The Medusa Amulet Read online

  “It’s not something you’d ever understand.”

  “Try me.”

  “It’s not something God would ever understand.”

  He began to wonder if he had more on his hands than a lonely woman seeking absolution on a lonely Christmas Eve. There was always the chance that this might be someone in need of clinical attention. For just such emergencies, he carried, as did all the confessors, a cell phone in the breast pocket of his jacket.

  “Now why would you say that?” he replied as soothingly as possible. “God forgives everyone. If you are truly sorry for your sin, and offer it up to God, He will take that burden from your heart. That’s what the holy sacrament of confession is all about.”

  “But what if you have transgressed against His will? What if you have transgressed against Nature?”

  He also wondered if perhaps she might not be a little bit drunk. Maybe she’d come here straight from some holiday bash, tipsy and suddenly overcome by remorse for some youthful crime. An abortion, perhaps? He’d heard that sad story too many times to count.

  “I shouldn’t be here,” she whispered, and though he leaned close to see if he could smell the scent of alcohol, all he got instead was another whiff of the cologne from the handkerchief… but with something underneath it.

  “The church? You shouldn’t be in the church?”

  “Alive,” she said. “Alive.”

  Now he knew that this was a deeply troubled woman, not just some conscience-stricken partygoer, and he had to be very careful and alert in what he said. He felt another pang of the heartburn, and sat up straighter in his chair. The air in the close confines of the booth was growing warmer and more redolent of her perfume. He wanted to sneeze but squeezed the tip of his nose to stop it.

  “That’s a very grave thing to say,” he said, “and a very sad thing to be convinced of. I’m quite sure that it’s wrong, too. How long have you felt that way?”

  At times like this, the line between priest and therapist became perilously thin.

  She laughed, a bitter hard laugh, and this time the scent of her breath-cloves and spearmint-did come through the screen, but again it commingled with that same troubling note from before. Was it hers, or his own? He felt himself sweating, and another hot gust of indigestion burbled up in his throat. He longed to open his half of the booth and let some fresh air in.

  “How long? I can’t tell you that,” she said, in an oddly coquettish tone, like a woman who’d been asked her age at a dinner party. “I just need to know what happens to people who have committed grievous sins. Is Hell real? Do you really go there? Is it for eternity? Is there any way out?”

  “Now, now,” Father DiGennaro said, “you’re jumping the gun here. We’re getting way ahead of ourselves. Let’s leave Hell out of the picture altogether and let’s just talk about-”

  “Why can’t you give me a straight answer?” she demanded. “Why can’t anyone ever give me a straight answer?”

  He remained silent, not wanting to throw any potential fuel on the fire. He took the cell phone from his pocket and held it low, so that she wouldn’t see its glow.

  “I can’t go on like this,” she said, her face just inches from the screen that divided them. “Don’t you understand that? Life is just a… a dead tree, with dead leaves that fall forever. They fall and fall and fall, and there’s nothing but more dead leaves to fall after that.”

  Father DiGennaro could not help but be reminded of the Tree of Life motif with which the cathedral was imbued, from its doors made to look like overlapping planks of wood to its two-hundred-foot-tall spire. Was she reacting on some level to that? He would have to tread with extreme caution.

  “I’d get out if I could,” the woman was saying, “but I don’t know how. I don’t want to go from bad to worse. You can certainly see why I wouldn’t want to do that, can’t you?”

  “Of course I can,” he said, his finger hovering over the phone, not wanting to break the seal or the sacrament of the confessional but wondering if it wasn’t time to call 911. “Of course I can.” The air in the booth had become cloying. He felt a sheen of sweat forming under his clerical collar, and he hastily undid the top button on his shirt. How he wished he had that Maalox with him now.

  “ Non era ancor di la Nesso arrivato,” she suddenly recited, “ quando noi ci mettemmo per un bosco, che da neun sentiero era segnato .”

  Father DiGennaro, who had spent several years in Rome, knew a perfect accent when he heard one.

