The Fallen (13 page)

“Because those who have since become our spies told them.”

Sandrine drained her glass and cleared her throat.

Henry leant forward into the light from the candle and rested his hand on Isabella's in an attempt to lessen the horror etched into her face. “We are not alone,” he assured her. “There are others who fight with us, both outside and inside the Church.”

“Wolves?” asked Isabella incredulously. “Hombre Lobo? Do they fight for you as well?”

“Those that will,” nodded Henry. “And Inquisitors too.”

“Enemies, now allies?”

“Of sorts,” said Sandrine.

“One being Inquisitor Cincenzo.”

“Precisely.”

“He was working with us, at least until he was found out and killed.”

“Tacit,” said Sandrine.

“What about him?” asked Isabella, suddenly protective at hearing his name mentioned in such a dark conversation.

“You said Inquisitor Cincenzo said his name as he died. Why?”

Isabella shrugged, overwhelmed by the question and the confusion of her mind. “I don't know. I don't know anything. Only that I know Tacit, what he is capable of.”

“I know too,” growled Sandrine. “The ruination of our plans in Paris was because of him.”

“And I was to blame too,” countered Isabella, feeling a strength renew within her, “and yet you are talking to me, telling me all you know.”

“So the question is,” Henry mused, picking up the Inquisitor's brooch from the table and turning it in his fingers, “just what was it about Tacit that was so important to Cincenzo that he spoke his name before he died?”

Isabella hesitated, feeling her stomach lurch. “We need to break him out.”

“Why?”

“You said you needed help. Perhaps Tacit is the one who can? Maybe he's the only one who can?”

“Where is he now?”

“In Toulouse Inquisitional Prison.”

“Impossible,” replied Henry, shaking his head.

“Why?”

“We have no one there on the inside who can help us.”

But Isabella paused, putting her hand to her lips. “Perhaps the one who can help us is not at the prison.”

Sandrine sat on the table's edge, leaning a well-toned arm on her raised knee. Candlelight caught once more in her olive-skinned face, turning her features demonic and sly, but her tone was calm. “What do you mean?”

“You talk about us being not many, just a few,” the Sister said, taking up the bottle and refilling her glass. She raised the strong liquor to her lips. “Perhaps then we need someone else to join us. Someone to even up the odds.”

“Can we trust this person?” asked Henry, turning briefly to look at Sandrine doubtfully.

“Probably not, no,” replied Isabella. “But there's no one better connected I know of who can help. And he cares for Tacit. Maybe he's the only other person left in the world who does.”

NINETEEN

P
ARIS
. F
RANCE
.

The white sheets of the bed were spattered red with blood, as the woman arched her back screaming, pushing against the infant in her belly.

“Maria!” cried her husband, clutching her hand tight so his own turned white.

“She is fine!” exclaimed the old nurse, shooing him from the bedside in order to examine her from the foot of it. “She is giving birth. That is all. We women have done so for a hundred thousand years. And we shall continue to do for another hundred thousand, if the Lord preserves,” she continued, peering across to the Priest in the shadows of the room and then up at the crucifix nailed to the wall above the bed.

“He shall, and he will,” replied the Priest assuredly, his hand to his heart,
and the nurse smiled back, before wiping the sweat from her brow with her sleeve and refocusing her attention on delivering the child.

“Now go and get some more hot water, Duilio!” she said. “And towels!” she called after him, as he fled from his wife's screams to the kitchen beyond, where he had already stoked a roaring fire in the hearth at the centre of the room. He found that the pan on top of the grille over the fire had boiled dry and at once refilled it from the jug on the side, the water sizzling and steaming into his face as it touched the scorching metal.

Without a moment's hesitation, he ran back to the room, pushing past the Priest and grasping his wife's hand again.

“It is a miracle,” Duilio said, tears growing in his eyes as he looked down at her struggle. “For years my wife and I, we tried for a child. And for years our Father did not answer our prayers. And then, when we felt that our time was over and that I would never have an heir, he rewards us!”

Maria's screams gathered to a crescendo and both Duilio and the Priest gathered round to the nurse as she called, “The baby! The baby is coming! I can see its head!”

“Push, Maria! Push!” urged Duilio, her hand back in his, his eyes fixed on the nurse's studious face between her knees. “Let us see our child with our own eyes!”

Suddenly the old nurse's face changed, turning from wonderment to horror.

“What is it?” asked Duilio urgently, as Maria's screams faded and the nurse's took over to shake the foundations of the tiny house. “What's wrong?”

“What is it?” Maria now asked weakly, feeling no more pain but instead seeing the concern on her husband's face.

“What is wrong?” Duilio asked again, but the nurse didn't answer, instead throwing herself away from the bed, the backs of her bloodied hands to her face, covering her eyes from the thing she had pulled from the woman.

As if by a hook, Duilio was dragged to look and now he cried out to see the thing on the bed, his hands clutched tight to the sides of his head, tearing wildly at his hair.

“What's wrong?” wept Maria, but Duilio never heard her, his ears filled with his own screams.

The infant resembled a grotesque demon, a thing found in fairy tales, rather than a human child: clawed hands, teeth sharpened to points, cat's eyes flashing wildly in its head, hooves where its feet should have been, a barbed tail lying bloodied and limp between its buttocks. Slick with gore, it stared up at its father and skewered him with a hateful glare.

