Patrick glanced at the other side of the room. Each of the doors had filled with dark figures. There was no shadow, no ripple of agate wings; but the angel of death was moving in the room.
For a moment as thin as air, the attackers hesitated, seeing themselves inexplicably surrounded. The next instant, round after round of rifle fire rang out in the silence, precise, implacable, sustained. Those at the front fell first. Their companions in the rear crouched down, firing wildly. Again and again the marksmen fired. From below, the sound of fresh shooting echoed among marble pillars. On cold floors, on white and pink and red marble, on the faces of saints and angels, blood trickled in warm streams, like the blood of doves on a vast altar of coloured stone. The sacrifice was complete.
FIFTY-NINE
He watched as Brother Antonio scraped the last cement from his trowel. The tablet was in place as it had been before. Francesca’s name, her date of birth, her date of death. The old man rose painfully to his feet.
‘It’s done,’ he said.
Patrick nodded. It was done. Her ghost had been laid to rest at last. A ray of sunlight rested on her name. There were no flowers, no photograph.
He stepped out of the tomb into the March sunshine. It would be Easter before long. There would be white flowers in the churches. Priests would preach of death and resurrection. ‘I am the Resurrection and the Life,’ they would proclaim. In Rome, the Pope from his sickbed would issue an appeal for peace. And the nations would turn deaf ears as always.
He walked away from the tomb, through a long avenue of cypresses, past the long dead and the newly dead, in a straight line, down towards the sea. Across a swell of sun-salted water, Venice shone in the distance, lovely, pinnacled, redeemed out of sea and mud.
She was waiting for him, watching a small boat drift with the tide. She was not as he remembered her. There was grey in her hair and her eyes had seen things he could not imagine. He took her hand, and they stood for a long time without speaking, watching the waves. He had buried the past. Let them think she was dead.
‘It’s over,’ he said. ‘You’re free.’
She nodded. The shore seemed to stretch away forever.
‘There will still be ghosts,’ she said.
He looked into her eyes, then brought her face close to his own and kissed her gently. She was not a ghost, he thought. He would not let her return to shadows.
She smiled and returned his kiss. But as she did so, she caught sight, far behind him, of the tomb where she had been reburied.
She remembered dim lights in a modern theatre, actors in ancient Irish dress, magical words she could scarcely understand. And Deirdre speaking to her lover before their death:
I know nothing but this body, nothing But that old vehement, bewildering kiss.
She had known then that they would become lovers. But not how it would end. Now that night was nothing but a memory, Deirdre’s words nothing but a half-remembered sound. She glanced at the tomb, at the weeds choking its stone.
He was wrong. It was not over. When the time came, she would explain. They would have a little time together: a year, two years perhaps. She took his hand and turned to look at the sea again. For all its loveliness, Venice was sinking beneath relentless waves. She held his hand more tightly. A year, two years. What did it matter? Nobody has forever, after all.