Sleeping Embers of an Ordinary Mind

by Anne Charnock

  She reaches to take the painting, but he waves her away.

  A painting of squared colours, he says to himself. What was she thinking? Maybe this is the way with girls. He shakes his head. She’s a clever child, but she should work only on assigned tasks at this age. He takes his quill, dips it in ink and begins a letter to the abbess. He must impress on her that his son will visit the abbess twice yearly for a formal account of Antonia’s work. Donato must check that she doesn’t lapse into playful ways. And Donato must vet any commission she undertakes before her work leaves the convent. He must safeguard the Uccello name.

  This will be his final letter of negotiation with the abbess. He reminds her that the dowry chest will be bequeathed to the convent on Antonia’s death, provided that a number of conditions are met during the girl’s lifetime. The abbess will allow his daughter to practise her art in her cell without requiring permission from the sister in charge of the scriptorium or from the novicemistress. She will be allocated a cell with sufficient light for this purpose, and all reasonable demands for the supply of pigments and other materials will be met. Antonia must not undertake any silk spinning or help with the production of gold thread, and she must certainly do no gardening or laundry work or any other manual duties that might damage her hands. He recommends, for he must not assume the abbess will reach this decision unprompted, that Antonia should be allowed, when her skills are sufficient, to teach drawing and painting to the boarders and novices.

  To sweeten the letter, he points out that the dowry chest will be bequeathed to the convent regardless of how long his daughter serves as a nun before her death. He also states his intention to donate a plot of farmland to the convent, so that Antonia will receive a lifetime annuity based on the land’s rental income. He signs off with a final warning:

  One day, my daughter will bring prestige to your venerable institution at no substantial cost, but if the conditions of the dowry are not met, I have instructed my son, in the event of my death, to take every measure to retrieve the girl and bring her back to the family.

  CHAPTER NINETEEN

  Bologna, Italy, 2113

  The barista in the corner coffeehouse greets Toniah in Italian and casts a friendly wave.

  Toniah stalls. “Wrong language. Won’t be a moment.”

  “Nessun problema. Posso aspettare,” says the barista. Unhelpfully, the translation still flashes up in Latin: “Bene est. Possum demorari.” Two seconds later, Toniah’s retinal translator relaunches with a prompt: Start anew or Return to last spoken. She chooses Return to last spoken, and the English translation appears: “No problem. I can hang around.”

  Toniah orders her vanilla latte. The barista looks at her suspiciously. “Are you lost? We don’t get many tourists around here.”

  “No. I’m in the right place. I’m here for the church.” She twists around and points at the monolithic structure standing diagonally opposite the coffeehouse, across the busy intersection. The church of Corpus Domini is part of a religious complex that spans an entire block in this otherwise unremarkable district of Bologna. Somewhere within the high stone walls—as solid as castle fortifications—lies the convent of the Poor Clares.

  “So, you’ve come to see our mummified saint?”

  She nods. “Maybe you can help me. My train leaves in three hours. I’ve already been to the saint’s chapel, and it’s locked. I can’t see any notice inside the main church about the chapel’s opening hours.”

  “It should open soon—around four o’clock. In fact, when Signora Martelli crosses the road at the pedestrian crossing, there”—the barista points at the side window—“you’ll know the chapel is open. She’s been praying for years for a miracle cure. It’s her legs.” She leans across the counter and says, “I don’t think Santa Caterina is impressed that she’s praying for herself.” She turns away, busies herself making the latte and calls over her shoulder, “I’ll tell you when I see her.”

  Toniah sits at a table with a clear view of the pedestrian crossing. She taps the table with her nails. It’s so frustrating—to come all this way, and the saint’s chapel is closed. On a five-day stopover en route to Beijing, where she’ll start her new job, an extra day in Florence might have been more sensible. But Toniah fancied playing a wild card, and so she researched this side trip to Bologna before leaving London. She made the single, incorrect assumption that the saint’s chapel and the church of Corpus Domini would have the same opening times. It’s curious, she thinks. The tourist office doesn’t promote the mummified nun—there’s barely a mention anywhere. Maybe they think it’s ghoulish.

