“I shall give him more extract of Papaver, Suor Umiltà.” An elderly man in a red robe trimmed with white fur appeared at her side with a long-necked glass flask in his hand. The doctor held the container up to the light to peer at the yellowish liquid within it.
“This is Dottore Agnolo di Boccanegra,” Umiltà said, “a most esteemed physician, trained in Paris. We are fortunate to have him here. And this”—Umiltà turned to me—“is our new assistant scribe, Beatrice Trovato.” I wondered what fourteenth-century Paris might be like. Dottore Boccanegra bowed briefly before looking up at the flask again.
“The color of his urine proclaims his derangement. Papaver will calm his fevered state and balance his humors.”
“Not yet,” I said. Everyone stared at me. “It could make him worse, with a head injury. And you won’t know how he’s doing either, if you keep drugging him.”
“Have you experience of physic, Signora?” Boccanegra wrinkled his nose at me as if I hadn’t taken a bath in too long, which from my perspective was certainly true. I figured I’d better come up with something plausible quickly.
“My late husband was similarly afflicted,” I lied, “and the poppy blunted his ability to speak in his last hours. He was unable to give his final confession.” They all looked at me with new understanding.
The physician changed the bandage while I stood there, and I saw a bruise on the young priest’s head, with a hint of swelling under the skin. I didn’t like the location—right at his temple, over the middle meningeal artery. A fracture there, and he’d be set up for a rapidly expanding epidural hematoma—a lens-shaped collection of blood between the skull and the brain—followed, if not checked, by coma, then death. His color was pale, his breathing irregular. Not good. I stole a hand out to feel his pulse—slow. Also not good. After the dressing was replaced, he looked tidier, but to me, worse. He had stopped moaning, and when I pinched his arm surreptitiously, he didn’t withdraw or flinch. I watched the physician examine him, restraining my desire to take over. The priest had the telltale signs of increased intracranial pressure—something was either swelling or collecting inside his rigid, unyielding skull. And if that pressure were not relieved he might never wake up again. How could I intervene? I had no instruments, no anesthesiologist, and perhaps most dauntingly, no authority.
“He asked for me?”
“He described you in a moment of clarity before the third dose of Papaver,” Umiltà said. Before I could consider why he might have done so, the buzz of the crowded pellegrinaio dampened suddenly and I felt the throb of a vicious headache, unbearable pressure like a vise at both temples. And I knew, with the certainty I now recognized from my hours in the OR, that blood was pooling under the curved table of the priest’s skull. A few more minutes, and it would be over. I dragged myself out of the priest’s head, still reeling from the remembered agony.
Lack of authority be damned—I had to do something. “Dottore Boccanegra,” I said, “have you a . . .” I wanted to do a craniotomy, but that terminology would not fly here. I stretched back to my med school history of medicine course until I had it. “Have you a trephine?”
Boccanegra’s eyebrows rose. “This scribe knows more of medicine than most women of her ilk.”
I went back to my old excuse. “My husband died thus. But he could have been saved, I was told, had the augur been applied to his skull in good time. . . .” I snuck a look at the priest’s face again, wondering whether under one of those eyelids one pupil was dilating now, as the nerve responsible for its contraction was crushed under the advancing edge of brain displaced by blood.
Boccanegra rubbed his chin with one hand. “In some cases injury to the skull and its tender contents may only be relieved by an aperture such as you describe.” I held my breath but my mind was racing. Come on, make up your mind, Dottore, before we lose him. “This procedure is, however, more often the purview of the military surgeon.” Boccanegra said this in a lofty tone, as if he were placing himself far above the surgeon’s lowly existence, but something about his demeanor made me wonder whether all that confidence was real. If I was going to convince Boccanegra to let me take over, I’d need to know what he was thinking. I took the direct route. It was surprisingly easy to slip into his head and find what I needed, and once I could read his thoughts I almost laughed out loud. The man was absolutely terrified. He’d never done a trephination; in fact, he’d never done any surgery at all. Clearly my experience trumped his. If I offered help, he’d have to take it.
