And it was more than that. It was a feeling I’d had when meeting the headmistress, even Gina, even Lou. Every time I tried to take a step closer to Rosa I felt as if I were pressing against an invisible, intangible barrier, a force field of words and looks and subtle body language. It was as if all these people had been trying to put me off the search—perhaps without even realizing they were doing it.

But I’m a stubborn bugger if nothing else, and having come so far I wasn’t about to give up. And maybe the wine was making me snappy. I decided to challenge him. “You work for the Order, don’t you?”

“I’ve had some dealings with it.”

“You find it recruits,” I said rudely. I was guessing, but I hit a mark.

He lost his smile. “If I perceive a person in need, and if through the Order I can meet that need—”

“Will you get me that contact or not?”

He nodded curtly. “Tomorrow,” he said. “I’ll send it to your hotel.”

When I got back to my room I booted up the Internet connection again. I found two more emails from Peter. In the first mail, to my surprise, he said he had booked a flight to Rome. He said he thought I needed help.

“I think we’re up against a cult here, George. Some kind of weirdo mother-fixated Marian cult. And it’s nearly as old as the church itself. If the Vatican is siphoning funds they’re going to stonewall . . . Go back to your tame Jesuit,” he wrote. “Maybe he can get me into the Vatican Secret Archives. All Slan(t)ers know that the answers to most of the universe’s mysteries are to be found in there . . .” Well, maybe. I knew that Peter was of course following his own agenda—mine was just incidental to him—and I wondered if there was more to this sudden change of plan.

The second of his emails was more thoughtful.

“We’re so short-lived, George. The Empire is buried a long way down, so far down it defeats the capacity of life to measure it. The oldest recorded human lived about one hundred twenty years. So if you go just a little more than a century deep you would find no human who’s alive today—and yet you’re still just a twentieth of the way back to the emperors.