The Miracles of Prato

by Laurie Albanese

  “Perhaps,” Fra Piero said gently. “But we can’t guess at God’s will, Lucrezia. We can only bend to it.”

  When Lucrezia and the procurator parted the curtain that separated the monk’s quarters from the bottega, they found Fra Filippo had just finished covering his large worktable with a clean white cloth. A candle burned next to a silver chalice filled with deep red wine. Spinetta stood near the front window fingering her prayer beads. She refused to meet her sister’s eyes.

  “I know this isn’t the wedding day you imagined,” Fra Filippo said as he came to stand beside Lucrezia. She could smell the fresh soap he’d used to wash his hands, mingling with the sharp smell of paint.

  “There’s no contract to sign, no sponsalia, no procession, no feast,” the painter said. “I can’t give you those things, although I wish I could. But I wish to marry you and to offer you all I have. We will be one, and no harm will come to you ever again.”

  Lucrezia closed her eyes.

  “Are you ready, Lucrezia?” The painter touched her elbow. She opened her eyes. They were still and deep.

  “Yes,” she said. “I’m ready.”

  Holding up the blue book, Fra Piero began.

  “All things are possible with the blessing of the Lord,” he said, nodding at the two standing side by side, the painter a half braccia taller and several stones heavier than the young woman. Lucrezia kept her eyes on the procurator and avoided looking toward Spinetta, who stood reciting the rosary, her lips moving silently.

  “In goodness and with holy intentions, this man and woman come together to be united in the sacrament of matrimony on this twenty-fourth day of September,” said Fra Piero. “There can be no happiness without a wife, and no one should be judged wise, as Aristotle says, who spurns so great a good of nature, so great a pleasure of friendship, and the usefulness of so great a gift.”

  From his pocket, the painter withdrew a small velvet pouch. With thumb and index finger he carefully removed a ring, and held it out to Lucrezia. It was a thin gold band, polished to a warm shine, embedded with a small red stone.

  “Red jasper, for love and fidelity,” he said.

  Lucrezia’s eyes grew moist as his large fingers slid the ring onto hers. The red jewel caught the light from the window, matching the color of the spiced wine.

  “I take you to be my wedded wife and I espouse you; and I commit to you the fidelity and loyalty of my body and my possessions; and I will keep you in health and in any condition.”

  Lucrezia recited the vows back to him. “I take you to be my wedded husband and I espouse you; and I commit to you the fidelity of my body and my possessions.”

  Fra Piero made the sign of the cross over their bent heads.

  “You are married in the eyes of the Lord. May He bless your union and protect your lives.”

  The painter reached over and held up the chalice. He placed it tenderly against Lucrezia’s lips and watched her drink from it. Then he kissed her sweet, moist mouth.

  Spinetta was relieved when her sister came into the bedroom that evening, as she’d done every other night. Lucrezia took off her dress and slid under the blanket beside her, putting her cold feet against her sister’s warm ones.

  “Please try to understand, Spinetta,” Lucrezia whispered.

  “It’s done,” Spinetta said simply. “Now we must continue to pray for what is right.”

  Hours later, lying in bed listening to Spinetta’s deep breathing, Lucrezia could still feel the painter’s lips on hers. She put her hand on the blue book from which Fra Piero had read their vows. By the light of a dying candle, she found the words she sought and read them again, then again.

  Slipping out of bed, she crept into the kitchen to Fra Filippo, who was lying on his pallet next to the hearthstones. With her chemise skimming the floor she knelt and touched his blanket.

  “Fra Filippo,” she whispered. “Filippo,” she tried again, using only his Christian name.

  Waking at the brush of her breath on his cheek, the painter sat up. The blanket fell to his waist, exposing his bare chest.

  “What is it? What’s wrong?”

  “I’ve read the book,” she whispered. “The blue book, Concerning the Sacraments of the Christian Religion. I saw the page you marked.”

  His heart seemed to stop. Did she think their vows were insincere? Was she going to leave him even when he could still taste her kiss and smell the chamomile in her hair?

