Silent Mercy

TWENTY-NINE

“MATTHEW, no doubt,” Faith said as Mike pulled her to her feet.

“What do you mean?”

“See those spires on top of the tower? Each represents the writers of one of the Gospels. Mark, John, Luke. This one must be Matthew,” she said, nervously trying to defuse the tension of the frightening near miss. “He’d be the first to tumble at the idea of a woman running this place.”

I’m sure Mike made that connection to the stained-glass window of Matthew and the winged figure in the old Fordham church even faster than I did. “Good to know.”

Staff and students spilled out of every doorway and came running to see if Faith was all right. Someone had summoned the janitor, who tried to push all the bystanders out of the way and see what the property damage was.

Mike was scanning the rooftop from where we stood to check whether anyone was there. “If you’re okay, I’m going to take a run up to see what happened.”

“No, no. Please don’t. It’s just one of the problems we’re having with the infrastructure. We’re old, Mike, and we’re literally crumbling. That’s part of the trouble with this place.”

Faith kept glancing over our shoulders, as though looking for someone in particular. “Why don’t the two of you go inside? Just use that entrance behind me before the crowd breaks up. I’ll join you as soon as I explain things to the dean of faculty.”

I took Faith’s direction and didn’t look back until I pulled open the heavy door. A man with a severe mien and pinched expression had approached her, causing the remaining students to take their leave. Mike followed me through the doorway, then charged up the flight of stairs that appeared to lead to the tower that dominated the rest of the interior campus.

The small chapel was off to my right. I let myself into the dark, cool chamber, silent as a tomb. The faint smell of incense hung over the room, and I walked around, studying the painted icons that hung on the walls.

Faith arrived before Mike. “Lovely, aren’t they? The priest’s wife made them. We use this for our Greek Orthodox services.”

“Greek Orthodox, at Union?”

“Yes, we’ve got a lot of diversity among our students and in our programs.”

She was shivering, and saw that I was watching her try to still the movement of her hands. “Why don’t we sit?”

“Are you sure you’re all right, Faith?”

“I will be. It’s not the falling statuary that scares me, Alex. There are faculty members — and trustees — who don’t want me to take the next step here. I’m not usually high-strung, but the politics, the backstabbing that seems to be going on, has unnerved me. Where’s Mike?”

“I don’t know. He probably—”

“I hope he’s not wasting his time on the roof,” she said, now wringing her hands. “That will only make them more unhappy.”

“Who are ‘they,’ Faith? Tell me about all this.” I sat on a long wooden bench against the wall, and she sat opposite me, at the end of one of the pews. I wanted to get a sense of the dynamic we’d just witnessed and then move on to discuss the more urgent questions I had about Ursula Hewitt.

“Some of the people in administration — not all of them — but there are some who don’t want to see me promoted. Did Justin tell you that I’m in line to be president?”

“Yes, he did. Is it fair to assume that the man who just came to assist you in the courtyard isn’t one of your supporters?”

“Mrs. Danvers?” Faith laughed. “That’s what I call him. Do you know who that is?”

“Yes,” I said, smiling back at her. “The brilliantly drawn housekeeper in Daphne du Maurier’s Rebecca. I’ve got my own Mrs. Danvers at the job. I’ll have to remember that image.”

I relished the thought of Patrick McKinney cross-dressing like the severe Dangers, a gray wig pulled back into a tight bun.

“I get a lot of ‘You just stay in your office and think great thoughts, Faith. I’ll take care of everything else.’ Meanwhile, the physical plant is falling apart and my allies have to wonder if I’ll be up to reestablishing control of the substantive issues here, not to mention raising the money we need for upkeep and programming. He’s the bane of my existence.”

“What’s his name?”

“I don’t want to take you in that direction, Alex. He wasn’t up in the tower, pushing poor Matthew over the edge. He’s not going to hurt me, physically.”

I wouldn’t pressure her on the man’s name till she got comfortable with me.

“Justin said that you wanted to talk with me, Faith. To talk about Ursula Hewitt.”

“I was horrified, of course, to hear about her murder last night. It’s so unspeakably sad — so tragic.”

“How did you learn about it?”

“Ursula had been staying with me from time to time.”

“Here, on campus?”

“No. I’m in faculty housing, around the corner. Her uncle phoned late in the evening, to see if she was still with us.”

“Are you married?”

“I’m divorced.”

“Who’s the ‘us’?”

“Oh, I’ve got two sisters. They both live in Kansas, where I grew up, but Chat has been here visiting, trying to decide about whether or not to move east,” Faith said as she shuffled her feet and re-crossed her legs. “I had to ask Ursula to find another place so Chat could be with me.”

“She’s living with you right now? Is she also part of a religious community?” I asked, even though Chat had suggested otherwise to Mike.

“No. My father had a plan for each of us, I guess you’d say. It worked for two of us. My older sister is named Serenity, and the baby is Chastity. That’s why we call her Chat.” Faith loosened up as she talked. “It was pretty tough growing up as the minister’s daughters in a small town with that label.”

“I’ll bet.”

“We’re not much alike in temperament. There’s a strong physical resemblance — people mistake her for me all the time around school. But she’s sort of the black sheep, not that my parents would label anyone like that. It’s how the world sees her, I think. Still finding her way after experimenting with some unconventional choices. That’s why I’m trying to look out for her.”

“How unconventional?” I asked.