The air was full of his and the nurse's shrieking, joined with the beseeching chants of the Priest, fighting against the baleful curses of the devilish thing writhing pathetically on the bed.

At once Duilio lurched forward, grasping hold of it, taking it by the ankles as it bit and scratched at his hand. Without thought, he ran to the flames of the kitchen fire and cast the demented thing into the middle of them, his head buried in his hands, weeping uncontrollably, as the flames burnt the creature's mottled flesh and the venomous cries from its foul craw faded to silence.

TWENTY

T
HE
V
ATICAN
. R
OME
.

For a moment Father Strettavario thought it was snowing in July when he caught sight of flakes of grey falling outside his residence window. He peered through the glass, his pale eyes shining with wonder, before he realised that something was burning in the city beyond the Vatican's walls. The air was full of ashes, rising up on hot thermals from a plume of flailing smoke within Rome and cascading down like a snowstorm upon the Vatican. He opened the window and leaned out. The faint smell of smouldering hay and wood mixed with the spiced scent of incense and lavender coming up from the Vatican's streets produced an intoxicating mix.

The old Priest rested for a while at the window, the billowing smoke and ashes reminding him of heretics burning in the Riga many decades ago, the stench of burning flesh, the flash of heat, the snatched cries moments before the flames consumed the victims' bodies and breath and condemned souls. The memories brought the hint of a quiet satisfaction to his wrinkled paunchy face. He'd led a hard life, a dedicated life, doing one's best, all one was able to do. Yet now, in the twilight of his years, something he'd never felt before, something he'd never expected to find within him, had begun to take seed. Doubt. Doubt about his work, his life, his faith.

Things had changed, within him and also about him. The change had come recently and had come fast, over the last few months. It seemed
to Strettavario that the rhetoric of some things within the Church had changed, proclamations hardened, ambitions broadened, intentions darkened. Doors to meetings once held open were now closed. Information shared among the parties was now covert and distributed only to closed groups. No longer was the talk of containment and tolerance. Talk was now of cleansing and preparing. Of torturing fallen Inquisitors and lapsed Priests, rather than trying to redeem them. Of disposing of broken things, rather than trying to fix them.

Why attitudes had hardened and fears had begun to manifest within the Vatican, Strettavario could only guess. But after hearing the news that the Eagle Fountain in the grounds of the Vatican was running red with blood, he feared he had more than an inkling of what was to come.

The squat old Priest looked up into the heavens, watching the ashes fall on the city below. He imagined each to be a spirit, spinning and turning like the souls of the departed, darting and falling among the rooftops and ridged towers of the Vatican's skyline. He watched as many as he was able, as if it were a game, his eyes trying to focus on each passing ash as it fell to the ground below. And then he felt the hard point of a blunt object nestle between his ribs and he froze, staring straight ahead and watching no more ashes fall.

He'd been around and handled enough firearms in his time to know the make of many weapons by the touch of barrel alone. His mind teemed with a thousand possible suspects, names and motives as to who might have ambushed him in his residence. Was this to be his end, a bullet in his back as, like a child, he'd watched the ashes fly? He wondered if he was too old to deflect the weapon and his attacker too naive to fire before he moved. He knew the names of living Inquisitors who could escape from such a predicament, if the gun was pressed to their ribs, but he knew that he himself was too old and too slow to try.

“If you want me dead, shoot me and throw me out of the window,” he said, quite calmly, as if advising his assailant as to the best next move. “The impact from the fall should crush the wound and hide the bullet.”

“Why would I want you dead, Father Strettavario?” replied a voice in stilted Italian, and Henry eased the gun from the Priest's back, his finger remaining tight to the trigger in case the Priest tried anything foolish.

“Why indeed?” Strettavario replied, allowing a little air back into his lungs. He turned slowly to face his assailant, his hands raised to show he was helpless. But having turned to face his opponent, the old Priest now knew he possessed enough in his limited fighting capability to disarm and
incapacitate the young man who had dared to break into his private quarters. He smiled and his pulse slowed. “And what can I do for you, Englishman?” he asked, in English, detecting Henry's accent. “A long way from home, aren't we?” Strettavario's eyes dropped to the curvature of Henry's chin, the indentation and muscular build of his neck, his broad shoulders, his tanned complexion, and suspected at once British infantry. “Or the western front? I thought Britain and Italy fought on the same side?”

“We do,” replied Henry, a wry smile on his face, “but Vatican City remains neutral.”

“Apparently,” replied the Father.

“And Sister Isabella requires your assistance.”

The Priest's face hardened at the mention of her name. He laughed, a cold controlled laugh. “And how does someone like you, an English deserter, come to know of Sister Isabella?”

“It doesn't matter how. Not at the moment. Sister Isabella has told me you're just the man we require.”

“And why would she suggest that?” Strettavario said, his milk-white eyes intent on the soldier.

Henry shrugged and considered lowering the gun. It seemed to him that there was something rather pathetic about the old man, the stooped curvature of his back, his eyes which seemed half-blind. He played the grip of the revolver gently in his hand and said, “She said you were well connected, that you could be of use getting a message to someone?”