by Sam Cabot
“But the poem itself,” Thomas said. “Where to go now. What that means, I have no idea.”
“That’s all right.” Livia smiled. “I do.”
55
This time, Jorge Ocampo wasn’t going to run. He would do nothing to call attention to himself. He’d covertly, stealthily make his way, an operative whose objective was to remain in deep cover while fulfilling his mission.
What was his mission?
He wasn’t exactly sure.
Anna hadn’t given him new instructions on the retrieval of the notebook or the surveillance of the professoressa. She hadn’t told him what to do about the unalterable facts of what had happened in Santa Maria della Scala. She’d drawn in a sharp, angry breath when he’d told her about the accident, but she didn’t yell, didn’t berate him, didn’t let loose that hot stream of vitriol she’d poured on his head on the few other occasions when he’d been unsuccessful at accomplishing a task. She really was unfair to him, Anna. He generally did quite well with the assignments she gave him, and he was—justly, he thought—proud of that. Like anyone, he had his moments of bad luck. Her impatience at those times, her lightning-fast willingness to reproach and blame him, really stung. It wasn’t reasonable, it truly wasn’t.
Although maybe she was changing. Maybe she was beginning to appreciate how hard he tried, and to understand that misfortune can happen to anyone. He’d expected a storm of anger, he’d braced for it, but instead he’d heard a silence, and then, “All right, Jorge. Are you out of sight?” When he’d assured her he’d taken cover, she asked where, and after he told her, she just said, “Stay there. I’m on my way.”
So he’d settled into his velvet seat in the musty theater, waiting for Anna to come and tell him what to do. In the dark he drifted into a reverie, feeling her satin skin and silken hair, hearing the thrilling music of her voice as she whispered to him in his native Spanish. But a horn blared outside and startled him, and the dream vanished and would not come back. As he waited he found himself growing more and more uncomfortable. Il Pasquino was his private place. He didn’t know what he should have said. “I’m not going to tell you where I am” hadn’t occurred to him, and if it had, Anna wouldn’t have put up with it. But he began to feel ill at ease about the idea of seeing Anna. Something in her voice . . . She was angry. She was hiding it, and he thought that sweet of her; clearly she knew the stress he was under and didn’t want to upset him further. But she was angry.
And, he realized, disappointed.
That caused Jorge a new kind of pain, the thought that his Anna was disappointed in him. She’d sent him out to be her knight in shining armor, and he’d let her down. He came to a decision. He wasn’t going to wait for her. Not right now. Not here, in his theater. He was going to leave Il Pasquino and steal along Vicolo del Piede, keeping to the shadows.
He had no instructions, that was true; but he was capable of formulating his own plans. He would find the professoressa. He would retrieve the notebook. He would complete his original assignment before he saw Anna again. Then his mistake in the church wouldn’t loom so large. He’d never meant to hurt the old monk. He’d only been trying to move him out of the way. How could he have known he’d lose his balance and fall? After all, Anna was the one who’d drilled into him that he must never use any of his Noantri Blessings in a way that Mortals might notice. So it shouldn’t be any surprise that he didn’t know his own strength! And people fell all the time, even hit their heads, without dying. What had happened to the monk was definitely not Jorge’s fault.
Anna had sounded worried about his safety, making sure he was out of sight, telling him to stay there. She wasn’t acting as though what had happened in Santa Maria della Scala was very important.
But even if he couldn’t be blamed for the monk’s death, he knew it mattered. And he was going to make up for it.
Jorge peeked through the grimy window, waiting for a moment when the street was clear. His mind drifted again, this time not to Anna, but to the accident. It was a strange thing, what had happened to that old monk. The man had died, and Jorge wasn’t so far from his own Change that he’d forgotten the terror of a Mortal anticipating that. But among the emotions passing across the old monk’s face, Jorge, to his astonishment, hadn’t found fear. What he’d seen—what he’d caused—was relief. Then, gratitude. Finally, to Jorge’s astonishment, joy.
To his additional astonishment, Jorge found himself feeling a tiny, transitory twinge of envy.
