FSF, March-April 2010 (32 page)

Once doubt fills us, it finds reasons everywhere for itself; and my doubt soon found more than I had ever imagined possible, and with the speed of hunting dogs.

When D'Orgoglio appeared, his face was full of alarm, and two guards were with him.

"I am still alive, Pier,” I said, with a little laugh to calm him. “I wish to perform the Reconciliation for this child. Please bring me the Body and the Blood and leave us when you have. Thank you, and thanks to you two as well, who guard the Papacy so well."

Their astonished looks held them where they stood, but D'Orgoglio moved at last, turning and leaving. Because the two guards remained, the boy and I waited in silence. When D'Orgoglio returned, he placed the goblet of wine and the bread plate on the table by my chair, and then, at an insistent nod from me, departed with the guards, closing the door behind them.

"Step closer, please, my child."

Was he afraid? Was that why he did not take a step? Or was it something else?

"Do you wish to confess?"

"What might I confess,” he answered, “that I would not repeat by my actions every day hence?"

"It is no different for all of us,” I heard myself say. “And yet we all confess."

It was difficult—nearly impossible, in fact—for him to say what he said next, I know now; but he found the courage or will or desperation to say it; and I was again moved, and for a moment could not see through blinking eyes.

"Bless me—” he began, stopped, closed his eyes, and, eyes closed, began again:

"Bless me, Father, for I....” Again he stopped, and I could see him struggle with himself as if with a demon. “Bless me, Father, for I have sinned."

"And what is the nature of—” I began, also stopping, for the words that should have come to me would not come either. I heard only the voice that had spoken before with words that were neither mine nor my uncle's. “
And what is the nature
,” I heard myself say then, “
of what you believe has lost you God's love
?"

His eyes opened in surprise. These were not the words he had expected.

"I—I have taken into darkness too many souls to count, Father."

"Whether they are in darkness now,” I heard myself continue, “is not for you to judge, but for God, for whom there can be no Darkness, for He and all that He has made lives in Light beyond Darkness."

"But I have
sinned
."

"That is not for you to determine, my child,” I went on, “but for God, who does not need to forgive what needs no forgiveness."

The boy, squatter of body than the boys I had grown up with—as squat as a Southerner, and just as long-armed, with eyes graced by the lashes of a girl—looked at me in confusion. How could a boy, even if he were a Pope, change the very words that every priest spoke and had spoken forever in this sacrament? Every sacrament was holy and beyond even a Pope's revision.

I was as confused as the boy was, and now frightened. What was this voice that spoke through me, changing what should not be changed, even if its words felt like Truth? Was I an instrument of the Lord of Lies now? Had I become it simply by accepting the boy's presence, a Drinker's?

And yet below the fear was a strange peace, one that let me say:

"So that you will know the peace in your heart that you deserve as God's child, I, your Pope, ask only that you say, when you have left this place tonight, and as you lie down to sleep, no matter how restless your sleep may be, a hundred Our Fathers. Utter them in joy and sincerity, as if your fear that God has abandoned you were but a terrible dream from which you have now awakened."

Not knowing what else to do, the boy nodded, but I could see the doubt in his eyes:
Forgiveness and salvation could not be so simple
.

And then the voice was gone, and I was free to begin, if I so wished, the Sacraments of Reconciliation and Communion, which the boy had requested and which, I remembered, might be combined in a single rite if a Pope saw wisdom in it. My uncle had never performed such a ritual, and yet such a ritual was what I would perform. I would even, because of what the boy had become, give him Blood before Body. Heresy or not, this is what I would do because it was right; because a voice somewhere insisted that it was.

I stood, picked up the goblet of wine from the table beside me, and held it out to the boy's lips. But when I said, “
Misereatur tui omnipotens Deus
,” a blue light appeared on the goblet's lip, and I stopped until it had faded. I had never seen such a light. Was it my fever, a trick of the eye in the candlelight, fatigue? I did not want to believe that it was real, for that would have meant something more frightening.

