Popes and Phantoms

The Year 1488 ‘By possession of a beautiful bottom (but not my own) I secure a new position in life and acquire respectability and a wife!’

‘Details, mere details,’ said Captain Slovo.

‘They may be mere details to you, Captain,’ replied Bosun, ‘but to us it’s life and death. Come on – slit your throat and spill the news.’

Ever since the blowing of his cover, revealing him as an amateur philosopher, Bosun had been manifesting dangerously democratic tendencies. Slovo would never have tolerated it but for the fact that he had only one more voyage to make and that replacing Bosun would be inconvenient. Otherwise, the upstart tiller-tugger would have been over the side in short order, to join the Venetian.

‘A reliable source,’ Slovo explained with a patience that should have stirred Bosun’s neck hairs, ‘informed me of a particularly succulent “fruit of the waves”, that is all. We sally forth to pluck and devour it. What could be more natural?’

Bosun made his protest with a discreet lowering of voice. ‘But a Caliph’s ship! That’s not been our way. We’re just a galiot and she’ll be laterna size – we’ll never hack it. They’ll be all over us!’

‘That prospect might be more attractive than you think,’ answered Slovo. ‘A Princess’s ship will carry a hefty contingent of maidens and eunuchs-in-waiting, in lieu of fighting men. The odds will be more even than you suppose. Besides, I am assured that we will be assisted by an agent aboard.’

In between his reflex ten-second checks on the crew’s devotion to duty, Bosun found time to construct the message ‘unconvinced’ on his features. ‘You’ve got a lot of faith in this source,’ he said cautiously. ‘That’s not like you.’

Nor indeed was it but, in the face of the arguments arrayed in battle order by the Shaduf, Slovo had seen little option but the leap of faith. If the Principal of the world’s oldest university said that a dowry-laden daughter of the Egyptian Sultan was en route to matrimony with a Turkish rival, Slovo found himself with no alternative but action. The additional consideration, that Slovo was soon to be declared an ‘Enemy of God’ throughout the Islamic world, made imminent departure very attractive. Bit by bit, the Vehmic conspiracy had narrowed and straightened the path before him, and then firmly pushed him on his way.

‘What more can I say?’ asked the Captain of his Bosun, preparing to deploy his ‘doomsday instruction’. ‘Trust me.’

There was no safe answer to that and Bosun swung away, launching into compensatory abuse of the crew. Those seamen not wedded to the oars teemed about like ants trying to appease him.

The galley fairly ripped through the water as the rowers settled easily into the mindless rhythm of the strokemaster’s ancient song. Bosun had been permitted to tantalize them with hints of a bounteous prize ahead and they pulled away with a will. Only Bosun himself remained discontent, pacing the rowing deck and scanning the sea ahead, but there was nothing so unusual about that.

Slovo, by contrast, was looking forward to what was to come. For once in his life he did not need to worry about preparing for every eventuality. The Shaduf – and through him, the Vehme – had instructed him down to the last detail. Such tender care recalled dim memories of family, and might have cheered the Captain but for what the Venetian and Stoicism had jointly worked on him.

While the Shaduf had said next to nothing about the apparently all-embracing Vehme, he had been generous to a fault with other thought-provoking ‘facts’. The Deity, however one conceived him or it, he had said, was possessed of seventy-three proper names and those infinite few who knew any of them were termed the Baal Shem.

Slovo had confessed himself intrigued by such theological information, but he was a working pirate with a living to steal. Exactly how did such revelations assist him?

The Shaduf’s patient explanation that the hearing of such names was destruction to an unprepared mortal and that the Vehme would secrete one of their own Baal Shem aboard the Sultan’s ship, went a long way to convince Slovo. Now he understood why the Vehme would pit a mere hundred fighting men against the floating fortress he knew they would meet. A deep and secret leviathan was being awakened on his behalf and the opposition would be vouchsafed a glimpse of God – at the price of their lives.

