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.’