There, at his personal racetrack, as hungry citizens feasted on fresh bread, Nero made a grand entrance dressed as a charioteer astride a golden quadria. To a blare of trumpets Peter the Apostle was dragged onto the track. He’d been arrested along with the priest Cornelius and several followers at a Christian house near the Pincian Hill. When the soldiers arrived Peter had smiled at them as if he were welcoming old friends.
Pater was hauled onto a high wooden platform at the center of the racetrack for all to see and Tigellinus loudly proclaimed him to be the ringleader of the plot to destroy Rome. When he finished his speech he sat beside Nero in the royal stands and they watched together as the Praetorians began their work with hammer and spikes.
‘We have it on good authority that this man Peter and his mob were the ones who trapped Balbilus and the others,’ he told Nero.
‘My hate for them was already great,’ Nero said through clenched teeth. ‘Now it is a thousand times greater. They killed my great astrologer and have taken from us the cream of the Lemures. Members of their Church will forever be our foremost enemies. Kill them. Crush them. Damn them to eternity.’
‘What shall we do with Balbilus?’ Tigellinus asked.
‘He is at rest in his own columbarium. Let him lie there in peace with the others.’
Peter was laid out on a wooden cross not so different from the one that Pontius Pilate had used to crucify Jesus. Iron spikes were driven through his palms and ankles but whereas Jesus had been suspended in the usual manner, Nero bestowed upon Peter the further indignity of being nailed upside down.
The gentle old man died slowly and painfully in the afternoon heat, proclaiming to the end – too softly for anyone to hear – his love for God, his love for his savior and friend Jesus Christ, and his absolute belief that good had vanquished at least some of the evil in the world.
For the crowd’s immeasurable pleasure, as Peter’s life was ebbing away, two hundred Christian men and women were dragged into the stadium, stripped naked, flogged and tied to stakes. Ravenous dogs, mad at the scent of blood, were brought in to finish them off.
And that night and for nights on end Nero’s gardens were the scene of a ghastly display: Christians whom Nero had dipped in animal fat and turned into human torches to illuminate the husk of a city that had once been the great Rome.
TWENTY
ELISABETTA STOOD IN the hallway, trying to decide what to do. If she remained quiet perhaps the young priest would leave of his own accord.
‘Sister Elisabetta,’ Tremblay called through the door, his Italian laced with a strong French intonation. ‘Please, I know you’re there. I must talk to you.’
She answered hurriedly, trying to think fast. ‘My brother’s in the Vatican Gendarmerie. He told me not to speak to anyone. He’ll be here any second.’
‘I know who your brother is. Please, you don’t have to be afraid of me. We’re on the same side.’
‘And what side is that?’ she called out.
‘The side of good.’
Against all her instincts Elisabetta let him in. Though she braced herself against some kind of physical attack he followed her quietly into the sitting room and took a chair. Tremblay was less imposing seated, his long praying-mantis legs crossed, his spindly arms folded on his lap. He had a slim leather file which he wedged between himself and the arm of the chair.
‘I’m glad you weren’t hurt,’ he said.
‘You heard about last night?’ she asked, still standing.
He nodded.
She couldn’t ignore the rules of hospitality. ‘Would you like some tea or coffee?’
‘No, thank you. I’d just like to talk.’
‘Then please start with who you are.’
‘Father Pascal Tremblay.’
‘I know your name.’
‘I work for the Vatican.’
‘So I gather,’ she said frostily.
‘I’m sorry for my reticence. You see, the facts don’t trip off my tongue easily. I’ve been trained to be discreet. No, more than discreet – secretive.’
‘Trained by whom?’
‘My superiors. Actually, my superior. I have only one.’
‘And who is that?’
‘I answer to Cardinal Diaz, Dean of the College of Cardinals. I whisper in his ear, he whispers in the Pope’s ear.’
‘What about?’
‘Evil,’ he said simply. ‘I will have tea if you’re still offering.’
Elisabetta left him, trying to compose herself while waiting for the kettle to boil. Though she briefly lost track of time the noise of the hissing spout brought her back. When she returned with two cups she saw that Tremblay hadn’t moved an inch nor unfolded his limbs. She handed him his tea and stared too long at his exaggeratedly bony fingers.
‘I have a condition,’ he said suddenly.
‘I apologize,’ she said.
‘It’s all right. It’s called Marfan Syndrome. It’s a disorder of the connective tissue. It’s why I look the way I do.’
‘It’s none of my business,’ Elisabetta said, sitting.
‘It’s better for you to understand me.’
‘Why?’
‘It just is.’
When she crossed her own legs she realized she was wearing jeans. ‘I’m sorry I’m not dressed properly. I was cleaning. You were speaking of being a whisperer. Is that on your business card?’
‘I don’t have a card,’ Tremblay said after taking a sip. ‘I don’t have a title. I’m simply a Special Assistant to the Cardinal. My predecessors have been Special Assistants, no more, no less.’
‘Your predecessors?’
‘There’s been an uninterrupted chain for centuries.’
‘Whispering to Cardinals and Popes about evil.’
‘Yes.’
Tremblay volunteered a brief personal history: how he’d been tagged at his seminary in Paris as more likely to succeed as an administrator than as a parish priest. Though he assumed they considered his appearance might be offputting to parishioners, he was told it was his aptitude and his degree in accountancy which had attracted the attention of the diocese. After taking his oaths he was assigned to the Archbishop of Paris’s ecclesiastical office and rose quickly through the administrative ranks until he began having regular contacts with the Vatican on diocesan issues. On one visit to Rome, seven years earlier, he’d been summoned to an audience with an Italian bishop he didn’t know in an unfamiliar wing of the Apostolic Palace. There was one other man present in the bishop’s office, an elderly Italian Monsignor with a pronounced tremor in his hands.
You are being selected to come to Rome, Father Tremblay was told. You are to take over the duties of the Monsignor who is retiring.
And what are these duties?
Vigilance, he was told.
Against what? Against whom?
Lemures.
‘What are Lemures?’ Elisabetta asked.
‘You saw one in the morgue,’ Tremblay said.
Elisabetta shivered. He seemed to notice but didn’t try to soothe her.
‘And you saw their skeletons at St Callixtus.’
‘I don’t understand.’
‘I think you do,’ he said. ‘Professor De Stefano told me how smart you are. He said you’d wondered if some kind of a sect might have persisted to the present.’
‘You worked for him?’
‘No, I told you who I worked for. I was assigned to the Pontifical Commission for Sacred Archeology after the skeletons were found. I was instructed to keep tabs on what you were turning up. What Professor De Stefano told you was true enough – there was, there is, a lot of concern within the Vatican about St Callixtus, particularly because of the Conclave and the confusing and damaging publicity if the story leaked out. The few officials who are aware of the Lemures were particularly worried. But De Stefano knew not much more than you did. Enough to make him nervous, maybe. He didn’t need to know more.’