The Miracles of Prato (27 page)

“I'll go,” Fra Piero said, pushing the painter away. “You stay here. Don't go off and get into trouble,” he said. But he could see there was no danger. The monk could hardly walk.

Fra Filippo let his friend leave, and surrendered himself to the swirling darkness. Once he was alone, the last of the painter's bravado slipped away. His lungs tightened, his stomach turned, and his throat began to burn. It had been many years since he'd wept, and his tears came in great hollow sobs that shook his body as they echoed in the empty bedroom.

 

The hour of Vespers had arrived as the procurator approached the rectory at the Church of Santo Stefano. He went the long way to the
cappella maggiore,
pulling the painter's sturdy little wagon to the rear of the chapel and entering the church through a side door. All of the lanterns had been extinguished in the empty church, and he stopped to let his eyes adjust to the dim light.

From somewhere near the altar, Fra Piero heard the sound of metal clinking, the rushed rustle of robes. He stopped and held his breath as he listened, the sound becoming more distinct. His eyes adjusted to the darkness and Fra Piero was able to see moonlight coming through the large window behind the altar, the wooden statues of the Virgin and Saint Elizabeth standing impassive above the tiny votives that flickered around their pedestal bases. He crept forward, toward the muffled sounds. Whoever was there was moving quickly, and furtively.

Quietly, Fra Piero slid along the cool tiles of the church floor, turning the corner toward the bell tower door. He made out one voice, then a second, much fainter. He moved closer, on silent feet. The door to the bell tower was open, and through the narrow space he saw the hem of a dark robe trailing up a short flight of broken steps.

Fra Piero stopped and held his breath, waiting. He saw the dark robe swaying to and fro, back and forth.

“You're an angel, Young Marco.” He heard the sharp voice of Provost Inghirami, full of something hot, something the procurator hadn't heard in a long time.

Fra Piero pressed himself against the wall, out of view, and peered around the doorway. In the dim light he saw the provost reach down and yank off the belt at his waist, jangling the keys that hung there. The fingers were milky white in the darkness as the provost's hands slid up, exposing the bare flesh of smooth buttocks bent in front of him. With a jerky motion Inghirami reached behind him, hooking the belt and keys over a spike in the wall before hoisting his own robes above his thighs.

Fra Piero couldn't tear his eyes away. The provost's long hands
gripped the boy's flesh, his body thrust, he moaned unintelligible words above the soft gasps of Young Marco.

When he'd seen more than he wanted, Fra Piero tiptoed silently back to the
cappella maggiore,
where he grabbed the altarpiece and slipped out of the church the same way he'd entered.

Saturday of the Twelfth Week After Pentecost, the Year of Our Lord 1457

“Please, Lucrezia, just a little bit.” Spinetta spoke her first words in many months, her voice thick. “Eat a little bite for me.”

Sitting in the infirmary, Spinetta gently brushed the hair from her sister's forehead with one hand, while holding out some raisins and a handful of shredded partridge Sister Maria had saved from the soup. Lucrezia's eyes hadn't recovered their light, nor her complexion its color. Her thin wrists poked from under the white balloon of the plain
guarnello,
and lay flat on the blanket.

“Bambino mio,”
Lucrezia whispered, her voice hoarse. She shook her head from side to side and Spinetta could see her full breasts pushing against the light fabric, the gentle mound of her still-swollen womb beneath the blanket.

“
Mia cara,
you must eat and drink.” Spinetta brought her sister's hand to her lips and her tears spilled onto them, wetting the raisins in her palm. “You need your strength.”

Two days had passed since the birth, and Lucrezia seemed to be getting weaker instead of stronger. As she watched her sister's eyes flutter and close, Spinetta remembered the strength Lucrezia had shown that day in the
bottega,
after her violation. Spinetta had given her promise, then, never to tell what had happened, and she'd been silent all these months simply to keep the truth inside of her. But so much had come to pass, and now it seemed Lucrezia's very life hung
in the balance. Sister Pureza had turned a cool eye on Lucrezia's suffering, and this made Spinetta angry. The very people who were supposed to protect them had failed Lucrezia in every way—they were hurting her still.

Dropping the food on a cloth, Spinetta rushed from the infirmary. As usual, Sister Pureza was busy at work, trimming the white roses that rimmed the edge of the garden. The old woman looked up as Spinetta approached, but didn't slow in her task. She gave the slightest nod, then looked across the garden to where Rosina knelt among the shade plants, digging up morels that grew between the mossy stones.

“My sister refuses to eat or to drink.” Spinetta didn't stop for niceties. She blurted out her words. “I've never seen her so weak.”

The nun squinted up at her.

“Lucrezia will eat, and she will heal. She's young and healthy.” As the old nun answered, she clipped a white blossom, which fell perfectly into the basket at her feet.

“How can you be so untroubled by her suffering when you've caused it, Sister Pureza?”

