Thomas M. Disch

by The Priest

  ‘now’ you will soon return to-there are those who reverence the Shroud while knowing it cannot be authentic. Cardinal Ballestrero of Turin (who admittedly has a vested interest in the matter) is on record as saying that the Church

  ‘reiterates her respect and her veneration for the Shroud.’”

  “Forged relics are an old scandal. The Church has survived many such scandals. It will survive this one.”

  “If it were only the scandal, I agree. But what if the Shroud is proven to be not the image of Christ but of A. D. Boscage? Who was crucified, died, and resurrected centuries afterward—the Messiah of the Aquarian Age? That would put Receptivist Science on an entirely different footing than any other crackpot religion ever known.”

  “Messiah? Why not the Antichrist?”

  “Why not, indeed, if that’s your preference? He’s been called that often enough.”

  Finally the question had to be asked, though Father Bryce knew better than to expect a truthful answer. “Who are you? And why are you doing this?”

  “Whom do you suppose, Father?”

  “You look like a younger version of an elderly parishioner from St.

  Bernardine’s, Gerhardt Ober. But I can’t suppose that’s who you are.”

  “Resemblances—yes, they can be deceiving. Undoubtedly, when you look about you here, the people you see seem to be versions of people you knew in your own time. It was the same for Boscage, and for myself. In you I seem to recognize a priest I knew when I was a boy of fourteen. He tried to seduce me, and I tried to murder him. Now, at last, that karmic debt will be paid. What seems to be the case is that in our transmentated state we perceive spiritual resemblances as physical. In some way that I don’t understand, I am the moral equivalent of this Gerhardt Ober, as you are the equivalent of my would-be seducer. Does that mean that this whole medieval mise-en-scène is a phantasmagoria? No, I think the truth is somewhere in between. We are here, in these borrowed bodies, like sleepwalkers, only half aware of the real world we stumble through. And for all you or I know, the same may be true of the lives we’ve left behind. But that is all philosophy. You have yet to answer my question.”

  “Who do I think you are? I think you may be the devil.”

  “I’m flattered, Father. Truly I am. The devil always cuts such a dashing figure. The ultimate scene-stealer. Of course, if I were the devil, I would have to deny it, wouldn’t I? The Father of Lies, and all that. Allowing for that paradox, let me assure you I am not the devil. Would you like to try again?”

  “This is madness.”

  “Now you flatter yourself, Father. Do you think your imagination so rich that I am just a figment of your fancy? Come to think of it, that is typical of pedophiles and rapists. They must believe that their victims solicited their attentions. Let someone only say hello, and you’re unzipping your fly.”

  Father Bryce said nothing, and after a time the Legate interpreted his silence as his final tacit submission. He left the cell and Crispo entered, followed by a soldier bearing a torch.

  Like a priest lifting up the Host for adoration, Crispo showed Father Bryce the crown of thorns that had been prepared for him.

  34

  “Gerhardt, I really must insist,” Hedwig said. “I have to see a doctor.

  I am in intolerable pain. You can see how my whole lower arm is swollen up. If you can’t drive me to Leech Lake, then I must call for a taxi.”

  “I’m sorry,” said Gerhardt, “but I need you here now. I can’t do everything that has to be done by myself. Not with him here. You said yourself he’s been acting funny.”

  “Not funny. He’s just obstinate sometimes. You’re the same way; that doesn’t make you funny.”

  “How was he obstinate? What did he want?”

  She sighed. As soon as she’d let Father Bryce have his way, she’d regretted it, and had avoided telling Gerhardt about it. But perhaps it was best that he know. He would soon enough, in any case. “He wanted me to show him how to use the beeper. So that he could visit the girls without having me let him in and out of their cells. After all, he is officially in charge of the Shrine.”

  “You didn’t give him the codes, did you?”

  “How could I refuse?”

  “For Christ’s sake, Hedwig!” Gerhardt threw the scrub brush into the bucket, making the soapy water splash across the bib of his overalls. He was already exasperated at having to mop up the bloodstains on the floor of the walk-in freezer. Cleaning was not one of his responsibilities.

