Brotherhood of the Tomb (30 page)

Below that, the tomb appeared shut, a great stone rolled against its mouth. And near the entrance to the tomb, another stone had been set up, a sacrificial altar. This was the end of the long pilgrimage through an insane world: one by one, the pilgrims were bringing their children to be sacrificed; one by one, the children were being tied and laid on the stone. And on their left, a figure in a mask was turning a grinding wheel, sharpening long, thin knives.

In the exact centre of the room, beneath the face of the risen Christ, stood a stone altar exactly like the one in the painting, draped with a white cloth stained with blood. On the altar stood a silver candlestick. It had seven branches, elaborately worked by a master craftsman. And its stem was a cross. Seven candles had burned low, dripping thick white wax on the cloth.

‘Patrick, come over here.’ Assefa was in a corner of the room, holding something in his hand.

Patrick joined him. Assefa had discovered a pile of clothing in the corner.

‘Look,’ he said. He held out a scarlet-trimmed soutane and a scarlet biretta. ‘These belonged to a cardinal. They’re quite clean, no dust.’ He bent down and picked up a small object. ‘And here,’ he continued. ‘A cardinal’s ring. It has a coat of arms.’ He passed it to Patrick.

The arms consisted of a broad cardinal’s hat with tassels falling on either side of a shield. In the shield were set a heraldic sun and moon. Patrick had seen the coat of arms before. In Corradini’s book, in the section about the Migliau family.

It took a long time for Patrick to explain about the murdered child discovered in Ireland, the fresco in the Palazzo Contarini, and the dream he had had the night before. Assefa listened in silence, with mounting horror. Corradini’s hints did, in the end, have substance behind them. At some point in the past, the Contarinis and certain other families had practised child sacrifice in Venice. Today, they or their successors still kept the cult alive. The question was why. And what was Passover? And what had the patriarch of Venice been doing in a painted chamber beneath Pietro Contarini’s tomb?

It was beginning to grow dark when they left the church. They found the faint path that led back to their landing-place and hurried to get there before the boatman decided he had had enough. Behind them, the church huddled in the twilight, protecting its secrets.

The old man was nowhere to be seen. Patrick called, but his voice was swallowed up in the silence. No one answered. He looked at his watch: their two hours were not quite up.

‘The bastard’s gone!’

Assefa nodded.

‘So I see. What do we do now?’

Wait until he comes back, I suppose. He’ll be here in the morning, looking for his double payment.’

Assefa wandered down to the water’s edge and looked out at the lagoon, at the dim light fading across miles of empty water. He turned to come back, then stopped and looked at something to his right.

‘Patrick, come here!’

Patrick heard the urgency in Assefa’s voice and hurried to the little beach.

‘Look.’

The old man’s sandolo was there, still beached at the spot to which they had dragged it. They went closer.

Someone had taken a heavy stone and smashed the boat’s light hull in several places.

FORTY-ONE

There was no earth, no sky; no heaven, no hell. Only darkness, only the sound of waves, and once, far in the distance, the horn of a great ship passing in the night.

It was curious, thought Patrick, how easy it had been to beat them in the end. There had been no need for guns. Without a boat or the means to repair the one in the cove, they were trapped. Trapped and certain of a slow death. They might find water here, but it was highly unlikely that the island would furnish them with the sort of food needed for survival.

The Italian mainland was only a few miles away, but it might as well have been fifty. Boats sailed through the deep channels further out, and once or twice a day an aeroplane would pass by overhead; but no one could hear them or see them. Swimming was out of the question: the waters of the lagoon were treacherous to a high degree, the safe channels of this sector known only to a handful of fishermen. An inexperienced swimmer would find himself quickly lost and dragged down by mud and weeds.

The fire burned down slowly into the loose fabric of the night, but neither man had the energy or the will to get up and find more wood. They were physically and emotionally drained, yet sleep refused to come. Patrick feared the onset of further dreams, here above all, in a ruin that was not a ruin, at the heart of his nightmare. He closed his eyes and saw dark shapes creep across the corners of his vision. Another bout of epilepsy? Or phantoms singular to this island, the bloodless ghosts of children without hearts?

