Skin of the Wolf

by Sam Cabot

  “A common affliction of Jesuits.”

  “Yes, perhaps. Let me ask you this. The incomplete Shift. My recent studies have been on the life of Saint Kateri Tekakwitha.”

  “‘The Lily of the Mohawks,’” Carbonariis said with curled lip. “She was Algonquin, you know. Wolf Clan. Her hagiography says Mohawk and Turtle Clan, but those were her father’s people. Not that the Church has any reason to care.”

  “But we do. Follow me. Tekakwitha founded a community, a sacred society of Native women. They lived for their commitment to each other and devotion to the Savior. Tekakwitha wore a hooded robe. We’re told it was to hide smallpox scars. But we’re also told that from a young age she refused to marry, that she was meek and practiced mortification of the flesh. Why would a woman like that care if people saw her scars?”

  The friar’s eyes glittered. Livia got it just before he spoke. “Jesuit! You think she was a Shifter.”

  “I do. And she contracted smallpox. From what you’ve said, I think her Shift was incomplete and that’s what she was hiding. You say she was from the Wolf Clan. Would that have been her—what do I say, her animal self?”

  Michael nodded. “It would have, yes.”

  “Her mother’s said to have died of smallpox. Maybe that’s true, maybe not. Maybe she was one of the Shifters who killed themselves, may God have mercy on their souls. But Tekakwitha was devout and suicide’s a sin. I wonder, now, if they were all Shifters, all the women she gathered to her. Christians, and Shifters, women who rejected suicide but wanted to keep their Shifter oaths of secrecy.”

  “It is possible,” Carbonariis said. “The members of her society did not associate with many, as I understand. A cloistered order, if they’d taken vows. I did not know her. But the stories say she celebrated both the Mohawk ceremonies of her childhood and the sacraments of her Christian faith.”

  “Which means,” Thomas said, “they’d have had a priest with them. At least one who visited regularly to celebrate Mass.”

  “But clearly not Ravenelle. He came a century later.”

  “Not him. But a Jesuit.”

  “Yes, one of your missionary brethren. What of it?”

  “If we knew who he was, that priest, we could follow his trail. Ravenelle had the Ohtahyohnee. Where did he get it? When Ravenelle’s life was in danger he gave the mask to a friend and extracted a promise to keep it safe. Why? Did Ravenelle know what it was, how it was used?” Thomas looked around at the others with a quiet excitement Livia recognized from their days in Rome. “Do you see? The Jesuit who ministered to Tekakwitha’s community may have known the women were Shifters. If the Ceremony wasn’t being done and the masks were being hidden one by one, if the medicine men were dying, too, then maybe a mask—this one—came into Tekakwitha’s care. And she gave it to her priest. Maybe that knowledge is what’s under seal at Il Gesù.”

  “Knowledge of the Shifters,” Livia said softly. “Like knowledge of the Noantri, hidden by the Church for its own reasons.” It would have meant so much to the Noantri to know this, she thought sadly. But been so dangerous to Michael’s people, if it had been known.

  Michael spoke. “All of this could be true. But what good does it do us? Ravenelle gave the mask to Hammill. Following Ravenelle might teach us something, but going back a hundred years before him—where will it get us?”

  “And how will it be done, except at Il Gesù?” Carbonariis said. “I know nothing that can help.”

  Thomas’s shoulders slumped. “No, you’re right. I was just hoping . . . I suppose it was a long shot. Tekakwitha’s society left no records, and it doesn’t seem to have survived her death.”

  Carbonariis said, “It didn’t. It dissolved, as though it had never been.” He shook his head. “Gitgoo ungehsege wahgwenyu. Omnia vanitas. They honored only briefly, and they did not live on.”

  “Then we’re wasting time,” Michael said, standing. “I’m heading back to van Vliet’s estate. I shouldn’t have let Edward go. It was weakness. Someone there will tell me where he is. I—”

  “Wait.” Thomas lifted his hand. “Father Carbonariis, what did you say? They honored only briefly and they didn’t live on?”

  Carbonariis fixed his eyes on Thomas. “Gitgoo ungehsege wahgwenyu. In what is—now—an ancient dialect of Mohawk, ‘to live on to honor it.’ Tekakwitha had that as her society’s name. Her symbol was the cross on the full moon.”

