The Scribe of Siena

by Melodie Winawer

  A flour-dusted man met us at the door, a broad smile creasing his face. “Gabriele, how unlike you, to pay a visit before nightfall—how did you manage to tear yourself away from your work? Rinaldo has gone to purchase our grain, and Bianca is upstairs sleeping.” He caught sight of me and his smile widened. “And who, may I ask, is this delightful guest? Will she be joining us for dinner?” Gabriele. I registered his name with a start. The baker, whom I assumed was Gabriele’s uncle Martellino, bowed at the waist, producing a small puff of flour from his apron. Before Gabriele could answer, a young woman came out from the back of the shop. She was shorter than Uncle, and trying to see around his width without success.

  “Father, move, I can’t see through you!” The baker moved to the side and she squeezed through the doorway. “Gabriele, aren’t you supposed to be painting the Ospedale?” The girl caught sight of me. “Were you planning to introduce your companion? Dinner is not ready yet.” When she saw Gabriele her face changed abruptly. “Gabriele—your clothes are stained with ash—what happened?” As my brain put the pieces together: Gabriele, painter, Ospedale, Accorsi, I felt the hair on my arms rise.

  “This good lady is a scribe at the Ospedale, and she was trapped in a fire from which I managed to extract her. May I present my cousin Ysabella, and,” he said, nodding toward the baker, “my uncle, Martellino.”

  Ysabella touched my hand solicitously. “What are you doing keeping this poor woman standing outside in the street? Gabriele, have you no sense?” She turned to me with a much kinder expression. “Come inside and sit; I’ll bring you a cup of spiced wine to revive you.”

  I turned to my rescuer. “Your name is Gabriele?”

  “Yes, Gabriele Beltrano Accorsi. It is my great pleasure to serve you. And you, Signora?”

  “Beatrice.” I said it the Italian way. “Beatrice Alessandra Trovato.” Seeing Gabriele in front of me now, as real as my own solid self, unnerved me. I’d created a person in my head, based on the words I’d read. My imaginary Gabriele was pale, effete, and emotionally close to the surface, with no sense of humor. That virtual person had no relationship to the man standing in front of me at all.

  The real Gabriele was much taller than I had expected—taller than me and taller than most of the other people I’d encountered in the fourteenth century—and although he was slim, no one would have described him as effete. He moved gracefully, despite his height. Oddly, I couldn’t read him at all. His voice was quiet, but the sort of quiet that makes you aware of the power underneath, like an ocean without wind—peaceful, but you know you are no match for it.

  Ysabella and Martellino led me to a low bench, inquiring after my health. Ysabella disappeared and returned with a tray of enticing items: a cup of hypocras—wine with spices and honey—a wedge of pale yellow cheese, and slices of fresh bread, still warm from the oven. I devoured it all shamelessly, thanking them between bites. While I ate, I took in the details of the room around me. Where there would someday be a hall table and a lamp that I’d almost knocked over on my first day in modern Siena, now a wooden flour chest—I’d heard Clara call it a madia—stood against the wall. A set of neatly organized weights and a scale were displayed in the front of the shop. The wood-burning oven with its arched opening proclaimed the baker’s trade, along with the flat long-handled wooden paddles that reminded me of pizza parlors back home. What I’d known as a decorative fireplace had once been the hearth of this medieval kitchen.

  A trestle table with benches on either side was set up in the room, ready for a family meal—dinner was the midday meal in this century; supper came at night. Two huge iron pots hung on a chain above a lit fire: one with water heating, the other releasing a meaty scent. A narrow shelf held several jars, a mortar and pestle, a salt box, a set of nested brass cooking bowls, a copper frying pan, and a set of earthenware dishes. A few impressively large utensils hung on pegs from the wall near the fire.

  Once I had finished eating, Ysabella stood up and announced I must come upstairs to rest. She had clearly marked me as her project. Gabriele stood up to assist us, but Ysabella waved him away. “I can provide the lady all she needs,” she said authoritatively. Gabriele looked at her with warmth, then turned to me. “You are in the best possible hands with our Ysabella. Just be certain to do everything she says.”

