I am the hailstorm that’s going to smash
the heads of those who don’t take cover.
– Girolamo Savonarola
I CALLED RAPHAELLA to fill her in on my discoveries and deductions. She didn’t answer her cell, so I left her a message. “I’ve been detecting some more. And delving deeply. Call you later.”
With the new information spinning around in my head, I left the library behind and went to the shop. Working at my trade always took my mind off other things-a welcome relief at that point. I had too many new bits of information and a host of questions spinning in my mind.
Outside, the air had cooled and slate-coloured cloud had rolled in. I flicked the shop lights on, then, wearing apron, gloves, and mask, opened a can of primer. I flipped the table upside down onto a bench and brushed primer onto the underside and legs. A gentle drizzle misted the window, and before I had finished the table a punishing downpour had set in. As I was cleaning up, my cell rang. Raphaella, I hoped.
“Shall I assume you will remain for the night once again, Mr. Havelock? The weather is terrible and the forecast indicates that it will continue until past midnight.”
I looked at the rain beating against the window. “Thanks, Mrs. Stoppini. That sounds like a good idea.”
“Aperitifs will be served in exactly forty-four minutes.”
AFTER A DINNER of grilled lamb chops with roast potato, carrot, and fennel I went back to the shop under an umbrella hammered by rain and sat down at a bench with a carpenter’s pencil, ruler, and graph paper. I scribbled calculations and drafted plans for about twenty minutes. Then I turned on the band saw.
Two hours later I wheeled my invention into the library. It was a chest-high stand, like a flat-topped lectern, on wheels. I placed my laptop on it, powered it up, pushed the lectern to the reference section behind the escritoire, and launched Raphaella’s database. As a trial run I noted a few book titles and authors-mostly editors of reference books-then shut down the computer again. The lectern would be handy for cataloguing books when I was on my own. I could work right next to the shelves.
I dropped into the chair by the library windows and phoned Raphaella.
“It’s your lover,” I said.
“No way. My lover left the house five minutes ago.”
“Hah.”
“So you’ve been delving.”
“Yup.” I described my research, pausing after I had connected the medal and the antique book. She was silent.
“You didn’t say, ‘Hmm,’ ” I pointed out.
“Curious. The man who wrote the book is the man whose face is on the medal is the man who is tortured in your nightmare. Why are you dreaming about him? What does he want from you?”
“I wish I knew. I’ll bet he’s mentioned in Professor Corbizzi’s manuscript.”
“We need to read it.”
“And we’ll have to learn more about this Friar Savonarola guy.”
“Want to flip a coin?” Raphaella asked.
“No,” I replied, my eyes trained on the alcove. “I want the whole story. You take the manuscript.”
“Good.”
“Are you coming out tomorrow?”
“I can probably make it for a few hours in the morning. I’ll call you.”
I LEFT THE LIBRARY and returned to the shop to collect my duffle bag of clothes and toiletries, my phone charger, and my book. I locked up the coach house and secured the deadbolt on the kitchen door, then made my way up the staircase, which always reminded me of a suspense movie. On my way to my room, I heard Mrs. Stoppini calling me. I turned on my heel and approached her open door and knocked on the frame.
“Do come in, Mr. Havelock.”
Mrs. Stoppini’s suite consisted of a good-sized bedroom, which I glimpsed through an open door, and a small sitting room with two upholstered chairs arranged in front of a fireplace. One wall of the sitting room was a large open bookshelf bursting at the seams. There was also a small desk and a cabinet. Mrs. Stoppini occupied one of the chairs, and a wine bottle with two glasses sat on the table beside her. She wore a silk dressing gown-not black, but almost-and dark slippers. It was the first time I had seen her in anything but her black outfit. She held a thick book in one hand, a finger between the pages.
“I hoped you would join me in a glass of sherry before you retire,” she said.
I reminded myself that she appreciated company, although she seldom said as much. “Sure,” I replied.
“If you’d care to pour.”
I followed her suggestion, then sat down. The windows were open, and the cool evening air freshened the homey little room.
“A votre santé,” said Mrs. Stoppini, offering her glass to be clinked.
“Cheers.”
“The late professor used to say,” Mrs. Stoppini mused, “that properly prepared food and things like caffè macchiato and sherry make us civilized.”
“You must miss him a lot.”
She looked down into her glass and said nothing.
“Sorry. That was a stupid thing to say.”
“Not at all, Mr. Havelock. You are quite right, of course.”
“He certainly was a scholar,” I said lamely. “I’ve had a chance to take a closer look at parts of his collection.”
“He was indeed,” Mrs. Stoppini said wistfully. “A true scholar is a rare thing in today’s world. One sees…” She didn’t complete her thought.
“I was wondering if it would be all right if I-and Raphaella-read a few of the books in the library. Especially the ones the professor wrote.”
“Provided nothing is removed from the library, I cannot think of an objection.”
I wished my mother was there. I was dying-wrong word-eager to dig more information about the prof from Mrs. Stoppini, but I was no good at wording questions that would tease out facts the way Mom could. So far, Mrs. Stoppini had volunteered almost nothing about the prof, but I knew there was something strange about the circumstances surrounding his death. All she had said was that he had become more private-almost paranoid it seemed-especially about his work, which he kept from her. I had concluded that the manuscript titled Fanatic was what had occupied him.
But why be secretive about it? He was a professor of Italian Renaissance studies. In the library there were lots of books on the period. He had written a few. Fanatic was probably one more. What was there about that book that demanded secrecy?
Raphaella and I now had permission to try and find out.
“Interesting book?” I asked, nodding at the volume Mrs. Stoppini had been reading when I came into the sitting room.
“Enough to pass the time, that is all.”
She didn’t mention the title. Why was I not surprised?
I HAD BROUGHT a novel with me, but with all the drama of the last couple of days I had forgotten that I was almost finished it, and not long after I had settled into the chair by the guest-room window on the second floor I closed Captain Alatriste and set it down. It was eleven o’clock, but I wasn’t sleepy. I looked out the window across the yard. The rain had stopped and the clouds had broken up, revealing a few stars and allowing moonlight to form patterns on the lawn.
Mrs. Stoppini’s door was still ajar and her light was on when I slipped along the corridor to the stairs, barefoot, wearing only pajama bottoms. The downstairs hall was shadowy, but enough moonlight came through the windows of the front foyer that I made my way easily along the hall to the library without turning on the light. I found myself thinking about Mrs. Stoppini’s irrational attitude to the place. She had respected the professor’s wish for privacy while he was working-and even that seemed a little extreme, but what did I know?-but with him gone, what difference did it make if she left the doors open and went in and out as she pleased? She was a reader-the bookshelves in her sitting room made that clear. Why avoid the library? Her behaviour when I showed her the secret cupboard was extreme. She was afraid of the place.
