The Shepherdess of Siena: A Novel of Renaissance Tuscany

by Linda Lafferty

  I thought no word had ever pierced my heart as sharply.

  Wounded at my friend’s disbelief, I sought solace with Fedele the donkey. The old suora had obtained permission for me to sleep in the tiny stable with the beast. With the training for the Palio, the streets smelled of horse, and Fedele brayed constantly, keeping the nuns from the few hours of sleep they were allowed.

  The sweet smell of hay comforted me, and my company stopped Fedele’s braying. I stuck a blade of straw between the gap in my teeth, teasing it with the tip of my tongue, making it flick up and down.

  Sometimes in Ferrara, I caught a whiff of the sea. It was miles away, but the salt flats encroached far enough inland that when a strong wind blew, it carried the salty aroma. I had never seen the sea, only heard tales of it, the blue waters beyond the Maremma in Tuscany. Once, when I sunk my nose into Orione’s thick fur, the old cobbler from Vignano asked me, “What elixir draws you to bury your nose into that colt’s neck?”

  I could not describe the smell of a horse to one who does not know its power. I asked Giorgio later that evening.

  “How can you describe the scent of a horse?”

  He thought a moment, pausing as he curried a mare. “Warm animal in the sunshine mixed with the perfume of the sea.”

  The sea. Now I was closer to the sea than I was to Orione or Siena. I had no mooring; I was left adrift with a false name and no past. Sometimes I wondered whether I was mad, if I really knew my own identity, since no one believed me.

  I flicked the piece of straw about in my mouth with the tip of my tongue.

  Anna Rosa found me on my knees in Fedele’s straw, remembering Orione and the night he was born.

  “You look as if you are actually praying,” she said, startling me. “Sincerely, I mean. Except for that piece of straw in your teeth. Do you move it with your tongue?”

  “What are you doing here? You will be punished,” I whispered.

  “No, I will not. You will never see me punished. The abbess would not dare.”

  I did not reply, though looking back, I should have questioned her. But that night, I was too far down the deep well of my sorrow.

  “I came to see you,” said Anna Rosa. “I am—sorry—for what happened between us.”

  “You do not believe me!” I said, turning away from her. “I raced Siena’s Palio of the Assumption. No one believes me—”

  She grasped my hand, pulling me to face her. “I do, Virginia. I do believe you.”

  I looked up at her.

  “I do, you know,” she said. “It is just that you suffer so much at the hands of the abbess. I cannot bear to see you punished! But I believe you. You are Virginia Tacci. And I believe you rode the Palio, as impossible as it sounds.”

  I braced my hand against the donkey’s shoulder and stood up.

  “Why do you believe me when no else does? They think I am mad or a liar.”

  “Why should you lie? You are locked in here, the same as me. What good is a lie when you are a prisoner anyway?

  “And,” she added, “the bright spark in your eyes when you say your name. The defiance. The name suits you, Virginia. You do not look like a Silvia to me.”

  I sighed, closing my eyes. Outside I heard the shouts of the Palio crowd.

  “They will be starting a practice run any moment,” I said, my ear cocked to familiar sounds of horses snorting and nickering.

  Fedele began to bray, forcing us to cover our ears. He kicked at the wall of his stall.

  I slipped a halter over his head.

  “Do you want to stand near the wall with me and listen?” I asked. “At least we can hear the hoofbeats.”

  Anna Rosa pressed close to me, and we waited long moments in silence. Our patience was rewarded with the roar from the crowd and the pounding of galloping hooves.

  CHAPTER 72

  Ferrara, Convento di Sant’Antonio, Polesine

  NOVEMBER 1582

  A new postulant’s cries pierced the early morning dark after Matins. Suoras rushed to the girl’s cell, praying and no doubt administering sleeping draughts. She was from a noble family in Modena. I heard the shattering of crockery.

  Her suffering and outrage awakened a spark in me.

  Tonight!

