“And the women?”
“A few minutes later — you had barely gone — the door opened. The English nurse was pushing one bed with the Rumanian woman. The doctor was pushing the woman you brought in. They went down the corridor and then turned towards the back of the building, to Operating Theater Number Three. You know which one I mean, Suor Miriam?”
Suor Miriam nodded, but Malory also saw her take a quick breath, as if someone had surprised her from behind or punched her in the stomach.
“The corridor outside Operating Theater Number Three was in shadows, so I stood a little farther from its door at the edge of the light from the cortile. I could see the husband of the Rumanian signora smoking his cigarettes. I counted. Ten cigarettes. Ten cigarettes later, I heard one cry, then another. Two babies. Two baby cries. Two different babies. I know, I have heard them before.” Suor Miriam nodded, with a smile of shadowed remembrance.
“Finally the door opened. The English nurse came out. ‘Good,’ she said when she saw me. The Rumanian signora was sitting in a wheelchair. I was surprised, of course. It was much too soon for a woman to sit in a wheelchair. But the English nurse insisted that I take the Rumanian signora down the lift to her husband in the cortile. I thought that maybe the English know better than we Italians about these things. So I wheeled her to the main lift.”
“This was one hour after I left?” Malory asked.
“Sì. It was seven o’clock, when the lift is very busy with people leaving for the night. And everybody was so excited about the Holy Father in San Pietro — it took me several minutes to get a lift with enough room for the Rumanian signora. When the lift doors opened, I looked down the corridor into the shadows by Operating Theatre Number Three again and saw the door open. The tall doctor was wheeling another chair. I was certain he would come in my direction and I held the door. I was about to call to him, but I saw him turn the other way. I don’t know why. The corridor ends at that level. But I thought perhaps he just wanted to give your wife some fresh air.”
“Ah …” Malory wasn’t certain how to respond to the word wife, but gave the young nun an encouraging smile.
“I took the Rumanian signora down to the cortile. Handed her and the chair to her husband. Neither of them spoke to me, neither noticed me. I stood for perhaps two minutes and then excused myself and climbed the stairs back to Operating Theater Number Three. I knocked on the door — I had, after all, done what the English nurse asked me to do — and entered. The room was dark. Only the light from the lamps on the Lungotevere shone through the window. The English nurse was standing, looking out at the synagogue. The two beds were empty, the machines turned off. But in its own shaft of light, not far from the English nurse, I saw a cradle. I walked over. I was eager to see the babies.”
“And you saw them?” Malory asked.
“I saw one,” Suor Anna answered. “One baby.”
“Only one?” Suor Miriam raised her chin. “But you heard two cries?”
“Sì e sì,” Suor Anna said. “I asked the English nurse where was the other baby. ‘Go home,’ she said to me. I protested, I’m afraid that I was rude. I wanted to know what happened to the other baby — I assumed, of course, that it was with your wife, Principe—and I wanted to know where she had gone with the tall doctor with the red hair and beard. They could not have left the hospital without taking the lift down to the cortile and passing me.”
“There is another lift,” Suor Miriam said. “It is not obvious, but it is where you saw the doctor wheel the young lady. It has been used in the past, when discretion was called for.” She lifted her chin to Settimio. He nodded.
“The English nurse asked me where I lived. I told her Santa Sabina with the Dominicans. She said ‘Then it won’t take you long to get home. Good night.’”
“And you left?” Malory said.
“I left,” Suor Anna said.
“And the Rumanians?”
“To walk to Santa Sabina I must cross from the Isola Tiberina across the Ponte Fabricio. As I turned to cross the bridge, I saw the two of them — he was holding her arm, she was walking, I could not believe it, very slowly in the opposite direction, across the Ponte Cestio to Trastevere.”
“Without a baby?”
“It is impossible to walk like that with a baby.”
“And then you went home?”
“I went to Santa Sabina, sì. I prayed.”
A distant bell rang. Twice.
“I am afraid they expect me in the hospital,” Suor Anna said.
“May we go with you?” Malory asked, suddenly taken with a plan of action. “We must be able to speak with Suor Anna’s supervisor, or the director of the hospital, and find out who is this tall American doctor with the red beard and his English nurse. I mean, can just anyone come into a hospital in Rome and deliver a few babies without permission?” The distant bell rang again. Neither Suor Anna nor Suor Miriam said anything.
“I believe, mio Principe,” Settimio murmured delicately, “that we might have more success searching for your Rumanians. Or better still — waiting for them to search for you.”
2/3
S SETTIMIO PREDICTED, IT WAS THE RUMANIAN WHO FOUND Malory.
The elevation of the Polish cardinal to the Chair of St. Peter magnetized the Eternal City. The kings and queens of the Catholic countries of Europe, the congressmen and senators from the United States who bore Polish names, and tens of thousands of fortunate Poles who found themselves outside the borders of their native country descended on Rome by plane, by coach, by motorcycle, by Volga and Lada, Trabant and Dacia, Polski Fiats and little Maluchs, and even by automobiles with lawnmower engines that ran on potato skins and cabbage leaves for the inaugural Mass of the new pope, John Paul II. Although it would not have been discreet for Malory to attend the Mass, Settimio asked him twice whether he would like to host a small luncheon at the Villa for a select group of guests who were already aware of the existence of Septimania. But not even the temptation of sharing tortelloni in brodo with Princess Grace could shake Malory out of his reluctance to be examined by royal invigilators on subjects he had never studied.
Settimio dutifully worked the telephones and called whomever Malory requested — from carabinieri to secretaries in the embassies of the United States, England, and even Rumania. But few picked up their phones, and those who did were at best confused and at worst unhelpful. Rome was otherwise engaged. Travel through the streets was nearly impossible, backed up to the rim of the bowl with a holy wash of dignitaries and pilgrims. The city was buried beneath the weight of a machine nearly two millennia in the making, fueled only in the smallest part by religion.
Isolated and besieged, Malory devoted his days to a better understanding of his inheritance, with the not-so-secret aim that it might reveal to him how he might be reunited with his barely seen Louiza and his unseen progeny. He developed a speedy dexterity with the card catalog of the Sanctum Sanctorum, although the vast bulk of the collection in the dozens of tunnels beneath the villa were in Latin, Greek, Hebrew, Arabic, and several other languages that meant nothing to Malory. During his nights in the Sanctum Sanctorum, he read through The Complete History of Septimania. He read and read again the story of Haroun al Rashid and his secret mission to bring the first King of Septimania to the West. He read again of his meeting with the butcher Yehoshua and his subsequent encounter with the daughter of Charlemagne. But his imagination was most attracted to the story Haroun spoke of with the red-headed Princess Aldana. “The Tale of Judar Son of Omar” appeared in each one of the fifteen editions of the Thousand and One Nights that Settimio was able to draw out of the depths of the tunnel.