Sacred Bones. Michael Spring

      Deusdona is the name I go by. “God’s gift.” I’d prefer the name of a Roman senator: Publius, say, or Marcius—someone who gave his life to public service back in the days of the Republic, when Rome was the center of the world, not Aachen. But you can’t improve on Deusdona, not if you make a living buying and selling sacred bones. It’s a name that has given me instant credibility in a competitive field, and helped me grow my business.

      My real name is buried with my mother, who died bringing me into the world, and with my father, who disappeared under a new moon in the year of the Great Flood. More than forty winters later, I still wake in the night and see the waters bursting through the Flaminian Gates, ripping them from their hinges, sweeping over the walls to the foot of the Capitoline Hill. My father leans against a toppled pillar near the Forum, enjoying the sonorities of Virgil’s Georgics, when suddenly the waters engulf him. He calls out a name, but all I can hear are the rushing waters.

      Neighbors brought me to the orphanage at Saint Peter’s, where I grew up in the company of monks and priests. They still visit me in my sleep. I see their pale, eager faces peering out at me from behind their hoods, and feel the terrible sweetness of their touch.

      I longed to be educated in the Lateran with the cubicularii, in personal attendance on the pope, but that was a preferment reserved for the sons of the wealthy. I was sent instead to a school for priests, in the glow of Saint Peter’s, outside the city walls. I was only seven, but I was sure God was banishing me for my sins. Exile could not have been a harsher punishment. Years passed before I understood that God wanted me to grow up in Peter’s presence, at the spiritual heart of the Church. The Lateran occupied a green and airy site, surrounded by gardens and vineyards. It was gifted to the Church by Constantine himself. But the pope was isolated there with his scribes and legates, away from the people. When pilgrims arrived in Rome, it was Peter’s bones, not the pope’s, they went to see. Our current Father, Gregory, still has to cross town to celebrate High Mass. It’s a wonderful procession, but each time he passes I want to shout out, “You’re the Keeper of the Keys of Heaven and Hell, not just the bishop of a powerful See. Move closer to Peter’s rock and leave the Lateran to the sheep and vines.” It’s a wonder God hasn’t struck me down for my impertinence.

      • 800 AD •

      I had my first glimpse of a pope on a bitingly cold spring morning, when Leo rode from the Lateran to the Holy See for the Festival of Saint Mark. Leo was a foreigner, the son of Atyuppius—a Saracen or Slav. He had tricked some virgins into drinking pig’s blood from the holy chalice and one of them had given birth to an aurochs with horns. Still, he was Peter’s successor, a man intimate with God. His face, I assumed, must radiate a wonderful light.

      I