The Religion: A Novel

by Tim Willocks

  He shifted his weight and levered the poignard deeper through the splintering foot bones. Gonzaga had not a breath left to scream with, nor could he find the strength to take one. His mouth gaped wide without sound. His quivering lips turned purple.

  Tannhauser seized him by the throat.

  “You haven’t even begun to understand cruelty. But you will understand it now.”

  He twisted the javelin free and drove it through Gonzaga’s other foot. Gonzaga started to crumple at the knees. Tannhauser held him upright. There was a venerable school of thought that held that acts of this vicious character reduced a man to the level of his enemy. Tannhauser did not subscribe to this philosophy. Again he gouged the spear deeper and felt the pain bubble through the windpipe clenched in his fist. The squalid priest’s eyes rolled white and he gargled for his life. Tannhauser was distracted by an anguished grunt from the chair. He turned.

  He looked at Sabato Svi and in his eyes he saw fear. He realized that a pall of mortal dread lay about the room, and that he alone was now its source. He withdrew the spear and shoved the screeching priest across the room. Gonzaga slithered in his own bloody footprints and hit the floor at the captain’s feet. Tannhauser laid the javelin on the table. He looked at Bors.

  Bors laughed and said, “When is it my turn?”

  Tannhauser went to Sabato. With care he unwound the key of the iron pear until it shrank to a size whereby he could pull it from his mouth without further injury.

  “Forgive me,” said Tannhauser.

  Sabato rolled his jaws and spat blood. He was white with shock, but though he had no violence in him, he was as tough as the nails that pinned him to the chair. Tannhauser examined them. Their flat heads protruded two inches above the backs of Sabato’s hands.

  “Can you endure a little longer, my friend? We’re not yet safe.”

  Sabato produced a grim smile. “I’ll be here.”

  Tannhauser grabbed the javelin and walked toward the prisoners. He stooped over Gonzaga and crammed the iron pear between his lips. He hammered it home with the heel of his hand and felt the snapping of teeth.

  “Stand up,” he said.

  The priest could do no more than grovel and moan.

  “Stand up! Stand, I say!”

  The priest struggled to his perforated feet and stood there shuddering, his nostrils snorting for air above the iron gag. Tannhauser shoved him across the room toward Bors.

  “Strip him.”

  With as much violence as possible, Bors began to rip Gonzaga’s habit apart. Tannhauser turned and grabbed the chubby captain by the neck. He manhandled him toward the constable still panting over the javelin in his belly. He pushed the captain’s head down.

  “Look at him.”

  The spear point had gored the man’s innards and sought the easiest exit, which was his anus. His breeches were clotted with excrement and leaking blood. The captain gagged. With the broad side of his boot, Tannhauser kicked the butt of the spear and drove it four more inches through the man’s entrails. The man doubled up with a terrible groan. The captain unleashed a stream of vomit all over his writhing subordinate. Bors laughed.

  Tannhauser cast his eyes about the desecration of his tavern: over the empty trestles and benches, the guttering pools of yellow light, the lurching swaths of darkness and shadow, the blood pooled black as petroleum on the flags. He turned back to the captain, his fat little face slack with fear in the tenebrous light. He grabbed him and spoke into his ear.

  “Look about and feast your eyes upon what you’ve wrought.”

  The captain did so with a grimace of dismay.

  “See the dead, the dying, the horror. See the barbarian laughing. The priest naked. The crucified Jew. Witness the vengeance of your enemies.”

  The captain hunched his shoulders around his vomit-clogged beard. With the bloodied point of the javelin Tannhauser lifted up the captain’s chin so he could look into his eyes.

  “Know that you are in Hell. And that we are its demons.”

  Puke foamed from the captain’s nostrils as he tried not to sob. He wrapped his arms over his head like a bewildered child. Tannhauser stepped back to the dying constable and spun the javelin and punched the needle tip through the man’s temple and into his brain. The crunch ran up his arm and the man fell still. He’d murdered a constable sworn to the Spanish Crown. His life had become one thing, and not another. He was once more a killer. So be it. He felt the drag of the bone as he plucked the spear free. He looked at the captain.

  “Torment or mercy,” he said. “You have a choice.”

  So desperate was the captain’s relief at clinging onto life that he broke his silence. “Great lord, Excellency, I am your servant.” He stifled a sob. “I am at your command.”

