Mercy
ou are surprised that I was a monk. I have never regretted the time
that I was. You ask how I came from there to here?
Let us see. I will need a place to begin. I was climbing up the gentle slopes of Transiemo in the Italian autumn of 1943. Transiemo? It's a mountain, additionally an abbey, and also a town. It figures somewhat in this tale. Now quiet yourself, for the tale is long.
I remember squinting down into the valley against the setting sun, straining to see across the miles the city of Cortona, where I had spent the last six years of my life. I could only see a faint smear of dark buildings against the white ground, so far below. Transiemo's abbey, which I was approaching, was way, way up, much higher than I normally would care to climb, but exercise is good for the soul. I kept telling myself that every thousand feet.
It was a challenge to ascend the several thousand feet, after months of undisturbed reading and gardening and praying. My body ached, warm from unwanted exertions, cold from the altitude and light snows. But I was glad. It made me feel young again. My abbot knew that I needed to be turned loose on occasion, and I was usually the first to be sent into the outlying peasant villages to teach. I enjoy teaching, especially after learning Latin to a sufficient degree to instruct others in it, which I had recently done. In the last year I had brought back with me several young men to meet Dom Leonard, and they had become novices.
I made my way to the offices of the abbess of Transiemo. She enjoyed chess, as did Dom Leonard, and I was often the bearer of a new move in a game. She had been losing recently to the abbot after two years of strong play - particularly after I became the harbinger of his moves. Occasionally I would glance at his offering, and decide that surely he could not have meant, say, King to R1. His handwriting could be very hard to decipher, after all; surely he was referring to Queen to N5, a far superior move.
As a result of my misinterpretations, the abbess found herself harried by strong kingside attacks all through the summer of '42 and up to the point of this telling, without recompense. (She privately confided in me that the abbot had hired a chess master, according to her sources in Cortona. I wondered aloud at who it could be, and she named several that were well known and respected in Siena and Arezzo, and I nodded, for it was surely one of them.)
You laugh. Yes, I like that one, too. But she was not a foolish woman. When I called on her this time, the chessboard was set off in a corner and she greeted me with somewhat less than her usual cordiality.
She had received an urgent missive from Genoa and it was for me, strangely enough. When she held out the sealed envelope to me, I saw the heavy red seal upon it.
I went to a private cell to read it, and did, once quickly, then again slowly. I considered the paper money folded inside it. Now, I do not possess the letter any longer - it was lost years ago - but it is safe to say that it was momentous.
I will say only that a great man in Genoa thought that I was the only person the church could trust for a dangerous task, and that it was impossible for me to refuse. It was feared that the Germans had discovered the hiding place of one of the most sacred objects in all of Christendom. I was to rescue it.
Hold your questions for a moment, and they will answer themselves.
I returned immediately to the abbess and prostrated myself before her. Not literally, mind you, but I was in dire straits. I told her of the letter and its contents, and she had to sit down. I sensed that she had known beforehand of the gravity of the mission.
It is a long journey, she said, and she told me that she would send word to Cortona and my abbot so that I would be accounted for. I had only a week to make the trip to Avellino. Perhaps less if the Germans moved more quickly. There was a motorcar behind the smith's which I could take.
"It is too much to ask," I said to her, uselessly. "There must be someone else."
"I think you know that there is not, and I am hardly the one to ask," she replied sharply. "Who better to send? It is a practicality. It is a duty to the Church. Do the skills this man speaks of remain intact?" "I don't know," I said, knowing that deep down, yes, they were intact. "It is the end of my peace."
"Everything comes to an end," she said.
What are the skills? You are curious and rightly so. Very well. The life that a man has before he comes to the Church is insignificant to some, and greatly important to others. Before I was ordained, before I came to Cortona, I was a professional thief.
Your eyes needn't be so wide. It is not unheard of. You were assuming I became the scourge of Paris afterwards, weren't you? No, I had a past before I came to Cortona.
Now, stop these questions. A good burglar knows how to be quiet and listen. How I came to God and the halls of Cortona is another story entirely and will have to wait, for I am telling this one at the moment. Patience.
That night I came to the walls of the abbey, well before lauds, sleepless. I looked down into the valley again, now dark save for the distant lights of the city. I wondered if I would ever return to Cortona, ever enjoy the simple brotherhood, the simplicity of the life. When I had doubted before my confirmation, Dom Leonardo had told me to take a leap into the dark. After a few weeks, I had still felt firmly in the dark, before one day suddenly realizing that I had made the correct choice. On that night, however, I was wondering if I had ever emerged from the night. I could feel my mind span across the distance, to my new, distant destination, and plan. Each click and whir of that mental machine made me feel as if the last six years had been for naught.
