The Sonnet Lover

by Carol Goodman

  “I think you should stay here, Rose,” he says. “Let me go up first.”

  I look up the steps and see the broken statue on the landing, only she seems to have changed position. Instead of looking up the steps, she’s craned her head over the edge of the landing and is looking down. Ned is crouched by her side, wailing into the night. It’s then that I recognize Mara, her neck twisted like a broken branch, and realize that the rose petals on the steps are her blood.

  CHAPTER

  TWENTY-ONE

  WHEN I WAKE UP THE NEXT MORNING, THERE’S A SICKLY GREEN GLOW TO MY room, an absinthe stain that seems to have permeated my eye sockets and seeped into the crevices of my brain. After a few minutes I realize that I’d hung my green dress over one of the half-opened shutters when I came in last night and it’s the light filtering through it that’s given the room a greenish cast. I stare at the dress, at its tattered hem and dark stains, and feel nausea rise as I remember what happened to ruin it. How I’d pushed back Bruno’s protective arm and rushed up the steps to kneel beside Ned, my knees scraping on broken marble, and leaned across Mara to feel for a pulse even though it was clear from the angle of her neck that it was broken. When I brought back my hand, it was covered with blood. Not only had the fall broken her neck, but she had also cracked her skull on the edge of the landing.

  I had wiped the blood off on my dress so that Ned wouldn’t see it and put my arm around him. When Bruno reached us he knelt down, put his hand on Ned’s shoulder, and suggested we all go back up to the villa to call the police, but Ned had recoiled from him.

  “It’s all your son’s fault,” Ned had said before dissolving into those awful shrieks again, reminding me horribly of the sounds that Mara had made the night Robin died. I told Bruno to go up to the villa and that I would stay with Ned. A moment after he left it occurred to me to tell him to get Gene down here. I turned away from Ned and Mara to call after Bruno, but when I did I saw that Bruno had paused at the top of the stairs, looking at something on the ground. As I watched he stooped down, picked something up, and put it in his pocket; then he turned and walked quickly toward the villa. I didn’t call after him.

  When he was gone I told Ned I’d be right back and I went up the stairs, scanning the steps for…for I didn’t know what. At the top of the steps I noticed that the chain holding the Pericolosa! sign had been broken. Had Mara tripped over it and fallen down the stairs? I stared down into the grass where Bruno had picked something up, but there was nothing more there. Then Ned’s sobs drew me back down the steps to sit with him until the police came.

  The rest of the night was a blur. Gene came and added his lamentations to his son’s. Then Cyril and Leo Balthasar appeared, and finally a swarm of Italian policemen who asked questions in a language I suddenly seemed to have forgotten. It was Leo Balthasar who helped Ned to his feet and led him away. I heard Ned again saying something about it being Orlando’s fault, but Leo only patted his arm and told him that it was no one’s fault, just a horrible accident. I started following them, but when I got to my feet I found that my legs had gone numb from kneeling so long. Frieda Mainbocher caught me.

  “Now, we can’t have another casualty tonight, can we?” Frieda said briskly. She practically carried me up the stairs and into the villa, up the steps of the rotunda and into my room. She would have undressed me and tucked me into bed if I hadn’t told her I was able to do it myself. I don’t remember, though, taking my dress off and getting into bed. Maybe Frieda did do it for me.

  Now I drag myself out of bed and over to the window. I ball the green silk dress up and toss it in the garbage. This disposal of clothing feels so good that I open a drawer, scoop up an armful of clothes, and dump it onto my bed. I’m hauling my suitcase up on the bed when I hear something slither under the door. I turn, half expecting to find dried rose petals drifting across the lintel, but it’s a piece of paper.

  Basta, I think, kneeling to pick up the paper, enough! I’ve had enough anonymous notes. But this one, I see right away, is signed. It’s from Bruno.

  “I have to talk to you today away from the villa. Will you meet me at the State Archives? I need you, Rose.”

