Twice Upon Time

“I’m sorry, I did not mean to frighten you.”

“You didn’t frighten me.” She sat very straight, clutching her gloves so tightly that her knuckles turned white.

“No, I didn’t, did I?” Guido smiled that sweet smile again. “You frightened yourself.”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” she protested, but without heat, because she knew he spoke the truth. For a moment she had felt the passion that slumbered inside her stir, like the first, barely audible rumbling of a volcano about to erupt.

“No matter.” He brushed away her words with an elegant gesture of his long-fingered hands. “Now, you sit for a moment and drink your wine, sì?”

Sarah took a swallow of wine and then another. Suddenly she began to laugh. “I do not believe this is happening. Here I am in Florence—” her hand lifted to her mouth as if to smother her laughter “—sharing a cup of wine with a stranger.”

He gave her a quizzical look. “And that is bad?”

“I don’t know.” Sarah felt a lightness she had never, ever felt before. No, she thought, that was not quite right. She felt the lightness in her dreams. That was why all her life she’d waited for the night to fall. Because if she was lucky, the night would bring her the dreams. Dreams of Florence. Dreams of Bianca and Alessio and their illicit love.

She looked down at the cup she still held. The wine had gone to her head, she thought. Or perhaps it contained something that made her forget all caution, all sense, like the waters of the river Lethe. She felt her blood stir again. “I don’t want to think about whether it is good or bad.”

Leaning back against the worn red velvet, she sipped her wine and let her gaze wander around the small, windowless shop, crammed full of string instruments in various stages of disrepair. It was then that she saw the lute.

It was obviously an old instrument. The red-and-blue decorations painted on its pear-shaped body had faded to just a hint of color. It hung from the wall on a braided leather strap cracked with time.

Sarah rose and went toward it. “May I touch it?” Even before she heard his affirmative answer, she was running her fingers along the smooth wood.

Guido watched the Englishwoman run her fingers over the lute as tenderly as she would touch a lover. He watched her take it down from the wall and coax a melody from the old catgut strings. And he smiled because now he was certain that she was the one he had been sent for.

Sarah felt her fingertips tingle as the instrument came to life under her stroking. Raising her head, she smiled across the room.

“My father brought me a lute once. He put it in my hands and I began to play it.” She laughed softly as she remembered. “It was like a miracle.”

When she had hung the lute back on the wall, she returned to the sofa but did not sit down. Guido had tilted his head up to look at her, and suddenly she had an insane vision of herself cupping his face, running her fingers through his short black curls. The heated promise of passion rippled through her and she wondered what it would be like, just once, to give in to it.

“I have to go now.” She linked her fingers tightly.

“Si.” Guido stood and ran his knuckles over the fingers she had clasped together so cruelly. “You have to go, Sarah Longford.”

Sarah hesitated for a heartbeat, then she stepped back from the temptation, from the touch she wanted so badly. “I’m staying at the Pensione Bartolini near the Church of San Martino. Can you tell me how to get there?”

“I will accompany you.”

“It’s not necessary,” Sarah protested. She had been strong enough to deny herself a moment ago. Would she be strong enough again? “Truly.”

“But it is.” Picking up a cloak, he slung it over his shoulders. “I must show you the right way.”

“Is it that hard to find?”

Guido shrugged. “There are many ways, but only one right way.”

Sarah shook her head at his cryptic words. “What do you mean?”

“Don’t you remember? I told you that I would help you find what you are looking for.”

“How do you know what I am looking for?” she cried out. “How do you know I have not found 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 minister from Blackpool and his wife or the widow from some small town in Yorkshire.

But instead of moving forward, she deliberately shifted her gaze toward the shop. The owner stood there, watching her. His spare frame almost filled the narrow doorway, and for a moment Sarah could see him in old-fashioned armor, guarding the entrance to a great treasure—or the throne room of a prince. This time he said nothing, but merely stepped back until he stood in the shadows of the dim interior.

Without knowing how or why, Sarah understood that she was being given a choice. Slowly she turned and moved toward the shop. For a moment she paused. Her gaze fell on the metal-and-velvet casket that had charmed her earlier, and still she did not move.

Then she felt the power. It was there, inside the shadowy shop. It did not pull at her, but she knew that it waited for her.

For the second time that evening, she stepped over a threshold.

Chapter Two

The shop smelled of petroleum and old dust. It must have already been full before the wagon had been unloaded, Sarah thought. Now crates and boxes were heaped one on top of the other, tables stood on cabinets, chest was piled upon chest, leaving passageways between the stacks just wide enough to squeeze through.

