Chapter 11
The bells of the city rang out the call for Ave Maria as Betta walked down the streets. Sunrise was chasing the bats from the sky, winged shadows that darted to and fro, silent as ghosts in the deserted streets.
A storm had rolled in from the hills last night, rattling the shudders and rousing even Signora Vannozza from her bed to stand at the loggia and let the fierce wind pull at her camicia. Puddles of rainwater remained on the street, oily windows reflecting the now clear sky. The morning was heavy with the feel of moisture.
Only the bakers were up; from their ovens wafted heavenly aromas that set her stomach to rumble. Betta had not waited to break her fast with the other servants. She would eat when she returned to the bodega instead of partaking of the pot that simmered in the kitchens.
She missed her mother's cooking. After almost four years of service, she had become accustomed to the work, the daily exhaustion that clung to her bones as she slept, the weight that never seemed to stay on her frame. Other girls of her age had begun the journey to womanhood; she was as flat chested and skinny as she had been at five. Perhaps her mother's stew would add some flesh to her bones. If there was food in the bodega to make a stew. Though the last baby had died, Mama was pregnant again. Ruberto had ceased even the pretense of work, allowing his wife and two sons to run the shop to the scandal of the neighborhood. Matrons on the street turned from him in disgust as he passed.
The square was hushed when she crossed the last alley and turned into the street. There she halted, confused. A prickle of sensation danced icy fingers up her neck. Eyes watching her from behind cracked shutters, but no one opened them, not even as she drew close enough to see the faded red paint around the door of her family's shop. Most strangely of all, bunches of angelica tied with twine were hung in front of doors and windows. Some of them were so old that the yellow flowers had become desiccated and covered with spiderwebs.
A dog was lying dead in the alley. Betta stopped and stared at it. The stench repulsed her, the way the animal's ribs were beginning to cave in. In the whole of her life, she had never seen anything like it. Dead animals were a common sight, mangy curs who could no longer snarl enough to feed themselves, cats caught in the flying wheels of wagons. But they had never been left to stink up the street.
"Betta!" A voice called down from the window at the second story. She looked up, quickly finding the familiar face of Martha, the corn seller's wife.
"Donna, what has happened?" Betta could not keep the fear from her voice.
The old woman looked to the left and then to the right. "Plague," she whispered, clutching at the wooden cross at her neck. "Run, child, before you are shut up as well."
The coin Betta had removed from the pouch dropped from nerveless fingers. Without uttering another word, she turned and ran, abandoning her week's wages in the headlong flight. Plague. The plague was death, and if she were caught where plague was found, she would be forced to stay here, and not allowed to return to the safety of the villa.
Plague. The word rang in her ears; she felt her lips going numb. How many of her friends had already died? Even as the faces of her friends flashed in her mind, she abandoned them, all that mattered was returning to the villa, which had become a sanctuary. A home where there was food, a refuge from death.
Donna Maria greeted her entrance into the kitchen with a curious smile and a raised eyebrow.
"Back from Mass, little one?" The twinkle in her eye disappeared, and her chin firmed. "I'll not have you missing services, like that pack of spraddle-legged whores...
Betta interrupted her. Something was buzzing in her ears, like bees, and she could feel tingles in her lips. Her hands were sweaty and yet ice cold, and she could not help but shiver.
"I heard them talking in the market.” Her voice sounded like an old woman, hoarse and out of breath. “There's plague in Trastevere."
"Plague?" Maria shrieked, voice filling the room, and then crossed herself. "God keep them safe." Then she looked down at Betta with a sharpening glance. "At the market, you say? You went no closer?"
"No, mistress," Betta said, meeting the housekeeper's eyes unflinchingly though her heart was beating loud in her chest. "Mama said I was to run the other way if ever I heard the word plague." A sudden realization made her clutch her stomach. As she had run through the streets, it had been the faces of her friends that had haunted her mind. She had given no thought to Mama or her brothers. What if they were ill and needed her?
