The Seville Communion Read online

  Despite his humiliation Gavira burst out laughing. "You surely don't expect me to go and shoot the bullfighter."

  "Of course not." The banker half-turned, an over-curious look in his cunning eyes. "Would you be capable of shooting your wife's lover?"

  "She's my ex-wife, Don Octavio." "Yes. That's what she says."

  Gavira rubbed at the little beer stain and adjusted the crease in his trousers. Of course he'd be capable of it, and they both knew it. But he wasn't going to.

  "It wouldn't change anything,*' he said.

  It was true. Before the bullfighter there had been a banker from a rival firm, and before him a well-known winemaker from Jerez. Gavira would need a lot of bullets if he was going to shoot her lovers, and Seville wasn't Palermo. Anyway, he himself had recendy found solace in the arms of a Sevillian model whose speciality was fine lingerie. Old Machuca slowly nodded twice - there were better methods.

  "I know a couple of branch managers." Gavira smiled, calm and dangerous. "And you know a few bullfighting promoters . . . That young man, Maestral, might have a hard time of it next season."

  The chairman of the Cartujano Bank screwed up his eyes. "A shame," he said. "He's not a bad bullfighter."

  "He's pretty," said Gavira bitterly. "He can always turn to soap operas."

  He glanced over at the newspapers, and the black cloud that had been lurking in the background again darkened his morning. Curro Maestral wasn't the problem. There was something more important than the blurry photo of him and Macarena, taken in poor light with a telephoto lens, on the cover of Q&S. What was at stake was not Gavira's honour as a husband but his very survival at the Cartujano and his succeeding Machuca as chairman of the board. He had almost clinched the deal involving Our Lady of the Tears. There was only one problem. A document dating back to 1687 set out a series of conditions that, if not met, would cause the land ceded to the church to be returned to the Bruner family. But a law passed in the nineteenth century, when the confiscation of ecclesiastical property was ordered by a government minister, Mendizabal, made ownership of the land revert, in the event of its secularisation, to the municipality of Seville. It was a matter of some legal complexity, and if the duchess and her daughter decided to resort to the law, things would grind to a halt for some time. But the deal was in its final stages; there was too much money invested and too many measures taken. Failure would mean that Octavio Machuca would undermine his successor's authority before the board of directors - where Gavira had enemies - just when the young vice-chairman of the Cartujano was about to seize absolute power. His head would be on the block. But as Q&S, half of Andalusia, and all of Seville knew, Pencho Gavira's head wasn't something Macarena Bruner had much time for lately.

  Quart came out of the Dona Maria Hotel, but instead of walking the thirty metres or so to the archbishop's palace, he wandered over to the Plaza Virgen de los Reyes and looked around. He was standing at the crossroads of three religions: the old Jewish quarter behind him, the white walls of the convent of La Encarnacion on one side, the archbishop's palace on the other, and at the far end, adjoining the wall of the old Arab mosque, the minaret that had become a bell-tower for the Catholic cathedral, La Giralda. There were horse-drawn carriages, postcard vendors, begging Gypsy women carrying babies, and tourists looking up in awe as they queued to get in to see the tower. A young girl with an American accent left her group to ask Quart for directions to some place close to the square; an excuse to get a closer look at him. Quart gave a brief, polite answer to get rid of her. The girl went back to her friends and they glanced at him, giggling and whispering. He heard the words "He's gorgeous". It would have amused Monsignor Spada. Quart smiled at the thought of the director of the IEA and the advice he'd given him on the Spanish Steps during their last conversation in Rome. Then, still smiling, he looked up at La Giralda, at the weather vane that gave the tower its name. Spain, the south, the ancient culture of Mediterranean Europe, could be sensed only in places such as that. In Seville different histories were superimposed and interdependent. A rosary stringing together time, blood, and prayers in different languages, beneath a blue sky and wise sun that levelled everything over the centuries. Stone survivors that could still be heard. You just had to forget for a moment the camcorders, postcards, coaches full of tourists and cheeky young girls, and put your ear to the stones and listen.

