“But how can creation, the world, be so filled with evil, if it’s a form of love? Unless the evil is God’s joke. You told me that God laughs, remember? That day on the Piazza Santa Maria Novella, when I held a broken stick to fight the noble boys,” I said, earnestly. “The day you told me about ingegno. I never forgot that, and have always tried to live up to your advice.”
Giotto’s gray brows rose. “My words made a great impression, though they were scant.”
“They were nourishing words!”
“They fell on fertile ground,” Giotto replied swiftly. He gave me an inscrutable look, and then, as if a haze cleared, I knew what kind of look it was: one of respect.
“Dante’s ideas about light make more sense to me than what he says about love,” I said, coloring. “I think it pleases God’s merciless humor to be reflected in beauty and art, and those are the brothers of light. Like light glows in the marble of St. John’s Baptistery, and you render light in your paintings.”
“Dilemmas, God’s humor, art as the brother of light…you come out with the strangest ideas. Keep them to yourself, pup. A man with these notions could run into trouble. At least you’re getting taller. You don’t look so obviously different, though people will always notice your beauty. I don’t want people talking about you.”
I was taller, and I finally looked older, like boys who were eleven. My body hadn’t matured enough to match my years, but even a little aging allayed my alarm. Silvano still taunted me with “sorcerer” and “freak,” and he inspected my chest regularly for something that never showed up, which irritated him. But Giotto had noticed me changing, and I was pleased by it. As I stood at his grave, I remembered the flush of pleasure his notice had brought. I repeated aloud the words he had quoted from his friend’s poem. I hoped they were together in paradise, laughing and joking as Giotto was wont to do. If there was any good in God, He would prize beauty and light, and Giotto’s rendering of those things should admit him directly to heaven.
A few months later, after the harvest had been brought in, when the small second figs were being served on tables and the city was cooling into autumn, Simonetta bore Silvano a son. He called a priest who frequented the establishment to baptize the infant, which was proof that enough florins gifted to the Church would buy anyone anything, even a solemn baptism of the bastard son of a murderous brothel keeper. The babe was called Nicolo, and even as a newborn his features mimicked his father’s: he had a narrow, thrusting chin and a tiny sharp nose.
Simonetta was much weakened from a difficult confinement, and Silvano was so pleased with her that he retired her to quarters of her own in the private wing. He would never let her leave, of course; the only way out of his brothel was death, we all knew that. He brought in another woman to take her place. She was a taciturn foreigner with high cheekbones, slant eyes, and thick arms and legs. She spoke little of the language and that only badly, and I didn’t like her. She grabbed roughly where Simonetta had always directed with a quiet word or gesture. Still, I was happy for Simonetta. She had left the work without being killed. I snuck to her room to visit her, though it was forbidden for us to enter the private wing. I relied on my senses to alert me to Silvano’s approach. Those senses were increasingly, unnaturally keen. I always knew where in the palazzo Silvano was. As time went on, I even knew where in the city he was. I would simply get still and empty, and an image would shimmer into my mind like a reflection coming onto the river as it calmed. I would see a piazza or a bottega or a mercato, and I would know with certainty that Silvano was there. It was as if my fear and hatred linked me to him so palpably that I could always perceive him, no matter where or how far away he was.
So the years continued. The work stayed the same but I seemed immune to it, as I was immune to time and illness. I lived in a kind of abeyance that felt natural to me because it was all that I knew. I was infirm only when I’d been beaten. Even then I recuperated rapidly. Once I was attacked outside the brothel. It was in the midst of the bankruptcies of the London branches of the Bardi and Peruzzi companies and the collapse of the smaller banks, which caused many merchants and small manufacturers of woolen cloth to go out of business. To add to the unrest, Tuscan crops were sparse. Florentines grew surly, angry, and fearful. Business was bad for everyone except Silvano, whose trade always flourished. I went one day to the church of Ognissanti near the Arno to look at the altarpiece, a Madonna and child painted by Giotto. The beautiful Madonna exuded a palpable spiritual gravity, while the baby Christ with his hand upraised in blessing was tender and sad, regal and graceful and open. Giotto had used colors of fabrics from the markets of Florence, which gave the Madonna a sweetly everyday feel. I stumbled out of the Ognissanti church as if my heart had been pierced, so powerful was Giotto’s art. I bumped into a man, who snarled and shoved me away.
