Passionaries

by Tonya Hurley

  “Captain?”

  “Yes, Officer.”

  “There’s someone to see you,” the desk sergeant advised. “Jesse Arens.”

  The detective thought about turning him away, but didn’t. “I’ll see him.”

  Jesse walked in, less fidgety and nervous than Murphy remembered. He appeared to be focused. Manic almost. A man on a mission.

  “Hello, Captain.”

  “Mr. Arens. What can I do for you?” Murphy asked snidely. “Somebody steal your drink tickets?”

  “I know we don’t like each other,” Jesse began. “But you know what I have to say is important if I’m here.”

  “Okay,” Murphy said, sitting up in his chair. “Spit.”

  “I came here for help,” Jesse admitted, taking a seat.

  “Help with what?”

  “Saving their lives.”

  Frey exited the shuttle terminal at Reagan National and headed for the cabstand.

  “Massachusetts Avenue,” he said. “The Nunciature, please.”

  The driver sped off, zipping past the monuments and repositories of American greatness. The Lincoln Memorial, the Treasury Department, northwest Foggy Bottom, along the edge of Georgetown, and past the Naval Observatory. He’d seen it all before, but was nevertheless impressed by the sheer grandeur of it all. Unlike the borough in which he lived and worked, not a single statue of a saint or archangel in sight, no Jesus or Mary. These were icons of a different sort. Edifices to earthly power and achievement, almost pagan, one could say, if not for the IN GOD WE TRUST printed on the bills he turned over to the cabby.

  He paid his fare and entered the Apostolic Nunciature on Embassy Row, beneath the flag of the Vatican, which flew from a large sculpted balcony overhead. An older man gamboled out to the foyer, his hand extended in greeting.

  “Dr. Frey,” he said.

  “Cardinal DeCarlo.”

  The men clasped hands, shook quickly, and proceeded to DeCarlo’s office.

  “Nice to see you again.”

  “It’s been a long time,” Frey responded.

  “I recall our seminary days fondly.”

  “That makes one of us, Cardinal.”

  “They say that former priests are worse than former smokers, Doctor.”

  “As far as I’m concerned, both can ruin your life.”

  “Same old Alan, I see,” DeCarlo observed. “Good of you to come.”

  “I needed to be here today anyway.”

  “On business?”

  “Yes, I’m moderating a psychiatric panel at Georgetown,” Frey told him. “A cocktail party is being thrown this evening by mutual friends of ours at the White House. You are most welcome to attend as my guest.”

  “Thank you, but my duties will keep me here,” DeCarlo declined. “What is the subject of your discussion?”

  “Possession and Exorcism: A Psychiatric Viewpoint.”

  “A most interesting topic,” DeCarlo acknowledged. “But not one for strenuous debate.”

  “Oh?”

  “Possession only takes place in movies these days,” Cardinal DeCarlo observed wryly. “All you need is two hours and a bucket of popcorn to make the demon disappear.”

  “Ah yes, but perhaps that is why more people believe in it than ever before, Father.”

  “Then you you’ve got your work cut out for you, Doctor. Even the Church is on the side of science in regard to this foolishness. It’s nothing a bottle of Paxil can’t cure, am I right, Doctor?”

  “If you say so.”

  “Quite coincidental timing for your panel, given the circumstances?”

  “You might even call it . . .” Frey paused, searching for just the right word. “Providence.”

  DeCarlo motioned for his secretary to leave them, and the heavy wooden door snapped shut as he departed. The cardinal got down to business.

  “The situation in Brooklyn is quite troubling.”

  “An understatement,” Frey said. “I can tell you first hand.”

  “It reflects badly on the Church.”

  “And the faithful for buying into such hysterical nonsense,” Frey added sharply.

  “On this matter we will agree to disagree,” DeCarlo said. “I’m content to say we are happy with the saints we already have.”

  “As you wish, Your Eminence.”

