Midnight in the Piazza Read online

  Dedication

  In loving and joyful memory of

  my father, Sam Parks.

  Contents

  Cover

  Title Page

  Dedication

  One: A Little Change

  Two: The Turtle Fountain

  Three: The Window That Wasn’t There

  Four: Explorations and Embarrassing Situations

  Five: A Reluctant Newbie

  Six: Seeking, Searching, Sketching

  Seven: Illumination in a Dark Shop

  Eight: A Man in Black and a Reappearing Act

  Nine: The Bernini Connection

  Ten: An Unlikely Ally

  Eleven: The Frenchman

  Twelve: A Duchess and Her Diary

  Thirteen: A Secret Meeting and a Rumor

  Fourteen: A Half-and-Half Partner

  Fifteen: Delving into the Diary

  Sixteen: A Passageway and a Hiding Place

  Seventeen: Caterina’s Curse

  Eighteen: The Subtle Art of Eavesdropping

  Nineteen: Appointment on Via Giulia

  Twenty: Synchronicity

  Twenty-One: A Missing Map

  Twenty-Two: At the French Embassy

  Twenty-Three: Enter Jacques Rambeau

  Twenty-Four: A Concert Is Proposed and a Document Disclosed

  Twenty-Five: Brahms, Beethoven, and a Business Call

  Twenty-Six: Intruder

  Twenty-Seven: Into the Belly of the Palace

  Twenty-Eight: Discovery in the Dark

  Twenty-Nine: Interrogation and Revelation

  Thirty: Déjà Vu with a Twist

  Thirty-One: The Four Protectors

  Thirty-Two: Unexpected Gifts

  Acknowledgments

  Author’s Note

  About the Author

  Copyright

  About the Publisher

  One

  A LITTLE CHANGE

  He might as well have told her they were moving to Antarctica.

  It was a month to the day after Beatrice Archer’s thirteenth birthday when her dad made the fatal announcement. Once he’d broken the news, she felt as if someone had yanked out her guts and baked them into a pie.

  It was a shame, really, because the day had started out so perfectly—as promising as a stack of brand-new books, their spines uncreased and their pages just waiting for a pair of greedy eyes. It was one of those crisp, bright New England mornings when the chill tickles your nose but the budding magnolia trees promise spring is just around the corner.

  Beatrice trotted down the broad Bostonian avenue after her Saturday-morning flute lesson, her instrument case clack-clacking from its handle like her dad’s old-fashioned typewriter. The sound made her feel as alive as if it had been her own heartbeat.

  She turned the corner and climbed the stoop of a narrow brownstone, then raced to the top floor to find her dad. Augustus Archer was a history professor, and when he wasn’t in the classroom or the Boston Public Library, there was one place in the world his daughter could always find him: his study. It was a cozy room paneled in dark wood with a bay window and floor-to-ceiling shelves heaving with books. Beatrice hadn’t read them all, but not for lack of trying.

  She burst into the study to find her father bent over an enormous tome, a pair of half-moon spectacles balancing on the tip of his nose.

  “Hey, Dad.”

  No answer.

  “Dad . . . ?”

  Silence.

  “Dad!”

  Mr. Archer looked up with a start. “Oh, you’re home. How was your lesson, sweet pea?”

  “Fine.” She shook her head with a silent laugh. When her dad was researching he was dead to the world. You could walk into his study with your pants on fire and he wouldn’t notice. But it was what made Dad Dad, so Beatrice didn’t hold it against him.

  “Listen, Bea,” he said, closing the book. “There’s something I’ve been wanting to talk to you about.” His eyes flicked to a framed photograph of a dark-haired woman, as if he expected her to offer advice or reassurance. Whichever he was seeking, he wasn’t likely to get it; it was Beatrice’s mother, and she’d been dead for over a decade. With a sniff of resolve, he took Beatrice’s hands. “I have big news,” he said. He wore a wide grin, but a hint of unease lurked behind his gray eyes.