“Nothing that would stand out here, but Manhattan, Kansas, is a different place than this island. Chat was a chronic runaway as a teen, did the tattoo thing, tested my mother’s great good nature all the time. No one in the family even knows that she was abused by a neighbor, back when she was fifteen. We got her through the runaway phase. Now she’s just a free spirit, and I’m trying to keep her under my wing.”

“Nice of you. If I can ever help talk her through that period, my door is always open,” I said. Now I understood why Faith had made that suggestion to Chat.

“We might take you up on that.”

“What can you tell me about Ursula?”

Faith Grant removed the glasses from her head and placed them in the pocket of her shirt. “In a way, I feel responsible for what happened to her, for her death.”

“Why? What do you know about it?”

“Not anything at all, except what’s in this morning’s newspapers. It’s just that the fact that she was murdered likely has something to do with her role in the church. And I encouraged her to come teach at Union after the Vatican silenced her.” Faith was soft-spoken but direct. “I’m one of the people who urged her to carry on with the work that she so loved.”

The door opened and Mike came in, giving me a quick shake of his head to indicate he had come up empty.

“Did you go to the top of the tower?” Faith asked. “Did anyone see you?”

She was more interested in whether Mike had been noticed by her superiors than whether he had encountered a criminal.

“No.” He sat beside me on the bench while I continued to ask questions.

“Back to Ursula Hewitt,” I said. “How long have you known her?”

“I met her about a year and a half ago, not long after she had been excommunicated. I had the idea that she might be in need of a place to teach.”

“Why not a Catholic institution?” I asked.

“That’s the whole point of silencing, Coop,” Mike said, leaning forward to engage Faith Grant and me. “No can do. That message is from the top, from the Magisterium.”

I looked at Faith for confirmation.

“He’s right. A very formal letter comes from Rome. The Magisterium is the teaching office of the Vatican, and according to their rules, the task of interpreting the Word of God is entrusted solely to that body — the pope and his bishops. Ursula was forbidden to teach in her own church.”

“But allowed to do so here?”

Faith smiled. “Well, according to our vision, she is. We’ve done this before, Alex. We’ve had a silenced Jesuit theologian here, taken him in and made him a scholar-in-residence.”

“Did you face any opposition to inviting Ursula?”

She stopped to think. “Not really.”

“What did she teach?” I asked.

“Feminist theology, of course,” Faith answered without hesitation. “The history of women in the church fascinated her.”

“Before those who became priests, had women been silenced?”

“Certainly. There are loads of examples. In modern times, they’ve had to do with obvious issues. In 1979, a nun — a Sister of Mercy on the Yale faculty — signed a document along with twelve others supporting abortion, supporting a woman’s right to control her body. She was told by Rome that if she didn’t recant, she’d be excommunicated.”

“Was she?”

“Sister Margaret agreed not to publish the document, but she wouldn’t recant. So she was silenced. Many of the most progressive nuns have been punished by the church for speaking out on abortion or on homosexuality,” Faith said, shaking her head. “And despite the wonderful work they do in the most underserved communities — and in these times when Rome is having a very hard go attracting young people to service, women or men — they’re shunned.”

“And the formal position of the Vatican on silencing?” I asked. “What’s the reasoning?”

“The primary argument used to be — centuries ago — that it would prevent confusion among God’s people caused by contentious issues. Roman and Spanish Inquisitions, the index of forbidden books, the outlawing of scientific thinking by geniuses like Galileo — you know all the historic examples. It might have been a means to quash dissension in those days, but now all the issues involved are commented on by the mainstream media on the nightly news.

“Let me ask you this,” Mike said. “Ursula Hewitt knew that much of what she did was unpopular. Was she ever afraid?”

“She was fearless,” Faith said, biting her lip. “Principled and smart and totally fearless. There was nothing about her I didn’t admire and look up to.”

“Was she still teaching this week?”

“Only one course this semester. Sort of a new direction for her. She’d been involved in stage work with a community group. She’d been researching medieval dramatists.”

“Why’s that?” Mike asked.

“Because they wove so many scenes of torture into their work.”

“Religious themes?”

“Indeed. Around the time of the Inquisition, stagecraft often depicted sadistic acts and intense suffering. Ursula had developed a fascination for what was called the Theater of Cruelty. It was common in the Middle Ages for dramatists to stage violent acts — like the Passion of Christ. They did it to make accounts in the scripture more believable, and by doing so, they hoped to inspire more religious faith in the audience.”

I was familiar with some of these works from my study of French literature. “Il faut du sang,” I whispered.

“You know it, Alex? That’s exactly right. ‘There must be blood.’ ”

“Sounds pretty gruesome,” Mike said.

He was correct about that. And I knew that he realized, as I did, that for at least one evening in the theater, the lives — and perhaps the deaths — of Naomi Gersh and Ursula Hewitt were linked in that milieu.

“What interested her about it?” I asked.

“Everything. Ursula questioned everything. When the word came from Rome that barring women from the priesthood wasn’t a human-rights issue, it was Ursula who stood up to the Magisterium. ‘Is it because we don’t have rights?’ she asked. ‘Or is it because we’re not human?’ ”

“That’s pretty direct,” Mike said.

“Ursula referred to the church as a place of hope — and a place of horror. ‘What does it say about Christianity’—she used to challenge her students—‘what does it say that at the center of Christianity, of all its writings and beliefs, is torture? Torture, and the murder of a man?’ ”