  “These claims are delicate matters for us,” he explained. “They need to be treated with the greatest care. For political, if not ecclesiastical, reasons.”

  “Fraud is fraud, Prefect,” Frey said. “Surely, the Church does not tolerate false miracles or false prophets.”

  “Strong words, Doctor.”

  “Not strong enough, Cardinal. I know them. Dropouts, runaways, teenage dreamers. Psychotics. Not exactly icons of virtue. I treated Sebastian.”

  “Most disturbing are the whispers of a supposed relic being secreted and worshipped.”

  Frey’s expression hardened as he turned the meeting from a conversation to a negotiation. “They are not merely whispers.”

  DeCarlo stood, understanding the doctor’s meaning.

  “We’ve had to deal with these sorts of uprisings throughout history,” DeCarlo advised. “Sects of all kinds challenging the church from within and without. Yet despite it all, we have survived.”

  “But this threat is different,” Frey observed.

  “Are you trying to drive up your price?” DeCarlo admonished.

  “I’m pointing out that the saints, as you call them, predate the church, and some might say are largely responsible for driving people to the church to begin with, for essentially creating the grass-roots movement toward faith, which could easily happen again. Without you.”

  “That’s far too simplistic, Doctor.”

  “Is it? Then why am I here?”

  “Since we are being frank,” DeCarlo countered, “We both have much to fear from the spread of these lies.”

  “Different motivations, but a common goal,” Frey concluded.

  “The relic must be destroyed.”

  “For a price.”

  “What do you have in mind?”

  “There is a market for such things, as you know,” Frey explained. “And a great deal of interest from many of our colleagues with less noble intentions than yours.”

  “Name your price.”

  “What I require is more than you or anyone can pay monetarily,” Frey stated.

  “I don’t understand.”

  “It is not enough that the heart is destroyed, it is only a symbol. An important and powerful one, but a symbol nevertheless. The real danger is the girls. They must be discredited. Unmistakably discredited and eliminated.”

  “We are not assassins, Doctor,” DeCarlo reminded. “Besides, death would only serve their purpose, feed their legend. You saw what happened after Sebastian.”

  “Whether they die as fools or live on as fools doesn’t matter to me. Only that they are rejected for the world to see. Made to recant.”

  “Recant?”

  DeCarlo considered his options. Such a thing would need to be done publicly—not privately, secretly, as he was planning to dispose of the relic.

  “That is my price,” Frey reiterated. “You see it is not the money, it is the myth that concerns me, that should concern us both.”

  “I’ve recently returned from Rome,” DeCarlo advised. “I believe I finally have the Holy Father’s attention on this matter.”

  “Good. It’s about time. Then you can explain my proposal.”

  “There is an investigation underway. Someone will be sent shortly to supervise.”

  “What is there to investigate?” Frey asked.

  Frey stood and extended his hand.

  “Who will be sent?”

  “We do not know,” Nuncio DeCarlo explained. “There is a process to these things. I am to travel to New York to meet with the emissary of the Holy See tomorrow.”

  “I trust you will keep me informed.”

  “Indeed.”
/>   “Do we understand each other?” Frey asked.

  “We do,” the Nuncio agreed. “I will take your offer under serious consideration.”

  The two men shook hands and the cardinal escorted Frey to the door.

  “As the philosopher said,” Frey concluded, “let not the perfect be the enemy of the good.”

  “This pope is not like us, nor like some who have gone before him,” DeCarlo explained. “Not, shall I say, practical. He will be difficult to persuade.”

  “With all due respect, Your Eminence, that is your problem.”

  Lucy, Cecilia, and Agnes pried the boards from the sacristy doorway. The walls and furniture were charred, signs of smoke and water damage everywhere. Lucy led them to the doorway at the back, which was open except for a few planks leaning against it.

  “Heaven or hell,” Lucy said as she peered down the stone staircase. “I still don’t know.”