  I sit down on my bed and look at my scattered clothing. I should go on packing and put as much distance as I can between myself and this place. I came thinking I would solve Robin’s death, but instead I’ve caused another one. I don’t believe that Mara’s death was an accident. I think Orlando pushed her so that she wouldn’t tell anyone that he had pushed Robin. If I had gone to the authorities right away with what I knew about Orlando, he’d be in jail now and Mara would be alive. And why hadn’t I?

  Although I’d allowed myself to be swayed by Mark’s reasoning, the real reason was that I wanted to spare Bruno. I wanted to be with him again. And wasn’t that really why I came back here, not to avenge Robin’s death or find any poems—what did I care for some old poems? I’d given them over quickly enough to Bruno last night.

  I look down at Bruno’s note. There’s no reason on earth why I should go. Last night Bruno had seen something at the top of the steps, which he picked up and put in his pocket. Why would he remove something from the scene of an accident unless it indicated that it wasn’t an accident—and who would he be protecting but his son? Wouldn’t he do anything to protect his son? There’s no point in me telling him about what happened in New York; it’s the police I should be telling. And yet, when I try to muster all the evidence I might take to the police—overheard conversations, which everyone will deny, cryptic notes, and old poems—it seems so scant and incoherent that my head spins. The only way anyone will ever believe that Robin didn’t kill himself and that Mara didn’t trip down the stairs in the garden because she was over-medicated and hysterical is if Orlando himself confesses, and the only person who might convince him to do that is his father. I can at least try.

  I look down at my pretty new Italian clothing and remember how happy Mara had been with each piece I’d picked out. She’d been as excited about my purchases as about her own. I don’t realize I’m crying until I see a tear darken a jade green blouse and then I start crying harder because it seems so awful that my only memory of Mara happy is of Mara shopping. I cry the whole time I’m getting dressed, picking out an outfit—the green blouse, the gondola-print skirt—that I think Mara would agree is much too pretty for a trip to the State Archives.

  The Archivio di Stato is on the east side of town in a modern building on the Viale Giovine Italia, which follows the line of the old city walls. It’s not in an area much frequented by tourists and so I’m fairly sure that once I switch buses in the Piazza della Libertà I’ll be able to make my trip without running into anyone from the villa. I’d managed to get out of there this morning without seeing anyone, and it’s doubtful that anyone else is going sightseeing today. I’d forgotten, though, that the bus goes by the English Cemetery, a popular site for anglophiles and fans of Elizabeth Barrett Browning, who is buried there, and, as it turns out, the place where Zoe Demarchis heads when things “get really screwy,” as she tells me when I find her slumped in a seat by the window reading EBB’s long novel in verse, Aurora Leigh.

  “Ned’s just so messed up over this,” she tells me when I sit down next to her, “but he won’t talk to me because he’s guilty we were making out while his mother was falling down those stairs. Like I’m to blame. Anyway, I thought I’d visit Elizabeth’s grave. She always helps me put things in perspective.”

  I would have thought Zoe Demarchis more likely to have turned to the ballad of some punk rock band—something by AFI, for instance, whose T-shirt she’s wearing—for solace than to the poetry of a neurasthenic English invalid, but I remind myself that I shouldn’t be so quick to make assumptions about people. Beyond the raspberry-colored hair that looks like it’s been hacked by a razor blade, the nose ring, the faded AFI T-shirt with its glaring white skull, and the tattered crocheted scarf that is ineffectually hiding several large hickeys on her neck, might well lurk
the soul of a poet.

  “What happened to Ned’s mother is not your fault,” I tell her.

  “Oh, I know. Everyone’s saying it was Orlando’s fault.”

  “They are?”

  “Yeah, because Mara caught him with Ned and she freaked out that her son’s gay and fell running away. But of course I know that’s not true because I was with Ned last night and he’s definitely not gay.” She adjusts her scarf, less to hide the hickeys on her neck than to call attention to them.

  “That’s what people are saying? Gossip can be mean and move fast,” I say. “Fama volat.”

