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kings, Father. Go on.”
    “Yes. Dead. Everyone is dead. Forty years is a long time. Yes… I must finish. In the piazza they had the ceremony of the blessing of the guns. They put us to work, the priests from Sicily. We helped with the blessing. Then His Holiness arrived. He blessed the guns also. I did not like this. His Holiness stood with the king and Mussolini. Then came the cardinal, Eugenio. I was close to them. They spoke very intently. All the parade was going by for them, and the soldiers marched, but they paid no attention. I did not like the looks in their eyes. I was that close. Perhaps I imagined all this later… in the prison. The looks in their eyes, I mean. Perhaps they were talking about something else. Who knows? But I felt then, or maybe later, that they were talking about the thing…” His voice cracked and he stopped speaking.
    Purcell picked up the canteen, but Mercado grabbed his arm. “You’ll kill him, Frank.”
    “If he doesn’t have a bad stomach wound, we’re killing him with dehydration. If it’s bad, then he’s dead anyway. We can’t get him to a doctor for hours.”
    Mercado nodded.
    Purcell emptied the canteen over the old priest’s mouth, saying to Mercado, “Keep him on track, Henry. The monastery.”
    Mercado said, “I’m starting to feel guilty about pushing a dying priest to stick to the facts and give us a good story.”
    Purcell replied, “The whole point of the Catholic religion is guilt.”
    Mercado ignored him and asked Father Armano, “Would you like to rest?”
    “No. I must finish.” Father Armano continued, “The next day I was brought to an infantry battalion. The soldiers were all peasants from my province in Sicily. We went to a boat and the boat sailed for many days. And we sailed through Egypt and we could see Egypt on both sides of the canal. The boat went to Masawa, in Eritrea. You know the place? This was the new Caesar’s African empire. He called us his legions. ‘Go to Africa,’ he said, ‘and make Ethiopia Italian.’ In Masawa our engineers were building the harbor. Ships arrived with soldiers and tanks… there was going to be a war. A fool could see that. The army marched to Asmara. It rained every day. But then the dry season began… The governor of Eritrea assembled the army in front of his palace. He read us a telegram from Il Duce. ‘Avanti! I order you to begin the advance.’ Then a general—I cannot recall his name—he read a proclamation. He spoke of the new Fascist Italy and of sacrifice. The bishop of Asmara rang the church bells and everyone sang the Fascist anthem, ‘Youth.’ Everyone seemed happy on the outside. But on the inside, there was much sadness. I know this because the soldiers came to me and told me they were sad. We marched on Ethiopia. At first it was not so bad, except for the heat and the fatigue. In the early part of October we entered Adowa. There was little fighting. But then we marched out of Adowa and the army of the Ethiopians began to fight. So, this Ethiopian emperor was a brave man. Haile Selassie—they called him the King of Kings. The Conquering Lion of Judah. Descended from King Solomon and the Queen of Sheba, they said. A descendant of the House of David. A brave man. He led his army with his own person, while our new Caesar sat in Rome. I am sure this man is dead, no? He must have died in battle.”
    “No,” said Mercado, “the emperor escaped to England, then returned to Ethiopia when the British drove out the Italians. He is still alive, but a very old man now.”
    Purcell wondered if Father Armano could follow all this, but the priest said, “So, they are not all dead, then. Good. Someone lives from my time. This emperor was a brave man. His army was ill-equipped,but they fought like lions against our tanks and planes. But we won that war. That much I could see before my imprisonment.”
    “Yes,” Mercado said, “you won that war. But you lost the big one afterwards. The one with the