A Time to Love (The Time Travel Journals of Sahara Aldridge Book 3) by Tracy Higley

Author:Tracy Higley [Higley, Tracy]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Stonewater Books
Published: 2021-09-14T22:00:00+00:00

Chapter Seventeen

September 18, 1737

Rome, Italy

Two hours and two kilometers later, Renae followed Alex and Persia past the Campo de’ Fiori, where she and Alex witnessed Caesar’s assassination so many years ago. They crossed the Tiber here, then continued northward.

They entered the Vatican area like every tourist would for centuries: westward across the Via della Conciliazone, with the Egyptian obelisk brought by Caligula pointing the way toward the greenish dome of St. Peter’s Basilica. It would be another two hundred years before the area would be declared a sovereign city-state, outside the purview of Italy’s government. The pope would sign that agreement with Benito Mussolini in 1929, a few years into Sahara’s future.

How strange, that I can see into my daughter’s future and yet cannot reach her.

A quick trip to the run-down kiosk where tickets to the Vatican Museum were sold, and then they started off across St. Peter’s Square to the right, to enter behind the long, rectangular Sistine Chapel.

“I’m going to meet him, then? Truly?” Persia’s eyes glowed as they walked through the Picture Gallery, a hall lined floor to ceiling, and indeed even the ceiling, with gilded frames of Renaissance art.

Alexander shrugged. “If he’s there, Persia. We can’t be certain—”

“We will choose the right day, then. A day we know.”

Renae followed silently, her heart pounding in her throat. How could these two be so cavalier? Whether Persia stumbled into meeting Michaelangelo in the sixteenth century could not be more inconsequential. They were about to let their young daughter travel to another time, alone.

Minutes later, they reached the famed Sistine Chapel, still sacredly quiet at this hour of the morning. Or perhaps the hallowed paintings left visitors awed into silence at any hour, in any century.

Despite her travels through the Mediterranean world, it was Renae’s first visit to the Chapel, and she found it impossible to know where first to train her eyes. A dizzying swarm of figures covered every inch of the walls and ceiling—gossamer angels and horned demons, saints being escorted to heaven and the damned dragged to hell. Enough nudity to make anyone blush, and stories that would take hours, perhaps years, to fully understand.

At her side, Persia’s tiny gasp echoed the expansion of her own chest, as though the art poured something of life into them both. A swell of unnamed emotion, senseless yet inevitable, rose within her, crested, and subsided, leaving her spent.

Michaelangelo’s frescoes on the altar wall and ceiling were of course the most famous. Renae’s eye drifted to the story splayed across the nine panels of the ceiling, to the Creation of Adam, with its iconic finger of God reaching out to connect with the finger of Adam, animating him to life. Then down to the Altar Wall, to the horrific scenes of The Last Judgment, inspired by Dante’s depiction of hell.

“It’s too much,” Persia whispered.

Yes, yes it was. How could one ever absorb it all in one visit?

But minutes later, after a quick read-through of a plaque mounted nearby, their whispered plan had nothing to do with the historic artwork, and everything to do with their future.

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