by Mary Hoffman
The Baron was eager to hear whatever the man had to say; as an experienced huntsman, he could sense that the prey was almost his.
‘Whoever you are, tell me what you know about the sheep farmer and his moneylending,’ he commanded.
‘I am a younger son myself,’ the man began nervously. ‘And I was unwise with the allowance I had from my father. Gaming, drinking, women – your lordship knows how it is.’
The Baron nodded encouragingly and poured the man some wine, even though he despised anyone who did not live within his means, whatever they were. He had the good fortune of never having been short of money for his needs and he had husbanded his land and resources well. There would be more to leave to Silvano than Bartolomeo da Montacuto had received from his father.
‘Well,’ said the informer. ‘I heard through the grapevine that there was a man in the city who would lend money at interest, even though it was against the law. When one is desperate, one will do anything. I was ashamed of my debts and did not want my father to find out about them, so I went to this man.’
‘And he was?’
‘Tommaso the sheep farmer. He had a lucrative second business in lending money illegally. Because the loans were without security, he could and did charge extortionate rates of interest – thirty per cent and more. I was soon in even more difficulty.’
‘How did you extricate yourself?’ asked the Baron, noticing that the man was reasonably well clad and did not look ill-fed.
‘I had a stroke of luck,’ said the informer, bitterly. ‘My father died.’
He stopped to drink and Montacuto could see he was hiding the tears that had sprung to his eyes. He wiped his mouth on his sleeve, pulled himself together and continued.
‘There was just enough money for me to pay Tommaso off. I thought I was a free man at last, even though a poor one. I had used all my patrimony and was without work. My family . . . no one had needed to earn his living before but I had wasted all my inheritance on old debts contracted when I was young and foolish and the interest charged by the sheep farmer had made matters worse. Still, at least I could hold my head up with my family and I began privately to seek honest work.’
‘What happened?’
‘Tommaso came to me and said that if I did not find him more debtors, he would tell my mother and older brother what my past had been.’
The Baron held his breath; he could smell his quarry now.
‘When you have lived the life I did, you know who is gaming too deep and spending money he does not have. It did not take long for me to find another youngest son who was in debt.’
‘And that was?’
‘Are you sure that my name can be kept out of this?’
‘I do not know your name,’ said the Baron. ‘You will be paid well for this information and you may have to repeat it to the Council. But if the man you name today proves to be Tommaso’s murderer, he will not be a future danger to you. You can remain under my protection until his execution.’
Montacuto knew that he risked scaring away his prey but it was a calculated risk; he sensed that this disgraced man longed to redeem himself and he was giving him a chance.
‘I do not wish him ill,’ said the informer. ‘I only wish he had killed Tommaso before I fell into his clutches. Or that I had had the courage to do what he did. The moneylender was evil, fattening himself on the misery of others. But it isn’t right that your lordship’s son should suffer when he is innocent.’
‘The man’s name?’ pressed Montacuto.
‘Gervasio de’ Oddini.’
The Baron let out a great breath of relief. He poured himself some wine and offered the informer more. At this moment he felt like clutching him to his breast and kissing him on both cheeks.
‘De’ Oddini?’ he said, as casually as he could manage.
‘Gervasio, the youngest son,’ said the man. Now that he had named him, it seemed that his tongue had been loosened and he couldn’t tell Baron Montacuto enough. ‘I knew he was in debt and I happened to tell him one day in the inn that I knew a way he could borrow money. He knew about the interest – I didn’t deceive him – but he was desperate, as desperate as I had been.’
‘You know that he is about to marry the moneylender’s widow?’
‘Yes. That was another reason I was willing to come and see you. It’s not right. I can understand his killing the old bloodsucker, but it doesn’t seem right he should take the man’s wife and money as well.’
‘And you know that he is the murderer?’
‘I’m almost certain. You see, Tommaso had a list of debtors, how much money he had lent and what the repayments had been. All of us who were in his clutches knew about that list. He never let it off his body except when he had it out to make marks on it.’
‘It was not found on him when he was killed.’
‘No. The murderer knew exactly where to find it and took it after his dagger pierced Tommaso’s heart.’
‘Except that it was not his dagger,’ said the Baron grimly. ‘It was my son’s.’
‘De’ Oddini had time to retrieve only one thing.’
The list would have implicated him, and the dagger my son,’ said the Baron. ‘That would not have been a real choice to a man like Gervasio.’
‘He must have made it in an instant but he was in too deep. He had killed Tommaso to cancel his debt and he needed that list.’
‘How do you know this?’
‘The night of the murder, Gervasio was in the inn. He was excited and was drinking heavily. He claimed to be upset about your son’s exile. ‘It looks bad for my friend,’ he kept saying. But as the night wore on – and he was buying all the drinks, this young man with debts – he mentioned one or two other names on the list as possible suspects.’
‘Did all of the debtors know each other’s names?’
‘No. Tommaso was very secretive about it. I didn’t know any others apart from Gervasio, of course, because I had introduced him myself. But I was suspicious when he mentioned other debtors by name because he wouldn’t have known any either – unless he had the list.’
