The Madonna of the Almonds (5 page)

Nonna and Amaria worked by candlelight. In this they were fortunate, for the wildman’s appearance by daylight would have been hard indeed to look upon. The candlelight was merciful. It turned blood-red to treacle-black. It hid the green tinges of gangrenous skin, and gilded the sickly yellow pallor of the flesh beneath the matted hair. It turned to gold the lice and fleas that crawled in the hair, and hid the veinous mapping of the bloodshot eyes to leave only the kindly gleam of life.

They had laid the wildman, or
Selvaggio
as they had dubbed him, on their humble board, which Amaria padded with straw for his comfort. She built up the fire with the faggots she had brought from the forest, and heated a pail of water on its embers. Then they began.

They were obliged to cut the clothes from his flesh with Nonna’s sewing shears. Selvaggio watched them, and never uttered a sound, but at length, as the cloth stuck to his wounds and the skin itself began to pull away, he lost
consciousness from the pain. Amaria dampened the clothes with water to ease their parting. She threw the pestilent smottered garments on the fire. But round Selvaggio’s trunk was wound a fine dark cloth – by the candlelight it seemed black in colour, but it seemed to be some sort of pennant so Nonna set it by to be cleaned, in case he should want it. The pennant had clearly been used to staunch the blood of the severest wound – a gash so deep that Amaria gasped, and Nonna wondered that it had not killed him. Yet this was the only gash he carried – the other punctures in his flesh were not slashes but holes – a rash of round wounds in his chest and shoulders, as round as arrow holes with the arrows gone, and yet smaller, much smaller. Nonna crossed herself and called on Saint Sebastian, a Saint who knew the pierce of an arrow or two. She looked closer, covering her face with a barm cloth lest she breathe pestilence into the fellow. Peeping from one of the punctures was a round metal pea. She eased it out and it rolled from the flesh, dropping with a neat click on the wooden boards on which the wildman lay. Both women leant close.

‘What is it?’ breathed Amaria.

‘Shot,’ replied Nonna, the syllable itself as short and sharp as gunfire. ‘
Pallottola di Piombo
. We are in a new world indeed.’ She held the metal up to the firelight where it gleamed evilly – a beady metal eye. She eyed it back. She had learned much of warfare since she had watched Filippo burn – she kept her eyes and ears open as the mercenaries
and soldiers had passed through town. ‘Tiny cannon balls shot from cannon that a man can hold. Called a hackbutt, or arquebus. Many, many died this way, this time.’

Nonna took the bowl from Amaria and tipped the water on the rushes. It was not suitable that a maid should touch the flesh of a man, even such a case as he, so this task was hers. She heated the blade of Filippo’s dagger in the fire and began to dig.

Amaria gasped. ‘What are you doing?’

Nonna did not look up. ‘These beans must be taken from his flesh. They are made from an alloy of lead and will poison his organs if left.’

Amaria rolled the first ball in her hand. ‘It is perfectly round,’ she marvelled. ‘How are such things created?’

‘They are made everywhere now. Even here in Pavia.’

‘Here?’

‘Yes. The two red towers near Saint Michele’s church, you know the ones?’

Amaria nodded. ‘Yes. The Devil’s legs. You must run between the two as fast as you can with your eyes shut lest the Devil shit on your head.’

Nonna allowed herself a smile at Amaria’s nonsense, even at such a time. ‘Yes, the
Gambe del Diavolo
. There. These are made there. The Devil shits bullets now.’

‘Truly?’ Amaria’s eyes were wide.

Nonna kept digging through the tender flesh. Some were near the surface, some deeper in. ‘No, child. Like most
evils, these are made by men. Hot lead is dropped from the top of the tower to the floor below. When it falls, as water does, the droplets become perfectly round in the air. By the time they reach the floor they are dry, and hard as Christ’s nails.’ She sighed. ‘Most of those that died at Pavia were shot through.’ She fell silent as she pulled the metal from the wildman’s torn muscle. The wound clustered on the white wastes of his flesh like battle sites littered across Lombardy, across the whole peninsula. As she searched the landscape of his body for more of the insidious shot, Nonna named the battles like a litany. She dropped the bullets into the dish with an attendant click for each. She began with Garigliano, the place where she had lost Filippo. Click. Agnadello. Click. Cerignola. Click. Bicocca, Fornovo, Ravenna. Click, click, click. Marignano, Novara. The Siege of Padua. And last of all, the Battle of Padova. The war had come home from far away to their very doorstep. Click. The bullets dropped into the clay dish like the Virgin’s tears and lay there clustered together in a string – the beads of a bloody rosary. Nonna bowed her head for a moment in sorrow for all the battles and all the dead.

