Gladly Beyond (46 page)

As described, Michelangelo Buonarotti was hired to create a monumental fresco of the
Battle of Cascina
in the
Sala delle Cinquecento
in the Palazzo Vecchio. He completed an enormous cartoon of the work (said be around 15 feet high by 25 feet long), which hung in place in the Hall of Five Hundred for several years. The work inspired an entire generation of artists and was copied endlessly, including the most famous by Bastiano da Sangallo (also called Aristotle Sangallo). Sangallo’s drawing is currently owned by the Earl of Leicester and on display at Holkham Hall in the U. K. (when not on loan to other museums).

From there, no one is entirely sure what happened to Michelangelo’s cartoon. Vasari insists it was destroyed by a jealous rival. Others assert it moved around Florence for a couple of years, losing bits and pieces to souvenir takers, eventually disappearing altogether. There is no record that Michelangelo ever created a
modello
of the work.

Louise, Countess of Albany, was married to Bonnie Prince Charlie (nearly forty years her senior) and lived with her lover, Vittorio Alfieri for most of her adult life. I am indebted to Christopher Hibbert’s work,
Florence—The Biography of a City
, for information about Florence during the early nineteenth century. According to Hibbert, Louise did indeed conduct salons without any furniture and served hard
matonelle
ice cream.

As for the Scottish Pretenders, as devout Catholics, they had a long history of involvement in Italy. Prince Charlie’s only child, Charlotte, lived the last few years of her life in Florence and Rome tending to her father. Charlotte had three illegitimate children of her own by a French Catholic archbishop (scandalous in the extreme). She left her children with her mother in France to tend to her father in Italy. Charlotte died in Rome in 1789 at just thirty-six years old.

All of the information on medieval
condotierri
, John Hawkwood and the Battle of Cascina is accurate to the best of my knowledge. Hawkwood is a fascinating historical figure, and he does have a large monument in his honor in the Duomo, painted by Paolo Uccello—a propaganda piece intended to lure other prominent mercenaries of the era.

I have created an extensive pinboard on Pinterest with images of everything I talk about in the book. So if you want a visual of anything, pop over there and explore. Just search for NicholeVan.

Other notes, PH lipstick—exactly as Claire describes it—is a real thing. I owe Lyndsie Campbell a huge thank you for gifting some to me.

I have also included a couple of recipes for several of the Italian dishes I describe, including Tuscan lemon-herb chicken and
schiacciata
. So read on.

As with all books, this one couldn’t have been written without help and support from those around me. I know I am going to leave someone out with all these thanks. So to that person, know that I totally love you and am so deeply grateful for your help!

To my beta readers—you know who you are—thank you for your helpful ideas and support. And, again, an extra large thank you to Annette Evans and Norma Melzer for their fantastic copy editing skills and insights.

A huge thank you goes to Rebecca Spencer, Lois Brown, Jennifer Jenkins and Amy Beatty for their helpful plot suggestions, revision notes and willingness to let me cry on their shoulders.

And, as usual, this work would not have reached its fruition without the excellent eye of Erin Rodabough. You have a touch of genius, my friend.

Thanks to Andrew, Austenne and Kian for your patience and willingness to eat a ridiculous amount of Italian food while I wrote this book. I’d write about
schiacciata,
and then I’d have to go make some.

And finally, no words can express my love and appreciation for Dave. Thanks for listening to me, no matter how scattered, exasperated or frustrated I am. I also appreciate that you are always up for kissing research and late-night ice cream runs. None of this would be possible without you.

Reading Group Questions

F
air warning—these reading group questions contain spoilers.

1. This book had two dissimilar prologues. The prologue that ended up staying and then another one written from Claire’s POV. (Flip a page or two to read Claire’s version.) Why did the author chose to use the prologue that she did? Do you feel it was the right decision? Which prologue do you prefer and why?
   
2. Do you agree with Grammy’s definition of courage—that it’s not a lack of fear, but rather shouldering your fear and walking into the dark anyway? Why or why not?
   
3. Do you believe in the concept of soulmates? That there is a most-right person out there for you? Why or why not?
   
4. One of the challenges of this book was world-building Italy for the reader. What aspects of the world-building did you enjoy? Which did you feel went too far or not far enough?
   
5. Claire desperately wants a relationship with Dante, but she is too afraid and traumatized by past relationships to be able to trust him. Have you ever experienced anything like this in your own life? Not necessarily with love, per se, but something you wanted yet were afraid of at the same time?
   
6. How does the storyline from 1814 fit into the narrative of the present? How are Claire and Dante similar to Ethan and Caro, and how are they different and why? Did the resolution of Ethan and Caro’s story catch you off-guard or did you expect it?
   
