A Golden Web

by Barbara Quick

  Alessandra exchanged a look with Giorgio, who shrugged his shoulders. Turning back to Emilia, she said, “All right—don’t put them on. But if you don’t, I shall leave you here by yourself and the wolves will eat you as soon as darkness falls.”

  Emilia seemed suddenly to think better of her resistance, although she sniffed and sighed and muttered darkly about the sin of subverting one’s gender, quoting chapter and verse from the Book of Deuteronomy. Alessandra stood by her, as if mistress and servant had changed roles, helping Emilia dress herself and stashing the capacious lavender-and sweat-scented everyday clothes in the newly emptied saddlebag.

  Emilia’s thin hair fit neatly beneath her cap. But when she looked down and saw how her much-used breasts, without the support of her kirtle, made for a convincing paunch—pooled above her belt—she shrieked in horror.

  Alessandra, surveying her, looked quite satisfied. “The transformation is perfect! What do you think, Giorgio?”

  Giorgio gave a nod of approval for Emilia but then shook his head at Alessandra. He touched his hair, which was cut short, in the usual style. “Y-y-y-your h-h-h—”

  “My hair! You’re right. Emilia, come here and put it in a braid for me.”

  “I won’t!”

  “What is the matter with you? You’ve been hovering around me like a mayfly for the past six months, wanting to braid my hair. Braid it now!”

  “I won’t let you cut off your curls, Alessandra Giliani, for I know quite well that’s what you have a mind to do.”

  “Braid it, or I’ll braid it myself—and I’m bound to make a botch of it.” Alessandra got her knife out of its scabbard, now hanging from the belt at her waist. It glinted so fiercely in the noonday light and looked so long that Emilia screamed.

  “You’ll cut your very head off!”

  “Please, Emilia—I beg you! The sun is past its zenith and we have a long way to go.”

  Emilia combed out Alessandra’s chestnut curls, kissed them, and then quickly wove them into a thick, ropy braid.

  “Stand back now,” said Alessandra. She was also a bit worried about cutting herself with the knife, which she’d sharpened often but had put to little use so far, apart from dressing game when it still belonged to Nicco. She held the braid in one hand while hacking away at it, from the neck out, with the other. She’d never cut anyone’s hair before and it shocked her how tough a rope the braid was. She had to saw away at it, and despite her full intention of being brave, tears sprang into her eyes as she did so. It felt as if she was sawing off one of her own limbs.

  When the last strands broke free, Alessandra looked down at this part of her that was now a separate thing. Then she handed it, half tossing it, to Emilia, who cradled it against her.

  “There,” said Alessandra. And then, using a voice that seemed more masculine to her—in fact, imitating Nicco, she said, “There!” again.

  Giorgio smiled at her.

  “You’re sure you’ll be all right, Giorgio? You have nearly as far to walk, I would wager, as we have to ride.”

  He shook his head, dismissing her concerns. “I was beset by robbers,” he sang as he ripped the undergarments he wore and then smeared dirt on them, “on my way back from Bologna. They took everything—the animals, their cargo, and even my clothes.”

  “What conspiracy is this?” said Emilia, looking up from the precious braid, her voice brimming with outrage.

  “A well-planned one, Emilio!”

  “Emilio?”

  “From now on, you are Emilio. Now get back up on your steed, my good man!”

  Emilia let herself be pulled and pushed back onto the donkey by her cross-dressed mistress and the half-naked illuminator, all the while praying aloud, “Oh, Lord, drive the Devil from her!”

  “Honestly, Emilia! I’m no more possessed than you are.”

  “You’ve a hectic flush in your cheeks.” And then, when she’d taken a good look at Alessandra, she spoke in a kinder voice. “Marriage isn’t that bad, whatever anyone else has told you. Not so bad as to make you run away. A wealthy gentleman, my dear! And probably too old to give you much trouble beneath your skirts, once he’s managed to have his squirt and plant a seed.”

  Alessandra’s cheeks really did flush then. “Hurry and be well, Giorgio! Not a word to anyone but the one who already knows—and to him, my affection and gratitude.”