Back to the window. One of a revolutionary’s best weapons was an ability to focus on his mission despite distractions. Ah—now came Jorge’s chance. The street was empty. Jorge slipped from the window and sauntered along, in his sunglasses and porkpie hat. He hadn’t worn either in the church, and he’d had on a jacket he was leaving in the theater. Sauntering down the street, he blended in beautifully with all the other hipsters. His plan was to head back to the professoressa’s house. He’d watch, and surely she’d come home eventually. Then he’d get the notebook Anna wanted and everything would be as it had been before.
That was his plan. But when he hit the intersection with Via della Fonte D’Olio, an amazing thing happened.
The professoressa. She’d passed by there. He caught her scent.
She was wearing perfume, this lady, something complicated and tropical. He’d noticed it in the Library and felt a stab of longing; the girls back home wore perfume, but among the Noantri, his new Community, his home now, it was the fashion to shun such things. Anna never wore perfume, petulantly asking, when he’d wondered why, if the fragrance of her own skin was not enough for him. He hadn’t mentioned it again.
This professoressa, though: the perfume he’d first detected in the Library—maybe gardenias, could that be right?—the scent he’d followed down the winding hidden corridor, and then faintly noted in Santa Maria della Scala (though there the flowers and incense overpowered it)—he could sense it now, trailing from the direction of the piazza.
She’d passed by, and recently.
His heart started to pound. He ordered himself to stay calm. Quickly, but no faster than a Mortal in a hurry would have jogged, he rushed up Via della Fonte D’Olio into the piazza. She was nowhere in sight, but her scent laced the air. The church—she must have gone into the church! Jorge trotted up the steps, and the moment he entered Santa Maria in Trastevere he knew two things: she’d been there, and she was gone.
Something had happened here, though it was over. He could feel the disturbance in the settling air, smell the ozone scent of sudden excitement, the fading but still strongly acrid aroma a jolt of adrenaline adds to sweat. On his left as he entered a priest stood on a ladder locking a small golden door. The Catedral Metropolitana de Buenos Aires—a church he’d been in only once or twice, but oh, how beautiful it was—had a door like that. He’d wondered about it, but never asked anyone, because he liked his own answer. Symbolic sanctuary, he’d decided it meant, a reminder that the church would shelter all who came to it. He’d never seen the one back home open and regretted he hadn’t arrived at Santa Maria in Trastevere just a few moments sooner, to see what was in them.
As the priest started down the ladder Jorge ordered himself to stop daydreaming. Revolutionary focus! This Church mumbo jumbo, it was oppressive, it was the enemy. He was only thinking about the Catedral Metropolitana because he missed home. The sooner he accomplished his mission, the sooner Anna and the others could establish Noantri rule, and the sooner he and Anna could return to Argentina. Jorge himself wasn’t interested in a position of power in the new order. He didn’t need it, because he’d have everything he wanted: to be with Anna, for eternity.
With new resolve, Jorge turned and left the church. He surveyed the streets issuing from the piazza, sniffed the air, and hurried past the fountain to the other side.
56
Rome could be splendid in autumn, clear and bright. The air, even when cool
, lacked the sharp edge of Jonah’s native Berlin, but he had no argument with a day like today. Rome was a beautiful city. Livia had brought him to it. And Livia was here still.
Shadows and sunlight alternated as his taxi sped—or what passed for speed in Rome traffic—alongside the Tiber. From habit unwilling to risk exposing his Noantri nature—though why it should matter, this near his goal, he wasn’t sure—he’d hailed a cab to take him down the Janiculum into Trastevere.
Livia and the priest were apparently inside San Francesco a Ripa, something he’d learned from the man he had watching them. Much as he loved the sight of Livia, Jonah had avoided tailing them himself to keep her from picking up his scent. Or the rhythm of his footsteps, or the sound of his breath. After all the time, and the depth of it, that they’d spent together, she’d know within seconds if he came near.
Now, though, he had to take the chance.
