by Gian Bordin
When the first dog was twenty paces away, he threw. The dog rolled, howling, trying to get back on his feet. Chiara’s knife hit the other one a second later. He tumbled over several times and came to rest at Pepe’s feet. The big man only looked dumbfounded at the animal.
The knife had hardly left her hand when she had her longbow ready again. As the first rider reined his horse to a skidding halt, shouting: "You’ll pay with your life for that!", she cried "now". A split second later, her arrow found its target, the rider’s neck. He slid from his saddle without a sound. The second steed reared violently, throwing its rider. A third horse crashed heavily to the ground, crushing its rider underneath. The other three bandits were now in disarray. Two ripped their animals around sharply and galloped away. The last one fell off his horse, screaming, a knife embedded in his face. Pepe and Pietro rushed the two who had fallen off their horses and wrestled their swords away.
The whole action was over in less than twenty seconds.
The five men of the troupe looked at each other and at Chiara, stunned, speechless.
"Get hold of those horses," she cried, running in front of one who had turned to follow the bandits, while Carlo and Giovanni caught the other two, one limping slightly.
Alda ran from behind the cart and hugged her.
"Oh, Chiara, I was so scared."
"All is fine, mamina," said Chiara and patted her back.
Through tears, Alda murmured: "You’ve never called me that."
"But that’s how I feel. That’s what I want you to be."
"You are like my own daughter, carina."
They separated and Chiara said in a somber tone to nobody in particular: "I killed again." But she was also aware that it did not affect her in the same way as the first time. Then she had not done it intentionally. It had been more by accident, by not considering the consequences of where she had aimed. This time, she had done it with intent. Have I become that hard and callous in this short time? she wondered.
"Chiara, what are we going to do with these two?" asked Lorenzo, pointing at the two on the ground, with Pepe and Pietro holding a sword over each.
One of the two still had a knife piercing through both cheeks. She went over to him and pulled the blade out. He yelled, but she ignored it.
"I suggest we strip them of their armor, boots, and outer clothing and send them packing. And we better do it fast. We want to be on our way promptly before the two who got away come back with help." She glanced at the yelping dogs. "Pepe, will you please finish off those poor animals?"
"You think we might be attacked again," asked Lorenzo.
"Possible. We can question these two." She turned back to them. "How far away is your hideout?"
The uninjured one glared at her defiantly. She went closer, pulling the second of Pepe’s knife from her belt.
"I asked you a question. Answer!" Her tone of voice left little doubt that she was serious.
"Scarperia, about four hours hard riding," he muttered.
"Do you take me for a fool? The truth, or you’ll have this knife in your face like him."
"An hour on the other side of the pass —"
She raised the knife, ready to strike.
"— don’t please," he yelled, holding up his arms protectively, "just beyond the pass."
She scrutinized his face for a few seconds. "And the next settlement this way?" She raised her hand again a bit.
"If you hurry, about an hour."
She turned back to the players. "Alright. Lorenzo, Carlo and Giovanni, rig up two of those horses to the small carts, and then get going as fast as you can, while Pepe, Pietro and I take care of those two."
They followed her order without a word and soon disappeared down the road. While Pietro removed the armor and outer clothing of the two bandits still alive, she and Pepe stood guard. Finally they stripped the one she had killed, but did not bother with the one lying under his horse.
"You killed a Baglione. You won’t get away. They’ll pursue you to the end of the world," yelled one of the bandits, as she and her two companions hurried to catch up with the other players while leading the limping horse.
"Did he say ‘Baglione’?" queried Pepe.
"Yes, why?" replied Chiara.
"The Baglione are notorious and feared bandits who have plagued the mountains for ages. If we killed one of theirs, they’ll want revenge."
"She killed him, not us," complained Pietro. "She’s always getting us into trouble."
Chiara opened her mouth to protest, when Pepe said: "So far it has been rather the other way round. She got us out of trouble. Twice already."
