Dominus Read online

  Tom Fox’s storytelling emerges out of many years spent in academia, working on the history of the Christian Church. A respected authority on that subject, he has recently turned his attentions toward exploring the new stories that can be drawn out of its mysterious dimensions. Dominus is Tom’s first novel.

  By Tom Fox

  Dominus

  Digital Short Stories

  Genesis (prequel to Dominus)

  Exodus (sequel to Dominus)

  New York • London

  © 2016 by Tom Fox

  First published in the United States by Quercus in 2016

  Cover design by Craig Fraser

  Cover images © Andreas Zerndl/Shutterstock (St. Peter's basilica), INTERFOTO/Alamy (seal) & Mark Owen/Arcangel Images (figure). All other images © Shutterstock/iStock

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without permission in writing from the publisher, except by reviewers, who may quote brief passages in a review. Scanning, uploading, and electronic distribution of this book or the facilitation of the same without the permission of the publisher is prohibited.

  Please purchase only authorized electronic editions, and do not participate in or encourage electronic piracy of copyrighted materials. Your support of the author’s rights is appreciated.

  Any member of educational institutions wishing to photocopy part or all of the work for classroom use or anthology should send inquiries to [email protected].

  e-ISBN 978-1-68144-449-9

  Distributed in the United States and Canada by

  Hachette Book Group

  1290 Avenue of the Americas

  New York, NY 10104

  This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, institutions, places, and events are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons—living or dead—events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

  www.quercus.com

  To Alex and Megan, who always ask the most delightfully provocative questions

  Behold, he cometh with the clouds, and every eye shall see him, even those that pierced him. And all the tribes of the earth shall wail because of him. So it is to be. Amen.

  Revelation 1:7

  Lo, I come unexpected, like a thief. And blessed is he that keepeth watch . . .

  Revelation 16:15

  CONTENTS

  Cover

  Title Page

  Copyright Page

  Dedication

  Epigraph

  Contents

  PRIMO

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  Chapter 33

  Chapter 34

  Chapter 35

  Chapter 36

  Chapter 37

  Chapter 38

  SECONDO

  Chapter 39

  Chapter 40

  Chapter 41

  Chapter 42

  Chapter 43

  Chapter 44

  Chapter 45

  Chapter 46

  Chapter 47

  Chapter 48

  Chapter 49

  Chapter 50

  Chapter 51

  Chapter 52

  Chapter 53

  Chapter 54

  TERZO

  Chapter 55

  Chapter 56

  Chapter 57

  Chapter 58

  Chapter 59

  Chapter 60

  Chapter 61

  Chapter 62

  Chapter 63

  Chapter 64

  Chapter 65

  Chapter 66

  Chapter 67

  Chapter 68

  Chapter 69

  Chapter 70

  Chapter 71

  Chapter 72

  Chapter 73

  Chapter 74

  Chapter 75

  Chapter 76

  Chapter 77

  FINALE

  Chapter 78

  Chapter 79

  Chapter 80

  Acknowledgments

  PRIMO

  1

  St. Peter’s Basilica, Vatican City: Sunday, 8:22 a.m.

  He did not come with trumpets from heaven. Angels did not burst into song. There was no darkening of the sun, and the fabric of the ancient basilica remained unscathed.

  He entered quietly, without fanfare, though with every footstep he took, the world began to change.

  Not that his outward appearance gave any indication of what was to come. An unassuming man in worn jeans. A gray button-down shirt, slightly wrinkled. His shoes, mildly tattered. In every visible way he was unremarkable.

  Later, no one was able to recollect seeing him enter St. Peter’s. Not one of the thousands gathered there observed him pass through the vast western doors or step into the great expanse of space designed to reflect the glorious meeting of heaven and earth. All they could remember was the way his silent walk through the interior had gradually drawn their attention once he was in their midst.

  But of his demeanor, there in the centuries-old heart of Christendom, they remembered every detail. The way he’d moved calmly down the central aisle during the pontifical High Mass. The way men and women had unconsciously parted to create a path while their children had clambered toward him, inexplicably drawn. The way they’d all hushed as he drew near, and how their gazes had lingered on him as he’d moved by. They remembered that.

  He had a posture that spoke of purpose, though he walked almost casually through the throngs. His hair, only a few inches in length, slightly wavy and with a gold-brown tone, seemed oddly bright in the orange light of the ancient church. As he strode toward Bernini’s great baldachin, his eyes were ever forward. Gentle and serene, yet strong.

  They all remembered his eyes.

  At the far end of the 211-meter-long nave, the Mass’s chief celebrant stood albed in white, bent at the high altar. Though his bodily infirmity would have conveyed the message effectively on its own, the design of the massive bronzework above him reinforced the fact that, for all the pontiff’s worldly fame and power, he was yet a tiny figure before the majesty of God.

