I turn back to the inventory and find after a few minutes that at least it’s organized by types of objects. There are lists of statues in the house and in the garden, rugs, mosaics, embroidered cloths, jewelry, paintings, furniture, and tapestries—including two described as hanging in the rotunda, “depicting scenes of courtly love,” woven by the nuns of Santa Catalina. One of these must be the one that still hangs in the rotunda that I hid behind yesterday. The other, I suspect, is the one that now hangs in my bedroom, the camera nuziale. I scan ahead to the list of frescoes and find a description of the birds painted on the walls of the library. In fact, the notary took pains to list each bird in the room by species and color, an account so thorough, it’s as if he were afraid one of them would take flight and escape into the garden. There’s a description of the garden fresco in the sala grande that itemizes each flower and tree in botanical detail and half a page devoted to a still life in the dining room that reads like a shopping list for last night’s banquet and makes me hungry enough to dig into my bag for some figs. I wonder whether the notary was naturally this meticulous or Barbagianni demanded this thorough an accounting of his new possessions. Whichever, I can probably assume that nothing has been left out.
Which is why, when I get to the description of the frescoes in the camera nuziale, the first thing I notice is that only four paintings are listed. It is possible, though, that the two paintings on the north wall, which are separated by the bed, are counted as one. So I carefully read the description of each painting.
Four frescoes in the wedding suite to celebrate the marriage of Asdrubale di Tommaso degli Barbagianni to Caterina di Albertozzo degli Galletti in the month of May in the year of 1511, depicting the story of Nastagio degli Onesti. The first fresco depicts the rejection of Nastagio degli Onesti by his beloved in the garden of her father. Various flowers and fruit trees…
I skip the botanical details and read ahead to the description of the second painting, of Nastagio wandering through the forest (no mention, I notice, is made of the birds in the trees—a surprising lapse for this thorough notary), and the third, of Nastagio watching a “noble knight” pursuing an unclothed maiden through the woods.
It is clear from the description of the third painting, the one in which the knight disembowels his former lover, that the notary must have described the painting while standing right in front of it. In fact, he seems to have taken a morbid interest in each gory detail as though the grisly subject matter had taken possession of him just as it had of Nastagio degli Onesti. He even adds an odd little editorial note to the inventory: “And so the young man learns of the perfidy of women and that he is not the first to be so thoughtlessly scorned by one of them.”
A rather unorthodox reading of the tale, I think, and not what I imagine Lorenzo was paying his notary for. Perhaps the notary was admonished for embellishing his account, because the next painting, of the banquet scene on the west wall, is described in a perfunctory manner. Or maybe the notary just had little interest in the happy finale of the story. “And so,” he writes laconically, “Nastagio declines the lady’s offer of a night of unhallowed lust and agrees to marry the lover who first rejected him.” Obviously he wasn’t aware of the existence of a fifth painting that suggested a different ending for the story.
Was it possible that then, as now, the painting was concealed by a tapestry or other wall hanging? But I can’t imagine this particular notary not lifting a piece of cloth to look beneath. And there’s no mention in the inventory of tapestries of one that hung in the camera nuziale. Clearly the tapestry in the rotunda was later moved to cover the fifth fresco.
I can only conclude that the fifth painting must have been added later, although it strikes me as odd. Wedding spalliere, like cassoni, had gone out of fashion by the late sixteenth century. Why would Lorenzo Barbagianni add another to the camera nuziale? And why such a horrible one? I’ll have to go through the account books to determine whether it was ever listed there. First, though, I turn back to the listing of furniture to see whether the cassone is listed and find a forziere—which, I remember, is the term that was used for wedding chests at the time—commissioned in 1511 to celebrate the marriage of Asdrubale and Caterina. The chest is described as “depinto e adorni d’oro,” painted and adorned with gold, but nothing else is said about the content of the paintings. There is, however, an odd little note added beneath the entry. “Although such objects have gone out of fashion today they should be preserved, if not for their artistic value, then for their power to teach valuable lessons and to contain the baser instincts of any new bride who may come to this house.” I shiver reading the words. Was the painting of Nastagio degli Onesti raping his fiancée also supposed to teach a valuable lesson?
