L'Oro Verde
Authors: Coralie Hughes Jensen
Copyright © 2011 by Coralie Hughes Jensen
ALL RIGHTS RESERVED
This novel is a work of fiction. Names, characters,
places, and incidents are drawn from the author’s imagination or used
fictitiously and are not to be construed as real. Any resemblance to actual
events, locales, organizations, or persons, living or dead, is entirely
coincidental.
No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any
manner whatsoever without the written permission of the copyright owner, except
in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.
To my daughter,
Megan
who is there for me when I need her.
ACKNOWLEDMENTS
Cover:
Covers by Cali
Thank you to my editor,
Kathy Brown. To my former employer who let me rack up enough frequent flyer
miles to fly to Tuscany. And a special thank you to the people of San Gimignano
and surrounding villages who inspired me to create Montriano and the diocese of
Petraggio.
OTHER BOOKS
BY CORALIE HUGHES JENSEN
Passup
Point
Lety’s
Gift
Winter
Harvest
The
Pukeko
~
Struggling up the side of the hill,
Bernardo glanced over his shoulder to see who shadowed him. He could almost
hear the raspy pant below but still could not make out his pursuer. Gulping for
air, he paused to listen again. The wheezing stopped, but it started again as
soon as he began to climb. He checked his watch—nearly two in the morning.
Bernardo knew he was being stalked. He needed a place to hide and away to
escape. But his mind raced, and he could not think clearly. Who was after him?
How much time did he have? Would the stalker kill him? The former altar boy was
not afraid to die. He had a strong faith and believed he would be with God
after death. He did not feel bad for or think of himself. He thought of those
who loved him and regretted the pain they would endure if he did not return. The
light from the three-quarter moon shimmered as the sultry heat of summer
condensed over the grassy fields and curvy rows of grapevines. But Bernardo did
not look up until he got to the top of the hill. Before him, his hometown of
Montriano unfolded over the crest. The ancient walls that once protected it on
all sides had crumbled and were replaced by flowering thickets for shade with
benches so visitors could look out over rows of grapevines, splashes of olive
trees, and undulating mist shrouding the farmhouses and fields.
Slowing to catch his breath, he stopped
to stare at the deserted streets, slithering like snakes down the hill and disappearing
into the blackness of the village. He should consider his flight, which way he
planned to go. The road to the right would take him to his parents’ house where
his father could protect him. The center one meandered down to his church, San
Benedetto. The stocky spire of the parish church barely peeked over the nearby
rooftops and was not as high as the town’s two towers. He imagined himself
standing in the steeple and ringing the bell, summoning help to keep the
stalker at bay. The street to the left led to the medieval towers, Polini and
Grossa.
Bernardo spun around until he could see
the Milky Way in the starry sky above the towers. He knew the spot well since
he often went there on summer evenings to study the heavens.
One night months ago as he carefully identified
the constellations, moonbeams spilled across his hand and forearm. It reminded
him of a high school art lesson on Leonardo da Vinci’s use of moonlight in a
famous painting. Bernardo owned a copy of it—
Leda and the Swan
. He kept
it under his bed and pulled it out often to marvel at its beauty. He would run
his fingers down Leda’s thigh, imagining what it would be like to feel a real
woman, warm and soft. The boy never figured out what the moon and the stars had
to do with the light in the painting. He never understood the lesson.
At school conferences, his teachers told
his parents he was slow, assuring them, however, that his handicap was surely
temporary. Most of them said he would catch up with the other students soon
enough. But Bernardo was already well past twenty, and he never caught up.
Would he need to go back to school to catch up? He no longer wanted to learn Da
Vinci’s secret of the moonlight. He could make out the constellations and a
galaxy as well from the steps of Polini Tower. He saw it all for himself and
that was enough.
A dog barking in a distant field brought
Bernardo back to the chase. He must find a place to hide soon or be captured.
Gazing past the Montriano skyline, he raised his hands to the heavens, brown on
black. He scrutinized the darkness and wondered if he wanted to keep running.
There were few lights, but the plastered brick facades of the ancient structures
within the walled village held the glow of dusk. Which of the three roads
should he take?
