Land of Angels: Book I: The Holy Path

By Terence Alfred Aditon

Who are these royal twins, Prince Stefan and Princess Anne, born to the monarchs of New Britannia, one hundred years after the World Peace Treaty? They are mystical and religious in an increasingly secular world. The prince has chosen Anglican ordination, studying also with a Buddhist Master. In his mortal aspects, he is in love with Rebecca, who must resolve being married to a prince who is also a priest. He must find the path between his mortal love and his love for the Glory. Stefan's best friend from childhood, Aidan, is in love with Princess Anne, afraid to declare himself to her as she works with her research foundation and is courted by a charming new arrival. Their much-loved kinsman is their Uncle Michael, who is of Old Roman nobility and who now is Pope. He needs Stefan to find a way to thwart the greed of developers, who want to claim the great ancient monastery lands of Terre Les Anges, the Land of Angels. Stefan must go there, his identity secret, to find the deed written almost two thousand years before, some of it lost, some in pieces, that will thwart the developers. Meanwhile, Aidan is in despair over Anne. He disappears, choosing perhaps to die of heartbreak among the marginal people who reject life in the New West. Stefan must find him, and both twins are waiting on the Glory to reveal their purpose for this time they are on earth. Much of their path has been mystery, but all of them must resolve the issues of their tangled lives.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Christian Faith Publishing, Inc.
• Release date: Apr 19, 2022
• ISBN: 9781685705008

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Land of Angels

Book I: The Holy Path

Terence Alfred Aditon

Copyright © 2022 by Terence Alfred Aditon

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, including photocopying, recording, or other electronic or mechanical methods without the prior written permission of the publisher. For permission requests, solicit the publisher via the address below.

Christian Faith Publishing

832 Park Avenue

Meadville, PA 16335

www.christianfaithpublishing.com

Printed in the United States of America

Table of Contents

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Chapter 13

Chapter 14

Chapter 15

Chapter 16

Chapter 17

Chapter 18

Chapter 19

Chapter 20

Chapter 21

Chapter 22

Chapter 23

Chapter 24

For loves no longer seen—

Matthew, My Parents, Al, and Mary Lou—

Who entered Peace and rose to Glory

Wherever you are is called Here,

And you must treat it as a powerful stranger.

—David Wagoner (1999)

Prelude

It was just over one hundred years since the World Peace Treaty was signed. Decades of war and terrorism, spurred by extreme religious zealotry, had finally ended.

The wars’ end was no victory of arms. The end came because an unexpected terror had struck the whole world. Seemingly out of nowhere, a pandemic, a world plague called the Sickness, descended on the earth. Soldiers and civilians alike were dying everywhere. Death loomed over every house in every part of the world.

The Sickness killed people of all ages, no generation spared. It was relentlessly lethal, raging for almost a year, defying every frantic effort to stop it.

It killed half the world’s people. And then suddenly, it had stopped and gone into hiding.

Even now, over a century later, its cause was unknown, a remedy still undiscovered. It would sometimes emerge unexpectedly in small, lethal, isolated flare-ups. No research had yet found a way to eliminate it once and for all.

But the plague had done what battles could not do: it made killing pointless. War and more death had become senseless. Peace was the aftermath of grief.

With the plague, despair, anger, and helplessness overwhelmed the world’s leaders. They saw only one way out, despite fear and distrust among them. After tentative feelers, each side to the other, the former enemies came together in New America to hammer out a World Peace Treaty.

They agreed to destroy the weapons of war and to prevent the manufacture of new weaponry. And they would share and discuss any progress made in ending the plague once and for all.

The Treaty not only ended the wars and terror attacks. It included environmental clauses to heal the Earth, ravaged by war and abuse.

Once these provisions were set in place, the final step was to establish a World League to monitor and refine the Treaty as needed. They established the World Police, centered in the World League headquarters, to enforce the Treaty.

But the Peace did not unify the world. To stop the violence, the world was divided into two parts.

