The Devil Will Come

NINE

ELISABETTA HELD THE slim volume in her hands, felt its smooth binding, smelled the mustiness of the yellowing and crinkling vellum pages. It was only sixty-two pages long, yet she had the sense that there was more to it than its value as an antiquarian book.

She’d only asked to borrow it but Frau Lang had pressed her to have it.

‘What if it’s worth something?’ Elisabetta had asked.

Frau Lang had lowered her voice, cocking her head at the wall separating them from her husband. ‘I doubt you could buy a loaf with it but if there’s money to be made let the Church have it. My eternal soul could use the help.’

The envelope with its neatly written enigmatic message lay on Elisabetta’s desk at the Pontifical Commission for Sacred Archeology.

As you always taught – B holds the key.

What was B? The key to what?

11 September is surely a sign …

A sign? What was Ottinger up to and who was the writer, K?

And the curious symbol, vaguely astrological, vaguely anthropromorphic. What did it represent? And why was it so familiar?

Elisabetta drew it on her whiteboard with a black marker and glanced at it frequently.

She heard female voices coming down the corridor and hoped that some of the Institute’s nuns weren’t coming to ask her to join them for coffee. She wanted to shut her door but that, she thought, would have been rude. So she kept her chair turned away in order not to invite eye contact. The voices faded. She opened her desktop computer’s browser and searched: Marlowe – Faustus – B.

Voluminous results filled her screen. She began to scroll through a load of articles and failed to notice that an hour had flown by or that Professor De Stefano was trying to get her attention by tapping at her door in a fierce staccato.

She’d borrowed Micaela’s mobile phone the day before to brief him from the airport but this morning he was anxious for more.

‘So?’ he demanded a bit testily. ‘What does it all mean?’

‘I think I know what B is,’ she said.

De Stefano closed the office door and sat on the other chair.

She already had pages of notes. ‘Two versions exist of Doctor Faustus, an A text and a B text. The play was performed in London in the 1590s but the first published version, the so-called A text, didn’t appear until 1604, eleven years after Marlowe died. In 1616 a second version of the play was published, the B text.’ She scanned her notes. ‘It omitted thirty-six lines of the A text but added 676 new lines.’

‘Why two versions?’ De Stefano asked.

‘No one seems to know. Some scholars say that Marlowe wrote the A text and others revised it into the B text after his death. Some say he wrote both A and B. Some say both are differing products of actors’ memories of performances years after the fact.’

‘And what does this mean for us? For our situation?’

Elisabetta raised her hands in frustration. ‘I don’t know. We have a collection of facts which may be related to one another, although how is unclear. We have a first-century columbarium containing nearly a hundred skeletons – men, women and children, all with tails. There is evidence of a fire, perhaps coincident with the death of these people. The walls are decorated with a circular motif of astrological symbols depicted in a specific order. The upright Pisces symbol certainly can be seen as having a double meaning. We have the post-mortem photographs of an old man, Bruno Ottinger, with a tail and numbers tattooed on his back. What these numbers mean is unknown. We have a play by Christopher Marlowe in this man’s possession. It was given to him by another person, a K. On the note it’s written that ‘B is the key,’ and that September 11 was a sign. The book from 1620 is the so-called B text. The frontispiece of the book shows Faustus summoning the devil while standing inside a circle of astrological symbols which are laid out in the exact same order as in the circle on the columbarium fresco. These are the facts.’

Except, Elisabetta thought, there was one more she’d keep to herself: the fleeting image of her attacker’s hideous spine on the awful night when Marco was killed.

De Stefano rubbed his hands nervously together as if cleansing them. ‘So we’re not in a position to weave them together into a cohesive hypothesis?’

She shrugged. ‘From my knowledge of the period, astrology was highly important to the Romans. Aristocrats and common citizens alike placed a great deal of value in the predictive value of star charts. Maybe for this particular cult or sect, the stars and planets were of pre-eminent importance. Its members’ physical abnormalities clearly made them different from most of their contemporaries. We know that they clung together in death. It’s not too much of a stretch to imagine that in life they were associated in some cultural or ritualistic way. Perhaps they were intensely guided by astrological interpretations. Or maybe they were a sect of actual astrologers. This is all pure conjecture.’

‘And you think this cult or sect might persist to this day?’ De Stefano asked incredulously. ‘Is that what this Ottinger is telling us?’

‘I wouldn’t begin to go that far,’ Elisabetta said. ‘That would take us beyond the boundaries of proper speculation. For a start, we need to understand the message on the envelope and to decipher the meaning of the tattoos.’

