The Madonna of the Almonds

by Marina Fiorato

  ‘Sometimes a soul is given in martyrdom so that we can learn from their suffering. Our Lord may have saved Lucy from one fate so that she may come to another, but Saint Apollonia,’ she leaned in and turned the page for him, ‘willingly leapt into her death fire rather than blaspheme the name of Christ.’

  ‘She did so?’ Bernardino was aghast. ‘Of her own free will? She was not forced?’

  Conceptione shook her head till her black wimple crackled. ‘She suffered much at the hands of Decius and his soldiers – all her teeth were broken and she is often portrayed with the pliers that pulled them from her head. But she leapt into the fire of her own accord. And when you paint Apollonia with her broken teeth, or Lucy with her eyeballs in the chapel here, their suffering will lead others to God.’

  Bernardino shook his head. ‘And Agatha?’ he said, turning the page as the gold leaf flashed briefly in the sun from the casement. ‘Her breasts were cut from her chest! Why did not God save her from such a fate, the loss of the very essence of her womanhood?’

  ‘Signor Luini,’ the tall nun began. ‘God did not visit this suffering on any of these Holy women. These tortures were laid upon them by man. Come with me.’ Haltingly, with steps that betrayed a great age that no one would guess, the librarian led Bernardino down the stair and out into the cloister, and he turned back to look where she pointed, at the red round tower.

  ‘This tower was not built for this foundation. It is much older. It is the tower of the old circus, the Roman circus, which was built when the Emperor made Milan the capital of the Western Roman Empire. Here, where we now stand, and where we sisters read and worship, and grow our healing herbs, was an arena of bloody sport and death. The playground of the Godless Romans. Lucy suffered under the purges of Diocletian, Agatha during the Decian persecution. The sufferings that were visited upon them were done to them by mortal men and pagans, mighty men in their time, kings and emperors. This very tower was a prison for the earliest of Christian martyrs: Gervase, Protase, Nabor and Felix. Here in this circus, the chariots circled and the gladiators fought for the pleasure of Emperor Maximian.’

  ‘Maximian?’ Bernardino’s memory jolted him.

  Sister Conceptione turned her rheumy eyes on him. ‘Yes. You have heard of the Emperor?’

  ‘Yes,’ said Bernardino, wonderingly, remembering the Abbess’s story. ‘He martyred Saint Maurice. He murdered the sixty-six hundred.’

  Sister Conceptione bent her toothless smile upon him. ‘Exactly so,’ she said, and started to shuffle off to the tower again. ‘You are learning, Signor Luini,’ she said as she went, without turning back. ‘You are learning.’

  He was learning. He revolved in the cloister like a top. Spinning with wonder at the connection. The stories of Saint Maurice, which had come alive for him on the chancel wall as the Abbess told the tale, were now given credence by the existence of the living, breathing, monster of an Emperor who had taken his macabre pleasures here in this spot. This very place which was now to be hallowed in the name of the man he had murdered. Bernardino lay down, dizzy, on the grass as the fat clouds scudded overhead. A change had come in him. He was learning.

  He was beginning, despite himself, to believe.

  CHAPTER 29

  Amaretto

  ‘Amante?’

  ‘Amare?’

  ‘Amarezza?’

  Simonetta and Manodorata faced each other across the table. Each had a willow cup of the sweet new amber elixir, and each tasted periodically as they tried to fix upon a name to christen Simonetta’s liquid alchemy.

  ‘Well,’ began Simonetta. ‘Let’s get back to the start. Man dorla is the word for almond…’

  ‘A name very close to my own.’

  ‘Indeed. Then perhaps we could call it Manodorata, if you agree. ’Twould not have been made without you.’

  Manodorata shook his dark head, and the velvet tail of his cap swung behind his shoulders. ‘That would never do. I am known in these parts, and association with a Jew would do your sales no favours. Let us canvass your other suggestions.’

  ‘Well…the old Latin for almond is amygdalus…’

  ‘Meaning…’

  ‘Tonsil plum, I think.’

  Manodorata gave a snort of laughter. ‘’Tis hardly an attractive root for a name. What else?’

  Simonetta tasted the brew again. She felt too raw to reveal the epiphany that she had had while making the drink, that she had distilled the pleasure and pain of her feelings for Bernardino. ‘It struck me that the drink is both sweet and bitter at once. And the words for love – amare – and bitterness – amarezza, are very close.’

