Three-Cornered Halo (27 page)

All about him, sighs, prayers, shouts of joy and acclamation, hands stretched forth, knees shuffling over the bare stones of the cathedral floor, a whole great host of people stretching forward, shuffling, edging, pressing ever a little forward to be one millimetre nearer to—a miracle. The priests still gazed, spellbound, upward from the altar, the Archbishop knelt, hands clasped, motionless, with that look of rapture on his upturned face: the Grand Duke and Grand Duchess on their knees, bowed submissive heads. All was peace, all was glory, all was unalloyed happiness and hope: the vision hung above them and blessed them with all the promise of the future: indulgence for their sins, prosperity for their island, renewed loving trust in their rulers, the knowledge to hug to their hearts for ever that they, in all the world, have been privileged to hold communion with a saint of God come down from heaven itself.… And he, Tomaso di Goya, two minutes after the vision had left them—was to destroy it all.

His hands clawed back against the pillar behind him, his feet dug into the marble carving of the empty font. He prayed: ‘Juanita—save me! Save me!' And suddenly, sharply—he knew what to do. If this were indeed a vision sent by God.… He called out sharply, hardly knowing what he said: “If you are a vision sent by God—perform a miracle! Let the Grand Duke take the Cellini thurible and offer incense to you, from the people of San Juan! Let incense rise up out of the thurible, and nothing more! If you are a saint from heaven—you know what miracle there will be in this.…”

Oh, dear, thought Cousin Hat: what ever mischief would this young man be up to next? A horrid, sly fellow, she had warned Winsome against him, time after time. She whispered, hissing it out of the side of her mouth under cover of a stifling handkerchief: “What is your boy friend up to now?”

Winsome, half stupefied with wonder, had been staring, mouth agape, alternately up at the vision and back into the shadows from whence Tomaso's voice imperiously cried out. “
Win
some” insisted Miss Cockrill, “what's this all about?”

“It's a challenge,” said Winsome, still staring, half in awe, half in terrified doubt. “If it's really a vision, if she's really the saint …”

“If she's really the saint—well, what?”

“The incense. We've—he's—doctored the thurible. The smoke of the incense will be pink. This is his private challenge to Juanita—if the smoke comes out white, we shall
know
she's a saint.…”

“Good gracious!” said Cousin Hat. It was all most peculiar. But, however, there was no time to go into it now. Unaware, as Tomaso was aware, of the impossibility of anyone existing who could be impersonating the saint, she had accepted the whole thing as a charmingly Juanese fraud; another of the ‘symbols' the Grand Duke delighted in. And since he and the Duchess would hardly be accepting a fraud without some demonstration if they had not been implicated in it themselves, she had been watching its progress with complacency and wishing them well of it with all her heart. And now … Not if she knew it, was this tiresome Tomaso to be permitted to upset so delightful an apple-cart. “Mr Cecil,” she hissed, “we must do something to stop this nonsense, right away.”

But Mr Cecil also was staring alternately up at the vision and back at the shadows where Tomaso di Goya stood: his face a mask of horrified anticipation, as white as chalk.

I must do something, thought Mr Cecil. I must act, I must stop this thing happening. I must do something
now
. But he could not. He who had been so ready, so masterful, when there had been time to think and plan, now, caught unprepared, could only gape and stare, limbs petrified in an immobility of indecisive dread. Across the width of the sanctuary, he could see El Gerente's grey face and knew that he, too, was powerless to move. But his eyes turned to the Arcivescovo and Mr Cecil relaxed: the old man had it all in hand, had but to put up the protest as earlier arranged, and this time with a far more justifiable excuse for interference. Juanita stood, quiet and receptive, in her shadows, the Grand Duke kneeled, unresponsive, at his prie-Dieu. The Archbishop had but to rise now and say that any vulgar, material challenge was an affront to the saint, the censer should be taken away and not used.…

He made no move.

More stridently now, astride the bowl of the font, Tomaso repeated his challenge. “The thurible! Let the Grand Duke offer incense before El Margherita, let her perform the miracle that she alone knows of—and I and all the faithful in all the world will recognise her for a saint out of Paradise.”

