“Hang on a second.”
She thumbed more buttons, and after a few moments she handed me the PIE.
“Take a look.”
There was a photo on the screen. “It’s like the picture you took,” I said after a quick glance. “The thing I took off the cross. But different.”
Raphaella nodded. “I went online to an encyclopedia site and looked up ‘atlas bone.’ You’re looking a picture of one.”
I paid more attention to the image. This one was lighter in colour and there was no black along the edges. And as Mrs. Skye had said, there was a bump, like an ear, on each side.
“Never heard of an atlas
“Scroll down a bit.”
I read the brief description below the illustration. The atlas is the topmost bone in a human spine, the one that cradles the skull. I handed the PIE to Raphaella and sat back.
“Why is this bone embedded in the base of that cross?” I wondered.
“It’s a relic.”
“We know it’s old, an artifact, but-”
“Not relic as in ‘artifact.’ A holy relic is something owned or maybe worn by a dead holy person. Or a part of the person’s body. It’s an object of veneration. People pray to it.”
“You’re kidding.”
“Nope.”
“Pray to a fingertip or a scrap of cloth?”
“Or to an atlas.”
“Wow.”
“And the place where the relic is kept is called a reliquary,” Raphaella continued.
“Which is what the cross is. But what did the prof want with it? He wasn’t religious in the formal sense. We know that.”
“It’s all in his book. And your old pal Savonarola is at the centre of it.”
“Somehow I’m not surprised.”
“Get comfortable. I need to tell you a few things.”
I settled back in my chair. “Okay, shoot.”
IV
“IN HIS RESEARCH into the after-affects of Savonarola’s life and death,” Raphaella began, “the prof discovered the existence of a sort of underground cult that started right after the friar’s execution. A few of Savonarola’s supporters continued to meet secretly and to work toward putting his ideas into practice by influencing the government through whatever means they could. This cult kept going for over five hundred years, and still exists. From then until now, one thing bound the cult together and ensured its continuation-a relic.”
“ ‘Let there be no remains to tempt the relic hunters,’ ” I murmured.
“Pardon?”
“In my vision-dream of Savonarola’s execution three men shovelled the burned remains of the gallows and the dead Dominicans into a cart and dumped them into the river. At least, that was what was supposed to happen. But I saw one of the men sift through the ashes and pick something up before they got to work. I didn’t realize until now what I had witnessed. The hangman had specifically ordered the men, ‘Let there be no remains to tempt the relic hunters.’ His bosses in the government and the Church were afraid that Savonarola would become a martyr. That’s why they dumped the ashes in the river-no grave, nothing to dig up and worship. But they missed a piece! The atlas!”
“Of course!” Raphaella exclaimed, energized again. “Everything you’ve said jibes with what the prof wrote.”
“Finish the story,” I said, pointing to the manuscript.
“The cult continued down the years, held together by the belief that the friar was an unacknowledged martyr who had died for a Christian theocracy-Savonarola-style, of course. They continued the commitment to influence government in that direction whenever and however they could. The prof wrote that he couldn’t pinpoint when the cross was made, but it’s been dated by experts to within a hundred years of Savonarola’s death, which makes it more than four hundred years old. How he got his hands on it, he doesn’t say.”
Raphaella paused and pulled her backpack toward her, rummaged around, and came up with a bottle of apple juice. She offered it to me.
“You first,” I said.
She took a long drink and handed the bottle over. I finished it as Raphaella took up the story.
“Anyway, the prof’s book is a warning that there are always people at work, in democratic countries as well as undemocratic ones, pushing to set up a theocracy of one kind or another. He calls these people fanatics, hence the title of his book, because they only see one side of things and close their eyes to other viewpoints, and that leads to intolerance and persecution of any who disagree. A theocracy is an enemy of democracy.
“He uses the Savonarola cult as one of his strongest arguments. The reliquary is physical proof that the cult exists, which is important because there’s very little documentary evidence of it.”
“This,” I put in, “is beginning to sound like one of those conspiracy novels with secret religious brotherhoods and paintings with hidden messages.”
“The prof wrote that the Savonarola cult is always small-no more than a dozen or so extremely religious Catholic men. Needless to say, women weren’t allowed-and still aren’t. It’s not like he thinks these guys will take over the world. It’s more like he uses the cult as an example of a trend he sees all through history, in more than one religion-various denominations of Christianity, Islam, and others.”
We fell silent for a while, slumped in our chairs. I looked around the library. The thousands of books resting on their shelves seemed to mock me. The professor’s learning seemed to have been as deep as an ocean.
“It’s the cross-or rather the relic-that brought the spectre,” Raphaella replied. “It’s part of him, part of his body. And until the prof’s death, it was in the hands of an unbeliever.”
“It still is.”
Raphaella looked terrible-pale, her shoulders stiff with stress, her eyes with that otherworldly brightness I had seen before. She was tuned to the spirit world, felt the vibrations rattle through her, shaking her to the core. Until today I hadn’t worried too much about her-not as much as she did about me-but today we were stumbling toward a fierce reckoning, and it was taking a toll on her.
After listening to her, I believed that now I saw things clearly.
“The spirit probably tormented the prof without mercy, glad to get revenge on the descendant of his old enemy, Corbizzi,” I began. “It definitely came after Professor Corbizzi on the night of his death. What you’ve read and told me explains why. He was a descendant of the Arrabbiato Corbizzi who stood against Savonarola all those years ago in Florence. In a way, the professor inherited a mission from his Renaissance ancestor. He lived in Florence for most of his life, taught university there, wrote books. But he hadn’t yet written the book that would expose the Savonarola cult and what it represents. He wrote that book here, in this library.”
“And at the same time he knew the spectre was after him.”
“Right. The professor acquired the cross somehow and brought it to this house. The ghost comes with the reliquary. Move the cross and the ghost must go with it. Maybe the spirit appeared to the professor and maybe it didn’t-we don’t know. But he was at risk, especially once he began to write the book. That’s what raised the stakes. That’s what the spectre couldn’t accept-the anti-theocracy book. Savonarola’s reaction fits with his life. He was a book-burner. He torched hundreds of books he considered immoral when he was alive. Like all book-burners, he couldn’t tolerate a different point of view.”
Raphaella nodded wearily. “It all fits,” she said. “It all makes sense. Savonarola had two reasons to haunt Professor Corbizzi-to silence him by burning his book, and to wreak revenge on him.”
