Maybe there was still something I could do for Siena, using my medical knowledge. Quarantine? I remembered reading about Milan’s response to the Plague—the communal government’s draconian solution was to barricade sick people into their homes to die. It might have worked—Milan was known to have suffered much less than most of Northern Italy—but it was a barbaric solution I wasn’t planning to encourage in Siena. Besides, most Plague wasn’t transmitted person to person.
I had five antibiotic tablets at the bottom of the bag I kept in my room; probably not enough to cure myself, let alone anyone else. I had a fleeting thought of leaving bread out to get moldy in the hopes that I’d make penicillin by accident, but discarded it as absurd, in part because of my ignorance on the topic. I wished, not for the first time, that Ben were around; a microbiologist would have been tremendously useful. I heard Egidio outside the scriptorium and knew I’d run out of thinking time for the moment.
* * *
After the fire, Egidio started acting funny. He blushed painfully whenever we met and refused to meet my gaze. I suspected he was feeling guilty for leaving me unprotected in the scriptorium. I cornered him, unable to tolerate the tension.
“Egidio, I’m fine, you know.”
“Yes, Monna Trovato.” Egidio looked so miserable I wanted to put my arm around his shoulders, but I knew it wasn’t appropriate behavior for a medieval woman, even a widow.
“Egidio, it’s not your job to take care of me.”
“I failed in my duty.”
“Your duty is to do what people tell you.” It was true, my translation of a medieval servant’s job. Egidio still looked grim. I had an idea. “Why don’t I teach you how to write a bit, and then you can help me sort through this mess. Will that assuage your guilt?”
“You would do that, Signora?” He beamed like someone who’d just been promised a spot in heaven.
Over the next few days, between stints with burned and waterlogged documents, I worked with Egidio on his writing. He knew more than he’d let on and just needed some tutorials before he was able to copy simple documents neatly. I showed his writing samples to Fra Bosi, who grudgingly authorized Egidio to act as my assistant. Egidio was floating on a cloud for the rest of the week.
Teaching was a pleasant distraction, but I soon found myself getting increasingly irritable. At the end of every page of copying I’d wander around the scriptorium, shaking out my sore right hand, and end up at the broken window, looking out at the half-finished scaffolding.
On the morning of August 6th, Bosi was off at a meeting of Ospedale officials to discuss a communal subsidy for postfire recovery, and Egidio had gone to buy more pigments for the rapidly diminishing stores of ink. I was so engrossed in repairing a multivolume set of Dante’s works that I barely noticed the banging sound at first. Eventually I stood up to stretch, and realized the sound was coming from outside the broken window. I approached the jagged opening. Outside, I could see the scaffolding, and behind it blue sky with a few drifting white clouds. My view was abruptly blocked by the silhouette of a head.
“I see you are awake this time, in contrast to our last meeting.” Gabriele’s voice came through the missing panes of the window.
I smiled. “Falling asleep on the job didn’t go well last time. I decided not to repeat it.”
“I am pleased another rescue is not necessary, as I have only recently recovered from the first one.” He smiled to soften his words.
“Do you want to come in? It might be easier to chat.”
Gabriele swung himself to the window ledge and stepped into the room.
“How was your time off?”
“To be quite honest, I found it difficult to think of anything else but returning here. A work in progress always compels me powerfully.”
I felt oddly disappointed. “So you came back for the Virgin Mary, then.”
“Santa Maria holds a place in all our hearts and souls, but humanity has its charms,” he replied, his eyes finding mine.
“I’m honored.” I remembered the painting of Saint Christopher I’d seen in the gallery just before I left and felt a faint spin of vertigo. Had he already painted me before we’d even met? “What are you painting?” I forgot for a moment that I knew the answer; Donata had told me, in modern Siena.
