A Time to Rise_Second Edition

by Tal Bauer

  “Look,” he continued. “I’m not saying it’s perfect. I know it’s far from that. Being gay and being here, in the Vatican, is ridiculously schizophrenic. ‘God loves you for who you are and created you in his image’. And you’re going to burn in hell for your sodomizing ways.” Scrunching up his face, Alain picked at a torn piece of fabric caught on a snarl of wood. “It’s better now than it was. But there are times I think God… whatever He is… never made it past the Vatican walls. Never got through St. Anne’s Gate.” He tossed a wry glance Cristoph’s way, his lips curving into a grimace. “But we all have to live in this world somewhere. Here is where I’ve chosen.”

  Cristoph chewed on his lip.

  “I’m here for reasons that have nothing to do with my sexuality.” Alain dropped the thread rolling through his fingers. “My faith, whatever that is, doesn’t hang on sex.”

  Alain caught how Cristoph’s eyes flinched, tightening as Alain said “faith.”

  Eventually, Cristoph looked at Alain, really looked at him. He met his gaze, and the anger, the bitter, closed-off wariness had fallen from his eyes. “Major Bader—”

  Alain shook his head. “Leave the major to me. He’s only taking it out on you.”

  “Taking what out?”

  Alain didn’t respond. He pushed back and gestured to the pile of uniforms still to be shredded. “You almost done here?” A thought had wormed its way into Alain’s mind while they spoke, a whisper of transgression. What was one more infringement on the rules?

  “I won’t be done for months.”

  “Then there will be plenty left when you get back. Let’s go.”

  “Go?” Cristoph frowned. “I’m restricted to the barracks. I’m on punishment detail when I’m not on duty, then back to my room. Major Bader’s orders.”

  “You leave Luca to me. Now come on. Let’s go.”

  He busted Cristoph out of the barracks, walking with the halberdier across the courtyard and drill square to St. Anne’s Gate. The cracked stone eagles keeping watch seemed withered with age and hardly up to their sentinel task. The papal coat of arms painted on the gate was fading away, lost in the chipped black paint and the bustle of Rome.

  Brazenly, they walked out of the Vatican, strolling past the open-mouthed guards on duty without so much as a wave. Alain watched Cristoph shove his hands in the pockets of his jeans, look down, try to smother his grin. The hickey on his neck stood out in the sunlight, a glaring bruise marring the clean line of his neck.

  He never left bruises on Cristoph in his dreams.

  Alain caught the guards on duty staring at the bruise and then at Cristoph before snapping back to attention when Alain glared at them both. He gave it fifteen seconds, tops, before Luca was alerted to their escape.

  “Where to?” Cristoph asked, hunching his shoulders as he squinted up the Roman street buttressing the Vatican’s walls.

  “This way.” Alain strode down the sidewalk, Cristoph by his side, the sun beating down on his shoulders and warming the black fabric of his suit. Cristoph still had threads from the shredded uniforms and wood chips splattered on his T-shirt, and with Alain’s all black suit—minus the Roman collar—they looked like an odd pair escaping from the Vatican. Another of Rome’s infamous Vatican trysts, complete with a salacious hickey to prove it.

  Snorting, Alain shook his head. There wasn’t a chance in hell that he and Cristoph would ever see the wrong side of morning or spend a few hours horizontal together. Not a chance in hell.

  A thirty-minute stroll in silence, surrounded by the hustle and bustle of Rome, led them to the polizia’s main substation for their city sector. Amid the car fumes and the tinny honks of scooters and the burly cursing of a hundred cabbies, Alain steered Cristoph into the side entrance of the substation, waving to the bored officer on duty at the desk. They breezed past a sign declaring the area restricted to “Authorized Police Personnel”, and then made their way down a rickety metal staircase. Alain ignored the confused looks Cristoph shot his way, skipping down the stairs two levels until they reached the second basement.

  Smoke and gunpowder hit their noses. Pops echoed down the halls. Overhead, lights installed during World War Two hummed and buzzed, vibrating against antique sockets and steel lampshades painted olive green.

  “Where are we?”

