Brotherhood of the Tomb (35 page)

Patrick thought of what he had seen that time in Egypt, his first brush with the Brotherhood of the Tomb: the blood of Muslim children filling a basalt bowl, a village torn with grief.

‘About twenty years ago,’ she went on, ‘leadership of the Brotherhood passed to a bishop named Migliau. He is now a cardinal and the patriarch of Venice.’

Patrick and Assefa exchanged glances. Another piece of the puzzle had fallen into place.

‘Migliau,’ continued Francesca, ‘has a deep animosity towards Islam. It isn’t a rational thing with him, merely part of his general baggage of fears and prejudices. He was furious when the Vatican Council issued a document called Nostra Aetate, calling for mutual understanding between Muslims and Christians. And when the present Pope visited

Muslim countries like Turkey or Morocco and talked about bonds of spiritual unity between the two faiths, he went crazy. He sent an encyclical letter to all branches of the Brotherhood declaring the Pope an apostate who had betrayed the faith of Christ.’

‘I don’t understand,’ Assefa broke in. ‘Surely this Brotherhood has never recognized the authority of the Pope. What difference would it make, whatever the Holy Father said?’

Francesca frowned.

‘It’s not that simple, Father. At the very beginning, the Brotherhood was entirely at odds with the Church. But in time, as the Church grew more powerful, they came to see it as the public expression of Christianity, designed for the world at large, while the Brotherhood held the truth. The Church was the shell, while the Brotherhood was the kernel. But now Migliau wants to change all that. He says the Pope has become Antichrist and that he, Migliau, is the true Pope, sent by God to unite the inward and the outward realms of faith. He is quite mad, you see. I think he would consider the Pope’s solution for Lebanon as a final betrayal. He might try to upset the plan in some way.’

‘I think he has started.’ Assefa explained what he and Patrick knew of Migliau’s disappearance. The others listened in silence. Even if they could not understand why the cardinal had chosen to vanish, it was clear that his absence was not a coincidence, but a prelude to something more dramatic.

You said you knew what Passover was,’ prompted Boberto. Assefa nodded.

‘Yes,’ he said. ‘I think so. I can’t tell you what they intend to do. But I think I can tell you when and where.’

He paused.

‘Can you tell me if there has been anything in the papers about a conference at the Vatican tomorrow?’

O’Malley nodded.

‘Yes, of course. About three days ago. It had been kept quiet until then in case of trouble. Something about the Middle East. I think the Holy Father is going to meet with religious leaders from different countries. It wasn’t described as anything very important.’

Assefa nodded.

‘No, but it is part of the Holy Father’s plan for peace negotiations. The meeting tomorrow will be the first of a series of public conferences designed to pave the way for his mission. That’s not how it will be presented, of course. Nothing will be said about Lebanon or any of the other projects, not even his hopes or fears or dreams. This will simply be a summit of Christian and Muslim leaders organized by the Secretariat for Non-Christian Beligions.

‘There will be the Pope himself, the cardinals representing the Secretariats for Non-Christian Beligions and the Promotion of Christian Unity, bishops from Catholic dioceses throughout the Middle East, patriarchs of the Greek Catholic churches, representatives of the Maronite, Coptic, Armenian and Assyrian Christian communities, Muslim shaykhs from the Azhar University in Cairo, Saudi ulama from Mecca and Medina, Ismaili leaders from Bombay and East Africa, and a Shi’ite mujtahid from Lebanon.

‘At the opening ceremony, Mr MacMaolain will be present, along with the President of Egypt and ambassadors from several Muslim states.’

‘Did you say the President of Egypt? That wasn’t in any of the papers.’ O’Malley’s face bore a look of deep concern. Assefa nodded.

‘Do you remember the papyrus I showed you this

morning?’ asked the Irishman, turning to Patrick, who was seated on his left. ‘Do you recall what Simon the Levite said about Egypt?’

Patrick nodded numbly.

‘Well man, come on, what did he say?’

‘ “If any still be alive ... he shall go unto Egypt, which is Babylon, that he may strike down Pharaoh ...” I... I can’t remember the rest.’

