And then, almost immediately, 'No, no, for the love of God don't tell me, I don't want to know.'
Jordan felt the contempt burst like a grenade inside him, and all at once he saw the cardinal for what he was: an old man, grappling with the vexing problem of how to keep his power as his world changed. 'Suffice it to say, then, that the Haute Cour has been almost fully compromised,' he said.
'Almost!' Cardinal Canesi exclaimed.
'We are moving with all due speed.' Jordan ground his teeth to be in the presence of such hypocrisy. 'You understand, of course, that there is the matter of the puzzle Dexter Shaw created.'
'Ah, now we come to the crux of the matter!'
Jordan realized just how much he despised this man. He stood for Rome-a city that was too chaotic, too crowded, too dirty for Jordan's refined tastes, and he despised Vatican City's hothouse atmosphere most of all. The entire might and power of the Catholic Church was focused here like sunlight through a magnifying glass, but so was its essential weakness. A city-state unto itself, it had willfully kept itself at arm's length from the rest of the world. As a result, it existed in a reality of its own, out of touch with its far-flung constituents, painfully slow to react to change of any kind.
'Dexter Shaw had been a thorn in our side for years,' Cardinal Canesi said. 'As he consolidated his position inside the Order, as he gathered power to him, he created more and more problems for us.'
'And for us, he wanted to be Magister Regens,' Jordan said. 'Which is one of the reasons we took him out.'
'I do not want to hear those things!' Cardinal Canesi's face went chalk white. 'Have I not made myself clear on this issue?'
'You have, your eminence, but as we both know, these are extraordinary times. So I trust that you will forgive me my small transgressions.'
Canesi made a gesture, as if to absolve Jordan of the onus of small transgressions, but still Jordan's keen eyes saw his body betray him. The cardinal moved uneasily, like a bird who has Puffed up his feathers in alarm.
'You know how I rely on you, Jordan.'
'Of course, your excellency. And you know how I am relying on your contacts in this time of ultimate crisis. You won't hold back, will you?'
'Of course not!' Cardinal Canesi said hotly. 'The pope has three days, perhaps four, the doctors tell me. They are working hard to stabilize him, but even if they do, without the Quintessence he will not recover.'
When it came to Cardinal Felix Canesi, Jordan held no illusions. If for some reason events didn't work out as he wished, Canesi would require a scapegoat, and Jordan knew full well who that would be.
Having had more than enough of Canesi, he went back out into the hallway and crossed into the pope's suite. Like all hospital rooms, it smelled of sweet sickness and acrid disinfectant. He stayed for ten minutes, which was all the pontiff had strength for. The Holy Father's face was gray and terribly drawn, but there was still plenty of life left in those pale blue eyes. He had ascended to the apex of the Catholic church more than twenty years ago, and it was clear he was not yet ready to relinquish his power.
'I am Arcangela, the Abbess of Santa Marina Maggiore.'
The Anchorite stared up at Jenny with piercing gray eyes that bulged slightly from their sockets. 'So you are the Plumber's woman. A handsome one, you are, but so sad!' Her eyes seemed fixed, like an owl's, so that she was obliged to turn her head to look this way and that. She was old and very thin, her skin translucent as rice paper, the blue of the veins in her temples and the backs of her hands startlingly vivid. She had a face the shape of an inverted teardrop, with a wide forehead and a crooked nose. One side of her mouth drooped slightly, and Jenny wondered whether she'd suffered a minor stroke until Arcangela shuffled forward on one lame leg.
'An ancient injury,' Arcangela said. 'I was nine when I was caught in the acqua aha. I slid and fell and was crushed between a piling and the hull of a boat. My parents said I was careless and, worse, stupid, to be standing at the edge of the fondamenta during the flood, but I loved to watch the water rising because at those times it takes on the color of wine… or blood.'
She had a wide mouth with expressive lips that moved seemingly of their own accord. 'You have asked to see me?'
'Yes,' Jenny said. 'May I come in so that I may speak with you in private?'
'You may not,' Arcangela said, 'principally because there is no way in or out of my cell.'
'What?' Jenny was taken aback. 'Surely you aren't a prisoner, as Anchorites were in medieval times?'
The abbess smiled, a slow, sly, wonderful grin that served to lessen Jenny's unease. 'It is so. I have been walled in of my own volition because, like all Anchorites, the depth of my faith in Jesus Christ has compelled me to reject the world, and live here in isolation. So far as the world outside this convent is concerned, I am already dead. Father Mosto said the last rites over me just before I was bricked in. That was thirty years ago.' She turned and pointed. 'Look there, the other two windows in my cell. This one, to the left, looks out onto the altar of the Church of l'Angelo Nicolo`, and this one to the right is where I'm fed and where I put the chamber pot when it is filled.'
Jenny was somehow terrified by this description. 'You mean you haven't seen the sky in thirty years?'
'Why would I do such a thing, you're asking yourself. It sounds like hell, you're thinking.' Arcangela's pale eyes were alight with an inner fire. 'Am I right?'
'Yes.' Jenny, on the verge of being overwhelmed, could only whisper the word.
'Well, it's not faith alone, I can tell you,' the Anchorite said. 'Such faith is indistinguishable from madness.'
She came closer, and Jenny could smell her-a rank, sour, animal smell. It was, Jenny imagined, how human beings must have smelled in the time of Casanova.
'You do not flinch from me-well, that is something,' Arcangela said. 'I am here, I have been here for thirty years to do penance, to pay for the transgressions my charges commit every day of their lives.'
'But your charges are nuns,' Jenny said. 'What kind of transgressions could they commit?'
Pointing at Jenny, Arcangela addressed the sister. 'Look at her, Suor Maffia di Albori. Dressed like our own Santa Marina!'
Jenny blinked. 'I beg your pardon?'
Arcangela crooked a knobbed forefinger. 'Santa Marina, eighth century, from the Bythian province of Asia Minor.' She nodded. 'Like you, she dressed as a man-in her case, a monk's habit-and lived among males all her life. We brought her relics here in 1230, when we founded this convent in her name, so that we could walk among men, talk to men, and so advance our Order's work.'
'The Order?'
The abbess's eyebrows suddenly shot up like a release of energy or the beginning of an idea. 'Ah, Suor Maffia di Albori, now she has begun to make the connections, to piece together the patchwork quilt of clues we have been patiently feeding her.'
Jenny's finger's gripped the iron bars of the Anchorite's cell. 'You are members of the Gnostic Observatines?'
'As you yourself are,' Suor Maffia di Albori said at her side.
'But I was told that-'
'The Order didn't allow women,' Arcangela finished for her. 'And now you know the truth. From the day Santa Marina Maggiore was founded, our charges have dressed in monk's habits, passing out of this sanctuary and into the world outside. In this way, we made deals with nobles, bartered with merchants, gathered knowledge for the doge and for ourselves. It was we who furthered Venice's way in the world, it was through our contacts in the Levant that the Serene Republic grew rich and powerful.'
'And you with it,' Jenny said.
Arcangela's face clouded over. 'Ah, now you talk like your male counterparts in the Order.'
'Oh, no, I was remembering Bravo's comment that the convent had provided the funds for the church's fourteenth-century renovation.'
'And how conveniently our generosity over the centuries has been obscured by the envy of some of the members of the Haute Cour-including the late Father Mosto-who want us disbanded, stripped of our power. All because I dared ask for representation in the inner circle.'
'But you should be part of the Haute Cour,' Jenny said.
