He sighed and decided the best thing would be to try to forget the case for the evening. Everything would make much more sense in the morning. It always did. He allowed himself a small smile at the prospect of a glass of good vintage wine and perhaps a little study of Psalm 96:
He will judge the world in righteousness and the peoples in his faithfulness.
Unknown to Benigni, a dark figure rose from the shadows of the corridor behind and followed him.
FORTY ONE
THE ITALIAN FRONT. THE SOČA RIVER. NORTHWEST SLOVENIA.
Close to dawn, the Italian field guns opened up. For hours the artillery flew so close that it seemed to Pablo that he could reach out and touch the shells, running his hands through the grubby slipstreams they left behind as they flew towards the Austro-Hungarian front line. The sun had just begun to rise above the high ridge of the Carso ahead of them, golden tendrils of light feeling hesitantly across the broken blasted terrain, moments before the onslaught began.
Medium-calibre guns opened up all along the rear line of the Italian Third Army, each blast a throaty bark compared to the bellowing roars of the larger calibre cannons and mortars used by the Austro-Hungarians that had savaged the Italian army so badly every night. The two armies had yet to meet upon the same field, but there was already a long stream of bloodied, blackened bodies being carried from the mountainside on stretchers and in carts courtesy of the barrages.
From the shallow trenches of the western face of the Carso, the Italian soldiers could now see the Austro-Hungarian front and wondered what value the blasted smoking ruin of clipped rock and stunted trees could possibly have for Italy to want to possess it so desperately.
Hour after hour rounds were fired by the Italian artillery teams, bristling the vista with smoke and noise, the shattered sounds echoing around the mountainside like fractured rumbles of thunder. Pablo watched the front until his eyes ached, then put down his rifle and rubbed his face with his hand. The initial charge of adrenaline with the first explosion of the field guns had now faded into a lingering feeling of sickness.
He was suddenly aware of the unit Sergeant’s barked orders and set his felt hat on his head and listened. From the words he was able to snatch above the incessant roar of the light artillery and the noise of soldiers preparing themselves for battle, he understood that there would be a charge upon the enemy, the target something called ‘Mount San Michele’. The word ‘charge’ brought a pain to his stomach and the malign sense of sickness seemed to heighten again. So much walking, so much climbing, and now Pablo knew that this was it. He looked up at where they had to go, a steep climb to a rocky ridge six hundred yards over hard limestone rock, the target heavily engulfed in smoke from the barrage.
Pablo looked to the front and swallowed, trying to harden his resolve. Terror raged within him. He shuddered and felt tears in his eyes. He sniffed at them and heard a Sergeant speak above the roar of the shells, telling them to do great things for their country.
“Don’t worry,” said Corporal Abelli. “We’ll look after you.” And then Pablo was aware that the shells had fallen silent, that whistles were blowing all along the Italian front line and soldiers were rising up and out of their shallow trenches and forward up the mountainside.
Almost immediately the air was full of noise and fire and smoke and flies, and Pablo’s first thought was how quickly the bluebottles had settled in the heat, oblivious to the clamour and torment all around. To him there was nothing but a roaring in his ears, from the soldiers all around him, from the guns behind him, from the enemy ahead.
At first he and the other soldiers of his unit followed the rest of the Third Army into the flames of conflict, running forward over the broken terrain littered with smashed stones and blackened splintered tree trunks. “Savoy! Savoy!” was cried into the air, in respect for the royal family for whom the Third Army fought, while behind the soldiers, Staff Sergeants followed with revolvers pointed at their backs.
When no enemy at first fired back, Pablo thought, like the other soldiers, that the enemy had fled and climbed into the higher ranges of the Carso, perhaps even as far as the Karst Plateau itself, or been obliterated by the initial barrage. But when they reached the barbed wire, great winding walls of the wicked stuff dragged across the wide vista, their progress was checked. It was then, as they began to climb over it, that the enemy appeared, the enemy who they’d been assured by their superiors had been reduced to a few ragtag shocked units left behind.
