The youth stood for some time just inside the cathedral door. It took a little while for the darkness within, after the glare of the great sunlit square outside, to resolve itself; for the arrays of pillars, the branching vault, the heavy elaboration of the altar, the tombs, the paintings, the lamps, the incense burners and racks of candles to become clear to the widening pupils of those who entered. But the youth stood longer than that, quietly, just to one side of the door, staring. Those who walked past him, going in or out, gave him barely a glance: a country boy in wretched clothes, and botched sandals, seeming afraid – overawed, certainly. Eventually he began to move, padding softly down one of the aisles, looking.
The cathedral had been built by men of austere vision. It was of plain grey stone, roofed by a soaring vault of simple and beautiful form. A sort of polyphony of shape – the arched openings between nave and aisles, and the arched windows which muted and tinted the light of the day before admitting it – struck the onlooker like Lenten music. Nevertheless, a later age had decorated it. Behind every altar, in every chapel in the aisles, in frenetic emphasis behind the high altar, in orgies of jewelled enrichment were columns of coloured marble, riotously foliate capitals, carved angels, painted canvasses of piously gesturing saints. One might have thought the same building had been occupied in successive centuries by adherents of two different religions.
The youth seemed simply overpowered, uncomprehending. He spent many minutes standing in front of a picture of a man kneeling in an amphitheatre, in military attire, with his head about to be severed by an executioner. The executioner’s sword was raised high. Behind it, and behind a bloodthirsty crowd, was a statue of a wolf, with two children crouched underneath its belly, reaching for its dugs with chubby hands. The boy stood frowning and staring, biting his thumb. But whatever story the picture told, it was not one that anyone had ever told him, and at last he moved on. Eventually he found a side chapel with a picture he recognized: St Jeronimo in the wilderness, shabbily clothed, kneeling, holding a book, and with a lion and a wolf lying at his feet. The church in his village was dedicated to St Jeronimo, and boasted a simple picture of the saint. The youth knelt down, bowed his head, and prayed.
Not for long; soon he crossed over to the opposite aisle and found what he was looking for: one of those little cupboards with curtained doors, in which confessions are made, and a line of penitents, kneeling on a bench, waiting. He joined them. When his turn came, he entered the little cubicle, knelt down, leaned his face to the grill behind which the priest sat unseen, and said, ‘Help me, Father!’
‘You must say, “Bless me Father, for I have sinned”,’ said the priest.
‘I have not come to confess. Please, help me,’ said the youth.
‘If you do not wish to confess, get out!’ said the priest. ‘How dare you? How dare you abuse the sacrament?’
‘Is there no mercy then? I implore you to help me!’
‘If it is not with your sins, I cannot help you. You must go to the appropriate authorities.’
‘There is a man at every gate who refuses me entry,’ said the youth. ‘And she will die.’ But he had accepted that the priest would not help him; flat despair dulled his voice, like the note of a cracked bell. The priest sighed, stood up, stepped out of his booth, reached into the penitents’ booth, and pulled the youth to his feet. There were no other penitents waiting – no further tales of lust and greed and cruelty to be told that afternoon.
‘People die every day, and there is nothing to be done about it,’ he said to the youth, taking in his poverty, his helpless demeanour.
‘But she will die unbaptized,’ the boy cried.
Severo, cardinal prince of Grandinsula, on the death of his elder brother having come to unite in one person both worldly and spiritual authority, had little use for pomp or luxury, or any of the appurtenances of power. Compared to the power itself, any benefit he might draw from it in personal comfort, or in gorgeous ceremony, seemed to him almost comically vulgar and trivial. He had a palace in the cool of the mountains, where plentiful springs of fresh water flowed unfailingly, but he had never lived there for more than a few days in the hottest weather. He lived with his secretariat in rooms above the cloisters behind the cathedral, and held court in the princes’ palace occasionally, to decide civic appeals. When he received a foreign deputation in the palace, especially a barbaric one from a distant country, he sometimes put on his cardinal’s scarlet, and had the royal crown of Grandinsula – he had never worn it – carried in front of him, but he lived from day to day in a simple black soutane, like one of his village priests.
His room was a whitewashed, barrel-vaulted cell, containing a narrow bed, a desk, a shelf of books, a small and roughcut cupboard to receive his clothes, and a prie-dieu, unadorned and with no cushion for the knees. Above the bed, opposite the prie-dieu, where he could contemplate it day and night, was a painting of the Harrowing of Hell. Every cell in the cloister had a painting; Severo had chosen this one for the subject, though the cell also had a window facing the sea, which admitted cool air and a view of the bay, and a door giving on to a balcony above the garden, where it was pleasant to walk. The awe in which his subjects held him was greatly increased by the impression that he lived austerely and plainly; in fact he had provided himself unstintingly with all that he needed.
His plainness deceived the boy. Having told his tale three times already to an ascending sequence of important dignitaries, the third being the canon residentiary of the cathedral clergy, in a splendidly furnished office, the boy was sulky, and disinclined to tell it all over a fourth time to this humble person found writing in a simple cell.
‘If you’re sending me for mare’s milk,’ he said, miserably, ‘forget it. Let me go home.’
The priest who had brought him, horrified at his lack of respect, forced the boy to his knees, threatening terrible punishments if he did not at once kneel to and obey his cardinal and his prince, and at once repeat his story, as he had been told. The boy knelt, but was reduced to terrified silence.
‘Where are you from?’ asked Severo.
