“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.
II
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
“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.”
