Quattrocento Read online

  “Could you?” Matt asked, looking past the audience to the technician manning the projector. “Thanks,” he added, as the two images began to move toward each other, collided in a confusion of lines, and then miraculously cleared into a single fingerprint, bold, cleanly etched in black against the white background, like the underdrawing of a painting.

  There was another wave of applause. Aides fanned out through the hall, distributing the freshly printed bulletin of the museum. Hundreds of Annas, searching for a new home—sideways, upside down, a glimpse of an eye clasped under an arm, a hand across her cheek, looked at curiously before being tossed in a bag. Stacks of them, and millions to come. Posters and coffee cups and fund drives. Why should Matt feel empty? He had done his job. His future was assured, he would be famous, they were already treating him differently. The airplane soared away, into the cold wind of a March day, flying toward the distant roar of the surf—he had to get away. He stood.

  “Where are you going?” Charles asked in a whisper, grabbing his arm.

  “Men’s room,” Matt said, and edged his way past the others sitting at the table. Outside the room, he paused, the metallic cadences of Petrocelli’s amplified voice droning on in the background, and tried not to think about the interviews that would come as soon as the news conference finished. The event had been staged in the same room that had been used for the reception for the studiolo, using the majestic sight of the mounted knights of the arms and armor gallery as a backdrop. To Matt’s side was the massive doorway to the studiolo. The sight of it was like seeing an old friend in a strange foreign city. He was tired, as worn out as though he had run a marathon that had gone on for days. He couldn’t remember the last time he had slept through the night. The studiolo beckoned him, a quiet refuge from a future Matt, as a restorer and art historian, had always dreamed of but, now that it was upon him, dreaded.

  Entering the studiolo he felt the familiar breath of air against his cheek, the warm scent of aged wood. When was the last time he had been here? He tried to think of why he had stopped coming, but now that he was back it was hard to imagine ever having been away, much less why. The parrot was still there in his cage, the door open. The armor leaned on the shelves, the instruments were ready to be tuned and played; the books open, waiting to be read. He circled the room, happy to see the familiar images, trying as he did to empty his mind and just let the quiet and the stillness take over, but the amplified voice continued to drone from the distance. He drifted from one panel to another, like a swimmer treading water as the current carries him sideways down the beach. There was something so familiar about the room, the oddly disproportionate shape, where had he seen it? Not here. There was a light high up, in the clerestory window behind him, that he had never noticed before. Perhaps it’s new, he thought. What could be new in a room that is five hundred years old? Not me, he decided. I am not new. I am old, the walls are old, and as he moved his shadow followed him, sliding along the cabinets. He watched as the round shadow of his head was drawn closer and closer to the twin circles on the wall, the Garter and its own shadow, the heart and center of the room. He felt the weightless light from the clerestory window on his back, holding him up, moving him to the focal point, and as he drew close he became aware for the first time of the vibration—was it from the light? He felt it settling into him from the air, rising up from the floor beneath him, a pulsing like that of a deep underground generator, as regular as the blood coursing through him.

  Matt watched, fascinated, as the two shadows, of his head and the Garter, slowly merged, a double eclipse, and as they did, the slow, steady vibration grew more and more pronounced until he wasn’t sure if he was hearing it as well as feeling it. He gazed at the wall, opened up before him, and saw the white bird, double winged, at the moment it became airborne, heard the clear, high chirp of a parrot behind him, felt the warmth of a summer breeze, redolent with rosemary and horses, through an open window, the heat of the sun on his back. The vibration was almost overpowering, hypnotizing. The black ring of the Garter’s shadow floated before him, penumbra to an unseen fire, growing and expanding, but as he fell toward it the amplified drone from outside grew ever more insistent, a discordant growl chasing him, and ahead he could see, in the blackness, the red eyes of the wolf, waiting—

  chapter 9

  Matt, standing in the room, felt the warmth of the midday sun on the back of his neck. He held his hand up in the shaft of light, watching how it molded the veins and fingers into a desert landscape of stark shadows. He turned his hand over, cupping the weight of the sunlight in his palm.

