The monastery was a long, low onestory building set back from the street in a section where empty lots alternated with dark and frequently windowless buildings. O'Rourke cruised past once, turned around, inspected the building on another pass, and then turned down an alley and went slowly past the rear of the structure. It was dark and had an abandoned feel to it. There was a padlock on the gate, but the fence was low enough to climb. Kate caught a glimpse of elaborate gardens and trellises in the dark backyard.
“Wait here a minute,” O'Rourke said softly, parking the motorcycle in a copse of trees near where the alley met a larger street. “If the strigoi are hunting for us, they may have left someone behind.”
Kate touched his arm, feeling the electricity of the renewed contact despite her fatigue and depression. “It's not worth risking,” she whispered.
O'Rourke grinned. “A bath,” he said. “Indoor plumbing. Maybe fresh clothes.”
Kate started climbing out of the sidecar. “I'm going with you. “
O'Rourke shook his head. “Compromise. Get on the bike. If I come out in a hurry, gun the thing and pick me up on the run. Do you know how to start it and drive it?”
Kate frowned but nodded. She'd watched him enough during the trip to know that she could get it moving. For some reason she thought of her Miata back home, destroyed in the fire. She had loved that machine . . . loved the sense of freedom and exhilaration it imparted when she drove it hard on winding mountain roads, the clean Colorado sunlight on her face, the wind in her hair . . .
“Kate?” said O'Rourke, squeezing her shoulder. “You with me?”
“Yeah.” She rubbed her cheeks and eyes with the heels of her hands. Exhaustion lay on her like a physical weight.
O'Rourke slipped down the alley, his black clothes making him almost invisible, and Kate sat there dully, listening to the cold wind stir brittle leaves. There were no insect sounds, no birds, and no sound of traffic from the main road a hundred feet farther down the alley. She tried to remember the sense of excitement and humanity she had sensed in her walks through Bucharest in May, the young couples kissing in dark doorways, the laughter, the grandparents watching their children in the park at Cismigiu Gardens. It was all from another world.
“It's empty,” said O'Rourke from behind her and she jumped three inches. She'd been halfdozing again.
They left the motorcycle in among the trees, climbed the low fence, and entered the monastery through a side window that was unlocked.
“There's been a Franciscan presence in Tirgoviste since the thirteenth century,” O'Rourke said softly as he lit a candle.
“The light . . .” began Kate.
“We'll stay in the inner rooms and halls. The shutters are closed. I don't think the police will be back. The nine residents here were brought to Bucharest for questioning and probably will be released there tomorrow . . . today really . . . now that the strigoi have had their little ceremony.”
Kate followed him down the corridor, glancing in rooms as she passed them. The candle stretched their shadows along rough walls to the ten-foot ceiling. Kate had never been in a monastery and was not quite sure what to expect: Gothic trappings, perhaps . . . dungeonlike cells, wooden bowls and utensils, perhaps a few wellused cato'ninetails for selfflagellation.
Get a grip, Kate, she thought. She wanted to go to sleep again.
The house was larger and cleaner than most homes she had seen in Romania, less cluttered, but it might have been the residence of a large farm family. The rooms were simple, but contained, comfortablelooking beds and dressers. Only the simple crucifixes on the walls of each bedroom suggested a monastery. The kitchen was more modern than most Romanian kitchens: no wooden bowls here, but lots of plastic plates and tumblers that reminded Kate of summer camp. The dining room had a battered and unadorned but undeniably elegant twenty-foot table that would have sold for several thousand dollars in an American antiques store. One of the rooms on the other side of the dining room had been turned into a modest chapel with a small altar and individual kneelers for twenty or so people. Kate's impression, even by candlelight, was of simplicity, cleanliness, and community.
“Have you spent time here?” whispered Kate. It was hard not to whisper in the silence.
“Occasionally. It was a good jumpingoff place when I was working with children in the mountain cities. Father Danielescu and the others here are good people.” O'Rourke opened another door.
“Ahhhh,” said Kate. The bath was large and deep and had tiled ledges on three sides. It was immaculately clean. Kate ran her hand along the tile and enamel of the tub itself, then frowned. “Where are the taps? How do you get water in this thing?”
O'Rourke set the candle on the ledge and walked over to the corner, where there was a counter with a farmhouse style pump over a huge galvanized tin tub sitting above what appeared to be a small propane stove with a single burner. “It takes a while,” said O'Rourke, “but it's the hottest water in Tirgoviste.” He began pumping.
For fifteen minutes they were busy filling, heating, carrying and dumping, but eventually the tub was filled. They paused then. Kate showed more embarrassment than O'Rourke. Is he still a priest? Am I ruining something important? Was that just an aberration in the loft? A sin to be confessed?
To hell with it, she thought and began unbuttoning her filthy blouse.
“I'll go check the doors and shutters,” said O'Rourke, pausing in the doorway. “You go ahead and take your time, I'll bathe next.”
Kate stood in her underwear and stared him in the eye. “Don't be silly. That would be a waste of time and hot water. Besides, I'll have my eyes closed when you get in. The tub's big enough. We won't even know the other is there.” She removed her bra and white cotton pants.
O'Rourke nodded and went down the dark hall.
Kate felt like crying when she lowered herself into the steaming water. It seemed there was no heating in the monastery other than fireplaces in the central rooms, the air temperature in the house equaled the lateautumn chill outside, and the bath literally steamed, raising a delicious fog that rolled over the edge of the tub, slid along the tiled ledges, and crept along the floor.
The water was hot. A lump of soap shaped like a small meteorite sat on the ledge; she lathered herself and let the soap create bubbles as she lay neck deep in the hot water, laid her head back, and closed her eyes.
She heard O'Rourke come in, squinted at him as he set down towels and a pile of folded clothes, and then closed her eyes while he stepped out of his own clothes and into the tub. He sat on the ledge for a minute, she heard the soft sound of plastic on the floor, and she realized he was taking off his prosthesis. Kate opened her eyes and looked at him.
“Now you've really seen me naked,” he said with no sign of embarrassment. He raised his good leg and his shortened left leg and gingerly settled in the steaming bath. “There is a heaven,” he whispered.
The water rose higher around Kate's chin, and she felt his thigh brush hers. There was room in this antediluvian hot tub for the two of them to sit side by side in opposite directions without crowding.
“I feel like we should be doing something,” whispered Kate. “Going after Joshua.” O'Rourke handed her a sponge and she squeezed water onto her face. “Something.”
“We don't know where they went,” he said softly.
Kate nodded, letting her arms and hands float. The heat made her breasts ache and reminded her of all the bruises she'd received and muscles she'd strained in the long nightmare crawl through the palace tunnel. “You had cities circled. Places you thought the ceremony might be held. Lucian thought that there would be four nights of ceremony. Did your priest friends know where the next two nights will be held?”