safer.”
“Too powerful,” he said. “Imagine, if you are the pope, having the bones of Christ. What a secret to possess! The ultimate knowledge, the ultimate forbidden fruit, you see?” He pressed the button of his keyless remote, and the Fiat beeped a few slots away, its lights flashing in the gloom of the garage.
“I don’t see why the bones of Jesus would pose a huge problem,” Miranda mused. “You could argue that he rose from the dead, lived another twenty or thirty years, and then died of natural causes, right? That still allows for the Resurrection.”
“Could be,” I conceded grudgingly as I folded into the tiny backseat. “But there’s that whole ‘ascended into heaven’ bit, too—isn’t that like the Resurrection, Part B?”
“Hairsplitting,” she said, with a definitive slam of the door. “How many bones can dance on the head of a pin? Come on, let’s get you settled at Lumani, then grab some grub.”
STEFAN HAD LEASED AN APARTMENT NEAR THE PALACE of the Popes for the summer, and Miranda was staying in a modern, charmless hotel a block from the palace. That hotel was fully booked now, though, as was every other hotel near the palace—a month-long theater festival was about to fill Avignon with throngs of tourists—so they’d been forced to look farther afield for my lodgings. Within the narrow circumference of old Avignon, luckily, no place was terribly far afield.
The Fiat spiraled down through the underground garage and out past the city wall, and Stefan turned onto a road that circled the wall like a moat. To our right were the wall’s stone ramparts; to our left, the green waters of the Rhône. Halfway around the perimeter, we re-entered the old city and doubled back, this time hemmed tightly between the wall’s inner face and the press of densely packed houses, their stone and stucco façades crowding the narrowest sidewalk I’d ever seen. We pulled up in front of a three-story structure that offered only one tiny, round window—scarcely more than a porthole—at street level, though the upper levels each had several large windows. An arched wooden door, painted emerald green, was set into the wall to the left of the porthole, but the door was locked, and didn’t look like a gateway to hospitality, at least not to my bleary eyes. Stefan rapped sharply on the door, waited a bit, and then rapped again, harder. Miranda, meanwhile, wandered farther up the street, stopping at a vine-draped opening in the wall that was secured by a pair of barn-style doors, also emerald green. “I think this is the entrance,” she called. “Here’s a sign, and a doorbell.” She pressed the button, and deep within the building I heard a faint buzz.
The sign, partly hidden by the vines, consisted of three repetitions of the word “Lumani” cut from a thick plate of steel and bolted to the wall, one atop the other. The vines hung halfway down the doors, an irregular fringe that varied between chest and head high. The tendrils reminded me of kudzu, the fast-growing Tennessee vine that, given half a chance and half a week, could swallow trees, barns, even slow-moving cows. Inside, I heard footsteps approaching the doors, then the rattle of a key in the lock. I suspected I was about to be greeted by an eccentric, crabby old Frenchwoman in bathrobe and slippers.
The left-hand door swung open, and the crabby old Frenchwoman turned out to be a lovely woman, possibly fifty, with wavy brown hair, warm brown eyes, and an even warmer smile. “Ah, bonjour. Hello, and welcome to Lumani,” she said. “I am Elisabeth.” An elfin-looking man with sparkling eyes and a short fringe of gray hair rounded a corner and joined her. “And this is my husband, Jean.” The final sound of his name—the -on of zhon —lodged in her nose rather than emerging through her lips, and I was reminded that French pronunciation was a mystery I would never master. “Please, please to come inside.”
Miranda, Stefan, and
“Too powerful,” he said. “Imagine, if you are the pope, having the bones of Christ. What a secret to possess! The ultimate knowledge, the ultimate forbidden fruit, you see?” He pressed the button of his keyless remote, and the Fiat beeped a few slots away, its lights flashing in the gloom of the garage.
“I don’t see why the bones of Jesus would pose a huge problem,” Miranda mused. “You could argue that he rose from the dead, lived another twenty or thirty years, and then died of natural causes, right? That still allows for the Resurrection.”
“Could be,” I conceded grudgingly as I folded into the tiny backseat. “But there’s that whole ‘ascended into heaven’ bit, too—isn’t that like the Resurrection, Part B?”
“Hairsplitting,” she said, with a definitive slam of the door. “How many bones can dance on the head of a pin? Come on, let’s get you settled at Lumani, then grab some grub.”
STEFAN HAD LEASED AN APARTMENT NEAR THE PALACE of the Popes for the summer, and Miranda was staying in a modern, charmless hotel a block from the palace. That hotel was fully booked now, though, as was every other hotel near the palace—a month-long theater festival was about to fill Avignon with throngs of tourists—so they’d been forced to look farther afield for my lodgings. Within the narrow circumference of old Avignon, luckily, no place was terribly far afield.
The Fiat spiraled down through the underground garage and out past the city wall, and Stefan turned onto a road that circled the wall like a moat. To our right were the wall’s stone ramparts; to our left, the green waters of the Rhône. Halfway around the perimeter, we re-entered the old city and doubled back, this time hemmed tightly between the wall’s inner face and the press of densely packed houses, their stone and stucco façades crowding the narrowest sidewalk I’d ever seen. We pulled up in front of a three-story structure that offered only one tiny, round window—scarcely more than a porthole—at street level, though the upper levels each had several large windows. An arched wooden door, painted emerald green, was set into the wall to the left of the porthole, but the door was locked, and didn’t look like a gateway to hospitality, at least not to my bleary eyes. Stefan rapped sharply on the door, waited a bit, and then rapped again, harder. Miranda, meanwhile, wandered farther up the street, stopping at a vine-draped opening in the wall that was secured by a pair of barn-style doors, also emerald green. “I think this is the entrance,” she called. “Here’s a sign, and a doorbell.” She pressed the button, and deep within the building I heard a faint buzz.
The sign, partly hidden by the vines, consisted of three repetitions of the word “Lumani” cut from a thick plate of steel and bolted to the wall, one atop the other. The vines hung halfway down the doors, an irregular fringe that varied between chest and head high. The tendrils reminded me of kudzu, the fast-growing Tennessee vine that, given half a chance and half a week, could swallow trees, barns, even slow-moving cows. Inside, I heard footsteps approaching the doors, then the rattle of a key in the lock. I suspected I was about to be greeted by an eccentric, crabby old Frenchwoman in bathrobe and slippers.
The left-hand door swung open, and the crabby old Frenchwoman turned out to be a lovely woman, possibly fifty, with wavy brown hair, warm brown eyes, and an even warmer smile. “Ah, bonjour. Hello, and welcome to Lumani,” she said. “I am Elisabeth.” An elfin-looking man with sparkling eyes and a short fringe of gray hair rounded a corner and joined her. “And this is my husband, Jean.” The final sound of his name—the -on of zhon —lodged in her nose rather than emerging through her lips, and I was reminded that French pronunciation was a mystery I would never master. “Please, please to come inside.”
Miranda, Stefan, and
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