The Fifth Petal

by Brunonia Barry

  She was leaving the day after tomorrow, but it was the last thing she wanted to do.

  “I don’t want you to go back,” he whispered in her ear. “Stay.”

  She tilted her head as if to see him from another perspective to judge his sincerity.

  “Stay with me.”

  “Yes.”

  In the weeks that followed, they began to talk seriously about staying long-term. The restoration was ongoing, and his adviser was talking about several other rock churches in the area that needed restoration and had begun raising more grant money. He’d already asked Paul if he was interested in continuing with the project.

  Callie spent her days as she had before, wandering the deserted quarter of the Sassi. She took every winding staircase she came upon, each one revealing a secret treasure or view. Every pathway felt magical, as if it had materialized just as she’d reached it. The brightness of the light and the silence of the stone muted and then erased the past. She began to believe the old saying was right: The tufo really did dry tears.

  If Paul had seemed as if he’d escaped the pages of GQ back in Pride’s Crossing, now he was Indiana Jones. The truth was, his appearance seemed to change a little each time she looked at him, as if he were a shape-shifter, or a chameleon changing color with his environment. She liked him best in this place.

  She was so tired at the end of each day that she didn’t have time to think, which was a blessing. Most nights, when Paul got back from working, they would meet his friends for dinner or to share a bottle of Aglianico, and then tumble into bed together, their bodies both exhausted and electric. Her nightmares had disappeared; her memory dreams were forgotten.

  She was aware that his friends thought she was strange, aware that she must appear so. She didn’t speak Italian, and her lone walks through the district did not go unnoticed. Paul confessed they had various nicknames for her: the girl with the rose on her palm, the wandering girl, the girl who’s afraid of trees.

  In fact, the only tree Callie had looked at since her arrival was painted on the wall of the Cripta del Peccato Originale, the Crypt of Original Sin, one of the few rock churches that had been fully restored. True to her nickname, the first time she saw the Tree of Knowledge, she had been a little scared, but she’d quickly gotten over it. She had now visited the Crypt of Original Sin with Paul and his friends twice. The initial visit was to see the tree itself. The second time was to compare the artist’s work with that of the frescoes his team was restoring. There was little similarity: The artists’ styles and the colors used were very different, so they’d concluded that Paul’s restoration and the surrounding imagery were likely of an earlier period.

  She had been to the cave Paul was working only once. They’d had to hike down the side of the ravine to get to it; there was no path, no handrail of any kind, and the cliffs were steep. She’d slipped and sent rocks tumbling below. Paul had caught her by the arm just before she would have tumbled after them. A few days later, crews were hired to create a better entrance path and put up a rope railing.

  What she had seen of Paul’s work had been intriguing; three of the walls had been uncovered, revealing religious frescoes, but the east wall was unrestored. Water runoff from the hill above it had caused damage, and, when the team began to clean it, whole portions of the fresco crumbled away. They’d closed the cave until they could divert the water, which was why Paul had been able to return to Pride’s Crossing last Christmas. Though the cave was open again now, it wasn’t clear if this wall would ever be repaired. All of the walls had been covered with soot, which had to be removed carefully, but this one was particularly delicate.

  “Is this from church candles?” Callie had asked, indicating the layers of filmy smoke residue the crew was so painstakingly removing from the other walls.

  “Mostly it’s from shepherds,” Paul had responded. “They moved in with their animals after Christianity came out of hiding and relocated to grander quarters. Soot from their warming fires did this.”

  Came out of hiding. Is that what I am doing? Callie wondered. Hiding? Yesterday she had visited the Church of San Pietro Caveoso, to see its portico of Our Lady of Sorrows sheltering those seeking protection under her cloak. The hooded suppliants looked like faceless children. She’d learned from Paul and his friends that the Sassi had a long history of hiding those not wanting to be found: from those persecuted for their religious beliefs all the way to Hannibal hiding from his enemies. Even the monastery where she and Paul were staying had once provided shelter for women who were running away from something. Am I running away, too? Probably. No matter, it’s working.

  Paul had told her that the Italian government had been giving grants to people who wanted to move into the Sassi district and restore some of the abandoned houses. Not the caves themselves, but the structures built above them, just shells of former domiciles, most standing empty now.

  “I could do that,” he said. “We could do it together. It would be fun.”

  He certainly had the skills. He spoke fluent Italian, and his work in the caves had familiarized him with the bureaucracy of permits and government restrictions. “We could live here permanently if you like.”

  He’d mentioned the idea so casually, as if testing her.

  She loved the thought of it. The Sassi was the first place that had felt like home to her. Maybe ever.

  They’d taken to exploring the unoccupied buildings, picturing what they would do with this one or that. Callie fantasized about what life in the Sassi would be like. They would live in one of the old houses. Paul would restore the rock churches. And she would learn Italian and get involved with the music school in some capacity, she hoped setting up some kind of sound healing practice.

  Today, while Paul worked, she was exploring more of the deserted properties. She hadn’t encountered another person since early morning. She was deciding which stairway to climb next when she was alarmed by the sound of approaching footsteps. “I’ve been searching for you for over an hour!” Paul said, as he turned the corner. “Come with me. There’s something you’ve got to see.”