  “ Non fronda verde, ma di color fosco; no rami schietti, ma nadosi e ’nvolti; non pomi v’eran, ma stecchi con tosco.”

  And he also knew his Dante. She was reciting from the Inferno, the lines describing the wood of the self-murderers, where the damned souls were tortured forever, bound into gnarled tree limbs studded with poisonous thorns. A chill ran down his spine. “ Non han si aspri sterpi ne si folti quelle fiere selvagge che ’n odio hanno, tra Cecina e Corneto i luoghi colti.”

  There was no better indication of her intentions, or her state of mind, than this-she was contemplating suicide. But when he tried to punch the tiny buttons on his phone, his thick fingers, damp with perspiration, misdialed. His left arm tingled.

  And the booth, it seemed, had become darker.

  He had to get out, and rising from his chair, he was almost overcome by dizziness. He swept the curtain of the confessional aside, and stumbled out into the dimly lighted cathedral. A sudden draft extinguished a bank of candles, and glancing up, he saw a plastic tarp drifting down from the gloom of the apse… trailed by the cardinal’s red hats, like so many dead leaves.

  A rivulet of sweat ran down his back, and he felt himself in the grip of something strange. His left arm was aching, and his breath was coming in short, shallow bursts.

  He took hold of the curtain on the penitent’s side of the booth, and yanked it open. He had never done such a thing in his life.

  Nor had he seen what he saw then.

  Her veil thrown back, her fur coat open, the woman stared up at him with a face that was at once as beautiful as any he had ever known-her eyes were wide, and even in the shadows, looked violet-and as terrible, too. Beneath the taut white skin, and for just a split second, he caught a glimpse of a gleaming white skull, and the very air seemed diffused with the scent of corruption. His heart seized up in his chest-it felt like a fist clenching-and his legs crumpled. But even as he fell to the floor, the cell phone skittering across the flagstones, he was unable to tear his eyes away from her awful and implacable gaze.

  The cell phone glowed at her feet as Kathryn watched the priest collapse. Snatching it up, she dialed 911, reported the incident, and before the operator could ask her anything more, flicked it closed and gently replaced it in the priest’s hand.

  But she could tell that he was already as dead as dead could be. She envied him.

  Then she descended the steps of the cathedral as fast as her sharp heels and the blowing snow would allow her. Cyril saw her coming and held open the rear door of the limousine.

  “Quickly,” was all she said.

  The moment the door was closed, she raised the interior partition, and the car swerved away from the curb.

  Eyes closed, she rested her head against the back of the leather seat. A blast of cold Chicago air buffeted the car as the tires swooshed through the salt and slush. In the far distance, she thought she could already detect the wailing siren of an ambulance.

  Take your time, she thought. Let the man rest in peace.

  The limo was warm and dark and comfortable inside, like a cocoon, and as she reclined there, listening to the siren race past in the opposite direction, she wondered if there was any reason for her to stay in this city any longer. With Randolph dead-and how many husbands, pray tell, had preceded him?-perhaps it was time for her to reinvent herself yet again, to decamp for another country, another continent, under another name… as she had done countless times before. There was only one thing she kept constant in her peregrinatio
ns, and that was her first name. She always employed some variation on Caterina; it was the only way she could hold on to any identity at all.

  But she had grown so weary of life… and death. She felt as if she had been marching in this solemn parade forever, with no end in sight. Had she known what that strongbox contained, so many centuries ago in Florence, she would never have opened it, never have risked Benvenuto’s wrath, or subjected herself to this… nightmare from which there was no awakening. If there was any hope for finishing the dreadful course she was on-for starting life again in its natural course, or ending it fairly, here and now-then that hope lay in La Medusa.

  And in David Franco’s being able to find it.

  She had sent others-treasure hunters, mystics, once even an Interpol detective-but all had either given up in frustration… or vanished off the face of the earth. Palliser was only the last in a long line. Although she had no way of knowing for sure, she felt that she, too, was caught up in some vast malignant web, and that there was a great evil spider brooding at its edge, sensing any vibration upon the strands.