There were inconsistencies and unanswered questions Slovo would have liked to pursue but he’d felt it indelicate to do so. He had purchased waxen earblocks for all the crew and put his trust in his new employers. It was this unprecedented sentiment that had so alarmed Bosun. Slovo couldn’t find it in his heart to blame him.

Then, just as he was pondering the degree to which the Islamic fatalism of Tripoli was influencing his present decisions, the look-out bellowed, ‘Ship-ahoy!’

Even the Captain had second thoughts when they drew close to the monster containing the Sultan’s daughter. The great galleon sat heavy in the sea, indicating the manpower packed within, although she moved along nippily enough when heaved by myriad banks of oars. The ominously huge bow and stern cannons discouraged proximity and the side facing Slovo was packed with a crowd of armoured welcomers.

It was to Bosun’s credit that he moved swiftly to silence the murmurs of dismay. To encourage the others he split the head of one too plainly frightened sailor. Thus exhorted, the crew embraced the wisdom of their Captain’s wishes and closed for battle, urged on by the strokemaster’s allegro song – and an impulse to get the thing over and done with, one way or the other. Slovo noted the skilful positioning of the Egyptian ship to permit her stern gun to fire, but allowed Bosun to judge when to make the vital ‘flick’ to port or starboard that would avoid the crushing ball. True, the ship was bigger than any they had faced before but the basic play had been run through a hundred times. And, supposedly they had a friend aboard.

When the Bosun had done his job and they were all soaked by the vast impact in the sea a score of paces to port, Slovo wound his ship up to attack speed. Then, reverentially on one knee (but weapons to hand), Slovo commended himself to Mary and her Son, not forgetting a word of praise to Jehovah (since Judaism seemed occasionally persuasive).

The galley Slovo was liberally hosed down with Egyptian bow and shot and men started to slump at the oars. The crew would normally have returned suppressing fire and plainly wished with all their hearts to do so. However, above the noise of the dying, Captain Slovo forbade it. At the same time he ordered his men to insert their earplugs.

Obeying the stupid Barbary pirate custom of the ship’s Captain standing fearless and prominent to face the worst the enemy could throw, Slovo at last had the opportunity to study his target at leisure – even whilst it tried to end his observations for ever.

It was a behemoth! A forest’s worth afloat, made to look even more unnatural atop the waves by the rich, primary-colour decorations the Mohammedan Royals seemed to like so much. After painful translation and with mounting amusement, Slovo noted that the mighty white sail was emblazoned with a profession of faith: There is no God but God and Mohammed is His prophet. He smiled even as a whistling arrow’s passage disturbed the fall of his hair. One God there might well be, he mused, but there was the hope that they might soon learn that He went under a number of names.

Abandoning attempts to escape by slave or sail from their more nimble pursuer, the lumbering Egyptian craft shipped oars and more or less awaited what might be. Happy to show them, a mere two lengths off and still weathering a storm of missiles, the galley Slovo banked for the cannon-free side and the final approach. The iron grapples and boarding platform were made ready and, since no ram was intended, the oarsmen were ordered to abandon their charges and tool up, allowing momentum to finish the job.

Slovo traversed his ship to join the elite group of particularly bestial sailors who always led the first charge. In lieu of commands they could no longer hear, he smiled encouragement.

The Royal Egyptian ship was high-sided but, burdened by her load, she sat low and permitted a clear view of her deck from the galley Slovo. Ordinarily, at this point it would have been time to hurl the fiery naphtha-pots and baskets of vipers to shed confusion and worse amidst the massed enemy, but Slovo ignored the pleading looks of the toughs around him. This time, just this once, he would have faith right up to the last possible moment.

The Baal Shem very nearly did leave it too late and exhaust Slovo’s feeble trust. The grapples had dropped, the platform had crashed down, its spikes biting into the Egyptian deck, before he showed his hand. The front ranks of pirates and marines were already in intimate and deadly embrace before his voice was heard. It was as well he acted, for they were hopelessly outnumbered.

