by David Hewson
They turned the corner into the small cobbled piazza. The early Renaissance façade of the Church of Sant’Agostino stood above them, its pale travertine, visibly plundered from the Colosseum some five hundred years before, now luminescent in the orange streetlights. He followed her up the long, broad flight of stone stairs, through into the vast echoing nave. Instinctively, he turned to his left, towards the painting he’d seen countless times, and knew would see afresh through her eyes.
“No,” she said, and took his elbow, guiding him away. “I didn’t bring you here for that.”
The Madonna of Loreto, an exquisite Caravaggio Virgin with the infant Jesus in her arms, the holy pair framed in the doorway of a simple stone house, staring down at two grimy pilgrims, stood in the gloom at the edge of his vision, like a sombre, glowing beacon.
“If he worshipped,” Agata said, “and I believe he did, he worshipped here. They all came to this place. The artists and the poets. And worse. This was an altar for the fallen. They had need of it most of all. Where would the Church be without sinners?”
She turned to face the entrance and he did the same, seeing the sculpture there, a pale study of two figures illuminated by a sea of candles.
“This was the whores’ church, too,” Agata Graziano told him. “The seat of worship for what was once Ortaccio. The mistress of Cesare Borgia is buried here. So were some of the most famous prostitutes of Rome, not by the Muro Torto, where the law dictated. You won’t find their tombs here anymore, though. All gone, out of a sense of . . .” She frowned. “. . . decorum. I’m just a humble sister with a fondness for art. I know no more of your world than I wish to. But this puzzles me. That men should want a thing so badly, and then feel filled with shame when they achieve it. Fillide felt no shame. Why should she? Look, Nic, look closely . . .”
He’d never spent much time on the figures there at all, though a dim memory told him that they had some special significance for the ordinary women of Rome. Sometimes, when visiting the Caravaggio, he’d seen them slip up to the larger statue, the Madonna, almost furtively, place an offering in the box, light a candle, cross themselves. Then, with one last sideways glance, step gently forward and touch the silver slipper that protected the Virgin’s foot.
He stared at the placid, beautiful woman carved from stone, seated majestically beneath the half-shell cupola of the alcove, with the child standing, one leg on her lap, one on her throne. How could he have been so blind? Above her hair, lit by the forest of blazing candles in the niche, rose a starry halo. Around her chest, tight beneath her breasts, ran a silver garland. The child was magnificent, rising to face the world, a bright, brave metal robe girding his waist. Wreathed in light, surrounded by flowers and mementos, messages and photographs of children, so many of them, she was beyond Christian iconography, timeless, like Venus displaying the infant Cupid, a prize, a miracle in her arms.
“What do women pray for when they come here? When they touch her feet like that?” he asked.
“Again, you are asking the wrong person. This is the Madonna del Parto, the Madonna of motherhood, of birth. It’s a belief that predates my faith. That through womanhood comes the fecundity of mankind. So I imagine they pray for the child they are bearing or hope to.” She hesitated. “Even a woman like Fillide, perhaps, though a Christian sensibility gave her generation the notion, the stain, of sin too.”
He thought of the painting hidden in the studio, its message lurking beneath so many surface deceptions. And he remembered Emily and the child they had lost. There were no prayers to ease that pain, no candles and flowers, or the worn, comforting touch of a statue’s silver foot shining in the gloomy belly of an ancient church marooned in its own quiet piazza, a few steps from the choking bustle of modern Rome.
“When they came here,” Agata asked, speaking in a loud, firm voice, the way the priest did at Emily’s funeral, when all else whispered, “what do you think they saw? Del Monte and Caravaggio. Galileo and Fillide Melandroni. What did they seek?”
“Disegno,” Nic replied simply.
The design of God in us.
He was unable to avoid her fixed, interested stare.
“You are a good pupil, Nic Costa,” Agata Graziano declared with a sudden serious turn. “I only wish I were a better teacher.”
He began to object.
“No,” she interjected. “A good teacher would have some answers.”
“I could ask an easier question,” he suggested. There was a moment’s hesitation before he found the courage to say it. “Who are you? Where did you come from?”