Assefa crouched beside him shivering, watching

the last flames flicker against the night, wrestling with his own private ghosts. Every priest is haunted by them at some time: thoughts of what might have been, certainties that have crumbled and become doubts, prayers left unanswered, the faces of starving children dying without God. Tonight, they crowded around him like pimps, eager to show him what lay for sale, not in the church or its painted crypt, but deeper still, in his own heart, bloodier and more desolate than any act of martyrdom or sacrifice.

The fire crumbled to ashes, the darkness deepened around them, and still they sat, each wrapped in his own thoughts, waiting for the slow night to pass. Around midnight, Assefa struggled to his feet. His limbs were numb with cold.

‘Patrick,’ he whispered. ‘Are you awake?’

‘Yes. What’s wrong?’

‘I think we’ll die if we stay out here. If not tonight, tomorrow. We should take shelter in the crypt: light a fire, try to get a little warmth. Perhaps someone will come.’ For some reason, Assefa was impelled to go down to the crypt. He felt the urge like a bodily temptation, but less tangible, less easy to resist. It was common sense, after all. Their survival might depend on it. There is no temptation so undeniable as common sense.

‘No,’ answered Patrick. ‘I’d prefer to stay up here. You go, if you like.’

Assefa hesitated.

‘I’ll get some wood, at least. There must be brushwood outside the church.’

He took one of the flashlights and set off into the darkness. Patrick remained, fighting an almost irresistible drowsiness that could, he knew, prove fatal. Perhaps, as Assefa suggested, morning would bring some sort of hope. There would be light, they could

explore the island. And perhaps, after all, someone would come. Plenty of people on Burano knew where they had gone. If their boatman did not return, surely someone would come looking for him. Patrick was sure the old man had been disposed of by whoever had staved in the sandolo. He remembered the boat he had seen momentarily the day before. Had they been followed all the way? Or was this simply standard practice when anyone enquired about San Vitale?

The whole thing was beginning to make a sort of crazy sense to him, though he still could not tie together its disparate strands. First and foremost was the notion of sacrifice. That was not too unusual: for many Christians, Christ’s death on the cross represented a sublimated, improved form of the Temple sacrifice of Judaism. He was the supreme offering, whose death made redundant all sacrifices of the past: ‘Neither by the blood of goats and calves, but by His own blood’. This Brotherhood, these keepers of the tomb of Christ, clearly believed in something similar, but to Christ’s own sacrifice they added that of innocent children.

Molech was nothing. How many innocents had died at the hands of Herod in order to save the infant Jesus? How many had died in Egypt in order that Yahweh’s chosen people could leave for a land of milk and honey?

Was that the meaning of ‘Passover’? A re-enactment of Egypt’s sacrifice so that another chosen race could have their freedom? Patrick shivered at the thought. It was a matter of days now.

He saw the light approaching from the far end of the nave. His first thought was that Assefa was returning, then he noticed that the light was different from that of the lamp his friend had been carrying: it was larger and rather brighter. He picked up his

own flashlight and switched it on. It gave out only a dim, yellow light that made no impact on the darkness. The approaching light wavered, then changed direction slightly and headed straight for him.

He switched off the lamp and got to his feet.

Who’s there?’ he called. There was no answer. He took several steps back to the wall of the apse, and began to circle along it, trying to get back to the main body of the church. The light moved nearer. He could just make out the indistinct shape of a figure holding it. The figure stumbled and the light swung wildly for several seconds, before righting itself.

‘Who are you? What do you want?’ Could it already be someone from Burano, risking the supposed horrors of San Vitale for the sake of a drunken friend and two foolhardy strangers?

‘Patrick? Sei tu, Patrick?’

The voice was soft, familiar yet unfamiliar, little more than a whisper, yet louder than a cry of pain. His heart seemed to stop, he felt himself grow dizzy. Stretching out his hand, he steadied himself against the wall. It felt rough and damp beneath his fingers.

‘Where are you, Patrick? I can’t see you.’

It was a dream, a nightmare rather, the last step down into madness. All his senses were intact, there was nothing to cocoon him from his surroundings, but he knew he was dreaming. What else could it be?

