by D B Nielsen
We were driven almost to the outskirts of Rome, until I could see the rolling hills in the distance, the tall dried grass moving like a wave in the breeze, breaking along a line of olive trees.
Turning to St. John, I asked, ‘I thought you said that Elijah was near Vatican City?’
I was careful to use St. John’s father’s name as I wasn’t quite sure how much the Swiss Guard knew.
Jade green eyes held mine. ‘He is. You’ll see.’
Several minutes later the car came to a stop by a deserted ancient Roman road. Paved stones could still be seen amongst the ruins flanked by some crumbling guttering but, between the stones, the area was filled with weeds like the empty blocks of land readied for construction. The site held the old foundations of a way station; a footprint of a small village and a derelict loggia. The old expression, “All roads lead to Rome” was brought to mind and I recalled my intention to visit the famous Via Appia which I’d yet to see.
In ancient times, Rome was the heart of the empire and each time a new city was conquered, a road was built from that city back to Rome. Along the side of the road, the Romans built milestones and way stations. Milestones did not give any information about the other towns in the area but instead told how far it was to travel back to Rome, while the ancient way stations were used by officials and travellers – not the Roman military as they brought their own supplies – journeying between towns and needing supplies for themselves and their horses or an apothecary for their traveller’s aches and pains or refreshment at a tavern like the Prancing Pony in The Lord of the Rings.
‘What’s happening now?’ I asked confused, as the car’s rumbling engine was turned off.
‘Now we walk,’ St. John said as the Swiss Guard held the door open for me.
I got out and took a few steps forward and paused to look around, turning at the sound of a slamming door to see our escort return to the driver’s seat.
‘Isn’t he coming?’ I asked, consternation creasing my brow.
St. John shook his head. ‘This is as far as the Swiss Guard go. No further.’
The way he said the last words made me shiver. They sounded both sinister and so final. I wondered if St. John were warning me that what I had asked for – to gain his trust and be part of his life – wasn’t such a smart idea.
Well, he’d soon learn that I was tougher than that. I thought. Besides, it wasn’t as if I had much of a choice; I was the Wise One, so I was involved in this as much as him.
I noticed as we began to walk that there was what seemed to be the foundations of a bathhouse with a system of drains and, turning to the empty block, realised there was an ancient pump within a surge of high grass, hiding secretively. It still seemed to be operating after all this time. The way it kept up a monotonous dripping, unreasonably fast, was eerie. The pump seemed somehow frightening, hideously indecent, having continued its steady rhythm for who knows how long unnoticed – dripping fast, dripping silently onto the still waterlogged grass around the blackened mud beneath. A dead patch. And each drop was a little death knell; a mercurial silver murderer.
It was as if I was staring through a keyhole; the blackened image in the ground made by the passage of water on earth.
‘See there?’ St. John said and, turning to where he pointed, I finally noticed an opening in the path ahead. ‘That’s where we enter the catacombs.’
We were going to travel through the system of ancient burial chambers under Rome, the hundreds of kilometres of tunnels stretching like an underground necropolis – the city of the living above ground, the city of the dead below.
I knew that it was only in recent decades that the catacombs, numbering about forty, had been discovered beneath Rome itself. My Mum told me that when she’d first visited Rome with my father, they entered the catacombs through an entranceway which originated in a local restaurant, discovered when the owners had decided to do extensive renovations. Things had obviously changed since then. But with continual excavation of Rome, it seemed likely that many more catacombs had still yet to be found. This catacomb, however, was obviously part of a well-kept secret. No tourists had ever come here nor would they. But it took a stout constitution to travel within the catacombs of Rome, as it was accurate to claim that, for the traveller, they were entering a city of the dead.
Though they were most famous for Christian burials dating from the second century so that the Christians who were being persecuted could bury their dead secretly, the catacombs also included pagan and Jewish burials. This might have been a response to the overcrowding of Rome as it expanded its empire – an instance of high urban density living – and the shortage of land, which was similar to Paris with its own necropolis.
