The Colors of Alemeth - Vol. 1

by V. Cobe

CHAPTER 18

  The Papal and Episcopal Art Museum

  As soon as they met on the grass for morning roll call, Alem whispered in Jaala’s ear, “We need to talk.”

  “What happened?”

  “Alemeth Ricardo Sá!” called Mother Zilá.

  “Present!”

  He turned his head to the left and said mysteriously, “In a minute.”

  Jaala couldn’t hide his enthusiasm. When roll call ended, they drove in silence to the Hall of Needs to have breakfast. There, they joined Hazael and Lael.

  “Is it about yesterday?” asked Hazael.

  “Shh!” exclaimed Lael. “Softer.”

  Alem nodded. He took a sip from his milked coffee and lowered his voice to a whisper.

  “Did you see anyone in the church last night?”

  The others looked at each other, confused, and shook their heads.

  “I saw a man.”

  Lael was beginning to pant. He dropped his toast on the plate and gripped the table.

  “He had black hair that almost reached the ground.”

  “What are you talking about?”

  “Listen to me. He was hidden between the pews. But when he saw me looking at him, he fled and knocked the vase.”

  “So that’s what that noise was.”

  “Lael also saw the vase breaking,” said Alem.

  “I saw it.”

  “I heard something break,” said Jaala.

  “But that’s not what’s important. Inside the vase was a crumpled and dusty dress.”

  “Alem, they’re going.”

  The senior students were heading out of the monastery to the bus that would take them to the Papal and Episcopal Art Museum.

  “You have to tell the bishop. If strangers are walking in here again—”

  “And say what, Haz? That I was walking around the church in the middle of the night?”

  Hazael remained wide-eyed but said nothing.

  “Come on. We’ll continue this later,” fired Alem.

  They finished eating in a hurry and rushed to the bus. The Papal and Episcopal Art Museum was in the oldest part of the city, by the sea, but away from the old and dirty docks. It took over an hour to get there, and during that time Alem couldn’t talk to the others about it, because they were always bothered by curious students as soon as they gathered heads.

  He was constantly taking a hand to his cassock’s pocket and tightening the piece of crumpled paper, as if to ensure he still had it with him.

  Haz would have a theory for it for sure. Jaala probably would too, but Alem suspected that his would be a lot less credible.

  The museum was an elegant, old but well-maintained palace, a former residence of King Fernando II of Aragon who ordered it to be built, though no one has lived there for decades.

  A very tall and very thin nun was waiting for them at the entrance. She greeted nun Zilá and the two chaperones with a big smile and waved at all the students. Her habit was brown, the color of Governance, one of the branches where women could serve in the Institution, in addition to Health and Education. The gold hood indicated that she was highly ranked in the hierarchy.

  “My name is Tamar. Welcome, everyone.” She opened her arms. “So many young faces here with us today, what a joy.”

  The chaperone nuns distributed plastic Faithful Crosses attached to a string to each student to hang around their necks. The crosses contained a map of the museum with explanations of the various periods by which the works were grouped.

  “I hope I can convince some of you to join us, even if only in the art business; painters and sculptors are endangered species, but what would the Institution expect if it cultivates them so late? You can’t teach someone how to paint at the age of eighteen.” She turned and walked through a golden door to another room, still muttering to herself, “I’m talking too much already.”

  Jaala pressed Alem’s arm.

  “Will you tell us what’s going on or not?”

  “I will! Stay close to me. We have to be discreet.”

  They followed among their fellow students, attentive to the nuns who were vigilant of everything.

  “What’s this story about a dress?” asked Hazael.

  “There was a dress inside the vase that was broken?” asked Jaala.

  “That the man broke, yes,” replied Alem.

  “Did you keep it?” asked Hazael.

  “It’s in my room. But the interesting thing is not the dress itself….”

  “Oh no,” muttered Lael.

  “It’s what I found in one of the pockets,” completed Alem.

  The voice of Sister Tamar rose.

  “It was actually you I was looking for…. Alemeth, right?”

  Alem stiffened and stopped talking.

  “As soon as they told me that today the senior year of Heart of Carmel would be coming, I immediately asked to give the tour.” She looked at the students with a smile. “Not to take credit from the others, of course, but Alemeth’s fame has crossed the boundaries of the monastery long ago. Do you, by any chance, happen to be interested in working with art?

  Alem looked around, red as his old hair color.

  “M-maybe….”

  “Right, maybe.” She sighed loudly. “It’s always maybe. I was saying that A New Day is Poulet at his best, a beautiful representation of his favorite subject, the dichotomy of sin and absolution. But that doesn’t interest you, does it?”

  Alem had before him a picture of one of the most well-known painters of the fourteenth century. Paintings were not his favorite things, so all he was able to withdraw from the image was a full moon, from which rain fell, and a dimmed sun. He saw no sin-absolution duality anywhere.

  The guide went to the next room, and the students and monastery nuns followed her.

  Jaala grasped Alem’s arm again and almost crushed it between the fingers.

  “What did you find in the dress?” he whispered.

  Alem shook his arm in pain.

  “I’ll get it out of my pocket. Be discreet, okay? Make as if you’re paying attention to the paintings.”

  With an impressive calm, he reached into the pocket of his cassock, took out the yellow paper and opened it in the palm of his hand so that the others could see what was written on it.

  Lael sounded squeaky.

  “That symbol in the corner! Is it not the same one you saw while… when…?”

  Alem had noticed the symbol the first time he looked at the paper. It was the same symbol he had seen in the iron bars of the dungeon when he was kidnapped. But what could it possibly mean? Neither he nor his friends had any knowledge of it.

