The Lost Legacy of Gabriel Tucci

By Joan Mora

The Lost Legacy of Gabriel Tucci

In 1850 Trastevere, gifted architect Gabriel Tucci encounters an olive merchant's daughter and for the first time finds beauty in something other than towers and spires. On the eve of Ferragosto, he learns her father has signed an undesirable marriage contract and the love-struck Gabriel and Anna Maria flee Trastevere for London. His reputation means nothing there, yet his dreams won't die. When his designs for a church are stolen by a rival architect who betrays him and blackens his name, he is forced to seek work outside of London, leaving Anna Maria with their five young children, aided only by a disgraced nun and a Jewish lady's maid. Barely surviving, she is presented with a heartbreaking proposal, offering her the opportunity to redeem Gabriel's name and repay his sacrifice. But at what price? 

Three generations later in present-day London, Luca Tucci practices Judaism, using Yiddish and Italian phrases interchangeably, yet his sister is entering a cloistered nunnery. As he says goodbye to his only remaining family, he submits a bid to design the music hall at St. Giuseppe's in his ancestor's name. Though someone else wants it more: a young widower set on fulfilling his wife's dying wish. Only one architect can win the bid, but neither is prepared when a centuries-old mystery threatens to dispel everything they believed was true. It all starts when a stealthy art conservator unearths haunting artifacts inside the church's sealed-up watching loft.

In a multilayered narrative, crossing timelines and continents, The Lost Legacy of Gabriel Tucci is a testament to the endurance of love and the will to survive.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Pillar & Bridge Press
• Release date: Nov 18, 2022
• ISBN: 9798986333304

Book preview

PART I

CHAPTER 1

Gabriel

July 1850

Trastevere

Midmorning on deadline day, Santa Maria’s bells missed the second toll. All across town, grandmammas pressed rosaries to their lips, holding breaths until the final bell sounded. "Buon Dio, I imagined them saying. Death knocks today." But my nerves were unmoved. I was finished with bad omens.

Cresting the hill to the west of the famed cathedral was my own Santa Lucia, a structure born of charcoal and sweat in this very workshop. When I was twenty-two, my basilica drawings had won the Accademia di San Luca’s top prize and my name echoed from the walls of the academy to the parapets of Rome. An architect on the rise, the masters had said. "Magnifico," they’d said. With no patience for collaboration, soon my confidence trampled my good sense. Yes, it is true. The year my designs were commissioned, I shunned Officina Barelli, the master architect’s shop I’d joined. You’ll never work again, Barelli had said. And I had not.

Now the floor around me was stacked with abandoned parchments of churches never to be built. Ten years of painstaking calculation and drawing, of contests and commissions awarded to lesser architects. Only a foot-length path to the door was free of the renderings; chancels stacked in one corner, coffered ceilings in another, façades propped against the walls, campaniles strewn about the stone floor. Ten years of rejection.

I blamed Janus, two-faced god of gates and doors, past and future. The marble statue had guarded our farmhouse for generations, yet new beginnings eluded me, for that duplicitous god faced the wrong way time and again. I should have hammered him to shards long ago, but I’m an architect, not a fighter. Truth told, if my life depended on weaponry skill, I would be long dead.

It would all change from this day. On this day I would not draw to the melody of Papa toiling with movements and mechanisms, pendulums and dials. No, Papa would toil with his clocks alone. Contest entries for the new cathedral were due by noon in the piazza. With this win, I’d fulfill a promise made my first year at the Accademia. A seventeen-year-old boy’s promise to a ghost.

In the kitchen, Mama was shooing a barn owl out the window with a broom. After it soared away, she set down the broom and crossed herself. "Buon Dio! she said, her voice hoarse from years of wailing. More death. She stood no higher than my shoulder and no wider than a child and seemed to shrink each year, as if her sorrow was a cinch, tightening around her. And did you hear? The bells missed a toll."

I patted her shoulder. Mama, it’s fine. Bats sleeping inside the bell again.

She crossed herself once more. Curse those bloodsuckers. Nothing had cinched her acerbic tongue.