It was estimated by archaeologists that the dead underneath Rome far outnumbered the living within its city perimeters, and that the vast necropolis beneath the living city was in anticipation of the Day of Judgement, a belief that the dead would rise from their graves at the Apocalypse.
Whatever the case, the volcanic rock under Rome was highly suitable for tunnelling as it was softer when first exposed to air and only hardened afterwards. Not only were there hundreds of kilometres of tunnels, but there were up to four layers of catacombs beneath the ground.
It was very much like descending into Dante’s version of hell.
At the entrance, St. John lit a torch made of sulphur mixed with lime which looked like it had been left there by the ancient Romans too. The flame roared to life, casting a small pool of light in front and around us but failed to penetrate the black wall of darkness beyond.
‘Why aren’t we using a modern torch? You know – like mountain climbers and those who go canyoning do?’ I asked St. John, warily looking at the flame in his hand, amber-lit against the darkness.
A memory sparked within my mind, then quickly fizzled out, leaving as black a hollow as the tunnel opening up before me.
‘Modern torches fail when near the Grigori. We don’t know why.’ St. John’s response drifted back to me as he already had begun to walk down the narrow steps. ‘Besides, the sulphur and lime coating means that even if the torch is plunged into water the flame won’t diminish.’
Right. And when would we be testing that theory? I wondered, shaking my head in disbelief. Was he anticipating that we’d be facing a problem down there?
But there was no time to comment as then we descended into the catacombs’ murky depths, into a darkness that seemed devoid of time or, more accurately, was dead time.
I watched my step as I planted my foot on the first of many narrow stairs and descended into the vast system of galleries and levels stacked on top of each other, four storeys down. The blackness was all consuming and claustrophobic, and there was only enough room for single file. Moving slowly forward with my hand planted firmly on St. John’s back, not even realising that I was fisting his jacket, I plunged into Rome’s dark necropolis.
I told myself not to be silly as I sighted the burial niches which were carved into the rock walls, that the occupants were dead, and that the dead couldn’t hurt me. But it honestly didn’t make me feel much better. In fact, it really creeped me out being down here amongst the remains of once-living human beings. Maybe it should have made me feel sad, imagining the lives of those who’d passed away long ago, and perhaps if I’d been to as many archaeological sites as Dad and St. John I would have remained immune or even excited to be wandering the catacombs but, instead, it just made me feel edgy and apprehensive.
At first, there were burial niches still in good repair – sealed with a slab bearing the occupant’s name, age and date of death. But after a little while, the slabs gave way to disrepair and stone sarcophagi could be seen placed in the niches, where presumably the bodies were wrapped in a linen shroud and spices such as myrrh and aloes like in the time of Jesus.
The deeper in we journeyed, the more the time became out of joint. The air I breathed was musty with age, and the burning sulphur of the torch reeked and stung my eye
s. I was suffused with a crimson fear, a presentiment of danger, covering my eyes like a veil. It was so dark that I wondered how St. John could possibly find his way – even though I knew he didn’t need the torch, and that it was for my benefit alone that he’d lit it. A dreadful suspicion grew in my mind that maybe he didn’t know where he was going, that he was merely, blindly, floundering along, trusting to luck. Panic was starting to set in, and if I didn’t get hold of myself and my overactive imagination soon, my nerve would break and I would bolt.
A thousand terrors flashed through my mind. But there was only the darkness and my breathing and the shuffle and crunch of our steps on dry dirt.
I imagined I could hear scuttling and gave a shudder. Rats perhaps? Cockroaches? Definitely spiders. I prayed that nothing hairy would drop on me. I was ready to scream. Indeed, I was stupidly frightening myself.
The underground catacombs were bitter cold, perhaps colder because it was winter outside, although dry. Yet beneath my overcoat I was perspiring. St. John might have laughed if I’d told him – especially because I only had on underneath the thin singlet top that he’d packed. But we walked in silence – whether out of respect for the dead or for fear of what lay ahead, I couldn’t tell.
