The Poet Prince (15 page)

The envelope screamed at Maureen to open it for the two excruciating hours that she remained in her place to sign books and talk to readers. It was impossible not to be distracted by what the contents might represent. Vittoria hadn’t exactly been warm or sincere with her birthday wishes, and yet she claimed friendship with both Bérenger, the love of her life, and Destino, her trusted teacher.

Once the final book had been signed, Maureen rushed to the await
ing Town Car, which would take her back to Fifth Avenue. She used the nail scissors in her purse to cut open the top of the envelope. Carefully she extracted what appeared to be a doubled-up newspaper. She unfolded it to discover that it was an advance copy of a British tabloid, due to go on sale in the morning, judging by the date. The headline screamed:

Vittoria Declares: Sinclair Oil Heir Is the Father of My Baby!

A photograph splashed across the remainder of the front page. It depicted Vittoria, wrapped in the arms of Bérenger Sinclair.

“It’s a lie, Maureen.”

Maureen tried not to cry over the transatlantic connection as she explained the deeply upsetting events of her birthday to Bérenger. He denied everything.

“I know Vittoria, but I did not sleep with her. And you may not believe this, but I have no desire to do so. I love
you
. I want to be with
you
.”

Maureen sighed, still holding back the tears. “That may be true
now
. But we were separated for a long time . . .”

“We were separated because you requested it. I gave you that space—and waited for you.”

Maureen couldn’t argue that point. She had been the stubborn one, determined to keep Bérenger at a safe distance in the early days of their relationship. Then, she was still afraid of the powerful bond that was building between them. It threatened to overwhelm her, and she bolted. They were apart for almost a year.

“The timing is perfect in terms of the age of that child,” she continued. “He would have been conceived when you and I were separated.”

Bérenger snapped with the stress, more than he meant to. This revelation of Vittoria’s had blindsided him and he was still reeling from the
shock. “You are so ready to condemn me over this, even though I am telling you as emphatically as I can that Vittoria means nothing to me and never will.
You
are the only woman in the world for me. The love of my life. My heart and soul.”

“What about the photos on the cover of the
News of the World
? And the
Daily Mail
?”

Bérenger answered with exaggerated patience. “First of all, there is only one photo, and I am
hugging
her in it. I am not having sex with her. It was taken in Cannes in front of about five hundred people. I was there with my brother representing the family’s interests in an independent film about Scotland’s mystical heritage. Vittoria was there too; our families are long acquainted. She’s bloodline.”

“She’s
what
?”

“Didn’t you know? Vittoria is a bloodline princess. Her mother is an Austrian baroness, from the Hapsburg lineage. The baroness was the one who secured my access to the museum in Austria for my research on the Spear of Destiny. Her father is of the Buondelmonti, an ancient and very wealthy family, originally from Tuscany. Vittoria and I have run in the same esoteric and social circles in Europe.”

His explanation just made things worse. Much worse. Not only was Vittoria one of the world’s most beautiful women, she was also the daughter of a fascinating noble heritage. Both sides of her family belonged to bloodlines that claimed descent from the union between Jesus and Mary Magdalene. Not incidentally, these families—including the Sinclairs—were some of the wealthiest and most influential in the world. Bérenger and Vittoria had more in common than not. The fact made Maureen feel like a common outsider.

“Vittoria claims to know Destino.” It was gut-wrenching to think that this woman had a claim on Maureen’s beloved teacher too.

“That’s entirely possible. I didn’t know about Destino when I last saw her, so I can’t tell you that. Maureen, listen to me. I have had no contact with Vittoria since that photo was taken, which leaves us with several important questions.”

“Which are?”

“Why is she lying about this? And why did she make such a show out of coming personally to you?” Bérenger paused for a moment, and Maureen could hear him breathe heavily as he thought about it. He continued.

“I don’t know the answer to either of those questions, but I swear to you, I will find them as soon as I can. And I am so sorry that you have been dragged into this. But in the meantime, I need you to believe in me. I love you. And I’m not going to let anything come between us, and I pray that you won’t either.”

“Okay.” Maureen whispered the weak reply. She was exhausted and hurt by the events of her birthday and needed time to think. The following afternoon on the airplane, she would torment herself all the way across the Atlantic with possible scenarios, most which featured the love of her life entangled in the impossibly long legs of the world’s most sultry supermodel.

Headquarters of the Confraternity of the Holy Apparition
Vatican City
present day

F
ELICITY DE PAZZI
gritted her teeth as she drove the sharpened nail deeper into her left palm. It was bleeding more profusely now, which would give her the dried crust and the scabbing she would need tonight. Timing was everything with the stigmata. They required a few hours to scab over, so that the wounds would bleed anew when she ripped them open during her public appearance. The left hand would need an hour or so before she could wrap it and begin the process of impalement on the right hand.

Felicity saw the first traces of stigmata when she was in school back in England. She had been having visions more regularly, falling to the ground in ecstasies when the Holy Spirit would take over her body.
The headmistress, however, was neither convinced nor amused by
what she referred to as Felicity’s fits. It was after she had been sent to counseling and was being threatened with expulsion that the stigmata first made themselves known.

On the day that the bloody wounds began to appear in Felicity’s palms, she wept with the joy of it. Finally, here was physical proof that she was born to be God’s instrument. Everyone would be forced to believe her now; how could they deny it? It was there for anyone with eyes.

