Past Lives

Twenty

Macandrew moved along the corridor as fast as he could, ignoring the pain that came from his injured foot. He ran up the stone steps leading up to the side door where he and Simone had first been brought in to the convent, anticipating problems when he reached the door but his luck held. The door was secured on the inside by a Yale lock and two sliding bolts — the original iron locks, although still present, were no longer in use. He undid the bolts slowly to avoid attracting attention and put his weight against the door so that the Yale would turn more easily. He put it up on the snib and slid out into dark, deserted streets.

He could see from a ceramic plaque on the wall opposite that he was in Villegaignon Street but it didn’t mean much. He knew hardly anything at all about Mdina save what Simone had told him — that it had once been the capital of the island but was now a piece of history, a daytime tourist attraction. He looked to his left and recognised what he thought must be the road they had come in on. Simone had mentioned the bridge spanning an old moat. He was pleased that he at least knew the way out of Mdina. Please God, he and Simone would be using it in the very near future. For the moment, he hurried off in the opposite direction to look for the cathedral. He paused when he reached a junction, which opened out into a large open square, and wiped the sweat from his brow: the air was oppressively humid.

The square appeared to be deserted but its openness made him uneasy. He couldn’t bring himself to believe that he was entirely alone despite Simone’s assertion that practically no one lived in Mdina. It didn’t feel right. He felt sure that the towers and turrets must conceal a thousand watching eyes. A street sign told him it was St Paul’s Square. More importantly, he could see, standing before him on the opposite side of the square, the huge stone front of Mdina cathedral.

Somewhere inside his head, the thin small voice of reason was telling him that he should be looking for a police station; raising the alarm and calling out the cavalry, but the thought of having to explain things to blank faces who would think him mad, made him balk at the idea. He took cover in an arched doorway to work out a plan of action.

The only thing he had in his favour right now was the element of surprise. Apart from that, he was alone, unarmed and probably outnumbered four to one. He looked across to the main doors of the cathedral and decided on a look and learn policy. After that, he would play it by ear.

Although he had no notion of the significance of it, he was working on the assumption that Ignatius and the others would be in the area that had been circled on the plan — the Chapel of the Cross. He’d also learned from the drawings that the cathedral was well endowed with pillars and alcoves. The chances were good that it would also be in darkness so cover should not be a problem once he got inside.

There was no question of entering by the huge front doors — he could imagine the echoing sound that would make. He would seek out a more modest entrance at the back or side of the building, preferably on the opposite side from the Chapel of the Cross. He crossed the open square as fast as he could and felt a sense of relief as he melted into the shadows of a narrow lane.

The first door he came to was locked but the handle on the second turned easily enough. He edged the door open slowly, an inch at a time and just until the opening was wide enough to let him squeeze through: the last thing he needed at this moment was a squeal of protest from a noisy hinge. He squeezed inside, taking great care not to let the heavy iron handle clatter back against the wood. Once there, he stood stock still in the darkness and just listened until his eyes became accustomed to the gloom. All was deathly quiet.

He started to make out shapes. The cathedral wasn’t in complete darkness. He could see a dim yellow light but wondered about its rectangular pattern until he realised that he was looking through the trellis top of a screen placed just inside the door. He moved to the end of the screen and crouched down before moving out into the open.

The light was coming from candles positioned at various points in the cathedral. They did little to provide illumination but much to create atmosphere. The building was alive with flickering shadows and they felt hostile. There was however, a more constant source of light on the other side of the building and a good way along to his left. By his reckoning, it was coming from just about where the Chapel of the Cross should be.

It was clear that restoration work was going on inside the building. Scaffolding had been erected at a number of places around the walls and tarpaulins had been spread on the floor. As he drew nearer, Macandrew could see that this also applied to the Chapel of the Cross where the stonework on the right hand wall had been under repair. This had proved useful to Ignatius and his cronies because two large tarpaulins had been picked up from the floor and draped over the iron-railed gates that guarded the entrance to the chapel. They effectively kept in most of the light but they also prevented Macandrew from seeing what was going on inside. There were sounds coming from the chapel.

He was close enough to hear muffled voices but still couldn’t see much, other than the reason for calling this place the Chapel of the Cross. A huge crucifix bearing the body of Christ was hanging on the back wall above the altar. It was over twenty feet high and suspended by a steel cable so that it leaned out from the wall at the top while the bottom rested on a small ledge on the wall behind and above the altar. Macandrew thought it looked more like a predatory eagle than a symbol of hope. It was flanked by two smaller statues, one of the Virgin and another of a saint.

