“Out of shape,” I gasped.
“Oh, the stairs.” Donata smiled with a trace of impishness. “They separate out students who have something important to say from those just looking for a better grade on the midterm. The pretenders give up.”
I collapsed into a leather armchair and sat for a moment, recovering. “I’m a well-meaning visitor but I need a beverage.” Donata laughed and went to fill a glass of water from a hand-painted pitcher on a credenza behind her desk. She watched indulgently while I gulped.
“Now that you are well-hydrated, please tell me, Beatrice: to what may I attribute this surprise visit?” Donata sat down in a comfortable chair across from me. I imagined that with her students she might sit behind the desk.
“I’m trying to find out about a painter who lived and worked in Siena in the 1340s. His name was Gabriele Beltrano Accorsi.” Lived. Was. Speaking about him in the past tense made a wave of sorrow rise up in me so acutely I had to pause for a few seconds. I could feel Donata scrutinizing me.
“Accorsi? He was a pupil of Simone Martini, in the years before Martini left for Avignon.” She pulled a massive text from the shelf and flipped through it quickly. “Yes, here he is. He was born in . . . 1311. Would that be the same Accorsi you’re thinking of?”
My heart was pounding. “That sounds right.”
I came into the world three years to the day after Duccio di Buoninsegna’s Maestà was carried through the streets to the Duomo by a great and reverent crowd. . . .
Donata interrupted my thoughts. “Now, date of death, let’s see.”
I held my breath. She was still looking down the page.
. . . not October 1347, please not October 1347 . . .
“Hmm, no date of death. I guess it’s not known. This book would include it if it were.”
I exhaled.
“Few of his paintings have been found, but we assume that more were painted than survived. Do you want to read this? There’s a bit more.” She handed me the heavy volume and I pored over the one-paragraph entry. Born in Siena. No mention of his marriage, but a list of a few paintings attributed to him. The Saint Christopher painting I’d seen in the Duomo’s museum was on the list, the one in which I, or my look-alike, stood on the river’s edge. There was no mention of the painting I’d watched Gabriele labor over, the four angels on the Ospedale facade guiding Mary’s Assumption into heaven. I searched for a note about the Messina Ospedale altarpiece but didn’t find it. Did that mean it hadn’t been finished? Donata’s voice made me look up.
“I’m happy to do some additional research on Accorsi—one of Siena’s own, little-known painters—that’s my sort of subject. But it will take me a few days—I have a manuscript due to a publisher this week. Can you hold out until next Monday? The Guerrinis’ next meal may depend on this advance.”
“Research on a medieval fresco painter can hardly be considered an emergency,” I said, trying to sound lighthearted, “compared to feeding a family of five.”
“Why is Accorsi so compelling to you, if you don’t mind my asking?” Donata leaned back in her chair. She looked charmingly academic with her wire-rimmed glasses pushed up on her head, caught up in her golden hair. She wore a tweed skirt suit of muted pumpkin-colored wool and high brown leather boots. The outfit would have made me look like a Dunkin’ Donuts fall special, but on her it was gorgeous.
“He testified against a Florentine murderer and got himself into trouble.”
“And you think this relates to Siena’s failure to recover after the Plague, and her eventual loss to Florentine rule a hundred and fifty years later? I’m missing the connection.”
“So am I, but it may have something to do with the murderer’s family. He was a Medici. An early Medici, but still.”
Donata raised her eyebrows. “You would certainly make a splash in the academic world if you could prove it,” she said thoughtfully, “and most things don’t even cause a ripple. Medieval historians like to pretend we know everything there is to know when of course the reverse is true.”
“Well, I’m very grateful for your help.”
“Of course. But what am I looking for?”
What was I looking for? I want to know whether he’ll be alive if I go back to find him. I came up with a more sensible version of the question for her.
“I want to know what he painted after the Plague arrived in Siena, if he painted anything at all. Those post-Plague years, until the fall of the Nine in 1355, seem key to the story.” She looked at me curiously. I didn’t say, of course, that I wanted to know whether he’d survived the Plague.
“I’ll do what I can. But . . .”
“But?” I smiled brightly.
“You seem awfully passionate about this topic, for a neurosurgeon.” What did she hear or see in my manner that made her wonder?
“Former neurosurgeon.”
“So it’s gone that far?”
“I don’t have a return ticket.”
“Welcome to starving academia,” Donata said cheerfully. “At least you don’t have a family of five to feed. Yet.”
* * *