by Glenn Cooper
‘Dear Lord!’ Cornelius cried.
Peter steadied himself with an outstretched arm against the trunk of a tree.
Antonius had a tail.
When the young Christian men returned to the villa, their fists and sandals stained with Vibius’s blood, they found Peter by the tree. One of them had a knife in one hand – and something else in the other. He showed it to the Apostle. It was a bloodstained pink length of tail.
‘There is no denying it,’ Peter said, shaken. ‘They are not ghosts. They are real. What must we do when we find true evil – evil such as can only be the work of the Devil himself – in our midst?’ he asked.
‘We must purge it,’ Cornelius said.
‘There is no other answer,’ Peter whispered. Then he raised his voice. ‘In the name of Almighty Christ you may set the torch and send these devils back to Hell.’
Balbilus looked to the dark ceiling and heard the muffled shouts of the Christian marauders and the sound of their stamping feet.
The Lemures squatted in front of him, packed tight like salted fish in a barrel: the men stoic, the women angry, the children fidgety. Above their heads, the loculi in the walls were full of ash-filled urns and the skeletal remains of their recent ancestors. The pungent smell of rot filled their nostrils.
Suddenly the muffled shouting above their heads stopped and all grew quiet.
Balbilus strained and listened.
He heard the voice of Peter but couldn’t make out the words.
Balbilus heard a faint whooshing sound and felt his ears pop as a roaring fire took hold above and sucked some of the air out of the chamber.
He felt his skin tingle as the temperature in the vault crept higher by the minute.
After a long while he heard a thunderous rumble when the vaulted roof crashed down onto the mausoleum floor.
More time passed and he saw the oil lamps sputter out one by one in the depleted air. When the last one died they were in complete darkness.
And in that darkness he heard the gasps and wheezes of a hundred men, women and children.
He was the strongest and the last to go. Sinking to his knees in the blackness and angrily clutching the chi-rho pendant so hard that it made his hand bleed, his final emotion was a shuddering rage so great and hot that it seemed to incinerate his brain.
It would be weeks before the soil of Rome was cool underfoot but Nero swiftly set about bringing some cheer to his beleaguered citizens.
His soldiers rounded up every Christian who had survived the fire and had been foolish enough not to flee. There were few public spaces left to celebrate their mortification properly so Nero invited Rome’s refugees to the gardens of his only untouched estate, across the Tiber.
There, at his personal racetrack, as hungry citizens feasted on fresh bread, Nero made a grand entrance dressed as a charioteer astride a golden quadria. To a blare of trumpets Peter the Apostle was dragged onto the track. He’d been arrested along with the priest Cornelius and several followers at a Christian house near the Pincian Hill. When the soldiers arrived Peter had smiled at them as if he were welcoming old friends.
Pater was hauled onto a high wooden platform at the center of the racetrack for all to see and Tigellinus loudly proclaimed him to be the ringleader of the plot to destroy Rome. When he finished his speech he sat beside Nero in the royal stands and they watched together as the Praetorians began their work with hammer and spikes.
‘We have it on good authority that this man Peter and his mob were the ones who trapped Balbilus and the others,’ he told Nero.
‘My hate for them was already great,’ Nero said through clenched teeth. ‘Now it is a thousand times greater. They killed my great astrologer and have taken from us the cream of the Lemures. Members of their Church will forever be our foremost enemies. Kill them. Crush them. Damn them to eternity.’
‘What shall we do with Balbilus?’ Tigellinus asked.
‘He is at rest in his own columbarium. Let him lie there in peace with the others.’
Peter was laid out on a wooden cross not so different from the one that Pontius Pilate had used to crucify Jesus. Iron spikes were driven through his palms and ankles but whereas Jesus had been suspended in the usual manner, Nero bestowed upon Peter the further indignity of being nailed upside down.
The gentle old man died slowly and painfully in the afternoon heat, proclaiming to the end – too softly for anyone to hear – his love for God, his love for his savior and friend Jesus Christ, and his absolute belief that good had vanquished at least some of the evil in the world.
