Remi swung around, a frantic excuse caught in her throat. Before her stood a rotund little priest wearing thick glasses.
Before she could form words, the priest said in Italian, “Welcome to our church. Are you visiting from far away?”
“Um,” Remi coughed. “Yes. I’m French. I teach art at an, um, private school for teenagers. I love Gothic architecture and I wanted to visit your church since it has many well preserved features. Remarkable, isn’t it? Such fine carvings on the column capitals. And that baptismal font? Beautiful! It’s, ah … ”
Remi realized she was babbling and stopped.
The priest smiled. “It’s so nice to meet a foreigner visitor. We don’t get many. And one who speaks lovely Italian too!” Then he gestured behind her, making her heart clench. “And what’s this?”
Remi almost fainted. “Oh! It’s … ”
Desperately she tried to formulate an excuse for why she had suddenly opened up a mysterious panel in the wall of this man’s church. Before she could come up with anything, he went on.
“This is called the Shield of the Trinity. It is an illustration of the doctrine of the Trinity and how the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit are separate but one.”
“Um, right.”
“It would be a good thing to show your schoolchildren. Perhaps you should take a photo of it.”
Remi searched for irony or menace in the priest’s tone and found none. Then it hit her—with those Coke bottle glasses, he couldn’t see the Shield of the Trinity was slightly ajar. He thought she was merely admiring the carving!
Her knees almost buckled in relief. “Oh, yes! That’s a splendid idea!”
She pulled out her phone so quickly that the tools inside her purse rattled loudly.
The priest chuckled. “Sounds like you overburdened yourself with souvenirs at the gift shop in town.”
“Something like that.”
“Well, enjoy your visit.”
The priest walked away down the apse and disappeared into the side chapel where the volunteers were no doubt still cleaning.
Remi stood for a moment, catching her breath and getting a hold of herself. Then the drive for discovery overtook her once again and, after giving another cautious look around her, she grasped the edge of the panel and pulled.
It swung open to reveal a small shelf inset into the wall. On that shelf was a ceramic statuette about six inches tall of the Virgin Mary holding the baby Jesus.
She plucked it out, tucked it in her purse, and closed the panel.
In her hurry, the stone slammed shut, the heavy sound echoing through the building.
“Why do these places have to have such good acoustics?” Remi grumbled, heading for the door.
She didn’t make it.
The priest popped out of the side chapel, squinting around for the source of the sound.
“I bumped my shin on one of the pews,” she called over. “Silly me. I was admiring the ceiling and not watching where I was going.”
“Are you all right?” the priest asked in a soft voice that barely carried over to her. His tone suggested she lower her volume. Remi did.
“Yes,” she said so softly she wasn’t sure it carried over to him. “Sorry.”
He nodded and disappeared into the side chapel again.
Remi hurried for the door.
Just before opening it, she stopped. A donation box stood next to it, an old chest of aged wood with heavy iron bands around it and a slit in the top. It looked like it had been sitting there for hundreds of years, accepting the donations of the faithful.
Suddenly, Remi felt guilty. She had just robbed this church. While she had taken something they didn’t know they had made it somewhat easier, it was still theft.
She rummaged in her purse, digging past the figurine and wrenches and chisels and hammers to extract her wallet.
Remi pulled out a ten euro note and stuck it in the collection box. Pausing, she pulled out a twenty and put that in too. She started to put her wallet away, hesitated, then pulled it out again.
She removed every note and put it in the collection box, then pulled out her change purse and emptied its contents into the box too.
Does that make you feel better? She asked herself.
Yes. A bit.
Does that make what you just did right?
No. Not really. But I have to. And in the larger scheme of human knowledge, it is the right thing to do.
She thought about that as she went to her car and, after an inner struggle, decided it was true.
* * *
Back at her hotel room in Bologna she stared at the figurine. It was a simple thing, not terribly well made, the kind of ceramic figurine pressed out of clay in a mold and fired to hardness before being sold by the hundreds to pilgrims and churchgoers. Some were painted. This one was not. Stylistically, she judged it to be 13th century, the same time the cryptex was made.
