Brunch was a huge success, if a messy one. I sat everyone in the dining room, out of sight of the kitchen. I wanted to show Donata what I’d found, ideally privately, after we ate.
Felice and Gianni were allowed to pour their own syrup and overdid it extravagantly. Sebastiano had a fistful of pancake in each hand and syrup on nearly every item of his clothing and all his exposed skin by the end of the meal. Donata and Ilario oohed and aahhed appreciatively about the unknown delights of American cuisine. We finished a triple recipe, and I was gratified to see the slim Ilario surreptitiously unbuttoning his pants under the table.
Ilario had promised the kids a trip to a medieval Christmas pageant in the Campo, and bundled them all up and out my front door. It was inordinately quiet after they left.
“Did you submit your manuscript to the publisher?”
“Thursday, just before deadline. Our next few months of dinner are secured.” Donata swirled the last little bit of coffee in her cup, then set it on the table.
“Donata, can you come in the kitchen for a second? It’s a mess, I’m warning you.”
“You are not the first person to have a messy kitchen, Beatrice.”
“Well, it’s unusually messy, actually, since the pipe leak. But I want to show you something.”
She raised her eyebrows. “Now I’m intrigued.” Once we were in the room together, I was satisfied to hear her gasp.
“Beatrice, this is extraordinary.”
I nodded. “Who do you think painted it?”
She narrowed her eyes. “It’s difficult to tell from sketches, but there are qualities of the drawing that remind me of Accorsi’s work. That would be a peculiar coincidence, to have your favorite painter’s frescos on your kitchen wall.” I snorted. She had no idea what a coincidence it was. She looked for a long time, close up, and then backed up a few steps. “It looks like studies for the birth of the Virgin. Apparently the Signoretti Chapel, here in Siena, has remnants of a fresco depicting the birth of the Virgin, though not enough survived to determine the painter. I have never seen the work myself; it’s not routinely accessible to the public.”
The Signoretti Chapel. It certainly wouldn’t be accessible to me, not if it required convincing the twenty-first-century Signoretti, my current archenemy, to let me see it. The slice through almost seven hundred years made me so breathless I couldn’t even respond. And what would I say if I responded anyway? I couldn’t tell Donata that I knew Gabriele had painted the Signoretti fresco, and I certainly couldn’t say I thought I recognized the models. I would have been very surprised if Gabriele had actually used these same faces in the final painting anyway, putting a notorious Medici in a Sienese nobleman’s house. “Do you know someone who could figure out what to do with these? I feel like my house has suddenly become a museum.”
Donata laughed. “Welcome to life in Siena—we all feel that way. Yes, I’ll have one of our restorers come take a look and see what we can do. I suppose it’s a blessing, your burst pipe.”
We both stared at the wall for a while, seeing different things. Finally, she turned back to me.
“Beatrice, I asked a curator I know at the Museo about Accorsi. You know that he has paintings here in Siena?”
“The Saint Christopher one? Yes, I’ve seen it.” I wondered whether Donata had. My likeness was glaringly obvious to me, but maybe an outside observer could miss it, among all the people he’d painted at the water’s edge.
“There are two actually. The second wasn’t painted here but was transported sometime in the 1800s from Messina, Sicily.” I felt the hair on my arms rise at her explanation. “Would you like to go see it?”
“What, now?”
“The Museo opens at eleven on Saturdays.” Donata called Ilario to alert him to her plans, and at my insistence, we left without washing the dishes.
We walked to the Museo. After a week of nasty weather the sun had finally emerged, and everyone was outside, enjoying the break from winter. In my head I was in the tiny chapel of Messina’s Ospedale again, walking through the slanting beams of sunlight. Donata read my mood and didn’t break the silence. I was aware of her at my side, matching my pace, and was happy to have the quiet company.
After consulting the museum floor plan we went straight to the right gallery. I saw the altarpiece right away, hanging on the far wall of the room. I crossed the length of the gallery slowly, as if I were walking through water. As I stood in front of the painting, I started to cry.
“Beatrice, what’s the matter?” Donata put her hand on my shoulder.
“It’s not finished.”
“Is that such a tragedy, cara?”
I looked at the painting through my tears—four saints in the panels above: Christopher, Luke, Placidus, Nicholas—and the predella below, recounting the life of the Virgin. And there was Paola-Mary with her fearful face and outstretched hand, still warding off the news of the Annunciation. But as hard as I stared, I saw nothing that had not been there before. If he’d finished it I would have known he’d lived. I was crying too hard to look any longer, and I felt Donata lead me by the hand to a padded bench in the center of the gallery. I sat there with my head bent, sobbing steadily.
“You must care quite deeply about this painter to be moved so by his work.” Donata spoke quietly.
“Crazy, isn’t it?”
“Perhaps not.”
“I’m glad you’re an art historian,” I said finally, my throat aching. It must have struck her as bizarre that I was sitting here in anguish over an unfinished altarpiece.
“You mean so that I can understand your grief?”
That made me start crying again. I took a deep breath. “Donata?”
“Carissima?”
“If I can’t finish this book of Ben’s, do you think you might be able to help finish it, and get it published?”
“Post-Plague recovery isn’t really my area of expertise, Beatrice.”
“It wasn’t mine either, until recently. But what if you had all my notes, could you do it?”
“Is there something that might keep you from finishing? I hope not an illness, God forbid.”
“No, nothing like that.” I took a deep breath. “If I disappear again, please don’t worry about me.”
She pulled back and looked closely at my face. “What are you planning? You can’t be suggesting you want to end your life because of an unfinished painting.”
That made me laugh, even through tears. “No, I’m not that theatrical, but if it happens, don’t worry about me.”
She sat silently for a moment. “You want me to accept this without understanding why?”
“Please,” I said. “I can’t explain.”
She nodded once, looking troubled. “I’ll try.”
I hugged her then, the warmth and solidity of her body rooting me, at least for that moment, in the present.
* * *