“It is the sign we have all been dreading,” said Adansoni gravely, “the prophecy we’ve been watching for. It is the shadow of the first of the three acts after which they shall come through and after which he shall rise on high.”
“This does not mean we are too late to stop the first act,” Korek tried to reason. But Adansoni shook his head.
“For this sign to have come to pass, the first act must have already been performed.”
“Where is the body though?” asked Casado, his face tense.
“No doubt we will find it, soon enough.”
“The horror of it,” muttered Korek, and for a moment both Casado and Adansoni thought the aged Cardinal Bishop might be crying. “Eyes, taken,” and Korek looked back at the hollowed bleeding eyes of the fresco, the suggestion of a tremble in his hand as it touched his face. “Now I understand.”
“We must doubt no more,” said Casado. “We must accept it has begun.” He uncurled his fingers and looked again at the blood trails on his hand, as if trying to divine a reading from them.
“And what part do you feel Tacit plays in all of this?” asked Korek. “The Pope’s vision? Tacit’s appearance? The prophecy which spoke of one like Tacit coming from the East? The fact he has returned to the city, at this very moment too? Do you think there is any truth in any of it?”
“Whether there is or not, we will not take any risks. When Poldek Tacit is found, we will kill him. Grand Inquisitor Düül understands his orders and knows what needs to be done. There is none other as good as Düül. Not even Tacit.”
“And of the second ritual?” asked Adansoni.
“The lust of flesh?” asked Casado, and all three old men seemed to blanch at its naming. “Düül has been informed of this also. He has the men and he has the apparatus to stop it.”
“Do you have faith that he can? He is gravely stretched, with all that is happening within the city and wider afield.”
“As I said, he is the best we have.”
“Really?” asked Adansoni, a devious light in his eye.
“Tacit is good, but he’s reckless. He makes mistakes. And the moment he does, he’s a dead man.”
“We should never have simply imprisoned him after the Mass for Peace,” muttered Korek. “It was a mistake. We should have killed Tacit, there and then.”
Casado turned away from the fresco, making for the light of the grounds outside. “It is not a mistake we will make for a second time.”
THIRTY SEVEN
ROME. ITALY.
“Are you sure he will come?” asked Henry, his thumbnail scratching a line on the table in the new safe-house they had acquired.
“He’ll come,” nodded Strettavario, not bothering to look up, his nose buried in a black tome, spidery engraved writing across its front cover.
“How can you be so sure? The Inquisition have not managed to track us to this place. What makes you think Tacit will?”
“Not yet they haven’t,” replied Strettavario, raising a finger from the edge of the leather-bound tome. “And this is Tacit. He will want revenge. Revenge for what I’ve done to him. To Isabella. He’ll stop at nothing. He will find us.”
Henry remembered the size and manner of the man from when he had observed him in Fampoux and absently dropped his hand to the handle of his revolver, the other tightening around the body of the rifle in his lap. His stomach convulsed.
“And they won’t help you when he arrives, if that’s what you’re thinking,” said Strettavario. Henry saw the old Priest’s face brighten with a knowing smile. “When he arrives, keep clear, or he’ll kill you.”
“You make him sound like some kind of elemental force.”
“He is a force,” replied Strettavario, only now looking up, weighing the comment on his lips. “Of sorts.”
“How long have you known him?” asked Henry, taking a sip of his tea and making no effort to hide his disapproval at how the old Priest had made it.
“His entire life as an Inquisitor.” Strettavario put down his book and gathered his own cup into his hand. Through the pale flickering light of candles on the table, Henry could see the steam twist before the old man’s pallid eyes.
“Was he always … so fearsome?”
“No,” the Priest said quickly. The question seemed to embolden him, capture a memory. “No, when he was younger he was a good man, too good for the Inquisition. But he was brilliant and strong and quick, the best of us. They took him and they made him one of them.”
“Do all who join the Inquisition change?”
“Mankind’s deeds know no depths and yet our souls can only sink so far before they are submerged within the domain of the Devil. He blackens hearts and corrupts minds. It takes a great man, greater even than Tacit, to withstand such a life and not find himself corrupted by it, not be left with its indelible mark. And there are few as great as Tacit.”
“The war,” said Henry, turning his cup between his thumb and fingers, “what little time I spent at the front line, I saw many terrible things, the depths to which man can fall to do his duty when commanded by those in authority. Or simply to try and live. It terrifies me to see what we are capable of but also the lengths our spirit will take us in order to survive. It gives me hope that one day this spirit will be put to good use by all, not used against mankind. I realised when I met Sandrine that really there is only love. Nothing else matters. It changed me. I knew I could not stay fighting an enemy that I did not know or feel anger and hatred towards. She helped me to see.” Henry was aware of the Priest’s cold empty eyes upon him. “What is it?”
“This woman you travel with.”
“Sandrine.”
“She is Hombre Lobo, the sworn enemy of the Church.”
“She is my love.”
“She is not to be trusted.”
“She is my love,” Henry repeated, the shadows around his eyes darkening.
“They are deceitful creatures, as they were before they were struck down by excommunication.”
“But Sandrine was never excommunicated. She was born of wolf and woman.”
