I went to see Father Scirocco, the younger of the two priests. I went to him rather than Father Angiosti because the latter was connected to the party, and that connection made me leery. I had no reason to trust Father Scirocco any better, but he was younger, at least. He had blue eyes and blond hair but a mottled face, pocked with small white scars. I felt disappointed at how soon he turned the conversation toward the sacraments.

“Have you availed yourself of the confessional?”

“On occasion.”

“Since your admittance?”

“To be honest, Father, since arriving here I’ve had little opportunity to sin.”

I caught the vaguest smile.

“But there’s a reason you are here.”

“I collapsed.”

“In return for being sheltered, you’ve agreed to commit yourself to this program. There’s the lay component, the group counseling, together with the tending to the body. But there’s also the spiritual.”

“I meditate. In the garden. Working alongside the others.”

“In the group counseling session, from what I hear, you say little.”

“I listen.”

“You find those sessions instructive?”

“Yes.”

“And this?”

“Pardon?”

“I have a degree in psychology. We don’t have to do this in the booth, in the dark. We can be more modern, if you like.”

“God is everywhere, I suppose.”

“Yes,” he said. “And just so you know, inside the booth or outside, the same rules of confidentiality apply.”

I understood the sanctity of the confessional, beyond which nothing could be repeated. But people were human, after all. The priests spoke to one another, no doubt. And there were pressures, I imagined, from within the institution and from without. From Orsini’s party, perhaps, or the likes of Cardinal Whiting. The situation was not immune to intrigue. Nor to a code of ethics that might allow certain exceptions in this circumstance or that.

“I haven’t had a chance to talk with anyone, not even my lawyers, regarding my legal situation. It might make it easier for me here if I could know what’s going on.”

“Are you afraid?”

He studied me hard with those blue eyes, and I felt my lips tremble. Maybe I was acting, I don’t know. I trusted him, almost.

“Sometimes,” I said.

“Of Paolo Orsini?”

They were full of sympathy, those eyes of his, and kindness, but also an eagerness. Maybe he was good, as he appeared, but often good people are the ones you can trust the least.

“I’m not sure, really, who to be afraid of.”

“That’s the worst kind of fear,” he said. “The one we can’t identify.”