“The Assumption of the Virgin—ascending to the kingdom of heaven in the company of angels. I had thought to make an angel in your likeness, if that would not offend you.” Gabriele tilted his head slightly to one side. I felt the bloom of heat rush upward from my neck to my face. “If it should seem too forward a request, I shall reconsider. . . .”
“No, no, it’s fine. I’m flattered.”
“Many thanks, Signora.” I snuck a look at him, trying to figure out whether this was his version of flirting, or just the mundane efforts of an artist trying to find a model. I wished, not for the first time, that I could use my empathy at will, in this case to figure out what Gabriele was thinking. But for whatever reason, either my inability or his opacity, my attempt to read him failed. He changed the subject gracefully. “Perhaps we should go back to our respective labors until the midday meal? Then we may feel at greater liberty to speak. I would be delighted if you would join me.”
“It’s a date.”
Gabriele smiled, perhaps at the strangeness of my modern idiom, and disappeared again through the open window.
For the next few hours we worked in tandem, with the Ospedale wall between us. By the time the noon bells rang, I’d managed to get through copying the most damaged section of the Inferno. The work was absorbing enough that I’d actually stopped thinking about my upcoming meal plans until a shadow fell over the page I was working on.
“The torments of hell are not a good subject to fuel the appetite.” Gabriele’s voice made me jump.
The door of the scriptorium creaked open on its hinges. Clara stood on the threshold, her hand over her mouth and her eyes round with surprise.
“Ser Accorsi, at your service.” Gabriele bowed graciously. “It is my great pleasure to make your acquaintance.”
Clara’s face flushed pink. “Oh, thank you, Ser, our pleasure is to serve you in whatever way we may. Are you hungry? In need of a cool place to rest? May I bring wine?”
“Monna Trovato and I were about to seek refreshment as a respite from the morning’s work.”
Clara gazed at me as if I had been crowned the queen of England, or the local equivalent.
“Ser, I would be most pleased to bring your dinner to the scriptorium.”
“We both thank you for your gracious offer.” If we ever got to know each other better, Gabriele would have to stop speaking on my behalf, but I did appreciate his medieval graciousness.
Clara backed out of the room with an eager, if somewhat clumsy, combination of a bow, nod, and curtsy. I could hear her footsteps accelerate once she was outside the door.
“Clara seems to be in awe of you, Ser Accorsi.”
Gabriele smiled wryly. “I suspect she has never seen an artist before. I am not a particularly remarkable example of the breed.”
“Do all artists rescue women from burning buildings?”
“If presented with the opportunity, I am sure many would.”
“That’s a generous view of your profession.”
“I strive to be generous, as I hope others would be toward me.”
“You certainly have been—taking me to your house, giving me clothes, feeding me dinner, taking care of me after that fire.”
He shook his head modestly. “Ysabella did the caring and the cooking, and the dress is a result of my uncle’s generosity.”
“I owe all of you my thanks.”
“You have suffered many losses, Monna Trovato, and now live without the protection your husband once provided you. My family and I are happy to be able to provide some modicum of the care that you have lost.”
I had lost, but not a husband. My lies weighed on me in the face of that pure generosity. “I haven�
��t told you very much about myself.”
“Confidences cannot be hurried.”
Once again, I was presented with an opportunity to tell someone the truth, and the desire to do so was overwhelming. I wiped my eyes with the back of my hand. “I don’t mean to make a spectacle of myself. I’m sorry.”
“Your tears reveal a vulnerability not immediately apparent in your demeanor,” Gabriele said softly. Clara was due to come back soon with dinner, and if I was going to say something, I had to do it fast.
“Listen, there is something I have to tell you. I’m not a widow. I’ve never been married, in fact. But my mother died as I was born, along with my twin sister. I don’t know who my father is. My brother was my only family; he raised me after our mother died, and now he’s dead too.” This time I started to cry in earnest, the tears rolling down my cheeks. I didn’t add that I had been wrenched almost seven centuries out of my own time, though it was certainly adding to my loneliness. I hoped Clara would take her time with the food.