  “I want to be your wife,” she said softly. She looked down at his bare chest and reached out her hand, almost touching his dark tuft of hair. She felt a longing that wasn’t desire, but need.

  “I read what it said, Filippo,” she continued. “We aren’t yet truly man and wife. We haven’t consummated our promise.”

  The monk put a hand out and cupped her chin.

  “Do you know what you’re saying?”

  She leaned forward, her head almost resting on his shoulder.

  “Yes.” She touched the hand that held her chin, her palm smooth and delicate. “I want to be your wife. Tonight.”

  “Lucrezia.” Her name filled his throat and he gently pressed his mouth to hers.

  His lips were dry and cool but as they lingered, she felt them swell and grow moist. Eyes closed, she saw his face in her mind, his searching blue eyes, the protective largeness of his frame, the strong, capable hands. She tried to calm her nerves, to trust that what came next would be no more frightening for her than it was for every new bride.

  “Filippo,” she whispered. “Do you love me? Truly?”

  “I love you, Lucrezia.”

  Gently, the painter turned his body and lowered her onto the pallet next to him. He lifted the blanket, and pulled her under it with him. His chest was covered with soft, dark hair, and she buried her face against it. His lips roamed from her cheek, to her ears, down to her neck. He paused at the place where the prior general’s hard grip had left a string of bruises, and kissed each one.

  “I love you,” he said again. “I love you.”

  Fumbling, he opened the clasp that held back her hair and pulled it softly around her face, kissing the ends, letting it tickle his cheek. Then he lifted her arms and began to slide her shift over her head. She felt his hands on her shoulders and then on her breasts. His fingertips lingered on her nipples.

  Still kissing her, Fra Filippo slid her chemise off her shoulder. Her breath was coming in short gasps now. Nothing mattered more than their bodies, together. She would be his wife, and she would no longer be afraid.

  He drew back and looked at her in the soft firelight. She forced a smile, and nodded. The painter ran his hands from her shoulders to her thighs. For a moment she remembered the prior general’s hot breath, and she recoiled. As if he could read her thoughts, the painter murmured words of reassurance, all the while holding her closer, pressing himself more firmly against her, covering her with his own warmth.

  She felt his thick fingers touching her, and inhaled deeply. The monk brought his hand to his mouth and wet his fingers on his tongue, then slowly brought them under the blanket, moving them back and forth across the lobe that seemed to grow under his touch. A low moan escaped Lucrezia’s lips, and the sound of her pleasure excited the painter. Softly, he parted her legs and rolled between them. She cried out.

  “Is it all right, mia cara?” The monk’s voice was throaty and deep.

  She opened her eyes. His face was close, and the love in his eyes reassured her. She pressed a palm against his cheek and nodded.

  Gently, slowly, a great heat pressed into her, filling her in a place she’d never realized was empty. Lucrezia drank in the painter’s familiar scent of wine and gesso and realized what it was to be in love. Until this moment she hadn’t known what it meant to be joined to another, body and soul, and the gratitude she felt more than made up for the pain that grew stronger as her body opened and he thrust more deeply. He kissed her eyes, her brow, her cheek; his breath rasped in her ear. His body stiffened, he shudd
ered, and Lucrezia held him more tightly, astonished by his complete surrender. She felt a soaking between her legs.

  “Lucrezia.” He pulled back to look into her face. His eyes were bright, lit from the inside.

  “Now we’re truly married,” she whispered, surprised at how much sorrow she felt along with her joy.

  “I love you,” he said. “Lucrezia, don’t cry. I love you.”

  Chapter Eighteen

  The Nineteenth Week After Pentecost, the Year of Our Lord 1456

  Lucrezia’s bruises healed until they were barely shadows on her body, wiped away by the painter’s love. Autumn blazed and cooled, and the woodpile outside the bottega grew smaller. She began spending more nights on the pallet with Fra Filippo, letting his hands roam the length of her body, his palms press lightly against her mouth to muffle her cries of pleasure. He was patient and kind, and in the dark she found it easier to push the prior general from her mind.

  As the Feast of All Saints’ Day approached, Spinetta complained of a chill at night, and asked if she might sleep on the pallet by the hearth.

