The Miracles of Prato (16 page)

De' Valenti pushed his
berretto
up on his head and scratched at his temple.

“My wife has given me four daughters and three heirs, but the devil took each of my sons before his first earthly breath. Only this one survives, and if my wife believes there was a miracle in her birthing chamber, who am I to deny it?”

Making his way into his wife's private apartment, Ottavio de' Valenti found Teresa propped on many plush pillows. He kissed her cheek, and she greeted him fondly.

“Ottavio, didn't you send for the novitiate?” she asked. “I thought she was to arrive last night.”

“I wrote immediately to the prioress.” The merchant knelt at his wife's bedside and took her hands in his own. “This morning we received word that she is delayed. But it's only for a day or two. Then she'll be here with you.”

Behind him, Prior General Saviano screwed up his face. He'd expressly said the girl was not to leave the convent.

“The novitiate? The Virgin of the painting is to come here?”

Teresa de' Valenti smiled and nodded.

“My husband is good to me. He's good to all of us. The Lord has given us many blessings, and now we have our own
Miraculous Madonna
.
It is a blessed omen that she is here among us, don't you agree, Prior General Saviano?”

 

P
lease, Fra Filippo, don't let me keep you from your work,” Lucrezia said after their moment had passed. “I'm content to sit and watch, especially if you have something to keep my hands busy.”

Fra Filippo's eyes fell upon the lavender he'd taken from the convent garden two weeks earlier. The flowers had dried, and could be ground to make fragrant oil.

Gathering the herbs and a wooden bowl and pestle, the monk settled Lucrezia at his table, where she nimbly separated the kernels as he talked about his plans for the frescoes.

“There's also the life of Saint John the Baptist, who is the patron saint of the wool guild in Prato,” he said. “I'll show his birth, his parting from his parents, and the banquet when his head is brought to King Herod on a platter. Many church patrons have paid to have their likenesses among the faces at Herod's banquet. It's said that when a patron is depicted in a painting that serves God's glory, it takes him one step closer to heaven's gate.”

His voice trailed off, and Fra Filippo turned to his fresh parchment, imagining where he might place the faces and bodies of the banquet revelers. As she sifted through the lavender, the colorful grains falling easily from the stems, Lucrezia wondered if her likeness as the Virgin Mary also brought her closer to heaven's gate.

“Do the paintings act as an absolution?” she asked softly. “Is that why the patrons are brought closer to heaven when they're depicted in your work?”

Absently, the monk answered.

“
Si, si.
A man may pay the church for forgiveness of a sin already committed, or become a patron and earn leniency for future transgressions. At least”—he glanced sideways at her—“at least, that's what they say in Rome.”

Lucrezia thought about his reply, and wondered if Fra Filippo might agree to paint Spinetta's face in one of his fresco scenes. Spinetta wasn't a sinner, but it couldn't hurt to have extra assurance of God's good favor.

“It is past Sext,” Fra Filippo said after a time. “You must be hungry.”

The two had a light meal of bread and cheese in the kitchen. Rosina poured them each a cup of watery wine, and tidied up the hearth as they ate in strained silence.

“If there's nothing else, Fratello, my mother needs me at home,” Rosina said after she'd wiped their small plates.

Lucrezia looked up in alarm.

“Of course.” Fra Filippo stood and brushed the crumbs from his hands. “And I must go to the chapel to check on the progress there.” He reminded Rosina to be sure her brother had gone to the convent and delivered the procurator's message.

“Yes, Fra Filippo,” the girl replied, “my brother has done as you asked.”

“
Si,
he's a good boy.” The painter removed a silver coin from a jar on the shelf, and slipped it into her hand. “Bring your mother something from the market.”

“Molte grazie.”
The girl pressed her cheek against his hand, bowed to Lucrezia, and slipped out the door.

It was still early afternoon. Standing in the doorway to the antechamber, Fra Filippo turned to Lucrezia.

“I'll work in the chapel until the light fades,” he said stiffly. “Please pass the time as you like, and I won't bother you again until dusk. By then I trust Spinetta will have arrived.”

