The Daughter of Siena: A Novel

by Marina Fiorato

  ‘My name is Riccardo Bruni.’

  Bruni. Out in the Tuscan Maremma, halfway to the coast she had never seen, there was a castle where the first Pia, Dante’s Pia, had been imprisoned. According to legend, there was a bridge near by called Pia’s bridge. It crossed the river Bruni. It seemed too much of a coincidence. Was fate leading her to trust him? The omen bought him a moment longer.

  ‘What do you want of me?’

  ‘I came to you to ask you for help. Our duchess, the governess of Siena, wants to move against the Eagle contrada. But having seen you like this, I cannot ask.’

  ‘Why?’

  Signor Bruni hesitated. ‘If your husband did this for a look, what would he do if you betrayed him? I cannot ask you.’

  ‘My life is over anyway,’ Pia said. ‘I am languishing in purgatory.’ She pressed her fingers to the grille so hard that tiny bumps of flesh bulged through the filigree. She quoted the words of Dante’s Pia: ‘Ah, when you return to the world, remember me, the one who is Pia.’

  The words were a farewell. She heard him rise and begin to draw back the curtain. She suddenly could not bear the thought of being left alone in her personal limbo, waiting for more outrages to be visited upon her.

  ‘Don’t go.’

  It was her own voice now, modern, insistent. This man, the duchess: could they help her? She needed to know more.

  ‘Are you not my husband’s creature?’

  ‘I am no such thing. But I must give you a warning, before I go. The Panther was a man called Egidio Albani. He whipped Vicenzo’s face in the Palio and he paid for it with his life. Your father-in-law beat him to death, in your own house, and last night I carried the guts to the piazza with your husband, to be spread out as a message.’

  Pia grew cold with horror. While she sat in misery in her chamber, while Nello was visiting his petty abuses upon her, a greater atrocity had already taken place in the cellars. The horseman had taken a risk in telling her this, making an assumption about the sort of person she was. And he’d been right. Now that she knew this, she could not retreat.

  ‘Now I know about the Panther, about what they did, about what Nello had you do, you have me, don’t you? I know what kind of man he is, he and his father. You’d better tell me the rest.’

  She heard him sit again. ‘Faustino Caprimulgo plans to rebuild the Nine, to make Siena a republic again, to take the city back from the Medici duchy. The duchess asked me to help her, and at first I refused, but after last night I agreed. Here is her seal.’

  Pia peered at the gold Medici arms painted on the plaque that he pressed against the grille. They matched the purse she had been given when Vicenzo died. Mistrust crept back.

  ‘Anyone may carry these arms,’ she said scornfully. ‘I have them myself.’ But she relented as the seal was drawn back again into the dark beyond the grille. ‘The duchess is a good woman, by repute. Learned too.’ She paused for a moment to marshal her thoughts. ‘If I am to believe you, who else stands with her in this alliance?’

  ‘She has writ to her brother-in-law, heir to the grand duchy.’

  It sounded plausible. ‘And on the other side, my father-in-law Faustino, and … who?’

  Signor Bruni said carefully, ‘There must be eight more, to rebuild the council of Nine. We think that he also has your father in harness.’

  Her father, Salvatore, in an alliance with the Eagle to rebuild the Nine. She knew it at once to be absolutely true. It all fitted.

  She said slowly, ‘Have you heard of the Priory of Siena?’

  When the horseman said nothing, Pia continued, ‘The priory of Siena was a council of lawgivers, august citizens of the city, greybeards from all contrade. The priory originated and gathered in Owlet territory. My father, as the capitano of the Civettini, holds the ancient title of prior.’

  She felt no compunction in revealing all this – her father clearly felt no loyalty to their contrada any more, so why should she?

  The voice in the dark was tentative. ‘You think his title places him above such alliances?’

  ‘No. I think quite the reverse. My father is the prior. To have the sanction of the priory is to confer a certain legality on Faustino’s actions. He would not act without my father. I am sure he is involved. You saw them last night – it’s the entire reason for my marriage.’ She spoke as realization came to her. ‘First to one brother, then the other …’ She finished in a whisper and had almost forgotten Signor Bruni was there, when his voice came again.

