Anna von Wessen (41 page)

He shook his head, and said, “But I ask you – and you need not know about it, I think, to answer – what can priests and preachers tell me of God, that He cannot tell me Himself? What can they say to Him on my behalf, that I have not told Him already?”

“Whatever you think,” rejoined Anna, “I am not the one to ask.”

“I see. Well – as you wish.”

With the cessation of their voices, a brief hush fell down over the chamber. It was Anna who interrupted its reign. Again she had been staring at the cross; and presently she was filled with a strange feeling, not exactly a fearsome one, but one nonetheless which she did not comprehend. She wished to dispel it immediately.

“How can a people forged by evil,” she asked, “entertain such blind faith?”

Contrary to her expectation, Dio thought for a while before he answered. It was plain that he did not wish to force upon her any opinion which had been formed by his people as a whole, and thereby to make her believe it too; but merely that he wanted to tell her what it was he truly felt.

“The answer,” he said, “is by no means simple. But then – there is nothing, really, upon this whole wide earth, that any one creature can say they verily understand. All is a mystery as of yet. We can only beseech guidance, and thereafter use what we have been granted to judge for ourselves. But this is how I think! It matters not, my child, how we came to be a part of this world. No living being has control over such a thing! We cannot change what was done, before our own free will was given. We are only accountable for choices made afterwards.”

“And what of wrong choices made willingly?”

“Ah! The perennial question! But this is my answer. Tell me – what creature has lived all their life without sin? Only Jesus Christ Himself, my God says. But then He was the material of His Father’s own soul, given for a time human flesh. We are no such thing, Mila, until we ask to be.”

Anna looked at him dubiously. “Until we ask?”

“Yes!” said he. “It is that simple. We need only ask!”

“Ask what?”

“What do we ask? Why, we ask forgiveness. We ask the blessing that we do not deserve – but which is given us anyway, because we are loved. Above all things, we ask His will, for our own shall always fail us. We can be neither right nor true, Mila, till we have His hand to guide us. But we must ask Him to give it.”

“How do you know these things?” Anna asked breathlessly.

“He has told me.”

“You – you can hear Him?”

“Not as I can hear you; not as you can hear me.” He reached his hand, and laid it over Anna’s heart. “You hear Him there. That’s where His voice comes. It is a still small voice, they say – very strange for such a mighty God, but then, He is gentle, as well.”

All in a rush a single heavy memory came upon Anna; one she had forgotten till now, or perhaps had simply ignored for lack of explanation. But presently, she began to wonder. Her brows knit together, and her mouth puckered uncomfortably, so that she looked quite like a small child who cannot manage to understand what is being told to it. And really, that is what she was.

“Only the darkness binds me,” she muttered.

Dio gazed upon her very seriously.

Anna thought for a little while more, and was utterly still and silent all the time she did so; but suddenly she threw up her hands, and loosed an exasperated cry. “But it makes no sense!” she said. “I am an evil thing! There is no forgiveness for someone like me.”

“That is what the Liar would have you think. He’s said the same to many – and as many have believed. Don’t make their mistake! There is nothing, Mila, that our Father won’t forgive. Not if the appeal has been made in earnest.”

“I’ve made no appeal,” Anna said bitterly.

“Then perhaps it is time to make one!”

His voice was firm; but when Anna looked to him, she saw that he smiled.

“I know not what to say,” she told him in a meek voice.

“I’ve a feeling,” said Dio, “that your heart has said already all it needs to say – but since you are my child, I will do with you what my father did with me. All right?”

Anna nodded.

“Say after me: ‘I am a sinner, who has made many mistakes.’ ”

Anna said it.

“ ‘For this I ask forgiveness.’ ”

Anna said it.

“ ‘Lord God my Father – I promise from this day forth to live truly to what You tell me to be right. If I stray, lead me back to Your path. This path I will walk all the days of my life. Amen.”

Anna said all this. But when she had done, she looked to Dio, and asked, “Is that all?”

“That depends.”

“On what?”

“Did you mean all you said?”

It was a moment before Anna answered, more firmly than she had anticipated: “Yes.”

“Then that is all.”

Again, the silence fell down. But this time it did not oppress, did not stifle. It was merely thoughtful.

“I worry for Vaya,” said Anna.

“Oh, Mila,” said Dio sadly. “So do I.”

“But what can I do?”

“I will pray with you, if you like.”

