The Miracles of Prato

by Laurie Albanese

“My head’s pounding,” he said.

  “You should rest. Go home, check on Lucrezia.”

  “Si, si, I will,” Fra Filippo said. “But first I must go to the apothecary and get a tincture for my head.” He blinked, and there were dark spots in front of his eyes. “I’ll have to come back later, but an hour of rest will do me good.”

  The painter hurried toward the apothecary, taking a shortcut through an alley behind the cobbler’s shop. He was looking down at the street, aware only of the throbbing in his temples, when he felt the rush of a man on either side of him. He turned right, then left. The men moved in front of him, blocking his way.

  “Buongiorno, Fratello.”

  “Buongiorno.” He nodded. He barely gave them a second thought until the oafs stopped, forcing him to yield.

  “We’ve come from the Bankers’ Guild,” said one. Fra Filippo looked from one man to the other. The first was short, his face covered in stubble that barely concealed an angry purple scar. The other was tall and thick, with arms the size of a horse’s flank.

  “What is it?” the painter asked irritably.

  The short one stepped closer. The painter’s heart began to race.

  “Our master would like to see the work you’ve done for the altarpiece,” said the short man.

  Fra Filippo’s head was pounding.

  “I don’t have it with me,” he said, irritated. “It’s at my workshop.”

  “Take us there,” the tall one demanded. “Show it to us.”

  The painter tried to pass the larger of the two, but the man moved in front of him and uncrossed his arms. Fra Filippo could see he was strong as a bull, and probably just as mean.

  “We’re not the Casa del Ceppo, we’re not a charity house,” the man said. “The painting is due soon after the solstice. The guild wants to see that you’re working on it.”

  “If the Arte del Cambio wants to see what I’ve got, tell them to come to my bottega in a civilized manner.”

  “We know what you’ve done.” The man spat at Fra Filippo’s feet. “If you’ve got something, show it to us now, and we’ll report back to the guild.”

  Shaken, the monk tried to move back, but he bumped up against a building. The two men in black parted, and a third, in red, stepped forward. Fra Filippo felt a chill of recognition as the red robes rippled.

  “I’ll gladly come to see what you’ve done.” The man addressed him in a far kinder tone than the others had used. Fra Filippo thought he heard an accent from the north of Italy, perhaps somewhere near Milan. “Shall I come now?”

  Fra Filippo’s eyes moved left and right, casting about in his mind for some other sketch he might pass off as the one for the bankers. But there was nothing.

  “I thought so, Fratello,” said the small man. Fra Filippo remembered him sitting behind a table at the guild offices, on the day he’d signed the contract. “We may not be men of high art, but our money is good, and you have our twenty florins.”

  Fra Filippo was silent.

  “Either you deliver the altarpiece on schedule, or you give us back the money while there’s still time to commission someone else. Maybe even your friend Fra Diamante.”

  “Do not threaten me,” the painter exploded. “I am under the protection of the eminent Cosimo de’ Medici!”

  “Not in Prato,” the man said. He put out a hand, much larger than Fra Filippo had expected, and pushed against his shoulder. “Do we understand each other, Brother Lippi?”

  The monk clenched his jaw. His head felt like it was about to explode.

  “Do we? Or shall I stop in at your bottega tomorrow, and take some things to guarantee you’ll give us what we want?”

  “Don’t you dare!” he said as he clenched his fists. “You stay away from my home.”

  “Don’t test us,” the man said, stepping away and letting his shadow cover Fra Filippo’s. “We are not patient men.”

  Chapter Twenty-three

  The Sixth Week of Easter, the Year of Our Lord 1457

  Lucrezia was stitching a small sleeve onto an infant’s gown when the pain ripped across her belly. She cried out—but there was no one to hear her cry, and she was glad. It was only May. The child couldn’t come yet.

  She pushed aside the pile of silk pieces, dropped her head between her legs, and lifted up her skirt. There was no water, no blood. Lucrezia gripped the edge of the table and panted.

  “Not yet, God. Please, not yet,” she gasped.

  The tightness pulled across her belly, expanding beneath her partum belt. Lucrezia reached for the belt she’d fashioned from soft leather, and loosened the laces. She squeezed her eyes shut and prayed aloud.