A heavy hand landed on her shoulder. "Rest easy, child, it’s in God's hands." She bit her lip. "Best you say nothing of going to the market neither, eh? And you are not to go back there until Constanza sends word that it is safe."
"How will she know?" Panic made her voice high and squeaky.
Maria shrugged. "Your mother's a good head on her shoulders for everything except men. She'll send word once it’s past."
Betta waited for word through September and into October, when the cold winds from the north were beginning, but no word came. At last, she could stand it no longer. As Maria left the villa for Mass the third Saturday of October, Betta slipped through the gate by the kitchen and began to run. The stones of the street rose and fell like waves beneath her feet as the miles sped by. A stitch grew in her side until she could continue no longer and had to pause, hands clutched around her middle.
Leaning against one of the stone troughs that dotted the city, a dusty horseman smiled at her, his face a pleasing canvas of lines and whiskers coupled with a low and rasping voice when he spoke. "In a hurry, little one?"
She nodded and gasped out the words. "Sir...the plague...has it gone?"
The man shuddered at the word and clutched the cord of an amulet protruding from his shirt "Gone, though it carried many off. As God is good, may it never come to the city again."
"As God is good," she agreed, then started off, though slower this time.
On the street where she had been born, shutters hung off of loose hinges, and the smell of leather drifted up from the shops like a perfume. Her feet began to fly as she neared the bodega. The doors would be open by now, her mother and brothers busy in the shop while Ginevra...
Betta skidded to a halt. The door of the shop was still closed, as were each of the shutters. The wooden boards that her mother had carefully washed each week were filthy with a layer of dirt.
"Mama?" She called up. "Marco?"
There was no answer. Betta called again, but there was no reply.
A cough sounded behind her. Giotto, the tooler, was standing in the middle of the street with one of his knives clutched nervously in his hand.
"Whatcha..." he began, then his words trailed off as he recognized her. "Ahh, it’s you," he rasped, then shook his head and began to turn away.
She was across the street in a second, the cloud of dust she had raised swirling around her skirts. "What has happened?" she demanded, grasping him by the arm. The years of scrubbing had muscled her arms; she tightened them as he tried to pull away.
"Let me go!" the old man squirmed away, but she held fast.
"Where is my mother?" She was screaming at him now, crying, and his wrinkly old face twisted.
"Plague!" he spit out, rotten teeth twisting the word until she could not understand it, could not imagine what he meant. "In the dirt with the rest of them. It's taken half the street." He pulled using all of his strength, and she let go rather than falling into the mud.
In the dirt. The phrase reverberated in her mind, tolling like the bells in the tower than filled the city with music. Her mother was gone. Her mother. Tired eyes and kind smile, the scent of grass by the river. As she had been washing linens and scrubbing floors, the plague had come and stolen her mother. There had not been time to bid her farewell, to say all of the things that were trying to claw out of her mouth. The ache of it was a hole in her chest, a deep black hole that she could not feel the bottom of.
"The others?” she asked.
Giotta turned h
is head and spit, the phlegm hitting the dirt with a wet splat. "That Ruberto is in the tavern. Ask him," he said and stalked off.
The sun was too bright in her eyes as she walked the two hundred paces to the wine shop that her stepfather frequented. It glared, and her eyes watered. Betta blinked, and then blinked again, wiping her hands across her cheeks. No tears. She would not shed tears here, not while there were things needed doing.
A chicken squawked, and Betta turned her head at the sound, expecting to see the familiar gawky figure of Benedetto penning one of his birds to be delivered. She searched the inside of the darkened shop, wanting something familiar, something to have remained the same when all about there was strangeness and death. Instead of Benedetto, there was a younger, hard-faced man wiping a knife against a filthy apron. The truth of it hit her, another blow. The old man must have died.
