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Chapter Text

et in arcadia ego

BOOK I. Vall de Núria 

The ghost has sunk into a restless sleep. In and out of this long dream, winter winds whistle through the mountains; an unforgiving pilgrimage on aching feet, on broken soles.

Images light up and disappear like oils in a labyrinth. Faces, twisted and ugly, crushed under splitting stones; screams of confusion and anger mingling with alarm bells; distant city lights watching, then fading; the bark of guard dogs crazed in his pursuit.

In this long night, the ghost has shed his body, his skin and muscle and bones. There’s only a hollow projection left. A grieving shadow, a scream turned whisper.

Spasming back to consciousness…the ghost’s eyes open to a blurry room in the shade.

The cold, the cold was cutting him from the inside out. But now…

…blankets cling to his shape, soothing all of his tired, bony angles. Fending to their side, his hands find a bowl of water, which he drinks through cracked lips.

And, again, the ghost relents to his dream. 

Years of survival have taught him to stay alert. Where the law of the strongest reigns, predators wait to attack at every turn.

His forearms bristle, his dreams turn sharp.

He flinches awake. Retreats against the bedframe in defence. Takes in his surroundings, ancient timber and stone; a window, small but unbarred, might be an escape route. 

But a thick smell of food fills the room, and the ghost’s will drops to his feet.

There’s a man watching him from the door. Dressed in black, robe buttoned at the front, collar white around his neck; a man of God.

The ghost can’t hold that gaze. He’s all too conscious of the way his ragged clothes lay discarded on the floor beneath him, leaving his skin, pale like the dead’s, on display. He’s riddled with scratches and stained with bruises. 

The man of God speaks. “Has hecho un largo camino, ¿no es cierto?”

The ghost blinks, hesitant.

So the man clears his throat, and without prompting, tries again in heavily accented French. “You have made a long way, my child.”

This time, the ghost does peer back at him; at his kindly, round features. The way he speaks is soft, so soft compared to the other voices that have hacked at the ghost like pickaxes through the years—all the things they’ve called him, done to him.

In silence, the man of God regards him. It might be caution, or curiosity. Finally, he takes a seat by the bedside, laying a tray on the ghost’s lap. “Have no qualms, please. Eat.”

And that smell, Lord Almighty, it’s enough to cave his stomach in. The ghost crams his mouth full of boiled potatoes, egg, and chopped up carrots, all of it slightly salted and doused in olive oil. It tethers together the disjointed parts of him, it breathes life back into them. Before he knows it, the ghost feels solid again; he licks his white fingers one by one. 

His saviour watches him like a satisfied cat. “Where did you come from?”

Prison. Ruthless cement and barbed wire. And before that, the youth detention centre. Soon tried like an adult for his heinous crimes.

“Bezièrs,” the ghost says through a mouthful, and he sounds meek and raspy from the run, and it’s not a lie, but it’s not the full truth either. 

“By foot?” That is enough to raise one of the priest’s black, thick eyebrows. Then, he chuckles. “You gave the pilgrims quite a fright. They looked like they saw…”

“A ghost.” Obviously. 

“Nonsense.” The man of God signals a cross, touching first his forehead, then his shoulders. “Superstition is nothing more than a lie of the Devil’s tongue…and you seem quite real to me.”

These are kind words. In his chest, buried deep, the ghost might have felt a spark of light. But it’s quick to die—he doesn't trust it—can’t bring himself to. Good things never come to last. 

The holy man clicks his tongue. “We’ll need to take care of these.” Slowly, the ghost follows his gaze downward. It takes a moment to sink in that he means the wounds—rust-red trails still fresh on his limbs.

The ghost contemplates them. There was a sensation here, some prickling pain that he might have wanted to pay attention to, but soon, it’s gone. Instead, he releases a thought he’s been holding inside. “You…you’re not frightened.”

“Of course not,” the priest says. You can tell he is clever by the way his eyes glint…and that slight smile. Truly, he hasn’t stopped smiling. “Go back to sleep, my son.”

And the ghost does. 

He might have slept seven days and seven nights.

A soreness overwhelms his muscles the next time he stirs awake, but the pain of his pilgrimage is beginning to fade. The soothing light, coming from the lone window, could mean it’s early morning, or early evening. It’s easy on his sensitive eyes all the same.

Sitting beside him again, the holy man. He has brought the ghost crisp bread, creamy soup, and tea that is sweet and mild. The ghost inhales all of it until there’s nothing left.

Over the rim of his own, steaming drink, the holy man says, “I heard about the earthquake.”

For a moment, the ghost thinks he might retch the food.

Inside, sirens ring. Stones crumble. His heart panics, a caged bird. Run away. He must escape, bolt on his feet, run—

“Don’t.” A hand touches his shoulder; he flinches. “You are so full of fear…nothing will happen to you.”

“I don't want to go back,” it takes all of his strength to say this—soft whimper dragging its way through the lump in his throat. And, by that, he means that he doesn't want to go back to that place, or that life, or that body and the terrible pain within it; he’d much rather roam the mountains for all eternity, much rather stay a ghost. “I’ll leave. Please.”

The priest studies him. “Leave, if you must. If that’s the plan God has for you. But first, listen to me. Do you have a name?”

The ghost’s temples pound; bright patterns explode behind his eyelids. Only thinking of that dreaded word makes him sick.

Finally, he shakes his head. 

“Well, you do not need a name to hear this. And you have nothing to fear.” The priest sets his cup on a bedside table, and slides its groaning drawer open. Produces a book—the book, the New Testament.

And he adjusts round black-rimmed glasses onto the bridge of his nose, and shifts the delicate, silken pages. “Acts 16:24. And at midnight, Paul and Silas prayed and sang praises unto God; and the prisoners heard them. And suddenly there was a great earthquake…” He pauses, the ghost’s spine perking. “...so that the foundations of the prison were shaken. And immediately all the doors were opened, and every one’s bands were loosed…”

On, he reads. About a jailer who almost committed suicide when he saw the prison doors wide open; about the apostles, Paul and Silas, being kind enough not to run. About the miracle, the hand of God freeing the unjustly imprisoned, turning into the opportunity for Paul and Silas to show compassion and kindness, and that, my son, is as much an act of God as the earthquake itself.

It is a tale of baptism and redemption, a tale which tastes bittersweet.

“But I…I ran away from my own shackles.” Squeezed tight between ghostly palms, the blanket is damp with sweat. “I’m not of God, Father. Just look at me.”

The priest does. The priest glares at him, bare-chested, trembling in his bone-white skin. “God has marked you. You are special, it’s obvious to the naked eye. You are the most…” He presses his lips, holds what he’s about to say, no matter how much the ghost wants to hear it. “Sometimes, it takes a fire to make space for new life. You can purify your soul of sin, but you cannot find your holy mandate behind bars.”

After that, it seems that he has nothing else to say. The light coming from that small window is filling the room, making it brighter.

The ghost looks at his hands, big and oh-so-pale; often, they have been covered in blood, the knuckles swollen and split from fighting. His hands, inherited from places he dare not think about…it’s difficult to picture them doing God’s work. Doing acts of gentleness and compassion. 

“I must go through the day’s motions, now.” The priest stands up, leaving his Book behind. “But promise me you will reflect on this, and listen closely for any signs.”

The ghost blinks. Nods. His muscles feel weak from the lack of motion, but, before he gets up too, he’ll curl onto the mattress again and wait until the headache passes…until he has assimilated all of this.

“Father,” he says, and tries to smile, wanly. “Do you have a name?”

From the doorframe, the man of God turns around, an eyebrow raised slightly—and, with it, a corner of his lips. “My name is Manuel Aringarosa. Pastor, well…I am the rector vicar of this sanctuary, I suppose.” A pause. “You are resting at Núria, in the Pyrenees. A holy place.”

“A holy place,” the nameless man whispers. “Okay.” And they regard each other for a second longer.

Chapter Text

Manuel Aringarosa shuts the door and rests his back against it.

His heart, usually sullen, beats fast.

A glance at his watch reveals it’s almost eight. And thus, he walks briskly along the corridors of the domus hospitalis, which he knows like the palm of his hand. He will help himself to another Earl Grey, then dash downstairs; church and chapels have to be open in an hour; snow wiped from window sills; altars candlelit. No service today—none until the weekend, when the hillside train brings most curious visitors to this valley—but there’s at least a couple of people lodged around his sanctuary. A family of hikers, a few quiet pilgrims…they may want to take a look at the church.

The air outside is fresh enough that the snowfall has stayed overnight. Manuel adjusts his long woollen coat over the cassock, breathing small clouds into the morning.

Inside of the church, at least, the air is dry. Manuel brings light to the altar, light to the transept, light to the vaults. The Light lives in this place, it’s there in its name; Valley of Núria, from the Arabic Al-nuriyah, “la llumeneta”, the glow of God.

Of God…Manuel gazes up at Christ on his bronze cross.

This Light, he sees it with new eyes now. He kneels down. He prays.

Good Lord, for the first time in years, he’s praying.

Father Aringarosa’s office sits at the west end of the church, near the chapter room. Behind it, a flight of night stairs leads to the dormitories; to his own, on one side, and to the attic—the Rector’s quarters. Empty, as they have been for months.

Aringarosa’s desk, made of sturdy French oak, is in a permanent state of tidy disorder. On the sides, heavy tomes and paperwork folders have piled up, framing the space where he usually writes. His ring emblazoned with the Holy Cross lays discarded next to a pen holder, tightly crammed with fountain pens and quills. The pocket radio is somewhere in there, too.

At the far corner, his landline rests, with the answering machine blinking a green light.

He takes a sip from his teacup, then a seat, then another sip. His finger hovers for a moment over the “play” button before pressing it. 

Beep. “Father Aringarosa, I am speaking from the rectory of Girona. Bishop Durall would like to discuss the future of…”

Aringarosa stirs the honey in his tea and skips the rest.

Beep. “Manuel, hello.” A less diplomatic tone. “I want a word with you. Be so kind and tell me when I can reach you. Or, even better, just come over to Salamanca. But call first. Two-double-o-five…”

After leaving her number, she hangs up without saying goodbye.

“Manners,” Father Aringarosa tells his cup.

For the rest of the day, he writes the weekend’s sermon, watches it take shape. The copy of the New Testament which he’d been reading the last few days is still resting by his guest, but Father Aringarosa can interpret those verses by heart, putting thoughts into words, words into Acts, Acts 16:24, page after page filled with ink, until it’s difficult to see, for the light from outside has gotten dim. 

As for the ghost, any more rest has eluded him. His eyes feel too heavy to read. Barefoot, he explores the austere corridors of the dormitories; uniform doors and narrow windows, and beyond them, green-white peaks, valleys stretching far and wide. There’s a lake too, the water quiet, not quite frozen.

He washes himself in the bathroom, showering off the mountain dirt. Bruises everywhere, still prickling at spots…but, in the cloudy mirror, his dark cuts are healing. They have been cleaned and tended to.

Father Aringarosa…almost too generous to trust.

These kind gestures, the ghost fears them, yet he craves them with all his soul.

Although…if he wandered towards the mountains again, wherever his bare feet would take him, something tells him that the priest would accept it.

Leave if you must, he’s said. If that’s God’s plan for you.

The idea of leaving seems almost easier than that of staying. He has never been alone, with himself, in the quiet; he has never known anything but survival, wandering port to port, street to street, wound to wound. 

And, as Father Aringarosa sat by the ghost’s side…

Did he talk in his sleep?

What did he say?

Suddenly, his face flares hot with shame. Here he is, greedily taking up space and time. Bothering this man of God with his night terrors. Unrepented of sin. Undeserving of…

Of…

He has no clothes. He’s noticed just after the shower; his body drips wet on the tiled floor. At all costs, he will avoid bothering the Father.

Instead, the ghost searches through the empty dorts by himself; inside a dust-heavy chest, he finds habits made of warm, dark fabric, in brown and ashen black. Some of them are broad enough to fit around his shoulders.

He adjusts the cord to his waist, finds a yellowed rosary hanging from it.

Snug, the habit keeps his body in place. And the breeze of fabric around his ankles…it’s comfortable, like a caress.

A cool, dry current picks up in the corridors, as if guiding him. He is compelled to seek the exit—tender eyes squinting at the bright, bare sky outside.

Promise me you will reflect on this, and listen closely for any signs.

That, he will.

The ghost takes on a mountain path.

It smells of pine and resin. Hour by hour, the snow is thinning down; this mysterious valley, the curtain of his pilgrimage, is changing. 

He walks, and walks, and walks. It might’ve been twenty minutes or a century, when suddenly, the sound of feet trotting on gravel reaches him.

Three people dressed in startling colours; blue, pink, green, out of place in this environment. He squints and darts his eyes away, a negative burned into the snow like an aggressive rainbow.

“Un monje,” the blue one, a man, approaches him. Behind him, there's the pink one, wearing a snowflake-patterned hat, letting out a gasp when she sees him…and lastly, a bright green child clinging to her legs. Blue tugs at his own jacket, and points at the ghost’s robe. “¿Franciscano?”

The ghost looks at him, through him, through the mirrors in his sunglasses. “I don't...”

“Oh. French. Yes, yes. You be…monk? New here?” The man’s French is broken, but soon he starts talking in the universal language of expressive, loud gestures. “Our family, aquí, every year. You stay?”

The ghost considers that. He considers it until the silence turns uneasy. “If that is God’s plan,” he says finally.

The green offspring disentangles itself from the protection of its mother’s legs.

It tilts its head at the ghost. The ghost tilts its head at it. It blinks, and the ghost blinks back. 

“¿Dónde vas? ” It says, and points at the ghost’s feet. “¿Sin zapatos?”

“Laura,” the pink mother nudges at her child and flashes the ghost a tight smile.

“Oye, tiene los ojos rojos como un hamster—”

Blue interrupts it. “This place. Beautiful. Super!” He gives the ghost two thumbs up. “Say hello from us, to El Rector. Where is he? We have not seen.”

After parting ways, a chapel emerges from the forest path like a mirage; built in white stone and gated with iron.

Many small candles have kept the inside warm. Stained glass breaks up the sunlight into gliding colours and shapes. Above the entrance, the image of a Saint holding a lamb; opposite to it, fir crowns and candlelight surround an effigy of the Virgin Mary.

Serene. Wood-sculpted. Big, dark eyes, and dark skin too; gentle hands holding her baby child. 

The Mother.

There was a mother, a long time ago.

And she comes to him in a stream of memories, igniting a warmth, a longing between his ghostly lungs. Her hands on his hair, softly untangling white locks. Her lips on his forehead to wake him up good morning, and her warm embrace in the night when he couldn't sleep.

And he can't afford to stay with these memories, for the idea of leaving her behind is almost easier than that of staying; for the pain is much worse when it’s not pain at all, when it’s sweet, and sweet she was when she was alive; and without realising he’s dropped to his knees and blurred the Holy Mother with his tears, the rosary in his hand singing her joys, and she's all around him, in the light, in the wind, in the snowfall outside, so he prays; even without knowing how to do it right, he prays. 

The next time Manuel lifts his eyes from the desk, it's well past bedtime.

Out the western balcony he goes, to stretch his legs and catch some air. The cloister, the shy winter grass, the half-frozen pond; they all look magical.

And there, in the middle of it all, hooded like a monk…looking at the sky…the nameless man.

A face delicate and as pure as Heaven itself.

He’s beautiful in his danger, this stranger, and Lord Almighty—

Manuel should truly stop this train of thought.

Still.

Careful, careful, with wary steps on fresh snow,

Manuel approaches him as one would a wounded beast—

(his father was a proud hunter—) 

and stands before him. Between them, only the snowfall.

The nameless man's cheeks are damp, tears frozen to crystals on his eyelashes. He bows his head, solemn and tame.

“Forgive me, Father.” His voice quivers. “The habit. I took without asking.”

This, all of it. The snow, the light, the calls in the morning. The fallen angel. Acts 16:24. Separate events, and yet part of a whole; for Manuel cannot shake off the feeling that they are all one, one and the same, a spiralling semblance of order in the chaos. 

He leans into the angel’s ear to whisper. 

“Keep it, my son. It may have chosen you.”

Chapter Text

It is warm. The winter has melted into an airy spring, the last string of nights growing hotter, thicker. The nameless man opens his eyes and peels the sheets from his body.

Darkness; his element, his friend. As a boy he learned to navigate it, and countless times it has protected him. Now, it welcomes him back. Barefoot over the tiled floor, he stretches, a dove in the starless night.

The habit awaits him, resting on the chair where Father Aringarosa usually sits by the bedside and speaks about God. The nameless man slips into it easily. A Seraphic rosary hangs from his waist—seventy prayers to the Holy Mary he carries, everywhere, always.

His skin is now camouflaged too, and he’s a peregrin, he’s a monk, he’s a shadow melting out of the room and into the corridors.

Out the window, Father Aringarosa’s austere church; the Romanesque clock tower, a grounding pillar in its midst. The dormitories extend from it like the arms of a cross. Heavy clouds move with the wind; the mountains and the rippling lake are bathed in moonlight.

The sight tightens around his heart. He thanks the Lord silently for His gifts.

This is a place where entire generations have found solace; all their wills together compel him, drift him forward, down the stairs and turning corners, until he finds the entrance to the old chapel.

Inside, candlelight burns. 

He hears…

Gasping. The snap of rope against flesh.  

The first time he explored the sanctuary at night, these choked sounds reminded him of prison—endless purgatory, brainless labyrinth of sweat and blood, where at every turn something horrible could be awaiting him, fists beating, hands groping and teeth biting, and pain, but the pain was worse when it was not quite—

The first time he explored the sanctuary at night, he’d been taken aback by the noise. Wasn’t the church empty? The pilgrims gone, the Priest resting?

It turns out, Father Aringarosa doesn’t always sleep.

He’s bare-chested, cassock lowered to his waist—soft and robust body quivering in the candlelight. His shoulders, hunched and swollen with lashes under the weeping eyes of Christ.

The nameless man grasps his crucifix, hot breath caught in his throat, wet lips mouthing verses to the Father’s Latin prayer. 

Quae sursum sunt sapite non quae supra terram. “That I might mind the things that are above, and not the things on Earth.”

Mortificate membra vestra quae sunt super terram. “That I might put to death what is earthly in me.”

Fornicationem imunditiam libidinem concupiscentiam malam et avaritiam. “Fornication, uncleanness, lust, evil concupiscence and covetousness.”

And the Father’s voice deepens, exhausting itself. Corded whip limp in his hand, the ritual gives way to meditation; quiet breath in, and out, but a weight has been eased—released. Purified.

The nameless monk has dug his fingernails into his neck, into its tense muscles.

(Buried deep burns the question: what is it? What is the sin that a man of God must purify?)

Father Aringarosa mutters one last word before throwing the dark vestment over his shoulders again and buttoning up, unflinching.

The monk releases the air from his lungs, slowly as to not be heard. 

Watching this, ever since the first time, has felt right to him, right like his habit, right like a caress; it soothes something instinctual in him far beyond the confines of memory.

Days pass, and the snow caps melt, and pilgrims come and go, and Father Aringarosa’s apostle doesn’t say much.

He has taken to following Manuel in the mornings, wordlessly opening the church and the chapels, bringing light to the altar, the transept, the vaults; and sometimes he’ll run sand paper along the splintering banks, fix groaning windows, replace nails rusted by age; and sometimes Manuel will bake bread in the stone oven, and they’ll break it, and he'll tell this nameless monk about the history of the Saints in the valley, and the Roman domes of Carlemagne in the city, and the red peaks of Montserrat near the coast; and they will spend time together in the study room, Manuel educating the monk in the ways of Marian prayer, which he seems to favour; spend time together at the cloister, preparing the ground for new flowers when sunnier days come; spend time together at church, Manuel playing the organ, the nameless monk with his delicate eyes shut, listening to the air flow through pipes like clarinets and flutes and chanting voices; and sometimes a pilgrim or the other will tell him: that is nice, Father, you play so well, but the sounds are quite dark, and the Rector—he must be so busy in the city—the Rector always chose local pieces for his mass; so, Castillian priest, couldn't you play something local?

And sometimes, the nameless monk will kneel in front of Manuel, who wears poise like he wears his cassock, and quiver slightly when a thumb grazes his forehead. He will receive Communion, tongue so close to Manuel’s fingertips that they flinch away as if thorns had pricked them. 

And sometimes, the nameless monk will stand in the cloister garden, scars bright in the morning light, and when he notices after full minutes that Manuel is watching, he’ll say, “In this place, God holds us close. You feel it too, don’t you, Father?”

“Of course,” Manuel replies too quickly, and breaks that piercing stare.

In spring, the hillside train reaches the Valley of Núria more frequently, and electric light starts peppering the hillfoots in the evenings: it comes from the restaurants, hostels, and resorts that have spent the winter shut off. Slowly, through the weeks, the mountains fill up with visitors, more and more traces of the outside world seeping into the sanctuary.

And thus, sometimes, Manuel leaves behind the gravity of his Church, of his questions to God, of his dutiful apostle…needing banality like a pinch of sugar in his morning coffee. 

This resort is a half-hour by foot from the Holy Mary chapel. Gas lamps and glass windows; plush seats where hikers gather to catch their breath.

Manuel greets two known faces—pilgrims who have requested an extraordinary Mass tomorrow—and he’s approached by a little, lovely dame. Before retirement, she used to clean the church once a week.

“Manuel, how nice to see you here.” She smiles widely and touches the cross hanging from her neck. “I happened to meet a friend of yours at the train station.” That earns her a raised eyebrow. “Is the Rector doing better?”

“I will forward him your good wishes,” Manuel says. “Bless you.”

But his eyes have already trailed behind the lady, to the glass panel at the entrance, where a known face glares daggers at him. The same way she used to glare at male students when they interrupted her seminars—one of the rare women among teachers at the pontifical University of Salamanca, where Manuel continued the education he had started in Madrid.

Isabel Escudero y Forns wears her dark hair in a bun, and the years have made her face sharper. She's surrounded by a halo of cigarette smoke, that crude habit she must have given up about twenty times since Manuel met her.

Once he’s stepped outside, he greets her by reciting her own words: “ ‘Just come to the city, but call first .’ I reckon that's not a privilege you'll grant me, Isabel.”

“I thought I'd be lenient with you, and not think you are ignoring my calls.” She judges him from over the rim of her spectacles. “You must be very busy with your secular priest life.”

Manuel’s lip tightens. “Pardon me?”

“You even have a ski station around here. That must draw so many visitors to your little tourist attraction of a church.” 

There’s a biting remark on the tip of Manuel’s tongue.

But, again…one should honour their teachers. That respect is not gone.

“I am where the Work wishes me to be,” he says simply.

Her eyes zig-zag on him. She’s inspecting his hands and clothing, seeking a Holy Cross to match the one on the lapel of her blazer. She doesn’t find it, of course not. It’s resting on the desk, in his office; it has been for months.

A realisation seems to sink in. Then, her scowl drops, and she looks just this side of sad.

“Oh, Manuel. Look at you,” she says. “Look at you.”

There’s a walk down the abbey’s path. There’s hot cocoa in paper cups warming their hands.

“Are you still teaching?” Manuel asks.

“This country has been a disaster since ‘75,” she blurts out, a rant that she’s probably held inside all the way here. “In this democracy, no one knows where they stand. The Reds think they can waltz into the Congress, claiming our properties and churches, changing every line of the Constitution we wrote. I have people everywhere, every day, fighting tooth and nail to preserve a bit of order in this society.” She sighs, inhales deeply, adjusts the steam-white spectacles to the bridge of her pointed nose. “Yes, alas, I am a teacher. But it is the younger generations that I am focusing on, at a private school.”

“Oh.” Manuel nods curtly. “Well. Each of us, in our environment. We do what we can.”

Her lighter sparks a glow in the corner of his eye. They stop to rest near the church, by a humble altar built on the pathside. She takes a candle and flicks her ash into it.

“Manuel,” she says all of a sudden, “my husband is dying.”

For a split second, Manuel is sure that he has heard wrong. “Your husband? Germán?” He turns to her in the dark, only the side of her face aglow. “Isabel.” Another pause. “Good Lord. I’m so sorry. Since when…?”

She cuts into his question; he takes his cue to say nothing, just listen. “We have made our peace with it. Well, I have, at least. There are still many difficult moments, difficult talks to be had…he might have a year left, or months.” Crisp sound of Marlboro paper burning, flick of her hand. “We are wrapping up business, as you understand. It is quite possible that he will have left us by the next Great Congress. And, well…that’s where he was planning to announce our new project. The Church of St. Paul and the Holy Cross, in Oviedo.”

“This is terrible. May you both find strength in the Lord.”

“Thanks.” She looks away, legs and arms crossed. “I was hoping to relieve myself of some of this responsibility soon.” 

“But of course. I’ll help you with whatever I can.” A pause. “May I ask…why hadn’t you told me yet?”

Isabel considers that. When she answers, her voice is a pitch higher. “Well, we wanted to. But you haven’t attended a meeting in ages. As stated. The life of a vicar. Very busy.”

“For the love of—” Manuel presses his lips, keeps defensiveness from surging. “I…there is a reason why I am doing the Work here. It was a recommendation of the Prelate himself. That’s what I do—spreading the Lord’s message to the layman. It is my duty…you are conscious of this.”

For a few seconds, only the distant wind howls between the mountains.

Isabel crushes her cigarette into the candle and immediately lights up a new one.

“You,” she says, “are better than this.”

And, again, here they go.

Manuel. “This is the only place—”

“Are you telling me that you like it here?” Isabel’s actual, booming tone rises above her manners. “You do? Greeting skiers to come and photograph your church, and tell them stories of a Catholicism that’s not even yours? Don’t make me laugh. The Manuel Aringarosa I know would have stepped over the Prelate—no, over the Pope himself, to make his name known.”

She signals a cross, forgiving herself for the blasphemy.

Manuel takes a moment to find his own voice again. “How…how do you dare? Do not think that your tragedy gives you a right to talk to me like this.” He glances over his shoulder, listening for the sound of steps in the night. Then, when he’s sure no one is around: “Who do you think is carrying this parish on a single shoulder? It’s certainly not the Rector. The Bishop of Girona owes me a lot.”

“You won’t get your dues from the Bishop of Girona,” she mutters. “We both know why.”

“Oh, we do?” Now it’s his turn to glare back at her. “Enlighten me.”

“We do. Because you’re not a local.”

And that is an ice-cold dagger of truth to his chest.

Most pilgrims do consider themselves more local to the Valley than Manuel; and that, in spite of all the work he’s done, and still does. Routinely, people assume from his accent that he can’t understand the local language, and behind his back there’s whispers, “he might be Castilian, but he’s a good boy”.

But, truly: can he blame them? The community he lives in has spent centuries at odds with the country, clamouring for independence, seeking an ancient glory. And, ever since the dictatorship ended, this dormant pride has flared anew. The populace wants local priests, local Bishops, and they aren’t afraid of saying so. No—he corrects himself—it’s not only the populace; it’s the stakeholders too, powerful people. This is what years of repression will do to a country, their language forbidden, their traditions censored, their money under close watch. Wounded peacocks, the lot of them.

“You know it’s true,” Isabel continues, softer, sensing the effect of her words. “Even if you sing their graces and you speak their dialect…”

“It’s a language,” Manuel grumbles.

“...call it whatever you want. The point is, you’ll die a vicar here, Father Aringarosa. And you’re not even forty. You can, and should, do something else with your life.”

Tired, he relents. “Did you come here just to berate me?”

“No. I came to talk to you about the church in Oviedo.” Crush. Click. Marlboro burn. “I’m not leaving the school to go build it.” Smoke fuming in the air. “Besides. I’m a woman, and it’s a Men’s Congress thing. You know how it is. But we’re not giving up on the contract either.” 

“So?”

“So, you should take over it.”

Manuel would rather listen to the curtain of noise that’s picking up around them. Crickets, owls, maybe fish flapping in the lake.

“The Opus Dei,” he says gravely, “won’t have me.”

“The Opus Dei needs new blood, whether it knows or cares. Our political oppositors will never cease to slander us, and our new statute in Rome may be a step in the right direction, but more power brings more challenges. The old sacks at the top don’t have what it takes to face them. And most of our members are too busy in this chaos to do anything but toss pennies our way. You have talent. You were always good at speaking, persuading, guiding others. I mentored you, didn’t I?”

“That was a long time ago.”

“Exactly.” She doubts, observing him, and Manuel does not catch her eye. “University…was a long time ago. A baseless rumour is no good reason to spend the rest of your life exiled here.”

“Don’t.”

“Fine.” Her smoke quivers in the wind. “It’s water under the bridge, anyway. If you become active in the Work again, bring this project to term…they’ll be kissing your feet before long. What’s keeping you in here anyway?”

Before he can grasp at a reply he doesn't have, Manuel hears the sound of sandals approaching on gravel. Breezy steps, full of purpose. He knows them well.

“Father. Good evening.”

The monk is standing in front of them, hands to the back. And, good Lord, Manuel wants to push him away from this conversation, to keep him as far from the Opus Dei as he can.

But, with him here, the night does feel a little brighter.

Addressing Isabel in accented Spanish, the monk says: “Good evening, señora.”

“Hum.” She fidgets in her seat, a little startled, her head tilting slightly to Manuel. “Hello, Brother.”

“This is Mrs. Forns, my son. Another good friend of mine.”

“A friend.” The monk gives them both a polite nod, then speaks French. “Father, I shall be off to sleep soon. Would you join me in prayer?”

Perhaps due to the secrets that Isabel has come close to stirring, two images collide in Manuel’s mind—the mention of the chapel, the idea of his monk praying in it alone at night—Manuel’s own expiation, Discipline in hand, shoulders raw.

“I’d hate to keep you waiting,” he says in discomfort. “We have much catching up to do.”

The monk bows his head. “I understand.”

Then—as the nameless monk so often happens to do—he kneels and leans in, expecting Manuel’s blessing.

Isabel flinches. She might have dropped her cigarette and is groping for it between the grass and stones. “Brother,” she says quickly without looking at them, “what did you say is your name?”

And Manuel can’t quite see, only perceive, the look of fear in the pale face. Whites of the eyes widening. Head leaning slightly into his palm, now not for Manuel’s blessing, but for protection.

But Manuel—as Manuel so often happens to do—has an answer. Ever unspoken but solid, practised and worn in his mind.

(A name, pale like the moon, pale like his flesh.)

(A name muttered at night, in the chapel, the one place where he yet has control…)

“Silas,” Manuel says. Acts 16:24, of course. 

The world is suddenly too warm, too cold. His palm, clammy on the monk’s cheek.

And Silas—Silas? —melts against his hand for a split second longer, then retreats onto his feet, an invisible force holding his spine straight and helping him rise from the ashes. 

“Tomorrow, Father,” he speaks into Manuel's eyes. “I can be of service again. Help you with Mass.”

And without another word, he is off into the night.

“Bless you for reminding me,” Manuel calls after him.

He’s, truth be told, not sure of what has happened.

Finally, he glances back at Isabel, and tries not to look like a child caught doing something he shouldn't. 

“Striking,” she says. “Very striking.”

“He’s a good boy,” Manuel replies. For a Franciscan, he could add, but doesn’t have the nerve to joke at his monk’s expense. 

“Anyway. You have an opportunity to come back to our ranks.” The last mound of ash crumbles from her cigarette, a fallen soldier; and Isabel, the ruthless general, stands up. “If you still have the drive, Father, you will think about it.”

Chapter Text

Sunday, once more. Father Aringarosa hosts a solemn Eucharist. The weekend brings quite a lot of pilgrims; new faces in the parish and generous donations in the offertory chest. Isabel is notably absent. 

The monk orbits him all morning. Attuned to him, listening to his words and obeying his commands, but from a reverent distance. Later, Manuel asks him to work the cloister garden, and the monk spends hours softening and feeding the soil, making it tender, digging shallow holes into it in preparation for flowers.

A few onlookers flock to the vaults to watch him—his muscles swollen and taut, the bulk of his shock-white chest beaded with sweat, the cuts on his skin faded to scars—but Manuel promptly shoos them away and shuts the cloister gates.

As soon as they're alone, the monk drops the garden gloves to the ground and faces him.

“Father. What’s wrong?”

A beat. “Can I ask you something?”

The monk, faintly smiling. “You already are…”

Manuel cannot find it in himself to smile back, although the sight kindles light inside of him.

“Do you…” He swallows dry. “Do you remember the night as it snowed, and I found you here, with your habit on? You were going to leave, weren’t you.”

The monk looks down, to the gravel, and nods solemnly. “But this place wouldn’t let me. The Lord wants me here.”

The priest’s breath hitches. “How could you know?”

“I did what you told me; I listened to the signs. The Mother of God showed me the right way, with the wind, with the birds. She told me that I should stay here with you and mend my life.”

Goosebumps bristle across Manuel’s forearms, brought on by the swelling breeze.

“I never remembered to tell you, Father,” the monk continues. “But the layman I met…he told me to give the Rector his greetings.”

Manuel rests his back against one of the stone arches, and gazes over the empty cloister. 

“The Rector is dead,” he says.

It is the first time he has spoken these words aloud.

When he hears them, the monk staggers. He grasps the rosary hanging from his girdle, then sits down on the grass. “May he rest in peace.”

“It wasn’t long before you came here,” Manuel mutters. “He’d been ill, but fiercely opposed to retirement. And the diocese of Girona, well…they didn’t do much about it, as you fathom. When he left us, God bless his soul, the ceremony was rushed and private. I had still hoped…” He pauses. Now, it is his turn to speak to the gravel. “It doesn't matter, truly. But it’s been months now, and we’re stuck with this lie until they find a suitable replacement. Once they send someone here to take over his work, while I remain a vicar.”

The monk’s pale red eyes roll into the sky, clouds sailing in his pupils. 

“I pray…that they might find their way.”

A corner of Manuel’s lips sharpens. “I pray that I might find my way, Silas.”

The monk’s gaze slides back to him, so intense that it causes him to stammer.

“I’m—I’m sorry. I shouldn't.”

“Do not apologise, Father. You give me the greatest gifts.” And, good Lord; beaming like this, glowing in the daylight, he’s not something of Earth, but of above. “I have no other name, so Silas it shall be.”

A phone call in the westward office. 

“Bishop Durall. Aringarosa speaking.” He smiles, concealing his accent from the inland. “I apologise for taking so long to answer you. There’s quite a lot to do here, in the sanctuary.”

“Manuel Aringarosa. It’s good to hear back from you, my friend.” The Bishop’s voice is ancient, tired. “I am glad you called back, for I have good news.”

“Oh. So you do.”

“Let me preface this by saying that I acknowledge, and appreciate, your work at Núria. You are an exemplary administrator. The bureaucracy is up to date, the accounts too. The daily business seems to run seamlessly, and all of that while keeping your parish content. There’s no person better than you to entrust this sanctuary with.”

Trimmed fingernails thrum on French oak; they fidget with pens and rings.

“It is my pleasure.”

“Now. The Rector’s passing was very unfortunate for us all,” Bishop Durall continues. “But I think we are prepared to let his memory rest. We have found a wonderful replacement, and it would be my honour if you could train him, walk him through the motions. He’s a very bright young pastor. Father Verdaguer.”

Father Aringarosa rolls his jaw, but his smile doesn’t falter.

“I see,” he says. “Let me think about it.” 

“Think…about it? Manuel, I was…I was looking forward to confirming this as soon as possible.”

“When do you need an answer?”

A beat. “Now, I hoped.”

“Oh. Oh, well. I’m sorry. I must leave,” Aringarosa turns around in his office chair. “The Church requires my attention. Many pilgrims here. It’s become quite a popular attraction.”

“Manuel—”

He drops the telephone into its socket.

Manuel sits in his church until well past midnight, watching the candles become smaller. Watching Christ on his bronze cross.

INRI.

Jesus the Nazarene, King of the Jews. Christ was called that upon birth with fear and reverence—and upon death, as a mockery. A beginning and an end.

You will die a mere vicar here.

Are you telling me that you like it?

“I had pictured it differently,” he would have said, perhaps, in a more honest life. This was certainly not within Isabel’s own plans; after all, she had chosen him, an awkward, bookish, very young seminarist at the top of his class, to have glasses of white wine and lavish lunches under the lazy Castilian sun, as if to say: they will try to teach you humility, but humility is for the sheep; this is what you should want; follow me, and it shall be yours.

And young Manuel had enjoyed that attention…although that was only a nice byproduct of the actual, central point. His life was Faith. He’d been prepared to sacrifice much in his pursuit of knowledge, in his will to rise above the masses and become a beacon of contemplation, of everyday sainthood, of the Work. 

And this church…this place where he finds himself. This church bastardises its own teachings, turning them into a curiosity, a touristic highlight.

A noise, like scratching, draws Manuel from his thoughts.

He furrows his brow—is that a wild pig, a fox trying to get into the church? What kind of animal sounds like that?—and stands up, pacing through the arched entrance toward the nave…

…in time to see two parishioners in black clothing swinging the door open. Two faces he knows; they had requested the Eucharist on Friday, showed up for the service earlier today as well.

“Hello,” he says. Father Aringarosa, a serene mask. “How can I help—”

The pilgrims freeze in their tracks. One of them points at Father Aringarosa; in one of his hands, the shape of a…woollen hat? Squinting, Aringarosa realises that it’s a balaclava—one the man was intending to put on—and, on his other hand, something he has only ever seen in the holsters of civil guardsmen—a gun.

Silas spends hours praying. 

Prayers for the Father, that the Lord might enlighten him, show him the thread of fate in the essence of all things. And prayers for the amendment of his own trespassings, that he might know how to thank the Father’s gifts of a new life and purpose and name; that they might both discern the truth from the noise. 

