Devil's Lair (32 page)

“Why do you pester me?”
Daedalus asked.

“We saw Icarus in Limbo,”
Giovanni said.

“My son? Please, don’t tell
me how he suffers. I could not bear to hear it. I want to remember him as he
was, yet in my mind he falls forever. Poor boy. It was all my fault.”

“He gave us a message.”

“Does he hate me?”

“Your son loves you and
forgives you.”

Daedalus said nothing, but
nodded weakly, and his eyes gave thanks before they wept.

A leprous man crawled into
the lancelight. “Why do you carry that wicked weapon?”

“A holy weapon,” Marco said,
“anointed in the blood of Christ.”

“In the blood of my king,”
the shade replied.

“Who was your king?”

“Arthur, King of Britain.”

“Are you Merlin?” Giovanni
asked.

“I am.”

“Then you know the Grail.”

Merlin nodded. “A greater
enemy than Mordred. We lost many of our greatest knights in the quest for the
Grail. They left and never returned.”

“I saw the cup,” said
another shade, who was bearded and wore the robe and hat of a Persian magus. “I
saw it at a great banquet. For us it was the cup of doom.
Mane thecel
phares.
”

Marco remembered the words,
which Rienzo had carved on the wall of his hermitage. “What does it mean?”

“My king once asked me
that.”

“King Arthur?”

“Belshazzar, King of
Babylon. He drank from the Holy Grail, which had been stolen from the Jews,” he
said, scratching urticate skin. “I was there. I saw the writing on the wall. The
hand of God appeared, and in His hand, like a finger, was a spear dripping
blood, a spear much like the one you carry, and in blood God wrote:
mane
thecel phares.
What did
it mean? No one knew. I was the king’s astrologer but I could not answer the
riddle. Only Daniel understood: the kingdom will fall.”

A pustular woman clawed to
the top of the festering heap. A rabid man gnawed on her leg as the woman
exclaimed, “That lance belongs to my son!”

“Who are you?” Marco asked.

“Mother of a great prince.
With a single thrust of that lance my son killed his father and my brother.”

Giovanni said, “You are
Morgan le Fay.”

“You are right.”

“The Lance does not belong
to Mordred. It belongs to God.”

Nadja said, “What do you
mean, his father and your brother?”

“Incest,” Giovanni said.

“I wanted a son,” said
Morgan le Fay.

“So you slept with Arthur?”
Nadja asked.

“A great son needs a great
father. I disguised myself, sneaked into his bedchamber, and from brotherly
love created—”

“A monster,” Giovanni said.

“A hero.”

“Who killed his own father.”

“What son does not dream of
killing his father? Most are too weak. Not my boy. Not my beautiful Mordred.”

“The Holy Lance!” another
shade cried out. He writhed on the ground in agony, bloated with dropsy, his
skin blackened and blistered.

Marco looked down at the
miserable creature. “Who are you?” he demanded.

“Peter. A poor monk. A
prophet in my time.”

“What do you know of the
Lance?”

“He discovered it,” Giovanni
said. “Isn’t that right, Peter? Peter Bartholomew?”

Peter smiled. “So they say.”

“You found the Holy Lance at
Antioch. The crusaders used its power to turned back the Saracens.”

“A miracle, really.”

“A pack of lies.”

“As God is my witness.”

“And the Devil your jailer.
You are a charlatan.”

“Says who?”

“Look around you, Peter. You
are punished with the forgers and counterfeiters.”

“Slander! Lies! Innuendo!
You’re the charlatan, Giovanni Boccaccio. Oh, yes, I’ve read your work. Nothing
but lies.”

“I’m a poet. My lies tell
the truth.”

“But look who’s in Hell
now.”

“Sorry. Just passing
through.”

Peter raised a burnt hand,
pointing to the Lance. “With a poor piece of forgery, if I’m any judge.”

“I agree,” said another
disease-ridden shade. “That relic is a fake.”

“Who are you?” Marco asked.

“Christoforous. Because I
based my greatest forgery on the legend of a cured leper, I am now condemned to
leprosy.”

Nadja asked, “Who was the
leper?”

“Emperor Constantine. I
forged the
Constitutum Donatio Constantini.
”

“It’s a forgery?” Giovanni
said, and laughed. “William would have loved to hear that.”

“I also did a brisk trade in
relics,” said Christoforous. “Made a few Holy Lances myself, though Holy Grails
were my specialty. Quite a demand for those. But let me ask you, brothers in
the art, how did you get your Lance to glow like that? An impressive trick.
Wish I’d thought of it myself. Essence of firefly, is it?”

“Are you sure this Holy
Lance is a fake?” Giovanni asked.

“Without a doubt,” said
Christoforous.

“I concur,” said Peter
Bartholomew.

Giovanni turned to Marco.
“If it’s a fake, we’re in deep trouble.”

Marco nodded, playing along.
“Deep, deep trouble.”

“An ordinary lance would be
worthless in Hell.”

“Yes,” Marco agreed, “but
what if this Lance was anointed in the blood of Christ?”

The poet shrugged. “Only one
way to be sure.”

Marco stabbed Peter’s thigh.
Peter screamed as the Lance burned a hole through phantom skin. Then the knight
stabbed Christoforous in the hand. The forger cried out in pain. The shades
slunk away together, seeking solace among the damned.

“Nadja!” cried a sinner who
lay trembling and feverish, her skin smoking like steam in winter.

“Helena?” Nadja said.

“It’s me.”

“Oh, poor Helena. You were
alive when I left home.”

“You left a pestilence in
your wake. It found me, Nadja, as it found your mother.”

