The Key (30 page)

Tonight
the note had said.

He stood and quickly left the room, thinking about everything else it had said as he wiped the ash from his hand and headed to the infirmary.

Athanasius heard Brother Gardener before he saw him.

The sound of his low lamenting echoed along the hushed corridor leading down to the isolated caves of the hospital. There was something about the noise that made him want to cover his ears and flee, as if the moans of some poor, damned soul had leaked out of hell. It was a sound of torment and madness and it drilled into the most primal part of his brain where his deepest fears lived.

He reached the corridor where the wards and isolation rooms were located and found the right room simply by following the sound. Then he took a breath, swallowed drily and pushed open the heavy wooden door.

The first thing he saw was the ghostly figure of an Apothecaria standing vigil. Beyond him, the naked figure of Brother Gardener lay writhing on a bed. He had been stripped to his loincloth and bound to the metal frame by thick canvas straps the colour of bleached bone stained brown by something wet and oozing. His skin bubbled with boils and there were deep gouges and angry welts where he had clawed at them with such violence that it looked as though he’d been attacked by an animal. Even now his fists clenched and unclenched as if craving to scratch the terrible itch that drew the awful lament from his foam-flecked mouth.

The Apothecaria turned as Athanasius made to enter and held up a surgically gloved hand to stop him from coming further. As Athanasius withdrew to the corridor, he stepped forward to join him, closing the door and shutting out the worst of the noise. Only then did he remove his mask. It was Brother Simenon, one of the more senior of the medical practitioners. He pushed past without saying a word and started walking up the corridor.

‘What ails him?’ Athanasius asked, falling in step behind him.

‘We don’t know. At first I thought it might be the same thing that struck down the Sancti, but that was more like haemorrhagic fever. This is something different entirely. We’ve taken blood and samples of the discharged fluid from the pustules, but so far none of the tests have proved positive for any known diseases. There are symptomatic similarities with smallpox, which is why we’ve brought him here to the isolation wards, but it’s not an exact match and I personally don’t think that’s what it is. There are also indicators of bubonic plague, but these diseases are extinct or extremely rare, so it’s unclear how he could possibly have contracted either.’

‘He was clearing the garden,’ Athanasius said, remembering the last time he had seen him.

‘Yes, the tree blight. I had thought of that, and it’s the most likely cause. There are some forms of fungus and mould spores that can rapidly attack the human immune and respiratory system. These can provoke a massive allergic reaction that produces mycotoxins, or they cause mycosis, which is effectively a gross fungal infection. Because of the skin condition, I suspect what we have here is mycosis, though I’ve never heard of anything that can bring it on so rapidly. We’re hoping we can find an example of the blight and test its toxicity, but as I understand the gardeners were ordered to burn all evidence of it.’

Athanasius nodded, thinking of the black infected smoke rising up into the clear air. ‘What about the other gardeners?’

Simenon stopped by another large door. ‘That’s what I’m most concerned about.’ He opened the door on to the largest ward in the hospital complex.

The room was narrow and vaulted, like a large cellar, with four beds lined up on each opposing wall – eight in total. Each bed contained a monk. They looked up in unison as the door opened and Athanasius saw the collective fear in their eyes. It was the entire garden detail, brought here under quarantine. Three more Apothecaria were in attendance, surgical masks covering their faces and blue nitrile gloves on their hands as they interviewed each monk in turn, looking for some early-warning symptom as well as taking numerous blood samples.

‘We thought it best to isolate anyone who came into direct contact with the tree blight, until we can rule it out as the cause of whatever has infected Brother Gardener.’ The wailing coming from down the corridor rose again, as if he had responded to the mention of his name. Everyone in the ward heard it.

One of the youngest monks, lying in a bed closest to the door, started weeping openly. He sank into the hospital sheets like a child hiding from the dark and stared through the open door towards the corridor as if the thing making the sound was coming for him next.

Simenon pulled the door closed and hurried back up the corridor, reaching into his pocket for a syringe and some sedative.

