Daughter of Ashes, page 6
“Do not speak her name, Lusius. The night has ears as sharp as a fox’s. I am following you to save your life. Go back to where you came from; join your fellow soldiers in the evening rites. Stay away from the Christians.”
The legionnaire looked toward the basilica. Its windows shone with a tremulous light. The flames of a new creed burned within its walls, while they who stood out here were the last repositories of a dying faith. There were only embers left of it now, and soon the winds of Christianity would blow them into ash.
“Isis sings her anguish,” he told her. “Even Rome seems to have declared war on the goddess. It has happened before, but this defeat will be her last. You will not be safe, either.”
The eyes of the priestess filled with tears.
“I pray every day that it may not be so, yet the statues continue to fall, and the temples to crumble. They wish to erase her. They fear the love that people still hold for her and which feeds the power of her priests. What makes you think the Christians will show her worshippers any mercy? They call their own brothers heretics.”
“They know what it means to be persecuted.”
The suffering etched upon the woman’s face transformed into fury.
“They know what it means, and they will do the same! This is a land where the cartouches of the gods of the pyramids coexist with the symbols of Rome, and the Menorah lamps of the Hebrew people are lit with the same flame that illuminates the effigies of Mithras and of the god Antinous. What can be the fate of a world so confused?” She grabbed his arm. “Don’t go. I fear the Christian priest’s invitation may be a trap.”
“Have you cast your astragali, Calida Lupa?”
“I have seen your future in the flames of the holy fire, soldier. The gods have spoken.”
The legionnaire wished he were carrying an amulet with the power to repel such an inauspicious pronouncement, but he had long since renounced the hand of Sabazios. He freed himself from her gentle hold.
“If it really is my destiny that the gods have shown you, there is nothing I can do but face it.”
He walked backward, not letting her out of his sight. When she slipped back into the shadows, he surrendered to the night and to whatever fate lay for him therein.
The basilica welcomed him with the singing he had heard earlier, songs of hope and of divine invocation. In the vestibule, some attendants made him remove his cloak and shoes. When he handed them his helmet and his armor with the glittering phalera fashioned in the imperial forges of Antioch, he felt as if he had relinquished his own self.
They washed his hands and feet in a basin of gilded bronze. Finally, the man who had promised him an audience emerged from behind a purple curtain shielding the great hall where the eucharistic synaxis was taking place. Cyriac, as he liked to be known, pulled him into a fraternal embrace before introducing him to the mysteries of the new religion.
Barefoot and clad only in his tunic, the legionnaire ventured forward into the worldly paradise unfolding beneath his feet in the form of uncommonly beautiful mosaics. Meek-eyed beasts, thriving plants, and radiant shepherds directed him to the baptismal font the Christians used for a ritual of rebirth whose workings he had yet to understand. There, immersed in the mystery of faith, they were anointed with the chrism that consecrated kings, prophets, and priests. The light of dawn would soon shine upon the vibrant paintings that decorated the walls, and the rays of the rising sun would reflect off the crystalline water. The new convert would feel that light illuminating him from the inside.
But Lusius was no such man. He had only come to that place to understand how far this new faith could embrace his own. He had heard rumors about the mysterious rituals that were said to take place inside this temple, and whose secrets were not entirely unknown to him. They were rituals that had come from far away, from the distant past. They were more ancient than any man who had walked these lands. Even among the Christians themselves were those who did not know them, and others who abhorred them. There was bound to be a rift soon.
Cyriac led him into the second chamber, forbidden to most. Only initiates were allowed in here, but Lusius had shown that he was already acquainted with some of its secrets. Cyriac the Christian had been astonished by this, and had wanted to see with his own eyes how well the Roman pagan would be able to find his way through the path of initiation set out beneath his feet.
Incense burned in the second room, and lamps hung from chains anchored to the ceiling, illuminating the mosaic tiles.
Stupefaction and wonderment. The brilliance of the heavens reflected upon the earth.
The followers of Christ stood waiting to one side, dressed in white just as he was, and as the priests of Calida Lupa were. Children cradled small fish-shaped vials of scented oil in their hands, in containers of the finest glass colored like precious stones. A young woman held a basket woven from rush. Inside, coiled up among loaves of bread fresh from the oven, there was a snake.
9
Today
OVER THE COURSE OF her adult life, Teresa had set foot inside a church only a handful of times—most recently the previous winter, in a little mountain village where the evil that breathed softly within the four walls of people’s homes was just as bad as the kind that howled through the woods.
The basilica of Aquileia greeted her arrival with an echo that reverberated through the formidable expanse of the building and swelled inside her chest. At their feet, beneath suspended walkways made of glass and steel, the mosaic pavement was suffused with a white light, and seemed to reflect a faraway world—no longer buried in the earth, as it had been until a century ago, but connected to another, higher realm.
“Per aspera ad astra.”
