minutes to prayer. As she was about to close her eyes she glanced at the title of a search result at the top of the next search page and to her shame, she found herself clicking on the link and postponing her devotions.
The title read:
There was a thumbnail photo of a mild-looking man with sandy hair, the Chairman of The Marlowe Society. His name was Evan Harris and he was a Professor of English Literature at the University of Cambridge in England. The posting on the Society’s web page was an international solicitation for academic papers to be published in book form in 2014 on the milestone anniversary of Marlowe’s birth.
Clicking through Harris’s biography, Elisabetta learned he was a Marlowe scholar who, among his other interests, had written on the differences between the A and B texts of
It took little effort to click on his contact button and type a brief email.
Professor Harris:
In my work as a researcher based in Rome, I recently received the gift of a 1620 copy of
She hesitated before signing her name as Elisabetta Celestino. She couldn’t recall the last time she’d used her last name on anything but a government form. Sister Elisabetta seemed, in general, to suffice these days but it wouldn’t, she thought, for a Cambridge don.
Elisabetta took the Marlowe book to the copier room, gently pressed the book against the printer glass and scanned the title page to her email address.
On her way back to her office she saw the tall young priest again. He was standing at her door and from the position of his head she was sure that he was staring straight at the symbol on her whiteboard.
When she got halfway down the hall he shot her a sidelong glance and scurried away like a startled deer.
Unsettled, Elisabetta returned to her desk, attached the Marlowe file to the Harris email and sent it off. She felt the need for a strong cup of coffee.
There were two nuns in the canteen who were drinking coffee. She knew them by name but hadn’t gotten much beyond that. She cleared her throat. ‘Excuse me, Sisters, I wonder if you could tell me the name of the very tall young priest in the department?’
One nun answered, ‘He’s Father Pascal. Pascal Tremblay. We don’t know him. He arrived the same day as you. We don’t know what he’s doing here.’
The other nun added, ‘But then again, we don’t know what
‘I’m here on a special project,’ Elisabetta answered, sticking to Professor De Stefano’s instructions about secrecy.
The first nun huffed, ‘That’s what
The phone was ringing when she returned to her office.
It was an English voice. ‘Hello, I was trying to reach Elisabetta Celestino.’
‘This is Elisabetta,’ she answered suspiciously. This was the first time her office phone had rung.
‘Oh, hi there, it’s Evan Harris, replying to the email you just sent.’
She’d been out of academia for a long time but she was incredulous that in the interim people had become so responsive to requests for assistance. ‘Professor Harris! I’m quite surprised you came back to me so soon!’
‘Well, ordinarily I’m a bit more tardy with my inbox but this copy of
‘I think so, roughly, but I’m hoping you can further enlighten me.’
‘I certainly hope you’ve got it in a safe place because there are only three known copies of the 1620 edition, all of them in major libraries. May I ask where you got it?’
She answered, ‘Ulm.’
‘Ulm, you say! Curious place for a book like this to land but we can, perhaps, go into its provenance at a later date. You say you have questions about the A and B texts?’
‘I do.’
‘And, if I may ask, are you with a university?’
Elisabetta hesitated because the answer would inevitably lead to more questions. But she was hard-wired to be as truthful as she was allowed to be. ‘Actually, I work for the Vatican.’
‘Really? Why is the Vatican interested in Christopher Marlowe?’
‘Well, let’s just say that the Faustus story relates to some work I’m doing on the attitudes of the sixteenth- century Church.’
‘I see,’ Harris said, drawing his words out. ‘Well, as you can gauge by my lightning response, this B text of yours interests me a great deal. Perhaps I could come to Rome, say the day after tomorrow to see it in person, and while you have me as a captive audience I can tell you more than you probably care to know about the differences between
Elisabetta thought that would be wonderfully helpful and gave him the Institute’s address on Via Napoleone. But when she hung up she wondered if she ought to have added, ‘By the way, Professor, I should tell you that I’m a nun.’
The Piazza Mastai was deserted and the convent was quiet. Elisabetta was happy to be in the silence of her spartan room. An hour earlier she’d pulled her curtains closed and removed her layers of clerical garb before gladly putting on her nightdress, which by comparison was weightless.
The feeling had crept up on her, the sense that her robes were becoming heavier and more stifling. When she’d first donned the habit after taking her vows, there’d been something magically light about the garb, as if the meters and meters of black cotton were but filmy gauze. But the past few days in the secular world of buses and airports and city streets and young women in their easy spring dresses had taken a subtle toll. Self-aware, Elisabetta launched into a fervent prayer for forgiveness.
Afterward, she was ready for bed. Although her praying had helped to soothe her spirit, she felt no closer to an explanation of the skeletons of St Callixtus. Tomorrow she would immerse herself in
With one last prayer for her safe passage through the night, Elisabetta slid between the cool sheets and switched off her light.
When Elisabetta’s light went out, Aldo Vani tossed a butt into the fountain and lit another cigarette. He’d been discreetly loitering on the Piazza Mastai for an hour or more, watching the windows on the dormitory level. He had a compact monocular scope hidden in his palm and when he was sure there were no passersby he’d swept the lighted windows repeatedly. In the two seconds it had taken for Elisabetta to pull her curtains, he’d spotted her. Third floor, fourth window from the west side of the building. He needed her window and the others on the top floors to go black before he could move.
It took nothing more than a diamond-tipped glass cutter and a small suction cup to quietly remove a pane from a ground-floor classroom window at the back of the school. Vani would have bet his life that the premises weren’t alarmed and he grunted in satisfaction when he unlatched the window and slipped through silently. Using a penlight he negotiated the rows of small desks. The hall was dark except for the red glow of exit signs at either end. His rubber soles were noiseless on the staircase at the western side of the convent.
Sister Silvia’s eyes opened at the familiar realization that her bladder was twitchy. From long experience she knew she had under two minutes before she’d suffer an accident. She embarked on the first of several night-time visits to the communal toilet.
It was a journey that began with bracing her arthritic knees for the weight of her heavy hips. Then she had to push her swollen feet into slippers and pull her bathrobe from the peg. With under a minute to spare she turned her doorknob.
The door from the stairwell to the third floor squeaked on its dry hinges so Vani had to push it open ever so
