The essence of fanaticism is that it has almost no tolerance for any data that do not confirm its own point of view.
– Neil Postman
I WAS STARING into the face of a monster.
Dark hair, spiky and dishevelled. A shaved patch across the skull from the right temple past the ear, a vivid stitched-up slash not quite hidden by a bloodstained bandage. A black eye swollen shut, puffed cheeks bruised and discoloured. Fresh scabs on nose, left cheek, and chin, bright red against pale skin.
I handed the mirror back to the nurse. “Call Hollywood,” I croaked. “Tell them to hold off on the screen test.”
I didn’t remember much more of my semi-conscious ride in the ambulance than the banging of doors, being lifted and lowered, prodded and jabbed, but I recalled waking up briefly to tsunamis of pain rolling through my skull. Later-hours? days?-brain fogged by dope, I saw light in a window. My hands had sprouted needles attached to tubes leading aloft to plastic bladders of liquid-one clear, one dark red-suspended from a rack. A tall nurse stood beside my bed, unclipping wires from my head, removing sticky patches, pushing a machine out the door, coming back with a little white paper cup.
“Take these,” she said. “You’ll feel better.”
“Raphaella,” I mumbled.
Something squeezed my upper arm. I heard my father’s voice beside me.
“She’s fine. No one was hurt,” he soothed. “Thanks to you.”
Later, pain-wracked, I floated in a dream-like state. A small black-robed man drifted past. The odours of earth and moss wafted from the shore. Gunfire crackled in the distance. Something thick and wet was smeared on my face around my eye and over my nose and chin and cheek. Gentle fingers smoothed warm paste on my skin.
A commanding voice in the background. “Here! Who are you? What do you think you’re doing!”
A face in the dark above me-the features, I would have sworn, of Raphaella’s mother.
Now things seemed normal-almost.
“You’ll be your regular, handsome self in no time,” the nurse announced merrily, returning the mirror to the drawer in the nightstand beside the bed. “Let me prop you up a little straighter. You’re drooping.”
A motor hummed, then the nurse bashed enthusiastically at the pillows behind my head for a few seconds. “Comfy?” Without waiting for an answer she headed out the door.
“You have visitors,” she called over her shoulder.
I had been in Soldiers’ Memorial Hospital for two nights, and this morning I was beginning to feel almost normal, although the mirror had hinted otherwise. My head, still aching a little, had cleared. I was hungry. I guessed that was a good sign.
Raphaella came through the door first, a vision more healing than any medicine, wearing a fire engine red T-shirt and black jeans. My parents trailed behind her, smiling, wearing that parental expression that said “We’re not worried about you; we just look like we are.”
Raphaella leaned over me. I could smell her hair and her skin, and I felt tears gathering at the corners of my eyes.
“I want to kiss you,” she said. “Where’s your mouth?”
AS THE MORNING PASSED and we waited for the hospital’s grinding bureaucracy to release me officially, Mom, Dad, and Raphaella brought me up to date.
“They got the guy,” Mom began. She related that in response to her call the cops had employed a silent approach-meaning no sirens-as they descended on Geneva Park. The Rama First Nation officers got there first, finding two unconscious men lying in the dirt. They had cuffed both of us before more cops charged onto the scene in a cloud of dust. The bag holding the gun and ammo was discovered minutes later. By the time the ambulances arrived police had sorted out the good guy from the bad guy and I was on my way to the hospital. Where they took the terrorist, no one knew.
“You have a concussion,” Mom went on, “and a bad cut on your head. Twenty-one stitches. You’ll have headaches for a few days, but the doctor assured us you’re all right.”
“That shiner is a doozy, but all in all, no worries,” Dad added. But his expression said “We were scared to death.”
“None of us in the auditorium had a clue what was going on outside,” Raphaella told me. “The show was a huge hit-the kids loved it-and with the music and the roars of laughter and the applause, it was mayhem in the auditorium. After the final curtain calls I went outside looking for you, and there was no hint that something serious had happened, that we had all been within an inch of our lives. Then I noticed a lot of cops moving around, a few hanging yellow DO NOT CROSS tape across the pathway to the cabins, and I realized something was going on. I still can’t get my head around it. We could all be dead right now.”
“We tried to call Raphaella to warn her,” Mom went on. “But you had her phone, remember? I sent you the photo?”
“There’s a publication ban on the details connected with the incident, ordered by a judge,” Dad said. “The official story is that a man with a history of mental illness was arrested at Geneva Park. That’s it. Your mom has been helping the police a little, and you’ll have to give a statement in a few days, when you’re feeling up to it.”
“And after you’ve talked things over with our lawyer,” Mom added. “We can discuss all that when you’re home. I just hope the police don’t find the cellphone with the terrorist’s picture in it. That could cause us problems.”
“The phone’s safe,” I said. “During the fight, it fell between the boards of the deck at the cottage door. I erased the image.”
“And now, Annie,” Dad said, “I think you and I should go to the cafeteria and have a cup of their horrible tea.”
After the door had hissed shut behind my parents, Raphaella sat on the edge of the bed and took my hand.
“Your dad says you should get a medal. You’re a hero.”
“I’m no such thing.”
I told her everything that had taken place after I left her in the auditorium.
“When I finally worked out who he was and what he intended to do, I was petrified. All I could think about was that huge room full of kids-and you-and pictures I’ve seen on the TV news when somebody goes into a school or someplace with a gun. I didn’t know what to do. I said something stupid to him, and he turned around and hurled the shovel and hell broke loose. It was a fluke, the way it turned out. It could just as easily have gone the other way.”
“Maybe your dad thinks you’re brave because of what you didn’t do.”
“What’s that?”
“Run away.”
I HAD BEEN HOME a couple of days when the cops telephoned and asked me to come in to make a statement and answer some questions. By then my constant headache, the jungle drum beating in the background, had faded, although my face still looked as if I’d stayed in the boxing ring one round too many.
