Blood of the Lamb (25 page)

39

Jorge Ocampo was running like the wind. He shouldn’t, he knew. Anna said he must never let the Unchanged see the extent of his Noantri abilities. Their minds were small and they would get frightened; they would shun him, perhaps even attack him, if they felt him to be vastly different from themselves. She assured him they couldn’t harm him if they did attack: any pain would be transitory, and in the centuries since the Concordat the Unchanged had lost the understanding of the effects of fire. Still, she said, if Jorge were to arouse suspicion, he would become less valuable to her. That was an alarming thought, but still he sped around the corner at Vicolo del Piede until he reached his goal: the abandoned cinema. The startled gasps as he raced past (“
Madonna!
Did you see that guy?”) would reduce his value to Anna less, he was sure, than being identified as the man responsible for what had happened in Santa Maria della Scala.

The old theater sagged and creaked in the shade of the vines that colonized its flanks. That Vicolo del Piede was never busy was one of the reasons Jorge had chosen this place for his private hideaway. Even Anna didn’t know he came here. The street was empty now, as usual, no one to see him leap onto a sill and slip through a half-open window.

Immediately, as it always did, the still darkness of the derelict interior quieted Jorge’s heart. His Noantri eyes adjusted immediately to the low light that seeped through the few filthy, cracked windows, but even if they hadn’t that would have been all right; he knew every inch of this theater. No films had been shown at Il Pasquino for a decade, but as so often happened in Rome, though the building was now useless it had not been demolished. It had merely been abandoned, as those who’d loved it had moved on to something new.

Anna. He had to call Anna. What would he say? He had to tell her the truth, but he so dreaded her inevitable fury—Anna could detonate with an incendiary heat, just like an Argentinian girl—that though he forced himself to take out his cell phone, he couldn’t, for a moment, go further. He gripped the phone tightly and sat where he always did: third row, right side, on the aisle, the seat he’d taken every chance he’d had at any of the movie houses on Avenida Corrientes, back home. Before he’d gotten involved with his brothers of La Guerra Sucia, before he’d met Anna and become part of an even bigger revolutionary movement, Jorge’s happiest hours had been spent in the dark theaters of Buenos Aires. Even with the torn upholstery and the spiders and the musty smell, even with no film to watch on the ripped and mildewed screen, Jorge felt more at home in Il Pasquino than anywhere else in Rome.

Oh, how he wanted to go home. He yearned for the day when Anna’s plans were accomplished and they could fly off to Argentina, finally together, with only each other to think about. Anna would always be concerned with the welfare of the Noantri, of course, and he would always support her in her efforts on behalf of her people.
Their
people! How many times had she reprimanded him, reminded him that he was Noantri, too, now and forever? But once the last obstacle to Noantri rule had been removed, he and Anna would be free to change their priorities, to trade this necessary work of freedom fighting for the joy of each other’s arms.

And though he’d made a bad mistake today, Anna would know how to fix it. She’d give him new instructions, he’d carry them out faithfully, and her plans would not really be disrupted. They’d continue on their path to victory, and home.

Feeling much calmer now, he lifted his phone.

40

Anna Jagiellon threw her phone into her shoulder bag as though to dash it to pieces against the rocks inside. Of course there were no rocks and the phone nestled comfortably next to her makeup kit. She really shouldn’t be blaming the phone, anyway, just because that idiot simpering Argentinian was always on the other end. What a mistake he was. It had seemed like a good idea at the time, making Jorge Ocampo Noantri. He already followed her around like a puppy dog, the skinny premed student (premed, because Che had been a doctor: always one for hero worship, Jorge) enraptured by the fiery foreigner. Her Hungarian heritage, which she’d alternately hidden and revealed as she cycled through identities in the years she’d spent in Argentina, had been on full display at the university at the moment Juan Perón returned to power in 1973. They’d all been Communists, all the hottest boys and fiercest girls, out to change the world, and Anna was ever their most articulate organizer, their bravest leader. Oh, the slogans she’d written, the speeches she’d made! On the streets she’d marched and chanted and then, with the others—as though such things could harm her—fled from the tear gas and the bullets down backstreets and twisting alleys. In smoky rooms packed with eager, sweating young bodies, all leaning forward to hear her, to see her, she’d shown them the beauty of the world that could be, the world being kept from them by the rich and the powerful.

They were fools, of course, but that wasn’t their fault. The Unchanged, Anna had found, only grew into anything resembling wisdom as they neared their own deaths. Not that it was the approaching obliteration that brought about understanding. Quite the contrary, it was, simply, the years. Wisdom took decades to bloom, and most of the Unchanged were not allotted anything like sufficient time. That might be sad, but it was true. Anna’s fellow Party members, her comrade leaders and her wide-eyed followers, were fools because they were young.