Through hardships to the stars. As she uttered the words, Teresa’s gaze followed the church’s towering columns all the way up to the shadows of its vaulted ceiling. The timber roof trusses and pointed arches were testament to the vertiginous heights humanity had scaled. Women and men had always sought the face of God in the beauty of art, and had searched, by extension, for a trace of the divine spark within themselves. Nobody could say for sure whether that spark really existed, but Teresa had always been moved by the unceasing devotion of those who pursued it, no matter how painful the search might turn out to be. Human beings had constructed this immortal temple with their bare and unwashed hands, drawing splendor all around them and handing their creation over to posterity. Mired, as they were, in earthly mud, they had managed nonetheless to erect the gates of heaven.
Teresa, too, sometimes looked for that spark in the mirror. She couldn’t bring herself to believe that everything would be over once her body perished—or perhaps even sooner, once her memories were gone. She would stare into her own eyes and sink into herself. Recently, she had begun to glimpse the spark in the pain she had endured, in the sense of dignity she held tight against her chest, in the effort it took to straighten her back and stand up straight. Roused in part by an anger befitting the betrayal of a great love, she had concluded that not even a god could have come as far as she had—for although godlike perfection might not allow for failure, neither could it experience rebirth.
She looked up at the crucifix at the far end of the nave, which seemed at once to bless and judge everything and everyone around it.
Perhaps only a god-made human could truly comprehend the value of fallen souls. Perfection never accustoms itself to sacrifice because no sacrifice is ever asked of it. And so, as eternity wears on, it is condemned not only to the silence of suffering, but also of the heart.
Someone quietly slipped their hand into hers.
It was Blanca, who had come to assist them in their search. She was holding Smoky by the leash. Like Teresa, she, too, carried a stick, but hers was a slender cane clicking along the walkway like a clock, a probing device the young woman used to shape and order the darkness that surrounded her.
Blanca had become an increasingly familiar presence in Teresa’s life. Teresa still hoped that the girl and her dog—armed with their matchless ability to track the olfactory traces of human remains—might someday permanently join the roster of experts employed by the prosecutor’s office. They would certainly inject new life into the department. But after a first attempt, Blanca had seemed reluctant to continue, and for a while, it had even looked like she might disappear altogether. Teresa squeezed her hand, then let go again.
“Are you ready?”
The young woman tilted her face up as if in search of Teresa’s voice.
“Yes. Just say when.”
Inspector Marini crouched down and helped her put on the special footwear used by professional restorers. Smoky’s paws needed covering, too. Marini got to work with a roll of sticky tape and a set of rubber-soled dog boots. Smoky swiped his tongue across the inspector’s face.
“Stop that, you drool-dispenser.” He pushed the dog away, only to receive two more licks in return.
Teresa gave the dog a pat.
“Come now, Marini, he’s starting to like you.”
“Not at all. He does it because he knows how much I hate it.”
“Hold on a second. Are you saying he’s licking you out of spite?”
“Obviously.”
Marini put his hand out to pet him, but Smoky bared his teeth and started growling.
Blanca called the dog to her feet.
“He’s still making his mind up on whether or not to trust you.”
Teresa wondered if Blanca felt the same way about Marini, too.
The director of the region’s cultural heritage department, in charge of preserving its archaeological and artistic legacy, was waiting for them at the entrance. Teresa called out to her, and the woman came over to verify that they were operating in accordance with the instructions they had been given.
“I must urge you once again to take the greatest possible care. Our charge has endured more than enough strain for the day. We must protect it from any further shocks.”
She kept referring to the mosaic pavement as if it were a living thing, moving her hands as she spoke and caressing the tiles from afar. She seemed afraid that it might be injured in some way. So far she had not hesitated to help the police, but now that her good intentions were about to lead to more action, she seemed suddenly doubtful.
Teresa placed her hand on Blanca’s shoulder. The girl and her dog would be the only ones to set foot on the mosaics.
“I brought these two here precisely to avoid dragging things on. Don’t worry about them; they’re professionals.”
The director looked them up and down: a blind girl and a mangy mutt with lopsided fangs and crazed, ice-blue eyes.
“I trust . . . you, Superintendent.”
“Not so much the rest of us, then.”
Blanca’s comment had come out as a whisper. Teresa took her aside.
“Don’t let it get to you, now. Just go down there with Smoky and do what you know best. Nothing else matters right now.”
Blanca almost seemed to be looking at Teresa, searching in the shadows of her vision for the features of this woman she had come to consider a friend. But the universe that swirled in Blanca’s clouded eyes remained a mystery to Teresa.
“If District Attorney Lona comes by and finds us here . . .”
“That won’t happen, and if it does, I’ll deal with it.” She put her arm over Blanca’s shoulders. “You and Smoky are the best we have, and you’ve already proven that. Who cares if you’re not part of the police force? It’s your CV that counts. Understood?”
“Understood.”
“Come on then.”
Teresa nudged her toward the walkway. One of the side panels had been removed to give the investigators better access to the pavement.
Marini helped Blanca down. Smoky followed with a graceful leap. The forensics team had already divided the nearly eight hundred square meters of mosaic art into equal sections, each measuring ten by ten meters, and marked out with rope.
