Blood of the Lamb (4 page)

Slowly, Damiani shook his head.

“Then, unless you return it to me, you cannot live.”

“My Lord.” Damiani’s voice was ragged. He tried to strengthen it. “Do not do this, I beg of you.” Meeting the steady, silent gaze, he said, “It will be futile in any case. I made a copy. I gave it to a friend.”

The dark eyes held him. “No, you did not.”

“I did. With instructions to publish it, in the event of my death.”

“To whom?” A contemplative frown. “Not to Spencer George, I think. He’s been ensconced in the North for some time. And would not, I think, approve of your actions, if he knew.”

“No, he wouldn’t. He is a historian. His view is long.” Damiani said this calmly. He hoped he was wrong; but, for Spencer’s sake, he hoped he was convincing.

“If it’s true you’ve made a copy, you have put a friend in danger. It is not only we who will be searching. Did you think the Vatican would not discover your theft, not chase after what they’ve lost?”

“In truth, my Lord, I thought only they would. I did not think I had anything to fear from our own people.”

A thought seemed to come to the tall man. In a voice equal parts wonder and disappointment, he asked, “Is this why you joined Garibaldi’s army? With this sole intention: to put yourself into a position to raid the Vatican Archives?”

Bound and prone, Damiani had to laugh. “Sir. You think too highly of my cunning. I never understood what I might bring about until I found myself with my troops at the gates of the Vatican. No, my Lord, I joined the Army of the Republic to unite Italy and throw off the papal yoke, not just from the necks of our people, but of all people.”

“Ah, Mario, you laugh. It was that laugh, that excitement, your boundless joy in life, that convinced me you could be one of us. Please, remain one of us. Tell me where the document has gone. Allow me to free you and all will be as before.”

Damiani breathed deeply. He smelled the straw he lay in, saw shadows flicker on the walls. He drew another breath and said, “No.”

“We will find it, Mario. We will find your friend. This is a grand gesture, but it will be in vain.” After a long, silent time, the tall man nodded. “I see. I’m sorry, then. Very sorry.”

He turned and strode to the rear of the stable. A great wave of fear broke over Damiani, banished, to his surprise, almost immediately by this thought:
All men die. In the end, you are a man, Mario, as you were at the beginning.
It calmed him, that realization; and another thought almost made him smile. Margaret would succeed. The death of Mario Damiani would mean something, mean more, even, than his life. Margaret Fuller, well known and wealthy, famously resolute in her endeavors, beyond the reach of both the Pope and the Noantri, would bring about the liberation of his people and the destruction of the Church.
It’s in your hands now, my friend. I know you will not fail.
Damiani was thinking this when the other man returned, carrying a blacksmith’s hammer.

“Mario?”

He waited, but Damiani did not speak.

Finally: “I understand. At least, I will not make you suffer.” He swung the hammer high above his head and down again with rushing force. Pain seared Damiani’s skull and blackness flooded in. Through it, he saw the other man take the torch from the wall and set it to the straw. As the world faded, Damiani had to laugh one last time. Flames, when they were racing to devour you, did, indeed, roar.

3

September 14, 2012

This document, dear friend, will shatter the Church.

Father Thomas Kelly read the words again, absently tapping a pencil on the table, an old seminary habit. A glare from his left and a “shush!” from his right; he grabbed the pencil up guiltily, offered an abashed smile. Serious researchers, brooking no distractions, were clearly to be found in London’s Transcendentalist Archives. Thomas sympathized. He was one himself. How else to explain his joy in rooting through these (rather ill kept, if truth be told) shelves and boxes, searching for a path probably not there to find?

And while he was on sabbatical, too.

Unlike many of his fellow Jesuit scholars, Thomas Kelly enjoyed teaching undergraduates, feeding happily off their enthusiasm and energy; but they required direction to the same strong degree that they resented receiving it. His own student days were barely a decade behind him, and his occasionally headstrong approach to his studies were still a clear enough memory that he couldn’t fault them. Teaching did sometimes feel like sailing into a headwind, though. Exhilarating, but exhausting. Time without classes was restorative, no question.

