The Inquisitor's Key: A Body Farm Novel

by Jefferson Bass

And yet there’s no escaping her, or at least the reminders of her; in a way, she trails Simone as relentlessly as Petrarch trails her. Scarcely a day goes by without some count or marquis or emissary or lady seeking him out, taking him aside, and murmuring in his ear, as if it were a secret, “I know you painted the lady Laura’s portrait for poor Petrarch. I have seen it—and such a likeness!” Apparently everyone in Avignon has seen the secret portrait…and yet he knows that is not so, for occasionally, to test the admirers, he poses trick questions, which nearly always trip them up: “And what did you think of the emerald necklace she wore?” he might ask, or perhaps, “Was the blue of her eyes perhaps too deep?”

  Astonishing, how the small, secret portrait of Laura—seen by few but praised by many—has put Martini’s name on the lips of all. Petrarch has now written not one, but two sonnets praising the picture. These have been copied and put into wide circulation, perhaps by other poets, but perhaps by Petrarch himself, not one for self-effacement. Martini had been appalled by the poems, but he’d be a fool to turn down the well-heeled clients that the poems have brought him. One of them, Cardinal Corsini—even more prone to self-admiration than Petrarch, if such a thing is possible—has commissioned a portrait of his own dearly beloved: himself.

  Between the portraits and the frescoes in the pope’s bedchamber, Simone is now laden with work, and gradually the death portrait of Christ seems less urgent. The pope’s frescoes are nearly finished. The twenty-four panels that crown the bedroom’s walls depict scenes from the four Gospels, although—high on the walls as they are—who will be able to see and appreciate their details? The frescoes in the window recesses depict architectural features—arches, columns, and coffers—that heighten the illusion of depth, making the walls appear not merely six feet thick, but ten or twelve, so His Holiness can sleep secure in the knowledge of the strength of his fortress.

  Simone now employs two assistants to do the drudge work for him: painting backgrounds and draperies and inscriptions, freeing Simone to focus on what he does best, and prefers above all: the faces and bodies that everyone tells him are more lifelike than any other painter’s—and it’s true! He’s buried in commissions, working harder than he has ever worked in his life.

  His latest project is a set of four frescoes commissioned for the portico of the cathedral. One of them, Andrea Corsini Healing a Blind Man, is paying the bills for the other three scenes, in a manner of speaking. The painting depicts a miracle that—according to the Corsini family, at least—occurred only a few years earlier, right here on the cathedral’s front porch, one morning before Mass. A wondrous event, if true, restoring sight to a blind man, yet Simone can’t help suspecting that the painting isn’t motivated purely by piety. The Corsinis have launched a vigorous campaign to have Andrea declared a saint, and the fresco is central to their strategy: “See,” it seems to say, “the proof is right before your eyes. You’d have to be blind yourself not to see it.”

  The second fresco, the Madonna of Humility, is obligatory—the cathedral is, after all, dedicated to Mary. This one, too, Simone finds it hard to put his whole heart into. Perhaps he’s grown skeptical about the miracle of the Virgin Birth, but more likely he’s simply tired of painting mothers and babies year after year, especially as Giovanna grows sadder and sadder about her barren womb.

  The third scene, by contrast—The Blessing Christ—is a source of satisfaction and deep pride to Simone. Jesus seems to float in the sky; his right hand is raised in benediction, and his left cradles an orb. Within the orb, Simone has represented the world in miniature: a landscape, rippling waters, and a starry sky, all artfully contained inside the sphere. The Savior’s gaze is strong and direct, as if our Lord were locking eyes with each viewer, one by one. Such an intimate, powerful gaze is bold and without precedent—unlike any portrait of Jesus that Simone has ever done, or ever seen. Surely this homage to Christ will bless the man who painted it; surely this will wash away Simone’s secret guilt.

