The Rome Prophecy

by Jon Trace

  ‘It counts.’ Tom points off into the darkness and the wind flaps the sleeve of his black cotton jacket. ‘What’s that?’

  His friend glances, unlit cigarette still in mouth. ‘The Champ de Mars. You know the Champ de Mars?’

  ‘The big park where they do the military stuff?’

  JP laughs and abandons his tobacco for a moment. ‘Aah, oui, the military stuff. Tom, the Field of Mars is the largest open space in Paris and perhaps the most respected. It is almost sacred. Much food has been eaten on this land and much blood drunk by its earth. During the Revolution, the Fête de la Fédération was held there, and two years after the storming of the Bastille, many people were massacred.’

  Tom senses his friend’s passion. ‘I’m sorry.’

  JP finally succeeds in lighting his cigarette. He takes a couple of deep draws and holds it out for Tom to see. ‘War and military stuff, as you call it, are engrained in our nation. Like my father – and his father – I smoke Gauloises. We do it because it is patriotic. Marketers will tell you Gauloises are forever linked with the French infantrymen – the poilu. Even the brand slogan is “Freedom Forever”.’

  ‘Good slogan, bad place to put it.’

  ‘Oui.’ He blows grey smoke into the night sky. ‘My mother says if the cigarettes do not kill you then the slogan will.’

  Tom smiles and looks out over the twinkling lights of the city below. His thoughts drift to his flight tomorrow, his meeting with Valentina and the circumstances that first brought them together. Painful memories surface of how he left his job as a priest in Los Angeles. A very public end to his vocation. His name plastered across every newspaper and news channel in the country. Every person in his parish pointing him out on the sidewalk. Venice seemed the perfect place to run to. A picture postcard of a city to hide in. Somewhere time seemed to have stood still.

  Only it hadn’t.

  Journalists and news crews turned out to be every bit as cruel there as they had been in America. Tom’s dark secret didn’t stay secret for very long. He’d misjudged Valentina at first and she’d probably done the same with him. Only over the course of the case that they worked together did they find common respect and affection, and by then Tom wrongly thought his future lay with someone else. It all seems so long ago now. Like another lifetime.

  JP lowers himself on to the boards alongside his friend and catches his eye. ‘You seem so very far away. Somewhere wonderful?’

  ‘Just thinking of the past. Moments like this make you reminisce.’

  ‘Aah, that is not good. Not tonight. Tonight is about making memories, not recalling them. When you are old and your bones will not let you climb the Eiffel Tower, then you have time to remember.’

  Tom gets to his feet. ‘You have a point.’ He peers out over the safety barrier and waves into the distance. ‘Goodbye, Paris.’

  ‘Aah, non.’ Jean-Paul throws his arms wide. ‘We do not say goodbye, you know this; we say au revoir, it is less permanent.’

  Tom turns his back on the city and faces his friend. ‘I know, but I really think this may be more of a goodbye than an au revoir. I don’t think I’m going to be coming back from Rome.’

  ‘You have the wanderlust again?’

  He nods. ‘A little.’

  ‘Or is it more a womanlust than wanderlust?’ JP studies Tom’s eyes, ‘Are you planning to make a home in her bed?’

  He laughs. ‘I’m planning no such thing.’

  ‘But it is possible, yes?’

  ‘Jean-Paul, as a Frenchman, you know that when it comes to matters of the heart, anything is possible, but—’

  ‘So,’ he jumps in again, ‘maybe you do have a little plan, yes?’

  ‘Maybe I have a little plan, no. Listen, Valentina and I go back a long way. We met in Venice soon after I left the priesthood in Los Angeles. She was a lieutenant in the Carabinieri and—’

  ‘And she was the first love of your life. The first one to introduce you to the magical intimacy of womanhood?’

  Tom frowns. ‘No! No, she was not. And no, we were not intimate in any way. Valentina was—’

  ‘But you would like to have been.’ He leans close to his friend’s face, a sparkle in his eyes, ‘This Valentina, I sense she is a Roman beauty who has stolen your heart, and now, like a brave Gaul, you will swim oceans and climb mountains to be with her again.’

