The Time Contessa (The Time Mistress Book 3)

by Georgina Young-Ellis

  The man turned it over in his fingers. “A scudo! Ah, such wealthy and benevolent souls…thank you! Thank you!” he yelled.

  Jake pulled Cassandra away from the old man and they quickly moved on. Whispering and the sound of shuffling feet came from a nearby alley.

  “Shit!” hissed Jake.

  Had someone heard the old man say they were wealthy? How stupid not to have been more careful with the coin!

  Two figures stepped out of the shadows. “Where are you fine people going this evening?” one of them asked. All that was evident in the dark was that they were tall and broad-bodied. They also emanated a terrible stench: a mixture of stale sweat and alcohol.

  Cassandra grabbed for her knife. Jake’s already glinted in his hand.

  Fast footsteps suddenly sounded from behind.

  “Jacopo! Cassandra!” It was Francesco’s voice. The point of his long knife came into view before his face did.

  The two men flinched away. “Bene, bene!” one of them cried. “There is no need to be hostile; we were just saying good evening.”

  “Be on your way,” Francesco growled.

  “Yes, yes, buona notte, signori….” They shuffled quickly away.

  “When I realized Signor Guerrini had let you leave with no escort,” Francesco said, panting, “I came to find you, figuring you couldn’t be far and would have to start out in this direction. However, you could get hopelessly lost on these streets, and God knows what trouble you could run afoul of after dark.”

  “Thank you, Francesco!” Cassandra slid her knife into its sheath and took hold of his arm. Relief flooded through her veins.

  “Come, let’s hurry,” the artist said. “All of us with our weapons are no match for some of the thugs that roam these streets.”

  They rushed along in silence for a moment, splashing through God only knew what.

  “Jacopo,” Francesco whispered, “Signor Guerrini suspects something between you and Giuliana.”

  “I know, but he has nothing to be concerned about,” Jake’s voice was hushed, yet strained.

  “Really? Well, if you say so, Conte.” He shook his head.

  Cassandra had the same doubts Francesco obviously did. It wasn’t a good time to talk about it, though. They hurried on through the town.

  Outside the city gates, moonlight shone onto the road, providing some sense of security. It only took fifteen minutes more, walking rapidly up the hill, before they were inside the walls of Sampieri’s villa and Cassandra could breathe again.

  Chapter Seven

  Her reflection in the mirror confirmed how well the russet silk gown set off the color of Cassandra’s hair. Though the hue of the garment wasn’t important to the sketching process, it was vital, this first day Sampieri was drawing her, she wear the dress that was to be in the portrait. It had just arrived from the dressmaker: cut square around the neckline, a touch of the creamy chemise flirting from beneath. The undergarment’s sleeves puffed high and then disappeared where the arms of the russet silk continued snuggly from elbow to wrist. She twirled; the skirt was just a little shorter in the front than the back. She leaned forward. Could she make her breasts appear any fuller? No, they’d been plumped to the maximum by the able hands of Caterina. She shrugged. She did look nice, though. A loud knock on the door and the sound of Jake’s impatient voice drew her from her room. They hurried down the road with Sampieri so they could get there before the early light changed.

  The artist seated her in a shaft of sunlight, took out his sketching materials and began to draw rapidly. Jake moved to the other end of the studio near where Francesco was preparing his canvas.

  “Cassandra, I know Francesco is compelling, but please don’t move your head,” Sampieri dryly remarked.

  Francesco grinned, and she darted her eyes back to Sampieri. She had to stay focused; she didn’t want to be caught looking at that scamp again. Every time she did, she felt naked, exposed…yet the feeling wasn’t entirely a bad one.

  After another hour, in which Cassandra had managed not to look away again, Sampieri asked, “Are you tiring, my dear?”

  “Maybe a little.”

  “Let’s stop then. The light is changing anyway. I’ll walk you home.”

  Jake refused to go with them. He was drawing a still life that had been set up for the apprentices to work on, with some charcoal, paper, brushes, and ink he had bought. Cassandra didn’t mind that he stayed. Having Sampieri to herself was a good way to get information. As she walked with him, images from the night before flashed through her head.

