“Honestly,” Clare said. “I didn’t see anything. I think I heard a shot. But when I ran to look, all I saw was the blood.”
“Was there a lot of it?”
How was she supposed to answer that? As she remembered it, the blood seemed to be everywhere. But Clare wasn’t good with blood. In fact, she pretty much got light-headed at anything worse than a paper cut.
“As I remember it, the place looked like an abattoir,” she said. “But it just can’t have been as bad as it seemed. The boy was fine. Stunned at first, apparently. Maybe even unconscious. But then he just ... stood up.”
Actually, the boy had pushed himself to his hands and knees, shaking his head like a boxer shaking off a roundhouse, then clambered to his feet. He spent a moment staring at the bloody mess of his clothes, and then uttered a single syllable.
“Shit!”
And the shocked silence had erupted into gasps and hallelujahs. Even Sister St. John had bowed her head and uttered a rapid prayer.
The story had seemed more unbelievable each time Clare told it—giving her statement to cops, EMTs, and worried bystanders in the noisy aftermath of the shooting. Now, telling it to Father Dominic Gregory, S .J., in the serene safety of All Saints College’s gated campus, it was simply surreal. It didn’t help that being invited to the college’s presidential suite felt like nothing so much as a trip to the principal’s office. Reflexive anxiety set in as soon as she touched the polished knobs on the imposing double doors and found herself dusting invisible particles of dust off her pants—an anxiety that only escalated as the president himself escorted her inside. Having spent her childhood helping her father brush the cat hair from his cassock when he absent mindedly left the vestry door ajar, Clare was not easily intimidated by the clergy. But Father Dominic Gregory could have made the pope himself feel inadequate. Tall and dark-haired, with just a sprinkling of grey at his temples, he seemed to have been born with the initials S.J.—Society of Jesus—after his name.
All Saints’ presidential suite was every bit as papal as its president. The long mullioned windows were inset with stained glass portraits of past presidents, many of them priests. The paneled walls were inset with book-cases and topped with arched finials. The books on the shelves all had the leather-bound air of Bibles. The chairs were heavy and velvet-covered; the desk could have been an altar. When Father Gregory offered Clare a digestive biscuit and a crystal glass of sherry, he could have been offering her Communion.
She tried to keep her hands from trembling as she glanced around for a place to put her plate. Of course, there wasn’t one. Any free surface was of such richly polished oak that even a coaster would have seemed insufficient. Grimly, she balanced her plate on one knee. As a vicar’s daughter, she had attended more church garden parties than birthday parties, but she had yet to master the art of actually eating something while fielding a teacup and a fiendish little plate of pastries—all the while knowing that someone would thrust a question at you the moment your mouth was full. It was only the first among many signs that she lacked a vocation.
On the other hand, the ability to juggle finger foods was something else Father Gregory had seemingly been graced with at birth. “So how is your semester going?” he asked, managing to sound as if that was, in fact, the reason Clare had been summoned here.
“Oh, quite well,” she said, sipping the sherry that was immediately threatening to spill over the rim of her dainty glass.
What was she supposed to say? That it was already getting toward midterms, the point during the semester when a teacher finally had to concede how genuinely unprepossessing even the most gilded of college youth was. It was also the point during the semester where Clare’s students were finally forced to concede that there were never going to be any Barbary pirates ripping the bodices off their enticing captives in a course entitled Introduction to Romance. That the details of the Arthurian cycle found in Excalibur were substantively different from those in Chretien de Troyes and Malory and Marie de France and that those differences were obvious enough that Clare was not disposed to pass quizzes that substituted the former for actually reading the latter.
“Then I can only apologize for reminding you of the recent unpleasantness over at the Church of St. Lazarus.” Father Gregory segued smoothly to the real reason he had called her there. “Unfortunately, the campus is swirling with rumors about the incident. Before I respond to them, I would like to talk to someone who can give me a lucid account of what exactly transpired. Fortunately, providence seems to have supplied me with exactly such a person. That is, if I’ve read your very impressive CV correctly?”
If he had read her CV. Clare was certain he’d committed it to memory before his secretary had phoned to ask if it would be convenient for her to drop by for a chat that very afternoon. The secretary had specified the convenient time before Clare had had a chance to say yes.
But ‘providential’ wasn’t exactly the word Clare would have chosen to describe what had happened to her. It was more like she had been in the wrong place at the wrong time. Still, she launched dutifully into her narration, winding up, “In any case, by all accounts the boy is fine. He was very lucky. A miracle, really.”