  “Mother Mary, give me strength,” she groaned, grabbing at a ream of blue silk. She’d been saving it for a special dress but now she put one end between her teeth and bit down to keep from screaming. She tasted the fabric and a vivid memory of her father’s robes flashed in her mind. She gnashed her teeth and writhed in the chair. Just when she thought she couldn’t bear it anymore, the pain stopped. Lucrezia lifted her head and blinked.

  Outside her window, sun was sparkling on the road that opened to the Piazza della Pieve. The silk pieces cut for baby clothes were on the floor where she’d pushed them, together with the needle, thread, and sewing hoop.

  Wiping her forehead with a rag, Lucrezia drank a cup of cool water from the cistern. Next to the hearth was the basket of delicacies Teresa de’ Valenti had sent that week, along with a note promising to send a midwife to Lucrezia when her time came. The signora hadn’t said whom she would engage, or how the midwife was to be sent for, and Lucrezia was sorry she’d waited so long to ask. For all of her careful praying, the cutting and sewing of the baby’s clothes, the drinking of herbs to ready her for labor, Lucrezia was alone and un-prepared. And the pains were strong. Strong enough that she feared her time was here.

  When she could stand, Lucrezia gathered her cloak, prayer beads, and the soft yellow cotta da parto she’d nearly finished. She tidied everything as best she could, put the pile of necessities on the bed, slipped the circle of beads into her pocket next to the medallion of Saint John, and prepared to find Fra Filippo at the church. She was nearing the door when the pain came again, bringing her to her knees. It took several minutes to pass, and many more until she was able to look up and take a true breath.

  She’d fallen at the foot of the Medici altarpiece, which stood on a large easel near the doorway. At first the image was unclear to her, but as the pain faded, the scene on the large panel came into focus. Her own likeness was at its center, but Lucrezia didn’t study her face. In the months of living with the painter, she’d tried not to look at the Virgin’s image and think of herself. Instead, she looked at the woods and flowers Fra Filippo had painted, pleased to see how much progress he’d made—not only in the Virgin’s swelling blue robes but in the sunlight that shone through transparent leaves in the field, and the light from the holy dove radiating across the kneeling Madonna.

  Lucrezia’s gaze wandered to the panels that stood on the floor next to the easel, with their lifelike images of Saint Michael and Saint Anthony Abbott. The panels were finished, and she studied them closely for the first time, seeing Saint Michael’s armor pitted and gleaming with silver, the fine brown fabric of Saint Anthony’s costume, his clothing the same color as the earth.

  “Per piacere,” she whispered to strong, gentle Saint Anthony Abbott, who knelt humbly on the ground. “Don’t let the child come now. Not yet.”

  Even as she prepared for another wave of pain, she promised herself that she would do everything possible to keep the baby inside her until late June, so that Fra Filippo might claim the infant as his own.

  After that day, Lucrezia moved about very little. She sat with her feet up on a stool with her face turned to the sun when it came in through the window on a right angle, a shawl around her shoulders when the sun fell below the city’s rooftops. Spring was everywhere, in the onion grass that grew along the paths in
and out of Prato, in the mewl of new calves in a neighbor’s pen, and in the smell of freshly turned earth where the woolfullers’ wives hoed their modest gardens.

  Lucrezia sat in the wooden chair by the hearth sewing and praying as the sun rose and fell. She had nothing to do but sew, and wait. And what she waited for—the child, word from Rome, a note of loving kindness from her sister at Santa Margherita—could not be rushed. She was in the chair when Ser Francesco arrived at the end of May to check on the Medici altarpiece, and she was there embroidering two silken panels of a pillow when the emissary came again in the heat of midday on the Feast Day of Saint Thomas the Apostle, in early July.

  The smell of Ser Francesco Cantansanti’s horse outside the window turned Lucrezia’s stomach. She heard his boots hit the ground, and the clink of the harness as he tethered the horse. Ser Francesco paused at the doorway long enough to knock and call out, and then swept into the bottega without waiting for an answer. As he bowed to Lucrezia, his eye took a quick inventory of the rich cuts of silk cloth that filled the workshop.