  With the new rope railing in place, the hike down to the cave was much easier. Callie could see that they’d hooked up a klieg light at the entrance, creating an artificial sun. The frescoes took on an eerie luminescence; the pietà on the north wall now glowed with a light that seemed to emanate directly from the face of Christ. Paul took her arm. “Over here,” he said, leading her to the east wall. “Underneath the first fresco—we found another, an older one.”

  The east wall, the water-damaged one.

  When the workers saw Callie coming, they stepped back to give her a clear view. They were all gathered around, and she could feel their excitement. At first, Callie wasn’t certain what she was seeing. Then, slowly, she saw the crisscrossed lines. “It’s a tree.”

  “Not just any tree,” Paul said.

  It hadn’t just been painted on the stone but had been carved into it as well, which accounted for some of the crumbling the water damage had caused. Its roots stretched as far into the earth as its branches extended skyward. The whole image promised to spread out across the entire east wall.

  “We think it’s a very early version of the World Tree,” Paul said. “Yggdrasil.”

  “Like the tree we saw in the Crypt of Original Sin?”

  “No, this is not the Tree of Knowledge. This is the other Garden of Eden tree described in Genesis, the Tree of Life. Also known as the World Tree. You could even call it the Tree of Immortality. According to Norse mythology, Yggdrasil was where Odin hung upside down to acquire the runes of power.”

  “Wait—you think this is Norse?”

  “No. We think it’s Mesopotamian.”

  Now she was really confused.

  “The Indus Valley image of the World Tree informed a number of religions that followed. Including our Old Testament. The Garden of Eden, for example.” He hugged her. “This is where the ancient religions all come together. If we’re
right, this is really big!”

  The tree displayed almost perfect symmetry from roots to branches.

  “As above, so below,” Paul said. “It’s a Hermetic phrase. Ann uses it in her practice of Wicca, but the phrase and its concept appear in varying degrees in almost every culture or religion. Even the phrase ‘on earth as it is in heaven,’ from the Lord’s Prayer, refers to this symmetry.”

  His enthusiasm was contagious. Paul was in his element; if she thought she loved him before, she was certain of it now.

  “This could be one of the oldest depictions on record. My adviser has requested that the Vatican send two of their antiquities scholars here to photograph and study it.”

  Hearing the news, Emily and Finn sent a congratulatory telegram. They had just returned from Florida, and they said Emily was feeling “renewed.”

  Paul and the crew hosted a celebration at the Palazzo Gattini Hotel that lasted long into the night, with music and dancing that seemed to grow wilder as the night progressed, with too much wine and some unusual couplings that reminded Callie of a slightly tamer version of Rubens’s Bacchanalia.

  Paul had left the party for a moment, and when he returned, he grabbed her hand, dragging her away from the frenzied crowd and onto a balcony that overlooked the rooftops of the Sassi. He was holding an envelope.

  He handed her the letter.

  It was from the Italian government. She looked at him, confused. Beyond the official letterhead, she couldn’t decipher a word.

  “I’ve been looking into what it would take for us to move in and restore one of the old houses,” he said.

  “What does it say?”

  “It basically says we should start looking.”

  “Really?”

  “You still want to live here?”

  “I do.”

  He smiled. “Me, too.” He kissed her. “I love you, Callie Cahill.”

  “I love you, too.”

  They chose a house the next day. It was one they’d admired, not far from the monastery. They’d been looking at it for a while. It sat on the edge of the ravine where three stairways came together. From here, they could see the river below and the caves across the canyon. It was just the shell of the old house, and it would take a great deal of work before they could move in, but they could see the possibilities. The location was perfect.

  Together, Callie and Paul began to visit all the rock churches, the few that had been restored and the many that were possible. There were years of work here, Callie realized. The thought of it made her happy.

  On April 2, they visited the Crypt of Original Sin for the third time. As the one church that had been meticulously restored, it would feature prominently in Paul’s dissertation. It was a great example of what was possible.

  They stood side by side in the darkness, listening to the presentation as, one by one, lights went on around the cave, illuminating each fresco, finally settling on the one they had come to see, not Paul’s Tree of Life from the cave across the ravine but the Garden of Eden’s other sacred tree. Callie drew in a breath; each time she saw the Tree of Knowledge, its power intensified. She couldn’t take her eyes from the serpent wrapped around its trunk, separating light from darkness, Adam from Eve.

  “It isn’t the Tree of Knowledge that the Bible describes, per se. A more apt translation is Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil. The decision to know the tree is the decision to be responsible for your actions.” He pointed to the serpent that wound through the roots. “Original Sin is the dividing line between innocence and responsibility.”

  Callie was comfortable with the concept of Original Sin, of being born into a sadness, even a corruption, already waiting for you. It seemed to her the way of the world, mirroring the discontent that drove the human condition. That baptism could erase it was something she wasn’t sure about. She’d like to think it was true. But perhaps it only obscured rather than erased? The way one fresco obscured what lay beneath. The same way years of smoke from the shepherds’ fires had obscured everything.