The heavy clunk of machinegun posts started up and soldiers began to topple like pins. The enemy’s front was now just two hundred yards beyond the wire, but the hail of bullets meant the only way forward was to crawl. If ever a head was lifted too far from the ground, it was turned instantly into a bloody shredded mass.
Pablo crawled, wincing every time his bare skin touched the scorching white rock. He felt his head was about to explode, such was the thundering noise all about him. His eyes were full of dust and dirt, kicked up from the boots of soldiers in front of him and the shells dropping all around him, so much so that he kept blinking the dirt from them and scooping nailfuls of filth from his lids with the edge of a finger.
Despite the roar of war, he was aware of laughing too and looked to his right to see Corporal Abelli crawling beside him, his woollen hat shredded by fire and the shattering of rocks. Pablo stared at him, disbelieving.
“Why are you laughing?” he shouted. “What is so funny?”
“The Devil’s flesh!” the Corporal laughed back, tapping the stones. “Can you not feel the fires of hell beneath? We are getting closer! Closer to the end!”
A short way ahead of them a shell landed in a flash of red and yellow, the bare rock stripped from the mountainside, flinging brittle fragments of limestone into the crawling masses. Something bit into Pablo’s skull and intense searing pain rippled across his forehead and down his back. His hair dampened almost immediately and he knew it wasn’t sweat.
He rolled forward into the hole the shell had created and lay there, his ears ringing, the ground beneath him sinking away as if he was tumbling into it. Perhaps he was tumbling into hell, being drawn down into its fiery depths? Perhaps the Corporal was right? Perhaps this mountainside truly was the flesh of the Devil?
Everything seemed far off, but Pablo felt the ground beneath him and he fell no more. Instead he just lay there, broken, his body shattered. He wondered if he was dying, if this was what death felt like. Calm. Remote. And he was aware that the entire landscape was shaking, rumbling with the weight of shells falling onto it. It was as if the whole earth was moving, trembling in its death throes.
Pablo lay there, not knowing how long. He was aware that men were climbing over him, always going east. He turned with great effort and crawled onwards, up the mountain.
There were more bodies now to clamber over, but ahead there was shouting and more and more soldiers ahead of him were getting up and running the final few yards to the enemy’s line, curses and cries in their throats. Pablo staggered to his feet and ran after them, bawling like the rest of the soldiers, the beast within him let loose. There was dust and smoke and wrestling bodies in the trench ahead of him, which looked like a tunnel to hell. He dropped into it and turned in time to see a Hungarian charge towards him. Instinct kicked in and he thrust out with his rifle, his eyes tightly shut. The rifle went heavy and the figure hung limp on the end of it. Pablo lowered it and the man slid off, dead, pierced clean through the heart. Pablo looked down into the dead man’s wide staring eyes.
There were tears in his own eyes, and tears in the eyes of the man he had just killed.
FORTY TWO
ROME. ITALY.
“Is it you?” Tacit asked the woman before him, his mouth open, his chin jutting forward like a slab of stone.
“It’s me,” Isabella replied.
Something blazed inside him and he swallowed, fighting emotions which threatened to overwhelm him. “My God,” he muttered, raising his fingers tow
ards her face, to test she was who she claimed to be, not an apparition. “Isabella!” And then he stopped and his face went dark once more. He spun on the heel of his boot and glowered at the old Priest. “What the hell are you up to, Strettavario?”
But Isabella took his arm and turned him back to her, her free hand curling inside his calloused palm. The touch of her skin on his was like fire and Tacit wrenched away as if burnt. She held up her hands as a way of pacifying him and showing she would not touch him again. “I’m sorry,” she spoke as a whisper. “I’m sorry. I’m sorry.” She said the words over and over, her eyes burrowing into Tacit’s, as if casting a spell. She could hear Tacit’s breath calming, in and out, slowing and growing shallow. “Don’t blame Father Strettavario.” She took a step towards him and Tacit didn’t move. “He only wanted to get you out of there.”