‘Sant Jeronimo, Holiness,’ said the boy.
‘A long way. Have you walked to Ciudad?’ The boy nodded. ‘Has anyone fed you?’
‘No, Holiness.’
‘You must be very hungry,’ said Severo. To his priest he said, ‘What are you all thinking of? Give him a meal.’
‘Thank his Holiness at once, and come to the kitchen with me,’ said the priest.
‘No,’ said Severo. ‘Why do you speak roughly to him? Can’t you see that you scare him? Bring food here; we will eat in the garden. Bring a plentiful platter of plain food – no delicacies, just what he’s used to. Let me see . . . a quartern loaf of dark bread, and some cheese and olives, an orange, and a flagon of water. Quickly.’
The priest withdrew. ‘What is your name?’ asked Severo, contemplating the boy. Someone washed and mended his clothes, worn though they were. His wrists jutted out of the sleeves of his outgrown shirt.
‘Jaime.’
‘Then come with me, Jaime. We will sit in the evening sun outside and talk, while we wait for them to bring supper. First tell me this do – they still pasture the sheep in the high sierra above Sant Jeronimo?’
‘That is where we found her,’ said the boy, eagerly, launching again into his story.
When the servant brought the bread and relishes, the telling had reached the point where the nevados carried the snow-girl away down the mountain. Severo had listened with a grave expression. He stopped Jaime talking while he ate – ate hungrily, rapidly at first, and then slowly, spinning it out. In a while the boy offered the bread and olives. ‘Aren’t you going to have any, Holiness?’
Gravely Severo took a hunk of bread, broke it in two, and gave half back to Jaime. Nobody he had ever broken bread with, such was his vow, would be less than a brother to him, or would know want while he had substance. The youth did not know that; he shared the food with his exalted companion out of the courtesy of peasants, who on the island never ate in the presence of one who was not eating. Severo took olives to eat with the bread and sat down beside the widow’s son on the bench.
‘To continue . . .’ he said.
‘It was a month, nearly, before my brother came for me, He had a new wife – did I tell you? – and I think he was sorry to leave her. When he came I was free to return to Sant Jeronimo, to my mother. I asked about the snow-girl as soon as I got home, and they said she was with Juan. They did not seem interested, Holiness. I set out to find Juan. I had a hard time; he was moving around – one town, then another town, always for market day. You know, Holiness, there is a leather market on Monday and then a fish market at Porto . . .’
‘Yes, I know,’ said Severo gently. ‘Where did you find her?’
‘It was stupid. I followed him all round the island – always a day late – and then caught up with him at home. Everywhere I went, people were grumbling about him. He had charged them to look at her, but they thought they had been cheated.’
‘Why?’
‘They paid to look at a wolf-child, but they thought they had seen an animal. When I caught up with him, I saw her again and I was not surprised. He had not washed her, or covered her. He is keeping her in the little cage they made to bring her down the mountain. She is starving. She refuses food. Holiness, she will eat only raw meat, and he will not give her any because he says it makes her savage. She has bitten him, more than once, and he no longer lets her out of the cage. So she is filthy. I do not think he can take her round the markets again, Holiness, because people are enraged at being, as they think, cheated, but he would not sell her to me for anything I could pay him. My mother would have pawned her rosary, but it was not enough. I implored him to give her raw meat, but he would not. All I could do was give her a little milk to drink, and come to find help . . .’
The boy’s voice shook.
‘Would not the priest at Sant Jeronimo help you?’ enquired Severo. ‘Does he know about this?’
‘He knows. He did nothing. I thought if I came to Ciudad . . .’
‘And here you found all doors closed to you except that of the confessional? I suppose I am not surprised. My officials are beleaguered; they have too many requests, no doubt. But I am surprised at the priest at Sant Jeronimo. Are you telling me the truth, Jaime?’
‘Yes, I am, Holiness, but . . .’
‘But?’
‘But Holiness, you have not seen her. She is – she is terrible. Everyone turns away, but I do not blame them. If I could stop thinking of her, I would. Holiness, when you see her, blackness . . . it is blackness in your heart. You are cast down, you cannot bear it. It is the worst thing you could ever know . . .’ He recovered himself a little, and said, ‘He said it would be blasphemy to baptize such a thing.’
Severo paced up and down the garden for a while. Then he clapped his hands, and when a servant appeared he asked for Brother Rafal. Rafal came, wearing a simple monk’s habit, a young man, only a little older than Jaime.
Severo said, ‘Rafal, this is my brother, Jaime.’ Jaime looked up in amazement. ‘I want you find him a cell for the night, and a suit of good clothes and stout shoes. In the morning you are to go with Jaime to the intramontana, and there you are to find a certain child, and bring it here. I will give you letters of authority and a purse. You are to be rapid and discreet. There may not be much time; the child seems to be dying, and the less attention we attract from the vulgarity the better. Do you accept this charge?’
‘Yes, Holiness.’
‘Good. Go with Rafal now, Jaime. I need to pray.’ When Jaime stood up, but stayed rooted to the spot, as if confused, he added, ‘You have done right, Jaime. You won’t regret it.’ Then, falling into Latin, a tongue very close to that of his island but different enough for him to suppose that Jaime would not understand him, he said to Rafal, ‘The boy is urgent to baptize the child you are seeking, but do not do so. He will not think to do it himself; he seems not to realize that is permitted. And I would first like to see what made the priest of Sant Jeronimo refuse his duty.’