Read The Seventh Sacrament Online
Authors: David Hewson
The Seventh Sacrament
Contents
Mithras, God of the Midnight, here where the great bull dies,
Look on thy children in darkness. O take our sacrifice!
Many roads thou hast fashioned: all of them lead to the Light,
Mithras, also a soldier, teach us to die aright!
from “A Song to Mithras: Hymn of the XXX Legion,”
by Rudyard Kipling
Principal Characters
THE PRESENT
Pino Gabrielli, warden of the Piccolo Museo del Purgatorio
Nic Costa, an
agente
in the Rome Questura
Gianni Peroni, a fellow
agente
Leo Falcone, Costa and Peroni’s inspector
Teresa Lupo, chief pathologist
Emily Deacon, Costa’s partner
Raffaella Arcangelo, Falcone’s partner
Ornella Di Benedetto, warden of the church of Santa Maria dell’Assunta
Rosa Prabakaran, a junior police
agente
Bruno Messina, police
commissario
over Leo Falcone
Arturo Messina, Bruno’s father, now retired from the police in disgrace
Enzo Uccello, a criminal on release
Beatrice Bramante, former wife of Giorgio, mother of Alessio
Dino Abati, a homeless man
Prinzivalli, a police
sovrintendente
Silvio Di Capua, Teresa Lupo’s deputy
Cristiano, a biologist specialising in worms
Judith Turnhouse, an archaeologist
Lorenzo Lotto, a left-wing aristocrat and magazine owner
THE PAST
Alessio Bramante, a schoolboy
Giorgio Bramante, his father, an archaeologist
Ludo Torchia, Toni LaMarca, Dino Abati, Sandro Vignola, Andrea Guerino, Elisabetta Giordano, Bernardo Giordano, and Raul Bellucci, students under Giorgio Bramante
Leo Falcone, a police
sovrintendente
Arturo Messina, police
commissario
over Leo Falcone
Author’s Note
MITHRAISM ORIGINATED IN PERSIA before the sixth century
BC
. From around
AD
136 onwards, it was adopted as one of the most important cults among Roman and government officials. Subterranean Mithraic temples built by Imperial troops are common in all of the empire’s military frontiers, from the Middle East to England. Three have been identified along Hadrian’s Wall, in northern England; more than a dozen, out of a suspected hundred or more, have been discovered in Rome itself.
At the heart of Mithraism lay several features which seem to have appealed to the military and bureaucratic mind. The cult was highly organised, secretive, and confined to men. It demanded insistence on absolute hierarchical obedience, first to local, higher-ranking members of the cult, and ultimately to the emperor. It also used a series of different “sacraments” to mark the passage of followers from one of its seven ranks to the next. Indeed the very word “sacrament,” while religious in nature today, stems from the original Latin term used for the oath of allegiance sworn by soldiers on joining the army. What those sacraments were, we can only guess, but they appear to have involved a separate initiation ceremony, with a swearing of oaths and on occasion a sacrifice, for each of the specific ranks, from the most junior, Corax, to the leader, Pater.
Mithraism shared some similar ideas and features with early Christianity, though the idea that the Catholic Church copied deliberately from the cult is probably far-fetched. None of the Mithraic scriptures remain, however, since this was a religion fated to be wiped from the history books. On October 28,
AD
312, at the conclusion of a civil war, Constantine won control of the empire at the battle of the Milvian Bridge, a strategic point at which the Flaminian Way crossed the Tiber River into Rome. Though a follower of pagan ways himself at the time, Constantine, probably for political reasons, decided to make Christianity the sole religion of the empire. As his troops sacked Rome, the repression of Mithraism began.
The most visible relic of Mithras in Rome today is the archaeological find uncovered by Irish Dominican monks excavating the basilica of San Clemente close to the Colosseum. Here, an entire underground temple has been revealed, with chambers for ceremonies, and the focal point of worship, the
mithraeum
itself, where the ceremonial altar, with its image of Mithras slaying the bull, would have stood. San Clemente is open to the public; many more underground sites, including other mithraeums, are open by appointment. The visits offered by the voluntary organisation Roma Sotterranea (www.underrome.com) offer the best way to explore the extensive hidden city that lies beneath modern Rome. Many sites are difficult, dangerous, and illegal to visit without expert assistance.
Since history is invariably written by the victors, we have no independent contemporary accounts of what happened on the day the victorious Constantine entered Rome. However, we do know that he “disbanded” the imperial elite troop of the Praetorian Guard, which had sided with his opponent, Maxentius, and destroyed entirely their headquarters, the Castra Praetoria, which possessed a mithraeum in the vicinity for their private worship. A glimpse into the events of that day can be found in a less well-known Roman mithraeum, on the Aventine hill, not far from the area where much of this book is set. Excavations beneath the small church of Santa Prisca in the 1950s revealed that the original Christian building had been built on the remains of a Mithraic temple. When the archaeologists made their way into the heart of the mithraeum, they discovered it had been desecrated, probably sometime shortly after Constantine’s victory, and statues and wall paintings had been destroyed with axes. What happened to the temple followers during this turbulent period is unknown.
