The Sonnet Lover

by Carol Goodman

  “No, it wasn’t anything I learned in the archives. I went into the church of Santa Margherita after lunch and I saw you there with Claudia.” If I’d expected Mark to look abashed, I’d be disappointed. His smile wavers only slightly, but otherwise he doesn’t look alarmed.

  “Really? I didn’t see you. You should have said something—”

  “The two of you didn’t look like you wanted to be disturbed.”

  “Oh, Rose,” Mark says, his face creased with concern now, “you don’t think there’s anything going on between me and Claudia Brunelli, do you?”

  “No, that’s not what I meant…” I begin, but falter, suddenly confused. Is that what I meant? Is that what this is all about? Was I merely jealous of Claudia—again?

  Mark puts down his glass on a side table and moves close to me, drawing me to him and away from the glass doors in one fluid gesture. I struggle to extricate myself, but his arm tightens around my waist.

  “I overheard you talking about what happened on the balcony…and earlier I heard Mara and Gene making a deal with Leo Balthasar. Mark, I know what happened on the balcony in New York.”

  With one arm still gripped around my waist, Mark uses his other hand to tilt my chin up to look at him, and I meet his steady gaze. “What do you know, Rose?” he asks.

  If a minute ago I thought I’d gotten over feeling anything for Mark, now I’m not so sure, but the heat that moves through me feels closer to fear than attraction. “I know that you saw Orlando push Robin from the balcony and that now you’re using that knowledge to get Claudia to drop the lawsuit. It’s blackmail, Mark, and I can’t stand by and let the world think Robin killed himself when it isn’t true.”

  I feel the tension in Mark’s arm relax, and something slackens in his face. He closes his eyes briefly and exhales. I realize I’ve been holding my breath, and I, too, breathe out now—a long sigh that warbles into an unexpected sob.

  “Rose,” Mark says, opening his eyes and pulling me closer to him. “I’m so sorry. I shouldn’t have lied to you. It’s just that I knew how much the boy meant to you—”

  “That isn’t the point.” I lay my hand on his chest to push him away. He grabs my hand and squeezes it, then drops it and sinks onto a couch.

  “You’re right, but it clouded my judgment. And then I knew Orlando was Bruno’s son and I thought…well, I thought you still had feelings for Bruno and that you’d be devastated that his son had killed Robin. I just wanted to think about what to do…and then it was too late because I hadn’t spoken up right away.”

  “Why would you think I still had feelings for Bruno?” I ask looking down on his bowed head. “It’s been twenty years.”

  Mark looks up at me. “Because I’ve always felt you held a piece of yourself apart from me. I confess at first I thought you were in love with Robin, but then I realized that you had far too much integrity to allow yourself to feel something for a young student. It made me think, though, that you’d loved someone at that age and never gotten over it. Then I noticed how you reacted whenever Bruno Brunelli’s name came up. Was I wrong? Are you over Bruno?”

  I look out the glass doors, across the pomerino toward the limonaia. There’s a light on in Bruno’s apartment, and I remember the last time I went there to ask him whether it was true, whether the baby Claudia was carrying was his.

  “No, you weren’t wrong,” I tell Mark. “I didn’t realize until I came here, but I think now that I left a part of myself here. I’m sorry, I suppose it’s the part I’ve always held back from you.”

  Mark nods. I’ve never seen such a look of defeat on his face. “We should have talked about it before this, and now…Is it too late, Rose? I know what I did was wrong, but if I made things right…What do you want me to do? Go to the police right now and make a statement that Orlando pushed Robin? I’m willing to, but I’m afraid that with the lawsuit…it will look like I’m trying to discredit the family. I’m certain that Professor Brunelli will see it that way.”

  “But Mara and Gene will back you up—and Leo Balthasar—”

  “Ah, but you just said that they’ve made a deal. Did Mara tell you…?”

  I shake my head and tell him what I overheard in the library. He nods. “Yes, that sounds like a deal Balthasar would make. All he really cares about is his film, and he wants to film it here at La Civetta. If the Brunellis win their lawsuit, how likely do you think it is that they’ll allow that? And there’s still the question of the stolen poems.”

  “Yes, it’s complicated,” I admit. “I can see that.”