  “We’re going to Rome,” he announced. Beatrice’s eyes widened, but before she had a chance to interrupt, he clarified, “Not for a vacation, but to live, indefinitely. I’ve been offered a position as head of the history department at the American Academy in Rome, plus unlimited access to some of the most restricted libraries in the world. I’ve given it a good deal of thought over the past few weeks, and I’ve decided it’s too great an opportunity to pass up—for both of us. You’ll finish the school year; we’ll pack up the house and fly to Rome sometime this summer.”

  Beatrice stood stock-still, mouth parted in disbelief. For a moment time stopped; then her world began to crumble. Images of friends, home, school, life as she knew it, all disintegrated like confetti in a rainstorm. Three little words surfaced in her brain and she grabbed at them as if to a lifeline: “I’m not going.”

  “Nonsense! Just think of it: pasta, gelato, the Colosseum! What’s not to love?”

  “I’m NOT GOING,” she repeated, and her mouth hardened into a line.

  Being the only child of an older-than-average father, Beatrice Archer was used to getting her own way. Her mass of frizzy hair was obstinately red, and her personality matched it. Her skin may have been fair, with a redhead’s unavoidable sprinkling of freckles, but her hazel eyes darkened to brown when she was determined, which was often. Her dad liked to joke that she had him wrapped around her little finger—but this time he wouldn’t budge.

  “I’m sorry, my dear, but we’re moving whether you like it or not,” he informed her in his no-arguing voice.

  An image flashed before Beatrice’s eyes: she was sitting in a classroom full of strangers, all speaking a language she couldn’t understand. They were pointing at her and laughing. Her face burned at the thought. The idea of changing schools or cities was bad enough, but changing countries? Changing worlds, more like. Leaving behind her best friend, Georgette; her pet turtles, Nick and Nora; her flute teacher; and everything else she loved about her life in Boston . . .

  No, she couldn’t—she wouldn’t let this happen.

  At first she tried to be reasonable, outlining the pros and cons of his catastrophic plan, just like her debate coach had taught her. When that didn’t work, she threatened a hunger strike. He called her bluff. At one point she stormed out of the room and slammed the door, only to skulk back in on the verge of tears. She tried every tactic, but nothing worked.

  Exhausted and losing hope, she collapsed onto the couch, with nowhere to turn but the simple truth. “I don’t want to go,” she whimpered.

  Her dad knelt down, smoothed her bushy hair, and kissed her forehead. “This is going to be a life-altering experience,” he whispered, his voice tinged with drama.

  “I like my life the way it is now.”

  “Don’t be afraid of a little change, sweet pea,” he chided.

  “A little change?” She sat up with a start. “Everything’s going to change!”

  “It’s going to be wonderful,” he insisted. “Once you settle in, you’ll love it; I promise.” When she didn’t seem convinced, he asked with a wink, “Have I ever been wrong?”

  She narrowed her eyes dubiously.

  He continued, undaunted. “We’ll be delving into the unknown, and we’ll have each other. Now, let’s get out the map of Rome and decide which rione we want to live in!”

  “Rione?”

  “The rioni are twenty-two ne
ighborhoods that make up the center of Rome. Each one has its own symbol and history.”

  In spite of herself, Beatrice was intrigued. Maps, symbols, history: three of her favorite things. Did she really have her dad wrapped around her little finger, or was it the other way around?

  Over the following weeks, Beatrice pored over maps and books about Rome. Her dad had spent a few years there before Beatrice was born and was a fountain of knowledge about the place. She tried to imagine him a few decades younger—with red hair like hers—sipping a cappuccino in a sun-soaked piazza, but she couldn’t picture it. The dad she knew had tufty white hair and a crinkly face, wore reading glasses that were constantly sliding down his nose, and had a fondness for bow ties and tweed. He spent his days inside, lost in a book or scribbling away on some obscure topic. He was about as far removed from her foggy idea of Rome as you could get.

  But as he regaled her with fascinating facts and tidbits of history, little by little she soaked up his enthusiasm.