  ‘In his cups, Faustino told me that by the next Palio the duchess would not be here. That is in a little more than a month. The Palio dell’Assunta, on the sixteenth day of August, is the conclusion of the plan, the day they intend to take the city. We don’t know why or how. But before then the nine conspirators will meet. I must be there when they do.’ Riccardo took a breath. ‘Do you know of any such meetings?’

  It was the moment. She must decide if she was for the Civetta and Aquila or the duchess and this man. She did not hesitate.

  ‘Faustino told his kitchens he would not be at home to dine tonight.’

  ‘Where is he going?’

  At this, Pia stopped, unable to take this final step. Was this whole discourse a trick devised by Nello to test her loyalty to her new contrada? She did not even know if the Panther was really dead – but her instinct told her she could trust this man.She opened her mouth to tell Signor Bruni about the duomo, but it was too late.

  Footsteps sounded in the nave. Pia opened the curtains of the confessional to see the priest returning. He seemed visibly shaken. In the distance, she could hear Zebra still keening about the Devil. It was loud enough to warn Signor Bruni. And then Pia knew that the horseman had not lied. As the priest came closer, she could hear him muttering about the Panther, beaten and laid out in the piazza, and watched as he fell to his knees in prayer.

  At once the horseman was gone. The flurry of his borrowed priest’s robes created enough wind to extinguish her candle as he swept from the box in a swirl of acrid silver smoke. He dropped back into the shadows and Pia prayed that Nicoletta had not seen or heard him leave. In the silence that followed, she heard a gentle snoring from the back of the church, and realized her corpulent maid was no more pious than she.

  The priest of the Aquila climbed into the box, huffing a little, and fumbling in his gown for his tinderbox. As he struck a light he apologized to Pia in unctuous tones.

  ‘Forgive me, Signora Caprimulgo. A dreadful sight in the square, a man dead and laid out, and a little parishioner afeared. And here you sit, patiently in the dark …’

  As she listened to the priest go on and on, Pia went over in her mind all that Signor Bruni had told her. So it was true about the Panther’s body. But what of the rest? She wanted to trust him, but could not; not yet. But there was a way to trick him out into the light.

  Her voice rang out, clear as a bell, speaking not to the priest but to the horseman, hiding in the shadows. She would give him more than a clue: she would offer a safeguard, the meaning of which was couched in legend like the riddle of some Grecian oracle. She would test him, try him and find him true.

  ‘But Father, I see by night, like Minerva.’

  Riccardo went back to the Palazzo Popolo, dispirited, as the day cooled a little and the city woke from siesta. As instructed, he entered the cool marble loggia of the Cappella di Piazza and began to climb the Torre del Mangia, the palace’s great tower. The duchess had deemed it unwise for them to meet again in the palace itself. To run there for sanctuary once was one thing, but to be admitted with regularity would be a sign to the watchful. Violante suggested they should meet instead at the top of the Torre del Mangia. At the bottom, she would post her most faithful sergeant who would not allow anyone in or out while the duchess was in conference two hundred feet above. Riccardo was to enter through the street entrance of the Cappella and Violante herself would come from the palace entrance to the tower through the library, when alerted by her sergeant that
Riccardo was by. With walls eleven feet thick, no room for two-way traffic on the stairs and an echoing organ pipe of a stairwell that gave ample warning of any approach, the torre was the perfect place for a clandestine meeting.

  As Riccardo climbed, with each turn of the stair he thought on what Pia had said, going over and over their short conference. It was quite a climb; no wonder the torre was named ‘tower of the eater’ after its first guardian, Giovanni di Balduccio, who spent all his wages on food – he had clearly needed fuel to make the climb so many times a day. Riccardo’s stomach growled and he was reminded suddenly that he had not eaten since the feast last night, and not much had passed his lips then. He began to feel dizzy and a cold sweat soaked his skin, but then, in a burst of sunlight and a gust of air, he was at the top. The view of the golden city, spread out beneath him, took his breath away, the campo seen from above reminding him sharply of his musings on the hoof that morning, a world away.

