Immortal

by Traci L. Slatton

  “Salve, Bastardo, it’s been a long time.” Pietro lifted his shaved head and smiled at me through a crowd of passersby. “I don’t see you around anymore. It’s been weeks since you tried to coax the leftover communion bread from me, or followed me around reciting the Mass.”

  “Gloria Patri, et Filio, et Spiritui Sancto. Sicut erat in principio, et nunc, et semper, et in saecula saeculorum,” I responded. I skipped toward him, winding my way through a perfumed quartet of laughing women who wore fur-lined mantelli that fluttered open to reveal shimmering cottardite, full-cut gowns of lavish fabric embroidered with pearls and appliqués. They stopped across the street from the church at a table of dyed wool swaths in the cluster of booths tended by merchants from the Oltrarno, the other side of the Arno, where enclaves of foreigners and Jews lived. I said, “I have some questions for you, Friar Pietro.”

  “What does an old monk like me know?” He sighed. “Not enough to advance in my order. I’m so incompetent, I’m lucky I can sweep the walk in front of a church on a cold day. I’m not even good enough to work at the monastery at San Salvi, with the other brothers of our worthy Vallombrosan Order.”

  “You’re learned like a professore. You know a lot about Master Giotto,” I said.

  Pietro leaned on his broom, his breath making white fog in the air. His rheumy eyes stared into me. “Master Giotto? What do you want to know about this painter? He’s too good for a filthy street cur like you!”

  “Of course,” I agreed, thinking that I wasn’t so filthy anymore, at least on the outside. I wondered if he would notice how polished and plumped up I was, and take in the implications. “But I want to know about Giotto. You said his master was Cimabue. What else do you know?”

  “Come.” Pietro motioned. He leaned the broom against the wall of the church.

  “Eh, monk, that’s a pretty boy!” called a condottiere from a hulking pack of them by the church wall. He touched his dagger, hollering, “Look at all that silky yellow hair!” The others laughed raucously and another one whistled.

  “Give me a nice tight boy anytime,” another leered. “They’re cleaner than women! I like ’em even better!”

  “That’s because no woman would have you,” I yelled, even though they were but a short distance from us. He growled and lunged at me, but I darted into the church after the monk.

  “Leave the soldiers alone,” Pietro chided. “They’re a brutish lot, but the city fathers think we need them.” We settled into a back pew. “Giotto, eh? Why Giotto?”

  “I like the frescoes at Santa Croce,” I said.

  “You should see the frescoes in Assisi,” he said. “He painted a cycle of St. Francis—extraordinary. I hear the paintings in Padua in the chapel on the site of the old Roman arena are splendid, too: the Last Judgment, the Annunciation, the Life of the Virgin, all magnificent, with a physical presence that moves the spirit. But what do you like about the frescoes at Santa Croce, Bastardo?” he pressed. I shrugged. “The naturalism, the composition of his figures, the inventiveness of his allegory?” Pietro chuckled, not expecting me to understand. The language was difficult for me, but because of all the time I’d spent with the frescoes lately, I caught the gist of his meaning. My face must have stayed blank, though, because Pietro put his hand on my shoulder. “You think they’re pretty?” he crooned. I nodded.

  “I know a few good stories about Master Giotto,” Pietro said. He rubbed his chin with a plump hand covered in sagging pale flesh. “I’ve seen him a few times, never spoken with him. He was born to a poor family in Vespignano, fifty-five years ago.”

  “Fifty-five!” I gaped. “He’s lived a long time!”

  “Well, time is different for everyone,” Pietro said, his face puckering. “Master Giotto has aged well. Me, not so much, though I was born the same year.” I looked at the droopy seams on the monk’s face and agreed, though silently. “Of course, I have no vanity; our dear Lord would not want that of the humble monks who serve Him,” Pietro added in a pious tone. “When Giotto was sheep-herding for his father, he would draw on flat rocks with a sharpened stone. He drew whatever he saw around him, or what he imagined. The great artist Cimabue happened by the pasture one day and was amazed! The untutored shepherd boy was a draughtsman the like of which Cimabue himself could not equal. He asked Giotto’s father at once if the boy could come to live with him, to be instructed and developed as an artist. Just like that, Giotto’s life was changed, his destiny set!”

