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

by Mary Hoffman

  ‘Oh,’ said Chiara. ‘Of course. Excuse me, Madama. Please have my seat.’

  How terribly sad, she thought. She expects a child but from her black dress her husband must be dead.

  ‘You have heard of our visitor, I’m sure,’ said Isabella when the servant had come and gone. ‘Monna Angelica also has a trading station in Gubbio, since her husband sadly passed away in the summer.’

  ‘Angelica,’ stammered Chiara, ‘of Perugia?’

  It was Isabella’s turn to be surprised. ‘You know each other?’ she said.

  ‘Your companion has the advantage of me,’ said Angelica, puzzled. ‘I’m afraid I know nothing of her.’

  Chiara was now blushing deeply. ‘It is just that Silvano mentioned you,’ she said. She could not take her eyes off the pretty widow; so this was the woman Silvano had been in love with!

  ‘Silvano da Montacuto?’ said Angelica. ‘You know him? He was suspected of my husband’s murder at first, you know. So he was hiding in Gubbio all the time! But that’s incredible – I might have bumped into him at any time on my business trips here.’

  Neither Chiara nor Isabella felt that Angelica needed to be disabused of that idea. Chiara longed to ask if Angelica had seen Silvano recently but she felt too jealous to ask.

  ‘Even Gervasio didn’t know where he was, you know,’ Angelica confided to the two women. ‘He’ll be so amazed when I tell him. We are going to be married, you know, Gervasio and I. Young de’ Oddini – he came with me the last time I was here.’

  ‘I remember,’ said Isabella. ‘Congratulations.’

  Silvano’s friend, Gervasio, thought Chiara. The one who really killed her husband. What an extraordinary woman!

  ‘The thing is,’ said Angelica. ‘We are going to leave Umbria and set up house elsewhere. Maybe somewhere further south. Perhaps Rome – that would be elegant, wouldn’t it?’

  ‘You are leaving?’ said Isabella. ‘But why, when you have just set up such a successful business here?’

  ‘Oh, you know, family matters,’ said Angelica. She couldn’t hope to keep Gervasio’s disgrace a secret from these women for ever, not if they knew Silvano, but at least she didn’t have to tell them about it herself. ‘The point is, I wondered if you’d like to buy me out?’

  Michele da Cesena did allow Brother Fazio to be buried at Giardinetto. Umberto, of course, was carried to Gubbio where in time he was buried in the family vault built for his brother in the Cathedral. The Minister General carried out another purification service himself in the friary and a second one in the convent of Saint Clare, just to be sure. There was no question of the nuns and friars attending a service together this time, not with Michele da Cesena as celebrant.

  Father Bonsignore was to keep his office of Abbot. The Minister General acknowledged that there was nothing he could have done in the face of Fazio’s madness and cunning. And when all this was settled, he sent for Brother Anselmo.

  ‘It seems that I was wrong about you,’ were Michele da Cesena’s first words to the Colour Master. Anselmo bowed his head in acknowledgment; he imagined that the Minister General did not often apologise.

  ‘The evidence looked bad against you, but if you hadn’t come to me with your suspicions in Assisi, there might have been more deaths in Giardinetto.’

  ‘There were deaths enough,’ said Anselmo. ‘And the last one should have been avoided.’

  ‘Ah, yes,’ said the Minister General. ‘We must speak of that. How is your wound?’

  ‘It is healing well, thank you,’ said Anselmo, who still bore his arm in a sling. ‘I have done little colour-grinding in the past week. But Brother Rufino thinks I will recover full use of my arm.’

  ‘That is good to know. But what shall you use that arm for in future, Brother?’

  This was what Anselmo had been dreading. ‘I await your decision, Father,’ he said, humbly.

  ‘You have shed blood in the friary,’ said Michele da Cesena. ‘Not on the sanctified ground of the chapel like Fazio, it’s true. But within the walls of a religious house dedicated to peace and to the teachings of our blessed founder, Saint Francis, you killed a man.’

  ‘I killed a man,’ agreed Anselmo.

