‘Well?’ Nicoletta snapped.
‘Begging your pardon, mum. The mistress left her prayer book.’
He handed Pia a parcel wrapped in a stole. It was intercepted by Nicoletta who unwrapped it to reveal a prayer book, bound in black buckram, tooled in gold. Grudgingly, she handed it to Pia. Pia had never seen it before and opened her mouth to say as much, when she met the boy’s hazel eyes, heavy with meaning. She thanked him and walked on. Nicoletta, the banker, gave Zebra the tiniest tin coin she could find in her purse.
Back in her room Pia opened the book, expecting to find a message – perhaps from Riccardo – and her heart quickened. But she got a surprise: there was a second cover underneath the first.
Le Morte d’Arthur
by Sir Thomas Malory.
And it was not just any copy, but her own, with the
little owl of the Civetta on the flyleaf of the quarto. She hugged it to her.
He
had done this for her. She was no longer alone.
‘Signor Faustino, she is improving so much that I wondered if we might have your leave to ride outside the walls again today.’
Faustino, framed by the windows of his great hall, steepled his long white hands and regarded Riccardo with his raptor’s eyes. ‘She’s coming on well, you say?’
‘Yes, sir. She’s cantering well now. If we have your leave to go into the country, we might try a gallop.’
‘Hm.’ Faustino touched his fingertips to his thin lips. ‘And how is your Unicorn?’
Riccardo made a quick calculation: if he maintained that he still could not mount the stallion, Faustino might conclude that there was no need for him to fill his time with Pia. If he revealed that he could now ride the horse, Faustino might want him to spend more time with Pia and less on practising for the Palio.
‘Well, too – I’m schooling him now, and he’s got quite a turn of speed.’
Faustino’s black eyebrows shot up into his white hair. ‘In truth? Well. Well. If you draw him in the Palio, we shall see. It’s all about what happens on the day, and that, my dear Riccardo, is in the hands of chance.’
He’s not as worried as he should be,
thought Riccardo, and wondered why.
‘I think, then, as to that other matter, it would be well
for you to take young Pia out of the city again.’ The amber eyes flicked upwards, suddenly aflame. ‘Why don’t you take her into the Maremma? There are some fine gallops in the salt marshes, near our castle.’
Riccardo gave a brief bow and left the hall. He ran out into the stableyard like a child.
The presence of an actual child in Zebra, holding his mount, sobered him a little.
‘Zebra,’ he said, ‘could you ask around about this horse, Leocorno? Try to get hold of Boli, or someone who knows him, and find a little about his history?’
Zebra looked doubtful. Riccardo sighed. ‘There’s coin in it.’
Zebra’s grin spread from ear to ear. He handed over the reins with a courtly ‘signor’, and ran. Shouting the comforting words needed to precede each mount, Riccardo vaulted up on to Leocorno.
The
Morte d’Arthur
transformed the lonely hours Pia spent in her room, and even her troubled nights were now filled with dreams of knights and faithless ladies and adventure. She was careful to keep the book’s existence a secret from Nicoletta, knowing the maid would make sure some accident befell it.
Nicoletta continued to exert her malign and bullying presence. Each night she would extinguish the light as she left Pia to sleep, pinching at the candle as assiduously as any mother putting her babe to sleep. But one night at dinner, Pia had spied a tinderbox, squat and silver, sitting on the
great oak sideboard. She had swept it, unseen, into her skirts. On the nights when she read into the small hours, she made sure that the heavy drapes were closed without the tiniest gap so no chink of light could give her away.
Riccardo had given her a world between two covers. In her desire to reciprocate his kindness, she scoured the pages for references to Arthur’s churches, but there were many mentioned in the volume and she would have returned to her next riding lesson with nothing to report, had she not chanced, on her way back from shrift, to be waiting outside the apothecary’s shop for Nicoletta.
The maid, in her usual inversion of their roles, had insisted that they go home by the Strada Romana. The hospital-church of Santa Maria Maddalena had a fine apothecary shop there, where she would buy a salve for her bunions. Pia, waiting, knew better this time than to run. She did, though, cross the street to find shade in the loggia of a tall palace. The palace of San Galgano.
