The Witch in the Lake (7 page)

Leo arrived home just as his father was lighting the lamps. The room looked cosy and unusually tidy—papers stacked in orderly rows on the shelf, the stone floor swept, the table laid with a fine embroidered cloth. And there at the head of the table sat Signor Aldo Butteri.

He raised his glass of wine to Leo as he came in. ‘
Buona sera
, Leo,' he greeted him, ‘come and sit beside me!'

Leo glanced over at the fire where his father was ladling pasta into three white bowls.

‘Go, go,' cried Marco happily, ‘go and sit. Look what our friend has brought.
Accidenti!
' Marco sucked his finger where he'd splashed a drop of boiling pasta.

‘
Porcini
pasta, wine, guests,' said Leo slowly, ‘this must be some kind of celebration.'

‘You could say that!' cried Marco as he brought over the bowls. He filled their glasses. ‘Tonight Signor Butteri has brought us a gift that holds the most important discovery in the world.'

Signor Butteri gave a little cough, waving his hand a little as if to say ‘oh, it's nothing,' but he was glowing with pleasure and pride, his face lit up like a ripe red
pepperoni
.

‘Look!' Marco pointed to a book that lay open on the table.

‘
Fabric of the Human Body
,' read Leo, ‘by Andreas Vesalius, 1543.'

‘Yes!' cried Marco. ‘Can you believe it? At last a book of human anatomy is published, and here we have it lying casually open on our own dining table! Hah! Look, Leo, drink it in, turn the pages, read, study, be amazed, but make sure your hands are clean first.'

Leo looked. In the centre of the title page there was an illustration of Vesalius dissecting a corpse. Leo grimaced. His father's favourite subject.

He pulled a stool up to the table. There was nothing to do but sit and listen. Maybe he would think of something—something heroic and brilliant—while the talk washed over him.

‘I was lucky enough to be present at a lecture Vesalius gave in Padua, last year,' Marco said. ‘He was dissecting a forty-year-old male—dropped dead after choking on a turkey bone—and a hundred students were watching the operation. They couldn't believe their luck.'

Aldo Butteri took a sip of wine. ‘I hope this book doesn't encourage your strange ideas, Marco. I only got it for you because you insist on this kind of thing, but I don't hold with the temple of the body being invaded by heathens, as you well know.' He clicked his tongue in disgust. ‘It's quite against the law to use a human subject. Before this bold fellow Vesalius came along, dogs or pigs were good enough.'

Marco gave a hoot of laughter. ‘Yes, and it was while watching pigs being slaughtered that the great Leonardo da Vinci discovered the heart is a mere muscle—'

‘Preposterous nonsense!' cried Aldo, choking on his wine. ‘The heart is too noble—it's the centre of the life force, you savage! The heart heats the blood, filling it with the glorious vital spirit!'

‘You should attend one of Vesalius's lectures yourself, Aldo,' Marco replied, grinning. ‘I'm sure he'd convert you.' He turned to Leo. ‘Lecturers before him always got a barber to do the cutting, only pointing to organs with their nice clean wands. But with Vesalius you get the real thing!' Marco was rubbing his hands together, eyeing his friend cheekily. ‘He walks into the lecture room holding up a real kidney in his hand for everyone to see, or a liver, or a piece of stomach—'

‘Ah, but the vital spirit isn't something you can
see
,' Aldo pointed out solemnly. ‘Not like the stomach,' and he patted the mound under his girdle.

‘Well
my
stomach is about to jump up through my mouth,' Leo said, pretending to stick his fingers down his throat. ‘Can we talk about something else during dinner?'

Marco gave him a playful push. ‘Oh Leo, the stomach is the most extraordinary organ. And the intestines—see the large one?—it's so long that if you unravelled it, maybe you could wind it twice around the courtyard outside!'

Leo put his fork down.

While the two men ate and argued, Leo turned the pages. It
was
a startling book. Every first letter of the page was illustrated to show some stomach-churning activity of the body. He was looking at L, where a group of children were pooing happily over the lower bar of the letter, when Marco leaned over and cried, ‘Aha! That's where all this good pasta is going to end up, isn't it!'