He decided to go right to see if his
parents were still up. Edging deeper into the shadows of the walls and
buildings, he scampered down the twisty road. But when he got to his parents’ house,
the gate was locked. Pulling away from the building, he looked up. The windows
were shuttered. When he lived with them, his father, Giuseppe, explained that
parents need their sleep and that he should not wake them unless it was
important. Was this important? A dog barked two yards over and lights went on
in that house, but his parents’ house remained dark.
Bernardo glanced up the road and was
relieved that it was still deserted. Spinning around, he followed this street until
it curled to the left, leading back into the center of town and the small
piazza in front of San Benedetto Church. Pausing at the main road, he waited,
listened and peered intently in all directions before quickly moving on.
The thirteenth century Romanesque-style
church had been written up in a brochure for tourists. Bernardo taped the picture
that appeared there to the mirror in his bedroom so he could look at it every
morning before he went to school. The outside of the church was unadorned; the
front had a single door. It was arched but somewhat narrow, not grand like that
of San Francesco Church farther down the hill. The interior, however, was
beautiful. Chevron-patterned terracotta tiles decorated the floors, and dark
beams crisscrossed overhead. High stained-glass windows tinted the rays of
afternoon sun. Frescos graced the walls, but not so many as in San Francesco.
Bernardo memorized the Biblical stories told in each one, but though famous
artists painted them, he could not remember their names. Perched above the high
altar, a beautiful Madonna, painted in the fifteenth century, looked down over
all the parishioners. Bernardo knew she was there to protect them. He prayed to
her often, asking her to care for his parents. Then he asked her to perform a
miracle and heal the brain injuries that made him forget things and misunderstand
them. The front door would be locked but Bernardo knew where he could get in.
Veering right at the steps, he circled the building and turned left into a dark
alleyway across from the rectory. Scaling a wall and dropping into the bushes
behind a bench in the priest’s contemplative garden, he followed the stone walk
to the sacristy and let himself in.
The sacristy was always open. Rumor had
it that Father Augustus broke the lock when he came in from the wine festival
one night. Bernardo smiled to himself. Father Augustus now lived in a
retirement cottage in Petraggio. Last he heard, the old priest was still
drinking his favorite whiskey, a habit he had picked up in seminary. No one
ever bothered to fix the lock because the wall and a locked gate protected it.
In the sacristy, Bernardo sat down and
fingered the phone. He could call for help, but he did not want to wake anyone.
Maybe he could rest here for a while and dial someone in the morning. Sitting
back, he thought about one service in particular where he saw the old priest
drunk. On Via San Lorenzo, old Valentino Rinaldi was dying. At eleven the night
before, his daughter, Elena, called Father Augustus at the residence asking him
to come to perform last rites.
Unfortunately for the priest, it was a
slow death. Rinaldi’s lungs sputtered and wheezed as the man made a last effort
to hold onto his spirit. Elena was afraid and did not want the priest to leave.
She asked that he delay last rites until the end and offered Father Augustus
red table wine. Chianti was not one of the priest’s favorites, and it would
take more wine than whiskey to gain the effect. Father Augustus was tired
though and would need strength to administer the final sacrament. He probably promised
himself that he would sip small doses so it did not disturb his blessing. Old
Valentino finally made his exit at four, and in the last minutes, Father
Augustus offered the final sacrament—with a flourish, it was said. But it was
then Sunday morning, and the priest needed to preside at the ten o’clock mass.
Bernardo assisted. The priest made it through the sermon with few slurs, or so
it seemed to Bernardo who rarely listened to the whole sermon anyway. But in
the middle of the blessing of the Eucharist, the sanctuary and nave of San
Benedetto fell silent.
Father Augustus had bowed down to place
a piece of bread into his mouth and never came back up. Bernardo, his heart
beating wildly and his hands still clasped tightly together, pretended to take
his hushed prayers closer to the altar. The priest’s cheek was slumped against
the paten, his pursed lips dotted with crumbs, his eyes closed. Bernardo’s heart
sank. Aware somewhere deep down that the show must go on, Bernardo grasped the
chalice of Christ’s blood, raised it high in the air, and then drank the sweet
wine. When he brought the cup down with a thud against the altar, Father Augustus
started. Bernardo pointed to the next prayer, and the mass continued without
further interruption.
