by Tosca Lee
The old woman calls down as we return through the courtyard.
“Da?” Claudia says. After a brief exchange, Claudia glances at me sidelong.
“What?” I ask.
“Come. We pray for Ivan.”
A little late for that, I think, but follow her anyway.
The chapel, though tiny, has enough wooden pews to cram nearly forty into its rustic space. Two figurines sit on minor altars on either side of the rounded apse: the blue-and-white-robed Virgin Mary and a man holding the baby Jesus in his right arm, lilies in his left.
I wait, awkwardly, as Claudia genuflects, and I wonder if I should leave her alone. But instead of sliding into a pew, she moves toward the second altar and considers the figure draped in wooden rosaries on top of it.
“The woman said to me, ‘At least the last time I saw him, he had just come from mass.’ So she is confident that he is in heaven. But Ivan”—Claudia glances at me—“was not religious.”
She runs her fingers beneath the white cloth draped over the altar’s edges.
“Which saint is that?” I ask.
“This is Saint Anthony, the patron of lost people and things. Forgive me, Saint Anthony,” she murmurs, as she gets on her knees and peers beneath, practically looking up the robe of the saint. A moment later she flips up the corner of the cloth to reveal a small slot carved into the altar itself.
I get down beside her, slide my fingers into the narrow space. “What is this?” I say.
“I think . . . a mailbox,” she says.
But whatever was there is gone.
Of course it is. Anything Ivan might have left has already been picked up—either by the so-called mailman or most recently by Ivan’s killer. I slump into the front pew. So much for Saint Anthony and his lilies.
I look to Mary as though for guidance, and then at the purple flowers beside her. They are the same ones as on the hill.
My gaze shifts to the vase beside Saint Anthony. The fuchsia petals are lettuced around the edges. Fresh.
And not from Lubenice.
“Claudia,” I say slowly as she pushes up from her knees. “Who conducts mass here?”
“A priest from Cres town, I suppose.” She shrugs.
That could be any number of people. But that isn’t the right question.
“Who was Saint Anthony?”
“I told you, the patron saint of—”
“Before that. Who was he?”
“Saint Anthony of Padua? A Catholic priest. Franciscan.” She glances at me.
Ten minutes later we are speeding down the hill past miles of rocky terrain and oblivious sheep seasoning their own meat on a diet of wild sage.
When we finally reach the south edge of Cres town, Claudia slows near the cemetery.
“There.” She nods toward a brick building across the street. A monastery.
It is bathed in flashing blue light, surrounded by police cars.
20
* * *
“This is very bad,” Claudia whispers.
For the first time since my arrival, we are in agreement.
I exhale a breath, take stock. Three empty patrol cars means the police are inside—except for the officer standing at the entrance beneath the crest of two crossed arms. A round window with a blue stained-glass cross is set in the brick face above it and the broad front walk is lined with trees I recognize as myrtles, each of them exploding with fuchsia flowers.
I start to get out of the car. Claudia grabs my arm. It is the first time I think I have seen her truly afraid.
“Audra, no.”
“You said yourself Ivan was smart. If he meant to give me something but knew the danger he was in, he wouldn’t have brought it with him. He would have left it at the chapel to be picked up and stashed someplace or given to someone he wasn’t aware of. Someone in there knows what and where it is.”
“Can’t you see? Something terrible has happened here. It’s too late!”
“We don’t know that! You wanted to know that Ivan’s faith in me wasn’t misplaced. Well, I want to know that he didn’t die for nothing!” I say it with more bravado than I feel. In fact, it’s desperation.
She purses her lips and then nods, though I sense that she may be shaking. Crossing herself, she gets out of the car. Mutters, “Piotrek is going to kill me.”
A small crowd has gathered on the edge of the street. As we reach the door, the officer—a woman—moves to block our way.
Claudia steps ahead of me to talk to her, tone as imperious as ever. She pulls her ferry pass from her pocket, holds it up like a badge.
A moment later she says something to me in Croatian as though I speak the language. And then we’re pushing our way through the door.
“That wasn’t horrible,” I murmur, following after her.
We step into a colonnaded courtyard, the grassy middle of which has been set with chairs, as though for a lecture or some kind of concert.
I hear static of walkie-talkies somewhere beyond the short corridor to the right. Claudia pulls me down the long side of the colonnade to the left, into a reception office. It’s filled with pamphlets in Croatian about some kind of art exhibit, a calendar of events. There’s a door on the other end of the room, but when I try it, it’s locked.
“Audra,” Claudia says behind me.
“We have to find the priest who did the mass. Where are the monks?”
“Murdered.”
I turn to stare at her. She’s pale.
“The officer told me when she let us through. Three of them, sometime last night. It’s too late.”
I refuse to accept this. I go to the door and begin to pound on it. Claudia hisses at me to stop. I bang on it again.
A few seconds later the door unlocks and a monk comes into the office. He looks startled to see us, and I realize he thought we were police. He’s wearing a brown robe, white belt around his waist, almost exactly like the statue of Saint Francis out front. But my attention is focused on one item: the tao cross dangling from his neck.
