Ken McClure: Past Lives

He could see from a ceramic plaque on the wall opposite that he was in Villegaignon Street but it didn’t mean much. He knew hardly anything at all about Mdina save what Simone had told him — that it had once been the capital of the island but was now a piece of history, a daytime tourist attraction. He looked to his left and recognised what he thought must be the road they had come in on. Simone had mentioned the bridge spanning an old moat. He was pleased that he at least knew the way out of Mdina. Please God, he and Simone would be using it in the very near future. For the moment, he hurried off in the opposite direction to look for the cathedral. He paused when he reached a junction, which opened out into a large open square, and wiped the sweat from his brow: the air was oppressively humid.

The square appeared to be deserted but its openness made him uneasy. He couldn’t bring himself to believe that he was entirely alone despite Simone’s assertion that practically no one lived in Mdina. It didn’t feel right. He felt sure that the towers and turrets must conceal a thousand watching eyes. A street sign told him it was St Paul’s Square. More importantly, he could see, standing before him on the opposite side of the square, the huge stone front of Mdina cathedral.

Somewhere inside his head, the thin small voice of reason was telling him that he should be looking for a police station; raising the alarm and calling out the cavalry, but the thought of having to explain things to blank faces who would think him mad, made him balk at the idea. He took cover in an arched doorway to work out a plan of action.

The only thing he had in his favour right now was the element of surprise. Apart from that, he was alone, unarmed and probably outnumbered four to one. He looked across to the main doors of the cathedral and decided on a look and learn policy. After that, he would play it by ear.

Although he had no notion of the significance of it, he was working on the assumption that Ignatius and the others would be in the area that had been circled on the plan — the Chapel of the Cross. He’d also learned from the drawings that the cathedral was well endowed with pillars and alcoves. The chances were good that it would also be in darkness so cover should not be a problem once he got inside.

There was no question of entering by the huge front doors — he could imagine the echoing sound that would make. He would seek out a more modest entrance at the back or side of the building, preferably on the opposite side from the Chapel of the Cross. He crossed the open square as fast as he could and felt a sense of relief as he melted into the shadows of a narrow lane.

The first door he came to was locked but the handle on the second turned easily enough. He edged the door open slowly, an inch at a time and just until the opening was wide enough to let him squeeze through: the last thing he needed at this moment was a squeal of protest from a noisy hinge. He squeezed inside, taking great care not to let the heavy iron handle clatter back against the wood. Once there, he stood stock still in the darkness and just listened until his eyes became accustomed to the gloom. All was deathly quiet.

He started to make out shapes. The cathedral wasn’t in complete darkness. He could see a dim yellow light but wondered about its rectangular pattern until he realised that he was looking through the trellis top of a screen placed just inside the door. He moved to the end of the screen and crouched down before moving out into the open.

The light was coming from candles positioned at various points in the cathedral. They did little to provide illumination but much to create atmosphere. The building was alive with flickering shadows and they felt hostile. There was however, a more constant source of light on the other side of the building and a good way along to his left. By his reckoning, it was coming from just about where the Chapel of the Cross should be.

It was clear that restoration work was going on inside the building. Scaffolding had been erected at a number of places around the walls and tarpaulins had been spread on the floor. As he drew nearer, Macandrew could see that this also applied to the Chapel of the Cross where the stonework on the right hand wall had been under repair. This had proved useful to Ignatius and his cronies because two large tarpaulins had been picked up from the floor and draped over the iron-railed gates that guarded the entrance to the chapel. They effectively kept in most of the light but they also prevented Macandrew from seeing what was going on inside. There were sounds coming from the chapel.

He was close enough to hear muffled voices but still couldn’t see much, other than the reason for calling this place the Chapel of the Cross. A huge crucifix bearing the body of Christ was hanging on the back wall above the altar. It was over twenty feet high and suspended by a steel cable so that it leaned out from the wall at the top while the bottom rested on a small ledge on the wall behind and above the altar. Macandrew thought it looked more like a predatory eagle than a symbol of hope. It was flanked by two smaller statues, one of the Virgin and another of a saint.

What he needed to find was some kind of vantage point so that he could see what was going on down on the floor of the chapel but there was no obvious way to achieve this. The chapel itself comprised a stone-walled cul de sac, richly decorated and separated from the main church by the two wrought iron gates, currently adorned with tarpaulins.

Something metal fell to the floor behind the screens and the sound echoed up to the ceiling. Macandrew heard muttered recriminations but shortly afterwards, the sounds changed from anger to excitement. He heard Stroud’s voice say, ‘They’re through! They’ve found it.’

The noise level dropped and leaping shadows on the walls above the tarpaulins told Macandrew that they were repositioning the light sources. He felt increasingly frustrated at not being able to see what was going on. He considered crawling right up to the tarpaulin screen, hoping to find a chink to look through but he could see from where he was that no light was escaping — therefore no chink. There was however, a bank of scaffolding on the right-hand side that extended into the Chapel of the Cross and reached right up to the back wall.

This could give him the height he sought but there would be little or no cover for him once up there. If any of the four should happen to look up, he would be like a clay pipe in a shooting gallery. There was a slim chance that he might be able to see enough from the outside end of the scaffold, where he would still be protected by dark shadow: it all depended on where the men were working in relation to the tarpaulin screens. There was only one way to find out.

He put his foot on the bottom tube of the scaffolding and gripped the one above his head, testing both for firmness before committing his full weight to the framework — the last thing he wanted was for the structure to start shaking when he started climbing. He raised himself slowly up on to the first element and then repeated the manoeuvre to gain a height of about six feet. The next level seemed a deal more unstable but he still managed to pull himself noiselessly up on to the wooden platform at a height now of just over ten feet. He paused before tackling the final two frames. Two more moves and he was twenty feet above the floor of the cathedral.

The last move set up a slight tremble in the framework when he was forced to take the weight off his injured foot a little too quickly but it was not enough to attract attention from inside the chapel and happened to coincide with a distant roll of thunder. He crawled slowly forward until he could see Ignatius and the others. They were looking down into a large black hole in the chapel floor.