And as for the people above the Father, Bishop and priests of this diocese, that they, too, may see the light again; that they may untangle themselves from the lies they have webbed. For the Light of God will diffuse them and be quick to show His blessed plan. 

A crash pulls Silas from his prayer. The commotion comes from the depths of this corridor.

Senses sharpened from years of survival, Silas slides into his robe, bolting away from the cross and into the open door.

He’s been here before, not the place but the feeling; a wrongness stretching in the shadows, pecking at the corners of his eyes. Rushing downstairs, he hears the echo of voices. Silas is in the silence; he’s one with it. Sliding behind the arched entrance to the church, he catches some Spanish words.

The Father. “Take the money, then. If it’s so important.”

There’s noise of ransacking across the altar, candles and vases dropped to the ground.

An aggressive shout. “I said stop talking.” A silhouette, hand pointed directly at the Father’s head. “He remembers us. He’s seen our faces.”

The Father, again. “I don’t know…”

“Don’t fuck with me, priest. You said it yourself!”

Silas peers from behind the door. At the end of the assailant’s hand…a firearm. Silas’s pulse thunders in his ears; a fist clenches around his heart.

“You should be ashamed. Coming to the House of the Lord with the intention to rob it.” The Father’s voice is deeper than usual, but unfaltering. “And here I was thinking that you were men of God. You were part of my flock, after all.”

The cannon shakes against the Father’s forehead. The Father starts muttering a Latin prayer—the man swings his arm back and digs the gun’s grip into the Father’s face, then knees him on the stomach. The Father staggers back, curls over himself. His nose leaks red on the stone floor.

That jolts Silas out of his shock.

Rage blazes within him, the burning need to protect what he loves.

And time slows down, as if the moment had frozen and he could walk it freely.

He swings the heavy door open, dashes behind the first assailant and grabs his armed hand—angry thunder as the revolver unloads on a column. Silas’s ears hiss as he seizes the wrist and twists it until the bone cracks. The man screams in pain. Silas wraps an arm around his neck, wringing tighter, tighter, tighter, then twisting his upper body until the bone crunches wet, both man and firearm dropping limply to the floor.

The second attacker approaches Silas from behind, cursing, flinging a candle holder; Silas grasps it and swings it back with all his might, locking it into the man’s skull. Blood sprays Silas’s face. He hits. And hits. And hits.

Before he knows it, he’s standing over two dead bodies.

His impromptu weapon falls to the floor.

The taste of rust is overwhelming. Even in this sanctuary at the world’s end, the red has found him. His throat is crawling with red. His face is stained with red. His path always leads to red. 

He seeks the Father. Finds him curled down on the ground, hurting; his cheek split open, his nose all bloody. He needs Silas, and Silas needs him. Silas crouches over him, holds his body with shaky arms.

Arms which are disappearing, Silas realises in horror.

He can see through them. He’s shedding his body, shedding his skin and muscle and bones. All his attempts to mend his wrongdoings have turned to dust in the space of a few minutes; he is turning back into what he was before arriving in the Valley. 

“No.”

Father Aringarosa stirs under him.

“My son,” he mumbles. “Are you okay?”

“I’m so sorry. I am so sorry.” Trembling hands, tears streaming down incorporeal cheeks. “Forgive me, please. They’re dead. I killed them.”

The Father closes his eyes. His chest rises and falls.

“Come here,” he says, stretching out an arm, and Silas dives into his embrace. 

In the chamber of Silas’s mind echo angry voices from his past. You are a disaster. A ghost.

You are a ghost with eyes like the Devil!

“Forgive me,” he says weakly.

Father Aringarosa shushes him. “Silas. Listen to me. There is nothing to forgive. You’re a godsend. An angel.”

And Silas, he can’t stop shaking, afraid that his essence is spilling and leaving him an empty husk again. But the light inside isn't gone, and he is feeling—he is feeling, quaking with anger and shame and grief, a scalding hot pool between his lungs. Tear after tear, sob after sob, it all comes to quieten…until all that’s left is one, single, physical sensation: the Father’s hand on his hair, caressing him, over and over.

“God’s will, we can’t fathom. We never will. The Lord’s thoughts are vast…and we are small.” The Father stirs in pain when Silas moves, prompting a hurried apology. And yet his words never waver, gentle, grounding. “But He brought you here, my angel. He brought you here to watch over me…”

Until both their breaths have stopped quivering.

Then the Father shifts, attempting to sit up; Silas scrambles to help him, supporting his body, not wanting to peel himself from his warmth. 

Yes…both of them are warm. As solid as the Earth itself.

The Father presses a sleeve to his bleeding nose. His eyes trail to the bodies.

“These poor lost souls,” he says. “Let us pray for them.”

Chapter Text

Again, Silas works the garden. Only, this time, he glows under a mystical moon; and he isn’t digging flowerbeds, but deep, wide graves…for two bodies and a blanket of marble stones.

The pain on Manuel’s face and under his ribs becomes an afterthought. Like an automat, he moves around the church as is his routine; cleans what is bloodied and replaces what is broken, and it’s only outside, catching a breath of fresh air, that he notices his shirt is torn, the collar gone.

He walks into the night, and yet out of it. The lights at the hillfoot remind him that there’s a world outside—of the church, of the valley, of the last few hours—and that neither he, nor Silas, have voiced a thought to involve the police.

Of course not. Silas is not made for the institutions, that hierarchical anthill. And Manuel would never put his angel at risk, a fugitive as he is…the last thing Manuel needs is to be discovered sheltering a murderer.

Although…

Silas…he’s not a murderer. There’s no chance that this profane world, which spirals deeper into disorder every day, would understand. But Manuel knows. Silas is a sign. A gift, sent from above. Perhaps to restore Manuel’s faith and to aid him; perhaps, destined to do great things.

Without a thought, Manuel’s steps lead him toward the lake. His clothing falls to the grass, pooling around his feet; he steps into the water until it reaches up to his waist, warm from the day, a quicksilver surface rippling with life. Manuel cleans the blood off his skin, runs wet fingers through his tousled hair.

He stays there until the wave of adrenaline rolls back, until a dim blue halo starts rising under the eastward mountains. He would like to close his eyes, give himself to sleep…

The sound of steps approaching on gravel breaks his reverie.

Silas. Chest bare and streaked with dirt, heaving in the moonlight. Manuel becomes all too conscious of his own naked body, not anymore tucked behind the safety of his vestments.

For a while, they remain quiet.

Then, Silas speaks. “There was once a boy.”

Manuel holds his gaze. 

“His mother,” Silas continues, “loved him very much. She was so beautiful, so kind. And his father…his father was two completely different people. Sometimes, he, too, was kind. He would ruffle the boy’s hair and carry him on his big shoulders. But all it took was something—the wrong word, the wrong gesture, for him to switch.” His face tenses. “The boy watched…he was forced to watch…as the mother bore the brunt of his wrath. She always held her chin high, and never uttered a word of complaint, and yet was punished. And the boy, he hated being so helpless to do anything…but whenever he tried to defend her, he too was hurt.”

“One night, the fighting was particularly bad. And Mama. She never got up again.” There’s a strange twitch in Silas’s face, as if he had just heard a loud noise. “And the boy couldn’t. Couldn’t understand, at first. He was paralysed. He stayed for hours by her side, waiting for her to…”

His thoughts trail off.

Manuel says, “Go on.”

“A few nights later, as the father slept, the boy took a butcher’s knife.” A pause; more thoughts lost in the water. “For a long time, he didn’t remember that night. But it comes to him, sometimes. While he sleeps…” He swallows. “The only thing the boy knew afterwards is that he had to run, and run he did. He ran to the outskirts of the city, hiding among rats, stealing to survive. Usually, people would look right through him, as if he were transparent. Those were the best times. Then there were others when strangers would treat him well…the boy quickly learned to never trust them. And he grew. Became big, too, a body inherited from the Devil. That’s what they called him: a ghost. A ghost with the Devil's eyes.”  

Silas enters the water, approaching Manuel. The ground is superficial where he stands, each of his steps oh-so-slow, as if fearing that a brusque gesture might make Manuel flinch away.

But Manuel has already looked into death’s eyes once tonight. Silas means him no harm, he knows.

“Whenever others would steal his food, steal his things, call him names…he only saw red. Do you understand, Father? He never wanted to kill, but it happened. It happened again, and again, and again. And this boy, this boy whom I should have left behind. This boy has followed me here.”

Manuel nods, letting the story, this answer to unspoken questions, sink in.

“In each and every one of us, there is a saint and a sinner, my son,” he says, “and, as we fall, we must rise again.”

Silas leans in.

“Please,” he mutters. “Please teach me how to purify the sin from this body, that this anger, this grief may leave me. I want to be an angel for you. Please.”  

Of all Manuel has seen and heard tonight, this is what gives him pause. Soon, he notices that his face is burning.

“Silas, I—”

“I have seen you at night,” Silas whispers. “Please. I do not fear the pain.”

The image kindles in Manuel’s mind’s eye, and for a second, his pulse drops.

Manuel’s expiation, Discipline in hand, shoulders raw. Silas, watching from the shadows, holding his breath.

Deep within his body—under many, many layers—something flickers alight. It snaps, perhaps, like a violin string tensed too far. 

Father Aringarosa approaches his apostle. He stretches his hands out, and Silas accepts them, letting himself be pulled in, compelled to kneel into the water. Aringarosa reaches for a splash with a cupped hand, and sprinkles it on Silas’s forehead; once for the Father, for the Son, for the Holy Spirit.

“That boy is dead.”

Swiftly, he shoves Silas's head into the lake.

Silas tenses from the shock, but relents. Aringarosa eases the grip on his nape, only easing it when he begins to spasm. 

Then Silas breaks the surface, panting, shaken, his face clean of dirt and blood.

“But you. You live.” Father Aringarosa smiles. Silas’s pulse beats under his fingertips; the lips are drenched, parted, glinting with moon; the pupils wide, full of fear and adoration. “You are right, my son. Pain is nothing to fear.”

Silas’s hands join in penitence above his head. Flickering light and shadows caress his limbs; his broad shoulders are hunched over the prayer bench. 

Where bones used to poke through paper-thin skin, the muscles are now taut and healthy. It’s a body from which Father Aringarosa's eyes often dart away.

But not tonight.

Tonight, he remains firm, his fist closed around the Discipline’s roped handle.

“Speak,” he says. 

“I chastise my body,” Silas’s voice is meek.

The whip descends upon Silas’s back. Once. Twice. His spine strains, his cries fill the chapel. Over them, Aringarosa mutters a prayer. 

“Mind the things that are above, and not the things of earth.”

“I…” Silas’s breath quivers, in, then out. “I chastise my body.”

Another crack. Another groan of pain torn from Silas’s throat. 

Father Aringarosa clenches his jaw. “Mortify your members which are upon the earth.”

“I chastise my—” Another snap, cutting Silas’s mantra. “Harder.” His voice cracks into a sob. “Harder.”  

Father Aringarosa drags his gaze down Silas’s back. The red lashes extend like fingers behind his shoulders and the curve of his buttocks. His own body feels hot; he’s sopped this fresh shirt with sweat through and through.

“Shh.” He leans in to wrap a hand around Silas’s neck, Adam’s apple bobbing up and down, throat trembling under his touch. “Don’t forget yourself.” 

Silas nods ecstatically. “Please don’t stop.”

Around both disciple and Discipline, Aringarosa’s grip tightens. 

Awake past their second and third winds, the night’s events seem like a fever dream. 

Manuel sits at the pipe organ, with Silas at his feet. Music is their last prayer; music soothes the wounds as they come. He’s playing a part of Widor’s third symphony, the prelude. Silas’s cheek rests against his thigh; not ideal to handle the pedals, but Manuel doesn’t terribly mind.

At some point, through the sounds like solemn strings and flowing flutes, cold air sweeps through the church. The door is open.

Click clack. Click clack. Heels on marble.

“Manuel.”

It’s Isabel. Of course. Manuel’s hands hover over the keys for a moment before resuming the melody.

Click clack. Click clack. She’s climbing upstairs, seeking him behind the balcony of pipes. Her aura precedes her; cigarettes mingled with Italian perfume.

“What are you two—” She cuts off when Manuel turns to her. “Good Lord.” She winces—at his face, the same way she just winced at the monk. “You were attacked. Some businesses in the valley have been robbed, too.”

Manuel nods slowly. Pulls a stop, the reeds quietening. “Armed thieves. Silas scared them away.”

Silas looks up, swollen eyes trailing to Isabel as if he’d just only noticed her.

Manuel slides his hand away from the keys, and softly to the side of Silas’s head. “You should go to sleep.”

It takes a moment for Silas to process that, the few strained seconds turning into minutes. He stands up, staggers, complies. Isabel takes note of his way downstairs like a bloodhound, glaring at him until he disappears behind the door to the dorts. “Did you think about my proposition?”

Manuel stops playing.

“I did think about your proposition.” After twenty-four hours awake, he has no energy left for beating around the bush. “Why me, Isabel? Is it truly just because I’m a man and I can talk to people?” He smiles, weary. “It doesn’t seem like a very high bar. You have no shortage of connections in the Work, and yet you came all the way here to recruit me.”

“Right. Connections who think they are strong-willed, but will relent at the first sight of the tides turning,” she says. “Do you know how many of my people make empty promises, and then turn around to shake hands with reds and Jesuits because their voters don’t support them? But of course, I shouldn’t direct their political decisions. They are all free Christians. This country is losing its way.”

Manuel nods, slowly. His hand skims over the carved stops. “Isn't the mayor of Oviedo a socialist?”

He pulls another one and the organ clicks in response. 

When Isabel talks again, she does so tentatively. “The recent change of government means that…obstacles…have been appearing in our way. Idiotic technicisms, truly. All it comes down to is that our names, Germán’s and mine, are rather associated with…the Spanish State.” By ‘associated’, she means connected in a way that is inseparable, inextricable. And by the State, she means Franquism. 

“Oh. I see.” A corner of Manuel’s lip quirks up. “Now we’re talking. You want to use me.”

“Don’t be preposterous.”

“A nobody like me, a priest who has spent over eight years in Catalonia, might be more palatable to the socialists, won’t he?”

She pauses. Arms crossed. Glaring at him behind her spectacles.

“You need this.”

“Do I need it, Isabel?” The implication here, of course, is that she needs him. But, at once, the question sounds more existential than he’d intended. “Anything else you haven’t told me about?”

“Fine,” she barks, already fidgety from the lack of smoking. “We’re building on the foundations of a historical church. Okay? A fighting site during the war. We had been negotiating with the council for years, and had acquired it, but suddenly, the cretins at the university have started insisting on examining the ruins.” She flicks a hand in the corner of Manuel’s eye, as if throwing garbage. “Archeology, they say. Heritage laws, they say. To examine who was responsible for the bombings. Now, for anybody with half a functioning brain, isn’t it clear which side was running around, destroying churches and killing clergymen?”

“Good Lord.”

She raises her palms. “Case closed. But, obviously, a transfer of power will open a window of opportunity for more recourses. We need to discourage it.”

“Do you know who’s funding this research?” Manuel asks. A scholar of history, he’s often felt a fundamental mistrust for the sciences; he is all too familiar with the many interests at play in who gets to write knowledge.

Isabel scoffs. “What, do you think they'll meet me for coffee and a nice little talk about their sponsors?”

Manuel plays a few, sullen chords. “If you do find out…perhaps there’s something you could do to put pressure on them. Or on the government. Perhaps the next election is near.” He studies the arch of his fingers over the manuals. “Or…if you don’t, let them have a preliminary look, pretend to collaborate and get them to your side. But only if you're sure that they will find nothing.” A pause. His head, ever dazzled from the lack of sleep, is already swelling with ideas.

The next time he looks back at Isabel, his eyelids feel heavy, his words come unfiltered. 

“I don’t want to be the vicar in Núria anymore.”

She closes her eyes and exhales, her voice lighter at once. “I know.”

Chapter Text

Before his rebirth, Silas’s eyes would often snap open at night: hands bloody, chest oppressed. For hours, he would embrace himself in the dark and quiver, waiting for his body to acknowledge what his soul already knew: that he was in the valley, in his sacred place, with nothing to fear.

But his slumber is back. His conscience lightened, his sin unforgotten—but perhaps forgiven.

To thank the Holy Mary, he builds her a garden in the cloister, full of lilies and hyacinths, irises and daisies. Every day he dutifully prays in front of it. 

In the mornings, before the sunlight peaks, Silas walks the paths around the valley; he knows them like the veins of his arms. The creation’s joys are everywhere—bruised heart swelling as birds chirp across the crisp trees, as the shadow of a pine tree offers him shelter, as he leans over a stream of running water to drink. As the heat seeps into his robe and the lashes on his back start to burn.

Silas’s body, in tune with this environment, has never been a more comfortable place.

In summer, the patches of white on the emerald-green hills don’t come from snow, but from grazing lambs. Silas knows some of the shepherds and their loll-tongued dogs; months ago, they startled when they saw him, but now they greet him with a rough bonjour. The news about Silas protecting Father Aringarosa from the pillage has travelled across the valley; regarding this, the only thing he said, one afternoon after coming back home, was “I talked to the guardsmen, Silas, and you have nothing to worry about.”

The Father has started spending a lot of time with this señora Isabel. They drink from seemingly bottomless mugs of black coffee and spread documents over the entire chapter room table; the cross-shaped layout of a church; contracts typed in print like rows of ants. In the Father's office, señora Isabel coughs into the phone receptor and says she hasn’t recovered from her cold yet. Not that she looks very sick. 

Silas accepts what the days to come will bring.

The nights are hot—wide moon on black sky. He counts yellowed beads and prepares himself for another full night of sleep.  

Sometimes, the prayers turn into something else.

Fragmented thoughts. Intrusive ideas. They used to assault him often during his quivering nights.

What would happen if Silas stood up in his room, and ventured into the corridors, and crossed the aisle, and took the westward stairs, and found the Father’s bedroom…?

For prayer, of course. For solace. 

But now, in these summer nights of comfort and heat, he doesn’t need the solace anymore. And yet, the thoughts still envelop him like silken fabric; and bring pleasant feelings, bubbles sheathing his heart, jolts of current in his abdomen and down below. Mixing with thoughts of the Father’s hands skimming over Silas’s habit, of his fingers on Silas’s lips, giving him Communion. Of their selves, the Father clothed and Silas bare, shaking in each other's arms, gasps echoing between the chapel walls. The Father's palm around Silas’s throat, stifling his soft prayer.

I chastise my body. Words muffled against his mattress, every fibre of his being alight.

The longing, it aches so. A sweet, rich agony. 

Pain…it has been as present in Silas’s life as the act of breathing itself. That boy, that dead boy Silas once was, had withstood violence interspersed with episodes of care and safety at his father’s hands; craving the later as he bore the former…and he had gone to survive on the streets of Marseille as a tender, malleable thing, the first sieges soon denting him, meshing his first experiences of pleasure and pain forever.

And in prison…thinking back revolts him. The abuse became a grisly instrument for survival. Countless times, he had exited his body and watched, from above, as it endured the unspeakable.

But this body, this vessel, this earthly animal, it was cunning. It could adapt. It transformed the pain into something bearable. Now, with pleasure comes pain; with pain comes pleasure; and the shame always follows, burning him to the bone.

God’s blessing, God’s curse.

Now, Silas feels a newfound comfort inside of himself—a newfound control. The shame still flows, but then it ebbs, leaving only the glorious shimmer he felt after his first expiation. He only wants to be in the Father’s presence, to revel in the slightest look or touch; and in mortification, this other sweet gift, which the Father can give or remove from him…which he cannot bear to think about losing.

Silas knows now that God did build this body—for suffering, yes, but for loving all the same. And all the dreadful things that the Father prays about, that he wants to guard the world against: fornication, and concupiscence, and coveting, and sin. That boy, that dead boy Silas once was, had been intimately familiar with each one of them.

This light that he feels inside…

It is none of these things. 

“Silas,” Manuel calls out.

The last time he walked this via crucis must have been before winter; the strain is obvious in his breath. Luckily, it’s not too far into the pathway when he runs across his monk, breezy on his long legs, much more muscular than Manuel’s.

Silas turns around. “Father. Did you come to walk with me?”

“I'll be glad to,” Manuel says. He leans on his knees to catch his breath, and gestures to the next bank at the pathside. “Perhaps…in a moment…”

Silas watches him take a seat. Manuel pats the bank for him to do the same, but Silas prefers the ground, close to Manuel’s feet. It brings thoughts of Isabel’s wincing, of her biting remarks about “his Franciscan”, but with the exception of Silas’s striking physique, this is nothing out of the ordinary; it’s a nice, pure thing. It is not wrong for a devout to revere his pastor, his spiritual Director, to commune with God through him. The Opus Dei in itself preaches that every man is a potential Saint. There’s nothing wrong with this. Nothing—

“These paths are ours,” Silas says meekly, drawing Manuel from his thoughts.

He removes his hood and rests the back of his head against the wooden bank. His lashes are white, so finely curved over the closed eyelids. Peaceful—he makes it seem so easy. 

Suddenly, Silas speaks again. “You are leaving, aren't you, Father?”

“Wait. How?” Manuel stares at him. “How do you know? Is this—was it another sign?”

Silas half smiles. “A sign, yes. From the documents señora Isabel has been leaving in the chapter room.”

Manuel scoffs. Then the implication sinks in. “You can read Spanish,” he says, and Silas neither confirms nor denies it. “You are an intelligent young man. Do you know that?”

At once, an obvious blush rushes to Silas’s cheeks. He zones out, looking not at Manuel but through him again.

Manuel hesitates for a split second, but relents to combing his fingers through Silas’s hair; minding his ring, which he has tentatively started wearing again. Without intent, he finds himself running the side of his hand across Silas’s cheeks, then holding it over his eyes, sheltering them from the intensifying sunlight. 

Silas parts his lips, breathing in the moment.

They could live this life. Perhaps.

If being close to God came to him as naturally as it comes to Silas, without the need to climb high; if he, too, felt at ease with his Catholicism here, no institution, no endless struggles with his humanity, only the wind and the birds.

If he could find it in himself to say no to Isabel and bury his Holy Cross in the cloister.

But alas…it’s not only about her political games, nor about the opportunities for growth he might’ve lost while brooding here in his self-imposed exile. It’s about sanctity. About doing his part to bring structure into this astray world. About compassion for those who don’t understand yet. About filling his daily life with work, with the Work, done the best he can. About stripping the realm of physical things to pursue Christianity at its most distilled, to pursue the one, righteous Way.

This must be what the circumstances are lining up to tell him. This must be why Silas stumbled from the Heavens, suddenly in his hands, both to guide and follow him.

“Silas,” he whispers. “Will you come to Oviedo with me?”

A fresh current of wind brings clouds with it, heavy and grey as granite.

Silas perks up. He is the one taken by surprise, now.

“Will…you have me?”

Manuel’s heart softens, in spite of himself. How could he not?

“Of course,” he says, and his gaze drops to his lap. “But…things will be different there. I am part of an institution, a very strict branch of Catholicism. I shall be a missionary again, for the Work of God.”

“Your calling, Father.”

“Indeed.” Manuel swallows. “I…and you, if you choose to follow me…we will commit to the Work fully, in all facets of our lives. We will give every day to God; there shall be no space for anything else. That is the main principle of the Opus Dei.” He pauses. Silas is looking at him keenly, nodding at every word. “But it will not always be easy. I need you to understand this, and I need you to obey me. There shall be no secrets between us.”

“I understand,” Silas says. “Yes, Father. Let me prove myself.” 

“If there is anybody who can do this, my angel, I believe it is you.” A beat; his lips pressed, choosing the words carefully. “I…I know that you are happy here.”

“This sanctuary warmed me when I was cold,” Silas says. “But It was you who kept me here. You offered me shelter, you gave me my life. And thus, my life belongs to you.”

Manuel has to keep a grip on his hands, keeping them from moving without his command.

“Silas, I—”

And a summer storm falls on them, leaving the breath frozen in Manuel’s throat, drenching them both to the bone.

Silas lifts his gaze and palms to the heavens, and a smile spreads on his lips. Bittersweet, as if bidding goodbye to an old friend.

A few hours before, after a morning’s worth of looking over building plans, Manuel and Isabel clear their thoughts by taking a walk down the chapel path. Tomorrow, she will take the train back to Ripoll, and later to Salamanca, where she resides; then, the only thing left to do will be waiting.

On the way, they meet townspeople who comment on how fast Manuel’s injuries have healed. A miracle, it feels like.

Once the two of them are alone, Manuel grimaces. “Are you sure that the people over at Rome will accept me back in such a hands-on way? I haven’t had any successes in their eyes for quite some time.”

“You doubt too much, Father.” Isabel inspects him, Marlboro hanging from the side of her mouth. “What about your Franciscan?”

“What about him.”

“He’s not with the Work, is he?” Isabel asks. Manuel considers that, then shakes his head. “So, have him sign the letter. He gets a referral from you, one from me. I’ll take them back with me tomorrow. He clearly has what it takes to become a numerary.”

“Clearly.” 

“Clearly.” It’s not a compliment.

They fall into silence. All around them it’s bright, the hotter temperatures bringing a strong smell of resin; lizards scurry away under the carpet of pine needles, gone before the eye catches them.

Isabel sighs. “This is what it’s all about, isn’t it?”

“Pardon me?”

“Oh, nothing,” she adds, too casually. There's a few beats of silence, but Manuel feels his pulse rising. “I always defended you, you know. In Salamanca…ugly business.”

“Isabel—”

“No need to explain. Keep it to yourself.” She flicks her cigarette, this time to the ground, crushing it under her heel. “But I am vouching for you.”

“Oh, that is very generous of you,” Manuel feels the sarcasm creeping into his tone. “Very Christian.”

“Certainly. And you are an intelligent man. You know what it entails. You will behave, won’t you?”

“How dare you—”

“Won’t you?”

“Yes. Good Lord.” Manuel starts walking fast, away from her. “I reckon. It’s not as if I know what you mean.”

“Good.”

Manuel fidgets with his ring. An empty cross glinting in the light; a fleeting mirror. He reaches the end of the pathway, a sea of green rolling down the steep slopes. Isabel doesn’t take long to catch up with him.

“You never underestimated me, unlike most men.” She pats his forearm. “I would like to return the favour, Manuel. You'll prove me right—I know you will.”

Chapter Text

She’s gone now, thank God.

It’s just Manuel and Silas again, the both of them alone with the world. 

Father Aringarosa sits at his desk as the first stars mottle a violet sky. His index finger stabs a number into the phone.

The voice that answers him is feeble, and this side of shocked. “Yes?”

“Bishop Durall, good evening.” A genial smile. “I have been thinking about it and cannot associate with the diocese of Girona anymore. I have received a request from the Prelature of the Opus Dei. I hope you understand.”

A pause. “Uh. My son. Your call comes outside of my office hours, but—”

“My apologies. I thought it would be important to discuss it as soon as possible. Shall we set a date to start working with that replacement, this Father Verdaguer you mentioned?”

Once the conversation is over, once the ancient Bishop has exhausted all his “thank you”s, Father Aringarosa comes back to the Scripture. His worn Bible is riddled with new markings. Piled next to it, several books by Josemaría Escrivà.

The verses he pens for this weekend’s sermon speak of a humbling God, one who can give or take in ways often unfathomable; who can be forgiving, but terrible, too. It speaks about sanctity through blood and deprivation. It speaks of a Holy Cross hanging empty, in wait.

Waiting for a bearer.

For a few weeks, Manuel has slept without a pillow. The carved blinds of his windows are half-open, letting the nightly breeze in; the moon outlines every shape in silver.

He stirs in his bed at the sound of footsteps, soft as if on padded feet.

The bedside light, an antique oil lamp, adds a golden glow to the room...and to Silas’s skin. Manuel has become so accustomed to his towering figure that he doesn’t bat an eye—not, at least, until he notices that Silas is stripped down to his undergarments.

“My angel.” Very purposefully, Manuel looks Silas in the face, and in the face only. “Are you watching over me?”

Silas doesn’t return the tense smile.

“Fo—forgive me. I’m losing sleep again.”

“I understand,” Manuel says. Any traces of his own slumber have evaporated. After a few, hesitant moments, he finds himself shifting to the side, making space for his apostle. “Sit down, then.”

Silas takes a seat on the edge of the mattress, then folds a leg over it, turning around to study Manuel. His spine draws a fluid arch; the lamplight dances in his pupils.

Manuel swallows. Painfully conscious of every inch of distance between them, every fold of the blanket snaking a path toward Silas’s naked body.

But he is a pastor first and foremost. Silas needs his counsel, his poised mask.

“Even the strongest among us feel melancholy sometimes,” Manuel offers.

“Even you?”

“Even angels, it seems.”

Silas leans his back against the patterned bedframe. “I am a man, Father.” His eyes lock on Manuel, shocking him with their intensity. “I am made of flesh as you are.”

And Manuel’s breath catches in his throat. For the flesh is traitorous. 

But he has a firm grip on his earthly cravings—he is most definitely not a brainless beast, no matter what some might say—and yet there is a spark inside him, the spark before a fire; the hair on his forearms prickles—

“No,” he mutters. “You are not something of this Earth.”

Manuel remains still, as still as prey, as Silas…delicately, almost carefully…leans closer to him. Circling an arm around his shoulders, as gentle as if he were afraid that the touch could hurt.

And it could. This touch could kill him. It could burn him from the inside out. 

A vow. He made a vow to God.

Still, Manuel doesn’t fight the embrace. He leans into Silas’s neck, breathing in his scent; bringing him back to the night they buried two men in the cloister. Perhaps the happiest night of Manuel’s life, despite everything—because he hadn’t been held and soothed like that since he was a child; because he’s never felt this close to anybody, in body or soul.

“This light between us,” Silas mutters. “Do you feel it too?”

Manuel is not alight, but aflame. It consumes him, this fire, this fire which he should have put out already. Every motion, every brush of Silas’s body against his, just feeds it; blazes goosebumps across Manuel’s skin, jolts into his core and deeper down between his thighs where the desire is harder to calm. Silas takes his hand, the pale, long fingers interlocking with Manuel’s tanned, clammy ones; Manuel finds himself relenting, craving to caress the hard muscles of Silas’s abdomen and the shape of his groin underneath the white fabric; to feel skin against skin; flesh against flesh; to bear down on this pale angel with all his strength—

He made a vow to God, God who is ruthless and all-knowing, God who put Silas in his hands as the sweetest form of mockery.

A vow he’s never broken—

(Seldom broken—) 

(Only once with somebody else—)  

As if splashed with freezing water, as if he’d been thrown into sturdy thorns, Manuel jolts from his trance.

“Silas, stop. Stop now.”

His own body aches in protest when he flinches away; he hastily covers himself with the thin blanket so as to not leave his own, crude desire on display.

He knows he cannot bear to witness Silas’s face, and yet he glares at it: the delicate, white eyebrows furrowed, the cheekbones flushed, the mouth open, dumbfounded.

“This is—these are the things we are supposed to leave behind,” Manuel stammers. “The things of Earth. Remember. The thoughts that cloud us.”

“No, Father,” Silas says feebly. “This isn’t—”

“Do not contradict me, child.” His face is burning. He turns his shoulder to Silas, shooting for the nightstand; his hands still sweaty, still trembling from the slip…and from the anticipation of its just punishment.

Manuel Aringarosa is not afraid of the Discipline. But this, this misstep—this merits something more than mere slaps. Something which has spent a long time tucked in the depths of his mind and of his drawer. A merciless device.

“I’m sorry,” Silas’s voice emerges beside him. “Please. Father, forgive me. What—what can I do?”

With a thud, Father Aringarosa snaps the drawer open.

When his hand emerges from it, the cilice is wrapped around his fingers.

“St. Francis of Assisi rolled in the snow to kill his own desire,” he recites, borrowed words from the Founder. “Saint Benedict threw himself into blackberry vines. And we…in a similar way, we must suffer.”

Silas’s hands trail close to him. “Please. I’m sorry. It was me, Father.” A note of desperation cracks the last word. “Chastise me if you must. Don’t let me lose my way.”

Aringarosa considers that.

Then, he nods curtly. His hands, far from trembling anymore, guide Silas’s knee to bend; trailing over the pale thigh—where they place the belt, this thorned bracelet, to glide over the skin.

“Look at me.”

Silas complies. Red eyes, loaded with trust and tears; they spill down his cheek when the eyelids fall shut.

“Don’t let sin distract you, my angel.” Aringarosa threads metal through metal. “Let your soul stay in the heavens where it came from.” 

Silas starts whispering the melody of a prayer. 

With a swift motion, Father Aringarosa clasps the cilice closed, thorns sinking into pale flesh, the melody torn into screams.

Autumn. A memento mori. 

The Father’s successor arrives at Núria enveloped by a dark and warm palette—dry leaves carried by swirls of air, red mushrooms flecking the paths.

In front of the church, Father Aringarosa shakes hands with the young Andreu Verdaguer. Long cassock, chestnut-brown beard. They walk through the transepts, and the altar, and the vaults, and the westward stairs, and the chapter room; from the Saints in their niches, from the Holy Mother and Saint Gil with his lamb, come curious glances. But they, too, shall eventually understand; this is nothing but God’s will, after all.

Silas follows the Fathers, doing his best not to stagger.

The cilice holds him. Shushes the protests of his aching soul. Every step, an open wound.

Of–

Of course, Silas will stay for some more time in the Valley, as the Father teaches Andreu Verdaguer everything there is to learn about their sanctuary. But this visit from the outside makes it all…real. In a few months, this life will be a bittersweet memory. 

The Holy Mother has his fealty, the prayers of his rosary; he shall do his deeds, the Work that God requires from him, and cleanse himself through humility and devotion.

Someday, more angel than man, he too shall come back.

“Would you like to see the chapels?” Father Aringarosa asks his successor, hands joined in his lap.

“I would love to,” Andreu Verdaguer says. He regards Silas with calming, rainy blue eyes. “This is a wonderful sanctuary you have here. Pastoral. Like Arcadia.”

Silas shifts on his feet, pulse pounding on his gashed thigh; blood leaving his face, dripping down his leg.

(Even here—)

(Even here—)

(Even in Arcadia, here am I—)

Father Verdaguer tilts his head to the side. “Are you well, Brother Silas?”

The Father places a safe hand on Silas’s shoulder. “My angel, you have been working very hard. Thank you for accompanying us. I will join you for prayer soon.”

And prayer, in this case, means…

The cilice peeled off by the Father’s hands. Tears and release. Silas’s wounds cleansed, tended to, as they once were with so much care after his arrival. Fingertips drawing a tender cross on Silas’s forehead.

The sweet ache, never stopping. Never allowed to surface again.

Even here, pain has found him. 

But its shape is different; barbed wire around his heart. 

End of Book I

Chapter Text

Salamanca, 1968

“I know I’ve heard your name before.”

Cutlery and glasses clinked as a hurried maid cleaned the dinner table, emptying ashtrays and picking up plates of half-eaten bream. The terrasse opened into a view of the Tornes river, bridge lights gliding on its surface; beyond it, the city of Salamanca arose, surrounded by tan-coloured walls. Gothic spires emerged from her centre to scratch the sky, none of them younger than three hundred years.

The night was warm, the wind still. Germán Escudero y Forns, still commonly referred to as El General, took a whiff of his whiskey, circling the rocks in his glass.

“Aringarosa…” He seemed deeply amused by every syllable of Manuel’s surname. “Italian descent?”

“Not that I know of, Sir.” Sitting opposite to him at the dinner table, Manuel kept his smile cautious. “The only thing my ancestors took from Italy must have been, indeed, the surname.”

“Seems familiar,” Mr. Escudero insisted. “Your father served in the war.”

“Yes, Sir.”

“But you did no military service.”

“Leave the boy alone!” Isabel’s booming voice preceded her. She was standing at the balcony door, Marlboro hanging from her mouth, hands clutching a wine bottle like loot. “Do you think we plucked him from the seminar in Madrid to, what—to shove a rifle in his hands and have him waste two perfectly fine years? He is a priest, Germán, a minister!”

Manuel cleared his throat. “Soon-to-be,” he corrected softly.

“Irrelevant.” She handed her husband the bottle. Germán hummed his approval before snatching the wine opener and working it with a swift twist of the wrist. From the high tilt of his square jaw, to the way he glanced at his pocket watch every thirty minutes to the hour, military precision still permeated El General's every move.

“My dear, I am not arguing that it is a bad thing,” he said. “Many of my contemporaries in the State have slandered the Opus Dei simply because its people have academic rather than military credentials. Me…I married into it.” He smiled as he refilled two glasses of dry white and slid one towards Isabel, one towards Manuel. “I think this new influx of ideas is exactly what has kept this country afloat.”

“You don’t think so, it is a proven fact,” Isabel exhaled her reply through the smoke. “They should be ashamed of themselves, those so-called social scientists popping up like mushrooms to question the Work; it’s rentable to blabber away at any journalist who will listen.” She twisted the pearls at her neck. “Ah…abolishing censorship was a mistake.”

Germán nodded. “Indeed, indeed…”

Manuel sipped and listened on. Hours-long conversations about politics over the dinner table had been a mark of the Aringarosa household as well; his father, an economist, was always giddy to chat over vermouth about the “Spanish miracle”. As far as one could tell just by listening to him, the Opus Dei’s rise to power had brought an isolated, authoritarian, scrawny Spain to unprecedented splendour. However, meeting Isabel, his professor of Ecclesiastical Law, had provided Manuel with more perspective. Power struggles riveted behind the curtains of an apparently unified state; the Opus Dei found critics among both old-guard followers of Franco and his detractors alike.

