Acts of Faith (35 page)

“Thank you, Father,” said Tim, both embarrassed and pleased.

“Of course you’ve got a way to go before you’re a Doctor of Canon Law,” Ascarelli cautioned. “But your Latin is absolutely splendid. I dare say if you hadn’t been trained in America you’d be nearly up to my standard by now. Forgive an old man’s arrogance, but I don’t think you can truly learn the language of Cicero anywhere but within echoing distance of the Roman Forum.”

He sighed histrionically. “What a pity about Vatican II. It all but made my once-honored position obsolete. Thank God they still issue papal bulls, encyclicals, and letters of appointment in Latin, or they’d probably have put me in a home for irregular verbs.”

Timothy smiled.

“Tell me,” the scribe asked with a twinkle in his eye, “do you think Our Savior knew the Latin tongue?”

“Well,” Tim responded warily, “He might have pleaded His case with Pontius Pilate in the Roman language. Certainly, Eusebius records a conversation between the Emperor Domitian and some of Jesus’s relatives.”

“So he does!” cried the old man with relish, “
Historia Ecclesiastica
3:20. You have a good point there, Timothy,” he exclaimed, adding cordially, “We must talk again.”

“I look forward to it,” Tim replied with equal warmth.

“In that case,” said Ascarelli, “I’d like to leave you with a token of our little chat.” He placed his wrinkled hands on the table and pulled himself wearily to his feet. “Take it,” he said.

“What?” Tim reacted with astonishment. The scribe was pointing to the very bottle of tablets he had given him.

“They were all yours to keep,” Tim protested.

“I know, I know,” the old man said with a grin. “But if you take them back, I’ll have an excuse to send for you so we can chat some more. Thank you. I feel much better. Pray for me.”

Before a bewildered Timothy could respond with, “And you for me,” the old priest had vanished.

As the months passed, Father Ascarelli’s headaches seemed to increase, necessitating more and more of Timothy’s visits to his apartment in the Governatorio, a large rambling building inside the Vatican.

Now and then, the old man would ask Tim to make a clean copy of whatever document he had just rendered. It was not long, however, before he casually added, “And if you see a rhetorical lapse here and there, don’t hesitate to correct it. Remember,” he said with a wink, “only popes are infallible.”

By the spring of the year, the two had established a rapport that transcended not only aspirin but Latin as well. It was the closest thing to a father-son relationship that Tim had ever known. There was nothing he would
not do for the papal scribe, and, perhaps more important, the feeling was mutual.

“I’m too old for this job, Timothy,” he complained one afternoon, in his usual cranky tones. “But His Holiness trusts no one but me to latinize his words. It’s too great a burden, so I had to offer my resignation.”

“What?”

“Oh, it wasn’t accepted, of course. I wouldn’t have done it if I had thought there was the slightest chance. But I did receive a concession, namely permission—and stipend—to hire an assistant. Do you have any notion whom I should select?”

The two men smiled at each other.

“I have a thesis to finish,” Tim answered shyly.

“Yes, but you are young and you can work on it at night, when fossils like myself are buried in their beds. Trust me, my boy. If you live up to the advance reputation I’ve given you, you’ll fulfill your greatest earthly ambitions.”

“And what do you think those might be?” Timothy asked warily.

Without directly answering his question, Ascarelli replied, “As I see it, the greatest pleasure on earth is dining at the pontiff’s table.” Mysteriously, he added, “They’re not your usual vulgar Italian sort.”

“What, Father?” Tim asked, genuinely puzzled.

“The wines, of course. They’re French. Naturally, as an Italian I deplore the defection of Pope Clement the Fifth. But when the papacy finally returned from Avignon to its rightful home in 1377, it brought back barrels of the finest Burgundy. And pontiffs have continued to look north for God’s most blessed grapes.
Experto crede
, they’re worth working for. Good night, my son.”

Despite his mentor’s encouragement, on his way back to the Via dell’Umiltà, Tim lingered in the Piazza Navona, contemplating the extravaganza of song, women’s laughter, and the clinking of glasses. He looked at the perennially festive Romans, and wondered if all he had sworn to forsake was worth the sacrifice.

I
n a matter of months—
de facto
if not
de jure
—Tim had become the papal Latin Scribe, and Father Ascarelli, the nominal holder of that office, served merely as his editor.

But when his manuscripts were handed back without even the slightest grammatical or critical notations, Tim began to wonder whether the scribe was reading them at all.

He finally worked up the courage to ask his mentor.

“Timotheus, my dear boy,” Ascarelli replied, “why should I waste my failing eyesight studying a letter of appointment to a new bishop in Texas, when he won’t understand anything but the fact that he’s changing his ten-gallon hat—
petasus decem congiorum capax
—for a miter? I’d rather spend the time composing an article for
Latinitas
on my strategies for the game of American football—
pila pede pulsanda americana.
”

Sending various important papal communications to every part of the world had a twofold effect on Tim. First, it made him appreciate the longitude, latitude, and magnitude of the Catholic population. It also offered a taste of what it felt like to send commands to a place like, say, Sri Lanka, and know they would be obeyed without the slightest equivocation. The pope’s pen could alter the destiny of millions with a single stroke.

