The Shepherdess of Siena: A Novel of Renaissance Tuscany

by Linda Lafferty

  He stared moodily at the thin spokes emanating from the heart of dark color.

  A perfect starburst of passion.

  Di Torreforte had not picked up his paintbrush since weeks before the death of his father. He felt unmoored. His family treated him with the respect owed to him, but nothing more. They did not seek his companionship. His sisters avoided him altogether, rarely speaking at the dinner table unless a question was directed to them. They did not love him. They were afraid of him.

  Only a small boy named Gregorio, a scabby-headed kitchen urchin who slept on a heap of rags on the stones at the corner of the kitchen, always smiled when he saw the master.

  One early spring day just before dawn, di Torreforte walked the halls of the palazzo, unable to sleep. He spied a figure struggling with a burden in the dim light of a single lantern. Gregorio was toting two buckets of vegetable peelings to be boiled into a broth for the workers. Crossing paths with his master, Gregorio beamed.

  “What do you have to smile about?” snapped di Torreforte.

  “Why, it is the day of the birth of Santa Caterina!” answered the boy, putting down a bucket to scratch his head with his dirty fingernails. “March 25th. All Siena is light of heart on this day. Only the devil himself would not find joy in his soul.”

  The devil himself be damned!

  “Might I be excused, signore? Otherwise the cook will box my ears,” asked the boy, wiping his nose on his sleeve.

  “Go, get out my sight, you little beggar!” snapped di Torreforte. “Santa Caterina’s birthday indeed!”

  It does not change the fact that you were born in rags and will die in rags. You still exist only because of my father’s misguided hand on his purse strings, adopting ragamuffins as kitchen workers.

  Di Torreforte’s anger fed an urge to get out of the palazzo.

  My father let too many scudi fall from his hand to these orphans. That money could have been used for paints, art, brocades, velvets. A new carriage, horses. What was he thinking? And now my brother Simone argues to do the same!

  He let the metal-covered door slam behind him. He walked the streets of Siena, his father’s silver-tipped walking stick in his hand. He was not sure why he had adopted this habit of carrying the stick. But in the days after his father’s death, when he saw the familiar bastone da passeggio leaning forlornly in the corner of the front hall of the palazzo, his hand had reached for it. Now it was always with him.

  It had rained hard the night before, and the gray stones of pietra serena gleamed in the sunlight. A pigeon dipped its beak in a puddle and threw back its head, letting the water dribble down its throat. The winding streets filled with voices as the Senese opened their shutters into the early morning sunlight.

  “Buongiorno!” cried one servant to one another, sweeping the entrance to a palazzo with the stiff branches of her granata. The shopkeeper at the end of the street whistled a tune. The wine merchant joined in, rolling kegs off a wagon.

  The lively chatter in Via di Giglio, the bright ring of horses’ hooves on the stones, only made di Torreforte wind his scarf tighter and turn his collar up. He hunched his shoulders and walked on.

  He found himself winding his way up through the Contrada della Giraffa into Piazza Matteotti and the Contrada del Drago. He hurried from the open piazza into the descending streets, narrow and confining.

  The street broadened. He looked up to the rose-colored bricks of San Domenico. He entered, blinking. He was not sure why he was there. He had avoided the great church since his boyhood, returning only for his father’s burial.

  A bright shaft of sunlight pierced the stained glass windows, illuminating a Dominican priest looking at di Torreforte through the bright color in a haze of spinning dust.

  The old man spoke to him from the sunbeam.

  “Have you come to see her?”

  “Who?”

  “Saint Caterina, of course. Have you come so early this morning to have her grant you peace and blessing?”

  Di Torreforte’s mouth twisted into a sneer. The priest’s expression did not change, the milky blue eyes staring back.

  The sneer melted. The holy man was blind. Di Torreforte stared back at the priest, bathed in light.

  “Well, my son?”

  “Yes,” mumbled di Torreforte. “I wish to see her.”

  “Come,” said the old priest. “This early, you will have a chance to be alone with our saint.”

