Beneath a Dark Highland Sky: Book #3 (17 page)

In that moment, she knew the difference between Malcolm and other men.
Malcolm would take a lifetime to know.
She wondered, who was the real man beneath the one he showed the world?

26

They returned to the great hall to find a woman in a velvet cloak standing uncertainly at the entrance. She was petite, with large brown eyes, thick brows, and dark hair with tawny, gold highlights in it. She glanced at Malcolm and then at Sorcha.

              “You must be Malcolm Maclean and you must be Sorcha Douglas. I congratulate you both on your wedding,” she said quietly. “You must surmise that I am Caterina Kerr, Caterina Cellini from Italy, Lulach’s wife.” She pursed her lips as if she tasted something rotten.

              Sorcha took her hand warmly. “Thank ye for coming, Caterina. Ye will ha’e heard what happened.”

She nodded. Her fingers were speckled in paint. “I apologize,” she said, looking at them. “I was painting. When I was told what Lulach and Nessa had done, I left right away. I did not pause to wash away the paint. I did not want to delay.”

Gillis watched from the shadows.

“There is no need to apologize,” Sorcha said. “I am glad ye came and ye are welcome here.” Sorcha liked her immediately.

“You expect news of Lulach, my…husband,” Caterina said. “I dunna know where he is, but I know what he tried to do, and I am willing to do all in my power to bring him to justice. Your clan sent a messenger and an escort and now I am here. I will answer any questions you have. The sooner he is found, the better. Perhaps we can talk privately?”

“Yea,” Sorcha said.

“I am Gillis, Sorcha’s brother. I will show ye to the retiring room.”

Caterina took his hand briefly in greeting.

As they made their way down a stone corridor, Gillis and Caterina walking ahead of them and Gillis holding a torch, Malcolm leaned over and whispered to Sorcha. “I ha’e seen that look on a man’s face before. I do believe Gillis is vera interested in our guest.”

“She seems to be an interesting woman.”

They came to the door and Gillis set the torch in a ring upon the wall. The retiring room was small and cluttered with Gillis’ wood carvings. Finished and half-finished boats and birds and wood shavings littered the large walnut desk along with Gillis’ tools. Her father’s old ink well and feather quill still sat on a far corner of the desk. There were a number of chairs set about the room and in the corner, a carved wooden chest with a complicated lock to keep out thieves and mice. The lock had always fascinated Sorcha when she was a wee lass. Behind her father’s desk, high up on the wall, was a tile depicting a Viking ship without a sail.

Sorcha lit the candles on the desk while Malcolm kindled a fire in the hearth.

“Who made these?” Caterina asked, running her fingers softly over the wood. “They are beautiful.”

Gillis beamed with pride. “I did.”

“You have a keen eye for detail.”

He nodded.

“Gillis,” Sorcha said, “Will ye bring spiced wine and oat cakes for our guest?”

Gillis nodded. “May I take yer cloak, Caterina?” he asked.

Caterina removed her cloak and handed it to him and he left to retrieve refreshments. She wore a practical, dark blue gown with puffs of white lace at the wrists, and the lace was also splattered with paint and soot.

“The soot is from oil lamps,” she said. “I use it to make black paint. In Italy, I could make it from charred grape vines. One needs to be resourceful. Some of the great painters grind charred animal bones to make the black paint.”

They seated themselves, Caterina closest to the hearth, and Sorcha found herself fascinated by the woman with paint and soot smudged on her hands and dress, the woman Nessa had often called, unfairly, ‘the Italian mouse.’ She was not beautiful in a proud, ostentatious way, but she was certainly not plain. She had a quiet kind of beauty and a graceful way of moving.

“You want to know if I will help you find my husband, who has been missing since the day he…since the incident at the burn.”

Sorcha nodded.

Caterina studied the flames in the hearth. She curled and flexed her fingers in front of the hearth, trying to warm them, and then placed her hands in her lap. “I do not wish to keep you long, on your wedding night, but I must tell you a story first.”

