The Inquisitor's Key

PROLOGUE

A mockingbird twittered on a branch of a dogwood as a middle-aged man — his hair going to salt-and-pepper, but his body fit and his movements brisk — approached a chain-link gate at the edge of a wooded hillside. The man wore a black Nomex jumpsuit, which was heavy and hot for Knoxville in June, but he’d scheduled a meeting with the university president later in the day and didn’t want his street clothes reeking of human decay. Sewn to each shoulder of the jumpsuit was a patch embroidered with the words “Forensic Anthropology” and the image of a human skull, a pair of swords crisscrossed beneath it.

The gate, like the rest of the fence, was topped with shiny coils of concertina wire. Above the gate, the unblinking eye of a video camera kept constant vigil; other cameras monitored the perimeter of the fence, which enclosed three wooded acres. A large metal sign wired to the mesh of the gate proclaimed UNIVERSITY OF TENNESSEE ANTHROPOLOGY RESEARCH FACILITY. KEEP OUT. OFFICIAL USE ONLY. FOR ENTRY OR INFORMATION, CONTACT DR. BILL BROCKTON, ANTHROPOLOGY DEPARTMENT, 865-974-0010. The gate was secured by a padlock whose shackle was as thick as the man’s index finger.

The man in the jumpsuit — Brockton himself — unclipped a large ring of keys from his belt, selected one, and opened the padlock. Swinging the chain-link gate outward, he proceeded to a second, inner gate, this one made of solid planks. The wooden gate, part of a high privacy fence shielding the enclosure from prying eyes, was secured by a second padlock, which was fastened to a heavy steel chain threaded through holes bored in each door of the gate. When the lock clicked open, Brockton fed one end of the chain through the hole in the board, link by clattering link, and then pushed the wooden gate inward. It opened onto a small grass clearing surrounded by locust trees, oaks, maples, dogwoods, and climbing honeysuckle vines. Stacked at one edge of the clearing, just inside the gate, were three aluminum cases, each the size and shape of a no-frills coffin. Faded shipping labels hung from the cases, along with red BIOHAZARD warnings.

Retracing his steps, Brockton exited the enclosure, returned to a white University of Tennessee pickup idling just outside the fence, and backed it through the gate and into the clearing. At the far edge of the grass, he tucked the truck between two trees and shut off the engine. Opening the camper shell and the tailgate, he slid out a sheet of plywood, pulling it across the tailgate until it was close to dropping off.

His muscles strained with the effort, for atop the plywood lay a black vinyl bag seven feet long by three feet wide, as thick and lumpy as a human body. He lowered the end of the plywood to the ground, forming a ramp, and then slid the bag down. Kneeling beside it, he tugged open the zipper — a long C-shaped zipper edging the top, one side, and the bottom of the rectangular bag — and then folded back the flap. Inside was a fresh corpse, a white male whose abundant wrinkles and sparse white hair seemed to suggest that he’d lived out his allotted threescore years and ten, maybe more. The face appeared peaceful; the old man might almost have been napping except for the unblinking eyes…and the blowfly that landed and walked unnoticed across one of the corneas.

From the back of the truck Brockton retrieved two thin dog tags, each stamped with the number 49–12 to signify that the corpse was the forty-ninth body donated to the research facility in the year 2012. With a pair of black zip ties, he fastened one tag to the corpse’s left arm and the other to the left ankle: a seemingly insignificant act, yet one that conferred a whole new identity on the man. In his new life — his life as a corpse, a research subject, and a skeletal specimen — the man would have a new identity. His new name, his only name, would be 49–12.

Upriver, the bells of a downtown church began to toll noon as Brockton lay 49–12’s hands across his chest. The anthropologist looked up, listening, then smiled slightly. Peering into the vacant eyes of the corpse, he plucked a line of poetry from some dusty corner of memory. “Never send to know for whom the bell tolls,” he advised 49–12. “It tolls for thee.”

At that moment, the cell phone on Brockton’s belt chimed. “And for me,” he added.

A Bell Jetranger helicopter skimmed low across a wooded ridge and dropped toward a river junction, the confluence where the Holston and the French Broad joined to form the emerald-green headwaters of the Tennessee. Beneath the right-hand skid of the chopper, a rusting railroad trestle spanned the narrow mouth of the French Broad. Just ahead, at Downtown Island Airport, a small runway paralleled the first straightaway of the Tennessee, and a single-engine plane idled at the threshold, preparing for takeoff. The helicopter pilot keyed his radio. “Downtown Island traffic, JetRanger Three Whiskey Tango is crossing the field westbound at one thousand, landing at the Body Farm.”

“Three Whiskey Tango, this is Downtown Island. Did you say landing at the Body Farm, over?”

“Roger that.”

“Three Whiskey Tango, are you aware that the Body Farm is a restricted facility?”

“Downtown Island, we’re a Tennessee Bureau of Investigation aircraft. I reckon they won’t mind.”

Two miles west of the airstrip, the modest skyline of downtown Knoxville sprawled above the right-hand riverbank. The skyline was defined by two twenty-five-story office towers built by a pair of brothers who began as bankers and ended as swindlers; a wedge-shaped pyramid of a hotel, Marriott-by-way-of-Mayan; a thirty-foot orange basketball forever swishing through the forty-foot hoop atop the Women’s Basketball Hall of Fame; and a seventy-five-foot globe of golden glass balanced on a two-hundred-foot steel tower like a golf ball on a tee — the Sunsphere, a relic of a provincial world’s fair orchestrated by the swindling banker brothers in 1982.

The epicenter of Knoxville, though — its beating heart if not its financial or architectural nucleus — lay another mile down-river: the massive oval of Neyland Stadium, home and shrine to the University of Tennessee Volunteers. During home games against the Florida Gators or the Alabama Crimson Tide, the stadium roared and rattled with the fervor of 102,000 rabid fans. Beneath the stadium, in a grimy building wedged under the stands, was the university’s Anthropology Department, home to twenty professors, a hundred graduate students, and thousands of human skeletons.

A mile beyond the stadium, the TBI helicopter crossed to the river’s hilly, wooded left bank. Easing below the treetops, it touched down just outside the fence of the Body Farm. Brockton emerged from the research facility’s entrance. Fighting the blast of the rotor wash, he wrestled the wooden gate into place and locked it, followed by the outer fence. Then he ducked under the spinning blades and clambered into the cockpit. As he swung the door shut, the turbine spooled up and the chopper vaulted upward, buffeting the fence and shredding oak leaves as it climbed. The pilot banked so steeply that Brockton found himself looking straight down at the naked form of 49–12, and he realized with a queasy smile that if his harness should fail and the door fly open at this moment, he would deliver his own fresh corpse to the Body Farm. But luck and latches held, and the chopper leveled off and scurried upriver with the anthropologist strapped safely aboard.

The GPS screen on the instrument panel displayed a map and a course heading, but the pilot didn’t need either. He simply aimed for the plume of smoke twenty miles to the east.

The plume marked the smoldering remnants of an airplane hangar, and the charred remains of a dead undercover agent.

Jacques Fournier has three advantages over most of the spectators filling the square of Notre Dame. He’s uncommonly tall, so he’s able to see over everyone else; he’s uncommonly stocky, so he’s able to push his way through the throng; and he’s uncommonly dressed — in the white cassock and black scapular of a Cistercian monk — so he benefits from grudging deference as he nudges his way toward the cathedral. If someone moves to protest or shove back, he makes the sign of the cross, and that generally settles the matter. Nudge by nudge, foot by foot, cross by cross, Fournier edges toward the front of the cathedral, where a platform has been built for this morning’s spectacle. The cathedral’s façade is shadowed, backlit by the rising sun, but the massive rose window — fired from within by sunbeams slanting through the nave — blazes red and gold.

A murmur of excitement stirs the crowd, and a shout sweeps across the plaza like rolling thunder: “They’re coming! They’re coming!”

To a chorus of cheers and jeers, a chevron of royal guards pushes through the square leading four shackled men. The men are France’s most famous prisoners: the last and most illustrious of the Knights Templar, the warrior-monks who acquired staggering wealth and power during the Crusades. For more than a century, the Templars were highly valued by both the king and the pope. Escorting pilgrims to the Holy Land, the Templars provided safe passage and carried letters of credit — less appealing to bandits than gold or silver — and, upon arriving in Jerusalem, cashed in the credit for currency from their vaults on the Temple Mount. But when the Holy Land was lost to Saladin and his Muslim hordes, the Templars began falling from favor. And seven years ago, in 1307, King Philip the Fair arrested hundreds of the knights, charging them with acts of heresy and perversion. “God is not pleased,” the arrest warrant began — a phrase Fournier finds applicable to many situations and many people. “We have enemies of the faith in the kingdom.”

The shackled prisoners are led up the steps and onto the platform just as Fournier reaches its base. The first is Jacques de Molay, Grand Master of the Order of the Knights Templar. A tall, silver-haired seventy-year-old, de Molay appears gaunt and haggard — seven years of captivity have taken their toll — but he walks with as much dignity as chains, weakness, and advanced age allow. Behind him shuffles Geoffrey de Charney, the Templars’ chief commander in Normandy, followed by Hugues de Peraud and Godefroi de Gonneville. After the prisoners and guards have mounted the stage, one of the cathedral doors opens and a procession of sumptuously robed clergymen emerges: the high-ranking officials who have decided the Templars’ fates. At their head is William, archbishop of Sens, who serves also as Inquisitor of France and as the king’s own confessor. The archbishop is followed by Cardinal Arnold Novelli — Fournier’s own Uncle Arnold. Three years ago, when he was made cardinal, Uncle Arnold handpicked Jacques to succeed him as head of Fontfroide Abbey, a remarkable opportunity and honor. Three weeks ago, a missive bearing Cardinal Novelli’s wax seal arrived at Fontfroide, inviting Jacques to journey to Paris for the sentencing: “an event,” the cardinal wrote, “that cannot fail to reinforce your zeal for protecting the faith.” And indeed, the young abbot already feels a surge of inspiration as he surveys the solemn clerics, the chained heretics, and the mighty façade of Notre Dame.

The cathedral occupies the eastern end of the Île de la Cité, the slender island at the center of the river Seine. The island’s western end is dominated by the royal palace and gardens, and this division of the island into two halves — God’s half and the king’s — is pleasing and instructive, Fournier thinks. Render unto Caesar that which is Caesar’s, he reminds himself, and unto God that which is God’s. Evenly ballasted by church and state, the boat-shaped isle maintains an even keel, at least most of the time. Occasionally the balance of power on the island shifts to one end or the other, causing France itself to tip precariously. But not today; today, king and cardinals alike agree that the Templars must be punished, for the good of the kingdom and the salvation of their souls.

As the watery late-winter sun rises above the twin bell towers, the archbishop steps forward. Quieting the crowd, he reads the Templars’ names and the charges against them. “Having confessed to these crimes fully and freely,” he tells the four, “you are hereby sentenced to perpetual imprisonment. May Almighty God have mercy on your souls.” The crowd roars, some in approval, some in protest.

De Molay, the old Grand Master, steps to the front of the scaffold and raises his hands for silence. After a scattering of whistles and catcalls, the noise subsides. “Listen to me, and hear me well,” de Molay calls out, his voice thin but strong. “We have indeed confessed to these terrible crimes.” He pauses to let those words sink in, and the archbishop bows his mitred head gravely. Then de Molay shouts, “But those confessions were false — forced from us by torture!” Geoffrey de Charney steps forward, nodding and shouting that what de Molay says is true; meanwhile, the other two prisoners shrink back, distancing themselves from de Molay and de Charney. At the other end of the platform, the archbishop of Sens, Cardinal Novelli, and the other clerics huddle in consternation; then the archbishop hurries to the captain of the guards, whispering urgently and pointing at de Molay. “The Order of the Knights Templar is holy and pure,” de Molay cries as the soldiers converge on him. “Our sin was not heresy — our sin was weakness! We betrayed the Order! We signed false confessions! These clerics are the real traitors to God!” A blow from one of the guards knocks the old man to his knees, and the crowd surges forward, on the brink of mayhem. As the soldiers drag the prisoners from the scaffold and force their way back to the prison, swords and lances at the ready, Fournier feels a mixture of outrage and sadness: outrage at de Molay’s brazenness; sadness for Uncle Arnold and the other holy men, publicly denounced by a lying heretic!

Word of de Molay’s outburst is relayed to the palace. King Philip — taking a late breakfast — roars his rage, rakes the dishes to the floor, and roundly cudgels the unfortunate messenger. Next, he swiftly convenes a council of civil and church lawyers. The lawyers, no fools, assure the king that a relapsed heretic — what better proof of heresy, after all, than denying one’s heresy? — can be executed immediately, without further trial or appeal. With equal parts fury and satisfaction, the king decrees that de Molay and de Charney will die before the sun sets.

The news spreads across the island, and out to the rest of Paris, like wildfire. Within the hour, boats begin delivering bundles of kindling to the place of execution: the Île aux Juifs — the tiny Isle of the Jews, a stone’s throw upstream from the royal palace — where countless unbelievers have been executed over the years.

And so it is that six hours after the dramatic scene in the cathedral square, Fournier is jostling and nudging and sign-of-the-crossing his way forward once more, this time toward the western end of the Île de la Cité—the king’s end of the island — to see de Molay and de Charney put to the torch. Fournier bulls and blesses his way to a choice viewing spot on the shore and sizes up the stack of firewood accumulating across the narrow divide of water. There’s fuel enough to incinerate ten heretics, he judges, let alone two.

Fournier’s assessment is based on more than a little experience with heretic burnings. Happily, he was a theology student here four years before, when King Philip burned fifty-four Templars for the same shocking crimes as de Molay and de Charney: spitting on the cross, denouncing Christ, worshiping a pagan idol, and performing acts of sexual depravity. Burning the fifty-four Templars consumed two full days and a veritable forest worth of wood; this immolation should require only an hour, or perhaps two, if the fire is kept small to prolong the pain.

Satisfied that the fuel is more than adequate for the task, the young abbot turns in a slow circle and studies his fellow spectators. They’re a mangy and flea-bitten lot, most of them—enemies of the faith, thinks Fournier, or unreliable friends, at best—but a few arm’s lengths to his right, he notices a cluster of other clerics. They’re Dominicans, judging by their habits: a handful of novices; two friars who appear to be about his own age, possibly younger; and an older man, seemingly the group’s leader. The older man is talking — lecturing, more like it — about heresy in general and the Inquisition in particular. That’s not terribly surprising, since the Dominicans are the pope’s chosen order for detecting and uprooting heresy. But there’s something about the man’s easy confidence that Fournier finds grating.

He edges closer, listening to the older man’s comments with keen interest, a critical ear, and rising irritation. Fournier’s no Dominican, but he’s taken a keen interest in the Inquisition since his arrival at Fontfroide. Geographically, the center of the Inquisition — Toulouse — is near Fournier’s abbey; theologically, the spirit of the Inquisition is close to Fournier’s stern and austere heart. During the past year, in fact, he’s spent weeks in Toulouse, observing and admiring the work of Bernard Gui, the devout Dominican whose masterful wielding of physical pain, theological cunning, and abject terror has broken hundreds of heretics during his seven years as Chief Inquisitor. Fournier wonders if Gui is here today, but he doubts that the Inquisitor’s busy schedule allows him time to travel from Toulouse to Paris, even for such a worthy cause.

Suddenly, from the knot of Dominicans, he hears Gui’s name spoken aloud, as if the older friar has somehow been reading his thoughts. The man is speaking in Latin so that the rabble around him cannot understand, but his words are clear to Fournier. The Dominican is criticizing Gui — and not just criticizing him, but mocking him: mocking a brother friar, and the Chief Inquisitor at that. “He has the fierceness of a bull,” the man says with a smile. “The intelligence of a bull, too.”

Fournier pushes sideways, further closing the distance between himself and the Dominican. The movement catches the eye of the friar, and when he meets Fournier’s gaze, Fournier calls to him in Latin: “Would you dare to say such things about Bernard if he were here to listen?”

The older man registers mild surprise, but not the contrition and fear that Fournier expected from him. “My words will reach his ears soon enough, I feel certain,” he says to the hulking young Cistercian. “When you relay them, be sure to tell Brother Bernard who spoke them: Johannes Eckhart, master and chair of Dominican theology here at the University of Paris.” He bows, with a slight smile and a sideways tilt to his head — is he mocking Fournier now? — and then turns his back on the indignant abbot.

“God is not pleased,” Fournier mutters beneath his breath. He considers pushing through the half-dozen people who stand between them, considers teaching the old man a lesson in respect. Suddenly a shout ripples up the shore, like a bow wave from the boat that is making its way upstream toward the Isle of the Jews, making its way toward the towering stake and the stacks of wood.

The boat, rowed by eight men, carries half a dozen of the king’s guards, as well as Jacques de Molay and Geoffroi de Charny. One of the guards raises a flaming torch high overhead, and the mob roars.

The pyre burns until midnight. The two templars are long since incinerated, but the crowd lingers, loath to leave until every stick of wood is consumed.

When the flames finally gutter and die, the Order of the Knights Templar has been extinguished. But hanging in the air, like the lingering smoke and the scent of charred flesh, is the dying cry of Grand Master Jacques de Molay: “I summon the king and the pope to meet me before God!”

CHAPTER 1

I heard a click in my headset, followed by the voice of the TBI pilot. “Dr. Brockton, you okay back there?”

“I’m still kinda puckered from that takeoff,” I answered, “but yeah, I’m fine.”

He laughed. “I’ll go easier on the landing.”

He circled the plume of smoke, which rose from the ruins of a house. Fifty yards away was what might have been an airstrip except for the fact that it was hemmed in by houses. I pointed at the ribbon of asphalt. “What’s up with that? Looks like they accidentally put a runway smack-dab in the middle of a neighborhood.”

“They did, but not by accident,” the pilot said. “This is Smoky Mountain Airpark. A subdivision for aviation nuts. Instead of a garage, every house has its own airplane hangar.”

A small fleet of vehicles ringed the smoldering hangar and half-burned house we landed beside. In addition to the helicopter, I counted four fire trucks — two of them still spraying water on the house — plus three Sevier County Sheriff’s Office cruisers and four unmarked cars, which I supposed were TBI vehicles.

I was only half right, I learned when four investigators met me halfway between the helicopter and the house.

“Good to see you again, Doc,” shouted Steve Morgan over the ebbing noise of the turbine and the rotor wash. Steve had majored in anthropology, but he’d been working for the TBI for about ten years now, and he was the one who’d called to ask if I could take a quick look at a death scene. “Where’s your assistant? Miranda? I thought you two were joined at the ileum.”

“She’s in France for the summer,” I yelled. “Left a couple days ago. On a dig with some fancy French archaeologist.” Whatever expression my face was showing, it made him laugh.

“Doc, do you know Dave Pendergrast, from our Sevier County office?”

“I didn’t, but I do now. Good to meet you.” I shook Pendergrast’s hand.

“This is Special Agent Craig Drucker, of the FBI,” Steve went on. He turned and nodded toward a man striding toward us from the ruined building. “And Special Agent Robert Stone of the Drug Enforcement Administration.”

I smiled. “No need to introduce me to this guy,” I said. “Rocky Stone and I go way back. Last time we worked together was that big meth-lab explosion that killed a couple guys up in Scott County. That was, what, three, four years ago, Rocky?”

“Ha. More like six or eight.” He grinned. “My oldest kid was being born while you were piecing those two bodies together.” I smiled, remembering how antsy Rocky had been to get to the hospital to see his wife and the baby, and how proud he’d been the next day when I dropped by the maternity ward to see them. “Thanks for coming on such short notice,” Rocky said. “Sorry we kept you in the dark on the ride over.”

“Hey, I’m not complaining,” I assured him. “I’ll do just about anything for a helicopter ride.”

The subdivision wasn’t just an aviation nut’s dream; it was also, the DEA agent explained, a drug runner’s dream. “For the past year,” Rocky said, “we’ve been investigating a smuggling ring based in Colombia. They’ve been flying cocaine into small airports all over the Southeast, changing the drop point every time. But this place is perfect as a more permanent base — a clandestine hub, I guess you could call it. No control tower, very little traffic, virtually no risk of detection. You land whenever you’ve got a shipment, taxi the plane into your own private hangar, lock the door, and unload in complete privacy. This operation could have run without a hitch for years.”

“So what happened?” I asked, nodding at the smoking ruins. “Turf war? A raid that got too hot to handle?”

“I wish,” Rocky said. “One of our undercover agents had infiltrated the operation. What’s left of him is there, in what’s left of the hangar. We’ve got an arson investigator coming, but we’d like you to examine the body. See if he died during the fire or died before the fire. We need to know if it was an accident or a homicide.”

“Dr. Garcia’s the medical examiner,” I pointed out. “He’s got primary jurisdiction here.” Dr. Edelberto Garcia — Eddie — served as ME for Knoxville, Knox County, and several surrounding counties.

“Actually, we called Dr. Garcia just before we called you. He says if the body’s rotten or burned, you’re the guy to look at it.”

“That’s damned decent of Eddie,” I joked, “letting me have all the good ones.” All four agents smiled.

“The scary thing is,” Rocky said, “the Doc’s not being sarcastic. He actually means it.”

The truth was, Rocky was right. I actually did.

The dead agent was maurice watson, alias “Perry Hutchinson,” whom the DEA had planted as the manager of the airpark. Six months before, working through the drug smugglers’ distributors in Atlanta, Hutchinson had offered them a sweet deal: a house, a hangar, and a key to the gas pump in exchange for a small cut of the profits.

“They brought in the first load two weeks ago,” said Rocky. “It was small — just a test run. Smooth as silk. They were planning another run next week. A big load. We were all set to come down on them. But somebody got spooked — or got tipped off.” He shook his head grimly. “You ready to take a look?”

“Sure. Let’s go.”

The intense heat of the fire had reduced the hangar to scorched brick walls and sagging steel roof trusses silhouetted against blue sky and gray smoke. Entering through a side door, I found myself sloshing through an inch of muck — a slimy mixture of water, ash, soot, and petrochemicals — and I was grateful that I’d put on my waterproof boots before delivering corpse 49–12 to the Body Farm.

Occupying one side of the hangar was a blackened Ford pickup; on the other side was a scorched plane, a V-tailed Beechcraft Bonanza; and tucked between them was a riding lawn mower, its gas cap removed. Lying on the floor next to the mower, faceup in the muck, was the corpse, its facial features all but obliterated, its left hand still clutching a five-gallon gasoline can. The heat of the fire had shrunk the flexor muscles of the arm, locking the man’s fingers around the handle in what was, quite literally, a death grip. “So, looks like an accident,” Stone said. “Might even have been an accident.”

“Mighty convenient accident,” I said, “the way the fire just happened to break out so close to so much gasoline.”

“Damned convenient,” Rocky agreed.

I knelt beside the body. “I assume he’s not carrying his DEA badge,” I said, “but have you checked him for other identification? What was his undercover name? Hutchinson?”

Rocky nodded. “He’s got the Hutchinson driver’s license. Can you get a DNA sample so we can be sure? Or did the heat…? Is the DNA…?”

I finished the question for him. “Is the DNA cooked? Probably not. The femur is pretty well insulated by the muscles of the thigh, and most of that tissue’s still there, so we can probably get a good DNA sample. But the dental records might be quicker and easier. Can you get me those?” Tugging on a pair of gloves and kneeling beside the corpse, I opened the mouth. “Agent Stone? Unless your man had just come from a barroom brawl, he wasn’t refueling his lawn mower when he died.” Leaning back so Rocky could get a better view, I showed him the teeth. All eight incisors had been snapped off at the roots.

“Shit,” Rocky muttered. “That doesn’t look like something the fire did.”

“No way,” I told him. “See how the teeth are folded backward into the mouth? That’s called a ‘hinge fracture,’ and it means somebody swung something at him — a baseball bat or a steel pipe or the butt of a rifle — and caught him square on the mouth.” I studied the face with my eyes, and then with my fingertips, pressing and squeezing in order to feel the bones through the burned flesh. From there I worked my way down the entire body. When I finally got down to the feet, I looked up at Rocky. “I’ll X-ray the body when I get it back to the Regional Forensic Center,” I said, “but I can tell you already he’s got multiple fractures. Half a dozen, at least. I hate to say it, Rocky, but somebody broke your man, bone by bone, before they killed him.”

Stone’s eyes had gone narrow and cold, and his jaw muscles pulsed rhythmically, forming knots the size of walnuts. “Damn those bastards to hell,” he said. “How long will it take you to do the exam?”

“The exam itself, half a day,” I said. “But I’ve got to get the tissue off the bones to do it right. And that’ll take a couple weeks — we’ll put him out at the Body Farm and let Mother Nature clean him off.”

He grimaced. “Isn’t there any other way? Something more respectful? More dignified?”

I shook my head. “I could dismember him, put him in kettles, and cook him down. That’d be a little faster. But it seems less respectful, to my way of thinking. And an aggressive defense attorney would claim that I damaged the bones in taking him apart.”

He sighed. “All right, do it the way you think is best. Just find everything—everything—so we can nail these scum-sucking bastards.” He looked at the vehicles. “Thank God we got the fire out so fast. If the gas tanks had gone up, I doubt there’d’ve been any of him left for you to look at.”

“Wait. Wait.” I looked up, my gaze swiveling from his face to the blackened vehicles. “You’re saying there’s still unburned gas in here?” He nodded. “In the truck and in the airplane?”

“Yup. The truck holds twenty-six gallons; the plane holds ninety.”

“There’s almost a hundred gallons of high-octane aviation fuel sitting right over our heads? We shouldn’t even be in here, should we?”

Stone shrugged. “Fire’s out.”

“There might be an ember somewhere in that plane. One of the tanks might fail. The roof could collapse. A spark from—”

I was interrupted by a metallic clatter — the clatter of metal punching through metal — and a neat round hole suddenly appeared in the side of the airplane.

“Shots! Shots! Take cover!” yelled one of the agents. Another bullet slammed into the plane, this time into the wing, and a thin stream of pale blue liquid began dribbling from the wing and pooling atop the muck.

“Jesus, that’s avgas,” said Stone. “We gotta get outta here.” He hoisted me to my feet and began pulling me toward the door. All around us, agents and deputies were scrambling, staring and pointing in various directions, drawing weapons. Another bullet chipped a cinder block and ricocheted off in a shower of sparks. A flame bloomed at the base of the far wall. From there it followed a finger of gas, a finger beckoning it toward the center of the hangar, toward the leaking airplane.

I tore free of Stone’s grasp and ran back toward the plane. Behind me, I heard him shouting, “Doc, come back! Get out!”

A wall of flame had engulfed the far wing of the plane by the time I reached the dead agent. Grabbing his feet — the closest things to me — I tucked them under my arms and dragged him behind me like a sleigh, slipping and staggering as I hauled him through the muck. I’d almost made it to the door when the plane exploded, and a fist of fire slammed into my back and knocked me flat.

Rocky Stone helped me carry the body of his dead agent to the most secluded corner of the Body Farm and lay him at the foot of a big oak. Unzipping the body bag, I tugged it free, fastened ID tags on the left arm and left ankle, and then draped the bag over the corpse.

“You broke half a dozen procedures and every rule of common sense, going back for him like that,” Stone said. “And I am incredibly grateful. If you hadn’t gotten him out, we wouldn’t have a prayer of making a murder case.”

“I wish the shooter hadn’t gotten away.”

“You and me both, Doc. He was only a couple hundred yards away — up on that low ridge — but by the time any of our guys got there, he was gone.” Stone knelt and laid a DEA medallion on top of the bag. Closing his eyes, he said a few silent words, then stood. “So, you say it’ll take about two weeks to get us a report?”

“More or less. More if it turns cool, less if it gets really hot. Once the bugs and I have cleaned him off, I’ll take photos of all the fractures.” I had already documented them, or at least most of them, with X-rays, which I took with a portable machine at the loading dock of the Forensic Center. But if the case came to trial, the prosecutors would need crisp photos to corroborate the fuzzy X-ray images.

Normally I’d have delegated the cleanup to my graduate assistant, Miranda Lovelady, who ran the bone lab and did much of the legwork at the Body Farm. Miranda had left for France only three days before, but already I was feeling her absence. I missed her help, and I missed her camaraderie. At the moment, though, I was relieved she hadn’t been with me in Sevierville. I’d narrowly escaped being incinerated; in fact, the hair on the back of my head was singed, and if I’d been wearing my usual outfit — jeans and a cotton shirt — instead of the Nomex jumpsuit, my clothes would surely have caught fire. Thank God Miranda wasn’t there, I thought.

She’d left on short notice, under circumstances that remained slightly mysterious to me. A week earlier, she’d received an urgent e-mail and then a phone call from a French archaeologist, Stefan Beauvoir, asking her to come help with a hastily arranged excavation. The site was a medieval palace dating from the thirteen hundreds — practically prehistoric by American standards, but nearly modern for Europe.

I’d hesitated before saying I could spare her; after all, during half a decade as my graduate assistant, she’d made herself indispensable. I valued and respected Miranda’s intelligence and forensic expertise. But it went deeper than that, I had to admit: She was as important to me personally as she was professionally. In some ways, I felt closer to Miranda than to anyone else on earth, even my own son. If you took DNA out of the equation, Miranda was my next of kin. I felt certain that the bone lab and the Body Farm could limp along without Miranda for six weeks, but I wasn’t sure I could manage that long.

“Excuse me, Doc?” Rocky’s voice seemed to come from far away, not so much interrupting my thoughts as awakening me from some dream. “So if we’re done here, I guess I’ll be taking off. The TBI’s gonna think we’ve hijacked their chopper.”

“Sorry,” I said. “Didn’t mean to check out on you there. Hang on — I’ll walk you out and lock up.”

I bent to straighten one corner of the body bag, and as I did, my cell phone began bleating. Fishing the phone from the pocket of the jumpsuit, I glanced at the display. I didn’t recognize the number; it started with 330, an area code I didn’t know, and it looked longer than a phone number should be. I stared dumbly for a moment before I realized why. It was a foreign call, and 33 was the country code — the code, I suddenly remembered, for France. Miranda! I flipped open the phone, but in my excitement, I fumbled it, and it fell onto my foot and skittered beneath the body bag. Flinging aside the bag, I rooted for the phone, which had lodged — ironically and absurdly — beside the dead man’s left ear. I had just laid hold of it when it fell silent. “Damn it,” I muttered. I punched the “send” button, only to be told by a robotic voice that my call “cannot be completed as dialed,” doubtless because it was an overseas number. “Damn damn damn,” I muttered, but just as I finished the third damn, the phone rang again, displaying the same number.

This time, I did not drop it. “Hello? Miranda? How are you?”

“Ah, no, sorry, it is not Miranda.” The voice was a man’s, accented in French. “This is Stefan Beauvoir. The archaeologist Miranda is helping. She wanted me to call you.”

My internal alarms began to shriek. “What’s wrong? Has something happened to Miranda? Tell me.”

“The doctor says it is—merde, how do you say it? — the rupture of the appendicitis?”

“Miranda’s got a ruptured appendix?”

“Oui, yes, a ruptured appendix. She asked me to call and say, please, can you come?”

“Can I come? What, to France?”

“Oui. Please, can you come to France? To Avignon?” Ahveen-YOHN. I didn’t like the sound of it. “She is having the surgery now, and she will be very grateful if you can come.”

“Doesn’t she want someone from her family?”

“Ah, but it is not possible. I call her mother and her sister. Neither one has a passport. So she thinks next of you, and asks if you can please come quickly.”

“Of course. I’ll be there as soon as I can. I’ll get on a plane this afternoon.”

“Bon, good. You can fly into Avignon, but the flights are better if you come to Lyon or Marseilles. Marseilles is one hour by car.”

Racing down the path and out the gate, I frantically flagged down the TBI chopper, which was quivering on its landing skids, transitioning toward flight. Stone took off his headset, scrambled out of the helicopter, and hurried over to me.

“Doc, is something wrong?”

“Can you guys give me a ride? I need to get someplace fast.”

“Where?”

“France.”

Sixty seconds later, we were airborne again, this time with me in the right front seat. “Does this thing have turbo?” I asked the pilot. By way of an answer, he rolled the helicopter into a 90-degree bank.

“Holy shit,” I heard Stone squawk from the back.

Skimming low across the river, the chopper hurtled toward Neyland Stadium. “I don’t know where you can land,” I said, scanning the vicinity of the stadium. “The parking lots all look pretty full.”

The pilot grinned. “I think I see a spot that might just be big enough.” Swooping low over the towering scoreboard, we plunged straight into the bowl of the stadium.

“Touchdown,” Stone deadpanned as we thumped into the south end zone.

My secretary scarcely glanced up as i dashed past her desk and into my office. “Peggy,” I called out, yanking down the zipper of the greasy, sooty jumpsuit. “I need you to do some airline research for me, please.” Yanking off my boots and the jumpsuit, I tossed them in a corner.

“For that conference in Seattle next month? I booked your tickets last week, remember? Nonrefundable.” Her typing hadn’t even slowed.