At least I know now that the wall paintings and cassone predate Ginevra’s residence at La Civetta by a good seventy years. Now for the inlaid floors. The only category that comes close is mosaics, but when I look there I find only a description of a few mosaics in the garden. Nothing in the house at all. Still, it doesn’t prove that the floors weren’t commissioned during the years Ginevra lived at La Civetta. I’ll have to go through the whole account book.
I open the account book and read on the first page, “Rincontro di Cevole dal 1581 al 1593.” The next page is so covered in black ink that the words swim together into a dark blot and the column of numbers on the far right of the page sways like a cobra to a snake charmer’s pipe. I lower my head and cover my eyes with my hands, pressing the palms into my lids. Sparks fly into the blackness, a sure sign of an impending migraine. I’ll have to take a break soon, go upstairs for a couple of Advil, and lie down, or I won’t be able to work for the rest of the day. With my eyes closed, I become aware of voices in the library above me. They could have been there for the last hour, but I’d been too intent on the inventory to notice. Or maybe it’s that the low rumble of masculine voices is suddenly punctuated by a louder, high-pitched female voice.
“I thought we had a deal.”
“You and I certainly did not have anything of the kind. Your husband and I had reached a tentative agreement.”
“Is that right, Gene? Did we come all the way to Italy in the middle of the broiling heat of summer, spending money we can ill afford on your salary, on the basis of a tentative agreement?”
The reply is too low and garbled for me to make out, but now at least I’ve identified two of the library’s occupants—Gene and Mara Silverman. And when the third party speaks again, I recognize his voice as Leo Balthasar’s.
“Yes, I said I thought I could get you a fee for working on the script once Dr. Asher had a go at it, but I never said anything about getting you a producer credit. Frankly, I don’t see that you’ve got the qualifications.”
This time Gene raises his voice enough for me to hear it. “My screenplays have won numerous awards at film festivals nationally and internationally. I worked with Robin on the first draft of the script whether he chose to acknowledge it or not. I should be working on it now, not Rose Asher. She has absolutely no experience in screen-writing.”
“But the period is her specialty and we need to have someone with historical clout to give the project credibility. And besides, Cyril insisted on her, and without Cyril there’s no film.”
“I don’t understand that,” Mara says. “I thought Cyril was in debt up to his eyebrows, so how does he come by the money to make a film—and where does he get the money to throw around Hermès scarf rings as party favors?”
“It’s not Cyril’s money per se, but the LLC, Lemon House Films, he put together with investors he drew in. The old boy is friends with half the nobility in Europe. Bored, rich playboys and dowager duchesses who love the idea of being part of a movie. They love to feel like they’re part of the ‘artistic process.’ But the only reason they trust us with their money is Cyril’s say-so.”
“Is that because your last production company went bankrupt?”
“Mara!”
“I’
m just saying. And when are the actors going to get here, anyway?” Mara asks.
I hear Balthasar sigh before answering Mara’s question. “We’ve nearly finished attaching the talent, but we certainly don’t want to have actors and crew sitting around on their salaries before we’ve got the script ironed out—and I want to have those poems you told me about when the investors show up. They’ve been told this isn’t just another imitation of Shakespeare in Love. They’ve been promised Shakespeare’s Dark Lady, and I want the proof in my hands when they get here. So if those poems you told me about don’t really exist…”
“What else do you think Orlando Brunelli was going on about? He had them, I tell you, or his father had them and then Robin stole them and took them to New York.”
“I was on the balcony as well as you,” Leo begins, but then he lowers his voice to an angry hiss that I can’t decipher. Both men converse in a low rumble for several minutes and then Mara’s higher-pitched voice breaks in.
“But I don’t understand why you’re protecting him.”
“We are protecting him, Mrs. Silverman, because we have a thirty-million-dollar film project hanging in the balance and if we come forward with what really happened on that balcony he will come forward and publicly reveal that the poems were stolen.”