 

After he'd gone, Lucrezia moved restlessly around the studio. She lifted a sheet and saw a darkly painted pietà, the face of the Virgin taut and gray. Lifting another cloth draped over a large panel, she found a kind-faced friar with a halo above his head. When she couldn't make out his identity, she dropped the sheet and picked up a pile of parchments. She turned them over and found her own likeness looking back at her. It was her face, her cheeks, her eyes. Yet by the monk's hand she'd become something precious and holy. She'd become the Madonna, the Blessed Mother.

Spinetta had said the likeness was flattering, but Lucrezia wanted to see for herself if this was true. Although she'd worn splendid dresses, and been adorned with delicate
bende
made by the finest weavers in Florence, here in Prato she'd been told for the first time that she was a beautiful woman. She couldn't help but wonder what changes showed now, in her face. Her eyes moved quickly across the monk's cluttered worktable, sure that there would be a reflective surface among his many tools.

The monk wasn't a tidy man, and his table was piled with many instruments. She reached over a cluster of large vessels and pots toward a glass canister near the wall, and her sleeve caught on a paintbrush, tipping a jar of color. Lucrezia cried out and jerked her arm back. But instead of steadying the container she upset another, which tipped into a bowl of paint.

She jumped back, but it was too late. The viscous liquid streaked down her robe from waist to knee, and it smelled of rotten eggs.

Lucrezia grabbed a crumpled rag, but wiping at the
verdaccio
only smeared it further. She tried water, but it beaded up on the oily surface of the paint. Lemon did the same, and wine vinegar bubbled and turned the green mess into brown and purple the color of an old bruise.

When it was clear the thick paint wasn't lifting, Lucrezia remembered that Fra Filippo used ammonia to clean his brushes. She bent to the low shelf where she knew he kept the flask, and carefully removed the stopper. The sharp odor burned her eyes. Looking quickly around the workshop, assured that no one passing by could look in and spy her, Lucrezia slipped the robe over her head and stood in her undergarments. She laid the robe onto the floor, where she could be sure nothing else would spill on it, and blotted the black fabric with the foul-smelling ammonia. But instead of lifting the color, it seemed to suck away the pigment. The robe was ruined.

Surveying the sloppy mess she'd made, she thought bitterly of the beautiful dress she'd worn on the day she left her home. Lucrezia replaced the stopper in the flask, returned the ammonia to the shelf, and went into the kitchen, where a bucket of water sat on the floor beside the fireplace. Wearing only her wimple and her
panni di gamba
, Lucrezia knelt, dipped the rag in the bucket, and dabbed furiously at the green splotches and grayish pools of color where the ammonia had leached the dye from the fabric.

The terrible smell made her dizzy. Sitting back on her heels, she fingered the hem of her silken chemise, where she'd secreted her medallion before giving it to her sister, and wished she had it now. Her eyes were closed when the knock came, three quick taps that she barely heard before the door opened and the wind came in with the imperious figure of Prior General Saviano.

“Brother Painter,” he cried into the
bottega,
his voice a mockery. “
Frate Dipintore,
I wonder if you can solve a mystery for me?”

Lucrezia pushed her slight figure into the small space behind the kitchen doorway.

“Is anyone here?” The prior general's voice brayed in unison with his horse, which neighed at the post outside the doorway.

He clomped through the
bottega,
treading across the splattered green paint. He would tell the painter that he was forbidden to paint Sister Lucrezia's likeness again, and then he would go directly to the convent where he would upbraid the insolent prioress for disobeying his explicit orders that the novitiate not leave the convent.

“Fra Filippo,” he called in a snarl.

His temples pulsed and his boots made wet footprints as he entered the kitchen and spotted the crumpled robe, and then the small toes of Lucrezia's stocking-covered feet. He turned slowly to his left, and Saviano's heart began to pound when he saw her figure, crouched behind the door. His eyes climbed up the coil of Lucrezia's body, taking in her white silk undergarments, her bare arms. Stepping closer, he put a hand out and touched her wrist. She flinched.

