Tales from the Vatican Vaults: 28 extraordinary stories by Kristine Kathryn Rusch, Garry Kilworth, Mary Gentle, KJ Parker, Storm Constantine and many more

by David V. Barrett

  The party was still going on, somewhere in the palace. I wondered just how much of our conversation he’d remember in the morning. Not too much, I hoped; just enough to worry him to death, without making him change his way of life one little bit. I snooped around for a bit, went to my office, did some paperwork I’d been neglecting. I don’t need to sleep, which is a blessing. I read the official reports from our man in Aachen, and wrote a few letters. Then I slipped out through the back gate and rejoined the crowd. Someone had gone up on the wall with five fat baskets of low-denomination coins and started sprinkling wealth on the people below, so the pro-meat-hook faction was temporarily in abeyance. That set my mind at rest. They’d still be there when I wanted them. They always are.

  *

  ‘I’ve been thinking,’ he said.

  His hands – long, thin, pale; bitten fingernails – were shaking. ‘Oh, yes?’ I said.

  ‘If there really—’ He lowered his voice. Not much point to that. The audience chamber had once been a Roman emperor’s triclinium, where distinguished guests dined and were entertained by the empire’s finest actors and musicians. The acoustic was perfect. Impossible not to hear even the quietest whisper; a key selling point to an emperor paranoid about conspiracies. Come to think of it, I was the architect. ‘If there really is a God—’

  ‘Trust me on that,’ I said.

  He gave me a bewildered look. ‘This changes everything,’ he said. ‘I mean,’ he went on, looking over his shoulder, ‘all my life, I never thought—’ He paused, then managed to get started again. ‘You know my family history.’

  I grinned. Two of his uncles had been popes.

  ‘Well,’ he went on, ‘it was a natural conclusion to draw. My uncles were – well, like me, I guess.’

  ‘They were.’

  ‘Exactly. There you have it. And they were popes. So you can see, I always assumed that the Church, God – it was all garbage, like a trick or something. It was all just to control the people, they need to believe in something. And if you’re at the top of the tree, you can pretty much do as you like. I thought—’

  I smiled. ‘You thought that religion is the opiate of the masses,’ I said. ‘You held, not unreasonably, that God was a convenient fiction – if He didn’t exist, it would be necessary to invent Him. Or, if God ever did exist, then He is dead, and it’s we who have killed Him.’ I sighed. ‘Actually, your views do you credit. Throughout history, the wisest philosophers and the vast majority of truly intelligent men have come round to that way of thinking. As it turns out, they’re all wrong. But you’re in excellent company, nonetheless.’

  He didn’t speak for a moment. If he had, he’d probably have whimpered. ‘Obviously,’ he said, ‘this changes everything. From now on, I’m a reformed character. No more booze, no more girls, no more selling absolutions and taking bribes. I’m going to take the Church right back to basics, and—’

  I shook my head. ‘You can’t.’

  Stunned look. ‘I’m sorry?’

  ‘You can’t do that,’ I said. ‘That would be wrong. That can’t possibly happen for another three hundred and fifty years. And when it does come, as an explosion of righteous indignation unlike anything the world has ever seen, it’s going to cause a schism that’ll make the present breach with the Greeks look like a lovers’ tiff. The smoke from the pyres of burning heretics will blot out the sun, and their soot will blacken the bricks in every city in Christendom. I’m sorry, but there’s no way you can change that. It’s a done deal. You’d be well advised not to try.’

  ‘That’s insane,’ he said.

  I frowned at him. ‘You mustn’t say that. He moves in a mysterious way.’

  ‘That’s not mysterious, it’s crazy. It’s—’

  I shushed him. He looked at me. ‘In less than two centuries’ time,’ I said, ‘an agent of one of your illustrious successors will order the massacre of a city known to harbour heretics; the innocent along with the guilty. Kill them all, he’ll say, God will know his own.’ I shrugged. ‘And He will.’

  He’d gone white. ‘I don’t believe it.’

