The Religion (18 page)

"You have two men outside," said Tannhauser. "You must be angry with them."

Confusion filled the captain's face. "Angry?"

"I am angry with them. They've done nothing to disperse the rabble. It's an outrage."

"An outrage, yes, yes," agreed the captain.

"If you would spare their lives, as well as your own, you will order them to fire their guns and clear the street. Then you will dismiss them for the rest of the night. Tell them to go home. If you find them loitering, they will be flogged."

"Flogged raw!" babbled the captain.

"When you've given them their orders, you will slam the door on them. Because you are angry."

"I am furious!" yelled the captain.

Tannhauser glanced at Bors, who'd positioned himself out of sight of
the door, arquebus to his shoulder, the javelin close to hand. Tannhauser prodded the captain forward.

"If you step outside," said Tannhauser, "we'll kill you all."

Before the captain could think too hard, Tannhauser opened the left-hand wing of the doors. The captain, free at last to vent himself and in a manner in which he believed himself expert, poured all the emotion of his ordeal into the tongue-lashing he laid on his two inferiors. When the threat of a flogging was expanded into a variety of mutilations and a double hanging, Tannhauser poked the javelin into his arse. In mid-sentence, the captain slammed the door shut on his minions. He looked to Tannhauser for approval. Tannhauser took the pistol from the captain's belt. Without being asked, the captain handed over a powder flask worked in brass and a pouch of ball and patches.

"Join Father Gonzaga," said Tannhauser. "On your knees."

As the captain hurried to obey, convinced that he'd secured his tormentor's goodwill, two gunshots thundered outside. Tannhauser reprimed the pistol and took another look through the shutters. The crowd was in flight, leaving a pair of groaning bodies on the cobbles. The two constables laid into a third prostrate figure with their gun butts. Such was the price of gawking. Tannhauser belted the pistol and added the arquebus to Bors's collection.

Bors nodded toward Sabato. "I'll go and fetch a claw hammer."

Sabato twitched with alarm and Tannhauser shook his head. "Let's do it without breaking his hands." He took a lamp from one of the trestles and hurried into the warehouse and located his tool chest. He retrieved a fine-toothed hacksaw and hastened back. He reexamined the nails through Sabato's hands.

He said, "I paid fifteen gold scudi for this chair."

"You were robbed," said Sabato Svi.

Tannhauser went to work with the saw in short, rapid strokes.

"So our Sicilian adventure is over," said Sabato Svi.

"There'll be other adventures, grander and more lucrative." The first nail head dropped off. "Don't move." He started on the second.

"At least you won't have to sail to Egypt, with the Greek."

"There'll be more pepper too. It grows on trees." The saw topped the second nail and Tannhauser laid it down. "Let the hand go loose," he said. He took hold of Sabato's left wrist. With his other hand he interlaced
his fingers through Sabato's and hooked them under the palm side of his knuckles. "Loose, I said." Tannhauser whipped the hand up from the nail.

"There. Now, the other. Loose."

In another moment Sabato was free. He rose from the chair and worked his fingers gingerly, then clenched his fists, surprised.

"Flesh wounds," said Tannhauser.

Bors called from the window. "The street is clear."

The three friends congregated around the prisoners, who groveled on elbows and knees in the flickering gloom. Between the priest's splayed hands was a puddle of drool. Both men stank of their own soil. Tannhauser looked at Sabato.

"They're yours if you want them."

The captain's voice quavered from below. "But Your Excellency-"

Bors booted him in the teeth.

Sabato shook his head. "It would give me no joy."

Tannhauser indicated the captain to Bors.

"Kill him."

Bors dropped the muzzle of the arquebus to the base of the captain's skull and let fall the match. There was a brief pause, which the captain filled with the wail of one who knew he was about to die with neither absolution nor unction. Then the contents of his skull exploded from his brow in a sooty blast of flame and befouled the flagstones. Gonzaga recoiled as his face was splattered with brains and fragments of lead. Bors laid down the gun and hauled the gagging and naked priest to his mutilated feet. He grabbed the iron pear by its key and tore it from Gonzaga's mouth, leaving a mass of broken stumps in its wake.

