Cathedral (5 page)

"You're quite welcome."

"Could you do one more favor for us? I'll give you a number to call. Tell the person who answers where we are. Tell them that Brian and Maureen need help. Let me know what they say."

"I'll use a phone in the village in case this one is tapped."

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Flynn smiled appreciatively. "If I've seemed a bit abrupt-"

"Don't let it trouble you." He repeated the number Flynn gave him, turned, and disappeared into the narrow passageway.

Flynn took the bottle of Dunphy's from the table and poured some in Maureen's teacup. She shook her head impatiently. "Not with the penicillin, Brian."

He looked at her. "We're not getting along, are we?"

"I'm afraid not."

He nodded. "Well, let's have a look at the nick, then."'

She stood slowly, pulled her wet sweater over her head, and dropped it on the stool. Flynn saw that she was in pain as she unhooked her bloodied bra, but he didn't offer to help. He took a candle from the table and examined the wound, a wide gash running along the outside of her right breast and passing under her armpit. An inch to the left and she would have been dead.

"Just a graze, really."

"I know.,'

"The important thing is that you won't need a doctor." The wound was bleeding again from the movement of her undressing, and he could see that it had bled and coagulated several times already. "It's going to hurt a bit." He dressed the wound while she stood with her arm raised. "Lie down and wrap yourself in the blanket."

She lay down and stared at him in the flickering light. She was cold, wet, and feverish. Her whole side ached, and the food had made her nauseous, though she was very thirsty. "We live Re animals, licking our wounds, cut off from humanity . . . from . . ."

"God? But don't settle for this second-class Popish nonsense, Maureen. Join the Church of England-then you'll have your God, your respectability, and you can sit over tea with the Ladies' Auxiliary and complain about the IRA's latest outrage."

She closed her eyes, and tears ran down her cheeks.

When he saw that she was sleeping, he took the cup of Dunphy's and drained it, then began walking around the

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cellar. He examined the walls again and saw the scorch marks. How many times had this place been put to the torch? What made this location holy to both the Druids and the Christians? What spirit lived here in the heart of the earth? He carried a candle to the wooden chest and studied it.

After some time he reached out and lifted the lid.

Inside he saw fragments of limestone that bore ancient Celtic inscriptions and a few unidentifiable pieces of metal, bronze, rusted iron. He pushed some of the objects aside, revealing a huge oval ring crusted with verdigris. He slipped it on his ring finger. It was large, but it stayed on his finger well enough. He clenched his fist and studied the ring. It bore a crest, and through the tarnish he could make out Celtic writing around a crudely molded bearded face.

He rubbed his fingers over the ring and wiped away some of the encrustation. The crude face stared back at him like a child's rendering of a particularly fearsome man. He felt dizzy and sensed his legs buckling under him. He was aware of hitting the floor. Then he blacked out.

42

Brian Flynn woke to find a face staring down at him.

"It's noon," said Father Donnelly. "I've brought you some lunch."

Flynn focused on the ruddy face of the old man. He saw that the priest was staring at the ring on his finger. He got to his feet and looked around.

Maureen was sitting at the table wearing a new pullover and eating from a steaming bowl. The priest had been there for some time, and that annoyed him. He walked over and sat opposite her. "Feeling better?"

"Much."

Father Donnelly pulled up a stool. "Would ~ou mind if I joined you?"

"It's your food and your table," said Flynn.

The priest smiled. "One never gets used to dining alone."

Flynn took a spoon. "Why don't they send you a monk or something?" He took a spoonful of stew.

"There's a lay brother who does the caretaking, but he's on leave." He leaned forward. "I see you've found the treasure of Whitehorn Abbey."

Flynn continued to eat as he spoke. "Sorry. Couldn't resist the temptation."

"That's all right."

Maureen looked up. "What are we talking about, please?"

Flynn slipped off the ring, passed it to her, and motioned toward the opened chest.

She examined the ring, then passed it to Father Donnelly. "Its an extraordinary ring."

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Father Donnelly toyed with the ring. "Extraordinarily large, in any case."

