The Shepherdess of Siena: A Novel of Renaissance Tuscany (34 page)

C
HAPTER
74

Siena, Brunelli Stables, Vignano

J
UNE
1585

For three years, day after day, month after month, Giorgio had watched the road to Siena, waiting for a messenger in de’ Medici livery. And now Andrea Sopra was standing in front of him, waiting while Giorgio read the letter from Cardinale de’ Medici.

The messenger watched Brunelli burn the missive in the smithy fire, and as the edges of the parchment curled and crumbled into black ash, he asked, “What response shall I give the cardinale?”

“Tell him sì
,
” said Giorgio, his eyes still on the bright flame. “I will do it.”

Giorgio rode up the winding road toward Fiesole, climbing the hills high above the red tile roofs of Florence. Soon his horse began to sweat, attracting horseflies whose buzz competed with the frenetic drone of the cicadas clinging to the tree branches. He let the gelding walk in the mottled shade of summer leaves. A stream gurgled alongside the road, spilling down the hillside.

When he reached the stone quarries of Borgunto, Giorgio dismounted and let his horse drink. He stared at the men hauling rocks on their backs, sweating in the sun, their faces encrusted with powdered rock, their linen tunics stained yellow-brown with sweat.

“You, traveler,” said a foreman. “What do you want here?”

“Only water for my horse.”

“And what else?” The foreman’s face narrowed with suspicion.

Giorgio sized up the man approaching him—a man who surely recognized his Senese accent. He thought quickly.

“I am seeking help,” Giorgio said, taking a step toward him. “My daughter is stricken with a high fever and cough. She has turned a mottled blue, with black splotches. I—”

The foreman jumped back.

“The pox! You must leave at once!”

“I will,” said Giorgio, taking another step toward the man. “If only you will tell me where to find the healer Carlotta Spessa.”

“La strega.”

Giorgio frowned.

Witch? The cardinale has sent me to speak to a witch?

“I have been told she makes healing potions. To cure my daughter.”

“Up there,” said the foreman, jabbing a finger toward a dark opening in the rock wall in the slopes far above the quarry. “The de’ Medici prince built her a villa over the grotto.”

Giorgio made out the edge of a slate roofline above the quarry.

“Now be on your way at once!” said the foreman. “We do not want your contagion here.”

Giorgio tied his horse to one of the iron hitching rings outside the doorway, bored into the ancient stone. The lower half of each ring was worn smooth, the leather chafing away the metal over the centuries.

A coal-tressed woman answered the door. Her eyes glittered like shards of emerald glass against her light brown skin. She studied him from foot to head, saying nothing.

“I am looking for a healer,” said Giorgio, twisting his hat in his hands.

The young woman glanced over his head, her eyes searching for watchers.

“No, you are not,” she said. She paused, this time staring straight into his eyes.

What deep green! Never have I seen eyes so piercing. Cat’s eyes—

He felt his knees weaken. He shifted his weight to keep his balance.

“Healing is not your business with me. But you may come in anyway, stranger.”

Giorgio stepped over the threshold. A wild onslaught of aromas—sweet, herbal, acrid, fetid—stopped him, paralyzing him midstep.

“You will get used to it,” said the woman. “The smells—pungent and potent—are the tools of my craft.”

She spun around to face him. “I am Carlotta Spessa.”

“I am Antonio Martini,” he answered. His eyes met her brilliant eyes.

She shook her head. Her black hair rippled around her shoulders. “If you continue to lie to me, I shall ask you to leave.”

He dropped his gaze to the rush-covered floor. “All right,” he said, eyes still lowered like a scolded child’s.

“Speak,” she said. “You have only one more chance to tell me the truth.”

Giorgio hesitated for only a moment. “I come on a mission that persuaded me to disguise my name and my purpose. I am Giorgio Brunelli of Vignano, just outside the southeastern walls of Siena. I am a horse trainer,” he said, his head bowed. “And an artist.”

When he looked up again, her eyes were chipped emeralds, a fierce sparkling green. She smiled.

“Si. Sì, Giorgio Brunelli of Siena. That is much better.” A fat black cat wove between her legs. “Now that I am hearing some truth, I shall ask you into my kitchen to sit by the hearth and have a cup of tea. Or wine, if you prefer.”