Bernardo was so deep in thought he
almost did not hear the noise. There it was again—the swoosh and crackle
of bushes in the garden. Not even thinking of the phone, Bernardo moved toward
the nave door. The white albs that hung along the wall glowed in the moonlight,
and he fingered them tenderly. For a split second, he wondered if his was still
there and had the urge to pull it over his head one more time. Perhaps the Lord
would recognize him and spare him as the senior altar boy who faithfully
assisted at all those masses. Until just a few years ago, he carried the
processional cross up the long center aisle and sometimes swung the censer. Clouds
of incense pulsed from the openings, making him want to sneeze, but he did not,
recognizing how important it was to keep the censer steady. He often held the
paten for Father Augustus during communion because even then the old priest’s
hand shook uncontrollably.
But Bernardo had to get out of there
now. What was wrong with him? Why could he not keep his mind on his task?
Turning around, his hand found the knob on the nave entrance. He twisted it to
the right and then quickly to the left. It had a funny catch that no one
bothered to fix. The only people who used it knew you had to manipulate the
knob to open the door.
Bernardo slipped into the dark church
where he paused to let his eyes adjust, but he did not really need to. He knew the
layout by heart. A foot to his right, his eyes settled on the offertory
candles, all of which had flickered out. The smell of hot wax and incense was
overpowered by the musty stones and decomposed humanity that inhabited the pews
over centuries. Bernardo loved that smell—the scent of his ancestors held aloft
in the damp air that mingled with the smoky prayer emanating from the candles.
He lingered to inhale the memory, but hearing the squeak of the sacristy’s outer
door, he did not wait there long.
“He’s coming,” he whispered to the figure
on the crucifix.
Turning his back to the altar, he gazed
down the long aisle, racking his slow and unreliable brain for a place to hide.
Then it came to him. He remembered a small crawl space behind the vault of
Giovanni Cardinal Bartoli who oversaw the diocese in the 1400s. A sleeping
body, carved in granite, lay sprawled over the stone lid. When he was nine,
Bernardo once watched in horror as his cousin, Tonino, and his friend, Piero,
tried to pry open the lid to see if the body was still there. The cover would
not budge because the top was far too heavy, but years later, Bernardo still
dreamt about a shriveled corpse with yellowing teeth jumping out at him.
A marble statue of St. Francis of Assisi
stood over the tomb, his arms outstretched, his fingers that once supported a
bird, broken off long ago. Bernardo knew the story of the saint’s life and felt
protected by him. When praying, he would often run his fingers over the smooth
folds of the robe, feeling uncomfortable because he had heard a preserved piece
of the saint’s vestment was actually rough and worn.
He knew he would be safe, having hidden
here before. Tonino once tried to find him in the church and could not. He
could see Tonino, though, observing him through a tiny hole and trying not to
laugh when his cousin scratched his head. With his cheek against the floor,
Bernardo could make out the sanctuary and altar as if he were a mouse peering through
its front door.
It did not take long for Bernardo to
hear noises in the sacristy. The pursuer must have discovered the unlocked entrance.
But the footsteps did not seem to come directly into the nave, making Bernardo
breathe easier as the sound faded. Perhaps it was someone who worked in the
parish, someone who had left the lights on downstairs or an altar lady arriving
to press the albs. But his relief did not last. The stomp of footsteps
began again. For the first time, Bernardo noticed the gait was somewhat uneven.
Thump-ka-thump
. The steps got louder until he heard the
familiar right-left rattle of the knob.
Thump-ka-thump.
He watched a figure cross the floor in front
of the sanctuary, pausing to cross himself at the altar.
Bernardo wanted to cross himself too but
could not extricate his right hand from the narrow space beside him. His
breaths were short as he waited—waited for his pursuer to turn and try to find
him.
The figure finally spun to face the
pews, and Bernardo realized it had no face. The cowled visage topped a long coarse
robe. Was he crippled? Why did he waddle and why did he hold his side?
More labored steps, and the shadow
passed out of Bernardo’s line of sight. Thump-ka-thump
, thump-ka-thump.
The
steps got louder. And suddenly, they stopped. Drawn toward the victim like a
magnet, feet suddenly appeared directly in front of the young man’s peephole.
