“Our contacts, they sent us this one word. ‘Seer’. It was the last we heard from them. We haven’t heard from them since.”
“Must be her,” replied Tacit, his hands turning to white fists. “That’s settled. We go and see her.”
“Can she be trusted?” Isabella asked.
“Sister Malpighi is many things, but she’s not someone to be easily turned by the Devil. You two,” spat Tacit, looking at Sandrine and Henry, “can you be trusted not to get into trouble if you come with us?”
“Just worry about looking after yourself, Inquisitor,” retorted Sandrine, standing and gathering her belongings from the table.
“Good,” said Isabella. “Are we going straight to see this Sister?”
“No,” replied Tacit, “there’s somewhere I need to go first. Something I need to do.”
FORTY THREE
PLEVEN. BULGARIA.
The stars had come out and the nocturnal insects were biting by the time Poré and his clan returned to the nearby town they had left six hours before. The air smelt of warm grass and flowers, bleached under a hot, relentless sun, but there was something mixed with the light summer scents, something acrid. Smoke. And there were sounds too, faint, but growing louder with every step closer to Pleven. Gunfire.
“Whatever is going on?” asked one of the old soldiers under Poré’s command, as they neared the town’s outskirts and saw torchlight and horses ridden hard down the roads, men gathering in crowds to hear messengers speak.
“Perhaps war has come at last to this place?” replied the Priest roughly, stopping to rub a little life into his ruined thigh. “It seems that the conflict’s flames have reached everywhere else. Why not Bulgaria?”
They walked on, catching snippets of fleeting words from passing groups of men, about Italy and mobilisation.
“Whatever can they mean?” asked another of Poré’s men. “Italy mobilised months ago! Can it be that the news has arrived here only now?”
“News travels slower in the east,” replied Poré. “But for the news of Italy’s war to have arrived only now, I find that hard to believe.”
They reached a main square, where pear and cherry trees lined the outer perimeter and a large crowd had gathered around a belvedere to hear a man speak. He was dressed in a suit, a pillbox hat on his head, and he was remonstrating with his hands, his commanding voice audible from the very edge of the enclosure. But despite his best efforts, the crowd was wild and unrestrained and a fight broke out among the throng of men, rucking left and then right, as the mass brawl threatened to engulf the entire square.
“What is going on?” asked Poré in stilted Bulgarian of a local man hurrying from the fracas to avoid being enveloped by the fighting.
“Have you not heard? Mobilisation!” He held his hands to his head. “They are saying that there will be mobilisation!”
“Who says?” called Poré, but the man had already turned and fled. Poré took hold of another, grasping him hard by the arm so he could less easily slip away. The man spun on him, expecting to throw a punch to protect himself, but on seeing the gaunt figure of Poré, stayed his fist.
“Let go of me!” he shouted, yanking his arm free.
“What is going on here? Who is mobilising?”
“Nobody yet. But it is just a matter of time.”
“For what?”
“Till Bulgaria mobilises for war! Already they are saying that Tsar Ferdinand and Radoslavov are drawing up plans. That we will march on Serbia before autumn!”
“Why?” cried Poré, but this man too fled from the erupting chaos all around them before he answered. “For what reason?” Poré called after him.
“Because of Italy,” answered another man, heavily bearded and red-faced, hurrying past.
“What of them?” asked Poré, hiding anything in his accent which might suggest he was from the west of Europe.
“The treacherous scum. They are marching on Austro-Hungary!” The man waved with his arm away towards the west.
“Where? Where are they marching to?”
“Apparently they have already crossed the Soča River. They are marching on the Carso! A great army, a hundred thousand strong! They dare to try to take those lands and with it the monastery of Sveta Gora! Mount San Michele! The Slovene national treasure!”
A cold sweat clamped around Poré as the man made fists in front of him.
“We will fight back,” the man warned. “With these!” he said, lifting up his clenched hands. “With anything we can lay our hands upon. We will turn the earth red with their blood!”
