Gospel (27 page)

“Whoooooo!” he cried, laughing, moaning, screaming in agony simultaneously at the cold. He snapped his fingers for Lucy to follow.

“You wanna carry me?”

“Chivalry is a Christian idea,” he yelled back, rushing to the shore.

O'Hanrahan, going second, rolled over the side and lost his balance, soaking himself completely. He bobbed up instantly in the icy water, emitting a shocked howl from his depths. Lucy smiled despite herself and even Rabbi Hersch, reaching the shore, bent over in unsympathetic laughter. O'Hanrahan beckoned for Lucy to jump in and take his hand. This is an adventure, Lucy told herself, hoping to make these next few moments tolerable. A wave hit the side of the boat and splashed up in her face, so figuring she wouldn't be much more wet she jumped into the water …

Excruciation! Misery!

Holding the professor's hand for support and her knapsack high above the water, they waded to the pebbly shore ten yards away. The rabbi peeled off his life jacket and gave it a fling back to the boat; O'Hanrahan did the same. Sweeney didn't catch them, but fished them into the boat with a pole. Lucy had tied hers so tight that she and the rabbi spent a few minutes untying the knot.

“I'm freezing!”

“You take Girl Scouts? Whadya call this Gordian knot here, Jesus H. Christ…”

“Hurry!” she cried, clutching her knapsack and the bag with the mail, her fingers turning blue.

Soon the rabbi had pitched her life jacket back to the boat and Mr. Sweeney of Ballycastle, now cursing no one but himself for this folly, sped away back to the mainland. Lucy, O'Hanrahan, and Rabbi Hersch walked toward the hill and the black-robed stranger who did not move to greet or help or guide them.

“Jesuit hospitality?” muttered Lucy.

“Just wait until you get inside this joint,” O'Hanrahan replied.

As they approached the priest, Lucy saw that he was youngish, in his thirties; his beardless, waxen face did not seem to notice the rain streaming from his uncovered head and there were dark circles under his eyes as if in a permanent state of malnourished contrition. He viewed them noncommittally.

“We'll go now to the chapel,” he said, turning and walking before them.

Across the heather they made their way to a gravel path as the rain pelted them and the wind blew through them. Pneumonia, thought Lucy calmly, and at the very least, flu. Ahead, at last, was a series of humble-looking, whitewashed stone croft-cottages, enclosed in a declivity, surrounded by gnarled, windblown trees and scrub. A second priest met them at the door—the man who had called on them in the Crown. Lucy took the mail out of the bag and handed it to them as cheerfully as she could, glimpsing the names on the envelopes: Rev. D. Quinn, S.J., and Rev. T. O'Reilly, S.J., and a few letters for a Father General, F. Theophilus Creech, one of which had a three-tiered miter and some inscription … But the letters were snatched from her before she could study further.

“Welcome,” said the young priest without much feeling, “to the Chapel of the Holy Savior. I'm Father Quinn, if you need anything. I must admit, I believed you would come alone, Father.”

While O'Hanrahan invented explanations, Lucy began to make out features in the dimness: she was in a foyer, not much warmer than outside, and through double doors there was a small stone-walled chapel. Behind them was a large dark wooden door that opened creakingly to reveal a short hallway with doors at carefully measured intervals; it could have been a small prison but, Lucy understood, this was a building of six monastic cells. The rabbi was shown to the end chamber and Lucy to the chamber across from his, and O'Hanrahan catty-corner to hers.

Father Quinn reached in and turned on the light, a small low-watt bulb from the ceiling. “The generator goes off at 7:30 after the supper is prepared,” he said tonelessly, “but we'll get you a candle. The heat will be on until then, and I suggest you put your wet shoes and clothes on the radiator right away. I see you have a watch. Supper is at six in the refectory. There is a brief prayer service in the chapel but we ask you not to attend, being a woman.” Then he left and closed the door.

There was a cot. A bedside table with a Bible and a drawer for one's very few belongings; there was a table and a chair against the wall, which had a small five-inch-wide gothic slit for a window. After draping and arranging her shoes, socks, jeans, and borrowed winter coat along the barely warm radiator, she changed into her dry clothes and lay down on the cot.

