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.
II
“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
“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