  Manodorata nodded. ‘In fact one might say that love lies within bitterness – the word amare is found at the beginning of amare-zza.’

  Simonetta smiled wryly. ‘So love ends in bitterness? Not a very encouraging homily.’

  ‘But a true one.’

  ‘Not for you. You have your Rebecca, and your sons.’

  ‘Even those who love the most, rarely die on the same day. Everyone is alone eventually, but love lives for ever, as we once discussed.’

  Simonetta shivered, as she thought of Bernardino. Had he remembered her, or did he even now lie in the embrace of another, wherever he was? A bitter thought indeed. ‘Let us say Amarett-o then. For our drink is only a little bitter. And we must hope that its taste can at least give cheer, for the time that we are on the earth.’

  From the day that Amaretto was given its name, Manodorata and Simonetta moved fast in their joint venture. Manodorata brought a gang of Jewish workers to harvest the almonds and cut back the trees correctly for the next growth. Simonetta oversaw this process – she told the axemen what she herself had once been told by Lorenzo: ‘the branches must be spaced so that a swallow may fly between the groves without flapping his wings.’ When it was done, and the trees were elegantly spaced, Simonetta looked back from the arches of the loggia and actually saw one of the small birds dip and turn through the pleached grove. Just as he had said, the swallow did need to fold its wings. She felt a shiver of foreboding, for had not the Romans foreseen ill auguries in the flight of a swallow? She shook off the feeling and went inside to the kitchens, where the womenfolk that Manodorata had employed had created a buzzing hive of industry as they set to to make the almond milk.

  Manodorata had thought of everything. He laid out money to bring brown rock sugar from Constantinople, lemons from Cyprus and apples from England. Cloves and spices came from the trade ships of the Black Sea, and were brought by runners from Genoa. The still worked day and night, and the industrious Jews made the house live again, filling it with their chatter and strange beautiful song. Sweet melodies and guttural words floated through the rooms.

  From Venice came the most precious cargo, clear bottles of cristallo glass, swaddled in silk like babes. When Simonetta opened the first parcel she gasped – for the bottle was a thing of beauty, mirror-bright, water-clear and with the elegant shape of a Roman amphora, with a flat bottom so the bottle might stand. The whole was finished with an almond shaped stopper, tied in place with a riband the same blue of the Castello arms.

  Simonetta did not know nor ask how many ducats Manodorata poured into their enterprise. But as the bottles were filled, tied and crated, she was to learn that Manodorata had not yet completed his investment. He climbed the stair to her chamber and knocked and entered. In his arms, a festoon of red and gold almost hid him from sight.

  Simonetta turned from her window and laid down her bow, for she had been shooting pigeons for the pot. She wore Lorenzo’s ancient garb. Her hair was longer now, and matted, one cheek red from the twang of the bowstring, her fingers raw and chapped from plucking her quarry. Manodorata sighed and threw his bundle on the bed.

  ‘What is that?’ queried Simonetta, leaving her perch.

  ‘Time was you would not have asked that question. It is a dress. Have you forgot that such things exist?’

  Simonetta was drawn to the material, which se
emed to glow from within. She rubbed her hand on her breeches before she dared touch the cloth, which was soft and cold as snow. The ruby red was fretted with gold thread and where the thread crossed, seed pearls sat like stars. She had a sudden urge to feel the dress against her skin. ‘For me?’ she asked, incredulously.

  ‘I don’t think it would suit me.’ Manodorata sat down on the bed. ‘Simonetta. I cannot sell your liquor. You must do it yourself. Whatever may have…come to pass in recent weeks you are still a lady of good name, and unless I have forgotten everything I ever knew about trade, you will shortly be a very successful merchant.’

  ‘I?’ said Simonetta aghast. ‘I was not…that is, I cannot.’

  ‘What is the matter?’ asked Manodorata, testily, as if he already knew her answer.

  She sighed. ‘I was not born to trade. I was born nobly, into the Signori. I do not have the way of…business. My father and mother – Lorenzo, they would say it shamed my name, and theirs. God knows,’ she turned her great eyes on her friend, ‘that I have lately shamed that name enough.’

