Fanatics (16 page)

“Wow. Give you a morning in with some old books and you’re quoting Latin.”

“Glad you’re impressed. The Dominicans were a preaching order of monks, defenders of correct Roman Catholic doctrine, and—get this—they were the boys who conducted the Holy Inquisition, torturing and burning people all over Europe. There was a play on words I’d like to tell you about if you don’t mind a bit more Latin.”

“I think I’m up to it.”

“Do-mi-ni-can,” I enunciated. “
Do-mi-ne Ca-ne
. Latin for ‘the dogs of God.’ Nice fellas if you could catch them in the right mood. Anyway, that’s what I’ve learned so far. Savonarola is in Bologna, studying to be a good Dominican preacher.”

“It sounds like this Girolamo didn’t get enough attention as a child.”

“People at the time thought he was holy.”

Raphaella scoffed.

“Anyway, the food’s all gone,” I pointed out. “Want to take a walk?”

“Let’s take the dishes inside first.”

W
E DIDN’T GET FAR
—just along the shore a ways, near the spot where I’d found the
GPS
—before we sprawled on the grass in the shade of a willow at the edge of the water. White butterflies fluttered in the hot air, and the lake lay calm and green under a cloudless sky. Raphaella reclined on her back, and I lounged beside her, propped up on one elbow.

“How’s the prof’s manuscript?” I asked lazily.

“Not as academic as I thought it would be.”

“That’s a surprise.”

“Yeah. He says in the preface it’s for a general audience. But it’s a little dry.”

“As in ‘boring’?”

“Not at all. It’s slow going, though. Very intellectual. And theoretical. His central thesis is—”

“In just a few hours you’ve read enough to work out his
thesis
?”

“It was pretty easy,” Raphaella replied nonchalantly. “I just read the paragraph in his preface that begins, ‘The thesis I hope to demonstrate in this book is …’ ”

“Oh.”

“The prof says that two similar trends in the modern world have led to a number of theocratic governments, and that this type of regime is the enemy of democracy and tolerance.”

“Ah.”

“Or words to that effect.”

“I see.” I didn’t see at all.

“Not exactly light reading,” Raphaella remarked, “even if the book is for the general public.”

“Speaking as a member of that public, I’d say there are quite a few heavy-duty polysyllabics in that thesis.”

“The key one is theocracy—government by priests or ayatollahs or the equivalent who claim to rule according to God’s laws. The prof claims theocracies are dangerous. It works like this: God wants us to live according to his laws, which have been written down as Holy Scripture like the Qur’an, the Torah, the New Testament, whatever. God inspired the Scriptures, so what they say is true.”

“But people have been arguing for centuries over interpretations of those books.”

“Exactly. In a theocratic government there’s always someone, or a small number of men—and it’s
always
men—who claim special knowledge. They’re usually priests, or the equivalent—imams, rabbis, the Council of Seven. They—and only they—have the correct interpretation. So
they
say. To go against them is therefore to go against the will of God. There’s no room for disagreement by ordinary people.”

“So there’s no real democracy,” I said. “The average citizen is left out.”

Raphaella nodded. “And no tolerance. If there’s only one divinely inspired holy book, there’s only one ‘true’ religion. And if the laws are based on the book, they’re infallible.”

I stated the logical conclusion. “And if you oppose the government, you’re going against God. I can see why the prof was worried enough to write a big thick book.”

“He was distressed, that’s for sure.”

“I’m reading one of the prof’s books. It’s called
Savonarolan Theocracy
.”

Raphaella sat up. “In the manuscript, the prof devotes
a whole section, which I haven’t read yet, to your Dog of God monk.”

“I think I can guess what he’ll say.”

“Ready for a couple more polysyllabics?” Raphaella asked.

“Fire away.”

“Okay. Throughout history two related movements occur, then fade, then emerge again, in a sort of cycle—puritanism and fundamentalism.”

“Aha! That fits with another of the prof’s books,
Puritanism, Fundamentalism, and Theocracy
. I’m familiar with both terms. Puritans are the American Thanksgiving guys in their black suits and funny hats, right? And fundamentalists are the ones who rant against movies and books that have too much sex.”

