Three-Cornered Halo

by Christianna Brand

  And then there had been the meeting with the young man from the Joyeria.…

  Tomaso di Goya had gone up to the cathedral to study the relic situation, in Juanita’s chapel. Despite Miss Cockrill’s dash of cold water, he could not help believing that somewhere there, must lie the solution to the catastrophe of the little boxes. A woman had been there, standing silently before the glass coffin beneath the hanging table; but she had been some gaunt tourist, not a patch of firm, rounded flesh on her such as Tomaso delighted in, and he had given her not another glance. But then she had stretched out her hand to a candle and he had seen again the opal ring.

  Child of a long line of goldsmiths and jewellers, direct descendant of a painter of genius, Tomaso di Goya loved all lovely things; son of a strolling gipsy mother, he must for ever act a part. He affected no glimmer of recognition but, softly moving, stepped forward and lighted a candle, slipped money into the box, stood back, and, eyes closed, murmured a prayer. Only when he lifted his head again to look reverently up at the crumb-scattered table, did he give a great start, an exclamation of happy astonishment. Ecco! La Senorita! La Senorita del Opale! Bowing and flourishing and clicking his heels, he kissed the chill knuckle above the opal ring. A thing of beauty! Miracoloso! He had recognised it—she recollected his remarking upon it yesterday, aboard the vaporetto?—and he had recognised it again as she moved her hand in the candlelight.…

  Just offering up ones own little personal glow-worm of prayer to their dear Santa Juanita.

  Ah, but not ‘Santa’ Juanita, said Tomaso, mounting immediately upon the hobby-horse of his present discontent. Not even ‘Beata’ Juanita. His High and Mightiness the Grand Duke decreed otherwise; and so she, the poor one, the blesséd one, their island angel, must lie here patiently (a thing she would most assuredly never have done in her lifetime) and see herself passed over while the infinitely lesser fry of other lands jockeyed successfully for position in the heavenly hierarchy.… He broke off, however, he begged her pardon; the Senorita could not be interested in what after all was purely a matter of Juanese politics.

  “Hardly politics, Senor di Goya? This is surely a question for the Church alone?”

  That was all the Senorita knew about it, said Tomaso bitterly. If it were left to the Church, Juanita would have had her rights long ago. It was well known that the Arcivescovo prayed day and night for nothing else; the Patriarch it was true was in the Grand Duke’s hands, and alas! the Obispo also, who would replace the poor old Archbishop when he died—but, left to themselves, they would have been as enthusiastic as any in San Juan. Only the Grand Duke, for dark and desperate purposes of his own.… Off galloped Tomaso on the hobby-horse, hell-for-leather, once again: the profit to San Juan, the rights of the people, the yoke of the tyrant, the deserts of Juanita, the impossibility of resistance in Rome once the truth became known there, the table, the miracles.…

  Try as she would, Winsome could sort out from the long list of miracles, not more than three that could really stand up to the name.

  Tomaso shrugged immensely. With goodwill on all sides, these matters arranged themselves. A little exaggeration here, a little discretion there.…

  “You mean make up a miracle?”

  He threw wide his expressive brown hands, his shoulders up to his ears. No need to do that. Simply take some old episode, burnish it up a little—what did facts matter? they all knew well enough that Juanita had been a saint. “It is not of importance, Senorita, by what means Rome comes to the same conclusion.”

  “I was only thinking,’’ said Winsome, “that if you were going to do that, it would be better to have a new miracle altogether: now.”

  His hands dropped, his shoulders dropped—his jaw dropped. He stood staring at her, a very caricature of stunned amazement. “A new miracle—now?”

  “That would drive your Exaltida into doing something, wouldn’t it?” said Winsome, briskly.

  For Winsome, also, thought it mattered very little by what means the Church of Rome was brought to recognise what, to so fervent a student of the Diaries as herself, was but self-evident truth. Juanita had been a saint, had poured forth the exquisite aspirations of her sanctity in words which she, Winsome, alone was to translate to the English-speaking peoples and these words, these writings, these torrents of purple ink would remain unknown, an irreparable loss to a world never more sadly in need of such exhortation, until the College of Cardinals pronounced the verdict which would launch them on a flood of religious fame. “It would have to be something very simple, of course,” said Winsome, coolly, “and nobody must know.”

