The Scribe of Siena
Page 31
I flew to Siena on Christmas day. This time my keys fit the lock. There was no bakery—no yeasty smell from Martellino’s ovens, but it still felt like home, or halfway home. I fell asleep in my clothes on the little guest bed.
I woke up to the sound of Felice’s voice mingling with the twitter of winter sparrows in the courtyard garden. It was almost noon. I stumbled downstairs to find Felice perched in the orange tree. At this time of year there were no blossoms or fruit to pick. In true childhood fashion she launched into conversation without awkward preliminaries.
“You’re back. Where did you go? You missed Christmas. I have a new doll. She has red hair. And you missed my birthday. Mamma made me pear cake. I like pears. Do you?” She scrambled down from the tree.
“I went home to New York,” I said. “And I’m sorry I missed your birthday. I love pears.” My Italian felt rusty, but she nodded, satisfied.
“Is your mamma home?” I’d sent Donata a letter as soon as I’d gotten out of the hospital, sketchily explaining my three-month disappearance. I wondered what she’d thought.
“She’s making risotto.” The memory of the first time I’d seen Donata cook risotto came back to me. Sebastiano must be walking by now. As if to prove me right, the back door to the garden opened, emitting an unsteady but determined Sebastiano, who squealed with pleasure at his escape and toddled toward me.
“Sebastiano, caro, vieni!” Donata’s head appeared in the doorway, following her voice.
“Beatrice! What a pleasure.”
It had been a long time since I’d heard my name out loud in Italian. Donata’s face was flushed from the heat of the stove, and tendrils of golden hair escaped from a loose bun at the base of her neck. Even in a faded flowered housedress she looked like an angel.
“I didn’t know you were back.”
“I got in last night, too late to say hello.”
“Come for lunch,” she said. I didn’t need to be asked twice.
Risotto in December is very different from risotto in July in a place where the seasons get the respect they deserve. In Italy winter is dried mushroom time, and I walked into the Guerrini kitchen to the intense aroma of porcini. The family welcomed me without any questions, letting me eat before I talked. I was hungrier than I’d been in weeks. When I helped myself to thirds, Ilario, who’d only had seconds, laughed.
“Do they starve you in New York City? Or is the food not worth eating?”
“Nothing like this.” The creamy rice, the glass of Montalcino red, the astringent bitterness of the arugula salad dressed sparingly with olive oil, lemon juice, and salt, all combined to make a heavenly meal. Maybe I’ll be all right now that I’m back in Italy, I thought; it doesn’t have to be medieval. But I wondered.
After lunch, Felice and Gianni reluctantly cleared the dishes, then disappeared upstairs to play with their new holiday toys. Donata and I washed up, and Ilario retreated into the bedroom with Sebastiano. When I peered into the room a few minutes later they were both asleep, son blissfully splayed out on his father’s slowly rising and falling chest.
“Now tell me the whole story, Beatrice,” Donata said, wiping her hands on a kitchen towel and pulling out two chairs for us. I took my time settling, needing a few moments to strategize.
“I went to Sicily, for research. I’m sorry I didn’t tell you where I was going; things happened more quickly than I’d expected.” Still true, if deceptively so.
“A spur-of-the-moment trip to Sicily sounds very adventurous. Your research must have been successful, to keep you there so long.”
“Well, I met someone.” When you have to lie, use the available facts.
“How romantic—in Sicily?”
“We ended up in Messina. My work got a little derailed while I was there. He’s from Siena though.”
“Cara Beatrice, how fairy-tale marvelous that sounds. Was it?”
“It was until I got sick.”
“So you said in your letter.” She paused expectantly. I didn’t answer right away, and the silence grew uncomfortable. “Nothing from him, I hope?”
“Oh, no, nothing like that!” I laughed with relief. She’d thought I had some rip-roaring sexually transmitted disease. “Donata, I need coffee. Can I make some for us?” I needed alcohol more than caffeine to tell this story, but the preparation would buy me more time than pouring a glass of San Rafaele.
