“Stop,” he whispered to her sternly. “Disgraziata.”
Lucrezia’s chest tightened.
“I followed your rules, Father, and look what’s become of me,” she whispered to herself.
Beyond the curtain Lucrezia heard the painter clear his throat loudly, and she clamped her lips shut.
I’m a novitiate consigned to God, she argued within herself. I’m only modeling at the instruction of Mother Bartolommea to please the Medici. And to please the King of Naples. Her fingers brushed over the velvet ribbons of the sleeves, which seemed to quiet her fear. I can’t be a signora, but I can pretend. There’s no harm in pretending.
She pulled the cotta over her head.
When he heard the gentle slide of the curtain, Fra Filippo looked up from his easel. The late afternoon sun illuminated the gold of Lucrezia’s hair, wrapped tightly in a bun. Like a wreath of silk, the benda sat upon her head, the tiny pearls shimmering. The silk cotta stretched across her shoulders and chest, her sleeves swelling out like an angel’s wings, the bodice hugging her waist and falling in heavy folds, just past her stockinged feet.
“Lucrezia.” Fra Filippo breathed her name with such longing and disbelief, that he didn’t need to say anything else. Lucrezia closed her eyes, afraid she might faint. As she did, the painter quickly picked up his pencil.
“Stop, please. Stay as you are,” he said.
Lucrezia froze. The room, indeed the rumble of the streets of Prato outside his workshop, seemed to hush. The monk didn’t take his eyes from her face or speak another word until he’d captured her expression, the gentle curve of her mouth, the way the benda sat perfectly on her forehead. When the sun passed over the neighbors’ rooftop he touched a red crayon to the place where the Virgin’s lips were parted.
“Enough,” he said gruffly. “You must change back into your nun’s robe.”
Lucrezia didn’t speak. She’d stood in one place for so long that she’d nearly forgotten where she was. Her muscles were stiff, and she ached. But the look on the painter’s face was deeply satisfying.
“You’ve allowed me to see my vision come to life,” Fra Filippo said. “Now hurry.”
Behind the curtain, Lucrezia’s fingers shook as she worked the buttons on the cotta. She pulled off the benda. She was being foolish, even more foolish than she’d been as a girl in Lucca, pretending to be a bride under her homemade bridal crown. To imagine the monk had looked at her with anything more than the eye of a painter entranced with his own heavenly vision was blasphemy—a terrible sin of pride and vanity. It was surely the urge of Satan in her.
Lucrezia tugged on the robe, and straightened her wimple. She had no looking glass, but when she stepped from behind the curtain, she knew the Lucrezia of splendor was gone, and she was bitterly thankful.
When the procurator and Spinetta returned she was sitting in the antechamber, waiting. She pressed at the wrinkles in her robe as Spinetta entered, her face drained.
“Oh, Lucrezia.” Spinetta sighed. “I wish I could have done more for the poor woman, but I fear she will soon be with the Lord.”
Lucrezia prepared to speak, but as she opened her mouth, the deep voice of the monk boomed forth.
“Sister Spinetta, I am sure you gave the new mother great comfort,” Fra Filippo said from the doorway to his workshop. “Now you must return to the convent. Your escort will be here shortly.”
Outside the bottega the skies were turning a deep blue. The de’ Valenti servant appeared, and the sisters said their good-byes hastily before following him onto Via Santa Margherita for their brief walk home.
“We are so fortunate,” Spinetta whispered to Lucrezia as they both breathed in the fresh evening air. “There is so much in this world we don’t know about suffering.”
“Yes, Spinetta, it’s true,” Lucrezia replied, glad they were walking, and that she did not need to meet her sister’s eyes. “There is so much that we don’t know.”
Chapter Nine
The Feast of Saint Bartholomew, the Year of Our Lord 1456
The sky went from midnight blue to deep black, and still Lucrezia tossed on the narrow cot in her cell.