And yet, when Felicity showed her classmates, the headmistress, and subsequently the counselor, they all looked at her with a mixture of pity and horror. No one was able to see her stigmata.

Felicity was devastated at first and sobbed until she choked with the violence of her rage and disappointment. How could God have betrayed her so? How was it possible that she saw the wounds of Christ so clearly on her own hands, but the others did not?

And in the darkest hour of her most agonizing night, Felicity understood. The people around her were mostly godless; they were certainly not gifted with the holy sight as she was. Of course they could not see a vision of something so sacred that it was bestowed upon her specifically by her Lord Jesus Christ. It was her own special gift, shared between her and her savior. And yet these common people were the ones she would have to reach if she was going to assume her place as the Lord’s special child. And it was in that realization that she knew what she would have to do.

She would have to help the ignorant masses to see the bleeding wounds left by sharpened iron nails so that there would be no further doubt from any of them.

Felicity began that night in the bathroom of her dormitory. She did not have access to any nails immediately, so instead she stole the blade from a razor out of the toiletry kit belonging to one of her roommates. The razor wasn’t optimum as it required some work and artistry to create the look of a hole left by a nail, but she made decent work of it. Unfortunately, she also fainted in the first attempt. This led to her expulsion from the school, followed by her hasty return to her family in Italy.

She had perfected her technique now, after more than ten years of practice, perfected all of it. When she appeared before the growing crowds who were coming to see her, the passion poured from her and she commanded the attention of all in the room without fail. When she spoke as herself, she was charismatic and convincing. Fanatical, yes, but it was hard to turn away from her if you were inclined to believe
that God was to be feared and that there was limited time to be saved. But it was when she spoke directly to the Holy Spirit that the drama began, making her infamous throughout Rome and causing lines to form at the door of the confraternity for hours before the meetings began. It was when she engaged the Holy Spirit that Felicity fell to the ground and writhed horribly, when the stigmata opened in her hands and began to bleed. At other times, the voice of Santa Felicita herself poured from her in a type of ecstatic possession.

There were even a number within the confraternity who referred to her as Saint Felicity, so convinced were they that this little prophetess was the true messenger of God.

Felicity, now expert in what it took to gain the attention of those who came to hear her, could manipulate a crowd within minutes. And she knew just how to make the ragged holes in her flesh so that the godless ones could finally understand how she suffered with her visions. For Felicity, this suffering was all-important. To be a prophetess for God was the task of a martyr, one that required agony and constant penitence. It was only through mortification of the flesh, total chastity, and an absolute commitment to the physical experience of suffering that one could be certain that the visions were pure.

People needed to understand just how much pain was required to hear God clearly.

Paris
present day

M
AUREEN MET TAMMY
at her hotel in Paris, a quiet little boutique inn that was Maureen’s home in the French capital. She loved this hotel, which existed in what was once an outbuilding on the eastern edge of the Louvre palace complex. It was charming, untouristed, and within walking distance to nearly anything that mattered to her.

With the picture windows of her hotel room open, the gargoyles appeared to be jumping from the neighboring medieval church and into the room. Each gargoyle had a unique personality—some fierce, some comical. All of them were her friends, and she felt strangely protected by them as she slept under their gaze. The alley that separated the buildings was so narrow that she could very nearly reach out and touch her Gothic watchdogs. This was Maureen’s favorite feature of the rooms on this side of the hotel.

She sat on the bed on the afternoon of her arrival, looking out the window at a springtime shower in Paris. She was waiting for Tammy, who was in the adjacent room, getting dressed.

When it rained, the gargoyles spit. Maureen marveled at the engineering of the medieval architects who created the gargoyles not as decoration but as drainage systems. The drainpipes flowed from the roof, with openings to expel the rain that ran through the gargoyle sculptures and ended in their gaping mouths. She had learned that
the word
gargoyle,
from the French, was related to
gargouille,
which meant “gullet.”

The knock at the door startled her, and she rose to let Tammy in.

Tammy was clutching a file folder in her hand as she strolled gracefully through the door. Her long black hair was pulled back into a sleek ponytail, and she was dressed casually today in jeans and a
white T-shirt that spelled out in black letters Heresy Begins with HER. The two women could not have been more different: Tamara Wisdom, the statuesque, olive-skinned beauty who was brash, outspoken, and vivacious; Maureen, the fair-skinned redhead who, while feisty in her
Irish way, was more reserved in her expression. But spiritually, they were sisters of the highest order who shared a great love, both for their work and for each other.

“Do you want to talk about Bérenger first?” Tammy was never one to mince words or avoid conflict. “Because I have a perspective.”

“I’m sure you do, and I’m guessing it’s his.”

Tammy and Roland lived at the château with Bérenger, and they considered one another to be family. She was fiercely protective of Bérenger, as he had been extremely generous with her, financially and spiritually, throughout their friendship. It was rare when she didn’t defend him, which is exactly what Maureen was expecting from
her now.

“Stop it. He loves you. And only you. Totally, eternally, completely. You
know
that. God made you for each other, and you know that too. If he slept with Vittoria during the time when you two weren’t together, so what? He’s a man and a healthy one. It happens.”

Maureen considered this for a moment. “Yes, but . . . he
loved me
at the time he did this. If it had happened before we met, I could accept it easily. But he was already certain I was his soul mate, said repeatedly that I was the only woman he would ever want. Apparently he forgot to mention the exception about Italian supermodels.”