She fiddled absent-mindedly with one of the many horse-stays set into the exterior wall, lifting the heavy iron ring and letting it drop back against the stone with a clang. Lift drop, lift drop, lift drop. Only on her third go did she notice the design of the thing. It was a sword, buried in stone, with a little man’s head growing out of the hilt where a jewel might sit. She stepped back into the sun and looked up to the second-storey loggia. The
piano nobile
was placed on a level with the church opposite, to compensate for the fact that the church stood on a slight hill. And outside the elegant, double-arched window were a number of friezes of the saint who gave the palace its name.
Pia had heard of Saint Galgano and his relics, which lay dry-boned and silent somewhere in the hospital-church across the street. In one relief, he was doing great deeds as a knight. In another, he was taking a great sword out of a stone.
Pia looked about. She saw two moneylenders setting up their tables in the shade of the palace, piling their coins on their
banco
benches. They must live locally, for their strongboxes would not stand to be carried far. She greeted them, quickly, one eye on the apothecary’s door for the returning Nicoletta.
‘Why the sword, do you know?’
The men were puzzled.
‘Beg pardon, miss?’ said the first.
Pia repeated, ‘Why is there a sword on the horse-stays, on the friezes?’
‘Ah,’ said the second, pinching his spectacles on to his nose like a schoolteacher. ‘Because our blessed San Galgano buried a sword in the stone, in the round church of Montesiepi, above the abbey of San Galgano.’
Pia thanked them and crossed the street just as Nicoletta emerged from the apothecary’s. For once, her smile was almost as wide as her maid’s.
The next day Pia called Nicoletta to her chamber. She sat hunched on her bed, and as the maid loomed over her she clutched her pelvis.
‘Nicoletta, I know you have a good care of me and look after me as if I were your own. Indeed, I know you have
a care of me like one of your own kin. And perhaps you will not be surprised then that I come to you, now that I am in great pain.’
Nicoletta, clearly delighted to hear it, sat heavily beside her mistress on the bed, causing Pia to steady herself lest she roll into her bulk.
‘Well, my pet, tell Nicoletta all. Is it your women’s courses? For I have noted, sure, that you have been bleeding wondrous heavy.’
Pia gripped her stomach harder and made herself speak in gasping, groaning tones. ‘It is. The pain is most severe, and the bleeding comes and goes more than once in the month. I thought perhaps … I know you go to that hospital-church we passed the other day – Santa Maria Maddelena, was it? And that if
you
seek solace there, the sisters must be very learned for I know you have a great knowledge of medicine.’
Nicoletta simpered at the compliment. ‘That is true. I do go there sometimes, for they have the best physick, mayhap because they have some blessed relics in their holy house.’
Pia was careful to keep her eyes low so Nicoletta could not see them flare. ‘Of San Galgano?’
‘’Tis so. And it is true there are sisters who do have the knowledge you speak of, of female troubles and such. But if you’re sufferin’ in your women’s parts, ’twill pass soon enough. With the wax of the moon the cramps will go. Might get worse for a little, afore it gets better.’ This prospect stretched her smile even further.
Pia flicked her a look, and sighed.
‘Well, perhaps you’re right. I must bear it as well as I can. But in truth, I have been worrying that this malaise may prevent me from carrying a child, and you must know that my dearest wish is to do my duty.’
She rose slowly and limped, doubled-up, to the window, all the time watching her maid keenly in the glass.
‘But you are right; and there is no need for my father-in-law to know of it, lest it get worse and then, perhaps, I must ask him to call for his physician. But do not fret, my dear Nicoletta. There will be no need for him to know that you did not see the necessity to act early …’
Nicoletta’s smile snapped back small. ‘Well … I might have cause to step that way this week, for my poor foot will need a fresh poultice. Perhaps I’ll mention it to the sister hospitaller, have her send some novice along.’
