Getting the sample would not be a simple affair. There were no exceptions, except for one; everyone who did not directly work at the Florence pharmaceutical research facility needed to give at least 24 hours notice prior to a visit. Security was elaborate. Upon receipt, a request for access was run through the company’s files to ensure that the person was still actually employed at VBI. Most VBI employees, as they were not directly connected with the Pharma division, also needed special executive permission if they wished to enter the facility. The no-exception rule excluded Milly. He could do as he wished, and dropping in at the facility unexpectedly was one of the things, as the giver of arbitrary laws, available only to him. His security card was programmed for such arbitrary decisions.
Abelard had chosen to leave Montreal on the weekend to boost the odds that Milly would not try and contact him, and so avoid raising his suspicions. He had reckoned his risks as fair that over the 24 hour notice period Milly would not yet have alerted all VBI installations to be on the lookout for him. These risk assessments he had chosen not to share with Oliver. Neither did he show annoyance at Elizabetta’s unexpected presence, although it did put him out. He was confidently prepared to face danger with Oliver at his side but felt Elizabetta could limit his options. However, while he was not one to refuse an extra hand in a tight situation, that was not why he had asked Oliver to meet him in Florence. He reckoned it best both for his own as well as for Oliver’s security that he be kept away from Milly.
They had chosen to stay at a hotel conveniently located near all the major tourist attractions. Not that Abelard intended to mix business with pleasure, but with the 24 hour wait he saw no reason to stay away from the elegant refinement that was the Florence of his memories. To his mind, he had been here more than 600 years ago. His quick visit just weeks earlier with Milly, to see the Donatello, had not given him any occasion to satisfy the yearnings his recall had awakened. He had suppressed an overwhelming urge to rush out and look again upon those wonders he had already seen and those that may still have been under construction at the time but had since been completed. He had been able to see the city only through the blur of a swiftly moving vehicle, on the way to the research facility, to store the sample; the sample that everyone knew about, that he had a hunch was now on everyone’s must-have list. This time he would indulge himself.
Halfway through spring and it was still unusually cool. They left the hotel and headed to the tree-lined Via Calzaiuoli, which gave onto the Piazza Del Duomo, where Abelard wanted to see again the magnificent Cathedral of Santa Maria del Fiore. In his vivid memories Brunelleschi's magnificent dome had not yet been built when he first saw the cathedral under construction and the geometrically set, coloured marble facade was relatively modern, the original having been destroyed in the sixteenth century. He also felt as though a small part of the cathedral belonged to him.
His neural pathways were alive with images of a quarrel that arose with the Republic when his mercenary earnings were unexpectedly taxed to help pay for the building’s construction. As he recalls, at the time, he had been faced with a bit of a dilemma. He couldn't very well refuse donations to Mother Church but he couldn't either allow his employer to set a dangerous precedent, arbitrarily altering the terms of a contract. The cloth-makers' guild, which had been a major sponsor of the cathedral construction, along with the Republic, had fallen on hard times, which sent the notoriously miserly Signoria scrambling for new sources of finance. It made the mistake of trying to gouge a Gascon. Abelard suggested to the Signoria that he might not be able to dissuade his men from taking employment with another, less honourable captain, about to sign a contract with the Pisan Republic, one of Florence's more aggressive rivals. Unable to legally give him more than the contract stipulated - laws, arbitrary though they may have been, were nevertheless supreme - and unable to rescind his ecclesiastical taxes, they cleverly invented the forward condotta, signing a contract for the defence of Florence, beginning six months hence and conditional on Venice attacking at the time, which was highly unlikely, since the Doge of that city was otherwise preoccupied with his Genoese rivals. He was made whole and happy with only the very smallest risk he would actually have to fight for his already earned income.
"Hey, look, they finished the tower," he yelled, excitedly pointing to the tall, slim campanile which Giotto designed and began to build well before Abelard first saw the city. But construction had stopped when Giotto died and the structure was not completed until well after he was asleep. “Sorry, I got carried away.” he quickly added, “This guide book is so well done, I imagined an unfinished tower,” he trailed off with a contrived laugh.
Elizabetta and Oliver watched Abelard with a mixture of awe and some amusement. He was rooted to the pavement in front of the Baptistery’s east door, which Michelangelo called the Gates of Paradise, in which Lorenzo Ghiberti, who also did the north door, sculpted Old Testament scenes onto its ten panels. They might have been less amused had they been able to listen in on Abelard’s thoughts. He clearly remembers Andrea Pisano's magnificent south door, done before he would have first set foot in the Piazza during the troubled fourteenth century, but the other two were executed too late for him to have ever viewed. He was transfixed, unaware of all else.
