Cristina (née Christine) Madero’s elder son now sat on the edge of his bed and contemplated his future. For years the only ambition he’d nursed which ran counter to his preordained lot of running the family business had been to sign on as a striker with, first of all, Sevilla FC and ultimately Man United. At first these strange physical symptoms had only concerned him as possible obstacles to his athletic ambitions. But there seemed to be no long-term effect, and what made him abandon his hoped-for sporting career was the gradual realization that, though he was good, he would never be Best. Anything less had no appeal, and he set aside his football boots with no regrets.

Now it seemed to him that perhaps he had been denied that ultimate sporting edge because another purpose was written for him. To have interpreted this intermittent irritation in his hands and feet as a form of stigmata would have been blasphemously arrogant. But the blood today had changed all that. The blood and the second manifestation of the young priest. The first time the vision had invited him to follow. Now, ten years later, it had offered him a gift. The symbolism of the eggs was not hard to read. In form perfection; in content life. Was not that the essence of a priest’s existence, to strive to be perfect and so reveal life’s true meaning?

The more he thought about it, the more it seemed to him clear that this was the message he had been receiving for all his short years.

Yet he was in many ways what is called an old-fashioned child, and he knew that getting other important people to accept his sense of vocation was not going to be easy.

Problem one was his own family.

The Maderos were in the eyes of their bishop the very model of a good devout Catholic family – generous in charity, regular attenders at Mass, both their sons serving as altar boys – but never in the five hundred years since they started to make their name in the wine business had a single man of the family offered himself for the priesthood.