Devil's Lair (14 page)

Tancredo,
he remembered, but did not speak the
name.
Let him rest.

A sword lay on the floor.
Marco went to pick it up. The weapon had no weight, but gleamed brightly in the
moonlight.

Marco heard footsteps outside
the door. He stepped into the hall, saw nothing there, and returned to the
bedroom.

The bed was gone.

In its place, Marco found a
suit of armor hanging on a post. A helmet was mounted above the breastplate. It
looked like a Knight Templar clad in light and shadow.

“Hello,” Marco said.

From behind the visor, the
knight of shadows echoed, “
Hello.
”

“Who are you?”

“
Who are you?
”

Now the voice was mocking
him.

Marco raised his sword.

“I don’t remember.”

“
I don’t—
”

He swung the blade,
decapitating the helmet from the post. It bounced against a wall, then came to
rest at his feet. With the tip of his sword Marco opened the helmet’s visor,
letting the last word escape.

“
Remember.
”

“How much do you remember?”
William asked after Marco recounted the dream.

They stood together on the
balcony, looking out past the Tiber River to Vatican Hill and beyond.

Marco said, “This is not my
home.”

“Then you have no reason to
stay.”

“You said it was.”

“I said this was your villa.
Home is not a place. Home is not some piece of property. Everything you see
belongs to God. Every place is God’s place. Give yourself to God and you will
always feel at home.”

“I don’t believe in God.”

“Even the Devil believes in
God.”

Marco laughed. “Well, then.
That settles it. Who am I to argue with the Devil?”

“You are Marco da Roma.”

“So I’ve heard.”

“There is a mark upon your
chest. Many men have worn this mark. They sacrificed their lives to protect the
Grail. Now one man remains. The last Knight Templar. One man stands between
this world and utter darkness.”

“I don’t know that man.”

“You must find him in
yourself,” said William. “It is time for you to be the man you are.”

Giovanni found Marco sitting
in the pomegranate orchard behind the house, leaning against a slender trunk.
He was dreading this conversation but had promised William he would make the
effort. William refused to go south without Marco, and Giovanni needed to go
south. All of his hopes had fled to Naples. He intended to follow them there,
even if it meant making peace with this overgrown amnesiac.

“You kept an orchard,”
Giovanni began pleasantly enough, pacing between the rows of trees. The fruit
was entering its season. Giovanni plucked the ripest one he could find: red and
round and wonderful. “Pomegranates.”

Marco picked a small round
seed from the dirt, rolled it between his fingers, and tossed it down the
slope.

“The fruit of Hell,”
Giovanni said.

Marco gave him a hard look.

“A myth.” Giovanni tore open
the fruit and offered half to Marco, who accepted it without thanks. The poet
continued, “One of the stories the Romans used to tell. Pluto abducted the
goddess Prosperpina, and the world fell into—”

“I don’t care.”

“Mercury was sent to
rescue—”

“Leave me alone.”

Giovanni scooped out some of
the scarlet seeds and put them in his mouth. The sudden sweetness made him
moan.

He swallowed the juice, spit
out the seeds, and said, “Anyway, Prosperpina ate six pomegranate seeds in
Hell, which meant she couldn’t live only on Earth, but had to return to the
underworld three months out of every—”

“What are you doing here?”

“Talking,” Giovanni said.

“Go away.”

“William sent me.”

Marco snorted. “Persistent.
I’ll give him that.”

The knight tested the taste
of his own pomegranate, seemed to like it well enough, and devoured the rest.

The poet finished his. “Rome
is dying, Marco. There’s nothing for you here. Come to Cumae.”

“I thought you wanted to get
rid of me.”

“You saved our lives.”

“I don’t intend to make a
habit of it.”

“I owe you for that. If you
come south, I can repay you.”

“With what?”

“You are a knight.”

“Am I?”

Unlikely,
thought Giovanni, but said, “There is
something in you that reminds me of Barillus.”

“The knight of Naples.”

Giovanni nodded. “I could
introduce you to Queen Joanna. That is my offer.”

“I do not know this queen.”

“I know her well. Or did, in
her youth. She is the granddaughter of King Robert the Wise, and a great
sovereign in her own right: charming and eloquent at the royal court, but
ruthless on field of Mars. Her territory stretches from the Adriatic to the
Tyrrhenian Sea, from Umbria, Piceno, and the ancient land of the Volscians to
the straits of Sicily. She held Avignon before she sold it to the pope.”

“What do I need with a
queen?”

“There is great honor in
service to a queen. Honor and fortune. Naples is the finest court in Italy. Not
what it was in Robert’s day, but even now it is second only to Avignon. The
queen is at war with Hungary. She needs good warriors. I could vouch for your
skills, if not your honor.”

“Why do I need you?” Marco
asked. “If I want to meet the queen, I’ll go to her myself.”

“Not that easy,” Giovanni
said. “You need an introduction to court. Without it, you would be viewed with
great suspicion. They might take you for a spy. The queen knows me. She likes
my stories. If I tell your story, she will listen.”

“You speak of Naples.”

“Yes.”

“The old man spoke of
somewhere else.”

“Cumae. It’s on the way to
Naples. We will search for the gates of Hell. If we do not find them, which
seems likely enough, then the quest ends there, and from Cumae it’s a short
road to the royal court.”

“The girl believes the gate
is there.”

“Nadja is an epileptic.”

“You think she’s deluded?”

“The girl has not had an
easy life. God punishes her. For what, I cannot say. She has suffered much, and
needs to believe in a higher purpose. Her visions give her meaning.”