  How long would it be before the spider sensed a new intruder?

  The storm outside was picking up, and by the time the limo was approaching her lakefront building, the streetlights were bobbing in the wind, and the snow was swirling in the air.

  But pacing back and forth in front of the steps, as if oblivious to the storm raging around him, she saw a young man, his hood drawn, his hands stuffed down in his coat pockets, and she immediately knew who it was.

  “Cyril, let me out in front,” she said over the car intercom.

  “Are you sure? I’m almost at the garage entrance. Whatever you-”

  “Let me out!”

  Without another word, he pulled the car up at the curb, and Mrs. Van Owen jumped out, gathering her fur coat around her.

  David turned around and threw his hood back. With the wind whipping his thick brown hair into a frenzy, the snow sticking to his cheeks and eyelashes, and an absolutely tormented look in his eye, he stared into her face. She had the impression he wanted to grab her by the fur collar of her coat and shake her like a kitten.

  “Did you mean what you said?” he demanded.

  “You mean about the money?”

  “Yes,” he said, but waving it away as if it were only a secondary consideration. “I mean the rest of it.”

  Ah, the promise to save his sister. “I did.”

  “Every word?”

  “Every word.”

  He was studying her face, as if he were trying to reconcile it with some other image or impression. She could see him wrestling with himself right before her eyes, trying to believe in something that could never, in any rational terms, make sense. She was afraid to say anything more lest she accidentally deter him. The swaying sodium light overhead threw his features into a sickly light, then into deep shadow, and back again.

  But the haunted expression never left his eyes.

  “I’ll hold you to it,” he said, as if issuing a threat.

  “I’d expect you to.”

  There was something more he wanted to say-she could see the words almost forming on his lips-but then he must have thought better of it. She suspected she knew what it was-he wanted to demand some further proof, some ironclad guarantee, some assurance that he was not being duped.

  But what stopped him was the overwhelming need-and desire-to believe. It’s what stopped anyone from questioning his or her faith beyond a certain point. Who wants to burn down the only house they can bear to live in?

  “I will leave tomorrow,” he said, and Kathryn nodded.

  “I’ll have all the arrangements made immediately,” she said.

  And then, raising his hood back over his head, David turned and marched away, leaving a trail of wet footprints on the snowy sidewalk. Pulling her fur collar up around her face, she watched him go, wondering all the while if this was to be her savior… or only more bait for the spider?

  Part Two

  Chapter 11

  The moment the plane taxied up to the gate at Galileo Galilei Airport, David was out of his first-class seat and waiting in the aisle. Over his shoulder, he had the black leather valise in which he carried perfect copies of the Cellini papers and the all-important drawing of La Medusa. Too irreplaceable to travel with, the originals had been secreted, for safekeeping, in the upper regions of the Newberry book silo.

  True to her word, Mrs. Van Owen-or her travel consultant-had made all the necessary arrangements virtually overnight. And while most people were still digesting their Christmas dinners, David was clearing Customs. A uniformed driver was waiting for him, and they drove straight to the Grand-an eighteenth-century palazzo that had been converted into one of Florence’s most luxurious hotels. An opulently furnished suite had been reserved in his name, the bedroom walls decorated with faded frescoes of a courtier and his lady wandering through a cypress grove filled with songbirds. The birds, and the grisaille tint with which they were rendered, were plainly a tribute to another of the city’s Renaissance masters, Paolo Uccello-whose last name, literally translated, meant “birds”-and it reminded David that he was back in his spiritual home, the cradle of Western art and culture.

  Only now it was more than a vast, open-air museum. It was a vault that might hold the key to his sister’s very life.

  And he couldn’t afford to waste a second of his time there.

