Blood of the Lamb (11 page)

“I’m afraid I don’t. It’s across the Tiber from Rome proper and therefore through the centuries a neighborhood of noncitizens when only citizens were allowed to live within the city walls. It housed the Jewish ghetto until the ghetto was dissolved and has always been a magnet for people of many nationalities because of its proximity to the docks. It has a Bohemian reputation but has gentrified lately, with writers, galleries, cafés—you’re smiling again. I’ve gone beyond pedantic into pompous, haven’t I?”

“Just a little, around the edges. But you’re spot-on. Damiani lived there, and as it happens, so do I. It’s an extraordinary place. Though I suppose,” she added, “most people feel that way about their hometowns. You probably find Boston extraordinary.”

“Yes, I do.” Thomas thought it sweetly polite of her to be at pains not to rank her hometown above his own. Though he had yet to meet a Roman who didn’t consider everywhere else inferior to Rome. “It does seem a fascinating place. Trastevere,” he said. “Damiani obviously thought so, writing love poems to it. Is that what you meant by ‘interesting’—that he wrote love poems to buildings?”

“No.” She shook her head thoughtfully. “We actually have a tradition of that here. But look. You wouldn’t know this, but . . . These pages, there are forty or so poems here. Some are clearly in praise of what could be called major sites—important churches, statues, piazzas.”

“You can tell which they are?”

“A few. They’re unmistakable. Here—the martyr in the well has to be San Callisto.”

“Yes, I thought so, too.”

She glanced sideways with a smile. “Did you?” Then back to the book. “And here’s Fontana dell’Acqua Paola, and I think I see Porta Settimiana. But there are so many poems. Some seem to be about places that are relatively insignificant. And I think some major places are missing.”

“Well,” Thomas said, “a lover writing love poems—he might find praiseworthy what others consider insignificant.”

“Undeniably true.” She inclined her head. “Still, there are one or two churches, for example, that no lover of Trastevere would ignore. What I’m wondering is whether the missing pages were about those places.”

“They might have been. There’s no way to know, though.”

“I’m not so sure. I—” Livia Pietro snapped her head around. The solemn clerk who’d brought Thomas’s materials wheeled his cart past their table. Livia Pietro’s green eyes seemed for a moment to flash, another thing Thomas had thought eyes didn’t actually do. The clerk, paying no attention to them, crossed the room to collect books left by a researcher finished for the day. Livia Pietro watched him wordlessly, then turned back to Thomas. “If you look at how the—”

Stopping, she leapt to her feet. Before Thomas had quite registered that she was standing in front of him, he felt himself gripped from behind and flung onto the cold stone floor. The echoes of clattering chairs pinged around the room, mixing with shouts from affronted scholars and from Livia Pietro, who, in a flurry of complicated jacket and skirt, seemed to be struggling with the silent clerk over Damiani’s notebook. Thomas was briefly immobile in confusion—What was going on? Why had the clerk thrown him out of his chair? How had he come back across the room so fast?—but when a falling book thunked onto his forehead he unfroze and grabbed for the clerk’s ankle. All he got was trouser leg, so he yanked on that. Thrown off balance, the clerk tottered and fell but rolled to his feet again. He ignored Thomas, who was clumsily trying to free himself from books and furniture. The clerk and Livia Pietro faced each other. For a half second both stood as still as the marble statues that stared disapprovingly from niches along the walls.

Then movement: the clerk’s eyes, fixing on the notebook in Livia Pietro’s hand. He lunged. Thomas, halfway to his feet, body-blocked him with a South Boston street corner move. As the clerk crashed to the floor and a chair toppled onto him, something brushed by Thomas: the complicated jacket of Livia Pietro, who, shoulder bag and hat in one hand and notebook in the other, was racing across the marble floor.

Appalled, Thomas yelled, “Wait!” He was aghast at the sudden thought he’d gotten it wrong: Livia Pietro was stealing the notebook and the clerk had been trying to stop her. Thomas glanced down, saw the man trying to untangle himself from a heavy chair. No time to help: Pietro had turned a corner. In a hail of
“Silenzio!”
from the other researchers, Thomas sprinted after her.

