In Love by Christmas: A Paranormal Romance

by Nathan, Sandy

  A black-clad servant opened the door for them. Lines of grief marked his face. He was bent over and almost sobbing.

  “What happened, Luigi? He was fine when I left. Are we too late?”

  The servant shook his head. “No, Your Eminence. He lives, but he is in great pain. I cannot stand to see him suffer.”

  “Take me to him,” Leroy said, not realizing how his appearance would affect the houseman.

  He jumped in front of Leroy, blocking the doorway and holding out his arms to clutch the door jamb on each side. Ready to die to protect his master, with all of his one hundred and forty pounds. “No! You will not touch him.”

  “Don’t worry, I won’t hurt him.” Leroy stepped forward and the fellow in the door moved aside like a feather. “Take me to him.”

  The room was small and oval. Stone walls covered with white plaster rose high overhead. A window near the top cast light upon the man in the bed. He was ancient, dying, and in great pain, as his servant had said.

  “Oh, Tomas. I am sorry that you must suffer so,” the archbishop went to his brother, dropped to his knees and took his hand. The dying man flinched at the touch.

  “Don’t touch him yet,” Leroy said. He dropped to the stone floor and began to chant, arms and hands spread over the shrunken form in the bed. “O Great One, this is a good man. Take his pain. If you wish to make him well, heal him now. If you don’t wish to make him well, take his pain and let him leave in glory.”

  The archbishop and servant stood back, listening to Leroy singing in his tongue. He detached two of his eagle feathers and brushed them over the suffering man’s body, touching his head and forehead, his lips, his throat, heart. Belly and all his internal organs, traveling down his legs and ending with his feet. Leroy continued to chant, traditional melodies and words that came to him.

  “You belong to Jesus, you belong to Jesus. You have always belonged to Jesus, to Jesus you are going, from Jesus you came. Go in peace, good brother, go in peace and carry love from my People to Jesus. Tell him his son, Joseph Bishop, my grandfather, loves him. Tell him Joseph Bishop loves you and bids you good speed.”

  His voice rose, vibrating from the hard stone and plaster walls. When he said his grandfather’s American name, a “crack!” rocked the room. The stone and plaster split, traveling down the wall from the high window to the top of the crucifix hanging above the sick man’s head.

  Leroy laughed, “See, my friend, Jesus is coming for you. Jesus knows you, and He will take you with Him and to my grandfather. There is no pain for those who know the Lord. No pain for those who know the Great One. No pain for those encircled by angels and lovers of God. Open your eyes, and see your dear brother.”

  The man on the bed opened his eyes wide in astonishment. “Aldo, what is this? Am I dead? What is this light?”

  Light filled the room as though all the windows in the world had opened. Something ricocheted around. The man in the bed began to weep, as did his servant and brother Aldo. And Leroy.

  Wings brushed them, angels brushed them; the golden radiance of God covered them. Someone else was there, unseen. A Someone that angels sang of throughout all time.

  “You are here just for a moment longer, my friend. Glory awaits you. The reward of your life awaits you. And we are supposed to talk,” Leroy said.

  “Yes, that is true. Aldo, Luigi, wait outside, I must speak with my friend. I have waited for him all these years.” He shooed the others out.

  Leroy sat in a simple wooden chair next to Fr. Tomas’s bed. He leaned forward, listening intently.

  “I was a simple priest, not destined for greatness like my brother. I saw the people who had suffered most, at their own hands, and at the hands of the evil one.” A faint smile touched the face of the prostrate priest.

  “While my brother visited palaces and castles, I visited the homes of the poor, hospitals, places they took the wretched and cast off. I knew that evil existed. I saw terrible things.” Tears misted his eyes. He wiped at one, and then looked astonished. “I can move this hand. I couldn’t before you came. Hah! What they say of you is true.”

  Leroy didn’t know what that was, but he wanted to make sure the padre understood. “I can’t make you better. You are going to die.”

  “I know. We are granted this interval so I can tell you. This is between you and me, you understand. You may never repeat it.” Leroy nodded. “Will Duane has called me so many times for so many years. He wanted to know where his wife is. He wanted to know if she was well.”