  “I didn’t give him the code for accessing the elevator, so he can’t leave the dormitory floor. And what harm can he do if he’s with the girls? You surely don’t believe what that little Joyner girl said.”

  Gerhardt pursed his thin lips and shook his head. “No, I might have believed that about someone else, but not Father Bryce.”

  “Of course not him. The man’s a priest, he’s sworn to chastity. And I’ve always known that Janet was a little liar. She pretends to be this innocent, sweet child, but if she were, how did she come to be here in the first place?

  Pregnant at the age of twelve!”

  “True, true. Did you tell him what she’d accused him of?”

  “Perhaps I should have. But it just seemed too… ugly. Even now, thinking about it, I’d like to swat her again. That’s why I have to see a doctor, Gerhardt. I did something to my wrist when I struck the girl. It hurts more than it did when I first broke it. And there are no painkillers left. We used up the last of them on Tara Seberg.”

  “You’ve just got to hang on, Hedwig,” Gerhardt said, using the handle of the mop to help him rise to his feet. He’d been kneeling so long that the wet knees of his overalls had frozen to the metal floor of the freezer. “Have some brandy. That’ll take off some of the edge. I’ve called Father Cogling and told him that we need his help. He said he’d come tomorrow, but I told him he had to come right away. And he said he would. That was a couple hours ago. Once he gets here, he can take you in to see a doctor. But there is one thing, Hedwig.”

  She sighed. “What is that?”

  “It would be better not to tell Father Cogling about…” Gerhardt tilted his head to where the corpse of the fat man, now frozen quite solid, still lay in the wheelbarrow, waiting interment.

  Hedwig had spread a linen tablecloth over the body as a kind of shroud.

  Gerhardt had yet to explain how the man’s body had come to be here, and he probably never would. Nor did she want to know anything about it. Just as her brother resented being required to perform the woman’s work of scrubbing a floor, so she resented being implicated in the masculine domain of violence.

  She understood that it was sometimes needful, in the interest of a higher cause, to perform illegal actions. Doctors who refused to stop performing abortions might, for instance, have to be dealt with in ways that the civil authorities would not sanction. But that was men’s work, and women should not have to know about it. Whatever the motive that had impelled her brother to act as he had, Hedwig trusted that he’d done so in good conscience, but she did resent having been made a witness to it.

  “Hedwig, I would appreciate it if you would go back down to the dormitory floor and look after things there. I don’t like the idea of Father Pat being alone with those girls.”

  “Gerhardt—you don’t believe that girl, do you?”

  “No, nothing like that. But they might be telling him stories about the way things are run here. Which they wouldn’t be doing if you were there.”

  “That can’t be helped, Gerhardt. I can’t be breathing down his neck every single moment.”

  “Even so, it’s better you were with them.”

  Hedwig sighed with feigned reluctance. She would much prefer being with Father Pat and the girls than catching her death of cold while she watched her brother mopping up bloodstains.

  “Do you have your own remote, or do I have to access the elevator for you?”

  “No, I have mine. I gave Father Pat the spa
re.”

  The moment she was alone inside the cage of the elevator, Hedwig began to cry. She cried—silently, and without needing more than a pat or two of her hanky, but for someone so little given to weeping it amounted to a torrent. In part it was simply the pain of her broken wrist, but there was also a sense that BirthRight was falling to pieces around them. Tara Seberg had died when her infant miscarried two weeks ago, and now Mary Tyler seemed to be going the same way. They should not have begun operating BirthRight until they had been assured of being able to call on professional medical assistance for such emergencies. All the good work already done and the prospect of doing so much more seemed to be coming to nothing. Only a miracle could help the Shrine now to realize the rightful glory it had for so long been denied.

  When the elevator doors opened, there was Father Bryce in the common room, with Mary Tyler and Alison Sanders sitting beside him on either side of the sofa. Hedwig was so taken aback that she did not step out into the corridor. Mary Tyler had not been out of her cell for the past two months.

