They were, he guessed, reproductions of paintings by the many artists whose work graced the city’s buildings; and that had been most of the greatest artists of the Renaissance, that time in human history when art and science had not so much progressed or flourished as exploded in the minds of so many men of brilliance. It had been an era when the shackles of a corrupt and authoritarian church had begun to be loosened, yet so much of the art of the era had been sacred, and used to decorate many of the churches and cathedrals of Europe’s great cities.

By sheer coincidence, the first painting he saw on its, lightly fluttering flag was Leonardo’s John the Baptist. Opposite it, across the doorways, was a greatly smoothed and polished reproduction of another of the artist’s surviving works.

“The Last Supper,” Serrin said. “Christ and his disciples. I don’t think the original looks quite as clear that.”

Kristen looked at it curiously, stepping closer to examine it.

“I can’t see Judas,” she said.

“I’m not sure where he is. I can’t even remember if he was there or not,” Serrin said. “I didn’t pay enough attention in Sunday school.”

“He’s got to be there, but the arm is wrong,” she said, pointing to the left of the picture.

“What?” he asked, stepping forward himself to see what she was talking about.

“Look. There. Someone is holding a knife at that man’s stomach, but you can only see the arm. Whoever the arm belongs to you can’t see. And he isn’t pointing it at Jesus,” she added, a little confused. “And why are they all accusing him? Look at their hands.”

He squinted, unsure, but with a strange sense of disquiet and anxiety. Something was terribly wrong with this painting.

“Look, they’re making daggers with their hands. Look, he is,” she said urgently, pointing to the left of the painting. “His hand is a flat dagger across that woman’s throat. That’s it! Those two on the left hate her, not him,” she said, urgently now. “Serrin, what is this? Look at his face, that man with the pointy gray beard, his hand is cutting her throat, and she is so sad, look at her. Who is she? Is that Mary?”

“I think so,” he said uncertainly.

“But she’s too young.” Kristen protested. “That can’t be his mother And look, it’s her again. The Mona Lisa. I’m sure it is. It’s her eyes, even though they’re closed.”

Senin was struck by half a dozen insights in the same instant, and he felt horribly cold and even a little sick.

“It isn’t his mother, it’s Mary Magdalene,” he told her, remembering what he’d read in the book he’d bought. “And I hadn’t seen it, but I think you’re right. The book only says that Leonardo painted himself as one of the disciples. Here,” and he pointed to the other side of the painting, one from the right. “That’s him. Talking to the bald man, there at the end.”

“And why is the young man at his side turned completely away from Jesus?”

“That I don’t know,” Serrin muttered, but his eyes returned involuntarily to the woman in the picture. For a moment he realized that the apparently central figure of the painting, the open-handed Christ staring slightly vacantly at the viewer, almost as if he was shrugging his shoulders, was not what this painting was really about. His eyes were drawn to the Magdalene and the accusing hands of hatred directed at her by the disciples around her.

It is she who suffers, he realized. This man painted a blasphemy.

“I want to read your book,” she said suddenly.

“Hmmmm? What? What book?”

“The book on the man who painted this. And the Mona Lisa, and the other things you look at,” she said simply.

“That might not be a bad idea,” he said. If not for Kristen, he surely wouldn’t have noticed any of the strange things about the painting, He made a mental note to come back after they’d toured the square a bit so he could scrutinize every last detail of every painting and etching.

“But now I want to go on one of the boats,” she announced brightly.

“Gondolas” he corrected her.

“I know,” she said testily. “I want to go on one. Now. Come on!”

He laughed and hugged her, then let himself be pulled along. In some people, such a demand would have been childish petulance, but with her it was a genuinely childlike enthusiasm and desire to learn and experience what seventeen years on the streets of Cape Town had given her no inkling of.

“Yeah, let’s do it,” he said, and they walked through the piazzetta to the Molo San Marco and down to the Giardinetti, where they found a host of men only too ready to take their money and promise to sing into the bargain.

It’s a tourist thing, he grinned to himself, but what the hell? There actually are stars in the sky tonight, we can drink wine, and the canals really don’t seem to stink as Michael said they would. The guy propelling this thing has seen untold lovers clamber aboard his boat and he’s probably given them all pretty much the same patter about how beautiful the lady is and how her face shines in the light of his lantern-after all, he’s an Italian-and I still don’t care.

Leaving the disquiet of the painting behind him, Serrin grinned broadly, paid the man a good tip, whispered in his ear and got a broad smile in return, then settled down among the cushions of the narrow boat for the ride.

“What did you say to him?” she asked, suspicious.

“That you were an African princess and I bad eloped with you,” he whispered into her ear. She was about to hit him when he put up a hand in self-defending protest.

“It’s true! We did elope-after a fashion. We had to smuggle you out of the country,” he pointed out, She drew back from her playful slap.

“And you are a princess to me,” he said with an absolutely straight face.

Then she slapped him anyway.

24

Kristen was so full of the delights of it all at breakfast the next morning that even Streak didn’t have the heart to puncture her mood with something sarcastic, The lanterns and cafes of the night had enchanted her, and the eerie, smooth passage of the gondola across the waters had seemed like gliding across silk. Appraising Serrin at the breakfast table, Streak decided that the origin of the slight shadows under his eyes was fairly obvious. He resisted commenting about men with younger wives especially since, after all, Serrin was an elf like himself and there was some fraternity involved on that count.

“Our friends will be with us shortly after lunch,” Streak told Geraint, “Earlier than they’d originally planned, which is all right, innit?”

“Just as well,” Gerairn fretted. He was fretting a lot, and fretting all the more because he really wasn’t sure why. “I have to leave you for a while, I’m afraid. I promised to take breakfast with some ghastly little secretary at the consulate, It’s necessary if we’re to have backup for our enquiries at the Doge’s offices. It will look odd if they check and find I haven’t actually been in touch with the consulate. Plus I really should get some hints on who to avoid among the paper-pushers.”

Getting up, having drunk only some much-needed coffee, Geraint made an excusing gesture of farewell and bolted for the door.

“He isn’t well in himself,” Kristen observed.

Michael nodded agreement. “It may be what happened yesterday.”

“That woman? That Countess? It might be that, but I don’t think so,” she said.

“You’re an expert on that now, are you?” Streak enquired, not passing up some chance for a bit of mischief.

“I can tell when a man’s got a woman on his mind,” she snorted derisively.

“And it’s not that?”

“It’s more than that, trust me.”

Claudio approached from the door to the kitchens, beaming happily.

“Yes, our breakfast is great, thank you,” Michael said, heading off the enquiry.