“I haven’t followed that investigation. I’ve stayed out of it. The last time I saw Amalthea was in July, and I have no plans to ever visit her again.”
“Ignoring evil doesn’t make it go away. It’s still there, still part of your life-”
“Not part of mine.”
“-right down to your DNA.”
“An accident of birth. We’re not our parents.”
“But on some level, Maura, your mother’s crimes must weigh down on you. They must make you wonder.”
“Whether I’m a monster, too?”
“
She paused, acutely aware of how intently he was watching her. “I’m nothing like my mother. If anything, I’m her polar opposite. Look at the career I’ve chosen, the work I do.”
“A form of atonement?”
“I have nothing to atone for.”
“Yet you’ve chosen to work on behalf of victims. And justice. Not everyone makes that choice, or does it as well and as fiercely as you do. That’s why I invited you tonight.” He opened the door to the next room. “That’s why I want to show you something.”
She followed him into a wood-paneled dining room, where the massive table was already set for dinner. Five place settings, she noted, surveying the crystal stemware and gleaming china edged in cobalt and gold. Here was another fireplace, with flames dancing in the hearth, but the cavernous room with its twelve-foot ceiling was on the chilly side, and she was glad she’d kept on her cashmere sweater.
“First, a glass of wine?” he asked, holding up a bottle of Cabernet.
“Yes. Thank you.”
He poured and handed her the glass, but she scarcely glanced at it; she was focused instead on the portraits hanging on the walls. A gallery of faces, both men and women, gazed through the patina of centuries.
“These are only a few,” he said. “The portraits my family managed to procure over the years. Some are modern copies, some are mere representations of what we think they looked like. But a few of these portraits are original. As these people must have appeared in life.” He crossed the room to stand before one portrait in particular. It was of a young woman with luminous dark eyes, her black hair gently gathered at the nape of her neck. Her face was a pale oval, and in that dim and firelit room, her skin seemed translucent and so alive that Maura could almost imagine the throb of a pulse in that white neck. The young woman was partly turned toward the artist, her burgundy gown glinting with gold threads, her gaze direct and unafraid.
“Her name was Isabella,” said Sansone. “This was painted a month before her marriage. The portrait required quite a bit of restoration. There were scorch marks on the canvas. It was lucky to survive the fire that destroyed her home.”
“She’s beautiful.”
“Yes, she was. To her great misfortune.”
Maura frowned at him. “Why?”
“She was married to Nicolo Contini, a Venetian nobleman. By all accounts it was a very happy marriage, until”-he paused-“until Antonino Sansone destroyed their lives.”
She looked at him in surprise. “That’s the man in the portrait? In the other room?”
He nodded. “My distinguished ancestor. Oh, he was able to justify all his actions in the name of rooting out the Devil. The church sanctioned it all-the torture, the bloodletting, the burnings at the stake. The Venetians in particular were quite expert at torture and creative at devising ever more brutal instruments to extract confessions. No matter how outlandish the accusations, a few hours in the dungeon with Monsignore Sansone would make almost anyone plead guilty to his charges. Whether the accusation was practicing witchcraft, or casting spells against your neighbors, or consorting with the Devil, confessing to any and all of it was the only way to make the pain stop, to be granted the mercy of death. Which, in itself, was not so merciful, since most of them were burned alive.” He gazed around the room, at the portraits. The faces of the dead. “All these people you see here suffered at his hand. Men, women, children-he made no distinction. It’s said he awakened each day, eager for the task, that he cheerfully fortified himself with a hearty morning meal of bread and meat. Then he’d don his blood-splattered robes and go to work, rooting out heretics. On the street outside, even through thick stone walls, passersby could hear the screams.”
Maura’s gaze circled the room, taking in the faces of the doomed, and she imagined these same faces bruised and contorted in pain. How long had they resisted? How long had they clung to the hope of escape, a chance to live?
“Antonino defeated them all,” he said. “Except for one.” His gaze was back on the woman with the luminous eyes.
“Isabella survived?”
“Oh, no. No one survived his attentions. Like all the others, she died. But she was never conquered.”
“She refused to confess?”
“Or submit. She had only to implicate her husband. Renounce him, accuse him of sorcery, and she might have lived. Because what Antonino really wanted wasn’t her confession. He wanted Isabella herself.”
“A year and a month,” he said. “That’s how long she survived in a cell without heat, without light. Every day, another session with her torturer.” He looked at Maura. “I’ve seen the instruments from those times. I can’t imagine any version of Hell that could be worse.”
“And he never defeated her?”
“She resisted until the end. Even when they took away her newborn baby. Even when they crushed her hands, scourged the skin from her back, wrenched apart her joints. Every brutality was meticulously recorded in Antonino’s personal journals.”
“You’ve actually seen those journals?”
“Yes. They’ve been passed down through our family. They’re stored in a vault now, with other unpleasant heirlooms from that era.”
“What a horrible legacy.”
“That’s what I meant when I told you we had common interests, common concerns. We both inherited poisoned blood.”
Her gaze was back on Isabella’s face, and suddenly she registered something that he had said only moments ago.
She looked at him. “You said she had a baby in prison.”
“Yes. A son.”
“What happened to him?”
“He was placed in the care of a local convent, where he was raised.”
“But he was the son of a heretic. Why was he allowed to live?”
“Because of who his father was.”
She looked at him with stunned comprehension. “Antonino Sansone?”
He nodded. “The boy was born eleven months into his mother’s imprisonment.”
She gazed around the room at the other portraits. “I don’t think I’d want these portraits hanging in my home.”
“You think it’s morbid.”
“Every day, I’d be reminded. I’d be haunted by how they died.”
“So you’d hide them in a closet? Avoid even looking at them, the way you avoid thinking about your mother?”
She stiffened. “I have no reason to think about her. She has no part in my life.”
“But she does. And you
“I sure as hell don’t hang her portrait in my living room.” She set down her wineglass on the table. “This is a
