A chicken coop leaned against the rear wall of the courtyard and a handful of chickens wandered about, pecking at the dirt. One or two roosters mingled with the hens. Guendalina inspected the coop for any eggs, causing the hens to squawk and scatter as she strode across the courtyard. A goat was tied to a ring in the wall, staring at the two women who had intruded into the animals’ domain. It bleated once and then returned to its search for a blade or two of grass to nibble. In a far corner, as far from the houses as it could be and yet still within the confines of the yard, was a falling-down outhouse.
“That goat belongs to the neighbors,” Guendalina complained. “They never feed it enough and it can be very ill-tempered. But I saw them all leave the house this morning, so I know we have some time to ourselves.” She gazed around the court and then pointed to a place near the wall and the door leading back into her kitchen. She handed the mirror to Angelina. “Here. You stand there, facing the house with your back towards the chicken coop. Hold the mirror up so you can see your face and the coop behind you. We can wait a few minutes and see if the chickens show any interest in each other.” They giggled as Angelina stood as instructed and Guendalina scattered a handful of grain on the dirt and then leaned herself against the wall, looking across the yard towards the coop, ready to direct Angelina to turn slightly if any of the hens sparked a dalliance away from the center of the court.
The women stood silently. Angelina felt foolish, examining her face in the mirror as she waited for the roosters and hens to mate. One of the roosters approached the grain and circled about, inspecting it as the other fowl waited for his invitation to join him. He pecked at it once or twice before clucking at an usually high pitch. The hens approached and pecked at the ground. The rooster continued to circle through the yard, clucking and pecking before fixing his attention on one hen. He slowly walked around her, his beak darting back and forth, his coxcomb shaking. The hen blinked her eyes and pecked at the ground again. Then, squawking and fluttering her wings, she darted away from the rooster’s attentions. A cloud of dust burst from the ground as her feet scrabbled across the yard.
Angelina let out a small sigh of disappointment. Guendalina pointed to another part of the yard and Angelina shifted the angle of the mirror slightly. In the looking glass, she could see the rooster had chosen another hen to desire and was circling her, dragging his wing on the ground opposite his intended to convince her of his good intentions. She clucked with delight and ruffled her feathers, inviting him closer.
Afraid now that the slightest noise or movement might distract the fowl and interrupt the courtship, Angelina held her breath and struggled to not even blink. This almost seemed too simple. If the chicken and rooster mated, the most difficult tasks she and Guendalina had set for themselves today would have been accomplished in less than an hour. She fixed her gaze on the mirror in her hand.
The birds had shifted position slightly as they continued their dance through the center of the yard. Angelina moved the mirror so as not to lose sight of them.
The rooster clucked and made yet one more circle about the hen, drawing closer and closer, his wing stirring up the dust behind him and leaving the trace of a circle in the grain remaining on the ground. Abruptly, with squawks of mutual delight and triumph, the rooster darted onto the hen’s back and pushed her head down. Clucks and squawks and bleating erupted across the courtyard as all the animals got caught up in the mating ritual they were witnessing. Angelina bit her lower lip and could not help but bounce on her toes, the chickens behind her clearly visible over her shoulder in the mirror. She pursed her lips at the glass in her hand as if to kiss her own reflection.
In an instant it was all over and the rooster fluttered towards the coop and the hen resumed her stroll through the grain-strewn yard. The goat continued to bleat and tug at the fraying rope that led from his neck to the iron ring in the wall.
Guendalina bounced with excitement as well, hugging Angelina. “Did you see it? Did you see them in the glass?” she asked repeatedly, as if she were a girl half her age. “Did you catch their reflection with yours in the mirror?”
“I did! I did!” Angelina could not believe their good luck. “I caught my reflection with the mating chickens in the specchio!” She pressed the surface of the looking glass against her torso, afraid some other reflection might spoil the newly minted magic. “Now what do we do?” she gasped excitedly.
Guendalina pulled a fine white bandana from her bosom. Guiding Angelina’s hand, tightly grasping the mirror, away from her torso, Guendalina gracefully draped the bandana over both the mirror and Angelina’s fingers.
