The Road to Damietta (2 page)

It didn't matter that at dawn, before anyone was around, half of our retinue—the vintner and his assistant, the goatherds, half of our guards, and all of our farmers—would return to the country.

Weeks went by before I saw Francis Bernardone again.
It was on the night Raul and I stood on the balcony above San Rufino Square, watching the skies for the serpent star.

Raul had brought a chart of the heavens when he came from Granada. Father had engaged him to teach me the history of the world and some of its languages, but Raul had a liking for astronomy, and although my father thought it pointless for females of my age or of any age, he didn't object to my spending an hour now and again gazing at the stars.

The Arabian seer who made the chart had noted that for the past three centuries a fiery apparition had appeared at regular intervals of one hundred and seven years. Raul unrolled the chart, laid it out on the balcony rail, and set a lantern beside it, and I read the Arab's notes describing the apparition as a "glowing serpent with a fiery tail, which flees across the western sky at dusk."

"We should go and tell everyone," I said, "so they can come and watch."

"Assisi, my friend, is a nervous place. If the serpent does not appear, they'll laugh at us. If it does appear then there'll be an awful scene—the populace running this way and that. Hiding under beds, in the cathedral, in the forest, in caves. As it is, if the serpent does come, few will know because few ever raise their eyes to look at the heavens. But I wish that Marsilio was with us. I sent him a letter weeks ago and invited him here to witness the event, but he wrote back and called me a fool for believing in such maunderings."

The two men had exchanged letters for a long time, mostly about the shape of the earth. Marsilio, who lived in Perugia where they believed many strange things, thought that it was shaped like a pear, and Raul thought that it was more like a wheel, the various countries, islands, and oceans being the spokes in the wheel. Everyone knew the earth never moved, but both men were wrong about its shape. It was the heart of the universe, and everything else—the sun and moon and stars—moved around it in an obedient procession, like slaves. Besides, the earth was most certainly flat and hung suspended from a golden cord, like a feast-day platter, only larger.

We stood on the balcony with the map spread before us, and the serpent came soon after vespers. But somehow it lacked the tail the seer had described. In truth, it wasn't much of a serpent.

"It looks like somebody's footprint," I said.

"The street lanterns and the bonfire burning there below us hinder our view," Raul said. "On a better night, it would look much different."

"Like two footprints."

"Remember, that seer Yakub made his prediction more than a hundred years ago."

"Perhaps the serpent is worn down from all its travels. But Yakub says here in his notes that it is a good omen to wish upon."

"A voice," Raul said, "whispered to me just now, saying, 'There is no such thing as an omen for lovers to be found in the sky. Nor a voice whispering in the night.'"

From below us in San Rufino Square came a clash of cymbals and the braying of horns. A band of musicians surrounded by a motley crowd had gathered at a bonfire. One of the musicians, a youth dressed in an embroidered tunic, wearing a velvet cap with a cock's feather and a broad belt set with shimmering studs and clasps, I recognized at once.

It was impossible to hear me above the clamor, but I took a long breath and shouted down to him, inviting him to watch the fiery serpent.

"Who is it you shout at?" Raul asked.

"The one in the velvet cap and the cock's feather—Francis Bernardone."

Raul said nothing, groaning instead.

The sound of lutes and violins drifted up on the windless air. A hush fell upon the crowd. Then Francis Bernardone was singing, softly and clearly:

"
Put out my searching eyes!
Blind me!
Let me never again see thy beauty,
For my heart it crucifies.
"

The fire shone on his upturned face. I wondered if he saw me in my white gown with the ribbons and rosebuds, leaning above him on the balcony.

A sigh must have escaped my lips, for Raul said: "You are very prideful. He's not singing to you. Other girls also inhabit Piazza San Rufino. There's the pretty Fabrissa Filippi directly across the square. Next to her are the Barbarossas, Beatrice and Aspasia, equally favored. And let's not forget Clare di Scifi, of the noblest of all Assisi families, a girl famed for her beauty and winning disposition. If you believe that Francis Bernardone sings only to you, then, my dear, you are the possessor of an immense conceit."

