“I am in possession of a document that proves the role Giovanni de’ Medici had in the death of Ser Buonaventura. I present it respectfully to the court.” The clerk delivered the letter to the judge, who spread it out on the table in front of him. He read silently.
“Monna Trovato has produced a letter written by Ser Giovanni de’ Medici during his imprisonment.” The judge directed his next words to the clerk. “Please read the document aloud, so the assembled may hear the evidence presented therein.”
The clerk read into a silence so complete that I could hear him swallow. “‘I am being held in a cell awaiting trial for the dispatch of that night watchman who presumed foolishly to block our way. If he had known that it is wiser to let a businessman go about his business undisturbed, he might still be alive today.’”
Everyone started talking—the clerks, the spectators, even the guards flanking Gabriele. The judge had to call for order, and it was several minutes before the room was quiet again.
“Monna Trovato, please explain how you came to be in possession of this document, and why it was not previously brought into evidence at the Medici trial.” The silence in the courtroom felt like the lull before a hurricane hits, when the sky turns green and trees are weirdly still.
How I came to be in possession of this document? I had not prepared for that question, so extemporized.
“I discovered it in the pages of another book, Ser, unexpectedly. A tax record collected for an entirely different purpose. When I laid eyes upon the letter, its relevance to the case in question became clear, and I brought it with me today, for examination by the court.” I brought it further than you could imagine, Mr. Iudex, in your wildest dreams.
The judge put the tips of his fingers together and regarded the shape he’d made with his hands, as if it were the most fascinating structure in the world. “The nature of the evidence presented suggests that the denunciation must be reconsidered, and the indictment held for the present. I will review the matter after we adjourn today. Is there any further testimony you would care to provide, Monna Trovato?”
My opinion of Gabriele’s character seemed superfluous, but I didn’t want to miss any opportunity to keep him from hanging. “I would like to affirm Messer Accorsi’s honesty, gentleness, and good character, if it would have bearing on the case.”
The judge nodded once. “Noted. This session of the court is now adjourned. Messer Accorsi will remain in prison until the verdict, which will be announced at Terce tomorrow.” Gabriele filed out between the guards. He had an odd look on his face, halfway between wonder and amusement. It was remarkable that I could have come hurtling through the centuries, arriving just in time to provide evidence to support Gabriele’s innocence, and then, having done that, not even have the opportunity to say hello.
When Umiltà and I were reunited, she grasped both my hands in her powerful grip and looked up at me. “We have matters to discuss, Beatrice,” she said firmly. “Come with me now to my studium.” She held my sleeve as we filed out with the crowd. As we headed down the stairs, I answered under my breath.
“Matters to discuss? That’s the understatement of the fourteenth century.” Umiltà didn’t seem to hear.
PART XI
THE CHIEF SCRIBE
As Umiltà and I crossed the Campo, my mind moved toward critical overload. Was some Medici responsible for Gabriele’s false arrest, with Signoretti as part of the plan? If so, which Medici? Did Umiltà really just offer me a new job? And what did she mean by calling me Gabriele’s “intended”? I stopped walking. The slight hill of the Campo looked much steeper than I remembered.
“I have to sit down,” I said to Umiltà, who never had to sit down.
She sighed and appraised me as if I were a lame horse some swindler had tried to sell her. “I suppose we can postpone further discussion until you have rested. Where shall I send a messenger to collect you?”
“I’m not staying anywhere,” I said, and hearing how forlorn that must have sounded, amended slightly. “I just got here. I don’t even know where to lie down.”
Umiltà’s eyes widened. “You mean to say that you sought me out within minutes of entering the city gates, with minutes to spare before your testimony was required on Messer Accorsi’s behalf? God must certainly have set these events in motion.”
The timing had turned out awfully close. “Suor Umiltà, if I don’t find a place to rest soon, I’ll have to lie down in the middle of the Campo.”
