Coronets and Steel (55 page)

I said in Dobreni, “Is Father Teodras in to a visitor? It’s important,” I added.

His brow furrowed. “I know no Father Teodras.”

“He hasn’t died?” Shock surged up in me, followed by the corrosive burn of self-mockery. I never thought he’d be dead. But what else, after more than half a century?

“I don’t remember a Father Teodras ever being here,” was his mild reply.

“Please, can you ask someone?” I put my hand out to stop him, though as yet he had made no move to shut the door. “Father Teodras. The Cistercian monastery on Mt. Corbesc. I know I’ve got the right place. He was here. This was . . . around 1940, or right before. He—performed a marriage. I need to talk to him about that. If he’s alive,” I added in desperation, and did not realize until I had ended that I had switched to German. “And if he isn’t, I need to see the marriage records.”

The monk studied my face. His eyes were black and slanted, their expression mildly curious. So different from Tony’s. “This is not our day for visitors. May I ask you to wait a moment?”

“Yes, thank you!” I added fervently, and as the door closed I tried to still my breathing. My arm hurt, and my emotions were stirring up with a violence that surprised me. I rubbed my arm above my elbow.

No ghosts now, no mysterious faces. Only the breeze rustling my skirt, causing the clouds to play hide-and-seek with the sun overhead as the tall fir trees soughed and sighed.

I’d barely made these observations before the door opened again. This time it was a different man, a much older one, whose white cassock was belted by a black cord. He wore a crucifix on a long gold chain, and his hands were posed together in the same way depicted by monks in tapestries a thousand years old. He met my eyes directly; his were hazel, sunken with age, but they held that same expression as the other man’s. Mild, only slightly interrogative. Mostly steady and—secretive? No, that was not it. “Please, come within. I apologize for Brother Marcus leaving you waiting outside,” he said in accented German, his voice deep. “We are not accustomed to many visitors. You seek someone called Father Teodras?”

“Yes. I—” I swallowed. “I need to talk to him. He performed a marriage, of my grandmother. This was right before the Second World War. It was in secret. He was young, then. If he’s still alive, please, may I speak to him?”

A smile narrowed the monk’s eyes. “Secret marriages have been forbidden for many years, child.” His smile faded; something of my stunned and sick reaction must have shown in my face as I followed him into a white-plastered hallway that gave onto a well-ordered garden.

A sun-touched white marble statue of the Virgin Mary stood gracefully above a bed of late lilies, her tranquil face bringing to mind the Mary of the treasure in the Roman church. Beyond this garden lay a plain building. Beyond that a back gate and a kitchen garden. Here and there white-robed figures moved about their business, some talking quietly, some solitary. The ambience was orderly, peaceful, and not particularly otherworldly.

The elderly monk trod with measured pace around the garden to the building. There we came to an archway. He gestured for me to look through as he said, “We do not permit the world beyond this point. But here you can see Brother Ildephonsas at work.”

I glanced across an inner courtyard. Chickens cackled and pecked and wandered about the hard-packed ground. In between them sparrows hopped and darted. On a side of the yard was an open shed, in which a thin old monk stood on one side of a table with a still sheep laid on it. This monk held the sheep’s head between his hands as a white-haired monk quickly stitched up the animal’s side.

“A boar got in among the flock last night.” The monk spoke at my shoulder. “Brother Ildephonsas has a talent with beasts.”

Two long-haired dogs with thin, pointy muzzles galloped into the yard, plumed tails flying and tongues flapping pinkly.

One gave an excited yap and thrust his nose into the sinewy hand held down to him for a second. Brother Ildephonsas’ long, homely face creased into a big smile, then he straightened up. When the sheep twitched and shuddered, he folded his hands around its head, and it relaxed. Totally absorbed, he never noticed us.

Remembering what I’d learned from Nat, I asked, “Is he a Salfpatra?”

“Yes.”

“But it’s Father Teodras I’m looking for. Does this man know him, is that it? May I talk to him?”

“Brother Ildephonsas cannot speak to you because he made a vow of silence many years ago, when he joined the order,” the monk said gently, and he turned to go back.

