By now del Moro was stabbing needles into him with all the force he could muster; into his back, his armpits, the soles of his feet. Blood was oozing from dozens of wounds all over his body. The pain was excruciating. He started to cry and jerk convulsively against the straps as the needles dug half a centimetre deep into his flesh. Very calmly del Moro fastened Hercule’s head to the back of the chair and turned to the Cardinal, “Can you find anything, Rivero . . . an amulet, a devil’s cross?”
“Nothing so far.”
With a sense of horror that near rendered him unconscious, Hercule watched the inquisitor walk over to the laboratory bench, and clearly heard his thoughts: This bit of theatre will soon be over . . . the men ought to be with Schuster at any moment . . .
That was when he knew they intended to kill him. And not only him, but his benefactor Schuster, too. In a moment of devastating lucidity he understood it all: that, in this context, his gift was of no import, whether it could be explained or not wasn’t of the least consequence. The important thing was not even whether it existed. But that it existed as a possibility.
Let me go! he screamed right into del Moro’s gaping mind.
On hearing this soundless cry that echoed inside him seven times as loud as an ordinary scream, the inquisitor almost fell to the floor. During his thirty years of working as an exorcist he had never experienced anything like it. With the sweat pouring down his face, he turned to Rivero, “There’s no doubt about it, the monster is possessed! Let us, in the name of God, put an end to this!”
Hercule lost consciousness. And this, as it turned out, saved his life. For it was his unconscious body that afforded del Moro and Rivero the brief respite they needed in order to find out what was happening, a matter of extreme importance. In a building a street away, four novices – forerunners of the late-nineteenth-century sapinieri or Sodalitiorum Pium, the name later given to the Vatican’s secret service – had just been sent out on a mission to silence the chief witness to this affair.
LYING ON THE bunk in his cell, Julian Schuster opened his eyes and looked around to see where the voice that had woken him up was coming from. There was no-one there. Just his own doubts lurking treacherously in the dark.
But then he heard it again: the phantom voice.
Hercule? he asked. Are you there?
Soon dead . . . came the reply.
The message he received was scarcely louder than a hum. He listened intently, but now all he could hear was a faint murmur rising from one of the downstairs corridors where the Order’s officials had their offices.
Then he heard the voice again, much clearer this time.
Schuster, it said, we must get out of here . . .
Hercule, he replied, is that really you?
The answer was instantaneous. Hurry . . . the men are closing in . . .
Schuster got up, on legs so shaky he could barely stand.
What men?
Four of them . . . in this building . . .
Again the brother looked round the room as if hoping to see his ward there; but the only things to be found were the glum disconsolate grey of his barrack walls and a resurgence of doubts he could scarcely ward off.
What men are you talking about?
Doesn’t matter . . . hurry . . .
The novices selected by Cardinal Rivero for this mission were inside the building, and no more than fifty steps away. One was in the downstairs corridor of offices, and at this very moment was approaching the attic staircase. There he stopped for a brief second and felt the length of copper wire that lay coiled into a snare in his girdle pocket.
Hurry, for God’s sake, the voice inside Schuster said. Take the left-hand corridor. At its far end you’ll find a door leading to a closet . . . if you want to stay alive, do as I tell you.
It was dark in the corridor. Schuster could hear footsteps on the staircase, and the breathing of someone approaching. Twenty metres along the corridor, to his right, he found the door and slipped soundlessly into the space behind it. It was some kind of a storeroom, crammed full with Mass crucifixes and vats of incense.
On the floor there’s a carpet . . . roll it aside . . . you’ll find a hatch . . . open it and climb down . . . they’re coming closer.
How do you know all this? he asked.
I can see, no, feel it . . . so can you, if you try . . .
