by David Perry
“Husband.”
The priest’s eyes fairly twinkled. “I am Father Nicolo Monaldeschi,” said the cleric, taking off his glove and offering his hand, “but for some reason everyone calls me Don Bello.”
“Well then, we will too, Don Bello. And here comes my husband, Adriano.”
Adriano gave Lee a questioning glance as he crossed the room holding two cups of coffee. Adriano offered the usual morning pleasantries, fluidly, in flawless Italian. Don Bello led them across the increasingly crowded room in search of a table. Two conservatively dressed businessmen jumped up from theirs, instantly recognizing the elderly priest, and motioned for the trio to take their places. While Adriano and Don Bello draped their coats over their chairs and settled in, Lee went back for the priest’s espresso. Adriano smiled when he returned. The conversation was in full and lively swing.
“Adriano tells me you are a student of history.” The priest was positively puckish in his enthusiasm.
Lee sat down.
“You have come to the right place.” The priest pushed his chair closer to the table. “Orvieto is rich in history. You must let me give you a tour before you go.”
“That would be super, yes please!” Lee almost spilled his coffee in delight. He noticed Adriano rolling his eyes affectionately.
“How long are you here?”
“Two months,” Lee answered, taking a sip of his latte. My god, even train station coffee was delicious here.
“Wonderful! Plenty of time, then! You’ll practically be Orvietani before you leave.”
“Oh dear, Don Bello,” said Adriano. “You don’t know what you’ve done. Lee will drive you crazy with questions.”
“Not at all,” he continued gleefully while he delicately imbibed his espresso. “I can show you the catacombs and underground passages at San Andrea. They say that some of the popes used them to hide during difficult times. Borgias, Medici, Jewish refugees from the Nazis, Italian partisans subverting the fascists. Cathar heretics escaping the Crusaders. The occasional pregnant nun on the run. Oh yes, Orvieto has many secrets.”
“Your church is beautiful. We were there for its feast day Mass Sunday evening,” Lee said, ever the eager, albeit aging, acolyte and would-be priest.
“Oh no, dear boy, Sant’Andrea isn’t my parish, I just help out there since—since it lost its pastor and its deacon last year.” Don Bello’s winsome demeanor dimmed a bit, but for just a second. Recovering quickly, he went on, “My parish is San Giovanale, right on the cliff. It’s the oldest church in Orvieto, even older that Sant’Andrea. San Giovanale is built over the remains of a Roman altar and an even older Etruscan temple.” The cleric offered this last fact with more than a little bit of obvious pride.
They chatted amiably for the next fifteen minutes or so, until the speakers overhead crackled to staticky life. The train was five minutes away.
“Ah, time to go,” Don Bello said with a slight frown. “But, we can continue our conversation on the train if you like.”
“That would be lovely,” Adriano said with genuine enthusiasm, and helped the priest into his coat.
Lee looked on in bemused amazement. It wasn’t like Adriano to cozy up to someone so professionally religious, no matter how charming. God knew Adriano and Brian had had their share of arguments over, well, just that. God.
“I’m so sorry to hear about your friend,” Don Bello said, patting Lee’s shoulder as they walked toward the train. “Adriano told me. Your bishop friend must have been a very special person to have had two such wonderful men to care for him, in life and death.”
“He was,” Lee replied. “Thank you for that.”
“We miss him very much,” added Adriano. “Especially Lee.”
“He was lucky to have you both, and the Church must have been lucky to have had him,” Don Bello said kindly.
“Well,” Lee said, remembering the article about Bishop Sancarlo’s and Reverend Vicky’s ecumenical lovefest and subsequent controversy. “Brian wasn’t Catholic. He was a bishop in the Episcopal Church.”
“Roman Catholicism. Anglicanism. Two sides of the same religious coin. Episcopalians are just Catholics with half the guilt.”
Adriano laughed out loud. “That’s terrific. Brian would have loved that. May I use it?”
“Of course, dear boy. Quote me at will. It’s not often that I say something memorable.”
“I doubt that, Don Bello,” Adriano said.
“I won’t even charge you residuals, although I am always fundraising. We need money to restore the frescoes in San Giovanale. Eleventh century. Quite rare. Unique in Italy, actually in the world.”
