Waking the Moon

nervous fingers with nails bitten to the quick. He was one of the youngest of the Benandanti, and Balthazar’s most promising protege—except for the archaeologist Magda Kurtz, who had first arrived at the Divine nearly a decade earlier and had long since left to pursue her career elsewhere. Though now Magda was back at the Divine for the summer, as a visiting scholar, and Francis had never left.

“It’s always hot,” Francis muttered, as though it were Balthazar’s fault. “Diplomats used to get paid hardship wages for being posted here.”

Balthazar smiled. As an undergraduate Francis had been Balthazar’s golden boy and, like Magda, an archaeology student, though Francis had never strayed from his original love of classical Greece and Mycenae into the muddier territory of Old Europe.

“Anyway, it’s not the heat that gets you,” Francis added. “It’s the humidity.”

Balthazar nodded, sighing. In addition to being head of the Divine’s renowned Department of Anthropology, his formal titles included that of Provost of Thaddeus College, as well as 144th Recipient of the Cape of the Living Flame of the Gjnarra of Transbaikalia in the Gobi Desert, a title that was less honorary than some of his colleagues in the Explorers’ Club might think.

And, of course, he was the chief of the Benandanti at the Divine. Here his duties consisted of a certain type of surveillance, an eternity of watching and waiting for an enemy who never seemed to arrive. An enemy who might no longer exist at all. Balthazar did not in fact like everything about his job, but the Benandanti were in some ways like the military. You were often born to the job, and once indoctrinated you were indentured for life, and presumably beyond. For the last six years, Francis had been as close to family as Balthazar had here: a melancholy thought.

Francis took another quick drag on his cigarette. “Thank you for coming, Balthazar,” he said. For the first time he grinned. “But wait till you see!” Turning, he gazed up at the bulk of the Shrine, his face shining. “It’s incredible, Balthazar, incredible—”

Balthazar shook his head and followed Francis’s gaze. “Well, perhaps you’d better show me,” he said mildly.

Above them reared the heart of the University—the Shrine of the Archangels and Saint John the Divine. A fabulously immense Byzantine folly, completed early in the twentieth century after nearly two hundred years of construction. Minarets and mosaics and Gothic sandstone buttresses, crenellated parapets and winding stairways that led to no visible doors: all of it surmounted by a dome of gold and lapis lazuli that threw back to the sky its own gilded map of the heavens. Seven different architects had designed and built disparate aspects of the Shrine. Inside, no less than fifty-seven chapels, some no larger than a closet, others the size of bowling alleys, had been consecrated to saints of varying rank and degree of holiness. The upper level alone was so crowded with ghosts that in the predawn hours the nave was filled with their hollow whispers. In the crypt chapel near the catacombs, icons routinely wept blood, and in dim corners lustful teenagers lagging behind on class trips often glimpsed Victor Capobianco, known as Damnatus, the Doomed Bishop, kneeling on the granite floor and weeping as he recited the Stations of the Cross. Francis’s Sign would have to be quite original to merit even this minor investigation.

For a moment Balthazar let his gaze rest upon the stone triad above the entry-way. Callow undergraduates had christened the trio The Supremes. They actually represented Michael and Gabriel and Raphael, the Archangels who guarded the Divine. Balthazar waited, just in case they had a message for him, but there was nothing.

“Come on.” Francis tugged at Balthazar’s elbow and steered him past a noisy flock of nuns. “You’ve got to see this.”

It was like stepping from a subway platform into the arcane circle of some immeasurable cavern. “I saw it in the Tahor Chapel,” said Francis. His voice, always too loud, boomed so thunderously that a number of tourists turned to stare. Balthazar followed him down one of the wide side aisles, stepping in and out of spectral pools where light poured from stained glass windows onto the floor. Everywhere banks of candles shimmered behind kneeling figures. As they passed, Balthazar could hear the soft sounds of weeping and whispered invocations.