Then she took the shears and asked the girl to turn her back as she snipped back dead yellow flesh from the lips of the gash – this was the hacked maw of a sword, for sure. She handed Amaria the shears to clean and her granddaughter then used them to attack Selvaggio’s hair. Amaria cut great clumps away until his hair was all of a length. She washed
it then with water and lemon to clear the lice away, and as she cut the fruit to squeeze it on his scalp he seemed to revive. His eyelids flickered – perhaps from the sting of the juice for there were sores on his scalp – and she felt moved to whisper an apology as the eyes closed again. Nonna took her bone needle and waxed thread and sewed the cleaned gash as best she could. She had heard of such remedies on the battlefield and they made sense to her. Sewing was part of her lexicon. If something was torn or rent, you sewed it closed. Nonna clung to her homespun sense through these moments of horror – she needed something to make sense in this world gone mad – where a young man was peppered with blades and shot. As she sewed she tried to imagine his skin was the cambric of a cushion cover, and that she sewed to stop the flock escaping, not the viscera of his stomach.

Amaria had an easier task – she whetted Filippo’s knife on the hearthstone and cut away the beard that covered the savage’s face. As she rubbed olive oil into his skin and began to shave him close, she felt a shock at the warmth of his skin and the roughness of the stubble, for she had never touched a man before. She had had no bearded kiss of a father to remember, or muscular embrace of a brother. It was all new, so new and good that her face heated in the firelight, and her heart sounded in her ears. Her ministrations revealed a face with regular, good features and a refined look that was far away from the savagery of the invalid’s name. Nonna glanced up when the beard was gone and saw him to be
young. So young. She had imagined him to be another Filippo, but she knew as she worked that the wildman was little more than a boy – more of an age of a grandson than a son to her.

At length Amaria began to cut Selvaggio’s claw-like nails. When they were clipped away she washed the hands and rubbed in aloes for their wounds and blisters. She noted that the left hand – but for its wounds – was fine and soft, but the right had the calloused palm of an accustomed soldier who carried a sword every day. Nonna dressed the wounds of Selvaggio with a salve she had made of sage in hog fat, and poured wine into the deepest wounds before its application. The two women worked quietly, murmuring to each other occasionally over what was best to be done, revolving around the body as the hours passed. The candles and the laid-out body reminded Nonna of a wake, and she knew that their work may end as such, for his wounds were so heavy, and some infected, that he still may not see dawn.

She felt at least that, even should he die, she had done what she could not do for her son. She had cleaned his wounds and laid him out, and finally she covered the boy in a clean linen coverlet and left him to sleep, the sleep of refreshment and recovery, or of death and despair. But as the grey light lessened the powers of the candles, the eyelids flickered again, and a bloom returned to the thin sallow face that had not been there before. In the daylight, with all wounds hidden, the case did not look as grave as before.
They allowed themselves to hope. He did not rave or fever, his skin was not fiery to the touch, nor his colour hectic. They could now fully see his face; the eyes, as they opened, were the green of basil leaves, and the hair the light straight brown of merlin feathers. As he slept, grandmother and granddaughter embraced as they watched him, and then crept from the room up the stairs of the cot to the dormer they shared, to sleep also. But before they slept both of them shed tears; Nonna for what she had lost, and Amaria for what she had found.

Simonetta di Saronno had her head in her hands. Those long white hands, with the middle fingers all of a length, concealed her face completely. She had thought that she had reached the bottom of her well of despair, but had now been plummeted to new depths by the man who sat opposite her, across the massive bare board of her great hall.

She was not weeping though. And the man that sat with her was not Bernardino Luini, whatever appearances might be. In fact she had tried hard to forget that impossible man, and had almost managed to dispel his face from her waking hours. Her dreams, however, he penetrated against her wishes, and her prayers were all the more fervent in the morning.

No, the gentleman was a notary – Oderigo Beccaria, a man of middle years who had tended to the di Saronno fortune in many hours of private counsel once a month, closeted with Lorenzo. Simonetta had not realised the littleness of her own plight to others so it was salutary to her to note
that Oderigo turned up on the first of the month, with his quill and his ledger, as if Lorenzo had never died. She had not known that she, a woman who had never had to think about anything beyond the colour of her gown and the dressing of her hair, would now have to become intimately acquainted with her own household accounts.

