The Venice Conspiracy (5 page)

CHAPTER 13

Luna Hotel Baglioni, Venice

Too much wine has left Tom dizzy and deliciously mellow. The tension from the last twelve hours is fading as quickly as any doubts he might have had about where he is now - lying on his back on a bed that’s bigger, softer and more expensive than any he’s ever known.

The air smells of flowers. Lilies in small vases either side of the king-size bed. There’s the sound of running water in the background. Not a tap, not a bath, but a shower. It’s full on, beating hard in a marble cubicle. When it stops, he sits up and sees Tina approaching in a white towelling robe that looks too big for her. She shakes her long blonde hair out of the scrunchie she’d bunched it in, and looks wonderful. Her eyes are filled with a gentleness that melts his inhibitions. ‘Come on. Let’s get you scrubbed up.’ She pulls him by the hand and the room tilts as she leads him to the en-suite. The light is too bright. She deftly flicks a switch that kills the overheads and leaves them standing in a softer glow from candles near the sink. Tom starts to unbutton his shirt. She kisses his neck and moves his hands. Her fingertips trip down the fastenings and it falls from his shoulders. Her mouth finds his. He feels his belt being tugged open and his trousers slide down gym-hardened thighs. Her hands glide across the front of his legs and she can feel his muscles twitch and flex like snakes beneath silk. Tom’s heart thumps hard, drumming his urgency into her body. Her thumbs latch on to the side of his shorts. His hands pull her robe apart. The smell, the warmth, the touch of her skin electrifies him. Tina pulls back and kisses him. Short, hard kisses that set his lips ablaze. Now she holds him off, so her nipples tantalisingly brush the mountains of his chest. Tom takes her breasts in his hands, cradles them like he’s been given something sacred. He doesn’t understand how he feels - doesn’t want to. Even her skin confuses him - soft, yet firm. It’s all a contradictory swirl. An unrehearsed dance.

Tina lets her robe fall and she holds him while he climbs out of a tangled knot of trousers, underwear, socks and shoes. They step into the steaming cubicle. Hot water beats hard on his scalp and skin.

Tom’s about to say something. She puts a finger to his lips and shushes him. Kisses him again. More urgently this time.

The dance quickens. A tempo unknown to him. A beat that cannot -
will not
- be halted.

She reaches between his legs and strokes him.

He holds her waist, uncertain for a moment, stuck between two worlds - the one he’s left behind and the one he’s falling into - and then she puts him inside her.

She folds her body around him and takes his mind into a space and time he’s tried for so long not to think about, not even dream about. His body quakes as she moves against him, holds him, grips him.

He feels her heart against his chest, feels himself deep and hard inside her. Her hands span the broad arch of his back, fingers digging into his skin as she trembles and almost buckles.

Tom grips her legs and lifts her. Her knees tighten like a vice around the top of his thighs. She clings to his neck as a wave of orgasms breaks loose.

Tom pushes her against the cubicle wall. Their bodies rock rhythmically. Their lips stay desperately locked together for fear that something special might escape should they dare to breathe.

And then it happens.

For the first time in his life, at the end of an experience full of contradictions and pleasure, Tom Shaman gives himself - in all his uncontrolled entirety - to a woman.

CAPITOLO VII

666 BC
The Sacred Curte, Atmanta

Two days after meeting Pesna, Teucer finally sets about the task the magistrate gave him.

He doubts the gods will be pleased. He is, after all, nothing more than a common murderer. The father-to-be of an evil rapist’s child. Nevertheless, he will once more seek their forgiveness and try to divine signs that goodwill may visit Atmanta in the coming months.

Tetia walks with him to the curte. The grass is sodden with dew and the only sounds are the shuffle of their feet and birds stirring in the now leafless trees.

Teucer is going to make no ordinary sacrifice. It wouldn’t be enough. The atonement of a netsvis and his wife merits more than an offering of livestock.

The ceremony he has in his mind is one of personal cleansing and purity. He uses the sharpened staff of his lituus to mark out his sacred circle. This time it encompasses not only him but also Tetia. They stand together as he angles his ceremonial knife to open a small cut on the fingertips of his left hand. Next, he does the same to Tetia and looks to the skies. ‘Man and wife, joined as one by actions in what we do, joined by the blood we have shed of others and now the blood we shed of ourselves.’ He holds his cut hand up to his wife’s and their bloody fingers touch. Slowly Teucer moves one way around the circumference of the sacred circle and Tetia goes the other, until they meet again.