  He beckoned blindly, listening for the approach of the visitor. “She is sheltered in the crystalline case just there, of course.”

  Di Torreforte knelt at a pew in the darkened chapel. Two candles glowed, their flames dancing in the cold draught of the church.

  Santa Caterina’s head, uncannily preserved, stared out at him. He looked at her sunken eyes, her sharp cheekbones, her gray-white skin. Words of prayer would not come.

  The head of a nun! What is so holy about an empty skull and broken teeth? Charlatans pawn off splinters from the true cross of Jesus, the hem of the Virgin Mary, the hair of St. Paul, a peg from Noah’s Ark—

  “You are a good son to come and pray to our Saint,” said the priest. “You are Signor di Torreforte, sì?”

  Giacomo looked at the priest, startled.

  “You recognize me? But—”

  “But I am blind? I recognize much more now than I did when I could see. I remember you as a little boy, signore. Your voice gives you away. You come to pray for your father’s soul, no doubt, and for the benediction of our patron saint. A good son. I will leave you here to receive her blessings in solitary peace.”

  Di Torreforte looked down at his feet.

  The crypt is just below this floor, I tread above my father’s body.

  He kneeled on the stone floor, clasping his gloved hands in prayer.

  Father, I—

  The candlelight leapt—a door must have opened somewhere in the church. The illumination shone bright on the eyes of Santa Caterina.

  Father, I am not the son you wanted me to be.

  She stared at him from her sunken eye sockets. Her eyes were blue. Unmistakably blue.

  Di Torreforte did not cry out, he did not move.

  He stared back. He waited for her to speak. She said nothing, but looked at him unblinking. Accusing.

  And in the fierce gaze of those impossible blue eyes, Giacomo di Torreforte felt something within him shift—perhaps slightly, perhaps forever.

  But his mind could not accommodate what his heart felt.

  As he left, he saw the blind priest mumbling a prayer. The old man made the sign of the cross and kissed his fingertips.

  The priest turned. “Is someone there?”

  “It is I, Father.”

  “Ah, yes, Signor di Torreforte. Did you find peace, my son?”

  The light streaming through the rosette window blinded him. He put up a hand to shade his eyes.

  Peace?

  “You know, she never took the holy orders,” said the priest. “She was a laywoman, a tertiary, and worked amongst the poor, the lepers, the afflicted. Her letters convinced the Pope in Avignon to return to Rome, the gaping schism of our great church healed.”

  “Letters? She was literate?”

  “Some people say it was Caterina’s scribe who wrote the letters, but others insist she did learn to read and write. She was the poor daughter of a Senese dyer, one of twenty children her poor mother bore. Humble beginnings. But she became educated in order to help others.”

  The priest smiled, his unseeing eyes staring into the distance.

  “Such a simple Senese woman. And yet she healed us all.”

  Di Torreforte’s hand reached for his scarf. He savagely untied the precious silk from his neck and placed it in the priest’s hands.

  “This is for the poor,” he said, watching the blind priest’s blue eyes widen at the touch of smooth silk.

  “My son!” said the priest, his fingers running across the fabric. “It—is costly. It feels like the lining of a drap
pellone for the Palio!”

  “For the Palio? Yes, perhaps it will be someday. A good destiny for it—it should fetch a good price and feed many orphans. Arrivederci, Father.”

  Giacomo di Torreforte converted his apartments into a studio. He told his brothers that they would manage Monte dei Paschi, and that he would hear their report each month. At his instruction, the usual stipends from Monte dei Paschi to the poor, the hospitals, and the orphanages were resumed. The di Torreforte family could raise their heads once more in the streets of Siena.

  Giacomo locked himself into his studio and began to paint. To paint her.

  The colors were bright, the lines muted. He adopted the Senese style of the old masters. The black mantle and white veil of a tertiary matched the colors of the Senese republic. In her hand was a lily, the sign of innocence and purity . . . and of rebirth.

