18
Father Mark casually calling the only alternative to being chained to a bed, “Mr. Everington’s plan B,” had me on my way to Lucas’s room straight away.
“It’s not an option! And I’ll make sure he knows it!” My subconscious could whisper as much as it liked, I didn’t want Father Mark dead! I’d popped in to see Lucas on the way to the hospital, but this warranted another visit.
He did look surprised to see me. Pleased, though. If slightly anxious. “All right, Margaret?”
“I’m fine, Lucas.” How many times had I told that lie, already? And how on earth was I going to put this? “I’ve just been to see Father Mark.”
Lucas nodded gravely. “Brave man.”
I blinked. “Yes. Look…” Nothing for it, blunt it was. “You’re not thinking of killing him, are you?”
His eyes widened slightly, and he was silent for a moment longer than usual before replying. “Room secure. All okay.”
Evasive, much! “Lucas,” I said sternly.
He shrugged and spread his hands. “Margaret, everyone’s thought about it at least once by now. The guards. The camera fellow. Bane. Definitely thought it!”
“Father Mark’s one of Bane’s best friends!”
“Yes.” Lucas fixed me with a particularly sane look. “But you’re the other half of him.”
I swallowed. Stupid to think it hadn’t crossed Bane’s mind. No sin in a passing thought, though, only if you let it settle. You might want to bear that in mind yourself, hmm, Margo? “You can’t kill Father Mark, Lucas.”
“Could. Easy. He wouldn’t fight.”
“I meant you mustn’t!”
“Oh.” He combed his fingers through his neat blond hair, staring at me gravely. “Wasn’t going to, Margaret. Last resort idea. Saw it in my eyes, did he?”
“Yes, he did.”
“Shouldn’t have told you.”
“He was afraid you could get into trouble. And he’s right. Don’t kill anyone, Lucas, okay?”
He stared at me and didn’t answer.
“Unless they’re literally about to kill me or someone else and there’s no…less permanent…solution, okay?”
He smiled and nodded. “Unless,” he agreed cheerfully.
Men!
27 days
I’ve been thinking about Snakey’s parents, recently. We’ve been trying to make contact with them, since what happened. I do hope that they don’t feel in any way betrayed by what happened in Brussels. But I’m also convinced that however they feel about it now, Georg Friedrich’s survival is ultimately in their best interests. Because only reconciliation can ever truly bring them peace, not revenge.
Margaret Verrall—blog post, ‘The Impatient Gardener’
Taking my fertility chart from the drawer, I put it in my lap and opened it, thermometer in my mouth. I’d not done my checks since— My finger went to the graph, tracing the shape gently…there, that was where my temperature had leapt up on the day I’d found out…and all along here, oh, the relief of marking that higher level, day after day.
But today…today it would drop.
Fumbling the pen into my hand, I took the thermometer from my mouth, but it was no use. I had to slam the book closed. If I looked at that chart for one more second I was going to lose it.
“Okay, Margo?” asked Bane.
“Fine. And you?”
“Oh, I’m okay. I might actually be able to do something for the vote today, you know? Jon’s talking about getting someone to film us practicing with the nonLees, so he can use it for his ‘Disabilities are only as limiting as you allow them to be’ campaign. Clearly I must be improving.”
“According to Jon, you’re doing really well. Other than…” I hid a smile.
Bane winced. “Has everyone heard about that?”
“It was totally Trainee Wayland’s fault. Even if it is a nonLee range, you don’t just stroll along to adjust your target whenever you feel like it.”
Bane grinned. “Yeah. The headache was the least of his problems. By the time Eduardo finished with him I think he wished I’d been using a Lethal!”
Lucas’s faint memories of the awesomeness of St. Peter’s had won out against the threat of people—who looked like them. Point to St. Peter’s. Lucas was still doing his hiding and scuttling in the corridors, and he wouldn’t enter the lift—too like a cell?—but we reached the mighty basilica without incident. Fortunately it was pretty close.
We walked in and he went ‘wow’, his eyes widening. I genuflected to the tabernacle, then stood for a moment. Lord, Lucas is so hungry. Feed him, please?
My hungry companion was staring at me. “Why do you go down on your knee like that?”
“Because Our Lord is here in this place. Physically present. You see that gold dove hanging under that huge bronze awning? He’s in there.”
Lucas thought about that, eyes intent on the ‘dove’ now, despite the awesome building. “Can I see?”
“Uh…” Okay, should’ve seen that one coming! “Well, the Host is often displayed for Adoration, but I can’t just get Him out for you; a priest would have to. There’s not much to see with the eyes, though. It looks like a small, round piece of crisp bread.”