“Are you hitting us up for money, Don Bello?” Adriano teased. “We’ve only just arrived in Orvieto.”
Don Bello raised his gloved palms upward in mock supplication: “Render to Caesar what is Caesar’s and unto God what is God’s. Perhaps. The American dollar is strong this year, I believe.”
Adriano chuckled again. “I have a feeling you’ll meet your fundraising goal.”
In ten years of marriage, Lee had never seen Adriano warm up to a priest like this. Well…Brian, of course. But that was different. He was a bishop, not just a priest. More to the point, he was Brian. Brian had been Lee’s friend, mentor really, for years before he married the young couple, but when Brian got his terminal diagnosis, it was Adriano who had suggested he move in with them. Lee looked lovingly over at Adriano, now quite smitten it would seem with the elderly cleric. Thank God for Adriano, he keeps me sane. He helps me forget—forget many things.
The train was full, but as if endowed with a bubble of goodwill and luck, Don Bello secured three seats together for them in a compartment, instantly abandoned, but with conviviality, by its already seated occupants.
Wow, thought Lee. Don Bello knows everyone in town. He’s like an Italian version of the leprechaun from the old Lucky Charms commercials of my youth.
“You seem quite popular,” Adriano noted genially.
“Well, I wouldn’t say that,” said the priest, grinning. “Just old.”
As the train pulled out of the station and headed south to Rome, an hour distant, Don Bello turned to the couple and asked, “Where are my manners? What is it, after all, that takes you to Rome? Sightseeing? Museums? A papal audience?” He offered this last with a wink at Adriano.
Lee screwed up his courage. Somehow, he had a feeling that Don Bello wouldn’t be pleased with the answer, for all his joviality.
“We’re going to meet an Anglican priest actually, a colleague of our friend Brian’s, we think. It’s a bit of a gamble. We’ve never met and she doesn’t know that we’re coming.”
“Who would that be?”
“The Reverend Victoria Lewis.”
Don Bello inhaled quickly and a slight twitch ran across his face, like a computer screen processing a new bit of data or a just introduced connection. In a flash, it was gone and the priest’s florid good humor rebloomed.
“At St. Paul’s Inside the Walls.” Don Bello smiled. “What a coincidence. That’s where I’m going today. Reverend Vicky and I are having dinner. Perhaps you can join us?”
Before Lee could answer, Adriano jumped in. “We’d love to,” he said. “But wouldn’t it be an imposition?”
Lightning will strike next, Lee thought. Adriano chumming it up with one priest and about to break bread with another.
“No imposition at all. Vicky is an old friend. She’ll be delighted to meet you, especially if you find that she knew your friend, Bishop…?”
“Swathmore. Brian Swathmore.”
“It wouldn’t surprise me at all. Vicky knows everyone in the Church.”
“The Anglican Church, you mean,” said Adriano.
“Canterbury. Rome. Jerusalem. Mecca. Vicky has been everywhere and met everyone. She is one of the greatest woman scholars—that’s not fair. She is one of the greatest religious scholars alive today.”
“She sounds like quite the woman,” Lee said.
>
“Quite the person,” Adriano corrected gently.
“She is both,” agreed Don Bello. “I miss her. She is a dear friend. Orvieto misses her.”
Adriano and Lee remained silent. Finally, Lee said. “We heard that she once had a congregation here in Orvieto, until last year.”
“Yes, she did. Until, yes, until last year.”
There it was again, that brief dermal glitch across Don Bello’s face. If lasted only a second, then was gone. But Lee had caught it. He wondered if Adriano had too.
“Well, my, my. What a small world. Imagine that, both going to the very same spot in Rome on the exact same day on the exact same train! Quite the coincidence indeed.” Don Bello took in a deep breath.
Lee said nothing. He leaned back while Umbria gave way to Lazio outside the speeding windows of the train, accompanied by the soothing hum of the rails and the occasional punctuation of the locomotive’s horn.
Somehow, Lee thought, grasping his husband’s hand, I don’t think it’s a coincidence at all.
CHAPTER XXIII
A Conspiracy of Shadows
Thursday, December 5, 2013, midmorning, the Archbishop’s office, Orvieto
Revelation was burning.
