Page 37 of The Stone Witch of Florence

THIRTY-SIX

SANTO DEI SANTI

July 11th of 1348, the Inquisitor’s Palazzo

G inevra walked briskly toward the inquisitor’s residence. Never mind that Taddea does not believe you. She would speak to him and then continue on to the neighboring parish of Santa Margherita, the last church in the apothecary’s guidebook. She is scared and alone, but you will fix it. She reached the Piazza della Santa Reparata; there was the dead mason still on the scaffold. She tipped her head in greeting. Outside the inquisitor’s apartment, a dirty monk waited in front of the door, which was slightly ajar.

“Oh! Excuse me. A live woman, how marvelous. Fra Leobaldo at your service—do you know if the inquisitor is still, ah—” Ginevra saw her note from the day before still stuck in the doorjamb.

Oh, God, he’s dead , she thought, unsure if that nullified their deal. But then the door swung open fully and there was Inquisitor Michele with red-rimmed eyes and stubbly face.

“You!” he said to her, breath stinking of wine. “Why do you keep me waiting for so many days? It has been...many of them.”

“I keep you waiting? I was here yesterday! Why did you not answer my knocks? Wait—why do you open the door yourself? Where is your man Giuseppe?”

His lip trembled. “Dead! Dead. The pestilence... Does anybody die from any of the usual ways anymore? Death was once endlessly creative—all manner of diverse and wondrous accidents—broken hearts, getting stuck in odd places. Now he strikes the same note again and again, no longer creating harmonies. But what he lacks in artistry, he makes up for in tenacity. It’s only a matter of time, now that he has entered my home.”

Ginevra and Fra Leobaldo exchanged glances. She had expected the same subtle intoxication as before, but now he was downright drunk, the monk’s knocking the only thing that had gotten him out of bed. She took his arm, giving him a little shake. “Come now, you’ve made it this far. Some have hearty constitutions against it naturally.”

“Ahem, forgive me for interrupting—Fra Leobaldo, at your service, Ser Inquisitor. I am the record keeper for the church of Santa Margherita. I’ve come to tell you the results of the inventory you requested in May—”

“Did you say Santa Margherita?” interrupted Ginevra.

“Oh! My brave monk,” said Fra Michele. “Noble man, most worthy keeper of records! I’d given up hope that anyone would respond. It took you a while, but still, your faith brings much heart.”

“Ah...yes, well, I fled to the countryside months ago, and it wasn’t until I returned that I discovered your letter—”

“This is Monna Ginevra, an expert on depraved thievery.”

“At your service,” said Ginevra with a small bow.

“My dear Leobaldo, please come sit. You must be thirsty from your journey.”

“Thank you, Ser Inquisitor, but seeing as somebody just died here—”

“Nonsense! All the precautions I followed, keeping myself apart from people, from my work. It has meant nothing! In or out, it makes no difference, death will come, death will come for us all.”

He grabbed the reluctant monk by the arm and steered him through the entryway to an interior courtyard, where there was a table with several open bottles of wine and also a donkey that had come in through the open door to munch on the courtyard’s garden. Ginevra followed. The inquisitor wiped out a cup with his sleeve, filled it almost to the brim, and then held it toward the monk.

“I’d offer you something to eat, but you see, it was Giuseppe who—”

“Ser Inquisitor—what I have to tell you is brief. I return to Florence only because everyone at the monastery where I stayed in Frascati died besides me.”

The inquisitor put his cup down. “What is the brief thing you have to say, then?”

“That the church of Santa Margherita has been robbed?” cut in Ginevra.

Leobaldo stared at her. “The right arm of San Pancrazio replaced by—”

“An evil-looking glass vial?” she finished.

“I see you truly are an expert in depraved thievery. Here.” He took a bottle from his purse and placed it on the table. The liquid inside matched the purple color of the wine. “I know not when the arm was taken, only that it was present when I departed in May.”

Inquisitor Michele took out his pomander and inhaled deeply, then took a large sip of wine.

“Ahem—as I have delivered my message and you have no servant, I’ll, um, see myself out. I pray you find the person responsible and that they suffer a terrible punishment.” Leobaldo left as fast as he could without running.

The inquisitor jumped a little at the sound of the front door slamming, and turned to Ginevra. “And how did you know what he was going to say, late woman?”

Ginevra brought out the apothecary’s book, and stretched the accordion pages out on the table. “Because every one of the churches in this guide have been visited by the relic thief. And here, in this bit at the end, it mentions the San Pancrazio arm just reported missing by Leobaldo.” Next to the book, she placed the inquisitor’s original list and wrote upon it:

San Miniato—right leg of San Miniato.

Robbed on July 10.

Sant’Elisabetta—holy bread .

Theft noticed: July 11. Relic last seen: July 10.