T
HE BOY STOOD WHERE HE USUALLY DID AT THAT TIME
of the morning: in the Piazza dei Cavalieri di Malta, on the summit of the Aventino hill, not far from home. Alessio Bramante was wearing the novelty glasses that came in the gift parcel from his birthday party the day before, peering through them into the secret keyhole, trying to make sense of what he saw.
The square was only two minutes’ walk from Alessio’s front door, and the same from the entrance to the Scuola Elementare di Santa Cecilia, so this was a journey he made every day, always with his father, a precise and serious man who would retrace his steps from the school gates back to the square, where his office, an outpost of the university, was located. This routine was now so familiar Alessio knew he could cover the route with his eyes closed, no longer needing that firm, guiding adult hand every inch of the way.
He adored the piazza, which had always seemed to him as if it belonged in a fairy-tale palace, not on the Aventino, which was a hill for ordinary, everyday men and women. Ones with money, like bankers and politicians. But not special people, kings and queens, banished from their homelands to live in the grand villas and apartment blocks dotted through its leafy avenues.
Palms and great conifers, like Christmas trees, fringed the white walls that ran around three sides of the piazza, adorned at precise intervals with needle-like Egyptian obelisks and the crests of great families. The walls were the work, his father said, of a famous artist called Piranesi, who, like all his kind in the Rome of the past, was as skilled an architect as he was a draftsman.
Alessio wished he could have met Piranesi. He had a precise mental image of him: a thin man, always thinking, with dark skin, piercing eyes, and a slender, waxy moustache that sat above his upper lip looking as if it had been painted there. Piranesi was an entertainer, a clown who made you laugh by playing with the way things looked. When he grew up, Alessio would organise events in the piazza, directing them himself, dressed in a severe dark suit, like his father. There would be elephants, he decided, and dancers and men in commedia dell’arte costumes juggling balls and pins to the bright music of a small brass band.
All this would come at some stage in that grey place called the future, which revealed itself a little day by day, like a shape emerging from one of the all-consuming mists that sometimes enshrouded the Aventino in winter, making it a ghostly world, unfamiliar to him, full of hidden, furtive noises and unseen creatures.
An elephant could hide in that kind of fog, Alessio thought. Or a tiger, or some kind of beast no one, except Piranesi in his gloomiest moments, could imagine. Then he reminded himself of what his father had said only a few days before, not quite cross, not quite.
No one gains from an overactive imagination.
No one needed such a thing on a day like this either. It was the middle of June, a beautiful, warm, sunny morning, with no hint of the fierce inferno that would fall from the bright blue sky well before the onset of August. At that moment he had room in his head for just a single wonder, one he insisted on seeing before he went to Santa Cecilia and began the day, as befitted a school dedicated to the patron saint of music, with a chorus of song in which he made sure his own, pitch-perfect voice was always uppermost.
“Alessio,” Giorgio Bramante said again, a little brusquely.
He knew what his father was thinking. At seven, tall and strong for his age, he was too old for these games. A little—what was the word he’d heard his father use once?—headstrong too.
Or perhaps, as his grandmother once said, he recognised himself in his son. They were alike, or so some claimed. And, at the party, his father was the one who picked out the parcel with the glasses, hoping, perhaps, to bring the event to an end as quickly as possible. So it was only right that he bear some accountability for the toy.
Alessio was unsure how old he was when his father first introduced him to the keyhole. He had soon realised that it was a secret shared. From time to time others would walk up to the green door and take a peek. Occasionally taxis would stop in the square and release a few baffled tourists, which seemed a sin. This was a private ritual to be kept among the few, those who lived on the Aventino hill, Alessio thought. Not handed out to anyone.
THE SECRET WAS
to be found on the river side of the piazza, at the centre of a white marble gatehouse, ornate and amusing, one of the favourite designs, he had no doubt, of that man with the moustache who still lived in his head. The upper part of the structure was fringed with ivy that fell over what looked like four windows, although they were filled in with stone—“blind” was the word Giorgio Bramante, who was fond of architecture and building techniques, used. Now that he was older Alessio realised the style was not unlike one of the mausoleums his father had shown him when they went together to excavations and exhibitions around the city. The difference was that the gatehouse possessed, in the centre, a heavy, two-piece door, old and solid and clearly well used, a structure that whispered, in a low, firm voice:
Keep out.
Mausoleums were for dead people, who had no need of doors that opened and closed much. This place, his father had explained all those years ago, was the entrance to the garden of the mansion of the Grand Master of the Knights of Malta, leader of an ancient and honourable order, with members around the world, some of whom were fortunate enough, from time to time, to make a pilgrimage to this very spot.