More so if you actually used it productively, of course. Or, on the other hand, found a way to relax. Maybe he should go down to the Thames and sail a real boat, not a metaphorical one. Instead of spending his days sifting through the disordered collection of papers left behind in 1850 when the American journalist Margaret Fuller sailed for New York. Although, he reminded himself, that journey ended in a shipwreck that took the lives of all the passengers, Fuller included, and most of the crew. So much for real boats.

Thomas glanced at his watch. What he
should
do was stop daydreaming and get back to campus. He had a meeting soon at his office at Heythrop College with a student whose thesis he’d agreed to advise even while theoretically student-free. Why not? His own academic career had received generous help from some of the Church’s top scholars. Now that he was regarded as in those ranks—a standing Thomas viewed with skepticism, but there it was—it was his duty to offer help in the same spirit.

It was not an entirely altruistic gesture, though. What was? On days like this it was good to feel you’d gotten something done. Thomas’s morning had been a waste. The letter with the dire phrase (“shatter the Church,” indeed!) had been written by Mario Damiani, a fiery anti-Papist poet of the Risorgimento—the nineteenth-century uprising of the Italian people against the power of the Church. Thomas considered the idea that any document could be that dangerous flatly absurd. For one thing, Damiani’s politics plus his tendency toward hyperbole suggested he might be putting forth more hope than fact. For another—and Thomas said this as a churchman who’d himself been through a momentous crisis of faith, who loved his Church yet saw it with clear eyes—if the scandals, disasters, and wrong turns of the past decades, or millennia, hadn’t shattered the Church, he suspected there wasn’t much that could.

He was curious about what Damiani thought had that power, though; but his real interest in Damiani grew from another part of this letter. Thomas’s focus as a scholar encompassed the Risorgimento and the other Italian political movements of the time. He’d written a number of groundbreaking papers, and two books, in that area, and when he’d found Damiani’s letter to Fuller the implications made his scholar’s heart pound. The Vatican Archives had been looted in 1849. The letter made it clear Damiani had been involved; in fact it claimed he’d led the troops himself, though Thomas suspected the poet of being a bit of a blowhard. Church scholars had long given up hope of recovering treasures stolen in that raid, partly because Vatican record-keeping had been so imprecise it was hard to know exactly what was gone. But no one, to Thomas’s knowledge, had taken the route he was following: through Garibaldi’s partisans.

He’d struck a vein with this letter: Damiani had sent a copy of something to Margaret Fuller and hidden the original. Whatever it was, the copy no doubt went down with Fuller, and the location of the original must have died with Damiani. But maybe he’d done it more than once, or maybe others had done the same—hidden things or sent them away. A study of Damiani’s papers and those of his circle might, just possibly, lead somewhere new.

It was the lot of historians to interpret events, to stand to the side and study, not participate. Thomas had chosen that role and for the most part was content. But as he gathered his coat, laptop, notepad, briefcase, and errant pencil, he thought—not for the first time—how satisfying it would be to be instrumental, just once. To be a part of history instead of a follower of it. One small discovery, one document found because Thomas Kelly had thought to look where others hadn’t—well, well, if that wasn’t the sin of pride rearing its ugly head. Thomas grinned and, probably to the gratification of the other researchers, left the Transcendentalist Archive.

Heythrop College stood at the other side of Holland Park. Since coming to London from Boston seven years earlier, Thomas had become rather the sedentary scholar. A fast walk, he decided, would do him good, and he trotted down the steps and into the park. The brilliant gold of linden leaves overhead and their crunch underfoot called forth from him a silent prayer of thanks. Thomas loved the change of seasons, both the fact of it and the idea. Yellow leaves, bare branches, pale buds, bursting blooms, then yellow leaves again: it all happened whether you wanted it to or not. If at the height of summer you couldn’t quite believe in winter, if in the depths of winter you thought summer would never be back—it didn’t matter. Flowers, autumn colors, snowfall, they were all on the way; faith not required. For Thomas, that very fact was enough to bolster faith.

He’d traversed the park, reached the campus, and was climbing the stone steps to the doors of Charles Hall when his cell phone rang. Juggling briefcase and office keys, he stuck the phone to his ear. “Thomas Kelly.”

