Bitter Greens

by Kate Forsyth

  Venice, Italy – April 1590

  Pascalina bent and laid her head next to her daughter’s on the pillow. Their russet curls interwove, their soft breath mingled. Margherita was asleep, her thumb still in her mouth.

  ‘My darling, my daisy,’ Pascalina whispered. ‘I can’t lose you. I can’t.’

  She wept for a while, then rose and went to the window. It was a clear moonlit night. The courtesan’s garden and palace seemed forged in curlicues of wrought iron and silver. Pascalina looked down upon them, wishing with all her heart she had the power to summon fire to incinerate what she hated. Yet smoke did not begin to cloud the luminous sky. Flames did not bring gaudy colour to that monochromatic view. All was still and quiet.

  I must save my daughter, she thought.

  Weakness suddenly overwhelmed her. She had to lean forward, gripping the windowsill with both hands, her head hanging down. When the dizziness passed, Pascalina lifted her head and saw the white bell-shape of a woman standing in the moonlit garden, looking up at her. La Strega. The whore. The witch.

  She slammed the shutters closed, but it was too late. The witch had seen her.

  Pascalina stood, unmoving. Moonlight struck through the shutters, striping her face and body with bars of black and white. She felt that if she stood still, not even breathing, she could freeze time. Margherita would sleep peacefully forever, her thumb tucked in her mouth. Alessandro would lie waiting for her in their bed, forever. Their home would float in a little enchanted bubble, outside time, safe from harm.

  Then the bells of the city rang out, marking the midnight hour. Pascalina gasped a breath. The earth seemed to tilt under her feet. She groped out blindly, took a stumbling step forward. Time ratcheted forward.

  Pascalina fell on her knees by her daughter’s bed. There was just enough light for her to see the curve of Margherita’s face, eyelashes fanned against her cheek, her russet-coloured hair strewn over the pillow. Pascalina bent her head to kiss Margherita’s soft little hand.

  Blood had seeped through the white bandage, causing a stain on the tip of Margherita’s finger like a wayward flower. Or a sprig of parsley.

  PIETÀ

  Venice, Italy – April 1590

  ‘Margherita, wake up, darling. Wake up.’

  Margherita stirred sleepily and opened her eyes. Her mother knelt by the bed, shading a candlestick so its light did not pierce her eyes too cruelly. The room was otherwise dark.

  ‘You need to get up. Come on, my darling daisy-girl. That’s right. Sit up. Here, I’ll put your dress on for you. Lift up your arms.’

  When Margherita was dressed, her mother bundled her up in her cloak, pulling down the hood to hide her hair.

  ‘You’ll want Bella-Stella.’ Pascalina caught up the beloved little rag and pressed it into her hand.

  ‘But, Mama, it’s night. What’s happening? Where are we going?’

  ‘Sssh, piccolina. We’re going on an adventure. But we must be quiet. Can you walk downstairs in the dark?’

  Margherita nodded. Her mother blew out the candle, leaving a question mark of smoke in the air. They went down the stairs, feeling their way. Pascalina kept a tight hold on Margherita’s hand.

  Alessandro was waiting for them in the courtyard where he baked his papier-mâché masks. Mist was swirling through the bars of the water-gate, which Alessandro held open. Faint splashing sounds came from the canal outside. ‘The boat’s here. Come quickly. We don’t want anyone to see us leave.’

  Peering through the darkness, Margherita recognised the long curved shape of a gondola bobbing up and down on the canal, with somebody standing towards the back, bending over a long oar. The gondolier turned and smiled at Margherita. It was Zio Eduardo. Margherita smiled back at him, though she was troubled. Why was her uncle here in the middle of the night? Were they going to visit her nonna?

  Pascalina climbed in, then lifted Margherita in. ‘Quiet, mia cara.’

  Alessandro lowered the water-gate and locked it, the key grating loudly in the lock. He winced and whispered, ‘I’ve been meaning to oil that for months.’

  ‘Sssh,’ Pascalina hissed back.

  Slowly, the gondola glided forward, carving apart the mist. ‘Will we ever be able to come home?’ Alessandro stared back at the little house where he had been born.

  ‘Not while La Strega lives,’ Pascalina answered.

  ‘Mama, where are we going?’

  ‘I don’t know.’

