A Golden Web (8 page)

The sun was low and turning red behind them when they reached the closest northwest gate, the Porta San
Felice. The top of the Basilica glowed in the last golden rays of light. A line of birds was gathered overhead on the highest westernmost edge, unwilling to surrender the day until the sunlight disappeared. Alessandra also wanted to savor this day and this moment. She had never been to the city without one or both of her parents.
This day marks the beginning,
she told herself,
of my real life.

The guard at the gate asked their business.

“I am a student,” said Alessandra, trying to sound more like her brother than herself. She gestured with her thumb toward Emilia. “My servant.”

The guard looked at them more carefully then, and Alessandra was certain that he would see through their disguises.

“Do you have lodgings?” When Alessandra, to be on the safe side, shook her head no rather than speak again, the guard stepped up close to her horse, indicating with a flick of his head that she should bend down to better hear him. “My sister and her husband let rooms to students, although they’re not strictly licensed, if you know what I mean.”

He flicked his head now at Emilia, as if acknowledging a
fellow of his own station. “They’re clean rooms, though—no bugs in ’em. And my sister’s a wicked good cook.”

Both Alessandra and Emilia were hungry, and their eyes grew wide at this news.

“Can you lead us there?” Alessandra asked him.

“Well, I’m not supposed to leave the gate.”

Alessandra reached into the pocket of her doublet and took out her moneybag, shaking it meaningfully.

“But seeing as there’s no one else on the road but yourselves,” said the guard in a predictably oily tone, “and seeing how my sister’s place isn’t far from here, I suppose there wouldn’t be any harm—” He slipped a weathered hand out of his sleeve and held it, palm up, to Alessandra, “in showing you the way.”

Alessandra dropped a silver
Bolognino grosso
in the guard’s hand, which snapped closed around the coin and disappeared again.

The guard’s lips parted in a smile containing more gaps than teeth. “Bologna is a confusing place, if you don’t know it well, particularly after dark. This way, sir!”

Alessandra didn’t dare look at Emilia, terrified she’d burst out giggling. “This way, sir!” he’d said. Soon, soon,
she told her aching bones, they’d stable the animals, eat a good meal, and get to lie down. It would be Heaven, bugs or no bugs.

They went down a street overarched on both sides with porticoes.

“Everyone wants to rent out rooms to students these days,” the guard went on. “Because if they do it, they’re allowed to build their place out a little bit more, over the street. All the merchants are keen to do it, God knows, the greedy buggers. It’s become the arsehole of the world here, so built out that the sun don’t shine on the streets no more.”

So this is how men spoke when they were among themselves! Alessandra saw Emilia, discreetly but distinctly, make the sign of the cross.

“Here we are then, my dear good sir!”

Alessandra wondered if she had given him too big a coin.

“Isabella! Isabella, you old slut, look what baby brother has brought for you!”

A small, brown, leathery woman who hardly seemed human came to the door, holding a candle up to their
faces. Alessandra just caught the guard, out of the corner of her eye, rubbing his fingers together in a silent message to his sister—if she was his sister.

She, in turn, bellowed for someone named Tonio. A surly, none-too-clean-looking boy, about Alessandra’s age, came down the stairs. “Take the horse and donkey to the stable!”

Alessandra dismounted, trying not to wince, and then started to unbuckle the saddlebags.

Emilia slipped off the donkey and stumbled up beside her. “I’ll do that, sir,” she said without skipping a beat, even lowering her voice, if Alessandra wasn’t mistaken.

“Thank you, Emilio!” She could have kissed Emilia just then, but of course she didn’t dare.

There were two other students lodging at Signora Isabella’s—one studying law and the other, like Alessandra, aspiring to gain admission to the medical school. Both were clerics, with their heads shaven in the tonsure, which made it hard to tell their age. They were, in any case, far older than Alessandra. They looked at her and Emilia with a great deal of curiosity. But Alessandra parried their
questions with protestations of fatigue. She and Emilia ate and retired to their room as quickly as possible.

There was a small bed for Alessandra and an even smaller one for Emilia, nothing more than a pallet on the floor. Despite her exhaustion, Emilia kissed Alessandra good night and tucked her in—and the sight of it would have amused anyone who saw them. But they were, as far as they knew, unobserved, and they fell asleep immediately.