  “I’ve only ever known bad things to change people’s lives,” I whispered.

  “Oh, accidents, catastrophes, yes, those alter lives forever, but miracles happen, too. Do you not think that the lepers healed by our Lord had their lives changed for the better?” Pietro asked. “Or the sick whose demons He cast out? Or the blind to whom He restored sight?”

  “I never thought about it,” I admitted.

  “You need more catechismal instruction, boy,” he said, in a tone of indulgence mixed with annoyance. “When you come around, I’ll try to teach you. If a street rodent like you can be impressed by Giotto, there’s hope for you. Just don’t end up like your old amico Massimo.”

  “Massimo? What?” I jerked upright. Pietro surveyed me curiously.

  “You didn’t hear? He fought with some lout of a condottiere over possession of a florin. The condottiere said no deformed street urchin could own a whole florin and stabbed him. In the neck, here.” Pietro tilted his head and indicated a pulsing spot on the line between his shrunken earlobe and his clavicle. “Poor ugly bastard spurted blood like a pig at the butcher. I put him on the cart to be taken out for a beggar’s burial myself. A few months ago.”

  I closed my eyes and remembered all the times I’d huddled somewhere with Massimo, sharing a scrap of bread or inventing a game to keep ourselves warm in the winter. I wondered if those same memories had struck him when he sold me to Silvano. My stomach clutched up as if I’d eaten bad food, and I couldn’t tell if it was because I felt badly for Massimo, or because I didn’t. Didn’t I owe him grief, after the time we’d shared?

  “Don’t dwell on it, boy,” Pietro said, touching my shoulder. “Did you know that the Holy Father himself sent a courtier here to see what kind of man and painter this Giotto was? The courtier arrived at Giotto’s workshop one day as he was hard at work. The courtier requested a drawing to take back to the Pope, and Giotto took out a sheet of paper and a brush with red paint, held his arm close to his body like so”—Pietro demonstrated—“and then, without any help from a compass, he drew a perfect circle! By his own hand!”

  “What’s a compass?”

  Pietro snorted. “An instrument used to draw a circle, Luca Stupido. That’s the point; Giotto so excels that he didn’t need one. The courtier thought he was being made a fool of, and argued, but at Giotto’s insistence, he sent the circle to the Holy Father, along with an explanation of how Giotto had made it. The Pope at once sent for Giotto. Giotto painted such beautiful works for him that the Pope paid him six hundred gold ducats!”

  “So much money.” I gaped. I tried to imagine a fortune like that, and the freedom and beauty it could buy, but my mind flitted out from within me as if I were trying to contemplate the boundless blue limits of the sky. I wondered if even Silvano could conceive of wealth on that scale.

  “Indeed.” Pietro patted my shoulder. “That’s enough for today, Bastardo; you will strain yourself under the heavy burden of this knowledge.”

  “I have another question,” I said, thinking of how Silvano hinted that he knew my origins. “I’ve been wondering about my parents. You hear what goes on in Florence, and you’ve been a monk here for a long time, do you know anything about them? Or where I came from?”

  “I remember you only from the streets, Luca. It seemed you were always there, though you look more finely built than the other ragamuffins. The color of your hair is unusual; perhaps you are the son of foreigners. Ask in the Oltrarno, you might find someone who remembers something.” He sighed. “I
must go back to sweeping the walk, else the abbot will think I can’t even do that right. He will use it as an excuse to blame me for how people give more money to the Franciscans and the Dominicans than to our order. Go along,” he said. “A street mouse like you has a lot to keep himself busy with. Not that way, idiot,” he called up to a novitiate polishing the incense box at the altar. “You’ll damage the finish! The abbot will hold me responsible!” He bustled away. I sat for a while, thinking about perfect circles and moments of opportunity that change the direction of a life. I wondered if I would ever have a moment like that, or if my great moment would come at the sharp edge of Silvano’s knife.