  “Hand me that paper,” ordered a voice from behind.

  Alem jumped and turned. Mother Zilá’s eyes were sparkling and her arm was outstretched at him.

  “I will not ask again.”

  Alem hid the paper behind his back, but there was no way out.

  “It… it’s just a paper I found on the floor.”

  “Don’t make me look stupid. Do you think I’m stupid?”

  Oh my God, I’ll have to hand it over. They’ll expel me.

  He stretched his arm forward, ready to hand the paper to the Mother Superior, but Sister Tamar approached, laying her tall, slender shadow over the two of them. She slapped his hand and snatched the paper from it.

  “If this was found here, it is my business.” She turned to Mother Zilá. “I’m sorry, it’s the rules of the museum, my rules. This is how we handle things here.” She put the paper in the pocket of her brown habit, turned and went on her way to the next gallery. She shouted for all the students to hear, “Do not touch anything that is not yours, boys!”

  Mother Zilá still fired an angry look at Alem before turning her back and following the guide.

  “I think I’m going to pass out.” Lael was livid.

  “It’s fine now,” said Alem, without looking up from Sister Tamar.

  “I memorized what was written on the paper. I think I
can replicate it,” said Hazael and immediately started scribbling something in a notebook.

  Lael bent over and threw up on the ground, to the dismay and disgust of the others.

  Mother Zilá looked at him with repulsion and sighed.

  “Someone take this unfortunate boy to the bathroom, please. But don’t linger.”

  Alem put an arm around Lael’s shoulders and led him down the hall to the bathroom at the other end.

  “You can relax, everything’s fine now.”

  They entered the bathroom and went straight to a toilet in one of the five closed cubicles.

  “Water?”

  “N-not… y-yet…,” answered Lael, folded around the ceramic bowl.

  The bathroom door opened, and two people came in talking in excited whispers.

  “…in The Umbra Nocturne,” one of them said.

  “I don’t believe it.”

  Lael’s eyes widened, and Alem motioned for him to not make any noise.

  He knew that word. Welcome to Umbra, had been what he was told while he was in the dungeons but he never knew what it was. And neither did his friends when he told them.

  “I’m telling you. I heard it this morning.”

  “But how?”

  “I don’t know. But you haven’t heard the best part,” he lowered his voice to a volume that was barely audible. “An attack… Defectio…”

  “And what’s new about that?”

  Alem peered through the cubicle door. They were two very old men, almost bald. One of them had a violet cane to support his weight, even when standing still.

  “…different… attack… inside… land….”

  “In Umbraland?” said the other, surprised.

  “Shh! Come on.” And they left the bathroom.

  Alem was panting. Lael let out a groan of despair, bent over the toilet and barfed.

  Hazael was asking Sister Tamar something when Alem and Lael returned.

  “I cannot give you a complete answer,” said the nun. The students were looking at a corner of the room, entirely covered by a gray fabric. “The only thing I can say is that the artist only recently revealed his true intentions with the work that is still there. And the Institution didn’t like it.” She smiled and shrugged. “Shall we go on to the last one? I saved the best for the end. This one is very, very interesting.”

  “Are you feeling better?” asked Hazael, as the group followed after the nun.

  “No.” Lael was still pale but now he had fear in his eyes.

  “We heard about Umbra in the bathroom,” clarified Alem.

  “What?” asked Jaala.

  “As if….”

  “Who said that? What did they say?”

  “Shh!” insisted Alem. “They weren’t very enlightening. I still don’t know what that is.”

  “The White Tree remains a mystery today,” said Sister Tamar.

  “And now that symbol on the paper, a paper that a mysterious man lead you to in the monastery church!”

  “Jaala is right, it looks like someone is trying to tell you something about….” Hazael stopped talking and then mouthed, “Umbra.”

  “Some say the painting was commissioned by Pope Marcelo III, in an attempt to popularize a story that until that time was not part of the Holy Bible. Some say it was the Pope himself who wrote the story of the White Tree, and not one of the apostles, but these are rumors that border on heresy, so we better leave it at that.”

  “Yes, there’s definitely something strange here,” said Alem.

  “What we heard in the bathroom proves that that place is real, that place connected to your kidnapping….” Lael spoke for the first time during the conversation.

  Welcome to Umbra, Alem recalled.

  “Do you remember the address?” he asked.

  They all nodded.

  “The man wanted me to find it.”

  “You’re not thinking…,” said Hazael.

  “I am. God forgive me, but we have to go to St. Matthew’s Square.”

  The sound of marching boots sounded a few seconds before four Order Brigade guards passed by them thundering toward a closed room.

  “That’s it, boys, you can now go to the museum shop. There’s a lot there.”

  The sentence was interrupted by shouts from the back of the room. A few seconds later, and as the cries approached, the four Order Brigade guards reemerged, dragging two old men. One of them clung with all his might to a violet cane, while the other complained with indignation. Two other men dressed in dark blue suits and sunglasses, at a corner of the room, watched the scene with discretion. But Alem had the strange feeling that it was him who they were watching. They left after a few seconds. Midway out of the room, the old man dropped his cane on the floor, where it stayed even after all of them disappeared from view.

  “Such an offensive thing.” Sister Tamar sighed.

  Mother Zilá and the other nuns called the students to join them and guided them to the museum shop before returning to the monastery.

  Alem followed them, but not before glancing at Sister Tamar. When she saw him looking at her, the nun made a strange gesture: she extended her right hand horizontally just below the chest, closed her left hand in a circle and placed it under the right one. She winked at him, turned away and disappeared through the door.