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Page 33.
 Leonardo lived near the fabulous castle of Amboise for the last three years of his life. More precisely, he was given a smaller, ancillary mansion called the Château du Clos Lucé, connected to the royal chateau by an underground passageway. Today, Leonardo’s home away from home was a museum of his works.
He died in bed presumably from cardiovascular problems on May 2, 1519. According to legend, King François was at his bedside, and cradled a dying Leonardo’s head.
After Leonardo’s death, his main possessions were split up (not without the usual rancor) between his assistants Melzi and Salai, and his brothers back in Florence. There is some controversy about the exact path taken by Leonardo’s several famous paintings at Amboise, most notably the Mona Lisa. The Louvre, in any case, claims that it became property of King François in 1518.
And now, reading the brochure, Hannah noticed a tiny footnote at the bottom of the last page. Her gaze was directed there by a little asterisk in the text above, relating to the various controversies about how and why Leonardo painted her.
Startled, Hannah read the footnote. The text seemed obscure and did not particularly grab her attention. What did get her notice were several scholarly references in incredibly tiny italic print at the end of the footnote. These included a graduate assistant Claudette Vervain, Department of Late Renaissance and Early Modern Paintings, at the Louvre.
“Oh, my, aching, lord,” Hannah enunciated in hammer-blow wording.
“What’s the matter now?” Yves asked with a pained look.
“I found her.”
“The Mona Lisa?”
“No, Claudette Vervain. Dad’s girlfriend in Paris, the love of his life.”
Yves managed a stunned look. “I have something else to show you.”
“What is it?” she asked, almost impatiently. What could merit her attention at a moment like this?
He pointed to another brochure, this one being of Leonardo’s works in the Louvre. He pointed to a painting of a provocative, characterful young woman. The painting’s title was Portrait of an Unknown Woman, or La Belle Ferronnière. She was not La Gioconda, but she did have that mysterious little smile filled with secret thoughts that marked Leonard’s craft at its highest, informed by his careful studies of living people as well as his scientific dissection of cadavers to research how muscles worked, including those of smiling and frowning.
Something tickled at Hannah’s memory. “What am I thinking?”
“The address written in your Dad’s Journal II along with Claudette Vervain’s name.”
A light flickered on in Hannah’s mind. “Rue de la Belle Ferronière.” She remembered that pretty little headband on the unknown mistress’ forehead with the jewel in the center. At the same time, Hannah recalled a mental snapshot of the hidden street near Bercy, with its wall in the tunnel leading into the courtyard; that steel door; and its secretive atmosphere.
“Probably just a strange coincidence,” Yves ventured.
“Maybe,” she allowed softly. “Or is it?”
“You’re scaring me.”
“Listen, Yves, it’s almost as if someone has been guiding me toward whatever is coming next. We’re here, and we found a reference to Claudette Vervain. My father wrote her address in his journal, and the address is a street with the same name as one of Leonardo’s famous paintings here in the Louvre.”
“La Belle Ferronnière?” Yves leaved through the brochures until he found one describing Leonardo’s other (but far less) famous paintings in the Louvre, including the one of the Lovely Ferronnière. He showed her the text. “It’s not the woman, but that little headband with a tiny jewel in the center of her forehead. Look at that seductive, scheming face. Her personality comes across after five centuries. She was young, and a mistress of King François I. She was a commoner, whose husband was supposedly a worker in iron—un feron, from fer, iron, from Latin ferrum. Nobody actually knows who she was, or even if Leonardo was the artist. That style of headband, with a jewel in the middle of the forehead, came to be known as a ferronnière, considered very stylish for a long time.”
“I think I’ll make one for myself,” Hannah said. “It’s so pretty.”
“You’d look beautiful in one,” Yves told her.
“Aww,” she said, appreciating his flattery.
They kissed, and Leonardo’s famous lady seemed to be smiling with them across the room. The Mona Lisa had that effect on everyone in the world who saw her. Hannah wondered what Claudette Vervain knew, and intended to find out.
As another startling little side fact, Hannah noticed that the Mona Lisa also seemed to be wearing a ferronnière across her forehead, without a jewel. It was the fine border of a barely visible veil.
At least she had accomplished one thing by taking the day off, and dragging Yves away from his work. She’d found a clue that would lead her to Claudette Vervain, her father’s lost love.
As they stood together, leaning over the stone wall that overlooks the Seine in front of the Musée du Louvre, at the Quai des Tuileries, Yves looked a bit grim. “I won’t give up so easily.”
She punched him lightly, fondly, in the ribs. “Thank you.”
He put his long arm protectively around her shoulder and back. “We will get to the bottom of it.”
She held her hands against his side, as if his ribs were a pillow. She snuggled her cheek against the warmth of his body in his sweater. “You are my hero.”
“Not a hero,” he said fiercely in her ear. “Just a lucky guy to have found you.”
“Aww,” she intoned again, not for the first time that day. “You are my rock star. You are going to sell millions of videos and become the next famous producer.”
He laughed. “I’d settle for being the next Yves.”
“You are my Yves.”
“Then I am already rich and famous.”
“You and me, babe.”
“You and me,” he said devoutly as they became probably the billionth young couple to kiss avidly in Paris near the Seine by the Quai des Tuileries or a hundred similarly romantic places while boats passed on the river, trees rustled in a summery breeze, and blossoms fell like snow around them.
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