“Of course, of course.” She sounded more solicitous, now that she didn’t think I’d returned to Siena without letting her know. “Your former chamber is still available. Once you begin your new role as chief scribe, in place of Fra Bosi, bless his departed soul, you will need more suitable lodgings, but this will serve in the interim.” It was not so much a job offer as a statement of fact. In that way,Umiltà reminded me of Lugani. I wondered what had happened to him, and his suspicious second in command.
“I’ll take it,” I said, not clarifying which “it” I was taking—job or lodgings. I managed the walk back to the Ospedale and to my familiar little cell.
* * *
I’d forgotten to ask what had happened to Clara. Back in the room where I’d first met her, the sharpness of her absence made my chest ache. Nothing had changed since I’d left on that September morning. There was the wooden chest, the bed, the inginocchiatoio in the corner where I’d attempted my first medieval prayer, and the small wooden table. But now the room was bitterly cold, the closed shutters doing little to mitigate the draft. I eyed the bed I’d threatened to lie down in, but now that I was alone, the urgency for sleep had subsided. I put my bag down on the floor and started unpacking.
All my possessions fit easily into the chest. The inginocchiatoio beckoned silently and I walked over to kneel at it, familiar with the motion after my months of medieval life. I closed my eyes and imagined my first-grade catechism teacher, Sister Amelia. I’d come to her once for help crafting a prayer to ask for a dog for Christmas. I remember the way she lowered herself to my six-year-old level until her eyes met mine.
“Prayer is not currency, Beatrice. We pray to God not to bargain for favors. Prayer is an act of praise. We pray to express our devotion to God.” It wasn’t exactly what I was looking for, but I sat with her and tried to learn what she was trying to teach me. I never did get that dog.
It was not an easy task to praise rather than ask, under the circumstances. I couldn’t help the thoughts that crept in, particularly one refrain that was clearly more plea than praise. Don’t let them hang him. PLEASE don’t let them hang him.
I felt the cold draft as the door to my room swung open.
“Is that truly YOU?” The high-pitched voice pulled me onto my feet.
“Clara?”
She looked much as I remembered her, round face flushed pink under the white of her coif. She stood in the doorway with her feet planted wide and her mouth wide open to match.
“Monna Trovato? I thought you were dead!”
She raced over and threw her arms around my neck. She smelled of woodsmoke and cloves, and as we embraced I felt the roundness of her belly filling the space between us. Pregnant. We emerged from our hug and I tried not to stare at her midsection.
“Clara, how did you know I was here? I’ve just barely arrived.”
“I heard from the other Ospedale wards that a woman—a former scribe—testified at the painter’s trial. I came right away, hoping it was you.” She must have seen my surreptitious glance, because she put her hand on her belly protectively. “Yes, I have been blessed with the promise of a new life.” Asking who the father was didn’t seem appropriate. “Have you just arrived in Siena?”
“Yes,” I said, trying to decide what story to tell her.
“Where did you go? When I came back with the water, you were gone.”
“I’m told I was found by a group of travelers who nursed me back to health.”
Clara’s eyes grew wide. “Praise God
for miracles,” she said, and embraced me again, her face nestling at the hollow of my throat. We held each other quietly, like two survivors of a shipwreck. When she emerged from the hug, a familiar look appeared in her eyes.
“You must be hungry.”
I had to smile. “Clara, I can wait to eat.”
“No, you must be famished after your travels—and you look thinner than I like to see you.” I wasn’t sure how she could tell anything about my weight under all the clothing I had on. “I shall visit the kitchens right away to find something nourishing and warm.”
I did feel hungry, despite the violent disruption of hurtling back in time and the drama of testifying at a murder trial. “Is there any poratta?” I remembered the fragrant soup that had been my introduction to medieval Italian cuisine.
“Poratta, Signora? I can find something better than that.”
“No, please, poratta is just what I’d like. It will be the best welcome home I can imagine.”
Clara smiled. “I am so glad to have you with us again, Monna Trovato.”