7. Did Pierce’s appearance at the end surprise you? Or did you figure out Blackford’s reincarnation and the Colonel’s presence in the storyline earlier? Did you like the resolution of the book?
   
8. Several ideas and poems run through the book; ‘somewhere i have never travelled’ by e.e. cummings and ‘Let me not to the marriage of true minds’ by William Shakespeare were the most prominent. Why do you feel the author chose these two poems specifically? What similarities do you see between the poems? They are listed below for you to read and discuss.
   

    
   

   somewhere i have never travelled,gladly beyond
   any experience,your eyes have their silence:
   in your most frail gesture are things which enclose me,
   or which i cannot touch because they are too near
   your slightest look easily will unclose me
   though i have closed myself as fingers,
   you open always petal by petal myself as Spring opens
   (touching skilfully,mysteriously)her first rose
   or if your wish be to close me, i and
   my life will shut very beautifully ,suddenly,
   as when the heart of this flower imagines
   the snow carefully everywhere descending;
   nothing which we are to perceive in this world equals
   the power of your intense fragility:whose texture
   compels me with the color of its countries,
   rendering death and forever with each breathing
   (i do not know what it is about you that closes
   and opens;only something in me understands
   the voice of your eyes is deeper than all roses)
   nobody,not even the rain,has such small hands
   

   —e. e. cummings
   

    
   

    
   

   Let me not to the marriage of true minds
   Admit impediments. Love is not love
   Which alters when it alteration finds,
   Or bends with the remover to remove:
   O no; it is an ever-fixed mark, 
   That looks on tempests, and is never shaken;
   It is the star to every wandering bark,
   Whose worth's unknown, although his height be taken.
   Love's not Time's fool, though rosy lips and cheeks 
   Within his bending sickle's compass come; 
   Love alters not with his brief hours and weeks, 
   But bears it out even to the edge of doom.
      If this be error and upon me proved,
      I never writ, nor no man ever loved.
   

   —William Shakespeare
   

Alternate Prologue: Claire’s POV

S
ometimes when writing a book, I end up creating multiple versions of some sections. With
Gladly Beyond
, I went back and forth with the prologue. Should it be from Claire’s point of view with a more chatty style? Or did I want a more somber, omniscient tone? After a lot of feedback from reviewers, I opted to keep the more serious prologue as the official one. But here is the chattier version, if you’d like to see Claire’s take on the D’Angelo family curse.

I
t sounds like the beginning of a lame joke:

What do a gypsy curse, a man in tight breeches, a lost Michelangelo masterpiece and death have in common?

The answer?

Apparently . . . me.

It all began with a curse.

I know, I know—cursed by gypsies!—it’s like every bad historical romance ever written.

But, turns out, there’s truth in the cliché.

And, in the gypsies’ defense, everyone considered it a ‘gift.’

Right up to the point they realized it wasn’t.

The gift/curse began with one man—Giovanni D’Angelo.

A medieval Italian nobleman who, after a series of poor business decisions, found himself near bankruptcy. Giovanni faced mounds of debt, five unmarried daughters and one angry wife telling him to
fix this now
.

So he did what any god-fearing Renaissance man would do—he sold his soul to an old gypsy woman.

Okay, so no one knows if Giovanni
literally
sold his soul. But he did visit the camp of the
zingari
—the gypsies—and came away with the gift of Sight. The ability to see, hear and feel the past and the future.

Cool, right?

Eh, not really.

Don’t get me wrong. Initially, it was awesome.

With his new talents, Giovanni saved his family, had a son, outmaneuvered his opponents, crushed his rivals. I’m sure it was all stiletto-daggers and velvet-doublets and paid-assassin magnificence.

But the ‘gift’ grew in strength year by year.

Think about it. If you saw, heard and felt everything that
had
happened and
would
happen in a specific place . . .

It would drive you mad.

They say the voices destroyed Giovanni in the end.

Not the sights or the feelings.

Nope.

It was the never-ending noise.

Giovanni launched himself off the cathedral bell tower at the age of forty-one. Raving mad.

Twenty-five years later, his son was found swinging from the southern city gate, foam and blood dripping from his mouth.

A generation after that, his grandson strapped himself to the front of a newly-invented cannon and lit the fuse.

At which point, the D’Angelo women realized three things:

One, this ‘gift’ was seriously a curse.

Two, the curse was hereditary, passing on to each first-born son.

And, three—like women have been doing since the dawn of time—they needed to clean up the mess their men had made.

Right.

They didn’t have much luck.

Priest blessings and exorcisms proved futile. The
zingari
themselves just shrugged and said the original knowledge was lost to history.

For their part, the D’Angelo men did what men have always done: drowned their woes in wine and war, renamed themselves the Damned Earls—complete with a stylish coat-of-arms—and earned buckets of money before going completely insane.

This dysfunctional dance continued for seven hundred years.