  ‘What you believe,’ I said sternly, ‘is no longer up to you, and don’t you forget it. Think,’ I said soothingly. ‘What’s the ideal aim of the true Christian? The imitation of Christ. And what was the main event of Christ’s ministry on Earth? His judicial murder by the agents of the state and the forces of organised religion. Blessed are the holy company of martyrs, who will sit on the right hand of God. Now,’ I went on, ‘if there was no God, or if you had any doubts at all about God’s existence, you’d be morally justified in objecting to the massacre of innocents. After all, there might be no Heaven, mortal life might be all we have; to deprive innocents of life would be an appalling act. But since you know that God exists, and since martyrdom is the highest possible achievement available to mortals, where’s the harm? The truth is, you’d be doing them a favour.’

  ‘But—’ He licked his lips, like a dog. ‘All right,’ he said, ‘fine. The victims are martyrs and go to Heaven. So, what about the killers? They go to Hell, right? And that’s entrapment.’

  I smiled and shook my head. ‘That’s just silly,’ I said.

  Bewildered look. ‘Is it?’

  ‘Of course. Think. The victims die for their faith; they are martyrs; they are saved. The killers kill them – not a pleasant process; have you ever killed anyone, innocent people, in cold blood? It’s no fun at all, you feel sick for days and you have recurring nightmares. But the killers do it because it’s God’s will; and for doing God’s will they are accorded the honour of good and faithful servants, and enjoy merit in Heaven.’

  He made a sort of gurgling noise. ‘What, both sides? That’s just gross.’

  And I’d started to think he was quite bright. ‘No it isn’t,’ I said. ‘It’s just like my case, war in Heaven. A war between two opposing sides both devotedly loyal to the same cause. Both sides, because God wills it. Keep your eye on that phrase, by the way; Dieu le volt, that’s what they’ll be yelling in sixty years’ time when they kill every Muslim civilian in Jerusalem.’ I paused. He looked like he was about to throw up all over my shoes. ‘God wills it,’ I said. ‘Because God said, let there be light. And without darkness, the light would be invisible. God wants as many of His children as possible to be saved. But Man is a savage animal. He ordained that Man should be born with inherent aggressive tendencies, which are perfectly normal and natural, and which find their normal and natural outlet through slaughtering his own kind. God wills that both the slayers and the slain, the crusaders and the martyrs, should be saved. Selah. The logical means to that end is a schismatic Church.’ I grinned again, and quoted:

  Teach me, my God and king,

  In all things Thee to see,

  And what I do in everything,

  To do it as for Thee.

  A servant with this clause

  Makes drudgery divine.

  Who sweeps a room, as for Thy laws,

  Makes that and the action fine.

  He gazed at me. ‘Say what?’

  No poetry. No soul. ‘Sweeping a room,’ I said. ‘Drudgery. And there’s no worse drudgery, believe me, than massacring civilians. It’s exhaustingly hard physical work, like harvesting or chopping wood, and it’s incredibly miserable and dreary and depressing. But if you do it for God, honestly believing, you sanctify the wretched chore into a sacrament. Faith and works. Can’t have one without the other.’

  He drew in a long, ragged breath. ‘This isn’t real,’ he said. ‘It’s a dream or something.’

  I slapped him across the face. He squealed. ‘You’re not dreaming,’ I said. ‘Try and get it into your thick head. God is working His purpose out, as year succeeds to year. God needs you to bring to the papacy the special gifts and talents that you alone possess. You may not like what you have to do – I know I didn’t, when it was my turn. But I knuckled down and did it, because God wills it. And so will you.’

  There were tears on
his stupid face. ‘But I don’t want to.’

  ‘Ah.’ I smiled. ‘Divine discontent,’ I said. ‘The ethics of angels.’

  *

  As I believe I said earlier, we represent His Divine Majesty’s loyal opposition. Our motto is: His will, right or wrong. Or should that be, right and wrong? You choose.

  Naturally. The cornerstone of it all is free will. To give you a choice, He created evil. An act by itself is nothing, it’s meaningless. Take any virtue; take courage, faith, hope, love. The courage of the thief climbing into a darkened house, not knowing if the householder is lurking in the shadows with an axe. The faith of the true believer, offering up the still-beating heart of his child on the altar of his gods. The hope of the tyrant’s bodyguard, fighting the berserk mob so that their master can slip away, his pockets stuffed with diamonds. And love – these three abide, but the greatest of all is love; the love of his country that compels the visionary to herd women and children into the gas chamber, so that his people, his neighbours may one day see the bright new dawn.

