by Mary Hoffman
‘It is up to me,’ he said to himself, his voice beginning to slur. ‘There is no one left in our family to avenge Ubaldo but me. His sons are too young. And I won’t let that so-called friar get away with murder.’
He called for his horse.
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CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
Mordant
The soldiers arrived from the Council before Angelica could reach the palazzo of the de’ Oddini family. But she was there in time to see them lead Gervasio away in manacles. He cast imploring looks at her and his father but did not, she noticed, protest his innocence.
‘On what evidence do you arrest him?’ begged Vincenzo.
‘Ask Baron Montacuto,’ said the Captain.
‘Montacuto? But then this is a trumped up case to get his own boy cleared,’ protested Vincenzo. ‘Don’t worry, Gervasio. I’ll have you out of prison within the hour.’
‘Look after Angelica,’ was all Gervasio said, looking his intended wife defiantly in the face.
Left alone, Vincenzo and Angelica were in a state of shock. The father instinctively believed in the son’s innocence and was all for going to the Palazzo Montacuto immediately. The beloved, though, had her reservations about the lover. She saw straightaway from the look on his face that he probably was her husband’s killer.
Angelica was under no illusions about Gervasio. She remembered that he had been friendly with the young man who had written the poem. And though the red flower had been gained by the one, it had been the other who had vigorously courted her. That was not the action of a true friend. If he could do that, he could just as easily have killed a man and put the blame on someone else. She didn’t doubt it.
Nevertheless she still wanted to marry him. He was her safe-conduct to a more elegant life and a way of putting her peasant origins behind her. There must be a way to rescue him from execution. But not at the cost of the Montacuto boy’s life. There was something sweet and natural about him in her memory that brought out a new maternal feeling in her.
‘Let us try the Baron,’ she agreed. ‘I shall go with you.’
The solemn procession had arrived at Giardinetto. The Abbot went to meet it with heavy heart. Although it would have been a sinful deception, he wished he could have kept the fact of Brother Valentino’s death from the Minister General. After his strictures last time, Bonsignore was still smarting.
He saw now that, as well as Michele da Cesena and his chaplain, there were four other friars from Assisi – and it looked as if the two painters had joined the group as well.
The Abbot and the Minister General performed a perfunctory embrace and then the four friars took the elaborate casket from the carriage and carried it on their shoulders to the chapel, as if the Blessed Egidio had died only the day before, like poor Brother Valentino, whose plain coffin already lay before the altar.
There were two trestles laid ready for the casket and the friars of Giardinetto filed in behind it, chanting the opening prayer of the Requiem Mass, as if willing the bones to do their work and flush out the murderer from their midst.
But nothing had happened by the end of the service, except for some heartfelt sobbing by some of the younger brothers.
When it was over, Valentino was laid next to Landolfo in the little cemetery. As the Minister General performed the committal, he looked around the graveyard and Bonsignore could tell he was thinking it too cramped for the needs of a house that was going to have a murder every week or so.
When Valentino was safely under the earth, the Assisi party visited the Abbot’s cell for refreshment. Simone and Pietro, the unofficial visitors, went to the colour room. Brother Anselmo suggested that all the other friars should take some fresh air while he spoke to the Sienese artists but Silvano stayed to talk to them.
‘This is a bad business,’ said Simone. ‘You must have some idea who’s doing this?’
‘I have had my suspicions,’ said Anselmo, much to Silvano’s surprise. The Colour Master certainly hadn’t shared them with him. ‘But I have no proof.’
‘You must be careful,’ said Pietro. ‘If the murderer suspects you know something, you will be in even greater danger.’
‘And you shouldn’t try to confront him by yourself,’ urged Simone, ‘or you will be his next victim. Go and tell Father Bonsignore once the visitation is over and let him help you.’
Anselmo was touched by their concern. ‘If I’m still here, I shall,’ he said.
‘Still here?’ said Silvano. ‘What do you mean?’
‘Father Bonsignore has told me that the Minister General wants another interview with me. I think he has me marked down as the murderer.’
‘But that’s ridiculous!’ said Silvano. ‘I thought he was supposed to be a good judge of men.’
‘Your loyalty is touching – all of you,’ said Anselmo. ‘But I think things are coming to a head here. If the Minister General orders me to Assisi, you must look out for the other brothers, Silvano. And our sisters nearby.’
‘Do the sisters know about Brother Valentino?’ asked Pietro.
‘The Abbot sent the stableman to tell them,’ said Anselmo. ‘He didn’t want any of us to leave the friary before the party came from Assisi. Mother Elena has locked and barred the doors. But I am not really afraid for them. The murderer hasn’t harmed any of them yet and it would be immediately noticed if someone other than myself as their chaplain left here to visit them.’
‘This is unbearable,’ said Silvano. ‘Do you really think the murderer will confess, because we have the Blessed Egidio’s bones?’
‘I know that Father Bonsignore hopes so. It is such a personal disgrace to him, what has happened here. And I know he fears that Michele da Cesena will remove him from office. Or disband the house, if the relics do not expurgate the sin.’
Brother Fazio’s head came round the door.
