The Girl With the Botticelli Eyes (23 page)

“A new government?”

“Call it instead a ‘New Order.’ Why quarrel?” Borghini looked up at the boy and winked. “Ay, Beppe?”

“
Si,
Maestro.”

Borghini turned back to her. “I’ve read about your Mr. Manship’s show and I loathe it. Do you know why?”

“No, Ludo.”

“I resent—deeply resent—the fact that such people think they can come here, loot our museums, deprive us of our heritage. We, the descendants of Caesars. Have we become so polluted? By what right?”

Borghini pounded the desktop, making objects on it scatter. “What do you want from me, Ludo?” her voice pleaded. “I’ve met the man twice. Once in Fiesole, at my house. The other time in this little restaurant in Firenze. He wanted me to go to New York with him for the opening of his show.”

“Because of the striking resemblance to your illustrious ancestor, the Simonetta,
whore
of the Medici.” The word, in his mouth, sounded like a sneer. “And you declined his offer?”

“Yes.”

“That’s to your credit.” Borghini’s fingertips played lightly over the leather tooling of his desk. “And your friend Mr. Manship …”

“He’s not my friend, Ludo,” she repeated wearily.

“After his luncheon with Pettigrilli, your friend went out to Parioli?”

“So I gather. Aldo said he’d given the fellow the address of the gallery.”

“And, of course, the fellow came right around forthwith.”

“Yes,” she murmured softly.

“Please stop mumbling, Isobel. I can’t hear you.”

“Yes. Yes. Yes,” she said, this time almost shouting.

Her sudden lashing out had taken him aback. Once again, she could feel the boy’s agitated breathing and see out of the corner of her eye his knuckles whiten as he clenched the back of her chair.

Borghini’s fingers resumed their drumming. “Do you really think I need you to tell me that some unwanted intruder had been out to my gallery, snooping around?”

“No, Ludo,” she said, trying a more deferential tack. “I wouldn’t think so.”

“Don’t patronize me with your ‘No, Ludos.’ Get that long-suffering tone out of your voice. I know very well how to deal with scum like your friend. I’ve been dealing with that sort for a lifetime.”

He pushed a snapshot toward her. It had the overexposed, out-of-focus look of something taken by a surveillance camera. He pushed several others toward her. Two or three merely showed the front doorway and the interiors of the little Parioli gallery. But in several others, sure enough, there was Mark Manship. One caught him peering into the shop window from outside, one hand over his eyes to screen out the sunlight. Another showed him with his hand poking halfway through the open back door. Both photos were grainy, had much distortion, and the features of the individual in each case were indistinct. But in a third photo, taken from the rear of the gallery; looking out onto a back alley, the figure of Manship rummaging through a trash can was clear and unmistakable.

“So,” Borghini said, aglow with quiet triumph. “What am I to do with you, Isobel?”

“Let me go, Ludo,” she said, close to tears. “I intended no harm. I was merely trying to do this Manship fellow a favor …”

“A favor at my expense.” Once again, Borghini’s fist pounded the desktop. “Because of this favor of yours, I must now worry about what your Mr. Manship might or might not have seen out in Parioli.”

She swallowed hard. “From what he told me—”

“Told you? You mean you’ve seen him again since he’s been out there?”

“No. I haven’t seen him. I’ve spoken to him on the phone.”

“When?”

“Just last night.”

“You didn’t say that. Why didn’t you say he called? What did he tell you about his visit to the gallery?”

“He said the shop was closed, that everyone was on vacation. You saw him for yourself with your own cameras. He didn’t go in.”

He watched her coolly through half-shut eyes. “That’s true,” he conceded begrudgingly. “He didn’t go in.”

Her face brightened with the incontestable logic of that fact. “Well, then, you see, Ludo, if he didn’t go in, then he didn’t see anything.”

He frowned, unwilling to accept anything quite so simple. Then, for no apparent reason, he smiled at her. It was a rather disquieting smile, unpleasantly suggestive.

“I can well see why Mr. Manship would take such a keen interest in you, Isobel. Ay, Beppe?” He winked at the boy, prompting a low, soft laugh from him. “You’re very beautiful, aren’t you?”

She glanced at him, puzzled. “Beautiful?”