The Porta Nova—one of the twelve gates of the city, close by Alessandra and Emilia’s port of entry into Bologna—turned out to be the very place where the medical students gathered. This intelligence came to Alessandra at breakfast, over the bowl of hot milk and the hard roll that came as part of the cost of the room. She asked the other aspiring
medico
, whose name was Paolo, if he could show her where and how to enroll at the University.

Paolo snorted and said there was no need. All she had to do was pay her dues to the students’ association and start attending lectures.

Books, the two clerics told her, were the biggest problem. There were always several people in line to read
every book kept under lock and key in its carrel in the library or chained to its stand at the stationer’s. People weren’t shy about pushing and shoving, either, nor were they above taking and giving bribes for the privilege of sitting at the writing desk and making one’s own copy.
Pecie
—the official copies of books rented out in pieces—were hard to come by. Paolo boasted that he was maintaining a flirtation with the stationer’s daughter, who sometimes smuggled parts of books to him under her chemise. Alessandra nearly choked on her crescent roll at this piece of information.

“I’ll introduce you to her, if you like,” said the generous Paolo. “She’s such a flirt that one man more is always welcome to ogle her boobies. Although,” he added, eyeing Alessandra, “you can hardly be called a man!”

She froze.

Paolo smiled at her, showing his rotten teeth. She wondered whether his tonsure was really a tonsure or only the natural retreat of the hair he once had. Also about how ugly the stationer’s daughter must be to want to flirt with the likes of him. She could hardly breathe. Of course he’d seen right through her!

“Why, your voice hasn’t even changed yet! How old are you, Sandro? Thirteen? Fourteen?”

Alessandra blinked a few times, taking this in. She said in a confidential tone of voice, “You won’t tell anyone, will you?”

Paolo thumped her on the back, so that the bite of roll she had just taken came flying out of her mouth. She was about to apologize to the people sitting across the table from her—a merchant and either his daughter or his very young wife—until she realized that they were both too drunk to notice.

“You can depend on me!” said Paolo. “I’ll wager you must be a prodigious scholar to have been sent here by your parents to study”—he lowered his voice to a malodorous whisper—“at such a tender age.”

“I’ve read—rather a lot. I was also—on intimate terms, in my parish, with the stationer’s daughter.”

“By God!” Paolo slapped his thigh. “Boy or man, you’re my sort, you are! A fellow who knows how to get on in the world. This, for instance,” he said, laying a finger on the fringe of hair around his bald head, “and this,” taking a fistful of his black clerical robe. “God calls
us to Him not only to serve but also to survive! It was this or the army for me—and I have a powerful dislike of blood.”

“You’ve made a strange choice of profession, then,” said Alessandra, barely able to keep herself from laughing.

Paolo slumped in his chair, like a boat that’s suddenly lost its wind. “It’s true, it’s true! But I have an even greater aversion to legal texts.” He looked utterly miserable. “The truth is,” he whispered, leaning close again, “I can hardly read.”

“Then why are you here? There are many choices for a man, apart from priest, lawyer, or
medico
.” Alessandra thought, as she said this, that the same was not at all true for her own gender. What could one be but a nun or a wife? Widows often could and did take on the work of their husband. But no woman could set out to be anything—except, perhaps, a servant.

“I ask myself that same question, all the time! Why am I here? All these bits of books piling up in my room now, and I can hardly read them. You can’t know how it bedevils me! It takes me three times as long to parse out a text as the other fellows. And by the time I get to the
end, I’ve forgotten the beginning. Half the time the letters dance around and change places and convey another meaning entirely.” He groaned. “I’ve failed my first-year exams three times now!”

Alessandra was about to say “There, there!” and offer comfort—but stopped herself just in time, remembering that men didn’t do this. She tried to think of what Nicco would say. “Bloody hell, Paolo!”

He looked at her, his eyes brimming with gratitude. “That’s what I say, Sandro, old friend. Bloody hell!”

“Bloody hell!” echoed the merchant across the table from them.