•   •   •

Anna had also been young, many years ago, when John Zapolya ascended to the throne of Hungary and Anna was torn from the life that was rightfully hers. Silk and velvet, meat and wine and music, were replaced overnight by sackcloth and filth, coarse bread and foul water. Though she was her father’s natural, not legitimate, child, Anna was nevertheless the only remaining heir to the house of Jagiellon, and as such had, of course, to be exterminated. The golden-haired daughter of the soon-to-be extinguished royal line was thrown into a stinking cell where her wishes meant nothing and her degradation was complete.

Until what she thought was to be her final night on earth, with her execution scheduled for dawn. The priest had come to hear her confession in her last hours. Anna had refused to speak to him. They had been a devout family, hearing Mass daily in the palace chapel, taking Holy Communion. Her father was the patron of the monastery on the hill. That the God they’d worshipped with such certainty had allowed this carnage and desolation, and that one of his priests was now offering
Anna
forgiveness—no, no, the man should be on his knees, begging her for hers! She’d turned away stonily, and he’d crept out, and Anna waited in exhausted relief for the dawn and her release from this hell.

Near midnight—as on so many horrific nights before—the jangle of keys heralded a visit by a man intent on having his way with the once-virginal daughter of the dead king. By now long past numb, and intent on the longed-for dawn, Anna just stared at the wall as the man settled in the dirty straw beside her and said he was a friend, a former courtier of her father’s, and was here to help. He was lying, she was sure: all her father’s intimates had surely been put to death, or had fled. Why he said it, she didn’t know. Some of them did, the men who came into her cell. Some of them spoke to her as though to persuade her there was, somewhere, a reason she should not hate them for what they were about to do. She despised those men even more than the ones who silently and roughly threw her on the straw and took her as they wanted.

So she didn’t speak to this man, didn’t look at him, and when he came close she didn’t move. She’d learned to respond as little as she could; in the beginning she’d fought them, but they had always conquered her and her ineffectual struggles only inflamed their lust. Her sole power was in impassiveness and scorn.

The man took her chin gently in his hand, turned her head to face him. He looked into her eyes. She found herself strangely captivated, and was not sure if she could have moved in any case when finally he took her by her shoulders, laid her softly in the straw, and leaned over her. She felt his mouth on her throat, his soft lips, and then a searing, fiery pain engulfed her. It blazed through her as though she were plunging into boiling oil. She lost sight and hearing, could feel nothing but this agonizing Fire. She tried to scream but no sound came. Just when she thought she’d go mad from the pain it started to fade, and when she could see again, she found the man’s eyes still on hers. She found also that she could hear the newborn squeak of a baby mouse in its nest inside the walls, and she could smell the aroma of roast meat from the guard’s quarters across the courtyard.

He sat her up, this courtier, took her hands, and told her what he was. What she now was. Stunned and unbelieving, she took him for mad. He told her not to fear the dawn. He stroked her hair and, leaning forward again, kissed her. His mouth on hers awoke in her such a clamor of yearning, such vast, unknown pleasure, that it was almost pain again. She still hadn’t spoken when he stood and left, locking her cell behind him.

She sat immobile, staring where he’d gone, until they came for her at dawn. Her hands were bound behind her, her eyes blindfolded, and she was hanged, not with a sharp, merciful snap of the neck, but a slow, terrifying strangulation. She fought, kicking, writhing, but darkness flowed gradually in and she was gone. Her last thought was,
At least it’s over.

Until she awoke on silk sheets in a room filled with daylight glowing softly through lace curtains. The courtier sat beside her in a velvet chair. He smiled and she reached her hand to his.

•   •   •

Anna shook herself to bring her thoughts back to this world. Enough memories, enough time-wasting! Each phone call from Jorge brought worse news than the last. She could see no help for it now: she had to involve herself directly, or this golden chance might be lost. If the Church, or the Conclave, recovered the Concordat, another such opportunity could be centuries away. But Jorge was no longer a useful tool. He was a liability, calling attention to himself, and so potentially to her and their movement.

Jorge, the stupid fool, had killed a monk.

41

“Esposito? Come in here a minute.”

The
soprintendente
’s command came without urgency, as though it were a request; but the man never raised his voice. Some of Luigi Esposito’s fellow Gendarmes had the idea from his manner that their boss was fundamentally unconcerned, with his work, theirs, or anything else, that he was just marking time until he was pensioned off. As so many of them were. But Luigi had learned to read the
soprintendente
’s inflections and the look in his eyes. That’s why, though he was just a Naples street kid, he’d become a
vice assistente
when his fellows were still—and would always be—uniformed Gendarmes.

Luigi rose from his desk, where three windows open on his computer linked him to the websites of various law enforcement agencies specializing in art and antiquities theft. Educating himself about the ins and outs of this crime specialty seemed an obvious next step. Especially since he had no suspects to process, no interviews to conduct, and no actual physical evidence to examine.