Fanatics (13 page)

He got up and waved his hand. “Don’t ask.”

W
HEN
I
GOT TO
W
ICKLOW
P
OINT
the estate gate was blocked by a panel van with
BRADLEY SUMMERHILL & SON, AUCTIONEERS
painted on the side. Brad Summerhill, the son, was heaving his bulk from the driver’s seat. I pulled my motorcycle around the van and activated the remote.

“Follow me,” I said, and steered through the opening gate.

Brad backed the van up to the coach house door. I helped him lug the table into the shop.

Brad handed me a clipboard. “Sign here,” he said in his usual barely civilized manner.

I initialled the hand-printed form and passed the clipboard back.

“Your father was lucky,” Brad remarked.

“Oh?”

“He should never have gotten the table so cheap.”

Brad always seemed as if he’d sucked half a dozen lemons before he began his day.

“He bought it at auction, didn’t he?”

“Yeah.”

“Your auction.”

“So?”

“So how does an auction work? Remind me.”

“Forget it,” Brad growled. He squeezed himself behind the wheel and drove off.

“Y
OU’LL TAKE SOME
refreshment before you begin your work,” Mrs. Stoppini informed me.

“Love to.”

“Tea?”

“I guess it’s too late for a cappuccino,” I said, “even for an uncivilized guy like me.”

Mrs. Stoppini checked the kitchen clock. “Most assuredly not.”

She went to the coffee machine and began to froth the milk. Over her shoulder and in a voice that suggested a major crime had occurred, she protested, “Your friend left without saying hello.”

“Brad was delivering a table my father bought. It needs to be refinished. Brad was in a hurry. He’s not a friend, really. More of a business, er …”

“Associate?”

“Right. More that than friend. He’s a little abrupt at times.”

“Then he has missed out on a homemade brioche.”

“Serves him right.”

Mrs. Stoppini made the espresso in a wide cup, then poured the foamy milk on top and set the cup on the table.

“May I enquire how your work is progressing?” she asked, sitting down and pushing the plate of pastries toward me.

“Well,” I said after swallowing a piece of bread roll as light as a fairy’s wing, “as you know, the repairs, the painting, and the mantel are finished. I’ve made an inventory of the furniture and everything else that isn’t a book, including the items in the, er … well, as I said, everything. Raphaella has worked out an efficient way of cataloguing the books. Which reminds me, I’ll need to know which ones you want noted in detail.”

“There are a number of volumes that he valued more than the others. They are all to be found in the alcove,” Mrs. Stoppini replied.

I should have known. “Okay” was all I said.

“Splendid progress, Mr. Havelock.”

“I have work to do in the shop this morning—the table I mentioned—then I’ll put in a few hours with the books.”

“Excellent. And I do think your young lady will prove to be an asset.”

I left the house smiling, picturing the look on Raphaella’s face when I informed her that she was not only a young lady but an asset.

Nourished by the cappuccino and brioches, I crossed the yard to the shop and began to inspect the table—a plain, functional piece of pine furniture, still sound but showing its age through scratches, dents, flaking paint, cigarette burns, and one wobbly leg. Dad wanted it refinished as original,
which meant seeing to the leg and then stripping off the old finish and sanding the table before repainting it.

I set to work, and after a few hours the piece stood clean and ready for sanding. I hung up my apron, washed my hands, and went to the house. I wanted to acquaint myself with the books in the alcove before Raphaella and I began to catalogue them in detail. On the day we had worked out the professor’s method of organizing his collection and Raphaella had stuck her labels on the “columns,” we had avoided that part of the room.

I entered the library and shut the doors behind me. I felt as if I had closed myself off from the world. Since the first day I had come through those pocket doors with their lion’s-head knobs the alcove had seemed like a sinister space all its own, a special niche that was physically part of the larger room but at the same time a separate area. Most of the books scattered across the hardwood and rugs had been found in or around the alcove, and the table there had been knocked over, as if the professor’s final struggle had begun there. But it was more than that. The room’s menacing atmosphere intensified as I neared the alcove. The occasional whiff of smoke I often detected in the library was stronger there. My discovery of the keys and the secret cupboard with its weird contents seemed to intensify the mystery and malevolence.