Blinking, I thrust the goblet out again toward the boy's lips; but when I said “
Et dimissis peccatis tuis
,” the blue light not only appeared once more but danced frantically on the rim of the goblet. I returned the goblet to the table, where the fire faded again, tore a piece of bread from the loaf, and tried once more. I handed him the bread first, so that he might partake of Body before Blood, that it might discourage the flame.

As if afraid it might bite him, the boy merely nibbled on the piece—

And then it did indeed bite him: The blue flame leaped from the bread, and the boy jerked back, as if burnt.

"It is as I feared!” he cried.

Doubt was taking me as well. What could I do against blue fire? And yet there was something odd about the flame. It did not feel like God's anger. It did not feel like damnation. What was it then?

"Let us continue, my child,” I said, not knowing what else to do.

"No!"

"We must.” Quickly I said, “
Perducat te ad vitam aeternam
,” and held the goblet to his lips once more.

The boy did not want to obey, but he touched his lips to the goblet's rim at last and even took a sip.

Again the blue flame stirred on the goblet, rearing up to leap from the metal to his mouth; and this time I reached out to put my hand in its way.

The flame did not burn me, but instead danced around my hand like a snake until it broke free and leaped to the boy's mouth again.

Again, the boy jerked back as if burnt.

"I cannot do this!” he cried, and the door started to open behind me.

"Do not come in!” I shouted. “We are doing what must be done for this child, Ser D'Orgoglio. We are not to be interrupted."

"But Your Holiness,” the man's voice said, as if he'd seen the blue light himself—which perhaps he had though a cracked door—"if this is demonic possession, you are perhaps too inexperienced to attempt—"

"It is not a possession, D'Orgoglio,” I said, wondering why I felt so certain, “and I am not accustomed to being interrupted by my attendants in the middle of a sacrament."

It was unkind of me to speak like that—especially to a man like D'Orgoglio—but rudeness was the only way I knew to make him leave. The boy would certainly not continue the rite in the presence of the man, and the manner in which this strange mixture of communion and reconciliation was proceeding would certainly excite D'Orgoglio too much for him to allow its completion.

"Yes, Your Holiness,” D'Orgoglio's voice said, and the door closed once more.

"What is your name, my child?” I asked, turning back to him.

"Taddeo—Taddeo da Casta."

"We must continue, Taddeo."

"I cannot."

"You say this and yet you are here. You wish this. Why do you claim you cannot continue?"

"Because I am damned,” he answered.

"As you have said before.” I was growing impatient.

As he said it again—
because I am damned
—the blue flame danced higher, not only from the goblet, but from the plate of bread as well, as if fueled by the very words he was repeating. And a voice I knew well by now whispered:
Yes, that is the reason
.

"It must burn me because I am damned,” the boy was saying yet again, and yet again I was answering, “You are
not
damned."

"But you can see the flame of God's anger?"

"It is
your
flame,
filius Dei
. It is yours, for you to use as you wish.” This I now knew, and it was certain.

"No!"

The boy shook his head violently. The two places on his lips where the fire had indeed burnt them were healing, of course.

"And in your self-loathing you use it this way—as no loving God ever would."

"No!"

He was stepping back, and, as he did so, the blue light reached out for him from the goblet and loaf. The flame was larger now, as tall as a child, hot and blue, and a figure was taking shape within it.

"See!” he exclaimed. “That is no loving God!"

"I see a boy in the flame, Taddeo. I see
you
."

It was indeed the figure of a boy, his face shapeless but somehow familiar.

The boy screamed, unable to look, and, turning, began to run. He ran toward the distant shadows of the Basilica's Nave, and when those shadows took him, I listened to his footsteps until they too faded.

The flame had hesitated for a moment on the goblet and bread, but then had followed him, becoming a wisp and a whisper and then nothing at all.

