Resisting the desire to look at the visitor, since she already knew who he was, Justine said, “I prefer Bacchus, but The Sacrifice is truer to Caravaggio—the personal anguish felt by the artist, a child orphaned by the plague, his use of light, the heart-wrenching choice . . . a profound historical moment.”
“Well said. My choice as well,” Blackburn said. “Life is often a reflection of Caravaggio, is it not? You are confronted with a ‘heart-wrenching choice.’”
She paused for several moments. “Andrea.”
“Andrea. I understand you paid a visit to the Foundation. Clever. Although you now possess information that you don’t want.”
Justine’s laugh was sardonic. “You’re quite right. A profound complication. And Donatello?” She took a wild guess.
“Some young Italians get carried away, exceed expectations. Have profound regrets.”
“Like the loss of a brother?” In the suffused light, Justine observed Blackburn’s every movement, each expression. She had the confirmation she needed. It had been Donatello who had partially severed the supporting arch in the tomb. She gulped and struggled to maintain her composure. But why? “Why sabotage the investigation? Surely no treasure had been found as yet.”
“Yet the find was imminent . . . and we—my colleagues and I—weren’t ready.” His left temple twitched—he had said more than he intended. “What are your plans?” he asked.
Ready? Ready to carry out another theft? “I am sorry, sir, but I don’t intend to share my plans with you.”
“Unfortunate. I might have been helpful.”
Justine dismissed his offer. “What will happen now?”
“With the codex? Nothing, I should think. Absolutely nothing. We have the euros safely deposited in Geneva,” he replied. “The Foundation has the codex. Nearly everyone is happy.”
“You and Andrea must be quite happy. The euros in Geneva. The resolution of the current heist. What’s next? The statute of David?” She turned to gaze at the man she remembered all too well: tall, with an impish manner, protruding belly, startling blue eyes. A flash of consternation moved across his face as he limped away. “She will regret the loss of her friendships with your family: you, your mother, your father.”
“Very true. And the Vatican is not happy.”
“Ah, yes, the Vatican. Troublesome institution, the Church. Always poking its nose into perfectly reasonable business transactions.” Blackburn’s eyes glistened with humor now, as though the Andrea business was forgotten. “The Vatican will vie for this codex. I’m not sure it will be successful, but the matter is out of our hands now, yours and mine.”
“No remorse?”
“Remorse, my dear, is for those who believe in a hereafter, an earthly hair shirt designed to prepare the way, seeking acceptance from a demanding god.” He slowly rose and walked away.
Justine watched him go. His gait was slow. He favored his right leg, hardly the countenance of an international art thief. After his confinement and torture in Egypt, she felt less compunction to “bring him to justice.” She considered the irony of her own situation, that state of affairs that seems deliberately contrary to what one expects. Her eyes returned to Bacchus, and the salacious expression on the face of the Roman god. She realized that, like Bacchus, Guido and D.H. were often amused by the subtle verities of life that escape more ordinary mortals.
Justine stepped back into the sunlight of the Piazza della Signoria and stood still for several moments to admire the larger-than-life statues of Dante, Machiavelli, and Vespucci. She remembered the murder witnessed by Lucy Honeychurch in A Room with a View. The novel had been in the back of her mind since Alexandria. Am I only a witness? Or am I going to untangle this web of mysteries?
On her return to Via Alighieri, she purchased a strawberry gelato and relished its sweet coolness on her tongue while she considered her next step.
Back in her apartment, Justine grabbed a cup of coffee and sat down at the computer. She would deal with Andrea first, then contact her father about Donatello. Her fingers sat on the keys for several moments. She expected that Blackburn would e-mail or call Andrea immediately—or not, depending on the game he wanted to play.
Hi Andrea,
I know you will be leaving for Florence shortly, and I just want to remind you to bring along the full translation of the codex. I know you have a couple of passages you want to verify, so we can sit down with the codex copy still in the family safe in Fiesole. The team meeting has been moved back two days; we need more time to process the data. Eager to see you. Best, Justine
How would Andrea play it? Would she refuse to come to Italy at all? Act as though nothing had happened? Acknowledge that she’d been dealing with the Foundation, but concoct a story to explain her contacts? Who knows.
