checked that the coast was clear, and invited her to step inside.
‘Did your father send you?’ he demanded, still looking for the catch.
‘I came on my own.’
‘Does he know you’re here?’
‘He’d kill me if he knew!’
‘Did anyone follow you?’
‘I saw no one.’
‘Did the Sisters not challenge you?’
‘They were asleep.’
‘What age are you?’
‘I’m fourteen.’
‘Do you realize what you are doing?’
‘I’m old enough to make my own decisions.’
‘You know you can never go back?’
‘I know that. Am I safe here?’
‘You have my word on it!’
She would have his word indeed! A cast iron guarantee! For no one in Ireland had followed the story of Chastity McCoy more closely than Schnozzle. He knew every detail of her strange upbringing, a childhood steeped in the bigotry that was her father’s hallmark. It had all started with the arrival of Ramirez, the apostate priest and his blasphemous circus, who travelled the roads at McCoy’s bidding to shame and outrage the Catholic people. He remembered all too well her late mother, a one-time nun seduced away from the convent to join in this provocative charade. He could say with pride that he himself was the only man brave enough to confront them, to stalk them fearlessly from townland to townland, risking the wrath of Magee and his bully boys. Schnozzle foretold that it would end badly and when he heard that Ramirez had been murdered he knew he had been proved right. God was not mocked! But what was he to make of the corollary to this tale of shame? The Señora moving into the Shambles with McCoy, heavy with his child? For years it had troubled him, this enigma of the half-caste girl playing in the gutters on the Protestant side of the square. If God had a plan in all this, Schnozzle couldn’t see it. He reluctantly accepted that the ways of the Almighty might not be ours. He prayed that the blood in her veins would one day prove unsuited to the cold Presbyterian ways of Armagh. And in time his patience was rewarded.
The rumours at first were will-o’-the-wisps, ephemeral whisperings, fading away to nothing when he tried to pin them down. Ireland had always been full of rumours, of visitations and apparitions and miracles, all promising deliverance from the horrors we had brought on ourselves. At first he dismissed them, but they persisted. There was something unsettling about them, something that marked them out from the ordinary run of superstition, these whispers from Donegal of a broken chapel at the end of the Yellow Meal Road, in a place they mockingly called Ballychondom. Whispers of a dancing Madonna, a mysterious icon, a statue of unrivalled potency. He began to hear of powerful cures for the sick and wonderful promises of the nation united under the leadership of the One True Church. Briefly Schnozzle dared to hope.
But the tale, so full of expectation, had ended suddenly in shame and humiliation. The rumours that reached the palace now spoke of dark and treacherous deeds. He heard how McCoy and the girl had ventured to the very end of the Yellow Meal Road and stolen the Dancing Madonna on the eve of Her Epiphany. Stolen it for an exhibit in a peepshow, to mock him and his people once more. Terror and bloodshed still ruled the land, tolerance remained as elusive as ever. Protestant and Catholic still slaughtered each other with ritual regularity.
Few now remembered, or cared to remember, the Madonna of Ballychondom. She had been consigned to the scrapheap of collective memory, along with a thousand other lost hopes and false dawns. But Schnozzle hadn’t forgotten her. He still clung to a wisp of hope. For one rumour, stranger than all the others, had reached his ears. A sting in the tail so implausible that it could only be true. The Little Sisters had reported to him that on her trip to Donegal with her father the Madonna had danced for Chastity McCoy.
When the door was safely bolted he sat her down at the kitchen table and gave her the third degree for a bit, to allay any residual suspicions, but her answers measured up. What had given her confidence to cross the Shambles and turn her back on her father and his heresy? Shyly she hinted at the presence of Patrick Pearse McGuffin round the place, and Schnozzle, though his eyes never left her, offered up a pious ejaculation to the Sacred Heart for His mysterious ways. To be on the safe side, though, he’d have Immaculata give her a full gynaecological examination in a while to check if she was a virgin or not. Immaculata was a veteran among veterans of the never-ending abortion struggle; the foetus had yet to be conceived that could escape her stringent searches. Was McGuffin her boyfriend, Schnozzle asked, all smiles now? Maybe he was and maybe he wasn’t was all she would concede. He pressed her further. Was she expecting? She blushed, denied it vehemently, began to cry and got up to leave. He put his hand firmly on her shoulder and let her cry; these were things he had a right to ask. If, with the help of God, she joined the Church, she would have to answer questions like these every week in the confessional.
He was on the point of questioning her about the Missing Madonna, but he bit his tongue. An inner voice counselled caution. This was something that could wait. He had gleaned enough already to know that these were deep waters. He knew that the three of them had seen Her dance and heard Her message. An unlikely trio they were too! Frank Feely, a simpleton from the hills above the town. Noreen Moran, gauche and unschooled, the child of a spoiled priest forced to share her father’s wretched exile. And Chastity McCoy, least likely of the threesome! A ragged half-breed from across the Shambles. He had the boy in service below stairs where he could keep an eye on him in person. Noreen was in the convent in Caherciveen out of harm’s way. He had a monthly report from the Reverend Mother on her spiritual progress. And here was the third of them, landing on his doorstep without benefit of preliminaries. Subtlety and patience had never been virtues that Schnozzle admired, but for once he knew better than to go probing too deeply the will of the Almighty. All would be revealed in time. In the meantime there were a thousand practical details to attend to.
Already his mind was racing with the responsibility of the project. How much time had he got? How long would it be before McCoy sobered up and spotted that the bird had flown? Was there some way he could throw him off the scent till the job was done? Normally it would take a year’s instruction to turn a Protestant, but given the girl’s pedigree could the job be expedited? He had a month, two if he was lucky. It would have to be done by Easter. She would receive instruction under conditions of the greatest secrecy, and her conversion would only be announced when it was complete.
But then what was to become of her?
Anywhere in Ireland would be out of the question. She would have to be returned to Mexico. It was the only place she would be safe. Was there anyone he could rely on there? Mentally he ran through a list of those with experience in Latin America. Father Alphonsus was the man he needed! Father Alphonsus had connections in Tijuana, he remembered. When the time came, Chastity would return to the land of her forefathers, and the great sin of her mother would be expiated. He looked up in gratitude at the portrait that hung over the Adam fireplace. A hint of a smile was playing round the lips of old Cardinal Mac. Schnozzle dropped to his knees on the Persian rug, gave the girl his rosary beads, and showed her how to count them as he offered up the five decades of the joyful mysteries. Our Blessed Lady had answered his prayers! Saint Jude had intervened on his behalf! The old Cardinal’s dream, of one, just one lost sheep returning to the true fold, had come spectacularly true! He had the genuine article on his hands at last.
On the mantelpiece beneath Big Mac’s portrait, propping up the Peter’s Pence inventory, stood three fading photographs in silver frames. He
