The Religion (20 page)

"Are you hurt, my lady?" asked Tannhauser, as if, perhaps, she'd turned her ankle.

Carla shook her head. She looked at the coachman. She'd never seen a man recently killed. "Is that man dead?"

"Dead as a stone, my lady."

He paused, as if waiting for her to swoon or otherwise embarrass him. She felt no inclination toward the former and was determined to avoid the latter, yet could think of nothing useful she might say. She looked up at the star-spangled heavens.

"It's a beautiful evening," she ventured.

Tannhauser favored the sky with an educated glance. He slotted the pistol in his belt.

"Indeed," he agreed, as if she'd said something wholly pertinent. "Orion the Hunter is down and Scorpius has risen. The stars have judged in our favor." He looked at her. "But men, I'm afraid, will not." He nodded at the carriage. "Is the priest within?"

She nodded. "I'm afraid I know neither his name nor whom he serves."

"His name is Father Ambrosio and he serves the Inquisition." It seemed perfectly fair that he should know all this while she did not. "Is he armed?"

"Only with his faith."

"Then from eternity, at least, he has nothing to fear." He pointed to the far side of the carriage. "Yonder stands my horse-and my good companion-Buraq. He's mistrustful of strangers but let him take your measure and show no timidity-a warm word if you have one-and he'll let you mount him. Wait for me at the foot of the hill."

She realized that he intended to murder the priest, and in blood so cold she wondered it wasn't frozen in his veins. She looked at him and he forced a smile to reassure her, and she saw that he was a killer of the darkest
stripe, and that for all his broad intelligence and largeness of heart, there was a defect-a hole-in his conscience that was almost as wide. She wondered what had made the hole and how long it had been there. It saddened her, because the cause must have brought him great anguish, and the cost must have been so high that he had forgotten how much he had paid. She thought to object to the murder, but he was taking this stain on his soul for her advantage and she held her tongue. She'd offer no more false faces. She'd not insult the man with pious hypocrisy. She'd embrace the world in which she found herself so bloodily embroiled. She'd learn at last to be true to her inmost self.

"I wish to stay here with you," she said.

"I will join you shortly," he said. "There's no need to be afraid."

"I am not afraid. Though I know not how, this disaster is of my making. I will not hide from its consequences."

"Perhaps you don't understand," he said, "but I'm going to slay the priest."

A thud rocked the inside of the carriage and she turned to look. Ambrosio had fallen to his knees, his fingers knotted. His thin face beseeched her with a doleful supplication.

"He grovels for his life, as most do," Tannhauser said. "But if I spare him he will do us further harm, you may take my word."

She looked Tannhauser in the eye. "Do not delay on my part."

Tannhauser, both shocked and relieved by her phlegm, rubbed the back of his hand across his mouth. "You're sure."

She nodded. He stepped past her to the carriage doorway and studied the priest.

"These creatures are like rats. They come out only at night."

The priest cringed and Tannhauser struck his hat off with his palm.

"Who sent you on this base and unmanly errand?"

Ambrosio's mouth opened and closed. Tannhauser leaned in and clamped one hand to the tonsured crown of his skull. With a short stroke of the sword he docked the priest's ear. Carla flinched as Ambrosio uttered his first, pitiful response and rivulets black as brimstone poured down his neck. His eyes flicked toward hers with bewilderment and terror. No, she told herself, you will not look away. Tannhauser turned the priest's face toward his own.

"Answer me, dog."

Ambrosio heaved for breath. "Father Gonzaga, of the Congregation of Saint Peter Martyr."

"Good. What were your orders?"

"To convey the signora to the convent of the Holy Sepulchre at Santa Croce, to be retained there indefinitely for the good of her immortal soul."

"And what of Gonzaga's master, Ludovico?"

The name shocked Carla more than any of the singular events she'd so far endured. She'd not heard it uttered in thirteen years. She waited for Ambrosio's answer.

