The Scribe of Siena

by Melodie Winawer

  For hours we moved in and out of sleep as the moonlight slanted across the bedcovers. Sometimes I woke first and reached for him, sometimes he reached for me, sometimes I could not tell who moved first. I could not have enough of him, and he was as gently relentless as I was hungry. We pushed each other beyond the line of reason, until we stopped talking at all. The night smelled of spent candles, and somewhere I heard the hoot of a lone owl. The moon had set by the time we disentangled ourselves from each other and the bedcovers. Gabriele propped himself up on one arm.

  “I’m not going to be able to walk tomorrow,” I said, looking up at him.

  “You can stay in bed, Beatrice. Although it may be more tiring to stay in bed than to rise, if things continue as they have thus far.”

  I laughed, but his breathing had changed, and when I reached out to touch his face, it was wet. “Gabriele, why are you crying?”

  “I, like you, am afraid.”

  “Afraid of what?” He was safe in his own time, unlike me.

  He took a deep breath before answering. “I fear this passion I have for you will give rise to new life.”

  I’d thought of it more than once, what it might mean to bear a child in the fourteenth century, stripped of modern medicine’s reassuring presence. “We’ve survived a raging inferno, a collapsing scaffold, a storm at sea, your murder charge, the Plague. Don’t you think we can survive a baby?”

  Gabriele’s shoulder shook, and I worried for a moment that he might be sobbing. But instead he laughed, a bright, sweet sound in the velvet dark.“If you continue to make me laugh, thus, even in the midst of my tears, then we are destined for a marriage blessed by God.”

  “Amen,” I said, and this time, we slept.

  PART XIV

  THE CONFESSOR

  I woke again without knowing why. Then I felt it, the internal hum I knew so well. I untangled myself from the blankets and slipped out of bed, then fumbled in the dark to find my chemise. Now the hum was louder, and with it came a flash of vision—a dark night with no moon, a makeshift ladder, the jutting edge of a loggia. Danger, I could feel it. But from what?

  * * *

  In the narrow alleyway, Baldi assembled the ladder. It nearly escaped him, swaying in his hands as he pivoted it sideways, then upward. The free end hit a ceramic pot resting on the loggia’s edge, and the pot teetered dangerously but did not fall. Breathing hard, Baldi braced the ladder against the building across the way, wedging it firmly, and began to climb.

  He tested the first rung with one foot—it held. As he climbed, the ladder bowed under his weight. His foot reached the eighth rung, the ninth, the tenth. Then the jutting edge of the loggia was in reach, and he grasped it, his fingers scrabbling against rough plaster, until he was high enough to clamber over the wall. The shuttered doors opened with a hoarse creak as the hinges complained.

  The room was darker than the alley. No matter, he’d have his quarry—especially drugged with spent lust after rutting with his new wife. Baldi began to make out the outlines of the canopied bed. There was one elongated shape draped with a patterned coverlet, or were there two? He fingered the dagger at his waist. Accorsi’s new bride was black haired, but it was hard to see anything above the blanket’s edge.

  Then he saw a second head, a small one, in the bed with the large. Before he could make sense of what he saw, the child opened her eyes and let out an ear-splitting shriek. Baldi leaped to the bed to clap one hand over the screaming mouth, but as he did so, the babe, hellspawn that she was, bit down on his finger hard.

  * * *

  Gabriella’s scream sent me running. As I burst into the room Bianca’s yells joined her daughter’s. It was dark, but I could tell there was a stranger there, a large stranger who did not belong. I saw the flailing of limbs—Gabriella’s small ones, Bianca’s white and wild as she pounded the intruder with her fists. He was fumbling at his waist for something while trying to keep Bianca’s blows from landing. I knew, from a combination of common sense and my uncommon one, that a dagger was next. I threw myself at the bed, aiming for the attacker’s arm before he could find what he was fumbling for.

  The man was heavy and smelled of sweat, and gave a grunt as I hit him. Then his force turned on me: he flipped me onto my back, pinning my arms to the bed with one hand, and drove his knee between my legs. Bianca pounded at his back with her fists but he barely flinched. I could see the dagger now, glinting as he drew it from the scabbard at his waist. Then there was a crack, the sound of metal hitting bone, and the intruder’s huge body collapsed onto mine, squeezing all the air from my lungs and blanketing me in dirty wool.

  * * *

  “That’s Giovanni Battista, the man who claimed he was an Ospedale scribe,” Ysabella declared, brandishing the bloody candlestick that she’d used to bash the intruder on the head. We all stared at the beached body of the unwelcome visitor. The man lay on the floor with blood oozing from a head wound. Bianca had retreated to the wall, holding the wide-eyed Gabriella in her arms, when Gabriele burst into the room.

  “We shall find out more when he awakes,” Gabriele said grimly, “imminently. Light the wall sconces so we can see his face.”

  Ysabella took a glowing ember from the fire to do that while Bianca disappeared, taking Gabriella with her to safety.

  Our attacker began to groan and move his limbs. Gabriele took the dagger from the bed, and he bent at Baldi’s side, holding the blade near his throat.

