Bitter Greens

by Kate Forsyth

  The day came when the moon was round and as golden as a sequin, sewn to the silk of the sky, and the sorceress’s voice called from the base of the tower. Margherita let down her hair and braced herself as the sorceress clambered up the immense height. Her approach agitated the little birds, and they swooped about her head, shrieking. La Strega ducked her head, then, as she pulled herself up onto the windowsill, reached up and knocked the nest away. It tumbled down, spilling the baby birds. Although they flapped their tiny wings, squawking in terror, the baby birds could not fly, and they plummeted down into the blue abyss. The parent birds darted after them, their distraught cries filling the air.

  ‘No!’ Margherita cried, both hands flung up as if hoping to catch the falling birds. Her impetuous forward motion was halted by the cruel wrench of her hair, looped three times around the hook. She watched the nest and its precious cargo disappear, tears flooding her eyes.

  ‘What on earth is the matter?’ La Strega was genuinely puzzled.

  ‘The nest … the baby birds …’

  ‘It was in my way,’ she said, stepping down into the tower room. ‘Come now, don’t cry over a silly nest. The birds will build another one.’

  ‘It wasn’t a silly nest. It was their home. You shouldn’t have knocked it down.’

  ‘You shouldn’t be so rude. You don’t wish me to cut your rations again, do you?’

  ‘No!’ Margherita cried. ‘I’m sorry. I don’t mean to be rude. I was just sad about the baby birds.’

  ‘You must learn not to be so tender-hearted,’ La Strega said. She took the heavy coil of rope she had carried over her shoulder, tying one end to the hook and tossing the other down so her servant Magli could tie the first of many sacks to it. ‘The world is a cruel place, Petrosinella, and it wounds the weak.’

  ‘Yes, I know. I’m sorry.’

  ‘Wait till you see what I’ve brought you,’ she said, helping Margherita pull up the heavily weighted rope. ‘You’ll be so surprised.’

  Let it be a puppy, Margherita wished, crossing the fingers on both hands. Please, let it be a puppy.

  But the sorceress’s birthday present for Margherita was nine small terracotta pots, a sack of soil and some small calico sacks of seeds: parsley, basil, oregano, rosemary, thyme, chives, sage, wintercress and the little rampion bellflower that Margherita’s mother had always called rapunzel.

  A harvest of bitter greens for Margherita’s thirteenth birthday.

  The Abbey of Gercy-en-Brie, France – April 1697

  The bell rang, signalling the beginning of sext.

  I looked towards the convent irritably, not wanting to return to the vast gloomy church for yet another hour on my aching knees. But Sœur Seraphina was brushing the earth off her tools and laying them in her basket, drawing off her gloves, rising to her feet. ‘I’ll have to finish my story tomorrow. Hasn’t the morning flown? We’ve almost finished planting out the whole bed.’

  ‘Why? Why lock a little girl away like that? It seems … it seems so cruel,’ I burst out.

  I was remembering the times that my guardian, the Marquis de Maulévrier, had locked me in the hermit’s cave at the Château de Cazeneuve. I’d crouch in the bitter-cold darkness, my body bruised and aching from his birch rod, hating him with all my might. ‘I hope you’re smitten with boils all over,’ I’d rave. ‘I hope you’ll be plagued with gnats, and flies, and locusts, and cockroaches. I hope you’ll be trampled by a herd of stampeding pigs, and kicked by an incontinent camel. I … I’ll make you sorry. I’ll put scorpions in your bed. I’ll spit in your soup.’

  Eventually, I would run out of curses and threats, and sit rocking in the darkness, furious with my mother for allowing herself to be taken away, furious with myself for caring so much. Then the tears would come, a gale of sorrows. I’d still be crying when Nanette would unlock the door and creep in, bringing me a handkerchief – I had always lost my own – and a warm shawl, and some wild-boar saucisson. ‘Don’t cry, Bon-bon, it’s all right. The Marquis is praying. He’ll be on his knees for hours. You run through the secret passage and play in the caves, but listen out for the bell. M’sieur Alain will ring it when the Marquis comes down. I’ll make sure you’re locked up tight when the bastard comes looking for you.’