  Tannhauser pointed to the corpse. “Drag him to the wall, over there.”

  As the captain bent to his work, Tannhauser glanced at Bors and indicated the dead man bleeding on the trestle. Bors lumbered over and laid down his weapons and scooped up the corpse in both arms. He lugged him to the warehouse doorway and flung him into the dark. Gonzaga stood trembling and nude among the black-and-white tatters of his robes. Bors went back to the bench and took up the arquebus. He stabbed the muzzle hard in Gonzaga’s ribs.

  “Kneel,” he said. “Kneel like a dog.”

  Gonzaga fell onto his hands, choking on the pear, and Bors laughed again.

  Tannhauser picked up the second arquebus from the floor. He blew on the match and went to the window and cracked a shutter and peered outside. Two more constables and a score or so of idlers milled about in the street. He snapped his fingers at the captain, who dropped the body by the wall and trotted over.

  “Clean your beard,” said Tannhauser.

  The captain scrubbed nostrils and chin with his sleeves.

  “You have two men outside,” said Tannhauser. “You must be angry with them.”

  Confusion filled the captain’s face. “Angry?”

  “I am angry with them. They’ve done nothing to disperse the rabble. It’s an outrage.”

  “An outrage, yes, yes,” agreed the captain.

  “If you would spare their lives, as well as your own, you will order them to fire their guns and clear the street. Then you will dismiss them for the rest of the night. Tell them to go home. If you find them loitering, they will be flogged.”

  “Flogged raw!” babbled the captain.

  “When you’ve given them their orders, you will slam the door on them. Because you are angry.”

  “I am furious!” yelled the captain.

  Tannhauser glanced at Bors, who’d positioned himself out of sight of the door, arquebus to his shoulder, the javelin close to hand. Tannhauser prodded the captain forward.

  “If you step outside,” said Tannhauser, “we’ll kill you all.”

  Before the captain could think too hard, Tannhauser opened the left-hand wing of the doors. The captain, free at last to vent himself and in a manner in which he believed himself expert, poured all the emotion of his ordeal into the tongue-lashing he laid on his two inferiors. When the threat of a flogging was expanded into a variety of mutilations and a double hanging, Tannhauser poked the javelin into his arse. In mid-sentence, the captain slammed the door shut on his minions. He looked to Tannhauser for approval. Tannhauser took the pistol from the captain’s belt. Without being asked, the captain handed over a powder flask worked in brass and a pouch of ball and patches.

  “Join Father Gonzaga,” said Tannhauser. “On your knees.”

  As the captain hurried to obey, convinced that he’d secured his tormentor’s goodwill, two gunshots thundered outside. Tannhauser reprimed the pistol and took another look through the shutters. The crowd was in flight, leaving a pair of groaning bodies on the cobbles. The two constables laid into a third prostrate figure with their gun butts. Such was the price of gawking. Tannhauser belted the pistol and added the arquebus to Bors’s collection.

  Bors nodded toward Sabato. “I’l
l go and fetch a claw hammer.”

  Sabato twitched with alarm and Tannhauser shook his head. “Let’s do it without breaking his hands.” He took a lamp from one of the trestles and hurried into the warehouse and located his tool chest. He retrieved a fine-toothed hacksaw and hastened back. He reexamined the nails through Sabato’s hands.

  He said, “I paid fifteen gold scudi for this chair.”

  “You were robbed,” said Sabato Svi.

  Tannhauser went to work with the saw in short, rapid strokes.

  “So our Sicilian adventure is over,” said Sabato Svi.

  “There’ll be other adventures, grander and more lucrative.” The first nail head dropped off. “Don’t move.” He started on the second.

  “At least you won’t have to sail to Egypt, with the Greek.”

  “There’ll be more pepper too. It grows on trees.” The saw topped the second nail and Tannhauser laid it down. “Let the hand go loose,” he said. He took hold of Sabato’s left wrist. With his other hand he interlaced his fingers through Sabato’s and hooked them under the palm side of his knuckles. “Loose, I said.” Tannhauser whipped the hand up from the nail.

  “There. Now, the other. Loose.”

  In another moment Sabato was free. He rose from the chair and worked his fingers gingerly, then clenched his fists, surprised.

