Bitter Greens

by Kate Forsyth

  Yet, when they went down to the cellar, it was to find that rats had been at the flour. Pascalina sat on the bottom step and drew Margherita onto her lap. Together, they stared at the spoilt sack. ‘Today of all days,’ Pascalina murmured. ‘Oh well, we’ll need to go to the market after all …’

  ‘No, please. Let’s not go.’

  Pascalina chewed her lip. Her freckled face looked pale and weary. ‘I need to go. I cannot make bread, or a pie, or even soup without flour.’ She stood up.

  ‘I don’t want to go.’ Margherita clung to her mother’s leg, tears welling up in her eyes. Pascalina was silent for a moment, as if contemplating trying to go to market with a weeping girl clinging to her leg every step of the way, then said with a sigh, ‘Very well, you stay here, my daisy. I’ll go to the market by myself. I won’t be long. Don’t open the door to anyone.’

  Margherita went up to her room, to play with her doll. Her room was small, with a low slanted roof. It had a little window, with a lovely view across the narrow alleyway into the garden on the far side of the wall. The garden was the most beautiful place Margherita had ever seen. In spring, it was a sea of delicate blossom. In summer, it was green and fruitful. In autumn, the trees blazed gold and red and orange, as vivid as Margherita’s hair. Even in winter, it was beautiful, with bare branches against the old stone walls and green hedges in curves and curlicues about beds of winter-flowering herbs and flowers.

  Margherita’s mother never liked to look down into the garden. She always kept the shutters closed, so Margherita’s room was dim all day long. Margherita needed more light to see her doll, though, so she opened her shutters and looked down into the garden.

  The sorceress was sitting under a blossom tree, drinking from a jewelled goblet, her skirts spread out like the petals of a blue flower, her torrents of golden-red hair shining in the sunshine. She looked up and smiled at Margherita and beckoned. Margherita slammed her shutter closed and jumped into bed. Her heart was pounding against her ribs.

  A little while later, someone banged on the door. The visitor banged and banged, and kept on banging. Margherita tried to ignore it, but it was too loud. She imagined the neighbours hearing it and wondering what was wrong. She imagined an accident to her father, some catastrophe in the marketplace that had injured her mother. She could not bear the suspense. She got up and crept down the stairs to the shop, the masks grinning and winking at her in the gloom, and opened the door, just a crack.

  A huge man stood there, dressed all in black, his face as round as the moon.

  ‘What is it? What’s wrong?’

  ‘La Strega Bella wants you.’ The man shoved the door open, even though Margherita was pressing all her weight against it.

  The sorceress stepped into the doorway. ‘Margherita. I’m disappointed in you.’

  Margherita was too afraid to speak, her legs feeling weak beneath her.

  ‘Did you tell your mother what I said?’

  Margherita shook her head.

  ‘But why? Are you afraid? You shouldn’t be afraid of me. I’ve been waiting for you a long time.’

  Margherita frowned. She felt she had been rude but did not want to apologise.

  ‘Hold out your hand,’ the sorceress said.

  Obediently, Margherita held out her hand. For a moment, she wondered if the sorceress meant to give her another necklace, and her heart lifted in anticipation. Then she thought perhaps the sorceress would whip her across the hand with a willow switch, like the priest whipped the boys at school, and she began to take her hand away.

  But the sorceress had smiled and bent down, taking Margherita’s hand in both of her own, soft, white and perfumed. She lifted Margherita’s hand to her mouth and bit off the tip of her left ring finger. Margherita screamed.

  The sorceress spat out the ragged little piece of flesh. Blood stained her mouth. She dabbed it with a handkerchief, which she pulled from her sleeve. ‘Tell your mother to remember her promise or I will eat you all up,’ the sorceress said sweetly and stepped out of the doorway.

  Margherita kicked the door shut and flung herself against it. Blood was running down her left hand. She wound it in her apron. In moments, the linen was stained red. Margherita sobbed out loud. She slid down the door and sat with her knees pressed against her chest, her hand throbbing with pain.

  She did not know what to do.

