Unable to look at his daughter, Don Riccardo Doria simply stood at the window of his villa staring out across the bay. “You are sure it was the Frenchman,” he finally asked gruffly without bothering to look back at her or hiding the disappointment he felt over the news his daughter had brought him.

“It was the Scot,” the frail young woman replied in a whisper as she continued to stare down at her feet.

“Did he force himself upon you?” Doria asked, betraying a hint of hope that his daughter was not entirely at fault.

Before answering, Alessandra Doria took a moment to reflect upon the time she had spent with Robert Stuart, Lord of Aubigny and Captain of the French King’s Garde Ecossais. As much as she wished she could clutch the straw her father was offering her, pretending she had been raped, she could not. She had willingly given herself over to the red haired Scotsmen who had marched into Italy with the army of Francis I of France. Already well aware her immortal soul was in the balance, she had no wish to add to her sins by lying about a matter as important as the one under discussion. “No, Papa, he did not” she finally admitted mournfully.

Closing his eyes as he absorbed the pain this admission was causing him, Doria drew in a deep breath and held it before slowly releasing it as he turned his attention to weighing his options. There was but one way to avoid a stain on his family’s honor and, perhaps in time, find a suitable match for her, a man’s whose discretion could be bought off with a sizable dowry. But in order for the desperate plan gelling in his mind to succeed, he would need to move fast and, above all, in secrecy, ensuring the fewest possible number of people became of Alessandra’s indiscretion.

“Find your mother and have her come to me,” he finally snapped without bothering to look back at a girl he had once pinned such high hopes, one whose marriage to a man with title and position, a prominent citizen who would have further the family’s position and fortune.

Unable to leave without first discern what was to become of her and the child she was carrying, Alessandra slowly dragged her gaze up from the spot on the floor before her and over to where her father was standing. “What is to become of me, Papa?”

“You?” he growled as he slowly swiveled his head about in order to peer over his shoulder at her through narrow, angry eyes. “You will be sent off to Ferrara where you will stay until the child is born. After a suitable period of time has passed and a suitable match has been found, I will send for you.”

“And the child?”

“The bastard is of no concern to you once he, or she, is born.”

“What will become of it?” Alessandra ventured tentatively.

No longer able to contain his anger, Don Doria pivoted about on his heels and briskly marched up to where his daughter was standing. “Your concern for the child’s welfare is sadly misplaced,” he thundered. “Other than bearing it to term, you have no need to trouble yourself with what becomes of it.”

No longer able to stand there before her enraged father, Alessandra spun about in and fled the room, leaving Don Doria alone to ponder the very question she had posed. What would become of the child was important, but one that could be set aside for the moment. First he would need to conjure up it a plausible excuse that would justify his daughter’s prolonged absence. As to the child, that would have to wait until she had given birth and its sex was known. Only then would Don Doria be able to decide how best to turn what was, at the moment, a crisis to his advantage. Properly educated, a boy could prove to be useful, even one who was a bastard whose blood was tainted by a man who was, in Don Doria’s opinion, little more than a savage.

“A Scot,” he muttered dismissively under his breath while slowly shaking his head. “What hope can there be for a child sired by such a creature?” Having no need to answer that question for the moment, he turned his attention instead to dealing with matters that demanded his immediate attention. The fate of the child, if it survived its birth and prospered, could wait.

Having been forewarned the notorious English property developer seated at the far end of the table made no effort to check his temper when he felt he was being messed about, the young civil servant chosen to present his departments proposal hesitated when he saw Guy Tinsdal look at his watch for the second time in as many minutes before twisting about in his seat, giving the door leading out of the conference room a quick, sideward glance. Convinced he was on the verge of losing the very man the Minister of Enterprise, Energy, and Innovation had personally courted and persuaded to come up to Edinburgh to invest in the what he was trumpeting as ‘the next silicon glen’, the young Scotsman frantically took to looking about the room, hoping as his gaze skipped from one worried face to another someone would save him by interjecting a comment that would calm Tinsdal. Unfortunate, all of his colleagues were just as clueless as to why the Englishman was reacting as he was to what they believed was a perfectly reasonable proposal that was being flawlessly laid out.

If truth be known, Tinsdal had already made up his mind to pass on the opportunity before he had arrived at Edinburgh airport that morning. The idea that he, a man who many said made Donald Trump come across as a piker, would invest in the pipe dream of a politician to the tune of several million pounds was laughable. The only reason he had bothered to even show up at the government offices was to keep on the good side of someone who at first sight appeared to be an up and coming politician, someone potentially worth courting in the future. Concluding that even this modest goal was a wash, whilst the flustered civil servant was still floundering through his final slides, Tinsdal turned his mind to the real reason he had made the trek north.