De Stefano had been growing more haggard and sallow-looking by the day and she was becoming worried about his health. He seemed to labor at the simple act of pushing himself up from the chair’s armrests. ‘Well, the good news is that the media hasn’t gotten wind of the columbarium yet. The bad news is that the Conclave begins in four days and as it gets closer my superiors are certain to get more and more anxious about the risk of a leak. So please keep working and please keep me informed.’

Elisabetta turned to her computer screen, then caught herself. She decided she ought to devote a few minutes to prayer. As she was about to close her eyes she glanced at the title of a search result at the top of the next search page and to her shame, she found herself clicking on the link and postponing her devotions.

The title read: The Marlowe Society calls for papers to commemorate the 450^th anniversary of the birth of Christopher Marlowe.

There was a thumbnail photo of a mild-looking man with sandy hair, the Chairman of The Marlowe Society. His name was Evan Harris and he was a Professor of English Literature at the University of Cambridge in England. The posting on the Society’s web page was an international solicitation for academic papers to be published in book form in 2014 on the milestone anniversary of Marlowe’s birth.

Clicking through Harris’s biography, Elisabetta learned he was a Marlowe scholar who, among his other interests, had written on the differences between the A and B texts of Faustus.

It took little effort to click on his contact button and type a brief email.

Professor Harris:

In my work as a researcher based in Rome, I recently received the gift of a 1620 copy of Doctor Faustus. I attach a scan of the title page for your inspection. I have a number of questions about the topic of A versus B texts and wondered if you might be able to help me. As the matter is somewhat pressing, I enclose my telephone number in Rome.

She hesitated before signing her name as Elisabetta Celestino. She couldn’t recall the last time she’d used her last name on anything but a government form. Sister Elisabetta seemed, in general, to suffice these days but it wouldn’t, she thought, for a Cambridge don.

Elisabetta took the Marlowe book to the copier room, gently pressed the book against the printer glass and scanned the title page to her email address.

On her way back to her office she saw the tall young priest again. He was standing at her door and from the position of his head she was sure that he was staring straight at the symbol on her whiteboard.

When she got halfway down the hall he shot her a sidelong glance and scurried away like a startled deer.

Unsettled, Elisabetta returned to her desk, attached the Marlowe file to the Harris email and sent it off. She felt the need for a strong cup of coffee.

There were two nuns in the canteen who were drinking coffee. She knew them by name but hadn’t gotten much beyond that. She cleared her throat. ‘Excuse me, Sisters, I wonder if you could tell me the name of the very tall young priest in the department?’

One nun answered, ‘He’s Father Pascal. Pascal Tremblay. We don’t know him. He arrived the same day as you. We don’t know what he’s doing here.’

The other nun added, ‘But then again, we don’t know what you’re doing here, either.’

‘I’m here on a special project,’ Elisabetta answered, sticking to Professor De Stefano’s instructions about secrecy.

The first nun huffed, ‘That’s what he said, too.’

The phone was ringing when she returned to her office.

It was an English voice. ‘Hello, I was trying to reach Elisabetta Celestino.’

‘This is Elisabetta,’ she answered suspiciously. This was the first time her office phone had rung.

‘Oh, hi there, it’s Evan Harris, replying to the email you just sent.’

She’d been out of academia for a long time but she was incredulous that in the interim people had become so responsive to requests for assistance. ‘Professor Harris! I’m quite surprised you came back to me so soon!’

‘Well, ordinarily I’m a bit more tardy with my inbox but this copy of Faustus you’ve obtained – do you have any idea what you’ve got?’

‘I think so, roughly, but I’m hoping you can further enlighten me.’

‘I certainly hope you’ve got it in a safe place because there are only three known copies of the 1620 edition, all of them in major libraries. May I ask where you got it?’

She answered, ‘Ulm.’

‘Ulm, you say! Curious place for a book like this to land but we can, perhaps, go into its provenance at a later date. You say you have questions about the A and B texts?’

‘I do.’

‘And, if I may ask, are you with a university?’

Elisabetta hesitated because the answer would inevitably lead to more questions. But she was hard-wired to be as truthful as she was allowed to be. ‘Actually, I work for the Vatican.’

‘Really? Why is the Vatican interested in Christopher Marlowe?’

‘Well, let’s just say that the Faustus story relates to some work I’m doing on the attitudes of the sixteenth-century Church.’

‘I see,’ Harris said, drawing his words out. ‘Well, as you can gauge by my lightning response, this B text of yours interests me a great deal. Perhaps I could come to Rome, say the day after tomorrow to see it in person, and while you have me as a captive audience I can tell you more than you probably care to know about the differences between Faustus A and B.’