The servant boy, Tonio, had come in to clear the tables. Alessandra saw the other boarders hasten to pocket whatever hard rolls were left before Tonio took them away.

As he passed her, he bent close to her ear and whispered, “Meet me at the privy, then.”

At the privy? She wished Nicco were there to tell her whether that was something men did, too. She looked at Tonio, hoping to catch some clue from his expression. Then he winked at her. Alessandra hesitated, then winked back at him.

In her room, she held her head in her hands and moaned. She had no idea what anything meant anymore! Emilia, utterly worn out from the previous day’s journey, was still sleeping. Alessandra put a roll in Emilia’s hand, took a deep breath, then left to go out into the city, determined, beyond anything, not to go anywhere near the privy in Signora Isabella’s boardinghouse.

Alessandra—now “Sandro” to her fellow students—found out a
good deal during her first days in Bologna. The principal lectures were all given in the morning at locations decided on the spur of the moment by the students, who were completely in charge of the hiring and firing of masters. Lectures were held wherever a space could be found, depending on the weather and the master’s willingness to let the students gather at his home, if he had one. A few of the most highly revered masters were able to afford to rent a second house especially for this purpose—among
them, Alessandra learned, was the renowned and well-respected professor of medicine, Mondino de’ Liuzzi, who was the very reason she’d wanted so much to study in Bologna.

She was waiting for one such lecture to start—this one out in the square, as the
magister
had earned his degree in philosophy only the year before and was teaching to support the continuation of his studies. Alessandra’s ears pricked up at the mention of a woman doctor at the University of Paris.

“Oh, she’s history!” said a fat youth with pockmarked skin. “Haven’t you heard? She’s been restrained from ever practicing again.”

“Did they burn her?” someone else asked.

“No,” sighed the fat youth, sounding bored. “Only banished her.”

Alessandra felt more conscious than ever of her disguise. She seated herself in the middle of the throng of students attending the lecture, avoiding people’s eyes and taking notes furiously. Before the end of the lecture, she’d used up her little bottle of ink, but she didn’t dare ask to borrow ink from someone else. She had to simply try—in
among the whispered gossip, occasional snores, and bawdy jokes of the other students—to memorize every word.

She was both exhausted and elated when she found her way back to Signora Isabella’s, hoping she was on time for the midday meal. She had taken wrong turns twice, had to push her way through a throng of people gathered to watch a group of mummers, and just nearly missed being bitten by a savage dog. She was two steps up the staircase when someone grabbed her cloak, jerking her backward and pulling her into the alcove under the stairs, one hand—a filthy-tasting hand—held over her mouth. She knew even before her eyes had adjusted to the dark: It was the serving boy, Tonio.

When Giorgio got back to Persiceto, traveling the long way on foot, he really did look as though he’d been beset by robbers. He was limping, bleeding, sunburned, and cold by the time he arrived, long after dark. The kitchen maid, when she saw him, shrieked in a most gratifying way. Everyone else reacted just as Nicco had imagined they would—except Pierina. Pierina, now thirteen and growing fast, threw her arms around Giorgio,
covering him in tears and kisses.

Ursula, who had been busy ministering to Giorgio’s injuries when Pierina burst into the kitchen, looked from one to the other and then at her husband. He shook his head as if to indicate
I had no idea!
Giorgio started to speak, but his words were caught in a hopeless stammer and he merely blushed.

Realizing that she’d revealed what she shouldn’t have, Pierina stood alongside him in an agony of embarrassment.

Carlo said, “First things first. What happened to you, lad?”

Giorgio looked like the most miserable and unwilling chorister who ever lived. “Robbers,” he sang, “along the road.”

Pierina fainted.

“For goodness’ sakes!” said Ursula. “This house is beginning to resemble a hospital. Get water for her!” she told the kitchen maid. “And stop that mewling! You’re only making things worse.”

Giorgio, for all his fatigue, had adroitly caught Pierina before she hit the ground.

“The horse and the donkey?” asked Carlo. “The manuscript?”

Giorgio shook his head above Pierina’s prostrate form. It was unclear whether his distress was in reference to his master’s loss of property or to Pierina’s public revelation of her feelings for him.

