The Fallen (8 page)

“I know the Inquisition. I know what they're capable of.” Isabella's eyes turned to the Inquisitor's brooch on the table, the emerald stone glinting in the weak amber candlelight. “I just want answers.”

“So let's see if we can find them,” called the rich alluring voice of a woman from behind her. Isabella knew who it was before she turned to look.

“Sandrine Prideux,” she said.

A tall dark-haired woman rested causally against the side of the open doorway, patting her face with a towel as if she had just returned from bathing, a loose shirt hanging from her shoulders, buttoned only to her breast line.

“Sister Isabella,” replied Sandrine, her eyes flashing. “I am surprised to see you again.”

“And I you. It would seem then that ‘Peace and Revenge' never came to be?”

Sandrine's lips curled, her features hardening. She dropped the towel into the crook of her elbow and crossed her arms. “Perhaps not Peace,” she replied, her eyes glowering.

Isabella smiled thinly, weighing the comment in her mind. She recalled the ruin of Fampoux, the resolute defiance of Sandrine as she and Henry prepared to leave that town for the final time.

“I should kill you,” Sandrine continued, stepping lightly into the room, drawn towards Henry. She stroked a hand up his back and spread her fingers through his hair, pulling herself towards his face for a brief kiss. Her hand closed about Henry's bound arm in a sign of concern, but he shook his head in assurance. Isabella used the opportunity to check her proximity to an exit, before her eyes met Sandrine's again. “You know that, don't you? I should kill you for what you did in Paris.”

“And why should you do that?” Isabella asked, as Sandrine took up the liquor and poured herself a large measure. She set the bottle down hard, so that the impact of it shook the table, and snatched up the glass, holding it up to the edge of her chin, observing the Sister as if formulating the words to reply to her retort.

“You, and the Priest. The Inquisitor. The one they call Tacit.” She hissed the name with contempt. “You ruined everything. At the Mass for Peace. You killed the Cardinal Bishop Monteria.”

Isabella had long laid awake at night after the events in the French capital and the Mass for Peace, imagining what might have happened had Cardinal Bishop Monteria not been stopped from donning the wolf pelt and transforming before the massed congregation at Notre Dame. Passion fuelled her words as she replied. “That Cardinal Bishop was about to commit mass murder within Notre Dame!”

“That Cardinal Bishop was helping us to strike back at our enemies! All our combined enemies! We had planned everything for months. Me. Cardinal Bishop Monteria. Cardinal Poré. My father.” A shadow seemed to draw across her face like a veil, sorrow replacing her anger. “We were willing to risk everything, even our lives, for a chance to avenge what had been done to my people for centuries, to repay the curses cast upon us, to give those who had spun those corrupt incantations a moment to stop and reflect on the wickedness of their actions. To throw open the windows to this wickedness for all to see.”

“By killing so many innocent people as well! Is that what you wanted? To kill all those innocent people who were attending the Mass in order to show the errors of our Catholic faith's past? The diplomats? The royal families? The innocent civilians? All slaughtered for revenge?”

Sandrine's teeth were bared. “And this war doesn't slaughter enough innocents as it is?” She took a step towards Isabella, her fists clenched and raised, but she caught sight of the pendant at the Sister's throat and paused, drawing back a step and seeming to shrink and calm. “Peace! That is what we sought primarily. A chance to end this infernal war. A chance to make mankind realise that there were more terrible things within the world for them to face together rather than their own kind, their neighbours, their foreign cousins, those separated by race or religion. Peace and revenge! Peace for the world, and revenge for our people. And you took both away.”

At once Isabella's defiance shrunk. “It never would have worked,” she said, but her words came falteringly. She knew that she and Tacit had saved a thousand lives at Notre Dame, but by doing so, had they perhaps ensured the continuation of the war? Not a day had gone by when the thought had not troubled her. She watched Sandrine take a deep pull on her drink, before she said, “I never realised.”

“Realised what?”

“That you were one of them.”

A cold smile drew itself across Sandrine's face, one of resignation and pain. “We are all one. We are family drawn together by blood.”

“And yet you can walk abroad freely, as any normal person, not tethered by Hombre Lobo's curse of daylight or the moon? I don't understand.”

“There's much you don't understand, and never will.”

“So educate me.”

“Why? Why should I? What have you to offer me?” Sandrine's fingers were splayed like claws. “Why should I not kill you now?”

“Because I can help you.”

Sandrine laughed, a bitter cruel laugh which froze Isabella's blood. “If you could help, why would you wish to?”

“Because I cannot go back, not now, not back to the Chaste, not to my Church. Not after what has happened. They will kill me, the Inquisitors. I have nothing. I am not safe anymore.” The realisation of her predicament grew as she spoke, and caught as a moan in her throat.

“It feels terrifying, doesn't it?” asked Sandrine. “Being all alone?”

Isabella nodded and let her head drop. She could feel the slow creep of fear draw over her. Sandrine tutted, drawing Isabella to look at her again.

“Imagine how my people have felt, for a thousand years. Terrified. Alone.”

“Who was he?”

“Who?”

“The man on the bridge who was killed. Why was he so important? At least tell me that.”

“He was one of us. We watched out for each other. We worked together.”

“He was an Inquisitor! Why are you working with someone at the Inquisition? I thought they were your enemy?” Isabella said, forcing a laugh, but the fierce look which was returned crushed the chuckle to silence.

“You come here, a stupid Sister from the Vatican, who believes all that is important in life is to test the chastity of those who have taken the vow of celibacy.”

“I don't believe that. Not for a moment.”

