Beneath Ceaseless Skies #167

by Bruce McAllister

  There was, I knew, more than one thing the rider was not telling us, but to press for it, I also knew, would not become the guests of any contrada.

  * * *

  The apartment was much bigger and brighter than the one I had grown up in with my mother, whose evening visitors—unmarried or unfaithful men of the village—had made it seem even smaller. While Bonifacio followed the rider into it, Stappo and I stopped at the doorway and waited.

  The rider looked back at us, stopping too.

  “Thank you for the courtesy,” the rider said. “I am afraid your dog must remain outside. My father is sick, and dogs upset him even when he is well. He was bitten when he was a boy and, because he lives now more in his childhood than in the present, he fears dogs as much as a child would. We also need a good guard dog for our alley, and yours certainly has the weight and teeth for it, does he not?”

  The rider looked at Bonifacio for a moment.

  “Were you bitten by a dog, too? You step away when the dog nears you. It is a subtle thing—something that most would not notice—but my father, when he could still walk, did the same thing.”

  “Yes,” Bonifacio answered, his own voice cracking a little, too. “I was bitten when I was five years of age. I still carry the scars.” He rolled up his sleeve to show what the four longest teeth had done to his forearm.

  This clearly surprised the rider—not that Bonifacio had scars but that he was so willing to show his body to a stranger. The rider looked at Bonifacio and said slowly: “How painful it must have been.”

  “At the time, yes. They do not bother me now.”

  The rider was nodding with the faintest of smiles, amused as he probably was by the forthrightness of this boy who looked so silly in his leggings and did not act or sound like a peasant at all.

  Bonifacio did not seem bothered by the smile. He liked the attention, I knew.

  “Thank you,” the rider said at last. “This helps me understand better my father’s fear.”

  I told Stappo to remain outside, and when he had lain down, I entered the apartment and shut the door.

  As I turned to face the rider, he said: “My name is Gian Felice Rottini. I have ridden in the Palio for five years now, and I was the winner for the city’s Madonna the last two years, finishing last year with an arm broken in two places and the year before that with a broken collarbone.”

  He pulled his sleeve up, and there was the bony protrusion proving it.

  “But none of this should surprise you, cugini. As you must know, all Sienese are willing to suffer such travails of flesh and bone, not to mention mind and spirit, for the Madonna and for the honor of our neighborhoods and families and city.”

  The rider’s tone was not bragadoccio but only what he felt we should know, guests that we were.

  “My father rode when he was younger, and his father and his two uncles before him. We have always known good horses and good riders, our family, as you will see if you look at the list posted in the Piazza. I had a sister, too....”

  The rider paused, and I thought it odd—mentioning a sister suddenly, out of the blue.

  “She ran away with a young man from Capperchio, and who knows where they are. It was a sad thing, but the human heart, when it is not in the service of God, does many sad things....”

  The rider had become contemplative, even wistful. What a strange boy this was. Bonifacio was staring at him, too. Something about the words “in the service of God” had made him look at the rider hard. Did Bonifacio, because he was pope, hear more in those words than I could?

  “But our neighborhood, Il Nicchio, does not pass judgment on the children of God, for that is for God to do, though God, in his love, passes judgment not at all, leaving—”

  “—leaving,” Bonifacio interrupted suddenly, as if quoting someone, “mortals to judge themselves and make of those judgments ‘sins’ which God, in His eternal compassion, need not forgive—for they are not real. For ‘sin’ is but a mistake which—”

  “—the truth,” the rider finished for him, “can correct simply by being the truth, if mortals will forgive both God and themselves....”

  It was the rider’s turn to stare now. Who was this dirty boy who quoted heretical teologia too? I wished Bonifacio had remained silent.

  And yet what the rider himself had said was not, I knew, what a boy from Siena, a rider in the Palio, or any boy from any city—except perhaps a Child Pope—would say either.

  Who was this rider?

