Years before, I had lost a wife to cancer. More recently — just as I’d emerged from my cave of grief — a woman I’d begun to love had been murdered. And now Rocky Stone, a good man, a dedicated cop, a devoted husband and father. At the moment, my heart felt like a graveyard full of tombstones.
I don’t know how long I sat there, staring unseeing at the stone steps. After a few seconds or many minutes, I felt a hand on my shoulder and a voice asked, in Irish-accented English, “Are you all right, lad?” I looked up. Standing before me, two steps down, was a silver-haired priest. He was dressed like a priest, at any rate — the black pants and shirt with the white clerical collar — but he didn’t look like a priest, or at least like any priest I’d ever seen. I guessed him to be ten years older than I was, but he had the physique of a man half his age: tall, broad shouldered, flat stomached. His shirt was short sleeved, and it strained to contain his chest and his biceps. He leaned closer, looked into my eyes, and asked again, “Are you all right? Anything I can do to help you?”
I took a deep breath to steady myself, then another. “Thank you, but no.” Another breath, which came in very raggedly. I forced it out between pursed lips, as if I were blowing out birthday candles. Rocky Stone was what, forty-four? Forty-eight? “It’s kind of you to offer, though. I just got some bad news. It blindsided me.”
He kept his left hand on my shoulder and extended his right, which held my cell phone. “I’m thinking this was the bearer of bad tidings; would I be right about that, lad?” I nodded, taking it from him. “I got a phone call like that once,” he said. “Long ago. Changed my life. It’s been an interesting life, and lots of it’s been good. But I’d give anything not to have gotten that call, you know?”
I nodded again, intrigued now, or maybe just desperate to be distracted from my own sadness. “Do you mind my asking what your bad-news call was?”
“Ah. No, lad, I don’t mind. Part of me penance is tellin’ it.” I looked up, puzzled. “It was bad news that I had a hand in bringin’ about, see?” I didn’t see, but he seemed to be diving into deep inner waters, so I waited for whatever it was that he felt bound by penance to tell. “I was twenty-two when the Troubles began. A young hothead livin’ at home with me mum in Banbridge, not far from Belfast. I had no job, no goals, and nothing better to do than to brood and rage, and blame everything that I hated about my life on the British Army and the Protestants. So I joined the Provisional IRA. I didn’t actually do much; I suppose I was provisional. Mostly spouted off a lot, in front of me mum and my little brother, Jimmy.”
He paused a moment before continuing. “Jimmy was sixteen, and he looked up to me more than he should’ve. ‘Rivers of blood,’ I liked to say, ‘that’s the only thing can wash the devils out of Northern Ireland.’ And while I was talking such stuff, Jimmy was listening. Jimmy was believin’. So Jimmy joined up. He didn’t even tell me. Jimmy wasn’t a talker — Jimmy was a doer. Nothing provisional about Jimmy. Jimmy planted a culvert bomb under one of the roads into town — that was our version of the IEDs that maim so many soldiers in Iraq these days. But the bomb went off prematurely. It wasn’t a British Army vehicle that Jimmy’s bomb blew up; it was a school bus. Three kids died; seventeen were injured. Some of them lost arms, legs, eyes.”
He stared out the window of the stairwell, as if watching the story unfold. “The army hunted Jimmy for weeks; it was hard for him to find food or shelter because the one thing all sides agreed on — Protestants, Catholics, Loyalists, Brits — was what a terrible thing young Jimmy Halloran had done. They finally found him in a barn on the coast at Mill Bay, alone and weak with hunger. He wouldn’t give up; I’m not sure they gave him a real chance, but even if they did, he wouldn’t have taken it. He wounded three soldiers during the gun battle. It took six bullets to bring him down. And you know the last thing he said?” His voice had gotten thick, and as I glanced up, I saw him wiping his eyes before he resumed. “Sorry, lad. Tellin’ it brings it all back. Jimmy’s dying words, said the officer who phoned with the news, were my very own words: ‘Rivers of blood.’ God forgive me.” He crossed himself, and breathed out a sadness that came from deep in his core. “So you can see why I might feel the need to do a bit of penance.”
“I’m sorry, Father,” I said. “That’s a heartbreaking story.”
“Ah, the heart — not as easily broken as we think it is, lad. Bruises often but rarely breaks, truth be told. Now, how about we go and get you something for that freshly bruised heart of yours, eh? Maybe a dram of brandy or a pint of Guinness to revive you?”
“Thanks. But I don’t drink.”
“What’s that?”
“I don’t drink.”
“What? Not a drop?”
“Not if it’s alcohol.”
“Well, then, it’s a piss-poor priest you’d have made, lad.” I looked up, startled, and his eyes — red rimmed — were now twinkling. “No alcohol? You’ve got no aptitude for the priesthood. No vocation, no calling.” To my surprise, I found myself smiling at his cheeky irreverence. “Well, no matter — I’ve got vocation enough for the both of us. Come along, if you like; I’ll have the brandy and the Guinness, and you can have coffee, or tea, or broccoli juice, or whatever other wretched beverage American teetotalers consume instead of nectar from heaven.”
He reached out a hand; to my surprise, I took it and let him haul me to my feet. As he headed down the staircase toward the library’s exit, he turned and looked over his shoulder. “Coming, lad? I’m Michael Halloran, by the by.”
I started down the steps after him, abandoning the Giovanetti book in the window alcove where I’d left it. “Do you serve a parish here in Avignon, Father Halloran?”
“You can call me Father Mike. Or just plain Mike. Or anything else, except Father Halloran.”
“I’ll go with Father Mike,” I said. “Friendly, but respectful.”
“Once I’ve had a drop or two, you can drop the ‘Father,’ if you’re wanting to respect me a bit less.”
I laughed. I was surprised to feel so relaxed with a priest; ever since my wife’s death, I’d had little use for organized religion or its foot soldiers. “I suspect you’re good at your work, Father Mike.”
“Devilishly.”
He held the exit door for me and we emerged, blinking, into the building’s courtyard. “Oh, you never answered. Do you serve a parish here in Avignon?”
“No, but it might not be such a bad posting,” he said. “I’m just here on holliers.”
“Excuse me?”
“Holliers. Holiday. Seeing how the other half lived, seven hundred years ago.”
“Half? More like the other one-millionth of one percent.”
“Arithmetic was never me strong suit, lad. Is there something I can call you besides ‘lad’?”
“Oh, sorry. Of course. I’m Bill. Bill Brockton.”
“A fine, honest-sounding name. And what brings you to Avignon, Bill Brockton?” He nodded at the impressive façade of the former cardinal’s palace. “And to this humble little parson’s cottage? Are you on holliers, too?”
“Not exactly. I’m an anthropologist. I’m here to look at some bones.”
“Bones? What sort of bones?”
“Just some old bones found at the Palace of the Popes.”
“A pope’s bones?”
“I don’t think so.”
“A papal mistress, perhaps. Clement the Sixth had a niece he was mighty fond of — that’s what he called her in public, at least. Or possibly a pope’s bastard son.”