  Giorgio touched his heart, waved, and then started down the road.

  Alessandra called after him, “I’ll send word of our address when we reach Bologna. I will never forget this—nor will my brother!”

  She kicked her horse and started out in the direction of the city, with Emilia’s donkey following close behind.

  They could see the bristling towers of Bologna, so they knew they were getting close, and yet it seemed to take forever to arrive. Emilia was too tired and sore to even complain or ask questions anymore. Even Alessandra, who rode with ease (thanks to Nicco’s instruction), was tired and aching in every part of her.

  The sun was low and turning red behind them when they reached the closest northwest gate, the Porta San Felice. The top of the Basilica glowed in the last golden rays of light. A line of birds was gathered overhead on the highest westernmost edge, unwilling to surrender the day until the sunlight disappeared. Alessandra also wanted to savor this day and this moment. She had never been to the city without one or both of her parents. This day marks the beginning, she told herself, of my real life.

  The guard at the gate asked their business.

  “I am a student,” said Alessandra, trying to sound more like her brother than herself. She gestured with her thumb toward Emilia. “My servant.”

  The guard looked at them more carefully then, and Alessandra was certain that he would see through their disguises.

  “Do you have lodgings?” When Alessandra, to be on the safe side, shook her head no rather than speak again, the guard stepped up close to her horse, indicating with a flick of his head that she should bend down to better hear him. “My sister and her husband let rooms to students, although they’re not strictly licensed, if you know what I mean.”

  He flicked his head now at Emilia, as if acknowledging a fellow of his own station. “They’re clean rooms, though—no bugs in ’em. And my sister’s a wicked good cook.”

  Both Alessandra and Emilia were hungry, and their eyes grew wide at this news.

  “Can you lead us there?” Alessandra asked him.

  “Well, I’m not supposed to leave the gate.”

  Alessandra reached into the pocket of her doublet and took out her moneybag, shaking it meaningfully.

  “But seeing as there’s no one else on the road but yourselves,” said the guard in a predictably oily tone, “and seeing how my sister’s place isn’t far from here, I suppose there wouldn’t be any harm—” He slipped a weathered hand out of his sleeve and held it, palm up, to Alessandra, “in showing you the way.”

  Alessandra dropped a silver Bolognino grosso in the guard’s hand, which snapped closed around the coin and disappeared again.

  The guard’s lips parted in a smile containing more gaps than teeth. “Bologna is a confusing place, if you don’t know it well, particularly after dark. This way, sir!”

  Alessandra didn’t dare look at Emilia, terrified she’d burst out giggling. “This way, sir!” he’d said. Soon, soon, she told her aching bones, they’d stable the animals, eat a good meal, and get to lie down. It would be Heaven, bugs or no bugs.

  They went down a street overarched on both sides with porticoes.

  “Everyone wants to rent out rooms to students these days,” the guard went on. “Because if they do it, they’re allowed to build their place out a little bit more, over the street. All the merchants are keen to do it, God knows, the greedy buggers. It’s become the arsehole of the world here, so built out that the sun don’t shine on the streets no more.”

  So this is how men spoke when they were among themselves! Alessandra saw Emilia, discreetly
but distinctly, make the sign of the cross.

  “Here we are then, my dear good sir!”

  Alessandra wondered if she had given him too big a coin.

  “Isabella! Isabella, you old slut, look what baby brother has brought for you!”

  A small, brown, leathery woman who hardly seemed human came to the door, holding a candle up to their faces. Alessandra just caught the guard, out of the corner of her eye, rubbing his fingers together in a silent message to his sister—if she was his sister.

  She, in turn, bellowed for someone named Tonio. A surly, none-too-clean-looking boy, about Alessandra’s age, came down the stairs. “Take the horse and donkey to the stable!”

  Alessandra dismounted, trying not to wince, and then started to unbuckle the saddlebags.

  Emilia slipped off the donkey and stumbled up beside her. “I’ll do that, sir,” she said without skipping a beat, even lowering her voice, if Alessandra wasn’t mistaken.

  “Thank you, Emilio!” She could have kissed Emilia just then, but of course she didn’t dare.

