Two Women in Rome

by Elizabeth Buchan

  ‘There was,’ he said, extracting a jeweller’s loupe from the drawer. ‘I was consulted. The paintings bore no resemblance to Pucelle’s.’

  ‘But he was in Italy?’

  ‘Fouquet and Bourdichon worked almost exclusively in France but we do know that Pucelle fils was commissioned to paint a book of hours for Chiara, Duchess of Palacrino, in the fourteen nineties.’

  ‘So?’ The possibility breathed from her.

  ‘This suggests he was probably in Italy, and records in Paris appear to confirm that he was. But the book of hours that he was commissioned to paint was never found. There are a couple of full-page miniatures in museums, including one here in Rome, a few ascribed to his studio and plenty of forgeries.’

  ‘So …’ she said again, calculating the odds.

  His loupe inched over the painting and she noticed his fingers trembled.

  ‘And?’ Lottie checked her impatience. ‘Apologies. I know these things take time.’

  He stepped back. ‘Some of the characteristics are evident. If it is a forgery, it’s a good one. If a pastiche, a respectful one.’

  ‘What about paint analysis?’

  ‘That would be the next step.’

  Technically, since it formed part of an archive, the painting came under the remit of the Archivio Espatriati. If it proved to be genuine, it would trigger the attention of the art world and, almost certainly, problems. Whatever its status, it would require skilled treatment.

  Gabriele passed his loupe over to Lottie. ‘Do you know much about Pucelle fils?’

  ‘Not enough, clearly.’

  ‘It’s never too late.’

  ‘I’ll do some research.’

  She edged the loupe over the painting. At the bottom right-hand of the page was a minute splatter of red on the painted frame.

  ‘Blood?’

  ‘It happened,’ said Gabriele. ‘The painter or the scribe might cut themselves, but the painting was too valuable to throw away.’

  Water, blood, paint … Lottie encountered the wear and tear left by human beings on a daily basis. ‘All that toil, only to cut your finger and face ruin.’

  He shrugged. ‘Went with the job.’ He peered at the painting. ‘Dio.’

  ‘Is there something wrong?’

  ‘Nothing.’ But his knuckles had whitened. ‘A twinge in my back, that’s all.’ Then he fell silent before saying: ‘I can certainly look into this for you. I’ll fetch the logbook.’

  He disappeared into the room at the back of the workshop. She heard him move around. A telephone rang and a quick-fire conversation ensued in an unfamiliar dialect.

  She took up the loupe. What had alarmed Gabriele Ricci? Bending close to the painting, she realised she had missed something.

  Behind the seated Virgin, a rose scrambled over the garden fence and, behind that, a woman with long blonde hair and a tonsured man dressed in the Franciscan habit knelt on the grass. She was weeping and his hands were raised in supplication. The cartouche issuing from his mouth read: Obsecro te. I beseech you.

  In the distance, the towers and buildings of the hilltop city were tucked behind an undulating wall. Beyond was a plain consisting of fields and marshes and dotted with classical ruins. The track leading towards the mountain was thickly hemmed with marjoram, blue flax and wild dog rose. Towering in the furthest background was a mountain with flower-smothered foothills threaded through by a path. Toiling up the path were the same woman and the friar.

  A white dove circled above them.

  ‘Paese et aiere,’ said Gabriele, emerging from the backroom. ‘A medieval term for landscape and skies. At that period, the painter was instructed to include landscape and sometimes told which animals to include.’ He gave the slightest of smiles. ‘The olives are painted in verte de flambé. The fields are ochre and sienna.’

  Lottie was enchanted. ‘It’s like poetry.’

  The lens of the loupe had become smeared with her breath, and the two figures blurred and moved as they ascended towards the solid gold sun in the centre of the sky.

  Lottie found herself there, with the stones crunching under her feet, the sunstrike on her back, the sweat under her arms. She sensed their fear and yearning and their desperate need for speed.

