No Time Like the Past

by Jodi Taylor

  I uncovered the next picture.

  Paris and Helen.

  Whew! I could see why this one might be banned, even without Savonarola. Two figures are in a garden, late in the evening. The light is fading and the picture is full of shadows and mystery. Paris is leaning over a reclining Helen and it’s very apparent what both of them have in mind. Between them, they’re wearing about six square inches of material. The impression given is that no sooner has the viewer moved away than they will fall on each other. A tiny part of my mind wondered whether he would take off his helmet. Sensuality just oozed from the image. He’d painted the promise of sex. The background was full of trees with their limbs twisted erotically around each other and everywhere you looked, there was rounded, gleaming flesh.

  ‘Wow,’ said Clerk, unable to drag his eyes away.

  The third portrayed the death of Paris.

  He lies, sprawled and broken with his head in Helen’s lap. It’s unclear how he died – there’s not a mark on him. I suspect Botticelli didn’t want to mar the perfection of his body. Helen is wearing (barely) something white and diaphanous with intricate draping, beautifully painted. Her head is bowed in grief. We cannot see her face. A heavily built Menelaus (I assume it’s him because he’d been painted with red hair and in the Middle Ages, it was a popular belief that the devil had red hair) leans threateningly over Paris’s fallen body towards Helen. The three figures form a perfect triangle. It’s a masterpiece of composition.

  I stepped back and contemplated these three pictures. I could have looked at them all afternoon. For the rest of my life even, but time was short. I felt a rage that these could have been lost. Burned in the Bonfire of the Vanities. That would not happen. Not while there was still breath in my body. I was determined we would save them.

  But how? They were huge. Why the bloody hell couldn’t he have painted small, intimate pictures that we could just shove down the front of our tunics and run like hell. We were fortunate, however, that they weren’t the biggest things he’d ever done The Primavera was seven feet by ten feet for God’s sake. These weren’t that big, but there was no way we could conceal any of them. The best thing would be to get them on the cart, and back to the pods as quickly as possible.

  I issued a series of quiet instructions and for the next few minutes, we were very busy.

  All this time, the artist hadn’t moved. He slumped in his chair, unmoving. I couldn’t tell if it was despair or resignation. I sought in my head for something to say to him. Some word of hope, but there was nothing. He would never paint anything miraculous again. There would be a few nativity scenes, but the spark was gone, and the strict rules laid down by the church as to how religious subjects were to be portrayed wouldn’t help, either. He would sit on a committee to discuss, I think, the positioning of Michelangelo’s David, but he would die, early in the next century, in conditions of great distress and poverty, having been unable to recapture his former brilliance. Still, he never painted lewd or lascivious subjects again, so that was all right, then.

  Sands and Clerk were manhandling the last piece of panel out of the door. I could hear them cursing as they struggled down the stairs, and believe me, when historians curse, they don’t mess about. There was the sound of voices as Peterson and his gang turned up, and they began to load the cart.

  I should go.

  I walked back to the still unmoving figure. His eyes had the familiar blind look of one in great emotional distress. I hadn’t noticed the wooden crucifix hanging on a chain around his neck. He clutched it with one hand, as one clutching a lifeline. Given that the other hand still had a grip on his flagon, he seemed to have all bases covered.

  I did what I could.

  ‘Sir, these paintings are going to a better place.’

  Silence. Apart from water, dripping somewhere.

  ‘Sir …’

  It was useless. I don’t think he was hearing me and I couldn’t say any more. If he bounded from his chair now, miraculously restored and seized a brush then I’d be changing History and then we’d all be in trouble and my Italian was nowhere near good enough for this anyway. I should leave well alone and just go.

  I walked over to the table and began to pick up flagons, looking for one that wasn’t empty. The least I could do for him was cushion this day with alcohol. I found two that were about half-full. I did remember to unstopper them and sniff the contents. I didn’t want him chugging back turpentine. I moved a small table within his reach and placed the flagons upon it.