"See how the priest has shat himself," said Bors with disgust. He brandished the iron pear. "We should've shoved this up his arse."

"Father Gonzaga," Tannhauser said.

Gonzaga shuffled in a circle, his naked thighs dripping brown filth, and stared at Tannhauser's boots. He was no longer a human being, but a sack filled with terror and despair.

"It's time you made a clean breast," said Tannhauser, "and now that you're alone, you need have no more fear of your comrades."

Gonzaga blinked with incomprehension. Bors stomped on the remains of the captain's head. Gonzaga swayed with nausea and Bors gave him a slap on his shaven pate.

"You hear that, priest? Friendless and alone."

Tannhauser said, "You've worked this atrocity on orders of Brother Ludovico."

Gonzaga nodded. "Fra Ludovico. Yes, oh yes." He hesitated, then blurted, "And to crucify the Jew was the captain's order, not mine. Of that deed I am innocent."

"He speaks like a lawyer," said Sabato.

Bors said, "I hate lawyers."

He grabbed Gonzaga's head with both hands and rammed his thumbs into the nostrils with such great violence that they popped asunder. Gonzaga screamed, his tongue waggling forth through broken teeth. Bors let go. From the nearest trestle, Tannhauser took a half-beaker of wine and gave it to the priest. The priest took it with both hands. He waited.

"Drink," said Tannhauser. Gonzaga drank. "Tell me, why does Ludovico turn against us?"

Gonzaga lowered the beaker. Rivulets of gore trickled from his ruptured nose and over his chin. "Why?" He groped for the courage to answer. "Why, because-because-" He quailed and gave up and hid behind the beaker. Bors struck the beaker from his hands. Gonzaga loudly befouled himself again. He clasped his hands to Tannhauser. His face was a haggard portrait of one for whom God no longer had meaning and who wanted only to live at any price. Tannhauser wondered how often Gonzaga had seen such a portrait himself, and he felt no pity.

"Speak freely," said Tannhauser. "And have no fear of offending us."

Bors sniggered. Yet Gonzaga clung on to Tannhauser's every word.

"You are a Moslem," he said. "A heretic, an Anabaptist, a criminal. You consort with Jews. You disdain the Holy Father." He pointed to the curious tomes heaped on Tannhauser's table. "The forbidden texts are there for all to see."

"That wouldn't be enough for Ludovico to show his hand. Tell me the real reason."

"Your Excellency, Ludovico told me nothing more." His eyes flicked at Bors. "Nothing at all. Your impertinence on the docks seemed more than reason to me."

Bors lurched forward. "Let me tear his scrawny cock off."

Tannhauser stopped him with his arm. Gonzaga clutched at his privities and shivered. "I was ordered to leave the matter in the hands of the police."

Bors strained to escape. "But you thought you'd nail my friend to a chair instead?"

Gonzaga closed his eyes.

"There must be more," said Tannhauser. "Tell me everything. Everything that passed between you."

Gonzaga struggled to form his thoughts. "There was a second task. Ludovico ordered the seclusion of a noblewoman, in the convent of the Holy Sepulchre at Santa Croce."

Though he already knew the answer, Tannhauser said, "What was the woman's name?"

"Carla de La Penautier, of the Villa Saliba."

Sabato and Bors both turned to stare at Tannhauser.

"When was this task to be accomplished?"

"It's accomplished already. Tonight."

Tannhauser recalled the priest in the carriage at the gate. "By whom?"

"The qualificator of our Sacred Congregation, Father Ambrosio."

"Does this creature have the face of a rat?"

Gonzaga simpered. "Oh, yes, exactly so, Your Excellency."

Tannhauser glanced at Bors and Bors struck the priest in the kidneys with his fist. Gonzaga fell. Tannhauser pulled him to his knees by one ear.

"Will the noble lady be harmed?"

Gonzaga struggled for breath. "No. Ludovico gave strict orders to the contrary."