“Mi scusi, signore,” I murmured, and then recognized him as one of my early customers, a merchant who traded in the silks of Cathay.
“Wait! I know you,” he snapped. He was a lean man with a stoop whose black hair had grayed since he’d left off giving Silvano his business. His eyes narrowed. “Are you still at Silvano’s? That’s been ten years…. you’ve barely aged! You should be a man now, long since discarded by Bernardo Silvano!”
“You mistake me, signore,” I said, trying to brush past him.
“Not so fast!” he cried, grabbing my arm and attracting attention from people walking toward the Ponte alla Carraia. “You’re exactly the same as you were then, how is that possible? You haven’t aged! This is magic! You’re a witch, I say!” A crowd was gathering and I tried to wrench my arm from his grasp.
“You mistake me!” I cried.
“It’s true, he’s Luca Bastardo from Silvano’s, and he hasn’t changed in a dozen years!” another voice called. It belonged to a weaver who used to save his soldi for months to afford a visit to Silvano’s. The weaver, too, had grown gray.
“Witch! Witch! Sorcerer!” cried several voices.
“It’s witchcraft that has impoverished Florence!” cried an anguished voice. “Black magic that has struck down our banks!”
“Black magic has devalued our wools!”
“Black magic has blighted our crops!”
“We’re starving and poor because of the witches!” The crowd seethed forward. People shouted and hands struck me. I didn’t defend myself. I was used to being hurt, and part of me felt I deserved it. I also knew my body could heal from almost anything; that was part of my freakishness, it was something upon which I could depend. I was beaten to my knees and then gripped roughly by my arms and legs and dragged. I was thrown down in the Piazza d’Ognissanti, facing the Arno. A crowd tossed sticks into a heap.
“Burn him! Burn the witch!” voices were calling. Some people backed away to prepare the pyre and others surged forward to gawk at me. I curled up on my side, covered my head with my arms, closed my eyes, and let myself travel back to the Ognissanti Madonna.
“Audi partem alteram!” a fierce voice cried. “Hear the other side!”
A hush fell over the crowd, but I was only dimly aware of it. I was caught in my voyage. I floated in front of Giotto’s beautiful Madonna with her strong, beatific body and the peaceful Christ child in her arms. I was basking in the angelic choir. “Madonna, Madonna,” someone was singing. Then I realized it was me. I opened my eyes. A very tall man in his thirties with a sweet face and fine complexion stood near me. I recognized him as the man who had caught me following Giotto years ago—Petrarca, Giotto’s friend. He motioned me to sit up. Slowly, painfully, I pushed myself up so I was kneeling. Ugly murmurs rumbled through the crowd.
“If we live good lives, the times are also good. As we are, such are the times,” Petrarca said forcefully. He gave me a penetrating look out of impassioned eyes, then turned to the people thronging about us. “St. Augustine himself said that. Killing this boy will not make your wool cloth valuable. It will not make your banks strong again, or your crops flourish!”
/> “It will please God if we exterminate the witches!” a male voice hollered in response. “With the Lord’s pleasure we will prosper again!”
“Yes, yes!” cried many voices.
“No!” Petrarca shouted. “Order your soul; reduce your wants; live in charity; associate in Christian community; obey the laws; trust in Providence—that is what you must do! This will improve your city’s lot and make it strong!”
“He’s right, this is enough, enough!” The deadly cool voice commanded attention—Silvano had appeared. He walked through the crowd, which parted as if before a snake. I was galled to my core to realize I was glad to see him.
“Signore Petrarca honors our city with his visit, and he is correct. Killing a whore will not bring our money back,” Silvano was saying, with his usual sneer. “Go back to work; our business is what has made Florence great, and what will bring it back to greatness!” Silvano bowed to the tall man. “I have read your poetry, signore. I am moved by the delicate emotions of unrequited love you express so brilliantly!”
“I’m glad my poor words have touched you,” he responded politely.
“Is it true you have received invitations from both Roma and Paris to receive the crown of the poet laureate?” Silvano asked, in a sycophantic voice.
