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CHAPTER 1

Thy kingdom come.

APRIL 3RD, 1492

Have the Gates of Hell been opened? Shrieking demons are swarming all over the outside walls of the convent of Santa Lucia, everywhere the light of their lanterns reaches. It's unusual to find so many demons gathered in one place. They are grotesque and misshapen, like all the demons Brother Girolamo has ever seen. Stories abound about demons that can take beautiful human forms for the purposes of seduction and deceit, but if there is truth in them, God has never revealed it to him. He sees only the monstrous and misshapen. Some are almost human, others seem twisted out of animal forms. One, swinging from an unlit sconce beside the doorway, has an eagle's head in place of a phallus — both mouth and beak are open, emitting howls of mocking laughter. Others flaunt all-too-human genitals, of both genders. One, perched above the door, is pulling open the lips of its vagina with both hands. Hands, head, and vagina, are huge, while the legs, arms, and body are tiny. Taken together, the demons remind Girolamo of the gargoyles serving as waterspouts on Milan cathedral, except that those are the colour of innocent stone, while these are the colours of all-too- guilty flesh.

He glances at the two monks flanking him. There is an old pun on the word Dominicani where, instead of its true meaning, "follower of the rule of St Dominic," the word is split into two in Latin, "Domini cani," the hounds of God. Brother Silvestro, short and swarthy, the greying hair around his tonsure tightly curled, is like an old grizzled guard dog, and Brother Domenico, tall, broad shouldered, with the pink cheeks of youth, is like an overenthusiastic puppy. Brother Girolamo sometimes sees himself, with his long nose and his ability to sniff out demons, as a Pointer in God's service. "Anything?" he asks.

Brother Domenico frowns, holding his own lantern high. The swinging light and shadows ripple over demon wings, scales, and fur. "I think I can hear something — it sounds like distant laughter. It's very unsettling. I can see why the nuns might be disturbed." A demon with stub-wings and a snake's tail hanging from the eaves pulls open its beak with both hands and roars close by Domenico's head. His peaceful countenance remains unchanged. Another, scaled all over, nips at him with its dog's head. Girolamo makes an irritated gesture towards them, and they shrink away. Good, they still fear him.

Brother Silvestro is gazing intently down at one that is fondling itself with one hand as it tweaks at the edge of Silvestro's black robe with the other. "I don't see or hear anything, but I feel an evil presence here," he says.

The convent echoes with the demonic laughter. Girolamo is more inclined to cry. Domenico and Silvestro are the best of his brothers, the most sensitive to such things. The fiends are all around them, visibly, audibly, palpably present, and Domenico could perhaps hear something, while Silvestro could almost feel a presence. No wonder the forces of Hell gain ground so rapidly in the world when they can do so unobserved. He himself had dismissed the rumours from Santa Lucia at first. Hysteria among nuns is much more common in the world than demonic incursions. He is only here now because the First Sister was so persistent. Why are the forces of Hell unleashed here? Why is this little Dominican convent on the south bank of the Arno of such interest to demons at this time? It's true that the little commonwealth of Florence is home to many sinners, but he has never seen so many demons gathered anywhere. If he banishes them immediately, he will never know. Better to let them rampage just a little longer while he investigates.

"Is there something here?" Silvestro asks.

"Yes. Just as the First Sister told me, it's full of demons," Girolamo says. He rings the bell, which cuts clearly through the renewed demonic bellowing. "God is truly guiding your senses." If feebly, he does not add. Few people seem aware of the presence of demons at all. Silvestro and Domenico at least feel something. He looks at them as encouragingly as he can, his good honest brothers, each with a lantern in one hand and a flask of holy water clutched tight in the other. They look back at Girolamo with identical expressions of expectant trust.

With a grating sound that rises above the clamour of the demons, a nun draws back bars inside and opens the door a crack. "Thanks be to God. Who's there so late?" she asks, and then recognizes him. "Oh, Brother Girolamo!" She opens the door wide. "Please come in, Brothers."

He strides in, passing under the demon over the door, who leers down at him. Inside is a cloister, stone arches supporting a covered walkway running around a central garden square. It must be pleasant enough ordinarily, but right now it is as demon-infested as the rest of the place. He takes a step to the right, stops, and takes a step to the left. The wardress stares.

"What are you doing?" Domenico asks, his voice full of trust in Girolamo. Domenico is intelligent, if young and overenthusiastic. He is also deeply devout. And he has seen enough to make him believe utterly in Girolamo's powers. Domenico's unswerving faith in him can at times exceed his own faith in himself. He looks into that deep reservoir of faith and trust in his brother's eyes and doubts for a moment — is it right for a man to trust anything human that much? Well, he would with God's aid endeavour to be worthy of Domenico's trust.

