A Rather Curious Engagement (25 page)

Clive gestured to two folding chairs on the other side of the table, inviting us to sit. Then he handed us the file. The top photo was the one we’d seen on the Internet, but now I could view the details more easily, because the print was larger and sharper. Clive had obviously focused on the memorial procession, following it from the church to the grave, of old men and women, and children dressed up in native costumes, holding candles and torches. Behind them was a grassy hill, and what looked like an open cave all alight with candles.

“What is that?” I asked, pointing to the cave.

“It’s a shepherd’s hut, built into the hillside. Very old; the family that you see in front of it has made it into a family crypt,” Clive said. “It is kept closed all year, except for this feast day when people lay wreaths of flowers and offerings to their dead ancestors.” He flipped the photo over so that we could see the next ones, which were of the church procession. Finally, we got to the last picture.

This was a blow-up of the metallic item that had been in the background of the first picture. It was still blurry, so I supposed you could imagine it to be what you wanted. But I did think it looked very much like a metalworked piece, and a lion standing on all fours with a great big mane.

“That’s the best shot I’ve got of it,” Clive said, reading our minds. “The rest underneath are just copies.”

“Has the Lion been actually verified by anyone?” Jeremy asked.

Clive shook his head. “The museum bloke who was supposed to do that simply didn’t get there in time,” he said hurriedly. “And to tell you the truth, I’m sick of the whole thing. People think I saw it and can identify it, so they bring me all sorts of lions, believing they’ve recovered it. I never even noticed the damned thing. There was so much else to look at that night. But once the collectors saw the picture, well, that really set the cat among the pigeons.”

I stared at the photograph of the festival, with all those faces glowing in the candlelight. “Which of these people are related to the one in the—grave?” I asked.

“All of them!” Clive said. “They have a large family. I asked about the Lion. They didn’t really want to talk about it. Said it had been in their family for centuries.”

“I don’t suppose they could explain the Beethoven connection? ” Jeremy asked.

“Bah,” Clive said. “I think these antiques boys make up this guff to drive up the price.”

“Who do you think stole it?” I asked boldly.

Clive shrugged. “Could be any number of brokers or traders in this stuff,” he said. “Some of them think nothing of walking off with treasures from graves or digs. But personally, I think it was a rival family. I heard that there had been some kind of feud going on, and the thing changed hands and went back and forth and blood was spilled.”

“Like, a
vendetta
?” I asked, wide-eyed.

“The word itself was invented in Corsica, they say,” Clive replied. “Their history is full of revenge stories. Whole towns carried on for centuries.”

“Can I make a copy of the first and last pictures?” I asked.

“Take one of each, love,” Clive said. “I’ve got plenty more. Just do me a favor. If you write an article about it,
don’t
credit me as the photographer. I’ve had enough of it. I used to like Corsica. Rented a nice little place, but now I can’t get a moment’s peace.”

He shook his head wearily. “I’ve published thousands of pictures, ” he said. “War zones, sweatshops, drug lords. But have you ever seen antiques collectors when they’ve got their sights trained on something? They just won’t listen to reason.”

Jeremy asked if the museum director we’d planned to talk to was indeed the one who had come down to verify the Lion. “Yeah, Donaldson. He just missed it,” Clive said uncomfortably. “Wasn’t fast enough. Supposedly an expert on that stuff, but I wouldn’t bother with him. Don’t think he’ll have much to add for you. Pissy kind of fellow, very imperious. I must tell you that lots of people have been after this Lion, but the trail went cold almost as soon as it heated up. I heard there’s a curse on the thing, so frankly, I’d like to see an end to it.”

We thanked him and headed out. “Right, cheers,” he said.

"Well, that wasn’t much help,” I said as we went out onto the street and climbed into the rental car. "Poor guy, he’s sick of it.”

"I’d say it’s a bit more than that,” Jeremy said. “I’m not sure what ails him, but maybe the museum expert can tell us.”