What he needed to find was some kind of vantage point so that he could see what was going on down on the floor of the chapel but there was no obvious way to achieve this. The chapel itself comprised a stone-walled cul de sac, richly decorated and separated from the main church by the two wrought iron gates, currently adorned with tarpaulins.

Something metal fell to the floor behind the screens and the sound echoed up to the ceiling. Macandrew heard muttered recriminations but shortly afterwards, the sounds changed from anger to excitement. He heard Stroud’s voice say, ‘They’re through! They’ve found it.’

The noise level dropped and leaping shadows on the walls above the tarpaulins told Macandrew that they were repositioning the light sources. He felt increasingly frustrated at not being able to see what was going on. He considered crawling right up to the tarpaulin screen, hoping to find a chink to look through but he could see from where he was that no light was escaping — therefore no chink. There was however, a bank of scaffolding on the right-hand side that extended into the Chapel of the Cross and reached right up to the back wall.

This could give him the height he sought but there would be little or no cover for him once up there. If any of the four should happen to look up, he would be like a clay pipe in a shooting gallery. There was a slim chance that he might be able to see enough from the outside end of the scaffold, where he would still be protected by dark shadow: it all depended on where the men were working in relation to the tarpaulin screens. There was only one way to find out.

He put his foot on the bottom tube of the scaffolding and gripped the one above his head, testing both for firmness before committing his full weight to the framework — the last thing he wanted was for the structure to start shaking when he started climbing. He raised himself slowly up on to the first element and then repeated the manoeuvre to gain a height of about six feet. The next level seemed a deal more unstable but he still managed to pull himself noiselessly up on to the wooden platform at a height now of just over ten feet. He paused before tackling the final two frames. Two more moves and he was twenty feet above the floor of the cathedral.

The last move set up a slight tremble in the framework when he was forced to take the weight off his injured foot a little too quickly but it was not enough to attract attention from inside the chapel and happened to coincide with a distant roll of thunder. He crawled slowly forward until he could see Ignatius and the others. They were looking down into a large black hole in the chapel floor.

Parvelli’s head appeared in the centre of the hole and he handed something up to Ignatius who turned round and held it up reverently in both hands. Macandrew could see it was a sword and the look on Ignatius’s face suggested that it must have some very special significance for him. He appeared oblivious to anything else going on around him. Macandrew lost sight of him as he moved into the shadow of the tarpaulin screens, still holding the sword up in front of his face.

Stroud was helping with the removal of something heavy from the shaft. He was pulling on a rope while Parvelli pushed from below. At the fourth heave, a large, iron box made it over the rim of the opening and was supported on the edge by Stroud until Parvelli had climbed out and helped pull it back.

The echoing voice of the fat man came from the depths of the shaft but he was told by Parvelli to be quiet. Stroud was trying to lever the clasp away from the lid of the box without much success. Parvelli took over and used brute force of a higher order to greater effect. The lid swung back to reveal the gleam of gold, which brought gasps of excitement and an outburst of animated chatter. It died when Ignatius cautioned them to be quiet.

Parvelli was about to start emptying the contents of the chest out on to the marble floor but Stroud stopped him and pointed to his watch. Parvelli hesitated then nodded and started to winch the fat man up while Stroud closed the lid of the chest and started tidying up. When he finally emerged, the fat man was cradling a human skull in his hands. Ignatius, who had emerged from the shadow of the screens, walked over and took it from him. Macandrew felt a shiver at the sight of Ignatius standing there with a sword in one hand and a skull in the other.

‘Meet our benefactor, gentlemen,’ said Ignatius. ‘James of Caesarea, the architect of our good fortune but alas... of no further use to us.’

He held the skull out over the shaft in the floor before letting it fall from his grasp. ‘Time we were going...’

The fat man leaned over the edge to look down at the splintered skull but, as he did so, Parvelli suddenly pushed him hard in the back so that he toppled headfirst into the opening and plunged to the bottom. His scream was cut short by a sickening thud. Almost in the same movement, Parvelli took out an automatic pistol and levelled it at the other two who were standing, open-mouthed.

Ignatius and Stroud both started to back away, both trying to reason with Parvelli, whose intentions were now very clear. He was going to kill them and take everything for himself. He pulled out a silencer from his pocket and calmly started screwing it on to the end of the gun.

Macandrew held his breath as he watched Parvelli walk towards the two men. He was thinking pragmatically that twenty five percent of his problem had just disappeared down the shaft and another fifty percent were in imminent danger. On the other hand, so was the key to the padlock. This would present him with a real problem should Parvelli choose to dispose of all the bodies down the shaft...