“No, no, sit, cara. I’ll do it.” I loved the way she called me “cara.” When Donata says “dear” she really means it. She made espresso and we both sipped in appreciative silence for a while.
“Now that you have your coffee, you must repay my hard work on lunch with the story.” She smiled encouragingly.
I took a deep breath. “Plague. I got the Plague.”
“Plague? How?”
“I was exposed somehow, then I was airlifted to New York. But I survived. Unscathed, I think.” I tried to smile but it came out feeling lopsided. My hands were shaking and I put my espresso cup down, but too hard—coffee spilled over the rim and onto the table. The mess shocked me. I’d made plenty of mistakes in my life but my hands rarely were the problem, fortunately for my patients. I looked up at Donata and saw her eyes fill with tears.
“Carissima Beatrice, how glad I am to have you safe with us again.” She rose suddenly from her chair and came to my side of the table, putting her hand on my shoulder. “I was so terribly worried about you, not hearing for months like that. I imagined the most awful things. Why didn’t you tell me?”
“I’m sorry.” What could I possibly say as an excuse—I couldn’t write to you because I was stuck in 1340s Siena? The difference between my story and the truth hung between us like a curtain. I pushed my chair away from the table and stood up next to her. Before I could figure out what to say, Donata wrapped her arms around me and buried her face in my neck. She smelled like porcini mushrooms and coffee, and more faintly, lily of the valley perfume. I stiffened, startled by her sudden embrace, but then the sweetness of it overwhelmed me and I let myself soften in her arms. It had been forever since anyone had pushed past my physical restraint like that, and a wordless relief swept over me. But it was more than that. My ears were humming, my vision darkened, and then I felt Donata’s emotion firsthand—the affection, the fear of loss, the stark relief. It’s back, I thought with a stab of joy. It’s back, and so am I.
* * *
In the next few days, I met with the lawyers, retrieved Ben’s notes from the safe-deposit box at the Bank of Siena, and clarified that I’d be resuming work on the manuscript without the aid of any meddling scholars. The Albertis were tight-lipped with what I suspected was disapproval, but they remained polite. The gas and electricity had been turned off while I was away, and I had to spend several unpleasant days getting my utilities back. This made me not only cold and dependent on candles, but also unable to make coffee—a bigger disaster. A few days after I’d arrived in Siena the weather hit record low temperatures, and the pipes froze in the top-floor kitchen. Not having running water reminded me of the less pleasant aspects of medieval life. I went to the corner bar for espresso to stay caffeinated, but while I was waiting for the heat to come back on a frozen pipe burst upstairs, damaging one plaster wall. Donata recommended a plumber and contractor for the repairs and offered me hot meals and showers until I could resume modern life at home again. Then I dove back into research. I had firsthand information about medieval Siena now, but I wasn’t sure how my intimate knowledge of the fourteenth century could help me with Ben’s mystery.
Ben’s unanswered question was as much a part of his legacy as the house he’d left me. Since the break-in, I had imagined the lengths to which someone might go to interfere with the work I was doing, and my resolve to finish it had grown even stronger. But beyond the modern-day academic threats, I had a personal drive to know. The evil that Ben had uncovered wasn’t just an academic question for me anymore—it might have killed people I loved in a time and place I had once called home.
Gabriele’s journal could be the key to my return to his time. But where could it be? The book hadn’t followed me into the fourteenth century—I’d lost it on my trip, perhaps because Gabriele had it then himself. So where should I be looking instead?
I thought through the twisted logic. When did I last have it? The time Gabriele had handed me his freshly written diary to hold didn’t count—that wasn’t the right version of the book I’d lost. I traced my path backward in my head. I’d been reading it in the Duomo when I first traveled to July of 1347. That book, if I could find it, might tell me whether Gabriele had survived the Plague. Gabriele’s handwritten lines stood out when I closed my eyes, like a bright afterimage:
I find the mysterious figure hovering at the edge of my paintings, watching the events unfold in the scenes I depict. It is as if she were seeking a path through my paintings and into this world.
