Of Love and Evil (The Songs of the Seraphim 2)

I knew only we had left the solid world of the Mission Inn, and the solid world of Liona and Toby, and we were once again high in the clouds. If I had a form I couldn’t see it or feel it. All I saw was the moist white swirling around me and here and there the tiniest flicker of a star.

I ached for the celestial music, but it did not come so much as the songs of the wind came, swift and refreshing and wiping me clean, it seemed, of all my thoughts of the recent past.

Suddenly below me I saw spread out an immense and seemingly endless city, a city of domes and rooftop gardens, and rising towers, and crosses beneath the ever shifting layers of clouds.

Malchiah was with me, but I couldn’t see him any more than I could see myself. But I could see the familiar hills and tall pines of Italy, and I knew then that that was where I was going though to which city I was about to find out.

“This is Rome you see beneath you,” said Malchiah. “Leo X sits on the papal throne, and Michelangelo, wearied from the accomplishment of his great chapel ceiling, labors on a dozen other commissions and will soon give himself to restoring St. Peter’s itself. Raphael paints in glory the apartments that millions will come to see for centuries beyond this. But none of this is important to you, nor will I grant you even the smallest amount of time to glimpse the Pope or any of his retinue, for you are sent as always to one particular heart.

“This one young man, Vitale de Leone, prays urgently and faithfully, and so passionately do others pray for him that they are storming Heaven’s gates.”

Down we were moving, closer and closer to the rooftop gardens, closer to the domes and steeples, until finally we could see the maze of crooked stairways and alleyways that made up the streets of Rome.

“You yourself in this world are a Jew, named Toby, and you are a lutenist as you will soon discover, and let that be a key to you as to how much of your varied talent will be needed to see this venture through. Now you are known as one who is imperturbable and can bring consolation to the troubled through his music, so you will be welcomed when you arrive.

“Be brave, and be loving, and be open to all those who need you—especially to our frantic and much discouraged Vitale, who is a trusting man by nature, and who so valiantly prays for assistance. I count upon your cleverness as always, your nerve, and your cunning. But just as much I count upon your generous and educated heart.”

CHAPTER FIVE

AS I EMERGED ONTO A SMALL PIAZZA BEFORE A HUGE stone palazzo a crowd broke as if it had been waiting for me.

It was not the mob I’d encountered in England on my last escapade for Malchiah, but clearly there were goings-on here and I was being plunged into their very midst.

The crowd were Jews, almost all of them, or so it seemed because so many wore a round yellow circle attached to their clothes, and others wore blue tassels on the ends of their long velvet tunics. These were rich men, men of influence, and their bearing told me this as well as their dress.

As for me, I was dressed in a fine tunic of rolled velvet, with slashed sleeves with silver linings, leggings that were clearly costly and brightly dyed green and tall leather boots. I wore a pair of fine fur-trimmed leather gloves. On my back I carried by its thin leather strap a lute! I wore the round yellow patch as well. And when I realized this, I felt a certain vulnerability I’d never known before.

My hair was shoulder length and blond and curly, and I was more stunned by recognizing myself in this garb than by anything that the crowd before me might do.

They were one and all stepping aside for me and gesturing to the gate of the house through which I could just see the light of the courtyard inside.

I knew this was my destination. No doubt of it. But before I could reach for a bell rope, or call out a name, one of the elders of the crowd stepped up as if to bar my way.

“You enter that house at your own peril,” he said. “It’s in the possession of a dybbuk. We have called the elders together three times to exorcise this demon, but we have failed.

“Yet the headstrong young man who owns the house won’t leave. And now the world, which once trusted him and respected him, has begun to regard him with fear and contempt.”

“Nevertheless,” I said, “I’m here to see him.”

“This is not good for any of us,” said another one of the men present. “And your playing a lute for his patient is not going to change what is happening under this roof.”

“What then would you say I should do?” I asked.

An uneasy laughter went through the group. “Stay clear of this house and stay clear of Vitale ben Leone until he determines to leave it and the owner decides to have it pulled down.”

The house looked immense with four stories of round arched windows, and the action described seemed desperate.

“I tell you something evil has taken up its habitation here,” said one of the other men. “Can you hear it? Can you hear the noises inside?”

I could in fact hear the noises inside. It sounded as if things were being thrown about. And it seemed that something made of glass was shattered.

I banged on the gate. Then I saw the rope for the bell and pulled hard on it. If the bell rang, it was deep within the interior of the house.

The men around me backed away as the gate finally opened, and a young gentleman, about my age, stood squarely on the threshold. He had thick black shoulder-length curly hair and deep-set dark eyes. He was as finely dressed as I was in a padded tunic and leggings and he wore Moroccan leather slippers on his feet.

“Ah, good, you’ve come,” he said to me, and without so much as a word to the others, he pulled me inside the courtyard of the house.

“Vitale, leave this place before you’re ruined,” said one of the men to him.

“I refuse to run,” Vitale answered. “I will not be driven out. And besides, Signore Antonio owns this house and he is my patron and I do as he says. Niccolò is his son, is he not?”

The gate was shut and the heavy wooden door closed and bolted.

An old servant stood there holding a candle which he shielded with his skeletal fingers.

But the sharp light came from the high roof into the courtyard, and only when we started up the broad stone steps did we find ourselves plunged into shadow and in need of the little flame to guide our way.

It was like many an Italian house, showing only drab windowed walls to the streets, but its interior was worthy of the word “palazzo,” and I was enthralled by the sheer size and solidity of it as we made our way through vast and polished rooms. I glimsed beautifully frescoed walls, floors of rich marble tile, and a wealth of dark tapestries.