through his many books. And I even wondered more than once if I might ask you to pray for the soul of that scholar who had lived in the house before.”
“I will pray for him,” Vitale whispered.
Signore Antonio looked directly at Fr. Piero.
“Do you still insist it is a demon raging here, a Jewish dybbuk? Or don’t you see now that it was the ghost of my old friend whose memory I consigned to oblivion because I could not bear his pain or my own?”
The priest did not answer.
Signore Antonio looked at me. I could see that he wanted to tell them of my description of the ghost I’d seen, but he did not. He did not want to indict me for seeing spirits or talking to them. I said nothing.
“Why did I not consider the truth of this in the beginning?” he asked, looking once again at Fr. Piero. “And who now is charged, justly, with seeing to it that my old friend’s remains are at last properly laid to rest?”
We sat in quiet for a long time. Fr. Piero made the Sign of the Cross and murmured a prayer.
Finally Signore Antonio rose to his feet and we all rose with him. “Bring light,” he said to the servants, and we followed him now out of the dining room and down to the main floor.
There he took a candelabrum from Pico, and unbolting the door to the cellar, he led the way down the stairs.
The scene was far worse than it had been only hours ago when I had come to seek the ghost. Every bit of furniture had been broken into pieces both large and small. Every book in sight had been ripped apart. Several of the casks, apparently empty, had been staved in, and broken glass glittered all over the flags.
But there was no unusual sound here. In fact, there was no sound at all except for our own respiration, and the soft steps of Signore Antonio as he approached the very spot where I had seen the ghost take a stand.
Signore Antonio gave the order for the floor to be cleared. At once his servants and guards swept back the debris. Their very boots at once marked the few hollow flags in the floor.
Quickly, with prying fingers, the stones were turned up and over and free of the space beneath them.
And there, in the light of the candelabrum, for all to see, was the small skeleton of the man, a loose chain of bones held together by the rotting remnants of his clothes.
All around him in bundles lay his books. And beside his books his sacks of treasure. But he himself, how he might have suffered in this tiny place, weeping, wounded, untended. The bones made it plain, to the bones of the hand that reached up to clutch the bundle that cradled his head, and the bones that tried to hold forever the precious book beside him.
How small and fragile lay the skull. And how in the light the little spectacles glittered.
CHAPTER TWELVE
THAT AFTERNOON, THE JEWISH ELDERS WERE INVITED to the house. Signore Antonio met with them in private, leaving Niccolò and Vitale and me to ourselves.
A coffin was brought that evening for the remains of Giovanni, and we accompanied the Jewish elders by torchlight on the long trek to the Jewish Cemetery where the remains were laid to rest. All prayers were said as they were meant to be said.
No ruffians were allowed to harry the funeral procession. And it was late when we returned to the quiet house. It was as if the ghost had never been there. The servants were still sweeping the passages and stairways, in spite of the hour, and candles burned in many rooms.
Signore Antonio summoned Vitale to join him in the library, and there told him, as Vitale would tell me later, that Giovanni’s wealth had been divided with one half being given to the Jewish elders, and the other bequeathed to Vitale who would not only pray for the soul of Giovanni, and commemorate his death in every acceptable way, but would begin the collection and restoration of Giovanni’s many literary works. Signore Antonio had copies of many of these books, and Vitale would hunt down those that had been lost. This would be Vitale’s principal task for Signore Antonio for some time to come.
Meanwhile Niccolò would move into the house as had been planned and Vitale would commence work as his secretary again.
In other words, the