Somewhere between encyclicals and letters of appointment, Tim managed to study for his exams, and to pass them all with distinction. When he and Ascarelli were topping off an evening of work—that is to say,
his
work—with a glass or two of
grappa
, Tim would be careful not to overindulge, for he would still have to bicycle back to the Via dell’Umiltà to study and write, while Ascarelli—and presumably the rest of the Vatican—slept.

Though the college building itself was a converted seventeenth-century convent, some evidence of modernity could be found in its small but well-equipped gymnasium. And since no amount of hard work rid Timothy of all his energies, he could sometimes be found at two or three in the morning at the rowing machine. To distract himself from other preoccupations, he had created a challenge: an imaginary trip from Italy to New York. Each evening he would log the number of miles he had rowed, hoping to reach two thousand by the end of his first year.

One night, as Tim was sweating his way toward the Azores, a voice from the not-too-distant past broke the spell of his athletic self-hypnosis.

“God, Hogan, what are you doing, trying to give yourself a heart attack?”

It was George Cavanagh, who had long ago on one hot afternoon in Perugia confided in Tim his fall from grace. Now he seemed transformed by the clerical collar he wore into a strangely imposing figure. Tim nonetheless groaned inwardly. He had been relieved not to see George for more than a year. Cavanagh was a painful reminder of his final afternoon with Deborah long ago.

“You should be asleep,” Tim retorted with a gasp.

“How can I possibly sleep when my role model is still awake?” George smiled as he seated himself on one of the padded benches, picked up a dumbbell, and desultorily began to curl his arm in an approximation of exercise. “Really,” he continued, “I’m not being sarcastic. I do admire you, Hogan. You’re some kind of tactical genius. I mean, I’ve heard you praised as a champion of the left, the right, the conservatives, and the avant-garde. You’re a real master of
romanità.
”

Tim accelerated his stroke and began to breathe heavily, sucking in the air with a pulmonary wheeze.

“Don’t tell me you don’t know what
romanità
is, Hogan,” Cavanagh continued. “It’s the secret of success in Vatican society. The ability to sugar-coat enigma with charm. If Machiavelli were alive today, he’d probably write a book about you.”

Tim glared at him.

“Come on,” George said, his tone now one of candid admiration. “Word has it that Fortunato’s invited you to teach a seminar in Canon Law.”

Tim rowed on without comment as George continued to probe.

“Word also has it that you’ve turned him down. What exactly are you going to do?”

“Why don’t you tell me, Father Cavanagh? You seem to know everything already.”

“Well, all I’ve heard is that you’ve asked for a pastoral post back in the States. I know that ‘work in the field’
looks good on your C.V. But are you sure it’s the right move to leave Rome just when your star is rising?”

“I’m a priest, not a politician,” Tim said angrily.

George rose. “Sorry, Hogan,” he said with undisguised exasperation, “I’m just lousy at
romanità
, otherwise known as artful groveling.
Pax tecum.
”

In late spring, Tim concluded his thesis. The Defense was set for the fourth week in May, under the aegis of Father Angelo Fortunato, the Dean of the Faculty himself.

“It’s a great honor,” Ascarelli assured Tim. “I, of course, will be in attendance. Which reminds me, I haven’t received my invitation.”

“To the Defense?” Tim inquired with surprise.

“Of course not. That is open to the public. I meant the reception in your honor.”

“I’m afraid there isn’t one,” Tim replied.

“Are you mad,
figlio mio
?” Ascarelli scolded. “Or are you just trying to keep an old man from a decent meal?”

“Truly, Father, there’s no party—”

“Aha,” the scribe retorted, shaking an admonitory finger. “They just haven’t told you yet. But I can assure you, when Dean Fortunato presides over a Defense, a lavish celebration always follows.”

The scribe’s words were prophetic. When Tim arrived back at the college a little after one in the morning, he found an envelope slipped under his door. The gold embossed Coat of Arms on the back bore the motto
Civitas Dei est patria mea
—The City of God is my true homeland.

Tim tore it open. In magnificent calligraphy, under a letterhead stamped
Cristina, Principessa di Santiori
and with an appropriately noble address near the Palatine Hill, he read:

Tim smiled with pleasure, then switched on his hotplate to boil water for coffee. There was much work still to be done before the sun peeked over the Esquiline hill.

It was only at six
A.M.
when he woke after a meager three hours’ sleep to celebrate morning Mass that the significance of the letter began to sink in.

The Santioris were distinguished members of what was known in Rome as the
aristocrazìa nera
—“the Black Nobility.” These were families of laymen who had for centuries been influential princes of the papal court, the so-called “Privy Chamberlains of Sword and Cape.”

Some had hereditary duties at papal ceremonies. Dynasties like the Serlupi Crescenzi, who had served as Masters of the Horse for centuries. Or the Massimo clan, who held the hereditary office of Postmaster General.

But the Santioris claimed an even higher distinction. They had served as Grand Masters of the Sacred Hospice, the highest rank a layman could achieve in the papal court. Perhaps the most significant sign of their true nobility was the fact that their names never appeared in the press. When they gave a party it was not reported. Anyone worthy of knowing about it would have been invited, and that excluded the Fourth Estate.

As Tim was sitting in a corner of the refectory, pensively spooning cornflakes, George Cavanagh appeared.

“May I join you, Father Hogan?”

Tim looked up, trying to disguise his annoyance, and replied desultorily, “Be my guest.”