My parents were having their five o’clock glass of wine together on the patio when I got off the phone, and when I told them about the upcoming interview they exchanged glances. My dad was up to speed on everything by that point. Mom had been in a bad mood lately. I didn’t blame her. A judge had clapped a total ban on publication of any aspect of the story. Mom’s exclusive-at least for the time being-had gone out the window. So much for freedom of the press.
“We’d better go over this together,” Mom cautioned. “When are you due at the cop shop?”
“Day after tomorrow at 10:00 a.m.”
“I’ll call Mabel Ayers and see if you can get in to see her tomorrow,” Dad said, getting up and going into the kitchen.
“Do I really need to talk to a lawyer?” I asked my mother.
“I can’t believe you asked that,” Mom replied.
Long experience as an investigative reporter had left her with a schizophrenic attitude toward police forces in general. She respected cops, knew their jobs were difficult in ways the public did not understand, agreed we needed them. “They’re unappreciated,” she would say. But she had also seen cops fudge evidence to get a conviction and even lie in court, under oath. She had, within the walls of our house, renamed the RCMP the RCLC-Royal Canadian Lies and Coverups.
“You have to be prepared for what they’re going to ask you, that’s all,” she said, putting down her wine glass. “They may try to trick you. And Mabel will be helpful.”
THE NEXT MORNING she and I drove to the city and met with Mabel Ayers, a chubby middle-aged woman with a small, messy office and a phone that rang constantly. The morning after that, I drove over to the OPP headquarters and met with three inspectors who represented, together, eleven letters of the alphabet-CSIS, RCMP, and OPP. The Rama First Nation cops who had arrested the paintball terrorist weren’t represented.
I was nervous. The two males wore dark blue suits, one with a red tie and one with a red-and-blue tie. They were clean-shaven, their hair clipped short. The woman-OPP-had on a dark grey pantsuit and wore her sand-coloured hair short. They sat across a big table from me, each with a newish file folder and a pad and ballpoint pen. It seemed more like a business meeting than an interrogation. Mom had warned me to keep my wits sharp. I jumped right in with the question Mabel had told me to ask first.
“Are you recording this interview on audio or video?”
RCMP frowned, then exchanged glances with the others. “This isn’t a formal interview, Garnet. And no, we’re not recording you.”
“On video or audio,” CSIS added. “Now, Garnet-”
“So I’m not under investigation?”
A look of irritation crossed CSIS’s face.
Mom had warned me that they’d call me by my first name, and she had been right. It was a technique to make me feel at ease so I’d trust them, and at the same time it emphasized that they were in control. They had introduced themselves using surnames only, but I was Garnet.
OPP tried her luck. “Garnet, this is just a chat. A conversation. We think you can help us fill in a few blanks, that’s all. Okay?”
I nodded.
Under questioning, I related that I had taken a walk around the grounds of Geneva Park, waiting for the show to start, when I noticed a man in a groundskeeper’s uniform emerging from the woods with a shovel in one hand and a duffle bag in the other. When I asked him what he had been doing in the woods he attacked me.
“I was just being nosy, I guess. I didn’t expect him to clobber me.”
From the time he bonked me with the shovel I didn’t remember much, I told them, except that I was mad and wanted to hit him back. I answered their questions truthfully but volunteered nothing. They didn’t ask me if I’d ever seen the guy before. Why would they?
“Is he hurt bad?” I asked.
“He’ll live. Do you remember opening the duffle bag?” the woman enquired.
“No.”
“Or putting it behind a tree?” one of the men-CSIS-asked.
“No.”
“So,” RCMP summed up, “you had no idea that you had saved the lives of a couple of hundred people?”
“No.”
I had been afraid they’d grill me about Mom’s phone call to the cops, the one weak spot in my story. But she had said in her formal statement that she deduced the youth summit had been the terrorists’ target all along, and with the show opening that evening-which she knew about because her son’s girlfriend was stage manager-she alerted police out of caution. Her version of events sounded pretty thin to me, but she emphasized that we had to stick with it. I guessed it had satisfied them because my interview came to an end with no hint that they were sceptical of Mom’s version. In unison the three inspectors got to their feet, and when I followed suit they thanked me for coming and wished me a speedy recovery from my injuries.
Just as I turned toward the interview room door the CSIS inspector said, “It’s quite a coincidence, though, isn’t it?”
I almost laughed. How often had I seen this same ploy in detective movies? The bad guy thinks he’s fooled the detective with his lies. The polite cop thanks him and is about to leave when he stops, as if a stray thought has struck him. He turns and says to the suspect, “Oh, one more thing. It’s not important, but…” Then the bad guy, his guard down, spills the beans.
But I hadn’t told any lies. I turned back toward the three suits, stood silent and waited.
“Your mother is an investigative reporter,” CSIS went on. “She’s the one who broke the story about the Severn Ten. She appears to have a lot of information about them.”
“And here’s you,” RCMP continued, “the son, who just happened to be on hand to prevent the massacre.”
“Yeah, well, Orillia’s a small town,” I said, and walked out the door.
MOST OF THE KIDS I had gone to school with saw graduation as an escape hatch. They couldn’t wait to leave Orillia in their dust. For them it was a small town, practically a village, narrow and unexciting, with nothing new to offer. They had explored all its possibilities long ago, and living here was like being condemned everlastingly to read and re-read a dull book. As graduation neared they became restless, eager for a future that would be rosy only if it was lived somewhere else. I had been just as fidgety-not to get out of town but to get on with my plans for the future.
I liked the familiarity of Orillia’s streets and parks and lakes, the sense of being on well-known ground, a part of things. And on days like today, when the sunshine poured like honey out of a clear blue sky and the breeze from the lake carried the scent of vegetation, hinting of adventure, I only had to imagine myself slogging through the traffic-racket of Bay Street in Toronto, the skyscrapers forming a shadowy canyon where the funnelled wind flung grit and bits of fast-food wrappers into my face, to know I was where I wanted to be.
