cooled. Perhaps, she said, something could be worked out.
When the Audi pulled away, she glared at Switters, and not because she’d overheard him lobbying a somewhat bewildered Toufic to include a pinch of hashish in his next scheduled delivery to the convent. “You reckless maniac,” she scolded. “Your irresponsible macho gunplay has disfigured my aunt.”
Horrified that he might have caused Masked Beauty permanent harm, he rolled himself rapidly to the infirmary, where his guilt and sorrow subsided slightly after he learned the extent of the so-called disfiguration. It seemed that the ricocheting bullet had grazed the old woman’s nose, neatly slicing off at the base the tiny Chinese mountain of horn flesh, the violet viral cauliflowerette, the double-dipped God-wart that for many decades had been protuberating there.
Nobody at the oasis got much sleep that night. Even the animals were restless and jumpy. The sisterhood was atwitter with agitation, and Masked Beauty, although surprisingly free of pain, was in a state of shock following her abrupt and artless amputation. “You’ll just have to get used to being desirable again,” Switters told the abbess. “Is it not a fine thing to be rebeautified on a planet that’s being systematically trashed? You know, my mother always wanted me to become a plastic surgeon. It would have saved her a fortune in lifts and tucks.”
For her part, even as she swabbed his own scratched cheek with iodine, Domino remained in a huff. True, she and her sisters had not merely accepted but actively solicited his protection, yet she found it brutal and anti- Pachomian that he would assault an official party from the Vatican (no matter that the party was belligerently authoritarian) with a deadly weapon. He replied that “assault” was a bit of an exaggeration. And then he told her a story.
The story had been passed on to him by Bobby Case, who had learned it from one of his “wise ol’ boys.” It seemed that long ago, a holy man, a bodhisattva, was walking through the Indian countryside when he came upon a band of poor, troubled herdsmen and their emaciated flock. The herdsmen were moaning and gnashing and wringing their hands, and when the bodhisattva asked them what was the matter, they pointed to a range of nearby mountains. To drive their flock to fresh green pasture on the other side of the hills, they had to traverse a narrow pass. In the pass, however, a huge cobra had established a den, and each time they went by it, the snake attacked, stabbing its long venomous fangs into animals and humans alike. “We can’t get through the pass,” the herders complained, “and as a result, our cattle and goats are starving, and so are we.”
“Worry not,” said the bodhisattva, “I will take care of it.” He then proceeded to climb up to the pass, where he rapped on the entrance to the den with his staff and gave the cobra a lecture it would not soon forget. Thoroughly shamed and chastised, the big serpent promised that it would never, ever bite the herders or their charges again. The holy man thanked it. “I believe you when you vow that in the future you will refrain from the biting of any passerby,” he said, and went on his way.
About a year later, Bodhisattva came that way again. From a distance, he saw the herdsmen. They appeared content, their animals hardy and fat. Bodhisattva decided to look in on the cobra and compliment it on its good behavior, but although he repeatedly rapped his staff on the rocks, he received no response.
“What on earth is the matter?” asked the guru, moved nearly to tears.
“Well,” said the cobra in a barely audible voice, “you made me promise not to bite anyone. So, now, everybody who comes over the pass hits me with sticks and throws stones at me. My body is cut and bruised, and I can no longer leave the den to find food or water. I’m miserable and sick, but, alas, there is nothing to be done to protect myself, because you proclaimed that I shouldn’t bite.”
Bodhisattva patted the poor creature’s head. “Yes,” he agreed. “But I didn’t say you couldn’t
The meaning of the story was not lost on Domino. She soon forgave Switters for his hissing. She continued to believe that he had hissed excessively and had taken an unseemly amount of pleasure in hissing, but she was not one to linger in the stale cellars of resentment. Nevertheless, her attitude toward him had changed. While he could have attributed the change to his cavalier gunplay or to the accidental shearing off of Masked Beauty’s growth (if he could divest the abbess of the shield behind which she’d taken refuge—her supernatural wart—mightn’t he likewise flush Domino from behind the convenient cover of her supernatural hymen?), he realized that she had seemed different, somehow, even before the shooting started. Thus, he was not entirely surprised when she announced that their tower-room petting sessions were at an end.