Since sitting for the monk in a donna’s fine dress, she’d been in the grip of an impossible fantasy. By day, when she busied herself in the garden, she was able to keep up the appearance of simple obedience. But alone, she thought constantly of the monk’s face. When he’d seen her in the silken gown, it seemed to her that Fra Filippo had looked at her not as a nun, but as a woman. Of course he was a monk, she a novice, and any emotion that passed between them was shrouded by their robes. His affection for her could be nothing more than that of a priest for his flock, she knew. Yet she could not stop imagining his hands on her face, or pretending they might share what could never be.
Lucrezia heard an owl far off in the trees beyond the convent wall, and freed a hand to rub the aching muscles along her shoulder. In the days since she’d last visited the monk’s studio she’d worked hard in the garden, cutting herbs and culling roots that would be mashed and fermented for Sister Pureza’s healing tinctures. Only this morning she’d put on hard boots and used a spade to dig up a mulberry bush. She’d dug strenuously, bringing up calluses on her hands and a sweat on her brow. Such vigorous work had felt good to her young body, and she’d gladly taken the roots to the well and rinsed them thoroughly. Then she’d hauled them in a wheelbarrow to the chopping block next to the infirmary. A huge iron cauldron in the convent’s kitchen had been fired, and the mulberry roots simmered there still.
After so much work, she’d expected to sleep well. And yet her mind raced. Lucrezia had never known a man such as Fra Filippo. The purpose and concentration he showed when he worked reminded Lucrezia of her own father. But the painter was a man who looked at her not as a father looked at his daughter, but as she imagined a man might look at a beautiful woman. Perhaps, even, at a woman he loved.
Secretly, she’d read the bawdy tales of Boccaccio’s Decameron, which told of the fever a man and woman might feel in each other’s presence. But she hadn’t imagined how such a fever might feel, nor had she seen such evidence in her own life. There had been one stolen kiss with her betrothed, and it had raised only a sharp burn from his stubble on her cheek. But when she thought of Fra Filippo, and smelled his earthy musk, she imagined laying her cheek against his chest, letting him hold her in his arms and whisper all that he knew of art and beauty. And love.
Before her father’s death, Lucrezia realized, she’d been a girl. Now, under the shadow of the veil that was to wed her to the Lord, she was becoming a woman. And there was no one with whom she might speak of such things. Her mother had never been her confidante. Her sister Isabella, to whom she might have spoken if they were near each other, had followed the monsignor’s directions and refrained from writing to Lucrezia at the convent. Spinetta was too young, and too pious. It was impossible, anyway. Lucrezia knew that many clergymen consorted with courtesans and took lovers whose names were disgraced by their very surrender. And she was certain that a novitiate who felt this way in the presence of a monk was tempting the malocchio, the eye of the Evil One.
With no earthly women in whom she could confide, Lucrezia turned to the Virgin. In her cell, after the others shut their doors and extinguished their candles, Lucrezia prayed. For two nights she’d knelt on the rough stones and whispered what raced through her mind. Her words were no louder than the scamper of mice in the night stair.
“Holy Mother, forgive me for putting on fine clothes when I’ve pledged to follow in your ways. Forgive me for longing for what I can’t have. Forgive me for what I feel under the painter’s gaze. Help me, please help me, Blessed Mother.”
Lucrezia prayed through the night and the monk’s face floated through her mind; her father’s hands, always at work, roamed across the expanse of her prayers. She saw a broken image of her own face under the crown of the Virgin and her body flamed with shame.
“Those who know such things sa
y the painter’s art is for your glory and for the glory of your Son,” she prayed. “I humbly ask you to guide me, Mother Mary. I beg you to keep me on the righteous path.”
Lucrezia remained on her knees as the moon rose. She prayed until the sisters assigned to Matins closed the dormitory door with a thud. Then she crawled into her cot, wrapped the blanket around herself, and tossed fitfully. Dragged from sleep by the bell that tolled for Prime, Lucrezia felt the grit beneath her eyelids and the ache of tired limbs. Her heart was heavy, yet at the same time she felt a joyful expectation. It was Thursday, and she would see the monk after Sext.
