Her dress, on that day, was of a most noble colour, a subdued and goodly crimson… At that moment, I say most truly that the spirit of life, which hath its dwelling in the secretest chamber of the heart, began to tremble so violently that the least pulses of my body shook.
Yes, Malone thought.
2
Two nights later, Sienna still hadn’t returned.
Malone lay tensely on his bed, listening to the sounds of guards patrolling in the darkness beyond his window. The intervening slow passage of time had been agonizing, but it had given him a chance to plan.
Rosetti’s translation of Dante lay open before him.
The same wonderful lady appeared to me dressed all in pure white… Because it was the first time that any words from her reached mine ears, I came into such sweetness that I parted thence as one intoxicated.
Sweat beaded his brow. He went into the bathroom, rinsed his face with cold water, then shut off the lights in his room and went over to the window across from his bed, watching the shadows and floodlights on the gardens and paths.
A glance at his watch showed that the time was almost midnight. In a few moments, a guard would appear on the right and walk along a white-pebbled path in the middle, his boots making crunching sounds. Malone shifted next to the window, where not even his shadow would be seen. He waited.
There. The sound of boot steps preceding him, the guard came into view. Malone nodded. Ten minutes later, another guard would appear, this one on the left. Five minutes after that, a third guard would become visible from beyond the changing rooms at the swimming pool, heading toward the chopper pads. The schedule hadn’t varied in the weeks since Malone had noted it.
He picked up the book and left his room. The dimly lit corridor was deserted. His footsteps made no sound on the runner that covered the floor. He reached the top of the curving staircase, started down, and heard boot steps on the marble floor below as a guard emerged from a room on the right, watching him descend.
“Couldn’t sleep.” Malone showed the guard the book. “I came to get another.”
The guard looked puzzled by the notion of finishing one book and wanting to read more.
Malone didn’t linger to talk about it. He went along the corridor on the left and opened the library door. In the darkness that faced him, the room had a smothering staleness that reminded him of the funeral parlor in which his grandfather’s body had lain. The only thing missing was the cloying scent of too many flowers.
Stop thinking that way, Malone warned himself.
He flicked a switch on his left, blinked from the glare of the overhead light, and closed the door behind him. The books were arranged not only by author but in categories: fiction, nonfiction, and reference, the latter on the right.
As Malone headed in that direction, he heard the door open behind him. Turning, he saw the guard. With a nod, Malone resumed his search. The encyclopedia was easily located. Britannica. He didn’t know anything about rare books, but he did know about Bellasar’s tastes, and he would have bet anything that this particular edition – 1911, the copyright page on the volume he selected showed – was the classic version preferred by collectors.
The guard kept watching. Malone nodded to him again, but this time with a slight impatience, as if saying, Fine, you’ve made your point. You’ve been a good watchdog. Now get on with your rounds and let me read in peace. The guard’s puzzled gaze wavered. After he stepped back into the corridor, his steps receding along the marble floor, Malone went over and shut the door, being sure that the latch made a noise to let the guard know he didn’t want to be disturbed again.
He carried the volume he had chosen – for subjects that began with R – to an easy chair, and as he turned the heavy book’s brittle pages, smelling its must, he tried to stifle his apprehension. Everything’s going to be okay, he assured himself. Just keep following the plan.
He found the article he wanted.
“Rossetti, Dante Gabrieclass="underline" English painter and poet, a founder of the Pre-Raphaelite movement, born in 1828, died in 1882.” Stop thinking about death! he told himself.
Rossetti’s original first names had been Gabriel Charles Dante, but his obsession with the Italian poet from the Middle Ages had prompted him to insist on being called Dante. The obsession had taken another form when he identified his beautiful wife, Elizabeth, with Dante’s Beatrice and dedicated himself to a passionate translation of Dante’s devotion to that woman, in effect describing the love he himself felt for Elizabeth. After Elizabeth’s death early in their marriage, Rossetti had buried the manuscripts of all his poems with her and had painted a symbolic portrait of his idealized love for her, calling it Beata Beatrix – Blessed Beatrice.
Again, the subject was death. Struggling to distract himself, Malone found significance in the parallel he shared with Rossetti – they were both painters, and their lives had been changed because of a woman each had fallen in love with while doing a portrait of her.
Love. For the first time, Malone realized that he had consciously used the word in connection with what he was feeling.
3
A half hour later, when the guard again looked in, Malone pretended to be asleep in the chair, his eyes closed, his head drooping, the encyclopedia open on his lap. This time, the guard shut the door when he went away. Immediately, Malone stood, turned off the lights, and went over to a casement window. Seeing no one outside, he opened the window, eased down to the murky ground, shut the window behind him, and sank behind a shrub. If the guard returned to the library, he would decide that Malone had wakened and gone back to his room.
Staying low, Malone assessed the spotlights in the darkness. After assuring himself that no one was in this area, he crossed a path, reached shrubs, and crept behind them in the direction of the Cloister, its bell tower silhouetted against the starry sky. Moving cautiously, working to blend with shadows, he took a half hour to cover a distance that would normally have been a five-minute stroll.
His palms sweated. Having been away from the military for a decade, he had to work to shut down his emotions. His heart pounded. His lungs couldn’t seem to get enough air. Leaving the cover of a fountain and reaching a clump of sculpted evergreen shrubs, he sank to the ground and stared at the arched windows of the Cloister. Although most were in darkness, it puzzled him that all of the basement windows were brightly lit. As he debated whether to risk crawling closer, he was startled by an outside door that opened, revealing a man’s shadow against an interior light. A guard with a rifle stepped out, closed the door, stared up at the starry sky, and lit a cigarette. Malone silently gave thanks that he had hesitated to crawl toward the basement windows.
No problem. I’ll just wait until he goes back inside or moves on. But with Bellasar and Potter away, the guard wasn’t in a hurry. Indeed, after finally finishing the cigarette, then stubbing it out with his boot, the guard continued to remain where he was. Only when the door opened and another man came out, this one wearing a knee-length white coat, did the guard assume a professional stance, as if he’d been standing at attention, watching the door.
The second man, tall, with dark hair, blocky features, and a husky build, wasn’t anyone Malone had seen before. With help from the hallway light spilling from the open door, Malone studied him, trying to memorize his broad lips, thick eyebrows, and square face. There was little time. The white-coated man pointed toward the crushed cigarette at the guard’s feet and said something curt, with the immediate result that the guard came to greater attention. A further disapproving remark caused the guard to follow the man back into the building. The door banged shut, blocking the interior light. But there was still ample illumination from the security lights in the area, and Malone took a long, careful time to watch for other guards before he reconsidered approaching the basement windows.