Two Women in Rome Page 4

And all I can think of is the way he says ‘Nina’ when he is trying not to tell me that he loves me.

  I am almost thirty-seven, which is old enough to have mastery over the unruly, selfish, greedy elements sewn into our characters. Old enough to know what is true and beautiful.

  He is twenty-two and young enough to believe in goodness and duty.

  When a disgruntled American buttonholed Benjamin Franklin and informed him that the happiness the new state had promised had not materialised, Franklin replied that the constitution only gave the right to pursue happiness and you had to catch it yourself.

  So I did.

  One way of dealing with trauma, with the unresolved and with loss, is to put them on paper.

  There is plenty to mourn, but I will not ignore the gains – the deepening and softening of the inner self, the unsuspected capacity to love the world. Yes, despite everything, it is impossible to ignore the good. Think of the olive tree, I tell myself, after a disappointing rain-lashed spring and an arid summer, yet still producing fruit.

  Leo.

  ‘To live is an act of creativity …’ I read that as a young woman and took note. It means that, at certain moments in a life, we must search our creative imaginations, choose a path and launch on to it and, despite weeping blisters and strained muscles, continue the pilgrimage. Getting married, taking on a job, having a child, finding a cause. Choosing is the moment when we make our pattern from the events over which we have no control and impose our own story on them.

  The choices also affect our death. They must do.

  I know my story.

  I think.

  NB. The Duke and Duchess of Palacrino hobnob with the family of ‘The Black Prince’, Prince Borghese (d. 1974), founder of a neofascist organisation, Fronte Nazionale. During the war, he specialised in tracking down and killing hundreds of Italian Communists. The Palacrinos would like to resurrect Mussolini’s Fascism. For them, democracy is a bad alternative.

  I am working on their garden.

  CHAPTER FOUR

  THE VIA DEI BAULLARI, THE STREET OF THE COFFER MAKERS, was in the Campo Marzio district and close to the Campo de’ Fiori. Lottie found it without trouble.

  Gabriele Ricci’s workshop had a stone arch, a large window frontage with bars and an ancient-looking door. A pair of gilt candlesticks and a majolica plate were displayed in the window on a length of green velvet. Lottie peered at them, concerned that, if the majolica plate was antique, which indeed it looked to be, the sun slanting down on to the window might damage it.

  ‘You can’t quite categorise him,’ Paul Cursor had given Lottie a quick briefing. ‘Book doctor, bibliophile, bookbinder and paper conservationist. But good.’

  The workshop was a modest space, every wall lined from floor to ceiling with bookshelves. At first glance, it gave the appearance of being crammed, but after looking more carefully, Lottie realised that it was pin neat and orderly, which she liked. Plus, the smell of paper, leather, wood shavings and linseed oil drifting through the warm interior was very pleasant.

  The shelves were modern and stacked with a selection of antiquarian and contemporary books, bound documents and files. At the back of the room a workbench was laid out with bookbinder’s finishing tools, pots of resin and paint. An easel stood beside a flat-topped table occupying the centre of the room. On a separate table, coffee cups were stacked on top of a state-of-the-art espresso machine. A door at the back led into a second office and an ancient beam with burn marks stretched across the ceiling.

  Gabriele Ricci was on the phone in the back room and, while she waited, Lottie inspected the books and the documents, which were in German, Italian, English and Greek.

  These included several volumes of French philosophy, two editions of Ovid, three of Herodotus, and a complete set of Charles Dickens, political and religious tracts, plus a modern edition mocked up to look like the original of Le Lettere di Margherita Datini a Francesco di Marco, 1384–1410.

  She ran a finger along the spines. These books and documents housed the exchanges between lovers, enemies, intellectuals – the men and women struggling with their impulses and tensions, the prejudices and injustices of their worlds.

  Many were risk-takers and voices of conscience. Or, passionately religious and brilliantly imaginative. At the time of writing, some of them would have been at the centre of events. Others had waited a long time to be exhumed from obscurity.

  How curious then, she thought. In contrast to the insistent and various voices corralled on the shelves tussling with the problems of being alive, the workshop itself felt closed and sterile – as if the richness and polemic of papers and manuscripts had been deliberately muted.

