Brotherhood of the Tomb (24 page)

He opened his eyes. It was still dark, but the mist had cleared. His head ached intolerably, and his eyes were painful. Blinking, he thought he could make out stars in a black sky. He was lying on his back against something hard. With an effort, he pulled himself to a sitting position.

On either side, dark buildings slipped by as though in a dream. There were no lights anywhere, but as his eyes accustomed themselves to the dark, he could make out the pattern of the Grand Canal. He was in

the mysterious gondola again, being rowed alone by a nameless and faceless gondolier. They were further down the Canal this time, heading for St Mark’s. The torches and candles of his previous dream had been extinguished, and the water was empty of other craft. All was silent as before.

It disturbed him that he could remember everything of his earlier dream, that he knew it had been a dream, and that he was certain, as he had been before, that he was not at this moment dreaming. And yet he could neither hear nor speak.

The gondola began to veer towards the left bank. As they drew close, he thought he recognized the twin-arched windows and ornamented upper storey of the Palazzo Corner-Spinelli. The boat slipped into a narrow side canal and made its way slowly through a labyrinth of channels, some only wide enough to permit the passage of a single craft. Unseen, they passed the backs and facades of tall houses. Here and there, Patrick could see a taper in a high window. Once, he caught sight of a woman watching them from a low balcony, her blonde hair combed loose in long, weeping tresses, and pale breasts cupped in tired hands, like offerings.

They slid beneath low bridges, the gondolier stooping down to get through. Once, in the distance, he could see through a gap between tall houses part of a wide campo. A bonfire had been lit, and in the centre of the square, a group of blind men wielding long knives chased a frightened pig in ever-decreasing circles. Then the scene was blotted out by a high wall covered in ivy. The gondola slipped deeper into the maze.

They passed near an embankment on which a crippled dog dragged itself painfully along. Patrick was sure the dog reminded him of something, but he

had forgotten what it was. He realized that, although he could neither hear nor speak, he was not wholly cocooned from his surroundings. He could feel the chilly air against his skin, and, if he dipped a hand into the water, it would come out wet and cold. And yet he sensed some sort of barrier between himself and this world. He had been brought here as a spectator, not a participant. But what was it he had been brought to see?

The boat slowed suddenly, and Patrick noticed that they were turning in towards the bank. Out of the darkness loomed the canal gate of a large palazzo. Two torches flared on either side, held fast by iron brackets, and a third was held by a servant dressed in a bauta, waiting just inside the open gate. Above the gate, a large moulding represented a lamb carrying a cross.

They swung in to a low flight of stone steps, and the gondolier tied up skilfully at the nearest mooring post. The gondola twisted round and scraped against the steps. The servant stepped forward, holding his torch high.

At that moment, something happened to Patrick’s ears, as though an invisible blockage had been removed. He could hear the sound of water lapping around him, and the wooden hull of the gondola scraping the steps. Like the dog he had seen earlier, the scraping sound reminded him of something. He stepped out of the gondola onto the first step. The servant bowed from the waist, then straightened. Patrick noticed his eyes, gazing at him from behind the mask: the lids were heavy, the pupils glazed and flecked with tiny specks of gold.

‘Abbiate la grazia di seguirmi. Isignori vi attendono. Please accompany me, sir. Their lordships are awaiting you.’

THIRTY-TWO

‘Can you hear me, Signor Canavan? Please nod if you can hear me.’

The voice sounded muffled and remote, but the words were English. Why were they speaking English?

‘Please try to answer, Signor Canavan.’

He tried to open his eyes, but they felt as though someone had stuck them together with glue. His lips would not move.

‘Is all right, Signor Canavan. Just let me know if you can hear me.’

He nodded, and, as he did so, experienced a wave of intense nausea. The nausea gave way to blackness. Then out of the blackness the face of the servant in the bauta came towards him. The mouth opened as though in speech, but Patrick could hear nothing. The face was swallowed up by blackness.

‘Can you hear me now, Signor Canavan?’

This time his eyes opened. He saw a blurred face staring down at him, a man’s face, wearing a look of concern. The words were English, but the accent Italian.

‘Yes. Who ...?’