  “Maestro, I see that Francesco Marino highly admires Signora Guerrini’s beauty,” she began. “Is there no fear of her husband growing jealous of his attentions?”

  “Please Contessa, call me Lauro.”

  “Then you must call me Cassandra.”

  “Very well. To answer your question, no. I believe Piero Guerrini understands the artist/subject relationship and has no fear of the two becoming confused.”

  “However, I mean, do you think there’s any danger of Signor Marino, how should I say, overstepping the boundaries of that relationship?”

  “Do you mean, do I think he’ll dally with our beautiful Giuliana? Mmmm, no, I don’t think so. He is too much of a professional.”

  “Ah, I see.”

  “Why are you concerned?”

  “I know that Piero Guerrini is a very jealous man. He threatened my brother last night as we were leaving.”

  “Did he?” Lauro turned his head quickly to look at Cassandra. “Then your brother must stay clear of Giuliana.”

  “Yes, I agree.” If Piero Guerrini didn’t kill Francesco Marino out of jealousy, which he seem s ed entirely capable of doing, how did the artist die an untimely death? Cassandra thought quickly before continuing continued aloud, “The other reason I ask about Francesco, is that he doesn’t seem to look at me with the eye of merely an artist.”

  Lauro laughed. “Yes, he can be brazen with his stares. However, with you, it’s different. You are not his subject, so perhaps he feels free to flirt with you.”

  “Ah, yes.”

  There was a rut in the road and Lauro took Cassandra’s hand to lead her around it. His dark eyes caught a glint from the sun and suddenly lightened.

  “Cassandra, I don’t mean to change the subject, but I’d like to ask you something. I hope you don’t think I’m being forward.”

  Her heart beat faster. “Please….”

  “You seem to be interested in my inventions. Would you like to see more?”

  “Oh yes!” She looked away toward the poppy-covered hills. That wasn’t what she’d thought he was going to ask.

  They arrived at the house and Lauro led her into the cellar kitchen. There, Ottavia was overseeing the preparation of the midday meal.

  “Who is joining you for dinner today, Maestro?” the housekeeper asked as she watched the cook pluck a chicken.

  “Only the contessa.”

  “Fine, then the one chicken will do.”

  The cook, a portly, middle-aged woman with a dark olive complexion and a large mole on her cheek, deftly removed the last of the feathers from the bird.

  “Watch this,” said Lauro.

  The woman poured oil from a jug into her hand and smeared it over the chicken. She then stuck it on a rotisserie spit and set the two ends of the spit into holders over the fire. She pulled up a stool near the hearth and grabbed a bowl of peas in shells. She sat down and began to pump a pedal that was attached by a series of metal poles and gears to the spit. The chicken turned as the woman operated the pedal by foot, and in the meantime, shelled the peas, tossing the pods into a pile at her feet.

  “Goodness!” Cassandra gasped.

  “This way,” Laura explained, “her hands are left free for other tasks. It was tedious, and a waste of time for her or another servant to have to stand there and turn a handle on the spit for hours. She can do needlework, knead bread, or do some other manual task while the bird continues to
roast.”

  The cook smiled up at her guest, fat cheeks puffing up to her eyes. Cassandra nodded to her and the woman went back to pumping and shelling without missing a beat.

  “Are all your inventions connected with food?” Cassandra asked.

  “On the contrary! Though you may have noticed how the, ahem, commodes, if I may speak frankly, are positioned on the same side of the house as the garden.”

  “Yes, and I realized the reason for that.”

  “Oh, very clever, Contessa, but you did not know I had a receptacle built underneath the garden to catch the waste. As it slowly decomposes, it leaches far under the ground, thereby avoiding contamination by direct contact with the food. It’s a far more sanitary method than others use.”

  A septic tank! The vegetables would be more appealing now that she understood that fact. “I am very impressed with your ingenuity, Maestro.”

  They walked through the house until they came to a door that Lauro unlocked with a key. Before them in the ample space were tables spread with drawings and various objects covered with linen cloths. There were a few high windows in the room. Lauro lit a torch from coals glowing in a brazier, and used it to light others stuck in sconces on the wall. The room filled with their golden light.