“Peggy, stop typing. Listen. I need to fly to France. Marseilles. Like, ten minutes ago.” On the other side of the doorway, her keyboard fell silent. “It’s Miranda,” I went on, pulling on the clothes I’d intended to wear to my meeting with the president. “Ruptured appendix. She’s going in for surgery right now.” Rummaging in my closet, I dug out my “go” bag, a duffel I kept packed and at the ready, and slung it over my shoulder.

“Oh, my Lord,” she gasped. “Poor thing.”

By then I was already headed for the staircase, my shirttail still untucked, my shoes and socks in one hand. “I’m off to the airport,” I yelled over my shoulder. “Call me once you book it.” As the steel fire door slammed shut behind me, I thought I heard her say something else, but by then I was halfway down the steps.

It wasn’t until the helicopter was lifting off from the goal line that I realized what she’d said. The realization came when I saw her dash onto the field, wildly waving her arms, clutching my laptop in one hand and a small blue booklet in the other: my passport.

Twenty-two minutes and thirty-three hundred dollars later, my passport in one hand and my bag in the other, I boarded a United flight for Dulles airport in Washington, D.C. From Dulles, Lufthansa would take me to Frankfurt, Germany, and finally to Marseilles, where Beauvoir had promised to pick me up.

By the time I boarded at Dulles, I felt sure Miranda was out of surgery, but my half-dozen phone calls got no answer or return message. The silence was terrifying.

As the aircraft climbed out of Washington and wheeled toward the Atlantic, the ten-thousand-foot chime sounded, reminding me of the church bell I’d heard tolling a few hours before. Please, I prayed, though I could not have said to whom or what I prayed. Please not for Miranda.

CHAPTER 2

The Customs agent didn’t bother to look up as he took my passport and reached for the inked stamp. “Is the purpose of your visit business or pleasure, Monsieur Brockton?” His flat tone suggested that he was already profoundly bored with me, even before I spoke.

I hesitated, uncertain how to respond. “Pleasure” didn’t seem to fit the urgent nature of the trip, but if I said “business,” that might open the door to more questions, or to the need for a work visa. “Uh, pleasure,” I finally said. He looked up with a frown, as if he disapproved of pleasure, or of my limited enthusiasm. Then, with a slight sniff, he whacked the stamp down onto the page and flipped my passport back onto the counter.

As I emerged through the glass doors of the international terminal into the outer lobby, I scanned the crowd, searching for the face of a French archaeologist who appeared to be searching for the face of an American anthropologist. What would a French archaeologist look like? Angular and arrogant, sporting a black beret, an unfiltered cigarette, and a pencil mustache? In my anxiety over Miranda, I hadn’t thought to ask Stefan how I’d recognize him, and he’d neither volunteered that information nor inquired about my own appearance.

I was midway through my second scan of the throng when, over the general din of foreign words and exotic accents, I heard a laugh — a familiar female laugh. My head snapped back to the right, to the cluster of faces I’d just rescanned, and there stood Miranda, arms spread wide, grinning broadly and shaking her head as if to say, “Unbelievable! You looked right past me! Twice!” I dropped my bag in astonishment; my hands flew to my chest, over my heart, as relief and happiness flooded me. Miranda was here, and she was all right. In fact, she looked better than all right, she looked fabulous: strong, healthy, excited, even radiant. What she did not look like was someone who’d just gotten out of emergency surgery for a ruptured appendix.

Miranda ran to me and flung her arms around my neck. “Thank you, thank you, for dropping everything and racing over here. I am so glad to see you!” She squeezed me tightly.

“Be careful,” I said. “You’ll rip out your stitches. Doesn’t that hurt like hell? Why aren’t you still in a hospital bed? How can you look so good so soon after surgery?”

She laughed again, a musical, pealing laugh like carillon bells. “So many questions, so little time! I’m fine. Doesn’t hurt a bit. I don’t actually have stitches.” I pulled back and stared at her, more confused than ever. She laughed again. “You’re the victim of a slight deception. But don’t worry; it’s for a good cause, and you’ll be glad you came.” I shot her a glance — one loaded with questions and blame, which she clearly comprehended — but she just shook her head. “All will be revealed in the fullness of time. After we get to Avignon. Meanwhile, meet Stefan.” She turned toward the line of faces, and a slight, bookish-looking man, forty or so, stepped forward, limping slightly — not one of the French traits I’d imagined. I extended my hand, and he shook it weakly. “Stefan Beauvoir, Bill Brockton.” Suddenly Stefan took me by the shoulders and kissed me on both cheeks. I’d known that cheek kissing was a common French custom, but in my imagination only men and women greeted one another this way; I’d somehow overlooked the fact that men kissed other men. I preferred the American handshake. Strongly preferred the American handshake.

Stefan cast a dubious eye on the yellow L.L. Bean duffel I was carrying. “Where is the rest of your baggage?”

“This is it,” I said. “I didn’t have time to pack. Besides, I didn’t think I’d be staying long.” He shrugged and smiled. It was a slight, cryptic smile, as enigmatic as the Mona Lisa’s but a bit more coy, as if he enjoyed prolonging my suspense.

It was lucky my bag was small, because Stefan’s car — a Fiat Punto — was built for midgets. The engine was proportionately tiny, too. A few miles north of the airport, the car slowed to a crawl as the road angled up a narrow valley between rocky hills. When we finally topped out, we’d left the coastal plain for the rolling farmland of southern Provence.

Miranda kept deflecting my questions, promising to explain everything once we were in Avignon, but with each deflection I found myself growing edgier. Now that my panic about her health had been resolved, I resented being manipulated — tricked and scared into coming — and I hated being kept in the dark. “It’s not a good idea to talk in the car,” Stefan finally interjected when I launched another inquiry. “We might have bugs.”

“He means it might be bugged,” Miranda explained.

“I knew what he meant,” I snapped.

“Ouch,” she said.

“Sorry,” I grumbled. “I’m tired from the trip — I can never sleep on planes. And somebody tried to barbecue me yesterday. So I’m kinda cranky at the moment.”

“Barbecue you?” She sounded slightly concerned but mostly amused.

“Barbecue,” I repeated. “What’s the French word? Flambé?” I told them the story, and ended by leaning forward, putting my scorched head between the front seats.

Miranda rubbed the stubble. “Wow, that’s crispy. I’d say you just used up another one of your nine lives.”

Stefan took a glance, then looked in the rearview mirror. “Is there any possibility that the barbecue chef — the guy who was shooting at you — followed you to France?”

The thought had not occurred to me before. “Why? Is someone tailing us?” I turned and looked out the rear window and saw half a dozen cars behind us on the busy highway. How would we know if one of them was following us? “I doubt that the guy shooting at me had any idea who I was. And he certainly wouldn’t have any way of connecting me to you, and to Avignon.” But despite my confident words, Stefan’s question had planted a seed of doubt in my mind, and it was already germinating into anxiety.

“I’m sure you’re right,” Miranda said. “And I know you’re exhausted. And of course you have a right to know what’s going on here. Please trust us and be patient a little longer. Relax and enjoy the countryside.”

I tried. But with Stefan’s eyes darting to the mirrors again and again, my jangled nerves refused to settle. “You still seem worried that we’re being followed,” I finally said. “Do you think someone is tailing you?”

“Non,” Stefan said curtly.

“There might have been a car following us in Avignon this morning,” Miranda added. “But Stefan managed to lose it before we got out of the city.”

Stefan held up a hand for silence. The farther we drove, the louder the silence became.

An hour after leaving Marseilles, we crossed the Rhône — a beautiful river, almost as lovely as the Tennessee — and then Stefan abruptly whipped off the highway and onto a two-lane road. As soon as he’d made the turn, he and Miranda checked behind us again, then shared a look of relief at the emptiness of the road. Through tiny villages and past farmhouses and barns, the road followed the river upstream. After a few miles, we turned onto another highway that took us eastward, to another bridge spanning the river. On the far bank stood a low hill ringed by an ancient wall and crowned by tiled rooftops and massive stone towers, all glowing in the golden light of Provence.

“Beautiful,” I said.

“Avignon,” Stefan announced. “City of the popes. Once the richest and most powerful city in Europe.”

CHAPTER 3

Stefan threaded the fiat through a portal in the ancient wall and into the old part of the city, navigating between stone buildings that were already old by the time the Mayflower set sail from England. Crooking to the left, the street burrowed into an underground parking garage carved deep beneath the hill. Stefan spiraled up several ramps, parking on the topmost level near a long pedestrian tunnel. Emerging at the end of the tunnel, we blinked and squinted our way into dazzling daylight.

We had surfaced on a large plaza, a couple of hundred feet wide but several times that long. Fronting the plaza, looming above it, was an immense castle, its high stone walls punctuated by even higher towers. “Le Palais des Papes,” Stefan said. “The Palace of the Popes.”

The façade of the palace was easily twice the length of a football field, the stone walls were forty or fifty feet high, and the towers at the corners — one of them within spitting distance of the cathedral — soared high above the walls. With its crenellated battlements, the structure looked designed to withstand a military siege. “Palace of the Popes? Looks more like Fortress of the Popes.”

“A mighty fortress is our God,” Miranda quipped.

Slightly to the left of the highest, most formidable tower of the palace rose a more graceful, less militant spire, this one topped by a twenty-foot gold statue of a woman wearing a tiara of stars. “Who’s the gilded lady with the stars in her crown?”

“The Virgin Mary, of course,” Stefan said. “That’s Avignon Cathedral. The house of God.”

“How come God’s house is so much smaller than the pope’s palace?”

My question drew a smile from Miranda.

From across the river, the palace had appeared immense but also fanciful — Euro Disney, or maybe PopeLand. Up close, though, it loomed over the square, hulking and intimidating. I didn’t know a lot about Catholicism, but I associated it with saints and stained glass. This, though, was not the architecture of inspiration and aspiration; this was the architecture of subjugation and domination.

We entered the palace by way of an imposing central gate, a portal through which a steady stream of tourists flowed. Once inside, we stepped behind a large display and ducked down a cordoned-off staircase. It led deep into the palace, to a vast chamber whose darkness seemed to clutch at the narrow beam of Stefan’s flashlight.

The beam brought us to an iron grille made of bars thicker than my thumbs, fastened with a hefty padlock. Stefan retrieved a pair of keys from a cord around his neck — keys that made me think of Saint Peter, the heavenly gatekeeper. Leaning against the grille, Stefan wrestled it open on groaning hinges, then motioned us inside and closed the gate behind us. He stooped to the floor and flicked a switch in a long cord that stretched somewhere into the darkness, and a string of dim bulbs, jury-rigged to the damp wall, revealed a crumbling stone staircase that descended through a rough-hewn tunnel.

Reaching awkwardly back through the gate, Stefan replaced the lock and clicked it shut behind us, locking us in, then led us forward. As we edged down the steep, uneven steps, we seemed to be descending not merely into the depths of the papal palace, but through the layers of time itself: one century deep, two centuries, three, four, five, six centuries into the past.

The stairs ended in a short horizontal hallway; at its far end, another padlocked gate of heavy iron guarded the entrance to a cavelike room whose dimensions I couldn’t discern for the darkness. This gate was even heavier than the first, and it took Stefan and Miranda both to tug it open. Inside the chamber, stout stone pillars and Gothic arches supported a low, vaulted ceiling. A lone bulb — the last in the string of lights rigged in the stairway — illuminated a small arc of the rough floor and the nearest pair of columns. Stefan turned to study my face as I surveyed the room. “Probably too far from the dining hall to be the wine cellar,” I said. “Was this a crypt? A dungeon?”

He shook his head and smiled, evidently pleased that I’d guessed wrong. “La chambre du trésor,” he answered. “The treasure room.”

“And was the treasure room half empty or half full?” I was joking, but he took it seriously.

“Totally full. Complètement. This room was overflowing with gold and silver and jewels. Millions’, maybe billions’ worth.”

“Hmm. I never really thought about the net worth of the pope,” I said.

“The pope did, for sure,” he shot back. “The popes of Avignon were richer and more powerful than any of Europe’s kings or emperors. Charlemagne ruled half of Europe. The popes ruled all of Europe. Tout entier.”

“But they didn’t exactly rule,” I pointed out. “Not the way Charlemagne did.”

“Non?” He cocked his head, lifting an eyebrow. “Tell me, how was it different?”

“Well, the popes didn’t have an army.”

“Bool-shit,” he scoffed. “Who were the Crusaders and the Knights Templar if not the pope’s warriors? They were sent to the Middle East to add the Holy Land to the empire of the Holy Father. L’impérialisme, plain and simple.”

“You’re putting a mighty cynical spin on the Church,” I said.

“Mon Dieu, just look at this place where we are working. The biggest Gothic palace in Europe. The epicenter of money and power.”

I flashed back to the skyline I’d seen as we approached Avignon from across the Rhône. “Okay,” I conceded, “maybe you have a point.”

“Oh, hell, don’t encourage him, Dr. B,” Miranda squawked. “He’ll pontificate all day. Pun intended.”

Ignoring her protest, Stefan resumed. “Go; sell everything you have, and give the money to the poor — that’s what Jesus said. The popes said, ‘Give the money to us.’”

“I take it you don’t approve,” I said drily.

He shrugged and smiled cynically. “Au contraire, mon ami. I approve completely. And gratefully.” He swept his arm in a wide, encompassing arc. “I owe my career to the popes. They and their faithful flocks — pious, hardworking sheep — created the world’s greatest art and architecture. I would be foolish and ungrateful if I did not approve.”

Miranda was right; once he got wound up, it was tough to wind him down, and I was fast approaching my limit. “I’m thinking you didn’t bring me here just to talk about the glory and the greed of the medieval popes,” I said. “So cut to the chase. What the hell is going on here? And why all the cloak-and-dagger stuff?”

“Come,” he said, and walked toward the center of the treasure chamber. As I followed him into the darkness, my eyes gradually adjusted, and I saw that a makeshift screen had been rigged between two of the pillars by hanging a blue plastic tarp, a jarring contrast with the ancient stonework. Stefan held one end of the curtain aside for me, and I stepped behind it into the blackness.

Stefan flipped another switch on an electrical cord, and a pair of halogen work lights flashed on. My eyes squinted shut against the blinding glare; when they opened, I saw that part of the room’s back wall had collapsed — a roughly semicircular section, head high and an arm span wide. The stones had been stacked in the corner of the room, the rubble excavated, and the opening shored up with rough timber framing. “I thought you were an archaeologist,” I quipped. “This looks like a job for a stonemason.”

Stefan pointed to the right. Along the side wall was a long table covered by a white sheet. On the white sheet was a complete human skeleton, laid out in anatomical order.

The bones looked old; their color was a cross between gray putty and red-orange caramel, with darker, greasy stains here and there. Wordlessly Stefan offered me a pair of latex gloves. I put them on and picked up the skull, my favorite place to start.

The bones were definitely a man’s — the strong brow ridge above the eyes told me that, as did the big bump at the base of the skull, the external occipital protuberance: small and subtle in women, prominent in men. The nasal opening was broad, but the face itself was comparatively narrow, framed by prominent zygomatics — cheekbones — that gave it an angular, aristocratic appearance.

Cradling the skull upside down in my left palm, I studied the upper teeth and the roof of the mouth. Two molars and a canine tooth were missing, and several others had cavities. The presence of all four wisdom teeth, plus the complete fusion of the sutures — the seams — in the upper palate, confirmed that the man was an adult. Turning the skull right side up, I examined the cranial sutures, the zigzag joints in the top of the skull. In young adults, the sutures are dark and prominent, almost like irregular zipper teeth. This man’s, by contrast, were smooth and fading, almost obliterated. Although cranial sutures can give only a rough indication of age, the smoothness of these suggested that this man was my age, mid-fifties, or older — maybe a decade or more older. The spine seemed to bear this out, too; the vertebrae were beginning to develop the ragged bony fringe known as osteoarthritic lipping, which is one of the skeletal signs of aging. This man’s spine, I realized with an unexpected, ironic smile, probably looked a lot like my own.

It was when I looked at the ribs that I felt a familiar spike of adrenaline, the rush that always came when I got hooked on a forensic case. On the right side of the rib cage, everything was normal, but on the left side, the eleventh and twelfth ribs — the lowermost, “floating” ribs, which attach to the spine but not to the sternum — looked slightly truncated. I picked them up and inspected their distal ends, which curve around the sides of the lower chest but don’t wrap all the way to the front. Normally they’re tipped with cartilage, though these were too old and clean for that. But when I compared them with the matching ribs from the right side, the difference between them was dramatic. The tips of the right ribs were smooth and rounded, but the ends of the left ribs were flat and jagged. The ends of these two ribs appeared to have been sheared off by a sharp blade.

I looked up at Miranda and Stefan. “Unless this guy fell on his own sword, I’d say he was stabbed to death.”

“But wait, there’s more,” Miranda said, eyes shining. “Look at the extremities.”

I scanned the right arm, the one closest to me. I noticed nothing amiss until I got to the distal end of the forearm. Near the wrist both bones, the radius and the ulna, were gouged on their medial surfaces, as if a knife had been forced between them. I felt a slight tingling, which intensified when I inspected the left forearm and found similar gouges there.

“Now the feet,” she said. I almost missed it: more gouge marks, these between the metatarsals, the bones at mid foot.

Wheels were turning in my mind, but they were turning slowly — bogged down partly by fatigue but also by disbelief at what I was seeing, or what it meant. “Okay, so what’s the story? Where’d this guy come from? And why all the secrecy about a skeleton that’s six or seven centuries old?”

She looked at Stefan. “Now?”

He nodded. “Oui. Now.”

Miranda stepped forward and lifted the flap of overhanging sheet from the front of the table. Tucked on the floor beneath was a box two feet long by a foot or so square. The box was stone, but it had roughly the same shape as thousands of corrugated cardboard boxes stashed beneath the football stadium in Knoxville — boxes I myself had carefully packed with the bones of the Anthropology Department’s skeletal collection. “A stone ossuary?” She nodded. “The bones were in this ossuary, sealed inside the wall?” She nodded again.

“The wall collapsed,” Stefan explained. “Vibrations from a jackhammer outside. When they saw something inside, that’s when they called me. And that’s when I called Miranda.”

“This was wrapped around the ossuary,” she added, lifting a tangle of crumbling cord from inside the ossuary. Near one end of the cord was an irregular disk of soft gray metal — lead — stamped with what appeared to be tiny likenesses of two men’s heads. I shot a questioning look at her.

Stefan answered. “Those figures are Saint Peter and Saint Paul. That’s a papal seal.”

“You’re saying those bones were put there by one of the popes?” He nodded. “Why would a pope seal up a skeleton and hide it in a wall?” I asked. “Was this a rival? Somebody he killed to get the papal crown?”

“Non. Not if the inscription is true.”

“Inscription?”

He pointed, and for the first time I noticed a flat, rectangular panel propped against one end of the ossuary. It was the lid, made of the same pale, soft stone as the box. Miranda hoisted it from the floor and laid it at one end of the table.

Two images were chiseled into the lid — images that sent chills up my middle-aged, incipiently arthritic spine. One was a lamb. The other was a cross.

Suddenly all the secrecy and skittishness made sense. This would be the find of the century — no, this would be the greatest archaeological find of all time — if these were indeed the bones of the Lamb of God, the crucified Christ.

“So,” he said, “perhaps you can understand why we didn’t want to tell you over the phone, or by e-mail. Too big. Too risky. And now that you know, you have a choice. Do you want to stay and help us study it, help us figure out if the inscription is true? Help us figure out if it’s Jesus?” Something about the way he put it—“help us”—hit a nerve. I wrote it off as jet lag, until he added, “You could be third author on our publications.” Third author? That was a role to which only first-year graduate students aspired. And the phrase “our publications” implied a cozy possessiveness on Stefan’s part — not just of the bones, but also of Miranda — that I didn’t like. I opened my mouth to say no, but Miranda didn’t give me time.

“Come on, Dr. B,” she coaxed, “say yes. It’s the chance of a lifetime. And there’s nobody in the world who’s better qualified to examine these bones than you.” I hesitated, but then Miranda gave me a pleading smile and clasped her hands, beseeching, and my resistance crumbled. Oh, what the hell, why not? I thought. You’ve come all this way, and it’s an interesting question. What finally tipped the scales was another thought that hit me out of the blue. And maybe it’s not a bad idea to hang out here till Rocky Stone rounds up those drug runners.

“I’d have to be back in Tennessee in a week,” I said. “Two, at the most.” Miranda beamed and bowed gratefully; Stefan smiled thinly.

“No problem,” he said. “I’m sure Miranda and I can finish everything after you go home.”

Suddenly he froze, holding a finger to his lips for silence and laying his other hand on Miranda’s arm. He turned toward the staircase, listening intently, and I strained to hear what had alarmed him. At first I heard nothing, but then came the faint clatter of metal on metal: a padlock rattling as it was inspected and tugged? the upper gate shifting from an exploratory shove? At that moment the room went pitch-black. Miranda gasped, and Stefan gave a low sshh. In the darkness, I felt a hand — Miranda’s hand — clutch mine. Finally, after an intense, interminable silence, I heard the rhythmic thud of footsteps.

Or was it the pounding of my heart?

Footsteps, I hoped, because soon the sound faded away.

“You really think someone was trying to get in?” I asked as we made our way up the dark, uneven stairs by flashlight. “Maybe it was just one of the guards. Turning out the lights because he thought nobody was using them.”

“Guards,” Stefan scoffed. “What guards? There is one guard on duty, at the main gate. His job is to keep tourists from sneaking in without buying tickets.”

“Okay, who has access to this part of the palace?”

“Dozens of people,” he fretted as he reached through the gate and fumbled to open the padlock. “Maintenance workers. Tour guides. Docents. But it’s dark and dirty down here, so everybody avoids it.” Finally I heard the lock click open.

“Almost everybody,” I corrected. “So who knows what’s in the treasure room?”

He shook his head, then pushed the iron grille open. “Nobody, really. Just the three of us. My boss — a petty bureaucrat — knows I found some bones, but he has no idea how important they are. And he’s not inquisitive.”

“Well, somebody’s inquisitive,” I pointed out. “Maybe we need a security camera to find out who. Or maybe we should move the bones someplace more secure.” He frowned, and didn’t reply; instead, he heaved the gate shut with a clang, then snapped the lock back into place.

We’d left the treasure chamber only minutes after we’d heard the furtive sounds above us. Stefan was clearly jumpy, and I was exhausted, so we’d decided to stop for the day and resume in the morning.

“Let me play devil’s advocate about the bones,” I said as we recrossed the cavernous cellar, or dungeon, or whatever it was, by flashlight. “How could that possibly be the skeleton of Jesus?”

“Sshh,” cautioned Stefan.

I lowered my voice to a murmur. “First off, Jesus died at thirty-three,” I went on. “This guy’s way older than that. Come on, you saw the arthritic changes in the vertebrae, Miranda.” We reached the bigger staircase, which would restore us to the world of light and air.

“Maybe he just put a lot of wear and tear on his spine,” she countered. “A carpenter? Back in the days before Black and Decker? That’s heavy lifting, man. Bad for the back. Remember the skeleton from that slave cemetery in Memphis? We know the guy died at forty, plus or minus, but his spine looked sixty.”

“But his cranial sutures didn’t,” I pointed out. “They were still very rugged. This guy’s look like they’ve been sealed and spackled. He’s older than I am; I’d bet my belt sander on it.”

She laughed, but there was no time for a retort because by then we’d reached the top of the staircase, stepped around the velvet cordon, and rejoined the tourists. The maneuver made me feel like one of the costumed characters at Disney World, who cross the Magic Kingdom in underground tunnels, then pop out of concealed openings in the shrubbery when it’s time to work the crowd.

Leaving the palace, we crossed the plaza and headed back through the tunnel to the parking garage. Except for us, the corridor was empty, so I renewed the debate. “Call me Doubting Thomas,” I persisted, “but what about the Resurrection? If these are the bones of Jesus, he didn’t rise from the dead.”

“Ha,” chuckled Stefan. “That would make things interesting for the Church, wouldn’t it? They would have to change the story a little bit.” He sounded gleeful at the prospect. “Maybe the pope hid the bones so he wouldn’t have to explain them.”

“Why not just destroy them?” I asked. “Get rid of the evidence altogether? That’d be a lot safer.”

“Too powerful,” he said. “Imagine, if you are the pope, having the bones of Christ. What a secret to possess! The ultimate knowledge, the ultimate forbidden fruit, you see?” He pressed the button of his keyless remote, and the Fiat beeped a few slots away, its lights flashing in the gloom of the garage.

“I don’t see why the bones of Jesus would pose a huge problem,” Miranda mused. “You could argue that he rose from the dead, lived another twenty or thirty years, and then died of natural causes, right? That still allows for the Resurrection.”

“Could be,” I conceded grudgingly as I folded into the tiny backseat. “But there’s that whole ‘ascended into heaven’ bit, too — isn’t that like the Resurrection, Part B?”

“Hairsplitting,” she said, with a definitive slam of the door. “How many bones can dance on the head of a pin? Come on, let’s get you settled at Lumani, then grab some grub.”

Stefan had leased an apartment near the Palace of the Popes for the summer, and Miranda was staying in a modern, charmless hotel a block from the palace. That hotel was fully booked now, though, as was every other hotel near the palace — a month-long theater festival was about to fill Avignon with throngs of tourists — so they’d been forced to look farther afield for my lodgings. Within the narrow circumference of old Avignon, luckily, no place was terribly far afield.

The Fiat spiraled down through the underground garage and out past the city wall, and Stefan turned onto a road that circled the wall like a moat. To our right were the wall’s stone ramparts; to our left, the green waters of the Rhône. Halfway around the perimeter, we re-entered the old city and doubled back, this time hemmed tightly between the wall’s inner face and the press of densely packed houses, their stone and stucco façades crowding the narrowest sidewalk I’d ever seen. We pulled up in front of a three-story structure that offered only one tiny, round window — scarcely more than a porthole — at street level, though the upper levels each had several large windows. An arched wooden door, painted emerald green, was set into the wall to the left of the porthole, but the door was locked, and didn’t look like a gateway to hospitality, at least not to my bleary eyes. Stefan rapped sharply on the door, waited a bit, and then rapped again, harder. Miranda, meanwhile, wandered farther up the street, stopping at a vine-draped opening in the wall that was secured by a pair of barn-style doors, also emerald green. “I think this is the entrance,” she called. “Here’s a sign, and a doorbell.” She pressed the button, and deep within the building I heard a faint buzz.

The sign, partly hidden by the vines, consisted of three repetitions of the word “Lumani” cut from a thick plate of steel and bolted to the wall, one atop the other. The vines hung halfway down the doors, an irregular fringe that varied between chest and head high. The tendrils reminded me of kudzu, the fast-growing Tennessee vine that, given half a chance and half a week, could swallow trees, barns, even slow-moving cows. Inside, I heard footsteps approaching the doors, then the rattle of a key in the lock. I suspected I was about to be greeted by an eccentric, crabby old Frenchwoman in bathrobe and slippers.

The left-hand door swung open, and the crabby old Frenchwoman turned out to be a lovely woman, possibly fifty, with wavy brown hair, warm brown eyes, and an even warmer smile. “Ah, bonjour. Hello, and welcome to Lumani,” she said. “I am Elisabeth.” An elfin-looking man with sparkling eyes and a short fringe of gray hair rounded a corner and joined her. “And this is my husband, Jean.” The final sound of his name — the — on of zhon—lodged in her nose rather than emerging through her lips, and I was reminded that French pronunciation was a mystery I would never master. “Please, please to come inside.”

Miranda, Stefan, and I ducked beneath the curtain of vines, followed my hosts down a short driveway, and stepped into a place of enchantment: a huge, enclosed garden courtyard complete with an arbor, hammocks, a gurgling fountain, large plane trees, and an immense metal mobile hanging from a cable rigged to one of the trees.

“What a lovely place!” exclaimed Miranda, turning in a slow circle to take it all in. Jean offered to show us around, while Elisabeth went to pour drinks — wine for everyone else, orange juice for me.

Lumani was like a cozy private gallery. The walls were covered with abstract paintings, and the garden and indoor spaces were full of sculptures, large and small. “The art is beautiful,” I said. “Are the artists local? From Avignon?”

“I made the sculptures,” Jean said shyly; then, with obvious pride, he added, “The paintings are by Elisabeth.”

Elisabeth emerged with the tray of drinks. I’d requested orange juice, but what she’d brought me was a deep red. Was it cranberry? Not my favorite, but I took a polite sip. Surprisingly, it was orange juice, freshly squeezed with a hint of pulp, but a richer flavor than regular orange juice — as if even the fruit in Avignon spoke with an exotic accent. “Delicious,” I said.

“Merci. Oui, it’s very special,” she said. “L’orange sanguine. Do you say ‘bloody orange’?”

Miranda grinned. “Blood orange,” she said, arching her eyebrows. “How appropriate.”

After we finished our drinks, Jean took me upstairs to my room. It was a third-floor aerie — I was practically nesting in one of the plane trees — with a bird’s-eye view of the garden. In the distance, beyond Jean and Elisabeth’s smaller, separate house, sprawled a jumble of tiled rooftops and spiky church spires. One of the spires, silhouetted against the sky a few blocks away, was unlike any I’d seen before: an open iron frame, its cluster of bells completely exposed. It was a bare-bones skeleton of a steeple, I realized; exactly my kind of steeple.

I pointed. “That church steeple — is it being restored?”

He followed my gaze. “Ah, non,” he said. “That is the design. It’s built that way for the mistral.”

“The what?”

“The mistral. Strong wind from the northwest. The tower is open so it doesn’t fight against the wind. The wind blows through, instead of pushing it down.” I liked the steeple even more now; its spare skeletal beauty was born of function.

As I leaned on the sill, lingering over the view, I noticed Miranda looking up, waving. “I’m jealous,” she called. “I wish I had a room overlooking the Garden of Eden.”

“Come visit anytime,” I said. “Just watch out for snakes. And don’t eat the apples.”

“Sorry, Miranda. what?” I hadn’t heard the question. My brain was empty but my mouth was full. Blissfully full.

“I know carbon-14 dating’s pretty good,” she repeated, “but how close can it get? How precisely can it nail the age of the bones?”

“Pretty damn close,” I finally answered. “Man, that’s good.”

I was finishing a bowl of lamb stew — my second bowl of lamb stew — at Pace é Salute, a Corsican restaurant near Lumani that Jean and Elisabeth had recommended. Its name translated as “Peace and Good Health,” both of which I regarded as fine things, but neither could compete with the honeyed lamb stew, made with tender chunks of lamb and a rich sauce of honey, garlic, citrus, and savory broth.

Suddenly Miranda’s question triggered a faint memory — faint but recent, something that had occurred as I was preparing to board my flight from Knoxville to Dulles. Was it really possible that only eighteen hours had passed since my secretary, Peggy, had dashed out to the helicopter with my computer and my passport? Reaching into the inner pocket of the jacket I’d been wearing for the past four thousand miles, I pulled out a letter she’d tucked into my passport — a letter marked “Urgent” that had arrived in the morning’s mail. “I’m glad you said that,” I told Miranda. “I would have forgotten this until the next time I went to the dry cleaner’s. And that might’ve been years.”

The envelope was postmarked Charlotte, North Carolina. Smoothing the letter, I scanned it again, because I’d given it only a cursory glance on the plane. “You’re not the only one interested in C-14 dating. So is the Institute for Biblical Science.”

“The Institute for Biblical Science?” Miranda’s eyebrows shot up. “Isn’t that a contradiction in terms?”

“Not necessarily,” I said, “though in practice, yeah, science often takes a backseat to the Bible.”

“And they’re writing to ask your advice about C-14 dating? I’m surprised they’re not writing to heap fire and brimstone on you. You’ve taken some fierce swings at creationism from time to time.”

“Not fierce,” I said. “Just factual. Okay, maybe a little fierce, too. I don’t get a lot of fan mail from the fundamentalists.” Putting on my reading glasses — a recent, annoying necessity — I read aloud. “‘Dear Dr. Brockton: I’m writing to ask your opinion on the accuracy of carbon-14 dating. Our Institute is initiating a study of artifacts from the Holy Land, and we would very much appreciate your thoughts on the precision and reliability of C-14 dating for establishing the age of artifacts, as well as human and animal bones. I would also appreciate any insights you have on the feasibility of extracting and sequencing genetic material from bone specimens. We would be happy to hire you as a consultant on this project, although — as you might expect — our budget is limited. Please contact me at your earliest opportunity to discuss this exciting project. Best regards, Dr. Adam Newman, Ph.D., Scientific Director, Institute for Biblical Science.’”

I folded the letter and reached for the envelope, but Stefan held out his hand. “Permit me?” I handed him the page. He read it quickly, then handed it back with a look of disdain. “Do what you want, but I advise you to stay away from them. Crazies. If you work with them, it will damage your reputation.”

Miranda leaned forward on her elbows. “What makes you say that?”

“A colleague of mine did some excavation at Qumran,” he said. “The place where the Dead Sea Scrolls were found. Someone from this place — this so-called institute — didn’t like a journal article she published. They attacked her work, tried to destroy her credibility. They even made threats against her. Very unpleasant.”

“Thanks for the heads-up,” I said, stuffing the letter back in my jacket.