To her, the library was taboo. But why? Was it because her companion had died there? Or was there more? I couldn’t fully understand her reaction to the room any more than I could make sense of my own.
I rolled the doors aside and stepped in, reaching for the light switch-and froze.
The acrid stink of stale smoke, burnt paper, and singed cloth and rotten wood hung in the air. Maybe Mrs. Stoppini had lit a small fire in her bedroom for comfort, and the smoke had curled over the roof, pushed into the library by the night breeze. No, her windows had been open, the fireplace cold. Besides, I had closed and locked the casements in the library earlier, hadn’t I?
On the other side of the room something stirred. In the far corner, the table and chair by the window, as well as a section of books and a patch of floor, were brushed with moonlight.
Thoughts flitted across my mind like bats. Whatever had caught my eye could have drifted past the window on the outside of the house. Or it could be with me, here in the room. I took a breath and slapped at the switch, flooding the room with light and dissolving the shadows.
There was no one there. I saw no trace of smoke, but the smell remained. Curbing my uneasiness, I walked quickly to the window. It was closed and locked. So much for my theory about the source of the smoke. I looked out, but the brightness behind me made it difficult to see anything in the yard except shadows cast by tree branches shifting randomly with the wind. Probably a moving shadow was what I had seen. I took a deep breath and let it out slowly, willing my heart to slow down.
I went over to the fireplace. The hearth was cold, its tiles swept clean, just as I had left it. I made a slow circuit of the room, sniffing like a spaniel as I went, and detected nothing that could have produced the odour of smoke.
“Smarten up, Garnet,” I said out loud. “It’s your imagination again.”
When I got to the section of shelves that held the professor’s fiction collection, I stopped and forced myself not to rush, to scan the titles slowly. I selected The Name of the Rose only because I had heard of it somewhere.
Before I left the library, I turned out the light and walked back to the window. I stood for a few minutes, looking out across the yard. The gardens, the trees, the patio furniture were all silvered by the moon, and bright lines rippled on the surface of the lake. At the shore the willows stood in pools of darkness cast by their drooping branches. Between two willows, visible against the lighter backdrop of the lake, stood a human figure wearing an ankle-length hooded cape.
A figure that cast no shadow.
Only his outline was visible. A silhouette the size and shape of a smaller-than-average man standing as still as the earth, facing the window where I stood.
I knew who it was.
I dashed out of the library and through the kitchen and into the yard. The patio stones were cold and damp on my bare feet, the grass cool and dewy. I made my way along the edge of the flower garden and stopped at the corner of the house, my irrational burst of courage pouring away like water through a grate. I saw nothing on the shore. I craned my neck around the house, my cheek brushing the cold stone. Shades streaked the moonlit ground, criss-crossed by the shadows of branches. A light wind whispered. The lake murmured. There was a faint smell of smoke.
I stood in Mrs. Stoppini’s flower bed, the damp earth pushing between my toes, the novel still in my hand.
I RINSED MY FEET in the kitchen sink, feeling foolish and terror-struck at the same time. After checking the deadbolt for the fourth time, I crept back upstairs. Mrs. Stoppini’s door was closed, the corridor a tunnel of darkness. I went into my room and shut the door behind me without turning on the light. I pulled on a T-shirt, then padded over to the window, keeping to one side, and peered around the curtain.
He was there.
He stood on the shore in full view, motionless, looking up at my room. He knew I was there. An icy chill inched up my spine and through my limbs.
Focused intently on my window, the man in the hooded cape floated slowly toward me, an otherworldly motion, like lava flowing across the grass. My heart battered against my ribs. My breathing was so ragged I felt I was suffocating.
He stopped by the broad skirts of the spruce tree below my window, his head tilted sharply upward, a pool of dark where his face should be. I could feel his malign hostility fixated on me, his will as strong as the granite wall between us.
The strain was unbearable. I couldn’t take anymore. I threw open the window, shrieked, “Why are you here? What do you want from me?”
The shadow didn’t react. My pulse pounded in my ears. Then, almost unaware of what I was saying, I spoke again. “De profundis clamavi ad te domine, domine esuadi vocem meam.”
Still no response. There was only the night breeze, the reek of smoke.
But gradually, the high-voltage hostility that pulsed against the window began to recede. The spectre stood a moment longer, then withdrew in that same slow flowing movement until he reached the shore, where he faded, a shadow into shadow.
I slammed down the sash, locked it, jerked the curtains closed, then collapsed into the chair. I got up and stumbled to the night table, switched on the lamp, and snatched up my cell, falling to my knees and leaning crookedly back against the bed.
“Raphaella,” I gasped as soon as she picked up, “it’s a haunting. It’s happening again.”
I SAT ALONE at the table in the Corbizzi kitchen, watching grey pre-dawn light flow into the landscape, giving definition to trees and gardens, the dew-pearled furniture on the patio, the glass-flat water beyond the indistinct shoreline. I was still shaking from the disorientation that comes when an experience shatters your version of reality like a rock smashes a window.
After the spirit’s visitation I had spent the rest of the night in the chair by the guest-room window, startling at every sound, unable to prevent myself from leaping up every few minutes and stealing a glance through the crack between the curtains. Every light in the room was on. I had been caught in the classic dilemma of a haunt’s victim. The bedroom, with door locked, window secured, curtains closed, was a sanctuary, a cave. At the same time it was a trap that cocooned me from sight and sound but made me vulnerable to stealth.
During the night I had spoken to Raphaella for a long time on the phone, but after a while we began to cover the same ground. There was no doubt now, no denial possible. The Corbizzi mansion was being haunted by the spirit of Girolamo Savonarola. And the apparition had chosen me, approaching at first through my dreams, showing me how he had suffered during his life, tortured in a rat-infested cell by men who went about their job as calmly and unperturbed as a janitor sweeping a hall.
But what was my connection to a Roman Catholic Dominican friar who had lived half a world away, more than five hundred years in the past? Nothing, probably, beyond my coincidental presence at the Corbizzi estate. Was it fate that had brought us together? Why was he showing me how he had suffered? Why had he slipped away when I repeated the line from the Latin prayer?
Before Raphaella and I ended the call, we had agreed to keep our minds open about the spirit, while allowing for the possibility that this haunting was evil. It had certainly seemed that way.
“But,” Raphaella had reminded me, “ghosts are frightening by nature. Their otherworldliness seems threatening even if it’s not.”
“Okay,” I had conceded. “Point taken. But I still think this apparition caused the prof’s seizure, even if he scared the poor old man to death without intending to. And there’s the fire and smoke. The smell seems to come and go, but it’s associated with the spirit. There was fire when the prof died.”
We agreed that she’d come over in the morning, and in daylight, we’d think of a plan.
