The Wolves of St. Peter's

by Gina Buonaguro

  Cursing under his breath, Francesco went back outside and, standing beneath the eaves, where there was some cover from the rain, planted the torch beside him. Above him, the sky was black and heavy, with only the slightest smudge of gray indicating where the full moon was hiding. No light was visible at Susanna’s. No light was visible anywhere but for his torch, which fizzled every time a drop of water circumvented the eaves’ dubious protection. He wondered what would happen if he knocked on her door. Would he be greeted with kisses or curses? Probably the latter. Maybe he’d just stand here all night in the rain, listening to the wolves howling as if their hearts had been rent in two. Perhaps he could join them, adding his cries to theirs until Heaven took heed of their demands. Wind caught at the rain and whipped it under the eaves and into his eyes. Shivering, he peeled a wet leaf from his cheek and pulled his cloak tighter.

  One clear night only a few weeks ago, he’d stood out here with Susanna. A little drunk with the wine he’d bought, he’d placed his arm around her shoulders and pointed out the autumn constellations, the same stars that shone in the Tuscan sky: Cassiopeia, Cepheus, Lyra, Cygnus, Pegasus, Hercules. For a few moments, he’d almost believed it was Juliet beside him. He had looked down, expecting to see starlight in her blue eyes, disappointed to see Susanna’s dark eyes looking back at him. But that had been then. He wouldn’t be disappointed to see Susanna now.

  Scarcely had he thought this when he heard the scrape of a door and footsteps in the yard. She came up beside him, only the leaning fence between them. She was wearing her cloak pulled over her head, one rough hand at her throat, holding it tight. In the feeble light of the torch, he could barely make out her face, with its gypsy eyes.

  “Do you hear the wolves?” she asked, ever so timidly for Susanna.

  It was a test, he knew, to see if he would speak to her again after their fight this afternoon. Either he would answer her or else she would go back inside and he and his foolish pride would perish in the rain. “So it is wolves,” he said. “I thought it must be, but they sound so close to the city.”

  “Not just close,” she said with a relief that obviously had nothing to do with wolves. “They’re right inside the city walls.” She rested her free hand on the fence close to his side. “His Holiness’s armies camp in the hills outside the city. They hunt game there, but they’re under orders from His Holiness not to kill the wolves. So now there’s no game for the wolves to eat, and they come here and steal livestock.”

  “Why would the Pope tell the soldiers not to kill wolves?”

  “It would be bad luck for Rome.”

  “His Holiness said it would be bad luck? Is it not sinful for a pope to believe in such superstition?”

  It may only have been an effect of the flickering torchlight, but he could have sworn Susanna looked frightened. “His Holiness does not sin,” she said in a whisper.

  He was about to add that this was maybe proof he did, then decided against it. He didn’t want a repeat of this afternoon. “You’re right,” he said in his most contrite tone. “It’s me who’s sinned. Tell me, though, why it would be bad luck to kill wolves.”

  “Because the she-wolf is the mother of Rome, of course,” she said, as if it were perfectly logical for the descendant of St. Peter and head of the Christian world to worry about appeasing the gods of ancient Rome.

  “I see,” he said carefully. “Still, superstition aside, isn’t it a problem that the wolves steal the livestock? Why not close the city gates?”

  She laughed a little as if it were a foolish question. “The walls leak worse than these roofs. There are plenty of holes for wolves to get through. They come inside the sheds and drag the sheep right out from under the farmers’ noses. At first, the farmers chased them away with their torches. But the wolves are so hungry they always come back, so now the farmers leave offerings for them. Old sheep and cows and chickens. They tether them to stakes away from their sheds. Then the wolves are happy, and there’s no harm to Rome.”

  Attendite a falsis prophetis, qui veniunt ad vos in vestimentis ovium, intrinsecus autem sunt lupi rapaces … Beware of false prophets, which come to you in sheep’s clothing, but are inside ravenous wolves. Francesco turned this over in his mind, thinking how a smart enemy of Rome needed no such disguise. Wolves were safe here.

