‘So you are, in fact, a virgin in such matters and I would accordingly counsel patience. You may have The Book in all good time but you doubtless appreciate the associated perils …’
‘Of course,’ said Slovo. ‘Knowing the guards, magical and otherwise, that surround The Book, I’m surprised that you can even carry it and live.’
‘Likewise. I have been provided with powerful wards but, even so, the stewardship is a trifle unnerving. If it’s all the same to you, Admiral, I’d be happier if we minimized its exposure to the world, for that’s when its guardians are most vigilant.’
‘And hungry,’ said Slovo helpfully.
‘Just so.’
‘I’m happy to wait then,’ confirmed Admiral Slovo, to the Welshman’s evident relief.
‘Thank you,’ he said, clearly desirous of a conversational diversion. ‘Incidentally, is that the height from which Tiberius’s victims were thrown?’
Slovo knew the general direction of the gesture was correct but, with a stubborn residual concern for truth, he turned to make sure.
‘Yes – or so it’s said. “Tiberius’s Drop”, the local peasants call it. He’s a legendary monster hereabouts.’
‘But you disagree?’
Admiral Slovo shrugged. ‘I have no strong opinions one way or the other. Perhaps he did have his partners, willing or otherwise, of the previous night flung to their death from a cliff, that is his business. We have all felt that way at one time or another.’
The visitor seemed slightly shocked, but said nothing. Instead, he looked out over the Gulf of Naples and considered how to regain his lost advantage. ‘It has been a long and weary old road for you, Admiral, has it not?’
‘I can hardly deny that,’ answered Admiral Slovo equably.
‘And do you blame us?’
Slovo’s smile was like a shine on a razor. ‘That would hardly be fair. My particular die was cast long before my recruitment to your “Ancient and Holy Vehme”.’
‘That’s very reasonable of you. However, would you maintain that famous Stoic poise were I to tell you that we enlisted you even before that? What if I were to say that your service to the Vehme was of far longer duration?’
The Admiral considered, ‘I’m not sure,’ he said in due course. ‘Is it the sort of thing you’re likely to say, Master Vehmist?’
‘I’m afraid so.’
‘Well,’ said Slovo, in thoughtful tone, ‘I should hope that I would not so abandon my Stoicism as to be unduly perturbed. It rather depends on the precise nature of the revelation.’
The black-gowned man poured himself another, quite generous, glass of wine. ‘And there you have hit the nail squarely on the head, Admiral! My business here is revelation. I have come, with the blessing of the Vehme, to shed light on the dark places of your history. It is our earnest wish that you should understand all – or nearly all. Whether you will like all that I shed light on is another matter.’
‘Valuing my life as lightly as I do,’ said Admiral Slovo, ‘I have successfully banished fear and recrimination from it. You term yourselves Illuminati, do you not?’
‘That is another name for the Vehmgericht,’ agreed the Welshman cautiously, his middle-German as faultless as his Court Italian.
‘Then pray illumine,’ said Slovo. ‘You cannot hurt me now.’
The Welshman raised his eyebrows at such presumption. ‘Well,’ he said, ‘let us start at your beginning …’
About the time that Turkish Imperialism seized another bit of Europe and rolled into Herzegovina, in the year that Charles the Bold became Duke of Burgundy, a small child, the blank slate that was to be Admiral Slovo, thought of something disastrously clever.
It started when another youth in the classroom that fateful day gave voice to the question that would give Slovo away.
‘Honoured sir,’ piped the stocky ten-year-old, bursting with the desire to display new found knowledge. ‘May I ask something?’
The schoolmaster looked up from the Latin text in which he was following the class’s painful recitation. An astoundingly liberal pedagogue for his time – indeed notoriously so – he was known to welcome signs of intellectual curiosity among the sons of the upper mercantile classes. Sensible queries were never deterred and could, on happy occasion, postpone the tedious work in hand. He lifted his pointer from the book and signalled for the conjugating chant to cease.
‘I’ve been thinking about Aristotle and Plato, sir.’
‘I am so relieved to hear that, Constantius,’ came the unpromising reply. ‘Why, to think I was under the impression that you laboured unwillingly in the vineyard of their works!’
It was a cheap bit of schoolmaster sarcasm and he instantly regretted it as the class dutifully laughed at the boy’s expense.
‘I am sorry, Constantius,’ he said loudly, bringing the merriment to an instant end. ‘I did not mean to crush the tender shoot of budding enquiry.’
Rehabilitated, Constantius looked warningly around at his classmates. ‘Well, honoured sir, I just wondered … where did they go?’
‘Why, to the grave of course, like we all do.’
‘No, I mean after that, sir. Where then?’
The schoolmaster stroked his beard and gave the boy a very cool look.
‘I now see the direction of your question, child,’ he said. ‘It is an interesting one.’
The boy swelled with pleasure at the unaccustomed approval.
‘Is anyone else similarly intrigued?’ asked the master.
Until the lie of the land was absolutely clear, no one ventured to risk such a confession and, noting this, the proto-Slovo was reluctantly obliged to raise his own hand.
‘Slovo …’ said the schoolmaster, feigning surprise. ‘Another dark horse of classical curiosity rears up in our very midst. Let’s see if you can develop the question. Proceed!’
Under the conducting baton of the master’s pointer, the seven-year-old was left with little option but to reveal more of his thoughts than was natural to him. ‘The paradox that struck me, honoured sir,’ he said slowly and gauging the reaction, ‘is whether ancient men of virtue such as Aristotle could enter Paradise when they did not – and could not – possess the true faith. But, if they are damned, for all their goodness, for not professing what they could not have known, then is that just? And if it is not just, then how can that be, since God is, by definition, just?’
‘What he means, honoured sir,’ said Constantius, butting in, ‘is that Plato and his fellows couldn’t have been Christians, could they? They died before Christ was born …’
‘I understood what Slovo meant well enough,’ said the schoolmaster with awesome finality. ‘And I can settle the debate quite simply by stating something you all should already know: Extra Ecclesia nulla salus: There is no salvation outside the Church. Your question, Constantius, is impious and inappropriate for an immature mind. However, since it was also a good question, I shall take the matter no further. Now return, if you please, to the verb habere, to have, and,’ he waved the pointer like a wizard’s wand, ‘con-ju-gate …’
‘The point is,’ said the schoolmaster, now very differently attired and accorded even greater respect than before, ‘that the question was Slovo’s. Every schoolroom has its spies and I knew it was he who’d primed the purely average Constantius, who longs to shine, with the query hatched in his own mind.’
‘So,’ said the black-cowled leader of the Tribunal facing the schoolmaster, ‘he makes arrows for others to fire.’