Glittering Promises

by Lisa T. Bergren

  “Signore Feliza mi permetta di presentarle Miss Cora Diehl Kensington,” Will said. “Miss Diehl Kensington, meet Signore Feliza.”

  “How do you do, Signore?”

  “Very well,” he said, obviously proud of this little bit of English. “And you?”

  “Very well,” I said.

  He seemed to remember there were others with us then and reached out to shake Antonio’s hand and warmly greet the rest, one at a time. Then he cast a look of concern to Will again. “Dove è Stuart?”

  “Sono davvero spiacente di dirti che Stuart è morto più di un mese fa,” Will said.

  Even I could figure out that the two were conversing about Stuart’s passing. The man’s face contorted with sorrow. Then he said, “Vieni, vieni,” gesturing us into a small apartment. He and Will went on chatting. I decided that Will was telling our host about Stuart’s death in Carcassonne, and after a moment, the two laughed over a shared memory, Antonio and Pascal joining in.

  I didn’t feel left out. I loved hearing the Italian language. And loved it even more when my man, as I’d earlier referred to Will, spoke it with such ease. It made me remember what had first attracted me to him—his knowledge, his ease, his demeanor, no matter what corner of the world he was in.

  All of us stood about in our host’s cramped little apartment, awkwardly taking up every square inch of room. Signore Feliza offered us coffee, gesturing to the stove, or wine, waving to a fat raffia-wrapped bottle. But Will declined and plunged in to what I guessed was his requested favor—still a mystery to me.

  The man paused and tilted his head one way and then the other. He shrugged his shoulders, obviously uncomfortable with the idea. Will’s tone changed to add a note of pleading, invoking my name first and then Stuart’s, apparently calling in his favors—or his uncle’s. Signore Feliza sighed heavily and then lifted one finger. “Solo questa volta,” he said. Then he turned to lead us through the end of his apartment, past a neatly made single bed, then down a narrow hallway.

  Will wriggled his eyebrows at me and rubbed his hands together. I smiled over his self-satisfied pleasure. What was ahead seemed to excite him more than any other monument we’d seen yet. And judging from his face, Antonio, too. A thrill went through me as I stepped over a high threshold and through a small door.

  It opened into a massive storeroom, and judging from the height, I wondered if David might be directly behind the far wall. Shelf after wooden shelf held what appeared to be a hundred gravestone sculptures—men and women prone as if resting. Some of the women had veils over their faces and bodies—all carved out of stone. On the next shelf were a hundred busts, likenesses mostly of men, once prominent, now gone for decades or even centuries. Some had noses missing, but most were remarkably well preserved. I passed by them, a little unnerved by their wide, blank white eyes.

  We reached the end of the shelves. In the very back, across the entire wall of the store room, were four massive blocks of white marble, each much taller than Will and wider than he could span with his arms. I gasped, seeing the first figure, nothing but a head, neck, and shoulder emerging from one of the blocks. Signore Feliza pulled off a canvas tarp from the next, and then the next, showing us each one.

  Will stood beside me, hands on hips, mouth in a big smile. “It’s even better than I remembered.” He shared a look with Antonio, and the older man smiled back.

  “Always a gift to see them here,” Antonio said, nodding in thanks to Signore Feliza.

  “What are they?” Vivian asked in wonder, walking around the third block for a better view.

  “They’re Michelangelo’s unfinished sculptures,” Will said. “Depictions of slaves, once meant for Pope Julius’s elaborate tomb. They were supposed to be some of the fifty that Julius wanted, but the pope died sooner than expected, and the funding never came together to complete them. Two that were completed were in the Louvre in Paris. Do you remember seeing them?”

  I nodded, but the Louvre, in its vastness, had been overwhelming. What came to me was only a dim memory. And I much preferred these sculptures still emerging, as if I could see the old master at work with his chisel and hammer, allowing each figure to find its way out of the stone.

  “This one, they call the Bearded Slave,” Antonio said. “It is the most finished of these four that remain.”

