But she hadn’t come as a tourist.
There were actually a few people in the church when she arrived. Apparently the grotesque went over well with teenage boys. She noticed a German family—the mother was reading from a guidebook—with a boy of about thirteen, and not far away, a Spanish father was telling his son, who looked to be a similar age, the story behind the murals. Catholic priests, he said, might be called upon to travel to pagan regions, where they might well meet a fate like those depicted in the bloody panels. Even now, a missionary into the world of the non-Christian must be prepared, and learning how those who had come before him had met their end with fortitude and unshaken faith was important. Melanie wondered if she could have managed to face such horrible torture—and remain true to any faith.
She looked around the church until she saw a young priest hurrying toward the exit. She ran after him. “Per favore, un momento, padre.”
He stopped, turned back to her, and studied her long and hard. “Si, bambina, si?”
She told him that she was seeking Sister Maria Elizabeta. He looked weary, as if he were often asked about the sister.
He shook his head. “She is not here. Questa e’ alla chiésa, this is a church. The sister, she does not live here. She lives at the convent.” His English was good, just a little stilted.
“Can you tell me where that is?”
“It would not matter. You would not see her. She prays. All day. She has taken a step away from the world. And when she worships, it is not at this church.”
That startled Melanie. She was so certain she had read the signs correctly.
“Please, it’s imperative that I see her,” Melanie said. “It’s a matter of life and death,” she said. She prayed she didn’t sound overly dramatic. “Please, I swear, I’m not a reporter or anything. I wouldn’t hurt her in any way. I simply need to see her.”
He studied her for a long moment and then seemed to soften. “When she worships, it is at San Giovanni in Catacombe.”
“San Giovanni—in Catacombe?” Catacombe? Like…catacomb? She hadn’t heard of it. “You mean San Giovanni in Laterano?” she asked, referring to a well-known church, often visited, but not near here.
“No.”
The young priest was staring at her. She felt a moment’s panic. He knew. He knew what she was, knew all about her, and he did not trust her. “I swear, Father, I come only in peace,” she said softly.
He shook his head. “San Giovanni in Catacombe is…not well-known. It is farther along the Appian Way. Look to the left when you see la roccia, the old stone in the road. The path to it is old, and made of broken stone. Not many go there. It is like this church, rotondo, but there are twelve, where we have only eight.” He hesitated again. “It is not a place for tourists. Yet it is intriguing, because of the twelve panels.”
“For the twelve apostles?” Melanie asked.
“Eleven were martyred, so say the doctrines. San Giovanni lived for many years and wrote the gospel that bears his name, and the Book of Revelation. The others…they were martyred. The twelfth panel is San Gionanni’s, with sun and light atop, and darkness and the fires of hell below. He is the messenger, so the artist believed. You will see, if you go. The church…is older than this. It has not seen much repair.” He had a beautiful singsong quality to his voice, ending many words with a soft A. He had a gentle quality about him that made her want to cry, or maybe laugh at herself—and give it all up. But she couldn’t.
“I will go to the church at Catacombe, Father. Thank you.”
“Bless you, child,” he said.
She nodded and turned away, aware that he was still watching her. Something occurred to her, and she turned back to him. “Father, Judas Iscariot hanged himself. He wasn’t a martyr.”
The young priest smiled. “He was a martyr, for the betrayal had to take place. And there are twelve not only for the apostles but because, long ago, twelve was magical. It was the number marking the turns of the moon, the months, and it has been a key number in many belief systems. The zodiac has twelve signs.” He hesitated, then shrugged. “Below the church are catacombs, but those are not opened to the public. They can be accessed only by the old stone steps beneath the central altar. The holy catacomb lies at a northward angle to another, deep within the ground. That other catacomb was there in pagan times, and it is there now. It is believed that the pagan altar was there when the church was built, and that it holds a prophecy of what the future will be—an oracle, perhaps. Man’s destiny, man’s final chance to make his choice between good and evil.” He shrugged, still studying her. “That is all I can tell you.”
