The Keys Of Heaven [Chapter 6: For The Forgiveness Of Sins]
Series summary: Three years ago, Father Aemond Targaryen performed a miracle. Now he is a cardinal, a media sensation, and a frontrunner to be elected pope. You are a nun who has been brought to Vatican City to assist with the papal conclave. But when your paths cross by happenstance, you must both reckon with your decision to join the Catholic Church…and what you want from the future.
Series warnings: Language, sexual content (18+ readers only), references to abuse and violence, volcanoes, bodily injury, death, peril, scheming, pining, some drugs/alcohol/smoking, Catholic trivia you never asked to learn, kangaroos!
Word count: 5.9k
🦘 A very special thanks to my Aussie slang consultant @bearwithegg and also her mum (any mistakes are mine) 🦘
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Rhaena keeps trying to have a yarn about the plan for the new fish pond at the convent in Sydney. She’s convincing herself that you’ll be back there together, soon and forever. You are only half-listening as you cast pellets of fish food into the dark gloomy water of the koi pond, metallic scales and skirtlike fins flashing from the depths. They make you think of coins, comets, blades, keys.
“And we’ll need something for the bottom, yeah?” Rhaena is asking, her habit a white wool blur in your peripheral vision, her voice a sweet hazy droning among the trickling of fountains and the grey breeze clattering through leaves and the muttering of cardinals as they stroll across the paths of sand-colored tuff pebbles. Kazi is walking with Cam and Lando and puffing on his vape; he glances over at where you are feeding the koi, looking like he wants to say something, then gets distracted when he spots Cardinal Ferrari.
“And here comes Ferrari flying down the straightaway!” Kazi shouts, clapping his hands as if in encouragement. Cardinal Ferrari with his ink-black hair and crater-deep wrinkles, stooped and shuffling, scowls at him. “He’s in the lead, but can he hold on to it?! He’s almost at the finish line! He’s stomping the gas! The fans are going wild! And…and…he’s done it, first place, whoo hoo!”
Kazi throws his hands into the air and waves them erratically. Cardinal Ferrari pitches him one last glare and then arrives at the cherub-adorned marble fountain where Cardinal Jahoda and Cardinal Koppel are conspiring fruitlessly; what is there left to say? The day after tomorrow votes will be once again cast and tallied in the Sistine Chapel, and this time there is no doubt who will emerge the victor. Not far away, Lucky is conversing with Cardinal Nemerenco, seemingly making assurances to smooth over any remaining turbulence on Aemond’s rise to the Chair of Saint Peter.
“Can we get blue pebbles?” Rhaena is saying, or at least that sounds like what she said; you have no idea what she means.
“What?”
“For the new koi pond,” she says, smiling eagerly. “At the convent. We need pebbles to cover the bottom after we put down a liner.”
“Oh, right. Sure. Do they come in blue?”
“Rocks come in all colors, mate.”
You laugh, shutting the clear plastic container of fish food. “Sorry, I’m still a little…” You gesture to your head. “Messed up, I guess.”
“No wukkas. I know you’re concussed.”
But of course, that’s not the problem. He enters the gardens accompanied by Cardinal Gideon Saati, once a rival, now a collaborator. Aemond is smoking a Karelia cigarette and nodding soberly as Cardinal Saati implores him to consider the needs of the people of South Sudan: humanitarian relief to combat flooding and the resulting food insecurity, providing shelters for the displaced, rescuing and reintegrating child soldiers, building schools, ending female genital mutilation. In the wings, Cardinal do Carmo waits impatiently to discuss his own concerns, perhaps preservation of the Latin Mass for parishes that still cling to it.
Rhaena says: “Do you think Mother Maureen will be stoked to see us?”
“Defo. She’ll pick us up at the airport and then drive straight to the pub for chicken parmi and Bundys.”
“Ripper! I just can’t learn to like red wine. It’s all they drink here.”
Aemond tasted like wine when he kissed me in the chapel, you think dazedly, longingly. And smoke, and lust. “Yeah, loads of wine,” you manage, stealing a glimpse of Aemond. From across the gardens, he is watching you too, quick furtive peeks when Cardinal Saati looks away and won’t notice. Cardinal do Carmo, still waiting, sighs and checks his watch, analog, cheap and temporary. He keeps complaining that they won’t let him have his Apple Watch back until the conclave is over.
“Where sells quality koi fish, do you think?” Rhaena asks.