A nun I could be maybe, but never a monk, she thought flippantly. Been a monk ten minutes and I already hate it. Jesuit sexist pigs. She looked at her watch and saw it was 4:45 and decided she would take a nap, hoping some internal clock would wake her in time to eat.

It was Rabbi Hersch who woke her by knocking on the door.

“Dinnertime,” he said softly. Lucy sat up and for a moment didn't know where she was. The rabbi opened the door and looked around it. “Paddy's been praying and helping at a Mass for the last hour, if you can believe it.”

“No,” she said, “but I can't believe any of it.”

“Now I want you to listen, little girl, to all the claptrap talked at dinner and be sure to tell me what you learn.”

Lucy looked at him oddly.

“It'll be in Latin mostly,” he added.

“But you … you mean you don't—”

“When should a Jew need Latin, hm? I can read it but I can't speak it at a clip. That's where you come in.”

“And that's why you wanted me along?”

“That's right.”

Another pause. “So you don't trust Dr. O'Hanrahan to get the scroll and deal with these people?” she asked tentatively.

“Paddy, I trust. These people I don't trust.”

Momentarily glad to have some rapport with the rabbi, she commented, “You know, sir, when I handed in the mail to these guys, I saw they had S.J. after their names, Society of Jesus, Jesuits. I find it odd these two priests, Quinn and O'Reilly, would go through seven years of schooling and rigorous education to be a Jesuit father only to serve this Father Creech fellow as sextons. It's a bit of a waste of Jesuit manpower, isn't it?”

“Yeah, but these don't appear to be your average Jesuits, huh?”

Lucy ran a brush through her hair, then accompanied the rabbi down the hall, stepping softly. They passed the chapel where the two attendant priests and O'Hanrahan, in vestments now, were at the Communion table, incense smoldering in the stationary thurible, the candles flickering. At the center of the rite, she assumed, was Father Creech, an ancient, drawn man, utterly bald but with gray flaring eyebrows that gave him the appearance of an owl. Rabbi Hersch and Lucy lingered out of sight in the shadowy doorway. “…
Et dimitte nobis debita nostra sicut et nos dimittimus debitoribus nostris,
” intoned the elder priest.

“The Lord's Prayer,” Lucy whispered to the rabbi.

“Big help you are. Everyone knows that one.”

Soon the benediction was given and the ceremony was finished. The paten and chalice were retired, the thurible extinguished, and then the candles. The three fathers and O'Hanrahan emerged and Father Creech looked unsmilingly upon Lucy and Rabbi Hersch as they were introduced to him. “Blessings upon you,” he said seriously as he noticeably didn't offer his hand. “Shall we to the refectory?” he said, turning in that direction.

O'Hanrahan, not breaking character, placidly followed.

“‘Shall we to the refectory,'” imitated the rabbi to Lucy as they followed the others. Lucy proceeded slowly, pausing to squint into the chapel and read the Latin motto above the altar:
Causam facti in nostro corde perpetue concludimus.

Lucy looked quizzical.

“Mean something to you?” asked Rabbi Hersch.

“I've read that somewhere before…”

The Father General presided at the head of the long table. Father O'Reilly lit the central candles and turned off the low-watt bulb. Father Quinn went on to the kitchen to procure the slight meal: hard bread, a sliced, boiled leek, fibrous and metallic, a mold-ridden homemade blue cheese that was gritty, and a small, wallet-sized slab of boiled fish.

Father Creech began the blessing. In Latin he praised the beneficence of the Lord, the glories and treasures of the Roman Catholic Church, the One True Church, etc., and how this meal was one more sign of bounty …

The rabbi peeked at Lucy, scowling.

Lucy looked back at him. They both looked at O'Hanrahan.

O'Hanrahan rolled his eyes at them.

The long recitative went on another five minutes. Never let us fully enjoy Your blessings, said Father Creech in high-toned, rounded Latin phrases, never let us take for granted any morsel until our mission is completed on this earth, the restoration of the supreme omnipotent church headed by His Holiness, Pontifex Maximus, Bishop of Rome, and the reunification of the Church Triumphant under him, Vicar of Christ, Christ's Proxy on this Earth …

Lucy peeked again at Rabbi Hersch, who was sneaking a sliver of fish. The Latin had lost him a few paragraphs ago, she figured.

Then at last: “…
in nomine Jesu Hominum Salvator, Nazarenus, Rex Iudaeorum.
Amen.”

