It was already lunchtime. They had reached Nick the day before and discussed a few little things. Navarro was back from Bologna. He had put on his glasses and was leaning over the letter. It was raining again. Just as it should be on the day of the funeral, old Visconti would be buried today. On Navarro's table were two old books, one on the magical writings of Johannes Trithemius and a copy of Agrippa von Nettesheim's De Occulta Philosophia. Behind them was a copy of the Annunciation and Deposition of Christ from the Capponi Chapel of Santa FelicitĂ  - the same Capponi who had donated the library.

"Back then, everyone still thought that everything in the Bible meant the same thing," said Navarro, squinting his eyes. "But it's probably true here."

"Well, some religions still believe that," Mike replied with a furrowed brow.

Navarro looked at him briefly. "The difference between what is being referred to and the object itself is obvious today," said Navarro. "In the Middle Ages, however, William of Ockham made it clear in the 13th century that the concept and the conceptual are not the same thing."

"Ockham razor, or what's it called?" asked Katherine.

"Exactly. The novel The Name of the Rose is about exactly that. The rose may wither, but the name of the rose remains. That's also the book's last sentence: Stat rosa pristina nomine. Nomina nuda tenemus - the rose of old is now only a name. All we have left are naked names."

"It's not a safe thing to say, at least back then," Elizabeth said, crossing her arms in front of her chest.

Navarro blinked a few times. "Still today, at least in fundamental systems. But Ockham also realized that it would be dangerous if he applied that to the Bible. What would happen to God then? Ockham refrained from further considerations and thus escaped the stake—unlike Savonarola in Florence, who wanted to beat virtue into the Florentines and actually ended up at the stake for it.

"So what about Dante?" asked Nikki, looking demonstratively at her watch. "Is the spell from Dante?"

Navarro turned around and took a large-volume edition of Dante from the shelf. Rain pattered against the windows and ran in chaotic patterns down the large bull's-eye windows. "Guaranteed. Here's the passage!" He read aloud:

"The emperor of the accursed realm, meanwhile

Rises from the ice with half his chest,

And before I can compete with giants,

Then a giant can with his arm."

"That's Satan?" Mike wanted to know.

"Yes. According to studies, the Satan in Dante's Divine Comedy is about five hundred meters high and sticks halfway out of the ice."

Elizabeth furrowed her eyebrows. "Hell is made of ice? I always thought that's where the eternal flames were."

Navarro looked at her closely. "Yes, according to the Bible, especially the New Testament and Matthew, it is. But you have to know that for an Italian, cold is worse than heat. So it's logical that the devil sits in Dante's eternal ice."

"But he's at the center of the earth. Shouldn't it be warmer there?"

Navarro shrugged. "Well, that brings us back to William Ockham; maybe the whole thing is just a symbol."

"In that case, it could be the same perpetrator who keeps symbolically opening up a hell allegory here," Nikki said, pulling the corners of her mouth down for a moment. "But this time, the victim is missing his lines, so it's more likely to be a threat. If old Visconti had read the card, he would have been even more convinced that the devil was out to get his family. No wonder his heart wasn't up to it if the pathologist is to be believed."

Mike scratched the back of his head. "You don't believe he died of natural causes?"

Nikki looked at her boyfriend and lifted her shoulders. "I'd feel more comfortable if there had been a forensic autopsy and not a private pathological post-mortem by a family friend," she replied with a deep frown. "But I don't think Visconti fell victim to our perpetrator, who seems to be hunting the whole family." She turned her gaze to Adami. "Speaking of which, have you found Ottavio by now?"

Adami looked at her for a long time. "My people are already searching. We've got the car, but there's no sign of him yet." He looked at his watch. "The funeral is almost here. If we want to wear something festive, we must get going."

"Can we come too?"

"We can manage that."

"Very well," said Katherine. "We can look at the thing upstairs in the cathedral immediately." She looked at Navarro. "Do you have any idea what that means?"

Navarro nodded slowly. "An obvious idea, unless I'm completely wrong. I'll show you when we arrive."

"In any case, they're in a hurry to get Visconti under the ground. Almost like a vampire," Elizabeth replied.

"But the vampire is more likely to be Donatella," Katherine remarked, "because of how she's behaving."

Adami nodded slowly. "You're not so wrong." He lifted his chin. "Maybe we can still exhume Visconti, but much of the evidence might already be destroyed."

Elizabeth frowned a little. "Where will he be buried?"

"He will later be transferred to Rome and buried in Campo Santo Teutonico, in the Vatican," Adami answered the lieutenant's question. "We've already had practice with exhumations."

"Very romantic," said Mike, "going to the funeral and thinking about the exhumation. It's like planning the recall when the car is still in production."

"You should be a funeral speaker," Adami said with a hint of a smile.

xxx

Florence was translated as the city of flowers, and the cathedral of Florence was called Santa del Fiore.

