Popes and Phantoms

by John Whitbourn

  ‘Intimately,’ came the agreement. ‘I have read both your case-file and your memoirs.’

  ‘How so?’ Slovo interrupted, referring to the latter. ‘I possess the only copy.’

  The man turned to look at the Admiral with a pitying smile. ‘Come, come, Admiral,’ he said gently, ‘you, more than anyone, know our ways.’

  Slovo nodded. ‘You are everywhere you want to be,’ he said heavily.

  ‘And see everything we want to see,’ the visitor added. ‘Don’t be bashful, Admiral, these memoirs of yours are excellent stuff. They deserve to be printed for a wider public.’

  ‘Although they never will be,’ Slovo said before the Welshman could.

  ‘No,’ the man agreed. ‘We can’t permit that.’

  ‘So may I see this “case-file” – since you have read my version of the same events?’

  ‘Sorry, no, Admiral. I have come to give you a fuller story, admittedly – but not the full story. I’m sure you’ll understand.’

  ‘But you do have The Book.’

  ‘Yes indeed.’

  ‘I’m honoured.’

  ‘I should say so!’ The answer was an exclamation. ‘There’s been a mere handful similarly favoured the last few centuries.’

  ‘May I see it then?’

  The man considered. ‘It is your first sight, is that not so?’ he asked.

  ‘That’s correct,’ replied the Admiral, looking away. ‘It was discussed on the occasion of my initiation, but otherwise …’

  ‘So you are, in fact, a virgin in such matters and I would accordingly counsel patience. You may have The Book in all good time but you doubtless appreciate the associated perils …’

  ‘Of course,’ said Slovo. ‘Knowing the guards, magical and otherwise, that surround The Book, I’m surprised that you can even carry it and live.’

  ‘Likewise. I have been provided with powerful wards but, even so, the stewardship is a trifle unnerving. If it’s all the same to you, Admiral, I’d be happier if we minimized its exposure to the world, for that’s when its guardians are most vigilant.’

  ‘And hungry,’ said Slovo helpfully.

  ‘Just so.’

  ‘I’m happy to wait then,’ confirmed Admiral Slovo, to the Welshman’s evident relief.

  ‘Thank you,’ he said, clearly desirous of a conversational diversion. ‘Incidentally, is that the height from which Tiberius’s victims were thrown?’

  Slovo knew the general direction of the gesture was correct but, with a stubborn residual concern for truth, he turned to make sure.

  ‘Yes – or so it’s said. “Tiberius’s Drop”, the local peasants call it. He’s a legendary monster hereabouts.’

  ‘But you disagree?’

  Admiral Slovo shrugged. ‘I have no strong opinions one way or the other. Perhaps he did have his partners, willing or otherwise, of the previous night flung to their death from a cliff, that is his business. We have all felt that way at one time or another.’

  The visitor seemed slightly shocked, but said nothing. Instead, he looked out over the Gulf of Naples and considered how to regain his lost advantage. ‘It has been a long and weary old road for you, Admiral, has it not?’

  ‘I can hardly deny that,’ answered Admiral Slovo equably.

  ‘And do you blame us?’

  Slovo’s smile was like a shine on a razor. ‘That would hardly be fair. My particular die was cast long before my recruitment to your “Ancient and Holy Vehme”.’

  ‘That’s very reasonable of you. However, would you maintain that famous Stoic poise were I to tell you that we enlisted you even before that? What if I were to say that your service to the Vehme was of far longer duration?’

  The Admiral considered, ‘I’m not sure,’ he said in due course. ‘Is it the sort of thing you’re likely to say, Master Vehmist?’

  ‘I’m afraid so.’

  ‘Well,’ said Slovo, in thoughtful tone, ‘I should hope that I would not so abandon my Stoicism as to be unduly perturbed. It rather depends on the precise nature of the revelation.’

  The black-gowned man poured himself another, quite generous, glass of wine. ‘And there you have hit the nail squarely on the head, Admiral! My business here is revelation. I have come, with the blessing of the Vehme, to shed light on the dark places of your history. It is our earnest wish that you should understand all – or nearly all. Whether you will like all that I shed light on is another matter.’

