Blood of the Lamb (48 page)

“There is no reason for you to leave Rome,” the Pontifex said. “Or to Cloak.”

“The Carabinieri have been looking for us since Father Battista died in Santa Maria della Scala. Spencer told me that. And surely someone will have seen us near the Tempietto. We’re suspects and, at this point, fugitives.”

“At the moment, yes. But you have a very good friend in Spencer George. He contacted us a few hours ago, with a clever proposal. Arrangements have already been made.”

“Arrangements, Lord?”

The Pontifex looked to the woman on his right.

“The Carabinieri and the Gendarmerie are in fact looking for you,” she said, “though their theories about the basis of your involvement keep changing.” In her dry voice Thomas heard her disdain for the quotidian forces of the law. “What they are sure of is the existence of an international ring of art thieves. Spencer George has elected himself head of this cabal. When his home is searched, as it will soon be, many valuable items belonging to the Vatican will be found. They’re being selected as we speak, from the office of the Cardinal Librarian, and will be scattered about. They will include this notebook. Certain other treasures will also be found, which will be traced back to other collections. On those items the provenance marks are recent and false, provided by Spencer George himself. Evidence planted in certain places will make it clear that you, Livia, were aiding Father Kelly in a search, instigated by Cardinal Cossa, to find the leader of this criminal organization, and to do it with utmost discretion, in order that the Vatican not be embarrassed by the ease with which its collections have apparently been raided. The Holy See, realizing you were both in service to the Cardinal, will intervene with the Carabinieri on your behalf.”

“I . . .”

Livia seemed no more able to take all this in than Thomas was himself. The woman continued.

“Ellen Bird, if she’s noticed at all, will be considered an ally of yours and therefore of the Vatican’s. The unfortunate death of Father Battista will be ascribed—correctly, I think?—to Jorge Ocampo, now dead himself, and a member of this ring of thieves, though his murderous behavior will most likely be attributed not to the requirements of larceny but to a mental instability brought about by the infectious fever that killed him. Cardinal Cossa”—she gave Thomas a brief, piercing look—“will be thought to have been slain in a confrontation with these thieves. Whose leader, by the time this has all been worked out—the Carabinieri and Gendarmerie detectives involved in the case being temporarily indisposed—will be found to have fled the country.”

“Leader?” Livia asked. “Spencer? Fled the country?”

“He’ll be traceable for a time, to give the authorities something to do. His ultimate plan, once he’s finally disappeared, is to spend some years in America.”

“Spencer?” Livia repeated. “America?”

“He expressed a desire to see the New World.”

“The New . . .” A pause. “Yes, I see. And his collection?”

“The most valuable pieces—valuable to the Noantri, I mean—will be found to have unassailable provenance. They, and his home, will turn out to be not strictly Dr. George’s possessions, but actually those of a distant cousin in Wales. This cousin will continue to pay the taxes and costs of upkeep on the home and will visit occasionally. A number of years hence he will, I believe, retire to Italy.”

She settled back in her chair with a satisfied huff. The Pontifex spoke. “You have, as I said, a very good friend in Spencer George.” With a small smile, he added, “As does the Gendarme detective. Apparently the entire idea of an art-theft ring was his. Dr. George feels he’s wasted on the Gendarmerie and has requested that, in return for Dr. George’s participation in this scheme, we arrange for the young man to be reassigned—transferred to the Carabinieri. If, of course, he’s willing to go.”

“I see,” said Livia again. “So, I may just . . . go home?”

“You may, but I wouldn’t suggest that you do, just yet. You and Father Kelly will be cleared of all suspicion shortly, but not until the various detectives become available, sometime tomorrow. Until then your house is being watched by officers who have instructions to bring you in for questioning. I assume you’d rather avoid that eventuality?”

“Very much so, Lord.”

“Well, then. As I’m sure you know, we maintain a number of residences throughout Rome for the convenience of visitors. May we offer you both our hospitality this evening?”

100

In fitful sleep that night, Livia was haunted by shadowy, oppressive dreams; between them, lying awake, by the image of Jonah engulfed in fire. Arising with the sun, she showered, then chose gray slacks and a soft blue sweater from among the items they’d been told would be waiting at the spacious apartment on Via Giulia for their use. “You both look rather the worse for wear,” had been Rosa Cartelli’s assessment.

Livia made her way into the kitchen. She and Thomas had been met the night before by a friendly young Noantri—though, from his manner of speech, Elder to her, Livia thought—who had shown them their rooms and served a light supper of
pasta al limone
before retiring discreetly to his own apartment across the hall. Now, at this early hour, she expected to be alone; but she found Thomas already at the table in the bright room. He was drinking a cappuccino, and grounds in the sink indicated it wasn’t his first.

“Good morning,” Livia said, smiling softly. “How are you doing?”

She could see he’d also had a shower; his wet hair was neatly combed and parted. The purple bruises from Jonah’s hands were visible above the collar of a new sweatshirt, plain and black. He considered her question as though it were complex and arcane. At last he said, “I’m not the same man I was yesterday, that’s for sure.”

“I hope,” she said, “that I like this man as well as I liked that one. Do you want more coffee?”

