CHAPTER 3:Demitri
The woman lay across the back seat of my car, wrapped in the old wool blanket I kept in the trunk for winter visits to the sick.Her blood had already seeped through the fabric in dark patches.Every few seconds, I glanced at her through the rear-view mirror, watching for movement.For proof that I had not carried a dead woman out of my church.
Her chest rose.Fell.Rose again.But it wasn’t enough.
The wipers scraped across the windshield with a dull, frantic rhythm.Rain lashed the glass.The road curved between cypress trees and low stone walls, silver and black beneath the headlights.Beyond them, the countryside stretched quiet and indifferent to the night I was having.
I took the bend too sharply.The tyres slid.
I corrected without thinking, one hand steady on the wheel, the other braced against the gear stick.The old instincts were still there, buried beneath years of prayer and fasting and sermons on mercy and forgiveness.
In the back seat, the woman made a small sound.
I looked up at the mirror.
Her head had rolled toward the window.
I tightened my grip on the wheel until the leather complained beneath my palm.
“Stay with me,” I whispered.
Santa Caterina sat on the hill beyond town, older than the road that led to it and less welcoming than most people expected a convent to be.It had been built from pale stone that had darkened with age and weather, its walls high, its windows narrow, its iron gate crowned with rust and thorns of climbing roses.In spring, the roses made the place look soft.At night, in the rain, it looked more like a fortress that had once been considered beautiful and now merely survived.
I drove up to the gate and killed the headlights.For a moment, the world went black.
The woman’s breathing rasped in the silence behind me.
I stepped out into the rain, crossed to the intercom, and pressed the buzzer.Static crackled.
Then a woman’s voice came through, brittle with sleep.
“Yes?”
“It’s Father Demitri.”
A pause.
“At this hour, Father, you had better be dying or bringing someone who is.”
I looked back at the car.
The woman had not moved.
“I need help.”
The gate buzzed.I pushed it open and drove through.
By the time I reached the courtyard, the convent doors were already opening.Light spilled across wet stone.Three figures stood beneath the archway in grey habits, their veils dark against the yellow glow behind them.
Sister Marina was in front.
She was seventy if she was a day, with a face carved by years of prayer and eyes that made grown men reconsider lying.I had once seen her reduce a wealthy donor to embarrassment because he called the women in her care “unfortunates.”
“They are not unfortunates,” she had said.“They are survivors.The unfortunate ones are the men who mistook them for weak.”
The donor had not returned.Sister Marina had not missed him.
She took one look at me as I opened the back door of the car.Then she saw the woman.
