The Borgia Ring (4 page)

The Venerable English College, Rome, January 1589

My name is Father John William Allen and my story begins in January, the Year of Our Lord, 1589.

History records many troubled eras. But for one such as I, a man of deep faith, these, I am sure, are times as bad as any in human reckoning. As I write, war rages between Catholics and Protestants, a war that has its roots in a schism created by the demon Luther and the Devil’s vassal, Henry VIII, over half a century ago.

Throughout Europe, men fight to uphold their vision of God. But the One True Faith, the faith of St Peter, the faith of Christ Himself, will, I know, prevail. Blood has been spilled, plenty of blood. But there is the blood of the faithful, and there is the blood of the heretic, and only the first of these is pure. Only the spilling of this blood is a sin.

I had been a student at the Venerable English College in Rome for five years, training to be a Jesuit missionary, when, late in May 1588, we received news from Paris that the good Catholic people of the city had risen up against that vile Protestant appeaser King Henri III. He fled and the governing of the city fell to a group of noblemen, the Council of Sixteen. Within days that great French Catholic the Duc de Guise was welcomed back into Paris from exile.

For a time there was peace there; indeed, Europe enjoyed a calm not experienced for many long years. Then, a few days
after Christmas, news reached us that, on 23 December, the Duc de Guise and his brother, Cardinal de Guise, had been tricked by the treacherous Henri and slaughtered by the King’s henchmen – stabbed through the heart in the council chambers of the Château de Blois, where they had been summoned to a meeting.

When I heard this news I knew immediately that my time had come, that I would soon be rewarded for my devotions and offered the chance of martyrdom. For five years I had been imbued with the teachings of the One True Faith and been taught how to teach in my turn, trained to express my heartfelt and soul-deep zeal, so as to convert the waverers and restore stray Catholics to the fold. I was ready.

I remember the gathering in the great chamber of the college at which the head of my order, Superior General Acquaviva, addressed us all and imparted the news of My Lord Guise’s murder. I remember the hush, the stillness, and how I could feel anger and the bitterness all around me, actually taste these things in my mouth.

That night any true rest evaded me, and when I did tumble into the oblivion of sleep I could not be sure I was dreaming or simply remembering. For in the dark hours before the dawn unspeakable shadows haunted the corners of my cell and I could no longer separate dreams from the waking world.

The same images kept returning to torment me. Tyburn Village, to the west of London. A windswept, rain-drenched morning in April five years earlier. The execution of a Jesuit missionary, Henry Wittingham.

It began with a commotion from the crowd seated in the wooden stands to one side of Tyburn Tree, the three-poster gallows that had been a place of death for so many men and women over the years. The crowd murmurs, and then, as the cart comes into view, some of them begin to cheer and shout.
The procession enters the square with the prisoner bound to a hurdle, naked but for a blood-stained loincloth. His face scrapes along the ground. As he is lifted from the dirt, the crowd can see Wittingham’s bloodied, swollen and blackened face. Gusts of rain sweep the scene. The executioner helps the condemned man stand upright on the cart parked beneath the scaffold. A noose is placed over the man’s head and the cart quickly drawn away.

He dangles and kicks. The crowd scream with excitement. A woman and two men run out to tug at Wittingham’s legs, trying to speed his end, but they are quickly spotted and dragged away by four burly wardens. The gasping man is cut loose and lowered to the ground. Then he is carried to a wooden platform where he is bound at wrist and ankle.

A hush. Even the sounds of Nature seem to recede; the wind drops, the rain slows. The prisoner’s face is awash with watery blood, his mouth agape. Most of his teeth are smashed. A gag is knotted across his open mouth and the loincloth yanked away and tossed into the mud below the platform. The executioner grabs Wittingham’s genitals and, with a single slice, castrates him. Blood fountains into the air, drenching the executioner’s leather jerkin. Wittingham’s body spasms, his back arches, and even through the gag, his screams sound like metal grinding against metal. Tossing the severed flesh into a basket, the executioner bends forward, grabs Wittingham’s hair for leverage and draws his blade the length of the man’s naked torso.

Wittingham has stopped moving, paralysed by shock. But he is still alive. The executioner reaches into the gaping hole and removes a handful of slimy, grey viscera. He tugs and cuts, holding aloft lengths of intestine before tossing them into the basket. Then he sets to work removing the prisoner’s heart. He cuts around the organ and severs arteries and veins. Only the executioner can tell when the heart has stopped
beating. The prisoner’s legs and arms still twitch as the vital organ is raised into the air. The executioner adds it to the growing pile of flesh in the tumbril. The leaden silence all around is broken only by the flapping of wings as a crow lands on the edge of the basket and hungrily eyes the grey and red tangle of human remains.

A voice enquired: ‘Father John?’ There was a knock at the door. ‘Father John? The Superior General wishes to see you.’

My eyes snapped open and the horrors of the night vanished. I was once more in my tiny stone-walled room. The voice, Brother Giovanni’s, was coming from the other side of an oak door a few feet beyond the end of my narrow bed. I leapt up and strode over to it, feeling a tight knot of excitement in the pit of my stomach.

Giovanni was holding a candle. Its flame flickered wildly in the draught and cast streaks of light and dark across his benign, round face. The priest turned and I followed him. The passageway was black apart from the puddle of light cast by the bare candle but, of course, after five years at the college, I knew my way well. And in the dark, walking behind the good Father Giovanni, I finally shook myself awake, aware now that my dream had not been mere fancy, but a memory. What I had witnessed in the rain of Tyburn had led me here, to this moment. I had seen for myself how the Royal Whore, Elizabeth, treated her citizens. That experience had been the turning point which called me to Rome and the great cause. But, when I left England, I had turned my back on many things. My family in Suffolk were good Catholics, but they had never been militant. They had naively wished for nothing but peace between all faiths. In coming here to Rome, I had been forced to sever all family ties. I would never see my parents or my two younger brothers again.