“Um, not exactly.”

“I knew it couldn’t be that simple.”

“Originally, ‘puritan’ meant someone who thought his religion had wandered off track. Puritans wanted to go back to the basics in their worship and doctrines. There was the feeling that this purity had been lost somewhere along the way. A fundamentalist was very similar. He was afraid his religion had become watered down or corrupted, and he wanted to get back to the fundamentals of his faith. In both cases, these people take their holy books literally. They tighten up on the so-called interpretations and say there’s nothing to interpret. It’s the words of God coming through the prophets, or the Prophet. It means what it says. Period.

“The prof wrote that history shows these movements usually shift toward theocracy. What started off as an attempt to improve the religion ends as an intolerant and undemocratic form of government, like in Salem, Massachusetts,
where witches were burned, or like today’s Islamist political movements or governments.”

“Everything I’ve read about Savonarola so far suggests he was a puritan.”

We were silent for a moment, each of us fitting ideas together, attempting to make a clear picture from the bits we had discovered so far. Raphaella’s eyes suddenly widened.

“Do you get the impression that the Corbizzi mansion is a battleground between the long-dead monk and the recently dead professor?”

I nodded. “And we’re standing between them.”

I looked out over the lake, suddenly overwhelmed by what I had gotten us into.

“Raphaella, I wish I had never gone to the Half Moon that morning and talked to Marco. I wish I hadn’t come to this place and made that agreement with Mrs. Stoppini.”

“If wishes were horses, beggars would ride.”

“I’m sorry I dragged you into all this,” I said.

Raphaella lifted her face to the sky, removed her barrettes, and shook her hair free, allowing it to tumble over her shoulders and down her back, as if she was preparing herself for a challenge. Then she turned to me and smiled.

“I go where you go, Garnet.”

W
E STROLLED SLOWLY
back to the house, our energy drained by the soft summer afternoon, the drone of bees in the flower beds and the gloom that followed in the wake of our reading. We had been dragged into an otherworldly conflict, like swimmers in a riptide, and we knew our only defence was to go with the current until it lost some of its strength, then strike off in another direction. Not a cheerful thought on a beautiful summer’s day far removed from the world of Professor Eduardo Corbizzi—and that of the cranky Italian friar who had been linked to him by events or forces Raphaella and I could so far only vaguely understand.

As we turned the corner of the mansion, I stopped. And groaned. Something had flickered behind the library window.

“Not again,” I muttered.

Raphaella looked at me, eyebrows raised.

“Did you see that?” I asked.

“What? Where?”

“In the library. Something moved.”

At that time of day, with sunlight slanting across the yard, throwing shadows over the lawn, the window glass was a pattern of reflected sky and treetops so deceiving that birds might fly directly into the glass thinking they were winging through the trees. But I could have sworn I had caught sight of someone moving inside the library.

“I can feel something, but I didn’t see anything,” Raphaella whispered. “Are you sure?”

“No. Yes. I don’t know.”

“Well, I feel better now that you’ve cleared that up. And why am I whispering again?” she added, annoyed with herself.

“We’re both on edge.”

“The edge of sanity, I’d say. Let’s go in.”

Any doubts I had held about my vision disappeared as soon as we closed the library doors behind us. The acrid odour of smoke was so strong it stung my nostrils. Raphaella stood still beside me, sniffing the air. A cold fingernail of dread scratched the back of my neck.

“Where there’s smoke there’s—”

“A ghost,” Raphaella cut in, drawing air through her nose like a professional wine taster, analyzing the ingredients of the invisible smoke the way I had seen her nasally exploring the medicines in the Demeter. Dealing with herbal remedies required a finely tuned olfactory organ, she had often told me.

“This is what you’ve been telling me about?”

“It’s him again,” I said. “But the smell is stronger this time.”

“I see—smell—what you mean.” Raphaella wrinkled her
nose. “Burnt wood, cloth,” she murmured, as if taking inventory, “leather, hot iron, paper. And—ugh—underneath it all, something fetid. But why smoke?”

