Solaris Rising 1.5 (19 page)

Frank looked up to confront a patrician figure. A rail-thin elderly gent with facial hair and a poet’s locks, both of the most startling Cremnitz White, as found in the Winsor & Newton palette. The man’s old-fashioned suit, though shabby, bespoke elegant tailoring. He carried a cane whose silver grip mimicked a dragon’s head.

“Whatever can you mean, sir?” asked Frank.

“Let us have introductions all around first, before I explain. I am the Duke of Fossombrone. Here is my card.”

The Duke tendered a neatly engraved card apiece to the artists. In turn, Frank gave their names.

“I’m Frank Duveneck. And these two roarers are John Henry Twachtman and William Merritt Chase.”

“And what brings you all here to the Queen of the Adriatic, my friends? I can’t credit that it was simply to meet my needs.”

“We’ve been studying art in Munich for some time now,” Frank said. “I’ve reached the point where I’m thinking I might even open up my own school there. But after so much hard labor we grew tired of that city, and sought to experience something completely different and relaxing.”

“Well, you have come to the antipodes, so far as that dour German culture is concerned. I’m sure you will all benefit from your stay here. And I know I will.”

“What do you allude to again with this cryptic assertion?”

“Only that I have been looking for an artist who might be able to chronicle an expedition I plan to undertake soon, and I believe you are that man.”

Frank felt compelled to speak up for his pals. “But my friends have as much talent as I. Why not one of them, or perhaps all three of us?”

The Duke said, “Allow me to see your work, gentlemen.”

John and William complied with the request. After examining their portfolios, the Duke said, “Very accomplished and stirring, sirs. But your work lacks that resonance with ineffable mystery that I detect in Signore Duveneck’s. So it is to him alone that I will tender my offer of employment.”

His curiosity piqued, Frank asked, “Exactly what are the terms and nature of this employment?”

Duke Fossombrone smiled, with some small underlying sadness attendant. “It is all too complicated to explain in the middle of the Piazza under a wilting sun. Please do me the honor, all three of you, of sharing dinner with me at my home tonight. Simply ask anyone for directions to the Ca’ d’Oro, and try to arrive by nine. Please bring neither wine nor flowers nor sweets, as I have a cellar, a garden and a baker, all of superlative caliber. I’ll see you then, gentlemen.”

The Duke of Fossombrone walked away with a slight limp, but seemed rather too proud to employ his stick as fully as another man might have done to maximize its benefits.

The
Jolie Laide
and the Legless Man

T
HE GONDOLA FERRYING
the three American artists to the Ca’ d’Oro rocked precipitously as John and William stood at its prow, supporting each other tipsily whilst trying to harmonize with their propulsive steersman at the rear on some native barcarole whose foreign lyrics they had adapted to an indecent English doggerel. The sun had just set, empurpling the gently sloshing Grand Canal and its dreaming houses, and allowing a few eager bright stars to appear above. Civic gas lights vied with oil lanterns to oasis the dark streets of the marshy city.

Slouched comfortably low in the boat on cushions, Frank smiled at the antics of his comrades. At the moment he felt constitutionally incapable of joining them, but he admired their high-spirited roistering nonetheless. To surround oneself with boisterous chums when one was feeling grim was sound medicine, albeit of limited efficacy.

Frank’s thoughts turned to the mysterious proposition tendered by Duke Fossombrone. To take on the mantle of evidentiary artist for some daring expedition into uncharted realms sounded jim-dandy to Frank at the moment, with or without compensation. So far, Italy had not proven sufficiently remote or distracting enough to alleviate his anxieties. If to attain peace of mind he had to emulate Pierre de Brazza, currently engaged in charting the upper reaches of the Ogowe River in Africa with nothing more than a bale of trade fabrics, then so be it!

The gondola began now to arrow toward the shore. The two crooners ceased their caterwauling and substituted whistles and exclamations.

“Is that really where skinny old Saint Nick lives?”

“What a manse! Look at all that gilt. Her lines ain’t so bad neither! Though she ain’t no Jefferson Market Courthouse!”

“Frank, you snagged yourself a rich fish, boy!”

Sitting up, Frank took in the ornate, filigreed, columned façade of the alabaster palazzo. The elegant building radiated the worn dignity of an elderly widow.

