Read Online The Seventh Sacrament by David Hewson - Free Book Online
Authors: David Hewson
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face that could silence the most troubled of watchers with a single, calming glance, one that said I know, but that is how things are.
This personal connection changed things, so much that, in the end, Gabrielli stayed away from the last exhibit as much as possible. It was unhealthy to become obsessed by the cast-off garment of Alessio Bramante, a dead schoolchild, victim of a tragedy no one could begin to comprehend. There were times he regretted his own personal involvement in having it placed in the Piccolo Museo in the first place.
And there was another cause for concern too, one that bothered him much more when he cared to think about it.
There was the blood.
EVERYTHING ELSE ON THE WALL of the small room in Sacro Cuore was static, frozen in time. Burns or fingerprints or mere accidental stains that only faded with the years, with nothing left to hint that living, breathing human beings had once touched them. Only one other object, the sleeve of the chemise of the Venerable Mother Isabella Fornari, abbess of the Poor Clares in Todi, possessed a bloodstain, now a pale, indistinct dun brown, and that supposedly belonged to the shade of a former Abbot who died in 1731.
Alessio’s T-shirt was of more recent origin. Beatrice Bramante said she had discovered it while searching her son’s room just after his disappearance. Over the lowermost star she found something inexplicable: a red mark, fresh and ragged at the edges, as if it had occurred only minutes before. Nothing could explain the stain’s presence. The garment had been newly washed shortly before the tragedy and left in a cupboard, untouched during the days of torment that had preceded its discovery.
The mother had approached Gabielli and asked if it would be appropriate for the item to be added to the collection of the Little Museum, contemporary proof that those departed in tragedy could still send a message to the living.
There had been doubts. Gabrielli believed the shirt should have been sent to the police. Others deemed that the plight of the boy’s father now made that inappropriate. The priest at the time had little affection for the odd assortment of curios he had inherited. Yet even the priest relented when faced with Beatrice Bramante, a woman who was both distraught and utterly determined. Then there was the unavoidable truth: a bloodstain had appeared on a seven-year-old’s white T-shirt while it was folded, clean and neat, in a cupboard in his home. All at a time when the child was gone from sight, presumed, by everyone, to be dead.
So they had relented, and before long come to regret it. Three years after the T-shirt had gone on the wall of the Little Museum, it had acquired another bloodstain. Then, in subsequent years, two more. Each was sufficiently modest to prevent it attracting those unfamiliar with the object. The fact was acknowledged quietly by those more observant among the church hierarchy, the case withdrawn from view until the newest stain faded, losing its freshness, then returned to the wall. Its metamorphosis was never mentioned again, for fear of unwanted publicity.
Gabrielli, who had been a party to this subterfuge, always knew a reckoning would come. If one accepted the premise of Purgatory, it was clear what was happening. The stains were a message. They would continue until someone listened, someone saw fit to act. The rational part of his mind told him this was impossible, ludicrous. Wherever the ghost of the hapless Alessio—just repeating the name to himself brought back a memory of the boy, stiff and upright in his office, asking intelligent questions about Bernini and his legacy in Rome—had gone, it could not be capable of making its mark on a simple object in a glass case on the wall of a curious church by the side of the noisy and traffic-choked Lungotevere Prati. The mundane and the unworldly were not supposed to meet like this.
For some reason these thoughts haunted Gabrielli more than
This personal connection changed things, so much that, in the end, Gabrielli stayed away from the last exhibit as much as possible. It was unhealthy to become obsessed by the cast-off garment of Alessio Bramante, a dead schoolchild, victim of a tragedy no one could begin to comprehend. There were times he regretted his own personal involvement in having it placed in the Piccolo Museo in the first place.
And there was another cause for concern too, one that bothered him much more when he cared to think about it.
There was the blood.
EVERYTHING ELSE ON THE WALL of the small room in Sacro Cuore was static, frozen in time. Burns or fingerprints or mere accidental stains that only faded with the years, with nothing left to hint that living, breathing human beings had once touched them. Only one other object, the sleeve of the chemise of the Venerable Mother Isabella Fornari, abbess of the Poor Clares in Todi, possessed a bloodstain, now a pale, indistinct dun brown, and that supposedly belonged to the shade of a former Abbot who died in 1731.
Alessio’s T-shirt was of more recent origin. Beatrice Bramante said she had discovered it while searching her son’s room just after his disappearance. Over the lowermost star she found something inexplicable: a red mark, fresh and ragged at the edges, as if it had occurred only minutes before. Nothing could explain the stain’s presence. The garment had been newly washed shortly before the tragedy and left in a cupboard, untouched during the days of torment that had preceded its discovery.
The mother had approached Gabielli and asked if it would be appropriate for the item to be added to the collection of the Little Museum, contemporary proof that those departed in tragedy could still send a message to the living.
There had been doubts. Gabrielli believed the shirt should have been sent to the police. Others deemed that the plight of the boy’s father now made that inappropriate. The priest at the time had little affection for the odd assortment of curios he had inherited. Yet even the priest relented when faced with Beatrice Bramante, a woman who was both distraught and utterly determined. Then there was the unavoidable truth: a bloodstain had appeared on a seven-year-old’s white T-shirt while it was folded, clean and neat, in a cupboard in his home. All at a time when the child was gone from sight, presumed, by everyone, to be dead.
So they had relented, and before long come to regret it. Three years after the T-shirt had gone on the wall of the Little Museum, it had acquired another bloodstain. Then, in subsequent years, two more. Each was sufficiently modest to prevent it attracting those unfamiliar with the object. The fact was acknowledged quietly by those more observant among the church hierarchy, the case withdrawn from view until the newest stain faded, losing its freshness, then returned to the wall. Its metamorphosis was never mentioned again, for fear of unwanted publicity.
Gabrielli, who had been a party to this subterfuge, always knew a reckoning would come. If one accepted the premise of Purgatory, it was clear what was happening. The stains were a message. They would continue until someone listened, someone saw fit to act. The rational part of his mind told him this was impossible, ludicrous. Wherever the ghost of the hapless Alessio—just repeating the name to himself brought back a memory of the boy, stiff and upright in his office, asking intelligent questions about Bernini and his legacy in Rome—had gone, it could not be capable of making its mark on a simple object in a glass case on the wall of a curious church by the side of the noisy and traffic-choked Lungotevere Prati. The mundane and the unworldly were not supposed to meet like this.
For some reason these thoughts haunted Gabrielli more than
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