The Passion of Artemisia (5 page)

“Artemisia, don't be foolish. It's just a brief unpleasantness.”

“It won't be brief unless you do something.” I gave him a long, cold look. “You have some amends to make.”

He looked shaken, and spread his hands out on the table. “I . . . I'll arrange something.”

5
Sister Graziela

P
ietro Antonio di Vincenzo Stiattesi, Giovanni Stiattesi's brother from Florence, counted the coin of my dowry on the tavern table in the Borgo across the Tiber where Papa thought we'd be less known. I felt like a bartered goat. This stranger who was soon to be my husband didn't even look at me standing at the edge of the room, so I stole a few glances at him. His boot hose sagged and his codpiece cords were leather, not silk. I had never seen a codpiece except in paintings. They weren't in fashion anymore. What was he doing wearing one? If these marriage clothes were his best, I understood immediately why Father had been able to arrange this marriage of convenience. The dowry.

It was borrowed from the state dowry fund, he'd said, and from someone else. He wouldn't tell me who. If it were anyone else, he'd tell me. Like creeping ice in my veins, I realized that the money for the dowry must have been part of the negotiations behind closed doors while I and the Roman rabble had waited for a verdict. To be married with Agostino's money turned my stomach sour.

“My brother will be good to you. He is a painter,” Giovanni whispered next to me.

“No proof of goodness in that,” I whispered back, then felt shame for my rudeness. I knew better. I should be grateful.

With a hand calloused by the resting of a palette, Giovanni's brother swept the coins off the table into his pouch, and finally looked at me. His face was not unpleasant, slightly pocked and longer than his brother Giovanni's, with dark eyes set deeply in his head. I liked his dark curls. His small mouth had a tendency to move sideways. Perhaps in the years ahead I could take joy in such a mouth. I felt a small measure of relief. Some daughters, unwanted daughters, were married off to disfigured men, or old, crippled widowers. He smiled at me and I quickly smiled back. It reassured me for the moment. In such marriages as this, was love ever possible?

I thought of my marriage
cassone
, packed and waiting in the carriage. Father had given me his tacking hammer and had told me to choose a few of Mother's things. I'd picked her yellow and blue faience pitcher and washing bowl, her bloodstone hair ornament mounted in gold with a pearl drop, her small onyx perfume bottle, her carved wooden memento box, one of a matched pair with Father's, and a brass oil lamp shaped with the figure of Diana whom the Greeks call Artemis, goddess of chastity. As an afterthought, I had packed Mother's dagger. She'd always kept it under her bed for protection when Father stayed out late at night. I didn't know what kind of a man this Pietro Antonio was.

A year ago when I'd assumed I would marry Agostino, I had painted on the
cassone
a scene of a wedding feast—a celebration I wouldn't have now. The
impalmamento
, the Mass of the Union, and the
nozze
were all to happen on the same day. There would be no banquet with crab apples, capons in white sauce, no tarts or marzipan, no wine, no toasts in our
blushing honor, no music, no dancing, no happy friends bringing sweetmeats and wishing us well, laughing, teasing, saying pretty things, ushering us to the bedchamber and then reappearing at morning to learn that all was paradise. None of it. By noon my fate would be sealed.

There was just enough time, if I took the carriage. I grabbed my cloak and sidled to the door. “I'll meet you at the church. Santo Spirito.”

“Artemisia! Where are you going? You can't leave here,” Father said, but I was out the door.

“The convent of Santa Trinità,” I told the driver.

Under the cold wet breath of gray clouds, I waited at the convent door. A pair of mourning doves cooing softly went about their explorations together on the stairs. It was sweet how they pecked and explored but always stayed close to each other.

Paola opened the door.

“May I see Sister Graziela?” I asked with some urgency.

“She's in the church.”

“Praying?”

“No. Cleaning. Come through here.”

I entered the church through a side door near the altar. The air was cool, still, and waiting. I found Graziela scrubbing the stone floor behind the altar. “Your way of life certainly keeps you on your knees,” I said.

“Oh, Artemisia, you scared me. I thought I was alone.”

“Do you have to do the whole church?”

“Only behind the balustrade. Agility and humility go hand in hand, you know.” She moved the bucket away from where she was working.

“I came to tell you—my father has arranged a marriage for me.”

“As well he should. What do you know of the man?”

“Only that he's a painter. From Florence.”

“And you will go there?”

“Yes, today. They're waiting at Santo Spirito right now.”

“Better soon than later.”

“I thought I wanted this, but now I'm afraid. All desire I'd ever imagined has been sucked out of me.”

“Not forever. It doesn't go away forever.”

“How can I . . . I don't even want to be touched.”

“As long as you hold on to your pain, you'll live a mean, bitter life. Leave it in Rome.”

I felt uncomfortable standing while she was kneeling so I crouched before the sacristy steps. “Can I ask you a question?”

“You know you can ask anything. Softly. Someone may come in.”

“What did you mean, abandoned by God and man?”

She dried the area with a rag and moved back to do more. “I was married once, but my husband died.”

“I didn't know. I'm sorry.”

“According to the law of forty days, the house we lived in was seized by my husband's brother forty days after my husband died, so I had to leave. When I went back to live at home, my father said he had no money to keep me.” She scrubbed more vigorously. “He tried to find an old widower for me, but couldn't.” Her voice dropped. “Because I wasn't a virgin.”

