What must it have been like to have known her? To have understood that love?
He reads the parchment again. Holds it to his heart and stares at the stone wall of his cell. What did she look like? What illness had befallen her? The dreaded syphilis? That awful French disease. The pox?
Next he thinks of his sister – wonders whether they ever lay together alongside their mother. Whether they looked into each other's eyes. Whether she's still alive and well.
Only after a hundred other thoughts and doubts does he peer into the plain wooden box at his feet by his modest bed.
He reaches in.
Lifts out a small package.
Something wrapped in a large silk handkerchief. Silver, by the look of it. An heirloom? A gift to a courtesan from a rich and grateful lover? Or perhaps compensation from the man who infected her?
There's some scribbling, a language he doesn't understand, perhaps Egyptian.
He turns the tablet over.
The face of a priest, an ancient seer wearing a conical hat similar to a bishop's. The figure is that of a young man, thin and tall, not unlike himself.
The hairs on the back of his neck prickle.
A gong sounds downstairs. Time for the communal evening meal. Soon other monks will be filing past his cell, pressing their faces through his doorway, enquiring whether he wishes to walk with them.
Tommaso bundles everything back into the box and pushes it beneath his bed.
He walks smartly to dinner.
His life changed for ever.
CHAPTER 43
Present Day Isola Mario, Venice Tom Shaman is the last person in the search party to enter Mario Fabianelli's hippy commune. He drifts in behind a couple of young uniformed officers and disappears into the westerly wing. Vito's instructions to him had been precise: 'Keep a low profile. So low, you're subterranean.'
The whole building makes him nervous. Right from the moment of stepping over the doorstep he's been picking up an atmosphere of unease. The vast cold spaces are completely alien to him, but as he walks from room to room he seems to know exactly what lies ahead. With each step the feeling grows stronger.
Tom passes ground-floor bedrooms, communal meeting rooms, a place where cleaners store equipment. He sees police officers pulling at boards and ceiling panels. He passes acres of fine oak panelling and trudges over quarryloads of ancient marble.
He pushes a door and enters a dark and windowless room. The air is warm and the smell familiar. Very familiar.
Candles.
Candles – but also something else.
Tom feels for a light switch.
Now he places it.
Even before the light comes on and he sees the dribbles of black wax on the high oak skirting, he knows what's happened in this room.
Mass.
But not Christian mass.
The air is toxic.
A smell of baseness.
Defilement. Stale sex. Maybe even blood.
Black Mass.
Every nerve in his body feels raw.
There are marks on the floor. Scratches made by something being dragged back and forth.
The table for a human altar. A platform for public defilement.
Tom's seen enough. He turns and reaches for the switch.
'Satanists,' says a woman behind him, so close he flinches.
Tom spins round.
The woman raises her eyebrows as if she's teasing him. 'We let them use this room. I guess a former priest like you knows a lot about them.'
Tom feels as though the top of his head is being gathered together by someone pulling an invisible drawstring. It's like being back in the Salute again, down on his hands and knees next to the bloody image near the altar.
Her camera flashes in his face.
His heart is thumping. Palms sweating.
His eyes are dazzled by the flash, and in the blinding whiteness he sees flickers of the mutilated body of Monica Vidic, stabbed six hundred and sixty-six times.
Tom tries to stay calm. Takes slow breaths. 'I'm with the Carabinieri.' He gestures past the white haze towards the main part of the house.
'Sure you are,' says the photographer. 'I'm Mera Teale. Mario's fuck. I have a card saying PA, but really all we do is fuck.'
The glare fades and Tom sees an outstretched tattooed hand. He shakes it and watches a pageant of inked characters dance up her bony arm.
She's grinning lustfully – enjoying the fact that he's shocked – shocked at being discovered and at being photographed – shocked too by her exotic appearance.
'Excuse me, I need to find the others.' Tom tries to get past her.
She blocks him.
Her face is full of sexual mischief. Come-to-bed eyes and lips ruby red, glistening from some kind of gel. 'I know who you are, Father Tom,' she says playfully. 'I know what you're like. What you want.'
He stares at her, wonders if he's seen her somewhere. There's certainly something familiar. A tiny tear tattooed into the corner of her eye. Her left eye – the side of evil.
A mark he knows he's seen before.
Five thousand miles and a whole lifetime before.
CAPITOLO XLII
1777
Ghetto Nuovo, Venezia Neither Jewish-born Ermanno nor Catholic-born Tanina believe in any form of God, but they're both praying they don't get caught as he walks her back to her home near the Rialto. Venice may be considered the most libertine city in the world but it still discriminates heavily against Jews and prohibits their free movement outside the ghetto. Young men foolish enough to follow their hearts beyond its walls are never more than a moment away from fines, imprisonment or beatings.
It's gone midnight, and for the first time in weeks the night sky is clear and the stars look newly shined. The lovers huddle together, hoods over their heads, hands entwined, body heat from one sustaining the other.
As they near her home, Ermanno has something to get off his chest. 'My friend Efran is an intermediary. He arranges shipments with the Turks. His family has done this kind of thing for a long time, trading in coats of camel and goat.'
Tanina frowns.
'I know, you are far too fashionable to wear such coarse things, but listen, this is not my point.'
'And your point is?'
'He knows many courtesans.'
She frowns. 'Jewish ones?'
He laughs at her. 'Of course Jewish ones. There are many Jewish ones making the Catholics and their uncircumcised pricks very happy. You must know this.'
She shakes her head and looks at her feet. 'I do not think of it. I know my mother was a courtesan, and in the nunnery where I was brought up there were many other girls orphaned by courtesans, but they were all Catholic. Or at least, I thought they were.'
He lets go of her hand. 'Tanina, you were young and full of indoctrinated prejudice. Some will certainly have been Jewish. But no matter. Again, this is not my point.'
She turns to look at him, her face as bright as the moon, an expression of amusement mixed with playful mischief. 'Then, kind sir, procrastinate no more with me: what is your point?'
He blurts it out. 'Gatusso has courtesans. Many of them. Efran's seen him with them.'
She falls silent.
Tanina has known her employer and his wife, Benedetta, for almost ten years. When she ran away from the convent it was they who gave her work and lodgings. Benedetta encouraged her to paint and Gatusso always made sure that she was well paid and had ample clothes and food. 'I don't believe it.' She looks sad as she shakes her head.
'It is true.'
Now her temper rises. 'I do not even know this man Efran, so why should I trust what he says? And, I cannot see how he would know or even recognise my employer.'
'He has dealings with one of Gatusso's courtesans. She told him.'
Tanina stops walking. 'One of?' Anger fills her face. 'You say "one of ", as though there is a whole legion of them. As though he runs courtesans as – as a business.' She shocks herself. Deep inside her mind, fragments of old events fuse together. Things she thought nothing of at the time now seem to add up. A cheap mask she found in the storeroom. Stained female underwear in the rubbish pile. A discarded perfume bottle that smelled unlike anything Signora Gatusso would wear.