The Martyr's Song Read online

  Father Michael took a step toward the commander. “Please—”

  “Stay!”

  Michael stopped. Fingers of dread tickled his spine. He nodded and tried to smile with warmth.

  Marie stepped hesitantly toward the commander.

  “Put the cross on her back,” Karadzic said.

  Father Michael stepped forward, instinctively raising his right hand in protest.

  Karadzic whirled to him, lips twisted. “Stay!” His voice thundered across the courtyard.

  Molosov bent for the cross, which could not weigh less than thirty kilos. Marie’s face wrinkled in fear. Tears streaked silently down her cheeks.

  Karadzic sneered.“Don’t cry, child. You’re simply going to carry a cross for your Christ. It’s a noble thing, isn’t it?”

  He nodded, and his man hoisted the gravestone to Marie’s back. Her body began to tremble, and Michael felt his heart expand.

  “Don’t just stand there, woman; hold it!” Karadzic snapped.

  Marie leaned tentatively forward and reached back for the stone. Molosov released his grip. Her back sagged momentarily, and she staggered forward with one foot before steadying herself.

  “Good. You see, it’s not so bad.” Karadzic stood back, pleased with himself. He turned to Father Michael. “Not so bad at all. But I tell you, Priest—if she drops the cross, then we will have a problem.”

  Michael’s heart accelerated. Heat surged up his neck and flared around his ears. Oh God, give us strength!

  “Yes, of course. If she drops the cross, it will mean that you are an impostor and that your church is unholy. We will be forced to remove some of your skin with a beating.” The commander’s twisted smile broadened.

  Father Michael looked at Marie and tried to still his thumping heart. He nodded, mustering reserves of courage. “Don’t be afraid, Marie. God’s love will save us.”

  Karadzic stepped forward and swung his hand. A loud crack echoed from the walls, and Michael’s head snapped back. The blow brought stinging tears to his eyes and blood to his mouth. He looked up at Sister Flauta’s roof; the dove still perched on the peak, tilting its head to view the scene below. Peace, my son.Had he really heard that music? Yes.Yes, he had. God had actually spoken to him. God would protect them.

  Father, spare us. I beg you, spare us!

  “March, woman!” Karadzic pointed toward the far end of the courtyard. Marie stepped forward. The children looked on with bulging eyes. Stifled cries rippled through the courtyard.

  They watched her heave the burden across the concrete, her feet straining with bulging veins at each footfall. Marie wasn’t the strongest of them. Oh God, why couldn’t it have been another— Ivena, or even one of the older boys. But Marie? She will stumble at any moment!

  Michael could not hold his tongue. “Why do you test her? It’s me—”

  Smack!

  The hand landed flat and hard enough to send him reeling back a step this time. A balloon of pain spread from his right cheek.

  “Next time it’ll be the stock of a rifle,” the commander said.

  Marie reached the far wall and turned back. She staggered by, searching Father Michael’s eyes for help. Everyone watched her quietly, first one way and then the other, bent under the load, eyes darting in fear, slogging back and forth. Most of the soldiers seemed amused. They had undoubtedly seen atrocities that made this seem like a game in comparison. Go on, prove your faith in Christ. Follow his teaching. Carry this cross. And if you drop it before we tire of watching, we will beat your priest to a bloody pulp.

  Michael prayed. Father, I beg you. I truly beg you to spare us. I beg you!

  CHAPTER SIX

  IT WAS Nadia who refused to stay silent.

  The homely birthday girl with her pigtails and her yellow hair clips stood, limped down the steps, and faced the soldiers, arms dangling by her sides. Father Michael swallowed. Father, please! He could not speak it, but his heart cried it out. Please, Father!

  “Nadia!” Ivena whispered harshly.

  But Nadia didn’t even look her mother’s way. Her voice carried across the courtyard clear and soft and sweet. “Father Michael has told us that people filled with Christ’s love do not hurt other people. Why are you hurting Marie? She’s done nothing wrong.”

  In that moment, Father Michael wished he had not taught them so well.

