The Medusa Amulet

Chapter 14

Monday dawned cold and gray, but after a hot breakfast delivered to his room, David packed up his leather valise and set out on foot for the Biblioteca Laurenziana, still determined to be the first one through its doors.

Florence could be a forbidding city under the best of circumstances, with its ancient buildings glowering over its crowded streets and squares, but that morning, with a blustery wind keeping everyone’s heads down and dust and dirt flying up from the cobblestones, it was especially sinister. On the Via Proconsul, he passed by the Bargello, once the headquarters of the chief city magistrate. For centuries, criminals had been publicly hanged from its tower windows, and if they were foreigners, their bodies had been donated to medical students and “anatomists” such as Leonardo da Vinci for dissection and study.

A few shifty-looking men huddled in the Bargello’s doorway, throwing dice, and David instinctively hugged the valise more tightly to his side. Italy boasted some of the greatest artists and inventors of all time, but it was also the home to some of the world’s most skillful pickpockets and thieves.

The streets were congested with morning traffic, cars rumbling by and motor scooters whizzing past like hornets. Jumping out of the way of one, David thought he caught sight of a figure in a slouched hat, with a rolled-up newspaper under one arm, dodging into an alcove. But a break in the traffic opened up, and without looking back he darted across the street.

Ahead, Il Duomo, the mighty rose-colored cupola of the cathedral of Santa Maria del Fiore, rose above the surrounding rooftops. Ever since its construction in the 1420s, city law had dictated that no building should ever exceed it in height. Built by Brunelleschi, it was a miracle of both artistry and engineering, soaring over three hundred feet into the air and so all-encompassing that it was, in the words of the Renaissance architect Alberti, “large enough to shelter all the people of Tuscany in its shadow.” Mark Twain had said it looked like “a captive balloon,” floating over the town.

A bunch of tourists, climbing off their bus and hoisting their videocams, snagged him in their midst, and before he could extricate himself, he thought he glimpsed that same figure, hat pulled low, mingling with the mob; but he could have been mistaken.

He wondered if his near miss with that driver back at the skating rink in Evanston had left him a bit paranoid.

Heading across the piazza, he could see the smaller, but no less captivating, dome of the ancient Church of San Lorenzo; like every major construction project in Florence, the contract had called for the cathedral to be “ piu bello che si puo,” or in English “as beautiful as can be.” It was a stipulation the city fathers had insisted upon throughout the Renaissance, and it had yielded an unparalleled crop of striking architecture. Over the centuries, San Lorenzo-which claimed to be the oldest church in Florence, its original cornerstone having been laid in 393-had been rebuilt and expanded until, gradually, it had become a sort of monastic complex, housing an old sacristy by Brunelleschi, a new sacristy by Michelangelo, the Medici burial chapels, and, in an adjoining cloister, David’s destination… the world-renowned Laurenziana library.

From the outside, the buildings presented a fairly austere appearance, their walls layered in the dark stone, or pietra serena, of their native Tuscany. And although in warmer weather its cloistered courtyard was filled with green leaves and banks of multicolored irises, today it was barren and sere.

David’s footsteps echoed across the empty square, a flock of dirty gray pigeons scooting out of his way.

But under the sound of their fluttering wings, he became aware of sneakers squeaking in one of the shadowy arcades. When he stopped, pretending to tie his shoe, the squeaking stopped, and when he stood up and went on, he could hear it again, not far behind. He turned quickly, but saw only one old matron, in hard black shoes, persistently scrubbing a window frame. He waited for another second, peering into the arcade, with its rounded arches and deep recesses, but no one appeared.

Was he being followed? Was it just a pickpocket, and not a particularly good one at that? Was it someone who knew what he carried in the fancy valise?

Or had he just seen too many movies?

He shook his head and climbed the stairs to the second floor of the cloister, where the library and its world-famous collection of books and codices was housed.

But he was no sooner at the top than he heard that squeaking sound again. Was Mrs. Van Owen-rich and eccentric as she was-having him tailed, for God’s sake?