“Keep the glass covered,” Guendalina warned her cousin. “Make sure no one but the man you choose gazes on the glass next. Wrap it in the bandana and tie it with a ribbon or a bow. Make it pretty. Then give it to whomever you choose—which do you think it will be?” Guendalina seemed nearly as excited as Angelina.
“I don’t know!” Angelina exclaimed. “I kept thinking about it last night and I could hardly sleep, I was so excited. When I did finally sleep, all I did was dream about who might be the best choice to give the mirror to. What do you think, Guendalina? Mattheo? What about Merigo or Gualtiero? Oh, there are so many to choose from!” Whereas her choices had seemed so limited yesterday, it seemed today that there were more men available than she could possibly choose among. “Guendalina! Shall we cast beans to decide?”
The children’s game was a simple means of divination, most often used as a game for children to pass the time, but was seriously employed by adults from time to time. “Yes, let’s!” agreed Guendalina.
As she went back into the house, Angelina carefully lay the mirror flat on the table, still wrapped in the bandana. The squawking of the chickens had awakened the baby, but he simply gurgled to himself, reaching into the air and playing with his fingers. Guendalina scooped a handful of white beans from a jar on a shelf and piled them on the table.
Sitting down, she asked Angelina, “Which names do we choose from? Merigo and Gualterio and Mattheo? Any of the others? What about Goffredo or Leonardo?” Guendalina hunched her shoulders and, leaning across the table, teased her cousin. “Or even Ruggero?”
“Ach!” Angelina laughed and shuddered, sitting opposite her stregoneria-working cousin. “Don’t even mention Ruggero’s name!” They both laughed and Guendalina counted out the beans, moving them one by one across the table from the first pile to a second she was slowly building. As she moved each bean, she recited the names of one of the men and moved repeatedly down the list in the same order as she moved bean after bean after bean.
“Mattheo. Merigo. Gualtiero. Leonardo. Goffredo.” She began the list again. “Mattheo. Merigo. Gualtiero. Ach—Leonardo and Goffredo,” she recited the last two names together as one bean stuck to another and she moved two at once to their new place on the table.
Angelina watched, breathless and wondering which man the beans would direct her towards. “Of course, I’m not even sure that I will heed the direction of the beans,” she thought as Guendalina continued to count them out. “What if I don’t like the man the beans choose for me? After all, Goffredo does get drunk often and Papa says that Merigo is too fond of jokes and songs to be a good mason. But it is exciting to see whom the beans direct me towards!” She shivered with anticipation.
Suddenly, unbidden and unexpected, the image of Bartolomeo filled her consciousness and she caught her breath. She could think of no man more worthy to receive the looking glass with her reflection and those of the mating birds. “But he is already married!” she reminded herself for the hundredth time. “What good could come of my giving the mirror to him? It would only waste the magic and still leave me to my father’s whim.” She drummed her fingers nervously on the tabletop, attempting to focus her attention on the beans and the names Guendalina had selected to recite on her behalf.
“Mattheo.” Another bean slid across the table. “Merigo.” Hardly any beans remained to be counted. “Gualtie
ro.” Angelina tried to calculate how many beans were left and which name was likely to be the one she was directed towards. “Leonardo.” No, please not the drunk. “Goffredo.” One bean remained. “Mattheo.”
Guendalina looked up at Angelina and studied her face for a reaction. “What do you think of him?” Guendalina asked. “Will you give Mattheo the mirror or ignore the beans’ answer to your question?”
Angelina was reluctant to admit aloud how much she wanted to give the mirror to Bartolomeo. “I… I am not sure,” she decided.
Angelina hid the mirror among her things at home. “But the longer I keep it, the more dangerous it is,” she realized. “The more likely someone else will discover it and look at it.” She did not want anyone in her family to gaze in and be trapped by the reflections she and Guendalina had caught in it. But Mattheo? Did she really want to trust the beans and give it—and in giving the mirror, give herself away as well—to Mattheo? What to do?