“That I find hard to believe,” muttered Strettavario.
“And that is the truth.”
“Tacit, he will kill her. You know that, don’t you?” The Priest’s face seemed to harden.
Henry swallowed. “Then I will have to kill him first.”
Instantly, Strettavario’s demeanour softened and he chuckled and shook his head, so that the hanging skin beneath his chin wobbled. He took up his cup and sipped at it again. “I am sure you were a good soldier, Lieutenant Henry Frost, but you were never Poldek Tacit.”
A sound on the brickwork of the narrow ledge outside caught their ears and they both froze. Henry’s eyes flickered over Strettavario through the gloom and then back to the closed window.
“Did you hear that?” he asked, his voice tense.
Strettavario shushed him and slowly drew his chair back, preparing to stand. The sound, the creak of boots on stone, came again and Henry pushed back his own chair, stepping away into the dark of the room, his hands gripped tighter to his rifle, watching the window carefully.
“Perhaps it was the wind?” he asked, but in that moment the window shattered inwards and a vast figure hurled itself into the room, roaring like an unleashed beast. The rifle in Henry’s hands exploded and then the man was upon him, wrenching the weapon free and breaking it in two with his hands. A giant fist came out of the black and Henry’s head cracked backwards. He saw darkness and nothing else.
Tacit spun on Strettavario and turned the table over with a violent swipe, lurching towards him, his hands drawn into tight fists.
“Good evening, Poldek,” Strettavario said calmly, moments before a blow to his guts bent him double and a hand grasped the back of his neck, lifting him, gasping for breath, from the floor.
Tacit growled, taking two steps forward into the shadows and thrusting the Priest hard into the wall. Strettavario felt his ribs shatter and bloo
d spluttered into his throat. “Tonight you die.”
“You’re later than I expected,” groaned the Priest with a pained smile, a shard of moonlight striking across his face, catching in his white eyes.
“Is that so?” Tacit retorted, pulling back a fist to crush Strettavario’s face with a single punch.
“I thought Isabella meant more to you? I thought you would have got to her sooner?”
“Don’t play games with me, Strettavario. You killed her and now you’re going to die. But slowly, just as you deserve.”
“Tacit!” came a woman’s voice.
Tacit’s fist froze, his head yanked in the direction from where his name had been called. His fingers loosened around Strettavario’s collar and the old Priest dropped to the ground with a groan. Tacit turned like a man struck dumb towards the figure in the open doorway.
“What is this?” he hissed, his arms drawn tight to his body, his hands splayed wide, crouching low, suspecting a trick. He stood motionless in the dark of the place, his eyes fixed on the figure before him. “What is this?” he repeated, taking another step forward towards the woman. There were tears in his eyes and his hands were now held out beseechingly. “Is it you?” He spoke the words as if the vision was a ghost come to haunt him.
“It’s me, Tacit,” replied Isabella, her heart clutched tight inside her chest, her hands wrapped across it. “It’s me.”
PART THREE
“For everything in the world – the lust of the flesh, the lust of the eyes, and the pride of life – comes not from the Father but from the world.”
1 John 2:16
THIRTY EIGHT
THE ITALIAN FRONT. THE SOČA RIVER. NORTHWEST SLOVENIA.
All night Pablo had been unable to sleep, kept awake by the sound of rifle-fire from the lip of the trench and the churning of his mind, ruminating on his predicament, the Priests, the consortium of soldiers to whom he had been handed. All his life it seemed he had been guarded, protected, advised and shadowed by the Priests, who did all they could to ensure he was drilled in the right rhetoric and schooling, but chiefly that no harm came to him.
It seemed to the young man that they had taken him into their fold, with something approaching reverence and adoration, from the very day he had been turned out of his family home, branded a freak, a blight upon the family name, for the deformity he bore. The Priests assured him it was a divine blessing to carry such imperfection, and lucky chance that they were in the northern Italian city of Udine on the very first day that the twelve-year-old Pablo wandered its streets homeless, weeping and loveless.
In the six years that followed they showed him nothing but kindness and protection, ensuring his every whim was catered for and his health carefully monitored.
Strange then, he thought, that they had been so quick to recommend him for the army, to thrust him into the front line when the call came. And yet even here it seemed as if he was still being protected, both by the Priests who followed in the shadow of the forward line and by the soldiers in the unit into which he had been placed.
He watched his six fingers in the pale silver moonlight, drawing his other arm up behind his head to try to find some comfort in the shallow trench. All his life he had cursed his deformity, but in many ways it had proved to be his security and his benediction. He had lost the love of his blood family but had gained another family, one built upon the foundations of faith, endeavour and Godly rhetoric.
A line of soldiers, picked out at random from the massed ranks, had been ordered to lie thirty feet apart along the length of the forward trench, a little way ahead of where Pablo and the others rested, and fire spasmodically into the blackness beyond.
“What are they shooting at?” Pablo had asked, dragging his blanket across his chest to fend off the biting chill of night.
“Ghosts,” replied Private Lazzari. “What else do they hope to hit in this darkness?”
