Blood of the Lamb (42 page)

E P O R P

The last! No new poem, no next church to go to. They had it all, now—the entire puzzle. This final piece would lead them to the Concordat. Heart pounding, Livia knelt beside Thomas.
“Pro,”
she said, reading backwards as they had learned to do. “If that’s the first word, and the
p e
goes with what we already had, the word before it is
Petro.
” She looked up to see the dismay she suddenly felt echoed on Thomas’s face.

“‘For Peter’?” he said. “‘For Peter Bramante made it’?”

Livia sat back on her heels. “Saint Peter’s? He hid the Concordat in Saint Peter’s?”

For some moments they sat in silence. Saint Peter’s, the Vatican church, was Donato Bramante’s grandest work. A huge basilica where the Popes themselves worshipped, it held side chapels, underground rooms and tombs, hundreds of statues, plaques, paintings, gold and silver and precious woods, multiple levels, even tiers to its giant dome. How would you search Saint Peter’s? Where would you begin?

“That would be so like Damiani, wouldn’t it?” Livia asked rhetorically. “Once he got it out of the Vatican Library he didn’t take it anywhere. Just around the corner. To Saint Peter’s. But where?”

Thomas made no answer, just shook his head.

“Maybe when we get there,” she said. “Maybe something will jump out at us.”

Thomas looked as unconvinced as she was, but what else could they do? She stood. He didn’t, though. Still crouched beside the sculpture, he said, “He wrote it backwards.” Frowning at the floor, which she was sure he wasn’t seeing, he asked, “Why did he write it backwards?”

“As extra insurance? If you didn’t have the whole thing—”

“You need the whole thing no matter what direction it goes in.”

She said nothing, to give him space to follow his thought. He took a pencil from his back pocket, then searched in vain for a piece of paper. Wordlessly, she slipped Damiani’s notebook from her shoulder bag and offered it to him.

He didn’t reach for it. “Write in that? I can’t.”

“Damiani would’ve wanted us to.”

“But it’s from the Vatican Library.”

“The Bernini,” she said, “Santa Teresa’s relic box. Saint George’s.”

He met her eyes, sighed, took the notebook, and opened it to a blank page. He tapped the pencil on it a few times, then wrote:

P R O P E T R O B R A M A N T E E A M AE D I F I C A V I T

He stared at the line of letters, then separated them into the words they made:

PRO PETRO BRAMANTE EAM AEDIFICAVIT

“Was he telling us to rearrange the words? Once we have it all, to run it backwards? But it’s Latin. Word order doesn’t matter.” He did it anyway.

AEDIFICAVIT EAM BRAMANTE PETRO PRO

“Or, each word backwards? No. That just gives us Latin gibberish.”

Livia realized he was talking as much to himself as to her.

“But he did do it backwards,” Thomas went on. “There must be a reason.”

Livia withdrew the poems themselves from the zippered pocket of the bag and spread them on the floor in front of the statue. Well, if anyone could help with understanding poems, it would be Santa Cecilia. She read the poems over, taking in the lettered additions. Then she stopped reading, and just looked. Slowly, she said, “If you see it purely as pattern, each line is just below the bottom line of its poem, and the same width.”

Thomas turned to her, to the poems, back to her. “As pattern?”

“As graphics. Not meaning.”

“All right,” he said. “Go on.”

“I don’t know. But some are stretched out, some are squished up. To me that implies each line’s supposed to be kept as a block.” She gathered the poems and lapped them over one another, then covered the words of the first poem with her hand. Now only the letters were visible.

T I V A C

I F I D E

A M A E E

T N A M A

R B O R T

E P O R P

“Maybe,” she said, “some other kind of acrostic? The first letter of each line, or the second, or from one corner to another . . .” She trailed off, seeing nothing at all.

Thomas also stared at the letters, absently tapping his pencil on the marble floor. Beyond its rhythmic sound, Livia’s Noantri senses heard a rustle of wind in the courtyard trees, saw the tiny change in the shadows as the votive flames danced. The spices in the faint incense brought her an odd comfort, a connection to distant lands, other times. She realized that, as much time as she’d spent here with Maderno’s sculpture, she had never focused on the other works in this church. Maybe, after all this was concluded, once they found the Concordat and her world, so recently upended, was set right again— Upended. Set right.
“Thomas!”
The pencil-tapping abruptly stopped. “It’s not backwards. It’s upside down!”

He stared.

She said, “‘For Peter Bramante it made.’ Upside down. For Peter, upside down!”

He leapt to his feet and hugged her.

80

Jorge had been right.

