Bitter Greens

by Kate Forsyth

  ‘I was helped too,’ Margherita said. ‘By an old woman named Sophia.’

  A thin high wail cut through the night. Margherita was on her feet in an instant.

  ‘What’s that?’ Lucio asked, startled.

  ‘That, my love, is your son. His name is Raphael Lucio. He’s hungry, but if you sit up I’ll put him in your arms for a moment so you two can meet.’

  ‘My son?’ Lucio looked down at the tiny bundle in his arms in amazement. ‘He has your gorgeous hair,’ he said after a moment, winding a bright curl around his finger.

  ‘While your little girl has your gorgeous black hair,’ Margherita said. Carefully, she propped his daughter into the crook of his other arm. ‘Her name is Rosa Sophia.’

  ‘Two babies. I can hardly believe it.’

  ‘It was rather a surprise to me too,’ Margherita said with a laugh. She took the babies back and expertly settled them in the crook of her arms to feed. ‘I had no idea I was expecting! La Strega knew, though. My dress was too tight.’

  A spasm of hatred passed over Lucio’s face. ‘I thought she had killed you.’

  ‘She tried to, but I escaped.’ Margherita remembered her deliverance with wonder. ‘It was amazing, Lucio. This tower is built on a place of power, a shrine to an ancient goddess. I prayed to her for help … and somehow that help came.’

  Lucio looked uneasy. ‘It must have been merciful Mother Mary helping you.’

  ‘Maybe,’ Margherita said. ‘Whoever it was, I’m grateful.’

  ‘Well, at least now La Strega is having a taste of her own medicine. I wonder how much she likes her tower now.’

  Margherita stared at him. ‘She’s still there?’

  Lucio nodded. ‘I’ve heard her screaming for help these last few days. But no one can hear her here.’

  ‘She’s screaming for help? She’s locked in the tower?’

  ‘I guess she has no way of climbing down. The braid fell out the window with me.’

  ‘I bound her there.’ Margherita was frozen in horror. ‘Oh, my heavens, I bound her there with my spell.’

  ‘Serves her right,’ Lucio said.

  ‘No, don’t you realise? I cannot leave her there. I know what it is like to be locked up, to fear you’ll be left to starve. I cannot do that to her. I cannot have it on my conscience. We have to rescue her.’

  Lucio was silent for a long moment, then he nodded. ‘Very well. We’ll never be free of her otherwise. What do you want me to do?’

  ‘You can shoot a bow and arrow, can’t you?’

  ‘Of course,’ he replied. ‘Standard training for all young men of noble birth.’

  ‘Could you shoot an arrow through the window of the tower?’

  ‘Almost impossible,’ he answered. ‘But I can try.’

  ‘I know you can do it,’ she said, kissing him.

  ‘In the morning.’ Carefully, he laid down his sleeping daughter, then picked up his son and laid him beside his twin. ‘Tonight, I want to sleep in my wife’s arms.’

  In the morning, Margherita washed Lucio’s eyes clean again, and he was able to see the glory of the rising sun above the mountains and the shimmering reflection in the lake below. He kissed her in gratitude and stroked his babies’ soft cheeks, filling his eyes with their innocent beauty.

  Hand-in-hand, they walked through the forest, each carrying one of their twins. The babies slept peacefully. The tower loomed above them, dark and lonely.

  Lucio had stashed his bow and quiver of arrows under some rocks at the base of the tower. Once he had retrieved them, Margherita tied the end of her silver ribbon to one of the arrows. He looked at her sceptically. ‘She cannot climb down a ribbon.’

  ‘I did.’

  He quirked his eyebrows, shrugged and searched for the best vantage point.

  La Strega must have heard their voices, for she appeared at the window. ‘Please, you must help me! I’m a prisoner.’

  Then La Strega saw who stood at the base of the tower and fell silent. Her head drooped in defeat.

  ‘You stole me from my parents, you bound my will and locked me away in this tower for five long years,’ Margherita called up to the sorceress. ‘I should leave you here to die like those other girls whose skeletons lie in the cellar. But I won’t. I don’t want your death on my conscience.’

