Page 9 of Just for a Taste

“You are Duca de’ Medici’s guest,” she said, smiling warmly. “Please, let yourself relax a bit.”

I was so confused and exhausted it didn’t take any further convincing. My younger self, the little girl huddled in the corner of the school library reading sloppily taped-together regency novels, took over. As I sank into the tub and let the water lap at my chin, I allowed myself to indulge in the daydream.

Unfortunately, the reverie didn’t last when I realized the older maid would not even look my way. She stood by the far end of the tub, tidying my rumpled clothes with a peculiar air. Was it disgust? They were freshly washed. What had offended her so much? Had my Italian been too touristy? Was my desperation palpable? Or was the problem just . . .me?

A small hand pressed down on my shoulder, and Lucia’s dulcet tone whispered, “Signora Carbone is distant, but I promise she is happy to have someone in the abbess’s suite. She has kindness in her, even if it doesn’t always show.”

It was probably a lie, but it was a lie on my behalf, so I allowed it. I smiled as best I could and let her pull my arm from the tub to gently scrub it. All the while, Signora Carbone stood back from the tub, scratching away at some unknown document on a clipboard.

When my bath was done, she left to prepare pastries for afternoon tea, and Lucia enthusiastically gathered the outfit I would be wearing. It probably should have struck me as unnerving that the clothes she’d returned with were not my own, but it didn’t. Unlike the shoes which had materialized on their own, I felt that this pleasant young woman was my sister playing make-believe with me. Lucia dressed me in a fine dress I did not dare ask the price of.

Staring in the mirror, I frowned. The dress was wasted on someone of my short, boyish stature. But then, when I saw Lucia’s utter pride and satisfaction behind me, I could see the good qualities in it too. The lace choker around my neck accentuated what was now a surprisingly elegant jawline and high cheekbones. The emeralds brought out the green in my hazel eyes. And to my surprise, the coquette gloves and stockings actually looked flattering.

“Um, thank you,” I told Lucia over my shoulder, who grinned in return.

“Of course, signorina! By the way, Doctor Ntumba thought you might want to visit the libraries before meeting with her. Would you be interested in that?”

Libraries?As in plural? Despite not having accepted the job yet, my heart soared at the thought. Aside from my dire need for thesis material, I had already read all the books in my satchel several times over, and the idea of having access to more was exhilarating. No matter the genre, books were my solace, and they always had been. Books didn’t bully, books didn’t leave, books didn’t need, and books didn’t die. Instead, they transported me to fantastical realms and allowed me to live hundreds of lives within my own, ones with problems that solved themselves and people who spoke freely without expecting anything in return.

“Yes!”

The smaller library lived up to its name. It barely exceeded the size of my room, and its cleaning had been mostly neglected. Even so, its shelves teemed with countless volumes of various ages. Lucia left me there to explore, and I did so eagerly.

To my surprise, most of the books were not the things I could find in normal libraries. They were exactly what I had spent hours in fruitless pursuit of: old banking transactions, family trees, copies of letters . . . anything and everything related to the Medici family since the Renaissance.

I filled several pages of my notebooks with titles of documents to examine more closely, and many more with notes from what I had already scavenged. I had to remind myself I hadn’t signed any sort of contract, but the prospect of saying “no” to the job was growing more and more outlandish.

This inkling only grew stronger when it came time to see the large library. The room was a bibliophile’s sanctuary. Books covered every part of every wall, save the few sections with paintings, sculptures, or sitting areas. The room was scattered with wheeled ladders, and their pale bodies and yellow posts reminded me of a flock of storks. I followed the imaginary line to where they were staring. Overhead, in the middle of an oil-painted mural clearly inspired by the Sistine Chapel, was a massive golden chandelier. Even the floors themselves were decorated; the areas not covered by rugs or tapestries had been carved into with tiling, and Latin script surrounded each tile. In contrast to the study area by my room, this library appeared immaculately maintained. I would have bet money each individual book was dusted.

I didn’t notice Signora Carbone until she walked in front of me, handed Lucia a small stack of papers—busy-work, from the look on Lucia’s face—and marched to a desk in the corner.

“I manage this library,” she said, “and I manage it well.”

I felt a pang of betrayal at such a cozy sanctum being managed by such a standoffish woman, but I smiled and nodded anyway.

She beckoned me over. I stood awkwardly by her desk.

“As you may have noticed,” she continued, picking up a binder from a shelf behind the desk, “the books here are all organized. Each row is marked, and each book is assigned a number. I intend to keep it that way. Accordingly—” she dropped the binder onto the desk with an emphaticthud, and it swung open to reveal a gridded chart. “—any book or record you check out or eventouchmust be recorded within our logbook.”

Signora Carbone trailed her finger along each box as she spoke. “Here, you must put the name of what you have taken. Here, the EAN or whatever number it is assigned. Here, the location you have removed it from, the expected return date, the actual return date . . .”

She outlined, in excruciating detail, the hoops and ladders I would gladly leap through to read these books. Then she showed me a small receptacle to return it all. “Do you have any questions?”

I shook my head. As confusing as she had made it sound, the library’s system was straightforward enough.

“I see. So long as you follow these rules, you should not see me here.”

I gave her a tight-lipped smile, counting the seconds until she left. I went to work immediately, identifying each section and mentally notating a map of every shelf. To Signora Carbone’s credit, she had organized it beautifully, not just by author and whether a book was fiction or nonfiction, but by artistic classification. All the Arthurian legends were in one row, New Wave records in another. The placement made logical sense; I understood why she didn’t want it disrupted.

But before I got the chance to fully dig into it, Lucia returned. “Please come with me, signorina,” she said. “It’s time for you to speak with Doctor Ntumba.”

Chapter 4: Obbligato

Doctor Ntumba was waiting for me in the tearoom. She was as elegant as yesterday in a flashy, geometric-print pantsuit. Even her pose—sitting on the edge of a recliner with her legs folded tightly at the ankles—looked out of a magazine. Of the half dozen rings on her fingers, only one lacked a gem corresponding to a color on her pantsuit. Instead, it was identical in shade to her electric-green earrings and shoes. Her braids were meticulously styled and pinned in a tight up-do. It was no less intimidating meeting her for the second time, but at least I felt prepared. As invasive as my run-in with Duca de’ Medici’s maids had been, I was grateful for it now. Doctor Ntumba looked the picture of professionalism, and I actually matched her.

She trained her eyes on some figure in the behemoth of a textbook in her lap and only broke contact with it once she’d dog-eared the page, shut the book, and placed it on the ground beside her.

In a fluid gesture, she beckoned me closer and poured some tea into two cups from a china pot. I sat in a recliner perpendicular to hers and gave a small nod in greeting, hoping to look as nonchalant as she appeared.

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