A Golden Web

by Barbara Quick

  Nonetheless, Pierina often slipped into her sister’s bed at night, as Dodo kicked and snored and kept her awake.

  On one such night, she entered Alessandra’s room in the wee hours, surprised to find her sister writing in a little notebook that was visible for but an instant before Alessandra whisked the book under the covers and blew out the candle.

  Pierina felt her way in the dark, careful not to bark her shins on the chest beside Alessandra’s bed. She climbed over it and slipped underneath the covers. “What are you writing,” she whispered, “at this late hour?”

  “Why are you bothering me, moscerino?”

  “And so I’m a gnat now, am I?” Pierina sulked.

  “It’s hot,” said Alessandra. “Move away from me.” Pierina was feeling around under the covers for the book. “Get out! Leave me be!”

  “I won’t!” Pierina turned her back to Alessandra and they lay like that, bottom to bottom. They could hear the whisper of bats flying in and out of the open window, hunting for mosquitoes.

  Alessandra turned on her other side and stroked a lock of Pierina’s hair aside and then whispered into her ear. “You’re a lovable gnat, at any rate.”

  “I hate you!”

  “Hush—don’t hate me.”

  “You hide everything from me now! What’s happened to you, Zan-Zan?” Pierina’s voice was hoarse with anger. “I want my sister back!”

  Despite the heat, Alessandra drew Pierina into her arms. “You have me still, moscerino.”

  Pierina made Alessandra turn and face her. “Nicco says that you and Papa have some plan afoot. And our stepmother sighs contentedly all the time now, and has called on the silk merchant twice to show her his wares. But Nicco says he’s sure you have no intention of marrying, and Giorgio thinks I may be right in thinking you plan to take the veil.”

  Alessandra felt the sting of being spoken of behind her back by those she’d counted as her allies. It was almost as if she’d left them already. “You know as well as I do of our stepmother’s desire to send me away,” she began stiffly. “And, of course, as a dutiful daughter, I must—”

  Pierina interrupted her. “Say nothing! Say nothing rather than shutting me out again!”

  The heat of her words did a good deal to soften Alessandra’s resolve. “Oh, little sister—my sweet pest of a little sister! Do you remember our game of Disappearing?”

  “I remember that it got us in a great deal of trouble.”

  “Well, I’ve refined the rules somewhat—and the game, I’m quite sure, will work better this time. But in case it doesn’t, I’m not involving you and Nic. I’m taking the risks, as well I should, entirely upon myself.”

  “We are a family, Alessandra, and any risk you take upon yourself will redound upon us all.”

  It annoyed Alessandra that her sister, so often selfish and frivolous, was also sometimes right.

  She lay there through much of that night, while Pierina softly snored, and wondered what it was inside her that made her long for an unlit pathway and places that no girl from Persiceto had ever seen before. She knew she would take such a path. But how she would find the means to sustain herself was still a problem that nagged at her, kept her awake, and haunted her dreams when she finally fell asleep.

  When the pears and pomegranates hung ripe upon the trees, Ursula gave a banquet in honor of Alessandra’s fifteenth name day.

  Even though no one would be attending who did not already know Alessandra well, Ursula dressed and coiffed her with the greatest care. She had a gown made out of the blue silk with its crop of seed pearls. The heavy garment felt more like a shroud than a wedding dress to Alessandra when she tried it on.

  Ursula spent hours weaving matching blue silk ribbons into Alessandra’s hair. It was a bittersweet feeling for her, as she couldn’t remember ever having been touched by Ursula with such tenderness or at such great length. Ursula chatted gaily about the banquet and the various delicacies she’d instructed Cook to prepare: roast suckling pig with figs and cinnamon, sausage-stuffed capons, and brandied eels.

  She even praised Alessandra when the last ribbon was tied. “You look a perfect picture, cara! Worthy of”—Ursula paused meaningfully—“a very rich gentleman indeed!”