“Good, because revenge, it no longer matters. Everything has now changed.”

Isabella's voice was now gravely serious. “Henry, he said something similar to me earlier. But he never told what had changed.”

“Then I will.” Sandrine took a deep breath, as if summoning the will to speak. “There's a darkness, which has descended. Light has been extinguished. A hand is clawing across the world, and we know to whom it belongs, a hand which must be stopped, regardless of the cost, of allegiances and beliefs.” She heard the dry swallow of Isabella's throat.

“How do you know this?”

“Our allies. Our spies. Rumour and investigation. We never rest. In 1877 something was unleashed on the world. What it was, we don't know, but that year the crops failed in many countries of the world, the animals simply died in the fields by their millions. Parts of the world came close to famine. India was almost destroyed by one.”

“And you think to blame this on some higher power?” Isabella questioned. But Sandrine continued regardless.

“Some devilry had crawled into the cities and towns from somewhere, somehow. Demonic possessions paralysed whole communities with panic and fear. Monstrous children, the mirror of demons, were born in their thousands within the populations. The rivers ran red with blood. Wolves live in the shadows but we hear things, we have our sources, and we felt the evil that had come to the world.”

“And why does something which happened nearly forty years ago matter now?”

“Because it's happening again. We can feel that something stirring. This Inquisitor who was murdered, our contact within the Vatican and the Inquisition, we think he found some clue. Something big. He had found something we needed, something we could have used to fight back. He was coming to tell us.”

“I thought you only care for your people?”

“Not any more. For this fight concerns every man, woman and child throughout the world. We must find what it was our man had discovered. If we do not, then all will be engulfed in the shadow of war.”

Isabella sat back. “I know what he had found.” The words came out of her like a torrent. She was aware that Henry had been drawn out of the shadows to hear and that Sandrine was bending closer towards her.

“What had he found?” asked Henry urgently.

“A name.”

“Whose name?”

“I suppose the name of the person who can help us. The only one who can.”

“And who is that?”

“Tacit,” said Isabella, turning from Sandrine to Henry and then back again. “Inquisitor Poldek Tacit.”

ELEVEN

R
OME
. I
TALY
.

A choral melody was rising up from somewhere in the depths of Trastevere Monastery, angelic voices lifting the gloom of the corridor within which Cardinal Bishop Adansoni stood. His shoes creaked on the uneven floorboards of the passageway, and he winced and tried to place them where they would make less noise, as if ashamed to disturb the choir's pristine sounds.

The door to the Sister's residence was plain and black, made of a single panel of wood that sat awkwardly under the twisted lintel in the slanting wall. Adansoni raised his fist and knocked. Almost without delay, he was asked to come in.

Sister Malpighi was sitting in a chair looking out of the window, her hunched back turned to the door so she could not see who had come in.

“Cardinal Bishop Adansoni,” she said, only then looking over her right shoulder and smiling. She was ancient and withered, but there was a sharp light in her eyes that suggested great intellect and energy.

“Sister Malpighi,” replied Adansoni, bowing and waiting to be beckoned into the room. “I apologise for my rude and unexpected interruption.”

“Cardinal Bishop Adansoni, it was neither rude nor unexpected,” she replied, the light gathering in her warm features. “Will you take a little refreshment?” She poured a stream of water from a long fluted china jug into a glass on the table beside her and moved it so that Adansoni would be able to reach it easily when he sat. “Of course, I know why you're here.”

“Of course,” replied Adansoni, smiling and setting himself down slowly. “I forgot.” Sister Malpighi had long been well regarded by the Holy See and Inquisition for her powers of insight and premonition. Her skills had served the Vatican in times of concern and difficulty. There were others like
her in the employ of the Vatican, people blessed with the power to predict the future and advise on it, but none had ever been as accurate or as long serving as the Sister who now watched Adansoni closely.

“Troubling times,” she mused, pursing her thin lips.

“They are,” nodded Adansoni, taking the goblet and sipping at its contents. The water was lukewarm and stale, as if it had stood in the jug for some time.

“I find myself sitting here so often now, Cardinal Bishop Adansoni,” she revealed, peering out of her window over Rome, “looking to the city beyond, the city I love, my mind drawn to lands far away, places I have never visited or seen, other than in my imagination, or in books, and wondering, thinking what horrors must be taking seed right now within those terrible places of the western and eastern fronts. What terrors must be entwining man?” Sister Malpighi blinked, and Adansoni saw there were tears in her eyes. “The lamb of God is being murdered, the blood run out of him.”

“Whatever do you mean?”

“In the Caucasus, there will be a massacre, a genocide of a whole people, two million Armenians killed, driven out into the desert to die by the Turkish authorities.”

The old Cardinal swallowed. “When will that happen?” he asked gravely.

“It is happening now. At this very moment. As a prelude to
his
returning.”

Adansoni shook his head in shock and turned his attention to the small window looking out over the capital. “It seems as if the war is polluting all the towns and cities of the world already. As if
he
has already returned.”

“He is not returned yet, Cardinal Bishop Adansoni,” the Sister announced. She lifted an eyebrow pointedly. “But he will return. That is certain. It will not be long. When the forces of Britain and Germany meet on the plains of the Somme, when a whole generation is wiped from existence within one morning, from out of their bloodshed and sacrifice he will be born.”

“What about the others, those who come before him?” asked Adansoni without ceremony, his left hand tightening into a fist. “The ones who will protect him?”

“Why do they concern you, Cardinal Bishop Adansoni?” asked Sister Malpighi, a light in her eyes, the hint of suspicion on her lips.