The skinny kid with the punctured palm reclined on his cot. He was thoughtfully examining the purloined stickpin. He was attaching it as an accessory to his crude, wood handled penknife when he noticed an ominous cluster of scowling classmates surrounding him. Before they could strike, John Rossi sat up brightly and spoke.
“Well, me hearty pirates, do you want supper or not?”
Surprised, they nodded.
“C’mon then!” He leaped from the cot as if on a mission from God. “Follow me to the free feast of the night!”
And follow him they did. They crept full of hunger and curiosity out of their sleeping quarters, descended the dark wooden stairs, and sneaked silently into the dining hall.
With hushed tones and soft steps, the boys approached the steel mesh. Behind it were loaves of bread and plates of biscuits, butter, and bowls of cold soup.
The wall of mesh was secured on one side by an old-fashioned padlock, which John Rossi gleefully attacked with the stolen stickpin. Working with intense concentration and near-psychic precision, it was only moments before his efforts released the lock.
The ravenous youths pushed aside the wire mesh and helped themselves to a late-night meal, happily filling their stomachs and heaping admiration on their adventurous and courageous leader.
Forty-five minutes later most of the well-fed orphans were fast asleep when a single window on the top floor of St. Ignatius slid open high above the courtyard. Slowly, secretively, a long white snake of bedsheets slithered out into the cool night air. Behind the window, John Rossi and ten co-conspirators fed their thin escape route down the wall.
One by one they slid down, suppressing giggles of delight at their own bravery. John Rossi passed Father Brennan’s open window on the way down. He paused, still smarting from the priest’s whipping, and peeked inside. He could make out the huddled form of the snoring priest and the pack of slumbering Dobermans.
“Never again,” whispered the boy softly as he continued his downward climb. “Never again.”
With all his fellow escapees safely on the ground, John led the way to an identical building located catty-corner on the courtyard — St. Patricia’s Home for Girls — which was also locked up for the night.
John began working the priest’s stickpin into the front door lock. His pal, Bartolo, watched in admiration.
“They should name you Simon Magus, for the magician...”
The little lockpick flaunted the heroic white cloak he’d fashioned from a sheet, with its red cross drawn in red marker on the left shoulder.
“Simon Templar,” insisted John, “crusading Saint and—”
The lock popped open. Proud delight cut short his recitation. The young knights crept stealthily into St. Patricia’s, sneaking silently down the corridor. They flattened themselves against a dark wall when the exceptionally large Sister Teresa waddled down the opposite hall. As her flapping black habit disappeared around the corner, the ragtag crusaders continued on their quest. They climbed the stairs to the second floor, but on the landing their progress came to an abrupt halt — a heavy mesh partition, fit for a high-security prison, extended from wall to banister, floor to ceiling.
Bartolo looked eagerly at his leader but saw only an expression of disappointment.
“Someday I’ll get in... anywhere,” insisted Rossi defiantly. He eyed the door to the girls’ dormitory, a few short yards beyond the barricade.
He shook the mesh and called out “Agnes!”
The girl awoke with a start and a quick gasp, sat up, and glanced around. The room’s tiny cruciform night-lights revealed several other girls were also awakened by this unexpected late-night visit.
Trailed by curious girlfriends and rubbing sleep from her eyes, Agnes left her tiny bed and walked barefoot out into the hall toward the landing.
“John Rossi?”
She saw him through the grim partition. Delighted and disbelieving, she ran straight to the mesh barrier.
Equally happy, he drew a golden strand of Agnes’s hair through the mesh and began stroking it.
Although moved, she still managed to admonish him.
“You realize that when they catch you, they’ll cane you.”
Her hero would have no such doomsaying.
“It will never happen, dear Agnes, because tonight this hearty brotherhood is leaving” — his eyes danced with lively mischief and joyous self-assurance — “on a Crusade!”
A delighted smile brightened Agnes’s face. She not only believed him, she believed in him.
“Oh, John Rossi!” she exclaimed happily.
“I am no longer John Rossi,” declared the boy with a triumphant wave of his cape. “My name is Templar, Simon Templar, crusading Saint and hero of a thousand adventures!”
He took her warm hand in his through the cold metal mesh. At that moment, he became the embodiment of all things altruistic and romantic. It was as if the fictionalized Knight Templar from the colorful paperback had come to life.
“I have risked everything, Agnes my love, to bid you farewell. I can’t leave you without a kiss, can I?”
The boy was in his glory; Agnes’s eyes misted in adoration.
“And where do you go? What will you do?”
The Saint errant tossed back his head, striking a piratical stance on the stairs.
“Why, we will go out and find more and more adventures! We will swagger and swashbuckle, and boast and sing and throw our weight around!”
Agnes giggled, her feet prancing on the landing.
“You don’t weigh that much!”
The other children laughed aloud, forgetting the lateness of the hour and the danger of discovery.
Sister Teresa was returning from the bathroom when she heard children’s happy voices — a rare occurrence at any hour. Worse, she heard boys’ voices. The waddling nun ran fast, then faster, to the scene of the disaster. When she saw the unauthorized midnight conclave of underage children in their nightclothes, she screamed as if Satan himself had erupted from Hell.
Her high-pitched wail echoed through the courtyard like the screeching whine of incoming artillery. Father Brennan was awake in an instant, and so were his dogs.
Sister Teresa, arms flapping, turned in florid agitation, propelling her massive frame toward the main entrance in an overheated rush to summon Father Brennan from St. Ignatius.
Taking the sudden commotion as an exit cue, Simon Templar waved farewell with an exaggerated flourish. As the boys began their hasty departure, Agnes’s voice sliced through the air.
“Wait! John Rossi. My kiss...”
He stopped, enchanted by the proposition. The other boys ran, but Rossi returned to the impenetrable barricade. There was only one way to do it — if the two heroic lovebirds leaned over the banister and around the partition, and if they both stretched, their lips would touch.
He, taller than she, leaned out over the twenty-foot drop, his lips at the ready.
She, substantially shorter, sweetly puckered in anticipation as her cold little toes left the floor. She balanced precariously on the banister, her lips brushing his, as the furious barking of dogs began echoing up from the stairwell.
When Brennan and his Dobermans arrived on the second-floor stairs, the unamused headmaster discovered the two in mid-kiss. A shaft of moonlight shimmered through the window, bathing the precious couple in serene, beatific illumination.
If hearts were touched by their innocence and appearance, Father Brennan’s was not among them. A sadistic grin twisted his unpleasant features. The dogs snarled.
“Sic the boy!” the headmaster hissed.
Agnes’s eyes opened wide in terror. The dogs leaped from behind John Rossi, barking and snapping viciously, and she involuntarily recoiled. Agnes’ arms flailed desperately as she tried to regain her balance, but only her eyes caught Simon’s before she disappeared over the banister.