70

“What . . . ,” Livia sputtered. “How did you . . . ?”

“I told you,” Thomas said. “I’ve made this pilgrimage before.” He stepped back to the middle of the room, leaving open the small door on the altarpiece where the switch was hidden.

“‘He lays the sweet machine upon the stone.’ There.” Thomas pointed to a recess in the wall, where an unimposing rock was locked away behind a grate, to be viewed and venerated like the precious object it was. “Francis’s pillow. Ignatius used it, too. The sweet machine, la dorce machina, that would be his body. But there’s another machine here, too. This one. That’s what it’s called, Il Macchina. Thomas of Spoleto built it in 1704 to house relics Lorenzo di Medici donated to this church.”

“But—it still works?”

“It’s spring-loaded. As long as the friars replace the springs every few decades, it’s fine. I think they need to oil the hinges, though. It shouldn’t creak like that.”

“And Lorenzo di Medici? He was a fan of Saint Francis? That’s a stretch.”

“Desperation to get into heaven makes strange bedfellows.”

“Desperation of any kind does that, I suppose. Like you and me.”

He looked at her. He had to be able, he’d decided, to look at her, if they were to continue. And they had to continue. Lorenzo may have lied to Thomas, the Church may have lied to everyone, but Lorenzo was still a man and even if it were remotely possible that the Noantri were actually people, just a different kind of people, still, becoming one was the sort of choice a man should be able to make for himself. Not have made for him, by someone who considered him an enemy.

“Yes.” Steadily, he returned her gaze. “Like you and me.” He kept his eyes on hers, found he could, in fact, look at her, and was relieved (though he already regretted the choice of the word “bedfellows”). It might not be wise, though, to stand too near her. He took a step forward, toward the newly revealed shelves of caskets, boxes, stands, and tiny treasure chests in which rested particles of bone and hair that had once been living, breathing saints.

“Well,” Livia said, “I’m very impressed.” She moved forward, to stand at the altar also, but to his relief she kept a space between them. “But there must be over a hundred reliquaries here.” She stepped up on the small stone ledge where the altarpiece sat. Reaching out, she tentatively pushed and pulled at half a dozen of the gold and silver cases. “They’re fastened down. Some of them seem to be built in. It would take us hours to remove them all and search them, or search behind them or under them. How—” She stopped. “I’m sorry. I was about to ask you what we should do next.”

Thomas nodded and didn’t take his eyes off the reliquaries. He’d been trying to get inside the head of Mario Damiani; this might be a good time for the famous Thomas Kelly laser-beam concentration, that blazing focus that allowed for no distractions. “If I were leaving a poem for you”—he felt a flush of heat in his cheeks—“I’d try to think what you’d be likely to look for. Something that meant a lot to the two of us—the two of them, I mean. If I were Mario. That meant a lot to them—to Damiani and Spencer George. What would that be? You knew them.”

“Only Spencer.” He could tell she was trying to keep amusement out of her voice.

“Yes, I know that. But he—they—” He swallowed. “Or maybe, not something they shared, but something Damiani would expect Spencer George to expect him to think of . . .”

“A place,” she said, taking over. “A saint, a name. This was Damiani, so a pun, a joke, an elliptical reference. Maybe—”

Bees, Thomas thought, trying desperately to detour his brain away from the sound of her voice. Swarm. It meant something. Those were the words that had led them to Ludovica Albertoni, not to this cell, but still . . . Wings untorn. Nothing about the Ludovica tomb particularly called for bee imagery. It was odd, almost forced, in a way nothing of Damiani’s had been before this. Bees . . .

“Virgil!” he burst out.

“What? Where?”

“Virgil. He thought bees were immortal. That a hive could come back to life after a plague wiped it out. That would’ve appealed to Damiani, wouldn’t it? To one of your people?” The words tumbled out so fast Thomas nearly tripped over them. “He wrote about it. Virgil did. A whole beekeeping manual. Part of a larger work called ‘Farmers.’ In English, it’s called that. Virgil wrote it in Latin but he titled it in Greek.” He grinned. “‘Farmers,’ in Greek. He called it the Georgics.”

Livia stared at him. “You’re amazing. I’ve spent the last century among academics, but you’re amazing. Can all Jesuits do this?”

Thomas turned away to hide the glow of pride suffusing his cheeks. Honestly, Thomas. A female vampire is impressed by your intellect and that makes you blush? Add that to the ever-growing list of things to take into the confessional next time he had the chance. He scanned the reliquaries. Each bore a small silver plate inscribed in tiny, flowing script. The low light made them hard for him to read. He knew she could do better, and it wasn’t thirty seconds before she pointed and said, “There.” Thomas leaned forward to examine one of the larger, more elaborate of the boxes, a gold castle flying a tiny gold flag. The silver script spelled out a name that should have been obvious to them from the start. With his erudition, his love of wordplay—and his love of Spencer—Damiani had chosen images for the poem to the erotic Ludovica sculpture that would have made his lover smile. They were Noantri, the lovers, and they were homosexuals; Thomas supposed he’d have to add to his list of items to take into the confessional the fact that he hoped, when this was over, the historian got a chance to see the poem, and that it did make him smile.

“It’s a toe bone,” Livia said, gently rocking the golden castle to see if it could be removed. “From the left foot of Saint George.”