He’d been informed earlier that a Noantri, someone his agent didn’t know, had raced by on Vicolo del Piede. It might have been just some newcomer unable to keep his light under the Conclave-required bushel and it was possible the incident had no bearing on Jonah or his plan, beyond underlining the satisfaction he’d feel when it succeeded. After the Concordat had been published and the Noantri all Unveiled, none of his people would ever again be forced into false modesty and painful mediocrity. That was what he’d been thinking; but another of his agents had called just now, as he’d stood with Cardinal Cossa, to say a man who sounded to Jonah very much like the same one had passed by on Via di San Franceso a Ripa in the direction of the church—and to identify him as the clerk from the theft in the Vatican Library. Jonah had been told a third Noantri, besides Livia and the supercilious Spencer George, had been in Santa Maria della Scala, also; it was unclear whether that was again this same man, but Jonah was uneasy enough that he decided to come see for himself.
He understood that not only the Church, but the Conclave, would do everything in their power to thwart him, but he’d thought that at this point he had the upper hand with both.
This unknown Noantri, though, might be working for the Conclave. Jonah wouldn’t put that past the Pontifex, to give Livia a task and then set a spy on her. The Noantri leader was a dark and secretive man who’d always made Jonah edgy, whose eyes seemed to see right into him, whom Jonah suspected uneasily of foreseeing Jonah’s plan before he, Jonah, had ever had it fully formulated. Foreseeing it, but taking no preemptive action to stop it. As though he were giving Jonah every opportunity to do the right thing himself. This man, who’d emerged from the shadows to lead the Noantri as soon as the Concordat was signed, was an enigma even to his own. His steady voice had long led the opposition to Unveiling. Jonah was well aware that the Pontifex had now ordered his death and also that the only reason that order was stayed was the Conclave’s desire to find and re-conceal the lost Concordat. If the Noantri stranger was in fact trailing Livia and the priest at the behest of the Conclave, that was a situation Jonah would have to handle.
Another worrisome possibility existed, also: that he was following Livia and Kelly for someone else. Within the Community, sentiment on the subject of Unveiling ran high on both sides of the line. At this sensitive point, it was imperative that no one, from either camp, interfere with Jonah’s plan.
Now, Cardinal Cossa, he thought, as the taxi made the turn onto Viale di Trastevere: the Cardinal was a perfect example of everything that was wrong with the status quo. Because the Noantri were forced to remain hidden, Lorenzo Cossa was unfamiliar with them as people, as individuals; because he had only centuries of lies, tales, and legends by which to judge them, he feared and hated them. He couldn’t tell reality from nonsense, claiming, for example, to be revolted by the smell of a Noantri, which Jonah knew no Mortal could detect. As opposed to Cossa’s own omnipresent cigars, which could truly stink up a room.
What a sad man he was, too. Sad and bitter. As far as Jonah knew, it had been Cossa’s life’s goal to become Librarian and Archivist of the Vatican. Now he had. In the short time left to him—if he didn’t become Noantri—you’d think he’d revel in the vast, varied collection under his control. The knowledge there, the connections to be made and understood, the possibilities! But he hadn’t. He’d focused on the Concordat, set a team searching for it, brought in Thomas Kelly when they didn’t find it. Cossa was angry, fearful, and disappointed, and from what Jonah could see, he loved nothing.
No. That was wrong. He did seem to love Thomas Kelly. Although of course Cardinal Cossa would never say anything of the sort to Jonah, still he could sense it in Cossa’s voice, in the shift of his shoulders when Kelly was mentioned, in the fear in his eyes for Kelly in the current situation. Thomas Kelly was the son Lorenzo Cossa had never had. The prize pupil, the acolyte. Kelly had done well and Cossa was proud.
Soon, thought Jonah, Kelly would do even better. After which, Jonah would be rid of Lorenzo Cardinal Cossa once and for all.
And his revolting cigars.
