Skin of the Wolf (22 page)

L
ivia waited for Michael. These were his people, his brother, his story to tell. His face remained stone, but when he finally found words, his voice was bleak. “My work,” he said. “My people.”

“Your work will not help your people.”

In silence, Michael’s gaze met the friar’s. Livia saw desolation in one, bitter triumph in the other. Spencer leaned over and pressed Michael’s hand.

Carbonariis gathered his habit around him, stood, and strode to the door.

“Father,” Livia called out.

The Augustinian spun to glare at her.

“The partial Shift. The destruction of the nations. These are the things we’ve asked you here to prevent.”

“The nations are already destroyed.”

Slowly, Michael turned to face him. “The people still live.”

Carbonariis pursed his lips and nodded. “For which I say a grateful prayer every day.”

Livia heard more acid than gratitude in that, but said nothing.

Michael answered, “I do, also.”

Carbonariis took another step toward the door. He stopped; with a hissed breath he turned. He looked angrily to Livia. “Speak.”

“The mask,” she said. “The Ohtahyohnee
.
It’s a forgery. We think, though, that the real Ohtahyohnee
still exists. Someone had this one made to replace it.”

“It was not I.”

“Of course not. But the real one—others are searching for it.”

“For reasons of white man’s greed?”

Before Livia could answer, Michael spoke. “No. To use in the Awakening Ceremony. To Awaken not children, but adults.”

Carbonariis stared, then shook his head. “No medicine man would do that.”

“This is a white man. With him, a Shifter. My brother.”

Michael’s voice gained strength as he told the story: Edward (“Tahkwehso,” Michael said), van Vliet (whose Abenaki name Michael didn’t use), the gathering at Eervollehuis. The Ceremony being performed over and over for people unprepared for the Power and unable to control it. Livia watched color drain from Carbonariis’s face as the enormity of the peril dawned.

“The Shifters who Awaken—most will die or go mad,” Michael said. “All of my people—your people—will be in danger. Even those without the Power, even those who don’t believe it exists—”

“No.” Carbonariis held up a hand. “Don’t speak it. I saw it once. I don’t doubt it will happen again.” He crossed himself and walked to the window, where he stood, silent, for a long time. No one moved. The very air in the room was still, waiting for the friar.

Finally, he turned back to them. A slow, mordant smile stretched his thin lips. “They will all die. Death is the fate of all things living. The people will vanish as the nations have. You, and you”—nodding at Michael, at Thomas—“will be gone in the blink of an eye. We
three will be here when the civilizations that destroyed the nations dissolve into dust, we will live for aeons under the wheeling stars, but the end of days relentlessly approaches, and when it comes it will be our time, also. Our Savior will greet us—the nations, the people, even we—in the afterlife.

“Only a fool, then, would allow his heart to ache at the story you tell, Shifter. Only a fool would try to prevent what you say is coming.” He strode back through the room to the wooden chair and sat. “And so, I am a fool. Tell me: How can these men be stopped?”

Michael stared; then, as he had earlier, he surprised Livia by laughing. Spencer smiled with him. Thomas looked confused. Michael’s face grew serious again as he said, “We can stop them if we find them.”

“And a hermit monk from the forests of Newfoundland can help you to do that?”

“They’re searching for the Ohtahyohnee
.
If we find it we may find them. The trail of the mask leads back to the middle of the eighteenth century, to a French Jesuit named Etienne Ravenelle. Ravenelle left papers but they’re locked up at Il Gesù in Rome, and even Father Kelly can’t get at them.”

The friar threw a scornful glance at Thomas. “The Jesuits protect their precious knowledge. So this is why the Conclave sent me to you—on Ravenelle’s account. I remember him. What of him?”

“Did you—did you really know him? I’m sorry, Blackrobe. I don’t doubt what you say. It’s just, it’s not twenty-four hours since I learned such a thing was possible.”

Carbonariis gave the thin smile again. “And hundreds of years since I was called by that name. Ravenelle was a missionary to the Iroquois. Not a fool. A man with more questions than answers. Unusual among Jesuits. But if Ravenelle possessed one of the twelve
masks, I never knew it. If that was what you were hoping for from me, I can’t help you.”

In the silence that followed, Livia heard children laugh on the street outside. Their joy only underscored the despair around her.

“Father,” Thomas spoke suddenly, “maybe you can.” All eyes turned to him but he kept his on Carbonariis. “Forgive me. I’m thinking aloud.”

“A common affliction of Jesuits.”

“Yes, perhaps. Let me ask you this. The incomplete Shift. My recent studies have been on the life of Saint Kateri Tekakwitha.”

“‘The Lily of the Mohawks,’” Carbonariis said with curled lip. “She was Algonquin, you know. Wolf Clan. Her hagiography says Mohawk and Turtle Clan, but those were her father’s people. Not that the Church has any reason to care.”