Robed figures rustled silently through the candlelit dawn as Lucrezia and Spinetta took their place in the church and knelt. The young novitiates bowed their heads in what seemed to be the same humble manner as before, and said their prayers with the same quiet vigilance. Yet everyone at the Convent Santa Margherita knew the escort had returned thrice for the sisters, and nuns who watched Lucrezia and Spinetta closely were aware that the novitiates had begun to change. Some thought it was vanity; others, pride; still others, who were generous in their assessment of human weakness, thought the sisters felt guilty about leaving the convent to visit the painter.
On her knees, Sister Pureza looked at Mother Bartolommea and waited for the prioress to turn.
“What is it, Sister Pureza?” The prioress’s voice rasped with her first words of the day.
“Sister Lucrezia looks very worn. I fear the long hours with the monk are taxing her,” she said.
“What trouble can it be to sit all day while the painter makes an image of your likeness?” Prioress Bartolommea snapped.
“I haven’t had this experience, so I can’t attest to its demands,” Sister Pureza said. “But I have sat all day in contemplation of the Lord, and I know how tiring that can be. To pray all day is one thing, for at least it nourishes the spirit. But to sit for a painter must feed a sense of vanity and pride. Perhaps Sister Lucrezia is struggling in her prayers.”
Prioress Bartolommea knew well the sin of pride, and how it could plague the spirit.
“She isn’t the first novitiate who’s struggled to adjust to the rhythms of cloistered life, and she won’t be the last,” said the prioress. “If she’s troubled by her duties or by her conscience, she’ll speak them in confession, and that will clear her mind.”
“Perhaps,” Sister Pureza said. “Although the monk is her confessor, and this will certainly come to bear on how she unburdens her soul.”
Noticing the eyes of the others upon her, Sister Pureza shut her lips and finished the morning’s contemplation in silence. When Lucrezia passed, the novitiate avoided her gaze.
At breakfast, instead of the usual buns and watered wine, the sisters found a generous fig torta and a pile of boiled eggs in a copper platter.
“Fig torta,” Sister Bernadetta exclaimed. She clamped her hand over her mouth to silence herself, but the others voiced their appreciation.
“Blessed be the Lord, who sustains us with all good nourishment and sends us what we need to serve in His name.” The prioress spoke from her position at the head of the table. “This morning, as we take in sustenance that is indeed glorious in the Lord’s bounty, we thank the Medici, who sent this harvest of riches in honor of the Feast Day of Saint Bartholomew. We thank the bountiful family of Florence and pray for their continued prosperity.”
At the mention of the Medici, all heads turned toward the novitiates, and Lucrezia reached under the table for Spinetta’s hand. Despite the special food, she took only the smallest morsel of the fig torta, and was the first to rise when they were dismissed from the refectory.
“Certainly you won’t send the sisters to Fra Filippo’s bottega today,” Sister Pureza said to the prioress after the nuns had filed out. “You see Sister Lucrezia is pale. And let us not forget she is in mourning for her father, who passed to Our Lord only some months ago.”
The prioress’s face darkened. What Sister Pureza said was true. But she also knew that Ser Francesco had arranged for the sisters to go to the painter’s workshop every Tuesday and Thursday until the week of the Festa della Sacra Cintola. She’d accepted the gifts from the Medici without question, and as long as she still had the Holy Belt under her bed, she could not turn away the escort when he came for the novitiates.
“Sister Lucrezia isn’t fit for an outing,” Sister Pureza continued. “Perhaps it’s best if she remain in the convent today. I can prepare a tincture that will surely renew her, and if our good chaplain spends his day in contemplation as he should, then he won’t miss her at all.”
Mother Bartolommea nodded soberly. She knew her old friend was right. When the escort arrived she would send the monk a brief note telling him that Lucrezia would not be leaving Santa Margherita today.
The bells tolled as Lucrezia waited in the garden for Sister Pureza. She looked around at the bee balm in full flower and the coriander already going to seed. Kneeling on the narrow brick walk, she crumpled a vervain leaf and inhaled its scent.
“Good morning, Sister.”
The novitiate stood when Sister Pureza arrived, and the old woman nodded. Her eyes were deep and kind. But they were commanding, as well.