  ‘What a hopeless Casanova you are.’ Tom shakes his head in amusement. ‘Are you in the least bit interested in the true version, or do you just want to make up your own romantic fantasy?’

  ‘Oui. I am very interested. Though I am not sure the truth will be as satisfying as the fantasy.’

  ‘I’m sure it won’t be. Valentina is a friend. A good friend. We’ve kept in touch – phone calls, email, that kind of thing. She’s just been promoted in the Carabinieri, so I’m going over to celebrate with her.’

  ‘I understand.’ JP fights back a grin. ‘An Italian woman invites you to stay with her and celebrate. This is as good as a proposal of marriage.’

  ‘Only if you’re a crazy Frenchman.’

  ‘To that I plead guilty.’ He flicks the last of his cigarette into the black abyss and watches it fall like a firefly. ‘You didn’t say how you met her.’

  ‘You didn’t ask.’

  ‘Come, it is a long way down, you can tell me as we go.’ JP leads the way to the lift. ‘A woman in uniform! Just the thought of it is exquisite.’

  Tom hits the call button and hears great winding engines clunk and whirr below them. ‘She locked me in one of her cells and interviewed me in connection with a murder.’

  He frowns. ‘A murder? I cannot see anyone imagining you to be a murderer. Though you fight well enough – for an American.’

  ‘She had good cause, Jean-Paul. I’d just told her how I’d killed two men in LA. And she had every reason to think I’d killed again.’

  3

  I lie in the dirt of the square.

  The last of my blood drips slowly like warm red butter oozing from my butchered wrist.

  My life is ebbing away.

  Perhaps I will even die before the sun reappears from the grey, melancholic clouds above me.

  I hope not.

  I pray to see the great god’s face one final time before I pass.

  Voices swirl above me.

  They are not those of the soldiers – they are all gone now and are no doubt drawing rewards for their public chore. Some will already be bedding whores in the Aventine while telling stories of my demise.

  No matter.

  My dignity is preserved for eternity. I have a place in history.

  One day, when my secret is out, I will be respected and honoured for both my silence and my sacrifice.

  Without the guards, I am at the mercy of the mob, and they have no compassion. I see the plebs staring down their noses at me. Some scoff and spit in my face. Others loot the last of my jewellery and cloth. The hands of crude boys explore my cooling flesh.

  I feel nothing.

  Certainly no pain.

  The agony engendered by the sword is thankfully too great for my mind to interpret. I do not scream. Nor do I cry or whimper. I cloak my suffering in a blanket of noble silence.

  In the haze of faces above me there are none I recognise. No sign of my brutish husband. No tears from my shamed parents. Not even a last farewell from my friends.

  But I am not alone.

  My sisters are gathering. They are reaching out from the afterlife and wrapping their arms around me. I am ready to join them and to rejoice.

  I am ready to be reborn in the spirit of another sister.

  Ready to live beyond the grave.

  4

  Rome

  The Fiat splutters its way south-west down Viale della Piramide Cestia, then right on to Via Marmorata, running parallel to Circus Maximus.

  Cars are strewn at angles across the middle of the road near the Piazza dell’Emporio. An argument is heating up. Irate drivers are fenci
ng with fingers around a steaming bonnet and busted trunk.

  Once Valentina squeezes through the bottleneck and the cacophony of blaring car horns, it’s plain sailing along the banks of the Tiber, down the Lungotevere Aventino and Via Ponte Rotto.

  She checks her street map as she turns right on to the Piazza della Bocca della Verità and promises herself that tomorrow she’ll find time to buy a sat nav.

  She knows she’s arrived when the famous Romanesque bell tower of the chiesa comes into view.

  Valentina slides the Punto into an envelope-sized space opposite the church and parallel to a spectacular fountain that on another occasion she’d love to linger around. She locks up and walks across to a young officer guarding the taped-off scene. He watches her every step and gives her shapely form an approving smile.

