Immortal Muse

by Stephen Leigh

  “Y’know,” she told David, “here I am all naked and you’re still in all those clothes. It hardly seems fair …”

  *

  Camille’s cell phone rang about nine in the morning. She threw the covers aside and slid from the bed, trying not to disturb David. Verdette, curled up against her legs on top of the covers, mewled in irritation, yawned, stretched, and padded after Camille as she went into the hallway to pull the cell phone from her purse. She glanced at the screen: Bob Walters. She hit the “Accept Call” button with her finger and put the phone up to her ear.

  “Hey,” she said. “You’re up early.”

  “Yeah, and now you are, too. Sorry.” He didn’t sound particularly apologetic. “But you said to call if I found your guy. I’m not sure, but I think I might have.”

  The news made her stomach clench, caused her fingers to tighten around the phone’s gel case. “You might have?” she repeated.

  “Yeah. I was following up on this Helen Treadway—and thanks, by the way, for not telling me she’d left your friend, and I hope you’re having fun with him. It took me two days to track down her new place—and I saw someone yesterday coming from her apartment who matched your description: short guy, but his hair’s more blond than dark and cut really short. About the right age, and his features are close enough. I followed him, but he managed to lose me—which, let me tell you, isn’t easy to do. He just kinda vanished.” She could hear the annoyance in his voice. “So far, he hasn’t come back. I’ve set up a 24/7 surveillance on Ms. Treadway’s new apartment if he does, and my people have instructions to follow Helen whenever she leaves. We’ll track him down eventually. It all depends on how fast you want it to go.”

  Verdette jumped up on the hall table, trilling anxiously. Camille reached out with a hand to stroke her. “What do you mean?”

  “I mean there are things I’m allowed to do, legally, and things that I’m not. Those things that I’m not allowed to do are a lot more expensive, but they might save time.”

  “Things like … ?”

  “Things that you’re not going to know about,” Walters answered, “because I won’t tell you.”

  “Fair enough. How expensive?”

  “Ten large, upfront, with no guarantees. And none of that’s going to me, incidentally.”

  Camille sucked in a breath. She heard a cough from the bedroom, then a naked David appeared in the hallway, leaning against the wall and rubbing sleep-tousled hair. She watched him as she spoke to Walters. “All right. I can get that to you,” Camille said. “Go ahead.”

  “Yeah. I’ll go ahead when your check clears or you hand me the cash. You’ve seen my office; I don’t have that kind of money just sitting around gathering dust.”

  “It’ll take a couple days. I’ll have to liquidate a few assets.” She saw David’s eyebrows rise quizzically.

  “It takes as long as it takes. In the meantime, I’ll keep doing what you’ve paid me to do. Maybe we’ll get lucky and we won’t need the other methods. I’ll keep in touch, okay?”

  She heard the abrupt click of the receiver on the other end. She brought the phone from her ear and touched “End Call.” “Who was that?” David asked. He yawned and crouched down, holding his hand out toward Verdette, who pointedly ignored him.

  You told him there wouldn’t be any lies. “My financial adviser,” she answered. “He thinks that everyone keeps the same schedule he does.”

  “You should tell him that artists aren’t usually the 9 to 5 types.”

  “I’ll do that. Next time.” She put the phone back in the purse, then smiled at him. “You really have one of the worst cases of bed-head I’ve ever seen. I think we should take a shower and get rid of it, and then we’ll fix some breakfast. Sound good?”

  “Sounds delicious,” he said. “Both options.”

  INTERLUDE THREE

  Costanza Bonarelli & Gianlorenzo Bernini

  1635-1640

  Costanza Bonarelli

  1635 – 1636

  SHE HAD NEVER GLIMPSED a soul-heart that was quite the match of Gianlorenzo Bernini’s. Fortunately, or perhaps unfortunately, Costanza (she rarely thought of herself as Perenelle anymore) was at that time married to Matteo Bonarelli.