  Alain gestured to the steel door on the right. In Italian, stenciled letters read “Firing Range. Authorized Personnel Only.”

  “You mentioned you wished you had a different mentor. Someone more exciting or more fun.”

  In the Swiss Guard, Captain Ewe was the favorite mentor of the new recruits. Bombastic, personable, and in love with the church, Ewe had a beautiful wife, twin girls, and led the Guard Outreach. He personally brought food and provisions to the homeless and indigent population of Rome, his devoted followers in the Guard all traipsing along with him. He had hiked the Italian Alps, climbed Kilimanjaro, and swum the Strait of Gibraltar. He was, to so many of the younger recruits, a hero. He took them out to Rome, to churches and prayer retreats and monasteries where they considered the intractable aspects of their faith, and their purpose and meaning in the breadth of the greater Catholic Church.

  That just didn’t seem Cristoph’s style.

  “I didn’t mean—” Cristoph stammered.

  “I thought you’d enjoy this more than a monastic retreat. Or some kind of penance at St. Anne’s. Call it… stress relief.” Alain shrugged, his hands in his pockets. He grinned. “I thought you’d enjoy taking out some of that anger with the arsenal we keep with the polizia.”

  This time, when Cristoph met Alain’s gaze, his eyes were filled with something new—a fiery burst of mischief, a curl of gratitude, and what almost looked like friendliness.

  * * *

  Later, after Cristoph had sampled the weapon reserves the Swiss Guard kept at the polizia substation, they wandered back out into the late Roman afternoon. The sun had fallen, scattering orange and tawny oaken light across the city. The Coliseum cast long shadows over the twisted mixture of ancient ruins and modern concrete. The Tiber snaked through the center, slumbering and silent in its muddy, grime-filled depths. Stone that had seen empires rise and fall seemed burnished with gold in the setting sunlight, hiding the grime, the decay, and the ruin.

  They skirted scooters and packs of tourists, dodged cars trying to make their own lanes of traffic, and sidestepped a pack of wild cats, all fighting for space on the uneven, cracked sidewalks. A carpet of cigarette butts and stains from spilled gelato softened their steps.

  “Thanks,” Cristoph finally grunted, a few blocks away from the polizia station. “You’re not so bad, I guess.”

  Alain tipped his head back, laughing. “I’ll make sure that goes on my gravestone.”

  “Come on. You have to admit, you don’t put out the best vibe yourself.” Cristoph screwed up his face again, taking in Alain from head to toe and seeming to disregard everything about him in one pass.

  “What?” Alain spread his hands, buried in his rumpled suit jacket pockets, wide. His jacket flared, and a thread dangled from the inner lining, all the way down to his thigh.

  “You’re practically locked in a closet for an office, it’s full of medieval, creepy junk, and you don’t even bother to wear the uniform.” Cristoph snorted. “And when you did, you didn’t even wear the right one.”

  “I’m on Special Projects. I don’t need to wear the duty uniform.”

  “What does that even mean, anyway? You just stack papers from the gendarmerie in your office all day long?”

  “I wish.” Alain chuckled again. “I’m in charge of special projects the Swiss Guard has custody over.”

  “That’s a whole lot of nothing. Great non-answer there.”

  “It’s the only answer you’re getting.” Alain smiled at Cristoph as they waited at a crosswalk, letting the belch of Rome’s exhaust and the heat of the asphalt mix with the sounds of a million tourists crowding the road.

  “Thanks, Dad
.” Cristoph glowered.

  “I am definitely not old enough for that! No need to be rude.”

  Cristoph grinned quickly, but his expression settled back into his customary frown in a moment. “Who was that priest with you the other day?” He stepped ahead of Alain, clearing a path for the two of them with his broad shoulders driving into the press and grab of Rome’s populace.

  “He’s nobody.” Alain shook his head. “Don’t worry about him. You’ll never see him again.”

  “That sounds like something. Like he is somebody, and you don’t want anyone to know.” Cristoph threw him another sidelong glance, his eyes narrowed. “Are you one of those guards you mentioned, with an Italian boyfriend you want to marry? Is he a priest?”

  Alain shot him a scathing look. “No. I’m not one of those guards.” He hesitated, half of him ready to end the conversation with a curt order and a reminder of Cristoph’s rank.

