The Falconer's Knot: A Story of Friars, Flirtation and Foul Play

by Mary Hoffman

  ‘Tell me everything you know about my son and that man’s wife,’ said Baron Montacuto.

  Gervasio de’ Oddini stood before the Baron in the great hall his friend called home. Even as Gervasio cleared his throat and fiddled with the hat in his hand, he couldn’t help letting his gaze stray to the vast mantelpiece with the Montacuto arms above it, the brightly coloured tapestries of boar hunts and the heavy carved wooden chair in which the Baron sat to quiz him.

  ‘I know that Silvano was infatuated with her,’ he said hesitantly. ‘He wrote her a love poem.’

  The Baron sank his grizzled head in his hands. ‘Poetry!’ his muffled voice said. ‘Where is that poem now?’ he asked, his voice suddenly clear again and his eyes raised bright to Gervasio’s face.

  ‘I don’t know, sir,’ said the young man.

  ‘It could mean his death warrant if it fell into the wrong hands,’ said Montacuto. ‘If he had any sense, he would have burned it. But if he had any sense, he wouldn’t be in the mess he’s in now. See if you can find it, will you? Go to the man’s widow and see if she has it and get it off her. I don’t care what it takes.’

  Gervasio’s mouth curled into a smile, quickly suppressed. Silvano’s father was issuing orders to him as if he were a servant rather than another member of a noble family, but the Baron was actually sending him to the beautiful Angelica, with his blessing! And all the while the poem was inside his own jerkin.

  ‘We all know my son didn’t do it,’ continued Montacuto. ‘This is killing his mother and sisters. They spend all day weeping over him. But it is far too dangerous for him to return.’

  ‘May I ask where he is, sir?’ asked Gervasio politely.

  ‘You may ask,’ snorted the Baron. ‘But you’ll excuse my not answering. Safest if no one knows who doesn’t have to.’

  ‘Welcome, Maestro!’ said Brother Anselmo. He had never seen any of Simone Martini’s paintings himself but the artist’s reputation was great all over Tuscany and Umbria. Rumour had it that he had just completed in Siena a Mary in Majesty so beautiful as almost to rival that of his old master Duccio in the Cathedral there. And Anselmo had seen that one of Duccio’s installed himself.

  The painter walked among the friars and novices watching their hands deftly grinding minerals on their porphyry slabs. He was a slight figure, with a down-turned mouth that made him look as if he were sucking lemons, thought Silvano. But he was not a miserable man; far from it. His grey eyes held the spark of great intelligence and liveliness of imagination.

  ‘I brought with me to Assisi a great supply of colours,’ he said in a high, light voice. ‘But that was over a year ago and I am running out, in spite of the deliveries I’ve had from Siena since then. It would be very convenient to have a source of supply so near at hand.’

  ‘It would be an honour,’ said Brother Anselmo. ‘We can supply most pigments that you are likely to need, I think. May I ask exactly what you are working on?’

  ‘A chapel,’ said the painter, waving his arm in an arc from left to right. ‘I am telling the story of the life of Saint Martin on its walls. Fresco – the most difficult of all techniques. I have a workshop outside the Basilica where my journeymen mix the gesso for the walls. But they are not skilled in grinding pigments and I need them for humbler tasks like preparing the lime-white. And my assistants I need working with me on the frescoes if we are to be finished in time. We have been here many months already.’

  Silvano racked his brains to recall something about Saint Martin but could not. Was there something about a cloak? Or was that Saint Francis himself? He couldn’t remember.

  ‘Rose,’ the painter was saying. ‘Purples, blues, greens. I shall need ochres, cinnabar, vermilion, green earth – but most importantly, I must have some ultramarine. Can you supply me?’

  ‘If you can provide the necessary lapis lazuli,’ said Brother Anselmo, and he and the painter might have been speaking a foreign language for all that Silvano understood. ‘But I’m sure you know how expensive it is.’

  ‘Money is not a problem,’ said the artist. ‘The late Cardinal Gentile has left me well supplied with soldi. I can get you the stone. But do your brothers have the skill to make the ultramarine – the true blue?’

