THE PRIEST A Gothic Romance

by Thomas M. Disch

  The Cadillac had barely pulled away from the curb when the phone rang. If it was the police, Father Cogling could now state unequivocally that Father Pat was not in the rectory.

  But it was not the police. It was Mrs. Demain, the manager of the nursing home, who explained that she had been trying for some time to reach Father Bryce but that she always got his answering machine, which was why she was troubling Father Cogling.

  “I gather you’re calling about Father Bryce’s mother?” Father Cogling said. “Is anything the matter?”

  “That’s what we would like to know. Mrs. Bryce was checked out from the Home on Sunday morning by her other son, Peter. The ward nurse was given to understand that they would be going to your church, where Father Bryce would be saying the eleven o’clock Mass.”

  “Why, yes,” said Father Cogling brightly, “I remember talking to them briefly after Mass. Father Bryce was out of town on a retreat that day, and I took the eleven o’clock Mass. Father Bryce is still on retreat, which is why you’ve been getting his answering machine. And I must take the blame for not having monitored his calls for him. Though even if I had, there’s not much I could do to help you. There’s no phone where Father Bryce is. Is something the matter with his mother?”

  “The matter is that she hasn’t returned to the Home.”

  “Well, surely, the person to contact is the son she was with, Peter.”

  “We’ve tried. And came to the same dead end—another answering machine.”

  “Well, it’s surely remiss of Peter to have taken Mrs. Bryce off somewhere with no explanation, but I’m afraid Father Bryce couldn’t help you any more than I can.”

  “At this point, we’re considering contacting the police.”

  “That’s your decision, of course. Have you tried to call Peter at his place of employment?”

  “We did. And learned that he hasn’t reported to work since last Friday.”

  “That is worrying. Well, if I hear anything, I will let you know at once.”

  The woman hung up, and Father Cogling breathed a silent Laudamus Deo of relief. If he had had to explain to Father Pat that his mother and brother were missing persons, on top of the business with Bing Anker, it might not have been possible to persuade him to leave for the Shrine. He would have made a nuisance of himself trying to find them, and all in vain. Imagine trying to explain that one to Father Pat! My dear boy, I’m afraid I have bad news for you: We had to kill your mother and your twin brother, because they were about to be a source of great scandal to the Church. Father Cogling himself had not taken the matter so calmly when Gerhardt Ober had apprised him of his fait accompli, even though Gerhardt had been acting in this, as in so much else, as Father Cogling’s factotum. He’d done unbidden what Father Cogling would probably have agreed to let him do after days of agonized inner debate. Even now, Father Cogling had to ask himself whether he had acted to spare the Church grave scandal or to save his own skin. But, really, that was not a meaningful distinction, since the scandal could only have been averted by saving his own skin.

  Now that the deed had been done, by his acquiescence if not by his own hand, Father Cogling found himself wishing that it might have been accomplished years and years ago, before he’d yielded to Margaret Bryce’s blackmail demands. Of course, neither of them had ever called it blackmail. She was a poor widow who needed help bringing up her two boys, and didn’t he, as their natural father, feel a certain moral responsibility for their welfare? He did not. What he had felt was an abject fear of what might happen to him if she were to go over his head to the Bishop with her self-righteous demands. And so, to placate her, Father Cogling had dipped into the constant flow of donations, and no one had ever been the wiser. God had even performed one of his favorite miracles, producing good out of apparent evil, for the building funds that were pilfered from St. Bernardine’s collections box had gone toward the upbringing of the church’s future pastor.

  Perhaps God might perform the same miracle again and wring some blessing from these later ills. Father Cogling knelt before the altar of the rectory’s private chapel and prayed that that might be the case and that God would send some kind of token of his intentions in this regard. Father Cogling often asked for, and received, signs and portents that let him shape his actions in accordance with God’s wishes. Christ’s prayer at Gethsemane—“Not my will, but thine, be done”—was Father Cogling’s as well.

  Scarce had the favor been asked than it was granted: The rectory’s door chimes sounded their time-honored mi-do-re-sol, sol-re-mi-do. Father Cogling made the sign of the cross, by way of acknowledging receipt of the omen, got up from his knees, and crossed to the chapel’s bay window, from which it was possible to oversee anyone standing at the front door.