“Jesus Christ!” Archbishop Arnaud swept the glowing ember off the page of the open Bible on the desk in front of him and onto the carpet. He stomped it out, but the damage had been done already. The phone had startled him.
“Sabau Al-khair,” the voice on the phone said in clearly native Arabic, then followed in an English that bespoke North African origins, “Salvation to Your Grace.”
“E-rev Tov. Adonai Eloheinu, melekh ha’olam,” offered a second speaker before switching to English with a strong Israeli pronunciation. “Good evening.”
“My apostolic blessings upon you both,” answered Arnaud.
“Amen,” the phone-connected trinity answered as one.
“The Surahs of the Holy Quaran show our peaceful path,” said the first.
“Shalom,” added the Israeli, emphasizing the second word in tone and with a pregnant pause. “Indeed, these are the sum of our joy.”
“Amen,” they again repeated.
“From the birthplace of Paul to where the Star of David, the Crescent of Allah, and the Cross of Christ unite in sands of everlasting peace, may the Great Work continue,” said the Arabic speaker.
“Peace to us all,” intoned the Israeli.
For the next few minutes the trio exchanged small talk, sports scores, and various minor headlines of the day—all with a listless and practiced nonchalance, actors in a play just now realizing that rehearsals were over and the curtain was threatening to lift. After fifteen minutes or so, the first speaker sighed.
“Well, I must sign off. I have to get my children ready for school.” He laughed. Then, without humor he said, almost robotically, “The sleepers have awoken.”
“Oh!” the Bishop gasped. Hands shaking, he lit another cigarette and inhaled deeply. “Give them my best.” Idiot. What was there now to say? How long? he wondered.
“In the month of Tevet, we all give thanks to God.”
“Tev—” the Bishop almost squealed before biting his tongue into silence, slicing the cigarette from his lips like a guillotine and sending it tumbling onto the sacred texts of the triumvirate.
Ignoring the outburst, the Israeli spoke first, in flawless Italian. “Per quelle che confidate nella misericordia di Dio, facilmente peccarono.”
The Arab followed suit in smoothly practiced English. “For those that trusted in God’s mercy, easily have they sinned.”
“Per quelle alle quali particolarmente sei tenuto.”
“For those of your particular prayerful intentions.”
The Bishop grabbed a file card from the drawer and starting writing furiously, checking the words of his compatriots against a folded piece of paper on his desk. Nervously, he knocked it onto the floor and didn’t hear the last bit of the conversation.
“I’m so sorry, my, ah, my connection is bad.” The Archbishop lied to cover his clumsiness. “Please repeat the third, ah, petition to our Heavenly Father.”
The first speaker sighed with more than a note of impatience but complied. “Per quelle che sono tormentate per i loro disordinati amori desideri.”
“Yes, yes, of course,” said the Bishop. “For those who are tormented by their disorderly love desires.”
“Per tutti le anime del purgatorio.”
“For all of the souls in purgatory.”
“Per quelle che—”
“Another line?” Arnaud interrupted.
“Yes!” The first speaker’s irritation was evident. Then, somewhat gentler, a thin glove over an even thinner blade, he said, “Our prayers are almost at an end. Tu ad esse a te o ad altri hanno dato occasione di peccare.”
“For those that you and others have given an occasion to sin,” mumbled the Bishop glancing south from his window. South.
“Amen,” said the Jew.
“Amen,” intoned the Arab.
“Amen,” said the Bishop, but the line was already dead.
And soon, Arnaud thought staring at the phone, I likely will be too.
CHAPTER XXIV
The Eternal City
Thursday, December 5, 2013, noon, Rome
“Welcome to the Hotel Byron. A l’il bit of London in the heart of Rome. My name is Cedric. Here you go, gents, room number seven, with a lovely view of the wedding cake.”
To judge from his accent, the perky young desk clerk could have just arrived from Piccadilly, or a gay pub nearby.
“Thanks,” Adriano said, “but what’s the wedding cake?”
“That’s what we locals call it,” Cedric chimed in, shamelessly assessing Adriano’s jet-black top and swimmer’s trained bottom. “The King Vittorio Emmanuel monument. It’s bloody over the top, all drippy with statues and sculptured gewgaw, just like a big bridal pastry. You can’t miss it. It’s right up the street from here. You simply must take a gander at it.”