“They are keeping the Austro-Hungarians on their toes,” answered Corporal Abelli, pulling on his pipe and sending a plume of smoke rising into the frigid night air. “Making them aware we’re here.”
“I think they know that already,” said Pablo mournfully.
From somewhere behind him a chorus of field guns opened up and buffeted the black mountain beyond. Pablo imagined the shells breaking apart among the rocks, the limestone splitting open and spinning a thousand razor fragments of stone hundreds of metres into the dark of the enemy front line, every shard a lethal weapon.
He thought of mud and sand and wished he was not halfway up a mountain of brittle stone.
The echo of the brief artillery barrage faded, replaced by the bark of rifle-fire, making Pablo think of the depleted supply of rounds in his bullet pack for his Carcano carbine rifle. He looked over to the front line, muzzle flashes preceding each crack of the rifle like little fires being lit and then instantly extinguished. He knew that every shot fired into the darkness was one fewer in his own rifle.
THIRTY NINE
THE VATICAN. VATICAN CITY.
Bloody water pooled in the basin before him. Georgi flicked his wet hands and reached for a towel, drying them on the rough cotton fabric, leaving a red residue. “Don’t bother getting yourself clean,” called a voice from the shadows of the room behind him.
Georgi spun round, his knife instantly in his hand.
“Oh, it’s you,” he said, putting the knife away and continuing to dry himself. “More work needed of me? The second ritual is not ready to be performed yet.”
“Monsignor Benigni,” the voice warned, the figure remaining resolutely hidden in the darkness at the edge of the chamber, as if the light from the room might burn him. “He has become … troublesome.”
“Benigni knows nothing,” replied Georgi.
“Benigni is looking for you. He’s tenacious, resolute. Experienced.”
“Surely Düül is the real threat?” asked Georgi, the name seeming to catch in his throat and his fingers tightening around the hilt of his knife.
“His time will come. You know that. For now, deal with Benigni. He will find you, eventually.” The figure turned to go. “Make sure you find him first.”
FORTY
THE VATICAN. VATICAN CITY.
Monsignor Benigni felt a rivulet of sweat run down his spine and allowed himself a moment of pleasure from the sensation. It always pleased him when he perspired from the exertions of the day, or night, as it now was. It was proof he was working hard in his role to stamp out the offensive and the unwelcome within the Church. “Tears of God,” he often described the sensation of feeling sweat on his body. “The Lord is weeping in blessing for me.”
The chubby bear-like figure swept into the old quarters of Inquisitor Cincenzo, knowing it would be his final visit of the evening. Afterwards he would return to his office and, perhaps with a glass of wine to moisten his lips and enliven his mind, he would make the final marks upon the file he had compiled on the dead Inquisitor, before binding it shut with ribbon and retiring to his own quarters to rest.
He stood in the centre of the small chamber, the thin file fixed under his right arm, the fingers of his left hand tapping lightly upon its hazel cover. He scowled and looked about the room, searching for anything, any last clue which might complete his findings on the murdered Inquisitor. Not that he needed anything else for the moment. He understood. The three rituals. The lust of the eyes. The lust of the flesh. The pride of life. He had read about them within the Great Library, the three cardinal sins made real through rituals which, when committed in the correct manner and order, would summon great powers to a single point. Clearly Inquisitor Cincenzo had discovered that the rituals were being planned, although how exactly they would manifest themselves and how Inquisitor Cincenzo had managed to discover them, Monsignor Benigni did not know – yet.
But he knew he would find out. He always did. He prided himself on his tenacity, his ability to smell out corruption and wrongdoing. To ensure appropriate punishments were brought to bear o
n the guilty.
He gave the room a sweeping look – a dour and plain residence, just as he expected and appreciated. The home of a man on the road, very little in the way of furnishings, save for a single picture in a frame. Benigni stepped over towards it, surprised to have missed it on his previous visit to the apartment, and picked it up in his pudgy fingers. It was a grainy line drawing of a young woman, perhaps nineteen. On the back was a name, Katerina, a date three years before and a series of numbers written in two lines, one under the other. The bespectacled Priest frowned and looked back at the front of the picture, scrutinising the woman’s face carefully. He didn’t recognise her, not from the choirs or the nunnery within the Vatican or from Rome. And he suspected, from the way she was dressed and held herself, that the Church might not have been her first calling.
Without further hesitation, he removed the file from under his arm and unlaced the ties, slipping the photo inside, before turning on his heels and striding purposefully out of the room. It was clear Inquisitor Cincenzo had been careless. Had attracted the wrong kind of attention. They had countless witnesses claiming to have seen a group of men fitting the description of Inquisitors chasing him through Rome. The bullet pulled from Cincenzo’s head pointed to Inquisitors being involved. The Inquisitors who had chased Cincenzo had obviously killed him, but were they trying to stop Cincenzo committing the three rituals or where they themselves somehow involved with those rituals? That was, for Monsignor Benigni, the most worrying part. He had often heard talk of the Devil among Inquisitors, of the Antichrist lingering on the edges of their society, waiting to entrap the feeble and the unwary. He wondered if that was what had happened here, that these wild young Inquisitors had reached too far out into the Abyss and become ensnared?
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