Leo rolled his eyes and the two men roared with laughter. Signor Butteri poured another glass of wine and Leo knew that soon Marco would be reminding him that he'd had enough for a man in his condition and Butteri would protest and they'd go on discussing the body and its problems until midnight.

Leo looked at his father's face, flushed with wine and excitement. He loved Marco's enthusiasm, but so often it meant he neither heard nor saw anything else. He was like a river rushing through its course, not stopping for anything, taking branches or trees or people with him as he tumbled towards his destination.

Marco would be no help.

Leo fingered the sheet of music he still had in his pocket. He thought of Merilee as she was dragged along through the forest. ‘Your family of failures,' Beatrice had said to him. Leo winced.

‘Indigestion?' asked Signor Butteri. ‘You should take an infusion of fennel. I got some yesterday from the apothecary—Signor Eco. Very soothing to the stomach, it was.'

Leo sat up straighter. ‘Was Signora Beatrice there? I mean, when you went to see the apothecary?'

Signor Butteri chuckled. ‘No, but she might as well have been. Old Eco was in a rage about her. “Always bossing me around,” he told me, “as if
I
worked for
her!
” She sounds like a fury, that one. Works hard, mind you, Eco said, and she has the knowledge of a Wise Woman, but sometimes he wonders if it's worth all the agony of having her around. Always fussing, shouting orders at him in front of customers, telling him off.' Signor Butteri shuddered. ‘Couldn't stand it myself.'

Marco got up suddenly and took the empty plates. His face was no longer vivid and happy. But two round spots of colour still highlighted his thin cheeks.

‘Still, when I saw him tonight,' Butteri went on, ‘he was full of smiles. He'd just seen Beatrice—'

‘When?' cut in Leo.

‘Oh, a couple of hours ago, just before I came here. Anyway, he said she'd dropped in, in a great rush and dither as usual, to tell him she was going away. Imagine! Eco could hardly stop smiling!'

‘Did she say where she was going?'

‘Yes, now let's see if I can remember. It's in Tuscany—'

‘Well, here is some fresh prosciutto and cheese,' Marco said loudly, clattering down the plates in front of them. ‘The gorgonzola is particularly good.'

‘Fiesole—that's where it was. You know, the little town, not far from Florence.'

‘Mmm,' Marco savoured his cheese, ‘it's so strong that it stings the back of your throat. Try some, Aldo!'

‘Did she say why she was going there? Or for how long?'

‘Mm, the gorgonzola's good,' Signor Butteri said, loosening the cord around his waist, ‘but the parmigiano I had yesterday was better. Now let me see, Eco said she was going to some meeting of Wise Women, and he was glad to be rid of her for a while. He'd make up the aromatic posies himself now and—'

‘Did she say how long she'd be away?'

‘Well, not really, but he did say these meetings only happened every few years. They exchange recipes and potions and there's some kind of initiation ceremony for new candidates.'

‘New candidates?'

‘Yes, girls who want to become trained in the art of herbal cures. Some of them stay on forever—they're the Wise Women of Fiesole, haven't you heard of them? Often they're the first to find a herbal medicine for some sickness or other, cures apothecaries take for granted now.' Signor Butteri helped himself to some more cheese. ‘Take lavender, for instance,' he went on, leaning back in his chair. ‘Excellent for back ache—using the essential oil, of course—and it eases my gout pain too, I can tell you. Of course
some
people, ignorant villagers, you know, think the Wise Women do the devil's work, mixing witch's potions and the like. Scared of them, they are. But that's all a lot of rubbish. You know how stories spread around here . . .'

Marco winked at Leo and slapped a huge piece of cheese onto his son's plate. ‘Eat up, boy!' he cried, but Leo noticed that he'd only had one small bite of his own.

Leo sat quietly, letting the men's talk float around him. He was trying to remember. The Women of Fiesole—he had a picture in his mind of a huge stone wall, of women behind it, quiet, studious, like nuns in a nunnery. Merilee's mother had once told him about it.

Anxiety filled Leo's body. The wall towered in his mind. How could he ever get her out of there? He couldn't imagine his Merilee cooped up like that, like a bird in a cage. What kind of a life was that? He felt alarm pinging through his body. Wildly, he wondered if Anxiety was there in that book, under A. Which organ would it affect? The heart? His was racing so hard he felt dizzy.

