A usurer. Giovanni had not read her that canto.
“If you want to leave,” she said, “leave now.”
“Tonight?”
“Now.”
Not without William. “I’ll stay and see what happens.”
“Give William the book. If he has it, we won’t need another guide. You’ll be free to go.”
“Is that what you want?”
Nadja hesitated. “You have another life, Giovanni. You have children. Go home.”
Giovanni studied the temple walls. “There used to be engravings. Images carved in gold.” He passed his hand over the rough surface. “They would have been here and here. And maybe over there. Now they’re all gone. Stolen.”
“What images?”
“A father’s tribute to his fallen son. Icarus.”
“The boy who tried to fly?”
“This is the place.” He stepped outside. Nadja followed. The temple was built on a crest of the crater, with a view of the bay and the open sea beyond. “Here,” he said. “Right where you’re standing. They flew from Crete, father and son, carving the air with waxen wings. The boy fell into the sea. This is where the father landed.”
“How do you know?”
“Virgil wrote it down in the Aeneid.”
Nadja thought a moment. “That other man in my dream. With the bag of gold. I think maybe he was your father.”
Giovanni nodded. “All I ever wanted was to be a poet. My father never understood what that meant.”
“What does it mean?”
“It means giving up the present for the future. A future my father couldn’t see.”
Nadja said, “Sometimes it’s better not to know the future. Isn’t that what gives us hope?”
“The souls of the damned have no hope, but they can see the future. Aeneas’s father saw the future of his son. My father never saw my future when he was alive. If he’s down among the demons, maybe he knows me now.”
Within the ancient temple, William prayed alone while the others slept. When his regular orisons were done he meditated on a single word.
Hope.
The dark in his mind diminished. He felt his soul rise up through a veil of scintillating light, passing through and beyond the cloud of unknowing. As the supernal mist parted he saw not the beatific vision but a vision of the underworld, of demons and monsters, and in that blessed light he saw the moment of his death. The vision overwhelmed him. He was filled with a sweet and sudden ecstasy, for he understood now, beyond all understanding, that in three more days his soul would be returned to God.
In the morning Giovanni led them to the dromos of the Sibyl’s cave, a trapezoidal slit that looked like a keyhole in the crater. Nervous, he tied the donkey to a tree. Nothing in the cave, he reminded himself as the pilgrims repacked their belongings to take only what they could carry.
Marco was fully armored except for his helmet, which he wore slung at his hip.
“You will not need that armor,” the friar said. “It will only slow you down. The Holy Lance is our protection.”
“If I am a knight, I will go as a knight.”
William asked Giovanni, “How long did it take Dante to get through Hell?”
“Three days.”
To the others William said, “Bring the water and wine. Food is optional.”
Marco snorted. “For you, maybe. I’m already hungry.”
“Very well. But we won’t be needing these.” William set aside the bowls and utensils.
“What else?” Nadja asked.
“Bring the torch. The oil. Flint and steel.”
“Rope?”
“Yes, yes. Very good. The charcoal, too.”
The girl gave him a puzzled look.
“Bring it,” he said.
When they had repacked, William addressed the group: “We must ask a blessing on our journey. Let us all hold hands.”
He took Nadja’s hand and Marco’s. Nadja joined hands with Giovanni, but the poet and the knight each kept a hand free.
William said, “Please. Both of you. This is important.”
Giovanni and Marco obeyed with reluctance, joining their hands to complete the circle. They all bowed their heads.
“Oremus,” the old friar said, then prayed in the vernacular so Nadja and Marco could draw hope from his words: “To our most merciful Father, the one true God, Maker and Ruler of all things, in whom we mortals have our being, we humbly pray that You will favor and aid us in this most treacherous journey. May You light our way through darkness; may we follow a course redounding to the splendor, honor, and glory of Your name; and may all our enemies be cast into confusion, disgrace, and eternal damnation. Amen.”
“Amen,” said the others.
Turning to Marco, William made the sign of the cross. “‘induite vos arma Dei ut possitis stare adversus insidias diaboli.’”