  Manodorata sat down on the coverlet. ‘There are many things about your people that are a mystery to me. Principal among them is the Christian view that the word ‘trade’ is tantamount to the vilest curse ever uttered by a tinker. Things change, Simonetta. The old world is gone. Your name alone will not put meat on your table, it is true, nor lay faggots in your hearth. Yet coupled with this liquor your name can do much.’ He took her chin in his hand. ‘You will be the face of this drink – the ship’s figurehead, and as such you cannot dress like a poorly paid groom.’

  Simonetta released herself and looked down ruefully at her garb. She secretly longed to wear women’s weeds again, but till now had felt that she was paying a penance to Lorenzo.

  ‘Put it on,’ urged her friend, ‘and here,’ he produced more bounty. ‘A looking glass, also from Venice. A comb. Rose ointment for your hands. A small vial fell on the bed. ‘And lastly,’ he held high a glittering constellation that blossomed in his fingers. It was a coif or cuffia for her hair made from the same gold net and pearls. ‘Do something about that nest, ’tis fit for sparrows,’ he said, and disappeared.

  Simonetta shut the casement and flung off her clothes. She washed from head to foot with water from the rain stoup, and the cold made the bumps rise on her skin like the pigeons she had plucked. Her teeth chattered from cold and excitement and her eyes burned blue. She stepped into the dress and laced herself in as tight as may be, the silk soon warming against her skin. Then she combed her knotted hair till it fell in ripples past her shoulders. It was long enough to go up now, and she began to bind it into a coaz zone plait, her unaccustomed fingers remembering the old ways, the way she did her hair when she was a wife and a lady. She fixed the cuffia in place, patting the wayward copper tendrils into the precious net. Lastly she bit her nails till they were even and rubbed the cream of roses into her hands. She pinched her cheeks and bit her lips to make the blood come, and only then did she lift the Venetian glass. What she saw there made her skip with excitement. Her eyes were enormous and brilliant, her skin pearl white. Her lips were rosy pink and her eyes as blue as the Amaretto ribbons. She looked thinner than she remembered and her eyes were more shadowed, but her hair was still the same burnished red and it shone with her ministrations in a way that rivalled the pearls and gold that adorned it. She moved the glass down to see the dress reflected, and saw that her arms were more willowy and subtle muscles had formed from hard work; her waist now greyhound slim. As she descended the kitchen stair her workers stopped their tasks to goggle, and even Manodorata lost his composure for an instant. Her eyes suddenly stung as she felt their admiration, and she wished that Bernardino could have seen her thus. She turned to Manodorata, dismissing the thought with a grateful smile to her benefactor. When he didn’t speak she prompted him. ‘Well?’ she asked, ‘will I do?’

  He slowly began to nod and smile. ‘Yes,’ said he, ‘you’ll do very well.’

  It was the day of the spring fair of Pavia, the first fair of the year and the greatest of the region. Simonetta donned her red dress and went down to the loggia. Her new white palfrey, whom she had named Raffaella in remembrance of her maid, was saddled and her mane beribboned with holiday red and gold. Waiting too was a pack mule, loaded with crates of Amaretto bottles and jingling like a Russian’s sleigh. As Simonetta pulled on her riding gloves, Manodorata, who had come to bid her farewell, drew forward a dark young lady from his shadow. She was tall and capable looking, with sad black eyes and a beauty that spoke of the south. ‘This is Veronica of Taormina,’ he said. ‘She will help you today. She will not invite comment, as she is a Christian, not a Jew.’ Simonetta nodded, understanding his tact. ‘Greetings Veronica,’ she said.

  Manodorata went on. ‘Veronica will assist you at the market, and she will protect you on the road. You permit?’ This last to the girl who nodded as he opened her cloak to reveal a neat rank of daggers, each in the shape of the Maltese cross. ‘She will defend your person and your earnings. Where she is from brigands are more plentiful than hognuts.’

  Simonetta was curious and addressed the girl. ‘Perhaps you will tell me of such places along the road.’

  The girl’s sad eyes met hers as she shook her head. Manodorata put in, ‘I regret there will be no traveller’s tales from this lady.’

  Simonetta looked from one to the other. ‘Does she not speak our dialect?’

  Manodorata looked at the pavings. ‘She did once. Veronica is known to me because she married one of our kind – Joce of Leon. She was a Christian marrying a Jew, and her kind took her tongue, and her husband’s life.’

  Simonetta was stunned, and clasped the girl’s hand warmly. She marvelled at the misery that love wrought, and that the world held such great obstacles to men’s happiness. In this case, needless obstacles set against those that loved in the name of God. She had little time for her God now – here was just one more reason why.