  It’s evident from photographs that the church authorities have not taken the best care of their saint. Although she’s now protected under a glass case, for over six centuries, Caterina was displayed upright in a chair, wearing her nun’s habit and surrounded by devotional candles. The candles burned day in, day out, and her exposed skin became blackened by candle soot.

  It’s Toniah’s theory that Antonia Uccello was familiar with the story of this saint—the high-born Caterina dei Vigri as she was then—and that Antonia might have studied her theological writing. Their lives even overlapped, albeit briefly. Caterina’s essays—The Twelve Gardens, Treatise of the Seven Spiritual Weapons, The Rosarium and The Sermons—established her reputation as a theologian even among her male peers in Bologna’s professional elite. She was a painter, too.

  That would be something, Toniah thinks—to establish that connection; that Antonia was inspired by Caterina. Did Antonia, during her years in the cloister, read any of Caterina’s essays? How unsafe would it be to assume so? Toniah rechecks the dates on her timeline.

  In 1431, Caterina dei Vigri established a convent in Bologna for the Order of Poor Clares.

  In 1463, Caterina died. Antonia was seven or eight years old then, but she might have heard about the miracle cures at Caterina’s graveside. She surely heard from the pulpit that Caterina’s body had been exhumed and found to be incorrupt.

  If nothing else, Toniah reckons this visit to Bologna will provide an entertaining tale for her students in Beijing: a mummified nun in a glass case. And it takes the edge off her overarching disappointment; she still hasn’t seen the blue-petals painting with her own eyes. She knew before she left London that the painting had been temporarily withdrawn from display. It’s undergoing forensic examination to confirm the age of the pigment, and to check for any underpaintings. There’s a suspicion that the sitter’s hand has been repainted at least once.

  Next time, she’ll definitely get to see the painting. If she brings a group of students back to Italy, she’ll also take them to Antonia Uccello’s convent at San Donato in Polverosa, which stands a mile or so north of the main rail terminus in Florence. There’s little of the actual convent to see; the nun’s cells, the scriptorium and the kitchen were redeveloped for apartments a century ago. But the convent’s church is still there. It’s light and airy, simple. At some time in the past, the interior walls were stripped back to the brickwork, though several sections of fresco were conserved. These sections were transferred to panels and reattached to the bare walls. Toniah browses through her images to find one particular detail from the nativity fresco, which she knows Eva will love. She laughs quietly and sends the image to Eva. It’s a close-up of the bottom right corner, and it shows a sleek white hound greeting a rabbit.

  “There’s Signora Martelli,” shouts the barista. “Believe me, the chapel will be open by the time she gets there.”

  The entrance lies two hundred yards away on the church’s windowless edifice on Via Tagliapietre. Toniah brushes her fingertips along the grey stone surface as she follows the limping form of Signora Martelli.

  “Splendid isolation,” she says under her breath. What a perverse term. She can remember times during her postgraduate studies when a month’s isolation might have seemed a blessed gift. But decades of incarceration? It’s impossible to grasp in today’s world. She’ll fly around the planet tomorrow, and
as soon as she lands in Beijing, she’ll contact Poppy and Eva; no doubt she’ll chat with them from the airport shuttle. She makes a mental note not to mention the saint’s chapel while Eva’s within earshot; she might have nightmares. She’s upset enough already.

  Poppy took the news about Beijing fairly well. She even offered her congratulations. It helped that by the time Toniah received her job offer, Carmen was pregnant, or at least her remote bottle was pregnant. Poppy had something else to latch on to—a new baby to make the household feel more substantial. It was Eva who took the news hard.

  The night before she left London, Toniah read a bedtime story to Eva. She felt a wave of regret crash over her as Eva snuggled into her and gripped her arm tight; she’ll never forget it. Then Eva buried her face in her pillow. For a young girl who normally had a good deal to say, she seemed at a loss. Maybe, in a crisis, a child can’t put the words together. So the following morning, over breakfast, Toniah told Poppy and Eva that she’d pay for them to visit her in Beijing. They must visit during the cherry blossom season, she said, before Carmen’s baby is birthed. So now the household has two distractions: a baby and a journey.