It was funny, in a way, the notion that drama and excitement only occur somewhere else. Raphaella and I had had our share of adventure and mystery-and fear-without leaving town, when we were caught in the fallout from events that happened near the African Methodist Church more than 150 years before. My scrape with the paintball terrorist was more proof-as if we needed it-that being a sleepy little town didn’t make Orillia immune from the wider world. And our unanticipated crash course in the Italian Renaissance fanatic, Savonarola, made the prospect of a one-day whirlwind bus tour of Florence, Italy, seem dull in comparison.
I thought those thoughts as I drove the van toward Wicklow Point to begin my first day back at work since Geneva Park. I hadn’t been able to ride the Hawk lately. My face was still too swollen and tender to fit inside my helmet, with its tight safety padding. I was glad to get back to my normal routine, and I was looking forward to making a start on the designs for the pieces commissioned by Derek and Liz. My unfinished task-the inventory-hung over my head like a cloud of mosquitoes, but I had to see it through, and I would, with Raphaella’s help and, I hoped, without the interference of the spectre.
Getting rid of him permanently was another problem altogether.
I drove through the gate and down the shady lane to the shop and parked in the usual spot under the birches, then went to the back door and knocked.
“Good gracious!” exclaimed Mrs. Stoppini, wide-eyed and frozen in the doorway like a black mannequin, her bony hand on her cheek. For a split second she seemed unable to move, then she exploded into action, grabbing my arm and hauling me into the kitchen and bundling me into a chair. She slammed the door and alighted on the edge of a seat, staring at my face.
“I scarcely recognized you! What on earth-? Don’t tell me you have had an altercation!”
“An accident,” I fibbed. It was half true, I supposed. “I’m fine. I know I look awful, but-”
“Indeed!”
“I’m okay. Ready to get back to work.”
Over the inevitable cup of tea and brioche or two, and amid Mrs. Stoppini’s clucking and fussing and peering at my banged-up face, I told her about my new commission. I said I planned to spend the mornings working in the shop and would continue the inventory during the afternoons when, on most days, Raphaella would join me. Now that MOO was history, she had more time. She’d arranged to run the Demeter in the mornings and then come to the estate.
“Most satisfactory,” Mrs. Stoppini pronounced.
Before I went out to the shop I walked down the hall to the library, eager to see if there had been any changes over the past couple of weeks. The corridor was quiet, and for the first time in what seemed like ages, it smelled of floor wax rather than smoke. I took a quick peek inside the library doors. Everything seemed as we had left it, undisturbed. The room was quiet and almost, if I hadn’t known better, inviting.
I left the room and headed for the shop and my drawing board.
THE NEXT FEW DAYS passed without a ripple. The late-summer weather was hot and dry. The breeze off the lake flowed into the library as Raphaella and I toiled away, making good progress in the boring notation of book titles and authors’ names into the database. Once we had reached the alcove our progress had slowed to a crawl as we unshelved, examined, and noted the details Mrs. Stoppini required from every volume. We worked together, one dictating, the other typing.
At times we could barely detect the uniquely unpleasant smoky odour we had grown used to. On other days it was strong enough to be an almost physical presence. What all that signified, we didn’t know. The spectre never appeared and we didn’t complain.
Hanging over us was the unasked, unacknowledged question: What should we do when this assignment was complete? Walk away and say nothing about Savonarola? Casually tell Mrs. Stoppini, “We’re done. It was fun, and by the way, there’s a vicious ghost in your secret cupboard”? And speaking of the spectre, where was he, anyway? Why was he being so quiet these days?
Without having to give voice to our thoughts, we were certain that we were on track for a showdown.
And we were right.
AS IF IT WAS IN SYMPATHY with the mood inside the Corbizzi mansion, the weather turned unseasonably nasty. A cold front lumbered down from the north and soggy grey clouds rolled in over the lake and settled down for a long stay. Rain came and went on gusty winds, ticking drearily against the window glass. Raphaella and I talked about lighting a small fire to chase out the damp air and cheer up the place, and I had got as far as carting an armload of scrap wood in from the shop. But we decided the room was the wrong place for flames.
I was thinking about taking a break when my cell rang. I listened, then closed the phone.
“What’s zuccotto?” I asked Raphaella.
“An Italian scooter?”
“I don’t think so.”
“An Italian painter?”
I shook my head. “Mrs. Stoppini just invited us to share a piece with her in the kitchen.”
“I HAVE ALWAYS BELIEVED,” Mrs. Stoppini said as she poured strong tea into china cups, “that a generous helping of zuccotto brightens up even the dullest day.”
It turned out to be sponge cake filled with hazelnuts, almonds, cream, and chocolate. Raphaella tried a bit, chewing with an angelic look on her face.
“I think I’ve died and gone to heaven,” she rhapsodized dramatically. “Mrs. Stoppini, this is divine.”
Mrs. Stoppini smiled her thin-lipped smile. “One tries.” She glanced at me. “And your verdict, Mr. Havelock?”
I chewed slowly, swallowed, pressed my lips together, and tried to look pensive.
“Well…”
Mrs. Stoppini’s brows dipped in toward the bridge of her nose.
“Come on, Garnet,” Raphaella urged. “Don’t keep us in suspense.”
“It’s so delicious,” I intoned, “it ought to be illegal.”
Mrs. Stoppini tried not to look pleased. “Indeed.”
We all had a second piece.
Raphaella patted her tummy and said, “Bad idea to feed us, Mrs. Stoppini. Now I feel too lazy to work.”
“More tea,” our hostess stated, filling Raphaella’s cup. The teapot thumped as she set it down. “Mr. Havelock, if you will permit me, I have a request.”
Raphaella and I settled back in our chairs. “Fire away, Mrs. Stoppini,” I said.
Mrs. Stoppini folded her hands in her lap, drew in a long breath, and began. “I have been in contact with Ponte Santa Trinita University in Florence with respect to the late professor’s will. As executrix of his estate, I have decided to act upon a certain part of the bequest as soon as possible. To that end I enquired of the university, and the relevant persons there were kind enough to send details by mail.”
Was she being obscure on purpose? I wondered. I flipped a glance at Raphaella, whose eyebrows lifted almost unnoticeably. She didn’t get it either. Not yet, anyway.