One part was the secular New West, a convenient name for the nations which included Japan and other Eastern nations. All were secular democracies or constitutional monarchies.

The other part of the world consisted of religion-based governments. The West called those nations the Veiled World, although those nations called themselves the Faithful World.

Between the two sets of nations, they established neutral waters and lands, not to be entered by either side without serious cause. It had rarely happened. The world had remained peacefully divided.

When the Treaty was signed, there was a short grace period for people to choose which half of the world they would live in. After that, the Veiled World was closed to outsiders.

Only one Western scholar, Alyssa Craig, had lived there for a short time after peace had been established. She had been rescued from a pirate raider by a leader of a Veiled World nation. He loved her and held her as a concubine. But finally freed, she wrote of her experiences there. One of her students had read her journals and talked with her for many hours. The student wrote a book describing her teacher’s experiences, drawing upon the interviews and journals. Those writings were still the only accounts the West had of daily life in the Veiled World a century ago.

In the present time, the neutral zones still harbored the remaining pirates and outlaws who had survived the many attempts to eradicate them. Most of them had been destroyed by World Police forces, and they were now few in number. Still, they were dangerous and predatory, a constant worry to both sides of the World League.

So the world was not a paradise, but the nightmare decades of unremitting violence were over.

By Treaty agreement, satellite surveillance was launched, monitored by both sides, to detect outlaw elements, and to make sure no new weapons were built.

Exceptions to surveillance were made for long-established, nonviolent religious centers, and for the private lives of national leaders. They had the privilege of masking themselves from public view.

That privilege was used far more in the West. In the Veiled World, leaders were expected to show their faithfulness by their open lives. Each side saw these preferences as an ironic statement about the other side, but the option for privacy remained.

And now: there was a divided earth, but finally an earth at peace.

ROME

Chapter 1

It was not yet daybreak in Rome. The only light was a bare yellow glow coming from lamps mounted on the surviving Vatican walls.

In the dimness, two young men were kneeling on either side of a man’s body that lay on the road.

Luke knelt on one side. He wore a tattered and dirty friar’s robe, gray dust in his uncombed dark hair.

Opposite him was Stefan, all in black, narrow trousers, turtleneck shirt, a black knit cap covering most of his blond hair.

Earlier in the night, they had both been moving in the sand and powdery dirt of the caves and shelters that once were the Vatican’s great pillars in its public square. Despite a century of talk, the ravaged landmark had not been rebuilt. Now the ruins had become caves and shelters for those whose hearts and minds could not bear the society of the outside, everyday world.

Stefan gave them food and listened to those who finally would talk to him. They would only take enough for one meal, rarely thanking him, often just taking his offerings and retreating to another area of their rough surroundings. Stefan had won their trust slowly, enough for them to tolerate his being here among them. Conversation was sparse, Luke following Stefan’s lead, distributing blankets and personal items with lowered eyes and gentle movements.

It eased Stefan’s heart to know that Luke would carry on. He had already made arrangements for Luke to continue this work because he knew his time here would be short. He had heard these things in his soul.

*****

As they knelt across from each other, Luke looked over to Stefan, wryly noting that Stefan’s clothes were smudged in some places but were far from the sorry condition of Luke’s robe. It was Luke’s fleeting observation, one second of thought about Stefan, who fascinated Luke. But his thoughts quickly returned to the unmoving figure of the man stretched out between them. He had not fallen but seemed to have lain down when he could go no farther, in the weariness of impending death.

Luke could feel the urgency, the vibration of energy in Stefan’s manner toward this still figure. This man, lying in the road, was the man Stefan had been searching for, and was his childhood friend.

Aidan, Stefan whispered. His hand passed over the man’s face, coming to rest on his unmoving arm.

Thank God we found him, Sir, the monk said to a sharp, amused glance from Stefan. As often as Stefan reminded him, Luke was from New Britannia and could not call his prince by his first name, especially now.

