Authors: Thomas Gifford
One other sheet in the folder was just short of utter blankness. There was a mixture of capital letters that conveyed nothing to Elizabeth. A code of Val’s impervious to interpretation. It didn’t look breakable. But she took it with her anyway.
At the office, madness reigned, but she found a moment the next day to take Sister Bernadine aside over two cans of Coke and give her the list.
“Here’s a special task, Sister,” she said. Sister Bernadine was having a cigarette, the one she allowed herself in the afternoon, and she always looked more grown-up and intelligent when she smoked. It was all an illusion since she was admirably grown-up and intelligent whether smoking or not. Elizabeth handed her a Xerox
copy of the sheet with the names. “You will recognize one or two of these names, as I did. I’m betting they are all dead, probably died on these dates. Covers roughly the past eighteen months. What I want is the obituary data as it appeared in their hometown papers, as it were. And render it in English for me, just so I won’t make, some dumb mistake. Okay?”
“Good as done, Sis. But it could take a bit of time—”
“Well, bring the mighty jackboot of the Mother Church down on any necks that require it. It’s important. And keep it to yourself.”
Sister Elizabeth knew that there was nothing else in the world like the Secret Archives of the Vatican.
Twenty-five miles of shelving. Thousands upon thousands of volumes too heavy for one person to lift.
She knew that it was nicknamed “the Key of St. Peter” by historians. Without that key there would have been no meaningful history of the Middle Ages.
Somewhere within the Archives were the answers to questions that have perplexed scholars through the ages.
Did the Orsini prince strangle his wife Isabella on her marriage bed in the sixteenth century … or did he hire someone else to do it?
Who was St. Catherine? With her long blond hair was she, in fact, Lucrezia Borgia?
What secrets are hidden in the seven thousand weighty volumes of indulgences? What was the payment required for the absolution of sin? For the necessary exemptions from ecclesiastical law? Money and treasure of all kinds, yes. But what in the way of personal services to the pope and his princes?
What was the plot behind the theft of the Petrarch manuscripts? Was it a last-minute improvisation because the golden seals themselves were out of reach?
And was the answer to the question perplexing the twentieth-century nun Sister Elizabeth also somewhere in the Archives? What had Val been working on? And why did she have to die?
Perhaps the answer lay in one of the nearly five
thousand papal registers, beginning with Innocent Ill’s letters in 1198, all bound in volumes the size of world atlases with the ink having turned golden with the passing centuries.…
Of all the
fondi
, as each collection of documents was called—and no one even knew how many
fondi
there truly were—there is one
fondo
, called the Miscellanea, which alone fills fifteen rooms. Its contents remain uncatalogued, a grab bag.
It had been said countless times and with good reason, God only knows what reposes within the Secret Archives.
All the records of Galileo’s trial.
The correspondence of Henry VIII and Anne Boleyn.
The personal letters of Pope Alexander Borgia and the women who loved him—Lucrezia, Vannozza dei Cattanei, and Julia Farnese.
The records of the Sacred Rota involving the most intimate testimony relating to annulments.
The archives of the Congregation of Rites, the deliberations leading to beatification and canonization, including all the reports of the Devil’s Advocates.
The complete records of the trial of Monaca di Monza, which revealed the most intimate details of the life of the Nun of Monza and the others of the convent.
The
fondo
relating to the nunciature of Venice which came to the Archives in 1835 following the fall of the Republic of Venice and contained the stories of three religious institutions suppressed rigorously in the seventeenth century.
It was all part of Sister Elizabeth’s—and even more particularly, of Val’s—background, knowing what kinds of material could be found in the Archives. And Elizabeth had heard all the stories from Val about the near impossibility of finding, by plan, what you wanted to find in the vastness of books, parchments,
buste
, or folders.
She knew about the tiny room opening off the Meridian Chamber in the Tower of the Winds. In that square room was a bookcase which contained nine thousand
buste
. Uncatalogued, unstudied, unknown. To inventory those nine thousand folders would require two scholars
working on nothing else but their contents for nearly two centuries. One bookcase.