All sense of amusement departed her face. This dark, austere, yet pretty woman, hugging herself tightly in the long black coat of the nun she was not, looked back at him, suddenly uncertain of herself.
“What interest is this of yours?” she responded.
“I’m curious. It’s part of the job. Most of the job, to be honest with you.”
“Well, there is nothing to know. I was one abandoned child among many. They thought my mother was a woman of the kind . . .” She looked around the church. “. . . who would once have dreamed she might enter a place like this, and doubtless would never have been pretty enough or rich enough. My father was a seaman. He was African, I think. From Ethiopia. That is all I know and all I wish to know. The sisters took me in, raised me, and then, when they saw something worth cultivating, set me on this present course through the simple medium of education. My story is wholly unexceptional, for which I am grateful.” A shadow of doubt crossed her face. “Now, for a day or two, I am something else. One of you. Thanks to your inspector.”
“Another of Leo’s gifts.”
She looked a little cross. “He told you?”
Costa was aware that he had done something wrong. “Just the basics.”
“Why on earth would he do that?” she asked, not expecting an answer. “In another man I would have said it came from misplaced pride. But not him. Never. How odd.”
She pointed a short, commanding finger at his chest. “What Leo did was charity, and charity is best performed in silence. I am grateful for it, and wish to hear no more.”
She gazed at the statue: the bright, gleaming Madonna, an older goddess, too, perhaps, with the magical child in her arms. There was something there, Nic thought, something that was beyond even Agata Graziano.
“We are done with the dead,” she declared, and set off for the door. “For the time being anyway.”
Costa hesitated, staring at the statue, thinking of Emily. Thinking of what it might be like to be in the same room as the man who had taken her life so casually.
Leo Falcone demanded a high and difficult price of everyone he knew. Costa wondered, for a moment, whether he could pay it, whether he could enter a room with the men he knew to be the Ekstasists and act as if nothing were wrong.
“Nic?” Agata asked from the door. “Are you coming or not?”
He had never said this to Falcone, but the suit the inspector had ordered to be brought from the farmhouse was the one Costa had worn for their wedding.
“I’m coming,” he answered.
One
THIRTY MINUTES LATER THEY STOOD ON THE STEPS OF the Palazzo Malaspina. The entrance dominated much of the narrow seventeenth-century street that led, in a few short minutes, to the Mausoleum of Augustus, a place Costa had yet to find the courage to revisit. The Vicolo del Divino Amore was even closer around the corner, as was the Barberini’s small external studio, where the canvas of Venus with her satyrs now resided. Everything about this case, it seemed to Costa, was contained in the small, secretive warren of dark, dingy alleys here, the labyrinth that was once Ortaccio.
They stopped at the foot of the curving stone staircase. A heraldic decoration ran the length of each side: a stone shield half a metre high, divided into two halves, one stippled, one plain. A bare angular tree in the centre with three short horizontal branches on the left and two on the right. From each emerged sharp spines, top and bottom of the bra
nches. Mala spina. The bad thorn.
Agata Graziano looked at him, a shadow of guilt in her charming face.
“I lied a little, Nic,” she confessed. “This isn’t simply the Barberini’s Christmas party. We’re sharing it with one of the private galleries too. It’s about money, of course. We can’t afford it on our own anymore.”
He thought of Falcone and realised he should have expected this.
“Let me guess. The Buccafusca Gallery.”
“Yes,” she replied, impressed. “You’re quite the detective. How did you know?”
“Falcone told me. After a fashion.”
“Ah. He is an . . . interesting man. He likes you. I can see that.”
“Interesting,” Costa agreed.
“I merely wish you to know that some of the things you see here will be Buccafusca’s,” she added. “Not ours.”
