Graven Images (8 page)

“No shortage of stars in the sky tonight!”

Zorelli spun around. Down the wharf came the spirit, flickering as if concocted of fireflies.

“Aye, they pain my eyes, they do! If I had me a long-handled candle snuffer, such as would reach, I’d put ’em all out. Believe me I would. And hang a cloak on the moon!”

Zorelli stared at him, awed afresh to find himself in the employ of what was nothing more than the residue of a life, a cloud of ash, a burned wick of a man.

“You wanted to draw me,” spat out the ghost. “And I’m here. So let’s get on with it!”

The waters whispered. A seagull squawked. Zorelli produced parchment and charcoal and commenced to sketch by his subject’s own light.

He eyed the ghost’s teeth, crooked and sparse, leaning like tombstones in a forgotten graveyard. With mounting unease, he duly recorded his broken nose and the scar down his throat, longing for the smooth skin and noble features to which he was accustomed.

“As for your ear,” he spoke up with difficulty. “Naturally a hat, tilted to one side —”

“Never! I won’t have you covering it up. I want to be exposed for just what I am. Or rather, for what I
was
— that night.”

Distastefully, Zorelli sketched the ear, hurrying over its ragged border.

“Seventeen years it’s been that way.” The spirit gazed out over the harbor. “Aye, since I first took up with the Boccas.”

The Boccas! Zorelli brightened at the name. Spice merchants, they were, wealthy and refined. Zorelli himself had carved busts of the children, and he swelled with a sudden respect for his patron, as for all who lived in the world of the great.

“You were associated with the Boccas?” he asked.

“I should say! Seven years I served ’em.”

Zorelli sketched the ghost’s tattered doublet, wishing he could ignore the ragged tear that ran down the front.

“In what capacity did you serve?” asked the stone carver with a grin. “That is, if I may presume to ask.”

“Commerce,” said the ghost.

“Commerce?”

“That’s right.” He fingered his ear. “So to speak.”

Zorelli wondered at his patron’s meaning but hesitated to press him further.

“Aye, but that was long ago,” the spirit mused, scanning the water. “Even before I’d met Varentino.”

“The Varentinos, of course!” said Zorelli. He’d once carved a statue of Vito Varentino, the government diplomat. “A family of means,” boasted the sculptor. “And magnificent learning as well!”

He sketched his patron’s stumpy legs, imperceptibly lengthening them, as befitted a personage of his evident rank.

“It was the old man — Vito — I worked for,” said the spirit. “Back when he was stationed in Florence.”

“Truly!” Zorelli gawked, impressed. “And what, if I might ask, was your work?”

“Matters of state,” the ghost answered back.

“Really, now.”

“Right,” said the spirit. “In a manner of speaking, you understand.”

Zorelli sketched the ghost’s battered shoes, pondering his words. To whom was he offering shelter in stone? Trembling, he regarded the ghost’s tattered outfit, his broken nose and unsettling ear, and wished he’d never accepted his gold. But what was he to do — return to the quarry? After all, the spirit claimed to have been a man of influence while he’d lived, a point to which Zorelli clung like a cat.

“When can you have it finished?” asked the ghost.

“A month,” Zorelli replied. “At the soonest.”

“Fine!” He fingered the rip in his doublet. “Aye, a great relief it’ll be. Just remember — down at my feet, a cat. One-eared, and looking up at me. I want him to see for himself. See it plain.”

Zorelli rolled up his sheet of parchment.

“When it’s done,” said the ghost, “put it in a wagon and take the road to Rompoli, by night.”

The ghost set off.

“But wait!” cried Zorelli. “Where do I deliver it? And what of the payment? The other fifty ducats you promised!”

“I’ll meet you along the way,” said the spirit, and disappeared down the wharf.

Outside Zorelli’s door, sun followed storm. The trees dropped their leaves. Voices passed by. Of these, however, he remained unaware. The statue alone absorbed his attention.

All day and deep into the nights he labored, working by sunlight, then candles and lamps. He joyed in stretching his muscles again, exulted in swinging his ringing hammer. Streams of sweat ran down his throat as if he were stoking the sun’s own fires, and when he could work no more he fell into bed, exhausted and satisfied.