The dog and his human began their search for traces of biological matter.
“To start with, I’ll let him loose around the perimeter. If he doesn’t find anything there, we’ll start scanning each sector individually.”
She called Smoky to heel, then issued the command: “Sniff!”
The department director approached Teresa.
“I didn’t mean to offend her. I should have expressed myself more clearly. It’s just that it’s such a delicate, unusual operation.” She turned toward the nave. “I simply cannot believe this place could have been violated like that, that someone could have come in here and . . . done what you think they did. It would mean that the guards haven’t been watchful enough, that the security ring around the site hasn’t worked. This will need to be investigated, CCTV recordings will need to be examined, shift managers will need to be questioned . . .”
“We’re already doing all of that, Professor.” But if Giacomo had told the truth—and Teresa had no reason to doubt that he had—they would not discover anything he hadn’t already confessed to.
“We’ll need to launch an internal investigation to identify those responsible for allowing this breach to happen.”
Teresa would have liked to explain that there was no way anyone could divert a serial killer from his objective, not once the psychological mechanisms that eventually led to the ritual of murder—and the liturgical practices that followed it—had been triggered. But there simply wasn’t enough time for all that, and neither did she have the strength to summarize the results of years of psychiatric and behavioral evaluations Giacomo Mainardi had undergone.
“Trust me, it’s a good thing it happened the way it did.”
The woman gave her a look of disbelief.
“Are you saying it’s a good thing this work of art was defiled and the basilica desecrated?”
“I’m saying it’s a good thing no one crossed his path.” Teresa motioned at Marini. “You’ll have to excuse me now. The inspector and I will be following the search from a distance, up here on the walkway. It would be best not to have anyone else in the vicinity.”
The director nodded.
“I’ll be waiting by the entrance.”
Smoky was still searching for the scent cone that would lead him to the human remains concealed within the mosaic. According to Giacomo, the fragments of bone from his latest victim were hidden somewhere in there, embedded among those beautiful figurations.
Teresa and Marini moved down the walkway, their footsteps calm, their souls in a state of turmoil. Teresa could sense the agitation hidden beneath the inspector’s apparent composure. She would have loved to be able to comfort him, but she couldn’t give him what he needed.
Under their feet, the splendors of the earthly paradise began to reveal the biblical story of the prophet Jonah, cast into the sea by the Phoenicians and resurfacing three days later, alive, from the belly of a monstrous fish. An allegory of resurrection. The mosaics, which dated from the era of Theodore I, had first been discovered in the early 1900s; for the 1,500 years before that, they had remained in the shadows, covered by a surface layer of marble.
Blanca and Smoky had reached the foot of the altar, flanked by Renaissance-era pulpits. Smoky did not show any signs of excitement. He had yet to catch the scent of human death.
Teresa and Marini, meanwhile, headed for the basilica’s frescoed crypt, which was next to the apse commissioned by the patriarch Maxentius. In the fresco that adorned the dome of the apse, the Mother of God looked at her Son with aching tenderness as she offered him to humanity.
Walking down the steps that led to the crypt was like crossing a threshold in time and reemerging at the other end in the low light and warm hues of twelfth-century medieval soils and ochers. The walls and the low vaulted roof were covered in frescoes depicting salient episodes from Christian history and from the birth of Christianity in Aquileia. In the alcoves, scenes from the crucifixion of Christ and the passion of the early martyrs were reminiscent of the canons of Byzantine art.
“Who are they?” asked Marini, his face right up against a fresco showing two men getting beheaded.
Teresa pointed at the urns stored in a nearby cabinet.
“It’s them, probably. Martyrs.”
“This place is astonishing.”
Teresa wasn’t sure whether he was referring to life and death, or to the artistic treasures that had survived the passage of time.
A curtain situated at hip height showed two battling knights spurring their horses to a gallop. One of the two seemed to be wearing the robes of a Templar. He was the one doing the chasing, while the other knight was turning around to shoot an arrow at his enemy.
It wasn’t the first time Teresa had seen this kind of image, but at this new stage of her life, she found something of herself in it, too. She had hunted. She had chased. Now the arrow was about to be fired at her, even as she doggedly clung to the saddle and insisted on continuing the chase.
Teresa looked for the fresco of the Dormition of the Virgin, a scene which had become increasingly rare in the history of religious iconography. Few were interested in the death of the Mother. The fresco showed her Son watching over her body and cradling her soul in his arms, swaddled like a newborn. To Teresa, it all seemed almost painfully tender.
When the moment arrived, who would hold her in a comforting embrace?
“Shall we go, Superintendent?”
Teresa managed with some difficulty to tear herself away from her musings.
They emerged from the crypt and returned to the floor of the basilica. The girl and her dog had nearly completed their first circuit of the perimeter. Teresa had always been impressed by how perfectly coordinated they were, how very few words (never stern and always kind) they seemed to need in order to communicate, and by the instinctive understanding that bound them.
She leaned against the balustrade, her eyes fixed on the young woman.
“She says she wants nothing to do with Lona. He makes her anxious.”
