The Religion (13 page)

He would never let Carla set foot on the island of Malta.

Ludovico left the lavatorium and donned a clean habit.

The German, Tannhauser, was formidable, yet the man was willing to indulge in dangerous passions. A vain man. A foolish man. His insolence on the dock had confirmed it. He might well take pity on Carla. He might well be flattered to accept the role of her champion, no common honor for a scoundrel such as he. And no doubt she had the means to pay him. Ludovico had also sensed the man's sexual potency, as men of similar stripe, like beasts, often do. He felt a stir of jealousy and cautioned himself, yet equivocation was hardly necessary. The man was a blasphemer and a heretic. As Michele Ghisleri had counseled, in regard to prominent noblemen, "Remove the man, and you remove the problem."

Ludovico made his way to the abbot's parlor, where Gonzaga awaited instructions.

Gonzaga was a
commissarius
, a local priest who acted for the Inquisition and supplied information. He had a vicious streak, which Ludovico mistrusted, but was well liked, perhaps for that very reason, by the familiars in Messina. These latter, of whom there were many, Gonzaga had flattered by founding a brotherhood, the Congregation of Saint Peter Martyr. Familiars were lay servants of the Holy Office, ready at all times to perform the duties of the tribunal and permitted to bear arms to protect inquisitors. It was an honor eagerly sought, not least because it conferred immunity from secular justice. Highborn or low,
limpieza de sangre
-purity of the blood-was required, for no convert of Jewish lineage could serve the Holy Office.

In the parlor, Anacleto, as always as much apparition as human being, stood inside the door. Ludovico had found him in Salamanca, in '58, where he'd been asked to examine him for signs of diabolic possession. The young nobleman, then eighteen, stood guilty of incest with his sister, Filomena, and of the murder of both his parents when they'd caught the two siblings in flagrante delicto. Anacleto didn't deny these horrifying crimes, nor did he repent of them. Filomena had been hanged, and her corpse consumed by swine, while Anacleto watched. His execution, too, was a formality. But something in the youth's black soul had touched Ludovico. Moreover, he'd seen in him a tool of great value: a man without conscience, capable of any heinous deed. A man who would give undying
loyalty to the person who redeemed him. Ludovico spent four days with the youth and forged an unbreakable bond. He extracted Anacleto's penitence and absolved him. More than that, he gave him a higher purpose and a reason to live. Thus immunized by the Inquisition, Anacleto had accompanied Ludovico and Fernando Valdes on their relentless sweep through Castile, which climaxed in extravagant autos-da-fe in Valladolid, where the Emperor Philip himself attended the burnings. Anacleto had been his master's shadow ever since, always ready to protect him and to keep Ludovico's hands unstained by blood.

Gonzaga stood up and bowed. Ludovico gestured that he sit.

"This being the territory of Spain," said Ludovico, "and under the jurisdiction of the Congregation's Spanish arm, I have no formal powers here." He held up a hand to forestall Gonzaga's offer of all necessary authority. "Nor do I seek such powers. However, it is in the most urgent interests of His Holiness that by eight o'clock this evening two tasks be accomplished without fail."

"Our familiars include the best of the city constabulary," blurted Gonzaga. "My cousin, Captain Spano, will give us every assistance."

"By what means these tasks are accomplished, and by whom, I don't want to know. Neither action should be seen as the work of the Holy Office, but rather of the civil authorities. Both tasks require subtlety and speed in different measure."

"Yes, Your Excellency. Subtlety and speed."

"In residence at the guesthouse of the Villa Saliba is a noblewoman named Carla de La Penautier. She's to be taken to join the Minims at the convent of the Holy Sepulchre at Santa Croce, for a period of prayer and contemplation lasting no less than one year."

The Holy Sepulchre was perched on a waterless crag as fissured as the face of woe, some three days' journey into Sicily's scorched interior. The Minims were so called because their enclosed order of nuns practiced a Rule of unusual severity. They lived in absolute silence and abjured meat, fish, eggs, and all dairy stuffs. Ludovico thought of Queen Juana of Spain, confined to a darkened room for thirty years, and considered Carla lightly treated.

"She will not go willingly, but such a retreat can only be of benefit to her soul."

Gonzaga assumed a pious expression and bobbed his head.

"She must not be charged with any crime, civil, moral, or heretical," said Ludovico. "Commit nothing to paper. Only a fool puts something into writing that he may accomplish by speech alone, and speech, at that, which lays claim to no third witness. Do you understand?"

Gonzaga crossed himself. "Your Excellency, all will be as you ask."

"The second task will require the use of arms-sufficient to subdue a man both skilled in combat and loath to yield. He may have confederates. We met this man this morning, on the dock."

"The German," piped Gonzaga. "I should have acted sooner, for the man is half Moslem and partnered with a Jew, but he's not without powerful friends in the Religion."

"Tannhauser is a criminal. Evasion of customs, bribery of state officials, doubtless more. This must not be seen as an ecclesiastical matter. Have the civil constabulary handle it, but see they move swiftly and with force."

"Must the German be taken alive?" inquired Gonzaga.

"Tannhauser's life is immaterial."

"I shall have them arrest the Jew too," said Gonzaga.

Ludovico considered the ubiquitous hatred of Jews to be vulgar and without logic. Unlike the Lutheran scum, they presented no threat to the Church. He said, "That's their affair."

"Their goods shall, of course, be confiscate to the Congregation," said Gonzaga. "We're entitled to our share."

"Have I not made myself clear?"