The traffic in London was nearly hopeless. It took us forever to get across town to the higher-end section where the small, elegant museum was situated in a narrow brick house on a quiet, leafy street. As we climbed the white stairs to the front door, I noticed a surveillance camera just above the entrance, which was unlocked. But as we stepped into a small foyer, there was an inner door which was locked; and we had to be buzzed in by the tall, dark security guard at the front desk. I could see him through the window. He looked up when we rang, sized us up, and let us in. There was a young woman with her hair skinned back in a tight ponytail, standing alongside him. Both wore black suits.

“Would you like a catalog?” she asked. I saw a banner for the current display, which was
Swords and Shields of the Middle Ages
.

“No, thanks,” Jeremy said easily. “We have an appointment with Mr. Donaldson,” he explained.

The girl picked up the telephone, and spoke in a low voice. When she hung up she said indifferently, “Please wait here. He’ll be out presently.”

We drifted around in the lobby, waiting interminably. During the whole time, no visitors came in or out of the museum.

“Why does this place look like a ‘front’ for something?” I whispered to Jeremy. “You know, where some spy comes in from the cold.” I sighed. “I suppose we could have done all this by phone,” I said gloomily.

“No,” Jeremy said, “because we couldn’t look them in the eye on the phone. At first, I wasn’t entirely convinced that this Lion is the same one everybody’s been chasing after for centuries. But now I think it’s a distinct possibility.”

“Why?” I asked. He grinned at me.

“Oh, call it a hunch,” he said. “Think you’re the only one who gets them?”

The ponytail girl saw us laughing, and she looked unamused. I was glad when a tall, slender man came striding into the lobby. He wore an expensive blue pin-striped suit, very shiny black shoes, a blue and white silk tie, and a white silk handkerchief in his pocket. His very air of importance, and the sudden deference of the guards, told me that he was our man.

Mr. Donaldson shook hands with Jeremy and said, “Follow me, please,” and led us down a marble-floored corridor, past a back workroom where two men in white aprons were sitting on stools at a table with small paintbrushes, delicately cleaning and restoring antique figurines. He ushered us into an office at the back of the building, overlooking a small walled-in garden. The view was of carefully tended shrubs, trees and flowers, and a gravel path with large modern metal sculptures—one resembling a bent-over tulip, another a very long-legged bird.

Donaldson’s office was neat and fastidious, just like him. In fact, Donaldson looked as if he’d be right at home inside one of those Magritte paintings, of men going to work with an umbrella and a bowler hat. However, he possessed a certain twenty-first century slick salesmanship which incessant fund-raising required; he knew who we were, having read about us in the art press, so he immediately asked about the painting we’d inherited, and then he did a pitch for his own museum, asking to be the first to show “anything else amusing that you recover.”

I was getting accustomed to such sales pitches by now, and I no longer panicked at the thought that people whom I’d just met, urgently expected me to give them money and endorsements; for I’d discovered that initially, nothing more was required of me than an attentive expression and a pleasant smile. Jeremy and I took the seats he offered us.

“You’re here about the Beethoven Lion,” Donaldson said.

“Yes, we’ve just spoken to the photographer,” Jeremy said, watching for Donaldson’s reaction. The man snorted in disgust.

“Clive? Yes, well, we have him to thank for the loss of it,” he said.

“Why?” I asked.

“Why? Because five minutes after I’d told him I wanted to see it with my own eyes, he went to his favorite bar in Corsica and got drunk, and told everyone about it,” Donaldson said, shaking his head. “When I got there the place was already over-run with dealers, tourists, and press.” He sighed. “Travel journalists. Can’t keep their mouths shut about anything.”

“Could you explain the Beethoven connection to a lion aquamanile? ” Jeremy asked.

Donaldson cleared his throat. “Well, there are very few hard facts to go on. If indeed it is the actual Lion in question,” Donaldson said, “then it would date back to the early 1800s, when Beethoven was in Vienna. There was a certain German aquamanilia craftsman who set up a workshop outside Vienna, and he produced some fine pieces, during the era of Napoleon. I’m afraid at this point we leave the realm of known fact and enter the world of legend. There are actually many variations on the story of the Beethoven Lion, but this is the one I find most credible, and the one that most people in this field tell.”

I had to clasp my hands firmly together in my lap to keep from squealing with glee, like a little kid who’s demanded to hear a particular bedtime story and is finally going to get to hear it.
The Tale of the Lion
, I thought.