He didn’t take the time to pat himself on the back, though. As a disciplined guerilla fighter, he shrugged off his satisfaction, not letting it interfere with his strategy. He’d followed Pietro’s scent along Via di San Michele to Santa Cecilia and arrived at the perfect moment. He was pondering how to make his incursion—he wasn’t afraid of churches, of course not, no matter how many, and how dangerous, the obstacles the opposition had thrown into his course already today—when the
professoressa
and the priest came flying out. It was pitiable to watch the priest try to keep up with her, even more pathetic to watch such a graceful and talented Noantri holding herself back for the convenience of a Mortal. Not that any of that mattered. Jorge’s path was clear. Now that they were on the street he’d just trail them to someplace uncrowded, pounce, and wrest the notebook from her. He took off, staying a safe distance behind, ready to drop back if she seemed to be aware of him, or speed up if they turned.

Which they did, left on Via dei Genovesi and left again on Viale di Trastevere. The route they chose, avoiding broad piazzas and skulking in shadows, underlined to Jorge that they were up to no good. That, plus the shamefaced, embarrassed air about them both—the priest more than Pietro, but both—as they exited the church, the way they barely looked at each other and took obvious care not to touch. Jorge didn’t know the nature of their wrongdoing and he didn’t care: Anna would know, Anna would explain to him what all this was about once, in glowing triumph, he handed her the notebook. He wondered where Anna was, whether she was mad he hadn’t waited at the theater, but he decided she must not be because she hadn’t called. She probably knew he’d seized the initiative, taken the opportunity to continue his mission. She had faith in him; she was waiting.

Pietro and the priest rushed through the piazza in front of Santa Maria in Trastevere, keeping to the far side of the fountain from the church, she with her hat pulled down, he pretending to shade his eyes but clearly just hiding his face with his hand. Jorge followed as they worked their way to Vicolo della Frusta and then started on the steps up the Janiculum. He gave them a head start and then trotted up the steps himself. They must be going this way to avoid the road, where they’d be more likely to be seen. Probably, since whatever they were doing involved churches, they were making for San Pietro in Montorio, but a good agent would never assume such a thing. Jorge would catch up with them closer to the top; for now, better to hang back. He let some people pass him. Mortals, they were, huffing and puffing on the steps: a French-speaking couple holding hands, three teenage boys in soccer uniforms (How long had it been since Jorge himself had kicked a ball around? he suddenly wondered), and a thin, hatchet-faced older man who’d find himself able to breathe better, Jorge decided, if he threw away his cigar. Focusing on his task, Jorge realized he must really be spooked, because even though they’d left San Francesco a Ripa far behind, he couldn’t get over the sense that that blond Noantri was nearby. Well, continuing in the face of fear was the mark of heroism. Not that Jorge was afraid. Far from it. His hanging back on the steps was strategic. He could do that because there wasn’t much chance that his quarry would escape him. Actually, there was no chance. Finally, on the Janiculum Hill, Jorge would get what he’d been hoping for.

81

Spencer George, having seen the young Gendarme to the door and pressed his hand in perhaps a more fond farewell than their short acquaintance called for, had been settled in his easy chair deep in thought when Livia’s call came. After speaking with her, he’d spent some more time the same way, unmoving, eyes focused on nothing. Now he stood, walked slowly about his house, looking at this and that, contemplating an etching or a bit of silver. Finally he returned to his study. He rang for coffee, and when it had come and he had enjoyed it, he took out his cell phone and made a call.

“Salve,”
came the voice at the other end of the line.

“Salve. Sum Spencer George.
Quid aegis?”

“Hic nobis omnibus bene est. Quomodo auxilium vobis dare possumus?”
All is well here,
came the response.
How may we be of service?

82

Trotting up the last of the steep steps to the courtyard above, Livia slowed. Not that she’d been running at any speed, not for her: she’d had to hold herself back to make sure Thomas stayed with her. For an Unchanged—especially a bookish priest—he had impressive stamina and speed; still, a part of her wanted to race ahead and let him catch up when he could. He knew where they were going, after all. But that would be unfair. It might even make him think she was planning to abscond with the Concordat and leave him empty-handed. She didn’t want to worry him, and this discovery was as much his as hers.

What she was, in fact, planning to do with the Concordat when they found it, Livia wasn’t sure. Thomas was desperate to hand it over to the Noantri who’d abducted his friend the Cardinal. She needed to take it to the Conclave to obey her instructions—and to save Jonah. Incompatible goals, and though her Noantri strength would give her an easy victory if it came to a wrestling match, the thought of that, after this past day, left her decidedly queasy.

Well, they didn’t have it yet. That was a bridge they’d have to cross later. She wondered if Thomas was thinking about that moment, too.

She stopped to wait for him. He jogged up beside her, then leaned over for a moment, hands on knees, catching his breath. He straightened, but didn’t speak. Together, wordlessly, they started toward their goal.

Saint Peter’s, a mile away at the opposite end of the same long ridge where they were standing, was indisputably Donato Bramante’s most magnificent and monumental building. But this one before them now, this tiny chapel, this Tempietto, was arguably his best.