Standing beside the gorgeous divan within the Royal pavilion, was a negro among a frightened huddle of courtiers. Unhurriedly laying down his ostrich feather fan, he stepped forward and began to speak.

What he had to say carried above the clamour and what he said caused all clamour to cease.

One by one the Egyptians stopped what they were doing, their attention now clearly held by something far more important than a mere life-and-death struggle. Some of the pirates unchivalrously took the opportunity to dispatch their distracted opponents. And now that the identity of their helper was known, Slovo seized his own chance and took out the ship’s Captain with a crossbow-bolt to the throat.

In the event, he need not have bothered. At the call of the Baal Shem all those who could hear began to cry – with joy or horror Slovo could not discern – and then they started to die. A few pirates who had seen fit to discard the earplugs rapidly joined them.

Soon the Egyptian deck was choked with dead and dying, either neatly in rows as with the captured Christian oarsmen, or in twitching heaps of armoured marines and silk-garbed courtiers. Slovo had hoped to be able to watch and read the Baal Shem’s lips but it had all happened too fast, and perhaps that was just as well.

The surviving pirates howled with pleasure at such wild success and, casting their earplugs aside, poured on to the Egyptian prize. Their Captain followed suit. Then the coal-black Baal Shem stepped forward to meet them and thereby reversed the tide, leaving Slovo irritably wondering why he was being buffeted by routing men just as the battle was apparently won. But the crush before him cleared and all his doubts were resolved. As the Baal Shem casually advanced upon him, Captain Slovo found it supremely easy to forget courage and purpose and dignity. He discovered himself strangely willing to leap athletically back to his own ship and trample anyone between him and its familiar deck.

Fortunately it was all just by way of an effect, and the Baal Shem turned off his aura of approaching death-plus-something-worse as abruptly as he’d inflicted it. He leaned on the grappled rail of his galley-hecatomb and studied the shivering pirates with a neutral expression. ‘How much do they know?’ he asked in a touching falsetto, speaking directly to Slovo, and gesturing towards the crew.

‘Just enough,’ Slovo said, his speech emerging as a croak, ‘and no more.’

‘Then let them come and play,’ replied the Baal Shem, ‘while we talk.’

He stood aside and bowed everyone back aboard, the action as smooth and practised as that of any Sultan’s flunkey. The prospect of good plunder overcame the pirates’ fear and, like mice bypassing a watchful cat, they cautiously edged on to the ship of the dead, where they regained their normal instincts and fell whooping upon the fallen.

The Baal Shem in turn clambered stiffly on to the galley Slovo, making heavier weather of it than was customarily seen in pirate circles. He was obviously older than appearances suggested.

‘There are survivors in the pavilion,’ the Baal Shem said, almost as an aside, ‘together with an object which will be of inestimable use to you. Instruct your creatures to respect its boundaries. All else they may have – even my trusty old ostrich fan.’

Captain Slovo so instructed Bosun and he so implemented. Even in the present madness, their management-record was such that they were confident of being obeyed.

The Baal Shem allowed himself to be directed to the Captain’s deck at the stern and was settled upon a canvas stool. Slovo procured a goblet of wine each, the Baal Shem partook and then smacked his lips.

‘Delectable!’ he said with open pleasure. ‘This is the first fruit of the vine I’ve imbibed since my Islamic servitude began. Thank you, Captain!’

‘Every man needs access to intoxication,’ said Slovo, ‘in order that he may escape being himself.’

The Baal Shem nodded wholeheartedly. ‘I agree, Captain. However, to business straightaway: how and why, I suppose?’

‘If you don’t mind,’ replied Slovo, eyeing him cautiously whilst trying to conceal the impoliteness of doing so. ‘What was that magic word you cried? It won us the game, sure enough.’

Wiping his lips with a broad hand, the Baal Shem explained, ‘One of the names of the infinite, whereupon any mortal within earshot withers and dies. It is as simple as that.’