“
Buongiorno
, Thomas. It’s Lorenzo.”

“Father!” Thomas stopped, smiling in delight and surprise. He hadn’t spoken to Lorenzo Cardinal Cossa in three or four months. His own fault, he knew. His former thesis adviser—and spiritual adviser and friend, more to the point—had much to occupy him since his move to the Vatican four years ago. It was Thomas who should have made the effort to keep in better touch. “An unexpected pleasure! How are you?”

“Very, very well, Thomas. And you?”

“I’m fine, thanks.”

“You sound out of breath.”

“Rushing as usual, is all.”

“With your coat unbuttoned and your arms laden.”

“I’m afraid so.”

“You’re busy.”

“Always. But don’t—”

“You’re about to be busier. Thomas, I need you.”

“Of course.” Thomas shifted his load and started up the stairs again. “Tell me what I can do.”

“Here.”

“I’m sorry?”

“Here, Thomas. I need you in Rome. And now. As soon as you can get here. Much is happening. The day has finally come.”

“I—I’m sorry, I’m lost. What day? What’s happened? Is everything all right?”

“Much better than all right. I’ve wanted to call you for the last few months, since Father Bruguès took ill, but of course that wasn’t possible. But now it’s official. Two weeks ago he took a well-earned retirement. Thomas, I’ve been honored with both of his positions. I’ve been made Archivist and Librarian of the Vatican.”

“Oh!” Thomas stopped again, causing a rushing student to plow into him. The student, seeing he was on the phone, mouthed,
Sorry, Father
. Thomas smiled and waved him off. “Oh, that’s wonderful! Congratulations! Both positions—what an honor.”

“And a responsibility. Thank you, Thomas. Now come help me.”

“I— My classes, my students . . .”

“You’re on sabbatical, aren’t you?”

“I’m advising three theses.”

“Our Lord has given us glorious new technologies to allow you to do that from here.”

“I—”

“Thomas. You and I spoke about this back in Boston, when it was barely a dream. This priceless, irreplaceable, and deeply chaotic collection needs a comprehensive stewardship, an approach of methodical care it hasn’t seen yet. The opportunity to participate in that work was why I came to Rome. The chance to take the lead in it has been what I’ve wanted most, for a very long time, and I don’t deny it. Assisting Monsignor Bruguès was the beginning. Now the entire Library has been given into my care. It’s always been my intention that you should have a role.”

“Yes, of course.” Thomas entered the building and turned down the hallway. Outside his office the waiting student jumped to his feet. Thomas held up a delaying finger, unlocked the door, and shut it behind him. “And I hope—”

“A specific role,” Lorenzo went on. “The overall work is important, but there’s a particular task I need you for. Your skills and your knowledge. It’s something we haven’t discussed yet. I was waiting for the right time, and now the time has come.”

“I’m supposed to start teaching again in the spring semester,” Thomas said weakly.

Lorenzo Cossa sighed. “Your obsessiveness as a scholar is the positive side, I suppose, of your . . . lack of flexibility. Thomas, I’m a Cardinal. I’m the Vatican Librarian and Archivist. I can get you reassigned and Heythrop College will be proud, not dismayed. I promise you. Please, come help me here.”

Thomas shrugged out of his coat, looking around. His plants, his pictures, his books and papers. Seven years of settling in. He tossed the coat on the chair. “Yes,” he told the Cardinal. “Of course.”

•   •   •

The call to the priesthood had been the most compelling force in Thomas Kelly’s life. A rangy Irish redhead, he’d found baseball, girls, and garage bands also part of his South Boston youth, and he had a nodding acquaintance with illicitly acquired six-packs and smokable non-tobacco products. But behind it all, beyond the breathless rush of childhood and above the clang and crash of adolescence, hovered something still and silent. Something as calm and deep, endless and inviting, as the sea. Later he would come to understand this as faith; early on, he only knew the peace, the sense of being home, that he felt at Mass. It took him years to recognize most people didn’t feel what he did, even longer to see the path open to him. When he understood, he took to his vocation with joy and gratitude.