“Well, now,” Father Gregory said, “that’s rather the question, isn’t it?”
He let the suggestive silence that followed resonate until Clare finally realized that this—not some providential accounting—was the real reason for Father Gregory’s summons. Her eyes widened. “People are claiming this was a literal miracle?”
Father Gregory frowned. “Well, I don’t know if you can really have such a thing as a literal miracle. Seems somewhat theologically uncertain, if not oxymoronic, wouldn’t you say? Nonetheless, that’s hardly the question here, now is it?” Setting aside his sherry glass, he leaned closer. “Dr. Malley, I’d like to be straightforward, if I may?”
Straightforward? Wasn’t there something in the Jesuit Formation that forbade any such thing?
“Please,” Clare said.
“Do you believe you witnessed a miracle?”
Clare shook her head. How was she to know? What was a miracle supposed to look like? It was a question worthy of the undergraduate who had asked insistently where exactly Dante had found the mouth of Hell. Of course, as a medievalist, Clare had plenty of examples of what a miracle should look like. The Virgin being taken to heaven in a great, gilded ball. A heavenly song of praise still emerging from St. Cecilia’s torn throat as the executioner held up her severed head. An angel descending on great, parrot-colored wings to protect tiny St. Agnes in the brothel. A sea full of fishes listening attentively to St. Anthony when people would not.
But did Clare really believe that was what a miracle would look like? Did Father Gregory? Did anyone? Wasn’t it more likely that the miraculous would be so powerful, so awe-inspiring, so impossible to process that you wouldn’t be able to remember what you really had seen? Or maybe you would simply be too blinded by the grim realities of day-to-day life—the stupid, mind-numbing tasks of shopping and cooking and raising kids and getting to work on time—to even notice that a miracle had occurred?
“I’ve told you exactly what I saw,” Clare said. “I don’t know what else to say.”
Father Gregory nodded. “Then, at the risk of sounding ... inquisitorial, for want of a better word ...” He flashed a quick smile that signaled even college presidents had their little jokes. “Please allow me to phrase this more specifically. Did you see a mysterious priest lifting the boy into his arms and breathing life back into him?”
“Oh,” Clare said. “Really?”
“Indeed,” Father said. “Your answer, Dr. Malley?”
“I did not see a priest,” Clare said, feeling obscurely like she should renounce the devil and all his works and all his ways for good measure. “Thank you.”
Father Gregory spoke the two words like a benediction, and Clare found herself wondering whether she was allowed to go now. At the very least, could she hand back the treacherous plate and sherry glass? But Father Gregory remained lost in reflection, studying her as if she remained an unanswered question.
Uncomfortable with his scrutiny, she shook her head. “But what’s so miraculous about a priest saving someone’s life in any case? The whole thing happened outside a church after all.”
Snapping out of his study, Father Gregory smiled as if she had asked a particularly apt question. “The Church of St. Lazarus has not had a regular parish priest since 1973. All Saints has been offering its priests to celebrate Mass there since then. And the description I’ve heard of this mystery priest all but eliminate the possibility of its being one of ours.”
“How so?”
“He was described as wearing a soutane. And while I’m sure you’re well aware that there is no set habit for a Jesuit, the Rule specifies that our clothing, as much as anything else in our life, should make us disponible, or ready to serve. In the case of clothing, I would argue that would roughly translate as unobtrusive. And wearing a soutane, especially in the Bronx, would scarcely qualify as unobtrusive, wouldn’t you say?”
“No,” Clare agreed. Although in her mind, it scarcely qualified as the fashion faux pas of the decade that Father Gregory made it sound like.
“Then there’s the fact that all the witnesses used the word soutane specifically,” Father Gregory reflected. “Rather an exotic word for the Bronx, don’t you think?”
“French,” Clare said.
“Exactly.”
He leaned back in his chair, steepling his fingers. “So I think you’re beginning to appreciate the extent of the problem here.”
Well, no. Honestly, Clare wasn’t sure she was. As a matter of fact, she was beginning to think this problem might extend as endlessly as a hall of mirrors, with her rattling down the corridor still looking for a place to set her sherry glass.
“You think a rogue Lazarite has come back to the church to perform miracles?” Clare asked. “From where? France?”
Father Gregory drew a deep breath, and for a moment, Clare thought he was not going to answer the question. “It’s not so much a matter of from where, as from when,” he finally said.
“When,” Clare repeated.
