Innocence

Although I thought that I had been gone from the archbishop’s private apartment for a minute or longer, the unnerving vision must have occurred and ended in an instant, because neither Gwyneth nor Wallache reacted as if I had seized up. I threw the marionette atop the burning remnants of its twin, and the ribbons of foul black smoke didn’t merely seethe from it but leaped to the flue as if they were raveling up the chimney and onto some cosmic spool that turned at high speed.

The archbishop said, “What do you think you’ve achieved by this pointless ritual?”

We didn’t answer or look at him, but watched until the black smoke faded to gray and the charred marionettes shrank in a tangle of withering limbs, until the fire split their torsos and, through the curtain of blue flames, red coals glowed deep in those cracks.

“Are you done here?” asked Wallache. “Or would you like to burn a sofa cushion, perhaps an entire armchair?”

“We’re done,” Gwyneth said.

“Good. I’m in a hurry, if you don’t mind.”

“Last-minute trip?” she asked, indicating the two suitcases.

“As if it’s any of your business.”

“There’s nowhere for you to go, Your Eminence.”

“I grew up in worse snow country. I can drive through this.”

“Not what I meant. Would you like all the funds in my trust, for your good works? You may have the money now, if you want.”

No longer able to summon a smile, he said, “You are demonic.”

“Outside the storm zone,” she said, “airports will be open. But what about your flock, all left behind?”

A note of defensiveness at last blurred the sharp edges of his self-confidence. “There are many good priests in this diocese to see after them in my absence.”

“Yes,” she agreed, “many good priests,” by her tone implying that she did not include him in that category.

As when she and Goddard had sparred verbally with each other in the alley behind his gallery, this conversation had a subtext that I couldn’t quite grasp. Although I didn’t know where Wallache was going or why, Gwyneth seemed to have—or intuit—that information.

Recovering his poise, the archbishop said, “If you would like to confess your vandalism, Gwyneth, and I assume much else as well, I will prescribe a proper penance.”

“I’ve made other arrangements,” she said, dropped the key to the residence on the floor, and walked out of the apartment with me close behind.

In the antechamber, I said, “We have to bandage your thumb.”

“This will be good enough,” she said, and she pulled a knitted glove onto her right hand.

Following her down the stairs as she worked her left hand into the other glove, I said, “You seem to think he’s not fit to be what he is, where he is.”

“It’s not just what I think. It’s the truth.”

Crossing the drawing room, where in paint and bronze and stone, the many sainted founders of the faith looked sadly down, I said, “But why is he unfit?”

“Others under his authority broke their vows in a most terrible way. He didn’t do what they did, but he engineered a cover-up of what they did, less for the sake of the church than for the sake of his career, with no justice for the victims. And he engineered it in such a way that he left few if any fingerprints in his wake.”

I thought I knew to what she alluded, and if I was right, I did not want any further details.

Outside, the street receded left and right like the white bed of a river, and turbulent currents of snow flooded through the air.

61

LEAVING THE ARCHBISHOP’S RESIDENCE BEHIND, Gwyneth at first pressed the accelerator too hard, so that even with four-wheel drive and tire chains, the Rover fishtailed along the street, whereupon she gave it more gas, which didn’t help matters, before she eased back on the pedal. When the vehicle became stable and we were proceeding at a somewhat safer speed than a bank robber’s getaway car, I relaxed my grip on the seat and lowered my bracing feet from the dashboard to the floor.

I said, “Anger doesn’t solve anything.”

“I wish it did. If it did, I’d anger away all the troubles of the world.”

She hadn’t mentioned a destination. Again, she seemed to be driving a route chosen at random, but by now I knew that whatever map guided her this night, it had not been drawn by a whimsical cartographer.

“Where is he going?” I asked.

“Wallache? I don’t know.”

“Back there, you did seem to know.”

“All I know is that he’s going in a circle, and wherever he goes, he’ll only find the same thing that he’s running from.”

“What is he running from?” When she did not reply, I said, “Sometimes it seems you know something I don’t know but should.”

I could hear the smile in her voice. “Addison Goodheart, you are so well named. I love your innocence.”

For a minute or so, I reran her words several times in my mind, and at last I said, “I don’t think that was a put-down.”

“A put-down? How can it ever be a put-down when a girl says she loves you?”