“Good,” I said as we ended the call. “I like plans.”
Raphaella had once thought that haunts were “neutral”-the spirit neither harmed nor helped the person receiving the visitation. But our personal experience had proved her wrong when we had been chased through the forest near the African Methodist Church by eight spirits intent on stoning us to death. Only Raphaella’s quick wits had saved us.
I got up from the kitchen table and put the kettle on to boil. In my jeans pocket, my cell vibrated.
eta 9 rs.
I replied, then made a cup of tea. When it was ready I carried it outside and down to the shore.
RAPHAELLA ARRIVED just as Mrs. Stoppini was removing a tray of homemade croissants from the oven. The sight of the buttery golden brown crescents and the fragrance of freshly ground coffee improved my mood, but not nearly as much as Raphaella did when she burst through the door, dropped her backpack on a chair, and bowled me over with a bear hug and a deep passionate kiss.
“My hero,” she said, kissing me again, longer this time. “My brave knight.”
“Ahem.” Mrs. Stoppini stood stiffly by the counter, a jug of steamed milk in her hand.
“Morning, Mrs. Stoppini,” Raphaella said, smiling. “Sorry. I lose control when I’m near him. He’s magnetic.”
Mrs. Stoppini scowled at me.
“It’s a gift,” I said. “I can’t help it.”
“Indeed.”
Raphaella was wearing a white silk blouse, jeans, and leather sandals. She had swept her hair up onto her head and secured it with two plastic barrettes shaped like butterflies-her “let’s get down to work” look.
The three of us sat down and sipped espresso, munched croissants, and chatted. Raphaella told Mrs. Stoppini about the Demeter Natural Food and Medicinal Herbs Shop and described the lessons her mother was giving her on how to mix herbal remedies. Mrs. Stoppini actually looked interested. After breakfast, Raphaella and I excused ourselves and went to the library. I dragged a chair to Raphaella’s table by the window.
“I think Mrs. S. has a streak of kindness under that severe exterior,” Raphaella commented.
“She does.”
“And I believe she’s lonely.”
“Yup, no question.”
“And she thinks you’re a fine man.”
“She’s an excellent judge of character, and very perceptive.”
“Mind you, she could be wrong.”
“That’s true.”
“Do you think she knows?” Raphaella asked, switching tracks.
“I’ve been wondering since the day I met her just how much she knows. All along she’s been careful about what she tells me. She doesn’t talk about him much. At first I thought she was protecting the prof’s reputation or something, because of the fire-you know, gossip, scandal, questions, his seizure and so on. All I know is he was a prof, wrote some books, left the university because he was dissatisfied with his department and vice versa. Not that I expect her to tell me more. It’s none of my business, after all.”
Raphaella nodded.
“But,” I went on, “her paranoia about this room is something else.”
“So she’s aware of something going on around here.”
“Exactly. All she’d say was that the prof had been working on some project that he kept from her for some reason. He wouldn’t allow her into the library. What could he have been keeping from her? His new book, the manuscript in the secret cupboard? She didn’t know about the cupboard either, and when I showed it to her she didn’t want to hear anything about the contents.”
Raphaella played with her pencil, standing it point down on the writing pad, sliding her fingers down the length, reversing it, jabbing the eraser end down, repeating the motion.
“She’s in denial. Unless…” she said mysteriously, beginning to doodle.
“Unless what?”
“Maybe the professor kept her away not to hide a secret but to protect her.”
“That could be it. If somebody knows you don’t know, you’re safe. If they know you know, you’re a threat.”
Raphaella gave me a look. “I think I followed that.”
“Mrs. Stoppini still won’t come in here,” I continued, “even though the prof is dead and everything here belongs to her now-or is under her control, since she’s the executor of his will.”
“Hmm. So what’s our next step? Confront her with what we know? Ask her if she’s seen or heard anything… out of the ordinary?”
“Better to let things develop,” I answered. “Until we learn more.”
I got the keys from the desk and opened the secret cupboard, then laid out the Compendium Revelationem, the file folder, the box containing the medal, and the cross on the square table. For a moment my eyes rested on the Compendium-the ancient book that had been written by the man whose spirit was haunting me-and I shivered. The book was like a weapon with a dark history.
I picked up the file containing the professor’s manuscript and carried it to Raphaella at the table. “Enjoy,” I said, setting it down.
She unwound the string, opened the stiff paper file, and slid out the stack of sheets.
“It’s typewritten,” she observed, leafing through the pile.
“Yeah, on the Underwood over there on the escritoire.” I looked closer. “He’d been editing with a pencil, just like Mom does.”
“You realize,” Raphaella said, “this is probably the only copy.”
“I never thought about it. If he had word-processed the book, why bother to make a copy by banging away on an ancient typewriter? He wrote this here, in this room.”
I fetched the professor’s magnifying glass from the escritoire and examined the back of a sheet, talking as I peered through the glass. “People used to make carbon copies as they typed, by putting carbon paper between two sheets of stock before typing. But I don’t see any evidence of that.”
“How do you know all that stuff?”
“I work in an antiques store. And my father is at least a century behind the times. He’d fit right in around here.”
Raphaella smiled, then her eyes returned to the manuscript. “I guess we can’t take it away with us and get it photocopied.”
“Nope. I’m-we’re-not supposed to remove anything from this room.”
“Where can we get hold of a portable photocopy machine or a scanner?”
“I don’t-”
“Wait!”
Raphaella pulled her new phone from her backpack. “I’ve got one right here! The PIE has a camera! I can shoot the pages and email them to myself.”
She then put down the PIE, placed the manuscript pages back on the stack, and straightened it. She picked up her pencil and slid the writing pad closer.
“In the meantime,” she said, “let’s do some reading.”
AS RAPHAELLA DIVED into her work, I crossed over to the alcove and took down Savonarolan Theocracy, holding it as I slowly scanned the shelves for more volumes written by Professor Corbizzi. Mom told me she had found four titles-all of them out of print-on the web, listed with his bio. The books in the alcove were not shelved in order of each author’s surname because many of them had been pulled down and flung on the floor the night the prof had died, and I had replaced them haphazardly. But eventually I located three of the books I was seeking-Lorenzo and the Friar, San Marco’s Hounds of God, and Puritanism, Fundamentalism, and Theocracy.
“All thrilling reads, I’m sure,” I muttered, stacking the books beside the cross. But I was interested in works about Savonarola, so I searched the shelves some more and came up with two other books devoted to the friar, then settled down at the table, across from Raphaella.
Under different circumstances it would have been a golden morning, a quiet interlude with Raphaella in a beautiful room, with a perfect summer day as a backdrop. Raphaella had sunk deep into her reading. Her powers of concentration were amazing. Mine were okay, as long as I was interested in the topic. When I was in elementary school my dad used to say I had excellent powers of concentration-but only for five or ten seconds at a time. Take me fishing, though, and I was a different boy.