  “Fratello.” The emissary nodded, and stopped to study a sketch the painter had made for the design of the triptych frame.

  “Ser Francesco,” the painter greeted the emissary warily. Cantansanti’s presence further taxed his time, and Fra Filippo was already spread thin. He reached for his jug of wine and stayed where he was.

  “Are you still at work on the halo?” Cantansanti demanded when he saw the small brush the painter held to the panel, making tiny dots of color. “The halo was finished last week, Filippo. Why are you laboring over small details when there’s still so much to be done?”

  “It is not as simple as it looks!” the painter snapped, but quickly softened his tone. “I must keep layering if we want the halo to shimmer like real gold. If King Alfonso is to be pleased, the work can’t be rushed.”

  Wiping his brow, Fra Filippo thought recklessly of the altarpiece for the Arte del Cambio, which was due in one week’s time. Ser Francesco’s ever-watchful eye had diverted the painter from that work even as the Bankers’ Guild had sent their messengers twice more, demanding to see the progress he’d made. The answer, regrettably, was that he’d done little. The altarpiece needed to be done in a fury, or he would know the guild’s wrath.

  With the Feast of Mary Magdalene only two days away—and the altarpiece more than a week late—the monk slipped out of bed before dawn. The heat was already unbearable. He put a cup of honeyed water and some bread by the bed, and brushed a kiss across Lucrezia’s damp forehead.

  “I have to go to the chapel,” he said. “If Ser Francesco comes, tell him he can find me at Santo Stefano. I’m bringing the Medici pieces with me, so I can study them while I’m working.”

  After making sure the paint on the Madonna’s halo was completely dry, he carefully wrapped the triptych panels in smooth cloth and piled them into his wagon along with three large pieces of poplar he’d cut for the Cambio’s altarpiece. Each blank panel was nearly as tall as he stood, and the central piece was wider than the spread of his arms.

  In truth, Fra Filippo was bringing the Medici altarpieces with him so he might study the effects he’d achieved there and roughly replicate them on the panels for the Arte del Cambio. He had less than two days to pull together the triptych of the nursing Madonna surrounded by Saints Matthew and Peter. It wouldn’t be good but it would be big, and with a bit of the Virgin’s luck he thought that would more than satisfy the rough men of the guild.

  When the bells of Nones rang that afternoon, Lucrezia’s fingers were deftly sewing a nightshirt for the baby. Nicola was across the table, eating one of the sweet rolls she’d brought from Signora de’ Valenti and laughing merrily at a story she was telling about the Valentis’ daughters.

  “And the ducks chased the girl back to the water!” Nicola said. She was laughing heartily when Lucrezia heard footfalls and heavy breathing outside.

  “Open the door, Filippo!” a gruff voice growled at the door.

  It couldn’t be Cantansanti, Lucrezia knew, but she called his name anyway.

  “Stop stalling, let us in.” A hand rattled the iron latch, the heavy wooden door banging against the frame.

  Lucrezia stood, pressing her hands against the small of her back. Terrified, she stood in the antechamber and opened the door to find three men filling the doorway. Two were dressed in black, a third wore a red robe. She smelled wine, onion, and a spice she couldn’t recognize. Her stomach turned, the child kicked.

  “We’re from the Bankers’ Guild,” said the shortest of the three, arms crossed in front of his chest. He had a dark beard that barely hid a long scar that sliced his cheek from eyebrow to chin. “Where’s the painter?”

  “He’s not here.” She tried to keep herself calm, but the men’s anger was palpable. She felt her knees begin to buckle, and clung to the door.

  “Get him,” the largest one said harshly. “Get. Him. Now.”

  “Nicola,” Lucrezia called out to the servant. “Veloce, run and get Fra Filippo!”

  She heard movement, and the servant brushed past her and the men, her feet moving nimbly down the pebbled path.

  “He’ll be here,” Lucrezia said, avoiding the men’s eyes. She forced herself to stop shaking. “You only need to wait a few minutes.”

  “We don’t like to wait,” the man in red said curtly. With a chopping gesture he moved her aside, and the three men entered the bottega. “We’ve been waiting for months. We’ve come for the altarpiece.”

