very airiness of this creation-a sequence of notes, a few words and phrases-might that not be more enduring, after all? Who could destroy it? Who, for that matter, could truly possess it? It belonged to anyone with an instrument to play, or a voice with which to sing. Benvenuto wished that his father, with whom he had had so many bitter quarrels, were standing in front of him now, so that the artisan could bend his head-as he did to no one else-and beg for his forgiveness.
Instead, he turned away from the grave, where a long line of mourners waited to pay their last respects, and moved silently, surreptitiously, invisibly, down the long nave of burning torches and out into the gloomy piazza.
Ascanio, who awaited him in the shadows of the loggia, was nonetheless startled when, with a low cough, he made his presence known.
“Are we alone?”
“Yes,” Ascanio assured him, looking again in all directions. “There’s no one in sight.”
Cellini made his own survey, then carefully removed the wreath, fashioned from the infernal bulrushes, from around his temples. It had been a tight fit-it was a relief to have it off-and seconds later, like a figure shimmering into view as it stepped from behind a waterfall, he once more became visible to the mortal eye.
“You look no worse for wear,” Ascanio commented, his eye traveling up and down his master’s body.
But Cellini wasn’t so sure of that. Watching your own burial was a sobering sight.
“And now that you’re dead and gone, have you given some thought to who you are going to be?”
“Royalty, I think. Perhaps a marquis.”
Making a grand bow, with one arm folded behind his back, Ascanio said, “And where will the marquis live?”
Cellini had given it much consideration, and in the end he could think of nowhere better suited to his new life than the birthplace of his one great, and long-lost, inamorata. Throwing the hood of his cloak over his head, he strode off into the night, saying simply, “France.”
Part Three
Chapter 19
Even racing along at almost two hundred miles per hour, the train hardly rocked or swayed at all. A far cry from the Chicago El, David thought, as he gazed out at the rolling hills of the Italian countryside. Dusk was falling, and off in the distance he could just make out the sloping walls of another medieval town. On any normal occasion, he would have been relishing every minute of the trip to Paris.
But this was no normal occasion.
Having tried three times to put a call through to Chicago, he snapped his phone shut and decided to wait until later. The last time he’d spoken to Gary, Sarah had been at the hospital, receiving treatment, but “so far, so good,” Gary had said. “Her counts have either improved or held steady. We’re just hoping there’s not a reaction.”
David hoped for more-much more-than that. And he was determined to make it happen.
He heard the latch of the en suite bathroom unlock, and Olivia came out in a black turtleneck and jeans, still brushing her hair back. She looked as sleek as a seal.
But everything had changed for them in the past few hours. Ever since their first embrace on the steps of her building, it was as if all the walls had come down between them. Whatever suspicions he had ever harbored about her were gone, along with whatever reservations he had entertained. In all but deed, they were lovers-and before the night was over, even that, David suspected, might change.
“I just thought of something,” she said, pulling the brush one last time through her hair.
“What’s that?”
“I haven’t eaten since dawn.”
Now that he gave it some thought, he hadn’t had anything since morning, either.
“And maybe it would be nice to have some wine?” she added.
David needed no more persuading. Taking his valise with him, he locked the cabin and followed Olivia down the long corridor, into the next car, then the one after that, with the smell of food-good food-getting stronger all the time. A steward in a blue uniform smiled at them as they passed and said, “I recommend the trout. Just caught.”
The dining car was set with small tables on both sides of a narrow aisle, with white linen tablecloths, gleaming silverware, and little lamps that gave off a rosy glow. A waiter in a white jacket seated them and David ordered a cold bottle of Bordeaux. The last time he’d eaten on a train, it had been on an Amtrak to Detroit, and he’d had a bag of barbecue chips, a stale sandwich, and a lukewarm Coke.
There was something to be said for European transit.
After the waiter had poured the wine and taken their order for trout almondine with asparagus, a sort of awkward silence fell over them. For days, they had been working together, side by side, but now they were having an undeniably romantic dinner on the night train to Paris, and in the warm glow of the table lamp, David couldn’t help but focus on her dark and shining eyes and the sensual curve of her full lips. Glancing up at him over the rim of her glass, she caught him staring, just as she had done once before, and said with a sly smile, “What are you wondering about now?”
“Nothing,” he said, embarrassed. “It’s just been… a hell of a day.”
“Yes,” she said, nodding, “it has. But I wish there had been time, at my apartment, for me to show you something.”
“You mean your owl?” David joked. “We met.”
“No. It was something not so obvious. Library request cards.”
That wasn’t what he had been expecting. “Call slips?” No wonder Dottore Valetta had been so incensed at the sight of them.
“I keep them hidden in the stove.”
He topped off both of their glasses and said, “The stove? Don’t they catch fire?”
“Oh no, I had the gas turned off years ago. I don’t know how to cook.”
He was learning more about her every minute. “And these cards would be from the Laurenziana, I presume?”
She smiled, and her lips glistened. Was it gloss, he wondered, or simply the wine?
“You wouldn’t believe it,” she said, and before he could even ask what he wouldn’t believe, she leaned forward, her arms crossed on the table and said in a low voice, “I have them all-some of them the originals-from 1938 to 1945.”
The elderly couple just across the aisle from them called for their check. The old man winked at David, conspiratorially.
“Could this have something to do with why Dr. Valetta has banned you from the library?” David asked.
“All I wanted was to see who had asked for certain books.”
“And what did you expect to find? Adolph Hitler’s personal request to see a book about raising the dead?”
“You are mocking,” she said, slightly indignant, “but you are not so far off. What do you know about the Nazis and the occult?”
“Only what I see on the History Channel, late at night.” He hadn’t meant to upset her.
“I do not know what you mean by saying that. What is the History Channel?”
“Nothing,” he said, dismissing it. “I just meant that it’s considered kind of… speculative.”
“It is not,” she said, a spark kindling in her eyes. “People would like to think so,” she said, waving one hand with the wineglass still in it, “but that does not mean it is untrue. Between the First and the Second World Wars, Germany and Austria-both of them-were filled with mystic lodges and secret fraternities. The Ariosophists, the Thule Society, the Vril Society. Every city, every town, from Hamburg to Vienna, had them. Hitler was even a member of some. And when he started to rise in politics, he made sure that he kept spies in every group to report