Gonzaga paled. His mouth writhed with an apology he dared not utter.

"It is my wish," said Ludovico, "that the Holy Office leave no trace of their hand in this affair. It must be-and must be seen to be-an entirely civil matter. If the Holy Office should be implicated in these proceedings, in any way, you will be found most direly wanting."

Gonzaga glanced at Anacleto and found himself the object of the gaze that a cobra bestows upon a toad. "All will be as Your Excellency commands," said Gonzaga. "No papers, no third witness, no trace. A civil matter only. I shall not take a penny for my Congregation."

Gonzaga waited, as if for some kind of praise or reassurance. Ludovico stared at him until the man's squirms disgusted him.

"You've much to do, Father Gonzaga. See that it's done."

As Gonzaga scurried out, Ludovico felt a whisper of anxiety. He'd
never entrusted such matters to Gonzaga before. Desperate as the man was to please, he reeked of that excess of zeal and petty ambition so common among provincial functionaries. Yet Gonzaga was the local eminence. It was a shame Tannhauser should fall to so base a creature. As to Carla, he'd reconsider her fate in due course.

Ludovico went to the window and looked down into the courtyard below. Saddled horses waited to carry them to Palermo. There he'd take the measure of the Spanish viceroy, Garcia de Toledo, before embarking on the journey to Rome. After the Viceroy of Naples and the Pope, Toledo was the most powerful man in Italy, and in the matter of the invasion of Malta, more important than either. La Valette had asked Ludovico to pressure Toledo into sending a relief force; but that part of his plan would await his return from Rome. In Rome he would muster the means that he needed to secure Toledo's obedience.

That and more. In Rome he would also prepare for his return to Malta and his infiltration of the Religion. In the right hands, the Religion could live up to their name and become true champions of the Church. The Order was sworn not to fight against fellow Christians; but like all matters of policy, that could be made to change. The European war against Lutheranism would prove more bloody than anyone could imagine. The Religion's arms and prestige would be invaluable-if they survived the Turkish invasion. But that was in God's hands.

In God, Ludovico's trust was absolute.

They took their leave of the abbey. The sun was high and hot. The Palermo road was clear. They rode north with the wind of History at their backs.

Tuesday, May 15, 1565

Guesthouse of the Villa Saliba

Tannhauser rose from the bench like a wolf aroused from some primal dream, lithe and at once alert, yet still caught in the toils of another world. As he towered above her, whatever expectations she'd had were swept away in the moment that turned his lucent blue gaze upon her own. His face was battered yet still youthful. A black powder burn disfigured his neck by the left hinge of his jaw. A thin white scar bisected his
brow on the same side. His hair swung over his face as he stood up and the eye gleaming through it evoked an untamed creature regarding a world too civilized and cramped to call home. When he swept the hair aside the impression faded, and she was sorry. His lips parted when he smiled to reveal chipped and uneven teeth and a hint of cruelty. His burgundy-red doublet was striped with diagonals of gold and was of fine quality. His high boots shone. The ensemble was completed, yet compromised, by leather breeches of somewhat tawdry complexion.

Carla was alarmed by her reaction. Simply by standing up he'd pierced the sexual twilight to which she'd long condemned herself. He stirred her blood in a way she hadn't thought possible. She invited him into the parlor to take some refreshment and he paused to study her viola da gamba on its stand.

"The viola da gamba, yes? This is your instrument."

He said this as if he knew it could be no one else's, and this pleased her.

"It was the passion of my childhood and youth."

"I commend you on your choice," he said. "I've admired the music of the gamba in the salons of Venice, where fine practitioners abound, but I never before heard such sinew and fire in the playing." He smiled. "I might even say such fury."

Carla's stomach fluttered.

"And the composition?" he asked.

"An improvisation of our own."

"Improvisation?"

"An invention-an embellishment-on a dance suite in the French style."

"Ah, the dance," he said. "If all dance were so spirited I might have studied the art myself, but I am ignorant of it."

"It can be learned."

"Not on the Messina waterfront. Or at least not in any style that you would recognize." He held his hand to the neck of the viol, but stopped short of touching it. "May I?" he asked. "I've never studied such a marvel before."

She nodded and he whisked it from the stand and examined it with a close eye for the carvings and inlays and for the grains of the maplewood back.

"Astounding geometry," he murmured. He looked at her. "I understand that the shape is conceived around an arrangement of concentric
circles, of overlapping diameters. The harmony of the geometry produces the harmony of sound. But of course you know this better than I."

In fact, she did not, and was stunned by his recondite learning, but while she couldn't bring herself to nod, she didn't deny it. He peered through the f-holes for a signature.

"Who made this masterpiece?"

"Andreas Amati of Cremona."

"Superb." He plucked a string and watched its vibration. "The transmutation of movement into sound-now there's a mystery for you. But the transmutation of sound into music is more mysterious still, wouldn't you say?"

Carla blinked, too taken by his observations to venture an answer. Tannhauser appeared not to expect one. He held the viol at arm's length and spun it back and about, looking it up and down with genuine enchantment.

"My old friend, Petrus Grubenius, said that when beauty and purpose are married in perfection, there one may find magic in its truest form." With the viol still suspended he looked at her and smiled again. "If I were bold enough, I'd venture that such a notion would encompass that dress, too."

Carla felt her cheeks burn. She felt inadequate to the compliment and to acknowledge it seemed improper. A sense of sin clenched inside her. Such fears and doubts had hedged her life for as long as she could remember. Yet in these few moments he'd blown through all that dust like a wind through a long-unopened room.