Page 131

She smiled, then reached out and smoothed some of the makeup Will had just smeared. “You look like a man about to walk into hell pretending to be heaven. So yes.”
Eszter appeared next. She wore a ratty blond wig made of fine, straight hair. It was strange, seeing her without the bouncy curls that so well matched her personality. Her coat was too big for her frame, and a scarf was wrapped around her neck three times. She looked like a war orphan out of central casting—fragile, uncertain, and watching everything. She said nothing, but her eyes locked with mine for half a second. That was enough. She was ready.
Farkas, transformed with bushy black eyebrows that bordered on slapstick and a matching wig of tousled black hair followed with a limp that was either exaggerated by a rock in his shoe or expertly calculated. He carried a box—the same one I’d seen him with the day Egret and Sparrow had pulled him out of his home. He’d never told us what lay inside. I don’t recall asking, thinking it likely some family heirloom or cherished possession of Eszter’s youth.
His eyes never left his daughter. He spoke to no one.
Then came Egret.
If I’d been drinking anything the moment he stepped up, I would’ve spit all over the floor. His hair was wild, an homage to some batty professor who never left his office for the comfort of a shower and comb. But it wasn’t his hairdo that had me nearly doubling over; he scowled as he knotted a rope belt over the ratty friar’s robe Sparrow had fetched from the tailor. The master had done an expert job of making the piece look ancient, so much so that Egret’s appearance fell somewhere between hobo and parish-less priest.
“Remind me why I’m the one with sandals and no dignity?” he asked. “I look like I’m about to sell ale out of a barrel from the back of my cart.”
“Because, Friar Tuck,” Sparrow said, adjusting her veil, “you flirted with the seamstress and she shortened your hem out of spite.”
“Of course she did,” he groaned.
We walked—because taking a taxi would’ve been very un-pilgrim-like. Budapest was quiet, the streets wet with morning frost. There were no Soviet patrols yet—or none we could see—just the hush of old stones and the occasional bark of a dog behind some iron gate.
I was slower than the rest. Will stayed beside me, not touching, but close enough that I could feel him there like a tether. Eszter and Sparrow walked two paces ahead, with Farkas just behind. Sparrow’s gloved hand brushed the girl’s shoulder, and, for the second time in the past week, I wondered at the woman’s immediate instinct to care for the child.
Egret walked backward for part of the way, scanning behind us, playing the fool and the guardian all at once.
The Church of the Weeping Heart rose into view like a ghost through the fog. Its steeple was sharp and black, pointing skyward like a bayonet. In the courtyard, several priests greeted people who were already gathering.
They came in twos and threes—bundled women holding icons against their chests, old men in threadbare coats, children clinging to parents’ hands. Some carried bags, others baskets of food. One man had a rosary wound around his wrist like some medieval vambrace.
Voices rose in murmurs, laughter here and there. Despite the cold and the obvious hunger on some of their faces, there was also joy. A pilgrimagemeantsomething.
It meant direction.
It meant hope.
We blended into the crowd like we belonged.
A woman with watery eyes nodded at me and said something in Hungarian. That’s when I realized we’d forgotten that none of us speak these people’s language well enough to pass as, well, anything other than foreigners.
Unable to help it, I replied in Russian, “God be with you, child.”
Her eyes rose at the language of her country’s occupier, but her grateful expression never wavered. It appeared, in the pilgrim circles, country mattered less than faith. That would serve us well.
Will squeezed my arm once, unseen.
Eszter kept her eyes down, perfectly in character.
Farkas hovered near her, his limp more pronounced now.
Egret muttered something about how many saints he could name under pressure, though the only names he produced were those of theThree Stooges.
Sparrow rolled her eyes and tried to ignore him.
Then a priest appeared before us.
He looked older up close, with deep lines at the corners of his mouth and a nose bent from being broken long ago. His cassock was faded, but his posture spoke of military roots. He was no fool. Sparrow had chosen well.
He approached us with practiced calm.
“Father August?” he asked me, offering his hand.