Night Music (10 page)

“So why was she bleeding from her palms?” asked Lacey.

“Because her parents' knowledge of crucifixion came from what they had seen in church, and in the illustrated Bible they kept in their home, so they cut their daughter in those places?”

“They
cut
her?” said Mrs. Lacey. “Her own mother and father?”

“With a blade,” said Oscuro, “then used a screwdriver to widen the injuries. But it was the mother who did it.”

“The girl was a deaf-mute,” said Manus. “She could not talk of what was taking place, and she lived in fear of her mother. Her father was a weak man. He turned a blind eye to what was happening.”

“And the smell from her wounds?” asked Lacey.

“Cheap perfume poured into them,” said Manus. “The pain must have been terrible.”

“But why do such a thing?” asked Mrs. Lacey.

“They were poor, and people brought them offerings of food and money in the hope of securing their daughter's intercession in matters of health, marriage, wealth,” said Manus. “Mostly, though, her mother wanted to be important, to be noticed, and her daughter's stigmata gave her a position of authority in the town.”

Lacey and his wife exchanged a look. Both of them had rarely been forced to raise a hand to Angela, because that was just the kind of girl she was, and they always regretted it afterward when they did. They couldn't even conceive of torturing their own flesh and blood.

“We arrived in Padua a day before we were expected,” said Oscuro, “and prevented the parents from gaining access to their daughter, so that we could speak to her without interference. Father Faraldo examined the wounds and saw that they were infected. In cases of true stigmata, the wounds show no such septicity. He also detected signs of the introduction of a foreign object into the girl's flesh. Finally, we brought a woman from Vigonza who knew sign language, and through her we were able to establish the truth, and expose the imposture. Now the mother has been instructed never to hurt her child again on pain of arrest and imprisonment.”

“The poor girl,” said Mrs. Lacey. “I hope you don't think we'd ever do such a thing to our daughter.”

“I don't believe for a moment that you would,” said Father Manus.

Lacey wondered how true that was, and if Manus had said precisely the same words to the parents of the girl in Padua, all the while looking at them and thinking, Yes, I know just what you're capable of doing. Lacey glanced at Oscuro. Now there was a man who saw the worst in everyone. The problem with his kind was that they caused badness to manifest itself, as though their distaste for the failings of others fanned them into flame.

“And Angela, from what we hear, has shown no trace of stigmata,” said Manus. “It is statues that bleed when she is near, is that not correct?”

They were drawing close to it now. Mrs. Lacey turned to her husband, giving her consent for him to speak on their behalf. He did so, leaving nothing out, describing how, when Angela had turned twelve, the statue of the Holy Virgin in St. Bernadette's had begun to weep from the eyes when Angela passed it after taking Communion. At first, there was talk of it being a prank, but the statue was examined and no trace of interference could be found. It wasn't even clear who might be causing the phenomenon, and it was only when Father Delaney took it upon himself to sit close to the statue, and allowed his curate to give out Communion alone while he kept an eye on all who walked by, that he detected the link to Angela.

And then, on the occasion of her Confirmation, Christ on the Cross above the altar bled from His wounds, and blood and water gushed from the hole in His side, drenching the wall. The stain was still there, and nothing could remove it. Not that Father Delaney had tried very hard: he might have been a difficult man, but he had faith, and any doubts he originally entertained about Angela had long been cast aside. That was why the three priests from the Vatican were sitting in the kitchen.

It was in the days after the bleeding of Christ that people began to come to Angela, asking for her blessing and pleading with her to pray on their behalf. Lacey and his wife had tried to discourage them, but her daughter instructed her parents to let the people come, and had spoken with such authority and conviction that they were unable to refuse.