"I'm hoping they'll try to prevent me going in one direction, so I'll know where they don't want me to go," he explains. "But they don't seem eager to cooperate. We'll just have to search the place." He turns to the wardress. "Can you take us to the First Sister? I don't want to cause a panic among the nuns by going among the cells unheralded."

"Wait here, I'll wake her," the wardress says, bustling off. He can barely hear her answer over the racket the demons are making. There is clearly something here they don't want him to find. Interesting.

Girolamo sits on the wall of the cloister and folds his hands in his sleeves. The clean green scent of medicinal and culinary herbs rises up around him from the garden behind. His brother monks sit down beside him. The sobbing laughs of the demons rise all around, but they keep away now, scuttling from shadow to shadow catching the lantern-light along the edges of his vision. He ignores them as best he can and waits with what patience he can muster. Patience is not one of the gifts God has granted him. Rather the opposite. He has always burned, as long as he can remember. He burned as a child in Ferrara, wanting answers to questions his father and mother could not answer, and his grandfather only sometimes. Then he burned for education, for a girl once, which he does not like to remember, and then for God and the life of dedication and worship his parents refused him. He fled towards God. But even after he became a Dominican he burned, not so much the hard battle with lust, but with ambition. Pride. The everyday reality of the monastery was a disappointment. He burned then for more purity, more severity, more preaching, more rigor. He burned always with a desire to be closer to God.

He breathes deeply, and tries to identify the scents. Rosemary, comfrey, melissa, something sharp — a little bat-eared demon interrupts him by bellowing in his ear, and he banishes it impatiently with a gesture, drawing it through his fingers back into Hell where it belongs.

The wardress comes scurrying back, the First Sister following behind. He stands up. "It is very late, what brings you now?" the First Sister asks grumpily. Her headgear is a little askew. They keep the divine office properly here. She would have gone to bed after the Night Office at midnight, to sleep until Dawn Praise at three.

"You asked me to come across the river to exorcise your demons," he says, trying to make his voice soft and gentle. He knows his Ferrarese accent sounds always harsh to the Florentines, so sometimes they hear his most ordinary speech as roughly intended. "You told me they plagued you after dark. I am here to rid you of them."

"Brother Girolamo can see demons," Silvestro puts in.

"Do you see them here?" the First Sister asks. "You said it was imagination, hysteria, as if I can't tell the difference after all these years."

"I was mistaken, Mother." He bows his head in humility. "I did trust your belief and experience enough to come to see for myself. You're right. You have an infestation of demons. I could hardly avoid seeing them, they are so many." He points at a dog-faced one with spikes on its back that is peering at the First Sister from behind a pillar. It darts away from his pointing finger. "There is one, and there —" A snaking shape, vanishing as he points at it. "And there, and there." His finger stabs at them as they disappear into the shadows. "I am not surprised your sisters heard them, for they are shrieking and yammering so that my ears ring with their jeering. What puzzles me is why they are here, what's drawing them, or who."

"I'm sure all my girls are well behaved," the First Sister says, drawing herself up.

"It needn't be misbehaviour. They sometimes bother the especially holy, because they hate them more," Girolamo says. "Something must be attracting them here. It may be one of your nuns, or something else. Do you have any new sisters?"

"Not very new — we have four novices, but the newest had been here for months before this began."

"I'd like to walk through the convent before I banish the demons, to see if I can learn why they came," he says.

"It's true that you can banish them?" she asks, relief visible in the sudden relaxation of her shoulders. She isn't an old woman, Girolamo realises, perhaps no older than his own forty years. It was anxiety that had lined her face.

"God has given that power to me," he says, stiffly.

"What do you want to do? Sister Clarice said you wanted to search?" She spares half a glance for the wardress. Girolamo does not.

"I want to find what attracts them. Come with me — we will all search together."

"I cannot see the demons," she says, uncertainly.

"No, but you can see that I and my brothers do nothing wrong," he explains. "Show us the place."

She begins to lead the way along the walkway of the cloister. "This is the chapel," she says, at the first doorway. He holds his lantern high and looks inside. There is an altar, with a single wax candle burning before a plain wooden crucifix. On the wall is a fresco he cannot make out in the wavering light. The floor is tiled in red and black, a repeating pattern. The room smells of the candle, with a faint undertone of incense. There are no demons.

"That's one place clear at least," he says.

"I never feared them in the chapel," the First Sister says, and the wardress nods.

"You need not fear now. They will not harm you when I am with you," he says. Earlier the First Sister had told him a tale of overturned inkpots, spoiled bread, spilled soup, and similar little misfortunes. He felt compassion for her, doing her best to keep her little realm together, as he did his at San Marco, but without his resources.