‘And who were they?’
The informer mentioned two names, one of which was one of the debtors the Baron had tracked down himself. He sat back, satisfied. This was enough to convict Gervasio and bring back Silvano.
‘Thank you,’ he said. ‘You have given me back my greatest treasure.’
It was hard to say which of them was the more nervous. Abbot Bonsignore had offered to be present at their meeting but both Isabella and Anselmo had preferred to face each other alone. It was a meeting that both of them had known would happen ever since they had seen each other in the friary yard at Giardinetto.
All through the earlier conference with the Abbot, Isabella had been distracted, thinking of what was to come. Brother Anselmo had been in the colour room, making terra verde again; it was the most soothing job he knew. But after Nones, he got the message from the Abbot that Isabella was ready to see him.
They met in the Abbot’s cell. When Anselmo entered, they were both flustered, not knowing how to greet each other. Isabella offered him her hand and he took it as if he would like to kiss it but thought better of it. She said ‘Domenico,’ by mistake, even though she had been practising ‘Brother Anselmo’ in her head for hours.
‘This is extremely awkward,’ said Anselmo, after they were both seated. ‘I never expected to see you again.’
‘And yet Giardinetto is not far from Gubbio,’ said Isabella. ‘You must have thought about that when you accepted a place here.’
Anselmo acknowledged it. ‘I felt safe from any encounter as long as I could avoid visiting my old town. I never dreamed that you would come here.’
‘And was it so very terrible to see me? Have I changed so much?’ asked Isabella in a small
voice.
‘It is precisely because you have not changed at all, except to become even more beautiful, that it was – is – so very terrible,’ said Anselmo seriously.
‘So, you still have some feelings for me?’
‘More than any friar should have for a woman.’
Isabella sensed her fate sounding in her ears like a tolling bell.
‘You don’t ask about my feelings for you,’ she said.
‘I have no right,’ said Anselmo. ‘I cannot ask for what might be a balm to my ears as a layman, since I am a religious and have made binding vows.’
‘It is not unheard of for a man to leave the religious life, even after he is professed,’ said Isabella.
‘And is that what you would have me do?’
She was silent, unable to speak.
‘You have no idea,’ said Anselmo, bitterly, ‘what I have been through to rid myself of my love for you. Do you think it is easy for a man to make those vows I have made to Saint Francis and to God? Poverty was not a great trial, though it has sometimes irked me not to have my own books. I have continued my scholarship through the library here and at my previous houses. Obedience has been harder – you know I was not a very compliant man even from my youth. But I have wrestled with it and submitted myself to the Order and to my Abbot. Bonsignore has made that easy here.’
He got up and walked restlessly round the small room, so that his back was to her and his voice muffled when he spoke again.
‘But chastity! I had to give up my dearest hopes of our love and come into the brotherhood while I was young and lusty, knowing that you spent every night in bed with that man. Night after night I wrestled in agony with my thoughts of the two of you together!’
Isabella could not bear it.
‘Stop,’ she implored him. ‘Do not torment yourself and me. Every night that I spent with Ubaldo, and believe me they became less and less frequent as the years went by, was as much a torment to me as it was to you. You can’t believe that I ever came to love him, or to enjoy his embraces!’
‘It does not matter,’ said Anselmo. ‘Men are different from women. It was not desire I was struggling with, at least not alone. It was jealousy. Had you loved Ubaldo and rejected me for him, I might have found it easier to bear and perhaps to forget you but, as it was, I could only suffer.’
‘My poor Domenico,’ said Isabella.
‘But I did suffer and I offered my suffering to God,’ he continued. ‘I battled through the stormy seas of longing and jealousy for years and at last came into calm water. I am now reconciled to my loss and to my life as a religious. I no longer suffer in body or mind.’
‘So you do not wish to come back to me?’
‘I cannot.’
‘Then I shall not mention it again,’ said Isabella. She struggled to contain the grief that threatened to overwhelm her.
Brother Anselmo was no more composed. Several times it seemed as if he would say more but in the end he sat with his eyes cast down and it was the widow who brought their interview to an end. She rose and went to the door.
‘Goodbye, Brother Anselmo,’ she said. ‘I see that Domenico is gone for ever.’
She did not look back or she would have seen Anselmo stretched prostrate on the cold floor, like a man who had barely survived an ordeal by torture.
Michele da Cesena pondered what to do for a long time. At last, he sent a message to Abbot Bonsignore at Giardinetto.
‘The friary needs cleansing of the devils within it. I am sending to Giardinetto a most precious relic. There have come to me at Assisi the remains of the Blessed Egidio, one of the first companions of Saint Francis, and I wish to see them buried with due honour and ceremony. The brotherhood will pay for an appropriate casket and I shall myself accompany the blessed bones to Giardinetto before they are interred here in Assisi.
This will go some way to purifying the friary of the evil within. I should also like to interview Brother Anselmo again. This visit and the arrival of the casket will take place within the next few days. No time must be lost in exorcising the devils from Giardinetto.’
