The Madonna of the Almonds

by Marina Fiorato

  The Abbess sank into a pew and covered her eyes in prayer, or weeping, or he knew not what. Bernardino watched, not moving, as she grieved for what she had lost – far, far more than a childhood friend. Her innocence had gone too. When she raised her head her cheeks ran with tears.

  Suddenly martyrdom had a human face as both had witnessed for the first time in a pair of sheltered lives, one human being killed by another. ‘It is well that we saw what we saw,’ said Sister Bianca at last. ‘I have told you many tales now, of Saints and sinners, martyrs and the best of men. Here I sit, preaching to you these glib homilies of the canonized and the horrors that they bore. That I should presume to make you a better person, to bring you into the faith. It was arrogance and pride.’ She rose and began to pace before Bernardino, agitated. ‘But until today I did not know of what I spoke. I did not know of true courage in the face of death. My ministry here is sheltered, my life is one of quiet contemplation. I have been raised in wealth and comfort and never given succour to the sick or been among the dying. Here we give alms to the poor, but they are an orderly poor; the respectable and able-bodied are brought here and we throw coins at their feet. The ones with the pox, or the limbless ones that have been devoured by leprosy wait outside the Hall of the Believers for their comrades. They all believe fervently, but they are not admitted lest we sisters catch their contagion. I have never put myself in the way of sickness or danger or death. Here we hide; we call ourselves brides of Christ but yet we are virgins; we have never known the heat of a bed or what it may drive the human heart to do. We know nothing of love or what it is to give birth, or any of the trials of mortal women. Henceforth my ministry will change,’ the Abbess asserted, driving her fist into the palm of her other hand. ‘My faith shall assume a more practical nature. I and my sisters must go out into the world, take our ministry out to the people of this city, make life bearable for the unfortunates of this place.’

  Bernardino was touched by the change in the Abbess. In return he acknowledged something of the change in him. He left his perch and took the hand that bore the ring of office. ‘I too,’ he said. ‘I had never seen such a thing. I have never been a soldier, and have been mocked for the fact.’ He echoed Gregorio’s words that he could not forget. ‘While young men die, I paint men dying. While they bleed on the battlefield, I try to find the right carmine to paint their blood. Every face I depict at its end has a calm acceptance of a horrible fate, but this is merely a trope, my notion of what I thought the moment of death can be. The Countess can teach me much about the human face of sacrifice.’

  ‘Then if you paint her here, you do her justice. God makes us all differently. Your gift is not in swordplay or battle – you would likely die in the first skirmish,’ Bernardino smiled ruefully, ‘but you paint like an angel. Perhaps this day may change us both. We have both crossed the Rubicon,’ acknowledged the Abbess, ‘and can never go back. It is passing strange that is the death of a sinner and not a Saint that has thus altered us. And if you can paint what is real, what is human, as well as what is divine, you will have no equal, and my friend will not have died in vain.’

  And so he did. And another man who had been changed by that fateful day, also kept his word and wrote a novella on the life of the Countess of Challant. And at the close of his story Matteo Bandello wrote:

  ‘And so the poor woman was beheaded; such was the end of her unbridled desires; and he who would fain see her painted to the life, let him go to the Church of the Monastero Maggiore, and there will he behold her portrait.’

  CHAPTER 36

  The Dovecot

  Selvaggio had finished. He had planed and lathed and sanded, and now the dovecot was perfect, standing proud and bone-white with the wick wood gleaming in the weak sunlight. The sturdy pole was driven hard into the ground, the housing round with a conical white cap of a roof and two arched doorways for the residents. The little tower nudged his memory as he fashioned it, to remind him of an image of the cloud-capped crenellations of Camelot, but the scene was gone as soon as it had come to him. He stood back, and surveyed his work proudly. It was a palace of dovecots. He had worked tirelessly on this bird house as it was to be a gift for the one he held most dear on her name day.