Luke saw something distant and regal and sad having come over Stefan. The prince’s demeanor showed him cloaked in memory, with a grief that Luke could feel within himself. He could find no words in his mind to define the way Stefan gazed at this handsome, ragged man lying so still, who seemed to be barely breathing. There were doors of remembrance opening in Stefan, doors that were closed to Luke but obviously vivid to Stefan, and all of this made Stefan’s whole persona ever more that of a prince.

*****

Stefan touched one of the signal dots on the narrow wristband he wore. It enabled the satellite to unblock his royal privacy setting, showing their location. He touched a second dot that summoned medical help.

Within minutes, an ambulance pulled up silently beside them, it’s quiet, crystal-powered engine gliding to a smooth stop. The back doors sprang open, medics jumping out and nodding to Stefan, whom they knew from other rescues. Gently but quickly they moved Aidan onto the air bed that had purred onto the ground. In a few seconds, the airbed rose, lifting him inside.

As they tended to Aidan, quickly connecting him to lifesaving lines, Stefan turned to his young monk companion.

Go ahead back, Luke. I’ll see you soon.

Sir, the monk started to say but was stilled by a smile as Stefan climbed into the ambulance to sit beside Aidan.

As the doors closed, Stefan waved a quick goodbye that was also a blessing. He could see the sadness in Luke’s beautiful soul, his reluctance to remain behind. But Stefan knew that Luke had to get back to his friary before his absence was discovered. The young monk was here without permission of his superiors.

*****

With a quiet ache, Luke watched the ambulance speed away and become a disappearing dot in the distance. He felt very solitary now, some magic gone out of the air. But remembering Stefan’s understanding smile, a familiar joy came over him, which he always felt after he had ministered with Stefan on these dark streets.

Luke had found a suffusing sense of peace and calm in their work among the marginal, invisible rejects, people who defied every social agency’s attempt to help them. Tranquility enveloped him as he made his way back to the friary that was also a seminary, where he was preparing for final vows as a monk and studying for the priesthood.

*****

The first time Luke had ventured out, he was caught on his return and reprimanded for his nighttime absence from the monastery. Luke was penitent and apologetic and behaved himself the following week, keeping meticulously to the Rule. Seeing this, his superiors were satisfied that Luke would not repeat his error.

No longer under suspicion and despite his superiors’ warnings, Luke had begun again to slip out at night whenever he could, and tonight had left him in even more ragged a condition than usual.

Luke took quick steps toward the friary, which stood in the shadow of the Vatican’s old palace. Slipping in past the sleeping night porter, he got to his cell and brushed fiercely at his tattered habit. As a student, he was excused from the night office that was just concluding. Students needed their sleep, to concentrate on their studies. But Luke wanted to work with the poor as Saint Francis had done. And in this modern world, the poor were those who came out only at night, who hid themselves from a society that had every social program for helping them.

Before his nights of sneaking out, Luke had asked permission to minister to the reclusive, marginal men and women he had heard about from the older friars and the occasional visitor.

Luke’s superiors had seen his request as thoughtless pride, as a presumption that he could do holy things in the street when he should be studying and sleeping. They told him to focus on his courses and spiritual formation and that God had put him here in Rome for that.

Luke had lowered his eyes and felt rebellion in his heart when they told him this. How could they presume they knew why God had put him anywhere?

Then immediately, he accused himself of being ungrateful and arrogant. He had fully accepted his vow of obedience when he entered the Order. Yet he knew there were derelicts not far away, and he wanted to do something, anything, to help them. As fate would have it, that first night he went out, he had stumbled upon Stefan.

Luke had been edging along the crumbled Vatican wall to find the rumored hideouts of the men and women who lived in this area. When the social workers had first found them, offering help, they disappeared into the darkness, evading further contact.

So Luke was astonished the first time he found one of the makeshift cave dwellings, finding Stefan already there. He recognized the prince immediately, the rare photos of him and of his twin sister imprinted in his memory. The prince was mysterious and legendary in Britannia, a royal who had chosen priesthood in a New West that increasingly rejected religion.

