The Medusa Amulet (8 page)

It was a silver garland, and made to look as if it were fashioned from gilded bulrushes. It was admirably done, but the metal, she could tell, was thin. It was a nice piece, one that would make a handsome present for some aristocrat, but nothing to rival the riches lying around the studio.

There had to be something more.

She put her fingers back in the box and found the interior mount, where a circular object, the size of a woman’s palm, was neatly settled. Waiting for the cloud to pass, she glanced over at the bed again to make sure Benvenuto had not been awakened by the sound of the latch releasing. But apart from the rhythmic rise and fall of his burly chest, he lay still.

The night sky cleared, and suddenly the thing beneath her hand glinted dully in the moonbeams. She withdrew it from the box, expecting to find the richest ornament she had ever seen—a brooch or bracelet fashioned from a dazzling array of sparkling gemstones.
Emeralds, sapphires, diamonds, all embedded in beaten gold. His other claims notwithstanding, Benvenuto was universally acknowledged to be the finest goldsmith in Florence, a city acclaimed for that art. But this medallion on a simple silver chain was almost as utilitarian as the iron chest it came from.

It depicted, though quite skillfully, the head of the gorgon, Medusa—she whose gaze could turn any mortal to stone. Her hair, a writhing mass of serpents, coiled around the edges of the piece, while her fierce eyes and gaping mouth comprised the center. It was done in the niello style, very fashionable just then. The image had been engraved into the silver with a sharply pointed burin—Caterina had often seen such work done—and then the hollows had been brushed with a black alloy made of sulfur and copper and lead. As a result, the design appeared in starker, bolder relief, though Caterina preferred her own silver—what little she had—to shine more brightly.

Still, this was a finely wrought piece, like the garland. Indeed, nothing that came from Benvenuto’s hand was not finely made. But why all the fuss? There were a dozen things in the shop that had to be more valuable. Idly, she turned the medallion over, and found, interestingly enough, a stiff black silk backing, neatly anchored by several silver clasps. These she turned, until the silk fell free, and she suddenly saw her own inquisitive face staring back at her.

It was a small circular mirror, with finely beveled edges. Now
that
was something out of the ordinary. She held it higher in the moonlight, angling the glass to capture her own face. There was something about the curvature of the glass, a swelling outward of its surface, which captured her features in a ruthlessly clear fashion, while simultaneously, and subtly, distorting them. It was as if the more she looked, the more deeply she was drawn into the glass, and the more she wanted to look away, the more she could not.

She drew the mirror closer to her face—close enough that her breath clouded its lower half, close enough that she could see her own bright eyes, looking back at her as if she were not looking
into
the glass at all, but was inside it instead, and looking out. It felt as if the thing had come alive, as if it were beating with a subtle pulse. The moonlight flooded across the glass like a silver tide, washing over her image, eclipsing her … and that was the last thing she remembered.

When she awoke, she found herself lying flat out on the floor, with the morning sun pouring through the window. A rooster was crowing on the rooftop.

And Cellini himself—in nothing but a pair of loose cotton drawers—was kneeling above her.

“What have you done?” he said, his expression a complex mixture of fear, anger, and concern. “What did you do?”

She looked around, but the mirror, the garland, and the iron box were gone.

Benvenuto helped her to her feet, throwing a sheet around her naked shoulders, and she stumbled, as if she had been at sea for weeks, across the studio. There was a pewter basin and pitcher on the bureau by the bed, and she filled the bowl with water. Her skin felt as if it had been scoured with sand. But when she bent down to throw the cold water on her face and saw her reflection, the breath caught in her throat. Her lush black hair, one of her most prized assets, had turned as white as snow—as white as if the Medusa herself had terrified her beyond imagining.

She whipped around to look at Benvenuto, praying for an explanation. “What have
I
done?” she exclaimed. “What have
you
done?”

But he simply stood there, silent.

“Is this one of your silly pranks?” she demanded. “Because if it is, I don’t think it’s very funny.”

But shaking his head, he came to her and put one of his rough hands to her cheek. “If only it were,
il mio gatto …
if only it were.”

Chapter 5

David had barely hung his coat on the back of his office door before his phone rang with a call from Dr. Armbruster.

“Guess what we received by courier this morning?”

She was not normally this playful, and it took David a second to say he had no clue.

“A generous check for our library restoration fund from Ambassador Schillinger and his wife. It seems he was very impressed by your lecture last week.”

“That’s great,” David said, wondering how this might affect his chances of clinching that spot as the new Director of Acquisitions.

“And I have some other good news, too.”

At last.

“Another of the audience members would like to come in today and meet with you in person.”

As quickly as his hopes had been raised, they plummeted again. He prayed it wasn’t just some frustrated academic who wanted to debate Dante’s indebtedness to Ovid.

“Who is it?”

“Her name is Kathryn Van Owen.”

Anyone who lived in Chicago knew the Van Owen name. At one point, the family had owned much of the Loop. And Kathryn, the recently
widowed wife of Randolph, was a prominent, if rather reticent, figure in local society.

“Up until now,” Dr. Armbruster continued, “she had asked to remain anonymous, but as you may have figured out already, she was the donor of the Florentine Dante.”

For some reason, David instantly knew that she was also the Lady in Black—the one who had come in late, wearing the veil.

“She’s arriving here this afternoon, with her lawyer. Apparently, she’s bringing along something else for your opinion. I don’t need to tell you that it, too, could wind up in our collections.”

“Do you want me to prepare anything in advance?”

“I can’t think what it would be. Are you wearing a decent shirt?”