The old woman flinched, but her voice was calm.

“No, Sister Spinetta, your sister made her own choice. She sinned willingly, surrendered her chastity of her own volition, broke her vows knowingly.”

“No!” Spinetta's voice filled with emotion. “Her innocence was stolen from her, her chastity was violated.”

Sister Pureza stood up and shaded her eyes from the sunlight, to get a better look at the girl.

“I was there.” Sister Pureza measured her words slowly, carefully. “She told me herself that she'd remained with the painter at her will. I asked if he'd forced her to stay, or violated her, and she swore he hadn't.”

“Because he didn't, Sister Pureza. The painter didn't. It was the prior general. He took her by force. He's the one who stole her chastity.”

Sister Pureza felt dizzy. The cloying heat in the garden seemed to suck all the air from her lungs.

“What are you saying?”

“I'm saying the prior general found her and forced himself on her,” Spinetta answered. “He took her virginity. I would have told you before, but she begged me not to.”

Sister Pureza thought back to the day in the painter's
bottega,
when the novitiate had appeared in her white
gamurra,
her hair around her face like a golden halo.

“Why didn't she come to me?” Even as she asked the question, Sister Pureza already knew the answer.

“She was ashamed,” Spinetta said quietly.

Sister Pureza felt a wave of nausea. She wiped her hand across her mouth.

“Is it the prior general's child?” Sister Pureza asked grimly.

Spinetta took a moment to answer.

“No. I don't think so.”

Sister Pureza's answer was fierce.

“Then she has sinned willingly, no matter what the prior general did to her, she sinned knowingly with the painter.”

Now it was Spinetta who felt dizzy. Lucrezia had said that blame would fall on her, despite the prior general's deed.

“The painter promised to protect her. He said he loved her,” Spinetta cried. “Ask Fra Piero, Sister. He was there when they exchanged the vows, he saw them become man and wife.”

Sister Pureza's face folded into a frown.

“Only the Church can bless the sacrament of marriage, Sister
Spinetta. And the Church cannot, under any circumstance, condone the marriage of a monk and a novitiate.”

“But the Church can let the prior general go unpunished?” Spinetta cried. “I begged Lucrezia to come to the convent, but she said that blame would fall on her, no matter what was true. And she was right.”

With that, Spinetta turned and ran from the garden, tripping over her feet and leaving the gate to swing open in the still summer air.

 

The scent of roses was everywhere, and dust from the leaves covered her fingers. Sister Pureza sat alone on the stone bench in the garden.

Lucrezia wasn't the first young one she'd known to lose her virginity by force. It happened all the time, in every city, to women of every rank and station: housemaids, kitchen girls, merchants' daughters. Even nuns. It happened in an instant, often in silence, always in secret. Then the men carried on, salved by a moment's pleasure, while the women bore the stain as if it were a natural part of Eve's curse.

Weakened and ashamed, Sister Pureza let herself fall back into the memory of her own youth. For decades she'd pushed away every sound and smell reminiscent of her own surrender on a summer night in a lush Roman garden, when the roses were in full bloom and the heady smell of mint and moss underfoot filled her with thoughts of love and pangs of longing.

Like Lucrezia, she'd been a young beauty on the cusp of womanhood. But Pasqualina di Fiesole hadn't been taken by force; she'd surrendered willingly to a young man who belonged to one of Rome's finer families. And when the evidence of her sin had begun to show
in her belly she'd panicked, and she'd lied. She'd claimed her virginity had been taken against her will, and begged her father to go to the young man's family and insist on marriage. Instead, her mother had sent her to the Convent Santa Margherita, where she'd lived with her secret, alone, as the child grew in her womb.

Remembering the rank smell of the infirmary when the child had been delivered into this world, Sister Pureza felt her lungs fill with long-suppressed sorrow. God had punished her for her passion and her lies. He'd punished her, and He'd punished her daughter, too. What other reason would have compelled the Lord to take the beautiful girl back to His kingdom only hours after her birth?

Sister Pureza's tears stained her browned skin. She couldn't change the ways of the world, or what had happened. She couldn't undo the terrible sin the prior general had committed against Lucrezia, or the secret she'd lived with for so long. But she knew where Lucrezia's babe had been sent, and she could find him. At least she could repair this one wrong deed.

 

Sister Pureza slipped away from the convent right after Terce, while Prioress Bartolommea was in her study, going over the account books. The sun was hidden behind a cloud as she made her way toward Porta Santa Trinità, where the streets turned into narrow footpaths. A gaggle of hens came to peck at the hem of her robe as she walked. Several low buildings squatted at a tilted angle, and the air was filled with the stench of cabbage and old fish.

She'd prepared herself to knock on many doors, but stopped at only a few before she heard the high wail of a newborn through the window of one of the lowest hovels. His cries grew more pitiful as she approached the doorway and began to knock steadily. The
balia
pulled the door open. The child's mouth was attached to the nipple that poked between the folds of her dress, and he suckled furiously as his sobs subsided.

