The Scribe of Siena

by Melodie Winawer

  On the next page I found a familiar name: Vitalis Signoretti. The same Signoretti I knew? The family did date its prominence in Siena back to the fourteenth century. He seemed to be a patron of the arts—many of the sums by his name were for paintings on Ospedale property. Based on the numbers, he had a ton of money and was spending at least some of it on art.

  By the time the bells rang for Nones, I had a headache, and my hand and sleeve were stained with ink. But I was done. Bosi appeared in the doorway as I was putting down my pen and came to peer over my shoulder. He picked up the pages, scrutinizing each one and comparing it with the ledger template. I waited, hearing my heartbeat in my ears.

  “You will do, Monna Trovato,” he said. “Return tomorrow after Prime.” And with that, he left, Egidio trailing behind him.

  I stood in the middle of the scriptorium, stunned by my success. I’d just succeeded in landing my first medieval job, a symbol of permanence and stability in a place I wasn’t sure I wanted to remain. I rinsed what ink I could off my hands and sleeve, ruminating. I’d been dismissed, but I wasn’t ready to go back to my room yet.

  I was surrounded by primary sources—thousands of books—sitting on the shelves waiting for me to pull them down and read. What if the answers to Ben’s questions were in one of those books? I’d found that letter among Ben’s papers from Immacolata de’ Medici, mourning her husband’s death, but found no way to connect it to Siena’s downfall. Maybe there was something useful about the Medicis here.

  I started looking at the spines of the books lined up along the long walls, but most had no words. I pulled out, inspected, and returned at least thirty books, climbing ladders to reach the highest. I’d settle for anything Florentine I could find, though it was even more of a long shot in a medieval Sienese library than it had been in the modern one. Then I got lucky.

  It was a thin, bound transcript of the procedings of the city council, with the date, 1342, on the frontispiece. I looked through the pages. Walter of Brienne, Duke of Athens, who had briefly been the head of the Signoria of Florence, had visited Siena that year. He’d been received with a lavish banquet, which included a flaky pie of live songbirds that flew out during the party. The guests were listed too, and interestingly, Signoretti’s name came up again, and later in the list, a Ser de’ Medici, also visiting from Florence.

  I stopped reading to think. Was this the same Medici—the executed Medici—mentioned in Immacolata’s letter? This visit had happened five years earlier—if it was the same Medici, had he been going to Siena for all those years? Doing what? And if it was the same Medici, he’d been in the same room with Signoretti, the wealthy Sienese nobleman, at least once. I felt a strange chill looking at those names together: Signoretti and Medici, one from Siena, the other from her rival commune, both at this party with the head of the Florentine government. Had they met then? When I put it back on the shelf, my fingers were tingling, but I didn’t know how to interpret what I’d seen. I wished I could have asked Ben what he thought.

  After that, there was nothing else directly relevant to my questions. I spent some time poring over a gorgeous illustrated copy of Dante’s Divine Comedy, and what looked like a mathematical treatise in Arabic before I gave up. Exhausted and starving, I made my way back to my room. There I found a savory pie waiting for me, still warm and smelling of saffron. When I bit into it, cheese, cinnamon, and raisins filled my mouth. I silently blessed Clara as I chewed, and washed the pie down with wine. I climbed onto the bed without getting undressed, and when I closed my eyes, I could see little black letters wavering under my eyelids.

  * * *

  July 7, 1347

  Just after dawn, Gabriele started to climb the scaffolding in the Signoretti Chapel, his breath quickening from effort and anticipation. On the high platform he mixed fresh plaster for the intonaco, and with a trowel began laying down a thin layer at the seam he’d left the night before. The line of Anna’s bed, where the plaid coverlet met with the border of the wooden chest alongside it, had made a natural stopping place, and the division between the dried plaster and fresh intonaco would vanish easily in the final painting. Once the plaster was firm enough, Gabriele polished the surface to an even smoothness.