  “Huh?”

  “It’s from Virgil. Rumor flies. He describes Rumor as a monster covered with eyes and tongues. Why ever would anyone think that Orlando and Ned were gay?”

  “Well, because Orlando is. He had this big tempestuous affair that blew over because…well, because of me. Robin was bi and we hooked up. Orlando was in a total snit over it. I mean, he came all the way to New York and made a big scene in the park.”

  I remember the scene I’d watched in Washington Square Park. I’d been sure that Orlando was jealous that Robin had taken Zoe from him, not that Zoe had taken Robin from him. How had I completely misunderstood? It’s like I’d watched a foreign movie with the wrong subtitles.

  “Anyway,” Zoe goes on, “Orlando and I are friends again now. We just made up last night.” I recall Zoe and Orlando coming out of the limonaia in a fog of pot smoke last night and the scene that followed. Could Zoe be right about Mara lashing out at Orlando because she was afraid that he was corrupting Ned? Had I misread that scene as well?

  “Zoe, are you sure about Orlando and Robin?”

  “Oh, yeah, Robin told me everything—more than I really wanted to know, to tell you the truth. I couldn’t really blame him for liking Orlando—I mean, he is gorgeous—and Robin was so into the whole Dark Lady mystery, which Orlando told him about…oh, hey, this is my stop.”

  She’s gotten up and is standing in front of me, holding on to the bar above our heads and swaying with the motion of the bus. “Have a—” I stop myself before telling her to have a good time in the cemetery, but she’s already completed the thought for me.

  “Oh, I will. I came here like every week last year to visit EBB’s grave. She’s a big inspiration to me because I had all these horrible allergies and asthma growing up and my parents would hardly even let me leave the house—just like Elizabeth Barrett Browning! But even though she was sickly and her father tried to make her stay at home and wouldn’t even let her get married, she ran away with the great love of her life and got to live here in Italy with him until she died, just like I finally convinced my parents that I could go away to college and come to Italy and then I hooked up with Robin and even though that ended so sadly, now I’ve got Ned. I know this is going to sound stupid, but I’ve always thought of Elizabeth as the protector of hopeless love affairs or something. Like if you made an offering to her she’d help you out.”

  The bus comes to an abrupt stop and Zoe half falls into me. I catch a whiff of the fruity shampoo she uses and then she rights herself and gives me an unexpected hug. Before I can react, she’s gone. As the bus pulls away, I watch her cross the street and go in through the tall iron gates of the English Cemetery, which rises in a jumble of marble tombs and tall cypresses on its crowded island in the middle of the busy avenue. What an unlikely pilgrim to Elizabeth Barrett Browning’s grave site, I think, and yet, I’m sure she’s not the first lovelorn teenager to find her way there.

  Poor Zoe! If Ned really does connect her to his mother’s death, he may not want to have anything else to do with her. Besides, it’s likely that Gene will bring him home after this—whisk him into therapy and dose him up on antidepressants until it’s time to go to Cornell. Ned will probably think he’s obliged to fulfill his dead mother’s dream for him of becoming a doctor.

  I’m so wrapped up in the Silverman family drama that I nearly miss the stop for the State Archives and I have to scramble to get off the bus in time. As I walk into the clean, well-lit building, I guess why Bruno wanted to meet me here. It’s a relief to be away from spying eyes. A relief, too, to be in a place devoid of personal history, since the State Archives were still housed in the Uffizi when I was a student here. I’m enjoying the feeling of anonymity until I take out my Hudson College ID to show the clerk at the reception desk.

  “Bongiorno, Professoressa Asher,” she says, making of my title something royal and pretty. As close to a principessa as I’m likely ever to get. She switches easily into English but still gives Bruno’s title lovingly in Italian. “Professore Brunelli called to say he would be late, but he asked me to get some materials ready for you. I’ve brought them to the desk the professore always uses.”