‘My name is Doctor Luciani. You are in the Ospedale Civile. Capisce? Do you understand?’

Patrick nodded feebly.

‘You were brought here last night. Una signora ... a lady brought you here after she find you in the street. You were unconscious. Can you remember anything? Did you have an accident?’

Patrick shook his head. He felt as though last

night’s fog had been concentrated and decanted into his skull. His stomach was nauseous. It was like a migraine, only worse.

‘You mean - not have an accident ... or not remember?’

‘Mi ricordo ... la nebbia ... I remember ... mist... running ... a gondola.’

Patrick had replied in Italian; strangely, he found it easier, as though English had become foreign to him.

‘Ah, parla Italiano. Benissimo.’ The doctor paused. ‘Signor Canavan, I want to carry out some tests. They are merely to establish whether or not you have suffered some injury to your brain. You may have fallen or been struck. Do you understand?’

‘Yes.’

‘Later, I would like you to have an X-ray. And possibly an EEG. Just to be sure. But at this stage, I only wish to test your reactions to stimuli. There’s nothing to be worried about.’

Patrick’s sight was clearing. His head still throbbed, but his thoughts were less confused. Memories of the night before were beginning to flood back: Contarini in his kingdom of rats, a lame dog whining among shadows, the fresco on the wall of the palazzo.

A nurse came forward to assist the doctor. Patrick was in no condition to argue as she and Luciani began to prick and prod various parts of his anatomy. They flashed lights in his eyes, took his temperature and blood pressure, examined his ears for signs of blood, and tested his reflexes.

He remembered getting lost in the mist, then chasing someone who had been tailing him. What then? Had someone attacked him? Without warning, the image of a bridge formed in his mind, and on it a shadowy figure, half-hidden in mist.

‘Doctor!...’

‘Please, Signor Canavan, relax. We’ll soon be finished.’

‘No, please ... You said ... a woman brought me here. Una signora ... What was she like? What did she look like? Per piacere ... e importante ... molto importante.’

The doctor shrugged.

‘I’m sorry, I didn’t get a very good look at her. You were my first concern. When I went back to reception, she had gone.’

What age was she? Young, old?’

‘Did you know her? Is that it? She said you were a stranger, that she had been out late and found you in a state of collapse.’

What age!?’

‘About forty, I think. Quite thin, she was quite thin. And smallish, not a tall woman. I’m sorry, I can’t remember. Perhaps one of the nurses ...’

Patrick lay back, helpless. Images of the dream that had followed his collapse were forming in his brain: dark water peeling back beneath the sharp prow of the gondola, stone steps thick with moss, a huge pig, bleeding, running in tightening circles, eyes flecked with gold behind a carnival mask ... He was frightened that the dream would pull him back into unconsciousness again. Desperately, he forced his eyes to stay open.

‘I miei vestiti... Where have you put my clothes?’

‘It’s all right, don’t worry,’ the nurse reassured him. ‘They’re in this locker by your bed. Everything’s safe, don’t fret.’

‘La mia giacca ... my jacket, please look in the pocket. A photograph ... there’s a photograph.’

The doctor looked up impatiently from his examination and motioned to the nurse.

‘Take a look while I finish this. It may help jog his memory.’

The nurse found Patrick’s jacket and went through the pockets carefully. Everything was there - wallet, passport, keys, money - everything except the photograph.

By mid-afternoon, Patrick’s head had cleared completely. Dr Luciani allowed him a little light food, and the nurse propped him up in a half-sitting position. They left him in a side ward, with nothing for company but a battered television permanently tuned to a children’s channel. He asked them to contact Makonnen at the hotel, and an hour later he arrived, anxiety written all over his face.

Patrick smiled and reached out a hand.

‘If I didn’t know better,’ he laughed, ‘I’d say you were looking pale.’

‘I am pale,’ Makonnen answered, sitting down. ‘I didn’t know what to do last night, when you didn’t come back to the hotel. You said you’d be back before midnight. I thought of contacting the police - but what could I tell them?’

‘I’m sorry. Things got a little ... difficult. I found ... Francesca’s father.’ He paused. ‘Assefa, I think they may be on to us. Someone was asking about me at the Contarinis’

‘How could they have found us so quickly?’