It was clear to Nicco—and, really, to all of them—that the love between these two was formidable. He could see his father entertaining the idea of a match between his best artist and his second daughter—and how his initial reaction of annoyance was replaced by the realization that nothing, in fact, could be more perfect.

Giorgio’s work was a source of plenty for the family, bringing in spectacular new commissions. His reputation in the book trade was quickly growing. Carlo had been gnawed by fear that one of the rich private collectors in the region—perhaps Romeo Pepoli himself—would try to lure Giorgio away. The Giliani workshop could never come up with that sort of gold. But what girl in the parish was more charming than Pierina, with her blond hair, blue eyes, and winning ways? To have such an artist as his son-in-law—that would be the greatest triumph of all.

Nicco also liked the idea. He already loved Giorgio like a brother. And this would mean that Pierina—unlike Alessandra—would stay at home.

Ursula, secure in the knowledge that her elder step-daughter would command a high bride-price, seemed to find no fault with the idea of a humbler match for Pierina. She was glad, too, that her favorite stepchild would remain close by. Ursula merely looked at her and murmured, “So young!”

By the time Pierina woke from her swoon, with very little being said, she found herself betrothed to the young man she’d loved since first laying eyes on him.

Realizing it was Tonio—and not someone older or even much stronger than she, judging by his size—Alessandra grabbed the hilt of her knife, hoping dearly she wouldn’t have to use it. Tonio took note and let go of her after getting her assurance in pantomime that she wouldn’t cry out.

She spat, then wiped her mouth. “What do you want, you blackguard?”

Tonio laughed. Underneath the dirt, Alessandra saw,
he was barely more than a child. The serrated edges of his new adult teeth had not yet been worn smooth. He, like she, still had all his teeth—which was perhaps the only luck this boy had ever known. She wondered in what cowshed in what mean village he’d been brought into the world—and how he came to be the servant at Signora Isabella’s.

“‘Blackguard’! That’s a fancy word!”

“You rodent then—you flea!”

“I’ve been called worse in my time.”

“You seem proud of it.”

“A man takes what opportunities as he can to feel a sense of satisfaction.”

“As if you were a man!”

“As if
you
were!”

Alessandra readjusted her cloak. Under Tonio’s persistent stare, she reached down and grabbed the crotch of her breeches, shifting the fabric there as she’d seen her brother and his friends do when standing around the square together. “State your business, flea! I want my dinner.”

“Well, I want my money!”

“What money?”

“For my silence!” Tonio was looking at her as if convinced that she was simpleminded. “I know your secret!” he said in an exaggerated whisper.

“Do you?” Alessandra did her best to scowl at him. She pulled her cloak aside so that he could see her right hand on the hilt of her knife again.

“I won’t tell,” said Tonio, “not if you pay me proper!”

Alessandra pulled the knife out of its hilt and held the point under Tonio’s chin. “Don’t move,” she said. “It’s very, very sharp.”

“Don’t cut me, master!”

“Don’t threaten me, then.”

“It’s only that I know—”

“You know what?”

Tonio swallowed hard. “That you’re traveling with your nanny.”

Alessandra lowered the knife without even meaning to. “How did you find out?”

“I saw her—well, I don’t want to say it, seeing as she’s old. I saw her…” He cupped his hands over his chest and then, thinking better of it, lowered them down to his
belly, “when she was getting dressed. And last night I saw her kiss you g’ night.” Tonio looked wistful. Alessandra was fairly certain he had never had anyone kiss him good night.

She looked at him as if with a new sense of respect (even though all she felt was pity for him). “You’re a smart lad.”

“Look—just because I’m poor and you’re rich, it doesn’t make you any older than me, right?”

Alessandra tried to think, once again, what Nicco might do in the situation. “Mind your place!” she said. And then, throwing an arm around Tonio and speaking low into one of his dirty ears, she added, “It’s true enough—she couldn’t bear to be parted from me. She suckled me as a baby and she’d continue to do so, if she had her way.”

“Women!” said Tonio.

“They’re all the same.” Alessandra gave Tonio a friendly slap on the back and then hoisted up her breeches. “I told her no one would buy that disguise of hers. You won’t let on, though, will you?” She got her little moneybag out and found a coin in it—a small copper one—and gave it to
Tonio. “It would hurt her something terrible.”