Papa waved a hand, coffee sloshing from his cup. I’m a lucky man. Married more than half my life and never been cursed. Yes? Thick grey brows lifted as he questioned Mama.

She kissed his forehead, then leaned toward me in a pretend whisper. He doesn’t know I cursed him on our wedding night, a guarantee he’d never give me a moment’s trouble.

I didn’t for a minute doubt it.

Lucky and smart, Papa said, and chomped into a cornetto, crumbs flaking his mustache. He’d kept his sense of humor and joy, where Mama’s had tarnished in the winds of war and grief. Not to say Papa didn’t share her sorrow, but he accepted the loss as God’s wisdom, where she deemed it His wrath.

Your designs will win, Papa said. Patience and respect beget reward.

A decade of patience is long enough. My boots need new soles and I’ve not sold a stone chair or gargoyle for months, let alone a set of designs.

Remember, winners don’t trail like donkeys, Mama said, her strained smile a mere allusion to her former jovial self.

Yes, Mama. I kissed her floury cheek. It didn’t do to remind her I was over thirty years old. She used the same voice for me as she would a child. For her, we’d all stopped aging the day Sofia waded to heaven.

Perhaps now you will find a wife, start a family? Papa said. Passion in work leads to success—

Obsession to ruin. Yes, Papa.

Papa knew my mind but prodded anyway. Who had time for a wife when such dreams lay ahead? Awards and commissions, a legacy of churches to withstand centuries. Papa’s respect. Reprieve from this grief haunting me. From guilt.

"Ciao, Papa! Ciao, Mama!" I lifted my portfolio in salute and rushed out the door, ignoring the statue of Janus. Nothing would rattle me today. Not bells or bats or two-faced gods.

I charged up the narrow lane of terra cotta façades, ducking a bridge of drying linens and swatting a palm against an airing rug. I stepped over the jutting cobblestone at the edge of Santa Maria’s piazza. At this hour, sixty-degree shadows crossed the church, severing the exterior mosaic’s Madonna and child. Sometimes a glance at the façade in a certain light transported me back to my boyhood days, when I imagined the four marble saints above the portico as sorcerers. In the square, three playmates cuffed water from the fountain’s marble basin. As a child, I once earned a broom to the bottom from a matron sweeping nearby for doing just that. In Trastevere, there was no shortage of boisterous children and no shortage of women to thump them.

It was here I’d heard the death knell for my friends and neighbors after last year’s battle on Gianicolo Hill. Here I’d said a prayer for Zio Bruno’s missing leg. General Garibaldi had led the fight for Rome and a unified Italy. On that high hill they’d temporarily succeeded against a larger French contingent defending Papal rule, only to face defeat two months later. Garibaldi, nothing if not valiant, marched north with his dwindling troops. What would the saints think of the bodies and burials now? I dropped coins into the blind soldier’s cup, five quattrini today instead of three, for soon my pockets would bulge. We fortunate, healthy men owed a great debt to the damaged souls who had protected our city.

Under the shade of a mulberry tree, I set my portfolio against the bark and plucked a berry. The tart juice puckered my mouth. Arms folded with my head against the trunk, I took in the queue of pitiable men, shuffling with their portfolios toward the collection table, their hopes of winning high as Santa Maria’s clock tower.

Tomaso the clerk logged the entries as his assistant stacked designs on a cart. The process would take all morning, for Tomaso was a scrupulous sort, and men, architect or not, came from miles away for a chance. They’d squandered time and ink, for the name Gabriel Tucci would echo at the Ferragosto celebration. I had queued for too many years. Never again. Lines were for apprentices and fools.

Finally, the last man submitted his proposal and Tomaso began packing up.

I snatched my portfolio and approached the table, unrolling my drawings and weighting the corners with four rocks. The future Cathedral at San Bernardo. To reach master status, one had to act like a master, no matter what doubts lingered.

You heard the bells, Tomaso said. The deadline is past. He removed his spectacles and wiped the lenses with his shirt hem.

Winners don’t trail like donkeys.

