Shannon

  “You do know what I mean.” Sevovicz leaned forward and stabbed the air. “You know perfectly what I mean. Why do you do it? Do you know what will happen to you?”

  Vincent, fully aware of his bayonet and barely respectful, said, “Your Grace, you must explain to me what you mean.”

  “He who lives by the sword perishes by the sword. Go away somewhere. Do not trouble people. Join the French Foreign Legion. They conceal men like you.”

  “You have not said what you mean.”

  Sevovicz ignored him. “Or, better, heal yourself. My Robert— my Father Shannon— will become a Prince of the Church because he has healed himself. He has done the necessary thing in life for great healing: He has made the great journey, he has returned to who he was, to where he and his family came from, in the deepest way. That is a healing process.”

  Ellie appeared at the top of the stairs. She never praised her own appearance; her vanity, such as it was, lay in her work. But this morning she looked glorious and she knew it; she had taken the greatest care with her appearance and put on a red shirtwaist dress with cream flowers.

  “Good morning, Your Grace. Good morning, Vincent.” She kept her voice light and playful.

  Both men stood up.

  “I must go,” Vincent said.

  Now Robert appeared. “Is this a conference?” he said, fresh and light. “Goodbye, Captain Shannon— Robert.” “Ohhhhh!” Robert took Vincent's hand. “Breakfast?” “I have a long journey ahead of me. Thank you, ma'am, for your hospitality.”

  “Goodbye,” said Sevovicz, and opened the yellow front door. The moment Vincent had gone out, Sevovicz closed the door with a slam.

  Ellie had planned breakfast in the kitchen; she wanted Sevovicz on her own territory. As she led the way she knew that the atmosphere in the house had lightened. Her thoughts buzzed. One problem solved; another problem arrived. What's to be done now? If this archbishop finds out the house arrangements, he'll want to take Robert away immediately. And Robert isn't strong enough to resist. He'll go to the bishop or the parish priest and say, A priest of mine has been deceived into living immorally. I need your help.

  Suddenly wracked by relief at the stranger's departure, Ellie sat down on one of the settles as though poleaxed. Now I want this bloody man out of here. He's just as dangerous to us as the other fellow was.

  Resourceful as ever, she formulated the plan that would give her what she wanted— and what she believed was best for Robert. They would take to the road. Robert still had his ancestral search to complete. They would make arrangements to meet Sevovicz at the port of Limerick. And we'll simply not show up. I need to think it through. But if we stay here, this bloody fellow has the advantage.

  She began to hustle and bustle, preparing breakfast. Talking and talking, Robert and Sevovicz made their way along the passage to the lobby. She listened to them through the open door.

  “Ellie's father was a doctor. He died just after the war, and so did her mother, so she's all alone here. Or was until I arrived.”

  Ellie winced. He's so innocent. He'll next be telling this man what we do in bed.

  Sevovicz appeared in the kitchen first. He sat at the table— in Robert's chair.

  “Um— Your Grace.”

  “Yes,” he boomed.

  “Robert sits there.”

  “He won't mind.”

  “But I will.”

  “Oh, my dear miss, you must learn to distinguish between the important and the silly. That is what makes doctors different from nurses.”

  He might as well have jabbed her with a red-hot poker.

  “I believe that it is good behavior to act well as a guest,” she said.

  He looked at her as though she had slapped him— which, in a way, she had.

  “Very well. Where would you like me to sit?”

  “In the place where we always seat our honored guests”—and she pulled out the long bench on the far side of the table.

  Sevovicz rose as deliberately as he presided over funerals, walked the long way around the table, and sat down elaborately. She wins the first round. I must watch this woman; she is experienced. She will not win again.

  Robert arrived and sat down. “Do you like my chair, Your Grace?”

  Behind him, Ellie gave a see? glance to Sevovicz, which he noticed.

  “Now, Robert, we must make your arrangements. You are about to receive a very great honor from the Holy Father himself. Some chaplains of that terrible war are to be made monsignori, and you are the leading honoree.”

