CHAPTER 29

Thy kingdom come, thy will be done.

APRIL 3RD, 1492

The library is dark, but he can see by the shapes of the windows that it would be well lit in daylight. It is not a proper scriptorium such as they have in San Marco, but it is a good room. It smells of leather and good wax candles. The demons completely fill all the space in the room, and the sound they make is deafening, louder than the streets of Florence at the end of Carnival. Whatever is drawing them, it is here. “Stay back,” he says to the others. “And no more water unless I call for it.” He takes a step inside. The demons withdraw reluctantly, making a clear space around him. He moves to where they are thickest, holding the lantern high in one hand and searching with the other hand outstretched until he touches it. He finds himself reluctant to grasp it, though it seems to be just an ordinary brown-covered book. He draws it forward, ignoring the howls of the demons. They cannot speak proper words unless they are encased in flesh, but they keep up their endless gibbering and laughter. He turns the book so he can read the title in the lamplight. Pliny. Strange. He was a secular author, a Roman, a no one. Not the kind of book you’d expect demons to be drawn to. He opens the cover, and sees that the pages have been hollowed out in the centre to make the book almost a box. In the gap is a flat green stone, about the length of his palm, and as thick as his thumb, with a shallow depression in the centre.

“Now I have you,” he says, conversationally. He sets the lantern down on the writing table and moves the book to his right hand.

As soon as his fingers touch the stone, memory crashes over him like a wave. He screams and falls to the floor, curling up into a ball. First the terrible knowledge that he is a demon, not a man. Then the memories of all the other iterations where he has not known it until finding himself in Hell, and the last one where he had known it on Earth. The demons are howling and screaming all around him. He cries, choking on his sobs, weeping all the tears he cannot weep in Hell. Then Silvestro throws his holy water, soaking Girolamo, damaging the books, and making a clear path through the demon-filled room. The shock of it, of the event that has never happened before, brings him to himself, to this unique moment in the library. He sputters and sits up, clutching the stone tight.

He struggles to get himself under control. He wants to get to the others as soon as he can, but first he needs to get rid of the remaining demons. Weak as he is, he does not know whether he can impose his will on them. He pulls himself slowly to his feet, using the table leg for support. He wets his hands on his robe, and flicks the holy water at the remaining demons. “Begone in the name of Jesus Christ!” He keeps going until they have all fled or been banished back to Hell. The library is empty of them, but very damp. He hopes Matthias Corvinus’s bequest to Santa Lucia can be salvaged.

“Are they gone?” Silvestro asks. “It feels as if they might be?”

“Yes, they’re gone.” He wipes his face on his wet sleeve and draws a long delicious breath of life-giving air. What a miracle breath is!

“What happened?” Silvestro comes into the library and helps him to his feet.

“Sometimes they are too strong, even for me,” he says, taking up his lantern again. “That’s why I need your help, brothers. And now I must go.”

“Thank you, Brother Girolamo,” the First Sister says. “Thank you for believing me, thank you for coming here.”

“You know you can call on us in San Marco whenever you need assistance,” he says. He puts the book into his sleeve. “I must go.”

“Are you taking that book?” she asks, sharply.

“I need it,” he says.

She frowns. “The king of Hungary sent those books here to us.”

“It might draw more demons, and I might not be able to banish them again,” he says.

“Oh! In that case take it and be welcome.”

He takes a step towards the gate, his loyal brothers at his heels like a pair of mismatched hounds.

“Is it true that Magnificent Lorenzo is dying?” the First Sister asks.

“Yes,” he says. “Pray for him. He is one of the best men of our age, and soon to be a saint at God’s side.”

Her eyes widen in surprise. “It’s true then that you foretold it?”

“There is very little in the future we cannot change if we try,” he says, and leaves. Domenico bids the nun a good night and God’s blessing.

The bridge across the Arno is lined with shops, all closed up now for night. There is the butcher reputed to be a notorious haunt of sodomites, and the barber he used to visit in his last life, not because he gave the best haircut but because he read Cicero and St Jerome. A watchman raises his lantern to see who they are, then lets them go on undisturbed. Silvestro murmurs a blessing as they pass. There is a mist on the water, and a chill air rises with a whiff of the tanneries downstream. Girolamo knows he should go back to San Marco with his brothers. In the morning Pico will come to take him to Careggi, to Lorenzo, and the others. He is too impatient. He has another chance, he has the stone, and he is on Earth! He wants to shout and jump for joy. At the very least there will be food and beauty and friendship and hope. At best, he has the stone again and anything is possible. He does not want to storm Heaven, like Crookback, but he longs to break open the gates of Hell. He cannot bear to waste what remains of the night.