Anna made no protest, but merely took the hand Dio offered her, and bowed her head as he did. He spoke for a short space into the waiting quiet, beseeching his invisible protector to watch over Vaya Eleria, and to give her strength to be well again. His request was poignant and concise, and after it was uttered, he sat holding Anna’s hand.

The tears were starting up in her eyes as she asked, “Will He make her well?”

“If it is His will.”

But here he rubbed Anna’s hand comfortingly, and said in a low voice, “Of course I cannot speak for Him – but really I don’t think He will take her, Mila, before she knows all she must.”

Anna said nothing, but wept silently.

“Do not despair,” said Dio. “He called forth Lazarus, you know, from his very grave! And don’t you know that He rose from His own? From the dead! Ah, Mila – with God, death is not the thing that you have always thought it to be. The grave is no prison! There’s not a grave, my child, that can hold the soul. That goes with Him.”

They sat for a little time more together, but finally stood up, and went out of the chamber. Dio walked Anna to the door of her own quarters, kissed her cheek, and bade her goodnight. She watched him shuffle away into the darkness; but then took a deep breath, steadied herself as best she could, and went into the room.

The candle she had lit upon the bedside table was waning. There was naught but a dim, miserable glow radiating from its spot, which cast a poor pool of light across the bed, but lost all power once it reached the floor, so that the place where Anna stood was shrouded with black. She stepped silently towards the bed, and stood at its foot for a moment, watching Vaya sleep. Her rest was not as quiet as it had been, when Anna left her; and presently she tossed this way and that, murmuring incoherent syllables, but with her eyes ever closed, as if she were trapped in a nightmare.

Anna lay down beside her, and put an arm round her waist. Almost immediately she began to calm, and to shiver less violently than she had done. Her voice stopped. Yet still she slept on. 

XLII:

When in Rome

W
e begin anew, directly upon the morn of the day following the long night already accounted for, in order to relate a most astonishing thing. 

When Vaya rose finally from her thick sleep (Anna had been watching over her for some hours already), it was with a face strangely fresh, and eyes strangely bright. Either occurrence would have been out of place, given the severity of her recent illness; but both together, and with a smile at that, which was not blank or melancholy as hers last night had been; and it was simply marvellous! And Anna did marvel, on and on for many long minutes. She looked with knitted brows countless times towards the ceiling, searching for a sign of the one she believed had brought this miracle about. But she could not make anything out. Vaya seemed to notice, too, all these odd glances; and though they appeared almost to cause in her a slight amount of discomfort, she said nothing about them.

They were closeted nearly all the morning with Xeros, Leventh, and a number of others, poring repeatedly over matters which Anna thought were, on account of the fact that they could not possibly be understood any more than they were at present, merely superfluous and depressing. Yet she sat as still as she could manage, and burst with Vaya from the gloomy chamber just as soon as they were dismissed, almost like a schoolgirl who had been waiting all the day long to be released into the breezy brightness of a spring afternoon.

They met Nessa in the training chamber they had lately made use of. She had heard from Dio Constantín that Vaya was not well. Much to Vaya’s apparent surprise, Nessa approached her with a countenance both solemn and glad, clapped a hand upon her shoulder, and told in a very humble voice that she had prayed for her recovery. It was clear Vaya meant to thank her, at the least; but in her confusion she forgot to.

By dint of stretching and flexing the muscles made so weak the night before, Vaya worked them quickly to strength again. She sparred for a little with Nessa, but the latter could not stand long against her. Changing her shape suddenly as a sign of forfeit, she fell to the floor, and exclaimed, “You’re deadly enough! The sickness hasn’t taken
too
much, I see.”

The fortress would set out the following evening at dusk. As this was their last night of peaceful and unbroken rest (though it was uncertain how much said rest could be of either of these two things, with such a prospect looming ahead), all were left to enjoy it as they saw fit. There was an early supper in the dining hall, very extravagant in the terms of the Weld, and all partook of it heartily. Even Vaya was present. She ate what she could, and sat all the rest of the time looking anywhere but at her half-empty plate; and when her eyes accidentally fell upon it, she pulled unwittingly a series of most comical faces, which inspired Nessa and Cassie, at the least, with warm bursts of laughter.