  ‘Thank you,’ I’d sniffle and wind my arms about Nanette’s neck to kiss her cheek, and then I’d be off, running wild in the caves and the forest.

  What must it have been like to have been locked in one small room for years and years? What must it have been like to find the skeletons of other girls in the tower’s cellar and to know that their hair was bound to yours? The very thought made me feel queasy.

  I had never forgiven the Marquis de Maulévrier for his cruelty, nor had I ever understood what demons drove him to treat my sister and me so. How much more mysterious were the motives of that long-ago sorceress.

  ‘Why would she do such a thing?’ I said more softly.

  A troubled expression crossed Sœur Seraphina’s face. ‘I think … I think she was afraid.’

  ‘Afraid? Afraid of what?’

  ‘Afraid of time,’ Sœur Seraphina answered quietly.

  LAMENT

  … so hold me,

  my young dear, hold me.

  Put your pale arms around my neck.

  Let me hold your heart like a flower

  lest it bloom and collapse.

  Give me your skin

  as sheer as a cobweb,

  let me open it up

  and listen in and scoop out the dark.

  Give me your nether lips

  all puffy with their art

  and I will give you angel fire in return.

  ‘Rapunzel’

  Anne Sexton

  THE WHORE’S BRAT

  Venice, Italy – August 1504

  My true name is not, of course, Selena Leonelli. Nor is it La Strega Bella, though it pleases me to be called that.

  I was baptised Maria, like most little girls born in Venice in the year 1496. I had no last name, unless it was Maria the Whore’s Brat, Maria the Little Bastard.

  It is true that my mother was a whore. Not one of those poxy streetwalkers that plied their trade around the Bridge of Tits. She was a cortigiana onesta, a courtesan as much sought after for her wit and charm and cleverness as for her sexual allure. She was paid to sing and play music, to compose poetry, to dance, and to delight with her conversation. And for sex, of course.

  Sex paid for our palazzo on the Grand Canal. Sex paid for the cook and the footmen and the gondolier, who piloted my mother to parties in our own glossy black gondola. Sex paid for the maids, who silently picked up my mother’s fallen silk stockings and who changed the stained sheets every day.

  I was dressed like a little princess, in white satin sewn with pearls. I had a chest full of nothing but shoes. Red velvet mules. Boots of purple silk embroidered with flowers. Slippers sewn all over with silver sequins so my feet sparkled as I danced.

  When men came to visit my mother, I was always taken to my own rooms by my nursemaid. This made me angry. I’d scream and throw things at my nursemaid till my mother rustled in to console me. ‘You must not be angry,’ she’d say, smoothing back my golden-red hair gently. ‘They’re nothing to me. You’re the one that I love. No man will ever be able to come between us.’

  The man who came most often was tall and lean with a pointed beard, a thin flourishing moustache and curly hair perfumed with precious oils. His name was Zusto da Grittoni. I hated him. As soon as his gondola drew up at our water-gates, a servant would come running to hustle me away. I was always glad to go. I did not like the way he looked at me. His eyes reminded me of a cobra I had once seen swaying to the tune of a snake charmer at the Piazza San Marco.

  My mother was always restless and uneasy when he was there. I would hear her shrill laugh and the clunking of her chopines on the marble as she hurried back and forth, offering him food, pouring him wine, strumming her lute and launching into song. ‘Enough,’ he
would snap. ‘I don’t come here for your voice. Come to bed.’

  Her steps would slow as they climbed the stairs to her bedroom. Slower and slower she would climb, and he would tell her to hurry up. Then I would hear her door open and shut. At that point, my nursemaid would put her fingers in her ears, but I would always listen. Deep guttural grunts from him. The occasional sharp cry from her. Afterwards, my mother would stay in bed for hours. I would crawl in beside her and we’d lie in silence, my mother trying not to let me see her wiping away tears with the corner of her silken sheet.

  My mother was very beautiful. Her name was Bianca. It suited her well for her hair was silver-gilt, that rare colour so prized by the Venetians. Most of each day was spent maintaining her beauty. Bianca washed herself in white wine in which snakeskins had been boiled, rubbed crushed lily bulbs on her face to make her skin paler and burnt away her hairline with caustic lime, to make her forehead look higher.