Elisabetta thought that would be wonderfully helpful and gave him the Institute’s address on Via Napoleone. But when she hung up she wondered if she ought to have added, ‘By the way, Professor, I should tell you that I’m a nun.’

The Piazza Mastai was deserted and the convent was quiet. Elisabetta was happy to be in the silence of her spartan room. An hour earlier she’d pulled her curtains closed and removed her layers of clerical garb before gladly putting on her nightdress, which by comparison was weightless.

The feeling had crept up on her, the sense that her robes were becoming heavier and more stifling. When she’d first donned the habit after taking her vows, there’d been something magically light about the garb, as if the meters and meters of black cotton were but filmy gauze. But the past few days in the secular world of buses and airports and city streets and young women in their easy spring dresses had taken a subtle toll. Self-aware, Elisabetta launched into a fervent prayer for forgiveness.

Afterward, she was ready for bed. Although her praying had helped to soothe her spirit, she felt no closer to an explanation of the skeletons of St Callixtus. Tomorrow she would immerse herself in Faustus and the B text and become as knowledgeable as she could before Professor Harris arrived. But first she had to navigate a turbulent night. The old nightmares of her attack had resurfaced and had become mixed with newer terrors. She dreaded now the jumbled nocturnal world of labyrinths filled with macabre human remains and foul demons with monstrously naked tails.

With one last prayer for her safe passage through the night, Elisabetta slid between the cool sheets and switched off her light.

When Elisabetta’s light went out, Aldo Vani tossed a butt into the fountain and lit another cigarette. He’d been discreetly loitering on the Piazza Mastai for an hour or more, watching the windows on the dormitory level. He had a compact monocular scope hidden in his palm and when he was sure there were no passersby he’d swept the lighted windows repeatedly. In the two seconds it had taken for Elisabetta to pull her curtains, he’d spotted her. Third floor, fourth window from the west side of the building. He needed her window and the others on the top floors to go black before he could move.

It took nothing more than a diamond-tipped glass cutter and a small suction cup to quietly remove a pane from a ground-floor classroom window at the back of the school. Vani would have bet his life that the premises weren’t alarmed and he grunted in satisfaction when he unlatched the window and slipped through silently. Using a penlight he negotiated the rows of small desks. The hall was dark except for the red glow of exit signs at either end. His rubber soles were noiseless on the staircase at the western side of the convent.

Sister Silvia’s eyes opened at the familiar realization that her bladder was twitchy. From long experience she knew she had under two minutes before she’d suffer an accident. She embarked on the first of several night-time visits to the communal toilet.

It was a journey that began with bracing her arthritic knees for the weight of her heavy hips. Then she had to push her swollen feet into slippers and pull her bathrobe from the peg. With under a minute to spare she turned her doorknob.

The door from the stairwell to the third floor squeaked on its dry hinges so Vani had to push it open ever so slowly. The hallway was too bright for his liking. There were night lights at each end and one in the middle. He unscrewed the bulb of the closest one and paused to count the doors. The fourth door on the Piazza side of the building corresponded, he was certain, to the fourth window. It would be better if it was unlocked but it hardly mattered. There were few locks that could slow him down for more than several seconds, especially in an old building. And worse case, with a shoulder to the frame, despite the noise, he’d have his blade through her carotid in no time and would be down the stairs before anyone raised an alarm.

This time he wouldn’t fail. He’d promised K. He’d linger just long enough to watch the blood stop spurting from her neck as her arterial pressure dropped to zero.

Sister Silvia washed her hands and shuffled slowly back into the hall. Her room was two down from Elisabetta’s. She began to blink. The hall seemed darker than before.

She stopped blinking.

There was a man standing at Elisabetta’s door.

For an infirm old woman who sang her hymns in a soft, thin voice, she let out a monumentally piercing scream.

Vani took his hand off the doorknob and coolly assessed his options. It would take ten seconds to rush the screaming nun and silence her. It would take ten seconds to breech the door and finish the job he’d come to do. It would take three seconds to abort his mission and disappear down the stairs.

He made his decision and turned the knob on Elisabetta’s door. It was locked.

Other doors began to fly open.

Nuns and novices poured into the hallway, calling to each other as Sister Silvia kept pumping out the decibels.

Elisabetta woke with a start and fumbled for her light.

More doors opened. Vani’s options shrank. He knew there was only one thing worse than failing, and that was being captured.

When Elisabetta unlocked her door and swung it open she saw a man dressed in black disappearing down the stairs.