“Dottore, my knowledge is, of course, vastly inferior to your substantial expertise . . . but I did, in my husband’s last desperate hours, assist the surgeon with the procedure, which might have saved him had it been applied in time. If I assist you, perhaps we could save this young priest from a similar fate.” At last, Boccanegra nodded, and I knew I was not imagining the relief in his face. From his case of tools he pulled out a surgical knife, a hand drill operated by a wood-handled crank, and a frightening-looking chisel. Primitive, maybe, but sharp: they would have to do. Sterilization was clearly not an option, but while Boccanegra wiped his forehead with a voluminous sleeve, I surreptitiously grabbed a pitcher of wine from a side table and dipped the tools into it. I hoped the alcohol content in watered wine was high enough to help.
I moved in to position the priest’s head. My hand itched with familiarity as I picked up the knife and sliced through the skin at the temple, then peeled away the flap to expose the bone. Boccanegra, amazingly, let me proceed. He blotted the swell of blood from the skin with a cloth as I switched to the drill and made first one hole, then another, the drill’s sharp point disappearing into bone. Our patient didn’t even squirm as I drilled the tight ring of circles through his skull, then connected them with the chisel, sending tiny shards of bone flying from the wound. When the flap of bone lifted, I almost thought I could hear the hiss of escaping pressure, as if from a tire tested by a handheld gauge. There it was, the fresh clot I’d expected to see, mixed with an ooze of recent blood. I scooped it out and dumped it into a bloodletting bowl Boccanegra had on his instrument tray. Boccanegra, competent despite his unfamiliarity, found the bleeder and stopped its flow, holding firm until the bleeding subsided. I sutured it closed and we replaced the bone, then the flap of skin. Boccanegra closed the wound with a needle threaded with catgut.
I stepped back while Boccanegra turned to find a dressing. I watched the priest, counting breaths. One, two, three . . . more regular now. I snuck a look under his eyelids—pupils blessedly equal.
Boccanegra reassumed control seamlessly. “The good priest must rest now. I will bleed him, then dose him with Papaver. Thank you, Monna Trovato, for your layperson’s assistance in this grave matter.” I was about to protest—he’d bled plenty already—but I didn’t want to push my uninvited medical authority too far. I looked over my shoulder as we left the pellegrinaio and saw the dottore setting out another tray of evil-looking instruments.
* * *
I went back to see Bartolomeo the next day. I’d read about the high survival rate after trephination, which had been practiced since the Stone Age, but I’d had a hard time believing it, until now.
The priest looked up at me wide-eyed as I walked up to his cot. “The cathedral’s spirit, come to my aid,” he said. “Thanks to the Blessed Virgin for sending you.” I didn’t bother to correct him.
“How do you feel?”
“I cannot recall anything after leaving my chamber on the morning Messer de’ Medici was to be hanged.”
“That’s not unusual after a blow to the head.”
“Truly?” He looked relieved. “I feared a devil had captured my soul. But with the aid of the Virgin who guards us all, and you, her messenger of healing, I have been restored.” His brow creased with distress again. “The accused did not repent before his death. I failed in my most fervent prayers and he descended into the pit of hell, damned for all eternity, while I stood by, powerless to bring him to God’s side.”
> “He was a murderer.”
“It was my role to guide his soul to the heavens.”
“I don’t think anyone could have wrenched that soul away from where it was headed. Maybe your efforts spared him some torment.”
“Your words bring comfort,” the priest said earnestly, and his facial expression changed suddenly with the labile fluidity of a child’s. “The Virgin herself holds you in her heart.”
“I pray that’s true, but I’m just a scribe. Thank you for the compliment.”
“It is not a compliment, Monna . . . ?”
“Beatrice Alessandra Trovato. And I really am just a scribe.” I smiled at him. He seemed like a very nice, if excessively sensitive, young man.