  He was so captivated by the glory laid out below that it was a good minute before he noticed the duchess. She was in her customary purple and looked much grander in her gown and wig than she had in her nightgown the night before, somehow less approachable. He bowed, suddenly shy, and she smiled.

  ‘How went it?’

  Violante was only partly successful in keeping the urgency out of her voice. As she waited for Riccardo to climb the stairs, she had been thinking of little else but the campo, the next Palio and the few short weeks it seemed she had left to her.

  Riccardo nodded as if in answer to her question.

  ‘She confirmed that there is a plot.’

  Violante swallowed visibly. Riccardo went on to recount his conversation with Pia in fine detail, including the fact that Nello had cut off her hair. Violante was shocked: not so much at the blighting of a beauty but that a man could be so jealous of his wife. She had spent her marriage being ignored and was sure that if she had taken a lover Ferdinando would have been no more than relieved. But she had not, for she had made her choice when she wed and given her heart with her hand. She wondered briefly what it would have been like to be possessed, guarded, adored, as she had never been. But she wondered, too, for the first time in her life, if beauty were perhaps as much of a curse as her own plainness. Riccardo spoke again, breaking into her musings.

  ‘She thinks her father is connected as the prior of the Sienese, that his involvement would give lawful sanction to the plot by reviving the ancient priory. I asked her when and where they meet, but we were interrupted. I think, though, that she was trying to tell me something …’ Riccardo tried to order his thoughts. ‘We spoke for some moments, then the priest returned. We’d blown out the candles in the confessional to cover my escape in darkness. He struck his tinderbox and apologized to her and she replied, “I see by night, Father, like Minerva.”’

  Violante thought for a moment. ‘“I see at night” is a Civetta saying – the motto of the Owlet contrada.’

  ‘But she did not just say she saw at night, but that she saw at night like Minerva. Who is Minerva?’

  ‘Menrva was a Tuscan goddess represented as an owl.’ Suddenly the connection seemed significant, but Violante could not make the leap. ‘She was wise, and her name means memory. The Romans called her Minerva.’ Minerva. Something nagged at her own memory, tugged at it like a child tugs her mother’s skirts. She tried another tack. ‘What do owls do?’

  ‘Fly.’

  ‘But silently.’

  ‘They see all around.’

  ‘And they see at night.’

  ‘Yes. We are back at the starting line.’

  They caught each other’s eye and smiled ruefully.

  ‘Perhaps she means, then, that the Nine always meet at night.’

  ‘She did say they meet tonight.’

  Violante sighed gustily. ‘We are circling the course again. Let us consider the facts for clues. She is Pia of the Tolomei, yes? Married to Nello Caprimulgo.’

  He nodded.

  ‘Unusual, to marry out of the contrada. But perhaps not in this context – they are building alliances.’

  ‘That was her opinion too.’ Riccardo brooded on the crime that was Pia’s marriage.

  ‘Pia Tolomei,’ mused Violante, ‘of the Civetta contrada. Named for her ancestor?’

  ‘I suppose.’

  ‘You’ve heard of the first Pia Tolomei?’ she asked gently.

  Riccardo did not wish to seem ignorant. The duchess, whom he’d dismissed as a well-meaning, kindly woman, was also clearly possessed of a formidable mind. Perhaps she’d spent many years being lonely, many years alone in great palaces and great courts; perhaps books were her solace. Pia had said she was a learned woman. Perhaps Pia had coded a message to him in some reference that he may not have known but which she’d known he would relay to the duchess? Something pertaining to her ancestor, the first Pia?

  ‘Heard of her, yes. I don’t know the story, though. Except she was a tragic figure.’

  ‘Indeed. Pia of the Tolomei lived here in Siena in the thirteenth century. She is mentioned in Dante.’ The duchess said the name as if he should know who Dante was. ‘She was a great beauty but was imprisoned by her jealous husband, in the tower of the Castel di Pietra out in the Maremma, because he suspected her of taking a lover.’

  Riccardo felt the duchess’s eyes upon him. ‘What happened?’

  ‘Her husband killed her.’

  Riccardo’s skin chilled despite the heat of the day. ‘Strange, then – with such a heritage – that Pia’s parents named her so.’