  “And Orlando…well, I’m afraid of what he might do if confronted. He might flee—or worse. He’s very volatile. You didn’t see his face when he pushed Robin. He was like a madman.”

  I remember Orlando’s face when he fled the balcony—his eyes wide like a frightened horse’s—and then how he’d looked in the park, curled in on himself in grief. Then I recall Bruno’s expression watching his son perform last night. This would destroy him.

  “You’re right,” I say. “We’ll need to call the police before we confront him and we’ll have to talk to Gene and Mara and Leo Balthasar.” And Bruno, I add to myself. I know Mark will argue that it will only give him an opportunity to warn Orlando, who might then flee, but I have to give Bruno some warning of what’s to come. I owe him that much.

  “All right,” Mark says, getting to his feet. “I’ll talk to Gene and Leo. Mara will go along with whatever Gene says. I’ll tell them that I won’t give my permission to use the villa for the film unless they go along with us and that we’ll bring up Robin’s history of plagiarism. It won’t be easy, but I promise that I’ll do everything in my power to make this right. I only hope it’s not too late to make things right between us.”

  He reaches out his hand and touches my arm lightly, tentatively. I try to return the faint smile on his lips. “We’ll have to see, Mark…”

  “Of course,” he says, lowering his arm. “One thing at a time.” Then he holds out a crooked arm for me to take. “Now I think we’d better get to dinner. Or people will be gossiping about us.”

  I do a better job of returning his smile this time, but I shake my head. “Then we’d better not go in together. And I need a moment…”

  “Yes, you’re right.” He turns to leave and then, as if he’d just remembered something, turns back. “Oh, and Rose, it would help if you found those poems Robin supposedly stole. Have you had any luck?”

  “No,” I lie. “I haven’t found any poems yet.”

  Although I told the truth about needing a moment to collect myself, I had an ulterior motive for wanting Mark to go on ahead without me. I want to go back down to the cellar to check the account book one more time. Mark is right—it would be better if I could find Ginevra’s poems to prove at least that Robin didn’t steal them from the villa, that he left them where he found them, including the one in the cassone. If he was led to the one in the cassone by what he read in the account books, then maybe there are hints in the account books of where the other poems were hidden.

  I gingerly make my way down to the cellar in high heels that weren’t made for navigating spiral stairs. Without a flashlight I have to grope in the air for the string to the lightbulb, batting my way through spider-webs. When I finally get the light on, I see that I’ve acquired a netting of grime along my arms, but at least nothing has touched my dress. I find the account book where I left it and open it on the table, standing over it because I don’t want to risk soiling my dress on the chair.

  Scanning through the first few months of daily accounts, I quickly see that Lorenzo Barbagianni was planning to marry. It was, after all, the perfect time for him to take a bride. He’d inherited his father’s villa, which included not only this house but the surrounding farmland of olive groves and vineyards, and the convent of Santa Catalina and its wool and tapestry works. He was lord of the manor, responsible for the lives of dozens of servants and farmworkers, who, like Gualtieri’s vassals in the Grisel
da story, would have wanted him to produce an heir, but unlike Gualtieri he had obliged them by becoming engaged to a woman of nobility, Cecelia Cecchi. Betrothal presents were exchanged between the two families in the spring of 1581, one of which, I notice, is a small jewelry box inlaid with the finest gemstones, produced in the pietre dure workshop of the Casino di San Marco.

  So, I think, while Lorenzo was preparing for his marriage to Cecelia Cecchi, he was, no doubt, flirting with the commettitore’s pretty daughter. Flipping another page of the account book, I see that as part of getting his villa ready to welcome his new bride, he commissioned, on April 21, 1581, a pietre dure floor for the dining room. And so, I think, closing the book for now, when Pietro came here to lay the floor, perhaps he brought his daughter with him to help. It would have given Barbagianni ample opportunity to seduce her.

  The antipasto has already been taken away when I finally arrive in the dining room, and the diners appear to be halfway through their pasta when they all look up to watch me make my late entrance. Frieda Main-bocher looks so pointedly at her watch, I’m afraid she’s going to haul out a grade book from the folds of her wooly tartan wrap and mark me tardy.