For the crowd’s immeasurable pleasure, as Peter’s life was ebbing away, two hundred Christian men and women were dragged into the stadium, stripped naked, flogged and tied to stakes. Ravenous dogs, mad at the scent of blood, were brought in to finish them off.
And that night and for nights on end Nero’s gardens were the scene of a ghastly display: Christians whom Nero had dipped in animal fat and turned into human torches to illuminate the husk of a city that had once been the great Rome.
TWENTY
ELISABETTA STOOD IN the hallway, trying to decide what to do. If she remained quiet perhaps the young priest would leave of his own accord.
‘Sister Elisabetta,’ Tremblay called through the door, his Italian laced with a strong French intonation. ‘Please, I know you’re there. I must talk to you.’
She answered hurriedly, trying to think fast. ‘My brother’s in the Vatican Gendarmerie. He told me not to speak to anyone. He’ll be here any second.’
‘I know who your brother is. Please, you don’t have to be afraid of me. We’re on the same side.’
‘And what side is that?’ she called out.
‘The side of good.’
Against all her instincts Elisabetta let him in. Though she braced herself against some kind of physical attack he followed her quietly into the sitting room and took a chair. Tremblay was less imposing seated, his long praying-mantis legs crossed, his spindly arms folded on his lap. He had a slim leather file which he wedged between himself and the arm of the chair.
‘I’m glad you weren’t hurt,’ he said.
‘You heard about last night?’ she asked, still standing.
He nodded.
She couldn’t ignore the rules of hospitality. ‘Would you like some tea or coffee?’
‘No, thank you. I’d just like to talk.’
‘Then please start with who you are.’
‘Father Pascal Tremblay.’
‘I know your name.’
‘I work for the Vatican.’
‘So I gather,’ she said frostily.
‘I’m sorry for my reticence. You see, the facts don’t trip off my tongue easily. I’ve been trained to be discreet. No, more than discreet – secretive.’
‘Trained by whom?’
‘My superiors. Actually, my superior. I have only one.’
‘And who is that?’
‘I answer to Cardinal Diaz, Dean of the College of Cardinals. I whisper in his ear, he whispers in the Pope’s ear.’
‘What about?’
‘Evil,’ he said simply. ‘I will have tea if you’re still offering.’
Elisabetta left him, trying to compose herself while waiting for the kettle to boil. Though she briefly lost track of time the noise of the hissing spout brought her back. When she returned with two cups she saw that Tremblay hadn’t moved an inch nor unfolded his limbs. She handed him his tea and stared too long at his exaggeratedly bony fingers.
‘I have a condition,’ he said suddenly.
‘I apologize,’ she said.
‘It’s all right. It’s called Marfan Syndrome. It’s a disorder of the connective tissue. It’s why I look the way I do.’
‘It’s none of my business,’ Elisabetta said, sitting.
‘It’s better for you to understand me.’
‘Why?’
‘It just is.’
When she crossed her own legs she realized she was wea
ring jeans. ‘I’m sorry I’m not dressed properly. I was cleaning. You were speaking of being a whisperer. Is that on your business card?’
‘I don’t have a card,’ Tremblay said after taking a sip. ‘I don’t have a title. I’m simply a Special Assistant to the Cardinal. My predecessors have been Special Assistants, no more, no less.’
‘Your predecessors?’
‘There’s been an uninterrupted chain for centuries.’
‘Whispering to Cardinals and Popes about evil.’
‘Yes.’
Tremblay volunteered a brief personal history: how he’d been tagged at his seminary in Paris as more likely to succeed as an administrator than as a parish priest. Though he assumed they considered his appearance might be offputting to parishioners, he was told it was his aptitude and his degree in accountancy which had attracted the attention of the diocese. After taking his oaths he was assigned to the Archbishop of Paris’s ecclesiastical office and rose quickly through the administrative ranks until he began having regular contacts with the Vatican on diocesan issues. On one visit to Rome, seven years earlier, he’d been summoned to an audience with an Italian bishop he didn’t know in an unfamiliar wing of the Apostolic Palace. There was one other man present in the bishop’s office, an elderly Italian Monsignor with a pronounced tremor in his hands.
