Sign of the Cross(51)

After pondering the scroll for over an hour, she emerged from her trance and realized she was dripping with perspiration. In an attempt to cool off, she eased down the thirty-degree slope of the slate roof toward a portal in one of the spires, yet found neither the breeze nor shade she was hoping for. The heck with this, she thought. I’m probably going to hell for finding the scroll so I might as well sit in some air conditioning while I still have the chance.

Maria passed an elaborate row of statues that depicted a medley of saints, knights, and sinners in a variety of poses. Despite their exquisite craftsmanship, none of them grabbed her attention until she approached the final one, a majestic man in a flowing toga. Strangely, there was something about his face that seemed familiar. The sweeping curve of his lips. The lighthearted twinkle in his eyes. The arrogant protrusion of his jaw. The cocky smile on…

‘Oh my God!’ she blurted. ‘The laughing man!’

Stunned by her discovery, Maria considered racing back to tell Dr Boyd but realized if she didn’t scour the church for information, he would insist on a return trip – a trip where he would lead the investigation. And that was something she wanted to avoid.

Thinking quickly, she decided the easiest way to get background material on the statue would be to have a conversation with one of the tour guides. There were several on the roof alone, so she infiltrated a group near the tallest spire and listened to the guide’s lecture. ‘The tower stands three hundred and sixty-seven feet above the plaza, an astonishing height when you consider the age of this remarkable building. To comprehend how high we are, let’s walk toward the edge of the roof…’

When the group trudged forward, Maria approached the tour guide, a man in his early thirties. ‘Excuse me,’ she said in Italian. ‘I was wondering if you could answer a question.’

One glance at her smoldering brown eyes was all it took. The rest of the group could fend for themselves. ‘Yeah, um, sure. Whatever you need,’ he replied.

‘Thanks.’ She placed her arm in his and pulled him away. ‘There’s a statue over here that looks so familiar. Do you think you could tell me about it?’

The tour guide grinned confidently. ‘I’d be happy to. I’ve been working here for nearly five years. I know everything about this place.’

‘Everything? That’s amazing. Because this place is so big.’

‘You’re telling me,’ he bragged. ‘It’s five hundred and twenty feet long and two hundred and eighty-four feet wide. That’s bigger than a soccer field. In fact, it’s the third-largest cathedral in the world.’

‘And yet you know so much about it. You must be so smart.’

He beamed. ‘Which statue did you want to know about? I’ve got stories about them all.’

Maria pointed to the laughing man. ‘What can you tell me about him?’

The guide’s cocksure smile quickly faded. ‘Not very much. That’s one of the few objects that’s shrouded in mystery. When I was first hired, I asked the curator of the local museum about it, and he claimed it was the oldest artifact in the church, predating the other statues on the edifice by hundreds of years. Plus it’s made from a different type of stone than the others. Most of Il Duomo is made of white Carrara marble, but not this guy. He was made from marble that’s foreign to Italian soil. The only place that it can be found is in a small village near Vienna.’

‘Austria? That seems kind of strange.’

He agreed. ‘Even stranger is this monument’s placement. Look at the other statues around us. Does he seem to belong with any of them? The others depict the struggle of the common man in their quest for God, but not him. He’s anything but a peasant. Yet someone in the Church decided to place him here at the end of the series. Why they did we’re not really sure.’

Maria closed her eyes and thought back to the Catacombs. There, just like here, the laughing man seemed completely out of place. First, in the middle of Christ’s crucifixion scene, grinning his evil grin. Next, on the hand-carved box that contained Tiberius’s scroll. And now, his unexplained appearance on Il Duomo.

This guy had a habit of popping up where he didn’t fit. But why? Or better yet, who?

‘One more question before I let you go. Do you have any theories on who he might be?’

The guide shrugged. ‘The only clue that we’ve found is the letter on his ring.’

‘Letter? What letter?’

The tour guide pointed at the statue’s hand. ‘You can’t really see it from down here. The man who cleans the monuments noticed it last year. Still, we have no idea if the letter is the subject’s initial or the artist’s – or neither.’