His special memories gave him a window on what ordinary people at the time would have seen. He didn't perceive it as art that was great for the fourteenth century, to be admired for its period creativity and innovation and at the same time to be thrilled by its great age. For him, this was current and dealt with outstanding beauty in subjects of intimate familiarity to a medieval nobleman. While the ready explanations that science provided for most natural phenomena had by now stripped away much, if not all of Abelard’s piety, at the time God was the only available story for all that was unknown to the medieval mind. Art, mostly religious in character, was meant for the believer, to titillate, impress and inspire.
Along the Via Calzaiuoli, on the way to the Piazza della Signoria, they passed a small, compactly built man carrying a plastic shopping bag. He twisted his head in all directions but theirs, as though looking for someone. He wasn't difficult to spot, being the only human that morning wearing a loud, chequered jacket. It may all have been meaningless coincidence but Abelard was fairly certain that they were being followed.
Ah, Abelard reminisced, the old palace of the Signoria is still there and not much changed. He had signed more than a few contracts here and even proffered a number of threats when not in the employ of Florence. But these Florentines were very clever indeed, and maddeningly shrewd. Of all the states with which he had dealt, they were certainly the toughest negotiators. At some point the Signoria did something unusual for the times, they looked closely at the very nature of their enterprise, deciding that the military business was not one in which they cared to excel. They were shrewd merchants, excellent cloth makers and craftsmen, but as soldiers they really couldn't hope to do any better than their rivals. During that period of military adventurism this was a fundamentally important realization. It was in that spirit they were able to develop such skill at contracting, or as it would be called today, outsourcing their military requirements to people like Abelard, very talented at making war. And by specializing in mercantile pursuits, their forte, they did more than well enough to pay for someone else to organize violence in their favour.
The next morning they hired a car. The facility was along the Via Ponte Rosso, on the road to Bologna and their appointment was for later that afternoon. It was a much warmer day and after spending part of the morning wandering through the gold and silversmith shops lining the Ponte Vecchio and a quick tour through the Pitti Palace they left the noisy, crowded city and headed into the Fiesole Hills for a picnic. They drove out of the city’s smoggy haze and moved into the soft light of Italy's mountainous countryside. There was nothing harsh about the fabric like quality of the sun's rays as they were diffused through the humid air rising from between the verdant hills. It was a light so skilfully cap
tured by the brush strokes of renaissance masters such as Giotto, Masaccio, Fra Angelica and, later, Botticelli. The fine light, Abelard mused, also had much to do with industrial pollution.
They stopped at a small hotel of low, pretty white buildings surrounded by budding olive trees. There was a restaurant which was happy to prepare for them a lunch to be eaten in the grove. They had a splendid view of Florence, the outsized cathedral dome dominating their vision at every angle. After devouring his food Abélard curled up on the ground and fell almost instantly soundly asleep. Elizabetta was busy on her cell chatting with her mother and Oliver was growing happier, calmer, and drowsier when he was suddenly startled by a gentle hand shaking his shoulder. It was a hotel employee who thought it best to let Oliver know that someone was snooping about their car.
Oliver was immediately alert and dashed through the grove. Emerging unexpectedly from the hedge surrounding the lot, he startled the stalker, who was still carrying the plastic bag and wearing the ugly chequered jacket. When he saw Oliver coming towards him he turned and jumped through the already open passenger door of a black car. They were already through the main gate and on the road before he could get close enough to make out the license.
"If something happens and we are separated, we will meet at the cloister in the Museo di San Marco, tomorrow morning," Oliver said, after telling them that they had been followed since their arrival. Abelard, completely at ease with danger and already having spotted the sore thumb, was not surprised. Elizabetta was left breathless at the thought that she was in some sort of peril. She looked at Oliver a long while, as though begging him to say that this had all been a poor joke, her eyes grown imploringly big and round, her skin paler than usual. Oliver felt both sorry and guilty that he could do nothing to change their situation.
Abelard did not say much because what he suspected would have alarmed Oliver and, especially, Elizabetta. He reasoned that he had perhaps overestimated his leeway. Milly may in fact have earlier than expected discovered Abelard’s absence. Unable to reach him, he would by now have put everyone in the company on alert. Even worse, if all VBI employees were on alert, they could find themselves in an awkward situation at the research facility, particularly since Milly would by then surely have been informed of their impending visit.
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