  Karadzic looked at her, his gray eyes wide, his mouth slightly agape, obviously stunned.

  “Nadia!” Ivena called out in a hushed cry. “Sit down!”

  “Shut up!” Karadzic came to life. He stormed toward the girl, livid and red. “Shut up, shut up!” He shook his rifle at her. “Sit down, you ugly little runt!”

  Nadia sat.

  Karadzic stalked back and forth before the steps, his knuckles white on his gun, his lips trembling.

  “You feel bad for your pitiful Marie, is that it? Because she’s carrying this tiny cross on her back?”

  He stopped in front of a group of three women huddling on the stairs and leaned toward them. “What is happening to Marie is nothing! Say it! Nothing!”

  No one spoke.

  Karadzic suddenly flipped his rifle to his shoulder and peered down its barrel at Sister Flauta. “Say it!”

  A hard knot lodged in Father Michael’s throat. His vision blurred with tears. This could not be happening! They were a peaceful, loving people who served a risen God. Father, do not abandon us! Do not! Do not!

  The commander cocked the rifle to the sky with his right hand. His lips pressed white. “To the graveyard, then! All of you! All the women.”

  They only stared at him, unbelieving.

  He shoved a thick, dirty finger toward the large cross at the cemetery’s entrance and fired into the air. “Go!”

  They went. Like a flock of geese, pattering down the steps and across the courtyard, some whimpering, others setting their jaws firm. Marie kept slogging across the stone yard. She was slowing, Michael thought.

  The commander turned to his men. “Load a cross on every woman and bring them back.”

  The thin soldier with bright hazel eyes stepped forward in protest. “Sir—”

  “Shut up!”

  The soldiers jogged for the graveyard. Father Michael’s vision swam. Father, you are abandoning us! They are playing with your children!

  Several children moved close to him, tugging at his robe, embracing his leg. Blurred forms in uniform kicked at the headstone crosses and hoisted them to the backs of the women. They staggered back to the courtyard, bearing their heavy loads. It was impossible!

  Father Michael watched his flock reduced to animals, bending under the weight of concrete crosses. He clenched his teeth. These were women, like Mary and Martha, with tender hearts full of love. Sweet, sweet women, who’d toiled in childbirth and nursed their babies through cold winters. He should rush the commander and smash his head against the rock! He should protect his sheep!

  In his peripheral vision, Michael saw the dove clucking on the roofline, stepping from one foot to the other. The comforting words seemed distant now, so very abstract. Peace, my son. But this was not peace! This was barbarism!

  The twisted smile found Karadzic’s quivering lips again.

  “March,” he ordered. “March, you pathetic slugs! We’ll see how you like Christ’s cross. And the first one to drop the cross will be beaten with the father!”

  They walked with Marie, twenty-three of them, bowed under their loads, silent except for heavy breathing and padding feet, staggering.

  Every bone in Michael’s body screamed in protest now. Stop this! Stop this immediately! It’s insanity! Take me, you spineless cowards! I will carry their crosses. I will carry all of their crosses. You may bury me under their crosses if you wish, but leave these dear women alone! For the love of God! His whole body trembled as the words rushed through his head.

  But they did not reach his lips. They could not, because his throat had seized shut in anguish. And in any case, the in
sane commander might very well take the butt of his gun to one of them if he spoke.

  A child whimpered at Michael’s knee. He bit his lower lip, closed his eyes, and rested a hand on the boy’s head. Father, please.

  His bones shook with the inward groan. Tears spilled down his cheeks now, and he felt one land on his hand, wet and warm. His humped shoulders begged to shake—to sob—to cry out for relief, but he refused to disintegrate before all of them. He was their shepherd, for heaven’s sake! He was not one of the women or one of the children; he was a man. God’s chosen vessel for this little village in a land savaged by war.

  He breathed deeply and closed his eyes. Dearest Jesus . . . My dearest Jesus . . .

  The world changed then, for the second time that day. A brilliant flash ignited in his mind, as if someone had taken a picture with one of those bulbs that popped and burned out. Father Michael’s body jerked, and he snapped his eyes open. He might have gasped—he wasn’t sure, because this world, with all of its soldiers and trudging women, was too distant to judge accurately.