  And indeed it was. I liked the contrast of rough, untouched marble against the smooth finish of skin across shoulder, chest, and thigh. A wide band bound the slave, and his not-quite-finished face looked up and to the left, as if spying a far-off hopeful dream. Far more marble was at his back, waiting to be broken away. But my eyes were drawn to the next figure, in a narrower block.

  “This is the Young Slave,” Will said, stepping past it. “In the contrapposto pose.”

  “And that means…” Hugh said.

  “See how he has most of his weight on one foot, and that throws his shoulders?” Will returned, emulating the figure. “How does that make him appear?”

  “Relaxed,” Hugh said.

  “Rather bored, in a way,” Lillian said.

  “Indeed,” Will said, staring up at the block. “Perhaps he’s grown up as a slave. He seems settled with his lot in life, doesn’t he?”

  “And this?” I asked, moving to the third.

  “They call him Atlas, since he seems to bear the weight of the world,” Will said.

  I smiled, because he was right. All that could be seen of the sculpture was the man’s legs; his muscled belly; strong, wide chest; and burly arms. But his head and shoulders disappeared into the depths of the stone forever. “Why did Michelangelo never come back to these?” I asked in wonder, a part of me dying to see them complete. And yet to see them in this state was a wonder too.

  “Other commissions. Paid commissions. Even Michelangelo had to meet the bills.”

  We exchanged a smile of understanding. He took my hand and led me to the last one. “And this—this is my favorite. It’s called the Awakening Slave.’” He said no more, simply waited while we looked on. I could see why it was his favorite. The figure seemed partially alive. Vibrant. Writhing, flexing, straining.

  “Michelangelo saw himself as freeing his figures from the stone,” Will said lowly, chin in hand. “But does not this one feel as if he’s intent on freeing himself?”

  “It does,” I said, staring at the figure’s wide chest. There was such raw power in it, I half expected him to begin moving, as if somehow, miraculously alive.

  “He reminds me of you,” Will whispered in my ear.

  I started and peered at the figure anew. What reminded Will of me in it? Was I enslaved? Struggling to be free? Of what?

  “Why are these not in a museum?” Vivian asked.

  He laughed under his breath. “There is disagreement among the curators. Half find the stones vital, and half consider them trash. So here they sit. If my uncle hadn’t befriended Signore Feliza, the caretaker here, we would never have seen them either.”

  “It’s tragic, really,” I said, practically whispering. “Out of all we’ve seen, I believe they are my favorites.”

  “Mine too,” Will said, and we shared a tender smile. “Come. We should leave Signore Feliza before our intrusion is discovered by the curator.”

  “Grazie,” I said to the man, heartfelt in my thanks, as were the others, and he waved a dismissive hand in the air, but his eyes said he was glad to share the figures. I wondered if perhaps he spent month after month near them, never uncovering them from their shrouds, forgetting the wonder they were.

  We said our good-byes and left through his apartment. We emerged on the street, which was now several degrees cooler and darker than when we’d entered, and Will leaned in to share a word with Antonio. The older man’s eyebrows lifted, and he smiled and nodded.

  “It’s been a full day,” Will said to the group. “Antonio and Pascal are going to see you to the train and back to Siena, but I’m hoping to persuade Miss Cora to stay with me for a bit longer.”
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br />   It was my turn to be surprised, but I tried to hide it as Felix scowled at his old friend. “Really, McCabe? Do you think it entirely proper? Without a chaperone at this hour?”

  “Not entirely,” Will admitted, with a crooked smile. “But I promise to be none but a gentleman in your sister’s company.”

  Felix turned to face me and Will, arms crossed. “See that you don’t break that promise,” he said solemnly, making me smile. I’d always wanted a big brother… I kissed Vivian and Lillian and Nell on the cheeks, and they were off, guarded by their guide and a detective as well as Hugh, Felix, and Andrew.

  “If Signore Feliza’s is what you had up one sleeve,” I said to Will, taking his arm, “I cannot wait to see what’s up your other one.”

  He waggled his eyebrows and smiled. “Are you up for an adventure? Or are you weary? We could simply find a sleepy trattoria on the back streets and share a cozy supper if you’re too taxed.”