  It was a cold but sunny Sunday, and even though David had once lived and studied in Florence, he still had to reorient himself to the crooked, narrow streets, lined with ochre buildings several stories high. As a Fulbright scholar, he had walked these streets with a crumpled map, a Eurail pass, and maybe fifty bucks’ worth of lire in his pocket, and he found it strange to be navigating them again now, under such different circumstances. Several times he passed a cafe that he remembered having lingered in, or a gallery that he recalled visiting. Waiting for some traffic to pass-the Italians, he could see, still drove like madmen-he spotted the blue shutters of the little pensione he had once stayed in.

  The Grand it was not.

  Crossing the Ponte Vecchio, the old bridge with its ancient jumble of jewelers’ shops and tradesmen’s studios, he stopped to catch his breath and watch the Arno River, rushing below. In the summertime, the river was often reduced to a trickle, but at this time of year it was running high, its greenish water churning wildly under the graceful arches. Of all the city bridges, this had always been the most beautiful, and as a result it was the only one spared in the bombings of the Second World War. Hitler, who had always considered himself a connoisseur of art, had made a visit to Florence in 1938 and taken a special fancy to it. The Luftwaffe had subsequently been given his express orders to keep it safe.

  It might be the only thing, David thought, which could ever be said to his credit.

  The bridge was busy, but not so crazy as it was in the summertime, when hordes of tourists descended on its many shops. The Florentines themselves were a fairly sober and hardheaded lot, at least by Italian standards, and went about their business immune to the rich history in every corner of their hometown. On many of the older buildings, the Medici insignia-a triangle of colored balls-was still incised in the stone above the doorways, and in the main square of the town-the Piazza della Signoria-a plaque marked the very spot where the mad Dominican priest, Girolamo Savonarola, along with two of his followers, had been burned at the stake in 1498. For a few years, in his quest to purify Florence in the eyes of God, Savonarola had held the city in his grasp, murdering and mutilating his critics, pillaging the homes of the high and mighty, looking for anything of worldly value-from “sacrilegious” art to silver buckles and ivory buttons-to feed the flames of his bonfires… until the city had awakened, as if from a trance, and thrown off his spell with the same barbarity that he had exercised it.

  David’s steps took him across the broad expanse of the city square, and toward its most remarkable site-the Loggia dei Lanzi, and its panth
eon of statuary known the world over. Here, Cellini’s own masterpiece, the heroic bronze figure of Perseus, held aloft the severed head of the Medusa. Even the sunshine did nothing to detract from the sinister power of Cellini’s sculpture, from its indelible image of the nude warrior, clothed only in helmet and sandals, with his eyes still averted from the deadly visage of his prize, and his feet planted on her corpse. In an especially grim touch, the Gorgon’s blood spurted over the lip of the marble pedestal on which the entire statue was raised. As David approached, he saw a tour guide with a purple iris, the official flower of Florence, stuck in the lapel of her overcoat, leading a group of lackadaisical college students to the base of the Perseus. Several of them were carrying notebooks, and one held out a tiny recorder as she spoke.

  “Can anyone tell me,” the guide prompted them, in heavily accented English, “who was this Perseus?” While the students all suddenly dropped their heads and waited, pens poised, David loitered on the fringe of the group. The guide-a slender young woman with black hair pulled back from her face and hastily tied in a ponytail with a thick blue rubber band-took note of him, but she didn’t seem to mind his listening in. Maybe she was glad to have someone who looked interested.

  “A king?” one of the girls hazarded.

  “That is close,” she said, “that is close. He was the grandson of a king.”

  “So that makes him a prince, right?” the girl said, proudly, twirling her pen.

  The guide made a wavering motion in the air with one hand. “It is not so simple,” she said. “I will explain.”

  And as David hovered in the rear, the guide told the story of Danae, the most beautiful maiden in all of Greece, who was impregnated by Zeus, the king of the gods. “She lived in a palace, all of bronze, and Zeus came down to her as a shower of gold.”

  “I’ve seen that painting,” another girl piped up, “the one by Rembrandt,” and the guide nodded encouragingly.

  “Yes, you are right,” she said. “And this son, he was named Perseus. He grew up with his mother, on a far-off island, where the king fell in love with Danae, too, and wanted to marry her. But he did not want to keep her son around.”