Devil's Lair (22 page)

“No, we must stay together.”

“She knows where we are.”

“We can’t stay, Father. We
have to go. Now. She could be lost out there.”

William glanced back at the
philosophers who were walking away, deep in discussion. For a moment the friar
stood indecisive, like Buridan’s ass between two equidistant and equally
tempting haystacks.

Then, like a man, he chose.

Nadja wandered over the
green sward, lost in the orphanage of the damned, listening to the tearful
tumult. Again she caught the soft cooing of a single child. She turned to the
sound but could not find the source.

“Where?” she cried. “Where
are you?”

Wading through the
multitude, she searched left and right, then leaned down to roll one child over
and turn another around, looking for a face that had her features. The children
all gazed up at her with expectant eyes.

Not you, not you.

Her heart raced. Her hands
shook. Her cheeks were wet and her throat was dry.

“Where are you?”

And then she saw him. He lay
on his back, his tiny hands and feet clenched in anticipation. He had not aged.
He looked three hours old. And alive. So very alive. He smiled, and Nadja saw
her own eyes staring back at her. She picked him up and dandled him in her
arms. He felt light as a whisper. She kissed him and pressed her cheek to his.
He was cold, so cold. His breath had a faint odor of wetted ashes.

The children who had been
passed over now bellowed at the insult, but in Nadja’s mind the voices fell
away till only one remained, giggling and cooing, one little boy, her one
perfect little boy.

Someone touched her on the
shoulder but she shrugged the hand away.

William’s voice behind her:
“There is nothing you can do for him.”

“He’s hungry,” she said.

She pulled down the front of
her shift, exposing a breast, and moved her baby to the nipple. His lips were cold
as the heart of winter. She had no milk for him, but her dead child took what
she had to give, her warmth, her life. As she suckled him, a chill spread
through her body from her breast to her heart, then along her spine. Her arms
and legs grew numb. The air froze in her chest. She couldn’t breathe. She
couldn’t speak. Her vision blurred and the world began to slip away. Her child,
still nursing, looked hazy in her arms. She felt herself plunge slowly into
darkness.

No!

She ripped the dead thing
from her breast. It came away with blood in its mouth, smiling.

I’m sorry.

She set the monster on the
ground. Her body warmed slowly, her heart last of all. Nadja covered her
bleeding breast and lifted her gaze to William. “We should go,” she said.

As they searched for a way
down, the pilgrims were followed and questioned by a crowd of shades. Marco
brandished the Lance, clearing a path through the mob. News of visitors had
spread through Limbo.

The poet heard the siren
call of his own name. “Giovanni, Giovanni Boccaccio, Boccaccio, Giovanni...”

Keep moving,
he thought, trying not to look at the
dolorous faces but unable to ignore them completely.

“My father was Daedalus,”
said a boy of about fourteen, who fell in beside Giovanni and kept pace with
the pilgrims.

The poet studied him.
“Icarus?”

“Yes,” he said, then sadly,
“Yes.”

“Your father, is he here?”

“He fell too far. I saw him
fall. A dark wind froze his wings. I fear he’s gone to the ice, to the ice at
the bottom of the world.”

“Can you help us get out of
here?”

Icarus shook his head.

“If you help us,” Giovanni
said, “we can take a message to your father.”

“There’s no way out.”

“There must be.”

To this the shade said
nothing.

Giovanni said, “If I see
your father, what should I tell him?”

“Tell him I’m okay.”

“I will.”

“Tell him it’s not his
fault.”

Later, William saw a woman
approach. She wore a flowing phantom gown and flowers in her hair.

She said, “Where are you
going?”

“Down,” William answered.

“Will you please deliver a
message?”

“To whom?”

“My love, who lies below.”

“How will we know him?”

“By his harp. By his voice.
He has the most beautiful voice. He sang for me in the meadow. His name is
Orpheus.”

Giovanni stepped forward.
“Eurydice?”

“Yes,” she said. “That is
what they called me.”

The poet looked confused.
“Dante saw Orpheus in Limbo.”

She nodded. “Nine times he
escaped the pit. Nine times he came to see me, but they always throw him back.”

Nadja asked, “Back where?”

The shade of Eurydice shook
her head. “I don’t know.”

“What was his sin?” asked
William.

“He wouldn’t say.”

“If we see him, what
message?”

“Love. That is the only
message. Tell him I love him. That I wait for his return.”

“Then love survives,” said
Nadja, “even in Hell.”

Eurydice nodded and wept.

Giovanni said to Nadja, “Of
course love survives. Hell is the realm of torments.”

Another shade found them and
said, “You asked for me. I waited in the library, but you did not come.”

Giovanni saw the man’s
laurel crown. “Are you Virgil?”

“I am.”

“We’re here because of you.”

“For that I’m sorry.”

“I’ve read your work.”

“And I’ve read yours,
Giovanni.”

This surprised him. “Which
books?”

“All of them. Even the ones
you have yet to write.”

William said to Virgil, “We
must leave. Can you help us?”

“Perhaps.”

“How do we get to the bottom
of the abyss?”

“By dying.”

Giovanni said, “We need to
get down alive.”

“That is not so easy.”

“And back again,” said
Marco.

“Harder yet.”

“You could guide us down,”
Giovanni said.

Virgil answered, “I cannot
leave this realm.”

“You showed Dante the way.”

