Chapter 10 : 1548
“Di Luca! Been looking for you everywhere!”
Giacomo di Roberti bellowed down the corridor as Giovanni was being hurriedly escorted from Baldiserra’s gallery by the four guards. Everyone stopped, the guards confused by the unexpected interruption from this important man. Giovanni turned to di Roberti and saw the man’s ancient eyes hurriedly assessing the situation.
Di Roberti took a step towards them. “I thought I’d… arghh!”
He stopped, clutching his chest. “God! What’s happening?”
He sank to his knees and rolled onto the floor, his legs kicking and his arms thrashing with the agony of the sudden pain. There was a scream from behind him as his entourage caught up and rushed to his aid.
Giovanni made to run to his friend but the two guards holding his arms stopped him.
He turned angrily to them. “For God’s sake, Signor di Roberti is one of the most important men in the city. He needs help!” He shrugged their arms away and pointed at them. “Don’t just stand there! Run! Fetch a physician or you will be held responsible for his death. Go!”
The two guards turned to Baldiserra who waved at them to do as they were told. His eyes burned into Giovanni’s as he called the two remaining guards over to him. Giovanni ignored them and ran to di Roberti’s side.
“Stand back! Give him some air!” he yelled at the confusion of hands grasping at their master. He leaned over di Roberti and cried urgently. “Giacomo! Giacomo! Lie still. Help is coming.”
Di Roberti groaned and thrashed his arms around some more. “Air,” he gasped. “Arrgh!”
He grasped his chest again as Giovanni waved his own arms to move the entourage further way. Turning back to di Roberti, he gently cradled the man’s head.
“Giacomo,” he whispered, his voice breaking with emotion.
Di Roberti slowly opened his eyes, took a sly look around and then focussed on Giovanni and winked.
“I don’t know what that zealot Baldiserra is up to, but I can see you are in danger,” he whispered, his hand rising to pull Giovanni’s head closer to his mouth. “You must get out of the city now. Fetch Augusto, my attendant. I’ll instruct him. And get those two guards to carry me somewhere. Anywhere. But go. Now!”
Di Roberti’s head sagged back and he let out a huge scream of apparent pain. Giovanni was stunned into a moment’s inaction, but then felt di Robert’s hand push at him. He turned to the remaining two guards.
“You two! Come here. Carry Signor di Roberti to a bedroom. Signor Baldiserra, please, guide them. He needs more comfort than this hard floor.”
The guards rushed over and attempted to pick up the enormous di Roberti. Four of the entourage came forward to help them and together they carried off their still writhing burden, a fuming Baldiserra leading the way.
Giovanni beckoned Augusto, who was following di Roberti. “Go to your master,” he whispered. “He needs to speak to you urgently.”
Augusto proved remarkably efficient, arriving at Giovanni and Beth’s house only a few minutes after they did.
“There is no time to lose, signore. My master says we must leave immediately. Fetch your children and follow me. All arrangements for your belongings will be made later.”
An hour later, having crossed the lagoon and climbed into a waiting coach, they were racing across the countryside away from Venice.
Two weeks later, an increasingly frustrated Giovanni was pacing the grounds of a substantial villa set in the foothills of the mountains north of Verona, one of several retreats that di Roberti kept very secret from his friends and associates in Venice. Augusto and the staff of the villa had provided Giovanni and Beth with every comfort, while at the same time insisting they remain within the grounds.
“We are effectively imprisoned here, Beth,” grumbled Giovanni for the tenth time that day. “We have no news from Venice. Nothing. For all we know, Baldiserra might come charging through those gates at any moment.”
“Augusto has assured us that this house is secret, Giovanni,” replied Beth, trying as ever to calm her husband. “No one in Venice knows about it.”
“There must be some who know. And while there are some, we are not safe. I do not want to put you and the children at risk. We should be far away from here.”
Just then they heard the sound of hooves thundering along the track below them, the only path up to the house. As the hooves got closer, the galloping was overlaid by the grinding of a coach’s wheels spinning and complaining along the rough terrain. Five minutes later, the gates opened and a coach and four horses burst onto the drive.
As the coach pulled up in front of the house, there was a bellow from inside it.
“Augusto, where are you! This old man needs an arm. Two; more; as many as you can spare!” The guffaw that followed meant the coach’s occupant could only be di Roberti himself.
Giovanni rushed up and opened the door.
“Di Luca!” bellowed di Roberti. “Help me out of here. My insides have been shaken to pieces. And there’s plenty of them to shake.” He roared with laughter again as Giovanni eased him through the coach’s door and guided him into the villa.
Later, after a substantial dinner, di Roberti dismissed the servants and called Augusto to bring him his document case.
