Tuscan Daughter

by Lisa Rochon

  The guard now towered above her. Could he smell the bread? Head bowed, linen hood pulled low, she fixed her eyes on the intricate weave of his iron vest and the tufts of black hair that grew in patches on his thick arms. How could one man grow so large while others grew small from starvation?

  Slowly, carefully, she emptied her leather satchel and extended her coin. “Payment to enter your city, so beautiful,” she said automatically. The boy was rigid with panic below her skirts. “May Florence be ever golden.”

  She said the words obediently, but she did not feel obedient. The people around her, dressed in rags, crazed with hunger, looked ripped apart. They stank of onions and poverty. The air here felt unclean; the dawn itself looked torn asunder. Her throat tightened. She found it difficult to breathe.

  She felt a brief, crazed scuttling and the boy pushed out, sending her skirts billowing. The guard turned to chase him, but she pointed defiantly at him and ordered him to stop, even as her stomach contracted with fear. She felt strong enough to defend the weak. “Leave that boy! He is hungry. Let him be, you ugly toad!”

  The man stopped, momentarily dazed by her stupid show of bravery.

  “Will we deny him that?” she added, turning to the crowd. “Who else is brave enough to join me?”

  But it was too late. She heard the roar of the giant and felt a blow to her head. She crumpled against her cart, rattling her clay carafes, and mumbled a furtive prayer that they would not be broken.

  A garland of fear wound its way through the crowd. Bystanders watched with curiosity—this guard was the embodiment of the animal that lurked inside all of them. What lay in store for her offered a narrative with suspense and just desserts.

  “Hiding a thief. Inciting a rebellion. You will be beaten for this.” He looked at her with angry, rheumy eyes. Beatrice could smell the oily stink of his unwashed skin.

  “My customers wait for me inside,” she said weakly, feeling ridiculous and worthless.

  He had an iron grip on her wrist and was hauling her away. The crowd sounded a ragged chorus.

  She twisted around to see her cart, abandoned, strangers backing away from it as if touching it might infect them. A rooster crowed, beating its wings against a wooden cage. Would anybody help her?

  He dragged her past the tollgate, past the other guards, one of them jumping with glee. She struggled, but he yanked her arm hard, sending her to the cobblestones. He yanked her up again; she felt her limbs might come apart like a wooden puppet. Now he pushed her to the right, down an alley, a route she did not know. It led to a dead end, where a park had been closed off to the public. She felt brambles scratching her legs and saw a hastily erected stone wall and a makeshift wooden door. Shrubs grew thick around it. She could still hear the clatter of the vendors pushing their carts nearby. She wanted him to finish whatever he had planned for her quickly. He was breathing hard, the breath of an ox hauling logs up a hill, opening the door with a large iron key. Her wrist was on fire, and she thought of her mother gently hanging beeswax candles on wooden racks, the game of dipping her hands into bowls of wax, feeling the sudden, alarming burn, then the soothing, silky warmth.

  The door lurched open and the guard pushed her across the threshold and into the secret green. This is another world, she thought, stunned by the lush foliage allowed to grow everywhere along a long, narrow track, once a place of heavy traffic between two tollgates, the Porta alla Croce and the Porta a Pinti. She remembered how the vendors often complained about the decree from the Medici family that had closed a busy public thoroughfare so that the ruling elite might enjoy long, uninterrupted horseback rides.

  The guard released her wrist and pushed her forward. She immediately ran, and he caught her with two leaps. One of his hands held both of her wrists behind her back. How strange it was to walk together down the abandoned road, past rosebushes and cherry trees, sweetness filling her senses and the dread of what was to come churning her stomach. She looked over at him and saw his face lined with wickedness.