Who are you calling a donkey? Laughter erased Tomaso’s scowl. You think you have a chance this time? he said, logging my plans.

From anyone other than Tomaso, I might have taken offense. But he had proven his loyalty time and again. He’d sprinted all the way to Rome to deliver the news of Sofia.

I have as much time as the others. The same twenty-four hours in a day. How do they use theirs? I pointed toward a tavern, where a cluster of my competitors leered at women. Me? I’m off to replenish my charcoal supply. Yes, this time I will win.

As I turned to leave, my eye caught on a flash of color. The piazza blurred; the fountain, faces and clothes blotted into one mass. Against that backdrop, her blue skirts shimmered in the sun like an untainted sea, tresses of golden hair swayed like wheat. Then she disappeared into the grey mass.

Dry-mouthed and a little dizzy, I darted through the crowd, glancing at each young woman I passed, and maneuvered around plump cooks foraging for the evening meal, clucking like hens as they inspected artichokes and squash, olives and flowers. One swing of my arm would clear my way, but Papa’s words came back. Patience and respect beget reward. I slowed and swiped a handkerchief across my forehead.

Papa was right, as usual. At a table of lemons, she ran a pale finger over the glistening rinds, as if imagining them crushed into granita. Surely the master Raffaello had painted her there. The shock of a dog’s bark made her hand jump and a fat lemon rolled to the ground. In my most gallant stance, I scooped up the fruit then presented to her the brushed-off prize. Could she hear my heart, clanging inside my chest like a peal of bells?

She did not blink her piercing eyes. You think I cannot chase my own lemons? The corners of her lips lifted slightly.

Her voice did not glide innocently as I’d expected, it pulsed and danced. My usual confidence wavered.

Or you consider me sour? She tilted her head in jest, then turned to the rotund lemon seller. Morning, Signora. How is your daughter faring?

"Ah, bene, bene, the signora said. My seventh grandchild! I am blessed, and she is tired. This one has lungs like an opera singer."

When she laughed, her voice pulsed and danced, too. Instead of fawning over her as other men must have, I suppressed a smile, bowed, and held my tongue. Patience. She would come to market again. I was halfway home before I remembered the charcoal.

CHAPTER 2

Gabriel

July 1850

Over the next days, I tried to sketch a watching loft, a stone chamber perched above the nave in the triforium, but my charcoal betrayed me, breaking and splintering. I sat by firelight late into the night and attempted a curtain wall and hidden staircase, but my sketches resembled those of my untrained youth. I scratched and scribbled structures that would surely topple. Any master would laugh me out of a room with such amateurish plans.

Saints above, one moment with her and now she filled every inch of my imagination. The need to create was at once curse and gift. An architect must be singularly focused, like great masters of art, literature, or religion. Priests and nuns devote their lives to God; artists forsake life to portray their vision of life. My days were committed; I had neither the time nor desire for diversions. Why then did I feel as if I’d been released into the light after years locked in a crypt?

Papa and I had built our two-room stone workshop near the farm house, far enough to mute Mama’s whimpers, close enough for afternoon grappa with Zio Bruno. As a distraction, I helped Papa with a longcase clock commissioned by the mayor. He was too modest to admit it, but he was the only clockmaker considered for the job, for his technique was as precise as his clocks. First, he drew a rendering on parchment, calculating proportions just as I did for a church. Next, he chose the finest components: walnut for the casing, honeyed marble for the base, brass inner workings, a gilded face. He trusted me to sand and finish the wood while he assembled the pendulum, weights and escapement. When it was time to mount the clock face, he guided me.

Did you wish for me to become a clockmaker?

Not once I saw your first church elevation, Papa said. "But you are a clockmaker. And winemaker and stone carver and architect. One cannot have too many skills." Papa was not a man to cloak doubts with a compliment. When he disapproved of something, even the mice felt the blow of his words. His praise was heartily welcome.

Within two weeks I was questioning my tactic of not appearing too eager to the woman in the market. By then my temperamental Sangiovese grapes shriveled on their vines. I pumped well water, sloshing more on my boots than the tray above the pergola. When a month had passed, I pulled a ripe globe from the vine and cut my teeth into the skin. Time enough.

