The Raven by Sylvain Reynard
Maybe he has a source in the police force and knows what’s happening with the investigation.
He’d recognized Dottor Vitali’s name, although he seemed surprised to hear it. But it seemed to be the person of William York that he was most interested in. Raven found that puzzling.
And there was his speech. He’d called the Franciscans Ordo Fratrum Minorum, which, she’d discovered through the Internet, was their Latin title. And he’d warned her about going out after dark.
Raven couldn’t imagine what the warning meant, or why, if he wanted her to leave, he’d given her the relic. His gift was strange enough. Then his disposition had changed and he’d touched her gently.
More puzzling, he’d called her Jane.
Raven’s legal name was found only on her passport, work visa, and permesso di soggiorno, or “permission to stay” form, all of which were still in her backpack. However the intruder had discovered her legal name, it wasn’t by searching her apartment.
Her legal name appeared in her employment file, so it was possible he’d learned it through the Uffizi. Raven dismissed that possibility, since everyone at the gallery called her by her chosen name, which was displayed on her security card. She hadn’t been known as Jane since she was twelve.
So he’s connected with either the gallery or the police.
Batelli and Savola knew her legal name. But they’d seen her Uffizi identification card and knew she was called Raven.
The intruder seemed to want to steer clear of the police, for whatever reason. He certainly hadn’t learned her legal name through someone who knew her. At least, not someone who knew her in Italy. In Florida, it would be a different story.
Horror stabbed through her.
What if he talked to . . .
She couldn’t finish the thought.
No, there was no point in entertaining the possibility. Florida was far away and so was any trace of her former life. Even her diplomas displayed her chosen name. If he’d opened the bottom drawer to her dresser, he would have found them, still encased in protective sleeves.
Putting the pillow and quilt aside, she stood in the center of the bedroom and took stock of her surroundings. The drawers to her dresser were closed, as was the door to her closet. Nothing seemed amiss, with the exception of the missing sketch and . . .
Her gaze alighted on the nightstand, on which were stacked several of her favorite books. She noticed the volume of the collected works of Edgar Allan Poe had been moved from the bottom of the stack to the top. The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe had been demoted to second place.
Once again, she wondered if, in a moment of distraction, she’d moved the C. S. Lewis book herself. It didn’t occur to her to ask what, if anything, the intruder had against lions, witches, and/or wardrobes.
Raven rubbed her eyes in frustration. She had to report to work in a few hours, but she was too upset to go back to sleep.
With a sigh of resignation, she sat at her desk and opened her laptop. She’d catch up on her e-mail, which she’d been ignoring. When she logged in, she found a number of new messages, including one from her sister.
Hi Rave,
I tried calling you through FaceTime, but you never answer. Are you avoiding me?
Mom’s wedding was beautiful. It’s too bad you missed it.
Stephen is really nice. He was a plastic surgeon before he retired. He and Mom just moved into a big house on the ocean.
Raven paused her reading to roll her eyes.
Since you won’t respond to Mom’s e-mails, she asked me to ask you to come home for your birthday. She’ll pay for your ticket and you can stay with me and Dan. Did I mention that we moved in together? I can’t remember.
Mom wants to introduce you to Stephen and his kids. They’re older than us—married with kids of their own. His son is a doctor and his daughter is a dentist.
Come home for a visit. We miss you. We can celebrate your birthday and I’ll show you all the great hot spots in Miami.
You haven’t seen Mom in years and I think it’s time you two got over the past. I like Stephen a lot and he makes Mom happy. I think you’d like him, too, if you gave him a chance.
Dan is planning to take me to Europe to celebrate our two-year anniversary. I’m hoping we’ll be coming over in the middle of June. We’ll stay in a hotel, of course, but I’d like to visit you in Florence. Whether we visit Florence or not, I still want you to come to Miami.
Hey, what happened to that guy you had a crush on? I can’t remember his name. Did you ever ask him out?
Let’s talk soon.
Love,
Cara
XO
Raven sat back from her computer, resisting the urge to send a terse and angry reply.
She loved her sister more than anyone, but they had lived radically different lives. Carolyn was seven years younger, so she didn’t remember their father or the happy life they’d had as a family living in New Hampshire. She certainly didn’t remember the accident.
Raven took a moment to muse on the way her mind always attached a euphemism to the event that had disabled her. She flexed her feet beneath the desk, reminding herself that whatever she called it, its effects had disappeared. That fact alone made her more positively disposed to her mother, but barely.
When Carolyn was old enough, Raven had told her what had happened. Carolyn, to her credit, had listened carefully. But her memories were so at odds with Raven’s account, she had trouble believing it.
On one level, Raven viewed Carolyn’s lack of memory as a good thing, so she didn’t revisit the subject. She remained silent, even in the face of their mother’s revisionist history.
