Master of the Revels

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Master of the Revels Page 44

by Nicole Galland


  After the inspector gave us the all clear, we then had to wait for the toll-taker to come out and haggle with Giovanni about his gate tax. By the time that was paid, the moon had set, the sky was gray, and the eastern horizon was beginning to pink. The road behind us was spotted with wagons and horses coming to the city from the hills.

  Some cue—a ray of early light striking a tower, a shift in the morning breeze, I do not know—and the porter finally heaved open the portcullis. We were released into the city.

  We crossed through the deep gateway into the safety of the city, and I glanced behind us. In the dawn light I could see some men on horseback who were trying to move their way through the wagons, the way motorcyclists sometimes try to sneak through morning traffic on I-95. There was light enough for me to recognize that one of them was Piero. He looked agitated.

  “What?” Dana asked immediately, feeling me tense.

  “Shh, nothing,” I said. “I just recognized someone from another life.”

  She smiled up at me quizzically. “Another life? There is no such thing.”

  “Shh,” I said, smiling back at her. Irritated voices caught my ear, and I looked back at the queue. Piero was urging his horse to the front of the line; the voices were all the wagon drivers he was pushing past. The gatekeeper and the inspector both stepped out to prevent him from entering the city; he began to argue with them.

  “Giovanni,” I said softly.

  “I hear it,” he replied, eyes forward.

  Directly ahead of us were two parallel streets going north; we took the smaller one, the horse’s hooves creating an echoing, almost metallic ruckus in the still-quiet city. The street was barely wide enough even for the narrow wagon. It was lined with workshops and houses and the occasional vegetable plot. We trotted along for one long continuous block, over rough cobbles the horse did not like. I kept looking back for Piero, but if he’d gotten through the gate, he was not heading in our direction. Maybe he wasn’t after us. He’d been headed into the city anyhow, to meet his future wife and in-laws. Matteo and Agnola’s city house was near Santo Spirito; perhaps their cousin Piero was marrying into the neighborhood aristocracy and was simply annoyed that he had to queue up with the plebeians. In fact, when I considered it, it was unlikely he would seek out Dana in Florence. He knew she’d come from a rural village; she knew nothing of cities, not even how to get to this one. It was far more likely that the locals were scouring the neighborhood.

  Still, it was unnerving to think he would be in the city with us.

  As we traveled this long block, the city woke up with a suddenness that startled me. There were noises and smells that caught Dana’s attention, and she nestled into her wrap and closer to me, staring wide-eyed at everything around her, especially the cramped buildings. After a minute, she ducked her head completely under the wool mantle and huddled closer against my side.

  We passed a large palazzo garden to the left, then another to the right. Then private gardens to both sides, the houses of rich and poor mingled together. Soon we came to the Piazza San Felice and the fortress-like Piazza de Pitti. Dana stuck her head out again and squinted into the morning light at the stark expanse of plaza.

  Finally we reached the south bank of the Arno and the bridge.

  The Ponte Vecchio had, even then, the specific elegance of the powerful. For all the haphazard streets and lanes and gardens of the private citizens, this city bridge was perfectly symmetrical, with identical shops lining both sides of the span, buttressed by wooden sporti. No matter if a shop sold liver, jewelry, hats, or weapons, they all looked alike on the outside.

  The Arno at that time was accessible from many points, because two of the wool guilds—the washers and the fullers—needed constant access to running water. Their work was smelly, because ammonia (or, usually, urine) was used to soften the wool. Then the wool was rinsed in vats of river water that was—once it became too acidic—dumped back into the river. So there was more than the slightest stench to the Arno.

  But the stench was much greater at the bridge itself. Among its dozens of shops were butchers and fishmongers, and some of them were right at the start of the bridge. So it stank here. It truly stank terribly.

  It stank worse than Dana. This was my reason for coming to the bridge.

  Despite the empty street ahead of us when we were at the gate, the morning traffic had erupted and was miserable here, too many carts and too many people on foot for us to get all the way to the bridge. I asked Giovanni if he would be willing to pull over and wait for us while I took Dana for what I hoped would be the final leg of her odyssey. I was improvising all of this, and I had no idea if it would work out as I hoped. We might be in need of a quick getaway.

  Giovanni grimaced slightly—he was not a city dweller either and the bustle made him edgy. “If you require it,” he said. I was finally able to see him clearly: he was a slender man, with grizzled brown hair and a thoughtful expression on his weathered face. I could not tell his age, but he was no longer young. “I really do have to deliver the wheat to the hospital, though, that was not a feint.”

  “We’ll be quick,” I said confidently, having no idea if this was true. I alighted from the back of the wagon and beckoned for Dana to join me. She hung back, not wanting to yield the cloak. Giovanni had twisted in his seat to see her.

  “Tell her she can keep it,” he said, and smiled at her. He made an open-handed gesture to her, and she understood without my translation. She smiled, her face lighting up, her eyebrows arching nearly to her hairline.

  “Grazie,” she said.

  “Prego,” he replied, smiling.

