“Please, Spinetta, be patient. It will not be long until we have word from Ser Cantansanti, or from Rome. Have faith, I beg you.”
The days were quiet, and Fra Filippo spent them working on his altarpiece or studying Lucrezia’s face. The bruise over her eye was fading, the place where she’d bitten her lip had healed to a dark red. But since the Festa della Sacra Cintola, something more had changed. Her smile came more slowly, and the expression in her eyes was heart-breakingly close to the Madonna he’d always sought. Although Lucrezia was young he could see that she understood what the Blessed Mother had known: the link between suffering and joy, death and birth, fragility and strength.
“Your beauty’s even more compelling than before,” he said as he studied the shadow in her eyes.
“Is that why you love me?” Lucrezia asked quietly. She’d washed her hair that morning, and was dressed in a simple pale dress she’d found among the costumes the monk used for his paintings. Under the dress she wore her mended panni di gamba. “Do you love me because I’m beautiful?”
Fra Filippo had felt many things in the last week. He’d felt rage, regret, and a desire for revenge. But above all there was the need to protect and nurture Lucrezia. Yes, he loved her beauty. He’d made it his life’s work to understand beauty and he knew, perhaps more than most, that beauty was always more than what met the eye. Just as his paintings were made luminous by layering colors one upon the other, he saw that Lucrezia’s beauty came from a wellspring that could only be found in the depths of a complex soul.
“There are many beautiful women in the world, but none has ever moved me as you do,” he said gently. “Even before I saw you, Lucrezia, I knew your face somewhere in my heart.”
For the first time in his life, the monk shared his private fears and pains. He told Lucrezia about the nights he’d dreamt of his mother’s voice and awakened bereft on the narrow pallet in Santa Maria del Carmine; of the years he’d struggled to create with pencil and vellum the wonder and awe he felt.
“When I was a young man, painting was all I had,” he said quietly. “It was all I had, and so it had to become everything to me.”
She watched as his eyes clouded.
“In the monastery, it saved me from despair. In prison, when I feared for my life, I imagined all the paintings I’d create in God’s honor, if He would let me live,” the monk said. “For years I’ve painted as I prayed; I’ve prayed as I painted. After a time there was no difference between one and the other.”
Lucrezia nodded silently.
“All my life I’ve been searching for something,” he said with deep conviction. “I don’t love you because you’re beautiful. I love you because you’re the answer to everything I’ve looked for.”
He knelt before her.
“For me, to see beauty is to see God,” the monk said thoughtfully. “Beauty on Earth is a mirror of God’s love in heaven.”
“A speculum majus,” she whispered.
“Yes, that’s right. A speculum majus.” He put a hand on her cheek, and she didn’t move away until she heard Spinetta’s step in the doorway.
Mother Bartolommea was clear: she wanted the novitiates back in the convent before Santa Margherita became the subject of mockery and the target of the prior general’s wrath. Already, she had to make do with Fra Piero acting as chaplain to her nuns. Who was to say the prior general wouldn’t remove her from the post as prioress, also, when he heard of this new scandal?
“I don’t care how you do it,” she said to Sister Pureza. “I want you to bring them back here. You’ve spent more time with Sister Lucrezia than any of us. You’re the one who insisted I send her out of the convent for her own protection. Now you must bring her back.”
The old woman left the convent alone the next day, just after Terse. Walking along Via Santa Margherita, Sister Pureza vowed to bind the novitiate to her even more tightly than before. She would offer Lucrezia her protection, and she would be firm in her resolve.
At the Piazza della Pieve, she asked a boy where the painter lived.
“Fra Filippo?” The boy pointed to a house with a thatched roof. “He is there.”
Sister Pureza squared her shoulders and marched up to the door.
“It is Sister Pureza.” She rattled the latch. “Let me in.”
Spinetta jumped up and ran into the bedroom, followed quickly by Lucrezia, who’d picked up the cappello she was embroidering, and dropped it over her bare head.