“The last Lazarite who served as the parish’s priest did so in 1918, during the height of the Spanish influenza. A miracle-worker, it was rumored, who could heal simply by laying on of hands. Not a Lazarite, many said, but rather St. Lazarus himself. Of course, logically, the credit should go to the unsung devotion of our nursing sisters. But Servant of God Father Enoch is the reason the Church still has a reputation as the Lourdes of the Bronx, at least among the more enthusiastically-minded believers in the neighborhood.”
He didn’t try to hide his disapproval—as if such things as enthusiasms would never have been allowed, had a Jesuit been in charge in the first place. But Clare wasn’t really listening. Three words had caught her attention.
“Servant of God?” she asked. “You mean, he’s being considered for sainthood? His cause is actually before the Congregation for the Causes of the Saints?”
“For nearly twenty years.”
And now Clare really was beginning to understand the extent of the problem. “And so, if this priest’s ghost saved this boy,” she worked out the syllogism—lucidly, she hoped, “that would be a miracle toward his canonization?”
“I think ‘miraculous apparition’ would be a better term than ‘ghost.’ Ghosts land us squarely in the realm of speculative theology, which means you’re really nowhere at all. Speaking speculatively, however, you raise a tricky question.” Father Gregory threw himself into the trickiness of the question, clearly preferring it to any notion of miracles taking place on his watch. “As I’m sure you’re well aware, miracles leading to canonization must be posthumous. To prove the saint is able to intercede with God. A saint may or may not be a thaumaturge—or miracle worker—in his lifetime. But a wizard can work wonders as well. The point is, there’s no way to establish what’s behind the mortal miracles: Divine will or demonic interference? A posthumous miracle, on the other hand, can only occur if the saint is sitting at God’s right hand.
“Now, if you’re introducing a third possibility, the possibility of this being ... some kind of unlaid spirit, that would introduce some serious complications indeed. One would be forced to assume he is not yet in heaven. In fact, I think that’s rather the definition of an unlaid spirit. And yet, hardly mortal. I think that’s pretty much the definition of a ghost. Quite a complex issue when you think about it, isn’t it?”
He fell silent, inviting them both to savor the complexity of the issue along with their sherry. But all Clare could think about was that this whole conversation was proof positive of the All Saints undergraduates’ assertion that the only way to survive debating theology with a Jesuit was to do it stoned. Drawing a deep breath, she tried to steer the discussion toward less speculative shoals. “But this would only be one miracle,” she said. “Don’t you need two for canonization?”
Reluctantly, Father Gregory allowed himself to be dragged back from the serene world of tricky questions. “Twenty years ago, there was ... another boy,” he admitted.
“Did someone shoot him, too?”
“No, by all accounts this boy was severely autistic. A savant. Mathematically and musically gifted. But locked in. Completely uncommunicative.” “And Father Enoch cured him?”
Father Gregory’s face darkened. “Some said it was Father Enoch. Others said it was St. Lazarus himself. And still others said they were one and the same.”
To judge from his tone, they had arrived at the heart of the matter. But Clare was hard-pressed to understand what exactly that was. “I’m sorry, but I’m not sure I see the problem,” she said. “Are people worried about canonizing the wrong saint?”
Jesuitically enough, Father Gregory answered her question with a question. “Given your specialty, I assume you’re acquainted with St. Lazarus?”
Clare took a deep breath, suddenly feeling like she was back at her orals. “He’s really a conflation of two saints: Lazarus of Bethany, the brother of Mary and Martha, who Jesus brought back from the dead, and Lazarus, the beggar in the story of Lazarus and Dives.”
“Indeed,” Father Gregory said. “That’s rather his hallmark, isn’t it? Conflation, I mean. He really is a bit of a ... syncretic saint.”
And there was no mistaking that, in Father Gregory’s world, syncretism ranked right there with enthusiasm and soutanes.
“He has been adopted by other traditions,” Clare allowed. “Vodou, some say. Santeria.”
“Papa Legba, the Trickster of the Crossroads. And in the Cuban tradition, the orisha Babalu. Subject of the eponymous song. Of course, one does one’s best to respect others’ spiritual traditions ...”
His voice trailed off with as much distaste as if Ricky Ricardo had just invited him to join a conga line.
“Are they saying the Lazarites were really practicing Santeria at the Church of St. Lazarus?” Clare did her best to keep the interest out of her voice. She had always envied the Templars the rumors of their blasphemous worship of a goat-headed deity called Baphomet. Needless to say, the Lazarites had boasted no such infernal skeletons in their closet. Their theology, like everything else, was strictly missionary position.
