After helping place Luciana onto her bed, Antonella felt that giving up her sleep and her room was enough of a sacrifice, so she retired with a huff with Amerigo to his chamber.
Luciana was damp with sweat and coughed almost incessantly. “Sandro, do you still have the tobacco syrup you bought for your uncle?” I asked, fearing that someone might hear her hacking through the palazzo walls.
“I believe so,” he replied, before he rushed off to his room to look.
“Marco, she needs fluids. Go get her some water. Lots of water.”
“But, Carlo…”
“Do I have to think of everything? Tell him, I finally gave in to you, and after bedding me, I need my thirst quenched.”
Marco nodded without replying, and scurried off through my chamber.
Luciana lifted her head and asked, weakly, “Why are you…helping me, idiota?”
“Because you’d do the same for me, right?” I asked, sarcastically. “You have nothing to fear from me, Luciana. You never did. I know Marco loves you and only you. And you can start showing your gratitude by calling me Simonetta.”
Luciana twisted her face away from me, as Sandro returned with the tobacco syrup. I bid Sandro farewell, as Luciana’s presence was the biggest passion-block I could imagine. And despite her inevitable objections, she needed to be cared for. I lifted my napkin mask and kissed Sandro deeply—despite Luciana—before he slid out through the door behind the painting.
When Marco returned with the water, I snatched it from him and tried to shoo him off as well, but he insisted I give him a moment with Luciana. He whispered something in her ear that elicited no reaction, then kissed her gently on the forehead, before making his way for the door.
Before he exited, Marco turned back. “You will send for me if…” he muttered, clearly fearing the worst.
“I’ll have Amerigo get you,” I assured him, and Marco nodded reluctantly before letting himself out of my chamber.
Luciana spat insults as I stripped the damp servant’s gown from her and washed her sweaty, feverish, dark skin. I interpreted her venomous blasts as a good sign; she couldn’t die and be pissed off at me at the same time.
I dried her thoroughly and dressed her in one of my clean shifts. Luciana swung feebly when I brushed her thick, black hair and bound it with a band, then propped her up with pillows and gave her the horrid tobacco syrup to swallow. She appeared as though she might spit it back at me, so I plugged her nose to force it down before giving her a water chaser.
“Leave me be…Simonetta,” she demanded.
At least she called me by my name. Or someone’s name, anyway. Either way it was progress.
“I’m not gonna leave you alone, until you drink three goblets of water.” I poured the first goblet and thrust it in her face to show her I meant business. Some of the vital liquid spilled as she tried to steady the flow into her mouth, so I held it for her while she drank and drank.
Finally, Luciana sank back into Antonella’s bed and fell into a deep sleep. Her condition seemed somewhat stable, with her respirations even and regular, but I sat in a chair and watched her for the night, just to make certain.
Chapter 44
Luciana remained pleasantly mute throughout the next day as I spooned soup, wiped sweat, forced fluids, and medicated her with the horrible tobacco syrup and other herbal concoctions Marco purchased from the apothecary. Pride prevented her from uttering any words of thanks, but I felt a tiny bit of emerging humility prevented her from spewing any scornful ones either. I took her cooperation and silence as a small step in the right direction.
Marco, who was astounded that she had survived the night, made short frequent visits to check Luciana’s status in between his duties to his father, though I didn’t allow him in the room without his face covered. Despite all the wretched things Luciana had said and done to me, I couldn’t handle the guilt of another death on my hands, so when Marco offered to sneak a physician through Sandro’s house—one who would surely let her blood—I wouldn’t allow it. Instead, I convinced him the physician would no doubt inform his powerful father, and all would be lost.
Marco was so grateful for my doting care of his lover, that he offered to plead my case for freedom to his father, but I was just as happy not being an active participant in the Vespucci household for the time being. My confinement made it easier to invest my thoughts in Sandro, and my energy in Luciana.
Antonella avoided the whole scene. She made only one silent, obligatory visit to accompany me during my free time on the roof. It was a relief to remove the napkin from my face, since much of the time I felt like I might faint from asphyxiation. Carlo spent the hour on the roof grinning at me from the false knowledge Marco had planted, implying that I’d finally given myself to him. Carlo was all too pleased that my imprisonment had caused me to bend to Piero’s will.
When evening came, and it seemed the danger of Luciana’s imminent death had passed, I asked Marco to watch over her for a while so I could see Sandro, assuring him that Luciana would likely continue to sleep soundly.
“But…what if she awakens and requires something?” Marco asked. “Should I get your attendant?’ His eyes pleaded as he sat down on the bed and stroked her hair.
“Uh…if she needs something, then give it to her!” I shrugged.
Helpless nobleman.
I restrained myself from giving him an oh-no-you-didn’t head shake.
Still in my ugly servant’s dress, I ducked through the hidden door behind the painting, through the staircase, and into Sandro’s chamber. I startled him as I quietly snuck in.
“Simonetta!” He smiled and embraced me. “How does Luciana fare?”
“I think she’s past the worst of it. She’s sleeping now.”
