by Lisa Hilton
‘So this is she? The little changeling?’
‘Quite so.’
Her fat hands reached towards me, the flesh of her finger-pads moist on my collarbones. I tried not to wrench away.
‘Just slip your little tunic off a moment for me, dearie.’
I did as she asked, though I was old enough to feel ashamed, there in the courtyard, with the twilight air chilly on my bare limbs. She peered at me.
‘Hmmm. Special. Not for everyone, that’s for sure.’
‘You can go to our room, Mura. Supper will be ready. Say goodnight nicely.’
Like all children, I loved to hear myself talked about, but Adara’s room was too far away for me to catch the rest of their conversation. The other ladies returned as they were speaking, and through a chink in the shutters I watched them gathering round the fat lady, smiling at her remarks and dipping their heads as she reached those questing hands to pinch a cheek or pat a haunch appraisingly. Adara followed her to the porter’s lodge, and I could hear better.
‘She won’t turn then?’
‘No, the father thought not. That’s why he begged me to keep her.’
‘She might do very well then, very well. There’s them as likes that sort of thing.’
‘Worse luck for us!’ Adara laughed.
‘In a while then.’
Adara accompanied our visitor respectfully to the street door and I turned to my supper, feeling tired and deliciously clean, and safe in the knowledge that Adara would take care of me, as she had promised, as my papa had wished.
The lady came again at the end of the spring.
Even in the city we could smell the almond blossom in the valley. The maids brought baskets of pear-shaped loquats from the market; their creamy yellow flesh sherbety and delicious. I was scooping one out with a spoon when the lady came into our room with a bundle in her hands.
‘Well, Mura, look what I’ve brought you! Now you just put these on and we’ll fix you up a bit. Come along now.’
Adara was standing behind her and the two of them watched me appraisingly as I struggled into a pair of soft plum-coloured breeches and a delicate lawn shirt. The clothes were not new – if I looked closely I could see they had been carefully mended – but they looked very smart, for all that they must have come from a rag-seller’s cart.
‘The hair,’ said the lady.
Adara held out a pair of iron tongues.
‘Stand still, now,’ she said as the room filled with a smell of scorching. I felt the bounce of curls on my shoulders.
‘That’ll do. There, look. A proper little angel.’ They both laughed, but I didn’t feel happy. I felt scared.
‘Now you go along with Adara, and mind you do just as she says.’ The lady settled herself comfortably on Adara’s bed with her cracked heels scratching in the counterpane.
Adara held my hand as we crossed the courtyard, but we did not go into the big room on the first floor, which was already full of the sounds of music and laughter. We went upstairs again, to a smaller chamber, where there was a table nicely set with a figured cloth, wine and fruit, and a wide bench with yellow silk cushions. There was a gentleman waiting. He was quite an old gentleman, with a grey, flabby face showing over a dark cloak. When he smiled his teeth were greenish stumps.
‘Here we are, just as I promised!’ Adara had pushed a laugh into her voice, though her fingers were tight and damp around mine.
‘Now, Mura, I’ll be just along outside. Mind and be nice to the gentleman.’
She left us. I had no idea what I was supposed to do, no idea of anything except that I did not want to be alone here. He stood up, a big man, sloppily built. He reached out and took one of the curls that hung around my face, fingering it. I tried to keep still.
‘Would you like to sit down?’
I sat on a cushion and he seated himself next to me. He put an arm round my shoulder. I could smell him, the rich stink that hid under his arm. I felt the loquat rising acidly in my throat.
‘Look, I’ve brought you something.’
He handed me a top, a wooden spinning top with a little red leather whip.
‘Thank you,’ I said flatly.
‘Wouldn’t you like to play? Try it.’
Obediently, I squatted down on the floor and tried to remember the trick of the game. The silence behind me was thick. After a few strikes I had it turning, I concentrated on the flash of the red whip. There was a rustling sound.
‘Very good, very good.’
