Thomas M. Disch (33 page)

Father Cogling was not about to satisfy his curiosity by the simple expedient of answering the door. Indeed, if he’d been living in the Middle Ages and this pair had appeared on the drawbridge of his castle, he would have delighted in dousing them with a cauldron of boiling oil.

Lacking that immediate gratification, Father Cogling returned to the prie-dieu before the chapel’s altar and began to say a rosary, meditating on the five Sorrowful Mysteries. His visitors did not leave off sounding the door chimes until he had reached the third decade of the rosary, and the third Sorrowful Mystery, which is the crowning with thorns.

To think that God Himself should endure such torments so that our sins might be forgiven! The wonder of it brought tears to Father Cogling’s eyes.

XXIX

It had been unwise, and worse than unwise, to have ventured down into the work chambers of the Inquisition. The torturer Bertrand Crispo lacked all ecclesial authority; he was only the Legate’s minion, but in the Legate’s absence Crispo acted as though the Legate’s powers were his to exercise. And the Legate’s authority was virtually supreme throughout Languedoc. He answered only to Rome, which meant, in effect, that he answered to no one. Father Bryce doubted that his borrowed episcopal robes would provide him any protection should Durand du Fuaga come to think he was tainted with heresy. Indeed, there would be a kind of cachet in being able to number a bishop among du Fuaga’s victims. Father Bryce understood that now, thanks to a few ambiguous remarks that Crispo had let drop concerning the Legate’s zeal to seek out heresy even among the nobility and clergy.

“Perhaps even here in this cathedral, among the canons, Your Eminence, there may be those who have tolerated heresy, though they be not heretics themselves.”

Father Bryce had assured him that all the clerics attached to Notre Dame de Gevaudon were of the strictest orthodoxy.

“But, Your Eminence,” Crispo had said slyly, “how can you be sure? If a man is a heretic, he will conceal it as long as he can. Unless one has the tools available to the Inquisition, and skill in their use, nothing can be known. One will meet only lies and denials. Take the man Bonamico. He was apprehended trying to escape your service with most of his crew of workmen. We have questioned him many times, but he has been obdurate, when he is not simply speaking that gibberish, and claims to know less about the heretics who surround us than if he were a child of five years. But you will hear another song when we begin his proper examination.”

“Yes, I’m sure that’s so.”

“Perhaps you would like to be present at his examination, Your Eminence?

Since I have already acted against the Legate’s explicit instructions in permitting you to enter the Lombards’ cell and to speak with Bonamico, there can be no harm in your witnessing the work of his interrogation. Indeed, as I recall, you were to have seen the interrogation of the de Gaillac woman, but you were taken ill.”

“The spirit is willing, but the flesh is weak,” Father Bryce said, avoiding Crispo’s gaze.

“The flesh is weak. Very true. But this time you may find yourself better fortified. Custom breeds a kind of ease in these matters, as with bad smells. And you may be useful to the Holy Office if this Bonamico begins to jabber again in his strange speech. Is it the language of Egypt?”

Father Bryce shook his head. “No, it is the dialect of a northern people—Saxons, or their neighbors.”

“You speak it fluently.”

“It only seems so because you cannot understand all my errors.”

Crispo flashed his pale gums in a smile. “If there have been errors, Your Eminence, they were Bonamico’s, not yours.”

And so, unwisely, he had succumbed to the temptation and become the witness to the torture of Bonamico. Or, rather, of A. D. Boscage, though Father Bryce was not so unwise as to translate any of the man’s desperate insistences that he was not Bonamico but the transmentated spirit of a twentieth-century science-fiction writer. Instead, Father Bryce had urged Boscage that the only way to bring his torture to an end was to give his torturer what he wanted and confess himself to be a heretic.

Boscage did confess, but his torture continued, until he had implicated all of his fellow masons whom he could identify by name. Still Crispo demanded to know the name of the arch-heretic and high priest of the Albigensians.