The cave of the Sybil was long and narrow. The dromos ran parallel to the hillside. Giovanni saw several openings to their right, cut into the rock. He let William take the lead. The old man held the torch before him. They went slowly, studying the walls as they passed, looking for markings or other clues. A passage opened to the left.
“There’s nothing down that way,” Giovanni said.
“Let’s find out,” William suggested.
“The chamber of the Sybil is straight ahead.”
William took his own counsel and led them to the left. Giovanni fretted in silence. The tunnel split into more passageways, forming a kind of labyrinth in the rock.
“We could get lost down here,” Giovanni remarked, hearing a nervous edge in his voice.
William said, “All who come this way are lost.”
The passage came to a dead end.
“Look,” said William. “Something’s written here.”
Giovanni came up beside the old man, who passed the torch along the wall, illuminating the inscription. He saw dark letters etched into the stone: HOPE.
“This is it,” said the friar. “This is the gate.”
Can’t be, Giovanni thought. Hadn’t he come this way before? How could he have missed it?
Nadja edged closer. “What does it say?”
William moved the torch to the left, revealing the rest of the inscription. He read the words aloud.
“Abandon all hope.”
From somewhere deep below came a sound like thunder. The cave shook. The writing on the wall cracked and crumbled. Rocks with dark letters fell to floor.
A fissure opened beneath their feet.
Marco yelled, “Get back!”
They stepped away from the widening chasm, unstable on their feet as the temblor intensified. William staggered, reached out a hand to brace himself, and dropped the torch. Giovanni tried to grab it, but the torch rolled into the chasm and tumbled into darkness.
The earthquake was felt from Avignon to Constantinople, from Munich to Malta. Towers toppled. Mountains slid. Ancient trees were riven at their roots. The earth trembled like a sinner at the sight of an avenging angel thundering havoc over the work of a thousand years.
Apollo’s temple shook and shattered. In Tavern Avernus, rats scurried and patrons cowered as wine barrels crashed to the floor, exploding in crimson. In Naples the cathedral façade cracked and spalled, then calved from the building and fell to ruin. Terra firma rolled and swelled beneath Monte Cassino, reducing the abbey to rubble. In Venafro the Pandone Castle was torn asunder. A shockwave swept through the Apennines and leveled the town of Rocca Calasco, sending nine hundred souls to judgment. Corona Corvina fell from its perch, chased to the bottom by what had been the mountaintop.
In Padua, Petrarch sat on a garden bench reading Pliny’s Historia Naturalis when the earth began to shake. He stood with a start, dropping his book as the statue of Mnemosyne wavered and fell, missing the poet and crushing the bench.
Rome, the Eternal City, was nearly destroyed. Devastation ripped through the heart of the ancient empire. Columns crumbled in the Forum t
o the sounds of an infinite scream as people stormed the streets in terror. Buildings old and new were pulverized. Marble turned to dust, scattered on the wind. Some buildings stood while others were razed: Tiempo della Pace; Saint Paul’s church and Saint John’s basilica; the Conti and Milizie Towers. Rome’s greatest monument was not immune. The Colosseum cracked and the southwest outer wall collapsed.
A moment undid the glories of an age.
The earthquake stopped. Dust settled. The dark chamber smelled of marl and broken stone. Giovanni coughed to clear his throat, thinking of Saint Sunniva, who was buried alive in a mountainside.
“The exit is blocked,” William said, somewhere behind him.
Giovanni went to the friar’s voice, felt the man’s tattered robe, then searched for the opening and confirmed the verdict: he moved his hands along the cold walls of their enclosure, palm over palm, until he came to a ruin of rubble that obstructed the exit. “Can’t go back.”
“Can’t go forward,” said Marco. “Not without a torch.”
Nadja prayed: “Ave Maria, gratia plena, Dominus tecum. Benedicta tu in mulieribus, et benedictus fructus ventris tui, Iesus.” William joined her. “Sancta Maria, Mater Dei, ora pro nobis peccatoribus.” Giovanni, too, spoke the words. “Nunc, et in hora mortis nostrae. Amen.”