  In its place stretched a white horizon flooded with streaming light.

  And music.

  Faint but clear. Long, pure notes, the same as he’d heard earlier. My beloved. A song of love.

  Michael shifted his gaze to the horizon and squinted. The landscape was endless and flat like a sprawling desert, but covered with white flowers. From the distant horizon, the light streamed above the ground toward him.

  A tiny wedge of alarm struck Michael. He was alone in this white field. Except for the light, of course. The light and the music.

  He could suddenly hear more in the music. At first he thought it might be the spring bubbling near the courtyard. But it wasn’t water. It was a sound made by a child. It was a child’s laughter, distant, but rushing toward him from that far horizon, carried on the swelling notes of music.

  Gooseflesh rippled over Michael’s skin. He suddenly felt as though he might be floating, swept off his feet by a deep note that resounded in his bones.

  The music grew, and with it the children’s laughter. High peals of laughter and giggles, not from one child, but from a hundred children. Maybe a thousand children, or a million, swirling around him now from every direction. Laughter of delight, as though from a small boy being mercilessly tickled by his father. Then reprieves followed by sighs of contentment as others took up the laughing.

  Michael could not help the giggle that bubbled in his own chest and slipped out in short bursts. The sound was thoroughly intoxicating. But where were the children?

  A single melody reached through the music. A man’s voice, pure and clear, with the power to melt whatever it touched. Michael stared out at the field where the sound came from.

  A man was walking his way, a shimmering figure, still only an inch tall on the horizon. The voice was his. He hummed a simple melody, but it flowed over Michael with intoxicating power. The melody started low and rose through the scale and then paused. Immediately the children’s laughter swelled, responding directly to the man’s song. He began again, and the giggles quieted a little and then swelled at the end of this simple refrain. It was like a game.

  Michael couldn’t hold back his own laughter. Oh my God, what is happening to me? I’m losing my mind. Who was this minstrel walking toward him? And what kind of song was this that made him want to fly with all those children he could not see?

  Michael lifted his head and searched the skies. Come out, come out wherever you are, my children. Were they his children? He had no children.

  But now he craved them. These children, laughing hysterically around him. He wanted these children—to hold them, to kiss them, to run his fingers through their hair and roll on the ground, laughing with them. To sing this song to them. Come out, my dear . . .

  The flashbulb ignited again. Pop!

  The laughter evaporated. The song was gone.

  It took only a moment for Father Michael to register the simple, undeniable fact that he was once again standing on the steps of his church, facing a courtyard filled with women who slumped under heavy crosses over cold, flat concrete. His mouth lay open, and he seemed to have forgotten how to use the muscles in his jaw.

  The soldiers stood against the far wall, smirking at the women, except for the tall, skinny man. He seemed awkward in his role. The commander looked on with a glint in his eyes. And then Michael realized that they had not seen his awkward display of laughter.

  Above them the dove perched on Sister Flauta’s roof, still eyeing the scene below. To Michael’s right, the elderly still sat, as though dead in their seats, unbelieving of this nightmare unfolding before them. And at his fingertips, a head of hair. He quickly closed his mouth and looked down. Children. His children.

  But these were not laughing. These were seated, or standing against his legs, some staring quietly at their mothers, others whimpering. Nadia, the birthday girl, sat stoically on the end, her jaw clenched, her hands on her knees.

  When Father Michael looked up, his eyes met Ivena’s as she trudged under her cross. They were bright and sorrowful at once. She seemed to understand something, but he could not know what. Perhaps she, too, had heard the song. Either way, he smiled, somehow less afraid than he had been just a minute ago.

  Because he knew something now.

  He knew there were two worlds in motion here.

  He knew that behind the skin of this world, there was another. And in that world a man was singing, and the children were laughing.

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  JANJIC LOOKED at the women shuffling across the courtyard and bit back his growing anger with this demented game of Karadzic’s.