Pia grasped the windowsill in genuine relief. ‘Oh dear, dear Nicoletta! I knew I could rely on you.’
Nicoletta was as good as her grudging word. The very next morning a nun from Santa Maria Maddalena was shown into Pia’s chamber. She was wearing the black habit and the characteristic white wimple of the hospital sisters, the starched snowy linen of the headdress reaching skywards like gull’s wings.
When Pia saw the nun’s face her heart sank, for Nicoletta had grasped back some points in their game by supplying a novice no older than Pia herself. Had Pia really been suffering, this slip of a nun would have been
of trifling help, but she was more concerned that the girl would know little of the real matter on which she sought enlightenment. But when the nun sat on the bed as she was invited, Pia was encouraged. Although her eyes were sad, her expression serious, the young nun’s face was intelligent and her discourse was lively. She took just a moment to introduce herself as Sister Concetta, before she launched into detailed questions about Pia’s last bleeding, the colour, duration and amount of her flux. Pia held up a hand.
‘Sister, I won’t lie to you. By the grace of God, my health is good. But this city needs physick. I need you to tell me as much as you can of your patron saint and the foundation of San Galgano. Now, you can walk from this room this moment and tell my father-in-law what I have asked you. But I beg that you will not, as lives may be saved if you tell me what I need to know.’
She watched the nun’s eyes search her face and travel over her head, to her temples and ears where the scratches from Nello’s shears were barely healed. The novice’s next utterance was completely unexpected.
‘What happened to your hair?’
Pia, having undertaken to tell the truth, did not hesitate. ‘My husband cut it off.’
‘Why?’
‘A man smiled at me.’
The nun nodded, her eyes suddenly the sheen of glass. She reached up and unbound her headdress. Under the white wimple was a bald, livid scalp: a desert of burned, healed flesh, stretched taut and webbed with scar tissue.
Pia stared.
‘Aye,’ said Sister Concetta, ‘my husband did not use the shears but the firebrand.’ She tied her headdress on again, and placed her hands, with great dignity, in her lap. ‘Now, what would you like me to tell you?’
The Castel di Pietra rose out of the day like a jagged tooth.
Pia did not know what she had expected of the Eagles’ stronghold – perhaps a modern house or a summer palace, with all the attendant creature comforts. But this place was like a castle of legend – murky, medieval, pricked out with arrow slits.
She and Signor Bruni had ridden out for the best part of the morning. Pia had galloped once, far and fast, just as she’d wanted, the wind in her hair, the salty air splintering past her face. Whatever else happened to her, Signor Bruni had given her a great gift: she would always love riding, now and for ever. She was committed and, for the first time, she felt truly Sienese. Signor Bruni had given her so much without ever asking for anything back or acting with anything less than absolute propriety. And because he had behaved this way, because of all the men in her life he had asked nothing of her, today she had something to bestow on him. Two somethings.
But the time had to be right, and the place. They were nearly there.
They had been in full flow, racing together, Signor Bruni tempering Leocorno’s extraordinary speed so that
they could be shoulder to shoulder, until the Castel di Pietra had risen from the friendly horizon like a pirate’s ship and stopped her in her tracks. The sun was high, and the Eagles’ castle offered a welcome shadow, but neither rider was eager to get any closer. An evil miasma seemed to rise from the place, shimmering in the heat haze, like a cloud of hornets from their nest.
At length Pia kicked Guinevere to ride up to the stone edifice, taking the palfrey right under the cool shadow of the curtain wall. As she touched the walls of the ancient place they crumbled under her fingers, the stone black and crystalline, like muscovado sugar. They looked up to the windows. The building was so ancient that even to see glass in the leads was a surprise. Silently, they circled the entire fortress. There was a huge heavy door studded with iron, and a small sliding panel set within. Pia urged Guinevere to climb the incline behind the castle, and Signor Bruni followed, curious. But Pia had not yet found what she was looking for, so went on, unspeaking, pushing through a dark thicket of thistle and mandrake. At the western corner stood the dark finger of a single tower. Pia stopped.