The Secret Dead Read Online Free PDF

thought to visit — and
I did not like to risk Gennaro’s anger by asking him. I knew only that it was a
great cavern up in the hills, left behind by the excavation of tufa for
building. In the early years of the century, the Spanish authorities had begun
clearing the city’s churchyards to make room for more bodies, and the old
remains had been taken to the Fontanelle cave. Since then it had become a
dumping ground for the city’s outcast dead: those who could not afford or had been
denied burial in consecrated ground. Lepers. Sodomites. Suicides. The lazzaroni — the nameless poor who died in the streets. Plague victims were thrown in,
whenever there was an outbreak. Fontanelle had become a great charnel-house of
the unwanted; people said you could smell it from the north gate if the wind was
in the wrong direction.
    I caught the stench as the incline grew steeper and the
track widened out into a plateau; rotting flesh and stale smoke, the kind of
bitter ash that hung in the air and worked its way into your nose and mouth as
you breathed. A man lurched forward out of the shadows to greet us; again, the
chink and flash of money from somewhere inside Fra Gennaro’s cloak. A small
brazier burned by the entrance to the cavern. In its orange glow, I saw that
the man’s face was badly deformed, though his body looked strong; his brow
bulged low over one side like an ape’s and he had been born with a harelip.
Perhaps this was the only place he could find work. At least the dead would not
throw stones at him in the street, or shout insults. He and Gennaro spoke in
low voices; I had the sense that they too were familiar with each another. I
watched as the man took the cart and wheeled it toward the mouth of the cave, a
maw of deeper shadows that swallowed him until he disappeared from view.
    I turned to see Gennaro studying me.
    “Are you all right?” he said.
    Beneath my robe, my legs were trembling as if with cold. I
told myself it was the climb. I gestured toward the cave.
    “What if he tells someone?”
    “He won’t.”
    “How do you know? Surely you can’t see a body in that state
and not ask questions?”
    “Part of his job is knowing not to ask questions.” Gennaro
squinted into the darkness and pulled his cloak tighter. “Besides, he won’t
bite the hand that feeds him.”
    I did not immediately grasp his meaning, until I thought of
the coins chinking quietly into the man’s hand, their familiarity. Of course: This
would not be the first time Gennaro had brought a dismembered body here for
disposal under cover of darkness, no explanations required. I wondered how many
other illegal anatomizations he had carried out in that little mortuary under
the storehouse, with its convenient tunnel for ferrying bodies out unseen.
    The man returned with the cart and the empty box.
    “I’ll let you know if I find anything suitable,” he
muttered, darting a wary glance at me. Gennaro gave him a curt nod and turned again
toward the road.
    A pale glimmer of dawn light showed along the eastern horizon
as we walked back down the track, the city a dark stain below us.
    “Does he sell you bodies?” I asked bluntly.
    Gennaro looked sideways at me. “Remember your oath,
Brother.”
    We walked the rest of the way in silence. Under the cloak I
could feel stiff patches on my robe where the girl’s blood had dried. I
wondered how I would explain that to the servant who came to take my laundry.
    “I prescribe a hot bath for this fever that has kept you
from tonight’s services, Bruno,” Gennaro said, as if he had heard my thoughts. “I
will instruct the servants to fill the tub in the infirmary. Clean yourself
well. I will see to your clothes.”
    “Will you write about this?” I asked him, as we approached
the gate.
    He smiled, for the first time since we had set out. “Of
course. This is one of the most important anatomizations I have ever performed.
To study a child in utero is a rare piece of luck, as I told