“Mille grazie, padre, mille grazie,” she told him.
He nodded. She turned and left, but she knew that he watched her until she was out of his church.
“That bitch!”
Moments ago he had been fantasizing about her; now he wanted to shake her. God! He’d been such a fool. She’d been nothing but sweetness and light—all the while planning to set him up and leave him.
He shook his head, half enraged, half smiling at his own gullibility. He had fallen for her entire act. Hook, line and sinker.
So…
He thought about his dreams, and he knew that he had to find someone who could help him find the place he was now certain was real.
However kind Signor Marchetto had been, Scott didn’t think the man was going to be the one to help him. Still, he had to start somewhere.
He slipped his hand into his pocket for the drawing Melanie had done on her boarding pass. He knew the Appian Way. Not a problem. And though Melanie might not realize it, he knew about Santo Stefano’s, as well. It certainly wasn’t as frequently visited as the Vatican, but it was written up in a number of tourist books. He would start by heading that way, unless Signor Marchetto could suggest something better.
Absently, he pocketed his key and studied the drawing as he left his room. On his way through the lobby, he paused to speak with Signor Marchetto.
“Signor…dov’e…mia amica?” Scott asked.
“She is in the room. I have not seen her leave,” Signor Marchetto said.
“No. No, she’s gone,” Scott said.
The other man indignantly pulled himself up to his full height. “Sir, I do not know where she is, then. She did not leave through the lobby.”
Was the man protecting her? Scott wondered. No, his indignation seemed real.
And she might well have departed via the courtyard. Scott smiled. “Thanks. Grazie.”
“Si, signor.”
Scott headed out, still studying the drawing, and realized that Melanie’s line of crucifixes did not head to Santo Stefano’s. It went farther down the road and seemed to lead to a large standing stone. He couldn’t read what was written on it. Maybe nothing. Maybe it was just shading.
He went out and hailed a taxi. His driver didn’t speak much English, so Scott used his minimal Italian to the best of his ability to ask the driver to head past Santo Stefano’s, hoping he would spot the stone when they got there.
He knew they were going the right way when they passed the Coliseum.
They left it behind, and Scott stared at the pillars of the Forum, watching as the people began to blur into dots. Soon the road became rough stone, and the taxi driver stopped. He turned to Scott and began to rant. Scott didn’t understand his words, but from the accompanying gestures, he gathered that the ancient stone road was eating up his taxi’s undercarriage and tires, and he didn’t want to go any farther. Scott smiled and nodded, tipped the man well and got out.
He stood alone on the ancient stone paving, fields and forests stretching out on either side. The road grew rougher and more overgrown ahead. He closed his eyes, felt the breeze and the warm Italian sun, and just stood still for a long moment.
No great visions came to him.
With a sigh, he stared at Melanie’s drawing again and started walking. A little while later he realized that there was something ahead. He began to j
og, and almost twisted an ankle in a crack between the stones. Swearing, he slowed his pace. And after a few more minutes of walking, there it was: the stone from Melanie’s picture. Big and rounded, worn by time, it might have been an oversized grave monument. There were four words on it; they had obviously been reetched sometime in the not too distant past.
San Giovanni di Catacombe.
A path—most emphatically not one that cars could travel—led off the road. He followed it through high grass, weeds and then a copse of trees. The sun bore down, making him sweat, and he began to wonder if he was an idiot and how the hell he was going to get back to Rome. Then he passed through the trees, and there it was.
It was built of ancient masonry, round, but not as large as Santo Stefano’s. The plaster that had once added brilliance and color to the outer walls was chipped and peeling now. There was an entry at the top of a flight of wide stone steps—twelve of them, Scott counted—and columns that had seen far better days. The adornments atop them seemed to be gargoyles, maybe hellhounds of some kind, and he assumed that they were there for the same reason they sat atop many other churches: as guardians against evil.
