He sat down quickly, the sketch still spread before him on the table. He could hardly believe his ears. Cellini? One of his heroes ever since Amherst, when he had read every word of his celebrated autobiography in a Renaissance art course? The rebel spirit who had created some of the greatest sculptures of his day, works that had played a role in David’s very choice of career? For several moments, he was dumbfounded, before asking, “And what do you want me to do?” Already he was itching to start in on his research. “Verify the drawing somehow?”
She frowned at the very suggestion. “There is no question of its authenticity.”
David could see that she was not someone who brooked argument easily, and he was sorry he’d crossed her already. Even Dr. Armbruster looked cowed.
“Then what would you like me to do?”
With one long, lacquered nail tapping the sketch, and her foot tapping the floor impatiently, she said, “I want you to find it.”
“The actual mirror?” he asked uncertainly. What did she take him for, Indiana Jones? Dr. Armbruster, too, looked surprised at the nature of the request, though she was not about to start raising any objections. “Wouldn’t a gemologist, or a specialist in antique jewelry, be your best bet?” he said, but she grimaced in disgust.
“I have tried that route. They found nothing. It needs a scholar to find it; I am sure of that now.”
“Is it possible,” he said, almost afraid to complete the thought, “that they didn’t find it because it does not exist?”
“La Medusa,” she said, in a tone that brooked no dissent, “exists.”
Looking into those violet eyes, boring into his like a pair of icicles, he didn’t doubt it. Nor would he have dared.
“And I need you,” she concluded, “to get it for me.”
Chapter 6
The knock that had just sounded on Benvenuto’s door was not a friendly one, and the voice that called out his name was equally peremptory.
His hands were coated with warm wax, and he was in the middle of making a model of Caterina, who stood in the nude holding a wreath as if offering it up to the Heavens. It had taken him half the day just to calm her down, and it was bad enough that she insisted on wearing a scarf over her white hair.
“Who is it?” he bellowed, his eyes still trained on the girl. “What do you want?”
Cellini had already had to send his assistant Ascanio to the apothecary’s shop for a hair dye made of boiled walnuts and leeks—Caterina said she would not set foot outside until her hair was made black again—and now there was no one there to answer the damn door.
“It’s Captain Lucasi, and I am here at the behest of his lordship, Cosimo, the Duke de’Medici.”
The duke was the immensely wealthy ruler of Florence and patron to all of its greatest artists—Cellini among them. As for this Lucasi, Cellini knew from previous run-ins with the man that he was an officious prig, terribly impressed with the colored balls—the Medici insignia—adorning the front of his uniform.
“Damn it to Hell!” Cellini exclaimed, wiping his hands on a rag and throwing it on the worktable. “Let him in.”
Caterina wrapped herself in the bedsheet and, after making sure no wisps of white hair were escaping from under the scarf, opened the door.
Lucasi took her in slowly, looking from head to foot with a sly smile on his lips. “Shouldn’t you be wearing a yellow veil?” he said, referring to the garment prostitutes were required to wear in the streets of the city.
Caterina scowled and walked away.
Lucasi stepped into the room, looking all around. “What have I interrupted?” He poked his nose into the fireplace, where a pot of white beeswax was being kept warm and malleable, but when he ventured to touch it with his finger, Cellini shouted, “Get away from that, you dolt!”
The captain pretended to take no offense, but turned, with the smile still on his lips, and said, “You need to come with me.”
“Where? What for?”
Captain Lucasi shrugged. “The duke pays for everything you’ve got here,” he said, gesturing widely at the silver cups on the floor, the gems still loose on a table, and finally at Caterina, who had planted herself on top of the seaman’s chest, “and when he says come, you come.”
Cellini was within a hair of refusing, but even he knew better. When the Medici summoned, you answered their call, or wound up in a cell in the notorious Stinche. He had been there before, for public brawling, and had no wish to return.
“Give me a minute,” he growled, roughly scrubbing the wax off his hands and wrists with a bar of lye soap before pulling on a fresh shirt and blue tunic. Beneath them he wore the Medusa, which he had sworn to himself he would never again remove. “Take the charcoal from the hearth,” he said to Caterina, “and put a lid on the wax.” Marching toward the door, he said to Lucasi, “Let’s go then.”
The captain glanced down at his pants and shoes, still spattered with bits of wax, and said, “You don’t want to change those, too?”