“The old man has faith in
her.”

“He is a man of faith.”

“You’re not.”

“I have been to Cumae,”
Giovanni said. “In my youth, on my own quest, I traced the path of Aeneas. I
entered the Sibyl’s cave and found nothing there. No gate. No mystery. Only
darkness. There is no passage to the underwor—”

Inside the house, a child
screamed.

The young boy ran from the
dining room and past Giovanni, who tried to catch him, but the boy slipped past
and ran outside. Giovanni let him go.

He found Nadja in the dining
room, face-down on the tile amid broken shards from a toppled vase. Her body
stiffened and jerked. She spasmed. Her eyes were blank, her face contorted. She
began to vomit. Giovanni had never seen this before. It paralyzed him.

William rushed in. He rolled
Nadja onto her side, letting the vomit drain from her mouth, then he cleared
away the potshards. “Give her room.”

Giovanni stepped back and
bumped into Marco just arriving.

The knight looked troubled.
“She has a demon.”

“No,” said William. “This is
her gift.”

After Nadja recovered, they
helped her to the dining table, where they all sat together. Giovanni watched
as William bandaged the cut on her forearm.

The first thing she said
was, “Where is Nek?”

“The boy ran off,” William
answered.

Nadja covered her eyes with
her fingertips. She looked tired. “Am I that scary?”

“He’s only a child. He
doesn’t understand.”

“Neither do I.”

“Dante was epileptic,”
Giovanni told her. “He fainted at a wedding feast. He fainted twice in the
Inferno.
”

William said, “Perhaps
there’s some connection.”

“In canto three, Dante feels
the earth shake, sees a flash of red light, and falls to the ground asleep.”

“It’s not like that,” Nadja
said. “No light. Only music. A choir of angels.”

“In canto five, Dante swoons
and drops like a corpse. In canto twenty-four, he compares Vanni Fucci to a man
recovering from a seizure. And in the opening, of course, Dante says he came to
himself in a dark wood. ‘I came to myself.’ As if the entire poem were a falling
dream.”

William set a piece of paper
on the table before Nadja, then offered her a stick of charcoal. “Show us what
you saw.”

She drew a long thin shaft,
barbed at one end.

Marco spoke first. “An
arrow?”

“Spear,” she said. “Bleeding
at the tip.”

“
Lancea Longini.
” Giovanni could hear the excitement in
his own voice.

William studied the image.
“Yes. It could be the Lance of Longinus.”

“What is that?” Nadja asked.

“The weapon that pierced the
side of Christ.”

Giovanni leaned forward. “It
was the Holy Grail that caught the blood.”

William nodded. “The Lance
and the Grail are forever bound to each other by the blood of our Lord.”

“I had another dream,” Nadja
said quietly.

“When?”

“Days ago. In the woods.
Before those men...”

“Attacked us, yes. Go on,”
William encouraged her.

“I saw Marco with a spear.
It was shining with light, like a torch.” She turned to Marco. “You will need
this weapon to fight the demons in the dark.”

Marco scowled.

“We must find the Lance,”
William said.

Giovanni asked the girl, “Do
you know where it is?”

Nadja shook her head. “I saw
a man. He gave the Lance to Marco.”

“Who was he?” William asked.

“I don’t know.”

“What kind of man?”

“He wore a crown.”

“A king?”

She shook her head. “A crown
of leaves.”

“Leaves?” Giovanni felt a
sudden thrill. “What kind of leaves?”

Nadja drew another picture.

G
iovanni recognized it at once.
The laurel crown.
Only one man wore a laurel crown. A man known to
collect antiquities. A man rumored to be an epileptic.

The world’s greatest living
poet.

“Petrarch.”

CHAPTER 15

After consulting the friars
at the church of Santa Maria in Aracoeli, Giovanni reported back that Francesco
Petrarch had left the city and now resided in Padua as a guest of the Carrara.
The pilgrims set out from the villa the next day.

Marco watched them go. They
had promised to return to Rome with the Holy Lance, but the knight did not
think he would see them again. He cared little for William and Nadja, and
nothing for Giovanni, but they were the only people he knew.

When the pilgrims had disappeared
behind the Palantine, Marco wandered around his vast estate, from the orchards
to the gardens, from the cenacle to the cellar, dressed in clothes fetched from
the linen room. The clothes fit, but nothing else did.
This is not my home.
He needed something, but what? A war? A
cause? A friend? Perhaps the poet was right. Perhaps his future lay in Naples,
in the service of a queen.
Only one way to find out.
He caught up with the pilgrims at Saint
John’s gate. They were resting outside the portcullis and did not look
surprised at his arrival.

“I will see this Holy
Lance,” he said, and promised nothing more.

Giovanni wanted to visit
Florence and check up on his children, but William counseled against it,
fearing delay as much as pestilence, so they kept to the lesser roads and
smaller villages, lodging one night in Monteriggioni, where the poet purchased
four bowls of ribollita, a hearty vegetable soup mixed with stale bread. To
Giovanni it tasted like home.

Later that evening, as
William prayed and Marco practiced with his sword, waging battles with branches
and wars with weeds, the poet absented himself to the enceinte and sat alone
atop the stone wall that ringed the city, staring out over moonlit Tuscany.
This wall was famous for its fourteen towers. Dante had mentioned them in
describing the giants that circled Cocytus, the lowest level of Hell. Giovanni
sat near the gate tower above the road that lead to Florence, wondering if
Dante had ever sat here looking back toward the home from which he was exiled.