As her mother had died. Betta clutched a hand to her chest. No, she would not begin to weep. She was the daughter of Giovanni the cobbler, who had made the most elaborate shoes in all of Rome, and Constanza, who had been kind and beautiful. They were together again, and she would not disgrace them by blubbering in the middle of the street. She would find out what had happened to her family, and then she would leave this place behind and lose herself in mindless drudgery until the aching stopped.
The wine-seller’s shop lay at the intersection of two roads. A little farther on, those who dyed woolens and linens made their homes, the shops producing fabrics for those unable to afford the fine silks and brocades made in Florence. Both the leather workers and the dyers frequented the shop, the only difference between them the aroma reeking from their garments. Men with blue and red stains up to their elbows clutched pottery tazzas and watched her, the sunlight overhead illuminating the curls or lank strands of brown or black hair.
Each of the tables was full, men and women grouped together. The wealthier customers sat at tables covered with clean cloths. In the corner near the alley, the tables were closer together, and the voices were coarser, rougher.
Ruberto sat hunched in a corner, clutching a tazza to his chest, though the cup was empty. For the moments before he recognized her, she stood and gazed at him, letting the emotions flood her with something besides the numbness which felt too close to the grave. She hated him. She always had, even before she had been old enough to understand the meaning of the black, burning emotion that filled her when her stepfather cuffed her roughly or spoke cruelly to her mother.
The weeks of absence had not improved his appearance. Greasy red hair that looked to have not seen water in months hung to his shoulders in a disheveled mane, and there were deep circles beneath his eyes. But even then, he looked better than he deserved. Despite the amount of wine he consumed, his face was still handsome and fleshy. The splendid breadth of his chest had begun to shift, sliding down, as what had once been muscle was melting into a paunch that strained his belt. On his back, he wore the tattered remains of the blue doublet he had been wearing when he came to Rome and charmed a lonely widow into a quick marriage. Brown eyes looked up from the cup, and he started violently.
"Christ!' he swore, then began blinking. He looked into the cup and tilted it, then placed it on the table."You," he snorted. "Thought you were your mother. What you come here for?" His voice had gone from fear to anger in the span of a heartbeat.
Betta swallowed; talking to him was more difficult than she could have imagined. She wanted to run, to leave the street and never return because everything was a reminder of what she had lost.
"My...brothers. My mother. What...happened to them?"
"Plague." The single word held an ocean of meaning but no grief. Ruberto began turning the cup in his hands.
They were beginning to attract notice. Stools squeaked as they were pushed back for a better view and whispers rose around them.
She tried again, making her voice low despite the scream that was clawing to escape. "But my brothers. Where are they?"
"Gone, I tell you!" his voice roared out, full of spittle and rage that washed over her. "All of them gone, packed into the wagon when it came around. First that boy came down with it, and your mother, the hard-headed bitch that she is, wouldn't have anything but to stay with him until she came with it, too. Franco too, though I told him he should run. Then I could see how it was, so I left them there. Not three days later, and they were gone." He banged his fist on the table. "One, two, three. Gone."
The words stabbed into her; Betta placed a hand against her stomach, certain that the fist would come away bloody. This pain, it was too much. Better that she should have remained on the street and died with her family rather than living with this.... emptiness where they had once been. Marco, sweet, funny Marco who was the most handsome boy in all of the seven hills and could sing so beautifully that the priests had come and talked to Papa about taking him into the church, where his voice could be a service to God. And Franco, who was so skilled with his hands and gentle; he was to marry Eugenia, the corn seller's daughter when the two were a little older. And Mama. The deepest cut, the wound so raw and ragged and bone-deep that it had yet to be felt.
Her foot lifted, and she stepped back. Ruberto's lip curled, and he shifted on the stool, beginning to stand. As his feet kicked back, the bundle of rags beneath the table stirred; a feeble sound emerged, the mew of a helpless animal.