“There must be places in Sydney.”
“I heard about some big hatchery up in Kundabung.”
“Oh, that’s out in Woop Woop.”
“We could make a day out of it. Lunch and karaoke in the car. Harry is supposed to have a new album coming out soon.” Harry Styles, she means. She calls him Harry, like they know each other. “We can take some of the kids staying in the shelter along too. Field trip!”
“Heaps good,” you say, still distracted. Back to the convent for Christmas, Boxing Day, New Year’s, Australia Day, Lent, Good Friday, Easter? Back to the convent forever? And what was once a sanctuary has become a prison, a cage you built with your own hands, a vow you swore when you were a different person. Saint Blaise was torn apart by iron combs, Saint Barbara was imprisoned in a tower, and right now you feel a little bit like both of them.
Aemond has at last turned his attention to Cardinal do Carmo and is doing his best to seem interested, but you can see he is restless. He flicks ashes off the end of his cigarette, he taps his fingertips against his chin, he glances at the stone statue of Saint Agatha that looms near where he stands. His still-blonde hair is ruffled by the brisk December breeze; absently, you wonder what it would feel like to thread your fingers through it, if he would let you, if he would tell you to stop.
Now the cardinals are making their way back to the Domus Sanctae Marthae for brekkie, a procession of scarlet cassocks and zucchettos perched on greying heads. In the dining hall, Sister Penny, Sister Helvi, and Sister Nuru are dishing out cornetti served with jam, custard, and Nutella. As he leaves the gardens, Lucky looks back at you apprehensively, taking a drag on one of his cigars. He wishes you would disappear, like Saint Agatha’s wounds vanished when Saint Peter’s apparition visited her in a prison cell. But you can’t leave yet; you haven’t decided where you’re going next.
“Should we help with brekkie?” Rhaena says brightly.
“You go ahead. I have to put the fish food away.”
“Sure thing. Cheers!” Then she trots off to join the caravan of cardinals, an island of white in a choppy red sea.
If Aemond intended to speak to you—and you have the impression he did—that has been derailed by Cardinal do Carmo’s impassioned audience. Aemond exits the gardens as you venture further into them until you reach the shed used by the groundskeepers, now mostly unneeded in the winter months. You unlatch the door, step into the shadows, and store the plastic container of brine-smelling pellets on a wooden shelf. When you reemerge into the cool steely daylight, a hand snags on your wrist. You yelp, a reflex, a muscle memory, a shudder all the way down to your bones.
“Are you proud of the role you’ve played in his ascension, girl?” Auclair says, tall and barbed like razor wire, snow white hair, narrow icy eyes. “I know a nonbeliever when I see one.”
You rip your arm out of his grasp. “Don’t you ever fucking touch me,” you hiss; you, who have never raised your voice to a priest in your life, you, who thought you had cultivated such patience for the failings of mortals.
Auclair is stunned; but more than that, he is enraged. “I’ll have you thrown out of Vatican City.”
“And I’ll have Aemond excommunicate you when he’s the pope,” you say, and shove roughly past him as you stride towards the Domus Sanctae Marthae, your habit billowing like sails.
~~~~~~~~~~
At lunch, veal Milanese and radicchio salad, Cardinal Micallef of Malta seeks out Aemond to discuss his concern that European governments are disrupting the activities of NGO ships attempting to aid migrants in the Mediterranean. At dinner, cod arracanato and gnocchi with Sicilian Christmas bikkies for dessert, Cardinal Kelly of Ireland takes a seat at Aemond’s table to urge him not to soften the Church’s teachings on abortion. During the meetings throughout the day—while you and the other nuns are doing the washing, wiping down sinks and countertops and showers, sweeping floors, making beds, scrubbing toilets—cardinals fiercely debate pressing questions of the Faith as Aemond sits quietly, watching, listening, now so high above their squabbling. When inevitably the red-cloaked men turn to seek his counsel (and foresee in which direction he will lead them when he is pope), Aemond turns their attention to his friends:
“I believe Cardinal Shane Campbell has demonstrated through his work in Mongolia that the future of evangelism is working within communities to better understand their customs and their needs, not a top-down implementation…”
“If Cardinal Luckson Louissaint can help to rebuild Haitian infrastructure with his own hands, surely it is not unreasonable to expect cardinals in other countries to do the same. I would encourage my brothers serving in Brazil, South Africa, and Romania to look to his example…”
“It seems to me that Cardinal Kazimierz Nowak has shown outreach to people with so-called ‘irregular’ lifestyles helps to broaden the societal influence of the Church, not undermine it…”
“Brothers, we must remember that Christ himself was a servant, not a scholar, and there is an urgent need for priests who are willing to do work that is hard and unglamorous and so often disregarded. For an exemplar, we need look no further than Cardinal Orlando Almazan…”
Now it is nightfall, and you have slipped away from Sister Penny’s endless list of chores and frazzled requests to hide in Saint Peter’s Basilica, where you are only occasionally disturbed by cardinals who have gotten turned around and need help finding their way out. You lead them back to the Domus Sanctae Marthae like the Archangel Raphael guides travelers, ever-patient and uncomplaining, as if you could not possibly have desires of your own, as if you have been created for no other purpose.
