Robert Masello - The Medusa Amulet

“What have you done?” he said, his expression a complex mixture of fear, anger, and concern. “What did you do?”

She looked around, but the mirror, the garland, and the iron box were gone.

Benvenuto helped her to her feet, throwing a sheet around her naked shoulders, and she stumbled, as if she had been at sea for weeks, across the studio. There was a pewter basin and pitcher on the bureau by the bed, and she filled the bowl with water. Her skin felt as if it had been scoured with sand. But when she bent down to throw the cold water on her face and saw her reflection, the breath caught in her throat. Her lush black hair, one of her most prized assets, had turned as white as snow-as white as if the Medusa herself had terrified her beyond imagining.

She whipped around to look at Benvenuto, praying for an explanation. “What have I done?” she exclaimed. “What have you done?”

But he simply stood there, silent.

“Is this one of your silly pranks?” she demanded. “Because if it is, I don’t think it’s very funny.”

But shaking his head, he came to her and put one of his rough hands to her cheek. “If only it were, il mio gatto… if only it were.”

David had barely hung his coat on the back of his office door before his phone rang with a call from Dr. Armbruster.

“Guess what we received by courier this morning?”

She was not normally this playful, and it took David a second to say he had no clue.

“A generous check for our library restoration fund from Ambassador Schillinger and his wife. It seems he was very impressed by your lecture last week.”

“That’s great,” David said, wondering how this might affect his chances of clinching that spot as the new Director of Acquisitions.

“And I have some other good news, too.”

At last.

“Another of the audience members would like to come in today and meet with you in person.”

As quickly as his hopes had been raised, they plummeted again. He prayed it wasn’t just some frustrated academic who wanted to debate Dante’s indebtedness to Ovid.

“Who is it?”

“Her name is Kathryn Van Owen.”

Anyone who lived in Chicago knew the Van Owen name. At one point, the family had owned much of the Loop. And Kathryn, the recently widowed wife of Randolph, was a prominent, if rather reticent, figure in local society.

“Up until now,” Dr. Armbruster continued, “she had asked to remain anonymous, but as you may have figured out already, she was the donor of the Florentine Dante.”

For some reason, David instantly knew that she was also the Lady in Black-the one who had come in late, wearing the veil.

“She’s arriving here this afternoon, with her lawyer. Apparently, she’s bringing along something else for your opinion. I don’t need to tell you that it, too, could wind up in our collections.”

“Do you want me to prepare anything in advance?”

“I can’t think what it would be. Are you wearing a decent shirt?”

“Yes,” he said, quickly looking down to check. “Do you have any idea what she’s planning to give us this time?”

David could almost hear her shrug. “Her late husband’s family is as rich as Croesus-though you probably know that already-but frankly, he never showed much interest in culture or the arts. He built that car museum in Elk Grove, but I think it’s really Mrs. Van Owen herself who’s donating these things, from her own collection. And she’s what you would call,” she said, plainly pausing to find a neutral term, “an unusual woman. You’ll see what I mean when you meet her. Be in the conference room at a quarter of three.”

Hanging up, David ran a hand around his jawline-he should have put a new blade in his razor that morning-and reopened the Dante files on his computer, checking online for any other libraries or archives that might have something that shed some further light on it. He thought it would be cool, when meeting Mrs. Van Owen for the first time, if he had something new to share with her about the book, something he hadn’t already discovered and mentioned at the public unveiling. But he also hoped that she could tell him something more about its origins than he already knew. The text, by and large, was the standard, written in the Italian vulgate. Up until the early 1300s, when the Comedy was composed, Latin was the only choice for such an epic work, but Dante had changed all that. By writing his poem in the spoken language of his day, and in his inimitable terza rima stanzas, he had thrown down the gauntlet, making a clear break with the verse of the ancient Greeks and Romans and conferring a legitimacy upon the demotic tongue used by his own contemporaries.

But what really intrigued David about this edition, of which he could find no other record, were its illustrations. There was a life and a vigor to them that was unparalleled. They were unlike any other illustrations he had seen, in countless other printings, in a dozen different languages.

At two thirty-and having turned up nothing new and earthshaking-he took his emergency tie and sport jacket off the back of his office door and went down to the men’s room to put them on. As he adjusted the knot of his tie, he noticed that his hair, thick and brown and starting to curl up over his collar, could definitely have used a trim. He did his best to get it under control, then headed off to the conference room for his meeting with the mysterious Mrs. Van Owen.

Dr. Armbruster was supervising the setting out of a tea service. The room was wainscoted and warmly lighted, the back wall dominated by an oil portrait of Mr. Walter Loomis Newberry, its founder, in a black suit coat and hanging silver watch fob. Dr. Armbruster glanced at David-he felt like he was being inspected for flaws-and said, “Be appreciative, by all means, but don’t enter into any negotiations or comment in any way on the terms of her gift. We leave that to our own lawyers.”

“Got it.”

At three o’clock on the button, Mrs. Van Owen and a man she introduced as her attorney, Eugene Hudgins, were ushered into the room by the receptionist. The lawyer, a stolid guy with a red complexion, took a seat at the head of the table, as if so accustomed to it that no one would challenge him, and Mrs. Van Owen sat to his right. Dr. Armbruster took a seat on the other side, next to David. The receptionist took care of pouring out the tea, and David took those few minutes to study their benefactor.

Today, she had no veil on, and her face was the most captivating David had ever seen. Her skin was a creamy white, so flawless and unlined it was almost impossible to assign any particular age to it. Was she younger than he’d been led to believe, or was this the miracle of that Botox stuff he had heard about? He knew she had recently lost a husband-the news of his crash had been carried in all the papers-but David could see no sign of grief. Her hair was jet-black, and sleekly gathered into a tight chignon. She had a regal and vaguely foreign look about her… but not so much foreign to this place as to this era. A look that was further accentuated by her most striking feature of all-her eyes.

They were a violet blue. David had never seen eyes of such a color. Maybe that was why she’d worn the veil the day before. Maybe she took advantage of every occasion she could, even if it was to wear mourning attire, that allowed her to keep people from staring. When David found that he was doing just that, he took off his wire rims and pretended to be cleaning them.

Hudgins had opened a bulging valise and taken out a bulky sealed envelope, along with a legal-sized binder imprinted in big block letters with the name of his law firm, HUDGINS amp; DUNBAR, LLC.

“That was a very interesting talk you gave,” Mrs. Van Owen said, and when David looked up, she seemed to be amused by something. “I learned a great deal about Dante.” There was a slight smile on her lips, but her words, like her features, carried a distant air. She had a faint trace of an accent, but even David, who was very good at placing them, wasn’t sure where this one came from. Definitely European, that much he knew, but it could have been French, or Italian, or even Spanish in origin.