  The dark walls on either side fell away, and the gondola nosed into the Grand Canal. Margherita could see the faint shape of domes and spires, dark against the night sky, and hear the gentle lapping of water against stone.

  Suddenly, a beam of light was shone right into her eyes. Margherita shrank back. Pascalina gasped and wrapped her arms tightly around her. Alessandro swore. ‘Go, go!’ Zio Eduardo thrust the boat forward.

  But dark figures crowded on either side of the gondola, seizing the prow and dragging the boat close to the pavement. A high-pitched voice squeaked, ‘Get the child.’

  ‘No!’ Pascalina hugged Margherita as close as she could, but hands were on her, wresting her away. Grunts and cries. A thud. A splash. Her mother screamed.

  ‘Keep it quiet!’ the squeaky voice ordered. ‘We want no scandal.’

  The gondola rocked wildly as the giant stepped onboard, shoving Pascalina away with one hand and seizing Margherita with the other. Pascalina screamed and lunged for her. Margherita punched and flailed and kicked with all her might, but it was as if she was punching a mattress stuffed with wool. None of her thumps had any impact at all, and the giant with the moon-face seemed not to notice. He threw Margherita over his shoulder and stepped out of the gondola.

  ‘Margherita!’ Pascalina desperately tried to move the drifting gondola back towards the shore, scooping with both hands, sobbing and gasping.

  ‘Mama! Papa!’

  The giant shoved something into her mouth, cutting off her screams. ‘You be quiet now, else I’ll knock you to kingdom come.’

  Margherita whimpered behind her gag and beat the giant’s back with her fists. He slapped her across the bottom. ‘Keep still.’

  Margherita strained her neck, trying to see as the giant strode away. Nothing but stone walls, stone ground, stone sky, a never-ending maze of stone.

  Some time later, the giant dragged away the gag and made her drink some nasty-tasting liquid. Margherita coughed and tried to spit it out, but the giant held her mouth shut with his enormous hands and she had to swallow. The liquid seared her throat and gullet but warmed her stomach. She was put into a gondola and some dark cloth flung over her face. She lay still, sick with fear and the endless rocking of the waves, as the world she knew slipped away from her.

  Hours seemed to pass as Margherita bobbed in and out of sleep, her sleeping and waking moments filled with nightmares. Each time she woke, choking, to darkness and despair, she would try to scuttle back into oblivion.

  Eventually, Margherita came to full consciousness. Her head ached, and she felt sick. ‘Mama,’ she whimpered, but the gag was tight in her mouth, her tongue was dry and swollen, and she made barely a sound. The boat was still rocking, but the motion was different. The cloth over her had slipped sideways, and Margherita managed to lift her hand and draw it away so she could breathe more easily. Light stabbed her eyes. It was daylight. She raised herself and looked over the edge of the gondola. Grey water stretched away, as far as she could see. She gave a little sob and shrank back. She had never seen so much water. She must have travelled across the sea, she thought, far, far away from her own home. Terror filled her.

  She heard voices.

  ‘Are you sure she cannot know which way you came, Magli?’ a woman said. Margherita caught her breath at the sweet familiar tones of the woman her father had called a witch and a whore. La Strega.

  ‘She couldn’t possibly know,’ the giant replied in his squeaky voice. ‘But hush, she’s stirring. Let’s take her in before she wakes.’

/>   The cloth was drawn away from her, and the giant lifted her up and set her on the jetty. Margherita had a dazzled impression of a wide stone square, with the dim shape of domes and spires and roofs looming out of the mist behind. Water lapped, lapped, lapped at the stone wall.

  La Strega bent over, gently taking the gag from her mouth. ‘There, is that better?’

  Margherita shrank back fearfully.

  ‘Don’t be afraid, I won’t hurt you. Would you like a drink?’

  Margherita nodded. The giant gave her a silver flask and Margherita drank a mouthful. It was the same liquid as before, and she choked and almost spat it out. Her mouth and throat were so dry, though, and the giant’s round moon-face was so forbidding that Margherita swallowed it down.

  ‘Good girl,’ La Strega said. She was dressed in a sombre gown of midnight-blue satin, a stiff, wired lace collar framing her face and fanning out behind her head. Her hair was hidden behind a white coif and she wore a jewelled crucifix hanging about her neck. Nothing could be seen of her skin but her heart-shaped face. Only her golden eyes remained to remind Margherita of the woman who had bitten off the top of her finger.