How could a letter change all that I had worked for, I asked myself then. My youthful days of sin were over - I did not wish to revisit them. Perhaps the Germans would not find the thing. Perhaps the intelligence was wrong. The war was turning, it was said, and maybe it was as safe where it was as it had been in Turin.
All useless wishful thinking.
Oh, yes, the object of my mission, you have guessed it. You are a clever young lad. Again, I ask that you do not repeat what you hear here. That letter was lost for a reason. It would not necessarily be good for others to learn of it.
As I was saying, it was all wishful thinking. I had been placed in Cortona and I had taken up the life, to make up for the last. I was in the church's debt and that debt had to be repaid.
I bade the bare stone walls of the abbey farewell that day, and I took the small truck that afternoon. I drove to Perguia, several hours to the southeast, and there I left it behind, bidding a young factory worker to drive it back up the mountain for a modest amount.
Perguia in that day was a fair-sized city, and there I used the money I had been given. I shaved the rest of my head and bought simple clothes, a good heavy coat and hat. Much wandering and searching in the lower markets gave me access to several other tools of my old trade, which I filled a traveler's case with. I found a bus going south, and I boarded it, no one knowing me for a Benedictine. Dominic of L'Aquila would be all I was for now.
The journey took six days. I did not waste more time than necessary nor take less than was proper to avoid being followed. Such a business is too important to be careless at. After the first bus, I took a boat south down the T�vere, and then to Rome and then Naples in successive days. I stopped often to pray at whatever church had the unfortunate luck to be close to me when I felt low. At times I could not move my feet.
At other times I moved strongly. In Naples I used a telephone for the first time in quite a while. Before the afternoon was over, I had all the acquisitions I needed, and an auto. The rumors of the Americans and the British having taken Messina in Sicily I found true, and there were many rumors of a naval landing many miles to the south. The streets were flocked with refugees and I found my first taste of anarchy there.
I hurried on. I remember on the coastal road by Torre del Greco, a German staff vehicle, emblazoned with red and black Nazi flags flying from its fenders, happening to pass me and I nearly losing control of my automobile. I was touchy and nervous - and rightly so.
Yes, it was much to ask, to take this journey. You are young and probably don't understand; do not worry yourself over it. You will later. I will say it is a lot to ask a man to use talents - no, let us call them skills - that he has left to rust forever, because they are of a life he no longer wants. I was a aesthetic for six years at that point, remember, not an impassioned adventurer.
Anyhow. I may have mentioned that Avellino, then a sprawling town just west of the river Ofanto, was not my real destination. That was fortunate, because when I approached it after topping many hills, I saw that it was occupied by the Germans. There was but a company or two, but it was a sign that I might be too late. I had passed convoys of trucks and tanks, great concentrations, divisions, gathering north of Naples. I knew that there had been a landing near Salnerno, and that the Allies were somewhere south of the massive bulk of Mount Vesevio, visible to me still, southwest. The countryside was quiet but I could hear artillery in the distance, on occasion. If I returned by the same way, I was sure I would meet a battlefield. The British and their friends would push up the coast with their great tanks. Returning home was going to be hard.
The rest of the journey would have to be on horseback and on foot.
I went into the town, not far, and used the remaining money I had to buy a horse. I inquired as to directions to the abbey on the mountain. Not many people would speak, from the soldiers in town. I saw few men of any young age in the streets, and I was careful feign a strong limp. My stocky build and posture passed me off as a wounded veteran well. The uniform bought in Naples helped, too.
Eventually an old grocer drew me a map to the abbey, and I swore him to secrecy, which gave me something of sorely needed amusement. He wanted to know why a soldier needed to get onto Mount Vergine, and I spoke, perhaps tremblingly to him, that I wished to be considered as a novice - the war had shaken me. He looked at me keenly and said he did not blame me. His son was dead and another fought in Albania. A peaceful life among the mountains was something to be considered. I thanked him and left, heading out of town.
I had not ridden a horse in many years, and I was sore before many miles. I rested often and considered the route he had given me. After the Vergine foothills, there was but one road that went all the way to the abbey, and it wound around the peak, several miles worth of it. However, the incline was not so steep that I could not climb it, given time. That night I saw, in the distance, the form of the abbey -- set against the moonlight, perhaps some great warring prince having occupied it long ago in Italy's history. Now only a Benedictine order resided there.
And it was imperative that I get there unseen.
I reached the beginnings of thick green forest, white with fresh snow, and then slopes where God had decreed the mountain would begin. I tied up the horse where it could graze some, and trod through the woods on foot at that point, discarding the uniform and carrying what little I needed. The grand, austere scenery of these mountains struck me, and I can still recall it vividly. You've been in that country? Yes, it is beautiful.