Francis was singing another ballad; his words drifted up, soft as rose petals:

"
You are mine.
I am thine.
In my heart
You are locked forever
And the golden key is lost.
"

The song faded away. Silent and breathless, I leaned over the balcony.

Raul said, "You may be surprised by the question and you may not wish to answer. But if you do, answer me with the truth."

I knew the question before he had a chance to ask it. Calmly I said, as though I had said it many times before, "Francis Bernardone is my dearest love."

Raul's face was hidden, but silence betrayed his concern.

"I've loved him always," I said. "And I love him now and will forever."

"I understand, oh, how I understand," he said. "Bernardone is a charming minstrel, a singer of tender songs, a teller of fantastic tales, an acrobat whose feet never touch the ground, with whom every girl in Assisi thinks she's in love. And now it's you that joins the many. You've never met Bernardone. Never so much as spoken a word to him and yet you claim to be in love. What nonsense!"

"Must I speak to him? Isn't it enough that I have seen him in
the streets, on the roads, here in our courtyard, and now below us singing in Piazza San Rufino? I have two eyes and two ears. I can see and hear."

Yet as I spoke these bold words, I was aware that eyes and ears had little to do with my love for Francis Bernardone. If I were without sight and hearing, still would I love him.

The bonfire blazed high and in the light I caught a glimpse of Raul's face. He was deciding that such an impossible thing was possible.

"Feeling as you do," he said, "I must bring you twain together. We can't invite him here because your father, to state it modestly, would not approve. But an idea hovers in my head. Bernardone is a clerk at his father's cloth shop, not far from here. I require a length of wool for a cloak and serge for a pair of breeches. So we'll visit the shop one of these days, and while I make a purchase you can observe him close at hand."

"I don't wish to observe him," I said testily. "I've observed him many times before and I have observed him tonight."

"Yes, but you haven't met him. He isn't what you judge him to be from the glimpses. A plain countenance, somewhat severe, for one thing. An unusual pair of ears—not ugly, mind you, not big, very small in fact, yet they do stand out. Not up like a rabbit's ears but straight out like those of some woodland creature. Quite charming!"

"It isn't necessary that I meet him at all. Tomorrow or ever."

"Now Princess Ricca is being wildly romantic. To her this Bernardone is a gallant knight astride a snow-white horse cantering through fields of asphodel on an April morn. Princess Ricca is afraid to meet him. She would rather dream. Which is very wise of Ricca."

Worn out with talking, we were silent for a while. Then in the silence the apparition appeared. It was a burst of blue and silver light that lasted only a breath, so brief that Raul didn't see it and no one opened a window on San Rufino Square.

"An omen," prayerfully I said to myself. "An omen of wonderful luck to come."

But nine days later the fiery omen brought heartbreak instead.

In June every year Assisi celebrated the feast of Saint Victorinus. From balconies and windows hung tapestries and pennons. Laurel wreaths adorned the doors, and everyone, save children and young girls, watched the solemn festivities and afterward frolicked through the streets to the songs and antics of the
tripudianti,
a company of dancers.

This year the leader of the
tripudianti,
as for two years past, was Francis Bernardone. The day came misty and cold, but when the church bells rang for midday he was in Piazza San Rufino with his companions, rousing the city with the call of trumpets, summoning all those who were not too old or too young to come and join him at the feast.

From my balcony, scarcely breathing, I saw him stride forth with a jaunty swing, dressed in a tunic of the finest silk and a
yellow-feathered cap, holding the hand of the youth who had been chosen to play the part of Saint Victorinus. I watched as he led Victorinus to the center of the square and then disappeared in the crowd. I looked everywhere through the chanting throng for the red tunic and yellow-feathered cap.

I had seen the miracle of Saint Viotorinus four times before, since I was nine years old, so I kept looking for Francis all during the play, which was no different from the other times. First, the bishop by reason of his miraculous powers causes a mute boy to speak and also brings sight to a man who is blind. Then he is brought before a magistrate, just as in the days of ancient Rome, and asked to make a sacrifice to Vulcan, the pagan god, which he calmly refuses to do.