  For it was now nearly a year since he had fought the Swiss mercenaries in Amaria’s defence. Amaria and Nonna were both at the market, for the lessons of last year’s Saint’s day were still fresh and Amaria now went nowhere alone. Grandmother and granddaughter had gone to buy victuals for the feast; they were to have Zuppa alla Pavese, the meat broth with eggs, bread and butter which had been invented as a supper for the Royal prisoner Francis I. At Amaria’s insistence they had also gone to seek the lady in red who sold the famous amber liquor known as Amaretto, to see if a few meagre centimes might buy a small draught to toast Sant’Ambrogio. Mention of the Saint had led Selvaggio’s thoughts back to that fateful day, one year ago, when he had killed three Swiss but could only recall that he had Amaria in his arms for the first time.

  There had been other times since then, stolen moments before the dying fire when Nonna had retired to bed. They had remained chaste but Selvaggio knew he could not hold his passions in check for long. He wanted Amaria for his own, but did he have a right to take a wife when his past remained a blank to him?

  A fluttering at his feet pulled at his attention and he smiled down on the remainder of his gift. In a netted basket on the frozen ground were two turtle doves, snow white and hopping against their prison bars. He lifted them out with the hands of experience and set them in the little arched doors of the cot. He should clip their wings against flight but they seemed contented to stay, so he desisted for now, not wishing to blot their happiness. As they billed and preened he considered names for his gift and his memory surprised him once again as he began to recall tales of antiquity, as perfectly as if he read them before his eyes. Her-cules and Megara? Tristan and Isolde? Troilus and Cressida? Or the story he had loved the best, the doomed love of Lancelot and Guinevere, whose guilty embrace was witnessed by a cuckolded Arthur? No; for all these lovers had made sad ends; he wanted these doves to be named after a couple who had enjoyed a happy conclusion to their tale. Ah, he had it. He smiled as the ideal pair of names came to him from he knew not where.

  Perfect.

  CHAPTER 37

  The Cardinal Receives a Gift

  Gabriel Solis de Gonzales, Cardinal of Milan, was used to such little tributes as his flock liked to give him. A life of indigence and self-denial was not for him. He was quite happy to preach in the Duomo about camels and needle-eyes but he saw no need to impoverish himself in order to enter Heaven. He felt his place in Paradise was assured by his purgation of the Jewish menace. So he was not wholly surprised when an interesting-looking bottle of liquor was delivered to him. It was the colour of burnt sugar, and when he lifted the stopper – Venetian glass, he noticed appreciably – there was the sweet smell of almonds. He was not surprised by the gift, but the servant who brought it in was not his usual groom of the chamber. This man was small and ugly. ‘Where is Niccolò?’ asked the Cardinal imperiously, after the small pause necessary to recollect his groom’s name.

  ‘He took sick, Your Eminence. The water fever.’

  The Cardinal sniffed fastidiously. Better to replace Niccolò then, for he did not wish to contract the gripes too. Best to find a replacement. This was how the Cardinal rewarded many years of devoted service. ‘What is your name?’ asked the Cardinal.

  ‘Ambrogio, Your Grace.’

  ‘Hmmm.’ A good Milanese name. But this man would not do – he had too much in his face which called the Hebrew to mind. He would be dismissed too – but tomorrow would be soon enough. The liquor tempted the Cardinal. ‘Who brought this? It has no direction.’

  The man shuffled. ‘I know not, your Eminence. I think it came from his Excellency the Duke, as the Sforza’s man was just lately here.’

  The Cardinal tisked faintly at this man’s incompetence. He dismissed him with a
wave, confident that he would never have to see this feckless servant again. In this he was quite right.

  In the absence of Niccolò or an apt replacement the Cardinal extinguished the candles himself, and climbed into his velveted four-poster in his cap and gown. He took a goblet from his night table and drank the draught down while reading a book of homilies on the excrescences of the Jew in the Spanish language. He enjoyed the sentiments and the liquor together and drank on till the little bottle was empty. Really, the flavour of almonds was quite delightful. At length the book fell from his hand and he slept.