  There were two men there, one of them a priest. The priest seemed unfamiliar, though from the vantage of the bay window his most noticeable feature was the bright pink crown of his bald head, so it was hard to be sure. He kept ringing the bell impatiently, as one does when one suspects that those within are malingering. Father Cogling was quite certain that this had to be the priest from Las Vegas who had already telephoned twice wanting to talk with Father Pat, and then, thwarted in that regard, to insist that Father Cogling allow Bing Anker’s funeral services to be held at St. Bernardine’s, to which Father Cogling’s response had been a polite but categorical no.

  Having this priest appear at the rectory was distressing enough (especially if it were to be read as a portent), but what was still more distressing was the fact that the priest was accompanied by a young man whose face was maddeningly familiar, though Father Cogling could not at first put a name to it. And then the young man touched his thin, Clark Gable–style mustache in a particular way and Father Cogling realized that this was the impudent fellow who had been the fiancé of Alison Sanders, the girl whom Father Cogling had rescued from the abortion clinic. Father Cogling could feel his nervous system going on red alert. The priest was trying to find Father Pat, and the boy was undoubtedly trying to find Alison, and both of the people they were looking for were to be found at the Shrine of Blessed Konrad of Paderborn. But they could not possibly be aware of this coincidence, so why had they appeared at the door of the rectory together?

  Father Cogling was not about to satisfy his curiosity by the simple expedient of answering the door. Indeed, if he’d been living in the Middle Ages and this pair had appeared on the drawbridge of his castle, he would have delighted in dousing them with a cauldron of boiling oil.

  Lacking that immediate gratification, Father Cogling returned to the prie-dieu before the chapel’s altar and began to say a rosary, meditating on the five Sorrowful Mysteries. His visitors did not leave off sounding the door chimes until he had reached the third decade of the rosary, and the third Sorrowful Mystery, which is the crowning with thorns.

  To think that God Himself should endure such torments so that our sins might be forgiven! The wonder of it brought tears to Father Cogling’s eyes.

  XXIX

  It had been unwise, and worse than unwise, to have ventured down into the work chambers of the Inquisition. The torturer Bertrand Crispo lacked all ecclesial authority; he was only the Legate’s minion, but in the Legate’s absence Crispo acted as though the Legate’s powers were his to exercise. And the Legate’s authority was virtually supreme throughout Languedoc. He answered only to Rome, which meant, in effect, that he answered to no one. Father Bryce doubted that his borrowed episcopal robes would provide him any protection should Durand du Fuaga come to think he was tainted with heresy. Indeed, there would be a kind of cachet in being able to number a bishop among du Fuaga’s victims. Father Bryce understood that now, thanks to a few ambiguous remarks that Crispo had let drop concerning the Legate’s zeal to seek out heresy even among the nobility and clergy.

  “Perhaps even here in this cathedral, among the canons, Your Eminence, there may be those who have tolerated heresy, though they be not heretics themselves.”

  Fathe
r Bryce had assured him that all the clerics attached to Notre Dame de Gevaudon were of the strictest orthodoxy.

  “But, Your Eminence,” Crispo had said slyly, “how can you be sure? If a man is a heretic, he will conceal it as long as he can. Unless one has the tools available to the Inquisition, and skill in their use, nothing can be known. One will meet only lies and denials. Take the man Bonamico. He was apprehended trying to escape your service with most of his crew of workmen. We have questioned him many times, but he has been obdurate, when he is not simply speaking that gibberish, and claims to know less about the heretics who surround us than if he were a child of five years. But you will hear another song when we begin his proper examination.”

  “Yes, I’m sure that’s so.”

  “Perhaps you would like to be present at his examination, Your Eminence? Since I have already acted against the Legate’s explicit instructions in permitting you to enter the Lombards’ cell and to speak with Bonamico, there can be no harm in your witnessing the work of his interrogation. Indeed, as I recall, you were to have seen the interrogation of the de Gaillac woman, but you were taken ill.”