In the beginning, the miracles—if miracles they were—seemed minor: an ache relieved here, a sickly child improved there. But then Irene Kelly had brought her youngest daughter, Kathleen, the one who'd been diagnosed with cancer and whose hair was now entirely gone, her eyes sunk into her head and a smell coming off her like meat that had gone on the turn in the sun. Angela had touched Kathleen, placing the index finger of her right hand on the girl's tongue, and immediately after had announced that she was feeling unwell, and couldn't see anyone else that day. Angela went to bed, and in the middle of the night her parents heard her vomiting in the bathroom. When they went to see what was the matter they discovered her lying on the floor, the tiles covered with bile and blood, and pieces of what looked like rotten, blackened flesh that stank of decay.

Her father carried her back to bed, and they called Dr. French, but by the time he arrived Angela was sleeping soundly, and her skin was cool and dry to the touch. He examined her, but could find nothing wrong. They showed him what they'd found on the bathroom floor, and he put some of it in a jar and sent it off to Dublin to be tested, but by the time the results came back everyone in the village knew what it was: Kathleen Kelly's cancer, drawn from her body by Angela Lacey and then later vomited out onto clean tiles. Kathleen Kelly began to recover that very night, and now the doctors could find no trace of the disease that had been eating away at her internal organs. The child was still weak, but her hair had started to grow back, and that awful smell was entirely gone.

There had been other such cures since then, but none as dramatic as Kathleen's. People continued to come to the door to ask for Angela's help. Some even waited for her at the school gates, or congregated outside the church doors after Mass on Sunday, and she never declined to touch them or pray for them. But in recent weeks Father Delaney had made it clear that Angela was to be left in peace for a while, and rumors began to circulate about the arrival of priests from the Vatican who would talk with Angela and try to discover the nature of her gift. Father Delaney had asked her about it, of course, but she could give him no explanation. She had experienced no visions, seen no flickering images of Our Lady at night. No voices spoke to her from the dark, and she was untroubled by angels.

Or so she said.

Now here were the priests, drinking tea, eating cake, and each in his own way considering what he was being told. Faraldo was tugging at his chin, from which a few wisps of beard hung like pale, trailing ivy on old stone, yet his smile remained in place, and his eyes were placid. But Oscuro looked troubled, and even Manus had lost something of his joviality.

“Has your daughter been threatened by anyone?” asked Manus.

“What?” said Lacey. “Why would anyone threaten her?”

“People can act strangely when confronted with something that they don't understand,” said Manus. “Fanaticism takes many forms.”

“Not in this village,” said Lacey. “No one would ever wish any harm on Angela. God, I think some of them would be willing to lay down their lives to protect her, especially after what she did for Kathleen Kelly.”

“If what you tell us is true,” said Oscuro, “her fame is already spreading. It will attract others: the desperate, the lost. There will be some who might hurt her without meaning to, and others who will arrive with only that intention in mind.”

“Oh Lord,” said Lacey's wife. Clearly this was a possibility that she had never considered. She put her right hand to her mouth, and her husband held her left, rubbing it gently.

“Zacatecas,” said Oscuro, and the word appeared to cause him pain.

“Yes, Zacatecas,” said Manus.

“What is that?” asked Lacey.

“A city in Mexico,” said Oscuro. “A child, José Antonio, emerged from one of its suburbs.”

“Enough,” said Manus.

“No,” said Lacey, “let him speak. I told you already. We have a right to know these things, if they may affect Angela.”

Oscuro looked to Manus for permission to go on, and it was granted with a tired wave of the hand.

“José Antonio was said to have gifts not unlike those now being associated with your daughter,” said Oscuro. “He healed the sick, and caused water to flow from under stones in barren desert. He had the stigmata, too, but only on his wrists. The local bishop requested the assistance of the Vatican to corroborate what were already being described as miracles, but Mexico is a long and arduous trip, and it was almost a year before a Curia team could be dispatched. When the investigators arrived, the boy was gone, and nobody could say where he was. He was an only child who lived with his father, but their home was now uninhabited, even though many of the family's possessions remained in place. The local police were of no help, and the parish priest confessed himself baffled by their disappearance.

