Devil's Lair (35 page)

At the level of the knees,
Giovanni saw a rocky cavern. He and Nadja disembarked the body and together
they rested, listening to the wails of demons echoing the among the rocks.

“Where does this lead?” she
asked.

“To the antipodes. The far
side of the world.”

“The world has another
side?”

“According to Dante, the
Earth is a sphere. We’ve already passed through the center. At the top of this
tunnel is the mountain of Purgatory.”

“What do we do?” Nadja
asked, her breathing clipped by the arduous climb. “With the Grail, I mean.”

“Hide it. Somewhere.”

“Where?”

“I don’t know.”

As they continued their
ascent, the Grail’s light diminished. The tunnel was steep, cold, and clammy.
Giovanni grappled the rocky surface with hands and feet. Nadja followed. In the
dim light Giovanni relied less on sight than touch, testing each position
before shifting his weight. Every handhold was an act of faith.

“We should give it to the
Church,” Nadja suggested. “The pope will know what to do.”

Giovanni rested, waiting for
the air to sate his lungs. “The pope is captive to the French. If we give it to
the Church, we give it to the king.”

“Is he a bad king?”

“The Grail would make him
worse.”

“Why?”

“Avignon would rule the
world.”

Nadja frowned. “William
would not have wanted that.”

“They killed the Templars to
find the Grail. A French king and a captive pope. Rienzo would have killed us
to keep the Lance. Ambition is a rot in the heart of men.”

“Who can we trust?”

“No one,” Giovanni said.
“Not even ourselves.”

“Then what hope is there?”

Giovanni recalled his
encounter with Christophorous. “I have an idea.”

He told her his plan, and
Nadja agreed.

The passage forked ahead.
Nadja saw two arched gateways, one white and glistening, the other ashen like
bone.

“Which way?” she asked.

Giovanni seemed uncertain.
“Dante never mentioned this.”

Nadja passed her hand over
the polished white arch of the left gate. “I don’t see any markings.”

Giovanni studied the other
gate. “Me neither.”

There was something odd
about how the gate was made, Nadja thought. She had never seen this material
before. “Look, Giovanni. What is this? I thought the gate was marble, but it’s
something else.”

He ran his hand across the
smooth white surface. “Ivory,” he said. “Of course. I should have known. The
gate of ivory and the gate of horn.”

“Dante does mention it?”

“No, Virgil. Aeneas came
this way. One is the gate of truth, the other of lies. The Devil sends false
dreams up to the world through the gate of lies.”

“Which one is that?”

“Ivory.”

“Then we should go the other
way.”

“No,” said Giovanni. “Dante
would have gone through the gate of truth, to the mountain of Purgatory, and
then to Paradise. That will not take us home.”

“The gate of lies, then?”

“The path of Aeneas.” His
face was grim, determined.

“False dreams.” Nadja
studied the ivory gate. “The Devil sent me false dreams. He told me to bring
the Lance.”

“Marco has the Lance. We
have the Grail.”

Nadja listened to the
screams echoing from below. Marco was down there, warring with the demons. “He
cannot win.”

“But he can fight the demons
to a draw.”

“For how long?”

“Forever.”

They climbed for days, urged
on by a faint light above and a bellowing rage below. Three times the light
died and was resurrected. Nadja and Giovanni rested no more than necessary, and
did not dare to sleep. At last they reached a narrow shelf at the mouth of the
tunnel. The air was impossibly bright and smelled of the sea. They stood a
moment below the opening, on the verge of the living world. The cool breeze was
redolent of life and love and hope.

Giovanni took Nadja’s hand
in his.

“Don’t look back,” he said.

Together, hand in hand, they
stepped into the light.

CHAPTER 34

A miracle,
Petrarch thought as he tended the
revested earth, which now bloomed with color and life. He poured water from a
ewer, working his way down a row of bright eglantine along the wall, which had
been repaired after the earthquake of September the ninth. Three weeks ago this
garden had been a blight. He had left Padua on a mission to Venice, where
flowers suddenly flourished and the pestilence subsided. Returning to Padua, he
went straight to the garden to find that spring had arrived in autumn.

“Francesco.”

Petrarch turned and saw his
majordomo in the portico. “Can you believe it?”

“You had visitors while you
were out.”

“Who?”

“The poet Boccaccio and that
girl he traveled with. They left you a package. You’ll find it in the study.”

Petrarch went inside and
found a small wooden box on his desk. Curious, he picked it up, opened the lid,
and discovered a chalice cut from stone.

For a moment he wondered.

Could it be?

Then he shook his head and
chuckled. Giovanni had a wicked sense of humor, but at least he paid his debts:
one relic for another. This cup was far better than that pitiful Lance.
Not
a bad trade.
Petrarch wondered if he would ever see Giovanni again.
I’ll go to Florence next year,
he
decided. They could drink and laugh together. Giovanni would spin some
outlandish tale to explain his discovery, and Petrarch would pretend to believe
him.

He lit a candle and carried his new
treasure into the Hall of Grails. There were eighty in his collection. This
made eighty-one. He found a place on a shelf between two matching cups. In a
few days even Petrarch would not be able to tell one from another. As he walked
away, his candle lustered the rows of Holy Grails on either side. Dapples of
light danced about the room in radiant splendor.

False dreams,
he thought, and returned to the garden.