“Sister Lucrezia, I fear we’ve taxed you too soon after your arrival at Santa Margherita,” she said, gently taking the novitiate’s arm. “The prioress has seen your fatigue, and believes it is best for you to remain here with us today.”
Lucrezia held her breath. She was afraid that anything she said would reveal her confused feelings for the monk.
“I am terribly tired, Sister.” She kept her eyes averted. “But our chaplain said the great Cosimo de’ Medici expects the altarpiece in less than a year’s time, so he might present it to the King of Naples. Surely if so much is asked of the chaplain, I can fulfill my own small role.”
“Worldly matters aren’t our concern,” Sister Pureza said as she led Lucrezia to sit beside her on the garden bench. “There are always great matters in the world of men that press upon their duties. This is the world God made, and it is how men live within it. When you were with your father in Florence, you saw business conducted with great urgency, I’m sure.”
The old nun waited for Lucrezia to nod before continuing.
“I, too, spent my girlhood among luxuries and those who live for them. There are few who know that I once wore fine dresses and attended wonderful gatherings in the homes of great men. But I did, child. I know how hard it is to leave that world behind.”
Sister Pureza chose her words prudently.
“Prato is lively, and although some of our sisters do good works in the city, venturing out so soon after entering the cloister has presented you with what may seem to be a choice in the hand of your own fate. I’m old, but I remember how my heart was troubled when I arrived inside our walls. I remember wishing there might be some other way for me.”
Lucrezia saw the woman’s face go slack, as if remembering a great sadness.
“Did a tragedy fall on your family as it fell on ours?” Lucrezia asked.
“Yes.” Sister Pureza didn’t hesitate in her answer. “A tragedy befell my family. And I found refuge here with the good sisters of Santa Margherita. At first I resisted. But when God calls you to His cloister, it is best to accept His protection. When you let go of the world beyond our walls, only then can you see how vast the spiritual life is.”
Lucrezia bowed her head.
“Going to the monk’s workshop has taxed you,” the old nun said. “I wish you not to return.”
“But the prioress has made a promise to Fra Filippo. It is not mine to revoke.” The thought of never returning to the painter’s studio filled Lucrezia with dread. “I must do as I’m told, and go where the Lord sends me. Isn’t that right?”
Sister Pureza saw a pallor spread across the novitiate’s cheeks. Whatever God’s will, she wouldn’t allow the girl to become weak and ill.
“Come, Sister Lucrezia. You’ve worked many days i
n the garden, but haven’t enjoyed the benefits of our labors.”
Sister Pureza led Lucrezia to the bluestone that marked the entrance to the infirmary, and crossed to one of the small pallets against the wall.
“Sit,” Sister Pureza said, and Lucrezia obeyed. In a few moments, the nun returned with a flask filled with a cloudy liquid.
“My head is very muddled, Sister,” Lucrezia said. She let herself lean back on the cot. “I’m not certain why God has sent me here.”
“You must trust that God knows what is best. All is in His hands.” She gave the flask to Lucrezia. “This is vervain root and valerian. It will soothe you.”
Lucrezia made a bitter face, but drank the tincture. Sister Pureza handed her a ladle of water, and the novitiate took that, as well.
“You must rest, Lucrezia. You must not allow yourself to grow weak, for in weakness the Devil finds and tempts us.”
Lucrezia wanted to ask the nun if she’d ever been tempted by the Evil One, but she remained silent, and closed her eyes. She really was very tired.
As Sister Pureza watched the novitiate’s chest rise and fall, she thought back to her own arrival at the convent so many years ago. She’d come to Santa Margherita with a child in her womb, and had done little but sleep, day and night. Like Lucrezia, she’d fought God’s will. But in the end she’d seen His wisdom, and surrendered to it. Following her terrible loss, she’d turned to the midwifery skills she’d learned in secret at the side of her childhood nurse, and studied the medical works of Trotula di Ruggerio to strengthen her knowledge. After the Black Death claimed the best midwives in the valley, young Sister Pureza had found she was truly gifted in the birthing arts. For this she was ever grateful to the Lord.
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