by Tom Fox
“The son was a lost cause,” he said again, and Alexander could see specks of blood forming at the corners of his mouth, “but the father of the possessed child brought him before the Lord, begging for him to be healed. Begging for the impossible. And the Lord replied to him, ‘All things are possible for those who believe.’”
Alexander’s eyes were newly wet with tears that broke over his lids and flowed down his blood-streaked face. He gazed into the serene eyes of the stranger, shining the more brilliantly amidst his paling skin. The man’s hand had settled tenderly on Gabriella’s brutalized chest.
“That was it?” Alexander asked. “That was her favorite verse?”
The stranger coughed, more blood appearing at his lips and his chest beginning to quiver, yet he smiled all the more peacefully. “No, Alexander. Her favorite verse was the father’s response.” He reached out his other hand and closed Alexander’s eyes again. Not knowing why, Alexander let his hand remain, the man’s warm palm covering his face. He could feel blood, which Alexander now knew was the stranger’s own, warm and slick against his eyelids.
“The sorrowing father cried out to the Lord from the depths of his heart: O Lord, I believe. Help my disbelief. And those, Alexander . . .” the stranger paused, “those are the words that Gabriella recited every day of her life.”
Finally, Alexander’s heart broke. Only in her death had he learned that Gabriella’s faith had been as fragile as his. Only now, here, covered in blood on the floor of the Apostolic Palace, did he realize that he did believe, despite it all—but that his belief could not sustain itself. It had needed his uncle. In some way it had needed Gabriella. And now, now it needed . . .
He lingered in that embrace a few seconds longer, his eyes closed beneath the palm of this strange man. And then he heard a sharp inhale, and a long, completing exhale, gurgled and fading, which he knew could only be the man’s last breath—the sound of the spirit departing the flesh and life fading away. His eyes still closed, he felt the stranger’s hand fall from his face and heard the soft thud of a body collapsing on the cold floor.
Alexander kept his eyes closed, his fingers clutched tenderly around Gabriella’s arm, and he whispered her verse a final time—for her, and for him, and even for this stranger.
O Lord, I believe. Help my disbelief.
77
The gasp of air was tiny, barely audible in the massive space. It almost didn’t register. But then there came another, a little stronger. Then a third, full and complete, and Alexander felt motion beneath his fingertips.
He opened his eyes. On the marble floor before him Gabriella lay prone as she had before, his hand still gently wrapped around her arm.
Beneath his gaze, her hazel eyes blinked.
And she breathed.
Her chest rose, and her body was filled with life.
Alexander looked up in wonder. The Pope knelt across the hall, his eyes still closed in fervent prayer.
Alexander’s gaze fell again to Gabriella, her chest slowly rising and falling. Alive.
But beside her, the stranger had fallen. The hands that had covered her heart, that had covered Alexander’s own eyes, were open. His arms were outstretched on the marble floor. The blood from his wounds slowly spread out from beneath his body, flowing on to the ancient tiles.
The paradox struck Alexander like a wound in his own heart. Gabriella was alive. She was back.
But the stranger was dead.
FINALE
78
The Apostolic Palace: Tuesday
Morning broke over Rome with its usual grace. The rising sun was oblivious to the horrors the evening had wrought within the sacred city. Traffic was at its usual loggerheads by 6:30 a.m., the bustle of business and tourism unabated. Life, it seemed, pressed on.
Under stringent advice that he must issue a statement as soon as possible, Pope Gregory had scheduled a press briefing for 10 a.m. The gunfire at the northwestern wall the previous evening had been widely reported in the media, and ongoing reports of automatic weaponry from within the Apostolic Palace had been picked up by the parabolic microphones of the news vans stationed around Vatican City. The world knew that something had gone down inside those ancient walls. The longer it was left to speculate as to what it was, the worse those speculations would become.
Gregory had prepared for the event as he’d prepared for nothing else in his life. He’d felt real trepidation the first time he’d stepped out to speak to the public as pope, and he’d never fully enjoyed media engagements of any kind. But this was something different. For the first time he felt genuine confusion, yet it was mingled with an undeniable sense of responsibility. Terrible things had happened, and the leader of his flock had the duty to speak.
There was still blood beneath the pontiff’s fingernails. It was caked brown, hardened, crumbling on to the white paper he’d used to write up brief notes for his remarks. Normally this would have been the job of his Secretary of State, but some of that blood was his.
Gregory hadn’t had time to shower since the events of the night before. He’d barely had time to change out of the white cassock he’d been wearing, now streaked crimson with the blood of . . . by God, he couldn’t even remember how many individuals’ blood was on him by the end of that day. Christoph Raber, Cardinal Viteri, Gabriella Fierro together with the man who’d shot her.
And then there was the stranger.
His blood, too, stained the floor of the Apostolic Palace. The Pope hadn’t seen him shot. He’d only recognized that his visitor had fallen when he’d seen his collapsed form next to Alexander Trecchio, Gabriella’s lifeless body gripped in the former priest’s arms. At that moment Gregory had known that the only thing he could do was pray. And so he had fallen to his knees, folded his blood-soaked hands, and done as he felt God was bidding him.
