Read The Miracles of Prato Online
Authors: Laurie Albanese
The Miracles of Prato
The Miracles of Prato
To our own miracles
Melissa, John, Isabelle, Olivia, and Anais
with endless love and gratitude
Love, and do what you will.
(
Dilige, et quod vis fac.
)
Grant me chastity and continence, but not yet.
(
Da mihi castitatem et continentiam, sed noli modo.
)
â
SAINT AUGUSTINE, BISHOP OF HIPPO
Prologue
There's always blood: that's what the midwife is thinking. Bloodâ¦
Chapter One
Lucrezia and Spinetta Buti arrived at the Convent Santa Margheritaâ¦
Chapter Two
Dropping her feet onto the cool stone floor, Lucrezia bentâ¦
Chapter Three
“We haven't had enough rain,” Sister Pureza said in aâ¦
Chapter Four
Far from the serenity of the convent garden, behind theâ¦
Chapter Five
Fra Filippo Lippi sat beneath the window in his bottegaâ¦
Chapter Six
A glance at the fine steed tied just beyond hisâ¦
Chapter Seven
A uniformed Medici messenger entered the convent courtyard on Tuesdayâ¦
Chapter Eight
When Fra Filippo saw the sun shine into his workshopâ¦
Chapter Nine
The sky went from midnight blue to deep black, andâ¦
Chapter Ten
Seated in the confessional, Fra Filippo knew many of theâ¦
Chapter Eleven
With the Feast of the Sacred Belt only two daysâ¦
Chapter Twelve
The waning moon seemed to follow Sister Pureza and Lucreziaâ¦
Chapter Thirteen
Filing into the church for Lauds on the morning ofâ¦
Chapter Fourteen
Lucrezia sat in a sturdy wooden chair next to Fraâ¦
Chapter Fifteen
Lucrezia woke to the sound of pots rattling in theâ¦
Chapter Sixteen
“Perhaps you could go to Signora Valenti,” Spinetta said, herâ¦
Chapter Seventeen
More than a week passed with no word from Florenceâ¦
Chapter Eighteen
Lucrezia's bruises healed until they were barely shadows on herâ¦
Chapter Nineteen
“I wouldn't have believed it if my Luigi hadn't deliveredâ¦
Chapter Twenty
Fra Filippo labored every morning on the frescoes, and everyâ¦
Chapter Twenty-One
In small niches along the streets of Prato, parishioners festoonedâ¦
Chapter Twenty-Two
Fra Filippo was at the center of activity in theâ¦
Chapter Twenty-Three
Lucrezia was stitching a small sleeve onto an infant's gownâ¦
Chapter Twenty-Four
Prioress Bartolommea clutched the three gold florins in her handâ¦
Chapter Twenty-Five
There was no mistaking the pains this time. Water rushedâ¦
Chapter Twenty-Six
“Please, Lucrezia, just a little bit.” Spinetta spoke her firstâ¦
Chapter Twenty-Seven
Prioress Bartolommea reached for her new spectacles, which had beenâ¦
Chapter Twenty-Eight
Candles and oil lanterns flickered and hissed as the painterâ¦
Chapter Twenty-Nine
Dawn was still far away when an invisible hand pulledâ¦
Chapter Thirty
It was an especially warm day and Sister Pureza wasâ¦
Chapter Thirty-One
“Home,” the emissary drawled. He stood, his voice drunken, butâ¦
Epilogue
Light filters through the stained-glass window of the small chapelâ¦
The Liturgical Hours
In monastic life, the day was divided by the cycles of prayer:
- Lauds (at dawn)
- Prime (first hour after daylightâabout 6
A.M
.) - Terce (third hour after daylightâabout 8
A.M
.) - Sext (sixth hour after daylightâabout 11
A.M
.) - Nones (ninth hour after daylightâabout 2
P.M
.) - Vespers (twilight)
- Compline (last cycle of prayers before bed)
- Matins (night prayersâbetween 2 and 4
A.M
.)
The Liturgical Calendar
The year was divided into liturgical seasons:
- Advent (four Sundays before Christmas through Christmas Eve)
- Christmastide (Christmas Eve to January 13)
- Time After Epiphany (January 13 to nine Sundays before Easter)
- Septuagesima (nine Sundays before Easter to the Tuesday before Ash Wednesday)
- Lent (forty-day period from Ash Wednesday to Palm Sunday)
- Holy Week (Palm Sunday to Easter Sunday)
- Easter Season (Easter Sunday through the octave of Pentecost)
- Time After Pentecost (second Monday after Easter through the Saturday before Advent)
The Convent Santa Margherita
Prato, Italy
The Feast Day of Saint Augustine, the Year of Our Lord
1457
There's always blood: that's what the midwife is thinking. Blood when the virgins are opened, blood on the bed linens, blood to forge the vows. Again and again young women open of their own will or against their will, and when the men are done, the women come to the convent to finish what's been started.