“On the evening before the investigators were due to return to Rome, there came a knock on the door of the small inn at which they were staying. An old peasant stood before them—a vagabond, an outcast. He was covered in dust, and tired and filthy from the road. He said that he had walked many miles to find them, and claimed to know the fate of the boy and his father. The next morning, just after dawn, the investigators had their driver take them into the desert, with the peasant guiding them. He led them first to a cairn of stones, beneath which he said were the remains of the boy's father. The driver dug, and sure enough, bones were exposed, but the investigators could not have said how long they had been down there, or whose bones they might have been.

“Then the peasant guided them up a rocky incline to a cave. They had to crouch to enter, and had the peasant not instructed them to bring torches, then they would have been entirely blind, for no light entered the space beyond the first few feet.

“And there they found José Antonio. He had been mummified and placed in an alcove surrounded by fetishes: statues, carvings, jewelry, even alcohol and cigarettes. The peasant showed them the hole in his skull where it had been fractured by a heavy blow.”

“He was murdered?” said Lacey.

“Yes.”

“But who would do that to a child?”

“His own people,” said Manus. “Or that's what we think. Maybe his gifts were so frightening to them that they felt they had to kill him, or were so great that it was believed he should be returned to God. Either way, he died, and that was the end of it. So perhaps now you understand why we arrived in secret, and at night, and why care must be taken when it comes to Angela. We live in troubled times, and even the innocent are not immune from threat.”

Then Manus leaned across the table and gripped Lacey and his wife each by a shoulder, his big hands heavy upon them.

“I'm sorry,” he said. “This conversation has taken a dark turn. All may be well, though, and you should pray that it will be so. It's time that we were on our way, and let you go to your bed. Tomorrow may bring illumination. But before we go, Father Faraldo and I would like to speak with Angela.”

“She's in her room,” said Mrs. Lacey. “I'd say she's awake. I'm surprised that she hasn't made an appearance already, to be honest with you. I'll go and call her.”

“I'd prefer if we went up to see her,” said Manus. “It would be good to meet her first in her own environment. Such things, we've come to realize, are important.”

Mrs. Lacey stood. “I'll make sure that she's decent, and let her know that you're on your way up.”

Manus thanked her, and she left. The four men remained at the table and did not speak until Mrs. Lacey returned.

“Angela's awake,” she said. “You can go up and see her now.”

•  •  •

If Manus and the others had been expecting a girl out of the ordinary, they were destined to be disappointed. Angela Lacey was tall for thirteen, and bordering on pretty, but was otherwise unexceptional. Her bedroom betrayed nothing of the gifts that they had come to investigate, apart from a small, luminous statue of the Blessed Virgin on the windowsill. The room was small and furnished with a single bed, a bedside cabinet, a wardrobe and matching chest of drawers, and a small desk beneath the window. The walls were brightly painted in shades of yellow and blue and decorated with posters of bands and pop stars that only Manus could name, for the other two had no interest in such matters: ABBA was well represented, and he saw one of the detective fellows from television—David Soul, that was him.

Angela was sitting up in bed, wearing a dressing gown over her nightclothes. She looked curiously at the two priests who crowded into her room with her parents, but said nothing.

Father Manus introduced himself and his colleague, then asked Angela's parents for permission to speak alone with their daughter for a few minutes. He assured the Laceys that they would not be long, and would leave the door open just in case they might have any concerns. But those were more innocent times, and the Laceys did not give a second thought to the presence of two clerics in their daughter's room, especially as the more forbidding Oscuro would not be joining them. He remained in the kitchen, and the Laceys went back down to join him.

•  •  •

Father Faraldo took the small chair beside Angela's desk, while Manus remained standing.

“I knew you were coming,” said Angela. They were the first words she had spoken since the priests entered her room.

“Well, it was no secret,” said Manus.

“No, I knew you were coming
tonight
. I sensed it.”