The Sonnet Lover (30 page)

“Scusi, signora, non si può toccare.”

I turn around and find a woman in a navy skirt and pinstriped blouse standing over me. I apologize and introduce myself as a resident scholar at La Civetta.

“Ah, La Civetta,” she says, her stern expression softening. I’ve noticed how often just the name of the villa evokes for Florentines an ideal of beauty. “No wonder you’re interested in the rose-petal floor. You recognize it from the villa,
sì
?”

I turn back to the fragment and look at the surface I’ve cleared. The petals are unmistakably the same as the ones at the villa. “Yes, do you know who made this floor?” I ask while taking out my digital camera to photograph the floor, “and the ones at the villa?”

“
Sì,
he was a very famous
commettitore
—one of Franceso de’ Medici’s favorites in his workshop at the Casino di San Marco, and then too of the Grand Duke Ferdinand when the
pietre dure
workshop was moved into the Galleria dei Lavori in 1588—”

“So he was definitely active in the 1580s?”

“Yes, but he died soon after the move to the Galleria, by 1590 at least.”

“I see—can you look up his name?”

“Oh, no,
non è necessario
—I remember his first name was Pietro because I’ve always wondered if he was named that because his family were stonemasons.”

I remember that Pietro was the name of the
commettitore
mentioned in the account books. Of course it would make sense that it was the same one. “Do you know his last name?” I ask.

“Oh, yes, that I remember because it’s such a pretty name, like Petrarch’s girlfriend. His name was Pietro de Laura.”

On the bus ride back up the hill, my mind shifts between two sets of images as the bus sways back and forth on the twisting road. One is a picture of the wealthy Lorenzo Barbagianni standing in the Casino di San Marco watching the
commettitore’s
pretty young daughter as she helps her father with his work. Did Lorenzo begin by flirting with her? By bringing her little presents? Did she understand that a man of his class would never marry a girl of hers?

The other picture I see, again and again, is Mark telling me that Robin killed himself. How he’d looked straight at me and lied. When I’d started to believe that Orlando might have pushed Robin, I hadn’t wanted to face what that said about Mark. I’d allowed myself to believe that he might have been mistaken…or that he’d been afraid of accusing a young man of murder when he wasn’t sure, but now I have to wonder whether he had realized he could use what he’d seen as a way to get Claudia Brunelli to drop the lawsuit from the beginning. Had he already been planning, with Robin’s body still on the sidewalk below, to use his silence as a bargaining chip? How could I love someone capable of such callous deceit?

The bus rounds the last curve before La Civetta, and at the sight of the gates my eyes fill with tears just as they did twenty years ago when I looked back at them for what I thought was the last time. I’m forced to wonder whether I ever really did love Mark. To wonder whether the last time I really loved someone was twenty years ago when I walked out of the gates of La Civetta and took this same bus down the hill and got on a train to take me across the Alps and home.

What an idiot I’ve been,
I think, getting off at the gates to La Civetta. I speak my name into the intercom, thinking how little good it had done to call my name into the sibyl’s cave all those years ago. I might as well have dropped my heart into its dank pit while I was at it. The gates creak slowly open and I walk up the long, mournful cypress
viale
and then up the long curving staircase. I remember how it was on that last night—after I’d gotten the call that my Aunt Roz was dead—that I’d crept down these stairs in the dark. When I was halfway down, the moon had appeared in the oculus and lit up the marble, turning the rose petals beneath my feet into splotches of blood.
This place is cursed,
I’d thought, rushing from the house and wiping my feet on the mat outside the door as though I might leave a trail of bloody footprints.

In my room I find my shopping bags and mechanically begin unpacking them. In spite of myself, I’m comforted by the touch of the expensive fabrics. I spread out the Hermès scarf on the bed, admiring its mosaic pattern, and lay the slacks and dress and blouses I’ve bought next to it, fingering the rich textures of the silk and polished cotton. The colors are as vibrant as the powdered tints in the shop on the Via dello Studio and the colored stones in the Opificio.

