Primavera

by Mary Jane Beaufrand

  I didn’t understand, not about that. Neither did Emilio. But we said nothing.

  “Rest easy, Nonna,” I said.

  “Buona notte,” Emilio said.

  Chapter Seven

  The next day I was in the courtyard before the sun came up, wearing a plain shift, my hair scarved away from my face. I was battle-ready.

  The courtyard was completely transformed: there were four targets propped by the street entrance and straw dummies hung from poles on the opposite side. A stockpile of lances and spears and wooden swords leaned against columns, where someone had salvaged jasmine, half-trampled, half-dead. They were for someone else to rescue now. Not me. I had a new job.

  I picked up a wooden shield and threaded my arm through the straps. With my other arm I gripped a wooden sword. Gingerly, I tapped the chest of a hanging straw man. I wanted to see what it felt like and it was great. Just for once, not having to behave, not having to be gentle — it was better than cooking. It was better than pruning. And God forgive me saying so: but it was even better than stealing.

  The first army to show up that morning was the army of painters led by Signor Botticelli. They came in through the front — five of them, including Signor Botticelli — wielding easels and bags of different things: clear jars, horsehair paintbrushes, brightly colored stones, a rag doll, and sheaths of barley. At the head of them, Signor Botticelli came up to me and kissed my hand that was holding the wooden sword. “Ah! The Flower of Tuscany herself. One day, Flora, I shall persuade your mamma to let me paint you.”

  “You can stop pandering, Signor Botticelli. I don’t have any power.”

  “My dear Flora,” he said. “I am an artist. I must honor beauty where I find it. But, now that I think of it, I have a teeny tiny piccolo favor you could grant me. Fill this with a little red wine while your esteemed nonna isn’t looking, per piacere?”

  With a wink, he handed me a wineskin. And Lord forgive me, I took it, even though I knew how Nonna felt about his drinking.

  I hid the wineskin in my shift, perching it atop my belt. I don’t know why I did. I would never do anything against Nonna’s wishes. But for some reason, Signor Botticelli seemed a different sort of man — one to whom rules didn’t apply — with his bright velvet cloaks, pretty words, and impish grin that said there is more to me than you see.

  That was the beginning of my first conspiracy.

  At this point, Emilio came out of the kitchen holding a wheel of cheese. “Get away from that one, eh?” he barked at Signor Botticelli. “We need that one. She has work to do.”

  I wanted to tell him to pipe down, he wasn’t my master, but I thought I would let him gain a bit more weight before picking a fight with him.

  Instead I looked back to Signor Botticelli. “Do you also need to honor beauty in the boy wielding the smelly cheese?”

  The painter smiled, and the smile spread from his mouth to his eyes. “True beauty has nothing to do with what you wield, or even what you wear. Some day I shall prove that to you, Flora Pazzi, Goddess of Spring.”

  Then he clapped his hands twice and his minions followed him upstairs to the piano nobile where the real goddess awaited her sitting.

  That morning we learned how to storm a castle.

  Captain Umberto showed us how to advance as one block with our shields above our heads to protect us from flaming arrows. There were no real flaming arrows, yet the task was harder than it seemed. We tripped over each other. When we did, Captain Umberto made us start from the beginning. “Come on, Giovanni. If this were a real battle you’d be skewered through the eye by now. And the rest of you. Let’s move it! I didn’t know I was training a bunch of ladies.”

  All the while Domenica’s hair flew unfurled like a flag over the second-floor balcony. Her little complaints drifted down to us — complaints about ruining her alabaster skin and sitting still for too long and are you sure holding the barley doesn’t make me look coarse? Captain Umberto couldn’t seem to keep his mind on what he was doing.

  At the end of the day the men packed up to go to their billet, and I plunked my tired body on a bench. I was pleased with what I’d learned today, though I still wasn’t sure why I needed to learn it at all. I knew what Nonna told me, and what Papa told me, and it didn’t make sense. If Papa lost his bid to replace the Medici we’d just be poorer, wouldn’t we? And if Nonna died I would just be shoved off to Our Lady of Fiesole, wouldn’t I? I’d grieve for the rest of my life, but I could grieve without shielding my head from flaming arrows.