“Grazie,” said Giorgio.

He followed her into the interior of the house, her hair a black flag waving behind her.

Giorgio had never met a more physically attractive woman than Carlotta Spessa. Her smell, her simple presence, made his body tingle, the hairs stand up on his arms. The fact that she had invited him, a stranger, into her house, seemed to send a signal that filled him with desire.

He saw the curve of her breasts as she bent over the fire to retrieve a boiling pot of water. Her fingertips crushed herbs into two terra-cotta cups.

What lovely hands. I would use lime-white paint, bianco di San Giovanni, to capture the skin color—perhaps a minute grain of madder lake red. A bit of scrubbing on the canvas. But no. Completely wrong. There is that undertone of brown, earthiness. An umber or—

She interrupted his reverie.

“Why do you seek me?”

“You will be angry if I tell you.”

“I shall be incensed if you do not. What do you want from me?” Carlotta handed him an earthenware cup of chamomile tea.

“Revenge,” he answered. His eyes were still studying her skin. “And in the revenge, a reward. I seek a dear friend of mine.”

Her eyes glowed back at him.

“Vengeance kills the avenger,” she said, nodding to the cup. “Drink. You are agitated. It is filled with soothing flowers and sweet meadow honey. It will calm you.”

Giorgio sipped the tea. He noticed Carlotta watching his throat and studying his hand on the teacup. When he set the cup down, she picked up his hand, admiring it.

“You have the hands of an artist,” she said. “Look at the length of your fingers, the sensitivity in the fingertips.”

She turned his palm over, to inspect it. He swallowed hard at her touch.

“But you have tragedy written in your hand. You have suffered.”

“How—how do you know?”

“You told me, of course!” she said, laughing. Then her face turned serious, dark. “Yes. You seek revenge. And
. . .
I see the revenge you seek so clearly. What a pity.”

“Where?” asked Giorgio, bending closer to his hand, to her.

She looked away from his hand, and up at his face.

“In your eyes,” she said, her voice softening. “You come for vengeance. Justified vengeance, perhaps. You seek to right a wrong. But all revenge poisons the avenger.”

He said nothing. His eyes met hers, not denying a word. He sensed a great depth before him, an abyss. And he didn’t have time to wonder, to puzzle. Or to fear.

He could taste honey on her breath before his mouth met her lips. Giorgio drank deep of those lips, of that breath. He forgot completely why he had come to Fiesole.

But Carlotta had not.

The next morning, his body was damp and sore from lovemaking. He stretched out on the bed, still feeling the warmth left by Carlotta, smelling her scent. He fingered the linen sheets, remembering. He closed his eyes, picturing the outline of her body in the moonlight, the black blanket of her hair spread over his chest.

The sun began to rise, shafts of crimson finding their way through the open doorway. He walked naked to the hearth, where she stirred a cauldron. He kissed the place where her shoulder met her neck, his tongue lingering there.

He closed his eyes, drinking in her earthy scent and the warmth of her skin.

“You will find what you seek there, on the plank,” she said. He could feel the muscles in her shoulder work as she churned the wooden spoon.

There on an oak board lay nuggets of the most vibrant pigment he had ever seen.

Carlotta cracked eggs into two bowls, separating the sunny yolk from the clear membrane in preparation for tempera.

“Let me do it,” he said, setting his hand on her shoulder. “I have been doing this all my life.”

She stiffened at his touch, shrugging off his hand. “No. Watch me.”

“But Carlotta—”

“This is no ordinary paint,” she said. “It is from a source unknown to you. Until you know how to handle it the way I do, I will not permit you to touch it. You must earn the paint’s trust, its respect.”

He dropped his hand, her words haunting him with a memory he could not retrieve.

“Watch the care I use in the paint’s preparation. Never do I introduce a speck of my body oils, my flesh or fingernail. The color must not lick your skin, or
. . .
” She looked away.

“Or what?”

She turned back to him, the shine in her eyes vanished. Instead there was deadly matte green that reflected her warning. “The magic will be reversed. You may die as a consequence. Do you understand?”

“My fingernails have been stained with paint all my life! It is part of my technique to use my fingernail to etch fine detail. No artist—”