  Soon, she heard a key in the lock. She crawled away as the door opened. Her mother came in, carrying a basket of food. Margherita lifted her tear-swollen eyes to her mother’s face and held up her injured hand, still wrapped in the bloodstained apron. Pascalina dropped the basket. ‘Oh sweet mother of Jesus. What happened?’

  ‘She … she came … she bit off my finger … she said … she said she’d eat me all up … if you forget your promise.’

  With a hoarse cry, her mother was on her knees beside Margherita. She opened the bloody apron, to see the ragged wound at the tip of her daughter’s left ring finger. ‘It’s not so bad. It’s not the whole finger. It’s not even the whole tip. It’ll heal. It’ll heal, my darling. Don’t cry. Here, let me bandage you up. Oh, my poor darling. Didn’t I say don’t open the door?’

  ‘She said she would eat me all up.’ Margherita felt as if she was two people. One was crying and shaking, holding out a hand that ran with crimson streaks. The other stood outside the first, cold and stiff.

  Pascalina carefully bound up Margherita’s finger and warmed up some soup for her. She spooned it into her mouth as if Margherita was a baby again, and Margherita swallowed obediently. Then Pascalina sat, rocking her daughter on her lap, singing her a lullaby. ‘Farfallina, bella e bianca, vola vola, mai si stanca, gira qua, e gira la – poi si resta sopra un fiore, e poi si resta sopra un fiore … Butterfly, beautiful and white, fly and fly, never get tired, turn here and turn there – she rests upon a flower … and she rests upon a flower.’

  Alessandro came home long after dusk. ‘I’m sorry. She kept me waiting a long time,’ he explained wearily. ‘Is chiacchere asleep?’

  Margherita kept her eyes closed, her face pressed against her mother’s breast.

  ‘While you were kicking your heels at her palace, La Strega Bella came here and bit off the top of Margherita’s finger.’

  ‘What!’ Alessandro bent and picked up Margherita’s hand, examining the bandaged finger. ‘Is she mad?’

  ‘It’s a warning.’

  ‘My hands.’ Alessandro sat down heavily. ‘If we don’t give her Margherita, she’ll have me charged with theft, and both my hands will be cut off. How will we survive then?’

  ‘Did you see her?’ Pascalina said after a while.

  Alessandro shook his head. ‘She would not see me. That castrato servant of hers came, after a long while. It was strange to hear such a high squeaky voice coming from such a giant of a man. He said …’

  ‘She’ll have no mercy.’ Pascalina spoke in the same flat dreary voice, after Alessandro was unable to go on.

  ‘No. She won’t relent. She says I stole from her, and I must pay the penalty. God knows, it was only a handful of leaves, not worth much at all, but she could say anything and the judges will believe her. She sleeps with most of them.’

  Margherita could feel her mother’s chest heaving under her head. ‘My little girl.’

  ‘She’s seven now.’ Alessandro’s voice cracked. ‘Old enough to go to the convent, or into service. If we had a litter of little ones, we’d be happy to see her well settled.’

  ‘But she’s our only one, she’s our precious little girl. We can’t give her into the hands of that woman. Imagine what she would do to her.’

  ‘The castrato said Signorina Leonelli will treat Margherita like her own daughter. She’ll go to school and have everything she needs.’

  ‘But what does she want with her? Does she intend …’ Pascalina’s voice broke.

  ‘He swore to me that Signora Leonelli would not … train our girl up in her own profession. He says she promises to keep he
r safe.’

  ‘Will I … will I be allowed to see her?’

  Silence.

  ‘I don’t think so,’ Alessandro said finally.

  Pascalina was crying, clutching Margherita so close to her that she could scarcely breathe. She struggled to sit up. ‘Mama?’

  Pascalina hugged her close again. ‘Oh, my little darling, I’m so sorry, I’m so sorry.’

  Margherita could not speak. She felt a lurch in her stomach, as if walking downstairs in the dark and suddenly finding no step beneath her foot.

  ‘Come on up to bed, my darling. Come, let’s get you all tucked up. It’s all right, all will be well, all will be well.’ Pascalina tucked Margherita into her bed, her bandaged hand carefully laid on the bedclothes. She sat beside Margherita, smoothing back her hair from her brow, curling a ringlet around and around her finger.

