‘That’s for him to tell you.’
Elisabetta almost had to run to keep up with the long-legged young man. The catacombs seemed particularly gloomy that morning. Despite the chilliness of the place, she was sweating and out of breath when they reached the boundary of the Liberian Area and the cave-in site.
De Stefano was at the threshold, immobile except for those hands of his, obsessively rubbing at each other. Elisabetta was alarmed by his abject look of anguish.
‘You’re the only person I know who doesn’t have a mobile phone,’ he said angrily.
‘I’m sorry, Professor,’ she answered. ‘What’s happened?’
‘Look! See for yourself what’s happened!’
He stepped aside and let her enter.
The sight was almost as shocking as the one she’d seen the first time but her emotional reaction today was more raw. She was assaulted by feelings of devastation and violation.
The chamber had been picked clean.
Where skeletons had been piled on top of one another, now there were only a few bones left in the dirt: a rib here, a humerus there, toe bones and finger bones scattered like popcorn on a cinema floor.
The fresco too was gone, but it had not been removed. It had been pulverized, certainly by hammer blows, for the plaster lay in clumps and fragments, completely annihilated.
De Stefano was mute with rage so Elisabetta looked to Trapani for help.
‘Whoever did this used our shaft,’ he said, pointing overhead. ‘There’s no sign of entry or egress through the catacomb. The night guards at the visitor center heard and saw nothing. We quit yesterday at five o’clock. They must have come when it got dark and then worked all night. Who knows what their methods were but I’d say they dug out one or two skeletons at a time and hoisted them up in crates or boxes to a truck. There are fresh tire marks running through the field. And, to top it off, they destroyed our fresco. It’s horrible.’
De Stefano found his voice at last. ‘It’s more than horrible. It’s a disaster of shocking proportions.’
‘Who could have done this?’ Elisabetta asked.
‘That’s what I want to ask you,’ De Stefano said, glaring at her.
She wasn’t sure that she’d heard him correctly. ‘Me? What could I possibly know of this?’
‘When Gian Paolo called me early this morning to inform me of what he’d found here I had my assistant check the phone logs of the few people at the Institute who had knowledge of the work here. Two days ago a call was made from your office line.’
Elisabetta searched her memory quickly before he had even finished. Had she actually used her phone to make an outgoing call? She didn’t think so.
‘The call was to La Repubblica. Why were you calling a newspaper, Elisabetta?’
‘I didn’t make this call, Professor. You know I wouldn’t do such a thing.’
‘A call is made to a newspaper and two days later we’re cleaned out. These are the facts!’
‘If this call was made, I insist, on God’s name, that it wasn’t me who placed it. Please believe me.’
De Stefano ignored her entreaty. ‘I have to attend an emergency meeting at the Vatican. I have to tell you, Elisabetta, that it was a mistake to involve you in this. You are dismissed. Go back to your school and your convent. I’ve spoken with Archbishop Luongo. You can’t work for me any longer.’
TWELVE
ELISABETTA FELT LIKE she was on a boat that had slipped its mooring line and drifted from the protected waters of a harbor into a vast chartless sea. It was the middle of the afternoon and though she was physically in a place she knew well she found herself in an utterly strange mental and spiritual state.
The bedroom had stayed unaltered from the day when Micaela had left for university. Elisabetta’s own bed had the same pink ruffled spread and satin pillowcases, faded by years of sunlight. Her school books were still there, a precocious mix of French philosophers, theologians and serious novels. Micaela’s bookcase was, in contrast, filled with such light fare – romances, pop magazines, teen advice books – that it seemed it might float away. Over Micaela’s bed was a Bon Jovi poster. Over Elisabetta’s was a poster of a beautiful stag with giant antlers, cave art from Lascaux.
Elisabetta lay on top of her bed, fully dressed in her habit but with her shoes kicked off. She couldn’t go back to the school or the convent because Zazo had forbidden it and had enlisted Elisabetta’s father, Micaela and even Sister Marilena in his crusade. Elisabetta was finally convinced by the argument that she might be putting students and nuns in danger if she stayed there.
She couldn’t go back to the Pontifical Commission for Sacred Archeology because, for the first time in her life, she’d been suspended from a job. Her skin danced with anger at the very idea that De Stefano thought she might bear some responsibility for the looting.
And she couldn’t even pray in peace without becoming distracted and getting dragged into restless thoughts.
Disgusted, Elisabetta pushed herself up off the bed and put her shoes on. Defiantly, she decided that if she couldn’t resume her teaching she would continue with her other job, whether or not she remained on De Stefano’s staff. She thrust her chin forward truculently. She would continue out of intellectual curiosity. But there was something more urgent, wasn’t there? A deep notion was forming that she needed to understand what had gone on in the columbarium of St Callixtus.
For her own survival.
‘God protect me,’ she said out loud, then went to the kitchen to make herself coffee before settling down in the dining room to peruse some reference works.
There was a sound of a key in the door.
She looked up from her books and heard her father calling her name.
‘I’m here, Papa, in the dining room.’
Her books and papers were strewn across the dining-room table. She had used her father’s desktop computer in the sitting room to send an email from her private account to Professor Harris in Cambridge – not to cancel their meeting but to change the venue.
B holds the key.
She was midway through a modern copy of both texts of Faustus that she’d obtained from a bookstore near the Institute, making notes on a pad about the A text. Then she would tackle the B text, using the paperback and Ottinger’s original, looking not only for textual differences but for any marginalia that she might have missed previously.
Her father had finished work for the day. Neither of them was used to the other’s presence outside of a Sunday lunch.
‘How are you?’ he asked, lighting his pipe.
‘Angry.’
‘Good. I like anger better than forgiveness.’
‘They’re not mutually exclusive,’ Elisabetta said.
He grunted. The pipe went out. He reached for his pipe tool, retracted the long spike and methodically aerated the bowl. ‘I’ve got some tinned soup. Want some?’
‘Maybe later. I’ll make a proper meal tonight. How would that be?’
Carlo didn’t answer. Instead his eyes were drawn to the thing he most loved in the world – numbers.
Elisabetta had copied out the numbers from the Ulm tattoo onto an index card.
63 128 99 128 51 132 162 56 70
32 56 52 103 132 128 56 99
99 39 63 38 120 39 70
‘What’s this?’ he asked, picking up the card.
‘It’s something to do with the project I was working on. It’s like a puzzle.’
‘I thought they told you to stop.’
‘They did.’
‘But you haven’t.’
‘No.’
‘Good girl!’ Carlo said approvingly. ‘A grid of twenty-four numbers, nine by eight by seven,’ he went on. ‘A numerical pattern isn’t leaping to mind. Can you give me some context?’