For all he knew, that maniac in the BMW had followed him all the way from the States.

He no longer knew what to believe.

But he did know how to waylay his pursuer and find out once and for all.

The vestibule of the library had been purposely designed by Michelangelo to be dim-the windows had been bricked up, in fact-so that the visitors to the library would feel themselves ascending from its gloom into the sudden illumination-in every sense-of the library at the top of the stairs. David pressed himself into a niche that housed a marble bust of Petrarch, and with the valise clutched under one arm, held his breath.

The steps came closer, and paused just outside the vestibule.

Had the tracker decided to abandon his quarry?

And then, squeaking softly, the steps continued. David saw the back of a hat and raincoat, with a newspaper sticking out from under one arm.

Stepping out of the niche, David said in Italian, “What can I do for you?”

The figure whirled around, a copy of La Stampa flying out from under one arm, one palm dramatically pressed to her chest.

To his astonishment David saw that it was the tour guide, Olivia Levi, from the day before.

“ Maron! ” she cried. “You nearly killed me! Why did you do that!”

“Not until you tell me why you’ve been following me!” At least his suspicions had been proven correct-he had been followed.

Olivia bent to pick up the scattered pages of the newspaper, just as a heavyset female guard, in a gray uniform and cap, showed up at the top of the steps to see what the sudden commotion was all about.

“Oh no,” she shouted, glaring at Olivia, “not you again! You’re barred from the library-you know that-so get going!” She slapped her hands together, up and down, to emphasize her dismissal.

“But I’m not done with my research!”

“That’s too bad. The director is done with you.”

There was a pleading look on Olivia’s face and, without missing a beat, she added, “But I am working today! I am this man’s assistant. He has hired me to help him with his work here.”

She quickly glanced at David, waiting for confirmation, and David didn’t know what to do. His normal impulse was to help out a fellow scholar, but there was too much about this woman that he simply didn’t know, or trust.

“Is that true?” the guard asked suspiciously. “She works for you?”

But it wasn’t going to be that easy. “Why are you barred?” David whispered in English.

“What does it matter?” Olivia whispered back. “It was nothing!”

“Last chance-why are you barred?”

“I had an argument with the director,” she said, shrugging. “The man is a Nazi.”

From the way she said it, coupled with that weary shrug, David almost laughed. But it still took him several seconds before he decided to take a chance. Looking up at the guard, he said, in Italian again, “Yes, I’ve hired her.”

“And who are you?”

David took his own letter of introduction from his pocket and advanced with it in hand. “Dottore Valetta is expecting me.”

The guard studied the paper, glared one more time at Olivia, then turned around and waddled into the library, a nightstick straining in the belt at her side.

“ Grazie mille,” Olivia mumbled to David, who mumbled back, “But we’re not done-you’ll still have to tell me why you were following me.”

“Because you told me you would be working here,” she said. “I needed a way back in.”

“Why didn’t you just ask me?”

“Because you didn’t know me.”

“And I do now?”

“We are getting there,” she said, with a half smile that, despite himself, he found beguiling.

Following the guard, they entered the long and elegant hall that was the library’s main reading room. Bay windows, framed by marble pilasters, lined one wall, throwing a bright but diffused light onto the red and white terra-cotta tiles-demonstrating the fundamental principles of geometry-embedded in the floor. Wooden desks lined both sides of the room under a high, beamed ceiling. An old woman, studying some ancient text with a magnifying glass, glanced up as they passed, then quickly buried herself again in her work.

At the end of the hall, the guard turned into a side corridor and rapped her knuckles on a frosted-glass panel. She opened the door, announced them, and before David could even see Dr. Valetta, he heard the director say, “No, that woman is not allowed on the premises!”

“She’s working for Signor Franco,” the guard tried to explain.

David neatly stepped around her, where he saw the director, in a crisp tan suit with a pocket square, standing behind a desk. When David extended his hand, Dr. Valetta accepted it, all the while keeping a close eye on Olivia, who loitered near the door.