You find an alcove by a large statue of Saint Apollonia, whose teeth were ripped out of her skull, where you can hear the crowds outside in the square singing Good King Wenceslas. You envision the dripping white candles in their hands; you picture the warm glow of firelight on their faces. As the music enfolds you, reverberating off the white marble and red porphyry and travertine the color of sand, you close your eyes.
Two more days, then this is over.
You will board a flight back to Sydney, resume your life there, never see Aemond again except on Facebook, Instagram, YouTube, the television when the sisters turn the news on, and even then you will have to pretend not to really know him.
Why did God bring us back together? you can’t stop thinking, haunted by it. To test us, to torment us? Or to show us the path we should be taking?
There is a muffled thump behind you, like someone dropping a paperback book. You turn around to find Aemond standing there in an aisle of light that falls in through a window, red cassock, gold cross, his hands clasped behind his back. You say, smiling: “Did you just kick Saint Apollonia?”
He chuckles, a little sheepishly. “I was trying not to startle you.”
“It worked. Good on ya.”
“I’m sorry I didn’t get a chance to say hi earlier.”
“Yeah, you’ve been under the pump all day.”
“Everybody wants something.”
“Because now they know nothing can stop you.”
“Almost nothing,” Aemond says, and you see that shadows have grown under his eyes like blossoms that open in the springtime, that doubt he’s never known before is flourishing, a verdant indomitable weed, ivy covering his cold stone walls.
You ask, your voice soft: “Is there any way people could find out?” About the child?
“I don’t think so,” Aemond replies, like he’s spent a lot of time considering this, sleepless nights with demons scratching from the closet. “If Alys never told anyone, only the genes know the secret. I guess if he ever took one of those ancestry tests, and someone in my family did one, he could connect the dots. But I’m careful about that. Kazi sent me a 23AndMe kit last Christmas, but I never mailed in a sample. Now he jokes that I’m a serial killer and don’t want my DNA on file.”
Several long moments pass, punctuated only by distant, distorted music. “Is Alys still in Nisyros?”
“No, she died two years ago. Cancer.”
“Good.”
Aemond looks at you, his scarred eyebrow raised. “You’re usually so forgiving.”
“Usually.”
He peers around, seeing no one for you to assist, nothing for you to clean or serve or rearrange. “What are you doing in here?”
“I love Christmas music, and I can’t hear it anyplace else.”
He is quiet so he can listen. The next song has begun. “It Came Upon A Midnight Clear?”
You nod, resting your head against the wall, closing your eyes again. “It’s pretty ace.”
Another pause; the wheels in Aemond’s skull are spinning. “Do you have a favorite?”
“Probably…” You consider this. “O Come, All Ye Faithful.”
“You’ll be home soon. Then you can listen to Christmas music all the time.”
“I guess so.” Does he want that? When I leave the Vatican, will he be heartbroken or relieved? “I went to your room last night, you know. Before I found you in the gym.”
Aemond is startled, though perhaps not in a bad way. “My room?”
“Yeah.”
“Why?”
You shrug, your eyes still shut. “Maybe just to talk.”
“Maybe?”
There are heavy, echoing footsteps approaching rapidly. Your eyes flutter open; you move away from the wall, away from Aemond. “Cardinal Targaryen?” a man calls.
Aemond groans, exasperated. Then he collects himself. “Yes, Brother?”
Cardinal Everton Yearwood of Barbados ripples from the shadows, an urgent stab of red. “I was hoping to discuss a very important matter, and I am optimistic that you can put my mind at ease.”
Aemond turns to him as you retreat, becoming invisible, fading into the statues and the mosaics and the beams of cool December daylight. “How can I help you, Cardinal Yearwood?”