  The moon cast bright light on the brick wall that held me prisoner. Far better had it been a new moon mantling the yard in darkness, but I would not wait another night. I dragged the wooden chest from my cell—emptied of its contents—across the courtyard. The nightwatch—the sharp-eyed Suor Claudia—was occupied with the new postulant, who still wailed pitifully.

  I moved stealthily across the yard, hoping that there would be no other magpies out in the small hours of the morning.

  I looked up. A wall at least three times my height. I remembered my brawn as a shepherd, as a horse trainer. Would I have that same strength now?

  I had said good-bye to my friend Anna Rosa weeks ago, not knowing when the right moment would come.

  “I must go with you,” Anna Rosa had said, snatching at my hand. “You cannot leave me here!”

  “Anna Rosa,” I said, “you do not have the strength to scale a wall. I am not sure I do.”

  “But how shall I survive without you, Virginia?” Tears spilled down her freckled cheeks.

  “Stop crying!” I hissed. “The suoras will notice. You will ruin everything.”

  “I am sorry. I did not mean to be selfish,” she said, sniffling. She looked away.

  We didn’t talk again. I felt sorry for her, but I could not look back.

  Now the frost glistened on the top bricks of the wall. I pulled the wooden chest up close to Fedele’s shed. I heaved the empty box up on its side, and climbed onto the roof of the tiny stable.

  Snowy slush had accumulated on the top of the slate roof of the shed from two nights of inclement weather. Now the slush was beginning to freeze, making my work treacherous. I leaned over and pulled the chest up. My feet slipped, and I fell back onto the roof, still grasping the chest. With a thud I was sure would wake the entire convent, the coffer landed beside me.

  Fedele, startled from his sleep just below me, began to bray. I pressed myself against the slate tiles, hoping my sackcloth robe would shroud me in its darkness.

  I waited. No one stirred.

  “Good-bye, Fedele,” I whispered.

  I hauled the chest upright and pushed it flush against the brick wall at the back side of the shed. The chest was taller than I was. Scattered all around me were the flat stones I had heaved one by one on the roof over the past weeks. I set to work stacking the stones against the wall, building a pile I could climb to reach the top of the chest—and from there, I hoped, the top of the wall. How I would get down from the wall, I didn’t know. But if I died in the fall, then at least I would die outside this cursed convent—free.

  A shriek sounded across the courtyard. The postulant’s door had been opened. Probably Suor Adriana had been sent in to quiet the girl with a threat—if the sedative didn’t work.

  The face of Suor Loretta, kind and gentle, flashed in my mind.

  I cannot think about her. I cannot think about anything but escaping.

  My hands were numb from stacking the icy rocks. Sooner or later, the nightwatch would resume her guard.

  Now!

  I climbed the pile of stones, feeling them shift precariously under my foot. Out of the corner of my eye, I saw the light of a lantern, the nightwatch in the corner of the yard, beyond the garden.

  “Chi e’?” she shouted. “Who is it?”

  This was my only chance. I thought of the world beyond this wall. I thought of Orione and Siena.

  I tried to spring from the stones onto the chest, and I felt the stack collapsing. I grabbed the chest, but it was no use. The stones, chest, and I tumbled together from the roof of the stable onto the ground.

  I heard the snap of a bone breaking.

  For an instant, the pain of the broken bone blossomed in my arm, filling me with a savage fire that
wiped away everything else in the world—it was almost a relief, because an instant later that first fire faded and was replaced with a deeper, darker, more savage pain. I had failed. I was still within the hated walls of the convent.

  Perhaps an outsider might think that the simple brick walls of a convent would not be enough to stop an unwilling postulant—especially one with the strength and will that I possessed as a girl. But that outsider would not have understood the force of the locks, the height of the walls, or the fierce vigilance of the sisters of the night guard. Many a soul was tamed by failed attempts—and by the punishment the abbess inflicted upon them.

  I had failed, and I was punished with cleaning floors and chamber pots and lying prostrate on the floor of the refectory, but I did not surrender. The dispensary nurse did not set my broken bone properly, and for the rest of my life, I could not fully extend my arm.

  Still, I never gave up.

