A Golden Web (9 page)

On Saturday morning, the crier passed by Signora Isabella’s,
announcing that the water at the neighborhood bathhouse was good and hot.

“Quick, Emilia!” said Alessandra, shaking her awake. “Change into your gown! We must go bathe today—I feel I will die if I don’t.”

Alessandra had already pulled on the chemise, gown, and kirtle that had lain folded and hidden away.

“I will, with pleasure, Mistress! But how will we leave this house without being seen?”

“Just dress yourself! We’ll look out in the hallway and pass quickly. And if anyone sees us, perhaps they’ll take us for a couple of whores ordered up by our other selves.”

“Oh, the whole thing makes my head spin,” said Emilia, who was nonetheless getting up and dressing with unaccustomed alacrity. “I can’t keep track of who I am, one minute to the next.”

“Well, in a very short time,” whispered Alessandra as she cracked the door and gazed out into the hall, “both Emilia and Emilio will be much cleaner and more comfortable. Go now!” They darted out of the room and down the stairs, both of them giggling at the irony of disguising themselves as women.

They slowed their pace, both out of breath, as soon as they’d rounded the corner.

“How odd to be out and about in Bologna, dressed like this!”

Emilia was looking all about her, touching her gown and her unloosed hair, and looking down at her newly restored bosom, with obvious pleasure. “Do you really think they’d stop you from going to lectures if you showed up as yourself?”

“I don’t want to risk it. I haven’t seen a single other female student.”

They knew they’d reached the bathhouse by the cloud of steam coming from the windows. “This will be a treat for me, Emilia—far more hot water, I’ll wager, than in the laundry tub you bathed me in at home.”

Alessandra paid their entry and bought soap for them. They passed by some private curtained rooms, where servants waited on the couples within—illicit lovers, all of them, who could only meet in secret, away from their homes. Emilia sighed at the thought of all the wickedness in the world. “Maybe it’s not such a bad thing for you, after all, to hide yourself, out as you are among all those men and their wanton desires.”

“Yes,” said Alessandra as she pulled off her clothes. “The only feeling Sandro inspires among them is rivalry.” She lowered herself into the water. “Oh, Emilia—I’ve died and gone to Heaven!”

Alessandra tried to be as inconspicuous as possible during lectures. But when she knew a subject well, she would approach the professor afterwards and arrange to
be examined. In this way, all within the space of her first nine months in Bologna, she passed her first year’s exams, then the second year’s, followed by the third.

The fame of this brilliant and mysterious young man spread quickly, as did all news in the student quarter. People were calling him another Abelard. All sorts of stories sprang up about where he came from. He was, by some accounts, an Arabian prince traveling with his eunuch. There was another rumor that made the young man a nephew of the King of Burgundy. The story that was soonest quashed said that this Sandro was actually a girl from a wealthy family, traveling with her nanny, both of them dressed in men’s garb. No one believed that one, and it was soon dismissed as altogether implausible.

Alessandra withdrew more and more frequently into the sanctuary of the seven churches of Santo Stefano, to ask forgiveness for the sinful pride she took in her accomplishment, as well as for the sin of disguising her gender. She confessed once a week to the oldest, most wizened priest she could find, and made sure he saw the coins she put in the offertory. To her great comfort, he seemed every week to have forgotten everything she’d confessed
to him the week before. She took Communion from him and hoped he wouldn’t give her away.

In the dappled light and shadows of the innermost sanctuary of Santo Sepolcro, she knelt on the cold stone to pray for the courage to carry on. She prayed to her mother to intercede for her, to plead her case and send her the strength and determination that she knew she needed every waking hour.

Sometimes she stayed there until her knees had no sensation, too confused and afraid to step out into the light again. Why would God have given her a keen and questioning mind if He didn’t intend her to use it? Why would the world and all of Nature be laid out like a book, waiting to be read and understood, if the Creator had not desired her to discover its secrets and draw wisdom from them? Wasn’t it a sign of respect to try to better the lot of the creatures God had favored above all others with intelligence and reason?

Woman was created last of all, after all the animals and after Adam himself. Why would God have done it thus if He intended woman as a lesser creature? Would He not then have made her just after the animals and before Adam?