“Well, you see, the American ambassador to my country is a homosexual,” Yearwood begins.
“Okay,” Aemond says flatly.
“And this is…this is no good. And there have been some protests because him being there is inconsistent with our morals. I wrote a statement, but it did not have any effect, he regrettably remained the ambassador. So I think it would be appreciated…not just by me, but by my fellow cardinals as well…if you made some sort of public proclamation about the importance of national leaders being able to act in accordance with their consciences and therefore object to certain impositions.”
Aemond sighs irritably. “Brother, this is not a real problem.”
“Respectfully, I must disagree—”
“If the ambassador is gay, let him be gay. The Lord commands us to love all people and judge no one, the instructions are very simple.”
“But the Bible condemns immoral behavior—”
“That is for God to judge, not you.”
“As a shepherd of the flock, it is my responsibility to protect my sheep from the influences of the Enemy. I must defend their chastity, the health of their bodies, the sanctity of marriage—”
“And the pope is the shepherd of all shepherds,” Aemond retorts ominously. “You must follow where he leads you. In less than two days, we will have a new Holy Father. I trust you will defer to his leadership, whoever he might be.”
“Yes, Cardinal Targaryen. Of course.” Yearwood is abruptly conciliatory, perhaps even afraid. “I did not mean to offend you.”
“Go in peace, Brother,” Aemond says; but he raises his bandaged right hand as if it is a reminder: I was chosen, you were not.
~~~~~~~~~~
There is a knock on your bedroom door.
Rhaena, who had been chatting away about new recipes to try this year—oddities she read about before you stepped out of Leonardo da Vinci International Airport and into seclusion, Christmas lasagna with layers of red velvet and peppermint cheesecake and vanilla pudding dyed green, fruitcake bikkies, coconut chocolate baklava (a twist on a Greek dessert, inspired by the impending Greek pope, of course)—whirls to you, baffled. No one ever knocks this late. Rhaena is already in her pajamas and under the covers; you were just about to change out of your white wool habit and take a shower, cloak yourself in opaque steam, think of Aemond and then wash his memory off of you.
“Sister Helvi?” you guess. There is no reply. When you open the door, Aemond is in the hallway instead.
You stare up at him, blinking, your fingers settling on the doorframe so they won’t stray to his hands or his chest or his scarred cheek. He is a pillar of red; a gold cross hanging from his neck, face impassive like cold marble, hands hidden behind his back. Aemond’s eye flicks momentarily to where Rhaena is gaping at him worshipfully from her bed, then returns to you. “I need clean sheets,” he says.
“Okay,” you reply, stunned. Then he begins walking away.
You turn to Rhaena. She flings her arms wide; you shrug in return. You don’t know what’s going on either.
Aemond glances back to observe you aren’t following him yet. “Right now,” he says; and you are wrenched from your confusion and your delay, because now you understand what he wants.
To see me, to talk to me, maybe even more.
“I’ll fetch the sheets and be upstairs in a tick.”
“Good,” Aemond says, and vanishes towards the elevators. You take the stairwell to the basement, a dripping cold place like an underworld, freshly-washed bedding in high white stacks, spiders weaving webs in dark corners and on the ceiling.
Aemond opens his bedroom door before you can get your key out of your pocket. He must have been listening for your footsteps. He is all the way at the end of a hall; he doesn’t even have a neighbor since Cardinal Marcu went back to Romania. You drift inside, a white wisp like smoke, and he locks the door behind you. The light is dim, midnight outside and tall white candles flickering on the writing desk. Aemond seems surprised when you go straight to his bed and yank off the blanket.
“What are you doing?”
“Changing the sheets,” you answer.
“You don’t have to.” And now he’s admitted that’s not the real reason you’re here.
“I know. I want to. You can wait.” You strip the sheets from the mattress, feeling for spots that have dried stiff like bumps of Braille, inhaling vapors of him: smoke, salt, cologne, vanilla and amber and cinnamon. You toss the old sheets to the floor, then begin stretching on the new ones.
Aemond watches you for a few seconds, then sits down in the chair by his writing desk. He pours himself red wine—from a decanter into a small glass, a splash of lava, blood in crystal—and sips it as he studies you, his eye on you like a touch you can feel, running over your ribs and down your thighs. Your heartbeat is loud in your ears, your pulse scorching like magma boiling beneath the earth. Still, you are patient, you are deliberate; you bend far over the bed to tug the corners of the sheets beneath the mattress, you smooth the soft white cotton with slow, teasing hands. Then you are done, and you stand in front of his single-sized bed—never meant to be shared—with your hands laced together and a forbidden question written on your face.