“Yes, Sister?” the
balia
barked when she saw her. “What are you doing here?”

The
balia'
s dark hair was wrapped in a brown rag, and streaks of yellowed milk stained the front of her thin dress. Behind her, Sister Pureza could see several children crawling among the baskets on the floor. The baby made soft mewling noises as he drank, fat hands reaching for her bosom.

“God's grace to you,” the nun said, looking the woman in the eyes. “I've come to relieve you of your duties. The child's mother is healed; she can nurse him herself now.”

“Eh?” The
balia
frowned. “The man said I might see two years' worth of wages for this babe. This is good milk he's paying for!”

The old nun reached for the small purse that hung on a cord around her neck, and shook out a gold coin she'd secreted away so long ago that she'd forgotten how she had come to acquire it.

“Take this for your troubles,
balia
. It isn't two years' wages but it will help until you find another
bambino
to feed.” Sister Pureza pressed the coin into the woman's browned fingers. As soon as she did, the woman pulled the baby from her breast and thrust him into the old woman's hands. The child gave only a meek protest.

“Take him, then. Go on.” The
balia
turned her back on the nun and shut the door.

There was a crude stool beneath the lone window of the shack. Sister Pureza gingerly lowered herself onto it, holding the baby tightly. Gently she began to unwind his dirty blue swaddling cloth. The
balia
hadn't trimmed his pale fingernails, nor bothered to remove the dirt that had settled in his tiny creases of fat. When they returned to the
convent, she would make her special balm to soothe the raw skin around his scrotum, she thought, as she turned him over to see how bad the rash was on his buttocks.

Then she gasped.

There were a few tiny red bumps, but otherwise the skin on his bottom was clear and smooth. There was no birthmark.

“Balia!”
She stood and banged on the door. “You have the wrong child.”

 

It took the rest of the coins in Sister Pureza's small purse to extract the full story from the irritated wet nurse. The baby that had arrived on her doorstep in the night had indeed had a cross-shaped birthmark on his buttock and he'd suckled with a hearty appetite. But the next day a messenger had come with a sealed letter from the Church of Santo Stefano, and another small child in his arms. The
balia
couldn't read, but the messenger had shown her the seal of the provost of Santo Stefano, and she'd surrendered the first
bambino,
accepting the coins and the second child.

“And where was the first child taken?” Sister Pureza asked.

“I don't know, it made no difference to me.” The
balia
swatted at a child who'd grabbed onto her apron. “One hungry mouth's the same as another.”

In a daze, Sister Pureza turned and walked through the streets of Prato. She passed women resting their tired bodies against rusticated walls, and others who sat outside their huts pulling nits from their children's hair. A few asked her to pray for them and she nodded blankly. When she passed by the Palazzo Comunale she broke down and cried.

Dio mio, don't let the prior general do this to me,
the girl had begged, her
face strained with the hours of laboring.
You know he hurt me, Sister Pureza, you know the prior general hurt me.

Sister Pureza wept for what she'd done, for what had happened to the novitiate, and for what had happened to her so many years ago. The wounds felt so fresh she could almost smell the blood of her own laboring as she imagined the face of the Virgin, at the foot of the cross, watching helplessly as her Son called out for his Father.

 

L
ucrezia felt the damp rag between her legs, the rough blanket scratching her neck. Fra Piero and Spinetta were by her side, praying and forcing bits of food into her mouth. Her body was growing weaker, and Lucrezia lacked the strength even to lift her arms. But without her child, she didn't care.

“What if he's hungry?” she whispered, her face turned to the limestone wall.

Fra Piero saw her lips moving, and bent over her.

“What is it, my dear?”

“What if he's cold?” she whispered. “What if he's sick?”

Her breasts ached beneath the cloth Sister Pureza had wrapped around her chest to staunch the flow of her milk, and sometimes she swore she could feel the baby kicking as if he were still safe in her body.

“Please, Lucrezia,
mia cara,
eat something,” Spinetta begged, offering her plump raisins, ripe figs, the thinnest broth.

Spinetta wondered bitterly where Sister Pureza was hiding. It had been many hours since she'd confronted her in the garden, and Spinetta couldn't imagine what the old woman was doing.

“A little broth, please,” she begged, but Lucrezia's lips were clamped shut.

As Fra Piero prepared to leave, he bent over the limp girl and whispered into her ear. “Filippo sends his love. He begs you to keep up your strength.”

“What for?” Lucrezia asked, her breath hot and hollow. “Has he called on his friends? Has he found our child? Does he think I'm still waiting for word from Rome?”

She saw the procurator's shadow move along the wall as he left the infirmary, and felt Spinetta's hand on the curve of her hipbone. But Lucrezia didn't turn. She didn't eat, even when Rosina crept to her side with a small cooked egg cupped in her palms.