  ‘Valuing my life as lightly as I do,’ said Admiral Slovo, ‘I have successfully banished fear and recrimination from it. You term yourselves Illuminati, do you not?’

  ‘That is another name for the Vehmgericht,’ agreed the Welshman cautiously, his middle-German as faultless as his Court Italian.

  ‘Then pray illumine,’ said Slovo. ‘You cannot hurt me now.’

  The Welshman raised his eyebrows at such presumption. ‘Well,’ he said, ‘let us start at your beginning …’

  About the time that Turkish Imperialism seized another bit of Europe and rolled into Herzegovina, in the year that Charles the Bold became Duke of Burgundy, a small child, the blank slate that was to be Admiral Slovo, thought of something disastrously clever.

  It started when another youth in the classroom that fateful day gave voice to the question that would give Slovo away.

  ‘Honoured sir,’ piped the stocky ten-year-old, bursting with the desire to display new found knowledge. ‘May I ask something?’

  The schoolmaster looked up from the Latin text in which he was following the class’s painful recitation. An astoundingly liberal pedagogue for his time – indeed notoriously so – he was known to welcome signs of intellectual curiosity among the sons of the upper mercantile classes. Sensible queries were never deterred and could, on happy occasion, postpone the tedious work in hand. He lifted his pointer from the book and signalled for the conjugating chant to cease.

  ‘I’ve been thinking about Aristotle and Plato, sir.’

  ‘I am so relieved to hear that, Constantius,’ came the unpromising reply. ‘Why, to think I was under the impression that you laboured unwillingly in the vineyard of their works!’

  It was a cheap bit of schoolmaster sarcasm and he instantly regretted it as the class dutifully laughed at the boy’s expense.

  ‘I am sorry, Constantius,’ he said loudly, bringing the merriment to an instant end. ‘I did not mean to crush the tender shoot of budding enquiry.’

  Rehabilitated, Constantius looked warningly around at his classmates. ‘Well, honoured sir, I just wondered … where did they go?’

  ‘Why, to the grave of course, like we all do.’

  ‘No, I mean after that, sir. Where then?’

  The schoolmaster stroked his beard and gave the boy a very cool look.

  ‘I now see the direction of your question, child,’ he said. ‘It is an interesting one.’

  The boy swelled with pleasure at the unaccustomed approval.

  ‘Is anyone else similarly intrigued?’ asked the master.

  Until the lie of the land was absolutely clear, no one ventured to risk such a confession and, noting this, the proto-Slovo was reluctantly obliged to raise his own hand.

  ‘Slovo …’ said the schoolmaster, feigning surprise. ‘Another dark horse of classical curiosity rears up in our very midst. Let’s see if you can develop the question. Proceed!’

  Under the conducting baton of the master’s pointer, the seven-year-old was left with little option but to reveal more of his thoughts than was natural to him. ‘The paradox that struck me, honoured sir,’ he said slowly and gauging the reaction, ‘is whether ancient men of virtue such as Aristotle could enter Paradise when they did not – and could not – possess the true faith. But, if they are damned, for all their goodness, for not professing what they could not have known, then is that just? And if it is not just, then how can that be, since God is, by definition, just?’

  ‘What he means, honoured sir,’ said Constantius, butting in, ‘is that Pla
to and his fellows couldn’t have been Christians, could they? They died before Christ was born …’

  ‘I understood what Slovo meant well enough,’ said the schoolmaster with awesome finality. ‘And I can settle the debate quite simply by stating something you all should already know: Extra Ecclesia nulla salus: There is no salvation outside the Church. Your question, Constantius, is impious and inappropriate for an immature mind. However, since it was also a good question, I shall take the matter no further. Now return, if you please, to the verb habere, to have, and,’ he waved the pointer like a wizard’s wand, ‘con-ju-gate …’

  ‘The point is,’ said the schoolmaster, now very differently attired and accorded even greater respect than before, ‘that the question was Slovo’s. Every schoolroom has its spies and I knew it was he who’d primed the purely average Constantius, who longs to shine, with the query hatched in his own mind.’

  ‘So,’ said the black-cowled leader of the Tribunal facing the schoolmaster, ‘he makes arrows for others to fire.’

