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“Taddea, the book!”

“I told you the books were sold to the merchant from San Romolo. What’s going—”

“No, the guidebook—for pilgrims who come to Florence to visit the relics. You’re in it!”

“Oh, that thing. Yes, we are there, but you’d hardly know it. They just write us in sometimes in the back as a place for food and lodging. The full pages are always the Divine Nine now—”

“No, no, Taddea, the thief, he knows the book! He uses it to select his relics. Tell me your bread is safe! That you have seen it today.”

Taddea’s face went white.

Ginevra ran to the chapel door.

“Wait!” called Taddea. “I have the key.”

But when Ginevra pushed on the door it fell inward with a great clatter, the hinges and lock rusted through, the door propped back up to disguise the intrusion.

“Oh, my God,” said Taddea. “It wasn’t like this just yesterday—”

Ginevra ran up to the altar, and with trembling hands, she lifted the reliquary out of its cabinet. It was as she remembered: a crystal orb mounted in the center of a cross, where a holy loaf with its dark brown stain should be suspended between two halves of the sphere. As she examined the crucifix, the front half of the crystal fell and shattered on the ground.

“Shit! I’m sorry!”

“What are you doing? Please stop it!” cried Taddea, horror-stricken.

“Look!” said Ginevra, pointing to material that fluttered out from the broken reliquary like a leaf falling from the tree.

“That is not our bread,” said Taddea.

“It is parchment,” said Ginevra. She picked it up from where it landed atop the shards of crystal and the two women looked at it. Ordinary parchment, with nothing upon it but a dusty brown smudge.

“Do you see a bottle? Filled with purple or green?”

But Taddea was not listening. She had collapsed onto her knees, heedless of the broken crystal pieces. “Wh-what will I do now, without even the protection of our relic? Why was I left alone and alive?” She turned to Ginevra. “The door was not like that before you touched it!”

Ginevra’s blood froze. “Of course it was—you just did not notice it until now.”

“And the relic, it was bread just yesterday, until you came and reached for it.”

“Taddea! How could you think I would do anything to harm Fra Simone’s bread?”

Taddea stood up. “Is it so hard to imagine? You could always work magic more than anyone else. I know you meant to do good back then—I think, at least—but you have been gone years, while we suffered for your misdeeds. I was foolish to think I still know you. To believe your story about the bishop!”

“Please, Taddea, why else would I be here?”

“You—you come to seek revenge on all who shunned you. Take advantage of us when we are weak. To think I let you near Agnesa! What did you do but hasten her death?”

“How can you say such a thing? It is me! The only woman trying to help you. The thief—he has exchanged your bloody bread for parchment.”

“Stop it. Quiet. Leave and do not return again!”

“You know not what you say.”

“I know what I say.”

“I will be back. Upon my word, if I am alive, I will be back. And I will bring your relic.”

THIRTY-SIX