Wolves in Winter

by Lisa Hilton

  With Giovanni’s return, we made other remedies in the farmacia, receipts that reminded me of the prescriptions old Margherita had handed out. Castor oil and crushed red ants were the ingredients of one potion whose purpose the Countess, giggling, had me disguise in our book with a series of coded letters.

  ‘Have you had a sweetheart, Mora?’ she asked me suddenly.

  I was surprised. It was the first time she had spoken to me of myself, of my own life.

  ‘No, Madonna.’ I could feel the blood rising in my neck.

  ‘Would you like one?’ she teased.

  ‘No, Madonna. I’m content as I am.’

  ‘Well, perhaps one day we’ll find you a good husband,’ she said gently.

  I screwed up my face to keep back the tears, pinching the scuttling insects, enjoying the cruelty of dropping their tiny oozing corpses into the bubbling liquid.

  ‘As I said, Madonna, I am content as I am,’ I managed to force it out.

  ‘But I have upset you. Come, tell me why. Are you not happy here in Forli?’

  ‘I am quite content.’ But even as I said it, the tears were running down my face, tears for Cecco and my father and my ugliness, for all the losses and strangeness of my life. And before I remembered myself, I gabbled out the story of what had become of my father, and how I had been sold away from Toledo, and how I never wished to love anyone again. I had no thought for her station, of how improper it was for me to speak to her thus, I simply wept, and talked, and in a while I began to feel a little better, as she listened gravely, never interrupting me.

  When I was quieted, she said to me, ‘I was married very young, you know.’

  I watched her face. People will tell you things, if you keep silent long enough.

  ‘I was just twelve. His Holiness wanted Imola, my city of Imola, for his nephew. They were nothing, the Riario, fruit sellers from Liguria until Sixtus won the papal throne. And then he wanted to found a family, a great dynasty. He went to the Medici to raise money, but was refused, so he came to my father, the Duke, and it was agreed. Imola would be my dowry. It pleased them both, I think, to feel that they had cheated the Medici, and I would have a great marriage. I think my father meant well, but he did not consider – I was too young, so very young, and my husband was not a kind man. They hated him here, you know, and in the end they killed him.’

  I composed my face gravely. Everyone knew of the killing, and of the Countess’s revenge.

  ‘Did you love him, Madonna?’ I asked.

  ‘Never,’ she hissed savagely, ‘he was a fool and a coward. I am a Sforza, and he was no better than a market trader’s brat. It was my blood they needed, as much as my money.’ She laughed bitterly. ‘God knows, I showed them what Sforza blood is.’

  She looked away, and I wondered if she was remembering the dark stains on the flags of the piazza, those rotting corpses strung up to prove her Sforza will.

  ‘So you see, Mora,’ she continued, recovered to herself, ‘there are worse things than having no husband. They say that if you wish to live as you choose, you had better not be born a woman in Italy, but I think we do very well here, nonetheless, no?’

  She smiled a true smile then, a delicious, wicked smile, and reached out to brush the last of the tearstains from my cheek. ‘You can always open your heart to me, you know,’ she said smoothly, though I knew that our confidences were at an end for the present.

  I turned back to my work, and as I stirred and measured I thought of her, wondering that she could show so calm and gentle when she had such steel in her heart. I was glad all the same that I had not told her that I had not, quite, been born a woman.

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  WE WERE WALKING THROUGH THE PARK TO THE loggia, on one of the last bright days of the year. Countess Caterina walked ahead on Ser Giovanni’s arm, a new gown of silver damask trailing carelessly behind her. There was no secret now as to what was between them, it was talked of openly in the town that the Countess would take another husband before the season turned. The ladies arranged cushions and unpacked baskets of cake and jam, setting out the picnic on linen napkins, one of them began to pluck at a lute. I stood by demurely, eyes to the ground, holding the Countess’s reticule in case it was wanted. The ladies’ voices carried high and clear in the warm air, which had the first whisper of winter dampness in it, a lower note, like the occasional rumble of Ser Giovanni’s deeper voice as he joined the conversation. I thought we must look like a painting, gathered so, and tried to make the time pass by imagining which classical allusion a painter might take as his theme for a lady and her lover enjoying a sylvan feast. In any case, I thought glumly, I should always be the servant, standing attentively in the background.

