Page 84

“If you are a virgin, like the priest, I’ll put you in the circle instead of hitting you on the head.”

“Yes, yes! I am,” she lied. With large rough hands he dragged her to the open space where Michele sat, binding her with the other end of the rope to the same stake.

“There,” said the thief, “this is easier now.”

“It matters not. What you seek is not possible,” said Ginevra.

“Yes, it is! I found an ancient spell. How to make the dead appear again as the living.” He held up a thin volume. Gold letters winked in the lantern’s light: Liber Iuratus Polydoros. It was Agnesa’s book.

“The spells in such books are false,” said Fra Michele. “It is a heresy to believe them!”

“It seems straightforward enough to me, Priest. Listen: Upon the ground draw a circle of white chalk that is twelve fingers for the twelve disciples of Christ. Done. Within the circle draw a cross with its axis in the top half of the circle, in lines twice again as thick. Done. Then a triangle with its points all the way to the edges (on account of the three magi) and this is where a virgin, at least one, (we have two!) must willingly sit in the center. Around the circle you must write the 180 letters of the sacred name and they are i.b.n.a.b.n.e.x.a.t.r.o.m.u.m...etc. All done, as you would be able to see, if it were not so dark.”

He turned again to the crumbling bits of saints. Ginevra held up the heliodor and saw the words he spoke were, indeed, copied onto the ground beneath them in chalk. They, the “virgins,” sitting in the center.

And even though she never believed that spells of this type were valid, she could feel the ancient holiness of the place, and while one relic was almost surely useless here, he had a dozen together and there were some spells that never worked except for when the situation was perfectly correct, and perhaps this was that time?

“Ginevra...you do not believe this ritual is legitimate, right?” whispered Michele.

“No—no, of course not. Do you?”

“No, definitely not. But just in case, we must try to distract him.”

Ginevra looked at the bodies upon the floor.

“You have waited too long, friend, look at them, fingers are bones, mouths cannot close. What would it be for them to live again?”

“Be quiet! You said if I answered your questions, you would not interrupt me, and I have answered many! They will be as they were. I have prepared their homes and all will be joy!”

“Even Lazarus, raised by Christ himself, was only dead four days,” said Fra Michele. “These poor souls have been dead for months.”

“Be quiet! I did not lead you down here to insult me! Now: Virgins, do you say you sit willingly inside the circle? You must say it.”

“Never,” said Fra Michele.

The thief went over to the columned doorway they came down through, and pulled a rock from its lintel. There was a rumble and a crash, and the air was filled with dust.

“You see?” he coughed. “That was your path out. I’ve smashed it. Only I know the secret passages. If you do not say you are willing in the circle, I shall seal you up forever and go find some different virgins who are willing and quiet!”

“We are willing, we are willing!” cried Ginevra. Her head ached from where it had hit the wall, and she could not bear the noise of another passage collapsing. The time had come. The person they chased had caught them, and now they must bear witness to his designs. She fought a wave of nausea, rolling down through her from her sore head. The jettatore nodded, satisfied his captives were willing, and untied them from the stake, though they remained lashed to each other.

“Good, now all you do is stay in the center, and do not say one word or I will smash you.” The thief turned back to his assembled saint, precariously stuck together. He took off his cloak and there was the hair shirt, wiry, frizzled, and stuck to his raw skin. He placed his hands upon the bier:

Oh, angels of the heavens,

Oh, celestial orbs, lords of the day and of the night,

I have completed your rituals and so you are bound to me and required to hear my story and make it so and the story is:

San Miniato was walking through Florence when a soldier cut his head off but he took it back and put himself together again and that is how

I, Giancarlo di Sporco, who has adhered to God’s strictest penance of ninety days, wish you to turn these separate saints into one saint who is called the Holy of Holies and in gratitude he will speak to God and ensure my request is granted NOW.

He picked up the relic of Christ’s blood soaked into bread from Sant’Elisabetta and then paused and flipped through the book. “It does not say... It does not say how to add the blood...” In the end, he decided to stuff it through a hole in old San Piero’s torso. Then he kneeled on the ground and made the sign of the cross and said:

All this is done in the name of the one true God,

from whom all blessings flow, whose will shall be done on earth as it is in heaven, forever and ever, Amen.