  Most sunny afternoons, she and I would sit on the roof terrace of our palazzo, wearing broad-brimmed straw hats woven without a crown, so we could pull our hair through the hole and spread it out across the straw brim, hanging down the backs of our chairs. My mother would anoint her hair with a paste made from lemon juice, urine and sulphur; it made her hair shine like the palest of golden silks.

  It made my hair frizzy and brassy. So my mother made up a mixture of carrot and mangelwurzel juice and soaked my hair in that, coaxing me out of my fit of temper by promising it would make my hair shine like new copper. It did.

  My mother knew all sorts of strange things like that. She had grown up in the country with her grandfather, in a garden filled with fruit trees, vegetables and herbs. Chickens scratched in the straw, there was a dovecote filled with plump birds, and a goat that kept the turf in the orchard smooth, so fallen quinces were easy to find. Six beehives sat on trestles under a pomegranate tree, and her grandfather would bid them good morning each day on his way to collect the eggs.

  ‘Oh, I miss my nonno’s garden,’ Bianca told me. ‘From dawn to dusk, we were out working in the fresh air. He always said that is why my hair was so fair, because of the sunshine I soaked up as a child. He knew everything there was to know about the earth and the seasons and animals and plants.’

  ‘I wish we could go there.’ I was allowed outside so rarely, and I always had to keep close to my mother, holding her hand so I wouldn’t get lost in the crowds. I had never seen a tree, or a lawn of soft velvety grass, or a bank of sweet-smelling flowers. Venice was a city of stone and water, the only green the slime that grew where one sank into the other.

  ‘So do I.’ She gazed over the jumble of red roofs and pale domes and towers.

  ‘Why can’t we go?’

  ‘My nonno is dead. He died before you were born.’ Bianca got to her feet as she spoke, holding out her hand to me. ‘Come on, it’s time to go in, Maria.’

  ‘But it’s still sunny.’

  ‘I am attending a party at the Doge’s tonight. I must get ready.’

  The maids poured hot scented water into my mother’s hipbath, and we sat in it together, naked, washing the paste out of each other’s hair. ‘Your hair is so beautiful,’ she said. ‘Like cloth of gold. If only we could weave it, we’d make a fortune.’

  ‘I wish I had fair hair like yours.’

  ‘Everyone in Venice has blonde hair,’ she replied with a laugh, ‘even if they weren’t born with it. Yours is as rare and precious as amber.’

  She rose, cascading water over me, and the maids dried her and dressed her and anointed her with perfume. I sat forgotten in the cooling water as they braided her hair with pearls and silver ribbons.

  I asked her again about my grandfather the next day, as we lay in her bed together. To my surprise, my mother answered me.

  ‘Nonno was a benandante.’ Her voice was full of pain.

  ‘But what does that mean? A good walker? Do you mean … a gypsy? A vagabond?’

  ‘No, no. It means … someone who travelled away in their dreams. It’s hard to explain. You see, Nonno was born with a caul over his face. It’s a thin veil of skin that the midwife must cut away carefully if the baby is to live. He had a scar on his face from where she tore it away. He used to carry his caul in a little bag about his neck. Sometimes, he showed it to me. It was like a crumpled piece of translucent silk, like a partlet.’ She had turned to face me, her face a pale oval in the dimness. Her fair hair was strewn all over the pillow. I nestled my own face closer to my mother’s, the copper strands of my hair mingling with hers.

  ‘It was considered a great blessing to be born with a caul,’ my mother said. ‘It was said that caul-bearers would never drown and had a special affinity with water. Caul-bearers could travel away from their bodies at night, while they were sleeping, and so they could battle the forces of evil in the world and keep the rest of the village safe from harm. That is why they were called the good walkers, because four times a year, on the Ember Nights, they would leave their bodies behind and go to fight the malandanti, the evil walkers.’

  ‘What does that mean, the Ember Nights?’