  Matteo Bonarelli was another in a succession of minor relationships. His green soul-heart was small and shallow, but he was also a gentle man and kind to her, and if she occasionally strayed from him to be with another person whose soul-heart beckoned more to her, he would always take her back. She did not love Matteo, though she liked him well enough. She often felt guilty for her use of him, but he complained rarely and accepted her as she was—that was enough.

  Matteo could sustain her and he was understanding, so she remained with him as he moved from Arezzo, where he was making a meager living with his sculpting and painting, to Rome.

  To Rome: where the already famous Gianlorenzo Bernini—knighted by Pope Gregory XV with the title of Cavaliere—had his studio.

  Matteo, on their arrival in Rome, had taken her to view the Apollo and Daphne that Bernini had created for the recently departed Cardinal Scipione Borghese. Costanza had been, quite honestly, stunned. She knew Ovid’s story, of course: how Apollo had been smitten by the nymph Daphne, pursuing her, and how as he was about to capture her she transformed herself into a laurel tree. Here, somehow captured in a single, massive piece of white Carrara marble, were the two mythological figures: a heroic Apollo reaching to touch the side of Daphne, who was captured in the midst of her metamorphosis. The figures were life-sized and nearly seemed to breathe. The artist’s chisel had managed to coax an incredible range of textures from the stone: polished skin, granular earth, rippling cloth, fluttering leaves, and windswept hair.

  “Possiede la mano del dio,” she heard Matteo whisper in awe as they gazed at the work—He possesses the hand of God—and she could only echo his sentiment.

  Cavaliere Bernini, under the weight of more commissions than he could easily fulfill, was gathering around himself a cadre of skilled studio assistants to help. Matteo, with Costanza at his side, presented himself, his references, and his master piece—a small “Daniel and the Lion” in bronze—at the artist’s studio.

  After seeing the man’s work, she expected to see a similarly heroic figure approach them. Instead, Bernini was a gaunt man in his 30s, wearing a filthy sculptor’s smock well-dusted with marble fragments, a mallet still clutched in one hand. His brown hair was lightened with marble dust; he had a mustache upturned at either end and a wedge of straggling hair down the center of his chin; his restless but intense eyes were the color of old polished oak.

  Early on, in the wake of her discovery of Nicolas’ empty grave, there were many she found with soul-hearts that were fiery and huge, in which she could have easily lost herself. Yet she always held back, settling for someone with lesser talent and lesser visibility. Nicolas might find you if you’re too obvious—that was her thinking. In the intervening two centuries, Costanza—under far too many names for her to remember—had lived with a long succession of minor artists: painters, sculptors, musicians, singers, writers, philosophers. She’d sought out groups of them at times, using their collective energy to keep her healthy, active, and anonymous. She’d done so with one eye always looking behind her, half-expecting that Nicolas would appear and make good on the threat of the note he’d left in his empty grave. In truth, she wasn’t certain she would recognize Nicolas: if he had, like her, returned to his youth after taking the elixir, well, she remembered him mostly as he had been in old age. He could have passed her on the streets many times, and she might never have noticed him.

  After two centuries, it was easy to nearly forget him entirely. The only thing she kept of his was the sardonyx cameo. That, she wore every day; she wasn’t certain why—it had become her talisman, her charm. It was as much a part of her as her breath.

  She continued to search for those with the green soul-hearts, les personnes vertes. She had no choice in that; withou
t their nourishment, she became sick and lethargic. She wondered if Nicolas had the same compulsion.

  The creative energy on which she was destined to feed was more than mere sustenance. While she remained in the presence of their green hearts, she could also pursue her own talents: painting; learning an instrument; discovering that she had a singing voice that could be trained; pursuing scholarly studies. And, of course, trying to rediscover the knowledge that Nicolas had stolen from her, the secrets she’d once written down in the notebook.

  She made progress, though slow and laborious. She bought old scrolls and tried to translate them; she purchased chemicals and powdered minerals and solvents, and played with them. But thus far she had found little success, though she uncovered the occasional small spell she could work, and she’d reproduced several of her father’s old experiments. But there were months and even years where she couldn’t set up a proper laboratory or couldn’t obtain the materials she needed, because she had to move on—as she inevitably did.

