Feet of Clay Read online

  “Buscaglia. Giovanni Buscaglia. The Cardinal Secretary of State.”

  He glanced up at the camera and its red light. His eyes blazed as he held her bag out to her. “Here. You’ll find your passport, the photo and your Tanfoglio have all been returned. I removed the bullets and placed them in the pocket on the front of the bag. You’re not to load your weapon until you’re back on Vatican soil.”

  She took the bag from his hand. “Thank you, Constable.”

  He cleared his throat and glanced again up at the camera. “I’d also like to apologize for any inconvenience I’ve caused you tonight.”

  “Not at all.”

  “The Chief said I’m supposed to drive you back to your rental car and then escort you to the airport to make sure you don’t miss your flight home.”

  “Very good, Constable. Shall we go?”

  * * * * *

  She ran her gaze over the interior of Rafferty’s car. The front seat was distinctly less well-kept than the back seat she had occupied earlier in the evening. He looked self-conscious as she glanced around.

  The dashboard was littered with papers and files. She spotted the corner of a map sticking out of the mess in front of her.

  The storage spaces in the console between them were stuffed with fast food napkins. She also noted gum, a container of breath mints, a folding knife, and a large flashlight.

  He started the car and turned to her. “Diplomatic immunity, huh?”

  She nodded. “Quite right, Constable.”

  “Are you really a nun?”

  “I am.”

  He fidgeted in place and checked the time. “What time is your flight?”

  “Six-thirty.”

  He fidgeted again. “This may seem unusual but...” He took a deep breath. “I’d like you to meet someone before you go.”

  “I don’t think—”

  He interrupted her. “It’ll only take a few minutes.”

  “It is rather late.”

  “She’ll be up.” He tugged the car into drive and pulled onto the street. He flipped a switch on the dashboard and the vehicle’s siren wailed as it accelerated away from the station. She could see the blue police light reflecting off the buildings they passed.

  He dug his cellphone out of his pocket, thumbed the screen and held it to his ear. After a moment, he said, “Hi, it’s me. Figured I’d come for a visit. Got time?” He listened. “Great. See you in a few.”

  After speeding across the city, they pulled up to a dilapidated brick building. The sign on the front read “Philadelphia Home for Youth”.

  “What are we doing here?” she asked.

  “You’ll see.”

  “You’re being very mysterious, Constable,” she said as they got out of the car.

  They walked up to the front door and stepped inside. Rafferty pressed one of the buttons on the intercom at the front door. A moment later, a woman’s raspy voice said, “That you?”

  “It’s me. I brought a...friend.” Rafferty glanced at Alice.

  The door buzzed and Rafferty yanked it open. They stepped through and he led Alice down the first-floor hallway to a door marked “Counsellor”.

  Rafferty eased the door open and motioned Alice in.

  Alice stepped inside. It was a waiting room with four chairs facing a desk and a pair of filing cabinets. Above the filing cabinets hung a hand-made sign that read “Happy 40th Birthday, Rachel!”

  Behind the desk, the door to the counsellor’s inner office opened.

  “You didn’t stop by just to wish me happy birthday, did you?” a croaky voice called.

  A woman in a wheelchair emerged. A jagged red scar ran across her face from her forehead, over her nose and down the opposite cheek. She wore a plain white t-shirt and a crucifix hung just below the neckband. Her hair was contained in a black veil with a white band across the front. She smiled when she saw Alice and stuck out her hand.

  Alice stepped toward her, hand extended. Their hands clasped and they both said, “I’m Sister Jacobine.”

  Silence cloaked the room. Alice heard the door click shut behind her.

  “Happy birthday, Rachel,” Rafferty said, sotto voce.

  The woman in the wheelchair pursed her lips and looked past Alice to Rafferty. “Clearly, my brother did not tell either of us who we’d be meeting,” she rasped.

  Alice glanced back at Rafferty.

  He was seated in one of the chairs, arms folded across his chest. He looked amused.

  “Clearly, he did not,” she replied.