‘Excuse me, Brother Anselmo, gentlemen. Might I have some gold?’
‘You are still working on your Gospel?’ asked Anselmo, taking a key from his belt and going to a cupboard in the corner.
‘Of course,’ said Fazio, looking vaguely at the others. ‘God’s work must go on.’
‘You are gilding the letters?’ asked Simone. He was always interested in gold. ‘You use mordant gilding?’
Fazio nodded and focused on the painter.
‘Water, glair, a little chalk and a little honey,’ he said. ‘And then the finest slivers of gold.’
‘Why do they call it mordant?’ asked Silvano, interested in this new aspect of artistry, in spite of the horrors he had seen.
‘Because it bites,’ said Pietro unexpectedly clashing his strong teeth together, so that Silvano jumped. ‘The sticky mixture painted on to the page clings on to the gold like a dog to a bone.’
‘I could not have put it better myself,’ said Fazio. ‘But I believe you use gold in another way?’ he asked Simone.
‘Yes, we have reached that stage in the chapel,’ said Simone. ‘For the haloes of the saints, I use a set of punches in the soft gesso and then we paint it over with gold tin. It’s less fiddly than mordant gilding but it takes time.’
‘I’d like to see that,’ said Silvano. He suddenly longed to be in Assisi, thinking of nothing more distressing than colour and form and technique.
Simone patted him on the shoulder. ‘I’m sure you will.’
‘Ah, we each have our own mysteries,’ said Brother Fazio, taking the tiny packet of gold from Anselmo. ‘And I must get back to mine. I have a new chapter to prepare.’
Vincenzo de’ Oddini listened in despair to the damning evidence against his son. He could not maintain Gervasio’s innocence in the face of it. He was particularly shocked to learn of the boy’s debts. But he could not let him go to his certain death.
‘Please help him,’ he begged th
e Baron. ‘Consider if he were your own son.’
‘You dare to speak of my son,’ said Montacuto, ‘who languishes in exile while his mother and sisters waste away with grief because he can’t show his face in Perugia? It is your son who is responsible for that, stabbing the sheep farmer with Silvano’s dagger.’
‘I know. It was terrible. But think of the old friendship between our families. Our boys have always been close.’
‘It is not wise to remind me of that. What did their friendship mean to Gervasio when he stole my son’s dagger to do his dirty work with? Silvano looked up to your son as soon as he could walk. Do you imagine he would ever have done such a thing to him?’
‘But perhaps he did not mean to leave the weapon in the body and put the blame on Silvano?’
The Baron grunted. ‘If that is true, it makes it little better. But Gervasio intends to marry this – lady,’ he said, indicating Angelica, who sat overawed in the great salon of the Baron’s palazzo. ‘What are we to think of him for that?’
‘I do not think that was his intent when he killed my husband,’ she said in a small voice. ‘It must have been the money. But we have a future together now. I beg you to be generous. I . . . I am expecting a child.’
Both the Baron and Vincenzo were so surprised by this announcement they didn’t ask if the baby was Gervasio’s; they just assumed it. Angelica was relieved that she didn’t have to lie.
‘I beg of you,’ said Vincenzo, falling to his knees. ‘Don’t visit your vengeance on my unborn grandchild. Let him have a father and this woman a protector. Let them leave Umbria and start a new life in another city.’
‘It is no longer up to me,’ said Montacuto. ‘The Council have the evidence and they have him. The law must take its course.’
‘You can do it,’ said a quiet voice. The Baronessa had entered the room silently and had been listening for some time. ‘You can ask for the sentence to be commuted to exile and a fine. You and Silvano.’
‘Margarethe,’ said Montacuto. ‘Don’t distress yourself about this. We shall get Silvano back. And soon.’
‘But does another parent have to lose his child?’ asked the Baronessa. ‘And a pregnant mother her husband?’
She took Angelica by the hand. The widow felt large and clumsy and brassy in her new finery next to the slim and delicate Baronessa. She had the same large grey eyes as the young man who had written the beautiful poem.
‘My dear,’ said the Baron. ‘It is different. Gervasio de’ Oddini is guilty of a crime. Our son had to flee for his life when he had done nothing wrong. Would you let a guilty man go unpunished?’
‘Will it not be a punishment to leave his family, his friends and his city for ever?’
The Baron was silent. Suddenly his wife and the pretty blonde widow of the sheep farmer were both kneeling before him beside his old friend Vincenzo.
‘Get up, get up,’ he said testily, helping the women to their feet with more tenderness than his voice showed. ‘I shall refer the matter to my son. If Silvano agrees to clemency, I shall try to help Gervasio escape the full penalty of the law.’
Chiara was shivering with cold and fear. Since the Abbess had told them about the latest murder, she had repented her decision to stay in Giardinetto. The friary seemed cursed and she was frightened for Silvano as well as herself. Now she had absented herself from the colour room and was looking out of the grille towards the brothers’ chapel. No one had come to reprove her; discipline in the convent seemed to be breaking down.
She had seen the arrival of the relics from Assisi and noticed the painters riding behind. From here too she could watch while another coffin went into the ground and the friars dispersed. It was agonising not knowing what was going on. At any minute she expected to hear the bell toll to announce another death. Or to see another corpse carried into the chapel.