  After a moment I stopped puzzling over it and inspected myself. I was no painting. Bruises were sprouting, more vibrant than lapis lazuli but less pleasing to the eye. Goddess of Spring, Flower of Tuscany indeed. No, I knew what I was, and that was definitely not beautiful.

  I was also nearly dead from starvation. I wasn’t hungry for dainty fare: a pheasant or a raisin, or beans and parsley in thin broth — no, I could eat a whole boar — tongue, eyes, and all. When Emilio came out of the kitchen, I investigated him for a cheese or a capon or squishy bread, but all I found was Nonna’s purse strapped to his belt.

  “Where’s the food?” I said. “You always have something.”

  Emilio shook his head. “Remember what Nonna said yesterday? We’re not supposed to eat until after we get back from Fiesole.”

  Madonna! In my training I’d forgotten completely about his dead, unhallowed sister and Nonna’s strange request that we not eat until later. What was she thinking, anyway? It was Lent, true, but that never stopped us from imbibing anything.

  “Please, Emilio. I’m tired and hungry. Can’t I just stay here while you go to Fiesole without me?”

  If I were expecting an argument I was disappointed. Emilio just set his lips in a straight line. “Fine,” he said, and walked toward the front.

  I felt instantly ashamed. Here I was, whining like Domenica after only a few hours without food. Emilio had once gone three days without it. Some soldier I was.

  “Aspetta, Emilio. Wait!” I grabbed his arm and he swung around, his face filled with righteous fury.

  “Are you coming or not? I’m growing tired of your playing. This is just an errand to you, but to me it is my family. My only family. My sister raised me. She was like my mamma and papa and nonna. That’s right, my nonna. Think about it, eh? What would happen if that were Nonna lying on unhallowed ground?”

  “I would eat later,” I said.

  “Exactly,” Emilio said, and walked away, vindicated.

  I followed.

  Once, the previous summer, Andrea and I were in the Piazza della Signoria for a festival. We had been on our way back to the palazzo from Papa’s bank when our carriage had trouble maneuvering through a crowd. I bid the driver to stop and let us out because I’d caught sight of jugglers in purple and red, and a platform set up in the middle of the square. I was sure we were about to behold a treat.

  Andrea had been hesitant but at last done as I wished. “At least pull your veil down before we get out.”

  I did as I was told and tugged on his hand excitedly. “Let’s hurry and get closer,” I bade him, pushing my way through the throng.

  But he made me hang back, and soon I understood why. As the jugglers practiced off to the side, a girl was led forth in irons. She was young — not much older than I. Her skin was filthy and her hair cropped so close she seemed bald. She was crying and pleading with the two men who held her elbows and dragged her to the platform. She was saying something about not having a husband and children, which I thought odd. If I were a prisoner, I could plead for my children’s sake even if I had none.

  A narrow man wearing a Medici tunic stood in front of her, faced us, and read a proclamation. I didn’t hear the whole thing. I only knew that she had been traveling to San Gimignano and that she had been wearing men’s clothing — leggings and a codpiece. She shouted that it was to avoid highwaymen who preyed on innocent women like her, traveling alone without a husband or protector. But the man reading the proc
lamation didn’t seem to hear her, and kept reading to the end.

  Something in my stomach sank like a stone. “I changed my mind. I don’t want to see this,” I said, turning away.

  “No, Flora. Now that we’re here, don’t show them you’re afraid. That’s what they want.”

  “Who? That’s what who wants?”

  “The Medici,” he said, gesturing to an upper window in the nearby government palace. A curtain had been drawn back by a jeweled hand of a dark-haired man. I couldn’t see him well, but I could see that he was not reveling.

  Down below on the platform, the narrow man finished reading the indictment and looked up to that same window. I saw the man within nod once, subtly, and down below the man who had read the proclamation took a knife from his belt.