“I’m not so sure about his wealth, boys. I’m pretty certain he’s just renting the place. The House of Gold’s been on and off the market for decades, ever since Marie Taglioni gave it up.”

“Not that hussy of a ballerina who started the craze for short skirts? She lived here?”

“Indeed. While you boys were out liquoring up, I made a few inquiries. Duke Fossombrone came to town only a year ago, with his son and daughter. They don’t socialize hardly at all, and no one seemed to know much about them.”

“Daughter!” said John. “Now you’re talking! Bill and I will tickle her while you and the Duke are picking sand fleas outta your trousers in Outer Mongolia.”

The gondola bumped the slanted, partly submerged, algae-slick stone steps of Ca’ d’Oro; the riders disembarked, paid the boatman, and found a big, shadowed wooden door with a large knocker that they loudly employed.

The door swung inward after only a few seconds’ delay, to reveal a young woman, dressed not as a servant but in a fashionable ensemble of dove grey and mauve.

Bill and John doffed their hats immediately, but Frank was a laggard. He was too poleaxed by her appearance to respond.

Duke Fossombrone’s daughter, if such she were, demonstrated the type of woman dubbed by the French
jolie laide
, or ‘beautiful-ugly.’ Her thick black eyebrows were paralleled by a sparse and downy but undeniable mustache. Her oversized nose and mouth were out of all proportion to her face. Her figure was good, but her hands were too big. Her eyes resembled those of a startled, intelligent doe. The overall impression she radiated was chimeric, that of the hybrid offspring of a human mother and some satyr or troll.

To Frank, she seemed beauty incarnate, some Mona Lisa that Goya might have limned in a twilight moment.

After what seemed an eternity of contemplation, Frank too removed his hat. The woman smiled then, said “
Buona sera, signori
.” She indicated by gesture that they should enter.

The artists were conducted to a cool inner garden with high walls which had been arranged to host their meal. Capacious terracotta pots overflowed with tropical greenery. A large trestle table draped with a plain white cloth held a bounty of enticing food: steaming plates of vegetables and chicken; bowls of macaroni in tomato sauce; cheeses and fruit; baskets of rolls; as well as pitchers of water and wine. Tall-footed free-standing candelabra illuminated the repast.

Standing to welcome them was the Duke. He laid his hand on the shoulder of a seated young man, presumably his son. The handsome lad, perhaps twenty-seven or so, wore a brave look compounded of equal parts hope, despair and physical exhaustion.

“Welcome, gentlemen, welcome! Allow me to introduce my family to you. My daughter, Restituta, you have met at the door. Her English, I fear, is minimal.”

Restituta curtsied in the manner of a large bird settling from the skies onto a tree limb, an awkward signature mode that Frank found only enhanced her peculiar charm.

“And this is my son, Ludovico.”

“I would stand, sirs, but cannot do so easily, and so beg your indulgence.”

Frank noticed then two artificial limbs, with wool-padded cupped tops and dangling leather straps, resting on the floor near some crutches that leaned against Ludovico’s chair.

“My son lost both legs at the Battle of Villa Glori, some ten years ago, fighting to unite our motherland. He has been struggling back to health all the time since, but I fear he has his defeats as well as his victories.”

Ludovico smiled bravely. “I was proud to make the sacrifice for our glorious Kingdom.”

Duke Fossombrone continued: “Now, gentlemen, I’m sure you have a thousand questions. But our rapidly cooling meal beckons, and I for one am famished. Let us dine, and then you’ll hear all.”

Living as they had been on a limited budget, the hungry artists needed no second invitation to commence. Selecting linen napkins and piling high their plates—more like salvers, really—Bill and John took up seats on either side of the Duke’s son (inexplicably disdaining his alluring sister) and soon had the lad reminiscing vivaciously about his martial prowess. The Duke watched approvingly, while doing more drinking of the potent red wine than actual eating.

Restituta first made up a plate for her brother, then assembled one for herself. After she found a chair, Frank brought his own meal over to sit beside her. Unable to pass more than a few words in each other’s language between them, they contented themselves with enjoying the food and exchanging smiles and nods of appreciation from time to time.

Frank was pleased to see that the young woman had a hearty appetite and no timidity about indulging it in front of strangers.