  But, was this the beginning of something, something almost like friendship? God knew, they’d said more to each other in the past hour than they had in the entire time they’d known each other. He watched Cristoph from the corner of his eye as they dodged tourists on Rome’s cobbled streets and crossed the Pont d’Angelo, inhaling Vespa exhaust fumes.

  He chewed on the inside of his lip. Was this what the commandant had wanted? For them to be closer? Though, perhaps not in the biblical way Alain dreamed of knowing Cristoph.

  Cristoph, the real, actual man, intrigued Alain. That glowering stare hid a ferocious core, and there was a depth to Cristoph’s eyes that told of something deeper. Part of him wanted to get to know the man.

  But then there were his dreams. Nothing—nothing at all—like that could or would happen. It was an impossibility. He’d taken a vow. Albeit, it was a vow to himself, and he’d made it out of blood and the salt of his tears, but he’d vowed all the same. He’d never let his heart be broken again. He’d never let another man be put into danger and led to death’s door because of him. Never again.

  Cristoph had somehow woken a part of Alain he’d long thought dead. He’d laid that part of himself to rest when he’d buried the memories of his lost love. Now, his blood ran hot and his nights were filled with blond hair and electric-blue eyes and a burning, aching desire.

  In the daylight, the Cristoph of his nighttime fantasies was a pale comparison to the torrid intensity of the real Cristoph who stood before him. All of the dark shadows in his eyes, the fault lines in his soul, made the man so much more.

  His dreams were nothing on the reality of Cristoph, the flesh and blood man.

  Shame, again, licked up his spine, curling around his ribs. He should leave Cristoph alone. He should walk away. He should leave now before he did any more damage.

  Alain’s gaze slid sideways, again. He couldn’t look away. Cristoph was a magnet, a pull, a pulse that called to him.

  Maybe just a little bit of friendship. A kind word here and there. A joke, some laughter. That couldn’t all be bad, could it? One tiny tendril of humanity. It was what the commandant wanted, right?

  He was out of practice with that sort of thing. It really had been a long time since he’d spoken to anyone other than Lotario or Angelo. It was pathetic, really. He had no idea how to continue.

  “Looks like you landed yourself a boyfriend last night, by the state of things.” Alain looked pointedly at Cristoph’s neck. He pasted on a wide grin.

  It felt fake. He felt ridiculous. And he didn’t want to think about what Cristoph had been up to the night before. About who had held Cristoph in their arms and had him in their bed.

  Cristoph grimaced. “No way.” He exhaled, still scrunching up his face like a disgusted cat. “It actually wasn’t all that great.”

  “Not worth it?” Alain cursed the hopeful lilt in his voice. Don’t be irredeemably stupid, Alain.

  Cristoph met Alain’s curious look with a quick shake of his head. “And,” Cristoph continued. “That’s not what it’s about. You know.” He shrugged his shoulders, hunching in on himself.

  “Your bad attitude?”

  A quick glare shot his way. Alain quirked a grin.

  “It’s not about me being gay. Being gay here. I’m fine with myself. Everyone else can fuck off if they don’t like it.”

  Silence. Alain watched Cristoph as a pack of tourists filed through, jostling them both on the narrow sidewalk. Fast Japanese mixed with the warm sun and Roman fumes and the smells of rubber and smog. Cristoph seemed to draw away from the crowd, standing taller and pulling himself inward, as if trying to hold himself apart from the world. The tourists bumped Alain but stayed off Cristoph.

  He didn’t say anything about not being lonely.

  After the group passed, Alain heard Cristoph’s disgruntled sigh and the crack of his neck as he rolled his shoulders. As if too many people had sent him to red alert and he was forcing himself back down from some heightened, tense place of readiness.

  St. Anne’s Gate loomed, and a blue-bedecked Swiss Guard waited at the entrance, checking IDs and waving cars through. When the guard saw Alain and Cristoph, his eyes went wide.

  “When we get inside, go straight to your barracks. Get some rest and be on time for your shift tomorrow. Got it?”

  Cristoph nodded.

  “And, I want you to join the football team.”