  “Ah, Rose,” Cyril says, holding up his glass to me, “I would chide you for being late, but to see you so beautifully attired was worth the wait.”

  I can’t help but notice that all the other men at the table—Gene, Leo, Bruno, and Mark—watch me as I take my seat. Even Daisy Wallace murmurs something about my dress being a fantastic color. The only occupant of the table who pointedly does not look at me is Mara. She is staring at her untouched pasta sullenly. Her eyes look red and her normally creamy complexion is splotchy. Clearly she’s been crying.

  “It’s certainly lucky you got that consulting job with Leo,” Gene says. His look, I realize now, is more resentful than admiring. “I can’t imagine you could afford that dress on a professor’s salary.”

  I open my mouth to reply to Gene’s taunt, but Bruno beats me to it. “You seem quite preoccupied with academic salaries, Professor Silverman. Perhaps you’d be happier in another line of work.”

  “As a matter of fact, I’ve written a number of award-winning screenplays,” Gene says indignantly, “and unlike poetry, screenwriting pays. I think you’ll be impressed with the results once I’ve gotten a go at that script,” he says to Balthasar. “And you won’t see me squandering my time here shopping.”

  I’m more worried than insulted by Gene’s spiteful attack on me. It seems likely that Mara has tried to persuade Gene to break his deal with Balthasar and failed.

  “Actually, I believe Dr. Asher spent some time today doing re-search,” Mark says, directing his comments pointedly to Balthasar, “and has already made some important discoveries.” Some tacit message seems to pass between Mark and Balthasar that I imagine has to do with what happened on the balcony in New York. But Leo’s question to me stays on the topic of the film.

  “Have you?” Leo asks me. “Have you found the love poems of William Shakespeare’s Dark Lady?”

  “I honestly don’t know if I can promise you the Dark Lady,” I say, sidestepping the issue of found poems, “but I am beginning to believe that Ginevra de Laura was a significant poet and lived a life that would be worth telling whether she ever met Shakespeare or not.”

  “The Dark Lady without Will Shakespeare?” Leo Balthasar shrugs, rippling the folds of his soft white dress shirt. “It might make an interesting independent film.” He says “independent film” with as much condescension as he can fit into the two words. “But we’re talking a thirty-million-dollar project minimum, top talent attached. For that we need the Bard.”

  I laugh. “I can’t produce William Shakespeare out of a hat,” I say. “And I think you might be underestimating Ginevra de Laura’s story. She was the daughter of a craftsman—one of the artisans who created this very floor.” I wave my hand toward the repeating pattern of the Barbagianni crest inlaid in colored stone. “She may have even helped her father in his studio, where she could have met Barbagianni when he came to commission a wedding present for his fiancée, and she might have come here when her father worked on this floor.” I pause. I’m running way ahead of anything I know, but I’m intoxicated with the picture that’s emerging with my words. I only half know where they’re coming from. I see the girl kneeling over a workman’s table, her bare arms and plain cloth shift stained with dust from the stone she’s cutting: blue lapis lazuli, yellow jasper, orange carnelian, white Carrara, and black chalcedony. I imagine the colors suggesting to Barbagianni the colors of the silks he would dress her in when she became his mistress.

  “When she came here with her father, Barbagianni seduced her—raped her, probably. What could her father have done—”

  “Well,” Frieda Mainbocher says, “he could have brought Barbagianni to court and sued for the lost marriage value of a virginal daughter. He would have asked for money to increase her dowry to make up for her decreased value on the marriage market or for Barbagianni to marry her.”

  “Ugh,” Daisy Wallace says, “you mean she would have had to marry her rapist?”

  “That would have been considered a positive outcome,” Frieda says, “but it’s unlikely that a man of Barbagianni’s station would have agreed to marry an artisan’s daughter.”

  “And,” I add, “he was already engaged to a woman from a wealthy family. A Cecchi.”