Two weeks later, after my uncle had returned and reprimanded me for allowing a beggar child to visit me in the middle of the night (and without proper security during the visit), I heard a story from one of my tutors. I had not told a soul what had actually happened that night. It would be a secret I would keep for years. The tutor in question was one responsible for keeping me aware of news in the city; and the story he told me was of a child who had been killed at the Travinia Gate of the Vatican, and under strange circumstances. The child, my tutor explained, had run menacingly toward the guards brandishing a torch, one with a mysterious blue fire; and, though the guards, their bows raised and arrows nocked as was proper, had shouted warnings at him, the child had continued toward them, shouting demonically and screaming heretical oaths, all of which the guards found frightening. What ensued, then, is understandable, is it not, Your Holiness? Release their arrows the guards did, in their fear of the blue flame and the demonic noise; but strangely, the first five arrows, though they struck the child, did not stop his forward rush.

It was the sixth arrow, a particularly stout one, striking the child in the heart, that stopped him mere steps from the gate itself. The child looked, in the words of one guard, like Saint Sebastian, full of arrows, which no child should be because no child should have to be a martyred saint; and the guards did feel the tug of conscience and compassion. But stranger still, Your Holiness, was what happened then: Although the torch rolled away from the child at his collapse and could therefore not have set his robe on fire, the child did catch fire, and the fire was blue, as I said, and it burned intensely until only the child's bones remained, even as the astonished guards looked down on this miracle and crossed themselves in protection.

"Do you have any idea,” my tutor asked when he finished, “what this might mean, Your Holiness? Is this related to the rumors of those who drink blood, who can heal themselves and can only be brought down by arrows to their hearts?"

Of all my tutors he was the one who most believed I would indeed serve Christendom well as Pope, and for this I loved him and would always be grateful for him in my life.

"No,” I heard myself answer. “It means simply that a child is free at last."

My tutor was silent, trying to understand. And then he said: “So that he might return to God?"

"Yes. So that he might return to God."

Boniface stopped talking at last, and with a great sigh fell back. The young man was still standing where he had been standing throughout the telling. Had Boniface not told him to sit, to conserve his energy for the transcribing? But no, the young man in his earnestness had stayed upright, scribbling frantically with a quill in one hand and parchment and an inkwell somehow in the other. How difficult he had made it for himself.

The young man stopped writing, but did not look up. He was staring at the sheaves of parchment he had used, some where they had fallen on the floor, slipping from his hands, others still clenched in them. He had trembled more than once during the story, the old man knew. Boniface had seen him tremble, but had not stopped his tale. Who knew when the words might exhaust themselves, leaving the story unfinished—which would have grieved the young man terribly.

"I do not wish to leave you, Your Holiness,” the young man said suddenly. Still he would not look up.

"You are afraid that I will die if you do, am I correct?"

The young man's silence answered for him.

"Thank you for your concern, but I am not a story,” the old Pope said. “I am a man whose time has come. If I die, I will be forgotten in time by the living; and if not forgotten, my boy, then transformed by the flaws of public and private memory into something I was certainly not. But the true world itself, where words are not needed, nor stories, will not forget what I have touched in this life, just as it will not forget what you touch in your life,
ragazzo
. What we touch is of the world forever because we ourselves were once of it. As the world remembers, so does God, and the forgetfulness of mortals matters not in the slightest."

"Yes, Your Holiness."

"I told you my story not because I wish to be remembered, but because you, by asking, helped me to remember it, that is, to remember how important that night was to me; and so we have spent, you and I, some time together in this life; and that matters more, though you may not believe it, than any archive."

Boniface stopped. The words were tiring him at last, perhaps because these words were not really necessary.

The young man was nodding. He was confused, Boniface could see. He did not know what to do, standing there. He did not know what to say. He was not sure he understood, though years from now he probably would. And was this not the plight of all mortals—every day of their lives?

"Stand where you are,” Boniface said with compassion, “a little while longer,
ragazzo
. Soon we will need neither words nor memory....” He heard the young man make a small choking sound, as if from an emotion; and then, as the old man had predicted, none of it mattered, for the fog had completely filled the room now; and somehow it was the young man, no longer a shadow backlit by the familiar sun beyond the window, that had become the brightest of lights.