When he’d opened his eyes, the mysterious gift that had been given to him had been taken away. The woman was alive—the Pope beheld it himself, that extraordinary wonder—but the stranger was still. The wound he had sustained was too much. His life had been stolen from him, yet he had given it up willingly. Silently. In peace.
And in that instant, for the first time, Gregory wished he’d asked him his name.
The Pope televised his press statement from his office. His legs were weak and he did not know whether he could stand for his remarks, but he did not want to sit ex cathedra for these words. Instead, he called a small news crew into the office, allowed them to set up their equipment and station two reporters at the sides of the room to take down notes as he spoke. That would be enough.
When the time came, the light on the camera went red and the television aide signaled his three-second countdown. Gregory reported the details factually, calmly, and with as much dispassion as he could muster. There had been an incursion into Vatican City in the early hours of yesterday evening, though the individuals whom the media were reporting as its instigators—Alexander Trecchio and Gabriella Fierro—were in fact nothing of the kind. They were studious investigators who had selflessly forced their way into the midst of danger in order to offer assistance. They were both now safe, alive and well and under the protection of the Holy See.
Gregory choked slightly on that last phrase. He had seen the bullet tear its way through Gabriella’s chest. It was only he and Alexander who knew what an earth-shattering miracle it was to say that this woman was “alive and well.”
But some things were not meant for the media. Not now.
He summed up, in broad terms, what was known of the incursion. He saw no need to lie or conceal the truth from the public. A group within the Church, the very kind he’d been working to rid it of since his pontificate began, had joined arms with an outside corporation. They had attempted to manipulate and distort the public perception of events in a manner that discredited him personally, as well as the Church as a whole. Their aims were malicious, motivated by personal gain and the increase of power.
“Not all the miracles we ha
ve seen in these past few days have been divine in origin,” he announced. “Men have tried to play God, to masquerade as God, to call into question all of us who believe in a God. And that plot ended in violence, as such things too often do. But it was thwarted. Truth has had a louder voice.”
There were furious scribblings on the notepads of the two reporters in the room, penning the questions that would consume the media and the public in the days ahead. Which miracles had been false? Who was this outside company that had been involved? What group within the Church had acted in this way? There would be questions and conspiracy theories and rumors and doubts to fuel a generation. Despite his apparent innocence, the pontiff was revealing scandal, and scandal always tarnished everyone. He would never be looked at in the same way again.
But then the Pope came to the most difficult section of his statement—the portion he’d forced himself to write out so that emotion didn’t cause him to lose his way midstream. He forced a stalwart posture and spoke calmly.
“I must also report,” he read to the camera, “that the stranger who had appeared in our midst, in whose presence we had seen so many wondrous things come to light, was killed in the gunfire within Vatican City last night. That gunfire was ultimately part of an attempt on my life. In the process it mercilessly took the lives of many others. Including his. I have had his body moved to my private chapel, to await a burial befitting a man who gave so much.”
Even the minuscule news crew found it impossible to keep their composure as the Pope directly mentioned the stranger for the first time since the man had arrived in St. Peter’s. They noticed, as millions of viewers on the live television feed also noticed, the glass that came over the pontiff’s eyes as he spoke.
One of the reporters at the side of the room was overcome and broke protocol, interrupting the pontiff’s broadcast with a question.
“Your Holiness,” she asked, “who was he? This stranger? Can you tell us directly, at last, who it was that you had in the Vatican?”
It was the question the world had wanted to know since the Pope first stood upright beneath the great baldacchino of St. Peter’s. It was the question with which he himself had grappled, if only for the wonder of what every conceivable answer might mean. It was the question he’d never felt it appropriate to ask the man who had healed him and who—though he’d done so by evoking an envy in the hearts of those with medical resources and stirring them to action—had none the less given sight to the blind and health to the suffering. The man who had raised the dead.
But finally, the pontiff knew the answer.
“It is written in one of our sacred texts,” he replied, “that a man can show no greater love than laying down his life for a friend. You will continue to have questions. I will continue to have them. But what I can tell you is this: this man laid down his life. He was an example of perfect love.”
The Pope choked back tears, but for an instant his face beamed a strange, comforted joy.
“And, I think, he was my friend.”
It took a matter of minutes for the pontiff’s address to stir the public to new levels of frenzied questioning and debate. The world had hardly been ready for the stranger’s appearance, but it seemed even less prepared for his departure. It was as if it had come to accept that there was something exceptional about this man, if for no other reason than that he stood in the midst of events that had so quickly shaken society.
There had been ardent debate in the public forum as to whether he was what many believed: the return of Christ, an angel, a divine visitor. Millions of faithful were ardently pro, millions of dissenters adamantly against. But everyone had expected that the man’s story would go on; that they would have more time to deliberate, to debate, to fight. Not that it would end so suddenly, with so many questions still unanswered. The stranger’s arrival had divided the country, had divided society; but his sudden death had united them, at least in this.