  In fact, the trickiest conversation Toniah had to broach with Poppy arose from Carmen’s pregnancy. Toniah pointed out that she wasn’t happy that Poppy had taken a share of legal responsibility for Carmen’s baby, as the standby guardian. “God forbid, but if you ever became the child’s guardian, where would that place me if you were then to die or become seriously ill?” Toniah explained that although she’d always take care of Eva, Carmen’s child was another matter. Poppy simply said she hadn’t thought about it, but it was unlikely to come to that. She said, “How many disasters can happen to one child?”

  At the church entrance, decorated by a surround of terracotta reliefs, she takes a photograph and messages Ben: Visiting the mummified nun. I guess . . . you wish you were here! She smiles. Ben has a month’s leave coming up, and he’s joining her in Beijing. Initially, she resisted the idea of Ben visiting so soon, but she’d relented; it made sense. He said he’d help with the practicalities while she settles in to the new job. If she’s still in temporary accommodation when he arrives, he’ll hunt for an apartment—at least do the initial search. And if she’s busy with classes, she won’t have time to find the best shops and street markets. He has time on his hands, he can afford to visit and she’ll be glad of a familiar face.

  Inside the church of Corpus Domini, she heads to the side aisle and slips through an open doorway following a small sign: “Santa Caterina.” She rushes along a spartan corridor and joins the end of a queue; six adults are filing into the saint’s chapel behind Signora Martelli. Three of the visitors are carrying bags of groceries. Toniah shuffles into the back of the small, dark room. There are no pews; it’s a shrine rather than a chapel. She immediately feels embarrassed, in this intimate, claustrophobic space, because she knows she’s the only person with no intention of saying prayers. She takes a step back and bides her time. Surely, they’ll leave after a few minutes.

  Signora Martelli has taken the single-supplicant kneeler at the iron altar rail. Within inches of the rail stands the glass case with the small, seemingly miniaturized, figure of Caterina dei Vigri, her hands in her lap holding upright a silver crucifix. Toniah stands with her arms by her sides.

  Caterina dei Vigri—Toniah prefers her secular name—has a sweet face, framed by a white coif below a black veil. What kind of miracles occurred by her graveside? Toniah wonders. How were they attributed to Caterina?

  She glances to her right. There’s a woman in a blue suit, probably Toniah’s age. What on earth is she praying for? A sick relative? A promotion? She seems too young to be asking for a miracle. Not too young to need a miracle, but too young to believe in them.

  Toniah bites her lip to stop herself grinning. Signora Martelli is hamming up her supplication. Her head bows and lifts, bows and lifts, as though her mouth is straining towards the surface of a pool to catch her last breath. She’s a distraction, kneeling as she is directly in front of the saint.

  After several minutes, one of the standing visitors makes the sign of the cross, picks up his grocery bags and leaves. Toniah steps forward to take his place. She’s impressed that these parishioners make time in their days to retreat from the world. Maybe people come to this shrine because it’s a place where they can calm their thoughts, a place where they can anchor themselves.

  It occurs to Toniah that the closest she ever comes to actual meditation is when she visits a museum. Specifically, there’s a painting in Tate Britain that she can’t resist. It’s a private form of adoration, one she doesn’t share—especially not with colleagues, for it’s the type of art, dangerously close to sentimental, that lost favour a long time ago. When she sits in front of this painting, she can’t find the words to match its emotional pull—it’s something about love, tied tightly to the fear of loss. But it’s more exalted . . .

  Signora Martelli struggles to her feet with the aid of her walking stick. No one steps forward to help. It seems to Toniah they all recognize that Signora Martelli welcomes the pain; she offers her suffering to the saint in the hope that she will intercede on her behalf.

