by Debbie Rix
The room was furnished simply. Just a table made of local wood – chestnut, Berta thought – and two chairs. A large pot hung over an open fire. The doors of a small cupboard stood ajar, revealing row upon row of glass bottles containing curiously misshapen objects and different powders of varying shades. Berta sat and waited, taking in the aromas of herbs and flowers that hung from the wooden beams, drying in rows
A woman, dressed simply in a dark blue woollen gown, climbed down the ladder in a corner of the room. ‘Good morning, signora… how may I help you?’
‘You have been recommended to me,’ Berta spoke quietly, ‘I have a problem that I am told you can help me with.’
‘Please, signora, let me take your cloak. Aurelia, take the lady’s cloak and bring water for the fire. I can make you an infusion, signora… if you would like? To relax you.’
Berta watched the girl as she hung the cloak on a hook on the back of the door, and then, taking a large jug from the floor in both hands, she leant her body against the small wooden door at the back of the room, pushing it open. Berta glimpsed a tiny courtyard garden surrounded by a high wall filled with a patchwork of herbs. Vast bushes of rosemary, as tall as the girl herself, fought for space with the tall architectural spikes of angelica. Pots tumbled with aromatic basil, tarragon and lavender. Nettles were corralled in a productive corner. Everything had its place. And near the back wall was a pump that the girl now pushed up and down until water gushed from it into the large brown pottery jug.
‘We are fortunate to have a well that we share with our neighbours,’ said the woman, who had watched Berta’s gaze following the girl.
‘Tell me a little of your problem,’ she said kindly.
Unsteadily, Berta began to explain her predicament.
‘I have been married for many years – fifteen, in fact – to a good man. We have everything we could want, except for the one thing he desires more than anything else… a child.’
The woman’s gaze never left Berta’s face. She smiled a little now.
‘I see. And may I ask… are you still intimate with your husband?’
‘Of course!’ Berta was startled by her indelicacy, ‘What do you think I am, a fool? Of course we are intimate, as often as we can, but still, after all this time, I have no child. Maybe it is too late, maybe I am too old… I am thirty-four years of age. The doctors tell me, of course, it is my fault… that there must be something wrong with me, or I have sinned in some way. But I attend Mass, we say prayers to San Nicola… and still no child. A friend told me that you might be able to help me. My husband would not approve of me coming here. He is a modern man. He puts his faith in God and doctors. But I felt I had to come.’
The girl came back into the room and poured water into the large pan that hung over the open fire. She broke some small pieces of firewood in two and pushed them into the flames to provoke them into activity. Steam began to rise up the charred, stone chimney.
‘I understand well, signora,’ said the woman. ‘The life of an apothecary has always been shrouded in mystery. Doctors do not agree with our methods, but they can be very effective. The old remedies are still the best way.’
She spoke gently to the girl. ‘Aurelia, bring a bowl and some nettles; they are hanging there above the cupboard.’
She turned back to Berta.
‘Now, signora, there are some things I need to ask you.’ The woman took the stiff, drying nettles from the girl and began to pull the leaves carefully off the stems.
‘Aurelia, these are no good. Please go into the garden and bring me some fresh nettles. Take the knife.’ The girl, glancing uneasily at Berta, went back to the garden.
‘You may find these questions embarrassing, signora, and I apologise for that, but I do not believe that the fault always lies with the woman. This is heretical talk, I understand well. No doctor would agree with me, but I have helped several women with my methods.’
Berta nodded uneasily.
‘Your husband… when you are together, is he hard?’
‘Of course!’ Berta’s tone was once again irritable.
‘Forgive me, signora, but I need to understand the problem. There are remedies we can try to help you… to strengthen the blood and make you strong, but I need to know everything. Are you satisfied... by your husband? You understand what I mean by satisfied?’
‘Yes, everything is as it should be.’
‘Because you will not conceive if you are not satisfied.’
‘I am satisfied; that cannot be the cause. Might there be some other problem?’