Aemond takes another swig of wine. His left hand, knuckles white and tendons taut, is gripping the arm of his chair. “We can just talk,” he offers.
“I don’t want to talk.”
He stands, gulps the last of his wine, and begins to unbutton his cassock; but he turns away as he does this, as if part of him is still ashamed. You take off your white wool habit like Aemond did in Saint Peter’s Square when you were on fire, when he baptized you with fountain water and blood, when he won the Keys of Heaven days before the conclave would vote for the last time. Then you shed what is under it, pale green jumper, emerald-colored skirt, and then everything else too until you are bare, revealed, and no man has seen you this way in fifteen years. You leave your iron medallion on the nightstand. Then you sit on the edge of the bed, and Aemond joins you, and here at the midpoint of your lives you are suddenly teenagers again, nervous and exhilarated, knowing that nothing will ever be the same.
He reaches for you with his wounded hand, and only then do you realize you’ve left on your veil. Gently, he pulls out each pin, and then your hair is uncovered. He grazes his fingers through the unearthed strands, admires your face like you are something holy. Then he is so close you can feel the heat rising off his skin, see the need in the oceanic blue of his iris, and your palm is pressed to his heartbeat, and as he kisses you—so soft and so hopeful—you are thinking: I have to make this good for him. We might only get once.
You laugh, anxious, apologetic. “I think I forgot how to do this.”
You can feel the smile on his lips. “It’ll come back to you.”
“Just like you did.”
And now you’re falling into it like a current: his thumbprint skating up the line of your jaw, his lips wet with wine and warm and hungry, your eyelids dipping shut, a blind curtain falling. A weight settles on your waist, and you flinch before you can stop yourself. Aemond immediately lifts his bandaged hand away.
“I’m sorry,” you say, terrified that you’ll ruin this. “I’m not afraid of you, I don’t know why I can’t...I can’t...” Why I can’t make my body forget. Why I can’t be brand new again.
“Hey,” Aemond says gently, kissing you again. “Just watch me the whole time, okay?”
“Okay,” you whisper. Will that work? Can I do this?
Now he’s on his knees like he’s lost in prayer, but he isn’t, and he’s never been; he’s lost in you, skimming his lips up the inside of your thigh, your left hand dragging through his blonde hair, your right palm sinking into the mattress and leaving indents like footprints in wet sand. And then he’s there—warmth, pressure, bloodrush, gravity—and his arms are hooked under your thighs to keep you close, and your trembling fingers comb through his hair, sweat in a sheen on your belly and your chest, thanking him in hushed breathless murmurs because it feels like a prayer has been answered, like you have pleaded for Saint Lucy to cure your blindness, like you are Lazarus being raised from the dead, a vision, a revelation, a resurrection, something that ended too soon being brought back to life again. You watch him—and you are shaking, gasping, marveling, is this real?—and then at last you let your head fall back and your eyes close, because you know in your muscles and your bones that no one will hurt you while he’s here, no one will ever hurt you again, and the phantoms of corporeal memory fade, fade, fade until they are gone, sandcastles obliterated by the surf.
His tongue laps harder, faster, his arms yanking you closer, drinking you like wine, your wetness on his face like candle wax, and you collapse across his bed as your hips follow his cadence like the tides of the ocean, your own hands covering your mouth to smother your moans, wanting to scream—like when Saint Apollonia’s teeth were torn out, like when Saint Lawrence was roasted alive—but knowing you can’t, not here and now, not ever with Aemond, because this has to be a secret unless he shreds the myth he’s written for himself and burns it down to ashes.
Where his mouth is on you—famished, forceful, scarlet scalding heat—has turned to trapped magma, and it hemorrhages up through the earth and spills down the side of the crater in a river, a red glow, a devastating release, and then he’s scaling your body as he climbs onto the bed, you kissing him violently as you throb and pant beneath him, opening your thighs wide, wanting him to give you that again already, an exorcism, a baptism, and wanting him too, all of him, even if only tonight, a sliver of a lifetime in which you belong to each other, a glimpse through the keyhole of a door.
