by Rob Swigart
She dipped her head and hurried inside, leaving him rubbing his head by the door of the Church and wearing a puzzled, lopsided grin. Before him the dark mucky soil of the Paradise Garden stretched all the way to the refectory, buttery, and, he assumed, since he had not seen it, the infirmary. To his right rose the dark bulk of the Children’s Hall, the windows covered with peeling black shutters.
The girl named Celia was there in one of those rooms. Already it was after six, only a few hours before the child arrived.
He tried signaling Steve and Lisa, but there was no answer.
He had many questions. He had learned from the novice what floor she was on, but not what room. Nizam and the others were with her now. There was no way he could just wander up there without raising an alarm.
What would Lisa say? Where was Lisa?
She would counsel patience, of course.
He went back inside and strolled down the hall toward the Refectory. From there he could observe the main entrance.
Skulls
Steve made his way back along the wall through the yellow narcissus. Though it was still early, the air was already growing warm. The afternoon breeze was hours away.
Despite the prickling of concern for Lisa, he refrained from calling out. The last thing they needed was to be detected by someone inside. He was certain she couldn’t be far, and she was too sensible to make a mistake. No need for alarm. Yet.
He reached the spot where they scrambled over the lip of the cliff, but there was no sign of her. She hadn’t fallen. Their packs and climbing equipment were where they had left them. The trail of trampled flowers was unclear, and though he watched the ground carefully he almost missed the sinkhole.
He pushed aside the narcissus blossoms and snapped his light on an irregular surface below. There was no sign of Lisa.
After a final look around he lowered himself in and dropped to the floor, bending his knees when he hit. He was on a rough irregular slope tilting down toward the monastery.
Lisa was seated cross-legged a dozen meters away. She raised a hand in greeting. “Well,” she said casually. “There you are.”
He shrugged. “You couldn’t call out and you couldn’t climb up, so you waited.”
This required no reply. “I think it goes under the monastery.”
“It’s new,” he replied, feeling the texture of the wall. The ceiling was too low to stand fully upright.
She nodded. “During the storm, I guess. Limestone is full of caves, I believe.”
Craning his head at the small circle of blue sky, he said, “I might be able to boost you up.”
“Perhaps,” she replied. “But I think we might do better to explore a little.”
“You’re kidding? No, you’re not.”
They duck-walked forward. The cavern took a bend to the right and sloped more steeply downward. When it leveled out, there was plenty of standing room. On the opposite side was a wall of damp stone. “Foundation,” Steve muttered. The floor, littered with fallen fragments, widened to the right. “I think we’re under the church.”
“Look,” Lisa called, pointing to an uneven depression in the wall.
He came over, placed his palm over it, and pushed. A section collapsed inward with a terrific crash in the enclosed space. Objects clattered onto the floor inside as wooden shelving gave way.
He played his light into the space beyond and gave a sharp intake of breath.
“What is it?”
He stepped aside.
A few dozen tiny skulls littered the floor. They must have fallen from the shelving that collapsed with the wall.
Steve shook his head. “Children, all of them.”
“Mmm. San Akakio’s been a home for unwed mothers for hundreds of years. Bound to be some who died.”
He shook his head. “No, these aren’t normal.” He steadied the light on a tiny skull. “See?”
“There’s a hole in it,” she breathed.
“Two,” he said. “Side by side. Couldn’t have been more than a year old.”
“That’s not an accident, that’s deliberate. How recent are they?”
“I’m no forensics expert, but they look old, probably centuries.”
“Come on.” She pushed her way through.
He followed. They played their lights around the small room.
Near a locked door was a thick butcher table. A rusted axe with a worn, splintered handle leaned against it. Two long knives and an enormous cleaver were embedded in its surface. Everything was covered with dust.
“Well used,” Steve observed. He touched chop marks on a bone and snapped it between thumb and forefinger. “Friable. This table’s as old as the skulls. They processed bodies down here, defleshing to save space, avoid the smells. The flesh went into the gardens or was tossed out for the birds. A long time ago.”
“At least they stopped killing then.” Lisa turned away from the macabre scene, her attention caught by a wooden bas-relief sculpture by the door. Like everything else down here, it was stained and pitted with age, but clearly depicted a naked woman half turned away. She was looking down with an expression both bemused and melancholy. Her left foot was pressed on the head of a snake, its mouth gaping open.
“I saw a lot of statues and paintings like this in churches when I was young,” Steve said. “Genesis Three, so the priests told us; supposed to be Mary killing the devil from the garden. You can be sure, though, Mary was never naked, being without sin and all.”
“This is pre-Christian, Mesopotamian, I think. Must be why it’s stuck down here.”
“So what’s it doing in a monastery in Spain?”
“Left for us to find?” Though her tone was light, the image disturbed her. “Since Ophis Sophia will be here soon, this is either a sign or a bizarre coincidence.”
“I go with coincidence.”
“Mmm.” She sat with a sigh on the floor at the foot of the sculpture and crossed her legs, tucking her feet onto her thighs.
“What are you…?”
“Shh.” She stared at the scatter of tiny skulls, taking in and storing these signs of death, despair, fear, and loss.
