Our house was in the Civetta—little owl—contrada, one of seventeen remaining medieval districts in Siena. Donata and her husband, Ilario, rapidly determined to make me an honorary Sienese, or, specifically, a Civettina, loyal to our particular neighborhood. Besides Felice, they had two other children, Gianni (eight), and Sebastiano (six months), each noisy in a distinctively age-specific way. It was a nice antidote to my last few days of self-imposed solitude.
My indoctrination into the intimate life of the contrada came a few days later, when the Guerrinis invited me to Sebastiano’s baptism in the Civetta fountain.
The feast day of Saint Anthony of Padua, La Civetta’s patron saint, marks the time for all the contrada babies born within the previous year to be baptized in the ward’s own font. At noon on Sunday, Sebastiano, along with other infants and their families, waited his turn. Sebastiano was a perfect cherub of a baby, with golden curls and plump, dimpled arms and legs. At this moment he was angelically asleep for the priore’s words.
“I, in the name of Saint Anthony of Padua, sprinkle you with the waters of this noble fountain, so that from your heart the love for your contrada will flow eternally, blessing you with the great heritage of your ancestors.” The priore dipped his fingers into the fountain and sprinkled Sebastiano’s smooth forehead with water, at which point he promptly woke up and began screaming. Donata expertly folded down a flap of her shirt and shoved her breast in his open mouth. Draped with the black, white, and red silk scarf of La Civetta that would be his forever, Sebastiano realized that he was not being abandoned to starve to death on a mountaintop in the pouring rain, and soon dozed off to sleep again, to the obvious relief of his parents and the rest of the Civettini.
* * *
The next morning I woke up at dawn. Too restless to read or write, I dressed and left the house. In the faint gray of early morning, I wound through the narrow streets toward the Piazza del Campo. As I came around the corner of Via Banchi di Sopra, I saw a train of workers carting wheelbarrows piled high with yellowish dirt. A reverent silence hung over the men—as if for a religious occasion, rather than a menial task. Then I saw that the line wound its way down to the outer rim of the Campo, where the workers began to lay down the yellow earth, La Terra in Piazza, which would soon be a racetrack for ten Palio horses. I watched the workers, their manual labor imbued with their spiritual purpose, until I was too hungry to stand there anymore, and went to get a bottle of water and a wheel of panforte di Siena. The dried fruit and nut cake dusted with powdered sugar was delicious enough to transcend any demeaning fruitcake jokes, and it was dense enough to get me through the afternoon.
In the evening, the Sienese began to come to the Piazza to touch the earth and pay their respects. The Guerrinis found me there and invited me for dinner, which, after a day of panforte, was a welcome change. Felice and Gianni led the way back to Vicolo del Coltellinaio singing and chanting pro-Civetta songs boisterously all the way home.
Sitting on Donata’s living room couch, I held the dozing Sebastiano while Donata and Ilario worked companionably in the kitchen preparing dinner. I’d never had the luxury of holding a sleeping six-month-old before. A sweet, powdery smell rose from his skin, and he radiated warmth against my bare arms. His chest rose and fell with his peaceful breathing, and every now and then a fleeting smile crossed his face. I looked up from the world of infant bliss to find Donata looking at me.
“No bambini, Beatrice?” She said my name the Italian way, with four syllables. Bey-ah-TREE-chay. It sounded impossibly romantic. “But I see you feel his magic.”
I smiled, reluctant to break the wordless pleasure I had in Sebastiano’s sleeping company. “I had no idea they could be so . . . magnificent.”
Donata laughed indulgently. “Enjoy him while he’s peaceful, I’ll finish the risotto,” she said, and went back to the stove.
I watched Donata as she stirred the risotto patiently, and vowed to slow down. Certainly with Sebastiano in my arms exerting his hypnotic dreamy power, I wasn’t doing anything fast. Just as we were sitting down at the table, Sebastiano opened his mouth and turned his head toward my chest, searching for sustenance. Since I had nothing to offer him, I handed him over to Donata. He latched onto her breast with ecstatic concentration and ate with eyes closed, bliss personified.
