“Marian, oh, poor Marian,” the girl continued, “How she wanted to be a mermaid and sail away.” Her head twitched in the opposite direction, and the bones in her necked snapped again. She rested her head on her shoulder, her neck bent at an odd angle. She turned her glacial retinas towards Elano and blinked, her eyelids opening and closing like the shutters of a camera. “Oh, Marian, the dead virgin. I see a boy collecting her body washed ashore—and yet, he’s not an orphan. Do you know that boy, monk?”
“Heh-heh,” the High Priest chuckled. “Damn me! Mystery abounds! Poor mermaid…”
Of course Elano knew the boy. And he remembered Marian’s naked body wrapped in seaweed filaments that coiled around her budding breasts, crawling over her soft belly and below, hiding the auburn fuzz that adorned her groin. A thin layer of salt crusted her death-pallid lips, eyes forever closed. He was ten, eleven? She was a few years older. He’d come out to pray on the beach right before dawn, and found her drowned body swaying in the surf… But he was an orphan. Who was this girl? How did she know? How did she see?
“He who has no mother and no father will cast three lions to the bottom of the ocean,” and she looked in the direction of the coat of arms engraved on the hilt of Elano’s broadsword. “I say because I see,” the bling girl said in one breath, then she straightened up her head, closed her eyes, and resumed humming.
Elano stood and turned to Ulf. “Take her with the rest of the children.”
“Monsignor, that’s three years past the eligibility threshold—”
The Cardinal stared into the young monk’s eyes.
“That rule wasn’t carved in stone by the Almighty,” Elano said in a labored whisper. “It’s a vote a bunch of beer-bellies took one Sunday after vespers. We’ll make an exception. I’ll talk to the Vicar myself. She’s not going to the coalmines!”
“As you wish, Monsignor,” Ulf replied. He walked around the High Priest without even a look, approached the girl and helped her rise to her feet. The girl turned to her mother. Her eyes opened, and the crystal-like tiny globes flickered with a strange glow.
“Take heart, mother. Mary had a little Lamb—the Lamb did not die. Nor shall you.”
“Slaughter that beast!” the High Priest bellowed at the top of his lungs, then let out a hoot. “Roast that sucker!”
“Sunrise—” the mother said, her voice choking on tears.
The girl smiled at her mother. “Remember cousin Jonah?” she continued. “He was in the belly of the fish for three days and three nights. Alone. Forsaken. Praying in the rotten, humid darkness, away from seashells and seahorses—”
Ulf grabbed her elbow and jerked the girl away.
“Farewell, mother,” the girl said.
The woman kept her teary eyes on Ulf as he led her daughter toward the group of children eligible for orphanage, crowded in the shade of the double-decker.
Elano took a step back when the girl’s mother cast herself at his feet, her hair scattering all over. She attempted to kiss the tip of his boots.
“Thank you, priest, thank you. May the gods show you mercy as you’ve shown my daughter,” she cried out in one breath, her shoulders rattled by sobs.
Elano took a few rushed steps back toward his broadsword. He grabbed its handle and yanked it angrily from the ground. He looked at the wailing woman lying prostrated in the dirt, her shoulders shaking vehemently, her hair scattered over dirt. Arms tied behind her back, she drew her knees close in and, using her forehead as leverage against the ground, pushed herself up. Sharp pebbles cut into the skin of her forehead.
The High Priest turned toward her, a disgusted grimace on his face.
“You sold your soul. And your daughter,” he said. Then he spat in her direction. “Cursed by the gods of this land, forever!”
Elano spun in place and trudged away, casting one last glance over his shoulder.
As the woman straightened herself up, a few glistening drops of blood trickled between her eyes. Just like the crown of thorns thrust upon the Savior’s head, Elano thought as he sheathed his sword across his back.
4
USS Pittsburgh had once been the pride of the Tenth US Navy Fleet, the spearhead of its rapid deployment force. A hundred jets rested in her vaulted hangars or gleamed in the sun on her flight deck ready to become airborne on a minute’s notice. But that was in the World Before, when the US Navy was still a force to be reckoned with, the pride of a prideful nation—a dragon that spoke like a lamb and had ambitions to rule the world.