But she refused to see her mother, speak with her, or be in the same room as her until she acknowledged the truth. Which meant she hadn’t seen her mother since she’d left home for college over ten years earlier.
As for Carolyn’s question about her old crush on Bruno, who was her neighbor’s grandson, well, of course it had come to nothing. She’d almost forgotten about it, and him, given the previous day’s events.
Hi Cara,
It’s good to hear from you.
I’ll think about coming to Miami, but if I do, I’ll pay my own way. I won’t be seeing Mom. She knows why. There’s no point in getting into it.
As for your visit, it would be great to see you. But things are really busy at the moment. Let’s talk later about this, okay? I’m swamped at work.
I love you,
Rave
Raven sent the e-mail and closed her laptop, not bothering to scroll through the rest of her in-box.
She walked to the bathroom, putting thoughts of her troubled family life aside.
She wondered why some unnamed group would take an interest in her. She wasn’t going to abandon everything she’d worked so hard for, just because a mysterious criminal with connections to a secret association told her to leave the city.
She bristled as she remembered what the intruder had said about her sleuthing skills. She was going to redouble her efforts at investigating William York and the Palazzo Riccardi and, hopefully, find something that would convince the police she was not an accomplice to the Uffizi robbery.
As she brushed her teeth, she began formulating a plan. She’d stuff the euros in a shoe box for now, then donate the money to the Franciscan mission.
She spat out her toothpaste and gazed at her appearance. It was still difficult to accept that the attractive woman staring back at her from the mirror was real.
Her gaze dropped to the relic around her neck. She was going to have to hide it under her clothes.
She muttered a few choice expletives and went to get dressed.
Chapter Twelve
“I’m telling you, the time is now!” Maximilian raised his voice, his imposing figure moving forward in the predawn darkness.
He and his companion stood high atop the Palazzo Vecchio, arguing. His interlocutor lifted a hand to stay him.
“Patience.??
“We’ve been patient enough. I say we kill him tonight.”
His companion sighed dramatically. “Have you learned nothing from the Venetians? It will take more than us to fell him, particularly if one of the others is with him.”
Maximilian drew his sword. “We aren’t exactly young. Who’s to say the others will defend him? They’re probably just as eager as we to seize control.”
“Precisely why we must be confident in our alliances. Now is not the time for haste, particularly when you’re in danger of losing your temper. It makes you reckless, Max, and that is something you cannot be when dealing with the Prince. He’s more powerful than you can imagine.”
Max cursed, swinging his broadsword through the air. “I disagree.”
“Then you’re a fool. Even I don’t know the full extent of his power. I’m not about to find out only to lose my head.”
“Must we wait until his thousand years have expired?”
“Don’t be pessimistic. I made a mistake colluding with the Venetians. Now I’m cultivating other, stronger partners. And there’s always the ferals and the hunters.”
Max sheathed his sword. “Now you’re talking nonsense. Ferals can’t be controlled. And why would you want to work with the hunters?”
His companion smiled slowly.
“The Prince is old. The hunters would be only too glad to have his blood. They’d probably sign a treaty to leave the city alone if we were to deliver him up to them.
“Our borders have been somewhat porous recently. If a pack of ferals were to appear, they would wreak havoc. The Consilium will hold the Prince responsible. Not to mention that our noble prince has made a few errors recently—errors that threaten to expose him.”
Max rested his large paw on the hilt of his sword. “The Consilium is riddled with his allies.”
“And his rivals. They know his reign won’t last forever. All they lack is a leader who is willing to depose him, and a little motivation.
“Be patient, Max. The city will be ours soon enough.”
Chapter Thirteen
Raven sighed as she sat at a computer terminal in the archives of the Uffizi Gallery. She’d been demoted.
Professor Urbano had welcomed her back after her weeklong absence, but he hadn’t allowed her to continue her work conserving the Birth of Venus. Perhaps this was his way of exercising his skepticism about her appearance, despite the fact that her fingerprints had been verified.
Yesterday, she’d been relegated to errand runner, while on this day, she’d been sent to the head archivist and told to follow her instructions. Someone else was sitting in her chair in the restoration lab, holding her brushes and carefully covering part of the surface of Botticelli’s masterpiece with protective varnish.
Professor Urbano assured her she would be the one to apply the second and third coatings after Anja Pahlsmeier, a postdoc from Berlin, had completed the first. He was unwilling to interrupt the work she’d begun in Raven’s absence. Or so he said.
Raven tried very hard not to be resentful, and failed.
The head archivist tasked her with organizing the printed and digital scientific reports the restoration team had done on the Birth of Venus. Then she was supposed to scan the printed reports and send all the digital files to Patrick, so he could input them into the archives’ database.
The archivist had instructed Raven to familiarize herself with the files on the restoration of Primavera and to organize the new files in the same way. Raven was scrolling through the radiographs of Primavera, when she noticed something.