“Giacomo,” began Giovanni, “I–”
“Stop thanking me, man. It’s getting tedious,” roared di Roberti. “You’ve been a wonderful friend these past thirty years. Kept me alive, wondering what your next masterpiece is going to be like. Glad to be able to help.”
His eyes fixed on Giovanni’s, his expression uncharacteristically serious.
“I’ve always known there is something different about you, di Luca, something very special.”
Giovanni started to speak, but di Roberti held up a huge hand.
“No, don’t even try to explain, I could never understand it, and anyway, there are some things that should remain unexplained. I only know that your life is in danger from the zealots who hound you. But unlike them, I have known you for many years and I know you are a good man without an evil bone in you. When I heard that Baldiserra was making enquiries about you, I made enquiries about him. When I discovered he was from Naples, I put two and two together and got a mystery.”
He paused to laugh loudly, irrepressible as ever.
“Didn’t know when he was going to act, but he was behaving very strangely that evening of the reception for Da Cadore. Caused me all sorts of palpitations.”
He guffawed again, clutching his chest theatrically.
“No matter. You need to move on and I have, on your behalf, made some arrangements. You do not have to accept them, but I think they will be to your liking. Now, that property of yours in Venice. I should like to acquire it for one of my grandchildren. Getting married soon. So I’ll buy it from you. As it happens, I have a place, rather like this one, in Arezzo. Picked it up years ago. Don’t need it, so what I propose is that you move there. Take over the ownership in return for the Venice house. The notary can sort out all the details. What do you think, Signor Perini?”
“Signor Perini?” frowned Giovanni. “I don’t understand. Who is Signor Perini?”
“Why, you are, my friend. Tommaso Perini. Can’t keep your present name, any of you. So I’ve created a new one for you. Got all the papers. Lot of opportunity in Arezzo for a talented artist. Not been one there for over a hundred years, unless you like Vasari’s stuff. No, there’s been no real talent since Piero della Francesca walked that town’s streets.”
Giovanni smiled. “Yes, you are right.” He paused. “I knew h–”
“No, di Luca.” Di Roberti held up a hand. “I told you, I don’t want to know. Too much for my ancient brain to understand.”
By the time the ebullient di Roberti died ten years later at the age of ninety, his creation, Tommaso Perini, and the Perini family were well established in Arezzo, the young artist attracting many clients from the town’s merchant and noble classes. Tomm
aso and di Roberti met up at the villa outside Verona on a number of occasions during those years, when Tommaso was pleased to revert to being Giovanni di Luca for a few days. Di Roberti stubbornly refused to discuss anything about the past of the young man who shared his company, the young man he knew to be at least sixty-eight.
Tommaso waited until his three children were adults before telling them about himself. When he did, with Beth’s agreement and support, their overriding concern was for their half-sister Paola in Naples. Tommaso had sent several agents to check on her over the years and he was satisfied her mother, Francesca, was not hounding her. As the first agent he’d sent in 1530 had predicted, she had grown into a beautiful woman and she had married well. She had only one child, a son, whom the various agents reported had been sickly as a boy but who later grew to be fit and strong. Then an agent sent soon after Beth died in 1580 returned with dreadful news. Aged sixty-two, the youthful-looking Paola had come to the attention of the Church, ancient priests among its ranks remembering her devil-worshipping father. Paola was interrogated and it was only with the quick thinking of her son that she managed to escape Naples. No trace of her could be found and enquiries from more agents sent by Tommaso were treated with hostility and suspicion.
After Beth’s death, Tommaso became the itinerant artist he had determined not to be in his San Sepolcro days. However, there was a difference: every move from one town to another included a change of name and the need to re-establish himself. Moving on frequently, he was restless for many years, his only real comfort coming from visits to his children: Piero, a now highly successful artist in Rome; Sofia, the wife of a Florentine consul to Venice; and Gianna, married to a notary in Florence.
Piero died young, a victim of cholera, while Sofia lived until she was over seventy. Gianna, always a favourite, lived well beyond her husband and always delighted in her father’s visits. Her final moments were a strange scene that no outsider could possibly have understood. A frail, eighty-year-old woman took the hand of a man who was seemingly in his thirties and looked lovingly into his eyes.
“Babbo,” she whispered hoarsely. “Babbo, I don’t want to leave you but I feel it’s time. Promise me, Babbo, promise me that you will try to find my sister. Try to find Paola.”
“I promise, my dear, darling daughter.”
He continued to search, but there was nothing. By the time he left Italy for France in the mid-1630s, Paola would have been a hundred and seventeen. Her trail had been cold for fifty years.