The old midwife holds a rag soaked with a tincture of birthwort to the mother's cleft bleeding place and watches it fill crimson and maroon-black. She frowns as she looks for clots in the darkened blood. The birth has been long and difficult, lasting from the cycle of Nones prayers through Matins. It's now past the twelfth hour and still the poultice of chamomile and verbena has barely stemmed the bleeding. A quarter moon tints the eastern sky over the small city of Prato. The new mother on the ticking bed moans and calls for her child. Her eyes are sunken, her face twisted in anguish.
The midwife pushes back the edge of her wimple and looks across the candlelit chamber of the
infermeria
to where a novitiate stands pale and shaken, holding the swaddling infant in her arms. The smell of the chamber is not unlike the smell of a barnyard after a slaughter. The air is smoky and thick with the tinny scent of blood.
The old woman moves toward the novitiate and studies the infant's skin color to judge his health. She watches his chest rising and falling as he takes his first breaths among the Augustinian nuns. On the bed, the mother groans.
The young attendant blanches. The novitiate has seen no more than eleven winters; her thin body is not yet ripe for the taking. Yet it was she who held the legs of the mother as the midwife eased the infant's shoulders into this world. It was she who assisted through the hours of wailing, she who fed the mother a stew of fennel to keep up her strength. Her shock is the midwife's intention.
“There's always blood,” the old nun says. “This is what comes from carnal knowledge.”
The novitiate avoids the midwife's eyes. She holds the baby aloft, against the backdrop of the airless chamber with its dusty limestone walls. The mother calls out. The midwife takes a plain blanket, faded from so many cleanings with a wire whisk, and covers the mother's shivering body. At the sight of the midwife leaning over her with a white wimple like an angel's halo, the young mother turns her head weakly. Her gaze falls on the large wooden tub, which holds the water used to rinse the baby. The water, too, is tinged with blood.
“Let me hold him,” she says. She reaches a pale hand toward the midwife's own. “
Per piacere,
give him to me.”
The midwife holds a thimble of calendula and nettle tea to the mother's lips.
“Drink,” she says, and the mother obediently purses her lips and swallows the bitter herbs. Before the tea has passed her throat, she's crying out again.
“Bring him to me,” the mother begs, her hand clawing the empty air. “Please, let me hold my baby.”
The novitiate dares not utter a word. But the child lets out a lusty cry, as if to answer his mother.
In the cupboard by the door is a letter from the prior general of the Augustinian Order, Ludovico Pietro di Saviano, sealed with his ring in a pool of wax the color of blood. The old nun, tired from her duties as midwife, picks up the parchment and reads it again. Her gray eyes are keen and she sees the prior general's words even in the shadows. Her gaze moves to the heavy wooden crucifix mounted on the wall above the bed. The woman knows it isn't her place to question the prior general's instructions. She's merely a servant of the Lord and as a woman she is the lowliest of all His servants. Yet she mutters a prayer under her breath before moving across the small room and making the sign of the cross on the infant's forehead. She holds a reddish twig of avens and waves it across the child's temples, baptizing him for the uncertain journey ahead as she murmurs the words she's spoken many times, over each new child ushered into the world by her hand.
“Ego te baptizo in nomine Patris et Filii, et Spiritus Sancti.”
The novitiate's face glows as she hears the words that bind the child to Christ. The novitiate rubs the infant's arms, bends his knees and elbows, strokes his small fingers. The child opens his mouth and mews, a kitten's tongue. The novitiate flushes. With a deep sigh, the midwife tucks the twig into the child's blankets to keep him safe from evil, and instructs the novitiate to bundle the newborn for a journey. The young assistant doesn't utter a word, but her face asks its own questions and the midwife's nod, her whispered
“Andiamo!”
spur the girl to action. Her hands are deft as she wraps a second blanket around the child tightly.
“Be sure his head is warm,” the midwife whispers. “He may be traveling far.”
“Bambino mio,”
the mother calls out. There's new urgency in her voice.