“You are well informed, signore,” Petrarca said, looking away. “I am en route to Roma even now to humbly accept the honors they would bestow on me.”
“In my business, I must be well informed,” Silvano said slyly. He motioned for the two condottieri attending him to stand me up.
“You’re lucky I came for you, Bastardo,” Silvano said as one of the condottieri carried me away. “That prissy poet wouldn’t have been able to dissuade the crowd from a good burning. It would have been amusing to hear you screaming as the flames consumed you.” His eyes gleamed. “Be grateful!” He touched the welts on my face and frowned. “You’re bruised, but you can still work.”
And I was, and I did.
SO I GREW BUT SLOWLY, and by the time I should have been twenty-seven years and a man well grown, I looked about thirteen. Silvano’s son, Nicolo, who was eleven, was more developed than me, to Silvano’s delight. Nicolo was no taller, and he was as lean as his father, but he had a coarsened voice, a shadow of stubble, and red acne welts on his cheeks. I sported only fuzz above my lip. At least it was something. It made Simonetta smile and call me porcino, piglet. Her hair had grown white and her face was now seamed around her birthmark, though she was the same quiet, sweet woman I had known for almost twenty years, years that had passed as if I were asleep and dreaming, years during which I did not try to escape for fear that Silvano would kill another child, or perhaps Simonetta herself.
One spring business fell off sharply. I learned that illness was rife in the city when a patron came to my room. He was a wool-dyer who had done well and owned a few shops in the city’s more respectable northern outskirts. In the city center, rich merchants and noblemen kept the rents high, so most of the dyeing and finishing shops were located in the worst slums of the Oltrarno. This wool-dyer had a good opinion of himself because he’d located to better environs. That kind always felt that I should be gratified by their interest in me. This one instructed me to take off my clothes before he even touched me. I complied, and he barked at me to turn slowly.
“No bubboni,” he muttered. “Raise your arms above your head!” I did, and he nodded. “No swellings. Good. Cough, and then spit on the floor.” It was not a command I’d heard before, but over the eighteen years that had passed, unusual biddings had become the norm. People were creatures of twisted desires; if man had been created by God and in His image, only an evil deity could sire these lusts. I forced a cough and spat. The wool-dyer eyed it. “No blood,” he said, relieved. “You’ll do, boy.” And the rest of his hour proceeded as usual.
Afterward a new foreign woman came to clean me. I didn’t care for her. She was cold and scrawny and spoke in harsh cadences, poking me to get me to obey her. Today I looked her full in the face and asked, “Woman, is there a pox about in the city?”
She shivered. “There’s a terrible illness about, Bastardo. It’s reached the outskirts of Florence. People are afraid. They’re staying indoors, even leaving the city!”
“What kind of illness?”
“They call it the Black Death,” she whispered. “Some people have a terrible fever and spit up blood, and they die by the third day. Others get black swellings, bubboni, before they die. They say in countries in the East, more than half are dead! Even as many as eight in ten!”
“There was a plague eight years ago, and many survived it,” I said.
She shook her head. “This one kills everyone who takes ill. Everyone!”
The next month, with spring easing into summer, Silvano called me into the dining room, where he and Nicolo sat playing at dice. “I’ll teach you not to play stupidly, son!” he was saying, and boxed the boy on the ears as I entered the room. Nicolo saw that I’d witnessed his chastisement and he flushed and looked away.
A sharp squawk made me jump. In the corner of the room, in a gilded cage, was a brilliantly plumed bird. I gaped at it.
“Do you know what that is, Bastardo?” asked Silvano.
“Of course he doesn’t, Papa, he’s an ignorant whore,” said Nicolo.
“It’s a bird,” I said, stiffening.
“Not just any bird,” Silvano said. He went to the cage and took the bird out, held it on his finger, and crooned to it softly. He stroked its red head and green wings. “This pretty fellow is a special bird that I will display on festival nights, when many patrons come. He’s a rare bird from the Far East. No one else in Florence has anything like this!” He looked exultant and then replaced the bird in its golden cage. “Bastardo, you’re to go out into the city.”
“Shouldn’t you beat him first, to make sure he returns?” sneered Nicolo, adjusting the slits in the sleeves of his crimson tunic to show the blue silk farsetto underneath.