  As she stood before it, the image of Rose’s tree in Towner’s courtyard came to her, standing silent witness to history. She believed she understood Rose’s attachment now. It wasn’t dendrolatry, as Finn believed. It was something greater. Humans are rooted like trees, she realized; she hoped that some form of heliocentricity moves us toward the light.

  She gripped Paul’s hand tighter.

  His phone vibrated. He checked the number and exited the cave to get a better connection, motioning for Callie to stay until the presentation ended.

  The light of the midday sun was blinding when Callie emerged from the shadowy crypt. She took the stairs slowly, waiting for her eyes to adjust. At the top, she noticed a grove of olive trees. How had she missed them before? She had noticed only the vineyard where they parked Paul’s car. She hadn’t seen any trees.

  She found Paul at the edge of the ravine, the trees and vineyard painting a backdrop behind him. It was an arrangement similar to the ancient landscapes he was uncovering in the caves. She started to tell him this when she noticed he was still holding his phone, but his arm was hanging at his side, and his expression was difficult to read.

  “That was my father. My mother died this morning.”

  The banshee wasn’t always a terrifying creature. It was her imprisonment and diminishment that caused the turning, transforming her into the frightful crone we finally recognize only as she comes for us.

  —ROSE’S Book of Trees

  Rafferty was glad to see Callie and Paul together, though both of them looked miserable. He was sure that Paul felt guilty for being away when his mother died. He and Towner had seen Emily and Finn a few times after they came back from Florida, and she had looked so well that Rafferty had actually found himself wondering if she were in total remission.

  He looked at Marta, standing next to Finn. Too close, in Rafferty’s estimation. He had never been fond of Finn. The graveside service was taking longer than Rafferty had anticipated. Luckily, he’d told Jay-Jay to have them start the exhumation with or without him. There were still patches of snow on the ground, and the plowed piles in the parking lot probably wouldn’t completely disappear until May. This was the first day the ground had been cleared enough to bury the dead—or dig them up—and everything cemetery-related was happening at once.

  And, as if it all wasn’t awful enough, today should have been the day he took his twenty-five-year chip. Instead, the new anniversary of his sobriety would be tomorrow. Tomorrow it would be two years.

  Towner held his arm, joining the prayer responses as required, and trying to hold back tears.

  Though it was a nondenominational service, just family and a few close friends, Archbishop McCauley presided. Instead of beginning with the first prayer in the traditional mass of the dead, he ended with it: “Requiem aeternam dona eis, Domine.” He turned to the group, translating: “Eternal rest grant unto her, O Lord.”

  “And let perpetual light shine upon her.” Rafferty joined in the traditional response, crossing himself as the memorial ended.

  “I’m sorry I can’t stay for the gathering,” he said to Towner as they left the gravesite.

  “Everyone will understand,” she replied.

  He climbed into his cruiser, driving faster than the rest of the cars leaving the property. He didn’t want them to get too far into digging without him. Jay-Jay wasn’t one to assert himself, and Rafferty wanted to make sure the exhumation team didn’t overstep their prescribed duties. Also, he wanted to be certain that curious onlookers were kept at a distance.

  He headed out of Pride’s Crossing, over the bridge, and arrived at Greenlawn Cemetery. The first thing he saw was a crowd surrounding three open graves.

  In direct violation of procedure, the first two pine coffins had been opened on-site, and as he got out of his car, the crew was opening the lid of the last. A photographer from The Salem Journal leaned over to snap a shot. “Hey!” Rafferty called out. He raced over
to the open coffins, looked down, and felt the surge of adrenaline as it hit him.

  All three of the coffins were empty.

  Callie hadn’t visited her mother’s grave since last November. Now, a few hours after the shock of seeing Emily laid to rest, she stood in the fading light of late afternoon staring down into the hole where her mother’s body was meant to be. It brought her back to the morning after the murders, when she’d stood at the edge of the crevasse. Everything seemed distorted, and spinning. For a moment, she thought she might faint.

  “Who did this?” she asked, trying to regain her balance.

  No one answered. Towner took Callie’s arm, and no one spoke until they were walking back to the cruiser. “What kind of sick person would do something like this?” Callie demanded.

  “Someone who was trying to cover their tracks,” Rafferty said.

  This day was too much. After Emily’s service Paul had started to drink and engaged Archbishop McCauley in a loud conversation about the Church’s views on infidelity. The priest had quickly managed to extricate himself, and Finn had said, “You need to learn when to keep your mouth shut, son.”

  “And you need to learn when to keep your fly shut, Dad.”

  The place went quiet. Then Paul had walked out without Callie, and she’d gotten the call from Rafferty telling her that her mother’s body was missing. “Please don’t stop looking for the killer,” she asked him now, her eyes filled with tears. “I’m never really going to be okay until we find out who did this.” It was the sad truth, and they both knew it. Callie turned and slowly walked back to her car.

  Rafferty watched as she walked away. Towner, who had driven over with Callie, waited for him while he spoke to the cemetery caretaker.

  Though the ground around the graves didn’t look as if it had been recently disturbed, he did notice that about a hundred-foot expanse of lawn around the graves and leading up a nearby hill was a slightly lighter green than the surrounding growth.