“Amen,” said Marco.
A light pierced the darkness. The Holy Lance began to glow in Marco’s hand until the iron tip beamed brilliant as a torch.
The friar crossed himself. “Deo gratias.”
Shadows animated the walls. Nadja laughed in wonder, Giovanni in disbelief.
“‘fiat lux,’” said William. “God will light our way.”
“I’ll go first,” Marco said.
He moved to the front of the group. The crack in the floor was wide enough to step through. Marco paused at the verge of the abyss, surveyed the entrance, then took the first step. William entered second, bracing against the walls to ease himself down. Nadja went third. Her hair caught the light rising from the Lance.
Giovanni watched them go.
When the others had vanished, their footfalls continued to echo up to the chamber where the poet stood alone. Light dwindled in the lower passage.
You wanted to be another Dante, he chided himself, and took a deep breath to summon his courage.
He peered into the dismal maw and felt a warm draft on his face. The hole in the ground seemed to breathe. He sensed no sulfurous odor, merely the smell of damp stone. The echo of footsteps diminished and died. The only sound remaining was his galloping heartbeat and his panicky breath. It taunted and shamed him.
Giovanni crossed himself, muttering, “Libera nos a malo,” and followed the others down into Hell.
CHAPTER 20
Marco led them into the realm of grief. Nadja kept her hands on the rough walls to stop herself from slipping down the steep stone ramp. Loose rocks littered her path. A crack had opened between two worlds. The pilgrims now walked between. As Nadja warily descended, the air grew more obscure. Marco was far ahead and taking the lancelight with him.
“Slow down,” she said.
The knight waited. “Where’s Giovanni?”
A voice behind them and above: “Coming.”
Now he believes me, she thought.
They started forward as a group. Marco set an easier pace. Nadja followed William. Giovanni followed her.
“The lancelight is strange,” the poet said. “Not like a torch, or a lamp, or even the sun.”
“A miracle,” said Nadja.
William said, “The easy answer.”
“You have another?”
“God gave us a mind and a capacity to reason, so that we may better understand him.”
“Do you know how the Lance gives light?” Giovanni asked.
“There are three kinds of light,” said William. “Lux, lumen, and splendor. Lux is light in its pure form at the source, such as the light of the sun. It shines on the earth and into the earth to create minerals and engender plants.”
“No sunlight here,” Marco observed.
“Which brings us to the second form, lumen, a light that travels through something, like air or glass or water. Lumen cannot penetrate stone, and thus we move through darkness.”
“And the third?” Giovanni asked.
“Splendor. The light reflected from a surface.”
“But first the lumen must meet the surface,” Giovanni objected.
“Yes.”
“Without lux, there can be no lumen, without lumen, there can be no splendor.”
“Very good.”
“Then what is the source of the lancelight? Not the sun, surely.”
“Only one lumen can penetrate Hell. It flows from the lux of God. The lancelight, then, is God’s splendor.”
“In other words,” said Nadja, “a miracle.”
“Precisely.”
The path leveled out into a tunnel where the air was damp and smelled of rot. The pilgrims halted to rest.
Cries of anguish welled up from the dark. Nadja heard sighs and wails and lamentations. The voices were distant and spoke in many tongues. A woman pleaded in German, a man cursed in Italian, a boy prayed in Latin, but the jumbled words conveyed nothing more than pain and torment.
The pilgrims debouched from the tunnel into a vast open cavern. Nadja peered into the tenebrous void.
“Are we in Hell?” asked Marco.
“The antechamber,” Giovanni answered. “We’ll find a river up ahead.”
Something wriggled at Nadja’s feet. She stopped. Marco lowered the Lance to cast more light on the ground, which was covered with blood, worms, and maggots.
“Keep going,” William told her.
She tried to avoid stepping on insects, but with each halting stride there were more vermin underfoot. The ground became a writhing carpet of bugs, soft and moist and crunchy. Nadja squirmed at each squishy step.