12

Livia cracked the hidden door just enough to see Thomas Kelly race around the corner and skid to a bewildered stop a few yards past her in the bright, empty hall. A crash from the reading room announced the clerk was free of the chair; pounding footsteps said he was coming after them. If the Gendarmes weren’t also, they would be any moment. Livia cursed herself for a fool. Why hadn’t she been on her guard from the moment she became aware of the clerk? Of course a number of Noantri were in service at the Vatican—it only seemed prudent—but this was someone she didn’t know. That should have rung an alarm, but it hadn’t.

Or perhaps it had, but she’d been so intent on her mission and on Thomas Kelly’s discovery that she’d ignored it. The priest’s find, this notebook, could be crucial. She thought she’d seen a pattern to the places not written about, something Thomas Kelly wouldn’t have noticed because he didn’t know Trastevere. She might be wrong, or the pattern might be there but mean nothing. Until she was sure, however, she wasn’t giving the notebook up. Not to the priest, and especially not to a sticky-fingered fellow Noantri.

Briefly she considered leaving the priest behind. He’d only slow her, and what did he really have to offer? Well, she reflected, he did read Romanesco, possibly better than she. If she was right about the pattern of what was missing in the notebook, and if the poems that remained turned out to be important, another viewpoint on Damiani’s elliptical verse might come in handy. So, given the nature of the buildings, might an expert in Church history. Most importantly, the Conclave had told her to make use of, and keep an eye on, this priest. Obeying the Conclave in letter as well as spirit struck her as wise, right now.

Livia pushed the door open and showed herself.

“Father Kelly. Quickly! In here.” The priest spun in surprise. She held out the notebook. Kelly dashed toward her; she seized his arm and yanked him through the door, then slammed it shut.

“I— What—”

“Shh,” she commanded. “Come.” She grasped the priest’s arm and started towing him down the corridor. She knew he couldn’t see a thing. Her own eyes, much sharper than his, could barely tell floor from walls in the faint light seeping through the high openings. In the rooms on either side, those slits would be invisible, shadows in moldings near the ceiling. The door she’d just slammed, too, was imperceptible once shut. The Vatican was riddled with hidden passages and the Library was no exception. Most were built to allow servants to travel invisibly. Some had been created to facilitate other exchanges or escapes. Over many years, in the course of many legitimate research projects in various libraries, museums, and study centers around the world—her scholar’s credentials were impeccable—Livia had occasionally passed time wandering where she wasn’t supposed to be. Those explorations had yielded a number of doors and passages and occasionally led her to some interesting scholarship. Some secret doors, like the one to this passage, were never meant to be locked and gave easily once you’d found the hidden latch. Others required more finesse. To aid in her private research projects, Livia had acquired locksmith’s tools and the skills to use them, but she was glad not to be slowed down by the need for them now.

Of course, the clerk wouldn’t be slowed down, either. Even if he didn’t know about this passageway he’d find it. His heightened Noantri senses would lead him to her, by scent if all else failed. But she and the priest had a good head start. Livia’s hope was that by the time the clerk discovered the hidden latch, they’d be out the passage’s other end.

If, that was, Father Kelly could be persuaded to keep going. Shocked into silence by her sudden appearance and by her manhandling, apparently he’d now recovered. He tugged and twisted, trying to free himself or at least stop their progress. In the face of her strength he couldn’t do either, which added to his confusion and panic. He dug in his heels and shouted, “No! Wait! What’s going on?”

She stopped and turned, catching him gently so his momentum wouldn’t plow him into her. “I’ll explain,” she said. “But not here. Stay quiet. We need to get out.” She added, “I have Damiani’s notebook.”

“I know you do! You stole it! We’ve got to go back.”

“There’s no time. Come.” She started forward again, hauling him with her.

“Don’t pull! Let me go!”

