Glittering Promises (7 page)

Felix, Anna, and I arrived back at the villa before ten, after seeing to our errands in town. I’d convinced my brother to accompany us, trusting him to see us through, since he spoke some passable Italian. Though by his own admission, he knew mostly conversational words meant to woo beautiful Italian women or impress gullible American tourists we encountered in our circles. Given that we were out of the crowds in the city, Will and my father had eased on their stipulation about us having an armed guard at all given times. Here in the countryside, we’d all visibly relaxed within hours.

“
Buon giorno
,” Will said in surprise, just reaching the bottom of the wrought-iron stairs of the villa as we entered. “Where have you three been?”

“Good morning,” I said, taking his offered arm. “Felix accompanied us to a telegraph office,” I said, “so I could tell my parents our happy news. Then we went to the bank. I wired them some funds.”

He beamed down at me. “Oh, Cora. That must’ve felt wonderful.”

“Indeed,” I said, thinking for the thousandth time how glad I was. My mama and papa would not see another day in which they would worry about how they were to meet their bills or put food on the table. Papa could continue to seek out all the medical care he needed for his weak heart. And when he was better, they could do whatever they wished. Buy a cottage in the country. Or even a mansion filled with servants.

“The idea of them never worrying again about money makes me happier than almost anything,” I said.

“I imagine so,” Will said, smiling.

Lil and Nell appeared at the top of the stairway, and behind them, Andrew and Viv. “What makes you happier than almost anything?” Andrew said, his face and tone odd.

Hugh appeared too, catching our conversation.

“Are you still going on about the prospects in Dunnigan?” Andrew asked, his eyebrow lifting, his tone now clearly patronizing. They walked down the stairs.

Will cleared his throat in warning from my side.

“The prospects, as you call them,” I said, “are not prospects at all. I’ve accepted Father’s offer to run the Kensington-Diehl Mine.”

Andrew’s brow lifted higher. “You. A schoolmarm.” He looked about at the others with a wry grin, then back to me. “My dear Cora. What did they teach you in Normal School that makes you believe you can run a mine?”

I swallowed one quick retort, then another. “I am by nature a learner.”

“Well, that’s good, my dear, because learning this will be difficult.”

“You realize that you’ll be stuck in a dull office all day, poring over numbers,” Vivian added. She took my arm. “Do you
really
want to do that?”

My eyes narrowed. Of all the subjects in school, mathematics was my least favorite. And I much preferred novels to any other sort of reading… “I do enjoy learning new things,” I put in. “The challenge of it.” I straightened my shoulders. “I believe I can do it.”

“That sounds dreadfully sensible,” Hugh said as he reached the stair landing with the others. “Wouldn’t you rather have time for shopping and balls and grand parties?”

“You’re confusing my sister with yourself, Morgan,” Felix said, sliding an arm around my shoulders and giving me a squeeze. “Don’t let them talk you out of it. The Kensington-Diehl Mine is rightfully yours. I’m proud of Father for giving you this opportunity.”

Hugh snorted. “You’re only relieved it wasn’t you that Wallace put in that managerial chair.”

“Well, yes, there is
that
,” Felix said with a smile.

“In any case, you need not worry your pretty head too much over it,” Andrew said, giving me another patronizing smile. “I’ll be there to answer any question you need ask, when your father isn’t about.” There was something else in his tone, something less than friendly.

“Oh, thank you,” I forced myself to say, then slid my eyes to meet Will’s. Working with Andrew Morgan every day wasn’t something I’d considered.

“A necessary evil,” Will said under his breath.

I nodded and thought it best to change the course of our conversation until I’d had ample opportunity to think it all through. Will led me through the wide front door and out to the front of the villa. “So…are we off to see the shroud?” I asked. “Is that what you said was on the docket today?”

We paused as the motorcars pulled up in the front drive before the villa, dust rising on the road behind them. The old home was rustic, with unkempt vines overtaking several stone walls. It felt homey and welcoming, and I wished we never had to leave.

“Would you prefer to merely take a morning drive and return to convalesce a bit more?” Will offered.

“I’m weary of succumbing to my weariness. Let us see this fabled shroud. And then I’d very much like to get to see the countryside of Tuscany that Antonio waxes on about every chance he has.”