The Abbot was overwhelmed when he read this letter. The Minister General was doing them a very great honour in letting the bones of the Blessed Egidio rest at Giardinetto even for a few hours and he did not doubt their effectiveness in ridding the friary of the evil that had taken up residence there. But he was worried by the reference to Anselmo. It seemed as if the Colour Master’s problems were piling up.
Monna Isabella was getting better at hiding her feelings; she did not give way to them until she was alone in her private sitting room. She had been to see Chiara after her interview with Brother Anselmo and even then had managed to appear calm and in control.
‘Have you thought any more about my offer, Chiara?’ she asked. Isabella never called her Orsola; that was one of the things the girl liked about her.
Chiara had indeed thought a lot about going to live with Isabella. Silvano had not asked her to stay, not to leave Giardinetto. How could he? For, if she were to stay it would have to be as a sister, eventually a professed one, and such a person could not be subject to the whim of a sixteen-year-old boy, no matter how big his grey eyes or how long his black lashes.
No, she must decide her own fate without reference to whatever might happen to Silvano.
‘I think I should like to come and live with you very much, Madama,’ she said.
‘But that is wonderful!’ said Isabella. ‘The best thing that has happened today.’
‘Only . . .’
‘Only?’
‘Not just yet, if you will forgive me,’ said Chiara impulsively. ‘I don’t want to seem ungrateful but I should like to stay here until I know that everyone is safe. I mean Mother Elena and the sisters.’
‘And the brothers, of course,’ said Isabella with a wan smile.
‘Yes, the brothers too,’ said Chiara, suddenly very interested in her feet.
‘I understand, child,’ said Isabella quietly. ‘I too fear for the safety of those I love at Giardinetto. Come to me in Gubbio when the murderer has been found and dealt with and we shall be women of business together. You shall find your brother in my house from time to time. He has agreed to be my business manager.’
‘Bernardo?’ said Chiara, amazed. But already she could see herself, dressed in fine gowns giving orders to the brother who had abandoned her to the grey sisters of Giardinetto. It was a mean thought and she repressed it; it just showed how unsuited she really was to life as a nun. But Isabella’s news certainly gave an added piquancy to her offer.
It was not until Isabella was alone that the effort of the day’s scenes fell with all their weight on her and she wept as she had when she and Domenico had first been separated. She still loved him just as much; the white hairs among the brown and his thin drawn face excited only compassion and tenderness in her. If he was not exactly as he had been, then neither was she. And they both knew who was to blame for that.
She did not really believe that Domenico, Brother Anselmo as she must learn to think of him, had ceased to love her either. That was what made their separation even harder to bear. She felt, as she often had in dreams, that something exquisite had been dashed away from her lips at the moment of its enjoyment.
Her body ached as if a carriage had run over her bones and her head hurt. She sent for vinegar and got her maid to bathe her temples but it gave her little ease. In vain did she try to rest that night; sleep would not come.
In some ways it would have been easier if Ubaldo still lived. If they had found out that her old love now lived nearby, it would have made no difference; Isabella would still have been bound to the merchant. But – now that her long years of servitude were over and she would be free to marry again after a decent interval – to find him now! It was too cruel.
&nb
sp; She fell at last into an exhausted doze, worn out by grief and dry of all tears.
‘What are you making?’ asked Simone.
He had a rare half hour away from his frescoes and was wandering alone in the complex of buildings that made up the Basilica and its attached friar house. In a workshop he had come across Teodoro, a goldsmith whom he knew slightly from Siena.
The goldsmith was measuring sheets of crystal.
‘Good evening, Simone,’ he said. ‘It’s a commission at short notice. Michele da Cesena has ordered it himself for a coffin.’
‘The Minister General is dying?’ asked Simone.
‘No, no, certainly not. At least not as far as I know, Heaven preserve him,’ said Teodoro. ‘This is for the remains of the Blessed Egidio. I must have it ready within days so that the holy bones can be transported to Giardinetto.’
‘To Giardinetto? Why? Surely they will not bury such a sacred relic there?’
‘I have no idea. A humble craftsman doesn’t ask questions when the great Michele da Cesena gives him an order.’
‘I know what you mean,’ said Simone. ‘But perhaps it is in order to cleanse and purify the friary. You know there have been murders there?’
‘Yes, I heard,’ said Teodoro. ‘You think Assisi will lend the bones of the Blessed Egidio to the grey friars? And that the murders will stop?’
‘I hope so,’ said Simone. ‘Perhaps when the brothers are in the presence of so much sanctity, the murderer will be moved to repentance and will confess. I should like to see the devils driven out of Giardinetto.’
.
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
Death’s Head
Angelica’s father had made one rather feeble attempt to reassert his authority over her since her husband’s death.
‘You should by law come back to my house and bring your dowry with you,’ he said.
Angelica snorted. ‘And how much would that buy?’ she taunted him. ‘As I recall, you could scrape together very little to make your bargain with my husband. I was my own dowry and I shall revert to myself.’