I opened a book and began to read more about the life of the man who was tormenting my dreams.
THE LIBRARY WAS CALM and quiet, except for the whisper of pages being turned and the hiss of pencil lead crossing paper. Birdsong trickled through the open windows. As the hours passed and the morning slipped by, the heat rose, making me drowsy, and I began to feel the effects of my lost night’s sleep. But Girolamo Savonarola was a fascinating man-not necessarily, I was learning, for good reasons-and his powerful personality and the violent times he lived in drew me through the chapters as if I was reading a mystery novel.
The ringing of my cell broke the spell. I opened it, listened for a couple of seconds, closed it. Raphaella raised her head from her book.
“Mrs. Stoppini will be serving a light lunch on the patio in exactly nine minutes,” I announced.
Raphaella and I cheerfully obeyed the summons, taking our notes with us. Mrs. Stoppini had made panini stuffed with chopped plum tomatoes, fresh basil, and grated Parmesan cheese. A tall bottle of Italian mineral water beaded with condensation stood in the centre of the patio table. Mrs. Stoppini would not be joining us for lunch, she had said. She had to “attend to some overdue correspondence”-which probably meant write some letters.
Raphaella bit into a roll and pushed a bit of tomato into the corner of her mouth with the tip of her little finger.
“Want to share discoveries?” she asked after swallowing.
I nodded as I chewed.
“You first,” Raphaella suggested.
I took a few gulps of sparkling water, said, “I’m really glad I wasn’t born in the fifteenth century,” and bit into my panino.
Raphaella sighed theatrically. “That’s it? A whole morning’s reading and all you can say is that fifteenth-century Florence isn’t your cup of tea?”
“I haven’t got to Florence yet. I started in Ferrara and now I’m in Bologna.”
“Whatever.”
“That was only my intro,” I continued. “There’s more.”
“Give,” Raphaella commanded, then took a modest bite of her tomato roll.
I opened my notebook but didn’t consult it. I could usually remember what I had read. “Girolamo-Jerome in English, Hieronymus in Latin, spelled with Vs-”
“Stop showing off.”
“Savonarola, born Ferrara, Italy, an independent duchy, September 21, 1452. Son of a medical doctor well connected with the ruling d’Este family, hence loaded with money and privilege and favour. Girolamo was one of seven children. Extremely bright, academically gifted, went to Ferrara University. Physical characteristics: small, even by the standards of those days, thin, ugly, with thick lips, a big, hooked nose, and green eyes. Don’t let your eyes glaze over. I’m getting to the interesting part.”
Raphaella dabbed her luscious lips with a napkin.
“And stop doing that,” I said. “You’re distracting me. From early on it was clear that Girolamo wanted to lead the life of an ascetic. That’s a person who subjects himself to severe self-discipline and abstains from all forms of pleasure, like this delicious panino on my plate or the even more delicious woman sitting across from me. Like fine clothing, paintings, jewellery-”
“I get the picture.”
“This guy grew up surrounded by finery, waste, money, luxury, but he saw it all as corrupt and unholy. He ate plain food, insisted on sleeping on a straw mattress, wore a shift of coarse wool next to his skin to make himself uncomfortable and remind himself that the world was a corrupt place full of temptation.”
Raphaella’s voice hardened. “Something tells me you’re about to say he hated women.”
“Apparently their charms were lost on him.”
“Because they were the origin of all sin, and they enticed men to do wrong with their weaknesses and sexual looseness, et cetera, et cetera.”
“Young Girolamo would hardly speak to women, and when he did he preached at them.”
“And he probably preferred that they hide themselves under a dozen square metres of cheap cloth and cover their faces and submit totally to the rule of men.”
“There’s more,” I pointed out, waving my notebook.
“Go on.”
“He ranted on against corruption and moral decadence at the court, in society in general, even in the Church establishment. He rejected his family, left home at twenty-three, and went to Bologna to join the Dominicans. He left behind a nasty, bitter essay called…” I checked my notes to get the pronunciation right… “Dispregio del Mondo, ‘Contempt for the World.’ I think the title says it all.”
“Wow. Give you a morning in with some old books and you’re quoting Latin.”
“Glad you’re impressed. The Dominicans were a preaching order of monks, defenders of correct Roman Catholic doctrine, and-get this-they were the boys who conducted the Holy Inquisition, torturing and burning people all over Europe. There was a play on words I’d like to tell you about if you don’t mind a bit more Latin.”
“I think I’m up to it.”
“Do-mi-ni-can,” I enunciated. “Do-mi-ne Ca-ne. Latin for ‘the dogs of God.’ Nice fellas if you could catch them in the right mood. Anyway, that’s what I’ve learned so far. Savonarola is in Bologna, studying to be a good Dominican preacher.”
“It sounds like this Girolamo didn’t get enough attention as a child.”
“People at the time thought he was holy.”
Raphaella scoffed.
“Anyway, the food’s all gone,” I pointed out. “Want to take a walk?”
“Let’s take the dishes inside first.”
WE DIDN’T GET FAR-just along the shore a ways, near the spot where I’d found the GPS-before we sprawled on the grass in the shade of a willow at the edge of the water. White butterflies fluttered in the hot air, and the lake lay calm and green under a cloudless sky. Raphaella reclined on her back, and I lounged beside her, propped up on one elbow.
“How’s the prof’s manuscript?” I asked lazily.
“Not as academic as I thought it would be.”
“That’s a surprise.”
“Yeah. He says in the preface it’s for a general audience. But it’s a little dry.”
“As in ‘boring’?”
“Not at all. It’s slow going, though. Very intellectual. And theoretical. His central thesis is-”
“In just a few hours you’ve read enough to work out his thesis?”
“It was pretty easy,” Raphaella replied nonchalantly. “I just read the paragraph in his preface that begins, ‘The thesis I hope to demonstrate in this book is…’ ”
“Oh.”
“The prof says that two similar trends in the modern world have led to a number of theocratic governments, and that this type of regime is the enemy of democracy and tolerance.”
“Ah.”
“Or words to that effect.”
“I see.” I didn’t see at all.
“Not exactly light reading,” Raphaella remarked, “even if the book is for the general public.”
“Speaking as a member of that public, I’d say there are quite a few heavy-duty polysyllabics in that thesis.”
“The key one is theocracy-government by priests or ayatollahs or the equivalent who claim to rule according to God’s laws. The prof claims theocracies are dangerous. It works like this: God wants us to live according to his laws, which have been written down as Holy Scripture like the Qur’an, the Torah, the New Testament, whatever. God inspired the Scriptures, so what they say is true.”