He says something with quiet urgency in what sounds more like Italian than Croatian, and I look at Claudia.
“What did he say?” I demand.
“Please,” he says in pained English, “there has been a tragedy. I am sorry, you must leave!”
“Who conducts mass at Lubenice?” I say. “Is he still alive?”
“Pardon?” he says. Desperation rises inside me.
“Who conducts the mass? Did you know Ivan? The man living in Lubenice? Did you take anything from the chapel?”
Tell me!
He lifts his hands, looks to Claudia as though for rescue. “I’m sorry—” he says.
Claudia intervenes. I don’t know what she’s saying, but all I can think is, It’s here. Ivan wanted me here.
“Is there someone else we can talk to?” I interrupt.
I recognize the cool lilt of Claudia’s voice, the way the sun through the window seems to seek her where she stands. Her skin in that light is flawless, lending her an ethereal quality that causes the monk to gape. But then something else snares my attention. At first I think it’s a sound, some strain of a distant chorus that lifts the hairs on my arms. But no one is singing, of course. The next moment there is nothing in this room—not even the monk himself—as compelling as the door he just emerged from. I stride toward it and yank it open.
I push into the corridor as the room falls away behind me. There are offices to my right and left, but my gaze is fastened on what looks like a narthex farther down the hall. I skirt past an open door and then run the fifty feet to the chapel, heart thudding.
It is, I think, the most serene space I’ve been in since leaving my tiny cabin in Maine. Or would be, under different circumstances. But unlike my cabin, it is austere, imposing. Not meant for the unwashed world. At first glance it is empty . . . until I notice the single form seated near the front.
I pause as a figure rises from the pew. When he turns, I suck in a breath, though n
ot at his appearance. His face is plain, so devoid of furrows, scars, or even dimples as to be nondescript. His eyes are kind, if not memorable, enough gray in his hair to put him in his late thirties. The kind of man who might look equally unremarkable in an office suit, in a T-shirt on a ball field . . .
. . . or in a monk’s robes.
But it is his presence that sends me back a step.
Holy brother of God. It’s a Progeny monk.
He moves toward me, the rope around his waist dangling to his knees. I swear I can practically hear the brush of his hem.
He stops three steps from me, peers intently at my face.
“Ivan said you would come,” he says, as his presence hits me like a wave.
21
* * *
“I am Brother Goran,” he says. His head tilts, hazel eyes rapt. Do I imagine it, or has he sucked in a small breath? “And you . . . are Audra Ellison.”
“Have—have we met?”
“No,” he says strangely. “I have never had the pleasure.”
“How do you know who I am?”
“Because you look like your mother.”
A chill passes down my arms. Just then a door in the outer hallway closes, echoing all the way to the chapel. His glance is sharp. “We can’t speak here,” he says. “Quickly. Come with me.”
My heart drums in my temples as he leads me toward the back of the chapel and down a narrow stair to a subterranean set of rooms. An overhead light flickers to life, illuminating shelves and floor-to-ceiling cabinets—an archive of sorts, complete with a desk and monitor like some underground library.
“How did you know my mother?” I say when he has closed the door behind us.
“That is a story of another life—one I am afraid we do not have time for now,” he says, withdrawing a set of keys from his pocket and unlocking a drawer.
“Is there a short version?” I say. Because at this point, I’ll take anything.
To my relief he pauses, turns to look at me, if sadly. “Poor child.”
I swallow. “Whatever you know about her, I’d really appreciate hearing it.”
He pauses again and seems to consider.
“Your mother was . . . many different things to different people,” he says. “But the things she is remembered for will never fully represent who she was. People have a habit of taking one moment, one facet of a life, and painting an entire portrait based on their own experience. We do it without exception, to everyone. To the world. To God. We assign stories to everyone around us out of our own need to feel that we understand someone or some thing. When the truth is that we don’t—we can’t—know anyone. Because we do not fully know ourselves.” He looks at me.
“We like to think we learn people. We really only learn their stories. So here is one for you: Amerie loved rain. The way it made people huddle together—under umbrellas, beneath awnings. The way it stopped traffic. She loved the smell of it better than sun, and could smell a storm hours before it came. She said she loved that it brought her to the now. Because the moment your plans for anything are ruined, you are forced into the present. And for that one, perfect, ruined moment, she did not worry about the future, and the past was washed away.”
Fat tears roll down my cheeks. He moves toward me, brushes them away with the back of a finger. And though it is the first human portrait I have ever had of my mother, I almost wish I had never heard it. It was far easier to be angry.
“If you want to know Amerie’s story, the short version—which is the only one that matters—it is that she loved you and protected you with her life.”
“But how did you know her? I mean, you’re a monk.”
“I wasn’t always a monk,” he says with a slight smile. “But now, you’ve come for something.”
“You conducted the mass in Lubenice.”
“That man is dead,” he says, opening the drawer, “having given his life along with two others in service to our cause. But he was not one of us. His killer could not steal his memory . . . or know that he gave this to me.”
He presses an envelope into my hand. “This is yours.”