  “Wonderful,” said Ellie, in the tone she might use praising an enemy.

  Robert looked from one to the other. “How long will I be away?”

  Sevovicz was about to say, You will live in Rome, when he saw Ellie raise a shushing finger behind Robert's back.

  “The journey will take a week or so.”

  “Can Ellie come? Will you come?” he asked, turning his head.

  “We'll sit down later and work out all the details,” she said, and continued to cook.

  Sevovicz looked around the kitchen. “How many objects, Robert?”

  “What do you mean, Your Grace?”

  “I spy with my little eye. Remember?”

  Robert laughed. “I'm long past that stage, Your Grace. Ellie, did I tell you? They used to get me to play I Spy, to see whether my memory was returning.” To Sevovicz he said, “I don't need that anymore. My memory is coming back all the time.”

  Ellie served breakfast. The archbishop, remembering how food improved Robert, waited until they had all finished eating— and then he leaned forward. At last his moment had arrived. Now he could clinch his mission; now he could uncover what it was that Robert knew from the archdiocese, the thing that had so unhinged him. At last he had come to the point of unhorsing William O'Connell and thereby getting the preference he so ambitiously wanted from Rome.

  For months of close attention he had waited for Robert to recall and then tell what he knew about the Archdiocese of Boston. Over and over Sevovicz had asked himself the same question: What could it be?

  Everybody knew about the two marriages, the embezzlements, the cooked property deals, the criminal advisers. And now, it seemed, everybody knew about what Sevovicz thought of as the pansy life of Gangplank Bill. Would those facts by themselves have been enough to send this recovered war hero back into shock?

  Whatever it was must have been extraordinarily awful to have tipped him so far and so completely over the edge. Could it have been as bad as murder? In the archbishop's own house? One heard all sorts of rumors coming out of there. If it was serious enough to cause a young man of great integrity such damage, it was serious enough to close O'Connell down.

  This was the task Rome had sent him to do. Giovanni Bonzano, the legate, had even hinted that if the Holy Father had to replace O'Connell, the See of Boston would be open, wouldn't it? And it could only be filled by an archbishop. Sevovicz replayed all these questions and details over and over and over.

  One of the reasons why Sevovicz irked people had to do with his ego. He knew a big moment when he saw one, and he had the gift of drawing attention to it. But he was as unsubtle as a huge spotlight and he plunked himself down in the middle of any histrionics that happened to be around. In part, that accounted for the reason he had come to Ireland. He wanted— he needed— to be where such drama might be about to take place. It offered opportunities for him.

  Even when he was a young man, he had had the force of presence to stop a room dead— as he did now. So powerfully did he create and hold a pause that the temperature in Ellie's kitchen seemed to drop.

  “Robert, my dear boy. Time to talk. Your days in the chancery. How much do you remember?”

  Ellie, unable to hear the ticking of the bomb, chimed in. “His memory is perfect again. I was in France, I saw the same things Robert did. He remembers them perfectly.”

  “Excellent, oh, this is excellent.” Sevovicz turned to Ellie. “But this is Robert's second re
covery. Did he tell you that?”

  Ellie said nothing.

  Sevovicz said, “That is what I meant, miss, when I said there were things you didn't know. Robert had a relapse when he worked for His Eminence, didn't you, Robert?”

  Robert said cheerfully, “I certainly did.”

  Again, Sevovicz held the pause. Ellie waited. Robert alone seemed un-fazed.

  “Do you recall what it was that you saw or heard that caused the relapse?”

  “Oh, I do, Your Grace. I remember everything.”

  “Everything?”

  “Yes, I do. I have remembered for some time.”

  It took Sevovicz an enormous effort to contain his elation. A stroking of one palm with the fingers of the other hand would have betrayed his excitement— but only to those who knew him well, and none of them were here to see this.

  “So, Robert, my dear boy can you tell us—” Sevovicz rose abruptly. “Perhaps this is something that only I should hear. As your spiritual adviser.”