She smiled at him gratefully. "Thank you, Pepe."
"But the fellow said that their hideout is just over the pass and we’re still more than an hour from the next town?" Pietro moaned.
"Yes, even for horses, the pass is more than half an hour away, and they’ll take time to get ready. We’ll make it. Stop worrying and walk faster."
A quarter hour later they caught up with the others and shortly afterward saw a church tower in the distance. It took them another half-hour to reach the monastery of Benedictine monks.
Barking dogs greeted them. The lay brother guarding the gate refused to let them in. Traveling players were not welcome. Only when Chiara pleaded with a very pious demeanor that they were God-fearing and performed religious plays to strengthen the faith of the common people, and that the Baglione bandits were on their tail, was he willing to consult with the abbot. After an agonizing wait of several minutes, they were admitted, and the heavy gate was again firmly locked behind them. They were barely inside when she heard a group of riders gallop past. Peering through a gap, she counted eight horses.
They stayed three nights at the monastery. The abbot asked them to present a religious play to his brothers and the troupe spent the first day frantically adapting the only such play they knew to fit the creed of the order. It portrayed no hilarity, only pious devotion, and they were sent on their way with the abbot’s blessing and good wishes.
Their struggles were not over yet by a long shot. After Firenzuola and Covigliaio, they had to go over the Raticosa Pass before the road descended slowly the twelve leagues to Bologna, more or less staying on the crest of the hill between two rivers, with only a couple of villages.
* * *
After the incident on the pass, Lorenzo’s conduct toward her changed in subtle ways. He stopped treating her as the clever girl whom he liked to indulge in her whims. Now, whenever important decisions needed to be made, not only on things dealing with their performances, but on financial or other planning matters, he consulted her. It felt reaffirming. She also noticed that the men tended to treat her as one of them, except for Pietro who now often directed his constant complaints at her. Even Maria and Anna lumped her together with the men. Giovanni gave up on his unsuccessful quest to bed her. She almost regretted it. It had been good fun to spar with him occasionally.
They reached Bologna in the middle of November, sold their loot and the three captured horses — Antonia had nursed the wounded one back to health — and gave performances for two weeks. It took Chiara a few days before she caught on to the northern vernacular, different from her Tuscan one. In Ferrara, they were invited to play Phormio in the Palazzo d’Este, the seat of the Signori of the town. By then they were accustomed to lodging in expensive inns where the innkeeper did not begrudge them the wood to keep warm by the fire in the common room.
However, Venice, no more than two weeks away, eluded them. They learned that the Council of Ten had banished all mountebanks, jongleurs and acrobats, traveling troubadours and players, and other itinerants from the city. Lorenzo and Chiara visited the Venetian Emissary in Ferrara who, in a voice laced with disdain, declared that not even a special invitation by a member of the Great Council would get them there, that the Council of Ten wanted to purify the city of all licentiousness and ungodly behavior so often deliberately promoted by traveling players, that in his view they were the low
est of the low, who were destined to burn in hell in the afterlife and, therefore, should also be shunned in this life.
There was no point waiting out the winter in the harsh northern plains in the hope that the edicts might be rescinded. With the weather turning unseasonably cold, Lorenzo opted for the milder climate of the Adriatic coast, Rimini, maybe even go farther south to Ancona, where they would stay till spring when the mountain passes could again be traversed.
It was an unhappy troupe that braved the freezing wet of the marshes on to Ravenna, where the holy Christmas season prevented them from performing. There were disturbing rumors of a deadly plague killing thousand of people in ports in the eastern Mediterranean, in Malta, and Sicily.
In Rimini, they took advantage of the carnival festivities and enjoyed full crowds, their pocket filling again. Two weeks later, they were once more on their way south, taking in the coastal towns of Gradara, Pesaro, and Fano.