  There was a sudden volley of yelps and then complete silence. Francesco suppressed a shudder as he imagined a wolf running back up into the hills, bloodied pieces of sheep hanging from its jaws, a gore-stained piece of hemp rope the only evidence of the sacrifice that had just taken place.

  “One night last week, a wolf stole a farmer’s baby right out of its cradle.” Susanna spoke now in hushed tones.

  “I suspect the cradle was conveniently situated,” Francesco said, realizing now why the outhouses along the lane had been quiet of late.

  “No, it was truly stolen,” Susanna whispered earnestly. “And they say that the leader of the wolves is pure white.”

  Francesco laughed, shaking off his gruesome imaginings. “Is that all? Are you sure they’re not werewolves too? There’s a full moon under all that cloud.”

  “Don’t make fun of me or I won’t let you in.”

  “Then I won’t make fun of you anymore,” he said with a sincerity that became truly heartfelt when she opened the gate. “How do you know all this?” he asked, extinguishing the torch in a puddle and following her inside the house.

  “They talk of it in the market.” She drew off her cloak and, taking his, hung them both over a chair in front of the fire, filling the air with the smell of wet sheep. Two candles burned on the mantle, and although the room was hazy with smoke, it was warm. “If you listen in the market very carefully, you can learn things.”

  He paused for a moment but decided it was worth the risk. She wouldn’t throw him out now. If she did, he would drown in the rain and let the wolves devour his body—anything but go back inside with that man and that chicken. “Is that how you knew Calendula was wearing a new ring? You heard it in the market?” he asked carefully.

  “Of course,” she said, leading him to the bed. She pulled off his wet boots and set them on the hearth before sitting down beside him. His hose left puddles on the plank floor.

  “Did you hear who gave her the ring?”

  “No. Though I did hear your name as a possibility. I hear you gave Marcus quite a thrashing when he hit her.” She pulled the blankets over him as he protested. “You’d do the same for me, right?” She wasn’t looking for an answer, and, although he did have more questions, it was so warm beneath the blankets, Susanna’s hands and lips even warmer, he couldn’t bring himself to speak up.

  And when he did fall asleep, he didn’t dream of Calendula or anything else that had happened since he’d arrived in this wretched city. Instead, he dreamed of being a child again, of fields painted with poppies and running half-naked with his little sisters through endless sun-drenched days, gathering summer in their outstretched arms.

  CHAPTER THREE

  FRANCESCO WAS THE ONLY SON OF RICARDO VENTIMIGLIA, A Florentine priest, and Fiorella Adamo, daughter of a sheep farmer, which made Francesco a bastard. He had two sisters, Angelina and Adriana, who of course were also bastards. They were first christened with the surname of degli Angeli, “of the Angels,” soon changed simply to Angeli, making them angels in their own right. It was an early indication that, despite being illegitimate, theirs was to be the most privileged of childhoods.

  Ricardo Ventimiglia had been a practical man from the beginning. He was the youngest of three sons of a wealthy landowner, and his vocation had been chosen for him by his father. Ricardo had accepted this with good will and, with his enthusiasm for the arts and sciences, had become a humanist in the del Mare family court, first as the personal priest and adviser of Guido’s father, then of Guido himself. When Ricardo’s father and two elder brothers died of fevers, Ricardo inherited the family villa just outside Fiesole, in the hills overlooking Florence.

>   It was a stone farmhouse perched on a hilltop, reached by a winding lane shaded with black-green cypress trees. From the high windows, one could see groves of olive trees, vineyards, fields of wheat, forests, and far below to the red-tiled roofs of Florence. Green shutters were kept closed against the heat of the day and opened to let in the cool breezes of the evening.

  It would have been a sin for one man to live in such a house, Ricardo often told his three children, so he invited Fiorella to live with him, not even demanding a dowry as he couldn’t marry her anyway, and set her up in charge of the household. She supervised everything from the maintenance of the house to the collection of rents from the tenant farmers.