Malcolm nodded. “We will listen. ‘Tis important.”

Caterina nodded. “A rich man, a judge, wanted to marry me despite the fact I was well beyond marrying age,” she began. “My own father was wealthy, a supporter of the arts. He indulged my love of drawing and painting. This man, Monsignor Rosso, was interested in buying one of my paintings, or so he claimed. He offered an exorbitant sum. We lived in Florence. This man got me a job, an unusual job. I was sent to sketch executions. The only female among male artists, sitting before an angry crowd and overzealous judges. The only one who did not wish to see what she was sketching. But I felt some of those victims deserved a last sketch, someone to capture their last moments. So I did it. I noticed Monsignor Rosso watching me sketch one blustery spring day, his eyes pinpoints of lust that blazed from a face of sagging jowls. I did not like the way he looked at me. He seemed to enjoy my discomfiture. I was not surprised when he came to my father’s house to dine with us one evening under the pretext of inquiring about my paintings and to see how I was faring with the job he had gotten me. He emphasized the difficulty he had experienced in convincing the other magistrates to allow a female to sketch executions, and it was clear he expected my gratitude.

“My father, while a good judge of art, was a terrible judge of men. After dinner, we were alone in the hall, Monsignor Rosso and I. Despite being rich, he was a portly man with food stains on his clothing. I could see from his appearance Monsignor Rosso still feared the plague. Small bottles of perfume hung from his belt and his jewels were made of perfumed paste. It was evident he sprinkled his hands and arms with vinegar, for the smell stung my nose.

“He insisted on seeing some of the other paintings I’d done. My father had hung them proudly on the walls—paintings of pleasant things, barefoot women in skirts, verdant gardens, orange trees. As he studied them, he took my hand in his and said, ‘Such skill to come from a woman’s hands. And in your sketches of executions, you capture cruelty so well.’ I started to thank him but he interrupted me. ‘Such a waste of talent on a
woman
,’ he said. ‘A woman’s hands are meant for other things.’ He placed my hand on the front of his trousers and forced a brutal kiss on my lips while I struggled to get away from him. He bit my lip and made me bleed and promised to make me his wife. He reminded me I had no other marriage prospects.

“He was slovenly and grotesque and I lived in fear for days, fear he would return and I would be betrothed to him. I knew of a woman in similar circumstances who had been attacked by a man. He broke three of her ribs and bit off her nose. She never recovered. I convinced my father to send me to a convent. I thought I’d be safe there. Who would take any interest in a shy, plain woman who sketched executions and orange trees?”

Gillis returned to the room with a goblet of spiced wine and some oat cakes for Caterina and after he handed them to her, he turned to leave. “Thank you, Gillis. I do not mind if you stay.” Gillis nodded and as was his wont, folded himself into the shadows, standing behind Caterina’s chair.

Caterina nibbled at an oak cake. “At least I knew I would be free to paint and read in the convent,” she said. “The abbess was an eccentric woman who rode in an opulent carriage through the city with her dogs and even a great, furry, white cat named Piero. She used to clutch Piero tightly in her arms and stroke his fat, white head. She wished me to paint her portrait as well as portraits of her pets and thus she indulged me. I did not realize how high the price would be.” She frowned. “It is always the same. When others see your work they clamor for their own likenesses to be splashed on a canvas. But who can really capture a person, I mean, capture what is beneath the surface?”

She took a sip of wine, the movement graceful and birdlike. “Like many things in life, the convent was not what it seemed. I soon discovered it was more of a brothel. The nuns kept erotic manuals hidden in their prayer books and offered charity to male visitors. The cost of a dowry is exorbitant and noble families are often obliged to place their daughters in convents. My father was rich but had allowed me to enter the convent because he did not wish to see me married to Monsignor Rosso. He risked much placing me there, for Monsignor Rosso was a powerful man and my father fell out of favor with several high-ranking nobles. My father saw how sketching executions had changed me, and while my drawing technique improved, he wondered the cost to my soul. I had, for the first time, become fearful and withdrawn. He wanted to protect me from the world, from men like Monsignor Rosso.

