A Golden Web (2 page)

They were not ten minutes into parsing out the passage from
Aristotle when Domenico, caged inside his baby walker, bumped up against the half-open door.

Alessandra managed to catch her youngest sibling mid-fall. “Dodo, my little love! What are you doing out of the nursery?”

The two-year-old was all smiles at the success of the journey he’d taken on his own. He threw his sturdy little arms around his sister’s neck, crowing his own version of her name: “Zan-Zan!”

“He doesn’t even have his booties on,” said Nicco. “Madame our stepmother will be livid if she finds out he’s wandered off on his own again. Was it you or Emilia supposed to be watching him?”

“Emilia—but never mind. Look how tall he’s getting, Nicco! I think babies must grow in the nighttime—he already needs a new band sewn to the bottom of his gown.”

Alessandra gathered Dodo into her arms, smoothing the feathery tufts of his blond hair. “Doesn’t he look like an angel? We must get Old Fabio to paint an image of him in the new book he’s working on.”

“Old Fabio seems much more inclined to use devils than angels in his decorations these days.”

Just then, Emilia herself, rosier than usual and spattered in what looked distinctly like blood, appeared in the doorway, wringing her hands. “I am undone!” she wailed.

“Why, Emilia,” said Alessandra, handing off the baby to Nicco, “what’s happened?”

Emilia, a full head taller than twelve-year-old Alessandra, and twice as wide, nevertheless managed to collapse into the child’s arms. “It’s the friar,” she sobbed into the
chestnut-brown curls. “I gave him a piece of meat and a bowl of wine, feeling rather badly at the way I’d handled him earlier. And he no sooner had a sup of it than he clawed at the air and came over all possessed, barking and snorting like Satan himself!”

“Oh, God,” groaned Nicco, “it is my doing!”

“Hush, Nic! And then what happened?”

“Why, the Devil must have grabbed him by the hair, for he fell straight backwards!” Emilia wept harder. “And there he lay, his eyes rolled back and the earth just beneath him shaking so hard, I thought it would open up and swallow him!”

Alessandra looked accusingly at her brother. “Did you poison the wine, Nic? You could have killed us all!”

“I didn’t touch the wine!” Nicco struck his forehead with his fists. “I wished Fra Giuseppe dead today. I prayed to St. Anthony to strike him dead. But I took it back—I swear!”

Dodo began to cry.

“Are you sure he’s quite dead, Emilia?” said Alessandra.

Emilia looked up, wiping her nose with the back of
her hand. “I never thought to doubt it. He fell like an oak, and there was blood everywhere.”

Alessandra used the hem of her gown to blot Emilia’s tears. “‘By doubting we come to inquire, and by inquiring we perceive the truth.’”

“Oh, do shut up, Alessandra! Emilia, for the love of God, take us to the old sinner before the Devil claims him!”

They ran then, all three of them—with Dodo perched on his brother’s shoulders—outside the house and across the grounds, chickens scattering before them.

Fra Giuseppe’s body was sprawled on the raised and fenced platform of flagstones—safe from wolves—where one could overlook the garden. A circlet of blood spread out beneath his head, looking uncannily like a halo. The expression on his face, though, suggested a vision of unspeakable horrors.

“What ill luck,” wailed Emilia, “to die without the chance to make his peace with God!”

“It would have taken this one a month to confess all his sins,” said Nicco, nudging the friar’s body with the toe of his boot. “He’s as dead as a pike, God save me!”

Alessandra bent down, close enough to stare into the friar’s glassy blue eyes—then farther still, so that her cheek was resting on his chest.

“I know you love learning,” said Nicco. “But this is disgusting, Alessandra. He was a loathsome man!”

“Hush!” she said. With her cheek still pressed against the friar’s body, she felt along the length of his arm, finding the underside of his wrist and squeezing there.

“Make way, for I’m going to be sick!”

“Oh, do be quiet and help me, Nicco!”

“Help you what? He’s dead.”

Alessandra stood up and pushed Nicco closer to the body.