Father Kelly sounded so surprised, so offended at her unexpected might, that Livia almost laughed. Normally, like most Noantri, Livia hid her Blessings—her strength, her agility—from the Unchanged, to avoid provoking exactly this unease. She released his arm. “You don’t have to come. You can stay here. Work your way back along that corridor. Or shout and they’ll find you. But I’m taking the notebook and if you don’t come, you won’t know why.”

“You can’t! It’s—” He stopped. When he spoke again his voice was calm. “You came here for that notebook. You’re not studying Damiani any more than I am. Who are you?”

“I’m an art historian, as I told you, and on the contrary, I’m studying Damiani exactly as much as you are. I didn’t know about the notebook, though I’m very glad you found it. But I didn’t come for it. I came for you.”

A pause. “What?”

“I need your help. And I can help you. We’re both after the same thing.”

He said nothing. His eyes were wide in the dark and she held them with her own though he probably couldn’t see it. “I’m searching for the same thing you are,” she said. “We have to find it, and more urgently than I think you know.”

“
We?
Are you—”

“Wait!” She touched a finger to his lips. He startled. She listened, spoke again. “He’s found the door. He could find the catch at any moment. Come, or stay.” The priest didn’t move. “Father Kelly. To find the Concordat, you must come with me.” She heard his sharp intake of breath.

“What do you know about the Concordat?”

“More than you. You’ve been told to find it and you’ve been told it’s dangerous, but you don’t know its contents, do you? I do.”

“All I know is that it’s a secret the Church guards closely.”

“You doubt me. You have that right. But I’m telling the truth.”

“Why are you looking for it?”

“Not now. Come.” Instead of seizing his arm again, she gently took his hand. He startled once more, but while he didn’t fold his fingers onto hers, he didn’t pull away, either. She waited, then gave a soft tug. After a moment he took a step toward her.

They made their way down the servants’ passage, Livia listening for the clerk’s progress. A tiny click—he’d found the latch. She sped up, as sure-footed as the priest was stumbling. Twice she had to keep him from falling, losing precious seconds each time. Without him she’d have eluded the clerk for sure, but now it was touch and go. The rhythm and minutely rising volume of the clerk’s steps behind them told her he’d shortened the distance, was quite close by the time she and Father Kelly emerged through another hidden door into a tiny anteroom. Kelly blinked in the sudden wash of light. Livia slipped on her sunglasses and fixed her hat. “Be casual,” she instructed, and stepped through a low archway into the Vatican Museum’s Galleria Clementina.

Thomas Kelly alternately beside and behind her, Livia wove through crowds of shuffling tourists, keeping up a hurried but informed commentary on the paintings, statuary, and artifacts they passed. She was a private tour guide steering a visiting priest through the treasures of the Galleria Clementina and then into the Museum of Pagan Antiquities, behind in their schedule but still focusing on the art as they rushed. No one seemed to notice them, not even the security guards strolling casually, protecting the art while not alarming the tourists. One of those officers was Noantri, a man Livia recognized. They exchanged the tiniest of nods. Could she count on him to stop the clerk if it came to that? She wasn’t sure; best not to chance it.

The clerk, of course, had found his way through the passage and was on their trail. He was two rooms behind them; Livia easily picked his footsteps out. Unlikely that he’d risk a confrontation in this crowd. He’d follow them, waiting for his chance. She heard him speed up as she and Thomas Kelly maneuvered through the crush of people and started circling down the bronze spiral staircase. As they reached the bottom, he took the first steps down. The same thick crowd that slowed them would hinder him, but still he’d be no more than a few seconds behind when they burst out into the bright, crowded piazza.

Burst they did, and as Livia feared, alarms began to shrill and clang when the notebook in her bag crossed the Vatican’s threshold. Cardinal Fariña’s parting gift, the new security system; she’d known it was a risk. Quick-walking beside her, Thomas Kelly blanched.

“Fifty people came out when we did.” She spoke low, keeping a merry smile, not looking at him or changing pace. “Forty-five of them look more suspicious than a middle-aged lady tour guide and a priest. Just stay with me.” Ignoring the alarms and the security guards now running through the crowd, she clasped Father Kelly’s arm again and took off striding past the gelato and torta carts.