“Spain has remained a beacon of structure and decency for decades now,” Isabel said, preening at her wavy hair. “But. With so many conflicting interests among our own—and, God forgive me for saying this…but our Generalísimo is not the youngest anymore…”

Manuel considered that, and spoke carefully. “I think placing faith in a person alone is dangerous.” At once, two pairs of eyes drew to him. “All I mean is that we are ashes; people grow to die. A system that doesn't outlive its architects is a frail system. The creed should live on in the world, here, just as the soul lives on in God's realm.”

“A true devout.” The General sneered, leaning in to light up his wife’s cigarette. “The Church hasn't been an exemplary ally to the cause, I must say.”

During the war that the General so often cited as if it were a long-lost relative he missed, many Spanish clergymen had pressured the Vatican to pronounce itself favourable to their cause, the cause of Franco’s rebellion against an atheist state; yet the Pope had remained relatively neutral, condemned the violence on both sides.

Now, that had happened before Manuel was even born, but the wound still seemed fresh, the conflict ongoing. Only a year ago, as Manuel arrived at Salamanca, more criticism from the Holy See—this time, about poverty within the Spanish State—had been the heated topic du jour. As far as he was concerned, however, these were far from the right questions to ask.

“Which cause do you mean?” he asked the General. “Yours? Are your interests those of God?”

“I think so, Manuel Aringarosa. Wouldn’t you rather sleep at night knowing your parish won’t be burned to ashes? That you won’t be ripped off your bed and shot?” A pause, still the same smile. “Priests didn’t have that privilege back in my time.”

“Bloodshed makes martyrs,” Manuel said softly. “God might be on your side; he might. I cannot speak for Him. But that just goes on to show that God and the Vatican are not one and the same. See, take their complaint last year, about poverty. It was written as if poverty weren’t something Christ preached, something to aspire to. Perhaps my generation isn’t the only one that has gotten too comfortable with peace…that has allowed ideology to corrode it.”

Isabel swung her cigarette aside, its butt stained faint pink. “Manuel always says that the Opus Dei is not an ideology.”

“It’s not.” Manuel’s hand was firm on the table, the wine glass untouched. “It’s the truth. A kernel of it, at least. Germán, the Church will be your most valuable ally if you want to control a society from the roots, bringing values to the masses. We educate the layman. We build youth centres, and soup kitchens, and hospitals, and shelters, and we—we, the Opus, are not only in the government, but on the streets doing that social work that the Vatican so demands.” He looks down at his hands. “We are not at war anymore, but there are other battles to lead. Faith is not easily won.”

The General looked at his wife. Her smile got wider as she crushed her cigarette. 

The couple had gone inside and shuffled around until a vinyl started to play; Gershwin’s sax through open windows. Manuel leaned against the iron railing of the balcony, flanked by large cacti. Often, after a debate, his own words haunted him—whether he could have formulated something differently, been less abrasive. But he felt the truth burning inside of him, needing to erupt.

Despite coming from a religious environment, he was the first in his family to take the robe. He’d been an aspirant to the Work at fourteen, a firm candidate at sixteen. Then, among the protests of his parents, he’d joined the diocesan seminar at Madrid, and studied the Lord's word with an intensity that consumed every hour of his waking days…alongside the writings of Josemaría Escrivá, the Founder, a fascinating figure.

The Work was a tree, majestic and strong, its roots deeply ingrained in Manuel’s beliefs; hardwood to build foundations which would later carry the pillars of his knowledge. And there was nothing he enjoyed more than sculpting them, than reading new pages and trying out new disciplines like shapes; all the while, knowing that, no matter the direction of the new things he learned, he could offer them to God, that the Way lived in him and was as true as time.

And thus, with permission from his Bishop, he had transferred to the Pontifical University of Salamanca. Here, alongside the seminars of theology and canon law inherent to his degree, he studied history, psychology, social theory, and languages too; he had crammed more subjects into his hours than he thought possible, and planned to be first among his peers to obtain the Order of priesthood.

It was here that Isabel had set her eagle-sharp gaze on him, taking him under her wing. 

And, speaking of the Devil…she had come out of the building, approaching him again with only the barest hint of a stagger. She leaned against the railing too and narrowed her eyes fondly.

“He likes you.”

“Good Lord.” Manuel smiled, halfway. “What's he like when he doesn’t like someone?”

“Oh, don’t worry, you would know.” Isabel chuckled. “He thinks you’re interesting, the little priest from Madrid.”

“Not yet.”

“Soon enough, if you keep up the pace.” She paused. “He asked whether you think of going back to Madrid, after you’re done.”

Manuel gazed into the city lights. As a priest bound to the Opus Dei, he would be allowed to prioritise what the Work required from him without binding himself to a particular territory. He answered to his directors; they answered to the Founder in Rome.

“I don’t know,” he said finally. “Am I?”

“It depends.” All of a sudden, she sounded sober. “Namely, it depends on you. I can’t help but fathom that there is a reason you never talk about your decision to transfer from Madrid to Salamanca.”

“You do know already, Mrs. Forns. The diocesan seminar at Madrid is not an university, and it won’t be for—”

“Wrong,” Isabel cut him. “We are past that, I think.”

Manuel pressed his lips. Swallowed, to keep the discomfort from rising. The way he had when the General asked about his surname; a known surname, yes, but one he wanted no attention drawn to. His father: stints in politics, taking in too much debt. His brother: new money lost in a lavish lifestyle. His mother: laying on bed, silent, after one too many miscarriages. No heirs to the family’s property, no pawns on the political tabletop. Only curt letters ever since Manuel had announced he would dedicate his life to God—remaining unmarried, celibate—and gone through with it.

He loved the Work more than he would ever love another person; of that, he was sure.

“I could go back to Madrid. It’s where the decision-makers are, after all…but I would rather not. Not yet, at least.” He squinted; the cigarette smoke made his eyes swell. “I could become a Director, I’m sure. Give me the means to open a centre, and I will do it.”

“I was thinking that perhaps you would appreciate a break after all the hard work.”

At this, Manuel frowned. Was it a trick?

She must have perceived the mistrust, and smiled. “I am very serious. Have you ever been to Rome? Every so often, Headquarters organises retreats there, to meditate, educate oneself, and share perspectives with other clergy.” She watched Manuel. “Only for priests…usually. But we happen to know some people, and you’re quite far into your discipleship. So, Germán and I, we were thinking…the sooner we place a connection there, the better.”

From the door, Germán’s voice arose. Both of them turned to him; he was holding another vinyl disc, halfway out of its cover. “Isabel says you play the pipe organ,” he said, his grin slight and wolfish. “Do you know Parker? Alone for the American artists, it was worth it to open the borders.”

“Um.” It took Manuel a moment to process what the topic at hand was. “Yes. Yes, I agree, Sir.” 

Few other houses lined the riverside along with the ancient Escudero-Forns estate. The sights around the Tornes bridge, however, were surrounded by hastily built new blocks; the catwalks were cheap and looked it, and most paths hadn’t been paved to the end, more debris than gravel scratching Manuel’s leather shoes. Testaments to years of poverty and isolation hid in the shadows of each Spanish city Manuel had ever visited.

But the night breeze was cool, and the water mysterious, and the city centre pretty on its hill, a turreted Mediaeval fortress. Once one started to walk those cobblestoned streets, it was easy to forget the suburbs.

Manuel stopped in front of the Episcopal Palace and studied its templelike columns. Neoclassical—calling to the glory of old. In that city, in that country, the Escudero-Forns of the world were not unlike royalty; they had power by birthright, and they would cling to it at all costs. It was more important to them than values. It was everything.

Manuel wasn’t blind to the contradictions within the Opus Dei, not the Work but the institution, the societies it created. That was how a woman, like Mrs. Forns, had come to rule over men; that was how Manuel could rise out of mediocrity and preach the truth, if he stood close to her.

And all of this—all of it—was a pale imitation of Rome, where the Holy See ruled sovereign.

“Aringarosa!” A voice, full of energy, echoed on empty streets. “I thought I’d seen you.”

Manuel turned around, scowling at the interruption.

Antón de Quevedo. A little older than Manuel in stature, a little younger in temperament. Very happy, very handsome, very helpful. Very blond.

He was ambling over, sweating in his close-necked cassock…and in his surplice, another, white garment for liturgy. That got a raised eyebrow from Manuel. “Hello,” he said, caught off guard. “What are you doing here?”

“Oh, I still live here, you know. I was helping with the evening Mass.” Antón scoffed. He had recently moved out of the seminar, having been ordered a deacon; he would take every passing opportunity to bring it up. “Did you miss me?”

“Not particularly,” Manuel said. But Antón’s theatrical pout did make him chuckle.

In the classes they had shared—some law, some theology—Antón’s presence had been difficult to ignore. One could tell from the way he spoke and dressed that he had lived comfortably; a young prince, vain and cocky, but perhaps genuinely kind. His eloquence often absorbed the room as Manuel quietly rolled his eyes from another, far corner. 

Of course, they loathed each other. They disagreed on all the fundamentals; on the meaning of every reform, on what Vatican II meant for Christianity, on the general direction that the Church should take. They had spent a year ruffling each other to no end, their arguments often carrying over outside of the seminar room. But the fact that Manuel did not love him by default had led this young man, for some reason, to follow him—sometimes teasing him, true, the princeling in the mood for a duel—but sometimes trying his hardest to get him to smile.

He’d missed that. Kind of. Each of those debates a small victory…or a small defeat. When professors had agreed with Antón, when his observations had been at their fastest and sharpest, he would often turn to Manuel from the first row in the amphitheatre with a certain look in his big blue eyes.

I won.

That look.

It always kindled a fierce spark. It made Manuel want to grab him from the collar and rattle him. Maybe.

Regardless—he was here to study, not to make friends.

“And you?” Antón asked him. “You didn’t help with Mass.”

“No.” Of course not, because he was not ordained yet, but Manuel didn’t take the bait. “I was over behind the Tornes, had dinner with Mrs. Forns and husband.”

“Oh,” Antón said, going a bit quieter. “And how was it? As terrifying as it sounds?”

“She’s not that scary when you get to know her.” Manuel shrugged slightly. “Although Franquists really do like to bring up dead priests to prove a point.”

This time, Antón laughed. It was contagious, making Manuel beam too. 

“Of course, of course. I had almost forgotten you’re Opus Dei, like her. That must be why…” Antón shook his head, shook off the thought. The swell Manuel had felt in his chest was quick to disappear. “Oh, sorry. I’m just thinking aloud. I don’t mean to undermine your work.”

“I’m sure you don’t.”

Antón’s gaze lingered on his for a second. He smirked. His backhanded remarks always danced on the line of the plausibly deniable. “Well, friend. Will I see you around if I come by the dorm?”

“Ma-maybe.” A tremble in his voice—a pact with himself, not thinking of Antón and the dorms, never. Then, before waving him off. “Maybe not. I might be going to Rome soon.”

There, the corners of Antón’s lips fell. And he, too, in an unusual silence.

After a few moments, he echoed, “Rome?”

“Just a retreat. Nothing quite big.” 

“Rome.” Antón turned around. His face was halfway in the light, halfway in the shadows, a chiaroscuro. “Of course, that is…that is wonderful. Congratulations.” The last word, smeared by the wind. “Well, tell everyone I said hi, and I will come by one of these days, for sure. Good night.”

“Good night,” Manuel whispered.

It was another evening, weeks later, as Manuel packed his suitcase. The dormitory was cold, the thin cotton of his shirt making him bristle. Or perhaps it was unease.

Two weeks in Rome…his world could change in so little time.

As he turned around, he got startled out of his skin. Antón, tall in his cassock, hands to the back. Manuel scoffed.

“You could knock first, you know.”

“I could.” Antón grinned at him, and demonstrated, swinging the door open and closed. “I musn’t, though. No locks.”

The moment he shut the door, Manuel’s knees felt shaky. The air turned thick and too warm. But he wouldn’t give his peer the pleasure of seeming uncomfortable, and thus, when Antón approached him, Manuel stood his ground.

“I take it you do m-miss me.”

“I will, when you’re in Rome,” the prince said, mock-sadly. “No one else was referred to these retreats, go figure. Not even me.”

“Well if you asked—”

Antón placed a finger on his lips.

“No, Manuel,” he said solemnly. “This time, you win.”

Manuel froze. The thrill swelled, giving way to an urge; shutting down thought as raw instinct roused.

He jerked away. “Are you out of your mind?”

But Antón bent the knee, looked up at Manuel, as if he knew with all his wretched soul what Manuel wanted; the thoughts that always came back to sting him, the fever that followed, all-consuming, a disease.

Push him away. Manuel had to, and yet his body didn’t obey. It relented to Antón’s huge, pale hands, to their pressure, guiding him to sit down; fingertips digging into his waist, bringing shivers. In the span of seconds Antón had unclasped his belt without asking, then nudged beneath the fabric of his pants, where the ache was mounting.

He grinned up at Manuel.

“I’m very mad at you,” he said, before slowly making his way underneath. 

Manuel’s skin trembled; at the warm breath on his most sensitive spots, the length of him hardening under the crawl of Antón’s tongue. His motions were too confident, too practised, more than they had any right to be, and each jolt of pleasure filled Manuel with a feeling like hot water, making him gulp for breath, drowning him.

Antón took him in his mouth. The pressure hurt. Manuel threw his head back, eyes stinging, fingers digging into Antón’s hair, clinging for dear life. Antón only stopped and withdrew to whisper, again and again, “I’m mad at you,” a kiss, “see?” a swirl of tongue, “I’m so mad at you.”

And like that, Manuel was letting Antón guide his thrusts, rising and falling, until his entire spine curled, until he spilled deep, until he released all of the breath in his drowning chest, his body peaking before the fall.

Manuel collapsed back on his bed and heaved quietly.

Antón rose over him. Like that, glowing with sweat, he was the most despicably beautiful thing Manuel had ever seen.

“Don’t worry, friend,” he whispered, leaning in to pat Manuel’s chest. “No one has to know.”

The words were burned in Manuel’s mind, decades later.

No one has to know.

No one had to.

And yet, after spending his retreat marred by guilt. After promising himself not to do this again—never—as he always did. After going at such painful lengths to deny himself comfort; after mortifying and fasting and treating his body like the dirt it was. After trying to pull away from the realm of chaos, nature, instinct, to be close to God again.

Antón had talked.

Unsurprising. Manuel knows now. 

Antón had talked, perhaps not to everyone, but to the right people.

Talked about the things Manuel Aringarosa had done to him. That entitled, petty prince, who thought the world was his by divine right.

There was no proof. It didn’t matter. Upon Manuel’s return, one of their counsellors had asked him for a word in private…and Manuel’s reaction, sitting at his desk in the gloom, must have been telling enough. Telling that those allegations held, at least, a drop of poisonous truth.

Never again, he’d promised himself, Discipline in hand.

Never again.

So he’d gone on the Mission for a couple of years. And he’d been back, but stayed away from the Diocese, that seeping wound; studying at the conservatory instead, bleeding out his frustration via wrathful symphonies. But he found himself longing for the Church still, going to Mass on the daily, praying every day and night, sanctifying his work, the Work, and at some point he’d been back to the seminar, older, tired, and for as long as there were whispers Isabel had defended him fervently without looking him in the eye. And he’d been ordained; he, Manuel Aringarosa, this once-golden child, this little priest from Madrid who had lost his Way, he’d worked oh-so-quietly without drawing much attention to himself; running away from the future, the bright future he’d once had.

Chapter Text

1986

From the car window, the landscape runs from rocky slopes to forests, from forests to sparse towns, from sparse towns to barren fields. Curled in the backseat, Silas watches from behind the gloomy tint of his sunglasses. Ever since stepping off the hillside train, a vague dizziness has haunted him; but now he is beginning to feel better, knowing that they have left the French border far behind.

Now and then, Father Aringarosa chats politely with the chauffeur, an older and sturdy Spanish man. About an hour into their drive, the Father produces a map from the glove compartment and spends some time examining it.

“Say, my friend,” he speaks up. “I know that we were supposed to stay in the city overnight, but could you do me a favour and drive further?” The Father points to the map, waiting until the driver glances over. “Here. I’ll provide for accommodation, don’t worry.”

“Sure.” The driver shrugs. In the rearview mirror, Father Aringarosa’s eyes are full of the road ahead.

They travel until the afternoon, zig-zagging among hills. Vineyards climb up the enshrouding landscape and watchful Latin crosses crown the peaks, their silhouettes cut against a low sun. The road leads them into the next town—wheels rumbling over cobblestones. Finally, in a town square, they slow down to a halt; the Father disembarks, coming over to Silas’s side and opening the door. 

As their chauffeur drifts off, Silas follows the Father into sun-warmed streets. In this environment, so unknown to him, many old fears creep back at once; to be seen—acknowledged, even—as the first pairs of surprised glances come his way. Silas feels them like a physical weight.

“Don’t pay people any mind,” Father Aringarosa says. “I want to show you something.”

They find themselves facing a simple church. Silas follows in the Father’s hurried steps up the flat front stairs. Once inside, the space opens up; what he sees next robs him of breath.

Vaults grow from towering columns, their capitals pouring with sculpted flowers; the pointed domes are reminiscent of a canopy, metalwork intertwining, the brushing leaves of palm trees. The door frames are patterned with vegetation, more frozen life than stone. From the wooden altarpiece, at least a hundred Saints look up from their niches. Silas feels as though he stepped inside a faded, beautiful illustration. 

Next to the entrance, there’s a stone pile full of holy water, and Father Aringarosa douses his fingertips in it to signal a cross. Silas watches him walk inside on quick feet and examine the columns; then consecrates himself too, breathing it all in. After two years spent in their sanctuary, acquainted with its every corner, the new stimuli floods him.

The Father turns to him, smiling. With a hand, he motions for Silas to lean in and whispers in his ear.

“This is the Cathedral of Barbastro, where the Founder of the Work was baptised. This Diocese was under his protection until he passed, God bless him.”

“The Work…” Silas echoes. “The Work that we are bound to, Father. Is that right?”

“Yes, my son. The Opus Dei.” In his black day shirt, white collar around his neck, the Father seems younger at once, flooded with energy. “You see this decoration?” He whispers. “Renaissance. Nature. It draws the observer back to Creation, to God’s presence in all living things. Not the direction I would want for our church—it will be a smaller parish…and the Work is about dedicating every single, humble act to God. About contemplating the world, but ultimately leading our souls to Paradise.” He draws an arch with his hand along the shapes, the patterns; for Silas, nature, and the earth, and God are one and the same, but he wouldn’t dare disturb the Father’s explanation. “It’s the opposite of ostentation…there is joy to be found in austerity, and exhaustion, and discomfort. But…this, this church…it is simple, and yet impressive.”

The Father presses his lips, turning around to show Silas the altarpiece on the opposing side. “Here…humility for the self, and yet might for the Lord. How to translate this feeling into our Work? Do you understand?”

Without waiting for an answer, he ventures deeper inside the church. And Silas, Silas doesn’t watch the architecture, but the Father, wishing he would keep talking but afraid to inconvenience him by saying so; wishing, then, to have a direct window into his thoughts, to devour them, to nourish himself off his new fervour.

A memory kindles in his mind’s eye: the night of mortification.

Swiftly, Silas locates St. Francis of Assisi among the saints of this parish. Rosary in hand, he kneels and begs for piety.

Together, after the evening Mass, they exit the church. The Father engages in conversation with a local deacon, telling him where they are headed; asking for the nearest centre of the Opus Dei. The young cleric bursts into praise for the Work and for Master Escrivà, the golden child of Barbastro, and offers to shelter them at the diocesan guesthouse itself.

The Father does, however, favour a visit to the centre, which is located at the Founder’s former estate. And thus, before the day is over, the Holy Cross on his finger has granted them not only a bed, but a warm dinner as well.

The ancient streets see them going for a walk in the evening. Silas orbits the Father at a cautious, reverent distance. 

“Thank you for taking me here.” Silently, he thanks the grace of God, too, for having him fall under the Father’s care; for allowing Silas to befriend him without having ever known he was an influential man.

“Thank you for coming.” Father Aringarosa eyes him and smiles. “We needed an overnight stop regardless, and I wanted to show you this place. Shall we rest soon? We still have a long way ahead of us, and tomorrow, I’d like to see our site in Oviedo before anything else.”

“Of course, Father.”

“We will meet the architect there and take a look at our project. Afterward, we shall arrive at the centre at Oviedo, which we will call home—for some time, at least.”

The women’s centre at Barbastro, which hosts them tonight, is a quietly tidy, comfortable place. Numeraries are quite welcoming; not nuns, but laypeople who devote themselves to the Work and, according to what Silas has seen and overheard, have a strict routine of spiritual meditation, study, and prayer. Perhaps more structured than Silas’s life until now, more submerged in the bustle of ordinary life; but there are thousands of worse alternatives, and he does not need much. Only a roof over his head, his habit, his rosary. The rest, he can do without.

“That life will be fit for you, my angel.” Manuel Aringarosa stops walking and faces him. “I might be quite busy with matters pertaining to our project, I need you to understand. My mission is to expand the Work first and foremost.”

“Yes, Father. I understand.”

“But…you’re my disciple. I would like to take care of your education, if you’ll have me.”

Silas’s chest swells, each throb a thorn jabbing deep. “I would never have anyone else.”

Father Aringarosa smiles, then continues walking. “There is, ah…an old rectory, close to our site. I was thinking of renewing it when we have the funds, and managing our operations from there…”

Silas takes in the present moment, every streetlamp flickering alight and every pungent city smell and every brush of fabric against the wounds on his thigh. He listens to the Father; he will always listen to all of his plans and hopes, but Silas’s concern for the future is minimal. There’s nothing ahead of this walk, of this feeling, of this night, with him. 

A numerary assistant, the morning household shift, wordlessly hands Manuel Aringarosa a can of scalding hot coffee. The three travellers climb into the brand-new BMW and drink from paper cups, burning their tongues in turns.

The drive flows smoothly, even across roads that are in dire need of fixing. Broken, often not paved over at all; ah, the northern Spanish landscape. A couple of times they have to pause in front of a few cows which have wandered too far, with Manuel gritting his teeth as the driver honks. 

Silas steps out to stretch his legs and stares at the animals. Manuel watches him watch them.

He gives Silas a hurried Communion by the roadside; white eyelashes fluttering, the host sinking into his wet, pink mouth. Manuel peels himself away and flees forward. 

It takes many hours, but at last, Oviedo greets them at sundown. Manuel Aringarosa feels a sort of vindication by lifting his eyes off the map and seeing his markings turn into roads and buildings; even in its outskirts, Oviedo calls back to an archaic world of lords and peasants, the houses often darkened by humidity and age, the distant, wide hills thick with pastures. 

They make it to the east end of the city and deviate into a beaten road. An ancient, corroded sign confirms that they are on the right track; no text, only a simple Latin cross. Further ahead, the road is no more, so the BMW drives on gravel until the path wears too thin.

“Are you sure,” the driver says through a yawn, “...that you don’t want to go to the, um, house first?”

“Please,” Manuel says, “go there yourself and rest. It’s not far from here, we will reach it by foot.”

Not long after, the rumbling engine fades in the distance. Priest and apostle walk down the rest of the path on a carpet of brown beech leaves. 

And, at its end, the ruin emerges, bathed in orange light. Around it, the trees have cleared as if keeping a respectful distance.

Manuel looks at Silas. At the way his lips part as he takes off his sunglasses.

“Father,” he mutters.

The front facade is in the best state; a proud stone arch, crawling with moss, but still standing. That what is left of the stained glass is foggy; that what is left of sculptures is shattered. But still, one can see the beauty rising from its resilient, robust walls.

From its resting place, the church peers back at them. 

Compelled, Manuel approaches it.

Once he opens the main gate, he hears a voice coming from inside the building. “The foundations are in good condition. Layout practically intact, refer to corner of the northern transept—oh, hello.”

The voice belongs to a man, bald and dark-skinned, wearing a dissonant canary yellow shirt. He is not talking to Manuel, but to a small pocket radio; his accent places his origins somewhere in Argentina.

The architect. Manuel greets him. “Good evening. Mr Pisarello?”

Pablo Pisarello steps out of the ruin and wipes a hand on his dressing pants to shake Manuel’s. “Ah, you are the new builder. Father…?”

“Aringarosa, yes. Well, I’m here on behalf of the Work,” he adds, his best attempt at humility. “This is my assistant, Silas.”

Pisarello looks up and down at the monk. “Oh-ho,” he says. Silas stares at his outstretched hand for a moment before proceeding to shake it. “Welcome, welcome. Well, what do you think, Father? Beautiful, isn’t she?”

Manuel looks beyond the man. Sunlight pours through the destroyed roof and the cracks in the walls; a tower erupts from the upper story. “I see the way she will rise,” Manuel says, and he means it. “The photographs don’t do it justice. They made it look like a ruin.”

“Oh, there’s much of her still standing,” Pisarello says, grinning. “We will need to rebuild some, of course. I don’t quite think that we can reuse the columns or supports, a lot of it is wood…but the foundations stand strong. And your people at the house seem very dedicated to working on this project.”

“I, too, can help,” Silas says. “Let me help build this parish, Father.”

“Of course, my son.” Manuel turns to the architect. “I think we would gladly hear the details.”

“I’ve spent all afternoon here. Come, Father. Come, Silas.”

He swipes out the recorder again, describing the architecture as he goes. “Well-preserved wooden flooring, cracked only in places. Notice the first floor gallery, built with varnished oak, leading up to the nineteenth-century organ…”

That draws Manuel’s attention; from the western side, a curtain of pipes, many of them dented, cascades down a patterned wooden frame.

It’s a symphonic organ, like the one that accompanied him at the valley…so often played into the hour of wolves, giving him peace in his contemplation, peace after his mortification.

A symphonic organ, and a beautiful one, at that. 

“Excuse me—” Manuel interrupts Pisarello, who looks offended for a moment. “I’m sorry, Pablo. You speak of the pipe organ. Did you plan any specifics for it?”

The architect considers that. “I’m afraid I am staying out of that area for now. The former builder did bring in somebody else to take care of it…an artist, I think.” 

Over a year ago, this was one of the many conversations Manuel and Isabel held at Núria; the chapter room flooded with paperwork, his mouth tasting of stale coffee. 

Isabel, waving a hand. “Germán does love his music.”

“I know,” Manuel said. “He’s…a cultured man.”

“So much, in fact, that he wants a performer to consult on the construction of the pipe organ at your church.” She sighed, anticipating a protest. “I know. It’s a cost, I know. But I am not going to argue with my dying husband, Manuel. Do you expect me to argue with my dying husband?”

“I understandably do not expect you to argue with your dying husband,” Manuel said. The way she glared at everything was starting to rub off on him. “Who is it, then? Maybe I’ve heard their work.” 

“Monteverdi is the name. Young Italian virtuoso,” Isabel answered. Manuel hummed. The only composer he knew by that name was a few centuries dead. But then, again, in the course of his eight years in the valley, Manuel hadn’t quite kept in tune with the state of the art. “Germán says this young man is very gifted, apparently. Who knows. I cannot tell the difference between you organists. Can you?”

He did not dignify that with an answer. 

In the distance, as if on cue, the trio hears another car pulling on the gravel path and stopping. Light, but slow, steps approach the church.

Manuel peers out through the destroyed southern wall. Another, fourth figure is strolling towards them; a petite man,  hands behind his back, scanning the clearing as if it were a cocktail party.

“Speaking of the devil,” Pisarello chippers, and then scoffs at himself. “Oh, I’m sorry, Father. Am I allowed to say that?”

Manuel chooses not to mind that, instead dashing toward the entrance to receive the newcomer. “Good evening,” he says, hands joined in his lap. “Are you Mr. Monteverdi?”

The face that looks back at Manuel is young, this side of childlike. A smile on thin lips regards him.

“Di Monteverdi, but indeed. Good afternoon, gentlemen.”

“Oh. Di Monteverdi.” Manuel grimaces at his mistake. “Manuel Aringarosa. I am an admirer of your work.” Which is to say that, last year, out of curiosity, he picked up a recording of this boy’s Bach and listened to it once or twice. It’s good. Of course. “You made it to Oviedo early, didn’t you? How was your flight?”

“I would rather leave the small talk for another time, Pater.” Monteverdi rolls up the puffed sleeves of his shirt, revealing a dangle of jewellery at his wrist. “I hear your order appreciates good and steady work.” 

“It’s not quite an…” Manuel Aringarosa catches himself. He feels the days ahead of him are stretching into months. “What I mean is that…appreciating steady work might be an understatement. We are the Work, with everything that implies.”

“I see.” Monteverdi’s eyes glint, green in the afternoon light. He smiles and dashes inside the church.

And the first thing he does? Climbing the decaying stairs to the gallery; the supports holding them in place creak like a vessel under his feet.

“Don’t,” Manuel calls after him. “It would be quite a shame if you hurt yourself during our Work.” Plus, an invoice from the insurance company would not make Isabel happy.

Pisarello, at his side. “Ah, these artists…”

From the first floor comes a noise of shuffling and timbers groaning. “This was a good instrument,” comes Monteverdi’s voice from upstairs. He reappears and descends again, smiling with feline satisfaction. “A fine German specimen. Please, pardon my temerity, Pater. Sometimes, we do take risks for the love of art.”

“Indeed.” Some of Manuel’s harshness softens. He seeks his apostle, and upon saying his name, Silas seems startled, suddenly drawn back to Earth from somewhere else. “Silas. Do you remember our organ at the Valley of Núria? It was similar to this one, from the same period. Very beautiful.”

“Yes, Father,” Silas says. “I remember the music at Mass.”

They linger on each other for a heartbeat.

When Manuel looks back at Monteverdi, the boy looks wide aware, his smile now sharp, as if he’d remembered a joke. Manuel speaks with renewed patience. “What are the expert’s thoughts, then? Are you planning on designing its reconstruction?”

“Reconstruction?” Monteverdi raises a hand to his chin, then strolls outside, compelling the rest to follow without yet an answer. “No. Not at all.” A pause. “And I have my reasons. Are you familiar with the organ revival movement, Pater?”

History is a pendulum; every so often, a thought is pushed so far that it swings back wildly, going as far as to strike, to devastate. Music history is no exception.

“I know enough about it,” Manuel says finally.

Monteverdi paces on the autumn carpet. “I, like many of its followers, am of the opinion that an organ should be judged on its ability to perform polyphony: a technically perfect Bach. Which, as you know, is not the case here.”

Manuel considers that. “Many perfectly fine symphonic organs were dismantled and ruined in the name of this perfection,” he says. “I would hate for this to become another example.”

“Oh, and I’m sure that this was a perfectly fine instrument, back in its day,” Monteverdi retorts. “Quality is in the eye of the beholder. In the feeling; in the music. I will help you build something that will bring your church true splendour, Pater. Believe me.”

“Pray tell, where do you find them, Isabel?” Manuel shouts into the telephone receiver. “From under which stone did this arrogant git crawl?”

“Well, well, a pot calling the kettle black,” Isabel says, rapid fire. “Good night to you too. I take it, you made it to Oviedo?”

“Yes, yes, it was a fine trip,” Manuel grumbles. Circling a glass of red wine in his hand—a seldom allowance—he recounts the occurrences at the ruined church, and adds, “I hope your people won’t give me a headache. Any trouble will only reflect negatively on the project, on me, and ultimately on you.” 

“Well, this is not very tempered of you, Father,” Isabel says, a dim note of amusement in her voice. “It sounds like a mere difference of opinion. Have the years at the valley thinned your skin?” 

Manuel falls back on his seat, pinching the bridge of his nose. He is at the distastefully, sparsely decorated office of the director at Oviedo’s centre; mid-century furniture, a discreet medical cabinet, ugly curtains, tall bookcases full of years-untouched natural encyclopaedias. The lone decoration hanging on the wall is a collection of pinned, cased butterflies. 

“You are in charge,” Isabel continues. “But he is the expert, so if I were you, I’d try to leave your ego aside and listen.” A pause. “Have you thought about why this managed to get such a rise out of you?”

“I don’t know,” Manuel admits. “It has been a long couple of days.”

“Well, then. You’re a hard-working fellow, but perhaps don’t keep pushing this particular topic for today.” She exhales. “Join the others, do your prayers. Don’t let anything outside of the Work affect it.” 

Manuel sighs. She is right.

“All you have ever wanted was to educate the world, and spread the word of God. Imagine how many centres, how many hearts you can bring to the path of sanctification now that God has given you this chance. Make a name out of yourself and the way will become clear.” Those words are a breath of new vigour in his weary soul. “But you need to build this damn church first.”

With that, the line clicks.

Chapter Text

For the very first time in the span of his memory, Silas finds himself sharing supper with people. That is to say, many people.

He is being looked at, talked to…by men who call themselves his brothers; who have something fundamental in common with him. Silas is split between the defensive and the disarmed, and thus his body has stayed in place, has not yet tried speech. Yet he is very conscious, like a thrum in the ambience, of an invisible mortar that connects all of them; the warmth of faith, dense and present, greater than the sum of all their fickle parts.

“A real priest and a monk among our ranks!” The most talkative numerary is a man called Eneko, a little bit older than Silas himself. A mane of pale blonde hair frames his face, reminding Silas of a lion; the skin around his brow and mouth is marked by smiles and frowns, by a lifetime under the sun. “Our family grows. And soon, thanks to you, we are getting our own church!”

The Architect sits comfortably in a corner of the table, thumbs hooked on the braces of his trousers. “Quite soon, yes. After we iron out the legal nitty-gritty, and the contractor is on site…”

“I am the contractor! Well—it’s our company, my colleague’s and mine,” Eneko says. Then, he turns to Silas. “We’re engineers, and have worked with this kind of masonry before. This is why the Work requested me to move here.” He puts a roasted potato in his mouth and chews heartily. “Same with you, Rodrigo, isn’t it?”

Silas glances at the man who's been addressed. He’s older and smaller. “I did get moved here from Madrid for the church, to do the plumbing.” He shrugs a shoulder. “I’m happy staying here for a while. It’s a nice city, Oviedo.”

Only the clink of cutlery fills the room for a few seconds, until Silas has digested the words. Jolted out of silence, he turns to Eneko and speaks his clumsy Spanish. “Let me assist you, Brother. I have never built, only worked a little at Father Aringarosa’s church in the valley, but I am strong.” 

“If I may suggest,” a deep voice says, and all heads orient to it.

This man, who introduced himself as Director Tifón with emphasis on Director, is angular; high cheekbones, and a glare that pierces one for a few seconds before and after he has spoken. His lanky hands are joined on the table before an empty plate, all of the fingertips touching: the symmetry of a praying mantis.

“Let’s not rush into assumptions. We need the city council to give us the green light first. I suppose that is what Father Aringarosa is taking care of.”

“We can still start working, though,” Eneko says, rubbing his blonde beard. “Set up our workshop at the site, bring some–”

“Perhaps,” the Director interrupts, “there are some errands that the guests can attend to instead. We are family; the everyday business of our home is a family matter. Number one priority, so to speak.” He smiles, fine lips greasy with oil. “Until further notice.”

Silas nods, although the word family tastes bitter, like unwanted medicine. 

“Father Aringarosa mentioned working for the diocese of Girona for a long time,” the Director says. He turns his stare on Silas, who ruminates on the first mouthful of food. “I take it you also come from the area? Did I hear something French in your accent?”

It is then that the Father steps into the dining room, and the chills travelling up Silas’s spine warm up a notch. “Pardon my delay,” he says. “I am on quite a tight schedule tomorrow and had to take some notes, plan the day.”

“Thank you for coming.” At once, the Director retreats in his seat. “We were getting acquainted with our Brother Silas.”

Father Aringarosa takes the next empty spot, bringing the count of people around the table to ten. Without prompting, Eneko fills his plate with roasted chicken and rosemary-spiced vegetables. “Thank you, son. Ah, no one is more hard-working and loyal than Silas. He’s lived near us his whole life, on the other side of the frontier…but the borders are man-made, after all. The mountains are mountains. So of course we were destined to meet someday, two apostles of God.” He gifts them all a weary smile. “He’s only been learning Spanish for a little over a year, now. You’d never tell, would you?” And then, surveying Silas. “Est-ce que ça va?”

Silas nods, oui oui, ça va. He knows that the Father has taken care to speak no lies for him.

“I’m impressed,” Director Tifón says. “Perhaps we could do a little language exchange. Many of us still struggle with Latin outside of the daily prayers...”

Eneko motions at Silas to tilt toward him. “Bonjour. Did I get that right? In my home language, you would say: aupa!” 

Silas blinks. “Aupa?”

“Au-pa!” He takes a swig from his water and smiles heartily, as conversation rises and fragments around them. “Or Kaixo! That’s how you say hello!”

There is no hierarchy in the house. The rooms for numeraries and associates are spread throughout the three floors of the building. Perhaps for this reason, the corridors seem labyrinthic; the pale wallpaper, the doors in their white frames, the creaking floor, the plaster-sculpted details in the ceiling, all have the same unworn look.

As another numerary walks him through the house and motions, Silas can hear stifled Latin prayers behind the doors.

“Most of us share rooms,” the numerary says. His demeanour and frame are very bovine. “Father Aringarosa has been assigned to the rectory in the ground floor, closest to the chapel. The architect is upstairs. How about you? Would you like to take the spare bed in my room, or a single one?”

Silas clears his throat. On principle, he shouldn’t take anything for himself; that would be selfish. And yet, after so many months of nightly quiet in the valley, sharing his hours with somebody yet unknown seems like an insurmountable challenge.

“I will share your room.”

It’s that short man, the musician, rushing to shake the numerary’s hand. Silas can’t quite place his name, only remembers it being somehow green; he looks cherubic, taken right out of an altarpiece—only his curls aren't fair, but pitch-black.