9
The Marches, February 1348
I doubt I would still be around to tell this tale if the Venice authorities had not prevented us from visiting their city, leaving us little choice but to go south along the Adriatic cost to escape the worst of the northern winter. Not that they would have put us to death. No, something else that showed neither mercy nor discrimination between the good and upright and the bad and condemned was stalking the world. If I still believed in prayer, I would pray to God and the saints that such a scourge never visits the earth again.
It hit us completely unprepared. Taking advantage of the last few days of festivities before the beginning of Lent, we had performed for three days in the Piazza del Mercato in Fano, a small fortified city which can trace its beginnings back to Roman times. One day we faced a throng of people, the next day only a handful showed up. Before we had even finished preparing the stage, guards from the bishop marched into the piazza and ordered us to leave the city forthwith. We had to be outside the gates by sundown. All our entreaties to know the reason for this punishment fell on deaf ears. What had we done to be chastised in this way, because that was what it felt like?
As in turned out, even this was a stroke of good luck for some of us. Late afternoon on that miserable February day, we left through the Porta San Leonardo, the southern gate of the city. Even the weather had conspired against us and wanted to add misery to injustice. An icy drizzle from a bleak, grey sky was mercilessly soaking us to the skin. We took quarters in the first roadside inn we found half a league south of Fano and offered to pay extra to have a roaring fire dry us out.
When the weather cleared two days later, Lorenzo sent me back to Fano to find out why we had been expelled, but as I rode up the Porta San Leonardo I found it closed. The authorities had decreed that nobody was allowed to enter. Near the gates, an old man was making a brisk trade selling cooked chestnuts to a score of travelers who had also been turned away. He told me that there was an outbreak of pestilence, that sick people died within hours, that the disease could even be caught by simply looking at an affected person. Several other towns in the Marches had also quarantined themselves and it was said that even Venice had not been spared. It did not take much intelligence to deduce that the same scourge which had been rumored to ravage the eastern Mediterranean had now reached our shores.
This was a severe blow since for our livelihood we depended on easy access to large gatherings of people. "If people are afraid of catching a disease, they will not welcome us or come to our performances. Even worse, if they believe that a mere look may cause them to become ill, they might chase any travelers away," I thought. I still had to learn a lot about the callousness and cruelty of our fellow beings — even of those who preach love and peace and should know better — and how little it takes to turn friends against friends and drive friends to abandon each other.
Lent, rather than leading to spiritual reflection and atonement, became a time of fear and death, of heinous selfishness and vicious persecution, and I Magnifici? We thought that we could save ourselves by hiding in the mountains, but were sucked right into it.
A few of us found safety in the hills east of the Apennines — safety not only from the plague but also from a misguided priest who accused Antonia of having used witchcraft, but it was a hollow safety, bought at a terrible price. Deserted by four of the players, Maria and Lorenzo struck down by the disease, there were only four of us left as spring arrived in the little pasture valley high above Via Flaminia where we had taken refuge: Antonia, Alda, Pepe, and myself.
* * *
Consternation reigned among the players when Chiara brought back the news. Then they all shouted at the same time: "No!", "What are we going to do now?", "Lucky, we got out!", "We must get away from people!", "Let’s flee into the mountains!", "But where?"
Lorenzo shouted above them all: "Quiet! Let’s not panic now. We have to think this over carefully."
"Yes, maybe it’s a disease that only affects city people, and if we stay in the countryside we may be safe," said Alda.
Chiara shook her head. "Alda, this must be the same pestilence that we heard was ravaging the ports in the eastern Mediterranean. If it got up into these northern parts so quickly, no place may be spared. The chestnut seller claims that just seeing a sick person is enough to get it."
"Yes, then Chiara may already have it," cried Pietro and turning to her added: "You may have seen somebody without knowing it. You shouldn’t have come back to us." Then he noticed that he was looking at her and backed off, taking Anna with him closer to the door, looking away.