*****

The world was fascinated by these royal twins, the boy and girl who were not supposed to be born. The monarchs of New Britannia, King Philip and Queen Christina, already had two sons, observing the one or two-child family limit that was stressed by the World Treaty. Crown Prince Albert would succeed them; and his younger brother, Prince Edward, might end up being a king in his own right if a princess from New Netherlands or New United Scandinavia were to become his wife. The royal family was thought to be complete.

Overpopulation had been one of the major causes of unrest in the previous century. There were never enough jobs or opportunity for the growing tide of young people in poorer counties. This had provided a pool of recruits for power-hungry fighters who claimed religious authority to make war and foster terror. A one- or two-child family was now the ethical norm.

Before the Treaty, family size was a delicate subject. But now, religions of all types were silent on this great imperative to save the earth. Historians called this part of the Treaty, the Unspoken Mandate.

It was made possible by the medical advances that came with the end of the wars. Freed from spending endless money on arms, money was lavished on medical and scientific research and ecologically friendly manufacturing processes and technologies. Advances had been rapid. Knowledge and findings were shared between the two parts of the world by a World League special committee created for this purpose. The medical researchers had perfected birth control, accessible everywhere, and without side effects. Failures or mistakes were extremely rare.

So the queen’s astonishing pregnancy left her perplexed and distraught. She and the king were supposed to be examples to their people, models for adherence to the Treaty’s clauses and its spirit.

The King did not know how to console his wife, and they each blamed themselves for somehow doing something wrong. Their private physician’s wise, probing questions could not find any mistake they might have made.

With great sadness, the monarchs made quiet plans to terminate the pregnancy and decide how to live with their anxious and distracted consciences and memories.

But their attempt to conceal the pregnancy did not work. Despite every precaution taken to keep it secret, word leaked out: the queen was carrying twins, and one twin was a girl. No princess had been born to the royal family in over a hundred years.

Enormous public discussion ensued. There were groups opposed to the births, but they were drowned out by the sheer numbers of those who cheered the coming of the new babies, and especially a princess. A deluge of encouragement and support descended on the palace; there were, surprisingly, even messages from the Veiled World. At home, support for the queen, the desire for a princess, and the people’s love for the monarchs, resulted in a special plea from Parliament to continue the pregnancy.

*****

The twins were born the third week of December, greeted in headlines and news feeds as a royal present to the nation.

The girl was named for her beloved ancestors, the noble Princess Anne who had done so much good for humanity, and her mother, Queen Elizabeth II who was considered one of the great queens of history for her devotion to her people. The boy was named Stefan Andrew. Stefan was the name of a saintly king in the queen’s royal line, from the old areas of Eastern Europe. The new prince’s middle name was the name of the queen’s favorite Apostle.

*****

Now, in Rome, by chance, divine or human, Brother Luke had become part of the secret night world of his homeland prince. Stefan shared Luke’s deep love of Franciscan ideals—caring for the poor and sick, embracing poverty in the world in order to have the free riches of God’s abounding grace.

Luke knew it was also a paradox. Stefan was a dedicated Anglican priest, yet Stefan’s uncle was the Pope of the Old Roman Church.

Roman Catholicism had this new name but had kept many of its old traditions. One of them was that all nephews of the Pope were automatically cardinals. And this Pope loved his nephew dearly. That was a known fact. It was an irony: his most devout nephew was of a different tradition in the Christian churches, a tradition that rejected popes and cardinals.

Luke thought about all this as he struggled to stay awake this morning. He was more tired than usual, though he also felt energized. They had been searching for Aidan all week, once Stefan had received word that Aidan was now in Rome. Stefan had been to other cities in the New West, searching for his friend as rumors and information came to him.

Finding him lying on the road, so unexpectedly, had been a shock. Stefan had recognized him immediately, even in the dimness.

That scene was imprinted in Luke’s mind. Something about the two men had moved him in ways he could not explain to himself. The air itself seemed to have changed as Stefan knelt over his friend’s body….