  “You are not,” he said suddenly, using the plural you, “who you appear to be—either of you.”

  I said nothing. Bonifacio remained silent.

  “And that is exactly what I felt when I first saw you.”

  Stepping to Bonifacio so suddenly that the Child Pope startled, he took Bonifacio’s arm and held it out for us to see.

  “This is not the skin of a commoner,” the rider said. “These hands have never dug dirt or hammered iron or fished. And you, his friend, have both the hair of the devil—though I do not believe in such superstitions—and a rash that makes you need to sit in fountains to feel relief. You are not going to tell me who you are—of that I am certain—but you can at least tell me your given names, so that I might feel your truths within them.”

  Feel your truths within them? What did this mean?

  “I am Bonifacio,” Bonifacio said with a sigh, because he knew he must. The rider was still holding his arm, and Bonifacio did not wish a struggle.

  “And I am Emilio.”

  “You are fleeing from someone?” the rider asked.

  “Yes,” I answered.

  “May I ask from whom?”

  “Soldiers.”

  “I would, were this an ordinary day and you ordinary boys, answer that of course you are fleeing soldiers, or guards, or property owners—someone—because you have no doubt stolen something or injured someone. But not when your friend’s skin is so white and smooth, and he walks like a prince....”

  “We have committed no crime,” I answered. “They simply wish to capture us.”

  The rider laughed. “You might be better off if they did. A city can be cruel.”

  Bonifacio was scowling. All of this, I knew, would have been insulting to him. To expect a pope to be good at stealing or farming or living on the streets—what offense! Bonifacio looked at me and I looked back, and we both knew he could not afford to complain. The rider was not being unkind. He was stating fact.

  There was a strange look in the boy’s eyes now, eyes which were almost closed, as if he were listening to something beyond the room...and hearing it.

  “There is more,” the rider said, and his voice was strange. It was higher now, not cracking, not the voice of a boy-becoming-a-man at all.

  “Yes,” I answered, wondering why I had.

  “But you do not feel comfortable telling me or anyone.”

  “That is true, Master Rottini,” I said. “It would also be better for you perhaps if you did not know.”

  “That may be true,” he said distractedly, still listening.

  His eyes cleared, and he returned to us.

  “Perhaps,” I heard myself say, “we should ask who you are?”

  The rider looked at me, then away, as he said, “My father lies in one of the other two rooms of this appartamento. You will hear his coughing. His lungs are full of fluid, and no one can help him. How much longer he will live, we do not know, but his illness is not the kind that sickens others. We have blankets for you to sleep on in this room so that his coughing will not interrupt your sleep. If you are hungry—which I can tell you are—and because this is Palio, there is no shortage of food anywhere in the city, including our home. So please conduct yourselves not only as our guests, but as our family, which you are as well.”

  The rider turned and walked toward the room where coughing had started up suddenly.

  When he was gone, Bonifacio started to speak, but I put my finger to my lips. “Are you not hungry, Bonifacio? An
d thirsty?”

  “Yes. Very.”

  “Then let us act in that spirit only, as members of this hospitable family.”

  * * *

  As Bonifacio and I sat at the table eating bread and stew from a pot that seemed to have been placed there for us, and drinking all of the water we wanted from a beautiful Sienese pitcher, the rider’s head poked around the corner.

  “My father is sleeping now, and I must go to the Piazza to register for the third qualifying race, which occurs this afternoon. I would recommend that you not venture out into the city this day—that you wait until the race itself two days from now—but you have your own intuitions to guide you in such matters, I am sure, and do not need mine. If you do leave the apartment and have not returned by night, I will assume that you have left the city on your own or been captured by those you attempt to elude. I would hate to think the latter, Emilio and Bonifacio, but I would have no choice....”

  It was the strangest declaration of caring that I had ever heard, but perhaps the Sienese spoke this way—roundabout and formally.

  Bonifacio was astonished, too, and not doing well at hiding it.