  Kneeling up behind him on his driver’s seat, she threw her arms around his waist and hugged him tightly. His eyes welled. For a moment I considered dropping my improvisational plan and just asking him to take care of her—he was the only person who had been kind to her, possibly in her entire life—but I didn’t know where he lived or if he had a family.

  “Come,” I said to her. “I must introduce you to somebody, but then we will come back and say goodbye to Giovanni.”

  She tch’d, but released him and climbed out of the wagon. I pointed to the bridge. “We are going that way,” I said, for Giovanni’s hearing as well as Dana’s. “This will not take long.”

  Hand in hand, Dana and I pushed through the morning crowd up to the bridge and approached the first butcher’s stall we came to. Dana wrinkled her nose at the smell. This was probably the first odor that had permeated her senses since she’d inured herself to the stink of her own dirt.

  We waited for a trio of men to exit, heavily laden with bloody packages. Then we went in, to see the butcher calmly dividing a headless ewe into its diverse edible sections with a bone saw. He was a small, hardy, steady man in dull clothes and a heavy canvas apron that was stained with blood. He looked up with an affable expression. Something that had been clenched in me relaxed. I had guessed fortunately.

  “Good morning,” I said.

  He nodded. His eyes strayed between us: I wore a bodice and skirt with nothing under, and Dana was wrapped in a heavy woolen mantle. I liked that he made sure to keep his face friendly despite our eccentric clothes.

  “Are you Signore Moschardi?” I asked. I hoped I was using the right dialect and accent.

  He tipped his head sideways a little. “I am,” he said. “Why?”

  “This is very unusual. May I speak with you in confidence, sir?” I asked, batting my eyes just enough to make him want to say yes. He frowned a little in confusion, but then he nodded. He went to the entrance and made a wait a moment gesture to somebody outside. He pulled the door closed. Then he turned to me and nodded for me to begin.

  On the ride into the city, I had invented the false story I would give to DODO, but I’d also considered what invention should pour out of me now. I told him that myself and my young sister here were the only surviving children of a farmer, whose wife had died in childbirth and who had eventually killed himself because we wer
e so destitute and he was ashamed he couldn’t feed us, so we had become the indentured wards of the farmer’s neighbor, who had been very kind to us but also raised us to work hard, especially my little sister, as she was simple and could not speak, and we’d have willingly remained indentured to the family our whole lives, but when the patriarch died, his son did not want us around, because his men were taking too much of an interest in me and that meant trouble, so we were thrown out, and we fled to Florence for refuge, where we heard much good spoken of Signore Moschardi and his family, and hoped perhaps they would be willing to take in my sister to work for them before I presented myself to a convent. I said all of it that fast too. I did not want to take her to the convent because she had been beaten savagely by a nun and now was terrified of all of them.

  And then I threw in for good measure that some brigands had attempted to rape her and had ripped her dress off her, which accounted for her disheveled state, but a kind cart driver had given us his cloak for her to wrap around herself.

  Signore Moschardi looked stupefied by my tale. He had blinked in amazement as I told it and then blinked in amazement for a moment after I had finished. I steeled myself for awkward questions, but the first thing he asked, almost shyly, was:

  “Who has spoken well of me?”

  “Ah, I am sorry, sir, I do not know the names. We were at the western gate, and an older couple asked what we were doing outside the gate at dawn by ourselves. I gave a short explanation and suddenly everyone waiting to get in was offering advice on who might help us. Several people mentioned you.”

  He smiled a little. “Funny that they were more eager to offer advice than to offer help,” he said. “But I am glad my name was on their lips. It is good to be spoken well of.” He sounded pleased but not surprised. “I’d like to believe that I am worthy of it. Thank you for giving me a chance to demonstrate that I can be.”

  I let out a breath I hadn’t realized I was holding. Dana spoke no Italian, but when I sighed, I could feel her next to me taking a full deep breath for the first time since I had found her. She was still frightened and still overwhelmed, but she liked this man too. Despite the blood on his leather apron and the roughness of his trade, he spoke gently. He had a cheery face.

  And he worked surrounded by bovine carcasses in a shop hovering over the urine-scented Arno River, so he did not notice Dana’s stink.

  He was perfect.

  The door opened abruptly and Dana, with a squeak, cringed and hid behind me. A woman walked in—like the butcher, she was dressed quite drably and her face was kind. She carried an empty basket. “Why have you shut the door, Iacopo? People are going to Bernardo’s stall instead.”

  “Lena, close the door,” said Moschardi. “Put your basket down.”

  Dana stepped out from behind me, understanding she was not in danger.

  “I’m already late delivering—”

  “It can wait,” said Moschardi. “Listen.” He told her the story, gesturing to us. She looked as amazed as he and then turned to face me squarely.

  “You are telling me you wish to give us your sister?” she said.

  “Not as a slave,” I emphasized.

  “Of course not as a slave!” she said, with such repugnance that I felt ashamed for needing to say so.

  “She needs someplace to sleep and eat, and she can work to earn it. I cannot take care of both her and myself. We have nothing. We are desperate.”

  They exchanged looks, and she stepped closer to him. They muttered together, mouth to ear in low voices. There were five or six exchanges. Dana looked up at me. She squeezed my hand.