  He still hadn’t moved. I looked around. After we’d moved all that stuff out, the room was nearly empty. Like his life.

  I crouched again and placed one hand over his cold one. Someone else with hands as cold as mine.

  He jumped a little at the touch and, for the first time, looked at me properly.

  ‘Simonetta?’

  ‘No,’ I said, very gently. ‘Simonetta is dead. Remember?’

  He nodded. A solitary tear ran down his cheek. He had nothing left.

  I hated to leave him, but Peterson was yammering away in my ear. It was time to go.

  ‘Go,’ I said to Peterson. ‘I’ll catch up with you.’

  At the door, I took one last look back. He hadn’t even reached for the flagons. I wondered if he was actually ill. The oil paints of the time were full of mercury, arsenic, and lead. Were his own paints poisoning him? No, not likely. As far as I could remember, he didn’t use oil paints that much; tempera on board was his favourite medium.

  I could have cried for him. What could he have gone on to achieve? What had the world lost today?

  I retreated out of the door, leaving him to his sad, empty world, and clattered off down the wooden staircase.

  We were just manhandling the cart back into the street when we heard voices approaching. Of course we did. Everything had been far too easy up until now. These would be the real men despatched to pick up these paintings. These were the men he’d been waiting for.

  I looked at my teams; Peterson, Roberts, and Prentiss with their cart stacked high with three big, very carefully wrapped panels. I signalled to Sands and Clerk, also similarly burdened, to step back into the courtyard. It would be a disaster if all of us were arrested. They melted away.

  ‘Go,’ I said to Peterson. ‘Head back towards the square. You know what to do.’

  He nodded. ‘For God’s sake, Max. Try and stay out of trouble.’

  ‘Not a problem. We’ll take a different route back to the pod and see you there. Now go. Quickly.’

  They heaved the cart into motion and set off down the street, rattling over the cobbles. Someone in the crowd shouted after them. Following instructions, they increased their speed and the crowd set off after the cart.

  ‘Will they be all right?’ enquired Clerk, anxiously, as he and Sands emerged back into the street.

  ‘Of course,’ I said with confidence. ‘To all intents and purposes, they’re just a bunch of concerned citizens conveying frivolous items to the Bonfire. How commendable.’

  ‘And what happens when they don’t stop at the Bonfire?’

  ‘Peterson will think of something,’ I said with slightly less confidence. Although he probably would. Think of something, I mean. ‘Right, you two. You know what to do if we get separated?’

  ‘Get back to the pod. Avoid the square. Stay out of trouble.’

  ‘Three simple instructions even we should have no trouble carrying out,’ I said, because I never learn. ‘Avanti!’

  Mr Sands winced.

  ‘What?’ I said.

  He shifted his load for a better grip. ‘Nothing. Hey, toc-toc.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘It’s Italian for knock-knock.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘No,’ he said, in exasperation. ‘Concentrate, Max. You never get this bit right, do you? You don’t say, “What”, you say, “Who’s there?” Honestly, how many times have we been over this?’

  I closed my eyes and when I opened them again, th
e two of them were just turning the corner at the end of the street. I picked up my skirts and trotted after them.

  We were fine for nearly three streets. Then we weren’t.

  On the face of it, they were just a bunch of kids and they too were collecting stuff for the Bonfire. Small items. One or two of them clutched pots. One had a small bundle of material. Most were aged between about eight and fourteen. Only three or four of them were older boys.

  Heads turned as we approached.

  ‘Keep going,’ I said. ‘Don’t catch anyone’s eye.’

  ‘Max …’

  ‘We discussed this. Back to the pod, gentlemen.’

  ‘What are you going to do?’

  ‘Watch your backs. Go.’

  They went.

  I paused, just to keep an eye on the kids and make sure no one followed.