She raised the lamp higher and he saw her face at last, the ghost’s face he had expected, dark eyes in a pale mask. He remembered a game he had played with others as a child, a flashlight propped beneath his chin, turning him into a thing of intense shadows and death-like pallor. But this was no game, this was truly someone who had been in the grave and returned.

‘I’m not a ghost, Patrick. You know that by now. You’ve been expecting me. Two nights ago, when you followed me, you knew then. Don’t be afraid -I haven’t come to harm you.’

He refused to believe that any of this was more than a dream. He had fallen asleep in the cold and damp, and the lesion in his brain was raising phantoms out of his inner darkness.

As though she could read his mind, she shook her head.

‘No, Patrick, I’m not a dream either. Don’t ask me to explain, not yet. Perhaps not at all. I’m not here to talk about myself. I’ve come to take you off San Vitale.’

He could see her face more clearly now. She had changed. Not aged so much as altered, subtly, less superficially than someone who has merely grown to middle age. Her eyes were not the eyes he had last looked into over twenty years ago. Perhaps she was real after all. He had no memories of her like this for his damaged brain to call upon.

He hesitated only another moment, then stepped into the light.

What have you done with Assefa?’ he asked.

‘He’s all right, I left him down at the cove.’ She paused, her eyes fixed on his face. ‘You’ve changed, Patrick,’ she said at last. ‘More than I imagined.’ He sensed the emotion in her voice. Do ghosts have feelings?

‘Where are you taking me?’ He took it for granted that she was in charge. Death confers privileges.

‘To the mainland. We’ve got to get there tonight. Migliau’s people will have someone watching. Please, Patrick - I know this is hard for you. It’s hard for me too. But you’ve got to come with me. If you stay here you will die.’

Numb, he followed her out of the church, walking several paces behind, her light always ahead of him, bobbing through the darkness. She seemed to know the way. In five minutes, they were back at the cove. Just before they reached the shore, Francesca switched off her lamp.

‘The path goes straight down to the beach here,’ she whispered. ‘Take my hand, I’ll help you down.’

Reluctantly, he reached out for her. With a shudder, he took her hand in his. It felt like ice, and for a horrid moment he thought the nightmare was real, that she was indeed dead. But it was only the night air, the cold night air that had frozen his hand as well. She led him down to the beach, just as she had taken him, many years before, to another beach, naked and shivering as the tide turned.

Assefa was waiting for them in the darkness. And beside him a third man stood leaning against a small boat.

FORTY-TWO

Rome, 2 March

The Madonna was very old and very worn. Her face was a filigree of cracks, the blue paint of her robe was flaking in places, and the gold leaf of her halo had all but disappeared. Whether it was age that had most taken its toll, or adoration, it was impossible to say. But her eyes seemed tired and unfocused, as though the prayers and laments of numberless generations had at last proved too much for her. The spirit, like the flesh, has its limits, and compassion, whatever the theologians say, is not inexhaustible.

Assefa stepped forward and added his candle to those already burning in front of the icon. He stood for almost a minute gazing at her ravaged face. She was black like him, and tired like him, and in her crumbling features he found more comfort than in all the city’s statues and paintings put together. He sighed and dropped to his knees, turning a plastic rosary between exhausted fingers.

In a shadow close behind him, Patrick stood in silence, his hands clasped before him, keeping careful watch. Santa Maria delle Grazie was a little-frequented church off the beaten track in the Vicolo de’ Renzi, just south of the river in Trastevere. No tourists came here, not even the clever sort who toss aside their Baedekers and lose themselves deliberately among alleyways smelling of cats and rotting citrus peel. Even pilgrims were few and far between, a mere handful of cognoscenti drawn by the Black Virgin.

According to legend, the icon had originally been

brought to southern France from the Holy Land during the time of the Crusades, by a Templar knight, Guillaume de Pereille. Some said that it was, like so many other Black Virgins, the work of Saint Luke. After the Albigensian crusade of the thirteenth century, it had been carried from Languedoc to Turin, and from Turin to Rome, where it had been housed in its own chapel in Santa Maria delle Grazie and named La Madonna Mora. The more prosaic said it was probably the work of the Roman artist Pietro Cavallini, who was known to have painted a very similar Madonna di Constantinopoli for the Benedictine Abbey in Montevergine around 1290.