  Before the young soldier can embarrass either of them, she flashes her Carabinieri ID. ‘Captain Morassi. I’m looking for Lieutenant Assante.’

  The tape-minder loses his flirtatious smile. ‘The lieutenant’s inside.’ He nods courteously.

  ‘Grazie.’ Valentina ducks the fluttering ribbon and before entering through a side door takes a quick look around. The main street is open and wide – maybe taking six lanes of traffic during rush hour – and there are parking places nearby for tourist coaches. Even given the lateness of the hour, it’s likely that whatever has happened here was seen by someone.

  ‘Buonasera, Capitano.’ The voice floats out of the cool, waxy darkness of the church interior, long before Valentina sees its owner. Federico Assante looks like a ghost in the pale light. He is in his early thirties, of average height, with thinning black hair cut too short to help his full-moon face.

  ‘Buonasera.’ Valentina shakes his hand. ‘So, what exactly went on here?’

  ‘A good question. Let me show you.’ He walks her part way through the side of the church. ‘Do you know anything about this chiesa?’

  ‘Nothing at all.’ She glances around: beautifully painted ceilings, high stained-glass windows that probably make sunlight look as though it has come from heaven, intricate marble flooring and two spectacular staircases leading to prayer lecterns. But everything is past its prime. ‘It looks as old as Rome itself.’

  ‘It almost is. Sixth century. In her day this girl was a stunner – hence the name, Cosmedin; it comes from the Greek kosmidon, meaning beauty.’

  ‘Impressive. But why do I need to know this now?’

  ‘You’ll see when we get to the portico.’ He guides her past a dark side altar and into a thin corridor paved in what looks like engraved tombs. ‘There’s a huge old drain cover in there, stood up by the far wall; it’s known as the Bocca della Verità, the Mouth of Truth.’

  ‘Why’s it called that?’ There’s puzzlement in her voice, ‘Who would even think of giving a drain cover a name?’

  ‘The sewers in Rome are pre-Christian. Originally they were used for everything, and I mean everything. They even used to dump bodies down there.’

  ‘Ugh!’

  Federico struggles to find the handle to the door that will actually let them into the portico. ‘There was also probably a demon from the underworld associated with it all, because the thing has a formidable face engraved on it and a wide slit for a mouth. It’s spent most of its life stood up on a plinth as part of a ritual whereby you put your hand into the mouth and if you told a lie it got cut off by the gods.’

  Valentina puts the pieces together. ‘So we have a severed hand being found in the most famous place in the world for severed hands.’

  ‘That’s about it.’

  ‘And has this ever happened before?’

  ‘Not for a few centuries.’ He finally opens the interior door leading into the portico. ‘Be careful here, there’s no light. The photo team came but their equipment fused. They’ll be back shortly.’

  ‘No spare kit?’

  ‘No spare kit. Cutbacks. Recession. You know how it goes.’ He shines his Maglite along the dark pillars and walls. At the far end the beam picks out a drain cover as big as a man.

  ‘That’s the Mouth of Truth?’ It’s so much larger than she’d expected.

  ‘Si. The hand was found actually in the mouth.’ He plays the beam around the lopsided slit a third of the way up the heavy slab. Blood has dribbled like Burgundy from the corner of the marble lips.

  ‘Was it done here?’

  Federico points the light on to the portico floor. A puddle of red answers her question.

  Valentina studies the dark mess. ‘Looks like it was severed from the left of the victim.’ She remembers something that Tom Shaman – the man she’s meeting tomorrow – once told her. Sinister is Latin for left – traditionally the side of evil.

  ‘Why are you so sure?’ asks Federico.

  ‘Lend me your torch, please.’ He hands it over, and she scorches the beam down the long wall running to the right of them. ‘It would be difficult for someone to stand that side of the victim because of this wall. In this light – or lack of it – it’s hard to see the blood spatter, but what little I can make out flows left to right, not right to left, so we’re looking at the blade cutting from the victim’s left, with her kneeling. That would indicate at least two offenders. One to make her kneel and hold her there, one to deliver the precise blow.’ She looks across to him, ‘Where’s the hand now?’

