The Phoenix of Florence

by Philip Kazan

  ‘A little,’ Bartolomeo says calmly. ‘I can’t pretend to be Tommaso. I’m just not made that way. So I’m glad you can make Papà happy by letting him teach you his art. He deserves happiness.’ Onoria’s mouth falls open. She’s never heard her brother talk like this. ‘But soon Papà will have his fencing school,’ he continues. ‘He’s buying a grand house outside Montalcino.’

  ‘I know that.’

  ‘I’ll be gone by then. No, it’s you I’m worried about, sister. You’ll be married in three years. No husband is going to let you roam around the countryside, let alone mess around with swords. You’ll be shut away. In his house. What are you going to do then?’

  ‘I’ll escape!’ she says petulantly.

  ‘Really? You won’t be here in Pietrodoro, you know. You’ll be wherever your husband lives.’

  She clenches her teeth so hard that she feels the sinews in her neck standing out like lute strings. ‘Why are you doing this?’

  ‘Because, Onoria, I’m giving you a way to escape.’ She makes an uncomprehending face at him, but he persists. ‘Books, sister. You read as well as I do. Your Latin isn’t bad at all. Books are the window you can jump through. This’ – he thumps the book in front of him – ‘Ovid’s Metamorphoses. Have you paid attention to any of it?’

  ‘No,’ she snaps. It’s true: she hasn’t.

  ‘Then I advise you to begin.’ Bartolomeo stares at her owlishly, like the priest he has almost become, then he grins and ruffles her hair, as though she really were a younger brother. ‘But let’s have another lesson. Why don’t you fetch one of Papà’s books on swordsmanship? You can show me how well you read, and teach me a little, too.’

  ‘Priests don’t need to know how to fight,’ Onoria points out.

  ‘Oh, no? What about Pope Julius? He rode at the head of a papal army. Like a condottiere.’

  ‘Really?’

  ‘Really. Would I lie about a pope? It was a long time ago, though – before Papà was born.’

  ‘So is that what you’re going to do?’ Onoria suddenly forgets that she’s annoyed with him. ‘Be a soldier priest?’

  Bartolomeo folds his arms behind his head and laughs. ‘Not if I can help it! But get that book and show me some things. Just in case.’

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  It is mid-August, and the little village bakes in the sunshine. Exposed on its crag, Pietrodoro sometimes feels like a metal spur glowing in a blacksmith’s forge. It is far too hot to play in the terraces, where the grass has been cooked to golden hay, and the praying mantises and lizards are the only things moving. The only good thing about high summer is the village feast, which happens on the eleventh day of August, Santa Clara’s day. That morning, as Onoria and Bartolomeo watch the villagers set out the long trestle tables in the piazza, Bartolomeo explains – it is a ritual the two of them have had for as long as Onoria can remember – that Pietrodoro’s Santa Clara is not the Clara who was Saint Francis’s companion. Their church, a puzzle of Roman columns and bricks, Lombard dragons and Norman arches, all shrunk together like a fig left out in the sun, is much too old to be dedicated to her. No, the saint of Pietrodoro was a woman who, perhaps in Roman times, perhaps later, climbed up to this lonely place to live as a hermit. It was her little shelter – perhaps a cave – that became the church, and she is the tiny black Virgin enshrined on the altar. Over the centuries her name was forgotten and she became Santa Celava, the Hidden One, and that, in turn, became Clara. After Clara of Assisi’s death, the two names, and even the feast days, became confused, and the ancient saint merged into the new one. No one really cares now, as Bartolomeo says, not even Father Giovanni. ‘Why do you care, then?’ Onoria always asks him, and he always shrugs and says, ‘Because the truth is important.’

  Onoria cares too. What she especially likes is that Bartolomeo has entrusted this knowledge to her. It feels like she holds the secret of the village. And wasn’t it Celava who turned a raven into the first Ormani? Santa Celava is part of her. As the tables clatter and scrape into place on the flagstones, as olive branches and festoons of vines, boughs of pomegranate and almond heavy with fruit begin to decorate the church, she mutters the saint’s name under her breath like a spell. Celava. Celava. The word is as mysterious as the hermit herself. What was she hiding from? Onoria wonders. Then her nose catches a whiff of roasting lamb meat and her stomach growls in answer. She forgets all about Santa Celava.