  I followed Ysabella up the steep stairs, reluctant to be separated from the author of the journal I’d pored over in modern Siena. At the top of the stairs, I could still hear Gabriele and his uncle talking in hushed voices below. Ysabella led me into what had been Ben’s bedroom, but there were no books and papers piled on the floor, just fresh-smelling rushes over the wooden boards. Being there, but with no sign of Ben’s presence, made me miss him acutely. But now, neither he nor anyone else I had known and loved in my old time even existed yet.

  Ysabella’s next question effectively distracted me. “Would you like to bathe? It will help dispel the smell of smoke from your skin and hair.”

  “You have a bathtub?” I hadn’t had a real bath since my last access to twenty-first-century plumbing.

  “We may not be casati,” she began—I recognized the word that designated the noble classes—“but my father built our own tub. The public baths are better equipped, but I hope you will find our modest version pleasing.”

  What an idiot I’d been. For weeks I’d been splashing awkwardly with a pitcher and basin of water in my little room, and meanwhile all over the city, and maybe in the very building I lived in, people were luxuriating in big bathtubs. “I’m very grateful for your hospitality.”

  Ysabella smiled broadly, then yelled down the stairs at the top of her lungs.

  “Fazio! Bring hot water, and be quick about it! There is a pot already on the fire.” She disappeared out the door and soon returned, dragging a small round tub made of wooden slats, lined with heavy white oiled cloth. I got up to help.

  “You must recover your strength.” Ysabella pushed me firmly down onto the large curtained bed and took off down the stairs. I sat on the edge of the bed and looked around the room. The one window had no glass in it now; I could see the translucent oiled paper rolled up above the window opening and beyond it a rectangle of sky. After a few minutes Ysabella and a boy with floppy black hair came back carrying the first of several steaming buckets. When the boy had left, I stood to peel off my smoky dress. I unhooked my bra and stepped out of my underwear carefully, feeling wobbly. Ysabella was staring at my bra as if she were a naturalist discovering a new species.

  “What manner of garment is that?” The most mundane things from my old life could get me into trouble.

  “Oh, I made it myself,” I said airily but held on to it so she couldn’t get a close look. Hooks and eyes were probably medieval enough to avoid suspicion, but not elastic or nylon. Ysabella was gracious enough to leave me to my bath without further questions, and I lowered myself into the hot water, sighing with pleasure. I had to bring my knees against my chest to fit, but that couldn’t diminish the exquisite sensation of immersion. I thought of the next letter I’d write to Nathaniel, telling him how offering a bath to guests was a normal thing here.

  Ysabella returned as the bath was beginning to cool off. She carried a clean white linen chemise—a more appropriate medieval undergarment than my anachronistic underwear.

  “I’ll wash your gown with our other laundry,” she said, briskly, and I didn’t argue. I kept the bra and panties.

  Ysabella handed me a gown made of blue-dyed light wool. It was long-sleeved like all the dresses I’d seen here, and laced in back, allowing for a snug fit through the body. I was comforted to see that the new dress had a higher neckline than my old green one. As I dropped the dress over my head I wondered whose it was. It would have been at least a foot too long for Ysabella. The thought that it might have been Paola’s—Gabriele’s late wife’s—chilled me. I thanked Ysabella and she nodded quietly. As I dressed I felt dizzy again, and had to sit down on the wooden chest.

  Ysabe
lla motioned to the bed and I gave in to her command. She brought me a cup of milk mixed with honey and ginger, placed a moist cloth smelling of lavender on my forehead, and left the room, making the wooden steps creak.

  I had a few sips of the warm milk and lay down. After a while the smell of lavender was replaced by a stronger scent wafting up the stairs. Something with anise maybe, or fennel, onions, chicken. It wasn’t long before the soporific effects of the bath and warm drink began to wear off and my thoughts sharpened. I just met Gabriele Accorsi. The fourteenth-century journal writer, fresco painter, and rescuer all had to be the same man—and he would soon be eating chicken stew downstairs, in my brother’s future house. The whole thing was implausibly coincidental, but not impossible—no more impossible than traveling back in time. I listened for Gabriele’s voice from the kitchen but I mostly heard Ysabella. She was a force to be reckoned with, despite her youth, and I could see that the men of the household respected her imperious will.