  He punched Beatrice hard on the back of her head, and she fell to the grass, her ears ringing with pain. She screamed, scrambling to her knees, until he grabbed a mound of grass and stuffed it in her mouth. Then he picked up a rock and she growled, pushing out resistance from the back of her throat. The rock came down hard on the side of her head, and the ringing in her ears became pounding—she felt herself fading in and out of consciousness. The pounding grew louder until it seemed it was both inside and outside her head. She could feel his hands grappling with the cloth bandages binding her breasts, but she had tied them so well and so tightly, his swollen fingers could not manage to undo the intricate knot. Cursing, he busied himself with ripping the clothes from her hips. Her skirts lifted, and the chain mail of his vest pressed hard on her face. She stopped moving as his massive weight came down upon her. The ringing in her ears grew loud and overwhelming, a monastery of monks shaking tiny silver bells, and her mind traveled in their direction, toward the relentless vibrations.

  * * *

  “What’s this?”

  From far away, Beatrice registered the voice. Her face felt wet and sticky—slowly, she wiped away the liquid so that her eyes could squint open. She saw a man with a lean, ugly face sitting high on his horse, his black tunic floating around him. Somebody she recognized. His figure was slight and his cheeks sullen. He looked to be barely thirty years old, yet he held himself easily, with the bravado of an old warrior. Yes, thought Beatrice groggily, it is he. A government official. Her mind attempted to latch on to his name in her memory. He carried a jousting lance by his side and raised it to thrust hard at the sentry’s chest. “What’s this?” he said again.

  “My lord, if you please, she’s a thieving villager,” answered the guard. His voice cracked with interrupted lust.

  “All women respond best to rough handling,” said the official, with a thin-lipped smile. “If she is to be submissive, it is necessary to beat and coerce her.”

  The ringing filled Beatrice’s head; she watched how the guard grinned, as if he’d experienced delightful complicity, how he shook his hand in the air triumphantly.

  “Animals, all of us, that’s what we are,” said the man on the horse. “My father introduced me to books. Livy’s history of Rome, an excellent, classic resource. I read it all the time; when other boys were out running races in the fields, there I was, alone with the words of Livy. And, the Roman philosophers—when I was a young man, barely married, I adored the words of Lucretius, who spoke of banishing superstitions and favoring the will of a man. That spoke to me, and do you know what?”

  The guard looked confused by the official’s long speech.

  “I copied the book out, all seven hundred pages.”

  “There’s no place for the peasant scum in Florence,” said the guard, interrupting. “Though I’d be glad to have my way with her.”

  The official looked down on him. “You left your post at the tollgate,” he said, his tone icy. He stepped his horse closer. “You have failed the republic and dishonored its virtù.” He aimed another thrust of his oak lance.

  “He has long terrorized us.” A third voice, this one with a rich timbre belonging to a woman. Through the fog filling her head, Beatrice thought she recognized Agnella. “Chancellor Machiavelli, my lord, humble servants of the republic count on you to punish those who weaken the state.”

  “I do not know you,” said Machiavelli, stepping his great white horse toward her.

  “I know you to be a fair advisor to our Gonfalonier Soderini, and greatly skilled in negotiation with leaders of foreign states.” Agnella was an expert at preening and placating; the words slid smoothly from her mouth.

  “Naturally, I am pleased with your political assessment,” said Machiavelli, leaning forward in his saddle.

  “Your battle of painters between Leonardo and Michelangelo is a stroke of genius.”

  The second chancellor nodded, bathing in his own brilliance. “You know this girl?” he a
sked, finally.

  “I shall take her to the noble doctors of medicine at the Ospedale di Santa Maria Nuova,” said Agnella.

  Beatrice felt the side of her head ooze blood, and the twinge of purple bruises distorting her face. Agnella brushed a hand gently over her cheeks.

  Machiavelli tossed a rope around the guard and pulled tight, saying, “This man disrespects himself and the republic.” He turned his horse, and the guard lurched painfully forward. “The government is soon to reopen this greenway to citizens,” Machiavelli added as an afterthought, looking appreciatively at the lush garden. “I shall advise the governor to hasten the project. Though I shall miss it for my jousting practice.”

  Beatrice was fighting to stay conscious. Everything around her sounded extra loud—the pawing of the horse’s hooves, Machiavelli’s voice, the shaking of the silver bells inside her head. She tried to speak, but her mouth seemed locked.

  “Your devotion to the betterment of the city is a model for us all,” called Agnella after him, sounding every bit the obedient subject his kind enjoyed. “God make you happy,” she added.