  His piercing eyes raked the group of lay brothers and novices and lingered for a moment on Silvano’s unshorn head.

  ‘I can teach them, Maestro,’ said Brother Anselmo.

  Chiara had seen the false novice only once since he arrived, that day she dropped the herbs. Her cheeks burned to think of it, as they had then. Her knowledge of young men was very limited – and unlikely to become any more extensive now – but she had never seen any more pleasing to look on than the unconvincing brother in the house next door.

  She asked Sister Cecilia, another novice, about him. But Cecilia was scandalised.

  ‘We do not look at the brothers,’ she whispered. ‘Only the new friar, Brother Anselmo, who comes here to hear confession and celebrate Mass. Before him it was Brother Filippo, but he’s too old and infirm now. And we know Father Bonsignore, of course. But we must never look at any of the younger brothers, particularly the novices like us who are not yet professed.’

  ‘But I’m sure that one is not a real novice,’ said Chiara. ‘He has a proper nobleman’s horse. And a hunting hawk! How can a friar, even a novice, have such worldly goods?’

  Sister Cecilia shook her head. ‘I can’t imagine. But it is wrong for us to speculate. It is not our concern, Sister Orsola.’

  So many things seemed no longer to be Chiara’s concern. Her world had never had very large horizons but now, within a week or so, it had shrunk to the little chapel, the sisters’ house and the garden of the convent in Giardinetto.

  Still, there was also the colour room. She did like working with Sister Veronica. The work grinding the pigments was dull enough, but the bright colours that sprang out when the water was poured on to the powders in the jars made her catch her breath, and ever since her first day, she had loved the names of them.

  ‘Green earth,’ she would murmur, as they worked on the pigments. ‘Blood stone, cinnabar, red lake, death’s head purple.’ It was like a litany to her.

  ‘Sister Orsola,’ reprimanded Sister Veronica that afternoon. ‘Silence while you work. We have an important visitor coming to see us.’

  Brother Anselmo watched as the artist crossed the short distance separating the Friary of Saint Francis from the Convent of Saint Clare.

  ‘Oh well,’ he said, shrugging his shoulders as he turned to Silvano. ‘It was not to be expected that he would entrust all his orders to us. The sisters have had a colour room much longer than we have and he will need a lot of paints if he is to cover the chapel he described.’

  ‘I wish I could see it,’ said Silvano. Listening to Simone describing the stories he was painting on the walls in Assisi had taken his mind off the murder for the first time since he had arrived in Giardinetto.

  ‘Oh, but you will,’ said Brother Anselmo, smiling. ‘We are to take the first consignment to him at the end of the week. I thought you might like to come with me.’

  .

  CHAPTER FOUR

  Saint Martin’s Cloak

  The morning air felt fresher to Silvano than a draught of pure spring water. It was a clear sunny day with a sharp tang of cold because of the early hour and he laughed as he rode his grey stallion flat out. The horse shook his head and snorted as he galloped, as happy to be away from the friary as his master was.

  ‘We are free, Moonbeam, free at last,’ cried Silvano, his novice’s tunic streaming out behind him and revealing some very unreligious brown knees. Even Celeste, gripping the pommel of the saddle with her yellow talons, seemed to enjoy the feeling of the wind ruffling her feathers.

  After a while the road began to climb into the hills and Silvano slacke
ned the horse’s pace. He found an open spot near a small stream and took the hood off his falcon. ‘Fly, Celeste,’ he whispered, releasing her jesses and casting her off into the sky.

  She soared heavenward on a current of warm air and was soon lost to sight. Silvano wished for the hundredth time that he had been allowed to bring Ettore with him. The hound would have flushed out a good eating bird for Celeste in no time. As it was he had to hope that the falcon would return to his sight before she found prey on her own.

  He listened for the silvery sound of the two bells on her legs and was soon rewarded. Celeste had flown in a wide circle and Silvano could just see her hovering high above. And even as he searched in vain for another bird in flight, his falcon, with her keen eyesight, went into a stoop; she had spotted something below her.