  Leroy about jumped out of his chair. This was the man on the other end of the telephone number!

  “I would never tell him. I could never feel the hand of God on him, as I can on you. He would harm her, rather than help her. That is still true, you understand?” Leroy nodded. “In the beginning, Will Duane blustered and shouted. Demanded. He was the rich man with all the power. Not all the power. His wife gave him my telephone number, direct. How many times I wished she hadn’t.

  “But Kathryn Duane wanted to know if her daughter was well, or if not well, alive. Had she not pined for her daughter, she would have cut all ties.

  “Will Duane would call and say Ashley was sick or had had an accident, but he couldn’t lie well enough to fool me into passing the message on. I am a poor priest, but I have ways of getting information … I kept track of the girl.” He sighed. “Poor lost soul.” He coughed.

  “I found Kathryn Duane in the worst of the hospitals for Rome’s poor. Nothing more than a waiting room for death. She was the most beautiful woman I have ever seen, but broken. Physically maimed, ruined, diseased in body, but mostly in soul. I visited her and saw she had a light that the greatest evil could not extinguish.

  “I had her moved to one of our hospitals.” He raised his hand to the indicated crucifix over his bed. “She was protected there. The evil one could not enter. I visited her. She was so ill, but little by little, she began to talk to me and tell me what had happened. She was not Catholic then; it was not confession, but it was.

  “She told me about her husband, a selfish, evil man who had never been faithful to her. She told me about her own faults, her drinking and addiction to tranquilizers. She told me of neglecting her daughter as a result. She told me about Enzo Donatore and all that happened to her at his hands.

  “She told me these things when she could talk. When we found her, she was barely alive and barely human. She screamed in terror and pain. Nothing was worse than hearing Kathryn Duane scream. That horror could make angels drop from heaven.

  “Nothing could heal her. But Jesus planted an idea in my mind. I took her to the place where angels sing.”

  Music wafted into the room, becoming louder. Women’s voices, chanting, “Glori Patri, et Filo, et Spiritui Sancto …” Chants in Latin. They reached the heights and flew upward from there. The man on the bed smiled. “My brother knows what I like.” His cheek twitched and he touched his heart, and then began speaking again.

  “She was terrified of Donatore finding her, more terrified of him finding the child. We brought her to a place where she was safe and protected. She gradually felt the love of God and the Holy Trinity. She released her daughter into the care of the Divine Protector and did what she needed to do for her own soul.”

  The bright old eyes twinkled a bit.

  “What would Will Duane say if he knew his wife was a Catholic?” Leroy’s eyes bulged. “He’d do more than that, my friend. Leroy, you must never tell a soul what I am going to say.

  “Kathryn Duane is now Mother Kathryn. I won’t tell you her order or her sacred name. She is safe where she is, cloistered from the world.”

  “She’s a cloistered nun?” Leroy gasped.

  “Yes, of course. What else could she be after being abused so badly? After hating her husband so much that she walked into the arms of the devil, knowing what he was, and what would happen to her? She is healed, she is forgiven, and she has forgiven the man she once loved.”

  Leroy was hav
ing trouble keeping his jaw shut.

  “She will never leave her monastery. She is safe there. She does God’s work, Leroy, praying day and night for the salvation of souls. The singing never stops in that place. It is a place for angels.

  “She is the most beautiful woman I have ever seen. If ever a woman could cause me to break my vows, it was she. But I didn’t and she didn’t. Still I have loved her all these years, keeping her safe from Donatore, and her husband.”

  “You’ve done a good job with that. Will’s almost crazy wanting to know she’s OK and wanting to say he’s sorry. He’s a changed man, Father, since he met my grandfather.”

  “But not changed all the way.”

  “No, that dog has some fleas to shed. But he cares about Mrs. Duane. And he cares about Cass, what Ashley calls herself now.”

  “How is the child?”

  “Not a child anymore an’ worked over by the devil about as much as her mother was. I think she’s safe now. I’d make her safe if her father’d let me.”

  “Fleas, Leroy. He has fleas. And you don’t.” Dying eyes, filled with truth.