The only meaningful index to the Secret Archives was devised long ago by Cardinal Garampi and collected in many volumes. It is incomplete, inexact, and altogether frustrating. He also wrote it in his own code.
She also knew about the gambler’s chance. It was what made the Secret Archives worth the effort.
She knew about the hundred-years rule—that the archives relating to the past century are closed. Absolutely closed.
And she remembered Curtis Lockhardt talking to them about the hundred-years rule. “Without the rule,” he had said, “half of the men who run the world would have to kill themselves. Thank God for the hundred-years rule. We Catholics know how to handle these things. Saints be praised.”
The Secret Archives of the Vatican were served by a total staff of seven men, overseen by one of their own number who is called the prefect.
Elizabeth was meeting Monsignor Petrella in half an hour in the Court of the Belvedere, home of the Secret Archives. Monsignor Petrella was the prefect. Monsignor Sandanato, who had spoken with him on her behalf, was the closest thing to a friend Petrella had, but even Sandanato did not know what she was going there for.
In half an hour she would begin trying to learn what in the Secret Archives had so fascinated Sister Val during the final months of her lifetime.
St. Peter’s Square lay in cool, bright early morning sun and shade as she crossed it, passed along the Leonine walls, and entered Vatican City through the Gate of St. Anne, strode purposefully past the
Osservatore Romano
building to the Court of the Belvedere next to the Vatican Library.
All her papers were in order, including the letter from the pope that had come with her job and her identification card with her photograph. But it was Sandanato’s emphasis on the Curtis Lockhardt connection that had speeded everything up, smoothed the way. And because of him
she was also given browsing privileges in certain areas, and browsing was
never
allowed. Curtis Lockhardt had personally raised millions to aid the Secret Archives in preservation technology. “Someday,” he had joked, “I’m going to walk in and find that Petrella has named the Xerox room after me.”
Monsignor Sandanato was waiting just inside the door, in the jarringly modern room with the floors of light marble and a big table where she would sign in.
“I was in here about a month ago to have a look at Michelangelo’s letters,” he said as they walked to the reception room. “Petrella’s an arrogant man, but he’d met his match. He told me I couldn’t see them just now and I wanted to know why not. Turned out the Holy Father had checked them out a while back and Petrella was afraid to nag him about returning them. Of course, no one else gets to check anything out. Ah, there he is. Tonio, my friend!”
The large reception room was furnished with antiques Callistus had sent over from the papal apartments. On a low table there was a tapestry of St. Peter sailing on stormy seas, not a bad warning for anyone about to begin working in the Secret Archives.
Monsignor Petrella looked like an elegant courtier with an invulnerable duchy of his own. He was tall and blond, wore a long black cassock, and his face was well preserved, vain, disturbingly unlined for a man in his fifties. He welcomed her with a thin smile and a firm handshake. Having delivered her, Sandanato excused himself to get back to the cardinal, and Elizabeth was alone with Petrella.
“As you are well aware, Sister,” Petrella said in silky English, “there are certain problems of organization here. The fact of the matter is simply this—the contents of the Archives will never be successfully catalogued, There is too much now and it is growing too quickly. Life has cast me in the role of Sisyphus and I can only do my humble best. I hope you are prepared.”
“I think I know the
fondi
I’m most interested in, but you can probably help me—that is, I’m finishing up some researches that Sister Valentine was working on—”
“Such a tragedy.” He sighed. “Such a mystery.” He raked her with his gossip’s eyes, eager for a clue.
“Do you by any chance recall where she was doing most of her work? It would be a help—”
“Ah. Yes. The Borgias, I believe. Very popular always, the Borgias. The nunciature of Venice … she spent many days in the Miscellanea. Some of the
buste
in the Tower of the Winds.” He made an openhanded gesture, as if to say, there is so much.
“I think I need to get a feel of the place. I know what a long shot it really is. But I owe it to her to try to find some footnote material.”
