There was no reason not to throw the photograph away; there was nothing to identify the person shown and it could never have illuminated any dark corners of history. Only Barneuve himself could have said who it was, and even the careful observer could discover little from the image alone. It was square, in black and white but faded into those sepia tones that creep over old photographs with the passage of time. The subject, a woman of about twenty, leans against the rail of a ship in a conventional holiday-cruise pose, the sort of snapshot that must have been taken tens of thousands of times. Had the photographer moved a little to the left, the name of the ship might have been known, for there was a fraction of a life buoy to be seen on the rail. Beyond, in the background, was a port and what seemed to be a minaret—enough evidence to suggest the eastern Mediterranean.
Of the woman, still less could have been said. She was dressed in a light cotton dress, down to the mid-calf, a sun hat on her head, but didn’t seem to be in a holiday mood. She had her own beauty, but it was not a conventional appeal. It was the intensity of her expression, staring determinedly and unflinchingly at the camera, which caught the eye. She stood like someone issuing a challenge. The more fanciful—filling in the gaps with imagination when firm conclusions cannot be reached—might have detected an impatience. Look, she is thinking, why are we wasting time here when there are so many fascinating things to be seen and done on the shore?
More, she was alone. On a crowded ship, brimful of people, she stood alone, waiting. Perhaps she had difficulty making friends? Maybe she needed none? She had the expression of someone searching constantly, yet never finding it. She looked, indeed, just a little cautious, but determined that no one should suspect her weakness.
Nothing else could be gleaned from the photograph, ripped out of its context in such a brutal way, the book that contained it upturned and shaken, so that it fluttered down onto the old worn carpet where it rested until swept up with all the other debris. In this way, the vital connection was lost, for before Barneuve’s relation so rudely disturbed it, the photograph had rested in a small book on Provençal church decoration, tucked up on the page that contained a reproduction of what Julien had come to believe was a portrait of Olivier de Noyen’s true, unknown love.
Anyone who chanced to see both together—had they taken the trouble to look, if they knew both faces so well they were engraved in the mind as they were in Julien Barneuve’s—would have had to agree that the resemblance was extraordinary.
ONCE HE HAD turned away—in his heart, if not yet openly—from the career of a lawyer, Olivier de Noyen for many years assumed that he would become a priest, despite his evident lack of capacity for the life, and accommodated the idea in his mind so completely and with so little thought that he never truly gave it up. It would have been more surprising if this notion had not occurred to him. He was, after all, surrounded by priests, living in a clerical household, knowing mainly priests or others destined for the church in one form or another. The priesthood was the most certain route of patronage as well—stay within the fold and he could count on the support of Ceccani and others within his circle who would willingly advance a personable, if wayward, young man of intelligence who would bring credit on them in return. And Olivier would have risen high indeed—Ceccani held immense resources in his gift. Even though Olivier could scarcely expect great advancement, for the necessary instincts of a politician were as strange to him as they were fundamental to his master—he would undoubtedly have come to a position of some power within the curia, and servants are often more influential than the masters they serve.
A life of plenty, power, and obscurity. How many names of papal bureaucrats are known to us today? How many engage the attentions of a Julien Barneuve? The Romans (before they became Christian, and probably thereafter as well) held Renown to be a god, and sought out her harsh attentions, even though her blessing might be bought at the price of death and disgrace. Some part of Olivier was attracted to that same altar in a way a man like Julien could never understand. And if (as the Romans also held, although they contradicted themselves often on this point) immortality is conferred by the continuous memory others hold of us when we are dead, then Olivier was the only one to win everlasting life.
Not that he ever thought all this through, weighed the pros and cons of the various options open to him, then made up his mind. Had he proceeded in this way—had he been more reasonable—a priest he would have become, for he did not know he sought fame nor did he ever understand why he sought it.
Rather, his life developed on the surface in the way necessary to indulge his passion for the old learning. Once his father had left him and his tears had dried up, the first thing he did was to go to his master’s scriptorium, take pen and ink and sand, and copy out the now destroyed manuscript. Word for word, with no errors. He had read it so often—and indeed had the gift of phenomenal memory, so that a text, once read, stayed with him forever—that it was not even a difficult task. And then he had a small inspiration. The hatred of his father, which he did not allow himself to feel—such things were unnatural and could not be admitted—he transformed instead into admiration and regard for Ceccani. And to express this admiration, he decided to make his patron a gift.
It was, in its way, his first publication, the nearest that could be reached in the days before the printing press. In his best, still-adolescent hand, he copied out the secret treasure that he had held to himself for so long and, to present it in an appropriate fashion, added a separate sheet of paper on which he wrote an epistle dedicatory praising the cultivation of the recipient, describing the gift as best he could, and expressing how the joy of bringing both together was reward enough for someone who admired Ceccani as much as he reverenced Cicero.
And he wrote it in verse, although he had not intended to when he began. But the first two lines came out as natural hexameters, and once Olivier noticed this, he grasped that he could lay on another level of compliment, by repeating a classical form for a man learned enough to appreciate the style.
By later standards—his own, and that of the intellectual world he helped bring back to life—it was a pitiable performance, gauche and inelegant, and this was no doubt the reason he refused to let it be reproduced later. But there was also a freshness to his efforts, a touch of spring in his words. The imagery, the grammatical constructions, were no doubt unsophisticated, but they also lacked the arch mannerism, the self-referential cleverness of a later and earlier period. What he wrote instead was a poem of simplicity and directness, a fresh morning after a long cold winter, with a faint aroma of rosemary and lavender in the air suggesting the warmth to come.
It was also a remarkable performance by a boy of sixteen, and Ceccani’s greatest talent as prelate and politician was to spot ability and harness it to his own purposes. Olivier was too shy to present his gift in public, at dinner in the hall or on some other occasion when others might see and perhaps also witness his master’s scorn should his effort not be well received. Indeed, he carried the roll of paper in his tunic—neatly tied with a piece of red ribbon he had stolen from the seamstress, and sealed with wax bearing an imprint from a seal he had fashioned himself from a small piece of wood—for several days, always hesitating whenever an opportune moment presented itself.
Nor could he draw strength and encouragement from any of his fellows, for although Ceccani had some twelve boys in his household, the rivalry between them was too great. All knew that patronage and advancement would come to only a few lucky ones, and the eldest, furthest up the pecking order, were more concerned to portray their juniors in a bad light to prevent them becoming rivals. Olivier knew instinctively that no one must know of his gift before it was delivered; it would be either stolen or ruined if anyone so much as suspected its existence. Few secret letters of state, fewer treaties of alliance between popes or emperors or kings were of such importance in Christendom as his few sheets of paper in the world of the boys’ dormitory, for they had the power to turn all upside down, to break alliances, shift the balance of power, exile some, and shower others with gold.