  ‘Precisely,’ agreed the schoolmaster. ‘For all his fortunate birth, he is the most distrusting boy I’ve yet to meet. He operates behind screens of deception and reticence, never saying all of what he means, even when it is of no import. Everything is buried beneath layers of artifice.’

  ‘That might just be cowardice,’ suggested another of his interrogators.

  ‘I, too, thought so,’ said the schoolmaster eagerly, ‘and so observed and tested him. He stands his ground in all the tiny wars of the play-yard. He is no coward, merely preternaturally controlled and nerveless.’

  ‘Do the other infants abhor him then?’ The question came from within the dark-clad ranks of those standing round the walls of the cavern.

  The schoolmaster politely sought to reply to the correct face but it was lost in the shadows between the torch embrasures. ‘No,’ he said. ‘That is the confirming point – his detachment is a seamless garment. To the other children he pretends to be a light-hearted and natural boy and they are deceived.’

  He turned his head slowly to take in the assembly and lifted his hand to solicit support from the hundreds gathered there. ‘I ask you to trust me,’ he said, addressing the whole gathering. ‘He is intelligent and calculating, cold-hearted and yet ethically aware. He is a seven-year-old that entertains theological speculations. While his peers play ball he wonders about Aristotle. I really think that he might serve.’

  Thus saying, the schoolmaster bowed his head and stepped back two paces in the prescribed Vehmic way, showing he was before the mercy of their judgement. The noose hanging round his neck made the point even plainer. The recommender of a rejected prospect was hung forthwith. This balanced the glory attaching to a successful proposal, for the Vehme wished their ranks to exclude all but the most promising recruits.

  The Tribunal conferred, their heavy cowls lending privacy to the deliberations. The schoolmaster and all his brothers (and some sisters) waited patiently and in silence.

  At last, the head of the Tribunal stood, a strategically placed torch bestowing a halo of fire around his head to those viewing from below. ‘We are minded to say yes,’ he announced. ‘Are there any who would disagree?’

  In a belief-cum-organization-cum-conspiracy that aspired to democratic ideals, it was always left open for dissatisfaction to have its voice – or even its way, if feelings were strong enough. On this occasion no one spoke.

  ‘So it shall be,’ concluded the Tribunalist. ‘The Captain of Nemesis will arrange what is necessary.’

  Therefore it was because of young Slovo’s precocious thoughts that an arrow took his father in the throat whilst he was out hunting. No one saw the archer, though a search was made; no one was ever charged with the crime. The flint-tipped and black-fletched little arrow still protruded through his neck when they bore him home, but the light had long since left his eyes. The whole household was inconsolable and even the boy Slovo, for all his famed control, could not hold back childish tears.

  Madame Slovo simply vanished one day soon after, and that was even worse in its way. She was last seen busy in the dairy and then, no more. No note, no token, not even a spray of blood was left to account for her passing.

  A brother died of the ‘sweating sickness’, an uncle hung himself for no good reason – one by one the Slovo clan went down. Neighbours began to get the message and avoided them.

  The final barrier between the boy Slovo and the outside world was his aunt. She – because the Vehme, whilst never merciful, could sometimes be whimsical – ended up as the erotic plaything of a Syrian princeling. Even more strangely, lust and hatred slowly mutated over the years into affection and what started as abduction ended in honoured matrimony. This would have been small comfort for the child Slovo, even if he could have known or understood it.

  Next, the Vehmgericht subtly incited the lawyer holding the Slovo estate in trust to pillage and defraud it (though he was going to do that anyway), so that at the age of eight, the boy Slovo found himself rapidly sans family, home and livelihood and the tender mercies of a far-away Church orphanage were extended to him.

  The Ancient and Holy Vehme began one of their long and infinitely patient watching briefs.

  ‘Oh …’ said Admiral Slovo numbly, meanwhile engaged in the most heroic struggle of his life in order to control his features. There was a lengthy pause as, in some frigid inner sanctum, he strove to accept the long-suppressed suspicion. ‘So that was you, was it?’