  “Oh, I love your accent. Where are you from?”

  “England. Amesbury, to be precise.”

  “Are you kidding me? That’s where she’s from!”

  “Who?”

  “The original Sister Jacobine. That is where you got the name, right?”

  Alice pressed a hand to her chest. “Yes. Yes, of course.”

  “She was such an amazing woman, especially given her circumstances. Being a woman during the Reformation couldn’t have been easy, never mind being a nun.”

  Alice glanced at Rafferty and back to his sister. “Oh child, they didn’t think about it that way. They just went about the business of living, as any of us do.”

  Rachel shook her head. “She was different. How many nuns would sacrifice their soul to protect their charges? You know the story, right?”

  Alice nodded. “I do. You think it is true?”

  “It must be something about the name. There was also a Sister Jacobine in Rome at the end of World War One who killed three German soldiers who broke into the hospital where she was tending to victims of the Spanish Flu.”

  Alice’s eyes went wide, and she paled. “That’s why you took the name?”

  Rachel nodded. “I always thought both of them had kick-ass, take-no-prisoners dedication. That’s how I wanted to be. I don’t think I could, you know, actually kill someone but, I’d like to think I’d give everything to keep my kids safe.”

  “I’m sure you would, regardless of the name.”

  “Maybe, but she’s kind-of my hero.” Rachel swept her hand to the side, indicating a framed, grainy, sepia-toned photo on the wall. Four tall soldiers standing with one very small nun between them.

  Alice stiffened. She looked over her shoulder at Rafferty. “I think it’s time we were on our way, Constable.”

  * * * * *

  The traffic on the roads was light even for four in the morning. They drove in uncomfortable silence. Alice watched out the side window as the darkened buildings sped by. Rafferty fidgeted in his seat.

  As they merged onto the freeway that would take them to her rental car, he took a deep breath. “I hope you didn’t mind the detour. Rachel has been nuts about ‘Sister Jacobine’ as long as I can remember. Figured she’d like to meet a kindred spirit.”

  Alice was not sure she could speak without bursting into tears. An unusual position for her. And so, the uncomfortable silence continued.

  Rafferty tried to fill it. “It’s just—I was embarrassed that I forgot it was her birthday.”

  “What happened to her?” She blurted it out before she had a chance to think about it.

  “You mean the wheelchair and all that?”

  Alice nodded.

  “Don’t feel sorry for her. I don’t think she’d change it even if she could.”

  “What happened?” Alice repeated.

  Rafferty sighed. “Two men broke into the youth shelter. She tried to fight them off.”

  Alice put a fist to her mouth. She could feel her gorge rising. “Why on earth would she not want to change it?”

  “Because now she believes she’s...worthy of her name.”

  “Sister Jacobine?” she whispered.

  Rafferty nodded. “Sister Jacobine.”

  Alice hung her head. “Jesus, Mary and Joseph.”

  At that moment, they pulled up behind her rental. Rafferty shoved the car into park. He turned and met her gaze. “I’m sorry, Sister. I have to ask. Why?�
��

  “And you think I will answer?”

  He shrugged. “It’s not like I can do anything about it, now.”

  “Quite true.” She peered at her rental car, then turned back to Rafferty, her vision blurred by tears. “You won’t believe me.”

  “I’ve heard some crazy stories over the years that turned out to be true.”

  “Not like mine.”

  “Try me.”

  She gazed ahead. “My name isn’t Alice Fisher. I have no idea what my birth name is. Was. Since my fifteenth year, I have been Sister Jacobine of the Order of Fontevraud, Amesbury Priory, Wiltshire. I currently reside in the Apostolic Palace in Vatican City. I am here at the behest of his holiness, Pope Benedict the Seventeenth.”

  He looked shocked. “The Pope ordered a hit? The actual Pope?”

  She glanced briefly his way before shifting her gaze to the window once more. “Since before you were born--before your grandparents were born--there have been members of the clergy whom His Holiness pronounces irredeemable. On those occasions, he tasks his Holy Redeemer with absolving their sins before they do further damage to the Church’s reputation.”