  Her mother scrubs Onoria’s face – Onoria is getting much too old for this, but she lets her mother do it anyway, because it is a special day – and brushes her hair. When she struggles into her best set of clothes, she submits to her mother’s fingers as they pinch and pull, tuck and tighten. When she is enough of a girl to satisfy her parents, she follows them out into the piazza to the shrieking of bagpipes and the thudding of goatskin drums, fourth in line in the little procession of the Ormani household, from her father to Belardino the stable boy. Her father is magnificent in his black Venetian doublet and hose, her mother in Florentine silk. Even Bartolomeo looks almost fashionable in a plain but expensive doublet. Hanging from his belt is a long parrying knife that was once Tommaso’s. Onoria wonders how much badgering from her father it took to make him wear it.

  Another procession, a mirror of their own, is leaving the palace of the Ellebori. She sees Federigo and waves, but he frowns slightly and doesn’t wave back. Then again, the grown-ups all look serious. This part of the day is serious business. Lodovigo is limping: an old wound that has been getting worse this year. Benedetta is gripping his arm tightly. There is no Augusto, she notes with relief, but his younger brothers, Antonio and Girolamo, are there, with Smeralda.

  In Pietrodoro, which the two families have struggled to dominate since, perhaps, the time of Santa Celava, neither the Ormanis or the Ellebori are allowed the place of honour. Instead, a boy and a girl are chosen by popular vote, dressed up as nobility and installed, with a lot of play-acting and bagpipe howls, at the top table. Then come the familiar rituals: dancers, some of them masked, acting out a legend of the old hermit and a shepherd; a horse race, both absurd and dangerous, with four riders careening around the square. More than once this has ended in disaster: horses crashing into tables, riders being dashed against walls. But today all is good. Onoria shouts until her throat is raw and screams as her horse comes in first. Then the food, endless toasts and singing until the sky fades to rose, to orange, to blue and then black.

  It is boring after a while, and she cannot quite talk to Federigo over the noise and the width of the table. She eats ravenously and rehearses fencing moves in her head. Just after the sun sets, she notices that Lodovigo Ellebori has stood up and is toasting her father. He smiles broadly and does the same. Lodovigo reaches over and grasps her father’s arm. One of the brothers – Girolamo, the younger – reaches over and raises his goblet in front of Bartolomeo, who, surprised and no doubt embarrassed, stands awkwardly and knocks his own goblet against Girolamo’s. Onoria tries to catch Federigo’s eye, and raises her own cup of watered-down wine, but he is ignoring her. His mind has plainly been somewhere else all day. The older men, though, are laughing and joking in a way she can’t ever remember seeing before. Servants are running back and forth, filling wine jugs from the barrels set up by the fires where lambs, kids and pigs are turning on spits, where cauldrons of tripe, cabbage soup and beef stew are steaming. The whole village seems to be singing. All at once, she is happier than she has ever been in her life.

  It is late when her mother finally makes the ritual excuses and leads Onoria back to the house. Onoria stands, swaying a little from the wine. Her drink had been watered almost to nothing, but it had been hot in the piazza and she feels as if she has drunk a barrel’s worth of something. Her stomach is full to bursting and she keeps giggling as her mother fumbles with the ties of her bodice.

  ‘Ow!’ she squeaks as her mother catches her bare skin with a fingernail. ‘Are you drunk, Mamma? I think everyone in Pietrodoro is drunk tonight!’


  ‘What do you take me for, Onoria?’ her mother says, and then she kisses her daughter to show she isn’t serious. But she is: as an Ormani woman, just like an Ellebori woman, or any woman, her duty at the feast is to sit, polite and ornamental, next to her husband.

  ‘I’ve never seen everyone so happy!’ Onoria says, spinning free of the confines of her skirt. ‘Papà and Don Lodovigo – like proper friends!’

  ‘That is a good thing,’ her mother says.

  ‘Is it because Augusto is gone? I hate Augusto,’ says Onoria, and claps her hand across her mouth, because she never talks like this in front of her mother. But her mother just raises her eyebrows.

  ‘Grand Duke Cosimo has brought peace to Tuscany,’ she says. ‘Maybe he has even managed to bring it to Pietrodoro.’

  ‘Cosimo de’ Medici …’ Onoria is wriggling into her nightgown. ‘A real soldier. Papà told me that Duke Cosimo led the army himself at Montemurlo.’