Radiographs are photographs taken by an X-ray machine, and they reveal details about a painting that aren’t visible to the naked eye. In this case, Raven’s attention was drawn to the radiographs that revealed the pentimenti, or outlines of the various figures Botticelli had drawn before he began to paint.
When she enlarged the radiograph of the figure of Mercury, she noticed something surprising. Originally, Botticelli had sketched him with shorter hair.
Raven had spent a lot of her own time studying Primavera and its restoration before she began working on the Birth of Venus. No one had ever commented on this particular change in Mercury’s appearance or why Botticelli had lengthened his hair.
Puzzled, Raven clicked on another file, which featured an infrared reflectograph of the same image. In the reflectograph, the layers of paint were visible. It was clear that Botticelli had not only adjusted the length of Mercury’s hair, he’d changed the color as well, darkening the strands.
Mercury was blond.
She sat back in her chair, staring at the computer screen.
On one level, her discovery was unremarkable. Artists in general, and Botticelli in particular, made changes to their paintings as they worked. Other changes to the original design of Primavera had been noted by the restoration team in their reports. But Raven couldn’t recall anyone mentioning the changes made to Mercury’s hair.
Curious, she scrolled through some of the written documents the restoration team had prepared. It took her some time to do so, but her investigation corroborated her suspicion. No one seemed to have noticed the change in Mercury’s hair and this was very, very surprising given the fact that the change was obvious on a close inspection of the radiographs.
Lost in thought, Raven opened a digital copy of the finished painting and enlarged it, focusing on Mercury’s head and shoulders. Then she switched to the radiograph.
She tried to imagine what Mercury would have looked like withshorter blond hair.
Discoveries such as this one could help an art historian make her career. But before she wrote a paper announcing her discovery to the world, she had to study the reports more carefully. And she had to be sure no one had written on this subject before.
Peering over her shoulder to be sure she wasn’t being watched, Raven surreptitiously removed a flash drive from her backpack and quickly copied the relevant images. She could barely contain her excitement, her leg jiggling back and forth.
She’d just transferred the flash drive to the zippered pocket of her backpack when she felt a hand on her shoulder.
“Are you okay?” A voice addressed her in English.
She jumped in her chair and let out a loud expletive.
“Shhh!” the archivist hissed from her desk, which was across the room. She glared at Raven over the rims of her glasses.
Raven nodded meekly before looking up into the guilty eyes of her friend Patrick.
He mouthed a quick “Sorry.”
“What are you doing?” she whispered, quickly closing the files that she’d opened on the computer.
“I came to ask you the same question.” He nodded at the computer screen.
Raven glanced at the archivist, then at her friend.
“It may be nothing.”
Patrick’s gaze moved to the archivist as well before he spoke. “Gina wants you to come over to have dinner with us tonight.”
Raven looked over at their mutual friend, Gina, who was working on the other side of the room. She waved.
“So it’s official? You’re an ‘us’?”
Patrick grinned. “Yeah.”
“I’m happy for you. I’d love to have dinner with you both, but I have to pick up a few things after work.”
“That’s all right. Do you have your Vespa?”
“It’s waiting for me at the shop.”
“I’ll take you to pick it up after work and we can meet at Gina’s later. Okay?”
“Thanks.” Raven smiled.
Patrick picked up a piece of paper and scribbled a few words. He left the paper next to her computer before returning to his desk.
Raven glanced at his writing.
You forgot about the cameras.
“Shit!” she muttered.
She crumpled the paper and shoved it into her backpack.
She looked around the room, trying not to appear obvious as she located the security cameras in the four corners.
She looked over at Patrick, who shook his head. He seemed just as worried as she.
He picked up his cell phone and began typing.
A few seconds later her phone chimed with a text.
What r u doing?
Raven quickly answered him.
Forgot about the cameras.
She could hear Patrick’s huff of disapproval from across the room.
Raven turned to look at the archivist, but she seemed preoccupied by her own work.
Raven’s phone chimed again.
You need to be more careful.
She couldn’t disagree. She was about to type a suitably contrite response when the telephone on the archivist’s desk rang.
As if in slow motion, she turned around.
The archivist was nodding and agreeing to something. When she finished her short conversation, she waved Raven over.
Raven walked to her desk, slowly.
“Dottor Vitali wishes to see you in his office. Now.” The archivist’s tone was brisk. “Make note of where you left off in your project and log out of your computer.”
I am in so much trouble.
Raven ground her teeth as she returned to her desk. With a few short mouse clicks, she logged out of her computer. She took a clean piece of paper and listed what she’d accomplished that morning.
She picked up her knapsack and handed the paper to the archivist.
“Raven, wait,” Patrick called to her.
He walked her to the door.
“Hand me the flash drive,” he whispered, holding his hand out.
“What?”
“So they can see us.” His eyes flickered to the side, where one of the cameras was positioned in full view of the door.
She shook her head. “You’ll get in trouble.”