Shannon (57 page)

He turned and walked back, picking his way through the rubble over the dark stains on the floor— and heard a voice.

“Back to the scene of the crime,” it said.

Two men stood in the lane, facing the house.

“We knew if we kept watching,” said one of them, “murderers always come back.”

That man had a machine gun and the other had a rifle. Vincent Patrick Ryan wore an oatmeal tweed Norfolk jacket that day, and a cream shirt and a yellow knitted vest and a cream-and-red paisley tie and these lovely clothes, and his taut skin beneath them, and his organs and arteries deep inside his body now burst open as this boy who had never known peace, and whose entire life had already been riddled by the mistakes and misjudgments and misuses of others, died screaming and twisting in a storm of gunfire.

Anthony Sevovicz's voice echoed down to the water. “Excellent punctuality.”

“Your Grace? What are you doing here?”

Ellie asked, “Where's your ship? Aren't you supposed to be sailing?”

Sevovicz pointed upriver. “There she is.” A vessel bore down, black with red and blue markings, a large and lovely and threatening ocean liner. “I came down last night. I stayed with the parish priest in Kilrush. I have everything arranged.” He addressed Robert. “We will go out on the pilot boat. I thought you would like a more intimate last look at your river.”

Ellie said, “Robert?”

“Miss, a word please.” Sevovicz, now wearing a black roll-neck sweater and black pants, led her away through the grasses, halted, and stood confronting her.

“What are you doing to him?” said Ellie.

“Mother Church wants him. And Mother Church gets what she wants. Go and confess your sins, miss, and please cease to tempt our poor priests, especially when they are so weak.”

He walked away, stranding her. “Robert!” Sevovicz called. “Time to go.”

Robert had been watching the encounter and his exuberance over Senan and the island and the estuary abated. He walked away from Joe and Molly; he walked in a direction opposite to Ellie and Sevovicz, where a small gnarled hillock gave him a better view out over the water. To his right he could see the gentle mauve haze out toward the Atlantic. No
boats were in sight and, on land, not a soul. When he turned left he saw the gentle majestic ship drawing closer and closer.

I should be thinking great thoughts. But I'm not. I'm thinking simple thoughts. The beauty of this place. The simplicity of the ancient past. The simplicity of my own ancient past. I knew nothing when I came here. What do I know now?

He stood for what seemed to the others the longest time, and then he left his viewing post. Sevovicz had begun to walk down to the pilot boat, where a man wearing a hat sat with oars crossed at his knees.

Robert walked over to where Ellie stood.

“I am going with him,” Robert said.

“You are?” It came out as a wail.

“Yes. I am going to travel with him now, on this ship. I will go to Rome. And I will accept the honor that they are giving me— I will accept it on behalf of all chaplains.”

Her face began to crumple; the sight pierced him, yet he lost no steadiness.

“But I will not accept the title of monsignor. And then I will do three things.”

She closed her eyes.

Robert said, “Ellie, look at me.”

She forced herself to open her eyes again. He looked straight at her, saw the pupils dilated with anxiety, the rims reddening with impending tears.

“I will suggest the forgiveness of Cardinal O'Connell. Not a perfect man, I know, but he has done good things too. And they will listen, because I have things to tell them, important things. He is in part a misjudged man.”

Robert paused and took a deep breath. “While I'm in Rome I'll begin inquiries concerning my own laicization.”

Ellie looked away, a sudden hand to her face. Sevovicz, too far from them to hear the conversation, strode down through the hillocky grass toward the sea. Ellie looked back at Robert, opened her mouth as though to ask a question, but made no sound.

Robert reached across the space between them, took her hand down from her face, and held it.

“I will tell them clearly that I wish— without being hindered— to become a layman.” He took another deep breath. “And then I will come back to you, and I will live with you by the river. That is— you are— my vocation. There are many ways to be devout. And over the weeks I've come to know that, for me, you are home.”

Far across the river stood the lighthouse and the tall ragged box of the old castle, sights Robert Shannon had seen on that first gloomy morning when he stood on the freighter's deck coming into Tarbert. Now, though, even the dark warning rocks shone in the sun, and the waters of the estuary sparkled. Nowhere in his vision did he see a terrible bloodstained wheat field, or the ragged bodies of his once-gleaming young comrades.

Neither of them moved. Robert had spoken so easily and so firmly, and he was so composed and on fire that Ellie could only stare at him.

Glory, it is said, is the flame of exploit. Whether she yet fully knew it, she was looking at a man who now saw himself clearly— and no longer as a casualty, but as a traveler come home, his life and soul brought to new purpose by the river that he had followed all his life.