  Grasping her tattered blanket against her chest, Margherita looked up at her mother’s face, white and tense in the candlelight. ‘Mama, why?’ she whispered. ‘Why does that woman want me? Why did she bite off the top of my finger? What does she mean when she says you promised to give me to her?’

  HE LOVES ME, HE LOVES ME NOT

  Castelrotto, Italy – November 1580

  All my family died of a terrible fever, Pascalina said, tracing gentle circles on Margherita’s brow.

  Where I came from, we called it blitz-katarrh, for it hit with the power and suddenness of a lightning bolt. One day, my mother complained of a sore throat and a headache. A few days later, she was dead, and my whole family was tossing and burning with fever. I did my best, I really did, but I was sick myself and only fourteen. And I had no one to help me. Soon, they were all dead: my parents, my grandparents, my little sister and my baby brother.

  I cannot tell you how terrible it was. I did not know what to do. The corpse-bearers came and dragged their bodies away and flung them in the death-pit outside the town, but I was nailed up in my house and left there alone for forty days and forty nights. I think I went a little mad. I had nothing to do but pace our little house and pray, and sing myself lullabies. The days passed, and I marked them off on the hearth with a stick of charcoal. On the fortieth day, no one came to set me free. I smashed my way out through the attic window, to find the street deserted. Nearly everybody had died.

  I foraged for food, stealing from the empty houses. In one house, there was a dead woman with a dead baby beside her. No one had come to take them to the death-pit. I left them there and took some coins off the mantelpiece.

  I didn’t know where to go or what to do. I walked to the main road and followed it downhill because it seemed the easiest way to go. I walked and walked, begging for food or work as I went. Sometimes, people were kind to me. Sometimes, they were cruel. Nowhere did I find happiness or tranquillity. My family’s deaths haunted me.

  Two years after my family died, I came to Venice. It seemed like a magical city, floating on the lagoon as if conjured by an enchanter’s wand. I sat in the meadow and stared at it, picking meadow flowers from around my feet – clover and daisies and wild garlic – and making myself a wreath. I walked down to the shore, and a boy in a boat gave me a lift across the lagoon in return for a kiss.

  By that time, I was dressed only in rags. My feet were bare, and I was so hungry I felt as if I was made of thistledown. But it was summer, and the paving stones of the squares were cool under my feet. I wandered through the city, going wherever my feet led me. I came to an ornate bridge, rising above its wide stone arch like a little city built on a rainbow. I climbed the steps till I reached the seventh archway, with its cocked stone hat, and there I stopped, leaning over the handrail. Far below, I saw my rippling reflection in the water and wondered who that girl was now … that thin-faced girl with a wreath of weeds on her fiery hair. She looked nothing like the Pascalina I knew. I think I began to weep. Suddenly, a face appeared beside mine in the water, the face of a young man.

  ‘Why do you weep?’ he asked.

  I almost said that I was lonely, but then I was afraid he would misunderstand me, so I told him I was hungry.

  He was quiet for a moment, then said, ‘Will you sell me the flowers in your hair? We rarely see such pretty flowers here.’

  I nodded, and pulled the wreath off my head and gave it to him. In return, he gave me a small coin and told me where I could find the markets. I thanked him, and then waited till he was out of sight before creeping after him. I saw where he lived, in a shop hung with the most beautiful and strange things I had ever seen, masks that glittered with jewels and gilt and bright paint. It was a treasure trove. Above the shop was a window, with flowers and herbs growing out of a box on the sill, and hanging on a line strung above my head was a fine carpet, which a kind-looking woman was beating with her broom. I could smell soup and freshly baked bread. It was such a homely picture that I began to weep again. I longed with all my heart for a home like that.

  Still clutching the coin in my hand, I crept a little closer, wanting to peep in the window. I heard laughter and the sound of a teasing voice. Then the young man who had given me the coin replied, right above my head, ‘Very well, then, I admit it, she was pretty. She had the most beautiful red hair. That’s not why I bought the flowers, though. She looked so sad …’

  I did not wait to hear more, afraid I would be caught eavesdropping under his window. I crept away down the alley, looking back to make sure no one saw me. When I turned to go, it was to find a woman was watching me from the end of the alleyway. She was very beautiful. She wore a dress like nothing I’d ever seen before, sewn with so many jewels that she glittered as she moved. Her hair was golden-red like mine, and she wore it hanging down her back like a young girl. Her eyes were exactly the same colour as her hair.