“Luca knows what I’ll do if he doesn’t return.” Silvano laughed and scratched his beard, which had grayed almost to white. “He’s to gather information.”
“You want to know about the new plague,” I guessed.
“The bird merchant says it’s ravaging the city,” Silvano said. “Has the plague really made inroads into Florence itself? Are people dying in swarms? A piece of street trash like you can get around in all sorts of clever ways, find out what’s going on, how bad it is. You’re good at sneaking around and observing things, aren’t you, Bastardo? It goes with your freakish agelessness.” He pointed at me. “Go. See if the sick die quickly and horribly.” He angled a glance at me, and I saw that his eyes were dimmed with a thin milky glaze. It startled me; I always thought of Silvano as the irreducibly potent, malevolent man I’d met in the market years ago. I noticed now, with wonderment, that his beard wasn’t the only sign of his age. His face had grown leathery and lined, and his pink scalp peeked through a monk’s tonsure of white hair. I gazed studiously at the dice on the table. It wouldn’t do for Silvano to see that I’d picked up weakness in him.
“Don’t worry, you won’t catch the Black Death.” Silvano snickered, misreading my expression for one of fear. “You’re the hardiest, most resilient thing I’ve ever seen. You don’t even catch the clap, and I have to put down a whore every month who gets it.”
“But it’s very odd, don’t you think, Father? That he barely ages and never gets sick,” Nicolo whined. “It’s unnatural. Some kind of evil sorcery. Maybe you should kill him and throw him into the river.” Nicolo smirked at me. “It’s been months since we’ve had good sport.”
“Nonsense, son, he’s useful to me, he’s still popular among the patrons.” Silvano smiled fondly at Nicolo. “Besides, I have bigger plans for him. He will mature, and when he does, we will have a new life of honor and station!” He leaned over and ruffled Nicolo’s hair, and I noted how Silvano’s hand was draped in loose gray skin. He added, “If you want some
sport, you can have the new Spanish boy.” He rose and motioned for his son to follow him. I stepped back into the wall as they passed me.
“Really, this Bastardo is too arrogant, I don’t like him,” Nicolo whined, pausing in front of me. He tilted his head and gave me a look of contempt down his bladelike nose.
“Beat him if you like, then, but not so much that he can’t go out in the street,” Silvano said from the hallway. Nicolo brightened. Before I knew what I was doing, I stepped toward him. It wasn’t a big step, barely even a hand’s width, but at the same time, my strength, like the waters of a river rolling into a wave, gathered in my arms, and the muscles of my chest and shoulders tingled with blood. I met his eyes square-on. It was a subtle thing, taking power into myself. I’d done it with snarling dogs on the street, when to show weakness would invite attack, but never with a person. Perhaps my fear of what my abnormal agelessness meant, and my humiliation over my captivity, and my dread at the terrible acts I had committed, had kept me from it; power was not for such unwholesome ones as me. But today, having spied weakness in Silvano, I refused to be beaten by his son. Nicolo paled. He stepped back hastily and then darted after his father. I was amazed at myself. I would probably pay dearly for it later, when Nicolo coaxed his father into beating me. But this moment, I’d been prepared to defend myself with force. I hadn’t known I had it in me, and it heartened me. Perhaps I wasn’t so despicable, after all.
I LEFT THE PALAZZO IMMEDIATELY. It was early May, with cool moments before summer swoops in and the sun roasts the valley of the Arno. Few people walked the streets. Doors were barred and windows were shuttered. Shops, factories, and even taverns were shut down. Florence was a city of tall towers, though not as tall as in the past, when they had been over one hundred twenty braccia in height. The city fathers had decided to restrict the height of private dwellings for greater public security, but still they were imposing. Now the towers were closed up and dark. The warning bell in the austere Palazzo dei Priori pealed out in somber tones and the air was threaded with a foul odor. Soon I saw the cause of the odor: bodies lay scattered on the street. Black flies buzzed around them and crows swooped overhead, cawing. Rats skittered around the streets but avoided the bloating bodies. Most of the dead looked like poor wool and dye workers, still wearing their foggette. Some were children, small bodies heaped together in twos and threes, tiny, wasted arms intertwined or flung out indiscriminately. The city had become a vast charnel house.
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