“But he killed that poor boy—”
“As I recall,” Gene says, “you weren’t overly fond of that poor boy five minutes before he died.”
“What happened on that balcony was a terrible tragedy,” Leo Balthasar says, “but I don’t believe it was premeditated, and nothing we do will bring Robin Weiss back to life. But bringing his words to an audience—a worldwide audience—is the closest we can get to giving him life. I honestly think it’s the best thing—the right thing—to do.”
The library is silent and I imagine that Mara and Gene aren’t quite sure how to respond to such lofty sentiments. Then Gene says, “So the three of us agree to stay silent, but there’s another witness—”
“He won’t be a problem. He has his own reasons for staying quiet.”
There’s another brief silence, and then Gene says, “I think my wife and I need a little better incentive for keeping quiet.”
“Very well,” Leo replies, “how about a producer’s credit and one percent of revenues?”
Yet another silence ensues during which I imagine Mara and Gene are tallying up their take and whether they could get more. I find myself staring down at the columns in front of me, aghast at how the three people upstairs have arrived at a dollar valuation of Robin Weiss’s life. Who else could they be protecting but Orlando Brunelli, who must have known that Robin stole Ginevra de Laura’s poems from the villa and killed him in his attempt to get them back? Balthasar said that it wasn’t premeditated and I imagine that’s true—that he pushed Robin in a mo-ment of passion—but that didn’t mean he should go unpunished. The world shouldn’t go on thinking Robin took his own life. Saul Weiss shouldn’t go on thinking his son had killed himself. What seems even more cold-blooded than the crime itself is the calculated cover-up being perpetrated by the three people upstairs, who, I gather from what I now hear, have just made a deal.
“All right,” Gene says, “but I want to be an executive producer.”
“Shouldn’t we get this in writing?” Mara says.
“If it would make you more comfortable—” Balthasar begins.
“No, no, a handshake’s good enough for me,” Gene says, his voice suddenly jovial. “After all, we’re all friends here, right? After what we’ve been through, we’re all in this together.”
Gene’s voice is so thick with innuendo that I don’t have to be upstairs to picture the wink that no doubt accompanies the handshake. Then I hear footsteps and a door closing. At least now I can go upstairs unobserved. Barbagianni’s account books can wait. I feel sick to my stomach. Although I don’t completely understand the conversation I’ve just overheard, I gather than Gene must have seen Orlando push Robin from the balcony—that must be what Mara was referring to when she asked why they were protecting a murderer. Why Gene stayed quiet about what he saw at first, I’m not sure. Perhaps Mark asked him to…or he just followed Mark’s lead in calling the death a suicide. Balthasar, too, must have realized that Orlando pushed Robin, but he agreed to stay quiet…why? Because he thought his film project would be jeopardized if a scandal was attached to it? Whatever their original motives for remaining quiet, though, clearly Leo and Gene and Mara have agreed that it’s in the best interest of the film project not to tell the truth about what happened on the balcony and that Mark—who must be the other witness Gene referred to—could be counted on to remain quiet because of “his own reasons.” What exactly those are, I’m not sure; all I know now is that I’ve had enough of accounting for the day.
Before I close the book, though, my eye strays to a phrase midway down the page. “Forty florin paid for me to the commettitore Pietro for a table inlaid with precious stones.”
Although it’s not a floor, it sounds as if this was a work made in pietre dure. I remember that in the 1570s Francesco I de’ Medici was importing pietre dure craftsmen to Florence and housing them in his new residence, the Casino di Marco. When he succeeded his uncle in 1587, Ferdinand I would move the workshop to the Galleria dei Lavori in the Uffizi and continue his uncle’s vision of decorating the Medici chapel in San Lorenzo in precious stones. Pietre dure workshops sprang up in major cities across the Continent, often overseen by Florentine craftsmen who trained in the Medici workshop. The workshop still existed today as the Opificio delle Pietre Dure, a museum and conservation center located just down the street from the Accademia and only a few blocks away from Francesco’s pietre dure workshop in the Casino di San Marco. That a wealthy nobleman like Lorenzo Barbagianni, who had just inherited a villa as impressive as La Civetta, should want to decorate it in the new fashion is not surprising.