  I smiled back into his eyes, full of mischief. “Oh, no,” I said. “I’m curious as all get-out to know what you wish to show me.”

  CHAPTER 10

  William

  “So,” Cora said, “why did you say the Awakening Slave reminded you of me?”

  Will smiled down at her. “Perhaps it was his biceps…”

  She laughed and shook her head. “No, really.”

  “Why do you think?” he pressed back. “Was there anything in the sculpture that reminded you of yourself?”

  “Besides the biceps?” she said with an impish grin. She looked up to the red-tiled rooftops and evening sky, a pale blue above them, while Will kept an eye out for any reporters. The only trouble with escorting Cora was that she stood out in a crowd of southern Italians, with her fine clothing, blonde hair, and blue eyes. Everywhere they went, they drew curious looks. How long until someone connected her to the woman in Italy’s own newspapers of late? It’d become a mystery, these last days, Antonio had told him. The Case of the Missing Heiress.

  “I think,” she said at last, “that you see me as freeing myself of the shackles that once bound me. Of claiming my identity, as a Diehl, as a Kensington, and as a daughter of God—and exploring what that means.” When he didn’t say anything, she added, “No?”

  “Yes,” he said. “I’ve seen you grow in so many ways this summer, Cora. And I know that some of it has felt like freeing yourself of stone. It’s been work, but you’ve done it. I admire that in you.”

  Once Cora had found her footing with her siblings—about the time they reached France—she’d seemed to blossom. Or had it been meeting Pierre that helped her over the hurdle? Thoughts of the man—and his promise to meet again with them in Rome—darkened Will’s sunny mood. Did she still think of him? Wonder about him? Hope for that day of his return—or dread it? Did she wonder what he might buy her as presents? Wonder if he might have reciprocated if she had given him as fine a gift as the watch?

  “So why the sour face?” Cora asked, startling him out of his thoughts. “Do you not approve of this awakening slave?”

  “Wh-what? Oh,” he said, shaking his head. “Sorry. I’d moved on to sour thoughts.” He instantly regretted letting them creep in… At last they were together, alone, and he would ruin it by bringing up the watch again? Or Pierre?

  “Care to share it?” she asked, leaning toward him as they walked across the cobblestones.

  “No,” he said quickly, more harshly than he meant to. She visibly recoiled. “Forgive me, but I can’t.”

  “That’s all right,” she said. But she stared ahead, not looking up and around as she had a moment before.

  Inwardly, he groaned. She felt cut out, and justifiably so. “Look, I was only thinking of Pierre,” he confessed.

  “Oh,” she said, her delicate eyebrows shooting upward. “What brought him to mind?”

  He put his hand over hers and slowed his stride. “I was thinking about how you’ve blossomed on our journey,” he said quietly. “Like Michelangelo’s sculpture back there, breaking free of your past and embracing your future. And I was hoping it was because of what you’ve seen, experienced at my side. Not because of meeting…Pierre. Or reaching a place of stature in terms of wealth.”

  She ducked her head as if in thought, and they walked in silence for a bit. Then she said, “Will, honestly, it has all impacted me—the entire journey and every person involved. But it is you by my side now, right?”

  “Forever,” he said gently. “I hope.”

  She gave him a soft smile. “As do I.” And the promise in her clear blue eyes made his heart surge with pleasure.

  “Forgive me, my love, for casting a shadow over such a brilliant day.”

  “I understand,” she said lightly.

  They entered through the tall doors of the duomo, into the echoing sanctuary. They’d already done a quick tour of the cathedral and baptistery with the group earlier in the day.

  “You remember,” she said slowly, teasing him as they walked beneath the dome again, “that we were here earlier, right? Or are you like Hugh in thinking that one church is like another, and you forgot we already toured this?”

  “I wanted to show you the best part of this whole structure,” he said, leaning close enough to smell the sweet scent of her hair, the subtle bit of lemon verbena on her skin. It made him long to pull her close, out and away from the crowds. To kiss her… He remembered her in his arms, in the water near the Cinque Terre, her hair spread in glorious waves—

  “Will?” she asked, apparently for the second time.

