Beneath Ceaseless Skies #186

by Bruce McAllister

  “What?” the voice asked impatiently.

  “La Compassione, mi Signore. A boy with the Sign has come....”

  Footsteps sounded on the other side of the door, which opened at last to a face both chubbier and a little younger than my own.

  “Yes, he wears a tooth,” the face said to the guard, barely glancing at me. “But he may have stolen it.” Turning to me, the chubby face said, “Did you steal it?”

  The boy—perhaps fourteen—was draped in white satin a little dirtier, I thought, than what a pope should wear, but he seemed comfortable in it.

  “No, Your Holiness, I did not. I—”

  “I am not ‘Your Holiness.’ I am, as God has designed it, a boy like you.” He sighed, as if carrying a great weight, and his voice, in sudden affectation, became older, educated, with no little pomposity—a voice trained by clergy and papal tutors. And yet he winked at me, as if it were a game. I smiled back, and this seemed to make him happy.

  “Overfed and schooled in theological matters,” he went on, “but still a boy. My uncle, the Cardinal Vocassini—whose fondness for me is legend—convinced enough of his fellows that I, too young to cause any real trouble for the grown men in their silliness, would be preferable to the black sheep among them, a man whose machinations might very well succeed and whose papacy, as they put it, would be hell on earth for everyone. So—” He sighed again. “—I am both pope and boy now. If you did not steal it, where did you obtain it?”

  “Your Eminence—” the big guard interrupted gently.

  “You think I am treating him rudely,” the boy said, “but, if he carries il Segno, he must know who he is and not need my courtesy to tell him.” Turning to me, he added with a sly smile, “Is this not true?”

  When I found no words, he said, “You may call me Bonifacio.”

  It made me tremble to do it—to stand before a pope and call him by his name—but I managed it:

  “Thank you... Bonifacio,” I answered, and then: “And, yes, I believe that is true: ‘He who knows who he is does not need to have others tell him.’“

  I was quoting Father Tamillo, or was it the old man at the wharf—the one who could barely speak. Both were wise and worth quoting, especially at a moment like this.

  The Child Pope laughed, looking at the big guard. “He is smarter than his peasant clothes suggest. Again, where did you get it?”

  “From a man on a wharf, who claimed he was sent by my father. He told me I should find you, Your— That I should you find here and request from you, if it is not an imposition, at least one vial of the ‘holiest water’ in the land—because you possess it.”

  He laughed again and took a deep breath. “Then you must indeed be who my guards believe you are.” Then, without warning, he reached out for my arm. I flinched, but let him take it.

  Without any fuss, as if he were a physician, he pulled up my shirtsleeve, inspected the arm, saw the rash, nodded, and sighed.

  “Come in. Whether I can give you what you need as emissary in this terrible conflict we all face—that is, whether the water I can give you is holy enough—I do not know. But give it I shall, for I am pope, even if the night here and throughout Christendom these days fills me with fears no pope should feel. Do you fear the night, Emissary?”

  “The further I travel, the more I do perhaps.”

  “Then fear is good enough for this pope. If an emissary of La Compassione suffers from it, I shall too—and gladly!”

  He was comparing me, a peasant boy, to himself, a pope, but this did not feel strange. He wanted us to be friends—that I could tell—so why not make of us equals?

  To the guard, Bonifacio said, “He will need a bed, food and water. Prepare it.”

  As the big man left, Bonifacio waved me into his room and gestured around it.

  “This is where I live now, Master Emilio—now that, according to my uncle, the Holy City is too dangerous for me, day and night. Given what I myself hear, or imagine I do, in the sounds of night on this island....”

  I looked at his bed. It was simple, barely bigger than the boy himself, and took up little of the small room and its stone floor. But it sat in the middle of the room, not against a wall, and this I did not understand.

  “...I tend to believe him,” he finished.