“Oh, don’t be coy. You know that you are. For as long as I’ve know you—what is it now, ten years?—men have always pursued you. Some for perfectly fine motives, some for less exalted ones. Even I wanted you.”

His manner up until that moment had been playful, possibly even flirtatious. Now it had suddenly taken a somewhat sinister turn. It wasn’t what he’d said but the way he’d said it, that mixture of regret and undisguised sexual playfulness. It sent a current of ice through her veins.

It was true, of course; Men had always wanted her. She couldn’t help that. She knew it as a young girl and then as she grew older. Artists flocked to her, photographers, filmmakers, potential suitors—all wishing to enter into some kind of union.

With Borghini, she’d always known just from the way he behaved in her presence—affecting a certain boredom, distraction, a kind of avuncular affection—that he was deeply attracted to her. But his attraction went beyond the merely carnal. Had it been just that, it would have been simpler to deal with. With him, she knew the driving force was something else. There was always a subtext, something unspoken but no less real because of that. In all their time together, he’d never once laid a questionable hand on her. She’d never quite been able to figure that out. It wasn’t mere gentlemanly restraint. But whatever it was, her innate womanly intuition had warned her to give him a wide berth.

“You were close to my ideal,” Borghini went on wistfully. “Had things been different …”

He glanced up, to see the outline of the boy hovering like a dark stain above her. “Beppe, leave us for a moment.”

He watched the boy, somewhat resentfully, fade away and didn’t resume until the door clicked shut behind him. Then he turned back to her. “My mother, you know, would have adored you.”

The sudden disclosure increased her discomfort. She sensed more coming and sought desperately for ways to deflect it.

“You were exactly what she’d always planned for me. And you know …” His words trailed off into shy laughter.

“I never got to meet your mother, Ludo.”

“She died long before you were born.”

He came around the desk. Taking her hand, he led her up to a small settee, where he seated her; He was almost courtly. “I’m sure that’s more comfortable than the baby’s chair.”

“Yes, much better.”

“I was punishing you, I suppose. How silly. I do have a nasty streak, don’t I?” He started to pace. “Yes, Mama would have adored you. She would have fussed over you and spoiled you. She would have loved your gorgeous Simonetta eyes. She would have painted them.” Lost in thought, his voice trailed off as he studied her eyes. “Of course, it was out of the question. There was the considerable age difference, and then, too, I don’t believe you were prepared to live the sort of life I was in a position to offer.”

She started to reply, but he silenced her with a wave of the hand.

“No doubt you’ve heard something of my activities.”

“Yes.”

“I’m still quite involved in the movement. Some six thousand of us now. All around the world and growing every year.” His pacing had become circular and faster. “There are many in our country; aggrieved, humiliated, destitute, though they don’t speak out …”

Relieved that the topic of conversation had shifted to his work, she struggled to keep his mind focused in that direction. “Aggrieved about what, Ludo?”

“For one thing,” he sneered, “agents of powerful interests, like your friend Mr. Manship. And their insatiable hunger for our most treasured possessions, for another. Take my word for it, Isobel. This Botticelli thing—it won’t happen. Not so long as I have breath to breathe. We in the movement have ways of preventing it.”

Splashing another grappa into his shifter, he spilled most of it onto his desk and onto the papers and snapshots lying there. “The pack of whores who sit in the National Assembly today. We have ways of, shall we say, impressing them. This Botticelli horror won’t happen, Isobel. Take my word—”

His shouting brought the boy back. The door burst open and he stood there eyeing them warily.

“Get out,” Borghini shouted, and the boy fled backward, like a dog kicked by its master.

When he turned to her again, she saw in a glance the old madness in his eyes. In the next moment, he’d reached down into some lower drawer and rummaged angrily about there. All she could see was the top of his head as he rooted about at his feet, then slammed something down onto his desk.

“This, I take it, is what your friend so desperately wants.” He shoved a large manila folder across the desktop. “Look. Go ahead. Look.”

The folder had skidded to a halt, half off, half on the desk, part of its contents spilling out from inside. Not daring to look too long, she glimpsed a section of old parchment. Faded charcoal lines, frayed edges soon came into view. She knew what it was. She didn’t have to see any more.

“You see, Pettigrilli was right.” Borghini stood, his voice ringing with anger.

Hands trembling, her fluttering fingers struggled with the top leaf of the folder.