“That
does
sound restorative,” Vivian said, coming outside with Nell and Lil. She finished pulling on her second glove and took a deep breath, smiling at all of us. “I feel better already, being in the country.”

I tried not to stare when Andrew came out to stand beside her, but I couldn’t help myself from sneaking peeks. Was I the only one who could see the forced nature of their relationship, how obviously wrong they were for each other? But how much more intolerable would he be toward me if they decided to part ways?

The others clambered aboard the cars—minus Mr. Morgan and my father, who had elected to remain behind to see to “non-Dunnigan business,” they’d said—and then we traveled through picturesque green hills dotted with spires of Cyprus trees. I spotted farmers on wagons pulled by horses, the sight making me wistful for home. Gradually we merged onto a wider road that contained more and more motorcar traffic. Forty minutes later, we entered the city of Turin and soon pulled up near a grand cathedral made of white stone.

Rising high above it, in back, was a dome. A line of pilgrims extended out the cathedral door and around its corner. Some were barefoot. Some were on their knees. Some had obvious ailments. The pilgrims mixed with refined ladies and gentlemen, who tried to ignore the “riffraff” even as their faces pinched in impatience at having to wait to go inside

“The priests here do not bow to the wealthy,” Will said in my ear, nodding toward the line as we exited the car. “In other locations we can buy quick entry. Here, the holy men say that all are equal in God’s sight.”

I covered a smile over Viv’s agitation at this news and boldly took Will’s arm as we walked to our place at the end of the line, not caring if any of our touring party reported my familiarity to my father. Antonio and Pascal trailed behind us, warily watching the crowd as if any one of them might pounce. A woman of perhaps seventy, her head bulbous with monstrous cysts, waited in line ahead of us. She was hunched over, one shoulder higher than the other, her gnarled hands on the end of a cane as she shuffled forward.

Will glanced toward me, looking as if he wondered if the sight would overwhelm me or the other females in the group. For our entire trip, Will, Antonio, and the guards had done their best to keep the beggars from us, practically creating a human wall when needed to allow us to pass unencumbered. But we’d seen them, even if we’d pretended not to, before we’d looked away in discomfort. There was simply no feasible way to marry our extreme luxury with their desperate circumstance.

I was certain that Will was right when he told us there were a fair number who were out to take advantage of their sorrowful state. But now more than ever, I felt oddly separate from this woman. And I knew it had a great deal to do with the amount my father had put into my checking account the day before.

Happiness depends on how a body uses what the Lord gives them.
Anna’s voice rang as clearly in my head as if it were a bell high above me.

We turned a corner, and I glimpsed the terribly deformed beggar ahead of us again. “I want this time in Italy to be more than the culmination of our tour,” I said to Will. “I want it to be a pilgrimage of sorts. To find out where God is leading me. What He wants from me.
How
He wants me to live my life. My whole future is suddenly so different than I imagined.”

Will nodded and lifted my hand for a quick kiss. “Us,” he amended. “Where He is leading
us
. While you may feel bandied about by your father, one moment pulled, the next pushed, your heavenly Father only longs to bring you closer.”

I smiled up into his blue eyes, two shades lighter than my own. They were more like the sparkling Atlantic than the deeps of the Mediterranean. They held a spark of hope and wisdom.

We each got lost in our own thoughts then, but I took comfort in his proximity, the strength of his hand in mine, the warmth of it through the fabric of glove and sleeve. I grew more pensive the closer we got to the church entry, and as we left the growing heat of the afternoon and entered the shadowed cool of the cavernous sanctuary, I inhaled and exhaled with satisfaction.

Across marble tiles, we moved down one side of the cathedral, as others left down the other. In the center were old pews, scratched and colored with decades of use. A few people sat and considered the gilt altarpiece extending upward and the sculpture of Mary and Jesus in front of it. But most were heading beyond it, to the chapel in the rear of the cathedral, beneath the great dome that sent three streams of light at an angle through small windows at its base.