Stripped to its bare navigation installations, weapon systems dismantled, jet fighters dumped into the ocean, the carrier now served as the largest floating hospice the world had ever known. Its superstructure island had been remodeled into an abbey, complete with steeples and a bell tower. At its top, a baroque cross rose above the cluster of twirling radars, antennas, and satellite dishes. Anchors dropped all the way to the ocean’s floor, the giant ship remained at rest, an unmoved mover eloping from the night’s thick shadows.
Standing on the bridge wing, Father Micon looked at the shapeless clouds that hid the moon. Blackness upon blackness stretched its deep folds over the Atlantic, with only the host of position lights on the flight deck below glittering into the night.
Re-christened Domus Mariae, the carrier had been dedicated to the Blessed Heart of the Virgin in a grand ceremony on Christmas Day of 2072, Anno Domini. Twenty-five years later, Micon still remembered that December morning. A blizzard was sweeping over the Hudson Bay, icy needles nabbing at faces, the frost-dipped wind cutting through the heavy robes of the prelates lining the flight deck, all of them eager for the dedication homily to come to a blessed end so they could crawl back to their burning fireplaces, their cups of steaming cider, and stare at walls heavy with portraits of clinically depressed saints.
Micon had never questioned the Church’s ban on military technology. All those multi-billion dollar steel-encased ships—the giant carriers, the lethal destroyers, the sleek frigates—that were littering the ocean floor off the shores of Norfolk, San Francisco, or Hawaii. Or the strategic bombers, fighter jets, drones, attack helicopters, tanks, and artillery pieces cast at the bottom of the junkyard in North Texas—a giant dump hole strewn with barrels poking out of armored turrets and mounds upon mounds of weapons, anything from mortars and assault rifles to machine guns and rocket launchers, all rusting under a scorching sun.
For centuries man had enabled himself to kill at a distance, and wars had grown into mass executions guided from far away. Death rained from heaven with the simple tap of a button on a joystick hidden somewhere in a Nevada bunker. The Church had finally spoken: a man will take another man’s life only when he is the bearer of a divine commission; and he will do so with his own hands: swords and not missiles; an ax and not an RPG. The way of the bullet is the way of the coward one, the wicked, and the faithless.
If man must be at times God’s chosen instrument to execute His just and holy vengeance, then in the enemy’s eyes one should stare when delivering the ultimate sacrament—the taking of another’s life. Eyes are the gates of the soul, so penetrate the darkness and behold that engorged tumor called sin, suckling on the divine gift of life. Then take that gift back in the name of our Lord and Savior, the Alpha and the Omega, the Judge of the living and of the dead.
Thus Inocentis III had proclaimed ex-cathedra in Nunquam Iterum, his first encyclical in the aftermath of the Blessed Collision. And his words abided.
Micon heard footsteps behind him and turned. Father Lambert’s lanky silhouette emerged from the darkness. The ship’s captain, a square-jawed man with a trimmed beard and a pair of piercing grey eyes gleaming from the shadow of his hood, stepped closer. He shook his head in disappointment.
“They are late again,” Father Lambert said. “This time by three hours. No radio signal, no contact, nothing.”
Father Micon patted Lambert on the shoulder; he knew his fears all too well. Every time Nautilus tarried on its return voyage
from Harlequin Island, the captain was afraid he would never see his submersible again.
“The Lord has them in the palm of His hands,” Micon said. “His will rules over the undersea, too. Why worry your weak heart, my brother? Keep the faith.”
“What about keeping you warm, huh?” the captain said.
“I will survive the night,” Father Micon said, wrapped his robe around his frame and returned his stare to the dark ocean.
The wind picked up the pace. A sudden gust spun over the waves crested with fresh foam and carried the spray high into the air, splashing the bridge with a myriad of small drops. Micon tasted the salt, then pulled the hood of his habit on. Father Lambert drew near and rested his vein-creased hands on the parapet, clutching the rail. He nodded at the letter Micon held in his hand, the Vatikan’s seal hanging loose at the end of a ribbon.
“Any news about the Clinton?”