“A special dispensation. But
you were not invited. I know your purpose. You come as thieves in the night to
steal from the Devil, the greatest thief that ever was. How do you hope to
survive this folly?”

“With your help,” Giovanni
said.

“I have no power to help
you.”

“With your advice, then,”
said William.

“Go back the way you came.
It is your only hope.”

“The passage behind us is
blocked,” said Marco.

Nadja said, “We must go
down.”

Giovanni tried another tack.
“Is it true that shades in Hell can see the future.”

“Sometimes,” Virgil
answered.

“What will happen to us?”

Virgil shook his head. “We
see the future on Earth. In Hell there is no future. Not for us. Not for you.”

Giovanni recalled a scene
from the
Inferno.
“Take us to Minos,” he insisted. “That far, at least.”

“You cannot go down that
way.”

“Is there another?”

Virgil turned and departed.
He glanced back over his shoulder. “Follow me.”

“Thank you,” Giovanni said.

“Don’t thank me. You will
not find what you’re looking for.”

“What will we find?”

“Despair.”

CHAPTER 22

Virgil led the pilgrims to
where Limbo dropped away. They circled to the left. Looking back, Giovanni saw
the light of the citadel grow dimmer, as if a black mist were rising from the
depths to cloud the path behind them. For awhile they joined a herd of damned
souls shambling along the top of the cliff, until Virgil led the pilgrims out
of the crowd and up a short rise.

“They go to Minos,” he said.
“We go another way.”

They crested a ridge.
Giovanni saw King Minos, a beastly half-man with a long tail who stood at the
brink of the chasm hearing the confession of a weeping woman. The infernal
judge was flanked by black cherubim. Giovanni saw no portal, only the drop
itself.

Minos shook an urn in anger,
spilling ashes. “Silence!” He wrapped his long tail around himself eight times.
“Save your sweet words. Flattery will get you nowhere but Malebolge!”

The tip of his long tail
lashed out, seized the woman in a caudal clench, and lifted her into the air.
As the tail unwound from Minos’s trunk, the woman spun around him eight times,
then was tossed shrieking into the pit.

“We cannot linger.” Virgil
led them to another place. “Orpheus climbed up this way. You might climb down.”

Marco stuck the tip of the
Holy Lance into the well of blackness and said, “I can see the bottom.”

“Not the bottom. The second
circle.”

“We’ll need the rope.”

They tied the rope to an
outcrop of rock. Marco climbed down first, then Giovanni. The rough stone wall
was warmed by the anabatic air. The wind blasted Giovanni, tugging at his
clothes. One gust nearly knocked him from the cliff. He lost his footing and
rolled to the left, twisting, twirling, bouncing off the rock, swinging
perilous and pendulous until he could regain his footing and finish his
descent. Nadja followed, untroubled by the wind. William came last and said he
felt no breeze at all.

When the pilgrims stood
together on the second circle, Giovanni signaled Virgil with a tug on the rope.
The rest of it fell down to them. The shade of the old poet raised a hand in
farewell, then stepped back from the bluff and was gone.

The wind rose as the
pilgrims tried to cross to the next cliff. Swirling dust needled Giovanni. He
shielded his face in the crook of his arm, but could not keep the grit from his
eyes, nor the tears that followed. The tempest knocked Giovanni to the ground
as the others struggled to stay afoot. Marco and Nadja shouted words Giovanni
could not hear. The knight pointed back to the cliff. The poet nodded.
Defeated, the pilgrims returned to where they had climbed down. They circled to
the left, along a dark ledge carved out by the whirlwind. Clinging to the stone
wall, they made slow progress.

Giovanni saw shades whirling
in the storm like sailors drowning in Charybdis. He covered his ears against
the shrieking of the damned and the skirling of the squall.

Farther on, the wind quelled
a bit, though Nadja had to scream to be heard. “What is this wind?”

“
Lex talionis,
” William shouted.

“What?”

Giovanni leaned close to her
and said, “Law of retaliation. Eye for an eye. In life these sinners were blown
about by their passions. The punishment fits the crime.”

Here the cliff wall was
studded with yellow crystals. William broke some off and placed them in his
pouch.

“What’s that?” Giovanni
asked.

“Brimstone,” the friar said.
“We may need it later.”

“What for?”

“Thunder and lightning.”

A knight, arrayed in ghostly
white armor, descended out of the swirling air. He wore no helm. His hair
blustered. His eyes sparkled in the lancelight. He stared at the weapon in
wonder. “The Holy Lance?”

“Who are you?” Marco asked.

“I am Lancelot.”

Giovanni said, “You quested
for the Holy Grail.”

“For my sins, I could not
find it.”

“For our sins, we might.”

Nadja asked, “Is it true you
sinned with Guinevere?”

“She is my weakness. And my
strength.”

“What happened?”

“I saw her and I fell. I
heard her voice and wept. My eyes and ears condemned my heart. To shield my
thoughts, I veiled my face behind a visor, but there is no armor for
amor.
Like a stag pierced by the arrows of a
huntress, I fled. I carried my wound into the wood, begged for death and did
not die. I absented myself in errantry, defeating many evils for my lady,
though I could not slay the evil in my heart.”

“Can love ever be evil?”
Nadja asked.

“There is no evil like a
love mislaid.”

“Then it’s true you lay with
her?”

“There is no greater truth.”

“But if you stayed away...?”