  “Just about everywhere you turn are ancient ruins,” he told her, his eyes on fire, “sometimes just lying around, as if no one has touched them in centuries. The same street you take to get to school might have been walked down by Renaissance princes, medieval peasants, even Julius Caesar himself!”

  Beatrice’s imagination took wing. She’d inherited her dad’s love of history, a fascination for the stories of people who’d lived long before her own time. For her, history was even better than fiction; these people had actually lived, with dreams and fears and hobbies and best friends, just like she had. Only they’d lived hundreds—even thousands—of years before. Every time she opened a history book or listened to one of her father’s stories, she took a step back in time.

  What would it be like to live in a place where history wasn’t just shut up in books, but living and breathing in the very paving stones you walked on?

  Two

  THE TURTLE FOUNTAIN

  The taxi screeched to a halt in a small piazza in a neighborhood known as the Jewish Ghetto. The door swung open and Beatrice clambered out. She spun around, taking in her surroundings.

  The buildings were painted in pastels, like different flavors in an ice cream shop. Soot-colored cobblestones shimmered beneath her feet and the shop signs were covered in incomprehensible words. A couple of kids kicked around a soccer ball and an old man sat on a bench, a black cat circling his ankles. She felt a rising sense of delight with her new neighborhood, but underneath sat a brick of anxiety. Was it just fear of the unknown? Fear of change, as her father had chided her?

  The splashing of water caught her attention. In the middle of the piazza, a fountain sparkled in the sunlight. Beatrice stared at it, transfixed, drinking in every detail: a pool of turquoise water, massive marble seashells, four laughing boys sculpted in bronze riding miniature dolphins, a basin overflowing above their heads. It was the most perfect fountain she’d ever seen, but the best part were the four bronze turtles that perched on the very top, as if scrambling up to take a drink. They made her think of her pet turtles back in Boston—a bittersweet reminder of the life she’d left behind.

  Her dad elbowed her in the ribs, shattering the spell. “Come on, we can sightsee later. We’ve got unpacking to do and a new home to explore.”

  Beatrice tore her eyes from the fountain. “Which building’s ours, Dad?”

  “That one.” He pointed up. “Our apartment’s on the top floor.”

  The four-story building was the color of ripe apricots, its deep green shutters closed against the baking sun. A mass of purple flowers exploded over the doorway and tiny white jasmine blossoms crept up the walls. The double front doors—big enough to let in a school bus—were marred with squiggles of graffiti. Beatrice’s dad clucked with disapproval as he turned a key in the lock.

  They lugged their suitcases inside and climbed into an ancient-looking elevator. As the tiny cabin began its rickety ascent, Beatrice could see the floors they were passing through the grille on the door.

  Once they were safely on the top floor, her dad pulled out a key as long as an unsharpened pencil. Clack, clack, clack, clack. It turned in the lock four times and the door swung open. Beatrice crossed the threshold with a flutter in her stomach and stepped into a shadowy corridor.

  “Here’s your room,” he said, opening the second door on the right. He strode across the room and flung open the shutters. “Look, you have a view of the fountain!”

  “I do?” Beatrice ran to the window and leaned out. Seen from above, the bronze turtles seemed to hover over the lip of the fountain’s upper basin. She felt an odd tug at her heart, as if something about this strange new place had been calling to her from across the world.

  “So, what do you think?”

  “I . . . ,” she began, then paused. “I suppose it’ll do,” she allowed with a wry smile.

  Mr. Archer laughed and tousled her hair.

  “Dad,” she said hesitantly, “why do they call this neighborhood a ghetto?” The only “ghettos” she’d ever heard of were the dangerous neighborhoods in big cities.

  “Because this is where the word comes from. The ghettos you’re thinking of took their names from Italian ghettos like this one, but the meaning changed along the way.”

  “So . . .” She waited for him to elaborate. “What does it mean?”

  Augustus Archer had a way of explaining things without actually explaining anything. When Beatrice showed interested in a topic, he’d pique her curiosity, then leave her to do the digging. She’d learned the art of researching at his knee and spent many an afternoon in the Boston Public Library puzzling out a mystery.

