Blood Ties (8 page)

Then everyone was laughing, except for the German and the girl, the sudden welcome release of it, laughing as fat droplets bounced off their soaked, grey cloaks. Boys again, laughing in the rain.

Something made Gianni turn. He saw the figure, standing with his back to the gate, which was still barred and locked, as if the figure had just passed through its solidity. The hood of a cloak was thrown back, a shaven head bare to the rain. The moment Gianni looked at him, the figure slowly raised a finger, crooked it twice towards himself.

Over his shoulder, Gianni said, ‘Throw the bodies into the house. Burn it.’

He had taken three steps away when Piccolo called, ‘What about the girl, Gianni? She has seen us.’

She had. But if the shaven man’s summons meant what Gianni thought it did, then this would be the last time he hunted with his pack. They had never left witnesses before; but if no one lived to speak of what they had done, what terror would there be for their enemies? Would not the heathens sleep untroubled by the howling of wolves in the night?

He turned back, looked at each of the boys in turn. In a way, he would miss them. Even Wilhelm.

‘Tell her the name we hunt by, then release her. Let the Jews of Rome remember the Grey Wolves. Let them live with that name in fear.’

When he approached the figure at the gate, the man with the shaven head bowed once in greeting.

‘He has summoned me?’

Another nod.

‘Then take me to him.’

The man unbarred the gate, stepped aside to let Gianni precede him. As he stepped through, Gianni glanced back at the house, saw the first tongue of fire lick at one of the windows. The rain, fierce a moment before, suddenly slackened and, in the next instant, died.
God’s blessing on God’s cleansing flames
, he thought, and then he remembered the old Jew’s secret, the jewels he was probably carrying. Yet the thought didn’t even cause him to break step. That was part of an old life, dissolving now in smoke and fire. This mute, shaven man was leading him to a new one. Leading him to his destiny.

Thomas Lawley leaned against the oak panelling of the antechamber, desperately trying to stay awake. A chair had suddenly become vacant five paces from him, but he knew as soon as he sat down he would be gone. He had not slept at all for two nights, and in the previous three weeks had barely mustered half a dozen decent rests. Wind and tide had been against him at Dover and he had been forced to spend three days on the water, to land in Hamburg. The Jesuit system of transit was, of necessity, less developed in the Northern and Protestant German states. He’d made up for the lost time from Catholic Bavaria on, pushing each horse hard, abandoning them at the way stations, snatching both sleep and food in short bites. But time had been lost, Renard had expected him to have reached Rome a week before, to be already starting on his return, bearing the weapon of coercion.

And now he’d been standing for six hours outside Cardinal Carafa’s door. It was well-known how the man inside hated the Jesuits, but he also must have known the importance of Thomas’s mission. It took all of his training, meditations and prayers muttered under his breath, to calm his anger, as he watched courtier, pilgrim and priest precede him into the audience chamber. At least those around him gave him space to lean, stretch his limbs, relieve his aching knee. They would not want their exquisite robes to brush against his muddy cloak and boots.

His eyes flickered shut – and opened to the sound of the outer door, another supplicant admitted. This one was different, much younger than most of the fat prelates and courtiers gathered to pay court to the man everyone thought would be the next Pope. This youth was dressed in plain contrast to the gaudiness on display, a grey cloak over a simple black doublet, his dark hair cut short, the wisps of a young man’s beard on his chin. His pale face was finely boned and, Thomas noticed, streaked with blood, probably from the scab at his ear. More blood stained his doublet and he made the occasional attempt to blend it into the dark material.

He had been abandoned by his guide, a bald-headed man who seemed to have some special privilege there, for he had swept into the audience chamber and the person who had been lately admitted, a corpulent, red-coated bishop, had been ejected, protesting vigorously. He looked like a fat and squawking pigeon, all ruffled feathers, and Thomas found himself smiling, an unaccustomed sensation in recent years. He looked at the youth to see if the amusement was shared. He found the boy staring at him, but there was no humour in his eyes.

Thomas had the sudden sensation he had seen the young man before. He looked intelligent and Thomas had taught many in Jesuit schools before his true mission began. Taking a chance now, while the other looked at him, he raised his hands to his chest, the left sheltering the right from all but a direct view. Pinching his thumb and forefinger together, he described a tiny cross in the air, the upright first, the crossbar carrying on into the curves of an ‘S’. He watched the young man’s eyes, saw them dart away, come back. Then saw them harden before he looked down, returning to the task of scraping the blood from his shirt front.