  Margherita drew the long heavy rope of hair out of her sack and coiled it on the stone. Then, with her dagger, she cut branches from the white-flowering thorn and built a pyre about the hair. From far above, the witch watched, her own hair touched to bright colour by the sun. Margherita gathered handfuls of dry leaves and twigs, and thrust them into the heart of the kindling. Then, with steady hands, she lit the fire with her flint and steel. Bright flowers of flame burst open on the twigs. She sliced open her palm with her dagger, letting nine drops of blood fall down on the fire:

  With my own blood, three by three,

  I burn this hair and set you free,

  All of you bound by another’s curse,

  Let the evil spells reverse.

  I wish only that you may gain,

  Kindness, mercy and love’s sweet pain.

  Then Lucio let loose his arrow with its streaming tail of silver. It flew true, straight through the window, the witch dropping to her knees so it did not impale her through the heart. Somehow, the ribbon transformed into a rope of tightly twisted silver cord, and La Strega was able to climb down. By the time she reached the ground, she was weeping with relief. The few days she had spent in the tower had changed her enormously. She was haggard, her hair streaked with grey, her face graven with deep lines. She dropped to her knees before Margherita and begged for forgiveness.

  ‘It is not easy for me to forgive you,’ Margherita said. ‘You stole my freedom, you stole my youth, you almost stole my life. Yet if I do not forgive you, my life will be warped by what you did. And without you, I’d never have known what true love is.’

  La Strega raised a ravaged face. ‘I’m truly sorry.’

  ‘You need to show true repentance,’ Lucio said sternly. With his dagger, he cut two branches from the thorn tree and bound them into a makeshift cross with the silver cord. He gave it to La Strega. ‘You could do so much good in this world. Till now, you have chosen darkness and evil. Can’t you choose another way now? To show you truly repent?’

  ‘I’ll try.’ La Strega took the crude cross in one hand. With the other, she scooped up handfuls of the hot ashes and streaked them on her face and arms. ‘I don’t know where I’ll go. I know one thing, I’m free of Venice at last! The witch Sibillia bound me there, you know, bound me against my will.’

  ‘As you bound me,’ a man’s voice rang out. Magli stepped forward from the shadow of the tower. His voice was as clear and sweet and powerful as a bell. He smiled at the sound of it. ‘Listen to me! I can speak. I can even sing.’ He opened his mouth and began to sing the lullaby Margherita had sung so many times in her lonely prison: ‘Farfallina, bella e bianca, vola vola.’ Fly, fly …

  ‘You sing beautifully,’ Margherita said. All her old fear of this huge man melted away. She thought of the story that Lucio had told her, of the stranger who had helped him when he was wounded. She remembered the huge footprint in the dust and held out one hand to him. He took it and bowed low over it.

  ‘I used to listen to you sing and long with all my heart to be able to sing like that. You’ve set the music in me free again. I can never repay you!’

  ‘She bound you too?’ Margherita cast an angry look at La Strega, who rose to her feet.

  ‘I needed him!’ she cried then flushed and dropped her eyes. ‘I’m sorry,’ she said.

  ‘Come back to Florence with us,’ Lucio said to Magli. ‘I will tell my uncle you saved my life. With a voice like yours, he’ll be glad to give you a place at court.’

  ‘I must go back to Venice first,’ Margherita said. Lucio looked at her in surprise. ‘My parents … I must find my parents.’

  ‘Of course! We’ll go back
to Venice, find your parents and show them their grandchildren. Maybe we’ll get married there? I’d like to have it settled before I go home. My uncle is kind, but he does rather think he’s in charge of our lives. If we’re married and have your parents’ blessing, and two fine children already, well, what can he say?’ Lucio grinned at her with his old merry expression, and Margherita was flooded with love for him.

  La Strega went west, barefoot and streaked with ashes, carrying nothing but the cross of thorny branches. Magli headed south, taking messages to Florence. Lucio and Margherita headed east to Venice, each carrying a sleeping baby in their arms.

  It was a long way, and they were both sick and weary, and, very soon, footsore. A young man gave them a lift in his cart. His name, he told them, was Giambattista Basile, and he was a Neapolitan looking for work in the Venetian Republic.