“What do you mean?”

“Why would this presence leave behind the smell of burning?”

“I assume because he caused the fire that led to the professor’s …”

“Maybe,” Raphaella mused. “But you’d think—”

“Look,” I exclaimed, leading the way across the room. “Something’s disturbed the manuscript.”

“I left it in two neat stacks.”

The bitter stink was more pronounced here. The books I had been using lay open where I had left them, but the manuscript had been tampered with. Several pages were askew. I checked the window. It was closed and locked as it always was when I left the library, so no breeze had moved the pages.

I looked around, alert for any more signs of the spirit’s presence. Was he here now, I wondered, keeping himself invisible? My eyes probed the alcove. The bookcase door hung open, exposing the secret cupboard with its rolled-up door and empty shelves. The cross gleamed on the tabletop, untouched, with the small wooden box beside it.

“There’s a page on the floor,” Raphaella said, bending to retrieve the sheet. Between trembling hands she clutched it, with its lines of neatly typed letters and pencilled scribbles here and there, and sniffed it.

“Smoky,” she murmured.

“Look at the edges,” I pointed out.

Along one margin and across the top of the typed page, the thick white paper showed a faint brown stain. I had seen
marks like that on lots of old books. Books that had been near a fire.

“I’
D BETTER PHOTOGRAPH
the pages now,” Raphaella cautioned. “Just to be safe.”

We worked fast. Raphaella leaned over the stack, snapped a picture, I removed the page, the camera clicked again, and so on. When the
PIE
’s memory was full, she emailed the images to her address at the Demeter, cleared the memory, and started shooting once more. It was a tedious process, but we got it done.

Raphaella tidied up the manuscript and tucked it back into its file case, securing the flap with a stouter than necessary knot. She tossed the
PIE
into her backpack. I returned the
Compendium
and cross, box, and manuscript to the cupboard and locked up.

“We have to make sure we do this—return everything to the cupboard—whenever we leave the library,” I said.

“Right. Well, I’m ready,” she said, looking around nervously.

“Let’s get out of here.”

Tucking the little brass keys into their place under the rosary in the box and closing the escritoire drawer, I was unable to shake the feeling that the spirit was watching every move.

We found Mrs. Stoppini sitting at a small desk in the main-floor room she called the parlour, writing letters on thick creamy paper with a fountain pen as if she was still in the last century. She insisted on seeing us to the door.

“See you soon,” I said.

“I shall look forward to it.”

Outside, Raphaella kissed me goodbye and slid behind the steering wheel of her mother’s car. She waved out the window as she drove off down the shady lane. She had a few hours’ work to do at the Demeter.

I went into the shop, gave the refinished table a quick final inspection. It looked great. Dad will be pleased, I thought as I locked up. I pulled on my jacket and helmet, mounted up, and piloted the motorcycle through the estate gates, glad to be leaving the place and wondering once again how Mrs. Stoppini could live in that house without contact with the spirit that I was more and more sure was full of dark intentions.

And not for the first time I felt guilty leaving her alone there. I reminded myself that she had been by herself in that big house when I met her, and beyond her fear of the library—which I could now fully relate to—she had showed no signs of knowing about any spiritual visitations.

I rode straight into town, heading for the public library across the road from the Olde Gold. The beginnings of a plan were moving around in my mind, like puzzle bits scattered across a tabletop.

A
N HOUR OR SO
later I walked in the back door of my house with two books on Savonarola under my arm—the same titles I had been reading in the prof’s library. In our
kitchen I listened for signs of activity from Mom’s study. All was quiet except for the ticking of the clock above the kitchen sink.

“Anybody home?” I called out.

Things had been tense since Dad and I had ganged up on my mother about the Afghanistan assignment. For a day or so it had seemed she had given up on the idea, but she had never said so in so many words. All three of us avoided the subject altogether—which made it one of those “elephant in the living room” things that just kept everybody on edge.

So I was kind of glad to have the house to myself for a while. Tension was one thing I didn’t need right then. My nerves were tight as piano wires as it was. I fixed a mug of tea and took it up to my room, dumping the books on the desk.