103

The grudging Father Creci led them across the front of the church to a chapel on the right. Tucked in a corner on a two-foot marble plinth stood a large wooden statue of Mary Magdalene. Life-size, Livia thought, if you took into account people’s smaller stature then. Of course, it wasn’t made in Mary’s time, it was made in the fifteenth century. Still, people were smaller during the Renaissance, also. It was an ongoing source of needling from the Elder Noantri to the Newer, if one of the relatively few made in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries should show himself to be no physical match for a smaller, slighter—but no less everlasting—senior.

Examining the statue with a practiced eye, Livia found herself agreeing with the belligerently untutored monk. As a work of art, it wasn’t very good. Its proportions were off, its carving in some places clumsy. The iconography was here: the long loose hair, the left hand holding the unguent jar, that marvelous contradiction signaling Mary Magdalene’s dual nature: her debased early life as a prostitute, and her later devotion, because it was that same costly unguent with which she washed Christ’s feet. This Magdalene wore no jewels or gold chains, and neither her clothing nor the body beneath it could be called voluptuous. Those facts and the half-closed eyes and pensive face told Livia the sculptor was depicting Mary after her repentance and conversion.

“Livia,” Thomas said, in casual tones that belied the rise in his pulse rate and adrenaline level, which Livia could feel, and which echoed her own. “I think this might be it, don’t you? What we were sent to see.”

“It could be,” Livia answered, putting doubt into her voice although she felt none. She turned and smiled at the monk. “Father Creci, you’re obviously dedicated to your mission and we’ve already taken you from it for too long. Might we be allowed to spend some time with your sculpture? I understand you have a great deal to do. I think I speak for Father Kelly, also, when I say your devotion to your ministry is inspiring. If I may be allowed to make an offering?” She slipped three one-hundred-Euro notes from her wallet. “Or shall I place this in the offering box on our way out?”

The monk all but snatched the bills from her hand. “No, no need to trouble yourself, I’ll take care of it. Thank you. Yes, please, take as much time as you like. If you have any further questions, don’t hesitate to ask.”

They watched him walk quickly away, a bit more bounce in his step now than before.

“Do you think he thought I wasn’t actually going to stuff the bills in the box?” Livia asked Thomas.

“I’m sure of it.” Thomas grinned. He turned his attention to the statue and his face grew serious. “If this is it, what Lorenzo meant, what about it did he mean?”

“I don’t know,” Livia said slowly, considering the piece. “Either its iconography conceals something . . .”

“Or it conceals something.”

“Another Damiani poem?”

“Possible,” said Thomas. “Personally, I hope not. I’d like to think we’re done with that.”

Livia walked slowly around, leaned to peer behind the statue. She put out a tentative hand, felt it, pushed gently. Firmly positioned on its base, solid and tremendously heavy, it didn’t move. Returning to the front, she stood and looked, letting her eyes move slowly over the piece, as the art historian in her would with any new work.

The statue’s face wasn’t beautiful: elongated and flat, with a high forehead, a crooked nose, a cleft chin. The folds of cloth, so often a breathtaking element of Renaissance art, were uninteresting, and the unguent jar was held at a strange angle. The face had an undeniable power, its emotions growing deeper and more complex the longer Livia regarded it. The force exerted by it, though, required time spent before it. In a church—and a city—so full of glories, this statue would almost assuredly have passed unnoticed through the centuries; Livia herself, whose vocation gave her reason to be familiar with many more pieces than most people could claim, couldn’t recall having seen it before. A strange piece to carry its own endowment.

Unless that were the point.

“The face is beautiful,” Thomas said. “No, I don’t mean beautiful. But I can’t stop looking at it.”

“I think the sculptor felt the same way about his model.” The tiny contractions in Livia’s muscles were showing her the artist’s path through the work. “Thomas, look at this. The jar is tipping—if you really carried oil like that, you’d spill it. And the right hand—it looks like it’s pointing straight to it.”

“Does that mean something?”

“Maybe not. Or maybe it’s saying what the jar holds is important. And isn’t liquid.” She looked around. The few resolute early tourists they’d passed on their way up the aisle might make their eventual way to this chapel, but right now, none were near. Livia handed Thomas her shoulder bag and stepped up lightly onto the plinth. Balancing easily, she ran her hands over the unguent jar. She rapped with her knuckles, listening for a change of tone. “Thomas?” she said quietly. “It’s hollow.”