chapter 2

“Poplar?” Sally asked, turning the small painting over so that she could see the wood panel of the back. She stroked the surface, as smooth as old ivory and almost black with age, the raised grain like the carved veins of a marble statue under her fingertips.

“Lombardy poplar,” Matt replied.

“Oh. Lombardy poplar. That makes all the difference in the world.”

“Well, it does,” Matt said with a faint smile. “Go ahead and laugh.”

A harsh tattoo of rain pelted against the window, the storm gaining as the late-November day faded into evening. Water streamed down the glass, dissolving the shadows from the light that, pearl-like, barely reached the back of the cluttered office. “Well, I just don’t see it,” Sally said, examining the darkened painting. “I can barely make out that it’s supposed to be a face. There’s something decidedly creepy going on here,” she added with a frown. “It makes me think of Ophelia. Floating in the weeds, forgotten by Hamlet. You think you can bring her back to life?”

“I think it’s worth a try.”

“You’re being awfully noncommittal,” she said, giving him a sharp glance. “I know you. You’re on to something, aren’t you? What is this? A lost Leonardo?”

“Dream on. The odds are better than even that I’ll never be able to put a name to it.” He ran his hand through his hair, pushing it away from his forehead but it fell back again. He couldn’t blame her, he thought, for he was just the same. Even though he knew arriving at who painted a picture should be the last step in a very long journey, it was impossible not to start thinking of it right away. Like walking down the street. A person in the crowd catches your eye; is it something singular about the face, or is it someone you know? For him, as an associate curator of Italian paintings at the Metropolitan Museum, it was also a professional reflex, and after five years he had to force himself to look for its own sake.

“Seems like a lot of work,” Sally commented. “How long will it take you?”

Matt shrugged. “Hard to say. It depends on what’s been put on it over the years. But it’s not that big. It shouldn’t take me more than a hundred hours. A hundred fifty, at the outside. Maybe two, if some clever restorer way back when came up with some varnish I’ve never seen before.”

“Two hundred hours! Is it worth it?”

“I don’t know. I never thought of it that way before.”

“You’re too much.” Sally laughed. “How else would you look at it?”

“I forgot. In the legal world, time is the measure of all things. Two hundred hours would be … what? Forty thousand dollars? A minor brush with the SEC?”

“Eighty thousand, but that’s not what I meant, and you know it. It’s a lot of time out of your life, no matter how you count it. And you’re the one who is always so suspicious of anything that pretends to be old. How do you know this isn’t a fake?”

Matt took the picture from her and leaned back against the edge of the workbench. Crowded behind him was a jumble of books and tools that had been shoved aside for projects awaiting his attention. At the back of the bench, next to a rainbow of jars shadowed by a forest of brushes bunched together in coffee cups and old cans, stood a small brass clock under a dome of glass. The finely machined works spun and turned in an intricate dance, sparkling in the light of the lamp. The minute hand slipped upward, moving as it edged into perfect alignment with the hour hand, transforming the two into a double-ended arrow. The clock began chiming the hour. A soft counterpoint to the irregular drumming of the rain on the window. As it stopped, the minute hand fell to the right, breaking the arrow. Matt finally stirred, his face relaxing into a faint smile.

“So?” Sally asked. “What’s the verdict?”

“It’s the real thing,” he said, propping the picture back against the ruined fortress of books that tumbled to one side of the workbench.

“What makes you so sure? Tell me what you see.”

“I see what you see. A lot of dirt, a lot of work. It’s what I don’t see that counts.”

Sally glanced at the clock. “We should get moving. This thing ends at seven.”

“Good point,” he replied. “Why don’t we just skip it and go have dinner?”

She laughed and handed him his jacket, an old tweed that had seen almost every party he had attended since graduation from college eight years before. “You just told me Charles has been working on this for fifteen years. Come on.”

“It’s a permanent installation,” he protested, shrugging his arms into his coat. “We can see it anytime. He won’t even notice.”

“Yes, he will,” she said, guiding him out the door. “What do you mean, it’s what you don’t see that matters?”

“The eye sleeps until the spirit awakens it with a question,” Matt replied. The door to the stairwell closed behind them with a hollow slam as they walked down the short flight of stairs from the conservation lab to the ground floor of the museum. “That’s what my old professor down at NYU always said to us, and he was right. I’ve had her right next to me for weeks now. Half the time I look at her I don’t even realize I have.”

“So?”

“No alarm bells. When you look at a picture, you see what you’re looking for, or what the painter wanted you to see. It’s when you aren’t looking that something that doesn’t fit will jump out and grab you.” They could hear the sounds of a party as they came out into the first-floor galleries of the museum. As they turned the corner into the vast medieval hall, dominated by the three-story carved and gilded rood screen from a cathedral in Spain, the hum of conversation and laughter grew louder. “Do you remember Saint George?”