The Grand Duke lifted his head and looked directly up at Juanita; she hung, suspended motionless in her shadows, and gave no sign. Mr Cecil looked frantically over at the Archbishop. He remained, unmoving, looking up with that smile of ineffable happiness, at the vision. He thought wildly: The old fool—he's looking to
her
to save us! Tomaso called again: “The thurible! If she is a saint in heaven, let the Grand Duke salute her with the thurible!” and Mr Cecil yapped out, suddenly, sharply, above the tumult of the people, “ Arcivescovo! Now is the time …”

But the Archbishop prayed quietly on. The Patriarca rose from his knees and came down slowly from the altar steps towards the Grand Duke's prie-Dieu. “Exaltida—if this is the people's wish …?”

“Arcivescovo!” cried Mr Cecil, almost screaming, caught up in an extremity of terror, unable to do more than cry out; and “Arcivescovo!” moaned El Gerente, caught up also, like Laocoon in the toils of fear. “Do something! Speak!
Do
something …!”

But the Archbishop knelt on: hands clasped before him, face uplifted to his saint—happy at last and for ever, free from fear, free from pain, free from all earthly longings for ever more. In the hour of his exquisite happiness, in the moment of the fulfilment of all his dreams—the soul of His Serenity, El Anitra, Archbishop of San Juan, had passed away quietly into the hands of God.

In the niche above the High Altar, quietly and passively receptive—Juanita. Still kneeling, his eyes turned indecisively towards the thurible—the Grand Duke. To either side of him, panic-stricken into helplessness, Mr Cecil and the Gerente. Astride the marble font in the body of the church, crying it out for the last time over the heads of the people—Tomaso. “What are you all afraid of? If she is a saint from heaven—let him take up the thurible!”

From her prie-Dieu to the right of the altar steps, Miss Cockrill got suddenly to her feet. She hooked the handles of her large brown bag over the elbow-rest of the prie-Dieu. “Look after that,” she said to Winsome, and marched forward to stand almost between the kneeling Grand Duke and the thurible. “Excuse me, Patriarca,” she said to that dignitary who still stood, one hand outstretched, encouraging the Grand Duke, “but I think this should be removed.” And she removed it without more ado, unhooking it from its golden stand, letting it hang by its golden chain, great, lazily-glowing weight that it was, from her neat, gloved hand. “Pink incense,” she hissed in an aside, to the startled Grand Duke. Aloud she said: “I think it should be put somewhere else. It is quite disgraceful that the Grand Duke should be heckled into using it—a most vulgar idea, putting the saint to some cheap test.” She looked round for somewhere to take it to. One sharp, chopped-off cry from Tomaso, decided her. The font! I'll take it down to the font and dowse out the fire: then they
can't
use it. The deadly thing hung, harmless yet infinitely dangerous, like a rattlesnake held up, hissing, by the tail, in her gloved hand. Carrying it carefully, people falling back before her as she went, she marched with it down to the font.

There was a crash and a thud as Tomaso di Goya fell forward to his knees. A miracle! The saint had sent a miracle: had sent this sign, from a quarter more utterly unexpected than any other, to save the Grand Duke from the destruction in store for him. The people parted, in astonishment, making way for her and, very small between the great supporting pillars of the nave, she came forward to where, a glimmer of carved white marble in the dimness, the font loomed up at her. She is bringing it to
me
! By her means, Juanita is sending it back to me!

Here the crowd was almost solid, packed densely, pressed back ever more thickly as the front ranks gave way before the small, advancing figure with the thurible. He leapt suddenly to his feet. “Give way! Give way! Move back from the carpet of flowers, let no one set foot on the path down the aisle, leave the aisle clear …!”

The flowers had long since been scattered by scuffling feet, but where they had been there remained a sort of ill-defined pathway. But the time Cousin Hat came with her burden to the font, a passage had been cleaved by the pressing back of the crowd to right and left, clear through to the great West door. He climbed down slowly from the font and confronted her. She was rather pink in the face from the exertion of carrying the great thing, but she handed it to him, holding it steadily. “Put it into the water. I can't reach.”

“Senorita,” he said, “the font is dry. There is no water there.” And he looked into her face and looked at the golden censer. “There is a bomb in it,” he said.

Far, far away, at the end of an interminable passage, flower-strewn, between two walls of people, dangerously close, there shone the light of the open great West door. She put out her hand for the censer again. “Go before me. Keep the people back. I'll carry it through and out into the square.”