  Then the two guards who had been keeping the prisoner on her feet now forced her to her knees. I couldn’t see what they were doing to her, but I heard her scream, no no no, first in terror, then in a shriek that had no words, just raw pain and horror. The pitch of her voice went up and down like a giant wave. I tried to bring my hands to my ears to block out the noise, but Andrea gripped my fingers tighter.

  “Coraggio, Flora,” he said. “I didn’t want you to see this, but now that we’re here we have to stay. Whatever you do, don’t let anyone see you buckle. You’re a Pazzi. We have to stand tall.”

  The narrow man on the platform stood up and held something small and bloody in his hand that he showed to the crowd. Behind him, the two jailers hoisted the prisoner to her feet, cupping her chin to show her face so that everyone might see. The woman was still shrieking, but her shrieks were now muffled by wet gurgling noises. Deep red blood ran in rivers down the hole where her nose had been just a moment ago.

  “Let her try to hide that!” the narrow man said, his fist beating the air in victory.

  A cheer arose from the crowd; the woman was dragged off, her nose tossed to dogs as the jugglers took the stage.

  I looked up. In a high room in the government palace, a curtain fell back into place.

  I thought of that poor woman and her nose that evening as Emilio and I mounted our horses to fetch Father Alberto at the duomo. “Eh, Flora?” Emilio said.

  “What was that, Emilio?”

  “I asked if you needed a veil.”

  I looked down. My shift was plain, but it was still a dress. And with my long hair I was still clearly a girl. That was the important thing. The authorities just didn’t like feeling deceived about a person’s sex.

  “There’s no crime against women going about unveiled,” I said. “If there were, every washerwoman in the city would be thrown in irons.”

  Emilio shrugged. “It’s your skin,” he said.

  My hand involuntarily went to my nose.

  We turned a corner and found ourselves in the shadow of the duomo. We trotted the giant length of it until we were in an open space between the cathedral’s main entrance and the baptistery building just opposite. The round baptistery was diminutive next to the cathedral and yet, of the two, that was the one that always caught my attention. It was closed this evening, the two doors of the entrance shut tight.

  “You fetch Father Alberto,” I told Emilio. “I’ll stay here with the horses.”

  As soon as Emilio was out of sight I dismounted and got closer to the baptistery doors, each side containing five bronze panels, each panel molded with different scenes from the Bible. Mamma said an artist named Ghiberti sculpted them. She knew things like that, whereas I only knew the way these doors made me feel. I loved the way the figures were so lifelike, they seemed to jump out at me. I stroked the round curls on the head of Esau in one of the panels and half expected him to turn to me and smile. Surely to be baptized behind these doors meant to be blessed for all eternity.

  I tore myself away only when Emilio emerged with my favorite priest.

  Father Alberto was a thin man with tonsured black hair clipped above his ears. He wore coarse, gray robes that reached the ground, and sturdy sandals. One simple wooden cross hung from his neck. He was not ornate in his appearance. But his imagination, ah! That was a different matter.

  His sermons were more elaborate than Ghiberti’s doors. Especially the sermons about hell. He could talk for hours about fiery pits and the writhing torment of the damned. I loved the damned. It was my favorite part of Sunday.

  “Flora.” He nodded at me. “I haven’t seen you at confession lately. Is there anything new you want to tell me?”

  “No,” I said, mentally going through the list. “It’s all the same. I don’t honor my mother and father and I loathe my sister. Oh yes, and sometimes I spit into the soup.”

  “Do you repent any of this?”

  “Not really,” I said.

  He frowned and scratched his head but delivered no sermon, as I knew he wouldn’t. Perhaps he thought righteousness was something I could grow into, like Domenica’s cast-off gowns.

  “All right, then. Andiamo.”

  The road to the hill town of Fiesole was wide and well-traveled. We rode three across — Emilio and I on horseback, Father Alberto on his donkey. As we progressed steadily upward, I understood the best way to avoid highwaymen is to travel with a threadbare priest. No one looked at us twice. Not even the scrawny ones, their hands twitching around the hilts of their blades.