  She stood in front of a copy of The Codex Amiatinus, an early manuscript Bible, and a voice behind her said, ‘Do you wish to look at it?’

  Startled, she turned around. ‘If possible. I always like to hold a manuscript or book.’

  ‘You can’t know a work unless you handle it. No facsimile can reproduce that primary contact.’

  He sounded hoarse and not particularly friendly.

  The Codex was a facsimile. Lottie knew, as he would know, that the original was kept under lock and key. ‘I agree.’

  ‘Perhaps you have seen the original in the monastery of San Salvatore on Mount Amiata?’

  ‘That would be awesome and, arguably, it belongs there, but it’s in the Biblioteca Medicea Laurenziana in Florence.’

  It had been a test.

  Silence.

  Lottie used it to make a snatch assessment of Gabriele Ricci. For a start, he could move quietly. Good looking but very thin. Tall. Angular face with shadows under the eyes and grey hair that had once been dark. A pallor indicated he did not go out much, and the tautly held body looked a stranger to relaxation – and to humour, perhaps.

  Reverting to the previous subject, she said, ‘Knowing what a manuscript weighs, what’s noted in its margins, its wear and tear, the crevices in its construction is crucial.’

  ‘Agreed.’

  ‘But not always possible.’ She was pleased to note a spark of interest. ‘Since the great manuscripts of the world are kept under lock and key.’

  ‘Rightly or wrongly?’

  She calculated her response. He would know, as she did, that no facsimile could reproduce the essence of a manuscript. They were useful substitutes but they could never possess the smell or the texture of the real thing. No reproduction mirrored the tears, the overpainting, the patching up, the stitches and the depth of colours or the essence and feel of an original.

  ‘Both,’ she replied. ‘If we agree that you cannot really understand a manuscript without holding it or inspecting it closely, then lock and key are impediments.’ She gestured to his choked shelves. ‘It’s the great dilemma. Not handling them is to miss engaging with their inner life. Handling them is to put them at risk.’

  He took a while to answer and she wondered if her Italian had been too garbled.

  ‘It’s none of my business,’ she said, ‘but if the plate in the window is original majolica, the sun will ruin it.’

  ‘It isn’t your business …’ Nevertheless, he lowered the blind. Then, he said, ‘I take it you are Signora Archer? The new archivist at the Espatriati?’

  He knew perfectly well who she was.

  ‘Chief archivist.’ She added, ‘Elect.’

  He indicated a chair at the desk and sat down opposite her and said, without more ado, ‘Show me.’

  ‘Two projects.’ She slid over the folder containing the letter. ‘In this case, I’m the messenger. I’m afraid I can’t brief you in detail.’

  He lifted the tissue paper and peered at the handwriting, which, in places, was illegible.

  ‘It’s from a Lady Henrietta Forbes.’ She read from the notes that Paul had emailed over.

  In accented English, he read aloud. ‘“If goodness of heart were sufficient for the conquest of the throne, his daughter would occupy it immediately for she is goodness pers
onified.”’ Gabriele looked up. ‘She is?’

  ‘Henrietta is writing about Charlotte, the daughter of Charles Edward Stuart, the Jacobite, who had tried to get back the English crown in seventeen forty-five. She was rejected by him for most of her life but came to Rome to nurse him when he was dying. Henrietta is admiring her sacrifice. As well she might. It’s a lesson in forgiveness. He was a drunk and a would-be king, who ran away at a crucial point and behaved badly to his daughter.’

  ‘She thought she would inherit something, no doubt.’

  How to defend a despised daughter? Did Lottie wish to defend a despised daughter? ‘Charlotte was kind. Henrietta says so. She stuck by him.’

  He drummed his fingers on the desk. ‘Il sangue non è acqua,’ he said.

  Blood is thicker than water.

  Yes.

  Growing up, it wasn’t unusual for Lottie to wake up, jaw clenched, stomach churning emptily, in a bedroom that she occupied but wasn’t hers, in a house lived in by people with whom she had nothing in common.