“I’ll be stuffed before I’ll kiss him good-bye!”

“Don’t be an idiot! He needs to be stomped on, not kissed. But it has to be just right, and I don’t have the strength to do it myself.”

“You want me to stomp on the dead friar’s body?”

Alessandra knelt down and traced a cross near the top of Fra Giuseppe’s belly, between his ribs. “Just here! Stomp on him, hard and sharp, but not hard enough to break his bones.”

“And now the child has gone mad!” cried Emilia, crossing herself.

“Please be quiet, both of you! Do what I say, Nic, or he’s bound to die!”

“God in Heaven,” said Nicco, “this may well be worth a trip to Hell!”

Nicco had expert aim, whether with bow and arrow, his balled fist, or his boot, which no sooner made contact with the place indicated by Alessandra than the priest’s jaw dropped open. While Nicco and Emilia both recoiled in horror, Alessandra reached deep inside the friar’s foam-flecked mouth and pulled out a half-chewed piece of mutton.

Fra Giuseppe gasped, sputtered, and then cried out in fear when his hands made contact with the pool of his own blood. “Are we attacked?” he said, his voice wobbling.

“You were, dear sir,” said Alessandra, tossing the chunk of meat over her shoulder, “but my brother saved you!”

“Alessandra Giliani!” said Emilia, crossing herself again—but Alessandra silenced her by grabbing her hand and giving it an urgent squeeze. A crow flew down from
the sky, snatched up the meat, and exultantly flew away with it.

The priest looked up and about him wildly. “Brigands, was it? And in broad daylight! Ouch!” he groaned as he tried to right himself and clutched his ribs. “They’ve injured me something awful, the villains!” He paused and sniffed the air. “They were mad with drink—they must have been. Who else would be fool enough to try and kill a man of God?”

“Who else indeed?” said Nicco solemnly.

Emilia was about to mutter something else when Alessandra found a handful of flesh through the folds of her nanny’s skirts and pinched hard enough to make her cry out instead.

“Do you see them?” asked the friar, looking up at her cry.
“Bastardi!”
he shouted into the distance, shaking his fist.

Alessandra had to cover her mouth to contain her laughter. “Are you wounded, Nic?” she said with tears in her eyes.

Nicco rubbed the backs of his knees where, earlier, the friar had struck him. “Not too badly to run in pursuit
of them—if you’re sure you’re well enough now, Fra Giuseppe.”

“Run, dear boy—run like the wind! God will reward you!” His gaze focused then on the upended wine bowl. “I had the oddest dream,” he said.

“Run, Nicco!” cried Alessandra, the laughter spilling out of her despite all her best efforts to keep it hidden.

“Like the wind!” said Emilia, daubing at her eyes and shaking.

“Wind!” echoed Dodo as Nicco took off in the direction of the stables to saddle his horse and go for a lovely ride. He would have to work hard, he told himself, to think of a way to repay Alessandra, his excellent Alessandra—who, though only a girl, was smarter and braver than anyone, save their father, in all of Persiceto.

Alessandra caught up with Nicco just as he was tightening Nero’s
halter. The stallion whinnied at the sight of her, then pushed his huge head against Alessandra’s clothes, looking for the windfall apple or pear she usually kept tucked into one of her pockets.

Nicco looked down at his sister with admiration. “What I can’t fathom is how you figured out how to bring the old sinner back to life.”

“That’s an easy one. He was not dead!”

Alessandra held her hand out flat to give Nero his
apple, wary of having her fingers nibbled. “Do you remember that pike you caught, last Whitsuntide—how you stepped on it, just so, and it coughed up the smaller fish it lately swallowed—how the little fish went flying through the air?”

“But a man is not a fish!”

“You made me think of doing the same thing, nonetheless, when you said Fra Giuseppe was ‘dead as a pike’—those were your precise words. I already suspected, from what Emilia told us, that some meat might have been caught in his gullet. You know how he gobbles his food!”

Nicco shook his head in wonder. “St. Francis himself might learn a trick or two from you, Sis!”