“What did you do?”

“You can guess, can't you? I wasn't good enough for any man, so I was given to God.”

Still on her knees, she scrubbed some more, talking to the floor and her scrub brush. “Piece by piece, I sold all I had for my dowry which I gave to the convent. All my clothes, some fine dishes and glassware, silver spoons and knives, pots, bed linens, pewter goblets, jewelry, a painting I loved.” She stopped and leaned back on her heels. “It was of Venus and
Adonis in a garden. Not by anyone important, but I miss it. I pleaded with my father to use the money for my keep. He protested that it wouldn't last my lifetime. So, when there were no more things to sell, I entered the convent as a postulant.”

“You said once that you shouldn't enter a convent unless you felt some calling.”

“Yes. True. But I didn't say when I learned that.”

“Oh.” That changed everything I knew about her. “Did you have any children?”

“No. We were married only five hundred and twenty-six days.”

“How did he die so young?”

“You will have me tell all, won't you? Let it be a lesson, then.”

She carried her bucket and scrub brush and rags to the sacristy step and sat down. She motioned for me to do the same. I was surprised because it was a disrespectful thing to do. The coldness of the stone seeped through my skirt.

Her eyes, every shade of olive green and gray, with amber lights, seemed to deepen, as though they were seeing many things again. “I loved my husband, and moved in earthly heaven in his presence. He had a lover. I like to think, even now, that it was someone he knew before he married me, but that may not be so. I existed only when he touched me, and waited, breathing somehow, for the next soft word.”

“Did you stop loving him?”

“No. If it's really love, it doesn't change when you find out. Everything—eating, sleeping, waking, watching the rain—everything becomes shaded because you know. You still have walks in the country and nights of love, but they're darkened by what's unspoken.”

“So what happened?”

Graziela wrung out the wet rag into the bucket of dirty
water, twisting the cloth with a force I'd never seen in her before. “The husband of his lover found out, and killed him. Dragged him into the Tiber, where all such men are bound.” She stared down at the gray scum on the water. “A loss as vast as Egypt,” she whispered.

“I had no idea. You seem so . . . peaceful.”

“One can achieve that.” She stood and lifted her bucket and brush and rags. “I'll be right back. Wait for me in the third chapel on the right.” She pointed. “Volterre's fresco of the Assumption is there. Take a good look. I just learned that the standing figure in the long red
lucco
on the right is Michelangelo.”

She'd been married, I thought as I walked down the nave. I'd known her since I was twelve, yet this I'd never known. No wonder she was different from the other nuns.

I looked through the wooden grating into the third chapel, and in the fresco there a man did wear a red cloak that hung straight to the ground. He had white hair, a white beard, and intelligent brown eyes. “Michelangelo,” I whispered. He was not looking up in astonishment as the Virgin in blue was taken up to Heaven as the other figures were. He was looking out at me with an expression of tender concern, looking into me even, giving me a kind of benediction. I was going to his city to live and learn among his works. Below his full sleeve, his hand was gnarled and scarred from chisels. Love surged up in me for those hands. Even a scarred hand can bring forth greatness. There was a connection between us, between our spirits, I dared to think. No man might ever see it, but there, in the silent church, God could, if He wanted to, bless a union of souls.

Graziela found me. “Sister Paola is coming to say goodbye. I only have a minute.” She reached deeply into her sleeve and drew out a tiny muslin bag. She untied the drawstring and tipped into her palm two gold earrings, each with
a large creamy
perla barocca
, the luster covering a gnarled surface like a whorled walnut. “Imperfect. Like humans,” she whispered. “I know it's vanity. I should have sold them with the rest of my things to give a larger dowry to the convent. Marcello gave them to me on our wedding day.”

“How did you keep them all these years?”

She chuckled thoughtfully. “Nine years. It hasn't been easy. Sewn inside my underclothing most of the time. Once I had to keep them in the toe of my shoe.”

She lifted one and let it dangle a moment. “If the beauties of the world were going to be denied me, then these, at least, would not be.”

“The world in a pearl,” I said.

I thought how the pearl's surface was secreted with infinite slowness to protect the live oyster from chafing and inflammation, like Graziela's serene calmness year by year smoothing but not completely hiding the rough territory within.

She laid one of the earrings in my hand. It felt warm against my palm. “I don't need but one,” she said. “You can pin the other one on a dress.”

“Graziela, no. I can't take it.”

“Yes, you can. Let it remind you,” she whispered. “Do not lose yourself completely to man or God. Do not delude yourself. You cannot afford to believe in illusion—for the sake of your happiness and for the sake of your art. As for the sake of your soul, trust that to me. I have many hours to pray, and it grows tiresome praying for one's own soul.” She closed my hand around the earring. “You have work to do.”

“Yes, I have work to do.”

“Hide it under your bodice now, and remember, the real principles of living are not all in the Scriptures. They are in blood ties, histories, sayings, innuendoes, surreptitious looks, clandestine agreements, and hot clasped hands. When
you learn to recognize them, life will become easier, rich in opportunities and rewards. Be wise, Artemisia. Be watchful. Look in their faces and show no fear.”

I looked in her face now, and said her words over again in my mind. Their importance made them toll like deep bells that I knew would echo in the years ahead.

Sister Paola came hurrying down the nave, her short legs moving fast, her fingers on her cheeks, her face alive in a hundred expressions of joy.