  If those to whom she had become muse became abusive or jealous or suspicious of her, she would leave them and her current identity; for those special ones who became companions, friends, or lovers, she would wait until her lack of aging became painfully obvious, and she would vanish one day from their lives, never to be seen again.

  The soul-heart before her now, in whose glow she stood like a frozen woman before a great fire … this soul-heart wouldn’t be one of the quiet ones, one of the hidden ones. If she stayed here, if she bound herself to this one, there would be no hiding—not from a soul-heart this large.

  Is this really what you want?

  There was no answer inside her to that question. Not yet.

  Costanza barely dared to breathe as she felt Bernini’s green heart. His radiance filled the entire studio and enveloped her. She had never experienced a soul-heart like this before, already seething and full, yet with still-untapped potential she could bring out. She could feel the glow beating and pulsing as Bernini walked around the table on which Matteo’s sculpture had been placed, fingers prowling his chin hair as he examined Matteo’s work closely. Twice, as he paced, his gaze flicked suddenly from the piece to Costanza. He seemed to regard her with the same appraising intensity that he did Matteo’s sculpture.

  She knew then that he felt her presence as she felt his.

  “You’ve a decent resume and come with good recommendations,” Bernini said to Matteo at last. His voice was a low growl, vibrating with the same intensity as his gaze. “Competent enough work, this. I can pay you seven silver scudi a month. When you finish your work for the day, you may use your studio space for working on any commissions of your own. I also have a man who will rent you lodgings close by for a reasonable rate. You can start this Martedì, if you wish.”

  “Pardon me, Cavaliere Bernini,” Costanza interrupted. She knew Matteo; he would take the offer, thinking it was the best he could do. “My husband is worth more than seven scudi when he will be crafting angels and cherubs for you that no one will doubt come from the hands of the master himself.”

  Bernini’s piercing gaze found her again, and he laughed, a long and low chortle. Matteo looked down at the floor. “And pray, Signora Bonarelli, what do you think I should pay your husband?”

  “I should think an artist with his undoubted skill deserves no less than twelve scudi a month.”

  Bernini’s mouth seemed to tighten in amusement. “I can offer eight. No more.”

  “Eleven,” Costanza answered, “and the Cavaliere should be grateful for the bargain. Rome is an expensive city.”

  Bernini gazed again at Matteo’s sculpture. His long fingers slid over the bronze figures as if willing them to move. “Ten,” he said finally, “and your husband should be grateful that his wife’s beauty makes it difficult for a man to argue with her.”

  “Agreed,” Matteo interjected quickly, his head coming up as Bernini nodded and gestured to one of the workers in the studio to come over.

  “This is my brother Luigi. He’ll show you the studio and your working space, and put you in touch with the man for your housing.” He turned to Costanza and gave a slight nod of his head. “Signora,” he said, his gaze holding hers for a breath.

  “Cavaliere,” she answered with a curtsy. She smiled at him, and his lips turned upward under his mustache.

  And with that, he was gone.

  She already knew that they would be lovers. She already knew that she had to feed on his great talent. She could make it blossom so it might shake the very world.

  *

  Every day, Costanza would bring Matteo his noon luncheon. She would eat with him, sitting at his bench and gazing at the work on which he was engaged: a portion of the coat of arms that would go over the tomb of Pope Urban VIII. The marble angel rested on the bench, rough-cut with the marks of the chisel still apparent and—two weeks into Matteo’s employment in Bernini’s studio—now half-freed from the marble block in which it had been trapped.

  After their lunch, Costanza would wrap up the plates and cups and place them back in the basket, and take her leave of Matteo. On her way from the studio, she would stop in the well-lit main room, where Bernini himself was working on the allegory of Charity for the tomb. The massive group—a mother clasping her child, with the weeping child alongside her, the mother gazing down sympathetically toward the crying infant—was only half finished, yet the face of the mother was already captivating in its expressiveness. Costanza could feel the artist’s soul-heart throbbing as he worked, tapping at the chisel with a wooden mallet, flakes of marble falling away in a slow snow.