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The midwife ignores the mother's cries. She takes the child from the novitiate, opens the infirmary door, and passes the infant to the Augustinian sister who waits outside, under the moon. Swiftly, the nun carries the child through the chapter house garden, her feet making no sound on the dusty ground. She doesn't allow herself to look at the infant. In the convent courtyard she passes the child into the arms of a man in a brown traveling cloak. His hood obscures his face. The baby's feet kick softly against the swaddling cloth as the man hurries to a waiting mule cart. The man slaps the mule, and they pass onto the road. The convent gates close behind them with a heavy thud. The midwife's work is almost finished. She dismisses the novitiate quietly, with only a slight hint of praise for the girl's hard work. Squaring her shoulders, the midwife holds a bundled stick of dried rosemary and sage, lights it in the candlewick, and blows out the flame. A thick plume of smoke issues from the smudging stick. She paces the edge of the room, pausing over the prostrate mother to waft the smoking herbs above her body. When the smoke has clouded the chamber, she sets the smudging stick in a tin plate and begins cleaning the infirmary. Silently she gathers and drops the bloodied bed sheeting into a basket. She drags the full wooden tub across the limestone floor to the doorway, where it will be carried away at first light and used to water the herbs in the garden pots. She ignores the soft weeping of the young woman on the bed as she picks up the knife, the bowl with the afterbirth, and the crude iron forceps which were not needed. She carries all of this in the folds of her generous apron, holding the corners of it like a basket. Finally the midwife blows out the candle, and the shadows in the room are plunged into the flat planes of an ordinary night.
“Where's my child?” The young woman's rasping voice cuts the air. “What have you done with him?”
The old nun's heart isn't hard, but she's become adept at putting off the mothers. This one must be managed as the others have been managed.
“I've followed the prior general's orders. The child has been baptized. He'll be well cared for.”
“No, no, no,” the young woman wails. Her pleas can be heard in the halls of the convent dormitory where the nuns lie in their cots, listening. “
Bambino mio.
My baby.”
“Please. It's not in our power to question the prior general.” The midwife's tone is gentle for the first time this long night. “God's will must be done.”
“The prior general.” The mother shrieks his name and moves as if to rise. Her hair, which has been caught up in a net, comes loose and shimmers like pale moonlight. She sobs. “
Dio mio
, don't let the prior general do this to me. Please, I beg of you, Sister.”
The old midwife has seen a new mother's tears before, and long ago pledged never to let their salty bitterness sway her.
“We've delivered of you a healthy son, but we won't speak of it again. This will be best. You'll see,” the midwife says as she leaves the room and shuts the door on the young woman's pitiful sobs.
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Alone in her narrow cell, the midwife lights her candle, removes her wimple, and lets her gray braids unravel to her waist. With weary fingers she unplaits the hair and massages her scalp. She opens a small pot of lavender oil culled from the herb garden she tends each day, and rubs a few drops briskly between her palms. The woman kneads her stiff hands. She strokes the scented oil across her forehead, along
the length of her hair, across the back of her neck. Her skin tingles with this small pleasure.
The cell is snug, in accordance with the Augustinian Rule, and the scent of lavender fills it easily. The tiny room accommodates only a narrow cot, a crude wooden writing table, and a weathered Book of Hours. This has been her home now for almost fifty years. Long ago, the woman couldn't bear to come here until she stumbled into the room, exhausted and ready for sleep. Now the old nun is relieved to be alone.
“Dear Lord,” she prays as she moves slowly to the writing table. “Is this Your will? Is this what's best for all?
Sanctus Christus.
Blessed be.”
She thinks of the young mother's sunken eyes, the lovely face racked with pain and fear. This isn't the first unwed woman whom the midwife has tended in birth. But this is the first time the nun has felt so close to another's sin of conception.
Putting the candle on the table, she takes up a piece of parchment and sits on the heavy stool. She dips her quill into a pot of ink, colored with dye yielded from her garden, and begins her letter to Prior General Ludvico di Saviano. Carefully, her quill tip scratches across the parchment in a slow rhythm as she recounts the events that have taken place at the Convent Santa Margherita.
Early this morning, on the Feast Day of Our Blessed Saint Augustine, a male child has been born of my hand. The birth was difficult, but the mother is young and strong and her body will heal. In accordance with your instructions, the mother has not been permitted to hold the child or to give him a Christian name. He has been baptized and sent to a wet nurse who will see to his care. No record has been made of his birth.
At this, she touches her head and then her sternum, making the sign of the cross. She continues to write.
The cord and placenta have been buried near the pear tree outside the monastery wall. There was no caul, but there is a red birthmark on the child's buttock. The mark is roughly the shape of a cross.
This is a fact, the nun tells herself. The birthmark can't be omitted.
The infant is a pure soul, and I trust he will be sent to a home where true Christian parents may claim and raise him as their own. I have done this at your will.
When she is satisfied with what is dispatched in her careful penmanship, she folds the parchment and seals it with the wax from her candle. Into this wax she presses her thumb, the only seal a nun is permitted to use.
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Every word the midwife writes to the prior general is true but for one: in the mind and heart of his mother, the child does have a name.
“Dear Lord,” the new mother speaks into the sage-smoked darkness. “Protect my son until we're together again. Mother Mary, by the power of the Holy Belt, I beg your forgiveness.”
Then she says the child's name aloud and waits. But there is no thunder from the Lord, no hand of the Virgin to soothe her. She hears no denial, no acknowledgment, no anger. If not for the smell of blood in the room and the torn place between her legs, it would be as if the child had never been born.