  Alessandra’s papa had assured her that Ursula was still searching for a son-in-law worthy of her ambitions. “If so, Madame, then this is a sight I’d like to see. May I look in my Lady’s mirror?”

  “Oh, Zan-Zan,” cooed Ursula—and truly the nickname sounded loathsome coming from her, as if it had been spoken by a snake. “Won’t you ever call me ‘Mother’?”

  Alessandra wanted to say “Never!” But she held her tongue and peered silently into the circle of polished bronze Ursula held before her.

  There was something new about her face she hadn’t seen the last time, perhaps a year ago, that she’d looked into her mother’s mirror—for it was her mother’s mirror, or had been. The bones of her face seemed better defined than before. She reached up and touched the bone beneath her cheek, the softer bone of her nose—was it bone, or something else? Skulls always had only a hole there.

  “You’re a lovely young woman now—a fruit that’s nearly ripe for plucking. A year in the convent, and then there will not be a virgin in Emilia-Romagna who will command a higher bride-price—or merit a grander bridegroom!” Ursula reached out and pinched both of Alessandra’s cheeks hard enough to hurt. “There!” she said, without a hint of cruelty in her voice.

  Like a pig, thought Alessandra, being primped and fattened and brought to market.

  The bells rang for Sext, twelve peals through the golden, sun-flecked, midday air. “To the window, Alessandra!” Ursula was half pulling and half pushing her to the largest window, which faced out over the square. “Just so, dear—no, lean on the sill a bit. More to the middle—hurry!”

  The sun was warm on Alessandra’s cheeks, which were still smarting from being pinched. She heard the sound of horse’s hooves clattering on the cobblestones below. “Don’t move!” said Ursula before stepping back from the window, but not so far back that she couldn’t see out into the square.

  Two riders approached at a pretentious gallop—one a gentleman and the other evidently his servant. They pulled up short beneath the window. The gentleman removed his hat and bowed. He was a man about her father’s age, and someone Alessandra had never seen before. She kept her face composed, only nodding ever so slightly to answer his bow. And then, leaving a wake of dust shot through with sunlight behind them, the riders galloped away in the direction of Bologna.

  Nicco, just coming back from the stables, saw the whole thing and was left brushing the other riders’ dust off his clothes.

  “Who’s that old git, then?” he called up to Alessandra.

  Alessandra, keeping her gaze facing outside, away from Ursula, looked down at Nicco and crossed her eyes.

  Nicco wiped the smile off his face when Ursula appeared side by side with Alessandra in the window. He noticed how his sister had grown—perhaps from all that time spent lying in bed: She was just a hand’s breadth shorter than Ursula now.

  “That, young Niccolò,” Ursula said magisterially, “is a very wealthy man, owner of two castles and vast tracts of land in a delightfully distant province.”

  Alessandra turned to her. “May I take this dress off now, Madame?”

  Ursula, dismissing Alessandra with a wave of her hand, continued to look out the window.

  Nicco called up to her, “You’re not planning to give our Alessandra to him?”

  “I would, readily enough, but the gentleman already has a wife.” Ursula laughed—a thing she did rarely enough. “No, we have promised Alessandra to his only son. Your father has gone to a great deal of trouble over the matter—far more trouble, in my opinion, than was deserved.”

  Eight

  That summer went by quickly for Alessandra, filled as it was with her observations of all that she was about to leave behind. She wanted to spend more time with h
er siblings than they seemed to have for her suddenly, as if they’d simply accepted the idea that she was leaving for the cloister, and had replaced her already in their hearts and habits.

  She couldn’t help but notice and feel hurt by Ursula’s uncharacteristic good cheer, evidently at the prospect of getting rid of her least favorite stepchild. Alessandra looked, as always, to her father’s library for comfort—and wondered if books and learning were to be her sole lifelong companions.

  There were two aspects of her plan that especially troubled her, driving her to steal into Ursula’s room and look into the polished bronze of her mother’s mirror whenever she could do so undetected.