“What’s your opinion, Angelina?” the sculptor addressed his cat one day. He glanced from her to the cat he was carving. “A fine beginning, wouldn’t you say?”

Zorelli stepped back and studied the statue. The stocky form of the ghost had emerged, but the cat still lay hidden within the marble. The stone clung to the figure like a fog, and the sculptor reached for a chisel, took up his hammer, and returned to dispersing it.

“Tell me, Angelina,” said Zorelli. “Have you ever seen such a statue before?”

The cat remained still, asleep in the sun.

“Never!” replied Marta, looking on from the doorway.

She stepped into the studio and eyed the marble. “A statue — commissioned by a beggar in rags?”

Zorelli swallowed. “Marta, I assure you —”

“What then — a thief? Or a murderer, perhaps?” She smiled knowingly at her husband. “Do you take me for a fool? No such patron exists! Amusing yourself in marble, you are, and
stealing
the money you give me for food.”

“Marta, let me explain.”

“Explain?” She glared at the stone carver acidly. “All that I need to have explained is what possessed you to carve such a figure, and ruin a perfectly good block of marble!”

She swept out of the room, leaving the sculptor contemplating the statue and its subject.

Never, he mused, had he carved such a face. The barbarous mouth was that of a cutthroat. The eyes belonged to a hangman, or his prey. With each hammer blow he grew more afraid of the figure gradually being revealed.

And yet, Zorelli reminded himself, the man was acquainted with the wealthy Boccas, and the cultured Varentinos as well. And he certainly hadn’t lacked for money. Perhaps, he reasoned,
all
ghosts looked as grubby as this one — even the ghosts of the great.

He tried to drive the specter from his mind, picked up his hammer, and returned to work, musing on the power he possessed to fix the world’s memory on a man for the length of the life of stone. Pounding, scraping, sanding, polishing, he gloried afresh in his ability to rescue his subjects from oblivion, securing for himself, parasitelike, a portion of their immortality.

Day by day the hammers became lighter, the chisels smaller, the files finer. Chipping gave way to grinding, then sanding, each tool removing the marks of its predecessor.

And then, one day, the statue was finished.

“Tell me, what do you think, Angelina?” Zorelli picked her up and approached the figure who held a cup to an infant, watched by a one-eared cat. “Come now, let me hear your opinion.”

Desperately, she jumped from his arms.

That afternoon the stone carver hired a pair of horses and a wagon, and with the help of three other brawny men loaded the statue into the back. When evening fell, he snapped the reins and headed down the road to Rompoli.

The night was still, the wintry air bare. The sky overhead was littered with stars. For an hour he drove among frost-stricken fields, wondering just where it was he was headed — when suddenly he sighted a shimmer ahead.

“Well met!” said the ghost, grinning as he approached the wagon. “You brought the statue, then?”

“There in the back.”

“Fine!” said the spirit. “Finally! Aye, a great relief it’ll be.”

He climbed aboard, glowing unreally, as if he were but a magician’s illusion.

“How much farther?” Zorelli asked.

“Oh, we’ve a bit of a ways,” said the spirit.

Zorelli gave the reins a shake, sharing none of his patron’s good cheer. He glanced at the ghost’s filthy attire and shuddered at the thought of how his patron must have stunk while he was alive. Even in stone such a man would draw flies. And yet, he claimed to have been of some importance. . . .

“You mentioned before your connection with the Boccas,” Zorelli spoke up hesitantly. “Engaged in the spice commerce, didn’t you say?”

“That’s right,” his companion answered back.

“Master of the countinghouse, were you? Or captain of a ship, perhaps?” The sculptor smiled hopefully.

“Not likely. The competition was my job.”

“The competition?”

“Right,” said the spirit. “Making sure no other pesky traders reached port with a load of pepper before us.” He reached absently for his missing ear. “And trying to stay alive in the bargain.”

The smile deserted Zorelli’s lips. He studied the specter. Was he speaking of foul play? Naturally, he’d heard of such things. But the polished Boccas? The thought was absurd.