She felt a rushing in her ears. Was it wind? Was it a discordant chorus of voices? Was it the sound of her own blood racing through her veins? The agitation she had felt earlier was back, her heart pumping so hard that her breath grew uneven. But she moved forward, drawn into the labyrinth of furniture and bric-a-brac like a hapless wanderer being sucked into quicksand.

“All this belonged to the Cornaro family.”

“What?” Sarah jumped at the man’s words, her reflexive movement jarring a pile of furniture, making it wobble dangerously. She felt a flash of terror as intense as if he had said that it had belonged to the devil. “Cornaro?” she whispered. “Did you say Cornaro?”

“Sì. Some distant relation in France ordered everything sold after the last of the Cornaros threw himself from the top floor of his palazzo.” He smiled grimly. “The Cornaro curse. Now it is over”

“Curse?” Sarah felt her mouth go dry.

“For centuries they have had more than their share of violent death—in every generation. They were rich and powerful, but the curse was in their blood and drove them to be vicious to others and to themselves.

“A woman was the cause.” The man’s lugubrious voice grew animated, as if the bloodthirsty tale gave him pleasure. “The curse began long ago when two brothers wanted the same woman and spilled blood over her.”

Two brothers and one woman! Sarah opened her mouth to ask if their names had been Alessio and Ugo. If they had loved a woman named Bianca. But no sound emerged.

No, she thought wildly, it could not be. It was beyond all reason that the dreams that had visited her all her life had a basis in fact, wasn’t it? She felt a flash of pure terror.

And if it was indeed so? Was this why she had been compelled to come to Florence? Was this why she had been led here, to this street, to this shop, at this very hour?

The questions careered through her mind like stampeding horses, making her dizzy. The world around her spun faster and faster until it was only a blur. But in her mind was a perfectly clear image of the lovers whose passionate lives she knew better than her own—perhaps because she had but a ghost of a life herself. Oh, surely they had not been cursed, her heart cried out. Surely they had found happiness together. Surely fate could not have been so cruel to punish them for their love, no matter that it had been guilty and sinful. And if it had punished them, she did not want to know it.

“The beautiful Bianca married Ugo.”

The man’s voice snapped her out of the vertigo as effectively as if he had slapped her.

“But she took Alessio as her lover. Ugo found them together—”

“No!” Sarah raised her hands to block her ears.

“And butchered them with Alessio’s own dagger.”

Too late. The words penetrated her mind and the knowledge settled around her heart like a lead weight.

“Are you all right?” The man bent down to her and peered into her face. “Here, sit drown.”

He shoved a half-open crate that stood on a chest to the side and half helped, half pushed Sarah to sit next to it. “I will get you something to drink.”

“It’s not nec—” she started to say, but he had already disappeared down the passageway toward the front of the shop.

Still stunned, she rubbed the heel of her hand against her chest as if she could ease the weight there. At the same time, her rational mind battled with the realization that the dreams that had accompanied her life had been of people who had lived and breathed, loved and died. And died so horribly. She shuddered.

Her eyes filled, and as the tears spilled down her cheeks, she rocked back and forth and mourned.

Time passed — minutes or hours, she could not tell. When the tears were spent, she leaned, weak and exhausted, against the crate that stood next to her.

Its top was half-pried open, and among the jumble of small objects wrapped in newspapers and rags, a twinkle of color caught her eye and she reached inside the crate. With a feeling that bordered on reverence, she picked up a bellied jar made of cobalt blue Venetian glass, its stopper shaped like an open fan, and held it in the palm of her hand. Who had held it as she was holding it now? Bianca or one of the descendants to whom she had bequeathed the Cornaro curse? What had it contained? Medicine? A cosmetic? A love potion? Poison?

Even as the questions formed in her mind, her own reflection on the dark blue surface dimmed and transformed into the image of another woman, her lovely face framed by a cloud of dark curls as she lifted away the fan-shaped stopper and poured a liquid into a bowl. As the image faded, Sarah could have sworn she smelled the sweet fragrance of jasmine.

Her fingers trembled lightly as she touched the fan of clear blue glass. She tried to remove it, but the years had glued the stopper and the jar together. Curiosity driving her, Sarah plucked a pin from her hat and carefully, with infinite patience, scratched at the stopper until it loosened and she was able to work it out.

