As their pile grows, Savonarola orders a monk with a wheelbarrow to return the objects to the flames. As soon as the men drop the books and paintings, the monk scoops them up and brings them back. After six or seven trips, everything Francesco has pulled from the fire is already burned. Matteo and Cesare have given up on paintings, because the canvases are destroyed. All three of them stamp at the covers of books with their hands to put out the flames, so the pages won't burn. One of them begins to call out in agony, crying to God.
By now there's no hope of saving anything. All of the artwork in the pyramid is ruined, most of the books are blackened through. The monk with the wheelbarrow is still pushing everything from their pile back into the fire. Every one of his trips undoes what all three of them do together. Slowly the crowd grows quiet. The whistles and catcalls die out. The people who yelled at Francesco, calling him a fool for trying to save the books, become silent. A few people shout for the men to stop. But the three of them continue their trips, back and forth, throwing their arms into the flames, climbing into the ashes, disappearing for seconds, then reappearing. By now the loudest sound in the square is the roar of the fire. The three men are gasping. They've inhaled too much smoke to scream. Every time they go back to their pile, the architect says, you can make out the red flesh of their hands and feet, where the fire has burned their skin off.
The first of them collapses into the cinders, facedown. It's Matteo, the youngest. Cesare stops to help, but Francesco drags him away. Matteo doesn't move. The fire crawls over him, and his body sinks into the pyramid. Cesare tries to call out to him, to tell him to stand up, but Matteo doesn't answer. Finally, Cesare stumbles over to the spot where his brother fell. When he's almost standing over Matteo's body, he collapses too. Francesco watches all this from the edge of the bonfire. When he hears Cesare's voice calling for Matteo, then listens to it fade under the fire, he realizes he's alone and falls to his knees. For a second he doesn't move.
Just as the crowd takes him for dead, he forces himself to his feet. Reaching one last time into the bonfire, he takes two fists of ashes and staggers toward Savonarola. One of Savonarola's assistants blocks his way, but Francesco stops short. He spreads his fingers and lets the ashes fall between them like sand. Then he says, 'Inde ferunt, totidem qui vivere debeat annos, corpore de patrio parvum phoenica renasci' It's from Ovid. It means, 'A little phoenix is born anew from the father's body, fated to live the same number of years.' Then he falls at Savonarola's feet and dies.
Terragni's narrative ends with Colonna's burial. Francesco and the two brothers are given almost imperial funerals by their families and humanist friends. And we know that their martyrdom succeeds. Within weeks, public opinion shifts against Savonarola. Florence is tired of his extremism, his constant doom and gloom. Enemies spread rumors about him, trying to bring about his downfall. Pope Alexander excommunicates him. When Savonarola resists, Alexander declares him guilty of heresy and seditious teaching. He's sentenced to death. On May twenty-third, just three months after Francesco burns to death, Florence sets up a new pyre in the Piazza della Signoria. Right there, on the very spot of the two bonfires, they hang Savonarola and burn his body at the stake.
What happened to Terragni? I ask.
All we know is that he honored his promise to Francesco. The Hypnerotomachia was published by Aldus the following year, 1499.
I rise from my chair, too excited to sit.
Since then, Paul says, everyone who's tried to interpret it has been using nineteenth— or twentieth-century tools to pick a fifteenth-century lock. He leans back and exhales. Until now.
He stops himself, breathless, and falls silent. Footsteps shuffle in the hallway, muffled by the door. I look at him, stunned. Slowly the things of reality, of the true outside, begin to penetrate again, returning Savonarola and Francesco Colonna to a bookshelf in my mind. But there remains an uneasy interaction between the two worlds. I look at Paul, and realize that somehow he has become the crossroads between them, the ligature binding time to itself.
I can't believe it, I tell him.
My father should be here. My father, and Richard Curiy, and McBee. Everyone who ever knew about this book and sacrificed something to solve it. This is a gift for them all.
Francesco gives directions to the crypt from three different land-narks, Paul says. It won't be hard to find the location. He even gives the dimensions, and lists everything in it. The only thing that's missing is the blueprint of the lock to the crypt. Terragni designed a special cylinder lock for the entrance. It's so airtight, Francesco says, that it will keep robbers and moisture out for as long as it takes someone to solve his book. He keeps saying he's about to give the blueprint for the lock, and the instructions for opening it, but he always gets distracted, talking about Savonarola. Maybe he told Terragni to include it in the final chapters, but Terragni had so many other things to worry about, he didn't do it.
And that's what you were looking for at Taft's.
Paul nods. Richard says there was a blueprint in the portmaster's diary when he found it thirty years ago. I think Vincent kept it when he let Bill find the rest of the diary.
Did you get it back?
He shakes his head. All I got was a handful of Vincent's old handwritten notes.
So what are you going to do? I ask.
Paul begins reaching for something else under the desk. I'm at Vincent's mercy.
How much have you told him?
When his hands return to view, they're empty. Losing patience, he moves his chair backward and lowers himself to his knees. He doesn't know any details about the crypt. Only that it exists.
I notice faint tracks across the floor, ruts that trace quarter-circles back to the metal legs of the desk.
Last night I started making a map of everything Francesco said about it in the second half of the Hypnerotomachia. The location, the dimensions, the landmarks. I knew Vincent might come looking for what I'd found, so I put the map where I used to keep the best work I did in here.
There's a clink of metal against metal, and from the far corner of the desk bottom, Paul produces a screwdriver. The long swatch of tape that secured it to the underside dangles like a weed in his hand. He peels the tape off, then swivels the desk toward us. The front legs slide along the grooves in the tile floor, and suddenly the ventilation duct comes into view. Four screws hold the grille to the wall. The paint has been chipped on all of them.
Paul begins unscrewing the grille. One corner at a time, the vent comes undone. When he reaches into the duct, then removes his hand, he's holding an envelope stuffed with papers. My first instinct is to look out the window of the carrel, to see if anyone's watching us. Now I understand the sheet of black paper that covers it.
Paul opens the envelope. First he pulls out a pair of photographs, each one worn from handling. The first is of Paul and Richard Curry in Italy. They are standing in the middle of the Piazza della Signoria in Florence, directly in front of the Fountain of Neptune. Blurred in the background is a copy of Michelangelo's David. Paul is wearing shorts and a backpack; Richard Curry is wearing a suit, but his tie is loose and his collar is unbuttoned. Both of them are smiling.