“I’m glad to be back,” I answered. Before I could say anything else, she was gone.
* * *
When Iacopo left again for Siena on business he would not explain, Immacolata had had enough of the Medici men’s secrets. After supper she went into Giovanni’s studium—in her mind Immacolata could not think of it as Iacopo’s—and began to look through the papers her son had left behind. The room was dark and cold, and smelled of melted wax.
Iacopo had become even more secretive when the magna Mortalità arrived in Firenze. The city went mad with terror and mourning, and with the fury of priests proclaiming the arrival of God’s wrath upon the earth. But there was something else, something hidden and dangerous in her son that seemed to have been spawned by the Mortalità itself. Iacopo left the palazzo heavily cloaked and hooded, and returned from his forays long after curfew. He burned candles at all hours writing in the drafty studium, and managed to find messengers to take his letters despite the horror sweeping the city, paying the carriers in gold. Immacolata was grateful that she and Iacopo had been spared the touch of the Pestilence, but it was as if she had lost her son to another incarnation of the beast. Iacopo had grown a long straggling beard and mustache, and became even thinner than before; the bones of his face reflected the light.
Immacolata paged through the ledgers, her eyes blurring over the columns of black ink. With Giovanni dead and Iacopo in Siena, the accounts were her domain again. This time, Immacolata went back to the days and weeks before her husband’s death. As she read the entries, she felt a chill at the back of her neck, as if a window had been opened to let in a winter’s draft. Several names repeated themselves next to increasingly large sums, names of Siena’s powerful casati families, well known even outside that city’s walls. Signoretti led the list but was not alone. Vast sums had gone to these men of Siena, men whose families angled for power in the commune. Next to each of the sums was a set of initials, the same letters each time, in Giovanni’s sharp, angular writing. The initials spoke to her, calling up a name she had heard many times in Giovanni’s conversation. He thought I was not listening, or if I listened, thought I could not understand. But she understood now: it was not the name of an individual, but the Brotherhood of San Giovanni Battista. Pouring florins into the coffers of Siena’s most powerful noblemen. What were you about, my dead, conspiring husband?
Now, with this new knowledge, Iacopo’s assumption of his father’s work, his silence, and his increasingly frequent trips to Siena took on even greater menace. But it was not enough to understand what drove Iacopo now. There must be more, something recent and urgent. Shivering, Immacolata turned to the cold hearth. And there she found what she sought: a half-burned letter, edges curling brown and streaked with ash.
For Messer Iacopo de’ Medici:
I have done your bidding. The painter Accorsi has been imprisoned by the Podestà’s police and will stand trial within the week. That will pay him back for bearing witness at your father’s trial. With success your family name will be cleared of any taint and the painter will hang from the gallows. Ser Signoretti granted me audience once he read the letter of introduction you sent, and has agreed to take the witness stand in your favor.
I will find you after the trial to collect my due. Will you be staying at your accustomed place? This time we have him.
With God’s help this letter will move you to ride quickly to Siena and bring my gold.
Penned by my hand on this last Day of December, 1348
G.B.
Siena
Immacolata held the letter tightly and closed her eyes. What was her child planning, her son who carried the taint of his father’s violence in him? She recalled Iacopo’s last letter, before her husband’s hanging.
Father is still in prison in Siena, and it is said they will hang him. Do you know of an Accorsi in Siena? He may have been an informant, I am looking for him. I will stay in Siena until the trial.
Accorsi must be the informant who had brought Giovanni to trial for murder. Immacolata closed her eyes and saw Iacopo as a swaddled infant, his dark eyes, so unlike his father’s pale ones, large in his tiny face, in those first days when the sound of a babe’s cry blew the stale air from their home. Her body had failed her, but her husband’s gold had bought them the child they had desired. He wanted an heir, she wanted a son. In Iacopo they both had their desires, mutual or not. And Iacopo would never know his true origins.