  Fiorella’s father had been pleased with the arrangement, willing to overlook its sinfulness in exchange for having rid himself of a daughter without having to part with any of his sheep to make a dowry. In addition, Ricardo saw to it that he found a good price for his wool, until in time he owned his own wool shop. Fiorella, too, was happy and prayed every day to the painting of the Madonna that hung in her bedchamber, thanking the Virgin for her good fortune. Besides her skills as a landowner’s “wife,” she was remarkably beautiful and a devout mother, refusing to send her babies to a wet nurse and keeping them always at her side. Francesco’s earliest memories of her were warm and sweetly scented like the jasmine sachet she kept tucked in her bosom. And after she died, hemorrhaging from a miscarriage when Francesco was eleven, it was the scent of jasmine that brought her back to him.

  Ricardo believed in a superior education, even for his daughters, convinced the female sex was almost as intelligent as its male counterpart. And so the trio not only spoke the language of Petrarch and Dante but also French, Latin, and Greek. While his sisters wrote letters in all these languages to their father in exquisite hands, Francesco had learned mathematics and logic as well.

  Of course, none of this entered his dream that night. Instead, Francesco heard his sisters calling his name from the graveled path below the classroom window. It must have been a Saturday, when lessons ended early. He looked expectantly at Maestro, not at all surprised to see him dressed in Sodoma’s aquamarine gown. Maestro closed the geometry book and waved him away with a flick of his lace-edged handkerchief. Ah, to be so young and able to run like the wind, he was saying as Francesco put away his books and instruments. But then, I was never strong like you and your sisters. Maestro dabbed his handkerchief at his cheeks, even more heavily rouged in Francesco’s dream, as if he were a comic actor playing himself on the stage, with every effeminate gesture exaggerated. A weakness of the lungs. Still, it did keep me studious.

  Francesco promised to be studious too before running out of the room and along the hall to the great stairs. Chasing him was his sisters’ puppy, Bibi, who barked and nipped at his heels before Francesco slid down the banister—something the children were strictly forbidden to do—and flew up onto a cupboard. Francesco took the oak steps two at a time and ran across the cool flagstones of the entrance and out onto the gravel drive, where his sisters waited for him in their matching pink silk gowns with sashes tied behind them in bows so enormous they looked like flamingos ready to take flight.

  They didn’t have to discuss where they were going and so talked of other things as they half-ran down the hill, Florence shimmering far below them. Angelina, who was eleven, had taken to sighing over Petrarch’s lines to Laura, and she quoted him now:

  By grief I’m nurtured; and, though tearful, gay;

  Death I despise, and life alike I hate:

  Such, lady, do you make my wretched state!

  She did her best to look wretched as she said them, and Francesco teased her. You’ll have legions of men writing you sonnets. There won’t be enough paper in all the country to hold them.

  What about me? asked Adriana, who was only nine. I want sonnets too.

  And sonnets you shall have, said Francesco, feeling vastly older at almost thirteen. He was going to Padua soon to study law.

  But all the paper will be gone, she complained.

  Then they’ll have to come and sing them under your window at night. There will be so many brave, noble men singing songs to you, they’ll use up all the notes in the world.

  Adriana thought on this before telling her brother it was impossible to use all the notes in the world, and he replied that he would talk to their father, as she was the one who should be studying logic with Maestro. She laughed and, putting on a high, affected voice, waved an imaginary handkerchief in front of her. Tell me, Adriana, she imitated, Aristotle’s ten categories. I would list them myself, but I am afraid it would make me sneeze. And at that Adriana let out a delicate Achoo! Achoo!

  A half-dozen tenant farmers were scything hay in a small field. Wearing long, simple tunics with either bare legs or hose worn out at the knees, they bowed low to the ground as the children passed, the sisters giggling and curtsying in return. Francesco could have sworn he spotted Aristotle himself among the farmers, but it turned out to be Bastiano instead, busily painting rainbows across the farmers’ noses.