He turned and sloped away as if drunk on his rage, and Poré and his men watched him go.
“And so now I know where it is I must go,” he muttered to himself.
“Where must you go, Poré?” asked one of his clan. “Surely not to war as well?”
“The Carso,” he replied, looking at them all. “It is the place decreed. The place to be bathed in blood. I must go to the Carso.”
FORTY FOUR
THE VATICAN. VATICAN CITY.
Moonlight flooded the silent back stairs of the Vatican, casting everything silver-black. In the dead of night, Vatican City was as quiet as a morgue. Tacit descended the stone steps as quietly as possible, his ears alert to any sounds from the passageway behind and beyond. Isabella followed closely in his shadow, her hand to the wall. “I’m touched,” she said in a hushed voice, masking a smile as they reached the bottom of the stair well and paused.
“By what?”
“That you came back. For me. Strettavario said you would.”
“I thought you’d been killed,” replied Tacit, peering into the dark of the room beyond.
“It’s nice to know you care.”
It seemed to Isabella that Tacit froze. “Of course I care.” He waited for a moment, as if summoning the courage to speak. “I told you, that time in Paris.”
“Why did you leave me, in that corridor? You shouldn’t have. It was cruel.”
Tacit looked beyond to where Sandrine and Henry stood, crouched tight to the wall of the passageway, aware they could hear every word that he and Isabella were saying. He leant in to her, drawing her close. “It wasn’t your fight.”
“It wasn’t yours to fight alone.”
“No!” hissed Tacit, turning from her. He crushed his hands into fists and looked back. “I couldn’t stand it, to think of losing you. Of what they might have done to you had you come with me.” He dropped his hands to her shoulders, appearing to diminish before her, no longer the giant man he was. “Look, I don’t expect you to come with me. You can stay here, or return to the Chaste, tell them I took you hostage and that you escaped. Strettavario will look after you. I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have brought you along.”
But Isabella pulled her hands free and shook her head. “Don’t patronise me, Tacit,” she said. “You left me behind once before. You won’t do it again. Promise me you won’t do it again?”
“I can’t do that,” replied Tacit, shaking his head.
“Promise me,” she pressed, facing up to him.
He relented, allowing her this one victory. “Okay, I promise.” He bowed his head, as if making an oath, before looking up. “I won’t let anything happen to you.”
“This touching reunion is all very pleasant,” called Sandrine, “but it’s not achieving much.”
Isabella ignored the comment and raised her hands to his face.
“God, Poldek,” she muttered, her hands moving to the bound wounds on his forearms from the nails. She had bandaged them the best she was able from the provisions Henry had with him, but the Inquisitor still looked ravaged beyond hope from his injuries. “What did they do to you in that place?”
“It’s not important,” he replied, as she placed her hands on his face, smoothing the hair from his eyes. In the harsh light from the single lantern, Tacit looked grievous and daring, his face butchered and broken from his time in prison.
“Thank goodness they never
touched your eyes.” Tacit slipped from her grasp to peer back at the door again, as Sandrine called, “So what exactly are we doing here?”
Tacit said nothing, surveying the hall beyond. They’d picked the right time to come. The inquisitional hall was deserted. The rare time it was ever quiet was in the middle of the night, shortly before dawn. Witching hour. Inquisitors were either in bed, on assessment or dead. He hoped that, in a few minutes, he wouldn’t be joining the deceased, four slugs of lead in his chest from an overenthusiastic Inquisitor on guard in the hall. He knew they would be hunting him even here. They wouldn’t give up on their man that easily. The prospect teased his gut.
The moonlight had turned Isabella’s hair an ashen rose in colour, her skin deathly white. She looked as if she had risen from the grave, deathly beautiful.
“I need to get my bag, my tools, my weapons,” said Tacit. “Beyond this door is the inquisitional hall. It looks deserted but chances are it’s not. If there are any Inquisitors inside, we’ve got a problem, but it’s mine alone. No one’s to follow me. Understand?”
