Blood of the Lamb (46 page)

“No!” she shouted. “If you run the air will feed the flames! Drop! Roll!”

She raced out the door, through the courtyard, and down the steps, wild with fear as she saw the flames engulf him. If she could only catch up to him she could stop him, wrap him in her arms, choke off the fire; but he’d always been able to outrun her.

92

Livia had run after Jonah Richter. Thomas should have followed. She might need his help to wrest the Concordat from Richter’s hands. But Thomas could barely stand, certainly couldn’t run.

And there was something else.

Staggering to his feet, Thomas crossed the chapel to where Lorenzo lay, his head at an odd angle but otherwise sprawled like a man relaxing in the sun.

“Lorenzo. Father!”

Lorenzo opened his eyes.

“Thank God!” Thomas breathed, fumbling for his phone. “I’m calling for help.”

“Thomas.” Lorenzo’s voice was faint. “Find the Magdalene.”

“What? No, don’t talk. Help will be here—”

“I can’t move,” Lorenzo whispered. “I can’t feel my arms, my legs. Thomas, let me go. But find the Magdalene.”

“What do you mean?”

“This isn’t all. The Church you love . . . the Concordat wouldn’t have . . . it would have been built anew. Stronger, purer. But it won’t . . . you must find . . . find . . .” Slowly, his eyes closed. His lips continued to move, though no sound reached Thomas.

“No. No, Father, please. Lorenzo!” But there was nothing more.

Thomas knelt motionless on the cold marble, trying to will Lorenzo to open his eyes, to speak. Finally, rousing himself, he looked around. Oil from the now-extinguished eternal flame dripped from the altar onto the floor. He stumbled over, dipped his fingers in it, muttered the prayer consecrating it to God’s holy purposes. Returning to Lorenzo’s side, he traced the sign of the cross on Lorenzo’s forehead, and began: “Through this holy unction and his own most tender mercy may God pardon thee . . .”

93

Livia stepped slowly into the chapel under the Tempietto to find Thomas praying over the body of Lorenzo Cossa. In her hand she held the lead tube; in her heart, the indelible sight of Jonah, at the bottom of the steep steps, on his knees as the fire consumed him. His arms were raised high, one hand a triumphal fist; the other, holding the tube, suddenly hurled it out of the flames with what must have been his last strength.

By the time she’d reached him, nothing could be done. He was charred, devoured, destroyed, turning to ash in the still-dancing flames. She’d stood, numb, watching the fire die down. She’d said his name, once; then, carefully, methodically, as though it were someone else doing it, turned away and searched until she found the lead tube. Clutching it to her, she started back up the hill.

In the chapel, she knelt beside Thomas. After a few moments he turned to look at her.

“I’m so sorry,” she said.

His eyes held a question that she answered with a shake of her head.

“I’m sorry, too,” he told her.

In the silence, she opened her arms for him. He moved into her embrace. In the dim chapel, they shared their sorrow.

94

Anna had watched Jorge twist and flail as he fell. His descent wasn’t long and he’d hit the ground hard. It didn’t matter. The fall was camouflage. As a Noantri the impact wouldn’t have killed him; but what she’d done would, whether he’d fallen or not. She’d seen it begin. As he lay on the asphalt, tiny drops of blood started to leak from his eyes. There would be more, and then from his mouth, nose, and ears. His skin would turn purple, as though he’d been bruised all over. His internal organs, too, would bleed. Anna had given him a great gift some decades ago. He’d been unworthy of it, and now she had taken it back.

She’d wanted to stay and watch, because although this was a process much discussed among the Noantri, very few had actually seen it. Fascinated as she was, though, she knew she’d better move on. Jorge’s body would be discovered soon, and it would be just as well if she weren’t around.

Where was she going? She hadn’t decided, but it would be far. What she’d said about finding Pietro and the priest was bold talk, and with time she knew she could, but right now she wasn’t in a position to look. So far the Conclave didn’t seem to know that she’d been trying to thwart their plans; been trying, in fact, to usurp their power. At this point, she judged them likely to win. That idiot Jorge had put her and her faction too far behind. She had no idea where to go to pick up the chase now. To stay in the game she’d have to regroup, and she had a feeling the clock was running out.