Nervously, Zorelli clutched the reins, guiding the wagon down the road toward its unknown destination.

“I recall that you mentioned working with Vito Varentino as well,” he spoke up. “Employed in matters of state, I believe.”

“Aye, matters of state,” said the ghost.

Zorelli smiled respectfully. “Of what sort, if I may be so bold?”

“Finding out,” said the spirit matter-of-factly.

“Finding out?”

“That’s right,” the ghost replied. “Whatever the old man wanted to know. Listening behind doors, searching rooms, paying the servants for what they knew. Aye, he kept me busy, he did.”

Zorelli stared at the specter in shock. Varentino, the renowned thinker and statesman — secretly engaging spies? Surely this mist of a man was lying. And yet, the sculptor asked himself, why should a ghost depart from the truth?

“Turn off to the left there,” commanded the spirit. “Aye, that’s where my poor bones be.”

“Your bones?” said Zorelli. “Why here, of all places?”

“
I
wasn’t consulted in the matter,” snapped the ghost.

Zorelli guided the horses off the road and into a rocky meadow.

“Dead ahead, there. Aye, that’s the spot.”

The wagon banged and bounced over the ground, till Zorelli brought it at last to a halt.

“Fine!” exclaimed the spirit, hopping down. “The earth being soft as it is from the rains, I thought you could tip out the statue feet first and let it plant itself in the ground.”

Zorelli climbed into the bed of the wagon, anxious to be rid of the statue and its subject. He breathed in deeply, and with the sum of his strength shoved the sculpture along the bed till it teetered, swung upright, and plunged into the earth.

“Well done,” cheered the spirit. “Well done, indeed.” Smiling, he studied the statue before him, running his fingers over the forms.

“Perfect!” he whispered. “Already I can feel it!” Blissfully, he gazed at the marble.

“Is this to be your gravestone?” asked Zorelli.

“In a manner of speaking,” murmured the spirit. He reached into a pocket, pulled out a coin purse, and handed it to Zorelli.

“The rest of your payment. You’ll find it all there.”

Zorelli watched, flattered and awed, as the ghost returned his gaze to the statue. Mounting the wagon and grabbing the reins, the sculptor felt suddenly loath to leave.

“If I might ask but one question,” Zorelli spoke up. “Why was it you wished to be shown feeding an infant?”

The spirit turned. “I wasn’t
feeding
the tyke.” He fixed his eyes on the stone carver. “On the contrary, I was murdering it.”

“Murdering?”
gasped Zorelli.

“That’s right. The cup I put to its lips held poison.”

Zorelli stared at the ghost, speechless. He felt suddenly weak. His hands took to trembling. A murderer — celebrated in stone? Stone that he, Zorelli, had carved?

“Whatever — possessed you,” stammered the sculptor, “to pay to have such a scene depicted?”

The specter smiled, “A peaceful sleep. I was murdered myself, you see, that same night. Before I had time to get home to my cat and properly confess my crime.”

Zorelli’s thoughts whirled. “The cat?”

“That’s right.” The spirit’s eyes brightened. “The one you carved. Oh, he was a fine companion, and whenever I did something that troubled my sleep, I told him about it. Aye, and slept sound.”

Zorelli’s gaze rested on the cat, then slowly traveled up the statue.

“And the infant?” he faltered, struggling with the words.

“Just six months old. Alessandro, they called him.”

“His full name!” the stone carver demanded, determined to know the full truth of the crime.

“Alessandro Ferrante.”

The sculptor paled. “Lorenzo’s nephew?”

“Aye, that’s him.”

“Impossible!” Zorelli jumped to the ground. “He died of a cold! A chill in the night! I carved the tomb for the child myself!”

The specter snorted. “A chill, was it now?” He grinned, revealing his crooked teeth. “It was Lorenzo himself who paid me to do it. Paid me those ducats I gave to you.” He glanced at the rip down the front of his doublet. “And him who had me stabbed, as well.”

In disbelief, Zorelli plucked out the coin purse and gaped at it in horror.