“Thanks,” Lee answered, making sure his wedding ring was visible as he signed the guest register. “We will.”
True to Cedric’s description, the hotel was a bastion of Empire in the midst of Rome’s urban chaos, an exactingly restored antique edifice crammed with Georgian furnishings and a seemingly inexhaustible collection of prints featuring Lord Nelson, Wellington, and, of course, Byron. Tea was served at 4:00 p.m., Pimms cups at 6:00, all in the tweedy bar off the lobby dominated by a bust of Queen Victoria. The royal yacht Britannia sailed across the walls over the urinals in the reception level bathroom. More importantly, they served a full English breakfast and were immediately adjacent to St. Paul’s Anglican Church, Reverend Vicky’s parish. Perfect for two nights in Rome.
“This will do, pig,” said Adriano, throwing open the double doors of their tiny but nonetheless spectacularly situated balcony overlooking the city. “That’s got to be the gayest monument I’ve ever seen in my life.”
Lee joined his husband. Flirtatious or not, Cedric had been right. The view was to die. The grotesquely ornate tribute to Italy’s last king loomed up like a gaudy marble cake about to explode in the oven from over-yeasting.
“Rome, the eternal city.” Lee sighed, remembering his first time here when he was a junior officer aboard the Ithaka. “I do love this place. There’s more history here per square foot than anywhere on earth. I escorted a group of cruise ship passengers from Boca Raton, but only for the day. Didn’t get to see much.”
“Well, let’s make the most of our visit, then. Beside nosing into other people’s business.” Adriano gave Lee a look.
“I’m not nosing, I’m just curious,” said Lee, picking up the hotel brochure on the nightstand. “Oh look, this hotel used to be the palace of one of the Orsinis. That was the family that married into the Medici. Lorenzo the Magnificent’s wife was an Orsini. I do want to try and find the Medici palace where Leo the Tenth and Clement the Seventh entertained during the
Renaissance. I think it’s used as the Roman senate now.”
“Don’t change the subject. You know what I mean.”
Lee put down the brochure and grabbed his lover’s hands. “Listen, I just feel some sort of connection, you know. Andrea was my age, for Christ’s sake. We share the same birthday. The same year, even. Thank goodness I wasn’t named Andrew. That would be really creepy.”
Actually, Lee already felt it was more than creepy. He hadn’t said anything to Adriano yet, avoiding a fight as long as possible, but he knew this from his own experience: No one destined for the priesthood, a true believer, would ever commit suicide unless he had truly lost his faith—or been pushed. How he wished he could speak to Archbishop Sancarlo, Andrea’s mentor—Andrea’s own Brian Swathmore, as it were. As for the new bishop, Arnaud, Lee didn’t want to run into him if at all possible. He had seen how he looked at Adriano that night at Sant’Andrea. Plus, Opus Dei was nothing to take lightly, nor was the power of the Vatican. He remembered Cardinal Maltoni’s cryptic answer from the newspaper article following Andrea’s death.
“Roma locuta; causa finita est.”
Rome has spoken; the matter is finished.
“Andrea reminds you of you, and, well—you know.” Adriano’s voice trailed off.
“Yes,” Lee answered, somewhat absently. “Exactly. That must be it. I don’t know. I just know that I’m curious. It’s an interesting story.” I’m lying, Lee thought, and Adriano knows I am. He won’t let this go, damn him.
Adriano pushed back and regarded his husband. “Is that all?”
“Yes, of course,” Lee said, giving him a kiss. “Besides, you know I love a good puzzle, and this one’s got everything. Sex, death, Vatican intrigue.”
“OK, Miss Marple.” Adriano wagged his finger somewhat playfully. “Just don’t embarrass us. Don Bello said he’d meet us in the lobby bar for a drink and then take us over to meet Reverend Vicky.”
Whew, Lee thought, Adriano seems to be letting me off easy. Humor I can handle, but I know there’s something else here. “By the way,” he said, “you seem awfully chummy with Don Bello. Do you think he’s gay? He seemed terribly pleased to find out that we were married. Not the expected reaction from an octogenarian Italian priest.”