Three-Cornered Halo by Christianna Brand

Beatitude. The second is the mother of the Beatitude concerned: she is ninety, stone deaf and extremely disagreeable and she says and always has said that her daughter was a tiresome, hysterical extrovert and remained one till the end. The third is me. The opposing party is led by a young firebrand in the town—for pelf: and on the spiritual side by this damned old fool whom you see approaching us now.”
    And sure enough, the Arcivescovo was coming towards them—toiling in the sunshine up the dazzling white marble steps, his soutane hitched up in one trembling old hand, a black blot against the shimmering white and blue. He was very old and very ugly: and he was dying—slowly and agonisingly dying of a great rodent ulcer that, outwardly healed and leaving only a tapeworm of white scarring on his mottled old forehead, beneath the scarring ate its way into the brain. El Arcivescovo, His Serenity the Archbishop of San Juan, nicknamed El Pato because he resembled that most hideous of all feathered creatures, the Muscovy duck. His left hand grasped the skirt of the black soutane, the right dangled, by habit, unconsciously held out a little so that the faithful might catch at it as he passed by and, with hasty genuflexion, kiss the great, glowing jewel of the episcopal ring.…
    The Grand Duke and Mr Cecil sketched by a semblance of this ceremony, neither of them caring to risk inhalation of lingering Barrequitas germs; and the old man subsided painfully on to a seat. He looked, as he always looked, as though it were doubtful he would ever rise again. Mr Cecil, not wishing to have his holiday clouded by a death-bed scene, especially one taking place on a garden bench, quickly made his adieux.
    The Hierarchy of San Juan el Pirata consists of three; all cadets of the tiny seminary in Barrequitas from which the island priests are drawn. Old Juan, finding his fortress grown to the proportions of a townlet and women and children on his hands, decided that the time had come to turn to God; and, looking round for a likely candidate for episcopal honours, lit upon an old pirate chum, ripe for retirement from the sea, spruced him up, stuck a looted mitre on his head, and instructed him to found a church; having, with memories of Lisbon and Venice where most of his business was conducted, created him Patriarch. The Patriarch, his duties growing arduous, created an Archbishop to assist him, who in turn created a Bishop: all three gentlemen, however, jumping to it with alacrity when their patron snapped finger and thumb. This position continues relatively unchanged up to the present day. Cut off from the mainland by language difficulties—and its confusion of Spanish and Italian makes Juanese especially difficult to anyone speaking either—San Juan is forced by necessity as well as by strong inclination, to be self-supporting; and in the matter of the Church, especially so. Its leaders are selected arbitrarily by the Grand Duke and since their election is for life, the only way to get rid of them is to end that condition. More than one Grand Duke has availed himself of this privilege and in not very ancient times. High positions are coveted in San Juan by none but the most ambitious; and kept only by the extraordinarily discreet.
    The Arcivescovo, with nothing very much to lose but his life and that uncomfortable and anyway already forfeit, was growing in his old age, alarmingly indiscreet. He was a good, holy old man: it had stood between him and the Patriarchy, his former Obispo having been promoted over his head. Now he had two remaining wishes only: to see before he died—and he knew that death was very near—El Margherita canonised; and to see the Grand Duke Lorenzo with a son and heir. It was to discuss these two matters that he had craved audience today.
    El Exaltida sat impatiently through the slow unfolding of the rose of the old man’s mind. “As to a child, Arcivescovo, what would you have