  The first hours of the giornata, a day’s work for the fresco painter, set the whole day’s work in motion. A calm beginning let the work roll forward with a sweet, measured cadence. Gabriele laid out the bags of spolvero—he would use this soot to mark the drawing’s outline—and the jars of pigment he’d prepared. The bedside chest took shape under his brush as he worked. Some painters from Simone’s workshop complained about painting inanimate objects in their eagerness to depict the human form, but for Gabriele it all pulsed with the same life and beauty—a line of inlay, a metal lock, the intricate geometric pattern of the carpet—all as worthy of attention as the Virgin’s curving fingers, or the lines on Gioacchino’s anxious face.

  At the beginning of the day when the plaster was still damp the pigment absorbed slowly, as if the wall and the paint were shy lovers, but at the end of each day, as the angle of the sun sharpened, the wall avidly embraced the colors. Gabriele worked rapidly, aware of the urgency of drying plaster. He leaned back to examine the red of the nursemaid’s robe against the rose of the infant Virgin, her right hand raised in a baby’s first salute. The juxtaposition was just as he’d imagined it. He put his brush down reluctantly; soon it would be too dark to paint. He headed out into the busy streets as the light was just beginning to fade.

  On the way home, Gabriele stopped to listen to a trovatore singing Dante’s Paradiso. A small crowd had gathered in appreciation—an elderly cleric next to a restless young son of a nobleman, and a few scruffy-looking children. The singer’s sweet voice held them all entranced.

  Quando Beatrice in sul sinistro fianco

  Vidi rivolta, e riguardar nel sole

  Aquila sì non gli s’affisse unquanco.

  E sì come secondo raggio suole

  Uscir del primo, e risalire in suso,

  Pur come peregrin che tornar vuole;

  Così dell’ atto suo, per gli occhi infuso

  Nell’ imagine mia, il mio sì fece,

  E fissi gli occhi al sole oltre a nostr’ uso.

  When I beheld Beatrice turned to her left and gazing on the sun

  Never did eagle so fix himself thereon.

  And even as a second ray is wont to issue from the first and re-ascend

  (like a pilgrim whose will is to return);

  So from her gesture, through her eyes infused in my imagination, did mine own take shape;

  and I fixed mine eyes upon the sun, transcending our wont.

  Like an artist’s muse, Gabriele thought. The singer had chosen one of Gabriele’s favorite passages. He had a brief vision of his late wife Paola’s face, but to his dismay, her features would not come into focus. She had been a timid almost-child when they wed; but a good match for Gabriele, fatherless and motherless, with only the painter’s trade to support a new family. Gabriele had been inspired to protectiveness and in time, affection, though not passion.

  Within a few months Paola had grown ripe with child, but their babe would never cry or find solace at his mother’s breast. When Paola and their son died, Gabriele had returned to his art with greater intensity. He never spoke of Paola, despite his family’s attempts to draw him out, or to find him a new source of feminine distraction.

  But Gabriele’s muse, to his consternation, did not have Paola’s face. The woman he had painted on the riverbank watching Saint Christopher carry the Christ child came from some shadowy place of visions, not memory. He felt irrationally guilty, as if an imagined woman emerging from the spirit world could signify an infidelity to a wife nearly three years gone.

  The sound of bells reminded him of his cousin Ysabella’s promise of supper. He turned away from the performance and hurried back to his uncle’s house.

  “Gabriele has deigned to grace us with his artist’s presence!” Ysabella
’s words were softened by her wide smile. She stopped short to look at Gabriele.

  “Change your sleeves, else you’ll cover us all with paint.” He looked down at himself, seeing the spattering and smears of color along his arms and hands.

  “Of course, Queen Ysabella,” he said, bowing, and made his way through the shuttered bakery storefront of the house. Gabriele unbuttoned his dirty sleeves at the shoulder as he mounted the stairs to his third-floor bedchamber under the roof, where he attached clean sleeves. His tunic would have to do for now.

  “Don’t forget to wash your hands.” Ysabella’s voice carried up the narrow staircase. As he came down the stairs, Ysabella was smearing the shoulder of mutton with a paste of chopped parsley as the fat dripped and sputtered into the fire.