Mrs. Stoppini got up and glided out of the kitchen in her creepy way, returning almost immediately with a bulky manila envelope, which she laid on the table beside my plate. The envelope had foreign stamps on it, along with a few post office imprints and stickers.
Taking her seat, our hostess went on, “I wish to ship one of the, er, objects in the library to Italy-the university-as soon as possible.”
“The cross,” I guessed.
She nodded toward the envelope. “There are strict but simple procedures regarding the shipping container required, along with suggestions for insurance, method of shipping, and so on. These latter issues I will handle myself.”
She paused.
“I see,” I said.
“I should be most grateful, Mr. Havelock, if you would consent to construct a suitable container for the object in question. Of course, I shall pay for the required materials and for your services.”
Her decision didn’t surprise me. Raphaella and I weren’t the only ones who would be happy to see the cross off the premises, although we were the only ones in that kitchen who knew it was a reliquary. Or that it was, as well as a valuable artifact, a bundle of trouble.
“I’ll agree,” I said, “if you’ll let me name my price.”
“Very well,” she replied with obvious relief. “That is acceptable. And what is your fee?”
“Another piece of zuccotto.”
“HMM,” Raphaella mused.
“Hmm, indeed,” I replied.
We were sitting before the fireplace as the gusty wind outside fitfully grumbled in the chimney. Behind us, beyond the window, legions of clouds marched across a sombre sky. I felt as if we were being shoved toward an inevitable confrontation with the spectre-a feeling I had been almost successful in ignoring for the past week or so. Mrs. Stoppini’s decision had brought Raphaella and me back to our main problem.
“What do we do?” I asked, throwing myself into a chair before the hearth.
Raphaella lowered herself into the other club chair. “We don’t have many options, do we? Comply with Mrs. Stoppini’s wishes, crate the cross up, and wash our hands clean of the whole issue. Or tell her it’s a reliquary with a resident ghost-”
“A murderous ghost.”
“And let her take responsibility. The way I see it, because we know what the cross really is and what its dangers are, we’re responsible if anything bad happens when it’s sent away.”
“I agree. There’s no way we can sidestep this one.”
We stared silently at the coals for a while.
“On the other hand, if the haunting is connected to the professor’s manuscript, as we believe… I don’t know where I was going with that thought.”
Raphaella got to her feet. “Well, I know where I’m going,” she said. “Back to work.”
“Unless…” I continued.
“Unless what?”
“I’ve thought of this before, but I pushed the idea away. It’s too… frightening.”
Raphaella nodded. “I know what you’re thinking. Go ahead and say it. Get it out in the open.”
I nodded in the direction of the fireplace. “We could take the atlas from the reliquary and burn it.”
Raphaella sat back down. My statement lay between us like a sleeping dragon, too horrible to examine closely because we were afraid of what it might mean.
It would be like killing Savonarola all over again, I thought.
Raphaella shook her head, as if I’d spoken aloud. “He’s been dead since fourteen ninety-what was it?”
“Eight.”
“Right. He isn’t alive. Therefore we can’t kill him.”
“But it would be sacrilegious, like desecrating a grave.”
“How much respect is owed him? He probably killed Professor Corbizzi. Or contributed to his death. He wants to destroy the professor’s book. And look at his record.”
“I still don’t think I could bring myself to do it.”
“Me either.”
“But you said-”
“I was just playing devil’s advocate.”
“Good choice of words,” I said.
ON THE WAY TO THE SHOP the next morning, under skies that showed no sign of allowing the sun to peek through, I stopped off at the lumber store and bought a sheet of thick plywood and some spruce planks to make a frame for a shipping container. The packing foam would be delivered in a few hours.
With the directions from the university in Florence-translated by Mrs. Stoppini-laid out before me on my workbench, I started to work. The guidelines were straightforward and pretty simple. I needed to build what was essentially a wooden box with interior braces capable of holding the cross upright and immobilized so as to withstand rough handling and vibration. The space around the antique would be stuffed with synthetic packing. I didn’t tell Mrs. Stoppini that there would be a stowaway in the crate.
By working full tilt I had the crate ready by lunchtime. I brushed it clean of shavings and sawdust, hung my apron by the door, and left the shop, taking a deep breath of the soggy air to clear calculations from my head.
I had just stepped onto the patio when I saw him on the shore of the lake, by the willows, just as I had weeks before.
The setting suited him-the backdrop of grey waves and greyer sky was a perfect frame for his black robe and dark, disfigured features. He stood motionless, if “stood” is the right word for a spectre that seemed to hover just above the ground like an evil thought, his cape undisturbed by a wind that lifted the willow branches nearby. His ravaged face was trained in my direction, the swollen eyes dark in their sockets, as if he were reminding me of something. I held his stare, fighting to control my breathing. He glowered at me, fuming, radiating anger and hatred.
“So I guess today’s the day,” I said to myself as an icy shiver crawled up and down my spine. The reckoning. The showdown. Today the atlas bone would be sealed up and sent back to Florence.
“Or not,” the ghost’s malign glare seemed to say.
Then the wind gusted and his form broke up like oily smoke and drifted off along the shore.
I gulped. The vision had lasted a few seconds at most, but the impact was like someone had cracked me on the head with a plank. I took a deep breath, pulled myself together, and went to the kitchen door.
RAPHAELLA ARRIVED IN TIME for minestrone soup and panini stuffed with egg salad salty with chopped olives. The three of us ate in silence. Mrs. Stoppini seemed preoccupied-and sad. Raphaella’s face showed the tension I felt. The moment she saw me she knew that I had seen the apparition.
After lunch Raphaella and I lugged the new packing crate from the shop to the library and set it onto a blanket we’d spread on the alcove table. The pleasant odours of glue and freshly cut spruce were swamped by the acrid stink of smoke hanging in the room. I returned to the shop for the power drill, screws, a jar of adhesive, and the strips of felt I had cut earlier for the surfaces where the braces would be in contact with the cross. Through the window I noticed whitecaps forming on the lake. Wind-thrown rain began to patter against the glass.
