The Fallen (17 page)

TWENTY SIX

T
HE
V
ATICAN
. V
ATICAN
C
ITY
.

Monsignor Benigni descended the dark spiral staircase into the bowels of the Vatican, his hands clasped loosely together across his ample middle. He walked with his head bowed, his fat lips pursed, his perspiring fleshy face etched with thought.

He had come this way into the halls and vaults beneath the Vatican many times, always preferring the quiet and the isolation this route offered to the busier thoroughfares elsewhere in Vatican City, with their wide sweeping staircases and opulent marble corridors. In these lowly passages, where natural light never reached and the cold stone of the floor had been
worn smooth with centuries of passing feet, there was little chance of meeting another coming the other way, less chance of questions being asked and private thoughts being interrupted.

There was a yawning black archway to the side of the spiral staircase, leading deeper still beneath the foundations of the Vatican. Only a select few, other than the librarians and scholars who worked within them, had ever gone beyond into those catacombs and silent halls, where the sum of all Catholic knowledge was assembled and stored.

The Vatican's libraries.

Without hesitation he plunged into the black, drawn deeper by flickering torchlight at the far end of the sloping corridor. Benigni reached the end of the narrow constricting passageway and turned right at the junction, walking with his right hand brushing against the brick wall, imagining the centuries of history scraping against his fingertips. The corridor descended, sloping down in a long arch, before arriving abruptly at a small room, book-lined and lit by lantern light, rows of narrow desks set out in uniform lines, studious Priests huddled behind each.

He ducked his head beneath the archway and slipped into another hall, its walls covered in papers and sheets of animal skin, maps of the world and strange illustrations from remote countries. He crossed the chamber, bowing to step through yet another archway. This time there was a flight of stairs leading immediately downwards from the exit, ready to catch the unwary, dropping into a tiny cell-like room that was empty save for a door in the opposite wall and a red-eyed, broad-skulled Priest sitting behind a tall narrow desk, his skin as white as alabaster.

“Monsignor Benigni,” he said, his face impassive, but with a light coming into his eye. “We have not seen you for many months. What brings you back to us?”

Benigni spoke without hesitation. “The three cardinal sins.”

The Priest paused, something resembling admiration playing at the corners on his mouth. “I see,” he said. A frown began to form on his face, a worried look, as if the resonance of what the thick-set man had asked for had begun to sink in. He pushed himself away from his desk, swivelling on his chair and padding slowly away from it. “You had better come with me,” he suggested, turning for a moment and watching the Monsignor follow him.

The Priest's lower lip had withered through years too long to remember to resemble a thin line of gristle, and his yellow teeth protruded prominently. In the dark of the vault, lit only by copper-coloured lanterns, he ran
his finger across the spines of the books and bound sheets of papers lining the shelves to his right, counting quietly as he went.

There was a smell of ink and linseed in the corridor, a rich golden light emanating across it, as if the vast room beyond was a giant hall filled with treasure. And it was filled with a treasure, the sum of all man's knowledge stored in a single vast room.

The Great Library.

“Three sins?” the librarian Priest repeated, turning from the main thoroughfare of the hall into a narrow side avenue, lined with the broad ends of shelves. “And what brings Monsignor Benigni to look upon such a topic? I thought it was the policy of the Sodalitium Pianum to reserve their investigations to those of modern indiscretions, rather than those identified since the coming of Man?”

Benigni raised an eyebrow, his piggy black eyes flashing. “And I thought it was the policy of the Great Library and its servants to refrain from enquiring as to visitors' topics of interest?” he asked, his tone perfectly balanced between wit and warning. “And anyway, surely all indiscretions sprout from the three sins?”

The Priest bowed his head in submission. “Very well,” he replied, before vanishing around the corner. Benigni took the opportunity to peer about himself and the hall in which he stood. The chamber was immense, a hundred feet tall, three hundred feet long, filled with innumerable broad wooden shelves reaching to the ceiling, serviced by tall ladders manoeuvred on giant wheels, running on metal tracks. The hall echoed with the quiet bustle of a thousand Priests, poring over the shelves, returning books piled on heavy carts or studiously turning over pages. He savoured the calm atmosphere, the smell of aged leather and paper, waiting patiently for the Priest's return. When he emerged he was carrying a great pile of books, up to his nose, over which he peered.

“This should help you with what you're looking for,” muttered the Priest, handing the stack of tomes over to the Monsignor's outstretched hands. “There's a desk just over there,” he said, pointing with a hand. Benigni nodded and turned towards it. “Just be warned,” said the Priest, his eyes narrowing. “Some subjects have teeth. And what's more, some bite.”

TWENTY SEVEN

T
HE
V
ATICAN
. V
ATICAN
C
ITY
.

Father Angelo Coronati bore his sermon notes like a gift he was bringing to a gathering, for that is exactly how he saw them, gifts for those who had come to hear him speak. He'd been told he had a keen skill with words, an ability to express clarity and resonance, to send his words rising and ringing among the congregation, to bring all who heard them solace and insight.