  It was soon to be All Hallows Eve, and the ladies were frightening one another with stories of ghosts and spirits, as the light turned from gold to grey.

  ‘There was a woman at Modena,’ one of them was saying, ‘who had a priest as a lover, and they conjured demons together.’

  ‘I heard that if you fill a glass bowl with oil and honey and set it before a tomb the spirits will come out to eat on All Hallows night,’ giggled another.

  Ser Giovanni suddenly noticed me, in that way great people have, as though they were surprised by the appearance of servants, like actors who had stepped through a curtain.

  ‘Come ladies,’ he said, ‘this is childish talk, when we have a real scholar amongst us. A scholar who knows the magic of the East, eh, Mora? What should we do if we want to see a ghost?’

  They turned their heads to me, some with a little quiver of distaste. I did not like to be noticed by them. I did not like the sound of that slave’s name before them, I did not like their white skins and their light eyes. I could see the Countess watching me sternly.

  ‘Please, your honour,’ I began shyly. ‘Maestro Ficino, whom the ladies will know is a very great man, teaches that there is a sympathetic relationship between terrestrial materials and celestial bodies. If the harmonies are aligned, as in the musical properties of the seven planets, then it is possible to speak with the spirits. We would have to purify a room, hang it in white and seal it, sprinkle it with rose vinegar, and then—’

  ‘Thank you, Mora,’ the Countess cut me off. My face burned. I was pompous. I did not know how to make charming conversation. Ser Giovanni looked embarrassed. I had failed him.

  ‘There, there is another way,’ I gabbled. ‘We need laurel leaves, to write on.’

  The Countess nodded indulgently at one of her women, who scampered off to rummage in the garden. I took a pen from her reticule and squatted down to show the ladies what to do.

  ‘See, we write the name so, of the spirit we want to see. It has to be a secret, write the name of the person you want to see.’

  Some of the ladies looked thoughtful, others tittered, but they all scrabbled for the quill.

  ‘And then we hold it up to the sun, like this.’

  We stood in a line, facing westward.

  ‘So now, when you go to your beds, the spirit will visit you in your dreams.’

  The ladies laughed, squinting excitedly at their leaves.

  ‘But you mustn’t tell, otherwise the magic won’t work.’

  ‘Then I hope you have chosen your ghosts wisely,’ said the Countess dryly. ‘Come, it is growing chilly.’ I caught Ser Giovanni’s eye, and hoped that he was pleased with his gift.

  Next day when I drew back the curtains of the tester, the Countess’s gold eyes were waiting for me accusingly.

  ‘What did you mean, Mora, by that foolish game with the leaves?’

  ‘Nothing, Madonna. Excuse me. It was nothing, just to amuse the ladies, you know. To do it properly . . .’

  ‘I know, one needs amulets and incantations and heavenly lyres,’ she was smiling, her sternness was a game.

  ‘So you summoned your spirit, Madonna?’

  ‘I did, and most gratifying it was. My husband,’ she stretched luxuriously, her hair tumbling from her cap, ‘wa
s quite pleased to have a little excursion from Hell. And I to send him back there. Thank you, Mora, I slept excellently.’

  I did not believe her, how could I? And yet I was glad, so glad that I had pleased her.

  ‘If you like, I could cast a chart for you. Maestro Ficino taught me well.’

  ‘And what might you see?’

  ‘Oh,’ I said slyly. ‘Weddings, and such things, you know. Venus riding on a stag with her hair all unbound, holding an apple and a flower garland. Love. Abundance. Those things.’

  ‘Is that so? Well, we shall see, shall we, little witch?’

  Witch was not a good word. Witch was a word of howling crowds and spitting priests and cells and flames. Witch was the thin line trodden by Margherita and her kind, who took refuge in madness. Witch was what we had fled, my old master and I, when I pushed him out of a window in Florence and made him fly to the ground. Maligno, demonio. But in her pretty mouth it had a sweet sound, not ‘Moor’, not nothing, but a name made just for me.