"I've not heard tell of His Eminence in months-since he went to Malta."

Tannhauser bent to the hole in Ambrosio's skull. "Now you must die. And know that if your God has indeed made a Heaven and a Hell, Lucifer will rub his hands as he watches you burn."

"Jesu!"

Tannhauser canted the sword steeply and drove it through the notch of his throat. Ambrosio emitted a bubbling gasp and his hand clawed at Tannhauser's back in a final embrace. Tannhauser shoved him to the carriage floor and cleaned his blade on the dead man's robes. The blood was tenacious and it was a moment before he was satisfied. While Carla stood and watched, as if from the window of a dark and stirring dream, Tannhauser reshaped the world like a bloodstained mason, tearing down one wall even as he threw up another. He sheathed his sword and drew a dagger.

"Where is your good companion?" he asked. "Amparo."

"At the villa. My abductors were unaware of her existence. I didn't enlighten them."

"Then you did right well."

She watched him cut the dead coachman from the traces and she stepped back as he hefted the corpse like a bale. He crammed it into the carriage on top of the priest and closed the door. He examined his goldstriped doublet as if for stains. His satisfaction in finding none was that of a man so practiced in butchery that the result was no more than he expected. He wiped his hands on his hams and stripped the breeching, crupper, and hip strap from the coach horse.

He said, "I've concluded from the conspiracy mounted against us that Ludovico is the father of your boy."

"I regret not telling you sooner. Perhaps you'd have avoided this calamity."

Tannhauser shook his head. "The die was already cast. When I got back from your villa, a pack of city constables sought to ensnare me."

He led the coach horse free and soothed it with words and caresses. He nodded toward his own mount by the roadside. As if to forestall the impression that his offer was mere gallantry, and thus a source of contention, he said, "Please, Buraq has carried me far today and will appreciate the lesser weight."

In the moonlight the animal appeared as white as milk.

"He looks as pure as an allegory of Virtue," she said.

Tannhauser said, "I'm sure he'd say the same of you if he could."

Leading the coach horse by its harness, Tannhauser steadied Buraq as Carla hiked up her skirts and mounted with ease. She saw Tannhauser take in her short leather boots, and his delectation aroused her. Buraq accepted her calmly and she felt at once his wonderful strength and poise. She thrilled to his beauty, his nobility, his smell. She thrilled to the stars and the night. She thrilled to the man who stood by her and studied her legs with such unabashed appreciation. Tannhauser handed her the coach horse's reins.

She collected her wits and said, "You say the constabulary waited?"

The smile that had lurked behind his eyes that afternoon reappeared. "The Messina police force will be understrength for a while." The ghost smile vanished and something cold fled through his spirit. "They killed young Gasparo, for standing tall in defense of Sabato Svi. They put Sabato Svi to the torture, because he is a Jew. Both men honored me with their friendship."

"I'm sorry," she said.

"When the powerful turn against us, we must act as the powerful act, which is in one's own interest, and without morality or mercy. We killed them like dogs and my conscience rests easy. So be assured: no one is left alive to speak your name in any of this-no one except Ludovico. But he will keep his peace, for his part in this debacle would shame him before those even mightier than he."

He took her arm at the wrist and squeezed. His fingers bit her bones, as if his intention was to rouse her from her dream.

"Ludovico has gone to Palermo, and thence to Rome. Go back to Amparo. The priest here never took you and of this butchery you saw naught.
Say nothing and no one will ask. Take Buraq, and care for him, and return to France, tomorrow, as if none of this took place."

Tannhauser's grip was painful. But he'd roused her from her dream in the moment she'd first seen him, with his face still damp with tears in the garden of roses. God had willed that she take this path and by this path He graced her. This was what she knew, here and now, with the great horse breathing between her thighs, and the stars on fire above, and the bite of a man's fingers on her flesh.

"I'm to Malta," said Tannhauser. "The stronghold of the Hounds of Hell. Starkey will have his way, after all. But I will find your boy, come what may. And I will bring him home safe to your arms."