Alessandra sat there in the twilight of the church, surrounded by the entombed spirits of the dead. She knew she would have to oppose all the powers on Earth to accomplish what God had given her the ability and ambition to do.

Alessandra was sitting among the throng of scholars at a lecture by Mondino, taking careful notes on everything he said and jotting down questions she hoped to ask him later. Halfway through, she turned around, aware of someone’s attention trained on her rather than on the eminent doctor. She felt it as surely as if an insect had been hovering around her head—and she wished that, whoever he was, she could as readily swat him away.

He sat behind her and a little bit to the side. He was handsome and well made for that bookish crowd, and he wore the clothes of a gentleman, although carelessly, as if his wealth was of little concern to him. His eyes were dark and yet full of light. He met and held Alessandra’s eyes, which flashed at first with annoyance and then softened. She took in the rich binding of his notebook, his chiseled profile, and his beautiful hands—
and then she turned to her own notes again.

Her heart was beating fast. What business did he have, looking at a fellow student so intensely?

Even though the lecture was one that Alessandra had been greatly looking forward to hearing, she found herself having trouble concentrating on the rest of it. And when it was over, she resolved to wait until the following week to speak to Mondino.

Her hands felt cold while she corked her ink bottle and put her pen in its case, and yet the sun was shining and there wasn’t a cloud in the cerulean sky. She stole another look over her shoulder; there were those eyes again—and this time it seemed they were laughing at her.

She swept her things into her satchel, gave him a withering look—the sort of look she imagined Nicco would give to any fellow who dared to stare at him so impertinently—and walked away with more swagger than she usually affected, trying especially hard to look both taller and older.

She thought of him, though, during the whole of her walk back to Signora Isabella’s. Of all the scholars who’d come to her father’s scriptorium—of all the traders passing
through Persiceto, and of all the people in the town—she’d never seen any person before whose face and mien pressed themselves as precisely into her memory, as if he had been an engraved seal and she a melted pool of wax.

She hurried away as if fleeing the sweet laughter in those brown, expressive eyes, wondering if she would ever see him again and knowing that she shouldn’t.

Intimate friendship would not be on Sandro’s path—how could it be? Anyone who drew too close to her was bound to discover her secret.

That evening, sticking her head out the window of her room for a look at the full moon and a bit of fresh air, she saw him—at least, it looked like him—on the street below, standing as still as a statue. Whoever it was bowed and evanesced into the shadows. But the incident was alarming enough for Alessandra to resolve to find new lodgings.

When Nicco came to look for Sandro at Signora Isabella’s, he was told that the young gentleman and his servant had left Bologna, called away on urgent family business.

This bit of news left Nicco scratching his head.

In fact, Alessandra had sent a note to her brother, informing him that she was seeking out new lodgings and he shouldn’t send any correspondence until she could tell him precisely where. But the messenger and Nicco had passed each other on the road.

Nicco wandered rather helplessly around the student quarter. Everyone he asked, it seemed, had heard of the academic prodigy named Sandro. But no one had the slightest idea how to find him.

The rumor of Nicco’s quest grew its own wings, with a proliferation of adornments. Nicco was an agent of the King of Burgundy…a secret assassin…Sandro’s homosexual lover…Sandro’s brother…Sandro’s creditor…and (best of all) Sandro’s unbelievably homely sister, who had donned male garb to come search for him.

Tonio, always keen to follow the scent of money, found Nicco at a tavern, waiting for the joint of meat roasting on the spit there.

“’Scuse me, Your Honor,” said Tonio, simultaneously bowing and wiping his nose. It was a bad season for colds that winter, with dripping noses everywhere.

The joint was taking a long time, and Nicco had drunk
quite a few bowls of hot mulled wine by then. As a result of this, as well as his sense of fatigue and discouragement, his only words to Tonio were “Go away!”

But Tonio, used to being treated as a scourge, only came closer. “Yes,” he said, squinting at Nicco in the firelight, “I can see the resemblance between you—although he’s not nearly as fat!”

In a trice, Nicco grabbed Tonio by the collar, until only the long, curling points of Tonio’s secondhand shoes brushed against the ground. “He’s not nearly as apt to lose his temper, either!”