  He still had half an hour before his appointment at the archbishop's palace, so he walked up the Calle Mateos Gago and had a coffee in the Bar La Giralda. He felt like sitting at the bar and enjoying the black-and-white tiled floor, the prints of old Seville and the coloured tiles on the walls. From his pocket he took the Eulogy of the Templar Militia, by Bernard de Clairvaux, and read a few pages at random. It was an extremely old octavo edition which he read every day between matins, lauds, vespers and compline; a routine he followed rigorously, with a strictness that had more to do with pride than piety. Often, during the many hours spent in hotels, cafes, and airports, in between appointments or work trips, the medieval sermon that for two hundred years had served as spiritual guide for the soldier-monks fighting in the Holy Land helped him bear the loneliness his work entailed. Sometimes he let himself be carried away by the mood that reading it induced, imagining himself as the last survivor from the defeat at Hattin, the Tower of Acre, the dungeons of Chinon, or the fires of Paris: a weary, solitary Knight Templar whose brothers in arms had all died.

  He read a few lines (although he could have recited them from memory): "They are tonsured, covered with dust, black from the sun that scorches them and the chain mail that protects them . . He looked out at the bright street, the people walking beneath the orange trees. A slim young woman, probably foreign, stopped a moment to check her reflection in the half-open cafe window. She looked beautiful as she raised her bare arms gracefully to tie back her hair. Suddenly her eyes met Quart's through the window. For an instant she held his gaze, surprised and curious, before becoming self-conscious. Just then a young man with a camera round his neck and a map in his hand came up and drew her away, slipping an arm round her waist.

  It wasn't exactly envy, or sadness. There was no word to define the desolate feeling familiar to any cleric who beholds the closeness of couples: men and women lawfully playing out the ancient ritual of intimacy, with gestures such as stroking a neck down to the shoulders, a hand following the gentle curve of a hip, a woman placing her fingers over a man's mouth. For Quart, who would have had no difficulty in becoming intimate with many of the beautiful women who crossed his path, the certainty of his self-discipline was even stronger and more painful. He was like an amputee who still feels tingling or discomfort in a limb that is no longer there.

  He looked at his watch, put his book away, and stood up. On his way out he almost bumped into a very fat man dressed in white. The man apologised politely, removing his panama hat, and then watched Quart as he went out into the square. When Quart reached the brick-red baroque building behind a row of orange trees, a caretaker stepped forward to check his identification, but immediately let him through when he saw the dog collar. Quart passed under the main balcony bearing the coat of arms of the archbishops of Seville carved in stone, supported by two double columns, and he entered the courtyard in the shadow of La Giralda. He mounted the magnificent staircase beneath Juan de Espinal's vault with cherubs looking down at the pedestrians with a bored air, killing time in their centuries-old immobility. Upstairs were corridors of offices, busy priests coming and going with the self-assurance of those who know the terrain. They almost all wore suits with round collars, shirt fronts and black or grey shirts, and some wore ties or polo shirts under their jackets. They looked like civil servants rather than priests. Quart didn't see a single cassock.

  Monsignor Corvo's new secretary came to meet him. He was a soft little cleric, bald, very clean-looking and with a gentle manner, in a grey suit and dog collar. He had replaced Father Urbizu, killed by the chunk of cornice from Our Lady of the Tears falling on his head
. Without saying a word the secretary led Quart through a reception room. The ceiling was divided into sixty coffers containing biblical scenes and symbols intended to inspire virtue in the Sevillian prelates as they governed the diocese. The room also contained some twenty frescoes and canvases, among them four by Zurbaran, one Murillo and one Mattia Preti depicting St. John the Baptist with his throat slit. As Quart walked along beside the secretary, he wondered why there was always a head on a tray in archbishops' and cardinals' anterooms. This thought was still in his mind when he saw Don Priamo Ferro. The priest of Our Lady of the Tears was standing at one end of the room, stubborn and dark in his old cassock. He was talking to a very young, fair-haired priest with glasses. Quart recognised the young priest as the builder outside the church who had stared at him when he met Father Ferro and Gris Marsala. The two priests stopped talking and looked at him, Father Ferro expressionless, the young man sullen, defiant. Quart nodded briefly at them, but neither responded. They had obviously been waiting some time and had not been offered a chair.