  Her hand came to a halt and the figures stilled, locking her out from their drama.

  ‘An example of the travel-landscape characteristic, much used during this period,’ she said, adding drily, ‘That I do know.’ She looked up and was struck by his haunted expression.

  He turned away to stoop over the painting. ‘I think we must agree that this is a sophisticated painter.’ He straightened up. ‘Where was this found?’ he asked. ‘Which papers?’

  Her finger hovered over the figure of the Virgin. Skill and tenderness rose from the page like perfume. Painted into it was the mighty whoosh of the archangel’s wings … the flourishing city … the mysteries of the steep, crevassed mountain … the drama of the woman and the friar, whose flight provided a contrast to the delicate girl’s submission in a garden.

  ‘I’ve only just taken up my post at the archive, but the painting was found in the papers of an Englishwoman. A Nina Lawrence.’

  His face was ashen.

  Lottie returned to the archive reflecting on the girl sitting in the garden, awaiting a troubled but astonishing future.

  Back at her desk, she ignored the waiting emails and did some research on Pucelle fils.

  The youngest son of the acclaimed French master Jean Pucelle, Pucelle fils (as he was always known) was born in Tours around 1457 and died in Palacrino, near Rome, around 1503.

  At this period, the Loire Valley was the principal centre for the French court and a cultural powerhouse producing illuminated books. Two master French painters, Jean Fouquet and Jean Poyet, worked at the court, and Pucelle fils learned his trade in Jean Fouquet’s workshop.

  The painter’s presence at court ensured that he was exposed to a variety of influences and extensive contact with the royal family and rich and powerful aristocratic families. His work spanned twenty years and included the innovative Hours of Yseult de Valois. In demand all over Europe, he was unusual in being able to command high fees from his patrons, who wished to have masterpieces for their collections.

  Characteristics of his work included: adopting the device of painting a frame around his paintings, a palette of twelve or more colours, a fondness for highlighting hair and drapery with gold and a marked use of white lead.

  So far, so promising.

  She ran over future procedure. Authentication. Establishing provenance. If authentic, the decision where to sell it.

  The first question must be: who was Nina Lawrence? And how likely was it that she had been the possessor of an original Pucelle fils?

  Lottie pulled on her gloves and tackled the first of the boxes.

  Inside was a mound of dank material, compressed together by age and mishandling. Working with extreme care, she removed each document one by one, prising apart with tweezers those that were stuck together. A photo. Letters. A dried flower pressed between paper. Certificates and reports.

  Last to be lifted from the box was a bulging brown-leather A5 notebook, tied up with string. The jacket was stained and foxed, and the pages, plus many additional papers slotted between them, had swelled it to over twice its normal size.

  Lottie eased it on to the table. Mould had slid into the cracks, and the string had impressed marks like burns onto the leather.

  She prowled around it and took photographs from several angles.

  Having cut the knot, she opened it.

  Gently, professionally, she turned the pages.

  There were close-written entries. Botanical drawings. Pressed flowers. Letters. Photographs.

  A life.

  CHAPTER FIVE

  Rome

  1 January 1978

  SCRIBBLING NOTES ON SCRAPS IS NEVER SATISFACTORY AND I made the decision to buy this notebook, splashing out to get the best quality I
could afford. A beautiful object … it has waited for me. Until I had breath, until I could snatch the time.

  What has happened to me was not planned but, because it has happened, I wish to record it, question it. People who do what I do regularly undergo different forms of interrogation and self-interrogation. This will be no different.

  Unwise, yes. Dangerous, yes, but I live with the threat of danger. It directs how I live and drives my psyche. It is the black hem that borders my days. I fully understand that I crave it. The job I do is for life – and for death.

  So be it.

  Two years ago a joyous spring rolled into the city and Leo (not his real name) sat down on the steps of a church in a street close to the Campo de’ Fiori. Legs out, sleeves rolled up, enjoying the warmth. Everything about him shrieked student liberated from study, free to sit in the sun. As it turned out, I guessed right.