  He’d dutifully kicked over three gravestones and hefted them onto the backs of terrified women. One of them was the birthday girl’s mother. Ivena, he heard someone call her.

  Janjic could see that she’d taken care to dress for her daughter’s special day. Imitation pearls hung around her neck. She wore her hair in a meticulous bun, and the dress she’d chosen was neatly pressed; a light pink dress with tiny yellow flowers so that she matched her daughter.

  How long had they planned for this party? A week? A month? The thought brought nausea to his gut. These souls were innocent of anything deserving such humiliation. There was something obscene about forcing mothers to lug the ungainly religious symbols while their children looked on.

  Ivena could easily be his own mother, holding him after his father’s death ten years earlier. Mother, dear Mother—Father’s death nearly killed her as well. At ten, Janjic became the man of the house. It was a tall calling. His mother died three days after his eighteenth birthday, leaving him with nothing but the war to join.

  The women’s dresses were darkened with sweat now, their faces wrinkled with pain, their eyes casting furtive glances at their frightened children on the steps. Still they plodded, back and forth like old mules. Yes, it was obscene.

  But then the whole war was obscene.

  The priest stood still in his long black robe, hunched over. A dumb look of wonder had captured his face for a moment, then passed. Perhaps he had already fallen into the abyss, watching the women slog their way past him. Pray to your God, Priest. Tell him to stop this madness before one of your women drops her cross. We have a march to make.

  From his right the sound came, like the sickening crunch of bones, jerking Janjic out of his reverie. He turned his head. One of the women was on her knees, trembling, her hands limp on the ground, her face knotted in distress around clenched eyes.

  Marie had dropped her cross.

  Movement in the courtyard froze. As one, the women stopped in their tracks. Every eye stared at the cement cross lying facedown on the concrete beside the woman. Karadzic’s face lit up as though the contact of cross with ground completed a circuit that flooded his skull with electricity. A quiver had taken to his lower lip.

  Janjic swallowed. The commander snorted once and took three long steps toward Marie. The priest also took a
step toward his fallen sheep but stopped when Karadzic spun back to him.

  “When your backs are up against the wall, you can no more follow the teachings of Christ than any of us. Perhaps that’s why the Jews butchered the man, eh, Paul? Maybe his teachings really were the rantings of a lunatic, impossible for any sane man.”

  The priest’s head snapped up. “It’s God you speak of!”

  Karadzic turned slowly to him. “God, you say? The Jews killed God on a cross, then? You may not be a Franciscan, but you’re as stupid.”

  Father Michael’s face flushed red. His eyes shone in shock. “It was for love that Christ walked to his death,” he said.

  Janjic shifted on his feet and felt his pulse quicken. The man of cloth had found his backbone.

  “Christ was a fool. Now he’s a dead fool,” Karadzic said. The words echoed through the courtyard. He paced before Father Michael, his face frozen in a frown.

  “Christ lives. He is not dead,” the priest said.

  “Then let him save you.”

  The burly commander glared at the priest, who stood tall, soaking in the insults for his God. The sight unnerved Janjic.

  Father Michael drew a deep breath. “Christ lives in me, sir. His spirit rages through my body. I feel it now. I can hear it. The only reason that you can’t is because your eyes and ears are clogged by this world. But there’s another world at work here. It’s Christ’s kingdom, and it bristles with his power.”

  Karadzic took a step back, blinking at the priest’s audacity. He suddenly ran for Marie, who was still crumpled on the cement. A dull thump resounded with each boot-fall. In seven long strides he reached her. He swung his rifle like a bat, slamming the wooden butt down on the woman’s shoulder. She grunted and fell to her belly.

  Sharp gasps filled the air. Karadzic poised his rifle for another blow and twisted to face the priest. “You say you have power? Show me, then!” He landed another blow, and the woman moaned.

  “Please!”The priest took two steps forward and fell to his knees, his face wrinkled with grief. Tears streamed from his eyes. “Please, it’s me you said you would beat!” He clasped his hands together as if in prayer. “Leave her, I beg you. She’s innocent.”