I avoided the road as much as I could as I climbed. But I had to cross it occasionally. What I feared the most came at the second of such times.
There was a noise, one of carousing and drinking, and another of a military motor, and I ran deep into the trees and waited, just before a truck passed, moving slowly.
There were many soldiers in the open back. I ducked down then and listened. They were laughing, and I heard a scream that was not male. It came again, and there was the sound of brakes, then a scuffle, and much cursing in German.
The truck's engine rumbled again, the odor of oil came to me, and the noises diminished into the night.
Then I heard a soft moan. It was pitiful.
I turned back to the woods, and began walking. Very steadily, one foot before the other. The ground was treacherous and steep and I had to watch my footing carefully.
Long after I should have been out of earshot, I could still hear her. I went back. There is that thing called mercy.
She looked very bloody and her clothes were torn. She made only indistinct sounds. I carried her out of the way, to where I could safely make a light. I cleaned and dressed her where blows had cut the skin, and wrapped her against the cold with my extra coat. She was unconscious all that night, and I stayed with her, praying more than sleeping, and wondering if the abbey was already taken. Each time I finished praying, I started cursing. I chuckled, wondering what Brother Claudio would have thought if I had finished each of the psalms with an outburst of blasphemy. I will save you, my gentle listener, from quotations. I was thinking of what I was going to do with the girl. Of complications. Of my mission.
In the light of the morning I could see more of her, and she was older than I thought. Wiry, skinny, hair short. Her bruises were superficial, but of course worse had occurred to her. She was also awake, and something in my gaze told her I was not her enemy.
I told her that I had dressed her wounds. She only watched me, for a time, before venturing to ask who I was. A man, Dominic, I said. She considered this also. It was some time before she said her own name - Emilia. I asked who her father was and she said she did not have one. Questioning her further, I discovered little. She was apparently from the town, and living by her wits. Her mother had died the year before.
There is an abbey up on the mountain, I told her, and that I would take her there tomorrow morning. I had decided on my course of action. I would leave her in the woods, enter during the night and leave, having told her to approach the gates afterwards. They might suspect her but only briefly. But this was not to be.
"Those bastards are from the abbey," she said, and I remember her spitting on the ground. My body grew cold.
I asked her, afraid, if there were no monks there.
There are, but the soldiers are there too, she replied. She had tried to steal food from the abbey larder.
"I will feed you," I said to her. I gave her most what would have been my breakfast; war rations, which were mostly biscuits, and wine. She ate and drank and I watched. Tell me what you saw, I asked.
She regarded me with suspicion. I told her that I was concerned for the order there.
I heard what I did not want to.
"There is another truck worth of them. One is an officer with a fancy car. The monks are afraid of them."
My mind was racing by then. Years of contemplation, I think, just fell away. Time was of the essence if there was even a chance.
I asked her if she would have gotten that food if the soldiers had not been there. Yes, she answered, a haughty tone entering her voice, and I allowed a chuckle.
"You could have asked the brothers and they would have given," I told her.
"Maybe," she said.
I asked if she felt well enough to walk. She crawled out of my coat then, and struggled to her feet. I moved to support her, but she shrugged me off, putting the coat back on. I can walk, she said, and added that she had food in her now and that she could climb any mountain in Italy if I had more.
So she followed me and we toiled up the slope together.
It was late afternoon before the walls of the Abbey of Mount Verdine rose before us. I scaled a fair-sized tree and looked down and across, past the treeline, to the courtyard. Snow obscured the stoneworks, the martial frugality of the walls, making it even more foreboding, invincible in its serenity. Absolute peace reigned, save the guttural sound of the sentries, talking in German. The troop transports marred this beautiful place. They did not belong here, and their drivers smoked cheap cigarettes. Binoculars and an hour of watching told me they had been here less than two days, from accumulation of butts in the snow.
She watched me even more carefully as I climbed down. What are you going to do, she asked.
"I am going inside," I told her.
"You are just an old man. They will kill you."
"Maybe."
The marks of her footprints were still there by the west wall, not the best place to enter. The north side I would take.
We waited. We ate of the food I had. I reasoned that the monks and the soldiers would not keep to the same hours. A Benedictine takes to his bed before the sun is down, and wakes long before it rises; a war would not disrupt a schedule set down for five centuries. I would have maybe a window of two hours before lauds at best, and there would still be sentries to avoid.
"Stay here until I return," I told her, and I went. The moon was still strong but it could not be avoided. I approached and mounted the north wall at the proper time. The dead of night shadowed it the most, and that was where I went over.