  “Flesh wounds,” said Tannhauser.

  Bors called from the window. “The street is clear.”

  The three friends congregated around the prisoners, who groveled on elbows and knees in the flickering gloom. Between the priest’s splayed hands was a puddle of drool. Both men stank of their own soil. Tannhauser looked at Sabato.

  “They’re yours if you want them.”

  The captain’s voice quavered from below. “But Your Excellency—”

  Bors booted him in the teeth.

  Sabato shook his head. “It would give me no joy.”

  Tannhauser indicated the captain to Bors.

  “Kill him.”

  Bors dropped the muzzle of the arquebus to the base of the captain’s skull and let fall the match. There was a brief pause, which the captain filled with the wail of one who knew he was about to die with neither absolution nor unction. Then the contents of his skull exploded from his brow in a sooty blast of flame and befouled the flagstones. Gonzaga recoiled as his face was splattered with brains and fragments of lead. Bors laid down the gun and hauled the gagging and naked priest to his mutilated feet. He grabbed the iron pear by its key and tore it from Gonzaga’s mouth, leaving a mass of broken stumps in its wake.

  “See how the priest has shat himself,” said Bors with disgust. He brandished the iron pear. “We should’ve shoved this up his arse.”

  “Father Gonzaga,” Tannhauser said.

  Gonzaga shuffled in a circle, his naked thighs dripping brown filth, and stared at Tannhauser’s boots. He was no longer a human being, but a sack filled with terror and despair.

  “It’s time you made a clean breast,” said Tannhauser, “and now that you’re alone, you need have no more fear of your comrades.”

  Gonzaga blinked with incomprehension. Bors stomped on the remains of the captain’s head. Gonzaga swayed with nausea and Bors gave him a slap on his shaven pate.

  “You hear that, priest? Friendless and alone.”

  Tannhauser said, “You’ve worked this atrocity on orders of Brother Ludovico.”

  Gonzaga nodded. “Fra Ludovico. Yes, oh yes.” He hesitated, then blurted, “And to crucify the Jew was the captain’s order, not mine. Of that deed I am innocent.”

  “He speaks like a lawyer,” said Sabato.

  Bors said, “I hate lawyers.”

  He grabbed Gonzaga’s head with both hands and rammed his thumbs into the nostrils with such great violence that they popped asunder. Gonzaga screamed, his tongue waggling forth through broken teeth. Bors let go. From the nearest trestle, Tannhauser took a half-beaker of wine and gave it to the priest. The priest took it with both hands. He waited.

  “Drink,” said Tannhauser. Gonzaga drank. “Tell me, why does Ludovico turn against us?”

  Gonzaga lowered the beaker. Rivulets of gore trickled from his ruptured nose and over his chin. “Why?” He groped for the courage to answer. “Why, because—because—” He quailed and gave up and hid behind the beaker. Bors struck the beaker from his hands. Gonzaga loudly befouled himself again. He clasped his hands to Tannhauser. His face was a haggard portrait of one for whom God no longer had meaning and who wanted only to live at any price. Tannhauser wondered how often Gonzaga had seen such a portrait himself, and he felt no pity.

  “Speak freely,” said Tannhauser. “And have no fear of offending us.”

  Bors sniggered. Yet Gonzaga clung on to Tannhauser’s every word.

  “You are a Moslem,” he said. “A heretic, an Anabaptist, a criminal. You consort with Jews. You disdain the Holy Father.” He pointed to the curious tomes heaped on Tannhauser’s table. “The forbidden texts are there for all to see.”

  “That wouldn’t be enough for Ludovico to show his hand. Tell me the real reason.”

  “Your Excellency, Ludovico told me nothing more.” His eyes flicked at Bors. “Nothing at all. Your impertinence on the docks seemed more than reason to me.”

  Bors lurched forward. “Let me tear his scrawny cock off.”

  Tannhauser stopped him with his arm. Gonzaga clutched at his privities and shivered. “I was ordered to leave the matter in the hands of the police.”

  Bors strained to escape. “But you thought you’d nail my friend to a chair instead?”

  Gonzaga closed his eyes.

  “There must be more,” said Tannhauser. “Tell me everything. Everything that passed between you.”

  Gonzaga struggled to form his thoughts. “There was a second task. Ludovico ordered the seclusion of a noblewoman, in the convent of the Holy Sepulchre at Santa Croce.”