“How did you know?” replied Tacit, still staring at Isabella, but the question was meant for the old man.
“That you would try to break out? Exact revenge?” Tacit nodded and turned his head to one side to hear the answer. “I know you, Tacit, perhaps better than you know yourself.”
“I killed a lot of people in that place,” Tacit growled, looking back at Isabella, something approaching regret bound up in his words.
“I heard,” answered Strettavario.
“Why’ve you done this to me?” And for the first time Tacit resembled a man aware of his actions, sullen and cowed, not some beast driven by rage. “Why’ve you lied to me?”
“We need you,” said Strettavario. “More than ever.”
A black fire seemed to flicker once more on Tacit’s features. “The man who put me away, the man whose evidence condemned me after the Mass for Peace and cast me into Toulouse Prison, the man who saw me bound and gagged and tortured for nine long months.” He turned on the Father and took a step towards him, his powerful fingers splayed. “He now needs my help? I should kill you where you stand.”
“Yes, you should,” replied Strettavario. The Priest’s top lip had beaded with sweat, but there was a hint of humour beneath it. “But you won’t.”
“And why’s that?”
“Because then you’ll never know why we had to get you out.”
“I can live with regrets.”
“But not with the consequences of not knowing.”
Tacit hesitated. He could feel the pulse beating in his neck begin to slow, the madness of his rage lessen. He looked between the pair of them, trying to work out just what it was they knew and why it was so important to have brought him to them. Tacit worked his tongue around the rough contours of his mouth, finally looking away and setting his weight over the table, spreading his great palms across the wood.
“Does anyone have anything to drink?” he asked at length, his eyes settling on Henry and Sandrine sitting at the far end. He narrowed on them, as if only now realising their presence.
“Who are you?” he asked.
“Does it matter who we are?” spat Sandrine.
“The hell is does.”
“It’s not important, Tacit,” called Isabella.
“The hell it isn’t!” replied Tacit. He caught sight of the bottle of brandy on the sideboard and his hope flared. He powered across the room towards it, gathering it up as if claiming a great prize. It was uncorked and at his lips in a flash, the contents swirling. To Tacit it felt as if the memory of the months of torment was diminished with every fierce burning gulp of the harsh liquor.
“Something is coming, Tacit.” At once he stopped drinking and took the bottle from his mouth. “Something terrible.”
Waves of haziness flooded across his mind and his eyes rolled in his skull. The caress of the alcohol was like a soothing lullaby. Ambition and anticipation wavered and then slipped from within him. He shrugged and raised the bottle to take another swig.
“The Antichrist,” said Strettavario, and at once Tacit froze. “He is returning, as was prophesied by our Pope thirty years ago.”
Tacit scowled. “Rubbish.”
“Strettavario is right,” said Isabella, coming forward and gripping hold of Tacit’s arm to make him look at her. “Remember what you said to me that time in Arras? About the way the demon looks at you? About the way it knows it is winning?”
Tacit studied Isabella’s face for a moment, drinking in her beauty and feeling a weight rise once more inside him, a feeling stronger than the drunkenness pulsing about him. “How long?” asked Tacit, his hand gripping tighter to the bottle. His eyes flickered over to the old Priest who had now clambered into a chair beside the table to ease his pain. “How long have you known of the Antichrist’s return?”
“Three months. Maybe four? Possessions. Signs of demons among the newborn. Other signs, not just across the country but across Europe. Across the world. People are seeing and feeling his return. The Eagle Fountain, it is running red with blood.”
Tacit stopped mid-pull on the bottle and lowered his hard eyes onto the Priest. Strettavario continued.
“These signs, they have happened before. In 1877.”
“The Russo-Turkish war,” said Tacit without hesitation. “In Bulgaria. I know of it. It cost many lives.”
“But perhaps not enough,” countered Strettavario, “for his purposes. This war, it is the preparation of his domain for his return. We have chosen to ignore this possibility. But now, we cannot deny the darkness anymore.”
