When he’d made his regular call the night before, Sarah was actually back home, but she still sounded so weak. Dr. Ross had gotten her into the new protocol, and while it was too soon to tell if it would work, at least she had not rejected the new drug. “And they say that’s a very good sign,” Sarah said, doing her best to sound upbeat. “Tolerance has been a problem with a lot of other candidates.”
David had done his best to sound enthusiastic, too, and so had Gary, who chimed in on the extension, but sometimes David felt that they were all just acting a part for each other. Gary had asked him if his new promotion had come through, and David had said, “If I’m lucky with my assignment here, I don’t see how it wouldn’t.”
Sarah said she knew it would—she had always been his biggest booster—and when David hung up, he hadn’t been able to fall asleep for hours, which might explain why he was having trouble staying awake. The late-morning sun was spilling through the clerestory windows of the reading room in the Accademia di Belle Arti, and taking off his glasses, he rubbed his eyes and yawned.
For the previous three days, he and Olivia had been holed up in their alcove at the Biblioteca Laurenziana, combing over the various drafts and versions of Cellini’s manuscripts—his treatises on sculpture and goldsmithing, in addition to the many copies, some in his own hand, of his unfinished autobiography. They were searching for any mention of La Medusa, or anything like it, which might point them in the right direction. But there had been nothing so far.
In an attempt to hurry things along, David had left Olivia in charge of the Laurenziana research, while he had taken this ten-minute journey to the Piazza San Marco, and the Accademia library, where the Codice 101, S—yet another draft of Cellini’s life—was kept. David knew the director here, Professor Ricci, from his days in Florence as a Fulbright scholar, and though David had thought he was an old man then, Ricci was unchanged, still shuffling around the echoing halls and cloisters of the library—founded by Cosimo de’Medici himself in 1561—in his bedroom slippers, with the bottoms of his pajamas peeking out from under the cuffs of his trousers. His skin was as yellow and crinkled as very old paper.
“So you are going to write about our Benvenuto?” Ricci said, in that proprietary way that Florentines displayed toward their legendary artists as he deposited the original manuscript on the desk in David’s carrel. “The Laurenziana, they have some fine things over there,” he said, sniffing, “and that Dr. Valetta, he will go on. But they are attached to a church, after all, not a museum.”
David had the distinct sense that there was a cross-piazza rivalry here.
“Superstition reigns over there,” Ricci concluded, “while reason alone prevails at the Academy.”
David had to smile. “Actually, I’m not writing about Cellini himself,” he confessed, “but looking for evidence of something he made. A mirror with the Medusa’s face on one side.”
Signor Ricci scratched the gray stubble on his chin, and said, “I never heard of such a thing. He made the Medusa only once, for the great statue of Perseus.” Shaking his head, he said, “No, no, you must be mistaken, my friend.”
It was the last thing he wanted to hear. Unless it existed, and he could find it, he would never be able to hold Mrs. Van Owen to her promises. For one thing, he would not be able to lay claim to the money—she had offered no consolation prize—but more important than that, he could never insist that she fulfill her solemn oath … to save his sister’s life. It was a slim reed to cling to, but he didn’t have any other.