Popes and Phantoms by John Whitbourn

Author:John Whitbourn [WHITBOURN, JOHN]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Science Fiction
ISBN: 9781473200906
Publisher: Orion Publishing Group
Published: 2015-12-30T23:00:00+00:00

‘They ask me to investigate something,’ said Admiral Slovo, ‘to “sort it out”, and then cavil at my methods!’

‘I agree,’ sympathized his fellow countryman. ‘You never know where you are with the English. Mostly they’re as rough as a Turk’s lust and then suddenly they’ve gone all mushy on you.’

‘Precisely,’ said Slovo, warming to this young man and more glad than he could, of course, decently show, to run into such a compatriot. ‘And their sense of humour …!’

‘Nothing but toilets,’ nodded the young man. ‘Yes, I’ve run into that – and even that would amuse them – run, do you see?’

Admiral Slovo had come to Westminster Abbey with the intention of hearing mass and offering up a prayer for his speedy delivery home. At the door, however, his eye had been caught by a lithe figure with a sketch-book and charcoal-stick, whose evident grace and taste in dress proclaimed him a non-native. As it turned out he was a Florentine, but the Admiral could forgive him that for the sake of civilized conversation – and a possible pick-up.

‘Your sketch shows no small talent,’ said Slovo, ‘Master …?’

‘Torrigiano – Pietro Torrigiano. And so it should after all my schooling.’

Admiral Slovo studied the artist from head to foot but received no satisfactory answers to the silent questions he posed. ‘Your style betokens tuition,’ he agreed, ‘but the residual stigmata of humble origin suggest insufficient funds for such luxuries.’

Torrigiano smiled wryly. ‘What I do not owe to God, I owe to the Medicis,’ he conceded, and at the second half of his tribute spat heartily on to a proximate headstone. A passing chantry-priest looked blackly at them but thought better of any other protest. Foreigners were best left to their own damnation.

‘Duke Lorenzo, dubbed “The Magnificent”,’ continued Torrigiano as he sketched furiously, ‘rescued me from my peasant destiny and placed me in his sculpture school. We were taught by Bertoldo, you know, and he was taught by Donatello!’

‘Most impressive,’ commented Slovo (who was actually self-trained to indifference in all matters artistic).

‘It was also Lorenzo who expelled me from both school and Florence and into my present penurious exile. I altered another pupil’s face; we couldn’t both remain, so Lorenzo made a decision as to who showed most potential and …’6

‘That is the way of Princes,’ said Slovo, trying and failing to offer consolation. ‘Difficult choices.’

‘Difficult to live with possibly,’ answered Torrigiano with a mite less respect and tact than he should have shown to an elder and better; the very cockiness that would ensure his death, many years on, in the prisons of the Inquisition in Spain. ‘Mind you, I have made a life of sorts here in this land. The odd commission does arise.’

‘None odder than this, I suspect,’ said Admiral Slovo. ‘Draw me now against the background of the Abbey – or whatever it may be called at present. Use all speed whilst the effect lasts.’

Slovo had been starting to lose interest in his young find and thus looking about, thinking of Kings and Crowns, discovered that the world had changed whilst they talked.

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