  ‘Henrietta died a couple of months later, probably from sepsis after cutting a finger.’ Lottie reapplied herself to Paul’s notes. ‘The letter requires the usual treatment to stabilise it and we hope you will take it on. The terms are these.’ Lottie named a sum.

  ‘You’re offering less than your predecessor.’

  Lottie would not have put him down as a greedy man and she was intrigued by the tactic.

  ‘No,’ she replied. ‘I checked.’

  He acknowledged the point with an ink-stained finger. ‘Even so, the price for my services has to go up.’

  She half rose. ‘The budgets are carefully set at the archive. We offer you good rates but if they are not good enough for you, we’ll look elsewhere.’

  The thin features tightened. ‘You’re new to Rome and to Italy, I think.’

  ‘Is it so obvious?’

  ‘Yes,’ he said.

  ‘How?’

  ‘You don’t believe that all roads lead to Rome. But you will.’ He got to his feet. ‘You’re from the west of your country?’

  ‘You can tell even when I’m speaking Italian?’

  ‘I’m good at accents.’

  ‘How many languages do you speak?’

  ‘French, English, Spanish, a little Hungarian, Italian, of course.’

  ‘For your work?’

  ‘Not entirely. The winter days can be long and sometimes the work dries up.’

  Not so. Paul had alerted Lottie to Gabriele Ricci’s internationally respected reputation. A conservator and book restorer, he was a man on speed-dial for the major museums. He was not likely to be short of commissions.

  ‘You are looking at me as if I’m one of your documents,’ he observed, but mildly. ‘Are you trying to sum me up?’

  ‘Yes.’ His eyebrows climbed. ‘Doctors deal in broken bodies and psychologists in broken minds. But you, a book doctor, operate on vellum, parchment and paper.’

  There was another of the long silences and she grew impatient.

  Somewhere in the nearby streets, a church bell pealed. At the sound, he went over and shut the door with a bang. ‘They never stop,’ he said. ‘Never.’

  ‘You dislike the church bells?’

  ‘I do.’

  There was another silence.

  ‘Are you interested in the projects? Or shall I leave?’

  He held out a hand.

  Lottie pulled out the package and peeled away its protective covering, giving a small gasp when she caught sight of the contents.

  ‘Beautiful …’ she managed to say. ‘How very, very … beautiful it is.’

  The blue of the Virgin’s cloak shimmered and burned into her vision as Gabriele Ricci lifted it up and placed it on the easel.

  The painter had caught the startled Virgin at the exact moment one of the great stories of the world began, a story that would end with her losing her son in pain and violence.

  Impeccable in his sanctity, robed in flowing pink, crowned and bearing a gladioli flower, the archangel winged down towards the figure reading in the garden.

  A curious, almost painfully still, hush fell over the workshop.

  ‘Inquiry,’ she murmured. Interrogatio.

  Gabriele’s expression did not betray much but she knew she had caught his interest.

  No expert, but Lottie knew enough to know that the fifteenthcentury painter had expectations laid on him – at this period it was always ‘him’. ‘Wasn’t there a fifteenth-century friar who preached a sermon outlining the precise emotional breakdown of the Virgin’s state of mind?’

  ‘That’s correct.’

  On being told the news by the beautiful, stern archangel, said Fra Roberto, Mary underwent a range of emotions from disquiet and anguished questioning of her fate to eventual submission and contemplation of the divine will.

  Here she was raising her hand to ask of him: How can this be, seeing I know not a man?

  ‘She’s lovely,’ Lottie added, admiring the balance between the materials the painter had chosen and the skill with which they were used.

  ‘But in shock.’ Gabriele Ricci, who was standing beside her, pointed to Mary’s hand clutching her robe in panic.

  The Virgin’s face was white and shaded with grey tints; her expression reflected her youth, her innocence and submission. Judging by the architecture, the palace on the right-hand side of the painting was Italian, whereas the garden displayed a French influence. The Virgin’s cloak of lapis-lazuli blue flowed over a border of periwinkle and acanthus. A rabbit with green eyes and a very white scut played by its hem and a mouse had made a home in Mary’s skirts. Overhead, larks wheeled in a bright and joyous sky and, in the bottom left-hand corner where a frog and a worm co-habited under a stone, there was a suggestion of initials.