Saint John, pray for us. Saint Blaise, pray for us. Saint Lucia, pray for us…

Balthazar paused as Francis raced by a tiny chapel, with a solitary penitent and single guttering candle. A painted statue stood in an alcove, its plaster robes flecked with dust: the image of a young woman holding out a gilt tray from which a pair of eyeballs peered mournfully. For a moment Balthazar stared at the disembodied eyeballs, then hurried on.

Wilting flowers, donated by wealthy alumnae and the grateful beneficiaries of successful cardiac bypasses, filled other alcoves in front of more exotic images of marble and glass and wood, steel and plaster and humble plastic. The main altar was a glowing curtain of gold and silver rippling in the distance. Balthazar followed Francis down a narrow staircase, around and around and around until finally they came out into a dimly lit indoor plaza. Everywhere you looked you saw high stone archways opening onto other corridors or chapels. Some were closed off by iron grilles, others guarded by still more statues or the occasional noisy air-conditioning unit.

“Almost there,” Francis sang out. “Here we go—”

Balthazar hoped there would be no one in the Tahor Chapel; and blessedly it was empty. They stepped inside. Francis pulled shut the high iron grille that served as door, and for good measure dragged out the CHAPEL CLOSED sign and set it behind the threatening spikes and bars. Then he fished a key from his pocket and locked the gate behind them.

“Okay,” said Francis. “Okay okay okay.”

His voice broke and he looked anxiously over his shoulder at Balthazar. “It’s—well, I was here this morning, and I saw it then, but—well, I hope—”

Balthazar made a dismissive motion with his hand. “Not to worry, Francis.” Smiling expectantly, he tilted his head. “Please—show me—”

The Tahor Chapel was a tiny L-shaped room, its walls of smooth black marble veined with gold and pale blue. Ambient light spilled from small recesses in the ceiling, but the prevailing illumination came from thick white candles set into crimson glass holders, dozens of them, flickering in front of a narrow stone altar. There was a faintly spicy smell, like scorched nutmeg. In spite of himself Balthazar felt his spine prickle.

“It was here this morning,” Francis repeated as they approached the altar. “Jeez, I hope…”

Atop the stone altar rested the chapel’s famous icon, the so-called “Black Madonna” of Tahor found in an Anatolian cave five centuries before. It was over a thousand years old, the image of its central figure dark and shiny as an eggplant. A halo of gold chips radiated from her head. Piled in front of the wooden likeness were heaps of rosary beads. Very carefully Francis removed them, the beads spilling from his fingers in jingling strands. Then, with exquisite caution, he took the icon itself and moved it to one side.

“Ahem,” said Balthazar. He wondered what had driven Francis to move the icon in the first place. This was forbidden, of course, and anyone besides a Benandanti who tried such a thing would have been quickly and quietly dispensed with. “Francis, is that really—”

But before he could say anything else Francis grabbed him and pulled him closer.

“Balthazar. Look—”

Inside the altar was a figure, thumb-sized and roughly thumb-shaped. Dull black and slightly gleaming, it appeared to be of stone, but it was not: it was carbonized wood smooth as a chunk of polished quartz. It had been discovered at the same time and in the same place as the Black Madonna, and from the first its significance was recognized by the Benandanti. For hundreds of years it had been closeted in Ravenna, and later in Avebury, in one of their countless holdings of rare and arcane objects. New initiates to the Benandanti often expressed amazement at the seemingly careless handling of such artifacts. But the Benandanti had many such secrets. And, as Balthazar had once told Francis, “These things have a way of looking after themselves.”

It was the figure of a woman. The very crudeness of its execution told how ancient it was. An eyeless, mouthless face; twin inverted triangles for breasts; a slit to indicate the vulva. A Goddess image, precious as the Venus of Willendorf or the Paphian Aphrodite. The Benandanti called it the Tahor Venus.

“Look,” Francis exclaimed. In the flickering light, the Venus cast an eerie shadow across the altar. From his breast pocket Balthazar withdrew his glasses. For a long moment he held them, as though unwilling to see what they might reveal; finally he slid them onto his nose. Beside him Francis pointed at the figure.