  The clip-clop of hooves on paving stones echoed up through the high window of the studiolo from the alley below, punctuated by the high whinny of a horse. “Ercole,” a voice called in the distance.

  Matt felt the material of the doublet he was wearing. Linen. Soft. Under it a silk shirt, and on his legs, hose. Strange, he thought. This is very strange. Not the clothes, but how natural they felt. The colors were bright. That’s indigo, he thought, looking at the doublet, I wonder where it’s from. He fingered the silver pin that fastened the coat. I’m standing in a room, he thought, looking around. I was standing in a room, and I am still standing in a room. He looked down at his feet, standing on the same octagonal terrazzo tiles, but now in leather boots, with soft brown felt uppers that angled up in the back to his midcalf.

  The studiolo was just as he had always known it. The same inlaid panels—the weapons, the instruments, the bench with the mazzocchio. And above it, the Garter. A shadow passed at the edge of his mind, an echo of darkness, like low thunder in the night, that grew as he looked at the empty black circle behind the Garter. A memory, something he had once known, but as he tried to bring it forward the feeling passed, and the circle became just a shadow of inlaid wood.

  Matt looked farther up, above the Latin inscription that ran like a frieze around the room over the inlaid panels. The studiolo was unchanged, but different. A series of allegorical paintings hung on the high walls above the frieze, a complete cycle representing the liberal arts. Two of them, Music and Rhetoric, he had seen on his last trip to London. And there, over the door, was Astronomy—Ptolemy kneeling as he was handed an astrolabe—although Matt knew it only as a photograph, for the original, in the Kaiser Friedrich Museum, had been destroyed in the war. The studiolo was furnished, too.

  Next to Matt was a small table, standing by the side of a barrel chair of heavy carved wood, with arms that curved up in a semicircle from the crossed and intertwined legs. He ran his hand across the surface of the table, smooth and oiled, and then picked up the globe of brass loops in the corner behind a thick book with a tooled leather cover. An astrolabe, like the one in the painting, or in the inlaid scene on the wall just behind him, with the ambits of the sun and the moon marked off. Shining in the sunlight, the astrolabe cast turning circles of black shadow on the terrazzo floor as Matt looked at it. He set the astrolabe down and opened the cover of the book. A miniature of the sun, with beams like curved swords, puckered the thick parchment with its gilding. Geographia, the title proclaimed in elegant black lettering, inscribed by hand. Matt let the cover drop.

  He looked at the closed door again. He could stay here. He could sit down; he didn’t have to go anywhere. Tired, he found the idea appealing, but the door pulled at him. What lay beyond? He found it odd that he felt no urgency, or even sense of danger, but instead only an expectant curiosity, almost as though he already knew what he would find. He walked over to the door, under the lowered ceiling of the entryway, inlaid with the Duke of Urbino’s coat of arms, and, pushing it open, stepped through.

  The long room of the ducal library stretched in front of him, reaching the entire breadth of the palazzo. Furnished, it looked even larger than when Matt had seen it, stripped bare, on his trip to Gubbio years before. Shelves of books, broken by tapestries and pictures, lined the tall room from floor to ceiling. Two massive tables, laden with thick tomes and bronze sculptures of heroic myth
ical struggles, sat in the center. Matt walked over to the nearest painting, a forest scene of a woman bathing, while beyond her a man changing into a stag was being attacked by dogs.

  Matt, entranced by the painting, became aware that he was not alone. Someone was standing in the entryway to the library. He looked over to find a man dressed in the long red robes of a scholar but with the broad shoulders and short, stocky legs of a wrestler. He had a face to match, with wideset eyes framing a nose that had long before been flattened and left that way, like a rock wall tumbled by a frost heave and never repaired.

  “Actaeon and Diana,” Matt said, as the man walked up to him. “Van Eyck. I saw it in Brussels.”

  “The duke just got it. I’m Rodrigo de Aranjuez, the duke’s librarian. And you are?”

  “Matt. Matt O’Brien.”

  “Might I ask where you are from? I can’t place your accent. Ireland?” he asked, looking at the ring on Matt’s finger. A gift from his parents, passed down from generation to generation, it was a ruby set in a golden coil.