His palms are cupping your face, and then his fingers are inside of you, a strange sensation because it’s been so long, but when his hand begins to move the euphoria comes rushing back like a ricochet, someone you haven’t been in a long time, a fifteen-year drought that ends with a downpour. He covers you like a veil—his sweat-slick chest against yours, his belly, his hips—and you’re so ready for him that even though he is thick and long there is no friction at all when he enters you, only a painless perfect fullness, a relief that rolls up through you like a wave, yes I can do this, yes I want this desperately.
Aemond murmurs, breaking a kiss that is ravenous: “Are you alright?”
You nod, and then sigh into his open mouth: “All the way.”
And he gives you what you ask for, until he is buried in you completely, until there is a deep rapturous pressure that feels so good you almost can’t stand it, it is too overwhelming, it is too divine, his thrusts like tremors of earthquakes that open blood red crevices, a scorching abyss that consumes. You don’t even to think to remind Aemond to make sure you won’t get pregnant. You know he wouldn’t do that to you. You know he is haunted enough already.
He gasps and withdraws, strokes himself just twice, spills out onto the clean sheets with a moan; but now he is too far away. You follow him, nuzzling the scarred half of his face, closing a hand around his cock and squeezing him as he jolts with aftershocks, running your thumb up over the tip, soaking your hand with his salt and his lust, and Aemond tilts up your jaw so he can kiss you, your wetness still gleaming on his lips and his tongue, bathed in each other’s earthen minerals and gluttonous for more.
“It doesn’t feel wrong,” he says, wonderous like he didn’t think this was possible.
“No,” you agree softly. “It doesn’t.”
Aemond wants to be the one to wash you clean. You go to his shower together, constructed for a much older man: lots of room to maneuver, a bench to take the strain off unsteady legs. As steaming water beats down, Aemond is kneeling and lathering soap on your thighs and your hips and your belly, a thick white viscous film that makes you want more of him. You go down to the floor, the white tile biting at your knees, the water pouring over your back, and in his lap you find a rhythm you thought was lost to you, relearn how to move and how to balance, and his palms are on your face when you come, the bandages on his right hand sodden and turning pink as he bleeds through them. Aemond tells you when to stop—it doesn’t take long—but you wish he didn’t have to. There is a starvation you’ve never felt before: for his body, for his soul.
You have to go back to your room. You’ve already been gone for too much time to easily explain away. You are rushing to towel off your hair when you notice the carnage of Aemond’s bed: tangled cotton sheets, damp patches you both left on them. “Now you really do need clean sheets,” you say, intending to bring some.
“Leave them,” Aemond replies, smiling drowsily. He picks up your medallion off his nightstand and returns it, placing it in your empty, unpierced palm. “I want them to smell like you.”
~~~~~~~~~~
There are sounds of clanging pots and silverware coming from the kitchenette, and the rich homey scents of caramelized sugar, vanilla, warm milk. This is unusual; no one uses it for anything more than snacks and tea. Bewildered, you peek inside. Lando is standing over the table and piercing a large circular custard resting in a saucepan with a toothpick. On the counter behind him, you see an empty egg carton, spilled snowfalls of white sugar, opened cans of evaporated and sweetened condensed milk.
“Cardinal Almazan?” you say, stepping inside. “What are you making?”
He lifts the toothpick from the custard and observes that it is clean. Then he looks up at you and beams. “Leche flan. The Spanish brought it to us, but we made it sweeter.”
“It smells fantastic.”
“I am not so talented, but Saint Honoratus of Amiens lends his assistance.”
Saint Honoratus is the patron saint of bakers, as well as candlemakers, florists, and oil refiners. “Is he your saint?” Everybody has one, whether or not a medallion hangs from their throat.
“Saint Nicholas,” Lando says instead. “The patron saint of children. They are our most precious gifts, and yet so vulnerable. But we’re all children to the Lord, no matter how old we grow. We need guidance. We need protection. We need to know that we are unconditionally loved.” Then he continues, meaning the flan: “It has to go in the refrigerator overnight, and I’ll flip it onto a plate in the morning so the caramel side is on top. But then you’re welcome to have as much as you’d like.”
“Oh no, I couldn’t devour all your hard work. I’m sure it’s meant for you and your friends.”
Lando is perplexed. “It’s for anyone who wants it.” He sets the saucepan aside so the flan can begin to cool. Then he goes to the sink and begins scrubbing spatulas and measuring cups. This is startling; you can’t remember the last time you saw a priest tidying up.
