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Another surprise: "I've never seen these draperies before."
"They belong to the Order," Deacon Giuseppe said, as if that explained everything. To him, it must have. But he had to see it didn't explain everything to his companion, for he added, "We don't use them very often. Will you step through with me?"
The Pope did. Once inside the blood-red billowing silk, he got surprised yet again. "I didn't know that disk came up."
"You weren't supposed to, Holy Father," Deacon Giuseppe said. "You'd think we'd do this over in the Sacred Grotto. It would make more sense, what with the Popes' tombs there-even Peter's, they say. Maybe it was like that years and years ago, but it hasn't been for a long, long time. Here we do it, and here it'll stay. Amen." He crossed himself.
"There's… a stairway going down," the Pope said. How many more amazements did the Vatican hold?
"Yes. That's where we're going. You first, Holy Father," Giuseppe said. "Be careful. It's narrow, and there's no ba
Air. Fresh air. Even through doors closed and locked and warded against him, he sensed it. His nostrils twitched. He knew what fresh air meant, sure as a hungry dog knew a bell meant it was time to salivate. When he was a man, he'd lived out in the fresh air. He'd taken it for granted. He'd lived in it. And, much too soon, he'd died in it.
Crucifixion was a Roman punishment, not a Jewish one. Jews killed even animals as mercifully as they could. When they had to kill men, the sword or the axe got it over with fast. The Romans wanted criminals to suffer, and be seen to suffer. They thought that resulted in fewer criminals. The number of men they crucified made the argument seem dubious, but they didn't care.
As for the suffering… They were right about that. The pain was the worst thing he'd ever known. It unma
He dimly remembered them taking him down from the cross-pulling out the spikes that nailed him to it was a fresh torment. And one more followed it, for one of the Roman soldiers bit him then, hard enough to tear his flesh open but not hard enough, evidently, to force a sound past his dry throat and parched lips.
How the rest of the Romans laughed! That was the last purely human memory he had, of their mirth at their friend's savagery. When he woke to memory again, he was… changed.
No. There was one thing more. They'd called the biter Dacicus. At the time, it didn't mean anything to a man almost dead. But he never forgot it even though it was meaningless, so maybe-probably-the change in him had begun that soon. When he did think about it again, for a while he believed it was only a name.
Then he learned better. Dacicus meant the Dacian, the man from Dacia. Not one more human in ten thousand, these days, could tell you where Dacia lay-had lain. But its borders matched those of what they called Romania these days, or near enough. And people told stories about Romania… He had no way to know how many of those stories were true. Some, like sliding under doors, surely weren't, or he would have. Considering what had happened to him, though, he had no reason to doubt others.
And now he smelled fresh air. Soon, very soon…
"How long has this been here?" the Pope asked. "I never dreamt anything like this lay under St. Peter's!" The stone spiral stairway certainly seemed ancient. Deacon Giuseppe lit it, however, not with a flickering olive-oil lamp but with a large, powerful flashlight that he pulled from one of the large, deep pockets of his black vestments.
"Your Holiness, as far as I know, it's been here since Peter's day," Giuseppe answered seriously. "I told you before: the Order of the Pipistrelle is in charge of what Peter brought in his baggage."
"And that was?" the Pope asked, a trifle impatiently.
"I don't want to talk about it now. You'll see soon enough. But I'm a keeper of the keys, too." Metal jingled as the deacon pulled a key ring from a pocket. The Pope stopped and looked back over his shoulder. Giuseppe obligingly shone the flashlight beam on the keys. They were as ordinary, as modern, as boring, as the flashlight itself. The Pope had hoped for massive, ancient ones, rusty or green with verdigris. No such luck.
At the bottom of the stairway, a short corridor led to a formidable steel door. The Pope's slippers scuffed through the dust of ages. Motes he kicked up danced in the flashlight beam. "Who last came here?" he asked in a low voice.
"Why, your blessed predecessor, your Holiness," Deacon Giuseppe replied. "Oh, and mine, of course." He opened the door with the key, which worked smoothly. As he held it for the Pope, he went on, "This used to be wood-well, naturally. That's what they had in the old days. They replaced it after the last war. Better safe than sorry, you know."
"Safe from what? Sorry because of what?" As the Pope asked the questions, the door swung behind the deacon and him with what sounded like a most definitive and final click. A large and fancy crucifix was mounted on the i
"With Peter's baggage, of course," Giuseppe answered.
"Will you stop playing games with me?" The Pope was a proud and touchy man.
"I'm not!" The deacon crossed himself again. "Before God, your Holiness, I'm not!" He seemed at least as touchy, and at least as proud, as the Pope himself. And then, out of the same pocket from which he'd taken the flashlight, he produced a long, phallic chunk of sausage and bit off a good-sized chunk. The odors of pepper and garlic assailed the Pope's nostrils.
And the incongruity assailed his strong sense of fitness even more. He knocked the sausage out of Giuseppe's hand and into the dust. "Stop that!" he cried.
To his amazement, the Italian picked up the sausage, brushed off most of whatever clung to it, and went on eating. The Pope's gorge rose. "Meaning no disrespect, Holy Father," Giuseppe mumbled with his mouth full, "but I need this. It's part of the ritual. God will strike me dead if I lie."
Not, May God strike me dead if I lie. The deacon said, God will strike me dead. The Pope, relentlessly precise, noted the distinction. He pointed to the door ahead. "What is on the other side of that?" he asked, a sudden and startling quaver in his voice.
"An empty chamber," Deacon Giuseppe replied.
"And beyond that? Something, I hope."
"Think on the Last Supper, Holy Father," the deacon answered, which didn't help.
He thought of his last supper, which didn't help. Not now, not with his raging hunger. It was too long ago. They were out there. He could hear them out there, talking in that language that wasn't Latin but sounded a little like it. He could see the dancing light under the door. Any light at all stung his eyes, but he didn't mind. And he could smell them. Man's flesh was the most delicious odor in the world, but when he smelled it up close it was always mingled with the other smell, the hateful smell.
His keepers knew their business, all right. Even without garlic, the cross on the farthest door would have held him captive here-had held him captive here. He'd tasted the irony of that, times uncounted.
"This is my blood," he'd said. "This is my flesh." Irony there, too. Oh, yes. Now-soon-he hoped to taste something sweeter than irony.
Where would he have been without Dacicus? Not here-he was sure of that, anyhow. He supposed his body would have stayed in the tomb where they laid it, and his spirit would have soared up to the heavens where it belonged. Did he even have a spirit any more? Or was he all body, all hunger, all appetite? He didn't know. He didn't much care, either. It had been too long.