“That is a blessing,” he sighed. He had clearly spent almost no time in this space since his move from the Via della Vigna Nuova, as the room was in disarray, with clothing strewn across his small bed and sketches rolled up and stacked in a corner. We were in such a rush to get to Luciana the night before; I hadn’t really paid much attention as we dashed through his quarters.
“My father thought it was odd that I chose this particular chamber,” Sandro whispered, as he noticed me scanning his room. “There are many larger ones in the house, but I insisted on keeping this one since it was closest to you.” He smiled. “Filippino is just next door.”
I absorbed all the objects in the room, wanting to know everything I could about him, each intimate detail. I sat on the bed next to Sandro and picked up a book on his nightstand before thumbing through its pages. Chills ran through me when I realized it was a handwritten copy of Dante’s Paradiso. It rested on top of Alberti’s Treatise on Painting, and next to the books rested a coin.
I scooped up the silver coin and examined it. On one side, there was a picture of a woman draped in a large scarf with a javelin in her right hand and a bundle of javelins off to her left—just as the Abbess appeared in my dreams. On the flip side, was the engraved word Constantia.
I looked up at Sandro in shock. “Where did you get this?”
“Ahh, I had forgotten. ‘Twas given to me by the Abbess at the Ognissanti on the night you ran out suddenly. She said I am to give it to you as an offering of faith.”
“What?”
“You were clothed as a nun, remember?”
“Yes, but this isn’t a religious coin. Look.”
He examined it carefully. “Hmm. I wonder why the Abbess would want you to have a coin bearing the image of the goddess Constantia?”
“Goddess?”
That shriveled old woman is some kind of deity?
“Yes, the goddess of constancy.”
Constancy. She has always been there.
I leapt up from his bed. “Sandro, I really want to see your Saint Augustine in His Study! Can we go now?” I understood at that moment that she had the answers I sought all along.
“I can think of no reason not to.” He smiled and stood as well, im
petuous as ever.
As we tiptoed through his house and out the front door, terror ran through me at the thought of what I might discover, but I needed to know.
We made our way down the Borgo to the church, and found the Ognissanti eerily lit with torches, and the door cracked open as if waiting for us. I followed Sandro through the dimly lit nave. Rows of pews stood empty under the vaulted ceiling, and the nave appeared devoid of any living souls. Except one. The coyote sauntered out from the left transept, cocking his head to the side with his knowing smirk, then trotted up next to me as if escorting me down the nave. Sandro never turned in his direction, but I could feel his warm canine breath on my legs and launched a swift kick his way. When my foot found no purchase, I had to keep myself from tripping. I turned to glare at the creature, but just as suddenly as he appeared, he was gone.
Sometimes I hate that bastard.
Sandro led me into the choir, and even though I’d seen his Saint Augustine a million times before in my future, I was still in awe as he pulled the cover from it. And it wasn’t quite the same. Sandro had painted rays of light that filtered in from the left side of the painting, creating an almost ominous glow.
The portrait of Augustine wore Mariano’s face, as he sat in his study, his gray curls and beard framing his furrowed his gray eyes that stared in the direction of Ghirlandaio’s Saint Jerome in His Study. I examined all the objects surrounding Augustine once again: the Cardinal’s mitre, the armillary sphere, the myriad of books, and of course, the text within the garbled words, the meaning of which I now understood.
“You recognize the clock of course.” Sandro grinned. I looked again at the red-faced twenty-four hour Italian clock in the upper right hand corner of the fresco.
“It’s just like the one from my bedchamber.”
“Yes.”
Though I never know what time it is on the weird clock.
“How did you choose the time?” The solitary hand pointed to the Roman numeral “one.”
“It is the first hour after sunset; the canonical hour in which Saint Jerome died in Jerusalem. The legend states that Augustine was in his monastic cell in Hippo Regius, about to write a letter to Jerome. You see how he grasps the inkwell, quill, and paper in his left hand?”
“Oh yeah.” The items also looked identical to their counterparts in my nightstand.
“Augustine was startled by an ineffable light, and the voice of Jerome called out to him, telling him that he would sooner enclose the ocean in a small vessel, clasp the whole earth in his fist, or halt the movements of the heavens before he could describe the beatitude that he was experiencing in death.”
“So that’s why Mariano looks so surprised…uh…I mean Augustine.”
Sandro laughed. “Yes. I used my father’s countenance because I see him as a wise man— at times—but mostly because he understands and craves the light.”
A female voice interrupted from behind. “It is quite ingenious, is it not?” I didn’t need to turn around to know who it was. Neither of us had noticed her slip into the room, and Sandro jumped a bit in startle.
“Thank you, Abbess,” Sandro replied.
“Sandro, may I have a private word with your companion? I should like to show the would-be sister my cell.”
“Of course.” He bowed politely, and stepped away.
I felt mesmerized by this eternal woman, unable to speak. Before I knew it, she took my young hand into her wrinkled one, and led me through the back of the choir and into the convent. Her hand was warm, the flesh of a live woman. Apprehension raced through me as we walked past cell after cell, down the gray, dismal corridor.
