“I understand, Michael.”
“Yes. Well, that’s the way it was after being until about a month ago when Seamus—that’s old Daniel O’Halloran’s grandson—was passing the wall and noticed a wet streak glistening on the stucco. He stepped closer, wondering where this bit of water might be trickling from on this dry and sunny day, for contrary to popular myth, it does not rain every day in Ireland—least ways not in the summer. I’m afraid I can’t say that for the rest of the year. But anyways, when he saw that the track of moisture originated in the eye of his grandfather’s painting, he ran straight to Mallow to fetch Father Sullivan. And since then it’s been one miracle after another.”
Vincenzo let his mind drift from Michael’s practiced monologue that told him nothing he hadn’t learned from the rushed briefing at the Vatican before his departure. But he did get the feeling that life in the little village had begun to revolve around the celebrity that attended the weeping of their Virgin.
And that would make his job more difficult.
“There she is now, Monsignor,” Michael said, pointing ahead through the windshield. “Cashelbanagh. Isn’t she a sight.”
They were crossing a one-car bridge over a gushing stream. As Vincenzo squinted ahead, his first impulse was to ask, Where’s the rest of it? But he held his tongue. Two hundred yards down the road lay a cluster of neat little one- and two-story buildings, fewer than a dozen in number, set on either side of the road. One of them was a pub—Blaney’s, the gold-on-black sign said. As they coasted through the village, Vincenzo spotted a number of local men and women setting up picnic tables on the narrow sward next to the pub.
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.