“I’ve had my fling,” she said, “and escaped relatively unscathed. I believe I can safely state that should I ever enjoy such acts again, it will be under the auspices of matrimony.”
“And I’m not a candidate to share your marriage bed?”
In spite of herself, she smiled. “If that is a proposal, I will give it due consideration.”
Perhaps fearful of arousing his imp, he elected not to pursue the matter, and that seemed okay with her. They had a great many other things to talk about, and over the next four months—during which lengthy and, at times, acrimonious negotiations with the Vatican took place almost weekly via e-mail—they talked as fervently as they once had kissed. If either or both of them regarded conversation an unsatisfactory substitute, they did not let on.
The talking had begun the morning after the incident, when, in the shade of one of the walnut trees, she had briefed him on the reasons why the Church had sent Dr. Goncalves and Scanlani to retrieve the Fatima prophecy in the first place.
A lot of the briefing was pure conjecture—the piecing together of tidbits of information that Goncalves had let slip, combined with an intuitive feel for the situation—but in weeks to come, when more facts became available, Domino’s assessment proved quite accurate, although it should be noted that the full story unfolded slowly over time and may never be completely known.
For whatever reason, Fannie, after she fled the oasis, had made a pilgrimage to Fatima in rural Portugal. There, under the spell of the very place where the Virgin Mother had allegedly made her most dramatic historical appearances, Fannie had requested an audience with the nearby bishop of Leiria. Eventually, an interview was granted. The bishop was aware of his predecessor’s involvement with the Lady’s third prophecy, how he had concealed it in his safe from 1940 until 1957, when, under the direction of Pope Pius XII, he’d hand-carried it to Rome; and then, three years later, how he’d gone to assist Pope John XXIII with its translation. What the current bishop didn’t know was why the Vatican powers had never revealed the contents of the prophecy. He’d heard the rumors, but felt it was none of his business. Still, he was intrigued by the defrocked Irish nun’s story, allowing that it was at least feasible that the Church believed the prophecy destroyed, and even that the infamous Pachomian abbess, Croetine Thiry, might, through her late uncle, have ended up with the only extant copy.
It was one thing to be intrigued, quite another to take action. If Pope John had, indeed, burned the prophecy and what he believed to be the only copies thereof, he must have done so for a very sound reason. The Vatican undoubtedly would concur with that reasoning. The news that Cardinal Thiry’s translation had escaped the flames might hold a minimum of delight for it. And Rome had a long tradition of killing, literally or figuratively, the messenger. On the other hand, if a surviving copy did exist, wouldn’t it want to be apprised? Especially if the copy was in the possession of a loose cannon such as Abbess Croetine?
In the end, the bishop nervously telephoned that cardinal in Rome whose duties included the investigation of miracles and visitations. He relayed Fannie’s story and awaited official reaction. It was not long in coming. Less than a week after the phone call, the cardinal rang up the bishop and instructed him that Fannie’s tale was a blasphemous hoax and should be dismissed as such and forgotten.
Feisty Fannie, however, was not so easily deterred. She went to see Sister Lucia, now nearly ninety-two years old and living again in Portugal. To the surprise of those around her, the normally reclusive Lucia received the Irishwoman. In private, Fannie told her story, and as she recited the words of the third prophecy (over the years, all of the Pachomians had unintentionally memorized it), cerebral calcification cracked, rust flaked away from axon terminals of mnemonic neurons, and in the old woman’s brain, synapses that hadn’t fired in years—decades, perhaps—commenced to shudder, sputter, and send off sparks. They shook hands with other synapses, and the crone found herself recycling each and every word of that fateful prognostication that she’d received over miraculous meadowland airwaves in 1917 and written down for presumed posterity in 1940, the words that she had cautioned would “bring joy to some and sorrow to others.”
On a couple of occasions in the past, Sister Lucia had voiced polite disappointment that the Church had not