“Go back to San Marco,” he says to Domenico and Silvestro. “I have to see the Count.”

“Now? Tonight?” Silvestro asks, amazement clear in his voice.

“Yes.”

“Does it have to do with what happened in the library?” Domenico asks.

“Yes.”

He can feel them looking at him but he doesn’t answer their unspoken questions, and they don’t ask him anything else. He stops at the corner of the market, silent now, except for rats rustling through the remains of stinking spoiled vegetables.

“I’ll see you later,” he says.

“But you’ll miss Dawn Praise,” Domenico ventures.

He has forgotten, under the weight of knowledge. This afternoon feels no closer to him than all the other times he lived through this day. His last time in Hell, and before that, his last iteration, where everything changed, feels much closer. He rubs his fingers over the stone for reassurance. “Because of what happened in Santa Lucia, seeing the Count now is very important. Dawn Praise can manage without me for once.”

“Thanks be to God,” they murmur, and go on in silence towards the monastery.

Once he is alone he can restrain his impatience no longer. He runs across the empty marketplace and down the Via Porta Rossa. He lived for so many years in the building that he knows the trick of opening the outer door and slips inside easily without needing to disturb anyone. He runs up the two flights of stairs and hesitates on the gallery that runs around, linking all the rooms. Where will Pico be? The little study where Girolamo later lived? Or the room on the end where Angelo died, which became the Pardos’ dining room, but which he knows was originally Isabella’s bedroom. They have servants, he knows, he doesn’t know where they sleep.

He hesitates on the gallery. He could still leave, go back to San Marco, wait for morning. It’s well on into the night now, a strange time for visiting. But he couldn’t bear it. He could hardly stand the deception with Silvestro and Domenico as they walked together. He can’t go to services and pretend, not when he cannot pray. He needs to talk to people who will understand. But he can’t be sure Pico is even here. He will be in Florence the next morning and come looking for Girolamo in San Marco. But could be at Careggi now, or at the Medici Palace. In any case Isabella will be here, and she will know where Pico is.

He lifts his lantern and knocks on the door to the study, his door as he thinks of it. It looks cleaner than when he last saw it, less scuffed. He wants to kiss it in its familiarity, run his fingers over the pattern in the wood grain. Everything is wonderful, because it is Earth and not Hell, because it is beautiful, or has the potential to be beautiful, because God’s grace is hovering over it. There is no response to his knock. He walks around the corner, the shadows dancing as he walks, and knocks on the bedroom door. “Pico?”

“Who’s there?” Pico calls.

He is delighted to hear his voice, and very relieved to find him here. He opens the door. “Pico? It’s just me, Girolamo.”

Pico and Isabella are both in the bed. Pico snatches the covers and pulls them over Isabella. Girolamo has seen no more than a tangle of limbs and her long dark hair lying spread across the pillow, all immediately smothered in blankets. “Brother Girolamo? What is it? What brings you here?” Pico sits up, swinging his pale hairy legs over the side of the bed. “How did you know to come here? What’s happened? Is it Lorenzo?”

Pico looks annoyed to be woken. Yet the expression on his face as he looks at Girolamo mingles friendship and respect. This is not how he looked at him when he knew what he was. There was more intimacy, indeed, but also some contempt. A tiny part of Girolamo wants to retain his respect, although he knows how unworthy of it he is. He knows it will vanish as soon as Pico knows what he is, never to be seen again.

“Lorenzo will live until Sunday, it’s not that. How I knew to come here is hard to explain. I have found something you need to see, Pico.”

“All right. How exciting. Give me a moment to get dressed and I’ll be with you.”

“I’ll wait in the study,” he says, and leaves.

In the study he is almost surprised not to see his little bed and his own small collection of books. He walks around the table and admires Pico’s much more extensive collection. He looks up when Pico comes in grinning, tucking his shirt in. “You nearly frightened my little Isabella out of her wits,” he says. “I had no idea you knew about this place.”

Girolamo pulls the book out of his sleeve. “Look at this,” he says.