  Her mother clicks her tongue. ‘Why are you so interested in such things, girl? What do you know about Montemurlo?’

  ‘Papà was there! The Grand Duke beat the Florentine rebels …’

  ‘Yes. Well, girl, my uncle was killed there. He was a nobleman, and he had his throat cut by some peasant arquebusier. Please don’t talk to your father about fighting. “Wars, horrid wars,” that’s what Virgil says, and it is true. Now, to bed with you.’

  ‘Are you going to bed too, Mamma?’

  ‘I’m going to pray for a little while in the chapel.’

  ‘Goodnight, Mamma.’

  ‘Goodnight, little one.’ She turns towards the door, then pauses and sits down on the edge of the bed into which Onoria has just climbed. ‘But you aren’t so little now, are you?’ She brushes a stray lock of hair away from Onoria’s forehead. ‘Let me plait it for you. I was watching you today, you know. You’re not a girl any more, Onoria.’

  ‘What do you mean, Mamma? I don’t … I mean, I don’t have anything here yet,’ Onoria says, folding her arms across her chest. But it is hard to be annoyed as her mother gently plaits her hair, fingers working deftly, the most comforting sensation in the whole world.

  Her mother laughs softly. ‘That will come by and by. That’s not what I meant, though, cara. The way you hold yourself. So confident. You’ll never be a great beauty, but that’s a good thing.’

  ‘I don’t care about that,’ Onoria says, trying not to sound defiant.

  ‘I didn’t mean to be cruel. You have the kind of face that someone might want to paint. A face that will get you a good man for a husband.’

  ‘You’re beautiful,’ Onoria says, puzzled. ‘And Papà is a good man.’

  ‘I was lucky. Anyway …’ Her mother takes a ribbon from where Onoria has an untidy collection of objects and ties off the plait. ‘There you are. You have lovely hair.’ Then she sighs. ‘I saw the Ellebori boys looking at you.’

  ‘Mamma! What – Antonio and Girolamo? That’s horrible! But … at least it wasn’t Augusto.’

  Her mother sighs again. ‘God forbid. Anyway, we’ll be leaving Pietrodoro soon. Your father has just bought a fine house near Montalcino. Maybe, in the autumn, I’ll take you to Florence. Would you like that?’

  ‘Florence?’ Onoria has only ever been to Viterbo and Orvieto. ‘Why?’ she asks suspiciously.

  ‘You’re thirteen, my darling. It’s time we started looking.’

  ‘I don’t want a husband. You know that. I never want to get married.’

  ‘I said exactly the same thing when I was your age. I expect every single girl that’s ever been born has said it.’

  ‘If I have to get married, then I’ll marry a condottiere who’ll take me off to war with him.’

  Her mother shakes her head and kisses Onoria on the cheek. ‘Then we’ll have to find you a condottiere, won’t we?’ She stands up.

  ‘No, you won’t.’

  ‘Oh, no? My parents found one for me.’ Her mother turns from the door and touches her fingers to her lips. ‘Sleep well, Onoria.’

  ‘Goodnight. I love you, Mamma.’ But her mother has already gone, and the latch clicks softly behind her.

  Though Onoria’s room is on the top floor of the palazzo, the only room in the stump of what was once a high tower, and faces away from the square, it is still noisy enough that she doesn’t fall asleep for a long time. Voices and instruments rise and fall, sometimes a whisper, mostly a roar. It is hot, of course, and though she kicks off the sheets, her nightshirt still binds to her damp skin. Finally, she rolls out of bed, takes her rosary from its drawer and kneels on the floorboards, which are more or less cool, and prays for a long time. She usually prays to Santa Celava, who has some power to find things that are lost, and so she does tonight, asking the saint to intercede with the Holy Virgin and help her to stay unwed. Her thoughts drift: she is stepping back, then forward, lunging, parrying. Then the saint’s face appears, tiny, age-black and rimmed with tarry gold, and she goes back to her entreaties. At last she feels the energy in her body begin to ebb, and she crawls gratefully back into her bed. She is asleep almost at once.