57
Jorge Ocampo walked slowly, casually up the shallow steps leading into San Francesco a Ripa. Livia Pietro’s perfume trail had brought him straight here, and though Jorge knew following it would have been child’s play for any Noantri, still he was pleased with himself. Not just for finding the professoressa, but for ensuring he’d be able to get close enough to relieve her of the notebook before she detected him. He’d stopped at a farmacia and bought cologne, not one of the powerful, manly scents he’d worn back home—though he’d been tempted—but a cheap, sharp, unpleasant toilet water no one but a stuffed-nosed Mortal could have enjoyed. He’d have to wash it off before he saw Anna again, of course, but the pungent junk should make an excellent mask as he approached Pietro. What she might be doing here, he didn’t know, but it mattered not to Jorge. He was on a mission.
Briefly he considered remaining outside, waiting for his quarry to emerge. His last foray into a church had not gone well. No, he decided. Too many variables, too many chances for her to slip away. Or even just to do whatever she was here for, and keep him waiting. Jorge did not want to wait.
The church’s doors stood open, welcoming tourists, pilgrims, and the faithful. The fearful, Anna called them. Jorge’s memories of the sweet incense and the echoing cool shadows in La Iglesia de Caacupé, the Buenos Aires church of his childhood, always brought him comfort. He supposed Anna must be right when she said the comfort sprang not from the presence of something ineffable and beyond his understanding, but from yielding to fear and surrendering rational thought, allowing scheming, power-hungry churchmen to deceive him, like millions of other sheep, into believing in that presence. She must be right, but he missed the comfort.
He sidled to the left as he entered, took off his shades, and looked around. At first glance it seemed that San Francesco a Ripa enclosed its visitors in a calm white interior, gilt-trimmed but sedate. Broad streams of sunlight poured from twelve round-topped windows, one over each arch, to crisscross the nave and reflect up off the patterned marble floor. People knelt or sat with bowed heads in some of the pews, and tourists with guidebooks ambled up and down the aisles.
Jorge had been in this church before, though, and he knew the serene nature of the nave and columns only served to emphasize the real pride of San Franceso a Ripa and the real reason to come here. The church was the final resting place of many wealthy and devout parishioners. Their memorials occupied the side chapels, where elaborate commissioned statuary commemorated their exemplary lives and their assured places in the world to come.
Seized with inspiration, Jorge slipped quietly over to, and up, the right-hand aisle, keeping his gaze on the side chapels opposite. Pietro was an art historian. The crowning glory of San Franceso a Ripa’s funerary art was the chapel dedicated to Ludovica Albertoni. It depicted the deceased, surrounded by the heads of angels, at the moment of her departure from this life. To Jorge this work had always appeared more erotic than pious, more earth
y than ethereal. He wasn’t alone in thinking so, but no matter: the work was by Bernini, and in a church full of beautiful things, it stood head and shoulders above the rest.
And—obviously trying to elude him, because she’d changed into loose, cropped white pants, a white T-shirt, and a floppy canvas hat, and was carrying a different shoulder bag—Livia Pietro stood before it, looking up.
58
Five angels gazed out beyond their chapel and over the church, the joy on their faces inviting the congregation to share in the glory of Ludovica Albertoni’s ascension to heaven. The sixth angel didn’t join them; he was watching Ludovica as the ecstasy of what was happening filled and thrilled her.
“Here?” asked Thomas. “You’re sure?”
“‘Death throes? The pure puling of being born?’” Livia quoted. “This is Ludovica Albertoni at the moment of death. There’s also always been a theory that it can be read as Saint Ann receiving the Immaculate Conception.”
“Simultaneously?”
“He did that sort of thing, Bernini. And see there? ‘Among the winged creatures . . . look down upon her face . . .’ That one putto, he’s the only one looking at her.” As Thomas followed her pointing finger, she added, “Aren’t they beautiful?”
They were, the light from Bernini’s hidden window glowing on the angels’ heads and on the tomb of the pious woman they were welcoming to paradise. Thomas didn’t offer his critical assessment, though, asking instead, “If this is right, where could the poem be?”
Livia paused, then answered, “The only place I can think of is inside that head.”
Thomas gazed skeptically at the sculpture. “But this was carved centuries before—”
“They’re mounted on steel rods. The heads. They were made separately and installed once the sculpture was in place.”
