Of Love and Evil (16 page)

“Once the house was secured again, I went to the cellar. I lifted the stones, eager to free my poor friend, and attend to him, and what do you think I found?”

“He was dead,” said Fr. Piero in a low voice.

Signore Antonio nodded. Then he looked off again as if he wished, for all the world, to be absolutely alone now rather than telling this tale.

“Did I kill him?” he asked. “Or did he die from the blows he’d received from the others? How could I know? I knew only he was dead. His suffering was ended. And for the moment, I merely moved the stones back into place.

“That night another mob came, and the house was once again the target for their abuse. But I had left it locked and secured, and when the toughs saw that no lights burned within, they finally went away.

“Soldiers came on Monday after Easter. Was it true, a Jew known to me had attacked Christians in Holy Week when it was forbidden that a Jew be seen in the streets?

“I gave the usual noncommittal responses. How was I to know such a thing? ‘There is no Jew here anymore. Search the house if you like.’ And search the house they did. ‘He’s gone, fled,’ I insisted. They left soon enough. But more than once they came back with the same questions.

“I was miserable with grief and guilt. The more I brooded on it, the more I cursed myself for my roughness with Giovanni, that I had dragged him to the cellar, that I had beaten him to make him lie quiet. I could not bear what I had done, and I could not bear the pain I felt in remembering all that had gone before. And somehow in my misery, I dared to blame him. I dared to blame him that I had not been able to protect him, and heal him. I dared to curse him for the sheer misery that I had felt.”

Again, he stopped and looked away. A long moment passed.

“You left him there, buried in the cellar,” said Fr. Piero.

Signore Antonio nodded, slowly turning to face the priest again.

“Of course I told myself that I would soon attend to his burial. I would wait until no one even remembered the riot of Holy Week and I would go to the elders of his community and tell them that he must be laid to rest.”

“But you never did it,” said Fr. Piero softly.

“No,” said Signore Antonio. “I never did it. I shut up the house and abandoned it. Now and then I stored things there, old furniture, books, wine, whatever had to be moved from this
house. But I never entered the house myself. This is the first time, the very first time since, that I have entered the house.”

When it was clear that he had paused again, I said softly, “The ghost has gone quiet. The ghost went quiet when you began to speak.”

Signore Antonio bowed his head and put his hand to his eyes. I thought he would break into sobs, but he only took a ragged breath, and then went on,

“I always thought,” he said, “that I would tend to this, someday, I would have the proper prayers said for him by his own. But I never did.

“Before the end of the year I was married, I began to travel. My wife and I buried more than one child over the years, but my beloved son, Niccolò, whom you see here, has cheated death more than once. Aye, more than once. And there was always some reason not to approach the abandoned house, not to disturb the dust of the cellar floor, not to face the questions of the Jews as to their old friend and scholar Giovanni, not to explain why I had done what I did.”

“But you didn’t murder him,” Fr. Piero said. “It was not your doing.”

“No,” said Signore Antonio, “but he was murdered nevertheless.”

The priest sighed and nodded.

Signore Antonio looked pointedly at Vitale.

“When I met you, I loved you immediately,” he said. “You can’t imagine what a pleasure it was to bring you into the old house, to show you the synagogue and the library, and to put before you so many of Giovanni’s books.”

Vitale nodded gravely. There were tears in his eyes.

Signore Antonio went quiet. Then spoke again. “I wondered if my old friend would be pleased that you were living under the old roof, if he would be pleased that you were going
through his many books. And I even wondered more than once if I might ask you to pray for the soul of that scholar who had lived in the house before.”

“I will pray for him,” Vitale whispered.

Signore Antonio looked directly at Fr. Piero.

“Do you still insist it is a demon raging here, a Jewish dybbuk? Or don’t you see now that it was the ghost of my old friend whose memory I consigned to oblivion because I could not bear his pain or my own?”

The priest did not answer.

Signore Antonio looked at me. I could see that he wanted to tell them of my description of the ghost I’d seen, but he did not. He did not want to indict me for seeing spirits or talking to them. I said nothing.

