The Day of Atonement by Breck England

Author:Breck England [England, Breck]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Mango Media
Published: 2018-10-30T09:52:53+00:00

טשנדוס

“Chandos,” all three of them said at once.

Antonine Study House, Rome, 1100h

The commendatore’s personal car stopped in front of a worn-looking building with grimy steps on which sat a begging Gypsy. They often chose the entrance to convents for this purpose, although the Study House of the Antonine Order was not strictly a convent—it was a dormitory for the nuns who attended schools in the city. Two young women burst laughing out of the building and down the steps on their way to class. In their thin white tops and dark jumpers, they looked like ordinary high-school students except for the white veils that nested their hair. Nearly running down Father John Paul Stone, imposing in his great cassock and coat as he emerged from the big car, they shivered to a stop. He smiled down at them and they continued at a fast clip down the street.

Stone, Maryse, and the commander of the Vatican police, dressed in a plain business suit, had arrived unescorted to avoid attention. In the open entry was a staircase overhung by a darkening, heavily lacquered painting of the Virgin crowned with bluish stars, bearing her child in her arms and looking up into a tempestuous heaven. No one guarded the door, so Stone stepped back outside and pressed the door buzzer. They heard a stirring upstairs.

To Maryse the place was cold but comforting. The smell of books, cleaning fluids and incensed clothing reminded her of her sanctuary at Paris. In a place like this, the mind and the soul could function undisturbed and still find enough friendship to stave off loneliness. From somewhere in the building came the rich echoes of recorded chant. A cheerful dark-eyed little woman suddenly appeared at the top of the stairs.

“I’m sorry; I didn’t realize anyone was here,” she said in English, clucking upward at the apparent source of the chant. Father Stone made his request, and the woman shuttled away, her robes fluttering.

Soon she came back accompanied by another woman, beckoned them up the stairs, and left them. Maryse judged that the woman standing there was about her own age, which surprised her. The rich caramel skin was offset by graying hair and a trace of aging in the dark flush around her eyes. Thin, even spindly, she was shivering in her black dress and had clearly been crying.

This was the wife of the late Monsignor.

“Fatima Chandos,” Father Stone introduced her with authority in his voice. “Signora Chandos, these people are from the police and they insist on speaking with you.” The woman gave him a questioning but trusting look and motioned them into a sitting room, bare but for a few chairs, a thready plant struggling for light from the window, and a single blue and white icon of the Resurrection hanging on the wall. Maryse automatically judged it a recent work, though original and no copy.

They sat, and Father Stone explained. “Signora Chandos has been staying here in the Study House as a guest. It was a temporary arrangement until the council ended.

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