  The turn of a season is an odd time, a perilous time. As the winds shifted and grew colder, changing the pressures of the air, Caterina’s youngest child, Bernadino, fell sick. I had seen little of her six children. Of those she had borne to her first husband, the eldest – the Pope’s nephew, Ottaviano, who one day would rule Forli and Imola – was training as a soldier, whilst her second boy was in orders, and her daughter, Bianca, already betrothed. Bernadino was about six, the child of handsome, low-born Feo. Feo had been as hated in Forli as Riario and, like Riario, the people had murdered him. The Countess had wreaked terrible revenge upon them for their act.

  The younger boys had their own household within the Paradiso, where my lady would visit them each day, and I never went there until a maid was sent for me in the farmacia to tell me that the little boy lay ill with a high fever. The Countess’s ‘experiments’ were not merely for her own amusement. In the old-fashioned way, she doctored her family and her servants, noting the success of her cures as my father had done, as I had done at Careggi. Yet she was gone to Imola with Ser Giovanni, to see after the last of the grain harvest, so there was a mutinous look on the maid’s face; I could see she resented that I was being called to the Countess’s place.

  Bernadino lay on a daybed in the nursery, with the shutters closed and the fire banked high as he sweated and trembled with the sickness. The nurse stood by with a wetted cloth, smoothing his brow under damp gold hair the same colour as his mother’s. Though his eyes were glassy and far away and his face was wan, I saw that he was a pretty child. I put my hand to his temple and to the fluttering throb in his wrist and asked the maid when it had come on.

  ‘He had a fever three days ago, but very slight. It had gone by evening.’ Her voice sounded close to tears, she was terrified that she might lose her place or worse if something befell the child while his mother had left him in her care.

  ‘It is quartain then.’

  The fever that creeps into the blood from wet marshy places, attacking every third day. Many are brought low with it in Italy, and whilst a grown person may wait out the cycle, I knew it could be fatal for little ones. There was a seed my father had used to bring it off, swertia, ground with cloves and cinnamon; but I doubted I could find such a thing in Forli. It grew in the high mountains of the East, where the silk for my mother’s wedding gown was made. Gentian was close to it, I would need that, and lemons, basil leaves, black peppercorns. I sent the maid to the kitchens to ask after the fruit. She brought it to me in the farmacia, where I was roasting a spoon of alum on a metal plate. I ground it with the pepper and basil, and mixed in water and lemon juice, adding a spoonful of honey to help the child swallow it down. I sent the nurse away.

  ‘I will sit with him.’

  Just a little after he had taken the mixture his brow cooled and his pulse settled. I changed the pillow beneath his head and watched him sleep, wishing I knew some childish song, such as a mother might sing, to comfort him. I opened the shutter a little to clear the air in the room and looked out across the walls at the city. I might be peaceful here. I might tend to the Countess and work in the farmacia and wait quietly when she rode out hunting. I might walk to San Mercuriale and light a candle for poor Cecco’s soul. I felt the warmth of the fire spreading into me, and contentment came with it. I knew I should never forget what I was, but I might grow a little more comfortable with it, grow to believe that here, perhaps, was a place for me in Forli. So I sat and dozed through the night, making sure to administer the medicine at the sound of the first bell, and when I woke again there was the boy, bright eyed and laughing in his mother’s arms, she all flushed and muddied from the fast ride from Imola, and covering her son with kisses.

  Mora Buona, she called me. Good Mora. But I liked little witch better.

  *

  One day my lady came to me as I was sorting her chemises for the laundress, running my hands over the delicate lawn, looking for tears or stains, and placed her hands over my eyes.

  ‘What is it, Madonna? What’s the matter?’

  She was giggling like a girl, delighted with herself.

  ‘Come, Mora. I have a present for you.’

  I had not had a present since Adara gave me my lost doll. I stumbled before her, she guiding me so I did not fall. We passed through the sala, down the stairs to the hall where I smelled roasting meat from the kitchens, out into the cold air. We crossed the courtyard, slick with wet, then turned towards the stables, passing through a door into a place which smelled not of leather and animal sweat but clean and crisp, of soap and mint.