  “To forestall any difficulty,” Gabriele said, and we all waited until Baldi’s eyes opened.

  “Bastard,” he said.

  “Perhaps, but that has no bearing on this situation,” Gabriele responded. Humor in the face of danger was his specialty too. “Tell us your true name. We know you are not the Ospedale scribe you claimed to be.”

  “I was the scribe until this upstart bitch took my job from me.”

  So this was the Guido Baldi I’d replaced, the one Fra Bosi had told me about on my first day of work.

  “Trying to kill your replacement is a pretty extreme reaction to losing your job,” I said, still shaking from the adrenaline of the attack.

  “I was hired,” Baldi said, cringing away from the dagger’s point.

  “By whom? I should very much like to know,” Gabriele said evenly.

  Baldi’s eyes went to Gabriele’s face, then mine.“What might the information be worth to you?”

  “Your survival might be of some worth,” Gabriele answered evenly.

  Baldi grunted. “I will tell you if you don’t turn me in.”

  In the candlelight I could see the sheen of sweat on Baldi’s face and the small, deep-set eyes. Gabriele and I exchanged glances. The information might be worth it.

  “You should be in prison, Messer Baldi,” Gabriele said.

  “It’s my master you want, Accorsi. I’m done with him now.”

  “Very well. Tell me who hired you, and I shall not turn you over to the police,” Gabriele said, “but if I find you are lying, or if any trouble arises that could be attributed to you, I shall make it my business to see you arrested. Or worse.”

  We all watched, waiting for Baldi’s answer.

  “Iacopo de’Medici, of Florence.”

  * * *

  Immacolata moved about her rooms with a new sense of freedom, now that the men of her household were gone. Giovanni’s death had receded from the most acute place of shock, replaced by a disturbing contentment. When she stretched out in their large connubial bed, she no longer worried she might accidentally brush one of her husband’s furred limbs. Once, waking him in the night would have brought at best a day of angry words, and at worst, a beating; now there was no one to wake.

  But Iacopo’s absence gnawed at her. A week after her son’s latest departure for Siena, Immacolata woke from a dream with her heart pounding. In the dream, Iacopo sat immobile in a flat-bottomed boat without oars, a boat that skimmed rather than parted the water. His craft headed inexorably toward the narrow line of horizon, and
though she tried to call him back, he faded from her reach, shrinking to a pinpoint.

  Awake in bed at dawn, Immacolata rubbed her eyes to dispel the nightmare’s afterimage. When she went downstairs for a cup of something warm to drink, her manservant appeared from the gloom of the hall.

  “A letter for you, Signora,” he said, handing her a folded parchment, sealed with wax.

  In the Name of God, Amen

  Cara Mamma,

  Business keeps me here longer than I planned and I do not know when I shall return. Do not expect word from me.

  Your Iacopo

  Immacolata clutched the letter as if it were Iacopo’s own hand, rather than his words. The message, bare of any detail, unnerved her. She placed the untouched cup of hypocras on the kitchen table and walked slowly back upstairs.

  She found the old letter she had hidden in a drawer, and unfolded it to read again.

  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

  The initials brought no one to mind. But those words—this time we have him—told of other times and failed attempts. Failed attempts at what? She hoped to God Iacopo had stopped, would stop, at false denunciation—a heinous enough crime. But what if he had worse evil in his heart? What if he planned murder, the ultimate vengeance?

  What use are the secret plans of men if they only bring death and destruction? I will not let my son follow his father to the gallows with blood on his hands. The words reverberated in her head like a Compline prayer.

  * * *

  Immacolata arrived in Siena by carriage in the last days of February. She went first to the inn where she’d visited Iacopo in the terrible days after Giovanni’s death. Messer Semenzato himself answered her knock.

  “Do you have a guest here by the name of Iacopo?” Before she used his last name, a name that might not be well received here in Siena, she paused to let the innkeeper answer.

  “We don’t see many women looking for a man without a family name,” he said, narrowing his eyes. The bells in the Torre rang for Vespers. Immacolata had not intended to arrive so late; a dangerous time to be a stranger in any city.

  “He travels under several names,” Immacolata said, the answer rolling easily off her tongue. It might not be a lie. “And he comes from Firenze often on business.”

  “He might have been here before, but now my rooms are full of Poggibonsi merchants.” The innkeeper looked more closely at Immacolata. She had dressed carefully for the journey in a high-necked gown of dark red wool edged with green and embroidered with a pattern of vines. There were advantages to being an aging woman—few would suspect trouble from her. Messer Semenzato opened the door wider when he saw the florins glinting in her hand.

  “What makes you think he might have been here before, Ser?”

  “A Florentine has stayed here several times, but never called himself Iacopo. He came recently to rent his usual room, but I had no rooms to let.”

  “Was he dark, and slim?”

  “Could be,” the innkeeper said, “though many are.”

  “Do you know where he might have gone, if not here?”

  “I’m afraid I do not,” the innkeeper said, and she had no luck prying any more information from him, other than a recommendation for a place where she might rest her horses and herself for the night. She hoped the dawn would bring more help, as finding a single man with an assumed name in a city of this size would be a daunting task.

