The Witch of Napoli by Michael Schmicker Read Free Book Online

Tommaso?”
    “No,” I admitted. “But I’ve seen post cards.”
    “Today, everybody visits the Piazza della Signoria in Florence to gawk at Michelangelo’s statue of David. In 1495, everybody flocked to the piazza to gawk at Savonarola. He drew crowds of 10,000 people, haranguing them for hours with his apocalyptic sermons and hellish visions of the End Days.”
    Rossi shook his head.
    “He ordered prostitutes and sodomites burned at the stake. He recruited a children’s army of 5,000 young boys and sent them door to door, frightening citizens into giving up to the flames of his
falò delle vanità
, his bonfire of the vanities, their playing cards and chess games, and lutes and recorders, their copies of Boccaccio’s salacious tales, and their Renaissance paintings which glorified man’s body instead of his soul. After one of Savonarola’s sermons, Botticelli himself was so scared he tossed some of his artworks into the fire. The Last Judgment was coming any day, and he had been painting naked pagan goddesses.”
    Rossi shook his head. “Madness.” He seemed lost in thought for a moment, then finished his story.
    “Eventually people tired of his piety and sermons and began to rebel. They smeared shit on the altar in his cathedral, planted explosives under his pulpit to try and assassinate him as he preached, and eventually he needed an armed escort of a hundred men to travel around the city. When cardinals in the Curia tried to rein him in, he called the Church the “harlot of Rome,” and denounced the pope as the Devil incarnate. Finally Alexander VI had enough and excommunicated him.”
    Rossi smiled grimly. “Then the citizens of Florence extracted their revenge. They hung Savonarola in chains from a wooden cross and burned him alive over a bonfire built on the exact same spot in the piazza where he had burned their worldly vanities. They jeered and spit and poked him with sticks as he screamed in agony. They kept the fire blazing for three hours, till his flesh was blackened and charred, then they broke the bones into little pieces, burned them to ashes and threw them into the Arno while citizens lined up on the Ponte Vecchio and pissed on them as they floated by.”
    Rossi looked at me. “He died filled with hatred for humanity – our sins, our weaknesses, our disbelief. Now he’s back.”
    “But what can he do to us?” I protested. “He’s just a spirit.”
    “For Christ’s sake, Tommaso!” Rossi glared at me. “Have you forgotten what you saw the other night? If a spirit can lift a table off the floor, it can also hurl a vase across the room at your head. If a spirit can touch or pinch you in a séance, it can also slap or punch you. I don’t like Alessandra calling on him. ”
    “Does she call on him often?”
    Rossi scowled. “Whenever no other spirits respond. I’ve warned her to stop. She’s never seen her twisted face with Savonarola’s fiendish eyes staring out of her own sockets, or heard the venom spewing out of her own mouth. She’s in a trance when he’s possessing her, and when she recovers she remembers nothing. All she knows is that she produces her most spectacular feats when she allows him to take over her body.”
    He pulled his watch out of his vest pocket and shot a quick glance. “I’m late. I have a class to prepare for this afternoon and I need to get going. Can you read the final paragraph?”
    I turned back to the letter. Rossi had wrapped it up nicely before finally baiting the hook with a few shekels.
    The Spiritualist Society of Naples would like to invite you to visit us and investigate
Signora
Poverelli. We suggest that you attend three séances, as you did with Madame Guppy. We are prepared to pay your travel and hotel expenses, as well as an honorarium. We believe she is genuine, but if she turns out to be a fraud or a hysteric in your opinion, we believe you’ll still find her quite entertaining.
    Rossi held out his hand. “My apologies for taking