  And each day, like a lover furtively stealing a kiss when she thought no one was looking, she would open her mind to that green heart and take it into herself, letting its fire course through her, breathing his energy in and breathing it back to him increased and enhanced. He never looked at her, but she knew that he felt her behind him, knew that he must feel her touch.

  Today was no different; she left Matteo and paused at the open archway that opened into Bernini’s personal studio. She leaned against the arch; sunlight poured in from the southward-facing windows, making each marble dust-mote sparkle and gleam against the emerging figures from the Carrara marble block. Bernini was sculpting the folds of the robe the mother wore, tapping each wrinkle carefully and glancing occasionally at a small-scale clay model resting on his workbench. She closed her eyes momentarily, letting herself open to the soul-heart, tasting it as it moved through and around her, nearly fondling it, her fingers moving involuntarily as if to touch.

  He’d never spoken to her before, never indicated that he knew she was watching him. But today, he spoke, without turning around. “Have you ever sculpted, Signora Bonarelli?”

  “No, Cavaliere Bernini. I’ve painted a little. That’s all.”

  “Then you must try. Come here.” He turned to her finally, gesturing with the hand holding the chisel. She set down the basket and approached him. He gave her chisel and mallet, turning her to face the sculpture. Up close, the mother’s face peered down at her, smiling. Bernini moved behind her, his body a heat along her back. He took her hands in his own, closing his fingers over hers. His breath lifted the hairs on the back of her neck. “You have to let the stone talk to you,” he said. “Let it tell you what’s caught inside. You must be careful, because what you take away, you can never put back. So it’s best to go slow. Gently. Now, go on, place the chisel there, in the groove I just made. Angle it a little more …” His hand guided hers. “Now, tap the end with the mallet; firmly, but also softly. You want to coax and tease the stone, not tear at it. You want to dance with it, like a lover.”

  She struck the chisel, feeling his guidance of her stroke. A flake of stone fell away, continuing the groove along the line he’d started. His voice was a low, hungry growl in her ear. “There. You see how it feels? The power of creation in your very hands—can you feel it, like you’re caressing the marble? She wants you to release her. Again—once
more.”

  Another tap, another small flake of stone. She felt his lips touch the back of her neck in the same instant, and she breathed in sharply at the touch, her body leaning back against his fully. “I’ve felt you watching me, Signora.” His breath was warm; his lips brushed her skin again and she gasped. “Every day you’ve watched, and while you did, I could see her more clearly—the mother inside the marble. She’s you.”

  His green heart wrapped her like a cloak, warm and safe and comforting. She inhaled the power with every breath and gave it back to him, redoubled. The radiance swelled around them like an ocean tide, and there was a hue to it that she’d never seen before: a thread of brilliant lapis lazuli that wound about the two of them.

  “What now, Signora?” Bernini asked behind her, his muscular arms enclosing the two of them, the statue forgotten. “You must tell me. You must make the choice.”

  She turned in his arms, looking up at him. She handed him the chisel and mallet so that his arms relaxed around her, but she didn’t step back. She remained there, her body against his. “I’m going home,” she said. “You know where that is.”

  His gaze held hers, his lips slightly parted. She touched them with a finger, letting it slide slowly down his face to his chin, then away. “And your husband?” he asked.

  “He’ll be here for hours yet—and he has a small commission of his own to work on as well.”

  “And what of afterward?”

  “Matteo is pleased to be associated with Cavaliere Bernini’s studio. Neither of us would wish to jeopardize that relationship. What Matteo doesn’t want to see, he won’t see.”

  “Ah, so that’s how it is.” He set mallet and chisel down on the workbench, bending away quickly and moving back in almost the same motion. His hand stretched toward her; his forefinger curled under the silver chain around her neck and lifted the cameo from where it nestled between her breasts. “That’s a beautiful piece,” he said. “Is it Roman?”