  ‘What I’d like to do,’ Giambattista said with a sigh, ‘is write stories, but I guess I’ll have to be a soldier instead.’

  ‘That seems a shame,’ Lucio said politely. ‘Do you not like fighting?’

  Giambattista shuddered. ‘I hate it, but I hate being poor even more. I’m hoping to make my fortune in Venice, and then I can retire and write scurrilous stories. You two look like you have a tale to tell. Will you not share it with me?’

  ‘You’d never believe it,’ Margherita said with a shaky laugh.

  ‘Try me,’ Giambattista challenged her.

  So she and Lucio told him most of their story, if not all. Some things were too hard to tell. He gasped and scowled and shook his fist in all the right places, and in the end – as they came over the hill and saw Venice floating in a sunset haze on the lagoon – he said, ‘I’d have had it end differently! You should have strangled her with that silver cord, or turned the comb into a wolf to eat her.’

  Margherita sighed and shook her head, but Lucio said, ‘Perhaps you’ll be a better soldier than you think, Giambattista.’

  He grinned. ‘Ah, well, it’d make a better story, don’t you think?’

  Dusk was falling as their gondola drifted through the shadowy canals towards San Polo and the small shop of a mask-maker. Margherita was so exhausted she could barely support the weight of her two hungry babies. Lucio drew her back to lean on him, putting his strong arms under hers, gently cradling his children. Margherita let her head rest on his chest, feeling the beat of his heart beneath her cheek. ‘I wonder if they’re still there. Maybe they’re dead, or moved away …’

  ‘We’ll find out soon,’ Lucio said.

  Margherita had dreamt of her return so many times. A narrow dark alleyway, a window opening into a treasure trove of strange exotic masks, bright with sequins, nodding with coloured feathers. She would fling open the door and cry, ‘I’m home!’ and her parents would rush to embrace her.

  So this is what she did. And though her parents were slow to reach her, their bodies bent and old now, their grief-numbed minds slow to realise their daughter was truly home, when at last their arms encircled her their embrace was as fierce and glad and loving as she had ever imagined it would be.

  Palazzo Pitti, Florence, Italy – October 1600

  On 6th October 1600, a grand entertainment was staged in Florence to celebrate the marriage of Henry IV of France and Maria de’ Medici, the younger sister of the Grand Duke, Ferdinando I.

  Called simply the ‘opera’ (the ‘work’) by its exhausted creator, Jacopo Peri, it was the very newest of entertainments – a combination of music, song, dance and acting. Held at the Palazzo Pitti in Florence, the idea was to prove to the world how brilliant was the Florence court, and how exceptional its singers, dancers, actors and musicians. Peri had chosen as his theme the story of Orpheus and Euridice but had changed the ending to a happy one so as not to cast a blight on the nuptials. Henry IV of France had already been married by force once, to mad Margot, his wedding precipitating the St Bartholomew’s Day Massacre. No one wanted a shadow to fall upon his second wedding day.

  Margherita was to sing the role of Proserpina, the goddess of spring. It was a mark of huge favour. The only other woman in the cast was Peri’s own daughter, Francesca, who played the title role. All other women in the opera were played either by castrati or by a single pimply-faced soprano-voiced boy. The castrati were all squeezed into flouncing gowns and tightly curled wigs, the boy tottering on high heels to try to raise him to the same height as everyone else. Magli had flourished so well under Margherita’s tutelage that he had been given the role of La Tragedia. He towered over everyone else on the stage, his lugubrious face painted with a single tear.

  Margherita wore her own red-gold hair hanging loose, at the insistence of her husband, Lucio, and was dressed in a gorgeous gown of silvery-green silk embroidered all over with flowers. She stood, her palms damp with perspiration, her stomach fluttering with nerves, in the wings, waiting for her cue. At one point, she peeked around the curtain, smiling to see Lucio sitting in the front row, his twins perched on his knee. Margherita’s parents sat on either side, dressed in their finest, while nearby sat the Grand Duke and his wife, the haughty Christina of Lorraine, the King of France and his new bride, plus countless richly clad noblemen and noblewomen.

