A bodyguard even taller than Seabright, and almost as wide, stood nearby teetering on his toes. He was not very obtrusive, handling at least the passive aspects of his job quite well. The dark woman clung to Seabright's arm, smiled brightly, and seemed to attend closely to his every word, meanwhile wistfully wishing that she were somewhere else. Mr. Thorn could tell. He had hopes of soon discovering her name.
"Then you might as well give up, hadn't you?" the young man at Mary Rogers's side was whispering into her ear. His tone was quietly despairing, that of one who knows full well that argument is folly, but feels compelled to argue anyway. "You think he's going to listen to any kind of an appeal now?"
"No." Mary's monosyllable was quietly ominous.
"Then why the hell did we come here? I thought . . ."
At that point every conversation in the room trailed into silence.
Through a curtained doorway at the front of the room, between the two large tables, two armed and uniformed men came into view, rolling a mobile stand between them. The stand was draped with a white cloth, completely covering the upright rectangle that was its cargo. The rectangle was about the size of the top of a card table, somewhat larger than Mr. Thorn had been expecting. Then he remembered the frame. According to the news stories and the sale catalogue, a frame had been added to the painting, probably sometime during the eighteenth century.
With the stand positioned on the dais between the tables, the two armed men stood still, alert, on either side of it. An auctioneer came to join them, placing his pale hand on the white cloth. He let his showman's hand stay there, motionlessly holding the cloth, while in a low voice he made a brief and scrupulously correct announcement.
"Ladies and gentlemen, as most of you know, Verrocchio has signed this piece. But in the time and place in which he worked, such a signature often signified no more than a master's approval of work done by an apprentice. What we can say with absolute certainty is that this painting is from Verrocchio's workshop, and that it is in his mature style. The minimum bid tomorrow night will be two hundred thousand dollars."
With one firm twitch, the showman's hand removed the cloth.
Mr. Thorn forgot even the live and lovely flesh of the two genuinely attractive breathing women in the room. He rose from his folding chair and like a man in a trance stepped forward, closer to the painting. It of course shows Magdalen, not as she came to Christ, but as she must have looked when rising from His feet with sins forgiven. Yes, of course, painted in the mature style of Verrocchio. But by an imitator—though transfiguration would be a better word than imitation for what the creator of this painting had accomplished. How could they all fail to see the truth?
And of course at the same time the face is that of the model who posed for it, that young runaway girl of more than half a thousand years ago. An excellent likeness, if that is what you wish . . .
Incipient tears in the eyes of Mr. Thorn were stopped by harsh cries of alarm. Another sort of liquid, flung from behind, struck him on the shoulder, and scarlet droplets spattered past his ear to mar the cheek and hair of Magdalen.
He turned with a snarl. The girl in unfashionable blue jeans was on her feet, holding in one hand a small plastic bag almost emptied but still drooling red on the expensive carpet. Vindictive triumph ruled her face. Closer at hand, Ellison Seabright had been incarnadined from head to foot, Rodrigo Borgia skinned alive, standing in stunned disbelief. His bodyguard, galvanized too late, came pushing forward in a fury. Men and women in uniform, springing from the walls and woodwork, were all around the triumphant girl, about to seize her. You are under arrest, they cried, and in a moment they would manacle her wrists . . .
Chapter Two
Quite early in the game, long before our long marching column approached Buda, the chains of hand-wrought iron were unlocked and taken from my wrists. At the same time, my ankles were untied, and I was given a better horse to ride. To my thinking all this served as an early confirmation of my own good judgement in deciding to throw myself upon the mercy of King Matthias. Of course with the Turks close at my heels and the remnants of my own outnumbered army fast dissolving, there had been little real choice.
The king, when he accepted my surrender, had been angry with me—mainly as a result of certain false accusations, lying letters planted by my enemies for him to intercept, a whole devious chain of circumstances that I do not mean to go into here. But evidently His Majesty soon realized the truth. I did not have another chance to talk to him during the march to Buda, but his officers must have been given orders to treat me well. When we reached Buda they put me into a cell high up in the fortress, a stone chamber better ventilated and cleaner than many of the free houses of the time.
My food also was good, by the standards of the time and place, and plentiful enough. This was, you understand, more than twelve years before I fell under the treacherous swords of would-be murderers, stopped breathing, and acquired my present idiosyncrasies of diet. And when cold weather arrived I was allowed a fire. Guards took me out each day for exercise in a courtyard. There I sometimes walked under the noses of papal legates—I recognized Nicholas of Modrusa once—ambassadors from here and there, some other important men and curious ladies whom I could not identify. None of these ever spoke to me, but observed silently, from balconies where they usually chose to remain half concealed. Even then, you will understand, my reputation was under construction, by German enemies who employed Goebbelsian thoroughness in their attempted destruction of the truth. Now, for important folk visiting His Majesty at Buda, the in thing to do was evidently to ask to see the monster caged. Well, at the time I enjoyed my walks despite observers, and perhaps I should now think more kindly of them. Some were doubtless sympathetic to my cause, and they may have expressed their feelings to Matthias. Still, I spent a year in that first cell.
From time to time I was given brief audience by the king, who limited himself for the most part to looking at me keenly and inquiring how I was. Matthias was then only twenty years of age, but had already spent four years on the throne of Hungary. He had come to power by what amounted to popular acclamation; and time had already begun to vindicate the confidence thus shown him by his people.
At the end of a year I was suddenly moved about fifty kilometers up the Danube to Visegrad Palace, where Matthias was currently spending a good deal of his time. A good deal of money, also, which he extracted mercilessly from the wealthy landowners of his realm, and not all of it was going to feed and equip his formidable army. Scholars and artists from across Europe were beginning to assemble there at his invitation. Already they had started to put together the magnificent library that would be known as the Corvina, and only a few years later the palace would house the first printing press in all that region of Europe . . . but I am beginning to stray from my story.