  “So, that’s you? The Holy Redeemer?”

  She shrugged self-consciously.

  “How do you get that gig?”

  “Upon my birth, because I was a girl, my father took me with all haste to the nunnery in Amesbury. The only thing for which I’m grateful to my birthparents.”

  Rafferty blew out a breath. “Pretty cold. They couldn’t have put you up for adoption?”

  She blinked back tears before she continued. “The Prioress, Alice Fisher, took me in and raised me, as was common in those days. I was schooled and cloistered and kept safe and well fed. I learned the way of the Sisters of Amesbury until I took my Final Vows on the altar of the church.

  “Afterwards, the Prioress took me into a crushing embrace and told me how proud she was to call me her Sister. She was, in my mind, not my sister but my mother. She raised me, taught me right from wrong and disciplined me. I owe as much to her as I do any human being alive or dead.

  “In later years, after she had gone to her just reward, I took her name as my own and have been known as such ever since.

  “The first time I ever killed a man was just after my final vows. A highwayman had forced his way into the living quarters to steal food. If he’d just asked, we would have given him what he wanted. We were nuns, after all.”

  “A highwayman?”

  She ignored his question, too caught up in the telling. “He looked around and saw all this ‘virgin territory’—that’s how he phrased it—and I just couldn’t let him do that to my sisters.

  “I was the smallest of all of us. I think he underestimated me. Perhaps he did not think anyone so small could be a threat to him. While the Prioress fought him off, I snatched up the big knife from the kitchen counter and thrust it between his shoulder blades. He was dead before he hit the floor.

  “From that moment, until I left the Priory to go abroad, I became the protector of the Amesbury Priory. I helped keep them safe and in good health.

  “Once one goes abroad, however, and stays in various convents along the road, it becomes infinitely more difficult to keep a secret.”

  Rafferty squirmed in his seat. “Secret?”

  “Some years after I went abroad, word reached Pope Clement the Eleventh and he summoned me for an audience. I have been at the Vatican ever since, doing what I do, as this Pope or that Pope needed it done.”

  She touched her hand to her chest as the tears overflowed. “My goodness. I have gone on, haven’t I?”

  Rafferty watched her closely. “Sounds to me like that’s a story that’s been held inside for a long time.”

  “Quite so.” She nodded as she wiped the tears from her cheeks.

  Rafferty narrowed his gaze, although the humor never left his eyes. “This isn’t one of those James Bond kinda things, is it?”

  “James Bond?”

  “You could tell me but then you’d have to kill me?”

  Alice burst out laughing. Quickly, she covered her mouth.

  “That’s how you became the Pope’s enforcer? Because you killed an intruder when you were fifteen? I’m sure the police would have cleared you of any wrongdoing. You acted in self-defense. Had a roomful of nuns as witnesses.”

  She nodded. “There was the constabulary, yes. But none of us were dispatched to fetch them. It was decided we would handle it ourselves. We disposed of the body in the hog trough the next morning.”

  Rafferty’s brow furrowed. “I don’t understand.”

  “I was a woman. It was quite possible I would have been put to death for killing him. Or at least, they would have tried. Then my secret would have been revealed to everyone. Alice Fisher wouldn’t allow that to happen.”

  “You keep talking about this secret. It’s obviously not that you killed a man when you were a teenager. What secret?”

  She took a deep breath and plunged ahead. “The day we discovered I was special was just after my third birthday. I was playing with the rest of my sisters. That was what we called each other in Amesbury--sisters. Not Sisters, as in a nunnery but as in a family. We were one big family in Amesbury. We lived for each other. We would die for each other.

  “Playing with my sisters at that age was a chaotic affair at best. All of us running around, screaming, giggling.” She smiled. “It was the best of times.

  “When I collided with Margaret, who was barely two inches taller than I, her chin drove my teeth through the flesh below my bottom lip.”

  His gaze dropped to her chin.