But Schuster didn’t need to try, because the voice, the phantom mind – hovering in a state between sleep and waking in the small area drafted between death and unconsciousness where a final step is so easily taken, but impossible to revoke – was still functioning. Irrespective of time or of space, through walls and hallways, through the meandering corridors of this stronghold, inside the walls of which Loyola had once observed a world he could no longer understand, for a second in time Julian Schuster connected with the consciousness of one of the young novices who’d been sent out to kill him. For the briefest of moments Schuster found himself inside the mind of the novice, discovering there a young man who, half a generation later, was to make a name for himself during the controversies surrounding the first Vatican Council and win over the Polish and Lithuanian officials in the decree of papal infallibility. Schuster didn’t understand how he could possibly be aware of all this, since it belonged to the future. Nor could he understand how he knew that this man’s sheer cold-bloodedness would one day make him one of the most feared men of his time. Furthermore, that he was of Polish origin, Wittold Kossak by name, but known to his colleagues as “el Lobo”, “the wolf”. What he did know with absolute clarity, however, was that this boy, just as Hercule had warned, was out to kill him.
My God, he thought, scared stiff by this revelation, where on earth are you?
Same place you left me . . .
Exactly as the voice had foretold, Schuster found the hatch in the floor. Now he could hear distinct sounds coming from the corridor, someone tearing open the door to his room, then uttering a cry of disappointment. In only a matter of moments, they would go on searching the corridor, yank at locked doors and discover the room at the far end.
An iron ring had been screwed into the centre of the hatch. With an effort he managed to pull it open. Beneath him was a ladder fastened to the wall, leading down to a food lift.
Climb down into the shaft, the voice said, crawl into the lift and unhook the cable . . .
And if it won’t take my weight? he wondered. Will this be the last thing I’ll ever remember?
Footsteps were approaching from the corridor. He could hear men’s voices whispering in the dark, followed by someone hushing them. With a prayer to Providence, he lowered himself down into the shaft, opened the repair hatch and crept into the lift-cage. Cold sweat breaking out on his forehead, he unhooked the cage cable and with a jerk felt the cage begin to fall, faster and faster, until the brake slides caught hold and levelled off its acceleration.
Landing gently against the springs in the cellar, convinced that it was thanks only to a pure oversight on Fortune’s part the lift had borne his weight, he climbed out of the cage and half ran through a corridor dimly lit by tallow candles.
There’s a door at the other end, the voice said. There’s a key on top of the door frame, open the door, and go up the stairs . . .
By now Schuster had ceased to be amazed by the accuracy of the instructions he was receiving; he found the key in the specified place, and without asking any questions followed all further instructions to the letter. Climbed some stairs, turned left, retreated down a corridor, hid to order in a window-bay, held his breath, stood still when told, until finally he found himself behind the back door leading into the examination room where he’d left his ward some four hours before.
On the other side of the wall he could hear someone knocking on the door, and then a voice – that of Kossak, the Polish novice – explaining that Schuster had vanished, was nowhere to be found, though they’d searched the entire building. The voices rose agitatedly inside the room, a door slammed, a
nd the conversation continued in the antechamber.
Go in, he heard the phantom voice whisper, take me away from this place . . . and then get out, as fast as you can . . .
The sight that met Schuster made him think of the morning, scarcely a year before, when he’d found the boy in the madhouse cellar. Unconscious, bound, and seated in something reminiscent of a barber’s chair, blood streaming from the open wounds on the disfigured body. An awl, dug a decimetre deep into his flesh, stuck out from his back.
Schuster released him from the straps, carried the featherweight body in his arms over to the back door. In the antechamber the quarrel was still going on, he heard the Cardinal’s agitated voice. It was only a matter of minutes before they would come back in the room.
He carried the boy a hundred steps before laying him down by a door which led out to one of the alleyways. Hercule was regaining consciousness.
Where is there any Divine justice for this creature? Schuster thought. Where was their God just now, when they needed Him the most?
He heard the boy panting like a consumptive. Saw him open his eyes and look vaguely about him before settling his gaze on him. Carefully, Schuster wiped away the blood with a handkerchief, and managed to get him on to his feet. Pointed to the back door. Limping, the boy ran off down the alleyway.