“Amaro. Amaro di Monteverdi. The organist,” he gestures with his hand, “as you for sure know.”

Before, this Amaro has been sharp-tongued and quick-witted with the Father, but Silas is thankful for his intervention.

“You will?” the numerary asks. “I’m sorry, I didn’t get that you were with the Work.”

“Not…quite,” Brother Amaro says. “I am intrigued. I thought that, for as long as I am staying under your roof, it would be fair for me to live according to your principles.” Amaro appraises Silas, a look that might be wary or curious. “If that is okay…Brother. I would hate to take something away from you.”

“No,” Silas says softly. “I mean. Yes, it is okay.”

“Well.” A pause. “Good night, then.”

Silas is quick to tuck the door of his bedroom in place, keeping the world outside.

The walls are bare except for an empty cross. The furniture, white as bones made of birch…and thinking of the bed he’d called his own, back in the Valley, his first home, makes his chest swell…

But this bedroom. It’s no less than he needs to survive and no more than he promised to possess.

He promised…to the Father.

Father Aringarosa, who sleeps in a room like this one, by the chapel and the Blessed Sacrament where God can keep him close.

Perhaps he, too, is thinking of Silas right now…

Another greedy thought. This cyst of emotion inside won’t disappear, no matter how much Silas digs into his skin to cut it off.

The wooden beads of his rosary whisper taciturn prayers. Moonlight glides in through the slits of wooden blinds; Silas pulls the barbed cilice from its pouch, the light bouncing off its spines.

Cold. Slightly shaky chest. Piercing pain on his thigh, not yet healing. 

Serviam—his first thought. I will serve.

The cross sees him read the New Testament and mutter his morning prayers. Later, the water boiler coughs-and-rumbles, beginning to heat just as he is done showering. His stomach groans too, but in the common room he only takes a cup of watery coffee, drinks it in two long gulps. Some of the others help themselves to bread and cheese; others fast before Mass. 

“Silas.” 

The Father stands next to him, looking fresh in his black day clothes, sipping from his own mug of coffee. “How was your night?”

Silas smiles feebly. “Good…”

Before he can find it in himself to ask the same question back, the Father does as he did yesterday at the dinner table; switches back to his marked, lovely French, a veil of language between the two of them and the rest of the room. “Silas, are you expiating right now?”

The marks that the cilice left on him throb at the slightest motions. Still, Silas’s gaze drops and he shakes his head slowly.

“I’m sorry. I wore the belt yesterday, but I felt too weak for more.” Silas’s body has never minded pain—pain and pleasure being two halves of a thrilling whole—but the cilice is different. The beats of alarm that it sends coursing through his muscles are truly difficult to bear. “Do I disappoint you?”

“My angel. You could never. God will thank you for your strength.” The Father pauses. “Let’s meet on Saturday, before mass, for your first tutorial. Perhaps you could confess to me and alleviate some of that pain?” There’s some shifting, a signal between Father Aringarosa and the Architect. “I have to go. Did Director Tifón already give you and Monteverdi some tasks?”

“Hello, Pater. You’re talking about me.” They both turn to regard Brother Amaro. His Italian accent makes the Spanish vowels even louder, grander. He waves a list written in cursive lettering before Silas. “We are running errands. Quaint, isn’t it?”

“Good,” the Father says in Spanish, and drinks up his coffee.

In the Valley, Father Aringarosa would have held him, would have kissed his forehead goodbye. Silas knows. 

The city of Oviedo is made of faded colours and narrow streets; the buildings hunch together like crooked, gossiping townspeople, and the face of every house is patchworked with flowers in the balconies, with bedsheets hung to dry. Together with Brother Amaro, Silas follows a trail of bustle and voice into the city centre. 

There are traces of a sad history in this city—in the marked faces of its people—in the broken stagger of its elderly and the fiery eyes of its young—in the way construction works roar clouds of dust into the air, trying to cover up stony scars. But Silas is acquainted with that underlying tension, that trembling beneath the surface. It’s both inside of him and out. 

Silas consecrates himself before the Cathedral, a jab on the thigh as he gently kneels, but he minds not to tumble. Stalls line the streets all the way to the Fontán, the city market, with its copper-green rusted ribs and gnarled trees planted at the entrance. Silas does the carrying, Amaro the talking; they buy eggs, legumes, onions and veal—although Silas must turn away from the display of red-white meat and its smell like iron.

His stomach is still closed tight when Amaro, sidestepping vendors and dodging passersby with practised agility, points to a nearby café. “Would you like to drink a coffee?”

“There is coffee at the house.”

“Indulge me, now. I would like to get a feel for this place.” 

Unaccustomed to denying anyone anything, Silas shudders. Even clad in his day clothes—jacket over knit sweater and pants faded to grey—he’s already had to bear the sweep of eyes up and down his frame time and time again.

“Oh, I see,” Amaro muses, although Silas isn't sure whether he said anything. “You don’t like to be out in the city, do you?”

Silas’s gaze drops to the ground, where cigarette butts and saccharine sachets litter the cobblestones. No one has taught him how to react to such a question, and so, he doesn’t.

“People are not used to remarkability.” Brother Amaro shrugs, then approaches one of the tea tables, where two women are sitting and shouting at each other. “Excuse me, young lady. I heard that there is a luthier’s shop somewhere around here. Would you kindly tell me the way?”

“He said young lady!” Hen-like cackles. “Of course, of course!”

The women point them in the direction of another square, a smaller opening around the market’s corner.

“It couldn’t be me,” Amaro muses as they walk. “If I were as tall as you, I would flaunt it.”

Silas’s voice feels hoarse from disuse. “I…I don’t think that’s why they look at me.”

“What, your skin? I think they find it endearing. I overheard the ladies talking about mice. Un ratoncito.” Amaro flashes him a grin, and Silas doesn’t quite know what to make of it. Although he’d take being called a mouse over many other things. 

“Some scholars of the Bible believe Noah of the Ark to have had albinism too,” he says. “That’s what Father Aringarosa told me.”

“Oh? I did not know that,” Amaro says. “Well well. The two of you seem close. How long have you been with the Opus Dei, then?”

“Ah…about a year…”

As soon as they double the next corner, a lad with a puffed hat invades their personal space, interrupting their conversation and shoving a paper into their hands.

“Hello Sir! Vote…” he realises Silas’s stature then: now, both of them are startled. The next word drops out of the boy’s mouth like a toothpick, “...Garrido.”

Silas squints at the black-white pamphlet he has been handed. It shows the profile of a man with a square jawline and parted hair, a picture he has already seen printed and glued across the market walls and streets. None of the words or abbreviations written around it hold any meaning to him, and so, when he sees Amaro standing on his toes to take a look, Silas passes it to him.

“Elections to the town council soon.” Amaro seems interested. “And…will you look at that?”

Similar prints are being handed out nearby, on the sidewalk: there’s a makeshift stall consisting of a parasol and table covered in stickers. Right at the front, pancharts hang proclaiming slogans such as,  

student syndicate - for an education that is laich, public, and free

STOP REPRESSION

WE WANT THE CHURCH OUT OF OUR SCHOOLS

Silas lives free of judgement, and none of these suggestions would have merited more than a passing glance…until, that is, the last sentence. 

RESPECT HISTORICAL MEMORY - SAY NO

to the rebuilding of the Basilica of St. Paul

Silas crosses glances with Amaro, the same thought kindling in both of them at once. They approach, carefully. Behind the stall, smoking, there’s a replica of the lad that just bumped into them. Younger than Silas himself, probably; a brown mane like a colt’s falling over the eyes and down the shoulders, and too-wide clothes over crossed arms.

Then the colt opens its mouth, and Silas is startled to hear the voice of a woman. “You two wanna sign?” The…girl, he presumes, blows away some smoke. “We’re collecting ‘em. Need a few more before handing this over to the town council.”

It takes a moment for either of them to react, but it is Brother Amaro who speaks up. “Signatures?” Amaro asks. “For what, if you’re so kind?”

The colt leans forward, pointing at a black-and-white print of, what Silas now realises, is their church.

“There’s this ruin at the west end.” She points with her cigarette in the direction, as if they could see it from here. “Bit hidden. Got very broken down during the war. There’s talk, well—more than talk, that they’re tryin’ to take it down and build something new on the spot.”

“I see,” Amaro says. “What is the problem with that? What is, ah…historical memory?”

“Huh? You’re not from around here, right?” She cocks her head, the heavy hair falling over her eyes. When she blows it aside, Silas realises that her eyelids are painted black and heavy. “The problem is that many war crimes were committed in this country, and then swept under the rug. It was never investigated why it got targeted in the first place, who did it. That’s all we folks at the University wanna do. Take a proper look at the place. Document it.”

Amaro nods, hands joined at his lap. “And how are you faring? What do you think you’ll find?”

“Official story says the church got broken into by anarchists. Me, I’m not so sure. Plenty of fighting took place here; the city was blue, the land was red. Plenty of fascists here, who liked to set up traps for their enemies.”

“Why wouldn’t they let you investigate, if they have nothing to hide?”

“Right?! But, guess what. The same people who bombed the church get their friends to rebuild it now, and pretend nothing happened. Real shameful.” The colt rummages around the papers now, and hands them another one, folded over and written in tiny print. “Here, in case you wanna read up on it. They like to keep things in the family, these people.”

“Enough,” Silas whispers.

He turns around, walls away with his hands sunk deeply in his pockets. Aversion rises like bile from his empty stomach.

Amaro catches up with him, his performance earning him a glare. “Why,” Silas hisses, “would you entertain that slander?”

“Knowledge is power, Brother,” Amaro waves the folded paper in front of him, and places it inside his wide sleeve. “Know thy enemy. Oh, look!” He points at a shop, the sign decorated with the swirly shapes of instruments. “Here is the luthier.”

Amaro steps inside, and Silas hurries to follow, into a world permeated by the scent of wood and varnish. The workshop is riddled with parts of violins and other instruments; Amaro winds up testing one, bow swaying over strings, the scales easing Silas’s mind. 

This place seems quiet and civilised in comparison to the overwhelming outside—the market and its smell of food, of flesh, all of it churning in his belly.

When he looks outside, he finds the colt in her garbage stall, looking right back.

Father Aringarosa has discovered a small stone chapel in the clearing. Its cross is still standing, half rust and half iron. He strolls around it before going back into the ruined church. 

Through the sunken ceiling, morning light bathes every corner of an injured nave. Stepping into it is stepping inside a bubble of silence; his own, small sanctuary.

“All I have ever wanted is to fuse architecture with its surroundings,” Pisarello says. He is wearing an eggshell-white shirt with its front pocket full of pens, like some sort of public worker; in one hand, his pocket recorder; in another, a coffee thermo branded with a smiling face and the words Smile, God Loves You.

Aringarosa himself is dressed plainly, in a black day shirt and pants, his white collar the only indication of priesthood. “Mass will be interesting here,” he says.

The architect nods. “I have been transcribing all my observations, there must be a few hours’s worth of them already.”

“I’m sure the boys at the house can lend you a hand, if it’s too tedious work.”

Father Aringarosa trails his eyes along the apse, its curved vault devoured by shrapnel like fields by a plague. And so is much of the floor, of the columns, the capitals, the windows.

Pisarello’s voice, echoing: “It’s a beautiful site.”

“It is.” Father Aringarosa pauses. Then, he turns around. “Pablo, I want to ask you something. In your professional opinion,” he waves an arch toward the bitten-down walls, Pisarello’s glance trailing behind him, “what caused this damage?”

“Oh. I’m not qualified to…” A scoff. Sweat on the brown skin of his forehead. “That would be an archaeologist’s job.” A pause. “We’d need proper expert observation. Maybe testing.” Another pause. “Without it…it’s very difficult…”

Father Aringarosa lets the ensuing silence speak for itself. 

Finally, after a few long moments, Pisarello shifts on his feet. “This…was a shell bomb…”

Father Aringarosa turns his back on the debris.

Under his breath, he mutters Isabel’s name like a curse. 

“Do not shoot the messenger, please,” Pisarello says. “I want to build this church as much as you do. All I have ever wanted is to make art: to honour a building, its people, the magic they create together.” Around them, dust floats in the morning light. “Art takes time. It takes decades. Centuries. What are a few months of waiting, compared to that?”

There are another few beats of silence, of empty words echoing between crumbling walls.

Finally, Aringarosa turns to the architect. “Pablo. I need a favour from you.”

A grey, slick Opel parks in front of the dirt track. Father Aringarosa watches as the Mayor of Oviedo, Álvaro Pérez Garrido, descends from his carriage; he wouldn’t look out of place at the front of a card deck, King of Hearts or Diamonds, jewel-encrusted fingers and a cup in his hand short of spilling.

Father Aringarosa reaches out a hand. No rings; the Holy Cross, safe inside one of his pockets. 

“It’s a pleasure to finally meet you.” Aringarosa smiles. “Did you come directly from your latest campaign trip?”

“Yes, yes. I spoke in several towns around Oviedo. The people are very active. Very demanding! We need to keep them happy.” Garrido rubs his hands together, handsome in the morning light.

“Around Oviedo. You must be very familiar with your people, Álvaro.”

“Of course! The people in the city and the land can be different, but their worries are not. I love this land, its culture. Its determination.” The man tugs at the lapels of his jacket, a wide grin plastered on his face. “Many workers send their young here to learn.”

Aringarosa nods, starting to stroll toward the side of the church. “Education is important. I consider myself an educator at heart. The Church funds universities, research centres, rehabilitation programs. It has kept the youth off the streets for decades, and helped rebuild this country from the roots. It would be a shame to become enemies, when our goals are so similar.”

A beat, Garrido scratching some dry leaves off his hem. “A lot of my electorate are workers…” 

“They are, I suppose, good Christians as well,” Aringarosa retorts. “I would hate for any political opponents to spin this conflict as some sort of…anti-Catholicism.”

“Of course, Father. That may very well happen.” The Mayor sighs. “But my voters don’t like to see the Church granted privileges while they fight for their rights…and their history. If we don’t even let them take a small, preliminary look at these ruins…our electorate will feel betrayed. Apathetic. It’s not good.”

“I admire their passion, I truly do,” Aringarosa says, turning his eyes up above. “But they are barking up the wrong tree. I am a nobody, a priest in search of a parish. The Way of Santiago crosses Oviedo; I would gladly inspire pilgrims with my words as I did in Catalonia. We even have an artist on board, to design a pipe organ in the Baroque tradition. Let us do our Work, shaping the culture.”

A cold wind picks up from the north and shakes them, a glimpse of sunlight from beneath the canopy.

“Besides,” Aringarosa says “if you told me that your thoughts aren’t bigger than the city itself, I would be very surprised.”

Garrido raises an eyebrow. 

“All I mean is that I sympathise with a man trying to make a name of himself.” Father Aringarosa smiles. “I do not own this land; God does. And God has friends all across the North. I assure you that, with our Work behind you, an eventual electoral campaign at a state level would not be a problem.”

“Your Work.” Garrido blinks. “Fine, Father. You make some valiant points.”

“I am not my predecessor, Álvaro. New times have come. Let that be as clear to your people as it is to mine.”

When the sound of the Mayor’s car fades in the distance, Father Aringarosa still finds himself sitting at the front step of his church, watching the dilapidated chapel. 

Comfortable people often think themselves above faith, and yet it is faith that feeds them, when the skinny cows come.

Chapter Text

Thursday. Circle. A group meditation in the attic common room; taciturn daylight through pastel curtains. Only Father Aringarosa and the Architect are absent. 

The other seven numeraries that live at the house (plus their guest and associate, Brother Amaro) are congregated, led by the Director. Each of them clutches a booklet with the Opus Dei’s Catechism; same text, but different editions. Silas inherited his own—worn and leather-bound, smaller than his palm—from the Father, in a small ceremony they held at the Valley. It was then, just the two of them and God as their witness, that Silas took his vows, promising to give Him every day of his life.

“Since we are preparing for an important, all-hands-on-deck mission, I thought it would be a good idea to discuss our core principles,” Director Tifón says. He is a spindly man, long on his seat; when he tilts forward, the hem of his pants recedes, showing bony ankles and mauve socks. “My question for you today may seem simple, but it’s at the core of what we are. For you, brothers, what does it mean to do the Work?”

“When I started studying,” the sturdy, bull-like numerary says, “handing in assignments and such, I didn’t put my all in it. I thought that it was okay to, say, miss a citation, or not show up to a class or two whenever I was too tired. Ever since I joined the Opus Dei, though, I started taking it much more seriously; not for my professors, or even for myself, but for God.”

“Just like a priest offers bread and wine during Mass,” Director Tifón says, nodding, “so we offer our Work to God.”

“Yeah. And you can’t offer crappy work to God,” Rodrigo says, prompting Silas to tilt his head. “What? It’s true.”

Director Tifón turns toward Silas, too. “What do our newest members think about it?”

Silas shifts in the seat, minuscule for his size. “For a long time, I thought I had nothing to offer to God. But Father Aringarosa taught me that I can honour Him with every small act. I started doing daily prayers, small repairs around the sanctuary. And work in the garden.”

“No tasks are more important than others,” the Director agrees. “We do not stop being religious when we are outside the church; we can honour God anywhere, anytime, with work that may seem most menial. Even as no other person sees us, God does.”

Eneko clears his throat. “I’ve got a story…”

“He always does,” Rodrigo mumbles.

“...about the Founder of the Work, Master Escrivá. I heard that he showed some of his first followers the rooftop of the Cathedral of Burgos, where apparently, there are gorgeous details sculpted on the pinnacles, but in a way that makes them completely invisible at street level.” With his hands, Eneko paints spires in the air. “He said that those sculptors understood the principles of the Opus Dei: because they were so careful with detail. Because they did not sculpt for anyone else’s eyes, other than God’s.”

“I think I can get behind these principles,” Amaro says, holding up his fingertips and squinting at them. “You’d be pressed to find any grand musician without calluses on their hands; or who hasn’t injured themselves once, rehearsing obsessively until their tendons were swelling. The pursuit of excellence, as you say, can take its dues.”

Silas glances at him, catching a glimpse of scar on his palms. But then Amaro turns his wrist with a jewellery jingle.

“It is a compulsion,” he says. “The drive to keep going, even as it feels like your body will give in, that you will falter and collapse. Often, I understand why Schumann sacrificed his hands to the art.” 

“This is also a good point,” the Director says. As he speaks, he addresses each of his brothers, this family they have founded. “Have you ever felt at the edge of your strength, working or studying into the hours of the night, and then it suddenly seemed like another, new wind was breathing life into you? That'd be the sign that God acknowledges our plights, and thanks us for our Work. For a sign that the Work is being done well, my friends, is that it hurts.”

The norms, their daily prayers, occupy Silas’s time until midday, when a smell of food fills his room. A numerary assistant has come in today to clean and cook; she serves rice, sappy with the juice of stir-fried mushrooms, and a colourful salad. 

Eneko kisses his fingers. Silas watches him make a ponytail out of his thick, heavy mane of hair. “Why can’t my cooking be like this, Sister?” he asks the lady. “Will you stay here and eat with us?”

“I can’t,” she says. “I must drive back to León.”

Eneko whistles. “That’s a long way. Isn’t any women’s centre closer?” He directs that question at Director Tifón, who is fixed in the distance, absent.

“It’s fine,” the woman says. “We do it happily.” 

“God will pay it to you,” the Director says without looking.

The hours after lunch, Silas spends as Eneko’s cohort. Trip by trip, they move between the site of their church and a warehouse at the outskirts of Oviedo, where they load steel bars, long silver planks, and sealed sacks of sand with long noisy cranes into their truck. These are the jigsaw pieces of an exoskeleton which they will stock together in the course of weeks, months, making this House of the Lord from the outside in. 

Together, they will help that colossus rise from her old skin. And she shall be magnificent, from her shell to the depths of her entrails.

And so, Silas follows his foreman’s directions, carrying machinery and timbers. Their work only stops when it’s time to pray rosary beads, as the sun recedes and an early dusk sets the sky ablaze.

The next meeting between Father Aringarosa and Álvaro Garrido does not take place on-site, but in the Mayor’s world; the world of streetlamps and anonymous passersby, of well-lit clubs in marble streets; of orders taken swiftly and thick curtains closed behind the waiter; of long, wooden plates brimming with red ribbons of ham and long-curated cheese slices, all of it washed down with dry burgundy.

“Not hungry?” The mayor nods to Aringarosa’s empty plate.

“It is almost Friday. No red meat.” Father Aringarosa smiles slightly. “How is the situation with the city council evolving, my friend?”

“My councilspeople have very different opinions,” Garrido offers. He’s well-dressed, but takes the wrong fork for his appetiser. “Some of them would just rather look to the future, let the past be. Others, well. They have stakes. A history here.” 

“Do you have a timeline for the decision, perhaps?”

Garrido cuts into his question, knife slicing into veal. “Say, Father, you spoke about support for my campaign— possible campaign at a community level. I must ask what that entails.”

“It depends,” Aringarosa says. “I suppose you aren’t asking me to tell my people what to vote…because I won’t. Any sensible Catholic knows to make that choice by himself.” 

“No, no.” Garrido scoffs. “Of course not. That’s not your job.”

Father Aringarosa’s fingernails tap on the varnished table. “I know you love this land, and that you have thought and written a lot about what is right for its people. I've read your articles.”

“I would like to think so, Father—oh, this serrano. You don’t know what you’re missing.”

“No, I do.” Aringarosa smiles. “I belong to the more orthodox currents inside of the Catholic Church, yes, but many of the laypeople around me are anything but conservative. In fact…they do not want to conserve anything as it is today.” A gaze, dragged across the black-on-grey decoration; the surly taste of wine on his lips. “I don’t truly mind ideology, neither yours nor your opponent’s. The Work can take many shapes and have many names. But to do things that would leave room to paint you as anti-Catholic, well…we would have a problem there.”

“You see,” Garrido goes fidgety all of a sudden; dropping the napkin on his lap, pointing a finger. “I won’t change my politics, their general tendency. Not for the Church. The Church has been an ally for my people…sometimes. Oftentimes not.” He pauses. “This particular topic, however…this historical memory…I’m not sure that it is feasible to investigate, as the student syndicate demands. Have you met them?” A puff of breath. “All demands. All entitlement. You have seen the streets of this beautiful city; how much we are doing to renew it and rebuild it. Sometimes I would prefer to look to the future, leave the past in the past. However difficult it may be.”

“Name a sum that would make it easier, then.”

Pursed lips. A scoff. “Yes. Yes, let me think about that, Father. I will get back to you.”

After coffee, Father Aringarosa takes the bill—as giving as any good Christian should be—and shakes Garrido’s hand. “My friend,” he says, “God will thank you for your decision, and so will the Opus Dei.” 

It’s well past sunset when Silas’s key to the centre turns inside of its lock. He pushes the door open and lets Eneko in first; both of them sweat-drenched and spent. The road is burned in his eyesight as a kind of residual, perpetual motion.

“You’re a fast learner, Brother!” Eneko chippers, patting Silas’s back. “We got a lot of work done today. Very nice.”

They leave their dirt-ridden shoes outside. Tumbling into the corridor on bare feet, they lead straight towards the chapel, to visit the Blessed Sacrament as is the norm once a day; there, they make a wordless, motionless communion with the Body of Christ.

The chapel…near the Father’s room…deep in Silas’s gut, a sort of hope flutters, until they are done with their Communion and head back to the house; the sight of an empty dining room and a squeaky-clean kitchen snuffs it out.

In the shower, next to his bedroom, Silas cleans the day off himself. Lukewarm water, foamy soap. Fresh towels. His habit has been ironed—the household lady, that silent dove, must have confused it with a liturgical vestment. Neat folds. Crisp and soothing.

His fingers tighten around its fabric.

This earthly vessel has no right to all these comforts. It’s banal. Ridiculous in its yearning. Because it craves. Deep down, it still craves…

He goes back into the shower and turns the hot water on, standing, motionless, until it’s scalding hot on his scars, the skin of his forearms gone from white to pink, the pulse a shriek on his thigh.

On the way back to his room, Silas sees light downstairs, under the staircase railing.

Director Tifón’s strict voice fills the corridors. “No. Not after this display.” 

“What? I mean…” this is Eneko. Silas pauses, lingers in the shadows. “All I mean is…it will be winter soon. The others told me that the one heater is barely—”

“Don’t play dumb, Eneko. Don’t you think you can distract me from the matter at hand.” It’s the same tone the Director took on at the circle. “Please ask yourself: can you call yourself a devout to God if this continues happening?”

“What do you mean?”

“What do I mean? We try to escape our bodily cravings as much as we can. Why would you willingly risk your vows in such a brazen manner…it simply escapes me!”

A few, tense seconds pass. “I’m sorry— what?”

“We do not speak to the numerary assistants!” Ire, breaking through the effigy; a drawer is slammed shut, the cutlery clinking, like shattering glass. Silas’s pulse shoots up as he flinches in the shadows. “Certainly not as you did today! Now, be off to your evening prayers, if you still even care to do—”

Silas shuts the door to his room. A long-forfeited alarm has awoken in him, sending his senses astray. He clutches the wooden, yellowing rosary tight between his fingers, and prays to the Holy Mary, and repeats to himself that he’s in Oviedo, in a centre of the Opus Dei, without reason to worry, without reason to quiver. But the only one who could calm him down is the Father himself, his soft-spoken Spanish words, his protection, his shelter, the Valley, being back there with him, and where hope flickered, there’s now grief—a void, deep and pitch black, and buried in it, a flicker of anger. 

It is a little later. Both the night and Silas’s loud mind have settled into silence. He is still in his underwear, wiping the barbs of the cilice ; before every use, he sterilises them, and afterward he cleans off the blood and bits of flesh, holding it between pieces of fabric to keep it from slicing his fingertips open.

A soft knock at the door interrupts him…followed by Amaro’s voice. “Brother. Do you have a moment?”

At first, Silas is reticent, recoiling in his white skin.

But why should he? There is nothing to hide.

“Come in.”

Amaro looks even smaller in the threshold, the hair framing his face, not anymore pulled back. He rakes his eyes up and down Silas, then focuses on the cilice. “What’s that?”

Silas’s voice feels hoarse from the day. “I shouldn’t…the Director will tell you about it.”

“Perhaps he will, if he doesn’t find out that I greeted the wench who came to do the cooking, too.” Amaro’s grimace morphs into a sneer. “What a strange way for him to admit he’s never talked to a woman.”

Silas acknowledges that that is supposed to be a sort of mean-spirited joke—as well as an admission, in complicity, that Amaro heard everything. But Silas feels still too tender to smile, still reeling, attempting to make sense of this fleeting stream of scenes played around him. 

“I am about to mortify my body,” he answers. “Bleed the sin out of it.”

Amaro lingers in the door. A few seconds, he ruminates, chewing on his lower lip.

Then, he shuts the door by leaning back on it. The air in this airless room changes. Amaro is inspecting it, gouging it. Again, Silas feels observed, like back during another bedside conversation, when his hands were full of scratches, his fingernails full of mountain dirt.

“So this is another of your practices,” Amaro says. 

“We are all the children of Christ. Just as he carried the Cross, so too are we destined for Golgotha.” Silas’s gaze drops to the floor. “It’s the only thing that helps.”

“It helps.” Amaro scoffs, drawing Silas back like a dart. “Let me guess, it was your priest that taught you this, to—to whip and cut yourself? What kind of religion is this?”

Silas holds Amaro’s gaze until their silence becomes unusual.

Without warning, in a fluid motion, Silas clasps the cilice around his thigh and tightens it as much as he can. Thorns pierce into his flesh, tears flood his eyes. His lips remain parted, but out comes no sound; adrenaline surging, rushing, washing away the day’s exhaustion. 

Amaro mutters something in Italian under his breath.

Pain makes it all bearable. Through it Silas fears nothing and no one. As we fall we must rise and his breath falls, rises, falls.

“Yes. The Father taught me. But I have known pain all my life, Brother.” And he too rises, looming over Amaro breath trickling out of his mouth and blood down his thigh. “He taught me to channel it, to make it good. And you, Brother, you judge my ways while living here—how did you get your scars?” 

Amaro takes a moment to respond, voice at once much hoarser. Raising his palms, scarred with round marks, as if stabbed through with nails. “Um—this—I've got this from birth.”

Silas grabs Amaro’s hand, sweaty-cold. “Stigmata,” he mumbles. “Marked, too, perhaps.” Through the prickling tears, he looks at Amaro’s face, drained now of colour. “Marked by some special purpose. Do you know what it is?”

“My purpose?” Amaro looks at him blank. “My music. I suppose. My music shall live on when I am dead.”

At once, Silas drops him, and reaches for the Discipline. Behind tight lips, sour words build up: the reckoning that Amaro hasn’t understood the principle of the Opus Dei. That, when his hands hurt, they do it for selfishness, for wealth and fame.

That of course he wouldn’t understand Silas, wouldn’t understand the Father, for Father Aringarosa would never have brought him here, never have taught him this agony for a selfish reason, he would never, he would never never never—

“You are vain, Brother,” Silas says, hoarse. “Vanity is pride. Vanity is futility. Ecclesiastes 1:2. All is vanity. All is vanity. Do you understand?”

The pain pulsates, a stab of focus and logical thought piercing through this fleshy mass of emotions: he is not a teacher; he holds no answers. Silas is no one to accuse others. His dizzy mind sinks back behind the haze of pain, and the stammered prayers flow without prompting, interrupted only when the whip cracks against his shoulders. 

When he turns again, Amaro is gone.

Saturday.

Serviam.  

Silas staggers to the dining room. There, he finds the Father. Prim in his cassock, though it’s very early in the morning. Glancing at his watch.

Ready to leave. 

Silas freezes. “Did you forget our…our meeting?” That’s what he would ask, if he were a more selfish man.

But Father Aringarosa smiles at him. The way he only smiles at Silas, all the way up to his dark eyes. “My angel. Did you sleep well?”

“I…I did.”

“Come with me.”

Like the rest of the house, the chapel is uncannily clean at all times. The dim light that filters through the simple, small windows plays off the wooden flooring; in the air, a pulse, that deafening silence that all blessed places have.

The Father fills up the small pile with holy water from a glass bottle; then, he lights up some altar candles, protecting the flame with a cupped hand. Silas watches him intently.

“How are you?” the Father asks. “How did you find the first circle?”

“Good.”

“Do you get along with your brothers?”

Silas intends to answer, he truly does, but Father Aringarosa has already hastily disappeared…inside the confession booth. 

“Ah…”

“Silas.” The Father speaks through the screen, its shape like a fractured rose window, each opening showing a bit of his profile. “Tell me what troubles your soul.”

Silas considers that.

He kneels, bows his head. Prays, and the Father joins in, his practised Latin sending an exhausted chill down Silas’s spine. 

“Since my last confession,” Silas starts, forcing the words out, “I have sinned. I have felt wrath at the young people in the city, who say horrible things about us. I have yearned for our old life…I have felt greed crystallise, deep inside me, and turn into anger.”

“Anger at whom?”

“At…” Silas breathes in. Rising, falling. “At God…I think. But I try to atone for my wrath. With work at the site, Work for God. Work for you.” Sweat gathers in his joined hands. “I try to stay busy until the very last minutes of my waking days and give these feelings no time to assault me. So that I can stop coveting what my flesh desires, but my soul cannot have.”

A pause. Pounding silence, smell of candle. “Have you acted upon these thoughts, Silas?”

“No, Father.”

“Have you missed prayers? Or…your expiation?”

“Not once.”

“I believe you.” A pause, as the heat rises inside Silas. “When this happens, my son, mortify your limbs in the manner that you consider appropriate. But please do not forget the Work. Put it first, always.” The Father takes a breath. “Focus on the Cross. Think about its meaning. This dedication is difficult, I will not deny; but not senseless.” 

Silas nods yes. “There is something else, Father. Two nights ago, Brother Amaro paid a visit to me, in my room.”

“So he did.” A pause. “What did he want?”

“To enquire about our customs. About the Work. I know…these are things he should ask the Director, and not me. And yet, in the heat of the moment, I yelled at him. I called him vain. I felt myself proud enough to confront him about faith. I should not have done that, and for that I repent.”

“I see.” The Father takes a breath. “I see, my child. The balance between guiding your brothers and accepting them as they are is not an easy one to strike.” The booth feels cool and slick against Silas’s forehead. “You, too, are learning. Perhaps you need to find contentment in this rhythm before attempting to evangelise others. You know that I believe you were chosen, my angel. Among all the children of God, you have a great gift; a purpose. But pride could only ever muddle it. Let me absolve you from it.”

And thus, Father Aringarosa grants him forgiveness for his sins, and all the sins of his past life. 

As Silas speaks of the Work he has been assisting Eneko with, the Father radiates interest; he asks questions, and he listens, and it might be the confession lightening the sin off Silas’s back, or the sunrays peering from over the surrounding mountains, but his next breaths taste sweeter.

“Show me,” the Father surges, all of a sudden. “Let’s go to the site.” All the way there, between his big hands, Silas clutches the bottle of holy water—a keepsake.

They get out of the car. 

The air is wrong.

It’s immediately obvious to Silas. There’s a foulness in it, not quite a smell but a feeling, rank all the same.

Before seeing anything, the sound of voices challenging each other has already reached them at the gravel path’s end. Eneko…he is talking, yelling, and there are other unknown voices too.

Kids. Well, youngsters—from this distance, they look like wiry imps.

All of them styled after the rotten colt at their head.

Anger creeps up his throat. She, that garbage woman. Silas doesn’t yet know what crime has been committed here, yet he knows that she is the culprit.

Eneko in his grey overalls, along with some workers of his enterprise, stand cross-armed near the small outdoor chapel. And, on the steps of the church, the colt neighs at him.

“We’re not touching nothing. And neither are you. This is a site of historic interest! No one’s given you permission to build.”

“We are preparing,” Eneko shouts back: the lion roaring.

Father Aringarosa, hasty on the gravel path: “What is happening here?”

The colt turns to him. Her ears, pierced through and adorned with bits of metal like cattle markings, as if she were owning it; I am an animal; I want nothing of God.

She regards Silas next, and purses her lips in recognition.

“I know this guy. Ah, shit, you’re one of them.”

“One of…?” The Father leaves the question open, glancing at Silas, then back at the colt. When he resumes speaking, he does so patiently. “This church belongs to me now. I think I deserve to know what the problem is.”

“Good, the owner. Then you can tell your contractors to scramble. The University wants to conduct research on this site, and we made an appeal.”

Another of the youngsters speaks up. “Our law team has been studying this. Your contract isn’t active until our appeal has been resolved. Right, Denis?”

The colt nods curly. “So why the hell are you building?”

“You should get out of here,” Eneko says, all red in the face. “I’m going to call the police and they’ll drag you all out of here.”

Another of the colt’s kids mutters, “Facha,” before spitting on the floor.

The northern wind picks up, and Silas wiggles in his habit.

“Eneko, wait.” The Father steps between the frontlines. “I am quite sure we can settle matters just by talking. I have seen your pamphlets.”

“Yeah.” The colt does not move an inch. “You wanna call the bulls? Suit yourself. See if they like that you started working without permission.”

“Please,” the Father says, raising a peaceful hand. “Nothing has been built yet, this is mere preparation. And, as you say, there is a contract; we will never turn you away from a church, but you must understand that we have a right to be here as well. Along with our…” he rolls his hand, “...materials.”

The colt snorts, her nostrils flaring. “What are you preparing for? Why do you assume that this will work for you? Until the Mayor rules out whether we’re taking a look at the church or not, it don’t belong to you. But to the city. So what the hell is all this? We’re going nowhere.”

Silas realises that the wrath is rising inside him again. He has just confessed—this cannot be right—and yet, hearing this shameless slander, he feels the red lighting up the nerves of his body.

Imploringly, he looks back at the Father; these hands need a way to serve, to keep them away from violence.

“Well, well, well,” the Father says. He turns to the workers and addresses them. “As children of our Lord, we are destined to bear the Cross, to be questioned and persecuted. It is rare for truth not to be controversial, and as Christ himself said: love your enemy; do good to those who mistreat you.” Judging by Eneko’s glare, falling downward, he feels the same as Silas in this instant; a shame that runs bone-deep.

“That being said,” the Father proceeds, “Just as you have a right to gather here, so do we. Silas,” and the monk perks up, “give me that holy water, please.”

Unquiet rumbles among the present. In the distance, a vehicle roars past the highway. Father Aringarosa approaches the chapel and sprinkles it, muttering a blessing. By the power of the Pope’s Prelature of Opus Dei and the will of the Lord…

Afterward, clasping his hands: “The church, of course, may be of historical interest, but the chapel is outside. Silas, my son, take some of the workshop tables. We will need an altar.” Silas shoots into motion the moment he hears his name, delighted to be useful. The Father’s voice wanes behind him as he dashes to collect tables, cloths, candles from the site. “Eneko, would you be so kind as to bring the Sacrament from our house? Welcome to our Chapel of the Holy Cross and St. Paul.” The smile is all there in his voice. “I hope you’re in the mood for an outdoor Mass today, my friends.”

Chapter Text

Every day turns a notch cooler, autumn quieting into early winter. Silas settles into his routine—Work, meditation, prayer, repeat; a worn, known path to take him through each day…to come back to, when his thoughts send him astray. 

One morning, not long after the episode in his bedroom, he pays a visit to the Blessed Sacrament and finds Amaro knelt. Unwilling to interrupt his brother’s meditation, Silas waits until he stands up, then speaks quickly.

“I apologise,” he says. “What I said was arrogant. I am not a teacher. I would hate for you to follow my example…and do something that you are not ready for.”