The talk in the hall was loud – was well-nigh uproarious. Voices sounded on all hands, resounded to and fro between the walls and the ceiling, and were inconceivably merry. Sad smiles, if you will believe it, there were none. Every grin, whether crooked or straight, was robed in the royal raiment of good faith and fellowship. It was as if they did not even know they would march next day! And as for the humans, well – there was not one of them who did not wish to join that march. Yet of course Xeros would not allow it. He merely commended their bravery, and ordered them to be ready for the wolves’ return, when the services of the medically-skilled among them would be most certainly required.

Anna, for herself, conversed more earnestly with her father than she had yet had the courage to do (and thereby, though she did not know it, bestowed upon him a gift of happiness which he had not known in long years). When the meal had come to an end, and all of its sharers evinced similar signs of desiring to leave, so as to spend the remainder of the night with their individual families, all rose from their seats and saluted one another. Anna embraced Dio Constantín very tightly, and bade him goodnight. There was a shining sharpness in his eye, which spoke plainly of his wish that Anna would not go; but he looked with no little understanding towards Vaya, and offered her a nod of concession.

“Tomorrow,” he said to Anna, “is full of uncertainty. If I had faced such a day, nearly three quarters of a century ago – well, I would have bidden my father adieu, though I adored him ever so much, and taken my leave to spend what certain hours I had left, in the arms of my wife. Verily I did so, when I left him in Chersky, and never saw him more. But as for me! It is not the same for me. You hardly know me, Mila.”

Anna hugged him once more, and kissed his rough cheek. “There you speak wrongly,” she said to him. “I love you, Father.”

“Oh, Mila! I love you so, my child.”

They pressed each other’s hands once more, and Anna turned away. Vaya took her arm, and as they made to quit the hall, Xeros called after them that they were due in the chapel next day at five o’clock. They nodded over their shoulders; Anna waved once more to her father; and they hurried quickly away. Next moment they were gone entirely from the mountain.

~

Earlier that day, they had spoken together about what they would do with this their night of freedom.

“Now I,” said Anna, “have hardly ever been anywhere, to be sure. You must tell me, then, the most beautiful place you have ever seen.”

Vaya was not long in thinking, before she answered, “Rome. That place would be Rome.”

“Then we are going to Rome!”

After departing the Weld, therefore, they went down to the channel, hired a vessel to cross it, and then shifted into Italy. Now, ordinarily they probably would not have fretted about shifting the channel; for its maximum depth is roughly six hundred feet, with its highest pressure proving at about two-hundred-and-eighty pounds, which is not so fearsome for a Lumarian. But the pledge they had made obliged them not to be so reckless as was their wont. It was after this brief delay, then, that they arrived at the outskirts of the great city.

“Benvenuti a Roma,” said Vaya, as she turned to smile at Anna. She held out her arm, and added, “Shall we?”

So they began. It was Anna who had proposed this method, rather than simply to shift from place to place; for she had not spoken falsely when she told that her own
travelling credentials were fairly insignificant. Probably that seems rather strange, in a being whose ability to journey depended on nothing more than the focus of her thoughts. Yet all her life she had lived in the house on Thayer Street, and indeed had never considered that there lay any greatly altered substance or material within the bounds of foreign lands. But now she wished to traverse the whole city of Rome, with Vaya by her side, to act as a guide in whose sole discretion would lie the direction whither they bent their steps. She had asked Vaya, too, to carry her Turin, in the case that she should need it; but she refrained from placing it about her own neck, unwilling as she was to suffer the weakness which it brought, with the enormity of tomorrow lingering just over the horizon.

They wished, too, to make use of this small trip as a way in which to allow themselves an unfamiliar dose of normalcy, and to leave behind, for however brief a time, the weight of their supernatural selves. And indeed it was as if the burden were almost wholly lifted, as they strolled none too quickly through the streets. The streets – both narrow and wide, which ranged below and between high columns of ancient and modern architecture alike. They chose the busiest places for a while, feeling a strange sense of community with the rushing tide of humans to either side of them.

Having entered from the North, and maintained thereafter a West-hand bearing, they came after nothing too long a time to the Vatican City, where Vaya pointed out many things. One of the most well-known structures of that area, we know (and so we shall say a little concerning their survey of it) is St Peter’s Basilica.

They stood still for a moment, examining its grandeur: the oblong body whose face was set with tall fair columns, and dark doorways (those of the Holy Door, the Filarete Door, and the Door of Death) in betwixt; up a little higher, the
Loggia of the Blessings,
or the balcony which was used for the heralding of the new pope. Higher still, a statue of Christ with various others at His either hand. Higher again, the great dome of the basilica, topped with a cross.