  The children crossed terraces planted with grapes, still tiny and green on the vines, past the silver olive trees, down the grassy path through the patch of laughing sunflowers, and lastly through the field of poppies to the copse of trees that overhung the bubbling spring, warm and white with minerals from the rocky ground. Francesco removed his embroidered doublet, pulling at his hose, mindful that his mother (still alive in his dream) would scold him should he tear the knitted fabric, until he was finally down to his linen chemise. His sisters untied their silk sashes and helped each other out of their gowns until they, too, stood in their chemises.

  How he wished his dream could have continued this way, drawing on those summer afternoons of swimming in the spring until, happy but tired and hungry, they would dry themselves in the sun before dressing and climbing back up the hill through the long shadows of cypress trees, but here the dream started to go wrong. The spring was gone now, mysteriously dried up, the only sign of it a coating of white mineral dust over gray rock. Above them, the sun was a white, hazy ball, and he wondered what had happened to the trees, now a forest of blackened sticks. He was suddenly very hot, and salty sweat ran down his forehead, stinging his eyes.

  They each pulled a bare branch from the trees and were poking among the rocks when Francesco saw a big furry animal. A wolf, he thought, going over to it, the rocks scorching his feet, the grass needle-sharp. But it wasn’t just any wolf. It was a fearless white dream wolf with a tail of iridescent green and purple stripes. The tail moved. The green and purple stripes shimmered.

  What is it, Francesco? Angelina asked.

  A wolf, he said. Stay where you are. He sensed something evil in the sun’s heat. His throat was beginning to burn.

  No, we want to see, his sisters said in unison, and they scrambled over the rocks, gasping at the sight of the wolf with its tail striped like a gentleman’s hose. And why should he think that, stripes like a gentleman’s hose? Whose hose?

  Attendite a falsis prophetis … Beware of false prophets, which come to you in sheep’s clothing, but are inside ravenous wolves, Adriana translated. She carried her stick over her shoulder, and off the end hung a bat with red eyes. The very one that would fly down the chimney of Susanna’s father’s house before it fell down in the storm.

  The wolf regarded them without interest and blinked. Do wolves blink? Francesco asked his sisters. They glanced at each other and shrugged.

  What’s that sticking out the side of its mouth? Adriana asked.

  It’s a tail, observed Angelina calmly at first, until she guessed the tail’s owner. Oh no! she shrieked, backing away. It’s Bibi’s tail. The wolf has killed Bibi!

  No! said Adriana. Look. Bibi’s tail is still moving. He’s still alive. Do something to save him, Francesco!

  But Francesco barely heard them. His eyes followed the green and purple stripes along the rock across the dry grass to where the wolf’s tail had now indee
d turned into a gentleman’s hose. His eyes traveled upward past the enormous codpiece to where the hose met a doublet of purple belonging to a man gazing down at them from a big white horse. But not just any man on a horse, for Francesco knew him. Guido del Mare. And another day in Rome he would tell a policeman it was his own name as they watched the body of a woman with golden hair being pulled from the Tiber.

  What are you doing here? Francesco asked. It’s too early. Blinded by the sun, it was hard to see Guido’s face, but he knew it well, or would know it well. He peered beyond the prancing horse to see if Juliet was there with him, playing with the combs in her hair as she was wont to do when she was being coy, but it was impossible to see with the blinding sun.

  But Pollo Grosso was there, at Guido’s side as always, and in the dream he really was a big chicken, a white one, sitting astride his horse, wearing nothing but his dagger, big orange chicken feet sticking out on either side of the horse. He held the reins with his wings, and his red comb shone brilliantly in the sun.

  The problem with you, said Guido to Francesco from high up on his horse, is you’re a boy, not a man. The light bounced off the steel shaft of the sword he carried in his right hand, while with his left he held the horse’s reins. Francesco shielded his eyes with his hand, seeing now the scar that ran from the corner of Guido’s eye to the corner of his mouth.

  I did that, Francesco said, pointing at the scar.

  And a lot of good it did you. Now do what your sisters asked. Save Bibi, you little boy.

  I can’t. It’s too late for Bibi.