Petrella nodded. “Good. A realistic approach devoid of impatience is the key to retaining your sanity. This is all terra incognita. Come with me and I will show you just a bit of what you’re getting into. But you’ve been here before, have you not?”
“Only in a very limited way when we ran a piece in the magazine about the Archives. I was a tourist, you might say. Today I’m a worker.”
He smiled, nodding, leading the way.
They began in the study room with its huge black desks and bookracks for volumes too heavy to hold, the great clock, the throne on which the prefect nominally sat overseeing the room. He was usually too busy to be there. “But it’s the idea that matters,” Petrella explained. Through windows she could see the patio and the glorious red oleanders, orange trees, some students already taking a break for a smoke.
She followed along through darkened corridors lined by huge metal shelves two stories high, where the lights are timed and go off automatically as you proceed along your way, moving always in a bubble of light upon a sea of darkness. She saw the Hall of Parchments, where the ancient documents have been turned vaguely purple by a fungus that will eventually destroy them. In the oldest part of the Archives she saw the poplar cabinets built by the greatest cabinetmakers of the seventeenth century for Paul V Borghese, still bearing the coat of arms of the Borghese pope. Within those cabinets, the papal registers.
They climbed the narrow dark stairs to the top of the Tower of the Winds. Far below, the gardens of the Vatican lay like a miniature green map. The Room of the Meridian at the top was empty. Two of the walls were covered with frescoes depicting the winds as gods with wind-whipped robes. The room was designed as an astronomical observatory—’One can’t help hoping that Galileo, whose signed confession is stored downstairs, draws some consolation from this fact,” Petrella remarked—and the floor was laid out in a zodiacal diagram oriented to the rays of the sun coming through a narrow aperture in the frescoed wall. From the ceiling above hung a wind indicator, moving gently.
“The Gregorian calendar was created here,” Petrella said. “There are no lights in the tower for a very good reason. Since no artificial light is ever seen here, the presence of even the slightest flicker would indicate either fire or intruders. Clever.” He laughed softly.
In the afternoon Val settled down into the incredibly uncomfortable chair at her huge desk in the study room and sent for her first materials. She began with the
fondo
relating to the nunciature of Venice.
She hated everything that intruded on her time in the Archives but the fact was she had her job to do. For the next few days she could at best spend three hours a day in the study room and even that meant that Bernadine had to take up the slack at the office. Which meant her researches into the six names slowed down. But finally Bernadine had enough to warrant a report. Elizabeth, growing punchy from all her searching combined with the magazine work, decided to reward them both with a lunch out at a favorite trattoria near the office.
Even though she’d discovered nothing she could connect to Val, she’d begun to lose herself in the Archives. She had come across some fascinating things in the nunciature of Venice
fondo
and some rather juicy bits from the Borgia material, hints of this and that, sex and violence and treachery—all the hallmarks of the period. She had read notes on the backs of letters and seen tiny obscene drawings in the margins of documents, put there
as doodles by impertinent copiers dead these three and four and five hundred years. She spent her days holding the history of the Church and the civilization in her hands, felt herself being drawn seductively down paths she oughtn’t to have spent time on … and she couldn’t help it. And now, having been truly bitten by the archival bug, by the past, she had to bring herself back to the twentieth century and go to lunch.
Bernadine had found an isolated table in a corner and was waiting for her. They quickly ordered lunch and Bernadine opened her attaché case. “Preliminary report,” she said, “with real biographies to follow. But I’ve tracked them all down and you were right, those were death dates. What we seem to have here—if it’s a pattern you’re after—is some very unlucky Catholics. I’ll run through them chronologically.
“First, Father Claude Gilbert. A French country priest, seventy-three years old. He was what you might call an underachiever, spent his entire life in the Church in a village not far from the coast of Brittany. A champion of the preservation of the Breton language. One supposes, a good and harmless man … in the fifties he even wrote a couple of books, diaries of a country cleric in Breton, you know the kind of thing—”
“He must have been in France all through the war,” Elizabeth said.