But what she did see was even more terrifying. The dead merchant Ubaldo riding back into Giardinetto on his horse! Her heart was beating fast and she wanted to cry out to warn the brothers that the world had turned upside down and the dead walked again. But gradually she got hold of her senses and remembered that Ubaldo had a younger brother. Peering as hard as she could, she thought she could discern differences between them after all.
This one was taller, though he had the same slumped posture on his horse as Ubaldo when the sisters had met him on the road from Assisi the night he was murdered. Chiara guessed that he had drunk too much. But what was he doing in Giardinetto? The sight of him filled her with dread, even once she had realised he was a living man. She wondered whether to go and tell the Abbess, but what could Mother Elena do?
Night was beginning fall in the friary of Giardinetto. Candles were burning at the head and foot of the casket of the Blessed Egidio. The evening meal had been consumed in silence, to the clear annoyance of Umberto, the unexpected visitor. Michele da Cesena was much stricter than Abbot Bonsignore and expected the Lector to read at every meal while the friars ate in silence, even when visitors were present.
When Umberto had arrived, loudly demanding to see Brother Anselmo, he had been told that the Colour Master was closeted with the Minister General. This confused Umberto, who thought that the Minister had handed over the task of retribution to him. But he could do nothing but fume.
Anselmo had not come to supper after his meeting with Michele da Cesena. The Abbot had told Umberto frankly that there was no room for him to lodge at the friary that night. He had not been best pleased to see Ubaldo the merchant’s brother unannounced and the worse for drink on such a difficult day. Now Umberto had to decide whether to ride on to an inn in Assisi or turn back to Gubbio. And he still didn’t know how to get Anselmo alone.
The friars went to bed early, a practice that Silvano still found irksome. He went for a few minutes into the chapel and knelt before the casket. There were another one or two friars there, silently praying. He didn’t stay long. He couldn’t raise the enthusiasm for the holiness of these relics that seemed to come naturally to the real friars.
He wondered whether to go in search of Brother Anselmo but it felt too uncannily like the night Ubaldo had died; he didn’t want to tempt Fate by repeating his actions of that day. So Silvano went back to his thin straw mattress and turned restlessly for a few hours before falling asleep.
No one rang the bell any more for the services that took place in the hours of darkness; the friars moved automatically to the chapel to say Matins and Lauds.
But somewhere between Lauds and Prime, Silvano was woken by the unmistakeable whinnying of Moonbeam. He got up immediately, casting his cloak round him against the early morning air and ran to the stables. Moonbeam was restless and frightened, his eyes rolling. And he was not the only one. The other horses in the stable seemed infected with the same fear.
‘What is it, boy?’ asked Silvano, stroking his horse between the ears. But even that familiar caress did not soothe the animal. Celeste too was fluttering on her perch, though whether alarmed by the horses’ behaviour or her by own fears was impossible to tell.
Silvano went out into the yard. The sky was light and there were flocks of birds wheeling erratically, as if they didn’t know what direction to take. There was an eerie quality to the light and he suddenly felt afraid. The ground under his feet began to tremble and he fell to his knees. Immediately he knew what had been frightening the animals.
‘Earthquake!’ he cried, as loudly as he could, running towards the house to waken the brothers. Soon they were all out in the yard, clutching on to each other and to any bit of wall or tree they could find as the ground seemed to slide beneath them. A fissure opened between the chapel and the friars’ house – about six inches wide. A hot blast came from the vent.
And then all was still and silent again.
Michele da Cesena took charge and ordered the brothers into the chapel. Many of them had t
o step across the gap that had opened in the earth.
‘It is a sign from the Lord,’ he said severely as soon as they were all inside. ‘Nothing has been damaged but a great rift has opened between your dwelling and the House of God. It symbolises how the evil of the murders has separated every man here from the love of Our Creator. On your knees, Brothers! And pray as you have never prayed before that the culprit comes forth.’
But again no one stood up to admit the crimes. No one had been moved by the bones of the Blessed Egidio to confess anything and even God’s wrath rending the earth brought no admission now.
Silvano cast his eyes warily round the chapel. It had become a routine to check the friars against his mental list and they were all there, even Brother Anselmo. Silvano breathed a sigh of relief; it seemed ridiculous to be glad that no one had died in the night. No one injured by the earthquake and no new murder.
Michele da Cesena and his party were going back to Assisi after breakfast. And the painters had already gone the day before, taking more packages from the colour room in their saddlebags. Silvano liked to think that life would go back to normal in the friary but he knew that couldn’t be.
‘How is it with you?’ he asked Brother Anselmo as they left the chapel together.
‘I have been better,’ said Anselmo, with a wintry smile. ‘The Minister General made it very clear that I am the chief suspect for the murders here – even though I had no reason for violence against Brother Landolfo or Valentino. My history with Ubaldo is enough to darken my name.’
‘Did you see his brother last night?’
‘Umberto was here?’
‘Yes. He was looking for you. And he was drunk.’
‘I’m glad I didn’t meet him,’ said Anselmo. ‘Has he gone?’