Outfitted in a clean linen shirt and waistcoat, I waited in a concealed alley off the piazza, holding a basketful of lemons and grapes. I’d tried to tame my wavy hair and beard. My palms sweated. The clock tower hands had not moved since I’d arrived.

A musical trio in black caps and smocks harmonized in the colonnade. Over the years, their faces had weathered like limestone. Their strained voices now warbled the high notes, but the trio was as fixed to their spot as the saints above the portico. I hummed to the buoyant tune, silencing the past year’s echoes, an endless reverberation of battle cries, shotguns and wailing widows. Hope, the notes intoned. Future.

Then there she was, slyly casting her eyes not upon the market offerings, but at the passersby. Aha! She looked for me. When our eyes met, she glided across the piazza toward me, her face a blend of mirth and confidence. She plucked a lemon from the basket and held it to her nose. You expect a tray of candied peel in return?

Since you offer, I prefer it sweet, not sour.

She raised her brows, her lips pursing to conceal a smile. My days are full. You might ask another.

I glanced left and right, feigning interest in nearby women. But I already knew, there would be no other.

An older woman stepped toward us, her eyes narrowed. Ah, so this was her mother. A greyed version of her daughter, her skirts were of rich fabric, albeit faded. Bright eyes contrasted with pale skin, her face reflecting a life of both love and pain. There was approval there, but a warning, too. You are the architect, yes? Your hands may have designed Santa Lucia, but they won’t touch my Anna Maria.

Mama!

Anna Maria, even her name was beautiful and pure. She appeared embarrassed by her mother’s candor. I bowed my head. Gabriel Tucci. After her admonishment, dare I press on? May I walk with your daughter? Under your watch, of course.

Mama? Anna Maria held out the basket to her mother and kissed her cheek.

God help us if your father sees me. I look like a fruit peddler. She sat on a nearby bench and rolled a lemon between her hands, eyes trained on me.

As we strolled the piazza, I focused on the rhythm of Anna Maria’s skirts sweeping across the cobblestone.

I am not charmed as easily as my mother, she said, swatting a fly.

This was charmed? Then why walk with me now?

I take pity on you, for you have bought lemons from the most expensive stall in Trastevere. She cocked her head, a wry smile on her lips.

Are you not worthy? I’d play her game of wit. Why haven’t I noticed you before?

I don’t know. Why haven’t you? A sliver of sun spotlighted a pale freckle on her cheekbone.

That’s what comes from hiding away in a workshop. What is your family name?

Falconi.

I swallowed hard. Of all the women to notice. Your father is Paolo Falconi?

You know him?

Who doesn’t? Only by name. Everyone knew of Falconi’s daughter, knew no man would come near her. At eighteen, she was almost past marrying age.

I have been away, she said. I only returned in the spring.

Unable to meet her eyes, I gazed at her hands. One finger on her right hand bowed outward at the knuckle, misshapen as though broken and never set.

Laughter and clinking glasses rang from a tavern patio. Tomaso waved, and my face grew hot. We promenaded across a well-known stage.

My mother and I agree on one thing, she said. Santa Lucia is a masterpiece. Is it true? Did you threaten every artisan until their work reached perfection?

Threaten is a harsh word. I liked to think myself meticulous and resolute.

The rumors of the red mosaic, they are true?

In a blend of cardinal and vermillion representing the blood of Christ, the side chapel’s ceiling tiles possessed a red like no other. I had insisted the mosaicist destroy the color recipe and the artisan doubled his price to fulfill my wish. You will remember my church, no?

How can I not? she asked. From my terrace, I see it towering over our grove.

Ah, so your days are full of afternoons on the terrace?

My father produces the region’s best olive oil. I oversee the inventory, supply batches to the finest cooks. My father’s manner chased off too many customers.

An industrious woman. Most interesting.

What new building can we expect from you?

"The Cathedral at San Bernardo. The winner is to be announced on Ferragosto."