Flynn poured a bottle of Guinness into a glass. "Where did it come from?"

The priest shook his head. 'The last abbot said it was always here with the other things in that box. It may have been excavated here during one of the rebuildings. Perhaps under this floor."

Flynn stared at the ring in the priest's hand. "PreChristian?"

"Yes. Pagan. If you want a romantic story, it is said that it was a warrior king's ring. More specifically, Fenian. It's certainly a man's ring, and no average man at that."

Flynn nodded. "Why not MacCumail's ring? Or Dermot's?"

"Why not, indeed? Who would dare wear a ring larger than this?"

Flynn smiled. "You've a pagan streak in you, Father. Didn't Saint Patrick consign the departed Fenians to hen? What was their crime, then, that they must spend eternity in bell?"

"No crime. Just born at the wrong time." He smiled. "Like many of us."

"Right." Flynn liked a priest who could laugh at his dogma.

The priest leaned across the table. "When Oisin, son of Finn MacCumail, returned from the Land of Perpetual Youth, he found Ireland Christian.

The brave warrior was confused, sad. Oisin rejected the ordered Christian society and longed with nostalgia for the untamed lustiness of old Erin.

If he or his father, Finn MacCumail, came into Ulster today, they would be overjoyed at this Christian warfare. And they would certainly recognize the new pagans among us."

"Meaning meT'

Maureen poured tea into three mugs. "He's talking to you, Brian, isn't he?"

Father Donnelly rose. "I'll take my tea in the refectory."

Maureen Malone rose, too. "Don't leave."

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"I really must." His demeanor had changed from paternal to businesslike.

He looked at Flynn. "Your friends want you to stay here for two more days. They'll contact me and let me know the plan. Any reply?"

Flynn shook his head. "No."

Maureen looked at Flynn, then at Father Donnelly. "I have a reply. Tell them I want safe passage to Dublin, a hundred pounds, and a work visa for the south."

The priest nodded. He turned to go, hesitated, and came back. He placed the ring on the small table. "Mister

"Cocharan."

"Yes. Take this ring."

"Why?"

"Because you want it and I don't."

"It's a valuable relic."

"So are you."

"I won't ask you what you mean by that." He stood and looked hard at the priest, then took the ring from the table and placed it on his finger.

Several new thoughts were forming in his mind, but he had no one to share them with. "Thank you." He looked at the ring. "Any curse attached to it that I should know about?"

'Me priest replied, "You should assume there is."

He looked at the two people standing before, him. "I can't approve of the way you live your lives, but I find it painful to see a love dying. Any love, anywhere in this unloving country." He turned and made his way out of the cellar.

Flynn knew that Maureen had been talking to the priest while he'd been sleeping. He was having difficulty dealing with all that had happened in so short a time. Belfast, the old lady and the abbey, a priest who used pagan legends to make Christian statements, Maureen's aloofness. He was clearly not in control. He stood motionless for a time, then turned toward her. "I'd like you to reconsider about Dublin."

She looked down and shook her head.

"I'm asking you to stay . . . not only because I What I mean is . . ."

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"I know what you mean. Once in, never out. I'm not afraid of them."

"You should be. I can't protect you-"

"I'm not asking you to." She looked at him. "We're both better off."

"You're probably right. You understand these things better than V'

She knew that tone of voice. Remote. Sarcastic. The air in the cellar felt dense, oppressive. Church or not, the place made her uneasy. She thought about the coffin through which they had entered this hole, and that had been a little like dying. When she came out again she wanted to leave behind every memory of the place, every thought of the war. She looked at the ring on his hand. "Leave the damned thing here."

"I'm not only taking the ring, Maureen, I'm taking the name as well."

"What name?"

"I need a new code name . . . Finn MacCumail."

She almost laughed. "In any other country they'd treat you for megalomania.

In Northern Ireland they'll fin~d you quite normal, Brian."

"But I am normal."

"Not bloody likely."