Ping. Another e-mail. Could it be Andrea so quickly? She checked the screen—it was from Guido, with an attachment.
Hello, Justine,
I enjoyed our evening last night. Dinner was delicious. I am sending along a little surprise: the DNA report on the two women of the tomb. I think you’ll find a reason for this gift. Love you, Guido
Excitedly, she opened the attachment and began the download and print. While the pages were printing, she had time to think: “love you” is like “love ya,” and is certainly not “I love you.” She had interpreted their morning interactions correctly, yet she still found herself infatuated with those lovely green eyes. A “reason for this gift,” indeed. A consolation prize.
Justine jumped up, walked quickly to the ancient wooden file cabinet, and found the file labeled simply, “Mary’s DNA.” Alone in the house, she spread out both sets of data on the table in the sunroom. Haplogroups the same. Not surprising. Then she went deeper, into matching genes and mutations, those metaphorical genetic paper clips on the blue ribbon that Guido had talked about in his apartment that day.
In spite of the sun streaming in through the high windows, the blood drained from her face, her limbs went immobile. As moments ran into minutes, she vigorously massaged her arms, shuffled the pages of data, and placed them carefully into separate files.
CHAPTER 32
Peripheral vision: what is seen on the side by the eye when looking straight ahead.
—New Oxford American Dictionary
ON THE FOLLOWING DAY, a day scheduled for the full team meeting, Florence was buried under a frosty blanket, the last stab of wintry cold in early April. Even so, the city was warming to the spectacle of the country’s upcoming election. To the unpracticed eye, Rome’s glamorous mayor, Franco Rutelli, would appear to have the edge on the crude, yet wealthy and amusing, former Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi. Although no stranger to scandals, Berlusconi had utilized his nearly exclusive ownership of Italian media to keep his peccadilloes and shady business dealings mainly out of public view.
Nevertheless, Justine was betting on Berlusconi. Italians had a penchant for choosing unseemly characters for their dysfunctional government, since Italians had little interest and virtually no trust in politicians. Life was local; the people had turned inward during the Baroque period, and never resurfaced. The gems of life resided lovingly in family, the land, the Church, history, art, wines, cheeses, and pasta.
She turned on the radio in her toasty car to hear Berlusconi’s Mediaset criticizing the Vatican for seeking an injunction to keep a certain codex from being returned to the Coptic Museum in Cairo: “Vatican contradicts own position on the proper ownership of ancient artifacts.” Mediaset had duly noted the Vatican’s dramatic defense in the earlier case against the Getty—and concluded with a proclamation from a representative of Forza Italia, Berlusconi’s party: “We cry hypocrisy!” In turn, leftist Rutelli, hardly a defender of the Church, charged during an interview with Rome’s La Repubblica that Berlusconi was out to bring down the Vatican.
Justine rolled her eyes. The election was less than two weeks away: April 13th.
“Where’s Andrea?” Morgan asked his daughter.
“She couldn’t make it this morning—complications at the Sorbonne,” was the simple answer, or lie, which Justine addressed to those seated at the oval table in the conference room of the Florence Archeological Museum. Justine had not received a response from Andrea as yet, but knew she had received her e-mail; otherwise, she would have been at the table this morning. Delmo and Morgan had invited Andrea to be here today, but Justine had steered her toward a false date. She needed more time to deal with the fallout of Andrea’s deception.
Justine paused, assuming a most professional demeanor, which she realized might be a little difficult in a leather motorcycle jacket over a tangerine sheath. Although her father was the team leader, he had asked her to begin with her new—although not her newest—discovery. Seated around the table were the key players of the investigative team: Morgan and Delmo, Marco, Amir, Riccardo, and Guido. The closed report, loosely bound in dark green backing, sat in front of each of them. A few members, including Justine, had already pored over the mtDNA and carbon-14 results; Morgan declared that they were ready to share the major revelations from the Cerveteri tomb.