  His Grace Don Aquilino Corvo, archbishop of Seville, liked to adopt a pose rather like the Gentleman with his Hand on his Chest that hangs in the Prado. Against, his dark suit he would rest his white hand bearing the emblem of his rank: a ring with a large yellow stone. Thinning hair, a long angular face, and the gold cross on his chest all reminded one of the painting, an impression the archbishop was happy to go along with. Aquilino Corvo was a pedigree prelate, the result of a careful process of ecclesiastical selection. Skilful, manipulative, accustomed to sailing on stormy seas, he had not been appointed archbishop by chance. He enjoyed considerable support within the nunciature of Madrid, had the backing of Opus Dei, and had excellent relations with both the government and the opposition in the Junta de Andalucia. None of this prevented him from engaging in marginal, even personal activities. He was, for instance, a bullfighting aficionado and always had a front-row seat when Curro Maestral or Espartaco were appearing. He was also a supporter of both local football clubs, Betis and Sevilla, out of pastoral neutrality as well as prudence, his eleventh commandment being "Don't put all your eggs in one basket". Last but not least, he detested Lorenzo Quart.

  As Quart had expected after his reception from the secretary, the first part of the meeting was cold but polite. Quart handed over his credentials - a letter from the cardinal secretary of state and another from Monsignor Spada. He gave the archbishop some general information on his mission, facts with which the archbishop was already well acquainted. The archbishop offered him his unconditional support and asked to be kept informed of his progress. Quart knew that in fact the archbishop would do everything possible to sabotage his mission. Corvo, under no illusion that Quart would tell him anything, would have exchanged a year in purgatory for a front-row seat if the special envoy from Rome slipped on a banana skin. But they were professionals and knew the rules, at least as far as appearances went. They eyed each other across the desk like fencers waiting to strike.

  The shadow of their last meeting in that office hung over them. It was a couple of years ago, His Grace had just been appointed archbishop. Quart had handed him a thick report listing the lapses in security during the Holy Father's visit to Seville during the previous ecclesiastical year. A married priest, suspended a divinis, had tried to stab the Pontiff while ostensibly handing him a memorandum on celibacy. An explosive device was found in the convent where His Holiness was staying, in a basket of clean clothes delicately embroidered for the occasion by the nuns. And thanks to continuous leaks to the press from the archbishop's palace, the schedule and itinerary for the Pope's visit was entered with horrifying precision in the diaries of all the Islamic terrorists in the Mediterranean. It was the IEA, and specifically Quart, who stepped in quickly, changing all His Grace's original security arrangements, as the Curia scolded the archbishop. In despair, the nuncio mentioned the matter to His Holiness, in terms that nearly cost Monsignor Corvo his recently awarded rank and in addition almost gave him an apoplectic fit. Once he'd got over this setback, the archbishop proved to be an excellent prelate. But in a most unpriestly way he allowed this early crisis, the humiliation, and the part Quart had played in it to gnaw away at him and disturb his equanimity. That very morning he confided the loss of equanimity to his long-suffering confessor, an elderly cleric at the cathedral who heard him on the first Friday of every month.

  "That church is under sentence," the archbishop told Quart. His voice, clear and priestly, was made for giving sermons. "It's only a matter of time."

  He spoke with all the authority of his ecclesiastical rank, possibly overemphasising it in Quart's presence. Although he might not be important in Rome, a prelate in his own see was not to be trifled with. Corvo was aware of this, and he liked to stress the fact of his considerable local power and independence. He would boast that all he knew of Rome was the Pontifical Yearbook, and that he never touched the Vatican's telephone directory.

  "Our Lady of the Tears," the archbishop went on, "is in ruins. " In order to obtain an official declaration to that effect we have had to overcome a series of administrative and technical difficulties . . . It would seem that the administrative ones are about to be resolved, because the Heritage Department, for lack of funds, has given up its effort to preserve the building, and the mayor's office is about to approve the decision. But the file hasn't yet been closed because of the accident that cost the municipal architect his life. A case of bad luck."

  Monsignor Corvo paused and contemplated the dozen English pipes lined up in a little wooden stand on his desk. Behind him, through the net curtains, you could just see La Giralda and the flying buttresses of the cathedral. There was a patch of sun on his green leather desk, and the prelate placed his hand there casually. The light made the yellow stone of his ring glint.