He left the woods behind him and climbed the stone steps to the doorway. One of the massive wooden doors stood ajar, and he stepped inside.
For a moment, after the bright sunlight outside, he was nearly blinded in the pale, filtered light within. The church was dark in the way that only ancient structures could be dark; the heavy walls seemed to carry with them a shadow of age and gloom, as if a living darkness now hovered inside them. Then he saw the twelve panels, each with a stone altar before it, a prayer bench and candles. In the center of the room stood a large stone altar, stark and bare.
He thought for a moment that he was alone.
Then he froze. As his eyes became accustomed to the darkness and shadows, he realized that one of those shadows was real.
Just as in his dream. His nightmare.
A shadowed figure…
A representative of stygian darkness, betrayal and damnation?
Or the embodiment of light within the horror of a nightmare?
7
His eyes fully adjusted at last, Scott saw her clearly, his figure in a black hooded cloak. Except she was actually a nun, wearing a black habit and a cowl.
And she was staring straight at him.
He walked over to her.
She was very old. Wrinkles creased every inch of her face, but as she smiled at him, there was a bright light in her eyes, and her cheeks seemed suddenly round and rosy. If there was any light in the church, he found himself thinking, it emanated from her.
“Sister Maria Elizabeta?” he asked softly, but he already knew the answer. And she was indeed the woman he had seen in his dream. He almost bolted, remembering how her face had changed in that dream. Was he a fool? Seeking this woman, thinking she could help him—when there might be far more behind the façade than he could imagine.
She spoke to him in barely accented English. “So, you are the first.”
“Pardon?” The idea that her gentle face might turn into some hideous mask of evil seemed suddenly absurd.
“You are the first. The first of twelve, the first of the first three,” she said, and smiled beatifically. She reached out to touch him, setting her hand on his face as if he were a small lost boy. If he’d had time to think, he might have shrunk away. But he didn’t have time to think, and he was glad. It was a gentle touch, and it provided a sense of comfort and reassurance that he’d come to the right place.
“My name is Scott Bryant,” he told her.
“Scott,” she repeated.
He nodded.
“You are Capricorn,” she said.
He cleared his throat. “Well, I’m a Capricorn. A lot of people are Capricorns—though they don’t all go in for that kind of thing.”
She smiled as if she knew exactly what he was thinking…feeling.
She linked an arm through his and began to lead him from one gruesome scene to another. “This church has all but outlasted time. Time past, with eternity still ahead. There you have Andrew, crucified by being bound to the stake, not nailed. This is James the Greater. Here he is depicted as having his head chopped off, though some images have him stabbed. Jude—beaten to death. Poor Matthew. Burned, stoned or beheaded, or all three, and so, in his portrait, we see the tortures of each death. Simon, crucified and sawed in half. They go on.”
“There’s Judas, hanging,” Scott noted.
The sister smiled. “In the Gospel of Matthew, it is suggested that Judas betrayed Jesus because of greed. But in the Gospel of John, Jesus knew that he must be betrayed and offered Judas bread he had dipped, so that ‘Satan entered into him.’ He is here because he was one of the twelve, just as is John, who lived to be a ripe old age and wrote some of our scriptures that we cherish to this day. In my mind, as in the opinions of so many, Judas was a martyr, as well, for his betrayal of Our Lord was part of what needed to be done. Ah, but who can say, my friend Scott? None of us now living was there, and words written on a page are merely transcriptions, perhaps erroneous ones, and may be interpreted differently by different people.” She led him onward. “Ah, here is Judas. He had a role to play, a painful one, but he played it well. What needed to happen, did.”
“What about free will?”
“There’s the real question, isn’t it?” the sister said. She drew Scott over to one of the few pews that ringed the central stone altar. “Do you mind? I am even older than I look, and I have been waiting a long time for you.”
“Please,” he said, helping her down to the pew.
She sat, sighed with the pleasure of easing her old bones, and turned to him.
