You know me well enough to see I’m leaving something out. As you predicted I’ve met my match. It makes me cringe but there it is. The inaccessible Dr. Trovato, you must be thinking, hooked at last. True to form, I’ve picked a person who is so staggeringly inaccessible (or he has picked me, or some other force has picked us both, but now I’m sounding medieval!) that there’s no chance—well, almost no chance—it will succeed. Because, you see, not only is he dead, he’s from another century. He was dying the last time I saw him, dying of the Plague, the way I almost did. But he didn’t have modern American medicine to pull him through. I gave him a taste of it, but was it enough? The obvious thing to do would be to try to find out whether he survived, and if he did, to go back for him. And if I went back to find him and he was dead, then what? Would I wish I had stayed in my own time? I’m not sure, believe it or not. I felt more at home there and then than I’ve ever felt, but I can’t tell how much of that was him. Maybe I’m crazy, but this particular insanity revolves around the truth, as improbable as it may be.
When I finished writing, the page was wet from tears.
The next morning I went back to Fabbri again. He seemed inordinately happy to see me; it was possible I was the only person he’d seen in months.
“I’m looking for a Giovanni de’ Medici,” I said, “who paid his taxes in Florence in 1345 and died in 1347. What other sources might be useful? I’d like to know more about his family.”
Fabbri’s pale forehead furrowed with thought. “You might search for birth and death records from Firenze’s archives.”
“Can I get the information without leaving Siena?”
Fabbri looked pained that his resources were insufficient for my purposes. “We can arrange an interlibrary loan if you’d like.”
I liked, but unfortunately it would take three or four days to get a copy of the pages of interest. Now that the question of Giovanni de’ Medici’s family was on hold, I was free to pursue the answer to the question I’d been afraid to ask.
* * *
Donata’s office was on the sixth floor, and there was no elevator. By the time I reached the top of the last set of steep marble steps, I was panting, and when Donata opened her door to my knock she looked alarmed.
“Beatrice, you look gray.”
“Out of shape,” I gasped.
“Oh, the stairs.” Donata smiled with a trace of impishness. “They separate out students who have something important to say from those just looking for a better grade on the midterm. The pretenders give up.”
I collapsed into a leather armchair and sat for a moment, recovering. “I’m a well-meaning visitor but I need a beverage.” Donata laughed and went to fill a glass of water from a hand-painted pitcher on a credenza behind her desk. She watched indulgently while I gulped.
“Now that you are well-hydrated, please tell me, Beatrice: to what may I attribute this surprise visit?” Donata sat down in a comfortable chair across from me. I imagined that with her students she might sit behind the desk.
“I’m trying to find out about a painter who lived and worked in Siena in the 1340s. His name was Gabriele Beltrano Accorsi.” Lived. Was. Speaking about him in the past tense made a wave of sorrow rise up in me so acutely I had to pause for a few seconds. I could feel Donata scrutinizing me.
“Accorsi? He was a pupil of Simone Martini, in the years before Martini left for Avignon.” She pulled a massive text from the shelf and flipped through it quickly. “Yes, here he is. He was born in . . . 1311. Would that be the same Accorsi you’re thinking of?”
My heart was pounding. “That sounds right.”
I came into the world three years to the day after Duccio di Buoninsegna’s Maestà was carried through the streets to the Duomo by a great and reverent crowd. . . .
Donata interrupted my thoughts. “Now, date of death, let’s see.”
I held my breath. She was still looking down the page.
. . . not October 1347, please not October 1347 . . .
“Hmm, no date of death. I guess it’s not known. This book would include it if it were.”
I exhaled.
“Few of his paintings have been found, but we assume that more were painted than survived. Do you want to read this? There’s a bit more.” She handed me the heavy volume and I pored over the one-paragraph entry. Born in Siena. No mention of his marriage, but a list of a few paintings attributed to him. The Saint Christopher painting I’d seen in the Duomo’s museum was on the list, the one in which I, or my look-alike, stood on the river’s edge. There was no mention of the painting I’d watched Gabriele labor over, the four angels on the Ospedale facade guiding Mary’s Assumption into heaven. I searched for a note about the Messina Ospedale altarpiece but didn’t find it. Did that mean it hadn’t been finished? Donata’s voice made me look up.
“I’m happy to do some additional research on Accorsi—one of Siena’s own, little-known painters—that’s my sort of subject. But it will take me a few days—I have a manuscript due to a publisher this week. Can you hold out until next Monday? The Guerrinis’ next meal may depend on this advance.”
“Research on a medieval fresco painter can hardly be considered an emergency,” I said, trying to sound lighthearted, “compared to feeding a family of five.”
“Why is Accorsi so compelling to you, if you don’t mind my asking?” Donata leaned back in her chair. She looked charmingly academic with her wire-rimmed glasses pushed up on her head, caught up in her golden hair. She wore a tweed skirt suit of muted pumpkin-colored wool and high brown leather boots. The outfit would have made me look like a Dunkin’ Donuts fall special, but on her it was gorgeous.
“He testified against a Florentine murderer and got himself into trouble.”