  Silvano ran in the direction of Celeste’s rapid descent, crushing grasses and twigs beneath his clumsy friar’s sandals. He found Celeste sitting on a plump partridge and let her take a bit of the warm flesh before skilfully making the substitution with a bit of chicken wing he had brought in his pouch.

  He stuffed the still bleeding bird into his saddlebag and let Celeste take a break. The day was warming up and he raised a heartfelt prayer of thanks to God above for letting him be out here in the Umbrian sunshine instead of inside the dark chapel of the friary in the company of several dozen pious men all older than him.

  Monna Isabella ran her household as well as any woman in Gubbio. Once she had accepted that she could not escape her marriage, she had become like a trained hawk; she would obediently return to her master’s fist with something good for him to eat. Which is to say, she kept a good table. Ubaldo’s money meant that she could order the finest food and the richest clothes. She and her children went about in velvet, silk and lace, like nobles, and their dinners were as lavish as a bishop’s.

  And this was because Isabella supervised everything herself. No selection of food from the market or cloth from the merchant was made without her eye upon it. Not a chicken could be plucked in her kitchen without her knowing where every feather ended up, according to her servants.

  It was a way to fill her days but that didn’t mean she was happy. Thousands of women before her, she supposed, had endured marriages to men they didn’t love – or even disliked – but every now and again a rage would rise in her heart that took her by surprise. It made her rail against her fate so hard that she had to hide away in her private sitting room till the fit passed.

  On these days she thought of the young scholar with the brown eyes more than usual. It was a private dream of hers to imagine what marriage to her Domenico might have been like. It was a dangerous fantasy, because of the descent into reality that had to follow. But for a few hours she could picture the two of them sitting side by side poring over an illuminated book, while Domenico talked to her of poetry.

  She remembered the terrible day when they met for the last time and she told him that she must marry Ubaldo. Domenico had told her the story of the Umbrian poet Jacopone da Todi, to console them both.

  ‘Imagine, my darling,’ he said. ‘Jacopone, a wealthy young man, had married the lady of his heart’s desire, the woman he had loved for years. They pledged themselves to each other for all time. But not long afterwards, at a grand feast, the platform where his bride was standing collapsed and she was crushed to death.’

  ‘How dreadful!’ said Isabella.

  Domenico took both her hands in his. ‘When the body of his wife was unearthed from the rubble, Jacopone found that she was wearing an instrument of penance under her beautiful dress. Even on that day of rejoicing she had clothed herself in such a way as to mortify her flesh, in memory of Our Lord’s suffering and because she feared Jacopone was too attached to the pleasures of the world.’

  Isabella had been confused. What woman could be so pious and yet love a mortal man carnally, enough to marry him? ‘What did Jacopone do?’ she asked.

  ‘For ten years he wandered like a beggar, sleeping rough,’ said Domenico. ‘And then he decided to devote the rest of his life to God. He turned his back on this world of personal desires and possessions and dedicated himself to the service of Our Lord. He joined the Franciscans. If he wrote poetry before to his beloved’s beauty, since her death he writes only in praise of God.’

  ‘And this is a tale to cheer me?’ asked Isabella, her throat aching from all the tears she had shed.

  ‘It is to show you that life must continue – even after great grief,’ said Domenico. ‘Yours and mine. You shall be another’s but I shall never marry. I shall carry your image in my heart for ever and it will comfort me whenever my life is hard.’

  And that was how they had parted, with a kiss that had to last them for the rest of their lives; they had not seen each other since. Domenico’s lips had remained unkissed ever after, if he had been true to his vow, and Isabella’s had suffered the unloving touch of Ubaldo’s.

  When her first son had been born, she had wanted to call him Domenico but her husband wouldn’t hear of it.

  ‘He is my son, not the bastard of your miserable swain,’ he had said. ‘Let him be Federico, after my father.’

  Federico was followed swiftly by Giovanni and then there was a lost child. Ubaldo had been almost tender towards her then in her new grief. Was it because of that or the indifference he later felt for her that she was allowed to call their third boy Domenico after all?

