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I flashed back to the skyline I’d seen as we approached Avignon from across the Rhône “Okay,” I conceded, “maybe you have a point”

“Oh, hell, don’t encourage him, Dr B,” Miranda squawked “He’ll pontificate all day Pun intended”

Ignoring her protest, Stefan resuive the money to the poor — that’s what Jesus said The popes said, ‘Give the money to us’”

“I take it you don’t approve,” I said drily

He shrugged and smiled cynically “Au contraire, ratefully” He swept his ar arc “I owe my career to the popes They and their faithful flocks — pious, hardworking sheep — created the world’s greatest art and architecture I would be foolish and ungrateful if I did not approve”

Miranda was right; once he got wound up, it was tough to wind hi you didn’t bring reed of the medieval popes,” I said “So cut to the chase What the hell is going on here? And why all the cloak-and-dagger stuff?”

“Come,” he said, and walked toward the center of the treasure charadually adjusted, and I saw that a ed between two of the pillars by hanging a blue plastic tarp, a jarring contrast with the ancient stonework Stefan held one end of the curtain aside for me, and I stepped behind it into the blackness

Stefan flipped another switch on an electrical cord, and a pair of halogen work lights flashed on My eyes squinted shut against the blinding glare; when they opened, I saw that part of the roohly seh and an arm span wide The stones had been stacked in the corner of the rooh tiist,” I quipped “This looks like a job for a stonemason”

Stefan pointed to the right Along the side as a long table covered by a white sheet On the white sheet was a complete human skeleton, laid out in anatomical order

The bones looked old; their color was a cross between gray putty and red-orange carareasy stains here and there Wordlessly Stefan offered loves I put them on and picked up the skull, my favorite place to start

The bones were definitely a e above the eyes toldbump at the base of the skull, the external occipital protuberance: s was broad, but the face itself was cooular, aristocratic appearance

Cradling the skull upside down in my left palm, I studied the upper teeth and the roof of the , and several others had cavities The presence of all four wisdom teeth, plus the complete fusion of the sutures — the seams — in the upper palate, confirht side up, I exa joints in the top of the skull In young adults, the sutures are dark and proular zipper teeth This , alive only a rough indication of age, the se, mid-fifties, or older — maybe a decade or more older The spine see to develop the ragged bony fringe known as osteoarthritic lipping, which is one of the skeletal signs of aging This man’s spine, I realized with an unexpected, ironic smile, probably looked a lot like my own

It hen I looked at the ribs that I felt a faot hooked on a forensic case On the right side of the rib cage, everything was normal, but on the left side, the eleventh and twelfth ribs — the lower” ribs, which attach to the spine but not to the sternuhtly truncated I picked them up and inspected their distal ends, which curve around the sides of the lower chest but don’t wrap all the way to the front Norh these were too old and clean for that But when I coht side, the difference between theht ribs were smooth and rounded, but the ends of the left ribs were flat and jagged The ends of these two ribs appeared to have been sheared off by a sharp blade

I looked up at Miranda and Stefan “Unless this guy fell on his oord, I’d say he was stabbed to death”

“But wait, there’s“Look at the extremities”

I scanned the right arot to the distal end of the forearouged on their medial surfaces, as if a knife had been forced between the, which intensified when I inspected the left foreares there

“Now the feet,” she said I ale marks, these between the metatarsals, the bones at mid foot

Wheels were turning in ed down partly by fatigue but also by disbelief at what I was seeing, or what it uy come from? And why all the secrecy about a skeleton that’s six or seven centuries old?”