Finally, once all were sated, Duke Fossombrone got to his feet, a tad unsteadily due to his imbibing.

“Mr. Chase and Mr. Twachtman, I am sharing this secret with you, although I choose not to avail myself of your services, out of respect for your camaraderie with Mr. Duveneck, whom I definitely do wish to employ. I enjoin you to keep this knowledge
sub rosa
, or you might scotch the whole affair. For you see, I have had many narrow-minded auditors of my dream, men whom I relied on for friendship and support, react with sneering incredulity and even threats of incarceration, as if I were a dangerous madman. Simply because the expedition for which I need Mr. Duveneck’s talents is no common earthly one.

“I am going to the Moon!”

Visions of a Lunar Empyrean

“L
ET ME GET
this straight,” said Frank for the fifth time.

The hour was well past midnight, and several candles had already guttered out and been replaced. John and Bill, wearying of the infinite parsing of what they were already calling “Fossombrone’s Folly,” had departed boozily for their lodgings in the cheap pensione where all three artists shared a room. Ludovico, wan and exhausted from the small normal efforts of eating and socializing, had been helped to bed by his sister, clomping out of the garden on his unnatural legs like some amateur, untrained stiltwalker. But Restituta had returned swiftly after seeing to her brother’s comfort. The long table had been cleared of food by a quiet and efficient servant, and on the board now was spread an expansive sheet of paper whose quasi-mechanical diagrams reminded Frank of Leonardo’s sketches.

“This mystery substance which you have access to,” Frank continued, “possesses the power to cancel out gravity? How can that be?”

Duke Fossombrone sighed. “I have no idea how it works, young man, I know only that it does. As I told you, it is a unique element, possibly stellar in origin, discovered by the Rae-Richardson Polar Expedition nearly thirty years ago. One huge chunk of ore was mined in the Arctic and brought back to civilization, where it sat in a warehouse as a useless enigma for decades, until my chance discovery of its true nature and potential.”

Duke Fossombrone had disclosed to Frank that he was a respected naturalist with connections to the Academy of Sciences at Bologna, and well-versed in experimentalism.

“And now you own this miraculous stuff, and plan to use it to travel to the Moon.”

“Finally you comprehend!”

“Oh, I savvy all right—I just don’t believe any of it!”

Duke Fossombrone sighed. “Given the lateness of the hour, I had hoped to forego a demonstration until the morning. But I can see I will not gain your participation without proof. Restituta!”

The Duke addressed his daughter in their native language, and she hastened dutifully off. Fagged from the busy day and the incredible assertions of the Duke, Frank blurted out an impolite question.

“What’s the story behind your daughter’s odd name?”

“She is named after Saint Restituta, patron saint of Ischia where she was conceived. My wife and I had long been barren, but upon a recreational visit to that charming isle we found ourselves granted our fondest wish. Unfortunately, Restituta’s mother perished in giving birth to her, but that in no way diminished my wife’s dying allegiance to the saint, nor my living pledge. And in fact the name has proven peculiarly apt, since Restituta’s main miracle was to cross the waters to Ischia not in any conventional craft, but riding upon a millstone! A voyage no more nor less wonderful than the one I intend to make to the Moon.”

Restituta returned, pushing a wooden trolley. On the trolley sat a bulky box, with wires extending into and out of some intermediary device. Frank did not recognize the apparatus at all, and Fossombrone sensed his puzzlement.

“This is nothing more than a Plante-Faure lead-acid cell, a storage mechanism for electricity, with a Wheatstone rheostat as part of the circuit. That latter device allows proper modulation of the current. All common as the pox. But here—here is the real marvel.”

The Duke picked up what appeared to be a small thin sheet of hammered copper.

“Here is a small piece of the worked ore, Mr. Duveneck. I have named the substance ‘cavourite,’ after our beloved patriot, Camillo Paolo Filippo Giulio Benso, Count of Cavour. Now, Frank—if I may be so bold as to employ your Christian name—please donate a small object of your own so you will know I have not prearranged a hoax.”

Frank found a bottle of ink in his pocket and handed it over. The Duke wrapped the bottle in the foil, then stuck the leads from the lead-acid cell onto the assemblage with a pinch of putty. He set the wrapped bottle down on the table.