  He did not sleep, of course. He was dead. For what the Cardinal did not know is that another liquid that has the scent of almonds is the lethal compound Prussic acid. This powder, extracted from the leaves of the cherry laurel, is so deadly that even the poisoner that sold it, in the small streets behind Mantua’s cathedral, felt moved to warn the lady who bought it from him of its effects. She had nodded quickly and taken the vial in her white hand, a hand, he noted, with the three middle fingers all one length.

  The Cardinal’s newest and last servant ran rapidly down the steps of his dead master’s palace. He paused only to throw a cloak over his livery, and conceal the empty bottle he had taken from his master’s bedside. He ran to his horse where it stood silently behind a hedge of yew. He rode hard till he came to the open country. The river was a broad silver ribbon threading through the night. He flung the bottle far from him, and above the hoofbeats heard a splash as the river accepted the crystal bottle and made it its own. He reached the Villa Castello at daybreak and saw his mistress watching from her window as the sky paled. She came down at once to meet him, and he was too exhausted to do more than throw his reins over the dovecot and leave his horse to crop grass as he almost fell to the ground. She did not trouble him with long interrogation. ‘Did you see him?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Is it done?’

  ‘Yes.’

  She breathed relief. ‘I excuse you from your tutelage of the boys today. Go and get some sleep.’ As he entered her door she called him back. ‘Isaac?’

  ‘Yes, my lady?’

  She searched for the words. ‘Your God would be proud of you.’

  He smiled the smile that was his only beauty, and sketched a shalom with his hand. ‘Yours would too, my Lady.’

  CHAPTER 38

  A Baptism

  ‘I cannot stay. Saint Catherine was the last of them.’ Once more, Bernadino paced, wolflike, in the nave of a Holy place. ‘I must go. If yesterday taught me anything it is that there is nothing more important than living the life you are given, even if it is in sin. I have made a friend of God while I lived here. I know now that he is real, when once I thought he was not. I think he loves me too, despite my many flaws. But life is short. I know, at last, how to paint. I learned yesterday. And now I have to go, and live the life that I must, even if I am damned for it.’

  ‘Who is she?’ The Abbess’s eyes were open and candid. Bernardino was caught off guard. ‘Who?’

  ‘The lady.’

  ‘Which lady?’ Bernardino’s mind ran over the speech he had given, at a loss to know where Simonetta’s name appeared. Bianca moved from him and pointed to Saint Ursula. ‘This one,’ she said, then she strode to the panel of Saint Maurice and her finger picked out the lady in the foreground in a red dress. ‘And this.’ Her black skirts swept the floor as she turned to point: ‘Saint Agatha, and Saint Lucy, and Saint Apollonia. Even,’ she indicated the last of all, ‘Saint Catherine. Here in her own chapel she has the look of the Countess of Challant indeed. But here on this panel, where she stands next to Saint Agatha, she is that secret lady once again. The lady who appears everywhere in this place yet you have never once spoken of her. Even in my mother.’ She pointed to the spectre in white who knelt on the lunette above Saint Catherine and Saint Agatha. ‘She was indeed a beauty, but you have flattered her with a superior countenance. Even I, one that loved her well, must admit that.’

  Bernardino smiled ruefully and placed his head in his hands. He laughed. ‘You do not flatter my painting skill.’

  The Abbess sat on the pew next to him. ‘Bernardino. You know how highly I prize your work. But look again. There are subtle differences, but all these ladies are the same woman.’

  He rubbed his eyes fit to dislodge them from their sockets and when he opened them he looked afresh at his work. Sister Bianca was right. He had painted Simonetta over and over again since he had come here. He had painted her as Saint Ursula looking down at the red-winged angel that was Elijah. He had painted her, in great detail, in a red dress that he had never seen her wear attending the dedication of Saint Maurice’s church. There she stood, resplendent in her finery, the scarlet of her dress crossed with gold, with her hair caught in a jewelled fillet studded with seed pearls. Great were the happenings in that painting, as Saint Maurice founded his church among the dead; but it was the lady in red with her strange hands folded in prayer who drew the eye and pulled the viewer into the painting. I am one of you, she seemed to say. I am a witness to this day. And – he almost laughed – he had painted Simonetta standing outside her own house, that very villa with the rosy plaster walls and the elegant portico that he had seen but once, as he bade her farewell. He had even painted the window at which she had stood that day when he took his leave, and placed in it a figure with shoulder length red-gold hair wearing a man’s russet hunting tunic.

