Fanatics

by William Bell

  “Indeed” was all she said.

  We ate and sipped in silence for a little while, then I got to my feet. “Well, hi-ho, hi-ho,” I said.

  “It’s off to work we go,” Raphaella finished.

  Mrs. Stoppini looked confused. We collected our packs, thanked Mrs. Stoppini for the tea, and headed for the library. As soon as we turned into the hallway, Raphaella stopped in her tracks. She looked at me, an unasked question in her wide eyes. I nodded. I had felt it, too. As if the atmospheric pressure had suddenly dropped, the air felt heavy and menacing. Raphaella’s shoulders tightened as we pressed forward, side by side, the floor creaking under our reluctant feet. We stopped at the pocket doors. The odour of smoke was powerful and repellent.

  “He’s in there now,” Raphaella murmured, wrapping her hand around her ankh.

  My heart drumming, I placed my hands on the brass lion’s heads, then hesitated for a moment before opening the doors. In a way, I was relieved. Everything Raphaella and I had experienced since I first set foot in the Corbizzi mansion pointed to a confrontation between me and the spectre of the man who had invaded my dreams like a virus, infected my waking life and then spread to Raphaella’s. I had known this moment would come, and now it was here.

  I felt Raphaella’s hand on my shoulder. I rolled the doors aside.

  I may have thought I was ready for a showdown, but nothing could have prepared me for what was waiting on the far side of the room.

  Covered from head to foot in a tattered black robe whose hood kept his face in shadow, Girolamo Savonarola stood before the alcove, his attention fixed ahead of him. He was as unsubstantial as a shade, but he gave off a frightening aura of willpower, malevolence, and dark purpose made even stronger by the nauseating stench of scorched wood, singed cloth, and decayed flesh.

  I closed the doors firmly behind us without taking my eyes off the creature across the room. When the doors thumped together, the monk in black turned slowly in our direction.

  How can I describe the indescribable? The pitiful, horrifying face framed by the heavy black wool of the hood. The hawkish nose protruding like a blade between eyes swollen and bulging, each pupil a black marble in the centre of an ash-coloured egg. The charred skin of his cheeks and forehead, seamed with cracks, blistered and withered. The fractured yellow teeth showing where the flesh of his lips had burned away.

  He fixed his grotesque bloated eyes on us and raised his arms like a dark angel, the crisped skin of his skeletal hands and forearms cratered and ravaged by fire, exposing charred bones. His hideous mouth opened in a prolonged, silent howl more terrifying than any noise.

  Raphaella and I shrank back. I felt the door against my shoulders, heard Raphaella’s rapid gasps and my heart battering my rib cage, fought the urge to fling the doors open and run.

  I realized we were seeing him as he was the moment he died, choking and gagging as he twisted at the end of the hangman’s rope, his windpipe smashed closed, his feet and lower legs already beginning to burn. But he wore the white tunic and black cape of the Dominicans’ daily life. The power of his presence was like rocks piled on my chest. Now I understood the spell he had been able to cast over his audiences in church and cathedral. He stood with his arms raised in command, as if delivering one of his prophesies.

  He had sent those he called sinners to the torture chamber or the fire. What would he do to us?

  “Don’t take your eyes off him,” Raphaella whispered, her voice shaking. “Don’t back down.”

  His attention bored into her, the freakish eyes radiating hostility as they focused on the ankh around her neck. It wasn’t until then I realized that to him she was an unbeliever and no better than an adulteress. Like Mrs. Stoppini, she was not married to the man she loved and shared her life with. They were women he would have had publicly thrashed, or worse.

  I stepped toward him, arms chest high, palms facing him.

  “Stay away,” I said, my mouth dry with fear. “Leave us!”

  Savonarola stopped. He lowered his arms. Then he began to… dissolve, like salt in warm water, into the air around him.

  And he was gone.

  II

  MY KNEES WERE SHAKING so badly I dropped into the nearest chair, certain that the spectre had disappeared but not left. Raphaella did the same. I looked over at her. Her eyebrows rose and fell in silent comment.

  “You don’t look so hot,” she said.

  “Bad choice of words.”

  She giggled, releasing pent-up tension, and I laughed with her. I went over to the windows, winding the casements open as far as possible to ease the overpowering stench. Then I crossed the room toward the escritoire. As I passed her chair, Raphaella grabbed my hand, pressed it to her cheek, let go again. I bent over and kissed her on the mouth.

  “Hey, admit it. I really know how to show a girl a good time,” I joked.

  She smiled. “Were you as scared as I was?”

  “More. But it was too easy, wasn’t it? I told him to go and he went.”

  Still trembling, I dug the keys from their hiding place and went through the elaborate process of getting into the secret cupboard. The objects-which I was beginning to consider a curse-seemed in place and intact. I hauled them out onto the table.