I moved with him, but my steps were slow. “I don’t get it. What does he have to do with—oh, no.” Realization finally hit me, with awful finality.

The monk said softly, “There was once a young actor named Teodras Vinescos. He traveled in Romania and neighboring countries, and he was a friend to many young noblemen. But that man, that life, was left behind him more than half a century ago.”

“So the marriage was a fake. That’s what you were trying to tell me?” I said in a hard voice. “Took a while to sink in, but lately I haven’t exactly been quick on the uptake . . .” Tears burned my eyelids, blurring the garden path before my feet. Furious with myself, embarrassed at the thought of climbing into Josip’s car while blubbering, I fought them down.

My toe bumped a low step. I didn’t remember a step on the way in. I’d been brought to a small room with the cream-colored walls so common in this part of the world. It was lit by windows high on a wall, furnished with long wooden benches. The only ornament was a simple wooden carved crucifix, mounted between the windows.

I rubbed my eyes fiercely as I plumped down onto a bench. The old monk sat next to me, his hands folded.

“I’ve got the story now. I’m sorry to have disturbed you,” I said tightly.

“Your disappointment is understandable,” was the even reply. “Your grandmother yet lives?”

“Yes.” I took a deep breath, then expelled it. “At least, I hope so. She too has gone silent. We don’t know why.” I gulped in another breath. This time my voice shook less. “Did he—take that vow because of what he did to Gran? The false marriage, I mean?”

“That lies between Brother Ildephonsas and God,” he said. There was no reproach at all in voice or face. He and the other guy looked like people who had found the answers. Or at least, for whom the questions no longer mattered in the face of what they had found.

“I see,” I said, standing up. “Well, thank you for the truth.”

The monk also stood up, gesturing toward the bench. “You are welcome to remain here for a time, if you wish. Brother Marcus will show you to the gate when you are ready to go.”

“Sure. Thanks,” I said again.

“Go in peace.” He sketched the sign of the cross between us, then went out.

My legs sagged under me. I sat in the quiet room, listening to my own breathing. Still ragged. Poor Gran, I thought. Wearing that ring all her life—and it didn’t mean anything.

I leaned my head back and breathed deeply, wondering what to say when I got home. If she would hear me. It was too easy to picture her being shocked beyond recovery, but then I thought, don’t borrow trouble for Gran. Deal with your own issues.

What issues? I was exactly the same person I’d been before Josip drove me up. I was the same person as I’d been at birth. Everyone was the same. Ruli and Tony and Aunt Sisi—the situation was exactly as it had always been. So, outside of my mother’s legitimacy, which she had never questioned (and my mother wasn’t going to care about it when she did find out), nothing had changed.

I remembered Josip patiently waiting, and rose to leave.

Up the hallway a door opened and the first monk emerged. He gave me a placid nod and led me to the door in the big gate. With a courteous word of farewell he let me out.

Instead of the rust-black VW bug, Alec’s red Fiat gleamed in the weak sunlight.

He leaned against the car door, contemplating the distant mountains, Riev Dhiavilyi—Devil’s Mountain—crowned by the Eyrie silhouetted in the drifting haze.

Alec had not yet seen me. His sleeves were rolled to his elbows and the brisk wind ruffled through his hair and over the shirt but he seemed unaware of the cold.

As the door shut behind me with a quiet but solid thud he squinted against the sun’s glare, then took a couple of swift strides to meet me. He studied my face, then said, “I’m sorry I did not tell you before. I’d planned to today. Both of us were going to.”

“Both?”

“No one as yet knows that my father is here. He wants to meet you. Asked me yesterday to bring you up to have lunch with him. Are you up to it, do you think?”

I had difficulty making the transition, and said blankly, “Shouldn’t I be dressed up?”

“Your appearance is fine. Are you too tired?”

“You knew all the time?”

“Your mother was born in Vienna, but she wasn’t baptized until your grandmother reached Paris. Apparently Armandros always had some excuse, until right before they parted.”

“And?” I asked, but I knew what was coming.

Alec said gently, “And she was baptized Maria Sofia Dsaret.”