At last, when his back was being laid open with a many-thonged whip, Boscage was inspired to take the one revenge within his power. “There is the man you seek!” he declared. “There, beside you.
He
is our bishop and high priest.”

Crispo signaled for the whip to be put down. He approached the post to which Boscage had been bound and lifted his sagging head to look into his bloodied face. “You name Silvanus de Roquefort, the Bishop of Rodez and Montpellier-le-Vieux?”

“Yes!” Boscage agreed readily. “That is
your
name for him. But as an Albigensian he has another name. All the
perfecti
have secret names by which they are known to one another.”

“The man is lying!” Father Bryce declared with unfeigned indignation.

“He would name anyone to have you stop his torture.”

Crispo lifted his hand for silence. “There may be truths hidden within a lie, Your Eminence, like seeds in dirt. Let me proceed, please.” He addressed Boscage: “What is this other name?”

“He is the High Priest Ammon-Ra of the Ancient Order of Hibernians. And the language you’ve heard us speak together is Egyptian, just as you suspected. Ammon-Ra has been initiated into the highest levels of Egyptian wisdom.”

“These are preposterous lies! You cannot possibly—”

Crispo looked up at Father Bryce. “I think it would be best, Your Eminence, if you were not here to be insulted by the man’s inventions. As you say, they must be lies. But it is my work to hear them.”

Reluctantly, Father Bryce let himself be led from the torture chamber, and spent the next hour fuming inwardly in the cloistered garden where he’d first found himself when he’d awakened in the skin of Silvanus de Roquefort.

How could he have foreseen that A. D. Boscage would still have the presence of mind to ply his trade as an inventor of fabulous falsehoods in his present extremity? The wit, even, to tailor his lies to the appetites and expectations of his audience. Ammon-Ra and Egyptian wisdom! But Crispo’s eyes had fairly glowed with the thrill of discovery.

Father Bryce was full of forebodings. But when Crispo joined him in the garden, his manner was more apologetic than threatening. “I beg Your Eminence’s forgiveness for my seeming lack of respect. As you understood at once, the man is a liar, nothing but that. Usually I am not so easily deceived. Not that I ever credited what he said with respect to Your Eminence.

You must not think so.”

“I never supposed you such a fool,” Father Bryce replied, in what he hoped was a bishoplike tone of calm condescension. Yet he could not keep from asking, “And does the man still maintain that I am some Egyptian high priest?”

“He maintains nothing now, Your Eminence. He died during interrogation.

I misjudged his endurance. The Legate will not be pleased. If I had not been impatient, I am sure that at last I would have worn down his impostures and discovered the truth he thought to conceal with his fabrications. I have no doubt he was a heretic and could have named many others.”

“No doubt at all,” Father Bryce agreed. “But as you noted, the flesh is weak. Sometimes, perhaps, weaker than we suppose.”

“Quite true, Your Eminence. His was. Have you further need of me?”

“No. But—”

“Yes?”

Should he try to strike a bargain with Crispo? Dare he suggest that he would say nothing to the Legate about Bonamico’s Egyptian nonsense if Crispo would return the favor? Might that not, instead, reawaken Crispo’s suspicions?

At last, he only smiled, and offered his ring to be kissed, and dismissed Crispo with the medieval equivalent of “Have a nice day”: “
Pax vobiscum
.” Peace be with you.

“
Et cum spiritu tuo
,” the torturer responded, as automatic as an altar boy.

Alexis Clareson drove his battery-powered wheelchair across the considerable expanse of what appeared to be a Persian carpet of the first quality, though Father Mabbley was no judge of such matters. Alexis parked beside a wheelchair-accessible liquor cabinet, slid it open, and said, “You’ll have some brandy.”

Father Mabbley pretended this was a question. “Thank you, Alex. That would top things off nicely.
Such
a meal. I don’t think I’ve ever eaten lobster except in a restaurant. I didn’t know it was legal to make it in one’s own home.”