“I can’t wait,” Costa replied, and then followed her through the front doors into a grand marbled reception area set beneath an alcove with a carved scalloped half shell many times the size of that over the Madonna del Parto. He watched the private security men, who seemed to know Agata Graziano, nod gravely and take off their caps before ushering the pair of them into a square, echoing hall of pillars and shining stone façades, an extravagant lobby more in keeping with that of an embassy than a private home. A palace like this was, for Costa, a rare blank sheet. The home of the Malaspina dynasty—now occupied, as far as he knew, by its sole surviving member—was a sprawling complex that covered a vast area of this part of Rome, and never opened its doors to the public, not even for a day.
The place was a wonder; the crowds would have flocked there. Smaller mansions, such as the Palazzo Altemps, had been acquired by the state and turned into grand museums, former aristocratic homes that were as much exhibits themselves as the rich and varied collections they held. The Malaspina clan had escaped such a fate. They maintained their secret hidden lives behind the soot-blackened walls of a city fortress that was dark and forbidding from the outside and full of light and beauty within.
Beyond the entrance was a vast cobbled courtyard, with a large statue of Cupid stretching his bow at its centre. On all sides rose three floors, the first two open to the elements, with an arched colonnade on the ground, and a balustrade balcony on the second. Lights blazed from every level, silhouetting a sea of bodies talking animatedly, members of a society to which Costa knew he would never belong. He felt hopelessly out of place, and perhaps she saw that, because Agata Graziano took his arm for one brief moment, and said, “Don’t worry. I’ll look after you if you look after me.”
“Agreed,” he murmured, and then they pushed their way through the first ground-floor hall, where a noisy throng of people gossiped. The Buccafusca Gallery insignia, a black mouth, open in greed or ecstasy, it was unclear which, appeared everywhere; all the objects surrounding them appeared modern and ugly.
“Salut,” Agata declared, grabbing two glasses, orange juice for her, prosecco for him, as a scantily clad waitress fought her way past. “I may join you in that before long.”
He cast his eyes around the room: bright, shiny people, beautiful, fixed on each other, looking as if they owned the world.
“So this is how the upper classes live,” he observed. “I always wondered what I was missing. Perhaps . . .”
He could see them now, across the room, and the sight of them blended with the images in his head: of Rosa Prabakaran’s photographs, and that dreadful experience close by a long-dead emperor’s tomb, just a short walk away from where they now stood in this strange, artificial party.
Looking at the four—Malaspina, Buccafusca, Castagna, and the stocky, uncomfortable Nino Tomassoni by their side—he realised that any of the taller men could, in theory, have been the hooded figure. But there was something about Malaspina—the commanding, stiff stance, the smug assumption of superiority—that convinced Costa he was the man, could only be the man.
“Are you comfortable with the aristocracy?” Agata Graziano asked, watching him.
“I don’t have much experience,” he admitted.
“Well,” she said, shrugging, and beginning to fight her way through the sea of silk-clad bodies with a jabbing elbow and a forceful determination, “let’s start.”
Two
CHRISTMAS,” FRANCO MALASPINA DECLARED, “THE SAME thing every year. A party for the Barberini. A line of cheques to be written. Everyone presumes on my charity, Sister Agata. Why did I do this? Tell me. Please.”
Agata laughed. It was a deliberate taunt, cheerfully delivered, though Costa felt the atmosphere was not as cordial as Malaspina pretended. The three men by his side had shambled away when they approached. The trio seemed unhappy, uncomfortable, as if they had been bickering, stopping only because of the arrival of company.
Malaspina possessed the kind of too-perfect Mediterranean tan that seemed to be de rigueur for a certain kind of young Roman aristocrat. His craggy face, marked by a prominent Roman nose, was intelligent but disengaged, as if everything around him was of no great significance. Buccafusca and Castagna were of similar build but less striking in appearance, with the dark hair and pale, serious faces of bankers or bureaucrats, and a manner that was diffident in the extreme. Tomassoni, short, overweight, and sweating visibly under the hot lights, looked as if he didn’t belong in the place and couldn’t wait to get out. All three of them had now reassembled a few metres away, close to another strange modern sculpture, talking quietly, furtively, among themselves.
“You do this because you are a good man at heart, in spite of all your pretences, Franco,” Agata replied happily. “One day you’ll be married and have children of your own. Then you’ll think differently. Then you’ll remember Christmas as it was when you were a child.”