Slovo frowned slightly. ‘But you mentioned survivors?’

‘Ah, yes.’ The Baal Shem looked meaningfully at the dead wine flagon but Slovo didn’t take the heavy hint. ‘It was always intended there should be one – aside from myself, of course – you’ll need the Princess where you’re going. It did come as a surprise though there being two who lived. Have you the time for me to explain?’

Slovo looked over his deserted ship to the wild scenes unfolding across the way. ‘They will be like badly brought-up children if they do not have their full measure of fun and profit,’ he answered.

‘Well, it will be enough for you to know that my life’s vocation – up to mere moments ago – was to fan the brow, and other parts, of the Princess Khadine. Now, it so happens that she is famous in the Islamic world for the divine beauty and perfection of her curvaceous behind …’

‘Oh yes, I have heard of her,’ said Slovo helpfully. ‘I once saw an indecent woodcut highlighting her attributes.’

‘I’m not surprised,’ said the Baal Shem. ‘Our “lustrous jewel of the Delta” is quite a celebrity. Anyway, coincidentally, it also happens that the Caliph-Sultan Bayezid of Istanbul is famous for his interest in such matters. Accordingly, in order to avert the scandal of a war between Moslems and the deaths of untold thousands, the girl’s backside is to be pressed into service and she is being rushed into matrimony with him. I am called upon to keep her cool while she is ferried thither, post-haste.’

‘I still don’t understand why she is alive,’ Slovo said. ‘Surely a body-slave such as yourself must have ample grievances you wish to repay in full? There is also the question of how you ensured her immunity.’

‘She survives,’ answered the Baal Shem, now casting reticence aside and rattling the empty flagon in Slovo’s direction, ‘because you need her – in the most honourable sense. She, and her ransom, will be your guarantee of welcome at your destination – not to mention the riches aboard her ship and the mighty craft itself: a welcome addition to any navy. There is also, as part of her intended dowry, a relic prised from the bony hands of Coptic monks: part of the pelvis of St Peter or some such: long revered and smothered in gold and baubles. Your next employer will love you dearly for the handing over of that.’

Slovo declined to rise to the dangled bait about his future and held to the question in hand. ‘You neglected to touch upon the subject of how,’ he said politely.

‘Ah yes,’ said the Baal Shem, clearly impressed by the Captain’s restraint. ‘Well, it is possible with some effort, and some magic, for me to circumscribe the name of God so that it fails to harm certain categories of person. It appealed to my sense of humour to exclude those possessed of a beautiful bottom …’

‘Oh, I see!’ said Slovo.

‘Although that fails to account for why an accompanying Rabbi of the Hebrew faith should hear the blessed name and live.’

Surely he doesn’t …?’ asked the Captain.

‘Goodness no!’ replied the Baal Shem. ‘He is exceedingly plain, prematurely middle-aged and dumpy – a shape gained through excessive study and prayer. No, it transpires that he already knew the name – presumably by dint of those last two activities – and so did not share the general fate.’

‘I should like to meet this man,’ said Slovo, as though asking a favour.

‘And so you shall, Captain. His fortunes are entirely in your hands. You may allow him to proceed on his embassy from the Cairene Hebrews to their Ottoman fellows, you can converse with him or simply ditch him in the sea. It is up to you.’

Slovo at long last had mercy on the Baal Shem and fetched another flask of wine from his personal store. ‘I should have thought,’ he said, averting his eyes from the ensuing noisy imbibing, ‘that with such a man anything but the sweetest good treatment would be most unwise.’

‘Ah …’ answered the Baal Shem, reluctantly disengaging his lips from the purple flow, ‘that is the difference between he and I, between his … philosophy and that of the Vehme. He might know an ineffable name, but he would never use it!’

Just then a peculiar cry went up from the captured Egyptian ship, different from the sounds of insensate joy that Slovo and the Baal Shem had got used to. They looked round to see two pirates hoisting a golden-skinned youth on to the ship’s rail for all to see.