“Greetings, Mr. Franco. We’ve been expecting you. But how is it that you know Signorina Levi?”

“She’s volunteered to help me with my research,” David improvised. “She tells me she’s quite familiar with the Laurenziana’s collections.”

Dr. Valetta snorted. “That much is true. But I wouldn’t believe anything else she tells you. The signorina has her own ‘theories,’ and no amount of fact can ever dissuade her.”

“What?” Olivia broke in, unable to contain herself. “I have plenty of facts, and I’d have more if people like you weren’t forever standing in my way!”

David turned to her and said, “ Basta.” What had he gotten himself into?

Subsiding, she said, “I will wait for you in the reading room,” and stalked out.

“Sorry about that,” David said to the director.

Valetta looked like he was still wondering what to do, then said, “You will have to be responsible for her, you know?”

“I will.”

Determinedly regaining his composure and pinching the crease of his trousers before resuming his own seat, Dr. Valetta invited him to sit down.

David took the chair opposite the desk, resting his valise against his leg. The walls of the office were lined with shelves of books, all perfectly arranged and aligned. More, David thought, for show than for use.

“And you are comfortable if we continue to speak in Italian?”

David nodded and said he preferred it.

“Good. I believe that you have done some research in our collections before?”

“I have. But it was some years ago.”

“Then permit me to remind you of our procedures.”

David listened attentively, in part to make up for Olivia’s transgressions, as the director explained that any manuscript or text that was requested had to be brought to the borrower’s assigned desk by a library attendant, and no more than three at any time. Any manuscript being returned also had to be given back to one of the attendants. Any portfolio or briefcase leaving the library had to be inspected by a security guard-assisted by a librarian-at the checkout station. No photographs were allowed, except by special permission. And, to avoid any ink spillage, no pens-only pencils-were allowed for note-taking.

“We have set aside an alcove for your exclusive use,” Dr. Valetta said, “for as long as you need it.”

“That’s very kind of you,” David said.

“And I have instructed the staff to be accommodating, if, say, you need more than the usual number of texts at a time.”

“Thank you again.”

Dr. Valetta lifted his hands and said, “Mrs. Van Owen has been very generous to us. We are only too happy to repay her in any way we can.”

Mrs. Van Owen. Was there anywhere, David thought, her reach did not extend? Any move he made that she did not anticipate? For a moment, he wondered if Olivia wasn’t one of her plants, sent to keep tabs on his progress.

After a few more minutes of chitchat, during which Valetta seemed to be probing into the focus of David’s research-a probing that he did his best to fend off-David stood up to excuse himself.

“I’m on the clock,” he said, wondering if the expression would make any sense in Italian. “I’d better get started.”

“Of course,” the director said, and ushered him out.

In the reading room, Olivia was seated next to the woman with the magnifying glass, pointing out something on the yellowed page she was studying. The woman looked rapt and appreciative, and David had the sense that, for all her eccentricity, Olivia Levi did indeed know her stuff.

A young librarian, in a red vest that David normally associated with car valets, showed them to an alcove with a massive desk, a pair of sturdy oak chairs, and a dual-headed banker’s lamp that cast a warm glow around the interior. A faded fresco of the Muses in a garden adorned the wall beneath the window. There was even a silver cup, holding a bunch of sharpened No. 2 pencils, like arrows in a quiver, along with a pad of call slips.

Olivia threw her coat over the back of a chair and broke into a grin. She looked as if she’d won the lottery.

“So, you’re some kind of big deal, huh? A private alcove? An audience with the dictator himself? Who are you, really?”

David took off his own overcoat, placed the valise on the desk, and wondered about that himself. Up until now he’d been a Renaissance scholar working in obscurity in a private library in Chicago, but over the past few days he’d begun to feel like a secret agent. And now he had to think like one. He could either dismiss this young interloper, send her off to attend to her own “theories” and hope she didn’t create another row, or he could offer some hint about what had brought him there.

