The priest bowed, departed. O'neill. Of course! It was young Dane's name, he should have remembered. Save that in the Cardinal's palace everyone just said Dane. Ah, he had made a grave mistake, keeping her waiting. If Dane was His Eminence's dearly loved nephew then Mrs. O'neill was his dearly loved sister.
When Meggie came into the room Cardinal Ralph hardly knew her. It was thirteen years since he had last seen her; she was fifty-three and he was seventy-one. Both of them aged now, instead of only him. Her face hadn't changed so much as settled, and into a mold unlike the one he had given her in his imagination. Substitute a trenchant incisiveness for sweetness, a touch of iron for softness; she resembled a vigorous, aging, willful martyr rather than the resigned, contemplative saint of his dreams. Her beauty was as striking as ever, her eyes still that clear silvery grey, but both had hardened, and the once vivid hair had faded to a drab beige, like Dane's without the life. Most disconcerting of all, she wouldn't look at him for long enough to satisfy his eager and loving curiosity. Unable to greet this Meggie naturally, he stiffly indicated a chair. "Please sit down."
"Thank you," she said, equally stilted.
It was only when she was seated and he could gaze down upon her whole person that he noticed how visibly swollen her feet and ankles were.
"Meggie! Have you flown all the way through from Australia without breaking your journey? What's the matter?"
"Yes, I did fly straight through," she said. "For the past twenty-nine hours I've been sitting in planes between Gilly and Rome, with nothing to do except stare out the window at the clouds, and think." Her voice was harsh, cold.
"What's the matter?" he repeated impatiently, anxious and fearful. She lifted her gaze from her feet and looked at him steadily. There was something awful in her eyes; something so dark and chilling that the skin on the back of his neck crawled and automatically he put his hand up to stroke it.
"Dane is dead," said Meggie.
His hand slipped, flopped like a rag doll's into his scarlet lap as he sank into a chair. "Dead?" he asked slowly. "Dane dead?" "Yes. He was drowned six days ago in Crete, rescuing some women from the sea."
He leaned forward, put his hands over his face. "Dead?" she heard him say indistinctly. "Dane dead? My beautiful boy! He can't be dead! Dane-he was the perfect priest-all that I couldn't be. What I lacked he had." His voice broke. "He always had it-that was what we all recognized-all of us who aren't perfect priests. Dead? Oh, dear Lord!"
"Don't bother about your dear Lord, Ralph," said the stranger sitting opposite him. "You have more important things to do. I came to ask for your help-not to witness your grief. I've had all those hours in the air to go over the way I'd tell you this, all those hours just staring out the window at the clouds knowing Dane is dead. After that, your grief has no power to move me."
Yet when he lifted his face from his hands her dead cold heart bounded, twisted, leaped. It was Dane's face, with a suffering written upon it that Dane would never live to feel. Oh, thank God! Thank God he's dead, can never now go through what this man has, what I have. Better he's dead than to suffer something like this.
"How can I help, Meggie?" he asked quietly, suppressing his own emotions to don the soul-deep guise of her spiritual counselor. "Greece is in chaos. They've buried Dane somewhere on Crete, and I can't find out where, when, why. Except I suppose that my instructions directing that he be flown home were endlessly delayed by the civil war, and Crete is hot like Australia. When no one claimed him, I suppose they thought he had no one, and buried him." She leaned forward in her chair tensely. "I want my boy back, Ralph, I want him found and brought home to sleep where he belongs, on Drogheda. I promised Jims I'd keep him on Drogheda and I will, if I have to crawl on my hands and knees through every graveyard on Crete. No fancy Roman priest's tomb for him, Ralph, not as long as I'm alive to put up a legal battle. He's to come home."
"No one is going to deny you that, Meggie," he said gently. "It's consecrated Catholic ground, which is all the Church asks. I too have requested that I be buried on Drogheda."
"I can't get through all the red tape," she went on, as if he hadn't spoken. "I can't speak Greek, and I have no power or influence. So I came to you, to use yours. Get me back my son, Ralph!"
"Don't worry, Meggie, we'll get him back, though it may not be very quickly. The- Left are in charge now, and they're very anti-Catholic. However, I'm not without friends in Greece, so it will be done. Let me start the wheels in motion immediately, and don't worry. He is a priest of the Holy Catholic Church, we'll get him back."
His hand had gone to the bell cord, but Meggie's coldly fierce gaze stilled it.
"You don't understand, Ralph. I don't want wheels set in motion. I want my son back-not next week or next month, but now! You speak Greek, you can get visas for yourself and me, you'll get results. I want you to come to Greece with me now, and help me get my son back."
There was much in his eyes: tenderness, compassion, shock, grief. But they had become the priest's eyes too, sane, logical, reasonable. "Meggie, I love your son as if he were my own, but I can't leave Rome at the moment. I'm not a free agent-you above all others should know that. No matter how much I may feel for you, how much I may feel on my own account, I can't leave Rome in the midst of a vital congress. I am the Holy Father's aide."