  “May I look?”

  “As long as I can trust you not to share my secrets in England,” he replied, grinning.

  “Of course.” She smiled back at him.

  One drawing was of an olive picking machine. Another was for pressing grapes and separating the skins from the juice―very sophisticated for the time.

  “Are these in use?”

  “No, not yet. I have begun to build the parts for them here, you see.” He uncovered an object. It was part of the olive picking machine. She gently picked it up and turned its crank while Lauro explained that, as soon as he could devise them, he would attach a series of small, grabbing mechanical hands that would pull the olives off branches faster than a human could. However, a human was still required to put the “hands” in place and turn the crank. It didn’t seem any more practical than the current method of shaking the olives off the trees onto a ground covering, and then gathering them up.

  As if reading her thoughts, he said, “Olives are easily bruised or damaged when they fall to the ground. Using this method, olives can be stripped from the trees quickly, into the worker’s sack, without harming them.”

  She nodded. Something shiny glinted on a nearby table: various lengths of brass tubes fitted together. It couldn’t be! “What are you doing with these?”

  “I am trying to figure out how to better see the stars.”

  It was impossible. He seemed to have built a telescope one hundred years before Galileo used his to look at the moon and planets. As it was, Copernicus had not yet announced his heretical theory that the earth was not the center of the universe—that would not come for almost another fifty years.

  “But let’s move on.”

  He hurried her away to show her other projects he was working on: a system for bringing water into the house by means of a pump, and one to deliver better irrigation to his fields—this was still only a drawing of the schematic for a series of little dams, water wheels, and canals. He was experimenting with better ways to dry fruits and vegetables in the sun without exposing them to insects. These different kinds of wooden containers were covered with netting and cloth. He was waiting for more cherries to ripen, he said, so he could test them. He was also experimenting with solar heat: covering buckets of water with different kinds of black materials: cloth, leather, marble, to see how quickly they could be heated. He had made drawings of all these, and the materials were neatly stacked waiting their next use. There were also various kinds of containers he’d been working with to see which best attracted and held the heat. But a telescope…a telescope!

  “I should show you the bathing tub I have constructed on the roof.”

  “Really?”

  “It is the most effective method I’ve yet devised for heating water with the sun. Now that the weather is warm, I’ve been collecting and heating rain water in an onyx-lined cistern on the roof so I can bathe. I like to have a clean body, and I feel, contrary to many other of my countrymen, that immersing the body in water is the best way to do it.”

  “I appreciate that. As a matter of fact, we do bathe often in England. I miss it.”

  “After we eat, let’s go see how the tub is doing. It rained hard last night, and the sun is warm today. If there is enough water in it, perhaps in a few hours it will be warm enough for you to have a bath.” He covered the telescope up with a cloth.

  There had to be a way to get him to show how it worked. She was dying to know if it was effective…or not.

  They enjoyed a leisurely midday meal and then retired for a short nap. Afterwards, Lauro came to her room and they went up to the tower and out through a small doorway onto the roof of the second story. He pointed out the wooden tub, lined with black stone, and a drain that jutted from the roof of the tower. It had a rim around it which must have allowed for the gathering of rain. The drain sent water from the roof into the deep tub, but it was positioned far enough from the tower not to be shaded by it in the warmest part of the day. The sun was shining brightly and, as it was mid-afternoon, directly onto the tub. It was about half full of rain water. She dipped her hand into it.

  “It’s warm!”

  “Yes, that is the onyx attracting the heat.”

  They walked around the roof and he showed Cassandra a much larger cistern that had about a foot of rainwater collected in it.

  “One of the things I’m working on, as you saw, is developing a system that brings rainwater directly into the house to supplement the water from the well. I have developed a pump from the well to the kitchen, but it is not very efficient. I think bringing water down rather than up would work better.”

  She nodded as he spoke. Hydro-engineering was not her area of expertise.

  When they went back into the house, he ordered Ottavia to arrange for Cassandra’s bath. The woman had Caterina gather linens, soap, and oil as Cassandra stripped out of her clothes and donned a beautiful velvet robe of Teresa’s. She then followed Caterina up to the tower and out onto the roof.