More thought. “So how do you know it’s really God?”
“Because a long time ago, when God was among us as a human being, He told us it was.”
Lucas clearly knew enough about our stream of the Underground that the whole God-coming-as-man didn’t leave him bewildered, and he nodded acceptance of this answer. “God should know.”
“Well, yes. Have you…read up on the different streams before, Lucas?”
He nodded. Who’d have thought? An EGD Security Major well-versed in forbidden knowledge.
“Actually,” I told him, “did you know there are some people from other streams here at the moment for a big meeting with Pope Cornelius?”
He just shook his head. “Not interested. This is the only one that really made sense. If God cares. Seen a lot of…” His eyes went haunted and conscious-stricken. “Seen a lot of…of Underground executions. Well…seen them brought in. All very brave, whatever stream. All very certain. But this stream…something. Joy? Something…unexplainable. Always drew me. Just didn’t know.” He shot a sidelong look at me—still didn’t know. Not yet.
Did I?
25 days
I did three years in the EuroArmy before being recruited for SpecialOps. After another year with them, they said they wanted me to infiltrate a Resistance cell. I’d had three friends killed by the Resi-rats by then, so I was all for it.
It was hard at first, being Resistance. SpecialOps had taught me to kill ruthlessly, but the Resistance wanted me to kill the people I was really protecting. But I had my orders from HQ. Kill anyone they want you to kill. Your job is to protect the majority. Never focus on the individual. So I followed my orders. Hesitation would’ve cost me my life.
Georg Friedrich—interview for the ‘Maltese Herald’
“You know, St. Peter’s is a bit of a breakthrough for Lucas,” I told Father Mark, a few days later. “He likes it so much he sneaks along there on his own. Tucks himself away in a crevice of some ancient tomb or side altar, which does no harm to anyone, except making the guards jump occasionally.”
Usually to be found in the vicinity of the ‘dove’, which fascinated him, though he was more normally staring at the flowers at the foot of the altar below. The Head Gardener liked flowers alive and growing, just like Lucas—he lined the old vases with plastic and transplanted plants into them for a week at a time.
Father Mark smiled sleepily. Not feeling like talking but happy to have me babble at him. Lucas was a nice safe topic.
“I had to persuade him not to remove the flowers from the altars—he kept wanting to look at them,” I went on. “And the other day Father Simeon—the Sacristan, you know, he didn’t mean any harm, bless him—but he was a little too persistent trying to get Lucas to put them back. Lucas went into total panic mode and ended up at the top of the tallest tomb in St. Peter’s.”
I sighed, still half-dismayed, half-amused by the incident. “The Sacristan had to send for me and a ladder—the ladder for me, I don’t know how Lucas got up there; he certainly can climb.”
Father Mark smiled again in acknowledgement of this tale as I leaned to examine the plant on the bedside table. Something about it had been bugging me for several days.
“This isn’t even the same one!” My plant recognition skills had improved markedly of late. In fact… “This is one of Lucas’s, isn’t it?”
Father Mark blinked and cranked his mind into conversational mode. “Man’s been bringing me a different one every day. Don’t think he trusts anyone here enough to leave one long-term.”
“Lucas has been here?”
“Every day, Margaret, and my throat remains intact, so relax.”
Father Mark could now just about think and talk around the nasty headache he got when doctors were present. But apart from the psychologists’ necessarily brief sessions, he hadn’t much to occupy him. Hmm…
Lucas watched lots of Masses from his hidey-holes, and he was asking a lot of questions. Really good ones, too. I was occasionally having to look up the answers. Perhaps Father Mark could get him talking and handle those.
24 days
The orders came down from Reginald Hill himself. I was to travel to Monaco, still as the Resistance fighter whose cover I’d spent the last five years perfecting, and take out Margaret Verrall. If captured, an ‘escape’ would be arranged. I’d have to lie low out-of-bloc until the furor died down, then I’d get a new identity and return to work with SpecialOps. Out of consideration for the disruption to my life during that period, I would get a special bounty of 100,000 eurons. Of course, I knew it wasn’t really for the ‘disruption,’ it was because of the nature of the job, but all the same. Who wouldn’t leap at an offer like that? 100,000 eurons just for doing my duty and I’d get out of the Resistance alive, too!
The thing they forgot to tell me was that Reginald Hill is a conniving, back-stabbing, treacherous murderer and Margaret Verrall is the complete opposite. So despite the fact I’m now stuck at this touchy-feely farm, I’m actually genuinely glad that for the first time in my life I failed to complete my mission. It saved my life.
And by the way, if I could vote, I’d vote no!