So, the mysterious monk who had deflowered the young contessa, and unknowingly left her with child, was Ludovico Ludovici, and Ludovico wanted the slate to be wiped clean. It was as tangled a web as Tannhauser had been caught up in. But how had Ludovico known that Carla had beseeched his aid in getting to Malta? Through Starkey? Inadvertently, perhaps. But Gonzaga wouldn't know the answer and Tannhauser didn't ask.

"Where are the charges written against us?" asked Tannhauser.

"None were prepared. We were forbidden to commit anything to paper."

This much, at least, was good news. "And where is Ludovico now?"

"He left to see Viceroy Toledo this afternoon. From Palermo he goes on to Rome."

"On what business?"

"I don't know. Grand Master La Valette's, perhaps. And his own. Always his own. He'd never confide such matters in me."

Tannhauser considered him. He nodded to Bors. "He's nothing left to tell us."

Sabato Svi walked away.

Bors drew his dagger. He hesitated. "I've never killed a priest before."

Gonzaga started babbling in Latin.
"Deus meus, ex toto corde poenitet me omnium meorum peccatorum, eaque detestor
. . ."

Tannhauser took the dagger from Bors. "Neither have I."

He silenced Gonzaga's last prayer by stabbing him behind the collarbones and cutting the pipes from his heart. During the rebellion of the False Mustafa, when the janissaries massacred thousands in the streets of Adrianople, Tannhauser had found this method to be more certain than cutting the throat. And the blood was neatly contained inside the chest. Gonzaga died without a sigh. Tannhauser let him fall and returned the dagger.

He said, "It's much the same as killing anyone else."

Bors wiped the dagger on his thigh and sheathed it. "And now?"

Tannhauser pondered. Santa Croce lay inland, in the mountains southwest of Etna. The route thence from the Villa Saliba-the Syracuse Road-wound due west of the Oracle, past Messina's southern gate. Ambrosio and his escort would not yet have reached the Villa Saliba. Carla, he hoped, would have the sense not to offer resistance. And Amparo? But speculation was idle. He had more than time enough to cut them off on the Syracuse Road. He suddenly felt a little nauseous and realized why.

"I haven't eaten since breakfast," he said. He indicated the corpses. "Let's stack this filth in the warehouse. Then, while I fill my belly, we can talk."

Tannhauser watered Buraq, rubbed him down with a sack, and left him out back with a bag of crushed oats and clover. When he returned, Bors had sluiced the floor with vinegar to clear the stench. Poor Gasparo was laid out on a trestle. While Bors went to pillage the kitchen, Tannhauser hastened to his chamber and retrieved his medicine chest.

When he returned, Bors had laid the table with bread and cheese and
wine and a quarter of cold roast swan. He added a bottle of brandy and three dainty glasses. Sabato Svi sat with his head in his bloody hands. His shoulders were shaking. Tannhauser set his medicine chest on the table and opened its lid. He wrapped his arm around Sabato and felt the muted sobs in his chest. He waited while they stilled, then he said, "Show me your hands."

Sabato scrubbed his face on his sleeve, then took a deep breath and let it out. He avoided Tannhauser's eyes. His beard was all mucked about with mucus and blood. Tannhauser took a cloth from the chest and started to wipe his face. Sabato took the cloth and did it himself.

"You must think me less than a man," he said.

"I heard you spit in their faces. No man could have been braver."

Still Sabato kept his face turned. Tannhauser glanced at Bors.

"I've shat myself for much less, believe me," Bors declared.

Sabato looked at Tannhauser. His eyes were haunted. "I've never lost everything before."

"The Oracle?" said Tannhauser. "They've but broken a chain around our ankle."

Sabato said, "That isn't what I mean."

Tannhauser nodded. "I know. Yet, in losing everything, you win the chance to discover all that is precious."

Sabato saw that he spoke from the heart. He nodded.

"Now, let me see those hands."

Tannhauser took a stoppered bottle from the chest. He'd learned some battlefield medicine out of necessity and had picked up a number of vulnerary remedies from Petrus Grubenius. Apart from the method of their infliction, Sabato's wounds were unremarkable, being already closed into small puckered holes that hardly bled at all. Tannhauser cleaned them with witch hazel and sealed them with oil of Hispanus. He decided against a bandage.