“Same thing. Sometimes the sailors thought they were sure to lose an arm or a leg, falling overboard or getting tangled in the rigging, and that it would have happened if Our Lady’s love hadn’t protected them. This isn’t nearly as many as we once had. Our Lady was looted twice.” His eyes dimmed. “People always want to take what isn’t theirs. Even today.”
He tried a fretful smile. “I’m Ivan—I’m sorry, I should have said. I’m the curator’s son. Let me show you and your friends the altar. The museum is closed today, so that’s all you’ll be able to see.”
I followed him between two smaller marble altars on either side of the nave, censers dangling above us, to the enclosure of the main altar. Its walls were painted a deep maroon, like the inside of a heart; Malina, Niko, and Luka were already there, on the narrow benches on either side. Three curved tiers rose up from the altar, each wider than the previous one, the last holding a tabernacle supported by mottled green marble pillars. Above them stood the painting of the Madonna and child, surrounded by cherubs and seraphim, a chiseled marble curtain shielding it from above.
“This is a replica of the painting found by the Mortesi? brothers, painted over plaster,” he said. “The original icon is in a museum. Safer than it would be here,” he added, again with that trace of outrage.
Looking up, I saw a delicate confection of glass, its loops so finely wrought it made me long for the blowpipe at my lips, the molten give of the bubble, or the gather, at the end of the pipe. From below, some of the shapes even looked like the bulbs and buds of flowers. They practically quivered in my sight, wanting to burst into fractals like some hostile hybrid of glass and weedy plant, and my breathing went shallow. I screwed my eyes shut and snapped the band around my wrist, trying to rein myself in.
“And see all these dried wreaths and bouquets hanging from the lintels?” I heard Ivan saying, but I didn’t dare look at actual flowers, even dead ones. “Those are votive gifts from brides who get married here. They give their bouquets and ribbons and jewels as offerings to Our Lady, to safeguard their marriages and their husbands when they go off to sea.”
Why would Dunja have wanted to come here? I wondered. Despite my reaction, my still-buzzing scalp and the milling unease like centipedes down my spine, I could feel that this place was meant to be a sanctuary, if not one for me. What could she have been looking for in this homespun little church?
I turned my attention back to our reluctant guide, who was biting his chapped lower lip. “There’s one more thing,” he said. “We don’t usually show this to the larger groups in case of damage or accidents, but since it’s just the four of you . . . do you want to touch the first stone, behind the altar? The one that held the painting when the brothers found it on the sea?”
Luka’s face brightened like a little boy’s, despite all the skepticism. “We’d love to,” he said. “Thank you.”
Ivan squeezed behind the altar, his voice growing muffled. “It’s tight back here, but you’ll come through just fine.”
I startled as his hand wrapped around mine, and he gently tugged me forward, placing my palm against the altar’s cool, dusty back. I edged in sideways, trying not to breathe too shallowly. The dark, tight space smelled as clean as the rest of the chapel, nothing but the fresh saltwater breeze from outside and the ghostly undertone of faded incense. Still, my flesh crawled as Ivan guided my hand around the dry rim of an opening carved into the altar’s back, as if there might be creatures in there, a snake or swarming beetles, a scorpion with its barbed tail held poised to strike.
But when I finally slipped my hand into the smooth, rounded opening and ran my fingers over stone polished by countless palms, I felt a deep wash of disappointment, as if I had thought there might be something here. A clue, maybe, something we could use to begin picking at this thorny tangle with Mama—and the two of us—at its center.
But nothing was ever so easy.
After all four of us wriggled out the other side, Ivan gestured toward the doorway to the left of the altar. “The museum is through there. It’s a shame that I can’t show it to you, but after yesterday, my father thought it’d be best to be a little careful, even if we can’t close down the church itself.”
Malina stiffened beside me. “What . . .” My voice came out raspy. I could practically taste my heart in my throat. “What happened yesterday?”
“Someone stole our most precious votive offering. It was a tapestry of the Madonna and child, embroidered by Jacinta Kuni?-Mijovi?, from Perast. She worked on it for twenty-five years while her husband was away at sea, until she lost her eyesight. She used gold and silver fibers, and seed pearls, but by the end, when she ran out of money and could barely see, she used her own hair. You can see how it pales from dark to white where she wove it in.”
He turned away from us, as if to straighten a little display of candles, but I could hear the fury in his voice. “Can you imagine how much love went into something like that? Her wealth, her sight, her own hair—just in the hope that her husband would come home. And now it’s gone forever. It was given to Our Lady, and someone stole it. Our Lady wouldn’t ever be vengeful, but I don’t think it’s blasphemy to say that I hope that woman pays for it.”
“Were you here when it happened?”
“I was,” he said bitterly. “I showed her everything, even the first stone. And I let her stay upstairs alone so I could tour a French group that had come in. She seemed so . . . She didn’t seem like the kind of person who’d do something like that. But what do I know. I can’t even be remembering her right.”
“Why not?”
“I thought she was old, to begin with. Her hair was white. But when she took her sunglasses off inside, I could have sworn she wasn’t any older than me.”
FOURTEEN
“WHAT IS SHE DOING?” I DEMANDED. WE SAT AT THE outermost table of the trellis-shrouded restaurant’s terrace, overlooking the water as the sun dipped behind the mountains across from us. I’d wanted to head straight back to Cattaro, as if simple movement could make up for how stagnant and lost I felt, but apparently I’d still looked pale when we got off the ferry. Luka had insisted we get something to eat. “What could she possibly want with a tapestry? And if she burgled a church, it seems likely that she’s the one who took our things, too.”
Malina dipped her chin, her cascade of curls rushing over her cheeks. “But what for? It’s not just why a tapestry—it’s why that one.”
“Maybe if we understood the context better,” Luka mused. He was sitting next to me, across from Malina and Niko, one arm slung across the back of my chair. “This gleam, these things you both can do, and Jasmina too.” He leveled a gaze at his sister. “That you knew about, apparently.”