Simone clambers down the ladder, calling, “And where will I find these twenty eggs, laid by twenty pious hens to glorify God, His Holiness Pope Benedict, and French fresco painters?”
D’Albon laughs and moves his index finger in a downward spiral. “All the way down, at the bottom of the tower, where it’s nice and cool. Soon it will become the subtreasury, filled with gold, silver, and jewels. But for now, it’s the egg cellar. Eggs and plaster and rags.”
Simone ducks through the doorway into the spiral staircase and starts down, but then — on impulse — he stops and looks overhead. The stairs continue upward, apparently to the roof, and Simone decides to take a quick detour before fetching the eggs. He jogs up the first spiral, walks briskly up the second, and lumbers up the third, huffing by the time he steps onto the rooftop.
The view from the roof is dizzying and dazzling. To the west, the arches of Saint Bénézet’s Bridge cascade across the Rhône to Villeneuve. At their far end is another square tower, this one built by the king of France to collect bridge tolls…and to remind the sometimes arrogant residents of Avignon who holds the real reins of power in this part of God’s world. From below, d’Albon’s voice wafts upward; an apprentice is getting a scolding for his clumsy plasterwork, and Simone turns from the view and scurries for the cellar.
Spiraling down turn after turn, he feels his head begin to spin, and he stops near the bottom and leans on the wall to steady himself. It’s cool and dark down here — there are no windows in the tower’s lower levels, only narrow slits that provide stingy hints of light and air. In the chamber just below him, he hears a gritty, sliding sound, punctuated by grunts of exertion. Curious now, he descends the final few stairs and peeks into the chamber — the egg cellar that will soon brim with treasure. By the golden glow of a flickering lamp, he sees a portly workman shoving a heavy chest into a deep niche in the wall, then wedging a flat stone over the opening and slathering mortar around the edges. The man’s troweling technique appears oddly awkward, and his work looks shoddy. Simone’s puzzlement only increases when the man finishes sealing the stone in place; when he stands, Simone sees that the pale garment he’d taken for a workman’s smock is instead a floor-length white robe. A Cistercian monk’s robe. The kind of robe favored, as everyone knows, by Pope Benedict himself: the White Cardinal who has become the White Pope.
Suddenly Simone senses the vulnerability of his position: lurking in the stairwell spying on some furtive secret of the pope’s. Edging back up the stairs one level, Simone ducks into a dark, vacant room and waits until he hears footsteps. From his hiding place, he sees the white-robed figure pass by like some stout, panting ghost. Once the footfalls and panting have faded, Simone hurries back to the cellar. He should collect the eggs and hurry upstairs with them — the French painters will be running out of tempera any minute now, if they haven’t already — but his curiosity triumphs over his sense of responsibility. Crossing to the far wall, he squats beside the mortar bucket and studies the crude handiwork, as if close inspection of the wall’s surface might reveal what’s hidden inside. Hidden by the pope himself! But why? Why hide a treasure chest inside the wall, when the entire room, floor to ceiling, is meant to be heaped with riches? In any case, why not order a real mason to do the work?
Astonished by his own sudden boldness, Simone picks up the trowel and uses the tip to scrape out the line of mortar holding the flat stone in position. Then he pries the panel free, leans it against the wall, and tugs the chest from its niche. The chest, a stone box, is wired shut, and the wires are crimped together with lead seals — the seals of Benedict XII! — to protect the contents. Rubies and emeralds? Gold florins? Perhaps even the Holy Grail?
Throwing aside any last vestiges of caution or respect for authority, Simone cuts the wires with the edge of the trowel and pries the close-fitting lid loose. Even before he lifts it off and sets it aside, the smell of death wafts out, so he’s not completely unprepared to see bones inside. Simone’s not squeamish — given that so many artists’ models are beggars and whores, a painter can’t afford to be squeamish — so it’s natural for him to take a closer look at the bones.
He starts with the skull. Cupping it carefully in both hands, he lifts it from its nest of ribs and raises it to eye level. The face is long and narrow, the cheekbones high and prominent, the forehead slightly lower than he would have expected. He rotates the skull in his hands, looking to see if there is damage — marks of a violent death — but there is none. As the skull comes full circle in his hands, Simone’s visual memory tells him there is something familiar about its shape and proportions. He frowns, trying to place it, and suddenly lays the skull aside and roots in the box until he finds what he’s looking for: the bones of a forearm, which are — as he knew they would be — slightly splintered at their lower ends, just above where they once joined the wrist. Just where a spike would have passed through them on its way into the wood of a cross.
He rummages in the box for the other arm, and then for the feet. All four extremities bear the ragged, splintery evidence of piercings. Martini lays the limbs on the shelf alongside the skull and stares at them, the bones that were within the flesh he studied and sketched so attentively.
His mind ranges back to that odd night seven years ago, when he spent hours drawing by flickering lamplight, capturing every detail of the fresh corpse laid out on the floor of the cell. He remembers the parting words of the jailer: “I do believe he was a holy man…. His only sin was his holiness.”
He fits the lid back onto the box. Then, acting on an impulse he could not have put into words, he reaches for a pair of tools lying on the floor — a chisel and a hammer — and swiftly incises a broad cross on the stone lid of the box. Then, beneath the cross, using the pointed corner of the chisel’s blade, he gouges the outline of a lamb. Working swiftly — for the mortar in the bucket will harden soon, and he is surely risking his life to tamper with the pope’s sealed secret — he replaces the box in its niche, wedges the slab back into place, and trowels mortar into the joints, taking care to mimic the Holy Father’s sloppy workmanship.
As he slathers the final bit of mortar into the gap between the stones, Simone wonders why God has put this dead man — this blameless man, if the jailer’s report was true — in Simone’s path not once, but twice now.
He rises, and starts up the steps. Only then does he remember and turn back. God might require penance of him soon, but d’Albon’s painters needed twenty eggs half an hour ago.
CHAPTER 33
Elisabeth surveyed the leftover fruit and pastries with surprise when she came to collect the breakfast tray, then peered at the untouched cup of espresso. “What,” she asked in astonishment, “no Monsieur l’Inspecteur?” She cast a glance at the cornflower-blue sky. “Did the sun fail to rise today? Is the world coming to the end?”