The Fallen (36 page)

Up until that moment, Poré had never seen a man like him before, his life being always so full of light and colour, not dark like the savage who had visited, dressed in black from head to toe, a hood of felt covering the crown of his heavy square head. He had stood statuesque at the far end of the chamber, his large fists on his hips, staring at each child in turn, eyes boring, deciphering what he could from the young boys' appearance and manner, his mouth locked in a perpetual sneer, after which he had shifted his weight from his left to his right foot, stepping forward between the rows of desks, his long strides pacing the length of the room in an instant. The large shadow he had thrown seemed to shrivel and chill anyone caught beneath it, like a curse. Poré could still recall the sound of metal clanking dully beneath his tattered black robe with every heavy step he took, as if the bones under his shirt were exposed and made of iron.

Poré hung his head and clutched his hands, trying to choke the memories from his mind. But they refused to leave, growing clearer and even more real.

Although at the time Poré feared he knew who the man was, he had never dared to guess that the Inquisitor had come to call him away to join the acolytes for the Inquisition. When all that remained of the class was a ragtag collection of slight and brittle-looking children, only bloodless strained faces staring back, Poré had allowed himself a fleeting surge of hope that he would not be one of those called. But all too quickly his name was called, and afterwards nothing was ever the same again.

“What's the matter, boy?” the Inquisitor had hissed, as Poré had approached him that first time from his desk. “Where's your pride at being chosen for the Inquisition?”

Poré had tried to speak, but words had failed him and he'd hung his head lower and shuddered with tears.

“Is there some mistake?” the Inquisitor had spat, looking across to the man leaning with his elbows upon the heavy leather tome of names. “Can this whelp surely be one of the chosen?” He'd looked at the boy as if he were a piece of discarded filth. “He weeps like a child and has the arms of a girl.”

“He is wise,” the man at the book countered, holding his fingers to the point in the register he had reached. “It is said he has a great mind.”

Young Poré lasted just two months within the Inquisition. The Inquisitor who had greeted him in the class had also decided to take personal responsibility for him, and subjected the boy to the very worst abuse. Daily beatings, verbal assaults, cruel interrogations and hostility shown to him at every opportunity, all exacerbating the true horrors he was supposed to face and fight as an Inquisitor. From this tortured life he could never find peace, for when the demonic cries of a possessed child or the phantom wails of a spectre had fallen silent, Poré was subjected to the taunts and violence of his master when they returned to their residence.

When he decided he could stand no more and resolved to leave, his pitiful pleading turning him prostrate before the local Cardinal, his eyes full of tears, he was granted his wish. But at a terrible cost. His mother and father were placed into inquisitional hands.

Root and branch. It was the Inquisition's way.

He'd beseeched the Cardinal to leave his family alone, to take him, but to no avail. He never saw his family again. It was then that the seed of hate was planted and proof, if ever Poré needed it, that at the heart of the faith was a blackness which could only have been forged in hell by the Devil.

Poré returned from his memory back to the wilderness of the Slovenian-Italian border and his current predicament, his cheek pressed into an open palm. His eyes were full of tears and he wept in pain at his loss and isolation. He was alone, so alone, as he had always been. And at once doubt seized him. How could he, one man, hope to do what had been decreed to him when the word of God had been revealed and assured him and told him to be strong?

The howl of a wolf thrust his senses back into the forefront of his mind. The crack of a branch sounded, followed by another howl, this one closer and directly ahead of him. Slowly he moved his hand towards the pelt lying at his feet. Another howl came, this time to his left, just beyond the light of the camp fire.

And now there was movement, a large hulking body running towards him from out of the trees, a vast terrible creature. Without any hesitation, Poré pulled on the pelt and spun to howl down on the approaching wolf with his talons splayed wide and his blood-red jaws open to receive him.

SEVENTY TWO

R
OME
. I
TALY
.

“They're still after us!” said Isabella breathlessly, the moment they had run inside the house Tacit had found for them and locked the door. She leant back against it and swept the hair from her face. “I can hear dogs.”

“I can hear a lot more than just dogs,” replied Tacit, pacing through the rooms to the rear of the house to check all was clear throughout. All across the city, wolf howls haunted courtyards and narrow side-streets.

“Sandrine,” muttered Henry, looking to the window.

“She'll be fine,” said Isabella, going to his side.

“Unlikely,” replied Tacit, returning to the room to snatch a bottle from the sideboard and slump into a chair at the table. “But she and her kind are keeping the Inquisition busy.” He twisted the cork off the bottle and set it eagerly to his lips. “That's all that matters. For now. We need a little time to think.”

“I just hope Strettavario got away all right from the last place we stayed. Everywhere seems cursed!”

“Don't worry about him,” replied Tacit, setting down the bottle and vanishing back into the depths of the house. “They're not looking for him. And anyway, I've known Strettavario long enough to know he can handle himself.”

“Strettavario, he reminds me a little bit of you.”

Tacit came back with a large roll of paper under his arm, scowling, and shook his head, but there was the suggestion of humour in his face. He set the paper on the table and rolled it out, setting the dead weight of his revolver in the centre of it. Isabella and Henry came forward, seeing that Tacit had found a map of Europe.