  The two women set out for Pavia, each thinking of those they had lost, but there was much to lift the spirits along the road. Simonetta found the green hedgerows and the warm sun charming, and when she hummed an air of the May Veronica hummed along too. She found that she could converse well enough with her companion; their discourse continued with questions on the one side and nods and smiles on the other.

  As the women drew into Pavia the press of people became almost oppressive; curs barked and livestock jostled. Here a fool in motley juggled fire and there a chicken seller spread the wings of his goods like fans. As they rode across the famous covered bridge of Pavia they were obliged to dismount and lead their mounts; Veronica led the way and her strange silent authority somehow cleared the path for her mistress. They climbed ever uphill as the throng intensified, and at length they reached the square at the rear of the squat red Duomo where the cacophony reached its peak. Minstrels coaxed folk tunes from their wheezing instruments, while vendors called out their wares. The delicious aromas of pies and pasties fought with the spicy rank odours of sheep’s urine and goat dung. The two women found a Marshal in a quartered tabard who showed them to their pitch with a pained and busy air. Simonetta noted with a jolt of pleasure that the pitch that they were assigned was placed in the exact centre of a six-pointed star, marked out by white cobbles set into the grey. She decided to see this as a sign – she found it pleasing that in mere decoration, a Jewish symbol had unknowingly been placed in the shadow of a Christian building, and hoped it would bring luck to their enterprise. Simonetta unloaded the bottles while Veronica pulled their trestle from the mule and set the table together. Hundreds of other pitches competed for room and Simonetta began to doubt that they would even sell one bottle of their precious elixir. But she draped the trestle with blue velvet and ranked the crystal bottles on the cloth, making the wares look as tempting as she could. At Manodorata’s initiative she had opened one of the bottles, and brought a cup on a chain which Veronica affixed to the table leg, so that the liquo
r might be tasted by perspective buyers at the price of a centesimo. They stood back and waited as the sun climbed and the people milled around their table. As Manodorata had suspected, many folk gathered to stare at the lady in the red dress, but some stayed to taste, and then to buy. Simonetta became bolder with each sale, losing her shyness and chatting with the crowd, charming noble customers with her breeding but using a lower kitchen wit for the tradesmen and servants. Veronica was a solid welcome presence at her back, her fingers dourly counting the money while her dark eyes saw everything. She shooed the bold brave urchins that crept below the table to catch the falling drops from the pewter cup and chain in their mouths. Twice she clasped the wrist of a pickpocket in her iron grip, and once she saw, as Simonetta did not, that a friendly noblewoman who fingered the stuff of Simonetta’s gown was plucking the pearls from the golden net. A flash of the Maltese knives was enough to send the dame back into the crowd. By the time the bells of the Duomo struck Nones they had sold every last bottle, and the town buzzed with the news of the miraculous new drink. As the two women packed away, the townsfolk became so clamorous with their advance orders that Simonetta caused Veronica to borrow quill and vellum from a notary, so that she could write them down. By noon they were gone, with promises to return. Both sang in earnest now, and a fat bag of ducats jingled and bounced against the neckbone of Veronica’s mule.

  Amaria Sant’Ambrogio, in the market to buy figs, saw the wonder of the lady in the red dress and tasted from the cup on the chain. She felt – as she always did when she experienced anything to delight her – that she must fetch Selvaggio to share in it too. Once she would have hoisted her skirts and run all the way home, but mindful of her new-found decorum she merely hurried home as fast as she could with no unseemly displays of her flesh. She found Selvaggio in the lean-to workshop he had built in their yard, and she took his arm to come at once, even in the carpenter’s apron he wore. They hastened back to the cathedral square to see the fabled beauty and taste the wonderful liquor of almonds. But by the time they reached the Duomo the sun was high and the pitch was empty. Amaria identified a passing Marshal by his quartered tabard and was told they had just missed the lady by a matter of moments. Only the accounts of the townsfolk remained; the good burghers of Pavia seemed dazed by the May madness as they enthused about the noblewoman in red and her incredible brew. Even Amaria, whose discourse had become more measured of late, talked all the way home of the lady, whom she claimed was as beautiful as the Queen of Heaven herself. But Selvaggio kept his peace. For his own taste, the only true beauty in womanhood belonged to she who told him the tale.