Justine launched in, “Our story begins with an Icelandic volcano eruption. Hekla 3. In 1159 BCE. Devastating ashen rain and abrupt climatic changes warmed the earth and increased its acidity—the lands became unusable.”
“Herodotus insisted that it was the battle at Troy that caused the Etruscans to scatter. Not so?” Morgan asked, smiling at his daughter, whom he hadn’t seen much of since she moved into town. In fact, it was Amir who had told him that she was investigating the Icelandic volcano.
“Troy, then a part of Lydia, was indeed destroyed, but not by soldiers in a Trojan horse,” said Justine. She unzipped one of her eight jacket pockets to extract a pen and opened the report. “The dark sky and raining ash must have been more frightening than a mammoth horse. They understood war. But not this.” Since the 2007 earthquake in Cairo, Justine had been studying how natural disasters affected cultures and migration, using the facilities at the Fiesole museum.
“The story sounds a little far-fetched, Justine. Iceland is thousands of miles away. What evidence is there?” asked Guido, narrowing his eyes. During their time together, she had said little about her inquiries—even though he had shared with her the mtDNA data yesterday.
“Greenland ice cores. Irish and Turkish tree rings . . . let me find the section.” Justine opened one of the pages of the report marked with a Post-it. “A radiocarbon date secured from ice cores shows volcanic activity about 4,000 years ago. A more precise method of dating volcanic deposits of recent age is, of course, tree rings. Anomalous growth patterns are detected among the annual rings of trees growing at the time the deposits were embedded. Trees that were injured but not killed by flying rock particles and mudflow may have a sequence of narrow rings beginning at the time of impact.” She looked up expectantly.
“You’re referring to ‘cross-dating,’” said Marco, finally taking off his wide-brimmed hat and setting it on the desk behind him. A crease appeared across his two-toned forehead. “The matching of ring-width variation patterns in one tree with corresponding ring patterns in another. Fairly solid evidence.”
“Exactly,” replied Justine, nodding toward Marco, who had been highly supportive of her investigation. “Thank you. There is also a small lake above Sardis in Lydia in Western Turkey that deepened drastically between 1200 and 1100 BCE. Another sign of significant shifts in the earth’s crust.”
“As our two women occupying the Cerveteri tomb tell us,” said Delmo. He patted the report in front of him, which contained the translation of the papyrus scroll found in the tomb, as well as the historical, geological, and mtDNA analyses. “Migration from Lydia would have begun about that time. Listen: ‘Summer snow everywhere. Difficult to bring. To see. My eyes fail me.’”
Riccardo nodded, mesmerized by these ancient words, as though they were written that very day. “It’s widely accepted that peoples throughout the Mediterranean were on the move then. The Sea Peoples were raiding and plundering. The Palestinians moved south. Eruption of the Icelandic volcano could have contributed to the migrations.”
“I’m convinced of it,” said Justine. “It would not be the first time that an eruption reconfigured the map.”
“But there was no wholesale migration into the Italian peninsula,” added Guido. “That we know of, anyway. I’ve always been convinced—like you, Marco—that the Etruscans were indigenous to Tuscany. Although we now have mtDNA evidence that there might have been connections between the Lydians and the Villanovans, ancestors of the Etruscans, thousands of years before. Everything we thought we knew is being questioned.”
“Thousands of years before, you say . . . ?” began Justine, almost in a whisper. “That would coincide with the volcano, and small-scale migrations of the Lydians could have accelerated the evolution of the Etruscans.” She scanned the room and returned her questioning eyes to Guido.
“Such a theory is credible,” he agreed, holding her searching eyes as he spoke.
“Small groups,” interrupted Amir, “even a few individuals, may have come into the area and provoked dramatic advancement. Of course, they would have had to gain the trust and respect of the locals. I’ve found that such jumps in development can just as often be explained by the zeitgeist.”
Justine paused, gazing down at the report. “I do realize that zeitgeist can be explained as a collision of several emerging ideas that ignite advancement,” she said warmly. “But in this case, I’m suggesting that these women from the tomb may have had knowledge that others didn’t have.”