  “We’ll find out soon, one way or the other,” Cecilia added.

  “Let’s do this the right way,” Agnes said, pulling three candle stalks from her shoulder bag.

  She handed one each to Lucy and then CeCe, who reached into her jeans pocket for her Zippo. She lit the candles, and the girls proceeded down the steps and into the chapel, which was empty. Sebastian’s fevered scrawls on the walls had been painted over, the shattered stained glass windows removed, the bone chandelier dismantled and carted off. To their surprise, all that remained were the statues of their namesakes and Sebastian’s, painstakingly reconstructed. They were cracked, burned, and damaged. Scarred but still standing.

  They moved to touch them, running their fingers along the crevices and the chips. Lucy paused to stare at the eyes of Saint Lucy, sitting on a golden plate.

  “It felt like a womb when we first came down here,” Cecilia observed. “Now I understand why. This is where we were born.”

  “The search for his heart has led us here, right back where we started.”

  “Just as it should be.” Lucy reached for her wrist.

  “When Sebastian gave these to us, they were a gift,” Lucy said, exposing her chaplet. “He asked us to have faith in him, just as he had in us. But we hadn’t earned them yet. I think it’s time we did.”

  She removed it and placed it on the pedestaled figure. Cecilia and Agnes did the same.

  Lucy reached down for the partially melted remnants of candles from the bone chandelier that once hung in the chapel. She dug her fingernail into each, freeing its wick, placing one in Cecilia’s and Agnes’s palms and lighting them.

  Lucy, Cecilia, and Agnes stood in silent reflection, candles burning, hot wax dripping to their hands along their forearms, slowly coating them, turning them to human candles. The flames grew brighter, casting more light and greater shadows on the walls of the sacred chapel as the candles burned down to their flesh.

  They made a vow to one another and to him.

  “We won’t come back for them until we bring Sebastian with us,” Lucy promised.

  A sudden pain in her forehead drove her to her knees. Cecilia and Agnes reached for her. She opened her eyes and they sparkled a translucent blue, the light from their candles reflected in each iris.

  “I see,” she said, smiling just as she had to Sebastian on that fateful night of their ordeal.

  Cecilia and Agnes let her rest for a few minutes and brought her back to consciousness.

  “Are you going to be okay?” Agnes asked.

  “Yes,” she answered, gazing intensely at the statue of Saint Lucy before her. “I will be fine.”

  “Let’s meet at Born Again.”

  She grabbed her candle and led them out of the chapel and up the stairs.

  “What do you think she saw?” Agnes asked Cecilia.

  “Our future.”

  The white marble columns of the Eternal City fade in the distance. Hooves pound the stony trail, throwing clouds of orange dust upward, nearly obscuring the chariots, with archers aboard, that draw nearer and nearer.

  Fires burn, blue flames flicker upward, jumping through the thick black smoke of smoldering olive branches, and disappear in the daylight.

  Sebastian stands proudly, the bright Mediterranean summer sun gleaming from his armor.

  “They are coming,” he warns.

  The three women draw closer to him.

  “We are not afraid,” one says, holding firmly to his bronze breastplate, the others each grabbing him tightly by the vambraces on his wrists. “They will need to take us first.”

  “There is a time to fight and a time to yield.”

  “We choose to fight for you.”

  “No, you must be my witnesses. No matter what, do not waver.”

  The soldiers arrive and dismount. They rush forward, swords drawn on one of their own.

  “Sebastian!”

  “It is I.”

  “Do you shield yourself with women?”

  “No, with love. Killers, I disarm myself.”

  Spatha, shield, armor, and galea drop piece by piece to the ground at the accused’s feet, exposing his flesh.

  “Centurion, you are accused of sedition, of heresy. A traitor to Caesar. Will you make amends to the Gods for your offenses?”

  Sacrificial incense is offered and refused.

  “I am the sacrifice.”

  “You have chosen your fate.”