“We share a great deal of sorrow, you and I,” Gabriele said, bending his head. “I lost my wife, as you have lost your sister and brother, and I too have neither mother nor father. In our shared grief perhaps we shall find comfort.” He ended his sentence with an inflection that was almost a question. His hands remained at his sides, but his voice was like an embrace.
“We could both probably use a little comfort.” I already knew about his late wife and his orphanhood, from the journal he had written. I wished I could tell him more of the truth in return for that offer of comfort. He handed me a linen handkerchief that I used as gracefully as possible.
“The deep pleasure of work helps, does it not?” He didn’t say much, but what he said had a tendency to be unerringly accurate.
“Yes, it does. Quite a bit.”
That was the moment Clara chose to come in with our dinner. She seemed too distracted by Gabriele’s presence to notice I’d been crying; in fact, she didn’t even look at me. From the tray she’d brought, I saw that Clara must have been extra-inspired by feeding the Visiting Artist. I wondered for whom the elaborate meal had been originally intended, since none of it could have been made without advance notice.
Gabriele received Clara’s offering with a grace so exquisite, I thought she might swoon. He even asked her to recite the menu. She rolled off the list of dishes with pride.
“Lasagne, Ser, from pastam fermentatam, served with cheese and spices, limonia of chicken, and torta di marzapane. I hope it pleases you, Ser.”
“A beautiful meal, brought by a lovely maid with obvious talents in the kitchen.” Gabriele bowed at the waist. Clara left beaming.
My first lasagne in the fourteenth century was outrageously good. Fermentatam must have meant “leavened,” and the pasta was springy and tender. It didn’t bear much resemblance to the modern Italian lasagna. The pasta was cut into individual squares about an inch wide, tossed with freshly grated Parmesan cheese, pepper, and a heavenly combination of cardamom, nutmeg, and cinnamon. It wasn’t sweet, but was almost rich enough to be dessert, and we ate it with pointed wooden sticks a bit longer than a regular toothpick. The marzipan tart at the end of our meal reminded me of the now-defunct Elk Candy Shop on the Upper East Side in New York City, where Ben would buy me a marzipan figurine every year at Christmas. I’d try to make it last for weeks, taking a tiny bite each day and wrapping it back up in its shiny decorated foil.
When our plates were empty, Gabriele leaned back to speak. “I suppose you are really a scribe. Is at least that part of the story true?”
“I am a scribe, yes. I’m sorry to have deceived you. It’s complicated.”
“It does appear to be.” He said this wryly but without barbs. “And are you a pilgrim?”
“I have traveled very far. Is that enough for the moment?” That was as much as I could say while still telling the truth.
He nodded. “I will not interrogate you further and risk spoiling your digestion.”
When the door to the scriptorium slammed against the wall I expected Clara, but instead it was an unfamiliar boy in a black-and-white tunic and hose.
“Messer Gabriele Beltrano Accorsi?” The boy was out of breath, as if he’d come running.
“Before you,” Gabriele said, turning to face the messenger.
“I have been charged to deliver this summons.” The boy handed a rolled-up parchment to Gabriele. It was sealed with red wax and imprinted with an official-looking seal: two young boys nursing from a she-wolf, the symbol of Siena’s origins.
“I come from the office of the Podestà, Ser Accorsi,” the boy said, squaring his shoulders. His voice cracked slightly from high to low. “Your presence is expected on the third day following the Feast of the Assumption.” He bowed, and waited for Gabriele’s response.
“Am I to be told the matter for which I am summoned?”
“It is explained in the document you hold in your hands,” the messenger said. “At least, I think that is what it says. I didn’t write it or read it. I assure you, Ser, it was given to me sealed as you see it.” He gazed up at Gabriele again, this time looking more like a boy and less like the official he was trying to be.