The top clattered to the floor as I turned. His hands were buried in the cloak, moving in a strange jerky way. He looked very silly.
‘Sir? Should I . . . should I carry on, sir?’
‘Come here,’ he gasped.
Then those arms were round me and he was pushing me down among the cushions. I turned my face from his breath and tried to struggle free as he fumbled at the breeches, trying to pull them off. I felt something against my bared thigh, a hard, wet thing, I was crushed by his weight, he was pushing against me. I tried to cry out but my mouth was stopped with yellow silk. His hands had found my bare flesh, probing and squeezing, and when I tried to wriggle free he panted, ‘Yes, good, good.’
Then a sudden razor-slash of pain, as though he were ripping at my skin. The dust in the cushions was choking me, he was grunting and writhing. A foul drop of thick drool crawled into my ear.
I didn’t know what he was trying to do, but I would not let him do it, I would not. Behind my eyelids came the memory of my dream, of my mother and the wolves running, free, savage. So I turned my head and bit his hand, as hard as I could, gagging as my teeth met over the bone and my mouth filled with his filthy blood. He screamed, I staggered up, gasping and retching as his boot caught my knee and I fell, hitting my head against the table. I heard the bang of the door, and then the floor came up to meet me, where the little top lay on its side.
When I awoke I was a prisoner. The fat lady was gone, our room was dark. I tore off those hateful clothes and threw them in a corner, then pulled and banged at the door, but no one came. Eventually I put myself to bed, not caring to look any more at the lights across the courtyard. They left me like that for some days, only two whispering maids unlocking the door to pass in a plate of food and take away the pot. I wondered what Adara would do to me now. Would she turn me over to the men who had taken my father? Would I be beaten again and sent back to another gentleman, now that I knew what was wanted of me? The thought of it made me retch. What had that bulging hag called me? ‘Changeling’.
All I wanted was to sleep, so that the dream would come to me again. In the dream I was strong and free and fearless, but awake I was just myself, skinny, pitiful, abandoned me. I thought then that I must be cursed. My father had spoken to Adara about me. He had said that I would not change. Was I to blame for what had happened to him? Maligno. The startled look on the face of the slave, the steaming water spreading towards me like a pool of evil. Was that me? I scrabbled for my little charm under Adara’s bed, but it was gone. Had the maids swept it up with the dust and hairballs? Or had Adara taken it, to show to the Spanish queen’s priests so that they would burn me? Would they believe me, if I told them what the man had tried to do to me? It was not my fault, none of it was my fault, but then why would I be treated like this if I was not to blame? I was ill-wished, I thought, bad luck, and I could not escape it.
*
One night, Adara came in earlier than usual. She stumbled as she passed inside and let out occasional giggles as she relieved herself in the pot and flopped onto her bed. There was a knock at the door and Adara fumbled up again, poking a taper at the stove to light the lamp.
‘Oh, what now?’
‘Gentleman for you,’ the porter’s voice.
‘Tell him he’ll have to come back tomorrow,’ Adara chuckled. ‘I’m indisposed.’
‘May I speak with you, madam? I can pay.’
A stranger now, a foreign voice, speaking Spanish with an odd, jerky accent. Adar
a opened the door, putting her hand to her hip and looking out into the darkness with a scornful expression.
‘What do you want?’
‘I want news of Samuel Benito.’
I knew that if I was to learn anything I must keep very, very still. I pushed the air slowly out of my lungs, although my heart was leaping in my chest.
‘What do you know about Samuel Benito?’ hissed Adara, opening the door wide and pulling the stranger towards her by his cloak. I was desperate to look, but I knew even a twitch of my eyelids would betray me.
‘Don’t be afraid, madam. I’m not from the Holy Office, I’m just a bookseller.’
‘I don’t know what you’re talking about.’
‘I think you do.’
I heard the bedsprings squeak as Adara sat down. ‘Go on.’
‘I come from Genova, madam. I had business with Benito, for many years. I come to Toledo every year, and this time I found his shop gone, destroyed. As you know. Don’t trouble how I found you. People talk. Samuel was good with medicines, was he not? You bought mercury from him.’