“But we digress,” Miranda reminded me. “C-14?”

“Oh, right.” I spooned another dollop of sauce from the bowl. “Yum. If — and mind you, this strikes me as a mighty big if — if the bones from the Palace of the Popes are two thousand years old, the C-14 report will say something like ‘two thousand BP plus or minus one hundred.’ That means ‘two thousand years before the present, with a one-hundred-year margin of uncertainty either way.’ Wiggle room, in other words. So the two-thousand-year-old bones could be as old as twenty-one hundred years or as young as nineteen hundred.”

“Actually,” Stefan said, “we should be able to get closer than a hundred years. If it’s a good sample, an AMS test — accelerator mass spectrometry — can tell us the age plus or minus forty years.”

“Wowzer,” Miranda marveled. “I’m used to time-since-death estimates of days or weeks, not millennia. How does it do that?” It was one of Miranda’s favorite multipurpose utterances; sometimes it meant “Explain, please,” but sometimes — in response to, say, a 3-D laser hologram or a fiery sunset — it meant simply “That’s amazing!”

Stefan laid down the Corsican grilled cheese sandwich he’d been nibbling on, and he smiled the smile of a man who loves hearing himself explain things. “The machine, the spectrometer, counts the carbon atoms in the sample,” he said, “and it calculates the ratio of three different isotopes — three different forms of carbon. The ratio of those isotopes is like a signature…” He trailed off, frowning, then held up a finger, recalibrating his explanation, and resumed. “Non, the ratio is like a time stamp — the time stamp on an e-mail or a security-camera photo — that we can match to the ratio in the atmosphere at any point in time.”

“Call me dense,” Miranda persisted, “but how do you know what the ratio in the air was two thousand years ago?”

“Ah,” he beamed, “because the rings in trees have recorded the ratio in the air, year by year. And we have analyzed tree rings all the way back to ten thousand years ago.”

“We have?” Miranda arched her eyebrows. “We, you and I? Or we, you and other people?”

Stefan’s eyes narrowed in annoyance. “We, the scientific community,” he said testily. I dabbed at my mouth with my napkin, hiding my smile. “So when we find which tree ring has the same ratio as the bones, voilà, we know that the man died the same year the tree ring was formed.”

“I like it,” Miranda said. “An atomic stopwatch. A wood-burning atomic stopwatch. And it’s really that accurate, that reliable?”

“Oui, sure. You know the Shroud of Turin, the so-called burial cloth of Jesus?” Miranda and I both nodded. “You remember when the fabric from it was carbon-dated?”

“I remember that,” I said, “but Miranda was probably still in diapers. Wasn’t that, like, twenty years ago?”

“It was in 1988,” Stefan preened.

“I’ll have you know I was wearing big-girl pants in 1988,” Miranda said. “But I was too busy watching Sesame Street to tune in to the Vatican News Network.”

“So,” Stefan began, warming up for another mini-lecture. “Millions of people believe the Shroud of Turin is two thousand years old, oui?” God, I thought, he does love to hear himself talk. Was it just his smugness I objected to? Or was I jealous of him at some level — resentful of his tightness with Miranda, afraid he was taking my place in her esteem? Whatever the reason, I was starting to wish I hadn’t agreed to stay on and help the two of them. “But it was seen for the first time,” he went on, “the first time we can be sure of, anyway, here in France, in 1357. The C-14 samples were cut—”

“Wait, wait,” Miranda interrupted. “The Shroud of Turin started out as the Shroud of France? No kidding?”

“No kidding,” he said impatiently. “It was first shown in the village of Lirey, near Paris, in 1357. But the believers say non, the Shroud is much older than 1357. So finally, in 1988, the Vatican allows scientists to make a C-14 test. A small bit of the cloth is cut from one corner”—he made a snipping motion with his fingers—“and pieces are sent to three different laboratories. And voilà, all three labs say the same thing: The Shroud is from the fourteenth century.” He smiled wickedly as he pointed at me. “Ha! From the same century as Bill!” Miranda giggled, and my face flushed.

I pushed back from the table. “You know what, guys? Ancient relic that I am, I’m really beat,” I said.

“Oh come on, Dr. B,” Miranda cajoled, looking contrite. “It was a joke. Don’t leave.”

I waved off any further conversation. “It’s okay. Stay; enjoy your dessert. I can find my way back from here.”

That much was true — I had no trouble finding my way back. It was finding my way forward that seemed difficult at the moment.

CHAPTER 4

I peered over Miranda’s shoulder at the screen of her laptop. “Okay,” I said, “push the button. Let’s see what the verdict is.”

It was nearly noon, though no speck of sunlight could penetrate the depths of the palace’s subterranean subtreasury. We’d spent the morning taking measurements of the bones, a task that was tedious, time-consuming, and therefore welcome: a convenient excuse to ignore how awkwardly dinner had ended.

Miranda had keyed dozens of measurements into her laptop, and was running ForDisc, software we’d developed at UT to compare unknown bones with our forensic data bank, which included thousands of skeletons whose sex, race, and stature were known. Might ForDisc shed light on the racial and geographic origin of our John Doe — or Jesus Doe?

Miranda scrolled the cursor and clicked. “Gee, here’s a shocker,” she said. “It’s a dude.” I laughed; given the robustness of the skull and the narrowness of the pelvis, there’d been no doubt in my mind that the skeleton was male. “Hmm,” she mused. “You measured the stature directly, right?”

“I did — head to heel — and added a bit to make up for the missing cartilage.”

“And what’d you get?”

“About one hundred sixty-six centimeters; five five.”

“Hmm,” she repeated. “ForDisc puts him at one hundred seventy-five centimeters — nearly five nine.”

“That’s odd. Really odd.” Could my tape measure be off — by four full inches? I stepped back and took another look at the skeleton. Suddenly I was struck by how unusual the proportions were — an anomaly I’d registered subconsciously but had failed to appreciate fully. “Look how long of limb and short of trunk he is,” I said to Miranda and Stefan. “This guy was like a human stork.” ForDisc estimated stature by extrapolating from femur and tibia length, and normally that formula was quite accurate. But the formula was fooled by a leggy guy like this — a reminder that it’s the exceptions and outliers that make life interesting and keep science challenging.

The software was also handicapped by the age — or rather the youth — of its data. ForDisc knew nineteenth-and twentieth-century skeletons well — especially modern white Americans — but ancient bones were terra incognita to it. And so, like us, ForDisc didn’t know if our guy was first century or fourteenth, if he was Palestinian or Parisian.

“Well, rats,” said Miranda. “I want a ForDisc upgrade. One that has time-travel and crystal-ball features.”

I was disappointed, too, but Stefan seemed unfazed. “No problem. Let’s get the samples for the C-14 test. That’s the big question anyway: How old are the bones — seven hundred years or two thousand?” He turned to me. “Do you prefer to be a dentist or a bone surgeon? I brought a saw if you want to cut a cross section from the femur.”

“Dentist,” I said. “Pulling teeth is easier. Besides, it doesn’t fill the air with bone dust. Or with plague spores. What if this guy had the plague — wasn’t there an epidemic here in the fourteenth century?” Miranda nodded. “So shouldn’t we be worried? Shouldn’t we be wearing masks?”

“Yes, but no,” said Miranda. “It was really bad here. An infected ship anchored at Marseilles in January of 1348, and the rats swam ashore. Plague hit Avignon two weeks later. Within a matter of months, two-thirds of the people were dead — twenty, thirty thousand people. Corpses rotting in the streets, choking the river.”

“Terrible,” I said. “Must have been terrifying, too.”

“A lot of people blamed the Jews,” she went on. “All over Europe, Jews were driven from cities. Entire Jewish settlements were massacred. Horrific. But here, the pope at the time of the plague — Clement the Sixth — defended the Jews, said they weren’t to blame. He even offered them refuge.”

“That took guts,” I said. “The townspeople could’ve turned on him.”

“No kidding,” she agreed. “What’s the old saying? ‘The friend of my scapegoat is my scapegoat’? But plague doesn’t make hibernating time-bomb endospores the way some other bacteria do.”

“And you know this how?” I pressed.

“I studied up on the way over last week — journal articles on plague were my in-flight entertainment.” Despite my lingering annoyance about the unpleasant turn the dinner-table conversation had taken, I gave her a grudging half smile for that. “In London,” she added, “a team of scientists is trying to reconstruct the entire DNA sequence of the plague bacterium. They’re getting snippets from known plague victims — bones from a fourteenth-century plague cemetery — but they’re having a hard time piecing the genome together. Bottom line? Plague doesn’t survive for centuries, and this guy’s not contagious.”

“Okay, okay, I’m convinced. But I’d still rather pull a tooth than butcher a bone.”

“Let’s send a molar,” Stefan suggested.

Holding the mandible with my left hand, I gripped one of the eighteen-year molars, a wisdom tooth, pinching it firmly between my right thumb and forefinger. I wiggled it gently and felt a slight grating as the tooth wobbled in the dry socket. Wiggling a bit harder, I began to tug, and with a rasp and a faint crunch, it pulled free of the jaw. “What do you think?” I asked, holding out the tooth for Miranda and Stefan to inspect. “First century or fourteenth?”

Miranda weighed in first. “I say it’s him. With a capital H: Him.”

“Jesus? Really?” I pointed toward the fringe of osteoarthritis on the spine. “But he’s ancient,” I reminded her. “My age; maybe older.”

“Nah, not older,” she shot back. “Just harder working. Wore out his spine.”

“You surprise me, Miranda. I had you pegged as a doubter.”

She shrugged. “Sometimes I like to play the long shot. Makes life more interesting.”

I looked at Stefan. “What about you? How do you vote?”

He shrugged, looking bored. “Oh, of course it would be interesting if Miranda was right, but that’s unlikely. I think probably fourteenth century.” He said it in a monotone, but his eyes flickered, and I wondered if he was more hopeful than he was admitting.

I reached for the Ziploc bag, but Miranda stopped me before I could drop the molar in. “Wait. No fair. You haven’t said what you think.”

“Rats. You know how I hate to go out on a limb.” I held up the molar and studied it. It was a dull grayish brown nearly down to the roots; the gum line had receded during the man’s life. A large cavity had burrowed into the center of the tooth’s crown. Could this stained, decaying tooth really be from the man whom millions around the world revered as the Son of God? “It’s clear to me now,” I finally said, “that this guy died six months ago, and that all this is an elaborate hoax to cover up a modern-day murder.” I nearly dropped the tooth when Miranda punched me on the arm, hard. She had a sneaky right cross that way; it wasn’t the first time she’d popped me when she thought I was being insolent.

“You’re no fun,” she said, but her eyes were smiling — maybe at my silliness, maybe at finding an excuse to punch me — and it felt as if we’d finally gotten out of the minefield of last night’s prickly conversation and back onto safe, comfortable ground again.

I tipped the tooth into the small bag. Stefan took the bag from me and was about to seal it when I stopped him. “Should we send them two? The lab said ‘one or two teeth,’ didn’t they?”

“I think one is enough,” he said, “but okay, if you want to send two.” I picked up the mandible again and grasped another molar. “Wait,” he said. I looked up from the jaw. “Not another molar.”

“Why not?”

“No reason. Call it a crazy Frenchman’s superstition. This time…a canine.”

“Okay. I mean, oui, monsieur, you’re the boss.” I shifted my grip to a canine, one of the fanglike “dogteeth.” This one was pegged tightly into its socket; the snug fit and the tooth’s tapered shape made it harder to pull, and I was forced to use pliers. The tooth came free, but the root snapped off in the jaw, giving the tooth an oddly flattened base. I balanced the tooth upright on the table briefly, just for fun, and then slid it into the bag, where it settled against the molar with a slight click.

“So where’s the C-14 lab?” I asked. “In Paris?”

“Non, mon ami. Guess again.”

“Oxford? That’s one of the places that tested the Shroud of Turin, right?”

“Wrong again. I think you will not guess. We send the teeth to Miami.”

“Miami? Florida? Why on earth?”

“Because the world’s biggest C-14 lab is there. Beta Analytic. They have offices in Europe — and Asia and Australia — but they’re just offices. The only lab is in Miami. They have two AMS systems and fifty-two liquid scintillation counters.”

“What’s a liquid scintillation counter?” Before he could answer, I waved my hand. “Never mind — I don’t need to know. How long does it take? A week? A month?”

“Pas du tout—not at all! Days. One or two days, after they get the sample. Last year I sent them a goat bone from a first-century site in Turkey. Four days later, voilà, I get the results.”

“That’s faster than I can grade a batch of test papers,” I said. “Must be expensive.”

“Not so bad. This will cost eight hundred euros. Twelve hundred U.S. dollars. Sure, it’s a lot. But if these are the bones of Christ, that’s a small price to pay to find out, n’est-ce pas?”

“Jesus!” Miranda exclaimed, then laughed at her unintended double entendre. “Just imagine — if the Virgin Mary on toast can fetch thirty thousand bucks…”

“Excuse me?” I felt a step behind her in the conversation. “The Virgin Mary? Toast? What are you talking about?”

“The Sacred Sandwich.” Now I was two steps behind. “Don’t you pay any attention to the world outside the Body Farm?” She rolled her eyes happily; one of her great joys in life was giving me grief. “Some lady in Florida takes a bite out of her grilled cheese sandwich and then she notices the BVM—”

“The what?” Three steps.

“The BVM — the Blessed Virgin Mary. A portrait of Mary’s face was scorched into the bread. So the woman seals the sammy in Tupperware and keeps it on her nightstand for ten years. Then she sells it on eBay. Some online casino buys it for thirty grand.”

“That’s so bizarre,” I said, “on so many levels.” A host of questions popped into my mind: White or whole wheat? Why Tupperware rather than a Baggie? Didn’t Mary mold? But I decided there was no future — no worthwhile future, at least — in delving further into the Sacred Sandwich. “I am amazed, and know not what to say.”

“I say, ‘Praise the Lord and pass the pickles,’” she cracked. “Anyhow, if somebody will pay thirty K for the BVM on loaf bread, think what the bones of Jesus might fetch. Not, of course, that you’d sell him on eBay, right, Stefan?”

“Non, never.” He smiled ironically. “People who shop on eBay can afford a sandwich sacré, maybe, but not the bones of God.”

It was a juxtaposition of ancient and modern, in more ways than one.

Avignon’s hospital was a complex of concrete-and-glass buildings located several miles outside the stone wall ringing the city. The contrast between the medieval city and the new suburbs was more than just striking; it was deeply disorienting, given how far back into the past I’d traveled in the space of twenty-four hours. Sure, the battering ram of modernity had smashed through the city’s ramparts; in addition to ancient buildings, the walls encircled cars, computers, even a few Segways. But those were trivial, fleeting artifacts; they seemed to skim the city’s surface like water bugs on a pond, without penetrating its depths or altering its medieval essence. Outside the walls, though, Avignon was not so different from Knoxville, and this hospital could have been transplanted to any suburb in the United States without looking out of place.

A deeper, more interesting juxtaposition, though, was the one about to transpire within the hospital — specifically, in the Clinique Radiologique, where we were bringing the skull for a CT scan: ancient bones, twenty-first-century technology.

“You know there’s no compelling scientific reason for this,” Miranda pointed out, not for the first time.

“Sure there is,” I repeated.

“Is not,” she said. “Admit it. We’re burning time and X-rays just for fun.”

“O ye of little curiosity,” I countered. “O thou scoffer; vile, mocking spirit. We are gathered together in the spirit of scientific inquiry.” I held the boxed skull aloft as I walked, as if I were a priest and the skull some sacred relic — which, after all, it might actually be. “Besides, don’t you want to know what he looked like?”

“Sure I do. I think it’ll be…fun.”

I shook my head, exasperated and amused. She was stubborn. And she was right, of course: what fun, to get a forensic facial reconstruction of what might be — almost certainly wasn’t, but yet might be — the face of Jesus, a face that I had arranged for a forensic artist to “sculpt,” in virtual clay, on a 3-D scan of the skull.

Stefan had persuaded a friend in the hospital’s Radiology Department to do the scan. We’d parked at a loading dock behind one of the hospital’s two low towers and threaded a maze of service corridors. After enough turns to make me wish I’d left a trail of bread crumbs behind — the hospital was nearly as labyrinthine as the palace, though a lot better lit — we entered a wide public corridor and followed signs that even I had no trouble translating from the French: RADIOLOGIE.

Stefan’s friend turned out to be an attractive young woman named Giselle, whose name tag identified her as a MANIPULATRICE ERM, which appeared to mean she was an X-ray tech. She led us to a room containing a large, doughnut-shaped CT scanner, and turned to me. “Monsieur, s’il vous plaît.” Please, sir. My French was getting better by the minute, I said to myself, but I unsaid it a panicked instant later, when she added, “Mettez-le ici.” Seeing my blank look, she pointed to the box under my arm, then to the machine’s scanning bed. I nodded sheepishly. Removing the skull carefully, I set it on the pillow Giselle offered, then rolled up the towel I’d used as padding in the box and wrapped it around the base of the skull to stabilize it. After a final check to make sure the mandible was correctly articulated at the jaw’s hinge points, I nodded at Giselle, and she led us through a doorway and into a control room. As I watched through thick windows whose glass contained lead — less elegant but more protective than the leaded windows of Avignon’s chapels — the bed of the scanner moved in and out of the opening in the scanning head. Slice by slice, X-rays cut through the bone, and the differing densities they encountered registered on the screen; line by line, a detailed picture of the skull materialized on the screen. When it was done, Giselle slowly rotated and inspected it, making sure the entire skull had been imaged. The detail was astonishing; so was the ease with which the manipulatrice could manipulate the image: removing the top of the skull, for instance, to show the floor of the cranial vault, or slicing open the tiny caverns of the frontal sinus. As she effortlessly explored the hidden, inmost structural secrets of the skull, I found myself marveling, Miranda-like, How does it do that?

Joe Mullins was three thousand miles to the west of France, but ten minutes after Giselle scanned the skull in Avignon, Joe was looking at it in Alexandria, Virginia.

Joe was a forensic artist at the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children, a mouthful of a name that he mercifully shortened to the acronym NCMEC, pronounced “nickmeck.” After a traditional fine arts training in painting and drawing, Joe had taken an unusual detour. He’d traded in his paintbrushes and palette knives for a computer and a 3-D digitizing probe; he’d forsaken blank canvases for bare skulls — unknown skulls on which he sculpted faces in virtual clay. By restoring faces to skulls, Joe could help police and citizens identify unknown crime victims.

I’d worked with Joe on a prior case, one involving boys who’d been beaten to death at a reform school in Florida, but the Avignon case was different from the reform-school case in a multitude of ways. For one, we already knew the identity, or at least the supposed identity: Jesus of Nazareth. But was it, really? ForDisc hadn’t been able to shed much light, but perhaps Joe’s facial reconstruction — based on the skull’s shape and the artist’s subtle eye — could tell us whether our man had been a first-century Jew from Palestine.

Joe wasn’t looking at the actual skull, of course. After the CT scan, Giselle and Miranda had uploaded a massive file containing the 3-D image of the skull and sent it to a file-sharing Web site — a cyberspace crossroads, of sorts — called Dropbox. Joe had then gone to Dropbox and downloaded the file, and, as the French would say, voilà.

The case clearly didn’t involve a missing or exploited child, so Joe couldn’t do the reconstruction on NCMEC time. But he was willing to do it as a moonlight gig, a side job, and when I’d first e-mailed to ask if he’d be able to do it — and do it fast — he’d promised that if we got the scan to him by Friday afternoon, he’d have it waiting for us first thing Monday.

My phone warbled. “Hey, Doc, I’ve got him up on my screen,” Joe said. “What can you tell me about this guy?”

“Not much, Joe.” I didn’t want to muddy the water by telling him what the ossuary inscription claimed. “Adult male; maybe in his fifties or sixties. Could be European but might be Middle Eastern.”

“Geez, Doc, that doesn’t narrow it down much.”

“Hey, I didn’t include African or Asian or Native American,” I said. “Give me at least a little credit.”

“Okay, I give you a little credit. Very, very little.”

“You sound just like Miranda, my assistant. Way too uppity.”

He laughed. “This Miranda, she sounds pretty smart. She single, by any chance?”

Sheesh, I thought. “Take a number,” I said.

CHAPTER 5

“Shall we find some fishing poles,” I joked, “and see what we can catch from the end of this fancy pier?”

Miranda, Stefan, and I were standing on the ancient stone bridge that stretched halfway across the Rhône. After we left the hospital’s Radiology Department, Stefan had headed for Lumani, skirting the city wall — the fastest way to cross old Avignon was to detour around it — but as we’d passed under the bridge, I’d admired the four graceful arches. In response, Stefan had whipped the car off the road, parked, and led us up through a tower and onto the bridge, or what was left of it.

“No fishing,” he said in response to my question. “You don’t want to eat anything that comes out of the Rhône.”

I peered down at the emerald water. “Looks pretty clean to me,” I said, leaning over the metal rail for a better view.

“Be careful,” he cautioned. “That railing isn’t strong. See, a piece of it is missing.” He pointed to a nearby gap in the rail, cordoned off by orange plastic safety mesh. “The river is full of industrial chemicals,” he went on. “Terrible toxins and carcinogens. Not just in the water; the sediment in the bottom of the river is full of them, too.”

“Okay, I take your point,” I said. “I won’t fish, I won’t swim, and I won’t eat the mud. It’s still a pretty river, though.” He made a grimace of disagreement.

A few paces farther out on the span, Miranda hummed a few bars of music, then began twirling, singing in French, “Sur le pont d’Avignon, l’on y danse, l’on y danse”; a moment later Stefan chimed in, trailing a line behind, turning the song into a round. Miranda and I had never sung together at all, I realized with a pang, much less sung rounds. Halfway through the verse, Miranda lost her place in the lyrics, falling into sync with Stefan for the last two lines.

“Crap,” she laughed. “I mean merde. I can’t sing rounds worth a damn. I lack the courage of my melodic convictions.”

“What’s the song?” I asked. “How do you know it?”

“It’s about dancing on this bridge, the pont of Avignon. My mom used to sing it to me as a lullaby.” She smiled at the memory.

“It has lots of silly verses,” Stefan added. “You dance, I dance, we all dance. The girls dance, the boys dance. The dolls dance, the soldiers dance. Frogs. Gorillas.”

“Frogs and gorillas? My mom never mentioned those,” Miranda said. “She just sang the first verse over and over. No wonder it put me to sleep — it was so boring! Matter of fact, I could use a nap right now.” She faked a yawn.

Halfway along the bridge was a small stone building, ancient and showing its age badly. The front of the building partially blocked the bridge; the back, though, jutted above the river, supported by an extension of one of the bridge pilings. “Nice fishing shack,” I observed.

“The chapel of Saint Bénézet,” said Stefan.

“Saint who?”

“Bénézet,” said Miranda. “The kid that built the bridge.”

“This bridge?” She nodded. “It was built by a kid?”

“Yep. Maybe a teenager. Hard to be sure. ‘A young shepherd boy’ is how most of the stories put it. I read up on it after Stefan brought me here.” Suddenly I was less excited about the bridge, now that I knew I was retracing an outing they’d made together. But Miranda went on. “The kid’s minding his flock, minding his business, and suddenly he has a vision, or an angel swoops down, or some such. God tells him to build a bridge over the Rhône, right here. So Bénézet goes and relays this message to the bishop of Avignon. The bishop says, ‘Yeah, sure, kid—’”

“Wait,” I interrupted. “Really? The bishop says, ‘Yeah, sure, kid’?”

She cut her eyes at me. “What, you’re thinking the bishop says, ‘Forsooth, callow youth, thou pullest my leg’?”

“Okay, smarty, I guess ‘Yeah, sure, kid’ is more like it.”

“Anyhow,” she resumed. “So then the bishop says — and I’m paraphrasing, mind you—‘Okay, junior, if you want me to believe that God sent you, you gotta prove it. See that huge stone over there? Thirty men can’t lift that stone. If you can, I’ll believe you; if you can’t, go back to the farm and quit wasting my time.’ So the kid—”

“Young Bénézet?”

“Our boy Benny. Benny goes over and hoists it with his pinky—”

“With his pinky?”

She rolled her eyes in exasperation. “So maybe he uses both pinkies. The point, Dr. Hairsplitter, is that Benny hoists the giant rock, plunks it in the river, and voilà, the bridge building has commenced. Seven years later, while the bridge is still going up, Benny goes down — dies, at age twenty-five, plus or minus.”

“Of overwork?”

She shrugged. “Overwork. Underfeeding. A surfeit of saintliness. Who knows? The historical record is vague on cause of death.”

“But that’s why the bridge only goes halfway across the river.”

“Not at all. When Bénézet dies, it’s far enough along that other, lesser mortals can finish it. But maybe their workmanship wasn’t as miraculous as his, because after four or five centuries, most of the arches collapsed during floods and wars. Anyhow. Bénézet’s body was entombed in this sweet little chapel they built on the bridge to commemorate him.”

“Is it still here?”

“Duh. If you keep walking another twenty feet, you’ll smack into it.”

“Not the chapel, smart-ass, the body. Is it still here in the chapel?”

“Non,” said Stefan, who had kept quiet for what was — for him — a remarkably long time. “During the French Revolution it was moved to a convent outside the city to protect it.”

I couldn’t resist a joke, though I feared it would trigger another round of pedantry. “Even corpses got guillotined during the Revolution?”

“The revolutionaries considered religion an institution of tyranny,” he began, and my fears were confirmed. “All over France, they destroyed churches, religious statues, other symbols of oppression.”

God save us from oppressors, I prayed. And from pedants.

“But,” Miranda interrupted, snatching back the reins of the narrative, “here’s some trivia you’ll find interesting. He was an Incorruptible.”

“Excuse me?”

“Bénézet. He was an Incorruptible.” She stopped and nodded at the stone chapel, whose stout wooden door faced the bridge. “Bénézet’s body, lying here for centuries, did not decompose. Leading one of the popes, in the sixteen hundreds, to proclaim Bénézet one of the Incorruptibles.”

“The Incorruptibles.” I sounded it out slowly, savoring the syllables and the meaning. “Sounds like a band of crime-fighting comic-book superheroes waging war on bribery and embezzlement. ‘Holy hedge fund, Miranda — someone on Wall Street is making insider trades! This looks like a job for the Incorruptibles!’”

She groaned, as I’d figured she would, and as I’d hoped she would. But she was right: I was intrigued to learn that Saint Bénézet was an Incorruptible — someone whose corpse did not decay. Catholics considered incorruptibility a sign of sainthood, but I looked at it through the lens of science. A few years back, I’d examined the body of a young woman — a pregnant young woman — who’d been killed and hidden in a cave for thirty years. The cave’s cool, damp conditions turned her soft tissue into a substance called adipocere — sometimes called “grave wax”—and the transformation was so complete, she might almost have come from a wax museum rather than a crime scene. In the morgue, I’d paused to admire her lovely features, and then I’d sprayed her body with hot water, watching with wonder as her prettiness and her half-formed baby melted away, dissolving like some sweet sad dream in the heat of a summer’s day.

I thought of her — that lovely murdered young woman who had spent three decades as an Incorruptible — as I stood on the ancient bridge beside an antique chapel where a shepherd-turned-engineer had lain in state for centuries.

According to Stefan, the move to the convent for safekeeping had not agreed with Bénézet. Some years after the French Revolution, the nuns to whom he’d been entrusted opened the saint’s coffin, the better to revere his perfectly preserved remains. Imagine their disappointment to discover that the miracle — like the man himself — had expired, and his mortal coil had shuffled off silently, unheralded by angelic fanfare or human notice.

Human notice: We seemed to be attracting it. As I leaned recklessly on the tubular steel rail of the Bénézet bridge once more, watching a long, slender canal boat slip beneath the outermost arch, Miranda laid her hand on my arm. “Don’t look now,” she murmured, “but someone’s stalking us.”

“Where?” Trying to look casual and touristy, I raised my eyes, pointing to the fortress on the river’s far shore, as if calling Miranda’s attention to it.

She looked in that direction, smiling and saying, just loudly enough for Stefan and me to hear, “Downstream about a hundred yards. Edge of the parking lot. There’s a red-and-blue sign. Guy in a floppy hat standing behind it, propping binoculars on top. Don’t look yet.”

I swiveled slowly, with only a passing glance at the spot she’d indicated, and gazed upward at the cathedral and the papal palace, which loomed above us on the rock. “You’re right,” I said. “That’s the biggest pair of binoculars I’ve ever seen. And they’re pointing right at us.”

“Merde,” Stefan muttered a moment later. “Now he has a camera. A big telephoto lens.” He raised his arm, hitched up the cuff of his sleeve, and made a show of checking his watch. “Allons-y. Let’s go. Turn your backs and cross to the other railing, so he can’t see us. Then let’s get the hell out of here.”

Hugging the far side of the bridge, we hurried back along the span. This time there was no singing or dancing. As we exited the tower and scurried to the car, I asked, “Did either of you get a good look?”

“Non.”

“’Fraid not,” Miranda said. “White guy with tan hat and black binoculars. That narrows it down to about, what, a zillion people?”

I recalled Stefan’s nervousness as we’d driven from Marseilles to Avignon, and again when we’d heard noises near the treasure chamber. I’d been inclined to dismiss it as excessive paranoia — that, or Stefan’s exaggerated sense of importance — but now I was re-evaluating. “Have you seen someone watching you before now?”

“Oui,” he said. “Nothing as obvious as binoculars and a camera, but yes, I think so.”

“When did it start?”

He shrugged. “A few days ago.”

“Maybe the day before you got here,” Miranda added. “Remember, Stefan? You got that phone call when we were having lunch, but then the caller hung up without saying anything?”

“Ah, oui. And then you thought someone was following us back to the Palais…”

“But when we turned around, he ducked down an alley and disappeared,” she finished. “So now I’m questioning everything, everybody. The guy behind me at the café this morning — did he smile because he thought I was cute, or was he just pretending to flirt so he could study me? The woman in the hotel lobby — was she really reading that newspaper? Hell, now that I’m feeling paranoid, even you seem kinda sinister, Dr. B, you know?”

I knew, and I made a mental note to make a phone call to Tennessee as soon as I was alone.

“Stone here.”

“Rocky, it’s Bill Brockton.” I backed into a doorway in a narrow street that was just around the corner from Miranda’s hotel. She’d gone to her room to catch up on her e-mail for an hour, and Stefan had headed off to an electronics store to buy a motion detector and alarm for the treasure chamber. I was on my own until seven, when I’d arranged to fetch Miranda for dinner.

“Doc? I thought you were in France,” said Stone. “Did you just make that up so you could get the extra helicopter ride?”

“No, I am in France. Rocky, I need to know if there’s a chance — any chance at all — that one of your drug smugglers might have followed me here?”

The line was silent for a moment. “Are you serious, Doc?”

“Unfortunately, yes,” I said. “I realize it’s unlikely, but I need to know. Somebody’s watching us — me, Miranda, and this French archaeologist we’re working with.”

“Are you sure? What happened? Exactly?”

“We just caught someone watching us through binoculars from about a hundred yards away. Then he traded the binoculars for a camera with a really long lens.”

“You’re sure he wasn’t just sightseeing? Taking in the scenery?”

“Come on, Rocky. Howitzer-sized binoculars, followed by a foot-long telephoto? What would you think if you saw that kind of optical artillery aimed at you?”

“I’d probably think, ‘Oh shit,’” he acknowledged.

“So. Any chance your bad guys have tailed me to France?”

“I doubt it,” he said…but his tone was hedging. He sighed. “The truth is, I can’t completely rule it out. We’ve got a bad leak somewhere, Doc. I don’t know where, but we’ve just had another operation compromised. So yeah, it’s possible they know we called you in. If they do, they know you’d be important at a trial. I’m sorry, Doc. I was gonna call you soon — you’re on my list, but I’m up to my ass in alligators, and I’ve got half a dozen undercover operatives I’m trying to pull in before it’s too late.”

“I understand,” I said. “I’ll let you get back to it. Good luck, Rocky.”

“Thanks, Doc. I’ll call you as soon as I know anything. Meanwhile, watch your back.”

Suddenly, just as the call ended, I felt myself falling, toppling straight back. Reflexively I yelled; an answering shriek sounded in my ear as I thudded into someone and we landed in a tangle of arms and legs. A moment later, I was helping an irate Frenchwoman to her feet — a woman whose door I’d been leaning against at the moment she opened it. Mortified by my clumsiness — and by my inability to say anything but “pardon, pardon” by way of apology — I slunk down the street and around the nearest corner.

But it’s not paranoia, I finally consoled myself, if they really are out to get you.

CHAPTER 6

“Okay, you can open your eyes now,” I said.

She did, and she squealed with delight. “Oh, sweet—a fancy hotel named after moi!”

“We’re having dinner here.”

“Cool! That’s so…boss, Boss.”

We were standing, Miranda and I, in front of the Hotel La Mirande, an elegant little jewel box tucked into the dead-end street behind the Palace of the Popes. I’d stumbled upon La Mirande only forty-five minutes before, shortly after I’d stumbled upon the slightly bruised, very irate Frenchwoman.

