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A collective sigh passed through the congregation as they gazed at this new relic, real in a way in which the thumb of a lesser-known sixteenth-century Spanish saint kept behind the altar and brought out on holy days was not. Theo wondered if some of them were looking at the bloody cloth not with horror but with cupidity, hoping that Don Andrés might give it to their church and so immeasurably raise its prestige in the city, but such thoughts were clearly far from his mother’s mind. Beside him, she continued to weep, staring up at Don Andrés and turning to follow him with her eyes when he left the church.

Theo was embarrassed. He was sure that everyone could see the exhibition she was making of herself, and of him. He wanted to say something, but he thought she might shout at him if he did, and that would make their humiliation worse, so he remained silent, wishing himself anywhere but where he was.

Afterward, in the presbytery, Theo was surprised to hear Father Juan and Don Andrés talking in English. They both spoke with an accent, but Theo detected at once that, unlike the priest, Don Andrés was a native speaker. He didn’t sound like an American, and so Theo thought logically that he had to be British, particularly as Father Juan kept addressing him as Sir Andrew. Sir was the same title that all the characters had in The Boy’s King Arthur —currently Theo’s favorite book, which he had already read three times start to finish. Bad and good, they were all called Sir —except the king, of course, and Merlin.

“Is he a knight?” Theo asked his mother in Spanish, leaning close to her and speaking in a whisper.

But at the moment he spoke, there happened to be a pause in the general conversation, and Don Andrés, clearly possessed of razor-like hearing, answered Theo’s question himself, speaking Spanish too.

“Yes, but without the armor, I’m afraid,” he said, smiling. “Do you like knights, young man?”

Theo nodded, his face hot with embarrassment. Father Juan and the parishioners of the Sacred Heart were kind, but they never included him in their conversations about politics and religion. And now here they all were, suddenly focused on him, craning their necks to hear what their illustrious visitor might be saying to Elena’s young son.

“And who is your favorite knight?” asked Don Andrés, persisting with his questions, notwithstanding Theo’s evident discomfort.

“Answer the gentleman,” said Elena.

Theo could hear the urgency in his mother’s voice. He knew she would think it a stain on the family honor if he was rude to such an important guest in front of Father Juan and the church elders, but he remained tongue-tied until she pushed an invisible finger into the small of his back, forcing out the answer, “Lancelot,” with a sudden expulsion of held-in breath.

“Lancelot, eh?” said Don Andrés, stroking his chin. “Even though he betrayed his king?”

Theo nodded. His eyes were held unwillingly by the curious stare of the Englishman, who seemed a different person now to the impassioned speaker in the church. There was an irony in his voice and an amused expression that hadn’t been there before. And Theo felt, too, the strangeness of the moment—that he and this foreigner should be discussing a subject about which his mother and the others in the room were completely ignorant.

Abruptly, Don Andrés laughed. “I may not approve of your choice, but I can understand it,” he said. “Lancelot was certainly glamorous, even if he was disloyal. He was the Douglas Fairbanks of Arthur’s court. No wonder the queen couldn’t resist him. You have a clever son, senora ...”

Don Andrés paused, looking expectantly at Elena, whose turn it was to blush as Father Juan stepped in to introduce her.

“Senora Sterling,” he said. “And her son is Theo. You’re right that he is a clever boy. I can vouch for that.”

The Englishman smiled at Theo and then returned his attention to Elena, bowing slightly to acknowledge the introduction.

“Sterling,” he said, repeating the name. “A good name, strong and sound like my country’s currency, but not Spanish. You are married to an American, senora?”

Elena swallowed, twisting her hands nervously again like she’d been doing in the church. Ever since they’d arrived in the presbytery, Theo had been conscious of his mother’s suppressed excitement. Several times he’d thought she was going to speak, but now—presented with the opportunity—her natural shyness got the better of her and all she could do was nod.

“Elena came here from Mexico in 1914. Her parents were killed by the Socialists,” said Father Juan, coming to her rescue.

Don Andrés grimaced, but he didn’t take his eyes off Elena. “I am so sorry,” he said. “Have you ever been back?”

Elena shook her head. She was rigid—an outward sign of the effort she was making to control her emotions.

“That must be very hard,” said Don Andrés, and Theo had the curious sense that the Englishman was taking in and experiencing his mother’s pain: an intimacy that he instinctively resented but was powerless to prevent.

Perhaps his sympathy gave Elena courage, because she suddenly started to talk, her words tumbling out in a flurry of disconnected sentences: “I met the priest. The one they killed,” she said. “I thought I recognized his name, and then I knew it was him in the photograph. He hadn’t changed, even though he was much younger, a novice, when he came to our house. There was a Jesuit symposium in the town and everyone took in someone. He was our guest. My father sent me to his room in the evening with a bowl of hot water, and he was standing by the open window looking out at the sunset over the hills with his hands raised, palms out. Like this,” she said, demonstrating. “And I was ashamed of interrupting him at such a moment. I put down the water and backed away. I was going to leave, but then he turned and beckoned me over, and his smile ...”

Elena stopped, overcome by the intensity of her recollection, but Don Andrés urged her to go on. He was sitting forward in his chair with his eyes fastened on her, and it felt to Theo as if he and Father Juan and the parishioners had somehow receded so that his mother and the Englishman were now the only people in the room.

