The phone call had beaten around the bush long enough. I'd not spoken to Prelate Brechet, now Pater Prelatus Brechet, the very leader of my order, in years. The quiet static of the line between us invaded the dying conversation.
"She is up for sainthood, as you know," Pater Prelatus Brechet said. The silence built again, and a wave of soul-wrenching memories flooded my mind.
"I disagreed with putting her in the impetus battalion," I mumbled quietly. "Her soul was too kind for such harsh work."
I remembered well the looks of my instructor, Prelate Brechet. As I heard his distinctive long breath, I awaited the lecture to come.
"She pushed for it; you'd remember her indomitable will better than any of us," Pater Prelatus Brechet said, "At the time, I agreed with you, though we did not know it. She had a meeting with my predecessors, and the result of that meeting is why her placement with the impetus battalion was approved." There was a long pregnant pause with a slight hum from my old instructor, "It is also why her sainthood, the first of our order, will be approved."
That bombshell weakened my legs, and I used my free hand to steady myself as I slid into a greasy chair in this rundown hotel room.
"You are in St. Louis, correct?" Pater Prelatus Brechet asked. The officialness, if that was a thing, of his voice returned, and it straightened my sagging form in the chair.
"Yes, Pater Prelatus," I responded in equal measure.
"His Holiness, the Pope desires an inspection of the portrait we commissioned of her," Pater Prelatus Brechet said slowly. "You two were," a short and soft pause interrupted his sentence. I heard a quiet voice in the background, one I listened to every Sunday, give a gentle assent. "Close, when you were younger, his Holiness feels that you'd be best in assessing the quality of the portrait."
Close is the polite term for nearly being thrown out. Our order can marry after five years of service, and training members of our order takes seven years. It was not uncommon for trainees to marry and work as a team. Melini and I did not marry. We loved each other in the way first loves can, but no, we did not marry. It wasn't a scandal, per se, but it was a blemish on each of our records.
I did not have time to say anything; my phone buzzed, and a quick look provided me with an address in New Orleans.
"I am finished here, Pater Prelatus," I responded with the requisite formality. "I will leave this evening."
"God goes with you, child," that familiar voice said from some distance away from the phone.
The line went dead, and I was only still long enough to organize my mind into the necessary steps to leave. I'd planned on leaving in the morning, but a quick call to the rental car company and I was ready for an overnight drive.
I stepped out of my rental, grabbed my valise, and looked at the building before me. It invited a chuckle from my dry sense of humor. The future Saint Melini portrait is being painted in a former paper mill turned artist commune right off the Bayou Lafourche waterway.
I walked across Joe Brown Road to what seemed like the main entrance. The old paper mill is adorned with thousands of paintings, artwork to some, graffiti to others. The loading dock doors are open and had a set of makeshift stairs into the building.
When inside, I found a man painting silver scrollwork across the doorway and floor. No, painting isn't the correct term; he was touching up silver preexisting scrollwork.
I quietly watched his steady hand deliver paint in smooth lines. I hoped that patiently waiting would give me an opportunity to ask the painter for directions.
"What is it, Father?" the man growled in disdain. He pointed the dry end of his brush at my nose. "Not all of us can afford Vatican silver. Not all of us can afford the fees for the church-blessed wards."
I blink in shock and look around at the interior of the commune building. Heads were starting to poke out of little cubbies and cubicles tented with blankets and plywood.
I turned back to the man, who was now off his stool and standing a few feet closer to me. I am not a Father; the laity often doesn't know the distinction. The standard attire for my order doesn't help.
I smiled and gestured to the scrollwork, "No need; this is solid foundational scrollwork. My guess is that the paper mill paid the local diocese a lot of scratch to have this done," I said.
The man paused his advance and turned his gaze to look at where my hand was pointing.
"Have you a jeweler here?" I asked.
The man frowned and turned back to me, "Several," he said.
I set my valise down on the floor and popped it open. "Purchase a tube of silver solder from him," I said. "Mix this in when you make your paints from the solder," I pulled out a small packet of silver dust. I looked around the space, the floors, and the walls and did my best to estimate the totality of the building's inscrolled silver. I pull out five more packets. "This should be enough. Are you familiar with mixing your paints from powders?"
The man nodded, dumbfounded.
"Good," I said. "May I? The blessing could be refreshed?" I proffered my hand to his brush, and he slowly offered it to me.
I stepped past him and moved to a wall, where a rectangular mark about eight inches by eighteen inches was.
