David Hewson - A Season for the Dead

“Promise me something,” he said, scribbling on a page ripped from his notebook.

“What?” she said, taking the paper from him.

“You’ll go to this address. It’s a hostel. They can help.”

“Okay,” she replied mutely, some suspicion in her voice.

“I don’t come this way often,” he said. “Remember that address.”

Then he walked off, back toward the steps that rose up to road level, back toward the bridge that led on to the Vatican.

He was on the stone staircase when the mobile phone rang.

“I’m in your debt, Mr. Costa,” said Sara Farnese, and he could hear the relief in her voice.

“The name’s Nic. You’re welcome. I lost your coat and things. Sorry.”

She laughed. It was the first time he had heard her make any sound of pleasure and this was, he thought, the real Sara Farnese, not the person she tried to portray to the world. “It was worth it ten times over. Watching them, chasing you… Nic.”

“So you escaped?” he asked.

The line went quiet. It had been a direct question, an understandable one in the circumstances. Perhaps she was wondering whether it was personal or professional. He was unsure himself. Nic Costa considered where she would go in the circumstances, and cursed his curiosity: He wished, automatically, that he had arranged to have her followed.

“Call again, Nic. If you like,” she said, and was gone.

Ten

The man wore a black suit and dark glasses. He was muscular and probably middle-aged, though he wore such heavy clothing, in spite of the heat, it was difficult to tell from what was on show. For the life of him, Gallo could not figure out his accent. Southern? Sicilian maybe? He didn’t want to try. There was something serious about him, something that said you just did your job, did it well, got your money, then walked away.

The car struggled through the traffic out to the motorway which led to Fiumicino airport and the coast. He had jazz playing on the music system: Weather Report, with Wayne Shorter’s sax wailing like a banshee.

Gallo knew Ostia well. He’d taken many parties around the old port area and the ruins of the imperial town. “Who are they?” he asked.

“Who are who?” the man in the black suit grunted.

“The people I’m supposed to entertain.”

“Visiting college professors. Not archaeologists themselves, but people with an interest. I hope you know what you’re talking about.”

“No problem.”

The car turned off the motorway early. Gallo was puzzled.

“Aren’t we going to the town?”

“Not first. There’s another area that got cut off from the meander by a flood hundreds of years back. The Fiume Morto. The dead river. You know it?”

“No.” Gallo felt his good mood start to wane. No one ever went to the dead river except hardened diggers. It was just mud and mosquitoes. “You might have told me.”

The black glasses looked at him. “I heard you were a clever guy. You can make things up if you want. What does it matter? It’s all show business. Don’t worry. It won’t take long. After that we go to the town. Then you run on autopilot, huh?”

“Yeah, right.” Gallo scanned the flat land of the Tiber estuary.

The stink of the marshes came in with the air-conditioning. It was chemical, lifeless and made the back of his throat turn dry and start to ache. There was nothing ahead, not a bus, not even a car. Gallo looked at the man again. He was wearing black leather gloves. Odd in the heat.

The driver turned to him again. “You’ve heard of Tertullian?”

Gallo laughed dryly. “Oh, wow. What a sweetheart that guy was. Really full of joy and light. What was that wonderful line about women? ‘Tu es ianua diaboli.' You’re the doorway of the Devil. Boy, do the feminists love that one. What a twisted dude."

The man at the wheel was watching him and, in spite of the sunglasses, Jay Gallo could tell there was something severe about him, something cold and immovable. “I was thinking,” the man said, “of another saying.”

“What?”

“'The blood of the martyrs is the seed of the Church.'”

Gallo turned to look at the man. Maybe he wasn’t as old as he first thought. He moved with the ease of someone about his own age. The glasses, the clothes seemed to be there to age him. The travel business, Jay Gallo thought. What a way to earn a living.

The mention of Tertullian had put Gallo in full flow. It was rare he got a chance to display his erudition with someone who might begin to appreciate it. “These early Christians. You know what puzzles me? How did anybody sign up for this thing? What was the point?”

“You mean why did Tertullian call for people to be martyrs?”

“No! Why did the poor suckers take him at his word? Why die just for some… idea?”

The dark glasses thought about that. “You’ve seen the Caravaggio in Santa Maria del Popolo? St. Peter’s Crucifixion?”

Gallo knew the church as well as he wished. It was a minor star in the galaxy of Roman sights. A chapel by Raphael, a touch of Borgia history and two famous Caravaggios, all in the perfect Renaissance piazza the tourists loved because it sat at the end of the tawdry shopping street, the Via Corso.

“Yeah.” He recalled a striking large canvas of the saint about to be crucified upside down. The cross was being pushed and pulled upright by three largely unseen workers who could have come straight out of any sixteenth-century tavern. Peter stared at the nail running through his left palm with a determination, almost pride, which Gallo never could understand.

“That tells you everything. Peter’s executioners believe they’re raising the means of his cruel death. In truth, with each inch they build higher the foundations of the Church, as the saint clearly realizes.”

Gallo waved a hand as if to say this was obvious. “Yes, yes. He’s a martyr…”

“Furthermore,” the man continued, “he’s bathed in the light of Grace, which even shines on his murderers. He goes to his death out of duty, and happily because he knows there is a better life awaiting him in Paradise. This is a transformation he seeks. He knows he goes to Heaven.”

“Crazy…” Gallo grunted, shaking his head.

The dark glasses stared at the empty horizon ahead.

Gallo smiled and thought of another Caravaggio, in the Borghese, and the story behind it, one that always went down well with the Americans. “Anyway, Caravaggio didn’t believe that crap himself. Look how he paints himself as the severed head of Goliath. When he did that, my friend, he was under sentence of death himself, for murdering a man during a game of tennis. He painted his own head there to acknowledge the Pope’s hold over him and beg forgiveness. He had good, practical reasons to be scared. And he was. You don’t see him expecting salvation there. Just the grave. And oblivion.”

“You’re a cultured man,” the driver said, to Gallo’s obvious satisfaction. “What happened to the painter?”

“He got his pardon. Then died on the way back to Rome. Ironic, huh?”

“Possibly. Or apt. Perhaps that was his punishment.”

But Jay Gallo wasn’t listening. There was something he had to say, something important. “And here’s another irony. Tertullian didn’t even take his own advice. He was no martyr. He died in his bed at a hundred and two or something. Hypocrite.”

Then he remembered the Vatican license plate on the car and added quickly, “Not that I know the first damn thing about religion, of course.”

“Just history.”

“That’s right.”

Jay Gallo looked around. They had parked by the low muddy waters of the river. There wasn’t a soul in sight. Or anything to look at either. All the usual places to visit were a good half mile or two away. He wished there was somewhere he could buy a beer or a good coffee with grappa in it. He wished the place didn’t stink so badly of chemicals and pollution.