  Ellie Kennedy's famous tongue could swear a gray sky blue. Nor did she care who heard her; she rarely used such language but always to great effect. Now her mouth formed the words— but Robert preempted her.

  “No, Ellie must stay.”

  “But”—Sevovicz tried again—”I mean, the things you have to say?”

  “I have nothing to say.”

  Sevovicz looked at him, like a cat looking at a caged bird. “What?”

  Robert held out his hands. “There's nothing to say.”

  Sevovicz sat down again. “But my dear Robert. You had a serious relapse. Dr. Greenberg is the best psychiatrist in this field, and he said it had as serious an effect upon you as the war itself. So how can there be nothing to say?”

  Robert sighed. “I'm sorry. I've put it clumsily. I should have said, there's nothing I can say. I mean— there is plenty to say. But I can't say it.”

  “What do you mean?” The cat could see the bird, could even put out a paw and touch the bars of the cage— but couldn't grasp the prize. Robert held his hands out wider and didn't speak.

  “But, Robert, you knew something dreadful?”

  “I did, Your Grace. And I do.”

  “And it was so appalling that it— well, it caused you damage, serious damage?”

  “Oh, yes, Your Grace.”

  “Therefore, it is in the Church's interests— in your interests, in the interests of the pope, the Holy Father himself— that we know about it.”

  “I know.”

  Ellie watched, almost holding her breath. And in your interests too, I bet, you big ugly Pole.

  “Robert, my dear boy please tell me.”

  “Your Grace, I can't.”

  “No, Robert, you must. If you were caused danger of that magnitude, then whatever was done in the Church's name— done by the Cardinal Archbishop of Boston— no matter how eminent he is, the Church must know. He must be removed.”

  Ellie knew grave matters; she had seen a great deal of life. And she knew ambition; she had watched military politics, where one officer would send another into death's very jaws to remove an obstacle from the chain of command. She almost smiled. Now I see. Sevovicz has been sent in as the pope's hatchet man, and he's after the cardinal's job himself.

  Robert's improvement had been remarkable— most significantly and rapidly since he had come to Ellie Kennedy's house, where he felt safe and invulnerable. On his best days he had all his old intellectual sharpness. In one of those prolonged flashes of clarity, he now spoke.

  “There's a reason, Your Grace, why I can tell you nothing. It's a reason you will completely understand.”

  “Robert, my dear boy it will have to be a very grave reason.”

  “Oh, it is, Your Grace.”

  “What could be so grave?” Sevovicz hit the table with a knuckle; his nerve wasn't holding.

  “Your Grace, you must know, from your own experience. You must have seen it. It is the Seal of Confession.”

  “What do you mean?”

  Robert explained patiently. “Do you recall the day we went to see His Eminence for him to become my Confessor?”

  “You were so ill afterward.” Sevovicz clapped his hands together. “I was so worried. I shall never forget it. When you emerged from His Eminence's study, you were so pale, so white, you were close to collapsing. Did he rebuke you so much in Confession? I asked you, and you did not reply.”

  “Well, I had good reason. His Eminence did not hear my confession. I heard his.”

  “What?” Sevovicz's one-word question sounded not so much like a pistol shot as an artillery shell— a boom! with a crack!

  “Yes. He made me his Confessor. As he had every right to do. And in that Confession he told me everything.”

  Sevovicz clapped his hands again. “Because he thought that you would forget!”

  “As I did. But now I remember.”

  “But you knew things long before he made his confession to you?”

  “I did. But I don't know which things I knew, and in any case he covered everything. That is why it took so long that day. He made a General Confession.”

  Sevovicz turned to Ellie. “A General Confession, miss, is when a penitent wishes to renounce all the sins of his life.”

  “I know what a General Confession is,” she said. “Have you ever made one, Your Grace?”

  “I have no need. Have you?”

  “There isn't a priest in the world who'd have enough time,” she said.

  After that, the Archbishop of Elk sat with his huge head held low and his eyes down, sighing all the while.

  When a last cup of tea had been downed, he said, “I will pay a courtesy call upon the bishop of this diocese.”