  “I remember Sister Angelica kneeling in front of me to gently tug on the lip. She pulled the teeth back through the flesh and peered at the gash above my chin.”

  Alice touched the skin under her bottom lip with her fingertips. “I can still see her fingers pulling away from my face, blood on the ends. Then the look on her face changed from consolation to amazement and she gasped. ’Mary, mother of God,’ she whispered.

  “Sister Anne rushed over from tending to the laundry and examined my chin. Her face, too, went from concern to wonder, and she snatched up the wooden crucifix that hung from her neck and kissed it. ’Praise be to God,’ she said.

  “It was only the progressive thinking the Prioress had brought with her to Amesbury that saved me. I was declared a gift from God rather than a child of Satan, as I would have been if I had been cloistered anywhere else.”

  His jaw was slack, his eyes wide. “What was it? What happened?”

  “If you look, you will find no scar below my bottom lip. Indeed, you will find no scar from any injury I have sustained on my person. To Sister Angelica and Sister Anne’s astonishment, the gash in my lip healed itself while they watched.”

  Confusion flashed over his face. Then shock. Then he laughed.

  “Good one, Alice. You really had me going there.” He chuckled again.

  She picked up the knife in the console between them.

  He grew still.

  She unfolded the knife and placed the point where her index finger met her palm. She raised her gaze to his eyes.

  He stared at the point of the knife. His jaw was slack. “Sister...you don’t have to...”

  She pressed the knife so the point bit into her flesh. She hissed as the blade touched bone and then drew it the length of her finger, until the point slid through the skin at the tip.

  “Oh, my God,” Rafferty muttered and swallowed thickly.

  “Indeed.” She watched the blood welling along the length of the finger. Just as the blood threatened to spill over the tip, it stopped. She felt it mending, as she always did.

  She grabbed a napkin from the stash the knife had been resting on and wiped the blood away. She held the healed finger up for him to examine.

  “That’s some kind of trick,” he said haltingly.

  “It is your knife, Constable. I can do it again if you would like. You can even pick
the finger.” She held the knife over her splayed hand.

  “No, no. That’s okay. Don’t...”

  She closed the knife and set it back on the napkins and looked at him from under her brow. “I have never done that before.”

  “Never done what before?”

  “Purposely shown someone my secret.”

  “Why me?”

  “I’m not entirely sure. Perhaps because you were schooled by nuns as I was. Perhaps I simply needed to get it off my chest, as they say.”

  He glanced back down at her hand. “Does that...happen everywhere?”

  “Yes.”

  She saw the realization dawn on his face. “Back at the station, just before we were interrupted, I was going to ask you to explain how your fingerprints were found at three other crime scenes.”

  “I remember.”

  “At first, we thought there must’ve been some kind of mix up.”

  “How so?”

  “Reverend Charles Jackson?”

  She nodded. “Ah, yes. Richmond, Virginia, if I recall correctly.”

  “Nineteen twenty-one?”

  “Quite correct.”

  She met his gaze and he raised his eyebrows, sweeping his open hand toward her to continue.

  She mentally braced herself. “I was born on the Eve of the Christmas Feast,” she started.

  “Christmas Feast? Christmas Day?”

  “Yes,” she said and took a deep breath and let it out. “In the year of our Lord fourteen hundred and ninety-one.”

  “Fourteen ninety-one? Are you kidding me? That makes you...”

  The words caught in her throat. “The oldest living person on God’s green earth?” She felt more exposed than she’d ever felt in her life.

  “Right.” He paused. “That’s means you’re Rachel’s—”

  “No.” She could feel her eyes stinging once again. “I am not anyone’s hero,” she said between clenched teeth.

  “But—”

  “What? Because I sacrificed my soul when I killed those men?” she spat the words from between her lips.

  “For whatever reason, she looks up to—”

  “I am not worthy of her admiration.”

  “Why? Because you killed those men?”

  She pounded the dashboard. “Because I cannot die! Because I would give anything to have a soul to sacrifice!”