by Sam Cabot
When Thomas arrived Lorenzo had dismissed the young priest, pointed Thomas to a chair, and poured cognac into crystal snifters. Thomas, even at this ridiculously early hour, had been grateful for that, but the strong drink made what followed even more surreal.
“Thomas,” Lorenzo had said in quiet, measured tones, “tell me what happened. Start in the Library.”
So Thomas had recounted the meeting with Livia Pietro, the fight, the flight. Lorenzo said nothing, just sat puffing on a cigar, his eyes searching Thomas’s face. Thomas, sure by then the whole thing was an inexplicably elaborate attempt to terrorize him, felt calm, almost amused; but suddenly, when he reached the discussion in Spencer George’s study, he had trouble going on. Lorenzo advised him to finish his cognac, and gave him more.
“What happened there, Thomas?” Lorenzo asked. “What did they tell you?”
Feeling the comforting burn of excellent liquor, Thomas continued. “At first, nothing. Just that someone they both seemed to know, someone named Jonah, knew where the Concordat was. And that she—Livia Pietro—was ordered to find it by some group they call the Conclave. Whoever they are, they told her to get me to help her. They know why I’m here.”
He looked to Lorenzo but Lorenzo just nodded.
Thomas said, “She’s afraid of them, or of something, but I don’t know what. He—” Spencer George’s face flashed in front of Thomas and his stomach clenched. “Nasty, sneering man. He—he—”
“He what, Thomas?”
Thomas took another sip. The cognac was warming him. He felt it in his fingertips and along the back of his neck. He was loose, he was safe. “I wouldn’t help them. They wouldn’t tell me how they knew about the Concordat or what it was or why they wanted it, and finally I told them I’d leave unless they did. I started to go and she said no, sit down, and she told me what they are—what they say they are. Do they believe it themselves?” he suddenly wondered. “Can they be that crazy? How could anyone—”
“Thomas. What did they say?”
Thomas snapped his eyes back to Lorenzo. “Yes. I’m sorry. She said . . .” He drew his brows together and concentrated, peering down at the light reflected in the amber liquid he was holding. As he spoke, the glow shimmered and danced. “She kept using the word ‘Noantri.’ It’s a Romanesco word, a contraction of noi altri, it means ‘we others,’ and residents of Trastevere use it about themselves but she said even though that’s what most people mean by it, it didn’t just mean that, it meant her people.”
“Her people? Thomas, who are her people?”
Thomas lifted his eyes again to meet Lorenzo’s. Why was the Cardinal looking so solemn? Thomas burst into a grin. He realized he was tipsy and that this was the most absurd thing he’d ever say to Lorenzo. Dramatically, he lifted his hand toward the ceiling. “Vampires!” He started to laugh. Guffaws rocked him and he shook helplessly. The cognac sloshed in his snifter as he cracked up.
Lorenzo reached forward and took the glass from Thomas’s hand. He set it down and softly asked, “What else?”
Instantly, the comic mood vanished; instantly, Thomas was sober. “The historian,” he heard his own voice in monotone. “I refused to believe them, anything so ludicrous. He said all right then, I should leave, but she said it was important that I stay, important that I help them. So the historian—Spencer George, yes, that’s his name—he shrugged and picked up a knife from his desk. He took the flowers from a glass vase—I think they were irises, but I’m not good with flowers—”
“Thomas?”
“He laid them very carefully on the tray. As though he cared about them. He brought the vase and put it on the table right in front of me and then he took the knife and he slit his wrist.”
Thomas stopped. Lorenzo repeated, “He slit his wrist.”
As though from far away, Thomas noted that Lorenzo phrased that as a statement, not a question. “Over the vase. Blood spurted into the water. Bright red . . . But right away, right away, it started to heal. It was a deep wound. He showed it to me, turned his wrist up right in front of me, and I watched it heal. I could see it. The bleeding stopped, the skin moved, crawled together almost. The blood in the water hadn’t even mixed, it was still making little trailing threads, and he wasn’t bleeding anymore.” Thomas looked up at Lorenzo. “How did he do that? What kind of trick . . . ?”
Lorenzo was shaking his head.