  “You would make a Franciscan into a glutton with your cooking,” Gabriele said appreciatively. His uncle Martellino entered the kitchen, hands on his belly.

  “She’s already managed that with her father! But I was no Franciscan to begin with.” His broad smile creased his face.

  “Where is our Bianca?” Gabriele asked.

  “Upstairs praying to Saint Nicholas again to protect her unborn child,” said Ysabella, pulling a pan of roasted onions from the fire, edges curled and darkened by the heat.

  “You will see how it feels when your time comes,” Martellino said. Ysabella shook her head but held her tongue. She clearly had no intention of acting like her brother’s wife now or ever; Gabriele had never seen two women less alike.

  The heavy wooden door slammed open against the wall, and Bianca’s husband, Rinaldo, entered the house with his usual excess of noise.

  “When do we eat?” Rinaldo bellowed. “The price of wheat has risen again, and a day at the bank always makes me ravenous.”

  “Food never comes fast enough for you, Rinaldo,” Ysabella retorted, stirring vinegar into the roasted onions and shaking salt over the bowl.

  “No one will want a bride with that tongue.” Rinaldo stared pointedly at his father.

  “I am certain that your sister will find a husband happy to hear what she has to say,” Martellino said tolerantly. “What man would not put up with any amount of haggling for such meals as this?” He put his hand on Ysabella’s shoulder to calm her obvious irritation. “And until such time as she does find a husband, we will certainly benefit from her ample skill in the kitchen. Your mother would be proud of you, my angel.”

  Bianca chose that moment to lower herself painfully down the steep staircase.

  “Sit, Bianca, lest our child appear before his time.” Rinaldo strode to Bianca’s side, leading her to a bench at the table.

  Gabriele sighed inwardly as Rinaldo sat beside him; they would be sharing a tagliere tonight. Most diners gracefully shared the wooden platter, but grace was not in Rinaldo’s nature. Gabriele imagined he might not be eating much this evening, for Rinaldo’s speed at the table was difficult to match.

  The meal began with a brief prayer, then bunches of taut purple grapes to open the palate, followed by the fragrant salad of roasted onions. Martellino kept Rinaldo distracted with questions about new regulations from the city council for pricing loaves, allowing Gabriele to cut off a sizeable chunk of mutton before Rinaldo could attack it. Ysabella spoke into the contented silence before sweetmeats appeared.

  “The crowds at the mercato were buzzing with news,” Ysabella said. “I Noveschi granted the Ospedale communal funds to commission another painting to honor Santa Maria.”

  Bianca fingered a gold chain she wore around her neck. “There is talk about Simone’s pupils, but others say the Lorenzetti brothers . . .”

  “Gabriele is the obvious choice,” Ysabella insisted. She slammed a wedge of creamy white cheese emphatically down on a board on the table, spearing it with a knife.

  Martellino cut a slice from the cheese and chewed as he spoke. “We know our Gabriele’s merit, but the rector of the Ospedale will have to decide for himself. And you, silent one, have you nothing to say about all this?”

  Gabriele could feel his pulse beating at the angle of his jaw. He and the other members of Martini’s studium had struggled to keep the work flowing after their master’s death. He needed to pay the calzoleria to resole his shoes, and it had been some time since he had contributed his share to Martellino’s household expenses.

  “I will submit my name to be considered for the commission,” Gabriele said levelly as he rose from the table. “And an example of my work stands before the rector, each time he enters the doors of the Ospedale. I hope that will guide him.”

  “No sweetmeats for you, Gabriele?” Ysabella looked incredulous. Her figure was a testament to her love of sweets.

  “I have eaten enough to fill my stomach, despite obstacles.” Gabriele’s face remained impassive, making his words seem innocuous. Rinaldo, oblivious, wiped the bottom of the almond bowl with his fingers for the last grains of sugar. Gabriele pushed his chair into the table. “I hope you will excuse me. A day on the scaffolding has made me long for bed.”

  Upstairs in the top-floor chamber where his sketches and studies beckoned from the plaster walls, Gabriele pulled his tunic over his head, then his white cotton shirt. He hung the clothes on the pole protruding from the wall, extinguished the burning candle in its holder, and climbed up onto the large bed, where he said a prayer before he lay down to sleep.

