Excerpt

Chapter 1

Karl Desbiens glanced at the clock on the wall of his tiny dorm room and felt his stomach tighten. It was ten minutes to ten and Father Dionne was surely on his way, walking slowly across the campus with his familiar gnarled rosewood walking stick in hand. The stick was a yard long, deep reddish brown and was said to have belonged to one of the Jesuit martyrs who founded the college back in 1750. Karl doubted that, and had often thought about scraping a bit of the wood from the bottom of the stick and have the sample radiocarbon dated.

That would put an end to the mystery once and for all.

It would also help him make up his mind.

Father Dionne was on his way over to ask Karl if he had decided on his future, if he knew what he wanted to do with his life. He'd enrolled at the college in his mid-twenties after working a variety of jobs that weren't for him. Now, after studying at the at the college for six years and receiving his Master's Degree in Theology, he found himself at a crossroads. He had completed the requirements of philosophate, and was now embarking on three years as a regent where he would either work in a foreign mission or teach at a Jesuit school.

It was a tough decision to make, especially when he wasn't sure if becoming a Jesuit priest was even for him. He enjoyed some aspects of the order like meditation and the pursuit of knowledge and academic achievement. He also had a fascination with the Spiritual Exercises of St. Ignatius. It was all so mysterious that it sometimes seemed that it had all come right out of The Twilight Zone, rather than the writings of a holy man.

But was it for him?

As a Jesuit priest Karl would have to take a vow of celibacy and that had been easier to accept than he'd thought since he'd never been much of a ladies man. And coming from a family of modest means, a vow of poverty wouldn't change his life all that much. But there was also a vow of obedience and that was the one Karl thought he might have trouble with. Would he be able to accept and follow orders from his superiors absolutely and without question? Karl had always been the type who wanted to know the reasons behind things, who needed to understand before he could act. It was an obstacle to be sure, but perhaps it was something that further study would help him to understand.

If he decided to become a priest, his life would always be a simple one and he would have to follow orders and like it, because he had chosen to live his life in that way.

Chosen to serve God.

That was the thing, wasn't it? It was a poor and humble life, but there was no more noble a calling on Earth than to serve God, and do His work.

It was almost enough to tip the scales in favor of the priesthood.

Almost.

But Karl needed to be sure.

He'd been told by other priests that when the time came he would know what the right choice would be, without a doubt and without hesitation. That moment hadn't come yet, and he wondered if it ever would.

And if it didn't, there were other options.

He could continue his studies and work toward ordination, but remain a lay person living his life as a Jesuit, but not as a member of the order. That was an alternative, but it seemed a pretty poor one since the main reason he'd studied and already put up with so much hardship was to eventually become a priest.

There was also the possibility of becoming a priest and something else, sort of like the bestselling novelist, Father Andrew Greeley. Greeley was both a fiction writer and a priest. From what Karl had read about the man, his superiors didn't like it all that much, but Father Greeley seemed to enjoy doing both jobs, and there was no law, either inside or out of the Church, that said he couldn't.

It wasn't all that new an idea.

Church scholars and philosophers had long ago figured out that in order to matter in today's society priests needed to have a second profession. Hyphenated priests, they were called, and they could be everything and anything they wanted to be, from Jesuit-lawyers to Jesuit-engineers, Jesuit-psychiatrists to Jesuit-journalists, Jesuit-poets and Jesuit-musicians, even Jesuit-construction workers. There were no limits, and in fact, because of his training and discipline, it was quite likely that if he were to become a Jesuit-lawyer, he might be a better lawyer than the non-Jesuit variety. He'd certainly be a more honest one. The idea appealed to Karl, but even if he picked the hyphenated priest route, he still wasn't sure what should come after the hyphen.

It might as well be Jesuit-skeptic, because the more he considered and wrestled with his future, the less he believed in Ste-Claire College's place in the whole Jesuit order.

For example, just a few years ago the college celebrated its two-hundred and fiftieth anniversary, but they had no artifacts from the original settlement, which had supposedly been located some seventy-five kilometers north of the college. While an earlier nearby Jesuit settlement, Ste-Marie among the Hurons, was more than a hundred years older than Ste-Claire, that site had been a treasure trove of stone structures, iron tools, artifacts and old bones. So celebrated were the martyrs of Ste-Marie that a Shrine was erected to them in 1926 complete with the reliquary of the martyrs. The martyrs themselves had been canonized in 1930 and made secondary patrons of Canada ten years later. In 1950 the site of the mission was excavated and archeologists found the hard-packed floor of the Church of St. Joseph. By 1964 the entire site had been uncovered and reconstruction of the original settlement had begun. It was finished by 1967, Canada's centennial year, and now the shrine and the settlement attracted tens of thousands of tourists and pilgrims from around the world each year. Pope John Paul II even visited the shrine in 1990. But even though Ste-Claire was less than three hours away by car, it hadn't even merited a drive-by in the Popemobile.

And there was more.

The names of the Ste-Marie martyrs were part of Canadian history – Jean de Brébeuf, Gabriel Lalement, Anthony Daniel, Noël Chabanel – and countless schools across the country had been named in their honor. Even two Jesuit martyrs who had been killed in what later would become New York State – Isaac Jogues and René Goupil – were considered to be martyrs of Ste-Marie. With the reconstruction of the mission and the shrine built to honor their memory, the Ste-Marie martyrs were very much alive in people's hearts and minds. In fact, it appeared as if they were going to live forever.

But what of the Martyrs of Ste-Claire: Daniel Semine, Joël Champetier, and Jean-Louis Trudel?

No shrine. No ruins. No canonization. No schools. No rusted tools. No old bones. No artifacts.

Nothing.

Nothing, except for a few books detailing the Ste-Claire martyrs' struggles in the forbidding Canadian wilderness, a couple of graphic accounts of their torture and deaths at the hands of savage Iroquois raiders, and a college named after the martyrs' patron saint.

And even that didn't make any sense. Ste-Claire wasn't a Jesuit saint. She was an Italian saint, and had been a follower of St. Francis of Assisi. Other than establishing the Order of Poor Clares, Ste-Claire's only accomplishment of note was being proclaimed the patron saint of television in 1958 by Pope Pius XII, because in 1252 she had apparently been able to see the Christmas services held in the Basilica of St. Francis while lying in her sickbed inside the convent.

Just another mystery to be solved.

Which, combined with the rest of the facts, or lack thereof, made it seem as if the martyrs had never existed.

Or no one wanted anyone to know of their existence.

So what difference would one more Jesuit priest make at a college that already had enough of them to field a hockey team called "The Flying Fathers" that played in charity events all over Southern Ontario? Why should he stay at the college and become a priest when all he'd be doing is teaching other similarly directionless youths about a "house" in the Order of Jesus about which few people knew and even fewer cared?

Just then there was sound on the other side of the door. The squeak of door hinges swinging open, and then the sharp tapping of a rosewood walking stick approaching. The sound of the stick against the hallway floor grew louder with each tap.

Tap.

Tap.

Tap.

And then silence.

It was Father Dionne.

He wanted to know what Karl was going to do with the rest of his young life.

Karl didn't know, and that wasn't going to be good enough for Father Dionne.

There was a firm knock at the door.

Karl didn't want to answer it, but he had no choice.