It is far too light. And too small to explain even the first of my questions.
“You were expecting something else.”
“No. Yes. I don’t know what I was expecting.” There’s a ruckus from somewhere in the direction of the staircase. A man’s voice, and another I recognize as Claudia’s. The sound brings me back to the moment as surely as a clap of thunder. Three men have died for the thing in this envelope. Four, counting Ivan.
And possibly hundreds before them.
“The diary,” I say abruptly. “Does it exist?”
“If it does . . . that is the key to finding it.”
But I don’t want what’s in this envelope to be about the diary. What I want is safety for those around me. And answers, for myself.
Footsteps on the stair. The door bursts open. Claudia.
“The police,” she says, breathless. “They’re questioning the brothers. With a picture of you.” Her eyes, which are wild, flick to Goran.
“How is that possible?” I say, feeling the color leave my face.
“They’re saying you were seen boarding the ferry last night,” Claudia says. “With Ivan.”
“But that’s not true!” I say.
“It doesn’t matter what is true,” Goran murmurs, moving swiftly toward a closet. Claudia follows him with a gaze.
“And you cannot persuade me, friend of Audra,” he says, back turned. “Nor do you need to.”
“This is Goran,” I say to Claudia. The look on her face is weird. “The mailman.”
The monk pulls two robes from the closet, pushes them toward us. “Quickly.”
I pull the robe over my head, swiftly tie the rope around my waist. “This way,” Goran says, before leading us upstairs.
“Wait here,” he says and crosses the hall into an office.
I turn on Claudia. “You tried to persuade him?”
“I didn’t know,” she snaps, tying her rope. “You can’t feel them when they’ve been hidden too long, or at all after a certain age. They lose their gifts, like Ivan was beginning to.”
But I had felt him distinctly.
Goran reemerges and gestures for us to follow him.
“Did you come from Rijeka?” he asks.
“Yes,” I say.
“I will take you myself to Merag, I know a fisherman near there. I will call him to meet us.”
He leads us through a small kitchen toward a back door, but pauses before he opens it. “It is twenty meters to the car. You know what to do? I cannot do it myself.”
I glance between them, confused.
“You are a man,” Claudia says to me. “A monk. That is what anyone outside must see.”
Goran opens the door and we step into a day that is far too bright. His stride is crisp as we follow him to the old gray Opel parked in the tiny lot behind the monastery. Ten feet from the car, a policeman steps around the side of the building and hurries after us, shouting for us to stop. I barely refrain from grabbing Claudia’s arm, amped nearly out of my skin. I stop long enough to fix him with what I hope is a monkish gaze.
Feel bad for your sins and walk away, dude. And quit looking at porn.
My heart threatens to fail in the three seconds it takes the policeman to wave a weak greeting and turn back the way he came.
We hunch down in the backseat of the car as Goran pulls out of the lot. I can feel the crinkle of the envelope in my pocket as he talks urgently on the phone. Claudia, meanwhile, is dialing up what I assume to be another fit from Piotrek.
“How did you know Ivan?” I ask when Goran finishes his call.
“I didn’t, personally, though your mother did. And he did not know I was acting in this capacity or you would now be talking to a corpse and that envelope would be in the Historian’s hands. There was a time when no hunter would harm a monk, if only for fear of his soul. Those days are gone, I�
�m afraid,” he says, stopping at a corner. I shrink down lower, will myself to be small. Claudia drops her voice and hangs up a few seconds later.
“The envelope . . . where did Ivan get it?”
“From you, of course.”
Claudia stares at me from across the seat. The car turns, accelerates down the road.
“You said your brothers were willing to die for our cause. Why? If Bathory was a monster?”
“It was a Franciscan who helped hide her illegitimate first child—a daughter—before Elizabeth’s husband, Ferenc, could have the baby killed. Who ultimately brought her here, to Croatia. The brothers have hidden many of Bathory’s descendants, keeping the secret genealogy of children placed for adoption by parents who could not dare raise them . . . At one time even helping those children learn to coexist with their own gifts and excessive energy in the age before pharmaceuticals.”
The ADHD. I glance at Claudia. She looks like she’s barely holding it together. And I admit, a marathon sprint sounds awfully soothing right about now.
“But you’re Progeny.”
“Yes. And so I have my own reasons for wanting to help you.”
“Because you knew my mother.”
“Helping you aids all the Progeny. But yes. Perhaps selfishly I wanted to see Amerie’s face again.”
A strange, dawning thought. How old is he—nearly forty? “Are you . . .” I’m not sure how to even ask this.
Claudia’s brows lift so high they practically crash into her hairline.
“No,” he says. “I don’t know who your father was. Only that he died nearly ten years ago.”
He turns off the road as his phone rings. A moment later he pulls the car to a stop and twists in the seat.
“The boat is there, the blue and white. Quickly.” We get out, shed the robes. I embrace him with so many unanswered questions.
As the boat pulls away, I look back at him once where he stands beside the dull gray Opel. Somehow I think I will never see those sturdy shoulders and that reassuring demeanor again.