Berta thought of the last time she and Lorenzo had made love. Nearly twenty years her senior, she had to admit she no longer desired him. He had grown fat, his lush dark hair was thin and sparse, and she struggled to remember him as he had been when they first met – strong and virile, able to pick her up and throw her onto the bed, impressing her with his tales of adventure at sea. Then, she had counted the days until her returned from his travels, willing him to come safely back to her, bringing sparkle and noise to the quiet life she led while he was away. But over the ensuing years, she had come to enjoy the periods without him almost more than those times they spent together, bringing as they did the restriction of her freedom, and requiring her to devote her waking hours to making him happy.
Nevertheless, she had always managed to fulfil her wifely duties, and even to enjoy them, as long as the candles had first been extinguished. Then, she would allow her mind to run free, imagining herself with another, younger fantasy lover – perhaps one of the pretty young men she invited to their salons… artists, architects, musicians. For, while she had never actually risked any physical infidelity, her mind was at liberty to fall in and out of love at will. She did not consider this sinful in any way, merely a private expression of her own desire. And, in truth, it enabled her to make Lorenzo happy; to make love to him with the passion she had felt for him when she was young. She still cared for Lorenzo and felt no antagonism to him. He had been generous over the years, encouraging her in her artistic interests and indulging her passion for artistic company, mostly, she suspected, because it leant him an air of sophistication that he did not himself possess. And her marriage to Lorenzo had provided her with financial security and a position in society. But there was no doubt that the first flush of desire she had felt as a girl of seventeen had faded over the years.
The girl came into the room carrying a basket of fresh nettles.
‘I shall give you a tisane to drink,’ said Violetta, ‘sweetened with a little honey. It will strengthen you. Drink it today and ask your maid to make it for you each morning. I will also make you some little biscuits that perhaps your maid could collect for you tomorrow. They will give your husband strength.’
‘But my husband doesn’t need strength, he is perfectly well,’ Berta protested. She had already been assured by her doctor that her predicament was her sole responsibility. No fault could be laid at her husband’s door.
‘Signora, I am sure he is well enough. But his seed may not be strong.’
Berta watched the woman as she soaked the fresh nettles in the boiling water, mixing a small piece of honeycomb to sweeten the drink.
‘What sort of biscuits?’ she asked after a short pause, curiosity getting the better of her.
‘Don’t worry, they are delicious, filled with wonderful things – walnuts, pistachio, pine kernels, cinnamon, ginger and cloves. No man can resist them. In fact, he may get a little fat, they are so delicious. But they will strengthen his seed.’
Standing, the apothecary moved to the shelves that lined the walls on either side of the fireplace. She took a turquoise-coloured majolica jar and stood it carefully on the table. Putting her hand deep into the pot, she removed a scaly, desiccated creature.
Berta recoiled involuntarily.
‘Signora, please don’t worry. This,’ she said, holding up a dried-up lizard, ‘this is the best part. Once it is ground to a fine powder and mixed with the other in
gredients he will not notice the taste.’
Then, pulling a vast pestle and mortar towards her, she deftly removed the head and the feet and began to grind the dead creature, while Berta sipped her nettle tea.
When Berta returned home, Lorenzo was looking anxiously out of the window. He turned as she entered the room.
‘Berta, there you are; I was worried. Where have you been?’
‘Just for a walk, Lorenzo. It was a beautiful morning.’
‘A walk, at this time… unaccompanied? Why did you not take the servants with you? You know it is dangerous for you to be alone in the town.’ His tone was challenging. His black eyes bored into her, searching her face for signs of guilt.