  ‘Indeed. A cautionary tale perhaps. History has a way of repeating herself.’ She looked sideways at him and knew she was right.

  ‘She said something of her own situation,’ admitted Riccardo, ‘that struck me as strange. She said: “Ah, when you return to the world, remember me, the one who is Pia.”’ He may not have had book learning, but his memory was excellent.

  ‘She was quoting.’ Violante stood a little straighter. ‘It is from Dante; the story of the first Pia. The poet met her in purgatory.’

  ‘She said that too!’ broke in Riccardo. ‘She said she was languishing in purgatory. The Palio freed her from one husband, and she was wed to his brother before the day was old: a man she detests, a man who …’ He could not go on.

  Violante leaned on the balustrade. She thought about Pia, who was as trapped by her status as she herself had been, but without love to sweeten the pill. She had loved Ferdinando and would not have flown her cage even if the door had been opened for her. Riccardo came to stand beside her and stared down at the city.

  ‘She wants to help us.’

  She turned to him then, squinting against the sun, sensing something in his tone. ‘But you do not wish to let her?’

  ‘No. Nello cut her hair just for smiling at me. If she acts against her family she would face not just his wrath but the weight of the law.’

  Violante nodded. If a person betrayed their contrada they could, under Sienese law as old as this tower, be put to death.

  She sighed and looked out again at her city, innocent and beautiful in the day. She was full of misgiving. It was clear the boy was infatuated with Pia, and she both envied and pitied him for this, but it would do him no good – and would put the girl in great danger. She thought of Ferdinando, of how much she had wanted him and how little he had wanted her.

  Her eyes fell on the duomo. Ferdinando had once told her that the towers of this palace and the dome of the duomo were exactly of a height, demonstrating, he said, that the state was as powerful in this city as the Church. Faithless and long-dead, what would he have said to the threat that faced her now?

  The duomo.

  She straightened up abruptly, serious.

  ‘The duomo.’ She had spoken aloud without knowing it.

  Riccardo was confused. ‘What of it?’

  ‘It was built on the site of an ancient temple. The temple of Minerva.’ They looked at each other.

  ‘Tonight, the duomo.’ Ric
cardo breathed. ‘That’s where the new Nine will meet. And it is within the Eagle contrada to boot. But what hour?’

  Now the duchess smiled properly. ‘Of course. Nine of the clock.’

  The sun was setting as Riccardo Bruni crossed the Piazza del Duomo. He had kept his priestly garb and pulled the cowl close over his head. Stooped over to conceal his height, he hoped he would pass for one of the vast number of pilgrims who visited Siena on their way to Compostela or Canterbury. The great cathedral, striped in black and white marble, was gold and onyx in the dying sun. The starlings screeched as they sought their rest, black clouds in the golden sky.

  Riccardo reflected that his father, now, would be slicing his bread and sausage and pouring a cup of wine. The duchess would be dining alone in her lonely palace at a long polished table, while a hundred silent servants revolved around her needs. And Pia Caprimulgo of the Aquila contrada? What would she be doing? Would she be playing the harp or dulcimer? Plying her needle? Or submitting to the rough attentions of her dreaded husband Nello? Riccardo’s throat tightened. He plunged through the great doors of the cathedral and the duomo swallowed him whole.

  Mass was over and the huge, cavernous space was darkening, slashed here are there by the vivid strikes of coloured light from the stained glass: twilight split into a rainbow by a prism. Where the light fell, nameless wonders sprang from the dark: frescoes of the damned, mosaics of the saved, priceless reliquaries holding the fragments of broken saints. Riccardo had been here for high mass, among the jostling, bright crowds, a hundred, a thousand times in his life. Pressed against his neighbours in the sweat and heat, he had always found it an awesome and godly place. But at night the place was vast, dark and forbidding. Tonight, it seemed that God had left his house and leased his domicile to the Devil. The thought, and the old stones, chilled him. Ghostly shapes moved silently about – a sacristan, a priest, an old lady with a broom. The dust of her sweepings rose to Riccardo’s nose, there to mingle with the incense of the censer, lately swung through the faithful, belching the white smoke of sanctity.