You are being selected to come to Rome, Father Tremblay was told. You are to take over the duties of the Monsignor who is retiring.
And what are these duties?
Vigilance, he was told.
Against what? Against whom?
Lemures.
‘What are Lemures?’ Elisabetta asked.
‘You saw one in the morgue,’ Tremblay said.
Elisabetta shivered. He seemed to notice but didn’t try to soothe her.
‘And you saw their skeletons at St Callixtus.’
‘I don’t understand.’
‘I think you do,’ he said. ‘Professor De Stefano told me how smart you are. He said you’d wondered if some kind of a sect might have persisted to the present.’
‘You worked for him?’
‘No, I told you who I worked for. I was assigned to the Pontifical Commission for Sacred Archeology after the skeletons were found. I was instructed to keep tabs on what you were turning up. What Professor De Stefano told you was true enough – there was, there is, a lot of concern within the Vatican about St Callixtus, particularly because of the Conclave and the confusing and damaging publicity if the story leaked out. The few officials who are aware of the Lemures were particularly worried. But De Stefano knew not much more than you did. Enough to make him nervous, maybe. He didn’t need to know more.’
‘And now I do?’
‘I need your help.’
‘I don’t see what I can do. I was dismissed.’
‘Yes, I heard.’
‘And I’m being sent to Africa.’
Tremblay appeared surprised at that. ‘When?’
‘A week from now.’
‘I can try to get that reversed.’
‘No, don’t! I want to go.’
‘Then we haven’t much time. Lemures,’ he said again, putting his cup down.
Lemures. The ghosts of the ancient Romans, the shades of the dead. Malevolent, restless, unwanted souls. Invaders of the home, they were said to come at night to do fearsome things.
Tremblay said there had been a public festival every May during which the Romans performed rites to exorcise these horrible entities from their homes. At midnight in every Roman household the head of the family, the paterfamilias, would throw black beans over his shoulder and say nine times: ‘These I cast. With these I redeem me and mine.’ The Lemures were supposed to become distracted as they gathered up the beans. Suddenly the worshipper would spin around, throw clean spring water in their direction, then clang bronze plates together, demanding that the demons depart. And for a year they would, with luck, be obliged to do so.
The origin of the name Lemures was obscure. But the modern association was clear enough. Lemurs, the African primates with nocturnal habits, haunting stares, ghostly calls and long, thick tails. The Roman ghosts had been the inspiration for the name given to the animals by the eighteenth-century taxonomist Carl Linnaeus.
Tremblay uncrossed his legs and leaned forward. ‘At St Callixtus we have a first-century group of men, women and children who possessed tails and died together, perhaps violently by fire. The early Romans feared them, thought they were ghosts. But, Elisabetta, they were real. They were there in ancient Rome. They were there throughout history. They’re still here. Your man from Ulm was one of them. Aldo Vani was one of them. They stole the skeletons from St Callixtus, for what purpose I don’t know. They killed Professor De Stefano. They tried to kill you. They are among us.’
‘How do you know all this?’
‘It’s my job. The Vatican – or rather, a very small number of people within the Vatican – has known of the Lemures for centuries. The Church has quietly done what they can to counteract them, to defeat their evil at every possible turn. There have been successes but also many failures. They are difficult adversaries. I’m a tracker – more detective, unfortunately, than priest. I look for their signs, I follow their trails which are sometimes as vaporous as rumors. I travel, I read, I monitor the internet, intelligence reports, and even, like you, the medical journals.’
Elisabetta looked shocked.
‘I confess I looked at your email box.’
‘You went to my desk?’
‘I’m sorry. In this day and age you should log off an email account when you leave the office.’
‘Did you also call the newspaper from my desk phone?’
‘No! Someone did, but it wasn’t me.’
‘I imagined it was.’
‘Why?’
‘You made me nervous.’
Tremblay laughed. ‘I have that effect on people.’
‘Who are they? What do they want?’