  I was on my way to light a candle in the chapel of the Virgin. Why would a robust atheist do that? God knows is the answer, unless it offered me reassurance that, somewhere, light should burn in a country that had many dark areas. Italy was in trouble: a right-wing government with no effective opposition clashing with a growing number of Communist voters. Violence, bombings and corruption. There are many good and sane people in Italy, many of whom fought to remain sensible, moderate citizens, but it was hard. My business was, in part, to peer between the cracks and see what lay underneath.

  Also, Rex found the church a convenient place to meet and I had grown fond of it. A candle never did any harm, and it could very well be an insurance.

  Preoccupied with these thoughts, I failed to notice Leo’s outstretched legs, tripped over them and landed on a knee. The jolt made my eyes water and it took me a few moments to get up. I managed to apologise and hoped I hadn’t hurt him.

  He got to his feet and said it was his fault. On closer inspection, he was indoor-pale and rather beautiful.

  We examined the damage. He said he didn’t mind being tripped over and insisted I should sit down so my knee could recover.

  I needed a minute or two.

  The sun was warm, the smart in my knee subsided, but a serious bruise was in the making and we ended up in a café. We drank our coffees and continued talking while the city churned and the swifts came diving in from Africa. He had completed a three-year degree in philosophy in Bologna and had come to Rome for the next phase of his life in the seminary.

  A priest? I was startled and disturbed by the idea.

  It will be long and demanding, he told me with a relish that made me shiver inwardly.

  I looked across the café table and forced myself not to say: You’re far too young and energetic to be locked up behind church walls.

  He appeared to read my thoughts and said that it was not a problem for him and he had always known.

  I digested that one and questioned the ‘always’, and he told me that, in his family, the youngest son was expected to become the priest.

  The determinism made it worse.

  He said that life’s lottery was like that.

  I had seen and done many things, but his fate seemed depressing. It was none of my business but I suggested – tentatively – that he could have decided to do something else.

  The fact that you are pointed along a way does not necessarily make it the wrong way or one you do not wish to take, he told me. He wolfed the wafer that came with the coffee and I offered up mine.

  There was no greater calling, he added … no greater service than to minister to others.

  It was a stock-in-trade sentiment but it struck me as odd that he didn’t mention God.

  I said that his family would be pleased.

  He looked at me carefully and seriously and said that he was lucky to have a strong, loving family and to be able to serve it. Didn’t I think that too?

  I could think of several reasons why not.

  He switched the subject and asked me about my work and I told him about a recent trip to a large estate in Tuscany and the garden that was being scooped out of a parched valley.

  The plan for it happened to be in my bag; he professed interest and I showed it to him. I told him that my clients were a little bitter about the situation because the land used to be run on the old mezzadria system, which suited them fine until the Communists began to demand changes in the 1960s. After that, there was a drift to the cities and, now, they struggle to employ anyone.

  He scrutinised the plan, which showed boundaries and sources of water. He jabbed his finger confidently down and said I should plant the olives there. When I asked him why, he replied that it would be the driest area in the garden. He was right.

  Had I made friends with the soil? If not, I must get to understand it as I would my own body.

  I stared at him.

  Take care over the water supply, he warned, and instructed me to guard it because, if not, others would help themselves.

  This chimed with stories of water rustling that I had already heard and I laughed and thanked him.

  His family were all farmers, working on an estate north of Rome, and his earliest memories were of being taken by his mother into the fields to work with the vines and the olives. At this point, his voice dropped and he let slip that his mother had recently died.

  The way he said it suggested a loss to which he was not reconciled and I told him (presuming, perhaps, as I barely knew him) that I could tell that he had loved her very much.

  He shot me a look and asked if my mother was still alive.

  I told him that I had no family to speak of.

  There was a pause and then we carried on talking.