“Father Bartolomeo the Timid, they call me. With good reason.” He smiled wryly. “Ever since the moment I beheld you running through the Duomo, I knew you were a spirit brought to this earth with some heavenly purpose.” Before I could ask him what he meant, Boccanegra appeared at his side. I curtsied and made my exit. As I left the pellegrinaio it struck me what Bartolomeo had said. Was it possible that he had witnessed the night of my arrival in the fourteenth century?
Every time I went to visit again over the next few days, Bartolomeo was either sleeping or in the company of some caretaker. I allowed myself to hope that he might hold a key to my return to my own time, however innocent he seemed. The last time I went to see him, the cot was empty. Umiltà told me that the priest had returned to the cathedral where he lived and worked.
* * *
The following morning I went to Mass in the cathedral. A wizened stick of a priest stood at the pulpit delivering a sermon as dry as his visage. At the end of the service I wandered around, looking into the side chapels. Finally, I recognized Bartolomeo kneeling in prayer. He looked up as I passed.
“I didn’t mean to disturb you,” I said.
“I am woefully prone to distraction, Signora, and my prayers falter in their constancy. That is why I am here today, rather than in the pulpit.” He rubbed the top of his head as he spoke, and his face shifted rapidly. “The sun is so lovely this morning, is it not? I was imagining that I might ride out of this very window upon a ray of light and follow it to its celestial origin.” He laughed, a high-pitched, childlike sound, and pointed to a gleaming stained glass panel. Had he been like this before the head injury?
I couldn’t help falling into old medical habits, assessing the extent of his amnesia. “Do you remember how you hurt your head?”
“I cannot recall the details. Were you present, Signora?” He was staring off into space now. “Your apparition burns in my memory. I took you for a demon unleashed by the night as I faltered in my prayers to protect our city from evil. But now I understand your beneficent purpose.” The hairs on my arms rose as I remembered the sound of a voice chanting the night office, that first night I’d awakened in Siena’s Duomo.
“What do you remember about that night?”
“I heard the sound of footsteps in the nave and saw a figure disappearing through the great doors of the cathedral—I know now it was you. Then I prayed harder, in the hopes that my inexpert fumbling had not opened the door to unwelcome spirits.”
“I’m not a spirit,” I said firmly. But that was an interesting thought. Had his prayers—or a failure of his prayers—allowed a chink to open in the wall separating one time from another? I made up a more reasonable story for him. “I fell asleep in the pews after Compline, and awoke to the sound of the divine office.” I still wanted to wring more information out of him, this link to my old time. “Have you ever witnessed such apparitions before, Father?”
“Never, Signora. But my hours spent in contemplation of the Holy Spirit have sharpened my eyes to the world beyond our own, and it was simply a matter of time before otherworldly beings showed themselves to me.”
“I’m not an otherworldly being.” That wasn’t entirely true; perhaps it was better to meet him on his own ground. “Father, do you think the Duomo is a portal of sorts, through which spirits—like myself, for example, might travel?”
“The person is the portal, not the place.”
His comment had an edgy clarity that jarred me. “What person?”
The priest spoke in a low melodic voice that was almost a chant. “The cathedral, for all its grandeur, cannot house the love of God without a human element as a vessel, and God must work through the actions of saints and men. Where the heart and soul travel, the divine presence works its miracles. The mystics serve as an entry through which God communicates with our humble world. They harbor the Divine in their hearts and souls at all times and in all places. You, for example, do not appear to be bound to any place. Or any time, for that matter,” he added, almost as an afterthought.
With that unnerving statement, he closed his eyes. “I am so very tired, Signora, I must lay my head down for a moment.” He bowed and left the chapel. After a few minutes I left too. As I crossed the courtyard I wondered whether he might be onto something. But if it was the person and not the place that mattered, shouldn’t I be able to go home whenever I wanted?
* * *
The oddest part of my encounter with the priest was that it had occurred at all. In my medieval experience to date, intimate conversations between members of the opposite sex were rare. There was little privacy, and the private places were mostly off-limits. Gabriele and I had spent time together on his scaffolding, but that was in front of half the population of Siena, and he’d been working, not chatting.
