Precious Blood(30)
If Gregor thought about Roman Catholic churches at all, it was simply to conclude, vaguely, that they were much like Orthodox and Armenian ones. For hundreds of years after the Great Schism, right up to the Council of Trent, the three had offered pretty much the same Mass in pretty much the same words, although in different languages. The Schism was more a political than a theological event. When the Armenian Church had gone off on its own, there had been a theological break—but the Armenian Church was profoundly conservative liturgically, and the services hadn’t changed enough for anyone but a Patriarch to notice. The organization of parishes hadn’t changed at all. St. Agnes’s, Gregor had decided, without really thinking it through, would be a lot like Holy Trinity back in Philadelphia.
As it turned out, that wasn’t true, although Gregor had a hard time figuring out why. He got up at five-thirty in the morning, distinctly uncomfortable from hunger—lentil beans didn’t stay with you, no matter how much olive oil and onions you mixed in with them—and having nothing else to do, stationed himself at the window to pass the time until he could go over to the convent for breakfast. He had no idea what nuns ate, but the bread-and-water rumors of his childhood hardly seemed creditable. Even if they didn’t have what he wanted—which was about four pounds of well-fried bacon—they ought to have something that looked like real food. After all, Catholics only gave up one thing for Lent. Not life.
His room was a small square box with a brass-and-walnut crucifix hanging over a prie-dieu on one wall and a narrow cot covered with a gray army blanket against the other. The closet was big enough for four or five brooms and contained only three hangers. The chair was the sturdy wooden flat-backed kind that had once been a staple of parochial-school classrooms. The only redeeming feature of the place, Gregor thought, was the view: straight into the middle of the courtyard.
He rummaged around in his suitcase for his robe, noticed that George’s pink tie seemed to be fraying at the edges, and abandoned the tie to wrap himself up in plaid wool flannel. Rosary House was not enamored of overheating. He picked up the chair, dragged it over to the window, and sat down. It was still dark out, but the courtyard was very brightly lit. It was a solid square patch of city lot, anchored on the intersection corner by the church itself and on the Ellery Street corner by what Gregor was sure must be the school. The fire doors were a distinct giveaway. Rosary House occupied the center of the back stretch of lot. Like the building to its left, it fronted on no street. The building to its right fronted Carver. Gregor had no way of knowing which of these was the convent and which the rectory, but he did know each had to be one or the other. The Carver Street building was the smallest on the lot and the most advantageously placed of the three smaller buildings. Gregor mentally assigned it to the priests and hoped he was right.
At 5:45 just as the church bells rang the three-quarters hour, the church lights began to go on, rank after rank of them starting in the center of the building and marching outward to the front door. The peaked stained-glass windows that made up most of the wall on Gregor’s side of the church spilled light onto the courtyard sidewalks. Into that light came the tall figure of a nun in veil and cape. Gregor had no trouble recognizing her as Sister Mary Scholastica. She strode to the side of the church, opened a door near the back Gregor hadn’t noticed before, and disappeared downward. A moment later she reappeared, in the company of a smaller woman in a long brown coat. The smaller woman looked to Gregor as pregnant as anyone could get.
Gregor was sure the women would go back into the church again, or go somewhere else. It was cold out there, and the wind was very strong. He could tell that much by the way Sister Scholastica’s habit whipped around her legs. Instead, the two women stood there, talking and gesturing, seemingly oblivious to the freeze. In a few minutes they were joined by yet another woman. This one was very blond and very bright, with a red coat and red boots and red leather gloves to match. Even at a distance, she looked expensive as hell.
I wonder what this is about, Gregor thought. The blond woman was more vehement than Sister Scholastica or her pregnant friend. She shook her head and stamped her feet and threw her arms into the air. Sister Scholastica folded her arms across her chest and looked as bullish as she was probably being. The pregnant woman fluttered. Then the blond woman shot out her hand, grabbed the pregnant woman by the wrist, and started tugging her off toward Ellery Street.
Sister Scholastica stood her ground until the other two were out of sight. Then she straightened her veil, turned around, and went back down the steps into the church. Seconds later, the church bells began to ring six o’clock, and a man Gregor didn’t recognize raced out of the Carver Street building, hatless, coatless, and with his Roman collar flapping loose at one side. He, too, disappeared through the back door of the church.