  “No one might know, Senorita, but every one in San Juan would suspect.”

  “As long as nobody in Rome suspected,” said Winsome, “that needn’t matter either.” And after all who, she said, could Rome suspect?

  “Everyone in San Juan,” said Tomaso, with simplicity.

  That Winsome Foley at this stage contemplated for one moment actually taking part in any fraudulence on Juanita’s behalf, or for that matter really believed that a fraud would be perpetrated, was of course by no means the case. But—there was a foolish excitement in pretending that it might, it was flattering after the rebuff of the earlier evening to be receiving the wide-eyed homage of this clever young man, in being the leading spirit in a pious conspiracy, half-laughing, half-eagerly earnest; in sitting with him like two conspiratorial children, upon the steps before Juanita’s glass coffin, in the flickering light and shade of her votive candles, and playing with ideas and plots. They strolled together, animatedly chatting, through the narrow streets leading back to the hotel. They passed his shop and he urged her to come in. “No, no indeed, I must get back to the evening collatione.”

  “The collatione at the Bellomare, Senorita, is not until nine o’clock.”

  “Well, but it’s eight o’clock now; I really must go.”

  “Come then after dinner, Senorita: we will drink a Juanello together in my Joyeria, I will show you my treasures, we will enter into our conspiracy. It is naughty, but it is harmless, and it is fun.…”

  He was waiting for her, lurking in the shadows by the hotel gate; with Tomaso it was impossible simply to stand and wait, without creating an impression of being in hiding. But he stepped forward boldly and imprinted one of his chaste but florid kisses on her knuckly hand; and it was fun, it was flattering, it was above all a triumph over Cousin Hat with her bruising irritabilities. He had laid out a little treat for her in the Joyeria, tiny glasses, gold rimmed, for the Juanello, some of Lorenna’s little cheesecakes in a silver box: he had popped up to the Colombaia in the meantime to snatch a kiss from Lorenna and scrounge a few. She sat among the jewels and the trinkets in the shifting shadows of the single, swinging lantern, beneath the hanging bird-cages, gold and silver-gilt, each with its jewelled and enamelled singing-bird, feeling the soft, cool slither of pearls between her fingers, sipping her Juanello, closing herself in again with unreality. She had at his earlier invitation brought Juanita’s diary with her (Volume I), and they became almost hysterical with muffled laughter, hunting through it for some ‘reference’ to a miracle to be performed twenty years after the writer’s death. All the best saints gave notice of posthumous ‘signs.’ “Sœur Thérèse of Lisieux, for example, promised showers of roses.”

  “The rose is the national flower of San Juan,” said Tomaso, thoughtfully.

  “Still, we’d better have something original. You wouldn’t like to go to the trouble of organising roses, and then find Sœur Thérèse of Lisieux getting all the credit.” She went off into gales of laughter at her own wit and held out her tiny glass for more Juanello.

  Tomaso di Goya, pouring the Juanello, judged that his moment had come. Tomaso had worked very hard on the problem since the hour of their parting for the collatione; and in no spirit of conspiratorial fun. He said now with a tremendous effect of dawning inspiration, that the business of roses was altogether too ‘natural’ for them, that the answer lay far more probably i
n his own skill and artifice. “If, for example … There is the thurible, the Cellini thurible, which only the Grand Duke uses, offering up incense before the Gospel is read, on fiesta days.… If, let us say, when he used the censer on some given day, not white clouds of incense arose but coloured clouds—pink clouds, rose-coloured clouds, the rose is the national flower of San Juan, you know—and the scent of roses …” He broke off. He asked, all casual, the question that he had brought her here to ask: the question which she alone (with the possible exception of Innocenta who also was familiar with Juanita’s writings) might be able to answer. “Is there any reference in the Diaries, Senorita, which might be taken—or twisted!—to suggest that Juanita would one day send some such sign?”