He recognizes me. And he rejects me
, Thomas thought.
Why?

The inner doors opened and the shaven man stood there. As the assembled company rose, to primp and prepare for their audience, the man beckoned the youth who stiffened, then strode forward. The door closed, swallowing both men, outrage and ruffled feathers returning to this side of it. Within the hubbub, Thomas made his mind still.

What
, he pondered,
did the man who would be Pope want with someone so young? A boy with blood on his hands?

Gianni knew what he wanted from Cardinal Carafa – a mission. Killing Jews was good training, but it was old sport. Besides, evil though they were, the Holy Church faced greater enemies now, greater threats, both within and without. The man he had finally got to see understood this, had led the fight against the heretic, the witch and the sinner from the very beginning. This man had founded the Inquisition in Rome, rooting out dissent wherever he discovered it, purging with flame and sword the length of Italy. Now he was preparing to take that fight to the enemy beyond, to the lands where Luther, Calvin and their ilk held sway. Even beyond them, to the new worlds opening up across the great oceans, where savages worshipped idols in the darkness of sin, in ignorance of the True Church’s holy light. The Jesuits had begun such work. But even though Gianni had been educated by them, he knew them as weak, unwilling to do all that must be done. They had tried to teach him to cure with the power of love. He knew, in his own experience, how much more effective was the power of hate.

As this man knew. Gianni gazed now at the shrunken figure, swathed in red on his red throne. Carafa! Even the name made his knees go weak, so he was grateful when, before the raised dais, he was able to prostrate himself, lie spreadeagled as he had lain before the crucifix in that rough chapel earlier, while above him the shaven man showed he was not mute, leaning in to whisper secrets into the old man’s ear. Secrets that had brought Gianni here.

Fingers prodded him and he looked up to meet the gaze of his hero. Long, thin fingers beckoned him forward, one with a huge emerald upon it, thrust out. Falling again to his knees, almost sighing with ecstasy, Gianni kissed it again and again.

‘Enough.’ The voice was soft, set at a high pitch, a quaver in it, a voice that did not need to strain to be obeyed. Instantly, Gianni laid the hand down, stepped back, knelt again at the foot of the throne.

‘You have been about work for the greater glory of God, I hear.’

‘
Ad Majoram Dei Gloriam
.’ The Jesuits had taught him Latin with rigour, they were good for that at least. Effortlessly, Gianni slipped into the ancient tongue. ‘If your Holiness deigns to think so. I do what little I can.’

There came a rasp from above, which Gianni realized was a laugh. ‘And it is much. Sometimes, with all these new enemies we forget our original ones.’ He paused. ‘Look at me, my son.’

Gianni raised his eyes, almost expecting to be blinded. But the man who sat there was just a man, an old one, near eighty it was said, not unlike the old Jew, the same sallow skin hanging in folds down a lined face, a stray wisp of white hair peeking from beneath a cap. Under tufted white brows though, there was nothing old in the keenness of his eyes.

‘And I hear you desire to be of more service. To the Faith. To me.’

His heart began to beat even faster. ‘If you consider me worthy, Holy Father. If you let me, I would happily die for you.’

That rasp again. ‘I am not your Holy Father yet, my son. If all goes well, I may well be Pope, within weeks. Then let my enemies fear. Let the heretic quake in his false worship, the witch cower in her coven. I will root them out, cast them into the flames, redeem their souls by the flaying of their flesh.’ The voice rose in pitch, in power. ‘And you would join in that crusade, my son? You would die for that?’

‘Try me, Most Holy. Let me prove worthy of your trust.’

‘Oh, I will.’

Carafa raised a hand and the shaven man placed a parchment into it. Squinting in the light, he read for a moment, then spoke again.

‘Do you know Fra Lepidus?’

It was a name from his past, a name he tried never to recall, for it conjured a vision of a cold cell floor, of a rope biting into flesh, a falling stick.

Blinking, Gianni stuttered, ‘A holy man, your eminence. The Abbot at Montecatini Alto.’