“You know…” Alessandra lowered her voice, even though the two of them were quite alone. “I wouldn’t dare say this to anyone else, but I think a good many things that common folks call miracles are merely matters of an observant person’s plain good sense.”

Nicco climbed up onto his horse. “The miracle will be if you are not burned for a witch before you’re grown!”

“Half the trick of being a smart girl is learning how to
hide it.” Alessandra stroked Nero’s silky muzzle. “Don’t look glum, Nic! Fra Giuseppe is bound to give a good report of your progress, now that he fully believes you saved his life. You may even be quit of him as a tutor, as his knowledge doesn’t extend much beyond what he’s already taught you.”

“What he’s already taught
you
, it would be fairer to say. It was excessively good of you to give me the credit for saving his life!”

“Goodness had nothing to do with it.” Alessandra shivered. “I have no desire to ever serve as fuel for a bonfire in the square.”

They were both silent for a moment, remembering the monk who was burned at the stake there the year before—how he’d shouted through the flames that the wrath of God would come down on the sinful puppet who sat on the Pope’s throne in Avignon. The smell of burning flesh lingered for days afterwards. “Did you make Emilia promise not to tell?”

“She loves us both too much to ever tell. But, now, Nic, I have a favor to ask of you.”

“Ask away! I would be a brute to deny you anything,
after all you’ve done for me.” Nero pawed and snorted, so that Alessandra, straining her neck to look up at them, moved back a couple of paces.

“Teach me to ride, Nic!”

“You have your little pony, and you ride quite prettily already.”

“That’s not what I mean. I want you to teach me to ride as well as you, and to learn the ways of the woods and all the creatures that live there.”

“I will teach you to ride, with pleasure, although you’re a bit of a shrimp to handle a horse as big as Nero. But the woods are full of dangers—”

“Which is why I want to learn their ways!” Alessandra looked out to the dark line of trees that marked the beginning of the forest. “I’ve made a study of all I can, in and around our father’s house. I long to go farther afield. You have no idea how galling it is to be penned up here as surely as our cattle.”

“Our cattle are penned up to keep them safe from wolves and bears and just the sorts of brigands you convinced Fra Giuseppe had tried to rob him.”

“But if you teach me to ride, and read the woods—”

“It is not one of your books!”

“It’s one of yours! You’ve spent your life learning the language of it, just as I’ve learned Latin. And you will teach me—you must!—just as I’ve taught you.”

“And if something should happen to you?”

Alessandra stood close against Nero’s flank and looked up into her brother’s blue eyes. “Your knowledge will keep me safe, dear onion—or as safe as a girl with dreams can ever be in this small-minded world.”

Alessandra had, for many years now, been in the habit of stealing away with a candle to the storage room. Because there was no window there, and no fire, it was the only room (apart from the privy) where she could usually count on spending time alone.

On each of these visits, she would open the chest that held her mother’s wedding dress and everyday clothes. (Her two embroidered gowns and the silk and velvet clothing were all appropriated by her stepmother.) Alessandra would caress the linen and homespun garments that still held a faint scent of the person she’d loved so much and lost. And lately, from the silken folds of the wedding
gown, she’d take out the heavy icon of the Virgin, painted by Old Fabio with her mother’s likeness. Alessandra held it against her as she prayed, and kissed her mother’s face after every whispered
Ave Maria
.

But this day she opened the chest that held the children’s own outgrown clothes that could not, as yet, be handed down. Sorting through them until she found some of Nicco’s garments that she thought would fit her, she stripped off her gown and kirtle and pulled on breeches and a doublet. With some twisting and tucking, she managed to hide her hair under a cap. She knew the disguise was a good one when her sister walked in on her and let out a mighty shriek.

“Hush, for God’s sake, Pierina—it’s me!”

“You scared me half to death! I thought we were being robbed. What are you up to, then? I’m sure it can’t be any good.”

“Mind your own business, pipsqueak! I’m off to study.”

“I’m going to tell!”