  Alessandra’s mother had been a person of celebrated beauty, both inside and outside, and a model of womanhood held up all around the parish—a lady who did good works quietly, without crowing about them. Who managed to show both justice and affection to her children. Who was a helpmate to her husband but also a companion to his heart, held in the tenderest esteem by him.

  The face Alessandra saw in the mirror belonged to an awkward, lonely, and frightened girl who was nonetheless filled with a sense of her own momentous destiny. Who was about to leave all safety and comfort behind her, as well as every similarity she bore to the saintly mother she loved so well.

  Pierina was right: The risks applied to all of them. Shame, censure—even financial ruin, if the Church or the Podestà sniffed out Alessandra’s deception. She’d looked in some law books from her father’s library: if she’d understood them correctly, her father could be held responsible for every rule broken by her, every flouting of convention, every breach of the law, both civil and sacred, that she incurred. His land, his books, and his business would all be liable.

  She cried, alone in her room, thinking of Nicco reduced to working as a laborer on someone else’s land, and Pierina—beautiful Pierina—dowerless and relegated to a lifetime of servitude. And her papa?

  This thought made her weep hardest of all. Her papa, who believed in her obedience and goodness as no father had ever believed in his daughter before, with such trust and faith and love—her papa would die of shame and sorrow if Alessandra’s deception were made known.

  She would have to cover her tracks so thoroughly that not one single suspicion would be raised, either in her home or at the convent. But such an enterprise—she was worldly enough to know—would require not only determination and careful planning but also a great amount of gold.

  Alessandra put down the mirror, dried her tears, and crossed herself. She closed her eyes and imagined her future, and could picture no other path but this one stretching out before her—however difficult and solitary. However far it led from the sort of future her loving father dearly wanted for her.

  She prayed to the mother of God—and to her own mother—to understand and forgive her for what she was planning to do.

  The call of a nightjar woke Alessandra from a troubled dream. All she could recollect of it was that she was lost in a strange and ominous land. The birdsong was part of the dream, but she couldn’t remember how, except to recall that she felt afraid, as if something—or someone—were pursuing her.

  She lay there in her bed, looking out at the shimmering glimpse of Heaven that showed through her window. And then she heard the chirrup again, recognizing it this time—now that she was more completely awake—as Nicco’s call to her to come out into the night.

  Before Ursula had begun keeping such close watch on her, Alessandra and Nicco—and, later, Pierina—had occasionally climbed up and down the ancient wisteria vine that clung to the stones of the house and perfumed Alessandra’s room with its purple blossoms all through the spring and summer. Ursula found out about these nighttime jaunts and caused the vine to be cut so that it reached too far below Alessandra’s window to allow her escape.

  On full-moon nights, Alessandra would lie in her bed and remember the delicious feeling of being abroad in the silvery, dangerous world of the nighttime.

  It was a grinning new moon now, and even the starlight was shining only faintly through the wisps of clouds that raced across the sky—not the sort of night Nicco usually chose for their rambles. Not a safe night for risking whatever evil spirits lurked in the shadows—a night that would be the darling of robbers, assassins, and demons.

  Alessandra wrapped the blanket around her shoulders but shivered anyway—half from fear, half from cold. The chirrup might have been a nightjar, after all. She lit the candle from the banked embers of her fire, pulled on her clothes, and looked outside.

  There were scant leaves left on the wisteria now, and a few of these—she saw, with a start, when she saw his face in the window—were stuck in Nicco’s hair.

  “Are you going deaf?”

  “I was asleep!” She held her hand out to him. He grasped it and pulled himself up far enough to crawl through the window.

  “I have something for you, Zan—and I’m going to ask for something in return.” He stared at her, his blue eyes snapping in the firelight. “Talk!”

  Alessandra looked with determination out the window and into the darkness. She longed to tell Nicco everything—and to ask his advice. But she only shook her head. “I leave for the cloister in three months’ time. What would you have me say?”

  He stood close to her, waiting until she met his eyes. “To the others—to our stepmother, lie all you want, although you put your soul in mortal peril. But do not lie to me, Alessandra!”