“But people have been arguing for centuries over interpretations of those books.”
“Exactly. In a theocratic government there’s always someone, or a small number of men-and it’s always men-who claim special knowledge. They’re usually priests, or the equivalent-imams, rabbis, the Council of Seven. They-and only they-have the correct interpretation. So they say. To go against them is therefore to go against the will of God. There’s no room for disagreement by ordinary people.”
“So there’s no real democracy,” I said. “The average citizen is left out.”
Raphaella nodded. “And no tolerance. If there’s only one divinely inspired holy book, there’s only one ‘true’ religion. And if the laws are based on the book, they’re infallible.”
I stated the logical conclusion. “And if you oppose the government, you’re going against God. I can see why the prof was worried enough to write a big thick book.”
“He was distressed, that’s for sure.”
“I’m reading one of the prof’s books. It’s called Savonarolan Theocracy.”
Raphaella sat up. “In the manuscript, the prof devotes a whole section, which I haven’t read yet, to your Dog of God monk.”
“I think I can guess what he’ll say.”
“Ready for a couple more polysyllabics?” Raphaella asked.
“Fire away.”
“Okay. Throughout history two related movements occur, then fade, then emerge again, in a sort of cycle-puritanism and fundamentalism.”
“Aha! That fits with another of the prof’s books, Puritanism, Fundamentalism, and Theocracy. I’m familiar with both terms. Puritans are the American Thanksgiving guys in their black suits and funny hats, right? And fundamentalists are the ones who rant against movies and books that have too much sex.”
“Um, not exactly.”
“I knew it couldn’t be that simple.”
“Originally, ‘puritan’ meant someone who thought his religion had wandered off track. Puritans wanted to go back to the basics in their worship and doctrines. There was the feeling that this purity had been lost somewhere along the way. A fundamentalist was very similar. He was afraid his religion had become watered down or corrupted, and he wanted to get back to the fundamentals of his faith. In both cases, these people take their holy books literally. They tighten up on the so-called interpretations and say there’s nothing to interpret. It’s the words of God coming through the prophets, or the Prophet. It means what it says. Period.
“The prof wrote that history shows these movements usually shift toward theocracy. What started off as an attempt to improve the religion ends as an intolerant and undemocratic form of government, like in Salem, Massachusetts, where witches were burned, or like today’s Islamist political movements or governments.”
“Everything I’ve read about Savonarola so far suggests he was a puritan.”
We were silent for a moment, each of us fitting ideas together, attempting to make a clear picture from the bits we had discovered so far. Raphaella’s eyes suddenly widened.
“Do you get the impression that the Corbizzi mansion is a battleground between the long-dead monk and the recently dead professor?”
I nodded. “And we’re standing between them.”
I looked out over the lake, suddenly overwhelmed by what I had gotten us into.
“Raphaella, I wish I had never gone to the Half Moon that morning and talked to Marco. I wish I hadn’t come to this place and made that agreement with Mrs. Stoppini.”
“If wishes were horses, beggars would ride.”
“I’m sorry I dragged you into all this,” I said.
Raphaella lifted her face to the sky, removed her barrettes, and shook her hair free, allowing it to tumble over her shoulders and down her back, as if she was preparing herself for a challenge. Then she turned to me and smiled.
“I go where you go, Garnet.”
WE STROLLED SLOWLY back to the house, our energy drained by the soft summer afternoon, the drone of bees in the flower beds and the gloom that followed in the wake of our reading. We had been dragged into an otherworldly conflict, like swimmers in a riptide, and we knew our only defence was to go with the current until it lost some of its strength, then strike off in another direction. Not a cheerful thought on a beautiful summer’s day far removed from the world of Professor Eduardo Corbizzi-and that of the cranky Italian friar who had been linked to him by events or forces Raphaella and I could so far only vaguely understand.
As we turned the corner of the mansion, I stopped. And groaned. Something had flickered behind the library window.
“Not again,” I muttered.
Raphaella looked at me, eyebrows raised.
“Did you see that?” I asked.
“What? Where?”
“In the library. Something moved.”
At that time of day, with sunlight slanting across the yard, throwing shadows over the lawn, the window glass was a pattern of reflected sky and treetops so deceiving that birds might fly directly into the glass thinking they were winging through the trees. But I could have sworn I had caught sight of someone moving inside the library.
“I can feel something, but I didn’t see anything,” Raphaella whispered. “Are you sure?”
“No. Yes. I don’t know.”
“Well, I feel better now that you’ve cleared that up. And why am I whispering again?” she added, annoyed with herself.
“We’re both on edge.”
“The edge of sanity, I’d say. Let’s go in.”
Any doubts I had held about my vision disappeared as soon as we closed the library doors behind us. The acrid odour of smoke was so strong it stung my nostrils. Raphaella stood still beside me, sniffing the air. A cold fingernail of dread scratched the back of my neck.
“Where there’s smoke there’s-”
“A ghost,” Raphaella cut in, drawing air through her nose like a professional wine taster, analyzing the ingredients of the invisible smoke the way I had seen her nasally exploring the medicines in the Demeter. Dealing with herbal remedies required a finely tuned olfactory organ, she had often told me.
“This is what you’ve been telling me about?”
“It’s him again,” I said. “But the smell is stronger this time.”
“I see-smell-what you mean.” Raphaella wrinkled her nose. “Burnt wood, cloth,” she murmured, as if taking inventory, “leather, hot iron, paper. And-ugh-underneath it all, something fetid. But why smoke?”
“What do you mean?”
“Why would this presence leave behind the smell of burning?”
“I assume because he caused the fire that led to the professor’s…”
“Maybe,” Raphaella mused. “But you’d think-”
“Look,” I exclaimed, leading the way across the room. “Something’s disturbed the manuscript.”
“I left it in two neat stacks.”
The bitter stink was more pronounced here. The books I had been using lay open where I had left them, but the manuscript had been tampered with. Several pages were askew. I checked the window. It was closed and locked as it always was when I left the library, so no breeze had moved the pages.
I looked around, alert for any more signs of the spirit’s presence. Was he here now, I wondered, keeping himself invisible? My eyes probed the alcove. The bookcase door hung open, exposing the secret cupboard with its rolled-up door and empty shelves. The cross gleamed on the tabletop, untouched, with the small wooden box beside it.
“There’s a page on the floor,” Raphaella said, bending to retrieve the sheet. Between trembling hands she clutched it, with its lines of neatly typed letters and pencilled scribbles here and there, and sniffed it.
“Smoky,” she murmured.
“Look at the edges,” I pointed out.
Along one margin and across the top of the typed page, the thick white paper showed a faint brown stain. I had seen marks like that on lots of old books. Books that had been near a fire.
“I’D BETTER PHOTOGRAPH the pages now,” Raphaella cautioned. “Just to be safe.”