  Raphaella came to stand beside me. “One of these is the reason he’s haunting this house,” she said.

  She took the medal out of the box, held it on its edge against the tabletop, and flicked it. It spun for a moment, wobbled, and quivered to a stop. She picked up the heavy cross and set it down again, turning it toward the window so the sombre light dimly illuminated the jewels. Brushed the leather cover of the Compendium with her fingertips. Untied the string on the manuscript file, took out the stack of pages, and carried it to her work station. She had touched each of those things as if she was receiving a secret message from it.

  “I feel like I know less and less each day,” I commented.

  “It was this manuscript that seemed to attract all his attention last time he dropped in to say hello,” she said from her seat, holding up the scorched sheet we had found on the floor. “But… well, I just don’t know either.”

  She sighed and pulled open her backpack.

  Before long we were hard at work-Raphaella reading and taking notes on the Savonarola chapter of the professor’s book, me cataloguing volume after volume of history books, my computer on the wheeled stand I had made in the shop. I had copied and synched Raphaella’s database so that any addition either of us made would show up on the other’s file. As I pushed forward with the tedious job of recording the author and title of each book, reading the spine and tapping keys, occasionally taking down an old book and checking the title page because the words on the spine were illegible, I tried to put the image of the friar’s ravaged face out of my mind. But it kept slipping back, insisting that I note every macabre, loathsome detail.

  At the same time my typically divided mind was telling me this was nuts. I was in a room lit by electric lights, not torches or candles, typing on a computer, not writing with a quill pen. It was the twenty-first century! How could I also be thinking about a ghost?

  I gave up, my concentration shattered. I saved my work and wandered over to the alcove table, idly picked up the medal, with its image of a fist wielding the dagger of heavenly anger and punishment, its profile of Savonarola, whose revolting smell still lingered on the damp air in the room. I put the medal in its box and closed the lid, running my thumb over the cross.

  I rested my hand idly on it, rotated it this way and that, watching the flat light wink in and out of the jewels and make patterns on the gold. On the heavy base of the cross the light seemed to form a little sphere inside the blown-glass dome. Tiny jeweller’s clips fit tightly into indentations around the dome, holding it in place. The wavy nature of the glass with its tiny bubbles almost obscured whatever it was meant to protect.

  By the window, Raphaella turned a page, looked over and smiled, went back to her reading. I fishe
d my penknife out of my pocket and opened the smaller of the two blades. Working slowly and cautiously I pried up the six clips until the dome came free. The bent clips poked up into the air like little cranes. It was easy to slide the dome out from under them.

  I got the magnifying glass from Raphaella’s table and examined the object that had lain under the globe for who knew how many years. It was medium brown in colour, blackened a little along the outside edge, roughly circular, with a protruding bit on each side, and hollow in the centre.

  It rested loosely in an indentation that had been carved into the gold alloy of the cross’s base. With the help of the magnifying glass I could make out the marks left by a carving tool.

  “Raphaella?”

  “Mmm?”

  “Can you come over here and look at this?”

  I handed her the magnifying glass. She bent and squinted at the mysterious article.

  “Recognize it?”

  “Nope.”

  “Wait,” I said.

  I slid the knife blade under the object and lifted it out of its place and set it down on the table.

  Raphaella inspected it again. “Could it be some kind of shell or animal bone?”

  “It isn’t wood. Or stone. Or plastic. So, yeah, maybe. Coral? No-wrong colour.”

  Raphaella was thinking. “Why does the shape look familiar? Hmm. Something tells me I’ve seen this before.”

  “If you can’t remember, it doesn’t matter if you’ve seen it before.”

  “Don’t be technical,” Raphaella replied, taking a page of the manuscript she had been reading, turning it print side down on the table, and sliding the object onto the paper with her fingertip. Using the PIE, she took a picture of the thing, pressed a few buttons, and waited, eyes on the screen. She shut off the phone and put it down.

  “I emailed the photo to Mother. If it’s animal or human, she’ll probably know. What are you doing?”

  “Putting this thing back where it came from. Have you noticed a change in here during the last few minutes?”

  “Yeah, it’s warmer all of a sudden,” Raphaella said. She sniffed. “And-”

  “Right.”

  Fighting the urge to hurry, I set the object back into its resting place in the base of the cross, fitted the dome into place, and bent the clips into their seats. The dome was tightly held again.

  “Okay,” I said. “That should-”

  My cell vibrated in my pocket.

  “I shall serve lunch indoors today. In eight minutes.”

  Raphaella and I locked away the artifacts, closed and locked the windows, and gratefully left the library.

  III

  LUNCH WAS MINESTRONE SOUP, thick and deep red, with beans, vegetables, little chunks of beef, shell pasta-all topped with freshly grated Parmesan cheese and sending off a mouthwatering aroma so wonderful that I held my face over the bowl, inhaling, for so long I upset our hostess.

