Given the absence of physical artifacts, this story had been officially dismissed by the Catholic Church as a Protestant story concocted to embarrass the Church and the Papacy. Yet there were etchings of Pope Joan and footnotes in a hundred ancient, illuminated manuscripts. There was even a small, disfigured shrine to Pope Joan on a small street not far from St. Peter’s Square.
This old story troubled Graham’s soul. It was why he was afraid for Brigid when people spoke of her as “miraculous,” and why for so long he had been unable to find satisfaction or love or even sleep.
Graham took a chair in front of the screen displaying those rapt, excited, tormented faces and carefully considered his options.
Should he wait, observe, and report the facts that were unfolding before him? Should he do his job? Or should he commit journalism’s greatest sin by interfering in this true epic drama? If he did that, he might very well change the outcome.
TWO
CAMBRIDGE, MASSACHUSETTS
I WAS TRYING to get my seven-year-old, Gillian, ready for the day. She is a funny little girl, bratty and bright. And clever. And slippery. She’s the apple, peach, and plum of my eye, and I love her to pieces. Thank you, God.
It was Easter Sunday, and Gilly was in the closet trying on various articles of clothing, some of which were actually hers, and she was telling me about her dream.
“I finally found out where the polar bears went.”
“Oh. So, where did they go?”
She leaned out of the closet, showing me her darling face, her bouncing curls, and her bony shoulders.
“Gilly, you have to get dressed. Come on, now.”
“They were on the moon, Mom. They were on the moon. And I was there. I had a special car with skis instead of wheels, and, even though it was nighttime, it was soooo bright that I could see the bears everywhere. You know why they’re on the moon?”
“Why?” I said, lacing up my shoes.
“Because the moon is made of ice. The ice covers the oceans of the moon.”
People had been talking about colonizing the moon for the better part of a hundred years. It was still an impossible hope. A total fantasy. But there it was every night, right up there, pristine, visible, and with historic human footprints still in the moon dust. And now Gilly’s dreamed-up polar bears were not facing earthly extinction. They were partying on the moon.
As Gilly, now back in the closet, told me, “the man in the moon” provided the bears with food and volleyball.
I laughed, thinking about that, and she said, “I’m not kidding, Mom.”
I was folding up the discarded clothes Gilly had flung all over the room when I heard her cry out for me.
“Honey, what is it? What?”
She came out of the closet showing me the blood coming from the web between her thumb and forefinger of her left hand. She still held a piece of broken lightbulb.
“It just rolled off the shelf and broke.”
“Let me see.”
She showed me the glass, with its sharp edges.
“No, silly, show me your cut.”
She held out her hand, and droplets of blood fell on the front of her chosen Easter dress, a froth of ruffled pink with an over-skirt of spangled tulle. It was excruciating, the sweetness and the vulnerability of this little girl. I stifled my urge to cry and said, “Let’s fix this. Okay?”
A few minutes later, Gilly’s finger was washed and bandaged, the glass shards were in a box in the trash, and now I was focused again on the time.
Gilly wriggled into her second-best dress, a blue one with a sash of embroidered daisies.
“Gorgeous,” I said.
I stepped into my clean white surplice, and peering into a small mirror propped on the bookcase, I finger-combed my unruly ginger hair.
“You look beautiful, Mom,” she said, wrapping her arms around my waist.
I grinned down at her. “Thank you. Now, put on your shoes.”
“We’re not late, you know.”
“Not yet, anyway. Let’s go, silly Gilly. Let’s go.”
THREE
I BRACED MYSELF, then Gilly and I stepped out onto the stoop.
The shifting crowd filling the street roared. Communicants, neighbors, people who had come here to catch a glimpse of me, ordinary people of every age and description, reached out their hands, lifted their babies, and chanted my name.
“Bri-gid! Bri-gid!”
I’d seen this outpouring of passion before, and still I wasn’t sure how to act. Sometimes the mood of a crowd turned dark. I’d seen that, too.
Gilly said, “Mom. You’ll be all right.”
She waved, and the crowd went wild again.
And then they pushed forward, toward the stoop. News broadcasters, megabloggers, televangelists, and entertainment-TV hosts pointed their microphones toward me, asking, “Brigid, are the rumors true? Have you gotten the call? Are you ready to go?”
I had answered their questions in the past but was always asked for more, and by now, I didn’t have any more. Gilly was too small to walk through this groundswell, so I hoisted her up, and with her arms around my neck and her legs around my waist, I stepped carefully down to the street, where the crowd was at eye level.