  Sometimes she hadn’t had the strength to cross the room to the toilet and Hedwig had had to resort to the unpleasantness of a bedpan. And here she was, in her bathrobe in the common room!

  When they caught sight of Hedwig, all three of them sprang to their feet, smiling, and Alison called out, “Don’t close those doors! Father Pat has had the most wonderful idea.”

  “My dear!” Hedwig remonstrated. “Really!” She jabbed at the button that would close the doors, but instead she hit—and with the wrong hand!—the one that held them open. The pain flashed up to her elbow and then down into her fingers.

  And then there was Father Pat, with his hand on the door of the elevator, and both girls were inside of it, and Alison was saying, “I told him about the Shroud of Turin. How the Shrine has actual threads from the Shroud of Turin.”

  “To think of it,” said Father Pat, advancing into the elevator so that Hedwig had to step back from the door. “The very cloth that wrapped His crucified body!”

  “Surely you’ve known of that relic a long time, Father,” said Hedwig as the doors of the elevator closed. “It was already here in your seminary days.”

  “Yes, of course,” Alison continued in the same vein of overwrought reverence, “but it was Father Pat’s idea to take the relic from where it’s kept—”

  “The reliquarium,” said Hedwig. “But it’s securely locked.”

  “—and to let Mary touch it, or kiss it, or however you deal with a relic like that. Because she’s been so sick. And it could make her well again, or anyhow a little better. Father Pat says relics can work miracles.”

  “Yes, of course, but—”

  “If it could help me…” Mary ventured mildly.

  Relics can work miracles. Hedwig accepted this as an article of faith.

  And she did know where to find the key to the reliquarium. And if Mary was to mend and have a successful delivery, something on the order of a miracle would be required. But more than all that, BirthRight itself needed a miracle if it was to survive.

  “Please,” said Father Pat. “For their sake, and the sake of the children they are to bear.”

  Gerhardt would be furious. But really, what could be the risk? Even if they went up to the Shrine, its doors were secured. The girls could not get out of the building, even if they were foolish enough to try.

  And relics can work miracles.

  “Very well,” said Hedwig. She took the remote from the pocket of her smock, aimed it at the control panel, and, with a flinch of pain, pressed 1.

  35

  The girl was an enchantress. She was like the most beautiful statue of the Virgin that ever craftsman fashioned—the belly rounded with child but not unbecomingly swollen; the face a perfect oval, except for a subtle sharpness to the chin; the arms, bare almost to her shoulders and the palest pink, an invitation to his embrace. She inspired a reverence of desire such as a harlot of Delilah’s sort could never hope to arouse, though, like Delilah, this Alison had fingernails dyed red and carmined lips. Loveliest was the dark hair that streamed loosely about her face like the tresses of the Magdalene.

  It did not matter to Silvanus that he could not possess her at once. Now he understood those voluptuaries who prided themselves on drawing out their dalliances with their paramours until love had left them weak and trembling rather than dealing with temptation in a brisk martial way. In any case, he had already satisfied his baser appetites only a little time before in the cell of the girl called Raven.

  She had been no enchantress. When he had offered to hear her confession, she had spit out profanities that would have made a routier

  blush. When he had pressed himself upon her, she had resisted with a vigor that had prevented his carnal possession of her body until he’d wrung almost the last breath from her heaving lungs. Being bound hand and foot to the pallet in her cell, the minx had had no hope of effectively resisting him, and yet she would not yield. And so what mercy could there have been for her?

  None.

  Now, too late, he regretted what he’d done, for he was certain that when one of the girls’ elderly jailers discovered her lifeless body, there would be a price to pay. Even though it was they who’d brought the raucous “Raven” to this dungeon crypt and bound her to the pallet, the Ober woman seemed to expect that he would deal with the wanton, and with her fellow prisoners, only in his capacity as a priest. But in this antechamber of hell, this demesne of the Antichrist, how was Silvanus always to preserve a priestly demeanor?