  “God in heaven, let the fifth fresco be mine, that I might serve you and Santa Maria in its painting,” he whispered, closing his eyes. In the dark behind his lids, the image came alive: the Virgin ascending to heaven, borne by four angels with golden wings. As Gabriele’s breathing slowed into the rhythm that precedes dreams, he saw the face of the woman he had painted on the riverbank, her gray-blue eyes the color of the sea.

  So from her gesture, through her eyes infused in my imagination, did mine own take shape;

  and I fixed mine eyes upon the sun, transcending our wont . . .

  I shall make her an angel at the Virgin’s side, Gabriele thought, half dreaming. He smelled damp plaster as he drifted off to sleep.

  * * *

  At last, Iacopo de’ Medici thought as he entered his father’s studium, at last he has deemed me worthy of his trust. For years Iacopo had passed by the closed office door, glancing at the rectangle of wood that barred him from the responsibility he longed to assume. This time, however, the door stood open, and Iacopo entered and bowed his head in deference to his father, who sat behind his desk, writing.

  “You summoned me, Father,” Iacopo said, knowing he should not let his sentence end in the questioning inflection that so infuriated Giovanni de’ Medici. “If you speak in questions, you will be questioned, rather than obeyed,” Giovanni had said, more times than Iacopo could remember.

  Giovanni put down his pen. “Close the door behind you.” It took all of Iacopo’s weight to swing the door shut. “I have business in Siena, Iacopo, and I wish you to accompany me.”

  “I am honored by your trust, Father.” Iacopo ran a hand across the back of his neck where his headaches always began, for one had lodged there as he waited for his father’s summons. But he would not complain now. On the last occasion before his father had left for Siena, one of his maladies had struck, and he had begged off seeing his father to the city gates.

  “I have no patience for this weakness within you that invents ailments. You are a man, now, and a Medici son. You would do better to spend time learning the accounts, rather than lying on your back like a whore waiting for her next visitor. When I am away, your ignorance will be as clear to my associates and clients as it is to me. First master the ledgers. Then we will see if you can manage a business voyage of your own.”

  “I hope one day to earn your trust,” Iacopo had said, pressing the nails of one hand into his palm. And now, it seemed, the day for trust had finally come.

  Although Giovanni had begun to involve Iacopo in the family’s merchant banking firm, he had been notably closemouthed about his trips to S
iena. Iacopo had imagined a secret lover who might satisfy his father’s needs, but the details Giovanni recounted came as a surprise.

  “I must tell you of the business that has brought me to Siena for five years now, in the service of our commune. You are not too young to recall the year Florence submitted herself to the reign of Walter of Brienne, Duke of Athens? I seem to recall you had sprouted a few hairs on your chin by 1342.”

  Iacopo remembered it well. The Medici family’s role in overthrowing Brienne a year after his installation as the head of the Signoria was well known throughout the city and had been a source of political clout for the already prominent Medici family.

  His father continued. “Before it became obvious that Brienne was a disaster for our republic, several powerful families of Florence supported the duke’s regime, in the hope that he would bring economic stability in the wake of their terrible banking failures and the costly war against Lucca. Are you listening?”

  Iacopo shook himself back to the present. He had been thinking about his dinner, the capon that sat heavy in his stomach. Giovanni had always been alert to his drifts of attention.

  “In the year of our Lord 1342, I joined with a group of casati—noble families in Siena—who were barred by law from serving among i Noveschi. Chafing at this insult, they provided a source of unrest worth harnessing. Under the protection and direction of the Duke of Athens, we attempted to incite a revolt against i Noveschi in Siena. We offered the casati, our temporary allies, their rightful place in the seat of government in Siena. We imagined that with these Sienese families on our side, most notably the Signoretti, we might undermine i Noveschi and reestablish a different sort of rule, one that would eventually allow Florence to take control from within. And of course those families would be promised the benefit of a role in the new government as an incentive to joining our cause.”