Plainly, she could see his quandary.

“You do not trust me,” she said. “That’s okay. But I would remind you of one thing.”

“What’s that?”

“It was you who found me in the Piazza della Signoria, not the other way around.”

“I’m not the one who tracked me to this library.”

“Okay,” she conceded, “so I did do that. But maybe I can help you.” She glanced at the closed valise with undisguised curiosity. “Show me one thing, give me one clue, then see if I do not know what I am talking about.”

She waited, while David mulled over her offer. Then he opened the valise, took out a few of the papers, and placed them on the table.

Olivia lunged forward in her chair and bent low over the documents. Gradually, her expression became very serious, and, although none of the pages bore a signature anywhere, it was only a minute or two before she whispered, “Cellini.” Looking up, awestruck, she said, “These are from the hand of Benvenuto Cellini.”

Unless he was still being duped, she was darn good.

“Where in the world did you get them?”

“First you tell me how you knew that.”

“Please,” she said, with some disdain, “I am not an amateur in these matters. No one wrote quite like Cellini-in the Italian vernacular-and no one was so interested in these-how would you say?-dark matters.”

While it was still possible he was being gulled-that she had somehow known in advance what he was investigating-the possibility seemed increasingly remote. Could she really be such a fine actress? There was something in the expression on her face and in the tone of her voice-even in the undisguised scorn with which she had answered his last question-that persuaded him she was on the level.

And if that was true, then she could prove to be of inestimable value.

Slowly, David removed the rest of the papers from the valise-her eyes widened even more-and began to explain how they had been donated to the library by an anonymous (that much he kept to himself) patron. Olivia sat silently, riveted by each page, until she said, “But what is this?” Her fingers nimbly plucked from the stack the sketch of the Medusa’s head. “A preliminary study for his famous statue-where we met?” She gave him a quizzical smile.

“It’s possible.”

But on second thought, she shook her head, frowning. “No, that’s wrong-it’s nothing like it, really. The Medusa in the piazza is defeated-this one is defiant.” Her eye fell on the empty oblong on the same page, the reverse view, and she looked puzzled. “It was a medallion?” she hazarded. “Unfinished?”

“No, it was a mirror, simply called La Medusa,” David said. “And I have reason to believe that it was finished.”

Olivia gave it some thought, before saying, “I know a great deal about Cellini, probably more than anyone in Italy-”

Despite himself, David had to chuckle; one thing she had was the artisan’s ego, that was for sure.

“-but I’ve never heard of this thing, this mirror, called La Medusa.”

“No one has,” David replied. “But it’s my job to find it.”

She flopped back in her chair, her arms hanging down in mock defeat. “And how do you propose to do that? Find something that has been missing for five hundred years?”

“I don’t honestly know,” David said. “But since the Laurenziana holds more of Cellini’s papers than anyplace on earth, this seemed like the right place to start looking.”

She cocked her head, uncertainly.

He took a pencil from the silver cup. “Do you have a better idea?”

Olivia studied him, then, leaning forward, said, “Does this mean you are offering me a job?”

Was he? He felt like a diver, standing on the edge of a cliff and about to jump into unknown waters. Should he step back before it was too late, or take the plunge? “Does this mean you are available if I did?”

“I’m not sure. I am very busy, with my tours, and my own research, and-”

“Fine,” David said, starting to fill out the call slip and calling her bluff. “It was nice meeting you.”

But her hand flicked out and stopped him. “Already,” she said, “you are hard to work for.” And then she laughed, and the sound of it made David laugh, too. “I want a raise!”

There was a shushing sound from someone in the main reading room, as Olivia snatched the call slip and read what David had been writing there. “The Codice Mediceo-Palatino?” she inquired.

“Yes,” he said, wondering if it would meet with her approval.

“A good place to start,” she said, nodding. Raising her hand to signal one of the library attendants, she added, “You may not be so bad, after all.”