The Fifth Gospel

by Ian Caldwell

  I pull Ugo’s letter from my cassock, looking again at the pattern of gospel verses. Trying to imagine what triggered his discovery. Just three weeks earlier, he’d been tracking the Shroud out of Jerusalem in the hands of Doubting Thomas. What could’ve changed?

  But I can’t keep my eyes on the page. What troubles me most is the final quarter-hour of Ugo’s life. In my bones I know Simon is hiding more than Ugo’s discovery. There must be a reason he lied about hearing the gunshot.

  The gendarmes open the courtroom door. Mignatto turns to look. His face wears an expression of dull foreboding. His unease makes me turn as well.

  The judges have taken their seats. From behind us, I hear one of them say, “The next witness may enter.”

  The gendarme stands at attention. He calls out, “His Eminence Lucio Cardinal Ciferri.”

  I watch as my uncle steps into the courtroom.

  CHAPTER 35

  ALL THREE JUDGES stand in respect. Every gendarme bows. The promoter of justice and the notary rise. Mignatto follows, motioning for me to do the same. Even Archbishop Nowak comes to his feet.

  Lucio no longer wears his customary black. He has changed from his priest suit into a simar, the cassock of a cardinal. Like the skullcap on his head, its buttons and trim and sash are scarlet, a color that even bishops and archbishops are forbidden to wear. On top he wears a sweeping scarlet cape reserved for occasions of high formality, and over his heart hangs a baroque pectoral cross. The fourth finger of his right hand glints with the giant golden ring given to cardinals by the pope. This is a clerical show of force. No one here, not even Nowak, can match it.

  At the door, a bowing gendarme offers to help Lucio to his table. My uncle refuses. He refuses Archbishop Nowak, too, who offers him the arm that supports the pope. I am awed to see that he glowers at Nowak, evincing a fearsome superiority. Gone is any sign of Lucio’s physical weakness. He moves with old-fashioned dignity, erect and chin cocked, with eyes peering downward. It steals my breath because this tall, gaunt specter resembles no one so much as Simon.

  Lucio lowers himself into his chair. But everyone else remains ­standing.

  “You may be seated,” Lucio says.

  The presiding judge says, “Your Eminence, according to the law, your right is to be deposed at a place of your choosing. If you prefer a place other than this aula, tell us your wishes.”

  My uncle waves his hand. “You may begin,” he says.

  The judge clears his throat. “You’re aware, Eminence, that you may decline our questions? If you fear your testimony might cause harm to you or your family, you have the right to refuse to answer.”

  “I have no fear,” Lucio says.

  “Then we ask you to submit to two oaths. One of truthfulness and one of secrecy.”

  “I will take the first oath,” Lucio says. “But not the second.”

  I glance at Mignatto, wondering what this means. But the monsignor is watching Lucio with dire attention.

  “As the law requires, we will hear your testimony anyway,” the presiding judge says, sounding concerned. “And since you requested this deposition yourself, Eminence, would you please tell the tribunal the subject you intend to discuss?”

  “Am I correct,” Lucio asks, “that witnesses have been forbidden to mention my nephew’s travels this summer?”

  “Correct, Eminence.”

  “That is the subject I will be discussing.”

  I’m tense in my seat. The judges glance at each other.

  “Eminence . . .” the lead judge says.

  “In particular,” Lucio says, “I will be discussing how ungrateful my nephew’s incarceration seems to me, when he has placed his own career and priesthood in jeopardy, and even refuses to speak in his own defense, all in order to serve the Holy Father, who in return treats him as a criminal.”

  I’m frozen. Mignatto stares at the table, unable to watch. This is suicide. Lucio came here to wage war on the pope.

  In a quiet but firm voice, Nowak says, “Eminence, please reconsider your words.”

  Lucio responds with a stunning insult: keeping his back turned to Archbishop Nowak, he addresses him.

  “You deny it?” he says.