‘We’ve found a live-un,’ explained Bosun to the Captain. ‘He was hiding under a pile of deaders.’

‘Well, gracious me!’ exclaimed the Baal Shem. ‘This is a day of wonders!’

Slovo said nothing but for once allowed a butterfly feeling of pleasure in his stomach to live out its brief, fluttering life. Assuming this adolescent wasn’t a precocious theologian, the current voyage might be even more interesting than anticipated.

Once they’d all made themselves at home in the Egyptian behemoth and sunk the galley Slovo, the Baal Shem announced that he wanted to be taken to Sicily. All things considered it was generally felt best to humour him in every respect and Slovo set the course.

The Captain was mildly sorry to lose his maritime home, his means of livelihood for the last few years, but there were simply not the numbers to move the Egyptian prize even under full sail, and tow the Slovo. For old times’ sake, they waited long enough to see the forsaken galley point its stern skywards and then rapidly make its way, arrow-like, beneath the waves. Slovo even sought inspiration for a poem in the poignant sight but nothing suitable occurred to him.

Thereafter, the Baal Shem would not speak but retired to the Royal pavilion to think private thoughts that no one dared to interrupt. Captain Slovo thereby met the evicted Princess Khadine and the fortunate-in-his-studies Rabbi of Cairo.

The Princess was disappointingly clad in voluminous black and in a state of permanent rage. After a full day of having his ears incomprehensibly assaulted, Slovo toyed with the idea of handing her over to the crew so that, just for once in their stunted lives, they might get to see how the other 0.0000001 per cent lived. Common sense prevailed, however, and peace was finally restored by the completion of her chadoor-clad modesty with an equally thick, black sack to muffle her head. Whatever future complaints the Sultan of Egypt might levy against the Captain, lack of concern for Islamic dress restrictions would not be among them.

The Rabbi was called Megillah and Slovo’s first thoughts were to put him to much-needed work on the oars. It was unlikely his soft frame would last the trip, but he would at least perish in the good cause of putting distance between Slovo and the revenge of Islam in general, and Egypt in particular.

As it turned out, Rabbi Megillah saved himself (all unknowingly) with a masterful exposition over dinner that first evening of the five Noachian Commandments. Since Slovo continuously sought to balance his activities between the flesh and the spirit, he decided to retain the company of both the golden youth and the Rabbi – which Megillah mistook for an act of kindness. Between the two of them the journey became quite a pleasure cruise, and to compensate, Slovo experimented with praying before the pelvic bone of St Peter.

However, all good things must come to an end. The coast of Sicily was sighted, one dull and rainy dusk. Without being told, the Baal Shem awoke from his trance, and with the crew shrinking from him like puppies from a bath, he made his way to the ship’s rail and beckoned Slovo to join him.

‘I’m off now,’ he said as pleasantly as his tin-whistle voice could allow.

Slovo looked uneasily at the dark and choppy sea. ‘Right now?’ he queried. ‘Can’t I get you nearer?’

The Baal Shem shook his head. ‘No, that’s kind, but not necessary, thank you. I’ll walk from here.’

‘I see …’ answered Slovo, not going so far as actually to doubt him, ‘but …’

‘Another of my little skills,’ explained the Baal Shem. ‘It comes with knowing what I do.’

‘Which is?’ said Slovo swiftly. There seemed no harm in asking.

The Baal Shem merely smiled, proof against temptations. ‘Which is that you must now go to Rome,’ he said.

‘Rome?’

The Baal Shem was looking longingly to shore, eager to be away. ‘Yes, that is where your real life is to begin, the life you’re going to share with us. You should be pleased, you know, we have great plans for you!’

Slovo found it easy to take the news equably. ‘Are you prepared to tell me what they are?’

‘Not yet, Captain. Besides, they’re still somewhat fluid. Don’t worry, all you have to do is be yourself.’

‘That should be easy,’ observed Slovo dryly.