He slipped into the cool of the early morning Vatican air from a rear door of St Peter's Basilica, clutching his bundle of papers tight. He could hear the sound of distant choral music emanating from one of the churches in the city. For a moment he closed his eyes and bathed in its beauty, before making the ten steps across the grass of the Vatican lawn to the cobbled street in front of him, the winding road snaking its way through the gardens and between the chapels of the city. But Coronati did not need to follow it. The church of St Stephen of the Abyssinians, set back in the shadows of a towering fir, stood just across the road from where he approached. He cleared his throat and set his head low in a determined pose, his hard-soled shoes tapping against the stone cobbles.

He had led Mass in this particular church for nearly five years. He was proud to have done so, to lead a service to God in the oldest church in Vatican City. One could almost feel the years of faith and joy living within the building, like a heavenly embrace clothing all with its love and fervour.

In the shadow of the church's doorway, the white stone of its arch etched deep with the pattern of the Lamb and the Cross, Coronati raised a hand to the door and pushed, holding his sermon to his chest with a firm arm. Instantly he shivered against the brutal cold which greeted him from inside the thick-walled chapel, far colder than the cool of the dawn.

He drew the front doors wide, bustling beneath his robes in an attempt to tease some warmth into his chilled limbs. There was a candle-stand to the left of the entrance and he set down his sermon notes upon it, lighting a candle with shaking fingers, light radiating slowly into the room. Coronati couldn't help but feel that the air within the chapel seemed not only cold but oppressive too, as if the pitch of night had somehow remained inside the building. The joy so often keenly felt when stepping inside the building was no longer there.

The Priest picked up his sermon and walked deeper into the chapel, stopping to light more candles as he went. Slowly the church began to burgeon into life, the amber luminescence seeming to bring just a little more warmth to the building. But still Father Coronati shivered, the sermon tight to his chest. He reached the ambulatory and noticed how his breath ballooned in clouds before him, that his fingers ached with cold. It was a chill more reminiscent of a deeply buried prison cell than a place of worship.

He looked back to the church's open door eighty feet away, pale tendrils of dawn searching inside. Something troubled him, not just the sudden ice in the air. It was an unsettling sense of doubt. He wondered if he was ailing with a malady, the early signs of a fever perhaps? He placed his sermon on the lectern and put a hand to his forehead to feel for a temperature. An almost overwhelming sense of sorrow, agonising in its melancholy, suddenly took hold of him. He shuddered, clutching the edge of the stand for support, and felt the urge to weep, to cast aside all hope. A cry caught in his throat and he fought to keep hold of it in case it escaped as a moan. Such desolation and despair! He'd never felt anything like it before.

In final hope, he raised his heavy eyes to the fresco of Madonna and Child. After all, it always cheered his spirits to see it. But as he looked up he cried out, recoiling in horror. His hand reached out to the lectern to steady himself, but the shock of what he had seen was too terrible and he dragged it with him as he fell, casting the carefully ordered sheets of his sermon to the ground around him.

There was blood on the fresco, blood pouring from the eyes of the Madonna and her child, pouring from cruel wounds gouged deep into the paintings and the very stone of the church walls on which they had been painted.

TWENTY EIGHT

R
OME
. I
TALY
.

The passageway was too narrow and low for Georgi to pass through without having to hunch, his head and shoulders stooped as if in subservience.

At times his arms brushed the wood-panelled walls of the tilting corridor, the nun leading him through the winding labyrinth of the Trastevere Monastery minuscule before him, ancient beyond years. It seemed, if anything, that the corridor might swallow her.

“It's most unusual to accept a Priest here, particularly at such an hour,” she said, her voice thin and subdued.

“Apologies, Sister,” growled Georgi, checking the doors they passed to gauge whether the particular Sister he had come to visit had close neighbours. “I would not usually trouble you, but the Holy See insisted I speak to Sister Malpighi with utmost urgency.”

“Bad news from the Vatican?” asked the diminutive Sister, stopping before Malpighi's dark varnished door.

“Far worse than that, I fear,” replied Georgi, earnestly.

She knew the Priest had come to the right place. Only Sister Malpighi had the true vision to advise and direct on pressing matters, which could not be resolved by debate alone. The Sister nodded, accepting the Priest's reply and knowing it prudent not to enquire further. Sister Malpighi would resolve the situation. She always did, whenever trouble arose and the Holy See sent one of their Priests to speak to her, even one like this man, someone Sister Maltese had never seen before. Malpighi's visions were rarely wrong. Sister Maltese tapped twice on the door and instantly a tiny voice called back.

“Sister Maltese. You and my visitor may come in.”

Sister Maltese opened the door and stepped quietly inside, Georgi following her in, bowing beneath the door frame as he did so.

“My apologies, Sister Malpighi,” said Georgi, his hand to his chest. “I have been sent from the Holy See to have words with you regarding something of terrific importance.”

“Really?” replied the reverend Sister at the window tersely, her face growing more doubting with every passing moment. “Whatever is required, it does not demand Sister Maltese to be present. Sister Maltese, please leave.”

She spoke with such force that Maltese's hand gripped at the collar of her shirt, aghast at Sister Malpighi's manner. She'd never heard the Sister talk in such a way before, always thinking of Sister Malpighi as a polite and measured person in all she said and did. Sister Maltese bowed her head in quiet acceptance and backed away. Georgi watched her and closed the door behind her when she had gone, holding it shut with his hand.