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And then he waited for something to happen, but the Holy of Holies just laid on his table, dark and still and made of many parts.

“Aha! He moved a little!” said Giancarlo after a while.

“It is the beetles, Giancarlo, who crawl on him and trick your eyes,” said Ginevra. She touched the back of her head and pain shot through it. She was getting tired.

“No! He moved and is awake, now it is time to make my request.”

Ginevra slumped.

“Ginevra,” whispered Michele, shaking her. “Ginevra, stay awake! Do not leave me here!” But she was so tired, so in pain, she could not answer and slid down to the ground.

Holy of Holies I request of You

For these dead in this crypt that

You make their still tongues to talk

Cold feet walk

Shut eyes to see,

Gone souls come back to be—

A great roaring and whooshing immediately filled the chamber and the light from the lantern and even from the heliodor went out. Fra Michele screamed and the jettatore whooped with joy and Ginevra passed out.

FORTY-ONE

UP, UP, UP

July 12th of 1348, the Crypt of San Romolo

“Wake up! Ginevra, wake up!!” came Michele’s desperate voice through the whooshing and whirring and buzzing and the whole air fluttering and shifting and bumping into her. Ginevra couldn’t even tell if she had opened her eyes, so complete was the blackness.

“Michele! The souls. The souls have come back to their bodies!”

“No, woman! It is not the souls. It is the burying beetles! The beasts have taken flight.”

“The beetles?”

“Ginevra, they will devour the relics!”

“Forget the relics! They will devour us!”

“Light your magic light, where are the relics, where is the thief??”

She sat up straight, the pain still pounding in her head, and held the heliodor aloft with her bound hands. The beetles that were touching her saw the light, too, and were upon it in an instant and blotted out its glow. She wiped them from her face and covered her mouth with her headscarf. “Michele, it’s no use, I cannot see a way out!”

The frustrated bellows and crashings of the thief reached them through the shifting blackness as he tried in vain to sweep the swarming insects from his composite saint.

“We must find a way out while he is distracted,” Michele whispered to her. “Come! You are a woman who knows things—use your powers, find the alternate passage he spoke of!”

The inquisitor’s words cut through the fog of her pain. He was right. She was a woman who knew things. And she knew she did not want to be smashed like a beetle. She exhaled and listened and found, beneath the noise of the insects, beneath her throbbing head, the searing sting of the burn left by her coral figa, a gentle tugging upon her left hand. It was Vermilia’s Nemesis stone, and it knew the way out.

“Come, Michele. Do not make a sound.”

The pair struggled to their feet, bound together at either end of the thief’s rope, and slipped through a crack in the wall.

“Virgins!” called the thief. “Do not move! You said you were willing! Do not move or I will smash you as I smash these beetles!”