I had no doubt to which cell we were headed. Straight ahead, framing the door was a dull, silvery aura which barely shone through the gloom of the place. The aura may have been imperceptible to the non-believer of miracles, but at this point, I firmly believed.
She opened the seemingly mystical door, but all that rested behind it was a gray, empty space.
Maybe I was wrong about her.
“You have no possessions?” I asked. “I know you have to live sparsely, but there’s nothing…”
“What need have I of possessions?” She shrugged, as she adjusted her wimple and veil.
“I guess…I don’t know,” I answered, closing the door behind us. When I turned to face her again, we were no longer in her barren cell, but in the meadow outside the Porta al Prato, near the lone olive tree where Sandro and I first made love.
“I thought you might be more at ease out here,” she said, and with a wave of her arm she illuminated the grassy plain.
I took a deep breath, inhaling the aroma of the wildflowers. The caressing breeze tickled my legs through my dress, and I experienced every pleasant, visceral moment I’d shared with Sandro all at once. When I looked back to the Abbess, she was no longer a wrinkled, toothless old crone, but young and beautiful, with dark silken hair twisted into a pony tail and only a drape partially covering her milky bare form. She held the javelin to her side.
“You’re Constantia,” I acknowledged.
“That is one of the names I am called,” she said with a gleaming smile.
The coyote appeared once again, and gazed lovingly at Constantia, before affectionately rubbing his body across her legs.
“And the coyote? Why is he here?”
“Constancy needs the companionship of chaos to keep balance. He appears as the coyote because your mind has made him so.”
“And you have always been here?” I mused, as the coyote took a seat next to me. I resisted the urge to give him a good shove.
“Yes. In some form or another.”
“But why the old nun guise?
“You were not ready to accept me for who I am. Even now that you have been part of the otherworldly realm, you still needed a familiar form to gaze upon, and a tangible object to connect you.” Constantia played with her Miraculous Medal. “You had the Medal that Saint Catherine took credit for all these centuries,” she said sarcastically, “And yet you still feared me.”
“I don’t want to go back.”
“But I am here to guide you, Anastasia.”
“So why am I here?”
“You have been here with Simonetta since the beginning, but you have not allowed yourself to remember.”
“I am Simonetta?”
“A part of you is her, just as she is a part of you. You are eternally connected. Do you think it a coincidence that you were so instantly affected by Sandro’s every painting in your lifetime? Simonetta brought you back here, to accomplish what she did not the first time around.”
“Yes, I do know. She never told Sandro she loved him.”
“And now you have done what you came here to do.”
“But, wait,” I pleaded. “My time here can’t be over. What about Mariano? And what about our plans? I’m supposed leave with Sandro for Rome in a few days.”
“Anastasia, he does not intend to go to Rome. You know he cannot go there with you. There is nowhere in all of Italy the two of you can be together. Sandro loves you so much, he would do anything. He intends to flee, and give up painting out of his love for you.”
“Give up painting?” The horrifying thought caused me to sink to the ground. “Oh my God. Where would the world be…? It would change everything.”
“You know what you must do, Anastasia.”
I sat in a heap with my head lowered to my knees and my arms curled over my ears to prevent me from hearing any more. I couldn’t allow it to happen. I refused to let him give up his passion and deny the world his creations. Sandro had to paint.
When I lifted my head, I was back in Constantia’s cell, but she had vanished. There was nothing left to be said.
Chapter 45
I sat dumbfounded on the floor of Constantia’s cell for a time, before wandering out to rejoin Sandro in the choir. I found him resting on a bench with his chin in his hands, contemplating the two frescoes in front of him: his Saint Augustine, a
nd Ghirlandaio’s Saint Jerome. I slumped down next to him, and laid my head solemnly on his shoulder.
“Does the Abbess have you convinced?” Sandro asked, as he brushed a stray hair from my face.
“Convinced of what?”
“To join the Umiliati order,” he laughed.
Sandro always had a way of cheering me up. “No. I think I’ve broken half the commandments just today.”
“You never offered an opinion of my fresco.” Sandro motioned towards the wall.
“It’s brilliant, of course.” I clutched his arm. “And beautiful, just like you.”
He leaned over and kissed me, then paused for a moment before glancing around. “Perhaps I should not do that here.”
“Just another commandment broken,” I quipped, and gazed again at his fresco. “Does your father know you’ve painted him as Augustine?”
“I intended to show him tonight.” Sandro shifted uncomfortably on the bench. “But my mother was in a particularly foul disposition, so he abandoned the house for the tavern.”
“Your mother.” I’d almost forgotten about that horrible, screeching shrew. “She thinks I’m a whore from the brothel. I came to see you the night of the joust…and your father answered the door, and….” I suddenly remembered that look in Mariano’s eyes after I embraced him, and the question that Constantia ignored.
What about Mariano?
“Sandro, I need to see your father.”
“You need to see…my father?”
“Yes. He knows me as Stacia, the field worker from the tavern.”
“My father thinks you are a field worker?”
“No. I mean he knows it’s me…now. But before I even met you, Antonella, Amerigo, and I snuck out of the palazzo to the tavern countless times, and I would talk with Mariano there.”
What Remains of the Fair Simonetta Page 23