  “Grandmother Moon,” said Michael. “She protected the twins who made the world. We honor her still.”

  “The full moon,” Thomas said. “And the cross. And the motto Praevalere et veneror. ‘Live on and honor.’ I’ve seen it.”

  “Where?”

  Thomas looked around at them all. “On a ring that Father Maxwell wears.”

  52

  Maxwell?” Spencer saw Michael’s brow furrow as he said to Thomas, “At Fordham? Your department chair?”

  Thomas nodded. “He said he—”

  Spencer held up a hand to silence them. A car door had shut in the street outside. He listened to the approaching footsteps and his Noantri sense of smell brought him additional information. “Michael. We’re being visited by those charming detectives. I imagine their interest is rather more in you than me. Perhaps you’d care to wait in the kitchen until I send them away?”

  By the time the bell actually rang, the kitchen door was clicking closed.

  Spencer opened the front door and smiled. “Good afternoon, Detectives. How can I help you?”

  “We’re looking for Michael Bonnard,” Charlotte Hamilton said. She appeared no more beguiled by Spencer than she had earlier in the day.

  “I can’t help you,” Spencer said, still smiling.

  “Can’t or won’t?”

  “Does it matter?”

  Before she could answer, the other detective, Framingham, leaned past Spencer into the vestibule. “Hey!” He grinned and waved. Spencer turned and saw Thomas in the armchair in the parlor, just within Framingham’s line of sight. “How ya doin’, Father Kelly?” the detective called cheerily. “Hey, Hamilton, did you know these guys knew each other?”

  “No, I didn’t. Dr. George, what the hell is going on?”

  “Many people, seeing a priest in my parlor, would ask the same.”

  “Now, Dr. George,” Thomas said, rising. He came to stand beside Spencer at the door. “I’ve told you, it’s nothing to be ashamed of.” He smiled serenely at the detectives. “I’m Dr. George’s spiritual adviser. He requested a scholar, someone who would understand him. A historian, as he is. I was sent.”

  “Really? What a coincidence. You being at Sotheby’s last night, and now here.”

  “I was there for the same reason. To offer spiritual counseling to scholars.”

  “It’s something of a specialty of Father Kelly’s,” Spencer said drily. “Comingling the immanent with the transcendent.”

  “And of mine.” Another voice rang out, and the spectral form of Carbonariis loomed on Spencer’s left.

  “And you are?”

  “Giovanni Antonio de Carbonariis. I was also sent to Dr. George, to offer a more rigorous interpretation of Scripture than my Jesuit colleague. A mind as fine as Dr. George’s deserves no less.”

  “Surely, Father,” Thomas protested, “the narrow pathway you propound—”

  “Father, your own slippery, world-based formulations—”

  “Gentlemen, please.” Spencer looked to the detectives imploringly. “Do you see what I have to contend with? No wonder Michael refused to stay.”

  “He was here?”

  “Until these two pious sages squared off. I rather enjoy such Catholic contentiousness, but Michael will have none of it.”

  “Where did he go?”

  “I really couldn’t say. Back to his laboratory, I would imagine, where nothing speaks in nonsensical ambig
uities.”

  “We called. They say he’s not there. And his cell phone goes to voice mail. Yours does, too, by the way.”

  “I’ve turned mine off so as not to be disturbed while I contemplate the spiritual gifts these holy men are offering. Michael often has his off when he’s working, for much the same reason, though he’s contemplating bacteria.” Spencer looked both priests up and down, and shrugged.

  “We need to talk to him. I’d like to come in.”

  “Entering my home will bring you no closer to your goal. And it might keep me from my spiritual one.”

  “What do you know about Bonnard’s relationship with Brittany Williams?”

  “I’m not aware he had one.”

  “Has he ever mentioned her to you?”

  “He has not. Detectives, I really can’t expect to keep these fine gentlemen here all day. If I’m to avail myself of their wisdom—”

  “We’ll come back with a warrant if we have to.”

  “At that point, I will let you in, as I will have to. Until then, I have the labor of the devout ahead of me and I’m anxious to get to it.”

