A/N: Hello all! Welcome to my Da Vinci Code fic. A very, very old idea I've tossed around since 2004 (betraying my age!) since reading the book and subsequently watching the movie, which for the vast majority of us solidified Paul Bettany as -the- Silas. Being a Silas lives AU, I've taken liberties with mashing elements of the book version of events and the movie's together, dependant on characterisation preferences and the fact that Mr Bettany has simply shoved all other incarnations of Silas out of my brain! In the end I think with fanworks, it's embracing the spirit of the source material that matters most :) Anyhow, please enjoy and if you do, spare a review, it would be very much appreciated. Chapter 2 to come shortly.
Asturias, Spain. Around an hour east from Ovieda as the crow flies, in foothills and folds of the Peñamayor mountain range, a road that begins as tarmac, thins to gravel and finally breaks into spidering capillaries of sanded footpaths that lead almost to the heavens as they climb. The air is cooler in the hills and in the morning the mist trawls from the peak of the Trigueiro mount and down into the gorges below, hewn from rock old as time by the blood flow of the river Pra making its descent towards the ocean.
It is a quiet world there. In the lower hills tourists backpack and visit the sheep farms to sample the cheese. Some more adventurous souls climb higher, on foot or with rigging and ropes. But few go as far as the narrowest of paths, so rarely trod that they are cracked and carpeted in places by sweet blades of grass and the telltale flowers of malvas and tiny blue irises. Up in these steep and verdant meadows deer and wild boar are far more likely companions than man. In the winter snow blankets the hills at that height in chiffon powder and in summer the slopes are jewels against the dove grey peaks, chiselled into the skyline.
Peñamayor is a world above the world, removed from the clamour of the nearby city and the coast. A place that forgot time, if only you could reach the places where 'below' finally slipped away. And in the shadows of the peaks, in one of those high, high places, rest El Convento de Santa Philomena.
Built in the 16th century, to an unknowing eye it could at first appear more a farmhouse than a monasterial refuge. Nestled in a place where the hills plateaued, one of the seldom taken sand paths led up to a low wall whose bricks had been bound together by moss in it's age and beyond that a courtyard where a gnarled olive tree grew at the centre of the pavings and chickens roamed free beneath it's shade, content to scratch at the earth between the stones. A flight of uneven steps, worn and bowed by the centuries of feet that had trodden them, led up to the heart building of the convent itself, hewn in wheat colour stones, its terracotta roof long remade in gold and green by lichen and time. Alcoved doors stood in the shadow of a terrace with an arch leading the way, a simple bronze cross hung overhead. Beside the central, symmetrical block with its sloped roof other buildings were annexed on over time, a handful of them that were so varied in height dependent on where their foundations settled into the hill that the overall impression of the convent was of a set of pillar candles that had been all been burned to various degrees.
Through the arch, the door opened to reveal an entrance hall with cool white walls, painted stone, and low ceilings of dark umber wood. Further exploratory steps left and right led to living quarters, kitchens, and of course the chapel, and in the centre of the asymmetric homestead windows looked into the sanctuary of the convent garden. Rather than clipped, prim lawns and flowerbeds the space was deliberately wild, a constructive chaos containing herbs and forages and food allowed to grow amongst each other as God saw fit, carefully tended so all flourished but without enforced regiment, shaded by fruit trees that encircled the grotto. It was a symbiotic bed of life, much as the lives of the sisters who dwelt together within Santa Philomena.
At its height in the mid nineteenth century the convent had been home to around eighty women, and around a quarter of these had been cloistered. The sisters of Santa Philomena served the surrounding province of Asturias, those that left the convent to minister to the larger community acting as nurses, teachers, charitable workers. Time, however, took its toll upon not only the convent's walls but it's population too. Gradually as the world progressed fewer postulants came, religious life falling in favour in the wake of new rights for women in the secular world and greater access to both education and work for these newly liberated generations.
The real death blow though, came from the Second Ecumenical Council of the Vatican, or, as it was more colloquially known, 'Vatican II'. Bringing about radical changes in both congregational and personal worship, the new doctrines resulted in many feeling their relationship with God through the Roman Catholic Church had lost its sanctity and given way to selective devotion which meant it was not really devotion at all. The loss to avowed religious communities across the world was astonishing. Tens of thousands of men and women who had given everything for their God suddenly faced the thought that their sacrifices were rejected by the Church and their way of life without meaning. Many convents, abbeys and monasteries would ultimately close and fall to decay in the fallout of this revised Church, that in it's honest intent to bring the lay people home had inadvertently ostracised many of its own clergy.