  “Giovanni,” she whispered. I pressed my finger to her lips, but tempered the gesture with a reassuring smile.

  “You said you’re from a farm,” Moschardi said. I nodded. “And so your sister’s skills are farming?” I nodded again. “She won’t be good for much in a butcher’s household,” said Moschardi, “but my cousin Andrei works wheat fields to the northwest of the city. He is employed by a powerful family who might welcome more able bodies to help with the sowing.”

  “Of course,” I said, and winked at Dana. She raised her eyebrows and looked between Moschardi and me as if expecting a present.

  “I’ll give you a token of mine to show you have come from me. Tell him your story. I believe that he will take her in.”

  I took a deep breath of gratitude. This would get her even farther away from the estate, and therefore from Matteo and Piero and Agnola. “I thank you,” I said, tearing up. “On both our parts, I thank you.”

  “And she must have decent clothing,” said the wife.

  So that was it. Before the sun had risen a finger’s breadth higher than when we left the wagoner, Dana was clean and dressed decently in a bodice and kirtle Lena Moschardi bought for her, and she carried a small square of leather onto which had been branded Iacopo Moschardi’s family signet. He gave me instruction on where to find his cousin, in a villa rustica—a real working one, not a rich man’s summer playground.

  I managed to contain myself when he said it was just a little north of the hamlet of Vinci.

  “I thank you,” I repeated. “Come, sister,” I said loudly, and took Dana’s hand. We left the shop and worked our way off the bridge to where Giovanni sat waiting in the wagon.

  “Sir, you have been very kind,” I said. “I would ask two more favors of you, in the spirit of your religion.”

  “Name them,” he said.

  “First, the plan has changed again, and there is now a safe place for Dana to go, to the north and west of here. If you are headed—”

  “I will take her,” he said immediately.

  “Thank you, sir,” I said. “I will go with you. And the other thing I must ask you once we’re out of the city.”

  He looked curious.

  “It will make sense to you when we are away from the crowds,” I said.

  He nodded, then helped Dana—smiling proudly in her new clothes—up into the wagon for a final time. She smiled and threw her arms around his neck, hugging him. He smiled and patted her on the back.

  “It’s all good?” he asked me in a hopeful tone.

  I nodded. “Yes. Fortune and God are both kind today. But I believe the people from the estate are here in the city now, so we should keep Dana in the back, covered up.” I began to pull myself into the back of the wagon and beckoned for Dana to join me. She unclasped herself from Giovanni, planted a kiss on his forehead, and then almost literally threw herself into my arms.

  Giovanni clicked and slapped the reins on the horse’s rump. Slowly we crossed the bridge—very slowly, because of the people darting in and out of shops. Once we were north of the Arno, I relaxed my guard: Piero should have no reason to come to this side of the river.

  Giovanni made his deliveries in the heart of the city, mostly wheat that he had picked up in the valley during the previous day. These deliveries took about an hour. Three times I thought I saw Piero, but I was wrong each time.

  As it had been to the south, the farmland began immediately outside the city walls. It was now late enough that most morning traffic had already entered, and so the road was nearly empty. We drove on, up and down and around slopes, past the vineyards and wheat fields and streams and olive groves and flocks of sheep and pigsties. It was all so beautiful and peaceful to me, now that it no longer meant captivity for Dana.

  We rode without speaking, for a few hours, until we came to the turn the butcher had described. With no complications, we delivered Dana to the butcher’s cousin, who was indeed glad to have another set of hands on the farm. All signs suggest that she will be, if not integrated, at least accommodated by the local peasant cohort. She hugged me tightly and kissed me on the cheek as I left her.

  She would probably not speak another word of her mother tongue for the rest of her life, but she would not be a slave, and she would not be a nun of the very religion that had massacred her ancestors. I disobeyed orders, but she would be near the place in the
world where—if it so pleased the multiverse—she might still become the ancestress to Leonardo.

  And Gráinne believes Dana is dead, at least on the most recent Strand. She will hear that Dana is dead, and yet her descendant Leonardo will (I hope) still be born. Perhaps this will confuse her. I pray it will give her pause before continuing to pursue her plan.

  Once we were back on the road, Giovanni asked what the final favor was.

  “This will be hard for you,” I said. “But I have helped her to escape at the displeasure of my own masters, who do not approve of my Dulcinian activities. If I return to my position now, I will be punished very severely. Unless you help me.”

  “Whatever I can do,” he said.

  “You must strike me hard enough to give me a black eye and a broken foot,” I said—as I said, I had just worked out the false narrative I would give to DODO. “I must arrive home appearing to have been attacked and dragged off against my will, to account for my prolonged absence.”

  Of course he could not bring himself to do this.

  But then I described in gory and elaborate detail what supposedly awaited me if I didn’t appear to have been beaten. I saw the rage rising on his face, the disgust, the horror, and I said, “Now pretend instead of me standing before you, it is the person who would do such violence upon me. And it is a man.” That worked. He gave me a backhanded blow across the brow and stomped hard on my foot, although luckily his boot was soft and the dirt road gave way a little beneath me.

 

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