He looked at her in the dim candlelight. He thought he had never seen anyone so lovely, and he realized that he hadn't thought of her in that way for a long time. Now she was flushed with the expectation of new beginnings, not to mention the flush of fever that reddened her cheeks and caused her eyes to burn bright. "You may well be right."

"About your being a lunatic?"

"Well, that too." He smiled at the small shared joke. "But I meant about you going off to Dublin."

"I'm sorry."

"Don't be. I'm only sorry I can't go with you."

"Perhaps, Brian, some day you'll get tired of this."

"Not bloody likely."

91

"No.

"Well, I'll miss you."

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"I hope so," she said.

He stayed silent for a moment, then said, "I still don't know if we can trust him."

"He's a saint, for God's sake, Brian. Take him for what he appears to be."

"He appears different to me. Something odd about him. Anyway, we're not home free yet."

"I know."

"If anything happens and I don't have time to make a proper parting . . .

well . . ."

"You've had time enough over the years to say what you felt. Time wasn't the problem. Tea?"

"Yes, please."

They sat silently, drinking their tea.

Flynn put down his cup. "Your sister

She shook her head. "Sheila is beyond our help."

"Maybe not."

"I don't want to see anyone else killed.

"There are other ways . . . . " He lapsed into silence, then said, "The keys to the jails of Ulster are in America."

A month later, when spring was firmly planted in the countryside and three weeks after Maureen Malone left for Dublin, Brian Flynn hired a car and went out to the abbey to thank Father Donnefly and to ask him about possible help in the future.

He found all the gates to the abbey locked, and no one answered any of the pull bells. A farmer riding by on a cart told him that the abbey was looked after by villagers employed by the diocese. And that no one had lived there for many years.

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English, Scotchmen, Jews, do well in 7reland-Irishmen, never; even the patriot has to leave Ireland to get a hearing.

George Moore,

Ave (Overture)

Brian Flynn, dressed in the black clothing and white collar of a Roman Catholic priest, stood in the dim morning light near the south transept entrance to St. Patrick's Cathedral. He carried a small parcel wrapped in white paper decorated with green shamrocks. A few older women and two men stood at the base of the steps near him, huddled against the cold.

One of the two large transept doors swung open, and the head of a sexton appeared and nodded. The small crowd mounted the steps and passed through the side vestibule, then entered the Cathedral. Brian Flynn followed.

Inside the Cathedral, Flynn kneeled at the communion rail. The raised marble area, the altar sanctuary, was decked with fields of green carnations, and he studied the festive decorations. It had been four years since he had left Whitehorn Abbey; four years since he had seen her. Today he would see her again, for the last time.

He rose and turned toward the front of the Cathedral, slipping his right hand into his black overcoat pocket to feel the cold steel of the automatic pistol.

Father Timothy Murphy left his room in the rectory and made his way to the underground passage between the rectory and the Cathedral. At the end of a corridor be came to a large paneled door and opened it, then stepped into a dark room and turned on a wall switch. Soft lights glowed in the marble-vaulted sacristy.

He walked to the priests' chapel in the rear of the sacristy and knelt, directing his prayers to St. Patrick, whose

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feast day it was, and asking as he did every year for peace in Northern Ireland, his native land. He asked also for good weather for the parade and a peaceful and relatively sober day in his adopted city.

He rose, crossed the sacristy, mounted a short flight of marble stairs, and unlocked a pair of brass gates. He rolled the gates back on their tracks into the marble archway, then continued up the steps.

On the first landing he stopped and peered through a barred door into the crypt that contained the remains of the past archbishops of New York. A soft yellow fight burned somewhere in the heart of the crypt.

The stairca:se split in two directions on the landing, and he took the flight to the left. He came around the altar and walked toward the high pulpit. He mounted the curving stone steps and stood beneath the bronze canopy high above the pews.

The Cathedral spread out before him, covering an entire city block. The lighter spots of the towering stained-glass windows-the flesh tones of faces and hands-picked up the early morning light, changing the focus of the scenes from the Scriptures depicted on them in a way that their artisans never intended. Disembodied heads and limbs stared out of the cobalt blues and fiery reds, looking more damned than saved.