  Margherita heard the beautiful notes of her introduction. She took a deep breath, squared her shoulders and stepped out onto the stage, letting her voice soar with the music. Lucio gazed up at her, his dark eyes filled with pride and tender love. She smiled back at him.

  Here I am, she thought, singing before kings and queens, just like I always dreamt I would do. I can travel the world, see camels and elephants if I want to, visit mountains that touch the sky and oceans that pour over the edge of the world.

  I am Margherita.

  I am loved.

  I am free.

  POSTLUDE

  I’m redeemed, head light

  as seed mote, as a fasting

  girl’s among these thorns, lips

  and fingers bloody with fruit.

  Years I dreamed of this:

  the green, laughing arms

  of old trees extended over me,

  my shadow lost among theirs.

  ‘Rapunzel Shorn’

  Lisa Russ Spaar

  A TONGUE OF HONEY

  Château de Cazeneuve, Gascony, France – June 1662

  I was always a great talker and teller of tales.

  ‘You’ve honey on your tongue, ma fifille,’ Maman once said. ‘If you’d lived in earlier times, you could have been a troubadour.’

  ‘Girls can’t be troubadours,’ Marie said, nose in air.

  ‘Oh, but they can,’ Maman said. ‘There were some famous troubadours who were women. They were called trobairitz and wrote some of the most beautiful poems and songs we know. My mother used to sing me one by the Comtessa de Dia, and I used to sing it to you when you were just a tiny flea. Don’t you remember?’

  My sister and I shook our heads.

  She sang in her low voice: ‘You give me such joy, enough to make a thousand who weep, merry once more.’

  ‘I do remember it,’ I said in wonder, hearing a faint sweet echo from my babyhood.

  ‘Troubadours used to travel from court to court, telling stories and singing songs. They often carried news, which, in dangerous times, they would disguise as fables or fairy tales. Sometimes, they would stay at the court of a king and queen, but other troubadours travelled all over the known world.’

  ‘That is what I would like to do,’ I said with utter certainty. ‘I’ll be a … what was the word for a girl troubadour again?’

  ‘Trobairitz,’ Maman said. ‘It’s Occitan.’

  ‘Trobairitz,’ I repeated carefully, the word sounding strange on my tongue.

  ‘There aren’t any troubadours any more, are there, Maman?’ Marie said. ‘And if there were, girls wouldn’t be allowed to be one.’

  ‘Probably not,’ Maman agreed sadly.

  ‘I’ll be one anyway,’ I said with determination.

  Maman smiled and pul
led gently on my hair. ‘I’m sure you will, ma fifille, a clever girl like you. You can do whatever you like in this world, if you just have courage enough.’

  The Abbey of Gercy-en-Brie, France – April 1697

  I lay on my thin hard pallet, looking up at the shadowy arches of stone above me, just rising from the invisibility of night. My eyes smarted with tears, and there was a lump like a bite of unchewed apple in my throat. My life had seemed so open when I was a child, a land of infinite possibilities filled with castles and snow-capped mountains, flower-filled meadows and green valleys, cascading waterfalls and deep hidden gorges where the bones of giants might lie. Now, my life was so grey and narrow. It was bounded by bells and the chanting of prayers and iron-bound doors that were locked three times. I was caged.

  I thought of the strange tale that Sœur Seraphina had told me, of the girl locked in a tower without stairs or a door. She had sung, and her song had been heard. It had haunted the distant listener in the forest until he had come and helped her to escape. But I could not sing. Who was there to listen to me in this prison but the other prisoners? And God.

  I took a deep breath and pressed my fingers to my wet eyes. When I took my fingertips away, my eyes were dazzled. I blinked and looked up. Above me, a shaft of early sunlight had pierced the narrow mullioned window in the wall behind me. Before I had gone to sleep the night before, I had shoved the window as wide as I could in the hope of some fresh air and a glimpse of some stars. All I could manage was a few inches, not even enough to slide my hand through. Yet it was wide enough for the rising sun to find a way in, and there, rotating slowly in the shaft of golden light, were three honeybees.