  Emilio told Father Alberto his story, about a different priest who wouldn’t bury his sister because there was no money.

  Father Alberto sighed. “At least we know he isn’t a Franciscan. I hope you do not judge all men of faith by the acts of this one, Emilio,” Father Alberto said, wagging his finger. “That priest may be enjoying himself now, but when his day of judgment arrives, he’s going to have his entrails pecked out by a giant vulture every day for eternity.”

  Emilio lit up. “Really? How is that possible? Don’t we just have one set of entrails?”

  “He’ll grow a new one every morning.”

  Father Alberto then ignited a description that was gruesome even for him, but that I couldn’t help noticing sounded like what the Medici did to women who didn’t wear dresses.

  We reached the town square at sunset and paused to look at the city below. The colors were beautiful: warm reds in a field of green. The River Arno cut through it like gold thread. One by one bright spots appeared as lamps were lit. Soon my father’s toadies would start arriving at the palazzo, and my family would begin their nightly banquet.

  At the thought of food my stomach rumbled. I’d forgotten my hunger, what with the bronze doors and Father Alberto’s talk about eternal torment. “Is it much farther?” I asked.

  Emilio indicated a thin path that wound to the summit. We traveled it single file.

  At the top we dismounted. A strong breeze blew up here, whipping my hair into my mouth. Unfortunately it didn’t taste very good.

  Emilio pointed to a dirt mound with a primitive cross, the name Alessandra scratched in crudely. It overlooked a valley on the opposite side from the city. It was a lovely valley with sheep and tall grass, dotted with wildflowers. Looking out, I wondered if it were possible for God to dwell in two places: down in my city in the duomo, and here among the sheep?

  “Emilio,” I said. “I don’t think you failed your sister at all.”

  “Really? I could have buried her closer to home, but I always loved this field. I had to carry her body here myself. It was a long walk. There were flies.” Emilio stumbled over his words. Nonna was right: he had a heavy load, this one.

  Father Alberto removed his wooden cross and kissed it. Emilio and I folded our hands and bent our heads. Father Alberto muttered some words in Latin, but the words themselves were not important.

  Standing there at the top of the mountain, with the wind running through my hair, I wondered if Alessandra were here with us now, watching her brother. As I looked at the ground I thought I saw a shadow from the corner of my eye, a restless spirit whipping about our heads, trying to knock us off our feet. I grabbed Emilio’s h
and and gave it a squeeze.

  It’s all right, I told his sister. I’ll share Nonna with him. He’s a good boy even though he eats a lot. He’ll be fine.

  Then Father Alberto sprinkled the holy water, said amen, and we looked up.

  The spell was broken. I could no longer weave Alessandra’s presence from shadows, or God’s presence from wildflowers. The three of us were alone once more.

  Emilio dropped my hand and gave Nonna’s purse to Father Alberto.

  The priest shook his head. “I will not take this. You have suffered enough.”

  “Please, Father,” Emilio said. “Take it. If not for yourself then for the poor.”

  Father Alberto shook his head. “Don’t you see that if I take this from you it will prove a point?”

  Emilio shook the purse; the coins jangled. “This is not my money, Father. It is Signora Cenesta’s. If I don’t give it to you that would be stealing.”

  “Surely,” I piped up, “there is a circle of hell reserved for people who steal from their employers?”

  Father Alberto regarded the purse with suspicion, as though if he opened it up a thousand poisonous vipers would pop out and eat his liver every day for the rest of his life. “Allora. Here is what we shall do. I will take the purse, but I will not use it. I shall hide it. When you — either of you,” he nodded at me, “need money for anything you will come to me. Does that arrangement suit?”

  Emilio nodded. “If we do not use it for a while, you can lend it to another worthy soul. Perhaps someone else’s sister needs burying.”

  Father Alberto snorted. “Maybe I could even charge interest. Then I would be a proper usurer.”

  Then he looked at me and he blushed. He was afraid of giving offense to the daughter of the second most successful usurer in the land.

  I took none. Because that day I learned to shield my head from flaming arrows. Even the day before I would not have been offended.