  “Eminence,” Nowak replies, “we would not be here if your nephew would tell us the truth.”

  Finally Lucio turns. They sit almost face-to-face, cardinal at the witness table, archbishop in the first seat. In his princely scarlet, sitting at his full height, Lucio leaves no doubt who is the cock and who is the hen.

  “You made him a papal emissary,” my uncle says. “You consecrated him a bishop in secret. And this is how you allow him to be treated? You abandon him to this?”

  A knot forms in my throat. A bishop. In secret. My brother: a bishop.

  “My nephew, by himself,” Lucio continues, “accomplished what your entire Secretariat couldn’t. And for that you prosecute him?”

  Archbishop Nowak’s voice never changes. Never rises in pitch or volume. He has navigated the shoals with every cardinal on earth. His answer is only five words: “Did your nephew kill Nogara?”

  “No,” Lucio croaks.

  “Are you sure?”

  My uncle raises a hand in the air and jabs an accusing finger. His voice tightens. Suddenly I understand that everything is not as clear as I imagined.

  “If he did kill him,” Lucio seethes, “it was for you.”

  Behind me, Mignatto makes a sound of disbelief.

  Nowak is as calm as a priest hearing confession. “To hide what No-gara discovered?”

  Lucio is so gripped with emotion, he can’t find the words to answer.

  “Please,” Nowak says, “tell me about the Shroud.”

  Lucio shakes his head. “Not until my nephew is free and these charges are dropped.”

  “Eminence, you know that is impossible. The Holy Father needs to know the truth.”

  “The truth? ” Lucio roars, raising his hands. “You swear my drivers to secrecy. You forbid testimony. You let swaths of evidence be suppressed. That is a search for truth?”

  Stolidly, Nowak says, “Without these precautions, tonight’s exhibit would have been impossible. You know the difficult situation we find ourselves in.”

  “Because of the Orthodox you invited here!”

  For the first time, a ripple of anxiety crosses Archbishop Nowak’s features. “This is the Holy Father’s dying wish. His intentions are the very best.”

  Lucio lowers his voice almost to a growl. It is a cold, threatening sound I’ve never heard come out of him before. “If Simon killed that man—if he did—then it’s because, at every turn, you told him to keep his work secret. You silenced everyone who found out about Nogara’s exhibit. And now you act as if you can’t see your own reflection in this, when he’s accused of doing only what he saw you do, and what you trained him to believe you wanted.”

  Lucio collects himself. He looks stronger. He will do anything, even destroy his own career, for Simon. Never in my life have I felt so grateful to him.

  “Now,” Lucio says to Nowak, “I offer you a choice. Free my nephew and dismiss the charges, and I will privately tell you what you want to know. But if you continue to treat him as a criminal, then it will be war between us. The secret you don’t want anyone to know, I will put on the front page of every newspaper in Rome. I will stand in front of the Orthodox tonight and tell them everything. I will punish you for punishing him.”

  The silence now is unlike any other. No man in this room can remember someone ever speaking this way to a pope or his representative. No man, except me. It is how the Orthodox spoke to John Paul when he visited Greece. The fury that John Paul accepted and shouldered as his own burden. As I wait for Archbishop Nowak to say something, I pray he has the same wisdom as his master.

  His Grace stands. His right arm stretches forward, ha
nd hovering in the air. His voice doesn’t rise or falter. But in his sad, dark eyes is something new. Something I don’t recognize.

  “By the authority of the Holy Father,” Nowak says, “I end this deposition. I suspend the trial of Father Andreou. And I transfer this matter to the adjudication of the Holy Father.”

  He bows to the judges on the bench. “The tribunal is thanked for its efforts. This court is now dismissed.”

  CHAPTER 36

  THE AIR TIGHTENS around me. Every sound in the room is choked to silence. The judges rise. They mill around, then drift ghostlike out of the courtroom. The notary stands and then sits again, pecks at his keyboard, seeming to await further orders. After staring at Mignatto in disbelief, the promoter of justice packs his briefcase. At last the gendarmes instruct everyone, by order of the Holy Father, to leave.