“It isn’t,” Alex said. “Unless one has a full-time chef.”

“Alex, you’re bragging.”

“I am, indeed. And
this
is a very special old brandy. You’ll enjoy it.”

“I’m sure I will. But I fear you won’t enjoy what we have to talk about at this point.”

“Not yet, please, Mab. Let us enjoy the flowers of friendship a little while longer. You were so droll at dinner—and such a flirt. But you weren’t flirting with me, were you? Not that I blame you. Jeremiah is a jewel. Who could resist him? But he did rather monopolize your conversation. The rest of us just eavesdropped.”

“You flatter me, Alex. As ever. I didn’t flirt so much as listen.”

“And how better to flirt? But I’m just teasing you. As ever.” Alexis handed him a snifter, lifted his own, and said, “Your health.”

“And yours.”

They performed the rites of the first taste—the hand’s embrace of the glass, a slow swirl for the eye to savor, a sniff, then the wetting of the lips and the tongue’s astonishment.

“You do live well here, Alex.”

“Indeed. Who would have thought?”

“When we were seminarians?”

“A world ago.”

“Oh, as I recall, there was liquor then, too. Even brandy. Though it was usually Christian Brothers. Do you miss it?”

“That world? Of course, who doesn’t. Everyone misses some fabled Eden of lost innocence. That’s why it was the younger Elvis who was elected to be a postage stamp. What a silly election
that
was. Who would vote for being old and fat and corrupt? Which is not to say that I’m corrupt, mind you. Old and fat I must admit to. I’ve even come around to thinking old and fat a kind of blessing. In the sense of ‘Lead us not into temptation.’ I think the Church could solve all its present problems if it required not just chastity but
wheelchairs
of all of us.”

Father Mabbley laughed.

“So,” said Alex, shifting into Chancery mode. “Did you find what you needed to know?”

“I looked through Bryce’s files. He seemed, early on, headed for better things.”

“Yes, he got derailed. It was more the alcohol than any of his known indiscretions. Of course, the one tends to lead to the other. He’s back on the tracks now, I think.”

“The abortion protests, you mean? He seems to have become quite active along those lines.”

“Indeed, he’s our leading pro-Life crusader, and the Bishop is appreciative of his acts of zeal, since he can take credit for them with Rome without having to exert himself unduly in a crusade for which he has, like so many of us, mixed feelings.”

“I gather Massey’s own ideal agenda would be more liberal than accords with the current temper in Rome.”

“Yes, he has all the wrong opinions. Though he takes pains not to express them. Optional celibacy, women in the priesthood, birth control, some kinder accommodation of our gay brothers and sisters. What can I say: The man’s a flaming liberal. Which nowadays, of course, amounts to the brand of Cain. But he has two advantages that even Connie O’Connor might envy: He’s black, one might even say charismatically black, and his private life and financial life have been irreproachable. So all he has to do is bide his time until the climate changes in Rome.”

“Avoiding, meanwhile, any hint of scandal.”

“Exactly. And there we come to it, Mab. You’ve thrown out hints about Father Bryce that were a
little
unnerving. I hope there’s no connection between Bryce and the unhappy matter that brings you to Minneapolis.”

“I share your hope, Alex, but it’s not something we ought to be discussing at this point.”

“Oh dear, as bad as that? Well, I trust you won’t do anything rash. If it becomes as serious as you seem to think, would you at least talk to one of our lawyers before you go elsewhere?”

“Surely. Unless the whole thing blows up before I have the opportunity.

It would help if I could talk to the man, This Cogling person is not exactly forthcoming. In the literal sense that he wouldn’t come to the door of the rectory when I called on him there the other day. Oh, and that reminds me.

Cogling is stonewalling someone besides me. You may remember my talking to Jeremiah at dinner about the young man I met at Schinder’s.”

“Yes, the one you traded jokes with over your friend’s casket. I liked the one about John Gotti going to prison, though in one form or another it’s as old as the hills.”