‘And if it is the tree blight,’ Athanasius asked, ‘how soon before they start showing the same symptoms?’

‘Brother Gardener was the first to come in contact with it and symptoms manifested themselves in less than twenty-four hours. So if the blight is the cause, and any of the garden detail have been similarly infected, then we will know soon enough.’

Simenon fixed the face mask back in place as he arrived outside the door. ‘My prediction is that we will know within the next couple of hours. If the others are clear, we can literally breathe more easily and do what we can for Brother Gardener. If they have it, then what we have already done here will hopefully be enough to contain the spread. But there is a third potential outcome. If this thing proves to be something more virulent and contagious, some airborne pathogen that passes from host to host merely by proximity, then all of us in the Citadel, every last one of us, has already been exposed. We were all there, last night in the cathedral cave, when Brother Gardener dragged in the first infected branch and dropped it at the altar.’

Athanasius pictured the branch breaking as it hit the stone floor, the dry dust, caught in the light, rising from the crumbling wood like a wisp of smoke.

‘Tell me,’ Simenon asked, ‘you were in the garden at the start of the clear-up operation. How many trees were infected? Was it just one or two? Was it confined to certain areas or certain types of trees?’

Athanasius shook his head gravely.

‘It was everywhere,’ he said, realizing the dark implication of Simenon’s careful question. ‘Almost every tree had been affected.’

Then the LORD said to Moses and Aaron, ‘Take handfuls of soot from a furnace and have Moses toss it into the air in the presence of Pharaoh. It will become fine dust over the whole land of Egypt, and festering boils will break out on men and animals throughout the land.’

Exodus 9:8–9

Evening brought the return of something approaching normality to the city of Ruin. There had been no aftershocks after the initial tremors, so the clean-up operation was rapid and unhampered. Most of the streets had re-opened with restaurant tables spreading over pavements that had been littered with broken glass only a few hours previously. There were plenty of people too, relaxing after the stress of the previous twenty-four hours. Into these crowds Gabriel emerged.

He ambled along, sticking to the more touristy streets, his face covered by the peak of his cap, heading through camouflaging crowds to the old town wall. He didn’t need to be in position for another few hours, but any earlier and the daylight would have made him easier to spot, any later and his presence on the empty streets might arouse unwanted suspicion.

The old town itself was now closed to the public. Since the mid-nineteenth century, every building in the old town had been converted to commercial use. The official line was that the curfew was to keep the area quiet so as not to interfere with nocturnal worship within the mountain. In truth, there was an ancient covenant on all the land surrounding the Citadel that capped residential rents at mediaeval levels, whereas commercial rates were not controlled. The church had earned ten times more money from rental income after the ban had come into place. So no one was allowed in the old town at night. Every day at dusk, stewards swept the streets, shepherding tourists down the hill towards the public gates, ready for the portcullises to bang down and seal the place up for the night. Consequently, Gabriel’s first challenge was to get inside.

He spotted Arkadian by one of the main public gates, loitering beside a metal door built into the old stonework. With millions of tourists and salvation seekers climbing the steep streets every year, there were almost daily incidents involving everything from twisted ankles to heat exhaustion. Most of these could be dealt with locally, but if something more serious transpired and they needed to get an ambulance up there fast, the emergency hatches came into use, operated and maintained by the ambulance service and the police.

Arkadian nodded at Gabriel as he approached and turned to the control panel to punch in the access codes. From somewhere inside the stone wall the sound of a motor began to purr and the metal screen started to rise. Gabriel slipped underneath without breaking stride. Arkadian followed, cradling his immobile arm as he crabbed underneath. He punched the same codes into another panel and the shutter juddered and reversed direction, sliding back down to the floor then banging shut with a percussive thump. The whole thing had taken less than a minute. They headed up the darkened streets in silence, keeping to the shadows.

