Urban Venus

Chapter Twenty-Eight

‘She’s dead,’ I sob. ‘Maria is dead.’

‘Lydia, you’re awake. Thank God for that!’ Vincenzo sighs, and I open my eyes to find him standing by my side, tears streaming down his face.

‘Maria, died,’ I say again, but he doesn’t seem to be listening, clearly too caught up in the emotion of the moment. But I’ve only been asleep.

‘She killed herself because the man she loved wasn’t brave enough to do what he should have done.’ Then I look around and register where I am, no longer in the sixteenth century, but back in the twenty-first, in a high-tech hospital suite, with wires and beepers all around me.

‘Why am I in here? What’s happened with your painting? What’s all this for?’ I ask, pulling at the wires which pin me to the bed as I try to haul myself into a sitting position.

Vincenzo moves to open the door and calls out ‘She’s awake!’ and then it seems it’s party-time, as Sophia and Leonora, Dante, Lanzo and Stefano, plus Antonio Di Girolamo all pile in, a real frenzy of friends. I am overwhelmed as they all come across to my bed and plaster me with kisses and hugs, with ‘We were so worried,’ and ‘What happened to you, Lydia?’ and ‘We thought we were losing you,’ flying around everywhere, until a young, female doctor, a nurse trailing in her wake, comes into the room and calls order, sending them back outside so that she can check me over.

‘You had us worried there for a moment, Signorina Irvine,’ she says, standing back from the bed once she has finished prodding and poking at me. ‘But you seem to have come round very quickly. We thought you were in danger of going into a coma, as your vital signs were very weak when Signore Tizzaro brought you in, but amazingly you now seem to be showing no symptoms at all. Your body is returning to normal very quickly. It’s quite unheard of.’

‘I was asleep,’ I reply, simply. ‘I don’t know what all the fuss was about.’

‘I think it was a little more than that, Signorina,’ she chuckles condescendingly, considering herself, as she rightly would, the better qualified to pass judgement on my health.

‘I feel fine, just like I’ve had a long, long sleep,’ I say, but don’t add out loud that I also feel deeply sad, remembering the dreams and Maria’s fate.

‘How long was I out for?’ I ask.

‘A little under an hour,’ the doctor replies, and I am surprised at that.

‘But it felt like a lifetime,’ Vincenzo says, slumping back into his chair, looking thoroughly exhausted. ‘You really scared me, you know.’

‘I’m sorry,’ I say. The doctor excuses herself, once more expressing her amazement at my rapid recovery, and promising to return in fifteen minutes to carry out further observations.

‘Where did you go to?’ Vincenzo asks, panic subsiding and curiosity taking hold.

‘I was dreaming about Maria,’ I reply. ‘I’ve never done that before outside the gallery, so to start with I just felt a bit sleepy and didn’t give too much thought to it. I think those roses sent me off, you know, those ones on your desk. Maria always had roses like that around her. Such a strong smell. She’s dead,’ I say again, as the pain of memory hits once more.

‘Of course she’s dead,’ he laughs, ‘she lived nearly five hundred years ago.’

‘No, you know what I mean,’ I say impatiently. ‘She died in the dream. Can you bring Antonio in? I want him to hear all this.’

Antonio comes into the room clutching a small bunch of flowers. Not roses, I’m glad to say. Bless him, he must have nipped to the hospital shop at break-neck speed after I woke up.

‘How are you, my dear?’ he asks in his gentle, fatherly way.

‘I’m fine, thank you,’ I reply, smiling in confirmation.

‘Well, I must say you look remarkably well for one whom we considered in such grave health mere moments ago.’

‘I dreamt about Maria,’ I tell him. ‘She gave birth to Emilia. And Titian sent the baby away. To live in France. With a couple who were going there. They went to Paris. Then she killed herself. Maria, I mean.’ I blurt out the bare facts in short, sharp sentences, wanting to tell him everything all at once, and knowing he will want to hear it, as it is the resolution of his own story, too.

‘Slow down, slow down, my dear,’ he says, taking hold of my hand and patting it with his other. ‘It sounds like you have a lot to tell us, but there is no rush.’

‘How could he do that to her?’ I ask, once I’ve recounted pretty much everything I can remember to Vincenzo and Antonio. ‘They were so in love, they meant everything to each other, and he threw it away so easily. He always thought he was having a son, but Maria wrote him a letter to tell him about Emilia, after she’d been taken away. She had nothing to live for, poor girl.’

‘That would be why my story ended so abruptly,’ says Antonio, and I have to say he almost looks relieved, not at the outcome obviously, which is a tragic one, but that he now knows there is a valid reason for his own dreams coming to an end as they did. They ceased at the moment in time when Tiziano Vecellio pushed Maria Rossi and their daughter, Emilia, from his life. There was nothing more for Antonio to dream about, as the love of Titian’s life was no longer with him. Titian wouldn’t have known what had then become of Maria, I should imagine.

‘Things were very different in those days,’ Vincenzo says. ‘There must have been a huge stigma attached to having a child out of wedlock, and Maria probably would have fared better in life on her own, had she chosen life. And it was a very brave decision she took, not to.’

‘And the child would have been well taken care of, too. Raised as though she were their own.’ Antonio says.

‘But with Titian asking the painter to give the child the name of Urbino, surely everyone would know she wasn’t theirs?’ I ask.