“Why were you sent here?”

“Because of you.”

“Me?”

“And the Inquisition. They
made me say things.”

“What kind of things?”

“How you lured those boys
into wicked orgies with your pretty face and your demonic attacks.”

“I was raped.”

“So you said.”

“You believe me, don’t you?”

“No one believes a witch.”

“But I’m not a witch. I
never consorted with devils.”

Helena laughed. “If you came
down here to consort with angels, you’ll be sorely disappointed.”

“You bore false witness
against me.”

“I wasn’t the first.”

“Who was? Who gave my name
to the Dominicans?”

“Not for me to say. But I
truly thought you were a witch. At least, I came to think so, after the
inquisitor told me what the others were saying.”

“But you knew me, Helena.
You were my friend.”

“Don’t say that.”

“My best friend.”

“I’ll deny it,” said Helena.
“I denied it before, I’ll deny it again. I’m a friend to no witches. Go away,
Nadja. Look at what you’ve done to me.”

Beyond the last ditch of
Malebolge, nearing the edge of the chasm, they heard a low rumble like a human
voice.

“
Raphél maì amecche zabì
almi.
”

Nadja saw dark towers rising
up from the central pit of Hell. As she approached, the towers come into view,
and she realized what they were.

“Giants?”

“Nephilim,” Giovanni said.
“The noise you hear is Nimrod, who built the Tower of Babel. Because of this
sin, he has no human language.”

Like the towers at
Monteriggioni, giants ringed the abyss. Nadja looked down and saw needles of
ice jutting up like spears at the base of the cliff. Hundreds of shades were
impaled as if thrown down from a great height. Their phantom skin was frosted
over. They twitched and moaned on cold skewers.

“Is that the bottom?” Marco
asked. “The ninth level?”

Giovanni nodded. “Cocytus.”

“I expected fire, not ice.”

Nadja said, “There is no
warmth this far from God.”

Circling the edge, looking
for a way down, they saw Ephialtes, a giant who, with his brother, warred
against God. He was bound five times with a chain around his body, and
struggled so mightily against his fetters that the ground shook.

When the pilgrims reached a
third frozen giant, the colossus spoke. “I am Anteaus. You are Marco da Roma,
Giovanni Boccaccio, and Nadja of Munich.”

Marco said, “We came to see
your master.”

“You are expected,” said
Anteaus.

“Is there a way down?”

“There is.”

“Will you help us?”

“No. But I will take you to
the Devil’s lair.”

Anteaus held out his hand.
The pilgrims stepped into his open palm. Slowly, gently, the giant set them
down at the bottom of the abyss.

CHAPTER 31

A frozen sea of tears sloped
gently into a darkness unfathomed by grace, untouched by love. Nadja shuddered.
This glacial plain was all that stood between them and the provenance of
terror.

“Caina,” said Giovanni.
“Betrayers of kin.”

Nadja heard a sound like a
hailstorm, but saw no hail. A wind like the foehns of Bavaria pulsated over the
ice.
The Devil wind,
she thought. The vast plain was studded with small mounds of ice. Thousands
dotted the expanse like gravestones. On closer inspection, Nadja saw that these
were not crystalline formations, but human heads, sinners encased in ice up to
their necks. Their faces were livid, their eyes leeward and downcast to protect
them from the wind. Nadja realized the sound she took to be hailstones was
chattering teeth.

“Betrayers,” Giovanni said,
“worst of all sinners.”

“Who did they betray?” Nadja
asked.

“These, I believe, betrayed
their families.”

The pilgrims stepped around
the heads when they could, and over them when the population became too dense.
Twice they doubled back to find a better path through the sinners. Some heads
turned a little in the ice to follow their progress, though most of the mouths
were frozen shut and many of the eyes had closed with frozen tears. Nadja tried
not to look at the faces, but looked instead on the flat ice where she could
set her next step. Several times the slippery base betrayed her feet, throwing
her down hard on elbows and knees. Giovanni was having just as much trouble,
but Marco used the Lance as a staff and did not fall. Each time he planted the
Lance into the ice, the frozen surface melted a little, then refroze, leaving
an impression. A dotted line trailed behind him.

Nadja was watching this when
she tripped over one of the frozen heads. Her hands splayed on the ice. Her
left cheek smashed against the unforgiving surface. It stung, then throbbed.
She rolled over, sat up, and turned back to apologize to the sinner she had
kicked.

“I’m sorry,” she said, and
recognized the face: stern eyes and thin lips that rarely smiled. This was how
she had looked in life, before the pestilence disfigured her. “Mama?”

Her mother’s face was frozen
in tears, but the alluvium had cracked when Nadja kicked her. Nadja reached out
and pulled the ice from her mother’s cheeks and lips.

When she was free to speak,
the shade said, “Nadja? Is that you, child? My clumsy child?”

“It’s me, Mama.”

Her mother had always been a
pious woman, attending church, confessing often, and raising her daughter to
fear the Lord. What had happened? Why was her mother here, in this wellspring
of evil?

“I knew you’d come,” the old
woman said, nodding to the sound of cracking ice.

“Why?”

“For what you did to me.”

“I loved you.”

“You cursed me.”

“I came here to do God’s
work.”

“God has abandoned you. Like
your miserable father did.”

“God is with me now,” Nadja
said.

“Look around you, child. You
are in the Devil’s lair. The farthest place from God.”

“I brought Him with me,” she
said. “In my heart.”

A cold cackle rattled her
mother’s throat. Her lips formed a scornful grin. “Stupid girl. Foolish little
whore. You saw the Devil and you called him God.”