  Mignatto hunches over the defense table, emptied of strength. Only Lucio sits upright, disregarding everything else—gendarmes, notary, wreckage of order. He stares at the crucifix over the bench, crosses himself, and murmurs, “Grazie, Dio.”

  I hear a familiar voice behind me.

  “Eminence, your car is waiting.”

  Don Diego brushes past me.

  “Uncle,” I say, “what’s going to happen to Simon? What’s going to happen at the exhibit?”

  But Lucio’s focus is elsewhere. When Diego offers to assist him out of the palace, my uncle redirects him toward Mignatto. “Help the monsignor to our car. Give him anything he needs.”

  The last thing Mignatto says to Lucio before leaving is, “Eminence, you have to be prepared. The Holy Father could resume proceedings as soon as the exhibit is over.”

  Lucio merely nods. Tomorrow is tomorrow. Today, he is victorious.

  “Please, Uncle,” I say when Diego and Mignatto are gone. “What’s happening?”

  He places a hand on my head. The physical weakness is returning. His hand shakes. “We’ll know more tonight,” he says. “After the exhibit.”

  He turns and walks away. I begin to ask another question, but he never looks back.

  * * *

  WHEN LUCIO’S SEDAN SLIDES away from the tribunal, I stand outside in the courtyard, trying to orient myself in a world that has changed since I left it. All around me, laymen are walking out of their offices, sent home early to empty the country before Ugo’s exhibit. Cars are lined up at the border gates to leave. Black sedans wait near the doors of the Casa. Through the glass hotel doors I see Orthodox priests milling in the lobby. I hear, just faintly, frenzied nuns calling messages in different languages. Orthodox clergy are checking out their valuables from the hotel safe—jeweled crosses and golden rings and diamond-fretted medallions—and I feel like an altar boy watching priests vest in the sacristy, feeling the mystery of the Church gather in the presence of outward signs. My body vibrates with anxious energy. I try to keep myself in this outer world. But inside, everything is raging.

  I’ve always imagined that my father died in agony. When his heart stopped, the pain killed him before the lack of oxygen. He wasn’t found in his chair or bed, but on the bedroom floor, having pulled the Greek cross off his own neck. Mona told me I was wrong. She said he suffered, but not the way I thought. Yet I still keep his cross in a box deep in my closet, never to be touched. And to this day, no image frightens me more than of my father on that floor.

  The gospel of John says the final words of Jesus on the cross were triumphant: It is finished. His mission, completed. But only the theological Jesus could’ve spoken those words. The earthly Jesus suffered horribly. Mark’s description has always shattered me: Jesus shouted in a loud voice, “Eloi Eloi lama sabachthani?” which is translated, “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” Gospel scholars call this the cry of dereliction. It expresses a suffering so total that God the Son felt abandoned by God the Father. Ugo told me once that crucifixion is like a heart attack prolonged to hours or days. The heart slowly fails. The lungs slowly collapse. The ancient Romans, who set Christians on fire to use them as torches, and carted them into stadiums to watch wild animals devour them, considered crucifixion the worst punishment of all.

  These are the two deaths Simon knows best. Our father’s and our Lord’s. So to say he killed another man is to say he was willing to inflict on another living creature an experience he believed to be the sum of torment. This, from the boy who found his father dead on the bedroom floor. In my heart, I will never believe it.

  Yet for a moment at the witness table, Lucio seemed to consider it possible. And even now, thoughts creep into my mind. Ugo seemed so angry in the voice message he left Simon. So hurt. He had probably been drinking shortly before he died, since a man who would take the Diatessaron out of the museum to show it to the Orthodox wasn’t acting reasonably. I don’t know what really happened in those final minutes, when only God was watching. And though I tell myself there must’ve been someone else at Castel Gandolfo besides Simon and Ugo—two men were sleeping in that Casa room, and only one man broke into my apartment—the truth is that Lucio’s doubt has left a deep impression.