An unremarkable artifact, except for two important features.
One, the cryptex had pointed her to it.
And two, it rattled.
Remi remembered the plaster bust of the historian Edward Gibbon in the Glencairn Museum that hid a copper cylinder inside with a note, and the ivory statue of the Virgin Mary at the Cloisters, which had also contained a note.
Could this little clay figurine contain a note baked in when it was made?
Remi turned it over in her hands. There was no seam, no hole, no way to get inside. She pressed on every surface, hoping to spring a catch and pop it open, like she had with the wall at the Church of Saint Pantaleon of Nicomedia.
No luck. It was fired as one piece, whatever it contained being sealed inside.
I have to break it.
The realization made her pause. This figurine was more than 700 years old!
No other way to get inside. They intended for you to break it.
Yes, when it was new, not when it was a valuable antique.
It’s not valuable, or rare. You can buy one on eBay for a few hundred dollars.
It’s still an antique.
Remi groaned and stood up from her hotel room desk.
Pacing back and forth, she went over and over the problem in her mind. The figurine obviously contained the final cryptex revelation, or at least another clue to the revelation, which had laid hidden for centuries. The only way to uncover it was to smash the figurine.
But she couldn’t do that. She was an art historian, for God’s sake!
Art historians don’t rob churches.
Remi stopped, letting out a deep sigh. She had come this far, compromised so many of her professional ethics, she couldn’t exactly stop now.
And, deep in her heart, from the moment she had discovered the figurine she had known she’d do what she was about to do.
At least I’ve photographed and measured it thoroughly, making a complete record for posterity. And maybe I can minimize the damage.
Remi fetched a pair of pliers from her purse.
Sitting back down at the desk, she picked up the figurine and set the pliers on either side of the Virgin Mary’s feet.
Is this a sin? I’m not a Catholic but I’m pretty sure this is a sin.
Except that the Catholic church, or some faction within it, made this figurine specifically to be broken.
That made her feel better. Sort of.
She gently pressed down on the pliers, wincing as she heard a crack. A hairline fracture ran halfway up the figurine. The bottom did not snap off as she wanted it to, however.
She had to press harder, so she did.
The entire figurine shattered into a dozen pieces.
“Damn it!”
Her anger at her clumsiness evaporated as a small copper cylinder tumbled to the desktop along with the figurine fragments.
A chill ran down her spine. Putting down the pliers quietly, as if nervous about disturbing her new find, she gently picked it up.
It was a small copper tube about the size of a cigarette, closed at both ends. She shook it gently and heard the sound of something moving a bit inside. Her instinct told her it was a rolled-up piece of paper or something similar.
Remi pulled out a pair of wire cutters from her purse. When she had gone to a hardware store in Florence the previous day, she had felt crazy buying all these tools, not knowing which she’d need in the church, if any at all. Now they were coming in handy.
With breathless care, she put the wire cutters on the very end of the copper tube, angled the tube a bit so whatever was inside would sink to the other end, and pressed.
The end of the tube popped off with a loud snip.
Remi took a deep breath, set down the wire cutters, and cupped her hand, turning the copper tube so the open side hung down.
A little roll of parchment fell into her hand.
Trembling a little, she tried to unroll it.
Her hands shook too much. She fumbled the paper and it popped out of her grasp. She gave a little yelp as it almost rolled off the table.
She grabbed it, took a deep breath to settle herself, and carefully unrolled it.
Written on it, in a small and tidy hand, was a series of letters and numbers.
“X3f6Oee7c7
bE336ungl2
6phoistmil”
A code.
Disappointment threatened to drag her down. She’d searched for so long, risked and compromised so much, only to be confronted with another puzzle.
But then a slow smile spread across Remi’s face.
Oh, you think you’re going to stop me with a code, eh?
Well, I just happen to be the world’s foremost expert on medieval codes.
She gathered the pieces of the shattered figurine in a handkerchief and tucked them away. Then she carefully copied out the code onto a sheet of paper.
Time to return to the United States, where she had her reference materials and her main computer. The tools she needed to crack this and uncover its secret.
The adventure is not over. I’m just passing through to the next step.