‘ “And that shall be the true Passover, that God’s chosen people shall pass out of the land of Egypt and come into the Land of the Promise ... Egypt shall fall, and Babylon, all them that have scattered the children of God among the nations.” I know the text well, Patrick. It’s a good many times I’ve read it now. But, by God, it never made as much sense to me before as it does this instant.’

There was a shocked silence as the meaning of the ancient words became clear. Simon and John and all the dispossessed of Jerusalem would have their revenge. A different pharaoh in a different age, yet perfect somehow for such a vengeance: the ruler of Egypt struck down side by side with the man who had inherited the mantle of the old Roman emperors. And struck down, for that matter, in Rome itself, the Babylon of so many apocalypses.

‘Is there anything more we should know?’ O’Malley asked at last, his tone subdued and hesitant for the first time since Patrick and Assefa had met him.

Assefa nodded.

‘Yes. Two things. First, the conference is only going to last two days. Press coverage has been kept deliberately low-key. Only the more important agencies and correspondents have been invited to be there. By the time hostile elements in Iran or Libya or Egypt can so much as react, the last session will have finished and the delegates will be on their way

home. And the Holy Father will have won a major public relations success. He will be able to say that he has sown the seeds of Muslim-Christian unity, wiping out centuries of mutual distrust and bigotry in forty-eight hours. Whatever the fundamentalists on either side will say, he will have made a gesture for peace. Since Gorbachev came to power, the value of such gestures in international affairs has become very great.’

He fell silent.

‘You said there were two things.’

Assefa hesitated.

‘Yes,’ he said. ‘Two things. The second is this. At ten o’clock tomorrow morning, a special papal audience will be held in the Apostolic Palace, in the Sala Clementina. All the high-ranking delegates will be there, along with the Irish and Egyptian presidents and members of the Curia who will not be present at the actual conference. But the highlight of the audience will be an event which His Holiness hopes will win the hearts of men and women throughout the world.’

He paused and closed his eyes for a moment.

‘After he has greeted the dignitaries and seated them round the chamber, the Pope will welcome a party of orphans selected from every country of Europe and the Middle East, but chiefly from Italy and Egypt. Christian children and Muslim children, the hope of a new generation.’

Assefa looked at the others one by one.

‘Do you understand what I am saying?’ he whispered. ‘Tomorrow morning, the Pope will give his blessing to over one hundred children.’

No one said a word. From the street below, a faint sound of feet and voices and engines rose up to them, a thousand miles away, empty, without

meaning. Assefa’s final words seemed to echo and re-echo around the little room, filling it until there was space for nothing else.

Dermot O’Malley broke the silence. He sat in his chair without moving, listening to the echo wipe away the world outside.

‘ “And it came to pass,”’ he said in a flat voice from which all emotion had gone,’ “that at midnight the Lord smote all the firstborn in the land of Egypt, from the firstborn of Pharaoh that sat on his throne unto the firstborn of the captive that was in the dungeon.” ‘

But Patrick did not hear him. He sat rigid in his chair, staring ahead as though he saw something there in the dying afternoon light, a television screen, red and blue lights flashing, a child’s face stained with blood, small teeth on bloodless lips, dead eyes, bodies like dolls, scattered across a patterned marble floor.

FORTY-EIGHT

They were on the terrace at the rear of the apartment. O’Malley had gone with Assefa to the Vatican. Roberto was on his way to deliver sealed letters to several members of the government and the judiciary. There seemed to be nothing for either Patrick or Francesca to do but wait.

The last light had almost faded from the sky. Directly opposite, in the grey dome of Sant’ Andrea della Valle, a pair of kestrels were nesting. As they flew back and forth, their wings caught fire in a strip of sunlight that lay slantwise across the back of the dome.

‘That’s the male,’ said Patrick, pointing as one of the birds hovered briefly before darting away in search of fresh building material. ‘The one with blue wings.’

‘Yes,’ said Francesca. The birds set her on edge. She had never been that free, to wing effortlessly in unencumbered air, to turn feathers into light, to be the hunter, not the hunted. ‘They come here every year,’ she said. ‘They build a nest and hatch their chicks and fly away again.’

She wished she could just flap a pair of wings and fly away with a kestrel’s ease, away from Rome, from Italy, from the past.