  ‘Where’s my mama?’ she blurted out.

  ‘Why, I’m your mother now,’ La Strega said.

  Margherita shook her head, as much in bewilderment as in denial. She felt strange, as if the mist had drifted inside her ears and eyes and nostrils, filling her head with cloudy numbness.

  ‘One day, I will come and claim you as my daughter, and take you somewhere beautiful, where you will be safe from the world,’ La Strega said. ‘But you are still too young. So I have found somewhere for you to live till then. They will be kind to you and keep you safe. Come.’ She held out her hand, and after a moment’s hesitation Margherita took it. Safe, she thought dazedly. Then, with a sudden spurt of terror, But where’s my real mama?

  La Strega gripped her hand more tightly. ‘Do not dare defy me,’ she whispered, bending so her mouth was near Margherita’s ear. ‘If you do as you’re told, I will be kind to you, but if you resist, my fury will have no bounds.’

  Margherita looked down at the bloodstained bandage wrapped around her wounded finger and shivered. ‘But … what about my own mama and papa?’

  ‘They don’t want you any more.’

  The words cut Margherita cruelly. Tears welled up in her eyes. ‘That’s not true.’

  La Strega bent and kissed her, stroking away a lock of Margherita’s hair. ‘I’m so sorry. I know it hurts. But it’s better to know, isn’t it, than to always be wondering? They’d have lied to you, of course – people do. But the sooner you realise that you can never rely on other people, the better. Come on. Here we are.’

  As they had been talking, La Strega had been inexorably drawing Margherita across the square to a large, square, grey building with many small windows. A heavy wooden door was set into a low portico, with a bell hung beside it. At the base of the door was a small opening, just large enough to squeeze a large parcel through.

  La Strega rang the bell peremptorily.

  A wooden door grated open. A shadow fell upon Margherita’s face.

  She looked up and saw a figure all in black. A soft old face was framed in a white veil. ‘Can I help you, my daughter?’ she asked in a shaky old voice.

  ‘I have brought you an abandoned child. She has nowhere else to go.’

  ‘Oh, the poor child, the poor blessed child. Bring her in. I’ll call Suòra Eugenia.’

  Margherita was feeling sick and dizzy and afraid. She did not want to go through that heavy wooden door, with its iron bolt and lock. La Strega bent and whispered in her ear, ‘Remember what I said. Defy me and you will suffer. Do as I say and all will be well.’

  Trembling, Margherita obeyed the sharp tug on her hand and stepped forward through the door. The old nun closed it behind them, folded her hands in her sleeves and led them down a long cold corridor. Somewhere close by, a bell rang out. The nun opened a door and led them into a small room. An iron cot was set against the wall and a low fire burned in the grate. La Strega lifted Margherita and set her on the bed. ‘You’re weary, bambina. Why don’t you lie down?’

  Margherita obeyed. She felt strange, as if she was shrinking. The fog inside her head filled her whole body now. She shut her eyes. Where’s my mama? I want my mama. Tears seeped out from beneath her eyelids.

  A cool hand was laid on her brow. ‘Her family does not want her?’ a new voice said. Margherita opened her eyes and saw a tall figure in black, her face as still as if carved from pale stone. ‘She seems whole and unmarred. What is wrong with her that they choose to give her up?’

  ‘They are poor,’ the sorceress said. ‘And she is a wild unmanageable child, much given to fancies and temper tantrums.’

  Margherita thought dazedly, Who are they talking about? Not me? She struggled to sit up, to shake the mist from her brain.

  The nun frowned. ‘That does not seem reason enough to give away your own child.’

  ‘The father died, and the mother is all alone. She is struggling to make enough to even feed the child. You can see how thin and pale the child is.’

  The nun bent and circled Margherita’s wrist with her finger and thumb. ‘She is thin.’

  ‘I’m made that way,’ Margherita cried. ‘It’s not because my mama doesn’t feed me.’

  She remembered how her mother would shake her head as she piled another serving on Margherita’s plate. ‘It’s so unfair,’ Pascalina would say. ‘I only have to look at a plate of pasta and beans and I get fat, while my daisy-girl eats platefuls of it and stays as skinny as a stick. Where do you put it, piccolina?’

  She gasped with pain. ‘Where’s my mama? I want my mama.’