  Agnella waited only long enough to see the guard hauled away before spitting on the ground where Machiavelli’s horse had stood. Working fast, her fingers flying, she lifted one of her underskirts and tore free a clean patch, pressing the compress against the gaping wound on Beatrice’s head. Beatrice gasped, struggling to keep her eyes open.

  Two villagers Beatrice knew from Settignano came fast across the green to her. They must have run the news of her abduction to Agnella at the hospice.

  “We have a cart waiting for you and the girl,” said one woman.

  “Just outside the wooden door. How is she? Will she live?” asked the other.

  “She will live, yes,” said Agnella. “I think Machiavelli’s jousting practice might have saved her life. I told him I’d bring her to the big city hospital; it wasn’t the time to convince him of the value of the women’s hospice; a man such as him probably believes it is run by witches.”

  Softly, sternly, she instructed: “Stay awake for me, Beatrice. Do not follow the ringing.” She tore another long length from her skirt and wrapped Beatrice’s head several times until the blood was staunched. Her hands ran gingerly down the length of Beatrice’s body, muttering to herself: “One broken wrist, two broken ribs. The head—it’s too early to know.” She straightened Beatrice’s skirts and hoisted her up. “Stay with me, Beatrice. Listen to my voice,” she soothed. “No sleeping. No following the ringing. Right here, with me.”

  The women lifted Beatrice and carried her across the green. They brought her through the mouth of the gate and stepped into the street. Word had traveled fast outside and within the city. A crowd closed a tight circle around Agnella and Beatrice, but it was Michelangelo who pushed past to lift Beatrice in his arms and place her onto a waiting wagon.

  “Michel, we’ll take her to the hospice at Santa Caterina, where I can tend to her,” said Agnella. “Roll forward carefully; avoid the ruts in the road as best you can.”

  Beatrice heard Michelangelo giving grim approval, then felt movement, the sound of horses stepping forward. From there, she knew no more.

  Chapter 38

  The Santa Caterina hospice had four small rooms, each of them occupied by women. Two were victims of domestic abuse, both with lacerations to the face and broken fingers. One patient believed that a demon lived inside the bulging knot of her right thigh. Another had fallen sick from the hex of her husband; he preferred his younger mistress.

  Not all of the patients were destitute. Several from wealthy families were sharing beds with their sisters who, without the promise of suitable suitors, had been pressed into service within the convent. Their rooms were located farther down the hall. These women sometimes demanded tincture of opium and gold leaf, for amusement and pleasure; Agnella always listened to their stories and declined their requests, politely. She saved the mixture for patients who truly needed it: Beatrice was one.

  Agnella cauterized the gash in Beatrice’s head with a salve of rose oil and turpentine mixed with warm egg yolks. Two nuns wrapped her head in a turban of white gauze. Their mentor—whom they respected as a doctor—secured wraps around her ribs. The girl’s skin had turned gray; the veil of death hung near. Tomorrow they would know whether she would turn away from the ringing and return fully to the earth.

  Agnella pointed to Beatrice’s broken wrist, badly swollen and already the color of a thunderstorm. “Tomorrow, if she is still with us, we’ll set it with laudanum.”

  “Pimpernel, to help her sleep?”

  “Yes, she can sleep safely now. A dose of pimpernel, fine. But wash her first,” said Agnella. “Then massage sweet chestnut oil into her feet and legs. Use a little honey and sage. You have the oil in your apothecary?”

  “Enough, though we could use more.” The second nun spoke crisply. “She is a beauty, and so young. Who would do such a thing?” The women let the comment hang in the air. Then: “I’ll fetch some.” She left the treatment room, but not before tears sprang to her eyes. Patting a linen across her face, she inhaled deeply, lifted her chin and ran to the apothecary.

  * * *

  There was another patient at the hospice who benefited greatly from opium—a woman Agnella had recognized. This patient had arrived days before Beatrice; she had called herself La Riccia. Since then, she had lain on a bed without speaking, the blood weak in her body, her skin dull as limestone. Because she seemed confused and disoriented, she was kept for a week in an airy private room to steady her pulses. The nurses bathed her with warm water infused with lavender. Agnella sat on a wooden stool by her bed, reading long passages of poetry to her. “‘Beauty and Duty in my soul keep strife.’”