That’s when it happened again. First, sudden silence. Then I could hear Ilario, Felice, and Gianni talking, as if from far away. The scent of Parmesan from the risotto sharpened, and I felt the warmth of my left arm where Sebastiano’s head had rested. Then I had a sensation I’ve never had before, first a gentle but persistent tugging on my nipples, then a rush of little electric shocks in my breasts, sparking downward, then a wave of heat and fullness, and an overwhelming feeling of peace, and I realized—I’m breast-feeding. Or more accurately, Donata is, and I’m in there with her. Donata was lost in a little world with Sebastiano and she didn’t notice my intrusion, or my retreat.
The rest of dinner passed without incident, unless you count the moment when Gianni upended his glass of ice water into his sister’s lap. After dinner, Donata and Ilario kissed me soundly on both cheeks and I walked the few steps through the courtyard to Ben’s house, let myself in the massive door, and made my way to bed, with the sensation of Sebastian’s evening meal still tingling in my body. It took me a while to fall asleep.
* * *
The next morning I dove into Gabriele’s journal again.
I came into the world in the year that Duccio di Buoninsegna’s Maestà was carried through the streets to the Duomo by a great and reverent crowd.
I paused to look up Duccio—the Maestà was finished in 1311.
My father, spent from mourning the loss of my mother, died when I was still a babe, and my uncle took me into his household. On my fourth birthday, I begged him to make me a paintbrush. We cut a tuft of hair from our unwilling cat, and bound it to a slender twig. Thus began my career as a painter.
Until my apprenticeship, I was a difficult child. I used the yolk of an egg to decorate the wall behind my chair, and the sauce from our midday stew created the outlines of a Madonna on the table. When it became obvious that I wished to paint more than eat, my uncle sent me to study with Simone Martini. Under his tutelage, my mischief was bent into study. When Simone finally let me work at his side, he directed not only my hands, but my soul.
“Paint from the holy text, but let your soul give life to your brush,” he whispered, as I lifted my arm to copy the Annunciation he had set before me. In my fingers the feel of the brush faded, and I was filled with the fear of the Virgin at her uninvited angelic guest’s arrival. I took the Maestro’s words to heart.
Siena, June 28
Dear Nathaniel,
Sorry I haven’t written back to you for so long. I’m trying to finish what Ben started before that smarmy Signoretti gets there first, wherever “there” is. I still don’t know what Ben was looking for, but I don’t want to give it up—I want to do Ben justice now that he’s not here to finish the work himself. So I’m trying to map out what happened to Siena during the Plague, hoping to figure out what Ben was onto, instead of thinking about getting back to New York to repair aneurysms. I haven’t found anything yet. But if Ben did, it must be somewhere.
In the meantime, while you’re taking care of my apartment (thanks again) I’m enjoying hanging out in the fourteenth century with my very appealing fresco painter. It’s a safe obsession, since he’s been dead for over six hundred years.
The surgeon part of me seems to have gone dormant. Don’t tell the department head, since I’d like to have a job when I get back . . . though I’m not sure when that will be. A long-quiet part of me is waking up, the historian born in my brother’s study twenty years ago.
Would you like anything from Siena? Maybe something for the bookstore?
Love,
B
I didn’t write what I was thinking. I did not confess that I had begun to live as much in the pages of that journ
al as in the real world around me. I did not express the nagging worry that my empathy, so useful to me as a doctor, was now sparked by words written by someone dead for centuries. I’d been happily lost in a book many times before, but this was different. This, I had no control over. Even then, I think I sensed the possibility inherent in that profound immersion in the written word—the possibility, and the danger. But it did not make me stop reading.
* * *
Two days later, I found a note from Donata under my door inviting me for coffee. I felt a rush of warmth reading this personal invitation from my first Sienese friend. We planned to meet at the Fonte Gaia the following day before heading to her favorite café. I stuffed her letter in my bag as I headed out to the piazza.
Donata arrived in a flax-colored linen dress, looking effortlessly perfect. I suspected that she looked this elegant even in her sleep.