Carla did not doubt him. Yet she said, "I'm coming with you. That was our bargain."

He considered her in silence, his eyes unreadable. He released his grip and turned and walked away. She watched him maneuver the carriage to the rim of the road. He pushed it over the edge and the carriage and its morbid cargo rolled away into the dark. He returned and mounted bareback on the coach horse.

"The red ship sails at midnight." Tannhauser glanced at the moon with an educated eye. "If we're to collect the girl, we must hurry."

"Amparo?" She'd been sure he wouldn't welcome the added burden.

"In an imbroglio such as this," he said, "a scryer and her vision are not to be scorned."

He wheeled and set off down the hill at reckless speed. Buraq followed of his own accord, as sure as he was fleet. Carla rose from the saddle and threw back her shoulders. The wind blew through her hair. She felt as if she'd grown wings.

Wednesday, May 16, 1565

Messina Harbor-The Couronne

The
Couronne
was half a mile offshore when the Oracle exploded. The ensuing fire was immense and the whole bay glimmered yellow with its light. Of the human chaos unleashed along the docks, all Bors could see were tiny, desperate figures etched against the flames.

As they plowed on into the darkness, the uproar of the waterfront was drowned by the creak of timber and cordage, by the dip and sweep of fifty-two huge oars, by the boom of the gong and the crack of whips and the jangle of shackles and chains. On the open rowing deck below, slaves chained five to a bench bent over the looms. They shat and pissed where they sat, on sheepskins still sodden with the filth of the day before. Bors crammed tobacco up his nostrils and leaned against the rail. The Oracle was dead, but life was good. The distant, desperate figures were in their world, and he was content to be in his.

Mattias had arrived at the wharf just as Giovanni Castrucco and Oliver Starkey seemed about to come to blows over how much longer they could wait. Bors, reluctant to waste more powder than was needed when it could be used to kill the heathen, had freighted eight of the dozen quintals left in the warehouse to the
Couronne
, along with their war chests, harness, and supplies, and the muskets of the vanquished constabulary. Mattias, by contrast, hove up on a bareback horse, encumbered by two women and a collection of musical instruments, like a covey of troubadours who'd lost their way and found themselves bound for Perdition. For a man who'd slain two priests and three officers of the crown, Mattias conducted himself with admirable poise, and in herding his brace of femmes and his golden stallion past the eyes of the astonished knights had even exhibited a charming congeniality. But Mattias was nothing if not a firm hand in a pinch.

Mattias stood now up on the quarterdeck, conversing with the famous Italian captain and the Lieutenant Turcopolier as if for all the world he were their equal and not, as was now the case, the most wanted man in Sicily, if not the empire. Bors grinned. The man was a marvel. And look at the expression on his face, as if he were as perplexed by the waterfront inferno as were they. It was no surprise to Bors that the Grand Master wanted him for the fight. But the old pirate would get double value, for when it came to slaughter Bors could show these fighting monks a trick or two himself.

The women that Mattias had taken under his wing? Only God knew what further trouble they would bring. They stood beside Bors at the gunwale of the
rambardes
watching the shore, the contessa and the wild-eyed girl. He'd given each a half a lemon with which to combat the stench of the slaves and they wafted the fruit beneath their noses with a dainty air.
The contessa kept looking at Mattias on the bridge. Bors could see that all her hopes-and who knew what dreams?- were now firmly invested in his friend, and a woman's hopes and dreams were as heavy as any burden known to man, especially when going to war. The girl beside her took no interest in the ship and its malodorous hurly-burly, but stared at the flames, the only thing still visible on the dark and distant shore, as if they exerted an enchanting force, as if she could see something in them that others could not. The women would make life more hazardous. Decisions would be blurred. Love would poison the well and whoever drank from it. But Bors's sacred vocation was to watch Mattias's back, and watch he would.