Seeking a path through my paintings and into this world.
Here was something even more compelling and terrifying: maybe the journal, far from its time of origin, would again open a gateway to the past, as it had before. You’d better be sure you know what you want before you look for it, Beatrice. But even as I thought those words, I rose from the bench and walked out of the room.
I arrived at the Duomo in time for Mass. It was almost possible to pretend, listening to the Latin, that I was back in the 1300s. Until I looked at the boy next to me, fiddling with his mother’s smartphone. After the service, I made my way over to a gray-haired docent at an information desk near the entrance. She turned to me with a practiced smile and perfect English. “How can I help you, Signorina?”
“Do you have a lost and found?”
“Of course. What have you lost?”
“It’s been a few months.”
“You’re coming back for the first time now?” Her pleasant demeanor cracked a bit.
“I didn’t realize I’d lost it.” It sounded lame even to me.
“It’s quite unlikely we’ll be able to help you, but why don’t you give me a description of the item and I’ll ask the other staff.”
“It’s a book.”
“What sort of book? At this point you might just want to buy another copy.”
“It’s irreplaceable, actually.” I had a terrible thought about how much trouble I’d be in with the Siena library for losing the book, and with the inappropriately trusting Fabbri.
The docent raised her eyebrows but pushed a small piece of paper and a pen over to me. “Please write a description here, and your contact information. You must realize how unlikely it is that we will find it after all this time.”
I wrote a few lines, and she put the description into a manila envelope. I took a walk around the cathedral, going back to the pew where it had all started. I even checked the floor but found only a discarded monthly Siena Attractions pass and a plastic barrette decorated with a yellow daisy.
* * *
Foiled in my attempt to find Gabriele’s diary, I resorted to academic pursuits. I considered my evidence: firsthand knowledge of Giovanni de’ Medici’s execution, and the poignant letter written by Immacolata Regate de’ Medici about her grieving, increasingly inaccessible son. If it somehow related to Siena’s extreme devastation by the Plague, then it might implicate the Medici family—but the connection was still obscure to me. I had Immacolata’s letter with me now, carefully packaged in a waterproof archival envelope. Once I got to the library I took it out and read it again, the words familiar now.
Since the death of his father I fear my little Iacopo has been full of strange and troubled thoughts. . . . But ever since the misery that has befallen his father, my beloved husband, the execution that has become the tragedy of our noble family, Iacopo . . . broods alone and writes endless pages in a small cramped hand. . . . It does not appear to be a letter. . . . I pray to see the joy return to my son’s face, and lighten the shadow that weighs upon all our hearts.
Iacopo de’ Medici. Giovanni de’ Medici had to be Iacopo’s father. How many executed Medicis could there have been in 1347? It was enough to get me started.
A quick Internet search for Medicis in the 1300s came up with a Giovanni, executed for an unknown crime, but in 1342—too early. Could the website be wrong? My best living source was Donata, who, over coffee that I managed to make competently enough to please her, suggested I try the crypt. The crypt was the university library’s underground archive, which I’d missed on my first trip to Siena. Built in the catacombs of one of the university’s original buildings, it housed some of its oldest documents in a dimly lit space with low arched stone ceilings. The humidity was tightly controlled by a regiment of humming machines along the wall.
I spent the rest of the day there, assisted by the now familiar and untiring Emilio Fabbri. I smiled my most Gabriele-like smile and told him how helpful the journal had been thus far in my research, omitting the fact that I’d lost it. I hoped he didn’t mind if I kept it a bit longer? He bowed his assent and left me to the documents he’d assembled.
Fabbri suggested I start with tax records, a good way to find medieval people, assuming they’d paid their taxes. Since it was unlikely that any Medici would have paid his taxes in Siena, I didn’t expect that approach to be useful. However, through an odd twist of fate, it was. A former graduate student at the University of Siena had done her thesis on contrasts between Sienese and Florentine financial record-keeping in the fourteenth century, a topic that would have once bored me. As a result of her work, though, a good chunk of Florentine tax records was available in the library’s archives. It took me hours to read through the pages of faded writing despite my unusual firsthand experience as a medieval scribe.