  ‘Look, Mora, look!’ She clapped her hands and when I saw what was there I began to cry. She had made a little room for me, with a settle and a table and a fireplace. There was a quire of paper on the table, and an ink bottle and a box of quills. A package of books in oiled canvas, sealed with red wax. She danced around, showing me what she had sent for from Florence and even Venice. The smell as I unwrapped the parcel was of my papa’s house and I cried all the harder, half in sadness and half with joy. There was a candlestick and a box of real wax candles for when the winter days grew dim, an astrolabe and a cushion for my back.

  ‘Are you pleased, little witch? See, now you can cast your spells in peace!’

  She was teasing me and I laughed with her as I went on my knees to thank her for her goodness to me. I was quite overcome. I was full of pride. I had a studiolo all of my own. I thought I could write a letter to Maestro Ficino, to tell him how I did, and that he would be proud of me that my learning had brought such credit. I should sit in my own room, on my own seat and wait for a letter in return. I could read and read, and learn Greek even, and write to scholars in far away lands as my papa had done.

  That winter, I thought that the dreams, the black dreams, had finally vanished, replaced with visions of a future where I should be safe. I had my own room, here in the Rocca, and it did truly seem a paradise to me. I was full of plans for what I should become, I thought even that I could send for one of the little Corsellini boys and have him to a student, so grand had I grown in my own eyes. No one laughed at me now, and if there were some puzzled, jealous words from the Countess’s ladies I did not care for them, for she cared for me. I thought I was precious, as my papa had told me, not for some old man’s fancy that my deformity made me a mystical prize, but for myself, for what I knew and how I could use it. For the first time since Adara carried me through the streets of Toledo, I felt valued and safe.

  But then the comet came.

  *

  For weeks after Twelfth Night, a blizzard enclosed Forli in an eerie snow-cloud, the roaring of thunder muffled by the incessant soft fall. We were cosy and merry enough in the Rocca, though. The Countess kept the cittadella provisioned permanently for siege, and we were glad of it as the drifts banked up against the walls. There was music and dancing each evening in the sala, and now I was no longer so awkward and fearful I quite enjoyed watching the ladies as they darted and spun. The Countess and Ser Giov
anni would retire early to her apartments to discuss their business. The grain accounts, she said, needed a great deal of attention. If the townsfolk were gossiping, her little court in the Rocca were mindful enough of her authority to confine themselves to no more than knowing looks and smiles. Towards the end of the month, the snow cleared, but the sky darkened from the grey of a goose’s wing to the black of a raven’s, so that we had to light torches even at noon, until the day when the countryside was lit up by a series of explosions, a giant’s firecrackers – and then even the Rocca shook as the comet struck on a hillside just beyond the walls.

  The Countess sent militiamen with shovels to clear a path that she might see for herself what had happened. She insisted I ride out with her to inspect the site where it seemed all the people of Forli were gathered, fearful as to what the comet’s appearance might portend. They held up fragments from the fall as we passed, some three sided, like cracked iron, others as large and lustrous as the Countess’s own famous pearls. The impact had hollowed out a great pit, as large as a house, into which the snowdrifts were already subsiding.

  ‘What does it mean, then, Mora?’ The Countess was turning to me, her tone light, but her gloved hands were playing tensely with the fur collar of her mantle. I wondered what answer Maestro Ficino might give.

  *

  The rain is lashing the walls of the Rocca. Darkness, except where the booming guns find their targets and howls go up from the walls as figures collapse into invisibility. Then fire, its orange glow silhouetting the swarming, desperate figures on the ramparts as the guns pound on, until suddenly the wall sways and bellies, the great stones seeming to hover, suspended for a moment in nothingness until their weight brings them down and the fortress splits apart like an egg, bleeding fire. From the breach walk two men and a woman, her spine proudly erect, her dress smeared with smoke and blood. Caterina. Her hair hangs forlornly down, plastered by the rain, but she holds her head up and does not look back at the dark shapes, firelight glinting on their drawn swords, who swarm like ants into the crack. The man beside her attempts to take her arm- in support or in possession – but she shakes him off and continues, her amber eyes blind with grief. Behind her, the second man, a dark blur in the darkness. Until the fire from the walls catches his face, the brim of the black hat hiding his eyes, but the mouth visible, smiling, a glint of teeth as white as the pearl on his collar. Him.