'Guard the other one,' Signor Mantissa called back to Godolphin. 'Don't let anyone know it's there until we return.'
'Evan,' the girl whispered, moving closer to him. 'Will there be shooting?'
He did not hear her eagerness, only her fear. 'Don't be afraid,' he said, aching to shelter her.
Old Godolphin had been looking at them, shuffling his feet, embarrassed. 'Son,' he finally began, conscious of being a fool, 'I suppose this is hardly the time to mention it. But I must leave Florence. Tonight. I would - I wish you would come with me.' He couldn't look at his son. The boy smiled wistfully, his arm round Victoria's shoulders.
'But Papa,' he said, 'I would be leaving my only true love behind.'
Victoria stood on tiptoe to kiss his neck. 'We will meet again,' she whispered sadly, playing the game.
The old man turned away from them, trembling, not understanding, feeling betrayed once again. 'I am terribly sorry,' he said.
Evan released Victoria, moved to Godolphin. 'Father,' he said, 'Father, it's our way only. It's my fault, the joke. A trivial oaf's joke. You know I'll come with you.'
'My fault,' the father said. 'My oversight, I dare say, for not keeping up with the younger people. Imagine, something so simple as a way of speaking . . .
Evan let his hand rest splayed on Godolphin's back. Neither moved for a moment. 'On the barge,' Evan said, 'there we'll be able to talk.'
The old man turned at last. 'Time we got round to it.'
'We will,' Evan said, trying to smile. 'After all, here we've been, so many years, biffing about at opposite ends of the world.'
The old man did not answer, but burrowed his face against Evan's shoulder. Both felt slightly embarrassed. Victoria watched them for a moment, then turned away to gaze, placid, at the rioting. Shots began to ring out. Blood began to stain the pavements, screams to punctuate the singing of the Figli di Machiavelli. She saw a rioter in a shirt of motley, sprawled over the limb of a tree, being bayoneted again and again by two soldiers. She stood as still as she had at the crossroads waiting for Evan; her face betrayed no emotion. It was as if she saw herself embodying a feminine principle, acting as complement to all this bursting, explosive male energy. Inviolate and calm, she watched the spasms of wounded bodies, the fair of violent death, framed and staged, it seemed, for her alone in that tiny square. From her hair the heads of five crucified also looked on, no more expressive than she.
Lugging the tree, Signor Mantissa and Cesare staggered through the 'Ritratti diversi,' while the Gaucho guarded their rear. He'd already had to fire at two guards. 'Hurry,' he said. 'We must be out of here soon. They won't be diverted for long.'
Inside the Sala di Lorenzo Monaco, Cesare unsheathed a razor-edged dagger and prepared to slice the Botticelli from its frame. Signor Mantissa gazed at her, at the asymmetric eyes, tilt of the frail head, streaming gold hair. He could not move; as if he were any gentle libertine before a lady he had writhed for years to possess, and now that the dream was about to be consummated he had been struck suddenly impotent. Cesare dug the knife into the canvas, began to saw downward. Light, shining in from the street, reflected from the blade, flickering from the lantern they had brought, danced over the painting's gorgeous surface. Signor Mantissa watched its movement, a slow horror growing in him. In that instant he was reminded of Hugh Godolphin's spider- monkey, still shimmering through crystal ice at the bottom of the world. The whole surface of the painting now seemed to move, to be flooded with color and motion. He thought, for the first time in years, of the blond seamstress in Lyons. She would drink absinthe at night and torture herself for it in the afternoon. God hated her, she said. At the same time she was finding it more difficult to believe in him. She wanted to go to Paris, she had a pleasant voice, did she not? She would go on the stage, it had been her dream since girlhood. Countless mornings, in the hours when passion's inertia of motion had carried them along faster than sleep could overtake them, she had poured out to him schemes, despairs, all tiny, relevant loves.
What sort of mistress, then, would Venus be? What outlying worlds would he conquer in their headlong, three- in-the-morning excursions away from the cities of sleep? What of her God, her voice, her dreams? She was already a goddess. She had no voice he could ever hear. And she herself (perhaps even her native demesne?) was only . . .
A gaudy dream, a dream of annihilation. Was that what Godolphin had meant? Yet she was no less Rafael Mantissa's entire love.
'Aspetti,' he shouted, leaping forward to grab Cesare's hand.
'Sei pazzo?' Cesare snarled.
'Guards coming this way,' the Gaucho announced from the entrance to the gallery. 'An army of them. For God's sake, hurry.'
'You have come all this way,' Cesare protested, 'and now you will leave her?'
'Yes.'
The Gaucho raised his head, suddenly alert. The rattle of gunfire came to him faintly. With an angry motion he flung the grenade down the corridor; the approaching guards scattered and it went off with a roar in the 'Ritratti diversi.' Signor Mantissa and Cesare, empty-handed, were at his back. 'We must run for our lives,' the Gaucho said. 'Have you got your lady with you?'
'No,' Cesare said, disgusted. 'Not even the damned tree.'
They dashed down a corridor smelling of burnt cordite. Signor Mantissa noticed that paintings in the 'Ritratti diversi' had all been taken down for the redecorating. The grenade had harmed nothing except the walls and a few guards. It was a mad, all-out sprint, with the Gaucho taking pot-shots at guards, Cesare waving his knife, Signor Mantissa flapping his arms wildly. Miraculously they reached the entrance and half-ran, half tumbled down 126 steps to the Piazza della Signoria. Evan and Godolphin joined them.
'I must return to the battle,' the Gaucho said, breathless. He stood for a moment watching the carnage. 'But don't they look like apes, now, fighting over a female? Even if the female is named Liberty.' He drew a long pistol, checked the action. 'There are nights,' he mused, 'nights, alone, when I think we are apes in a circus, mocking the ways of men. Perhaps it is all a mockery, and the only condition we can