Ever since Silas’s outburst, Amaro seems gentler; a gentleness which Silas had chalked up to fear, that surfaced in him only as Silas showed asperity. However, it is still there, somehow—green eyes sparkling like gemstones polished.

“It’s fine,” Amaro says. “You spoke no lies. I did talk to the Director, as you said I should…and, voilà.”

Clutched in his tiny hands, Amaro shows him the Catechism.

Silas smiles. 

“You were right, even if your tone was harsh.” Amaro nods. “Perhaps I have been leading a life that is too self-centred. I grew up near Rome; I know the stories of Christianity, know the art. Went to the church with my parents, but I never really thought of myself as…well.” He opens a scarred palm. “Believing. Until now. Do you think this may be fate?”

“I believe in fate,” Silas says softly. “If you feel that God wants you here, then He does. You have been granted a privilege, Brother. Take it seriously.”

Amaro nods, thoughtful.

Silas carries the joy of that conversation with himself, knowing that he is spreading God’s message—and what, if not that, is the meaning of the Work—but, in addition to that, Father Aringarosa’s parish can use the support right now.

Every day, they hold an Eucharist outdoors, at the chapel, with their sleeping church as a backdrop. Every day, Silas walks up to the dirt track where protesters gather, sometimes less than a handful, sometimes many more. They are all interchangeable to him, but the colt, that one he recognises—the colt is always there.

They hand out pamphlets; set up some of their trash stalls at the beginning of the road, by the old Latin Cross. Often, they hold conversations with passersby, and once or twice the urban guardsmen need to be called, the rumble hitching to a boil. The police Captain is a bloodhound—clockwork ticking of fingernails atop a sheathed baton. Silas tries to pay no mind to that presence. To their presence. Patient, loving, as the Work has taught him to be.

Once, the colt hands him one of their copied papers—

“Hey, friar. Take one of these to mass.”

Scribbled underneath: get fascism out of our history class!!

“You cannot deny her artistic inclinations,” the Father comments upon seeing that, while Silas fumes.

Oviedo, particularly its Cathedral, is a renowned stop for pilgrims on their way to the western city of Santiago. Many of those Spanish pilgrims are Catholic themselves—but many aren’t, only familiar with this route as something of a cultural curiosity—and, as far as international visitors go, they’re quite a mixed bunch.

Of potential conversions. Of opportunities for expansion.

Or interesting conversation, at least. 

The Church, protesters included, catches eyes in a way it otherwise wouldn’t; and, with it, Manuel Aringarosa’s Work. What people see when they walk over the dirt track is not the oppressor, nor the regime of years past; but Manuel’s numeraries, often drenched with sweat from working as they take Communion by the forest. They see Silas sculpting the legs of their simple altar and planting flowers by the chapel. They see Eneko and Rodrigo stocking up bricks to fix the chapel where it’s worn. They hear the Monteverdi boy, who has suddenly taken to accompanying Mass with his begrudgingly celestial violin.

They hear the sermons, too. A good pastor preaches for one as he would for a thousand. But it would be inaccurate to say Father Aringarosa dislikes an audience.

As long, that is, as he can end his day with no other company than the Scripture. 

These lukewarm evenings, he often spends at the office on the ground floor, or in the attic, a space sunk in smoke from Tifón’s cigars. Pisarello—a southerner, not cut for the cold—deals with the wait by hoarding chocolate bars. Manuel pretends he hasn’t noticed. 

Ah, well…

There are no Saints, even in this oasis in the middle of a chaotic world. Director Tifón himself is not exemplary of the good spirits expected in an Opus Dei leader: he looks more like some sort of nineteenth-century professor, gravely awaiting the next autopsy. Once, over Tifón’s shoulder, Manuel catches a glimpse of a passage which he is annotating, one of the Founder’s articles entitled Passionately Loving the World : a line about facing contrariety with a smile, and he looks so genuinely miserable while doing so that Manuel chokes a wry laugh. 

Then, again…he is none to speak.

Back at the Valley, he brooded for eight years; not a second of clarity, of purpose, of Faith…not before the angel entered his life.

With purpose comes ambition. The will to earn, to own . All of these things which a perfect Catholic should not covet, and yet, without which he’d be unable to grow. As he told Silas himself, the balance is not easy to strike; between stubbornness and temperance. Between caution and conquest.

Tonight, by the comfort of the gas stove, Manuel reads the daily newspaper and absently nurses a cup of tea.

He looks up to find Pisarello across from him, sprawled on another armchair.

The architect studies him. He opens his mouth, hesitates. “Are you—?”

Manuel leaves the daily on his lap and folds his hands over it.

“Yes?”

But the elaboration he is expecting never comes. 

Instead, it is the Monteverdi boy that erupts inside the room. “Good evening,” he says, in general, speaking to an audience. “It’s getting cold, Pater. My roommate and I were wondering if you could lend us the stove.” He pauses, then. “Am I interrupting anything?”

Father Aringarosa has not stopped looking at Pisarello. I don't know. Is he? 

“We were only, um. Talking about the protests,” Pisarello says. And all of a sudden, he’s easy, he’s the smiling face in his God Loves You thermos. “A pesky bunch.”

“Oh, yes,” the Monteverdi boy inflects as he picks up a blanket from the closet. “I’m sure you’ve shown all those teenagers who's boss.”

Manuel raises an eyebrow. “Don’t you have any work to do, Monteverdi? Or is the Opus Dei only paying for your field trip?”

For a moment, the young artist looks offended. “I thought you appreciated my music at Mass.”

An image flashes in Manuel’s mind; Silas’s red eyes, dreaming to the tune of Amaro’s violin. Something tightens in the back of his throat. “I do. But you’re here for a reason.”

“I have been dedicating myself to the project fully, Pater. You are welcome to see what I have so far.”

In his room, there’s a propped-up drawing table and a canvas, electrically alight, on which translucent paper rests. Monteverdi’s sketches and annotations are at times creative, expressed in aquarel; and at times, drafted with ruler and scale, instruments of a mathematical precision which Manuel never mastered.

Despite their differences, he has no trouble admitting that some of these are beautiful.

“Here. I thought I would indulge some of your wishes,” Amaro gestures to one of the coloured sketches, metal pipes and dark wood—perhaps walnut—in a flow of curved and pleasantly symmetrical patterns. “Very sullen, very emotional. Very Romantic. I’ve done the calculations for this one too, but, if you gave me free reign, I think this design right here could yield the best results.”

The pipe organ cut to Monteverdi’s taste is white, decorated with marble-sculpted leaves. Its orderly successions of grey pipes are exposed and neatly arranged. Cherubs trumpet from the sides. Near the concepts, he’s noted some measurements of the church, as well as the volume of air and pressure that he’d need to play its full range. “I counted enough space for some forty-odd registers in the architectural plans. Reeds, flutes, maybe some hybrids. Judging from the architect’s exploration of the statics, I think we should pull it from the wall a notch, to minimise changes in the temperature that can affect the tuning—an important detail if I’ll be playing on the daily, and so that we can access the manuals better.”

If I'll be playing on the daily. Why would he care to?

Manuel waves that thought away. “It seems quite distant from its original shape, but you have done a fine job.”

“I thought the Opus Dei might appreciate sobriety in the decoration.”

Manuel hums. “Don’t let that limit you. It should look appealing, just not extravagant…I’m sure we can find some images of the Cathedral of Barbastro, which inspired my plans as well.” After leafing through the rest, sketched stops and carvings and air systems, he has to make an admission. “You are taking your task seriously.”

Amaro laughs. “What can I say? We find inspiration in the most unexpected places.”

Before Manuel leaves, he studies the drawings again. He notes that the capitals, their Baroque swirls, look like pale angel wings.

Shortly before the next Mass, Father Aringarosa finds the altar vandalised; the surface split in two, Silas’s careful woodwork sprayed with the Anarchist symbol.

Sitting on the front steps of his church, smoking a hand-rolled cigarette, the young syndicalist woman. Denis. 

“Ain’t been me.”

Father Aringarosa, eyes narrow from the sun, gloved hands sunk deep in the pockets of his dark coat: “Does it matter, if you agree with whomever did this?”

“Can’t say I don’t.”

Aringarosa draws his gaze along the yard, then leans in, to pick up a few broken altar candles. “ God is my Father, even though he sends me suffering. He loves me tenderly, though he wounds me. And I, who follow His will, can I complain if I meet suffering along the way? For he is treating me like his son.” Briefly, his gaze arises toward the winter sun, before regarding the young woman again. “Don’t stop, by the way. Beat us, kill us, burn us. I believe the message it will send might not be what you think.”

“Yeah, right. Never met a Catholic who wasn’t a gigantic victim.” Her cheeks are round, her small fingers poking through fingerless gloves. “People don’t do stuff like this out of the blue. We’re trying to tell you, peacefully, that we want justice. That we want memory. And you just won’t listen.” The wind drags dry leaves along, swirling in an endless cycle. “Sometimes, you’re done being nice. You're pissed off. You gotta hit them with a hammer.”

A beat. “Fine, then. I’m listening.”

She rolls her eyes. “Oh yeah. Right. You’re—you’re all calm and trying to talk to me or whatever. Reaching out a hand to your aggressor. ‘ Can’t say we didn’t try! ’ But you see, Father, you’re not the victim. The victims are the ones who died here, who died all across this goddamn country, and are rotting in unmarked graves. Why are you so afraid of this being investigated? What do you have to hide? Do you know how many crimes of war were committed all over? How many families never got closure?” The ember of her cigarette burns, a controlled fire. “You’re protecting fascism.”

“I have no ideology,” Father Aringarosa says. “Only God is behind me.”

“Right. God and Franco from beyond the grave.” She pauses. “How’d you come to get this land? I saw your name on the contract. Did some digging, but nothing turned up. You haven’t worked at churches or universities around here. So how does the land go from Escudero, a fascist general from the Opus Dei, to some nobody priest from fuck-all country? You family?” A cock of her head, studying his lack of a reply. “Or Opus Dei? Not like you’d say, if you were.”

“You’d be wrong about that,” he says softly. “Yes, I came to it through the Work of God. But Mr. Escudero and I don’t have a common political agenda. In fact, there have been as many right-wing members of the Opus Dei as progressives—Anarchists, even.”

“As many? Bit of a stretch, isn’t it?” She rests her baby-round cheek on a fist. “I guess I don’t know anything about you, specifically. But it doesn’t matter. You can’t be neutral, here. Neutral is doing them a favour. The whole thing,” she gestures openly, “is rotten. You and your little cult friends are enabling this. If you wanna be neutral, drop this church and go back wherever you came from.”

Father Aringarosa considers that.

He turns his back on her, shifting his gaze through the yard in search for the makeshift pieces of a new altar. “I see you here,” he says, “coming in every day. Coming to protest like we attend Mass. You have an accent from the land, so I suppose that there's a hard-working family behind you. So you study in the afternoons, go to university. And you are at the head of a political protest. Do you do your best?” She does not answer; Father Aringarosa does not expect her to. “Work ethic is the spirit of the Opus Dei. It is there, in its name: the Work of God. You might be dismayed to hear that you and I are not, in fact, that different.” 

“Hey, you don’t know jack about me, so. Fuck off.”

Aringarosa goes about his business, not caring to look back as she storms down the path.

The wait comes to an end on a cold afternoon after All Saints day. He is comparing translations of the Gospel of St John, when the phone in Director Tifón's office rings.

“Aringarosa,” he answers into the receiver.

“Father. Here is Pérez Garrido.”

The fountain pen stops moving.

“I have made a decision. It has not been easy, but I am afraid I must disappoint you. The students got other worker syndicates to their side. My councillors are split on the matter, and I will vote no.”

“Well, well, well,” Aringarosa’s voice does not rise a notch. “I thought we had a deal.”

“No one is going to hold me accountable over a conversation we had,” Garrido says breathily. “I know you will say that my political enemies would find this anti-Christian…call it whatever you will, but I cannot betray my voters.”

Once he has hung up, Aringarosa rests the back of the pen on his lips. The ugly curtain flowers, purple-yellow-white, are burned into his eyesight.

He signals a cross; it is time to pray.

All the while, he smiles.

“I heard back from the Mayor,” he announces, later, to the men gathered in the common room. “I’m afraid the news is disheartening.”

Over his spectacles, Pisarello lifts his gaze from a crossword puzzle. Monteverdi gasps. Director Tifón scowls, long hands held over his lap. “Disappointing? How?” 

“The city is going to allow a preliminary study,” Aringarosa elaborates. “For us, this means that the contract is on indefinite hiatus, as they decide if the project will be stopped completely.”

Monteverdi, fists shaking at his sides. “That cannot be legal.”

“Well, it can if there is deemed to be something to document,” Father Aringarosa says. “But we are not all that sure that is the case, so I suppose we will have to bear with an even longer wait.”

Pisarello studies him, very quietly.

“So it could happen?” Monteverdi says. “It could still theoretically happen? Are…are we staying here while this unfolds?”

Aringarosa takes a moment. Tifón, sensing the tension, announces he is off to do his norms and leaves, closing the attic door.

“Amaro,” Father Aringarosa says, “there is no reason to worry. We can persuade them that this church will be built—it might just take longer than expected—and whenever that happens, we will notify you. But the living expenses, ah…that might be hard to justify in the long term.” 

Monteverdi’s mouth opens, but out comes no sound. “My–my organ. My Beckerath. Are we doing all that is in our power to build it? Why are you so calm?!”

“My son, I am as disappointed as you are. Let me think for a while longer.”

Monteverdi’s gaze trails from priest, to architect. From architect, to priest. In that moment, he looks like a lost boy.

Only when he leaves, the wooden door shaking in its hinges when he slams it shut, does Pisarello ask. 

“That…was it?”

“I’m thinking,” Aringarosa says. “It’s a delicate matter. Perhaps it is better, sometimes, to let things play out without intervention.” He looks at the stove, its blue butane flame. “Rest assured you will be kept on my payroll while they deliberate. What Monteverdi is doing here, he might as well do from Italy.”

Pisarello makes a noncommittal sound.

“What a shame. But I suppose,” he says, attention returning to whatever magazine he’s scribbling on, “If God has other plans, he will give us a sign of what he wishes.”

Father Aringarosa sinks on an armchair and into his read again. “That’s the spirit.”

Lightless dusk. Dark gives way to darker; one could barely tell blood from ink.

The dormant giant yawns. Year by year, she quivers as the wind grows cutting, as winter runs its course and coats her with a sigh of ice crystals, crystals which dig a little deeper, deeper every year. Oh, how her bones long for the warm summery swell; cycle after cycle, decade after decade, this slow, bittersweet decay.

Down the path, a low rumble. A roar of wheels on gravel, a flare of lights approaching, then snuffed out. 

It must be below zero; the woollen scarf grows cold and damp with his own breath. Stuck in his head, reeling, Bach’s Opus 582; he would so gladly have filled these halls with melodies, his words, which he carries everywhere and always.

But there are no notes here. Only the distant, wailing wind. Only the creaking, wooden panels of old—columns and flooring and stairs—acknowledging his presence at the site with a loll, with a hum.

Once through with his reconnaissance, he looks up at the western side. 

The symphonic organ.

Climbing up the stairs, each squeak is a chord.

“Good night, my friend,” he tells the manuals, his voice hoarse from the cold. The keys are bitten down, the console home to an infestation of termites. Probably, not one thread out of its thousand-plus is in place. Not one pipe will ever exhale again, no air breathed to sing into this sad titan’s lungs. 

And yet, Amaro di Monteverdi plays them. For an audience of many, for an audience of one. For God, if no one else is watching; this God of penance and pain could find it most pleasant, his performance tonight.

The melody is so worn that he doesn’t need to hear it.

The first passage, low, longing rumble of the pedals, fills the hallways of his mind. Perhaps this organ finds his Bach alarming, an intrusion; he feels the walls pulsating in agitation around him. Yet his gentle handling soothes it down. Amaro hums with the pulse of its heartbeat. 

Bach hid prayers in the melody. The cantilenas spell:

From God I want not to leave. 

From Heaven descended the Angel.

“Good night, good night, my friend.”

What is music if not frozen architecture? What are these notes if not swirls and wings ready for the takeoff, each a bit more elaborate, a bit more beautiful? This old giant is too simple, too worn, too trusting in its softness. So soft, in fact, that it has come to repulse Amaro; because what the world needs is space for the new, space for the reform, space away from these dying spasms of a century gone, and while it’s singing voiceless for one last time it’s eased into his trust so, that it hasn’t even noticed the hammer Amaro has snatched from the site, picking it up at the climax, plunging down on the manual, then on the stops, then on the wooden pipes, keys and levers coming apart without resistance as if they were waiting for someone to put them out of their misery.

And he thuds. And tears. And throws. How dare that priest want to send him away. How dare he strip Amaro of his newfound love and purpose.

They all will have this church, or no one will—the organ, crumbling around him —

No one.

The last variations he plays on the air, the stairs under his feet about to collapse from the pain and the betrayal of it all. Amaro dashes away, leaving a feather-thin mist in his wake; a pour of petrol, a spark of match in his hand, a butane-orange gift for the flames to lick patiently until it hisses, until it bursts, until for the last time this giant rises in flames and finds its grave in the night sky. No one can take it away from him, his limerent limelight, his beautiful Beckerath, his perfect Bach.

Chapter Text

It’s a catastrophe. 

It’s a miracle. 

The sky blazes orange well into the early morning; a cacophony of roaring sirens and helicopters. A column of thick smoke hisses and blurs into a pink, burning sky, until all that’s left is coal and a foul-smelling fog.

Underneath, ground zero. 

Their site. What used to be their site. 

Manuel’s nausea at the sight of a fire truck parked before the path, tinting the trees orange with its endlessly spinning light, has calmed. The hollow fist of shock squeezing his lungs has relaxed. It’s all washing over him now, a traitorous patter of raindrops dampening him head-to-toe, slowly numbing his senses.

Soundless and sooty under its thick helm, the rims of its eyes glistening pink, a face is talking to him.

“...still not able to determine the cause, but there was a gas canister half-melted underground, were you setting up any electrical—?”

Beacon lights flash blue and orange on the dispersing smoke, on the coal-black void that used to be their battered flooring, the wooden columns, the crumbled walls. All of it, a puff of nothingness. Only the vaulted arch of the entrance has survived, useless—thank Lord the fire has not taken more than its first destructive bites into the expanse of trees around it.

All that keeps ringing in his mind is a question.

Where will they hold Mass today?

Across from him, his small chapel, the stone charred dark.

Silas.

He has to keep Silas from seeing this.

Manuel’s feet spring into action. Yet as soon as he’s strolled away, a policeman blocks his way. “Sir. Father. Deputy Vidal, from the Civil Guard. We know each other from all that, all that ugly business with the protests. You were here to hold Mass?”

“I—” It takes a moment for Manuel to focus on the bearded face. Beard and moustache; the kind that, together with his black uniform, identifies Vidal as—at the very least—an ally of Christiandom by way of common enemies. “Yes. Pardon me, yes. What…what happened?”

“First responders have a couple of ideas. I’ve sent in my people to sweep through, take a look, some pictures.” The deputy keeps jotting down notes with gloved hands. “Pretty sure we will get to the bottom of this soon. Do the people, the people from your parish, who usually gather here—do they smoke?”

“I’m—” Manuel breathes in his answer. At once, he’s realising the weight of anything he might say; realising how careful he needs to be. “This was my church,” he says, letting some of the grief trickle into his voice.

Deputy Vidal sighs and nods, tipping his military hat. “I’m sorry, Father. Must be a lot.”

“Many obstacles have stood in our way,” Manuel whispers, “since the beginning. We have worked so hard.”

“Yeah. I hear you. Those anarchist bastards have given you a rough time.” Vidal scowls. Strolls away to speak, now to the firemen, then to a few of his officers, dispatching them to block the path. “Give us a few hours to do a little digging, rule if it was an accident. You think it was one?”

Manuel swallows, his throat thick with smoke. “You don’t?”

The first onlookers are starting to gather behind the police line. Among them, there’s the young syndicalist girl, entering the gravel path punctually for her protest. She drops her backpack, mouths, what the f—

Manuel’s gaze locks with hers for a moment. His eyes go narrow.

“You.”

In the corner of his vision, Deputy Vidal is sharply aware of this interaction. He turns to the young woman; she flinches, as if about to run.

“You, you, come ‘ere, missy. Let’s have a talk. Identify yourself, just for the record.”

Shaky, she scrambles her little ID card from the pouch at her waist. The deputy levels it with his eyes and scowls. “Ruiz, Denise. One of our usuals.”

“What—what happened?”

But another figure is dashing down the path, too fast for Manuel to react.

Silas. Aimed at her like an arrow. One second he staggers on the gravel path, slamming through the policemen’s raised hands and their bewildered protests; the next he’s bashed the kid to the ground.

Denise falls on her hands with a hollow grunt. Before thinking, Manuel has shoved himself in Silas’s way, against the brunt of Silas’s strength, attempting to repel him.

“Silas. Silas!” The angel is snarling, blind and deaf with rage. Until Manuel shouts at the top of his lungs, “ Silas! ”, and the red eyes lock on his own, flashing with recognition. 

“Fa…F-Father.” His mouth contorts with grief. “That demon—!”

“Silas, calm down! Look at me! Look at me.” Manuel holds Silas’s cheeks, acutely aware of the deputy’s ruthless eyes on them. “We preach forgiveness, my angel. If disgrace strikes we fall, we rise, we pray.” 

“I did nothing, you fucking psycho!” Comes the shout from behind them. Manuel turns to her in exasperation. “Why the hell would you—why the hell would I?! I didn’t—I didn’t want this to happen!”

Manuel points an accusing finger. “You. You did this. You did this with your words! How did you expect people to react to your pointed anti-Christianism? Hit them with a hammer?!” Manuel feels Silas collapsing, clinging to him, sobbing into his robe. And Manuel embraces him, knowing that Silas needs sadness more than he needs rage. He turns his back on Denise; nothing that stray child can say will console them now.

“I’m out,” she says. 

“Not so fast, missy. Do your people smoke? Do you bring anything to protest with, say, spray, Molotov cocktails? Hey, you—she's running!” There’s the sound of chasing, of boots stomping on gravel, of a lightweight body falling again. Manuel clutches his arm around Silas’s broad shoulders, almost wishing to keep him from seeing this, this display of humanity at its ugliest. 

“Father! Silas!” It’s Eneko’s voice, breathy from frenzying down the path. “Shit! Our stuff!” He can’t stop blinking, or combing a hand though his thick hair. Blurry figures gather behind the police line—Pablo, Amaro, Tifón. Manuel feels a division between the man he is, wrapped in Silas’s arms, and the priest he has to be.

For Saints transcend humanity with their patience, their temperance, their wisdom.

He kisses Silas’s forehead once more and runs a hand through the white hair…then pulls away. He has knelt down as Manuel, but rises as Father Aringarosa—arms open for his flock.

“Don’t be afraid, my children,” he shouts. “From the ashes we shall rise.”

Eneko has bent over, clutching his empty stomach. Gagging onto the grass. Aringarosa untangles himself from Silas’s pull and confronts Eneko. “Breathe, my child. Your materials and tools. They are all insured, yes? We will take care of this together.”

“It was okay just yesterday,” Eneko says, pale as the moon. “Just yesterday in the evening, we—”

“We have this. Okay?”

“But the church—our plans—”

“There’s a plan, my son. There always is.” Father Aringarosa places his hands on the man’s forearms, firmly. “The police need to work now. Come on. Let’s go.” 

Beyond the line, all the present look like they have shuffled out of bed and frenzied through their prayers. The shock has the Director pacing, while Pisarello talks with a policeman, near Amaro, who is shaking a policeman’s hand: “Thank you. Thank you so much.” In the morning grey, the battered remains of the church have emerged; splinters and mounds of charred stone, of iron melted. 

Silas stares at it, a look of utter defeat. As they join the rest, Father Aringarosa mutters, “Don’t look if you can’t.”

Amaro turns to Silas and hugs him. Aringarosa keeps answering the same questions. Yes, it happened sometime this night; no, they still don’t know the cause. There has been an arrest, maybe, an interrogation at least—Denise Ruiz is nowhere to be seen near the ruin—and they will need all the help they can gather to clean up, but first there needs to be time for grief, and trust put in the Lord, in His truth coming to light. 

Director Tifón, nodding toward the police line. “Did you talk with the Guard?”

“Not quite,” Father Aringarosa says. “I reckon they still have a way to go.”

The Director’s knuckles are white from grasping his own forearms. “We are behind on our daily Mass and prayers. Perhaps we are still in time to have it at the Cathedral, in case you want to stay here for longer.”

“We can do that. Drive in with the rest already. Hold a Circle, maybe. I would like a moment.”

Silas rushes to Father Aringarosa and addresses him in French, his voice shaky, his eyes damp. “I’m not leaving without you.”

There’s a beat. A faltering, almost.

Aringarosa holds up a thumb and caresses a cross across Silas’s forehead. “You are the starkest and purest of us all. You want to stay here, at the foot of the Cross, as John and Mary did. But this is not the Crucifixion. Give yourself rest, my child.”

The last words of support and counsel vanish in the wind, as one by one, the numeraries leave this impromptu funeral site.

The last one Aringarosa talks to is Pisarello.

“Come here, Pablo. It’s time.”

Priest and architect, both silently, follow the cars with their gazes as they snake down the road. The last visit doesn’t take long to announce itself with another, subtler roar of the motor, the only brand-new Opel which Father Aringarosa has seen around, slowing down to a halt.

The Mayor, Pérez Garrido, steps down from his carriage and takes off his sunglasses. Besides them, only the police cars are parked at the scene anymore. The beacon lights turn his face blue, or smoke-grey, cadaveric grey.

Garridi strolls toward the police line. Looks from the site, to Aringarosa, then back at the site. From behind the fog, debris and collapsed stones make for a desolate landscape. In the distance, officers take pictures of the path and its scrambled mix of footprints. 

Finally, with a voice as fickle as never before, Garrido spits out, “What does this mean?”

“An end.” Aringarosa clasps his hands. “Or a new beginning.”

Garrido, bitterly. “Or an awful coincidence, don’t you think?”

“No, Sir,” Aringarosa says. “I don’t believe in coincidences.”

“I agree. No coincidences. No crimes of war to investigate if there is no site.”

“What are you implying? My church has been subjected to a campaign of harassment and vandalism by the only side in this debate with a penchant for fire. But…who knows. This could have been an accident, too.” He raises an eyebrow, as well as his voice. “Do you think it was an accident, Pisarello?”

The architect, between swigs of his thermos, hums. “It’s difficult to say.”

“Why would the students burn this church?” Garrido’s voice is trembling, short of cracking. “They wanted to investigate it.”

“Anger often doesn’t obey reason,” Aringarosa says. “Maybe it was only their incendiary words that ignited someone else’s rage.”

“You—why—” The Mayor’s fist tightens around his sunglasses, and he points them at Father Aringarosa, the accusation turned on him. “You are the only beneficiary of this monstrosity. The only way for you to go through is if this is ruled an accident. Which…even if the students take the blame…it won’t—”

“It will.” The gentleness is gone from Aringarosa’s voice. “And the moment it does, you will quietly approve of our new building plans with no further protests.”

Aringarosa reaches an expectant palm out to Pisarello. For a moment, the Architect hesitates…but then, he reaches for an inner pocket of his sport jacket; for a small, rectangular object, which he drops on Aringarosa’s outstretched palm. 

His pocket recorder.

Rewind. Click.

“I do not own this land; God does. And God has friends all across the North. I assure you that, with our Work behind you, an eventual electoral campaign at a state level would not be a problem.”

Garrido’s voice. “Fine, Father. You make some valiant points.”

Rewind. Click.

Unmistakable in the clean silence of a restaurant at the upper quartier. “You have seen the streets of this beautiful city; how much we are doing to renew it and rebuild it. Sometimes I would prefer to look to the future, leave the past in the past. However difficult it may be.”

“Name a sum that would make it easier, then.”

“Heh…yes. Yes, let me think about that, Father.”

“The Opus Dei will thank you.”

“Say, who do you think will find this more interesting?” Aringarosa asks, finger over the Play button like a trigger. “Your voters? Or your political rivals?”

The present Garrido sounds very different to that genial, smirking voice in the recording. He sounds wheezy, the king fallen from his horse. “This must be a joke.” He swallows. “Give me that tape right now.”

“Here.” Aringarosa presses the recorder’s lid to open it, the thumb-sized rectangle so inoffensive inside. “Take it. Do you honestly think it’s the only copy?”

The Mayor slumps his shoulders. A castle of cards, crumbled. “You bastards of the Opus Dei. I should have never, never once—”

“Are you Opus Dei, Pablo?” 

The architect shakes his head.

“No…” Aringarosa, mock thoughtful, hands him the tape recorder again. “So, if I were you, Mayor of Oviedo, I would go back to that city that is papered with your face. Leave the Church to the Church and the State to the State.” A new smile spreads on his lips. “As it should be.” 

“Well, told you. Told you they were church-burners.” Over the phone receiver, there comes a long, drawn sigh, and Manuel can almost smell the Marlboro.

The weight of the day, this string of risky moments, is heavy on his eyelids; all he wants to do is rest. Yet, this conversation has proved to be easier than envisioned, with Isabel staying level-headed, far from upset.

“I see what you mean, about this being a new opportunity, Manuel,” she says, almost casually. “I suppose the architect still has some of the old plans?”

“Hmm.” Manuel thinks back to the long mornings in the chapter room: the multiple plans, models, potential shapes that the church could have taken. Could still take. 

But it is still too soon to think about that; they may have escaped an investigation by the skin of their teeth, but they’re about to fall into the next, which could be the beginning of a tedious instruction if found to be a criminal case. Manuel doesn’t feel half the confidence in this manoeuvre that Father Aringarosa did, in front of Garrido. 

Here is where Isabel Forns’ net of contacts, in the law and its enforcers, by way of her work and husband, comes in handy. 

“You are utterly right, Isabel,” he says, preemptively. “But first, we need a piece of print that says this was an accident. Could you send an expert report my way?”

Crisp burn of the cigarette. The sound of a seat creaking paints a clear mental picture: Isabel, leaning back on her throne and flicking the ashes. “Of course. But do the police want to listen?”

“The deputy in charge looks like an ally. Officers usually are. But…he might be too eager to put the reds in handcuffs.” Manuel toys with the ring between his fingers. “I think he might've arrested the girl already.”

“Without charges?” Isabel clucks her tongue. “No. They’re holding an interrogation, tops. Or, if there’s provisional proof enough to suspect her affiliation to a terrorist group, she could remain isolated for up to seventy-two hours without bail.”

“A terrorist group…” Manuel sighs, dehydration pounding in his temples. An accurate descriptor, that is probably not; but, if the police can spin it like that, she has probably caused enough trouble. “I don’t know if…”

He trails off, suddenly.

“Isabel,” he says. “Interrogating? They could interrogate and detain her for three days without solid proof? What if she confesses?”

“A confession?” Isabel scoffs. “You think, Father?”

He has no time to piece together what she’s implying. Manuel has already swiped a pen from the Director’s desk to jot down notes, an amalgam of scattered details he can remember from the morning, now incredibly distant, full of noise and smoke.

“A confession? You think so, Father?”

Kitchen towel held to the receiver as if to keep the voices from spilling, Director Tifón scowls. A woman’s words always feel wrong, out of place, ringing in this space where the two sexes were never meant to mingle.

But the priest is talking to her, and no communication with the exterior takes place away from the Director’s attention. No envelope, sent or received, leaves his desk without a slice shaved off by his letter opener. No call or conversation takes place away from his keen ear.

This Centre, this house, is an organism; its inhabitants, red blood rushing through the corridors of its veins. Living systems have evolved to function without consciousness to a certain point, and so the Centre breathes, the Centre’s heart beats, it sheds and assimilates and dreams, without the need of thought directing the action.

The Director may have a given name, but in truth, if you tore him open as he used to do his subjects, you’d find him full to the brim with thought, with rank, with cortex; his role is to regulate the deeper impulses that grow in the dark. This system depends on him to figure out in which places sickness might be growing, and what the proper course of action is. In another life, he was set to be a surgeon. Fate, written deep in his genome—printed deep in a twisted string of protein—decided otherwise. Specifically, it was a tremor in his hands, exacerbated by medication and inherited from a dead uncle.

Dr. Tifón never felt robbed of purpose. It was not his to begin with. 

Over the telephone, Aringarosa and the female have hurriedly said goodbye. Sitting in the shadows of the common room, Director Tifón lays his own receiver to rest.

A priest, of course, cannot be contradicted. Rules don’t apply to a priest the way they do others.

Especially not to this priest, it seems.

The Director has a hunch, a spike of icy suspicion lodged in his larynx. As a child, he used to spend his days collecting leaves, sticks, bugs, maybe one or the other frog if he was lucky; to put them where he could index and observe. How many hours until decay? How many years until reduction? Thus he’d deduce the laws of nature, step by cautious step.

In the Centre, a process of induction takes place; the laws are given, they were dictated by God and the Founder, and the parts of this organism must adapt like a patient medicated. He knows the language needed to read them. He detects, corrects malfunction.

Brother Silas…there’s something very other in that man, something that Father Aringarosa seems to think comes from Heaven. Although the Director cannot assert if that’s valid, cannot compare and contrast, he isn’t imbecilic enough to think that he holds all the answers.

But perhaps…perhaps.

A confession…you think so, Father?

Perhaps that woman, that forsaken rib of Adam, has intuited what the Director already knows by cold logic.

That the only beneficiaries of this “accident” are they. The Work.

Carefully, on bare feet, the Director slides out of the dark room and down the stairs. He finds Aringarosa in the kitchen; under a cabinet, a lone electric light casts a halo behind him. 

From the threshold, the Director watches Aringarosa take a spoonful of honey and…hesitate. He does not lift it to stir inside his tea. Instead, he holds it upside-down in the jar, watches it leak back drop by slow drop.

Aringarosa then turns around, looking in the eye, as if he’d been expecting this visit. 

“Good evening.” He looks at the dinner table, now empty of food or cutlery, only decorated with a small laced cloth and cacti. And, like a secret message, a folded piece of paper. “Pray tell, did you hold a Circle today?”

Vicente shakes his head.

“Tomorrow, then,” Aringarosa says. “First hour.”

With a fingertip, Aringarosa slides the note over the tabletop. Vicente takes it, scowls. The handwriting is disciplined and clean.

He sees notes amounting to a coherent story—a false one.

“Are these…things that were found at the scene?”

“We must spread this message,” Aringarosa says, the softest non-answer. “We should not contemplate this opportunity for too long, or we will lose it.”

“Lying to the police is a great favour to ask.”

“I am not asking.” In the dark, Aringarosa’s eyes glint yellow from the lamplight—a house cat glimpsing prey, its dormant instinct now wide awake. “The Opus Dei prizes achievement above anything else. If we can facilitate achievement with our actions, why shouldn’t we?”

The Director contemplates that. In the Centre—in the centre of this pulsating, living being, in this position which finally has given him meaning, he is not sure what to answer. 

“Jacob tricked his father into giving him God’s blessing by disguising his hands as his brother’s,” Father Aringarosa continues. “He did it because he knew that there is a right and a wrong—that many ends justify the means. You are an intelligent man, Vicente, a leader. Leaders don’t wait for the truth to come to light; we make the truth.”

Chapter Text

This dreary night, Silas spends awake, in a stupor, wrapped in cold shivers and sweat; inhabiting a space he’s visited time and time again—after each explosive fit of the man he’d called a father; after each brawn that ended with him beating another scrawny soul within an inch of their lives; after each day he’d spent a ghost, a dead self, an asphyxiating taste of rust.

It’s something else, now. Arson. Not by him, but in spite of him, of the safety he so desperately has tried to find in this house of masks. Debasement. Disgrace. The erratic hand of fate determined to tear the world from under his feet again.

Day and night are indistinct with the blinds shut. For hours he lies awake, paralysed, cilice clinging to his thigh. It has bit him at the wrong angle, the wound wetter than usual—hot pain growing under his muscles, spilling on his bedsheets. Half of Silas’s body is numb, but absurdly, in the throes of his insomnia, the other half is alit with craving; a need for touch, for comfort, only magnified by this despair; a need for the Father’s words flowing out like the sweetest wine, there in the Pyrenees, when they still got lost in each other’s gazes. Silas fights these memories with his prayers—that I might mind the things of Heaven, and not the things of Earth—and focuses on the cilice; even a flicker of desire has the potential to ignite ecstasy and then see him plunge into the abyss, but it’s been weeks since he last succumbed, letting those warm thoughts and images flow freely in his mind and turn into sensuality, a lie, lie, lie, a story that the cunning animal tells itself to parse this mockery of love.

(Except he can’t help but hoping—he can’t help but believing—)

Long, agonising hours he struggles between bouts of grief and desire, each a spear jabbing into flesh, a flame licking away at paper-thin skin. Sometimes, he wants to get carried away to burn in the deserts of Hell. Sometimes, he wants to smoulder until all that’s left are ashes.

Blinking. Awake.

Thoughts tether together.

Serviam—serviam—

Piercing ache on his thigh.

He fell asleep. Never got it off, the cilice.

Silas’s hand quivers over the entwined metal, his limbs so cold, so numb, foreseeing the pain. When he pinches the buckle and peels it off, bits of wet tissue come off where the wound tried to heal overnight. 

Silas bends over himself, mouth gaping open, lungs full of a silent scream. 

Blood drops on the wooden floor.

This mess won’t clean itself.

A little late with his prayers, Silas exits his room to a house which feels very different: colder, quieter. In the kitchen, two burned bread slices peek out from the toaster, as if someone had started fixing breakfast then left in a hurry. Hunger and nausea burn a hole in his stomach.