Tonio, undaunted, looked Nicco straight in the eyes. “He’s quick with that big knife of his, though.”

A smile lit Nicco’s face. “You know where I can find—my brother?”

Tonio, with both feet flat on the ground again, made tender readjustments to the rags that passed as his clothes. “As it happens, Your Highness,” he said, “I am one of his most trusted associates.”

Nicco snorted. “Where is he, then? Tell me the truth and I’ll pay you well.”

Tonio moved a bit away, far enough so Nicco wouldn’t
be able to grab him again. “I don’t exactly know….” He threw his arms up in front of his face when Nicco raised his hand—but it was only to send Tonio packing.

“Leave me be, rodent, if you have no information for me!”

“That’s just what he called me!”

“One of his closest associates, are you?” Nicco took another swig of his wine, found it cold, and spat it out. “Waiter!” he called.

“I said I didn’t know exactly where he was—but I didn’t say I have no information.” Tonio sidled close to him. “I do have information. Privileged information, I might add.”

“Are you still here?”

Tonio came close enough to whisper—and Nicco moved away, repelled by the odor of his words, even while hanging on their meaning. “Both he and his nanny are still in Bologna!”

“You know about Emilia, do you?”

“I do,” said Tonio, sounding very well satisfied with himself (and taking Nicco’s repugnance in stride). “I also know where they buy their bit of bread and cheese of an afternoon.”

“Why didn’t you say so?” Nicco slapped some money down on the table to pay for his wine. “Take me there, lad, without delay! You’ll be able to buy yourself some decent clothes before this day is done.”

Alessandra was under considerable pressure from Emilia, who was fed up with dressing as a man. Between the come-ons of whoremongers and her utter isolation from other women during the long hours when Alessandra was immersed in her studies, Emilia grew more and more despondent. She hated that smirking ragamuffin Tonio, and was convinced that Signora Isabella was the Devil’s spawn. Much to Alessandra’s distress, Emilia had taken to drinking in taverns during the long and lonely afternoons. She’d sometimes forget herself then, doing or saying things that might imperil the secrecy of their entire enterprise.

After a day spent inquiring after new long-term lodgings—a day she hated taking away from her studies—Alessandra realized that the only way to allow Emilia to go back to dressing like a woman was to unmask her as Sandro’s nanny. There was no question of being able
to start over in another part of the city as two other people; everyone, it seemed, already knew about the prodigy Sandro and his plump, womanish servant.

The reality of their situation cost Alessandra—as Sandro—in terms of her masculine pride. How could Sandro hope to be taken seriously as a scholar if he was known to be traveling in the company of his nursemaid?

They were discussing this—in truth, they were arguing about it—when Tonio brought Nicco to the threshold of their favorite bakery.

“By God,” breathed Nicco as he caught sight of his sister. “She looks amazing!”

Tonio, looking at Emilia, squinted his eyes. “Do you think so? She doesn’t have the figure for it at all—far too soft and lumpy.”

Nicco hastened to give Tonio a silver coin. “Here, my boy! You’ve been wonderfully helpful.”

Tonio stared at the heavy coin in his hand. It was more money than he had ever possessed in his lifetime.

“I’ll give you another just like that if I find you’ve kept this whole thing strictly to yourself. Not a word to anyone!”

“Cut out my tongue if I tell anyone, master!”

“Now go!”

Tonio disappeared so quickly, it was as if he’d never been there.

Nicco strode inside the bakery, which was empty except for Alessandra and Emilia, who shrieked when she saw him.

“Hush!” cried both brother and sister as one.

“Are you real?” Emilia stretched out her hand to touch Nicco’s cheek. “You must be real, because spirits don’t have prickly whiskers—I’d swear by it!”

“Nic!” Alessandra couldn’t help it: She threw her arms around her brother.

“You didn’t think I wouldn’t come, did you?”

“I’m so glad to see you!”

“You look thin, Alessandra. Emilia, you’re here to see that she eats properly!”

Alessandra shushed him. “I’m ‘Sandro’ here—and I’m ‘he,’ not ‘she,’ as far as the world concerns itself with me.”