“Oh, nothing quite that dramatic. Thank God.” The prayer sounded absolutely sincere coming from Father Gregory’s lips. “It was more a rumor that in calling on Father Enoch to aid his son, Ezra Grinnell had unleashed ... more than he expected. Nonsense, of course, but you can see how the family might find resurrecting the issue—so to speak—distasteful.”
Clare’s eyes widened. Oh, yes, she could see. In fact, she could fully appreciate the extent of the problem now. All she had needed to hear was the name Grinnell. As in the Grinnell Science Building on the far side of the All Saints campus. As well as the Grinnell Chair in Biochemistry. And the Grinnell Scholarship Fund. Not to mention half a dozen other galleries and dorms and memorial gardens that all bore the Grinnell name. And suddenly, several more puzzle pieces fell into place. Or, as Father Gregory would be more likely to put it, Clare was beginning to understand the real difficulty here: the difficulty of making sure an inopportune miracle did not offend All Saints’ largest donor. And who could blame Father Gregory for that? As a priest, Clare assumed his priorities were mixed, but as college president, they were fairly inarguable.
“You mean this boy was one of the old robber baron’s descendents?” Clare asked.
“The family prefers the term ‘visionary entrepreneur’,” Father Gregory said. “And All Saints is happy to accommodate them. Who are we to name-call, after all? But yes. Michael Grinnell was Erastus Grinnell’s great-grandson. Miraculously relieved of his affliction during the Jubilee of the Church’s construction.”
“Then it was determined to be a miracle?”
“Officially, the matter remains unresolved. The Grinnell fortune was built on pharmaceuticals, after all, and it is beyond dispute that Ezra Grinnell promised a fortune to anyone who could find a cure for his son. So it was impossible to eliminate the possibility that Michael’s cure was a product of science, not religion. Especially when Michael himself put an end to the discussion by vanishing when he was still a teenager.”
“You mean, he’s...?” How to phrase it? Raptured? Ascended? Sitting at the right hand of God?
“No one knows what happened to Michael Grinnell. No one’s seen him for nearly twenty years.” Father Gregory’s face darkened. “Although he was rumored to have been seen graveside when his father, Ezra, was buried last year. And to judge from the family’s reaction to those rumors, they would not welcome a Second Coming. So to speak.”
“Why?” Clare asked. “Do they think he’ll bring the orisha with him?”
Father Gregory shot her a sharp glance that warned her that he did not encourage a taste for speculative theology in others, either. “I’m afraid if you want an answer to that question, you’d need to ask Lukas Croswell,” he said. “He’s the only one I know who had first-hand experience of the boy.”
And the last penny dropped—with about as much force as an anvil falling out of the sky to brain Wile E. Coyote. “Lukas Croswell?” Clare said. “You mean, the father of the boy who Father Enoch is supposed to have just miraculously saved?”
“In addition to his invaluable contributions as head of All Saints’ Health Services, Lukas has often investigated saints’ causes on behalf of the Promoter of the Faith.” Father Gregory permitted himself another small smile. “Or, as no priest seems able to resist calling it, the Devil’s Advocate.”
“So Croswell works on behalf of the canon lawyer charged with eliminating any non-miraculous explanations of a saint’s cause,” Clare said. And that made it official. A logical Gordian knot that only a Jesuit could have tied. But Clare was getting the uncomfortable feeling that it was not going to be up to a Jesuit to solve it.
“And what does Dr. Croswell say about what happened to his son?”
“That his son is too traumatized to be questioned about the ... details of his resurrection.” Father Gregory raised a shoulder. “Quite an understandable attitude to take, of course, but it scarcely qualifies Dr. Croswell as the sort of dispassionate observer we need.”
Another long pause as he let her fill in the gaps for herself. Or, as Clare was certain he would put it, he relied on her obvious intelligence to perceive the extent of the problem.
“Are you asking me to investigate a possible miracle on behalf of the Promoter of the Faith?”
“Oh, hardly anything that formal. In fact, I think a verbal report might be in all our best interests. Nothing but an informal chat, really. After you’ve had a chance to examine all the evidence for yourself.”
With that, Father Gregory arose and effortlessly relieved her of both her sherry glass and her crumbled digestive biscuit, as clear a signal that they were done as if he had pronounced the Mass was ended and she should go in peace. “I have complete faith in you, Dr. Malley,” he said as he turned Clare over to his secretary for further instructions. “And I’m looking forward to receiving a lucid accounting—at your earliest convenience. Shall I ask Sister Anne to find a time on my schedule in the next few days?”