Horror clawed at Betta; she darted forward and snatched at the bundle. Ruberto had no time to protest. Fingers trembling, she pulled at the rags, finally exposing Ginevra's filthy face. The smell of her was enough to make Betta glad that she had not eaten before leaving the palazzo. Filth and shit and the wet reek of urine rose up from her in a cloud. At 7, Ginevra was old enough to use the pot or one of the cesspools, but the blanket wrapped around her was heavy with her body's leavings.
Those in the neighboring tables were making disgusted noises, and a tall man in a white apron was making his way toward them. Before she could be thrown out, Betta clutched her sister tightly to her chest and made her way to the street, leaving Ruberto behind. As she sped up, she could hear the beginnings of an angry argument.
"Pay..."
"I've none today...."
She ignored them. Ginevra was sleeping in her arms, body much too light. Before the plague, she had been a laughing, happy girl with red curls down to her waist that their mother... No, she could not think of Mama now, not when there was work to be done.
The door of the shop stood closed but opened to a push. It was soon clear why the door had not been barred. Anything worth stealing was gone from the workshop. Tools and leather and shoe forms that had danced in the breeze were missing. Only one table remained; on it, a single pair of shoes waited with a long needle protruding from a seam.
Ginevra was stirring, the fragile movements of a baby bird. "Shush," Betta whispered, holding her tighter. Staggering under the weight, she made her way upstairs. The two rooms above the shop had similarly been stripped of anything valuable. What had been her parent’s marriage bed was gone, replaced by a pallet on the floor. The smell of it made her nose wrinkle. There was a heap of straw in the corner where a chest had once stood. Betta placed her sister there and began unwrapping the blankets.
In the wine shop, the smell had been horrible. In the enclosed room, it was worse. Betta reeled back and landed hard on the floor, shaking the wide boards. Panting, she tried to clear her nose of the smell.
A little voice emerged from the blankets. "Betta?"
The hope in it almost broke through the wall enclosing her emotions. Disregarding the filth, she leaned in and embraced her sister.
It took an hour and a trip to the neighbors to borrow soap to remove the filth from Ginevra's body. As they talked, Ginevra's voice became clearer as the wine Ruberto had been giving her to stop the crying wore off. The picture she painted in simple words broke through the stone lodged in her chest. Again and again, Ginevra asked for their mother. The bastardo had not even told her that they were dead, only that they wer
e gone.
Betta spun a story for her sister as the last of the muck was cleansed from her body, a tale of angels and the mercy of God and the blessed mother that she no longer believed. But Ginevra was young. Anything to keep her sister from crying.
"And you will come with me, yes?" she asked. "Our cousin, Donna Maria, will find a place to keep you at the villa..."
"What you think you are telling her?" Ruberto's voice sounded from the corner by the stairs, full of quiet menace.
Betta stifled a gasp. She had forgotten how quietly he could move. For all of his bulk, he walked with the silent tread of a cat. More than one beating had been meted out when she had been caught in the act of disparaging him. Betta kept her eyes on the floor. Her eyes angered him, always had. They were too sharp, to knowing for a girl.
"I'll care for her."
He snorted out a laugh. "You'll not. She's mine."
"She's...starving and filthy. You can't."
A flint was struck, lighting the oil lamp. The sudden flare of light threw harsh shadows across his face, hollowing out his cheekbones and emphasizing the malicious glint in his eyes.
"Best you keep coming back here then, every Sabbath as you did before. To cook for her, or who knows when she will eat."
"She is your daughter."
He nodded. "That's why I kept her with me instead of leaving her with the others. But what use have I for a girl child? If she'd have been a boy, I coulda made something out of her, brought her up in the trade, but a girl child... good for nothing. Yet."
Would he let her starve? Looking at his hard face, she knew the answer. She nodded once, unable to meet his eyes. "I’ll buy bread," she said, already heading toward the narrow stairs leading to the second floor.
Servant to the Borgia Page 6