The Rome Prophecy

92

Father Alfredo Giordano is in an unusual and awkward position when his cell phone rings.

He’s bare-chested, in only his pyjama bottoms and has just come out of a Downward Facing Dog.

Right now, he’s balanced on his hands counting a five breath in The Crow.

Alfie has never held The Crow pose for a full five before. He usually crashes sideways at the start, slips backwards on reaching two or bangs his forehead on a very shaky-handed three count.

Right now, his palms are well spread and he’s rock solid on a four, so no way is he going to answer that phone until he’s made the full five.

‘ Cinque! Yee-haaaw!’ He rolls out of the yoga pose and pads across the polished wooden floor of his tiny room. He pulls his cell phone from the charger cable stuck in a wall socket and answers with gusto: ‘ Pronto, Giordano – il padrone di yoga fantastico!’

His old friend daren’t ask what he’s up to. ‘Alfie, it’s Tom. I need your help.’

‘You have it, my friend.’ He takes a deep yogic breath. ‘ Il padrone can fold you into a Bird of Paradise or twist you into a One-Legged King Pigeon. Which would you prefer?’

‘Alfie, this is serious. What do you know about St Cecilia’s?’

He drops the comedy routine. ‘St Cecilia’s in Trastevere?’

Tom switches on the speakerphone function so Valentina can hear, then glances at notes on a pad. ‘The one in Piazza di Santa Cecilia; that’s Trastevere, right?’

‘Yes, yes, it is. What’s wrong, Tom?’

‘I’ll fill you in later. Please, Alfie, just tell me what you know.’

‘Okay. The church is very famous. Let me think… it was built in something like the third century. It has an amazing Romanesque campanile… lots of rebuilds over the ages, notably the ninth and I think eighteenth centuries.’

Tom scribbles furiously. Valentina watches over his shoulder.

Alfie continues with his list. ‘Oh, one of the weirdest things, there’s a convent adjacent to the church, and the sisters there shear the lambs from Sant’Agnese fueri le Mura and use the wool to make sacred vestments. Inside the church there are paintings depicting the beheading of St Cecilia. You remember the story of her?’

Tom has to jog his memory. ‘Lived her life wearing sack-cloth, married but stayed a virgin out of devotion to the Lord?’

‘Haven’t we all,’ interrupts Alfie with a tang of irony.

Tom continues to download the rest of what he knows about St Cecilia. ‘Patron saint of musicians, feast day in October – no, sorry, November. And her killers had great trouble putting her to death.’

‘Seven out of ten, or B plus, whichever you prefer.’

Valentina flaps her hands in frustration. Fascinating as this is, it isn’t helping rescue Louisa.

Tom ignores her. ‘I’m not finished. Didn’t she suffer some Rasputin-like death? Her persecutors tried to kill her two or three times and failed?’

‘I’ll up you to an A minus. They attempted to suffocate her in the bath at her house. When that failed, they decided to behead her. That didn’t go well either. The executioner tried three times to decapitate her, and then, seeing that she was still alive, fled in fear.’

‘And she didn’t die until three days later, after she’d received Holy Communion.’

‘Another thing,’ adds Alfie. ‘The original church is widely believed to have been built on the place of her home and martyrdom.’

Tom writes down ruins of old home beneath church and underlines it as Valentina reads over his shoulder. ‘So are there a lot of tunnels and open areas beneath the ground at Santa Cecilia?’

‘A lot?’ Alfie sounds almost incredulous. ‘Tom, there’s a whole city beneath Rome. The place is built over this soft volcanic rock and there are miles and miles of catacombs. Have a look at the crypt at Santa Cecilia and you’ll understand what I mean.’