Adara’s voice changed. She was respectful, even wheedling. ‘If you like, sir, you can see for yourself that I have never needed such things.’
‘You are kind, madam, but I haven’t come for that. I want what Samuel left with you. Don’t worry, I’ll give you a fair price.’
‘I know nothing about any books.’
‘Did I speak of books, madam?’ Adara’s breathing quickened. She had made a mistake. ‘You have the child.’
‘I took her in out of the kindness of my heart, an orphan.’
‘Very commendable. But I heard about what happened that night. A pretty piece of conjuring. The description is in Solomon, the Almandal if I remember.’
‘I don’t know what you’re talking about.’
‘No, perhaps not. But the Holy Office will, if I choose to tell them that you assisted the necromancer Benito to spirit – hah, a good joke – to spirit away his child?’
‘What do you want?’ Adara’s tone was surly.
‘As I said. Samuel’s remaining merchandise. But I imagine you are much occupied, madam, with your-er-profession. I will take the books as well as the child.’
After that, the world changed again. The next day, Adara woke me early and told me I was going on a journey, a long journey, with a kind man who would take care of me. I tipped up my chin and looked her in the eye. I knew all about her ‘kind gentlemen’. She fussed around me guiltily, tying up my little chest, wrapping a warm shawl around my shoulders, tucking a twist of candied orange peel into the pocket of my robe, but I could hardly bear to look at her. My papa had trusted her to take care of me. I did not speak a single word to Adara, or to the book merchant.
I was perfectly, perfectly silent through the days and days of journeying to the coast, jolting along in the cart next to my papa’s trunk, through a countryside filled with the soft air and heavy green of summer. I did not speak even when I saw the sea at Valencia and the huge ships my father had told me about, nor during the voyage, which ate a season on the waves with the dull blur of land to one side and the shifting glass of the ocean to the other. I did not speak when we came to Savona which the book merchant said was in Italy, and the tongue around me was strange and not strange, sometimes like Spanish and sometimes like nothing I had ever heard. I did not speak when I was taken to a house on the wharf and a woman bathed me, dressed me in my red dress and combed out my hair. They took me to a long hall where groups of scared-looking women stood, whispering to each other in our old tongue as brightly dressed men considered them and made marks on slates. I did not show that I understood their words, because I knew what was happening; and when I was told to put back my shawl before one of them, I gazed at him with all the fury I could summon, so that he stepped back from me and muttered something to the bookseller. I watched my price pass between their hands, and took no leave of him.
I did not speak all the time we journeyed across the warm plains of this new country, nor as we came under the walls of Florence, nor as we passed the great church when I wanted to cry out – for its colours were of marzepan on carnival day, soft pinks and greens that seemed to call for me from Toledo; the only bright things in that cold city.
In the dormitorio of the palazzo, I sunk my teeth in the straw mattress as I came to waking. Every morning, I lay there, soaked and trembling, until the yellow light of dawn brushed across the ceiling and I remembered who I was. Not Mura Benito, the bookseller’s child from Toledo. Not Mura who could wish up wolves and far away cities, mirages conjured in the stove-light for a delighted little girl. Not Mura safe in her little room above the shop. I was Mora, the slave. Mora, the ugly orphan who was fit only for whippings and the whispered desires of foul old men, so each morning, I put aside my dream wanderings, and I kept my eyes down.
I did not want, I did not feel. I sought the little ice-shard that was all I had of my mama, now, and instead of longings, I conjured hate.