I sit down on the bed, next to my purchases, and admit to myself that for all my horror at what I’ve witnessed today, there is one piece of welcome news: Bruno had nothing to do with sending Orlando to New York, and he probably had no idea that Orlando pushed Robin. It’s not much comfort, but it’s something. At least, unlike Mark, he hadn’t been revealed today to be a total cad.

I’d had plenty of reason to think Bruno was a cad twenty years ago when Claudia came to my room and told me that she was pregnant. I’d thought at first that she was telling me that she and Bruno would finally be divorcing. When Bruno had told me that he and Claudia had an understanding, I thought that meant they both saw other people and lived apart. I thought it meant they didn’t sleep together. And surely even the antiquated conventions of the Catholic Church wouldn’t demand that they stay together if she were pregnant with another man’s child. I said as much to Claudia. Then Claudia took my hand and told me that the baby was Bruno’s.

So Bruno wasn’t exactly a saint—but at least he wasn’t hiding a murder. Right now, I think ruefully as I slide my newly purchased clothing into a dresser drawer, that makes him the more honorable of my ex-lovers.

I give the drawer a hard push to close it and hear something chime against the wood. Opening the drawer again, I run my hands under the tissue paper and feel something flat and metallic at the back. When I pull it out, I see it’s a small brass key. I look down at the dresser to see whether it matches a lock on any of its drawers, but there are no keyholes on the drawers. Nor is there a keyhole on the single drawer on the dressing table. I turn around in the room, scanning the rest of the furniture, but nothing else is locked. Nothing except for the
cassone
at the foot of the bed.

It hardly seems possible, but then, it seems to be a day for surprises. I kneel in front of the
cassone
and fit the key into the lock. As I turn it I wonder what kind of surprise might lie inside—would it be the kind of thing that I’ll be sorry later that I uncovered? Griselda’s humble downcast eyes as she greets her husband’s new bride seem to rebuke me, and I open the lid. I recall Barbagianni’s dictum that
cassoni
ought to be preserved, “if not for their artistic value, then for their power to teach valuable lessons and to contain the baser instincts of any new bride who may come to this house” and wonder what object lesson may have been added to this
cassone
to teach Barbagianni’s new bride subservience. I’m expecting some profane variant on the Griselda tale—perhaps the children slaughtered after all, or Gualtieri really marrying his daughter—but instead I find, stretched out on the reverse of the lid, a reclining nude of surpassing beauty and delicate modesty. Her arms are crossed in front of her breasts, one hand tucked beneath a satin pillow against which her smoothly curved cheek…not so much rests, as gen-tly hovers above. Her deep-lidded eyes are closed, her lips curved into the faintest of smiles, as if she were dreaming. I sit back hard on my heels, as if the beauty of the figure had been a hand that laid itself on my chest and pushed, knocking the breath out of me. I’ve stood in front of paintings at the Louvre, the Uffizi, the Met, and
admired,
but none of those paintings have ever had the power of this simple reclining figure, painted by an anonymous
cassone
painter, not for a million eyes but for only two eyes, those of the bride who in contemplating such physical beauty would bring forth beautiful children.

I lean forward to look at her more closely and notice that the
cassone
isn’t, as I first thought, completely empty. A single sheet of paper lies at the bottom. When I pick it up I notice that the wood at the bottom of the cassone is covered with dark stains, as though it had at some time suffered water damage. Odd, I think, if it’s been in this room all along. Then I turn to the poem, which is in the same handwriting as the two other poems I have read so far.

Thy words are what I crave, not velvet, silk,

Bestowed to gloss me as prime property,

In fevered art of lust; a minute’s talk

With thee means more than bartered luxury.

These garments, even mine, will wither, fade,

Spun-silk worm-feast someday in my dark grave;

While sonnets, by which time’s cruel hand is stayed,

Thy lustrous jewels free-given to me, save

Our love from all decay; thy wordrich gifts

Exceed the whole of wealth on this bleak earth.