Isabella sat back on the edge of a table and crossed her arms. She flicked her hands to loosen her wrists and tousled her hair, forcing it into some sort of shape.

The giant of a man gathered an oil lamp from the room opposite, groping in his pocket for matches.

“Thank goodness,” she said brightly, when he produced a packet of them. “Light! It feels like we've been encased in the dark ever since you came back.”

Tacit lit the wick and replaced the glass cover, adjusting the flame so that its thin light eked miserably through the darkness. Any light was enough for Isabella. Tacit set the lantern down on the table and spread out the map, softening the edges and creases with his hands so that it lay flat.

“There are some more chairs through there,” the Inquisitor announced, pointing with his thumb through the doorway from which he had gathered the map, as he leaned over the table, “if anyone wants to sit.”

“What is this place?” asked Isabella.

“A very old inquisitional safe house. Known only to a few of us. Most of those who used it are long dead. I'm hoping no one thinks to look for us here.”

“It sounds like the whole of the Inquisition is against us out there,” Isabella said, as Henry reappeared with two chairs and offered one to her. He set his own across the table from Tacit and dropped into it, exhausted. “The whole Inquisition isn't against us. We know that,” replied Tacit. “But we need to work quickly. I'm hoping we'll be safe here, for a little while at least. For long enough.”

“Long enough for what?” asked Henry

“Those numbers we found in Benigni's office.”

Isabella nodded. “I have them here.” She took the paper onto which she had copied them from her pocket and pushed it across the map towards Tacit.

“I've been thinking,” he said, turning the sheet in front of him. “These aren't library record numbers at all.”

“They're longitude and latitude,” announced Henry suddenly, leaning forward and catching sight of the numbers from where he sat.

Tacit nodded, impressed.

“When did you get these?” asked Henry.

“When you were flat out on Benigni's floor. But I think you're right. They're coordinates on a map.”

“Northern Italy?” asked Henry, watching Tacit's finger come to rest over the border with Slovenia.

“The Carso,” said Tacit. He tapped the spot on the map with the end of his index finger. He looked up at Isabella and then across to Henry. “That's where the coordinates point. There's something there. At the Karst Plateau. Something that Cincenzo found there, or believes to be happening there.” He looked at the pair of them. “That's where we need to go.”

“Tacit,” said Isabella, her voice wavering. “All this! The murders. The Inquisition. The map.” She closed her eyes for a moment, as if letting the momentum of everything catch up with her. “I'm scared.”

“Only just now?” he replied, a light coming to his own eyes.

“This thing we're getting into, is there no one we can call upon to help? Surely there is someone else you can trust? Someone in the Holy See?”

“No.”

“Cardinal Bishop Adansoni?” she suggested. “You speak so highly of him, like he was your father?”

Tacit's eyes grew very large and dark. “No.”

“He's a good man. He cares for you.” She clutched his hand tighter so that her knuckles whitened. “I know he cares for you very much, from the times I have spoken with him previously. We should try and find him. Maybe he can help explain the map?” she suggested, waving towards the table.

“No,” Tacit replied firmly, the darkness within him almost instantly crushing any softening of emotion he had shown. “It's too dangerous to involve an old man like him.” He stood and returned his attention to the table. “This is for us and us alone,” he announced, tapping on the area marked on the map. He looked from Henry to Isabella, and then back at the point on the map he was indicating. In the thin light of the single
lantern, Tacit looked more determined than ever, his face butchered and broken from all he had endured.

“The Karst,” he announced, his finger set to the place on the map where the Italian and Austro-Hungarian borders met. He looked again at the pair of them. “That's where the coordinates point. There's something in the Karst. That's where we need to go.” He saw that the soldier looked troubled. “What is it?” Tacit spat. “Getting cold feet?”

But Henry ignored him and buried his chin in his hand, his eyes searching the recesses of the room's far corner.

“Resurrection,” said Henry. “The Chamber of Bones.” Now both sets of eyes were on the soldier and he dropped both hands to the table. “What Accosi mentioned before. I've been thinking. I know of it,” he said. “I've heard of it.”

“What do you mean?” growled Tacit. “You mean it's a place?” And then it seemed as if the realisation struck him.

“Nostra Signora della Concezione,” they said together, and Isabella's eyes widened.

“Of course!” she said, her hand to her hairline. “The church of Santa Maria della Concezione of the Capuchins, in Rome!”

“Beneath which is the Crypt of the Resurrection.”

“The Chamber of Bones,” confirmed Henry, nodding.

Tacit's eyes narrowed. “I wonder how it's connected? Maybe it's a location for one of the rituals? If we can get there first–”

The sound of glass breaking and wood snapping disrupted them, and as one they leapt up from the table and the map.

“We have company!” hissed Henry, gathering his revolver from his holster. “I thought you said this place was safe?!”

“Followed!” spat Tacit, taking his own revolver from his thigh. “We must have been followed.”

SEVENTY THREE

R
OME
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TALY
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