“We take it for granted, the presence of water here,” Donata said, sitting down beside me on the edge of the reflecting pool. “Water was scarce in medieval Siena, and its availability to the people of the commune changed lives. It took eight years to build the conduit to bring the water here, then the following year, 1343, the fountain was completed.”
Donata had pronounced the word commune with three syllables: co-mu-neh. I’d never heard it out loud before. In my head, I’d been imagining the word commune, the hippie 1960s version.
“Nobody knows exactly what the original looked like,” Donata said. “It’s one of those puzzles that keeps art historians like me up all night.” As we walked to the café, I looked back at the Fonte’s pool glittering in the sun and wondered what it had looked like back when my artist was alive.
We ordered two espressos, and I watched Donata sip hers slowly.
She spoke first. “How are you managing?”
“I’m comforted by picking up the work Ben left, as if he’s there inside me, telling me how I’m doing. The way he used to.” I looked away and was glad when Donata changed the subject gracefully.
“I’ve always loved the name Beatrice. Do you know how your parents chose it for you?”
“I never knew who my father was, and my mother died giving birth to me. Ben chose my name. He was reading Dante in the hospital waiting room.”
“He chose well for you,” Donata said.
I was silent for a long time, thinking.
“Have you seen the ospedale, Beatrice?”
“No, should I?” I must have sounded unenthusiastic. “I don’t really want to spend my free time thinking about medicine.” My response sounded more irritable than I’d intended.
“Beatrice, I meant the Ospedale Santa Maria della Scala—across from the Duomo. It hasn’t been a hospital for centuries.” Her gentle reprimand made me blush.
“I’m sorry. The thought of visiting a working hospital in Siena is about as appealing as amputating my own leg.” Donata snorted in a graceful, somehow Italian way. “I repent my brutish American manners—will you be my friend anyway?”
“Of course,” Donata said. “I like your brutish American ways—politeness can get tiresome.”
We walked companionably together back to the Piazza del Duomo, where the cathedral and the Ospedale faced each other. Donata stopped in front of the Ospedale entrance. “The facade of the Ospedale is another great mystery for art historians.”
“I don’t see any paintings.”
“Exactly. It is believed there were once five frescos here, depicting the life of the Virgin Mary. But it’s not clear who painted them. It was probably a collaboration among three of Siena’s greatest painters: Pietro and Ambrogio Lorenzetti—the painters of the Sala della Pace in the Palazzo Pubblico—and Simone Martini.”
Martini—Gabriele’s teacher. Donata must have heard my intake of breath but misinterpreted the reaction.
“Yes, an extraordinary combination of painters, unprecedented and never repeated. Simone left Siena for Avignon around 1336, and did not return. The Lorenzettis died in the first year of the Plague. Four of the frescos—the birth of the Virgin, the presentation of the Virgin in the temple, the betrothal of the Virgin, and the return of the Virgin to the house of her parents—were probably painted by the Lorenzettis and Martini. But the paintings did not survive.”
“I thought you said there were five?”
“The fifth is even more of a mystery. It might have been painted later than the others, and the attribution is uncertain. Four were painted over the arched doorways. The fifth may have been in the center, with two on each side flanking it.”
“And the subject?”
“The Assumption of the Virgin—when she ascended to heaven at the end of her life.”
At that moment, despite years of Catholic school, I suddenly saw the story from Mary’s perspective for the first time. “Can you imagine being accosted by an angel who tells you that you are going to give birth to the son of God, then doing it, only to lose your son to a crazy bunch of rabble-rousers? I couldn’t handle it, even with heaven at the end.”
Donata fingered the beads at her neck. I wondered whether I’d offended her with my abridged version of the life of the Virgin. “I see Siena is starting to get under your skin,” she said. “We Sienese feel a special connection to Santa Maria, who has protected us for hundreds of years, and medieval Siena was even closer to her embrace than we are now. When the gates closed at night and the mantle of the Virgin settled over the commune’s inhabitants, priests chanted the divine office through the dark hours of the night, keeping material and spiritual dangers at bay.”
