Free The Seventh Sacrament by David Hewson

in her own charge, hoping one day to be able to impress visitors with her erudition. The charnel house in the Via Veneto was undoubtedly impressive. She wished her own dead monks had provided a similar quotable motto for the inscription over their tomb on the Aventino.
    Quello che voi siete noi eravamo, quello che noi siamo voi sarete, read the famous epitaph.
    What you are we were, what we are you will be.
    But her smaller version was, Ornella felt, more tasteful, more in keeping with the original purpose. It had none of the theatrical touches of Concezione: skeletons still in their monastic robes, cowls drawn around their skulls, patterns of vertebrae and jawbones arranged like some ghastly frieze, mocking the spectator, seeming, to her, to deny that anything of value existed in their worldly lives.
    Santa Maria dell’Assunta was, simply, an underground public tomb, a place where a hundred monks—no more, no less—decided that their remains should stay visible for anyone who wished to see them. After a suitable time in the Capuchin cemetery in San Giovanni—she had researched this thoroughly for her imaginary visitors—they would be exhumed and taken to the crypt. There each corpse was arrayed tidily on the bare earth, five rows, twenty in each, skeletal arms neatly folded over skeletal chests, patiently awaiting resurrection.
    The late English writer had installed some weak electrical lighting so that his visitors could enjoy the spectacle. Rumour had it that his will had demanded he be laid among them, too, an idea the city authorities quashed on health grounds, though only when he was in no condition to object. The man had lived in Venice for several years, in a small palazzo adjoining the Ca’ d’Oro on the Grand Canal, before moving to Rome. That had, apparently, been his inspiration for giving the place the nickname by which it continued to be known in the neighbourhood: Ca’ d’Ossi. Not that “the House of Bones” was a sobriquet Ornella would ever use.
    The Capuchins of Santa Maria dell’Assunta had, she firmly believed, bequeathed to future generations a humane and instructive exhibition, with none of the tourist-seeking histrionics of the larger place on the Via Veneto. It deserved to be better known, and perhaps receive a little restoration money, some of which would, naturally, find its way into the pocket of its lone custodian over the years.
    Nor—and she’d had to explain this point repeatedly to friends and relatives—had Santa Maria dell’Assunta ever scared her. Death, for Ornella Di Benedetto, was an ordinary, unremarkable figure who walked through the world like everyone else, trying to get on with the job Fate had given him. Some days, she imagined, he would hop onto the Number 3 tram that ran through Testaccio across the river to Trastevere, and back into the city in the opposite direction, studying the faces of his fellow travellers, trying to decide which among them was deserving of another journey altogether. Then, when his work was done, he would sit by the Tiber for a while, letting the traffic roar drown out his thoughts.
    Ornella Di Benedetto was never in fear of the corpses in her care, which made it all the more inexplicable that she was reluctant to enter the church that morning. The padlock and chain had been broken. It had happened before, a long time ago. Some youngsters had entered the building, looking for somewhere to sleep, something to steal. They would be disappointed on both counts. The place was cold and fusty, populated by rats, for which she left poison. Not an item of value remained, not even decent furniture. In the small nave, which the Englishman had used as a general hall and dining room, only a few worthless pews and a shattered pulpit still stood.
    Another time, twenty years ago, a drunk had found his way into the cellar, turned on the lights, then run out into the street screaming. That amused her. It had been exactly what the idiot deserved.
    No serious