Then suddenly, there they were, in her hands. She was touching them, stunned at the nearness, the accessibility of them. There were three of them—all in the eighteen-by-twelve-centimeter category. No special care had been given to the manner in which they’d been stored. No paper overlays protected them; they were not under glass or any covering that would prevent the time-faded charcoal lines from disappearing.

“Go on,” he shouted. “Pick it up. Pick it up.”

With tremulous fingers, she lifted one from the folder, careful to hold it at the edges with the tips of her fingers. There was the Simonetta—that virginal, achingly lovely face, the long, exquisitely attenuated oval of it fading ghostlike into the smudged parchment.

She could feel his eyes on her, watchful, triumphant.

“That’s what your friend wanted, isn’t it, Isobel? He has excellent taste. Well, what’s the matter? They’re not fake.”

“No, they’re not fake, Ludo. I can see that.”

She could tell it from the sure, pure sweep of the line, rendered unbroken in a single stroke, as if whoever had held the charcoal never lifted it once. No hesitation. No erasures. No overlapping lines. Just masterful control of the hand, as though some preternatural force had guided it.

Serene, timeless, devoid of any of the frank sensuality found in the
Birth of Venus
or the
Primavera,
the sketches for the
Chigi Madonna
had a fragile, chaste beauty. The infant she cradled in her arms was plump and laughing—greedy, lunging for a fistful of grapes. You could almost hear its giggles of delight.

Borghini’s gaze bore down harder. “Your friend went to Parioli to steal those from me,” he shouted. “And you sent him there.”

“No, Ludo. I didn’t.”

“Don’t tell me you didn’t,” he thundered.

“Ludo. I swear.”

“If he dares come poking round again, things won’t go quite so easy for him.”

She was close to tears. “Ludo, please. I’d like to go home now.”

He was ranting and tossing things about on his desk. “Next time he shows his face here—” He looked up, startled, as though her last words had finally registered. “You’d like to go home?”

“Yes, Ludo. I’d like to go now, as soon as possible.”

“But why?” There was a look of hurt in his eyes.

She could think of nothing to say that would not offend him or send him off on another tirade.

“Isn’t my house comfortable? You have enough of everything here.”

“Everything is fine, Ludo. Lovely.” Her voice was almost a whisper. “But I want my own home. Please. When may I go?”

He gazed at her as if not quite grasping what she’d said. “When? When?” His hands fidgeted. “Who’s to say when? Perhaps tomorrow.” He rose suddenly, stamping his booted feet. “Perhaps never. Beppe. Beppe,” he bellowed at the closed door. “Show the signorina upstairs to her room.”

She could still hear him muttering after the door had closed behind them.

S
HE MOVED NUMBLY DOWN
the long, musty corridor, its walls lined with the darkly shadowed portraits of Borghinis long gone. There were Borghinis epauletted and braided in military uniform, in brocades and silk and flounced shoulders, monocled Borghinis, Borghinis with muttonchop whiskers and waxed mustaches, generals and judges, magistrates and merchant princes.

The boy trailed behind her, murmuring directions in a soft, oddly suggestive way.
“Sinestra,
signorina.
Diretto. Destro.”

She was aware of the slow, scuffing drag of his footsteps on the stone floor and could feel his eyes ranging up and down her body from behind. He kept to the rear, never once coming abreast of her or moving ahead.

Presently, they came to a door at the end of a dark hallway. The boy came forward, clanking a large ring of keys.
“Permesso,”
he murmured and brushed past her, making momentary physical contact. She thought it had been intentional.

He flicked through a number of keys on the ring, trying several before finding the one he wanted. Then inserting it in the lock, he pushed the door open. At first, it appeared to stick, as though it hadn’t been opened for some time. It made a groaning sound as it swung on its hinges. The boy stepped aside and waited for her to enter before following her in.

She had expected something dismal and punitive, like a cell. What she saw instead was more like out of a fairy tale—sumptuous, palatial, everything on a grand scale. A mustiness hovered everywhere, with strong hints of camphor and faded old sachet.

At the far end of the room, a bank of leaded handblown windows extended the full length of the wall. Passing her again, the boy made his way there. Pulling a heavy braided cord, a wall of gray silk moiré slid back, revealing a vast expanse of rolling forest behind the palazzo.