I continued to wonder whether Gabriele might be interested in me as something other than a needy widow or angel’s prototype, but my ignorance of medieval behavior made it hard to tell. The biggest challenge was Gabriele himself; I had never met anyone so difficult to read. My attempts to divine what he was thinking—either the normal way or my paranormal way—repeatedly failed. Seeing my own image bloom from his paintbrush on the facade of one of the most prominent structures in Siena could have been evidence of his interest, but Gabriele seemed to pay more attention to his painting than to its model.
* * *
By the second week of September, Gabriele’s fresco was far along, and I was working on a business proposal, drawing on notes from the rector’s preferred notary. The document was addressed to a wool merchant named Girolamo Lugani, whose company in Genoa would provide new robes for the Ospedale staff and embroidered altar cloths for the Church of Santa Annunziata. Lugani was en route to Siena, and the contract had to be ready before his arrival. I was halfway through the document when I heard the sound of hammering outside—muffled, now that the window had been repaired. I went outside to see what was going on. Gabriele was back outside the scriptorium, this time with a team of carpenters.
“I have not the leisure to rebuild this myself, as the Virgin and the rector command my haste,” he said when I raised an eyebrow at the three laborers he’d brought to rebuild the scaffolding.
“You don’t trust your own work?”
“I suspect, as do you, that my work was not at fault.”
I stared at him. “How do you know what I think?”
Just then, a builder tapped his shoulder for attention. Gabriele gave me an apologetic shrug and returned to the reconstruction of his scaffold. I reluctantly returned to my correspondence with the wool merchant.
Over the next few days Bosi glowered constantly and corrected everything I did at least three times. Even the unflappable Umiltà was jittery, talking quickly and forgetting to finish the ends of her long sentences. I started getting nervous myself, wondering whether I’d have the opportunity to meet this Lugani, and not sure whether I wanted to.
I’d closed the door of the scriptorium to concentrate. Every error meant rewriting the whole page by hand, which certainly made me try to get it right the first time. The knock on the scriptorium door made me jump.
“Who’s there?”
The answering voice was muffled by the wood. “Gabriele Accorsi.” I leaped up, tripping over my skirt, a
nd opened the door to find Gabriele standing in the doorway with a package. “Good day, Signora. Ysabella regrets the time it took her to return your garment.”
Gabriele extended the package toward me. My hand brushed his as I took the dress and I pulled back instinctively. I hadn’t touched him since the scaffolding incident, and that time he’d not been awake.
“Thank you—I’ll give you back the blue one. Would you rather I washed it first?”
“Ysabella and my uncle asked that you keep it, if it suits you.”
“It’s a beautiful dress. I wish I could give your family something in return, but nothing I own is of much value.”
“Your presence in our lives has been more than sufficient, Signora.” I thought of a hundred possible things to say, none appropriate. “May I request a moment of audience, Monna Trovato? I would speak with you about a matter of mutual concern, but I do not wish to keep you from your work.”
“I needed a rest anyway. Do you want to sit down?” I pulled a second stool near mine, and we both sat.
Gabriele reached into the pouch hanging from his belt and pulled out something small enough to be hidden in his hand. When he opened his hand to show me, my mouth went dry. Two stainless-steel safety pins glinted in his palm—the pins I’d used to attach my handkerchief to the bodice of the green dress after my brush with the sumptuary police.
“Monna Trovato . . . would it offend you if I use your given name?”
“Call me whatever you like. Can I call you Gabriele then?”
“Of course, please call me Gabriele,” he said. “Beatrice, I fear you have not been frank with me. I hold great respect for your privacy, but your silence does not allow me to protect you as well as I might.” Once I might have said I didn’t need protection, but now I wasn’t sure. “My lady, can you speak to me? I will understand if you should choose to remain silent, with only God to hear your prayers.”
The Scribe of Siena Page 18