For a moment they stepped inside the place, through the portico and into the basilica itself, the interior of the site at which Peter formed the first Christian church. They stood inside the nave, gazing round at the statues, carvings, and many altars. Anna could not but admit that she was intrigued by the fullness of the weight of history.

Yet there was one thing which had troubled her, probably much longer than she remembered, and at least as long as recently. The trouble was exemplified, she thought, by the inscription which she had read, over the
Loggia
outside. It was written there, in Latin of course: “In honour of the prince of apostles; Paul V Borghese, pope, in the year 1612 and the seventh year of his pontificate.” Now – why, she wondered, would a temple erected to God be dedicated in honour of a man? This is something, to be sure, that we humans take far too much for granted. But Anna saw with new eyes; with a child’s eyes. It felt, to her, as a sentiment somewhat reminiscent of those which Dio Constantín had spoken about the night before.

Though the basilica was unspeakably beautiful, also it was unspeakably vast and expansive; and as they wanted not to spend all of their little time in exploring it, they quit it. But so long as they were in the Vatican City, Anna could not but go, at least for a moment or two, into the famed Sistine Chapel. They entered, in a very human fashion, through the Papal Palace (though not exactly by the methods of customary Roman decorum, and not exactly with the leave of the palace guardians).

The effect of the sight which awaited them (for of course Vaya had never entered the place on her own, all those years ago; and for her it was an equally novel thing) was of a degree not to be aptly measured. The basilica, on the one hand, had been almost like a palace within itself – like a fair Drelho, too large to be admired with a single sweep of the eyes. But this place, this was like snug beauty, expressed in paint arguably more breathtaking than anywhere else in the world, and incontrovertibly warm, while the basilica engendered grand feelings (most unwittingly, of course) of chill and ice.

The stunning decoration of the chapel was arranged in this way. The walls were segregated into three separate layers, much like a colourful cake, with the first and lowest displaying hangings that included Raphael’s ten tapestries (not really his anymore; for the originals were stolen away during the Sack of Rome, and only replaced with duplicates very recently) depicting the lives of Peter and Paul. In the second layer, the lives of Moses and Christ (again we wonder how they are comparable) were portrayed. In the last there were two series of paintings: one of the popes, and one of Jesus’s “ancestors.”

On the pendentives below the ceiling were shown the twelve men and women who claimed that God would send Jesus for the salvation of mankind. On the ceiling itself, doubtless the most stunning area of the chapel, was arrayed Michelangelo’s masterpiece, in three cohesive segments: “God’s creation of the world, God’s relationship with mankind, and mankind’s fall from God’s grace.” But then there was the most thought-provoking of all – and this was the wall behind the altar, which described the last judgment. The last judgment: when Jesus comes again, and marks the commencement of the final ruling over the souls of all the world. To be sure, this occasions not only awe, but also a great quantity of fear – most especially in hearts like Anna’s, which are only just beginning to find their way, and which take most everything as an extremely grave omen of things to come.

While Anna stared wonderingly, Vaya looked on in rather a more dubious manner. But the varying condition of her gaze did nothing to make it either less deep or lengthy than Anna’s own. It was after the gazing was mutually complete, and their thoughts struck a single chord which announced said completion, that they turned from the altar, and went out again the way they had come.

From the Vatican City they turned East. Anna asked Vaya where she meant to go, but Vaya told her to wait and see. One advantage of a narrative, though, is that we need not share her suspense; and so we know perfectly well that their destination was the Fontana di Trevi: collectively considered as the greatest fountain of Rome, very large of course, and with the Palazzo Poli as its stoney backdrop. In its centre niche stood Oceanus, god of water; to the left, the physical manifestation of Abundance, pouring water from an urn; and to the right, that of Salubrity, holding a goblet whose contents a snake quaffed. In the foreground were the Tritons (a kind of merpeople, if you will) guiding the sea-horses of Oceanus’s shell chariot. The water began to spill beneath Oceanus’s feet, and cascaded steadily down three levels of progressive size, till it fell into the great clear pool at the bottom.

“Well!” exclaimed Anna. “Isn’t that a sight?”

“Quite,” rejoined Vaya. “But do you know the most interesting thing about it?”

“Of course I don’t! You’ll have to tell me.”

“Well, they say – that if you throw a coin into the fountain, you are ensured a return to Rome.” She looked earnestly at Anna. “And if we are fated to return – then we cannot die tomorrow.”