  Perhaps we both already understood that we were intrinsically solitary people and destined to remain so. (His vocation. Mine.) Yet he talked at length about his mother and of how he would have done anything to prevent her suffering. ‘I was powerless,’ he said.

  I stopped myself from asking if he found his God had helped.

  I thought I was now expert at masking my thoughts but, clearly, I wasn’t. Midway through describing his future training, he stopped and said he could see I didn’t approve.

  I had to give it to him: he possessed the empathy of a good priest.

  ‘My mother used to say it was best to air the room even if the enemy is at the door …’ He played with the wafer wrapping.

  I looked at those fingers. Strong ones, but a little pale from long study and in need of the outdoor life.

  Why would he give up what is so precious – the right to individuality, personality, the idea of whom one was, or might be – when so many in the world are denied those choices?

  Again, he seemed to sense my thoughts and told me that he didn’t see it as giving anything up.

  I could have told him that I was intimate with the process of taking apart the personality. I could list the tools by which mindset, habit and urges are dissolved and laid out, like so many jigsaw pieces, and what it really means. He had a right to know if his surrender was to be irreversible. Which, presumably, he did? Think of the boat hovering on the edge of a high waterfall, I might say, and what happens next.

  I ducked it and remained silent.

  Instead, I snatched a look at him. He was brimming with energy, with humour, with life.

  I asked him if it was true that, as a priest, he must never ever again claim anything for himself, so that nothing would come between him and God?

  He nodded.

  It was odd how the clichés tumbled. Our eyes met. I felt the frisson and the untidy yearnings that I would have given much not to feel.

  He shifted in his seat. It’s not possible, he informed me without words. Not you and I.

  In those days, Leo may have been unworldly but there was also a hint of steel. I liked that and I believed him.

  It was peculiar, but the spring air made me feel I was poised to fly and I felt shaky and exhilarated in the same breath. I reached over to the adjacent table, kidnapped the wafer left by its previous occupant and presented it t
o him, telling him that I wished him the best and that I hoped he wouldn’t be lonely in the city.

  He snaffled the wafer in one bite, which made me smile, but in the next minute the smile was wiped from my lips because he told me that his uncle, Beppo, worked in the Vatican.

  My God.

  I remember staring at Leo and feeling nausea stir.

  I wished he hadn’t told me that piece of information.

  I managed to ask him where his uncle worked and he replied vaguely that he dealt with legal matters.

  The Vatican City State is the organisation that administers the temporal and diplomatic concerns of the Holy See, which, in turn, is responsible for the worldwide Catholic Church. It has many departments and to have a contact in any of them would be very valuable.

  Apparently this Beppo, who is only a few years older than Leo, is clever and trusted and has a brilliant career lying ahead of him.

  I grabbed at any old thing to say as I packed the garden design into my bag. Something along the lines that the Palacrino operation would be a big one and I thanked him for the irrigation warning.

  His parting remark was the remark of someone born and bred on the farm. ‘Water is the most important thing. In the future, the world will go to war over it.’

  Rex, to whom I reported, and I had often discussed finding a long-term contact in the Vatican City State. Over the years we had cultivated a couple. The first had inconveniently died and the second had gone to serve in Lisbon. But we still needed to know what was going on in the inner circles and who was pulling the levers.

  I knew what Rex would ask me to do. Get in there. Put a foot in the door.

  I could.

  Would I?

  CHAPTER SIX

  SO ABSORBED WAS SHE BY THIS, LOTTIE HAD TO REMIND herself that she was in the Espatriati office and not drinking coffee at a table with Nina and Leo.

  The notebook felt alive between her gloved hands, strong and sentient.

  She leafed through the pages.

  Rome? Beautiful and wayward, a place on to which you project many longings – poetic, erotic, aesthetic – and hope they will be met. She has allure and seduction and many faces. Lifestyle, fashion, art, sensation. Plenty of sensation. This is where stardust mixes with the sensual. Lies down with it, you might conclude. The chic with the classical. The acme of modernity with ruins that stretch back through several civilisations.