  As I said before, these were not nice children. They were encouraged to spy on their parents and all those around them. All of Florence lived in an atmosphere of fear and betrayal. Like the witch trials. And communism in America. Accuse before you yourself are accused. The church had enlisted their help and they’d been very useful, but at the end of the day, I told myself, these were just kids. With the attention span of an historian.

  I recognised a familiar scene. A little girl stood with her back against the wall surrounded by a mob of shouting children. At least they were still shouting. It’s when they go quiet that the trouble really starts. Every now and then one of them would dart forwards and slap her or pull at her clothing. She was aged about eleven. She stood defiantly, but every now and then, a tear tracked through the dirt on her cheeks.

  We all looked at each other.

  I should have followed on after Clerk and Sands. That few minutes start would be all they needed and this was nothing to do with me. Just a bit of childhood bullying. It happens to everyone. A child’s world is divided between the bullies and the bullied. This was the moment when I should have left and I would have, but just as I turned away, someone twitched off her dirty linen hood and a great quantity of matted red hair tumbled to her shoulders.

  I stopped. Without warning, I was back in the school playground.

  I was alone, as usual, standing in the angle between the music room and the main building. I was leaning against the wall, and, just for once, not doing any harm to anyone, when Georgia Woods and her cohorts found me. They were big girls, two or three years ahead of me and I thought, initially, they were on their way to ruin someone else’s day, but no, today was my turn. It is the unerring instinct of the pack to pick on the weakest, but they got it wrong that day.

  They started on about my hair. All right, yes, sometimes it looks as if I’ve been in the European Wind Tunnel, but those were the days of Big Hair and I’d seen worse. Apparently, it was the colour that was ruining their day.

  I stared at them with silent contempt and turned away. I already had detentions stretching into the next century, and some instinct was warning me my behaviour would not be tolerated forever.

  Meanwhile, according to this gaggle of teenage Barbies, only stupid people have red hair. Only evil people have red hair. Judas Iscariot had red hair.

  I said good for him. I’d always been a fan.

  They replied that red-haired people were descended from Satan.

  I replied that in that case so were Elizabeth Tudor, Titian, Mary Stuart, Henry VIII, Barbara Villiers, Nell Gwynne, Matisse, Emma Hamilton, General Custer, and Christopher Columbus.

  Their blank faces indicated they hadn’t heard of any of these. I wasn’t surprised. Non-redheads lack brain cells. I might have mentioned that to them.

  Out came the scissors and I realised this was planned. They hadn’t just been causally wandering past. I was going to have an impromptu haircut, and whereas other people might have proper parents who would descend upon the school in an avalanche of righteous wrath and demand retribution for this sort of thing – I hadn’t. I was on my own and they knew it.

  I stopped leaning against the wall and slowly straightened up, moving into fighting mode and summing up the opposition. There were four of them, but one was definitely unwilling. She hung back and didn’t want to be involved at all. One was fairly unwilling – she would only join in when there was no danger to herself. One was the leader – she might not want to get involved personally – but the last one was her enforcer – a big girl who would make two of me and who played hockey with all the brutal fervour of one who intends to play for the county one day and won’t let anyone or anything get in her way.

  I reviewed my own resources. On the plus side, I had a lot of hair. On the debit side, I had the muscle tone of lettuce.

  They closed in and things might have gone badly – although for whom, we’ll never know – because a prefect turned up.

  Five minutes and quite a lot of shouting later, we were all in front of Mrs De Winter, the Head Teacher. She didn’t usually deal with disciplinary issues, so I knew I was in trouble this time. I assumed my traditional expression of sullen disinterest and stared out of the window. She was surprisingly brief and they all filed out, encumbered with detentions. I went to leave as well, but she stopped me.

  ‘Sit down, please.’

  This was a new departure. Warily, I sat.

  She looked at me for a long time. ‘I can help you.’

  I gestured at the door, which had just closed behind Barbie and her bullies. ‘I can look after myself.’

