Not knowing whether to be impressed by the monk’s perspicacity or shocked at the crudity of the Vehme, Slovo pushed the flask towards the monk. ‘I should have a drink,’ he said, oh-so reasonably. ‘You’ll enjoy your time with us more. Wine dulls those parts of man which discern pain and boredom. Conversely, it awakens the inner eye for joy.’
‘Life is crap, so drink and forget,’ added Father Droz, nudging the container even further forward till it threatened to topple into Luther’s lap.
Strangely, the monk seemed to appreciate these last words and he was thereby persuaded. Downing the wine in one mighty convulsion of the throat, he smacked his lips and drew a pudgy hand across them to mop up the residue.
Admiral Slovo was both encouraged and repelled. Not even the pirates he used to know consumed brain-stunning liquor with such indecent relish. Wine was, he realized, a powerful weapon against a man used to drinking in beer-quantities. The monk’s defences were now breached and open to the attack of new ideas and sensations.
‘Right then,’ Slovo said, gathering together his gloves and scrip, ‘since your colleague is off enjoying himself with death-by-a-thousand-sausages, we shall be away. What would you like to do?’
Luther looked about, symbolically taking in the mighty City, one-time home of Empire and now the hub of Faith. The first assault of alcohol was making it all seem full of infinite possibility. ‘I should like,’ he said, ‘to … go to church.’
Admiral Slovo saw propriety win a momentary victory during the monk’s hesitation. It didn’t matter. They’d planned for just such eventualities …
It had taken an inordinate amount of money and the calling-in of several favours to get Numa Droz to dress as a priest. Not only did he have a low opinion of the cloth, he was also much attached to his rainbow silks and flamboyant hats.
Admiral Slovo had won him over eventually but it’d been an uphill struggle. The Admiral did not number any six foot eight inch clerics among his acquaintance and so had to commission the necessary disguise as a special – and expensive – secret. But this had proved to be simplicity itself compared with coaching the mercenary to behave in a manner even distantly approaching that expected.
However, Droz was warming to the role and beginning to enjoy the pantomime. After Mass at the Church of the Repentant St Mary the Egyptian, he sat with Luther and the Admiral outside a nearby Neapolitan baker’s-cum-resthouse, enjoying a lunch of pizza[15] and watching the lively life of the adjacent Bordelletto.
‘I enjoyed that sermon,’ said Numa Droz. ‘It certainly stuck the knife in the Pelagian heresy!’
‘Is that why you kept shouting “Orthodox”?’ asked Luther.
‘Well, you can’t clap in church, can you?’ answered the Swiss, giving Slovo a who-is-this-yokel? look. ‘It reminded me of a talk I once gave to a load of captured Janissaries. My oath! Nigh on half of ’em renounced Islam on the spot!’
‘And the other half?’ asked Luther.
‘We stuck ’em on stakes, matey!’ Suddenly Droz recalled who and what he was currently meant to be. ‘I mean, that’s what they do to us – and anyway, they were all apostates!’
‘The Janissaries,’ explained Slovo to the monk, thinking a little interlude wouldn’t go amiss, ‘are recruited from a levy of Christian children imposed on the territories conquered by the Ottomans. They are raised as fanatical moslems and serve as the Sultan’s elite troops.’
‘I have heard of them,’ said Luther, ‘but would question whether the term “apostate” is appropriate. Full consent to salvation can only be given in adulthood.’
‘Can it?’ said Droz innocently. ‘If you say so.’
The monk looked a little shocked but let it pass. He was plainly more exercised by the proximity of the church in which they’d just worshipped to Rome’s throbbing red-light district. Admiral Slovo noted the direction of his burning gaze.
‘Is something troubling you?’ he asked.
‘I’m not sure,’ said the monk, creasing his brow. ‘Do you see what I see?’
Admiral Slovo and Numa Droz obligingly looked but saw nothing untoward.
Luther turned to them in some agitation, not all, Slovo suspected, of innocent origin.
‘I’ve just seen men openly consorting with women of easy virtue,’ gasped the monk. ‘Look! He’s negotiating with her! They should be whipped!’
‘Well,’ observed Droz amiably, ‘maybe they will be, though it costs a little extra, I understand.’
‘No, no, no!’ said the monk. ‘I refer to this open … traffic – and beside a church as well. To think that next door to a House of God wherein the sanctuary light shines before the Body of Christ, they are performing such enormities!’
‘It’s how you got here,’ said Slovo, disarmingly.
‘Are you saying my mother—’ roared Luther, rising to his feet.
‘My reference was to the mechanics of the procreative act, not your personal antecedents’ came the calm reply. ‘In a city where men of quality tend to marry late, you are somewhat intolerant of the demands of human nature.’
‘I am mortified to hear you speak like this,’ said Luther, shaking so much with indignation that he had to sit down again.
‘It so happens that I am singularly well qualified to do so,’ claimed Slovo.
‘Are you admitting that you—’ interrupted the monk, ‘with the taste of communion still in your mouth?’
‘No,’ said Slovo, annoyingly failing to join in with the mounting wave of emotion. ‘I am not admitting what you might think, though there would be little shame in it if I did. It just so happens that my tastes are more restrained.’
‘And specialized,’ added Numa Droz candidly.
‘What I was referring to,’ the Admiral continued, ‘was that one of my early occupations in His Holiness’s service was the supervising of the great Social Register. This involved enumerating all the whores plying their trade in Rome, but, being lazy, I gave up counting after nigh on seven thousand freely answered to that calling. All that, mark you, in a city of fifty to sixty thousand souls. Ultimately, for fear of scandalizing both His Holiness and posterity, my finished return included only the true professionals of fourteen hundred or so. Of that number,’ he went on, ‘nigh on five hundred were foreigners, especially imported. And since it was obvious that none of these “unfortunates” starved from lack of trade, it must be accepted that they were well patronized. That being so, if a sin is so universally practised, is it any longer sin?’
Before Luther could make the predictable point that murder and theft were pretty widespread too, but that didn’t make them all right, Admiral Slovo waved Numa Droz on to say his piece. The polished double-act caught the monk on the hop.
‘Anyway,’ said Droz in his priestly role, ‘I’ve got this theory. The purpose of the sexual act is breeding, right?’
‘Yes,’ Luther agreed cautiously. ‘Such is the Church’s teaching, based on natural law.’
‘So, a sexual act is a procreative act and, conversely, a procreative act is a sexual one. Well then,’ said Droz triumphantly, pleased at having remembered his lines all the way through, ‘by that formula, any act which excludes procreation isn’t sexual, is it? If you take precautions or venture some of the more daring stuff the ladies over there offer, there’s no chance of a baby, and thus no sexual business and thus no sin, geddit?’