  The sun was halfway between noon and sunset. Near the house, white sheets on a clothesline billowed in the breeze. Workers were behind the villa in the vineyards, which stretched on and on. A small shepherd boy was tending goats and cows in a pasture. In the opposite direction lay Siena and the road to Lauro’s house, empty of travelers. With Caterina holding the robe to block the view of the workers, Cassandra stepped out. The sun was warm on her naked skin. She dipped a toe into the water, not as warm as the bath water she was used to, but enough to immerse herself in without a chill. She sank down into it, the stone smooth under her rear and legs.

  “Mmmm.”

  Caterina poured sweet-smelling oil into the bath. She then dipped the soap in and began to lather it, but Cassandra took it from her. “Do you mind if I bathe alone?”

  “Whatever you wish, Contessa,” the girl replied, curtseying. “Would you like me to wait inside for you?”

  “You may go on about your day. Just leave the robe and the drying sheet nearby. When I’m done, I’ll come down to dress.”

  “Very well, whatever you wish.” The girl laid the things over a stool and went back out the tower door.

  Cassandra relaxed against the back of the tub, the sky an endless blue above, all of Tuscany spread below as far as the eye could see. The sun continued to warm her skin. She closed her eyes. The smell of the oil was intoxicating—sandalwood, perhaps—like a Renaissance princess would use. She dunked her head under and applied the mild lanolin soap to her hair and scalp, the first time in more than a week that she’d washed it. She scrubbed it well. Then she rubbed soap all over her skin and cleaned herself. While the soap dissolved, she lay still, soothed by the warm, scented rainwater. She hummed one of the tunes she’d been playing on t
he harpsichord in recent days. Shadows moved across the hills, and the red of the poppies turned wine-colored as the light changed. A strong breeze blew, but it was warm and began to dry her hair. On distant roads, travelers came and went. The bells of Siena blended with the continuous birdsong. Her eyes closed. The sounds became a buzz. Her head jerked. She had almost fallen asleep. The water, far from cooling, remained tepid with the sun still shining on it. A girl laughed somewhere below. Cassandra sat up in the tub and looked out behind the villa. A young woman had come to take the sheets off the clothesline. Cassandra didn’t recognize her, but she had to be a worker in Lauro’s house. Then the wind blew and revealed a man standing just behind her. It was Giovanni, the apprentice—this was certain, there was no mistaking that handsome face. The two were standing in between the rows of sheets, hidden from anyone but Cassandra. Giovanni turned the woman around and pulled her close. Their lips met. She ran her hands through his hair and held his face while they kissed. The sheets flapped and they were hidden for a moment, and then the cloth blew outward, and Cassandra could see the couple again. Giovanni was loosening the ties of the young woman’s bodice. He pulled it open, tugged her blouse out of her skirt, and ran his hands up under it. Cassandra gasped; she couldn’t look away. The shadows of the sheets played over the lovers. Giovanni was lifting the woman’s skirt; his hands reached under it. They were kissing. The wind blew and covered them with a sheet, then blew it away. She was unbuttoning his pants. Giovanni, strong as an ox, lifted her high. She pulled her skirts up with one hand while clutching his shoulder with the other. She wrapped her legs around his waist. She clung to him and he began to rock his hips. The woman grabbed onto a clothesline post for balance. The sheets flapped in the breeze, covering them, uncovering them. The woman’s blouse was pulled down, exposing her breasts, which Giovanni suckled as he continued to move his hips. The woman arched back, clinging, to the post with one hand. Cassandra heard her cry out. Giovanni grabbed the woman’s hair and pulled her head down to kiss her, muffling her cries. They continued to make love as he kissed her mouth, her shoulders, her breasts. Then they collapsed to the ground. Cassandra raised herself higher for a better view. Giovanni was on top of the woman, thrusting. She held onto his arms as he kept her pinned to the earth. Her bare legs encircled his waist. The shepherd boy called to one of his goats, which made the couple stop and look in his direction. Giovanni reached up and pulled a sheet down on top of them. Cassandra only saw the outline of their forms as they moved in unison.