Devil's Lair (30 page)

“Thank you,” he said, and
they spoke of it no more.

As they crossed an old stone
bridge to the next embankment, their senses were assaulted by the odor of piss
and shit. Nadja saw hundreds of souls swimming in a brown stream that looked
like drainage from a privy.

“Harsh justice,” she said.

They reached the next bridge
and crossed over. Giovanni paused at the apex and looked down.

“What are you doing?” Nadja
asked.

“Seems as good a place as
any.” He lowered his hose and pissed into the sewer. “Wine into water. One of
the lesser miracles.”

Marco roared with laughter.
“Even Hell has its pleasures.” The knight lifted his tunic and joined Giovanni
in the sport.

“Well now,” said the shade
of a woman swimming in the filth. Crap covered her to the neck. Her face was
smeared with the issue of a stranger’s bowels. Nadja recognized her as the
woman they’d seen at the edge of Limbo, cast down for flattery. The wheedling
woman said to Marco, “Aren’t you a handsome devil? What have you got there, big
boy?”

The knight adjusted his aim and
hit her between the eyes.

“Hey!” she screamed. “Watch
where you’re aiming that thing!”

Marco nudged the poet. “See
that one over there?” he said, pointing to a man treading urine ten yards off.
“The bald one?”

“Too far,” said Giovanni.

“On my honor.”

The knight was as good as
his boast. The bald man spat curses from below.

Nadja giggled. She walked to
the end of the bridge, straddled the gap where the bridge met the bank, hiked
up her skirt, and gave as good as the boys.

In the third ditch, steaming
holes dotted the stone floor. From each hole projected human legs. Flames
jittered on the bare soles, skittering on skin. All down the valley, pairs of
legs twitched with pain. Cries echoed from every well.

Giovanni saw one shade whose
flames seemed greater than the others. He asked the man, “Who are you?”

“Pope Benedict the Ninth,” a
voice echoed from the hole.

Giovanni had studied church
history, but remembered nothing of this particular pope. “Why are you here?”

“Simony.”

“What office did you sell?”

“The papacy.”

“For thirty pieces of
silver?”

“Fifteen hundred pounds of
gold.”

Giovanni was impressed, and
a little disgusted. “You might have returned the gold and bought your way to
Heaven.”

“I never asked to be pope,”
Benedict complained. “It was my family’s idea. My uncles were popes, but they
died. I was next in line. They made me pope when I was only twelve. I wanted to
make everyone happy, so I said okay. Later, I changed my mind. Was that so
wrong? You can’t hold a grown man to something he said when he was twelve.”

“You might have abdicated.”

“I did. And made a tidy
profit. Of course, I regretted it immediately.”

“Did you repent?”

“I went to war and got the
papacy back.”

“You were pope twice?”

“Three times. If I’d been a
little smarter, I might have tripled my earnings.”

Crossing over the fourth
ditch, Marco saw shades walking with their heads turned backwards. They walked
in reverse to see where they were going. Tears streamed down their faces and
through the cracks of their asses.

An old hag cried, “Marco da
Roma!” Her pinched face looked like a rotten apple.

“Yes, woman?” Marco said.
“What do you want?”

“Don’t you remember me?”

“No.”

“You came this way before.”

“You’re being punished as a
liar?”

“I was a fortuneteller. You
were a defender of the Holy Grail.”

Nadja said, “He is the last
Knight Templar.”

“No need for Templars now.”
The harridan cackled. “The Devil defends the Grail.”

“What do you know of it?”
Marco demanded.

“I knew it of old, before
the stone of Heaven was carved into a cup. I was there, yes, when the shepherd
boy found the stone in the river. He brought it to me.”

“A shepherd?”

“David. The boy who would be
king.”

“You knew King David?” Nadja
asked.

“Oh, yes. And his father,
Saul. I used the stone to summon the shade of Samuel.”

“You are the witch of
Endor,” Giovanni said.

She laughed. “I am
remembered, after all.”

Nadja asked, “Did you see
David kill Goliath?”

“Of course, of course,” said
the witch, with a playful grin. “And how did he accomplish that? I’ll tell you.
When the stone fell from Heaven to Earth, and landed in the valley of Elah,
five pieces broke off. David went back to the river where he found the great
stone, and he gathered up the smaller stones. One of these he hurled at the
giant, killing the last of the Nephilim.” She laughed again. “Killed him
straight away.”

“What did you do with the
Grail stone?” Marco asked.

“I gave it back.”

“To the shepherd boy?”

“Oh, no. He was the king by
then. He commanded me to return the stone to the one who found it. King David
wanted to make a chalice for the future temple.”

“Solomon’s temple?” Giovanni
asked.

She nodded. “The lesser
vessels were made of orichalcum, but the great vessel was the Holy Grail,
carved from the stone of Heaven. For many years it protected Israel. But a
thief stole it from the temple, and the temple was destroyed.”

“Who stole the Grail?” Marco
asked.

“Who indeed?” She cackled.
“You will find him in the den of thieves. Look in the water. That is the man
you seek.”

Giovanni saw in the fifth
trench a bickering horde of shades sunk in boiling pitch. Some were buried to
their knees, others to their noses. Many were entirely submerged. When they
tried to surface, demons tore them to pieces with grappling hooks, sharp claws,
and carnassial teeth.

