"I'm sorry," Quart said again.
The assistant priest nodded weakly, staring at a vague point in space. He brushed his hair off his forehead. He looked truly pathetic. His glasses had slipped down his nose and he was very pale. He must have been under a lot of pressure to have lost control like that.
"I was just doing my job," Quart said, as gently as he could, leaning over the table. "There's nothing personal about it."
Father Oscar nodded again, avoiding his eyes. "I lost my head," he said, subdued.
"We both did," Quart said with a smile, trying to soothe the young man's wounded pride. "But I'd like to make one thing very clear: I didn't come here to persecute anyone. I'm just trying to understand."
Still avoiding Quart's eye and with his hand on his forehead, Father Oscar asked what the hell Quart thought he'd understand by going through other people's belongings.
Trying to sound as friendly as he could, Quart told Father Oscar about the hacker and the message to Rome. As he talked, he paced.
Then he stopped in front of the young priest. "Some believe," he said, in a tone that implied that he didn't believe it, "that you're Vespers." "That's absurd."
"But your age, qualifications, interests, they all fit the profile" He leaned on the table again. "How much do you know about computers?"
"The same as everyone."
"What about these boxes of diskettes?"
The assistant priest blinked. "That's private. You have no right." "Of course not" Quart held up his palms to placate "but could you tell me where your computer is?" "That's not important." "I think it is."
Father Oscar looked more resolute now, and less like a humiliated young man. "Listen," he said, "there's a war going on here, and I've chosen which side I'm on." He sat up straight and looked Quart in the eye. "Don Priamo is a good and honourable man. The others aren't. That's all I have to say."
"Who are the others?"
"Everyone. From the people at the bank to the archbishop." He smiled for the first time. A smile of anger. "And I include those who sent you from Rome."
Quart couldn't have cared less; he wasn't bothered by insults to his team. Assuming that Rome was his team. "All right," he said neutrally. "I'll put all this down to your youth. At your age, life is much more dramatic. Ideas and lost causes carry you away."
The assistant priest glared at him contemptuously. "Ideas are what made me join the priesthood," he said, as if wondering what Quart's motivation had been. "And Our Lady of the Tears isn't a lost cause yet."
"But if anyone's going to win in this, it won't be you. You're being transferred to Almeria"
The young man sat up even straighter, defiandy. "Maybe that's the price I have to pay for my dignity and a clear conscience."
"Nice words," said Quart. "So you're prepared to throw a brilliant career out the window. Is it really worth it?"
"For what shall it profit a man, if he shall gain the whole world, and
lose his own soul?" The assistant priest faced Quart firmly as if there could be no argument with this.
Quart managed not to laugh in Father Oscar's face. "I don't see what your soul has to do with this church," he said.
"You don't see a lot of things. That some churches are more needed than others, for instance. Maybe because of what they hold within them, or symbolise. Some churches are refuges."
Quart remembered Father Ferro's using exactly the same expression during their meeting in Corvo's office. "Refuges," he echoed.
"Yes."
"From what?"
Still facing Quart, Father Oscar stood up and walked with difficulty to the window. He drew back the curtains, letting in the air and the light. "From Our Holy Mother the Church," he said at last. "So Catholic, Apostolic and Roman that it's ended up betraying its original purpose. In the Reformation it lost half of Europe, and in the eighteenth century it excommunicated Reason. A hundred years later, it lost the workers, because they realised it was on the side of the masters and oppressors. And now, as this century draws to a close, it's losing the young and the women. Do you know how this will end? With mice running around empty pews."
Father Oscar fell
silent for a few moments. Quart could hear him breathing.
"Above all," the assistant priest went on, "some churches allow us to defend ourselves from what you came to impose here: submission and silence." He contemplated the orange trees in the square. "At the seminary I realised that the entire system is based on appearances, and on a game of ambition without principles. In the priesthood you only get dose to people if they can advance your career. Very early on, you choose a teacher, a friend, a bishop who will further you," Father Oscar laughed quietly. He didn't look so young now. "I thought there were only four types of bow that a priest makes before the altar, until I met priests who were experts at hundreds of bows. I was such a priest myself. People look for a sign from us, and when we fail to give it, they fall into the hands of palmists, astrologers and other charlatans peddling the spirit. But when I met Don Priamo, I saw what faith is. Faith doesn't even need the existence of God. It's a blind leap into a pair of welcoming arms. It's solace in the face of senseless fear and suffering. The child's trust in the hand that leads out of darkness."