The Devil Will Come (28 page)

From the way he said that Elisabetta added, ‘But
you
can, right?’

He started climbing again. ‘Yes. I am allowed.’ He stopped on the landing and opened a door. ‘Come. The Index Room and the librarians are next to the Old Study Room.’

The Old Study Room had canary-yellow walls and a high vaulted ceiling. Life-size statues of saints were set into niches in the walls. Large windows overlooked the Vatican Gardens. There were row after row of white laminate desks with gooseneck reading lights and power plugs for computers. All the desks were empty.

‘It’s closed,’ Tremblay said. ‘Because of the Conclave.’

The Index Room, also devoid of people, was lined with card catalogs and computer terminals. Tremblay knocked on a door with the nameplate of the Head Librarian and a woman in her fifties wearing heavy make-up responded.

She greeted him warmly. ‘Father Tremblay! How nice to see you.’

‘Signorina Mattera,’ he replied. ‘I’m sorry to trouble you without notice. I’d like to introduce a colleague to you, Sister Elisabetta.’

The woman politely nodded to her. ‘How can I help you, Father?’

‘We need to find any material you might have on a woman named Flavia Celestino. She was an academic researcher who was given access to the Archive in the 1980s.’

‘Well, I might be able to find her in the logs, but the information on researchers is usually very sparse.’

‘Would there be a record of the documents she requested?’ Tremblay asked.

‘Possibly, but usually not.’

‘Well, anything you can find would be helpful,’ the priest said.

Tremblay and Elisabetta waited in the Old Study Room at a table with a view of the garden which was showing the first exuberance of spring greenery. The new Pope would have a lovely place for respite.

‘May I ask you a question?’ Tremblay said.

‘Of course.’

‘Why did you become a nun?’

Elisabetta smiled but countered with ‘Why did you become a priest?’

‘Me first, eh?’ he laughed. ‘Okay. For me it was easy. I was an altar boy. I was comfortable in the Church. In college I was awkward. I never fit in so well. Well, maybe I would have been fine in an office doing accountancy, but I was never going to have a social life. I mean, my condition, the way I look. Women were scared of me so celibacy wasn’t the biggest sacrifice, I suppose.’

She pursed her lips. ‘I’m wondering, Father, if you’ve asked other nuns why they’d entered the clergy?’

‘No, never.’

‘Why me?’

He hesitated then blurted it out. ‘Because you’re so beautiful. When a beautiful woman becomes a nun, I imagine the sacrifices are greater and the commitment to God is proportionately greater too.’

Elisabetta felt her cheeks flush. ‘It’s a complicated question. Was I running from something? Was I running toward something? My faith is deep and I think that’s the important thing for me.’

‘It’s a good answer.’

The clipping of heels against the stone-tiled floor signaled the return of the librarian. She had an index card in her hand. ‘It’s most unusual, but it seems this researcher has her own file. I can’t imagine why but here’s the accession number. Do you want me to have it brought to you?’

Tremblay took the card and inspected it. ‘No, I’ll
find
it myself.’ He said to Elisabetta, ‘We’re going to the basement.’

Descending was easier for him and Tremblay was able to make it down several flights of stairs without stopping. The subterranean archives, excavated some thirty years earlier, was vast, stretching under the full length of the Vatican Museum. Unlike the Tower of the Winds with its breathtaking frescoes and dark wooden cabinets containing older, more precious material, the basement had the look of an industrial site. There were some eighty kilometers of file cases – metal, beige, utilitarian – laid out on concrete floors beneath a low concrete ceiling. The priest told her that insiders called it the Gallery of Metallic Shelves.

Tremblay looked at the card’s file number and said, ‘It’s a good thing nuns wear sensible shoes.’

They walked for several minutes through the seemingly endless grid of shelving. Elisabetta felt a strange association. It was like being in some kind of latter-day catacombs. In the past bones were revered. Now it was paper.

‘Many of these files,’ Tremblay said, ‘are more “secret” than the documents in the Tower of the Winds. Officially, there’s the hundred-year rule that keeps most of the Vatican’s correspondence and documents closed for one hundred years, to protect them from being released to the public during the lifetime of those concerned. From a practical standpoint, everything later than 1939 is strictly off-limits.’