“I am certain you have carried out your assignment with the utmost honesty, as befits your role.” It amazed me how agreeable Gabriele was at the delivery of such an ominous message.
“I shall go then,” the boy said, awkwardly, and turned on one heel, leaving as quickly as he had come in. He forgot to close the door. Gabriele and I stared at the roll of parchment.
“Gabriele, are you in some kind of trouble?”
He frowned as he began to peel off the wax seal.
“I sincerely hope not,” he said, but judging from the look on Gabriele’s face as he read through the summons, I suspected that trouble was coming.
PART IV
WITNESS
The flurry of activity leading up to the Feast of the Assumption precluded more soul-baring sessions with Gabriele. He withdrew into himself—it was a subtle shift, but I felt the difference sharply. He worked outside the scriptorium steadily, but his comments to me were more formal and distant.
I was partially relieved to go back to my guarded self. I’d worried about the consequences of discarding my widow-from-Lucca story, since I wasn’t in a position to tell the truth. But I missed the brief access I’d been given to Gabriele’s internal world—both the honesty of his suffering, and the comfort he might be able to offer me.
In any case, all of the Ospedale staff, myself included, were occupied with preparations for the Feast, which fell on August 15th. I had been given the task of producing the libri dei censi: books recording all the tributes paid to the commune during the festival. Most came in the currency of candles; wax was expensive, and even ordinary tapers were costly. Under Fra Bosi’s direction, I itemized the number and weight in wax of all the candles that had been promised. The commune itself was to present a single candle weighing the equivalent of a hundred pounds on the eve of the Feast of the Assumption. The weight of wax to be used in the tributes was actually written into statutory law. I found that funny at first, but there were probably some twenty-first-century statutes that would look just as funny 650 years after being written.
Umiltà took me aside at the beginning of the week to explain. “We come together on the Eve of the Assumption to pay homage to the Queen of Heaven, the source of Siena’s strength and solace. We light thousands of candles to honor her, and in doing so, create a fire so bright that the Virgin herself, looking down upon the city from her heavenly throne, will see the brilliance of our tribute and the magnitude of our devotion.”
The day before the Feast of the Assumption, Gabriele climbed through the window and walked over to my desk. Today he was wearing a white linen shirt open at the neck for his work in the sun, belted over dark brown leggings. His feet disappeared into shoes that tapered to a long point in the front. I had gotten so used to medieval fashion that seeing men in tights no
longer struck me as odd. The outfits of fourteenth-century Italy could look pretty attractive, on the right man. Not everyone looks good in tights.
“Are you well, Monna Trovato? I regret we have not had ample time for conversation recently.” He was gracious, as usual, but I could still sense the burden of the unresolved summons weighing down on him.
“My hand is tired after five days of writing down every candle, banner, and coin each magistracy and representative of the contado territories owes, but otherwise I’m fine. And you?”
“Well, thank you, particularly so at this moment.” He smiled at me, a sincere smile radiating outward. It felt like the sun breaking through clouds.
“What have you been doing out there? You can’t still be working on the scaffolding after all this time.”
“Indeed. Since you express such interest, I was preparing the wall over the entryway to be plastered.”
“What does that entail?”
Gabriele looked at me as if he were assessing how much to describe. I’d seen that look on doctors’ faces as they prepared to explain something to a patient. How much does she really want to know, and how much can she understand?
“Moisture is the enemy of fresco painting—the force against which we painters gird our works to survive the centuries.” I couldn’t bear the thought that not a single brushstroke of the painting Gabriele was preparing would last, and it was strange to know this when he didn’t. My distress must have shown on my face.
“Your reaction is like a painter’s,” Gabriele said. “One might think you were no stranger to the brush.”
“You describe it vividly, that’s all. I’m no artist. How do you prevent it?”
“I prepare the surface of the wall with tar, then build drains and gutters to divert the collection of water. Now I am smoothing the surface to receive the intonaco.” He looked at me, waiting for signs of boredom.
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