Eventually the burial niches were filled with bones and skulls, hundreds of them lining the walls, staring blankly from their hollows where eyes used to be. Speechless now, because they had no tongues. Nor lips, nor lids, nor life. I felt the shiver in my spine, and cast my eyes down and away from the knowing silent sneers, their jokers’ grins.
‘“Alexander died, Alexander was buried, Alexander returneth to dust; the dust is earth; of earth we make loam...” So Shakespeare was correct.’ St. John remarked. It was the first thing he’d said since we’d entered the catacombs.
‘How so?’ I whispered in the gloom, not wishing to wake the dead.
‘Wasn’t it he who suggested that “Your fat king and your lean beggar is but variable service – two dishes, but to the one table. That’s the end.”? Look around you, Sage. Whatever these men had achieved in their lives, all human endeavour, is cancelled out by the brushstroke of a master.’ St. John said, his voice mocking.
I shivered, and he must have felt my hand tremble at his back where I clutched him tightly but, keeping my tone light, I said, ‘For an immortal, you seem as fixated as Hamlet on the question of mortality. But unlike a Hamlet or a Horatio, at least you know that “There are more things in Heaven and Earth, Horatio, than are dreamt of in your philosophy.” That must be a comfort to you.’
‘Must it? I sometimes wonder,’ he murmured cryptically and lapsed again into silence.
We must have walked the length of Rome underneath its city streets and urban dwellings, until I saw that there was a larger opening up ahead. Under my clenched fist, I felt the muscles in St. John’s back tense, as if was preparing himself mentally for battle.
‘We’re close now; almost at the border of Vatican City.’ He said.
‘How do you know?’ I whispered into the darkness.
I felt him shrug. ‘Because like my father I’m drawn to it too.’
We entered into a tiny cavity and the glow of the torch brought a new dawn to its macabre décor. The arch was crafted from hundreds of skulls – mocking me with their silent laughter. Further in, I could see that vertebrae and femurs, some yellowed with age, formed grisly curlicues and fleur-de-lis on the ceiling of the chamber while the floor was patterned and enspelled in a cadaverous pentagram.
I was mesmerised, held in morbid fascination by the horror before my eyes. If it was possible, I clutched St. John’s jacket tighter – my knuckles turning as white as the bones directly in front of me.
I’d heard of the Capuchin Crypt under the Chiesa di Santa Maria della Concezione dei Cappuccini – a cemetery and collection of six tiny chapels where everything, from the light fittings to the picture frames, were made from human bones. The soil in the Capuchin Crypt was said to have been brought by the friars now buried there all the way from Jerusalem to Rome. Over four thousand friars and countless poor Romans found their final resting place in the Capuchin Cemetery – the bones piled high, stacked like gruesome Lego bricks on top of each other.
This crypt that we now stood in might have been similar to the Capuchin Crypt of the Three Skeletons as looking around I saw that there was a central skeleton as its focal point. This one skeleton was enclosed in the centre of the pentagram; a ghostly symbol of life coming to birth.
My heart was racing to the rhythm of a hummingbird’s wings, as I recognised the symbolism immediately.
The skeleton was fashioned as the Archangel Michael; the Prince of Light. Behind it, black feathers framed enormous wings brushing against the floor of the crypt, and in its right hand it held, not a scythe, but what I took to be a blade, a symbol of death, while its left hand held a set of scales meant to symbolise the weighing of each mortal’s soul, with its good and evil deeds, on Judgement Day. This was the Angel of the Final Reckoning.
An inscription was written above the skeletal effigy in a language I couldn’t yet read but was coming to know well.
St. John murmured, ‘It mirrors the placard in the Capuchin Crypt but written in the language of Babel; the first language. It declares “What you are now we used to be, what we are now you will be.”’
I shuddered but had little time to formulate a response as the effigy in front of us shifted – infinitesimally – but shifted all the same.
And then the shocking understanding of what this thing was crashed in on me.
‘Elijah,’ St. John addressed the figure in front of us.
It moved properly then and I saw with new eyes that it wasn’t a skeleton and it wasn’t ghoulish at all – it was hideously beautiful.