  Quart smiled slightly. "Your Grace mentioned technical difficulties," he said.

  He was sitting on an uncomfortable chair opposite the archbishop's desk, at one end of the room. The walls were lined with the works of the Church fathers and papal encyclicals, all bearing the archbishop's coat of arms on the spine. At the other end of the room there was a prie-dieu beneath an ivory crucifix. There were also a low table, a small sofa and two armchairs where the archbishop gave a somewhat warmer reception to people he held in high esteem. The special envoy of the IEA was obviously not one of them.

  "The secularisation of the building, which is required prior to demolition, has become rather complicated." The archbishop's mistrust of Quart was apparent. He chose his words with utmost care, weighing the implications of each one. "An ancient privilege dating from 1687, granted that same year with papal approval by one of my illustrious predecessors in this see, states categorically that the church is to preserve its privilege as long as a Mass is said there every Thursday for the soul of its benefactor, Gaspar Bruner de Lebrija."

  "Why Thursday?"

  "It was the day he died. The Bruner family was powerful, so I imagine that Don Gaspar must have had my predecessor by the throat."

  "And Father Ferro, I assume, celebrates Mass every Thursday . . :" "He says Mass every day of the week," said the archbishop. "At eight in the morning, except on Sundays and public holidays, when he holds two Masses."

  "But surely Your Grace has the authority to make him stop," said Quart innocendy.

  The archbishop glared at him. His hand twitched impatiently, destroying the effect of the light on his ring. "Don't make me laugh," he said, not sounding the least inclined to laugh. "You know this isn't a question of authority. How can an archbishop forbid a priest to celebrate Mass? It's a question of discipline. Father Ferro is elderly and, especially in certain aspects of his ministry, ultra-conservative, and he has very strong opinions. One of them is that he doesn't give a damn how many times I issue him a pastoral letter or call him to order."

  "Has Your Grace considered suspending him?"

  "Have I considered, have I considered ..." Corvo gave Quart a look of irritation. "It's
not that simple. I've asked Rome to suspend Father Fcrro ab officio, but these things take time. And I fear that since that unfortunate break-in to the Vatican computer system, they're waiting for you to return with your scalp hunter's report."

  Quart ignored the sarcasm. You don't want to get involved, he thought. This is a hot potato, and you're throwing it to us. You want someone else to play executioner so you don't get your hands dirty.

  "And until then?"

  "Everything's up in the air. The Cartujano Bank is about to clinch a deal involving the plot of land that would greatly benefit my diocese." Corvo seemed to reconsider his choice of possessive pronoun and then corrected himself softly. "This diocese. Although we may only have a moral right to the land, after three centuries of worship there, the Cartujano is going to pay us a generous sum in compensation. Which is good, because nowadays the collection boxes in most parish churches aren't exactly overflowing." The archbishop allowed himself a smile, to which Quart made sure he didn't respond. "In addition, the bank will pay for a church to be built in one of the poorest districts of Seville, and set up a foundation to support our charitable work in the Gypsy community. What do you think?"

  "Very convincing," said Quart calmly.

  "So there you are. All brought to a halt by the obstinacy of a priest on the verge of retirement."

  "I've heard he's well liked by his parishioners.''

  Monsignor Corvo raised the hand wearing the ring and placed it on his chest again next to his gold cross. "I wouldn't say that. The local people know him by sight to say hello to and maybe a couple of dozen pious old women hear him celebrate Mass. But it doesn't mean anything. People cry, 'Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord,' but then they get bored and crucify you." The archbishop peered indecisively at the row of pipes on his desk. At last he chose a curved one with a silver ring. "I have tried to find something dissuasive. I even considered rebuking him in the presence of his parishioners, but changed my mind after giving thought to the consequences. I'm afraid of going too far, and that the cure would be worse than the disease. We too have a duty to these people. Father Ferro is obstinate but sincere." He tapped the bowl of the pipe lightly against the palm of his hand. "Maybe, as you have more practice in delivering people from Caiaphas to Pontius Pilate . . ."