  “What?” Cristoph stared at Alain like he’d lost his mind. “What the hell are you talking about?”

  “I looked at your file. You listed football as one of your hobbies. It was on your army service record, too. Something about your outreach activities when you were in Africa?”

  Cristoph glowered.

  “We have a football team here for the Guard. They play the other teams at the Vatican. Seminarians, priests, gendarmes, firefighters. A few nuns. I want you to go and join. It would do you well.” They were closer to the gate now. One of the guards was on the phone, staring at them as he spoke.

  “Fine,” Cristoph grumbled. “I’ll check it out.”

  So convinced everyone was against him. Alain shook his head. What had turned this man into such a suspicious creature? What had turned him so contradictory, so at odds with himself? Pride that ran for miles, and a wariness of everyone and everything around him that ran fathoms deep.

  They reached the gate just as the guard hung up the phone. He stared at Cristoph, ignoring Alain.

  “Go.” Alain nodded to Cristoph and jerked his head toward the barracks. “I’ll see you tomorrow.”

  Nodding, Cristoph jogged across the courtyard and disappeared into the halberdier barracks right before Luca stormed out of the garrison offices.

  “Autenburg!” Luca bellowed. “What in the hell are you doing? You have no right and no authority—”

  “I am Halberdier Hasse’s mentor,” Alain shouted over Luca. “And in my role as his mentor, I determined he needed a mental break. You’ll remember the commandant has long approved of such measures.”

  Luca turned purple, vibrating with barely-concealed rage as he forced his shouts back down his throat. Pinched lips collapsed around his bellows as his eyes narrowed to slits, slicing into Alain.

  Twelve years ago, Best had taken Luca out of the barracks for a week in a much-needed mental break.

  “I’m watching you,” Luca finally hissed, seething. “Mark my words. I will see the end of you.”

  Chapter Six

  “So, how’s football going?” Alain sat on his usual stoop, the cold of the ancient stones seeping in through his black suit pants. Overhead, the single lightbulb droned in the Swiss Guard’s medieval punishment closet.

  It was the twelfth day after Cristoph’s assignment to his punishment duties. The pile of uniforms to be shredded was added to every day by Luca, growing ever larger. A small mountain of red, yellow, and blue fabric tumbled out of the basket, a never-ending deluge. The message from Luca was clear: you’ll be here until these are through. And they’ll never be through.

  Cristoph, as always, was hunched over the w
ooden block, pounding away at the uniforms with his hand axe.

  Alain had been waylaid for a week by a possible vampire nest in Turin, which turned out to be nothing but rags and remnants and a few desiccated husks of long-dead humans who had been dinner for the long-gone vamps. He, Lotario, and Angelo had quietly worked with Interpol to access the European database of unidentified bodies and upload the victims as best they could. Someone, somewhere, should have closure.

  From Turin, he and Lotario swung by Lotario’s former monastery for two days, checking out of the world and descending into the cloistered recesses of the catacombs, where the bones of a millennium of hunters sat in reliquaries. Ancient tomes, relics from beyond the edges of history, recovered manuscripts from the Great Library at Alexandria, and more, huddled in the darkness. They slept on the stone floors, surrounded by lines of salt and silver and the bones of their forbearers.

  Lotario spent two days in meditation, stopping only to haul himself up to the topmost level of the catacombs so his cigarette smoke could blow out of the sewer grate.

  Alain spent a day on his knees, staring at the ossuary of Hugh de Paynes. If any man’s bones had the secrets of time etched on his marrow…

  As always, the secrets of the universe stubbornly refused to reveal themselves to Alain.

  They made it back to Rome, back to the Vatican, to find Cristoph still on punishment duty. He’d also been grudgingly admitted to the football team, signed off on by Commandant Best at Alain’s request, despite Luca’s written caution against the approval. Alain had almost gone to Cristoph’s room, knocked on his door and checked in with him, had almost reached out like a normal human being. He’d nearly made it up the stairs—

  But no. He’d turned back. Had retreated.

  He finally worked up the nerve to seek out Cristoph in his punishment closet, out of sight from everyone else. At least he had something to talk about. God bless football.