Berta thought of all the times she had gone unaccompanied into the town, when Lorenzo was away. She would dress in simple clothing – not quite in disguise, but certainly confident that she would not be easily recognised as the wife of wealthy merchant Lorenzo Calvo. These outings were innocent enough, enabling her to visit buildings of interest, or providing inspiration for her sketches, and so she felt no guilt about them. But she knew that when her husband was at home, he expected her to behave as a noble lady should, and that solitary walks were out of the question. She regretted having gone out alone that morning; her desire for privacy had caused him to feel suspicious of her, and in truth there was no need. Anxious to quickly defuse the situation, she began to weep quietly, before sinking dramatically onto the bed.
After a few moments, she recovered herself sufficiently to speak.
‘I’m sorry, Lorenzo… I should have told you where I was going, but I thought you might not approve. I went to see an apothecary. To see if she could help me… to have a child.’
His face softened and he sat down on the bed, his arm around his wife’s shoulder. ‘You are right; I would not have approved. I do not believe in those old women with their magic potions. People in our position do not, and should not, visit apothecaries; we have doctors to help us, Berta. Only the poor still believe their nonsense. Is that why you went alone? Because you wanted to keep it a secret?’
Berta nodded miserably.
‘Cara,’ he said, caressing his wife’s shoulder, ‘you should have told me. I might have argued with you, but in the end, you know that if you really felt it would help, I would have allowed it. Besides, I have been worried about you.’
‘I’m sorry, Lorenzo. Please forgive me?’
‘Of course. But next time, please take the servants. Now then, what did she say? Can she help us, this old crone?’ he asked gently.
‘Lorenzo, she is not an old crone. She is a kind woman called Violetta. Her husband was a painter, sadly now dead. But she is educated, intelligent, and I liked her, Lorenzo. I have faith in her. She is hopeful that she can help me; she says I need to drink a special tisane each day and…’ she paused.
‘What?’
‘Nothing.’ The little lizard biscuits, she decided, should remain a secret for the time being. ‘It’s just that I am to go back to see her in a little while and she may change the tisane for something else. Are you angry with me?’
‘No, Berta, I am not angry – perplexed perhaps, and disappointed that you did not feel you could discuss this with me. But you know that a child is the one thing I yearn for – someone to share in our good fortune. And if you feel this woman can help us, then I will not stop you. Maybe you are right, we should try everything.’
Lorenzo stood now. ‘But I think we should continue with our prayers to San Nicola, don’t you? We might ask the priest to conduct a special Mass for us. We must pray for a son, Berta, a strong son to take on the business. A son who has your beauty and my acumen. He will be the most wonderful child any man has ever had.’
‘We might have a daughter,’ Berta said teasingly, ‘a fine strong girl, with your beauty and my acumen. How would you feel about that?’ She attempted a smile.
But Lorenzo said simply: ‘It will be God’s wish…’ and kissing his wife, he left her for the day.
Berta lay back on the bed. She felt drained by her visit to the apothecary. She had found much of what she had seen and heard unsettling – in particular the idea that ‘the problem’ might not be hers but her husband’s. This was radical thinking, not something any doctor she had ever met would approve of. Both the church and the medical profession were united in their belief that a woman’s inability to conceive was due to her sin – or at least because of some flaw or fault of hers. Sometimes the remedy was deemed to include more frequent congress and so the man might be encouraged to eat a good diet to give him strength for long nights of passion. But at no time in all the years she had been searching for a remedy for her childlessness had any doctor or priest implied that her husband’s seed might be at fault.
She sat at her dressing table, brushing her hair, and considered what it would be like if she did have a child. To have a little person needing her would be a strange experience. At the age of thirty-four, she had become used to her own company – and in truth rather revelled in it. Children would curtail a vital part of her life; the hours that she spent studying art or painting would instead be filled with caring for children. Gone would be the pleasing rhythm of her life, whether Lorenzo was in Pisa or abroad.