“Yes,” he said, quickly looking down to check. “Do you have any idea what she’s planning to give us this time?”

David could almost hear her shrug. “Her late husband’s family is as rich as Croesus—though you probably know that already—but frankly, he never showed much interest in culture or the arts. He built that car museum in Elk Grove, but I think it’s really Mrs. Van Owen herself who’s donating these things, from her own collection. And she’s what you would call,” she said, plainly pausing to find a neutral term, “an unusual woman. You’ll see what I mean when you meet her. Be in the conference room at a quarter of three.”

Hanging up, David ran a hand around his jawline—he should have put a new blade in his razor that morning—and reopened the Dante files on his computer, checking online for any other libraries or archives that might have something that shed some further light on it. He thought it would be cool, when meeting Mrs. Van Owen for the first time, if he had something new to share with her about the book, something he hadn’t already discovered and mentioned at the public unveiling. But he also hoped that she could tell him something more about its origins than he already knew. The text, by and large, was the standard, written in the Italian vulgate. Up until the early 1300s, when the
Comedy
was composed, Latin was the only choice for such an epic work, but Dante had changed all that. By writing his
poem in the spoken language of his day, and in his inimitable terza rima stanzas, he had thrown down the gauntlet, making a clear break with the verse of the ancient Greeks and Romans and conferring a legitimacy upon the demotic tongue used by his own contemporaries.

But what really intrigued David about this edition, of which he could find no other record, were its illustrations. There was a life and a vigor to them that was unparalleled. They were unlike any other illustrations he had seen, in countless other printings, in a dozen different languages.

At two thirty—and having turned up nothing new and earthshaking—he took his emergency tie and sport jacket off the back of his office door and went down to the men’s room to put them on. As he adjusted the knot of his tie, he noticed that his hair, thick and brown and starting to curl up over his collar, could definitely have used a trim. He did his best to get it under control, then headed off to the conference room for his meeting with the mysterious Mrs. Van Owen.

Dr. Armbruster was supervising the setting out of a tea service. The room was wainscoted and warmly lighted, the back wall dominated by an oil portrait of Mr. Walter Loomis Newberry, its founder, in a black suit coat and hanging silver watch fob. Dr. Armbruster glanced at David—he felt like he was being inspected for flaws—and said, “Be appreciative, by all means, but don’t enter into any negotiations or comment in any way on the terms of her gift. We leave that to our own lawyers.”

“Got it.”

At three o’clock on the button, Mrs. Van Owen and a man she introduced as her attorney, Eugene Hudgins, were ushered into the room by the receptionist. The lawyer, a stolid guy with a red complexion, took a seat at the head of the table, as if so accustomed to it that no one would challenge him, and Mrs. Van Owen sat to his right. Dr. Armbruster took a seat on the other side, next to David. The receptionist took care of pouring out the tea, and David took those few minutes to study their benefactor.

Today, she had no veil on, and her face was the most captivating
David had ever seen. Her skin was a creamy white, so flawless and unlined it was almost impossible to assign any particular age to it. Was she younger than he’d been led to believe, or was this the miracle of that Botox stuff he had heard about? He knew she had recently lost a husband—the news of his crash had been carried in all the papers—but David could see no sign of grief. Her hair was jet-black, and sleekly gathered into a tight chignon. She had a regal and vaguely foreign look about her … but not so much foreign to this place as to this era. A look that was further accentuated by her most striking feature of all—her eyes.

They were a violet blue. David had never seen eyes of such a color. Maybe that was why she’d worn the veil the day before. Maybe she took advantage of every occasion she could, even if it was to wear mourning attire, that allowed her to keep people from staring. When David found that he was doing just that, he took off his wire rims and pretended to be cleaning them.

Hudgins had opened a bulging valise and taken out a bulky sealed envelope, along with a legal-sized binder imprinted in big block letters with the name of his law firm, HUDGINS & DUNBAR, LLC.

“That was a very interesting talk you gave,” Mrs. Van Owen said, and when David looked up, she seemed to be amused by something. “I learned a great deal about Dante.” There was a slight smile on her lips, but her words, like her features, carried a distant air. She had a faint trace of an accent, but even David, who was very good at placing them, wasn’t sure where this one came from. Definitely European, that much he knew, but it could have been French, or Italian, or even Spanish in origin.

“Thanks very much,” he replied. “Coming from the donor of such a beautiful book, it means a lot. And now that you’re here, I can’t resist asking where the book came from.”

“Florence. But you know that.”

“I meant, how did it come to be yours?”

“Oh, it had been in my family for many years, and I thought it was time the world was able to enjoy—and study—it.”

“But the illustrations,” he persisted. “Do you know anything about who executed them? I’ve consulted dozens of sources so far, and checked archives online all over the world, but I still can’t find a match to any known edition.”

“No, I shouldn’t think you would.”

“Really? Why not?”

“Because it is one of a kind.”

“You know that? You know that it’s the only extant copy?” David could hardly keep the excitement out of his voice. “How?”

But instead of answering, she resorted to an airy dismissal. “That’s what I’ve always been told.”

David visibly deflated. All sorts of myths and legends clung to family heirlooms. This copy of the
Divine Comedy
was undoubtedly rare and valuable, but it was possible, even likely, that somewhere in the world, perhaps buried in the bowels of the Vatican library, another copy existed.

But it was unlikely to be a more intact one than this.

“Now that that’s been settled,” Mr. Hudgins interrupted, as if uncomfortable with this unmediated conversation, “we should really get on with the business at hand. We have some additional material to be transferred,” he said, nodding at the bulky envelope on the table and making it plain that David should open it.