  ‘You do not try to justify yourself?’ asked Michele da Cesena. ‘You do not remind me that you acted in self-defence or to disarm a murderer?’

  ‘Both you and I know that it makes no difference,’ said Anselmo wearily. ‘What matters is that I did it, not why.’

  ‘Do you want to remain in the Order?’

  ‘You know that I cannot, Father.’

  ‘Then I release you from your vows as a professed friar,’ said the Minister General. ‘Take the amount of time you need to make your arrangements, but you must leave Giardinetto.’

  ‘What did you make of her?’ asked Isabella when Angelica had left.

  ‘I thought she was very pretty,’ said Chiara in a small voice.

  ‘She is not as pretty as you,’ said Isabella.

  ‘Really?’

  ‘Really. And I’m sure Silvano thinks so too.’

  ‘Then why hasn’t he come?’ asked Chiara. ‘He said he would come and he hasn’t.’

  ‘I don’t imagine that his family would have been keen to let him go again so soon. And perhaps it took time to sort out everything in connection with Tommaso’s murder?’

  ‘But that is settled now,’ protested Chiara. ‘You heard her. She is getting married to Silvano’s friend, even though he did kill her husband, and they will run away together to start a new life.’

  ‘And we shall have a second wool business in Gubbio.’

  ‘You are right,’ said Chiara, shaking her curls as if to shake all thought of Silvano out of her head. ‘We should go back to our books. Everything is going to get much more complicated.’

  ‘For my part, I hope Silvano doesn’t come too soon,’ said Isabella gently. ‘I don’t want to lose you when I have only just welcomed you into my home.’

  Chiara squeezed her hand affectionately.

  ‘What would I do without you?’ said Isabella. ‘It will be some years before my children are old enough to be rational companions.’

  ‘Perhaps you will marry again?’ said Chiara. ‘Not that I am planning to leave you, of course.’

  ‘Of course,’ said Isabella. ‘But no, I shan’t marry again. There was only one man to tempt me and he is beyond my reach. I shall devote myself to my business and my family. And maybe one day, when I am old, I shall enter a convent myself. What do you say to that? Do you think Abbess Elena would have me?’

  Her eyes were bright and there was a catch in her voice.

  ‘I’ll go with you,’ said Chiara impulsively, ‘if I’m still living here and unmarried. I’m not afraid of the convent any more. I hated the very idea when I was forced to enter it but now I think that, if you did it by choice, you could live a happy and useful life there.’

  ‘Excuse me, Madama,’ said a servant, knocking on the open door. ‘There is a gentleman to see you. He wouldn’t give his name.’

  ‘I am popular today,’ said Isabella, straightening her dress and taking off her apron. ‘Show him to the parlour. Will you tidy up for me here, Chiara?’

  Her fingers were still covered with ink, her hair escaping from her cap of black lace, but Monna Isabella had no idea who her visitor was. And even when she entered the parlour it took a while for her to recognise the man sitting there. He was no longer wearing his friar’s robes.

  ‘Anselmo?’ she said doubtfully.

  ‘Domenico, once more,’ he said, coming forward but stopping short of taking her hand. ‘I have left my Order.’

  ‘You are no longer a friar?’

  ‘No longer even a priest,’ said Anselmo smiling wryly. ‘In fact, I am nothing. I must think about getti
ng some new work. Perhaps I should go as apprentice to Ser Simone in Siena and grind his colours for him?’

  ‘I don’t understand,’ said Isabella, sinking into her chair. ‘Why did you leave the Order?’ She hardly dared to hope that it was for her sake.

  ‘I knew it really the minute that blade entered Brother Fazio’s neck,’ said Anselmo. ‘That was the moment I ceased to be a friar, not when Michele da Cesena released me from my vows.’

  ‘Is it a rule of the Franciscans then?’ asked Isabella. She felt nothing but bleakness in her heart. Domenico was leaving the Order but not because he loved her. He was taking away the last bar to their being together but he would then leave for ever. This was the last time she would see him.

  ‘No, not a hard and fast one,’ said Anselmo. ‘But it was as clear for me as if I had lost my faith. I can no longer minister to my fellow man.’

