Up ahead, at the far end of the street, a crowd of people waited before a neat, two-story, stucco-walled house.
“And that would be Seamus O’Halloran’s house, I imagine,” Vincenzo said.
“That it would, Monsignor. That it would.”
There were hands to shake and Father Sullivan to greet, and introductions crowded one on top of the other until the names ran together like watercolors in the rain. The warmest reception he’d ever had, an excited party spirit running through the villagers. The priest from Rome was going to certify the Weeping Virgin of Cashelbanagh as an inexplicable phenomenon of Divine origin, an act of God made manifest to the faithful, a true miracle, a sign that Cashelbanagh had been singled out to be touched by God. There was even a reporter from a Dublin paper to record it. And what a celebration there’d be afterward.
Vincenzo was led around to the side of the house to stare at the famous Weeping Virgin on Seamus O’Halloran’s wall.
Nothing special about the painting. Rather crude, actually. A very stiff looking half profile of the Blessed Mother in the traditional blue robe and wimple with a halo behind her head.
And yes indeed, a gleaming track of moisture was running from the painting’s eye.
“The tears appear every day, Monsignor,” O’Halloran said, twisting his cloth cap in his bony hands as if there were moisture to be wrung from it.
“I can confirm that,” Father Sullivan said, his ample red cheeks aglow. “I’ve been watching for weeks now.”
As Vincenzo continued staring at the wall, noting the fine meshwork of cracks in the stucco finish, the chips here and there that revealed the stonework beneath, the crowd grew silent around him.
He stepped closer and touched his finger to the trickle, then touched the finger to his tongue. Water. A mineral flavor, but not salty. Not tears.
“Would someone bring me a ladder, please. One long enough to reach the roof.”
Three men ran off immediately, and five minutes later he was climbing to the top of the gable over the Weeping Virgin’s wall. He found wet and rotted cedar shakes at the point. At his request a pry bar was brought and, with O’Halloran’s permission, he knocked away some of the soft wood.
Vincenzo’s heart sank when he saw it. A cup-like depression in the stones near the top of the gable, half filled with clear liquid. It didn’t take a rocket scientist to deduce that water collected there on rainy days—rarely was there a week, even in the summer, without at least one or two rainy days—and percolated through the stones and grout of the wall to emerge as a trickle by the painting’s eye.
The folk of Cashelbanagh were anything but receptive to this rational explanation of their miracle.
“There may be water up there,” O’Halloran said, his huge Adam’s apple bobbing angrily, “but who’s to say that’s where the tears come from? You’ve no proof. Prove it, Monsignor. Prove those aren’t the tears of the Blessed Virgin.”
He’d hoped it wouldn’t turn out like this. He’d hoped discovery of the puddle would be enough, but obviously it wasn’t. And he couldn’t leave these people to go on making a shrine out of a leaky wall.
“Can someone get me a bottle of red wine?” Vincenzo said.
“This may be Ireland, Monsignor,” Father Sullivan said, “but I hardly think this is time for a drink.”
Amid the laughter Vincenzo said, “I’ll use it to prove my theory. But it must be red.”
While someone ran to Blaney’s pub for a bottle, Vincenzo climbed the ladder again and splashed all the water out of the depression. Then he refilled it with the wine.
By evening, when the Virgin’s tears turned red, Vincenzo felt no sense of victory. His heart went out to these crestfallen people. He saw his driver standing nearby, looking as dejected as the rest of them.
“Shall I call a taxi, Michael?”
“No, Monsignor,” Michael sighed. “That’s all right. I’ll be taking you back to Shannon whenever you want.”
But the airport was not where Vincenzo needed to go. He hadn’t figured on this quick a resolution to the question of the Weeping Virgin of Cashelbanagh. His flight out wasn’t scheduled until tomorrow night.
“Can you find me a hotel?”
“Sure, Monsignor. There’s a lot of good ones in Cork City.”
They passed Blaney’s pub again on the way out of town. The picnic tables were set and waiting. Empty. The fading sunlight glinted off the polished flatware, the white linen tablecloths flapped gently in the breeze.
If only he could have told them how he shared their disappointment, how deeply he longed for one of these “miracles” he investigated to pan out, how much he needed a miracle for himself.
‡
Cork Harbor, Ireland
Carrie’s heart leapt as she recognized the crate on the pallet being lifted from the aft hold of the freighter.
“There it is, Dan!” she whispered, pointing.
“You sure?” He squinted through the dusky light. “Looks like any of a couple of dozen other crates that’ve come out already.”
She wondered how Dan could have any doubt. She’d known it the instant it cleared the hold.
“That’s the one. No question about it.”
She locked her gaze on the crate and didn’t let it out of her sight until Bernard Kaplan’s man cleared it through Irish customs and wheeled it over to them on a dolly.
“Are you quite sure you’ll be wanting to take it from here yourself?” He was a plump little fellow with curly brown hair, a handlebar mustache, and a Barry Fitzgerald brogue.
Dan glanced at her. “Well...”
“Quite sure, Mr. Cassidy.” Carrie extended her hand. “Thank you for your assistance.”
“Not at all, Mrs. Ferris. Just remember, your crate’s got to be at Dublin harbor the morning after tomorrow, six sharp or, believe me youse, she’ll miss the loading and then God knows when she’ll get to New York.”
“We’ll be there.”
“I hope so, ‘cause I’m washing me hands of it now.” He glanced at his watch. “You’ve got turty-four hours. Plenty of time. Just don’t you be getting yourself lost along the way.”
He waved and walked off.
“Now that we’ve got her,” Dan said, tapping the top of the crate, “what do we do with her? We’ve got to find a place to store her overnight.”
“Store her? We’re not sticking her in some smelly old warehouse full of rats.”
“What do you think crawls around the hold of the Greenbriar, my dear?”
She caught an edge on his voice. Not sharp enough to cut, but enough for Carrie to notice.
Things hadn’t been quite the same between them since finding the Virgin. They’d had some moments of closeness on the plane to Heathrow after out-foxing that Israeli intelligence man, or whoever he was, and some of that had lingered during the whirl of booking the shuttle to Shannon and finding a hotel room in Cork City. But once they were settled in, a distance began to open between them.
It’s me, she thought. I know it’s me.
She couldn’t help it. All she could think about since they’d set their bags down in the Drury Hotel was that crate and its precious contents. They’d had days to kill and Dan wanted to see some of the countryside. Carrie had gone along, but she hadn’t been much company. One day they drove north through the rocky and forbidding Burren to Galway Bay; on another he took her down to Kinsale, but the quaint little harbor there only made her think about the Greenbriar and worry about its voyage. She fought visions of rough seas capsizing her, of her running aground and tearing open her hull, seawater gushing into the cargo hold and submerging the Virgin’s crate, the Mediterranean swallowing the Greenbriar and everything aboard. She spent every spare minute hovering over the radio, dissecting every weather report from the Mediterranean.
Obsessed.
She knew that. And she knew her obsession was coming between her and Dan. But as much as she valued their love, it had to take a back seat for now. Just for a while. Until they got to New York.