She could live with that. She could live with that, she thought with a smile, for a very long time. Her followers were determined that the Noantri should Unveil, and their numbers grew with each passing year. When Anna decided their strength was sufficient, she’d step forward and confront the Conclave directly. She wouldn’t need the lost Concordat for that.

Anna had cast one last glance at the dying Jorge, whose blood was by then seeping along the street to flow in little rivulets down the hill. She headed in the same direction, down, saying goodbye to La Sapienza, to comparative lit, and, with a sigh, to the Serb professor she’d had her eye on. And to Anna Jagiellon, she supposed, for a while. That was all right. It was a big world.

Trotting down the steps, she found herself wondering two things: Why the foul cologne, which had made him so much easier to find? And why, when Jorge’s bloody dying eyes met hers, had she read in them, not pain, not anger, but gratitude, and joy?

95

Thomas walked beside Livia in the silence under the trees. The winding way through the Orto Botanico led them down the hill far from the sirens and flashing lights. Leaving the Tempietto they found something had happened, something so big, one wide-eyed tourist told another, that the road down the Janiculum had been closed and they all had to stay up top. The six tourists on the overlook argued among themselves, agreeing the problem was clearly terrorism, debating only what kind: domestic, foreign, bombs, bio-agents. Livia had relayed all this to Thomas as she’d listened in, unnoticed, from the cloister.

“We can’t stay here,” he said. “How will we get down?”

“Don’t worry. Come.”

He followed as she turned and headed in the other direction, back around the cloister to the road along the top of the hill.

Thomas, dazed and bruised, moved slowly. Walking at all was an effort, but he found, for the first time today, it didn’t take any extra work to keep up with Livia. Her steps were as fatigued as his; she appeared also weary, also dispirited. The Noantri body, he’d learned, could restore itself, come back rapidly from almost any injury. The Noantri heart, it seemed, not so.

She’d led him to the gates of the Orto Botanico, Rome’s Botanical Garden. They’d been prepared to climb the fence in case the Orto had been shut down, but in typical Roman style, either the word that no one was to go up or down the Janiculum hadn’t reached the Orto, or more likely, it had been received with a shrug and was being ignored. They paid their entrance fee, hoping the young man in the booth wasn’t on the lookout for fugitives. As it turned out, he was not, being barely sentient enough to notice customers. They headed down the curving pathway where fallen leaves whispered underfoot. The tracery of branches revealed the fading autumn afternoon, as though the tree canopy had given up trying to hide the sky. The few blooms still to be seen had withered; even the bamboo grove was fading from green to yellow.

Whatever had happened on the road they’d have to learn later. They couldn’t afford to be seen by the
polizia
or Carabinieri; and they couldn’t afford to wait. Richter was gone beyond recognition, an unexplained blaze exhausted to a smoking mound of ashes on a flight of stone steps; but Lorenzo’s body would not lie in the chapel long without someone, sightseer or caretaker, stumbling upon it.

Lorenzo’s body. Lorenzo had lied to Thomas and used him, had betrayed his trust and had intended to betray the Church. But anger, indignation, resentment, even relief that Lorenzo’s plans had been thwarted—Thomas felt none of these. Instead, walking under empty branches, he searched himself, searched their fifteen years of friendship, for the failing. What in Thomas had made Lorenzo unwilling to trust him with this secret, unable to share his knowledge and his fears? They could have debated, talked, studied over it. They could have found another path. Why had it come to this?

96

Seated at the café in Piazza della Scala, Luigi Esposito had to admit to himself that he might be wrong. Wrong about Spencer George’s involvement in whatever was going on? No. The man was so clearly hiding something that Luigi suspected the uniformed
scemi
he’d been stuck with this morning could’ve seen it. But it was possible he was wrong about the value of a surveillance. It had been an hour since he left the interview with the historian and the man had not emerged. If nothing happened in the next hour or so, no one in or out, maybe the most useful thing Luigi could do would be to go back to the office and dig into George’s life. People peddling stolen art didn’t exist in vacuums. He’d find another path.

These were the thoughts running through his head when his cell phone rang. He didn’t need to check the screen; he’d thought it prudent to give the
soprintendente
his own ring tone.