Malaspina looked her up and down. “I spent Christmas with servants,” he complained. “It’s not the same. Besides, of course I’m a good man. Don’t you read the papers? I can show you the accounts if you like.” He hesitated, staring now at Costa. “So why have you brought a policeman to interrogate me?”
“I’m not here to interrogate anyone,” Costa replied politely. “Sister Agata and I were working together. She merely suggested I come along. If this offends you . . .”
“Why should it offend me?”
“Some people are not fond of us . . .”
“Not me!” Malaspina raised a glass. “To law and order. But order most of all. You’ll drink to that, won’t you?”
Costa sipped his prosecco, unable to take his eyes off the man. Franco Malaspina was not what he expected. In flesh, close up, he seemed amiable, larger than life, and yet ill at ease, with them and with himself, both forthright and subtly reticent. Costa had, he was forced to admit, no idea what to make of him. The voice didn’t ring a bell. The physique, the posture . . . these could have matched many in Rome.
“Of course, Agata,” Malaspina continued, “if I marry, I should marry you. Imagine the publicity. I finally find the last worthwhile virgin left in Rome.”
She said nothing.
Malaspina looked at Costa and tapped the side of his nose. “Agata is a fan of Dante, as are we all, though for different reasons. She sees herself as Beatrice. Beautiful, chaste, alluring. And dead.”
He laughed at his own joke. No one else did.
“You are too intelligent to make such a foolish comparison,” Agata objected. “You know Dante as well as any of us. He loved Beatrice, and she died. Through that he discovered there was a greater love than the physical. A spiritual love.”
Costa caught his breath. Something in Agata’s words had produced a moment of bleakness in Franco Malaspina’s eyes. It was only there for a second, but it was unmistakable, and also unreadable. Anger? Sadness? Grief?
“You sound like the Pope,” the man groaned. “This is Christmas. Even for a pagan like me, it’s not a time to talk of death.”
Agata nodded in agreement. “I’m meant to sound like the Holy Father, aren’t I?”
/>
“No. It’s a waste, Agata. A beautiful woman. Someone with feelings. I know you have them. You know too. We’re all human, the same little animals with the same desires and fears. What’s the problem?”
He stared into her eyes.
“Be like the rest of us, bold now and chaste afterwards,” Malaspina murmured, watching her draw back to stand closer to Costa. “Who’s to know? Is that all your god is? Just a spy in the bedroom?”
“Franco does this to me all the time,” she told Costa, half serious, half joking. “It’s one of his tricks.”
“Tricks,” he answered softly. “You bring a policeman into my palace and accuse me of tricks.” Franco Malaspina gazed at Costa, still and confident of himself. His teeth were unnaturally perfect. His eyes, bright, unafraid, glittering, held him. “Why are you here?” he asked.
“I told you,” Costa insisted. “I was invited to a party. Nothing more. If it’s a problem . . .”
The man took a deep breath, as if disappointed by the mild reply. “You’re the one whose wife died. I saw it somewhere. In the paper, I believe. They took pictures of you at the funeral. How does that feel?”
“Franco!” Agata intervened. “Don’t be so rude.”
“But I’m curious,” he protested. “He has no need to answer. Not if it offends him.”
“I’m not offended,” Costa cut in. “How does what feel exactly?”
“Being followed by scum like those reporters. Nosy bastards, invading your life. When you’ve done nothing wrong. I’ve had them too.”
“Not like this,” Costa replied sourly.
“No.” And the man had changed again. He seemed genuinely upset. Almost penitent. “It was wrong of me to presume in that way. I’m sorry. To lose the woman you love . . . I should never have asked. It was rude of me. Here . . .”
Malaspina’s right hand, the one Costa believed, when he entered that room, had taken the life of Emily, was extended now. “Shake, please,” Malaspina said. “Accept my apologies and my condolences. It’s the fate of everyone to be bereaved one day.” That strange, lost expression crossed his face once more. “I am merely fortunate never to have lost anyone who mattered to me. An absentee father scarcely counts.”