Malory sat for a moment.
If there is a baby.
She is the only woman.
Malory followed Settimio. He had little choice.
The little man in the Windsor knot and the midnight blue coat receded along the long pier of Fatebenefratelli in waves of sulfur shadow from lamppost to lamppost. Malory followed across the piazza, past a gothic shrine that rose like a miniature Albert Memorial in the middle of the island. An ancient Roman slept rough on the cobblestones, a significant hound beside him, jowls on paws, neither aware of the celebration at the Vatican, neither interested in Malory’s search. Settimio didn’t look back, but headed for a squat little church at the back end of the island. No more priests, Malory pleaded, no more friars, no more popes. But Settimio was too far off to hear.
Instead of walking straight into the church, Settimio turned to the left along the façade, to a corner where a long, low building lay like a breakwater against one rush of the divided Tevere. Malory entered. The stairwell was ill-lit, but he followed the cue of Settimio’s steps, neat and methodical despite the late hour and Settimio’s advanced age. Along the walls of the stairwell, yellowed frames held photographs from early in the century: colorless, long-bearded men, women tented in black — travelers in an antique land, posed in front of the repositioned columns and lintels of the Forum. In the shadows of the stairwell, Malory couldn’t make out the exact descriptions, typed on index cards. But at the top of each of the frames a few words stood out. Above, the words were in Hebrew. Below, the presumed translation — OSPEDALE ISRAELITE. Not a hospital for Israelites, or Israelis for that matter, Malory thought as he climbed, but a Jewish hospital. Although why Settimio should lead him there at midnight in his search for Louiza was beyond his limited linguistic powers.
At the top of the stairwell, a pair of windowed doors was still swinging. Malory followed into a long hall, a refectory perhaps, with a high ceiling and a cool floor speckled with marble meteorites, empty except for a row of polished benches that lined the walls — one set of windows facing into the center of the island, the piazza with the miniature Albert Memorial, the other lit by the sulfur lamps across the river by the synagogue. A Jewish hospital without any patients. Without any inhabitants, Malory thought.
“Settimio!” Malory heard a low alto, the rustle of movement behind him. “You’ve come to visit. And you’ve brought company.” He turned and saw a woman sitting at the end of the wooden bench, a nun perhaps. Yet there was nothing in her appearance, speckled by the shadows from the lamppost through the window, to assure him that the voice had come from her. No motion from the mouth. And in the vastness of the hall, sound came from everywhere.
“Permit me to present—” Settimio began. He walked over to the nun and bent to kiss her cheeks.
“Tesoro,” the old nun murmured, “you forget. I know the boy.”
“Il Principe,” Settimio bent by her ear in gentle correction.
“Ah, she has finally died,” the woman said. All was black and yellow and shadow, but Malory saw the delicate creases of her eyelids flutter like the leaves of the poplars behind the Wren Library. “I never liked your grandmother.” The old woman raised her chin towards Malory. “If it had not been for Settimio here, she would have denied me the privilege of delivering you, and you would have been born in some distant swamp in France.”
“Suor Miriam believes all of France is a swamp,” Settimio said, with no effort at discretion.
“It was one thing for your grandmother to fight against the laws of heredity,” Suor Miriam continued. “She was born a fighter.”
“Laws of heredity?”
“I have not yet informed the Principe of the special nature of his inheritance,” Settimio said to Suor Miriam with an apologetic turn at the corner of his mouth. “You see, mio Principe, while a woman like your grandmother may take up the title, only a man may inherit the kingdom.”
But Malory was more struck by his calculations.
“Did you deliver my grandmother too?”
“Figurati!” Suor Miriam laughed, and her eyelids fluttered again, but in a way that Malory could only think had a bit of the coquette in them. “I was a girl then, a novice, barely fourteen, twelve even. But I assisted. I was there. I saw the sorrow of the Principessa, I heard the disappointment of the Principe through closed doors — he was nearly seventy years old, after all, and it was his final opportunity to produce a maschio, an heir. I heard the first screams of your grandmother, her refusal to be decorous in the face of the disaster that was her birth.
“I was too young to have an opinion. Perhaps I am still too young.” Her eyelids fluttered again but didn’t wait for a gallant response from Malory. “Later, I was sympathetic. My friend Settimio agrees with me, I know. The church, and perhaps your kingdom, would benefit from the participation of women in more than childbirth.” Of the two of them, the nun seemed clearly older — ten, perhaps twenty years. In another life, or perhaps in this one for all Malory knew, their familiarity might have been connubial. Perhaps the nun was all the family Settimio had. Perhaps her enforced celibacy provided suitable companionship for Settimio. Malory had known him, after all, for less than three hours and had no idea whether there was a Signora Settimio, half a dozen Settimio sons, and a brace of junior Settimini.
“Come, Hercule,” the old nun said, and patted the darkened slice of bench next to her. “Sit. You didn’t come to hear me talk of your grandmother or the swamps of France. Or the birth of you or your mother, for that matter. Tell me why you have come to see me when there are more important people, I imagine, waiting to meet you.”
Malory sat. He spoke. He told Suor Miriam everything — the first discovery of Louiza, the meeting with his grandmother, Old Mrs. Emery. The funeral, the instruction to go to Rome, the loss of his fellowship, and everything that had happened in the past twenty-four hours, from the moment he’d arrived in Rome to the fantastical few hours in the Vatican. But most of all, he spoke about the rediscovery of Louiza in the second pew of Santa Maria sopra Minerva, the dash to Fatebenefratelli, Tibor’s gray-haired and very pregnant Principessa, the kind nurse, and the red-bearded American obstetrician. Malory spoke, but he watched the eyelids of Suor Miriam for any sign that might indicate intimate knowledge that would unite him with Louiza. When he’d finished speaking, she sat in silence, her eyelids motionless.
“Suor Miriam,” Malory murmured, wondering if she had fallen asleep. “Did you hear me?”
Again silence. Malory stood. He looked out at the mini Albert Memorial. He turned to the other set of windows and the synagogue beyond. Enough. Enough of the little man in the long coat, the blind and perhaps deaf nun, whether or not she was the midwife who had delivered him. It was time to go to the police, the carabinieri, to camp out in front of the British Embassy and shine a little rational English light on the disappearance. He was not about to let Louiza become a second Aldo Moro. He walked back across the speckled marble confusion to the foyer doors and stairwell.
“Come back at four tomorrow afternoon.” Suor Miriam’s voice stopped him at the door.
“Excuse me?” Malory said, turning. “Why should I come back tomorrow afternoon? What do you know? And if you know something, why can’t you tell me now?”
“Poor boy.” Malory could feel Suor Miriam’s eyelids fluttering, even at ten paces. “I know nothing. Suor Anna, the young nun who was with you and your Louiza and the Rumanian and his wife, she will return to the hospital at four tomorrow afternoon to begin her shift at four-thirty. She comes to me first for my blessing. She may know something. Come here and we will ask her what happened. Together.”