“Hey, everyone,” I said as I waded into the river of people. “Beautiful Easter Sunday, isn’t it? I would stop to talk, but we have to get going. We’ll be late.”
“Just one question,” shouted Jason Beans, a reporter from the Boston Globe who liked to be called Papa. He was wearing a button on his lapel, the single letter Y, which stood for the all-inclusive, universal question about everything: the heat waves, the long, frigid winters, the eerily brilliant sunsets, and the ever-warming, rising seas. Why?
“We can walk and talk,” Beans was saying. He was standing between me and other reporters who were angling for their “just one question.”
I kind of liked the somewhat annoying Jason Beans, but Gilly and I couldn’t risk getting swallowed up by this crowd. We had to move.
“Have you gotten the call from the Vatican?” Beans asked.
“Aww, Papa. It’s a rumor, nothing more. And that’s the really big scoop. Now, pleeease pardon me. I have to go to church. I have a Mass to say.”
“Bri-gid! Bri-gid!”
Flowers flew at me, and hands grabbed at my skirts, and Jason Beans stepped in front of us and wedged open a path. Gilly and I drafted behind him. We crossed the street, and there, midblock, stood the homey brick church that had anchored this neighborhood for a century.
People crowded us from all directions, calling out, “We love you, Brigid. Brigid, will you remember us when you’re living in Rome?”
“I remember you right here and now, Luann. See you in church.”
By the time we reached the entrance to St. Paul’s, thousands were being funneled through the narrow streets, toward the entrance, and they understood that only a few hundred would fit inside the small neighborhood church. The panic was starting. They all wanted to see me.
Gilly was twisting in my arms, waving, laughing into the crook of my neck. “Mom, this is so great.”
With Beans acting as the tip of the spear, I entered the sacristy with my daughter still in my arms. I thanked the reporter, who shot his last, desperate questions at me.
I told him, “I’ll see you after Mass, Papa, I promise,” and closed the door.
I let Gilly down, and she fed our pet tabby cat, Birdie. Then my little girl ran out to the nave and squeezed her way into a front pew. I crossed myself, and hoping that I would find the right words, I walked out to the altar.
The air was supercharged with expectation.
I looped the stole around my neck and stepped up to the altar. But instead of beginning the Mass in the traditional manner, I spoke to the congregation in the most personal way I knew how.
“That was a pretty rough scene out on DeWolfe Street,” I said to the congregants. “But I’m glad we’re all together now on this momentous Easter Sund
ay. We have a lot to reflect upon and much to pray for.”
A bearded man jumped to his feet at the rear of the church and called my name, demanding my attention.
“Look here, Brigid. Look at me.”
Did I know him? I couldn’t make out his face from where I stood, but then he walked up the aisle, crossed himself, and slipped his hand into his jacket.
In front of me, Gilly shouted, “Mom!” her face contorted in fear. But before I could speak to my precious daughter, I heard a cracking sound and felt a punch to my shoulder. I reached my hand out to Gilly.
There was another crack, and I staggered back and grabbed at the altar cloth, pulling it and everything on the altar down around me.
I fought hard to stay in the present. I tried to get to my feet, but I was powerless. The light dimmed. The screams faded, and I was dropping down into a bottomless blackness, and I couldn’t break my fall.
This ebook is copyright material and must not be copied, reproduced, transferred, distributed, leased, licensed or publicly performed or used in any way except as specifically permitted in writing by the publishers, as allowed under the terms and conditions under which it was purchased or as strictly permitted by applicable copyright law. Any unauthorized distribution or use of this text may be a direct infringement of the author’s and publisher’s rights and those responsible may be liable in law accordingly.
Epub ISBN: 9781473536432
Version 1.0
Published by Century 2016
1 3 5 7 9 10 8 6 4 2
Copyright © James Patterson, 2016
Excerpt from Woman of God copyright © James Patterson 2016
Front cover photomontage features images from Arcangel, Getty Images and WorldFoto/Alamy Stock Photo
James Patterson has asserted his right under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act, 1988, to be identified as the author of this work.
First published in Great Britain in 2016 by Century
Century
The Penguin Random House Group Limited
20 Vauxhall Bridge Road, London, SW1V 2SA
www.penguin.co.uk
Century is part of the Penguin Random House group of companies whose addresses can be found at global.penguinrandomhouse.com
A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
ISBN 9781780895437
James Patterson, Never Never
(Series: Detective Harriet Blue # 1)
Thank you for reading books on BookFrom.Net Share this book with friends