Up above, an eagle rode on a current of air, head twitching back and forth. The rising wind rustled through the trees.

“She knew,” I said. “She knew.”

“Armandros confessed the false marriage to her before he went back to fight against the Russians.”

“So
that’s
why they broke up?”

“The initial break was on ideological grounds, as I told you before. This is what I couldn’t find a way to tell you: when he would not give up his plan to fly against Russia she begged him as a last act to go to church with her so their daughter could be baptized. Though he wasn’t religious he apparently balked at lying to the priests about the baptismal certificate, which in those days was often the only form of ID a baby had. So he told her the truth. He hadn’t know if she was serious or not about that ‘last act,’ but after that confession, well, it was the last time they saw one another.”

“So she knew. I just don’t get it. She’s the most honest and straitlaced person I’ve ever known, but she wears a ring to this day!”

“On which hand?”

“On the left, of course.”

He gave his head a shake. “In this part of the world we wear wedding bands on the right hand.”

I tried to deal—but my brain had frozen.

“In those days, to be a single mother was serious business,” he said. “The ring as well as the false name would be a bit of social protection during stressful times—for your mother as well as for your grandmother. After all, she’d thought she was married when she left home and when her baby was born. Kim, I’m sorry I didn’t tell you. I should have—I meant to—but I didn’t quite know how.”

I sank into the car seat, and wound my hair slowly around my right fist so it wouldn’t blow in the wind, as I thought wonderingly,
Everything has changed. No. Nothing has changed, except I know the truth that everyone else knew.

He started the car and started down the long road. I said bitterly, “You would’ve told me in Dubrovnik if I hadn’t reacted like General Gudarian leading the troops every time you opened your mouth. And I probably wouldn’t have believed you anyway.” Depression curled like cold fog at the edges of my thoughts.

“I should have done better at broaching the subject,” he said. “I thought I was avoiding the accusatory, but I wasn’t, or you wouldn’t have been so angry with me. Rightly so. I grew up angry at your grandmother for what I regarded as a selfish act. Easy to condemn, isn’t it, when one doesn’t understand all the facts?”

“Totally.” I let out my breath, and the last of my anger with it. “Totally.”

Alec flashed a quick smile at me, but his eyes were preoccupied. “How’d you track the story down? Old palace servants?”

“At first. They told me about Salfmatta Mina—”

“Oh, the old governess.” He nodded. “Everyone whispered about her for years, but she steadfastly maintained she knew nothing.”

“She told me the whole story. That’s who I was with, when I escaped from Tony that time. She was a witness at the wedding, or what she thought was a wedding. I’m glad she doesn’t know it was fake.” I grimaced, shaking my head hard.

He nosed the car down the driveway to the Assumption church, the one with the mosaic ledge at which the festival begins. The one with the treasure.

He parked and helped me out. Silently I followed him around to the nave. As we entered, an old woman stepped from a pew, knelt and crossed herself, and walked away.

Alec and I were now alone.

We walked up the center aisle. The statues were there, the arresting beauty unchanged. Eternal rapture on Mary’s face.

“Wait.” I held up a hand, and looked around. “No children—no ghosts.” I sighed. “I not only saw ghost kids here last time, I heard them singing. But you say no one in the Dsaret family saw them?”

Alec said, “You do have two parents.”

I drew in a breath sharply. “The Murrays? Why didn’t I think of that? Maybe because everything here has been so much about Mom’s side of the family tree.”

“What do you know about your father’s people?”

“Nothing, really. His folks were old when they moved to California, and there weren’t any other relatives.” I pointed up at the cracked plaster figures with the peeling paint. “I didn’t dream
that,
did I?”

Alec murmured, “The statues underneath the plaster are solid gold.” He smiled at my dropped jaw. “One of the few pleasant stories about the prewar years, and Milo couldn’t write it down. If he’s up to it, I’ll ask him to give you the details, if you like, but the gist of it is, they took advantage of an already established process.”

“You mean, replacing the statues?” I whispered.

“That had been under discussion for close to twenty years. When the king and the then-bishop took a hand, things did speed up. Did you notice the statue of Mary in the garden up there on Mt. Corbesc?”