Free Blood of the Lamb by Sam Cabot Page B

the works in question. Some seemed promising, and Thomas slipped his pencil from his pocket once or twice to make notes, books to request later if he needed them. At the end of the list he found a grouping of uncategorizable odds and ends: letters, records, fragments. An item listed as “Poems, handwritten, anonymous, damaged” caught his eye. He clicked on the thumbnail image to enlarge it. The item was a pasteboard-covered notebook, bent and beat. How extensive the damage to the pages might be, Thomas couldn’t tell, but the front cover was in good enough shape that he could read the handwritten inscription on it: Poesie d’Amore, per Trastevere, Gennaio 1847 . Love Poems, for Trastevere, January 1847. He hadn’t been able to make out the words when the image was small, but the handwriting had seemed familiar. Now he could see he was right: it was Damiani’s.
    Thomas put in an immediate request for the notebook, and it was delivered soon after Damiani’s other works on a silent-wheeled cart by a thin, solemn clerk who whispered, “Prego, Padre,” and slipped away. Thomas’s white-gloved fingers put down the volume he’d been holding and took up the notebook. He leafed through it with a delicacy that belied the pounding of his heart. Could it be this easy? The stolen document, slipped into a notebook, then lost all these years because of a lack of attribution? Thomas imagined the Concordat rustling out of the pages, saw himself racing through the echoing hallways, bearing it triumphantly to Lorenzo; and he laughed out loud—provoking frowns from other researchers, which seemed to be his lot—when he turned the final pages. Of course it wasn’t there. Nothing fell out, though the book was in sorry shape: back cover gone, some pages torn and some missing, looking as though it had been stepped on more than once. Oh, Thomas. Still a hopeless romantic.
    He glanced at some of the poems. Just as the cover promised, they were love poems, or at least, poems of praise, to the buildings and streets, the statues and fountains of Trastevere. None of the poems was titled; it was left to the reader to work out the subject of each. A few seemed obvious to Thomas:
Du’ angioloni de quell’angiolo stanno de guardia
ar martiro, buttato ggiù in ner pozzo
two angels of that angel keep their watch
over the martyr, thrown into the well
    That had to be San Callisto, where two of Bernini’s angels gazed perpetually across the church to the pit where the martyred Pope had died. Or
Cosmologgje de colore, rosso-sangue, bianche,
e le curve llustre de li pini in ombre de verde
cosmologies of color, blood-red, white,
and shining curves of pines in shades of green
    What came to mind was the floor—Cosmatesque, the style was called—at San Crisogono. Many churches had similar floors, but these colors were associated, in Thomas’s mind at least, with that one. And Cosmologgje/Cosmatesco , was it wordplay? Maybe. But maybe not . . .
    Well, it had been his plan to spend the morning studying Damiani’s work. He might as well start here. He settled over the notebook, forearms on the table. He read a poem, turned a page, read another. So absorbed was he in the words he was reading that he actually jumped when a soft voice spoke beside him.
    “Mario Damiani! I thought no one read him anymore but me!”
    Thomas blinked, taking in the sight: a woman in a flowing, flowered skirt, a blouse, and a complicated jacket (how did women know how to wear things like that?) was removing large sunglasses and smiling in surprise. She took off a straw hat and smoothed her dark hair. She’d spoken in English, and, extending her hand, in English went on. “Livia Pietro. I’m an art historian.”
    Thomas took her hand automatically. Her grip was strong and cool, and her eyes were an extraordinary green: silver-flecked, deep and dark. Moonlight on the ocean. Thomas realized he was staring. “Thomas Kelly,” he said. He started to stand, but she slid out