The Rome Prophecy

108

A black rat runs into the underground cavern and stops.

It’s been drawn by the light, the warmth and the smell of the paraffin lamp.

It takes a beady look at Tom and Guilio, then turns and scrambles away.

Neither of them comments.

More important matters are being discussed

‘It’s difficult to know where to begin,’ says Guilio. ‘Do you or that policewoman friend of yours have any idea what’s going on?’

‘Let’s pretend we don’t – that way I have more chance of understanding.’

Guilio sits cross-legged on the opposite side of the lamp. ‘Anna and I were brought up together, and I don’t mean in the traditional sense.’ He lets out an ironic laugh. ‘I guess you’ve heard about the children in Romania being raised in the Piata Victoriei subways?’

‘I have.’

‘And the slumdog orphans in Mumbai and the homeless street kids in Rio?’

‘Unfortunately, yes.’

‘Well, Italy has its own secret child scandal. Anna and myself, along with a number of other kids, were brought up here in conditions like this.’ He gestures to the four walls of the room. ‘We were bred and raised underground in the catacombs and ruins of Rome.’ He picks up the lamp and twists up more of the wick. ‘Only we weren’t free from adult intervention. Just the opposite. They were the reason we were below ground. Only when we were judged to be fully compliant with the demands of the sect were we allowed to live out in the daylight.’

Tom’s not sure he fully understands. ‘You said sect; what are you talking about?’

‘It’s a branch of the cult of Cybele. It has its roots in a pagan movement going back thousands of years.’

‘Phrygian, then Greek and Roman, based around a prophetic goddess and her belief in female powers and male subordination.’

‘You know of Cybele?’

‘Only a little. I never imagined that any of her prophet sects still existed.’

‘That’s how they want it – the less people know about them, the more they get away with.’

‘Does the number ten, or the Roman numeral X, mean anything specific to you?’

Guilio drops his head. ‘It refers to a secret text they call the Tenth Book.’

‘What’s in this tenth book?’

‘I’ve no idea. It is heavily protected. Few people have ever seen it, and I suspect no men. The sect is very female-focused, so I probably only know a part of what goes on.’ He tries to make a joke of it. ‘Boys are of no particular value. They don’t even want us for our sperm, just for their rituals. It is the girls that the Mater values. They are the ones thought to have the power of prophecy and the ability to learn and protect the secrets of the cult.’

‘Mater?’ Tom remembers Anna’s fearful references. ‘That’s the name given to the female leader of the sect. I’ve never seen her without her mask and robes, but from what Anna says, she’s a wrinkly old witch in her late sixties or seventies. She and her trusted circle of crones run everything.’ He picks up a stone and throws it into the darkness, where the rat can be heard squeaking and fighting with something. ‘They believe they’re direct descendants, blessed followers of the goddess Cybele.’

‘I still can’t take all of this in. How and why did the kids end up down here?’

Guilio throws another stone. ‘Every time the sect looks like it may become extinct, new children, often babies, are brought underground into the womb and raised there. The children become adults and the cycle of complicity and abuse is perpetuated.’

‘The womb?’ Tom spits out the word in disbelief.

‘That’s what Mater calls the underground complex where she nurtures the children.’ He uses his finger to draw in the dirt in front of him. ‘Once you go below ground, there is basically a long tunnel with a series of passageways running off it. You drop level by level until it opens up into a large temple. Then there’s another tunnel that runs out from the other side into more passageways and rooms. But there’s only the one main entrance tunnel.’

Tom fights back a building anger. You can dress child abuse up in all the quasi-religious finery you like, but it’s still child abuse and it still makes his blood boil. In his time as a priest, he heard the confessions of several paedophiles and found most of them to be disturbingly smart people who used their intelligence to manipulate youngsters for their own gratification. Sex wasn’t the only thing it was about, either.

Power.

Power was the common factor.

Power and absolute control over another human being’s life. It made the offenders feel like gods.

Or in this case, goddesses.

Guilio rubs out his drawing in the dirt. ‘Mater was always tough on Anna. She’d get beaten more than the rest. Beaten and abused on a regular basis.’

‘Sexually abused?’