Santa Margherita—right arm of San Pancrazio.

Theft noticed: July 11.

The inquisitor shook his head and moaned as he read through all the additional thefts Ginevra had recorded. Then he paused, and picked up the book, turning quickly through the pages. “Is this...a pilgrim guidebook for the Divine Nine?”

Ginevra nodded slowly.

The inquisitor raked his fingers over his tonsured head.

“Even the finger of San Tommaso in its locked chapel has been taken?”

“Locks mean nothing to this thief. He knows how to turn iron to rust.”

The inquisitor drained his wine. “He is versed in alchemy. A man of education.”

“There is more—those who encountered him felt him. Became cold right down into their souls. Into their bones. Inquisitor, do you know what that means?”

He reached again for the bottle. Ginevra moved it away.

“My aunt spoke to a jettatore once,” he said. “Then a pile of bricks fell off a building and squished her. No wonder the plague rages so in our city. This jettatore draws it to us and then steals our holy guardians. Have you discovered, at least, what he looks like?”

“No, but I know what he smells like.”

“But jettatore do not have a smell. Otherwise no one would go near enough to be cursed.”

“This one does. They say he has a strong and peculiar odor that overwhelms the senses. They say he smells like a dead dog left in the gutter.”

“Ah. I know that smell. He is wearing a cilice. A hair shirt. Nasty things, woven from horsehairs, worn against the skin. They’re for lazy people that need pain to remind them to follow God. But, he wears it as he robs churches?”

“Perhaps it is in penance for his crimes?”

The inquisitor made a face at the suggestion. “Last night...last night was very dark, wasn’t it?”

“A new moon and a wicked storm.”

The inquisitor clapped himself in the head so hard his palm left a red mark. “I’ve been a fool, and so have you! It is the simplest pattern: when it is the blackest night of the month—a new moon—he goes about to do his wicked deeds unseen. He has robbed us every month since the start of spring, pulling as much as he can in an evening.”

Ginevra realized he was correct; it was possible the thefts coincided with the new moons of April, May, June, and now July.

“This jettatore !” continued Inquisitor Michele. “He has not been too clever for us. He has been too simple! Using a cheap pilgrim’s guide and waiting for dark nights. I’m surprised he had the brains to get San Miniato down the mountain!”

“He took just the leg.”

“What do you mean, just the leg?”

“I mean he broke the right leg off the relic, and left the rest of him in the tomb.”

The inquisitor snatched the wine bottle back and refilled his beaker. “Tell me slowly, Monna, name the parts he has taken.”

“If you stopped drinking you could remember them yourself.”

“JUST tell me.”

“Fine. First, San Filippo’s left arm, and San Zenobio’s head, then the thigh of San Barnaba, and from the churches of the Rogazione , the torso of San Piero, the right and left buttocks of San Paolo—”

“I remember when they decided to divide the buttocks. A most magnanimous solution.”

“And the left foot of Santo Stefano. And since we first spoke, to this list are added the shoulder of San Giovanni Gualberto, the finger of San Tommaso D’Aquino, the right leg of San Miniato, the right arm of San Pancrazio, and the bloody bread of the convent of Sant’Elisabetta.”

“Did you know,” said the inquisitor grimly, “the right arm of San Pancrazio is missing its pointer finger. The king of France requested a bit of him so we broke it off.”

“So?”

“Did you know also that the finger relic of San Tommaso happens to be the pointer finger from his right hand?”

Ginevra’s eyes widened with understanding. “Oh. OH. This is so. Very. Strange .”

“Please—fetch my desk from the front hall. My head aches too much.”

She brought it and the inquisitor took pen and parchment and drew a curious figure:

The two of them stared at the sketch in horror. “He is building himself a whole new saint from other saints,” said the inquisitor at last.

Ginevra picked up the parchment and examined it. “But what about the bread relic from the convent? This man looks whole. Did the thief mean to give him supper?”

“He is not whole. Not quite. Whoever heard of an evil spell using eleven of something? He will need twelve pieces. One for each of the apostles.”

“Well, there seems but one part missing and it is not a loaf of bread.”

“Not THAT. Perverted woman. And besides, the left buttock of San Paolo is rather more complete than the right if you know what I mean.”

“Then what, if not that?”

“What he is missing,” said the inquisitor, “is a sacred heart.”

“The blood of Christ, preserved in the convent of Sant’Elisabetta’s miraculous bread,” said Ginevra, understanding. “What will he do, then, with this new saint made of saints?”

“If only we had one of those necromantic books you trafficked, we might know.”

“I told you, I never trafficked—why do you know what is inside such books?”

“A hazard of my trade. They are all variations of the same. Instructions on how to command demons to fulfill base desires. Empty rituals, things like circles with stars drawn inside them, the sort of thing peasants put about their cowsheds to scare away the spirits of their dead relatives. Burning blood and chanting words in the night to make the peas grow. And to trick the ignorant that it is no heresy, the first step prescribed by these books are rituals of Christian penance so strict no man who was not a saint could succeed at them.”