We worked fast. Raphaella leaned over the stack, snapped a picture, I removed the page, the camera clicked again, and so on. When the PIE’s memory was full, she emailed the images to her address at the Demeter, cleared the memory, and started shooting once more. It was a tedious process, but we got it done.
Raphaella tidied up the manuscript and tucked it back into its file case, securing the flap with a stouter than necessary knot. She tossed the PIE into her backpack. I returned the Compendium and cross, box, and manuscript to the cupboard and locked up.
“We have to make sure we do this-return everything to the cupboard-whenever we leave the library,” I said.
“Right. Well, I’m ready,” she said, looking around nervously.
“Let’s get out of here.”
Tucking the little brass keys into their place under the rosary in the box and closing the escritoire drawer, I was unable to shake the feeling that the spirit was watching every move.
We found Mrs. Stoppini sitting at a small desk in the main-floor room she called the parlour, writing letters on thick creamy paper with a fountain pen as if she was still in the last century. She insisted on seeing us to the door.
“See you soon,” I said.
“I shall look forward to it.”
Outside, Raphaella kissed me goodbye and slid behind the steering wheel of her mother’s car. She waved out the window as she drove off down the shady lane. She had a few hours’ work to do at the Demeter.
I went into the shop, gave the refinished table a quick final inspection. It looked great. Dad will be pleased, I thought as I locked up. I pulled on my jacket and helmet, mounted up, and piloted the motorcycle through the estate gates, glad to be leaving the place and wondering once again how Mrs. Stoppini could live in that house without contact with the spirit that I was more and more sure was full of dark intentions.
And not for the first time I felt guilty leaving her alone there. I reminded myself that she had been by herself in that big house when I met her, and beyond her fear of the library-which I could now fully relate to-she had showed no signs of knowing about any spiritual visitations.
I rode straight into town, heading for the public library across the road from the Olde Gold. The beginnings of a plan were moving around in my mind, like puzzle bits scattered across a tabletop.
AN HOUR OR SO later I walked in the back door of my house with two books on Savonarola under my arm-the same titles I had been reading in the prof’s library. In our kitchen I listened for signs of activity from Mom’s study. All was quiet except for the ticking of the clock above the kitchen sink.
“Anybody home?” I called out.
Things had been tense since Dad and I had ganged up on my mother about the Afghanistan assignment. For a day or so it had seemed she had given up on the idea, but she had never said so in so many words. All three of us avoided the subject altogether-which made it one of those “elephant in the living room” things that just kept everybody on edge.
So I was kind of glad to have the house to myself for a while. Tension was one thing I didn’t need right then. My nerves were tight as piano wires as it was. I fixed a mug of tea and took it up to my room, dumping the books on the desk.
I set up my recliner on the balcony beside a small table, then took my notebook, library books, and tea outside. There was just enough breeze to stir the leaves on the maples along Brant Street and to bend the column of steam rising from the mug. I picked up the book I had been reading at the mansion, found the page where I had left off, and settled back in the chair.
WITH HIS FIERY ZEAL and deep intelligence, Savonarola quickly established himself among the Dominicans at Bologna, gaining a reputation far and wide as a fiercely intense, repent-or-burn-in-hell preacher. He had lost none of his hatred of the world, his disgust with the Church and its riches and corruption, his puritanical opposition to art, literature, costly garments-anything that in his sour view would lead a person away from religious devotion. He still wore his scratchy hair shirt under his clothing, and had added a spiked belt to punish his flesh even more. According to my reading, that kind of “mortification of the flesh” was widely practised at the time. After seven years he was sent in 1482 to San Marco’s priory in the most important city in all Italy.
The friar from Ferrara was thirty years old when he walked through one of Florence’s twelve gates, bound for the Dominican convent at San Marco Church and bursting with zeal to clean up a republic with a reputation-among fundamentalists like him-as one of the most sinful in Europe, a cesspool stained by every shade of wickedness. One of the largest centres in Europe, enclosed by a high wall and divided in two by the Arno River, Florence contained almost 42,000 “souls,” sixty parish churches-one for every 680 inhabitants-and dozens of friaries, convents, and religious brotherhoods. You couldn’t walk down one of the narrow streets without bumping into priests, nuns, or monks. Religion-and only one religion-coloured every part of a person’s life.
Florence was also one of the richest cities, but most of the coins were tucked away in the pockets of a few fabulously rich banker/merchant families or in the strongboxes of the Church, whose high offices were filled by men from those same families. It was a dangerous place, where sometimes blood ran in the streets and mutilated bodies littered the city squares because of conspiracies and power struggles between families.
As time passed, Savonarola honed his preaching skills and was soon in such demand he delivered his frightening sermons in the cathedral of Santa Maria del Fiore. By now he was claiming that God spoke directly to him. He made prophesies. His visions of doomsday, he ranted, had been revealed to him by God, and he recorded them in his Compendium Revelationem. He began to interfere in the government, criticizing it for ignoring the poor and underfed. But most of his energy went into forcing his brand of strict morality down people’s throats.
Savonarola urged the passing of laws to burn homosexuals alive, to publicly beat prostitutes, whom he called “pieces of meat with eyes.” He sent bands of youths through the city to harass men and women who dressed too richly, to force their way into houses and confiscate “vanities”-books, sculpture, fine clothing, paintings, jewels-and to burn them in great bonfires.
In his sermons he attacked the Medici family, calling Lorenzo, the top man, a tyrant-which he was. He railed against Pope Alexander VI, saying he was corrupt-which he was-and unfit to be God’s representative on earth. In this way, Savonarola pitted himself against two of the most powerful tyrants in Europe. There was no discussion with Girolamo Savonarola. To oppose him was to stand against the will of God.
Some Florentines saw the friar as an enemy of their power and wealth. Many became his followers, but just as many considered him a puritan and fundamentalist who claimed he spoke in the name of God when he censored or destroyed literature, art, music, and all ideas that were not in agreement with his. He had become, they said, a fanatic.
I TOOK A BREAK from my reading when my eyelids threatened to close permanently.
My parents had come home, and supper was almost ready. Mom sat at the kitchen table, her plate shoved aside to make room for the newspaper. Bowls of steaming vegetables waited in the centre of the table.
Dad pushed through the door. He gave me a look, then set a platter of barbecued steaks beside the bowl of carrots. The look meant things were still a little tense on the home-front. I knew the cause: Mom hadn’t turned down the Afghanistan assignment yet.
“Ready,” Dad said with forced enthusiasm.
We ate without much conversation, and after dessert all three of us seemed to have pressing things to do. My parents went to bridge club. I watched TV for a while, but the sitcoms seemed inane and childish, completely divorced from the real world. Turning off the TV, I laughed out loud.