  And there was more. He turned around as his greatest work revolved around him. Every woman that he had painted since he came here had something of her in it, in form or figure, face or hands. Most of the women had her colouring, and even when they didn’t they had her eyes, or her gestures. He didn’t know whether the feeling that bubbled in his chest would end in laughter or tears. That he had thought her forgotten! That he had lain awake in his cell desperate to remember her face! She was here before him, a hundred times over, more real in his depictions than when he had painted her from life in Saronno. Then, captivated by her person, he had not been able to see her as she truly was. Here, separated by more than just distance, his denied heart had remembered her in every particular, and his faithful hands had drawn her countenance every day. There were but two dames that were not Simonetta in that place: Saint Scholastica and a grieving acolyte at the Entombment of Christ. Both wore the black habit of a nun, and the plain kindly face of Sister Bianca.

  ‘Well?’ smiled Sister Bianca.

  ‘You are right. There is…a Lady. You are a clever woman to have seen so much when no word of it was spoken.’

  ‘These dames told me much, of course. But there was another clue, and it is this.’ She went again to the delimiting wall and found a small symbol in the frescoed panel, so small it would have fitted on a missive that could be crushed in a white hand; a piece of vellum that took leave of a lover. It was a heart that held a fleur-de-lys of leaves within. ‘Like the lady,’ said Sister Bianca, ‘this symbol is everywhere. Here on the shawl of Saint Catherine. On the bodice of Saint Ursula. And most often on the cloak of the Magdalene, as she witnesses the death of her lover-Lord, and when he reaches out to her from beyond the grave.’ In the Hall of the Nuns the Abbess pointed to the blood-red cape, covered in the leaf-filled hearts, wreathing around the stricken, lovelorn woman that Christ loved above all. ‘When I saw that I knew that you were captive,’ she turned back and smiled, ‘and then you painted your fair jailer again and again.’ The Abbess sat beside him again, with a look of intent inquiry. ‘Who is this lady with red hair and white skin, and eyes oval as almonds? Who is she that moves with such grace, that inclines her head like a Saint and carries her body like a queen? She must be a rare beauty indeed.’

  ‘She is a rare beauty,’ replied Bernardino, exhaling a breath of defeat. ‘But she is no Saint. Her name is Simonetta di Saronno. She is human; just a woman, like other women. And because of her sin and mine I am here. But now I know that I cannot be without her, and yesterday’s events showed me that our sin was per
haps not so great.’

  ‘Might you tell me?’ the question was gentle, as if to an errant child.

  ‘We loved too soon after her husband’s death, and in the wrong place. She was my model for the Holy Virgin in Saronno, and we embraced in the church. We were seen and denounced. She is Godfearing, and sent me from her. I went for her sake more than my own, but now I know that I cannot stay away. Life is not life without her. She is all that matters now.’

  Sister Bianca shook her head as she looked at the frescoes. ‘I think you will be painting her for the rest of your life.’

  Bernardino shrugged, as if it was easy to cast off his gift. ‘I think history has enough of my paintings. The best of my work is here. My Master was right.’

  ‘Your Master?’

  ‘Master Leonardo. He said that I would not be able to paint until I first learned to feel. And he was right. What I painted in the white church of Saronno was mere confection. I tickled the white walls with decoration as if I embellished a cake. Here I walked into a black cell and I have turned it into a jewel box. I know I will never do better, and that history will judge me on this place.’ His sweeping gesture took in the entire of the hall, and the many chapels, now peopled with numerous figures. Now he could see that the frescoes held none of the staged classical attitudes of his work in Saronno, nor the nerveless antique tropes of his former work. They were no longer refined, aristocratic and courtly. Here the figures lived with a vibrant naturalism; the fuzzy chiaroscuro with which he had aped Leonardo was now pulled into sharp focus which was real, definite and alive. Bernardino was no longer constrained by form or moderation. His passions had set him free: the brush was made flesh.