  I wonder what could have held him up as she escorts me through the large sala di studio with its row after row of polished wood desks, each desk equipped with a wooden book stand to hold delicate archival materials. Has Orlando come under some suspicion for Mara’s death after all? I find myself thinking that if he has, then at least I won’t be the one who has to break it to Bruno that his son is involved in a murder. Not a particularly noble thought, I realize.

  Bruno’s desk is in a small separate room—a mark of preference he must have earned with his considerable charm—under a window facing southwest and overlooking the neighborhood of Santa Croce. I can just make out, over the red-tile rooftops, the white and green Gothic façade of the church of Santa Croce itself. I always have to have a window wherever I work, I remember Bruno once saying, to give my mind space to dream.

  I thank the clerk and sit down at the desk, facing the window, and stare at the dozen or so books and document boxes Bruno has ordered for me. I see that he’s requested notarial records for the the last quarter of the sixteenth century. At first the thought of conducting research after what happened to Mara last night seems inconceivable, but after a few minutes I find myself scanning the materials. I quickly notice that Bruno has selected records from notaries who worked in the neighbor-hood around the Uffizi, a quarter once known as a working-class neighborhood of wool dyers and artisans. When I raise my head and look out the window, I can see the long twin rooftops of the Uffizi galleries, which today hold one of the most impressive collections of Renaissance and Baroque art in the world, but in the late sixteenth century housed the offices of Florentine government and the workshop of the Medici. It’s possible that Ginevra de Laura and her father lived in this very neighborhood.

  I find myself lifting my head often to look out the window, to give myself a break from the painstaking work of searching the notarial records for mention of any de Laura, to rest my eyes on the red rooftops and the distant hills, to picture what life would have been like for the daughter of a stonecutter—not just any stonecutter, but a commettitore of fine inlaid marble—and to check the street below for any sign of Bruno. I can see from here the arrivals and departures of the bus he’d have to take, and I’ve soon memorized its schedule, but an hour goes by without any sign of him. If something really did come up with Orlando, he might not be able to get away at all. I decide to check one more record book before giving up on him.

  And that’s where I find the reference to Pietro de Laura, commettitore of pietre dure, employed in the workshops of Francesco I de’ Medici. It’s a record of a lawsuit, filed on the second of May, 1581, against the nobleman Lorenzo Barbagianni for the defloratio of Pietro’s fourteen-year-old daughter, Ginevra, and a claim for restitution for the crime committed—either for Barbagianni to marry the girl or for him to provide a substantial enough dowry to compensate for her nonvirginal state on the marriage market. I recall Frieda saying last night at dinner that these were the options for the family of a rape victim, but still it’s shocking to see them in print.

  The witnesses to be called in the case were the girl herself, a nun of the order of Santa Catalina, and one of Barbagianni’s servants who claimed to have cleaned up the blood shed by the distr
aught girl as she fled from Barbagianni’s bedroom. “Such an abundance of blood,” I read, “that she left a trail all along the hall and down the steps, on the floor of the rotunda, and through the ingresso where she fled through the front door and then down the dirt road of the cypress viale toward the Convent of Santa Catalina where,” according to the nun who gave testimony, “she stained the floor of the vestibule with her blood.”

  Such a lot of blood that it’s hard to imagine how the girl was still standing, let alone how she made it all the way down the viale to the Convent of Santa Catalina. It’s hard not to wonder whether the accounts of the blood are exaggerated. I’m familiar enough with Renaissance accounts of rape to know that evidence of blood was key to proving that the violated girl was a virgin—as if the rape was somehow a lesser crime if the victim had had sex before. Of course, in Renaissance terms the proof of her virginity was so important because that was the marketable commodity that had been stolen by the rape. Ginevra’s father was seeking restitution for that commodity—through either marriage with the perpetrator himself or a sizable dowry so the damaged goods could still be sold to someone else.

  I page through the rest of the witness accounts to find Ginevra’s testimony. I’ve just found it when something makes me look up and see Bruno’s reflection in the window. I turn around, wondering how long he’s been standing behind me.