The Devil Hates Latin
REGINA PRESS has released our first novel recently to significant popular acclaim. As a special gift for our loyal Regina Magazine readers, here’s a taste of Katharine Galgano’s work. (See customer reviews HERE.)
PROLOGUE
he Cardinal inhaled sharply. The
view from the papal apartments over St Peter’s Square revealed a stark late winter’s tableau that was pure magic. Before him lay a painting executed in grays and whites, the work of Italian genius etched against a ferocious sky.
The heavy black snow clouds had been massing over Michelangelo’s famous dome all morning, discouraging all but the hardiest tourists from waiting in the queue which normally snaked around Bernini’s magnificent Colonnade.
In recent weeks there had been huge crowds of tourists there, eager for a glimpse of the new pope. The sudden death of the previous pontiff had spurred the usual hoopla surrounding a papal election, though this time the many billions following on social media had ramped the chaos up to unprecedented levels.
Reporters unfamiliar with Catholicism scrambled to untangle it all -- conspiracy theories speculating wildly about the pope’s unexpected demise, leads leaked from chanceries around the world, even astute remarks from san pietrini, the Romans who had maintained the Basilica from time immemorial, and whose accustomed stance was one of dignified silence.
When the white smoke finally rose, the world’s media was utterly wrong-footed. They had speculated approvingly on the potentialities of a cigar-chomping, Harley-riding German liberal with massive funding, or a handsome Filipino with an infectious grin and smooth delivery. Uncertain about how to spin the narrative on a tiny, fierce Cardinal from an African backwater, most media had simply ignored him.
Now, the tall, lanky American Cardinal found himself on his knees, kissing the papal ring of the first black man to sit on the throne of Peter.
The new pope was a reserved man, and no longer young. He was, however, extremely focused, and intent on his purpose. After the briefest of pleasantries, he came immediately to the point.
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CHAPTER 4
yson White regarded his wife
stoically as she moved among the pots on their rooftop terrace. It was an early spring morning in the Eternal City, and Michelle Orsini White was in a good mood. An avid gardener, his diminutive, dark-haired wife had managed through sheer persistence to interest her husband in the tomato vines growing up through her trestles, and the pots of mint and basil interspersed between her glowing spring flowers.
Every morning, he knelt by her side, carefully weeding, watering and re-potting. The fresh smell of the earth and the herbs rose from the pots; spring sunlight glinted off the cloudy green Tiber far below.
It was critical that Dyson take an interest in something, to Michelle’s mind. Since his release from a US federal penitentiary in Texas two years before, the tall, laconic 57-year old ex media and publishing tycoon hadn’t reacted much to anything except for a rather desultory concern with high papal politics.
Nothing else about his business empire interested him; he was resolved to stay in Rome and ‘keep an eye’ on the Papacy. One thing was certain, however. He’d sworn never to set foot in America again.
The Whites were staying in Rome as expatriate employees of his British media arm.
This was unfortunate because it meant that they couldn’t see their daughter Sophia, now Sister Mary Benedicta of the Boston Order. Sophia had practically flown into the convent after graduating from Christendom College, a small Catholic school in Virginia renowned for its orthodoxy.
There, her roommates had sustained the girl throughout her father’s ordeal at the hands of a Washington, DC federal prosecutor, who had filed 30 counts against him alleging everything from racketeering to conspiracy, insider trading, fraud and obstruction of justice.
In the end, it cost Dyson five years of legal maneuvering and tens of millions in legal fees to get 28 of the 30 counts dismissed. Michelle, who had no head for legal technicalities, couldn’t understand why her husband of 30 years had to serve a four-year prison sentence.
D