Raphaella was setting up in her usual spot, turning on her laptop and pulling pens and pads from her backpack. She placed the computer on the movable lectern I had made. We planned to retrieve the PIE from under the cabin deck at Geneva Park once the police presence there had died down. She didn’t seem to miss it much.
“I can feel his presence,” she said.
No need to mention who “he” was.
For what I hoped was the last time, I went through the familiar procedure. Put the first brass key in the lock and open the alcove cupboard. Reach inside, press the knot, wait for the click as the catch on the hinged bookshelf section released. Pull open the heavy door. Insert the second key and open the secret cupboard.
I peered inside. Each object-the cross, wooden box, Compendium Revelationem, manuscript file, and felt-wrapped cross-was just as we had left it. I turned toward Raphaella. She nodded encouragement. I lifted out the antique reliquary, laid it on the table by the crate, and pushed the cupboard door closed, leaving the key in the lock.
I had never experienced an earthquake, but the tremor that seemed to rise through the floorboards under my feet must have been similar. Raphaella stopped typing for a moment and gripped the edges of the lectern. The shudder beneath us subsided. I unwrapped the cross and carefully slid it inside the crate, snug against the braces securing the base and the horizontal beam. The fit was perfect. Inside the box the glass dome glowed as if lit from within.
The floor under me trembled again.
I removed the reliquary and stood it beside the crate, then began to paint quick-dry glue on the felt strips, using the brush attached to the inside of the jar’s lid.
Whack!
The door of the secret cupboard flew up and the file folder tumbled to the floor beside me. I concentrated on applying the strips of cloth to the braces in the crate, pressing hard with shaking hands. Raphaella went back to tapping keys. The rain beat harder against the window. I glued the last piece of felt, then picked up the file folder from the floor and placed it on Raphaella’s table.
Above my head a book sprang straight off the shelf, fluttered like a confused bird, and crashed to the ground. A second one followed. Then, volume by volume, the entire row of books streamed into the air and plummeted into a heap at my feet.
Raphaella shrieked, pointing to the fireplace. Behind the safety screen the pyramid of scrap wood I had set there the day before burst into a fierce blaze.
Forcing myself to work methodically, not to give in to fear, I tested the crate, finding that the glue had set. I gritted my teeth, clamped my jaws shut, muttered, “Here goes,” and gently but with as much determination as I could scrape together seated the gold cross in place. I slid the lid on and, glancing around, picked up the drill and a couple of brass screws.
“Garnet.”
The forced calm of Raphaella’s warning tore at my nerves. I whirled around to see her staring wide-eyed toward the other side of the room. The spectre stood by the escritoire, radiating hatred, his hood covering all but his blistered, ruined face. The air was thick with a miasma of burned cloth and wood and broiled, putrid meat. Savonarola raised his arm under the singed and rotted cape, pointing.
The folder on Raphaella’s table quivered. The string slowly unwound itself from the paper button. The folder suddenly sprang toward the ceiling, spinning end over end, spilling pages like feathers from a burst pillow. Sheets filled the air, a blizzard of paper streaming toward the fireplace, where every single page slipped behind the screen, flared for a split second in a tiny soundless explosion, then expired in a puff of black ash. In minutes the manuscript was gone.
With a sweep of his skeletal arm Savonarola pointed toward the alcove. An avalanche of books poured from the shelves, battering the heavy crate, sending it crashing to the ground, knocking the lid off. The cross broke free and tumbled among the fallen books. The table shook violently, rose from the floor, hung suspended for a second, then shot toward me, ramming my shoulder and knocking me to the ground, pinning my legs. A heavy book whacked against my head and I collapsed in a daze, craning my neck to keep my eyes on Raphaella.
She cringed by her table, mercilessly pummelled by flying books, struck repeatedly on her shoulders and head. She held up her arms to protect herself but the torrent knocked her to the floor, where she lay on her back, paralyzed with terror, her chest heaving. I heard a rumbling and a clatter, turned to see the chairs by the hearth tip and tumble across the floor, coming to a thumping stop against the doors.
The spectre began to float toward Raphaella, slowly, relentlessly, as if savouring what he was about to do. “Don’t!” I shouted, but he continued to glide toward her. Raphaella stirred, raised herself onto her elbows, crab-walked backwards, her eyes on Savonarola’s black form, until she bumped against the east wall.
Thin rivulets of flame, capillaries of fire, seeped from under the frayed black robe of the ghost and streamed toward her. She stared, wide-eyed, as the fire encircled her.
“Garnet!”
I struggled to free myself from the weight of the table and books, fighting to catch my breath. Something crashed into my shoulder. The crate lid spun toward me in a vicious arc. I ducked just in time and it smashed into the wall beside the window.
Savonarola stopped in front of Raphaella. He raised his arms. The robe fell back to reveal bones poking through burnt flesh. His piercing gaze bored into her.
“Don’t!” I pleaded again. “Take me! I’m the one you want!”
The spectre didn’t so much as turn my way. I remembered again how Savonarola had despised women-creatures to be lectured or scorned, originators of sin, agents of Satan. I hauled myself to my knees and tried to crawl over piles of books toward Raphaella. The flames around her crackled and smoked.
She cringed in the shadow cast by the dark spectre looming bat-like above her. Then, as quick as a thought, the terror suddenly left her face. She seemed-unbelievably-calm. She stared at Savonarola’s destroyed face. Her voice came, firm and strong.
“You can’t.”
The wraith seemed to shrink back a little.
“You know you can’t,” Raphaella said.
As if suddenly starved of oxygen, the flames around her shrank, flickered, and died, leaving no marks on the floor.
Raphaella looked my way.
So did Savonarola.
I knew what I had to do, but he was way ahead of me. I scrambled among the jumble of volumes on the floor, hurling them this way and that, glimpsed the sparkle of a red jewel against a gold background, and hauled the heavy cross out of the pile. Fumbling in my pocket, I yanked out my knife and opened it, my hands trembling violently.
