The Theatre of the Apocalypse
Part Three
By UD Sandberg
Copyright 2013 UD Sandberg
All images copyright © are in the public domain.
PART THREE
THE LION IN THE CATHEDRAL
Detail from the floor mosaic in the Siena Cathedral
31
Rome
Year 1599
Michele had sneaked behind the guards with the trailer for almost three hours and was losing patience. They seemed to take the trolley all over Rome. Bellarmine´s watchdogs visited stock traders1, artisans and bookstores. They rifled through drawers and chests in search of banned publications printed by Thoth´s Brotherhood. Meanwhile, the owners stood outside their merchant stalls with their backs to the house.
But he didn´t give up, when he had followed them as long as he had he wouldn’t give up so easily. Michele followed them past the Campo Vaccino, through the odors from the fish stalls outside the Colosseum. They continued to unexplored area of Rome, at least for Michele, through Constantine's triumphal arch to the crossroads above the Circus Maximus, where a large field spread out from the south into the ancient arena.
When they visited the house that was next to the field, they returned to the city again. Michele kept his distance, afraid of being discovered.
They entered the palace district next to Piazza Navona. The stopped in Piazza San Luigi dei Francesi outside a bookshop. They seemed to be waiting for someone. Michele leaned against a wall. Looked in a different direction but still so he could keep an eye on what they did.
Two old women sat on either box next to Michele and whispered, one had a hand behind a bucket and pointed up the street to Piazza del Popolo. One elderly gentleman stood in a small window one floor up in a stone house and looked down in the direction the woman pointed.
He pulled the window hatch open slightly and looked out from behind it, as if he was trying to hide.
In the direction the woman pointed at the other end of the piazza, a man came with an entourage of guards. The buzz on the piazza fell silent and everyone looked scared of the man.
It was General Inquisitor Bellarmine. He nodded to the crowd and then several of the women nervously bowed.
I had thought that the people of Rome would feel awe and perhaps love for the man who was responsible for their salvation, but they were just scared.
Bellarmine was in his usual sullen mood and met up with guards who shot the cart. They went into the bookshop next to the entrance to the church of San Luigi dei Francesi. Michele moved closer to the cart.
He saw the pamphlet he had seen earlier with Thoth´s Brotherhood´s symbol. On several of the pamphlets he saw that someone had written a message with wobbly handwriting, it was just one sentence, but he could not see it.
He heard Bellarmine´s voice from inside the bookshop. The cart was standing too close. He knew they would see him if he took a pamphlet.
He stood with his back against the wall and waited. He looked at an old woman who sold the images of saints from a basket outside the Palazzo Madama and the Sapienza University.
Michele noticed that a man came out of the university. He had a long, dark velvet coat on. He carried himself as if he were trying to notice all the faces and movements of the piazza.
Soon after, he met another man. They stood close together. From the lining of his coat the man took a letter and tucked it into the waistband of the other man's coat. He leaned forward and whispered in his ear.
While Michele witnessed the scene he came up with a way to get a pamphlet. But he'd never imagined how right he was.
Bellarmine came out of the bookshop with his guards. He rolled out a list, got a pen from a guard and checked off the bookshop behind them.
Michele took the opportunity. He looked wide-eyed at Bellarmine. He pointed to the men outside Sapienza and screamed.
”Thoth´s Brotherhood!”
Bellarmine followed instantly Michele's arm and saw the man who received the letter. The man in the velvet coat slipped into the gate to the university without them seeing.
The courier saw Bellarmine and his guards. He froze and stood still for a few seconds. He turned on his heel and ran away everything he could towards Piazza Navona. Bellarmine and his guards rushed after.
They left the cart. Michele took the pamphlet with the Brotherhood's emblem and tucked under his coat. He walked briskly toward Piazza del Popolo.
He bought the magazine Avvisi of a salesman in Piazza del Popolo. He went up to Circus Maximus fields and sat in the garden outside an abandoned palace, there were several in the area. Some inhabited by the homeless, others were completely derelict.
The grass was overgrown and the fruit of the trees had rotted. There was a blanket in the loggia and planks with clay laid against the opening of the garden from where the wind blew.
He hid in the loggia. He wrapped the pamphlet in the newspaper and read. The pamphlet was the same as the one August had in possession with the exception of the CE-cipher that was on his title page.
Reproba informatio ab Deus - occultus venalicium in praedestino vicis versus
This is wisdom from the Theatre of the Five Gates
Tabula smaragdina
Everything above is like that which is below, and anything below is like that which is above. In this path the One´s miracle will be achieved.
Place this on top of a wheel of the Great Truth, and you will see Great Magic.
Michele recognized the wheel with strange symbols that was under the text. It was an exact copy of the medallion that the whore Fillide had around her neck. He did not understand a word of what it meant, just as she said.
Farther down the page someone had written in ink. The text was half smudged, the letters had flowed out like spots on the page. The short handwriting revealed that a message would be nailed within a few days at the Pasquino. For further instructions it said.
Michele hid the pamphlet along with the newspaper in the loggia under some boards. He went down town.