  Confronting such temptations as had been placed in his path, what virile man could have done otherwise than he had done?

  But this one, this Alison, this statue of the Holy Mother quickened into life, this was a new order of temptation. Her glance was like a woodland creature, a finch that would light upon his finger and at once go fluttering off. Her very piety served to entice, for when he’d asked her if she wished to confess her sins to him, first she’d agreed and then, when he’d sought to know in more intimate detail the nature of her transgressions (and chanced, at the same moment, to brush the soft underside of her arm with the back of his hand), oh, what a pretty panic there was. She had not been bound to her pallet, as Mary and later Raven had been, but enjoyed the liberty of her cell, as did the youngest of the four fair prisoners, Janet. Like Janet, too, she’d fled his first caress and looked at him with such a look! Just as flames of many colors may flicker at the wick of a lamp, so in her eyes he could see at one instant fear, at the next reproach, and then the fear would flare up more brightly, and you could see the very fear of death in her face as though in a flash of lightning. But then, at last, and most astonishing, he’d seen a yielding. Her lips had trembled and then tensed into a smile of sweetest acquiescence. But this was not a yielding dictated by fear; rather (he was certain), like the wise virgin of the parable, she acted at the promptings of reason and deliberation. She knew that ultimately she must please him, but she hoped, virginally, to delay that fated moment.

  “Father,” she’d told him, “I would like to go to confession. But not here. Can’t we go up to the Shrine, where there’s a proper confessional?”

  “I wish it were possible, my child.”

  “Because you see, Father, there are things that I could tell you, if we were in the confessional, that somehow, here, like this …” She finished her sentence with a blush.

  “The problem, my child, is the elevator. I am unable to summon it.”

  “But if you tell Hedwig you want to go up to the Shrine, she can’t refuse you. She told us that you are in charge of the Shrine. You’re her superior. And there’s another reason, too.”

  “And what is that, my dear?”

  She had told him then of the relic of the Holy Shroud that was kept in a reliquarium in one of the side chapels, and he had listened dumbfounded. To think that such a treasure could be so close by and no mention made of it till flow! Why was not the Shrine teeming with pilgrims? Of course,
there were spurious relics, but Alison had assured him that this was unassailably genuine. Many books had been written attesting to its authenticity. Alison had read one of them herself. She mentioned it now because it had been her hope, ever since she’d learned of the relic’s presence at the Shrine, to be able to venerate it. She was certain that if she could press her lips to it, she and the child she carried could suffer no mischance when her time came. And beyond her concern for herself and her child, there was Mary Tyler, who was now very near her term and so sick that she almost required a miracle if she was not to miscarry.

  Silvanus had let himself be persuaded to take Alison to Mary’s cell, not without misgivings. He had not seen the girl since he had spent his seed upon her, and he was not certain if she would receive him in a spirit of humility or of grievance. She had seemed dazed at first, but then, as Alison had dwelt upon the benefits Mary might reap from being able to venerate the precious relic, she came to share her friend’s fervor and insisted on having her restraints undone so that she might rise from her pallet and put on a loose robe over her bedclothes, in which habit she proposed to visit the Shrine.

  All the while that Alison and Mary sang the praises of the Shroud and its miraculous powers, Silvanus began to formulate his own prayerful hope. For he, even more than these girls, stood in need of a miracle. They would pray to be delivered of healthy children, but he would pray for another kind of deliverance. Not knowing by what agency he’d been translated to this latter-day kingdom of the Antichrist, Silvanus had ceased to hope that he might be returned to his own era. “Lead us not into temptation,” Christ had bade us pray, “but deliver us from evil.” Never had those words rung with such urgency as now.

  And yet, even as the hope stirred in his heart that the relic of the Shroud would enable him to return to the precincts of Notre Dame de Gevaudon in his own kinder and more Christian era, the very temptation that he would escape from assailed him with more force than ever. He thought of being with Alison in the confessional, of pressing his ear against the black veil that separated priest and penitent until he could feel her breath upon his cheek.