"Pah Pietro, don’t be silly," exclaimed Antonia. "People always claim this for pestilence. I’ve seen, even spoken to people who later died of pestilence, and I’m still alive, and so has my mother and she lived to a ripe old age. I don’t believe this, but it’s best to stay away from anybody who has the disease."
"How do you know it isn’t true this time?" countered Pietro, his face showing his annoyance at being contradicted. "Didn’t Chiara say that people die within hours of catching it? I still think Chiara shouldn’t have come back. She always gets us into trouble, first with Casa Sanguanero in Pisa, then the Baglione bandits in the mountains, and now this."
Half a year ago, Chiara would have been mortified if another player had attacked her in this manner. Now she simply shrugged her shoulders that a grown-up man like Pietro would argue in such an illogical way.
Ignoring Pietro, Lorenzo turned back to Antonia. "But how can we know when a person has the disease? They may show no signs yet."
"You see," cried Pietro triumphantly, "she may already have the disease but show no signs. I say again, she shouldn’t have come back. She doesn’t care for our safety."
"Shut up, Pietro," exclaimed Lorenzo. "Antonia, how can we know."
"I won’t shut up," shouted Pietro. "You always side with her —"
"I side with her because we owe our success largely to her, don’t you forget that, and certainly not to your music."
"I will not let you insult me because of her. I want her to leave us right this minute, or I and Anna will leave. I will not put our lives at risk because of her." He pronounced each word with great emphasis.
His outburst was greeted by angry muttering. This is getting ridiculous, went through Chiara’s mind, but Lorenzo’s reaction completely floored her. He glared at Pietro for several long seconds and then said coldly: "Fine. You already got your share from what we made in Fano. You can leave anytime."
The players were stunned to silence. One could have heard a pin drop. Finally, Carlo exclaimed: "Pietro, don’t be silly. You’re an excellent musician, and we need you. Isn’t that true, Lorenzo?"
When Lorenzo did not answer immediately, Pietro shouted again: "See, our corago thinks that we’re less valuable than this young hussy who puts on airs, pretending to be of noble birth, and behaves as if she had more rights than the rest of us. Ever since she joined none of you has given proper credit to Anna. Chiara has even taken her roles."
Antonia took Chiara�
�s words from her mouth. "Yes, she stepped in when Anna complained that she couldn’t do it because she had her monthly curse. And it was Chiara who relieved precious Anna from having to face Pepe, and we all know that it is her act with Pepe and Carlo that draws the big crowds."
Lorenzo raised his voice. "Pietro said that he wanted to leave. I am corago and I repeat, he and Anna are free to go."
"We’ll go, but I’ll take the music box along."
"No, you will not. It’s mine."
"But I’m the only one who can play it, so by right it should go to me."
"You came to us with no musical instruments and you leave with none. This is final."
"You’ll regret this, Lorenzo." Pietro shouted.
He took Anna’s hand and stormed out of the room.
Chiara felt bad about the turn of events. Although she had often wished that Pietro would not constantly complain, she did not want to be the reason for breaking up the troupe. It must have shown on her face. Alda put an arm around her back and said: "Chiara, don’t blame yourself. This isn’t your fault. It has been simmering for quite a while."
Chiara pressed her hand and whispered: "Still, it’s sad. I didn’t want this to happen."
They stood or sat around, bewildered by the sudden finality of it. Nobody talked. Lorenzo sat, downcast, his hand stroking his beard.
"Order us some wine, Lorenzo," muttered Antonia who sat next to him.
After sipping the wine for a while, Lorenzo got up. "We need to make a decision on what to do. Antonia, and she has the knowledge in medicines, she recommends that we avoid people who are affected. But how do we know if a person is affected? Can you recognize the signs?"
Before Antonia could answer, Chiara replied: "If they show no signs, there is no way of telling. However, if we stay in an area where there are few people living and they haven’t had any contact with people from the city, then we should be safe, isn’t that so, Antonia?"
The old woman nodded.
"So going into the mountains, as Antonia said earlier, may protect us," argued Alda.