Fra Filippo waited until both young women were safely out of view before opening the door and looking down into the wrinkled face of Sister Pureza. Her anger was evident in her pinched mouth and the hard squint of her eyes.
“I know the novitiates are here, Chaplain.” She put a special emphasis on his title, spitting it through her lips. “Let me have them.”
“Sister Pureza,” he said calmly. “You know I am no longer chaplain of the convent.”
“Precisely,” she said. “The novitiates have no business here with you. Release them to me.”
“I am not holding them against their will.” Fra Filippo’s body blocked the doorway, his heavy hand held the door in place.
“They belong in the convent.”
“But you sent Lucrezia away.” The painter steadied himself, and spoke gently. He would get nowhere with the old nun unless he could settle her down and send her away without incident. “You sent her away for her own protection.”
“I sent her to the home of Ottavio de’ Valenti, Fratello, I didn’t send her into your hands to ruin her.”
Lucrezia listened from the bedroom. She put her lips to Spinetta’s ear, and whispered, “Please remember your promise to stay here with me.”
“Sister Lucrezia is an angel,” Fra Filippo said quietly, in the doorway. “I have only the deepest reverence for her.”
“Then let her come with me,” Sister Pureza said. “Prioress Bartolommea will forgive her if she comes now. Both of the novitiates must return at once.”
“Lucrezia doesn’t want to go back,” Fra Filippo said.
He slackened his stance and Sister Pureza, spry even in her advanced age, slipped under his arm and into the workshop. She moved quickly and found herself staring at a tangle of wool and silk cloth laid out on the floor in a series of cutting patterns.
“What is this?” she demanded. “Have you taken up the work of a seamstress as well as that of painter and monk?”
Sister Pureza leaned over and picked up the yellow silk of a sleeve Lucrezia had cut that very morning from an old piece of strazze de seda filada she’d found.
“I demand to know what’s going on here.”
“The girl will not be safe at the prior general’s convent,” the painter said. “She cannot go back now.”
Lucrezia moved toward the doorway. She didn’t want to be found hiding, and she was afraid the monk’s anger might compel him to reveal her bitter secret. Straightening her spine, Lucrezia tucked her hair under the cappello, pulled on the needle until it snapped from the thread, and stepped into the workshop.
“Sister Pureza, I am here.”
The nun and the monk turned to stare at Lucrezia. In her pale gamurra, locks of hair spilling from under the cap, a blue shawl slung round her shoulders, she looked as if she’d stepped out of a painting.
“Lucrezia!” Sister Pureza gasped. “Why do you look this way? Where is your robe?”
Seeing the nun who’d given her only friendship and protection, Lucrezia’s throat filled.
“Sister,” she cried. “Oh, Sister, forgive me.”
Lucrezia wrung her hands, and in this single motion Sister Pureza read far more than the young woman had intended. She stepped across the fabrics and seized Lucrezia by the arm.
“Are you hurt? Have you been harmed or soiled against your will?”
Lucrezia’s eyes widened.
“No, Sister Pureza, you misunderstand,” she said, shaking her head. Wildly, her eyes sought the painter’s, sending him a pleading glanc
e. “Nothing’s happened against my will.”
Sister Pureza’s grip on Lucrezia’s arm tightened.
“You and Spinetta will come back to the convent with me,” she said. “You can’t stay here, and certainly not like this. You’ll ruin your name and your father’s name, and then you’ll have nowhere to turn.”
“It’s not true.” Fra Filippo spoke in his deepest baritone. “I can care for her.”
It was Sister Pureza’s turn to drop open her mouth, and stare at the monk.
“Have you lost your mind, Fra Filippo? You are acting senza vergogna, without any shame at all! This is absurd. You mustn’t ruin the girl with your devilish notions.”
Fra Filippo stared at Lucrezia and spoke to her directly.
“I’ll marry you, Lucrezia, as I promised. I’ll renounce the cloth and marry you.”
“It’s the devil in her beauty,” Sister Pureza said angrily. “I told you, Lucrezia, to guard your beauty carefully.”