CHAPTER FOUR
MAY, AND FLORENCE IN ITS BOWL OF HILLS BEGAN to vibrate with gathering heat. As the evenings grew longer, the benches set into the walls of the palazzi filled with people, talking, eating, shawled women at their needlework with children scuttering at their feet. As the sky turned from gold to purple, the torches would be lit in the braces at street corners, and candles would appear behind the linen screens covering the windows, and then the sound of singing filled the city – the stomelli beloved of the Florentines – until those thin, sweet songs were replaced by the chiming of the bell for Lauds. This was the signal for householders to cover their fires and throw out their slops, carefully secure the doors of their shops and obediently shut themselves in until the first hour next morning. Even kitchen slaves might take advantage of these brief hours of fresh air, and imagine themselves in a garden, if they had the wit.
I did not. I still shuffled through the days locked in my carapace of bitter loneliness and longing, living only to search for my mother through my dreams. Until something happened that made me see I could find something, somewhere in the city, that might get me free.
There were three of them. Esclava like me, a little older than I, all mouse hair and watery blue eyes in fat moonfaces, bought from the Venetian trade. We slept beside one another every night. They were always gossiping and chattering, though they did not know I could understand their talk. I knew they went with the lads from the kitchens, allowing a pinch on their bared soft breasts, or more, before the curfew rang and the steward came round with his lamp. Gropings and fingerings, coarse words and grubby giggles. Perhaps I would have despised them if I could have roused myself, but I tried not to think on them, I tried not to think on anything. They felt it, though, my contempt, and they turned on me. At supper, my dish of beans and lard would be accidentally knocked to the floor, so I would have to scoop my meal off the floor or go hungry. One night I found the pot had been tipped over my sheet. I had to shiver through the night in my clothes, with the straw poking at my skin, then carry the stinking bundle to the laundry in the morning, and get a box on the ear for fouling the linen. It was strange, but it became almost a distraction to me, through the long days, paying them no mind, containing each slight, each piece of bullying, adding to my store of hate. Sometimes I felt I would burst with it, and felt an odd pleasure in pressing it down, in stopping up the rage inside of me.
Every week, before Mass, we were permitted warm water to wash with. I did not look at them as they stripped, I breathed through my mouth so as not to catch the scents released from their chemises. When my turn came at the basin I dipped a rag gingerly into the water, trying not to look at the horrible scum of greasy tallow soap and floating hairs, and rubbed it quickly over my neck, under my arms and between my legs, crouching with my back to them and my own chemise bundled over my shoulders. Suddenly, it was snatched away. I turned, trying to cover myself with my dripping hands.
‘Ugh, look at that.’
‘Che brutta
.’
‘She’s got nothing.’
‘Poverina, no wonder she’s too ashamed to speak.’
For a moment, I thought of hurling the copper basin at them, or of pressing its unfinished rim against one of their fat throats until the blood ran. I was twitching to do it. I tried to stare them down, but they wouldn’t stop.
‘Don’t you ever want to do it, Mora?’
‘Don’t you want to feel what you’ve got, up there? But you can’t, can you?’
‘Disgusting.’
‘Deformed, she is. Shall we tell?’
They sniggered delightedly. They were creeping towards me. I thought they would push me over, slide their hands over me like vines. Mind and be nice to the gentleman. I could hear my own breath, high and rapid. I thought I would explode. Then just as quickly they grew bored, the bells were tolling for Mass and they began to plait their hair, shuffle into their skirts. Carelessly, one of them threw my chemise at my feet. I felt as though cold water had been dashed in my face. Was this what I would become if I stayed here? Would that be me in a year or so, tormenting some poor new creature, grateful for an onion-breathed boy groping under my skirts? I saw our chamber with its truckle beds and the motes of dust drifting between the beams suddenly as sharp as a jewel. This was not what I was, it could not be. This would never be my home.
As I trailed behind the Medici servants to San Lorenzo that day, I looked about me, at this world to which my grieving had blinded me for so long and I felt redeemed. I had so nearly been lost, I thought. I had not listened to what my mother tried to tell me as I slept. I would not spend the rest of my life working out my strength until I was so useless I had to be grateful for a coarse robe and a bowlful of scraps to mumble by the scullery fire. I would not. Something was waiting for me, I was certain of it, and I had only to calculate and consider how I might get away to find it.