“But we do. Follow me. Tekakwitha founded a community, a sacred society of Native women. They lived for their commitment to each other and devotion to the Savior. Tekakwitha wore a hooded robe. We’re told it was to hide smallpox scars. But we’re also told that from a young age she refused to marry, that she was meek and practiced mortification of the flesh. Why would a woman like that care if people saw her scars?”

The friar’s eyes glittered. Livia got it just before he spoke. “Jesuit! You think she was a Shifter.”

“I do. And she contracted smallpox. From what you’ve said, I think her Shift was incomplete and that’s what she was hiding. You say she was from the Wolf Clan. Would that have been her—what do I say, her animal self?”

Michael nodded. “It would have, yes.”

“Her mother’s said to have died of smallpox. Maybe that’s true,
maybe not. Maybe she was one of the Shifters who killed themselves, may God have mercy on their souls. But Tekakwitha was devout and suicide’s a sin. I wonder, now, if they were all Shifters, all the women she gathered to her. Christians, and Shifters, women who rejected suicide but wanted to keep their Shifter oaths of secrecy.”

“It is possible,” Carbonariis said. “The members of her society did not associate with many, as I understand. A cloistered order, if they’d taken vows. I did not know her. But the stories say she celebrated both the Mohawk ceremonies of her childhood and the sacraments of her Christian faith.”

“Which means,” Thomas said, “they’d have had a priest with them. At least one who visited regularly to celebrate Mass.”

“But clearly not Ravenelle. He came a century later.”

“Not him. But a Jesuit.”

“Yes, one of your missionary brethren. What of it?”

“If we knew who he was, that priest, we could follow his trail. Ravenelle had the Ohtahyohnee
.
Where did he get it? When Ravenelle’s life was in danger he gave the mask to a friend and extracted a promise to keep it safe. Why? Did Ravenelle know what it was, how it was used?” Thomas looked around at the others with a quiet excitement Livia recognized from their days in Rome. “Do you see? The Jesuit who ministered to Tekakwitha’s community may have known the women were Shifters. If the Ceremony wasn’t being done and the masks were being hidden one by one, if the medicine men were dying, too, then maybe a mask—this one—came into Tekakwitha’s care. And she gave it to her priest. Maybe that knowledge is what’s under seal at Il Gesù.”

“Knowledge of the Shifters,” Livia said softly. “Like knowledge of the Noantri, hidden by the Church for its own reasons.” It would
have meant so much to the Noantri to know this, she thought sadly. But been so dangerous to Michael’s people, if it had been known.

Michael spoke. “All of this could be true. But what good does it do us? Ravenelle gave the mask to Hammill. Following Ravenelle might teach us something, but going back a hundred years before him—where will it get us?”

“And how will it be done, except at Il Gesù?” Carbonariis said. “I know nothing that can help.”

Thomas’s shoulders slumped. “No, you’re right. I was just hoping . . . I suppose it was a long shot. Tekakwitha’s society left no records, and it doesn’t seem to have survived her death.”

Carbonariis said, “It didn’t. It dissolved, as though it had never been.” He shook his head. “Gitgoo ungehsege wahgwenyu
. Omnia vanitas.
They honored only briefly, and they did not live on.”

“Then we’re wasting time,” Michael said, standing. “I’m heading back to van Vliet’s estate. I shouldn’t have let Edward go. It was weakness. Someone there will tell me where he is. I—”

“Wait.” Thomas lifted his hand. “Father Carbonariis, what did you say? They honored only briefly and they didn’t live on?”

Carbonariis fixed his eyes on Thomas. “Gitgoo ungehsege wahgwenyu
.
In what is—now—an ancient dialect of Mohawk, ‘to live on to honor it.’ Tekakwitha had that as her society’s name. Her symbol was the cross on the full moon.”

“Grandmother Moon,” said Michael. “She protected the twins who made the world. We honor her still.”

“The full moon,” Thomas said. “And the cross. And the motto
Praevalere et veneror.
‘Live on and honor.’ I’ve seen it.”

“Where?”

Thomas looked around at them all. “On a ring that Father Maxwell wears.”

M
axwell?” Spencer saw Michael’s brow furrow as he said to Thomas, “At Fordham? Your department chair?”

Thomas nodded. “He said he—”

Spencer held up a hand to silence them. A car door had shut in the street outside. He listened to the approaching footsteps and his Noantri sense of smell brought him additional information. “Michael. We’re being visited by those charming detectives. I imagine their interest is rather more in you than me. Perhaps you’d care to wait in the kitchen until I send them away?”

By the time the bell actually rang, the kitchen door was clicking closed.