Tendrils of loose curling hair, the colour of polished brass, a mirror of St. John’s own, framed a face I thought initially to be skeletal due to its unnatural pallor. But instead, the fallen angel in front of me had flawlessly perfect features – so pale, almost translucent, that I could see its bluish marbled veins and could count, through the diaphanous skin on its chest, its ribs beneath. It held the shape of a man and, as it unbent from its slumbering form rising to its impressive height, it stretched its onyx-black wings – like that of a raven – incredibly wide until it reached the chamber’s ceiling. I suffered Elijah’s strange, glittering eyes upon me, against all reason pitch dark – like bottomless pits, like falling into an abyss.
St. John moved slightly, obscuring the Grigori from my view and I realised that I had been in danger of failing to heed his warning – I had been so mesmerised by the sight of Elijah I could not have looked away without St. John’s intervention.
Keeping my eyes firmly planted on the ground, I avoided the temptation of looking up again at St. John’s father.
It was then that it spoke. Yet it didn’t speak.
Sound poured forth; haunting, heartbreaking. I now knew what they meant by the Music of the Spheres. It was a pure note that held all passion and despair, that rose above all earthly sound. Elijah’s voice was all around, engulfing me like a burning lance searing a wound. And I wept for what I could not mend.
‘My son,’ Elijah echoed the words spoken by Père Henri, ‘you have returned.’
‘I have brought the Wise One with me.’ St. John’s voice was the coolest it had ever been.
‘Ah.’ The sound was drawn out like a breath on the wind. ‘Come forward, Wise One.’
Against my will, I took a step forward, only to have St. John block my path.
‘It’s not going to happen. The Wise One will not cross the pentagram. Do not try to use any of your tricks, Fallen One.’
I realised then that the pentagram was keeping the Grigori imprisoned and was not an evil icon but a means of protection for the righteous and the living. Whatever power Elijah contained was housed within the pentagram.
‘You have grown cruel, Elijah,’ the fallen angel addressed St. John and I trembled to hear its ow
n name on its lips, ‘It is not I that would harm the Wise One.’
‘Louis,’ I murmured and felt St. John give a start. Up till then I had not spoken but the name came unbidden to my lips.
But Elijah just laughed and the sound was a frightful yet lyrical cacophony. ‘Louis? Do you mean the Rephaim named Andromalius? Who is he to me? Merely a minion of the Grigori. Nothing more.’
‘Then tell us what we need to know. Tell the Wise One what you refused to tell me about the Grigori, so that she can know for herself your power,’ demanded St. John of his father.
‘The Grigori,’ Elijah replied almost mystically, ‘Semyaza.’
‘Yes, tell us about Semyaza. Tell us what we need to know,’ St. John repeated.
‘First amongst the Watchers. Once beloved of God. He is the enemy of the Keeper and a danger to the Wise One. It is right that you should fear Semyaza.’
‘You’re wrong, Elijah,’ St. John said boldly, ‘I don’t fear Semyaza.’
‘Not yet,’ the fallen angel replied cryptically, giving a mirthless laugh, ‘but you will.’
I’d heard that name before. Both Gabriel and St. John had mentioned it to me. At first I couldn’t place the context, and then I remembered – he was the Grigori who had led the others into rebellion.
Elijah continued, ‘Do you not recall The Book of Enoch, my son?’
And St. John began to quote, as if in a trance, ‘“And it came to pass when the children of men had multiplied that in those days were born unto them beautiful and comely daughters. And the angels, the children of the heaven, saw and lusted after them, and said to one another: ‘Come, let us choose us wives from among the children of men and beget us children.’ And Semjaza, who was their leader, said unto them: ‘I fear ye will not indeed agree to do this deed, and I alone shall have to pay the penalty of a great sin.’ And they all answered him and said: ‘Let us all swear an oath, and all bind ourselves by mutual imprecations not to abandon this plan but to do this thing.’ Then sware they all together and bound themselves by mutual imprecations upon it...”’ St. John paused and, in a stronger voice, said, ‘Yes, I recall The Book of Enoch and Semyaza too. But he was cast into Tartaros for his trespasses against the Creator, his sins against humankind.’