“The convent was an ancient, damp stone building in the city. I was surprised to learn novices were given duplicate keys to come and go from palatial apartments. We were given revealing dresses and wine. The abbess came to my room one night with a handsome, flesh-and-blood suitor. I will continue to speak plainly. I had seen the erotic manuals; I was curious. I decided I wanted to experience life, I wanted to be with a man on my own terms so I would not be afraid. He came to me each night that week and I was fortunate, for he was a kind and gentle man, though he was married. I fancied myself, who had little beauty and therefore little prospects, in love with him. I suspected I was not suited to live out the rest of my life in a convent. I did not know where I belonged. I felt adrift.

“I was quite naïve. I thought he loved me too and would whisk me away from the convent and install me in his home as his mistress and I would paint portraits of his wife and children and other wealthy patrons of the arts. When the abbess brought me a different suitor the next week and I refused him, telling her I was in love, she struck me forcefully across my face, making my nose bleed. The man stank and had cruel eyes.

“In private, in an exhilarated voice, the abbess told me I had a choice. I would prostitute myself with any man who chose me or she would slice the fingers from my right hand.”

Gillis inhaled sharply.

Caterina held up her fingers, examining them. “How would I ever paint or draw again? My first love was and always has been painting. I let the man violate me that night for I had no choice.”

Sorcha felt tears brimming in her eyes. In the guttering light of the candles, Sorcha could see Gillis also cried silent tears as he listened to her tale.

“The next night, shortly before Compline, I quietly gathered my meager possessions, and carrying a light satchel, slipped out of the convent. The hours between Compline and Matins mark the longest stretch of sleep. Only the dogs that belonged to the abbess were awake, and they almost gave me away with their barking. It was frigidly cold. It was as if the convent spit me out that night, like a morsel of spoilt food it did not wish to swallow. People were celebrating the Feast of the Epiphany, commemorating the arrival of the Three Kings in Bethlehem.

“They paraded through the darkened streets, warm in their in costumes—beggars and kings—leering and laughing, many wearing colorful masks. It was also La Befana, Italy’s traditional time of gift giving, when an old, witch-like woman, who knows whether children have been good or bad, leaves them treats. Stockings were hung out on the night of the fifth, waiting to be filled by the Befana with sweets for the good children. I was hungry. I had no food. I am ashamed to admit, I stole some of the sweets from the sleeping children’s stockings as I hid in the shadows, so hungry I licked every last crumb from my fingers as I made my way to my home, back to a part of the city I knew would welcome me, with its bells and music and art. For Florence is not just a city of convents and women who are shut away but a grand city of statues and towering sin and architecture and dripping fountains, where I had once dreamed of being a great artist despite being a woman.

“That was before Monsignor Rosso bit me, when I thought Florence was a good place for me, a place with more woodcarvers than butchers, a marvelous place with workshops for marble and stone, a place teeming with goldsmiths and silversmiths and master painters. But there were those who also loved executions.

“I told my father all that had happened. I did not know what else to do. I did not, however, wish to bring disgrace upon my father’s name. For I was no longer a virgin. I had chosen to be with a man and then I had been forced into prostitution. Even Monsignor Rosso would not want me now. This is how they look upon women in such circumstances, even if such circumstances are partly forced upon her. A woman’s soul, her beauty inside, her talents, nothing matters if she is no longer a virgin. She has automatically become a whore.

“Fortunately, my father loved me very much. He did not judge me. He knew, however, that others would, and they would not be so forgiving. Even here, in Scotland, people whisper about me. They do not know me and they do not take the time to know me.

“My father, when I returned home unexpectedly from the convent, shivering from cold and exhausted, simply listened as I talked long into the morning. He took my hands in his and cried. He said he would figure something out. He needed some time. ‘Bella, Bella,’ he cried. My father was the only one who ever called me that. He told no one but my mother that I had returned. I have no sisters or brothers. They kept me hidden in the house.