  She smiled at me. ‘Are you hungry?’

  I nodded, and she pulled open a doorway in the wall. Beyond was the most wonderful garden you could imagine, stretching cool and green and beautiful, towards a grand palace at the far end. There were orange trees in tubs, and all sorts of herbs and vegetables and flowers, all grown within green hedges clipped in the shapes of flowers themselves. More fruit trees were standing against the high stone walls. I saw apricots and plums and pomegranates and figs. The smell made my mouth water.

  ‘Help yourself,’ she said.

  I did not rush heedlessly into that garden, I promise. I had grown wary over the past few years. I looked at her suspiciously. ‘What would you want in return?’

  ‘Just to talk to you.’

  I looked longingly at the garden again, but I dared not cross the threshold. The walls were high, too high to climb over, and the door she held open was made of heavy wood as thick as my clenched fist, and crossed with ornate iron bands. A heavy iron key was in the lock. It would take her only a moment to turn it and lock me inside.

  ‘We can talk here,’ I said.

  She smiled at me and stretched her hand through the doorway, plucking a fruit from a tree and passing it to me. It was a fig. Its skin was the colour of a twilight sky. I thought about how it would taste on my tongue, how its juice would trickle down my parched throat. For a moment longer, I resisted, then I remembered the coin in my hand. I offered it to her.

  She was surprised and then amused. ‘You’re right. There’s a cost for everything. For that coin, you can have some bread and wine as well. Come in.’

  The smell of fresh-baked bread was a torture to me. When she took my coin and went through the doorway, I followed her, cramming the fig into my mouth. She led me through the garden to the terrace, where a table stood under some grapevines. There was a decanter of wine there. She poured me a glass and rang a bell, and soon servants came with trays of food. I ate my fill, for the first time since my family had died. As I ate, she asked me questions.

  ‘What is your name?’

  ‘Pascalina.’

  ‘How old are you, Pascalina?’

  ‘Seventeen,’ I lied.

  ‘Are you still a maiden?’

  I
blushed and hung my head. I have told you not everyone was kind to me when I was begging on the road. Well, that is all you need to know. I think she may have guessed what had happened, for she was quiet for a while.

  ‘My name is Selena Leonelli.’ She poured me more wine. ‘I am a courtesan. All you see here – my house, my garden, my dress, my jewels, my servants – I have it all because I sell my body.’

  I must have flinched back. I had heard stories of women who tricked or forced young girls into prostitution, and I was suddenly sure that was why she had enticed me into her garden.

  ‘Don’t be afraid,’ Signorina Leonelli said. ‘I am a courtesan because my mother died when I was just a child. I was forced to take up her profession or starve to death. I would never force anyone to do the same against their will. You’re lovely – you would do well if that’s what you wanted – but I think by your face that’s not what you want.’

  I shook my head.

  ‘What do you want, Pascalina?’

  I thought of the kind young man who had given me the coin, and his house in the alleyway with the flowerpots on the sill and the carpet on the washing line, and the glimpse I had seen of a shop like a treasure trove. ‘I want a home. And a man to love me and only me.’

  ‘I can help you,’ Signorina Leonelli said. ‘But you must promise to pay the cost when the time comes.’

  A week later, I waited on the Rialto Bridge with a bunch of meadow daisies in my hand. I had washed my face and my hair in the well in the centre of the campo, and it hung down my back in soft red curls. A few other men approached me, thinking I wanted to sell my body, but I spurned them angrily. I was waiting for the young man who had given me the coin.

  He came at last. He was tall and handsome, with dark curls and a noble nose, dressed in a fine red doublet. I went forward shyly, holding out my flowers. ‘Buy my daisies, kind sir?’

  His eyes crinkled in amusement. ‘What is your name?’ he asked me as he fished in his pocket for a coin.