Alessio could still remember first hearing that there were knights living nearby. He’d lain awake in bed that evening wondering if he’d hear their horses neighing in the warm summer breeze, or the clash of their swords on armour as they jousted in the secret garden beyond Piranesi’s square. Did they take young boys as pages, as knights in the making? Was there a round table? Some blood oath which swore them to silent, enduring brotherhood? A book where their good deeds were recorded in a hidden language, impenetrable to anyone outside the order?
Even now Alessio had no idea. Hardly anyone came or went from the place. He’d given up watching. Perhaps they only emerged in the dark, when he was in bed, wide awake, wondering what he’d done to be expelled from the living world for no good reason.
A Carabinieri car sat by the gatehouse most of the time, two bored-looking officers inside ostentatiously eyeing visitors to make sure no one became too curious. That rather killed the glamour of the Knights of Malta. It was hard to imagine an order of true gallantry would need men in uniforms, with conspicuous guns, to watch the door to its grand mansion.
But there was a miracle there, one he’d grown up with. He could still remember the days when his father used to pick him up, firm arms beneath his weak ones, lifting gently, until his eye reached the keyhole in the door, old green paint chipped away over the centuries to reveal something like lead or dull silver beneath.
Piranesi—it must have been him, no one else would have had the wit or the talent—had performed one last trick in the square. Somehow the architect had managed to align the keyhole of the Knights’ mansion directly with the basilica of St. Peter’s, which lay a couple of kilometres away beyond the Tiber. Peering through the tiny gap in the door produced an image that was just like a painting itself. The gravel path pointed straight across the river to its subject, shrouded on both sides by a tunnel of thick cypresses, dark green exclamation marks so high they stretched beyond the scope of the keyhole, forming a hidden canopy above everything he could see. At the end of this natural passageway, framed, on a fine day, in a bright, upright rectangle of light, stood the great church dome, which seemed suspended in the air, as if by magic.
Alessio knew about artists. The dome was the work of Michelangelo. Perhaps he and Piranesi had met sometime and made a pact:
You build your church, I’ll make my keyhole, and one day someone will spot the trick.
Alessio could imagine Piranesi twirling his moustache at that idea. He could imagine, too, that there were other riddles, other secrets, undiscovered across the centuries, waiting for him to be born and start on their trail.
Can you see it?
This was the ritual, a small but important one that began every school day, every weekend walk that passed through Piranesi’s square. When Alessio peered through the keyhole of the mansion of the Knights of Malta, what he saw through the lines of trees, magnificent across the river, was proof that the world was whole, that life went on. What Alessio had only come to realise of late was that his father required this reassurance as much as he did himself. With this small daily ceremony the bond between them was renewed.
Yes, the young child would say, day after day, earnestly squinting through the narrow metal hole, trying to locate the vast white upturned coffee cup across the river hovering mystically in the bright air, a solid if mysterious fact in the world around them, one that never changed, one that predated their own existence and would stay with them forever through never-ending time.
Yes. It’s still there.
The day could begin. School and singing and games. The safe routine of family life. And other rituals too. His birthday celebration was a kind of ceremony. His entry into the special age—seven, the magical number—disguised as a party for infants. One where his father had picked out the stupid present from the lucky dip, something that seemed interesting when Alessio read the packaging, but just puzzled him now he tried it out.
The “Fly Eye Glasses” were flimsy plastic toy spectacles, large and cumbersome, badly made, too, with arms so weak they flopped around his ears as he tucked the ends carefully beneath his long jet-black hair in an effort to keep them firm on his face. Perhaps Giorgio was right. He was too old for toys like this. But Alessio Bramante was aware of what he had inherited from an archaeologist father, digging the past out of the ground, and an artist mother, whose paintings he admired but never quite understood. For him the world was, and always would be, intensely physical: a visual maze to be touched, examined, and explored, in as many different ways as he could find.
The glasses were supposed to let you witness reality the way a fly did. Their multifaceted eyes had lenses which were, in turn, hosts to many more lenses, hundreds perhaps, like kaleidoscopes without the flakes of coloured paper to get in the way, producing a universe of shifting views of the same scene, all the same, all different, all linked, all separate. Each thinking it was real and its neighbour imaginary, each, perhaps, living under the ultimate illusion, because Alessio Bramante was, he told himself, no fool. Everything he saw could be unreal. Every flower he touched, every breath he took, nothing more than a tiny fragment tumbling from someone else’s ever-changing dreams.
Crouched hard against the door, trying to ignore the firm, impatient voice of his father, Alessio was aware of another adult thought, one of many that kept popping into his head of late. This wasn’t just the fly’s view. It was that of God too. A distant, impersonal God, somewhere up in the sky, who could shift his line of vision just a millimetre, close one great eye, squint through another, and see His creations a myriad of different ways, trying better to understand them.
Alessio peered more intently and wondered: is this one world divided into many, or do we possess our own special vision, a faculty that, for reasons of kindness or convenience, he was unsure which, simplified the multitude into one?
Fanciful thoughts from an overimaginative, headstrong child.
He could hear his father repeating those words though they never slipped from his lips. Instead, Giorgio Bramante was saying something entirely different.