  “We...thank you,” he was saying.

  “The gratitude is ours,” the rider answered.

  The Sienese were definitely an odd people.

  When the rider was gone, a puzzled Bonifacio said, “I have no reason to want to leave this apartment.”

  “Neither do I,” I answered, and at that moment the coughing started up again in the other room. We were silent, expecting it to calm on its own accord and the father to fall back asleep. It did not. It worsened. And though we tried to distract ourselves with both talk and an inspection of the apartment, nothing helped.

  Without saying a word, we both headed for the father’s room.

  * * *

  There, on a pallet of burlap, straw, and woolen blankets, lay a small, thin man whose eyes stared at the ceiling and whose body was far too frail to stop the terrible wracking of its own coughs. He did not seem to be aware of us, but he did open his mouth to say, “Caterina! Dove stai?” Catherine! Where are you?

  That night the man’s coughing grew even worse, and Bonifacio and I could not help but lie on our blankets listening. The rider was in the father’s room, of course, and spoke tenderly to him throughout the night. It was a gentle, consoling voice, one I would have indeed wanted to hear had I been ill, but even the voice left me confused: who was this rider, and why did it feel as if he were hiding just as much as Bonifacio and I? What would a Palio rider have to hide?

  As Bonifacio and I stared at the dark ceiling and listened to the coughing grow more violent and ragged—until our own bodies hurt to hear it—we heard footsteps leave the father’s room and, a moment later, a voice standing over us barely holding back tears and saying, “He has made a turn for the worse. I believe he is dying. I must bring the doctor!”

  “We will sit with him,” I said.

  “Yes, we will sit with him,” Bonifacio echoed.

  “Thank you.” The rider composed himself. It was not becoming a Palio competitor to cry. . “Give him sips of water if he asks for them, but not too much. He cannot sit up. He may ask for food, but do not give him any. Sometimes a hand on his forehead is enough to calm the coughing, but tonight I doubt that will be enough.”

  Bonifacio and I rose as the footsteps left us and the front door opened but did not close.

  “Your dog is here,” the rider said, and we heard Stappo’s feet coming toward us. “Keep him from my father, please.” The door closed at last.

  “Stappo!” I whispered, leaning down, finding him with my hands and scratching him behind the ears. He whined a happy whine.

  Bonifacio and I headed through the darkness to the father’s room, where the candlelight was faint but did let us see a little.

  The coughing was terrible. A part of me wanted to leave, to get away from it, and the room, and the entire city, but another part knew I needed to stay.

  It is important, a voice whispered.

  What that meant, I did not know, but I could not leave.

  Bonifacio was kneeling in the candlelight beside the father, who sounded even frailer now, and whose chin glistened red and wet.

  “He is not going to survive the night, Emissary,” Bonifacio said.

  “You have seen men die like this?”

  “Two. A Cardinal and a Bishop. They, too, coughed up blood.”

  “You helped them die? I mean, did you—”

  “Yes. When a Cardinal, Archbishop or Bishop dies, it should be the pope from whom they receive last rites. I have given these rites sixty-seven times in my brief life, Emissary.”

  What an amazing thing, I thought. To be a boy and yet to have helped sixty-seven men die, helped their souls pass from flesh to God’s grace.

  “Can we wait for the doctor to arrive?”

  “The doctor is not a priest. We do not know whether the rider will bring the priest as well.”

  “No, we do not. Do you have what you need, Your Holiness?”

  “Not exactly. I do not have oil and will have to use holy water. You have the vials in your pouch. Please give me one. Once we open its wax seal, we should use it all. We can use the rest of it to bless this house and the rider tomorrow morning. We might even bless the rider, his horse and the race.”

  When—fumbling in the dark like a blind man—I finally produced a vial, Bonifacio was saying, “He is not able to request absolution; he cannot perform Penance. I must proceed to the Anointing and then the Viaticum. But if he is the rider’s father, he is certainly a man of contrition, and I can give him the forgiveness he believes he needs.”