‘How did you find me?’ he asked. ‘How did you come to follow me in Venice, the night I visited your father?’

She smiled. Not her old smile, he thought. That had gone forever. But another very much like it, wry, enigmatic - not in the manner of the Gioconda, but darker, as though it were not a smile at all but a

mask embellishing fear. Fear, great sadness, longings that had grown stale and useless - motifs for an entire life. He thought of masks: the white alabaster masks in Claudio Surian’s workshop, the coloured mask on his dead face, the bautas worn by the figures in his dreams, the high, elaborate costumes he and Francesca had worn at the carnival the year before she died and did not die - an entire city cloaked and veiled and sworn to silence.

‘Your arrival in Italy did not go unnoticed by the Brotherhood,’ she said. ‘They lost you in Rome and put out an alert to all their members. That was how we came to hear that you were here. At first I thought it was some sort of trap for me, but I couldn’t understand how you could have become involved. And then we found out who Father Makonnen was and realized it made some sense after all.

‘Anyway, I guessed you would go to Venice. The rest was easy. There were two places you could not avoid - my tomb on San Michele and the Palazzo Contarini. Brother Antonio told Dermot you had been on San Michele, and ...’

‘He knows?’

She nodded.

‘Only a little. He’s an old friend of Dermot’s, they used to be in Rome together. Dermot once told him a little, asked for help. Since all burials in Venice take place on San Michele, he’s been able to trace back many of the Dead for us, and through them their families. We’ve uncovered some very useful information that way.’

She looked out towards the dome again. The light had gone completely now, leaving the sky a dark shade of purple, like a heavy bruise. The kestrels were gone. A sound of moving traffic rose up from the city below, like a caged beast circling.

‘So you were there that night waiting?’ he said.

‘Yes. I was in the calle outside. I didn’t expect you to catch sight of me in the mist, much less know who I was. I’d no idea then that you had found a photograph, that you guessed I might still be alive.’

‘You wouldn’t have tried to speak to me?’

Her eyes widened.

‘No, of course not. For all I knew, you thought I was dead. I still had no idea of the nature of your involvement. From your point of view, my sudden appearance might have been a terrible shock. From mine, there was a very real danger that you could lead them to me.’

‘But you took me to the hospital.’

‘Of course. When you called my name, I realized you must know or guess that I was alive. Then you collapsed. I couldn’t just leave you there.’

Her hand lay unmoving on the terrace railing. His rested beside it, close, yet not touching. Once, holding hands had been the simplest of gestures. But here, tonight, with a grave and a score of years between them, it would have seemed almost a sacrilege.

‘I had Roberto follow you when you left the hospital,’ she continued. ‘Did you know there was a policeman waiting for you?’

‘Yes. Was he ... ?’

She nodded.

‘Matteo Maglione. He’s their chief man in the Venice carabinieri. He made a mistake going to the hospital himself. Roberto recognized him and realized that you might try getting out the back way. He followed you to Porto Marghera.

‘You made your own mistake, of course, when you started asking questions on Burano, trying to find someone to take you to San Vitale. They were

on to you straight away. Fortunately, we were just behind them. Too late to save the old fisherman; but at least we got you both off. You took a great risk going there.’

‘You did as much,’ he said.

She shrugged.

‘I’ve grown used to it. I don’t expect to live forever.’ She shivered. ‘Let’s go in,’ she said. ‘It’s getting cold.’

They went to the kitchen and made coffee. They needed something to do, something to distract them from the tension of waiting. Above all, there was an unspoken agreement between them not to enter into a discussion of what had happened twenty years ago. For Patrick, grief was beginning to slide into outrage at what had, in the final analysis, been nothing more nor less than a betrayal. If Francesca had left him for another man, his life might never have been as damaged as it had been by her supposed death.

She may have been resurrected, but nothing that happened now could give life back to the years he had wasted grieving for her. Nor, he thought, could anything give new life to the love she had destroyed. Perhaps she had been blameless, the victim of pressures she was powerless to resist. But he was in no position to judge. With a shock, he realized that he had already started to resent the fact that she was still alive. So much of his life had been built around her death, so much of him had been buried with her empty coffin, that he wondered if he could find the energy to fill the void her return had left.