  “The spirit is willing, but the flesh is weak,” Father Bryce said, avoiding Crispo’s gaze.

  “The flesh is weak. Very true. But this time you may find yourself better fortified. Custom breeds a kind of ease in these matters, as with bad smells. And you may be useful to the Holy Office if this Bonamico begins to jabber again in his strange speech. Is it the language of Egypt?”

  Father Bryce shook his head. “No, it is the dialect of a northern people—Saxons, or their neighbors.”

  “You speak it fluently.”

  “It only seems so because you cannot understand all my errors.”

  Crispo flashed his pale gums in a smile. “If there have been errors, Your Eminence, they were Bonamico’s, not yours.”

  And so, unwisely, he had succumbed to the temptation and become the witness to the torture of Bonamico. Or, rather, of A.D. Boscage, though Father Bryce was not so unwise as to translate any of the man’s desperate insistences that he was not Bonamico but the transmentated spirit of a twentieth-century science-fiction writer. Instead, Father Bryce had urged Boscage that the only way to bring his torture to an end was to give his torturer what he wanted and confess himself to be a heretic.

  Boscage did confess, but his torture continued, until he had implicated all of his fellow masons whom he could identify by name. Still Crispo demanded to know the name of the arch-heretic and high priest of the Albigensians.

  At last, when his back was being laid open with a many-thonged whip, Boscage was inspired to take the one revenge within his power. “There is the man you seek!” he declared. “There, beside you. He is our bishop and high priest.”

  Crispo signaled for the whip to be put down. He approached the post to which Boscage had been bound and lifted his sagging head to look into his bloodied face. “You name Silvanus de Roquefort, the Bishop of Rodez and Montpellier-le-Vieux?”

  “Yes!” Boscage agreed readily. “That is your name for him. But as an Albigensian he has another name. All the perfecti have secret names by which they are known to one another.”

  “The man is lying!” Father Bryce declared with unfeigned indignation. “He would name anyone to have you stop his torture.”

  Crispo lifted his hand for silence. “There may be truths hidden within a lie, Your Eminence, like seeds in dirt. Let me proceed, please.” He addressed Boscage: “What is this other name?”

  “He is the High Priest Ammon-Ra of the Ancient Order of Hibernians. And the language you’ve heard us speak together is Egyptian, just as you suspected. Ammon-Ra has been initiated into the highest levels of Egyptian wisdom.”

  “These are preposterous lies! You cannot possibly—”

  Crispo looked up at Father Bryce. “I think it would be best, Your Eminence, if you were not here to be insulted by the man’s inventions. As you say, they must be lies. But it is my work to hear them.”

  Reluctantly, Father Bryce let himself be led from the torture chamber, and spent the next hour fuming inwardly in the cloistered garden where he’d first found himself when he’d awakened in the skin of Silvanus de Roquefort. How could he have foreseen that A.D. Boscage would still have the presence of mind to ply his trade as an inventor of fabulous falsehoods in his present extremity? The wit, even, to tailor his lies to the appetites and expectations of his audience. Ammon-Ra and Egyptian wisdom! But Crispo’s eyes had fairly glowed with the thrill of discovery.

  Father Bryce was full of forebodings. But when Crispo joined him in the garden, his manner was more apologetic than threatening. “I beg Your Eminence’s forgiveness for my seeming lack of respect. As you understood at once, the man is a liar, nothing but that. Usually I am not so easily deceived. Not that I ever credited what he said with respect to Your Eminence. You must not think so.”

  “I never supposed you such a fool,” Father Bryce replied, in what he hoped was a bishoplike tone of calm condescension. Yet he could not keep from asking, “And does the man still maintain that I am some Egyptian high priest?”

  “He maintains nothing now, Your Eminence. He died during interrogation. I misjudged his endurance. The Legate will not be pleased. If I had not been impatient, I am sure that at last I would have worn down his impostures and discovered the truth he thought to conceal with his fabrications. I have no doubt he was a heretic and could have named many others.”

  “No doubt at all,” Father Bryce agreed. “But as you noted, the flesh is weak. Sometimes, perhaps, weaker than we suppose.”