Pico takes the book eagerly, then raises his eyebrows. “Pliny?”

“Open it.”

He opens it, and sees the stone. “Oho! What is it?”

“Take it out.”

He takes it out, and looks at Girolamo expectantly. Girolamo feels his hopes sink.

“You don’t feel anything?”

Pico rubs it. “I’m excited it was hidden in the book. What am I supposed to feel? Feeling things when you touch stones is rather more in Marsilio’s line than mine.”

“We’ll need Marsilio, or Lorenzo.” The first time he had the stone, nothing had changed. The second time, he had remembered when touching the stone and Lorenzo at the same time. This time he had only needed the stone. Maybe it would be the same for Pico, whose second time this was. Hoping, being able to have hope, thrilled through him.

“Well they’re together at Careggi. We can go there in the morning. I was planning to take you there then, anyway, if you’d come. You’ve always been so resistant to meeting Lorenzo.” Pico yawns. “Where did you find this?”

“At the convent of Santa Lucia. They came to complain to me of an infestation of demons.” Pico is still looking at him with friendship, respect, and intelligent curiosity. He is a well-made man, with a face infused with beauty, and more than beauty, Pico’s own characteristic self, his familiar expressions. Girolamo can’t bear to deceive him any longer. “No, I can’t wait, I have to tell you everything right now, though you won’t remember until you touch Lorenzo and the stone, if you even do then.”

“What? Remember what? Are you all right, Girolamo? You seem very strange.”

“I’m not all right.” He sits down by the table, in his usual place, facing the door, in one of the wooden chairs made to his own design. He shoves aside Pico’s big silver hourglass impatiently and sets the hollow volume of Pliny down in front of him. “It might be better to wait, but I want to tell you now.”

“Go on then. I’m very curious.” Pico sits down beside him, his face full of curiosity and love and respect. He hands Girolamo back the stone.

“This is the stone of Titurel,” Girolamo says, turning it in his fingers.

“What!” Pico looks delighted. “How do you know?”

“I’m a demon. I keep living through successive versions of my mortal life, and ending up back in Hell. Two iterations ago I found this stone, and last time it let me remember, when I touched Lorenzo. You and Angelo and Marsilio and I worked together for years to—”

“You’re a demon?” Pico says, recoiling in horror.

“Yes, but I’m not— I mean you well.” He can’t say he isn’t evil, he is, by definition, as he is forever outside God’s love because of the nature of his sin. “Marsilio thinks I can use the stone to harrow Hell again.”

“Marsilio does?” Pico has one hand on the big hourglass.

“Not this time, last time. I haven’t seen him yet this time.”

“How does the stone work? Do you stare into it?”

Girolamo automatically looks down at it in his hands when Pico says that, and so barely sees him raise up the hourglass and bring it down hard on the back of his head. It gives him quite a hard blow. The glass breaks and showers him with sand. He is not unconscious, but sits dazed while Pico ties him to the chair with the sleeves of his shirt. Then Pico, bare-chested, puts his head out of the door and calls for a servant. “Cristoforo. Bring me some rope.”

“Don’t trust Cristoforo,” Girolamo says. “He’ll accept money from Piero to poison you.”

Isabella comes in as he is saying this. She is dressed and her hair is decently covered. “What!” she says, stopping in the doorway.

“Don’t come in here. Girolamo has been possessed by a demon,” Pico says.

“Not possessed,” Girolamo says.

“But what was he saying about Cristoforo?” Isabella asks.

“He’s babbling, it’s the demon speaking through him, trying to set us against each other with lies. Wake the servants, if you will. Send Cristoforo in here, and send Reparata to San Marco to find someone who can exorcise him.”

Isabella nods and backs out, frowning.

“I’m not possessed. I am a demon. I always have been. I only just remembered, when I touched the stone.” He still has the stone clutched in his hand.

“I understand that you feel that. You’ll soon feel yourself again when the demon is driven out.”

“Get Marsilio,” he says.

“Marsilio’s out at Careggi with Lorenzo, who is dying,” Pico says, impatiently. “He can’t be interrupted for this. Your brothers will exorcise you.”

“They already poured holy water over me twice tonight. I’m still damp from it,” he says, looking down at his habit, which has tidemarks. “And we have to get to Lorenzo before he dies, if he’s going to send Piero away in time.”