“Fine with us,” replied Sandrine, crossing her arms and leaning back against the wall. “I’m not getting myself killed for some old junk.”
He looked back at Isabella, his tone even more commanding. “Stay here. If I’m not back in five minutes or the moment you hear shooting, leave.”
He pushed the door wide and slipped silently through it into the black. Just beyond the entrance he dropped to his haunches and looked across the hall. Empty. Tacit breathed deeply and rose, bounding towards the glimmer of the open hatch at the far end, the light of the inquisitional stores emanating from within. As he powered across the room, Tacit recalled the first time he visited the hall with his master, Inquisitor Tocco, his young eyes wide and disbelieving. That memory, the thrill of seeing the vibrant secret world beneath the Vatican’s polished and brilliant halls and corridors, would never leave him, the charge of adrenaline it left forever branded on his soul like a medal of honour.
Within five steps he heard footsteps and peered back, cursing.
“I told you to wait for me!” he hissed.
“And you came to me for help,” retorted Isabella. “That means we stay together.”
“And die together?”
“If so be it, yes.” She allowed herself a vague smile and looked towards the green shimmering light of the open store a little way ahead of them, a rectangular hole carved out of the thick stone of the roots of the Vatican building. Tacit halted alongside it, Isabella next to him.
“Gaulterio!” he hissed, hoping that in the nine months since he had last visited the store, the old keeper who always kept the graveyard shift within the inquisitional hall was still there. They would never have got rid of him. He was too knowledgeable and respected for an unceremonious expulsion. Only death would have taken the old man from his post.
“Who’s there?” came the croaked reply after a moment, a reticent caution to the voice.
“You know who it is,” replied Tacit, still not showing his face.
“Poldek Tacit!” Gaulterio called urgently, but the fact he kept his voice a whisper gave Tacit hope he would not raise the alarm, at least not immediately. They had a history, the old storemaster and Tacit, a strong tie of admiration and respect. Gaulterio had always respected Tacit for the stories of heroic deeds he had heard of the Inquisitor, and Tacit admired Gaulterio for never asking him further details of his assignments, unlike many of the other gossip-hungry cubs who helped Gaulterio run the storeroom.
Tacit stepped out of the shadows into the light of the storeroom counter.
“Jesus, Mary and Joseph,” the storeman muttered, his hand clutched to his throat, taking a step back. “They said you’d broken out.”
“They were right.”
“What the hell did they do to you?” the wizened old man asked, studying Tacit slowly, a look of shock and disbelief at the wounded battered appearance of the Inquisitor.
“Bad things. But that’s in the past.”
“Are you back for your things?” Gaulterio asked, a light coming to his eyes. He tilted his head to look down the length of his roman nose.
“I am.”
“They wanted to have it,” said the old man, his lips trembling.
“Who wanted it?”
“The Holy See. They wanted to take it. Make sure it was locked up. Safe.”
“Why?”
Gaulterio shrugged. “No idea. I suppose they thought you wouldn’t be coming back for it any time soon.” His face lightened and a mischievous smirk took root. “I gave them some old junk. Said it was yours. They didn’t ask any questions and they took it and locked it away. Never knew other people’s cast offs could ever be so valuable.” Bird-like, the old man turned from the counter and stepped away, pausing and looking back briefly from the shadows, as if to assure himself that his eyes and ears were not deceiving him, shaking his head. “It’s good to have you back, Tacit.”
Tacit muttered something under his breath and shifted around to rest his bulk against the edge of the counter, crossing his arms.
“Nice to know you still have friends,” said Isabella.
“We’ll see,” replied Tacit darkly. “I could do with a drink.”
“You’re not alone.”
Isabella pushed a hand through the gap at Tacit’s elbow and tightened it around the man’s biceps, pleased and a little surprised that he didn’t pull himself away from her. “God, I missed you,” she muttered quietly, as if a private thought to herself.