  “Then do not ask me questions!”

  “I know you’re planning something—and Pierina knows it, too. Damn it, why won’t you let us help you?”

  She whispered her reply. “It’s something that I can only do alone.” She took both his hands in hers, and felt how dear they were to her—and how much it would cost her never to hold them again.

  “Just tell me this—you’re going to live with the Sisters of Sant’Alba—just nod, yes or no.”

  In the firelight, Alessandra nodded once, very slowly.

  “And you will marry, in one year’s time, the person our father has chosen for you?”

  “Ah, don’t ask me that!” Alessandra knelt and stirred the fire and put some more wood on it. Her face looked golden in the circle of light.

  “You will take the veil?” Nicco hazarded.

  Without looking at him, Alessandra shook her head no.

  “Have you fallen in love with someone else?”

  “How could I, Nic, unless he were a phantom? I’m allowed to see no one, and no one sees me!”

  Nicco took her by both shoulders. They felt far too delicate and girlish to contend with the dangers of the world.

  “Whatever you’re planning,” he said, “you might have need of this….” He took his dagger out of its scabbard—the dagger he carried with him everywhere, which he used to kill animals and cut them apart, to spear his food at table, and to defend himself from predators, assassins, and thieves if he was caught on the road after dark. “You’ll need to know how to use it, and how to keep it razor sharp.”

  She reached up and touched his cheek, where a beard—though fine and light colored—had begun to grow. “But your knife! Surely you need it yourself.”

  “I’ll tell Father that it was wrested from me in a game of chance. Or, better yet, lifted from me by a whore.”

  “Oh, Nic!”

  “Such a tale would please him. He’ll wink and then buy me another knife.” Nicco unbuckled the scabbard and gave that to Alessandra, too.

  She held both objects in her hands, put the knife in its sheath, and embraced her brother.

  “And this, too,” he said, pushing her away and placing a heavy little leather bag in her hands. “It’s not very much, but it’s all I have.” She could see the glint of tears in his eyes, and how he blinked to make them go away. “Just promise me, Alessandra, that you’ll call out to me for help if you need it! There is no risk I would not take for you.”

  “You are the best of brothers!”

  She ope
ned the bag and counted out the ten coins it held. “How long, would you say, a man could live on this amount of money?”

  Nicco looked at her slantwise. “Here—or in some city?”

  “In some city,” said Alessandra.

  “A year, I’d say, if that man lived carefully.”

  She kissed his hands. “Thank you, Nic!”

  “You won’t tell me more?”

  She looked into his brave, blue eyes. “I’ll send word to you from the convent.”

  Her promise clearly made him happy. “Here, Zan,” he said, taking the knife from her. “I’ll show you how to make it sharp enough to slice through flesh as if it were butter.” He brought a sharpening stone out of his pocket and spat on it.

  Nicco’s knife—even Alessandra couldn’t guess that night how important a tool it would prove to be for her. How it would, in a sense, determine the course of her entire future.

  The family was gathered around the hearth. Alessandra was teaching Dodo his letters, incising them one by one into the skin of an apple with her little penknife—a gift from her father that doubled the number of knives she suddenly owned. If Dodo named the letter correctly, she let him take a bite of the apple. When every surface of the apple was incised and eaten, Dodo was allowed to feed the core to Nicco’s dog, and they started on another apple.

  The sun had set. The day itself had been overcast, and there wasn’t enough light now, of course, for reading. Pierina and Giorgio sang, though softly, as Ursula complained of a headache. Nicco sat and sharpened the new hunting knife his father had bought for him, as predicted, to replace the one he gave to Alessandra. She’d taken to wearing the dagger, well hidden, under her gown. He watched his sister as she carved each letter, the tip of her tongue in the corner of her mouth.

  Carlo, walking in from outside, looked over his elder daughter’s shoulder. “Hearken to this, Giorgio,” he said. “I think I’ll fire you and hire Alessandra in your stead. She draws letters with her penknife that rival those you make with your finest brushes.”