What surprises me here is the use of the personal pronoun. “Per me.” The account book—and therefore the inventory—wasn’t written by a notary or a computista; it was written by Lorenzo Barbagianni himself. So it was Barbagianni who performed the obsessively thorough inventory and Barbagianni who described the grisly episode in the Nastagio degli Onesti story as if the disemboweled woman had gotten only what she deserved, and it was Barbagianni who thought the cassone would be a proper vessel for containing the baser instincts of his future bride. Apparently I’m not the first person to make this discovery. When I look closer at the inventory, I notice faint indentations in the paper. I hold the book up to the light and I see that the looping scratches form words in English. Someone wrote something, leaning against the inventory book, not realizing that his—or her—pen pressed hard enough to leave an impression on the page beneath. The phrase—and the handwriting—is the same as in the note I found last night: “This house is stained with the blood of innocence.”
CHAPTER
SIXTEEN
I TAKE THE MAIN STAIRS UP TO THE SECOND FLOOR BECAUSE I’M AFRAID THAT the humming of the spiral staircase might make me more nauseous than I am already, but I’d forgotten about the rose-petal pattern on the steps. I feel as if I’m following a trail of blood back to my room. Even when I get to the top of the stairs and the carpet covers the pattern in the hall, I imagine that I can feel the drops of blood beneath my feet. Robin must have felt it, too, as he began to uncover the story of Ginevra de Laura, a sense of what this house had witnessed. Somehow by following her story he must have figured out where her poems were hidden in the house. If I can only follow in his steps I might be able to find the poems. I need to remember, though, that his steps might have ultimately led to his death.
I open my door and my eyes fall right on the big cassone at the foot of the bed. This is where the blood trail ends, I think, walking over to the big chest. Or perhaps it’s where it begins.
They’ve always given me the creeps. I know, of course, that the elaborate chests were designed to hold the bride’s linens and clothes,
that they were carried through the streets in a procession from the bride’s house to the groom’s, that as sumptuary laws sought to curb the display of public wealth the cassoni were conveniently employed to hide the richness of the bride’s clothing while at the same time hinting, through their ornate and gilded exteriors, at the riches within. I’ve studied the iconography of the stories that appear in painting and carving on their sides and lids: stories from classical mythology and Italian folklore exhorting obedience to the bride and celebrating the social bonds of marriage. I fully appreciate their value as works of art and cultural icons, but they have always looked like nothing so much as giant coffins to me.
This one is no exception. From its huge gilded claws—great fleshy paws with obscenely long talons—to its heavy domed lid, it looks better suited to hold the bride’s corpse than her wardrobe.
Nor have I ever been able to fathom the subject matter usually chosen for these monstrosities. The rape of the Sabine women, for instance, was a popular choice because it celebrated the reconciliatory power of marriage between enemies. Kneeling down to examine the painted panel on the front of this cassone, I find another popular Renaissance choice: Boccaccio’s story of Griselda. Although it’s not as gruesome as the story of Nastagio degli Onesti, I’ve always thought it was a particularly depressing story to use in celebrating a marriage.
A wealthy marquis named Gualtieri shuns marriage in favor of hawking and hunting. It strikes me how often the stories of this period start with a reluctant bridegroom. Even Shakespeare’s sonnets start with poems beseeching a wealthy young man to do his duty and procreate. In Gualtieri’s case, it’s his vassals who urge their master to marry lest he die without an heir.
Like a petulant teenager forced to attend a family gathering and so making sure that everyone suffers in his company, Gualtieri makes a deliberately perverse choice of bride. He picks a poor peasant girl, beautiful but penniless, named Griselda. He invites all his friends and relatives, and all the nobility from the surrounding countryside, and brings them to the rustic hut where Griselda lives with her father. Then, in front of all the assembled company, he orders her stripped naked so that he may clothe her in new expensive clothing.