I had memorized the plans of the abbey from the letter. They were detailed, from a former resident's memory, and profoundly accurate. I went past the balneary. Past the stables. I took a breather there, out of sight. The abbey was a good and self-sufficient place, when stocked with enough grain. The church itself, in the center of the many buildings, was what I wanted, stolid and stone.
She had made no sounds in following me. Except the last one.
I looked at her and scowled. She made a face at me.
"What are you doing?" I demanded, in a tense whisper.
She just stared back.
So we crossed the only clear ground between us and the lone spire. There was no going back now. The sentries were poor at their job, and none saw us. I stepped where there were already numerous footprints in the snow. You ask why she followed? I don't know. Perhaps she wished to see what I was about, to see me doing something violent to the soldiers. Perhaps she had nothing else to follow then. Do not ask so many questions or we will never get to the end.
The rear door of the church was locked, but that was nothing. I pressed my ear to the wood, and heard not a sound. I took out my tools.
"Three seconds," she whispered, after the lock clicked. "You are very good."
"Quiet," I said. "Five. It is complex." Another metal pin and I heard the click I wanted.
The door opened and I shut it behind us, quietly.
The glory in the construction of that humble edifice barely touched me as it should have. The only light came from the clerestory windows, high, high above. I moved silently behind the pulpit and sensed the hall out, for people. There could have been someone there but there was not.
Finally I found it, a small door on the left, behind the choir. It was not just locked - it was definitely locked. It was an old one, but tricky.
She was silent this time, watching. As the door opened, she made a comment about not being bad for an old timer.
We moved inside and I used the flashlight then.
Faintly, ever so faintly, I saw shapes. Covered shapes, cloth draping them. I drew up to one and uncovered it. It was a statue of a saint I did not recognize immediately.
"What are these?" she whispered. "Are they valuable?"
"Yes," I replied, quiet. "They are priceless. This is where the abbey's holy relics are kept. There are not many here..."
"You are going to steal them?"
I made a sign for her to be quiet, as I moved through the ghostly shapes. I stopped occasionally to listen. Nothing. There were footprints in the dust, made fairly recently. They led to the back of the room.
I found there a heavy iron box, resembling, but not quite as long as a coffin. I touched the surface gently. It was locked, and this one I would have to be less than kind with.
I took out the vial I had carried all the way from Naples in a metal container. "Do not touch what comes from this," I warned. Then I poured it into the lock.
After ten seconds I slipped the lock off and set it on the ground. It smoked feebly for several more moments. You are curious? A very strong acid. Its name escapes me at the moment.
"What is in this?" she asked me.
I took a breath then and said, "We shall see."
I examined the lid and the rest of the box. I saw nothing special, save the hinges, which I oiled twice. Then I slowly lifted the metal, and shone the light on the contents inside.
There was nothing there but a large wrapping of leather, perhaps eight feet long, which I lifted out, gingerly.
I unwrapped it. The linen inside was very, very old. It was burned in places, from a fire in 1532, and it had been patched then, crudely but piously, by Chamb�ry nuns. I unfolded the material enough so there could be no doubt.
She made a choked sound, and I was not breathing much either.
I'm sorry, but I cannot help but chuckle at you. You are gaping at me. Yes, I touched the shroud of Christ with my own hands.
Now let me finish.
"You are more than a thief," she said at that instant.
"I am less," I replied.
I had begun to fold it back when I heard the footfalls. They were too close to run from, so I simply turned. Light flared at my back.
I had seen this man before, somewhere.
He made a comment about thieves in the night that I didn't catch, in Italian. The Luger in his hand was pointed directly at me. He sat his lantern down on a table. He had approached softly in his dressing gown and bare feet, a gray jacket with colonel's insignia draped over his shoulders. Of all the things to be caught by - an insomniac.
"I thought if I waited long enough in the dark, I would find a rat or two," he said more clearly, displaying a stretch of cloth; it was from the girl's torn dress. "Caught in the door. I would not have heard you."
She made to run past him then, but he caught her easily with his free hand.
I just stood there, holding the shroud. In two seconds, perhaps, by the light, I recognized him. He stared back as well, perhaps somewhat recognizant himself, and I knew I was right.
Who was it? Let me say this - it was the last person I wished to see. It was a man I had known for many years and had not seen in seven. How he came to such a rank in the German army I do not know, but Hans had a past that was as dark as mine, and perhaps much darker. Where I was carelessly notorious when young, he had been less so. But not by the measure of his deeds, which were beyond any depths I had sunk to.