The household accounts, it seemed, were not in a healthy state. Oderigo told her, in no uncertain terms, that her tradesmen had not been paid, nor the servants, from the provision that remained from Lorenzo; a provision which that lord had left him to transact the accounts in what he was sure would be a short absence. Simonetta, at this stage in the conversation, was not unduly concerned. Smarting from her loss, she tired of this financial chatter and heartily wished Oderigo away so that she might mourn unchecked. She took the three bronze keys from her belt and went downstairs to the almond cellar. As always, she made sure she was not observed as she made her way to the back of the room, feeling the nutshells crack under her feet, and felt in the dark for the three keyholes that would unlock the room which held the di Saronno treasure. She was confident as she turned the keys in their proper order, that she would find what she needed within. Even when the first coffer she unlocked – with the cognizance of the three silver almonds on blue painted on the lid – proved empty, she merely moved to the next. Only when every coffer proved to be empty did she return upstairs, sit down and put her
head in her hands.

She did this because she felt that she was being punished. In the worst of her grief, she had cried out to God that there was little point in being rich and having fortune and possessions when the one person she loved was taken from her. Well, God had heard her, and had taken her treasure too. Now what?

Oderigo waited for her to compose herself. He was by no means as surprised as the lady of the house appeared at this discovery. He had heard, among the bankers and lawyers in Saronno and Pavia, that Lorenzo di Saronno had pursued his military ambitions in such a way that he was in danger of ruining his own house. A headstrong hot-headed young soldier with an over-developed sense of honour found it more needful to give his horses the best equipage, and his men the finest liveries, than to exercise the prudent, dull exigencies of a lasting income and pension for his estates. Oderigo tutted to himself. Such imprudence was unbelievable to a man of careful finance like himself.

Oderigo was not villainous, merely indifferent to Simonetta’s plight. In his line of work, and in such times as these, he was used to dealing with clients who found themselves in reduced circumstances. He removed the kerchief from his pocket that he carried for these occasions, but when the lady lifted her head he was relieved to see that her eyes were dry. By heaven, she was a fair lady! For the first time in his long career, he felt an alien flicker of sympathy thaw
his heart, for never had he seen such an expression of hopelessness on so fair a face. ‘Lady,’ he began. ‘You must not despair. I can buy you a little time. I will quiet your creditors and return in a month. Till then, do everything you can to retrench. Sell whatever you can, reduce the number of your servants; it may yet be possible to remain in this house. But it can be no
little
adjustment: everything in your power must be done – only the essentials should be left alone.’

Simonetta met his eyes for the first time. The house! It had never occurred to her, in the worst of the last few moments, that she would have to leave the Villa Castello. She could not,
would
not submit to leaving all that she and Lorenzo had shared, whatever it cost her. She nodded to the notary, and he took his leave, and as he walked the path between the almond trees he relived the thrill of the moment when Simonetta di Saronno had looked him full in the eye.

What a month had she then! What a reduction, a coming down of circumstances! What a difference would Oderigo see when next he walked the almond grove to Castello! Every man and maid who worked on the place was let go, except for her dear Raffaella whom she needed as a friend more than a servant. Gregorio was kept on the place for three reasons – for charity because of his injuries, for his service and strong attachment to her newly dead lord, and for an affection which she saw growing between the squire
and Raffaella. Having been rent from her own love, Simonetta could not so part two lovers.

One man and one maid would have to do. Each day Simonetta walked the villa’s rooms with Raffaella, determining what chests, what fine draperies, what paintings could be sold. Together they went through Simonetta’s closets. Jewels, furs, gowns from happier times were all to be sold. The great tapestry that covered one whole wall of the dining solar, which depicted in wondrous detail the doomed love of Lancelot and Guinevere, was taken from its poles. Simonetta ran her hands over the exquisite stitching as she folded the cloth for sale. She had loved the scene: the passionate embrace of the guilty queen and her shining knight with the shadowy figure of Arthur looking on, and the white conical towers of Camelot set in the hills behind like a shining crown. Lorenzo’s clothes too, untouched since he had worn them, would also go. Simonetta did not allow herself to bury her face in the scent of his linens or remember that she had felt, hard, warm muscle within
this
velvet sleeve as she leant on his arm or the breadth of his back under
that
fur as they danced. Dry eyed, she disposed of all, save for his russet hunting garb, and that she kept for a special purpose.