  He was surrounded by two cardinal concelebrants, and between them and him were the customary assistants who went everywhere with the beleaguered Pope, holding his twisted form upright by the elbows for those parts of the service that required him to stand. He was far from an old man, but the specific type of spinal stenosis he had suffered from since childhood left him permanently disfigured and unable to stand under his own power. The lingering results of that infirmity, however, had never weakened his spirit. They had only strengthened it, and the man the media had cruelly termed “the crippled Pope” was loved all the more by his flock for the weak body that made his inner spiritual convictions so evident.

  The Pope and his assistants were flanked by a suite of priests and a full cohort of servers decked out in their liturgical fineries. Behind them, on specially constructed riser
s, the red-robed choristers of the Sistine Chapel choir filled the space with the angelic Latin of the Sanctus. The angels themselves, one elderly woman would later recall, could have produced no more glorious a sound.

  Sanctus, Sanctus, Sanctus

  Dominus Deus Sabaoth . . .

  Benedictus qui venit in nomine Domini.

  Holy, Holy, Holy

  Lord God of Sabaoth . . .

  Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord.

  The stranger walked slowly forward.

  The Pope glanced up from the instruments of the bloodless sacrifice—the chalice and paten of hammered gold—his face beaming the glory he felt at every celebration of the sacred service. It was clear, as he craned a pained neck and gazed out over the faithful, his hazel eyes reflecting the shimmer of the crimson wine in the chalice, that the inheritor of the office of the Apostle Peter was wholly enrapt in the sacrosanct liturgical rite.

  It was as he looked over his flock that the pontiff caught his first sight of the stranger’s approach.

  And it was then that the inexplicable began to take place.

  At the front of the rows of chairs in the basilica’s central nave, just beyond the red ropes that kept the faithful at a respectful distance from the clerical centerpiece, the vivid blue, red and orange ceremonial uniforms of the Swiss Guard formed a crescent before the high altar. The men within the costumes, who looked like something out of a Renaissance carnival, were among the most highly trained and devoted military protective details in the world.

  As the stranger approached the periphery, the guardsmen were the last bodies before the baldacchino and the clerics beneath it. By tradition and honor, as well as by the oath each had sworn when they were commissioned in the Cortile di San Domaso, theirs was a line they would allow no man to pass. Holiness incited hatred as well as reverence, and for centuries the Swiss Guard’s ranks had ensured that, at least in practical terms, hate did not win out over love.

  But as the stranger continued to approach, it was clear that the path he intended to follow did not end at their cordon. The two guards closest to the central aisle stiffened, their position blocking his route, hands clutched tightly at their ceremonial halberds. Behind the approaching man it was as if the whole basilica had gone silent and stiff. The space was electric with focus. The thousands were staring at this man, totally enthralled.

  The stranger slowed, his blue-jeaned appearance all the more out of place as he came before the ancient uniforms erroneously attributed to a design by Michelangelo. He drew to a stop only a few feet from the guards. He said nothing. He kept his eyes only on the Pope, beyond and elevated several steps above.

  The stalwart guards tensed, devotion and tireless training calling them toward their sacred duty.

  And then, as the stranger stood before them, they knelt.

  The whole troop of elite soldiers, the de facto standing military of the Vatican, fell to their knees in almost perfect unison. The two closest to the stranger skirted aside, obeisantly poised, allowing him an unobstructed path.

  Muffled gasps from the crowd were audible as the stranger resumed his progress, stepping softly around the entrance to the crypt of St. Peter. A few paces later, he began his ascent to the high altar.

  The corpulent red-robed director of the choir glanced over his shoulder, shocked, then spun away from his choristers. His fat arms were still suspended in a conductor’s pose as behind him the choir faltered, then went silent.

  The sudden absence of sound in the basilica was overwhelming. The man’s footsteps could now be clearly heard, echoing through the mesmerized space as he mounted the final steps.

  At last he stood face to face with the Holy Father across the laden altar. The Pope’s body was bent sharply to his right, his assistants firmly gripping his upper arms in support. He stood frozen in place, his fingertips still touching the shimmering chalice, and locked eyes with the stranger.

  “Who are you?” His familiar, sonorous voice trembled.

  The man gazed peacefully into the pontiff’s eyes. While the people would remember the mysteriousness of the silence that filled the vast space during their long, interlocked glance, the Pope would recollect that it had been as if he was staring into eternity, his heart filled with the same sense of wonder and majesty that it formerly had equated only with gazing out over the undulating waves of the sea and contemplating the vastness of God’s glory.

  Then, in a gentle voice, holding out two upturned hands, the stranger finally spoke.

  “Do you not know me, Peter?”

  Gasps filled the basilica. Stillness gave way to a wave of sibilant tension as the man’s answer was whispered through the rows of faithful. The casual visitors in the throng struggled to comprehend what it meant, but the meaning of the words was apparent to men and women of faith. Apparent, and explosive. Peter was the name of the first holder of the papal office—the man who had denied Christ three times.