“What about his smile?” Don Andrés asked.

“It was radiant. Coming from somewhere deep inside, from his soul. Somewhere I can’t reach, however hard I try ...” said Elena, searching for the right words. “I went and stood beside him, and we watched the last red arc of the sun sink down out of sight, and it was the most beautiful thing I’d ever seen, even though I’d seen it a hundred times before. And then he said it.”

“What?”

“‘Praise him!’”

Don Andrés gazed intently at Elena. It was as if he was holding his breath until he sighed, as if letting go.

“Thank you,” he said. “Thank you for telling me that. I only met Father Miguel once, but I had the same impression as you. He knew God. It would have been what gave him such strength at the end. Here,” he said, reaching down into the bag by his feet and extracting the manila folder containing the photograph he had displayed in the church. “I would like you to have this, senora.”

Elena flushed, clearly embarrassed. “I couldn’t,” she said. Her voice was quiet now, barely audible, as if she was shocked and embarrassed by how much she had said and by how much attention she’d drawn to herself.

But Don Andrés wouldn’t take no for an answer. “I insist,” he said, getting up and putting the folder in her hands. “Father Miguel would have wanted you to have it. And don’t worry. I have several other copies.”

Resuming his seat, Don Andrés looked around at Father Juan and the silent parishioners and smiled. It felt to Theo as if the Englishman had gone away somewhere with his mother and had now returned, smugly pleased with the experience, and the thought infuriated him, blocking out any other response he might have had to her moving description of her long-ago meeting with the dead priest.

What right does he have to talk to her like that? he said to himself, before the next thought came unbidden into his mind: She encouraged it. It’s her fault even more than his.

He clenched his fists and swallowed hard, straining to control his anger, but no one was watching. Their focus was on Don Andrés, who was speaking again in that same authoritative voice he’d used to such effect in the church. “Make no mistake, my friends,” he said. “President Calles and his henchmen are servants of the Devil. Who else would kill a saintly man like Father Miguel in cold blood? This battle being fought now in Mexico is a struggle between good and evil, and it is our Christian duty to support the priests and the Cristeros in every way we can, even from afar. We can all be knights,” he said, glancing back at Theo with a sudden disarming smile, “Knights of Columbus standing together behind Cristo Rey.”

Everyone in the room called out their agreement. This is what they had come to hear. The Englishman’s conversation with Theo’s mother was now a forgotten interlude as they took out their money to give generously to the cause that was so dear to their hearts.

Outside, Theo and Elena had reached the other side of Gramercy Park when she realized that she had forgotten the tin in which she had brought the biscuits.

Because she was thinking about Don Andrés! thought Theo, looking down at the manila folder in his mother’s hand, but he agreed to go back, leaving her sitting on a bench under an ancient elm tree whose branches twisted out from inside the locked gates of the park and over the sidewalk.

At the presbytery, he passed two parishioners who were leaving through the front entrance, and then stopped dead in his tracks in the narrow hallway. On the other side of the half-open door, Don Andrés was talking in English:

“There is a Raphael Madonna in the National Gallery in London near where I live that reminds me of her—the same quiet reserve and beauty, the same knowledge of death and pain, and yet transcending that, an inner certainty of faith that can’t be broken—the same quality that she recognized in Father Miguel all those years ago. What a coincidence—that she should have known him! I wish I could show you the painting, Father. You would know what I mean. She ...”

Theo turned and ran out the door. He couldn’t stand to hear any more. He was angry, but ashamed, too, in a way that he couldn’t understand. He’d heard his father speak of his mother’s beauty countless times, but this was different. The Englishman’s praise made Theo think of her in a way he never had before. It was as if a window had opened in his mind on something ugly and dangerous, and he knew even as he ran that running would make no difference, because the window could not now be closed.

He stopped at the corner of the park, trying to compose himself and prepare a lie to explain why he had come back empty-handed, but he needn’t have worried. His mother didn’t seem to care. Talking about the past seemed to have taken a weight off her shoulders, and she insisted they take the bus home as a treat, climbing up to the top floor of the double-decker so that they could look down on the bustle of Fifth Avenue. “I’m proud of you,” she said, using her fingers to comb Theo’s hair—a habit she had when she wanted to convey something important to him. “Father Juan knows you are clever, but you heard how Don Andrés saw it too. Fancy that only he and you had read about those British knights! Did you see how Senora Castaneda was looking daggers at me? And well she might: her Franco can barely spell, let alone read a book.”

Theo pulled away, unable to contain his irritation.

“What’s wrong?” she asked.

“I don’t know. I didn’t like him.”

“Why not? I don’t understand.”

“I told you I don’t know,” he said, flattening his face against the window. There was no way he could ever tell his mother what he had heard Don Andrés saying about her in the presbytery, but he resented that he had to keep it a secret. She’d thrust herself forward to gain the Englishman’s attention. She ought to be ashamed of herself, not sounding so exuberant.

“You don’t know because there’s no reason for it,” she said angrily. “He is a good man, trying to help my country, a man of God. You say these things to make me unhappy. I don’t know why I deserve it.”

Theo could hear his mother beginning to cry again and his anger evaporated, just as it always did when she became upset. Now he wished he could take his words back, but a barrier had come between them that he did not know how to overcome.

Elena took a handkerchief out of her bag and blew her nose. And they passed the rest of the journey in uneasy silence.