  She is dreaming about a battle: there are men running all around her, and though she has a sword in her hand, she is standing like a statue in a great field of brown grass which is on fire, a line of flames burning towards her, birds flying up through the smoke like they do when the farmers down in the valley sweal their fields in autumn. A man stops beside her, an arquebusier dressed in half-armour that shines like mercury. He raises his gun and fires, bang!, again and again, bang! bang!, without pausing to reload, into the fire.

  ‘What do we do?’ Onoria shouts at him in her sleep.

  ‘They’re killing us,’ says the man, and his grin, in the shadow cast by his helmet, spreads like a bloodstained summer crescent moon. He raises his gun again.

  Bang!

  The door latch scrapes and suddenly the room is full of something, a man, a roaring, stinking man and his unwashed smell: bad teeth, dirty armpits, spit and wine. There is a dirty red light coming from somewhere and it ripples across the sheen of his black doublet. In her terror, she doesn’t recognise him straight away, this black horror leaping towards her with a dagger on his hip and a short sword hanging behind, though he knows her name, screaming it, screaming at her with his mouth working madly, all teeth and tongue and foam-freckled lips.

  Bang!

  I’m still asleep, she thinks, and the thought is clear, like a thought in a dream, but she seems to be sitting up in bed, her legs caught in the sheets, and then he grabs her.

  She is falling, the bed coming up to meet her at terrible speed as she understands that she is wide awake. Then her nose and mouth are smothered in the embrace of hot, damp cloth. She knows.

  Augusto Ellebori’s hand, twisting the heavy rope of her plaited hair, is pushing her face deeper into the bolster. She tries to cry out, because she knows, now – ‘Oh, God help me! Holy Mother have mercy on me!’ – but the hand pushes harder, and then there are iron fingers at her neck, something hard running across her throat, and then a twisting, a tightening, pressure, the sudden agony. A knee is thrust into the curve of her back. She feels muscles tearing in her neck as her spine arches backwards. Her hands thrash against the sheets, finding nothing to grasp. She is drowning in a sea of white linen. Her lips, forced into a rigid O by the ligature around her neck, search desperately, hopelessly for air. There is nothing, though, except pain. Not even fear. Her mouth is full of blood.

  Suddenly, the pressure lessens. She gasps reflexively, breathing in her own salty blood, hands scrabbling at the leather strap cutting into her neck. She hears Augusto panting with exertion. One of his hands twists the ligature again, and the other rustles for a moment with the linen of her shift before the fingers, hard as iron, rake up the inside of her thighs. One of his knees forces her legs apart. Through the blood singing in her ears she can hear the rasp of his breath. She tries to lift her head, but he pushes it hard into the bedding. Augusto’s fingers find wh
at they are groping for and he laughs. Suddenly, the pressure at her throat lessens. For an instant she is weightless, and then she is staring up at Augusto’s face, lips drawn back, tongue out like a hanged man, eyes wide and black, full of the polluted cruelty she saw that day in the courtyard. She drags a thread of air into her throat, which is surely splitting apart, flesh parting against its will, above and below as his hand shoves into her again, her body turning into one great wound. Fingers fumble, thrust, and leave again. As the room turns red, she sees his free hand fumbling with the ties of his codpiece.

  His voice, slick with greed and triumph, cuts through the soft red darkness that is sucking her down, mercifully, away from her terror and humiliation. ‘Filthy little boy-girl! So you like to fight, eh? Fight me, then!’ He slaps her face, but she barely feels it. ‘Now, which hole will I choose?’ She wants to drown, but something is keeping her afloat. A heat inside her, stronger than the pain. Anger. What a stupid thing to feel now, she thinks, because her thoughts are beginning to do what they want despite her: they are softening, beginning to drift out of terror towards a stillness, a radiant peace that is coming closer. She is so close. There, not far now, is the end to all this.

  Santa Celava, help me to my death now. Help me find God’s hidden mercy.

  It is death that her hands are scrabbling for, clawing at the air, far beyond her control. Her nightgown rips. She is reaching through dirty red darkness for the kind black face of Santa Celava when her right hand finds something else. Smooth, cold, something the memories that live in her fingertips recognise, even if her mind does not. Maybe she is dreaming after all, because the slowness, the care with which she clasps the hilt of Augusto’s left-hand dagger has the underwater feel of deep sleep. Augusto is trying to split her in half with something blunt and hot. She closes her eyes, though they are blind now anyway, and sees the hermit saint, a knife in her tarry black hand.