The finger drawing has gone, but Guilio carries on rubbing hard with the palm of his hand, as though he’s trying to wipe away the memories. ‘People think sexual abuse is always old men and young girls, but it’s not.’ He looks up, and even in the half-light the distress in his eyes is clear to see. ‘Anna had to sleep with these old hags. She was made to do things with them that would make you sick, and if she didn’t please them properly then they’d beat her and starve her. And for the boys there was just aloneness. No contact of any kind. No closeness was allowed. Not with each other, not with the girls or even the adults. You were taught just to stand and watch, always be on hand to serve. I was fortunate enough to be slaved to Anna, and when the pain became too much for her, we decided to escape.’

Tom’s heart goes out to him. It’s a miracle the guy’s not as mentally screwed up as Anna was.

Guilio wipes grit out of the palm of his hand and throws a stone in the general direction of the rat. ‘Anna and I escaped from the womb some years ago, maybe four or five now, I can’t remember. I tried to protect her as best I could, but she always lived in fear of Mater and the others finding her and dragging her back.’

‘That’s why you were in her apartment the night Valentina and I came round?’

‘That’s right. I’m the only one she trusts. The only one who knows what she went through. If the others get their hands on her, they’ll kill her.’

Tom knows he should tell Guilio that Anna is dead.

He should tell him right now.

It’s the decent thing to do.

But he can’t.

‘Can you explain how Anna came to be covered in blood when she was found near the Church of Santa Maria in Cosmedin?’

Guilio rubs at the ground again. ‘Some of the sisters and the Galli caught her returning from the shops. She wanted to buy me a present and made me go in the supermercato while she went for a card and some kind of surprise. By the time I came out, they were bundling her into one of the four-by-fours.’

‘And you knew where they’d take her?’

‘I thought they’d either head back to the womb or to the Bocca. They know Anna has a strange fear of it. In some of her states she gets frightened and imagines she’s being killed there. I gambled and went to Cosmedin.’ He rubs furiously in the dirt again. ‘If I’d been quicker getting there, or not so stupid to have let her shop on her own, then she’d still be safe.’

‘You can’t blame yourself.’

‘I can.’ He picks dirt from the angry grazes on his palm. ‘When I got there, I saw that they’d draped workmen’s covers over the portico of the church so no one could see from the street. It was clear something awful was going to happen. By the time I got inside, they had Anna in a robe. They were holding her down and trying to force her hand into that big marble mouth.’

‘So you scared them off?’

‘Not quite.’ He sucks dirt from his bleeding skin. ‘There was quite a fight. I can’t remember everything, but I know I grabbed this sword that they were threatening to use on Anna. I swung it to frighten them and it hit one of the women.’ He looks up at Tom. ‘It cut her hand off.’ He sucks again at the palm of his own hand. ‘I hadn’t meant to harm her, just frighten her. But it seemed like it was God’s will that it should have happened. There and then, that’s exactly what I thought. This is God’s will. So I picked the hand up and I shook it at them and said, “This is the work of Christ, my saviour and my Lord,” and it scared them. They backed off and ran for their lives. Or at least the women did. Two of the Galli rushed at me; a third dropped his weapon, an ancient sword that is used by the Korybantes to beat on ceremonial shields. Anna grabbed it and tried to defend me, but I told her to go. She stayed at first, but then I screamed at her and she ran off.’

Tom starts to fit bits of the jigsaw together. He understands now why Anna was at the Bocca and how she came to be wandering the streets, but there are gaps, very big gaps in Guilio’s story. ‘So you swung the sword and cut this woman’s hand off, and that’s how Anna got blood on the gown we found her in?’

‘That’s right.’

Tom doesn’t believe him. ‘So where’s the victim? Where did she get treated?’

Guilio shrugs. ‘The sisters would try to heal her themselves. They would have used Mater’s medicines, natural herbs, pagan practices.’

‘They don’t sound like adequate treatments for a severed hand.’

‘No, probably not. If she’d died, they would have buried her in the womb. They bury all the corpses around the outer walls; it’s supposed to evoke supernatural forces to protect the sect.’

‘A spiritual force field.’

‘If you like.’

Tom looks around the lamp. ‘Some of what you’re telling me doesn’t add up.’

Guilio does his best to appear offended. ’I don’t understand.’

‘Then I’ll make it clear. You’re lying to me. The blood on Anna’s gown didn’t come from whoever had her hand cut off. Forensic tests prove that it came from someone else.’ Tom leans into the light, ‘The question is, who? Who else got injured in that church, and what else are you not telling me?’