“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.
III
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.
Three
I
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,
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.
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
