*
Gabriele and I had no luck finding Iacopo at the inns—and we tried them all. Some innkeepers might have been lying, and many were tight-lipped, protecting their patrons. But my empathic efforts did not ferret out any particular crucial lie.
“I can’t imagine that none of these places has a small dark Florentine staying in it,” I said indignantly—we had gotten a minimally helpful description from Baldi to fuel our search.
“It seems we shall not find out from asking,” Gabriele said.
“We can’t just sit around waiting for him to hire someone else to kill you.”
But neither of us had a better idea. We headed home as the bells were ringing for Vespers.
We all slept together in Gabriele’s and my room with a heavy trunk pushed against the loggia doors from the inside. I fell asleep to the sound of my new family breathing around me.
The next morning as I prepared to go to the Ospedale, there was a knock on the front door. Bianca was seated at the kitchen’s trestle table, showing little Gabriella how to pick stones from a bowl of dried lentils. Ysabella turned from the stove with a frown.
Gabriele appeared at the bottom of the stairs, his hair still ruffled from sleep. “I am not expecting visitors—might you be?” I shook my head. Whoever was at the door knocked again, and Gabriele’s face changed, alert and wary. He looked through the front door’s grilled window. “Whom do you seek?”
“Is this the Accorsi household? I have a message for Ser Gabriele Accorsi, from Ser Luciano Datini di Padova.”
“I do not know this Datini,” Gabriele said, his hand on the door. I noticed he did not move to open it.
“He is a well-established merchant in Padova who seeks a commission from a Sienese artist. You came highly recommended by the rector, Ser.” After a moment’s hesitation, Gabriele unlatched the door and swung it open. The messenger stood on the doorstep with the letter in his hand, and Gabriele reached out to take it.
“Does Messer Datini require an immediate response?”
“He is eager for an answer.”
Gabriele hesitated before inviting the messenger in. He broke the letter’s seal. “Messer Datini seeks to commission a panel painting for his collection. He says he watched me paint the Ospedale fresco, in the last days before its completion, and knows the quality of my work.”
“Of course he sought you out,” Ysabella said, her tension softening into a smile.
“Perhaps because so many of our finest masters have died,” Gabriele responded modestly. “I am certainly in need of work; I have had none since Messina and we have many mouths to feed.” He looked back at the messenger, who was still standing in the doorway.
“When does Messer Datini wish to meet?”
“He hopes you will be able to meet today at Nones. This trip to Siena is brief.”
Gabriele read through the letter carefully again. “You can tell Messer Datini I will meet him at the appointed time and place.” Gabriele let the messenger out.
“I think I met Datini before I left for Pisa,” I said. “He was admiring your fresco outside the Ospedale.” It was nice to have good news, but I didn’t like the timing. “You’re going to trust him?”
“Would you have me ignore the commission? Long-standing interest in my work seems adequate proof of his intent.” I frowned; in a normal situation it would have made sense, but this was not a normal situation. “Beatrice—my art is my livelihood, and my life. If I ignore commissions, I will soon be out of work.”
“I could support us for a little while.” I wasn’t sure whether I’d just introduced an idea that could result in our first public marital argument.
“Of course you could,” Gabriele said without a trace of anger, “but for now we have more immediate worries.” He pointed at Gabriella, who had pulled a chair over to the hearth and was trying to stir Ysabella’s pot of soup. Bianca rescued her, and the soup, with a gasp. With that domestic crisis settled, I decided to head to the Ospedale, where I could talk to Umiltà about finding Iacopo de’ Medici. Gabriele followed me out, stopping me with a hand on my arm.
“Beatrice—be careful in your travels today.”
“You too. Maybe you could ask Tommaso to go with you?”
Gabriele smiled. “He would be most amused to know that I was afraid to meet alone with a potential patron.” I took that as a polite rejection of my advice. Gabriele kissed my cheek softly, then released my arm. I turned and made my way to the Ospedale.
After accepting Umiltà’s good wishes on my marriage, which she delivered with a probing look that made me blush, I gave her an abridged version of the story—that Baldi had broken into the house, and had confessed to being sent by Giovanni de’ Medici’s son.
“Revenge,” Umiltà said, her expression darkening. “I shall call upon the communal police to find Baldi and throw him in prison.”
When I explained to her how we’d promised Baldi freedom in return for information, I was afraid Umiltà might actually explode with suppressed fury. I managed to convince her to leave Baldi alone, but she insisted on sending a team of Ospedale guards to search the city for Iacopo. “And since you are here,” Umiltà added, as if she’d been in the middle of a sentence, “you can write out a letter of direction to the guards, describing the man they seek and authorizing his detainment under the Ospedale’s writ.”
The warrant required several versions before it met Umiltà’s approval, but eventually the guards fanned out on their errand with my warrant in hand and I headed out into the Piazza del Duomo. I hadn’t been back inside the cathedral since my return to the fourteenth century. Looking at its striped facade made me nervous, though now I knew a visit wasn’t likely to fling me through time against my will. The person is the portal, not the place. As the words popped into my head I remembered the little priest with the head injury. Had Father Bartolomeo survived the Plague? I walked up the marble steps and inside.
A group of priests had gathered in the oratory to chant the hour, and I was relieved to recognize Bartolomeo among them. I sat in a pew until the chanting stopped, and Bartolomeo came down the nave in my direction.
“Father.” He turned toward me with a look of apprehension. “It’s Beatrice Trovato, the Ospedale scribe. I’m glad to see you’re alive and well.” Since Bartolomeo was extremely unlikely to have heard about my recent wedding, I didn’t have to deal with the decision of whether to call myself Accorsi yet. I wasn’t sure of the medieval position on newlywed wives keeping their names, but I guessed it wasn’t favorable.