With his free hand, he made the sign of the cross. “No, Senorita; I will take it.” And he jerked it from her hand, and on the golden chains, the great thing swung: and he screamed out suddenly: “Keep back! Keep back!” and caught it to his breast and, screaming, ran.… Out through the double wall of the people, out on to the broad steps into the golden sunshine, screaming to the crowds that thronged out after him into the great cathedral square, to keep back, keep back, keep back.… Out into the sunshine, down the shallow steps, over the cobbles into the blessed emptiness of the centre of the square; and there alone with his wickedness and folly, his treachery and his greed—threw himself, hugging his own murder to his heart, down to the ground on top of the deadly thing; and screamed out his last prayer, offering his life in reparation to God.

But Tomaso's friends in Naples, traitors no less to their own cause than to any other, had run true to form. The golden thurible lay, a little scratched and dented, beneath his breast but otherwise suffered no harm. And after a little while, El Gerente arrived and picked his friend up by the arm and picked up the thurible (but gingerly) and led him back into the church.

Within the great rose of the cathedral with its leaf-green brocade and massed pale pink-and-white blossom, under the silver shimmer of the chandeliers, the people had stumbled to their feet and stood, electrified, looking towards the West door. At its centre, a rose in the heart of a rose, the Grand Duchess knelt in her rose-pink gown and her leaf-green cloak and only the fire-flash of diamonds gave away the trembling of her hands. The Grand Duke, royally aloof in the presence of danger, had continued unmoved at his prie-Dieu, the magnificent head held proudly still, the great shoulders tensed beneath the velvet cloak; caged within the altar rail, the celebrant and acolytes turned backs to the vision, craning to see over the heads of the people thronging the naves and aisle. Only the dead man, seraphically smiling, remained with his fixed, blind, witless stare turned up unwaveringly to the saint.

El Margherita had not, during her lifetime on the table-top, been remarkable for her tolerance. Now, however, she waited with exemplary patience while her public reassembled itself: Miss Cockrill, a trifle dithery, stumping back to her place, picking up as she went the brown handbag which meanwhile had received scant care from Winsome Foley, Tomaso di Goya being dragged, more dead than alive, to stand with hanging head, surrounded by politio, behind the Grand Duke's prie Dieu. But when all was quiet again at last, she raised her hand. “My children …”

Like the roar of the sea, the tumbling of the breakers against the rocks, the surge of a thousand voices beat against the towering cliffs of the red brick walls. Juanita! Juanita! Santa Juanita, Margherita del isla nostra, pray for us, intercede for us before the throne of God, remember us, thy children, oh blesséd one in Paradise.…

Juanita was on her high horse again. Gone was the cross old woman who had argued, with the familiar cackle of laughter, against poor Tomaso's attempts to discredit her. She was back to the mystery and majesty of her first apparition. With uplifted hand, she stilled the tempest of their importunings. “My children—hear me!” She gestured, pointing down to where the golden head of the Grand Duchess gleamed beneath the black lace veil. “At the voice of this, our daughter, I have come to you. To her prayer, I have answered: ‘Go in peace, Bellissima, Rose of our Island, mother of island princes to be.…' To you, my children, I promise happiness, prosperity and peace. To this doubting one”—she waved her hand again, imperiously—“forgiveness; for him I invoke the clemency of the Grand Duke. And for myself …” The squat figure bowed forward, humbly, hands clasped together in an attitude of self-abasement. “For myself, I ask nothing but the love and remembrance of my children here together in our island home; I ask only the obscurity in which I lived and died. Make no plea for me, my children, raise no clamour for title and honours for El Margherita. Let my memory dwell, a pearl in your hearts alone; and in token of this, I shall send you … I shall send you …” The voice broke and faltered, the light about her wavered and began to fade. A low moan broke from the people, Juanita, Juanita, stay with us, don't leave us; a great sigh that swept through the cathedral like a gust of wind through a forest of leaves. And, as the radiance about her faded to nothingness, like the first rain on the leaves, a little, light pattering began.… A little light pattering, pitter-patter, pitter-patter, like the new rain pitter-pattering on dry leaves; and, like raindrops pattering down upon the heads of the people, pattering down upon their suddenly upturned faces, pitter-patter, pitter-patter, silky-soft and warm as April raindrops—a shower of tiny pearls. The light faded and died about the vision, a hand moved in a final gesture of blessing—and El Margherita, Pearl of San Juan was gone. But with her going all the great cathedral, all its light and shadow, all its galleries, naves, aisle, sanctuary, flower-festooned, silken-hung, was filled with the patter, patter, patter of hundreds upon hundreds upon hundreds of tiny pearls.