“They have the capacity to follow multiple leads at once,” Emma said. “That’s their job. Don’t worry about misleading them. Can you describe this painting?”
“I didn’t get a good look at it. I didn’t think it would disappear—”
“It’s okay, Sister. Just say what you remember.”
“It’s called The Garden Gallery.”
“It’s in a frame?”
Sister Cecilia shook her head. “It’s on stretched canvas, but I saw the name on the top edge, handwritten in black ink. It’s an oil painting of a scene in a large house. Looking at it, I felt as if I were standing in a beautiful summer garden, about to walk through French doors into a gallery room filled with art.”
“What kind of art?” Colin asked.
She jumped, startled, and smiled back at him. “I almost forgot you were there. Several paintings are depicted, but one in particular dominates. It’s clearly the focal point.” Sister Cecilia sniffled, visibly calmer. “It’s of a woman deep inside a cave on a small island. She’s young and very beautiful, with long, blond hair. She appears to be asleep. The entrance to the cave is blocked by fallen rock. White light emanates from her body, out through the top of the cave and into the sky and onto the ocean.”
Emma stepped back from the window. “What is the woman wearing?”
“A white dress and a gold cross.”
“A saint?”
“Maybe. I can’t say for certain.”
Colin could see Sister Cecilia was shivering again, her lips purple, although it wasn’t that cold in the retreat hall. Emma’s questions were getting to her. He eased closer to the novice, the sun angling in through the windows onto her blunt-cut hair. “Cecilia was a saint, wasn’t she?” he asked.
“Yes—yes, that’s right. Saint Cecilia of Rome. She’s the patron saint of musicians and poets.”
He kept his tone even, interested. “Are you a musician or poet yourself?”
“I love to sing. The painting…the woman in the cave…” She struggled to catch her breath. “It’s not Saint Cecilia. She lived in the second century, during a brutal time of Roman persecution of Christians. She was a noblewoman who converted to Christianity.”
“She didn’t meet a good end, I take it,” Colin said.
“She was executed after she buried two brothers who themselves had been executed for burying other victims of persecution. She was supposed to be beheaded, but the executioner botched the job. He tried three times, but Roman law didn’t allow a fourth, so she was left to bleed to death.”
“That’s unpleasant.”
Color rose high in Sister Cecilia’s pale cheeks. “Her death was terrible but the memory of her life is a joyful one.”
Emma moved to the sitting area in front of the fireplace. “A sixteenth-century painting by Raphael, The Ecstasy of Saint Cecilia, shows her with a choir of angels. That painting is an example of bad restoration. We know so much more about what to do—and what not to do—than when it was touched up over the years.”
“I know the painting,” Sister Cecilia said. “Saint Cecilia is holding a small organ.”
Emma leaned against the arm of a club chair. “That’s how we identify her. The various attributes, symbols and stories of saints and biblical figures tell us who we’re seeing in a painting. Much of Western art involves religious imagery.”
“You mean like halos and crosses?” Colin asked.
Sister Cecilia bit back a smile, relaxing.
“Those are a start,” Emma said evenly. “These days most of us would be lucky to recognize the most common figures of the Bible—Jesus, Mary, Joseph, Adam and Eve, maybe a few others—but how do we know who’s who? Medieval and Renaissance artists had no pictures or YouTube videos.”
“Adam with an apple,” Colin said, “Eve with a snake.”
Emma’s eyes settled on him, cool. “Exactly.”
“I wouldn’t know that a woman holding an organ might be Saint Cecilia.”
“Five hundred years ago you might have,” Emma said, dividing her attention—and her suspicion—between him and Sister Cecilia. “Most average people weren’t literate and few had access to books, but many were intimately familiar with the figures in the Bible and the stories of countless saints. They would see a man with a beard holding an eagle and know it was John the Baptist. Such cues provide what scholars call a ‘visual vocabulary’ for understanding the religious images in Western art—art that for centuries was accessible to many ordinary people because of their common knowledge of the stories of the Bible and the saints.”
Sister Cecilia turned from the windows. “I have a hard time myself. I’m not that up on the iconography of saints. I know if I see a rose or a dove or some such, it’s there for a reason—it helps clue me into the identities of the figures in a particular painting. I just can’t keep everyone straight.”
“You teach kids,” Emma said with a smile.
“Were there any saint symbols left behind in the tower yesterday?” Colin asked.
He saw right away it was the wrong thing to say. Sister Cecilia’s eyes filled with tears, and she sobbed, gulped in a breath and ran out of the building.
Colin eyed Emma. “Were there?”
“No,” she said curtly. “I’m going after Sister Cecilia. You’re coming with me.”
“You knew she was holding back something.”
“Yes, I realize that.”
He was getting under her skin. “All right, Agent Sharpe. Let’s go find Sister Cecilia.”
She spun around at him. “You aren’t armed, are you?”
He was, but he said, “I was counting on you being armed.”
She went ahead of him. He followed her out to a lush shade garden that almost made him relax. Sister Cecilia was already out of sight, but he had a feeling he knew where she was headed.
Obviously, so did Emma Sharpe.
* * *
They caught up with Sister Cecilia at the tower entrance. Colin noticed that Emma hadn’t broken a sweat and didn’t look as if she’d exerted herself in the slightest keeping up with him. He had to give Yank’s art detective a little respect for her abilities in the field.
Sister Cecilia was staring at the closed solid wood door as if it had frozen her in place.