  For weeks, di Torreforte refused to leave his apartments. He did not bathe, only splashing cold water on his face. Ants crawled over crusts of bread on platters, flies rubbed their greedy forelegs over rinds of fruit.

  He refused entry to anyone. He worked alone.

  The saint held the lily in her left hand, her right hand extended toward the lips of a young girl. The maiden looked up into the great saint’s face, her hands crossed over her heart, accepting the blessings bestowed upon her.

  One day, a visitor arrived at the door of the palazzo on Via di Giglio in a carriage that was rickety with age and neglect. He lowered himself painfully from the carriage with help from a peasant.

  The man was stooped and balding. His hands, spotted with purple blotches, were twisted into claws. He struggled to grasp the great iron ring of the knocker, letting it fall on the metal door.

  “May I help you?” said a manservant opening the door.

  “I have come to visit Master di Torreforte,” rasped the visitor. He craned his neck, trying to see the servant.

  “Is he expecting you?” said the servant, knowing well that di Torreforte received no one, not even his family members.

  “Tell him . . . tell him Giorgio Brunelli has come to call. Tell him! I have not much time left on this Earth, and we should bid farewell face to face.”

  Di Torreforte’s brother Simone heard Giorgio’s reply. He stepped into the entry hall to greet the visitor.

  “Come, signore. Sit here. Massimo, send for some wine and panforte for our guest.”

  “I will not trouble you long,” said Giorgio. He turned his eyes up to Simone di Torreforte, unable to move his neck. “I only wish a few words with your brother.”

  “Of course, I understand,” said Simone. “But my brother. I—he is not receiving, I fear. He does not speak with us. He has locked himself in the garret upstairs, where he paints all day and throughout the night.”

  “Painting?” said Giorgio. “He still paints?”

  “He stopped for a year after my father’s death. But then one day, he came home and renounced his duties as the head of the bank. Since that day, he has become a hermit, seeing no one.”

  A tremor coursed through the left side of Giorgio’s face. “I must talk to him.”

  “Signore, I swear to you. He receives no guests—”

  “Except for this one,” said a voice.

  Di Torreforte, bearded and gaunt, appeared at the top of the stairs. His bony fingers grasped the wrought-iron railing for support.

  “Bring my guest to the studio,” said di Torreforte, his voice thick from disuse. “I will await him there.”

  CHAPTER 90

  Siena

  MARCH 1591

  Two days after the visit of Giorgio Brunelli, Giacomo di Torreforte returned to the Basilica San Domenico.

  “Buona sera,” said di Torreforte, grasping the old priest’s hand. He watched the blind man’s mouth curve up in a wide smile.

  “Have you found peace, son?” asked the priest, staring in his direction. “Has your father’s soul comforted you, Giacomo? The dead can soothe the living.”

  Di Torreforte’s face fell as he heard the priest’s words. He felt his heart tighten in anguish.

  “Peace?” said di Torreforte, examining the word as one would inspect a strange insect. “What is peace? My sins are too great for there ever to be peace in my lifetime.”

  “You must confess your sins, my son.”

  “Oh, Father!” said Giacomo, looking up at the basilica’s ceiling. His words echoed in the vast space. “There is no way to tell you the wrongs I have committed. If I could, I would surely do it.”

  “You speak under the roof of the Lord,” said the priest. “Take care you do not tell a falsehood. Confession will give you a portion of peace and God’s absolution. And it is your religious duty.”

  Giacomo closed his eyes, rubbing his forehead.

  “If I tell my sins, you will surely hate me, Father.”

  “I have heard many sins and always given God’s absolution. It is my obligation to offer forgiveness, not blame. Come with me.”

  Giacomo di Torreforte followed the priest into the small wooden confessional.

  “Forgive me, Lord, for I have sinned. Against you . . . and Siena.”

  Giacomo saw a slight movement through the grille as the priest’s back stiffened.

  When Giacomo began his confession, he watched for a sign that the priest would absolve and even console him. But as the confession continued and the priest heard the name Virginia Tacci, he sunk into himself like a mollusk into its shell.