“Not here,” replied Tacit, and at once drew himself away. Their eyes met, so much said in their glances. Tears welled in her eyes. “I thought I’d never see you again.” Tacit turned away as if he couldn’t stand to hear the words, to see her pain, but she drew him back to look at her. “Why does everything always go so ill for you Tacit?” she asked. “You seem … forever doomed.”
“There have been times,” he said, turning his eyes to look at the flagstones of the floor, a hand to his broad chin, “there have been times when I’ve wondered.”
“What?” Isabella asked, and she saw a light catch in the Inquisitor’s eye.
He shrugged. “That something wasn’t right, that someone within the Vatican was watching me. Wishing me ill.” He thought back to Arras and the warning the pale-eyed Father Strettavario had given him in the bar that night, that ‘they’ were after him. “But maybe …” He let his words trail to silence and cursed himself for his lack of conviction. He had threads of possibilities, but only that, threads leading merely to tangled confused conclusions.
“They tortured me, but it seemed to me as if they were torturing to see.”
“To see what, Tacit?”
“See what would happen. See if they came.”
“What came?”
“The lights.”
Isabella looked at him, crestfallen and confused. “I don’t understand.”
But Tacit shook his head and looked away. “Neither do I. But they’ve always been there, the lights. I don’t know what they are, what they mean. I’ve never told anyone about them. But always they appear to me at times of weakness, or power, when I am troubled.”
“What do they do?”
“They speak to me.”
“And what do they say, Tacit?”
“Terrible things.” He looked at her, and he could see the love and concern in her eyes. “I think they were trying to test me, whoever in the Vatican is studying me, hoping to awaken the lights through their torture. I think someone was seeing what it was I possessed.”
“For what purpose?” asked Isabella.
But Tacit only shook his head.
A noise drew them back to the stores and to Gaulterio.
The old man wheeled a vast wooden case on coasters in front of him. He drew to a halt in front of the counter and pondered for a moment how he was going to lift it up. Tacit didn’t give him too long to wonder, reaching forward and effortlessly dragging it onto th
e counter before him, the wood bowing beneath the weight. At once the lid was thrown open and Tacit was delving deep within it, pulling out all manner of items; weapons, tomes, holy symbols, felt stitched bags, glass implements and test tubes, herbs and fine powders encased in metal pots, placing them into the deep pockets of his coat. From the bottom he dragged his chain mail armour and held it up, examining it briefly in the pale light before handing it to Isabella.
“Here,” he muttered, before raking the final depths of the chest for anything of use.
The craftsmanship and weight of the metal suit astounded Isabella, so light but as hard as steel.
“You didn’t see me, Gaulterio, right?” he muttered over his shoulder, menace in both his eyes and voice.
The old man nodded and threw the lid of the box shut.
“And Gaulterio,” the Inquisitor added, plunging his hands into his pockets and still finding room for them among everything else. “Thank you.”
FORTY FIVE
THE VATICAN. VATICAN CITY.
In the passageway just down from Inquisitor Cincenzo’s residence, Monsignor Benigni stopped dead in his tracks and spun around to face the person following him, his back hard to the wall of the corridor.
“Who are you?” he shrieked, his hand thrust to his mouth. “What do you want?”
Georgi emerged out of the shadows and loomed over the trembling man.
“Georgi Akeldama?” Benigni exclaimed, his piggy eyes growing wide behind his spectacles. He recognised the man at once. He’d made it his business to recognise faces and put names to them, even names of people long dead.
“Monsignor Benigni,” answered Georgi, shaking his head. “Always sticking your nose into matters where it’s not appreciated. Did they never warn you of the dangers?”
“I am only doing what they asked of me,” he muttered pitifully.
“Me too, Monsignor,” replied Georgi. “Me too.”
He raised his hands towards the cowering Priest.
“Don’t take my eyes!” he cried. “Don’t take my eyes!”
The Fallen Page 17