He staggers upstairs, toward the circle room. Upon entering, he’s startled. Nine people, all of the house’s other inhabitants, are sitting there. A meeting that no one cared to invite him for.

Unable to put this alienation into words, he simply says, “Good morning.”

The Father looks up immediately and smiles. Silas smiles back on reflex, then  seeks his brothers’ faces; Amaro, at the Director’s right, watches his own fingers; the Architect looks like he lacks sleep, the circles under his eyes deepened. Eneko doesn’t look up, only lifts his palm. “Hey.”

“I am glad to have cleared this up,” Father Aringarosa announces, standing up. He places a hand on Silas’s forearm to guide him back out. “Come here, my son.”

The rest avoid Silas’s eye as if he’d said something terrible. For a split second, he wonders if he has.

But the Father’s touch eclipses that thought. Silas welcomes his guidance, leans into his frame; at every step, the injury on his thigh flutters.

“We were discussing the police’s involvement in this investigation,” Father Aringarosa says.

Silas sharpens.

Once upon a time, a ghost had some run-ins with the law. Most of them, he had escaped by the skin of his teeth, but they spawned a lifelong distrust. Getting caught once had been more than enough to confirm his worst fears. It had gotten him thrown into the youth detention centre where he’d awaited trial; and later, freshly sixteen, into his own claustrophobic, desolate fortress.

Silas hasn’t recalled those stills for quite some time. Images from a dreamscape, from another life indeed…yet the threat they pose is as solid as bone. This foreboding is turning into an ill omen. His eyes swell with tears.

“There is nothing to fear.” Father Aringarosa is his safe haven; he switches to French, now, soft and soothing. “Deputy Vidal, the man we talked to at the site, is going to be visiting us today. He is not an enemy, Silas…but, nonetheless. We must make sure that we don’t endanger you or any of your brothers. But especially you.”

“Me? But…why?”

“Trust me, my son. It will all make sense in time.” He pauses. “Please, let’s speak French. And address only me, not the officers. Understood?”

Silas nods keenly. Addressing the Father is probably the only way he’ll manage to speak a word in front of policemen, knowing that they are observing them, weighing them.

He lets the Father guide him to the dining table; over the tablecloth, there’s two cacti, the tips of their leaves dry and curled inward.

That is where they receive the policemen, too; no visitors are allowed further up than the ground floor.

The Deputy is a moustached bloodhound with a permanently disappointed air about him. Another, bigger man with a lesser uniform, whose name Silas doesn’t catch, is chewing on a toothpick. The noise immediately worms its way into Silas’s inner ear.

“Good morning, Father,” the Bloodhound says. “And your name, Sir…”

“Brother Silas,” the Father answers. “If you don’t mind, officers, I will translate for him. He has only lived in Spain for short of two years, and we would like to avoid any type of misunderstanding.”

“Oh.” The two policemen look at each other. Toothpick chews. Chews. Chews. “Fine. Should be fine. We’re only here to clear up a few details. Nothin’ big.”

Once he’s taken a seat, Silas rests his hands, big and white, on the wooden table. In the periphery of his vision, the Bloodhound’s pen moves over his notebook.

“So,” he says, “as I understand, you two are new in Oviedo. Obviously, you, Father, came here to oversee the project, but,” the pen turns to Silas, “what about you?”

Silas waits for the translation, then answers in French. “I came to Oviedo with you, Father. Because I wanted to stay close to you. My shepherd.”

Father Aringarosa takes a heartbeat to respond. “He…I asked him to. Silas and I met in Núria, where I was a vicar. He helped me every day for close to two years. That’s how he joined the Work, too; we were tasked by the Prelature of the Opus Dei to build this church.”

“Huh.” The pen scribbles. “When you say you are tasked by the Prelature, what does that mean? You’re Opus Dei?”

Silas hesitates. “Um…”

“Oh, if you’ll permit me,” Father Aringarosa says, “that just refers to the status of the Opus Dei, the chain of responsibility, so to speak. We are not quite a religious order, but not quite laich. Our Founder and some of our membership, such as myself, are priests, but the vast majority of the membership is comprised by laymen. Every Christian who takes their Faith seriously is welcome to join the Work.” He smiles. “Because of its special status, our vicar general is directly overseen by the Pope.”

“You kiddin’ me? The Pope?” Toothpick barks. “The Pope wants you to build the church?”

“So to speak,” Father Aringarosa answers patiently.

Silas peers at the Bloodhound. The corners of his mouth are downturned, unreadable. “So you are staying here. With other people of this…religious order, or…”

Toothpick interrupts. “Why aren’t the rest dressed like monks?”

The Father gives Silas time to think about his answer, to calm down from his instinctive reaction to the large man’s booming voice. “I took on the habit at the Valley of Núria,” Silas answers. “I was not a part of the Work yet. This is all…it is part of a whole, my religious journey. My other brothers have found God in vastly different ways.”

The Bloodhound darts up and down from his notes as he hears the translation. “That’s all very nice, but the first time we were alerted to potentially violent protests outside of your site was…”

The toothpick, pin-pointing. “September. Twelfth.”

“The twelfth. Throughout the next weeks, we met a few times again. But I never once heard a word about the Opus Dei. Why didn’t you say you’re a part of it?”

“Ain’t that a secret society?”

“Sounds secretive to me.”

Silas leans back in his seat, his thigh half frozen and half burning. He glances at the Father. “Why does it matter?” 

“My angel, don’t forget your manners.”

“What should I say to that, Father? Are we hiding something?” Intensified by pain, the irritation he felt at the Colt’s slander comes back. “Does the profane world want to know our practices? Do you expect swine to understand human speech? I have nothing to hide; the truth of God is light. Sooner or later, it too shall prevail.”

Father Aringarosa takes a deep breath. “What Silas means is that all the forces of change in history have been controversial. All of them have found strong opposition, and have been accused of the unthinkable. The baseless claims made about us come from all sides of the political spectrum: Falangists, Communists, Anarchists, all that’s in between; but we are bringing doctrine and values to this society. All we want was to do our Work in peace.”

Toothpick smirks. “I see. That why you attacked that girl when you saw her? Because of opposition?”

“The garbage colt. The very moment I saw her, I knew it, deep in my soul,” Silas hisses. “She wanted to burn us. I have no doubt.”

“Silas,” the Father says, then softens, “like all of us, is tired of the campaign of persecution that we have been subjected to by that anti-Spanish, anti-Christian woman. That being said, there is no proof that anybody intentionally burned our church. Or is there, officers?”

Silas stares at the dying cactus, his own hands dry and roughened from the work outside. A protest rising within, but he knows to keep it silent.

“You are too understanding with those little shits,” Toothpick says. There’s a beat, an exchange of glances between him and the Hound. “Sorry, Father.”

“About that,” the Bloodhound says, “Father, you said that on the morning of the sixth, you went to the site to prepare your usual Mass, is that right? How’s that work?”

“Every day, we do our morning prayers separately. Some of us are tasked with bringing the Sacrament from our little chapel, here in the house…”

“The Sacrament, that’s…?”

“The box where we keep the hosts. And wine, for the Eucharist. Many of us fast before Mass, so we hold it relatively early in the morning, at about eight.” He smiles, tired from watering everything down to these laymen’s terms. For the first time since they arrived, Silas notices the soft wrinkles in the corners of his eyes; and the way his face has gotten thinner from fasting, sunken cheeks and pale skin, the Work taking its toll on him too. “Some numeraries have jobs that they need to get to afterward. Others bring in the things we need for Mass—candles, the stove to heat up. Some replacement cans of gas, too.”

Silas keeps his head down through the Father’s lie.

“Oh, I see.” The Hound nods, all the while making notes. “Last question—just for the record. Where were you on the night of the fifth?”

Silas fixates on Toothpick. Who chews. Chews. Chews.

“I was here, in the house,” he says. “I did my nightly routine of prayer and mortification, and then I went to bed.”

“Silas consulted me for a tutorial that evening,” the Father says, and Silas’s mouth contorts, almost trembling. “We spoke about spirituality until late, and then he went off to sleep. Let me tell you, officers, these stairs creak quite a lot. If a big man like Silas had climbed up or down in the early hours of the morning, someone would have heard him.”

Throughout the next hours, Director Tifón lingers at the top of the stairs, pacing, keenly listening in on the conversations that take place downstairs. Some bits and pieces of the exchanges, he does catch; but never significantly, nor fully.

The control over this house is slipping from his hands. Sickness, madness. Maybe. Or a rebellious phase.

When an animal grapples with domination, there’s nothing left to do but insist. 

Eneko is done with his interview downstairs; his heavy steps creak up the staircase until, safe from any indiscreet glances, the Director regards him.

Without needing a signal, Eneko knows to follow him into the office, yellowed paper and wood.

“So?” 

“Yes,” Eneko says, scratching the side of his two-day stubble. “I told them everything you and Father Aringarosa said we should.”

“That’s a good start,” the Director says, some sourness creeping into his tone. “Tell me. Word for word. What did you say?”

“Uh, they asked me a few things about the house, and about the Opus Dei, and about how Mass works. No idea why. I told them that we were working on the electrical installations, although anybody who took a look there would see it’s not true—”

“Irrelevant.”

“—and heating up with a stove, since the days have grown cold. When they asked if we had stored gas cans there to heat up, I said yes.” He shrugs his broad shoulders.

“What else?”

“Um…you know. How we usually hold Mass, at what time we start. If I heard or saw anything unusual the day before. If I think that the anarchists did it. What do we have to hide, Vicente?” The question catches the Director off-guard. “Was…was it…one of us? Is this why we’re forced to lie?”

The Director darts back at him, at his smug sun-browned face, and he’s never wanted to slap anybody else harder in his life. “Go pray the norms, Eneko.”

“I can’t imagine—”

“Now.”

Once alone, the Director glues himself to the window again. It’s incredible how autumn has changed the landscape in the span of a few hours, and how little he’d noticed—until he started crushing acorns and seeds under his feet, and needing to wipe the yellowed leaves, the muck in the rain, decay, decay everywhere, decay deep in his house.

An evolving climate, the change bringing out a hidden facet of this land.

Outside, movement catches his eye. Silas and Father Aringarosa, walking together. Hand in hand, almost. Mouthing off in French to each other, God knows what about.

Indeed, Silas doesn’t even seem to take a step without Aringarosa's approval. But the Director does not trust him. He doesn’t trust anything he can’t classify.

“Vicente.” From the door to his office, Amaro di Monteverdi draws his attention. So agile, that the Director has not heard him breeze up the stairs.

“Hello, Amaro,” the Director says, gesturing for him to take a seat. “So. How was it? Are you okay?”

“I am. Mostly, they wanted to know the things you and the Pater predicted,” Amaro answers. He proceeds to recount a conversation similar to Eneko’s; at some point, he follows the Director’s gaze toward the medical cabinet, and from there to the butterfly case, taking some time to examine the pinned specimens. “Vicente…don’t you think that Father Aringarosa seems to be taking this situation with a lot of stride?”

The Director contemplates that, its implications. He grabs one of the pens on his desk and twirls it between his fingers.

He must be a leader; an example.

For, in the works of the Founder, betrayal of a superior is betrayal of God, of Jesus Christ, of the Work. And so, as he speaks, he clears his thoughts.

“The truth, Amaro,” the Director says, “is that the Opus Dei always has prized achievement. It is our duty to do the best we can, in all facets of our lives…and right now, our goal is to build that church.” He joins his fingertips above his desk. “An investigation, however well-intentioned, will be an obstacle. Father Aringarosa understands that, and so do I; there’s nothing else to say.”

He stands up. Outside, the pair has disappeared. Folie a deux? Or does Silas have a brutal, rogue side to him? A madness, unchecked? 

Another acorn has fallen from a tree, plunged against the window sill.

In many ways, sickness shows the weakest links of a system. But it's nothing chronic; it can be cured. 

“If you wish to renew your vows in May, the priests of the Opus Dei will be much like directors to you. You shouldn’t speak wrongly of Manuel.”

“Oh.” The boy sounds sad at once. Unripe; of course he is, the newest addition, ingested but not quite assimilated. “I’m quite sorry, Director. Perhaps I should not voice all the thoughts I have.”

“You are forgiven. I’ll leave the choice of confessing to you.”

Some time later, the Director has bled out every minute detail about Amaro’s conversation with the police and sent him off. The last set of steps that climb the staircase are lean and relaxed.

Pablo Pisarello approaches the office, then takes a seat across from the Director and crosses one leg wide over the other. He is not quite part of the family—and has a strident choice of colour to wear, a faint yellow reminiscent of chicks—but, nonetheless, he has understood the assignment.

“Oh, it was a very informal interview,” Pisarello says, his accent openly South American. “They were interested in the timeline and the project’s history.” Absently, Pisarello fiddles with the objects on the Director’s desk: with pen caps, and sharpeners, and safety pins. “I have the feeling that…something changed when I told them the name Escudero. That’s the man who originally commissioned me to design this, as you know, before Manuel took over.”

The Director cocks an eyebrow. “What changed?”

“Their attitude.” Pisarello piles up one object on top of the other, amounting to a small sculpture. “They asked me what I think about Manuel after working with him these past weeks.”

The Director swallows. Pain in his throat, an incoming cold.

“Well?”

“He is not a scrupulous man; his methods are not for the faint of heart. You’ll have to come to terms with that too, Vicente. But he had nothing to do with the burning.”

“Are you sure?”

“Yes.” Pablo smiles, although his eyes are puffy, as if he had been grieving. “He was as smitten with that church as I was.” 

Deputy Vidal knows that the brain can play tricks on people. For example, just from his father’s storytelling—which has gotten emptier, redundant, less coherent with time—he has adopted memories which aren’t his own. Namely, the times of war; he hadn’t been born yet, and yet he can smell the gunpowder, see the abandoned trails, feel the uneasiness running rampant after the uprising, knowing that the city may have been conquered but the lands around it were infested.

In his makeshift recollection, as solid as if he had seen them, he pictures the signs of caution Dad told him about: 

“Us” and “Them”. Words marking territories in the roads around Oviedo.

After this long workday, Vidal does not quite know which category these people of the Opus Dei fall under: friend or foe, grey or red, good or bad. Certainly, some of them have a spark in their eyes which he has only ever seen in dangerous people. Certainly, some of these people are in his own line of work.

Making their way back to the patrol car, their boots sinking into the muddy path, Núñez grunts around his toothpick. “You know what’s odd about all this?”

“What.”

“Of all the times we’ve been there by the church, up and down, chasing anarchists…I believe I’ve never once seen a goddamn gas can.”

Vidal nods solemnly. But, again, he knows the brain can play tricks on people; for example, what he remembers of French in school must be pretty wrong, otherwise he’d swear the priest was feeding them a load of shit.

However, on the day of, Vidal was among the first responders. The albino, the way he reacted to the burning…that was not feigned.

He gives Núñez a shrug. “What’s on paper matters. No reason to keep digging. We ain’t going to be throwing any anarchists in jail anytime soon.”

Núñez seems disappointed. “But why?”

Vidal opens the glove compartment for a pack of Pall Malls, which he offers to Núñez before taking one himself. The last look he throws over at the house is a little bit grudging. Behind two yellowing trees, the facade is white; if all houses have a face, he thinks this one is smiling.

But it’s been a long day. He’s got his wife and kids to get back to, a warm dinner ready for him.

He lights up his cigarette, takes one deep drag. “I’m gonna tell you only once,” he says. “Anybody named Escudero says this was an accident, then it was an accident.” He waits for a reply that doesn’t come. “Anybody named Escudero shoots a little old lady, you better note down that little old lady was up to no good. Aye?”

“Aye.”

The show is over.

Sure enough, just a few days later, someone’s slapped an independent report on their desk confirming the accidental fire.

Chapter Text

The last street lamp flickers on, phantasmal in the fog. Manuel snuggles into the woollen scarf around his neck. Through its glass panes, partially opaque, the central police station tells stories of tedious and endless bureaucracy; outside, mist has dampened the streets, turning them silver.

A glance at his watch reveals that it’s past midnight.

“Come on,” he mutters to nobody. Every passing car, fleeting lights gliding on cobblestones, kindles a hope in him; by not pulling over, they shove him back into a state of wait and vague annoyance, which only sharpens when a figure in black hurries through the revolving door.

She still wears the same worn hoodie as the last time Manuel saw her, on the day of. Her backpack is flung over a slouched shoulder, full of patches with images and slogans; most ominously, the red-gold-purple flag of the Spanish Republic.

Upon seeing him, the syndicalist Denise Ruiz stops on her scrawny legs. The smoky make-up around the eyes is smeared from crying.

“The hell are you doing here.”

Good question.

He’d hoped not to see her.

Manuel turns away from her sorry sight. The nearest telephone booth is a diffuse beacon in the mist.

“Did you call anybody to pick you up?”

“No change.” Her teeth clatter. “I’ll get the bus.”

“Nonsense. You’d have to wait until the morning. I was able to get hold of your brother.”

“What? How?”

“Ever heard of the Yellow Pages?” he snaps back. Considering the state of the country today, Manuel wouldn’t let a girl wander alone like that, at these hours, if she were family…that, and there is a below-zero chance that she'd trust him. “He’s on his way.”

She buries her face in her gloved hands and spits out, “Motherf–”

“A simple thank you would suffice.”

Still, Manuel is clutching a paper bag with the last couple of sandwiches he was able to haggle for at a local bakery right before closing. He hands it out to Denise, holding it away from himself as if it were trash. “Here. Eat.”

She growls. “What the hell are you playing at? You just had me sit for two days in jail—”

“I’m sorry,” Manuel says hastily. “I accused you. I know. I wasn't thinking that they—” Around them, service cars are parked, with some agents smoking and chatting within their eyesight. “By all accounts, it seems this was accidental. And, even if it hadn’t been…you couldn’t cause it directly. You’d need a motivated person. A person who was thinking clearly while they set my church on fire.”

For a moment, both of them just stand away from each other, breathing clouds into the mist.

Denise snatches the bag away from him. It rustlers as she fishes out some of the dry bread and reluctantly bites into it.

He sighs. “It’s good that you didn’t admit to it.”

“Bitch,” she says through a mouthful, “it wasn't me.”

“Good lord, Denise. Your manners.”

“No one’s called me like that for years. You don’t know jack about me.”

Manuel takes a deep breath. “Nonetheless. False confessions do happen. I know that what they put you through in the last forty-eight hours mustn't have been easy to bear.”

“Bit of an understatement there,” Denise says. When Manuel squints at her again through the mist, she’s glaring back, eyes fiery between greasy strands of hair. “Look, this sucks for you and your cult buddies. I didn’t want it to happen either. I didn’t. But you’re not gonna talk me out of anything. Your church is gone, then we’ll protest its ashes. You’re not gettin’ away with this. Everyone will know who you are and where you come from.”

“So they shall,” he whispers. “They’ll call you church-burners, they’re doing so already. Do you think I’m afraid of you? Do you think these accusations are new? Continue flinging them our way, please. We will turn the other cheek. You won’t change us. And you won’t change them.” He pauses. “That idiot Garrido and the people of his party are pawns. They may act like they’re throwing you a bone, but in the end you’ll always be different, lesser to them. Unless you dress and talk like them. Unless you sit at their tables, and show them you can play their game.” His voice is hoarse from the mist. “You can’t show them what you’re really like. They’ll use it against you.”

Denise watches him, frowning. Probably not wondering about what he is telling her, but about the why. And Manuel damns himself—for being right—for talking from experience at this child who will never listen.

“I’m not going anywhere,” he says. “There is Work to do, and more projects to push forward in Oviedo. We will build. If the people in Rome want it, we may open a conference centre here. Maybe another house, women only. So. Do it. Kill us and we’ll be martyrs. Waste your time with more protests. I’m not afraid.”

“Whatever.” She rolls herself a cigarette, but her hands are shaky, dropping paper and filter and tobacco to the ground in turns. “I won’t do any of that. I’m not putting any women at risk.”

Manuel scoffs. Hitting them with a hammer has its limits. “Be my guest.”

“Women only. Whoa. What a blast.” She grins around the white filter of her cigarette, as if needing some blasphemies to compensate for the previous, small display of compassion. “Carpet munching all day, eh?”

Whatever she means, it shouldn’t matter. He shouldn’t let it irritate him, being talked at like this. This openly. This brazenly. It shouldn’t.

“Look at yourself,” she says. “Why’s your God mind what others do? Doesn’t he have more important stuff to care about?”

Near them, a Cabrio pulls down to a halt, its intermittent lights clicking on and off. A young man steps down from it, boot plunging directly into a puddle of water. “Denis!”

Manuel watches Denise run to the man and hug him, the cigarette falling to the ground. The same mouse-brown curls, the same nose. There’s a hurried thank you from the man, but Manuel has no desire to stay there, and only waves a half-hearted goodbye. She’s managed to grate him, stirring the same loathsomeness he felt hearing Monteverdi’s music for the first time. A feeling green, green as sin.

A grey Thursday morning greets Director Tifón in the attic. One by one, his numeraries arrive—some still mumbling their prayers—and take a seat in the shape of a Circle.

Silas is among the first; worn, wooden rosary hanging from his girdle. The Director acknowledges him with a smile, trying to instil words into it. You are ill, my brother . Your desire and anger got ahold of you and drove you to madness. But, if you truly wish to be cured, here we are.

“These are uncertain times,” the Director says, clasping his hands together, once they’ve all taken a seat. “In our country, in our city…in our hearts themselves. We often talk of Christianity as a fight: it is not without reason that the Bible refers to believers as soldiers of Christ. But the Master Escrivà thought that the battle takes place, first and foremost, within ourselves. What better way to put it into perspective than by talking about Holy Purity?”

Discomfort ripples through the room. There’s shifting in the seats, and arms crossed, and gazes dropped. The only one who doesn’t seem to falter is Amaro, chin held high; proud in his newfound principle, his vows still fresh.

“There’s no reason to feel uncomfortable,” the Director says. “Very often—especially in times of uncertainty—our brain, this imperfect organ, will try to find peace in the wrong places. It will keep itself busy with banal pleasures, or with fantasies where everything is perfect. It will, perhaps, come to the wrong conclusion: tempting us with fleeting gratification and violence. We do not listen. We stay clean.”

Eneko clears his throat. “I believe there is a prayer for that in the Way itself…”

“Domine,” Silas intervenes. “Si vis potes me mundare.”

Lord, if you see me, you can cure me.

The Director welcomes that proverb. He sees Silas.

This violence that he has committed…a call for help. A cry in the chaos. A failure in the system. 

“Many people do not think it’s possible to stay completely chaste, living in the middle of the world as we are,” he says. “Celibacy is, of course, our most obvious distinction from animals; but it’s linked to the denial of other temptations too. Those not only of lust, but of greed, of gluttony. We are not slaves of our bodies. We enslave our bodies, through discipline and prayer.”

“The things of Earth,” Silas whispers. “Fornication, and concupiscence, and coveting, and sin.”

The Director nods. “To deny this is to lose the fight before it’s even begun.”

He looks at his family, his brothers. Shy in the wake of this conversation; which is a trait of the weak. He has been weak. He has coddled this house too much, allowing it to grow this side of wild.

To tame an animal again, you have to empty it of fighting spirit.

“Silas,” he says, “you are pledged to St. Francis of Assisi.”

The monk seems a little surprised to be addressed. “Yes.”

“He is not a Saint of the Work, but I am sure that he’d have interesting things to teach us about this topic. Does this affect or change your way of perceiving purity at all?”

Silas swallows, and speaks in his accented, slow Spanish. “Francis of Assissi decided to live in poverty, without owning anything. That was his manner of closeness to the Lord. He embraced the poor, and the sick, the unwanted.”

“Discomfort is welcome.”

“I don’t think that his idea was for life to be painful,” Silas corrects him without raising his voice a notch. “His simple life is how he found balance and solace. He stripped himself of all his material goods, because he was uncomfortable with them…he saw the face of Christ in lepers…he thought of every living thing as worthy, as animals were his brothers and sisters, too.” At that, the Director has to hold back a grimace. Peculiar, very peculiar. “He never wanted a rank in the Church, and only became a deacon so that he could lead his Order and teach others—”

“We can all learn from a life away from the most earthly matters,” the Director cuts into his explanation. This is a house of the Opus Dei, after all, not a hippie commune. “The things of Earth, as you so eloquently said.”

“Colossians 5,” Silas whispers. “Father Aringarosa is very fond of those verses.”

“Yes, thank you. I would hope Father Aringarosa is not only fond of them, but applies them as well. The point is that Francis of Assisi perfected the inner struggle: telling the body no when it wants an easy way out, be it in satisfying its lusts or in a bout of anger.”

At the Director’s right side, Amaro is compelled, alternating looks at him and Silas. Possibly noticing the second, spiritual confrontation happening under the surface.

It is Eneko who intervenes in the end. “I suppose that’s what we do,” he says, “when we punish ourselves. Cold showers, for example. Not putting sugar in coffee or not buttering our bread.”

“That is a good start, Eneko.” The Director stands up. “But we are ready for more. We won’t fall into the foul gripes of comfort.”

Silas, after all, is only one person—one of the Centre’s many spindly legs; one part cannot get sick in a healthy environment. The entire house has become too lenient with itself, all of it ill, in dire need of purification.

Vicente is not a monster. No…he would never single out a limb to cut it. 

Certainty grows within him, a compelling halo of truth. If God sees us, then He can cure us.

Mortification means denial. Mortification means hunger.

It means taking less than the body needs; money for commodities dwindling, portions on their plates reduced, hours of rest interrupted by urgent knocking at any point of the night, to check if they are indeed adhering to the new rules.

The Father spends most of his time with the Architect again, shut off in their tower, wrapped up in their plans. Gifting Silas a word of comfort now and then, when they cross paths in their daily journeys. 

Silas counts the days until their tutorial like the beads of his Seraphic rosary.

After the investigation concludes, the house and the site are left to grieving peace. Looking at what is left of Father Aringarosa’s church is not an easy task; the chapel, damaged but standing, is the first ominous centinel guarding the path. Merely walking it to its charred end proves challenging, reminding Silas of the hopeful eyes he saw it with mere days ago.

Police tape is tethered to the trunks at the pathsides; Eneko slices through it with his pocket knife, then Silas curls the rest around his weathered hand.

Then he turns around, finds Eneko watching him. “Not a crime scene anymore.”

“You think so, Brother?”

“I don’t know what to think.”

For the rest of the Working hours, and for the hours after that, an unbreakable vow of silence settles between them.

They sweep through the dirt; they count what they have left, and remove heaps of debris and splinters. Eneko’s people drive machinery to wreck the remains, loading bones of timber into waste bags so that somewhere, in the outskirts, an incinerator can end what fate started. 

Morning by morning, Silas takes Communion. Evening by evening, he sips on wine by a meagre dinner, softening his core until the thoughts come unbidden. And night by black night, the house becomes a labyrinth of gasps and whispers, of corded snaps against flesh.

And again, it’s morning; physical work, preening of the titan’s corpse—lifting, ramming, shovelling, then praying. Hunger wrenches him from the inside, an intimately familiar feeling, the body digesting itself. The gravel path shimmers as the streets of Marseille once did. This silence absorbs all sound, no stars, no wind, no birds.

Perhaps it was always like this.

You came into the Apostolate to annihilate yourself, says the Way. Not to impose your own needs. 

“From now on, when we wake up,” the Director says over the table, the cadence of his voice muffled, as if spoken underwater, “we start off the day with a small humiliation: discard your blankets, crash into the cold of your room, and kiss the floor. We’ll be testing a system of control for the mortification, too.”

Father Aringarosa, brow knitted. “Are you going to check on them, Vicente?”

“No,” the Director says. “They will check on each other.”

There are no questions, no protests; the numeraries are all too exhausted to think. The dry bread they dine on feels both heavy and too light, the bitter wine diffuses their senses. 

In his room, Silas removes the habit. Confronts the cilice.

He has much to mend. The longing, so buried deep within his core that it has become crystallised, embittered, forever clutching his empty stomach…but that is not the only shape his greed has taken. 

For, in the weeks leading up to this disaster, a selfish child within himself had dared to wish, Lord help him, that this church had never existed. He would follow the Father to the end of the world, there is no question about that…but there is no place he’d rather be, than the sanctuary where they met.

But he…he never wanted for this to happen. He shushed the smallest inkling of this idea out of his prayers, harmed it as much as he could. 

He cannot open up about this. He cannot open up to the house, or to the Director, and make matters worse. And the Father—the Father’s lies—no, he would never lie, he assured Silas that there was a good reason—

There is an ache in his gut that is attempting to warn him, that is refusing to die; full of questions to the Work, of suspicions, of anxious doubts. Or does the failure lie within himself? Is it part of the same, rotten wrong he carries everywhere?

Silas faces the Empty Cross, its imperative glare.

Agnus Dei
qui tolis peccata mundi
miserere nobis.

Saturday.

His tutorial with Father Aringarosa. The prospect of it has imbued life into his days—lungful of air as he startles himself out of bed— serviam —frenzy of goosebumps across an aching back.

Prayers. Morning verses to Mary’s joys, to the joy of living itself, ironic, not so ironic, coming to him as naturally as the song to a bird. A splash of cutting-cold water, on his face, in his mouth, washing the night away. And lastly, an impatient dash to the chapel, pushing more than swinging the door open.

Warm light embraces him; the Father must have heated the chapel, pushed the stove here for that very purpose. Silas finds him kneeling at the prayer bank, reading the Scripture under a small, flickering candle.

No…upon approaching, Silas sees that it’s not the Scripture, but the Founder’s words. 

All the same. In reverent silence, Silas waits for him to finish.

After a few minutes, the Father looks up and smiles.

“My angel. How are you?”

Silas…he truly has much to say, so much. But doubts pile up at the base of his throat, pushing down with their weight as if trying to suppress the voice back into his chest. 

“What—” The word comes out fickle. “What are you reading?”

“It’s a homily about the Gospel of St. John: the history of the man born blind.” Father Aringarosa stands up, looking at the book affectionately. “Would you like to hear it?”

There is nothing that Silas wants more than that. It only takes the idea of it for his eyes to swell with tears.

Through the blurriness, he can tell that a frown has hardened the Father’s features.

“Silas. What's wrong?”

“I—”

Father Aringarosa hurries toward him, motioning toward the bank. Priest and apostle both take a seat.

Silas’s words falter. He wraps his arms around the Father, feels him stir underneath.

“Please,” Silas exhales. “Please, I need you close.”

“My son.” The Father’s hands weigh down on his forearms, holding him at a distance. “Pull yourself together, child. I know it’s a difficult time…but, please. Tell me. With words.”

But this wrongness has no name. It’s mixed in with his own existential questions, his struggle with himself, his suspicions of the Work, with the new-old sensations of his starved and punished body.

“It…it has been difficult,” Silas echoes. “But it’s not only the devil whispering. No, Father—something is changing here. There is a…an uncertainty growing within my soul. A sense of…of…” he wants to say danger, but hesitates. “And the others, they are cold to me, as if they knew of my sins.”

There’s a beat of silence. The candle flickers. 

“Your…sins?” Father Aringarosa scrutinises him. “My son, what do you…what do you mean?”

“About my…” Silas exhales, burning with shame. “The things that only you know.”

Silence stretches between them, no sound between the chapel walls.

When Father Aringarosa speaks to him again, he does so quietly. “I would never break the vow of secrecy that I have with you. Is that what you mean?”

Silas looks away and nods.

The Father sighs. He leans back on the bank, decompressing, as if relieved. “Silas. My Silas. Sometimes, people who are going through a similar struggle…an inner struggle, will notice. Here, we all fight. Perhaps that is what your brothers are picking up on.”

“Yes, but the Director—he—” Silas’s protest seems silly, spoken out loud.

“The changes that Vicente is implementing are all normal practices in the Opus Dei,” the Father says. “I think he is discovering that the sort of house he was leading is…perhaps…not the sort that he wants to lead. You said it yourself. We all are on our personal journeys…even he.”

Together, they look at the candle dancing—watch the red wax melt, drop by slow drop. 

“Did it…get any better?”

Silas wishes he didn’t know what the Father is referring to.

He shakes his head. Ever since the fire, he has wandered without aim, full of covetfulness. “I am losing this battle.”

“These emotions—you need to learn to disentangle yourself from them.” A pause. Father Aringarosa looks down. “Otherwise…this could be bad for you in the long term.”

Silas looks at him. “Father, don’t you want to keep me close anymore?”

In response, his fists tighten. “Don’t say that. I told you that we would need to prioritise the Work. I told you that things would be different. But I love you. Like—like a son. You are my son in Christ.” At these words, so beautiful yet so damning, Silas doubles over and stifles a sob. The void in his core deepens; he is disappointing the Father, he is the cause of the despair in his voice…until it grows stricter. “Silas. I orchestrated all of this, all of our conversations with the Police, for you. I’m risking this project to protect you. So that you can stay with me. Don’t you understand what could happen to us otherwise?” 

“But…” He sighs, then the question comes out a shaky protest. “Why did you lie…”

“Did you want them to dig even more into us?!” There is smoke in Father Aringarosa’s voice; Silas has never been on the receiving end of that anger. But, as if realising it, the Father’s tone immediately softens. “All I mean is that the authorities have no place between us. I, too, grieve. As a man, I grieve this, which should have been our church—I grieve our former life. But I am a pastor, first and foremost. And my people—my Work needs me.” 

“I am your lamb,” Silas whispers. “I need you too.”

Without looking at him, as if it took him tremendous effort, the Father clasps Silas’s hand in his own. “You’re going to have to bear this pain.”

“I am trying… I am trying.”

“Silas.” His hand; so tight, so tight, that it hurts. “You have to try harder.”

Quivering confession, silent Eucharist. Wine ingested and burning all the way down, then fuzzy, sliding, sliding, sliding, plunging into a dream, adrift through the Work, mangled construction site, mechanical claws plunging into the Earth, eye of God watching, Sun by day and Moon by night, surrealistic swirl of cloud opening into angel wings, beaten body, beaten hands, hours becoming hours becoming hours hours hours. 

(Glimpse of cat dashing away in the corners of his eyes, into the trees; did he imagine it?) 

Evening again. Alone, sitting on his bed after supper, the barbed wire constricting his heart becomes difficult to ignore. When he shifts, the creak of his mattress comes from miles away. 

Hurt this feeling. Get the cilice.

Quivering hands reach for his nightstand, and he wraps the tines around his thigh, and he tightens them one number higher, but it’s numb, it’s so numb, why is it not working—

Soft knock at his door.

Silas’s stomach tightens, as if a fist had closed around it. There’s a flicker of fear, of desire, both of them forever entwined. Perhaps…is this…? 

“Brother. Do you have a moment?”

Amaro. Silas curls over, hugging his own chest. Soothing himself.

He soon hears the door swing open, and lightly staggering steps coming in.

Silas looks at him, over his own shoulder.

…except for the Father’s, Amaro’s smile is the first one Silas has seen for what seems like aeons.

“Are you…?” Brother Amaro trails off. “What’s wrong?”

Silas’s mouth is frozen open, his nose leaking. When he can’t hold his sobs, he holds back his breath, determined to asphyxiate the cries, to overpower himself at least within this one small struggle.

After minutes of silence, Amaro closes the door behind himself.

Whispers, “Tell me.”

More silence. A garbled noise claws its way up Silas’s throat. “I struggle,” he says. “I cannot see Heaven.”

The bed creaks again when Amaro takes a seat next to him. “How strange for you to be sad today. I always thought your tutorials with Father Aringarosa made you very happy.”

Eyes fixed on the floor. Nails digging deep into his naked knee. Words, misplaced confessions, rising from the depths of this hungry pit without his permission, burning him like bile. Silas swallows them.

“Sometimes,” Amaro continues, “I am surprised that Father Aringarosa can take all of this…all of what happened, with the church, in such stride.”

Silas drags a palm across his damp face. “He’s a priest,” he whispers. “He’s—he’s supposed to be tempered, and wise. He has it all under control. It’s my own soul that is closer to that of a beast.”

Amaro cocks his head. He doubles over to align with Silas, reflecting his posture and the language of his body, like a small, deformed mirror.

Finally, Silas retches his confessiin. “The cilice is not working. It’s happened in the past with…with the Discipline. The sin in my soul is too grand. I can’t purify it.”

First, Amaro is silent. Then soft. “Brother. You know…that I must do the evening round,” he says. “You know that I must report that to Vicente.”

To the Director…the praying mantis, acutely watching Silas since the evening they arrived—now shapeshifted into a more menacing presence, unwanted and ironlike, a warden. 

The flooring fades under his feet, then comes back again. 

Silas. “Do so. If you must.”

“You saved me without realising.” Amaro smiles, Silas hears it in his sing-song inflection. Sees it in the emerald-green eyes when he finally looks back. “Perhaps I can help you in return…”

Now, Silas sees that Amaro is carrying a pouch, crossed over his breast. He reaches for its contents, pulling them out like the most valuable treasure.

Silas squints. A Discipline.

Only, it’s slightly larger. Seven long tongues of rope; in their knots, small objects worked in by hand. Crystal shards. Fishing hooks. Needles. Like beads and flowers entwined into the braids of a maid.

Silas swallows dry. “What…what is this?”

“Vicente told me that this is how the Founder chastised his body,” Amaro says. “I wanted to follow in his steps…so I made this by hand. But I still have not dared…”

This…this is a twisted thing.

But beautiful, somehow. 

Silas contemplates it for an eternity, and then reaches out for it. 

Yes. He must be where Fate wants him. 

His fist closes around the handle.

“Let me see the truth of your words,” he mutters.

In one swift motion, he stands up and jolts up his arm, charging—

Crash of ropes against his back, seven claws piercing into the flesh. Toes curling. Roar torn from his throat.