Together they kneel and dig a hole in which Teucer starts a fire - a roaring blaze that will be a tribute to the gods and a beacon for their repentant journey into the darkness. They position themselves either side of the flames and Teucer unrolls a cloth that contains sacred herbs and foods for the deities. He sprinkles henbane into the growing flames while Tetia positions the jugs of water, wine and oils that he has blessed, along with black bucchero bowls she’s made for the ritual.

The rising sun is hidden by cloud - a disturbing omen sent from Apulu the god of sun and light and a chilling reminder of the fire Tetia allowed to die in their hearth.

They both swallow a draught of wine, then he fixes north-south and east-west lines, both in the sky and on the ground. ‘This is my front, and this is my back . . .’ He stretches out his hands. ‘This is my left and this is my right . . .’ The division of the sky is necessary for him to locate the sixteen celestial homes of the gods.

Finally the young netsvis turns east and kneels. ‘I am Teucer, son of Venthi and Larcia; I am your voice and your ears to the world. Great deities of the east, most benevolent of all gods, I call upon you to forgive me, to forgive my wife, to wipe our actions from your divine memories and to protect the good souls of Atmanta.’ He looks across the flames to Tetia. ‘And I humbly thank you that we should still be together and be free and happy.’

Tetia feels a thud in her stomach.

She bows her head and puts her hands there. The child is kicking. Pounding harder and more frequently than it’s ever done. She closes her eyes and hopes the pain will quickly pass.

Teucer doesn’t notice her, he’s now caught in the full flow of the ceremony.

Thunder booms in the darkening morning sky. Not the type of thunder that announces an important event, nor that of a celestial warning. It is the anger of the gods. Black crows break in bellowing squawks from the treetops.

Lightning comes.

A jagged bolt that cracks the clouds. A strike straight from the hands of Tinia, chief of the gods. A bolt blessed by Dii Consentes, the superior gods, and Dii Involuti, the hidden gods. It seems all of heaven is enraged.

Teucer and his wife are pinned to their spots in the curte. He vows not to lose his nerve. Not now. Not with so much at stake.

He sprinkles another handful of henbane over the fire. The granules turn into a thousand sparks and then die. He inhales the smoky aroma and feels tension drift from his temples, forehead and shoulders. The pain in Tetia’s stomach is worsening but she doesn’t shirk her task; shakily she pours water into an earthenware bowl. Teucer dips his fingers into it and flicks drops on to the fire.

Black clouds move like spectres across the horizon. A long breeze rustles the sun-crisped leaves of surrounding trees.

Teucer pours wine into a long-stemmed ceramic chalice. He makes a sign over it with his hand - mirroring the four celestial quarters of the sky - then sips the dark-red elixir.
As red as the blood that flowed from the rapist’s wounds.

‘Gods of the skies, noble rulers of our unworthy lives, I call upon you now to show me your merciful will.’

The seer’s hands tremble as he pours oil of valerian - a powerful narcotic - into the wine. It will further steady his nerve. Open his doors of perception. He downs the draught and drops more kindling on to the fire.

Another crack of thunder, louder and more ominous.

Perhaps out of fright, perhaps on pure impulse, Teucer turns to the west, home of the more hostile gods. He closes his eyes and waits.

Then it happens.

From his inner blackness comes a screaming vortex of demons.

Aita, lord of the underworld, in his warrior helmet carved from the head of a wolf.

Charun, the blue-skinned, feather-winged demon.

Phersipnei, queen of the underworld.

They fly around him. Pass through him. Ripping at his courage and sanity.

Thunder booms like an explosion across the hillside behind him. Forked lightning cracks the blackened sky.

With a single high-pitched scream the demons depart in a trail of blood-red vapour. But there’s something left.

Whatever chased them away - something far more terrifying - has stayed behind.

CAPITOLO VIII

The fire in the sacred circle reaches its climax. Great orange tongues of flame lick skywards. On one side of the blaze, Teucer acts like a man possessed. On the other, Tetia lies still. She has collapsed. The pain in her stomach is unbearable, the violence of the child within her feels almost demonic.

Demonic
.

She can think of no other word for it. The more pain the child inflicts upon her, the more the clouds darken and the thunder booms.

Teucer shouts and stabs the ground in a frenzy, slashing and digging with his ceremonial knife as if he’s trying to kill something.

She looks at the thick red clay at his feet, expecting to find a random, gouged mess. Instead she sees a precise, deeply carved symbol. An oblong, sharply divided into three, covered with hundreds of stab marks that look like slithering snakes.