Florence had been a vibrant city in the Middle Ages, as it had a monopoly on gold, the banker of Europe, so to speak, which is why numerous inventions such as the balance sheet, double-entry bookkeeping, and the banking system came from Florence. The word bank came from banca, the money changer's table. Sharp eyes and evil tongues were attributed to the wealthiest city in Europe at the time. The Florentine bank Bardi was the most powerful bank on the continent then, which knew no scruples. Anyone who owed the bank too much money as a state, as happened to England, had to expect that the bank would send out mercenary troops to recover the money owed through wars and raids. What Venice once was for the Middle Ages and the trade routes to the Orient, Florence was for continental Europe.

Some of this wealth was still visible. Nikki had already admired the considerable cathedral where the line of mourners gathered a few days ago, and the campanile, the white marble bell tower, stretched two hundred and sixty-two feet into the cloudy sky. Behind it was Brunelleschi's massive dome, which had inspired Michelangelo's design for the St. Peter's Basilica dome. Mike, Elizabeth, Katherine Nikki, Navarro, and Adami had even been given benches at the front of the cathedral, while the numerous onlookers had to stand at the back. The cathedral was well-filled, even though the funeral had been announced quickly.

Nikki looked around. Next to her stood a statue of Luca della Robbia, an angel devoutly holding a candle. Although the cathedral had always been seen as a Renaissance building, the interior was classically Gothic, with pointed arches of light brown sandstone.

Visconti's coffin was carried through the nave, with Donatella floating behind it like a ghost, not in white, but all in black. Beside her were five or six bodyguards with earpieces, sunglasses, and faces that showed little humor. But there was no sign of Ottavio.

The priest spoke the farewell words.

Requiem aeternam dona ei Domine

Et lux perpetua luceat ei

Give him eternal peace.

And the eternal light shines for them.

Navarro nudged Nikki. Then, he unobtrusively showed her a painting on the ceiling of Florence Cathedral. Under the dome, there was a scene depicting the devil with three heads devouring three unfortunate people.

"Who are these victims who are being devoured?" whispered the officer.

"They are victims who were once perpetrators. The scene," Navarro replied quietly, "also comes from the 34th canto of the Inferno. It's where the thing with the king of the cursed realm is. The scene still carries the medieval fear of supernatural evil."

"It's the whole point of hell to turn former perpetrators into victims," the officer whispered back.

"Exactly. It's more exciting anyway. The purgatory and paradise parts have thirty-three cantos each, but hell has thirty-four."

Nikki thought for a moment. "That makes a total of one hundred cantos. Maybe Dante just thought of more when he described hell."

Navarro smiled a little.

"Silenzio, per favore," a man in front of them said, looking at them angrily.

Nikki and Mike nodded. A funeral was certainly not the place to make mythological small talk.

She heard the priest's voice. The smell of incense rose to her nose. She looked at the angel beside her, holding his candle in eternal and silent devotion. He looked as if he was listening too.

Et ne nos inducas in tentationem

Sed libera nos a malo

A porta inferi

And lead us not into temptation.

But deliver us from evil.

From the gates of hell.

"And who are these three men he chews up?" whispered the officer.

"In the last part of the Inferno," Navarro said quietly, "Satan chews up the three arch-sinners of mankind: Caesar's murderer, Brutus, Cassius, and the worst sinner, Judas Iscariot, who betrayed Jesus."

"These are the absolute arch-sinners for Dante? The murderers of Caesar?"

"Sounds incredible, but they are. And Judas, of course."

Ego sum resurrectio et vita qui credit in me etiam si mortuus fuerit vivet: et omnis qui vivit, et credit in me, non morietur in aeternum

I am the resurrection and the life. Whoever believes in me will live forever. And everyone who lives and believes in me will not die forever.

After the ceremony in the cathedral, the mourners moved on with the coffin. The farewell to the deceased took place in the baptistery, a smaller octagonal church next to the cathedral, in the middle of which stood a giant baptismal font. A few days ago, when they had wanted to visit the building with Marco, the magnificent gates had still been locked.

The baptistery was octagonal because Navarro explained that the eighth day, after the seven-day week, symbolized the day of Christ's resurrection. By breaking out of the seven-day logic, the eighth day showed the supernatural nature of the resurrection.

"Look," said Navarro, pointing upwards. "Here, next to the Last Judgement, the Guidizio Universale is the same scene depicted as a mosaic. Satan devouring the unfortunate with three mouths."

"Then what happens in the cathedral, according to the letter above? Is Satan devouring sinners?" Nikki asked with a frown. And that's what Donatella is supposed to be threatened with?" She looked around. "Something about punishment and something about ... Devouring? We must ask her if she knows what that might mean."

"There'll be another little reception in the baptistery right after this is over," Adami whispered.

"But I don't think we'll be able to get to Donatella there," Elizabeth replied.

"I don't think so either," said Adami, "but maybe we can ask her later when the whole spectacle is over."

"Agreed," muttered Katherine. "And until then, let's go over the letter's text again."