She wanted to know why. There was always chaos enough in the world to go around. Why would Ophis Sophia want to bring more in this place of secret death?
She spoke without looking up. “The girls, they came here for help.” She fell silent.
“It’s been a long time,” Steve said, but she wasn’t listening. “You see something.”
“A memory,” she murmured in a soft, dreaming voice. “A child inside the mouth of a snake looking down at me. The child was laughing. That seems impossible, but that’s what it was, laughter. I take comfort in that.”
Steve leaned against the table and waited, arms crossed, as she grew ever more remote and unreachable.
Minutes dripped by. The smells of dry bone and moist soil grew heavy and oppressive, but still she did not move.
Finally, Lisa stood in one fluid motion and brushed dirt off her slacks. “Let’s get out of here.”
Negotiations
The cleaver made short work of the door. They waited for a reaction to the noise, but the muffled cadences of Mass somewhere above continued without interruption.
“Vespers,” Steve said. “We’ve been down here all day.”
They made their way to the staircase to the main floor through an obstacle course of barrels, crates, and casks thick with dust and cobwebs. Water, seeping through the outer wall, pooled along the foundation.
Lisa pushed gently at the thick wooden door. It swung open silently onto a deserted hallway. A burst of metallic clatter to their left identified the refectory. “Almost time for supper.”
The hum of conversation attracted their attention to the right. They pulled back into the cellar doorway and watched several nuns and priests come down a staircase and leave through the door to the Paradise Garden. They were about to explore further when two more men appeared. “Ibrahim,” Lisa breathed. “And
Nizam al-Muriq.”
“They’ve been upstairs with the girls, looking for the one they believe will give birth to their savior, if that’s what the baby is.”
Ibrahim and al-Muriq followed the others into the garden.
Lisa and Steve peered out the door to the garden where several groups of priests and nuns stood among muddy flowerbeds looking up at the Church. Their voices came in sharp, staccato bursts of curiosity and excitement.
“No wonder the halls are deserted,” Steve said. “Everyone’s out there.”
They crept closer. The carved oak doors of the church were open. Nizam and Ibrahim were standing to one side near a thin older man holding a small cedar chest. The old man’s eyes were in constant motion, like a soldier trapped in enemy territory.
“The Magi,” Lisa murmured. “Bearing gifts.”
“Comes to mind,” Steve agreed. “What star did they follow?”
“Blood moon and a comet,” she said.
A nun swept up a gravel path and climbed the steps. The dark purple bruise blooming on her cheek was clearly visible despite the failing light.
Lisa and Steve could not hear her words, but the conversation was animated. Nizam explained, she answered. From time to time, she stabbed home a point with a large black cross. The gesture carried with it both conversational punctuation and subtle threat.
“Wish we could hear,” Steve murmured.
“No need,” Lisa told him. “She’s negotiating. She’ll accept in the end. She’s as eager to profit by these strangers as she is to be rid of a troublesome baby. She doesn’t know who they are, not really. What she does know is that they came bearing the gifts in that box. I’m guessing money. She runs this place like a Mother Superior.”
“You can tell all this by looking?”
“Don’t you recognize her avarice? That bruise, though, that’s interesting. All is not peaceful in the monastery.”
“Considering those infant bones under our feet, that sounds like an understatement.”
She grinned. “A gift I have.”
“What now?”
“It’s almost dark. Blood moon in a few hours. That’s when the mother will deliver. We have to be there.”
“And where exactly is there?”
“I think we’re about to find out.”
Nizam gestured at the older man, who nodded, opened the cedar box, and held up two shrink-wrapped bundles.
“Not very impressive,” Steve observed.
“Lavender and white. Those are five hundred euro notes,” she said. “He’s holding at least a million euros in those two bundles.”
“Hmm. Notes that size are used mostly for money laundering. Each bundle fits in a hand. Easy to carry, but hard to spend.”
“I’m sure a monastery could manage to spend a gift from a generous donor.”
The nun took the bundles, one in each hand. They fit easily. She looked them over, nodded with satisfaction, and handed them back to the old man, who replaced them in the cedar box.
She kissed her cross and barked at an elderly nun at the foot of the steps. “Bring her to the Chapter House.” Her voice carried clearly.
The old nun bobbed her head and scurried toward Lisa and Steve. They withdrew to the shadows and watched her climb the stairs to the Children’s Hall.
A few minutes later a chorus of low moans and soothing women’s voices started down the stairs.
A middle-aged priest with recent cuts on his face helped the old nun unfold a wheelchair into which two other nuns helped the girl. She moaned and tossed her head, sending a mop of straight, sweat-soaked hair flying. Her wide eyes jerked back and forth, as though she was looking for escape. She couldn’t be more than seventeen.
The nuns, making shushing noises, wheeled her into the garden. The priest followed closely, touching the girl’s head from time to time.
Steve touched Lisa’s arm. “That’s her, the one you’ve been seeing.”
“Mmm. They’re moving her and she’s already in labor. Ah.”
“Ah what?”
“The Magi. They need to witness the birth somewhere public for maximum effect. They’ll want to record it. The Divine Mother will be there, too. They can take the child as soon as it’s born.”