  The act, like the transitory flesh, is meaningless. Only the will matters.

  *

  I didn’t get another chance for a quiet tête-à-tête with His Holiness for quite some time. By then, he’d already been forced out of Rome once – getting him back in required all the Emperor’s horses and all the Emperor’s men, and rather a lot of people died – and he was on the point of being thrown out again through the machinations of Bishop John of Sabina, shortly to be crowned as Pope Sylvester III (come to think of it, that was me too). The poor fellow; he was a shadow of his former pale, skinny, dissipated self; he looked like a newt in a cope, and the dark rings under his eyes looked like bruises. ‘I don’t want to be Pope,’ he said. ‘I hate it. I want to find a monastery somewhere on top of a mountain and spend the rest of my life in prayer.’

  ‘Hair shirt?’ I asked.

  ‘Yes,’ he said. ‘And stone floors and bitter cold. I want to get as much cold as I can, before I go to the very hot place.’

  I laughed. ‘That’s all just scare stuff,’ I said. ‘There is no everlasting bonfire, trust me. And besides, you’ve got a place reserved for you in Heaven. Just keep going, keep the faith, and you’ll be fine.’

  ‘Screw Heaven.’ If looks could kill, and if I could die – ‘What makes you think I want to go there?’ he said. ‘With Him? After what he’s done to me?’

  I nodded slowly. ‘Lord, Lord, why persecutest Thou me? Oh come on. Think of Job.’

  ‘I think of little else,’ he said, and I realised he was serious. ‘I keep reading it, over and over again, just in case I missed something.’

  ‘I applaud your taste,’ I said. ‘It’s the most important bit in the Bible.’

  ‘It doesn’t work,’ he said bitterly. ‘The arguments just don’t add up. God takes His most loving servant and He tortures him. And for no good reason.’

  I poured him a cup of wine. Good stuff. He looked at it as though there was something dead floating in it. ‘God created evil,’ I said. ‘Everything God does is good. Therefore evil is good. Accept it and move on.’

  ‘Go to hell.’

  I smiled. ‘You don’t like the way things are run around here,’ I said. ‘That’s good. I don’t, either. Tell you what. When you get to Heaven, look me up. We can plot a palace coup.’

  *

  Poor Theophylact died at the age of forty-three, finally worn out by dissipation and depravity, at the abbey of Grottaferrata. He’d repented of his sale of the papacy (why simply abdicate when you can make a buck? I rather approved of it at the time, though I didn’t imagine for one moment that anyone would be stupid enough to buy it) and forced his way back into the Lateran with an army of mercenaries; he said he wanted to clear out the corruption root and branch and drive the moneylenders from the temple. The German king threw him out again, and he was formally deposed and excommunicated. Because of that, when he turned up at the abbey pleading for absolution, the abbot refused; he let him sleep in the stables, because there was no room in the guest wing. The day before he died, three heretic bishops came to see him from the East. They claimed to have been led there by a comet, or something of the sort. They talked together for a long time. At the very end, he was visited by an angel. Come to think of it –

  ‘They won’t let me have the last rites,’ he croaked at me. He’d been blind for some time, but I think he knew me by my smell. ‘I offered them a lot of money, but they said no, there are some people you just don’t do business with.’

  ‘That’s all right.’ I said. ‘I absolve you, in the name of the Father. Heaven awaits you. Just follow the very bright light, turn left and there you are.’

  ‘I told you,’ he said – speaking caused him so much pain. ‘I don’t want to go there. I want to go to the other place. It’s where I belong.’

  ‘With me. For ever. I’m touched.’

  ‘With you.’ He grinned. It was as though the skin had vanished and I was looking at the bare bone. ‘Now that’s what I call eternal torment.’

  ‘Don’t be like that,’ I said. ‘We’ve always got on so well.’

  ‘Why did you tell me?’ He was gasping for air, like a drowning man. ‘If you hadn’t told me, I’d still have been an evil little shit, I’d still have degraded the holy office and sowed the seeds of your wretched schism, and I wouldn’t have known.’