He wondered if Merilee was still at home. Was she packing? Could he catch her before she went? His stomach dropped. He saw Beatrice's face as she stood over him, mottled and angry like a hunk of salami. He saw the sly snake of a girl inside her. And he saw himself, puny as a mouse, squeaking at her feet.

He kicked the table leg. All those stupid fantasies he'd had—how one day he'd save Merilee from robbers, savage wolves, cut-throat pirates—and look, he couldn't even face up to her aunt.

‘Family of failures' was right. Well, wasn't it?

He watched Marco talking, hunched over the book with his friend. His father might as well have been in another world, on Jupiter or Saturn, for all the help he gave.

Just then, Marco broke into a laugh. Leo's own lips twitched in sympathy. He felt something break inside him. He realised, suddenly, how much he loved his father's laugh. He thought how Marco had watched his wife die with her new baby in her arms, how he'd struggled as Laura fled from him, how he must have woken every day with fear of losing the people he loved, and still he could laugh. Get excited about things.

He was braver than that old salami-face, thought Leo. Braver than any of them.

And now, Leo decided, I'm going to try to be, too.

Leo stepped out into the night. He took a deep breath, filling his lungs. The air was sharp, cool for late spring. He began to walk quickly and quietly through the narrow lanes, keeping close to the buildings and their shadows, until he got out into the wider country, across town, to where Merilee lived.

It hadn't been hard to leave the house. Marco and Butteri were so deep in conversation that they'd hardly noticed when Leo excused himself and said he was going to get a breath of fresh air outside. ‘Take your cloak, it's still chilly at night,' Marco reminded him, ‘and don't go beyond the courtyard.' Then he'd turned back to his friend.

Leo was warming up already with the brisk walk. He began to jog as the spaces between the houses grew wider, and the grass became soft and springy under his feet. He was trying to make a plan as he went. But mainly he just couldn't sit still in that house any longer.

Somehow he'd get Francesca to listen to him. He'd explain about Beatrice, how false she was with that forked tongue of hers. He'd persuade her to defy Beatrice for once. Surely she'd do that for her own daughter!

He was close now. The sky was huge and black above him. The fields sprawled in darkness behind, the lamps in the windows of the houses pricking open the night like the eyes of small animals in the dark.

Maybe they'd escape, he and Merilee, he thought as he found the stony path to her cottage. They'd go to Venice and join a group of travelling troubadours. They'd just up and run, run cheering out of that house, away from Beatrice and her potions and her evil temper, and no one could catch them. They'd run until there was nothing but the sky and the earth and their whole lives in front of them, free.

As Leo came to the steps that led up to the door, he heard a clanging of wheels on the cobblestones and the sharp clop-hopping of hoofs as a carriage turned into the yard. He darted back into the shadows of the bushes, and waited.

The great iron-bound door opened and Beatrice whirled down the steps. She carried packing cases, and a box filled with little jars and bottles. Slowly, reluctantly, Merilee followed.

The horses snorted as the driver tied the reins to the tree beside the house. ‘Good evening, Signora,' he said. He nodded to Merilee. ‘Signorina.'

Beatrice was handing over her packages to the driver, with strict instructions as to how they were to be stowed safely in the carriage without breakages, when Francesca came running down the stairs.

She flung herself on Merilee, hugging her tightly.

Merilee stood still as a stone. Her dark head rested in her mother's neck. She was like a hunted doe, thought Leo, some wild animal that has been caught and has given up.

Over her daughter's shoulder Francesca cried, ‘Beatrice, look at her. She's too young to go—she's homesick already, aren't you,
cara?
'

Merilee said nothing. She just stayed where she was, with her face nestled in that warm, sweet-smelling valley of her mother's neck.

‘I don't want her to go, Beatrice,' Francesca said. Her voice was pleading, as if Beatrice were not her older sister, but rather her mother or the ruling queen of a court.

‘Nonsense,' spat Beatrice, getting rid of the last of her packages. ‘What Merilee needs is some discipline. She needs someone watching her all the time, someone who won't be too soft. I told you I found her with that devil-boy today. She deliberately flouted the rules, and you, my darling sister, are just not up to dealing with that kind of behaviour.'