Now I had three projects on hold waiting for someone else’s help—finding out about tax records from the clerk, the missing journal at the Duomo’s lost and found, and Gabriele’s fate from Donata—and I felt restless and irritable. The heat was on in the house now, but wind got in through the old wood-frame windows. I felt a strange sense of déjà vu, imagining the house as I’d seen it in Gabriele’s time superimposed on the modern version I lived in now. I stayed home for New Year’s Eve, and spent New Year’s Day in a flurry of housecleaning just to make myself feel better. I took a look at the damaged wall in the kitchen. Getting someone to fix it over the holidays was hopeless; Donata had recommended a contractor who said he could start mid-January. Looking at the chunks of loosened plaster, I thought I might be able to do some of it by myself, and, using one of Ben’s ancient metal kitchen spatulas, I started chipping away at the fragments. One big piece fell off, and I backed up, saving my toes. But when I looked at the hole I’d created I stopped and stared. On the wall underneath, the much older plaster wall, were lines in a faded brown—not mildew, but sinopia, the pigment used to draw out frescoes before they were painted. Suddenly I heard the bubble and hiss of my espresso boiling over and raced back to the stove to rescue it. With my heart pounding, I went back to chipping. After an hour I’d cleared a few feet of space, and could see I was right—it was a sketch of a man. It was not a perfect likeness, but the man’s features reminded me of Giovanni de’ Medici. I kept chipping until I’d bared most of the wall down to the original plaster. It wasn’t a coherent single painting, but a series of sketches. It must have been Gabriele’s studio—who else would have drawn on the wall on the top floor of Martellino’s house? Knowing that his hand, hundreds of years before, had touched the plaster, made the past seem suddenly closer. I wanted to touch it too, to narrow the centuries that divided us. Then I realized I’d been hacking away at a centuries-old work of art with a kitchen tool.
The man with the Giovanni-ish face was one of two talking outside a birthing room where a newborn was being bathed in a basin. The sight of the second man’s face made my heart skip a beat. This face reminded me of Signoretti—the medieval Signoretti. Why did they keep showing up side by side, this unlikely pair of noblemen? Was it just a coincidence? Was Gabriele just using the faces he knew? I wished I could ask him myself. I put down the spatula, which was now hopelessly bent, and went back to my coffee. It was cold but I drank it anyway, staring at the sketches.
A memory of Gabriele painting, holding a brush like an extension of his arm as he chewed his lower lip thoughtfully, filled my head. The thought that he might have died in the chapel where I’d left him in Messina was unbearable. I had to have that journal.
* * *
That evening, exhausted from my day with a plaster wall, I decided to go out for a drink. I sat down on a stool at the worn marble bar and ordered a sherry, feeling decadent. As I waited, I saw a familiar figure walk in the front door. His pale hair was flattened to his head when he took off his winter hat, and his slim stooped build reminded me of a parenthesis. For a few seconds I couldn’t place him out of context, and then I realized it was Fabbri from the university library. He saw me and waved, surprising me with his enthusiastic smile. People are sometimes very different when they’re not at work. I motioned to an empty stool and he joined me after shedding several layers of wool onto a coatrack by the door. I like to play a game of trying to guess what people are going to order and made a quick assessment. A gimlet, I thought as he gestured to the bartender, or something else quaintly old-fashioned. But he surprised me again by asking for an Absolut Citron kamikaze. You just never know.
“Dottoressa Trovato,” he said with a polite nod. He didn’t mention Gabriele’s journal, fortunately.
“Beatrice, please.”
“You know, it’s a funny coincidence I’ve found you here. I have your papers, copies from the library in Firenze. They came late today, but as I was on my way out the door I put them in my bag. The mailbox is so far from my office I didn’t want to go all the way back.” He handed me the sheaf of papers and then took an appreciative sip of his drink. I looked around me to make sure no one was watching before reading—I’d started to imagine Signoretti was following me everywhere, waiting for a misstep. But as I read through the pages, I forgot both my paranoia and my sherry. I saw Giovanni and Immacolata de’ Medici’s names immediately but found no mention of Iacopo’s birth, just a record of Giovanni and Immacolata’s only daughter, baptized Cristina.
“That’s odd.”
“Dottoressa?”
“Beatrice, please,” I said reflexively, reading over the pages again.
Fabbri had another sip of his drink, which was disappearing fast. I hoped he would be able to stay on his stool.
“I can’t find the person I was looking for. Just a different child, who died shortly after birth.” Could the tax records be wrong about Iacopo? I had that letter from Immacolata, about her son in the aftermath of his father’s execution. Maybe he’d been born later? The records extended several more years, but there was no mention of the birth of any Iacopo de’ Medici.
“Are the documents helpful?” The clerk had finished his drink and gestured to the bartender for another.
“Yes, quite. Thanks so much. I’m glad I ran into you.” I slid off my stool, forgetting the sherry.
“Your drink?”
“Oh, I’ve had plenty,” I said distractedly, leaving some cash for the bartender. I was about to leave, but remembering Gabriele’s skill at making everyone feel special, I stopped.
“You’ve been an enormous help,” I said. “I feel fortunate to be able to work with you.” He beamed—the Gabriele magic worked. I walked home in the dark, wondering where Iacopo had come from, if not his parents. If they were his parents.
* * *
With an empty weekend looming, I decided it was time to repay the Guerrinis’ hospitality and invite the whole family over for brunch, American style. Grocery shopping was challenging. It took me three hours to find a bottle of maple syrup, and six ounces cost the equivalent of twenty dollars. Bacon took less time, though I wasn’t familiar with the packaging and almost bought prosciutto by mistake. The ingredients for pancakes were easy.