“The shroud was in France until the 1500s,” Will said in a reverentially quiet tone as we drew closer, watching as people knelt before a glass case with margins of gold. The case, like a king’s glass coffin, held a cloth inside. Some wept. Some went to their faces beside it. Others passed by it with a cursory look. Will looked around at all of us as we huddled in a tight circle so that we could hear him. “It was brought here to Turin after a fire nearly destroyed it. The holes you see were from melting silver. They’ve been repaired over the centuries.”

Slowly, the line moved forward. In France, we’d visited churches that purported to hold the crown of thorns or a vial of Christ’s blood or a nail from the cross. But as I drew near, I knew this relic would be far more moving.

At last we were directly beside it, and I had difficulty seeing anything more than the tattered, ancient yellowing cloth. But as the sun shifted and the rays of light moved in the chapel, I could make out the darkened images of two legs, then crossed hands as I neared the center of the case, then a rib cage.

My breath caught as I made out beard, mouth, nose, eye sockets, and the bloody stains left from what must have been a thorny crown. I froze beside the end of the case, continuing to stare into the likeness of a man’s face.

Could it possibly be true? Was I staring into a reflection of my Savior’s body, the cloth that covered Him in the tomb…all that was left of Him when Mary Magdalene went to attend Him three days after the burial? I reached out and laid a hand on the glass, my eyes filling with tears.

A priest hissed a demand to
non toccare
, even as Will gently pulled me away with an arm around my waist, leaving room for other pilgrims to see. Seeing my tears, he reached for his handkerchief and handed it to me.

I took it but then pulled away from his grasp. “Wait,” I said. I turned to face the case, now ten paces away. There was but one ray of sun cascading down inside the chapel. The others in our group stood to one side, respectfully silent. Even Hugh, always ready with a wisecrack. But I had hardly a thought for them and what they must be thinking of me and my odd behavior.

All I could think of was what Mary Magdalene must’ve felt in that moment in the tomb, lifting the cloth as if to make certain He wasn’t there. Her friend and Redeemer, lifted from the cross and carried down, held in His mother’s arms. The cold of death upon Him, yet now gone. No longer in the grave. Resurrected, as clearly as Lazarus had been, shaking off the stink of decay and entering life again. Up and gone. I gripped Will’s arm, and he cast me a concerned glance. “Cora? Are you well?” he whispered. “You look wan.”

I nodded and looked up at him. My stomach did seem unsettled, and my head ached, but he seemed to understand that I was more overcome with reverence than feeling ill. He paused, then slowly drew an arm tight around my shoulders. Together, we stared toward the glass case that seemed to me an iconic symbol of my Savior. No cage or coffin could hold Him. He was free…free, and so much mightier than I had given Him credit for being.

There was nothing I could not conquer—or at least manage to get through—if my God was beside me. Whether that was poverty or wealth. I giggled at that thought. When had I ever considered wealth a threat? Not once before I had money. But now? Would such a fortune change me? Mold me in ways that would be better not to be molded?

No. I would use it for good. Shape it, not allow it to shape me. I laughed aloud, as if I’d just beaten it in a round in the ring.

Will gave me a quizzical look, and Vivian and Andrew frowned at me, which made me giggle more. But directly behind Andrew, I glimpsed the older woman—the one covered in cysts—shuffling toward the door. My heartbeat seemed to pause, then pounded in my chest.

The least of these. Inasmuch as ye have done it to the least of these, ye have done it to Me.
My eyes moved from the woman to the shroud’s glass coffin and then back to the woman now disappearing among the crowds. I squeezed Will’s hand, and he helped me rise to my feet. “Will, I need you to do something for me,” I said, looking up into his eyes.

“Anything.”

I pulled him along, edging past a group of tourists. The others awkwardly followed behind us. “Cora, what is your hurry?” he asked.

“Her,” I said, only slowing when we again had her in sight.

He frowned quizzically at the woman. “Her?”

“Yes. I want you to give her this,” I said, pulling open the drawstrings to my purse and then unclasping my wallet. From it I brought out a wad of
lire
. Everything I had withdrawn that morning from my new account.

His concern deepened as he took it from me. “But Cora, this is a great sum of money.” He lowered his volume as the others gathered drew nearer. “I mean, I know you have a great deal more at your disposal, but you cannot simply be giving it all away…”