Ignatius and Stroud split up as they backed away. Parvelli moved towards Ignatius first. The priest raised the sword above his head but looked more ridiculous than threatening. Parvelli took aim and Ignatius panicked and stumbled over backwards. The sword flew from his grasp and sailed over the chapel gates to clatter down on the floor of the cathedral proper. He lay, transfixed on the marble floor, as Parvelli moved in for the kill.

‘I don’t want the gold,’ he stammered. ‘I have no interest in it. I only want the sword. Take the gold, all of it, it’s yours. You’re welcome to it!’

Macandrew noticed that — despite his apparent panic and pleading — Ignatius was crabbing sideways on the floor, a little at a time. He could now see why. He was making sure that Parvelli could not see what Stroud was up to. Ignatius moved again and Stroud was now completely out of Parvelli’s line of sight... and on the move.

Just as Parvelli prepared to fire, Stroud arrived silently behind him and plunged a long slender knife into his back. He knew exactly where to insert it for maximum effect. Parvelli died without uttering anything more than a single gasp. Stroud let the body slump to the floor and, for a moment, Macandrew wondered if Ignatius might be about to be awarded the same fate but Stroud put away the knife and helped the priest to his feet.

Overhead, a crack of thunder — much nearer than the last — rang out and echoed off the walls. Macandrew took the opportunity to edge back along the gantry and begin his descent. He moved quickly across the tiled floor and into shadow, pausing only to pick up the sword. If Ignatius thought it so special, it might be worth holding on to. He took up position in a small alcove some twenty feet back from the chapel gates to wait his chance. With Parvelli and the fat man out of the way he felt that the odds had swung in his favour.

He looked down at the sword and wondered about it. It was a simple, short, two-edged Roman weapon but it obviously held some special significance if Ignatius cared more about it than the gold. It felt heavy and, although surprisingly free from corrosion, the metal was dull in colour and the cutting edges even duller. If he were forced to use it in anger, it would have to function more as a blunt instrument than anything else.

His plan was to ambush Ignatius and Stroud when they started to hunt for the sword. Ignatius would have a vague idea of where it had landed but his life had been in danger at the time so he wouldn’t have been concentrating. It was odds-on that the two men would split up in their search. He would take them out one at a time. Please God, one of them had the key to the padlock.

Sheet lightning dispelled the shadows for a moment before yet another loud clap of thunder was followed by the sound of torrential rain outside

As the noise of the thunder died away, Macandrew heard Ignatius say, ‘I’ll take that.’ He suspected he was talking about Parvelli’s gun. This was bad news. Next he heard the sound of something being dragged across the floor. This was followed by a distant thud. He guessed that Parvelli had joined the fat man at the foot of the shaft.

The main lights in the Chapel of the Cross were extinguished and Ignatius and Stroud started removing the tarpaulins, as yet unaware that anything was amiss. Their voices became clearer without the screens being in the way.

‘I’ll secure the box: you get the sword,’ said Ignatius.

Stroud swung back one of the ornate iron gates and stepped out on to the floor of the cathedral where he stood still for a moment and was silhouetted by another flash of lightning against the back wall of the chapel. He looked first to his right and then to the left before saying, ‘I can’t see it.’

‘What do you mean?’

‘It’s not there.’

Stroud started to walk in Macandrew’s direction; he was taking small steps, head bowed, looking to right and left. Macandrew willed him to come closer. His pulse rate was rising. This was the man who had cold-bloodedly mutilated him without the slightest compunction. The idea of using the sword on him was tempting and his fingers closed tightly on the hilt. There would be a strong sense of poetic justice about bringing down the blade on his neck, but he dismissed the idea: he was no cold-blooded killer — apart from that, the blade was too blunt.

When Stroud was about six feet away, Macandrew raised the sword. The lighting was at its poorest here and Stroud had had to stoop even more to see what was in front of him. He was practically kneeling when Macandrew stepped smartly out of the alcove and brought the base of the sword’s hilt down on the back of his head. It was a short, sharp blow and the man collapsed in a crumpled heap and lay silent.

What Macandrew hadn’t reckoned on, was the sound of keys and money spilling out from Stroud’s pockets. The noise of coins hitting the marble floor and rolling seemed to go on for ever as Macandrew appealed to the heavens for more thunder to cover the noise. It was not to be. He watched in horror as the last coin pirouetted to an agonisingly slow halt.

When he looked up, he saw Ignatius standing at the chapel gates with Parvelli’s gun in his hand. A bullet whined off the floor in front of him and marble chips flew up in his face just before he dived back into shadow. As if to mock him, a clap of thunder now filled the cathedral, prompting him to curse fate out loud.