I had never stayed in a place this fancy, and surely never would — the rooms started at eight hundred dollars a night — but how could I pass up a chance to take Miranda to a swanky restaurant that bore her name? Besides, Stefan was occupied procuring the motion detector and alarm for the treasure chamber. A quiet dinner seemed like a good chance to catch up with Miranda — and to learn more about her prior history with this pretentious pedant who might soon be the world’s most famous archaeologist.

I pulled a glossy brochure from my pocket. “Here, this gives a little background about your establishment.”

She took a look and laughed. “Ooh, architectural erotica — my favorite kind. Listen: ‘This timeless refuge offers a dreamy, relaxing, and authentic experience in a refined, eighteenth-century décor…. Behind its stunning façade, La Mirande exudes the sweet way of life of yesteryear.” She surveyed the exterior, an elegant neoclassical composition in butter-colored stone, its windows capped with gargoyles and angels, gods and goddesses, sunbursts and swirls of cake frosting in stone. “Stunning façade indeed,” she concurred. “The façade,” she added, “is from the seventeen hundreds, but parts of the building date back to the early thirteen hundreds, when a cardinal — a nephew of Pope Clement the Fifth — built his palace on the site.” She was enjoying this, and that pleased me. “Come on, let’s go inside and show them what chic cosmopolites we are.”

If the hotel’s exterior was quietly elegant, its interior was almost intoxicating in its richness. Crystal chandeliers and sconces glittered everywhere; paintings and statues and flowers filled the spaces, set against backdrops of gilded wallpaper, brocaded drapes, rich paneling, sumptuous sofas and chairs. An interior courtyard was set with candlelit dining tables; so was a lush outdoor garden that offered spectacular views of the floodlit walls of the Palace of the Popes. Miranda flitted from space to space, statue to statue, ruffle to flourish, her face beaming. “This place is so excellent,” she exclaimed. “You could probably pay my assistantship for a year for what dinner’s gonna cost, but wowzer, Dr. B, how gorgeous.” She laughed, a fountain of delight. “I know money can’t buy happiness, but damn, it sure can open doors to places that make me smile.”

We ate in one such place, a linen-draped, candlelit table in a corner of the hotel’s garden. Fairy lights twinkled in the trees around us; above us soared the graceful windows of the papal chapel, flanked by a pair of massive towers.

We were midway through dinner — duck breast for me, “line-caught sea bass” for her — before I worked up the nerve to go on my own fishing expedition and angle for details about Stefan. When I wasn’t busy bristling at his pretentiousness, I had realized, I was fretting about something else. I’d seen the way he looked at her, heard the way she spoke to him. They shared a familiarity that went beyond collegiality; a familiarity that might be, or might have once been, intimacy. It’s none of my business, I scolded myself, but that didn’t stop me from casting the lure. “Stefan’s quite a character,” I said casually. “Remind me how you know him?”

She didn’t exactly take the bait — her gimlet look told me she knew she was being cross-examined — but she answered the question anyway. “Remember when I did the dig in Guatemala, the summer after my first year of graduate school?” I nodded. “He was a crew leader. I worked under him.”

I raised my eyebrows at the phrase “worked under him.” I expected her to roll her eyes at that and fire back one of her signature smart-ass retorts. Instead, she turned crimson and looked down at her fish, swimming in butter and seaweed sauce. “Sorry, Miranda. I didn’t mean to embarrass you. I was joking, or meant to be. I think. I hope.”

She looked up, slightly defiant but also vulnerable. “It’s okay. I had it coming, after the way I’ve let Stefan be a jerk to you. I did get involved with him in Guatemala, and I shouldn’t have. I was a kid, and he was my boss. And he was married, though he said that didn’t really matter, because the French don’t mind infidelity—‘We approve of extramarital affairs,’ he said. Exact quote. He approved, turns out, but his wife didn’t.”

“And you know this how?”

“Because she came to Guatemala. A birthday surprise. A big surprise. When she found me in his tent, she came at me with fingernails and teeth.”

“Ah. That would imply a certain level of disapproval.”

“She took the next flight home and promptly divorced him.” She took a deep draw from her glass of red wine. “I’m also embarrassed that I still feel awkward about it. It’s been five years. It shouldn’t still bother me.”

“Says who?”

“Myself. My inner critic. My friends who have hookups and don’t think twice about it, who act as if sharing a bed with somebody’s no different from sharing a taxi or a park bench. I’ve just never been able to be that nonchalant about the whole sex thing.” She spun the stem of the glass between her fingers; the wine swirled up the sides, then sheeted back down. “I feel guilty about Stefan’s marriage, too. If not for me, he might still be married.”

“Maybe. But maybe miserably married. As it is, he seems like a fairly happy guy. Pompous, but happy.” She smiled. “Anyhow, if she hadn’t caught him with you, she’d have caught him with someone else, don’t you think?”

“Oh, probably. Much as I’d like to believe I’m something special, I probably wasn’t Stefan’s only…extracurricular activity.”

“Sounds like he had his sales pitch down pretty well. ‘Ah, chérie, I am ze Frenchman. I must, how you say, cherchez la femme. Non? Oui!’” She laughed at the parody, and I felt doubly glad — glad to make her laugh, and glad to do it by skewering Stefan. “But you know what, Miranda?” I caught and held her eyes; she looked back skittishly. “Even if Stefan’s a womanizing jerk, that doesn’t mean you’re wrong about the other thing. You are something special. You’re lovely, you’re smart, you’re strong and brave and spirited. You’re amazing.”

She raised her wineglass in my direction. “I’ll drink to that,” she said, smiling…but the smile looked wistful. When she set down the glass, her fingers lingered on the stem, and I felt a powerful urge to reach across the table and squeeze her hand. But would the gesture be one of friendship and empathy, or something more complicated, something more like Stefan’s overtures? I hesitated, and while I did, she let go of the glass and took her hand off the table.

I retreated to safer, more neutral ground. “Before the year you went to Guatemala, how’d you spend your summers? Other trips abroad?”

“Are you kidding? I worked my butt off. I had summer jobs from the time I was twelve. Babysitting. Mowing yards. I taught swimming a couple years. Spent three summers as a lifeguard.”

“City pool? Country club?”

“Nah, the real deal. Daytona.”

“Daytona Beach? Lifeguarding on the ocean?” She nodded. “Ever save a life?”

She smiled briefly. “Yeah. I did. I saved a life.” She looked away, somewhere into the past, then looked at me again. “But I lost one, too.” I waited, very still, hoping she’d go on. “My second summer, there was a girl — eleven, maybe twelve; she still had a kid body, and still had a kid’s innocence and exuberance. It hadn’t gotten complicated for her yet, the way things get for girls when they hit puberty, you know? Anyhow, she was bodysurfing on this gorgeous, gorgeous day.” I felt a rush of dread for the girl. “The waves were perfect — sweet little breakers, three, maybe four feet. That girl was having such a great time, just flinging herself into those waves with total abandon, riding them all the way in. She’d stagger up out of the foam with a suit full of sand and this huge, dazed grin on her face. Made me happy just to watch her. Then along comes this big-ass wave, twice the size of the others she’s been riding.”

“Oh no! What happened?”

“I can still see it so clearly. The top of the wave is just starting to curl when it gets to her. The wave lifts her up, and up — this twig of a girl, halfway up a mountain of water — and then it comes crashing down. I mean, that wave just explodes with her inside it.”

“God, how awful.”

“I see her tumbling, flipping end over end, then she smashes into the sand headfirst, like a post being pounded by a pile driver. When I got to her she was facedown, underwater, being pulled out by the undertow. I was sure she was dead, or worse — paralyzed, a quad.” I felt nearly sick just hearing about it. “But she wasn’t. Amazingly, she wasn’t. Her forehead looked like somebody’d taken a cheese grater to it, but once I got the water out of her lungs, she came to and she was okay. Coughing and crying, but okay.” In the candlelight, diamonds sparkled at the corners of Miranda’s eyes and then rolled down her cheeks. She wiped her eyes on her napkin, then blew her nose into it with a trumpeting honk. Then she laughed. “Miranda Lovelady: You can dress her up, but you can’t take her out.”

I felt as if I’d just ridden a roller coaster. “Wow. How come you never told me that story before?”

“We’ve never talked swimming before.”

“So that was, what, ten years or so ago?” She nodded. “Whatever happened to the girl? Have you stayed in touch with her?”

She shook her head. “Couldn’t. Didn’t know how. As soon as she came to, her parents yanked me off her, scooped her up, and skedaddled — straight to the ER, probably. Never asked my name or even said thank you. Too freaked out to be polite, I guess.” She shrugged. “Doesn’t matter. I’m still the one who saved her. Funny — I like to imagine I’m that girl’s hero; that she thinks of me as some sort of guardian angel watching over her. God knows, girls need all the watching over they can get.” She said it sadly, and I wondered if Miranda wished she’d gotten more watching over and guarding.

“You’re my hero, Miranda. You make me proud.”

“Thanks, Dr. B. Sometimes I make me proud, too. I did the right thing that time.” She looked away again. “Not so much the next time. The next summer. It was a guy that time — an adult. He got into a rip current, got carried out. By the time I saw him, he was out past the surf line. He didn’t know what to do, and he panicked; he was flailing, struggling to get back toward shore. Wrong thing to do. You can’t beat a rip current head-on; can’t outswim it. You’ve got to turn ninety degrees, swim parallel to the shore, till the current lets you go.” She paused, took a breath, then another. “His mistake was, he tried to fight it. My mistake was, I hesitated.” She shook her head, still angry at herself. “He was a big guy — taller than you, and stocky; I’d noticed him when he waded in — and when he got into trouble I hesitated, just sat there, because I was afraid he’d overpower me, take me down with him. Finally I grabbed a torpedo float and started swimming, but by then it was too late. He went under when I was halfway there; washed up two days later and a mile south, minus his eyes and his lips and his fingers and toes.” She drained her wineglass. “That’s still on my shame list, written in indelible ink. Thing is, I’m not sure I could’ve gotten to him in time even if I’d dived right in. But I’ll never know. Because at the crucial moment, I hesitated. God, I’ve wished a million times for a do-over, you know?”

“I do,” I said. “I’ve got a few of those, too. Who doesn’t? But from where I sit, Miranda, I see you do the right thing all the time, again and again.” I made her look at me. “Once upon a time, when I was wishing hard for a do-over, someone older and wiser told me that life’s a river. It’s not Daytona Beach, where the same water keeps washing up on the same damn spot again and again; it’s a fast-flowing river. That guy’s death? That happened way upstream, Miranda. Trying to swim back to that spot is like swimming against a rip current. Remember that girl you saved. You’ve spent all these years being her guardian angel. Let her return the favor. I bet she’d loan you some of that innocence and exuberance if you asked.”

She looked away as she parsed what I’d said, looking for any trace of insincerity or condescension, I imagined. Finding none — for there was none to be found — she smiled. This time, if there was wistfulness or poignancy in her smile, I couldn’t see it. And I was looking mighty close.

The candles were burning down and the night was getting cool by the time we left La Mirande. I wished I had a jacket to wrap around her shoulders; I considered wrapping an arm around her, but there was something fragile, something…sacred, somehow, in the air around us, and I didn’t want to risk disturbing it.

Thank you, I said silently to the universe, or to God, or to the river of life. Thank you.

The next morning, Stefan — low on sleep and high on irritation — was still struggling to install and debug the motion detector. I offered to help, though the offer was neither sincere nor particularly useful, given my ineptness with electronics. Blessedly, Stefan declined and actually shooed us away, which meant that I had Miranda to myself again. When we emerged from the palace onto the plaza, I felt almost giddy with freedom — a middle-aged schoolboy playing hooky. “What shall we do, Miss Miranda?”

“Let’s pretend we’re tourists,” she said. We dashed to Lumani. We arrived there in search of a guidebook; we departed with not only a guidebook but also a car: In a gesture of remarkable trust and generosity, Jean and Elisabeth loaned us their car, so — ensconced in an aging Peugeot and armed with a tattered English-language guide to Provence — we set out. Gingerly, for it had been years since I’d driven a car with a clutch, I eased us into the street and along the base of the ancient wall, which bristled with watch-towers every fifty yards. I checked the mirror often to see if we were being followed. Unless an eleven-year-old girl on a bicycle had been trained as an assassin, we were in the clear.

We started with a detour through the town across the river, Villeneuve-les-Avignon. Villeneuve meant “New Town,” Miranda translated; it was a name that had been accurate once upon a time, but that time was a thousand years gone. During the thirteen hundreds, Villeneuve, which was not so tightly cramped as Avignon, became a wealthy suburb of the papal city, and fifteen cardinals built palaces there, though none, as far as we could see, had survived. What had survived were two monumental structures: a 130-foot tower that once controlled the western end of Saint Bénézet’s Bridge, back when the bridge spanned the entire river; and a massive fortress that encircled the town’s hilltop. Both the tower and the fortress had been built to send a clear message to the uppity people of Avignon: The pope might hold the keys to heaven, but the king’s earthly army could break open the city gates on an hour’s notice, if papal push ever came to sovereign shove.

From Villeneuve we took narrow country roads, Miranda navigating with the guidebook and a large-scale Michelin map on her lap. As the tires sang on the asphalt, my heart hummed along, and I felt lighter and freer than I had since my arrival. Ten miles or so north of Avignon, Miranda pointed to a ruined fortress on a hilltop. “Châteauneuf-du-Pape,” she announced. “It translates as ‘New Castle of the Pope.’”

“All these ancient places with modern-sounding names,” I commented. “I guess five hundred years from now, people will say the same thing about New York, huh?” I threaded my way up through the village and parked beside the ruins. The structure had been built in the early thirteen hundreds, according to the guidebook, and had survived the ravages of time and the elements for six centuries. Unfortunately, it had not survived the ravages of Hitler’s soldiers. During World War Two, German troops filled the castle with dynamite and blew it up, destroying all but an L-shaped section of wall and tower.

Clambering along the edge of the ruins, we had a good view of the broad plain below, which was filled as far as the eye could see with vineyards, the neat rows of vines lined with river rocks. “The rocks capture the heat of the sun,” Miranda read, “to keep the vines warm at night.” Both the castle and the vineyards were the legacy of Pope John XXII, the second of the Avignon popes. “He was well known for his love of wine,” she went on, “and also for his sour disposition.” She laughed. “After he drank it, I guess it turned to vinegar in his soul.”

As we made our way back to the car, I noticed a stone staircase burrowing into the hillside, ending at a door set deep in the foundations of the fortress. I nudged Miranda and nodded down toward the doorway. “Pope John’s wine cellar?”

“Looks more like Pope John’s dungeon to me.” She was right. The steps were narrow, steep, and crumbling; the arch of the doorway was low; the door itself was recessed a couple of feet into the thick stonework. “Holy heretics, Batman,” she muttered. “This place feels haunted. Let’s get out of here.”

As the Peugeot clattered and corkscrewed back down through the town, Miranda announced, “I’m starving. How about lunch?”

“Sure. Can you make it back to Avignon?”

“I can make it back to that little café we passed two seconds ago. Look, there’s a parking place. On the right. Here, here, here.” I whipped the car into the spot, forgetting to push in the clutch, and we lurched to a stop as the engine stalled. “Smooth, Dr. B.”

“Thanks. Anybody ever tell you you’re bossy?”

“Nobody who valued life and limb,” she said, and I laughed.

The café, La Maisouneta—“Provençal dialect for ‘The Little House,’ I think,” Miranda said — was as humble and homey as La Mirande had been elegant and expensive. The handful of other customers seemed to be locals, not tourists: a rumpled young couple with a toddler crawling beneath the tables; a stocky older woman, her hair in curlers; a middle-aged man in paint-spattered coveralls. The menu was scrawled on a blackboard behind the counter, but most of the dishes on it were unavailable, the hostess informed Miranda. Lunchtime was just ending, and the kitchen had run out of everything except salad and something called reblochon, a traditional local dish consisting of melted white cheese with a potato on the side. “White on white,” I muttered. “Sounds terrific.”

It was terrific, in fact. The dish had been baked until the top of the cheese was golden brown and crispy, and it was garnished with crunchy bits of salty ham. It was, I decided, nearly as special as my first night’s feast of Corsican lamb stew.

Then again, maybe it wasn’t the food that was special; maybe what was special was stumbling across this hole-in-the-wall café on a steep cobblestone street in an ancient town, sitting across a stained checkerboard tablecloth from Miranda. She was speaking, but I had no idea what she was saying; instead, as I watched her mouth move, I was thinking what a lovely woman she was; I was wishing I weren’t her boss; wishing I were twenty years younger. Suddenly she stopped talking, stared at me, and waved her hands like semaphore flags.

“Sorry, what?”

“I knew it,” she sighed. “You had that lost-in-space look on your face. Where’d you go?” Hope and terror surged in me—Should I tell her? Has she guessed? — but she shook her head. “Doesn’t matter. So, I was just saying that the Romans crucified thousands of people, but only one set of crucified remains has ever been definitively identified. Found in an ossuary in Jerusalem in 1968. Totally a fluke. One of the heels still had a nail in it; the nail had hit a knot in the wood, and it bent, so when the body was taken down, the nail yanked out a chunk of wood.”

I chewed on the information while chewing on a bite of cheese-slathered potato. “When did you study up on crucifixion?”

“Right after Stefan showed me the bones.” I regretted my question; I didn’t want Stefan sharing the café table with us, even figuratively. Luckily, he merited only a passing mention. “It was uncommon to nail people to the cross,” she went on. “Rope was more common.”

“Rope?”

“Sure. You just tie the wrists to the crossbar.” She spread her arms wide, her hands slightly above shoulder height, tilting her head sideways and slightly down, though not enough to hide the playful smile on her face. “Asphyxiation’s the cause of death, right, if you’re hanging on a cross by your arms for hours?” I nodded, feeling a bit short of breath myself. Miranda made even crucifixion look miraculously fetching. Get a grip, Brockton, I scolded inwardly.

“So…uh…” I struggled to put together a sentence. “Do you think the gouge marks in our bones are fake, then? Made by a medieval-relic forger who didn’t know that nails weren’t generally used in crucifixions?”

She shrugged. “Maybe. But then again, what good’s a fake relic if nobody knows about it? The point of relics — the cynical point, at least — was to attract pilgrims. Not a lot of pilgrims visited the pope’s treasure chamber, I’m thinking. Besides, they’d’ve needed X-ray vision to see it. Makes no sense.” Just then she got a text message. When she read it, she frowned. “Well, crap. Stefan says he needs me to help him test the motion sensor.”

I suppressed a sigh. He had elbowed his way to the lunch table after all.

We’d planned to finish our day another twenty miles north, at the city of Orange, whose immense Roman amphitheater was already a millennium old when the cornerstone was laid at the Palace of the Popes. But Miranda felt obliged to help Stefan. And the truth was, my heart wasn’t really in playing tourist. Except for my delight in having Miranda to myself, I was just killing time — drumming my fingers on the stage sets of history — while waiting to hear from Joe Mullins. Waiting to see the face of the man whose bones had been entombed in a wall seven centuries before.

Would it be the face of a medieval murder victim — or the face of Jesus of Nazareth?

CHAPTER 7

A faint sheen of perspiration bedews the forehead and fleshy upper lip of Jacques Fournier — Cardinal Jacques Fournier, for the past week now — as he’s ushered into the pope’s chambers. The journey from Avignon to the countryside castle has taken an entire sweltering day, but a papal summons is a mark of high favor, and a private audience is a rare privilege, especially for a young, freshly hatted cardinal.

Pope John XXII hunches on a wooden throne by a window that overlooks vineyards—his vineyards — spreading across the wide valley. His desiccated, dyspeptic face is crosshatched with wrinkles, and the liver-spotted hands clutching the arms of the chair bear an unsettling resemblance to the carved talons that serve as the throne’s four feet. A papal claw slithers forward by an inch, and Fournier kneels — no easy task for a man of his bulk — to kiss the Fisherman’s Ring on the old man’s bony third finger. Despite his conspicuous contempt for earthly luxuries, the young cardinal’s eyes linger on the massive gold signet. John XXII’s monogram is simple yet regal, and the embossed image of Saint Peter hauling a net aboard a small wooden boat portrays to perfection the hard, humble work of fishing for the souls of men.

“Rise, my son,” the pope rasps, “for there is work to be done.” Fournier lumbers to his feet, puffing with the effort, and inclines his head to listen. “Your zeal for the purity of the faith is exemplary. Your inquisition rid us of the Cathar heretics in Montaillou, and we are most grateful.”

“Your Holiness honors me beyond all deserving,” Fournier murmurs. “I pray that we have seen the last of the Cathars. But we must remain vigilant.”

“Quite so, Jacques, quite so. And not just against the Cathars. The Father of Lies sows seeds of evil everywhere. This is why I have elevated you and brought you to the papal court. We must guard Christ’s holy church against those who would destroy it from within.”

“It is my privilege as well as my duty, Holy Father.”

The pope moves his hands to the lap of his silk robe and twists the gold ring. “How closely have you followed the problem with the Franciscans?”

Fournier inclines his head, his plump sausage-fingers interlaced. “I know that one faction, the Spirituals, preach that our Lord and his followers lived in poverty,” he says. “And that we should all do likewise.”

“They’re happy to live in housing they say belongs to me,” snaps the pontiff. “Happy to consume food and wine they say belongs to me. And happiest of all to denounce me for possessing these things that sustain their lives of precious purity.” He is sputtering with anger, spraying drops of spittle that sparkle in the slanting afternoon light.

Fournier shakes his head sadly. “They do Your Holiness an injustice. And now…but perhaps it is not my place to speak of it.”

“To speak of what?” The aged head snaps up, the eyes blazing.

“One hears…reports, Holy Father.”

“What kind of reports?”

“The Franciscans’ minister general, Michael of Cesena, grows bolder. He openly calls Your Holiness a hypocrite, a hedonist, and a heretic.” The pope’s fingers scrabble at the arms of the chair. “Forgive me if I speak too frankly,” Fournier continues, “but now Michael is said to be conspiring with Louis of Bavaria to destroy you. Their goal is to put a Franciscan on the papal throne. Perhaps none other than Michael himself.”

“Spawn of the Devil,” the old man rages. “Sons of Satan. They must be brought to heel.”

“Louis might prove difficult to rein in, but would Your Holiness consider summoning Michael to Avignon for…questioning?” The pope’s glittering eyes bore into Fournier’s; the cardinal bows deferentially. “I stand ready, of course, to serve in any capacity you think helpful.”

The pope nods. “Bring them here.” Reaching into a pocket of his cassock, he rummages ineffectually. “There are cells beneath us,” he rasps. “Also in the bishop’s palace in Avignon.” Finally he extracts a pair of keys and hands them to Fournier. Not quite the keys to heaven, thinks Fournier, but the papal dungeon is a starting place.

He takes the keys and takes his leave. On his way out, though, he hesitates, then turns. “Your Holiness, I beg your pardon. My conscience would trouble me if I did not mention another matter. I’m also hearing disturbing reports from the archbishop of Cologne.”

“Do Michael and the Franciscans foment trouble in Cologne, too?”

“No, Holy Father, not Michael; someone else. Someone far more subtle, and perhaps far more sinister. He does not bother to criticize you, Holy Father. This man dares to criticize God Himself.”

CHAPTER 8

“I have an idea for you,” Elisabeth said, setting my morning glass of blood orange juice on the table in Lumani’s garden. “For your — how do you say it? — zhondo?”

“I’m not sure I understand,” I said. “For my what?”

“Your zhondo. Your dead man with no name. Your mysterious bones.”

“Oh, my John Doe.” I smiled, but I was puzzled and concerned. How did she know about the bones? I’d been careful not to discuss the case with Elisabeth and Jean, given Stefan’s skittishness and my new paranoia. “Did Stefan or Miranda tell you about him?”

“Non, pas du tout. Not at all. It’s simple to guess. I look you up on Google after you arrive. I do this to learn about every guest. Most of the time, I find nothing. But you — you are a famous bone detective!”

“Not so famous.”

“Ah, monsieur, you are wrong. Too humble. So. A bone detective comes all the way to Avignon. Pourquoi? Because someone has found mysterious bones, oui? You and your friends, you arrive wearing badges from the Palais des Papes that day. So I think, ah, they are working at the Palais; this is where the mysterious bones are found. You see? Simple.”

I couldn’t help laughing. “Elisabeth, you’re a better detective than plenty of police officers I know.” She seemed to like that, but she wasn’t finished yet, apparently, because she raised her index finger and wagged it at me. “So, mysterious bones at the Palais. Oui? Oui.” She nodded, pleased to have answered her own question. “Whose bones? Someone from the time of the popes. Someone important. Someone whose death the pope needs to hide, oui? Oui.”

“Are you really an innkeeper and artist, Elisabeth? Or are you an undercover cop?”

She laughed. “Artists, we have big imagination.”

“And you can imagine who this John Doe is?”

She looked self-conscious for the first time. “Maybe yes, maybe no. But there is a mystery in Avignon at the time of the popes. An important man comes here. He has powerful enemies. And he disappears.”

I was starting to get intrigued. “And who was this important man?”

She smiled, happy to have me on the hook, and then drew a deep breath and launched into her story. “In the early thirteen hundreds,” she began, “there was a popular and powerful preacher in Germany, a Dominican friar named Eckhart. Jean. John. Johannes, in German. You have heard of him? Meister Johannes Eckhart?” She cocked her head and lifted her eyebrows.

“I’ve heard the name, but I don’t know anything about him,” I admitted. “Tell me.”

“Ah. Well, he was brilliant. My cousin is a Dominican, and he tells me about this. Eckhart was a great…théologien?”

“Theologian. It’s the same word in English.”

“Ah, bon. Eckhart studied in Cologne with Albertus Magnus — Albert the Great—and with Thomas Aquinas, the two most brilliant men of the time. Then he taught theology in Paris. But”—she raised a finger for emphasis—“he was also a great preacher. Very much loved. The Dominicans were the best preachers. They took the message out to the people.”

“The evangelists,” I said, nodding. “So what happened? You said he had powerful enemies?”

“Yes. One is the archbishop of Cologne. He is jealous because he is not so popular like Eckhart. So. He accuses Eckhart of heresy. Ah, but Eckhart fights back. He appeals directly to the pope, Pope John Twenty-Two. And in 1327—Eckhart has sixty-six years at this time — he walks from Cologne to Avignon, eight hundred kilometers, to make a defense.”

“At age sixty-six, he walked eight hundred kilometers? That’s five hundred miles.”

“He was a strong man. But his enemies were more strong, sad to say. The man who led the case against him here was le Cardinal Blanc—the White Cardinal.”

“But…” I felt silly asking. “Weren’t all the cardinals white in those days?”

She furrowed her brow, then laughed. “Ah, non, not the skin. The robe. He always wore the white robe of the Cistercian monks. Even after he became a cardinal. Even after he became the pope.”

“Wait. The White Cardinal became the pope? Which pope was he?”

“Benedict Twelve,” she said. “Before he was pope, his name was Fournier. Jacques Fournier. He was brought here by Pope John Twenty-Two to be the police théologique.”

“You mean to punish heretics? Like the Inquisition?”

“Exactement. He adored to be the Inquisitor. He protected the back of the pope. And when John Twenty-Two died, voilà, le Cardinal Blanc became the new pope, Benedict Twelve. He was the one who built the Palais des Papes. Before, the pope was in the bishop’s house. Then he tears that down and builds the fortress.”

“But while he was a cardinal, he was Eckhart’s enemy?” She nodded gravely. “The cardinal who was the pope’s guard dog?” Another nod. “That is a powerful enemy.”

A third and final nod. “You see? Eckhart comes to Avignon in 1327 to make his defense. And he is never seen again.”

“I don’t know if this Eckhart is our guy,” I whispered, “but he’s sure an intriguing guy.”

Miranda nodded without glancing up from the screen of her laptop. We were sitting in Avignon’s library — a spectacular library, housed in a former cardinal’s palace — beneath a gilded, coffered ceiling in the main reading room, which had once been the grand audience hall. When I’d mentioned Elisabeth’s theory about Meister Eckhart, Miranda had taken the idea and run with it, straight to the library’s reference desk.

Now I was skimming an English-language book on Eckhart’s life and teachings, which a helpful young librarian, Philippe, had found on the shelves. Meanwhile Miranda was combing Web sites and archival materials about Avignon’s cemeteries and death records, looking for any references to Eckhart’s death or grave. “The date of his death is unknown,” she murmured. “So is his burial site. Like Elisabeth said, he came here — in 1327 or 1328—to defend himself against charges of heresy. Then, poof, he drops off the radar screen. No mention of him until March 1329, when John Twenty-Two issued a papal bull, a pronouncement, condemning a bunch of Eckhart’s teachings. According to the bull, Eckhart took them all back — get this—before he died.”

“Sure sounds like bull,” I said.

“Indeed. But the point is, we know he was dead by March 1329.”

I went back to my book. The more I read, the more I liked this Eckhart. I didn’t understand a lot of what he said, but he seemed smart, genuine, and passionate about what he believed. He criticized those who asked God for personal favors, or who prayed “thy will be done” but then complained if things didn’t work out the way they wanted. And he had a sense of humor — not a quality I generally associated with monks and theologians. “My Lord told me a joke,” Eckhart wrote, “and seeing Him laugh has done more for me than any scripture I will ever read.” He could even be a bit cheeky. “Listen,” I said. “He writes, ‘God is not good, or else he could do better.’ No wonder the theology police put him under surveillance — he’s giving the Big Guy a bad grade.”

Miranda looked thoughtful. “Maybe,” she said. “Or maybe he’s playing with language—good, better, best? God’s not merely good, because good’s only so-so? Maybe he means God can’t be anything but best?”

I shrugged. “Dunno. This is why I study bones, not philosophy.” The most striking thing about Eckhart, though, was how fresh, how modern, some of his insights sounded. “Get this,” I told Miranda. “He wrote, ‘If the only prayer you ever say in your entire life is “thank you,” it will be enough.’ I like that. Then there’s, ‘The more we have, the less we own.’ Or how about this: ‘The price of inaction is far greater than the cost of making a mistake’?”

She flinched. “Ouch. Too bad they didn’t stress that one in lifeguard training — I might’ve gotten off my ass sooner and saved that dude from drowning.”

I kicked myself for having jabbed her sore spot. “Sorry. I take it back. Here, remember this one instead: ‘Do exactly what you would do if you felt most secure.’ Good advice, right? Be your best self? Sounds like something Dr. Phil might say.”

She snorted. “What do you know about Dr. Phil? Have you ever read or heard anything he’s said?”

She had me there. “Okay, okay. It sounds like something I imagine a New Age self-help guru might say.” I flipped a page. “So does this, in a brainier way: ‘There exists only the present instant…a Now which always and without end is itself new. There is no yesterday nor any tomorrow, but only Now, as it was a thousand years ago and as it will be a thousand years hence.’ Isn’t that a Zen-like, New Agey thing for a Catholic friar to be saying seven centuries ago?”

She smiled. “Very Zen. Very Tolle.”

“Very what?”

“Not what, who: Tolle. Eckhart Tolle, in fact — he’s another big self-help guru. His books have sold zillions of copies. And…Hmm, hang on….” Her keyboard clattered with rapid strokes. “In-ter-esting. According to this bio, Eckhart Tolle, darling of the yoga set, was originally named Ulrich Tolle. He changed his first name to Eckhart ‘as a tribute to a wise medieval philosopher and theologian.’ This wise medieval philosopher and theologian, I’m thinking. Tolle’s huge, very New Age.” She scrolled down the screen of her laptop. “His blockbuster book’s called The Power of Now, and it’s all about living in the present moment. How did your medieval monk describe it — as the eternal Now? Here’s the modern guru’s spin on that: ‘Nothing ever happened in the past,’ writes Tolle; “it happened in the Now. Nothing will ever happen in the future; it will happen in the Now.’ Same idea, slightly different words.”

“Hmm,” I said. “So how come the modern guru gets rich and famous, and the medieval monk gets hauled in on a heresy charge and then vanishes, maybe gets murdered?”

She shrugged. “Timing is everything. I guess the masses weren’t ready for Now until…you know…now.”

I couldn’t help smiling. “Touché, but not true,” I told her. “Meister Eckhart was an incredibly popular preacher. Too popular. He was brought down by jealous rivals.” I shook my head. “Why is so much scheming and backstabbing — and front stabbing, for that matter — done in the name of God?”

“Duh,” she said. “Don’t pretend to be a dumb-ass. You know perfectly well why.” I didn’t know perfectly well why, but I suspected she was about to tell me why. “People and their gods are just like people and their dogs.”

“Huh?” This time I felt myself six conversational and logical steps behind Miranda.

“You know how people and their dogs resemble one another? Crabby little ladies with snappish little Pekinese? Beefy bubbas with waddling bulldogs? Same thing with theology. Someone who’s bighearted, like your man the Meister, sees God as benevolent. A cruel, vindictive jerk, on the other hand, imagines God as harsh and vengeful. See? At the end of either leash — the dog leash or the God leash — there’s really just a mirror.”

The images — God on a leash, God as a narcissistic reflection — were shockingly irreverent. But she had a point, in an editorial-cartoon kind of way. Miranda almost always had a point.