"Some of the girls have been pinched black and blue, and when I came back from visiting you this afternoon, I was told that Sister Vaggia heard a trumpet blow in her ear as she was coming down the stairs, and tumbled," she says.

"I am with you now," he says, calmly. "Was Sister Vaggia badly hurt?"

The First Sister shakes her head. "Bruises and scrapes. But she could have been killed."

"Not likely," he says. "God does not seem to allow demons power to do true harm." She leads on again. "We don't know why God permits them into the world at all." At the end of the cloister is a set of stone stairs leading upwards, probably the stairs down which the sister had fallen. The foot of the stairs is barred with demons, one like a skeleton, another with one long arm and one short one, another covered with multiple breasts everywhere beneath the chin. They scatter as he advances on them. "But their power to harm seems limited, unless they have human help. Then they can be truly dangerous."

"If they possess someone, you mean?" the First Sister inquires as she leads them up the stairs.

"Yes, or if someone enters into a compact with them."

"Surely no one would do such a thing?" she asks, sounding shocked at the idea.

The demons set up their screeching again, perhaps trying to drown out what he is saying. He raises his voice a little, though he knows none of the others can hear the demonic screams and laughter that hang behind his words. "Strange as it is to think, some will risk eternity for Earthly power."

"And can the demons give such power?" she asks. They follow the First Sister down a corridor lined with cells. He can smell tallow candles, though none are lit now. She opens each door as they come to it, and he looks in. Each one holds a handful of demons, darting away from his light, and a single sleeping nun, on a straw mattress beneath a devotional painting. Some of them sleep quietly, others move restlessly in their sleep.

"They promise it, and sometimes it seems they fulfil those promises," he says, quietly, so as not to wake the sleeping sisters. "You only have to look about you at the world and see who has the earthly power to know that such compacts do occur."

"But God —" Silvestro protests.

"God allows us free will, and allows the demons to work in the world. We have to make an active choice to seek God and what is good, and we have to repeat that choice over and over. If the temptations weren't actually tempting, it wouldn't be much of a choice, would it? The vanities of this world are empty, we know that, but we also know how hard it is to fast when a feast is spread before us. God put Adam in a garden where everything was fitting and there was only a single wrong choice, and still he was tempted and fell. Since then, we have lived in a world where we are surrounded by temptations and there are more wrong choices than right. But we can still win through to God, through his own grace and sacrifice."

Silvestro does not answer. He is looking, as far as Girolamo can tell, at the bare arm of a young nun, flung out in her innocent sleep. The First Sister closes the door and they move on. The demons are everywhere, lurking along the edges of the light, but they seem to pay no more attention to one nun than to another.

"Is there nothing we can do against them?" the First Sister asks, as they come to the end of the corridor.

"Prayer," says Domenico, confidently.

"Prayer works if we are firm in our faith and hold tightly to it," Girolamo clarifies. "If we fear, or waver, as is so easy to do, then they can find a way past. But they hate prayer, and the name of our Saviour."

She opens the door to her own rooms. He notes a writing desk, a prie-dieu, her hastily disturbed bed, and the scent of lavender. The next door is to the novice dormitory, where four girls lie sleeping. "That's Sister Vaggia," the First Sister whispers, gesturing to a big-boned girl with a bruise visible down the side of her face. A demon is sitting boldly on her feet. It has a man's face with a pointed beard, but the breasts of a woman. Everything beneath its waist is covered in scales. It shrieks piercingly and then laughs in Girolamo's face as the girl wakes, terrified.

"Begone," Girolamo says to it. The girl screams then, and the others, less sensitive to demons, wake and scream with her.

"Hush, girls, hush," the First Sister says, uselessly.

The demon slides between Vaggia's lips and speaks with her mouth. "Mock monk, false friar, hell sunk, hell fire, so high, fly free, hell's gate, see be, other brother, burn and smother —"

As soon as he sees the demon disappear into the girl, Girolamo hands his lantern to the wardress and steps forward into the room. His shadow falling before him in the light of the three lanterns looks as monstrous in shape as the demons. His flapping sleeves look like bat wings spread out at his sides as he raises his arms to take hold of the nun's shoulders. He is uncomfortably aware of her young body beneath the thin nightgown covering it. She struggles and strikes out at the crucifix around his neck. "Friar Agira!" she shouts. "Friar Gira-affe, Giraffo! Gyra-tion! Friar Agitator!" She strikes him hard in the chest as she deforms his name over and over.

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Excerpted from "Lent"
by .
Copyright © 2019 Jo Walton.
Excerpted by permission of Tom Doherty Associates.
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