Verdetti tries to help everyone out. ‘If it wasn’t you, Suzanna, then who could it have been?’
‘One of the others, you mean?’
‘Yes.’
‘Oh, I see.’ She thinks for a while. ‘Well, if it was one of the others, it was most likely Claudia.’
‘Not Cassandra?’ queries Valentina. ‘Cassandra seems to be mixed up in a lot of bad things. Could it have been her?’
Suzanna stays quiet.
Federico sees an opportunity to push further. ‘Unless of course there is no Cassandra, and you’re lying about all this.’ He leans forward on the edge of his chair. ‘Are you lying, Suzanna? Are you making all this up?’
Valentina tries to cut him off. ‘Federico…’
He scents blood and won’t stop. ‘You don’t have any husband, or children. You’re just inventing all this rubbish about “others” because you’ve seriously hurt someone and now you’re trying to act crazy to avoid the consequences of your actions. Aren’t you?’
Suzanna grows tense.
The lieutenant presses his point. ‘Best tell us the truth now, before you make things worse.’
Valentina studies the prisoner. She no longer looks nervous. She seems angry.
Angry in a peculiarly restrained way. Like a politician or a headmistress when they’re under pressure.
‘I think you should go now,’ says Verdetti, sensing a mood change. ‘This may have been a bad idea. It’s too soon for her to face this kind of thing.’
Valentina ignores her. Her eyes are still locked on the prisoner and the extraordinary look on her face. If she turns violent again, she’ll be ready this time.
The patient stands and starts to pace the room, mumbling to herself.
She turns and glares at them.
Her face is filled with rage.
Her whole body shape has transformed into someone more powerful and more confident.
‘ Juno inferna! How dare you common plebs question my veracity? How in the name of Zeus dare you?’ She shoots Federico a contemptuous look. ‘Sweet Veritas should geld you for your impudence.’ She strides to within a foot of Valentina. ‘And you, girl – you are but a trollop with a mouth made loose by pleasuring too much cock. Now get out! Get out of my sight before I have you tied to the wheel of a chariot and whipped.’
Valentina gives Louisa a shocked look. ‘Is this Cassandra? The Cassandra in the note she wrote?’
The doctor looks worried. ‘Perhaps. Will you and your colleague please wait outside?’
‘Yes! Yes, I am Cassandra.’ She strides defiantly towards them. ‘And Cassandra is too proud to have whores like you speaking about her in whispers.’
The clinician opens the door and again urges the officers out. ‘I have to insist that you go.’
Federico turns to Valentina for guidance and she gives him an assenting nod.
They slip outside and close the door.
Valentina hears one final outburst from inside the room.
‘I know what you want. Oh yes, I know exactly what you and the snuffling pigs in that septic Senate want. I will never tell you. I would rather take my secret to the grave than tell you. You want the book, don’t you? You want to get your hands on it and ruin everything. Well, it will never happen. Never!’
22
The new one tries to hide her fear, but I see it.
We all see it.
It is glazed in the whiteness of her eyes as they lower her into the pit. Pass her into the womb of the earth.
She is naked and pink. Curled and cowed like a foetus.
Her soft, virgin skin is like a dropped silk handkerchief in the centuries-old soil. She sits on a cushion of earth, encrusted with the dried blood of many sacrifices.
Soon there will be more.
Above her, the drumming begins.
It starts like the peck of a bird, becomes the thump of a hoof, and grows into the stampede of cattle.
Taurobolium has begun.
The new one peeks through her fingers into the blackness above her and sees the first flickers of our lights.
I feel for her.
I envy her.
I love her and hate her.
We are lighting candles around the edge of the triangular pit. Her eyes catch mine and I fail to see what is so special about her. They say she is ‘the one’.
The favoured one.
But I see nothing that will stop me usurping her.
Nothing that will prevent me from taking my rightful place in line .
The Korybantes dance their way to the front, naked but for their shields, swords and helmets.
The sound of metal on metal makes a sinister percussion. The steel is there to slice.
To cut.
To kill.
There is an orgiastic surge in the music.
The Galli begin their chanting.
We gather closer and bond tightly with our sisters from Baby lonia, Syria, Asia Minor, Etruria and Anatolia.
The nine Korybantes are joined with the three magical Dactyls.
We are all one.
The music, drumming and chanting reaches its climax.
The goddess is here!
Our Mother has arrived.
She holds aloft the hands that eight thousand years ago dug into the earth of Catal Huyuk, the hands that spread the soil of time while She gave birth flanked by leopards.
We all scream.
Scream so loud our spirits almost fly from our throats.
Somewhere down in the blackness, the special one gathers the fine clothes we have sewn for her and dresses herself.
She moves to the centre of the pit.
The limbs of eunuchs strain on thick ropes and the rafters creak.
Above us, a bull that has trod pastures for six summers bucks in its harness.
Then it thrashes no more.
The blades open up its sacred rivers of blood and they pour down on the libation boards across the pit.
My sister showers in the animal’s life force.
She dances joyously as the blood from the Bull of Heaven purifies her.
Now she is born again – for eternity.
Unless I can stop her.
23
Father Giordano is covering for a friend and working a double shift.
That said, he’s doing it at a place where priests don’t mind putting in unspecified amounts of unpaid overtime.
St Peter’s.
Or, to give the greatest building of its age its full name, the Basilica Papale di San Pietro Vaticano.
Tom has scurried across the city to be there for Alfie’s final appearance of the day, and already all the effort is worthwhile.
The basilica is breathtaking.
Tom can’t think of any other way to describe it. The beauty of the vast seventeenth-century facade built of pale travertine stone, with its giant Corinthian columns, makes him dizzy.
Then there’s the inside.
The spectacularly arched entrance with its heavenly stained glass just about holds Tom’s eyes before they fix on Michelangelo’s central dome, still the tallest in the world at more than a hundred and thirty-six metres. Then there’s the basilica’s wonderful nave, narthex, portals and bays to feast on, before his favourite visual treat, the main altar, with Bernini’s astonishing bronze baldacchino, a pavilion-like structure that stands almost a hundred feet high and looks even taller.
St Peter’s is visual gluttony. No sense is left unstuffed. No emotion left sober.
Mass is said at altars great and small throughout the cavernous building, so Tom has to search a while before he finds his friend in the relatively modest Chapel of the Blessed Sacrament.
Modest is the wrong word.
The gilded bronze Bernini tabernacle alone is worth more than the entire church that Tom last officiated in.
He kneels with the rest of the congregation and can’t help but feel proud of his tall ginger-haired friend as he works his way gracefully and passionately through the service.