  Does she remember, Agnella wondered, that her true name is Leda? That they had once been neighbors? She feared the worst about the state of Leda’s mind, that a series of assaults—and, possibly, brothel poisons—had created terrible, disorienting trauma.

  When color started returning to Leda’s cheeks and her muttering had quieted, Agnella asked that Beatrice be placed in a bed next to her. The nurses did not question this instruction. Beatrice and Leda lay beside each other, beneath their white linen sheets, and slept for another two days.

  “‘And ’twixt the two ladies hold its love complete,’” Agnella read, sitting between the beds, a book in front of her, legs wide, leather boots rising above her knees. “‘The fount of gentle speech yields answer meet, That Beauty may be loved for gladness’ sake, And Duty in the lofty ends of life.’”

  Chapter 39

  The sound of moaning. A lament from another, faraway time. A human cry. Beatrice wished the keening would stop. If only she could find a way to undo the knots of pain, she might begin to heal the anguish coiled through her head and her body. Thinking about it only seemed to tighten the knots until she fairly pulsated with pain. She clenched her eyes and heard a moan gather in the back of her throat, an animal agony leaping past her tongue.

  If she could get out of bed, she might be able to outrun the sound of tiny shaking bells. It was hard to breathe, and she felt faint. Something pungent in her nose, the smell of pimpernel. Immobilized, her thoughts raced in all directions. She missed the olive tree, the ancient one with its massive trunk and gnarly arm that towered above the rest of the grove. Its flowers were powerfully shaped; she liked the way their sweet perfume, similar to the scent in her nose now, cleared her head. When she was a child, she would climb up its rough bark, chiseled and scarred all over by time. Even when the sun dropped low on the horizon in November and the winds from the Apennines blew unkindly over the land, there was a warmth to the olive bark. When it was time to harvest the great tree’s black olives, she would place a wreath of its silver leaves around her head, climb to its highest branches and speak of her wish to shake the branches so they might kindly release their fruit onto the blankets below.

  “There she is. Our pride! The olive girl!” her papà and mamma wo
uld say, pointing to their daughter half hidden by the branches.

  Agnella was always there, among the other villagers, and there were bottles of red wine and smoked boar layered in thin slices onto loaves of tough Tuscan bread. Beatrice would make a pretty speech that was long-winded and amusing. Nobody was allowed to interrupt. There was a lot of gesturing, with her arms reaching up to the sky and pointing dramatically to the earth, as she balanced in a crutch of the old tree, her black hair tumbling down her back. Sometimes she would stand up and bounce on a thick arm of the tree, and the fruit would rain a blessed bounty to the ground. Everybody harvesting would yell up their thanks to the tree, using the nickname—“Grandfather”—that her family had given it: “Grazie, Nonno!”

  The memory dimmed until it was extinguished by the pain climbing out of her throat. “Mamma!” she cried.

  As if looking dully through a linen sheet, Beatrice was vaguely aware of the night nurse who bent over her to administer more pimpernel into her nostrils. She felt something around her wrists, something painful in her bones, and wondered whether the guard’s hands were still gripping her there. The nurse checked her pulse, muttered something about it being weak, and something else about ice-cold feet. How could the nurse and her attacker both be there? She yearned for him to get off her, for more blankets, for another rubbing with chestnut oil. She heard the nurse leave, wooden clogs slapping on the stone floors, linen skirts swishing. Why was she leaving Beatrice alone with the guard?

  In the bed next to Beatrice, a patient stirred. A woman’s hand appeared, emerging from below the pile of blankets. Feet flexing, legs bending to form the peak of a rooftop. The woman rubbed her face slowly with her free hand. Through a slit in her eye, Beatrice watched the other patient, allowing her vision to slowly adjust to the dark. It was as if the sheet had lifted and she could see more clearly. The patient’s forehead was slick with sweat, and goose bumps were rising on her arms. Beatrice listened to the woman’s slow, irregular breathing. Her hand jerked to her neck, and Beatrice could see the outline of bruising there.