The rabbi winced at the King-of-the-Jews bit, as Lucy and the others began their meal in silence. Father Quinn rose to fetch a pitcher of acidic-tasting water, which Lucy decided was rainwater. With each gesture, Father Quinn turned to Father Creech and asked
“Permittetis?”
—asking his permission, but in the plural. Some equivalent, Lucy figured, of the “Royal We.” Father Creech was the embodiment of the Order itself. Father Creech nodded his head solemnly to permit his minions to do what they asked, pour the water, take up the plates, and he even gave the men permission to eat this stingy offering. Lucy saw that ultimate, unquestioning obedience was the foremost ritual of this dinner. Again, she looked at the rabbi, who chewed his paltry portion miserably.

O'Hanrahan said quietly, “If I might speak, Father—”

“Populus Dei est Romanus et lingua est Latina, Pater.”

Informed that Latin was the only language going, O'Hanrahan began again, first asking pardon, and then if he might address an issue. Father Creech nodded. Lucy watched the Father General cut his tiny fish into ever-so-small bites and she felt revulsion as his tongue went out to meet the food like some reptile, savoring each tiny, precious morsel religiously.

O'Hanrahan in fluid Latin asked when he might view the wondrous scroll that they both valued so highly.

Perhaps after the evening prayers, answered Father Creech.

O'Hanrahan went on to say that the scroll, from what was known about it, was very difficult and the language obscure. He would need possession of the scroll in a number of the world's libraries in order to unravel its divine mysteries.

Father Creech was noncommittal. Then after a pause during which he sipped a sip of water—it occurred to Lucy then that he was counting his sips as well as his bites to conform to some holy number, twelve perhaps—the father said he could not part permanently with such a valuable scroll, its price being dear for them and it clearly being a manifestation of Divine Will that they should have received it while so many others wanted it. All to the Glory of the Pope, Christ on this Earth …

But it may be inauthentic, suggested O'Hanrahan.

Surely it is a pseudo-gospel, Father Creech suggested, surely it cannot be by the real St. Matthias as rumored.

“Si inventum erit inutile,”
O'Hanrahan next switched to the future less vivid tense and then to the subjective contrary. Lucy's head hurt trying to keep up; she noticed Fathers Quinn and O'Reilly were exercised too by O'Hanrahan's showing off at the outer fringes of grammar.

O'Hanrahan said it was his every intention to safeguard Father Creech's possession of the scroll, and all he required was to take it to the mainland—accompanied, of course, by one of the junior fathers—and to photograph it. From these photographs, O'Hanrahan explained, he could translate this mysterious artifact.

Why not bring the necessary equipment here? suggested Father Creech.

Lucy saw that O'Hanrahan was stumped briefly, but he recovered: because, he said, if the photos do not come out in sufficient focus, we will have to redo them. There is a photo lab, surely, in Ballycastle. The same day we make the photographs we can develop them and see that they suit our needs. Then, simply, Father Quinn or Father O'Reilly can return the scroll to Rathlin Island.

If it should require that, Father Creech assented, feeling—Lucy divined—papal in his extravagance. Father Creech further proposed that after dinner his guests should discuss the matter less formally in his study. Father O'Reilly was dismissed to go make a fire, and there were Latin permissions granted, a kneeling, a kissing of the Father General's ring, a rote benediction, before the lesser father scurried away to do his master's bidding.

Lucy looked at the rabbi, who was stifling a yawn, and then down at her plate. There was a faint Roman numeral above the simple blue line that ran the circumference of the plate: MDCCLXXIII.

Then suddenly the Father General stood, and the others stood after him. There was a benediction of several minutes, then following many scrapings and permissions sought, O'Hanrahan, Rabbi Hersch, and Lucy followed Father Creech to his study. Father Quinn and Father O'Reilly in a display of abasement crept from the study after completing the fire in the hearth.

Lucy surveyed the library, the warmest room yet revealed in the complex, walls of shelves of centuries-old leather-bound tomes, a worn carpet for the stone floor, several chairs by the fire, and a large window that rattled in its sill, shaken by the wind outside.

“Please, child,” said Father Creech, speaking now in a baritone English. He pointed to the window with a gnarled, skeletal finger, “Look out upon the origins of this holy place.”