Once again I wondered if I was letting my imagination carry me away. Could the whole mystery surrounding the professor’s death and the fire be explained by a simple break-in gone wrong? Had someone known about the cross, the vellum manuscripts, the medal—all worth who knew how many thousands or millions of dollars—and entered the house bent on theft? Could a violent struggle with a burglar
explain the condition of the room the night the professor died—even the death itself, and the fire?

The theory was attractive. It explained things logically, in a real-world way, and it pushed thoughts of the supernatural and of sinister presences back into the land of superstition, where they belonged.

But it didn’t account for my dreams, which I
knew
were connected in some way to the Corbizzi house and the medal, although I hadn’t discovered how. It didn’t clarify the premonitions felt by both me and Raphaella. I trusted Raphaella’s insight more than I would a compass or an adding machine. And once more I reminded myself that my own experience had proved that presences and the supernatural were as real as the hardwood floor under my feet.

So I stood there in the alcove, leaning back on the table, and let my eye wander at random over some of the titles.
The Pazzi Family of Renaissance Florence
,
Savonarola and Il Magnifico
,
The Renaissance Popes
,
The Siege of San Marco
,
Blood in the Cathedral: The Pazzi–Medici Feud
,
Savonarolan Theocracy
—the last by none other than Eduardo Corbizzi.

The prof had been a scholar of Renaissance Italy, which I knew—after I looked it up—was the period from 1300
CE
to 1600
CE
. But that was all I knew, besides the fact that I couldn’t have found Florence on a map. I went to the reference shelves behind the escritoire and took down an atlas, looked up the city’s name in the index. Florence was in Tuscany, a region in central Italy, just like Marco had said.

My cell trilled. A city number I didn’t recognize.

“Hello?”

“Garnet Havelock?”

“That’s me.”

“Hello, this is Marshall Northrop.”

My parents’ friend, the professor from the classical studies department at York University.

“Thanks for calling,” I said.

We traded pleasantries for a few minutes, then Northrop got down to business. “You needed some translations. Got a pen handy?”

I sat down at Raphaella’s work station by the window and pulled a writing tablet to hand.

“Ready,” I said.

“First, let’s talk about the book. The title,
Compendium Revelationem
, is easy. The English is ‘Collection of Revelations.’ ”

“Okay.”

“Hieronymvs is a given or what used to be called a Christian name,” he went on. “You may not have known that in Latin a
v
is an English
u
. The modern spelling would be Hieronymus, like the artist Hieronymus Bosch.”

“Ah, I see,” I said knowingly. I had no idea who the prof was referring to.

“In English the name would be Jerome.”

“Got it.”

“Ferrara is, of course, the Italian city.”

“Uh-huh.”

“Firenze is the Italian for Florence.”

“Right.”

“You have the date already—1495. The rest is a name—the printer and/or publisher of the book, Signore Francesco—that’s Francis, like the saint—Bonaccorsi. With me so far?”

“I’m with you,” I replied, scribbling.

“Now to the words imprinted around the circumference of the medal. As you said in your email, some of the words are indecipherable.”

I didn’t remember writing a six-syllable word in my letter. But I said, “Understood.”

“Remember that the
v
in Latin is a
u
in English. Also relevant is this: it was customary when putting Latin inscriptions on buildings, statues, medallions, and so on to compress words where space demanded.
Sup
is ‘super’ or ‘above,’ for example. Add this fact to the poor quality of the inscription and I have quite a challenge. All I can be sure about for the one side of the medal is ‘Hieronymus’ and ‘Doctissimus’—Most Learned Jerome—a formal title for an academic or churchman.

“On the reverse side of the medal we have better luck. I find ‘The sword of the Lord above the earth’ and ‘speedily and rapidly’ and ‘the spirit copiously advises.’ That might also be ‘amply warns.’ But here’s a loose translation: ‘Behold, bold and swift shall be the sword of the Lord upon the land.’ ”

“Got it,” I said, jotting furiously.

“Good. I’m not sure how helpful that is to you.”

