Chapter Thirty-Eight
Florence seems frozen in time. The narrow streets away from the city center are obscure; the old buildings squeezing them hold shadows and secrets of the past. Like living in history.
I’m on the edge of my seat. I haven’t relaxed since leaving the hotel earlier. Marek and I made sure we were at the Louvre right when it opened. We went there before the airport to throw off anyone following us. After entering through the pyramid entrance, we immediately exited by way of the Metro and went straight to the airport.
The bus we got on nearby the Florence airport stops a building away from the Santissima Annunziata Basilica. Our driver tells us it’s considered the mother church of the Servite Order. We nod politely as if we understand what that means and exit.
Its facade is in the same Renaissance style of the buildings surrounding it. Marek holds the wooden door open, and I enter. He comes in behind me. The chapel is decorated in a heavy and dark baroque style with an abundance of marble and gilding adorning its walls.
We ask a man polishing the benches where we can find the crypt of Francesco del Giocondo, and he graciously takes us to it. The tomb is beneath a floor stone. A design of swirly lines, fleur de lis, stars, flowers, and what look like butterflies are etched into the sandstone.
“It’s not here,” Marek says assuredly.
A woman in her late thirties or early forties, blonde and wearing a black dress and suit jacket, sits in one of the pews, watching us. I grip the strap of my purse. Not to keep it from falling but because I’m anxious.
I look at the stone but keep darting glances at the woman. “How do you know this isn’t it?”
“My grandfather wouldn’t disturb a chapel. Also, he’d have a difficult time putting it in that crypt. He’d worry I couldn’t get it out.”
“Okay, so we go to the convent.” I turn to leave, and the woman in the pew is gone.
It’s a ten-minute walk through the tight streets. There are so many motorcycles and Vespas lining the roads it looks like a dealership. The Convent of Saint Ursula’s windows are bricked off, the walls gray and stained with graffiti. It’s a shell of what it must’ve been back in Lisa Gherardini’s lifetime. The building almost takes up the entire block.
“Great,” I say, glancing up the three-story building. “How are we getting in there?”
Marek backs up as if it’ll help him see over the top of the building. The street is so narrow it wouldn’t fit three Vespas lined up tire to tire. “There has to be some way.”
“An illegal way.”
He lifts a shoulder. “We’ve faced worse.”
“That’s encouraging,” I say.
Acting like tourists, we roam the streets surrounding the convent. By the looks we’re getting, I think they don’t get many visitors.
I slip my arm around his and lean close. “I don’t like this. Where are we?”
“We’ll be fine,” he reassures me.
I see it then, above one of the grates at the bottom of the building, written like the other graffiti: Keram Etnoc. I point at it. “That’s your name backward.”
A guy gets on a Vespa and drives down the alley. When it’s clear, Marek squats and sticks his fingers through the grate. “Keep a lookout,” he says.
He tugs and tugs on it, and the bottom moves slightly. Another pull, metal scraping against concrete until it’s up. “Wait here.”
“Be careful.”
Dropping to his belly, he slides inside. “Come on,” he calls.
I shove my purse in and follow it, inhaling dirt, scraping skin because my shirt rises a little as I go through. My eyes water from the dust floating around us. Marek pulls the grate back into place. The convent looks to be under construction.
“Do you think this was going on when your grandfather hid the clue?” I slip the strap of my purse over my head and wear it across my body.
“Yeah,” he says, his steps careful as if the ground’s going to cave under his feet. “I’ve seen a picture of this before. It was a selfie of my grandfather in front of dug-up graves. He texted it to me with others from his and my grandma’s Europe trip. Come on, let’s find the crypt and get out of here.”
Scaffolds cling to the walls encircling a courtyard with piles of construction materials. There’s a large octagon-shaped hole in the middle the size of the Trevi Fountain. Not sure what it was used for, but I can see the basement down below. Moving along the perimeter of the courtyard, I can almost see what it looked like all those years ago when Mona Lisa was here.
In Italian, monna is a shortened version of madonna, which means lady. Which means Mona Lisa would be Lady Lisa. Another fun fact I learned from the tour guide.
Seeing this crumbling building reminds me how quickly a place, a person, love can fade away with time. Marek and I both lost someone special in our lives. Their deaths brought us together.
It’s as if Marek has a sensor connected to my moods. His hand covers mine, fingers slipping between fingers, assuring me he’s here. He keeps hold as we pass every arched doorway and window until we come to an excavation site. Squares, or more like graves, the size that could fit a body, are carved into the ground. Archaeologists’ box grids.
“I wonder where he’d hide it.”
It’s not a question, I was just thinking out loud, but he answers, “I don’t know. Has to be here. I feel it.”
I kneel down by the excavation.
“Not there.” He stops me. “It’d be somewhere permanent. Less likely to be disturbed.”
I tilt my face toward the ceiling. “What about the beams?”
Marek comes up behind me, wraps his arms around me, and looks over my shoulder. “Too high. He was alone. He’d need help to get up there.”
“Okay, there’s not much to search, then.”
He untangles his arms from me. “It’d be in plain sight. You’d be too busy looking in all the nooks and crannies to see it.”
I laugh. “Nooks and crannies?”
“My gramps’s words, not mine.”
In plain sight is proving to be challenging to find. By the position of the sun and where the buildings are casting their shadows, it’s about one in the afternoon.
I go in the opposite direction as Marek.
“Plain sight.” I swing my arms, my purse bouncing against my side.
“Maybe I was wrong,” Marek says. “I’m going to search the courtyard. You look here.”
“Okay.”
It’s about twenty minutes into my search, and I want to give up. The walls and floors are so barren there’s no way Adam could hide the clue here. As I’m turning to leave, I notice something different in the bricked in window beside me.
The mortar around the bottom row looks newer than the others above it.
Just like at the Roman Forum.
I dart for the courtyard to get Marek. Several shadows slither past, and I stumble to a stop. My eyes follow their path.
Marek. They’re after him!
I sprint, hitting the ground hard. The shadows screech. It’s that terrible sound like metal scratching against metal. Marek scans the courtyard for the noise.
“Run, Marek!”
He spots me a second too late, and the shadows drag him down.