The screams chilled William like ice water on his teeth. Naked shades ran through the arc of lancelight. A thousand souls raced in circles, chasing a banner that eluded them. They were stung by swarms of wasps and hornets. Blood flowed from the tortured shades and fell to feed the worms and maggots.
Four figures broke from the group and approached the pilgrims. They hesitated at the edge of the lancelight and William saw that they had melted faces. When the friar stepped forward to meet them, they withdrew into darkness. He stepped back again, and let them come forward.
He asked, “Who are you?”
“Cowards,” Giovanni whispered.
“Demons,” said Marco.
The spirits spoke in unison. “Angels.”
“Fallen angels?” Nadja asked.
The chorus answered, “Not fallen. We took no side in the Rebellion.”
“But you’re in Hell.”
“No,” they said. “Neither God nor the Devil will take us.”
“Then you are well and truly damned,” said William.
“Why are you here?” the angels asked. “Who do you seek?”
“We seek the Grail,” said Nadja.
William asked, “Where can we find it?”
“Beyond all sorrow.”
The phantom runners circled again and the chorus of angels rejoined them, chasing the banner.
Nadja said, “They almost look human.”
“They almost were,” said Giovanni. “One was a pope.”
William was intrigued. “Which one?”
“Celestine the Fifth.”
“He’s a saint,” the friar protested.
Giovanni cupped his hands to his mouth and shouted, “Celestine! Pope Celestine!”
One of the shades drew near. He was naked as a bather, emaciated, and covered with bleeding sores. His skull had a hole in it, the remnants of some mortal wound. He appeared human, but the lancelight passed through him, casting no shadow.
“Do not call me that,” he said.
William asked, “What should we call you?”
“Pietro di Morrone. So I was born, and so I died.”
“Why are you here?”
“‘non resistere malo,’” said Celestine, quoting Christ.
“‘resistite autem diabolo et fugiet a vobis,’” William countered, quoting James. “You fled the papacy. Now the Church is ruled by heretics. You might have been another Gregory the Great. You might have ushered in the third age.”
The shade said, “Many are called, but few are willing. Isn’t that right, William of Ockham?”
“You know me?”
“You were called by the Church, and ran.”
“I ran from her to save her.”
“You said that of a woman once.”
Evette.
The blow struck deep.
Pope Celestine said, “I was tested and found wanting. You will be tested, Brother William. Where will you be found?”
With that, the shade of Celestine—pope and saint and eremite—withdrew once more into the solitude of shadows.
The pilgrims rounded a corner and saw a row of lights ahead: burning trees along a river.
The River Acheron, Giovanni thought.
A throng of shades waited on the riverbank for the ferryman who rowed toward them from across the water. When the rower arrived Giovanni saw that he was an old man with a long white beard and eyes like burning coal.
Charon.
“Wicked souls!” Charon cried. “Hopeless sinners! Welcome to eternal darkness!” The ferryman turned to Giovanni and his companions. “The living shall not pass.”
William stepped forward. “You will ferry us across.”
“I do not ferry the living. Come see me when you’re dead.”
“We were sent by God to meet the Prince of Darkness. We bear the Holy Lance.”
Marco raised the Lance. The light burned brighter.
Charon stared at it in nervous wonder. “I was not warned.”
“I have warned you,” said William.
The ferryman said, “You may cross at your peril.”
Marco brandished the weapon at the crowd. “Get back!”
The dead spirits shrank from the lancelight. The pilgrims stepped into the ferryboat. As Charon pushed the boat from the shore, a multitude of shades waded out into the river, grabbing the wales and rocking the vessel. Giovanni could scarcely keep his balance. The seething mob nearly whelmed the ferry but Marco stabbed the shades with the Holy Lance and one by one they fell back screaming into the water. Charon slashed at them with his oar, knocking dozens more into the drink. Pushing off the faces of the damned, Charon drove the boat from danger, then rowed across Acheron and saw the pilgrims to the other side.
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