Your chances are good? Her eyes were bright with hope.

I leaned close and whispered, I will win, of course.

Is your portfolio as exceptional as your arrogance?

So, she did not know of my failures. One day, I hope.

She studied me a moment. It will be you.

I let her sweet prediction linger in the air as we ducked under the shade of a mulberry tree. She leaned against the gnarled bark and tilted her face up to mine. Her wide cheekbones hinted at a fierce spirit and her alert eyes, intelligence and loyalty. She possessed complicated facets and I wished to chisel free each one. I told her of my workshop. Of Mama and Uncle Bruno, of Papa whom I respected most of all, for his life’s work was in the mysterious and vital business of clocks.

Papa says we measure time to remind us the moment between ticks is as sweet as a musical note, as majestic as a church bell.

We must stop to listen, she answered, stepping closer.

Yes. A squirrel roped up the trunk, its claws clattering against the bark.

Then I took a deep breath and told her about Sofia. About Mama dusting abandoned pinafores, ribbons, and books of fairy tales.

I’ll wager you were a fine brother.

Her words ignited further guilt. Not as good as I should have been.

I’d been allowed a week to mourn with my family and it was then I decided to give up my place at the Accademia. But Papa took me aside. Not only will you go back, but you will become the best architect Trastevere has ever known. Now give me your word. For Mama, for Papa and for my clever shadow whom I’d failed. Yes, I promised, for this was what had kept me away from home when she had died. Sofia might have grown into a beauty like this woman before me, who could touch a lemon and entice a man to give her a basketful.

Did she have your coffee eyes?

I smiled at a memory. Hers were darker but she used to fan my lashes with her pinky.

They make a lovely fan. She steadied her eyes on mine and pulled me around the tree, positioning me as a shield between her and her mother. Her brows drew together as she swept two fingers down my right cheek, over my beard to my chin, staring at my mouth. I fought the urge to touch her cheek, too. I was conscious then of the port-wine birthmark splotched across my jaw like a smeared grape, but she didn’t seem to notice the marks under my beard. I winced as my childhood nickname came back. Diavolo.

The corners of her mouth turned up as her thumb stroked my beard. As I suspected, softer down here where you rub at it.

I clasped my hands behind me so as not to trace a finger across her lips.

Time to leave. Her mother’s voice cut into our private moment.

"Ciao, bella." The crowd swallowed up her blue skirts, as if Raffaello had painted over the scene.

CHAPTER 3

Gabriel

August 1850

For days I replayed our encounter under the mulberry tree. Her upturned face, her thumb on my beard, her disappointment when she was led away. I roamed from one end of the city to the other, hoping for a chance meeting. Finally, one day as I curved the lane around Santa Lucia, she was walking toward me, a cloth-covered basket in her arms.

When I tugged the handle, she clutched it tight. How have I managed without you?

In that case. I set my portfolio on her basket, stretched my arms toward the sky. Such a relief. Where are we going?

We? I’m off to paint in the golden hour of light.

You’re an artist?

I am learning, yes. Late afternoons, Signora Celini teaches me to paint in exchange for extra jars of olive oil.

The disgraced nun? What use could she have for so much oil? I lowered my head in shame. Why had I used the crude label? How many considered me the disgraced architect?

Eyes squinting in challenge, she said, Is it a disgrace to love? The disgrace is a God who parts a rough sea but ignores a beaten wife. I misjudged you, she said, her cheeks flaming. And just like that, her fresh, witty words curdled to irritation. She turned away.

Rumors of a nun who had nursed her patient and fallen in love with her had shocked many. It seemed the only one in the dark was the mayor. If he learned of their forbidden liaison, he’d chase her out of town.

Wait, I begged.

She glanced over her shoulder. Would she stay or go?

I am the one who misjudged. But my words came from ignorance not malice. Will you forgive my disrespect? I bowed my head.

You’re curious about her need for oil? She burns an eternal lamp for the beaten wife God finally noticed.

I rubbed the sweat from my neck. I am truly sorry for the signora.