Later, Hercule Barfuss would reproach himself for not having used all his powers to prevent Schuster from going back to the examination room. But perhaps he’d already made up his mind?
Less than twenty-four hours later Schuster was found by a shepherd, in a vineyard out at Trastevere. Vultures were pecking at his eyes. Round his neck, as if drawn on in ink, was a very thin blue line In the carabiniere’s protocol it was described as “the body of an unidentified male, strangled with a snare”. He’d been found naked save for a small Indian amulet tied to a strap round his wrist. Leaflets asked the general public to come forward with any information that might lead to the arrest of the murderer.
But by then Hercule, ignorant of Schuster’s fate, was already far away, unaware that he too was being hunted or that there was now a price on his head.
IV
“ROLL UP! ROLL up, ladies and gentlemen! Thrilling entertainment for only two centesimi! We’ve got just about everything you’ve ever dreamed of, and maybe more besides, some things being beyond the human imagination. What are the Seven Wonders of the World compared with the Eighth, and Ninth and Tenth? No-one ever leaves Barnaby Wilson’s Roadshow disappointed.
“Pardon me, Your Ladyship, what did you say? What is it we have on show? Well, what don’t we have on show! We’ve got Brutus’ bloody dagger, Napoleon’s confirmation suit, St Veronica’s authentic Handkerchief, the golden dish on which John the Baptist’s head was served up on a bed of crushed ice. We have several beasts and extinct species of animal, we have three of the infant Jesus’ milk teeth, a bottle of the Mother of God’s distilled tears at the price of ten lire a drop. A hydra, a dodo, as well as a great anteater from the Virgin Forests of Brazil, where no man has ever set foot, or at least, has not returned alive. Ladies and gentlemen! If nothing of all this takes your fancy, then at least have your portrait painted in the latest fashion from the East End of London – as a heliograph. In Hermann Bioly’s studio your portrait will be drawn in light, your soul will be fastened to a glass pane by collodium, and you’ll be immortalised. What, still not convinced? Well, then we’ve got something to suit all tastes. Do you perhaps suffer from some illness? The Moorish pharmacist Ibrahim, King of Liniments and Emperor of All Tinctures, whose mixtures are famous all over Christendom, has just joined our travelling show. The Grand Duke of Baden-Baden was himself cured by his famous ointments. The King of Saxony, whose eczema of the feet all but precipitated a war with the Austrians, was cured as if by magic by his incomparable footbath. In his apothecary shop Ibrahim the Moor can offer you love pills, invisibility pills, pills for virtuousness, pills for immortality, pills for consolation in nameless sorrows and pills for imaginary aches and pains; besides which, we have Professor Steinert’s rejuvenation cure and Brown’s infamous treatment by opposites, which cures everything from corns to inflamed heart sores. You’re most welcome to join us, ladies and gentlemen, don’t hesitate, the next show starts at a quarter past the hour . . .”
Here Barnaby Wilson pretended to lose his voice, coughing extravagantly just as a glass of water, filled to the brim, materialised in his hand. Through a slit in his mask he drained it to the dregs, and at the same time as the liquid disappeared in little sips, the glass itself, strangely enough, also disappeared, centimetre by centimetre, before, after a loud burp on the circus director’s part, it went up in smoke.
“Have you ever, ladies and gentlemen,” he went on, “heard of the giraffe? Six metres tall, spotted like a fly agaric toadstool, with a dragon’s neck . . .what are a steamboat or a locomotive compared with the sensations awaiting you at Barnaby Wilson’s Roadshow?”
His monologue was suddenly interrupted by a violent explosion in one of the covered wagons parked in a circle of about a hundred ells in diameter beside the market place, thereby making the circus area invisible to the curious crowds. Feigning horror, he put his hand to his heart.