The fragile parchment crumbled in Immacolata’s fist as she gripped it. Iacopo had promised to return by the week’s end, and when he did she would speak to him. She would take him to their family chapel, and there the truth would be known at last, as it must, between mother and son. She left the studium, closing the door tightly behind her.
* * *
Umiltà’s messenger came to fetch me just as I was wiping the inside of the poratta bowl with a slab of bread. I’d hardly gotten through Umiltà’s doorway before she started talking. “First we shall address the matter of your employment.” Umiltà sat at her high desk behind a stack of parchment, an account book, and, incongruously, a small wooden spinning top. I wondered whether she played with it. “It has been extraordinarily difficult to manage the scriptorium in your absence, and Egidio, though able to copy a few lines now and then—thanks to you, he tells me, remarkably, whenever did you have the opportunity to teach him?—is no equal to you, nor to our Fra Bosi, may his soul rest in eternal peace. Your payment will of course be commensurate with your new level of responsibility. Before the Mortalità your appointment might have been questioned, for reasons not limited to your sex and your origins, but in these sparse times with so many dead or fled to the contado, few complain when anyone steps forward to do a job that needs doing. Do you concur?”
“Of course.” Chief scribe of the Ospedale? My medieval dream job.
Umiltà began straightening items on her desk. I wondered whether this might be the time to bring up the subject of vendetta, Signoretti’s testimony, and the Florentine threat. Just as I was formulating a sentence,Umiltà took a deep breath and thumped her hands on the desk loud enough to make me jump. “Now, let us speak of Accorsi.” Her words made me blush.
“What about him?”
“With the document you produced, Accorsi’s case was much strengthened. I am hopeful they will pardon and release him.”
Amen, Sister, I thought silently. “The person to whom that letter was addressed—Iacopo, Giovanni’s son. How difficult would it be to find him?”
“Why would you seek out the son of a twice-confirmed, once-hanged, Florentine murderer?” Put that way, it was a tough question to answer sensibly.
“What if Iacopo de’ Medici had something to do with Gabriele’s arrest?”
Umiltà narrowed her eyes. “Are you so quick to heap the father’s ills onto the son, knowing nothing about the man other than his parentage? And why would Messer Signoretti consort with a Medici criminal?
Accusation is a dangerous business, Beatrice, and oft goes awry. You might be punished yourself for false denunciation, particularly against such powerful individuals, and might lead me to be suspected as well. Have you evidence to support your suspicions?”
Evidence? There was the other letter, the one from Ben’s room. But with no signature.
. . . send me word when it is done . . .
I would have to figure out another strategy.
“Thank you for your wise advice, Suor Umiltà,” I said meekly.
She looked at me closely, knowing my rapid compliance should be viewed with suspicion, but I gave her a deferential smile. She accepted the gesture at face value.
“Now, let us move on to betrothal,” Umiltà said.
My heart sped up suddenly. “Betrothal?”
“To Messer Accorsi, of course. Marriage to an honest woman can save a condemned man from the gallows. Have you no such procedures in Lucca? You are a widow, not a virgin, but your virtue has no taint upon it, so the effect ought to be similar.” That was an interesting legal argument. “Do you find the match beneath you? You are the former wife of a notary, and he an itinerant artisan.”
“He’s an artist, not an artisan. And he travels for commissions. There’s nothing wrong with that.”
“You defend him very prettily.”
“I’m just being accurate.”
“Indeed.” She looked at me again with that penetrating gaze. “Beatrice, please be seated. My neck tires from staring up at you.” I lowered myself onto an uncomfortable bench, wondering whether it was especially designed to put claimants visiting her studium at a disadvantage. “Do you agree to the match, should Messer Accorsi’s innocence be confirmed by the court?”
“You think he’ll be released?”
“The evidence is in his favor.”
“He’d marry me just because I served as a witness in his defense?” My nervousness, as usual, made me resort to sarcasm, which Umiltà, as usual, missed.
The Scribe of Siena Page 35