it yet?” She almost—almost—ceacbed out for him.
“Lo so. I know it.” He touched his fingers to her cheek. “You have not found it yet, Sarah. But soon, very soon.”
Sarah fought the fierce desire to turn her face into his hand, just as she fought the feeling of disappointment at his words, telling herself that there was no reason for her to feel like a child at Christmas who opens a beautifully wrapped box and finds it empty. She took a step back and then another.
He opened the door and a wisp of mist swirled in, dissipating in the warmth of the room. It was a symbol, Sarah thought. A symbol for an hour she had spent. For a precious gift she had been given. She smiled. So the box had not been empty after all.
Looking up at him, she met his eyes. He gave her a small nod, as if giving approval to her unspoken thought. Together, they stepped outside.
It had grown completely dark while she had been in the shop, but the rain had stopped. They did not speak as they walked through the narrow streets, but it was an easy silence, as if everything that needed to be said had been.
They turned down a street bardy wider than an alleyway and found their way blocked by a wagon piled high with goods. A thin, tall man called out while he threw back the sailcloth to reveal a hodgepodge of furniture, paintings, boxes and crates.
In the light of torches, which had been placed in round metal holders on the walls of a house, several burly men silently began unloading the wagon. The only sound was the sharp, raspy voice of the gaunt, sallow man as he moved from one side to the other, giving instructions, admonishing the men to be careful of the treasures they were carrying.
The flames of the torches created stunning contrasts of brightness and shadow, making an ordinary scene into a primitive picture of the grotesque and the beautiful that could have been painted by Caravaggio. How different the scene would have been, Sarah mused, viewed by the pale, civilized light of London gas lanterns.
Strangely drawn by the jumble on the wagon, she moved forward, her hand outstretched to touch. Then she stopped like a well-behaved child and, folding her hands at her waist, looked over her shoulder at her companion.
“Go ahead.” Guido smiled and gave her a nod of encouragement.
Excitement gripping her, Sarah took a step forward and then another.
“Buona fortuna,” Guido whispered, although he knew she did not hear him. He watched her for a moment longer before he stepped back into the mist.
A corner of a marble-faced cabinet, its surface inlaid with lapis lazuli and amethyst and jasper in a wondrous pattern of flowers and birds, peeked over the backboard of the wagon. Sarah tugged off her glove and reached out to run her fingers over it.
The cold surface seemed to warm beneath her touch. Then, suddenly, as if the cabinet’s surface had become a mirror, she saw it standing in a large, high-ceilinged room. A woman in a dress of emerald-colored velvet bent over it as she pulled out one of its many drawers, and her waistlength black hair spilled forward to hide her face. Bianca, Sarah thought. She had hair just like Bianca.
“Buona sera, signorina.”
The vision disappeared at the sound of the gravelly voice. Disoriented, Sarah focused her gaze on the man who was scrutinizing her through the narrow space between the side of the wagon and the wall. He inclined his head and pulled his mouth into a grin, revealing a set of large teeth that reminded Sarah of yellowed piano keys.
“Buona sera.” She looked back at the cabinet, half expecting to see the vision again. The vision that had been a reflection of the dreams she had come to Florence to find. But all she saw was the marble surface with its lovely pattern. “You have some very beautiful things here.”
“Ah, sì,sì. Look at what you will.” He rubbed his hands together briskly at the prospect of business. He had taken note of the young woman’s shabby coat, but then he had seen more than one eccentric Englishman who dressed like a servant to cheapen the price.
“In a few moments everything will be unloaded and you can look at your leisure.” He gestured toward the shop. “I make a good price for you. An excellent price.”
“Oh, I don’t want to buy anything.” Regretfully Sarah took a step back, although she longed to touch the cabinet again. Longed to see if she could summon the vision once more.
“They all say that.” His laugh did not animate his saturnine features. “Then they look and they buy. You come in and look, signorina, and then —” he raised his bony shoulders in a shrug “— vediamo.”
“Grazie.”
Wanting to share her discovery with Guido, Sarah turned, but all she saw was swirling mist made luminous by the flames of the torches.
“Mercurio?” she called. “Guido Mercurio, where are you?” She turned around in a circle, once, and then again, but he was nowhere to be seen.
“Signore,” she called out to the owner of the shop. “Did you see where the man who was with me went?”
“Man?” He gave her a curious look. “I saw no man.” Perhaps she was pazza, he thought. But then all these foreigners were a little pazzi.
Sarah saw the odd look the shop owner gave her. Had the encounter with the man called Guido Mercurio been a figment of her imagination, she suddenly wondered? A dream? A vision like the image of the woman she had seen when she’d touched the cabinet?
She rubbed her hand over her forehead. Was she going mad? Was all this a dream, perhaps? Would she wake up and find herself back in the wretched little room above a cookshop where she had lived during her last weeks in England?
She looked over her shoulder, but all she saw was the incandescent mist that was closing in on her. Enveloping her. Unnerved, she turned away from the wagon—to look for Mercurio or simply to flee, she was not certain.
But then she looked back one last time. The dull gleam of a small writing desk, its decoration sadly battered by the years, pulled at her as surely as if she were a puppet on a string. Surrendering, she knew that she had been taken captive.
One of the men pulled the desk away just as she stretched her hand out to touch it, but her sound of disappointment turned into one of delight as a small chest, which had been hidden beneath it, appeared. With its vaulted lid and a surface that alternated between metal—intricately patterned with scrollwork and dragons—and squares of wine red velvet, it looked like a treasure coffer. Surely, she thought, it would contain strings of luminous pearls or glittering precious stones or perhaps gleaming gold florins.
Smiling at her fanciful thought, she curved her fingers over the backboard of the wagon, Guido Mercurio and her interrupted flight and fears almost forgotten. It was as if these things, these leftovers of somebody’s life, were calling to her, speaking to her in a language only she and they could understand.
Only a few things remained in the wagon now and she felt an agitation grip her. There was something there, something she could not define, something important. But it was slipping away from her. If she did not reach out for it, hold it, it would be gone.
Her breathing grew uneven. Her palms grew damp. Her nerves vibrated like taut strings being plucked by a rough hand. As she watched the men remove the last crates and the desk she had admired earlier, she drew closer to the wagon and closer still, until she could feel the wooden slats of its side pressing against her chest. Even when the wagon was empty but for some straw and a few blankets, she remained standing there, unable to move. Only when she felt a jolt did she let go, realizing that the men were pulling the wagon away.
Her hands by her sides, she watched the wagon move down the alleyway. As it was swallowed by the mist, she felt some of the agitation drain away. She stood very still, her gaze fixed on the path the wagon had taken. She could go now, she thought. She could find her way back to her pensione, where the fire in the common room would be burning brightly. Where the smells of the evening meal cooking would be welcoming. Where she could have some civilized, boring conversation with the