It was nearly midnight Sunday; I should have been sleeping, but after tossing and turning for two hours, I gave up, got up, and got dressed.

Outside, a fierce wind was roaring across the rooftops. What had Jean called it? The mistral. The mistral was roaring, and the bells in the skeletal iron steeple of the Carmelite church tolled each time the gusts peaked. The moon was full, and the lashing branches outside my window cast shadows that twisted and writhed on my bed, beckoning me outside for some reason. Tiptoeing down the stairs, I unlocked the inn’s rattling wooden gate — the wind nearly tore it from my grasp — and set out into the gale.

Avignon was a maze of narrow, crooked streets, but it was a small maze — barely a mile wide, according to the map I’d studied — so even if I got lost, I couldn’t get terribly lost. Besides, Lumani faced the stone ramparts that ringed the city; to find my way home, all I’d need to do was find and follow the wall. If I walked an extra half mile, so what? The ancient city was beautiful, and the exercise would do me good.

Leaving Lumani, I turned left and followed the wall westward, toward the rocky hill where the Palace of the Popes and the cathedral perched. The streets were empty at this hour, and the city itself was largely shuttered and silent. The only noise came from the wind: the surging, surflike mistral churning across roof tiles and seething through the shredded leaves of plane trees.

I’d not gone far — ten minutes’ easy walk, a scant half mile — when the street butted into another stone wall, even higher than the ancient ramparts: Saint Anne’s Prison, a historical marker informed me, though it was no longer in use. Moonlight cascaded down the rock wall like water sheeting down the face of a cliff. The surface was rough, pockmarked with deep, shadowed craters, which I stepped closer to examine. From waist level up to a height of eight or ten feet, rectangular niches had been gouged into the blocks, and these niches — a hundred or more — were filled with objects: photos, figurines, crucifixes, trinkets, talismans. I puzzled over it, and suddenly I realized what I was seeing. Family and friends of the men inside the prison had filled the niches with mementos and relics.

A half block farther, I came upon a stone chapel tucked against the prison wall; a historical marker identified it as the Chapel of the Pénitents Noirs. The Pénitents Noirs — the Black Penitents — belonged to a religious society that revered John the Baptist; this particular group of them had banded together in the fifteen hundreds to minister to the prison’s inmates as their own way of doing penance. The chapel was small and simple, with the exception of an ornate relief panel above the doorway. The panel, carved in stone, measured eight or ten feet wide by at least fifteen feet high. Most of it was filled with angels, clouds, and rays of sunlight, or rays of heavenly glory; at the center, two hovering angels held some sort of serving tray between them in the sky. By the pale light of the moon, as the mistral roared overhead, I saw that the angels were serving up the severed head of the Baptist: a grisly reminder that martyrs — their bodies and bones — occupied a prominent and powerful place in the faith of medieval Catholics. More mementos and relics.

Zigging and zagging through the labyrinthine streets, I made my way toward what I hoped was the Palace of the Popes. Sure enough, above a nearby rooftop loomed a massive tower, fifteen stories high. The battlements at the top overhung the tower’s wall slightly; moonlight streamed down through narrow slits in the overhangs, streaking the stones of the wall. The slits, I realized as I reached the tower’s base and peered up, would allow boiling oil to be poured down onto attackers — or, at the moment, down onto me. So much for turning the other cheek, I mused.

The buttressed foundations seemed to grow like stony roots from the rock. A cobblestone pedestrian alley, carved deep into the rock, wound upward along the base of the palace here. Threading my way through the tight passage and passing beneath the thick arch of a flying buttress, I emerged into the great square fronted by the Palace of the Popes.

I found myself at the southeastern corner of the palace, far from the main entrance, and at the opposite end from the cathedral. The walls gleamed silvery white in the moonlight, with deep shadows delineating the arches and overhangs and arrow slits in the masonry. As I studied the details, a shaft of light at the base of the wall caught my eye. A small wooden door at the corner of the palace opened, and a man in black emerged, closing and locking the door behind him. He started across the square, and his walk — a loping gait with a slight limp — looked familiar. “Stefan?” I was only thirty feet from him, but the rushing wind swept my words away, so I called again, louder. “Stefan!” He whirled, scanning the square, coiling into a crouch as if to run. “Stefan, it’s Bill Brockton,” I yelled, waving both arms. He un-coiled and met me halfway.

“Mon Dieu, Bill, quelle surprise. What are you doing here at the middle of night?”

“I couldn’t sleep,” I said. “The wind, I guess — rattling the rooftops and rattling me. So I decided to take a walk, see the city by moonlight. What are you doing here at this time of night?”

He rolled his eyes. “A rah,” he said.

“Excuse me? What’s a ‘rah’?”

“A rodent. A big mouse.”

“Oh, a rat,” I said, remembering that the French tended to swallow the ends of their words.

He looked impatient. “Oui, a rah-t.” The way he emphasized the t this time, it almost sounded as if he’d spat it at me. “I finally got the motion detector working correctly,” he went on. “I have it linked to my computer, and something set it off a few minutes ago. So I came quickly. But it was just a big rat, eating a sandwich I left in the corner of the trésorerie at lunch today. Quelle peste!”

“Better a rat than a thief, though,” I offered. “And at least you know the alarm works.”

“Bien sûr! Of course. But now I’m on the edge, so it’s difficult to sleep.”

“You’re welcome to join me on a walk, if you want.”

He seemed surprised by the offer. “Oui, pourquoi pas? Midnight in the city of the popes. I will be your tour guide.”

Damn, I thought. Be careful what you wish for.

Stefan gestured at the façade of the palace. The tour was beginning. “This part closest to us,” he announced, “is the ‘new palace,’ built by Clement the Sixth between 1342 and 1352.”

“He was the pope who protected the Jews during the plague?”

“Exactement.”

“Busy guy.”

“Oui. So, the big windows at this end of the building? The audience hall, where he held court. Above is his private chapel. Chapel — ha! It’s bigger than the cathedral! You know what Clement said about being pope?” I shook my head, as he’d hoped I would. “Clement said none of his predecessors knew how to be pope.”

“What did he mean?”

“He meant that none of the others knew how to throw such big parties. He was also called ‘Clement the Magnificent.’ When he was crowned as pope, he gave a feast for three thousand people. He served one thousand sheep, nine hundred goats, a hundred cows, a hundred calves, and sixty pigs.”

“Goodness. That’s, what, ten, twenty pounds of meat for every person?”

“Ah, but there is more. Much more. Ten thousand chickens. Fourteen hundred geese. Three hundred fish—”

“Only three hundred?”

He stretched his arms wide—“Pike, very big fish”—then transformed the gesture into a shrug. “But also, Catholics eat a lot of fish, so maybe it was not considered a delicacy.” He held up a finger. “Plus fifty thousand cheeses. And for dessert? Fifty thousand tarts.”

“That’s not possible. Surely somebody exaggerated.”

“Non, non, pas du tout. We have the book of accounts. It records what they bought, and how much it cost.”

“How much did it cost?”

“More than I will earn in my entire life. But it was a smart investment. It made him a favorite with the people who mattered — kings and queens and dukes. And, of course, with his cardinals and bishops, who sent him money they collected in their churches.” Turning away from the palace, he pointed to a building on the opposite side of the square. “Do you know this building?” I shook my head. “It’s just as important as the palace.”

“What is it?”

“The papal mint.”

“Mint, as in money?”

He nodded. “The popes coined their own money, and they built this mint here. They made gold florins in the mint, then stored them in the treasury in the palace.”

“The popes had their own mint? That seems ironic, since Jesus chased the money changers out of the temple in Jerusalem.”

“If you look for inconsistencies, you will find a million. The popes had armies. They had mistresses. They had children. They poisoned their rivals. They lived like kings and emperors; better than kings and emperors.”

“And nobody objected?”

“Oh, sure,” he said. “Some of the Franciscans — founded by Saint Francis of Assisi — they were very critical. They said monks and priests and popes should live in poverty, like Jesus. Pope John the Twenty-Second didn’t like that. He condemned the most outspoken ones. He had many Franciscans — monks, even nuns — burned at the stake.”

By now we’d reached the upper end of the square, where the palace sat cheek by jowl with the cathedral. Here the square lay well below the palace and the cathedral, and an immense staircase led up to a broad terrace in front of the church. The terrace held an immense crucifix, surrounded by statues of angels and weeping followers; high above it, atop the bell tower of the cathedral, the large gilded statue of Mary gazed down on her crucified son, her arms stretched downward as if in appeal.

Stefan pointed to our left, the northern end of the square, which was bordered by a large, elegant building. “Speaking of wealth, here’s one of the livrées.”

“The what?” The word he’d said rhymed with eBay, but I knew that wasn’t right.

“Livrées. The cardinals’ palaces.” The building was immense — twice the size of the White House, maybe three times. “There were more than twenty livrées here and across the river in Villeneuve. Today, only two livrées are still standing in Avignon. This one, the Petit Palais — the Little Palace — is now a museum. Beautiful medieval paintings inside. The other one is the bibliothèque, the public library. You have seen it, oui?” I nodded. “Come. I have two other places to show you on our moonlight tour of the city of the popes.”

We recrossed the palace square, and then another narrow plaza; after a few more turns, Stefan stopped on a narrow street and pointed to the entrance of an old building. I read the sign above the door — THÉÂTRE DES HALLES — and turned to him with a puzzled look. “A theater. So?”

“Non, non. Well, okay, oui, a theater. But read the other sign. The small one, beside the door.” On the wall was a historic plaque like the one I’d seen on the old prison. Beneath the French inscription was an English translation: Here, in the 14^th century, stood a church where Petrarch first saw his Laura. Stefan studied me. “You know Petrarch?”

I sensed another lecture coming. “Famous poet and philosopher, if my ancient memory serves.” Stefan nodded. “Somehow I’d thought Petrarch was Italian, not French.”

“Oui, tous les deux. Both. His family was Italian, but they moved to France. He lived in Avignon for years.”

“That must have been exciting for a poet.”

“Yes and no,” he said. “He found his muse here — this Laura.” He gestured at the plaque, as if it were the woman herself. “But Avignon? Petrarch hated it. Despised it. He called it a sewer, called it Babylon. Called the papacy ‘the whore of Babylon.’”

“Strong words.”

“Some of his words were even stronger. ‘Prostitutes swarm on the papal beds,’ he wrote. He accused the pope and his entourage of rape, of incest, of orgies.”

“So why did he stay in such an evil place? He couldn’t leave Laura?”

Stefan smiled. “Perhaps. But also, he was nursing at the breast of the whore of Babylon.”

“Excuse me?”

“He was the private chaplain to one of the Italian cardinals. The pope’s money supported Petrarch while he composed love poems and attacked the papacy.” Stefan glanced at his watch. “Come.”

After several twists and turns, we started down yet another narrow street, Rue Saint-Agricol. He stopped in front of an arched opening between two small shops and pointed. A narrow vaulted passage, almost a tunnel, led through the walls, passing beneath the upper stories of a building, and then opened into a small courtyard. Within the courtyard were several large cloth umbrellas and café tables. I looked at him, puzzled; what was he showing me?

“Here. The last stop on our midnight tour.” He led me farther into the courtyard. The back wall of the courtyard was formed by the side of an ancient stone building forty or fifty feet high. Arches in the wall showed traces of former glory: the outlines of tall Gothic windows whose stained glass was long since gone and whose stone tracery had been filled in centuries ago. “This building was once the chapel of the Knights Templar. You know about the Templars?”

“A little. Not much more than you said the other day, the day I arrived. The Templars escorted pilgrims to the Holy Land during the time of the Crusades, right?” He nodded. “And fought the Muslims.” Another nod. “And they made Dan Brown a zillionaire a few years ago.”

His brow furrowed. “Dan Brown?”

“He wrote The Da Vinci Code.”

“Ah, oui.” He snorted. “The book that says Jesus and Mary Magdalene made a baby, and the Templars guard their descendants. Crazy bool-shit. The Templars were destroyed by the king and the pope seven hundred years ago. King Philip owed them a lot of money. Instead of paying back the money, he accused them of heresy, locked them up, and took all their money and property. He made Pope Clement his accomplice.”

“Clement? The Magnificent? I hate to hear that. I was starting to like the Magnificent.”

“Non, non, not that Clement. The previous one — Clement the Fifth. Clement the Fifth was the first French pope, the first Avignon pope. He was the marionette — the puppet, I think you say — of King Philip. The king forced Clement to abolish the order and excommunicate the Templars, even though they had done nothing wrong. Shameful.”

“Too bad,” I said. “Clement the Magnificent sounds like a better guy than Clement the Puppet. No wonder he got a better nickname.” Stefan walked to the heavy wooden door of the chapel and began tugging at the handle. “Stefan! What are you doing?”

“It’s okay,” he said. “I have a key. The owner is a friend of mine.” He opened the door and stepped inside. “Come on, don’t you want to see?”

I followed him through the doorway, expecting an empty, ruined shell. But in the opposite wall, three of the soaring leaded-glass windows remained intact; moonlight poured through them, illuminating an astonishing sight. The chapel’s high, vaulted interior was filled with tiers of modern, auditorium-style seats on elevated risers. The seats faced what had once been the altar; in its place now was a small stage. Over the stage and directly over our heads as well, gleaming metal trusses held clusters of high-intensity spotlights.

Stefan laughed at my obvious confusion. “Not what you thought, huh? It’s a theater and conference center now. It’s all set up now for the festival. The Avignon Theater Festival starts in two weeks. There are theaters all over the city — fifty, maybe even a hundred small theaters. There will be a thousand performances in Avignon during the three weeks of the festival. Performances all day, all evening, sometimes even all night. One year, in the courtyard at the Palace of the Popes, I watched a ballet that started at sunset and finished at sunrise the next morning. Crazy. Exhausting. Also magnifique.” He gestured at the stage in the chapel. “Someone should write a special drama for this place,” he went on. “Something about religion and money and power. A deadly combination, don’t you think?”

“Certainly for the Templars,” I agreed.

We left the chapel; he locked the door behind us, and we returned through the narrow passageway to Rue Saint-Agricol. He pointed me toward Lumani and stood at the opening. When I looked back from the corner, he was still there, watching and waving good night as I turned down another corner of the maze.

When I reached the inn and crawled into bed, my mind finally spiraling toward sleep, I thought about Stefan’s account of the Templars; about the dangers of mixing religion with money and power; about Avignon’s long history of drama. The modern theater festival surely paled in comparison to the real-life pageants and power plays enacted here centuries earlier by popes and peasants, kings and cardinals, painters and poets. And a man who appeared to have been nailed to a cross seven centuries ago. Or was it twenty centuries ago?

All the world’s a stage, I thought drowsily. All of Avignon’s a stage.

The tune of Miranda’s childhood lullaby entered my sleepy head. Sur le pont d’Avignon. How did it go? I couldn’t recall the words so I substituted new ones, the only words I could think of that fit the half-remembered tune carrying me down, down, deep into sleep.

Avignon, Avignon. All roads lead to Avignon. Avignon, Avignon…

CHAPTER 9

Avignon, Avignon. Why did he come to Avignon?

For the old man who is groaning on the rack, the road has led inexorably to Avignon, and to this agonizing moment, but why? Because, he reminds himself, it is God’s will. There is no moment but this moment; no reality but this pain; no will but God’s will.

He gasps as the lever swings again, the taut ropes creak under the added strain, and the ratchet clicks into the next cog in the gear. He has been on the rack for an hour now, and each quiet, metallic click of the ratchet, as the jailer lifts the lever that turns the gear, brings the excruciating certainty that this time, surely, his limbs will be torn from their sockets.

A rotund figure, cloaked in white, stands beside the jailer and leans over the old man. The robe is topped by a conical white hood; within its dark interior, the eyes burn like coals. “I put you to the question once more. Tell me the truth. Where did you learn these errors?”

“What errors?” gasps the old man. “Tell me, Fournier.”

The hooded figure draws an angry breath. “There are no names here. Only you, heretic, and I, Inquisitor.”

“You want the truth? Here is the truth: You are Jacques Fournier, a shoemaker’s son turned cardinal, and you are afraid, or you would not be hiding beneath that hood. But does the hood change your voice, alter your fears and your weaknesses? Does your beloved white robe hide the belt of fat that your gluttony has fastened around your belly? Will these ropes sunder the name Eckhart when they tear apart my body?”

“Insolence will not save you. Insolence to this holy office only confirms that you are indeed a heretic. You have preached that God is not an intelligent being. Who taught you that heresy?”

“God taught me that, Fournier. God is not a being; God is more than a being. God is everything.”

“You understand nothing of God.”

“Of course not. If I could understand God, he would not be truly God. God is as far above my intelligence, Fournier, as you are below it.”

The Inquisitor pushes the jailer away from the lever and seizes it himself, then leans into it with his considerable weight. It is an action Fournier has imagined performing a thousand times or more these past fourteen years — ever since the day the two Templar heretics were burned on the Isle of the Jews. Ever since the day Eckhart dared to criticize inquisitors, prompting young Fournier to fume God is not pleased. The ratchet clicks once, clicks twice, as the older, heavier Fournier forces the lever and turns the gear. The body of the aged man on the rack reaches a breaking point; tendons tear, and he screams before losing consciousness.

When he comes to, he is crumpled on the cold stone floor of a low-vaulted cell, which is tucked into the foundations of a building that is formidable on the outside, palatial on the inside.

Two floors above the crumpled old man, the Inquisitor sits in a carved chair in a marbled audience hall. Atop the white robe he has draped a red shawl, and he has exchanged the Inquisitor’s hood for the broad-brimmed red hat that marks him as a cardinal, a Prince of the Church. Facing him, on a throne, slumps His Holiness, Pope John XXII, who croaks out a question. “Are you sure of this, Jacques?”

“Quite sure, Holy Father. I have put him to the question several times.”

“You mean…?”

“Yes, Your Holiness. Today I nearly tore him apart, yet he clung defiantly to his heresies. You’ve read his defense; he accuses his critics of ‘ignorance and stupidity.’ He is as arrogant and proud as Lucifer himself.”

The pontiff sighs, or wheezes. “We had hoped you’d be able to correct his understanding. Your success in rooting out the Cathar heretics in Montaillou was remarkable.”

“The Cathar heretics in Montaillou were simpletons, Holy Father. Shepherds and shopkeepers. Consider the woman Beatrice. She didn’t consider it a sin to have carnal relations with a priest, because it brought them both pleasure — and besides, her husband gave her permission. Idiots, all of them.”

The pope waves his hand impatiently. “Yes, yes; I’ve read the transcript of her confession. Hers and hundreds of others. You were very thorough in your pursuit of heresy. And quite exhaustive in your record keeping.” Fournier feels a flash of anger; is the pontiff mocking him now? The old man sighs before continuing. “So in view of your prior success with heretics, we had hoped you could bring Eckhart to heel.”

“Eckhart is no country bumpkin,” snaps the cardinal. “Some compare him with Aquinas. He has a quick wit and a dangerous mind. And he delights in spinning circles around those who are less nimble.”

“Has he spun circles around you, Jacques?”

The plump cardinal gives the shriveled pontiff a mirthless smile. “It’s hard to spin circles when one is stretched on the rack.”

“Will he ever confess his errors and submit himself to correction, do you think?”

“Never, Holiness. He’s old, arrogant, and stubborn.”

“A pity. Well, do what you must to keep him from leading more people astray. Still, it would be good if he could be brought to repentance before he dies.”

Fournier smiles a broader, more genuine, more sinister smile. “I pray without ceasing that he will die in a state of grace, Holy Father.”

CHAPTER 10

Simone Martini leans forward and stares into the eyes of Jesus, frowning. The Savior’s face is scarcely a foot away, and Simone’s not sure he likes what he sees. Can these really be the eyes of the Son of the Almighty? If so, shouldn’t they be larger, wiser, more…godlike, somehow?

“Not bad,” says a voice, so unexpected and startling that Simone jerks upright, whacks his head on a ceiling beam, and nearly topples off the scaffold — a twenty-foot fall to a stone floor, which would surely smash his skull like a ripe melon. His surprise and dizziness swiftly give way to pain and to anger. Who has dared to interrupt him at this delicate moment, as he’s making the final repair to the fresco? Didn’t he give strict instructions that he was not to be disturbed? The paint must be applied before the plaster dries; otherwise it won’t bond properly and the fresco will be ruined. Truth be told, Simone had been on the verge of laying down his paintbrush, satisfied with the Savior’s eyes after all. Still, he finds the intrusion doubly infuriating: His order was ignored, and now a bump on his head hurts like the devil. Rubbing the rising knot, he looks down to see which of his assistants has just earned a thumping.

But it’s not an assistant. Simone can’t see the man’s features — the hood of a cloak shrouds the face in shadow — but Simone knows his half-dozen apprentices by their shape and stance, and this stooped, stumpy creature isn’t one of them. “The face is quite good,” the stranger adds. “But the hands are too small and the fingers are much too short.” Simone can hardly believe his ears. Who is this rude fellow, and how dare he criticize the work of Siena’s most respected painter? “If you’re depicting Christ giving a blessing, the right hand must be more prominent; the first two fingers must be long and slender.” Insolence! thinks Simone. Insufferable insolence! Quivering with rage, he scampers down the scaffold and draws back his fist.

The little stranger removes his hood, and Simone gasps. “Master Giotto!”

Giotto di Bondoni, the best artist in Tuscany — and therefore the best in the world — springs into an old man’s parody of a fighter’s crouch. Then he laughs, steps forward, and flings his arms around Simone in a hug. When he releases him, he steps back and surveys the immense fresco, which covers an entire wall of Siena’s Palazzo Pubblico, the city’s center of government. Originally painted by Simone in 1315, the fresco depicts the Virgin Mary surrounded by saints and — above her, at the top of the painting — Jesus, raising his right hand in benediction. During a storm a few weeks ago, a leak in the roof damaged a bit of the painting. Had the rivulets appeared a few inches lower — streaking Christ’s cheeks, rather than discoloring his hair — the change would have been hailed as a miracle: “Behold! The Savior weeps!” Instead, it was dismissed as water damage, requiring a big scaffold and a small repair.

The old master makes a sweeping gesture that encompasses the entire fresco. “Not bad,” he says again, this time in a voice whose warmth and admiration are unmistakable. “Not bad at all, especially for a plaster boy who was always slow.”

Now it’s Simone’s turn to laugh. “I wasn’t slow — just overworked. You were too cheap to hire enough helpers.”

“Cheap? Cheap? Are you kidding? Do you know what I got paid for those frescoes in Padua? Nothing. Less than nothing. Three years I worked like a dog in that chapel, and that bastard Scrovegni paid me a pittance. You know what I had to do to make ends meet? I’m ashamed to tell you, Simone. I made copies of Duccio’s paintings and signed his name — pretended they were his work! — because Duccio fetched better prices than I did back then. And that’s not the worst of it. Once, when I needed money to buy more pigments, I put greasy pig bones in gilded boxes and sold them as relics of saints.” Simone is shocked; he opens his mouth to ask a question, but Giotto waves him off. “I don’t want to talk about it. It’s too degrading.” He makes a face of distaste. “And the Scrovegnis rich as kings. You know how they made their money, yes?” Simone shrugs; he’d heard the rumors, of course, swapped by gossiping assistants as they mixed plaster or ground pigments, but he’s not sure how much he’s supposed to know. And besides, he doesn’t want to deprive Master Giotto of the pleasure of telling the story. “Usury,” Giotto hisses. “Lending money at ruinous rates. Worse than the Jews, that family. Ever read Dante’s Inferno?” Simone shakes his head. “Dante puts Scrovegni’s father in the seventh circle of Hell for usury. I’d put Scrovegni the younger in the eighth circle, for fraud. Usurers, liars, and thieves, the whole family.”

Giotto spits — right on the floor of the public palace, the most beautiful building in Siena! — then looks again at the fresco, and beams. “Ah, but this is wonderful, Simone. Huge, too—almost as big as my Last Judgment in the Scrovegni chapel.” He turns to Simone and looks his former apprentice up and down. “How old are you now?”

“Forty-four, Master Giotto.”

“Amazing. You were a beardless boy when you mixed plaster for me in Scrovegni’s chapel.”

“That was twenty-five years ago, master.”

“Amazing,” he repeats. “Just think, Simone — if you’re already painting so big and so well at forty-four, what will you be doing at sixty-two, when you’re as old as I am?”

“I’ll be studying the things you’re painting at eighty,” the younger man answers, “despairing of ever catching up.”

“Nonsense.” Giotto shakes his head and rolls his eyes, but Simone can tell by the half-suppressed smile that the compliment is appreciated. “I hear you married into a family of painters. Memmo’s daughter — what’s her name?”

“Giovanna.”

“Ah, yes. I remember her as a pretty little girl. And do you and Giovanna have a brood, a passel of little Martinis?”

“Not yet,” says Simone, wishing that Giotto had not broached this subject, a source of sadness between him and Giovanna.

“A man as handsome as you should make many babies, Simone. Look at me — I am the ugliest man in Florence, but I have six children. Do you wish to know my secret?” Simone nods, miserable but polite. “The darkness.”

“The darkness? How do you mean?”

“In the darkness, Simone, I am as handsome as any man!” The old painter laughs at his joke. “Now clean your brushes and come with me. We’re dining with your father-in-law. I’ve just seen his frescoes in San Gimignano, and I want to know how he did it.”

“Did what, Master Giotto?”

“Got paid to paint men and women—naked men and women! — bathing together, going to bed together! On the walls in the palace of government! A man can bear to paint only so many martyrs and virgins. Let us move to San Gimignano, Simone — or better yet, to Avignon; that’s where the money is now — and let us start a new fashion of painting there. Courtesans, concubines, and lusty country wenches. Get me those commissions, my boy, and I will pay you ten times more than I paid you to mix plaster.”

Simone laughs. “At that rate, Master Giotto, I would still starve.”

CHAPTER 11

I’d been up since 5 A.M., despite the fact that I’d been wandering the streets with Stefan until one, and I was obsessively checking my e-mail inbox every five minutes. I’d hoped Joe might send me a picture of his facial reconstruction by now. It was 8 A.M. in Avignon, which made it 2 A.M. for Joe; I couldn’t imagine he was still up and working.

I’d just decided to head downstairs for a croissant when my computer chirped to announce a new e-mail. My heart began to thump when I saw that it was from Joe. I opened it eagerly but there was no message, only a small icon indicating that an image file was attached. I clicked on the attachment, and with maddening, line-by-line slowness the masklike image of a clay face materialized on the screen. Joe had done it; he’d restored a face to the skull from the Palace of the Popes.

As I studied the features, I had the eerie feeling that I knew the guy, or at least that I’d seen him before. Was it just that I’d seen Joe’s work before? Facial reconstructions, especially when done by the same forensic artist, do share similarities: “white female #7”; “black male #4.” Was that the reason this face looked familiar? I turned away, looked out the window to clear my mind, and then directed my gaze at the screen again.

Again I felt the tingle of unexpected familiarity. Who was this guy, and why did I think I knew him? It wasn’t simply that this was another generic white male, similar to a hundred other reconstructions I’d seen. This face was distinctive, the face of a unique individual: long and narrow, with prominent cheekbones and a slightly crooked nose, perhaps broken once in a fight. I’d noticed the general features when I’d examined the skull, but they were more pronounced now that Joe had fleshed out the bones.

Suddenly a synapse in my sleep-deprived brain fired. Pulse racing, I fired off a message to Joe: got it. great work — thanks. are you still there?

yes, came his answer a few seconds later.

can you do a couple of quick tweaks?

A pause. what sort of tweaks?

can you give him long hair? and a mustache and beard? oh, and maybe smooth out some of the wrinkles, take 10 years off him?

As I waited for his response, I feared he might balk.

so, you want me to give him rogaine & botox — er, claytox, right, doc?

right, joe.

no problem.

I breathed a sigh of relief, then sent another message: not to sound pushy, but how long will that take?

depends. you want it fast, or want it good?

I smiled. start with fast, I wrote back. if i need good, I’ll beg you for that tomorrow.

good answer. fast is lots easier for me right now — just got a new case I need to jump on. give me twenty minutes. i’ll tinker with it and shoot you a revision ASAP.

Twenty minutes was going to drive me crazy, so I went downstairs to grab breakfast. In my nervousness, I wolfed down three croissants and a dozen strawberries. Just as I reached the top of the stairs and opened the door of my room, I heard the chime of a new message arriving.

how’s this? was written above the revised image.

How was it? It was astonishing.

If Joe’s facial reconstruction was accurate, the bones of Avignon belonged to a guy who was a dead ringer for the man on the Shroud of Turin.

CHAPTER 12

“What’d you think,” she whispered, “that they were gonna open the drapes, pull it down off the wall, and let you lay it out on the floor?”

Miranda and I were kneeling — kneeling and bickering — in a corner of the Duomo di Torino, Turin Cathedral, where we’d journeyed after seeing the face Joe Mullins had sculpted on the Avignon skull. Miranda had tried to talk me out of the trip, a seven-hour drive, insisting that nothing short of a direct order from the pope himself would get us a glimpse of the Shroud. But I’d refused to be deterred; somehow I’d convinced myself that if I showed a photo of Joe’s facial reconstruction to someone in authority — the senior priest? a bishop? an archbishop? — he’d be so astonished by the resemblance that he’d happily arrange for me to compare the images side by side.

There was another reason I’d pushed for the trip, though I’d not mentioned it to Miranda. Rocky Stone had phoned shortly after I received the facial reconstruction. “Doc, I’ve got good news and bad news,” he’d told me. “The good news is, I know who the shooter in Sevierville was — a Colombian named Cesar Morales. The bad news is, he got off a plane in Amsterdam an hour ago.” Morales was in Amsterdam to negotiate a drug shipment, Stone believed. “But I can’t guarantee he’s not looking for you, too,” he’d added. “I’ve contacted Interpol,” he went on, “so the police in the Netherlands and France will be looking for him. But I want you to be careful. Lay low. Get out of town for a day or two, if you can.” What he said next had surprised and moved me. “I’m on the next flight for Amsterdam,” Rocky had added. “I’ll be there tomorrow morning…and I won’t stop looking till I find him.”

An hour after Rocky’s unsettling call, I borrowed Jean and Elisabeth’s car again — this time I was putting some serious mileage on the venerable Peugeot — and Miranda and I had raced up the flat belly of France to the foothills of the Alps, then angled eastward and careened through mountain passes and granite tunnels before finally looping down into the Po River Valley and the grimy sprawl of Turin.

Turin Cathedral was tucked inconspicuously at the edge of a paved plaza, flanked by the ruins of an ancient Roman gate and city wall. I might have overlooked the church entirely if not for the tall, freestanding bell tower beside it. I was surprised at what a small, drab building held the Christian world’s most famous relic. Turning to Miranda, I’d joked, “I’m reminded of my friend Sybil’s comment when she saw the Grand Canyon. ‘I thought it’d be bigger,’ was all Syb said.”

“I’ve had that same thought on a few occasions,” Miranda had answered with a sly grin as we crossed the threshold.

Inside, too, the cathedral was spare and austere: plain wooden benches, unadorned columns and plaster walls, a stone floor inlaid with octagons of white and gray, linked by small squares of red.

The Shroud was housed in a side chapel at the front of the nave, on the left side of the building. In front of the relic was a simple kneeling rail eight or ten feet long, and — between the rail and the Shroud — a wall of glass stretching from floor to ceiling. Within the glassed-in chapel, the Shroud was mounted above a long white altar garnished with woven thorn vines — reminders of the barbed crown placed on Jesus’s head before he was crucified. A black curtain, the width of the chapel, hid the relic completely from view; a poster-size enlargement of the face on the Shroud — a ghostly gray negative, which was more dramatic than the faint, reddish-brown image the cloth actually bore — was suspended above the altar. The poster was a consolation prize, of sorts, for those of us whose pilgrimage to Turin was thwarted by the black curtain.

Still kneeling, I unfolded the two prints I’d brought with me. One was a normal, positive print of the face Joe had made; the other was a negative image, which Miranda had created by Photoshopping Joe’s file. The likeness between the images I held in my hand and the poster behind the glass wall was uncanny, especially when I compared the Photoshopped negative with the poster.

Unfortunately, no one in authority had been astonished by the images we’d brought, because no one in authority was anywhere to be found. Except for one other pilgrim — a stout woman who knelt beside me and cast disapproving glances as we whispered — the only person we’d managed to find in the cathedral was an ancient woman selling Holy Shroud bookmarks, postcards, posters, books, and other mementos at the tiny gift shop at the rear of the nave.

“It’s almost closing time,” I whispered. “Maybe we’ll have better luck in the morning.”

Sssshhhh, came an annoyed hiss from the woman on my left. She was German; I knew this not from the accent of her sssshhhh, but from the wording on the prayer card she’d chosen to kneel before. A Shroud-inspired prayer had been printed in seven different languages and posted on the railing for the convenience of the faithful. Between angry glances our way, the woman at my elbow was muttering the German prayer in a guttural growl.