Georg Friedrich—interview for the ‘Monte Carlo Gazette’
Kyle’s accusations were still niggling me, however hard I tried to put them from my mind. And the opinion poll I’d just seen wasn’t good news. Three points lead to the EuroGov…
Was it possible I’d actually get five minutes prayer time? I hurried towards a favorite curtained-off side chapel in St. Peter’s, hardly daring to think the thought too hard. I raised a hand to move aside the curtain and paused—a voice was speaking inside.
“Obviously it’s wonderful when someone asks for baptism, but you must understand that I am obliged to ascertain the motivation behind the request.”
Bother, Pope Cornelius was in the chapel with someone, and it sounded like a private conversation. I’d go to the main altar…
I turned that way, but— Wait a minute, Jon was over there. He’d not left Bane on his own, had he?
“Motivation?”
Hang on, that was Bane!
“Yes. Why are you suddenly asking for baptism? The truth, please.”
I heard Bane’s resigned sigh. I should leave…but my ears were trying to strain right through the curtain. Not all that hopefully, ’cause this was the first I’d heard of any spiritual awakening.
“Well, I’m sure Margo told you what happened, before we went to Brussels. Thing is, she’s still really worried, doesn’t want to leave me on my own—comes up with all these excuses, but it’s obvious enough. I can’t stand it that I’ve done this to her, made her so scared. And I know what a downer you people have on…doing that to yourself…so I thought if I got baptized, it would, y’know, maybe convince her I really wasn’t going to.”
Pope Cornelius’s turn to sigh. “Bane, wanting to reassure your wife is a commendable thing, but it is not an appropriate reason to take upon yourself something so serious and life-changing as baptism. You must know I have to say no.”
Bane sighed again. “Yeah, I was honest. Look what it got me?”
Pope Cornelius’s voice went a little sterner. “Do you really not realize, Bane Verrall, what it would mean to your wife, if you were to seek baptism for the right reasons? Unless you have another reason you are reluctant to share, no is the answer and you should thank me for it.”
A long, long silence from Bane. “No other reason,” he muttered at last, rather fiercely. And after another moment of silence, “Thank you, I s’pose.”
22 days
Imagine being able to actually think about spiritual matters—just think about them—without that gnawing terror that someone might find out. That, specifically, the Department for the Eradication of Superstition might find out. If that sounds attractive, well, don’t forget that in 22 days, you can make it happen.
Margaret Verrall—blog post, ‘The Impatient Gardener’
Even now, walking over the grass with the flowerbeds around me, my heart thumped too hard as I found myself thinking, as ever, about the Vote which now seemed to be hurtling towards us like an out-of-control freight train. No more restfully, my mind insisted on listing the things I had to do in the rest of the day.
Visit Father Mark—no improvement there, alas.
Check and post the blog I’d written yesterday.
Answer as many comments and comment on as many other blogs as I could.
Write that article requested by an actual EuroBloc newspaper. Absolutely must do that.
Spend some time with Bane before he forgot what his wife…sounded like.
Prayer lists, how many days had it been since I’d even managed to pick one up?
Even the crush of things to do faded from my mind as we drew close to a certain unmarked grave. Don’t think about it, Margo. Not until you tell Bane.
But my treacherous mind was already picturing a little child, hair dark as Bane’s, running across the grass, laughing…
Never. It would never be.
Maybe one day. A child. So long as nothing was actually…damaged—oh Lord, let that not be so. But never the one I’d loved so hard those few short weeks. The one Father Mark had—
“Margaret?”
A question? I shoved the thoughts into my mental ‘baby box’ and slammed the lid. Until three days ago, only St. Peter’s, with its awesomeness and the call of the ‘dove’, and the hospital, with its familiarity, had seemed sufficiently non-threatening destinations for Lucas to creep from his room. But he’d finally let me tempt him out into the Vatican gardens to see where all his plants came from, and it was already clear this was going to be a permanent alteration to our routine. Because Lucas did love the gardens, but for some reason he’d only venture out there if I went with him. So we’d started going for a walk after reading the Office and doing all the questions and answers out there.
I absolutely did not mind. Nice to get outside.
What had Lucas found? Oh, a particularly lovely specimen of…something yellow and petally…growing in a rockery. I went to look. “Is it a good one?”
His finger traced the rim of a petal. “Fine shape.”
“It is very even.”
That familiar flash of amused condescension flitted through his eyes. “No…right shape, see.” He traced the petal again, then located an inferior specimen and turned back to me. “This not—”
His eyes narrowed into instant, intense focus on something over my shoulder—he dived into me—a sinister hiss—only as I was falling in a strange slow motion did my mind catch up.
Danger…