“Garnet, look out!”
Savonarola flowed toward me as fire veined from his robes and across the floor, like lava seeping from a volcano. I jabbed at the clips holding the glass dome to the base of the cross. In my frenzy, I broke two of them. Pried up the others. Thumbed the dome free. It clattered across the floor. With fire searing the bottom of my feet, I snatched the atlas from its cavity in the base of the cross.
I clawed my way toward the fireplace, the stench of the spectre in my nostrils, the searing fire around me, the five-centuries-old bone clutched in my hand. I heard Raphaella scream a warning, felt myself snatched into the air and hurled forward. I slammed against the mantel and fell to the hearth, knocking the screen aside. The fire scorched my face, singing my eyebrows. I thrust my hand over the flames and dropped the bone into the heart of the fire.
A prolonged, ear-splitting howl of rage and despair battered the room.
From behind, something grabbed me, pinning my arms, and hauled me away from the fire. I fought back with the little strength I had left.
“Garnet!”
It was Raphaella, holding me in her arms. We stared into the fire, at the bone resting on the coals in the centre of a forest of flame, afraid that if we took our eyes off it, the atlas would disappear. It smoked, glowed reddish orange for a few seconds, turned white hot, seemed to quiver. Then it flared and died and crumbled to a powdery ash and was lost among the coals.
Together, we felt the weight of his presence behind us. Still on our knees, we turned. He was in the centre of the room, a black cloud of evil, arms raised, his bony fingers pointing accusingly at us. Books cascaded from the wall behind him and thundered to the floor. The window imploded, showering us with glass. Savonarola glowered at us, his distended eyes wide, his devastated face twisted with frustration and hatred and rage, his ravaged mouth a black oval as he bellowed again. He glided in our direction on a raging sheet of fire. But as he crept forward, the fire’s intensity was already waning. His body began to lose power and substance, its colour fading. His physical presence wavered and then he seemed to dissolve like cooling vapour into the air around him, until he was gone.
Raphaella and I embraced like two shipwrecked sailors clinging to each other for life and warmth, the upended furniture, disintegrated window glass, and Professor Corbizzi’s books strewn like flotsam on a beach. We looked around the room-the evidence of violence everywhere-searching, not quite believing our eyes.
“He’s gone,” I whispered.
“Gone for good now, I think.”
“And he didn’t get the professor’s manuscript.”
WIND AND RAIN GUSTED into the room through the damaged window, clearing and freshening the air. The fire in the grate had dropped to embers. A thought struck Raphaella and me at the same time.
“Mrs. Stoppini!”
“I’ll go,” I said, jumping to my feet.
I took the stairs two at a time, ran down the carpeted hall toward her suite. Her door was ajar. Out of habit, without thinking, I slowed to a walk, stopped at her threshold, and put my head through the door. I could see the foot of her bed. Two black-stockinged feet, soles toward me, unmoving.
She was snoring softly and rhythmically. She had slept through everything. I retraced my steps to the library, slowly and quietly this time, and closed the doors behind me. If she woke up, I didn’t want her to see the room as it was.
Raphaella had gathered a few rugs from around the library and spread them over the fallen books under the windowsill to protect them from the rain. We brought sheets of plywood from the workshop and nailed them over the destroyed windows. I retrieved a metal bucket, a dustpan, and a brush from the garden shed, and we went into the house again.
“I won’t feel confident that he’s really gone until I do this,” I said, scooping up the embers and ash from the fireplace, brushing up all the dust, and dumping it into the pail.
When Raphaella was satisfied that not a molecule had been left behind, I carried the pail outside and dug a hole behind the shop and dumped in the ashes. I trudged across the sodden lawn to the lake, scooped up some water, lugged the pail back to the hole, swirled the water around the inside of the pail, then poured it into the hole.
“Let there be no remains to tempt the relic hunters,” I murmured as I filled in the hole and tamped down the dirt with a shovel.
Back in the library, Raphaella had begun to pick up books and stack them on the trestle tables. The entire alcove had been stripped, along with a couple of hundred volumes from the south and east wall. I hauled the crate back onto the table, then picked up the cross and reattached the glass dome, bending the unbroken clips into place. I fitted the cross inside, pushed the packing material into place, and screwed on the lid.
“The rain’s let up,” I said. “Maybe we’ll see the sun today after all.”
Raphaella plunked an armful of books on the table and forced a smile. “I think we can put everything back in a couple of hours,” she said. “We already have the columns labelled, so we can organize the books by topic first, then alphabetically, then reshelve them. I-”
“Stop.” I took hold of her hands. “We’re okay,” I reassured her, seeing the frenetic energy in her eyes, the aftereffects of our ordeal. “We came through it. It’s over.”
Raphaella began to cry-first tears, like the patter of rain that heralds a storm, then a full-on gale of sobbing. I held her tightly, holding back aftershocks of my own, blinking away the image of Raphaella on her back on the floor, encircled by flames.
“I thought I was going to lose you,” she spluttered against my chest, “when you were down and he went after you.”
“It takes more than an ugly little monk with a bad attitude to put me out of commission. Even a firebug like him.”
Raphaella laughed. Sort of. “We ended up burning him after all,” she said, wiping her eyes with the heels of her palms.
A ring sounded.
“What was that?” she exclaimed.
“My stupid cellphone.”
“I do apologize, Mr. Havelock, for failing to provide your afternoon refreshment,” Mrs. Stoppini said, a little flustered. “I was reading in my room and must have dozed off. I slept the afternoon away!” There was a moment’s silence as Mrs. Stoppini composed herself. “I shall have tea ready in seventeen minutes.”
Mrs. Stoppini didn’t seem upset when we told her about the library window. “I didn’t realize the wind was that strong” was all she said.
She told us she’d call a glazier to have it repaired as soon as possible. She’d also contact the shipping company to pick up the crate, which Raphaella and I had carried to the foyer at the front of the house. After a quick cup of tea Raphaella and I returned to the library and got to work putting the place back in order.