“They get a zillion requests a year to see the Shroud, touch the Shroud, cut a tiny snippet of the Shroud,” Miranda whispered on. She’d dropped her voice so low it was barely audible; she was all but breathing the words into my ear, and I found the intimacy of the communication both unsettling and exhilarating. “You think your request is special. So does everybody else — the parents of the dying kid, the nun who’s had a vision, the physicist who’s thought of a new way to authenticate the image on the cloth. Everybody thinks they’re special. And everybody is. So the priest or the bishop or whoever has to treat everyone as if no one is special.”

“I know, I know,” I whispered back. “But I thought it was worth a try. I thought maybe…” I shrugged.

“I know what you thought. You thought maybe you could convince him your case was extra special. Especially special.” I couldn’t help laughing — she knew me so well.

Ssshhh!

“Yeah, right,” I conceded. “My specialness and two euros will get me a cup of cappuccino.”

“More like four,” she corrected.

“Four euros? Six bucks? For something I don’t even like?”

“That’s your own fault. It’s never too late to grow, expand your horizons.”

“Yeah, well, show me the Shroud of Turin and I’ll drink all the cappuccino you want.”

“Really?”

“Really.”

“Tenured, full professor’s word of honor?”

“Word of honor.”

“Prepare to chug some caffeine with your humble pie,” she said, looking mischievous.

SSSSHHHH!!!! The angry shush filled the nave. The German lurched to her feet and stormed out, the accusatory echoes of her clogs ricocheting like gunshots.

Laid out flat in the hallway of the hotel diplomatic, where Miranda and I had booked rooms for the night, the Shroud of Turin ran half the length of the corridor. The tips of the toes practically touched the elevator; the other end of the image stretched to a window overlooking a noisy Turin street. What filled the floor was not, of course, the sacred relic itself; rather, it was a full-length, life-size, high-resolution photographic print of the entire Shroud, all 14.3 feet of it, plus another six inches of border at each end.

The print had arrived rolled like a scroll, tightly packed in a cardboard shipping tube. To flatten it, we’d briefly rerolled it the opposite way, inside out; that had mostly tamed the curl, though we’d had to anchor the corners with our shoes.

On my hands and knees, studying the face, I looked up at Miranda. “Come on, you gotta tell me. Where’d you really get this? It did not ‘miraculously appear’ at the front desk.”

“Sure it did,” she chirped. “Okay, with a little help from Holy Shroud Guild dot org.”

“A Web site?”

She nodded. “A Web site with an online gift shop. Through the miracles of Google, AmEx, and FedEx, I ordered it yesterday morning, right before we left Avignon on this wild-goose chase. I had the image file — a huge file — sent to a blueprint shop here, and I got them to deliver it to the hotel.”

“I take it back,” I marveled. “It did ‘miraculously appear.’ So how much does a full-length, high-res, special-delivery print of the Holy Shroud go for these days?”

“About a week’s pay,” she said. I whistled, but she cut me off. “A week of my pay, not yours. That’s actually dirt cheap, as miracles go.”

I turned my attention once more to the image on the replica of the Shroud. The body apparently had been laid faceup on the linen, with the feet at one end and seven or eight feet of fabric extending beyond the head. That part was then doubled back and folded down over the face, torso, and legs. The front and back images linked at the top of the head — an odd, hinged effect, rather like Siamese twins conjoined at the crown of the skull. Judging by the photo, the Shroud’s linen fabric was a stained and dingy ivory color; the image of the man was a faint reddish brown, with brighter red splotches and trickles here and there — in places consistent with wounds from scourging, crucifixion, and lacerations from a crown of thorns.

The color and faintness of the image surprised me. Most news articles and Web sites about the Shroud showed an eerie black-and-white face, like the large poster hanging in the cathedral. Those versions looked like photographic negatives, because they were negatives: dramatic, high-contrast images in which the linen backdrop appeared dark gray, the eye sockets looked dark gray, the eyelids a lighter shade of gray, and — lightest of all, in the photo-negative versions — the cheekbones, eyebrows, nose, mustache, and beard. The scroll Miranda and I were studying on the hotel floor, on the other hand, was a positive print, one that faithfully reproduced the actual image on the Shroud. In our copy, as in the real McCoy, the highest points were darkest, as if a damp cloth had been pressed onto a face and body coated with reddish-brown dust.

Studying the man’s face, I found myself distracted by his hair. “Hmm,” I said.

“What?”

“Well, I don’t get it. He’s lying on his back, right?”

“So they say. So it seems.”

“Then how come his hair looks like it’s hanging straight down, the way it would if he were standing up?”

“Hmm, indeed,” Miranda echoed. “Good question.”

“And another thing,” I continued. “What’s with these bright red stains all over the body — the wrists, the feet, the side, the back, the forehead?”

“Duh. They’re the wounds of Christ, dummy. From the nails, the scourging, the crown of thorns, the spear in the side. Remember?”

“Duh yourself,” I retorted. “I do remember the wounds of Christ. But there shouldn’t be blood on them. He wouldn’t have kept bleeding after he was dead. Besides, he’s too perfect.”

“How do you mean, perfect? He’s a bloody mess, Dr. B.”

“Exactly. He’s the perfect bloody mess.” She looked at me as if I’d gone over the edge. “Take that trickle of blood on the head.” A red squiggle, three inches long by a half inch wide, meandered down the forehead from just below the hairline to the medial end of the right eyebrow. Along the way, it broadened in three spots, as if it had seeped into lines in the forehead.

Miranda knelt and scrutinized it. “From the crown of thorns. What about it?”

“According to the Bible, the crown of thorns was put on his head before he was crucified. Before he carried the cross through the streets of Jerusalem. Before he hung there for hours. In all that time and all that trauma, that neat little ribbon of blood doesn’t get smudged by a flood of sweat? Doesn’t get smeared as the body’s wrestled down from the cross and lugged to the tomb? Doesn’t get washed away as they’re cleaning the body for burial? They’re burying him with sweet-smelling spices and wrapping him in this fancy piece of linen, right? Why wouldn’t they bother to wipe the blood off the face while they were at it?”

“I take your point,” she conceded.

“And look at that foot,” I went on. “That nice bloody sole is flat against the cloth, the knee bent the way it is on every Jesus on every crucifix you ever saw. Think about all those dead guys on the ground at the Body Farm — does one knee bend artfully like that? No way — their feet flop out to the sides.”

Miranda nodded slowly. “It pains me to say it, but you might actually be right.” I smiled; she enjoyed the game of pretending I was slow-witted. “In fact, if you look at this forensically, the whole thing starts to seem totally staged — as if somebody was working from a checklist: Crown of thorns? Check. Spear wound? Check. Nail holes? Check. Scourge marks? Check.” Miranda was on a roll. But suddenly she clutched my arm and gasped. “Oh, my God.”

“What?!?”

“I just had an idea, Dr. B. A brilliant, awful idea. Millions of people believe the Shroud is a holy relic, right? But what if it’s exactly the opposite?”

“The opposite of a holy relic? What do you mean?”

She took a deep breath before heading down this new trail. “Let’s assume, for the moment, that those C-14 tests back in 1988 were right — that the Shroud is only seven centuries old. In that case, it’s a fake, right?” I nodded. “But what if it’s a fourteenth-century not-fake?”

“Huh?” I stared at her, utterly confused.

“What if it’s medieval but also genuine, Dr. B? What if all the bloodstains, all the wounds, are real?” She pointed at the image, moving her hand up and down as if she were doing a scan. “What if this piece of cloth documents actual trauma, but fourteenth-century trauma? Not the scourging and crucifixion of Jesus, but the scourging and crucifixion of a guy in Avignon — a guy killed specifically to create…this!” Her hand stopped scanning; her finger pointed accusingly at the face. “This could be the world’s first snuff film. A snuff Shroud. Created expressly, deliberately, in order to document the very murder it depicts.”

The idea was startling; stunning, even. Could she possibly be right? Could the Shroud depict a deliberately staged fourteenth-century murder? And could the bones of Avignon — our “zhondo,” as Elisabeth called him — be the bones of the victim?

I looked at the image again in this new light. Yes, it looked like our zhondo’s face. But not our zhondo’s stature. I had a tape measure in my overnight bag, but for starters, I lay down on the floor alongside the Shroud, side by side with the man’s image. “So, who’s taller?”

“He is. He’s got a couple inches on you, maybe more. How tall are you?”

“Five-ten.”

“So he’s a six-footer,” she said. “That’s pretty damn tall, whether he was first century or fourteenth. Most guys back then were, like, five feet, five five, right?”

She was right. During the twentieth century, the average stature of adult males had increased by six inches or more — in developed countries, though not in Third World countries — as a result of better diet and health care. “Yeah, little bitty guys,” I agreed. “I’ve seen suits of armor my twelve-year-old grandson couldn’t fit into.” My heart sank as I realized the implications. “Damn. It’s not our zhondo, is it, Miranda? Can’t be.”

“’Fraid not,” she said. “This guy’s half a head taller than our guy. Sorry, Dr. B; I know the facial reconstruction got you all excited about connecting the dots.”

“Oh well,” I said breezily. “It was an interesting possibility. But so’s your snuff-Shroud theory. Wouldn’t that be ironic, if somebody was killed to make a ‘holy’ relic? Anyhow, we’ve still got a medieval murder on our hands in Avignon, right?” I nodded at the Shroud. “And now maybe we’ve got two medieval murder cases. Twice the bodies, twice the fun, right?”

She didn’t find my little pep talk any more convincing than I did.

Slipping my shoes back on, I rolled up the Shroud and tucked it under my arm. “I’m pooped,” I said, heading for my room, which was at the end of the hall — right where the foot of the Shroud had been moments before. “Sorry I brought you on a wild-goose chase.” I stepped through the doorway.

“Dr. B?” I stopped and leaned my head back into the hallway, just far enough to see her smiling at me. “Just for the record? I love chasing wild geese. Good night, Dr. B. Sleep well.”

I had a dream, and in my dream, i went back to the chapel in Turin Cathedral; went back to make one final attempt to see the Shroud.

As I walked down the center aisle, I saw a man dressed as a high priest — a bishop or cardinal, perhaps even a pope — behind the chapel’s glass wall. The black curtain hiding the Shroud had been opened, and I hurried forward, eager to see the relic at last. But above the altar, behind the curtain, was nothing but a blank wall.

Astonished, I stared at the priest. Beside him, in the shadows, stood another man. This man, his face in shadow, was holding a small bundle, which I recognized as the Shroud, folded like a bedsheet. The man handed something to the priest; it was a thick bundle of money, I realized. The priest bowed, and the man disappeared through a dark doorway in the back of the chapel. Then the priest turned and saw me. He pointed a finger at me, and then reached for a golden cord hanging from the ceiling. He pulled the cord, and a heavy black drape slid shut, hiding not only the blank wall and the empty altar, but the entire chapel from my view.

CHAPTER 13

I awoke at daybreak, disturbed by the dream, and trudged back to the cathedral, where again I was confronted by the maddening curtain that shrouded the Shroud. Was it possible that my dream was actually true — that the wall behind the black drape was indeed blank? Could the Shroud be elsewhere — locked in an underground Vatican vault for safekeeping? Rented out to some devout billionaire who paid a fortune to possess it during the long intervals between public exhibitions?

Leaning forward, I studied the glass wall that separated me from the artifact I’d hoped to see. The thickness of the glass was hard to gauge, but I assumed it was at least an inch thick, maybe more — possibly bulletproof; at any rate, surely Brockton-proof. There must be a back door into that chapel, I thought. A way in, so the pope can open the magic curtain every decade or two…or the cleaning lady can dust it once a month. Could I bribe the cleaning lady? Jimmy the door with a credit card or a paper clip? Suddenly I laughed — was I really fantasizing about breaking into a heavily protected chapel in order to scrutinize what was probably a fake relic? I took one last wistful look, then headed out in search of a café.

The café’s barista was a pretty brunette with immense brown eyes and a microscopic English vocabulary. After several fruitless, awkward attempts to request hot tea, I stammered out the words “caffè crema,” which I guessed to be Italian for “coffee with cream.” She smiled and nodded, and I congratulated myself on my suave Italian.

I uncongratulated myself two minutes later, when she handed me a thimble-size vessel containing what looked — and tasted—like soft-serve mocha ice cream. It was 8 A.M., far too early for ice cream. The barista looked my way, saw my confusion, and hurried over, cocking her head to punctuate the question in her eyes. I took another taste, and she beamed when I shrugged and smiled and trotted out the only other Italian word I knew: “Magnifico!”

Suddenly a dusty file drawer in my memory flew open. Magnifico: One of my all-time favorite graduate students used to say that a lot — and her name sprang to the tip of my chilled tongue and from there into the café, right out loud: “Emily Craig!” Years before, Emily had written an article that had something to do with the Shroud of Turin, though I couldn’t quite dredge up the details from that file drawer in my mind. Emily was now the forensic anthropologist for the Commonwealth of Kentucky, and we kept in touch across the mountains between Knoxville and Frankfort. Did I have Emily’s number in my phone? I did! I hit “send” to place the call.

She answered on the sixth ring, just as I’d expected the call to roll to voice mail. “Hello?”

“Emily? Hi, it’s Bill Brockton.”

“Who?”

Perhaps we’d not kept in touch quite as well as I’d imagined. “Bill Brockton.”

“Bill who? Oh…Dr. B? Uh…okay. Yeah. Hi. Give me, uh, give me just a second here.”

Her speech was slow and thick. Was it possible that she’d been drinking? At 8 A.M.? “Am I catching you at a bad time, Emily?”

“Well, since you ask, yeah. I don’t know what time it is where you are, but where I am, it’s two in the morning.”

“Oh, crap, Emily, I’m so sorry. It’s eight here — I’m in Italy — and I was so interested in what I’m calling about, I didn’t even think about the time difference. Go back to sleep. I’ll call you again at a reasonable hour.”

“Hell, I’m awake now,” she said, “and you’ve got me all intrigued. If you hang up now, I’ll just lie awake all night wondering why you called. So spill it.”

“Okay. If I’m remembering right, a few years ago you wrote a journal article that had something to do with the Shroud of Turin.”

“A few years ago?” She gave a groggy laugh. “Try fifteen years ago. Maybe more. I was still in the Ph.D. program at the time, so let’s see, that would have been 1994 or ’95. It was in the Journal of Imaging Science and Technology. Probably not on your regular reading list.”

“Can you give me the skinny on that article? Like, an abstract of the abstract?”

“Sure, more or less.” There was a pause. “Wait. Did you say you’re in Italy?”

“I did.”

“Where in Italy?”

“Three guesses.”

“You’re in Turin? My God, are you looking at the Shroud?”

“Ha. I wish. I’m definitely, damnably not looking at the Shroud. Everybody’s not looking at the Shroud; it’s under wraps until 2025, they say. But I am looking, or at least have been looking, and will be looking again, at a full-size, high-resolution photo of it.”

“No offense, but wouldn’t it have been easier and cheaper and smarter to just have that sent to Knoxville?”

“Long story,” I said. “Yeah, it would’ve. But I was in France, so Italy was right next door. Sort of. Anyhow, that article you wrote — didn’t it have something to do with your prior career as a medical illustrator? Or am I imagining that?”

“No, that’s right. Very good. Okay, here’s the story. One afternoon at UT, I was sitting in a lecture by Randy Bresee—”

“Randy Bresee — textile scientist?”

“Exactly. I was taking his course on textile forensics. And that particular day, he showed slides of the Shroud of Turin. He called it ‘the greatest unsolved textile mystery of all time.’”

“What did he mean?”

“He meant the mystery of how the image was put on the cloth. Part of the mystique of the Shroud is that supposedly there’s no way to reproduce that image with any technique known to man. ‘Not made with hands’ is how the church puts it, I think.”

“What’s so special about it, besides the subject matter?”

“The image is so faint, so superficial — it’s only on the surface of the fibers, not soaked in. It’s barely there at all. No brushstrokes; no snow fencing.”

“Snow fencing?”

“If you brush paint or pigment on fabric — even a really, really light coat — it piles up on one side of the fibers,” she explained, “like snow drifting against a fence. Tough to avoid that. Then there’s the way the image jumps out at you when you look at the photo negative of it. More lifelike than the positive, but more ghostly, too. So it really is an interesting mystery.”

“Especially for an artist-turned-detective, like you.”

“Absolutely. Anyhow, sitting there in that classroom that day, seeing the slides and hearing about this mystery, I got cold chills — I thought I might even throw up — because all of a sudden I knew. At the end of the class, I went up and said to Randy, ‘I know how they did it.’ He laughed and said, ‘Yeah, right.’ So I went home that night, got my friend Tyler to come over and pose for me, and I did it.”

“Did what, exactly?”

“I made an image of Tyler, on fabric, that had all the characteristics of the Shroud. It was on a linen handkerchief. It had no brushstrokes, it didn’t soak into the fibers, and when I took a photograph and looked at the negative, it had that same 3-D effect and that same ghostly look.”

“That’s amazing,” I said. “So sitting in a UT classroom one afternoon, you solved a mystery that was six hundred and fifty years old? How’d you do it — and why didn’t I pay more attention at the time?”

I could practically hear her shrug. “It wasn’t a murder case. And I was just a lowly student.”

“One thing I don’t get, Emily. I stayed up late last night researching the Shroud on the Internet, and everything I read — even recent stuff, with science in it — still claims there’s no way to duplicate that image. Have you ever sent your article to the people who say that?”

“Ha.” It wasn’t really a laugh. “I sent that article all over the place. I even demonstrated the technique, on camera, to a History Channel crew that was filming a documentary about the Shroud. The Shroudies — that’s what I call the die-hard believers — were incredibly hostile. I got hate mail: letters saying I was doomed to hell, letters calling me a Christ killer, letters threatening my life. So yeah, I’d say I described my work to some of the people who say that. And they were none too happy.”

“How’d you do it, Emily? Tell me about the technique.”

“Simple. Incredibly simple. Dust transfer. Medical illustrators use it all the time. I used it all the time, when I was a medical illustrator. You create the image on one surface, using charcoal or red ochre or—”

“Red ochre?”

“A pigment. Ferrous oxide — rust, basically. Ochre’s found in clays all over the world, in various shades. Red ochre — the best red ochre — comes from southern France.”

The hairs on the back of my neck twitched. “Southern France?”

“Yeah, somewhere down around Provence; I forget where. It was used in the cave paintings in France and Spain — fifteen, twenty, thirty thousand years ago. Dust transfer, too. Those paintings weren’t actually paintings; they were illustrations. They’d sketch the outlines of the figures — horses or bulls or whatever — with a burned stick, then rub on red ochre to add color.”

I’d thought I was excited when I first dialed Emily’s number; now, I was beside myself. I felt my hands shaking as I cradled the phone to my ear with one hand and took notes with the other. “And that’s how you made the image of your friend Tyler? You just rubbed dust onto the handkerchief?”

“Ah, no. It was a little more complicated than that. No snow fencing allowed, remember? So I added a step. I used a soft brush, dipped in dry, red-ochre powder, to dab an image of Tyler’s face onto a piece of newsprint. No outlines, just shading with dust; heavy in the high spots — the bridge of the nose, the eyebrows, and so on — and light in the low spots. I dabbed very gently, from different directions, so there wouldn’t be any strokes. Once I had a dense, smooth image, I laid the handkerchief on top and rubbed it with the back of a wooden spoon.”

“Like doing a brass rubbing?”

“Sort of, but much less pressure. So the cloth picked up only trace amounts of the pigment.”

“It wasn’t too faint to be seen?”

“You’d be surprised. It takes only a tiny, tiny bit of red ochre to stain the fabric. If you get it on your clothes, it’s tough to get out.”

“So you don’t have any trouble believing that an image created in this way could survive for hundreds of years?”

“Hell, I don’t have any trouble believing it could survive for thousands of years. Some of those cave paintings have been on the walls for thirty thousand years. The fabric of the Shroud, on the other hand: That I’m not so sure about. And if I remember right, Randy Bresee seemed doubtful that a piece of first-century linen could hold up this long.”

“But in either case — first century or fourteenth — you’re sure it’s a fake.”

“Define fake. I’m sure it’s an illustration, Dr. B — I’d stake my life on that. I think it was created during the Middle Ages. And I’ve got a pretty good idea who did it. But fake? That implies fraud or deception. And there’s a chance — a small chance, at least — that it wasn’t created to defraud or deceive.”

“I’m afraid I’m not following you, Emily.”

“Okay, this might sound far-fetched,” she said, “but just consider this scenario for a second. What if the Shroud was created in the spirit of an autopsy photo? Back in the days before photography existed. What if it was an attempt to capture a moment, to document exactly how Jesus looked when he was taken down from the cross?”

I hadn’t expected this wrinkle in the Shroud. “But you just said you thought it was made in the Middle Ages. So how could it capture a moment that happened fourteen centuries before?”

She sighed. “Okay, here’s where it gets far-fetched. Suppose there was an earlier Shroud, one that did date back to the first century. Suppose that this original Shroud gradually starts to fade and crumble. Finally, suppose that in the thirteen hundreds, a brilliant artist is commissioned to make an exact copy, to preserve the image for another thousand years.”

“Suppose pigs can fly,” I said. “You’re right; that sounds farfetched. If there was an ancient, authentic, first-century Shroud that got copied in the thirteen hundreds, what happened to it? Wouldn’t somebody have saved it, even if it was in shreds? I can’t imagine commissioning a copy but trashing the original.”

“It’s a stretch, I grant you,” she conceded. “I came up with it as a way to mesh faith with facts — the radiocarbon dating, the presence of iron oxide in the image, the good condition of the linen. It worked, sort of, for a while. Before I floated that idea, none of the Shroudies would give me the time of day.”

“And after?”

“After, one of the Shroudie Web sites actually posted my article. Briefly. But I still got hate mail and threatening phone calls.”

“I admire your efforts to reconcile religion and science,” I said. “But I’m not convinced. Remember Occam’s razor?”

“How could I forget? You drummed it into our heads over and over. ‘The simplest explanation that fits the facts is usually correct,’ right?”

“Exactly. So what’s the simplest explanation for an image of Jesus that first surfaces in the Middle Ages — the heyday of fake relics — on fabric that C-14 labs tell us is fourteenth century? I can’t help thinking it’s a fake, created to attract pilgrims to Lirey, the French village where it appeared in 1357.”

“I know, fakery fits the facts.” She sighed. “And yeah, it’s a lot simpler than my scenario.”

“Can I circle back to something? You said you think you know who made the Shroud. Who?”

“Ah. My money’s on Giotto di Bondoni,” she said at once. “Brilliant artist. Crucial, crucial figure in the transition from medieval art to the Renaissance. Giotto’s people look real, three-dimensional, not flat and stylized like medieval icons. Late twelve hundreds, early thirteen hundreds, so the timing’s right. The style’s right, too.”

“How so?”

“One, the guy on the Shroud is long and thin, and Giotto’s figures tend to be long in the face and in the body. Two, religious art was his bread and butter, but Giotto himself was a skeptic. Three, he was a notorious prankster. Think about it: If you’re a religious artist and a religious skeptic, what would be the ultimate prank? How about faking the burial shroud of Jesus — and getting away with it? Be tough to top that, wouldn’t it?”

“But wait — if it’s a prank, doesn’t that contradict your autopsy-illustration theory?”

“I’m not head over heels in love with that theory. I offered it as an olive branch to the Shroudies. And they clubbed me over the head with it.”

“So if Giotto wasn’t copying an earlier Shroud — if he did it as a prank, or a fake, or whatever — then it’s not a likeness of Jesus, or of anybody, for that matter. He could just make up any old face, right? He wouldn’t have needed a human model.” I was asking for two reasons: I needed to lay my Avignon hypothesis to rest once and for all, and I was still intrigued by Miranda’s snuff-film theory — a theory that resembled Emily’s autopsy-photo idea, but with a sinister twist.

“Occam’s razor, Dr. B. Giotto was an artist. Artists use models. Of course there was a model.”

“But the guy in the painting—”

“It’s not a painting,” she interrupted. “It’s an illustration.”

“Okay, okay, the guy in the illustration: Would his dimensions, his stature, match the stature of the model?”

“Absolutely, if the artist was doing a life-size illustration,” she said. “A good artist can draw exactly to scale. When I was a medical illustrator, I did it all the time.”

Exactly to scale: The words sliced through my Avignon theory like a razor, parting and crumbling the hypothesis like ancient, fragile linen.

An hour later, I was sprinting up the staircase of the Hotel Diplomatic and pounding on Miranda’s door. “Miranda, Miranda, wake up!” I drummed again, louder, hoping she hadn’t sallied forth in search of coffee and breakfast.

“Jeez, what the hell? Just a second.” A moment later the door was opened by a bleary-eyed Miranda, wearing only a long T-shirt. “What’s wrong?”

“Nothing’s wrong,” I said. She glared, plucking twists of toilet paper from her ears. “Sorry, I thought for sure you’d be up already.”

“Man, I’d just gotten to sleep,” she grumbled. “Be grateful you got a room on the back side of the building. Away from the sirens and car alarms that blared all night long.” She pressed her palms against her eyes. “So, what’s up — besides you, early bird?”

“This,” I said, stepping aside to show her the Shroud, which I’d unrolled in the hallway again.

“I’m thinking Housekeeping’s gonna do some damage when they run the vacuum cleaner over that,” she said, but I could see her curiosity awakening.

“I just talked to Emily Craig.”

“Emily? In Kentucky?” I nodded. “Just now?”

“Maybe an hour ago.”

“Betcha woke her up, too, didn’t you?”

“Well, yeah. I did wake her up. But that’s not the point.”

“Might’ve been the point to Emily. Are you about to tell me what you think the point is?”

“I am. Emily was explaining how the Shroud could’ve been made. A dust-transfer illustration — like a cave painting, or a brass rubbing.” Miranda nodded, rubbing sleep from her eyes. “She thinks the Shroud was made by a medieval artist named Giotto. Giotto was—”

She fluttered a hand in the air. “Yeah, yeah, Giotto and I go way back. I minored in art history.” She pondered. “Okay, stylistically, Giotto seems plausible.”

“But Giotto’s not the point, either,” I said.

She sighed. “Anybody ever mention that you take a long damn time to get to the point?”

“I’m getting there, I’m getting there. So Emily’s going on about how a good artist can draw to scale. Exactly to scale. Which is just rubbing my nose in the fact that the Shroud guy isn’t our Avignon guy. Can’t be.”

“Because our Avignon guy’s six inches too short.”

“Right. The Shroud guy is ten percent taller. But then, after I hung up, I thought, hmm.”

“Don’t tell me, let me guess. The hmm—that’s the point.”

“Exactly the point, Miss Smarty-Pants. Because after I thought, hmm, I thought, If he can draw exactly to scale, maybe he can scale it up, too. Why not larger than life? So I found a copy shop. Hey, you know the Italian word for ‘photocopy’?” She shook her head wearily. “Fotocopia. Isn’t that great? Anyhow, I found a fotocopia shop. Look.”

I knelt and laid a photocopy over the face on the Shroud. It was a full-frontal image of the Avignon skull. I’d taken the CT scan to the fotocopia shop, enlarged it to 110 percent of actual size, and printed it on clear Mylar film. When I moved out of the way, Miranda gasped. “Oh, my God, it is him — the fit’s perfect now!”

I couldn’t help preening. “See? The hmm was important, right?”

“No shit, Sherlock. Very important.”

The effect created by the overlay was almost like X-ray vision; almost as if we were looking through the face on the Shroud and seeing the bones beneath. I’d used this technique, facial superimposition, in several cases over the years: superimposing photographs of missing persons onto skulls that turned up, seeing if the face fit the skull. Most times the fit was terrible — the eyes floated out beyond the edges of the skull, or the nose hovered in the middle of the teeth, or the skull’s chin was twice as wide as the one in the photo — but sometimes, like now, everything on the face aligned with everything on the skull.

In a court of law, facial superimposition couldn’t be used to prove an identification; it could be used only to exclude one — to say “No, that face can’t possibly fit that skull.” If the Shroud face hadn’t aligned with the Avignon skull — the scaled-up skull — I’d have concluded once and for all that the portrait in Turin and the bones in France belonged to different men. But this was a better fit than I could have imagined, and Emily Craig’s confident assertion — that a good artist can draw exactly to scale — no longer struck me as artistic license, as illustrator’s exaggeration.

I fetched my tape measure, and Miranda and I took measurements from the Shroud to compare with those from the bones. We couldn’t get as many measurements as I’d hoped, because the Shroud’s image was vague, the landmarks tough to pinpoint. It was like examining a newspaper photo through a magnifying glass: the closer you look, the less you see. Still, the few solid measurements we managed to get — overall stature, femur length, nasal breadth, nasal length — fit well, once we scaled up the bone measurements. Even the skeleton’s leggy, storklike proportions — the short trunk and long limbs — were accurately rendered on the Shroud. “Everything’s the same, just ten percent bigger,” Miranda said. “Why do you suppose he did that?”

I shrugged. “Maybe he wanted it to look more impressive.”

She laughed. “Maybe he was getting paid by the foot.”

I laughed, too. “We can probably never prove it, but I feel sure. This guy on the Shroud is our guy from the palace.”

“But who is our guy?” she said. “Is it Eckhart, or is it Jesus?”

“That, Miranda, is the million-dollar question.”

CHAPTER 14

“In-ter-esting.” Miranda was scrolling down the screen of her iPad as the car careened through a curve near the Mont Blanc Tunnel on our drive back to Avignon.

“How can you read on these roads without getting carsick? I’d’ve thrown up before we got out of Turin if I tried that.”

“It’s a gift,” she said. “I have many. Now shut up and drive. And listen. Three interest items about the Shroud. Interest item number one: In the 1990s, a prominent microscopist named Walter McCrone found red ochre in the image on the Shroud — and vermilion pigment in the so-called bloodstains.”

“That would explain why those are bright red,” I said. “I was gonna circle back to that at some point. Since when is dried blood cherry red? Every death scene I see, dried blood’s almost black.”

“Right. The point is, this microscopist McCrone seems to support Emily’s position. Interest item number two: When the Shroud first surfaced in Lirey, France, a bishop in a nearby town got suspicious. He poked around, asked a lot of questions, and eventually wrote to Avignon to warn the pope that it was a fake—‘cunningly painted,’ he said — created to draw pilgrims to Lirey. What’s the catchphrase these days? ‘Faith-based tourism’? Ha. This sounds like a case of fake-based tourism.”

“Did this sleuth of a bishop happen to finger Giotto as the cunning painter?”

“He did not,” she said, “but I’m glad you asked, because that brings us to interest item number three. In June of 2011, an Italian art historian, one Luciano Buso, announced that he’d found an artist’s signature — guess whose? — hidden in the Shroud. Somewhere around the face, supposedly.” She unfastened her seat belt, and the car began beeping in alarm. She clambered out of her seat, squeezing her way into the back.

“What are you doing?”

“Getting the Shroud.” She wormed her way back to the front, belted in, and began unrolling the giant print. One end of it flopped halfway across the windshield, and I nearly ran off the road before I managed to bat it away.

“Are you crazy? There are so many better reasons to die than this.” I pulled onto the shoulder and parked.

“Sorry; it got away from me for a second there.” She hopped out of the car, laid the print on the hood, and unrolled it as far as the face. “Come help me look.” She pored over the image, squinting and frowning. “I don’t see a damn thing that looks like ‘Giotto.’ Do you?”

“No,” I said, “but that swirly bit around the eye looks kinda like a doggie.”

She retrieved her iPad from the floorboard and did further searching. “Okay, here’s the picture this art historian gave to the media. A close-up of the neck, showing the signature.” She enlarged the picture and studied the screen. “Hmm.” Then she studied our immense, high-resolution print again. “Hmmmmm.”

“Hmmmmm, what? I’m assuming the hmmmmm is important.”

She showed me the screen. “In his print, just above that double wrinkle in the neck, can you kinda-sorta see a potential ‘Giotto’?”

I was surprised by what I saw. “Yeah, I kinda-sorta can. It’s grainy, but I see something that could be a lowercase cursive g and a couple round bits that might be o’s.”

She stared at the mammoth print. “But now look at ours. Notice anything funny?”

“It’s really different. I see blotches and splotches, but everything looks all vague and random.”

“I think he’s cranked up the contrast a lot in his picture. Not in the whole image; just in that part of the neck. Looks like he’s Photoshopped it to highlight what he wants us to see.” Then she groaned loudly. “Oh, good grief.”

“Now what?”

“Look. On the actual Shroud, the forehead blood — the artful, crown-of-thorns trickle of blood — is above the right eye.” Then she pointed to the iPad. “But in this art-detective’s version, it’s above the left. He’s flopped it, left to right.” She growled in annoyance. “No fair. Shit, Dr. B, if I played image doctor for a day or two, I could probably make it say ‘Miranda rocks!’ somewhere in there.” She rolled up the scroll, shaking her head in disgust. “Come on, let’s go. What a gyp.”

“Too bad,” I said. “I was hoping this Giotto story might help Emily Craig’s work finally get the attention it deserves.”

We hadn’t gone more than a few miles before Miranda simmered down and resumed the quest for interest items. “During the early Middle Ages, there were supposedly dozens of ‘true shrouds’ rattling around — more than forty, according to one guy who’s researched this. But none of those showed an image of Jesus; they were just strips of cloth. It wasn’t until…”—she paused to scroll—“…1203 that there was a record of a shroud with an image. But it just showed the face, not the whole bod.”