Lucrezia’s hands flew to her face. “No,” she cried.
Fra Filippo stepped forward.
“Go away,” he said loudly, towering over Sister Pureza. “Go away, old woman.”
Sister Pureza glared at the monk, and looked beyond him, to Spinetta.
“Sister Spinetta,” she said. “Save yourself, at least.”
Spinetta’s face crumpled. She very much wished to hurry into the old nun’s arms, and tell her everything. Only her promise to Lucrezia kept her silent.
“I’m sorry, Sister,” Spinetta said weakly. “I cannot.”
Sister Pureza looked from one face to the other. Fra Lippi stepped toward her.
“You’d best be going, Sister Pureza,” he said firmly.
The old nun stood a moment more, looking from one to the other.
“Will you not change your mind?” she asked Lucrezia a final time. When the girl shook her head, the old woman turned and left the bottega, defeated. Lucrezia might believe the monk had the power, the will, and the worldly talents to look after her. But when the painter felt the wrath of Rome or the anger of his patrons, Sister Pureza doubted his resolve, or his lust, would be strong enough. And Lucrezia would suffer, just as she, Sister Pureza, had suffered so many years ago.
Chapter Seventeen
The Sixteenth Week After Pentecost, the Year of Our Lord 1456
More than a week passed with no word from Florence or Rome. Lucrezia and Spinetta slept and woke together in the monk’s bedroom, and each day they wrapped some bread and cheese for his lunch before he went off to work on the frescoes at the pieve.
Rosina’s mother was sick and the girl stayed away, but Paolo ran small errands for them in the afternoon, and after breakfast the two walked to the water pump and carried fresh water back in the monk’s heavy wooden buckets. Alone in the house, the sisters swept the corners of the rooms and prayed, or stitched a proper dress for Lucrezia from the silk and linen scraps they’d found in the storage chest. They kept their hands and minds occupied, but it was a time of great anxiety. Spinetta continued to pray that her sister would relent and return to the convent, while Lucrezia prayed her monthly bleeding would come, and worried when she saw her face filling and her cheeks softening. Yet, in her heart, Lucrezia was also joyful. She looked forward to the painter’s return every evening, and he never failed to bring home a small gift: one day a comb for her hair, another day a sack of oranges. Only this morning she’d put on a new reta to cover her head.
Between chores and the ritual of liturgical prayers that Spinetta insisted they keep, Lucrezia spent hours studying the paintings and sketches the monk had stored and stacked in every corner of his bottega. She didn’t dare move things too far from their places, but she tidied the shelves and straightened the panels, and as she did so she found a dozen small studies of the Mother and Child, and a large collection of drawings for the Annunciation he’d painted as a gift for the church of San Lorenzo in Florence. Seeing how many years Fra Filippo had spent working for God’s glory only made it more wondrous to her that she was here with him now, and that he said he loved her. She prayed that word from Rome would come quickly, and that it would be favorable.
In the cappella maggiore of Santo Stefano, where his assistants were busy grinding azurite and malachite, Fra Filippo stood in a doorway with the procurator. The men leaned against the limestone wall, a font of holy water between them.
“My love for her is sincere,” the painter said in a strained whisper. “Every day she lives without word from Rome is a torment to her, I can see it. I can’t bear to have her suffer, and I can’t wait any longer to hear what the pope will say.”
Fra Piero studied his friend’s face.
“They say Pope Callistus is gravely ill,” said the procurator. “But he’s never been a friend to the Medici, nor a patron of the arts. It’s doubtful he’ll grant what you’ve asked.”
“I know,” Fra Filippo said solemnly. “But I’ve been reading about matrimony, and there may be an alternative, Piero.”
The monk walked to his worktable and retrieved the book he’d been studying all week. It was blue, with a title engraved in gold, Concerning the Sacraments of the Christian Religion. He opened to the page he’d marked, and held it out for his friend to read.