As Angelina dressed for Mass that Sunday, she slipped the mirror, still wrapped in its bandana, into a pocket. “I must give it away today,” she determined, before it was discovered among her things and the magic squandered and also before another man came to her father with a proposal of marriage. She walked to the church with her family along the steep lanes of the Italian neighborhood on the lower reaches of the Hradčany hill, unusually quiet.
Although most of the Italian workmen and their families did not go hungry, neither were they among the wealthy of the town, and the small parish that served their spiritual needs could afford a cantor or two on Sundays and even a small choir on the great feast days but did not employ the grand choirs that some of the other churches did. The Mass had already begun when Angelina entered with her family, the members of the congregation milling about the nave, going from shrine to shrine, kneeling near the altar to follow the ritual dialogue between the priest and altar server.
Angelina peeled away from her mother’s side and knelt at the shrine of St. John the Baptist before kissing the statue of St. Francis, a native of Assisi not far from her family’s home in Tuscany. She saw Guendalina with her husband and baby on the other side of the church. She saw Mattheo, standing to one side, alone. She stood beside the pillar near the shrine of St. Francis and gathered her courage. Then, resuming her circuit of the shrines in the church, she made her way toward Mattheo. “I hope no one thinks… I hope Mattheo does not think I am chasing him around the church!” she thought.
He moved, drawing closer to the altar as the priest lifted the missal and turned to the congregation to read the Gospel of the day. Angelina knelt before the statue of St. Peter the Apostle and wondered if Mattheo would ease his way back to where he had been standing. She remained on her knees at St. Peter’s feet, waiting to see what Mattheo would do. Noticing her knees beginning to ache, she offered a brief prayer to St. Peter that he, prince of the apostles, would guide her hand in giving the mirror in her pocket to him whom God would have her wed.
The priest concluded the Gospel reading. “Laus tibi, Christe,” the altar server replied and then joined the priest in reciting the Credo. Mattheo remained near the altar. Angelina wobbled to her feet and approached the shrine of St. Margaret, who stood triumphantly on the dragon’s tail curled under her feet, the creature’s jaws near her hip. Candles flickered on a close-by stand.
“Scusa.” Daniela stood from her petitions to St. Margaret and, reluctant to take her eyes from the saint whom she still hoped would give her a child, nearly collided with Angelina, who had been keeping her eyes on Mattheo. The two women smiled and giggled quietly.
“No, permesso!” insisted Angelina, stepping aside and nearly tripping over the feet of Bartolomeo. He reached out to steady her, smiling as he held her shoulders in his supportive grasp. Angelina felt her heart race at his touch and her body shivered with delight despite her efforts to hide her excitement. She could feel herself blush and, embarrassed that she was blushing, felt herself blush even more deeply. She twisted her neck down and around, trying to evade Bartolomeo’s kind eyes and gentle smile.
He finally released her shoulders, after making sure that she would not fall or trip again. He moved to join Daniela near the shrine of St. Elizabeth, his wife’s other favorite saint. Risking everything, Angelina grabbed the mirror from her pocket and thrust it into Bartolomeo’s hands. He looked at the object wrapped in the bandana, unsure of what Angelina had given him. He nodded graciously, however, and slipped it into one of his pockets.
“I will look at it later,” he leaned over and whispered to Angelina, assuring her that it was not a dream in which she moved. She could smell last night’s wine on his breath and felt the heat that radiated from under his cloak. He stood next to Daniela, his back to Angelina. Angelina gasped, shocked at her audacity at giving the looking glass to the bricklayer.
Mattheo walked past her, grinning bashfully before turning his face away. Angelina was unable to respond apart from a small smile and turning her own glance aside, too. Might the gift of the mirror have been unnecessary to waken any feelings Mattheo was harboring for Angelina? Did he simply need the encouragement of her smile to approach her father and ask for her hand? “What have I done?” she fretted, twisting her hands, one around the other. “How will this play out? I wish Guendalina had never told me about catching the reflections in the mirror!”