  “Oh, sorry,” he said, feeling himself blush to be caught so lost in thought. “Come.” He took Cora’s gloved hand and led her to a side doorway. He spoke to the doorman and quietly paid him with a wad of lira, and the man allowed the two of them to slip through. They paused at the bottom of a long set of wooden stairs, and Will turned back to Cora. “This was my favorite place to go in Florence as a boy. My uncle brought me up these stairs the very first time we came here.”

  “Where does it lead?”

  “You’ll see,” he said with a grin. He led her upward, and five flights later, they emerged onto a small walkway that ran around the circumference of the base of the dome roof. From here, they could see the fresco paintings up close.

  “That’s odd,” she said.

  “What?”

  “They look distorted. All out of proportion. But from down below, they looked fine.”

  “Part of the mastery, isn’t it? The painters had to figure out how it would appear below, and paint them wrongly, so they would appear right below. It’s the same with David. If we were to stare at his eyes close up, they’d be looking in two separate directions.”

  “Amazing,” she said, stepping down the narrow wooden walk.

  “Careful,” he warned, lifting his left hand to guard her as she looked upward to her right and leaned precariously close to the rail.

  She glanced nervously to her side. To the church floor far below. “Well, that would be a nasty fall, wouldn’t it?”

  “Indeed,” he said, swallowing an inner shudder at the thought of her falling. He shook his head. It was with some relief that they reached the next door on the far side and he told her to go through it. They entered a new stairwell that was rapidly growing dark as the sun set outside. He hoped there were some candles above—he should have considered it earlier. But they were this far. To turn back now would mean missing what he wanted to show Cora most of all.

  They climbed one winding flight of stairs after another. “The dome that we’re circumventing was a marvel at the time. A dome without external buttresses to keep it from collapsing under its own weight had not been built since antiquity. And this was to be even larger than the Pantheon’s in Rome.”

  “What’d they have against buttresses?” Cora asked.

  “They considered them ugly, and since their political enemies used them, the city’s fathers refused to do so. And it was a break with the Gothic pattern and the first of many of the Renaissan
ce’s hallmarks. And yet no one could figure out how to raise such a massive dome without buttresses. At the time, even the mason’s mortar took several days to cure, and in that time, the weight put a tremendous amount of stress on the scaffolding, to say nothing of the stress to the structure long-term. So it remained unbuilt for more than a hundred years. Then came Brunelleschi and Ghiberti, competing architects, toward the end of the fourteenth century.

  “Some say the two were given a test. Whomever could get an egg to stand on one end on a piece of marble would get the commission. Ghiberti tried and failed. Brunelleschi took a long look at the egg, then cracked one end, making it stand in place.”

  “That’s cheating!” Cora said.

  Will smiled. “In a way. The other architects grumbled, saying they could certainly have done the same, to which Brunelleschi said, ‘Well, yes, and if you could see my dome plans, you, too, could build a dome for Santa Maria del Fiore.’”

  “He was so confident?”

  Will shrugged. “Either confident or bluffing. But he managed to put more than four million bricks into this dome, and it’s obviously still standing today.”

  “I can’t imagine building such a structure. But I imagine you could.”

  “It must’ve been glorious to be an architect in such an era. Brunelleschi even invented a unique hoisting machine to get the bricks up to the masons. And he was granted one of the first patents ever in order to protect his idea.”

  “He must’ve been brilliant.”

  “Brilliant or simply willing to try.”

  “Likely both,” Cora said. “I think I may have many willing-to-try moments ahead of me, working with my father. And Andrew Morgan.”

  “Indeed you will.” Upward they went, single-file, hunched over in places in order to fit through. “I confess this was far easier as a child,” he huffed after turning a particularly tight corner.

  “I would imagine,” Cora said, similarly out of breath. But her eyes shone with excitement, and he knew he’d made the right choice, bringing her. They climbed for another fifteen minutes before finally the stairs ended and they stood on a small platform. “Ready?” Will asked, his hand on the old brass doorknob as he looked down at Cora, who was only partially visible in the dark of the stairwell.