“It’s very useful,” I said. “Thanks a lot. You’ve cleared up a few things. Um, if you have a minute or two more, there’s something I heard that I’m almost certain is Latin. I’m not sure how accurately I can repeat it.”

“Go ahead.”

I recited the words spoken by the torture victim in my dream.

And the professor laughed.

“I guess I didn’t say it very well,” I said, disappointed.

“Sorry, I wasn’t laughing at you. What you said is taken from two very well-known works. Well, if you’re Catholic and know Latin, that is. The part beginning with
Credo
is from a
statement of belief, the Nicene Creed. It goes, ‘I believe in one God, the Father almighty, maker of heaven and earth.’ And so on. Want me to repeat that?”

“I’m writing it down. Go on.”

“The second bit is a prayer. ‘Out of the depths I have cried to thee, oh Lord. Lord hear my voice.’ It’s from the Psalms and has been widely recited since medieval times.”

“Oh.”

“I believe it was Oscar Wilde who wrote a book while in prison. He titled it
De Profundis
, or ‘From the Depths.’ ”

“Prison, you said?”

“That’s right. They locked Oscar up for being gay. It was against the law in those days. What a world, eh? Anything else I can do for you?”

“No. This is great,” I said. “I really appreciate it.”

“Any time, Garnet. My best to your parents.”

And he was gone.

With swelling excitement I opened my laptop and brought up the page of words I had copied from the medal and the professor’s old copy of
Compendium Revelationem
. My eyes darted back and forth between the computer screen and the scribbles I had made during the phone call.

The man in my dream was the man on the medal and his name was Hieronymus.

One of the names on the
Compendium
was Hieronymus. Northrop had said that Bonaccorsi was probably the publisher. So Hieronymus was probably the author.

I had the names of two cities in Italy, Ferrara and Firenze, or Florence. How they fit the puzzle was anybody’s guess.

I sat back and stretched. Puzzles. Conundrums. Riddles. Enigmas. Fun? Sometimes, but not this time. Frustrating?
Definitely. Dangerous? I looked around. Maybe. Probably.

My gaze was drawn to the alcove. “Well, Professor Eduardo Corbizzi,” I said out loud, “maybe I should ask you.”

I crossed the room and took his
Savonarolan Theocracy
from the shelf and carried it to one of the comfy leather club chairs in front of the hearth and the new mantel. Wondering what “savonarolan” meant, I began to read. The first chapter took me to Renaissance Florence. After half an hour or so of dry academic paragraphs I sat back and stared at the ceiling, the book open on my lap.

It couldn’t be this easy, I thought.

Savonarola. A surname. First name, Girolamo. Born and educated in Ferrara. Lived and preached in Florence. A Dominican monk and a priest. A writer and renowned orator. One of his most famous books was
Compendium Revelationem
, in which he recounted visions of the future he claimed were revealed to him by God.

He was the subject of Professor Corbizzi’s book.

His name, Girolamo, meant Hieronymus in Latin and Jerome in English.

He was the face on the medal, the author of the “Collection of Revelations,” the subject of Professor Corbizzi’s book, and the tortured prisoner in my dream. And according to Professor Eduardo Corbizzi, he was a fanatic.

I
CALLED
R
APHAELLA
to fill her in on my discoveries and deductions. She didn’t answer her cell, so I left her a message. “I’ve been detecting some more. And
delving
deeply. Call you later.”

With the new information spinning around in my head, I left the library behind and went to the shop. Working at my trade always took my mind off other things—a welcome relief at that point. I had too many new bits of information and a host of questions spinning in my mind.

Outside, the air had cooled and slate-coloured cloud had rolled in. I flicked the shop lights on, then, wearing apron, gloves, and mask, opened a can of primer. I flipped the table upside down onto a bench and brushed primer onto the underside and legs. A gentle drizzle misted the window, and before I had finished the table a punishing downpour had set in. As I was cleaning up, my cell rang. Raphaella, I hoped.

“Shall I assume you will remain for the night once again, Mr. Havelock? The weather is terrible and the forecast indicates that it will continue until past midnight.”