Alessandra grabbed Pierina by the shoulders and looked into her clear blue eyes, so rare in their part of
the world. “Tell what? That I’ve donned a set of Nicco’s castoff clothes?”

“It’s some sort of scheme of yours.” Pierina wriggled out of her sister’s grasp. “Or some game. And I want to play, too! You and Nic always leave me out of everything!”

“We wouldn’t if you weren’t such a tattletale.”

“I won’t be this time—I promise! Cross my heart and hope to die!”

“All right, then.” Alessandra took Pierina’s hand and sat her down on the chest that held their mother’s clothes.

Pierina was looking at her expectantly.

“It’s a game called Disappearing,” said Alessandra.

Pierina nodded sagely.

“I’m to go first, because I’m the elder girl.”

“You always get to go first!”

“Hush! The other’s job is to cover up while the person who’s ‘it’ is gone, without telling an outright lie. So if Emilia wants to know where I am, you’ve got to say you think I might be with Mother in the garden. And if Mother wants to speak to me, say that you’ve a feeling I’m in the nursery with Dodo—and so forth, until
everyone believes I’m here, even though I’m not.”

Pierina clapped her hands together. “It’s a lovely game!”

“I’m glad you think so.”

“But are you sure there’s not sin in the intention of leading others astray, just as surely as if I’d out-and-out lied?”

Alessandra smiled. “You’ll make a fine scholar yet, Pierina.”

“I will never be a bookworm like you—nor would I want to be! What gentleman would want to marry a girl who is always thinking?”

“A good man would! Don’t forget that our own mother could read, and was said by Dante himself to recite as beautifully as anyone in all of Romagna or Lombardia.”

Pierina looked suddenly sad. “I wish I could remember! My memory of her grows dimmer every day—especially since our lady took the portrait down. Sometimes I can’t picture her face at all.”

It was not the first time that Alessandra was sorely tempted to show Pierina the icon, which her father had made her promise to keep secret. She put her arm around
Pierina instead. “You’ll remember as soon as I remind you—close your eyes!”

With Pierina’s head resting on her shoulder, Alessandra described the painting their mother had sat for when she was pregnant with Dodo: a glorious half-page illumination showing the Annunciation—the very same image Fabio had copied for the icon. Alessandra looked at it so often that she could describe it perfectly, from the almond-shaped eyes to the startled brow and the slightly parted lips that seemed about to speak.

The original illumination was part of an exemplar that Carlo Giliani had been putting together to show off Old Fabio’s skill and the fine quality of the books produced by their workshop.

When his wife died in childbirth, Carlo had the folio with her portrait mounted on a piece of gilt-framed wood, which he hung in a place of honor above the hearth. Later, when he married again, his new wife insisted the painting be taken down. Just that past year, Carlo had Old Fabio paint the image over again in miniature for the weighty icon he gave to Alessandra, telling her that this treasure was for her and her alone.

“You look like her, Zan-Zan,” said Pierina, gazing up into her sister’s wide-set, unmistakably almond-shaped brown eyes.

“Hmm. I suppose I do.”

“I look more like Papa’s family, don’t I?”

Alessandra studied her sister’s blond hair and wide blue eyes with a familiar twinge of envy. “I’m sure our stepmother feels nothing but love when she looks at you.” They were both silent then, thinking about how little love their stepmother bore Alessandra. “Are you in, then? Are you going to play Disappearing with me and Nic today?”

Pierina nodded.

“Yours will be the hardest part.”

“But where will you go, dressed like a boy?”

“Into my newest study hall stocked with books I’ve never read nor touched!”

“What are you talking about? We have the best library outside of Bologna.”

Alessandra felt cheered up again, thinking about her adventure. “Ah, but this is a study hall filled not with books but the wonders of Nature—with birth and growth
and death and decay, plants and creatures, earth, water, and sky.”

“Are you running away?”

“Just for the day—I’ll be back before supper. And if you’ve played your part well, no one shall ever know I was gone.”

Alessandra kissed her, then scrambled up onto the windowsill. “Godspeed, Pierina!” she called out over her shoulder before steeling her nerves and jumping outside.