“She didn’t move,” Thomas said. “She just sat there drinking her coffee. As though there weren’t . . . weren’t blood in the vase. Then he did it again. He did it to his other wrist. The same thing, more blood in the water, and when that one had started to heal he showed me the other one again. It was barely a pink scratch. ‘Well,’ he said, ‘is that dramatic enough? Father?’ I didn’t answer so he said, ‘Livia, I don’t think he’s convinced.’ Then he smiled and handed me the knife. It was bloody. He opened his shirt and tapped himself on the chest. On the heart.”
“What did you do?”
“I dropped the knife and ran.”
That was it. That was the moment Thomas expected Lorenzo to grin, also, to laugh as hard as Thomas just had, and to explain to him what the Concordat really was, who the other signatory really was, and what the gang of book thieves/terrorists/merry prankster lunatics he’d encountered was really up to.
Lorenzo had not.
Quite, quite the opposite. He’d apologized for withholding this information from Thomas for so long, and said that Thomas’s reaction now was proof that he’d been correct in doing so. That of all the Church’s secrets, all its hidden truths, the truth of the Concordat was the most difficult for any devout man to learn. That the Noantri, begotten of Satan and birthed in hell, walked the earth. That they had as their purpose the degradation of men’s bodies and the destruction of men’s souls. That the Noantri promise of eternal life, meaning as it did a never-ending earthly existence and not a rebirth in the presence of the Lord, was a foul and futile pledge.
And that the Church had made a contract with them. And had held to it, to the mutual benefit of both groups, for six hundred years.
20
Thomas Kelly yanked open drawers and grabbed fistfuls of freshly pressed shirts. He pulled jackets and their hangers from the closet, swept the desk clean of pens and notepads, and stuffed everything recklessly into his suitcase. He was normally neat and methodical about his packing, as he was about everything, but nothing right now was normal and the only thing that mattered was to get away from here. To where? He didn’t care. The next plane out of Rome, wherever it was going. Beijing, New York, Kuwait City. Somewhere he knew no one, no one knew him, and he could try to understand what had happened to him this day.
The drawers and closets were emptied and the suitcase mashed shut when Thomas, loading his pockets with his passport and wallet, heard his cell phone ring. No! Whoever it was, let them— But conscientious habit had by then forced the phone from the top of the bureau into his hand. An unknown number, a Rome code. Again unconscious routine took over; he’d been at the service of others, trying to be of use, for so long. Before he quite knew what he was doing he’d answered it.
“Thomas Kelly.”
“Buongiorno, Father.” An unrecognized voice, speaking, after that first word, in an English lightly accented. “You don’t know me but we have reason to work together. You must bring me the Concordat.”
Thomas stopped in the middle of his room, suitcase waiting on the bed. “Who are you? What do you mean?”
“Who I am is not important. You will be more interested, perhaps, in whom I know.”
“What are you—”
“Thomas.” A new and this time familiar voice. “It’s Lorenzo. Whatever this man tells you to do, don’t do it!”
“What— What are—”
Through the phone, Thomas heard muffled, unintelligible sounds. Then the other voice was back. “He is a bra
ve man, your friend. Surprising, for a man of the Church. You’re usually such cowards. Father Kelly, I don’t have much time and neither do you. You’ll bring me the Concordat or your friend will die.”
Thomas sank into the armchair. He bent forward over the phone. Weakly, he said, “What?”
“My people need that document. It’s time the hypocrisy and evil of your Church was revealed for the world to see. Your friend the Cardinal wanted you to find it so he could hide it again and save your Church. Now you’ll have to find it to save him. He’s here with us, and not, believe me, by his own choice. If you don’t bring us the Concordat, he will die.” A brief pause. “No, better. Yes, much better. He won’t die. He’ll never die. I’ll make him one of us.” Thomas heard a horrified intake of breath that could only have come from Lorenzo. “Yes, a marvelous idea,” the voice continued. “I’ll give your friend eternal life. Isn’t that what you men of the Church are always going on about? Eternal life. Won’t he love that?”
A foul and futile promise. Lorenzo’s words rang in Thomas’s head. The destruction of men’s souls.