  Ellie said, “Of course. Do you know where to find him?”

  “I do.”

  Ellie recognized the subtext: He's letting me know that he's reporting this situation.

  “We thought,” she said, “since Robert now has only a few days before the boat at Limerick, that we'd continue his search for his ancestors.”

  Sevovicz said, “There isn't time.”

  Robert said, “I know where to go.”

  They looked at him in astonishment.

  He turned to Ellie. “The man, the storyteller, Dominic? He said it: How do we find the traces of a mud hut? But the name Shannon may be much older, as Dominic also said. And I've seen where the legend began.”

  Ellie said, “So where do you want to go?”

  “There's another possibility, one I like very much. I heard about a monk named Senan. He founded a monastery on an island in the mouth of the Shannon, Scattery Island.”

  Ellie said to Sevovicz, “And then we can meet you at Limerick.”

  “I have to go to Cork also,” Sevovicz said. “My luggage is there. And I have to sell my motorcycle.”

  They drank more tea.

  Sevovicz said, “Robert, I understand about the Confession. And I praise you for having told me, for preserving the Seal of Confession. But please tell me about your vocation. Do you still have a vocation?”

  Robert said quickly, “Oh, yes, I do, Your Grace.”

  Sevovicz rose and held out his arms like a statesman embracing a crowd. Ellie turned away so that neither man could see her face.

  Sevovicz left the house as a ship leaves port— with bells and boomings and a drama of farewells. Wanting to pull rank on the local bishop, he had dressed, in part, as a dignitary. His black stock beneath his round collar had the prelate's impressive flash of purple piping.

  As he went, Ellie said, “Perhaps you would call this gentleman in town.” She handed him a name and address. “My car needs to be fixed.”

  “I will fix your car,” said Sevovicz. “I have learned about engines.”

  And he did fix the car and then revved away on his motorcycle.

  When he had gone, Robert said to Ellie, “What will we do?”

  Ellie said, “We don't have to do anything.” She hugged him. “But what are
your plans for—” She stopped. “No, let's not discuss anything now. We should leave the house. And leave immediately.”

  Robert said, “Why?”

  “In case our bloody bishop comes around. He'll try and get you to go to his house and stay there.”

  They raced, tidying and putting things away. Upstairs Ellie packed. “Enough for four days,” she said. “Where will we go before Scattery Island?”

  “There were some people— who were very kind to me.”

  “Why don't we go back down the river?” she said. “And meet as many of those people as we can.”

  They loaded the car. Ellie had to figure out how many cans of gasoline to stow and how to manage the trip according to where she could buy fuel en route. Limerick provided certainty other towns less so. The dog climbed in. With the sun high in the sky they headed south. Anticipating Sevovicz's route, she took the opposite bank.

  “This is wonderful!” shouted Robert above the noise of the wind. “I can truly tell my father, when I go home, that I traveled the Shannon from the source to the sea and— almost— both banks.”

  Ellie said nothing, but she registered Robert's talk of home.

  On narrow roads, at a top speed of twenty-five miles an hour, they reached Banagher. Robert had made a list of all the towns where he wished to stop. They drove into the center and he directed Ellie to the far side of the river.

  “We stop here,” Robert said, outside a fine house. Mr. Reddan's great and lovely motor truck stood outside the door.

  Ellie stayed in the car and Robert knocked. A woman opened, an inquiring look on her face.

  “May I speak to Fergus?” said Robert.

  She looked at him calculatingly Then, with a sudden burst of enthusiasm, she said, “You may indeed. I know who you are.” Leaving the door wide open, she disappeared and came back a moment later, followed by Fergus. “Here he is.”

  “Oh, hello,” said Fergus. “This is my mam.”

  Robert smiled and beckoned to Ellie, who stepped out of the car. He introduced her, and Fergus's mother took over the conversation.

  “This man,” she said to Ellie, indicating Robert, “he stayed in this house several weeks ago. I wasn't living here then at all. But whatever he said to Fergus, everything got better.”