At his nod, she opened a ceramic canister and spooned coffee into the
moka
pot. She put it on the stove and unwrapped the blue and white paper around the
cornetti
that sat in a bowl in the center of the table. In a small pitcher she steamed milk and drizzled it into their coffee cups. Bringing the coffee to the table, she sat down across from him. “Were you able to sleep?”

“Not really.”

“I’m not surprised. It will be a long time, for both of us, I think.”

He nodded, reached for a
cornetto
. He ate; she leaned back in her chair and sipped her coffee, looking beyond him to the window and the glorious blue sky. In this quiet moment, in this bright, airy place her people maintained to shelter their own, she began to feel, not the end of her shock and sadness over what had happened yesterday, but the possibility of that end. The Noantri sense of time and thus of potential was different from that of the Unchanged. To Livia’s people, even to the Eldest, the future was always longer than the past. Thomas’s relationship to his own history was quite different, but she hoped he could feel some echo of optimism, too.

“There’s something else,” he said.

She turned from the window. “Something else?”

“That kept me awake. Not just what happened. What Lorenzo said.”

Livia thought back, found nothing to fasten on. “What did he say?”

“As he was . . . The last thing he said to me was that the Church would have been built anew after the revelation of the Concordat. But he seemed to be trying to tell me there was another secret, something even more dangerous. He died . . . before he could tell me more. But he said, ‘Find the Magdalene.’”

“The Magdalene? Do you have any idea what he meant?”

Thomas shook his head.

Tentatively, Livia said, “There are artworks all over Rome, paintings and sculptures, depicting Mary Magdalene. Hundreds, I’d guess. But there’s only one church dedicated to her. Santa Maria Maddalena, near the Pantheon. Could he have wanted us to go there? You, wanted you to go. He wouldn’t have wanted anything from me.”

Thomas met her eyes. “I’m sorry,” he said. “Hate like his . . . I always thought he was such a good man. Tough, and often angry, but at heart so good.”

“The tragedy,” she said softly, “is that he thought so, too. He meant to do good. He thought he was. So few people are wicked by their own lights. Thomas, you loved him. And he loved you. Remember that.”

“He used me,” Thomas said bitterly. “My studies—my focus on the period around the Risorgimento—it was his idea. Our friendship, keeping me close—it was all so I’d be ready for this. For when he had the chance to find the Concordat.”

“Because he thought it was important. He thought the Church you both loved needed him, needed you, to do this.” She put her hand over his. “And I doubt if your friendship was any less real, or less deep, for all that.”

“How real? He didn’t trust me enough to tell me about the Concordat. About your people.”

She was quiet a moment. “I trusted Jonah enough to tell him. It was wrong.”

Thomas entwined his fingers with hers. They sat in silence for a long time.

“I want to go there,” Thomas said. “To Santa Maria Maddalena.”

Livia met his eyes. “What I was instructed to do, I’ve done,” she said. “Whatever the Cardinal’s words meant, he intended them for you. If you want to go without me, I’ll understand.”

“No,” Thomas said, without pause. “I’d like you to come.”

101

They walked through the fresh Rome morning along streets just waking for the day. Their footsteps, in rhythm with one another, were purposeful but no longer racing, no longer furtive. Thomas tried to soothe the heaviness in his heart and the confusion in his mind by not thinking at all, not about where they were going or about what had happened yesterday. He watched shopkeepers put out their signs and sidewalk racks, café owners wipe off tables and bustle out with coffee for early customers; but the extraordinary choreography of everyday activity, usually a source of delight to him, today didn’t provide enough distraction. He turned to something else, something that had always worked: the search for knowledge.

“May I ask you something? Some things?” he said to Livia.

“Of course.”

“About your people?”

“I just hope I know the answers. It might really be Spencer you want.”

“No, it’s not your history. It’s your . . . your nature, I suppose you’d say.” They walked on, Thomas organizing his thoughts, welcoming the calm that came with focus. “Stop me if I get too personal. Can you . . . have children?”

“No.” A few steps later, she added, “Some Noantri, who either didn’t know that when they were made, or thought they didn’t care, find it a source of great sadness later on.” She paused again. “There are children among us. Or rather, Noantri who were made when they were children. Since the Concordat it’s been an unforgivable infraction of the Law to do that, and even before, it’s something most Noantri would have balked at. But these people—no more than a dozen or so—were made long ago. They occupy a special place in our Community—one or two of them are among the Eldest.”

Thomas reflected upon that. Everything he’d learned this past day would take so much reflection. “Is anyone ever sorry?”

“About becoming Noantri?”

“Because it’s irreversible. And . . . endless.”

He thought he knew her answer: that she’d say absolutely not, that with senses enhanced and all the time in the world to study, to hone, to learn, to love, what could anyone regret?

“Yes,” she said quietly. “This life becomes a burden for some. Many people find they never actually wanted to live forever. What they wanted was not to die.”

They turned a corner, had to part for a large group of small children in two ragged, giggling lines. When the little ones had been herded past by their frazzled guardians, Thomas and Livia came together again.

“This time yesterday,” he said, “I didn’t know you existed. Tell me, are there—others?”

“Other Noantri?” Livia looked confused. “Besides those of us you’ve met? Of course.”

“No, no. Other . . . I’d have said, ‘supernatural beings,’ but . . .”

Livia laughed. “I see. You want to know if I party with werewolves and zombies? Dance with skeletons, go hiking with Bigfoot?”