  “No,” Matt said. “An island west of there.”

  “Interesting,” Rodrigo said. “I didn’t know there were any.”

  “The colors are so fresh and clear,” Matt said, looking at the painting again. Even restored, it had not had anything approaching the richness and transparency of what he saw now.

  “The secret of Van Eyck, or so they say.”

  “No. That’s what everyone used to think, but it was a myth. It was technique. The oil, and the way he built the glazes.”

  The man glanced at the painting, and then back at Matt. “You know about oils?”

  “Of course. Everyone does.”

  “Not exactly,” Rodrigo said. He thought for a moment. “I’m leaving today to join the duke. I think you should come along. Would you like to meet him?”

  “Federico?”

  “That’s the only Duke of Urbino I know of. Are you all right?”

  Matt, caught by Rodrigo, regained his balance. The clothes, the paintings, speaking Italian—he had studied the period so well and spent enough time in the country that they were like second nature to him. But to meet Federico, the great duke. How or why it had happened, he had no idea; but it undeniably had, and what was strangest of all, he realized, was that it wasn’t until Rodrigo had mentioned the duke that it had really hit home where he was. It was as though he had woken from a dream to find himself not at home but in a place he knew just as well.

  It had taken four days to get to the villa. Matt could see it long before he could see the way up to it, high on the opposite ridge, across the narrow river and beyond the carefully cultivated fields. The hillside folded in on itself, making it much longer to get to the top than he thought it would at first. The fields gave way to olive groves that rose in gnarled profusion to rank upon rank of grapevines, already sagging under their ripening harvest, the wine-dark sea cresting at the very top against a sun-baked brick wall that hid a garden from their sight. All that could be seen of it, as they mounted the rutted track that ran alongside, were the upper branches of fruit trees and the darting songbirds that ignored their passing.

  They had arrived late in the afternoon, after the hawking party and the hunters had returned and the horses were being brushed down and led, hooves clattering loudly on the cobbles, to the stable. The simple neoclassical façade that had led them up the hillside had masked the true size of the house. The dirt lane led them around to the side, sweeping up in a final curve lined with poplars to the forecourt that was hidden behind. The stately row of trees was punctuated the last hundred yards by massive marble urns chipped and green with moss, vines tangled around the bases. The hillside leveled, as though taking a breath before its final steep lunge to the summit, leaving the house on a gentle rise. Three tall stories of stucco fronted by a terrace, the villa was flanked behind by a myriad of smaller buildings, stables and storerooms. They had passed the duke’s troop, camped in the valley below, but his honor guard was here, their tall pikes stacked against the stable wall, the pennants hanging limp in the still air.

  The distant chant of evening services rose and fell from somewhere inside the villa as they stretched and turned, limbering muscles stiff from a full day of riding. The shadows slanted across the forecourt, offering some welcome shade.

  “Let’s see who’s here,” Rodrigo said after they had dismounted. He set off for the kitchen, on the right side of the massive villa.

  The room was surprisingly large, Matt discovered, as he followed Rodrigo through the open doorway. An open hearth, large enough to stand in and flanked by two earthen ovens, took up the greater part of one wall. The light from the windows opposite was balanced by the glow from a fire that roared high despite the heat. Suspended by hooks, several large brass pots shone like Christmas tree ornaments, while behind them, its skin a dark red, a pig roasted on a spit, the fat hissing as it dripped on the coals. Like a world turned upside-down, a meadow of dried herbs hung from the beams overhead: bunches of rosemary and thyme, braids of garlic, garlands of crimson peppers shining with a latent heat like sleeping scorpions. A heavy table took up a good part of the center of the room, the little of the top that could be seen scored and dark from untold years of use. A huge wheel of pecorino, partly excavated like a mountainside in Carrara, towered next to a jumbled stack of bread loaves, like logs that had rolled off the mountain, cut and ready for use. Beside them were bowls of grapes and olives, and brightly colored majolica jars with the name of their contents boldly inscribed, and, in front, a row of birds plucked and trussed. Too small to be chickens, larger than quail, Matt wondered what they might be.