‘But not for you,’ Elisabetta said.

‘I have no restrictions.’ He checked the numbering on the cases. ‘I think we’re close.’

They finally came to a halt in the middle of a row. Tremblay used his finger to pick out the numbers on each pale yellow file box.

‘This one,’ he said. ‘Sometimes it’s helpful to be tall.’ He reached high above his head and wriggled a box free. ‘It’s a long way back to the Reading Room. Do you mind if we just look at it here?’

The box was almost empty; it contained only a dozen or so loose papers. Tremblay removed them, put the box at his feet and held the papers so that both of them could see.

The first page was a typed letter on University of Rome letterhead dated 12 June 1982.

Elisabetta’s mother’s signature was bold and confident, written with an italic-nibbed fountain pen. It brought tears to Elisabetta’s eyes but she sniffed hard once and stifled her sobs.

‘It’s her letter asking for permission to use the Archives,’ Elisabetta said, reading it quickly. ‘It’s on the subject of her book, Pope Pius’s excommunication of Queen Elizabeth.’

Tremblay put the letter at the back of the stack.

There were other, similar letters, requesting readmittance to do further searches. One of the letters summarized the documents she had already reviewed:
Regnans in Excelsis
, the Papal Bull of 1570 excommunicating Elizabeth, Queen of England for heresy; a letter from Matthew Parker, Archbishop of
Canterbury
to Pope Pius V (1571); a letter from Edmund Grindal, Archbishop of Canterbury to Pope Gregory XIII (1580); a Papal Bull of 1580, Pope Gregory XIII’s Clarification of the
Regnans in Excelsis
; a letter from the Papal Nuncio in France to Pope Clement VIII informing him of the death of Elizabeth (1603).

Tremblay looked to see if Elisabetta had finished, then turned to the next page.

It was Flavia’s cover letter dated late 1984, referencing the gift of her book on the excommunication of Elizabeth to the Vatican Library.

Then another letter, this one dated 22 April 1985 to the Chief Archivist asking to return to do research for her second book. Flavia wrote: ‘In the course of doing work on my Queen Elizabeth book, I happened upon an interesting correspondence between the English mathematician and astronomer John Dee, and Ottaviano Mascherino, the astronomer who built the Tower of the Winds. I would like to search the Archives for further letters between the two astronomers to elaborate on my hypothesis that, while the religious schism between Rome and England was absolute, there was nevertheless vigorous and persistent scientific and cultural intercourse among the luminaries of the day.’

‘Did you know of this?’ Tremblay asked.

‘No. Nothing.’

The next page caused Elisabetta to inhale sharply.

It was a memo to the file from the Chief Archivist,
dated
17 May 1985, withdrawing Flavia Celestino’s Archive privileges. It asserted that she had obtained unauthorized access to File Box 197741-3821 and that her notes had been confiscated.

‘This seems suspicious,’ Tremblay said. ‘She could only have received files specifically requested. As I said, there’s no browsing allowed.’

A lined piece of notebook paper was stapled to the memo. It was in Flavia’s distinctive italic.

‘Her notes!’ Elisabetta said.

The notations were sparse:

Letter from Dee to Mascherino, 1577:

Brotherhood

Common Cause

‘When I am observing the full eclipse of the moon on 27 September from London, I take heart in knowing you will be gazing on the same sight from Rome, dear brother.’ Lemures

‘My God!’ Tremblay exclaimed. ‘She found direct evidence. I’ve never seen this letter she refers to. Come with me. The file box that’s referenced – ones with these numbers are up on the Diplomatic Floor with the older documents.’

‘Wait,’ Elisabetta said. ‘We’re not finished.’

There were two more sheets in Flavia’s file.

The first was a memo to the file from a physician, Dr Giuseppe Falcone, addressed to no one but marked ‘Hand-delivered, 6 June 1985.’