“No,” Thomas said. “This isn’t happening. This isn’t real.”
“I’m sorry. I’m afraid it is. You’ll go back to those of our people you’ve already met, the two who are searching, and you’ll help them. You’ll find the Concordat and bring it to me or I’ll have the pleasure of welcoming your friend into our Community. We’re not unrepresented in your Church, but he’ll be our first cardinal. Quite an honor, wouldn’t you say?”
“No!” Thomas heard Lorenzo yelling from a distance. “Thomas! Don’t help him! They—” His words were cut off.
“Oh, yes, he’s very brave.” The voice was mocking now. “Willing to die for his Church and his God, I have no doubt. But sadly, I don’t think he’s going to get that chance. Go join the search for the Concordat, Father Kelly, and wait for my next call.”
The connection was cut.
21
Livia Pietro leaned over a map of Trastevere as the area had been in 1840. It had been Spencer’s idea to photocopy the map, one of the antique treasures of his collection, and use it to plot the locations of Damiani’s subjects. Truth be told, not very much had altered in the district since this map was made, but Spencer thought it would be useful to get as close to Mario Damiani’s standpoint as they could.
Livia could see how hard this was for Spencer. She hadn’t known Damiani—her own Change had come about during the First World War—and Spencer had never been one to reveal his feelings. But he and Damiani had been together for many decades; as Livia understood it, nearly a century. Noantri unions were the same as those the Unchanged made and also different. Couples came together for the same reasons: an ultimately indefinable compatibility of qualities physical, intellectual, emotional, and spiritual. Among the Unchanged, pairings that started well sometimes came apart nevertheless, as life’s events strained them, as the partners grew and became different people from the ones they’d been.
For the Noantri, the challenge was the same, and it was magnified by stretching over greater expanses of time. Through decades and centuries, personalities and behaviors altering as new knowledge, new views, and new experiences were added, a couple could easily find themselves, at last, totally unknown to each other.
But sometimes, the reverse. Sometimes the wealth of years only gave power to a couple’s love. Possibly it was the fact that the two had always been opposites that was the strength of Spencer’s relationship with Mario Damiani. Livia, despite what she’d led Father Kelly to believe, had known little about Damiani until yesterday, when she’d received the instructions of the Conclave. She’d researched him extensively before heading, just that morning, to the Vatican Library. From what she’d learned, Damiani had been everything Spencer wasn’t: enthusiastic, open, optimistic, and spontaneous. Among the Noantri of Rome, she’d discovered, their mutual devotion had been legendary.
“I get the feeling Mario Damiani knew every inch of Trastevere,” Livia ventured, glancing at Spencer as she spoke. Working with Damiani’s notebook and the map, the two of them were trying to decipher Damiani’s passionate, elliptical references and locate the poems’ subjects. They’d been at it for nearly two hours, ever since Thomas Kelly had bolted. Spencer, for his part, was delighted to be rid of the priest. Livia, though dismayed, could see that for her to go after Father Kelly would only terrify him more. She had thought, from their short acquaintance, that he might actually be strong enough to accept the difficult truth he was being told. She’d been wrong. She felt bad for him, and worried about the Conclave’s reaction when they found out. But perhaps it wouldn’t matter, after all, whether he was involved. His knowledge might have been useful, but Damiani’s notebook was likely to be the real treasure here. So while Spencer had calmly rinsed out the vase he’d used as a prop in his theatrical display—Signora Russo, his cook, was Unchanged, so it wouldn’t do for her to come upon it—Livia unrolled the map and began.
“When we met, Mario had been Noantri twenty years, I nearly two hundred.” Spencer answered Livia without looking up. “In all the time we were together we never traveled far. Mario didn’t care to. Rome, and particularly Trastevere, had his heart. I’d always traveled, even before my Change. I wanted to go back to Asia, but Mario could never be persuaded. He did say he might want to see the New World one day, maybe New York, but such . . . coarseness . . . held no interest for me. So we remained in Rome.” Spencer trailed off into a pensive silence. Livia let him be.