‘That’s like asking why is there evil in the world? I’m not the best theologian, Sister. My skills lie more towards organization and administration. I’m content to simply acknowledge that evil exists in many forms and the role of a compassionate God is to give us the strength to fight it and learn from it. The Lemures are quite amoral. They revel in attaining power, wealth, domination. Those seem to be their gods. And we, the Church, are their great enemy. Why this is so, I don’t know – but it is most assuredly a fact. It reaches back for centuries, perhaps millennia to the Church’s very beginnings. I like to think that we represent the good in the world and they represent evil. That we represent light and they represent darkness. Naturally opposing forces.’
‘One of the corpses at St Callixtus had a chi-rho pendant in his hand,’ Elisabetta said.
Tremblay arched an eyebrow, making his face appear even more elongated. ‘Really? The Church was young at that time. Very young. So the battle is quite old, then. They enjoy killing us, harming our interests, setting others against us. Throughout the ages, at every anti-Catholic turn of history, it now seems that we may suspect unseen Lemures hands.’
‘And what of their tails?’
‘Ah, the tails. They are a phenotype.’
‘I’m sorry?’
‘A scientific term. The long-held view of the Vatican is that the tails are a physical embodiment of evil. From the decidedly modern field of genetics we know the genotype is said to control the phenotype.’
‘Are you saying they have evil genes?’
‘What I’m saying is that they are extreme psychopaths, an almost alien subset of humans, completely lacking the ability to feel guilt or remorse. They have shallow emotions. They engage in antisocial behaviour, often involving violence. They understand the difference between right and wrong – they just don’t act like they do. There’s an evolving field in neuroscience linking specific genetic abnormalities of brain neurotransmitters like serotonin and dopamine with antisocial or psychopathic states. But the most visible
phenotype of the Lemures’ genetic constitution is unquestionably their tails. The anomalous tail has always been associated with evil. You don’t need to look any further than representations of the Devil since early times.’
‘If what you’re telling me is true, how could they have stayed hidden for so long?’
‘Because they are exceedingly careful and probably because there aren’t so many of them. They associate with their own kind. They couple and marry with their own kind. If they have to go into the army or some situation where others will see them, then we believe they’re sent to one of their own surgeons to have their tails amputated. They get sick, they go to one of their own doctors. They die, they go to one of their own funeral homes. Dropping dead on the street before their own kind can get to the body, as happened to Bruno Ottinger – that is a very rare occurrence. And getting shot like Aldo Vani by your brother – that’s even rarer.’
‘What about the tattoos?’
‘These have never been understood. I’ve personally scoured the Vatican to see if any of my predecessors had any credible theories, but there’s nothing. I was hoping you might have come up with something.’
‘No, I don’t have an answer.’
‘But you have clues. This message you found on the envelope in Germany – it’s a living document. We’ve never seen this kind of intimate communication among them.’
‘You know about it.’
‘Professor De Stefano showed me a copy of the note. And I couldn’t help but notice the Monad you drew on your whiteboard.’
‘Monad?’
‘You hadn’t identified it?’
Elisabetta felt her chest fluttering. ‘No, what is it?’
Tremblay pulled out his leather file, unzipped it and took out a page. ‘Look at this.’
It sent a chill over Elisabetta’s breastbone. ‘The symbol,’ she said quietly.
Tremblay nodded. ‘It’s from the frontispiece of a book published in London in 1564 by John Dee. He was an alchemist, an astronomer, a mathematician, a philosopher and the court astrologer to Queen Elizabeth I. We believe he was also a Lemures. The book, the Monas Hieroglyphica, the Hieroglyphic Monad, was an exhaustive text purporting to explain this glyph, this symbol of his own making which he claimed represented a mystical unity of all creation, a singular entity from which all material things on Earth derive. The glyph is constructed from four distinct symbols: the astrological signs for the moon, the sun, the cross, and the zodiac symbol for Aries, the ram, one of the fire signs. The text is hugely convoluted and technical but the gist, according to Dee, was that the sun and the moon of the Monad desire that the elements be separated by the application of fire.’