“Let’s take a break,” I suggested after an hour or so. I led Raphaella to the chairs by the fireplace. “I’ve been thinking,” I said.
Throughout the afternoon something had been scratching away at the back of my mind, like a mouse in the attic. I had been reviewing the battle with Savonarola’s ghost. Not that I had wanted to. I couldn’t help it. But there was something I couldn’t explain. It seemed that when the spectre was about to burn Raphaella, somehow she had warded him off. How?
“You can’t. You know you can’t,” she had said. She had been desperate and terrified, but she had uttered those words with something like confidence. What prohibition would someone like Savonarola recognize, no matter how much he thought Raphaella deserved to be burned alive? I could think of only one. It was an unbreakable rule that had applied through the ages to condemned witches and female prisoners bound for execution. As an ordained priest, Savonarola had been obliged to follow it.
“You persuaded him not to kill you,” I said.
Raphaella nodded. Her eyebrows rose.
The library was silent for a moment.
“Is it true?” I asked.
“He would have known if I’d been lying.”
I felt the world shift under me.
Raphaella smiled tentatively. “So what do you think?”
“I think that next to you, this is the best thing that ever happened to me.”
Her smile widened. “I knew you’d say that.”
She came and sat on my lap and snuggled close, her head under my chin.
“Well, we’re all set, aren’t we?” she said. “We have no money, no place to live, and a baby girl on the way.”
I didn’t ask how she knew it was a girl.
THE NEXT MORNING, still reeling a little from the events and the news of the previous day, I walked downtown, planning to have a coffee at the Half Moon and then drop in at the Demeter and see Raphaella.
She and I were entering a new phase of our life sooner than we had planned. People we knew would soon be abuzz with gossip. Critics would tsk and complain that we were too young and irresponsible. Children bringing up a child, they’d declare. Ruining their future. I didn’t care what uncharitable opinions they’d spit out. Raphaella was my future.
“What happened to your face?” Marco asked when I sat down at the end of the coffee bar near the kitchen.
“It’s a long story.”
He nodded. “Understood. A latte, then?”
“A macchiato today, please, Marco.”
He smirked. “I see the Corbizzi family’s having an effect on you.”
I drank the coffee, chatting with Marco as he made a mini-pizza from scratch. Who ordered a pizza at 9:30 in the morning? I wondered as he repeatedly tossed the dough into the air, spinning it into shape.
“Hear about that business over at Geneva Park a while ago?” he asked.
I fibbed. I was getting tired of pretending, but the cops had made the publication ban clear. “I don’t think so.”
“ ’Parently some guy went berserk with a rake or shovel or something. Started wailing on a guy he didn’t even know. They hauled him away in a straitjacket.”
“Oh, yeah. I think I remember now,” I replied.
Marco’s remarks proved the cops’ and spies’ disinformation campaign was working. Now I knew why I had never been asked to make a formal statement the day I met with the three inspectors. My fight with the leader of the Severn Ten-Eleven-had never happened.
“Prob’ly a disgruntled employee like you hear about on TV all the time. He was with an outfit that took care of the lawns and flowers. That’s what you get for hiring outsiders,” Marco concluded, crumbling mozzarella over the pizza. He was always put out if people from outside the community were contracted.
“I heard they took him straight to the loony bin at Penetang. They say he escaped from there six months ago and was living in the woods.”
Orillia. Where a story was never accurate for long. I couldn’t resist.
“Must have been hard landing a job with a landscaping company from outside of town if he had been living in the trees.”
Marco grunted his agreement, then used a wooden paddle to slide the pizza into the oven.
I said goodbye and left the cafe, heading for Peter Street and the Demeter. I was surprised to find Mrs. Skye behind the counter. Raphaella was supposed to be on duty. Mrs. Skye was ringing up a sale, placing jars of vitamins and supplements into the customer’s environmentally friendly shopping bag.
After the vitamin lady had shuffled out the door, Mrs. Skye leaned back on her prescription table, arms crossed on her chest, scrutinizing me.
“Raphaella will be in later,” she volunteered. “She wanted to sleep in today.”
Did Mrs. Skye know? I wondered, searching her face for clues. She must have read my mind.
“Somehow,” she drawled, but without the usual edge in her voice, “I don’t see you as a father.”
“Yeah, well, I guess we’ll both have to get used to the idea.”
Then, like a miser handing over his last penny, she said, “I suppose Raphaella could have done worse.”
“I love her, Mrs. Skye. I’m not going to apologize for that. To anybody. And I’m proud we’re going to have a baby. And I’m glad it’s a girl.”
A single tear trickled down the edge of her nose and onto her upper lip. Her face softened. This is what she looks like when she’s not mad at the world, I thought. Then I realized something.
“It was you.”
She swiped the tear away with the back of her hand. “What? What was me?”
“In the hospital,” I said, hardly able to believe it. “I did see you.”
She shrugged. “They weren’t treating your contusions properly. All those drugs they gave you, but no simple healing salve. Typical of the medical establishment.”
I felt a grin creep across my face. “Raphaella was right. You are warming up to me.”
“By slow degrees,” she said.
BETWEEN THE MANSION and the lake, the leaves on the outer edges of the trees showed a tinge of colour-red for the maples and yellow for the willows. The air was crisp and clear, the way it is only in autumn, and the lake glowed its characteristic green under a perfect blue sky. In a few weeks, leaves would be drifting down like multicoloured snow.
Starting today I was the caretaker of the Corbizzi mansion until it was sold in the spring. Mrs. Stoppini had instructed her lawyer to piece off the coach house and a bit of ground, and to maintain both a right of way down the lane and a narrow strip giving access to the lake. My lease was extendable after the three years were up, with an option to buy if I wished-and if I ever had the money.