  “I tried my best, sir.”

  “Do you intend to marry her?”

  “If I can get my hands on her and get her well.”

  The priest was looking more shrunken by the minute. “I have a gift for you. Words from a saint, St. Louise de Marillac. She was co-founder of the Daughters of Charity of St. Vincent de Paul. Have you heard of her?” Leroy shook his head.

  “Her life was filled with waiting and not getting what she wanted. About waiting, she said, ‘I will tell you quite simply that we must wait peacefully for grace to produce true humility in us by revealing our powerlessness to us.’

  “We are powerless, Leroy, until grace gives us the gift of that knowledge. And then we are truly powerless.”

  “An’ the Great One comes and does it for you.”

  “Yes.” He coughed and clutched his chest. “I must see my brother now, my friend. Everything is in God’s hands and will work out as it should.” He smiled. “I didn’t get to meet your grandfather, but I got to meet you.” The smile widened. “You will be greater than him, my son.” He made the sign of the cross in Leroy’s direction.

  Archbishop Aldo entered, hands bearing a vial. A couple more priests were with him. They went right to work. The Last Rites, Leroy had heard it called. He stood in the hallway, until someone came.

  “Your car is here, sir.” He gave Leroy a parcel wrapped in brown paper and tied with string. “Father Tomas had this wrapped for you.”

  Leroy took it and walked into the blinding Roman light.

  16

  Finding an Angel

  Leroy sat sprawled on the sofa of his villa. He held in his lap a framed black and white photograph, which was the content of the package the servant had given him the day before. The huge TV in the media room of his villa was on, the sound muted. Soundlessly wailing people filled the screen; short people in black keened. Talking-head announcers intoned dirges in Italian. He got Tom to turn off the sound and get the English subtitles up. Tom was very clever at things like that.

  Ribbons along the bottom of the screen read, “Fr. Tomas Bessagiori died last night at about four a.m. after a long battle with cancer. Long considered a saint by Rome’s poor and disadvantaged, the priest who devoted his life to the disenfranchised has gone home.”

  Leroy took in a huge gulp of air. His ribs heaved. He knew Tomas was dying. He could do nothing to stop it. He’d known him only a few minutes, yet he was devastated. As the announcements continued, his heaving ribs turned to uncontrolled sobs. His valet left the room discreetly.

  “The streets are filled with mourners, people from all walks of life. They’re converging on the little Vatican street where he breathed his last.”

  “Previously, Fr. Tomas was known for his charity to the poor, but now, as you can see from these shots from fashionable districts, he was loved by the rich as well.” Chic faces lined with grief lit candles in front of a statue of the original St. Tomas in a wide plaza.

  “He was able to heal the sick of heart and mind, as well as body. His charitable works are legendary. Hospitals, orphanages, and homes for those with incurable diseases.”

  “The Vatican has announced that one documented miracle has taken place since his death. That occurred in his death chamber, witnessed by five people, including his brother, His Eminence, Agapito Agusto, Cardinal Bessagiori. The process of canonization has thus begun for our beloved Father Tomas.”

  “Listen, Gianni, you can hear the people in the streets,” the Italian news doll said.

  Leroy turned up the sound for that one. The streets were flooded, and the crowds were heading to the Vatican. Shouts of, “Santo subito!” “Sainthood now!” filled the air. Black clad people, all ages, crawled toward the Vatican entrances on their hands and knees, striking their faces and tearing their clothes in grief.

  The cameras moved around. Bundles of flowers five feet high piled around the little chapel where Tomas had preached. His home before his final illness, when he had been moved to the Vatican, was a little place at the back of the church no different than the shabby houses in the neighborhood. Now it was a shrine. Candles, flowers, crosses, wailing mourners. Grief poured from the screen.

  Tears ran down Leroy’s cheeks, both for Fr. Tomas and for his grandfather. This is what should have happened when his grandfather passed. He was a great saint, but Enzo Donatore and his black devils stole his glory. Now, grandpa was “the missing shaman,” “a character so much like Jim Jones,” “a cult leader.”