  “Is the zuppa quite all right?” Mrs. Stoppini asked in alarm.

  “It’s great,” I replied. “Smells heavenly.”

  “A nice change,” Raphaella put in, aiming a meaningful glance in my direction.

  I almost choked on my soup, spluttering and holding off a laugh. Mrs. Stoppini looked confused.

  “Don’t mind us,” Raphaella said. “We’re just being silly.”

  “Indeed.”

  “Mrs. Stoppini, you ought to open a restaurant,” I said in admiration. “Your cooking is fantastic.”

  Her lipsticked-in lips betrayed the beginnings of a smile. “One does one’s best.”

  Since I met her I had been trying to find a way to pump Mrs. Stoppini for information. Up to now she’d been a dry well. On the few times she’d looked as if she might share something of her life, she seemed to catch herself and hide behind a stern demeanour. Confidentiality was important to her. I had no argument with that, but her attitude didn’t help Raphaella and me with the central question: how much did she know about the goings-on in the library?

  She had thawed out a bit in the short time I’d known her. She was still formal, if not flinty, most of the time, but I had learned that was a kind of defence that came from living alone after her “companion’s” death. Under the black wrapping beat a kind heart. I knew she was growing fond of Raphaella, so I thought this might be a good time to ask her a few things.

  “It’s sure nice here on the estate,” I began, pretty subtly, I thought.

  Nothing. Raphaella looked at me as if I had a geranium growing out of my head. Mrs. Stoppini merely nodded and ate some more soup in her ceremonial way, pushing her spoon away from her across the bowl, raising it at right angles to her mouth, and delicately sipping the soup off the spoon.

  “It’s really quiet here at night,” I said to Raphaella.

  Sip, from Mrs. Stoppini. An eye-roll from Raphaella, which told me what she thought of my disarming questioning technique. She took a different tack.

  “Mrs. Stoppini, do you mind if I ask what will happen to the library collection when Garnet and I have finished our work?”

  “Not at all, Miss Skye. The more valuable volumes, the late professor’s academic papers and the manuscripts of his published works, are bequeathed to his former employer, Ponte Santa Trinita University in Florence. The balance will, I suppose, be sold to a dealer. Mr. Havelock has already kindly advised me to have them appraised first.”

  I saw my opening. “You said ‘manuscripts of his published works.’ What will happen to any unpublished manuscripts?”

  “I have read no such papers. But should something be discovered, it will go to the university. They may do with it as they see fit.”

  “So,” Raphaella said, “eventually the library won’t be a library anymore. It will just be a room.”

  Mrs. Stoppini replied firmly, “That is correct. It will be an empty chamber, closed up and unused.”

  Abruptly, she stood and began to gather our empty bowls. I wanted to ask her if she knew about the cross and medal, but I let it go. Our hostess had obviously had enough chit-chat for now.

  Before getting back to work, Raphaella and I went for a walk along Wicklow Point Road. The trees on either side were wreathed in mist so thick it obscured their tops, forming a clammy tunnel. We walked silently, holding hands, putting off our return to the mansion.

  “Do you still think we’re close?” I asked.

  “Yes. Soon-maybe even this afternoon-everything will be clear.”

  WITH ONLY TWENTY PAGES or so left to read, Raphaella went back to the Savonarola chapter in the prof’s manuscript. I started on a new column of books. We had opened the windows again to freshen the room as much as possible, but no breeze crossed the foggy grounds of the estate.

  I was replacing a thick old volume on somebody named Dante Something when I heard Raphaella sigh behind me. I turned to see her slumped in her chair, her arms dangling, like a rag doll. I went over to her, not sure if I wanted to hear what she had discovered. I stood beside her and put my hand on her shoulder. She looked up at me, her eyes tired.

  “The cross,” she said, tapping the manuscript. “It’s mentioned in here.”

  I pulled a chair close to hers and sat down.

  “What do you mean?”

  “He talks about it.”

  An insistent buzz broke into our thoughts. The tabletop vibrated.

  I started. “What the-?”

  Raphaella suppressed a smile. “My cell,” she said, pushing books and papers aside and picking up the PIE.

  “It’s Mother,” she said, thumbing a button to activate the speakerphone. “Hello, Mother.”

  Mrs. Skye’s voice was curt and hurried. “I’m reasonably certain it’s an atlas. The bone, not the book. But the transverse processes-the projections on each side-are missing. Broken or maybe worn off. Got to go. Mr. Tremblay is waiting for his arthritis prescription.”

  “Thanks, Mother,” Raphaella said, but the connection had already been cut.

  “Hmm,” Raphaella mused.<
br />
  “I didn’t really follow what your mom was saying,” I told Raphaella.

  “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 bone. A book of maps, yes. A god from Greek mythology, certainly. Atlas holds up the world. But a bone?”

  “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.”