  Whether or not it had existed before, by the time Winsome Foley made her gay and tipsy way home that night, such a reference did indubitably appear in the Diary (Volume I). Tomaso was a dab hand at forging ‘facsimile’ handwriting on surfaces of silver and gold: so why not on a page of purple-lined paper as well?

  CHAPTER SIX

  MR Cecil and Major Bull, introduced by Miss Cockrill, were delighted with one another. Mr Cecil had himself first come to San Juan ‘conducted’ by Odyssey Tours, and professed himself prodigiously entertained by the Major’s witty descriptions of his adventures with il grouppa (‘Oddity Tours, I call ’em, my dear feller …!’) Major Bull, on the other hand, listened enraptured to gossip from the world of haute couture, all in garbled Restorationese. Both parties, in fact, prided themselves on collecting ‘freaks’ and had collected one another at sight.

  The Sunday before the Fiesta di San Juan is a gala in itself, being known as Domenica di Boia or Hangman’s Sabbath. In early days, it was thought a proper attention to the bloodstained memory of the Founder, to abstain from all public executions during the week of celebrations that commemorate his translation into heaven. From this arose a custom of saving up prisoners during the months of August and September so that such as survived the intervening weeks in gaol might be transported—amid much rejoicing, for a nice hanging is irresistibly delightful to the Juanese—to a neighbouring island and there done to death en masse on a specially constructed gallow, (‘or eight-nooser,’ suggested Mr Cecil, informed of these origins). The custom has in these degenerate days lapsed for want of material; but the special Mass survives and the Sermone de Defunto, and the Juanese flock over to the island with their wives and families—it is very much Children’s Day—and carrying enormous picnic baskets; effigies are hanged with much ceremony and laughter and in the swinging shadows there is music and dancing as in days of yore. To this jamboree the Major must, of course, conduct his party; and Miss Cockrill and her niece and Mr Cecil declared their intention of going with them.

  Cousin Hat had agreed, with the rest of the party, to go to the Mass in the cathedral and from thence down to the quay to embark for the excursion; and, standing in her trampled straw hat and unlovely linen dress, a green-lined parasol of outmoded design stuck under her arm to the great inconvenience of her close-packed neighbours, she watched with the bland impertinence of the English churchgoer, the extraordinary carryings-on of those whose religious observances differed from her own. What she would have felt had a group of foreigners (with mackintoshes and umbrellas) in a similar spirit of contempt invaded St Asaph’s, Heronsford Green, she did not pause to think. Not that the Juanese would have cared a fig for her reflections. Gay as children on this fine fiesta day, they hailed one another across the great, dim, old church, met by appointment at this side-chapel, that group of confessional boxes, dragged rush-bottomed prie-Dieu into friendly circles and sat animatedly chatting, their picnic baskets banked high about them, the children chasing one another merrily among the legs of the vast, standing congregation. Among them, disregarded and undisturbed, knelt quiet figures, heads bent, hands tightly clasped, praying away happily all alone with God; and before the great crucifix crouched a woman, tears streaming down her face, her forehead pressed against the nailed bronze feet that the brows of countless supplicants had burnished to gold. (Pure exhibitionism, said Miss Cockrill, quite out loud; but the woman prayed on, a million miles away in some Gethsemane of her own; and cared not at all for Cousin Hat.)

  Innocenta arrived, a plump mother duck, bustling to a place of advantage, shoo-ing before her her exquisite little brood. The regulation black lace shawls of Juanese church-going were pulled decorously half across their faces, only their lovely eyes looked out, dark and enormous, cast modestly down to the ground. Except for Inez. Inez looked about her boldly and fluttered an eyelash at a couple of crew-cut touristi.… “That will do, Irreverence,” said Innocenta, kicking her smartly behind the knees with the edge of a well-filled hamper; and really, she confided to Tartine, that girl would have to go. “Not the morals of a cat!” In San Juan, the cats are lint white with pale blue eyes; they wear blue ribbons round their necks and are much loved and charmingly well-behaved: but not with other cats.

