42

Thomas read Mario Damiani’s cryptic words with, a tiny corner of his mind was pleased to note, less befuddlement than he’d felt in the Vatican Library when first faced with the poet’s works. He was beginning to get inside Damiani’s head, he thought. These lines, he was sure, would soon yield to serious and methodical consideration and offer up their meaning.

If he could bring serious and methodical consideration to bear.

The truth was, leaning here on the worn wooden counter beside Livia Pietro, under the scrutiny of a painted angel peeking over a painted curtain, Thomas was having trouble concentrating. Part of it was the distraction created by the aromas swirling through the room. How many weeks, months perhaps, had it been since anyone had opened that door, before he and Pietro had, well, broken in? In all that time the sunlight of summer, now fading to autumn, had continued to fall through the ancient windows. In the quiet warmth, spices, medicinal herbs, flowers, and oils had released their intoxicating scents into the air.

The aromas were part of it; but the other part was that Thomas was noticing them.

Father Thomas Kelly was famous for his scholarly focus, which was another way of saying he was an absentminded professor. Though fond of flowers and sunshine, he generally took as little notice of them while working as he did of howling winter storms and broken water pipes—each of which had landed him in trouble in the past, to the great amusement of his colleagues. (“Until your feet got wet? Seriously?”) Faced with a task as monumentally important as the one he was involved in now, it seemed inexplicable to Thomas that he was thinking about scent.

And even more ridiculous, he realized, that he was thinking about thinking about scent. He was distracted by his own distraction. While Lorenzo’s life, and death, and afterlife, hung in the balance.

Thomas shifted position, leaning closer to the unfolded paper. Pietro raised her eyebrows as he crowded her, but said nothing. Together they read:

Sarve Reggina, madre de la sorgente

de nasscita e de morte, fragrante ojjo ner core

de le lanterne, tutto d’oro, potente

drento. Ave all’anima, ar piede, a la tera

ch’aregge sordati e ssuore, peregrini ner gnente.

Ave, Maria, mother of the source

of birth and death, and fragrant, flowing oil

that fuels the lanterns, golden, and the force

within. Ave, the soul, the foot, the soil

’neath nuns and soldiers, pilgrims on their course.

Just below the last line of the poem: the letters T I V A C, in heavy lead pencil, all uppercase.

At first neither of them spoke. The soft air of the apothecary enfolded them in scent and silence. Finally, Pietro tentatively offered, “Maria. Foot, again. Soil. Pilgrimage. Well, they’re pilgrimage poems. And these.” She pointed, not touching the paper. “What do you suppose this means?”

“T-I-V-A-C?” With equal uncertainty, Thomas said, “Nothing I can see. Maybe it’s initials? Something Spencer George would understand?”

“I suppose. Though we can’t very well ask him right now.”

“And,” Thomas realized, “we can’t be sure Damiani wrote them. Uppercase letters, lead, not ink—someone else might have done it.”

“In Damiani’s notebook? I got the feeling from Spencer that Damiani never showed his notebooks to anyone. But all right, let’s let that go for now and focus on the poem.”

If only I could focus, Thomas thought. But he redoubled his efforts and stared at the words. And slowly found himself drawn in, absorbed in the old, familiar way, until he all but felt the connections being made in his brain between what he was learning now, and what he already knew. “Something else,” he said slowly, as his synapses sizzled and clicked. “Soil, foot, you’re right, pilgrimage, but something else . . . Maria, yes, so another church dedicated to Mary. But: Source. Oil. Soldiers, the soldiers are important . . . Lanterns . . . golden lanterns . . . No! Not the lanterns are golden! The oil is golden. The oil. Where the oil bubbled up.” He saw the light go on in Pietro’s eyes and wondered if it was mirrored in his own.