"This is the foundational blessing," I explained. "It is the one piece of this inscrolling work you do not want to paint over or disturb."
With an equally deft hand, I began tracing the detailed work of the silver inlays. A moment later, the man handed me the bottom of the soup can he was using as his paint palette. It took me 45 minutes to properly outline and bless this foundational cornerstone.
I returned the brush and the palette to the man and smiled. "I've done far more with far less; the building is in good hands with your efforts," I said.
The man numbly takes his items and has to juggle the little baggies and the paint supplies.
"I'm looking for a painter who is making a portrait of one of my order?" I asked.
A new voice from behind me said, "All the way up top, overlooking the water, you can't miss her."
I am wordlessly guided to the stairs by pointing fingers. With my valise in hand, I make my way upstairs. I paused at the curtain of gauzy cloth that walls off the final chamber of this upstairs floor. Light from that space flits through the sheer fabrics and yet something about it holds me back.
I realized I had thoughts and feelings to deal with before I ventured forth. I last saw Melini five or maybe six years ago at a continuing education conference for our order. I'd thought that maybe there'd be a chance to start over as adults.
It was the Welsh countryside of Snowdonia; picturesque was and will always remain an understatement. I found her in a field the morning after I arrived. She'd risen before the sun and prepared to exercise her martial routines.
That is the difference between our places in the Swiss Guards. The impetus battalion is the quick reaction force, the soldiers of our order. They wear mail, silver-adorned plate armor, blessed steel, and silver weapons. My order is gray cloth, white collar, and black valise.
I watched and gazed in wonder and amazement at something I'd never thought I would witness. Sure, Melini was grace, beauty, and poise wrapped in the ability to deliver death and destruction, but that was not what brought tears to my eyes.
It was her faith; she'd come by it so completely that you could not unsee it. We'd shared an understanding of cynicism in our youth, but what stood before me washed my reservations of faith away. Before me stood an avatar of faith, bound to her life's work against the defilers we face.
When she finished her routines, she turned to me. Her smile was soul-wrenchingly painful. I understood, with the same clarity she understood her faith, that there was no future for us.
Melini sheathed her sword and walked to me. Her smile was warm and loving in all the ways I did not want to see.
"I am not for you," Melini said when we were near. "It is not to be. I could not bear the guilt if I took you from the love that is yet to come." Our foreheads touched, and she continued, "I have my own path, and you yours. What works I do will pale to the good of yours. You will know her, and the two of you have my blessings."
I wiped the tears from my eyes and straightened my uniform. I looked at the light coming through the curtain in the hallway of the artist commune. I hardened my resolve and swept the curtain aside. Three steps and a jingle of the curtain's metal weights, and I was there in a space of light, warmth, and wonder.
The canvas, as tall as I am, faced away from me. The metal disks at the bottom of the curtain jingled with pure notes—a vibrant woman in her youth peeked from around the corner of the painting. I caught a hint of a smile, courteous and joyous.
She laughed and said, "Ha! That is timing. I've just finished."
She stepped from behind the canvas, wearing overalls and a T-shirt covered with paints, oils, soils, and hues to brighten up a man's daily life.
She cocks her hip, and a quirky little smile plays across her face. It reaches all the way to the corner of her eye.
"Don't just stand there gawking," she said.
It was fear, really, that has held me back so far. Seeing the portrait of Melini would, could, might break my heart. I'm grounded to this spot by worry, concern, and a loss that I've yet to deal with.
A paint-smeared hand grabs mine and tugs me forward, closer to the windows and the light they delivered. I am pulled forward and then pushed from behind across the breadth of the studio. The young woman faces me out over Bayou Lafourche.
"One, two, three," she said before she spun me around.
There, on a canvas of oil and cloth, stands a Saint, Melini, who stood alone against a horde and won. It is not a rendition of her victorious battle or a direct portrait of her in her gleaming armor.
I fell to my knees and began to weep. It is an image of the moment before Melini sheathed her sword in that field in Snowdonia. A handful of moments before, she told me that our love could not be. It is an image, a memory only I could know or have, for we were the only two people in that field all those years ago.
Melini's bearing, that completeness of faith she bore, is recreated perfectly on canvas. I understand now so much more than I could have before. I let the grief flow. At some point, I am tugged into an embrace with a soul that matches my own. I am not the only one grieving.
"She said you'd come," the woman whispered. "She said you'd know this moment. She said I am to prepare you for what is to come."