  He addresses the women.

  “We are only mud. Death is life.”

  The soldiers pounce. He does not resist.

  The cries of defiance from the three echo across the pale plain. They struggle to reach him against the grasp of the guards, to untie him from the tree to which he is bound.

  The Praetorian issues his command.

  “Sagittarii!”

  The archers descend from the chariots and fall in line.

  “I do not fear iron or clubs or spears or arrows, Praetorian. Empty your quivers!”

  “It is not me you will fear.”

  The Praetorian gestures to the guards to release the women and then to the archers, who approached them, offering their bows and quivers.

  “No,” they screamed, refusing.

  The archers fix their arrows and draw back their bows, aimed squarely on the women.

  “Take them,” Sebastian asked. “I will be the target.”

  The Praetorian smiled.

  “It will not be by my hand that you die, but by theirs.”

  The first is dragged before him and walked back the proscribed distance. He raises his head, proudly, naked, defenseless but ready for battle.

  “Telum Ponite. (Place the arrow.)”

  “Sing, Cecilia.”

  “I have too much love on my lips to sing. My heart strangles me.”

  “Bracchia Reducite (Draw back the bow),” the Roman orders.

  She turns suddenly and fixes the Praetorian in her site. “I can’t.”

  “You must.”

  Her shaking hand pulls back the string to her ear.

  “Save yourself,” she calls out to him. “Break free.”

  “I wish there were other ways, but there aren’t.”

  “Don’t!” Lucy and Agnes shout.

  “Whoever wounds me most deeply loves me most.”

  “Let fly!”

  Her aim is true. The body shudders, the flesh is pierced, blood flows purple to the ground.

  Cecilia’s sad song, nearly choked back with grief, fills the air.

  “From his face he illuminates my sorrow and the summer night.

  “The melody of holy combat.”

  Agnes is brought before him. “What will the world be like without our love?”

  “The flower is cut back only to see it regrow.”

  “Hostes Dirigite. (Take aim.)”

  She whispers. “My spirit, my flame, my love.”

  “Do not tremble. Do not cry.”

  The command comes. “Iacite! (Shoot!)”

  The second arrow flies and strikes. She drops the bow and falls to her knees
, reaching out to him across the emptiness.

  “Eternal love.”

  The last is brought forward.

  “I cannot look.”

  “You must to make a good hit.”

  “All that is beautiful the devil takes.”

  With heaving chest, he smiles and replies.

  “Takes but cannot keep.”

  “You are the star, which is nailed to the living heart of the heavens.”

  “I call forth your terrible love!”

  “Ad Caelum! (To the sky!)”

  The final shaft is launched. He is struck. A pillow of iron and wood and feathers.

  “Tear the gates from their hinges. Rise to the heaven, which is studded with your immortal wounds.”

  “I suffer. I bleed. The world is red with my torment.”

  “Imperishable stem of the most beautiful flower. Praise the name it bears:”

  They cry out together. “Sebastian!”

  “I’ve found an exit.”

  “Desiste! (Stop!)”

  The archers depart. The women approach and free him from his bindings. They tear the garments from their bodies to staunch his bleeding, fill his wounds with their fingers.

  Cecilia sings:

  “You are praised

  Faraway, star speaks to star

  And says one name: Yours.

  God crowns you

  All the night, like a drop that dissolves on your forehead, Sebastian.”

  Agnes laments. “Blood flows in the shadow that believes.”

  Lucy’s eyes are raised heavenward. “You are a saint. Whoever holds you in his heart will shine with your grace. You die but to be reborn forever.”

  “I’ve heard it all before, Mr. Arens,” Murphy said.

  “You don’t believe me?” Jesse asked.

  “Why would I? You don’t have much credibility with me or anyone else for that matter.”

  “Frey is behind these deaths. Open your goddamn eyes!”

  “Your girlfriend said the same thing. What evidence do you have to support this accusation, kid?”