  Isabella neither knew nor cared. It was enough that she could say the name caressingly to her little boy. In spite of all her care not to show it, he was her favourite child. Her little daughter, Francesca, was a great joy and she loved all her sons, but Domenico had a special place in her heart.

  He looked least like Ubaldo of all their children, having her rosy complexion and chestnut hair, while the others were all dark. And he was his father’s least favoured child, which endeared him all the more to his mother. It was almost as if this little Domenico had been the result of her unfaithfulness, though this was entirely imaginary; she was not a fond wife but she was an honourable one. Whenever she retired to her sitting room in one of her black moods, it was of little Domenico that she thought, pretending that he was the son of her dream husband with the same name.

  It was on one of those days that she heard an imperious knock at the door and started to her feet in surprise. Ubaldo never visited her here and yet there was no mistaking the master’s knock. He did not wait for Isabella to open the door but came in, a dark presence shadowing the pretty space she had created for herself. There was no painting or relic of her first love and yet she was conscious that the room was a kind of shrine.

  Ubaldo seemed to sense it too, curling his lip with disdain. But he made no reference to her setting. ‘I have to go on a journey,’ he said. ‘To the friars in Assisi. The Franciscans will place an order for even richer altar cloths now that the Basilica is nearing completion. They want the best silks and I must have them embroidered according to their designs. I shall be away three days.’

  ‘Thank you for telling me,’ said Isabella politely, but exulting that she would have three whole days without her husband. ‘When do you leave?’

  ‘Tonight,’ said Ubaldo. ‘I shall ride as far as the friary at Giardinetto and lodge there.’

  Chiara was walking to the refectory when she sensed the aroma of roasting partridge on the air; it made her mouth water. But the smell of cooking was not coming from the little wood oven at the convent. Meat was even more of a rarity for the grey sisters than for their brothers next door. But that was where the partridges were being roasted, turned on a spit over an outdoor fire by the false novice.

  Chiara felt her stomach growl. She cast down her eyes as she went on towards the refectory, but not before she had seen the boy smile at her. He seemed happy, she thought, and she was sure that he hadn’t been when he came, that first night when she had seen him riding in on
his grey horse. Perhaps she would have had cause to smile too if there was roast fowl to dine on in the convent; there was nothing to look forward to but a sort of savoury gruel, lumpy and rather gritty.

  Chiara found herself sitting at the refectory table opposite Sister Veronica. The sisters ate in silence but the Colour Mistress cast a sympathetic glance at the young novice toying with the gluey mess with her wooden spoon. As soon as they were both outside again and walking back to the dormitory for quiet contemplation, Sister Veronica spoke to Chiara.

  ‘Would you like to come with me when I take Ser Simone’s colours to Assisi?’

  Chiara looked at her in surprise. ‘You may leave the convent, Sister?’ she asked. ‘I thought all the professed sisters had to remain enclosed.’

  ‘I have a special dispensation from the Abbess,’ said Sister Veronica. ‘I may go outside the convent in the service of the Lord. So, would you like to come with me?’

  Chiara nodded gratefully. Just to have a change of scene from the convent would be a treat. ‘Yes please, Sister,’ she said. ‘I should like that very much.’

  The wooden cart was laden with boxes and barrels filled with glass jars. It didn’t really take two friars to transport them from Giardinetto to Assisi but the Abbot was quite content to let Silvano go with Brother Anselmo. And his strong young arms would be useful for the unloading.

  It was not a long road but Silvano had not travelled it before; in fact he had never visited Assisi in all his sixteen years, although it was not far from Perugia. Brother Anselmo was telling him about the Basilica, as he occasionally flipped the reins on the back of the horses.

  ‘The Lower Church, where Ser Simone is working, was built first. In fact they started building it within two years of Saint Francis’s death. But the whole Basilica was only finished less than forty years ago.’

  ‘Finished?’ said Silvano, surprised. ‘How can it be finished? The painters are still working there.’