His funeral was to take place in private. He had touched the world, but the Vatican had decided that in keeping with the man’s quiet humility, his departure from it would not be made a public spectacle. Rumors were already spreading over the reasons for the decision. Did the Vatican know who he truly was? Were they hiding something? Why wouldn’t they allow his body to be seen? There were conspiracy theories stacking up upon conspiracy theories. But the Vatican, in keeping with its reputation, was still keeping some secrets.
The day finally passed, and when night descended on the Eternal City it brought with it a different sort of darkness. With that night there seemed to descend a great shared sorrow that extended far beyond Rome’s hills and towers. A sorrow that something had been given; a sorrow that something had been lost. A sorrow that something was forever changed, and the world might never know why.
79
Gemelli Hospital, two miles north of Vatican City: Wednesday
Alexander stood at the side of Gabriella’s hospital bed. Under the influence of the Holy See she’d been given a private room that was lush and comfortable, almost hotel standard. Her condition was closely and constantly monitored.
Only moments after her return to life, the remaining Swiss Guard had arrived on the scene, and among the pontiff’s first instructions were that she was to be taken immediately to Gemelli Hospital. In under ten minutes she was in Vatican medical transport. In under thirty she was on a gurney in the care of some of Italy’s finest physicians.
The Pope had not been permitted by the Swiss Guard to leave the Vatican, but he promised he would shortly be at the hospital to visit. While Caterina Amato was taken into custody and given medical treatment, while her executive board was rounded up by the police and questioned—during all this, the Guard wanted the pontiff under constant protection. He would be permitted to leave the confines of the Apostolic Palace only after they could, in some small measure at least, ensure his safety.
Alexander, however, had not left Gabriella’s side. She had come to, breathed and blinked her way into her new life there on the floor of the palace. Shock and blood loss, however, quickly took their toll as she lost consciousness. Alexander wouldn’t let go of her hand and walked with her, rode with her, stayed with her at every moment in the hospital.
Gabriella was thoroughly examined, but apart from being unconscious from shock, there were no signs of life-threatening trauma. The bullet wound that Alexander had seen shatter her chest was nowhere in evidence. She was bruised, and had a degree of blood loss the doctors could only presume came from the shot she’d taken in her shoulder. That shot had fortunately missed her bones and pierced only muscle and tissue, and so it, like all her other injuries, was easily treatable. Her prognosis was excellent.
Alexander had waited by her bedside as the hours of Monday night became those of Tuesday; as the Pope addressed the world and the world responded with its new fever of interest. There was a television in Gabriella’s room and he’d monitored the coverage, but only for a few minutes before switching it off.
For the first time in his life, he didn’t have questions. He wasn’t curious. He was only waiting.
When Tuesday became Wednesday and Gabriella finally came to, he was there to behold it.
Her eyes had opened slowly, blinking in adjustment. Their hazel light was foggy, but it was strong. She was with him.
“What . . . what happened?” she asked, her voice groggy from the pain medication dripping into her veins from an IV.
Alexander opened his mouth to speak, but he didn’t know what to say.
“I’m not sure,” he finally answered, reaching out to intertwine his fingers with hers. There was a smile at the edges of his eyes. “But I think I’m finally ready to admit I’ve seen a miracle.”
Gabriella remained in the hospital ward throughout the day. She regained strength and stability quickly, and Alexander sat at her bedside filling her in on the story of what had happened in those final minutes at the Apostolic Palace.
The Pope came to visit as he’d promised he would.
He brought flowers, a warm and protocol-bendingly long, tender embrace, and a small gift.
“I could have brought you anything from the Vatican treasury,” he said with a gentle smile, taking up a seat next to her bed, “and I’d gladly have done so. Anything for what you did for me, for the Church.”
Gabriella made a slight motion with her hand, waving away the suggestion that any gift was required or expected. The Pope signaled her to be still.
“However, I believe I’ve found something that will mean more to you than a first edition of Galileo or a Raphael original to hang on your wall.” He paused. There was a deviously pleased smile on his face. “Someone told me that you have, all your life, carried a cheap purple plastic rosary in your pocket.”
Despite herself, Gabriella blushed. Cheap and plastic it truly was. When her grandmother had presented it to her on the day of her confirmation, she’d confessed its charity-shop origins and price. But Gabriella had loved it her whole life.
“In the blood that covered the floor of the corridor where that gunfight took place,” the Pope continued, “my staff found a scattering of plastic beads. I had them collected, I washed them as well as I could, and had one of my assistants, Sister Pearl, restring them.”
He reached into his cassock pocket and retrieved his gift: Gabriella’s plastic rosary, refashioned and only slightly the worse for wear.
Gabriella’s eyes were suddenly moist, matching the Pope’s. She raised a hand and the pontiff wrapped the rosary around her fingers, then clutched her hand in his.
“It’s hardly enough,” he whispered.
She shook her head. It was more than she’d expected.
“You know,” the Pope continued, drawing his lips close to her ear, “what we’ve seen, what we’ve experienced, you and I . . . the world will never understand it. They will only see the lies, the manipulations, the hurt.”