The old town was lit by the yellowy glow of sodium lamps that cast a sickly light over the deserted buildings, making the whole place look diseased. They trod carefully, minimizing the sound of their footfalls on the hard cobbles, listening out for the sound of the clean-up crew. They heard nothing but the muffled noise of the night, and the sounds of people enjoying themselves beyond the old town walls.

Halfway up the hill Arkadian ducked into a narrow passage between two leaning buildings and unlocked a door to a small office with a counter running the length of it and posters on the walls giving advice about pickpockets in several languages. It was the old town police station, as good a place as any to wait until it was time to move. Gabriel checked his watch. They had about four hours to kill, but at least they were in position.

Arkadian flipped the hatch on the counter and moved through to the back room, careful not to switch on any lights.

‘You want a coffee?’ he called out, already filling a kettle. ‘It’s going to be a long night, you’ll probably be glad of the caffeine.’

‘Thanks.’ During all-night ops in Afghanistan, Gabriel and his troop had chewed on the caffeine pills known as Ripper Fuel, or sometimes emptied packets of freeze-dried coffee straight into their mouths to stay awake. It was the curious thing about combat: the thing that got to you most was the waiting. Boredom was at least as big a killer as the bullets. It made you crazy – reckless – and now, as then, he could afford to be neither. He should really try to get some sleep, but he knew it was impossible. He kept thinking of Liv, captured by the enemy and slowly heading this way. He couldn’t help feeling that he had failed her.

‘Here,’ Arkadian held out a mug of black coffee, ‘not exactly finest
khave
, but it should keep you awake.’

Gabriel took it and sipped the scalding liquid. ‘Thanks,’ he said. ‘Thanks for everything.’

Arkadian shrugged. ‘Just trying to make sure the good guys win. In the meantime, why don’t you tell me exactly what all this is about?’

Gabriel thought of everything he had learned in the last few hours: the Mirror Prophecy, the end of days, the search for the true location of Eden. It was difficult to know where to start. He looked up into the intelligent face of the detective and it suddenly became obvious.

‘It started twelve years ago,’ he said, ‘or it did for me at least. It began with the death of my father …’

The devotional day within the Citadel was divided into twelve different offices, with the four nocturnes breaking the night into quarters; the second of these was Compline. It began two hours after dusk and marked the moment when the mountain effectively went to sleep and the curfew began. No one was permitted to wander the tunnels, save for the guards who patrolled them, the monks on prayer rota on their way to or from the private chapels, and monks of a high enough rank to grant them exemptions from many of the rules that governed the rest.

Consequently, half an hour after Compline had begun, all was quiet – but not all slept.

Father Thomas was still awake, working alone in the library running endless systems checks to try to mend the faults in the security and environmental systems that had kept the library closed for so long. So far he had managed to fix the problems in the reading rooms and offices, but the main chambers, interlinked and vast, remained faulty – so he worked on.

On the broad stone balcony that formed part of the Prelate’s staterooms and overlooked the walled garden at the heart of the mountain a dark and ragged figure in a green cassock was also stirring. Dragan paced. He could not sleep. The Sacrament was not due to return to the mountain until just before dawn, yet already he could feel it drawing closer, bringing its life force with it. It had been taken from the mountain by traitors and heretics, but he had been chosen to return it – and so he would. By the end of the nocturnes it would be back in the chapel and locked in the Tau, its human vessel a necessary captive of the divine process. Only then would his strength return and the mountain be healed. Once that had come about he would deal with the traitors.

On the other side of the mountain in a windowless cell cut into the rock by the Abbot’s chambers, Athanasius was also awake. He had listened to the mountain quietening beyond his door, carefully folding and refolding his spare cassock to give his hands something to do. His senses felt keen, sharpened by adrenalin born of fear and apprehension. Soon he would have to leave the safety of his room and venture through the darkness. He had broken curfew before, but always on the Abbot’s business. However there was no Abbot now. This time he was on his own, and the business he was about was fraught with danger. So he folded and refolded his clothes.