Michele had no idea what or where Pasquino was, he went to find out. At Constantine's Arch there was a homeless man wrapped in a gray dirty almost black sheets. Michele bent down, looked around. He smelled of old cheese, the sheet was marinated in odors from the fish stalls next to the gladiatorial arena. Michele asked the man if he had heard of Pasquino. The man laughed. He stopped quickly and asked for money.
Michele could not afford to pay him and walked on. He came to Via Ripetta where the torch avenue had been lit. Michele stopped when he saw a horde of people coming from the port of Rome down from the square with the obelisk. Everyone was going to the castle and the Nolan. They were dark in their eyes. Michele tried to make contact with several of them but they pushed him away. They joined the growing crowd outside the citadel and the bridge over the Tiber. No one answered his question.
32
Rome
Year 1599
Michele would never get an answer, in silence they went down to the citadel. He stood with his question up at Piazza del Popolo, while the crowd outside the citadel just grew.
The crowd outside Castel Sant'Angelo was becoming cumbersome great Bellarmine thought. He thought that maybe he should have listened to the advice he received, that he should put the Nolan in a cave outside of town, but he wanted the security that the Vatican offered. He stood in a chamber in the citadel and looked out across the bridge over the Tiber and the crowd below.
An odor filled the air. Bellarmine thought it stank of poor man´s food, spoiled cabbage and rotten wheat. He hated the smell and he would have liked to follow the Pope who fled the city when it began to warm in early summer and go out
to the rural villas.
It was a common smell in Rome, especially on such a day as it was on this day, one of the hottest days of early summer. Dark storm clouds were close to the city's towers and the churches rooftop crosses. The heat pushed out the smell of poor man's food, and the stench of plague fire from the alleys until it was like a wet blanket over the whole city.
Bellarmine turned his back to the crowd and walked towards the Nolan´s cell. He met the secretary recording clerk outside the gate next to the cell. When they would go in the man refused to go with him but insisted that he easily could take notes of the hearing outside the door, also with the door closed. He could hear the prisoner and the General Inquisitor through the grated window, he assured emphatically as if his life depended on it. He had no means of actually being in the cell or having the prisoner in his line of eyesight. Boldly enough, he pulled up a chair before Bellarmine had time to say anything and sat down.
Bellarmine pondered the man with a gentle disdain.
”What do you think will happen, Alessandro, that he'll turn into a dragon and breathe fire?”
Bellarmine smiled his famous wolf grin. He wondered if it only was him that wasn´t afraid of the Nolan in Rome, although it tickled a bit in the stomach as he stood outside the door.
The secretary recording clerk did not respond, he pulled out a small table and put his quill and roll on top.
The General Inquisitor muttered something inaudible to the notary who still turned a deaf ear. Bellarmine tore up the keys from his belt and turned the lock in the door.
The prisoner sat on his knees in the cell, pinioned by two chains that were stuck in the wall. He rocked back and forth. The notary glanced into the slot that Bellarmine left but as soon as he saw the Nolan he turned his eyes.
Bellarmine walked with a straight spine towards the Nolan. The time for games and public hearings were over. He stood a few paces from the prisoner and towered over him like a giant over an ant, which he thought would scare the prisoner, just as it did with former prisoners.
The Nolan hissed something, like a snake that winds in the grass. Bellarmine noticed he unwittingly flinched. He thought that his body was not as strong as his mind. But it was still there the real battle was fought. He had the conviction, he was the soul warrior, equipped with God's mighty arsenal.
The Nolan sounded again and Bellarmine held back the body, pressed it in the Nolan´s direction as a shield lift against the enemy´s poison arrows.
Before he had time to grunt again Bellarmine said.
”Where is Thoth´s Brotherhood?”
The Nolan tossed and hissed the same thing as before, this time somewhat clearer.
”What do you say?”
The Nolan didn´t listen to him.
”Where is Thoth´s Brotherhood?” said Bellarmine and tried to put lead in the words.
For the first time Bellarmine heard a syllable from the Nolan´s hissing.
”... No”
”Say it again!” exclaimed the Inquisitor.
”Pasquino”, said the Nolan and looked up at Bellarmine with his black eyes.
Bellarmine went to the back of the cell, and uttered a little cry for God when he saw that the Nolan had missing whites of the eye. His eyes were black as the devil´s gap and empty as the abyss, like the paintings he had seen painted by crazy prisoners who swore that they had met the devil.
He had never in his life seen such a frightful beast and it calmed him not a bit that he was not alone about it. For a second a horrible thought took him in possession, the poor animals outside the citadel was right and the stories about the Nolan were true.
The Nolan possessed the black art of the Theatre.
He went out of the cell and locked the door. He instructed the notary to command five guards from the Swiss Guards on his orders to keep an eye on Pasquino.
When Alessandro ran off Bellarmine turned toward the cell. The Nolan still sat and rocked. He rubbed the chains against each other. It scratched in the head of the Inquisitor.