‘Indeed? I know little of him. Save this …’ He waved the paper. ‘It was found by someone I trust among his papers, along with certain … implements. I dislike the indiscriminate use of pain, do you not agree? Anyway, they are irrelevant, this’ – the paper again – ‘is relevant. Very much so.’ He paused, squinting at the parchment. ‘Is it true, then, what is written here. Is it true you are the son of Anne Boleyn’s executioner?’

If he had lived a thousand years, it was the last thing he expected from this man, in this place. It was all his nightmares condensed into one phrase, the yoke of shame his father had placed on him, the family sin he’d fled. No one knew this ghastly secret, no one except those who had taken part in that witch’s quest. No one …

Then the vision he struggled so hard never to see, that still woke him most nights, came back to him now, and he was there, no more than a child, at the monastery where his parents had reluctantly sent him after months of begging leave to study Christ’s words. He was lying on the floor, ropes biting into his skin, a switch rising and falling, leaving horrible weals, drawing blood, Fra Lepidus, with his mad eyes, wielding it, demanding the full panoply of his sins. And an eleven-year-old boy had nothing left to confess. Nothing save one family secret, bound in a vow of silence. And he broke that vow to stop the pain, told the man with the mad eyes everything. Told him of Jean Rombaud and Anne Boleyn’s six-fingered hand.

‘Ah! So it is true then.’

That voice brought him back from the horror of memory, to the room where his life had just turned awry. To the wrinkled face that now smiled down on him.

‘This … relic. It could be useful. The Imperial Ambassador in England thinks so. They are struggling to return the land to the One Church, under their good and pious Queen Mary. Her sister, daughter of that witch queen, may need … influencing to continue the good work.’ He laid gnarled fingers on Gianni’s shoulder. ‘Can you bring us this witch’s hand?’

The nightmare continued. He lapsed into Italian now, his Tuscan accent strong.

‘Holy Fath—, uh, your eminence. It was buried before I was born. In France. I do not know where. Only three people do.’

‘And they are?’

There was nowhere to hide in a nightmare.

‘My mother and father. And one other man. If they are still alive.’

It sounded like the plea it was.
Leave me alone! They’re dead. My past is dead!

‘And why would they not be?’

‘They are in Siena. So many have died there, they …’ He broke off. Suddenly he realized he wasn’t telling this man anything he didn’t know.

‘Ah, yes. Siena.’ The Cardinal’s thin fingers dug into the flesh at Gianni’s neck, forced him to take his old weight. ‘Then we have found your mission, my son. You will go to Siena. You will find which of these people is alive. And you will get them to lead you to the hand. Then you will take it to England. For the greater glory of God.’

At least, even in the worst of nightmares, there was a chance of waking up. He stuttered again. ‘My … Jean Rombaud, Most Holy. He survived terrible torture for this … this witch. And my mother … she would never betray him and his cause.’

‘And the third witness? You mentioned three.’

Another image. Gianni saw again that third person, the kind and gentle Fugger, his one hand waving in the air as he declined some Latin verb, as he coached the gifted child Gianni in his studies. He remembered then a part of the saga, shaming the Fugger when it was mentioned. He had broken his vow, betrayed Jean and Anne Boleyn once, but then had redeemed himself, saving Jean’s life at the last. But now, all these years later, what power of coercion could make him break his vow a second time?

For a moment, Gianni despaired. Then another vision came, clearing away all the others. A playmate sat beside him at his lessons. A playmate who did not want to learn Latin or Greek, but whose inattention only drew a caress from her indulgent father’s one hand.

Maria. Daughter. Beacon in his dark. The only person the Fugger loved more than Jean Rombaud.

‘I think, Holy Father, that I might have thought of a way.’

Carafa beamed. He would not correct him again on the title. It would be his soon enough, anyway.

‘My son, I never doubted you that you would.’

Gianni watched the Jesuit approach the throne, bow, kiss the ring. He had recognized the Englishman as soon as he saw him in the antechamber. Thomas Lawley had taught him when he’d first come to Rome three years before. It was hardly a surprise he wasn’t recognized in return; he had been one of a hundred in that intake of boys. But he remembered Thomas as being typical of his order: kind, patient, tolerant, the lessons imparted more with caresses than the beatings Gianni had been used to at Montecatini Alto. At first he had relished it and had thrived. As he grew older he recognized it for what it was: weakness. It was why he left early, seeking the more rigorous discipline of the Clerks Regular under Carafa, who was known for his loathing of the Jesuits. With them, he could think less and act more. Much more.