When Guy Tinsdal wasn’t sniffing about the real estate markets of the world, seeking properties he could snatch up at bargain basement prices and turn around for a handsome profit, he fancied himself as something of a connoisseur of the arts, a man who had a talent for finding rare treasures he could either add to his personal collection or, like the properties he speculated in, make a quick profit by selling them to someone who was willing to pay far too much for something they thought was more valuable than it was really was.

On this day he had his sights set on the estate sale of an elderly lady that was rumored to include a private collection once owned by a family line founded by a Scottish soldier of fortune who had served under Francis I of France during the Four Years War. Suspecting the Scotsman, as well as those of his line who followed in his footsteps, had availed themselves of every opportunity to add to their personal fortunes by liberating works of art from the estates they were billeted in while campaigning in a foe’s homeland, Tinsdal decided to have a look to see if there was something that struck his fancy. That he would find something was, at best, a long shot. But then Tinsdal knew when it came to speculating in art, like real estate, those who weren’t even willing to step up to the table and toss the dice had no chance at all of rolling a hard six.

When he noticed the young civil servant had finished and the man’s ministerial master hadn’t even bothered to show up, Tinsdal decided the time had come to put an end to this farce. In addition to the castle where the collection was being auctioned off, there was a well known whisky distillery he had heard of along the way where he wished to stop and sample their offerings after he’d finished at the estate action. It was a stop he would never make.

Having spent the entire afternoon at the National Gallery trying her best to impart her knowledge of art to a group of American tourists she was convinced would never be able to tell the difference between a Monet and Manet if their life depended on it, Megan Ellsworth gave up. After seeing them on their way and checking in with her supervisor, she headed off to her cubical to gather up her things before heading out for her flat where her plans didn’t go beyond enjoying a nice cuppa while devoting herself to nothing more ambitious than enjoying some serious alone time.

Unfortunately, that plan quickly went by the wayside within minutes of arriving home when she made the mistake of pausing at her desk on her way to her flat’s kitchenette, bent over, and clicked on her computer. Mixed in with the usual gut of inner departmental memos and routine traffic was an email from her old mentor labeled ‘MOST URGENT!’ Since Clive Barrow, a noted art historian who’d retired from the Gallery, was not the sort who readily gave himself over to hyperbole, Megan pulled out her well worn swivel seat, settled down at her desk, and opened the email, wondering what her former department head wanted from her now.

The idea that he wished her to do some research for a book he had thrice set out to write caused her to groan. Since his retirement as the director of the National Gallery’s Sainsbury Wing, he had become quite determined to complete a definitive work on Renaissance art on his own. In part this new resolve was due to the way people he had worked with had taken to joking about the way he went about throwing himself headlong into a fresh draft of what he hoped would be a testament to his encyclopedic knowledge of Renaissance art only to abandon it when he came to appreciate there was nothing at all new or unique about the way he was approaching his subject. Even Megan, who greatly admired a man who had helped her when she was just starting out at the gallery, could not help but chuckle whenever he informed her he’d suddenly realized someone else had already written extensively on the subject he’d been hoping to base his own work on.

Upon opening the email Megan was further amazed to find the body of the message was as just crisp and cryptic as the subject line had been, for Barrow tended to use a hundred words when a dozen or so would have done the job nicely. “Call me, ASAP,” Megan muttered to herself as she eased back in her chair and took to wondering what was so hell fire important that he needed her to get back to him without delay. “Well, we’re not going to find out what’s got his knickers in a twist by sitting here staring at the screen, now are we?” she asked after turning her attention to a grey female cat that had silently crept up next to her computer screen and was now staring at the young woman with a steady, sphinx like gaze.

Any thought of brewing up a cup of tea before foraging about in the fridge to see if there was anything worth eating that was not yet on its way to evolving into a higher life form before giving Barrow a call was set aside. ASAP was, in his world, ASAP. Ignoring the way her cat took to angrily swishing her tail about as she fished about for the mobile the feline was perched upon, Megan scrolled through its directory for Barrow’s number and pressed it.

“Dr. Barrow, it’s Megan.”

“Oh yes, right, Megan,” the voice on the other end declared as if he was surprised to hear her voice. “Something has come up that you might be interested, an opportunity I find myself unable to take advantage of.”

Like a boxer raising his hands higher in order to protect himself from a blow, Megan mentally prepared herself for what she expected would be the sort of opportunity a sane person ran away from, for Barrow was notorious for fobbing off anything he either considered to be below him or entailed many, many long and laborious hours of leafing through dryer than dust records and historical accounts that all too often led nowhere. “What sort of opportunity is it?” she asked doing her best to tamp down her dread.