  Lucrezia looked at the man in panic. “The altarpiece? Are you from the Medici?”

  “The Medici?” The men in black looked at each other and gave her a wily smile. “Yes, we’re here to fetch the Medici paintings. Give them to us.”

  Lucrezia paled. The men spread across the room like a stain, their odor bringing up bile in her throat.

  “Where’s the altarpiece? It was due yesterday.” The bearded man stopped at Fra Filippo’s table, scanned the drawings, and begin tearing them into uneven pieces.

  “He’s been working on it,” she said, confused and dizzy. “Ser Francesco has been here almost every week. Surely you must know.”

  “Olivio, it’s not nice to lie to a nun,” said the short man in red, putting a special emphasis on the word nun. He turned to Lucrezia. “We’re not the Medici, we’re from the Arte del Cambio. We’ve come for the commission.”

  “The commission?” Lucrezia reached behind her, and fell back into a chair. “The commission?” she asked faintly.

  “It’s late,” said one.

  “But it’s not here, is it, Sorella? The painter’s been lying to us, hasn’t he?”

  Lucrezia’s whole body froze. She looked wildly around the studio and then she remembered Filippo had taken the Adoring Madonna and the panels of the saints to the church, pulling them in a little cart.

  “I don’t know what you’re talking about,” she said tearfully. “Please, ask Fra Filippo yourself, I’m sure he’ll give you what you want.”

  “We’ve done that already. Either we get the altarpiece, or we take whatever we can. He owes us many florins.”

  With his right arm, the tallest of the three knocked over a neat row of jars.

  “Please be careful,” Lucrezia said faintly.

  The short man opened a large black sack and began to dump chunks of pigment into it, while the other noisily stacked poplar and other wood panels by the door.

  “These should bring something for our troubles,” he grumbled.

  With a drunken stagger the short man fell against a stool, and it crashed to the ground. Paint splashed across Lucrezia’s robe and she ran into the kitchen, listening to the men trampling through the workshop.

  “Please,” Lucrezia shouted. “Please be careful.”

  She listened to the men cursing and laughing as they stomped in and out of the bottega, trampling her little garden and attracting the attention of the woolgatherers’ children, who stood around the house, their mouths
open, watching.

  “The gold must be somewhere,” she heard one of the men growl.

  “He’s hidden it well, the bastard,” said another, as he flung the last pieces of wood onto the pile.

  “Lucrezia?” Out of breath, Fra Filippo pushed through the men and strode through the messy bottega. “Lucrezia, are you all right?”

  Her reply was drowned out by the men’s shouts as they swarmed him, the two in black grabbing his arms.

  “Lucrezia?” He shouted her name again, struggling against the men’s rough grips. “Where is she?”

  “She’s in the kitchen,” said the red-robed man in his clipped Milanese accent. “We’re not interested in your puttana, Brother. We’ve come for the altarpiece.”

  “Bastards!” the monk shouted, kicking out with his heavy sandals. “Get out of here. Get out or I’ll kill you!”

  The tallest of the three clenched his fist and swung up.

  “The altarpiece, or the money,” he shouted as he struck the painter’s chin. Fra Filippo’s head snapped back. “We told you we aren’t patient men. Where’s the painting, eh, Fratello? Where is it?”

  “I’m working on it,” Fra Filippo answered, his mouth bloodied.

  “It’s too late. It should be done.”

  “It’s at Santo Stefano,” he said, pushing out his chest. “Let me go and I’ll show it to you.”

  “You’re lying. We’ve been there. We know there’s no panel for the Cambio.”

  “You fools.” The painter pulled a hand free and struck out blindly. “You know nothing.”

  The tall man laughed again, bending back Fra Filippo’s wrist until he cried out in pain.

  “We know that artists who bed pretty nuns don’t keep their promises, we know that much.”

  The painter roared against his captors, but they only held him tighter. The tall man landed a short blow to Fra Filippo’s right eye, another to his belly, then a third and a fourth in his gut. In a flash the monk remembered the gap between the memory of physical pain and its reality. A hard kick to his thigh, another blinding shock in his groin, and he fell to the floor, the men’s hard boots cracking into his ribs.