The Assassini (89 page)

The state funeral—I call it that because in a very real way that’s what it was—for Hugh Driskill was held at St. Patrick’s Cathedral on Fifth Avenue. The limousines jammed the street, the blue sawhorses were in place, New York’s finest in brass-buttoned tunics and shiny leggings with steam snorting from their horses’ nostrils were out in full force, the sun shone like the clear, perfect light of God, the television cameras watched every arrival and made Klammer happy by making him a talking head on the evening news, the Christmas tree towered over the skaters in the Rockefeller Center skating rink, the shoppers put up with the inconvenience of having the avenue blocked off for a few hours on the morning of Christmas Eve. Once everybody had run out of wind and clichés they took my father and a few of the rest of us away together, and the mighty and the powerful went back to
Wall Street and Albany and Washington and London and Rome. A great many of them would gather only a few days hence in Rome for the pomp and circumstance of Callistus’s funeral. The rest of us went only as far as St. Mary’s Church in New Prudence.

I missed Artie Dunn, who would have kept it all in such crystalline perspective. I missed my sister, but that was becoming a familiar ache that would never be cured. I’d be carrying it with me for the rest of my life. And of course I missed Sister Elizabeth. But she was in Rome, she belonged in Rome, and in the back of my mind I saw her there, imagined the bustle and excitement she must be feeling with the passing of Callistus and the final moves in the game that would crown the new winner, the successor to Callistus. I stood in the spare little graveyard, thinking, remembering. The icy wind, the clear, cold sky with the sun dipping toward a rim of silvery clouds that lay like frost on the horizon. The shadows lengthened quickly across the crusty snow. Peaches was getting to do his bit. Margaret Korder was there, some of his old pals, a former Secretary of State, a retired television anchorman, some of his longtime partners, Drew Summerhays, who had seen so many comrades fallen and buried.

While we waited for the casket to be unloaded from the hearse and brought to the graveside, Summerhays stood beside me. He looked somewhat self-conscious, as if we shared a disreputable secret which, I suppose, we did, though I had no idea just how much of it he knew. He smiled at me, the familiar wintry look that survived every season.

“I don’t know what to say,” I said softly. “You’ve taken care of everything, every detail. I have no way of thanking you. I wish I did.”

“Oh, you do, Ben, you do.” The casket passed before us. Peaches was speaking to Margaret Korder. Summerhays seemed to be fighting off the desire to salute the remains of my father. “One day soon it will be my turn. I’ve left a letter saying I want you to handle everything. It won’t be complicated, but there will be some people who will insist on coming and will need special
care. There are instructions for you. You’ll make it all go smoothly. I’ll be watching.” He took my arm as we moved slowly toward the freshly dug grave. My father would lie next to my sister on one side, my mother on the other. “Forget all this, everything we’ve been through since your sister’s death.… Do you hear me, Ben?”

“What are you saying? What are you afraid of now?”

“I’m much too far along the road to be afraid of anything. What am I saying? I’m saying this—when ignorance is bliss, ’tis folly to be wise.”

“Ah. Well, when it comes to the Church, past or present, ignorance is the condition I aspire to. It’s odd, Drew. Lately I’ve been remembering … faith.”

“Ignorance and faith. Made for each other. We’ve been proving that for centuries. The Church is far from finished, you know.”

“That’s the thing that reminds me of faith. If the Church can survive all this …”

“Your father,” he said at last. “This is all very involved, everything about him. It all stemmed from his commitment to the Church.”

“It’s only complicated if you think about it,” I said. “I’m going to spend the rest of my life trying not to.”

“Well, you are doomed to fail, Ben. Your father was a great man. And in all the ways that matter you are very much like him.” The wind was so cold I felt brittle, as if I might crack. “He never forgave himself for the way he’d handled things with you. But he didn’t know how to fix it.”

“It doesn’t matter, Drew. We are what we are, each one of us, the sum total of the past.”

We stood at the graveside and I thought of my sister, all our family, all dead now. I was the only Driskill left. It was a peculiar sensation, seeing the row of graves, seeing the place next to my sister where someday I, too, would seek my rest.

I was trembling and then I heard the sound of a car drawing up behind us, out by the roadside, nearer Father Governeau’s grave. I heard a car door slam, a muffled,
heavy thud. Peaches was saying things about my father, about the Driskills.

I felt tears on my cheeks and I was too confused to know exactly why.

The service ended and my father was lowered into his grave and everyone was moving past me, touching me, mumbling all the things people mumble at such times. Then I was alone beside the grave, the darkness gathering quickly.

“Ben …”

I recognized the voice, of course, and turned, feeling my heart leap against my ribs.

She was coming toward me, the wind swirling the long woolen cape, giving her the look of a swaggering freebooter. The toes of her boots kicked feathers of snow. Her long stride quickly covered the ground from the car parked at the side of the road. Her long thick hair was blown across her face and she raked it away with gloved fingers. She looked at me with that steady, level gaze.

“I’m sorry I’m late. I got lost.…” I was sinking into her eyes, her face, as she spoke. I knew it would happen and there was nothing I could do about it. “It seems we were just here … for Val.” She reached out and took my hand. “How are you, Ben?”

“I’m all right, Elizabeth. You didn’t have to come all this way.”

“I know that.”

“You must be going crazy in Rome … Callistus’s funeral, the cardinals gathering, all of it. You should be setting the odds for the pools.”

She smiled. “D’Ambrizzi’s leading the field at three to five. Indelicato’s troops are confused and in disarray. The way things are going lots of people think it’s two to one D’Ambrizzi drops dead just before the election.…”

“Saint Jack’s main chance.”

She shrugged her broad shoulders, her smile lingering. “It doesn’t really make any difference, does it? Not really?”

“Doesn’t it? Funny thing for you to say. How long can you stay?” In my mind I saw her walking back to the
car, heading back to Kennedy, her courtesy call behind her.

“That’s pretty much up to you,” she said.

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

“I’m where I want to be, Ben. I’m here.”

“You’ve thought it through?” It took me a long time to get it out. I was afraid to believe my ears.

“Ben, that’s a slightly dumb question.” She slid her arm through mine and squeezed me to her. “Now I’m afraid you’re going to have to put up or shut up. As we say in the Church.” There was another slow smile breaking like a perfect morning across her face.

“Well, I’ll be damned,” I said more to myself than to her.

She was pulling me along. Her cheeks were pink with the cold. I heard the wind whistling in my ears. In the midst of death I seemed to be coming to life. Had I heard my sister’s ghostly, joyous laughter on the wind?

“I have a lot to tell you,” I said.

It was dark by then. We were walking toward the lights and the warmth, toward the little church.

PACE

THE FIRST SACRIFICE
THE ASSASSINI
PRAETORIAN
THE WIND CHILL FACTOR

Thomas Gifford is the
New York Times
bestselling author of
The Assassini, Praetorian, The Wind Chill Factor
, and
The First Sacrifice
. He died in 2000.