  I walked along the Arno on my way back to Silvano’s and stopped at a shop near the Ponte alle Grazie to buy some candied figs for the little blond girl. If I didn’t grieve for Massimo, I could at least feel pity for the little girl, who did not deserve the fate we shared. The door to her room was closed when I arrived, muffling the noises from within. My arms and the back of my neck were smooth, my stomach calm, so I knew that Silvano wasn’t looking for me. I waited behind some draperies that made me itch until a prosperous wool merchant emerged from the girl’s room. He was yawning and grinning and didn’t bother to shut the door as he left. I slipped inside. The little girl stood beside her bed. Her cheek was freshly bruised and a thin line of blood snaked down out of her nose.

  “I brought you this,” I said, and tossed her the little packet of figs. Her expression remained blank as one hand reached for the figs. The other arm wiped her nose, smearing blood. She popped a fig into her mouth. I said, “My name is Luca. What’s yours?”

  Her little face brightened, like a candle being lit inside her. “I know you, you held my hand when I was scared and helped me. You are very good. I am Ingrid.” She smiled and spoke softly, with an accent I didn’t recognize.

  “Ingrid,” I repeated, smiling back at her. I felt fierce pride that she remembered me, that she thought of me as someone who helped her, as someone who was good. She smiled as she took a bite from another fig. I was transfixed by the sweetness with which she admitted to fear. She was like one of the heavenly figures from Giotto’s fresco: holy. I couldn’t stop myself from approaching her and wiping the blood from her face. We are all so hurt here, I thought, aching. I promised myself I would never let anyone else hurt her, then I felt foolish, because, after all, I was a slave here, too. With that came the familiar prickle on my forearms. I slipped out of her room and ran back to my own. I made it inside only a minute before a patron stalked in.

  Later Simonetta came to lead me to the bath. Her pale face seemed more tired than usual.

  “Why so tired, Simonetta?” I asked.

  “Don’t fret about me, Luca,” she responded, stroking my hair. “Look at you, is that lice I see again? How is it you keep getting into trouble?”

  “That girl Ingrid, where is she from?” I asked, after Simonetta had lathered my head.

  “I wouldn’t get too close to her.” Simonetta frowned. Her long braid lay over one shoulder and I reached up to finger it.

  “Why not? What’s wrong with her?”

  “What’s wrong with any of us here?” Simonetta asked, with a rare bitterness. “I overheard Silvano. He’s going to sell her to some rich cardinal for a kill.”

  “A kill?”

  “Some patrons like to take a life. If they pay enough, a fortune, Silvano agrees.”

  I slid down into the warm water, struggling with nausea. It was hard to believe, after all that had been done to me, that something could still shock me. “Why would a cardinal want to kill a little girl?”

  “The cardinal feels God wants him to punish women for Eve’s sin. He is cleansing the world. He makes the girl suffer the agonies that Eve visited upon mankind. He takes his time, makes it slow and thorough, so it will be holy. He uses fire and blades. The girl must be young and innocent in order to be a proper offering for atonement. He has requested a virgin.”

  I was sickened. “Ingrid’s not that.”

  “There are ways.” Simonetta lowered her voice. She pulled me from the tub and dried me with a large rough cloth. “There’s a surgeon who sews a little bit, and an apothecary who provides a wash to tighten the parts…today is Ingrid’s last day working. The surgeon is coming tomorrow, so there is time for her to heal before the cardinal arrives.” Simonetta’s big face sagged. “She’ll be bathed every day in the apothecary’s solution, in preparation.”

  “When?” I whispered.

  “A fortnight, maybe two.” Simonetta shrugged. “The cardinal is coming from Avignon.”

  I couldn’t stop myself from remembering Ingrid’s soft hand in mine, and how she’d taken comfort from me. Then I imagined her bloody and contorted in pain, like Marco when Silvano cut him. I couldn’t help Marco, but I have to help Ingrid, I thought, stumbling back to my room. I could barely see the way through the fog of my fear.

  “Don’t think about it,” Simonetta whispered, tucking my hand into her heart. We stopped in front of my room. She put a soft plump hand on my shoulder. “Luca…”

  “What?” I asked, breathlessly.