“Where was it?”

“That one turned up in Constantinople,” she said, “which was the crossroads of the relics trade.”

“How come?” I asked.

“How come it turned up?”

“No, how come Constantinople was the crossroads of the relics trade?”

“Ah. Because of Saint Helena.”

“And what’s she the patron saint of?”

“Of relics, looks like. Helena was the mother of Constantine — the Roman emperor who finally gave the seal of approval to Christianity. She was quite the pack rat when it came to relics. She made a pilgrimage to the Holy Land and brought back a boatload of ’em. A true cross or two, three crowns of thorns, the Holy Sponge—”

“The Holy what?”

“Sponge. The Holy Sponge. A Roman soldier stuck a sponge on a stick and gave Jesus a drink up on the cross. Holy Nails.”

“Wait, go back. The sponge? Really? Jesus dies a horrible death, his friends and family are devastated, but as they’re pulling him off the cross and hauling him away, somebody stops and goes, ‘Say, soldier, can I have that sponge?’”

“So the story goes. Where was I? Oh, Holy Nails—lots of Holy Nails. At least thirty Holy Nails, scattered all over Europe.” She scrolled down the screen, then hooted. “Wow. The Holy Stairs: twenty-eight marble steps — I’m not making this up — from the palace of Pontius Pilate, the Roman governor. The steps Jesus stood on, supposedly, when Pilate washed his weaselly hands of the whole affair.”

“So after the grieving disciples snag the Holy Sponge and pry out the Holy Nails, they swing by the governor’s palace and pinch an entire staircase?”

“I’m just telling you what it says. Quit interrupting. There’s more, so much more in the realm of relics. Feathers from the wings of the Angel Gabriel, plucked or molted when he swooped down to tell Mary she was pregnant. Vials of Mary’s breast milk.”

“Gag.”

“Six Holy Foreskins.”

“Whose six Holy Foreskins?”

“Jesus’s, of course.”

“He had six of them? Or was the One True Penis snipped six times?”

She shrugged. “Maybe the rabbi was a rookie.” She consulted the screen again. “The body of Mary Magdalene — three Mary Magdalenes, actually, in three different places. The tail of the donkey on which Jesus rode to Jerusalem on Palm Sunday. A few heads of John the Baptist. A tear Jesus shed.”

“A tear? One of the ‘Jesus wept’ tears, from when Lazarus died?” She nodded. “And somebody just happened to be standing by with an airtight container?” I shook my head. “Twelve disciples? Jesus would’ve needed hundreds—thousands—to trail along behind him and scoop up everything he ever touched for all this stuff to be real. What a racket.”

“Well, yes and no,” she said, surprising me.

“How no?”

“People venerate relics everywhere, always. Relics can be props — they can dramatize and validate the religion’s story; visual aids. But they can also be considered talismans, with magical powers — the power to heal the sick, raise the dead, protect a city against invading armies. People crave relics — beautiful ones, like the Shroud, or even cheesy ones like the Sacred Sandwich.” I remembered what I’d seen on my midnight walk — mementos stuffed in the moonlit niches of a prison wall, and the nearby carving of John the Baptist’s severed head — and it gave her argument the ring of truth.

“So, circling back,” I said. “Whatever happened to that shroud from 1203—the one with the image?”

“Oh, that,” she said. “It vanished in the sack of Constantinople a year later. In all the raping and pillaging.”

“Who raped and pillaged Constantinople?”

“The Crusaders.”

“The Christian Crusaders? Raping and pillaging the crossroads of Christianity?”

“Depends,” she answered, “on how you define ‘Christian.’”

Just then the ring of my phone sounded — a startling noise high in the Alps, miles from any city. I snatched it from the console, narrowly missing a road sign as I sneaked a glance at the display. Private number. “Hello?”

“Hello, is this Dr. Bill Brockton?”

“Yes, it is.”

“Dr. Brockton, my name is Dr. Adam Newman. I’m the scientific director of the Institute for Biblical Science, in Charlotte, North Carolina.”

“Ah, yes,” I said. “I got your letter a few days ago.”

“Are you going to be able to help us with our project? We’re very anxious to get to work, and we’re very much hoping you’re interested.”

I hesitated. I’d been dubious when I first read the letter, and Stefan’s report had only confirmed my uneasiness. But I didn’t want to be offensive. “I’m sorry, but I’m afraid I won’t be able to help you with that, Dr. Newman.”

“I think you’d find it a fascinating opportunity,” he said. “If you’ll let me tell you more about it, I think you might reconsider.”

“Even if I wanted to, I couldn’t take it on right now,” I said. “I’m out of the country. I’m in France.”

“France?” There was a silence, and I thought I’d lost the call. “Well, gracious, lucky you. What part of France?” Something about his hearty tone sounded false, but before I could decide how — or whether — to answer the question, the world went dark, we plunged into the Mont Blanc Tunnel, and Dr. Adam Newman was gone.

CHAPTER 15

After dropping Miranda off, I eased the Peugeot through Lumani’s wooden gate just in time to see Elisabeth arranging purple stalks of lavender in a tall vase on one of the garden tables. She waved and nodded. “Ah, bonjour. You are back so soon. How was your trip? Did you see the famous Shroud?”

“No, we didn’t. It was impossible.”

“Ah, quel dommage—too bad.”

“It’s okay. It was a useful trip. We bought a copy of the Shroud. A life-size photograph. For three hundred dollars.”

She gasped, and as she drew in her breath, she exclaimed, “Ah!” I’d never heard anyone do that before — speaking while inhaling. The intake of breath somehow invested the “ah” with a little more wonder and a lot more charm. “Mon Dieu. For so much money, I hope it has the power to make miracles.”

“Well, I didn’t fall asleep and crash your car in the mountains, so maybe it does have miraculous powers.”

“Caffeine,” she said. “Caffeine has these powers, too. Do you want a coffee?”

“No coffee, thanks. But I’d love a cup of tea, if you don’t mind.” She turned toward the kitchen. “Oh, Elisabeth, before I forget. You’re an artist. Did you study art history, too?”

“Only a little.”

“I have a friend — she’s an anthropologist and an artist — who thinks that the Shroud of Turin was made by Giotto.”

“A painting by Giotto?” She wrinkled her forehead and frowned. “No, I don’t think so. The picture, the image, is too maigre… what is the English word?…thin? Not the man, but the picture. It is like a ghost, almost not there. Paint would be more strong.”

“You’re right,” I agreed. “Not paint. Dust. Pigment. Red ochre. Like a cave painting.” I pretended to sprinkle powder into my palm, then puffed it onto an imaginary surface.

“Ah!” There it was again, the charming, breath-taking “ah.” Just hearing it made me smile. “Red ochre. I think it is possible.”

“Do you know if Giotto ever worked in Avignon?”

She shrugged. “Pfft. I don’t know. Peut-être—maybe. Artists came from all over Europe to paint at the palais. Also at the livrées of the cardinals. There were many walls to decorate, and much money to collect. Artists come to money like flies come to honey.”

I laughed. “I thought all artists were poor and starving.”

“Most artists are starving. But if the pope likes you, you will never go hungry.”

When Elisabeth returned with my tea, she was balancing the cup on a pair of books: a lavish coffee-table art book about Giotto, and a smaller book, which she opened once I lifted the cup from it. “Vies des Artists,” she said. “The Lives of the Artists. By Vasari. You know Vasari?” I shook my head. “Giorgio Vasari. Italian. Sixteenth century. He made architecture, but also biography and history.”

“A regular Renaissance man,” I punned, then worried that the joke wouldn’t translate.

She laughed. “Ah, bon.” She checked the smaller book’s contents, then flipped to a chapter. “So. Vasari writes this about Giotto. He says, ‘When Clement Five became pope and brought the papal court to Avignon, Giotto came with him. And while he was here, he made many beautiful pictures and frescoes, which pleased the pope and the entire court very much. And so, when the work was all finished, the pope sent him back to Florence with love, and with many gifts. Giotto was rich and honored and famous.’ You see,” she said with a smile, “I told you: If the pope likes you, you don’t starve.”

“Ah,” I said.

CHAPTER 16

I made it to the library an hour before closing time. Neither of Elisabeth’s books showed paintings from Giotto’s Avignon period, but I felt sure the library would have a more comprehensive book. And I was glad to have another occasion to visit the former cardinal’s palace, which was now a palace of books.

The building was fronted by a square courtyard, which was open to the street but was flanked on its other three sides by a magnificent stone building in the shape of a low, wide U. The two wings seemed like later additions to the building’s massive central core; that part was three stories high — three very tall stories of pale, putty-colored stone, topped by crenellations. Unlike the battlements atop the Palace of the Popes, the crenellations here appeared merely decorative; the building was large, but not fortified, and the immense leaded-glass windows in its façade would have posed no barrier to attack.

I entered through a large glass door at the center of the building. Directly inside was a foyer with a massive stone staircase leading upward. One floor up, I entered the main reading room — once a cardinal’s banquet hall, it now served up a feast of books — and made for the reference desk. There I found the helpful librarian Philippe on duty again. He smiled at me in recognition. “Bonjour, monsieur. Are you back for more research on Eckhart?”

“Not this time,” I answered. “Art history this time. Do you have any books on the artist Giotto? An Italian painter. Giotto di…” I floundered for the last name.

“Di Bondoni. But of course. Magnifique. Come.” He led me down the long wall of the great room, to a section where oversized art books were shelved. They were arranged alphabetically, and midway along the wall, we came to G. Philippe pulled out two books — a thin one and a fat one — then reshelved the thin one. “That one is no good,” he said dismissively. “Everything in that one is also in this one. And more.” He handed me the fat book; it was two inches thick, a foot high, eighteen inches wide, and ten pounds heavy. The text was in French, but I figured that didn’t matter much; I was interested in the pictures.

“Thank you,” I said to the young man. “This is such a beautiful library. Is it okay if I take this upstairs to the mezzanine?”

“Sure. I prefer the mezzanine also. Very tranquil, and the view is the best.”

I lugged the book up another flight of stone stairs, emerging onto the balcony that overlooked the grand hall. I could easily imagine five hundred guests — cardinals, bishops, wealthy merchants, dukes and duchesses, and other lords and ladies. Twenty feet below me, where the banquet tables would have been set with gilded china, sparkling crystal, and platters of food, row upon row of shelves now marched across the tiled floor. Twenty feet above me were the timbered squares of the coffered ceiling, whose main joists measured at least eighteen inches square.

I was headed for one of the balcony’s wooden study tables when I spotted a chair tucked into a deep recess beneath a leaded-glass window. I settled into the cozy niche, imagining myself living and working in such opulence: a visiting scholar, perhaps, or the personal physician to his eminence the Cardinal, stealing a few moments in this out-of-the-way nook to peruse an illuminated manuscript from his prized collection.

Soon I forgot sumptuous surroundings; all my attention was riveted on Giotto’s paintings, especially a series of frescoes in a jewel box of a chapel in Padua, Italy. The chapel, belonging to the wealthy Scrovegni family, couldn’t have held a hundred people, but every square inch of the walls was covered with frescoes — more than fifty of them — depicting themes and scenes from the Bible, including numerous episodes in the lives of Mary and Jesus. The images were overwhelming in their number and richness; the little church reminded me of the Sistine Chapel, except that the paintings were smaller and closer to eye level. What refined and devout people the Scrovegnis must have been to commission such glorious art.

Finally I looked up from the paintings, rubbed my eyes, and then flipped to the index. I ran my eyes down the A section, toward the bottom, to see which pages featured Giotto’s Avignon paintings. I found no entry for Avignon. Puzzled, I lugged the book downstairs to the reference desk and showed the index to Philippe. “There’s nothing in this book about Avignon. Do you have another book on Giotto? One that shows what he painted while he was here?”

“Here?” He looked puzzled.

“Yes, here. In Avignon. This city.” I smiled. He frowned. “Pope Clement the Fifth brought him here,” I explained, proud of my knowledge. “He painted beautiful pictures and frescoes here, then he went back to Florence, more famous and beloved than ever.”

His frown deepened. “Monsieur Giotto did not paint here. He never even visited here.”

“But he did. I read it in an art history book.”

“What book?”

“The Lives of the Artists. By…Vasari?”

“Ah, oui, Vasari.” He laughed. “He just made up that stuff about Avignon.”

“What?”

“Yeah, it’s pure fiction. Vasari does that all the time. He tells great stories about famous painters and poets, but half of them are made up. Invented.”

This was a twist I hadn’t expected — another wrinkle in the Shroud, or at least in my theory that the Avignon bones were intimately tied to the Turin Shroud. I thanked him and began walking away, disappointed. Then a thought occurred to me, and I turned back toward Philippe. “Are there any famous fresco painters who did come to Avignon?”

“Ah, oui. The one who did the beautiful frescoes in the Palais des Papes. He is the neighbor of Giotto.”

“Excuse me?”

“Come.” I followed him to the oversized art books again, and he led me once more to the G section. “You are finished with Giotto?” I handed him the tome, and he tucked it into its slot on the shelf, but not before sliding out an adjacent volume, a much slimmer one. I noticed the word “Avignon” in the book’s title — an encouraging sign. “See,” Philippe said, smiling. “Giovanetti. Giotto’s closest neighbor on the bookshelf.” He translated the title for me: “An Italian Painter at the Court of Avignon.”

“Sounds perfect. I’ll take it.”

I returned to my window nook on the mezzanine and buried myself in the book. Most of the images showed frescoes in the papal palace — frescoes I hadn’t seen, since my forays had been confined to the subtreasury and the dark staircases leading to it. Giovanetti and his apprentices had painted three chapels in the palace, as well as the pope’s private study. Unlike the religious murals in the chapels, those in the pope’s private study showed scenes of French country life: a stag hunt, the deer portrayed at the very moment it was caught by the hounds; a rectangular pool where men fished with nets and with lines; a pair of gentlemen hunting with falcons. Despite the passage of nearly seven centuries — and obvious signs of damage — the frescoes remained vibrant. But were they the work of the same hand that had created the Shroud? I studied the faces, looking for similarities in features or style. But just as with the image on the Shroud itself, the harder I looked, the less I could see with certainty.

Immersed in art and uncertainty, I was slow to notice the electronic warble reverberating through the cavernous stone chamber. Someone’s cell phone was ringing. Frowning, I scanned the balcony and the reading room for the culprit; that’s when I noticed several faces frowning at me. I was the culprit. Embarrassed, I scurried to the staircase and checked the display; it read Tennessee Bureau of Investigation. “Hello, this is Bill Brockton,” I said in a low voice that I hoped would carry through the phone but not throughout the stone building.

“Dr. Brockton? Is that you? I can barely hear you.”

“Yes, it’s me,” I said, a bit louder, cupping my hand around the phone to muffle the sound, which tended to echo in the stone stairwell.

“Doc, it’s Steve Morgan at the TBI.”

“Steve. How are you? I hope you’re calling to say that the TBI and the DEA have rounded up that whole drug ring. I know Rocky was hot on the heels of one of them in Amsterdam.” The phone fell silent. “Steve? Did I lose you?”

“No. No, I’m here. I hate to say it, but I’ve got bad news, Doc.”

“What’s wrong? Are you okay?”

“Yeah, I’m okay. It’s not me; it’s Rocky. He…he was killed last night, Doc.”

“What?”

“In Amsterdam,” he went on. “Morales, the guy Rocky tracked to Amsterdam? He and Rocky shot each other. Both dead.”

I sat down on the stairs. “Oh, God,” I said. “You’re sure?”

“Yeah. I’ve got photos from the scene.”

“Damn it. Damn it. Does his wife know yet?”

“I just left the house. She’s mighty torn up.”

“Oh, dear God. Bless her heart. And those two kids. I…” My head was swirling with grief and guilt. “Steve, he went to Amsterdam because of me. He was trying to make sure I was safe.”

“He was doing his job, Doc. The DEA was running a dangerous operation, and it got compromised. He couldn’t trust anybody else. You’re not the only reason he went. He had people working undercover in Amsterdam, and he needed to reel them in. It’s not your fault.”

“I wish I could believe that.”

“Believe it, Doc. Not your fault.” In the background, I heard another phone ringing, and I heard Steve answer it, then speak tersely, though I couldn’t make out the words. “Doc, I gotta go,” he said when he came back on the line. “I know he was a friend of yours. I’m really, really sorry.”

“Yeah. Yeah, me, too. He was a good man. I…thanks for the call, Steve. Be careful out there.” My left arm dropped to my side; the phone slipped from my fingers and fell to the floor, bouncing down two of the stone steps before clattering to a stop. I left it there.

Years before, I had lost a wife to cancer. More recently — just as I’d emerged from my cave of grief — a woman I’d begun to love had been murdered. And now Rocky Stone, a good man, a dedicated cop, a devoted husband and father. At the moment, my heart felt like a graveyard full of tombstones.

I don’t know how long I sat there, staring unseeing at the stone steps. After a few seconds or many minutes, I felt a hand on my shoulder and a voice asked, in Irish-accented English, “Are you all right, lad?” I looked up. Standing before me, two steps down, was a silver-haired priest. He was dressed like a priest, at any rate — the black pants and shirt with the white clerical collar — but he didn’t look like a priest, or at least like any priest I’d ever seen. I guessed him to be ten years older than I was, but he had the physique of a man half his age: tall, broad shouldered, flat stomached. His shirt was short sleeved, and it strained to contain his chest and his biceps. He leaned closer, looked into my eyes, and asked again, “Are you all right? Anything I can do to help you?”

I took a deep breath to steady myself, then another. “Thank you, but no.” Another breath, which came in very raggedly. I forced it out between pursed lips, as if I were blowing out birthday candles. Rocky Stone was what, forty-four? Forty-eight? “It’s kind of you to offer, though. I just got some bad news. It blindsided me.”

He kept his left hand on my shoulder and extended his right, which held my cell phone. “I’m thinking this was the bearer of bad tidings; would I be right about that, lad?” I nodded, taking it from him. “I got a phone call like that once,” he said. “Long ago. Changed my life. It’s been an interesting life, and lots of it’s been good. But I’d give anything not to have gotten that call, you know?”

I nodded again, intrigued now, or maybe just desperate to be distracted from my own sadness. “Do you mind my asking what your bad-news call was?”

“Ah. No, lad, I don’t mind. Part of me penance is tellin’ it.” I looked up, puzzled. “It was bad news that I had a hand in bringin’ about, see?” I didn’t see, but he seemed to be diving into deep inner waters, so I waited for whatever it was that he felt bound by penance to tell. “I was twenty-two when the Troubles began. A young hothead livin’ at home with me mum in Banbridge, not far from Belfast. I had no job, no goals, and nothing better to do than to brood and rage, and blame everything that I hated about my life on the British Army and the Protestants. So I joined the Provisional IRA. I didn’t actually do much; I suppose I was provisional. Mostly spouted off a lot, in front of me mum and my little brother, Jimmy.”

He paused a moment before continuing. “Jimmy was sixteen, and he looked up to me more than he should’ve. ‘Rivers of blood,’ I liked to say, ‘that’s the only thing can wash the devils out of Northern Ireland.’ And while I was talking such stuff, Jimmy was listening. Jimmy was believin’. So Jimmy joined up. He didn’t even tell me. Jimmy wasn’t a talker — Jimmy was a doer. Nothing provisional about Jimmy. Jimmy planted a culvert bomb under one of the roads into town — that was our version of the IEDs that maim so many soldiers in Iraq these days. But the bomb went off prematurely. It wasn’t a British Army vehicle that Jimmy’s bomb blew up; it was a school bus. Three kids died; seventeen were injured. Some of them lost arms, legs, eyes.”

He stared out the window of the stairwell, as if watching the story unfold. “The army hunted Jimmy for weeks; it was hard for him to find food or shelter because the one thing all sides agreed on — Protestants, Catholics, Loyalists, Brits — was what a terrible thing young Jimmy Halloran had done. They finally found him in a barn on the coast at Mill Bay, alone and weak with hunger. He wouldn’t give up; I’m not sure they gave him a real chance, but even if they did, he wouldn’t have taken it. He wounded three soldiers during the gun battle. It took six bullets to bring him down. And you know the last thing he said?” His voice had gotten thick, and as I glanced up, I saw him wiping his eyes before he resumed. “Sorry, lad. Tellin’ it brings it all back. Jimmy’s dying words, said the officer who phoned with the news, were my very own words: ‘Rivers of blood.’ God forgive me.” He crossed himself, and breathed out a sadness that came from deep in his core. “So you can see why I might feel the need to do a bit of penance.”

“I’m sorry, Father,” I said. “That’s a heartbreaking story.”

“Ah, the heart — not as easily broken as we think it is, lad. Bruises often but rarely breaks, truth be told. Now, how about we go and get you something for that freshly bruised heart of yours, eh? Maybe a dram of brandy or a pint of Guinness to revive you?”

“Thanks. But I don’t drink.”

“What’s that?”

“I don’t drink.”

“What? Not a drop?”

“Not if it’s alcohol.”

“Well, then, it’s a piss-poor priest you’d have made, lad.” I looked up, startled, and his eyes — red rimmed — were now twinkling. “No alcohol? You’ve got no aptitude for the priesthood. No vocation, no calling.” To my surprise, I found myself smiling at his cheeky irreverence. “Well, no matter — I’ve got vocation enough for the both of us. Come along, if you like; I’ll have the brandy and the Guinness, and you can have coffee, or tea, or broccoli juice, or whatever other wretched beverage American teetotalers consume instead of nectar from heaven.”

He reached out a hand; to my surprise, I took it and let him haul me to my feet. As he headed down the staircase toward the library’s exit, he turned and looked over his shoulder. “Coming, lad? I’m Michael Halloran, by the by.”

I started down the steps after him, abandoning the Giovanetti book in the window alcove where I’d left it. “Do you serve a parish here in Avignon, Father Halloran?”

“You can call me Father Mike. Or just plain Mike. Or anything else, except Father Halloran.”

“I’ll go with Father Mike,” I said. “Friendly, but respectful.”

“Once I’ve had a drop or two, you can drop the ‘Father,’ if you’re wanting to respect me a bit less.”

I laughed. I was surprised to feel so relaxed with a priest; ever since my wife’s death, I’d had little use for organized religion or its foot soldiers. “I suspect you’re good at your work, Father Mike.”

“Devilishly.”

He held the exit door for me and we emerged, blinking, into the building’s courtyard. “Oh, you never answered. Do you serve a parish here in Avignon?”

“No, but it might not be such a bad posting,” he said. “I’m just here on holliers.”

“Excuse me?”

“Holliers. Holiday. Seeing how the other half lived, seven hundred years ago.”

“Half? More like the other one-millionth of one percent.”

“Arithmetic was never me strong suit, lad. Is there something I can call you besides ‘lad’?”

“Oh, sorry. Of course. I’m Bill. Bill Brockton.”

“A fine, honest-sounding name. And what brings you to Avignon, Bill Brockton?” He nodded at the impressive façade of the former cardinal’s palace. “And to this humble little parson’s cottage? Are you on holliers, too?”

“Not exactly. I’m an anthropologist. I’m here to look at some bones.”

“Bones? What sort of bones?”

“Just some old bones found at the Palace of the Popes.”

“A pope’s bones?”

“I don’t think so.”

“A papal mistress, perhaps. Clement the Sixth had a niece he was mighty fond of — that’s what he called her in public, at least. Or possibly a pope’s bastard son.”

“You do look on the bright side, don’t you, Father Mike?” He laughed. “I don’t know who it is. Realistically, probably never will. All I know for sure is that the bones are very old, and the guy died a very painful death.”

“Must’ve had his finger in the till, then. The popes didn’t take kindly to that.” He pointed up the street. “So, Bill Brockton, I just happen to know that there’s a pub two blocks yonder way. Shall we wend our way thither, for my heavenly nectar and your hellish excuse for a beverage?”

“Ah, me, that’s a shame,” he said, when I told him about Rocky.

“I feel at least partly responsible,” I added, explaining my involvement in Rocky’s case. “I need to figure out some way to help his wife and kids.”

“Heavens, can it be? Are you an honorable man, Bill Brockton? I don’t see many of your ilk these days. My parish has seven honorable men in it.” He frowned. “No, make that six.”

“It’s a small parish?”

“Oh, goodness no. We have two hundred people at Sunday-morning Mass. But only a handful of those are honorable men. One in fifteen or twenty: It’s the universal wheat-to-chaff ratio for men, I’m sorry to say. In women, it’s higher. I’d say as many as one woman in three is honorable.”

“For such a cheerful fellow, you’re mighty cynical, Father Mike.”

“Call me crazy. Call me observant. Call me whenever there’s beer on tap.” He hoisted his mug and took an appreciative swig of Guinness.

“So, you seem like a down-to-earth priest, Father Mike. Can I ask you something?” He nodded, licking froth off his upper lip. “When you look around Avignon at all the signs of wealth and excess and greed — the popes filling their coffers with gold, the cardinals building grand palaces like the library — how do you account for it? How do you reconcile it with the teachings of Jesus, who preached the virtues of poverty and humility?”

“I don’t reconcile it. I can’t. It’s not reconcilable; it just is. Or was. Things are better now, I think. Not perfect, but better. I think the clergy’s less obsessed with money and power and more interested in spirituality. I hope so, anyhow. The medieval Church was a product of its times, just as the early Church was, and just as the modern church is. You know, we like to call the Church ‘the bride of Christ.’ Well, she’s like any other bride: Sometimes she’s an angel, and sometimes she’s a bitch.” His words drew a shocked laugh from me. “The church is just people, Bill Brockton. Capable of beauty and nobility, but also capable of duplicity and depravity. The bravest, noblest church work I’ve ever seen — work that raised up villagers and brought down a dictator in Latin America — was led by a priest I knew. After he was killed, I learned he was also a pedophile. Sometimes the Church enables us to do our worst; more often, I hope, it ennobles us to be our best.”

His openness was refreshing. So was his willingness to hang on to the church’s ideals despite its failings.

“You seem to have a bit more air in your tires now, Bill Brockton. Is that true?”

I smiled. “Actually, it is.”

“Then I’ll be leaving now. I’ve got a sacred mission to attend to.”

“A mission? I thought you were on — what’s the word? — holliers?”

“And so I am. But Dublin is playing Manchester on the telly in ten minutes. It’d be a sin to miss the start of the match.” He fished in his pocket and pulled out a pen. “I happen to know you’ve got a mobile.” He smiled. “If you’ll give me your number, I’ll call you before I leave town. I’d enjoy another chat, Bill Brockton.”

To my surprise, I realized I would, too. Perhaps, I thought, I’ve been underestimating men of the cloth.

CHAPTER 17

“Your Holiness?”

“Come in, Jacques. I have not seen you these past three days. Where have you been?”

“I’ve been dealing with Eckhart. Your Holiness, I…There is a problem. With Eckhart.”

“I am well aware of it,” the pope says drily. “We discuss it often, do we not? The papal crown is not so heavy, and I am not so feeble, that I have already forgotten how diligently you strive to show him the errors of his teachings.”

The White Cardinal — heretic hound Fournier — reaches a plump hand into his robe and retrieves a handkerchief to mop his brow. Despite the autumn chill already settling into the stones of the building, his forehead glistens with beads of sudden sweat.

“There is, Holy Father, a new problem.”

“What is it? Have you allowed him to escape, as you did the Franciscan devil Michael, after I dragged Michael here for you to break? How could Eckhart escape, too? You told me Eckhart could no longer walk.”

Fournier folds the handkerchief, makes another pass. “Eckhart has not escaped. Eckhart has died.”

The pope’s ancient eyes look sharply at the man who is his protégé and doctrinal enforcer. “This preacher was already too popular with the people, Jacques. Have you now made a martyr of him?”

The handkerchief is hopelessly inadequate to soak up the rivulets of sweat coursing down the cardinal’s face. “He was old and frail, Holiness. In his sixties.”

“I’m eighty-five,” the pope croaks. “Do not insult me, insolent boy.” Fournier is nearing fifty — hasn’t been a boy for more than thirty years — but he’s old enough and wise enough not to quibble over terminology, especially in the midst of a scolding that makes him feel like a slow-witted pupil. “Eckhart walked here from Cologne — five hundred miles on foot — to answer the charges against him. He was not a frail man. Not when he arrived.”

Fournier slides his tongue over his lips, back and forth, a nervous habit that looks vaguely obscene. “Perhaps the rigors of the journey took a delayed toll on him.”

“Perhaps the rigors of your questioning proved too much for mortal flesh,” the old man replies. “Your zeal is commendable, but your measures can be excessive.”

“How can one go too far to protect the purity of the faith, Your Holiness?”

“By mistaking anger for righteousness, and rigidity for strength. I remember a woman you burned in Montaillou, two years after I made you bishop. Do you?” How could Fournier forget her, that stubborn, stupid shrew who refused to break for him? But he simply nods slightly, hoping to deflect the conversation. “Remind me why you burned her?”

“She refused to take the oath, Your Holiness. I begged her, again and again. I gave her many chances.”

“You burned her because she would not swear to tell the truth?”

“She would not.” Irked now, Fournier can’t resist the urge to justify himself. “And as you know, the oath is required of all who are called before the Inquisition.”

“Was anyone else burned for refusing to take it?”

“No one else refused, Holiness.”

“Then perhaps no one else knew the teachings of our Lord as well as she did. Jesus said, ‘Do not swear, either by heaven or by earth or even by your own head, but simply say yes or no.’ Did he not?” Fournier inclines his head ever so slightly. “Tell me, Jacques, why was this a burning offense, this peasant woman’s refusal to swear an oath?”

Why were half a hundred Templars burned in Paris, Fournier thinks, and four Franciscan monks in Marseilles? But he dares not voice those questions. Instead, he responds, “She defied the holy office of the Inquisition.”

“She defied you, Jacques, and it enraged you.” The old man studies the clenched jaw and flashing eyes of his middle-aged protégé. “Cardinal Fournier, I speak now as your spiritual father. Make confession, admit to the sin of pride, and do whatever penance your confessor requires.”

Fournier kneels, his face livid. “Yes, Your Holiness.”

“So Eckhart is dead. Died on the rack, I suppose.” Fournier does not correct the supposition; does not admit that he has broken one of the Inquisitor’s fundamental rules: Shed no blood. Instead, he makes a show of rising from his knees. The old man shakes a clawlike hand, dismissing his own question. “No matter. But we must not allow our foes to use his death against us.”

Fournier nods. “Your Holiness is wise, as always. I will see to it.” Bowing once more, he turns to leave the audience chamber, the hem of his white cassock gliding an inch above the gritty floor, remaining — as ever — unsullied.

“Jacques?”

He stops, looks over his shoulder. “Yes, Holiness?”

“Did Eckhart die in a state of grace?”

“Yes, Holy Father. At the end — the very end — he confessed his sins, renounced his erroneous teachings, and prayed for forgiveness. It was inspiring to see him saved.” The papal head nods, or perhaps it simply dodders. Either way, Fournier chooses to interpret the gesture as a benediction, and he leaves before the pontiff can call him back.

Descending the narrow staircase to the cells where prisoners are chained, the cardinal replays the scene once more in his mind. Only a few hours have passed, but already he has seen the scene a hundred times, exactly as he sees it again now:

Eckhart is no longer fit for the rack — his arms and legs too badly damaged by months of torture. Despite obvious agony, the man has refused to yield; has remained stubbornly, damnably unrepentant. “Perhaps my thoughts are mistaken,” he groans, “but my heart is pure. My heart loves God completely. I cannot be a heretic.”

“Are you so perfect?” Fournier demands. “Unblemished? The very lamb of God? So be it.” He sends the jailer to summon a carpenter, and he orders the startled carpenter to fashion a wooden cross in the cell, and to fetch rope, spikes, and a hammer. The carpenter complies, quaking in fear, then flees. Reluctantly, the jailer ties the heretic to the cross and helps wrestle it upright, leaning against the wall, but then he, too, retreats from the cell.

Eckhart’s breathing is scarcely more than a whisper now, scarcely enough to keep him alive. Minute by minute, as he hangs from his arms and his chest sinks, he is inexorably suffocating. “I can still save you,” Fournier tells him, pressing the tip of a spike against the soft flesh of Eckhart’s left wrist. “Confess your sins, renounce your heresies, and beg forgiveness.”

“I have no sins,” Eckhart gasps. “I have no heresies. I am at one with God.”

The iron spike rings as the hammer smashes into it — once, twice, three times.

The three-part sequence — demand, refusal, the ring of hammer upon spike — is repeated at the other wrist, and then at the feet.

Incredibly, Eckhart continues to breathe, if a rasping death rattle can be called breath.

“You have only a moment left,” Fournier tells him. “Repent, and reconcile with God.”

“How can we be reconciled?” the old man murmurs, sparking a flame of hope in Fournier. “How can we be reconciled, when we are already one? God and I are one.”

“Arrogant liar.” Reaching into a sleeve of his robe, Fournier takes out a dagger. “Die and be damned.” He thrusts the blade beneath the ribs of the man who, just a year earlier — just before he walked five hundred miles to defend himself at the court of the Holy Father — had been Europe’s most prominent preacher.