‘I don’t know. Anyway, we’d best move to another hotel. Or better still, find lodgings through your friend Claudio. By the way, what did his reporter friend have to say last night?’

Assefa shrugged.

‘Migliau is still missing. There has still been no demand for a ransom. It’s as though he’s vanished into thin air. The Carabinieri are growing frantic. The

official view seems to be that he was kidnapped, but that something went badly wrong. They expect his body to turn up in a canal any time now. However...’

‘Yes?’

‘As I said, that’s the official view. Claudio’s friend has other ideas. His name is Aldo Siniscalchi. I’ve arranged for you to meet him. You’ll like him: he thinks, asks questions, gets impatient. For several years now, he’s been keeping a file on Migliau. Well, not just Migliau, but the Church in Venice generally.’ He paused. A nurse looked in, glanced curiously at the American and his visitor, and left again.

‘Patrick, did you know that three of the eight popes elected in this century have been patriarchs of Venice? As I told you before, some people think Migliau may be number four. He got to be what he is now chiefly through family connections, but Siniscalchi thinks there’s a lot more to him than a coat of arms.

‘He got interested in Migliau originally because of the Cardinal’s extreme right-wing stance. Migliau has never hidden his opinions: he has been consistently outspoken in his opposition to reform in the Church or, for that matter, in society at large. No birth-control, no abortion, no divorce, no married priests, no women priests - the usual stock-in-trade of an ecclesiastical reactionary.’

Patrick smiled.

‘I take it you don’t see eye to eye.’

Makonnen shook his head.

‘No. But I have no choice. God did not do me the favour of ensuring that I was born in Europe or America. From the Third World, things look very different. Don’t get me wrong - I’m actually quite conservative in many matters. I don’t approve of Claudio or the communism he has espoused. That’s

not the answer. But the communists are right about some things. You can’t preach the Gospel to a man with an empty belly. You can’t enthuse about the Kingdom of God to someone living in daily fear of arrest by a right-wing death-squad. And I don’t think you can promote the growth of democracy by bolstering up dictatorships.’

‘And Migliau thinks you can?’

‘He doesn’t see the relevance. For him, the Church’s mission is to save souls, not lives. To rebel against the state, even if that state is steeped in injustice and bloody to its elbows, is a cardinal sin. To practise birth-control, even when you and your family are starving, is to contravene God’s eternal law.’

‘But that’s little more than the Pope himself has been saying for years anyway.’

Makonnen sighed.

“You don’t have to remind me. How do you think Migliau got to be Patriarch of Venice? But he wants to go further. If he had his way, he’d turn the clock back in ways you can’t imagine. Even I had no conception until last night.

‘He’d declare Vatican II invalid, abandon the principle of collegiality, reintroduce the Tridentine Mass. He’d ban all dialogue with other churches, prohibit relations with non-Christian religions, restate the dogma of Jewish culpability for the death of our Lord. With Migliau as Pope, the Church would take a major step backwards. There’d be an Index of Prohibited Books again, heresy trials, widespread excommunication.’

Patrick shook his head in disbelief.

‘You can’t be serious.’

Makonnen raised his eyebrows.

‘No? What makes you think I can’t? Compared

with thirty or forty years ago, the Catholic Church is positively giddy with modern thinking. And yet people like you - even people like myself - think it’s all but standing still. Men like Migliau are scared stiff. They see what the reforms have done, what they are still doing; they think forward another thirty or forty years, and in their imaginations they see the end of the Church as they know it: no Mass, no priesthood, no hierarchy, no papacy - perhaps not even a God. I think that’s an exaggeration, in fact I know it is - but try telling that to a hardliner like Migliau.’

Patrick shrugged.

‘So Migliau’s a Catholic fundamentalist afraid of change. What’s new? Conservatism and the Catholic hierarchy are scarcely strangers.’

‘Perhaps. But Migliau goes yet further. One of the cardinal’s greatest fears is that fundamentalist Protestants will start to negotiate for political influence in Europe just as they have been doing in the States. If that happens, they will draw away a lot of the God-fearing right whose support would be essential for a moral and religious revolution. Migliau knows he has to get in first.