  “Silvano wants me to ask if you enjoyed your old friend Friar Pietro’s lecture on Giotto.”

  My mouth dropped open. “He knows—how?”

  “He knows everything,” she cautioned, her birthmark turning dark red on her round face. “Don’t forget that, caro. You must not endanger yourself the way Marco did.” She squeezed my shoulder and was gone, and I went into my room wondering who Silvano’s spies were. I promised myself that I would extend my senses until I could perceive Silvano’s minions as well as I could perceive him, and that promise almost stilled the quiver of fear in my gut.

  TEN DAYS LATER I ROCKED BACK AND FORTH on my heels in front of St. John the Evangelist at Santa Croce. I was trying to figure out how to save Ingrid. Time was growing short. I had no plan. I was desperate and sought answers in what I knew was wondrous: Giotto’s paintings. If there was anything real in the stories that had inspired them, if there was any truth to the tenderness of color and line and expression, if there was a real saint who basked in the glory of these paintings, then surely that saint would help me. I had seldom prayed before, would curse at God more often than pray over the long years of my life, but I was praying at that moment. “It’s not for myself, St. John,” I murmured to the ascending figure.

  “What’s not?” an amused voice inquired. I whirled around.

  “Master Giotto!” I exclaimed, so happy to see his short, stout form in the flesh. I learned later that people often had that reaction to him. Though he wasn’t beautiful in the way beauty is thought of, and, in fact, his features were decidedly homely, Giotto had such a lively intelligence and such an expansive and humane spirit that he was a joy to behold.

  “If it isn’t the young pup, wagging his tail in front of my fresco, right where I left him,” Giotto teased. His gray brows wiggled at me.

  “I’ve been learning about your work,” I said, words tumbling over themselves. “I’ve been asking the monks—”

  “Be careful, you’ll educate yourself out of an aesthetic appreciation.” One corner of his mouth lifted in irony. “There’s something about the natural response that doesn’t mediate the truth. I thought I’d find you here. I brought something for you.” He held out a small package.

  No one had ever given me a gift before—except Marco, who had given me sweets—and I didn’t know what to do. This thing was obviously not edible. It was wrapped in glossy, finely woven linen and tied with a red ribbon.

  “It won’t bite.” Giotto gestured with the package. I took it and held it up. “Go on,” he encouraged me. So I inhaled deeply and then untied the ribbon. The cloth fell open, revealing a square wooden panel. I stuffed the fabric into my shirt and ran my finger over the panel, realized it was actually two small panels, facing in toward each other. I opened them out and held them side by side. Each painting was about the size of two of my hands in length and widt
h. A luminous Madonna in her starry blue cloak stared out at me from one. On the other stood the Evangelist, and next to him a small young dog, his adoring gaze on the saint.

  I dropped to my knees. “Master, I don’t deserve these.”

  “But they are your family,” he said, flushing. “If my paintings are going to be that for you, you must have some to take with you wherever you go. I can’t get away from my relatives; they adhere to me like tempera on wood, especially when they’re broke.”

  “I have nothing to give you in return,” I said, bewildered by his generosity.

  “Your admiration is enough,” he said, turning toward the large frescoes that graced the chapel. “They are valuable. See that you take care of them.”

  “I will!” I vowed. Slowly I stood and clutched the two panels to my chest. I was too dazed to say anything, even to stammer out the gratitude that rushed over me in waves as powerful as the Arno when it turns silvery gray and sweeps out of its banks.

  “So what was not for yourself?” Giotto asked, his tone mild.

  I was holding the panels in trembling hands, taking in every line, every color, every curve. The Madonna’s radiant face was so delicately limned as to show both a real woman and a celestial being who could truly be the Mother of Christ. Her eyes were wells of compassion and love. I thought I could fall into them forever. I would have to hide these treasures from Silvano and his all-seeing eyes, find some safe spot in the palazzo to store them. I would have to search hard to find even a tiny inviolate zone in that place.

  “Well?” Giotto’s curious voice roused me from my reverie. I looked up.

  “Freedom.”

  “You’re asking the Evangelist for freedom for someone else? Because you’re so free?”