“In the time of Pope Innocent III a simple sentence was enough, it says it right here.” Fra Filippo indicated the page he’d noted. “See, one only needs to say, ‘I receive you as mine, so that you become my wife and I your husband,’ and it’s done.”
The book specified that it was the act of sexual union that consummated the marriage and made it binding according to law, but the painter was silent on this subject.
“What do you think, Piero?” He laid a hand on the procurator’s sleeve.
Fra Piero was a practical man. He’d made the best of life by utilizing all the Church could offer, and finding ways to compensate for what Rome would neither abide nor provide. He knew his friend was permitted an even wider berth around the rules, as long as his work remained in favor. But it was a lot to put on a man’s God-given talents, and the procurator was hesitant to be an accessory to what Rome might consider a grave affront.
“Why do it at all, Filippo? Saviano’s gone, no one’s bothering you. Why not let things stay as they are, or let the girl return to the convent?”
Fra Filippo glanced over at the far wall of the chapel where Young Marco was adding shadows to the face of the young Saint Stephen. The apprentice was barely past puberty, and had the sweet, dark looks and deep eyes of a young Roman.
“It’s not enough,” Fra Filippo said. “I don’t want to trick her, or keep her with me as a concubine. I want to be her husband. I want to offer her as much protection as I can.”
“And if you’re thrown in jail? How will you protect her then?”
“The Medici won’t let it happen, not with so much riding on the triptych, not as long as I’m in the good graces of Ser Francesco Cantansanti.”
Fra Piero groaned. “Did you have to fall in love?”
“Do you think I had a choice?” Fra Filippo retorted. Again, he held up the blue book. “It says here that a union sealed by mutual consent and the blessings of a priest are enough to turn it into a sacrament. Plenty of others have married far from Rome but with the righteous knowledge of Jesus Christ. You know it’s true, Piero. My God, even Piccolomini has two bastard children, and he’s the Cardinal of Siena.”
Fra Piero’s sharp eyes wavered.
“As long as Prior General Saviano is alive, she can’t go back to Santa Margherita, you know that.” The painter lowered his voice. “At least I can offer her the protection of my name.”
“If you’ve figured everything out, why do you need me at all?”
“As our confessor, and as a witness. If anything happens to me, you can step forward and profess that she’s my wife, bound to me by vows of love.”
Fra Piero shrugged and shook his head.
“Does it really mean anything?” he asked. But even
as he looked at his friend’s face, filled with determination, the procurator knew the answer.
“It means something to me,” the painter said. “And it will mean everything to her.”
“It will only afford you as much protection as your work affords, you know that, Filippo.”
“Then thank God for the work,” the painter said. “And pray that it’s good.”
Although only the pope can grant you and Fra Filippo dispensation to marry, I can bless the union of your souls privately, so that you may have peace and live as man and wife in the eyes of the Lord.”
Lucrezia was alone with the procurator in the kitchen, and her head was reeling.
In her hands she held a copy of the blue book, its title stamped in gold.
“Fra Filippo’s name means a great deal throughout Florence and the surrounding regions,” the procurator said. He put a palm on her forehead. “You’ve put aside your wimple; you haven’t taken the vows that make you a bride of Christ. It’s unusual, Lucrezia, but I believe there is merit in such a union. If it’s what you want.”
“I want to be with him. I want to be his wife, if you say it’s possible.”
“Then let it be so,” Fra Piero said.
Lucrezia knelt and began the confession that would prepare her for the sacrament of matrimony. In halting words she spoke of the prior general’s violation, and of her own shame and guilt. It was the first time that Fra Piero was told, directly, what the prior general had done, and in his outrage the procurator vowed silently that he would do everything he could to ensure Lucrezia’s future safety and happiness.
“I’m not only angry at the prior general,” she whispered. “I’m angry at God, and at the Church. And at myself,” she said. “I was looking for a mirror when I spilled the paint. My vanity is what destroyed the convent robe. If not for that, he wouldn’t have found me in my panni di gamba and then…” She faltered. “And then maybe none of this would have happened.”
The Miracles of Prato Page 18