He knew that he didn’t have a hope of making it across the floor to the exit and that there was a limited number of hiding places on this side of the building. He decided on the desperate gamble of not moving away at all from the area of the Chapel of the Cross. His impromptu plan was to get back up on the scaffolding and lie perfectly still until Ignatius concluded that he must have escaped after all. It was a long shot but he was facing a man with a gun. Anything he did now was going to be a long shot.

Above the sound of the rain, he heard a groan come from the direction of his previous hiding place and knew that Stroud was coming round. He should have hit him harder but hadn’t wanted to risk killing him. Now — and too late — he was having second thoughts about that.

‘Pull yourself together, man!’ he heard Ignatius say. ‘It was Macandrew who hit you! He has the sword! He mustn’t get away!’

While Ignatius was occupied with Stroud, Macandrew saw his chance to crawl across the floor in front of the Chapel of the Cross and pull himself back up on to the scaffolding. There was no tarpaulin screen now to give him shadow but the lights Ignatius and the others had been using had been extinguished so candles were now the only source of lighting apart from occasional flashes of lightning. Still keeping hold of the sword, he reached the uppermost level and stretched out along the planks, preparing for a long wait. When he thought about it, he cursed himself for not leaving the sword behind. It was this that Ignatius was after and he wasn’t going to go anywhere without it.

As he lay, listening to the torrential rain on the cathedral roof, he wondered about Simone and whether or not he was going to survive to help her. He was picturing her lying unconscious in the stone bath beside the nun when a nightmare was born. He suddenly realised that it wasn’t a bath at all that the two women were lying in; it was a water cistern! That was why there were no steps down into it and why there was a chute in the wall! These “baths” were for collecting rainwater! Simone and the nun were going to drown if the storm continued!

Macandrew’s pulse was racing but he held his breath as he heard Ignatius’s voice again. ‘He’s still here I tell you!’

‘Come on,’ said Stroud’s groggy sounding voice. ‘We’ve looked everywhere.’

‘He’s here, I tell you. We’re just not thinking.’

Macandrew’s heart was thumping in his chest. He felt sure that Ignatius must hear it if he came any closer. He couldn’t risk turning his head to look but he was sure that he was nearby, maybe even directly below.

The scaffolding moved a little as a hand was slapped against an upright. ‘We haven’t checked up there,’ said Ignatius. His voice sounded confident and Macandrew feared that the game was up. He was hopelessly trapped. The only direction he could now move in was further into the Chapel of the Cross and that led to a dead end. He wished he hadn’t thought of that expression.

He felt the scaffolding move again as if someone had started to climb up it. Then he heard something clunk against one of the bars below. When he thought that one of them must just be about to clear the top section, he made a lunge towards the end of the structure in order to hit whoever appeared first. There was no one there.

Macandrew saw that he had been duped. They had only been pretending to climb up. In reality, Stroud and Ignatius had been shaking the structure and hitting the bars in order to make him break cover. Now both were looking directly up at him and Ignatius was pointing the gun at his chest.

Ignatius’s features relaxed into a condescending little smile and Macandrew threw himself flat as he saw him purse his lips as a precursor to pulling the trigger. The bullet hit a pillar behind his head and stone chips fell like hail below. Macandrew scrambled sideways along the gantry but he was just moving further into a cul de sac. He was now as far away from the gun as he was going to get but that was only into the far corner of the chapel. He was only delaying the inevitable. He was trapped in a corner, twenty feet above the altar with nowhere to go.

Stroud and Ignatius moved in for the kill. They pushed open the gates of the chapel in unison and walked side by side towards the altar, keeping their eyes on him all the way.

Thoughts of Simone and her plight compelled Macandrew to make one last gesture of defiance. It wasn’t something he could explain afterwards but, as the two men came to a halt, he stood up straight and swung the sword round his head like an avenging angel. He brought the blade scything round into the steel cable that supported the giant crucifix above the altar and cut clean through it.

The heavy cross, already leaning at an angle out from the wall pitched forward and came down on to the two men below who could only watch in horror as it fell directly on top of them.

From where Macandrew stood up on the scaffolding, it looked as if the figure of Christ had struck them down with his outstretched arms; one man lay crushed under each horizontal element, eyes wide open in death. Macandrew surveyed the scene, in utter disbelief. He was not going to die after all... but Simone was if he didn’t get a move on!

He lowered himself to the floor and scrambled over to the bodies to begin a desperate search for the padlock key. Outside the rain seemed heavier than ever.