“It was spotted again, three weeks ago. This time by a fishing boat off the coast of North Carolina,” Micon said.
The letter in his hand, delivered that evening with the rest of the mail, did confirm that USS Bill Clinton was still at large after all these years. A Los Angeles class submarine, one-third the size of its ballistic-missiles sisters, Clinton would have been the ideal vessel to run the shuttle back and forth to that godforsaken island. Instead, Lambert had to rely only on the twelve-man submersible, the only deep-sea-rescue asset aboard the carrier. The number of trips had increased in recent months, and that had taken a toll on the small vessel. On top of that, when the ocean was rough, Nautilus had a hard time surfacing underneath the iron belly of Harlequin Island, always at risk of being hurled by the angry breakers into the massive structural columns that kept the giant artificial island above sea level.
Down on the flight deck, a team of friars was unloading bales of supplies from the cargo area of a twin-engine Chinook helicopter. A friar held up a lantern while the others rolled the bundled packages down the loading ramp and stacked them on a four-wheel dolly. The lantern’s faint light beam fell for a second on the coat of arms emblazoned on the chopper’s fuselage: the keys of Saint Peter, the New Vatikan, crossed underneath the papal tiara. To the left was the spiked-sun with a cross—the insignia of the Jesuit Order.
The Jesuits…
The Jesuits had kept an entire fleet of helicopters in the name of strategic mobility for their troops—God’s marines still had to be hauled to distant places in pursuit of the enemies of righteousness, so the Pontiff gave them a fifty-year dispensation from the ban. They had half a century to clean up the world of unfaithfulness, or as long as those helicopters would last.
How gracious, in turn, for the Jesuits to provide a supply line for Domus Mariae. It was all politics, and Micon had no illusions that one day they’d foot him the bill. However, if it hadn’t been for the Jesuits hanging on to their helicopters, the Franciscan Order wouldn’t have been able to salvage the Pittsburgh. The Franciscans’ goals had been less lofty. They had no holy warriors to deploy, no righteous wars to fight; they simply wanted a floating monastery to spread God’s love across the seas to the other five continents from where no news had arrived for decades.
At least that’s what Micon had envisioned when he was appointed the abbot for Domus Mariae. Little did he know he would end up stuck in the middle of the Atlantic, running a death shuttle back and forth to Gottfrey’s demented playground.
“Let’s go inside, old man,” Father Lambert said, laying an arm around Micon’s shoulders as the two prelates strolled back toward the bridge’s door. “What would Heaven think of a Franciscan priest sneezing during the homily?”
“That would be the ultimate sacrilege, wouldn’t it?” Micon said.
“Nothing a heartfelt confession can’t fix.”
“You’re wrong, my brother. Some sins, no confession can fix.”
“Blessed Mary, here we go again. Who’s whining now?”
“Leave the Virgin out of this, Lambert.”
“She’s the only one whose supplications the Son won’t turn down, and at this point I need all the help I can get,” Father Lambert said, then held the bridge’s door open. Micon stepped in, and the captain followed.
The door slammed shut behind the two priests just as the bell started to toll, calling for the Compline, the last prayer service of the day in the aftermath of which the Great Silence would be summoned throughout the entire monastery ship.
Down on the flight deck, a friar hurled one last parcel on top of the overloaded dolly.
5
The bell tolled three times. For a few moments, the chimes drowned out the dull murmur of the ocean waves blasting the hull of the carrier. Awaken from their slumbers, a pack of seagulls circled the bundle of antennas cluttered around the bell tower, then flew back to their roosting sanctuary under the cover of a satellite dish. Once the tolls’ echo finally died, the birds folded their wings, huddled against each other, and went back to sleep.
Hauling off the bale-stacked dolly, the team of friars rushed past the main entrance of the abbey and disappeared around the corner on their way to the back depository. A second later, the door cracked open and, concealed by the slumping hood of a robe, a woman’s face shone briefly in the moonlight. She looked over to her left then her right, glancing across the deserted flight deck, then she stepped out. She nudged the door back in its place, and, holding the hem of her nun’s robe above her ankles, she raced toward the Chinook helicopter’s double-hunched silhouette looming in the dark.