  The fourth of the portal frescoes shows Saint George slaying a dragon and rescuing a princess. Not surprisingly, this fresco is livelier than the other three. Simone is not the first painter to portray the heroic deed, but he is the first—of this he feels sure—to bring such vivid drama to it. The knight, on horseback, charges forward, his lance gripped in both hands, galloping over the bones of earlier knights who died fighting the beast. The dragon rears up to fight, its scaly back arched, its talons clawing for the horse. The eyes are glittering with reptilian hate, and the sharp-toothed mouth is open to unleash a blast of fire. But the creature is a split second too slow: Although the dragon’s body has not yet had time to register it, the mortal blow has, at the very instant portrayed, been delivered. With unerring aim, Saint George has thrust his lance straight into the beast’s open mouth, with such force that it has pierced the throat completely and emerged at the back of the neck, its sharp tip drenched with blood.

  But despite its brilliance and drama, the Saint George fresco proves to be Simone’s undoing. In portraying the princess rescued from the dragon, Simon has impulsively given the princess the face of the lady Laura. To be sure, the face is small—only a few inches high—but the few people who have glimpsed the work in progress seem far more interested in the princess than in the miracle worker Corsini, the Virgin, the Christ, or the dragon-slaying saint. As he puts the final touches on the dragon, Simone considers altering the princess’s face, but stubbornness or pride overrules the voice of caution, and he leaves it unchanged.

  On the Sunday morning that the frescoes are unveiled, a huge throng gathers before Mass to file through the portico and view the paintings. On hand to bask in their admiration is Simone, standing just inside the door with Giovanna beaming beside him. A hundred people have already filed through to gawk and congratulate, and another two hundred still crowd the stairway and street outside. Simone leans out the doorway to see how the line is moving, and what he sees nearly drops him to his knees. She—the young countess herself, Laura de Noves—is at the top of the stairs, stepping onto the porch. Dressed in the green silk, she wears a pendant around her neck; the stone, which rests on her breastbone, is a large ruby, cut in the shape of a teardrop…or a flame. Inching along beside her, his hand resting possessively on the small of her back, is a thin, sallow man with sparse red hair and watery blue eyes. Trailing the couple is a nursemaid, carrying a small child on her hip. The boy’s hair, eyes, and skin are black, brown, and tan: the earthy tones of Siena; the earthy tones of Simone—his father!

  Simone staggers backward into the nave, then flees to a side door, leaving behind hundreds of disappointed admirers. Just before stepping through the door, he turns and sees his wife staring at Laura and the baby, Madonna and child. Even in the dim light of the church, Simone can see recognition, shock, and betrayal dawning—no, flashing like lightning—across Giovanna’s face as she takes in the pale woman and the dark boy who is so clearly Simone’s.

  Simone stumbles down the hill and hurries to his studio, where he sinks onto a stool and slumps forward onto the table. The cathedral frescoes were not his penance after all—if anything, he realizes, the foolish arrogance of the Saint George scene only added to his guilt, because Giovanna is now wounded by the knowledge that he has been unfaithful to her…and has even fathered the son that she has never been able to give him. Now, not only has Simone betrayed her trust, he has broken her heart, shattered her innocence. He groans and sobs as he comprehends the full extent of his shame. Then, with startling, piercing clarity, he suddenly understands the penance he must perform. Somehow, he thinks, I must find a way to portray the death of innocence—my innocence, Giovanna’s innocence, the world’s innocence. And how better to represent the death of innocence, he realizes, than a death portrait of the innocent Christ modeled on the blameless dead man God has sent his way again. What was it the jailer had said? “His sin, I think, was to be holy, to be free of sin”?

  Clearing off his worktable and unrolling his dusty sketches o
f the dead monk, Eckhart, Simone finally begins the penance he has been avoiding these past two years. The penance for betraying Giovanna.

  CHAPTER 35

  SIMONE SNATCHES A RAG FROM HIS WORKTABLE and savagely wipes the tempera from the wooden panel. He has painted a dozen images of the dead man now and has destroyed them all, finding them bland and insipid—utterly lacking the force of that stark corpse laid on the floor of that stone cell; completely devoid even of the force of those charcoal sketches he made by flickering lamplight almost a decade before.

  He returns, for the hundredth time, to the sketches. Unlike his polished attempts with paint, the charcoal images of the man are rough but powerful. Why can’t he render in paint what he captured in charcoal? Because, he thinks, a painting is too artful, too refined: a glittering object to be admired from a distance, not a force to be experienced and shaken by. The power of that scene, and of those sketches, lies in their rawness and immediacy. In the moment back then, and even in the sketches now, there is no possibility of distance, of a safe retreat into studied appreciation of color and technique, of composition and balance, figure and background, gilded borders and halos. The Death of Innocence cannot be a painting, he realizes; it must be something stark, spare, and haunting.