The Baal Shem turned back, suddenly troubled. ‘No,’ he said, his voice as grave as high C would allow. ‘I can reveal this much – it won’t ever be easy.’ So saying, he clambered laboriously over the rail and jumped. The sigh of relief from the superstitious (and highly racist) crew was almost audible.

Slovo looked over the side and found himself still almost eyeball to eyeball with the negro who was standing on the water as if it were an undulating platform.

‘You’ll be met at Rome,’ he was told. ‘Pay off your crew; give the Princess, the ship and the relic to the Pope. Do not hold anything back – we are trusting you.’

‘Don’t do that!’ advised Slovo.

‘Make a clean break with your past life. I wish you well. As does the Venetian.’

‘Who?’ said the Captain.

‘The Venetian,’ replied the Baal Shem, indicating a patch of sea beside his feet. ‘He tells me to wish you well with the job – despite everything. Oh, didn’t you know? He’s accompanied all of your voyages – particularly since he learnt you’re one of ours. Here, look!’

Slovo did as he was asked and, even in the gloom, now saw that a man-sized area of sea was coated in a film of green-blue slime and grease. It suddenly began to bubble and boil and Slovo hurriedly recoiled. ‘Is he still human?’ he asked, looking more closely. The slime blistered again.

‘Nominally so,’ explained the Baal Shem. ‘Higher minds can still communicate with him, although he says long association has brought increasing empathy with marine-life. It’s just as well because he’ll be joining them fully before too long, as the process of dissolution continues.’ The Baal Shem looked at the darkening horizon and saw that day was almost over. ‘Anyway,’ he said, ‘I can’t stay here chatting; I’ve got a dynasty to destabilize.’

And with those words, he walked off over the sea and into the fast falling gloom.

Whilst very careful not to look properly, Slovo waved cheerfully at a certain bit of sea below him and gave the order to row.

The great Egyptian ship slowly began to move and, shining brightly in the light of the moon, a patch of oily water – and something extra – dutifully followed.

‘Here’s to the Captain! May his stiletto never rust!’

The pirates cheered Bosun’s drunken toast and recommenced drinking themselves insensible and to an early grave.

Captain Slovo smiled thinly and soberly raised his modest mug of wine in response. He would be glad when this meaningless charade was over. The chilliest portion of his mind had suggested turning the crew in as ‘apostates’ and ‘barbaries’ to be hung at the nearest beach-strand at low tide. That would have made the very cleanest of cuts with his former life style. Certainly, the obliging potentate of the Roman Colonna clan (and Vehmist) who had greeted their arrival at Ostia Port would happily have arranged it.

In the end though, it just seemed simpler to pay them off with profligate lavishness, and a warning that they should now forget all. Asia, Africa, even Scandinavia, were all calling out for men of their calibre, he’d said – everywhere except Italy. The Italian climate would be bad for their health. Knowing the Captain as they did, they got the message and, as newly rich men, they could afford to be reasonable and oblige him.

After an initial frosty moment, caused by the appearance of their Islamic warship hoving into port, they had received a warm welcome at Ostia. The reception turned positively ecstatic when the full extent of their haul became apparent. The Colonna-Vehmist handled everything beautifully and the very next day a Cardinal, no less, with all the trimmings in terms of personnel, arrived to escort St Peter’s pelvis to a place of respect and reverence. Commanders of the Papal naval forces descended to drool over the captured Egyptian galley and a flurry of nuns took the cursing Princess Khadine out of Slovo’s life and to goodness knows what fate.

Rabbi Megillah blessed the Captain’s head and went off to contact the Roman Jews and seek solace – perhaps even a permanent home – in their midst. It seemed wise, he said, to quit the Moslem world for a while and, anyway, he’d tired of his barren Cairene wife. He was still blissfully unaware of just how narrow his escape had been.