“Are you by any chance familiar with who Guy Tinsdal is?”

“Who isn’t? When it comes to land and property, what the Queen doesn’t own, he does.”

“He is also the proud owner of an art collection I dare say would rival Her Majesty’s,” Barrow added. “Which is why he called me.”

“Did you tell him you no longer have the keys to the Kingdom, or that the Crown frowns upon selling off the nation’s treasures?”

Ignoring Megan’s sarcastic remark, and in a manner that struck Megan as being uncharacteristically brief, Barrow got right to the point. “It would seem the man has acquired a painting he claims was painted by Da Vince at an estate auction. Unfortunately, it’s unsigned and lacks any sort of provenance whatsoever that would support his hunch.”

“His hunch?” Megan blurted. “A man who the Daily Telegraph dubbed the shrewdest corporate predator in the EU bought an unsigned work of art on a hunch?”

“Megan, dear girl, men like Tinsdal might like to think they possess divine gifts that separate them from common plebs like you and I, but in truth, they go about tending to their affairs and making decisions in much the same way you and I do.”

“I seriously doubt that,” Megan muttered derisively. “I’m willing to wage you it’s been awhile since Tinsdal descended into the bowels of the earth in order to spend some quality time with the likes of you and I.”

A clear, audible sigh was all it took to warn the young art historian that Barrow was tiring of this pointless chitchat. “Be that as it may, Tinsdal wishes to have someone to look at the piece and see if it really is a Da Vince.”

The temptation to respond with a snide remark along the lines, ‘And naturally you thought of me,’ was tempered by a desire to do a little freelancing. Even if the piece did turn out to be nothing more than an effort by some unknown artist who had tied to copy the man who embodied the spirit of the Renaissance, both the experience and the chance to make some useful contacts she could tap later, when she set out on her own, would be worth the effort. “Okay, I’m in, provided I can call on you if I need some help.”

“Excellent,” Barrow declared, making no effort to hide the relief he felt at having pawned off what both he and Megan assumed was a fool’s errant. “Drop by tomorrow during your noonday break and I’ll pass all the relevant contact information off to you.”

That Barrow expected her to give up her lunch hour in order to trek halfway across London in order to retrieve information that could have just as easily been given over the phone came as no surprise to her. The man, she expected, was like all retirees, eager to take advantage of any opportunity that came their way to enjoy a little company. The idea that she would, in all likelihood, one day find herself doing the same thing kept Megan from suggesting an alternative. Besides, after being all but disowned by her own family, Clive Barrow was now the closest thing she had to a father, a sad state of affairs she found herself dwelling on for the remainder of the evening.

Historical Notes;

Portrait of a Young Fiancée, also called La Bella Principessa ("The Beautiful Princess"), is more than the inspiration of this story and the cover art used at its beginning. The efforts by Peter Silverman to establish this portrait’s provenance served as a guide our modern day protagonist follows. A book by him entitled Leonardo's Lost Princess: One Man's Quest to Authenticate an Unknown Portrait by Leonardo Da Vinci, as well as a PBS documentary, Mystery of a Masterpiece, tells of the real life search for the identity of the woman in the portrait and its creator. Martin Kemp, Emeritus Research Professor in the History of Art at the University of Oxford, also wrote a book on the subject entitled La Bella Principessa. The Profile Portrait of a Milanese Woman.

As an aside, the portrait was purchased for $19,000.00 when it was thought to be the work of a 19th Century German. Today it is said to be worth $100,000,000.00.

From Wikipedia;

Portrait of a Young Fiancée, also called La Bella Principessa ("The Beautiful Princess"), is a portrait in colored chalks and ink, on vellum, of a young lady in fashionable costume and hairstyle of a Milanese of the 1490s. Sold at auction in 1998 as an early 19th-century German work, it has since been attributed to Leonardo da Vinci by some experts, including Martin Kemp, who, in 2010, made it the subject of his book La Bella Principessa. The Profile Portrait of a Milanese Woman - The Story of the New Masterpiece by Leonardo da Vinci. Evidence discovered in 2011 accounting for its provenance has strengthened the case for it being by Leonardo. The attribution to Leonardo da Vinci has been disputed. Most of those who disagree with the attribution to Leonardo believe the portrait is by an early 19th-century German artist imitating the style of the Italian Renaissance. The current owner purchased the portrait in 2007.

The House of Medici was a powerful family who dominated the politics and economic life of the Republic of Florence from the 15th to the 18th Century. Four popes, (Leo X, Clement VII, Pius IV, and Leo XI), were selected from its members.

The German heretic referred to in the text is Martin Luther, (1483-1546)

Íñigo López de Loyola, (1491 – 1556), was the founder of the Society of Jesus, better known as the Jesuits.