Santa Philomena had not been immune to this tragedy. By the twenty first century, the once thriving mountain convent housed only fourteen women, and only three of these under the age of fifty. The world was changing still and the remote sanctuary of God was gradually dying, held on only by an ardent few, many of its annexes now boarded up due to disuse and disrepair, the nuns all but forgotten by the world below. It was a place that was disappearing, a place where one could vanish oneself if God was all one needed.
Manuel Aringarosa remembered Santa Philomena. He remembered it from his youth in Ovieda, when on his arrival to the town the Mother Superior had sent him a veritable summons to inspect the priest who would be building his new Church. He remembered how he was sure the climb would kill him once he had to leave his car, the road too narrow to take him any way but on foot. He remembered the warm welcome he'd been given when he'd arrived, the Sisters bringing him limeade sweetened with brown sugar made with limes from their own garden, and laughing brightly at how very red his face was. He remembered the Mother being sharp as a knife edge as she'd questioned him on both his intentions and his qualifications, but once seemingly satisfied he meant to do only God's will softening and inviting him to join for food and Vespers, then giving him a bed for the night so he didn't have to make that dreadful climb down again in the same day. He remembered the coolness, the scent of lemon balm on the breeze from the gardens, the sweet, silvery sound of the sisters' singing during morning worship before he left. He remembered the house of God it was, how it permeated the very air there, entirely tangible.
For the years he spent in Ovieda, Aringarosa corresponded frequently and frankly with the Mother Superior of Santa Philomena. She offered friendly council while he was still finding his feet with the locals, and the sisters companionship while he had no parish of his own, sometimes bringing him gifts of food and holistic medicines from the mount, sometimes having him as their guest on feast days. As he grew in prominence with each passing year, the Mother watched with interest, even as her own community dwindled further. When he left Ovieda for America and new seniority within Opus Dei, he still humbled himself before the women of Santa Philomena, for they knew God in a way he never could and remained staunch in their service to Him, even as they were all painfully aware, Aringarosa included, that the convent's way of life was slowly coming to an end.
They had parted in friendship founded on their mutual faith, the Mother Superior reminding him in a kind sort of chiding that no matter how great he grew, he could still come home to Asturias and find peace in humility there. He understood what she had meant; no matter what happened, he still had friends in the mountains of Spain.
Almost a decade later, laying in his hospital bed in London, the Bishop wondered through the haze of painkillers if that friendship would endure his crimes. It had been years since he had spoken to the Mother Superior at Philomena. For all he knew the convent had finally closed, its chapel doors locked for good. It was a ghost of a chance, but perhaps…
Aringarosa had no illusions of what was coming. He would be excommunicated for his part in the events in Paris and London. The prospect had already been discussed at his meeting with the Council at the Vatican and he knew it was only right. He had been betrayed and he had, woefully, betrayed others. Had he known that the 'Teacher' was going to incite Silas to murder, he never would have told the albino to obey their invisible benefactor. It had actually been promised that there would be no killing. That the Priory would have their lives spared, because with the recovery of the Magdalene sarcophagus, there would be no way to prove their claims about living heirs of Christ. It would just be a fairytale spouted by eccentric old men…
But Silas had spilled blood. A lot of it. And by his own foolish faith, Aringarosa knew in his heart he had endorsed it. Ignorance was as bad as action.
The Bishop felt as keenly that he had betrayed the albino as if he had forced the gun on him personally. He'd undone all the years that Silas had spent trying to be something more, something -better-, something worthy of God's love. His foster son's faith had been used so callously and given so blindly that he'd been turned into a terrible weapon. The damage was catastrophic.
Excommunication, Aringarosa mused, is too good for me.
Silas should have died. The nurses had said it. The police had said it. Found in Kensington Gardens, all but naked in the grass, the nurse who had finally relented to Aringarosa's pleading about the albino had explained that the state of undress had likely been what had saved him. Cold enough on a London night in February to slow down his bleeding to the point that he had been found by commuters still alive. By a genuine miracle the bullet had missed his bowel. It had nicked his liver but just a nick. Somehow, somehow against incredible odds, Silas had been repairable. He would live.
What manner of life would it be, though? Aringarosa recalled the condition Silas had been in when he had found him. Almost dead then, too, starving and beaten and utterly without hope. Hell was real to Silas, he had looked into it. The Bishop knew this as fact.