“There,” Spencer said after a moment, in stronger tones. He laid down his pencil. “I think that’s the last of them.” He frowned down at the map and then at the notebook. “I have to tell you, though, that whatever was bothering me earlier has not gone away. Something about these poems is so familiar. . . .”
“It’s not just that you knew he was working on them?” Livia studied the map, now that they’d completed it, looking for a pattern in the places Damiani had chosen to celebrate.
“I knew it, but I hadn’t seen them. He never showed me his work until it was finished. Something here . . . Something about the notebook itself, I think. I—”
The clanking of the brass ring on the front door interrupted him. Livia and Spencer exchanged glances; then Spencer crossed the room to peer through the window overlooking the piazza. “Oh,” he said. “My, my. Livia, come see this, and tell me what you want me to do.”
22
Carabiniere Sergente Raffaele Orsini scratched his chin (where his stubble was kept at fashionable two-day length by Elena’s birthday gift of a beard trimmer) and resettled in his café chair. Even the best of chairs could get a little uncomfortable after an hour and a half.
Giulio Aventino, his partner and senior, was probably back at the station by now, and livid that the maresciallo had given Raffaele permission to do this surveillance. If Giulio had been there when the request had come in he’d have fought it, though the maresciallo would’ve overruled him and Raffaele would be here anyway. That was politics, not piety, Raffaele knew: an uncomplicated favor like this for the Vatican was the sort the Carabinieri were only too happy to grant, so that when someday the police needed to, for example, follow a suspect into San Pietro, the Curia would respond in kind. Everyone scratched one another’s backs, that was the Italian way, and Giulio Aventino was no different except when it came to the Church.
The senior detective wasn’t just some kind of blasé unbeliever to whom the Church meant nothing. In Raffaele’s view Giulio’s soul seemed infused with the bitter cynicism of a heartbroken lover. Giulio Aventino had been devout once, Raffaele was sure of it. Now, his religion was his work. As his sergeant, Raffaele applied himself to learning from a senior officer of long experience, obvious skill, and high reputation. As a man, younger but much stronger in devotion to the Holy Mother Church, he was grateful for his own faith in the face of his partner’s gloom.
Here now, wh
at was this? Raffaele, as he’d been trained to do, stayed slouched in his chair, didn’t move, as though nothing was on his mind but his mid-afternoon macchiato. He reached for his phone, looking for all the world like a figlio di papà calling his girlfriend for a romantic chat. What he was, though, was a cop calling his uncle, the Cardinal, for whom the Carabinieri were doing this favor. Raffaele didn’t know why he’d been asked to watch this house, and no one had come out; but he thought Lorenzo Cardinal Cossa might be interested to know that a priest had just arrived, knocked, and was standing on the threshold talking to the black-haired woman whose photo, marking her as Raffaele’s surveillance target, the Cardinal had sent.
23
Standing on the cobblestones as the echo of his knock died away, it was all Thomas Kelly could do not to turn and run. He swallowed, bile burning his throat. The idea that he’d soon once again be in the presence of those . . . those creatures, made his stomach curdle and his skin crawl.
He still wasn’t sure he believed any of it: what he’d seen, what Lorenzo had told him. He’d given up hope that this was a simple nightmare but he was clinging to a new idea, that it was some sort of drug-induced hallucination. There’d been an accident. One of these terrible Rome drivers—some young kid on a motorino had almost run him down just moments ago, it was something like that, he was in a hospital all drugged up and his own subconscious had created this insane fantasy out of the depths of who-knows-where. The theory comforted him, but the problem with it was that while he waited for consciousness to return and the world to become right again, he had to take some sort of action. Although in this delusion Lorenzo Cossa had been deceiving and betraying Thomas for fifteen years, the fate threatening the Cardinal now was so horrifying that, though if any of this were true Lorenzo certainly wouldn’t deserve his help, Thomas found himself unable to just abandon him. After all, Thomas thought, if you don’t act heroically in your own hallucination, what can you hope from yourself in real life? Somewhere, somehow, Thomas was sure this all had to do with faith. The need to save someone whose treachery cut so deeply must be a test of faith. Thomas didn’t know why his subconscious demanded this of him, but he wasn’t about to let himself down.