She doesn’t need your pity. God has atoned in his way. Her paintings should hang in a museum. I call her Artemisia.

I smiled hopefully. What could I do to return our light banter? After the artist? Signora Celini is that good? May I see her paintings?

She regarded me then turned up a narrow lane, her skirts swishing. When I didn’t follow, she called over her shoulder, Have you changed your mind?

I ran to catch up to her. After a few silent moments, I ventured, And you? By which artist’s name shall we call you?

Anna Maria. She smiled, chin high. I paint landscapes. Cypresses and olive trees. Santa Lucia’s campanile.

My campanile?

Others cannot admire it?

She handed me the basket of oil then pointed in the distance. There, she lives in the field beyond Santa Lucia. We will stop there first. I’ve been inside, but never with the architect to guide me.

We trampled through blue-green sage and orange wildflowers toward Santa Lucia. She dabbed a handkerchief to her forehead, flushed with heat. So close to nature, so close to her, the intimacy of the gesture struck me. I wished to be the breeze that cooled her.

As we approached my church, my palms sweated. In the months since its first mass, I had gazed at my creation often. But to see it on canvas? How would Anna Maria bring forth the spires and campanile? How would she capture the sun lighting the stained glass?

My father wished the clock to dominate the tower. But for me, it was always the bells, I added awkwardly.

Mercifully, we arrived at the portico, where I set down the basket and opened the bronze door to lead her inside. She did not gape or gush, not even when she saw the crimson mosaic. I must admit, her nonchalance humbled me a bit.

As we stood near a mural of Santa Lucia’s burial, she said, I will paint you today.

You see a dead saint and wish to paint me?

No, I see color and wish to splash it on you.

This will take much time, am I right? Your father will worry?

He is distracted and home less and less. When he is there, he is stewing in grappa. He knows nothing of my visits to the signora. Now I have seen your masterpiece, we will see mine.

Tell me about your family, I asked, as we walked toward the Signora’s farmhouse. I was again aware of her closeness, of the tangy scent of her skin and the heat bearing upon us.

My family? Well, let’s see. Mama sings notes higher than a bird and lower than a man, despises olives, and speaks her mind to everyone but my father. Now, Papa… Her voice trailed off as she gazed skyward, as if she might see him looking down at her. When she spoke again, it was in a whisper, even though we were alone. He thinks I do not know his business is failing. Fires destroyed most of our grove in the war. He has secret meetings with some fat old wealthy goat. My father is too proud to consider taking a partner, but what else would they discuss?

I am not a business man. Though it does sound plausible. God forbid, a different sort of partnership?

"Our house was used as a training camp. Soldiers commandeered all but three rooms and left it a mess. Barbari." She flushed, in anger or embarrassment, I did not know.

Had they hurt her in some way? You weren’t there with them?

For three days, until my father hid me with the nuns at Santa Cecilia. I met Signora Celini there. She went quiet then, looking at the dusky sky, her neck silky white.

The scent of olives thickened as we approached the grove near Signora Celini’s stone farmhouse. Ceramic herb pots and barrels of heather lined the front pathway. Blackbirds soared and squawked above the eaves. I imagined this was our home. Inside was a workshop where I’d design important churches, where she’d tend our many children. Here we’d roam the fields from the time the sun crested Santa Lucia’s tallest spire until it dipped under the olive grove.

As we approached the door, she caught my arm. What are you daydreaming about? Signora Celini will scare that grin off your face.

I scratched my cheek. Perhaps this was a bad idea after all.

A long pause followed Anna Maria’s knock. After several minutes she knocked again. Her forehead crinkled. Why doesn’t she open the door? Maybe she’s ill! She waited another moment then pushed open the unlocked door.

In a room crossing the length of the modest house, one oversized chair stood on the stone floor near the hearth. Flakes of onion skin littered a square wooden table. The walls were bare, only square shadows where paintings once hung. Anna Maria rushed into the other room, came out with her hand to her lips. She’s gone. Her clothes, bed linens, all her paintings, gone!

Arms crossed, she circled the room and ducked in and out of the bedrooms. "She