  ‘Patalogica. It’s in the mortuary in deep freeze.’ Federico’s cell phone rings, ‘Scusi.’

  He steps away to take the call. Valentina notices a sign for tourists that says: ‘Only one photograph per person please.’ She guesses the crime-scene photographers will have had a laugh at that. No doubt taken their own pictures, too. She walks closer to the blood, but not so close that she’ll contaminate the scene.

  There’s no visible sign of a struggle.

  She turns sideways on.

  The portico is draped with crime-scene plastic sheeting to keep out prying eyes, but normally it would be very visible from the open road through iron railings.

  Surely someone would have seen something?

  Heard something?

  The victim must have screamed. Unless she’d been drugged or gagged – then she could more easily be manoeuvred into position.

  Why?

  Why would someone want to do this?

  The questions are still stacking up as Federico reappears. ‘Mystery over.’ There’s a real bounce in his voice, a tone of relief. ‘Seems some crazy woman has been picked up wandering the streets. She’s covered in blood and – you won’t believe this – she’s carrying some kind of old sword.’

  If the light had been better, he’d have seen that the look of disbelief on Valentina’s face is nothing to do with the weapon.

  She had the attacker down as male.

  And the victim is still missing.

  ‘I think your mystery is far from being over, Lieutenant,’ says Valentina. ‘In fact, I’d say it’s only just beginning.’

  5

  My eyes are closing now.

  Shutting for the final time.

  Through the milky veil of death I see Arria, my body servant.

  Sweet Arria, do not look so sad.

  She calls me Domina, then gathers her robes and kneels beside me in the dirt.

  The last of the crowd moves away.

  Even they know that they must scavenge no more.

  The time has come.

  I am cold.

  Colder than I have ever been. Arria is so alive she seems to burn like a fire next to me. She has brought blankets to wrap around my cooling husk.

  No doubt she also has my shroud.

  I have not the strength to move a muscle.

  Oh, that I could smile to show her my gratitude. But I cannot.

  I feel her warm hands press the cloth around me, as she tucks me tight like she once did when I was an infant in a manger.

  Her old and bony fingers hold my one remaining hand.

  Dearest Arria, I thank you.

  In my pa
lm I feel a coin. Enough to pay Charon the Ferryman. Enough to take me across the Styx to the gates of the underworld and stand before great Pluto.

  I am being lifted up and carried. I cannot see who bears me. Nor do I wish to.

  My eyes are closed fast now.

  The lids that once upon the sight of a lover fluttered faster than the wings of a butterfly are now too heavy to move.

  I am done.

  The unseen hands drop me.

  I thud and bounce on the rough wood in the back of a dusty cart.

  I feel the heat of the sun surfacing from behind the clouds. Great Apollo, I praise you. Wondrous Pluto, I seek your kindness.

  Through the muffled tunnel between life and death I hear the cart wheels trundle towards oblivion.

  Someone lifts my head.

  It is Arria. I recognise her smell. Her face is close to mine. She knows that my time is over, and as no relative is here, she performs her final duty.

  I feel her hand across my bosom, her fingers seeking out my fading heartbeat. She is bent low. Her lips touch my face.

  She is ready.

  Ready to catch my last breath in her wise old mouth.

  6

  Rome

  Federico gets a message from Central Comms. A street patrol has taken the female prisoner to a holding cell at the Carabinieri barracks in Viale Romania.

  By all reports, their new admission is as jumpy as a box of frogs.

  A doctor’s already been called to sedate her, but Valentina issues instructions that no medication is to be given until they arrive.

  The night is cold, crisp and clear. Halogen lights pick out swirls of dust and insects around the giant grey sign identifying the ugly, squat building as the COMMANDO GENERALE DELL ARMA DEI CARABINIERI. Federico is a local boy and he thinks the whole concrete edifice sits like a boil on the face of Villa Ada, Rome’s largest and most beautiful park.

  He and Valentina travelled separately from the chiesa in Cosmedin, but he’s waited patiently for her in reception.