Ah love, this rosy sunset breeze which lifts

My spirits, is a poem to thy great worth.

As you approach, may words grow wings and fly

To thee across the north Italian sky.

I look up from the poem to the figure on the
cassone
and notice for the first time that running along the curve of her hip is a delicate scroll of words. I lean in closer and see that it’s two lines of the poem inscribed in the wooden panel. “These garments, even mine, will wither, fade, / Spun-silk worm-feast someday in my dark grave.” Running my fingers along it I can feel the grooves where the words were carved, the paint cracked where the fine blade pressed into the wood. Clearly it was done after the
cassone
was painted. I look back at the sheet of paper in my hand and see that it’s the same handwriting. I run my hands along the words again, feeling a thrill as if I were really touching flesh, and notice that there are other marks in the surface of the wood, little crescents in the faded blue background, which I think at first might have been meant to represent tiny moons, until I notice that they’re all over the surface, in the flesh of the nude and her hair and on her pillow, and then I realize what they are. They’re nail marks. Made by someone inside trying to claw her way out.

CHAPTER
EIGHTEEN

I
DECIDE TO WEAR THE GREEN DRESS TO DINNER
. I
T
’
S A LITTLE TOO FORMAL FOR
even Cyril’s idea of dressing for dinner, which I’ve always suspected he got more from watching the BBC than from his own threadbare childhood, but I have a feeling that this is going to be an evening for drama—and I feel a sudden need to
gird
myself to face it, to clothe myself against the dangers of this house. And this dress is dramatic. It’s cut for a Grecian goddess, pleated over my breasts, skimming my waist, and then fluttering across my hips. The skirt is lined with a thin layer of chiffon that just grazes the tops of my knees as I make my way down the steps of the rotunda. I can hear it whispering against the heavy satin, silk talking to silk in iambic pentameter of transience and mortality. “These garments, even mine, will wither, fade, / Spun-silk worm-feast someday in my dark grave.”

When I get to the bottom of the stairs I can hear voices from the dining room, but before I turn in that direction someone calls my name from the library. I turn and see Mark standing by the French doors leading out to the
pomerino,
a champagne flute in his hand.

“Join me for an aperitif,” he calls to me, and then, as I come into the room, he says in a low whisper, “Close the door behind you.”

I hesitate. After what I learned about Mark earlier today, I’m not in the mood for an intimate moment, but then this is as good an opportunity as any to confront him with what I know. As I close the door behind me I’m not sure what I’m hoping for—that he’ll somehow be able to explain everything or that the confrontation will mark the end of our relationship.

“You look lovely,” Mark says, pouring me a glass of Prosecco. “Is that a new dress?”

“Yes,” I tell him, “I went shopping with Mara Silverman today.”

“Really? I can’t imagine that you and Gene’s wife would have much in common, but if shopping with her yields such beautiful results…” He strokes the silk pleat above my collarbone and a chill passes through my body. The words “spun-silk worm-feast” rise unbidden in my mind. I look at Mark, at his handsome, chiseled features and glossy hair, the muscular physique so carefully controlled in his well-cut suit, and feel no spark of attraction to him. His physical charms leave me cold. I wonder again whether I ever really loved him.

Mark takes his hand away when I fail to move closer. “You’re right,” he says, glancing over his shoulder out the glass doors, “this place is alive with gossips.”

“Yes,” I say, “La Civetta was built for spying.”

I see a vertical line appear between his eyebrows. Does he recall Claudia saying the same thing this afternoon? If so, he dismisses the coincidence and smiles. “You’re in an odd mood this evening. Perhaps you should have rested instead of going into town with Mara.”

“Perhaps, but I was also able to do some research in town and I learned something interesting. Something upsetting, actually.” I wish now that I had spent more time planning what I would say to Mark, but then I hadn’t realized I’d be alone with him so soon. I sigh, suddenly tired of having to measure each word so carefully.