“Seeing as how you’ve put it so persuasive-like…” Tonio smiled with satisfaction at the expensive word that came to him, as sweet and miraculous as the honey the bees pulled out of the air.

Alessandra tried to hide the sigh of relief that escaped her. “I’m glad to know I can trust you. There may be things that will come up, things that—” She jerked her head toward the room she shared with Emilia and said softly, “—she or I might need done.”

“I’m your man, Sandro.” A look of anxiety passed over Tonio’s features. “Is it all right to address you so?”

“When it’s just the two of us, you may use my Christian name.”

Alessandra knew that she had an ally now at Signora Isabella’s—and thanked her lucky stars she had an older brother.

“Papa,” said Pierina a few weeks after her betrothal. “Dearest Papa!”

“I quake with fear when I hear those words,” said Carlo.

“Sweetest Papa!”

Carlo held up his hands as if to ward off a blow.

“Darling Papa!”

“Slay me now, Pierina, and have done with it!”

She kissed him on the cheek and scooted close enough to rest her head on his shoulder. “You know I can’t marry until after Alessandra has her wedding.”

“What of it?”

She laced her arm through his. “Can’t she be persuaded to have it sooner?”

Carlo put a bit of space between them. “Are you in such a hurry, my poppet?” He looked more closely at her, examining her luminous skin and clear blue eyes. “You’re not—”

“No,” said Pierina, perhaps a little too quickly. “But I want to start my married life without delay.”

“You have time!”

“Who knows how much time any of us has on this Earth? And you know how Alessandra is—she will put off her marriage as long as she can, because…” Pierina looked a little guilty. “Because she doesn’t love her fiancé, does she? Not like I love my Giorgio!”

“Alessandra has not met her fiancé, Pierina.”

“And you shouldn’t let her meet him, either—not till the wedding! She’s bound to find some objection to him, despite the brilliant match you’ve made for her.” She lowered her voice. “You do not know my sister like I do, Papa! She is unnaturally stubborn.”

“Whereas you are docile and obedient?”

“I would be, forever and ever, if you hurried things up a bit. We could even have the weddings on the same day—wouldn’t that be lovely?” Pierina looked very pleased with herself. “We could have one big feast instead of two.”

Carlo spoke sternly. “You seem to forget your place, Pierina, as my second daughter.”

“Oh, I haven’t at all, Papa! I know that Alessandra’s betrothal is the only reason why Mother has agreed to let me marry Giorgio, besides wanting to keep me close by. One brilliant marriage is, after all, as much as any family needs.”

Unlike her big sister, Pierina had no gift for seeing when she was being teased—and always rose to the bait.

Carlo assumed his most thoughtful expression, as if
he were suddenly reconsidering everything. “So,” he said slowly, “if Alessandra does not marry the man I’ve chosen for her, then you will agree to make a brilliant marriage for us instead?”

Pierina pushed away and stamped her foot. “How you vex me, Papa!”

Her show of pique banished Carlo’s playful mood. “You will do as I say, daughter!”

Pierina knelt before him. “I must marry Giorgio! A fortune-teller told me I would marry a dark-eyed man from Padova.”

“There are many men who fit that description, and from far more illustrious families, who could probably be convinced to take you as a wife.”

“Please, Papa! Alessandra will be happy enough, once she gets used to the idea.”

“And do you not think that your sister deserves the sort of happiness you feel?”

“Oh, Alessandra does not even know what it means to love someone. All she cares about is Aristotle.”

“To love someone.” As Carlo repeated his daughter’s words, a shadow passed over his features. “Well, my child,
I am glad that you, at your tender age, have pondered so deeply the ways of Earth and Heaven, and understand them better than your sister—and perhaps better than everyone else in this household.”

Pierina looked at him fearfully. “Can’t Nicco make a brilliant marriage,” she asked in a small, chastened voice, “if Alessandra won’t?”

“Enough!”

“Forgive me, Papa!”

“Go to your room! Ask God for His forgiveness, and to mend your spoiled ways.”