  “Quite true, Your Eminence. His was. Have you further need of me?”

  “No. But—”

  “Yes?”

  Should he try to strike a bargain with Crispo? Dare he suggest that he would say nothing to the Legate about Bonamico’s Egyptian nonsense if Crispo would return the favor? Might that not, instead, reawaken Crispo’s suspicions?

  At last, he only smiled, and offered his ring to be kissed, and dismissed Crispo with the medieval equivalent of “Have a nice day”: “Pax vobiscum.” Peace be with you.

  “Et cum spiritu tuo,” the torturer responded, as automatic as an altar boy.

  30

  Alexis Clareson drove his battery-powered wheelchair across the considerable expanse of what appeared to be a Persian carpet of the first quality, though Father Mabbley was no judge of such matters. Alexis parked beside a wheelchair-accessible liquor cabinet, slid it open, and said, “You’ll have some brandy.”

  Father Mabbley pretended this was a question. “Thank you, Alex. That would top things off nicely. Such a meal. I don’t think I’ve ever eaten lobster except in a restaurant. I didn’t know it was legal to make it in one’s own home.”

  “It isn’t,” Alex said. “Unless one has a full-time chef.”

  “Alex, you’re bragging.”

  “I am, indeed. And this is a very special old brandy. You’ll enjoy it.”

  “I’m sure I will. But I fear you won’t enjoy what we have to talk about at this point.”

  “Not yet, please, Mab. Let us enjoy the flowers of friendship a little while longer. You were so droll at dinner—and such a flirt. But you weren’t flirting with me, were you? Not that I blame you. Jeremiah is a jewel. Who could resist him? But he did rather monopolize your conversation. The rest of us just eavesdropped.”

  “You flatter me, Alex. As ever. I didn’t flirt so much as listen.”

  “And how better to flirt? But I’m just teasing you. As ever.” Alexis handed him a snifter, lifted his own, and said, “Your health.”

  “And yours.”

  They performed the rites of the first taste—the hand’s embrace of the glass, a slow swirl for the eye to savor, a sniff, then the wetting of the lips and the tongue’s astonishment.

  “You do live well here, Alex.”

  “Indeed. Who would have thought?”

  “When we were seminarians?”

  “A world ago.
”

  “Oh, as I recall, there was liquor then, too. Even brandy. Though it was usually Christian Brothers. Do you miss it?”

  “That world? Of course, who doesn’t. Everyone misses some fabled Eden of lost innocence. That’s why it was the younger Elvis who was elected to be a postage stamp. What a silly election that was. Who would vote for being old and fat and corrupt? Which is not to say that I’m corrupt, mind you. Old and fat I must admit to. I’ve even come around to thinking old and fat a kind of blessing. In the sense of ‘Lead us not into temptation.’ I think the Church could solve all its present problems if it required not just chastity but wheelchairs of all of us.”

  Father Mabbley laughed.

  “So,” said Alex, shifting into Chancery mode. “Did you find what you needed to know?”

  “I looked through Bryce’s files. He seemed, early on, headed for better things.”

  “Yes, he got derailed. It was more the alcohol than any of his known indiscretions. Of course, the one tends to lead to the other. He’s back on the tracks now, I think.”

  “The abortion protests, you mean? He seems to have become quite active along those lines.”

  “Indeed, he’s our leading pro-Life crusader, and the Bishop is appreciative of his acts of zeal, since he can take credit for them with Rome without having to exert himself unduly in a crusade for which he has, like so many of us, mixed feelings.”

  “I gather Massey’s own ideal agenda would be more liberal than accords with the current temper in Rome.”

  “Yes, he has all the wrong opinions. Though he takes pains not to express them. Optional celibacy, women in the priesthood, birth control, some kinder accommodation of our gay brothers and sisters. What can I say: The man’s a flaming liberal. Which nowadays, of course, amounts to the brand of Cain. But he has two advantages that even Connie O’Connor might envy: He’s black, one might even say charismatically black, and his private life and financial life have been irreproachable. So all he has to do is bide his time until the climate changes in Rome.”