  “Ghetto is a word for an area of a city where people of a certain ethnicity or background live. Some people think it came from the Italian word borghetto, which means ‘little town.’ For centuries, the Jews of Rome were confined to this neighborhood. It was the only place they could live—and it wasn’t pleasant. Many were forced to live in squalor, abide by curfews, work demeaning jobs.”

  The blood in her veins turned to ice water.

  “The walls of the Ghetto and many of its buildings were torn down a century and a half ago,” he continued, “but the ironic thing is, today this neighborhood is considered one of the loveliest in the city, and now everyone wants to live here. Of course, the Jewish-Roman population still lives and thrives here.”

  “But why were they forced to live here? Who would do such a thing?”

  Her father sighed. “Ah, my dear, history has more than its share of barbaric chapters.”

  Beatrice’s ears perked up, ready for a juicy story.

  Her father patted her head distractedly. “I’m exhausted from that all-night flight, and you must be too.” Beatrice’s shoulders slumped. “How about you try to sleep off some of that jet lag?”

  With her curiosity whetted, she knew sleep would not come easily. But in spite of herself, her eyelids were drooping. Maybe, after a long nap, she’d be able to do some digging.

  Three

  THE WINDOW THAT WASN’T THERE

  Hunger woke her. After sleeping for what felt like days, Beatrice rolled over with a pang in her stomach. Her eyes struggled to take in her surroundings, but the room was nearly pitch-black. Slowly, a faint light appeared around the window shutters and the objects in the room began to take shape. It all came rushing back to her: she was in Rome.

  With a tightening in the pit of her stomach, she slipped out of bed and stumbled toward the open window, feeling her way across the dark room. After fumbling with the unfamiliar latch, she unfastened the shutters and pushed them out into the night. They opened with a satisfying creak.

  The city was asleep. She wondered what time it was back home.

  Home. What was Georgette doing right now? Was she taking good care of Beatrice’s turtles? Had she already found a new best friend?

  Looking down at the fountain that had enchanted her by daylight, Beatrice felt only loneliness, worlds away from her familiar life. Her sto
mach growled. How long had she slept? It could have been ten p.m. or four in the morning for all she could tell.

  She found the switch and the room flooded with light. She had to admit, her new bedroom was pretty fantastic. Wooden beams painted with blue flowers, green garlands, and gold swirls crisscrossed the high ceiling. The rust-colored terra-cotta tiles were cool under her bare feet, despite the summer heat. A rickety spiral staircase led to a loft above her bed, suspended halfway between the floor and the ceiling: a space just big enough for a desk and chair.

  But despite the charm and novelty of her new digs, they weren’t home. She missed her old room, its soft, squishy carpet, her rows of dog-eared paperbacks, her familiar, comfy bed. This place didn’t even have a closet! Just a puny little wardrobe that looked like it would topple over if you put in more than a week’s worth of clothes.

  She eyed the open suitcases and their contents strewn across the floor. The prospect of finding a new home for each and every object filled her with dread. Unlike her father, organization was not her strong suit. She gave it up as a lost cause and went to close the shutters, taking one last peek at the gurgling fountain below.

  A dim streetlamp burned in the corner of the piazza and a spotlight illuminated the fountain, but not a single light came from the dozens of other windows facing the square.

  Except . . . across the piazza stood a white building, directly opposite her own. Beatrice squinted at a small window on the second floor. No light came from it, yet somehow a shadow seemed to hover there. She knew better than to look in other people’s windows, but something about this one was definitely odd.

  She switched off her light and dug in her carry-on for the travel binoculars she’d brought for studying church ceilings. She crouched on the floor and peeked over the windowsill.

  Peering at the white building through the binoculars, she discovered that the window wasn’t a window at all. At least, not anymore. There was no glass inside the frame, just a walled-up space with painted-on windowpanes. And yet—impossibly—an indistinct shape quivered there, like a silhouette behind a curtain. Beatrice’s heartbeat quickened.