  The past was the greatest of all escapologists and it was almost impossible to experience it viscerally. Taste, smell, the texture of food, stuff under your fingers, fear of God, the warmth of the sun on your back, a caress, the sound of music striking up: the experiences of these five centuries or so back could only be guessed at and never truly felt. Yet there were clues, which, if you were careful and scrupulous, made it possible to take a reading of what was there.

  This artist possessed a forensic eye and an artistic sensibility fascinated by the properties of light; he understood perspective and delighted in his subject.

  ‘Fine brushstrokes, gold highlights, unusual lighting effects.’ Gabriele Ricci ticked off the points. ‘I suspect that the Virgin’s cloak is painted in azur d’outremer. Ultramarine. Incredibly expensive and only used for the Virgin and saints.’

  Lottie’s inner ear registered shock. Or yearning. Both? Perhaps Gabriele Ricci found his work a melancholy business?

  ‘If you paid two florins for the Virgin’s blue and one florin for the blue used in the rest of the composition you were suggesting a theological distinction,’ he continued.

  The blue soared.

  ‘This was Mary’s colour, chosen to convey benediction to all those who looked on it. The painter’s contract would have stipulated a certain sum to buy it and it was not to be used on anything else.’

  He was ensuring that Lottie was aware of his intimacy with medieval paint bases, their mixes and application and the iconography.

  ‘Painted on vellum or parchment?’ she wanted to know.

  ‘At a guess, parchment; but I would have to examine it to be sure.’ He inspected it more closely. ‘Bears the hallmarks of a painting from a book of hours.’

  The last was muttered, almost indistinct.

  She leaned over, careful not to cloud the glass in the frame. ‘A classic Annunciation.’

  The painting was approximately ten or so inches high and seven inches or so wide and had a trompe l’oeil border of a wooden frame on which was written part of a text.

  ‘Yes and no.’ He stood back from the easel. ‘It’s innovative, in fact. The figures are seen in close-up and the painting takes up the e
ntire surface of the page – two things that were still unusual in the late fifteenth century.’

  ‘So, late fifteenth century, would you say?’

  ‘If genuine, I would.’ He seemed reluctant to be definite and she did not know him well enough to know if this was just his manner. ‘But it’s not possible to be sure until it’s analysed.’

  ‘And if genuine it’s valuable.’ She drew in a breath. ‘Hugely. Very exciting.’

  He shoved his hands into his pockets. ‘Where was it found?’

  ‘Among papers being worked on at the Archivio Espatriati. A colleague discovered it, put it in the frame and arranged to consult you.’

  He nodded. ‘They use me on occasions.’

  Lottie turned back to the easel.

  The painting was beautiful, achingly so, conveying the Virgin’s confusion with a touching tenderness. The subject was an old one, had been told countless times, and the psychological drama was easy to comprehend. Unexpected pregnancy. Bewilderment. Uncertainty. And yet, it was also a complicated situation, wreathed in mystery and the perils of belief.

  The old demons, and habits of thought, stirred. The ones that made her slow and heavy, instead of quick and strong and positive.

  ‘At least …’ and she spoke to herself rather than to Gabriele Ricci, ‘… Mary was told who her son’s father was, which meant she could explain later.’

  His dark gaze rested on Lottie and there was a hint of speculation. Hastily, she returned to the subject. ‘Are there similarities to the work of the French masters … Fouquet, Bourdichon, Pucelle fils?’

  He raised his eyebrows as if to say: So you know about them?

  Lottie judged he was in his sixties – which would account for any tedious prejudices. She was in her thirties and expert in what she did, including ignoring time-wasting prejudice.

  ‘They were much sought after and often highly paid,’ she said coolly, raking through her memory, which was generally excellent. ‘Three years ago, there was a stir in the art world over a book of hours commissioned by a Renaissance duke; it was hoped that it was a Pucelle fils that had gone missing for centuries.’