“You’re a pathologist,” he retorted. “And I want to introduce you to Toni LaMarca. What’s left of him.”
“Basic caving technique,” Abati said, and pushed LaMarca back into the centre of the room. “Know the place you’re in and what’s around it. This wasn’t always a temple. I told you. These were tufa workings. Someone put the temple in here later, after they were finished digging out the stone. This is an underground quarry. Half those things you think of as corridors either lead nowhere. Or they just meet up with some fissure or fault in the rock.”
“I heard water,” Vignola said, puzzled.
“This is Rome!” Abati declared. “There are springs. Fault lines. Unfinished tunnels that lead nowhere. There must be channels that go all the way down to the river. It could link up with the Cloaca Maxima itself somehow. If I had the equipment and the people…” He gave them that condescending look Torchia was beginning to resent. “I could find out. But I don’t think any of you quite fits the bill. So don’t walk anywhere I can’t see you. I really don’t feel in the mood for rescue work.”
In his head, Ludo Torchia had allotted each of them a role. Abati was Heliodronus, protector of the leader. Vignola was Perses, clever, quick, and not always willing to reveal what he knew. Big, stupid Andrea Guerino made a good foot soldier as Miles. Raul Bellucci, an underling who always did what he was told, could pass as Leo, the mechanism for the sacrifice. And for Nymphus, the bridegroom, some kind of creature who was both male and female in the same body, the slim, annoying creep who was Toni LaMarca.
There could be only one Pater. Torchia understood exactly what that meant. Pater involved leadership, not blood relationship, certainly not love. He’d watched the way his own father had behaved, the simple, blunt dictatorial attitude that said Here in my own house I am a kind of god too. From obedience came knowledge and security. It had been that way for Ludo Torchia right up to the age of nine, when his father went down to work at the docks in Genoa one day and never came back. A year later, when his weak, incapable mother thought he was over everything, Torchia had stolen into the jetty where the accident occurred. He’d stared at the giant black crane, its head like that of some stupid crow, trying to imagine what had happened, how it would feel to have that mass of evil steel tumble over towards you, ravenous for something to destroy.
Ludo loathed the Church from that moment forward, watching his mother cling to the Bible each night, trying to find some solace in a religion that, the young Ludo Torchia knew, had failed them by allowing the crane to topple in the first place.
When he came to La Sapienza and began, under the careful tutelage of the brilliant Giorgio Bramante, to study Mithraism, Ludo understood finally what his life had lacked, and how that gaping hole could be filled. By duty, responsibility, leadership. Some clear declaration of his own identity, one that set him apart from the drones. He would be Pater one day, part of the old religion, one that kept its secrets beneath ground, didn’t share them foolishly with the masses in vast golden palaces. Here, in the temple that Bramante had uncovered, all the pieces should have been in place, and Ludo could begin by finishing the task those long-dead soldiers had begun almost eighteen centuries before.
Except one detail was missing. The cowardly Vincenzo had failed them, failed his destiny, to be Corax, the initiate, the beginner, a child even, if the old books had it right.
“Also…” Abati added quickly, marching towards the altar again, intent on something Torchia couldn’t predict, “I am not countenancing any of this nonsense.”
To Torchia’s astonishment, Abati now had the bird’s cage in his hands, was lifting it high. The shining black cockerel flapped its wings and made a low, aggressive crowing noise.
“Don’t touch that,” Torchia ordered. “I said…”
Dino Abati was working on the cage lid.
“Ludo. Think about it. We’re in trouble enough without these stupid games.”
“Andrea,” Torchia yelled. “Stop him.”
“What…?” Guerino mumbled. The big farmer’s son looked half stoned already.
None of them understood, Torchia realized. Bramante’s words kept ringing in his ears. How terrible must it have been to have lost your religion? To have seen it snatched from your hands, just before death, to be denied the final sacrament, the last opportunity you would have on this earth to make peace with your god?
Abati had the cage open, was turning it sideways, trying to shake the cockerel out into the damp dark air.
“Don’t do that,” Torchia said, walking over towards the red-suited figure.
Heliodronus always wore red, Torchia remembered. He always coveted the position of Pater. Had to. Until Pater died, there was nowhere for him to go.
Ludo Torchia surreptitiously retrieved a fist-sized rock from one of the stone benches as he moved, gripped it low and hidden in his right hand.
“I said…” he began to murmur, then stopped, found he was waving away a cloud of stinking black feathers, flapping furiously around his face.
Maybe he screamed. He wasn’t sure. Someone laughed. Toni LaMarca, by the sound of it. Terrified, screeching with fear and rage, the cockerel dug its claws into Ludo Torchia’s scalp, then launched itself over him, towards the exit, flapping manically, its cawing metallic voice echoing around the stone chamber that enclosed them like a tomb.
He didn’t know why he’d picked a bird that was black. Like a crow, its wings and limbs extended. Like some miniature mocking imitation of a crane.
Sometimes Ludo Torchia didn’t know why he did things at all. When he’d caught his breath again, he found he was on his knees, looking at the bloodied head of Dino Abati, pinning the figure in the red caving suit to the ground.
Not that it was necessary. Abati’s eyes were glassy. His mouth flapped open, slack-jawed. Torchia didn’t actually remember hitting Abati, which meant, he realised, he could have smashed the big, jagged rock that was still in his hand deep into his skull time and time again.
The rest were crowded round the two of them now. No one spoke. The chamber stank. Of dope and the bird and blood and of sweat and fear, too.
“Oh Christ, Ludo,” Toni LaMarca — it had to be Toni LaMarca — whispered. “I think you killed him….”
Torchia looked down at Abati. There was blood seeping from his nostrils. It bubbled, then subsided as he watched. Abati was breathing. He was probably just unconscious. That was all. Still, he’d made his point. He’d established himself, the way the Pater had to.
Torchia turned, gripping the rock, and looked up at the four of them. The Pater must rule. That was how it worked.
“Listen. All of you.”
He realised he was speaking in a different kind of voice already. Older. A voice with an authority he hadn’t quite found inside himself before.
“If you try and say this was just me, no one will believe you. I’ll tell them we did this between us. Everything.”
“Ludo,” Guerino moaned in his stupid, country-boy whine. “That’s not fair.”