You must learn to bear this pain.

But no pain— not the deepest anguish— nothing could be worse than disappointing the Father.

“That I might mind the things of Heaven,” Silas prays,

taking swing with the clawed Discipline, his muscles flaring,

the next plunging knives, scream tearing through the

faded image of his room suddenly sharper, clear despite the darkness, eyes watching him back from the stains across the wooden flooring, gaping mouths of the House ready to engulf,

blood rushing to his face and

streaking the floor, his beaten body reflected on Amaro’s wide pupils and

“Come on,” Amaro mutters, hands clasped under his chin as if in prayer,

“purify your body, Brother. You’re doing so well.”

Tumbling forward, sobbing, Silas can’t afford a pause for he must put to death what is earthly in him, 

he must try harder.

Chapter Text

Ahead, the road leads them outside of Oviedo, grey with the incoming morning. Father Aringarosa’s eyes are heavy; he’s been awake since five, held the Eucharist much earlier than usual. Shortly thereafter, he and Pablo—his copilot, napping quietly—have taken to the road.

It has been almost a week since Silas’s tutorial; a week which Manuel has spent watching him closely. Every morning, Silas takes Communion and mumbles his norms without protest, but the whites of his eyes are redder, as if his irises were slowly bleeding out. Scratches have begun appearing on his face and under the edges of his habit. Manuel hasn’t seen him eat in a minute, only sip water and wine…nothing of substance taken to his tall body, to support him through the hours of exhausting Work. As if he’d purged everything that was impure, never to let it back in. 

Father Aringarosa should feel proud of his angel; proud of the way his most fervent follower is transcending humanity.

And yet, from the house chapel, time and time again, Manuel watches as Silas shuffles down the stairway and approaches the front door. And, time and time again, he forgets his title, and all he wants is to dash forward and embrace him. I’m sorry. I know it is not fair. I wish the others would change their minds about you, about the fire, but it’s better—it’s better for them to get suspicious, than to have the police on our tracks…isn’t it? 

Time and time again, he swallows the impulse. Ignoring the dreadful fist that squeezes his insides. 

A few days ago, he was called to Tifón’s office. “Manuel. A word?”

So Manuel followed him, met Tifón in his lacklustre habitat, framed by the meticulous classification of dead insects. Exhibit A. Amazonian Butterfly. Exhibit B. Stag Beetle. Exhibit C. Perfectly normal human being, not insect-like at all. 

Once Manuel had taken a seat, he realised Tifón was watching him so intently, he might as well be doing so through the lens of a microscope. “I wanted to talk to you about Silas. Some of our Brothers are concerned.”

Manuel scowled. Who said that?, he wanted to ask. But it was the wrong question, he knew. In Tifón’s mind, the numeraries are no individuals.

“I’m his tutor,” Manuel said instead. “I am concerned too.” 

Tifón nodded halfway, then looked out at the landscape. The branches were peeled of any green; soon, it would be Advent. “Manuel…what are your plans after everything is fixed for the new Church of the Holy Cross? You have other projects, as I understand.”

Yes. He wanted out of this place, for starters. “There is no vicar for the Prelature in this region,” Manuel said, massaging his temples. “I think I would like to find a centre of operations in Oviedo. It’s the reason the Prelature wanted this place—the Way of Santiago is well-connected, with a good supply of pilgrims that might convert. We’ll need at least one centre for women.”

“You’d like to open a centre?” 

“Well, I would certainly not open a women’s centre.” Manuel grimaced. “My idea is not a house, like this one. But a business, perhaps something bigger…I need to discuss this with Isabel soon.”

Director Tifón turned around on his feet. “And…if you move out, what would happen to Silas?” He must have seen some change in Manuel’s expression, because he immediately added, “Please do not take this as anything other than a curious question. I simply think…since your last tutorial, you haven’t had much contact.” A pause. “And…he may have made a breakthrough. Do you…understand?”

Manuel held his reaction. Contemplated it. 

“It’s not a personal criticism,” Tifón continued. “I don’t…the problem doesn’t lay with you, or with the way you teach him, Father. It’s him. I think he is a little mixed up between the devotion to Christ, and the devotion to…a person. I hear Josemaría Escrivà himself often had that problem.” He tried to smile. “Idolatry can cloud our judgement.” 

What possible agenda would Tifón have to tell him this?

Manuel had ripped himself from that gut reaction, trying to parse his remarks as what they were…

The suggestion of a well-meaning disciple? 

The truth?

Was he bad for Silas? Would being under someone else’s tutelage...be better for him?

The first, frontal rejection of this idea mingled in with another image. Silas, his Baptism, the drops of water caught in his eyelashes. His weary steps in Manuel’s shadow, orbiting him like the Sun. Always struggling with this intoxicating devotion that Manuel cannot understand or return. This wound…this wound that he can’t stop picking at. This scab torn off over and over again.

Its cure might be distance.

He’d fallen silent for a few minutes. He needed to say something.

“Let me…think about it.”

“Of course. No one knows the needs of this parish better than you do, Father.” Tifón nodded. “But I could take over his education, if you…well. It is only an idea.”

Now, days after this exchange, Manuel finds himself grinding his teeth. No one knows better than you. I hear Josemaría Escrivà himself had that problem. 

“Oh, did he? Did he? You slimy bastard,” he mutters under his breath. “If you’re going to criticise someone, at least own up to—”

He hits the brakes abruptly. A white flash, the sight of an animal—a fawn maybe, dashing from one roadside to the other, panicked in its realisation that it's lost. 

Sighing, Manuel locks the engine and rests his forehead to the steering wheel. From the corner of his eye, he sees that Pablo has awoken with a startle.

“Um…Manuel…?”

He breathes in, then out. 

“It’s all fine.” Behind the wheel, the digital clock is blinking at 00:00, somewhere outside of time.

Knock knock knock.

This morning. Every morning.

Silas’s eyes, heavy and bloodshot, opening to the tangle of blood-sprayed bedsheets.

He blinks.

The floor is clean. He cleaned it. Or perhaps, it was Amaro. His nostrils, swollen with the prickling smell of disinfectant.

Every motion is the scratch of a razor, as if crystal shards were coursing through his veins in place of blood. Because the blood has been spilled. His blood. Amaro’s blood. He’s been coming in every evening now. A couple of days ago he tasted the clawed Discipline too, for, he says, in Silas’s face there is a heavenly relief that he too wanted for himself; and certainly, it feels like it might be the truth; like the effect of a confession, but thousand times more intense; no fire anymore, no light, only his eyes open wide in the darkness, hoping to see.

He moves—body soaked with the red prints of his fingers. Need to throw the bedding in the laundry. A few nights ago, he forgot to remove it, and came back to clean bedsheets; since then, the dove doesn’t meet his eye.

Perhaps…it is nothing unusual. These practices aren’t. The Father said so.

Nothing has changed. Nothing of consequence.  

Yesterday, after collapsing, he might’ve faded out for a few moments. Surreptitiously, Amaro had crept beside him, his arms making their way around his shoulders, the beads in his wrists hurting Silas’s skin—a constricting, sticky embrace. Then Amaro had caressed his hair. Had caressed his neck, over and over, wanting to be the only sensation that Silas felt in the nothing…but inside, the cunning animal hissed.

It reminded Silas of other, burning hands, touching him without his permission—but he was hurting too bad to move—if he shut his eyes—if he imagined it as an empty echo of the Father’s touch— 

…then he could allow this numbness to embrace him too, to lift off and finally sleep. 

Yes—this time, he has forgotten his prayers to the Holy Mary before bed—his prayers for purity and resilience—so they fill his stale lips like foam after the poisoning, and he washes himself, and although every move feels like razors slitting his muscles open, he will go on to do his best at not wincing. He can’t reach his back to take care of the wounds. The Father—the Father could help him—but he’s leaving after Mass for a meeting—so Amaro, Amaro perhaps—even though the void deep inside his throat grows at the thought—but who else would be left?

Driving westward, Manuel and Pisarello cross the Esna river, both of their heads turning at the sight of it, flowing furious and alive, falling over thick boulders. Some of the towns they pass are already decorated for Christmas; garlands and orbs, jewellery, a gluttonous disparage of meaning…but the natural sights make up for it.

“Have you ever been to Argentina?” Pablo asks, animated after his coffee. “There’s beautiful hiking trails. The National Park, the glacier of Perito Moreno. You could come over for a break, when all of this is over.”

Manuel alternates between looks at the landscape, and at the road. “Argentina…there’s missionaries of the Opus Dei there, right?”

“Oh, there’s plenty of room for another.”

“Hm.” Manuel thinks about that. But, before entertaining the idea of building a glass bridge across the Atlantic…there is work to be done here. “It seems a little silly to ask, but…don’t you miss the church , too?”

Pisarello glances at him. Sideways, like his smile. “I knew it.”

“Pardon me?”

“I miss her. I think you do too. But…I’ve come to think this isn’t the worst that could have happened.” On his lap, there is a big package made of papier-marché, which rustles when they take a curve. “The outcome, though. I’m not complaining.”

Manuel scoffs. “Better not.”

You never know what God is thinking, though that part he leaves unspoken. 

“Far away from home…it’s the price of work,” Pablo muses. “Though you…how is it for you, Manuel? Where is home?”

“I come from Madrid,” Manuel grumbles, a non-answer. “An hour from here.”

Beyond the car windows, rays of sunlight are breaking through the morning clouds and colouring the valleys; he thinks how, at Núria, you could stand on the mountaintops and see it snow on the towns down below.

He could mention it. But he feels as speechless now as he was back then. There are no words to describe it, except for an all-fulfilling certainty; that of creation, the design of a higher mind.

Benavente. The next town, a familiar name. For they are not in the community of Astúrias anymore, but in the outer circle of Salamanca…another avalanche of memories could unfold, but he’s not going to unearth any demons of lives past.

He speeds up, scrambling together the coins for another tollhouse, for yet another turn southward.

Out of the highway, a smoky wood sign announces the “Bodega de Rivalta”.

Its first half is part restaurant, part wine cellar; rustical, tavern-like iron lamps gloeing on outrageously expensive wine barrels. But they walk past it, to the lodge. This second reception is more business-like, more staged. Even the plump fir tree seems decorated in a sober, minimal manner. 

Behind the desk, a primly dressed woman is filing her nails. A hint of lip pencil pops in her smile, the same colour as the garlands hanging above. Manuel doubts it’s a coincidence. 

“Good morning,” she says. Then, seeing the package that Pablo is holding. “Oh, is that cake?”

Pisarello’s eyes drop. “I wish it was.”

“We’re guests,” Manuel says. “Aringarosa.”

The woman looks at a typewritten list of admissions, then scribbles over it with a ballpoint pen. “Come in, please.”

Her strict heels leave a trail of sound for them to follow, led into what's called the “circle lounge”. This is a freshly painted business room: a few bottles of water, five glasses, a table with armchairs around it, a whiteboard and a projector which Manuel could never figure out how to operate. “Anything you need, please just tell me.”

Once she’s gone, Pisarello leaves the wrapped model on the table. “I admire your commitment.”

It takes a moment for Manuel to follow. Pablo was watching the woman leave; she’s attractive. And yet, Manuel has not spared her a glance. He purses his lips. “That was never quite my problem.”

No time to explain—better this way. Another guest is opening the oak door: Álvaro Garrido, well-dressed, well-groomed, all the world a stage, a thin layer of make-up powder over his face. Manuel thinks of photographed food, looking appealing but rendered inedible from all the product put into it, toxic to the core.

“Ah, Mayor,” he says. “I’m glad to see you made it.”

“You absolute dirtbag,” Garrido says. Then composes himself, pausing, breathing: dedicating a polite nod to Manuel and Pablo each. “Let’s get this over with. Where are your people?”

“My people? Ah…it’s just the three of us, for now.” Manuel smiles. Yes, this dirtbag gets to play in the mud for a little longer. “Relax. Nothing bad for you will come out of this.”

Garrido scoffs, taking a glass of water and downing it as if it were whiskey.

But it’s the truth. Manuel has a sense of honour, if nothing else. He has never been unkind to anybody who helped him. However unwillingly.

“Manuel!”

Isabel’s hand luggage promptly falls to the floor as she erupts into the lounge, throwing her arms around Manuel and kissing him on each cheek—a proud mother regarding her birthday child. Pablo, she gives a short hug; she shares nothing more than a squalid handshake with Garrido before turning to Manuel again. “You’ve done a wonderful job. Wonderful.”

Something inside him warms, then freezes. Behind her, there is none other than Germán. His hair and skin are thinner, stretched over his bones the way that medication makes it; the handle of his cane is lifted like the tilde in the letter ñ, subtly pointing, subtly judging. 

“The circumstances are unfortunate,” Isabel says, “but oh, what a perfect timing on the rest of your decisions. Right, Germán?”

Under El General’s scrutiny, Manuel feels his legs turn to jelly. He is back at Salamanca, back to being a teenager aiming for a straight-spined posture, awkward in his fear, in his awe.

Then, Germán Escudero smirks.

“That’s right,” he grunts. “Good job, little priest.”

Isabel chippers on. “We were already thinking that we’d have to give up control to that cretin the vicar-general. Imagine. Let’s be more open to the press! We love the press meddling in our business! Let’s put up a big sign in front of the Centre: Opus Dei, Please Set on Fire, for anyone who's willing.”

And then, because the room needs to be made hers; she produces her Marlboro from a breast pocket, and, in coordination like clockwork, Germán produces a match, scrrrratch-hiss, the flame bright for a moment before disappearing into the tip of her cigarette, then—ashes.

“Don’t forget, my dear,” Germán says, shaking the flame off with a leather-gloved hand, “that the Mayor chose to do what’s right in the end.”

Garrido swallows. “After this move just before an election…I may very well not be Mayor anymore.”

Isabel’s smile sharpens. She offers Garrido another cigarette, which he reluctantly accepts. “Don’t worry.”

Germán, nodding. “We never forget a friend.”

“But the most important question,” Isabel says, pointing at Manuel, “is: may I see it?”

Manuel looks from one to the other half of the ruthless being that is the Escudero-Forns duet. His next smile is genuine, giddy.

“Well, please, Pablo,” he says, “unveil our Work.”

The papier-maché, unwrapped off the miniature like an orange peel, unveils the new shape their project has taken. For nights, the architect has sculpted it with styrofoam, and wood, and wax, and safety pins that he smuggled off Tifón’s desk; the first iteration was made in the attic, out of chocolate bars.

The cross-shaped ground is reinforced. A miniature version of the western facade, the only element besides the chapel that was salvaged from the fire, supports a taller wall with its arches. From the front, it looks almost coffin-like; the only element that challenges its symmetry is the inclined clock tower, a sword crossed over and plunged into the earth.

“And these are some plans from the inside,” Pablo muses, showing them a bound book of plans. The inside is less harsh, less cutting in its geometry. White, gold-accented marble climbs the walls; clean geometry to match the white pipe organ, the glass ceiling opening to a view of the sky. “I thought that we would make it imposing from the outside, but beautiful on the inside. The way of sanctity, austere and paved with difficulty...but, at the end, Heaven waits.”

Germán’s wordless nod of approval is enough for Manuel to feel heat rising to his cheeks. “The plans for the organ,” he says, anticipating the next question, “I can show them to you later.”

Another half-smile. “We trust you,” Isabel says. “I suppose patience yielded its results.”

Her husband gives her a half-nod. “It almost…pains me that I won’t be around to see it.”

For the first time, a shadow strikes Isabel’s face. She leans into him, grasping his forearm. “I know. But it’s in good hands. Manuel is excellent. Just wait until he presents this idea to the Congress.”

Manuel blinks.

“To the…what?”

“Oh yes, Father.” Isabel disentangles herself from her husband, and claps a hand between Manuel’s shoulder blades. “We are running on borrowed time, I’m afraid. Very soon, this project is going to be all your responsibility. Your child, so to speak.”

The Congress…the Congress, where everyone who has been a part of the Work for more than five years gathers to network. It will take place soon. In March. He’ll have to double-check the location. Oh, how it has slipped his mind…with all the things he needs to sort out over at the Centre…Monteverdi, the Church, the police, and Silas…

All of these struggles…all what he's gone through. He cannot fight this battle for himself only. He must fight facing the world, for the world.

Under his poised mask, his heart trembles. And yet, without a doubt, he says, “Of course.”

In his room, there are no mirrors—vanity, all is vanity—and thus, only in the showers can Silas peek at his wounds, far from the reach of his gaze as they are, bruised red-purple and wet-dry.

Knock knock knock.

Silas’s head jerks up. He is caught reaching for his habit on the bathrobe hanger, for the Director hasn’t waited to open the door.

“You’ve been working on yourself, I see,” he says. Startled, Silas says nothing. “Here, son. I thought…you didn’t drink much at supper.”

Tifón is handing him a glass. Wine. And Silas feels a spark inside—a spark of gluttony.

He needs it. The sweet diffusion of his senses, to prepare him for release.

And yet…his soul, the part of him that watches from above and fills him with wind, rejects it. No, this is not true grace, it whispers. It’s banal and fleeting, and the Director, most of all, should know. And his instinct, the dormant animal…in its sleep, it senses danger. Its eyes shoot open, its pupils go to dots, the heartbeat hitches to a thump as it did on the streets of Marseille and in—in prison, within its granite halls— 

telling him to run run run run RUN.

A step back. Another. Silas’s keen senses, awake; he is not a ghost anymore, but a collection of solid, tethered parts…which means that he can’t escape his body on command.

“When is the Father coming back?”

Director Tifón’s smile falls. “Silas. You…were doing so well.” With another step, he cuts the distance between them even further. Tifón is thin, but tall: the only one in the House at eye level with Silas. “In the mornings, do you practise the humiliation I talked to you about the other day?”

“Where’s the Father?”

The Director, stricter this time. “Please, practise what we talked about. Kneel.” 

It reminds him of other, arbitrary orders that have been given to him in the past. Within the dark spaces of the family home, that house of horrors; and the cunning beast…the beast wants to fight or flee, but neither of them are true options, if he wants to survive…

His fists close, quivering. His aching back finds the wall.

Fighting his instincts, fighting his own fists, fighting his grip on himself as if he were tightening a leather leash, Silas bends his knee.

It’s the only way.

Under the unforgiving sight of his warden, he puts his mouth to the floor.

There’s hours-long exchanges about the details: the shell, the budget, the legal implications, the whats and the hows. There’s an ease into conversation about the city of Oviedo, what it has, what it lacks, this north-western door to a realm. 

Afterward, Isabel and Manuel lean over the bridge, the Esna running underneath. “I never expected this to be solved so swiftly,” she says. “And you say this Director Tifón is a clown?”

“Oh, indeed. About as useful as a paper umbrella,” Manuel grumbles. “The only thing he seems to be good at is shutting others down, and, of course, parroting whatever section of the Way he's read on any given day.”

“Sounds like most of the old guard.” Isabel brushes a strand of brown hair off her forehead, tucking it back into her bun. “So the contractor is sticking with us. The Mayor is in our pocket. Your numeraries listen to you, don’t they? Of course. Of course they do. Move them around, Father.”

“Move them around?”

“Send them places, have them make contacts. We need to stretch fast across the tabletop.”

Manuel hesitates. “What game are we playing?”

She smirks at the river, the water dancing on the boulders. “Oh, you’ll see. You’ll see soon enough. If the Congress goes well, and I think it will, you will garner some attention. It would be wise to start thinking of how to use it.”

Thinking of how to use it. Thinking of how to turn the tide, as it rises and rises…water, a giver of life, but with enough power to destroy, to drown the world.

But what could Manuel do without power? He, as a priest, has a responsibility to be listened to. Without status, without ambition, without a wider audience, without playing the game for people like Isabel…he would still be at Núria, meekly awaiting whatever fate would give him. 

Isabel continues. “In the Americas, the Prelate has a preference for bigger enterprises. Office buildings. Conference centres. Things like that.” She smiles, sharply. “Perhaps we should import that idea, too. I still have contacts in the law, to counsel you on the administrative side of things. These ideas are difficult to push in Rome…the Vatican has us on quite a short leash.”

“Hm. That’s a problem, I imagine.”

“Not our concern yet, Manuel,” she says. Rightly—you wouldn’t start building a castle by its spires. 

“It’s true. However…” Manuel swallows. “Do you think sending me to the Congress is a good idea? I haven’t seen any of these people in twenty years. The last thing they remember about me…”

“...may be nothing.” Isabel lifts her palms to the air. “Don’t look at me like that! Good heavens! My apologies, but as far as they know, you might as well have been born yesterday. Word does spread about curious little happenings, though, like your outdoor Mass at Oviedo. All you need to do is…stay on your best behaviour.”

Stay on your best behaviour. The implication, swallowed by the current.

“How is…what was his name…” The wave of Isabel’s hand is rehearsed, tracing a small noose of smoke in the air. “The monk?”

“Silas?” Manuel asks. As if he had so many monks in his acquaintance. “He’s doing…well. The life of a numerary, as you know.”

“Told you. A natural talent.”

Manuel swallows. Not Silas. The conversation has made it easier, pushing the thought of him to the background. 

“Isabel,” he says, “if you want me in this for the long run, I can’t be living in a centre. I need my own headquarters. I need to get out of there.” A wordless prayer, and then a deep breath taken. “The rectory. I’ve had my eye on it for quite some time. It’s property of the Archdiocese of Oviedo, but I don’t think they are using it.” The last time he talked to anybody about it, it was Silas, at Barbastro. And he had looked so…hopeful. All of this so new, so fresh for his eyes. 

There’s a drag of her cigarette. There’s smoke, barred by the wind. “Give me a call the minute you’re back,” Isabel says. “Let’s make arrangements to get it. You deserve this.” 

Manuel’s goodbyes to Germán could, indeed, be the last…but he hasn’t quite registered it yet. The three of them try their best not to notice.

Outside, by the parking lot, it’s dark and cool. The neon sign to the restaurant hovers in the distance. As Pablo and he approach the car, Manuel detects the Mayor Garrido having a last, shaky smoke.

“You are a liar.” In cue with the car door unlocking, a predictable accusation. “I remember you put it like this: I am not my predecessor. But I get here…and all I see are birds of a feather.”

Manuel doesn’t even give him a glance. “I held you accountable for your words,” he says. “Don’t try to pretend I was lying. You lost this manoeuvre, Álvaro. Live with it.”

“You are a liar. And you lie the best to yourself.” 

Across from him, Pablo gets into the driver’s seat, fingers politely drumming on the wheel. Manuel does stay there one moment, considering. “Once,” he starts, “Francis of Assisi sold his father’s lavish tapestries and tried to donate the gold. But his church rejected that money, because of the shady business it came from. What’s the moral of this story?”

Garrido scoffs sourly.

“You would never understand,” Manuel says. “Have a good life.”

He sits inside, tilting his head back as the engine rumbles beneath them. A politician’s means are the ends, their business meetings, their salary, their oh-so-nice serrano. Then there’s something else, a footnote about making compromises in the interest of aesthetics. Of a community. Of a country.

Garrido and Isabel are, truly, not that different… 

But Manuel’s end is greater than his means. Greater than power.

During the way back, Manuel’s sole attention is focused on the darkness beyond the headlights. For a man of the Opus Dei, every moment is one of contemplation, the entire drive a prayer. He and Pablo take turns driving and make it to the house exhausted. 

Strangely, the first feeling he surrenders to is a need to talk to Silas about the day he’s leaving behind, Silas who has been there since the beginning, Silas who has permanently occupied the back of his mind.

On hasty feet, Manuel climbs the stairs to the second storey, then strolls to Silas’s room.

“My angel—”

What he sees robs him of breath.

Usually, in the evenings, Director Tifón can be found in his room. The cilice stays wrapped around his thigh for a couple of hours; the pain is much like an exercise, helping him focus on his evening read.

Tonight, he is at the office, pouring the contents of a wine bottle into a glass. He then holds it against the light, observing it closely; taking a whiff of it; trying to detect something else, a bitter note, among the aromatic waves. The presence of something which, in a small enough concentration, should have no taste or smell…

Shouts interrupt him. From the corridor. He looks up and hurries out; the door to Silas’s room is open.

Not him. The Director grits his teeth. That brute…

He chases the echo of Manuel Aringarosa’s voice in the empty walls, throaty and full. “What…did you do…to him.”

And peers into the room. In the corner, Amaro di Monteverdi is standing, wide-eyed, blood-streaked, under the priest’s glare. Brother Silas has collapsed on the bed, his back to a red-smeared wall.

“What is—?”

Before Tifón can speak, Father Aringarosa turns to him. His eyes are black with anger, in a way Tifón has never quite seen before. “You. You were supposed to have this under control. You provided this cretin with—with this Discipline?” 

“What?” Tifón looks at Silas, seeking the smoking gun…and then back at Amaro. At the device in his hand, leaking red on the floor; from sharp needles and blood-encrusted razors that someone has worked into the knots. Despite the certainty in front of his very eyes, that of this petite man holding the Discipline, there is an incongruence between subject and object that Tifón cannot quite reconcile. “This…?”

Manuel Aringarosa lets out a hiss through gritted teeth. He turns on his feet, his attention now on Silas, on Silas’s shape that’s crumbling to the side. “My boy. Do you hear me?” His hand reaches for Silas’s face, holding his jaw, then forcing his eye open. Louder. “Silas! He’s drugged. You drugged him,” the last part he snarls, turning over to Monteverdi. “What else did you do to him?”

“What—” Amaro gasps. His face, too, is sprayed red. “What-what is this accusation?! We were only purifying our bodies of sin. Tell him, Vicente. Please.”

Tifón opens his mouth. “These are all—” Acceptable ways to do the Work, he wants to say. Control is necessary, control is good. It’s a last resort to put everything in place, to calm the fiery impulses of a sick mind, make it malleable; it wasn’t too big a dose! Nothing you would even notice in a man of Silas’s build. “My doses shouldn’t have this effect—”

“How could you,” Manuel repeats, and raises a hand to his forehead, running it across the wavy length of his hair. “How could you—how could you ever—I trusted you. With him.”

Amaro reaches for Tifón’s sleeve with a gesture that’s more apt for a child. “I didn’t know you were doing it too,” he says, his brow furrowed. “I just thought—I saw the medicines in your office, for the pain, right? Please. We should mortify harder, shouldn’t we? We should follow the Founder’s example, shouldn’t we?”

Father Aringarosa takes a step forward, looming over the smaller man. His expression devoid of anything but utmost disgust; at any moment, he might lift Amaro and snap his neck, a hunter with an unfortunate hare.

When he speaks, however, he does so matter-of-factly. “I want you out of this house.” Then, his glare turns on Tifón. “Out. You understand? It is either him, or you. Both of you. I will blow your career to smithereens. How could you even suggest taking Silas away from me.”

“Non,” Silas groans, spasming awake all of a sudden, arms wrapped around Father Aringarosa’s waist, clinging to him. And Manuel stops talking, stops everything he is doing, to hold Silas in return and caress his face like a—like a lover—

My angel. You called him my angel—and angels are sexless. 

Mingled in with the alarm, Tifón feels a flash of ugly clarity.

But he can’t voice it. He will sound insane.

Behind him, Eneko’s exclamation. “Hey, what’s going on?” And Rodrigo, and the architect, too, are forming a curious circle around the door. This corridor is getting too crowded.

“You. Eneko,” Father Aringarosa calls out. “Help me get Silas to my room.” 

“I’m sure we can explain,” Amaro says over the confusion. “Just explain. Please tell Father Aringarosa that you encouraged me to make this Discipline and follow the Founder’s example.”

The answer is frozen in Tifón’s throat.

He never remembers saying that.

Chapter Text

Zamora, 1987

“Often—within the halls of this very Seminar, and after Mass, and in the Opus Dei Centre of Oviedo—during the course of the last few weeks, I have been asked about the challenges that our parish had to surmount. I am certain that, some attention as we have garnered, people have sneered behind our backs—the Schadenfreude of hopeless hearts who only find satisfaction in the disgrace of a neighbour—or interpreted the obstacles in our way as bad signs.

But that’s a fundamental misunderstanding of the truth. And the truth, my friends, is that conflict is as integral to Christianism as prayer itself, and will likely accompany us to the deathbed. Struggle, and contradiction, and controversy are fundamental to our Work—so said Saint Paul in Timothy 3: be a good soldier of God. We, in the Work, do not think of the ‘good fight’ in the sense of a holy, bloody war, through violence and fanaticism. It is a struggle which takes place within ourselves.

Let me be clear: no one ever requires perfection, even from a Saint. There come moments of exhaustion and weakness. So the Saint and the man inhabit the same physical space; we, who live in the flesh, must learn to reject the rules of flesh. Falling for complacency and acquiescence can be tempting—and I love the enemy—there is not one of my enemies that I have not treated with kindness. And yet, I will stand grounded in my principle; that of loyalty, and penance, and divine filiation, and the sanctification of all my Work.If one of you does not struggle, my friends, and brothers, and sons, he is doing something wrong.

Christianity is not easy. True religion will be met with discomfort; it will be met with controversy and questions. This is not a recent battle; and it’s full of both victory and defeat. In the case of the latter, isn’t it prideful to wonder—just as the apostles once wondered: “did this man go blind because of his sins, or because of the sins of his ancestors?” —what is the sin that causes these difficulties in our path? And yet, what were we expecting? Difficulty is part of the path. The path is painful. The path is streaked with blood. 

Agony and pain are ends, and not means. Never weaponise pain for your advantage; never see it a payout for the excesses you never plan on mending. Discomfort is nothing, if not used to listen closely, beyond it. Denying this is apathy; it is treason to the principles of the Work. It is looking forward to the Rapture, when Christ shall take us home, when the Earth shall flood. And yet, if I have learned anything from my years of self-imposed isolation, it is that we mustn’t be eager to leave this world behind; for there is Work to be done here, my Brothers. For it still yields surprises, and luck, and joys, waiting for us.”

After his last words have rung, Father Aringarosa enjoys the contemplative silence within the recital hall.

March has rolled around. A budding spring peppers the fields around Zamora with green.

It is Father Aringarosa’s first time visiting the city; its seventh-century Seminar bears host to this year’s Congress of the Opus Dei. During his own presentation—early enough in the day for the audience’s state to be receptive, agreeable—Father Aringarosa has told the odd couple-hundred men of the Work a story; the tribulations of this New Church of the Holy Cross and St. Paul, turned fable. Not taking questions, reserving them for the recesses. Those take place outside, at the historic courtyard, surrounded by gritty walls of stone thick enough to enclose many secrets.

A succession of curious characters entertains Father Aringarosa with small talk. A Peruvian rector, vivacious eyes behind spectacles like the bottom of a bottle: “Priests are in the minority here, as you can see. Priests with something interesting to say? Even less frequent!” 

A Conganese doctor, speaking French over glasses of apple cider. “The Work has financed fifty-percent of our hospital; I’m sure doing the same here wouldn’t be any trouble.”

An American banker, greying hair slicked back. “I was sorry to hear of Mr. Escudero’s passing. If, however, the church has a more interesting shape than I’d envisioned by talking to him.”

“Thank you,” Father Aringarosa says. “I gave Germán his last ointment. Alas, he went in peace.”

“How moving. Gaining his trust was surely no easy matter.” A small smile. “But he was right; you made inspired decisions…and had a dash of luck, too, so to speak. Sometimes, God works in mysterious ways.”

Pause. Many glances set on Father Aringarosa, but when he turns around to catch them, they fade into respectful smiles, knowing nods.

He has nothing to hide.

A bump in the path , the men of the Opus Dei say . An obstacle surmounted. God’s work, the Work. In mysterious ways. You are right, Father: we need to stand our ground in the face of adversity. 

No, Manuel has nothing to hide…regarding the church, at least.

After a long day of conferences, Manuel is back in the humble bedroom that the Seminar offered him.

Kneeling, black iron rosary twisted in his hand, he thinks of another bedroom he has called his own. The one near the chapel, at the Opus Dei centre, where at this time, Silas must be going through his norms as well…

Where, on a feverish December night, he laid Silas to sleep. The way his angel kept muttering and moving struck fear within Manuel’s heart; utterances to the haunting images of his past, of relief, or pain, or a space between the two which they both know very well.

“We need to go to the hospital,” Manuel had mumbled to himself—many times. Eneko, watching them from the threshold, was ready to help.

And yet, after everything they’d gone through…after knowing that these wounds had been from Monteverdi’s hand—that petulant, insane child who hadn’t been in the Work for half a year—and due to the incompetence of Tifón, who would probably clutch at straws to retain his power…the last thing Manuel wanted was this image becoming attached to his own. Not this soon before the Congress.

The internal guidelines had always recommended that this sort of event be kept away from the public eye—for the public loved a spectacle—unless something truly couldn’t be solved without involving the courts. This fell under matters to be solved within the Opus Dei, and within the Opus Dei only.

Finally, Manuel had turned to Eneko. “Bring me Tifón.”

Hopefully, that imbecile was a better doctor than he was a Director.

Forcing Silas’s nausea. Disinfecting his wounds, giving him a couple of stitches. As Tifón worked, Manuel glared at his nape. “It was the excess,” the alleged Director muttered, still making his excuses. “The dose I gave him—”

“You need opium as a substitute for authority,” Manuel stated. “You are no leader.”

At that, Tifón had not replied. He kept working with his back to Manuel.

Finally, he’d said, “You can inform Rome if you want to. But Amaro…”

Manuel knew what followed: don’t throw him out; he made a beginner’s mistake; born-again converts are always the most zealous, but he will understand in due time. “Ask to see the scars of his cilice,” Manuel said. “If he refuses to show you, it’s because there are none.”

At this, Tifón did turn around, frowning. “Why would—”

“Why? Why is anything?” Manuel snapped. He waited until the Doctor was done—showed him to the door, good riddance—to take his place at Silas’s side and wait.

Yet now, in the silence of his room, Manuel buries his face in his hands and breathes in very deeply.

What followed were some of the most troubling nights of his life. Sleeping on the floor, next to Silas, had left his back pummelled. Only leaving the room to give Mass, to research the Work’s codes of conduct, to notify Isabel that Monteverdi would have to make living arrangements elsewhere while they left his contract to expire. 

It had felt like a castle of cards crumbling; doubts of whether he’d even be able to come to the Congress in Zamora—betraying every ounce of trust that the Escudero-Forns estate had put in him—had exasperated him. Dropping this conference would be a political suicide; Isabel would never understand. And yet, taking Silas with him was not an option—be on your best behaviour—but neither was leaving him alone.

During one of those dreary dusks, he’d sat in the kitchen with Eneko. Fingers interlocked over the table, Manuel sounded remarkably poised for a man begging.

“Please. Only until I decide what to do with Vicente.”

Eneko did and undid the bun of his sun-bleached hair, as he always did when he fretted. “Me? But…there is still so much to do at the site.”

“Delegate,” Manuel said simply. “I’m not asking you only as a superior, Eneko. This is a personal favour as well. Help me. Please.”

Taking a few seconds to think…Eneko exhaled. “Okay. Family comes first. I guess I’ll be the substitute Director. But what…what happens with Vicente?” 

“I’m looking into…a sponsored leave,” Manuel said. How many details to give the Work about Tifón’s misconduct, well…that was another story. He may be more useful in power than not, with Manuel having considerable dirt on him.

But, under Eneko’s first question, there was another, silent one. What happened to him when Vicente came back from his forced vacation? “As for you, don’t worry. I never forget a friend.”

“Listen, Father…damn it.” Eneko crossed his arms over the grey, paint-stained hoodie. “I’m sorry…about Silas. He doesn’t deserve how we treated him, does he.”

Manuel stared him down until Eneko broke eye contact. “It escaped me too,” he admitted, nonetheless. “How extreme these circumstances were.”

“You should really go to the Congress in Zamora,” Eneko said, gaze to the floor. “It’s important. I…I can keep an eye on Silas for that time.”

Manuel accepted, of course. He would never say no to a possible solution, not to mention an act of repentance. 

And yet…even if he knows that Silas is technically safe, in hands as good as it gets—it is painful to be away from him. To not be able to grasp him with his eyes, to not have the shapes of that face and those hands within a palm’s reach.

Not that he would allow himself to cut that distance.

Nor would he desire to. He does not. He can’t.

Slowly, the pain turns to itch; to a soreness muddying his days.

A good pain. The pain of contradiction.

Rejected, and yet at peace; a familiar sensation for Silas. Never has he connected with others, but in comparison to his life as a wandering ghost, this is safer. Physical work keeps him busy, even as Eneko’s workers wince when they see him lift a stone or battery, many of them knowing of the marks hidden beneath his habit.

Still, every day, Eneko asks: Brother, will you come to Work tomorrow?  

As if the answer could be anything other than yes . 

He is left alone. Alone, still lost. But better.

Survival is none of his worry. The Director is gone. Amaro, too. Room to breathe, to digest what happened in winter. Eneko, the new Director, has exempted Silas from the Discipline’s claws, barring any corporal mortification that causes bleeding until they are sure that nothing is poisoning his veins. The Father offers no further explanations; he has been busy since the New Year, preparing the Congress that he has now left for. Letting a gradual distance grow between them. 

Whatever happened behind the curtains of the Work, in those days of December which Silas remembers through a misty haze, has stayed unaddressed. The silence, as cold and dense as the silver streets of Oviedo after the rain.

And when loneliness clutches him, and when he feels that even here, among his peers, he is unwanted; when he feels that, because of his very presence, a House broke and a Director lost his rank; when he feels that the Father, the only person who has ever made him feel as though he belonged…as though they belonged… 

…he stays for a little longer at the chapel, by the slowly growing church.

He kneels before the Cross. He huddles in the soothing embrace of his habit.

From the corner of his eye…there’s a glimpse of fur. 