"You," he said. "It is too much - it has been long. Someone has drawn you out from whatever miserable hole you have been hiding in. The Savoys, yes?"
I knew he had beaten me, somehow, to the shroud. I suddenly realized that the unnatural precognizance of the Germans learning the location of the abbey and its precious cargo was completely due to him.
I was trying to think of a way out of certain death.
"You are still a common burglar," I remember him saying. That burned me, and my anger rose.
"Not quite," I replied. "I've been more."
"You will still bring a price in Paris. Dead or alive."
He raised the pistol. I knew then that I could very likely move to my right and run straight out, and he could not hit me from the statuettes between us. I might even get away if I was blessed with an abundance of luck. He had not awoken anyone else.
But he would have her. I confess that in my baser days I might have sacrificed an innocent for my own life. The shroud was a cloth; a holy one, yes, a fine one, but not worth a human life.
I said several curses in his direction which I will spare you from again. "I almost had it," I said, acknowledging defeat. "It is the Duke of Savoy's by right, not some Austrian's."
He laughed at me and said that tomorrow it would be moved north to be flown to Berlin. "Do you know how long I have searched for that worthless piece of clever artistry you hold?" he asked me. He went on to speak of Leonardo Da Vinci being its executor; he did not believe it really bore the image of Christ's body, as you no doubt have surmised. He said that Hitler would make him a general, and after Germany lost the war he would take it again and perhaps sell it back to the Duke, if he was in a charitable mood. I watched the girl writhe in his arms, waiting for the shot.
"Hitler has the tendency to believe that Christian relics have great powers," he said. "Why not oblige him?"
"His God is not my God," I remember saying, my anger manifest.
"Last time we met you did not have such notions," he observed.
I stared at him. "You never knew me."
He only shrugged. "I am sorry it has to be this way."
He made to pull the trigger, and then I threw the shroud at him and leapt for the girl as he fired.
Miracle of miracles, I was not hit, and I brushed past him as I went, stripping her arm from his, also knocking over the lantern he had sat down. The flames caught at the robed forms instantly, blazing up in fiery oranges.
He tried to get up, but I kicked him in the back and he went sprawling, clutching at the linen. I could have killed him then, and perhaps I wished to, but I did not. This was partially because of the unnatural speed of the flames. They formed a wall within seconds - everything in the room seemed flammable, including me, and I was forced back.
She tried to leap into the blaze, onto his back, her hands reaching for the shroud, but I held onto her. I would not lose my choice, for the shroud was lost already. The flames pressed us, seemingly on all sides by then, and somehow I pulled her out of the smoke and to the door. Do not ask me quite how, but we got out of that inferno.
Shush! I am not finished. A moment.
We did not stop moving even then. Out the back door and towards the back wall of the abbey, my clothes smoldering, her coughing violently. Smoke clogged our sight and throats, and I stumbled, regained my step more than once.
We felt and saw monks scurrying about, yelling, calling for water and soldiers, but they did not stop us in the confusion. We made to the same dark stretch of wall, and made over it in the night.
I suppose, in retrospect, that they may have searched for us. I did not allow her to stop, however. It was a great long run through the mountain woods before I decided that we could rest.
"I could have got it!" she had repeated over and over, while clambering through the branches and snow. She was too out of breath to complain at that moment. I only laughed. I was glad to be alive again. And I was glad she was as well.
So, we began the long trip back to Cortona, which took many months. The Americans were moving on Naples before we got there, and we found ourselves trapped behind their lines. In the coming months we would witness the destruction of Mount Cassino by great bombers, the place where Saint Benedict had gathered his followers first, and we would see more and more death, as we followed the victorious Allies across Italy's length. All along I took her with me, all the way to Genoa, moving through German lines after the spring. The Duke of Savoy was somewhat upset at the loss of the shroud, but I had successfully kept it out of the German's hands. The shroud that sits in Turin now, you ask? I have no idea. It is certainly not the same one. Perhaps it is the one Da Vinci drew for that old French knight in the histories. I was somewhat disappointed to hear they had replaced it in any case.
Emilia became a ward of the Church before I left Genoa. I had grown somewhat fond of her by then during our exodus, but that is another story. I decided before I returned to Cortona that I would leave the abbey. Dom Leonard did not know exactly what kind of mission I had been on, but he knew something had changed, and he graciously allowed my departure with blessings for my future livelihood.
And of course you know what profession I took up again afterwards. I had been too long in that abbey. It was time to be a sensualist again, and live life once more.
Oh, well. It was some time ago. Come back in the morning and I'll show you how to work that lock that's been troubling you.
Hmm. You've grown quiet. A story from an old man will do that to you sometimes.