  Then I saw the floor and, on it, what surrounded the bed. Not votive candles, which some might use against evil in the night, but something else: glass vials, each capped with a cork, and exactly like the ones the minstrel had given me. But rather than just two, at least a hundred, making two concentric rings around the bed.

  I knew what the vials contained. I knew that if indeed the Drinkers of Blood existed, and you had such water around you at night, you might feel safe. But would you be? Would the water be holy enough to protect you?

  * * *

  He was watching me. “You are a smart boy. I can see your mind working like a team of horses. You have perhaps made an arrangement like this yourself around your own bed?”

  “No, but I understand its usefulness.”

  “Thank you for the graciousness.” He was teasing me—I could see it in his eyes–and yet he was indeed grateful.

  “Do you suppose,” he went on, “that were I to give you one of these—no, two, in case one breaks on your travels—it would make a difference? There are 123 vials here. Would removing two allow the Drinkers to take me in the night?”

  He was not teasing me now. He looked serious, and he had made his fear of the night clear.

  “I do not know, Bonifacio. I would not wish to put you at risk by—”

  “It is worth the risk, Master Emilio, if you will take it and use it where it may wield more power than the protection of a single boy.”

  I must have looked terribly serious myself because he said: “Master Emilio, I have worried you. I apologize. I am accustomed to too much free time and the banter which such free time affords those who inhabit the Holy City with little to do other than pray, study and chatter. Two vials cannot possibly make a difference in my defenses. But let us talk of other things now.” Bonifacio stepped over the vials to his bed and gestured for me to follow. “There are no soft chairs in this room—nothing like the chairs of the living spaces of the Vatican or Castel Gandolfo—and I apologize for this too. There is only that one hard chair. Sit here with me, please.” He patted his bed.

  I had never sat on such a bed, one with a satin coverlet, but it was not the coverlet that made me uncomfortable. It was the smell of this Child Pope—perfumes that a pope would of course be made to wear, and washes for his hair. I sat down anyway beside him, not wishing to offend; and for a while neither of us said a thing. The silence seemed to calm him.

  “Is silence not wonderful?” he asked at last.

  “Yes....”

  “Did you know,” he went on, “that there is a blind nun here on the island, at its one convent, who can see the future?”

  “I did not.”

  “I talk to her often because she seems able to hear what I most wish to say, whether I say it or not. Because she cannot see me—because she cannot see either boy or pope—she must listen to the spirit in me, the one in us all, and to this I am not accustomed. I am thankful for her presence and friendship. She tells me remarkable things, Master Emilio. Only yesterday she told me that in three hundred years an emperor will sleep in this very bed. An emperor! He will be so small that he can sleep in this very bed, which will still be here. Is this not remarkable?”

  “Yes, Bonifacio.”

  He smiled at his name. For a moment I thought he might thank me for using it.

  “Let us take a reprieve from battle,” he said suddenly. “I have a collection of seashells. It is my special vice, collecting them. Would you like to see them?”

  “I would, yes.” I had grown up in a village of sea shells.

  “They are in those drawers.” He rose from the bed and pulled from inside his vestments something that dangled from a satin ribbon. “Only I have a key.
”

  Unlocking them one by one, he pulled the drawers out. All displayed seashells of different colors, sizes and shapes. As I bent closer to see them, I expected to smell them; but there was no odor. The Holy City would of course know how to wash the sea and rot from shells when a fishing village did not.

  At first these seashells, though more exotic and free of any sea life that might have grown upon them, looked like any others. Then I saw the difference.

  “As you can see, Master Emilio, they are all ‘left-handed.’ Most snails from the sea and land open to the right, but these—which have been given to me by those who know of my obsession—open to the left. They are a little like us, are they not, Emissary?”

  “Scusi?”

  “They are different from their brothers and sisters, as you and I are, would you not agree?”

  It was true. These sea snails, their mouths opening on the opposite side, were strange, yet wonderful. Sinistrale. “Left-handed.” Unique.

  “Yes,” I answered.

