Blood of the Lamb (28 page)

Raffaele Orsini was watching his partner work.

He himself had gotten Giulio Aventino’s trademark soft-voiced, phrased-as-a-question, piercing-gaze-over-the-eyeglasses reprimand earlier, but he was the first to admit he’d deserved it. Not so much because of what had happened inside Santa Maria della Scala while he sat in the café outside—hadn’t the
maresciallo
told him not to enter the church?—but because, though Giulio hadn’t mentioned this, the thin young man they now thought of as their suspect must have exploded out of one of the church’s main doors just as, through another, Raffaele had been charging in.

Raffaele had been forgiven, though, or at least considered properly chastised, and welcomed back into the fold. In fact, he’d proved his use already. Not only by his rapid, efficient, and book-proper handling of the crime scene. While the historian smoldered in the pew, Giulio Aventino patiently listened to the lamentations of the old ladies. Raffaele would have liked to stay and pick up some pointers on dealing with hysterical witnesses, but he’d been dispatched to run interference with the dyspeptic emissary launched in their direction by the Bishop. This vinegary
Monsignore
had arrived with a flurry and a frown, sent to ensure, in equal measure, that the search for the friar’s killer was made a high Carabinieri priority, and that untoward behavior at the monastery of Santa Maria della Scala, should any come to light, not find its way into the official report. Raffaele had done a good job, he was pleased to say, of placating the priest while upholding the honor and independence of the Carabinieri. At the moment the
Monsignore
, in the company of the monastery’s prior, was exploring the possibility that some valuable item might have gone missing (a suggestion that made the
Monsignore
’s eyes flash, as though Raffaele, by speaking the words, was in danger of bringing about the fact). After they’d gone off Raffaele had herded the rest of the monks—there were fourteen—into two pews not far from where the body lay. As a detective, he’d have been happier if they’d left the premises altogether, so as not to endanger the evidence; and his partner, as a nonbeliever, would probably be happier if they just vaporized. But Raffaele felt strongly that they had a right to sit in prayer and meditation near the corporeal remains of their brother, to keep vigil and ease his joyous trip into the presence of God.

Until the coroner’s men took the body away, of course. Now the monks, on the orders of their prior, had returned to their cloister. The prior and the acidic
Monsignore
were inspecting the side chapels one by one. Uniformed officers, armed with a dialed-back version of the old ladies’ descriptions, prowled the streets hunting down the thin young man. And Raffaele was in a rear pew taking lessons in interview technique.

He always enjoyed this process. In some ways observing Giulio with a witness was like watching a soccer game between unmatched teams. Each play unfolded uniquely, and so held individual interest; but the overall organization of the game was familiar and the outcome never in doubt.

“Now,
Professore
, please.” Seeming both distracted and ready to be grateful, Giulio addressed the historian. “Tell me what you can about this incident. Where were you when it took place?” The answer, of course, Giulio already knew, as he could also, no doubt, predict the objection of Spencer George.

“What I told your sergeant—”

“Is what you told my sergeant. I’m sorry, sir, but it’s my responsibility to hear all witness statements personally. As I did with those of the
vecchie
,” he confided in a tone of shared misery.

“Yes, of course.” Spencer George, his eye-roll making it clear he was yielding, unwillingly, to the inevitable, began his tale. It was essentially the same story he’d told Raffaele: he and two friends had entered the Reliquary Chapel at the end of the side aisle “to admire Santa Teresa’s chopped-off foot,” a phrase near enough to blasphemy that it caused Raffaele to suppress a shudder. George had remained after his friends had gone. He’d heard a scream, come into the main church, and seen the monk lying on the floor with an apparition in black hovering over him. Giulio lifted his eyebrows at this suggestion of the supernatural, until George went on to add, “I believe it was her sister-in-law who’d run howling outside.”

“Ah.” Giulio nodded and continued. “And the friends you were with, your fellow historians? Livia Pietro and Thomas Kelly? Where are they now?”

From the pause and the widening of the historian’s eyes, Raffaele could tell the question had hit home. The
professore
had never been asked, or volunteered, the names or occupations of his companions.

And this was the point and had been all along: the point of keeping Spencer George waiting, of Giulio’s pedantic civil servant act, to make him feel superior and therefore get careless.

In their brief conference when Giulio arrived, Raffaele had explained he’d been sent by the Cardinal to keep an eye on Livia Pietro; Giulio in turn told Raffaele about the theft at the Vatican Library and the red-haired American priest easily identified as one Thomas Kelly, who’d been with Pietro then. The third party involved in that fracas, it seemed, was a thin young man of suspiciously similar description to the suspect they were seeking now. The Gendarme detective on that case was on his way; but even without him, Raffaele and his senior partner could see something was going on here that required a more thorough explanation. And that this historian, now that he’d been thrown off-balance, might well be the one to give it.

46

Thomas Kelly realized he’d lost control of the situation once again. He’d boldly led their escape from the monastery, as he’d been the discoverer of the hiding place of the new poem. True, Pietro had chosen for them a serene and splendid retreat in which to decipher the verse, and also true, and more rankling, it had been Spencer George who’d prompted Thomas to check for the folded paper in the reliquary’s roof. But as Thomas brought Livia Pietro through the hushed monastery corridors and out onto the street, and then along it, he’d felt less at sea than any time that day.

However, now she was ahead of him in a dark lane he wouldn’t have thought to turn down. She knew the way to the Basilica of Santa Maria in Trastevere, and he didn’t. He was sure she had no idea what to do when they got there, but neither had he, so they were even on that score.