So everyone was happy from the Pope downwards, and Captain Slovo decided to take his crew out for a final (with the emphasis on final) drink. The Colonna baron, wisely espying what sort of an evening it was going to be, graciously declined to join them. The Captain’s new position in the Vatican apparatus was all arranged, he’d said. Any … unfortunate aspects of his personal history had been expunged from the relevant records. Slovo should report for duty tomorrow and never look back – or contact the Baron again.

After three of four hours’ bulk consumption of alcohol, proceedings reached what Slovo always called ‘the knife-edge’ – that moment when the collective mood pivots wildly from jollity to jumpiness, and a pirate’s thoughts lightly turn to the blade at his side. Confined on board ship, such a moment can be relatively harmless, a stab, a scar or two, one killing at the most. Onshore, and in a big city however, Slovo was less sanguine. He did not wish to be held responsible for whatever might transpire – it was time for him to leave.

With a farewell wave that few noticed, he rose to go – and directly bumped into a body. The reaction to arm and strike was overridden, just in time, by the recognition that it was merely a little old woman, one of many working the taverns.

‘Read your palm, my love, my sweet?’ she said, not appreciating the greatness of her own recent good fortune.

The delay allowed the pirates to notice their Captain’s act of departure and the message passed down the line of tables. ‘Go on!’ they shouted, sentimental all of a sudden and anxious to forestall their beloved leader’s exit. ‘Go on – give the old cow some money. See what’s in store for you!’

Christian orthodoxy frowned on such practices and ordinarily Slovo would not have indulged. However, on this occasion he saw no way out that would not be a noisy and embarrassing anticlimax. Besides, he was embarking on a new life, why not bless it with a kindness? He gave the old girl a whole ducat and, smiling, held out his hand.

Also smiling, she took both and studied the upturned palm. She studied it – and studied it – and gradually the pirates became silent.

Then she dropped Slovo’s hand as if it were hot and gave him back his money. Never taking her eyes off him, she retreated stiff-legged backwards to the door.

‘We were astounded,’ said the Welsh Vehmist back at the other end of Admiral Slovo’s existence, where the fever of life and activity now seemed very remote. ‘Such a change in life and yet you took to it like the proverbial duck to water.’

‘A poor metaphor, I think,’ said Slovo. ‘It was the chaos of Neptune’s realm that you had me leave.’

‘Good point,’ nodded the Vehmist. ‘Yes, we required your career to take on the soundness and stability of land. However, we were fully expecting a transitional period, a space where we would need to apologize for you and nudge you along the path of propriety.’

‘For me,’ Slovo mused, ‘it was a novelty to behave like a normal man. Obedience and work, advancement and submission, they were a heady brew – for a while.’

‘But how you supped at it,’ smiled the Vehmist. ‘Dutiful hours in the Vatican, a home, making love to women, a Christian wife even! We didn’t know what to expect next!’

The Admiral turned to look at his guest, an ill-natured light in his eyes. ‘That’s the very point,’ he said. ‘You knew all too well …’

It was around the time that Mikhail Gorbachev died.

The Archaeologist allowed his Italian assistant to sound the call for ‘major find’ – ‘Aaaaaaa! Hereeeeeee!’ she sang sweetly.

That meant the rank-and-file diggers could ‘take five’ and quit their trenches to see what was turning up. The Archaeologist thought such concessions good for site morale.

As the sun-browned mob arrived, the Archaeologist scraped away with mounting enthusiasm. He didn’t even notice that some personnel had lit up strictly forbidden on-site cigarettes. ‘This is going to be good,’ he announced to all. ‘It’s a grave slab – not classical, late medieval, I should think. Joy, pass us the brush, will you?’

A finely constructed, sloe-eyed English girl handed down the required tool. The Archaeologist used it, with the ease born of practice, to flick away the remaining soil.

‘Oh bugger! It’s broken. Wayne, have your crew been using pickaxes down here?’

‘No way,’ answered a tall Anglo-Saxon in John Lennon glasses. ‘I watched ’em – trowels only.’

‘Well someone’s given it a crack. There’s a central strike with radial fault lines.’