“And you think this relates to Siena’s failure to recover after the Plague, and her eventual loss to Florentine rule a hundred and fifty years later? I’m missing the connection.”
“So am I, but it may have something to do with the murderer’s family. He was a Medici. An early Medici, but still.”
Donata raised her eyebrows. “You would certainly make a splash in the academic world if you could prove it,” she said thoughtfully, “and most things don’t even cause a ripple. Medieval historians like to pretend we know everything there is to know when of course the reverse is true.”
“Well, I’m very grateful for your help.”
“Of course. But what am I looking for?”
What was I looking for? I want to know whether he’ll be alive if I go back to find him. I came up with a more sensible version of the question for her.
“I want to know what he painted after the Plague arrived in Siena, if he painted anything at all. Those post-Plague years, until the fall of the Nine in 1355, seem key to the story.” She looked at me curiously. I didn’t say, of course, that I wanted to know whether he’d survived the Plague.
“I’ll do what I can. But . . .”
“But?” I smiled brightly.
“You seem awfully passionate about this topic, for a neurosurgeon.” What did she hear or see in my manner that made her wonder?
“Former neurosurgeon.”
“So it’s gone that far?”
“I don’t have a return ticket.”
“Welcome to starving academia,” Donata said cheerfully. “At least you don’t have a family of five to feed. Yet.”
* * *
Now I had three projects on hold waiting for someone else’s help—finding out about tax records from the clerk, the missing journal at the Duomo’s lost and found, and Gabriele’s fate from Donata—and I felt restless and irritable. The heat was on in the house now, but wind got in through the old wood-frame windows. I felt a strange sense of déjà vu, imagining the house as I’d seen it in Gabriele’s time superimposed on the modern version I lived in now. I stayed home for New Year’s Eve, and spent New Year’s Day in a flurry of housecleaning just to make myself feel better. I took a look at the damaged wall in the kitchen. Getting
someone to fix it over the holidays was hopeless; Donata had recommended a contractor who said he could start mid-January. Looking at the chunks of loosened plaster, I thought I might be able to do some of it by myself, and, using one of Ben’s ancient metal kitchen spatulas, I started chipping away at the fragments. One big piece fell off, and I backed up, saving my toes. But when I looked at the hole I’d created I stopped and stared. On the wall underneath, the much older plaster wall, were lines in a faded brown—not mildew, but sinopia, the pigment used to draw out frescoes before they were painted. Suddenly I heard the bubble and hiss of my espresso boiling over and raced back to the stove to rescue it. With my heart pounding, I went back to chipping. After an hour I’d cleared a few feet of space, and could see I was right—it was a sketch of a man. It was not a perfect likeness, but the man’s features reminded me of Giovanni de’ Medici. I kept chipping until I’d bared most of the wall down to the original plaster. It wasn’t a coherent single painting, but a series of sketches. It must have been Gabriele’s studio—who else would have drawn on the wall on the top floor of Martellino’s house? Knowing that his hand, hundreds of years before, had touched the plaster, made the past seem suddenly closer. I wanted to touch it too, to narrow the centuries that divided us. Then I realized I’d been hacking away at a centuries-old work of art with a kitchen tool.
The man with the Giovanni-ish face was one of two talking outside a birthing room where a newborn was being bathed in a basin. The sight of the second man’s face made my heart skip a beat. This face reminded me of Signoretti—the medieval Signoretti. Why did they keep showing up side by side, this unlikely pair of noblemen? Was it just a coincidence? Was Gabriele just using the faces he knew? I wished I could ask him myself. I put down the spatula, which was now hopelessly bent, and went back to my coffee. It was cold but I drank it anyway, staring at the sketches.
A memory of Gabriele painting, holding a brush like an extension of his arm as he chewed his lower lip thoughtfully, filled my head. The thought that he might have died in the chapel where I’d left him in Messina was unbearable. I had to have that journal.
* * *
That evening, exhausted from my day with a plaster wall, I decided to go out for a drink. I sat down on a stool at the worn marble bar and ordered a sherry, feeling decadent. As I waited, I saw a familiar figure walk in the front door. His pale hair was flattened to his head when he took off his winter hat, and his slim stooped build reminded me of a parenthesis. For a few seconds I couldn’t place him out of context, and then I realized it was Fabbri from the university library. He saw me and waved, surprising me with his enthusiastic smile. People are sometimes very different when they’re not at work. I motioned to an empty stool and he joined me after shedding several layers of wool onto a coatrack by the door. I like to play a game of trying to guess what people are going to order and made a quick assessment. A gimlet, I thought as he gestured to the bartender, or something else quaintly old-fashioned. But he surprised me again by asking for an Absolut Citron kamikaze. You just never know.
“Dottoressa Trovato,” he said with a polite nod. He didn’t mention Gabriele’s journal, fortunately.
“Beatrice, please.”
“You know, it’s a funny coincidence I’ve found you here. I have your papers, copies from the library in Firenze. They came late today, but as I was on my way out the door I put them in my bag. The mailbox is so far from my office I didn’t want to go all the way back.” He handed me the sheaf of papers and then took an appreciative sip of his drink. I looked around me to make sure no one was watching before reading—I’d started to imagine Signoretti was following me everywhere, waiting for a misstep. But as I read through the pages, I forgot both my paranoia and my sherry. I saw Giovanni and Immacolata de’ Medici’s names immediately but found no mention of Iacopo’s birth, just a record of Giovanni and Immacolata’s only daughter, baptized Cristina.
