Free The Devil Will Come by Glenn Cooper Page B

astrological symbols? Elisabetta clicked the folder of photos closed and rubbed her dry eyes.
    Yet another mystery.
    Elisabetta arrived at Piazza Mastai too late for evening chapel and was obliged to pray on her own while the other sisters took their evening meal together. Because the chapel was at the opposite end of the hall from the kitchen it was peaceful and quiet. When she was done, she crossed herself and rose. Sister Marilena was seated in the last row.
    ‘I didn’t hear you,’ Elisabetta told her.
    ‘Good,’ the old nun said. ‘Mama put aside a plate for you. She doesn’t like it when someone skips a meal.’
    Mama was Sister Marilena’s 92-year-old mother. Marilena had years ago sought and received dispensation from the Mother General of their order to allow her mother to live with them rather than going into an old-age home. They had plenty of space. The third and fourth floors of the convent were home to only eight sisters – four Italian, four Maltese – and ten novices, all African. It was hard going these days, recruiting young novices into the fold, particularly from Italy and the rest of Europe, so the women rattled around the facility and had the luxury of their own rooms.
    ‘Making an extra prayer?’ Elisabetta asked.
    It was their private joke. Marilena was always sneaking into the chapel for extra prayers. The order was under-funded. They needed more books and computers. With the dearth of novices entering the order they had to rely on lay contract teachers who were expensive . Most parents could ill afford a hike in fees. So Marilena was always praying for more resources.
    ‘I believe God heard me this time,’ Marilena said, her stock answer.
    Elisabetta smiled and asked, ‘How did Michele do on her geometry test?’
    ‘Not well. Does that surprise you?’
    ‘No. She’ll need extra help.’
    ‘Don’t worry,’ Marilena said, ‘I have vivid memories of Pythagoras and Euclid. How did you get on?’
    ‘I don’t like it. I hardly had a moment to pray.’
    ‘You hardly have a moment during school.’
    ‘It’s different. Here, I’m with you. Their office is alien to me and so are the people.’
    ‘You’ll get used to it.’
    ‘I hope not,’ Elisabetta said. ‘I want to finish the assignment and come back.’
    Marilena nodded. ‘You’ll do what the Church asks of you and I’m quite sure that God will bless you for your service. Now come and eat before we both get in trouble with mama.’
    Later, in her room, Elisabetta sat at her study desk in nightgown and slippers, trying to finish the articles that Micaela had sent her. It was hard going. The subject matter was technical and frankly distasteful – a compendium of medical literature on human tails. Most of the reports were in English and these she tackled first. There were a smattering in French, German, Russian and Japanese which she left for later.
    She put down her fourteenth paper of the day on atavistic human tails, a term with which she’d previously been unfamiliar. Atavism: the reappearance of a lost characteristic specific to a remote evolutionary ancestor. Like other atavisms, the scientific literature addressed human tails as one example of our common heritage with non-human mammals.
    Elisabetta wasn’t going to let herself be drawn into a debate on evolutionary biology. She was trained as a scientist and preferred to let Church doctrine coexist peacefully with truisms about evolution, at least in her own mind. No one in the Church had ever had occasion to question her about her beliefs on the matter and she’d try to keep it so.
    Human tails, she learned, were rare – very rare, with only about a hundred well-documented cases in the past century. Elisabetta forced herself to study the photos, especially those of babies. They stirred something inside her, something deeply disturbing and base: a stomach-churning revulsion. And there was more: an element of fear. An ancient Darwinian fear of prey in the presence