  As I walk home, the Belvedere Courtyard is almost empty. No more work trucks, no more commuter cars. Even the jeeps and engines of the fire department are parked in tight formation to leave more room for tonight’s visitors. It’s coming. Whatever Simon orchestrated for tonight, it’s coming.

  Peter is so happy to see me. He claps with glee, as if he’s waited patiently through this five-act day just to see his favorite actor take the stage. I have more than enough experience in hiding dark feelings from him. I bow as he claps. Brother Samuel looks relieved. Eleven hours with a five-year-old is saintly work for a man his age. He’ll have Peter again in an hour, when I leave for the exhibit, but even a saint deserves a break.

  “He’s been asking all day when you’ll be back,” Samuel whispers. “He says he gets to see his mother now.”

  Samuel smiles. But the smile fades when he sees the expression on my face.

  “Peter,” I say, “please thank Brother Samuel, and let’s go home.”

  Peter pumps his fist in the air. He grins at Samuel, who gives me the most pathetic look, as if to say, You would really deprive him of this?

  Once we’re back inside our apartment, I find myself watching the clock. Without a word, Peter starts tidying his room and putting his toys in piles just so. He lays out his toothbrush and toothpaste. He finds Pinocchio and opens it to the last page Mona read. I have to stop this.

  “Peter,” I say, “come here. I need to tell you something.”

  He hops into the chair, then hops out of it. He collects the phone from its station on the countertop, then places it on the table in front of him. He sits in his chair and waits.

  “We can’t call Mamma tonight,” I say.

  His head stops bobbing.

  “When I promised you we could call her, I’d forgotten I needed to be somewhere important tonight.”

  His eyes grow fat and pearly. Their rims go red. The tears are coming.

  “No!” he says.

  “I’m sorry.”

  “You’re a liar!”

  “I promise, we’ll call her tomorrow—”

  “No, you promised tonight!”

  “Tonight is impossible.”

  He abandons himself to sobs, and now the tears come rushing out.

  It will end, though. As every other tantrum has. Inside that five-year-old body is an older soul, accepting of compromise, unsurprised by disappointment.

  “We’ll find something special for you to do with Brother Samuel instead,” I say. “What do you suggest?”

  He’ll settle for something, I’m sure. Ice cream. A later bedtime. A movie.

  Tonight, though, he refuses them all.

  “I don’t want that! I want Mamma!”

  Maybe I’ve underestimated. Maybe this is not like every other time. I take ou
t my wallet and start to count bills. The next hill over from the Vatican has a park with a video-game arcade, a puppet theater, a carousel. If I don’t do something to stop this crying, I know I’ll say something I regret. Something about what’s really on my mind.

  “You can go to the Gianicolo,” I say. “Play video games. Ride the merry-go-round.”

  To show him how serious I am, I pull out the whole stack of bills, reserving only five euros for myself. When I close the wallet, though, something slips out and flutters to the floor.

  Peter stares at it. His face changes. His lips curl back.

  I look down. It’s the picture of Michael with his nose broken and eye blackened. The sight makes Peter start crying all over again. I grit my teeth and push the photo back into my wallet.

  “It’s okay,” I say, pulling him closer to me and staring over his shoulder at my watch. The exhibit begins in forty minutes. “That man,” I lie, “just has a bloody nose.”

  But Peter’s body is stiff. It trembles fiercely.

  “Babbo,” he whispers, crowding himself deeper into my arms. “That’s him.”

  “What?”

  He digs his face into my shoulder, trying to shield himself completely with my body. In a muffled voice I hear him cry, “That’s the man in our apartment.”

  * * *

  I FEEL HOT TEARS wetting my cassock. I feel Peter trying to climb into my lap, trying to envelop himself in my robes. But all I can think is: Michael.

  I have to tell someone. I have to do something.