  What the people in the street were doing—expressing their anguish at losing a true man of God—is what should have happened for his grandfather, shaman, teacher, and healer. Piles of flowers and candles and placards lined the streets for Tomas, growing by the instant.

  Leroy’s eyes fell on the framed photo in his lap. It was bigger than 8” X 10” and matted. He had no idea what it was. It had hung in Tomas’s bedchamber, his last place of rest. A black and white photo, it depicted the corner of a tiled roof, a three-quarters view so you could see both sides of the roof. The tiles were odd-shaped, not like the ones that sold in any of the building supply outlets he knew. Hand-made and old.

  The shot was taken so you could see a funny little animal—carved in stone—under the tile’s lip. It had a round hole for a mouth. A drain-spout. Behind the tiled corner, at some distance, a chimney stuck up. It was unusual too, with a notched, stair-step top. Each flat edge was tiled. The composition was nice; it was an artistic shot that no one would think anything about seeing in a priest’s room.

  Leroy jerked when he got it. Kathryn Duane was the Mother Superior of the monastery the shot depicted. If he found it, he would find her. But how? This clue was indecipherable. How many tile-roofed monasteries of cloistered nuns were there in Italy? Europe? The world? She could be anywhere. Tomas hadn’t said she was in Europe. But Leroy’s soul said she was. What was her name now? He didn’t know.

  He needed to find a cloistered monastery with singing nuns that had that weird tile and a gargoyle spout. He couldn’t do it. Despite the impossibility of it, Leroy’s mind immediately began to kick out plans to find Kathryn.

  But should he, even if he could? Tomas had told him Will Duane was an evil man. Leroy had not known him when he chased women. He had stopped, but Leroy didn’t know how sorry he was, or if he knew how he had hurt his wife and daughter. Even as a child, Cass knew her father was doing something hurtful to her mother and their family, even if she didn’t know what. Now, she certainly knew what.

  Leroy suspected Will wasn’t being upfront with him about Cass. Was she getting better? Why wasn’t he telling him the truth about his interactions with her? Will’s fleas might be running the dog.

  If that was so, knowing where his wife was would surely lead to her doom. Duane would go after her with Hannah and her troops and all of his computers and electronic powers. Kathryn’s safe haven would be ex
posed, and Donatore would get her again. Leroy decided he would never tell Will even the bit he’d found: she was a nun in a cloistered monastery, and happy. She’d stay that way.

  Why did he want to find Kathryn Duane? He did, absolutely. Leroy thought about what he’d say to her, if he found her. He’d tell her how sorry he was about all that had befallen her. She would tell him she did it to herself, and walked into the devil’s arms on her own out of anger at her husband. But she didn’t take her daughter; that was some hellish trick of Donatore’s.

  “How did you get free? Where did you find the strength and courage to get away? How can I help Cass do the same?” That’s what Leroy wanted to ask.

  The phone rang. Oh, shit, he thought. Will Duane. “Tom, would you get that. I’m out, unless it’s God.”

  “Sir, I think it is God.” Tom handed the receiver to him.

  The voice belonged to an elderly, grief-stricken man. “Leroy, it is Aldo, Cardinal Aldo. The important son of the Bessagiori family.” Aldo was weeping, out of control. “I need to confess a sin to you, Leroy. I have hidden something from you. I am the important one in my family, the Prince of the Holy Church. My brother was a mere priest, with a small parish. Oh, I knew he did good, but not to the extent he did. Stories are pouring in, thousands of stories of people he saved.

  “Now, I want him to save me. And I want you to save me. I will tell you what happened after you left. You saw our Lord in his chamber, yes?”

  “Yes.”

  “And angels, and holy beings. The Mother of God. You saw those?”

  “Yes, I did.”

  “I administered the Last Rites. He lingered. We stayed and prayed; his retainer, Luigi, and his closest friends. The air was thick with holiness. I could barely breathe. When my brother’s ribs stopped moving, a howl filled my ears. Not of pain, but of joy.

  “The crack down the wall that started when you were here shot down the wall. The crucifix that was mounted there flew into the air, tumbling. It landed so that the holy heart of Jesus rested against my brother’s heart. I fell on my knees, all of us did.