  “This one,” Bonifacio said, picking up one that looked duller than some, “is special. It is viewed, Master Emilio, as holy in a vast country far to the east. The great-great-great grandson of the explorer Polo—perhaps you have heard of him—brought it to me at my uncle’s request. It is my favorite. In that country, Polo the Minor tells me, they call it a ‘chank.’“

  Bonifacio offered me the shell, and I took it.

  “The people of that world, whose eyes are unlike ours, believe in a god who was once a man but became a woman so that he could experience the suffering of mankind. According to the legends in that land, this God, or Goddess, began to cry one day because of human suffering, and her tears filled the seas.... Does this story not sound familiar to you? Does it not sound like what La Compassione would wish of us all—to weep for others?”

  This was a boy, I saw again, who wanted company, and could have it if he told his visitor stories.

  “It is almost dark, Bonifacio,” I said gently.

  “Do not be afraid. You may sleep with me, if you wish, with the holy water around us both.”

  “I am, forgive me for saying so, thinking of my dog. I left him outside the church.”

  Bonifacio frowned. “You have heard of my fear?”

  “Yes.” I smiled.

  Bonifacio gave back a smile. “If you wish to sleep with your dog in the next room, do so. But how—”

  “I will be safe if I simply have candles to surround myself with, and, should you feel safe in sparing one, with but a sole vial of holy water.....”

  “You are certain.”

  “My skin warns me to danger....”

  Bonifacio looked at me puzzled for a moment, but then said: “Here is a vial, then. If you wish more, let me know. I will have Frazetti bring you ten thick candles that will last till morning. He will check on you during the night, but without waking you. Will your dog bite him?”

  “I will tell my dog not to.”

  We looked at each other for a moment.

  “In what way,” I asked finally, “is the water you have surrounded yourself with the ‘holiest’?”

  He sighed, then said: “It is merely water that I myself have blessed, and yet, I regret to say, it is probably the holiest in the land because what watches me at night—and what follows you, I am certain—wears the gowns of Roman priests and bishops—too many of them—and so the holy water there has been tainted by them. The Holy Spirit has fled the city....”

  He looked away, seeing something other than the room. When he spoke again, it was to say:

  “Sometimes I am afraid that I will be the one who invites them to me, who lets them past the vials of holy water even as I sleep. Do you walk in your sleep, Master Emilio?”

  “No, I do not.”

  “Some do, and I am one. It is not demonic, nor a sin, nor even something to be embarrassed by, I am told. But I worry that I may walk some night while I sleep and kick the vials away... and then where will I be? Frazetti has offered to sleep with me, to keep me from walking; but that is what one does for a child. Besides, I am not sure I fully trust him and his fellow guards. There is one—” Bonifacio stopped himself.

  Embarrassed, he smiled and added, “Thank you for coming all this way to see me. I have enjoyed our conversation and your kind company, Master Emilio. If you hear any disturbance in my room tonight, or any odd sounds in the hallway—ones a guard would not naturally make—I hope that you, your dog, and the spirit whose emissary the tooth proclaims you are will look in on me.”

  “Of course. My dog’s ears are excellent.”

  “Perhaps if I met him tomorrow, I might overcome my fear with him. Perhaps, then, you could both sleep in my room tomorrow night.”

  He did not want me to leave. He felt alone, and why would he not? It was a lonely island, I imagined—especially at night, and especially if one feared the night and did not trust one’s men.

  “Certainly,” I told him. “And after I have put my dog in my room, may I return to bid you good-night?”

  “I would like that.”

  He wanted me to know one more thing. I could tell. I waited.

  “You do know that the Oldest Drinker was born on the same night as God’s Son, but to another mother, and that his first drink was not milk, but blood.”

  “I did not.”

  “Now you do. It will matter, the seer tells me, in the conflict to come.”

  * * *

  Bonifacio was already asleep when I returned to his room. The one candle lit on the dresser of seashells revealed the vials in their perfect circles, and I left a little less worried about him.