He had promised the albino a better life. A life with warm food and a clean bed. A life with structure, with discipline, a life with the absolute joy of knowing God moved through it. A life with unconditional love from the Almighty.
Now he has condemned this man back to prison. Back to Hell. He had broken his promises through his folly and Silas would suffer for the rest of his days…
Aringarosa was going to be excommunicated. He would soon have no power, no influence, no money.
There was no time to wait until he recuperated from his own wounds. Action had to be swift, it had to be concise, and it had to have God's backing, because it would take a miracle to see Silas out of chains. Even now in the ICU, unconscious and intubated, the nurse had told of how he was handcuffed to his bed rails.
The Bishop had a phone brought to him, fingers trembling as he began to dial a Spanish number he still knew by heart despite the years that had passed. If the sisters at Santa Philomena agreed to his request, then he would have to pray there was enough money left within his reach to get Silas' cuffs unlocked and pull him out of England…
"Dios me perdone por manipular la corrupción de los hombres," he prayed as a foreign dial tone sounded on the telephone. God forgive me for manipulating the corruptibility of men...
Silas never did know what it cost the Bishop to make him go missing, either from a financial or spiritual standpoint. He remembered very little of being smuggled from the hospital. He did know through the cloud of opiates and pain that it had been a uniformed officer who had undone his cuffs a week after he had woken in an alien hospital room. He knew too that he was not ready to be moved when he had tried to stand and felt a ripping agony sear through his abdomen, actually blinding him for several long moments until he could breathe again. He was bundled into a wheelchair and passed a note before the officer began wheeling him, his vision shaking as he read the familiar hand:
Go with them. I am sorry, my son, for all I have done. I can do little else for you now, but try to ensure you safe passage. Remember, if you have learned nothing else, that forgiveness is God's greatest gift. I pray that you find peace. We will not speak again.
Time slipped again and Silas lost where he was. In and out of consciousness, he knew that he was moving, though by foot or vehicle he had no idea. It was night and the lights of London made his head feel as if it was going to explode. A sting in his arm heralded more pain medication and he thought he heard a kind voice, but it was speaking in English and he was too far gone to be able to concentrate on understanding it.
Once he woke in a room he had never seen and heard the sound of the voice nearby but muted by distance, another room somewhere. His eyes came into focus briefly on a crucifix pinned to the pale wall, Jesus' head lifted to gaze heavenward, and the first flicker of clarity came; he had prayed for forgiveness. He had gotten on his knees in the light of the moon and laid his soul before God, asking for it to be made clean. The pain told him he wasn't dead. Had God heard him..?
On the second day he was lucid enough he knew he was in the back of a large, dark car, a young man in a very expensive suit sat opposite him, his attention fixed on a smart phone in his hand. His suit and haircut and shoes all spoke of ludicrous wealth, but there was an Opus Dei symbol on the pin securing his silk tie. Silas exhaled when he saw this, the relief enough to nullify the pain under his ribs. This was a friend…
As the journey wore on the expensive man explained Aringarosa had arranged him passage out of the reach of the law as far as he could, but once he was out of the jurisdiction of the Direction Centrale de la Police Judiciare then Opus Dei could help no further. They could not absolve him of his crimes and even they were not above Interpol. He was being given the means to disappear, but he had to do so.
Silas' hazy gaze peered out of the window, silent all the while as instructions were given, explanations of his counterfeit documents, the remaining medications he would need to take while his wounds healed, the small amount of funds that had been afforded him. It all sailed over his head, his thoughts far away as he watched rain begin to peel down the car window.
Aringarosa had saved him once again. Saved him when he was the least deserving to be saved. He should have died. He should have burned. He had asked God for mercy but he had not for a moment expected to receive it. He wasn't worthy of such grace…
Climbing the stairs onto the small jet had felt like crawling over broken glass. Collapsing into the padded seat aboard the plane, leaden eyelids slid closed and he felt someone else buckle his seatbelt. He didn't know where he was going. He didn't care. Aringarosa was gone. Opus Dei would soon be gone. He had realised in the car he was wearing lay clothes, his woollen robes that had been his symbol of his service to God gone. Silas was gone. He was a spectre once more…
The expensive man had not disembarked from the plane. They had landed in Aerodromo La Morgal, a small, private airstrip usually used for helicopter and light aircraft excursions, rather than the commercial Asturias airport. Customs had boarded but barely glanced at their documents, and an envelope exchanged hands from the ghost's keeper to the official that was swiftly tucked inside the agent's blazer. The ghost felt nothing.