  “Thank you,” Lucrezia said quietly. “Thank you for your love and understanding.”

  “I do not know what is right any longer,” Spinetta said, her eyes darkening. “I pray every night for your soul, mia cara.”

  “As do I,” Lucrezia said.

  She said nothing about her monthly bleeding, which had not come for nearly two months now, but each morning, after the painter left her, she knelt by the bed and prayed for the Virgin Mother’s guidance.

  Lucrezia knew from the past that emotional turmoil could interrupt her regular bleeding, but the prior general’s violation gave her different cause for worry. If there was to be a child, more than ever she and Filippo would need the pope’s blessing. And if, God forbid, the child was the prior general’s, she would need the Holy Mother’s protection and perhaps more love than the painter had for her.

  “Do you hear anything from your patron?” Lucrezia asked Fra Filippo one evening, as he was cleaning his brushes.

  Fra Filippo didn’t meet her eye. He’d received a note from Ser Francesco Cantansanti two days earlier, delivered to him at the Church of Santo Stefano.

  Day and night Pope Callistus III is surrounded by his cardinals, who seek every opportunity to ingratiate themselves with His Holiness and discredit one another. The time is not favorable for a dispensation from the Vatican. I suggest you direct your passions to your work, and leave matters of love to those who do not wear the robe. Remember what harsh penalties the Archiepiscopal Curia can inflict when it wishes. And remember that you cannot marry the novitiate and also retain your title as Frate. Without it, you will renounce all the protection the Church affords you.

  “Filippo?” Lucrezia repeated. “What have you heard?”

  Clearing his throat, Fra Filippo kept his eyes on his brushes, and his hands busy. He’d replied to Cantansanti in haste, and dispatched the letter that very morning.

  My friend and honorable emissary, I respect your good judgment and trust you to know when the time is right in Rome. Meanwhile, I am in need of more gold leaf and lapis, which you know is very dear. I beg you to send me what funds you can so that I may finish the altarpiece in the fullest glory that Naples requires and the honorable Cosimo expects.

  “The Medici want to see the altarpiece in Naples as soon as possible,” he said. “When it arrives, I believe good things will come to us.”

  Lucrezia’s face clouded. The central panel of the triptych hadn’t been touched in days. Although her image was sketched and already filled in with an underpainting of verdaccio and a bit of cinabrese to warm the Madonna’s cheeks, it clearly wasn’t close to completion.

  “Then I pray you’ll finish it quickly,” Lucrezia said, her voice more terse than she intended. “So that good things will come to us soon.”

  But good things did not come quickly. In a week’s time the painter was forced to admit the loss of his chaplain’s wages meant he could no longer afford to pay Rosina. The girl, who’d just had a birthday, happily went off to Santa Margherita to begin her life as a novitiate. But the morning after she bade them good-bye, Lucrezia found Spinetta weeping in front of the hearth.

  “I want to go back to Santa Margherita, too,” Spinetta said, turning away from her sister. She was no longer angry, only sad. “Soon it will be Advent season, and I want to be with the others in the convent.”

  “I know,” Lucrezia answered. “But I’m afraid of what people will say if I’m living here alone with Fra Filippo.”

  “Then come back with me,” Spinetta said. “People are talking, Lucrezia. You must know that. He’s still a monk; no matter what he’s said to you, he puts on his white robe each morning and walks through the piazza with his head held high.”

  “But I love him,” Lucrezia said, lowering her gaze. “And my curse, Spinetta, my bleeding.”

  Spinetta turned pale. When her own curse had come the week prior, she’d used a small pile of clean rags, boiling them and then stacking them behind her few private belongings in a shelf by the hearth. She’d assumed her sister had been doing the same.

  “Your bleeding hasn’t come?”

  Lucrezia shook her head, refusing to look up at her sister.

  “How long has it been?” Spinetta asked.

  “Not since we left home, Spinetta. Not since July.”

  Spinetta muffled a cry.

  “You see why I’m praying for word from Rome?” Lucrezia whispered.

  Spinetta pressed her lips together.