“A TV comedy is make-believe, but a ghost in a loony library is real?” I asked myself.
I returned to my room and got into bed, the last light of evening fading from the sky. I yawned, picking up the history book.
The last chapter described how Savonarola had made so many enemies that after only three years or so at the height of his influence the city turned against him, including many of its priests and monks. The pope, who was Savonarola’s boss, wanted him dead. The Medici wanted him dead.
So he was kicked out of the church, excommunicated, and commanded to cease preaching. He ignored the pope’s orders. He was arrested-charged with, of all things, crimes against the church-and executed in 1498. The order to torture and hang him was signed by Pope Alexander VI.
I tossed the book down in disgust. Images from my dream swirled into my mind. The dark damp cell, the victim kneeling in agony, the candle illuminating papers bearing the pope’s seal.
“The pope,” I muttered. “God’s representative on earth.”
I lay back and dropped off to sleep.
IN MY DREAM I saw three nooses dangling from a gibbet, swinging lazily to and fro in the morning breeze, their shadows flickering across piles of brushwood stacked around the base of the gallows platform. Around me was a vast city square enclosed by six-storey stone buildings and densely packed with spectators. Their collective gaze was fixed on the closed doors of a stone fortress whose soaring bell tower pierced the clear morning sky. From the crenellated fortress roof, guards watched the crowd, pikes in hand, the pale morning light gleaming on breastplates and helmets.
A marble terrace fronted the building, and from the north end a wooden walkway stretched into the square to a gallows resembling a cross.
The crowd seethed and shifted. The air trembled with anticipation. The wide oaken doors of the fortress swung open and a hooded man emerged, followed by three monks in manacles and ankle chains, then a number of other men, some in long coats, some in clerical habits. The chained men were stripped of their black cloaks and white habits before the hangman led them along the walkway, their leg irons clanking on the new boards just above the heads of the spectators.
The hangman lifted a ladder from the platform and leaned it against the gibbet, then pushed the first prisoner up the ladder ahead of him, snugged the noose around the prisoner’s neck, tied a chain around his waist, and shoved him off the ladder as if he were a sack of grain. The crowd groaned, all eyes on the dying monk twisting and jerking at the end of the rope. The hangman moved the ladder to the opposite end of the gallows’ crossbar, then prepared and dispatched the second prisoner, whose neck could be heard breaking.
I saw the crowd lean forward when the ladder was moved again. I felt the morbid excitement, the fear, the fascination. What would happen when Savonarola was flung off the ladder to his death? Some whispered that he would take wing, like an angel. Others claimed the devil’s hand would reach up from hell and drag him down. Still others said that when the firewood was set alight the famous friar would learn what hell was like.
The hangman mockingly swept his hand up, inviting Savonarola to mount the ladder. The friar, his body twisted by the strappado, awkwardly climbed onto the lowest rung, his leg irons hindering ascent to the top. The hangman fixed the noose in place and looped the chain around the friar’s waist.
“Oh, prophet,” a voice rang out from the crowd, “now is the time for you to work one of your miracles!”
Was it a sneer or a prayer?
The hangman heaved the famous preacher off the ladder, and the spectators uttered a collective gasp. Savonarola’s bare feet kicked and jerked as the quivering rope throttled him. The hangman descended and walked to the marble terrace, then took the stairs to ground level. The crowd parted as he made his way to the foot of the gallows, an unlit torch in his hand.
Spasms of nausea seized my gut. The three men twisting and wriggling above the platform were to be burned alive. Savonarola struggled, writhing and kicking as if he could somehow free himself from the choking noose.
The hangman had lit his torch, but before he could shove it into the brushwood someone burst from the crowd clutching a burning brand. “Now,” he shouted, his eyes on the friar, “I can burn the man who wanted to burn me!”
And he thrust the flaming brand into the brushwood.
As smoke curled upwards the flames spread quickly, snapping and popping, but not loudly enough to smother the friar’s screams. Some in the mob tossed small bags of gunpowder into the fire. The sacks sparked and burst, feeding and spreading the flames, the conflagration forcing the onlookers back. The bodies on the gibbet blackened and blistered and smoked.
After a time, the burnt arms dropped into the fire, followed soon after by the charred, twisted legs, sending showers of sparks into a sky darkened by smoke. The hangman chopped down the gallows and it crashed into the fire in a shower of burning embers.
I saw a trio of men off to the side, two leaning against a cart, the third holding the halter of a sway-backed horse whose eyes had been covered with a piece of cloth. One of the men never took his eyes off the gallows, and when he was called in by the hangman to pile more wood on the fire, he carefully noted the position of the friar’s charred body parts before he heaped brushwood on them.
“Let there be no remains to tempt the relic hunters,” the hangman commanded. “You know what to do.”
Later that day, when the fire had cooled to a heap of smoking ash, the trio prepared to shovel the debris into the cart. But the vigilant one called a halt. Wading into the smouldering ash, he dug out the three hot chains and tossed them behind him, urging the others not to waste valuable iron. While his companions were occupied, he quickly sifted through the ashes at his feet, stooped, and slipped something into his pocket.
In short order the debris of execution had been shovelled into the cart and transported to the river nearby. At the foot of a covered bridge, the three men dumped the ashes into the swirling brown water, careful to sweep the last speck from the cart.
“That’s done, then,” said one.
“To be sure,” said the other.
The third brushed his hand over his trouser pocket and nodded.
LIKE A BUBBLE RISING sluggishly through dark liquid, I slowly freed myself from sleep, and from the horrifying spectacle in the city square.
There was no doubt in my mind that I had witnessed the gruesome death of Girolamo Savonarola, along with that of two fellow Dominicans. When I felt up to it I would check the details later in the prof’s books, but only for formality’s sake. I knew what I’d find.
My bedroom window was full of cheery morning light that mocked the aura of gloom and dread surrounding me. I forced myself to get out of bed, almost tripping on something. Cursing, I tossed the book I had dropped on the floor the night before onto the bed. I staggered down to the bathroom one floor below, scooped water from the tap into my mouth, then stepped under a lukewarm shower. I returned to my room, pulled on my clothes, and made my way to the kitchen.
My father was at the table. Hearing the scrape of my chair legs on the floor, he peered over the top of his newspaper and looked me over.
“Up late last night?” he asked.
“In a manner of speaking.”
“You look like you been rode hard and put up wet, as they say in the cowboy movies.”
“Right.”
“There’s some scrambled eggs and grilled bacon in the oven,” Dad offered. “The bacon’s nice and crisp.”
My stomach lurched.
“And there’s toast,” he added cheerily. “But I’m afraid it’s burnt.”
I barely made it through the back door before I retched violently into the flower bed.