  Stappo and I—full now of the zuppa di pollo, Elbanese pane piuma, pears and cheese brought by the big guard—fell asleep easily enough in the room next to the Child Pope’s. Our candles flickered on the floor around us, and I kept the vial in my hand, as the voice had told me to do. We barely heard Frazetti when he looked in on us. Later, however—when a boy’s voice cried out in the next room—both Stappo and I sat up, our hearts beating like immense wings. There were no other sounds. Had it been but the cry of a boy-pope’s bad dream?

  No. My skin was itching.

  Scrambling off the bed, the vial of water still in my hand and Stappo barking frantically beside me, I rushed to Bonifacio’s room.

  The door was open. The crying-out had turned into screaming.

  When I looked inside the room, I nearly screamed myself.

  The Child Pope had been walking in his sleep. He had indeed kicked a path through the vials of holy water and was standing unprotected, fully awake, screaming at a pitch entirely appropriate for what stood before him, illuminated by the one candle in the room.

  Dressed in a shredded, black robe of the kind priests wear, but far too small for it, the figure was bigger than any priest. Even hunched, as it was, it was taller than the big guard. As I watched, it moved toward Bonifacio on heavy legs whose huge, bare, and misshapen feet scratched the stone floor like metal nails.

  Bonifacio was looking up at the face, which I could not see. He had stopped screaming. He could not breathe, his arms out in front of him helplessly.

  Where were the guards? Had the creature killed them? Had they run away in fear?

  Before I could restrain him, Stappo had thrown himself at the thing, toward its neck, but the creature simply brushed him away with the back of an immense hand.

  Stappo landed on the floor, slid a stride, jumped up, and began licking at the wet, red slit in his flank left by the creature’s hand. He looked up at me, his eyes asking “Again?” I shook my head and shouted “No!” I did not want Stappo to die. He would die if he tried again, and he would try if I wished him to.

  I had, for the barest of moments, seen the thing’s face, and it was a face that would stop anyone’s breath.

  The hairless, twisted mass of bone that was the head had a mouth, but it was not a mouth. It was a hole, a circle of flesh, with teeth around the hole. I thought of the lampreys my
friends’ fathers brought up in their nets. Faces built to drink blood. Faces from nightmares.

  Where were the guards?

  Two more steps and the creature’s talons would be on Bonifacio. I shouted, shouted again, but the creature did not turn. I ran toward it, my heart thundering, and kicked its leg, kicked it again hard; and still it did not turn.

  What happened next I could not have explained. One moment I was kicking a leg as thick as a tree, and the next there was more light in the room than a hundred candles could have made.

  The creature turned away from il Papino toward me. Why?

  I looked down at my arms. They were glowing. It was not possible, but it was: the light was coming from my body. It was shining through my leggings and my camicia as if they did not exist.

  “You will not touch him!” a voice boomed, and it was mine, and yet a voice I did not know.

  “Domina sancta misericordiae!” the voice boomed again, and, though not a boy’s voice at all, it came from my throat even as the light grew brighter.

  The creature, coils of fat showing at its neck, took a step back, forgetting Bonifacio. Then it rushed me, as I had somehow known it would.

  Uncorking the vial in my hand, I hurled the water at its face.

  The creature bellowed. Stappo howled. The creature tossed its great skull back and forth to free itself from pain. The head tipped back, as if trying to see but unable to. The holy water had become a mist, swirling through the air, bright in the light from my body.

  Would the creature remain blind?

  I did not think so.

  When the creature stopped rubbing its eyes, it would see again and grab me.

  But it did not. Instead, it stood there. It could not look at me because of the light, but it did not turn back to Bonifacio. It was perfectly motionless.

  Bonifacio had turned away, too, blinded by the light.

  I was shining with the sun of a thousand candles, and in that light the creature was changing.

  It was growing shorter, but only because it was changing in other ways as well. The hunched back was straightening, the hands and feet becoming human again, the eyes smaller, the face a man’s face again, though covered with burns where the holy water had touched it.