He found the key in Stroud’s inside jacket pocket — practically the last one he looked in — but thunder drowned out his expletive-filled diatribe about what fate had against him. He stumbled out into the storm, getting soaked to the skin before he’d managed to cross the square. A mixture of anguish and adrenalin drove him all the way back to the convent through streets that were more like rivers, thunder threatening his ear drums and raindrops peppering his face like steel rivets. There were moments when he wasn’t sure if he was really awake or in the throes of some awful nightmare but he was still carrying the sword and it felt real enough.

The side door to the convent was unlocked — just as he had left it. He half ran, half stumbled down the steps and along the corridor to the room with the trap door, flinging himself to the floor and yelling Simone’s name into the dark opening. There was no reply. All he could hear was the deafening sound of rushing water.

He grabbed at the candle he’d used earlier, cursing as the first match he scrabbled from the box refused to light, and then broke through his own clumsiness. He had a second failure when water dripped from his hair on to the candle flame but a third attempt saw him climbing down the wooden ladder, candle in hand.

Down here, the sound of water running into the cisterns was so loud it pained his ears. He held the candle out over the cistern and saw in one heart-stopping moment that two bodies were floating in the water. The nun was face-up, although water was lapping over her face but it was the back of Simone’s head that he could see. With a cry of anguish, he jumped down into the water and tried to turn her over but it was difficult because of the chain securing her to the wall.

He couldn’t tell if she was alive or dead and the candle had been extinguished when he’d dropped it on the floor to jump in but he could tell that the chain was the limiting factor. Practically all its free length had been used up and, if the water continued to rise, it would shortly cover both women completely.

Macandrew took a deep breath and sank beneath the surface of the cistern to start work on the padlock in complete darkness. The water, still rushing in from the rain chute in the wall, buffeted him as he worked by feel alone. His lungs were close to bursting when he felt the key finally turn and the padlock snap open to slip off the ring.

He surfaced and took in a great gulp of air before submerging again to free the women completely from the chain. He pushed them up, one at a time, on to the edge of the cistern, having to half roll their bodies over the lip as energy drained away from him. Simone was first and then the nun. He was perilously close to exhaustion as he started to pull himself out, his arms at one point reaching an uneasy equilibrium on the side of the cistern when it seemed that strength would desert him and he would slide back down into the water. One final, desperate heave brought him out.

The nun was breathing but Simone wasn’t. He had to get air into her lungs. He rolled her on to her back and started mouth to mouth respiration, willing her to start breathing with every fibre of his being. Thirty agonising seconds had passed before Simone coughed slightly and water welled up from her lungs. Macandrew thought it the most beautiful sound he’d ever heard as she continued to cough and retch. He rolled her over on to her front and helped her expel the remaining water.

‘You’re safe,’ he murmured as he finally stopped to turn her again and cradle her in his arms. ‘It’s over.’ Simone couldn’t hear him. He’d said it as much for his own benefit.

He sat, holding her, rocking back and forward, seeking refuge in a kind of mental limbo where he could escape all that had happened if only for a few moments. He had no idea how long he’d been sitting there when a change in the sound of the water pouring in brought him back to his senses. The storm had ended: it had stopped raining. It took less than five minutes for the sound of running water to stop completely, returning the cellar to an eerie silence where even the occasional drip sounded loud.

Macandrew felt Simone stir in his arms and did his best to reassure her as she came round.

‘Mac?’ groaned Simone. ‘What happened? My head...’

‘How much do you remember?’

‘Stroud to give us something to knock us out while they went to the cathedral to get some sword Ignatius kept talking about.’

Macandrew filled in the blanks. He had just about brought her up to date when Noni started to come round too and Simone moved over to comfort her, holding her and reassuring her as Macandrew had done for her. When both women had recovered sufficiently, Macandrew helped them up the ladder. Noni was despatched to tell Mother Superior to call the police.

‘Dry clothes would be nice too!’ added Simone.

As Noni left, Simone saw the sword lying on the floor. ‘Is that what all the fuss was about?’ she asked.

‘It was in a shaft, under the floor of the cathedral, along with a stack of gold bars and a skeleton. Ignatius seemed more interested in the sword than anything else.’

‘It doesn’t look much,’ said Simone, picking it up and running her hand lightly along the flat of the blade. ‘What do you think is so special about it?’

Macandrew shook his head. ‘I guess Ignatius and Stroud have taken that secret to the grave with them.’

‘What will you do with it?’

‘Hand it over to the cathedral museum, I guess.’

‘You don’t think it has... well, special powers, do you?’

Macandrew found himself strangely embarrassed by the question. There had to be some rational explanation as to why this blunt, two thousand year old weapon had cut through a modern, one-inch steel cable and saved his life but... at that precise moment, he just couldn’t think of one.