“I’ve never been. Where is it? The Caribbean?”

“Saint George and the Dragon. It was a painting attributed to Luca Signorelli, so let’s say around 1500. One day while I was talking on the phone I reached across and moved the panel to find a pad of paper and realized right then that it was completely wrong.”

“What did you see?”

“Can’t say, really. It was the angle. Saint George suddenly looked very much like he belonged in a Manet. One of those suspendered bourgeois gents at a river café enjoying a glass of wine on a Saturday afternoon. The thing is, once I saw it, it was so obvious and crude I couldn’t believe I had been taken in. Speaking of a glass of wine?” he asked as they began edging through the crowd.

“Sure,” Sally replied. Matt disappeared into the pack around the bar set up next to the massive table that had once graced the dining hall of the Farnese Palace in Rome.

“I had no idea this was such a big deal,” Sally remarked, as Matt squeezed his way back to her.

“What’s the big deal?” a voice said out of the buzz of conversation as one hand appeared on Matt’s shoulder, another on his arm.

“You. You’re the man.” Matt greeted Charles, his immediate superior, with genuine warmth and affection. “Who’s the man?” he asked Sally.

“Charles,” she replied with a laugh, and held up her glass. “Congratulations. Everybody’s here.”

“Don’t I know it,” Charles said, rolling his eyes. A smile gleamed through his beard, a well-trimmed thick black speckled one with just the beginning of white. A head taller than Matt, he was as solidly built as an old armchair upholstered in sturdy wool. “I’m completely stressed,” he added. “I need a drink. No, I can’t,” he said, as Matt offered his untouched glass. “I’m working. But later—there’s a whole case of Moët waiting. I told Kent to make sure it’s cold enough to freeze the bubbles.”

“I didn’t see him. Where is he?”

“Oh, he’s not here. He called and said he had some people coming by the gallery and wouldn’t be able to make it. You know how he is. Plans are made to be broken. He’ll be at the apartment later, though. You are coming, aren’t you?”

“Of course.”

“And, Sally, you’re ravishing. No, you are, don’t make that face. Your friend here is looking mighty trim, too. Matt, you’ve lost weight,” he added, leaning back for a better look, his hand still on Matt’s shoulder.

“Charles, you’ve been working too hard,” Matt said with a laugh. “You see me every day. I’m just the same as I was this morning.”

“I guess I’m just getting fatter. And grayer, and don’t try telling me I’m not, you’re the worst liar ever born. Something’s different. You look so fit.”

“It’s the fencing,” Sally said.

“Swordplay?” Charles asked. “Have you taken that up again?”

“I needed the exercise,” Matt replied.

“I’ve got to run,” Charles said. “I’ll see you at the apartment,” he added with a parting squeeze of Matt’s shoulder. They watched as he dodged his way through the crowd and, with an effusiveness that betrayed no sign of stress, greeted the two men who had just walked in. The taller of the two, a man with an air of urbanity derived from equal parts of aristocratic features, expensive tan, and Italian suit, was the curator of the Department of Renaissance Art, Silvio Petrocelli.

“That must be Klein,” Matt said, looking at the man Petrocelli was guiding by the elbow. As impeccably refined as the curator, he was younger, with straight black hair that had none of the silver that was the primary reason for the word “distinguished” that had begun appearing before Petrocelli’s name in the press. Whether it was the thin titanium frames of his glasses, or the handkerchief in his jacket pocket arranged as precisely as the part of his hair, Petrocelli’s guest had a Continental air to rival that of his escort. Talking to Charles they looked to Matt like emissaries from a European law firm that had taken no new clients since steam had replaced sail, sent to the New World to find him, the last descendant of an ancient family gone native, a brown bear with a well-trimmed black beard.

“Who is Klein?”

“He’s the one who paid for all this.” Matt had never seen the mysterious donor who had provided the small fortune that had funded the restoration of the studiolo, a project that had consumed countless man-hours over a span of twenty years. It was almost inconceivable that one man would have paid for it all, but in its acknowledgments of support the museum bulletin had just one name: Dr. Johannes Klein, of the Fleigander Foundation, in Prague.

“What does he do?”

“I don’t know that he really does much of anything. Charles says he’s ‘in acoustics,’ whatever that means.”

“He’s a musician?”

