Iain Pears - The Dream of Scipio

When he had finished, she finally asked, “What news is there of the plague? People have begun to sicken here. Some have died already. How long will it last?”

“That is for your master to discover, I think,” Olivier said. “But if the stories are true, then it is only just beginning. I heard someone say yesterday that in Marseille there is scarcely a man left alive. The same stories come from other places as well. Some people think it will be the end of the world. The second coming.”

“Or perhaps the first. Is no one safe?”

“No. Everyone dies. Young and old, rich and poor.” He stared briefly into the fire. “You and me. And at any time. In half an hour we might sicken. Or next week, or next month. There is nothing we can do.”

“Except pray.”

“We are abandoned. There is a tale that in Nice a priest went to his church to pray for deliverance for the town, and many people came out of their houses to go with him. No one had yet died there, but when the priest turned his back on the congregation and raised the host, he uttered a groan and fell down, and black pus began to run from his mouth. Half an hour later he was dead, and the congregation left him there, lying in front of the altar. Within five days they were all dead as well, every single one of them. There is no help in prayer; it merely seems to make God the more angry. That is why I am here. Your master needs his papers if he is to discover anything of use.”

She smiled wanly. “In that case we must sleep. Your cloak will soon be dry, and you may sleep by the fire. If you wish you can get some more logs to keep it blazing all night.”

She stood; he stood as well and came close once more to reaching out for her, but something in her eyes told him it would not be welcome yet. Then she took the candle and went up the rickety stairs to the bedchamber, where Olivier could see the faint light and shadow playing through the gaps in the floorboards. He heard also her say her prayers, a strange sound, almost music but not quite, so alien to his ears that he almost shivered. He crossed himself and prayed as well, then wrapped himself up in his cloak—still wet despite having spent so much time in front of the fire—and lay down to watch the flames in the grate. She came down to him half an hour later; when they were finished, she cried herself to sleep in his arms. Olivier did not know the cause, but as he comforted her he grew certain it was not because of him.

CARDINAL CECCANI DIED in Italy in 1352, some rumors suggested by poison, and was buried in Naples. A hasty, careless internment befitting a man who had—no one knew why—fallen utterly from favor. He was placed in a vacant grave in the cathedral of Naples, which was then covered with a slab of marble. His name was eventually carved on it. That was all; unlike other more fortunate cardinals, he had no grand tomb with a carved representation of his appearance in life. The only reminder of what he looked like came from the painting by Luca Pisano, high up on the wall by the entrance to the cathedral.

But thanks to the Italian’s skill, his face remains, and is known. No such fortune attended either Manlius Hippomanes or Sophia, or Olivier or Rebecca. Their faces exist still, but only Julien ever half suspected who they were. Many times he had thought of what they might look like, and imagined Manlius to be like his prose: stiff, formal, somewhat severe yet with a hint of his wit about him—in the eyes, or the mouth, perhaps. He dressed him in his mind in traditional Roman clothes, even though by his day no one had worn the toga with any regularity for nearly three hundred years. He was influenced, perhaps, by the fanciful imaginings of André Thevet, cosmographer to the king of France, who published a set of idealized engravings of great Frenchmen and Gauls in 1584. Certainly, he tended to imagine a face that fitted in with his supposed character.

Ceccani’s portrait was a perfect reminder of the foolishness of the mind, for what Pisano painted bore no relation whatever to what Julien knew of his character. There he stands, half obliterated by peeling paint, wearing a huge hat that makes his head seem childlike and innocent as he contemplates the Virgin and her child. The shoulders are rounded, almost with a stoop, the gorgeous robes he wears look as though they are suffocating; perhaps Pisano caught something of the way high office and great power bore down on him. Only in his eyes is there a sign of calculation, or of cunning. That, of course, might have been a trick of the light. But why should people appear like their character? Who in Julien’s knowledge did? And whose character was fixed in any case? Did Julia look as she was, for example? And if they did, then Marcel Laplace should have had an entirely different face, not the chubby, childlike, innocent one he in fact possessed.

It was Bernard who pointed this out to him. A strange thing to discuss at that moment, perhaps, but then it was a strange meeting, organized hurriedly and in shock after Julien met him one Friday morning in February 1943, two months after the Germans had invaded the south and extinguished the pretense that France still existed in anything but name and memory.

It was just outside the café where he often had lunch; he came out, nodded to the owner, crossed the rue de la République, and began to walk back to his office; and as he strolled along trying to remember the last time he had tasted meat that was truly worth eating, a man came up, slipped his arm through his, and said quietly, “Good afternoon, my friend. I trust you ate well? Keep walking. Don’t slow down, and please don’t look surprised.”

So he did as instructed; it never occurred to him to do otherwise. “I want to talk to you,” Bernard said as he guided him down a narrow, empty alleyway. “Tomorrow would be best. Where do you suggest?”

And Julien had suggested the cathedral. High above the esplanade, next to the papal palace, dominated by a gigantic gilt Virgin, it was out of the way, rarely visited these days for there were few casual voyagers anymore, and it was too isolated to attract any but the determined worshiper. It was always dark and ill lit, offering a refuge for those who wished to sit without being noticed. Bernard nodded and slipped away; Julien kept on walking. It took him under a minute longer than usual to get back to his office.

It never occurred to him either not to keep the appointment; he went there exactly on time, stood on the forecourt overlooking the huge and deserted place and across to the river, then went inside to walk around as he waited. He ended up by the entranceway, staring up in thought at Cardinal Ceccani’s face, paying homage to the one power indisputably greater than his own.

Bernard was late. Bernard was always late, one of those who could never understand the irritation such a habit could produce in others. He wandered in fifteen minutes after the appointed time, walking with a strolling gait that suggested a man without a care in the world. He peered up at Cardinal Ceccani.

“Not a man to be trusted,” he said. “Who is he?”

“The patron of Olivier de Noyen,” Julien replied impatiently. “Bernard, what are you doing here? Did you change your mind?”

“Not exactly. You like de Noyen, don’t you? Why is that?”

“Bernard . . .”

“Tell me. You made me read him once. I found him a dreadful bore. Hysterical, out of control.”

“I am finding things out about him. He is more interesting than you think.”

He grunted. “Good to see the war is making you concentrate on the important things in life, then. Anyway, to answer your question, I didn’t change my mind. I went to England, and now I’m back, to be part of the Resistance. My name is not Bernard Marchand, you understand. Shall we walk? Will you hear my confession?”