“The legend goes that the origin of the Beethoven Lion dates back to a wealthy German family who were friends with Beethoven, and they commissioned it as a birthday gift for him.” He paused, allowing this to sink in.

“How old was Beethoven?” I asked.

“Well, let’s see, this was in 1804, so he must have been—” Mr. Donaldson glanced skyward, trying to recall, “in those days they recorded the day that you were baptized, but actual birth dates are not always known. Even Beethoven himself didn’t know his own birth date, though he tried throughout his life to find out! However, since it was the custom to baptize an infant within twenty-four hours of its birth—in case it died, you see, they wanted to be sure of the safety of its soul—that would put Beethoven’s birthday at, say, December 16, 1770. So at the time we’re interested in—the spring of 1804, he would have been 34, no, actually, 33 years old.”

I realized that every question I asked was going to involve a long, complicated answer, so I decided not to interrupt the flow of his explanations unless really necessary.

“So, you were saying, that this aquamanile was commissioned as a birthday gift?” Jeremy prompted.

“What?” he asked, blinking. “Oh, yes.” He stopped.

“And who was this German family?” Jeremy asked.

“It’s only a story, nobody really knows. More like a fairy tale, really. Various people who knew Beethoven have told different fragments of this story, and it’s been pieced together with gossip and innuendo.”

“But why did this wealthy family want to give Beethoven a gift?” Jeremy prodded, on the verge of conducting one of his lawyerlike interrogations.

“Why, because their eldest daughter—who was very intelligent, well-educated and her father’s pet—was a piano student of Beethoven’s. Her father commissioned a young artisan from this aquamanilia workshop, to make something special for the great Master. But I’m afraid the father got a bit more than he bargained for.

“You see, at the time, the man’s daughter—now I think her first name was—Gertrude, I believe, or Gerta, perhaps—anyway, she was engaged to be married off to a wealthy but much older man. Most young girls of this time understood their parents’ expectations of them, because a good marriage was very much a family affair in those days—and parents married them off fairly young, when they would make obedient wives. Quite often the bride-grooms were nearly old enough to be their fathers.

“This girl probably would have done what her family asked,” Donaldson went on, warming to his subject as if it were contemporary gossip about living people, “but, unfortunately for all concerned, she fell in love with the young man who made the aquamanile. Well, after all, he kept coming to the house to consult with the father, and the father would include his daughter in these discussions because she knew the Master better than any of them. So. The romance went on secretly for a time, but eventually, the impetuous boy declared his love for her and proposed marriage. Rather a romantic sort of fellow, you know, honest and all. So he put on his Sunday best, and went to see her father and declared his intentions.

“But of course the father was furious, and shouted that a marriage of that sort was completely out of the question, that the boy was considered quite beneath them, and in any case the girl was betrothed to another man, and you just didn’t go round disgracing your fiancé and your family by marrying a fellow from the working classes. There was quite a row.”

“What about Beethoven?” Jeremy prompted. “And the Lion.”

“Beethoven, meanwhile, was having problems of his own,” Mr. Donaldson said wryly. “He was already going deaf by this time. However, this was of course a very important period for him, very productive, and he was creating masterworks that would break with the very formal conventions of classical music at that time. He was finishing his great Third Symphony.”

“The ’Eroica,’ ” Jeremy said, totally enthralled now.

“Yes, but, well,” Mr. Donaldson said, with a sudden glint in his eye, “that was not the original title of the work. The original title was ‘Napoleon Bonaparte.’ ”

Not being a music buff like Jeremy, I asked, “Why did a great German composer want to name a whole symphony after Napoleon, a French emperor who conquered everybody in sight?”

“Well, you must understand the times,” Donaldson replied. “You see in those days, many people were chafing under the thumb of hereditary kings and despots and even religious leaders. People craved reform, hoped for release from all the corruption and tyranny. Artists in particular were at the forefront of pushing for ‘modernity,’ as they always are, and the notion of the rights of the ‘individual.’ Along came Napoleon, and, you know, aside from his great conquests, he made stirring speeches and actually did make some reforms—after all, the French Revolution was not so far from memory.”