Spencer opened the front door and smiled. “Good afternoon, Detectives. How can I help you?”

“We’re looking for Michael Bonnard,” Charlotte Hamilton said. She appeared no more beguiled by Spencer than she had earlier in the day.

“I can’t help you,” Spencer said, still smiling.

“Can’t or won’t?”

“Does it matter?”

Before she could answer, the other detective, Framingham,
leaned past Spencer into the vestibule. “Hey!” He grinned and waved. Spencer turned and saw Thomas in the armchair in the parlor, just within Framingham’s line of sight. “How ya doin’, Father Kelly?” the detective called cheerily. “Hey, Hamilton, did you know these guys knew each other?”

“No, I didn’t. Dr. George, what the hell is going on?”

“Many people, seeing a priest in my parlor, would ask the same.”

“Now, Dr. George,” Thomas said, rising. He came to stand beside Spencer at the door. “I’ve told you, it’s nothing to be ashamed of.” He smiled serenely at the detectives. “I’m Dr. George’s spiritual adviser. He requested a scholar, someone who would understand him. A historian, as he is. I was sent.”

“Really? What a coincidence. You being at Sotheby’s last night, and now here.”

“I was there for the same reason. To offer spiritual counseling to scholars.”

“It’s something of a specialty of Father Kelly’s,” Spencer said drily. “Comingling the immanent with the transcendent.”

“And of mine.” Another voice rang out, and the spectral form of Carbonariis loomed on Spencer’s left.

“And you are?”

“Giovanni Antonio de Carbonariis. I was also sent to Dr. George, to offer a more rigorous interpretation of Scripture than my Jesuit colleague. A mind as fine as Dr. George’s deserves no less.”

“Surely, Father,” Thomas protested, “the narrow pathway you propound—”

“Father, your own slippery, world-based formulations—”

“Gentlemen, please.” Spencer looked to the detectives imploringly. “Do you see what I have to contend with? No wonder Michael refused to stay.”

“He was here?”

“Until these two pious sages squared off. I rather enjoy such Catholic contentiousness, but Michael will have none of it.”

“Where did he go?”

“I really couldn’t say. Back to his laboratory, I would imagine, where nothing speaks in nonsensical ambiguities.”

“We called. They say he’s not there. And his cell phone goes to voice mail. Yours does, too, by the way.”

“I’ve turned mine off so as not to be disturbed while I contemplate the spiritual gifts these holy men are offering. Michael often has his off when he’s working, for much the same reason, though he’s contemplating bacteria.” Spencer looked both priests up and down, and shrugged.

“We need to talk to him. I’d like to come in.”

“Entering my home will bring you no closer to your goal. And it might keep me from my spiritual one.”

“What do you know about Bonnard’s relationship with Brittany Williams?”

“I’m not aware he had one.”

“Has he ever mentioned her to you?”

“He has not. Detectives, I really can’t expect to keep these fine gentlemen here all day. If I’m to avail myself of their wisdom—”

“We’ll come back with a warrant if we have to.”

“At that point, I will let you in, as I will have to. Until then, I have the labor of the devout ahead of me and I’m anxious to get to it.”

Spencer closed the door on the detectives. He turned to find Thomas grinning behind him. Even Carbonariis couldn’t hide a dour smile.

“‘Spiritual adviser’?” Spencer said. “Father Kelly, I commend you on your creativity, if not your devotion to objective possibility.”

“Thanks. And I commend Father Carbonariis on his ability to usefully confuse the situation. A forte of Augustinians, that kind of obfuscation, if I’m not wrong.”

Carbonariis glowered. “If you really are this man’s spiritual adviser, Jesuit, I fear for his soul.”

“On that score, you have no reason to worry,” said Spencer. “And now I propose we leave this house at once, before another encounter with the forces of the law demands some even more outlandish response.”

“I can’t think what that could possibly be.” Livia joined them from the parlor, where she had managed to remain hidden. “But don’t you think they’ll be watching the house?”

“I’m quite sure they will. Fortunately, this door is not the only exit. Another, in the rear, leads to a cramped but serviceable passageway to the next block.”

Livia smiled. Spencer knew what she was thinking and if pressed he’d be inclined to agree. Livia’s Change had come about in the twentieth century, when the fires were long past. The chary prudence of Noantri like Spencer was considered understandable but unnecessary by those younger; still, Spencer would not have been comfortable in a home without a second, and preferably hidden, exit. Adding that feature to his list of real estate requirements limited the housing inventory he was invited to examine—but not as much as he’d assumed it would. As it turned out, Prohibition, nearly a century before, had provided any number of exclusive dwellings with concealed escape routes.

Livia crossed the hall to open the kitchen door. “Michael, Thomas scared them away, you can . . .” Her words faded. She turned to the others. “He’s gone.”