  “Antonio, if you let that fire go out I will make you think it is in your hose,” a sturdily built woman called out, her attention focused on the wooden paddle she was shifting in one of the ovens. Like a risotto that hasn’t been properly stirred, her melodious Italian had a hard crust of Germanic inflection.

  Antonio, an overgrown child whose open mouth and vacant expression showed him to be as dull as the bucket of charcoal in his hands, just stared at the librarian. Rodrigo, finger to his lips, took the scuttle and stood just behind the woman.

  “Antonio,” she called again sharply. “Damn that boy,” she muttered, and yanked the paddle out of the oven. Holding it like a mace, she turned to look for the hapless youth, only to find Rodrigo grinning at her elbow. “Ach!” she cried. “Did you remember my cloves?” she demanded, recovering immediately.

  Rodrigo laughed and gave her a hug and a kiss on the cheek. “Lisl, mein Kätzchen, please. Why do you think I came all this way?” he asked, and held up a linen bag secured with a double loop of ribbon.

  “I know what you came for. A good meal,” the cook replied, slapping his hand off her waist. She brushed the thick apron that covered her simple blue dress.

  “Ah, Lisl.” Rodrigo sighed. “The unrequited passion is a pleasure unto itself. What sets it apart from all other stirrings of the soul is that it is the only one that will ever last. When desire is the fuel, the fire will never burn out. This is Matteo,” he added, seeing her sharp glance taking him in. “He has come from the farthest reaches of the globe on a noble quest. Diogenes searched high and low for that rara avis, an honest man. My good friend Matteo has an even higher goal in mind, for he searches not for himself but to satisfy the longings of his people. In the cold and dismal winters of his desolate homeland, lashed by the angry western seas, they huddle in caves of peat around smoking, wind-driven fires—”

  “You are Irish?” Lisl asked.

  “In spirit,” Matt replied.

  “—even great Helios,” Rodrigo continued, “in his golden chariot of fire forsakes these hardy souls for warmer climes, barely visible on the horizon as he flashes by, dawn coupled with dusk like the frantic mating of dragonflies. The sweet bosom of Mother Earth that nurtures us with her bounty is there a withered teat. They subsist on dried fish and raw eggs, stolen out from under sleeping birds in the dark of night.”r />
  “Hah,” Lisl exclaimed. “Scottish.”

  “A little of both,” Matt admitted.

  “And still they have faith,” Rodrigo went on. “They dream. And they whisper in awe of a legend handed down for untold generations from the shrouded mists of bygone times, ever since the returning Crusaders brought word of it to the far shores of this mortal domain. They say it has magical powers to restore youth and vitality, to make the blind see and the dumb sing. Shipwreck, kidnapping, piracy—he has survived them all in his unflagging search.”

  Antonio, his eyes as big as the wheel of pecorino, looked at Matt with a mixture of fear and respect.

  “He will not rest until he finds it,” Rodrigo continued. “And what is the object of this glorious quest?” He paused. “Porcini mushrooms. When I found him, he was headed for Siena.”

  “Oh, please!” Lisl, kneading dough, slammed it hard on the marble slab.

  “Exactly!” Rodrigo exclaimed. “In the last siege the Florentines catapulted the putrefying remains of dead mules into Siena to spread pestilence and disease,” he explained to Matt. “A common tactic. But the Sienese? What did they do? They ate them! Even today the most highly regarded dish in that town is rat. Stewed with peas and onions,” he added as an aside. “Mules and rodents, but not a single decent porcini in the entire place. I told Matteo that true north was the only direction on the porcini compass, and thus rescued our itinerant pilgrim from the terrible fate of a most certain culinary crucifixion.”

  Antonio, shuddering, crossed himself.

  “So many words,” Lisl said, her powerful forearms flexing as she kneaded the dough. She stopped just long enough to tuck back an errant lock of hair. “They are like flour for you,” she continued, as she lifted the lump of dough and dusted the surface of the table. “But when I am done I have a loaf of bread. What do you have? Cake.”

  Antonio nodded eagerly, a big smile on his face.