  “An old family indeed. Yes, these old families stick together,” Claudia says, glancing at Cyril. “They have little use for commoners. They make promises they don’t keep—”

  “Exactly,” I say, startling Claudia by agreeing with her so vehemently. “It’s another possibility. Perhaps Barbagianni pretended that he intended to marry Ginevra.” I take another sip of the bubbling Prosecco and the idea begins to percolate in my mind. I look around at the dining room table and it calls to mind another banquet, the one painted on the wall of my bedroom upstairs and the next painting in the grisly cycle of Nastagio raping his fiancée before the wedding night. “He lured her to the bridal suite with presents and false promises and then raped her.”

  I pause, noticing that my audience is as morbidly entranced with the scene I’ve conjured as Nastagio’s guests are with the bloody scene they’re forced to witness. “When she knew that he had tricked her, she ran from the bridal suite. She ran down the hall and down the steps of the rotunda, her own blood marking the path of her flight. ‘My blood announced my anguish as I fled.’ ” I pause, realizing that I’m quoting Ginevra’s poem. I look around the table to see whether anyone gives any sign of recognition at the line, but I meet only the wide-open eyes of interested listeners. If the person who gave me the poem is at this table, he or she isn’t letting on. “Although she never became Barba-gianni’s bride, she did become his mistress, and after Cecelia Cecchi died he installed Ginevra here in this house. I think it was she who commissioned the pattern of rose petals in the nuptial suite, along the upstairs hallway, and down the steps of the rotunda.”

  “I think you’ve got it all wrong,” Mara says, suddenly breaking her silence. “You say that Ginevra was sleeping with Barbagianni before he married Cecelia Cecchi—well, what if she plotted to kill her so she could take her place?”

  “Well,” I say, trying not to sound condescending, “for one thing Cecelia Cecchi died in childbirth—”

  “So? The Laura woman could have bribed the midwife to poison her…or let her bleed to death…I bet that’s what the bloody petals on the floor are supposed to represent—that whore’s triumph over poor Mrs. Barbagianni!”

  During Mara’s increasingly hysterical speech, the server has come in to deliver the piatto secondo—a beefsteak Florentina. When Mara looks down at her plate, she shrieks at the sight of the bloody meat and pushes her chair away from the table. Gene reaches out a hand to restrain her, but she bats it away, screaming, “No, it’s unclean, and if you touch a carcass or you’re a witness you’re supposed to confess.” Then she runs through
the open doors of the dining room out onto the loggia.

  Gene looks around the table, his face baffled, and meets Mark’s gaze. Mark tells Gene that he’d better go after her.

  “Yes, yes,” he says, getting up and laying his linen napkin over his plate. I wonder whether he covers the meat because of Mara’s calling it unclean. “It’s just the jet lag, you see, and this new medication she’s on, and”—his gaze falls on his plate, where the red blood of the steak is seeping up through the white cloth—“and she doesn’t eat red meat.”

  When he leaves, the rest of the table is silent for several minutes. None of us has much of an appetite, I imagine. Only Cyril seems undeterred by Mara’s unflattering description of the entree and is happily tucking into the rare steak. Mark finally excuses himself, saying, “I think I’ll go see how they are. Maybe I can help.”

  “It’s funny,” Frieda Mainbocher says after Mark’s gone, “but what Mara said about the meat sounded very familiar. I believe it’s from the Old Testament. Leviticus, I think.”

  I nod. Yes, Mara had been quoting from her Haftorah portion, the section that stipulates what sacrifices are expected for what sins, including what’s necessary of a person who has witnessed a crime. I can only conclude from Mara’s outburst that Gene hadn’t been amenable to sacrificing his producer’s credit and one percent of the film’s revenue to come clean.

  CHAPTER

  NINETEEN

  AFTER COFFEE IS SERVED, THE GUESTS DISPERSE QUICKLY AS IF EAGER TO DISPEL the mood of the dinner. Some wander out onto the loggia to enjoy the night air—or in Leo Balthasar’s case, to enjoy a good cigar—but I excuse myself, pleading jet lag, and head into the rotunda. Bruno catches up with me, though, at the foot of the stairs and, laying his hand over mine on the banister, says, “Rose, I need to speak to you.”

  I turn to him and am startled by the worry in his face. I almost say no, knowing that what I have to tell him will only cause him more pain, but then how much worse will it be to learn about Orlando’s role in Robin’s death with no preparation at all? “Yes, I have to speak to you, too,” I say, stepping down toward him.