  Toniah takes a short step. She falters. There might be a code of etiquette regarding who may kneel at the altar. But she’s come a long way for this encounter. She walks forward, kneels at the altar rail and puts her hands together. Slowly, she makes the sign of the cross—Get it right, she tells herself—forehead, stomach, shoulder, shoulder. Amen. She lowers her head and closes her eyes.

  Art history has brought her to many strange places, but to date, this is the strangest of all. She takes this moment to formulate a request, but she can’t think of anything that requires an actual miracle. It’s all a matter of luck, she feels. When she opens her eyes, she finds herself staring at the hem of Caterina dei Vigri’s habit. Toniah can’t stop herself; she reaches with both hands and presses her fingertips against the glass case, close to Caterina’s blackened, sandalled feet.

  CHAPTER TWENTY

  Fontaine-au-Bois, France, 2015

  Long car journeys used to be Toni’s pet hate, but it’s different now that she sits up front. Driving through France side by side with her dad, with bikes on the bike rack, she feels like an equal partner in a Continental escapade. According to her dad, she’s the copilot.

  “Man with baguette,” says her dad. He points.

  “That’s four this morning, but we’ve only spotted one beret.”

  The window is down, and Toni splays her hand to catch the breeze.

  Neither she nor her dad trusts the sat nav to find their destination—a small cemetery in the middle of nowhere. So Toni has a road map in her lap and a printout of the road junction in detail. It’s called Cross Roads Cemetery, and it’s two or three miles away.

  She twists around suddenly, stares out the window behind them. “You’ve got to stop—”

  “I can’t just stop—” But he brakes hard, swings the car into the side street on the right and pulls up in a residential parking place. “We’re almost at the cemetery. What’s so important?”

  “You’ll love it.” She opens the car door. “Come on.”

  She’s well ahead of him. He calls out as he locks the car, “Give me a clue.”

  “It’s purple,” she says over her shoulder, and she waves for him to follow.

  She turns left at the main road, past a forecourt stacked with marble gravestones, and she heads towards the road junction. Arthur will wait another ten minutes, she thinks. What’s ten minutes as a fraction of ninety-seven years?

  They’re in the small town of Landrecies, the last urban area before the war graves cemetery at Fontaine-au-Bois. She’s a couple of paces ahead of her dad when she reaches the junction. She points to the right. He lunges and grabs her shoulder to stop her stepping off the pavement. When he looks along the side road, he sees it, the third house on the right. An advertisement, the kind that covers the entire
side of a house. Expanses of purplish-blue and ghosted-white lettering, with burnt sienna brickwork showing through. Evidently delighted, he reads the sign aloud, “DUBONNET.”

  “I want a close-up photograph. It’s the perfect purple.”

  He keeps his hand on her shoulder as they cross to a triangular traffic island.

  “I’ll take a snap from here, first,” she says.

  They cross the road and walk towards the house.

  “People collect photos of these ghost advertisements. They’d love this one,” he says.

  “Ghost advertisements? That’s a thing?”

  He laughs. “They’re a leftover from the early days of advertising, before billboards came along. Companies leased the sides of houses and painted their adverts. And when the lease ended, they either repainted the original or painted a new advertisement on top. These days, they’re left to the elements, and you sometimes see older advertisements showing through.”

  They reach the house. The strongest patch of colour on the brick gable end is conveniently close to the pavement, and Toni takes a close-up snap.

  “In fact, I think the colour is lapis,” her dad says. “Lapis lazuli. The ground pigment is called ultramarine.” He leans forward and rubs the paint surface with his index finger. “It’s lasted well; the pigment content must be high.” He looks at his fingertip, and there’s a hint of the lapis. “You could go online and search for the Pantone colour of the old Dubonnet adverts. Some nerd will have blogged about it.”

  Toni knows about Pantone. Years ago, her mum bought a set of mugs with coloured stripes and Pantone numbers—an arty birthday present for her dad. He liked them, but now everyone’s got them.

  She stands back and photographs the full gable. The word DUBONNET—in faded, stretched white capitals—is repeated three times at different heights. Two are stacked close together, high on the wall, while the third almost sits on the ground. And each DUBONNET stretches the full width of the brickwork.