I was looking out the shop window across the yard to the place on the shore where I had found the GPS. Chief’s Island was a dark green brushstroke in the distance. Behind me, in the light of the window, Raphaella sat in a lawnchair reading a book with lots of health-food advice for expectant mothers. Nearby, next to the spray booth, rested the second of the three pieces commissioned by Liz and Derek-the smaller of the two dressers-ready to be stained. The design for the bigger chest of drawers lay on my drafting table. Derek had kept his promise. He had been happy enough with the bookcase that he had recommended me to some friends, and I had a few new orders already.
My cell rang. I turned to see Raphaella earmark her page and take the call. She nodded. “Thank you, Mrs. Stoppini,” she said, and disconnected. “The airport limo will arrive in approximately twenty-two minutes,” she announced in an uncannily Mrs. Stoppini-like voice.
“Duly noted, Miss Skye.”
All day Mrs. Stoppini had been giving us regular-and totally unnecessary-progress reports. She had called to declare that she had finished loading her steamer trunk. That the padlock had been locked. That the suitcases were packed and ready. That all of the windows in the house were closed and secured.
Raphaella and I crossed the patio and joined Mrs. Stoppini in the kitchen. Her trunk and bags stood ready by the door. She insisted on wearing her long shapeless coat and her hat-a beret-type thing that drooped over one ear-while she waited, as sharp-edged and angular as ever. Her lipstick had been applied over an even wider area today.
After apologizing that under the circumstances she was unable to offer a light refreshment, she continued, “I received welcome news from Florence yesterday. The purchase of the apartment I was seeking has been finalized and the place will be ready for me when I arrive. I shall go there directly from Amerigo Vespucci airport. The apartment is not far from the university. It is on the third floor of a centuries-old building on the Piazza della Signoria. It is quite spacious, with a guest suite.”
“But that’s-” I cut in. The Piazza della Signoria was the city square where Savonarola had been executed.
“I beg your pardon?”
“Er, a beautiful square I heard… er, read.”
The thick black eyebrows rose. “Quite,” Mrs. Stoppini agreed. Then she continued her train of thought. “Miss Skye, Mr. Havelock, I should be most grateful if you would consent to visit me for at least a month, after I am settled and before you”-she nodded to Raphaella-“find travel inconvenient. Nothing would give me greater pleasure than to escort you through some of Florence’s art museums and architectural treasures.”
She stopped. She took a deep breath.
“I shall miss you both deeply. But if I have your visit to look forward to…”
She swallowed. And blinked. Then she straightened her already rigid back and regained her composure.
“Winter in Florence is not the most clement of seasons, but… May I expect you, then, in Italy?”
Raphaella and I exchanged glances. Raphaella nodded, her chin quivering.
The grille on the kitchen wall buzzed. I got up and pressed the button to let the airport limo in. A few minutes later a black van appeared in the window and drew to a stop near the Hawk.
“Your ride is here,” I said unnecessarily.
Two burly men in blue nylon company windbreakers took charge of the trunk and the bags, then climbed back into the van. The driver made a three-point turn and waited, his engine idling.
Mrs. Stoppini was struggling to hold on to her composure. She whispered something to Raphaella, who hugged her, earning a startled look. Then Mrs. Stoppini stepped toward me, her hand extended.
“I shall hold you to your promise to visit me in Florence, Mr. Havelock.”
I shook with her but didn’t let go of the bony gloved hand. “Thanks for everything, Mrs. Stoppini. For the shop lease and the delicious lunches, and for introducing me to macchiato, and for introducing me to Professor Corbizzi’s books, and especially for teaching me that in civilized countries cappuccino is never served after twelve o’clock.”
The ghost of a smile crossed her lips. Before she could escape I wrapped my arms around her stick-like body and squeezed.
“I’ve been wanting to do that for a long time,” I said.
“Indeed,” she replied. And she climbed into the waiting limo, rapped on the back of the driver’s seat, and was swept away.
We watched the van disappear around the bend in the lane.
“You didn’t say that you’d told her about the baby.”
“I didn’t. She just knew.”
“You don’t mean-”
“That she has the gift? No. I would have picked up on that. But she’s a very intelligent and observant lady.”
“I’ll miss her.”
“Not nearly as much as she’ll miss you.”
ON THE EVENING of October 27 it snowed-the earliest blizzard in fifty years. By the time I unlocked the shop the next morning, the storm had marched on, leaving a watery sun in a cold grey sky.
I spent an hour snow-blowing the lane and shovelling the sidewalk to the front door of the mansion, then the path between the kitchen and the shop. As I did at least twice a week, I walked through the house, checking the window latches, the faucets, the radiators in each room.
And as always I spent a few minutes in the library, whose doors were now left permanently open. At last Professor Corbizzi’s favourite room was the way Mrs. Stoppini had wanted it-stripped of every last book, rug, and article of furniture. The majority of the collection had been taken away by a dealer. The alcove books, the Savonarola medal, the priceless copy of Compendium Revelationem had been shipped to Ponte Santa Trinita University in Florence. Mrs. Stoppini had even asked me to “do something” about the secret cupboard, and so I had locked it one last time, disabled the mechanism holding the bookcase section in place, removed the knot from the outside cupboard, and plugged the hole with wood filler, smoothing and staining it to make it invisible. No one who was unaware of the secret would ever discover the empty cupboard.
A couple of days before the blizzard I got a letter postmarked “Firenze.” Fanatics had been accepted for publication, Mrs. Stoppini announced in her cramped, angular handwriting-fountain pen on thick, creamy monogrammed paper-and the book would be off the press next summer. “I shall, of course, send copies to you and Miss Skye immediately the book is available,” she concluded. “I have taken the liberty of dedicating it to both of you. I know the late professor would concur.”
The sun had come out, filling the library with dazzling light reflected off the snow. This must have been how the room looked when Professor Corbizzi had first entered it, full of plans and ideas to fill it with books and to carry on with his work, driven by his commitment to warn his readers about fanatics who use religion as a veil for their hatred. Now that the publication ban on news about the Severn Eleven had been partially lifted, my mother was, in her own way, carrying on his work.
I left the house and returned to the shop. On the bench, awaiting assembly, were the cherrywood pieces I had fabricated to make a cradle. I put on my apron and went to work.