On the request of the Vatican I examined the patient, Flavia Celestino, who is under the care of Dr Motta at the Gemelli Hospital. She is in serious condition with diarrhea, vomiting, anemia, liver and kidney dysfunction and periods of disorientation. My differential diagnosis includes hemolytic uremic syndrome, viral encephalomyelopathy, amyloidosis, and intoxication with heavy metals or arsenic. The latter would have to be my leading suspicion. I have spoken with Dr Motta. He informs me the arsenic and toxicology tests are negative and while surprised I have to accept what he says. I believe he has considered all relevant possibilities but at this stage there seems to be little to be done for her
.

‘She was poisoned,’ Elisabetta whispered. Now she made no attempt to staunch her tears and Tremblay looked on impotently.

The last page was a copy of the death certificate, dated 10 June 1985, listing Flavia’s cause of death as kidney and liver failure and noting that a post-mortem was not requested by the coroner.

‘I’m sorry,’ Tremblay said, touching her hand. ‘But we have to find the Dee letter.’

He placed the file box back in its place and with
long
strides backtracked rapidly toward the Tower. Elisabetta followed, her body and mind so numb that she could hardly feel her feet against the floor.

Going up the stairs, Tremblay cursed his weak constitution but forced himself to keep going until they’d reached the second floor of the Tower. At the landing Elisabetta was worried that he might pass out from air-hunger.

‘It’s this way,’ he gasped.

Here in the Archive of the Secretariat of State, they passed through room after room of seventeenth-century walnut cabinets. Tremblay had written the file number on a scrap of paper and he referred to it as he searched the rooms. He finally found it, high up. Facing the tall library ladder he said, ‘I’m so puffed out I don’t trust myself.’

Elisabetta climbed the ladder and pulled open the door he was pointing at. He called out the file number to her. She found the box.

After climbing down she laid the file on top of one of the low cabinets in the center of the room and let Tremblay open the box.

It was full of parchments tied in a ribbon, all from the sixteenth century.

With a practiced eye he scanned the Latin, French, English and German scripts, looking for the one he wanted. Two-thirds of the way through the pile he stopped dead at a modern sheet of paper with a handwritten note in ballpoint ink.

1577 Letter from John Dee to Ottaviano Mascherino, removed to a personal collection. Signed, R.A. 17 May 1985

‘Who is R.A?’ Elisabetta asked.

Tremblay shook his head sadly. ‘I have no idea, but by God I’m going to find out. Let’s go. There’s nothing more for us to do here. I have work to do. I’ll contact you as soon as I have something. Please, say nothing of this to anyone.’

The phone rang in the librarian’s office.

‘This is Signorina Mattera in the Secret Archives. Yes, Your Excellency. Thank you for getting back to me. I wanted to inform you that Father Tremblay requested access to a red-flagged file today. It was regarding a woman who did research here in the 1980s, a Flavia Celestino. Yes, Your Excellency, per protocol, he was granted access and now, per protocol, I have duly informed you.’

ELISABETTA UNLOCKED THE
front door of her father’s apartment and blinked in confusion. Zazo was in the kitchen.

‘Where were you?’ he said with exasperation. ‘Haven’t I told you to stay put?’

‘I had an appointment.’ She didn’t want to lie but she said, ‘At the school.’

Zazo started to lecture her, ‘Elisabetta …’

‘What are
you
doing here?’ she countered. ‘How come you’re not in uniform?’

As he told her what had happened Elisabetta’s tears flowed again. ‘This is all my fault.’

‘How is it your fault?’

‘I don’t know,’ she said, wiping her eyes. ‘It just is.’

Zazo laughed. ‘You used to be so intelligent. What happened? Stop crying and make me some coffee.’

Later, while she washed their cups and saucers, Elisabetta asked Zazo if he wanted to go to church with her.

‘No more churches for me for a while,’ he said. ‘But I’ll walk you there.’

It was one of those wind-whipped afternoons where dense cumulus clouds blocked the sun intermittently, turning the light from yellow to gray and back to yellow again. Zazo couldn’t decide whether to keep his sunglasses on or not. He gave up finally and stuffed them into the inside pocket of his jacket where they got entangled with the phone records.