When her husband was at home, they would rise together and take breakfast. Then, while he visited the warehouses or clients, she would study alone in her chamber. Normally, he returned at lunchtime, and they would eat together before retiring, as usual, for siesta. In the late afternoon, they would dress – Berta wearing the latest fashions, her hair perfumed, her gowns of finest silks decorated with pearls and jewels. This was when she would come alive, welcoming twenty or thirty visitors to her home, or, taking their retinue with them, she and Lorenzo would meet friends at their private piazzetta. Her father’s profession of capo magister had influenced her greatly, and increasingly she chose to use her new-found wealth and position to nurture young artists and sculptors; she had become a patron, and her husband was proud of her instinctive ability to spot talent.
When Lorenzo travelled, as he still did two or three times a year, Berta would change her routine. Rising early, she would dress simply in a woollen robe, her beautiful red hair covered with a simple linen cap, and walk – usually alone – to the vast building site across the Arno river that was the Piazza del Duomo. Her father had died some years before, shortly after completing the work on her own house; but before his death he had been one of the many magisters who had also found employment at the site of the new cathedral. This architectural project would take over 100 years to complete, and as a child, Berta had been brought by her father to visit the site and watch him at work, carving the decorations on columns around a doorway, or sculpting delicate figures from pink marble, beautifying the interior of this extraordinary building.
Berta was familiar with the noises and sights of a building under construction, but she never ceased to be fascinated by the myriads of trades that were plied there. A building such as the Duomo, which was possibly the most complicated and extensive construction in the whole of Italy, required a workforce of literally hundreds of men – masons, gilders, painters, carpenters, even a priest to tend to their spiritual needs. On these early morning visits, Berta would walk around the site, studying the different techniques employed by this stone mason or that sculptor. She marvelled at the noise created by a hundred masons’ hammers as they chipped and carved the vast blocks of stone and marble. With the sun rising over the Duomo, they would labour, their backs burnt the colour of hazelnuts as they bent double over their work, the air filled with a choking dust as their tools struck the stone.
Sometimes she would take up position at the edge of the site, sketching the men as they tackled some particularly intricate task, chatting with them, questioning them about a particular technique or method or working. Then, stiff from sitting still, she would get up and stretch, walking around the edge of the site, studying the growing cathedral from all sides, noting how the sun stru
ck the building in the changing light.
On more than one occasion, she had watched, fascinated, as forty or fifty men winched a vast block of marble into position, dragging it hundreds of feet from one of the warehouses that stood on the edge of the Piazza. Carefully chosen for its colour and texture by the master mason, and mined many years before from quarries in Monte Pisano or Elba, each marble block was transported first by boat down the coast, then up the river Arno into Pisa, or placed onto barges and floated down canals that criss-crossed the plains around Pisa, waterways built especially to supply the city with the multitude of goods from Europe and the East to which they had become accustomed – glassware, cloth, gold and spices. The marble was then left to rest or purificanteur in the site warehouse to see how it coped with changes in temperature; for it was vital to first discover how it would react to frost, or snow, or the extreme heat that descended on the flat campo in the steamy summer months.
When Berta had been a child, her own father had often travelled great distances in search of the perfect piece of stone for a building. An architect in medieval Italy was required to have many skills, but chief among them was his ability to recognise the perfect stone in its natural state. Many weeks were spent scouring the quarries for the ideal rockface, which had to be both the correct colour and texture for the job – with the right pell or skin, almost as if it were a living being. Once chosen, the marble would be split; in winter by pouring water into a crack that had first been made on the surface, allowing the cold weather to do the mason’s work, the water expanding as it froze and ultimately splitting the stone. Once cut, the marble would be rolled precariously down the mountain on vast tree trunks, the blocks tied securely to improvised sleighs. Many men were required to control the precious cargo, and few journeys were completed without death or injury. It was a lengthy and exhausting part of the architect’s role, but a vital one, and Berta became accustomed to her father disappearing at least once a year on these treacherous journeys. Left at home under the care of a nurse, she could scarcely contain her excitement when her father reappeared after several weeks away. She would rush from her chamber or the schoolroom and throw herself around his neck, filled with relief at his safe return and impatient for tales of his adventures and the inevitable treats that accompanied the stories.