  “You must give me absolution,” prompted Giacomo as finished his long tale. “I have unburdened myself with this confession to you and God.”

  “Bless you, my son,” muttered the priest, his voice barely audible. “I absolve you . . . in God’s name.”

  Giacomo placed his fingers on the grille, looking at the priest. “But you . . . you do not forgive me!”

  “It is God who must forgive you,” said the priest. “Not I.” A silence stretched out in the dark of the confessional. “How can I forgive?” the old man said finally, his joints creaking as he rose.

  “I am Senese.”

  Giacomo wandered the streets of Siena for the rest of the day, his collar turned up against a cold March wind. Eventually, he stood in the shadow of the Torre del Mangia, where he watched families mingle, eating hot chestnuts and drinking mulled wine, though already talking of the approaching spring. Children chased the pigeons across the shell-shaped piazza, laughing joyously. Everywhere Giacomo walked, he heard talk of the next Palio, contradas boasting of their strategies to win.

  They might be talking of Virginia now. They would be talking of her chance to win. I have robbed Virginia and Siena of that.

  As an arc of pigeons flew over Il Campo, Giacomo walked toward the southeast section of the piazza entering the Via del Porrione, the entrance to Contrada della Torre and the small Jewish ghetto within its territory.

  The narrow streets were filled with the aroma of a foreign cookery: garlic, oil, and anchovies, scented with herbs he could not name.

  He walked past the synagogue, where an old man with a thick white beard sat on his heels, talking to an adolescent boy.

  “You must give back the coin,” said the man. “God will forgive you, but you must make right the wrong you have done.”

  The pair looked up at the Christian, who was listening intently to their conversation.

  “Go now!” said the man, touching the boy’s arm. “Do what is right.”

  The boy scrambled to his feet and set off running. The old man rose, rubbing his back.

  “If only all sins were so easily remedied,” said Giacomo.

  The man shrugged.

  “And why should they not be?”

  Giacomo exhaled sharply, a sound of despair. “Some are simply too ugly to confront.”

  “Those are the best to remedy,” said the man. He narrowed his eyes and jutted out his chin, challenging Giacomo. His white beard bristled.

  “It is just—” said Giacomo. “I have just come from pray
ing at my father’s tomb at San Domenico.”

  “Ah,” said the man, bowing his head in respect.

  “He died months ago,” said Giacomo. “And now . . .”

  Giacomo was not about to confess to this Jew that his father’s spirit hovered over him.

  “It is a powerful bond, a man and his father,” said the man. “I lost my father many years ago in the fight against Florence. He died of starvation during the siege.”

  Giacomo stared at the Jew.

  “You look surprised,” said the man. “My family has been here in Siena for three centuries. We fought alongside our fellow Senese, starved with our brothers. There is no difference between Jew and Christian in a siege. We all suffered and fought in her defense.”

  He took a little dig at the air with his chin, glaring at Giacomo. “I may be more Senese than you, my friend.”

  Under any other circumstances, Giacomo would have struck the impertinent Jew. He remembered how proud he was of his Florentine roots, how bewildering his father had become, claiming Siena as home. Siena the conquered.

  Why should I care about being identified as a Senese? I am Florentine!

  But something felt wrong within.

  “Am I right?” asked the man.

  Giacomo’s mouth collapsed, his two eyebrows colliding in sorrow. Tears flooded his eyes.

  “Come with me,” the man said, grasping Giacomo by the elbow, his hostility changing to concern. “I can offer you a moment of privacy.”

  Giacomo followed him into the darkness of the synagogue. Few candles were lit, despite the approaching twilight.

  “Can I enter here?” Giacomo suddenly felt like an intruder.

  The man shrugged. “I have invited you. This is God’s house.”

  “Are you . . . the rabbi?” The word felt strange in Giacomo’s mouth.

  Again, the man shrugged.

  “Here. Sit on the bench, I will leave you in peace,” he said, turning to leave.