It was almost closing time when I finally found his name: Giovanni de’ Medici, and the rest of his household too—Immacolata (wife) and Iacopo (son). Fortunately for me, the family had been good about paying taxes, and the records were from 1345. If this was the executed Giovanni, he’d lived past 1342. Just as things were heating up, Fabbri appeared and regretfully asked me to gather my belongings, as he needed to close the archives to visitors. I looked at my watch—ten minutes to five. I could do a lot in those ten minutes. I headed for the steel cabinet that housed execution records from Siena’s medieval prison. With Fabbri’s increasingly anxious assistance, I found the year I was looking for. And then, just like that, there it was. The parchment had yellowed with age, but of course I knew the handwriting and the signature—an owl and knife like a branch beneath the owl’s feet.
On this day, Messer Giovanni de’ Medici was thus condemned to death by hanging at the hands of the Podestà and jurists acting on the Podestà’s behalf.
Signed by my hand and no other,
Beatrice Alessandra Trovato
This of all things survives me? I had been there, then, after all. If anything should send me back in time this should, I thought, waiting for the thunderclap. But I felt nothing out of the ordinary, other than the combination of thrill and shock I might be expected to have, seeing a document I’d written centuries before.
The repetitive throat clearing of Fabbri at my shoulder brought me back to my own time: 5:00 p.m. exactly. I put the documents I’d found together in a file box allocated to me for that purpose, and left my discoveries to sit overnight (in a locked carrel) while I went home for dinner, a shower, and an early bedtime.
* * *
That night, I dreamed about Ga
briele. We were in the elevator of the building I’d grown up in; it smelled like Mr. Clean. I knew in my sleep that an elevator was a place where people from two different worlds could meet, because it hung suspended between places, with no real location of its own. Gabriele looked pale, as if he hadn’t fully materialized. He didn’t speak, and when I reached out toward his face, my hand touched the paneling behind him. He didn’t notice my intrusion on his physical integrity.
“Are you alive?” I asked, but it seemed he couldn’t hear me, or maybe I hadn’t phrased it right. “I mean, are you alive in your own time?” He smiled, as he often had when I’d said something amusing. “Did you take all your pills?” Medication compliance—what a ridiculous thing to waste my otherworldly encounter on. But Gabriele had already turned away. Slowly he took on the colors and patterns of the objects around him—the brass railing that ran around the elevator’s perimeter, the false wood grain. Gabriele would love that, I thought, remembering how much he delighted in the portrayal of inanimate objects in his work, but before I could finish the thought he was gone, and the elevator opened onto the bright fluorescent light of the tenth-floor hallway.
* * *
The next morning I woke up with a headache. I made a cup of coffee and sat at my kitchen table sipping until the pain receded, but my larger problem could not be solved by coffee. I had told only one person the truth about what had happened to me, and he was centuries old. I briefly imagined explaining time travel to Donata. The thought made my head ache again. Instead I did what I had done in 1347. I wrote a letter that I had no intention of sending.
Dear Nathaniel,
You were so close to the truth, I almost told you. I didn’t simply go to Siena last summer; I went to Siena’s past. And there I found myself in the middle of the mystery that Ben had started to unravel. But I found more than that. I found colors brighter than I had ever seen, and flavors more intense, and a way of life that centers around the pealing of the bells. I glimpsed the edge of that existence a long time ago, before surgery wrote its name in capital letters on my future. Now I’ve read Dante in the medieval Italian vernacular, and copied it myself. I’ve played a part in the law and business of a place where contracts are still written by hand, and faith is a profound part of daily existence. I’ve dedicated myself to the practice of history rather than medicine, and in the process I’ve learned a new way into people that doesn’t require slicing them open with a scalpel. It has all been surprisingly satisfying, and sweetly, terribly beautiful.