  There were two other students lodging at Signora Isabella’s—one studying law and the other, like Alessandra, aspiring to gain admission to the medical school. Both were clerics, with their heads shaven in the tonsure, which made it hard to tell their age. They were, in any case, far older than Alessandra. They looked at her and Emilia with a great deal of curiosity. But Alessandra parried their questions with protestations of fatigue. She and Emilia ate and retired to their room as quickly as possible.

  There was a small bed for Alessandra and an even smaller one for Emilia, nothing more than a pallet on the floor. Despite her exhaustion, Emilia kissed Alessandra good night and tucked her in—and the sight of it would have amused anyone who saw them. But they were, as far as they knew, unobserved, and they fell asleep immediately.

  The Porta Nova—one of the twelve gates of the city, close by Alessandra and Emilia’s port of entry into Bologna—turned out to be the very place where the medical students gathered. This intelligence came to Alessandra at breakfast, over the bowl of hot milk and the hard roll that came as part of the cost of the room. She asked the other aspiring medico, whose name was Paolo, if he could show her where and how to enroll at the University.

  Paolo snorted and said there was no need. All she had to do was pay her dues to the students’ association and start attending lectures.

  Books, the two clerics told her, were the biggest problem. There were always several people in line to read every book kept under lock and key in its carrel in the library or chained to its stand at the stationer’s. People weren’t shy about pushing and shoving, either, nor were they above taking and giving bribes for the privilege of sitting at the writing desk and making one’s own copy. Pecie—the official copies of books rented out in pieces—were hard to come by. Paolo boasted that he was maintaining a flirtation with the stationer’s daughter, who sometimes smuggled parts of books to him under her chemise. Alessandra nearly choked on her crescent roll at this piece of information.

  “I’ll introduce you to her, if you like,” said the generous Paolo. “She’s such a flirt that one man more is always welcome to ogle her boobies. Although,” he added, eyeing Alessandra, “you can hardly be called a man!”

  She froze.

  Paolo smiled at her, showing his rotten teeth. She wondered whether his tonsure was really a tonsure or only the natural retreat of the hair he once had. Also about how ugly the stationer’s daughter must be to want to flirt with the likes of him. She could hardly breathe. Of course he’d seen right through her!

  “Why, your voice hasn’t even changed yet! How old are you, Sandro? Thirteen? Fourteen?”

  Alessandra blinked a few times, taking this in. She said in a confidential tone of voice, “You won’t tell anyone, will you?”

  Paolo thumped her on the back, so that the bite of roll she had just taken came flying out of her mouth. She was about to apologize to the people sitting across the table from her—a merchant and either his daughter or his very young wife—until she realized that they were both too drunk to notice.

  “You can depend on me!” said Paolo. “I’ll wager you must be a prodigious scholar to have been sent here by your parents to study”—he lowered his voice to a malodorous whisper—“at such a tender age.”

  “I’ve read—rather a lot. I was also—on intimate terms, in my parish, with the stationer’s daughter.”

  “By God!” Paolo slapped his thigh. “Boy or man, you’re my sort, you are! A fellow who knows how to get on in the world. This, for instance,” he said, laying a finger on the fringe of hair around his bald head, “and this,” taking a fistful of his black clerical robe. “God calls us to Him not only to serve but also to survive! It was this or the army for me—and I have a powerful dislike of blood.”

  “You’ve made a strange choice of profession, then,” said Alessandra, barely able to keep herself from laughing.

  Paolo slumped in his chair, like a boat that’s suddenly lost its wind. “It’s true, it’s true! But I have an even greater aversion to legal texts.” He looked utterly miserable. “The truth is,” he whispered, leaning close again, “I can hardly read.”

  “Then why are you here? There are many choices for a man, apart from priest, lawyer, or medico.” Alessandra thought, as she said this, that the same was not at all true for her own gender. What could one be but a nun or a wife? Widows often could and did take on the work of their husband. But no woman could set out to be anything—except, perhaps, a servant.