The customs agent ushered him down the plane steps and into a waiting car, a navy sedan with blacked out windows. The driver glanced back at him in the rear view mirror and the albino felt a brief flicker of something when he saw a priest's collar. Not joy, not relief, just- familiarity.
"Buenas tardes, hermano. Debo llevarte a tu nuevo hogar. No mucho más lejos ahora," the priest greeted and offered a small, stiff smile through the mirror before pulling away across the tarmac of the airport.
"I am taking you home…" Silas had a home. Used to have. Home was for people. Ghosts didn't have homes. They merely haunted other people's ones.
Pale eyes stared out of the window, and for a moment there was a glint of surprise in them. He knew the view before him. He had been here before, a long time ago. When he had helped raise a church brick by brick, working at night to be safe from the sun. He had watched the moon rise over the same coastline he saw before him now, a silver globe mirrored in the sea and lighting the way as he worked. Ovieda. The Bishop really had sent him home…
The car gradually climbed, the sea dropping away to become a winking sapphire in the distance until it vanished altogether behind verdant hills. The sky was changing colour, gold to pink as evening drew close and the landscape changed to farm paddocks and woodlands. Finally, at what seemed to be a beauty spot the car pulled into a gravel car park and the engine stopped, the priest twisting his seat to look back at his passenger, his voice hushed as he breathed in Spanish:
"I go no further, my friend. You must follow the path up and to the west, into the hills. Stay west and you will find refuge. The Lord be with you."
The spectre just stared a moment, then nodded. He didn't complete the response to the simple blessing. The words didn't want to form in his mouth. Instead he slid silently out of the car, pulling with him the small duffle bag that now contained his whole world. He didn't move for a while, even when the car pulled away and left him. Ahead there was a butter colour path cut into the mountain that stretched up into his vision, its vista splashed with gold from the setting sun. His side burned, the pain medication long worn off. Good. If he was to finish this pilgrimage then he would do so being cleansed by the piercing in his abdomen.
Forcing his feet forwards, he began the climb, the cooling air of the evening a balm on his skin as every step seemed to stretch further apart. At first the ground was even but over time it gave way to sand and pebbles and every fall of his feet was a knife blade puncturing his side. As the sky turned blood red, then deepened with indigo the incline steepened and the ghost that had once been Silas struggled to breathe as he pressed his way on. He thought about abandoning the bag, but could not bear to throw away Bishop Aringarosa's final act of kindness to him, and so continued to carry what increasingly became a weight of rock and iron to his damaged body.
Night fell as he pushed on, picking out the path West as he had been instructed, aided by the setting of the sun in his navigation. The moon crested overhead and the spectre gazed up at it, almost delirious with pain and exhaustion when the ground beneath his feet finally began to balance and level, guided on by the silver wheel above. When its light fell onto bright stone walls it brought forth in him such a dizzying wave of euphoria that for a moment he thought he had climbed all the way to Heaven.
With the last of his strength, the ghost half mounted, half rolled his way over the low slung wall that marked the refuge's boundary and landed with a hard smack on cold stone ground. Panting shallow breaths, his exhales steamed in the night air, clear blue eyes watching the stars wheel overhead, white lashes opening and closing slowly. Wherever he was, the ghost decided, it was better than the hospital he'd come from. He let his breathing subside, beyond exhausted and his whole abdomen aflame, but he felt a momentary peace. Here he was, in the heart of God's own creation, between the Heavens and the earth. He could rest here for a moment.
Rolling his gaze to his surroundings, he had enough sense left to spy the thick, spiralling trunk of an olive tree only a few feet away and exhaled slowly. Olive. The symbol of life continuing even when it seemed the whole world had been torn asunder.
With the last dredges of strength left that he could call upon, the ghost dragged himself on hands and knees across the courtyard to the foot of the twisted trunk and dropped there, curled on his side. The smell of earth and the green warmth of the ancient tree sheltering him enveloped the pale figure and finally he closed his eyes, a hot tear escaping from beneath his lashes to trace down his skin.
Oh God, I am not worthy to receive you, but only say the word and my soul shall be healed…
The ghost had vanished. He had been made see through once more, and he knew the price, in the end; the price was the man he had been.