“Why did I not consider the truth of this in the beginning?” he asked, looking once again at Fr. Piero. “And who now is charged, justly, with seeing to it that my old friend’s remains are at last properly laid to rest?”

We sat in quiet for a long time. Fr. Piero made the Sign of the Cross and murmured a prayer.

Finally Signore Antonio rose to his feet and we all rose with him. “Bring light,” he said to the servants, and we followed him now out of the dining room and down to the main floor.

There he took a candelabrum from Pico, and unbolting the door to the cellar, he led the way down the stairs.

The scene was far worse than it had been only hours ago when I had come to seek the ghost. Every bit of furniture had been broken into pieces both large and small. Every book in sight had been ripped apart. Several of the casks, apparently empty, had been staved in, and broken glass glittered all over the flags.

But there was no unusual sound here. In fact, there was no sound at all except for our own respiration, and the soft steps of
Signore Antonio as he approached the very spot where I had seen the ghost take a stand.

Signore Antonio gave the order for the floor to be cleared. At once his servants and guards swept back the debris. Their very boots at once marked the few hollow flags in the floor.

Quickly, with prying fingers, the stones were turned up and over and free of the space beneath them.

And there, in the light of the candelabrum, for all to see, was the small skeleton of the man, a loose chain of bones held together by the rotting remnants of his clothes.

All around him in bundles lay his books. And beside his books his sacks of treasure. But he himself, how he might have suffered in this tiny place, weeping, wounded, untended. The bones made it plain, to the bones of the hand that reached up to clutch the bundle that cradled his head, and the bones that tried to hold forever the precious book beside him.

How small and fragile lay the skull. And how in the light the little spectacles glittered.

T
HAT AFTERNOON, THE
J
EWISH ELDERS WERE INVITED
to the house. Signore Antonio met with them in private, leaving Niccolò and Vitale and me to ourselves.

A coffin was brought that evening for the remains of Giovanni, and we accompanied the Jewish elders by torchlight on the long trek to the Jewish Cemetery where the remains were laid to rest. All prayers were said as they were meant to be said.

No ruffians were allowed to harry the funeral procession. And it was late when we returned to the quiet house. It was as if the ghost had never been there. The servants were still sweeping the passages and stairways, in spite of the hour, and candles burned in many rooms.

Signore Antonio summoned Vitale to join him in the library, and there told him, as Vitale would tell me later, that Giovanni’s wealth had been divided with one half being given to the Jewish elders, and the other bequeathed to Vitale who would not only pray for the soul of Giovanni, and commemorate his death in every acceptable way, but would begin the collection and restoration of Giovanni’s many literary works. Signore Antonio had copies of many of these books, and Vitale would hunt down those that had been lost. This would be
Vitale’s principal task for Signore Antonio for some time to come.

Meanwhile Niccolò would move into the house as had been planned and Vitale would commence work as his secretary again.

In other words, the prayer of Vitale had been answered, and in some ways, so had the prayers he had uttered in the synagogue, in that he was now, thanks to the inheritance from Giovanni, on his way to being a rich man.

I knew my time was coming to a close. In fact, I did not know why Malchiah had not already come for me.

I visited Signore Antonio at his house just as he was heading for bed, and told him that I would soon be leaving, as my job was finished.

He gave me a long and meaningful look. I knew that he wanted to ask me how or why I’d seen Giovanni’s spirit, but he didn’t, as this was a dangerous subject in Rome, and he was disposed, obviously, to let it go. I wanted to tell him how sorry I was that Lodovico had taken his own life. I tried to think of the words, but I couldn’t. Finally, I put out my arms and he drew me close in a firm embrace, and thanked me for all I’d done.

“You know you can remain with us for as long as you like,” he said. “I am delighted to have a lutenist in my house. And I would love to hear all the songs you know. Were I not in mourning for Lodovico, I would beg for you to play something for me now. But the point is, you can remain with us. Why don’t you stay?”