  That last meandering thought put an end to my easy idleness. Here I was, lying in bed with a scented cloth on my head while my colleagues back at the Ospedale were dealing with the aftereffects of a devastating fire. I sat up abruptly and headed down the stairs to find Gabriele, Ysabella, and Martellino sitting at the table in the kitchen, eating.

  “I must return to the Ospedale.” Three heads swiveled toward me.

  “You are not well enough,” Ysabella exclaimed with outrage. I saw Martellino and Gabriele exchange glances.

  “Monna Trovato, I hope you will accept our hospitality and the healing ministrations of my daughter Ysabella; she learned a bit of the womanly art from her mother, who lives now with the angels.” Martellino stopped speaking for a moment before he resumed. “Her dress becomes you, Signora.”

  I put my hand to the smooth fabric of the skirt. It had belonged to his late wife, Ysabella’s mother. I wondered how she had died. “Thank you for letting me wear it,” I said, “I’m honored.”

  “Please keep it,” Martellino added. “And do stay with us until you regain your strength, at which time we would be happy to accompany you back to your home, or the Ospedale.”

  I did not correct his assumption that my home and the Ospedale were two different places. I chose my next words carefully. “Ser Martellino, I could not have wished for better care than your family has provided. Your nephew saved my life, and your daughter has returned me to health. I feel hardly deserving of such generosity.” I saw Ysabella and her father both smile. So far so good. “But I can’t justify resting here, while my colleagues and friends deal with the fire and its consequences.”

  “I will escort you back immediately, if you feel well enough,” Gabriele said. Ysabella opened her mouth to protest, but Gabriele put his hand on her arm. “You have done your part in returning our lovely guest to health, good cousin. But regrettably we both must leave your competent hands to return to our work—even more work than before, now that this terrible event has occurred. Thank God it was not worse.”

  As we headed back out into the street I registered that he’d said lovely guest. Of course it might have just been a polite turn of speech. I glanced up at him surreptitiously, but he kept his gaze forward. “Thank you again for your help. I would have died back there if it hadn’t been for you.”

  “I am glad to have been able to protect you from injury, or worse.” Gabriele stopped and turned toward me. The crowds of people in the street parted around us like a stream around stones. “Though it appears some force other than my own had your protection in mind. When I arrived at your side, the room was aflame and the air full of smoke. You slept, without a single injury—no burns, no blisters, no poisoning of your breath. You have at least one saint protecting you on your pilgrimage.”

  “How do you know I’m a pilgrim?”

  “A woman who lives alone in the Ospedale, speaks with a peculiar accent, has no nearby family to which she would prefer to turn to when offered help by a stranger, and cannot help staring at everything she sees along the streets? With this ample evidence, I hazarded a guess.”

  “It’s not nice to make fun of immigrants,” I said sarcastically. Gabriele responded with a puzzled look and an apologetic bow. Apparently 650 years make a big difference in social convention and my sarcasm wasn’t immediately recognized. Plus, he’d probably never heard the word immigrant.

  “I only meant that your obvious delight in the wonders of the city around you—a city whose beauties I marvel at daily—gives me great pleasure. Wherever you are from, it certainly gives rise to women with remarkable temper and force of will.”

  He smiled, and I couldn’t help smiling back. “Lucca,” I said, reflexively.

  “I have never visited Lucca but hope to do so; I hear it is a haven for pilgrims as well?” I nodded again, rather than expose my ignorance.

  When we reached the Ospedale the smell of smoke still hung in the air. There were puddles of water on the pavement from the bucket brigade, and the place was teeming with people—pilgrims evacuated from the pellegrinaio, robed wards, men and women of the lay orders that staffed the Ospedale. A familiar figure appeared out of the crowd, moving quickly in our direction. Umiltà’s robes billowed out behind her, making her look like a small sailboat in a high wind.

  “Beatrice—it is truly a miracle to see you here, unharmed. May God be praised for his beneficence. How did you manage to escape the flames? It appears that the scriptorium’s hearth was the source of the conflagration—you might have easily perished.”