  She hesitated, her breath warm on my cheek. ‘They were the days when saints and martyrs used to fast and do penance, and the benandanti would fast too, and eat nothing but bitter herbs and drink nothing but pure water. Four times a year, at the changing of the seasons. Autumn into winter was called Shadowfest, and was the night to predict the future and communicate with the dead. Winter into spring was called the Feast of the Wolf, and was a time to celebrate and make love. Spring into summer was called Lady’s Day, and was a time to be handfasted and to dance about the maypole. Summer into autumn was called Cornucopia, when we celebrated the harvest and enjoyed the fruits of the earth. They were days when the powers of magic, both good and evil, would be at their peak. My grandfather would fast and pray and then sleep, and his soul would leave his body and go forth in the shape of a wolf to do battle with the forces of darkness.’

  I stared at my mother, eyes wide, and repeated the words in my head. Ember Nights. Shadowfest. The Feast of the Wolf. Lady’s Day. Cornucopia. The shape of a wolf. Battle with the forces of darkness. Every phrase was a charm filled with magic and danger.

  ‘Who did your nonno fight with?’

  ‘Strega e stregone.’

  Witches and warlocks. I shivered at the thought, half thrilled, half terrified.

  ‘If the benandanti won, the harvest would be safe, and we would all eat well and be prosperous for the year. If the malandanti won, there would be famine and plague. My parents and my grandmother died one year when the good walkers lost. I don’t think my grandfather ever forgave himself.’

  There was a long silence. I was seething with questions, but my mother was quietly weeping and I did not know what to do. I would have liked to have comforted her, but I was afraid that she would turn away from me and I’d have lost my chance to know more. After a long while, I said, ‘So what happened?’

  ‘That same year, the Pope … the Pope passed a law. He set the Inquisition to hunt down witches.’ My mother’s voice failed, and she took a deep breath. ‘I suppose many people were angry that the plague had come again. Fingers were pointed, wild accusations made. My nonno … oh, Maria, he was the world’s gentlest man. If you could only have seen him delivering a kid or binding up a bird’s broken wing.’

  ‘They arrested him?’

  She nodded. ‘I was wild with fear and grief. I went to everyone I knew, begging for help. The problem was … he did not know any of his other benandanti … he only ever met them in the spirit. He said their leader was a red-haired man who ran in the shape of a lion … so I went searching for any red-haired man I could find … that was how I met your father.’

  ‘My father?’ I sat up, staring at her. My mother had never once mentioned my father before. It was as if I had been an immaculate conception. Any time I had dared ask her, she would only droop and shake her head and tell me that he was long gone, and it was no use breaking
my heart over him, as she had done.

  My mother sighed. ‘Yes. He promised to help me but it was too late. They had tortured my poor nonno. Despite all they did to him, he refused to admit that he had any pact with the devil, or ever stole a child and ate it, or any of the other terrible things they accused him of. He was a good walker, he told them, working for the powers of light. They let him go in the end, so at least he did not burn at the stake, but his health was broken. He died a few weeks later.’

  ‘What did you do to the men who tortured him?’

  My mother looked at me in surprise. ‘Why, nothing. What could I do?’

  ‘I would have cursed them,’ I said. ‘Or changed shape into a wolf, like my grandfather did, and hunted them down.’

  ‘I cannot change shape,’ she said. ‘Only those born with a caul can do that. And it was a power to be used for good, not for hunting down men who work in the service of the Pope.’

  ‘But they killed your nonno.’

  ‘I know. But what could I do? I was only sixteen, and although I didn’t know it yet, I was growing you inside my belly. Oh, I was sick. And so sad. And I didn’t have a home any more. After my grandfather was accused, the local lord confiscated our house. I was driven from the door.’

  ‘But what about my father? Couldn’t he help you?’

  ‘He had gone to sail the seven seas,’ she told me. ‘It was not safe for men like him to stay when the Inquisition was in town.’

  ‘My father … he was a benandante too?’

  She gave a derisive snort. ‘So he said. I do not believe it though. No, the spell he laid on me did nothing but harm. If he was a walker of the night, he was a malandante, that I assure you.’

  THE ROYAL THIRTY-NINE