The corridor opened on to a wide hallway. Father Giovanni extinguished the candle and placed it on a shelf, then beckoned me to follow him. The corridor was wide and carpeted, a red strip of expensive wool laid over white marble. Huge portraits hung on the walls, a succession of Popes dating back many centuries. Through the windows, I could see it was still dark outside. The place was enveloped in a silence so absolute I could hear my own breathing. At the end of the passageway were double doors of heavy oak. Guards in Vatican livery stood to either side of them. They stared ahead, ignoring us as Father Giovanni rapped on the oak. The doors swung open.

I had been in this room only once before; on the day a year earlier when, after completing my training, I was received into the Jesuit Order. This was the inner sanctum of the Head of the College, the Superior General, Claudius Acquaviva, fifth leader of the Jesuits. The Order was created almost sixty years earlier by the saintly Ignatius of Loyola who had taught us that the Jesuits were God’s chosen missionaries, our role to serve the great and mysterious purposes of the Lord God Almighty. Our Order had many jobs to perform, I was told, but none more important than the task of returning heretics to the One True Faith.

The Superior General was a diminutive figure, seated at a massive desk in the centre of a vast room, studying some papers. He wore a simple black robe, a black cap on his head. A tall, slender man in priest’s robes stood in front of the desk, head lowered, hands clasped in front of him. I knew that back.

Brother Giovanni slipped out and I walked slowly towards the desk. It was only when I stood alongside the other robed figure that I could steal a glance at the man. He did not return my stare, but I could see his strong profile in the dim light, his straight, long nose, the soft curve of his shaven skull. It was
Sebastian – Father Sebastian Mountjoy – my closest friend at the college, a man who had been ordained on the same day as I. Sebastian, I knew, was aflame with the same religious fervour as I was, a fervour that consumed our waking thoughts and permeated our dreams. We had spent many hours together in spiritual contemplation and debate. Sebastian was three years my senior and came from a very wealthy Herefordshire family, committed Catholics who had long been engaged in their own clandestine work against the English Queen. But although our backgrounds were very different, we were spiritual twins.

Superior General Acquaviva looked up from his papers. He was a gaunt, pale man and naturally bald. The skin of his high forehead was smooth, almost baby-like. It caught the light from the huge candles set on either side of his desk. He had very light brown eyes; soft, kindly eyes. He seemed to be about to speak when there was a movement behind his chair. A hooded figure emerged from the deep gloom, startling both Sebastian and me. The man approached the desk. The Superior General glanced up and the man pulled back his hood to reveal a hard face: high cheekbones, narrow black eyes, cropped silver hair.

I fell to my knees. The figure extended one hand and flicked his fingers.

‘My sons,’ the Superior General interposed. ‘It was Father Bellarmino who called you here this morning.’

I was terrified. Bellarmino was perhaps the most powerful man in the Church. Many believed he was more powerful even than Pope Sixtus himself. As both the Pope’s personal theologian and Spiritual Father of the Jesuit College, his influence reached into every corner of the Vatican. But Father Bellarmino was a great purifier with a fearsome reputation across Europe. He had brought many heretics back to the Faith at the point of a sword or through the purification of fire.

‘I will let the good Father explain,’ the Superior General concluded.

Bellarmino’s voice was higher-pitched than I’d expected, but his delivery was that of a man who had long since lost any shred of self-doubt. A man who expected those he addressed to obey immediately, never to question him or to show anything but obsequiousness and sycophantism.

‘You are good and honest priests, and I know from your records and from the personal recommendations of the Superior General that you are dedicated to the notion of martyrdom,’ he began. ‘You came from England to be trained here and returned to your country, so that you may spread the Word of the One True Faith, act as missionaries and save souls.’

I hardly dared blink and could sense Sebastian’s fear too in the rigid set of his body. In the candlelight, the black eyes of the Spiritual Father of the College were fathomless pools.

‘A missionary’s cause is a noble one. You are aware, as we all are, that many worthy men have been lost fighting this good fight. If you are recognised upon your return to England, you will be arrested immediately as traitors and may well meet a traitor’s death. But I know you are not afraid of this prospect. Rather, you relish the thought of laying down your life in the Lord’s work.

‘But some of us have concluded we might do more for England; that we might do more, much more, to save the souls of your compatriots. Some here have concluded that too many good men have died as martyrs, pouring more blood into the hands of the English whore who sits illegally on the throne. And so, we have decided to remove the evil … at its source.’

And in that moment, I began to understand why we had been brought here. I quickly glanced at Sebastian, but did not catch his eye. Bellarmino was speaking again.

‘Your mission will be the most dangerous of any undertaken by the Order. From the moment you leave this building you will be spied upon, for enemies of the Church are everywhere. You will make for the tiny town of Créteil, a few miles south of Paris. You will find there a small tavern called Le Lapin Noir, close to the centre of the town. Seek out the landlord and tell him you are looking for Monsieur Gappair. Both the landlord and Gappair may be trusted. For the moment, you will assume the identity of English traders. We have prepared your papers and passports.’

He paused for a moment and fixed us both with those unreadable black eyes. ‘There is one more thing.’ He removed a small box from inside his robe and opened the lid. Inside lay a gold ring topped with a large, round emerald. ‘You will need this,’ he said, and handed it to me.