“Since I’ve been here, I’ve started to wonder what it might be like to be a historian instead of a doctor.”
Donata turned to face me. “What is it like to be a neurosurgeon?”
“Maybe it’s like having children. You are expected to be available at high intensity one hundred percent of the time, and the decisions you make have life-or-death consequences. But at least I can take a leave of absence.”
Donata laughed and we walked through the gates into the pellegrinaio, the frescoed hall that used to house ailing pilgrims cared for at the Ospedale. Now it was a museum.
“Do you miss it now, the surgeon’s life?”
I didn’t answer Donata for a long time. I was thinking about the surprising, heady pleasure of watching the past come to life. The OR seemed very far away. “No, I don’t miss it. Not yet.”
“I’m sure your passion for surgery will return.” Donata smiled. “After you’ve had enough time off.”
I nodded, but I wasn’t sure at all.
* * *
I went back to the library the next day, to grill Fabbri about Medicis beheaded in the 1300s, but I didn’t get a chance. Fabbri was frowning as he greeted me. “There is a Signor Signoretti here, asking after you. He insisted, and not as graciously as I would expect from a gentleman of his stature, that he would wait.”
“Where is he?” I looked around anxiously, having built an ominous picture of the man from what I’d heard.
The infamous Signoretti walked into the reading room. His black hair was slicked back from his high forehead, and his pale summer suit hung on him too perfectly. “Signora Trovato.”
“Dottoressa,” I said, correcting his address.
“Ah, of course, but the medical sort of doctor. Not like your late brother, whose expertise was history. My condolences. All who knew him mourn his loss.”
“Thank you for your concern,” I said, trying to suppress my irritation.
“You have not responded to any of my messages, Dottoressa.”
“I appreciate your gracious offer of assistance, but I don’t need it. I hope you will excuse me. As you know, we doctors are very busy.”
It did not require paranormal abilities to feel the anger pouring off Signoretti as the clerk officiously showed him out on my behalf.
I spent the rest of the morning with the Medici collection, which was small, not surprising, since we were in Siena, not Florence. Most of what I found was
from the 1500s, too late for what I was interested in. As I was leaving the library, the strap on my bag broke, sending the contents onto the floor.
I cursed inventively, then bent down to pick up my possessions. Fabbri appeared as I stood up with an armful of books.
“Would you like to leave the contents here, and pick them up tomorrow? Perhaps when you return the Accorsi journal?”
“Thank you, I’ll take you up on that offer.” I pocketed my wallet and keys and left everything else in Ben’s carrel, careful to avoid Fabbri’s second question. I tucked my broken bag under one arm, then headed home.
On the way, I had the sensation that someone was following me. Lately I’d had a constant feeling that there was some world hovering just beyond what I could see, the past edging into the present. But this was different.
I stopped at a neighborhood bar whose warm amber light spilled out onto the pavement, and after I had a glass of wine I felt ready to go back out again. As I walked home the unpleasant sensation returned. When I turned onto the deserted Via Cecco Angiolieri, I heard steps behind me speed up, and someone shoved hard against my hip, throwing me to the sidewalk. My broken bag was gone, along with the rapidly moving figure in the dark. I leaped up with my heart pounding, and stood shaking on the corner.
Whoever had mugged me would end up with a bag that was not only broken, but empty too. Part of me hoped it was Signoretti just for the pleasure of having thwarted him, but the idea that he’d resort to violent methods to get information made me nervous. What information could I have, or could Ben have had, that would be worth the risk? And why? Once I was home with the heavy door barred and double locked, I went to Ben’s desk and searched the drawers to be sure all was as I’d left it. I found the small folio and Gabriele’s journal where I’d stored them. I put the journal and folio into a battered leather backpack I found in the back of Ben’s closet, and tucked it under the bottom of my laundry basket full of dirty clothes, just in case. I knew I should return the journal to the archives, but couldn’t bring myself to let go of it yet.
The Scribe of Siena Page 4