One man stood aloof, up to
his knees in black pitch. The demons left him alone. He was garbed in a simple
robe, and had a nose like a flying buttress. On his head he wore a laurel
crown. With eyes closed, he chanted:

I am
defeated at this pass, much more

Than any
other bard who failed to find,

By use of
art, a line to match his lore.

For as
the eye that sought the sun is blind,

The
memory of my sweet lady’s smile

Is now
obliterated from my mind.

Giovanni recognized the
verses, and the man who spoke them. “Dante?”

The enmired poet turned.
“Who calls my name?”

“Are you...?”

“Dante Alighieri.”

Giovanni dropped to one knee
and bowed his head. “Magister!”

The laureate approached,
trudging through the pitch. The demons, busy torturing other shades, showed
little concern. Dante put a cold, spectral hand under Giovanni’s chin to lift
his gaze. “Who are you?”

“Giovanni Boccaccio. The
poet. Boccaccio.”

“I know your work,” Dante
said. “You have quite a following in Hell.”

“Why aren’t you in
Paradise?”

Dante sighed. “Poetry has
great power, but not the power to absolve sin.”

“But you’re a great man.”

“Hell is filled with great
men.”

“What was your sin?”

“Barratry. Bribes. The sins
of politics.”

“False charges.”

“Apparently not.”

Giovanni shook his head. “I
don’t understand. You went to Heaven. You saw the face of God. Even that did
not save you?”

“Did it save Lucifer? We
rise, we fall.” Dante glanced around. “It’s not too bad here, from the knees
up.”

“With what you knew, with
what you saw of Hell, you must have confessed your sins. Surely you repented.”

“One would think.”

“Why didn’t you?”

Dante shrugged. “Florence
offered to rescind my exile if I gave a public confession. I insisted the
charges be dropped. They refused. So did God.”

“You’re still an exile,”
Giovanni said, “suffering for your art.”

“No. My art gives me the one
thing most coveted in Hell.”

“What is that?”

“Hope.”

“Of what?”

Dante asked, “Did you
recognize the poem I was reading?”

“
Paradiso.
Canto thirty.”

“Yet I have no book.” He
showed Giovanni his empty hands. “How could I have read it?”

“You remember it.”

“Down here, we remember only
our sins. Whatever good we did in life is lost to us. We are denied that
consolation.”

Giovanni thought he
understood. “You can see the future.”

“Yes.”

“Your poetry lives on.”

Dante nodded. “I remember
little of my life, and nothing of my love. But some of it I wrote down. When
you walked by and heard me reading those lines, I was looking at a man reading
a book. He lives in the future. I do not know when or where. But when he reads
my book, so can I. When anyone reads it, I am there. It is all I have left of
who I was. It is all I know of Beatrice.”

“But if people stop reading
your work?”

“Then I am lost.”

Giovanni mulled this over.
“Is there any hope for me?”

“You still have life.”

“What life? There’s nothing
for me up there.”

“There is,” Dante assured
him. “If you cannot find it, make it. You are a poet, a maker. Remake
yourself.”

“How?”

“That I cannot tell you.”

“Show me the way.”

“Any way I might show you
would not be yours.”

Giovanni hesitated, then
asked the question he most dreaded. “Will my work survive?”

Dante closed his eyes,
seeing something Giovanni could not. “Your stories will be popular.”

“But my serious work? My
poetry?”

“What of it?”

“I lost my patron. I lost my
muse. I am becoming the failure my father predicted.”

Dante clucked his tongue.
“True poets are sired upon themselves.”

“I am a poet because of
you.”

“My way is not your way,
Giovanni. You have walked in my shadow long enough. It is time to step into the
light.”

Giovanni left reluctantly,
but knew he could not stay. Before departing he promised Dante he would do what
he could to keep the master’s work alive.

In the next ditch he saw
shades who moved slowly, weighed down by heavy lead robes which were painted
gold. Their faces were cloaked in cowls.

The nearest shade said,
“Take me with you. I do not belong here. I was a holy man. Everyone said so.”

“What holy man were you?”
Giovanni asked.

“If you know scripture, you
know my story. I picked up a few sticks, and for that Moses had me stoned to
death.”

Giovanni recalled the story.
“You broke one of the Ten Commandments. You dishonored the Sabbath.”

“Even Jesus worked on
Saturday.”

“For which he, too, was
killed. Yet you are here and he is not. Why is that?”

“Moses punished me for my industry,
God for my piety.”

“For your hypocrisy.”
Giovanni had no love for hypocrites. He picked up a rock and tested its weight.

The hypocrite said, “He who
is without sin should cast the first stone.”

“This is not the first,”
Giovanni said. “It will not be the last.”

He threw the rock at the
shade, who tried to dodge it, but the heavy cloak slowed him. The stone struck
the man’s face. Marco, too, picked up a stone, and Nadja another, and soon they
were all throwing rocks at the hypocrites.

The poet could not have
asked for an easier target.

Giovanni led his friends to
where a skulk of naked thieves were chased by serpents. Their hands were tied
behind them by snakes, which extended between the sinners’ legs and coiled
around their testicles. When the serpents on the ground bit a bandit on the
ankle, his human form burst into flame, then fell as ashes. The ashes spiraled
like a dust devil, gathered in a new form, and became a snake. Meanwhile, the
attacking snake melted like wax and transformed into a human. He then ran the
other way, chased by a nascent serpent eager for revenge.