  But sketches are not enough. Simone grasps the power of these rough sketches on coarse paper. But ordinary eyes—seeing humble materials—might be misled into dismissing the images as trifles; might not take them into their minds and hearts. Simone must help people let down their guard and open their hearts. To do justice to a man who was as innocent as a dove, Martini must be as cunning as a wolf.

  An image pops unbidden into his mind: The Mourning of Christ, painted by Master Giotto on the wall of the chapel in Padua. The limp body of Jesus is surrounded by weeping followers; grieving angels hover overhead, their hands outstretched or clasped or clapped to their faces in dismay and grief. Behind the mourning people, a low rock ledge angles from the picture’s lower left to its upper right. But something about the rock ledge struck Simone as odd the first time he saw the fresco: The ledge’s surface seemed fluid, almost as if it were draped with fabric, and Simone had briefly wondered, all those years ago, if perhaps a burial shroud had been laid on the ledge to receive the body of Christ.

  Now, that remembered painting and his own sketches of the dead man combine, and he knows how to proceed.

  AT A WEAVER’S SHOP ON THE RUE DE TEINTURIERS, the street of dyers, he inspects and rejects half a dozen fabrics—too coarse, too shiny, too short—before finally settling on one: a long strip of pale linen woven with a herringbone pattern that adds heft and elegance without calling attention to itself.

  He buys the entire roll and takes it back to the studio. Grinding one of his sinopia chalks into a fine dust, he mixes it with egg yolk to make a reddish-brown slurry of tempera. On a small corner of the fabric, he daubs a bit of the mixture, but he sees at once that the contrast is too jarring, the effect not at all mysterious or mystical. Frowning, he picks up another sinopia chalk and draws directly on the fabric with the dry crayon, sketching eyebrows and the bridge of a nose. It’s better, he decides, but still too obvious. To create the haunting effect he’s after, Simone must create a haunting face—the shadow of a face, the ghost of a face. Finally, doubtfully, he takes a sheet of parchment and shades the nose and eyebrows, followed by the rest of the face, but this time he deliberately makes the image dark and heavy. Then he lays another corner of linen atop the drawing. Using the blunt, curved end of the pestle with which he grinds pigments, he rubs gently from all directions, pressing the cloth against the image in dust. After several minutes of rubbing, he folds back the fabric.

  Simone gasps. There on the linen, staring back at him, is the ghost of the murdered monk; the ghost of the crucified Christ; the ghost of innocence lost.

  CHAPTER 36

  Avignon

  The Present

  I GLANCED FOR THE TWENTIETH TIME AT THE DOORWAY of the library mezzanine, listening for the staccato cadence of Miranda’s clogs as she jogged up the stairs. I’d been waiting for half an hour, and I was getting anxious. It wasn’t like her to be this late, especially when she was the one who’d called the meeting. Our librarian friend, Philippe, who had by now taken an interest in our interests—Eckhart, Martini, and the Shroud—had phoned Miranda an hour before to say that he’d found something intriguing, and Miranda had wasted no time summoning me. Upon arriving at the library, I’d been surprised that Miranda wasn’t already waiting. Now, thirty minutes and a dozen unanswered cell phone calls later, my surprise was turning to genuine worry.

  Finally I heard footsteps on the stairs, but they weren’t Miranda’s. Philippe appeared in the doorway. “Ah, good—I thought that was you sitting up here.”

  “Yes, but we’re still waiting for Miranda.”

  “Unfortunately, I cannot wait any longer,” he said. “I’m taking a class—art history—and I have an examination this morning. If I show you what I found, will you share it with her?”

  “Of course, Philippe. Please.”

  He pulled out a chair and sat across the table from me, laying a folder between us. “My art history professor is a curator at the Petit Palais—do you know it?”

  “That’s the museum that’s in a former cardinal’s palace, right?”

