Lena’s jaw tightened. She was a scientist. She had data. She had protocols. But she also had a memory: her grandmother, in a hospice in Palermo, reaching for a cheap print of Caravaggio’s Nativity . The old woman’s finger had traced the manger, the ox, the stunned shepherd. She had died that night. And Lena had washed the print with distilled water and a microfibre cloth, erasing the fingerprint as if it had never been.
“The azurite will lift,” she said quietly. “You’ll leave a mark.” attingo
He lowered his hand slowly, not to his side, but to his chest. He pressed his palm over his heart. The tremor was visible now. Lena’s jaw tightened
His voice cracked.
“Well?” she said.
For one second — attingo — the boundary between his skin and the wall dissolved. He did not feel plaster. He felt a pulse. Not his own. Older. A rhythm of hands reaching across time to other hands. She had protocols
Matteo stood alone with Saint Sebastian. The arrow points had flaked away centuries ago. The eyes were two dark almond shapes, patient and unknowing.