For now there was no money for meat, Simonetta began to hone her skills with the bow. The sport that she had enjoyed as a diversion, a skill befitting to a great lady, now became as needful to her as to the poorest serf. Hour after
hour she spent at her chamber window – not weeping now, but firing arrows with increasing accuracy at the almond trees. As her skill improved she left the trunks alone – by now as barbed as Saint Sebastian – and painted a single nut with red clay to become her target. She painted the almonds hanging further and further away from the house until she was a true proficient. Her skill was sharpened by the fantasy that she was shooting Spanish soldiers, and sometimes, secretly, that artist fellow who she could not forget.
That
for his silver eyes,
that
for his dark curls,
that
for his maddening white grin that haunted her – torturing her with the remembrance that it had warmed her where she had thought she would be cold forever. Sometimes she thought of him as she walked the woods, dressed in Lorenzo’s shabby hunting garb, setting snares and dispatching the rabbits she caught. She felt a ruthless enjoyment as she found the creatures struggling as they strangled themselves. She took the skins and the stomachs from them with newly learned skill. As the gouts of warm blood ran over her white hands, she revelled in angry pleasure and her heart hardened within her. Like the pagan soothsayers she read her own fate in the entrails. That that had beat warm and strong was now clotted and cold. She straightened and looked back across the parkland. Glittering frost rimed the almond trees like powdered diamonds, and the low winter sun gave the plaster of the villa a rosy blush. She looked at the elegant, square building with the last remnants of her affection. God had taken her
love from her; she would not let him take her house too.

She took to wearing Lorenzo’s hunting garb at all times. She kept only one gown – her wedding dress of green orefois – and never wore it once. She resembled a boy as she strode through the woods, more so now because of her greatest sacrifice. As she trod the dead, red leaves of autumn she remembered the night when Raffaella had cut off her hair – the shears whispering in her ears that she would never be fair again. She had gathered the red skeins from the floor and wrapped them in tissue to be sold to Florence where red hair was the fashion for wigs and pieces. She cared not. She reacted against the beauty that she had, she was gladdened when her white hands became calloused, glad that her crowning glory had gone. She took a last look in her silver-backed looking glass the day before it was sold, saw the hair that stubbornly insisted on curling prettily above her shoulders and round her face, but rejoiced that
he
would never ask to paint her again.

Her board had little to recommend it now. Nightly meals of rabbit or squirrel, with the few roots she found in the woods, were her comfort. In better days, when the ornamental rose gardens and yew walks of Castello had been planted, it would never have occurred to her or Lorenzo that they might be better served by their acres by planting vegetables. In the evening she sat huddled over the meagre firewood that Gregorio had chopped, and sang unaccompanied the airs she used to play on her lute before it had
gone to be sold. When she felt her eyes drop from the exercise of the day she went to her chamber and rolled in the one fur cloak she had kept. She slept directly on the stone floor, for the fine wooden box-frame bed of English oak, the bed where she had spent her wedding night, was gone. The autumn winds whistled through the windows unchecked, for the Venetian glass roundels which they had fitted there were gone too. Most nights she slept from sheer exhaustion, but on the last day of the month she was wakeful, for she knew she had not enough money to give to Oderigo on the morrow.

Shocked by the change in the villa and its lady, Oderigo was obliged to seat himself on a log by the hearth for both board and bench had gone. Simonetta was not alone today, but flanked by Raffaella and Gregorio, ready to plead for their lady or protect her if Oderigo became angry. He counted the coins she gave him in silence. He did not need to tell her that there were not enough. He indulged himself with a look at her face. She was thinner, harder, but no less beautiful. The change in her demeanour was great, greater than the change that the loss of her hair and the change in her garb had wrought. If he thought her fine when he left her last time, his reflections would be no less great today. She spoke first.

‘Signore,’ she said with her new confidence, ‘I will not leave this place. What can I do more? Tell me, where am I
to seek help? What am I to do? I am ready.’

Oderigo opened his mouth but then thought better of it. He knew of one who would help her, but was reluctant, as a Christian, to send her in his path. He shook his head to himself, but she saw it all.

‘What? Who?’ she questioned with urgency. She came to the notary and took his arm. ‘I know you can help me. Tell me where I can find succour, for the love of God!’

He sighed. ‘Lady, I do know of one who can help you. But he will not do it through the love of your God, or mine, or any that we know. His name is Manodorata.’

Simonetta heard Raffaella gasp, and saw her maid sink to the floor and throw her apron over her head. She turned to Gregorio, who rapidly crossed his breast as his lips muttered a prayer. Puzzled, not understanding, Simonetta turned back to Oderigo.

‘Manodorata? Who is he? Can he help me?’

‘He can help you, Lady.’

‘Then why do you all shrink? What manner of man is he? Am I to petition the Devil himself?’

Oderigo would not meet her eyes this time. ‘Very like, my Lady. He is a Jew.’