  I shrugged. ‘I’m horrible,’ I said. ‘It’s what I do. Besides,’ I went on. ‘Because you knew, every sin you committed was a sacrament. Instead of eternal damnation, you’re saved and will join the elect in Paradise. Twenty-six years of Earthly suffering is nothing compared with eternity. You’ve been really lucky. It’s like buying a gold brick for fourpence.’ I paused. ‘I saved you,’ I said. ‘All my idea. They’d have left you in ignorance and let you burn. But now, thanks to me—’

  He looked at me with his sightless eyes. ‘I don’t like the way things are run,’ he said. ‘I think there must be a better way. If God can do this to me, he isn’t God, he’s just a very powerful bully.’

  ‘Your sins are forgiven,’ I said. ‘Go in peace.’

  ‘Fuck you,’ he said; and then he died.

  I closed his eyes. ‘Flights of angels sing thee to thy rest, kid,’ I said. ‘You’ve earned it.’

  *

  Not for me, though. The plan continues. God is still working His purpose out. All that pain, all that misery, and we aren’t even halfway through yet. And when we reach the end – you’re not supposed to know this, but what the hell – it’ll all start all over again, from the beginning. The rebranded name will be the Kingdom of God on Earth, but do you really suppose it’ll be any different? Worse, probably. The brave, blazing new Empire of Light is going to need an awful lot of darkness if it’s to be visible at all.

  No peace for the wicked.

  Ω

  Angels and fallen angels, indeed, the whole panoply of celestial beings known as ‘thrones, dominions, principalities and powers’ (Colossians 1:16) or ‘principalities and powers and rulers of the darkness of this world’ (Ephesians 6:12) are part of the very structure of Christian belief. They do not, of course, fall within the remit of the majority of scholars; historians and theologians by necessity have different frames of reference; evidence and faith are not interchangeable.

  But if the Church of Rome had documentary evidence detailing the direct involvement of such powers, not only in the affairs of man but in the hierarchy of the Church at the very highest level, it is understandable that they would suppress them.

  c. 1040

  This very personal account, found in the early-medieval section of the Vaults, is startling for two reasons. The first is that it purports to be the testimony of a time traveller, an historian from the twenty-fifth century who journeys into the past. The second . . . this will become apparent as the narrative proceeds.

  If time travel is indeed possible, it would be an inestimable boon for historians. We have consulted colleagues in the
oretical physics at Oxford, Cambridge, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and the California Institute of Technology, and have received a cautious acceptance of the possibility of time travel, though hedged around with so many caveats about its practicability that we doubt it will become a reality in our lifetimes, if ever.

  When discussing which of the many documents found in the Vatican Vaults we should publish in this volume, one member of the team suggested that we had a duty to include this account on the basis that if there are time-travelling historians in the twenty-fifth century, we would be doing them a great favour by placing this chronicle in the public realm. Another member of the team countered this suggestion by arguing that if by publishing it we made the twenty-fifth-century historians aware of the revelation contained herein, they would not send the narrator back to the eleventh century and this account would therefore never have been written. Such paradoxes, our scientific colleagues assure us, are fundamental to theoretical physics.

  Chasing Charlemagne

  John Grant

  ‘Priest.’ The voice came from the shadows.

  I paused in my stroke and the dinghy eased to a halt on the still water. The alley from which the whisper had come was pitch dark.

  ‘Nobody’s called me that in a long time,’ I said.

  I wasn’t really afraid. Just a handful of decades ago the city had teemed with people. Now there were only a few of us, scavenging among the ruins and the slowly rising waters. For the most part we kept a healthy distance from each other, but there was a companionship too. A companionship in craziness.

  ‘You never stop being a priest,’ the unseen speaker continued. ‘Beneath it all, Kenneth, you’re still wearing invisible vestments.’

  ‘Who are you? Come out of there so I can see you.’

  Broadway was a silver palace of moonlight. The water beneath me was mercury; the shattered windows to either side were sculptures of crystal bedecked by abstract tapestries that by day would be revealed as lichens and seaweeds.