  “I ask myself that same question, all the time! Why am I here? All these bits of books piling up in my room now, and I can hardly read them. You can’t know how it bedevils me! It takes me three times as long to parse out a text as the other fellows. And by the time I get to the end, I’ve forgotten the beginning. Half the time the letters dance around and change places and convey another meaning entirely.” He groaned. “I’ve failed my first-year exams three times now!”

  Alessandra was about to say “There, there!” and offer comfort—but stopped herself just in time, remembering that men didn’t do this. She tried to think of what Nicco would say. “Bloody hell, Paolo!”

  He looked at her, his eyes brimming with gratitude. “That’s what I say, Sandro, old friend. Bloody hell!”

  “Bloody hell!” echoed the merchant across the table from them.

  The servant boy, Tonio, had come in to clear the tables. Alessandra saw the other boarders hasten to pocket whatever hard rolls were left before Tonio took them away.

  As he passed her, he bent close to her ear and whispered, “Meet me at the privy, then.”

  At the privy? She wished Nicco were there to tell her whether that was something men did, too. She looked at Tonio, hoping to catch some clue from his expression. Then he winked at her. Alessandra hesitated, then winked back at him.

  In her room, she held her head in her hands and moaned. She had no idea what anything meant anymore! Emilia, utterly worn out from the previous day’s journey, was still sleeping. Alessandra put a roll in Emilia’s hand, took a deep breath, then left to go out into the city, determined, beyond anything, not to go anywhere near the privy in Signora Isabella’s boardinghouse.

  Ten

  Alessandra—now “Sandro” to her fellow students—found out a good deal during her first days in Bologna. The principal lectures were all given in the morning at locations decided on the spur of the moment by the students, who were completely in charge of the hiring and firing of masters. Lectures were held wherever a space could be found, depending on the weather and the master’s willingness to let the students gather at his home, if he had one. A few of the most highly revered masters were able to afford to rent a second house especially for this purpose—among them, Alessandra learned, was the renowned and well-respected professor of medicine, Mondino de’ Liuzzi, who was the very reason she’d wanted so much to study in Bologna.

  She was waiting for one such lecture to start—this on
e out in the square, as the magister had earned his degree in philosophy only the year before and was teaching to support the continuation of his studies. Alessandra’s ears pricked up at the mention of a woman doctor at the University of Paris.

  “Oh, she’s history!” said a fat youth with pockmarked skin. “Haven’t you heard? She’s been restrained from ever practicing again.”

  “Did they burn her?” someone else asked.

  “No,” sighed the fat youth, sounding bored. “Only banished her.”

  Alessandra felt more conscious than ever of her disguise. She seated herself in the middle of the throng of students attending the lecture, avoiding people’s eyes and taking notes furiously. Before the end of the lecture, she’d used up her little bottle of ink, but she didn’t dare ask to borrow ink from someone else. She had to simply try—in among the whispered gossip, occasional snores, and bawdy jokes of the other students—to memorize every word.

  She was both exhausted and elated when she found her way back to Signora Isabella’s, hoping she was on time for the midday meal. She had taken wrong turns twice, had to push her way through a throng of people gathered to watch a group of mummers, and just nearly missed being bitten by a savage dog. She was two steps up the staircase when someone grabbed her cloak, jerking her backward and pulling her into the alcove under the stairs, one hand—a filthy-tasting hand—held over her mouth. She knew even before her eyes had adjusted to the dark: It was the serving boy, Tonio.

  When Giorgio got back to Persiceto, traveling the long way on foot, he really did look as though he’d been beset by robbers. He was limping, bleeding, sunburned, and cold by the time he arrived, long after dark. The kitchen maid, when she saw him, shrieked in a most gratifying way. Everyone else reacted just as Nicco had imagined they would—except Pierina. Pierina, now thirteen and growing fast, threw her arms around Giorgio, covering him in tears and kisses.

  Ursula, who had been busy ministering to Giorgio’s injuries when Pierina burst into the kitchen, looked from one to the other and then at her husband. He shook his head as if to indicate I had no idea! Giorgio started to speak, but his words were caught in a hopeless stammer and he merely blushed.