“No. Something to do with vibrations. Or was it resonating frequencies? I’m really not sure. He consults. Charles says the space shuttle would still be a little plastic model without him. Apparently Boeing pays him a ton of money just so he won’t talk to Airbus. Like most people, he has a personal computer. His just happens to be a Cray.”

“Not bad,” Sally said. “I’d sort of like to see what his largesse has bought. Can we take a peek?”

“Sure.”

The two of them followed a knot of guests leaving the reception through the small exhibition gallery that led back into the great medieval hall. To one side was a tall doorway, flanked by columns and crowned by a wide lintel, with heavy wooden doors that had been hooked open.

“Very impressive,” Sally said as they approached the doorway. “It looks like the entrance to the Supreme Court.” She came to an abrupt halt just inside the doors. Not much larger than a walk-in closet, the room was decorated with trompe l’oeil imaginary cabinets made to look so real that at first it seemed much larger than it was. “What is this?” she asked, looking around in amazement.

“The studiolo from the ducal palace in Gubbio, in Umbria. It’s one of the glories of the Quattrocento.”

“I assume you are referring to that period of the fourteen hundreds in Italy that was the foundation of the early Renaissance.”

“The very same one,” Matt replied, in a deadpan tone to equal hers. Sally, as she was putting smoked salmon on a toasted bagel the morning after the first night they had spent together, had told him that she had liked him right away at the dinner party where they had first met, and so she had decided that his somewhat pedantic explanation of the term (in their very first conversation, she reminded him, when he denied having explained anything) had been more earnest than patronizing. It was a reflection of his enthusiasm, she said; sort of cute, the way he assumed everyone would find it as engrossing as he did, if they only knew. Pedantic, he was willing to admit (he knew he tended to go on, once he got started); patronizing, he didn’t like at all, and as for cute—even though he wasn’t overly thrilled by the word, he knew that women thought of it as the highest compliment.

“Glorious is one way to put it. I’m astounded. I never imagined anything like this could even exist. What was a studiolo?”

“A study, but in the real sense of the word. It was a room for contemplation, a place to reflect.” Matt was surprised to find himself as overwhelmed as she was. He had already seen most of the room, disassembled, as it was being restored. It had been standing next to one of the panels that he had first met Charles, brush in hand and working glasses halfway down his nose. But seeing the separate panels, stripped down and laid bare to the bright overhead lights of the restoration lab, had not prepared him for the power of the space once inside it.

“There were only three like this ever built,” Matt said. “The pope had one and Federico, the duke, had the other two. This one, and another in his palace at Urbino. That one was done by Botticelli.”

“You must be joking. This guy had Botticelli doing room decoration? Where did he get his money?”

“He was the greatest of the Renaissance condottiere. Mercenaries,” he explained, answering her glance. “Soldiers for hire. Florence wants Volterra? Talk to Federico, the deal’s done. He was unique for the time because he never went back on his condotta—his contract. Others would switch sides at the drop of a hat, but when you hired Federico, he was yours for the duration. But he was also one of the leading humanists of the day. Scholars traveled from all across Europe to read his collection of books and manuscripts, many of which couldn’t be found anywhere else. They became the core of the Vatican library.”

Sally stepped forward, trying to gain a sense of the true dimensions of the room, and then turned in a slow circle. The imaginary latticework doors of the cabinets had been left ajar, affording tantalizing glimpses of shelves crammed with the everyday life of the Quattrocento. Candlesticks, an inkwell, a pair of eyeglasses carefully folded and put away in their case, in the warm glow of the subdued light it was all as real as a waking dream. Books abounded, along with manuscripts, one left unrolled as though the reader had just been called away and would be back at any moment. Musical instruments were everywhere, from the delicate bodies and fretted necks of lutes and citterns to a tambourine and drum. A crescent ivory horn chased in silver hung from a hook, ready at hand for the next hunt, while for a dance, a pair of cornetti and a rebec had been left nearby. On the next shelf lay a harp, the fine thread of an errant string curling upward, while hanging beneath it a thoughtful hand had provided a tuning key, its tiny shadow just visible on the wall behind.

One cabinet had been stocked with armor, a brutal reminder of the source of the wealth that had made the room possible. A mailed glove had been thrown carelessly on shin greaves and spurs with a mace propped up next to them, its graceful execution giving a deadly beauty to the barbs and sharp ridges of the heavy iron head. In the shadows an eagle perched on a helmet, its wings raised defiantly and its beak open in a silent snarl, a shield clutched in one taloned foot.

Sally found a birdcage tucked inside a cabinet to one side of an alcove barely large enough for a small window. A parrot, its feathers the pale green and red of dried flowers, perched behind the delicate tracery of the bars that held it captive. She leaned in for a closer look.