CHAPTER 18

Stefan was leaning against the wall at the southwest corner of the palace, waiting beside the door where he’d made his midnight exit a few nights before. As we approached, he dropped a cigarette to the cobblestones and ground it out, then took the lanyard from around his neck and unlocked the door. The key to the palace fascinated me: It was made of silver, or perhaps steel; its head was cut with an elaborate pattern of filigreed scrollwork; branching symmetrically from two sides of the cylindrical shaft were stubby bars of varying lengths — bars that resembled ribs jutting from a spine. Never had the term “skeleton key” seemed so descriptive.

“So. You wish to see frescoes by Giovanetti?”

“Please,” I said. “Giotto has an alibi, so Giovanetti’s our new prime suspect.”

Stefan rolled his eyes. “Now you think Giovanetti made the snuff movie?” Miranda had filled him in on the trip to Turin, the short-lived Giotto theory, and my conviction that the bones of Avignon were linked to the Shroud of Turin. Was there a hint of scorn in Stefan’s voice when he asked about Giovanetti?

“He’s worth a look,” I said, trying to keep my irritation under control. “Giotto never left Italy. The bones were in France — and the Shroud first surfaced in France. So geographically, at least, Giovanetti fits the facts.” Stefan looked annoyed but took us inside.

He led us through a labyrinth of passages and stairways I’d not seen before — how long had it taken him to learn his way around the sprawling, soaring maze of the palace? — and stopped before a locked door near the top of one of the towers. This door, too, answered to the master key, and Stefan ushered us into a room that took my breath away. Every square inch of the plastered walls and ceiling vaults was covered with vivid images: people and landscapes and buildings, scene upon scene, all set against a background of deep blue.

“Oh, my,” breathed Miranda.

“Beautiful,” I said.

“Oui, not bad. This is the chapel of Saint Martial. In the third century, the pope sent him to France. They say he converted many people and made many miracles.” He pointed to specific panels, one by one. “Healing the sick. Raising the dead. Casting out devils.” The last of the ceiling panels showed an old man kneeling before a handsome, haloed saint; flapping overhead, on batlike wings, was a scaly brown demon that two angels were shooing away. “One legend,” Stefan went on, “is that Saint Valérie of Limoges — a martyr, beheaded for her faith — walked to Saint Martial carrying her head in her hands, so he could perform the last rites for her.”

Miranda scanned the walls and ceiling. “I don’t see a headless woman on the hoof. I guess she’s offscreen, digging her own grave.”

“You’re twisted,” I said. “You know that?” She nodded happily.

My eye was drawn to an area where the fresco was badly damaged. The bright, vivid images were absent altogether or were reduced to faint outlines. Looking closer, I saw that a layer of plaster a half inch or so thick was missing in these areas. “What caused all the damage? Water?”

“Non. Soldiers. During the nineteenth century, the palace was used as a military barracks. The soldiers chiseled out the faces and sold them.”

I scanned the frescoes, and sure enough, virtually all the missing images were faces. One panel showed Jesus flanked by four followers. The four followers’ faces were gone, but Jesus remained unscathed. Pious vandals, I wondered, or just superstitious?

I walked closer to inspect the damaged figures. Faintly traced on the base coat of plaster — the layer exposed when the surface had been pried off — was the black outline of a woman’s face: a face that fit perfectly with the undamaged body. I turned to Stefan. “Why is the outline of her face still visible? Did that bleed through the layer of wet plaster?”

“Ah, non. That’s a charcoal sketch. A study. The artist draws the scene on the rough wall, then puts on a layer of smooth plaster. He paints the scene while the plaster is still fresh — that’s why it’s called ‘fresco.’ The paint soaks in, and voilà, it becomes part of the plaster. Over time the colors can fade, but the paint cannot peel off. Except with a chisel.”

“How did the artist remember all the details, after the sketch was covered with wet plaster?”

Stefan looked at the ceiling, or beyond, lifting the palms of his hands. “A miracle.”

“So, Boss, what’s the verdict?” Miranda finally asked. “You think Giovanetti’s our guy? Did he do the Shroud?”

I took another look at Jesus, then rescanned the entire room, floor to ceiling. “This is beautiful,” I said. “Giovanetti was a great painter.” Finally I shook my head. “But the style’s not right. His people are…I don’t know…too pretty. Too delicate. They don’t have the heft, the fleshiness, the power that the figure on the Shroud does.” I sighed. “That’s my two cents’ worth, anyhow.”

“Agreed,” said Miranda. “Too bad, though. Seemed like a great theory. Stefan, what do you think?”

“I think you are chasing smoke.” He checked his watch. “Merde,” he cursed, “I must go now. I have a stupid meeting with a petty bureaucrat.”

Miranda laughed. “But how do you really feel about him? And who is this charmer?”

“Pfft.” His meeting, he said, was with the city official who had jurisdiction over the palace. “I tell him I need to move the bones, and he says no, and no, and no,” he fumed. “I keep saying, ‘Someone’s going to steal them, and then you will be sorry,’ but he won’t listen. He is even too cheap to pay for the motion detector — I had to buy it with my own money. Fou. Idiot.” He shook his head in disgust. “Allons-y. Let’s go.”

He led us out by way of a different door, which — like every door in the palace, seemingly — yielded to his master key. This door opened onto a cavernous banquet hall, which was filled with display cases and milling tourists. Frowning at the tourists, Stefan pointed us toward the far end of the hall, where a doorway led to the main exit.

Miranda ducked through the doorway, and I was just about to, when I stopped dead in my tracks. There on the wall at the end of the banquet hall — on plaster the color of old linen — was the face of Jesus, larger than life. The eyes were piercing; the nose was long and slightly crooked, as if it might have been broken once in a fight; the first two fingers of the right hand, uplifted in a gesture of blessing, were long and thin.

“Miranda — wait! Come back!” She wheeled and hurried toward me, her face full of concern. I pointed; when she saw the picture, her eyes widened and her jaw dropped.

I read the plaque on the wall. The picture was a preliminary study for a fresco, it explained, like the sketch I’d seen upstairs. But this wasn’t a crude outline in charcoal; this was a finely detailed work of art, rendered in the same reddish-brown hue — and the same sure, powerful style — as the face on the Shroud of Turin.

The portrait was the handiwork of another Italian artist, one who — unlike the stylistically promising Giotto — actually did work in Avignon at the time of the popes. He was known by three names.

Simone Martini.

Simone of Siena.

Master Simone.

CHAPTER 19

“Master Simone, Hurry! Please hurry! If we’re caught, this will happen to us.” The nervous jailer leans backward slowly, easing his head through the doorway of the cell just far enough into the hallway to look and listen. He sees and hears nothing, but when he straightens and turns his attention into the cell, he pleads again, “Hurry.”

His eagerness to leave is inspired by more than just fear of detection. The scene set before him is like something from one of his nightmares — and in fact, after this night, it will become one of his nightmares, destined to haunt him for the remaining seven years of his life.

Six oil lamps flicker on the cold stone floor, their wicks sputtering at odd, startling intervals as they’re struck by droplets from the damp ceiling. All around the small cell, the lamps cast shadows of Simone at work. As he bends, straightens, shifts his feet, moves his arms, the shadows jump and writhe, like demons performing a macabre dance around the dead man stretched at the center of the cell.

Despite the jailer’s entreaties, Simone cannot, will not be rushed; such a remarkable subject demands his full attention and best work. The corpse — an older man, but robust, or a ravaged, ruined version of robust — lies faceup on the stone floor. He is nude, but Simone has modestly crossed the hands above the genitals. The artist is fascinated and horrified by the wounds, the very stigmata of Christ. The punctures in the wrists and feet are fringed by ragged flesh and crusty blood; the knife wound in the side is sharply edged, but the blood and serum from it are smeared down the torso, hip, and leg. A crude wooden cross leans against the back wall of the cell and it, too, bears bloody stigmata.

Simone never expected such an opportunity when he arrived in Avignon. He came simply to test the patronage waters at the papal court — to see if French clerics might consider loosening their purse strings for an Italian painter. But a painter can kiss the hands of prospective patrons only so many times before his lips and his spirit grow chafed. Once that happens, he needs to work, whether there’s money in it or not. So having had his fill of Avignon’s splendor, Simone sought out its squalor, making the rounds of its prisons, hospitals, and cemeteries, concluding each polite inquiry by pressing a florin discreetly into the welcoming palm of a jailer or nurse or gravedigger.

It’s not that Simone is morbid; far from it — no one loves life more than Simone of Siena! But it’s always a good idea to study and sketch a corpse or two, if opportunity presents itself. In a religious painter’s line of work, the quick outnumber the dead, but not by so wide a margin as one might suppose. There’s a steady market for martyr paintings, of course, but the real money is in dead and dying Christs: A painter who’s quick with his brush and smooth with his tongue can feed a family of ten solely with commissions for crucifixion paintings. It’s crucial, therefore, to master death and dying, but where to find the examples? Living models — thieves and prostitutes and beggars, who’ll pose for a pittance or a porridge — are far easier to come by than dead ones. Far more troublesome, too, though: the living wheedle and whine and fidget, while the dead demand no fee or food. Corpses hold stock-still, no matter how many hours the sitting lasts. On the other hand, if the sitting stretches too long, the stench becomes distracting, especially in summer. Ripeness is a virtue in fruits, women, and opportunities, Simone has learned, but not in corpses. This corpse, though — freshly dead, laid out on a cold stone floor in late fall — this corpse is a godsend.

The trip to Avignon came up unexpectedly in the midst of a chapel commission in Tuscany. Simone had spent months drawing the sinopia studies on the rough walls; finally every scene was sketched, and all that was needed was the duke’s final approval. That would surely be a mere formality — after all, each scene featured at least one family member in a prominent position, a flattering light. The Virgin Mary bore a striking resemblance to milady the duchess; Joseph, to the duke himself; the baby Jesus, to the duke’s squalling brat and heir; John the Baptist, to the duke’s younger brother; and so on and so on, down to the final feebleminded cousin, portrayed as a simple shepherd. The sketches done, Simone had ground his pigments, made new brushes, set up his worktable, and asked permission to mix plaster and proceed. But fate had intervened: His honor the duke had galloped off into the night, narrowly escaping an assassination, and was now rumored to be hiding in Rome, or perhaps Naples, or possibly Venice by now. The chapel project had ground to a halt for god knows how long.

So when the invitation came to accompany a musician friend to Avignon — Avignon, which Master Giotto claimed would be the new promised land for artists — only a fool would have refused, and Simone was no fool. He and the musician, a mischievous flute-player, set off through the Susa Valley, paying a larcenous toll at the Savoy Gate, the monumental arch guarding access to the Alps. They’d followed, in reverse, the tortuous route taken by Charlemagne’s troops five centuries before, and by Hannibal’s lumbering war elephants ten centuries before that.

The ancient alpine route was well traveled but not easy. Winding along foaming rivers, skirting the faces of looming glaciers, the road was often blocked by rock or ice, occasionally cut by landslides; the June weather alternated between mild sunshine, fierce rainstorms, and occasional brief blizzards. If not for the help of a band of monks crossing from Turin to Grenoble, Simone and his friend might never have completed the crossing. But complete it they did, and as they followed the Rhône down to the arches of the beautiful bridge and the bustling papal city on the hill, Provence had wrapped her warm arms around Simone like a sweet lover, and he’d found Avignon to be quite fetching.

Also quite chaotic. If ever a modern-day Babel existed, surely it was Avignon. The official language of the church was Latin, but with French cardinals and courtiers, Roman emissaries, German and English theologians, aimless Spaniards in varying degrees of drunkenness, and the Provençal natives jabbering in their own ancestral dialect, it was not uncommon to hear half a dozen languages within the space of a block, and to understand none of them. Fortunately, a city so brimming with languages was also brimming with translators, so Simone found ways to communicate.

He spent his first few days sketching faces and buildings in the city’s main squares and churches, but then — inspired by the chance sighting of a cart bearing a body to a graveyard — he decided to cast his net in different waters: the waters of the Styx, river of death. Simone liked knowing that he was swimming against the current, and he smiled as he thought of a passage of scripture he was deliberately turning on its head. The day of Christ’s Resurrection, when His grieving followers went to visit His tomb, an angel had asked them, “Why do you seek the living among the dead?” Here in bustling, booming Avignon, Simone set about to seek the dead among the living.

His initial inquiries, at charnel houses and hospitals and apothecaries, were met with suspicion and incredulity, not surprisingly. After all, why would any artist in his right mind want to draw corpses when he could paint pretty women instead — chaste virgins or, better yet, lovely madonnas, baring ripe breasts to suckle holy infants? But gradually, as he persisted in his rounds and deployed his charm and his coins, nuns and priests and gravediggers began to trust and like the crazy painter. Fortune smiled on him during his second week in Avignon: A stonemason fell from a scaffold in the nave of a church, breaking his neck when he hit the floor. The sketches of his corpse would surely be useful references for some future painting of the death of Lazarus or the murder of Abel. Two days after the mason’s fall, a child was trampled by a runaway horse — not ideal, the mangled little body, yet still potentially helpful if Simone is someday commissioned to depict, say, King Herod’s Slaughter of the Innocents.

But this latest find — a robust man killed by crucifixion! — this, for a fresco painter, was manna from heaven. Simone had profusely thanked both God and the jailer for this unique opportunity. To God, he expressed his thanks in prayers; to the jailer, in florins.

Now, studying the corpse in the warm glow of the flickering lamps, he marvels at how poorly the crucified Christ is always portrayed. In every representation Simone has ever seen — and ever done — the wounds look contrived, even silly, with their spurting fountains of blood, and the flesh and bone lack any semblance of sinew or substance. For the first time, Simone Martini feels a sense of obligation and duty — not to the sacred subject matter of some scene he’s being paid to paint, but to the human subject himself, this dead man offering himself so freely to the hungry gaze of the artist. “This is my body,” the man seems to be saying, “which is broken for you. Feast your eyes upon it.” And so Simone does, devouring the visual banquet of legs, belly, chest, face, and ignoring the jailer’s panicked pleas for haste.

Simone’s first drawings of the corpse are quick and crude — a flurry of fast, flowing lines he makes without even lifting the charcoal, without even taking his eyes off the body to inspect his work. Despite their swiftness and spareness, the sketches capture the essence of the lifeless form: the long, sad face; the strong sinews, now gone slack; the tangibility and carnality of the corpse. Next he makes detailed drawings of individual structures — fingers, feet, nose, eyes, ears — cramming pages full of body parts, like macabre still lifes of some thoroughly dismembered corpse. Finally, having gotten to know the dead man in all his particulars, he draws the entire body with great care. Except that what he draws is not, in fact, the body; what he draws is light and shadow — but no, he draws even less than that. His charcoal pencils cannot draw light, they can only sketch darkness: shades of shadows, ranging from the watery gray of dawn to the soft, utter blackness of velvet. And such magic Simone can work with shadows! Curving a shadow around an oval of blank white, he can create the illusion of roundness and of highlight: the illusion of an egg, or a forehead, or a breast. And from two simple elements — shadow and not-shadow — he now conjures flesh, blood, hair, fingernails, even mortality and mournfulness. Seeing this magic unfold, the jailer is bewitched, finally forgets his fears, and watches in rapt silence.

At last, just as the first paleness of dawn begins showing through the narrow slits that pretend to provide air and light to the prisoners’ cells, Simone tucks the remaining stubs of charcoal into his cloak, rolls the sheaves of drawings, and nods his readiness to leave. After making sure the way is clear, the jailer leads him out. He is about to close the door when the painter stops him, speaking for the first time since entering the cell and beholding the dead man on the floor. “What can you tell me about him? What crime did he commit to merit such a death?”

The jailer — a man who has witnessed, and who has inflicted, more than a few deaths in his service to the Church — fixes the painter with a long look. Answering questions — especially troubling questions — was not part of the bargain he made with the Italian. He shakes his head and withdraws through the stone archway, and the door groans on its hinges. But just before it closes completely, he puts his lips to the narrow gap. “They claim he preached words from the Devil,” he says, “but I heard him speak only with kindness and faith. I’m a simple man; I don’t pretend to understand the arguments of these churchmen. But his crime, I think, was to put them to shame by his faith and his goodness. I do believe he was a holy man — the only holy man I’ve seen in my twenty years among cardinals and popes. His sin, I think, was to be free of sin.”

“You make him sound like Christ reincarnated.”

“I don’t expect him to rise from the grave, Master Simone. But if he does, the bastards will find a reason to kill him again.”

The vertical strip of shadow narrows, darkening into a thin black line, and then it is gone, displaced by oak planks and iron hardware. The opening into the darkness has closed, at least for now. Simone Martini — altered in ways he will not understand for years, if ever — turns from the realm of shadow and illusion and death, resuming his place in the world of life and breath, light and color.

CHAPTER 20

Light and color filled the square, a leafy park that was jammed this Sunday morning with tables of bright fabrics, fresh flowers, watercolor paintings, and Provençal delicacies — cheeses, wine, honey, olive oil, strawberries, raspberries. Miranda was auditioning samples of cheese and wine — wine tasting at 10 A.M. — to round out our picnic basket. Stefan had offered to meet us here and take us on a field trip to the Pont du Gard, an ancient aqueduct that was one of Rome’s finest feats of engineering. I wasn’t looking forward to having him along, but I was excited about the aqueduct. “Listen to this,” I said, glancing up from the guidebook. “The aqueduct is sixteen stories high and fifteen hundred feet long, but it drops only one inch from one end to the other. Can you imagine building with that kind of precision two thousand years ago?”

“Mmm.” Miranda smacked her lips. “I can imagine eating my weight in this goat cheese.”

“It carried forty-four million gallons of water a day. Isn’t that something?”

“You really are in touch with your inner nerd, you know that?”

“Where’s Stefan? He was supposed to be here half an hour ago, wasn’t he?”

“Forty-five minutes.”

“Try his cell phone, will you?”

“I have. Twice. My call went straight to voice mail.”

“Try it again. Maybe he’s over at the palace.”

“Oh, I’m sure he’s at the palace,” she groused. “Which is why he’s not getting my calls. A nuclear blast couldn’t get through those walls, let alone a cell phone signal.”

“Then let’s just go over there,” I suggested. “Seems silly to sit here and wait for him. Either he forgot about the plan, or he got sidetracked by something.”

I hoisted the backpack over one shoulder — Miranda had managed to cram a hefty load of lunch treats into it — and we headed for the palace, a ten-minute walk away. As we approached, Miranda phoned again, but once more the call went to Stefan’s voice mail.

At the palace’s main entrance, we flashed our badges, ducked behind a cordon, and threaded our way down the staircases that led to the base of the treasury tower. “I assume he’s locked the gate behind him,” I fretted. “Do you think he’ll hear us if we yell?”

“I’ve got a pretty good set of lungs,” she said. “The last guy who grabbed me in a parking garage got a perforated eardrum to go along with his scratches and bruises.”

Surprisingly, though, Stefan hadn’t locked the gate; he hadn’t even bothered to close it. “He must be expecting us,” I said. “Either that, or he’s getting really careless.”

“If he was expecting us, he should’ve left the lights on,” Miranda grumbled. She flipped open her cell phone to wake up the display screen, and used the light to scan the wall for the switch.

“Ingenious,” I said. “You’re so resourceful.”

“Hey, I grew up watching MacGyver. I can make a computer out of matchsticks and paper clips.”

“Really?” Even by the faint glow of the phone, I could see her eyes roll. “Oh. You were being sarcastic.”

“Not sarcastic. Only hyperbolic.”

“Miranda, if you hope to have any success in academia, you’ve got to stop exaggerating. If I’ve told you once, I’ve told you—”

“Yeah, yeah, a billion times,” she interrupted. “The same number of times you’ve told me that joke. Damn it, where’s the switch?” She yelped as a spark split the darkness, followed by the feeble glow of bulbs trailing down the staircase like luminous bread crumbs.

I’d expected the subtreasury to be brightly lit by the work lights, but it wasn’t. Miranda looked worried as we stepped into the gloom. “Stefan?” No answer. “Stefan, are you in here?” Silence. “Come on, Stefan, this isn’t funny. If you’re in here, come on out. You’re creeping me out.” The only sound I heard was Miranda’s breathing, which had turned fast and ragged.

“Let’s turn on the work lights,” I suggested, as much to distract Miranda as anything else. “Can you find the switches for those?”

She opened her cell phone again and disappeared behind one of the support pillars; a moment later, my eyelids and pupils clamped down against the glare of the halogen bulbs.

The lights only underscored the emptiness of the room. Miranda looked at me; wordlessly, we headed for the blue tarp that curtained off the excavation area. I ducked around one end of the tarp, Miranda around the other. Our eyes automatically swiveled to the same spot. The table was empty; the bones were gone.

“I feel sick,” Miranda said. “Whatever’s going on, it’s not good.”

“Maybe not,” I conceded, “but let’s try not to panic. Let’s look around a little more, then go outside and try to reach Stefan again.” She nodded, chewing her lip.

I studied the table where we’d laid out the bones in anatomical order. The white sheet was still in place; a few small smudges and stains confirmed that yes, this was where the bones had lain. I lifted the fabric that overhung the table and stooped to peer beneath it. “The ossuary’s gone, too,” she predicted, and she was right. “Goddamn it,” she said, but there was no heat behind the curse, just weariness. “I should have known.”

“Known what?”

“Known better. Known something would go wrong. Known that Stefan was working an angle. Known that he was still the same guy who cheats on his wife, shafts his colleagues, or does some other damn selfish thing that’s gonna blow up in our faces and make us the collateral damage, the civilian casualties, the friendly-fire deaths.” I considered trotting out my exaggeration joke yet again, but it dawned on me that Miranda might not be exaggerating this time. “He’s taken the bones and skipped town,” she said. “I just know it. They’re probably on eBay right now.”

“They won’t be on eBay,” I said, “but they sure aren’t here, and I don’t see a helpful note explaining why. Let’s lock up and see if we can find out what the hell’s going on.”

We switched off the work lights, climbed the stairs, and switched off the dim string of bulbs in the stairwell. By the faint light of Miranda’s phone, I wrestled the heavy gate shut, then hit a problem. “I don’t see the lock,” I told Miranda.

She brought the phone closer, playing its bluish-white glow over the hasp and then the nearby bars. “Hmm.” She widened her search, sweeping the light horizontally across the entire gate at waist height, then in progressively lower tracks at each horizontal crossbar. When she reached the level of the floor, she grunted, then said softly, “Oh, shit.” I bent to look at whatever she’d seen.

The padlock — the industrial-strength lock with the inch-thick shackle of hardened steel — had been cut in half.

“Now what?” asked Miranda.

We’d voiced our concerns to the ranking security officer at the palace; he took notes and promised to investigate, but he didn’t seem nearly as worried as Miranda and I were. After that, we’d gone to the police station, but the entrance was locked. A notice taped to the glass door announced FERMÉ—JOUR FÉRIÉ. OUVERT LUNDI. “Damn,” said Miranda. “Closed. Religious holiday. Open Monday.”

“Swell,” I said. “It’d be a great day to rob a bank, if we weren’t otherwise occupied.” I hesitated. “Do you…happen to have a key to Stefan’s apartment?”

She punched me in the shoulder. “No, I don’t happen to have a key to his apartment, but thanks for the vote of confidence. I came to work, not to get laid.” She drew a deep breath and exhaled slowly. “Sorry; my issue, not yours. It was a reasonable question. But the answer’s still no. I don’t have a key.”

“Do you know where it is?”

“What, the key?”

“No, Einstein, the apartment,” I said.

“Ah. Actually, I do know where the apartment is. Stefan invited me for dinner the first night. I think I can find it again. It’s not far from the palace, and it’s got a balcony with a view of the palace and cathedral. If we stand at the front of the cathedral, I bet I can spot his balcony, and then we can figure out how to get to his building.”

Fueled by fear, we hurried back to the main plaza and scurried up the staircase to the cathedral, positioning ourselves directly in front of an immense crucifix. Shading her eyes against the late-morning sun, Miranda scanned the skyline. “I wish I hadn’t had that third glass of wine that night,” she said. “The view of the palace and the cathedral was great. I remember that much, but not much more than that.” She frowned, shaking her head. “Damn it. Why didn’t I pay more attention?”

I couldn’t resist the opening. “Hmm, maybe because you were delirious from appendicitis?” Her elbow caught me just beneath the ribs. “Youch! Now it’s my appendix that’s exploding. Come on, you know you deserved that.”

“Yeah, I know. Sorry — I’m taking out my guilt on you. It’s less painful that way.” She gave me another token jab. “See? I feel better already.”

“So, the night of the winefest, you went out on the balcony. Were you standing? Perching on stools? Sitting on a stone balustrade?” She shrugged. “Doing handstands on a metal railing?”

“Yes!” she suddenly shouted, grabbing my arm. “That’s it — a metal railing. A cheap-ass, flimsy metal railing. One of the damn welds broke when I leaned on it. I almost fell off, from five stories up. Dogs would’ve been licking my brains off the sidewalk. Only thing that kept me from falling was a windsock I managed to grab.” She shook her head. “That’s why I didn’t go to bed with Stefan that night, even though I was looped and he was trying to put the moves on me. I thought, You bastard, you let me lean on this cheap-ass, flimsy railing that could’ve killed me. You’re still the same thoughtless, selfish sonofabitch you were last time I saw you. It’s true, Dr. B—plus ça change, plus c’est la même chose.”

“Huh?”

“Old French saying. ‘The more things change, the more they stay the same.’”

“I prefer Eckhart’s warning about the price of inaction,” I said. “Come on, let’s look for a fifth-story balcony with a cheap-ass, flimsy metal railing.” Together we studied the buildings that overlooked the plaza, the palace, and the cathedral.

“It was a block or two away,” she said. “Maybe three. I remember rooftops between Stefan’s place and the palace.” Suddenly she smacked herself in the forehead. “Jesus, Mary, and Joseph, what a dumb-ass. I took a picture from the balcony with my iPhone.” She fished out the phone and whisked her finger across the screen, scrolling through her photos. “Here it is!” She performed a magician-like maneuver with her fingertips, and the view zoomed in, enlarging the details at the center of the photo. The image was small — not even the size of a postcard — but it was crisp enough to show three sets of tiled rooftops, a cluster of chimneys, and a thicket of television aerials between the lens and the spot where we were standing. I studied the photo, looking for distinctive features that would help me lock in on the balcony. “Got it,” she said, squeezing my arm again, then pointing. “The modern building? The one with the ugly TV antennas on top?”

“I see it.”

“One floor from the top, slightly left of center. See that red and blue and yellow thing? That’s the wind sock that saved my life.”

“Let’s go,” I said.

She didn’t answer. She was already halfway down the stairs.

We took two wrong turns in the maze of streets to the west of the palace, but within twenty minutes we were standing before the glass-doored entrance to Stefan’s building. The doors were locked — not surprising — but I’d given no thought to what we’d do once we found the place.

“Now what?” I said.

She scanned the sidewalks on either side of the street, then pointed to a shoe store that was two doors down. “Come on. Have you got some money?”

“This is your idea of a plan? To buy shoes?”

“Watch and learn.”

Five minutes and ten euros later, we walked out of the shoe store, laden with shopping bags filled with shoe boxes. Empty shoe boxes. The clerk had stared at us as if we were crazy, but buying a dozen boxes was a lot cheaper than buying a dozen pairs of shoes. Our hands conspicuously full, we loitered in front of a women’s clothing boutique next to the apartment entrance, pretending to window-shop. A saleswoman smiled and beckoned to us from inside — our bags marked us as big spenders — but Miranda fended her off with a slight shake of the head. The woman’s smile faded, and her expression shifted to disappointment, then suspicion. Suddenly Miranda hissed, “Now!”

A middle-aged man had just emerged from the apartments, and the door was swinging shut behind him. “Monsieur, monsieur, s’il vous plaît,” Miranda called. The man looked our way, and — seeing an attractive young woman struggling with an armful of packages and a faceful of smile — he caught the door and held it. Miranda sashayed inside with a “Merci beaucoup,” trailing feminine mystique and me in her wake.

We tucked our shopping bags behind a potted palm tree in a corner of the lobby and called the elevator. When we got off on Stefan’s floor, Miranda turned right. Walking slowly, she studied the doors on the far side of the hallway — the side facing the palace. She hesitated in front of a door marked 407, then moved on.

“Don’t you remember which one is his?”

“Sshh.”

“Wasn’t his balcony the third from the end?”

“SSHH!” She sounded scarily like the German woman in Turin Cathedral.

Three doors from the end, at 405, she stopped and nodded, pointing at a small, half-peeled decal on the door. With the knuckle of her index finger, she rapped three times, then pressed her ear to the wood and listened. Wordlessly she shook her head. She knocked again, louder this time, and once more she listened. Nothing. She reached for the knob and slowly, slowly tried it. To my surprise, the door opened and we stepped inside.

The apartment was a mess: dirty dishes in the sink and on the kitchen counters, clothes everywhere, mail and stacks of papers strewn on every horizontal surface that wasn’t occupied by dishes. My first thought was that the place had been ransacked, but my second thought — considering that ransackers don’t tend to smear food on plates and silverware — was that Stefan was a terrible slob. “Not exactly a neat freak,” I observed. “Was it like this the night you were here?”

“No, it was neater than this.” Miranda surveyed the carnage in the kitchen. “I think that plate there — the one with the dried hummus and moldy pita bread? — I think that was mine. And I’m pretty sure that’s my wineglass; it has my lipstick on it.”

I refrained — barely — from asking, Since when do you wear lipstick?

It was in the bedroom that my mental pendulum swung back to my first thought. Having lived alone for years now, I knew what bachelor clutter looked like: dirty clothes strewn on the floor; clean clothes piled on the dresser and bed. Mostly I kept a handle on my housekeeping, though occasionally the clutter got out of hand. But Stefan’s bedroom was beyond cluttered; Stefan’s bedroom was a study in chaos. All the drawers of the dresser hung open, empty or nearly so; shoes, sweaters, even spare linens had been pulled from the closet floor and shelf; the overstuffed armchair in one corner of the room lay on its side, the fabric lining on its underside in tatters. “Somebody’s been here looking for something,” I said, feeling a chill run up my spine.

“I’ve got a bad feeling about this, boss,” Miranda murmured.

“Call Stefan’s phone again.”

“I’ve already called a dozen times. I called just before we went in the shoe store.”

“I know, but we weren’t in here when you did. I’m sure he’s not going to answer. I want to know if his phone’s in here.”

“Ah. Good idea.” She hit the redial button, and through her speaker, I heard his phone beginning to ring. Unless the ringer was off or the battery was dead, his phone wasn’t here.

After five or six rings, I expected to hear a voice mail coming faintly through the speaker. What I heard instead electrified me. There was a click, then silence: The call had been accepted, but whoever took it didn’t speak. Miranda’s eyes, big as saucers, met mine. “Hello?” she said. “Stefan?” No response. “Who is this?” she demanded. “Where is Stefan?” There was a long silence on the other end of the line, and then a click, and the screen flashed the message Call ended.

“Take a right here,” I said. “I think it’s in this block.”

“Where are we going, and why?” Miranda was edgy, and I didn’t blame her.

“A few nights ago — it was the night before we went to Turin — I couldn’t sleep, so I went for a walk. It was late, around midnight. I bumped into Stefan. He was coming out of the palace.”

“At midnight?”

“Yeah. We walked around for, I don’t know, half an hour or so.” Just ahead, on the left, I spotted the passageway leading from the Rue Saint-Agricol. “He brought me here.” I led her through the corridor and into the courtyard. “This used to be the chapel of the Knights Templar. Stefan had a key — funny, Stefan seems to have keys to everything — and he took me inside. He was kinda dragging his heels when we left.” Suddenly I remembered. “When I left. I walked away, but he didn’t — he hung around here, and I wondered if maybe he was waiting for somebody else to show up. He acted anxious to get rid of me, you know? And he stayed behind after he shooed me away.”

“Jesus, why didn’t you tell me this sooner?”

“The truth?”

“Please.”

“I wondered if maybe he was meeting you. A moonlight rendezvous in the chapel of the Templars.” She didn’t say anything, but I noticed the muscles of her jaw working. Reluctantly, I reached for the black iron knob, hoping that it would not turn in my hand. But it did. The chapel’s heavy wooden door swung inward, and Miranda and I stepped inside.

The air was cool in the stone interior — cool, pungent, and coppery. It was a mixture of smells I knew only too well. “Maybe you’d better wait outside,” I told Miranda.

“Hell, no.” I knew there was no point arguing with her.

A maroon velvet drape separated the entryway from the soaring, vaulted space of the chapel itself. As I held the curtain aside, Miranda stepped through, and I followed half a step behind.

She gasped and reached back for me, her fingers digging into my arm. Then she turned and buried her face in my chest.

Congealing on the stone floor was a pool of blood, already black at its rim, still red at the center. High overhead was the arched metal truss that supported the theater lights. Suspended horizontally from a cable and pulley at the center of the truss was a short wooden beam. And nailed to that beam — like some modern-day minimalist crucifix — was the nude body of Stefan Beauvoir.