  These were words the Savior would speak to his own.

  Camera flashes began to ignite the space in their hundreds. But the Pope only stared at the stranger’s extended hands. The pontifical eyes welled with unexpected tears.

  “My faithful servant,” the stranger said a moment later, his voice rich and oddly soothing. He placed one of his hands upon the trembling pontiff’s shoulder. The assistant holding the Pope’s right arm reinforced his grip, but the stranger kept his gentle gaze on the Holy Father, absent of any menace.

  “Do not be afraid. It is I.”

  The Pope’s eyes were like glass, his breath weak. In the distance, the stranger’s latest words had been heard and their even more direct contents ignited the faithful, who snapped images with their cameras, filming the scene with their phones, dozens dropping to their knees in prayer. The dozens became a hundred, and a hundred became two. But the pontiff gazed straight into the man’s face. His whole body trembled.

  And then the miracle happened.

  “You are a man of faith,” the stranger said softly to the Pope, “and your faith has made you whole.” He reached out his other arm, grabbed the hands of both the assistants from the shoulders of the pontiff and pulled them gently aside. They resisted only a moment, then silently let the man draw their hands away from their charge.

  The Pope stood, unsupported and bent, wavering.

  “Stand, Peter,” the stranger said. “That which was crooked has been made straight.”

  The Pope stared at him, his eyes wide. He took a breath. Swallowed.

  And then the Holy Father stood upright for the first time in his life.

  Neither man seemed to notice the cries of wonder from the cardinals and clerics surrounding them, or from the awe-struck masses behind as the crowd beheld the healing of their spiritual leader.

  The Pope’s own eyes were glazed with a film of wonder and gratitude.

  With his right hand, the stranger lifted the golden chalice and placed it back into the Pope’s grasp, ensuring that the pontiff’s grip was tight.

  “Now, Your Holiness, finish what you came here to do.”

  Without saying another word, he walked around the altar table to the pontiff’s left and took one of the clerical seats behind him.

  And then, closing his eyes and folding his hands calmly on his jeans, the stranger began to pray.

  Fidene Municipal District, Rome: 8:36 a.m.

  Six kilometers to the north, at a sharp isolated bend in the Tiber river, a body floated face down in the cold water. The golden hair on its head swirled almost beautifully in the gentle current. At this early hour, no one lamented his absence. No one was out searching. No one even knew he was gone.

  In fewer than forty-eight hours, the whole nation would know this dead man’s face. It would spark controversy. It would incite anger and mistrust and prompt cries of deception. It would shatter faith on an unthinkable scale.

  But at this moment the corpse bobbed in the river in solitude, its face concealed in the cloudy waters. The murder that had t
aken the man’s life was a thing of the past, the chains at his ankles insufficient to submerge the body as his killer had hoped. And so his corpse floated steadily toward the center of the city. As if it knew that more was to come.

  2

  Headquarters of La Repubblica newspaper, Rome: 9:28 a.m.

  Silver smoke curled upward, its tendrils bending back on themselves in plumes that dissipated slowly in the stagnant air. Those that fell downward reached fingernail and skin and joint, caressing flesh and leaving their unmistakable mark: yellow and faint, the hint of congealed tar and breath.

  The problem with chain smoking was the damned yellow fingers.

  Over the years, Alexander Trecchio had tried a thousand different postures for propping his favored MS Filtro in his hands to avoid the smoky recoil and the sticky yellow build-up that invariably formed around his knuckles, but nothing worked. His doctor had told him even more times than this that yellowed skin was the least of his worries. But Trecchio was a man who based his actions, and especially his habits, on concrete facts. The possibilities of emphysema or a shortened lifespan were frightening, but dismissably hypothetical. The fact that his fingers were yellow, by contrast, was inescapable.

  He drew a long, constrained breath through the thin paper and tightly packed tobacco, his eyes closed. He visualized the red coal singeing its burrow deeper into the shredded fragments of dried, cured leaf and the smoke wending its way through its tiny conduit, racing to meet him. As the familiar richness rolled over the buds of his tongue and into his lungs, Alexander realized that at the end of the day he didn’t really care about any of the inconveniences, even the fingers. His bad habit was one little thing that brought comfort and calm when so little else did. He’d take it.

  “You were late last week.”

  Speaking of things that bring little comfort or calm.

  The annoying, Chihuahua-like voice of Alexander’s line editor broke through the serenity of the moment. He held the smoke in his lungs longer than usual, hoping that when he finally exhaled, the man would evaporate with it. But that kind of luck was not with Alexander Trecchio this morning. Sundays brought blessings and peace to many, but rarely to the staff of a newspaper that printed a Monday-morning edition.