  ‘That wasn’t what I was talking about.’

  I sat very quietly, not moving a muscle. As do small animals when confronted by some unknown peril.

  The silence went on. The bell for the next lesson rang and we both ignored it. A little voice inside my head said, ‘This is important. Don’t screw it up.’

  We looked at each other. Something was about to happen. I was about to have the most important of my entire life. The one that changed everything. The one that set me on the path to St Mary’s. When someone told me I had worth.

  However – the point I’m taking so long to make – is that from the beginning of time there’s always been a worldwide prejudice against red heads.

  ‘Better dead than red,’ they would shout at school. To which I would reply:

  ‘Blondes will cry.

  Brunettes will pooh.

  But here is what a redhead will do.’

  Usually just prior to smacking them one. Now, in another time and another place, here was some other kid on the receiving end.

  We need to be clear on this. I don’t like children. There isn’t an orifice that doesn’t exude something unpleasant. Sometimes, all of them exude simultaneously. And this was not a waif-like elf with huge, appealing eyes. She was small because she was malnourished, and a waterfall of yellow snot bubbled from one nostril to solidify in the crease above her top lip. Occasionally, she licked it. I am continually astonished that people actually choose to have children! To be honest, if she hadn’t been small and ginger, I would probably have walked straight on. But she was …

  I weighed up the opposition. They were only kids, after all and children always do what adults tell them to do.

  You can tell I’m not a parent.

  I was only a couple of hundred yards from the pods. Just a quick sprint over the Ponte Vecchio and straight to San Spirito. No problemo.

  I shouldered my way through the crowd, picked up her hood and handed it back, making sure I stood between them and her. A narrow alleyway opened up a few feet to her left. I took her hand, barged through the kids that didn’t get out of the way quickly enough, led her to it, said, ‘Go home,’ and watched her run away.

  Her footsteps echoed for a while and then she was gone. I should have followed her then. I should have got out of there while I could.

  I turned back, all ready to make myself scarce, and it was too late. Children had closed in around me. The silence had a sinister quality. I felt a sudden moment of fear and pushed it aside. These were kids, for God’s sake. What could they
do to me?

  Quite a lot – as I was about to find out.

  I had a choice. If I called for help, both teams would drop everything and come to pull me out and we’d lose everything. We couldn’t do that. Apart from the fact that the future of St Mary’s was riding on this, I couldn’t, just couldn’t, abandon those paintings to the mob of religious bigots and bullies that comprised Florentine citizenry on this day.

  A voice spoke in my ear. Peterson.

  ‘Max, they’ve got the cart. We couldn’t outrun them.’

  I could hear raised voices and the sounds of a scuffle.

  There was nothing anyone could do.

  ‘We planned for this. Let them have what they want. Walk away. No one gets hurt. Just walk away. Sands and Clerk are just ahead of me. Find them and get back to the pods.’

  ‘Copy that.’

  I stuck my chin in the air and prepared to shoulder my way out and chase after the others. Back to safety. But suddenly, all the little kids were in a ring around me and everyone was ominously quiet.

  I still wasn’t that scared. What could they do to me? They were children. Some of them barely reached my waist.

  Whenever I look back at this, I wonder if it wasn’t History trying to teach me a lesson. Not to interfere. Don’t get involved. We’re always being told: don’t get involved. There’s always a price to pay and usually it’s a life. Do what you have to do and get out. That little girl had been in no desperate peril, but suddenly, I was. Because – and what were the odds of this happening – as I eased my way along the slimy, wet wall, trying to get past them, my coif caught on something – a nail, maybe – and as I moved away, the stupid thing fell off. I made a grab for it, but too late. A gasp went up. More red hair. They probably thought they were being overrun by Satan’s minions.

  Something caught me on the arm and I couldn’t think what it was until another stone whizzed past my face. I barely had time to jerk my head out of the way.