He grinned. “In Roman times the British used to export duffel coats. A duffel was a modish item for a while. It was called the byrrus Britannicus. George, you could have been fashionable for once in your life.”

“Peter, forget duffel coats. What the hell are you doing here?”

“Cash-flow problems,” he said.

“What are you talking about? You own a house, for God’s sake. You must have savings—”

“My accounts have been frozen,” he said. “Long story. Look, obviously I’ll pay you back . . .”

Maybe I’m naive. It was a time in my life in which various people, including a Jesuit and my long-lost sister, seemed to have little difficulty keeping me away from awkward truths with simple deflections and guile. But that day I was distracted, as I had been since coming out of the Crypt. I couldn’t get the memory out of my head; it was as if the milky air of the place were a drug, and I had been addicted in one quick hit.

So that was why I went with the flow concerning Peter, why I found it hard to focus on his evasions about what he’d been doing, why he’d turned up in this state. It just didn’t seem to matter.

I didn’t want to stump up for a separate room; the hotel was cheap but not that cheap. I upgraded to a twin, in my name. We moved into the room that afternoon.

It didn’t take Peter long to unpack. That carry-on contained nothing much but his laptop and a couple of changes of clothes, some of which still had shop labels on them, as if he had purchased them in a hurry. He didn’t even have a razor; he borrowed mine until he bought a pack of disposables.

He showered, shaved, sent his traveling clothes down to the hotel laundry. Then he spent the rest of the afternoon voraciously reading the little book Rosa had given me on my alleged ancestress Regina.

That evening, he let me buy him a meal at my favorite of the little roadside restaurants. I told Peter as much as I could about my sister Rosa, and the Order, and the Crypt. He just listened.

On a napkin I wrote down the three Latin slogans I had tried to memorize in the Crypt. He used online dictionaries, accessed through his handheld, to translate them:

Sisters matter more than daughters.

Ignorance is strength.

Listen to your sisters.

“What do you think they mean?”

“Damned if I know,” he said. He filed them away, intending to research them later.

I tried to explain the appeal of the place.