  Spencer closed the door on the detectives. He turned to find Thomas grinning behind him. Even Carbonariis couldn’t hide a dour smile.

  “‘Spiritual adviser’?” Spencer said. “Father Kelly, I commend you on your creativity, if not your devotion to objective possibility.”

  “Thanks. And I commend Father Carbonariis on his ability to usefully confuse the situation. A forte of Augustinians, that kind of obfuscation, if I’m not wrong.”

  Carbonariis glowered. “If you really are this man’s spiritual adviser, Jesuit, I fear for his soul.”

  “On that score, you have no reason to worry,” said Spencer. “And now I propose we leave this house at once, before another encounter with the forces of the law demands some even more outlandish response.”

  “I can’t think what that could possibly be.” Livia joined them from the parlor, where she had managed to remain hidden. “But don’t you think they’ll be watching the house?”

  “I’m quite sure they will. Fortunately, this door is not the only exit. Another, in the rear, leads to a cramped but serviceable passageway to the next block.”

  Livia smiled. Spencer knew what she was thinking and if pressed he’d be inclined to agree. Livia’s Change had come about in the twentieth century, when the fires were long past. The chary prudence of Noantri like Spencer was considered understandable but unnecessary by those younger; still, Spencer would not have been comfortable in a home without a second, and preferably hidden, exit. Adding that feature to his list of real estate requirements limited the housing inventory he was invited to examine—but not as much as he’d assumed it would. As it turned out, Prohibition, nearly a century before, had provided any number of exclusive dwellings with concealed escape routes.

  Livia crossed the hall to open the kitchen door. “Michael, Thomas scared them away, you can . . .” Her words faded. She turned to the others. “He’s gone.”

  53

  The Protector had thought the mask was safe, at least for now. The Ohtahyohnee was a great deal on his mind lately, the inevitable result, he thought, of the upcoming Sotheby’s sale and all the excited talk. But he’d thought its hiding place secure.

  Now he was worried, though. Probably he was overreacting. Probably the sanctuary he’d given the Ohtahyohnee was as perfect as it had been when he’d selected it. But too much was going on. Questions now swirled, and people were taking notice of him, he who should have been invisible in the life of the Ohtahyohnee.

  He himself, not the role he played, was the problem. He understood that. Another man might have done better. Another man might have been more equipped for the keeping of such a powerful secret. A man braver, or wiser, or more ruthless. Or were those the same? But there was no other man: the time and thus the duty had been his.

  He hadn’t sought out the obligation but he’d not turned from it, either. He’d searched for the Ohtahyohnee, as he must, as his predecessors had done; it was his honor and the mask’s bad luck that he was the one of them who’d found it. He’d done what he could. And now again, he must do what he thought best. He must move the mask out of here, change the hidden shelter. The Ohtahyohnee had to be lodged in a place with no connection to him.

  He wished he could consult with his brethren but the oath they’d taken forbade that. Through the centuries the members of the society had sworn to uphold two sacred trusts. The first, the identity of a Shifter, was a secret he himself had never been called upon to protect. Though how he wished he had been, how he wished he’d just once seen the Shift, seen the Creator’s generous gift made visible before him. In that same way, the location of a mask was never to be shared until the mask was transferred to a new Protector. He and his brethren were to act as stewards, their sole duty to hold the masks in their care until the rightful owners could return for them. Centuries ago when their society was established it had seemed the wise path: each mask with its own guardian, no information shared. It wasn’t his place to question the wisdom of those who had gone before, but he was disquieted at the knowledge that nothing now stood between the Ohtahyohnee and the world except himself.

  But that was the circumstance, and he had to act upon it.

  He pulled open the heavy door, entering the darkened space with great care. Earlier in the day when he’d gone out he’d had the odd feeling he was being watched, though he’d seen no one, nothing. He’d shaken that sense off, telling himself it was because he was fearful that he felt he had something real to fear. But his unease had underscored the rightness of his decision. He’d already determined to move the mask and had gone to its new home to assure himself everything was in order. He was grimly amused by his choice: a safe-deposit box very difficult to trace to him that he’d established years earlier, in case it was needed. The mask would rest in the vault of a bank whose fortune was rooted in the long-ago devastation of the animals and forests from which, in the beginning, this Ohtahyohnee had come.