She hesitated, remembering the brief image of a moment ago. No, her practical mind protested. It would carry no smell. All this was simply too weird, too fantastic to be true. Resolutely she brought the open jar to her nose and took a deep breath.

When she breathed in the faint scent of jasmine, she cried out softly and her fingers slackened. Horrified, she saw the jar tip over and roll from her hand. Unable to move, she watched helplessly as it fell to the floor and shattered.

“Signorina?”

Her head snapped up as she heard the steps of the owner returning. Oh God, she thought as panic rushed through her. What had she done? She would never be able to pay for such a priceless piece. Her fingers trembling, she tore off her hat and swept the shards into it with the hem of her coat.

She would hide, she thought. Hide until the man was gone, and then she would escape. Escape and pretend this whole evening had been an illusion, a nightmare. Perhaps with time she would come to believe it.

Even as the thoughts tumbled chaotically through her brain, she grabbed the oil lamp and rushed blindly through the passageway toward the back of the shop.

“Signorina.”

Just as she heard him call out again, the passageway widened and she saw a door that stood ajar. Pushing it open, she slipped inside the room. Leaving the door open a crack, she pressed her back against the wall.

The owner called out again. There was a crash, followed by pungent swearing at the extinguished lamp.

Sarah glanced at the offending lamp, which she had placed behind the door, and pressed her hands against her mouth as hysterical laughter threatened to erupt.

She heard a stream of invectives about foreign women who acted like lunatics when they heard an interesting story, and a giggle escaped her.

Then she heard a door slam, a lock grate, and she knew that she was alone.

Counting the minutes, she waited. When she was sure he would not return, she took the lamp and crept back through the passageway.

The door was locked, but she had expected that, she told herself as she suppressed a shiver. Patiently, methodically, she began to search for a spare key.

She found a key and then another and another, but none of them fit the rusty old lock on the door. When she finally capitulated, she almost gave in to the tears that were pricking her eyelids.

As she rose from crouching in front of the door, she caught a glimpse of her dirt-streaked face in an old, obscured mirror. She stiffened her back, as if the grime on her face were a badge of honor. She had done what she could, she thought. Now she would wait until morning.

She was used to dealing with adversity, she reminded herself without bitterness. When you could not change what life meted out, you accepted it and dealt with it as best you could. Was spending one night in a dingy little shop worse than growing up the illegitimate child of a weak, whining woman? Was it worse than being a miserably paid companion to people who thought you were a lower form of life? Was it worse than hiding a soul that was brimming with need and hungry for passion in the body of a spinster?

Her gaze fell on the unusual casket of metal and velvet and her resignation gave way to a flurry of excitement. Approaching it as carefully as she would a sleeping animal, she ran a cautious finger over the ruby-colored velvet. It had once been richly patterned, but the years had thinned the nap of the fabric so that it was almost bald in places.

Because no image rose before her, she bravely tilted up the vaulted lid.

Telling herself that she had no right to be disappointed that the casket was empty, she dipped her hands inside and ran her fingers over the velvet lining, which was of the same wine red color as the decorations on the outside. Her hands began to tingle and she tried to pull them back, but some unseen power held them there.

Alarm rippling through her, she stared down at her thin, chapped hands. The image blurred and then cleared again to hands that were soft and white and scented with precious oil of jasmine. Hands that were plunged into a fabulous profusion of jewels.

A chain of square-cut sapphires was carelessly tossed aside. A collar of rubies and diamonds followed. Nimble, capricious fingers plucked out a long rope of pearls the size of mulberries. Again the image shifted and Sarah saw a figure in a fine white nightgown, the pearls dripping from one hand like oversize drops of water, the woman turned toward a man who stood in the shadows.

The image faded and Sarah found herself staring down at her own hands again. This time there was no resistance when she lifted them and pressed them against her face. She was going mad, she thought, as the memory of a dream that could only be the continuation of what she had just seen played before her closed eyes.

She saw Bianca take Alessio’s hands and lead him from the shadows to the bed with its crimson canopy and curtains. She saw her twist the rope of pearls around his hands until they were effectively manacled by the jewels. She saw the lovers tumble onto the bed.

With a cry she dropped her hands and opened her eyes, unsure of what she would see, where she would find herself. When she realized that she was in the grimy antique shop that was filled to the eaves with the rubble of generations of Cornaros, she was not sure whether to be relieved or terrified.

She would somehow unravel this knot, she assured herself. If she could just sit down for a little while, surely her methodical mind would find a way to order and explain all this. And once that was done, she would deal with it.