The little group had crossed the Paradise Garden and entered the South building.
Steve pointed at the church entrance. “Nizam and Ibrahim, but no Lex. Where’s the American?”
She stiffened. “Hunting. We have to go. Now.” She padded to the Refectory door and stepped inside.
The kitchens were deserted and silent. Pots still simmered, but the burners were turned off.
Steve looked back up the hallway at a mob of young girls gathering at the garden door.
Steve shrugged. “OK, boss. I hope you have a plan.”
“Not exactly.”
“That’s right, you don’t make plans. An intuition, then? A vision?”
“Check your phone.”
“What…?” Steve fished it out and held it up, shaking his head. A message from Usem blinked urgently. He read it aloud. “Muriq means a defensive wall, ‘the one that keeps the enemy at a distance.’ Nizam picked it for a reason. Be careful.”
Lisa’s mouth was grim. “Good advice.” She led the way through the kitchen and into the dining hall. She stopped in the middle of the tables set for dinner, and said, “Alain’s about to call.”
The Chair She Sat In
The painting wasn’t labeled, but Alain thought the nearly naked man bristling with arrows must be Saint Sebastian. He couldn’t guess the intentions of the two plump cherubs at the top poised to dive-bomb the saint’s pale blue body, nor did he recognize the haloed woman with a deeply sympathetic smile at the saint’s side, plucking arrows from his flesh. He doubted her mercy would increase his chances of survival.
Alain had not seen the novice since she left for Vespers. He faked intense interest in this heavy, gilt framed painting near the refectory while afternoon slowly faded away. In all that time people hurried though the building to the Paradise Garden and others hurried back. A few went up the stairs and came back down again. The sounds from the kitchens had grown loud and died away. Everyone seemed to be moving to the Garden, but he maintained his vigil.
Though he knew little of religious art, he guessed, correctly as it happened, that this one dated to the seventeenth century. The gloomy weather and tormented landscape suggested a suffering peculiarly Spanish. Nothing like the lovely weather outside.
What he did believe about this painting, for he was a man of quite definite opinions on such matters, was that it was quite bad. Its proportions and expressions were unnatural. The message was confused, too: was the viewer supposed to sympathize with the martyr, apparently more startled than pained by the arrow through his groin, or rejoice at the saintly woman’s curative touch? Alain was pretty sure a saint without his badges of martyrdom wouldn’t carry much supernatural weight, and as far as he knew, Saint Sebastian was mostly famous for his arrows. Removing them would surely diminish his power.
What was good about the painting was that standing before it afforded him the long view down the main corridor of all three south buildings. As he watched, the main doors opened and four bare-chested men in loose white trousers and soft-soled shoes carried in a large sedan chair on their shoulders. The poles were padded and chased with silver.
Their passenger was a vast, pale, nearly shapeless mass with a pinched, ill-tempered expression on a small, round face. Layers of filmy translucent material waved languidly with each step, concealing and exposing rolls and folds of flesh the color of St. Sebastian’s blood-drained body. In her right hand she held a staff shaped like a golden snake with open jaws and curved golden fangs. Gilt dragons decorated the sides of her chair, and a rectangular silk parasol sailed over her head, its crimson fringe shimmering like scales. Four elaborate clawed feet terminated its short legs.
She saw Alain and her expression changed to one of sublime, ineffable joy.
He waved and she looked away, still smiling.
Alain tried calling again. This time Steve answered.
“By the refectory door,” Alain told him. “You should see this; they’re bringing in the Divine Mother. She looks like the pictures of Beletili.”
“On our way.”
When they joined him, the sedan chair was disappearing through the door to the Chapter House. Alain said, “Pregnant girl’s in there. Lots of attendants: nuns, a priest. Going to be quite a show.”
Lisa’s voice was clenched, fist tight. “More of a show when we arrive, maybe.”
The Chapter House was a hundred meters away, but the sounds of Celia’s labor came clearly.
“Uh-oh,” Steve muttered.
Lex Treadwell came in from the Paradise Garden. Like the other Ophis Sophia attendants, he was now bare-chested, with wide white trousers flowing around his ankles. Halfway to the Chapter House he stopped and turned back.
His eyes locked with Lisa’s. Neither one moved for perhaps ten seconds.
As far as they could tell at this distance, Lex’s expression didn’t change. He simply made up his mind and headed toward them.
Alain reached back for his gun.
Namtar
Lisa was examining the painting of Saint Sebastian, her head tilted to one side, a faint smile flirting with her lips.
Lex Treadwell walked toward the trio without haste, his bare feet falling soundlessly on the brown carpet.
As he approached, Steve and Alain moved aside, bracketing him. He ignored them, and stopped between Lisa and the painting.
When he leaned down to look into her eyes, Steve stirred. She signaled patience with a small wave.
Lex studied her face as if she were a stranger, not someone he had tried to kill only a few days earlier. His upper body partially obscured Saint Sebastian.
She moved her gaze from the saint to Lex’s eyes, empty as an Arctic sea.
He frowned. “You are Lisa Emmer.”
“Yes, Namtar. I understand your new name means Fate.”