  The door shut behind him and silence settled. He was alone here as he’d known he would be at this hour. The outer door, as always, was unlocked, but in the middle of the day no one came here—a shame, as the place, like others of its kind, had been built as a help to people hoping to rise above their lesser selves.

  As he moved into the echoing room it gave him back no sound but his footsteps. A wan winter light struck odd colors from the high windows, barely enabling him to make out his own faint shadow on the stone floor. A shadow like his heart, he thought as he strode to the front: not strong, but nevertheless continuing forward.

  A sound behind him, the faintest rustling. He turned sharply. No one, nothing. In the stillness he decided it had been no sound at all, just his dread taking external form. He continued on, turning left at the aisle. In the wall at the end nestled a small door, an unassuming element in the grand space. It gave access to a spiral staircase no longer used. Behind the staircase, between its enclosure and the next room, was an empty space, a stone cavern, of a kind that in this age of obsession with the value of every square foot would never be built. When this building was erected, though, pleasing dimensions and proportions of rooms were judged paramount. If empty space was required to achieve them, so be it. For his purposes, empty did not mean useless, and the philosophy of waste behind this aesthetic was a valuable if ironic aid.

  Inside the tiny staircase-room, the walls faceted into a series of curved panels, three rows circling the room, seven panels making up each row. Their grainy oak surfaces appeared identical and undisturbed, but there the falsehood lay. In the center row, a light push on the smooth wood caused a delicately crafted panel to swivel, revealing the dark space within. He’d had this hidden niche built many years ago, not with any thought of ever truly needing it but for the same reason he’d acquired the safe-deposit box: his oath required him to be
prepared. He wondered sometimes what sanctuaries his fellows had established, if any were like his. His curiosity was all the greater because he could not ask.

  He lifted out the box from the shadowed shelf inside, feeling the heft. When he’d first held the copy he’d commissioned, now making such a stir at Sotheby’s, it had proved heavier than expected. He’d expressed his misgivings to the maker and was assured the wood was identical, the depth of the carving the same. He had no option but to take the man’s word for it. The maker—who’d never held the real one, never even seen it, but had done his remarkable work from photographs and descriptions—had proved correct. The Protector recognized from the moment he finally held the real Ohtahyohnee that it was as unyielding and substantial as the promises of the Creator.

  The panel swung back into place with a click. Box under his arm, the Protector opened the stairwell door. He saw only dim stillness and left the small room, shutting the door behind him. He should take the mask and go, now while he knew he was alone; but he found himself unable. He had to see it again, to look once more upon its power. He couldn’t leave this room without the chance to feel the glorious sensation—at once wildly electric and deeply tranquil—the sight of the Ohtahyohnee created in him.

  He sat, placing the box on his lap. He opened the padded lid, untied the cord on the deerskin sack, slid out and unwrapped the blanket within, and the Ohtahyohnee was revealed. Even in the dim light, what force, what majesty! As always when he gazed on it he had a sense of a flame springing up deep within him. He regarded the Ohtahyohnee, felt himself smile, and silently told it, as he had before: Your time will come again.

  He had just returned the mask to the darkness of the deerskin when he heard a sound, a rustling, nearby this time. He snapped his head around. In shock and fear, he choked: right behind and looming over him, a face, close, fearfully distorted. No sound came from it, but he could hardly look into the eyes, so full were they of fury and yearning. Arms reached for the Ohtahyohnee. He batted them away. Bent over the mask, cradling it, he started to stand. A blinding swipe, and fiery pain tore the side of his face. Hot blood obscured his vision. He staggered forward, clutching the mask all the tighter. He felt it being tugged, wrenched, but he wouldn’t release it. Another blow knocked him forward. Screams echoed around the high stone room; he realized with a shock they were his own. Repeated blows fell on his head and shoulders. He tried to pull away, managed two steps, but slipped and fell. His head struck the cold stone floor. He saw a sickening swirl of colors; through it he kept as tight a grip as he was able, but his strength failed and he felt the Ohtahyohnee pulled from his grasp. As the colors faded and darkness took him, he offered a prayer, apologizing to the mask and the Creator for not being the man he should have been.