  “Exactly. Specializing in medieval art from the time of the Avignon popes. There is one painting on display there by Simone Martini—a Madonna and Child, not very interesting to you, I think. But my professor showed me a drawing in the storage room—not on display—that she is certain was made by Martini. It’s not signed, but it was found in the city archives, filed along with some very old records about Martini’s house and studio. She let me make a photocopy of it.” He slid the folder across the table to me. Slowly I opened it. The image inside was a charcoal sketch of a man’s face—or, rather, parts of a face: a pair of eyes and a nose. The nose was long and broad and slightly crooked. It looked like a nose that had been broken in a fight.

  It looked like the nose on the Shroud of Turin.

  TWENTY MORE MINUTES CREPT BY AFTER PHILIPPE left me with the Martini sketch of the Shroud nose, and still no sign of Miranda. Finally, unable to sit still any longer, I went to the window that overlooked the library’s leafy courtyard. The window was open, and the late-morning air wafting from the street was getting steamy with heat and smells. Along with the mouthwatering aroma of onions and potatoes frying, I caught the sour tang of sewage—one of the signature perfumes of ancient cities, I’d decided. Down below, two kids scampered toward the children’s wing; they were trailed by a mother who—at 11 A.M.—already looked weary. On the opposite end of the courtyard, a stout dowager waddled behind a fat, waddling dog, reminding me of Miranda’s comments on dogs and gods.

  Suddenly, floating up from below, I heard music—the angelic voices of a mighty choir, funneled through a puny speaker. To my surprise, I realized that the angels were singing in English: “Glory, glory hallelujah! Glory, glory, hallelujah!” Scanning for the source of the sound, I glimpsed movement across the street. A man stepped from a shadowy doorway, pulling a cell phone from a holster. As he raised the phone, the hymn swelled by a decibel or two, then ceased as abruptly as it had begun. The man put the phone to his ear, and I thought I heard him say, “Praise God.” I leaned out the window for a better view, and when I did, his face swiveled toward me.

  I’d seen that face before. I’d seen it framed by upraised hands—one of them clutching a Bible, the other waving a sword—and I’d seen it in a Paris airport security photo, taken the day before I’d arrived in Avignon. As I stared, frozen in the open window, Reverend Jonah Ezekiel smiled at me for what seemed an eternity, his smile and his gaze never wavering, until a car—a sleek black sedan with dark windows—screeched to a stop directly in front of him. It paused just long enough for the preacher to slip into the backseat. Then it spun forward, skidded around a corner, and was gone.

  Inspector Descartes d
idn’t answer until the fourth ring, and by then my throat had clamped shut in fear. As I fought and failed to form words, he snapped, “Oui? Il y a quelqu’un? C’est quoi, ça?” Hearing no response, he hung up. I forced myself to draw a deep breath, then another, and hit the redial button. “Oui, Descartes,” he practically shouted when he answered.

  “Inspector, it’s Bill Brockton,” I managed to choke out this time.

  “Docteur? Is something wrong? Are you hurt?”

  “No, I’m not hurt, but I’m afraid something’s wrong. Terribly wrong. I’m afraid Reverend Jonah has Miranda.”

  “Merde,” he cursed. “What has happened? Why do you think this?”

  Haltingly, with frequent pauses to breathe and to tamp down my panic, I told him.

  “Merde,” he repeated. “What kind of car? Which way did it go?”

  “I don’t know. Black. Four doors. A Mercedes? A BMW? Something French? Hell, I don’t know, Inspector. I only saw it for a second before it disappeared around the corner.”

  “Did you see the driver?”

  “No. The windows—” Suddenly the phone vibrated in my hand; startled, I nearly dropped it out the window. When I saw the number of the incoming call, though, my heart soared. “Inspector, I have to go. I’m getting a call from Miranda.” I pushed the “send” button. “Miranda? Thank God. I was worried sick.”

  “No need to worry,” said a man’s voice, smooth and sarcastic. “She’s in very good hands. She’s in God’s hands.” The floor seemed to drop away beneath me, and the vast, frescoed reading room spun. “But you can get her back if you do exactly as I say.”

  “Who is this? And what do you want?”

  “Don’t play dumb. You know who I am, and you know what I want. You yourself offered it to me by fax. Shall we discuss a trade?”