“Cardinal Almazan, please, let me do that.”
“It’s my mess, Sister,” he says. “But if you’d like to sit and chat while I work, I’d appreciate the company.”
Reluctantly, you drop into one of the chairs around the table; and you remember Sister Augustina slumped here, eternally motionless, irrevocably silent, her hollow exoskeleton of a body shipped home to Germany to rest beside the child she lost in life, that she is now reunited with in a place where all mortal failings are washed away and we are left stainless.
Lando smiles, pleased, then notices something that concerns him. “Why is your hair wet, Sister?”
The shower. You reach up self-consciously to feel the narrow band of hair that your veil leaves uncovered, more than damp, almost sopping. You grapple for an explanation, your panic evident. Then you mumble something about wanting to get warmed up with a hot bath. Your flustered response is far more suspicious than your hair. Your face is burning, your gaze darting evasively around the kitchenette.
Lando’s eyes go wide—he must understand, or at least have an inkling—then he turns back to the dishes. He asks you as he scrubs, his voice pleasant and benign, pivoting: “Have you done much traveling in your service to the Church? Before this trip, I mean.”
“Yeah nah, not yet. Other sisters in my convent have, they hopped over to Canada and the States…last year Sister Rhaena went on a group trip to visit a convent in Anchorage, Alaska, isn’t that grouse?”
“Oh yes, very grouse,” Lando agrees, although surely he doesn’t know what it means. “You didn’t want to go with Sister Rhaena?”
You hesitate. “I’ve always preferred to stay close to Sydney. It feels like home.”
“You are looking forward to returning to your convent, then?”
Something catches in you, a wince, a dread; you are Saint Bartholomew, having your skin flayed layer by layer until you are secretless. “I want to see Mother Maureen, and the other sisters too. I want to be able to celebrate the holidays with our guests staying in the shelter. But…” It’s the first time you’ve ever said it aloud, but it’s true. “No. No, I don’t want to go back to living that way.”
Lando comes and sits down in the chair beside you, offers you his small open palms, creased with lines like how the earth is demarcated by the equator and the prime meridian, different hemispheres, different lifetimes.
What if we had never left that beach?
You give Lando your hands, and he doesn’t say anything, he just holds them gently so you know you aren’t alone.
“Lucky believes I should stay away from Aemond,” you say, and there are scalding tears filling up your eyes, blurring your vision, leaving you blind. Then they flow down your cheeks in rivers. “What do you think?”
Lando smiles. “Why would I have any wisdom to offer you? I think you should listen to God.”
“But I can’t tell what he’s saying.”
“You can’t tell, or you don’t want to?”
And impossibly, that voice is becoming clearer already. “What brought you to the Church, Cardinal Almazan?”
“I had a good life and a good family, and I enjoyed all of it. Our house was beautiful, and it had air conditioning, and a courtyard with fountains and bright green parrots, and I went to the best schools in Manila. But there were always street kids around when we were driven to places, you see. They’d be there on the sidewalks begging tourists for money, and they were filthy, skinny, covered in scars, some of them maimed. On an ordinary morning, I was staring out the car window at one of those children, a boy around my age, and I thought, filled with disgust and horror: That could be me. And then, Sister, the strangest thing happened. I heard a voice that was so loud and so unmistakable it rattled my bones: You should care no matter who it is. All at once, in that moment, everything seemed to shift for me. I saw the world so differently, and I believed in God in a way that was effortless and without question. And my family perceived me becoming increasingly devout as a series of pointless sacrifices, but to me…I felt at peace. Everything was suddenly so simple. Joy came from the most mundane places. I appreciated everything.”
You are amazed. “That’s how the Faith feels for me too.”
“But you don’t have to be a nun to follow the Lord.”
“No,” you whisper. “I don’t.”
“You have listened to God for so many years. I’m sure he will speak to you now.”
Yes. Yes he will. Lando releases your hands as you rise from the table, feeling exhausted and sore all over, feeling free. “Thank you, Cardinal Almazan.”
“Please just call me Lando, Sister.”
“It seems too informal.”
“And I am no one special,” he says, grinning. “Don’t forget to help yourself to some leche flan tomorrow.”
You laugh shakily, swiping away the tears that glitter on your eyelashes. “I will.”
“Goodnight, Sister.”
“Goodnight, Lando.”
And as you are gliding through the doorway, white and silent like a ghost, you hear Lando turn the sink back on so he can finish the dishes.