  A bell rang. There was a sudden hush, a scraping of chairs on the stone floor, everyone stood on tiptoe. But it was not the Mass beginning, it was the Grand Duke arriving with La Bellissima the Grand Duchess, and their train; the train including a flutter of the little French friends, sniggling behind their demure Juanese black lace veils. They giggled their way up into the gallery overlooking the altar, reserved for the ladies of the palace, in the wake of an ancient crone, carried in a sort of palanquin—La Madre, mother of El Margherita herself. The Grand Duke and Duchess went forward quietly and took their places at two great, carved and gilded wooden prie-Dieu, set apart, close up to the altar rails. They wore, as custom ordained, black velvet cloaks, his caught up by the right corner and thrown across his breast and over the opposite shoulder almost burying his mouth and chin, hers flowing out and down to her heels; with collars of wrought gold set with precious stones. La Bellissima, like every other well-conducted woman in the church, wore a heavy black veil pulled half across her face—it was widely believed that in this disguise she frequently sent a deputy to the Mass; but no other head, in that island of dark brunettes, could have shone beneath the lace with such a gleam of gold. Before the prie-Dieu, lazily glowing, the golden thurible* hung on its golden stand.

  The Mass began.

  El Patriarca sang the Mass. Robed in black, before an altar hung with black, he moved, a grey man with a clever, worldly face, pacing slowly through the age-old ritual, lingering over words unchanged through centuries, in a language dead to change. There was a rustle of pages as the congregation sought through their Missals for the Epistle for the Day, following the Latin in the Juanese translations alongside. He passed, bowing, across the altar front, to the Gospel side. An assistant lifted the great book from the Epistle corner and carried it, supporting its weight against his own forehead, down into the sanctuary; and paused before the Grand Duke.

  The Cellini thurible hung with its handful of glowing coals before the two prie-Dieu. The Grand Duke rose, took incense in a golden spoon and sprinkled a little on the coals; and when the sweet-scented smoke began to rise in its thin, grey thread, went forward and, kneeling before the Book, lifted the thurible on its sliding chains, tossed it a little forward, twice, and then up high, so that the smoke billowed out and all about the Book; and, repeating the movement three times, rose, bowed, and retired, moving slowly backwards to his prie-Dieu. The Gospel was read, the celebrant and assisting priests sat down in their places all about the altar, with folded hands. The thurible hung dormant again, on its stand. The Arcivescovo stumbled up the pulpit steps.

  The Sermone de Defunto as preached upon this fiesta, is also traditional, and to the Juanese almost the best part of the day—a thundering denunciation of their lustful lives and deliciously terrifying threats of hell-fire awaiting them all too soon. Not that they believe a word of it; the good God who made His sons vigorous and His daughters beautiful, is kind and loving and will forgive; but old childhood fears prevail and though the Archbishop’s voice had of recent years
lost much of its ranting power, still the familiar words could send a shiver through the soul and many a firm purpose of amendment had been known to last right through the day of merry-making that followed, till the kindly moonlight came.… It was a considerable disappointment, therefore, to find El Anitra not giving them the Sermone de Defunto at all.

  For the Archbishop was speaking not of the dead but of the living; not of the end but of the beginning; not of death but of birth. How great was the sin, cried the Archbishop raising a shaking emaciated hand, naming no names, of a woman who out of vanity and selfishness denied life to her children …! How great the abomination of passions gratified for no sake but their own! A man and a woman, a husband and wife, be they great or humble, rich or poor, came together for the procreation of their children; and to deny them being was lust and shame and a sin before the Lord.… The Juanese with their happy, teeming families and well-stocked Orfano del Innocenti, listened in astonishment. But soon a word was spoken in the body of the church, a name was named in a whisper that licked round the congregation like a flame. La Bellissima heard the low hiss of the sibilants and lifted her lovely head for a moment but gave no other sign. The Grand Duke sat rigid and silent in his chair. The Archbishop moved on to his second hobby-horse. It was the deep wish of the people of San Juan, that the name of their island saint be forwarded without further delay to Rome.… No one—no one, insisted the old man, forcing up his quavering old voice to a sort of shriek, had the right to deny so pious and proper a wish.…