  “I’ll stay with you a bit longer,” she said, reaching inside the pocket of her robe for her prayer beads. “But I must at least practice my duties as a novitiate, and serve the poor and ill in the ospedale when I can.”

  Lucrezia’s beauty and love gave Fra Filippo all that his heart needed, but the world demanded payment for food and firewood, and feeding three people taxed his meager resources until they were nearly gone. The food he brought home each evening grew more sparse, and while Spinetta was across town at the ospedale on a cool afternoon, Lucrezia went into the small patch behind the bottega to dig for some root vegetables to fill their stomachs.

  Advent was upon them and it was cold, even in the sun. Squatting heavily, she tugged at the tubers pushing their way up through the hard ground. Her back ached and her breasts felt heavy, the raw wind cut against her bare hands, and her eyelids were nearly shut. In an hour’s time she’d dug only three onions and a rutabaga.

  Inside for the afternoon siesta, she wrapped herself in the rough woolen blanket that smelled of Fra Filippo, and fell into the cocoon of sleep. She’d never felt so tired, it seemed, in all of her life. Even after she’d slept deeply, she barely kept herself awake through the evening meal of thin onion soup.

  The painter helped her into bed that night, bringing her an extra glass of wine as she combed out her hair. She was pale, he saw, but her eyes were somehow bluer than they’d ever been before.

  When she woke in the morning, Lucrezia rushed to the chamber pot and retched. The painter brought her a rag and wiped away the bile that wouldn’t stay down. He said nothing of what he suspected, and neither did Lucrezia. But when she went into the kitchen, Spinetta was standing at the hearth, staring at her with wide, frightened eyes.

  “Are you ill?” Spinetta whispered, shaking her head even as she asked.

  Lucrezia looked at her sister. How stark their differences appeared: Spinetta in her black robe and wimple, starched and fresh, while Lucrezia’s gamurra hung damp from perspiration under the plain blue robe she’d pulled over her head.

  “I don’t think I’m ill, sister.”

  They could hear the painter moving around in his workshop and they spoke quietly to each other in urgent tones.

  “I must stay here and have the child.”

  “The child of a monk.” As the bitter words left Spinetta’s mouth, the far worse possibility was reflected in the expression on her face.

 
“Whatever God wills,” Lucrezia said, dropping her eyes to the rough floorboards. Spinetta crossed herself and sat heavily on the stool opposite Lucrezia.

  “What did Fra Filippo say?”

  “I haven’t told him yet,” Lucrezia said. “But he must know. In truth, sister, I’m afraid of what will happen now.”

  She closed her eyes and pictured a fat-limbed, blue-eyed child with Filippo’s broad features. But each time she remembered the prior general’s face, nausea took hold of her.

  By the time Spinetta went to the market for a bit of ham, leaving the two of them alone in the bottega, Lucrezia was exhausted from worry. She found the painter in his studio, and cleared her throat to get his attention.

  Turning from his palette, Fra Filippo guessed exactly why she’d come to him. He’d suspected her news for some days now, and although it had consumed his thoughts, he was still unsure of his feelings.

  “Filippo?”

  She saw his face was grave, and tears stung her eyes. The painter reached for her hand and held it tightly.

  “What is it?” He touched her cheek. “Why are you crying?”

  Outside, the streets stirred with the sounds of horses pulling carts, but the bottega was perfectly still. Lucrezia said nothing. She guided the painter’s hand to her belly, and placed it there, gently.

  “It’s been many months since I suffered the curse,” she said. She laced her fingers through his, and watched his face. He blinked, but didn’t move. His hand stayed where it was, warm and immobile.

  “I’m going to have a child,” she blurted. “Tell me, Filippo, is it a blessing, or is it a punishment?”

  As she voiced her fears, what spread over the painter’s face wasn’t horror or dread, but something much closer to happiness. Fra Filippo didn’t take his hand from her belly, but simply pressed more firmly.

  “A child from my Madonna will be a blessing,” he said.

  “I’m not your Madonna,” she said weakly. “I am not any Madonna. To say such a thing is blasphemy.”