And she was an unnatural creature with a nimble intellect, a great depth of learning, and an indelible physical presence. A creature who, to hear her tell it, felt a warm, benign joy in the company of others physiologically like herself. Whereas he was a man who’d given his merely human mind, body, and soul to a spiritual community he’d chosen: a Church he’d always understood, even in the days of his darkest doubts, to exist as a place of honest refuge from the evils of the world. About which characterization he was now, at best, unsure.

Where did that put the two of them on the relative-advantage scale?

He pondered that question as he followed Pietro, turning left and then right along narrow streets, then left again onto a busier one, until she suddenly stopped. She thrust out her arm so she could halt Thomas’s progress, also. Shades of the Vatican Library. She peered from the mouth of the alley, and then, adjusting her hat and sunglasses, strode confidently into a wide piazza. Thomas followed—what else was he going to do?—as she strolled nonchalantly toward the fountain and then turned to survey the basilica’s façade. Wide and imposing, it well suited the first church in Rome, in fact the first in the world, dedicated to Christ’s mother. On the pediment the Madonna and Child were flanked by—if he remembered his art history (and he certainly wasn’t going to ask Pietro)—a mosaic of ten female saints no one had ever been able to name. He craned up to see them as he trotted by the fountain and through the piazza. Pietro, he noticed, also looked up, with an air of familiarity and happiness, as though seeing old friends. Well, there you go. Maybe they weren’t saints. Maybe they were all female Noantri. And maybe that wasn’t the Infant Jesus and the Blessed Virgin at their center, it was Baby Damian and the Queen of the Night.

He considered issuing himself a reprimand for his cynical attitude but decided he had a right to it.

Inside the church Thomas’s eyes had to adjust once again to the dimness while Pietro headed without pause down the center aisle. Unlike Santa Maria della Scala, he and Pietro didn’t have this basilica practically to themselves. A few scattered worshippers were kneeling or sitting quietly in pews, and one or two stood in side chapels lighting candles, while dozens of visitors, some with guidebooks, some without, prowled the splendid aisles.

Now capable of seeing, Thomas hurried after Pietro, passing between rows of columns of which no two were alike. They’d come from Roman and even Egyptian buildings, he recalled his art history lecturer saying, and he remembered thinking at the time that this reuse of structural elements was a physical manifestation of the supplanting of pagan thoughts and fears by the sheltering truth his faith offered. Resolutely, he turned his gaze away from the columns and from the astounding ceiling with its gold coffers and devotional paintings, there to remind the flock what awaited them in heaven above if only their faith, while they remained below, stayed strong.

Refusing equally to think about the implications of that and to allow himself another cynical interior remark, Thomas stepped to Livia Pietro’s side. She stood at a marble railing supported on open stone grillwork; the railing bore a stone plaque.
Fons Olei
,
the bronze letters read, marking the spot where, two thousand years before, the miracle responsible for the basilica’s existence had occurred. Oil had bubbled up out of the ground here. According to legend, the Jewish residents of Trastevere had recalled an ancient prophecy and hailed the flow as a sign, a herald of the appearance of the Messiah. A few decades later word came from Bethlehem that a Virgin had brought forth a Son; there followed tales of signs and miracles, and later of the Son’s sacrifice for love of his Father’s flock. The nascent Church declared the prophecy of the oil fulfilled. The building in which it had occurred—by then a social club for retired Roman soldiers—was recognized as sanctified ground, razed, and rebuilt to the glory of the Lord.

That the oil was now understood to have been petroleum, a substance unknown to the locals at the time but not uncommon in the area, and that the ancient Jewish prophecy appeared to be a back-formation of which no trace could be found before the bubbling of the oil, had never bothered Thomas before this.

Pietro turned to Thomas.
“
‘
Fons Olei,’”
she said. “We’re here. What now?”

“It’s astounding how you people keep expecting me to know what to do next.”

She pursed her lips. “You’re right. I’m sorry. I was less expecting than hoping, actually.”

In Latin it’s the same word,
he thought, but didn’t speak, just squatted and fingered the bronze letters, feeling around their edges. Maybe something had been slipped behind one; but Pietro had apparently had the same thought and already discarded it. “Those letters are too new. They were put there after Damiani’s time. You can tell by the typeface.”

Thomas could tell no such thing, but she was the expert. Still on his haunches, he examined the marble railing. He ran his gaze along the floor’s intricate mosaics, seeking a break in the pattern, a hidden instruction. Nothing presented itself as a hiding place, with one exception: the open stone grillwork on which the railing rested. Behind it, the steps to the altar rose. A piece of paper shoved through the grillwork would have fallen to the floor and could count on resting in that lightless cavern until the entire basilica crumbled to dust. Or until the paper rotted away from mold and damp. Or was devoured by dark-dwelling beetles. From the experience Thomas could claim of Mario Damiani—limited but intense—sliding the next poem, if that’s what they were here for, through the grillwork to lie in the dirt was far too slapdash a choice.

Nevertheless, he pressed his face to one of the openings, for a closer look. He felt Pietro kneel beside him, heard her rummage in her bag, and suddenly the area under the steps was illuminated by a bright light. Pietro peered through an opening beside him as he searched the cavern with methodical care.

It was totally, completely empty.

Thomas stuck his hand through the railing anyway. He felt around: perhaps there was a way to fasten something, attach the paper to the back of the grillwork. If so, he’d have to search behind every opening, a tedious process at best. But the masons had been conscientious. The rear side of the stone, though never intended to be seen, was polished to as smooth a finish as the front.

Thomas stood slowly and Pietro straightened up beside him.

“I thought you could see in the dark,” he said, unhappily belligerent.

“Better than you. But light always helps.”

He saw her drop her cell phone back into her bag.