  The Vehmist beside him had taken the precaution of donning fine-mesh body armour beneath his gown before arriving. Not knowing that the Admiral’s favoured stiletto blow was a strike to the eye, he felt reasonably confident of survival. In the event, his trouble and present itchy discomfort in the heat were all wasted. Admiral Slovo prevailed in his supreme test, denying and overcoming the inner howl for revenge.

  ‘Sorry, yes,’ answered the Welshman. ‘You had potential, you see, but we had to find out what the world could make of you. For what we had in mind, a secure upbringing in the warm bosom of the family probably wouldn’t have been suitable.’

  ‘No,’ agreed Slovo, looking into a private middle-distance and speaking his words as though translating. ‘I can see that.’

  ‘It’s just a shame it was so hard on you personally,’ said the Vehmist, reasonable to the point of mockery.

  ‘Only to start with,’ Slovo reassured him.

  ‘Yes. That was noted at the time,’ agreed the Welshman, nibbling at a dried apricot. ‘You rapidly became endlessly adaptable – and that suited us very well.’

  ‘I’m pleased to hear my savage education gratified someone; tell me, who was reporting for you?’

  ‘Oh,’ mused the Vehmist, ‘a variety of people. Our first move was to replace the Orphanage Superintendent with one of our own folk.’

  ‘And what a sow she was!’

  ‘Only by necessity and only in your case, Admiral. Actually, she was quite a kindly person in normal life – I knew her well in her old age.’

  ‘I trust her death was attended with drawn-out pain and degradation,’ said Slovo.

  ‘No,’ replied the Vehmist. ‘It came very swift and merciful.’

  Admiral Slovo looked away. ‘I’m heartbroken,’ he said.

  ‘Naturally, there were others. We would never rely on merely one opinion. Of course, your spectacular escape didn’t exactly make our task any easier. We lost you for a number of months.’

  ‘Oh, I’m sorry to hear that!’ said Slovo. ‘At the time, I had no idea I was inconveniencing anyone.’

  The Vehmist smiled wryly, studying a flight of small birds winging overhead. ‘I dare say those whose throats you cut on the way were a trifle put out …’ he observed.

  ‘Mere youthful high spirits,’ explained Admiral Slovo, ‘added to a residual desire for justice.’

  The Vehmist shrugged to signify his indifference. ‘Anyhow,’ he said, ‘there was no real harm done as far as we were concerned. We picked up y
our trail in Bohemia by dint of the local mayhem.’

  ‘Bohemian political life was ever thus,’ countered Slovo.

  ‘Quite so – but you added a delectable degree of style and art to the process. The refreshing change caught our local agent’s attention.’

  In travelling memory lane, Admiral Slovo seemed to have found some consolation. His eyes looked on the sparkling sea with renewed favour. ‘I rather enjoyed life in that river-flotilla,’ he said. ‘Rising so fast entailed a lot of responsibility on my young shoulders, it’s true, but I found the work very … healing. Of course, between the Turk on one bank and the quasi-human frontier tribes on “our” side, we had quite a torrid time of it.’

  ‘All of which we fully approved of,’ said the Vehmist. ‘Likewise the Town Governorship that followed and the condottiere service in Thessaly. Banking in Ravenna was something of a departure, but a welcome one, a valuable broadening of experience. You see, Admiral Slovo, all our judgements were made after the event – we were hard pressed to keep up with each new incarnation and your name was rarely off our trace list. You certainly got to see Christendom, didn’t you?’

  ‘Something kept me moving,’ agreed Slovo. ‘Forever in search.’

  ‘Of what?’

  ‘I can’t recall, actually,’ answered the Admiral. ‘That Slovo is lost and gone. It’s like speaking of a different person.’

  The Vehmist appeared to accept this. ‘The leap from banking to piracy took us by surprise, I must confess. That radical departure – and its suddenness – meant we lost you once more.’

  ‘In fact,’ said Slovo, ‘there are closer affinities between the two professions than cursory thought suggests. Piracy seemed a logical extension to what I had been doing – and a more honest way of life.’

  The Welshman again deferred to the older man’s judgement. ‘By the merest stroke of fortune,’ he said, ‘it was that choice that caused our paths to cross again, never to part. Only then could we closely study what we had created – and scarce forbear to cheer!’