33
Südbahnhof, Vienna
June 15
August had bought tickets to a first-class compartment which they would have to share with other passengers on the road south to Florence. From the Renaissance city, they would take a taxi the last sixty kilometers because of slow trains and buses to Siena.
Ludwig sat on needles before the departure, it did not help that they were alone in the compartment. The situation reminded him too much of his trip from Copenhagen to Riegersburg. He looked anxiously out of the train window.
Impatiently, he went out of the cabin and stood in the door and looked out over the long platform to the terminal. Some near the terminal ran to catch the train.
No cops in sight. The Crime Night appeared and disappeared. He saw the night club trash, the drunken night´s whores, heard the echo of the shots he fired. To some extent, he did not recognize himself, to some extent, it was someone else who held the gun. A little devil in him. His Mr. Hyde.
Finally the stationmaster whistled in his pipe. The train moved. When the train had rolled for a few minutes Ludwig picked up the computer and linked up with the train's wireless network. The strength was good and the speed was fast on the train.
He surfed in on some Swedish websites to see what had happened to the Swedish police hunt for him. There was nothing new. He thought that they probably thought he was in Sweden still.
August sat himself next to Ludwig to watch the news. He asked Ludwig to enter the European CNN. They clicked a video of BREAKING NEWS.
CNN's vignette came in the picture. Ludwig turned up the sound. The anchor came in the picture. In the studio was a young brunette, American-Syrian.
Good evening. I´m Hala Gorani.
Photos from the Kunsthistorisches Museum were shown to the tune of some dramatic strings and drums.
The news anchor drove voice-over when images from the museum was in the picture.
Headline - Another robbery at the Kunsthistorisches Museum in Vienna.
Hala Gorani:
The piece that was stolen was the world famous Sapphire box of Edfu. Several attemps has been made to acquire this piece over the last years and it was not long ago that the museum was robbed of its Saliera by Cellini.
The Sapphire Box of Edfu is a one of a kind-piece with its delicate decor and long history. The box, orginally from Egypt, is over 2 000 years old. Its value is undetermined but experts at Sotheby´s and Christie´s state to CNN that on the open market its value would easily reach over 500 million EURO which is more than fifteen times as much as the Saliera. They say it is ”The Mona Lisa of arts and crafts”.
The police are now seeking this man.
A photo of a dark-haired man came into the picture.
His name is Karl Feigl. He´s an Austrian citizen, 45 years of age and surprisingly a clergyman. If you have any information, please contact the police at this hot line number.
800 – 1222 - 566
”Poor Karl”, said August.
August leaned back and asked.
”Where did you learn to do that?”
Ludwig hesitated for a second, but since August already knew his story, it didn´t matter anyway, even if he didn´t know the whole story.
”I learned that from a guy I worked together with in the carpentry shop at Hall. It is very simple to fake a fingerprint, if you really want to. Many believe that you have to cut off a finger or something like that but the only thing you really need is a sample, take pictures of it, fix it up a bit in Photoshop, print on transparency paper, run it with a little glue. Cut. Etch. Make a dummy. Rub in the palm of your hand for a little fat and you're done. Just search Google and you will find how many guides anywhere.”
They looked at the news cast again. CNN made it real. Law-abiding as they almost always had been. They saw themselves as a man who looks at his fist after he hit someone in a fit of rage.
When Ludwig was thinking of the theft he became angry but he
said nothing. A few years ago, he was a model citizen. His life had taken an unexpected turn. Thanks to August had he committed his second serious crime.
August stood up. Drew the curtains to the corridor.
They tried to calm down but it was hard. The tension made them sit in silence, exhausted. They took the time to breathe a bit.
They sat in silence for a long time. August picked up the Four-Leaf Clover and looked in his notebook at the code that belonged to the Four-Leaf Clover´s first chamber. He put back the Sapphire Box in the velvet pouch and leaned back and closed his eyes.
Ludwig kept one hand on the box, he felt on the sapphires and the malachite-stones through the bag. By the way, the Bear and the Rat was tricked on the price when they sold the Sapphire Box but that's another story.
After a while, August fell asleep. The Train trot had always had a soporific effect on him.
Ludwig looked out over the Alps. The train balanced on narrow bridges and passes, went through tunnels in the high mountains. Ludwig looked at the plains surrounding villages that spread out in the valleys below the mountains. In the corner of his eye he saw August's notebook. He thought of Victoria's diary notes. She had written about the signs on the obelisks. The human head and the ox-head. Capita et bos. If the notes were about the hieroglyphics on the obelisks, it was possible that it was the three obelisks, Lateranense, Matteiano, Flaminio, she wrote about. Three signs. One for each obelisk. But she had only mentioned two. Ludwig wondered if it meant that the three symbols were actually two, one of which was repeated on one of the obelisks. He tried to see them in front of him but he had no idea of the stones.
*
Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna
June 15
The calm soon returned to Ludwig and August, at least for a while. Unlike them, Alexander was up to speed. The adrenaline was flowing. He was a straight six, a direct injection turbo diesel. He incited the stars and gave orders.