‘Yes, but she could have been a poor orphan that they took in,’ Antonio replies. ‘Don’t forget they moved hundreds of miles away from their home. No one would have known them in Paris, least of all asked questions about their child’s origins. ‘Urbino,’ you say. What a fortunate choice of name for her, especially as you had your dreams in front of that painting! You must be so relieved to find out what happened to Maria, even though it’s not the ending you might have hoped for?’

‘It’s a horrible ending for her, poor girl, but at least I know what happened now. It’s no wonder she wanted me to know her story. Things like that just don’t make it to the history books, do they? But it still doesn’t explain why I had the dreams,’ I say. ‘I still have no evidence that I might be related to them, I’m just assuming I am, like with you and your relationship to Titian. And calling the child Urbino just complicates things, doesn’t it? I can’t follow down the Rossi or Vecellio lines of investigation any more.’

‘Urbino is a very unusual name,’ Antonio says. ‘It’s a place, and not a commonly used surname in Italy, really. Would you like me to look into it for you? Let’s see what else we can find out. I’ll go and do that now for you. You just concentrate on getting better.’

‘There goes a man with a mission,’ Vincenzo laughs, as Antonio leaves the room, intent on his next piece of historical detective work. ‘If anyone can find out something, then he’s the one.’ And he turns back to me. ‘This is all great stuff, and I know you’re pleased to have a resolution to the dreams and all that, but I’m just so relieved you’re OK.’

‘Can we go home now?’ I ask, impatiently tearing at the covers and looking around. ‘Where are my clothes?’

‘Oh, they’re probably still in my study, sorry. I didn’t think to bring them in all the panic. I’ll call in that bossy doctor to start the discharge process and I’ll nip back and get them for you. We’ll have you out of here soon, don’t worry.’

Vincenzo has tucked me up in bed back at the apartment, despite my protestations that I feel absolutely fine, and that there was never anything medically wrong with me in the first place.

‘But that doctor insisted,’ he says. ‘She wasn’t very happy about you going home so soon, but I promised I’d take care of you, so that’s exactly what I’m going to do, whether you like it or not.’

At that moment Sophia sticks her head round the door, checking it’s OK for her to come in. She is bearing a tray with some fruit juice and a Panini.

‘Room service!’ she announces, popping the tray down on the table beside my bed. ‘How are you feeling?’

‘I’m fine, and really, all this is lovely, but I’m not ill. Honestly. I’ll be back on my feet tomorrow, you’ll see. In fact, I’d be back on my feet now if this man here would let me get out of bed,’ I add, jabbing Vincenzo affectionately in the ribs. ‘But thank you, you’re all doing a great job of looking after me.’

‘My pleasure,’ she says, leaving us to it, but then, ‘Oh, someone else to see you,’ and Antonio’s head appears round the door.

‘Are you feeling better?’ he asks, and I try not to sound impatiently cross when I reply:

‘Yes. Fine. Really. Thank you.’ It’s lovely that they’re all so concerned about me, but really, they don’t need to be. ‘That was quick. Did you manage to find anything out?’

‘Well, it’s interesting,’ he begins, perching on the side of the bed. ‘I did some research into the origins of surnames, and Urbino isn’t a very common one, so there aren’t many references to it. But there is evidence of a small cluster of D’Urbino’s in Paris in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, one of which may or may not be your Emilia. If she had married of course, then her name could have changed, and none of these might be her, but on the other hand, perhaps her adoptive parents told her who she was when she came of age and she decided to keep her name throughout her life as a reference to her heritage? But that of course, my dear, we shall never know. All we do know is that the Urbino name surfaces in Paris, where we know Emilia went, so that has to be encouraging news, doesn’t it?

‘And…. and this is the really interesting part,’ he goes on. ‘Urbino and your name, Irvine, are actually from the same ‘family’, as it were, of names. Urbino kind of evolved into Irvine, as the ‘b’ sound isn’t terribly French when it occurs in the middle of a word. They can make the ‘v’ sound much easier in their native tongue, you see.’

I try not to leap out of bed with excitement at this news. Vincenzo has to practically hold me down.

Antonio continues: ‘So Urbino evolved into Urvino and then lost the Italianate ‘o’ from the end. Urvine and Irvine sound the same, and to all intents and purposes are the same name. Spellings were easily confused over the centuries, particularly when only a small proportion of the population could actually write their own names. So there you go. Irvine equals Urbino! Perhaps that is your link?’

He sees the look of utter excitement on my face and smiles.

‘I think it’s more than a ‘perhaps’, Antonio,’ I reply. ‘And actually, rumour has it that my family is of French origin. You never really know, do you, as these stories get passed down through the generations, and you’re never sure quite how much truth there is in them, but I think you have just confirmed things for me! I have to be related to Emilia! I am Lydia Irvine, otherwise known as Lydia D’Urbino! Hey, that has quite a ring to it! I like it!’

Antonio leans in and gives me a big hug. ‘I’m so pleased for you, Lydia,’ he says. ‘I know there’s still nothing concrete as such to prove your link to Emilia, but I think this is as close as you are going to get, don’t you? As long as you are certain in your own mind, then that’s all that matters. And I think you are now, aren’t you?’

‘Yes, I am. Very. Thank you so much Antonio,’ I say. ‘I have a feeling there won’t be any more dreams now. Maria’s all done with me, isn’t she? Her story is complete. Although I might have to pop back to the gallery at some point, just to check….’ I look across to Vincenzo to gauge his reaction.

‘No you don’t, not yet!’ Vincenzo laughs.