The nun dashed underneath the propeller’s limp blades, climbed the short flight of stairs leading to the chopper’s cabin, and knocked on its door. It opened immediately, the squeal of its hinges causing her to cast a worried glance over her shoulder. A novice monk, skittish and no older than twenty with a freckled face and fidgety hands, peeked through the doorway. He wore the black cassock of the Jesuit order, the cloth hugging his body tightly, held in place with a tincture knotted around his waist.
“Hey, handsome,” the nun whispered, and cracked a hurried smile.
The novice monk panned his jittery eyes from the ringlets of blond hair wandering out of the slumping hood, to her lips, blood red in the light that drizzled from the cockpit’s emergency box. The nun glanced back one last time at the abbey from where the muffled voices of friars and nuns reciting their communal prayers were echoing through the night—words in Latin about contrite hearts and the demons of the flesh and God’s relentless grace abounding toward sinners.
The monk grabbed her by a shoulder and pulled her in.
“Easy now, handsome—”
The door slammed closed behind her; the lock clanged shut.
Once inside the cockpit, he removed her hood and took her head in his hands. His eyes collected every single detail of her face, like going twice through a checklist.
“God in Heaven,” he mumbled, and swallowed hard.
She arched her lips again, but stopped halfway into a frozen simper. There was no need to try and seduce the man before her. She just looked at him, the unfinished smile creasing her face, her eyes bathed in pity, her hands crawling on his chest. He was young, but already like all the others—weak, drenched in his own lust, helpless, and ready to sell his soul—but his soul was of no use to her.
The novice monk caressed her hair and gently put the rebel hair locks back in line with the curls that wrapped around her face like a cursed halo. Suddenly, he dropped to one knee, scoured with his hand under the copilot’s chair, and pulled a neatly folded paper from underneath. He stretched it out and held it up to the light alongside the nun’s face. It was a page from a TIME photo album he’d found in the rubbles of the public library where he’d spent his solitude challenge at the start of his novitiate—forty days of fasting with nothing but rainwater collected in a tin can, a few crumbs of mildewed bread, and a family of rats that kept him company.
His eyes kept darting back and forth from the photograph of the platinum blonde woman to the robe-covered
replika in front of him. Same ruby red lips, same bedroom eyes with just a tinge of sadness in them, same never-ending eyelashes like a collection of black parabolas sloping heavenward, and, yes, the beauty mark—exactly in the same place, slightly up and to the left of her perfectly arched mouth.
“It is you,” he mumbled. “God—”
“Damn right, handsome,” the nun replied, and she barely touched his chin with her index finger, a half gesture like chasing an insect away. Her gentle tap sent a ripple through his body; he kept his wanton eyes on the picture.
In the photograph, the woman wore an ivory cocktail dress that left her arms and shoulders bare. A gust of air wafting through a grating in the pavement swirled her dress up around her waist, exposing a pair of strong, flawless legs—legs made to break a man’s spirit and turn his sacred vows into nothingness.
She wore underwear—tight, immaculately white…
The novice monk swallowed a knot in his throat and looked at the replika in front of him dressed in a black, loose-fitting, pathetic robe... He turned the photograph toward the nun, and nodded at the woman immortalized in it.
“What about—I mean, do you have a pair of—like these—like she does—you know—the white panties?” He blurted the last word. Blushed. God must surely understand. Heaven is a place for sinners, and he was about to become one.
“Sorry, handsome, but I left those on the island,” the nun said.
She grabbed the tincture wrapped around his waist and pulled him in. The novice monk let go of the photograph. The rumpled page sailed to the floor of the cabin.
Eyes glued to the woman in front of him, the monk started to fumble with the knot of his tincture, desperate to untie it. The nun turned her face away and glanced at the array of navigation gauges, knobs, switch consoles, and throttles that cluttered the helicopter’s flight deck; two rosaries hung off the cyclic levers, the tiny crucifixes dangling at the end of strings of wooden beads. She paid no attention to the young man hovering over her, who kept mumbling and pulling at the knot of his tincture as drops of sweat gathered on his brow.
Runaway Nun (Misbegotten) Page 3