Tetia pulls herself to her knees. She knows her husband is in danger. Something deep within tells her that when he has finished whatever he’s doing, his life will end.

The child.

The thought terrifies her. But the child does seem to be the only explanation. It wants him dead.

Through the flames she sees the flash of Teucer’s knife. His face is twisted with pain as if every nerve in his being is burning. The god that chased the demons away is revealing himself, showing Teucer his will.

And Teucer can take no more.

The baby kicks hard. So hard Tetia screams. So violently she can’t breathe. She sees Teucer stand. He staggers to his feet, puts his hands to his head and bangs his temples, as if to stop the awful visions in his head. But still the pain will not cease.

He looks down at the evil signs he has made, walks a step and pounds again at his face.

Tetia’s heart goes out to him, she wants to hold him, love him, protect him.

Another kick. So vicious, she vomits. All she can do now is watch as Teucer falls to his knees. The child’s movements seem almost in sync with her husband’s, as though one is passing pain to the other, through Tetia.

Summoning the last of his own free will, Teucer gets to his feet. He moves towards the sacred fire like a drowning man grasping for a rope.

Sudden pressure erupts in the centre of Tetia’s back, a pain she’s never felt before.

Teucer staggers, as though being pulled away from the flames.

Tetia heaves for breath. The child is hurting everything now - her ribs - her stomach - even her spine.

Teucer lets out a roar.

Hands stretched to the sky and eyes wide open, he hurls himself forward into the white-hot centre of the sacred fire.

PART TWO

CHAPTER 14

Present Day
Luna Hotel Baglioni, Venice

Sleeping with a woman for the first time is strange. Waking beside her in the morning is even stranger.

Tom Shaman is coming to terms with this strangeness as he lies on his back staring at the ceiling in Tina Ricci’s king-sized bed.

His head’s a mess. A real mess.

He urgently needs fresh air and some time to work out what the hell is going on.

While Tina sleeps snugly, Tom carries his clothes to the bathroom and dresses in the light of the shaving mirror.

He takes the room key, quietly shuts the bedroom door and walks the streets for the first time since discovering Monica Vidic’s body.

It’s already 9 a.m. and he can’t remember the last time he’d gone to bed so early and woken so late.

The morning light is as rich as honeycomb. The temperature a comfortable eighteen degrees. Everywhere he looks, couples are sharing coffee, croissants and newspapers at pavement cafés. It certainly seems as though the world was built for two.

He walks along the front of the Bacino di San Marco and doubts there is a better view of the canal in all of Venice. Crafts of every shape and size jockey for position in the waterway - gondolas, ferries, trade boats, a Carabinieri cruiser and vaporetti.

As he prepares to turn left at the Ponte dei Sospiri a funeral boat passes, slowly ploughing its way to the historic cemetery on Isola di San Michele. The flower-laden vessel jolts memories of Monica and the monster who murdered her.

It’s not something he wants to dwell on.

He pilots his thoughts back to Tina. A few days ago he hadn’t even known she’d existed; now she’s assumed a central role in his life.

The first woman he’s slept with. He’s sure it would have been no big thing for her. But for Tom, it’s a
landmark
. He struggles to define exactly what kind.

One to be proud of? Or ashamed?

He really isn’t sure. Years of Catholicism do that to you. They make you uncertain about how you should feel about anything pleasurable, especially sex.

Like most priests, Tom tried hard
not
to think about being intimate with a woman. And like most of his colleagues, there were times when he failed.

In those moments, he’d imagined such a relationship would start off slow - a warm kind of friendship - and then gradually grow into something deeper and more passionate. He’d never dreamed that he would end up behaving like a hopeless teenager and losing his virginity in a drunken one-night stand.

But then again - if he was honest with himself - he hadn’t been
that
drunk. Tipsy - yes. Loose and uninhibited - certainly. But so drunk that he couldn’t have stopped himself? No, not at all.

And now? In the full glare of the morning light - what did he think now?

Need it be a one-night stand? Is that what she wants? What he wants?

He can’t answer any of the questions. It all seems so horrendously confusing. And to think he’d spent years counselling parishioners on their marital problems. The thought brings a smile to his face. How hopelessly unqualified he was.

But Tom has no regrets. None at all. Whatever happens next, he knows it is all part of the new person he is becoming. A person who, overnight, has allowed a complete stranger into his life. And in giving her the most precious thing he’d had left, he’s allowed her to become an intimate player in his new life.

But for how long?

The question haunts him as he meanders back towards the hotel.