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Cruuunnnnnchhhhhh. Ginevra whipped her head around and saw Fra Michele, in his blindness, had stepped off the cleared path and put his foot through some poor person’s skull.

She turned back around and the thief was inches from her face. A man of middle age, with eyes that glowed like a dog’s in the meager light of his lantern, the rest of his face obscured by dark hair and bristly beard. Her coral burned so hot her eyes watered.

“Good,” he said. “You are here, come.”

“What?” said Ginevra.

“Not you,” hissed the thief. “The priest. I know he is with you. I watched you walk up the hill together. I opened the gate and unlocked the church for him. The saints must have brought him to me, to save me the trouble of finding one.”

“One what?” called the inquisitor.

“Michele, close your eyes! Do not look at him,” cried Ginevra.

“Be quiet. You are extra. Go over here.” The thief grabbed Ginevra and threw her hard against the wall at the back of the chamber. Her head slammed into the rock, and the heliodor was knocked from her hand, sending her into darkness.

“Foul thing!” cried the inquisitor, who could see nothing at all and was still trying to shake his foot free from the skull. “We have followed you here to your cursed den and in the name of Jesus Christ, the holy Virgin, and all the saints, I command you to cease your work and cede the relics you have taken or be damned to the fires of eternal hell!”

Ginevra tried to shout out a warning, but the wind was knocked out of her and she lay on her back, gasping for breath.

“Oh, potter, maker of painted plates, mixer of secret colors! Your wealth has corrupted you. You take what is not yours,” yelled Michele. He held the wooden crucifix before him and flailed blindly.

The thief laughed. “The relics let me take them. They belong to God, not to a city or a man. The people of Florence took them for granted, locked them away in cupboards, so they came with me where they are needed. Come.”

“I will not! Where is Ginevra? Give back the relics, save yourself from the fires of hell.”

“Do not try to scare me with talk of hell, Priest! Hell has already broken through to the living earth. For months, I have waited and gathered and fasted and punished my flesh and now you must do your part. Come, and do not interrupt me.”

In a flash, he was behind Fra Michele and shoved him hard into the bare circle on the floor, forcing him to his knees and binding his hands to an iron stake driven into the stone floor at the circle’s center. “Good, now stay. I will tell you what to do.” The thief returned to his bier and began lovingly adjusting the relics, but each time he got one into just the right spot, another rolled out of its place and had to be adjusted again.

Ginevra found her air and let out a moan.

“Be quiet, you are extra,” he repeated, as he nudged the foot of Santo Stefano up against the thigh bone of San Barnaba for the hundredth time. The scapula of San Giovanni Gualberto tipped over. He sighed, repositioning it.

Ginevra was baffled. What did he mean, extra? Right now, it mattered little. What she needed to do was find a way out. Her coral was stuck to her, burned into her flesh. She picked it out, hung it outside her dress. She forced herself onto all fours, and began to search the ground, swiping away beetles and feeling for the heliodor.

“Where is my friend?? Untie me!” yelled Fra Michele.

“No! Do not interrupt me.”

“Why do you build a saint made of saints?” he persisted.

“Do NOT interrupt me.”

“If you answer my question, I’ll stop interrupting you!”

The thief was silent for a moment. “You will think I am mad.”

Ginevra paused in her search to listen.

“We already think you’re mad,” Michele said. “What difference does it make?”

“If it will make you quiet...” said the thief. “The secret of it matters little now. These separate relics will soon be joined together into a new saint, the sum more powerful than the separate parts. He will be called the Holy of Holies and will speak to God on my behalf and compel Him to bring these dead around you back to life.”

“It is not possible,” Ginevra said from her spot behind the bier, hands moving frantically through the mire. At last, they closed around the heliodor.

“Are you a virgin?”

“Uh—”