“Let’s back up a bit and start at the beginning,” suggested Morgan, irritated. His face told Justine that he thought she was wandering astray. “Delmo . . . tell us about the translation process that you undertook. I understand that the linen wrappings weren’t that useful. Read us more.”
“Right,” said Delmo, looking up from the report at the mention of his name. “The strips of cloth had other uses before their application as body wrappings: partial messages, bills of sales, lists of products ready for market. Much like the wrappings on the Zagreb mummy in Egypt. But the scroll, now that’s another story. Hieroglyphics and Phoenician, a bilingual document. A true gift.”
“Phoenician was derived from hieroglyphics, isn’t that right, Professor?” asked Amir, whose khaki uniform was nearly identical to Morgan’s, telling Justine how much their relationship had deepened during their recent work together. Morgan watched Amir with a paternal gaze, concerned about the young man since the mysterious death of his grandfather. “I know of other ancient documents containing more than one language. For instance, I’m aware of the Pyrgi Tablets—the three golden leaves recording a dedication to the Phoenician goddess Ashtaret. Found near Cerveteri, in fact. And, of course, our own Rosetta Stone.”
“Well, ‘derived from’ is probably too definitive, Amir. The Phoenician language made use of Egyptian hieroglyphs, but the two systems were actually quite different. Hieroglyphics are primarily made up of ideogrammme—ho domenticato, come si dice in Inglese?” Delmo asked, turning to Marco.
“The English word is ‘ideograms,’ Professore. Both come from Latin by way of Greek,” explained Marco, who, like the other men in the room, held extraordinary respect for the retired Bologna professor’s advancement of linguistics.
“Si, si,” continued Della Dora, “you must forgive an old man who sometimes forgets the names of his own children. In hieroglyphics, each ideogram depicts an idea, but in Phoenician we have an alphabet and each symbol represents a unit of sound. The symbols are letters that together build words—the first known alphabet of Western civilization. Phoenician is derived from hieroglyphics only in the sense that the Egyptian ‘glyph’—that is, symbol—for ‘bear’ is simplified by using a single stroke to represent the letter ‘b’.” He paused only briefly to mask his breathlessness; having ditched his cane, he once again felt like a man of action.
“Now, back to
your question, Amir,” Delmo continued. “It is much more difficult to write or read hieroglyphics. Only the well-educated members of the highest classes were able to learn it—even in Egypt. Remember that after the Rosetta Stone was found it took scholars many years to completely translate it because it was sometimes read from left to right, right to left, or even up and down. Phoenician acted as a cross-reference, since most traders could read Phoenician. They were indeed the middlemen in the Mediterranean. Peoples like the early Etruscans could learn to write any spoken language by using the letters of the Phoenician alphabet.”
“Enough of the technical linguists, Delmo. Give us some more words. What do they actually tell us?” Morgan raised his hand as though to gently halt Della Dora’s recital. “What is the story here?”
“Let me begin—with your permission, Professor,” Justine said, reaching to her right to place her hand on Delmo’s shoulder. He reached up and patted her hand. A respectful affection had grown up between the two since he had consulted her on her knowledge of Egypt.
“It’s a remarkable story,” she began. “Assuming that the volcanic eruption and its effects on Lydia had caused the migration, this is a story of the history of the two women on our tomb. Del gave us an example earlier of winter snow, listen to more: ‘The skies were dark and rains of gray snow covering the land. Goddess Artemis and the governing council of Lydia tell us we must have fewer on our land, so we set out for the land of the Pharaohs. One ship stopped in Lemnos, another in the Levant.’”
“Lemnos? Where the Etruscan stele was found?” Marco jotted several notes in the margins of the report. “Not sure how that would have worked . . . Etruscan traders must have returned to that island centuries later—after they had developed their own unique language.” He was talking to himself.
“Just a brief historical note here,” interrupted Riccardo. “Those who were left behind would return to prosperity about three decades later and establish the city of Ephesus.”
The Italian Letters Page 23
