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The bishop began to step backward toward the statue.

In bringing these criminals before you

Give me a sign that you are pleased with my righteousness

That you favor our city and will intercede on our behalf with the Lord God

“He will not look at me,” said Giancarlo.

Give us a sign that we have discovered the source of evil

Return to us our relics, tell them we are righteous

Lucia did a gigantic, ridiculous fake sneeze, her trick from the apothecary’s shop, that echoed off the walls of the piazza. The bishop looked down at her. Giancarlo locked eyes with him. The bishop gave a little shiver and a puff of icy breath left his lips. He shifted his eyes skyward again.

Hear us, oh, Madonna, hear me, your bishop of Florence, and come to my aid!

The people writhed on the ground, complete in their supplication.

“Damn, I thought he would fall off the stage and die, like our poor kitten,” said Lucia.

“Lucia,” said Giancarlo. “He is smoking.”

“He is not just smoking. He is on fire. Hey! The bishop is on fire!” she shouted.

The crowd looked up.

The bishop looked down at himself and screamed as flames licked across his chest. The figa had grown so hot from the jettatore’s stare that it lit his robe on fire. He ripped it off his neck and threw it. Ginevra watched it bounce off the throne of the Virgin and land on the gilded brocade at the statue’s feet.

As the bishop slapped out the fire on his chest, Becchino ran back into the square, brandishing the stick that the soldier had been chasing him with, dancing around the shocked Florentines.

“The soldier tried to catch me, but the plague caught him! Dropped dead in the middle of a step. That’s what you get, taking pay for dirty deeds! I would know!”

The bishop, now just lightly smoking, yelled for his mercenaries to kill Becchino, but now they would not. The Madonna had struck their comrade dead and lit their boss on fire. The mercenaries who had been minding Ginevra and Fra Michele walked over to the bishop to tell him that they were quitting his employ, that they wanted what was owed them today. All eyes were on the ensuing argument, so nobody noticed at first that flames grew upon the Madonna’s wooden skirt. Nobody besides Fra Michele, the inquisitor.

Yelping, he leaped upon the statue, and Ginevra jerked behind him on the ropes that bound them together. The flames shot along the ropes; Ginevra snapped her hands free of the burning fibers and began to swat at the fire that now attacked the inquisitor’s perfumed linen wrappings. When his garments died down to a smolder, she turned to the Virgin, and helped the inquisitor beat the flames from her painted robes. At last, Ginevra pulled the gag from her own mouth. She spun around, searching the platform for her figa.

“She has saved the Virgin!” yelled somebody in the crowd.

A fold of the Virgin’s wooden robes, weakened by the flames, fell aside.

“No, she has defaced her!” yelled somebody else.

Ginevra crouched, certain she was about to be stoned to death.

“BEHOOOLLLDDD SINNNERSSS,” screeched Fra Michele. He pulled Ginevra into a gesture of supplication before the Madonna, and raised one arm above his head, pointing.

The crowd went dead silent. And then they began to point at the stage and whisper. Not sure they could trust their own eyes. The wooden panel of the Madonna’s skirts had fallen in such a way that it was clear to them the Virgin had pulled aside the burnt robe herself for the benefit of her audience. And staring out at them from the folds of her garment was the skull of San Zenobio.

People started to cry out, “It is the relics! The Virgin has brought them back to us! She revealed them to the criminals!”

“NO!” said the bishop, fighting his way through the mercenaries. “No. No. No.” Never in his life had a plan gone so badly.

Giancarlo smiled and wrapped the blindfold back around his eyes.

Fra Michele and Ginevra began to remove twelve relics from the statue and place them at her feet.

The bishop stepped between the statue and the crowd. “These are counterfeit! Counterfeit relics, put here to trick you! They would not reveal themselves to sinners such as these!”