  ‘She refuses to believe her mother doesn’t want her any more,’ La Strega said. ‘If it wasn’t for me, the poor child would be out on the streets. Her mother was offered a job on the mainland, but her new employer didn’t want her if she had a child, so she simply packed and left, leaving the child to fend for herself.’

  ‘She did not. That’s not true.’ Margherita found the strength to sit up, but the two women discussing her at the end of the bed did not even glance her way. The old nun sitting beside her smiled at her sadly and stroked back her hair with one gnarled hand.

  ‘I thought that if you would take her for the next five or six years, I would offer her a job in my household,’ La Strega said. ‘She is too young now and too unruly. But I have great faith in your ability to tame the wildest of girls, Suòra Eugenia.’

  ‘You are too kind, Signorina Leonelli,’ the tall nun replied, rather drily.

  ‘I’m not wild. I’m not. Please, I shouldn’t be here! She took me … I want my mama.’

  ‘Poor child,’ the old nun said.

  Suòra Eugenia did not even glance her way. ‘What’s her name?’

  La Strega tilted her head to one side. ‘Mmmm. I believe it is Petrosinella.’

  ‘Little Parsley? The child is named Little Parsley?’ The old nun’s voice was sharp with incredulity.

  ‘Children are named after rosemary and angelica and clover, why not after parsley?’ There was a rich undercurrent of amusement in La Strega’s voice. ‘Besides, she has a birthmark shaped like a sprig of parsley on her left breast. No doubt she was named after that.’

  Margherita’s hand crept to her chest in bewildered surprise. How did the sorceress know about the birthmark? She tried to argue, but suddenly bile rose in her throat, sharp and sour. She leant over the side of the bed and vomited on the floor.

  The old nun jumped back, raising her black skirts. ‘Poor piccolina.’

  At the sound of her mother’s pet name in this stranger’s mouth, Margherita began to cry even more desperately. Sobs shook her body, making her retch again. ‘Suòra Gratiosa, will you tend to Petrosinella?’ Suòra Eugenia said. ‘Let us talk outside,’ she said to the sorceress.

  ‘Hush, hush, little one, all will be well,’ the old nun said, bringing a damp cl
oth to wash Margherita’s face. Margherita pushed her away, straining to listen to the quiet conversation in the hall, but all she caught were fragments.

  ‘She has been ill … you must pay no heed to her ravings … poor little thing doesn’t understand … not a florin to her name …’

  ‘She is not infectious?’

  ‘No, no, just under-nourished and ill-treated …’

  ‘She is thin, it is true, but I can see no signs of ill-treatment.’

  ‘Not all cruelty can be seen by the eyes.’

  ‘That is true, God knows. Yet surely she has other family that could take her in?’

  ‘Not a soul.’

  Not Nonna? Margherita thought in numb misery. Not Zia Donna and Zio Eduardo? Does no one want me?

  ‘I know I can trust you to keep her safe.’

  ‘We maintain strict enclosure at the Ospedale della Pietà …’

  ‘I do not want her hair cut … I’m prepared to make a generous donation …’ Margherita heard the faint chink of coins.

  ‘May God’s blessing be upon you.’

  ‘I will return for her in five years’ time … I expect her to be well versed in menial tasks …’

  The voices faded, as if they were walking away down the corridor. Margherita scrambled to her feet, meaning to try to escape, but the room spun into starry blackness. She reached out and grasped the bed, not understanding why her legs felt so weak.

  ‘Come, back into bed, Petrosinella,’ Suòra Gratiosa said.

  ‘That’s not my name. I’m Margherita!’ she sobbed.

  ‘You need to rest, Petrosinella. You’re not well. Back into bed.’

  ‘I want my mama,’ Margherita wept. ‘Where is she? Where’s Papa?’

  ‘I’m so sorry, little one, they’re gone.’

  ‘No!’ Margherita tried to run for the door, but the nun caught her and held her tightly. ‘I want my mama and papa. Where are they? That bad man hurt them. Oh, please, let me go. I need to find them … let me go.’

  The nun lifted her into the cold hard bed and Margherita began to weep heartbrokenly, calling for her parents. The nun soothed her as best she could, bringing her some medicine on a spoon. Margherita swallowed it, hardly noticing what she did. ‘Where’s Bella-Stella? I want Bella-Stella,’ she wept, curling herself up into a ball. But her beloved little rag had been lost.