Immortal master—Cellini liked that. If only this painter knew how fitting it was.
The head of the Order, Abbot Anselmo, lifted the tarpaulin, draped it back, and taking a fistful of dirt, cast it into the grave. A painfully shy old man with a terrible stammer, it was he who had agreed to reserve for Cellini this burial spot … in return for a magnificent marble crucifix Cellini had made and donated to the Order. As the other mourners stepped up to take their own handfuls of dirt and rubble, the faint strains of a laubade drifted in from the rotunda. Played on a harp, a pair of flutes, and a five-stringed lyra da braccio, the composition—both words and music—was also Cellini’s creation. As the melody filled the chamber, Cellini felt his fingers twitch involuntarily, as if playing the notes on a flute, and his eyes filled with tears. Not with regret—he had done what he had done in his life, and he made no apologies—but with nostalgia. His father, a musician himself, had longed for his son to become a famous flutist, and though Benvenuto had made a brilliant start, it had never been his first love. Music was too ephemeral; it was lasting monuments that he had always wanted to build.
But listening to the solemn tune, and its equally solemn lyrics—based on the closing words of the divine Paradiso—he wondered if he had been right about that. Stone could shatter, gold could be melted down, but the very airiness of this creation—a sequence of notes, a few words and phrases—might that not be more enduring, after all? Who could destroy it? Who, for that matter, could truly possess it? It belonged to anyone with an instrument to play, or a voice with which to sing. Benvenuto wished that his father, with whom he had had so many bitter quarrels, were standing in front of him now, so that the artisan could bend his head—as he did to no one else—and beg for his forgiveness.
Instead, he turned away from the grave, where a long line of mourners waited to pay their last respects, and moved silently, surreptitiously, invisibly, down the long nave of burning torches and out into the gloomy piazza.
Ascanio, who awaited him in the shadows of the loggia, was nonetheless startled when, with a low cough, he made his presence known.
“Are we alone?”
“Yes,” Ascanio assured him, looking again in all directions. “There’s no one in sight.”
Cellini made his own survey, then carefully removed the wreath, fashioned from the infernal bulrushes, from around his temples. It had been a tight fit—it was a relief to have it off—and seconds later, like a figure shimmering into view as it stepped from behind a waterfall, he once more became visible to the mortal eye.
“You look no worse for wear,” Ascanio commented, his eye traveling up and down his master’s body.
But Cellini wasn’t so sure of that. Watching your own burial was a sobering sight.
“And now that you’re dead and gone, have you given some thought to who you are going to be?”
“Royalty, I think. Perhaps a marquis.”
Making a grand bow, with one arm folded behind his back, Ascanio said, “And where will the marquis live?”
Cellini had given it much consideration, and in the end he could think of nowhere better suited to his new life than the birthplace of his one great, and long-lost, inamorata. Throwing the hood of his cloak over his head, he strode off into the night, saying simply, “France.”
Chapter 19
Even racing along at almost two hundred miles per hour, the train hardly rocked or swayed at all. A far cry from the Chicago El, David thought, as he gazed out at the rolling hills of the Italian countryside. Dusk was falling, and off in the distance he could just make out the sloping walls of another medieval town. On any normal occasion, he would have been relishing every minute of the trip to Paris.
But this was no normal occasion.
Having tried three times to put a call through to Chicago, he snapped his phone shut and decided to wait until later. The last time he’d spoken to Gary, Sarah had been at the hospital, receiving treatment, but “so far, so good,” Gary had said. “Her counts have either improved or held steady. We’re just hoping there’s not a reaction.”
David hoped for more—much more—than that. And he was determined to make it happen.
He heard the latch of the en suite bathroom unlock, and Olivia came out in a black turtleneck and jeans, still brushing her hair back. She looked as sleek as a seal.
But everything had changed for them in the past few hours. Ever since their first embrace on the steps of her building, it was as if all the walls had come down between them. Whatever suspicions he had ever harbored about her were gone, along with whatever reservations he had entertained. In all but deed, they were lovers—and before the night was over, even that, David suspected, might change.
“I just thought of something,” she said, pulling the brush one last time through her hair.
“What’s that?”