“What we have just heard an example of”, he said in a conspiratorial whisper, “is the Saxon phlogistonist Bruno von Salza’s hair-raising experiment with lead sugar, arsenic butter and powder of zinc. With the aid of phlogistonised air he can blow a cathedral sky-high, make gold out of all kinds of base materials, get matter moving to the point where the dead will arise from their graves and cut and run for sheer horror . . . Allow me also to introduce Leopold the Savage, caught with a lasso in Numidia’s endless desert, Gandalalfo Bonaparte, bastard son of the great Napoleon, Miranda Bellaflor – the girl with four tongues – or the Ligurian omnivore Jean-Paul who swallows coins of various denominations and spits them out in any order you ask him to. Show us a sample of what you can do, Jean!”
With a discreet bow a tall, very thin gentleman, disfigured by a big outgrowth of hair covering half his face, took his place beside Barnaby Wilson on the little platform from which the circus director was addressing his public. In one hand he held a glass jar filled with live bees. Very carefully he unscrewed its lid. Placed his mouth against the opening – his gape was so wide he was said to be able to swallow cannon balls – and the public could clearly see the insects flying into it.
The Ligurian omnivore pursed his lips, replaced the lid, and then, calm as if it were a question of the apothecary Ibrahim’s pills against nameless sorrows, noisily swallowed the bees, one after the other.
After which he, at a signal from Barnaby Wilson, reopened his immense abyss of a mouth so that the public could see with its own eyes that the insects were gone, and with another bow, to the crowd’s undisguised delight, cleared his throat and spat out the bees, one by one, so that to deafening applause the tiny winged creatures flew away on the mountain breeze down to the bay where the town of Nice was bathed in the red of the setting sun.
Satisfied, through his mask Barnaby Wilson surveyed the gathering with his one eye. By now several hundred curious persons had congregated in a crescent around him: women, men, old folk, children.
A little further forward to his right, he saw an elderly gentleman, clad in a frock coat and with a funny-looking shock of thick grey hair falling in waves on to a pair of somewhat feminine shoulders.
“Good sir, step forward, and we’ll reward you with a free ticket,” he said in a honeyed voice, “and allow me to demonstrate yet another of our show’s sensations: the Emperor of China’s very latest fad, telekinetic fluid magnetism that works at a distance!”
The man appeared flattered at having been selected for an experiment with the Chinese Emperor’s latest toy, and as he, proudly, if a trifle hesitantly, approached the platform, Barnaby Wilson took out a Leyden jar from the pocket of his baggy nautical waistcoat, had him stop right there on the steps and, in a flash, electrified him. “Fluid magnetis
m, the core of all secrets,” he exclaimed, affecting a theatrical tremor in his childlike voice, all the while furtively rubbing a glass wand behind his back against a piece of chamois leather. And before the bashful gentleman in the frock coat had time to react, the circus director stood once more before him. Moving mysteriously as a mediaeval magician, mumbling formulas in an incomprehensible tongue that in fact was none other than Welsh from the islands in Cardigan Bay, he waved his hands over the man’s head. Much to his pleasure, he heard his audience sigh raptuously as all manner of lightweight objects circulating in the air began sticking to the man’s frock coat: leaves, particles of dust, scraps of paper, even two very-much-alive bees that the Ligurian omnivore had spat out a few minutes earlier. Little lightning flashes flew off the frock coat and a decimetre or so above the crown of the man’s head his wig was hovering freely in the air like a greying halo, sparkling and electrified.
“Behold the Eleventh Wonder of the World!” Wilson exclaimed triumphantly. “The magnetic fluid known as electricity, the latest thing from the Emperor’s court in China. By this singular power cities will soon be lit up, turning night into day, horses will be abolished in favour of electric cabs, messages be sent in a matter of minutes at distances of more than a hundred miles, and the face of God will be illuminated across the heavens as He looks down in amazement at the inventiveness of the being He once created at random out of a lump of clay.”
Flushing red all over his face, the man made a grab for his hovering wig and disappeared at a run out of the market place. The audience shouted for joy and inside the nearest tent Lucretius III lit the lamps for his complicated phantasmagoria.
The Horrific Sufferings Of The Mind-Reading Monster Hercules Barefoot: His Wonderful Love and his Terrible Hatred Page 13