  ‘But you are not a murderer,’ protested Isabella. ‘You killed a murderer. It was an accident but by doing it you rid the world of a very great evil. Why should you be punished for that?’

  ‘It sounds as if you would like me to remain a friar,’ said Anselmo. ‘I thought that was the opposite of what you wanted.’

  ‘What I wanted?’ said Isabella. ‘When has it ever mattered what I wanted? I was torn from my true love and made to marry a man I didn’t care for. I was forced to be a good wife to him, to bear his children, entertain his friends, turn a blind eye to his mistresses. And then a mad friar did an evil deed and took that husband’s life away. At the same time I found my old love again but did he want me? No, he was married to another now – the Church!’

  ‘Hush,’ said Anselmo. He took her hands. ‘I have nothing to offer you, no wealth, no job, no position in society. I am an ex-religious and ex-scholar who has killed a man. I have no right to lay my heart at your feet.’

  ‘Your heart?’ said Isabella.

  ‘People would say it was for your money, because you are a rich widow. And I could not bear to be thought such a parasite.’

  ‘What are you saying? That if it were not for what gossips would say, you would offer yourself to me? That you love me?’

  ‘I have always loved you,’ said Anselmo simply. ‘A love like mine doesn’t alter because of circumstances. But as a friar I could not allow myself to think about you. I had to lock that love up as if in an iron chest and bind it with chains. But I am a friar no longer.’

  ‘Why did you come here?’

  ‘To see you once more. With the eyes of one who is now free to love you.’

  ‘And free to marry me?’ said Isabella softly.

  ‘I would not ask that of you,’ said Anselmo. ‘It is too much to expect that you would take me back after what was said at our last meeting.’

  Isabella smiled for the first time since she had entered the parlour.

  ‘Then it seems as if I must do the asking myself,’ she said. ‘Domenico of Gubbio, will you do me the honour of being my husband?’

  Chiara couldn’t think who could be taking up so much of Isabella’s time. She had been to supervise the children’s bedtime, heard their prayers and ordered supper for herself and the lady of the house. Since she couldn’t get on with the accounts on her own, Chiara now had nothing to do.

  It was a balmy night, even though late in September, and Chiara went to the window and looked out into the street. At first she thought she was seeing things. A grey stallion was coming along the street under her window, ridden by a very elegant young man in a grey velvet jerkin and a feathered hat. On his pommel sat a hawk.

  But it couldn’t be Silvano! Young men, even as high born as the heir of Baron da Montacuto, did not take their hawks when they went visiting. She rubbed her eyes and looked again. The horse and man had disappeared. She must be having visions.

  But then there was a knocking at the front door and her heart started to beat faster. She went to the head of the stairs but was so surprised to hear laughter and a man’s voice coming from the little parlour that she stopped on the top step.

  A servant went to the parlour door and Monna Isabella came out, followed by – of all people – Brother Anselmo. Only he was no longer dressed as a grey brother and he had an arm round Isabella’s waist. Chiara rubbed her eyes again.

  And then Silvano came up the stairs. His plumed hat was under his arm and he carried a small hawk on his left wrist.

  ‘Welcome,’ said Isabella.

  ‘Well met,’ said Anselmo. ‘You know my betrothed, I think?’

  ‘Betrothed!’ Chiara and Silvano exclaimed at the same time.

  And so he saw her. And ran up the remaining steps to stop on the one beneath her.

  ‘Chiara,’ he said, making a formal bow. ‘I have brought you a gift.’ He held out the bird to her. It was tiny, Chiara saw now, like a miniature version of Silvano’s peregrine falcon.

  ‘For me,’ she said, puzzled. ‘It’s very kind of you and a very pretty bird. But . . .’

  ‘It is a merlin,’ said Silvano, grinning widely. ‘A lady’s hawk.’

  ‘But I don’t go hunting and I’m not a lady,’ said Chiara.

  ‘But you might be one day,’ said Silvano. ‘In fact I very much hope you will be.’

  ‘Why did you send no message?’ whispered Chiara.