“Sister Lucrezia!” His lips were tight. He looked right and left, around the small kitchen. “Why are you here?” he demanded.

Lucrezia didn't speak. Her eyes burned and brimmed with tears.

“Where is the monk? Are you alone?” The prior general's gaze changed from angry to bright as he took in the gravity of their circumstance. “You don't need to hide, my dear.” He wrapped his long fingers around her arm, and pulled her from behind the doorway. “Come here, let me see what the monk has done to you.”

“No.” Lucrezia's lips tried to form words, but no sound came. She lowered her eyes and resisted as the prior general pulled her into the center of the kitchen. Holding her with a strong grip, he reached for her chin with his other hand. Her heart sank, and she trembled. She willed herself to move away, but her feet wouldn't obey.

“You know how beautiful you are,” Prior General Saviano said.

She thought of Daphne, the Greek maiden who'd turned into a tree so Apollo couldn't have her body, and Lucrezia stood still as a tree as the prior general roughly ran his thumb along her chin and tugged at the brim of her wimple. He pushed it back, then tugged it off, letting a long piece of hair spill out from under her hairnet. He fingered it gently.

“The devil has made your beauty bewitching,” Saviano said. He held her arm tightly with one hand, and used the other to trace the bone up to her cheek, past her tiny earlobe, down the length of her white neck.

She could hardly breathe.

“Bewitching.” His voice was husky. “Beautiful, bewitching Lucrezia. This is how the painter touches you, isn't it?”

Lucrezia's eyes moved toward the doorway. Where was Spinetta?

“He doesn't,” she said weakly. “He doesn't touch me.”

“You're lying.” The prior general's voice was low but harsh, and drops of spittle sprayed her cheek. “But your lies won't do you any good.”

Under his robes, the general felt his lust fueled by envy and anger. Why should the painter take liberties of the flesh while he did not? Why should he deny himself when the girl had already compromised her virtue and given the sweetest bit of it to Lippi?

He clamped her hair firmly, locking her in his grip. Lucrezia felt his cold hand reach up and pull at the silken bloomers, the
panni di gamba
she'd sewn in her father's home. The cloth ripped away as if there had been nothing there but cloud and air.

“Don't fight me,” he said gruffly, his breath hot on her face. “Give me what you've given to the painter.”

He pushed her backward, lifting her off the ground and pinning
her against the kitchen table. Lucrezia could smell onions and cheese on his breath. Her stomach was on fire, her body was numb. His hips pressed against her from the front, the wood table cut into her back. Breathing loudly, he pulled his robes up and fumbled under them, then roughly parted her legs. Lucrezia squeezed her eyes shut as he pressed between her thighs. There was a chafing, a dry heat, and she felt herself tear in two as he thrust harder, deeper. She cried out. Her head snapped back and hit the table, and she bit down on her lip and tasted blood. The prior general grunted loudly, the sound of an animal roared in her ear, and he thrust furiously until he shuddered, and for a moment everything in the room was still.

Then he reached between them to separate his body from hers, and when his hand came up wet and rusty with the smear of new blood, his eyes widened. He cried out a final time.

“You were—” He couldn't bring himself to say the words.

Lucrezia turned away and covered herself with her bare arms. The cleric stood upright and when he didn't reach for her again, she pushed past him into the monk's bedroom, slamming the door and falling against it onto the ground, sobbing.

In the kitchen, the prior general wiped the blood and his seed on the hem of his black robe. He folded himself back into his undergarment, and looked around at the disheveled studio. Without another word, he turned and left.

 

F
ra Filippo took a last look at the sketches he'd made on the plastered walls in Santo Stefano, brushed the red chalk from his palms as best he could, and said good night to his assistants as dusk fell. Looking behind him at the stained-glass windows of the church, he felt wonderfully happy. It had been a fine day's work, but
all afternoon his mind had been in the
bottega
with Lucrezia. How lovely it was to have her there, even if only for a day or two. He knew she'd be in nuns' robes, but when he thought of her, he pictured her wearing the silk dress of
morello
purple, the
benda
sewn with small pearls.