  “Though he does not...need it,” I heard myself say.

  I could feel Bonifacio’s eyes on me in the dim light.

  “I was listening to the heresy, Bonifacio, the rider’s....”

  “And mine.”

  “Yes. And I have always thought the same—about God and ‘sin’....”

  “I am not surprised, Emissary,” he answered, and I could not tell whether it was the boy or the pope speaking.

  I handed him the vial.

  “In nomine clementiae patris inunctio te,” Bonifacio began, making a cross with a wet finger on the man’s forehead. I could barely hear the Latin over the coughing, and almost as soon as Bonifacio began, the man began to squirm, as if to say, Do not give up on me! Do not give me the last rites when I am not dying! Allow me to fight a little longer!

  Bonifacio stopped, looked at me again, but I had no advice to give. Bonifacio was pope. He should know.

  As if hearing my thought, Bonifacio said:

  “I believe he is dying, and as pope I must trust what the Holy Spirit tells me. Yet I do not want to help dispatch a man prematurely from his body by the very words I might utter....”

  There was a sound behind us, a familiar one. A dog’s paws on a floor. But how had Stappo gotten in?

  Then there was another sound, and I turned. A figure stood in the doorway to the room, Stappo at its feet, and the figure was saying, “The doctor is nowhere to be found. They say he has gone to Valverde to minister to a cousin, and I—”

  The voice stopped. Even in the dim light I could see the rider’s eyes open wide as they took in the scene in the room: A chubby boy with pale skin—who was not a commoner but was fleeing from someone—kneeling on the floor by the rider’s father and reciting Latin no boy should know. Reciting it with power and authority, one hand on the man’s forehead and in his other a glass vial that glinted in the candle’s light.

  The rider took a step. Still Bonifacio did not turn from the father. The work at hand, which only he could do, had made him deaf.

  I looked at the rider and the rider looked back at me. The boy, whose features looked even softer now in the dim light, appeared to be fighting tears again. Stappo remained perfectly still.

  Then the father indeed began to die. The death rattle that people always spoke of but that I had only witness
ed once, when my grandmother had died on a pallet in our church, began as a raspy word that was not a word.

  When I saw the expression on the face of the rider, the sadness and yet the acceptance, I felt something move through my body.

  It was not an itch I felt, though indeed the feeling came from the rash. It was a coldness and yet a warmth; and it was a word, one I could have uttered with my lips, but one so important that it was also a light I could not speak. It was the light that had moved through me that night in Bonifacio’s room on Elba when the Drinker had nearly taken him from me, but even more of that light would be needed now. Stappo was whining—

  —because light was beginning to fill the room. The light was coming from me, as it had before, but this time it would be different, I knew. It would bring something back, rather than send something away. That is what the light was saying, and the voice within it, and the spirit whose emissary I was and would remain until my journey was over.

  Bonifacio looked up now. He stood up and stepped back to give me room, my light reflecting in his eyes as if it were bright morning through a window.

  Behind us, in the doorway, the rider made no sound.

  I placed my hands on the father’s chest and, as I did, the room was filled with such light that it was no longer a room, and the five bodies in the room were no longer bodies. There was only Truth and the beauty of it. These were all that was needed. There was a singing now, too, a sound like a great cornamusa, like a great body swimming toward what needed to be done.

  * * *

  When I woke, I was standing over the father in the candlelit darkness, the light gone. Bonifacio was speaking Latin again, though calmly, and the rider was kneeling on the floor, touching his father, wiping blood gently from the man’s chin.

  The father was no longer coughing but instead breathed steadily, eyes open and aware. I was looking at Bonifacio, and Bonifacio was looking back at me. The rider looked up at me then, too, and in a voice that no longer cracked, that was high and sounded happy to be what it was, finally said:

  “You are the Emissary we have heard of....”