  ‘I tried to write but the words seemed artificial on the page,’ said Silvano. ‘Besides, I wanted to bring the merlin in person. It is a kind of a message.’ He was still smiling and Chiara, feeling her heart lift, began to smile too.

  ‘I know I am not worthy,’ said Silvano. ‘I know after what I have told you before that I must convince you that I am worthy of your trust and love. But I want to try. Please tell me that you believe me.’

  ‘Yes, please tell him,’ said Monna Isabella.

  ‘Put the poor boy out of his misery,’ said Anselmo.

  But Silvano didn’t look at all miserable. This time he felt his beloved really did return his feelings.

  Chiara went down the stairs towards her suitor.

  ‘What chance have I, if you are all conspiring together?’ she said.

  She reached out to Silvano. And he carefully transferred the glove with the merlin on it to her left hand. He took the right one in his own and looked as if he would never let it go.

  .

  LIST OF CHARACTERS

  .

  Perugia

  Silvano da Montacuto, the only son of a noble family

  Barone Bartolomeo da Montacuto, his father

  Baronessa Margarethe da Montacuto, his Belgian mother

  Margherita and Vittoria, his younger sisters

  Gervasio de’ Oddini, his best friend

  Angelica, the object of his affections

  Tommaso, her husband, a sheep farmer

  .

  Gubbio

  Chiara, daughter of a once wealthy family

  Bernardo, her brother and guardian

  Vanna, Bernardo’s wife

  Monna Isabella, a married woman

  Ser Ubaldo, her husband, a wealthy wool merchant

  Ser Umberto, his younger brother

  .

  The House of Saint Francis in Giardinetto

  Father Bonsignore, the Abbot, an old friend of Baron Montacuto

  Brother Anselmo, the Colour Master

  Brother Bertuccio, the cook, a lay brother

  Brother Fazio, the Illuminator

  Brother Gianni, the stableman, a lay brother

  Brother Gregorio, the Lector

  Brother Landolfo, the Guest Master

  Brother Matteo, a novice

  Brother Monaldo, the Librarian

  Brother Nardo, the Cellarer

  Brother Ranieri, the Novice Master

  Bro
ther Rufino, the Infirmarian

  Brother Taddeo, the Assistant Librarian

  Brother Valentino, the Herbalist

  .

  The House of Poor Clares in Giardinetto

  Mother Elena, the Abbess

  Sister Cecilia, a novice

  Sister Elisabetta, a novice

  Sister Eufemia, the Novice Mistress

  Sister Felicita

  Sister Lucia

  Sister Orsola, see Chiara of Gubbio

  Sister Paola, a novice

  Sister Veronica, the Colour Mistress

  .

  The Basilica in Assisi

  Simone Martini, painter from Siena

  Pietro Lorenzetti, another Sienese artist, old friend

  and rival of Simone

  Lippo (Filippo) Memmi, Simone’s friend and later his

  brother-in-law

  Tederigo, Lippo’s brother

  Donato, Simone’s brother

  Marco, a journeyman

  Teodoro, a goldsmith from Siena

  .

  Michele da Cesena, Minister General of the Franciscans

  The Minister General’s Chaplain

  .

  THE DIVINE OFFICE

  .

  Friars, monks and nuns say the Hours of the Divine Office, that is the eight sets of prayers recited at specific times of day. When they can’t get to a church to do so, they say them privately. At the time of The Falconer’s Knot the services and times would have been roughly as follows:

  .

  MATINS MIDNIGHT

  Lauds 3 a.m.

  Prime 6 a.m. (dawn)

  .

  BREAKFAST

  Terce 9 a.m.

  Sext Noon

  .

  LUNCH

  Nones 3 p.m.

  Vespers 6 p.m.

  .

  SUPPER

  Compline 9 p.m.

  .

  BEDTIME

  .

  HISTORICAL NOTE

  .

  Background

  Giardinetto, unlike Perugia, Assisi and Gubbio, is an invented place, as are the Franciscan friary and the convent of Poor Clares there. All the characters in this novel are fictional except for the painters Simone Martini and Pietro Lorenzetti, and their assistants, and the Minister General of the Franciscans, Michele da Cesena.