Mewling…mewling…small noses turned upward, searching for a whiff of food. The ears chipped; the fur grey, black, brown, and tiger-striped.

The construction has unearthed rats and mice, and the cats have been quick to follow.

Only for them, Silas has taken care of picking up this big bag of food at the market. Its roasty, fatty smell fills his nostrils. He dumps a torrent of pellets to the ground; the cats devour it. Some of them nudge against his leg, leaving fur in their wake.

There’s one that often watches him from the sidelines. A beautiful one, black and flecked with gold; the only other mark is white on its chest, like a priest’s collar. Its eyes are big and ochre, its fangs sharp; it looks like it’s permanently scowling.

That one does not approach Silas. Even as Silas inclines to let the others nuzzle against his palm, running a finger across a bony spine, caressing patchy fur. Only when Silas turns around, getting distracted with Work…only then, the black-white cat starts eating.

It’s difficult. Not unlike people are.

In the absence of company, though: cats are a start.

His prayers for the mercy of Christ have become less compulsive; the hallways of his mind, lately so empty of anything but calls for forgiveness, are now a more peaceful place. A quiet joy of living does fill him again; and so, the norms he recites, not to the sacrificial Lamb but to the Mother, Santa Maria mater Dei ora pro nobis. He understands her better now—suffering in in silence as she watched her son bear the Calvary.

Once he’s done, he pays a visit to the Sacrament…and hears Eneko, at the end of the corridor, talking to someone.

“Ah, yes. That is great, thank you. I’ll let him know!”

On his way to the stairs, Silas must approach him anyway. Eneko closes the main entrance and turns around, silver keys jingling in his hand. “Hey! Brother. Good news for you! And, uh, I could use some help.”

Silas tilts his head. Says nothing.

Eneko scratches his blonde stubble, fills the silence again. “Well, um…it’s okay, if you’re busy. You must have a lot of…prayers…to get to.”

“No,” Silas says, gentle, approaching the door. “Family comes first.”

There’s another still from the past months, in Oviedo, which Manuel cannot help but recall every so often.

Feeling breathless, from three stories’ worth of tall stairs climbed. Ringing the quaint tinklebell of an attic apartment near the Fontán; the background noise of that loud, centric location reaching him even indoors.

But this place was far removed enough from the church and the Centre. That was all that mattered.

The lock had clicked, the wooden, green door opened. On the other side, Monteverdi, like an unsettling china doll. 

“Pater.” To Manuel’s surprise, he opened the door wide, letting him inside his sunlight-filled lair. “Please, take a seat. You do drink tea, don’t you?”

Manuel had camouflaged himself with day clothes. Despite the invitation, he stayed by the door. A glance at Monteverdi’s new apartment—which, of course, the boy paid for out-of-pocket—revealed the creative-entropic energy of an artist; paper, carbons, the half-finished portrait of a headless statue.

And porcelain figurines. Many of them. Beady animal eyes observing Manuel from every last corner.

“Oh, I see you noticed my collection,” Amaro said, putting water in the teapot and turning the stove on. “I bought them at the market. Thought they’d keep me company. Has your angel ever told you that he sees all of us as fauna?” He smiled, a peaceful smile. “Topolino. Little mouse. Though, I suppose, Silas would see himself as the sacrificial lamb.”

“Monteverdi,” Manuel started, tentatively, “I am going to leave for a few days.” The boy looked back at him, raising two puzzled eyebrows. “Vicente is gone. And everyone at the house has a duty to report to me if you try to approach them.”

Monteverdi took a hand to his chest. “I understand,” he said, leaning back on the kitchen counter. “Many things were said and done. I don’t blame you for concluding this from your point of view. May I say something?” All the surfaces, objects around him were varying shades of inoffensive pastel. “I have been thinking so much about what happened, Pater. I never intended to hurt anybody…”

Manuel said nothing.

“You see—I was giving him painkillers. For the pain. Vicente had been talking about it, and so I thought…we always try our best, don’t we? We owe it to God.”

“Painkillers. For the pain,” Manuel repeated. “Have I heard that correctly? For the pain caused with your…instrument of torture?”

The frown on Monteverdi’s brow made him look like a child. “What…what do you mean? Oh…Silas said something about needing to purify his sins harder. Could he have misinterpreted something you said?”

“Let me be clear. You are not sorry,” Manuel said, feeling the irritation creep back into his voice. “Do you honestly think I’ll let you back into the house?”

“Don’t interrupt me,” Monteverdi snapped. “I was the only one there for him.”

“You.” Manuel rolled his jaw. “I know exactly what you are…and what you are trying . This is a game to you. You are never going to set a finger on Silas again…nor on the organ you designed.”

Out the window, smoky clouds passed over the sun, draining the colours of the room. And so was Monteverdi’s face…drained of expression.

 “A pity,” he told the distance.

Manuel considered that a victory. A warning emitted.

He turned around and reached for the doorknob, cool in his hand. 

“It takes one to know one, doesn’t it, Pater?”

He shouldn’t react. He should just open the door and leave.

And yet…the provocation, the stirring of a storm. That little cretin. He wouldn’t get the last word. “Pardon me?”

“I wouldn’t do it any differently, were I in your shoes,” Monteverdi said then, almost casually. “Feeling like a God…it must be nice. You only need to say a word, and your mouse will do anything you desire. Yes, he would, Pater, he would. But you lack…” His fist furled, then bloomed. “... imagination. ” 

“You have completely lost your mind.”

“Priest,” his tone turned higher, swaying wildly between anger and desperation, “I did nothing, except hold him. Someone had to! I’ve learned my lesson.” Then, bitterly, as Manuel turned back on him. “You’ll regret this!”

Manuel opened the door as the teapot started whistling, and closed it to the sound of something being thrown away, shattering on the floor—like a porcelain mask cracked through.

Over the next three days, the Congress hosts many conferences. The Prelate, Monsignor del Portillo, was the Founder’s shadow as he still lived; and, in the Founder’s death, keeps on trying to imitate his charisma. Through the years, he has counselled the writing of many legal missives and recommendations, which often fell toward the more conservative side of Vatican politics.

Although it would be difficult for the head of such an organisation to remember all the letters he signed across the decades, Father Aringarosa does not approach him to shake hands.

Just in case.

Still, among the other presenters, there is surprisingly little in the way of substance. Much criticism about the state of the Catholic Church, and the country, and the world at large; many ideas for expansion, but no practical proposals to cling to power here, in the Mediterranean, as society changes and leaves them behind. For many of the present, it’s an enterprise, and for others it’s more of a lifestyle, a secret club they fancy themselves part of. 

Another priest from the capital, newly minted, during the last recess of the day. “Oh, you come from Madrid too? Can’t hear it in your accent.” He lets out a nervous laugh. “I have to polish up my English…and Latin.”

“I haven’t been to Madrid in a minute.” Father Aringarosa stirs his black tea, although there is no sweetener in it. “I haven’t quite kept up with the state of affairs. A new Archbishop was appointed not long ago, if I recall correctly?”

“It won’t last,” the man says, his large, blue eyes shifty. “I suppose Monsignor Suquía will stay in the See until the end of his term, but I hear there have been concerns about his health. Founded concerns, if you follow.”

“Oh. How unfortunate.” Stir. Stir. A short sip. “It wouldn’t hurt the Work to have someone sympathetic there. Do you perhaps know…?”

“Oh. I know who the candidates are. But, really, you only need to keep one in mind—the current auxiliary bishop in the Archdiocese of Toledo has had his eyes on it for quite some time. He was one of my teachers at Madrid, a very hard-working fellow.” The fellow’s tone gets faster, fuller. “I heard the Pope gave him an audience just months ago. Monsignor De Quevedo.”

Somewhere in the room, a glass breaks.

Father Aringarosa’s interlocutor looks over disapprovingly. “They should not offer spirits this early. What a lack of self-control.”

“Quevedo,” Father Aringarosa says, lips slightly twitching around the name. “Antón.”

“Ah!” The man gives him a wide grin. "Exactly. So you do know him!”

At once, it seems like the conversation around them is erupting, getting louder. The room is too crowded, to the point that there’s no more oxygen here. Father Aringarosa excuses himself.

Chapter Text

An elaborate, golden altarpiece; at its centre, the small statue of the Immaculate Mary is painted as though she were made-up, with blush on her cheeks and curled eyelashes. Palms up. Smiling. Shrugging it all away.

Manuel can’t look either her or Christ in the eye.

“I know. I know I made a mistake,” he tells the trembling rosary. “It was my cross to bear. And yet, you reward that…that bastard…” He breathes out. “I’ve given you everything. Everything. I wanted nothing in return.” 

Nothing in return?, whispers a voice, his inner devil’s advocate. That isn’t entirely true, is it. Your reward is eternal salvation. The conditions for it —distilled, interpreted, passed on by entire generations of fallible humans— never said anything about a pleasant life on Earth.

Oh, no. This goes beyond unpleasant.  

How, lord almighty, how, after a lifetime of dedicating himself to the Work, of denying himself any sort of Earthly pleasure, of repressing his very essence…how can he simply turn the other cheek at learning that Antón de Quevedo—the Devil himself—is going to become a Bishop?

What is the point of any of this?

He buries his face in his hands. Anger and helplessness lick like flames down to his marrow. The stress of these past months, the Church burning, the grief for Germán, the fear of disappointing Isabel again, and…and Silas. He has been preparing himself to give up Silas. “I must lose everything,” he mutters. “If it truly is like this, if I’m destined for this…this calvary…you might as well…you might as well not have given him to me at all!”

He crosses his arms and jolts up, breathing in, keeping the air captive.

It’s supposed to be difficult; that is what he’s told himself, time and time again.

And yet…it never was difficult for everyone. Not equally.

Outside, the light saturates orange. The road ahead turns sharper; and, over the course of the next hour, its edges will start to fade. Eneko and Silas have spent the last few evenings close to the church; a new titan, ruthless and cutting…but, instead of turning right, toward the gravel path, they keep on walking for a few more minutes.

Where the tall trees begin to grow, and the asphalt turns to soil, and hedges surround a terrain that is being readied for the sowing…there stands a house. The outer walls, peeling; the small carvings above doors and windows a much older kind of stone than the rest. It’s taller at the sides, flanked by two square turrets, their bricks forming pretty patterns.

The first time they strode toward it, Silas regarded Eneko quizzically, not sure of what this place was, or why he was being led there.

Now, Eneko laughs a little, scratching the back of his head. “You know what those small windows are for?”

Silas looks up, squinting at the rows of openings in the turrets.

“To look down without being seen. Very fancy, Brother.”

The heavy door creaks when they open it, bidding them welcome.

Inside, it’s bigger than the Opus Dei house. And old, very old. One by one, they lit up the oil lamps lined up in the corridor. At its end, there is a staircase; an abstract, stained glass window lets in a plethora of coloured shapes to graze the floor.

It’s been cleaned. The dove saw to it. There is a drawing room, and a dusty library, and a small garden gone wild which Silas hasn’t explored yet, not in the dark. In the eastern wing, phantasmal sheets veil old pieces of furniture—ethereal feeling of fairytale, of life fading away long ago.

Now, room by room, Eneko and Silas are bringing this place back from its stasis.

This is the Father’s home. It will be. He…will make a home out of it. 

Together, Eneko and Silas pick up the Work where they left off, ripping off wallpaper wetted by age, discovering the painted-over decoration underneath; flowers, curved stalks intertwining, stretching like their Work into the long hours of the night.

As numeraries and associates bid their goodbyes, Manuel feels as though he’s acquainted himself with enough human beings for a lifetime. Instead of pushing his quota of daily interaction, he feigns interest in the rust-black statue that guards the Seminar.

St. Alphonse of Zamora, a Jesuit martyr.

Beaten to death on the Mission, in America, too ambitious in his spreading of the Word. Manuel, despite having once been a missionary himself, scoffs.

Imagine dying so far away, while there is still so much to purify and clean here, right in front of you.

Still…

Manuel rolls his shoulders, adjusts his bag. 

This Congress has been a victory, however bitter the aftertaste. 

He walks toward the city centre; these few hundred metres are the bridge to another world, flooded by its worldly, petty matters.

A Mercedes Coupé is obtusely parked in the middle of the street. Smoking against it, dressed head-to-toe in mourning black—knowing very well that no one is going to reprimand a widow…Isabel leans against it. 

She peers at him from above Germán’s dark blue shades, then opens the door to let him in.

Manuel cocks an eyebrow. “No driver?”

“Not today,” she says, taking the last drag. “It keeps me busy.”

They abandon Zamora, and start following the river. Raindrops patter on the glass, smeared away by the wipes. “Congratulations.” Isabel sneers. “Look in the back. There’s something for you.”

An elegant, long box awaits Manuel in the back seat. Wine. An aged, sour red from the region of Costa Brava in Catalonia. Definitely not a choice that Isabel would have made for herself.

There is a small note inside, handwritten with a quill: For you, little priest from Madrid. May you continue to do good Work. G. E.

“Oh. Thank…thank you.” Manuel closes his eyes. Presses his lips tight. 

“I know you like red.” A beat. “What’s the matter? Didn’t it go well?”

“No, it went well,” Manuel says. “Very well. I met the vicar general. I made contacts across the whole wide world. Everyone loves the story of the church and is eager to tell me how resilient, how lucky we were.”

Drag, drag, drag. She lowers the window, and the cold, wet air slaps Manuel on the face.

“What’s the problem?”

The problem burns the tip of his tongue. But someone will catch him dead before he mentions Antón and what happened in Salamanca. That is but the final, corroded nail jammed into a coffin of deprivation and loneliness; like Tantalus, he has spent months doubled over with thirst and hunger, the cure just barely within reach before it recedes again.

“It’s been a long…” He sighs. “Year.”

She chuckles. “You’ve always had a hard time admitting it.”

“Excuse me?”

“That you’re human yourself. Prone to doing things wrong once in a while, just like the rest of us commoners.” She glances at him. “So. If anything happened—”

“What is this about?”

“—perhaps tell me.”

“There’s nothing,” he says, but it comes out weak.

In the ensuing minutes, hours, she doesn’t require his conversation, which is good. He leans back in the seat, not sleeping, knowing that she knows that he’s not sleeping, just shutting the world away…

Until, earlier than it should, the car makes a turn. He jerks awake to the sight of a small roadside church; just in time for Isabel to turn the car keys, the docile engine going silent. She exits, signalling at Manuel to follow. His leather shoes, sinking into the dark brown mud of the road.

She rushes toward the church. The windows are small, misty openings, leaving the humble aisle in the shadows. “We’re confessing.”

“You want to confess now?” He says, blinking the tiredness away. Then, he stops on his tracks. Suddenly, he is wide awake. “Isabel.”

Giving him a crooked grin, she has stepped into the confession booth…on the priest’s side.

“Since there’s, obviously, something on your mind that you can’t hold a normal conversation about. I am your tutor, after all. So come here, my son,” she says, her voice mock-deepening, “tell me your sins by quantity and type.”

Manuel throws a paranoid look above his shoulder. “I am quite sure that this breaks the entire rulebook.”

“Eh, it won’t be the worst thing that has happened within the Opus,” she says, motioning to the prayer bank, “speaking of which…”

She takes a seat. For the first time in decades, Manuel hears her praying the pater noster; Latin verses compelling him to kneel, and join her, heart in his throat.

But, in the place of asking about his last confession, Isabel gets to the point. “Did you do anything that weighs on your conscience?”

“You sound like you've decided already.” Nonetheless, she is entitled to know how her project came to fruition. “I did blackmail Garrido to get him on our side,” Manuel says, though, not very priestly as it sounds, it’s nothing he has qualms about. Garrido has no principles; he would’ve accepted their deal without a second thought, weren’t he afraid of losing votes. Manuel’s thoughts then trickle to Denise, to the fire in her, how defeated she looked at the police station. To Silas, pressured to lie even though he truly didn’t want to, then punished for it. “I have, indeed, been greedy. I have put our interests above the safety of others.” 

Through the opening, he sees Isabel roll her hand, prompting him to go on—a gesture courtesy of her late husband. “What else?”

“Who do you think I am?” Manuel’s voice grows accusatory. “Do you think, like everyone else seems to be so eager to, that I had someone burn the church?”

“Well…” The way she drags that word, it’s a disguised yes. “Let’s do a thought experiment. Say you did. Say it was planned on your part, and you never consulted me. A risky move, indeed.” A pause, a breath of smoke. “But the outcome was right. If, however, this was some madman who did it on their own account…” She clicks her tongue a few, damning times. “It better have been the reds, Father. I will not tolerate a wild card on our side.”

“I…” He looks up from his joined hands, to the gloomy stone arches. “This has nothing to do with our church. My doubts…are a matter of the spirit. Whether what I’m doing to myself, what we do, is worth it.”

“So we’re back there. Did you grow too comfortable while away from the Work?”

“Comfortable?” Manuel laughs dryly. “I was never comfortable in my own skin. I never stopped…practising corporal mortification. I deny myself everything, every little—every little pleasure and commodity that I could have. That would make the days in this sack of flesh more bearable.”

His strained voice echoes in the chapel. 

“You doubt your vows,” she observes.

“My vows are a part of this. Why should I deny it? I’m not a Saint.” He breathes out. And, suddenly: the thought of Silas embracing him at the Valley, a full-body shiver, resentment sparking into anger. “I know of my religious vocation. I always have. But a priest must stay above—above everything—no emotions, no desire! And for what? For the Work? I do my Work. For the Church, to see the kind of people who would spit in my face climbing the ecclesiastical ranks? For God? Is it for God, Isabel? I've never felt closer to God than when I’m with—”

He catches himself. Bites his tongue.

Isabel. “With…?”

A pause.

A whisper. “With him. The monk.”

Time freezes; so does the fire under Manuel’s lungs.

The click-clack of stiletto heels on stone reaches him from a far distance. And yet, when he looks down, Isabel is throwing her hands around his collar, ready to claw at him.

“I told you to behave.” She pierces him with icepick-grey eyes. “I vouched for you!”

Manuel gulps at air, a man drowning. “I—didn’t mean it like that! Good Lord! Who do you think I am?!”

“Oh, I know who you are, Father. I know it very well.” Isabel’s bony grip on his collar tightens, nails digging on his neck.

He forces his glare to hold hers. Decades of shattered dignity amount to the pieces of a new, inner armour; rigid in his spine, keeping his head high.

No more shame. No more.

He whispers, “You always did.”

Perhaps sensing the shift inside…Isabel lets go. 

Reaches for her cigarettes.

“Great commanders have been deviants,” she says. “Even women.” Manuel keeps himself from snorting at that, even women. He’s read enough history books to know that there is nothing new or unique in his problem. “But they didn’t make an atrocious display of it. You’ve got to behave like a man. You need to keep a grip on yourself!”

“Oh, truly,” he spits. “Thank you for this valuable counsel. I think I will manage.”

“You think. If it’s obvious to me, it will be to others. I don’t want people talking about this.” She lifts a finger, aiming, accusing. “Never. Never. Display your weakness. Every dark secret is a potential liability.”

Manuel pulls away, cassock breezing around his ankles. “I am trying.”

“Not hard enough. You must solve this.”

Yes. He must. This is the hegemony they live in, and Isabel would advocate doing inhuman things in the name of what passes for helping . “Do whatever you have to do,” she says. “Whatever. You hear me? By the time the vicar-general requests a meeting with you, I want you to have gotten your act together.”

She storms out. 

And he follows her hasty steps. 

Knowing, as he does, that she needs to have this word, this dot on the page. Knowing that, in this silence, she is silently thanking God for having Manuel crack only after Germán’s passing; at least, her husband didn’t have to die ashamed of his own legacy.

That, at least, she is keeping these thoughts to herself.

Silas’s hands have grown dextrous, carving smaller and more precise details in the chapel’s new altar. Be it clay, or stone, or wood, the shaping of materials under his palms feels wonderful; the thin layer of putty on his skin, the world shaping him as he shapes it, creating something—a meaning—out of nothing.

This new morning, he has spent against the backdrop of noise and dust coming from the site; later repairing the chapel, reinforcing the wall harmed by a storm, filling the cracks; building, stone by stone, with the simple and effective masonry he has learned from Eneko.

One layer after the other, the pale wall piles up.

He continues working as steps approach him from the gravel path. As a familiar gravitas permeates the air; that is when his pulse hitches.

Silas turns around. Father Aringarosa, studying his Work.

He must’ve come directly here from the Congress, judging by the leather bag hanging from his hand. Silas rises on his feet, reaching for it to help him.

The Father drops it. Wordlessly, he moves closer. 

Takes another piece. Places it on top. 

Silas swallows his questions. There is no need for answers; no future beyond this moment. Only the weight of granite in their hands; the grit in their fingers; the strain in their muscles.

Rebuilding. Reclaiming. Repairing. 

“You’re in for a treat, Father!” Eneko chippers, juggling a stack of rolled-up plans under his arm while he fishes in a pocket for the keys. The three of them follow the path leading to the Father’s rectory, its traces almost lost in the wild grass.

“Here. We’ve been fixing it up for you. Not all of it, the place is immense! But you’ve got running water and the chimney’s free—”

“Ah, you didn’t have to.”

From the shadows, two golden eyes watch Silas…and, in a blink, they’re gone.

The rectory welcomes them—creak of timbers under tired feet. Silas leaves Eneko and the Father to talk while he cleans the day off himself in the servants’ bathroom. Rumbling pipes trickle until they fill a bucket. Silas’s naked skin runs with goosebumps, the wind taken out of him splash by cold splash.

He will go back to the centre. To his little room, where—where no one means him harm, not anymore, not yet…

His day clothes for the site lay dirty, discarded…in favour of his crisp habit, which smells like the laundry shops at Marseille…

He stops himself. 

No. No disappointing the Father with his tears.

Silas tiptoes, barefoot, into the living room. It’s full of ochre light, from the torches.  The Father is running his hands across the worn furniture, then examining a large tapestry, who Silas himself unveiled a few days ago. Brown-green-black colours, forming the Romanesque portrait of a man weighing the Earth’s globe. There’s no sign of Eneko.

A floorboard creaks underfoot. The Father turns to him. There’s dark bags under his eyes.

Silas waits for a cue to leave…

He waits.

The Father simply undoes his overnight bag. One by one, he leaves his items—all that he possesses—on the table; a bottle, wrapped in his black shirt; a pouch with his toiletries; a leather-bound notebook; the New Testament, worn from reading; the garnet-red pouch with his own, small Discipline. 

That last item, he contemplates in his hand, before leaving it by the others.

“Could we…get the fire going, please? It’s a little chilly in here.” The Father half-smiles. So, so tired.

Silas looks at the hearth, and then back at him. “Of…of course. As you wish.”

“I was gifted a nice wine from Girona.” Breath in. Breath out. Silence. “Perhaps I can tempt you…to stay for a little longer?”

Popping, creaking, the fire draws a sigh of relief from Manuel. Fervent flames swallow logs whole; twisting their shapes until, glowing from within, they start to look like something St. Michael might have slain.

Even through his exhausted haze, this place is impressive. Some of the furniture unearthed seems ancient, while some other pieces date back to the 40s or 50s; like the heavy-cushioned sofa, rosy-gold, greying in the dusk. There will be much to donate, surely, and many steps before one can bring this place to its righteous splendour. 

Ah…but what a luxury it is, being able to settle. Resting, at last.

With the only company who has ever felt better than absolute silence.

Manuel watches Silas take a seat on the carpet; hugging his knees, huddled in himself. Looking so young, troubled somehow. Wary of this moment.

But who could blame him? 

It’s time for Manuel to address the elephant in the room—part of it at least, an ear or tusk. “We haven’t been alone in quite some time.”

Silas glances at him over a shoulder. The flames trace the side of his face, colouring it golden. 

Manuel swallows. Goes to the table, where he pours some of the sour red into two scratched, faded glasses.

“Listen.” Manuel’s voice is strained, the effort wearing it thin. “I…had to think at many lengths…about what happened. I am sorry. I…it was never your fault, the things we had to do, the lies to the police. Those were things I did for…myself.” He swallows dry, handing Silas the glass. “It was not…exemplary of me.”

“Father.” Silas looks surprised. “Don’t say that, please.”

“I must. And I’ve been cold with you. I know. I didn't…I didn’t like what I saw with the Monteverdi boy. It was a gut reaction, to all that blood, to you both…” Just thinking about it makes the room spin. “You…you did nothing wrong. You hurt yourself, if anything. And I should have been there, keeping an eye on that,” he spits the next words, “little devil.”

The glass nested between his hands, Silas looks to the fire.

“You don’t have to worry about Amaro, Father,” he says. “He is of the light.”

Manuel scoffs. Monteverdi is not of the light; he is made of smoke and mirrors. But he is also unimportant—and he’d be so angry to know—he is irrelevant and Silas is here, safe, by Manuel’s side. 

Silas tilts his head back to take a gulp, his Adam’s apple bobbing up and down. A dark red drop runs down the side of his chin; Silas wipes it with the back of his hand.

Manuel promises himself to never take this for granted again. 

“How…how are your wounds healing?”

Silas regards him curiously. Always taking long to reply, never wasting a word. “The flesh heals,” he says. “It always does.”

This doesn’t quite answer Manuel’s question. And it must've been obvious in his expression, because, unprompted, Silas kneels up and removes his habit; a practised, long stretch and yawn of thick fabric over his head.

The sight robs Manuel of breath. 

Silas’s slumped shoulders, coursed by yellowing-purple bruises and deep crevasses. Wounds like the rugged shapes of sunken earth, as long, tortuous, and painful as the way of Golgotha, crossing the spot on his shoulder blades where the bend of a wing might have once been. 

“Dear God,” Manuel mutters. He forgets his glass and kneels down on the floor; his hands land on the sides of Silas’s back. “My angel. How can you do this to yourself?”

“But you encouraged me,” Silas tells the fire, his tender voice cracking under the weight of all this confusion. “You must learn to bear the pain, you must try harder. And I did, Father. I prayed every day, until my voice was raw. That the coveting, the longing, may finally leave me.”

Manuel’s limbs turn heavy, his fingertips too hot on Silas’s shoulders. Despite everything, the exposed muscles stir a spark of desire—soon sinking in shame like wet, hot mud.

He withdraws his hands, carefully folds them over his own lap.

This is a paradox; that those who live in the manner of saints must fall deeper in suffering. That Manuel and Silas may never complete each other, leading parallel lives—the same, lonesome cycle time and time again until Judgement Day—while the greedy princes and queens of this world, who never have denied themselves anything, only amass more prosperity in their overflowing hands.

But he…

He is a pastor, first and foremost.

And Silas. Silas needs him.

The wine is softening Manuel’s edges, he knows. “I admire you very much. What you have endured…” He remembers his own ostracisation at Salamanca; what it was to have his peers turning their backs on him, to flee like an animal wounded as soon as he’d seen the opportunity. But, at the house, Silas kept his head high; he bore this cross for weeks. “I could not. I am so very sorry.”

“You are too kind to me.”

“No—I’m afraid…” Manuel can’t lie, can’t keep the words from flowing. “I’m afraid that your pain may have been for nothing, my angel. I’m afraid that I made things worse…that the entire Opus Dei thinks—” 

“Father.”

Silas’s head hangs down. And yet, he says nothing more; for seconds, for centuries.

“What is it, child? Tell me. Please.”

“I shouldn’t…” Silas embraces himself. The silence, in itself, is punishment. “The expiation worked for my anger, my grief…but this ache…that, what only you know. It won’t…it won’t leave me. I’ve done everything,” he adds, tumbling over himself. “I’ve prayed. Asked God to have mercy, to cleanse me. Si vis potes me mundare…”

“All the saints were men.” Manuel’s words have worn off their meaning. “All of them struggled.”

“It makes no sense.” The tilt of his head, the downturn of his lips, the knife-sharp line of his cheekbones. Even now, hurt and broken, every line of his body is dizzying. “Pain always exhumes pleasure in me…in that I expiate, I sin. In that I see you, my mentor and Father in Christ, I sin. Only with the cilice… only the cilice has ever worked against it.  But I can’t bleed out this feeling, Father. I cannot erase the thought that God must want this, that my love for you feels natural, that I adore you like I adore Him. That this is not a sin, but a gift, pain and pleasure all the same.”

In the ensuing silence, only the fire creaks.

Manuel’s insides feel sticky, like tar, like blood; pumping through his veins, fast and warm, so warm, so warm…

Unbidding the thoughts of those summer nights at the Valley, sweet moans and red lashes on pert white skin; teaching Silas to accept the Calvary, a tangle of expiation and intimacy—as it turns out, the closest to intimacy that Manuel has ever—

“Forgive me,” Silas’s plea is muffled by a hand, covering his mouth. “I told you that this should better remain unsaid.”

Manuel chokes on his words. Anything he could have replied— no, it’s fine, I asked you— seems achingly banal.

He forces himself to see the ripped-open skin, to graze it with his own hands. God gives men suffering—treats us like his children—but what kind of God would want to destroy his most beautiful creation?

This cannot be right.

An epiphany enlightens Manuel, casting a new light on this broken body—this broken, beautiful body at his mercy.

“Please, let me mend my wrongdoing,” he mutters. “Let me kiss your scars.”

Silas doesn’t move. Beyond him, the fire breathes, it swells. 

“My scars belong to you,” he says quietly. “Do with them as you please.”

Manuel tastes these words.

Time stretches as the space between them dwindles. On his knees, Manuel tilts forward…and his lips find Silas’s back.

And Silas exhales a sound from the depths of his chest—something that has stayed chained in there, yearning for the end of a prolonged agony.

Manuel presses himself to him before lifting his lips again, finding another spot on that broad, pallid expanse…until he grows bolder, sliding his tongue along the wounds—they taste of iron, and soap, and still a hint of sweat—and there’s Silas’s faint scent overriding them all, dragging him to madness.

This warmth, this new-old warmth that Father Aringarosa forces himself to snuff out time and time again…Manuel allows it to fill him. He is at the Valley, lonely and faithless; he is watching this stranger sleep, beaten from his Pyrenean pilgrimage. This nameless man in his habit, in a swirl of snow, so in tune with God and the elements, so perfectly taking the shape that fate needs from him, and emotions Manuel had never hoped to feel again are rearing from their resting place. He's in the angel’s arms, half conscious from the pain of a close call, and yet dumbly happy that things happened the way they did because they can cling to each other; he’s fighting the intrusion of sensuality in his thoughts every evening, the panic when Silas, his Silas, gives him the sort of pleading look one should reserve for Christ; because Manuel has given him a life, a name, a purpose, and Silas desires nothing more than giving himself whole in return. 

And Manuel has struggled. Struggled with loving him back, with selfishly wanting this soul he claimed in God’s name. Tonight, Manuel won’t let God have him.

Silas jolts, the stiffness melting under Manuel’s mouth. Each kiss draws more, sublime noises, like a new and curious instrument. Silas is disquiet, kept in place by Manuel’s hands; hands which are growing bolder, travelling up Silas’s sides and grazing the shapes of his ribcage, then his collarbone, then his throat, it's muscles tightening under the Holy Cross ring. Manuel wants to revere each part of Silas the way he’d do with a piece of art, by losing himself in it.

It’s desire, boiling past the point of idolatry. Sensual. Impossible.

Manuel taps against the worn resistance of his soul.

Withdraws his lips, withdraws his hands.

Cautiously, on his knees, Silas turns around. He’s almost quivering, breathing through his open mouth…Manuel can almost not bear it to gaze down the muscles of Silas’s flat, hard belly, and further down…

He shuts his eyes.

Silas stammers. “Should…should I get the cilice…?”

“No.” Manuel’s palm travels up to Silas's cheek, and Silas leans into it. “Don’t do that. Please.”

“Father,” Silas stutters, “you’re burning.”

Perhaps, he will burn harder. Ablaze in the deserts of Hell; ablaze, or alight. Manuel almost laughs at the irony of it all. And yet, Silas’s hands pull him back from his gloomy inner world, cool on his cheeks, loosening his rigid collar so that he can finally breathe.

Manuel doubles over. Just the most timid brush of Silas’s fingertips sends his nervous terminations ringing. He wants Silas’s hands to wander; he wants them unbuttoning his cassock, his shirt, seeking the skin underneath. He wants them wrapped around him, squeezing him, torturing him. This is too much—he cannot afford this—he is not ready.

Manuel won’t scare Silas by pulling away, so he pulls Silas close instead. Whispers desperate words of reassurance. “Silas, I feel the light between us—I do—since the beginning. But I didn’t—I don’t know how…”

“Don’t fret.” Silas leans in, forehead to forehead. “It is not a sin.”

Even if he wants to believe that—and he wants to, with his whole being—Manuel doesn’t. Not knowing God like he does.

But he…he is tired of hurting. Tired of hurting Silas in His name. 

His hand cups the back of Silas’s head, caressing the fine, white hair. Their wine-laced breaths, hot on each other’s faces.

“Lay down, my angel,” he whispers, and Silas obeys, spreading himself on the carpet, never complaining of discomfort. Flames dance in the red eyes, pupils wide and full of fire, of moon, of trust.

Manuel gazes down that long body. Naked, hiding nothing. He grasps one of Silas’s thighs, spreading his leg apart like an angel wing…

To seek the last wounds, the ones Manuel himself carved. A symmetrical pattern on Silas's thigh; barbs, pushed, then pulled. Blackberry vines to mortify the desire out of their flesh. 

Manuel swallows. Then lowers his lips, grazing the scar of the cilice .

The cry Silas lets out is of pure agony. Manuel’s lips are barely inches away from his arousal now, the curve of his groin so soft, the smell of him so alluring, the length of him so full, so obvious under the scant piece of fabric that is his underwear. Beautiful, he’s sure. But Manuel is trying not to see, not to feel, not to name any of this.

“Father.” Silas whimpers, sobs. The hips lift ever so slightly, seeking what they cannot have. “Please.” And when Manuel looks up, Silas wraps his arms around him. Manuel tumbles down, cassock half-open, Silas’s body beneath his own, hard as marble and soft as velvet. “Please. Please. Just this one time.”

Manuel freezes—no, this is enough—no, it could never be, nothing is enough—he feels ridiculous, painfully predictable, a slave to this cage of flesh—and why must it be like this? What is he doing here, on top of Silas? This is madness, he shouldn’t, he—

Silas’s lips land on his. Manuel’s senses sharpen up, they plunge down. His pulse races faster than it ever has done from fear, or excitement, or what used to pass for pleasure. Not even Antón, his golden nightmare, had kissed him—those lips had only assaulted, taken, kept. And, before he can sort out what is happening, he is clumsily mirroring the way Silas’s lips hold his, the needful nipping, the motions of that cool tongue sliding over his own. Even though Manuel is groping in the dark. Even though he is at a loss as to how one is supposed to do this, to love an angel, to love anybody at all.

Silas is restraining himself. Shaking under the surface.

And Manuel, sticky with sweat, allows Silas to lock him in with arms and legs. He pushes his hips forward, delving deep into his angel through the fabric of his clothes. And Silas, so attentive, so attuned to every last of Manuel’s gestures, so desperate to please him, takes his cue to mirror him—a little bit harder—arching into his hip, falling, then thrusting in again, dragging skin against fabric, muscle on muscle, a rhythm that quickly becomes ravenous, all of his fast thrusts melting into one—and Manuel couldn’t pull away even if he wanted to—even if it aches, the sweetest sort of pain—and that is the point, he’s given himself over, given himself to the one person he would trust with his life, and Silas, Silas who takes so much less than he needs—who hasn’t taken anything for himself his whole life—Silas takes him. Takes him with the compulsion of someone who has thought about this thousands of times.

It is very pleasant. It is raw. It is over soon, Manuel’s body sticking to Silas’s as he spasms with silent release—a first, glorious, blaze of bliss, then a groan as he decompresses, body beating, beating, beating, each echo a little softer, slowly waning.

He buries his face in Silas's neck.

Cannot say anything but his name.

Cannot feel anything but Silas’s pressure against his robe, still impossibly tight. Barely having caught his breath, he can do nothing but nodding, but muttering, “Do it.”

And Silas obeys, of course he does; throws his head back, bumping it on the floor, all of his sweat-cold muscles tightening at once under Manuel, his voice swelling in a delicious crescendo—tearing a roar from his throat that could be of pain or pleasure alike.

Oh, and he should. He should scream. He should let God hear.

Manuel’s mind glimmers, no thoughts marring its empty scape; only the fire, receding. And Silas coming back from this ecstasy, the both of them beating in unison, breath-in breath-out.

When he moves, he’ll have to undress…to clean himself…to address this.

So…he doesn’t. He stays there. A little while longer.

“Father,” comes the whisper.

“Mmm.”

“Can I…” under his forehead, he feels the muscles of Silas’s neck tense. “Can I…can I stay here with you?”

Manuel’s throat tightens. The sweat cools, pooling under his clothes. Good Lord, he’s sticky with his own seed. There’s so much room around them, and yet so little in this habit.

And yet. Something is missing. The shame, it—

It’s not there.

Against Silas’s chest, he simply nods.

Silas, in Manuel’s bed. Naked in the early morning light, the blankets a tangle around his shape.

Manuel is wide awake next to him. Wet hair combed back, his skin still pricking from a cold shower; from another, quotidian punishment.

He’s never quite understood praying the Joys. Never quite understood what anybody would want to celebrate in this forsaken life, in this lifetime he has spent at odds with God, minding the things of above.

But…it’s different now. Watching Silas sleep, safe in his arms…and he, Manuel, safe in Silas’s.

Uncertain what lies ahead, what lies around them, in a world that at best will never understand, at worst will try to destroy them.

At least…this is their nest, their shelter. Undisturbed. 

It might not be the sanctuary where they met. But it could be home—it will be. They could make home out of it.