“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.”
“No.”
“Well, I’ll miss you.”
“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 Donnelly 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.
Book II
New York
George Moore,
CHAPTER 5
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 he 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 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 light burned somewhere in the heart of the crypt.
The staircase 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.
Father Murphy turned away from the windows and peered down at the worshipers. A dozen people were widely scattered over the length and breadth of this massive-columned house, none of them with any companion but God. He lifted his eyes toward the great choir loft over the front portals. The large pipe organ rose up like a miniature cathedral, its thousands of brass pipes soaring like spires against the diffused light of the massive rose window above them.
From his pocket Father Murphy drew his typed sermon and laid it over the open pages of the lectionary, then adjusted the microphone upward. He checked his watch. Six-forty. Twenty minutes until Mass.
Satisfied with these small details, he looked up again and noticed a tall priest standing beside the altar of St. Brigid. He didn’t recognize the man, but St. Patrick’s would be filled with visiting priests on this day; in fact, the priest appeared to be sightseeing, taking in the wide expanses of the Cathedral. A country bumpkin, thought Murphy, just as he himself had been years before. Yet there was something self-assured about the man’s bearing. He seemed to be not awed but critical, as though he were considering buying the place but was unhappy with some of the appointments.
Father Murphy came down from the pulpit. He studied the bouquets of green-dyed carnations, then snapped one off and stuck it in the lapel of his coat as he descended the steps of the altar sanctuary and walked down the center aisle. In the large vestibule under the bell tower he came within a dozen feet of the tall priest, that area of space within which greeting had to be made. He paused, then smiled, “Good morning, Father.”
The tall priest stared. “Morning.”
Father Murphy considered extending his hand, but the other priest had his right hand deep in his overcoat pocket and held a gift-wrapped box under his other arm. Murphy passed by the priest and crossed the cold stone