“Wood,” she said, and looked around the room, astounded. “This isn’t painted. It’s all wood.”

“Intarsio,” Matt said. “The Florentines were famous for it.”

“It’s simply amazing.” She circled the room again and then turned to him. “We should go. Could you hold this for me?” she asked, handing him her coat. “I’ll be right back.”

Matt drifted around the room, gazing at the panels, Sally’s coat draped between his clasped hands. A couple looked in the door but left, leaving him in solitary possession of the still room. The wooden paneling dampened what was left of the sounds of the reception outside, making it seem worlds away. Going from panel to panel, he ended up at the long wall across from the alcove. Staring at one side, he found the cabinets slightly distorted, as though seen out of the corner of his eye. He moved step by step toward the center of the wall, and then backed away. Finding that he had gone too far, he moved slightly in again and then stopped, transfixed by the sight. The wall vanished, the world beyond revealed as clearly as though he had thrown open a window. The shelves receded in front of him, the cabinets to each side, the inlaid shadows as real as though cast by the light from the window behind him. The books, a tour de force of marquetry before, now waited for him to pick them up, the candle to be lit, the harp to be tuned and played. Matt had found the vanishing point, the spot where all the lines of the perspective converged. He closed his eyes and then slowly opened them, enjoying the slight vertiginous rush as the wall between him and the cabinets again dissolved. The scene had been executed so perfectly that the imaginary pilasters framing the doors and the bench that ran below the cabinets seemed to extend right out into the room toward him.

Lying on the bench directly in front of him was a checkered circle, a faceted octagon the size of a man’s head. A mazzocchio, the wooden form around which the men of the day had wrapped the material of their elaborate headdresses, Matt could see now that the builders had placed it precisely on the vertical axis of the inlaid scene. But where was the horizontal axis? It should be at eye level. He looked back up at the panel in front of him. There it was. Not the middle shelf, as he had first thought, but just under it. Suspended from a hook, centered on the horizontal axis as the mazzocchio was on the vertical, was another circle, much smaller. Made to appear as though it had been worked in cloth, the circlet was looped and buckled with a dangling tail capped by a tiny pearl that seemed to gleam translucently against the dark background.

Of course, Matt thought; what better for the vanishing point than the symbol of the Knights of the Garter, the most elite of the honorary orders of the Renaissance? Appointed a member by King Edward IV of England, Federico had considered it the highest honor of his career. But something was wrong. Looking at the Garter Matt felt off balance, as though he were trying to look around a corner. He glanced down at the mazzocchio, and then back up at the circle of cloth. There was the same sideways tug. The Garter was out of true. How could it be? The builders of the room, masters though they had been, had misplaced the focal point of the entire wall. Or had they? He leaned closer, like someone trying to make out the bottom through the surface of a pond. There was something else, something on the wall behind the Garter. An echo of the cloth circle, its shadow could just be seen, black against the dark under the shelf. The shadow was the true vanishing point. But was it even a shadow? Staring at it, now that he saw it, he wasn’t sure.

It stood out from the wall, sharply etched, the Garter next to it now the double image, a new moon and a full, both rising. He looked from one to the other, seeing both at the same time. Light and shadow, circling, almost merging, one black, one light, patterns against the shadows, black and white, squares—the mazzocchio. Odd, he thought, he had been looking at the Garter, but here now was the mazzocchio. The black and white squares mapped the circle, echoed in its own shadow on the bench. There was a bench, and on it a mazzocchio, and on the wall, behind the wall, inside the cabinet, hanging from a hook was a Garter, he could see it; with a pearl and a silver buckle and there was the shadow, black and sharp, looking back at him, regarding him with a steady, unblinking gaze.

He remembered once sitting by a window, waiting for his train to move, his gaze on the cars next to his, also motionless, squares of light against the black night, people reading, talking, staring into space, one looking back across at him. His thoughts elsewhere, he had noticed that the other train had begun to move, only to discover that his was the one that was drawing away, the bright squares vanishing behind as his train swayed and bumped, picking up speed, the flashes of light faster and faster, like the sun sparkling through the canopy of trees high overhead. Shadows and light, a raised sword, a harsh laugh changing into a deep discordant howl, like a wolf—

“Ready?” Sally walked back in. “Matt,” she said, taking him by the arm.

Matt, tense and rigid, relaxed. He looked at her. “What is it?” he asked.

“Are you all right?”

“I’m fine.”

“Something’s bothering you. What is it?”

“Nothing. It’s just a dream I’ve been having.”

“What’s it about?”

“The usual thing. You’re running and you can’t get away.”

“We both need to get away. I can’t wait for June. It will be here before we know it.”