“So our thief wears his hair shirt to prepare for a ritual.”

“It must be so,” said the inquisitor. “And there is nothing we can do about it.” He raised his wine cup to his lips. Little gold chickens stared at Ginevra from purple and green vines. How she hated those chickens, their blank expressions, the monotonous colors from the kilns of—

“San Romolo!” she yelled.

“What? There are no relics of San Romolo.”

“Not the saint, the town... The pottery merchant of San Romolo once bought a secret book!”

“I knew you trafficked them!”

“Shh. Look on your cup—the colors come only from there. Purple and green vines! The same as the liquid in the bottles. Sometimes it is diluted, sometimes intense, but the hue is the same!”

She took the cup the inquisitor clutched, dumped out the wine, and held it next to the onion-shaped bottle from San Pancrazio. The inquisitor opened his desk again, took out the bottles he had gathered in the early weeks of the investigation. Held purple to purple and green to green, and it was true: the liquid inside, all shades of the intense pigments that rendered twirling vines and grapes.

“And look,” he said, “the very shape of the vessels! These are exactly the sort of vials that precious pigments are stored in.” He showed his own painting supplies to Ginevra. “The sort of vials that you must keep hundreds of to run a pottery workshop.”

“What do you make of this, then?” asked Ginevra, mind racing. “At Sant’Elisabetta the bread was replaced not with a flask, but this scrap of parchment with a smudge upon it.”

He held the parchment up to the light, then placed it next to the bottles. The tips of his fingers fluttered against his lips. “He leaves something to replace that which he has taken.” He picked up a lavender-colored vial and before Ginevra could so much as utter a warning, he broke its seal and poured a drop onto his finger. He touched it with the tip of his tongue.

“Inquisitor! Stop, drunk fool!”

“Pah. He has added only water. Plain water, poured into bottles and stained by chance from their prior use.”

“How can you know this?”

“Our thief, our penitent jettatore , he needs our relics for his ritual, but leaves third-class relics, created by pouring water over the bones, or in this last case, he must have rubbed a bit of the holy blood onto a piece of parchment. Water would have dissolved the bread.”

“I don’t understand—”

“It’s standard, really,” said the inquisitor, growing excited at his discovery. “A way to make many relics from one. If water is poured over a relic, some of the relic’s power is transferred to the water, though of course the power is less potent than that of the original. But I’m confused—to leave behind these vials, then, is an act of kindness. He is returning a bit of what he has taken. But never mind that now—what will he do with our city’s treasures, now that his composite saint is complete?”

“We must find the answer in San Romolo,” said Ginevra.

The inquisitor nodded. “I will inform the bishop at once. He must send men to recover them. San Romolo is less than a day’s walk from here.”

Ginevra’s coral grew cold upon her chest. She looked at the inquisitor with incredulity. “You have let me do all the work. You have let me do the work, and now the two of you will claim you found the relics, and say I did not fulfill our contract!”

“Don’t insult me! You’ll get what we agreed on—a pardon on your exile, and a recommendation to start your business. If, of course, they are in San Romolo.”

Ginevra did not like this one bit—she remembered from her arrival in Florence the Swiss mercenaries the bishop kept at his door. These were not men she trusted to recoup fragile items from a jettatore . They were bloodthirsty soldiers-for-hire known for their brute strength, not for their finesse. And her future hopes hung upon the relics’ intact return.

“Inquisitor, please. We have come to our most delicate step. We know not what this jettatore means to do with your relics. What will happen if soldiers arrive and he is in the middle of his ritual?”

“They will poke him with knives and tie him up, I suppose?”

“But this man is a jettatore . He knows how to turn iron to rust! He could probably just look at them and their blades would fall out of their handles.”

Inquisitor Michele shrugged. “Then the mercenaries will use their fists to overpower him. This is one man against many. I do not see what you are so concerned about.”

“Ser Inquisitor, you must understand that the malocchio that is living inside the thief feeds on anger. The bishop’s men will be full of it. Surely this twisted creature, in his cilice, must be approached more gently.”

“Monna. This is something that requires arms first and compassion later. A show of physical force. Then after, forgiveness. This is how things are done. I will tell the bishop to send his soldiers to San Romolo, and he will see how wrong he was to think I could not solve this crime.”

“So that’s it, then,” said Ginevra, disgusted with herself for trying to reason with an inquisitor. “THAT’s what this is all about? Proving yourself superior to the bishop? He will not take kindly to that.”

“Womanish worries only. It is natural for you to be frightened, but don’t be. I’ll be right back from the bishop’s. Wait here. I don’t think he likes you very much.”