Bartolomeo forget about whatever it was that Angelina had thrust upon him in church. He only remembered it when he discovered it in his pocket that afternoon, sitting in the tavern with his friend Stefano. The two men were drowsy from drinking mugs of wine and satisfied with each other’s company even as their fellow masons and neighbors lifted other mugs around them and joined in drinking songs from the taverns in their villages back home. Absentmindedly reaching one hand into a pocket as he leaned against the wall behind the bench, his fingers closed around the white bandana and pulled Angelina’s hastily given gift into the light.
Stefano noticed his friend turning the thing around in his hands. “Where did that come from? Who is giving you tokens and gifts now?” Stefano laughed.
A thin string was tied around the object, holding the bandana in place. Bartolomeo tried to untie it, but was too befuddled by the wine to coordinate his stubby fingers. “Grmph!” he muttered into his beard in frustration before tearing the string away from the thin, square thing. He pulled away the bandana and dropped it onto his knee.
The mirror in his hand was face down. Turning it over, he looked into it and, pretending to fuss about his appearance, licked a fingertip and primped one eyebrow and then another. Stefano laughed, imitating Bartolomeo as he mocked Bartolomeo’s care for his appearance. Bartolomeo held the looking glass at an angle to examine his face and ran his fingers through his hair and then looked over the glass into Stefano’s face. The two men collapsed against each other, laughing heartily.
“Who did give me this?” Bartolomeo finally wheezed, their laughter gradually subsiding. He struggled to recall.
Stefano plunged his elbow into his friend’s rib cage, sending them both into another paroxysm of laughter. “I know, I know… You get too many gifts and tokens to recall which young girl is besotted with you now!” Stefano wiped his eye. “Is there any chance that Daniela might recall who gave it to you? She always did have a better memory for these things than you do!”
Bartolomeo had difficulty catching his breath again for a few minutes. Men around them were singing loudly and toasting each other with their mugs of ale. Two new mugs appeared at their elbows, unbidden. The two bricklayers guzzled the newly arrived ale, spilling as much or more down their chins as they swallowed.
Bartolomeo wiped his dripping chin with the back of his hand. Would Daniela recall? He attempted to retrace his steps, and dimly recalled someone thrusting something into his hands. A moment later he could see, in his mind’s eye, that he had been standing in church when the mysterious package had been given to him. Another moment later, and he could see Angelina’s face through the
fog of ale and hilarity that clouded his memory.
“Poor girl,” Stefano mocked her name when Bartolomeo announced his recollection of who had given the mirror to him. “What do you think she wants from you? Could she have intentions of winning you away from Daniela?”
Bartolomeo wrapped the bandana around the mirror and replaced it in his pocket. He shook his head. “There is no likelihood of that, of course,” he agreed with Stefano. “But I do wonder if she thought she might have a chance with me. Or if she made a mistake and meant to give this to someone else. Who can say, Stefano?” He looked his friend in the eye.
“But now I have a gift for Daniela that cost me not a single coin and she will be too excited to ask what reason I might have for giving her such a thing!” The two men collapsed against each other again, howling with laughter. “She will be too excited to ask and too grateful to refuse anything I might ask in return!” Stefano’s eyebrows arched and then his elbow punched Bartolomeo in the ribs again and the two men fell back against the wall, their hilarity blending with the drunken cheer of all the other workmen that filled the tavern that Sunday afternoon.
Strange dreams and desires stalked Bartolomeo’s dreams that night. Coming home from the tavern, he had bestowed the mirror on Daniela as a gift “for no reason other than I love you,” he declared. She squealed with delight and propped the silver-backed glass against a jug of wine on their table. She planted a kiss on his cheek and did not resist his more amorous overtures that followed shortly. But after, as he slept, he was dimly aware of another girl’s face looming before his. This other girl stirred longings within him that he had thought just quenched but found the embers of desire stirred and fanned by the ghostly presence.
Bartolomeo shifted in his sleep to grasp and hold the girl in his dreams more easily. He found her presence curled against him and pushed aside his awareness of his wife in the bed beside him. His arms closed around the figure of his dream and he kissed her, his tongue searching deeply in her mouth for the heartfelt reciprocation that he yearned for, and he discovered that the image returned his desire as forcefully as he had ever wanted from any woman.
Come Hell or High Water: The Complete Trilogy Page 78