‘Looks ancient to me,’ said Wayne authoritatively, leaning forward and peering into the trench.

The Archaeologist stood up. ‘You’re probably right,’ he muttered. ‘What a shame. Well, folks, I didn’t expect to find anything like this. As far as we know there was never a church here, so either this slab is displaced from somewhere else – and has deliberately been broken – or else whoever’s it is, is still underneath, buried outside consecrated ground. All in all, a nice little bonus before we hit classical levels.’

‘Can you read any of the markings?’ asked Joy.

The Archaeologist leaned closer and worried at the stone with his brush. ‘There’s a lot of stuff but in very bad condition, and the fault lines go straight through it. Latin, I think. Also there’s some larger script up one end. Let’s see, SL-O–V–O: Slovo. Well, well, well!’

‘There was a villa here called that,’ explained Wayne for the benefit of the native Caprisi diggers. ‘Fifteenth to sixteenth century – where the Villa Fersen subsequently was. We’ve already uncovered some other stuff from it, fragments of statuary, that nice ornate key we showed you yesterday: bits and bobs, that sort of thing.’

‘Maybe this was the guy himself,’ mused the Archaeologist, smiling. ‘How neat! Right, no more work just here for a space. We’ll make arrangements to lift this beast and conserve it.’

‘One thing,’ said Joy hesitantly. ‘I mean, maybe it’s my eyes playing up or just the grain of the stone but … well, look – I don’t think that’s a natural break.’

She stepped lithely into the trench and knelt beside the slab. The consequent coffee-and-cream cleavage display awoke slumbering engines in the Archaeologist’s mind and he failed to hear her next remark.

‘Pardon?’

‘I said it’s a V,’ she repeated, stretching forward to trace the relevant line, thereby worsening the Archaeologist’s concentration problems. ‘A great big V!’

When the ‘break’ did indeed prove to have intricate radial ends and exquisite lightning bolts carved about the lower portion, the Archaeologist felt impelled to do some research in his free time.

A raid on the Anglo-Italian Institute’s library in Capri Town produced Dr Grimes’s famous Dictionary of Sign & Symbol, a comparable V and the entry: ‘Vehme (supposed)’ beside it. This in turn led him to the two-volume Oxford English Dictionary and greater enlightenment in the form of: ‘Vehme-Vehmgericht: a form of secret tribunal which exercised great influence in Westphalia and elsewhere from the 12^th to 16^th centuries.’

Intrigued by now, the Archaeologist continued his pursuit of the silent dead. A week or so later he struck oil when the post delivered Secret Societies by Professor Royston Lyness Ph.D. (Oxon) (OUP 1990). Sitting in his tent, reading by the inadequate light of a camping solar lamp, he discovered the following – and as he read he became more and more oblivious of the mosquitoes’ loving attentions.

The Archaeologist looked ecstatically into the middle distance (circa twelve inches away in the context of his tent). So, maybe the dry old bones they’d uncovered under the slab today and neatly bagged in plastic, had once been clothed in ‘illuminated’ flesh. Or perhaps they belonged to a Vehme victim and so were unworthy of the Archaeologist’s doggedly Marxist-leaning sympathies. Either way, for good or bad, the Vehme, whoever they were, seemed to have chosen to mark the old boy’s grave with their sign. What a brilliant footnote to his report it would make!

Turning off the bug-encrusted solar lamp, he laid his bearded head to rest, well pleased.

The report was never written. Slovo’s grave remained obscure, though his bones got to fly to London, for cursory study – and then covert disposal in a Holborn dustbin. Some of the nicer finds were gifted to London museums that were prepared to take them.

Meanwhile, the Archaeologist, still troubled by the howl of the libido and the unavailability of Joy, slowly succumbed to the siren call of Capri. A mere week into his ensuing pleasures with the island’s abundantly available wallet-related love, the poor man contracted the HIV virus that would more than fully occupy the remainder of his short life.