The Borgia Ring Read Online Free PDF Page B

castrates him. Blood fountains into the air, drenching the executioner’s leather jerkin. Wittingham’s body spasms, his back arches, and even through the gag, his screams sound like metal grinding against metal. Tossing the severed flesh into a basket, the executioner bends forward, grabs Wittingham’s hair for leverage and draws his blade the length of the man’s naked torso.
    Wittingham has stopped moving, paralysed by shock. But he is still alive. The executioner reaches into the gaping hole and removes a handful of slimy, grey viscera. He tugs and cuts, holding aloft lengths of intestine before tossing them into the basket. Then he sets to work removing the prisoner’s heart. He cuts around the organ and severs arteries and veins. Only the executioner can tell when the heart has stoppedbeating. The prisoner’s legs and arms still twitch as the vital organ is raised into the air. The executioner adds it to the growing pile of flesh in the tumbril. The leaden silence all around is broken only by the flapping of wings as a crow lands on the edge of the basket and hungrily eyes the grey and red tangle of human remains.
     
    A voice enquired: ‘Father John?’ There was a knock at the door. ‘Father John? The Superior General wishes to see you.’
    My eyes snapped open and the horrors of the night vanished. I was once more in my tiny stone-walled room. The voice, Brother Giovanni’s, was coming from the other side of an oak door a few feet beyond the end of my narrow bed. I leapt up and strode over to it, feeling a tight knot of excitement in the pit of my stomach.
    Giovanni was holding a candle. Its flame flickered wildly in the draught and cast streaks of light and dark across his benign, round face. The priest turned and I followed him. The passageway was black apart from the puddle of light cast by the bare candle but, of course, after five years at the college, I knew my way well. And in the dark, walking behind the good Father Giovanni, I finally shook myself awake, aware now that my dream had not been mere fancy, but a memory. What I had witnessed in the rain of Tyburn had led me here, to this moment. I had seen for myself how the Royal Whore, Elizabeth, treated her citizens. That experience had been the turning point which called me to Rome and the great cause. But, when I left England, I had turned my back on many things. My family in Suffolk were good Catholics, but they had never been militant. They had naively wished for nothing but peace between all faiths. In coming here to Rome, I had been forced to sever all family ties. I would never see my parents or my two younger brothers again.
    The corridor opened on to a wide hallway. Father Giovanni extinguished the candle and placed it on a shelf, then beckoned me to follow him. The corridor was wide and carpeted, a red strip of expensive wool laid over white marble. Huge portraits hung on the walls, a succession of Popes dating back many centuries. Through the windows, I could see it was still dark outside. The place was enveloped in a silence so absolute I could hear my own breathing. At the end of the passageway were double doors of heavy oak. Guards in Vatican livery stood to either side of them. They stared ahead, ignoring us as Father Giovanni rapped on the oak. The doors swung open.
    I had been in this room only once before; on the day a year earlier when, after completing my training, I was received into the Jesuit Order. This was the inner sanctum of the Head of the College, the Superior General, Claudius Acquaviva, fifth leader of the Jesuits. The Order was created almost sixty years earlier by the saintly Ignatius of Loyola who had taught us that the Jesuits were God’s chosen missionaries, our role to serve the great and mysterious purposes of the Lord God Almighty. Our Order had many jobs to perform, I was told, but none more important than the task of returning heretics to the One True Faith.
    The Superior General was a diminutive figure, seated