“Free will…Perhaps Judas Iscariot should be among the saints. Perhaps it was his freely made choice to do what was needed. Indeed, maybe the long-ago faithful who built this church believed as much, for they gave him his place among his peers. Either that, or, they simply believed in the magic of the number twelve. They hadn’t come far from pagan days, you know.”
Her beliefs seemed almost irreverent, at least compared to other clerics he had known, and yet she seemed to glow with faith and…holiness.
He liked her.
“The world is not always ours to understand,” she went on, then winked. “Here is what I know. When I was a girl, I dreamed of the catacombs.”
He started at that. “The catacombs?”
“Not those in the city where they now take the tourists. We believe that the catacombs were more than a burial ground. In the old days, when the Roman gods and goddesses were still worshipped with fervor, the first Christians were often forced into hiding. Scientists, archeologists, anthropologists—all have been at work, and every time an ancient relic is found, a new theory of our faith’s past is postulated. As to what I believe…No one knows, for I do not speak of it. I see my faith as I see it, and in my heart, I’m sure. Each man—and woman—must find his or her own destiny, use his or her own free will. Often the decisions are small ones. Do I give a dollar to that poor fellow with no legs, or do I walk by?”
“What about the poor fellow who passes by and doesn’t have a dollar?” Scott asked.
She laughed, pleased with their conversation.
Then her laughter faded. “The man who doesn’t have a dollar cannot give a dollar. But the man who does have a dollar should love his fellow man enough to part with it.”
“He will—assuming he has lots of dollars,” Scott said.
“Ah, a skeptic. Well, Scott, you’ve been given a dollar. And you have free will. What will you do with your dollar?”
“Look,” he said, growing a little impatient. “I’m a decent fellow—I’ve given lots of dollars. But this isn’t about man’s kindness or inhumanity to his fellow man. Lord knows—and we both know—that too many wrongs have been committed in the name of religion.”
“But you’re not here in the name of religion. Religion is an organization. Faith is within
.” Her eyes sparkled. “Catholic, cattolico—it means ‘universal.’ Too often we forget that. Does God—any man’s god—live in his heart? And does evil also dwell within, or can it slip in, as John suggested of Judas?”
“You know you’re driving me crazy,” he told her.
“I tell you these things because you are Capricorn, and you have come at last.”
“And now that I’m here?”
“There are others, and we will wait for them to gather, you and I.”
“And then?”
“Then the battle for earth shall begin.”
They were both startled by a sudden—and completely irreverent—exclamation from the doorway.
“Oh, my God!”
Scott swung around. One sneaker in hand—she had apparently taken off her shoe to knock stones from it—stood Melanie.
She was looking at him as if he were a ghost—or evil incarnate.
He smiled at Sister Maria Elizabeta. “There’s a Virgo for you.”
The sister didn’t rise, but she did smile. “Come in, child. Come on in. I don’t know where your third is as yet—the third earth sign is close—but the two of you are here now, so I’ll tell you what I can, as much as I know. As to what will come after that, well, this man and I have just decided that free will does exist, so what one does depends on the circumstances, does it not?”
Melanie walked slowly into the church, looking from the sister to Scott. He shrugged, trying to appear casual, certain that he was gloating, nonetheless, at having gotten here before her. Melanie pursed her lips and kept coming. She ignored him as she sat next to Sister Maria Elizabeta and took her hands.
“My friend Lucien DeVeau knew you,” she said, speaking cautiously.
“Ah, yes. I knew him many years ago,” the nun said. “So troubled then, but…not so much now, I think. Or not in the same way. I have seen him in the dreams.
“I knew the time was coming for the gathering before the storm, if you will, and I sought both of you in my dreams. There is a tremendous power in the mind, you know. One day, scientists may figure it all out…or not. The power of the mind lets us do things we might never have imagined when the need is great enough, when the potential loss is great enough. And I feel that we’re now facing a grave danger.”