*****

Luke quickly went to join the other students for breakfast, the Superior noting the condition of Luke’s robe. He wondered how a student could get so tattered and dirty by doing the small amount of required manual labor on the grounds each afternoon.

Well, he thought, some men had a talent for neatness, others looked rumpled, no matter what. He had seen this before, though Luke seemed to be a rather extreme case.

Seeing that that his appearance had simply been attributed to his clumsy ways, Luke was relieved to have escaped questioning. He was a terrible liar, his stammered answers and stumbling words making him unable to face down a reprimand he deserved.

The young monk struggled between the Rule’s original ideals and everyday obedience. He felt driven to be a helping presence to people who lived like castaways. Didn’t St. Francis kiss the dying leper? Didn’t the saint find Christ in the rags of the despised and lowliest of the earth?

But all of Luke’s night adventure still left him sleepy. He would probably doze during study hours or be accused again of laziness and laxness if he were caught dropping off in class or chapel. He wondered how the Prince managed….

And then his speculations disappeared as the Superior began the blessing over the food, Luke finding peace and gratitude in the thanksgiving prayer for the meal before them, feeling the enormous hunger of a young man, feeling graced for what had happened this past night.

Chapter 2

At the hospital, the medical team had brought Aidan back to a reluctant consciousness.

He opened his eyes to see Stefan sitting at his bedside, the doctors and nurses having done all they could for now.

Go away, Stefan, Aidan growled in a strained, weak mustering of strength. I don’t want your magical healing.

It’s not my healing, Stefan told him quietly, beginning to reach toward the white stillness of Aidan’s hand lying on the coverlet.

Don’t… Aidan gasped, without the strength to withdraw his hand from Stefan’s touch.

Stefan stopped immediately.

May I sit here with you, Aidan? he asked in a soft voice.

And watch me die, came the satiric gasp in response.

Perhaps. And share those minutes.

Your victory, Stefan. I’m dying without your blessing or voodoo cures. And with this, he coughed, choking and struggling.

The nurse came running from the doorway, adjusting Aidan’s bed pillows, resetting the oxygen feed that had come loose. She gave Stefan a withering look.

You’re upsetting him, she told Stefan, almost matching Aidan’s growl. I think perhaps you should let him rest.

She surprised herself by her own vehemence. She was a nurse giving orders to a prince, and this sort of prince.

Other times when Stefan had brought people in, she had felt a strange power in him. He had a sense of presence, and something else she could not name. And tonight, his aura and energy seemed especially strong, sweeping by her as he entered Aidan’s room, something distinct and elusive about him. It made her feel as uncomfortable as the patient she was tending.

She knew the prince was also an Anglican priest. She heard rumors about his healing powers. They were only rumors, dismissed by skeptics as wishful thinking, as the weakness of gullible people clinging to foolish hopes.

Still, even the sickest men and women he had brought here, seemed already on the mend as they had arrived.

Tonight, though, might be a different story. This patient was close to death.

So much for the prince’s supposed healing powers.

*****

The nurse shared the widespread popular indifference to religion and was put off by things religious and churchly. In addition to the religious extremism that had fueled so much terror, religions in the home countries of the New West had also been wracked by scandals, sexual and monetary. There had been a great drawing away from organized religion, yet the principles had continued in the great protections of human and animal rights, of concern for people and for the earth.

So the nurse, much a product of her time, had no use for clerics. Yet here was Stefan, obviously as much a priest as a prince, right next to her.

Perhaps it was his powerful maleness that troubled her or the ascetic planes of his face. Or maybe it was the strange combination of energy and calm that she sensed. She had no way to put it into words, even in her thoughts. She only knew it made her feel uneasy and uncertain, resentful, irritated, and angry.

Trying to explain her discomfort to herself, she decided that Stefan might be trying to force something religious on her patient. She rankled at the thought. That must have been the reason she felt so unsettled.

Priest or no priest,