  * * *

  When Baldi did not appear at their appointed place and time, Iacopo knew this last plan too must have gone awry. Accorsi was still alive, and exonerated from the murder charge. Was Baldi dead or captured, and what secrets might leak out of him if he were pressed? Iacopo returned to his chamber in the new inn as the day’s light was fading. This latest failure sat in his belly like a stone.

  Iacopo stared at the scarred wood of the desktop, seeing imaginary figures emerge from in the pattern of scratches. He must devise a new plan against Accorsi, and this time, act alone, and quickly. His days were surely numbered, if the Brotherhood now saw fit to dispose of him. I cut down a thousand men with the Mortalità as my blade—surely I can kill one more with my own hands? But when he looked down at those hands now, those smooth untried hands of a nobleman’s son, he wondered.

  * * *

  Iacopo awoke to a thumping on the door of his room. The light slanting through the camera’s single window told him he had slept long and late. The knocking grew louder, followed by a familiar voice.

  “Iacopo, open the door.” Mamma. Iacopo leaped out of bed, looking for another exit, or a place to hide. There was only the door behind which his mother stood.

  “Iacopo, I shall not leave without speaking to you.” The handle rattled but the lock stayed firm. Iacopo stood silent, not moving lest the sound alert her to his presence. The noise at the door stopped. Could she have gone? He waited a minute, two, barely breathing. Then he heard the rasp of a key in the lock, and the door swung open, letting his mother in.

  He stared at her face, so familiar and yet so unwelcome. He was beyond her comfort or aid now, though he longed for the solace she might once have given him. My heart is an alien thing, barbed against any confidence or warmth.

  “How did you find the key?” His voice sounded harsh, like his father’s.

  “The innkeeper took pity on me, a mother searching for her son in a foreign place.”

  An image of Giovanni’s purpled face in the hours after the hanging filled Iacopo’s head, and a pain stabbed behind his right eye. “I must not be disturbed. You know I am conducting important business that my father entrusted to me.”

  “I must speak to you.” She closed the door behind her. There were lines around her mouth and at the corners of her eyes. She is old, he thought, but not too old to interfere. “I know you seek the man who testified against your father,” she said.

  Her words made his heart drop in his chest, but he willed his voice not to tremble.

  “It is no concern of yours.”

  “Iacopo, I fear for your safety in this city that took your father’s life. Come back with me, and let us find a way to heal the wound of your father’s loss without more violence.” He could not allow this conversation to go further, this awful pleading.

  Once Immacolata might have reached out to touch her son, but now her hands remained at her sides. “If you will not speak to me, then at least find a confessor to hear your sins. I shall pray for your deliverance from whatever gnaws your soul.”

  Deliverance from whatever gnaws my soul. Can I even hope for that? He imagined the words flowing from him and the absolution a priest could provide.

  “I shall consider what you have said,” Iacopo said with finality. “But leave me now, for my father’s business demands attention.”

  Immacolata looked into her son’s face, searching as if something might be found there. Then, without another word, she left, pulling the door shut behind her.

  After she had gone, a memory came to Iacopo unbidden from his boyhood, as real as if he were still crouching unseen against his mother’s bedroom wall. He saw his mother’s arms raised in defense, saw her cringe and plead for mercy as his father’s blows rained down relentless upon her head and limbs and back. Iacopo had longed to help her but instead crept away, afraid to become the subject of that awful
wrath. Do I wish to be that father’s son? Whether he wished to or not was of no consequence for it seemed he had no choice.

  * * *

  We questioned Baldi until the sun rose, but he didn’t know much, or didn’t reveal it. Baldi didn’t know where Iacopo (he called him “the Medici boy”) was staying—he’d been at Semenzato’s before, but wasn’t any longer. Baldi was to await a letter with their next meeting place after the deed was done. I grimly imagined what Baldi’s success would have meant. Yes, he’d orchestrated the letter denouncing Gabriele, and the scaffolding accident. There was nothing else we could get from him. With a smirk he reminded us of our promise, and we ushered him out the front door. Now we knew what Iacopo had planned, but not where to find him.

  Ysabella went upstairs to bed and Bianca put Gabriella in her cradle; after the night’s uproar the child had fallen asleep in our bed, one arm thrown over her head and her long red child’s gown wrapped about her legs.

  Gabriele and I sat at the kitchen table. It felt like a year had passed since our wedding—had it really been just the day before?

  “Our married life is not as peaceful as I’d imagined,” Gabriele said. He smiled, that sweet smile I’d seen him give only me, and took my hands between his.

  “Peace is not very likely when the two of us are involved,” I answered, wryly. “Baldi probably won’t make more trouble, but his boss is at large somewhere.”

  “We could search the local inns,” Gabriele said. I nodded, but now I was remembering what I’d learned in my trip back and forth between two centuries. “I think that attack on you is just a tiny piece of a larger plan.” Gabriele raised one eyebrow quizzically. “No offense meant; your life isn’t tiny of course.”

  “A single man’s life is an infinitesimally small flicker of a candle in the bright light of the divine presence,” Gabriele replied seriously.