He is a long time chewing on it. “Why would they do that?”
“I don’t know.”
“He won’t talk to you?”
“He’s under house arrest.”
More silence.
“If you can figure out where they took him,” I say, “that would give me someplace to start.”
The Guard has sentries all over the papal palace.
“Of course,” he says. “I’ll find him.” But his voice drifts in uncertainty. Quietly he adds, “Simon didn’t do it, though. Right?”
My brother at his strangest, at his most inscrutable. Even to a friend, Simon seems capable of anything. God knows what a panel of three judges will think.
* * *
FINALLY, FLOATING OVERHEAD, WE see lights burning on the hilltop. We’ve reached the old medieval tower that has a new Vatican Radio antenna rising from its roof. Connected to it by a wall covered with satellite dishes is another of John Paul’s construction projects: a convent for our tiny community of Benedictine nuns.
“I’ll stay back,” Leo says.
He doesn’t ask what we’re doing. He knows Helena lives here.
I ring the convent bell. No one answers. A light is on in one of the windows, but there are no sounds inside. Still, I wait. Every Benedictine house in the world, for the past sixteen hundred years, has obeyed a rule that guests must be greeted as if they’re Christ.
At last the door opens. Before me is a round-faced woman with plain eyeglasses in a white wimple. Everything else—black veil, black tunic, black cincture, black scapular—blends into the darkness.
“Sister, I’m Father Alex Andreou,” I say. “My son is the boy Sister Helena watches. Would it be possible for me to speak to her?”
She studies me in silence. Only seven nuns live in this priory—it isn’t even large enough to qualify as an abbey—so the women all know each other’s business. I wonder how much they know about me.
“Would you wait in the chapel, Father,” she says, “while I fetch her?”
But in the chapel the other sisters might overhear us. “If it’s the same to you,” I tell her, “I’ll wait in the garden.”
She unlocks the gate and acts as if I have every right to be here, even though the sisters do the sowing and harvesting, and the pope gets the produce. There are no Benedictines in my church—Greeks have an older tradition of monasticism—but I admire these women and their unselfishness.
While I wait, I pace the garden rows. Every Vatican boy steals fruit from these trees, and every pope turns a blind eye. Finally a sound comes from the gate: the faintest swish of a habit. When I turn, Prioress Maria Teresa hovers before me.
“Father,” she says with a small gesture of deference. “Welcome. May I help you?”
She has a gentle face, younger than its age, darkened only by the pockets of loose skin beneath her eyes. But her expression is solemn. I’ve come during the Great Silence, the hours after compline prayers when Benedictines don’t speak. Only the rule of hospitality trumps the Silence.
“Actually, I’d hoped to speak to Sister Helena,” I say.
“Yes. And she’ll speak to you, briefly, in a moment.”
I assume the prioress has come down as a courtesy, since Uncle Lucio is the cardinal-protector of her branch of Benedictines, the man who represents their collective interest at the Vatican. And yet there’s no deference in her voice when she continues, “This will be the only time I allow Sister Helena to involve herself, or our community, in this matter. I hope you understand.”