  She stared at me as if intense scrutiny might give her the answer. I need some facts to defend you properly, she might have said. Her eyes went rapidly to Gabriele, who was standing beside me, then back to me.

  “I didn’t do a thing with the hearth.” I didn’t mention that I was totally incapable of managing the fireplace. “I fell asleep while I was working.” I inclined my head in Gabriele’s direction. “Luckily, Messer Accorsi found me.”

  “Messer Accorsi, we owe you our gratitude twice: once for turning your hand to the beautification of our facade, and again for rescuing this devoted pilgrim and grieving widow.” Gabriele shot me a look after Umiltà said the word widow.

  “It is my great pleasure, Suor Umiltà, to make your acquaintance at last.” Gabriele bowed deeply. “I regret that the circumstances of our meeting are so unfortunate. I know Monna Trovato regretted her inability to stay and give aid to the Ospedale, but I assure you that her condition was such that it could not be allowed.”

  Umiltà nodded, satisfied, then shifted her gaze to me. “Beatrice, you must rest. I shall have Clara attend you in your chamber. Will a physician be needed?”

  “No, Messer Accorsi’s cousin has taken very good care of me. Was anyone hurt?”

  “Fortunately not. And the fire was found early, thanks to Messer Accorsi. This is not the Ospedale’s first fire, though I certainly hope it will be our last. Tonight the servants are cleaning the worst of the mess from the scriptorium. Tomorrow, though, we will begin to inventory and repair the damaged books.” By “we” I knew she meant “you.”

  “There is nothing more to do tonight?”

  “You would do the Ospedale a better service coming to work well-rested tomorrow than getting in the way of perfectly competent servants doing their job today.” There was no point in arguing with Umiltà. Before I left, I said good-bye to Gabriele, who was watching my interchange with Umiltà with a small smile on his face.

  “Thank you, Messer Accorsi,” I said, “for everything.”

  “It has been my great pleasure,” he returned, bowing at the waist. I turned away and headed reluctantly to the Pellegrinaio delle Donne. As I headed up the stairs to my room, my legs started feeling shaky and I admitted to myself that Umiltà might have been right about my need for rest. I fell asleep with the image of Fra Bosi’s tear-stained face in my head.

  * * *

  By the beginning of August the scriptorium was functioning again, thanks to the efforts of a team of Ospeda
le wards, led by Fra Bosi. Several documents were destroyed beyond repair, others were damaged but with the text still legible. Bosi set me the task of recopying pages, and Egidio worked around the clock churning out paper to meet the demand.

  The day of the fire took on a strange encapsulated quality for me, as if it were outside the normal order of time. I had vivid flashbacks for days afterward—seeing Gabriele’s face haloed by sky as I awoke on the Ospedale pavement, and smelling the lavender rising from the bath Ysabella had drawn for me. I stared out the broken scriptorium window periodically as I worked, but Gabriele hadn’t returned to his post yet. I felt restless and jittery and had trouble concentrating for more than an hour at a time. Ben’s mystery seemed like a story I’d once read a long time ago.

  After the fire, Umiltà decided to make me an employee rather than a charity case and proposed a small stipend to supplement my room and board as the first-assistant scribe. Earning money for the first time in the fourteenth century hammered home the fact of my existence here—not just a tourist anymore. I had a funny thought of applying for a time traveler’s work visa but had no one to share the joke with. I kept the coins in a pouch I carried at my waist, and every now and then I’d pull the pieces of silver out to look at them. Their strangeness reminded me of how impossibly far from home I was, without any obvious route back.

  * * *

  After a week of working dawn to dusk to repair damaged texts, I had time to think again, and thinking led inevitably to anxiety. Faced with my knowledge of the future, and my growing doubt that I would be able to leave the fourteenth century before the Plague arrived, I had an overwhelming urge to start planning. But how could I plan anything? No one else knew the Plague was coming, so if I tried to warn people, they wouldn’t believe me, or worse, they’d think I was a witch. Neither outcome would help eliminate the Plague and both risked eliminating me. I had no illusions about my power to prevent the most deadly health disaster in history from killing more than half the world’s population. Even in an electronically connected modern society with high-speed transportation and stockpiled antibiotics it would have been a massive undertaking.