“That’s odd.”
“Dottoressa?”
“Beatrice, please,” I said reflexively, reading over the pages again.
Fabbri had another sip of his drink, which was disappearing fast. I hoped he would be able to stay on his stool.
“I can’t find the person I was looking for. Just a different child, who died shortly after birth.” Could the tax records be wrong about Iacopo? I had that letter from Immacolata, about her son in the aftermath of his father’s execution. Maybe he’d been born later? The records extended several more years, but there was no mention of the birth of any Iacopo de’ Medici.
“Are the documents helpful?” The clerk had finished his drink and gestured to the bartender for another.
“Yes, quite. Thanks so much. I’m glad I ran into you.” I slid off my stool, forgetting the sherry.
“Your drink?”
“Oh, I’ve had plenty,” I said distractedly, leaving some cash for the bartender. I was about to leave, but remembering Gabriele’s skill at making everyone feel special, I stopped.
“You’ve been an enormous help,” I said. “I feel fortunate to be able to work with you.” He beamed—the Gabriele magic worked. I walked home in the dark, wondering where Iacopo had come from, if not his parents. If they were his parents.
* * *
With an empty weekend looming, I decided it was time to repay the Guerrinis’ hospitality and invite the whole family over for brunch, American style. Grocery shopping was challenging. It took me three hours to find a bottle of maple syrup, and six ounces cost the equivalent of twenty dollars. Bacon took less time, though I wasn’t familiar with the packaging and almost bought prosciutto by mistake. The ingredients for pancakes were easy.
Brunch was a huge success, if a messy one. I sat everyone in the dining room, out of sight of the kitchen. I wanted to show Donata what I’d found, ideally privately, after we ate.
Felice and Gianni were allowed to pour their own syrup and overdid it extravagantly. Sebastiano had a fistful of pancake in each hand and syrup on nearly every item of his clothing and all his exposed skin by the end of the meal. Donata and Ilario oohed and aahhed appreciatively about the unknown delights of American cuisine. We finished a triple recipe, and I was gratified to see the slim Ilario surreptitiously unbuttoning his pants under the table.
Ilario had promised the kids a trip to a medieval Christmas pageant in the Campo, and bundled them all up and out my front door. It was inordinately quiet after they left.
“Did you submit your manuscript to the publisher?”
“Thursday, just before deadline. Our next few months of dinner are secured.” Donata swirled the last little bit of coffee in her cup, then set it on the table.
“Donata, can you come in the kitchen for a second? It’s a mess, I’m warning you.”
“You are not the first person to have a messy kitchen, Beatrice.”
“Well, it’s unusually messy, actually, since the pipe leak. But I want to show you something.”
She raised her eyebrows. “Now I’m intrigued.” Once we were in the room together, I was satisfied to hear her gasp.
“Beatrice, this is extraordinary.”
I nodded. “Who do you think painted it?”
She narrowed her eyes. “It’s difficult to tell from sketches, but there are qualities of the drawing that remind me of Accorsi’s work. That would be a peculiar coincidence, to have your favorite painter’s frescos on your kitchen wall.” I snorted. She had no idea what a coincidence it was. She looked for a long time, close up, and then backed up a few steps. “It looks like studies for the birth of the Virgin. Apparently the Signoretti Chapel, here in Siena, has remnants of a fresco depicting the birth of the Virgin, though not enough survived to determine the painter. I have never seen the work myself; it’s not routinely accessible to the public.”
The Signoretti Chapel. It certainly wouldn’t be accessible to me, not if it required convincing the twenty-first-century Signoretti, my current archenemy, to let me see it. The slice through almost seven hundred years made me so breat
hless I couldn’t even respond. And what would I say if I responded anyway? I couldn’t tell Donata that I knew Gabriele had painted the Signoretti fresco, and I certainly couldn’t say I thought I recognized the models. I would have been very surprised if Gabriele had actually used these same faces in the final painting anyway, putting a notorious Medici in a Sienese nobleman’s house. “Do you know someone who could figure out what to do with these? I feel like my house has suddenly become a museum.”
Donata laughed. “Welcome to life in Siena—we all feel that way. Yes, I’ll have one of our restorers come take a look and see what we can do. I suppose it’s a blessing, your burst pipe.”
We both stared at the wall for a while, seeing different things. Finally, she turned back to me.
“Beatrice, I asked a curator I know at the Museo about Accorsi. You know that he has paintings here in Siena?”
“The Saint Christopher one? Yes, I’ve seen it.” I wondered whether Donata had. My likeness was glaringly obvious to me, but maybe an outside observer could miss it, among all the people he’d painted at the water’s edge.
“There are two actually. The second wasn’t painted here but was transported sometime in the 1800s from Messina, Sicily.” I felt the hair on my arms rise at her explanation. “Would you like to go see it?”
The Scribe of Siena Page 32