“Where does the heart of this darkness reside?”
“It grows within the Vatican.”
Tacit’s eyes narrowed and something cold sliced through him. “How did you find out?”
“Inquisitor Cincenzo,” announced Henry, nursing his bruised jaw with his fingers. “He was one of our spies, the one who confirmed the darkness to us. He too had suspected that something was wrong. Had seen the signs. He’d gone looking for answers and we think had found them. The last message we received was that he had found the ‘location’.”
“What location?”
“We don’t know. He was intending to tell us that final evening, but they killed him before he was able to reach us. He paid with his life for what he discovered.”
“Did you know Cincenzo?” asked Strettavario.
Tacit shook his head. If the name was known to him, he couldn’t recall it. He turned the bottle in his fingers, his back resting against the sideboard.
“Well, he knew you,” said Isabella. Tacit skewered her with a glare. “He mentioned you by name as he died.”
Tacit stood quietly for a moment, trying to take in all he had been told, trying to make sense of it. “Why you?” he asked after a while, looking at the strangers at the end of the table dismissively. “Why did Inquisitor Cincenzo know and trust you?”
Sandrine hesitated and Tacit detected something treacherous about her.
“There’s more to this than meets the eye,” he said. “Outsiders, dealing with dead Inquisitors, announcing the return of the Antichrist? I don’t like the smell of you. It reminds me of things I hunt in the dark places of the world.”
“Used to hunt,” Sandrine retorted, and Tacit fell silent, pursing his lips. “You’re no longer an Inquisitor, Poldek Tacit. It seems to me you’re as abandoned as the rest of us.”
For a moment Tacit felt wrong-footed, snagged by the cruel truth of her words. What the woman had revealed was right. Everything he had known, it was gone. He was as exposed as the heretics he used to hunt. He looked across at Strettavario.
“Who else in the Vatican knows about this?”
“The Holy See suspect, but hope they are wrong. They are putting precautions in place, one of which is to stop you.”
“Why me?”
“They think you are in some way bound up with everything.”
Tacit rolled his eyes. “What about you?” he asked, indicating Henry and Sandrine. “Is this it? Just you two?”
Sandrine shook her head. “There are others, throughout the Vatican, who too have felt this darkness and fight with us.”
The old man shook his head.
“That’s a first for you.” Tacit thrust the mouth of the bottle back between his lips. He needed the drink to help take in what he supposed he was hearing, what he had long feared but never dared to believe. Just like the Holy See.
“You always drink so much?” asked Sandrine, distain lifting the edge of her mouth.
“No,” replied Tacit, feeling his tongue slur between his teeth. “Not when in prison.”
“You got demons?”
“Don’t we all?”
“Is that why you drink?”
“I don’t like people prying into my personal business,” growled Tacit, slamming the bottle down on the sideboard, his hand slipping to his hip and the holster which wasn’t there. “Particularly people I don’t know. People I don’t trust.”
Isabella stepped between them. “What do we do first?”
“We?” replied Tacit, shaking his head. “You’re not going. It’s not safe.”
“Tacit, it’s not safe anywhere!” said Isabella, her palms held out to him helplessly. She let them drop. “Not anymore.”
The giant man considered the words. “All right,” he said after a moment, weighing up his options. “We find out what this location is, where it might be. Only thing we can do is to break into Cincenzo’s residence and see if there’s anything there we can find which might help. It’s not much. And they’ll be expecting us.”
“Does the word ‘seer’ mean anything to you?” asked Henry, thrusting his revolver into his belt, having checked the cylinder was full.
“Seer?” replied Tacit, the edge of his lip turned up. He sank his chin deeper into his hand. “I wonder if they mean Sister Malpighi?”
“Who’s she?” asked Sandrine.
Strettavario chuckled. “An intolerable gossip within Trastevere Nunnery!”
“And someone often used by the Holy See for insight and visions of things still to come. How do you know about her?”
The Fallen Page 16