  My solace was the donkey, Fedele. And I was his. Suor Loretta was astonished that I knew to soak his hooves in cold salted water to soothe his sore legs and how to pack sugared herbs in his hooves to chase away thrush.

  “But how did you learn such cures?” she asked me, her eyes dimmed by a milky film.

  “Sorella! I have sworn to you a thousand times, I rode Palio horses!”

  Suor Loretta looked over her shoulder.

  “Mia cara! You mustn’t speak of this again. The abbess will punish you—she will take you away me and from Fedele.”

  I wanted to scream in protest, but I saw Suor Loretta’s eyes fill with tears.

  “I have grown quite fond of you, Silvia,” she said. “So has my donkey.”

  A donkey! I have ridden the finest—

  I saw the wet pink cheeks of the old suora, heard her labored breathing, burdened with strong emotion. A rush of shame made me bite my tongue.

  “I will prove one day that what I say is true,” I whispered. “But until then, this work with Fedele and with you, Suor Loretta, is the only thing that consoles me. For that, I will obey—even if you do not believe me.”

  “It would do you no good for me to believe you, Postulant Silvia,” said the old nun, turning up her hands palm in a helpless gesture. “For there is nothing I or anyone else can do. I, too, was immured in this convent against my will. There is no way out. Acceptance will give you peace.”

  I buried my nose in Fedele’s neck.

  “I will never—ever—reconcile myself to this life! I do not want that kind of peace.”

  “Then your soul will always be in turmoil. Even when we are buried, our bones will not leave the convent. You have seen the cemetery.”

  “Sì,” I said, choking back tears. I clung tighter to the donkey’s neck. I thought of Orione, of Siena.

  I felt a gentle touch on my shoulder. The old woman reached out a hand to comfort me. She stroked my back as I had often seen her caress the donkey. I melted under her touch.

  “I will tell you a secret that comforts me. My beloved Fedele will be buried alongside me. I have secured a promise from the abbess to bury the donkey as close to my final resting place as possible.”

  A donkey in consecrated ground! Is Suor Loretta mad?

  I did not question how this suora could hold such sway with the abbess.

  Why did I not realize then who she was?

  She was excused from certain prayers, had meals brought to the little shed that sheltered the donkey. These deviations from the convent routine were monumental. In a convent, everyone was treated the same. The one common goal was devoting our lives to Christ.

  “You must learn there are blessings to our life here,” said Suor Loretta. “Many girls would have been married to brutal men, forced into partnerships with those who detested them, who beat them.”

  I thought of the tanner’s son.

  Could I have been happy bedding a stinking simpleton who would never let me walk the streets and hills of Siena, let alone ride a horse? Every night he would have climbed into my bed, forcing his smelly body onto mine. Once married, I would have had to give up my freedom to be his wife.

  “Have you looked carefully at the marvels of our convent? Have you seen the frescoes—the one of Jesus climbing up a ladder to the cross? Look at it during prayers. Jesus is not fettered or forced by the point of a sword. He willingly mounts the ladder as his followers watch.”

  Why do I care, you crazy old magpie? What difference does it make?

  “Our Christ made a choice—willingly. Perhaps someday you will do the same.”

  “Never!” I said, my throat tight with anger.

  Suor Loretta looked away from the scorn written on my face.

  “Perhaps I can help you find some comfort in the convent, some advantages you have not recognized.”

  “What possible advantage could there be, locked away as a prisoner?”

  Suor Loretta picked up a brush and stroked Fedele’s back. He closed his long lashes, his ears swiveling back in pleasure.

  “Would you like to learn to read and write, Silvia?” asked the nun, brushing the brown line down the donkey’s back. “Because that is a gift I can bestow upon you.”

  I stared at her, astonished “Me? Read? Write?”

  I remembered Giorgio pointing out my name in the letter from the Duchessa d’Elci when she sent me the collo di cavallo. I had traced the two words—Virginia Tacci—with reverence.

  “That is one gift the convent can give you. It will open all the doors of the world to your mind . . . and quite possibly your soul.”

