Only two left.
Cardinal Ludovico bowed to the altar and genuflected before the sanctuary on arthritic knees.
He started for a side door.
The pilgrim waited.
He opened the door that led to the changing rooms where he would shed the chasuble and alb of worship for the ruby gown of office.
He turned into the corridor and the pilgrim was behind him.
“Cardinal Ludovico.”
He turned.
The face of a child, not a man at all but a girl, perhaps a woman, thin and haggard. He began to smile, and then he saw the knife.
“I come to kill you,” she said. “The way you had Michael killed.”
Cardinal Ludovico understood. This was the woman with Michael, the one who had overturned a table in the galleria in Milan. He had not intended to frighten anyone, least of all Michael. He had loved Michael. Didn’t she understand that?
But he said nothing to her.
He waited for her and the knife and his death. He tried to think of God.
And he knelt on the stone floor to receive his death.
The knife glittered in the dim electric light of the hallway between the church walls.
“Why did you kill him? I loved him,” Marie Dreiser said. Her eyes glistened with all the tears she had been saving for this moment. The tears dug little paths on her cheeks.
“I did not kill him.”
“This. You killed him for this.”
She held the tape in her hand.
The cardinal blessed himself. And then he raised his hand and began to bless her. “I forgive you,” he said. “You do not know what you do.”
“Do not forgive me. Forgive yourself forever for this murder on your hands.”
And he looked at the pale, elegant fingers of his hands, and he thought he saw the blood, saw the same thing this girl saw.
She did not move.
Cardinal Ludovico closed his eyes to better feel the blow, to feel the blade sink beneath flesh, between bone and sinew, to find his heart. All his life as a priest he had waited for this moment, for the first of the final four things. To die in this church, after that act of worship, comforted him. He did not intend his death, but it pleased him to die because he had felt so badly about Michael Hampton and felt the guilt of Michael’s death as surely as if he had ordered it.
He opened his eyes, and still she had not moved. She stared at him but could not see him because her eyes were so blinded now by tears.
“I want Michael!” she screamed and threw the knife down on the stones. The knife clattered and skidded across the stones and stopped at the kneeling figure of the cardinal.
Then she threw down the tape.
The cassette clattered loosely on the stones and skidded as well. It was almost within reach of the ancient, bony hands.
“Take it. Michael died to give it to you. He only wanted to give it to you, he didn’t want anything, he wanted to be free of it. He said I could have sanctuary with him, he said I would be free, and I loved him for that, for the kindness he gave me. Take it! You evil man, you utterly evil man. I hope to God, if there is God, that He will come down and smite you and you will roast in hell for eternity for what you did to Michael.”
“I did not kill him. I swear to you, child, I did not kill him and I did not want his death.”
“Go ahead, you’ve got the knife. I don’t care, I won’t kill you, you hideous frog. I hate you. I thought about you, about tearing your eyes out with my hands. I could do that, I could do that. Mein Gott in Himmel!” And she leaped at him and knocked him to the ground.
The cardinal struck his head on the stones.
Her hands were on his throat.
“Sanctuary! You would not give him sanctuary!” she screamed in German, but he did not understand a word. He felt the vise of her small hands choking down life, holding him under. There was blood on his forehead.
Was this from God?
But the blade was beneath his hand.
Was this a sign?
He struck her, and the knife slipped into her back as easily as if she had intended it this way.
The hands slackened.
Her eyes grew wide. Her eyes were large enough to see everything in the world.
“Michael,” she said. Her voice was soft. She saw him rise from the chalk outline on the bridge and smile at her gently. He was the kindness of the world, reaching out his hand to her.
“Michael.” She said it with love and tenderness. “Lamb.”
And her back arched, and then she had to fall — she knew it — and she would have to fall on this man who was lying on the stones beneath her. She would have to strike her head upon the ground, but there was no pain to any of it.
“I did not kill him.”
He said this over the crumpled body of the German girl. “I did not kill him.” He reached down to touch her neck, to feel for any pulse. The knife protruded from her back. And then he saw the cassette. He reached for it first. He held the cassette.
The cassette transformed him back to cardinal from priest. Michael was gone, the moment with the mad girl was gone. He held the tape recording. The secret deal a man had given his life for. To know it was to have the power to use it, and Michael, poor Michael, could not understand the uses of power.
Almost against his will, he was suddenly filled with soft contempt in that moment for his son in the church, Michael Hampton. He had not harmed Michael, did not wish him harm, had said a Mass of the dead for him this morning in the holiest church in Christendom. But Michael did not understand power and was afraid of it, from the moment he had run from the army and then from the CIA. Michael did not want to know, he did not want to hear. What a pity. God gave him his talent, and he did not want to use it. Except for the church. Michael was naïve enough to believe the Congregation for the Protection of the Faith was merely an agency of innocent intelligence, bent to give the pope and the hierarchy the best possible information about the welfare of the church in the various countries of the world.
Poor Michael.
The leonine eyes of the cardinal glittered now.
Pulse fluttered like a dying bird beneath his fingers. She was alive, but what was the point of it? We all end in eternity.
He raised his fingers and blessed her. The Latin ritual for absolution came next: “Ego te absolvo, in nomine Patri, et Filii, et Spiritu Sancti.…”
What was he absolving her for?
She was a child, and she might have sinned with Michael. Sinned before he was killed on the bridge.
Did he believe in such things after thirty years of deception and treachery in the name of the protection of the church?
Yes, he must believe.
He pulled out the knife and raised it above the child as he had done a moment before, raising his hand in blessing and absolution.
Forgive me.
The side door opened and threw bright light into the narrow hall. He looked up at the tall man. Did he know his eyes glittered in that moment or that the tall man saw every intention in his eyes?
“Will you murder again?” the tall man said.
“I did not…”
But he looked at the knife, and it accused him. He saw now there was blood on his hand, not the imagined blood of Michael that the girl saw, but the real blood, this of the girl he had not intended to hurt.
“Put the knife down,” said the tall man, and Cardinal Ludovico thought he must obey.
The knife clattered on the stones again.
“Get away from her.”
He staggered to his feet on creaky legs. He felt age and weight and the weariness of many burdens. He held the tape in his hand.
“How many would have to die for the tape before it’s been paid for?” the tall man said.