David Hewson - The Fallen Angel

Mina sat down on a bench and stared at the altar. Costa joined her. They stayed there for a few minutes in silence. Then, without another word, she got up and marched outside, crossed the forecourt and climbed onto the perimeter wall overlooking the hill, perching there like any other teenager, hands round her knees, helmet strap gathered round her wrist, gazing at the view: the historical heart of the city stretching in front of them like a magical panorama with the ragged crown of the Sabine Hills beyond.

He thought it best to leave her alone for a few minutes. Costa went and peered at Bramante’s Tempietto through the cloister’s bars. It resembled a monument that had escaped from Ancient Rome only to find itself locked in a beautiful prison for some reason. Finally he walked over to the wall and saw, as he reached her, that she was crying.

The tears ran in two vertical streaks down each cheek, bright and viscous. After a little while she sniffed then wiped them away with a scrunched-up tissue dragged out of her jeans pocket.

‘Perhaps this wasn’t such a good idea,’ he said. ‘I can run you home.’

‘I’m not crying for Beatrice,’ she spat at him with a sudden, childish petulance. ‘She’s been dead for four centuries.’

‘Of course not. If you want me to go. .’

‘I didn’t say that, did I?’

‘No. If you want to talk about anything. .’

She stared at him with cold, glassy eyes.

‘That’s why you came, isn’t it? To interrogate me?’

He hitched himself up onto the wall, sat a little way along from her and said, with a shrug and a wry smile, ‘Actually I came because you asked me. I nearly said no.’

Her head went to the city again. She was silent for a while then she murmured, ‘I’m sorry for being hateful. It happens sometimes. Mina, the perfect child. Not so perfect really.’

‘I meant it. If you want to talk, fine. If not. .’

‘I don’t.’

He waited. For all the knowledge that Malise and Cecilia had crammed into this bright and unusual girl, for all her skill with words and languages, she was still a teenager. Sullen and joyful in turn, unpredictable, uncertain of herself and the world around her. Grieving inwardly for a father whose death she, perhaps, failed to understand too.

‘Somewhere there,’ she said finally. Her arm was sweeping the glorious panorama in front of them. ‘In that dip to the right of the Vittorio Emanuele monument. .’

‘Yes?’

She wouldn’t look at him. She was uncertain of saying this somehow.

‘There’s another church, Santa Francesca Romana. Next to the Forum. It’s white. Pretty brick campanile. Somewhere behind the Palatine, close to the Colosseum. You know it?’

‘There are so many churches in Rome,’ he said, trying to recall that section of Mussolini’s broad and insensitive highway cutting through the core of the imperial city. Then it came: a small, elegant building perched on a ridge next to the fence marking off the Forum, and a memory of traffic jams in spring.

‘You mean the car drivers’ church?’ he said, remembering. Santa Francesca was the patron saint of motorists. On her feast day in March hundreds would converge on the area to have their vehicles blessed.

She stared at him, full of doubt. Costa explained.

‘I suppose that’s the place,’ she said, listening to his description. ‘Daddy told me a story. About Simon Magus, the wizard, and St Peter. It’s as true as anything else.’

She clasped her hands, fingers gripping one another tightly. Telling stories helped her somehow.

‘Nero,’ Mina Gabriel began, ‘was the emperor and ordered a debate, a contest of miracles, a trial of the powers of Peter and the wizard. Simon called on his masters and flew. Levitated.’ She gestured with her hands. ‘Right in front of everyone. The emperor. The people, thousands of them, because they’d come to see. It was magic, wasn’t it? Everyone wants to believe in magic. So Simon flew.’ Her hands unclasped, her fingers rose to the blue summer sky. ‘High up. Like a bird. Like an angel.’

Her eyes went back to the distant line of steeples and towers.

‘Peter’s miracle was to kneel down and pray to God to bring the magic to an end. It wasn’t God’s magic, you see. It was someone else’s and that was not allowed. So Simon fell to earth, died on the stones in front of Nero. Broken. Gone.’

Tears again. He waited. The tissue came out. She coughed, struggling to regain her composure. Then she gestured towards the city.

‘In Santa Francesca Romana, on the right, next to the main altar, there’s a stone with some hollows on it. They say they’re the marks that Peter’s knees made as he prayed to God, with such force he could move rocks, kill a man, do anything. This was God’s magic, wasn’t it? Nero was furious. He had Peter crucified.’ She nodded towards Bramante’s Tempietto. ‘Perhaps here. Who knows? But you see the point?’

The story was new to him yet it seemed so Roman, so cruelly apposite.

‘Not exactly.’

Mina’s round, liquid eyes, too sad, too worldly for someone of her age, held him. Costa felt he was being slow.

‘If you believe this story,’ she went on, ‘Peter wasn’t crucified for being a Christian. He was tried for murder. His prayers sent Simon crashing to his death. He killed someone because they were different. And now. .’

Her gaze strayed towards the Vatican, hidden by the hill.

‘. . look where he is.’

‘Rome’s full of stories,’ Costa told her. ‘Full of beauty and barbarity too. That’s what we are. A kind of magnifying glass for humanity. All the best parts, all the worst, out there in the light of day for everyone to see. Not so much of the barbarity any more, though. Usually, anyway.’

‘Daddy told me that story. He said it comes from the Acts of Peter. They’re apocryphal but it’s the same source that says Peter was crucified upside down. If you believe that. . and most of the world does.’

She closed her eyes, remembering something, then, in a pure soprano, sang out loud the foreign words. .

‘The day thou gavest, Lord, is ended

The darkness falls at thy behest.’

Mina watched him, her eyes dark with some inner fury.

‘At thy behest,’ she said, back in Italian again. ‘All Peter did was pray. He didn’t murder Simon Magus. God did.’

Mina Gabriel wiped away her shining tears, snatched up the helmet and pulled it down over her golden hair.

‘There’s one place left,’ she said.

Bernard Santacroce was about fifty years old, perhaps a little more, shortish, fit and handsome in an expensive dark suit, pale pink shirt and grey tie. He had a full head of reddish hair and the tanned, unlined face of a banker or a surgeon, knowledgeable, confident, content with himself. The man sat behind a vast wooden desk, polished until it looked like a mirror, in a study at the summit of the tower that was the Casina delle Civette. Beyond the window stood two majestic palm trees, feathery fronds swaying in the light breeze. There was a glorious view down to the garden, and across the river to the Vatican. Peroni had never been anywhere so solitary and peaceful in the centre of Rome. The tower was magnificent and unique, one reason, perhaps, why Santacroce looked so pleased with himself as Cecilia Gabriel led them in.

Falcone’s cheek had lost a little of its colour. The heat was still inside him, though. Whether she knew it or not, the Gabriel woman had guaranteed that he would not turn aside from what she presumably believed was merely a tentative inquiry into a death in suspicious circumstances. He had his pride too.

Santacroce waited for her to leave then bade them sit down.