  Though he already knew the answer, Tannhauser said, “What was the woman’s name?”

  “Carla de La Penautier, of the Villa Saliba.”

  Sabato and Bors both turned to stare at Tannhauser.

  “When was this task to be accomplished?”

  “It’s accomplished already. Tonight.”

  Tannhauser recalled the priest in the carriage at the gate. “By whom?”

  “The qualificator of our Sacred Congregation, Father Ambrosio.”

  “Does this creature have the face of a rat?”

  Gonzaga simpered. “Oh, yes, exactly so, Your Excellency.”

  Tannhauser glanced at Bors and Bors struck the priest in the kidneys with his fist. Gonzaga fell. Tannhauser pulled him to his knees by one ear.

  “Will the noble lady be harmed?”

  Gonzaga struggled for breath. “No. Ludovico gave strict orders to the contrary.”

  So, the mysterious monk who had deflowered the young contessa, and unknowingly left her with child, was Ludovico Ludovici, and Ludovico wanted the slate to be wiped clean. It was as tangled a web as Tannhauser had been caught up in. But how had Ludovico known that Carla had beseeched his aid in getting to Malta? Through Starkey? Inadvertently, perhaps. But Gonzaga wouldn’t know the answer and Tannhauser didn’t ask.

  “Where are the charges written against us?” asked Tannhauser.

  “None were prepared. We were forbidden to commit anything to paper.”

  This much, at least, was good news. “And where is Ludovico now?”

  “He left to see Viceroy Toledo this afternoon. From Palermo he goes on to Rome.”

  “On what business?”

  “I don’t know. Grand Master La Valette’s, perhaps. And his own. Always his own. He’d never confide such matters in me.”

  Tannhauser considered him. He nodded to Bors. “He’s nothing left to tell us.”

  Sabato Svi walked away.

  Bors drew his dagger. He hesitated. “I’ve never killed a priest before.”

  Gonzaga started babbling in Latin. “Deus meus, ex toto co
rde poenitet me omnium meorum peccatorum, eaque detestor . . .”

  Tannhauser took the dagger from Bors. “Neither have I.”

  He silenced Gonzaga’s last prayer by stabbing him behind the collarbones and cutting the pipes from his heart. During the rebellion of the False Mustafa, when the janissaries massacred thousands in the streets of Adrianople, Tannhauser had found this method to be more certain than cutting the throat. And the blood was neatly contained inside the chest. Gonzaga died without a sigh. Tannhauser let him fall and returned the dagger.

  He said, “It’s much the same as killing anyone else.”

  Bors wiped the dagger on his thigh and sheathed it. “And now?”

  Tannhauser pondered. Santa Croce lay inland, in the mountains southwest of Etna. The route thence from the Villa Saliba—the Syracuse Road—wound due west of the Oracle, past Messina’s southern gate. Ambrosio and his escort would not yet have reached the Villa Saliba. Carla, he hoped, would have the sense not to offer resistance. And Amparo? But speculation was idle. He had more than time enough to cut them off on the Syracuse Road. He suddenly felt a little nauseous and realized why.

  “I haven’t eaten since breakfast,” he said. He indicated the corpses. “Let’s stack this filth in the warehouse. Then, while I fill my belly, we can talk.”

  Tannhauser watered Buraq, rubbed him down with a sack, and left him out back with a bag of crushed oats and clover. When he returned, Bors had sluiced the floor with vinegar to clear the stench. Poor Gasparo was laid out on a trestle. While Bors went to pillage the kitchen, Tannhauser hastened to his chamber and retrieved his medicine chest.

  When he returned, Bors had laid the table with bread and cheese and wine and a quarter of cold roast swan. He added a bottle of brandy and three dainty glasses. Sabato Svi sat with his head in his bloody hands. His shoulders were shaking. Tannhauser set his medicine chest on the table and opened its lid. He wrapped his arm around Sabato and felt the muted sobs in his chest. He waited while they stilled, then he said, “Show me your hands.”

  Sabato scrubbed his face on his sleeve, then took a deep breath and let it out. He avoided Tannhauser’s eyes. His beard was all mucked about with mucus and blood. Tannhauser took a cloth from the chest and started to wipe his face. Sabato took the cloth and did it himself.