The mob—played by those now assembled in the square—turns violently against him and demands his death, whereupon the angry magistrate commands him to place his head upon a block. The executioner wields a sword and blood gushes out—the red, red wine from Santa Lucia. Women wrap him in winding cloths and bear him away while the throng laments.

Only then did Francis Bernardone appear, striding forth in shiny black boots that reached above his knees and a sendal cloak of many colors. He cleared a place to dance and dancers formed circles, held hands, and went round and round singing, my father and brother Rinaldo among them. (Mother, who thought that dancing was a pagan sin, had left the square.)

As I watched Francis Bernardone flashing around, the wind
whipping his cloak, revealing stripes of green and yellow, as I sulkily counted the days and weeks, realizing that another year would pass, another June would come, before 1 could dance in Piazza San Rufino, I was shocked to see him dancing in the same small circle with my closest friend, Clare di Scifi. Clare was only two years older than I, scarcely that, and yet there she was below me in her white dress trimmed with lace, floating about like a snowflake.

I fled the balcony. I closed the door tight and flung myself on the bed and stopped my ears with pillows against the sound of the brazen drums and the wild songs of the
tripudianti.

For weeks for weeks, I closed my mind to every thought
of Francis Bernardone.

Even when Raul brought his name up or his latest escapade was mentioned at table and no one defended him except my mother, I remained silent. If he appeared in my dreams, as he often did, sometimes as a horseman fleeing from me as he had fled from the leper, other times as a troubadour beneath my window, praising the charms of Clare di Scifi, not me, or as a clown in a parti-colored cloak leading a rout of revelers, it was not my fault.

Like lightning in a cloudless sky, these peaceful days came to an end on the first day of the feast of San Niccolò. On that day the youth of Assisi elected from their ranks a
podestà,
five judges, five counselors, and a bishop. These mock officials took over the management of Assisi and thus, by raising the lowest to the highest, the powerless to seats of power, they gave the mighty a
taste of how it felt to serve and not be served and above all to learn the art of humility.

Francis Bernardone, chosen as the youthful bishop, was to take the place of Bishop Guido. Served by his companions, who were posing as acolytes, he would celebrate the evening Mass.

I never had gone to the
festa,
but on this occasion Clare di Scifi and some of the other girls who lived in Piazza San Rufino banded together against our parents and wrung from them permission to attend the Mass, provided we were accompanied by five watchful servants.

It was a cold night when we hurried through the streets to the cathedral, wrapped in our heavy cloaks, everyone twittering like birds, except me. The thought of Francis clad in a bishop's fine vestments, of possibly touching the hem of his robe, awakened all the old dreams. Most of the girls wished to remain in the back, where small fires in iron buckets fought the cold, but I prevailed upon them to press on until we came to the altar.

Francis appeared to the sounds of lutes, a wide smile on his face, dressed in a violet-colored robe that didn't fit, since Bishop Guido was much smaller than he was. His hair curled out from under the rim of a purple miter cocked sidewise, and in his pleasant baritone he sang the hymns and antiphons and jauntily celebrated Mass.

I watched and listened, so enthralled by every word he uttered, every movement he made, that Clare, thinking I was
asleep, kept nudging my arm. And after Mass ended and Francis went tripping through the crowd, I followed him.

Before we reached the door he had disappeared, and when I saw him again, outside on the cathedral steps, he had shed his bishop's garb and was dressed in an outlandish costume, one half of which was red silk from head to toe and the other half a coarse green fabric used in the making of horse blankets.

The cathedral square was flooded with citizenry. The flood spilled over into courtyards and arcades, ran off toward other piazzas. It seemed that everyone in Assisi and the whole countryside had come to celebrate the feast of San Niccolo. Those who attended Mass were there to watch Bishop Guido squirm in his velvet chair, uncomfortable at the sight of Bishop Bernardone gaily mocking him. The thousands who remained outside were interested not in this topsy-turvy scene, but only in celebrating what was called the December Liberties, a saturnalia that had come down to us over the centuries.