AFTER FORCING DOWN a cup of clear tea I walked down the hill to the Demeter, hoping to find Raphaella alone in the store. No such luck. I pushed through the door, setting off a discreet buzz, and was bathed in the odour of yeast, vitamins, dried legumes, medicinal herbs, and peanut butter from the machine at the end of the counter. Mrs. Skye stood behind the pine counter in her usual green smock, fitting a new roll of paper into the cash register. She looked up.
“May I help you?” she enquired impersonally.
“Fine, thank you, Mrs. Skye. And how are you?”
She hated it when I referred to her as Mrs., but sometimes I got fed up with her attitude. She’d known me for over a year but always treated me like a stranger, hoping, I guessed, that if she was rude enough I’d abandon Raphaella.
“My parents are well, too,” I pushed on. “They send their best.”
Mrs. Skye made a psh! noise and turned her back. She stepped over to the table under a bank of little drawers that contained the herbal medicines she combined into prescriptions, picked up a pestle, and began to grind furiously.
Raphaella came through from the back room wearing a green smock with HEALTH IS WEALTH across the front, a caption not up to her usual witty standard. Or maybe I just wasn’t in the mood. When she saw me she stopped.
“Uh-oh, another dream,” she stated, eyes boring into mine. “Come on.”
She took my hand and led me into the back room, a large space jammed to the ceiling with shelves holding boxes, jars, bottles, clear plastic bags of beans, nuts, grains, and other foods, and furnished with a small table and two chairs. A few cartons with Chinese writing on them sat on the floor by the alley door.
I grabbed her and held her tightly. Raphaella kissed me, then pried herself free and filled the kettle and plugged it in. I pulled her to me again.
“I’m kind of glad to see you,” I said.
She pushed me into a chair. I watched as she bustled around, preparing some kind of drink and searching out just the right nutrition bar for someone who had witnessed a legal murder.
“I saw his execution,” I said. “Him and two other monks.”
“Tell me everything,” Raphaella said, plunking a steaming mug onto the table. “And drink this slowly.”
I did as she asked. By the time I had finished describing my vision, I had eaten the bar and drunk two cups of the weird this-will-be-good-for-you tea.
“Now we know the answer to the question you asked me yesterday in the library.”
Raphaella nodded. “ ‘Why does the spirit leave the odour of smoke behind?’ ”
“Right. It’s ironic in a gory way,” I mused, folding the nutrition-bar wrapper into increasingly tiny squares and pretending my hands weren’t shaking. “The preacher who wanted to burn certain so-called sinners ended up being burned himself.” I looked up at Raphaella. “But that’s not really justice, is it? Nobody deserves to die like that.”
“No.”
“Are people who design executions so the maximum amount of suffering is inflicted sick? Is something inside them broken, like a cracked microchip or a stripped gear? I mean, just seeing it scared the hell out of me.
“I used to think atrocities were a thing of the past. They happened way back in the fog of history. And I thought that the past was like another country, far away, and that things are different now. After I saw Savonarola being tortured I read up on the strappado and found out it’s still being used, but the information didn’t sink in. I guess I tried to deny it. But that vision last night-the fire, the way the crowd joined in, enjoying the hanging and burning-”
“You’ve been thinking about Hannah,” Raphaella said quietly.
I nodded.
“And what those men did to her.”
Mention of Hannah’s name took me back to a windy starless night more than a year ago, when I had been dragged from sleep long after midnight by the mournful cries of a woman walking in the forest behind the mobile home park where I was living during my stint as caretaker there. I followed Hannah Duvalier along a path to a grave at the edge of the African Methodist Church burial ground, and later to the ruins of a log cabin where a terrible killing had taken place. Hannah made that same walk every night. She had been dead for 150 years.
“That was in the past, too. But do you know what Mom told me? A few months ago she was researching an execution in Afghanistan in 2005. A woman was stoned to death in front of dozens of witnesses. Legally. According to Islamic law. This was after the Taliban were kicked out. And Mom said stoning is still part of the penal code in Iran. It’s promoted by Islamist militants in other countries. Execution by stoning takes half an hour. It’s like being clubbed to death, slowly.”
Raphaella was standing beside my chair now, and she laid her arm on my shoulder. “Garnet, calm down.”
“I don’t get it. How could a crowd of men who knew the woman tie her up, cover her face, and throw rocks at her head, hitting her again and again, until she was dead? What’s wrong with people like that?” I looked up at Raphaella and tried to smile. “I’m repeating myself aren’t I? I’m babbling.”
She smiled back at me and said nothing.
Another thought burst in my brain, like those little packets of gunpowder the crowd flung onto the fire in my vision.
“It’s religious law that allows-hell, demands-stoning as punishment. For adultery. The regulations even specify what size of stone to be used. And by the way, a male adulterer gets a lashing and goes home.
“It was the Church that helped execute Savonarola. The Church’s Inquisition burned Jews and heretics. Religious leaders burned the witches in Salem.”
“I’ve always wondered,” Raphaella mused, “is it the religion that’s evil, or the people practising it? Is the religious law an excuse for committing acts they would have carried out anyway? A way to dress up viciousness as holiness?”
I felt suddenly exhausted, as if my mainspring had wound down. “I’m sick of it,” I whispered. “All of it.”
Raphaella crouched in front of me and took one of my hands. “But we have to see it through. We have to make him go away.”
I kept silent.
“Which means finding out why he’s still haunting the Corbizzi place,” she added.
I drew in some of Raphaella’s energy, the way a sponge absorbs water.
“So we go back… when?” I asked her.
“Tomorrow. I believe the answer’s in the prof’s unpublished book.”
I completed her thought. “Which is why the spirit was messing with it yesterday while we were lounging around outside.”
“I think we’re close, Garnet. I really do.”
MY STEP WAS A LITTLE lighter as I strolled back up the hill under the canopy of old maple trees in full summer leaf, but I still had a lot of thinking to do. I was so deep in thought when I got home that as soon as Mom hinted it was time the lawn was mowed I said yes without argument and marched straight from her office to the garage to get the electric mower.
An hour and a half later, hot and sweaty, I took my second shower of the day, stuffed my clothes into the laundry hamper, and put on a clean T-shirt and jeans. As I was heading downstairs something caught my eye. The history book I had chucked onto the blankets that morning had fallen open to a page near the back. I picked up the book and was about to slap it shut when I noticed the words “Appendix: The Arrabbiati.” Strange phrase, I thought.
Curious, I took a closer look. The Arrabbiati, or “Angry Ones,” were Savonarola’s opponents, the offended citizens who saw him as an intolerant puritanical tyrant. They included people from all walks of life, many from well-known families. The author of the book had listed these families alphabetically.
I ran my finger down the column of names, suddenly knowing what I was about to find.
And there it was, in black and white.
Corbizzi.