He was completely earnest in this, and for a moment I couldn’t think of an answer. I looked at him. I thought of all that had happened in these two days, and it felt as if I’d known him for years. I felt the same pain I’d experienced in my first
mission for Malchiah, when I’d become so very close to the people in England whom I’d been sent to help.

I thought about Liona and Little Toby, and of Malchiah’s assurance to me that I knew how to love. If that was true, it was a recent bit of learning, and I was still a dreadful beginner at loving and would have to somehow make up for ten years of bitterness and failure to love anyone at all. Whatever the case, I loved this man now and I didn’t want to go. Much as I wanted to return to Liona and Toby, I didn’t want to go.

Niccolò was asleep when I came to his room, and I let my farewell be a simple kiss on his forehead. His color had returned, and he was sleeping deeply and well.

When I got back to the “other” house, I found Vitale in the library where we had first talked. He was already reading through some of Giovanni’s translations, and he had a stack of books ready for further examination.

Those volumes that had been in the cellar hiding place were badly damaged from mold and damp, but he could make out well enough the titles and the subject matter, and would seek replacements far and wide. He was now completely taken with the life of Giovanni, and Giovanni’s accomplishments, and he spoke of seeking out others who had been Giovanni’s pupils in years past.

It turned out Pico had told him of our visit to the house in the early hours, and Pico had overheard my conversations with the ghost and my conversation with Signore Antonio in which I had described the ghost in detail. So Vitale knew it all.

He said that if it were not for me surely the Inquisition would have destroyed him, of that he was well aware.

“It was never your doing, any of it,” I reminded him. He sat there shuddering, as if he could not quite get the earlier danger out of his mind.

“But my prayer, my prayer for fame and fortune, do you think it waked this spirit?”

“The opening of the house itself waked the spirit,” I said. “And now the spirit is completely at peace.”

When we embraced, I was close to weeping.

Near midnight, when all slept, I went up to the synagogue, retrieved the lute from the floor where I’d left it, and sat on one of the benches in the darkness wondering what I should do.

The servants had swept the place, cleared away the fallen chandeliers, and dusted things. I could see all this by a bit of light that leaked in from a torch on the nearby stairs.

I sat there wondering: Why am I still here? I had said my farewells because I’d felt an overwhelming desire to say them, a certainty that I was meant to say them, but I did not know what to do now.

Finally, I resolved to leave the house.

Only Pico was on guard at the front door. I gave him most of the gold in my pockets. He didn’t want it, but I insisted.

I saved only what I thought I might need to find a warm place in a tavern where I might listen to the music and wait in the hopes that Malchiah would soon come for me, and I felt strongly that he would.

Soon, I was walking, very far away from the part of town I knew, through ink black streets where seldom a dog barked or a hooded figure hurried by. My thoughts were heavy. My failure to save Lodovico weighed on me no matter how many times I reminded myself that the Maker knew the hearts and minds of all of us, and He and He alone could judge the misery or confusion, or poison, that had led Lodovico to his dark path. More than ever I realized that what we know of another soul’s salvation is essentially nothing. We are always thinking and talking about our own souls, and of our own souls we don’t know what the Maker knows.

Nevertheless I marveled that I had not foreseen his suicide. I thought of myself when I was younger, and how many times I’d been tempted to take my own life. There were months, even years, when I was obsessed with the possibility of suicide, times even when I’d planned my own death down to the disposal of my remains. Indeed, every time I’d completed an assassination for The Right Man, skillfully dispatching another soul into the unknown, I’d been so tempted to take my own life that it was a marvel I’d survived. What would my life have amounted to, had I taken that step? I was almost weeping with gratitude suddenly that I’d been given the opportunity to do something, anything, that might be good. Anything, I whispered to myself as I walked along, anything at all that might be good. Vitale and Niccolò were alive and well. And the soul of Giovanni had apparently found rest. If I’d played the smallest part in any of it, I was too grateful for words. So why was I weeping? Why was I so sad? Why did I keep seeing Lodovico, dying with the poison in his mouth? No, this was no perfect victory, far from it.