Luis Rocha - Papal decree

His eyes couldn’t camouflage his grief and guilt. If it weren’t for the presence of Cardinal William and Father Schmidt in the car, Tarcisio would have cried openly.

The secretary didn’t have the courage to look at poor Trevor’s body splayed out in the corridor of the Domus Sanctae Marthae. It was a sight he didn’t want to remember. William spared him that suffering and offered to go in his place. Trevor was not his assistant. He saw him often and always considered him a good person, but felt nothing more than the normal shock of seeing a life cut short in that way.

‘This doesn’t seem prudent to me,’ William protested vehemently in the backseat. ‘It goes against all security standards.’

‘You’ve already said that,’ Tarcisio answered impatiently, his voice breaking a little.

Daniel, the commander of the Swiss Guard, had also disapproved when he’d heard Tarcisio’s intention in his office.

‘There are security protocols that have to be complied with,’ he’d asserted. ‘With all due respect, the secretary of state can’t leave the Vatican like a normal citizen or even like a normal cardinal. Your Eminence knows you are not a cardinal like the others, excuse my familiarity.’ This last remark was for William, who agreed with him and was not offended.

‘It wouldn’t be the first time,’ the secretary argued.

‘It would be the first time under these circumstances. Two murders in one day. We’re under attack, Your Eminence agrees, I know. The secretary of state is the most important prince of the church.’

‘You don’t have to teach me my position, Daniel,’ Tarcisio grumbled.

‘Your Eminence, pardon me, but I can’t let you leave without security.’

‘Be reasonable, Tarcisio,’ William said.

Tarcisio persisted. ‘I’m the cardinal secretary of state of the Holy See,’ he cried, flushed with anger. ‘His Holiness is the face of the church, but I’m the one who has to expose my chest to the bullets. What happened here today and in the last few days must not happen again. The Society of Jesus wants to negotiate, and with these latest developments they’re in a position to do so.’ His voice broke. ‘I don’t want to belong to a church that won’t defend its own.’

Daniel took a deep breath after listening to the secretary’s arguments. What a situation. ‘Very well, Your Eminence, I’ll prepare a car. You’ll take one of my men as the driver, and I’ll go in back.’

‘I’d like to go with Your Eminence to help as much as possible,’ Father Schmidt volunteered.

Tarcisio laid a grateful hand on Schmidt’s shoulder. ‘I appreciate it, my friend, but you’ve been through a lot today, and I want you to get some rest. I’ll take care of this.’

‘I won’t be able to rest until you return. Let me go with you, please.’

Tarcisio said nothing. He went to the window and looked at the sun setting behind the buildings.

‘All right,’ he finally decided.

‘I’ll come also,’ William said.

Daniel held a Beretta up in front of Schmidt’s face. ‘Do you know how to use one of these?’

Schmidt blushed and smiled nervously. ‘Of course not.’

‘I’ll explain it quickly.’

The Mercedes left twenty minutes later with a driver and two Swiss Guards, young but well trained, and two Volvos behind the Mercedes.

‘Was it Adolph who called?’ William asked.

‘No, Aloysius.’

‘What do you expect from this?’

‘I have no idea, Will. Not the slightest.’

‘But…’

‘He threatened to kill more people, Will,’ Tarcisio suddenly confessed. ‘He said they would kill…’ He hesitated. ‘His Holiness, to be specific. After what happened to Trevor, I don’t believe I’m in a position to bargain,’ he added in defeat.

‘The bastards,’ the prefect swore.

‘We can’t foresee their game, Will. We can only look out for ourselves.’

‘There’s nothing that can be done?’ Schmidt asked.

The two cardinals gestured negatively.

‘The person who helped us with this tragic operation complied with what was specified. Our interest was only the parchments. They’re in our possession,’ Tarcisio explained.

William didn’t approve of the secretary revealing these details to someone unknown. They might be friends, but that didn’t give him the right.

‘Who did you trust with this job, if I might ask?’ William insisted with no embarrassment or hesitation to interfere.

Tarcisio looked out at the Roman street they were passing before responding, ‘The pope’s assassin.’

Everyone follows predetermined patterns. His weak father had chosen to be an alcoholic who abused his wife and three children. Being a bricklayer was no excuse for staggering home every night, reeking of alcohol and shouting insults at his children and the bewitching woman to whom he was married. He was cursed for life with the responsibility of being the head of a family… or at least that’s what he blabbered during those long sessions with a belt in one hand and a beer in the other.

His mother never intervened. She always ended up asleep at the table, deaf to their wails and their father’s roars. When he tired of beating them, he knocked her awake and dragged her to the bedroom, slamming the door. A few minutes later the creaking of the bed could be heard.

For years he hated his mother for her weakness, her lack of concern for them, for falling asleep during almost every supper, for having to take her plate away so that her stringy blond hair didn’t get in the food, and for leaving them at the mercy of his father’s belt. Sometimes he saw her swollen face or eyes, a look of suffering, or a more pronounced limp in a woman who must have been very beautiful once.

He spent the best hours of the day in school, when his father didn’t make him come to work with him. He learned to read, though poorly, joining the syllables together with difficulty and stammering over the words like someone with a speech impediment.

One day when he was twelve, he found a book on a shelf in his parents’ bedroom, the only book in the house, and started reading it every night. He heard it mentioned in the Mass they attended every Sunday morning. His father would shave, his mother dressed them in their best clothes — his only pair of shoes and the only shirt that wasn’t torn — and they went with other parents and children to hear a man talk about Jesus and God. It was probably the only thing his father feared — not that he wouldn’t quickly forget everything that very same night, when he would return to his drunken ways.

At first he read with great difficulty, but then he made progress. It was the best story he’d ever heard. He had no idea what the title, The Holy Bible, meant, nor did he understand everything he read, but the impression of the stories as a whole was overwhelming. He started reading it every day, over and over, imagining the worlds described, the stories of Abraham, Isaac, Rebecca, Moses and the freeing of the people from slavery in Egypt, the crossing of the Red Sea, the fall of Jericho, Samson, David and Goliath, David and Jonathan, Absalom’s rebellion, the wisdom of Solomon, the birth of Jesus, His baptism, temptation in the wilderness, turning water into wine, calming the storm, finding refuge in Jesus’s parables, in the special child whose parents loved him, sometimes at the end of one more violent night. The Bible was his fantasy world, Joseph and Mary the parents he wished he had, the Apostles his only friends.

One night he discovered something. His father poured a colorless, odorless fluid into his mother’s drink and kept it in the bathroom in a cupboard full of dozens of medicines, many past their expiration dates. His mother slept at the table during supper; his father beat them with the belt. He thought of the Bible, the stories and Jesus, while he endured the belt. His father loosened his trousers to do the rest, but he recalled the Bible and shouted, ‘God will punish you. God will punish you.’ Then he shut his tearful eyes. He trembled and prayed, Help me, Jesus, help me, Joseph and Mary. His earthly father stopped hitting him with the belt.