  For the first time since my incarceration in the convent, I smiled.

  PART VI

  The Art of Death

  ANNI 1582–1586

  CHAPTER 73

  Siena, Brunelli Stables, Vignano

  NOVEMBER 1582

  Giorgio studied the stirrup leather in his hand. His weight had stretched the leather over the years. It was past time to shorten it.

  He selected the correct punch, laid the strip on the bench, and with two taps of the hammer, the job was done. He sighed, looking around the stables.

  Since Virginia’s disappearance, there was double the work to be done. Giorgio had too many horses to train and care for alone. He would have to hire another groom to lug water from the well, rake the stable floors, and clean the paddocks. There were horses that needed doctoring and brushing, tack to be cleaned, hay to be pitched.

  Alone in the stables, he found no time for his painting. Not since his father’s illness.

  Giorgio rubbed his open hand over his face.

  He collapsed onto a pile of straw to rest. His left hand—his painting hand—massaged his tired shoulder muscles and neck. He drank in the toasty smell of straw, considering a nap for a few minutes.

  He gazed at his hand. The paints that had embedded so deep in his cuticles had faded, replaced now with the soot of the smithy fires, the muck of the horses.

  When would he paint again?

  A clatter of hoofbeats.

  Giorgio groaned, dusting himself off with a slap of his hand. He could not handle any more horses.

  “Greetings. Are you Giorgio Brunelli?”

  “Who wants to know?”

  “You are summoned for an audience at the Palazzo de’ Medici in Siena,” said the rider, dismounting. He wore deep scarlet and gold.

  The bright crimson of the de’ Medici chased away Giorgio’s fatigue. Medici meant trouble.

  “I was dispatched to escort you at once,” said the rider. “My name is Andrea Sopra.”

  “And who has summoned me?” said Giorgio, still slapping the bits of straw off his clothes. “I have paid all of our taxes. I am very busy—”

  “The cardinale Ferdinando de’ Medici bids you to come immediately, Brunelli.”

  Giorgio studied the rider’s face. While his accent had the intonations of a Florentine, Giorgio recognized a countryman.

  “You are Senese, are you not?” he asked.

  The messenger shifted his weight.

&
nbsp; “I am. Many generations. I know of your sorrow—the villanella is beloved by all of us. Her name is echoed throughout the streets of Siena, not just in Drago.”

  “Then tell me. Why does a de’ Medici want to see me? I despise the name.”

  The messenger looked around quickly. His eyes darted to the dark corners of the stables.

  “Do not worry,” said Giorgio. “There are no de’ Medici spies here, or they would have carried me away in chains long ago.”

  “I am not certain,” said Sopra in a low voice. “But the cardinale is not his brother the granduca, I assure you. I beg you to come and hear what he has to say.”

  The de’ Medici flags—with the five red palle—lifted languidly in desultory breezes in front of the palazzo in the Piazza del Duomo. Giorgio Brunelli and Andrea Sopra dismounted, and a small squadron of grooms took their horses away.

  “I will search you for weapons,” said a Florentine guard, holding up his hand. “Surrender any you might have now. If I find anything on your person, you will be arrested immediately.”

  Giorgio gave the guard his knife, an essential tool for any rider.

  The guard nodded. Then he ran his hands down Giorgio’s body, sweeping his fingers over the artist’s crotch.

  “Get your filthy hands off me, Fiorentino,” said Brunelli, pushing him away. “You might fondle the palle of the de’ Medici, but not mine.”

  The guard reached for his sword. Andrea Sopra leapt between them, grabbing Giorgio’s tunic and yanking him away from the guard.

  “No!” he shouted. “The cardinale wants to speak to this man. Leave him alone!

  “Steady, Brunelli,” he hissed. “No one sees the cardinale without a thorough search.”

  “He is clean,” snarled the guard. His nostrils flared wide, and he gestured to Brunelli. “As clean as a shit shoveler can be.”

  “Basta!” said Sopra, plucking at Giorgio’s sleeve. “Do not take his bait.”