The Madonna of the Almonds (11 page)

‘They are miraculous.’

Father Anselmo was genuinely staggered by the frescoes. He revolved under the roof, marvelling at what he saw. There in the little transept was the Marriage of the Virgin, with the Virgin and Saint Joseph in the same brilliant lake blue – Saint Joseph placing a wedding ring on the strange right hand of Simonetta di Saronno, as her face in profile gazed at her new husband. Anselmo wondered what it must have cost her to pose for this, in the very place where she had wed her dead lord. (Uncannily, Saint Joseph, though only a humble carpenter, had something of the noble looks of Lorenzo di Saronno.) Opposite this masterpiece was another, Christ among the Doctors. Here, with characteristic arrogance, Luini had painted himself as the adult Christ, disputing with his hands spread and his face lively with argument as Anselmo had often seen him; so lifelike that it was disconcerting to stand below with his twin. There too stood Simonetta, presented as an older
woman, and by some trick of perspective, larger than her son; dressed in the same vivid blue, she reached out to him with one hand while the other rested on her heart. Anselmo felt a sudden disquiet. Luini had never confided in him about his family but the perspicacious priest suddenly had a glimpse of all that Simonetta might mean to Bernardino – not just a momentary lust that could be easily slaked, but a true and deep love in which he cast her as mother, lover and wife to him. He had painted her without ornament or artifice – there were none of the time-honoured symbols of the Virgin to be seen here. She clasped no gilded lily, nor overblown rose. She was unadorned by almond blossom, the flower which denoted Mary’s purity, and would have had an added layer of meaning to Luini’s model. Luini must have known of all these tropes, all these symbolisms, yet he had dismissed them all in favour of a more mortal depiction. A worldly worship, in interaction with her human family. Anselmo thought suddenly of Bernardino’s own name-Saint, Bernard of Clairvaux, who had revered the Virgin above all, and worshipped her with a burning passion. Discomfited, Anselmo walked thoughtfully to the presbytery of the
Cappella Maggiore
, with Luini following like a shadow. There was the Presentation of the Infant Jesus in the Temple, and there again stood Simonetta in the same cerulean blue, looking on in maternal fondness with long white hands pressed together in prayer for her beloved son. In the hills beyond the scene lay another miracle; his
own church of Santa Maria dei Miracoli had been transported from Saronno to the hills of Bethlehem, and stood, white and delicate, amid the alien corn. And here opposite, brightest and best of all, the Adoration of the Magi. Here Simonetta, in that peerless blue, held in her arms the Babe that was the morning star, as Kings came to the brightness of his rising. All was complete and wonderful; the stable so perfectly rendered in perspective that it seemed to arch out of the wall, the Kings and their retinue shining with jewels as bright as their blackamoor skin was dark, and the camels and destriers striding loftily behind the scene. And yet, despite all this wonder, the eyes were drawn to that serene figure in blue.

Bernardino, next to him, was still and silent; his hand clamped to his cheek. Anselmo turned to his friend. ‘Even to one such as me, who has seen the work at every stage, it is still a miracle.’

‘Hmm.’

Anselmo glanced sideways at his friend. Silence was not typical of Bernardino – he was usually very happy to sing his own praises. ‘Bernardino? Are you well?’

Bernardino was not sure. He certainly felt like he had some affliction. He would have visited the apothecary if he believed in medicine. But he had always been such a healthy animal, so immune to illnesses and so unsympathetic to those who sported them that he did not trust in the cures of such men, any more than he believed in the power
of prayer – the cure of a higher power. But it was true he did not feel normal. Wine and food had no savour for him. And women even less. God knows there were enough pretty girls in Saronno; he saw many such looking at him while he prowled the back of the nave waiting impatiently for mass to finish so he could be at his brushes again. Any one of them would be his; he knew how his talents conferred an attractiveness on him that his looks already assured. Yet he had not sampled any of them – he had not had a woman since he came here. But Anselmo must be answered.

‘I am quite well, I thank you. Who could not be, when he has produced such work?’

That was better. Anselmo, relieved, felt encouraged to ask a further question, something that had puzzled him as he peered closer. Something missing. ‘Is it finished?’

‘Yes, Anselmo, I thought I’d leave the Madonna without a face. A trifle modern for some tastes perhaps, but I am prepared to argue my aesthetic corner.’

Anselmo was now satisfied that his friend felt better – his ironic turn of speech had returned. The priest walked closer to the fresco and scrutinised the painting; sure enough a blank oval sat where Mary’s face should be. He did not know why he had not seen it before, so forcibly did the person of the Virgin draw the eye from the scene around her. The blue of the cloak and the fall of the material, and the light which seemed to emanate from that Holy Mother, drew all toward the face, which was not there. It made a
strange incongruous space – the Lady wore, it seemed, a mask such as the Venetians did, but one where there were no apertures for mouth or nose. It was vaguely unsettling.

Bernardino shuffled behind with an uncharacteristic hangdog gait. ‘She will be finished today. One more session with the
Grande Signora
, the Queen of Castello, and all will be done.’

‘She comes
today
?’ said Anselmo, unable to mask his surprise.

‘Yes.’ Bernardino’s eyes narrowed with enquiry. ‘Why? It is…what, the twenty-fourth day of February? Is there some obscure Christian festival which I know not of? The first time baby Jesu shit in a pot?’

Anselmo looked stern at such irreverence. ‘Nothing. No matter. And it is well that you have nearly done, for someone important this way comes. The Cardinal himself, on a progress to Pavia, halts his journey here tomorrow and will say mass. He wished to see the work that he commissioned. It is a great honour.’

‘The Cardinal of Milan? Tomorrow?’

‘Yes. I have his missive here, which his rider brought even now.’ He waved the scrolled letter at Luini. ‘You know His Eminence?’

‘Only by repute.’

Anselmo nodded. ‘He is said to be an…exacting man. Yet I think him not to be truly harsh nor cruel as it is said, but merely he is hard on himself in the service of God, and
this makes him hard on others. Devotion takes us in many different ways.’

Bernardino smiled, galvanised once again. ‘As long as his devotion takes the form of giving me further commissions, I care not for his methods.’ He clapped his hands together and rubbed them against the cold. He suddenly had the notion that his salvation lay away from Saronno, and was suddenly impatient to be done, and to be gone. He felt, uneasily, that his malaise was somehow connected with Simonetta di Saronno. Perhaps she had bewitched him, cursed him, or some such. ‘’Tis settled then. I will paint her one more day. And then it will be over.’ And it was not the fresco that he meant.

The truth was that he had dallied, and avoided the end of his work. And the reason was that, for the first time, he was not sure that he was equal to the task he had set himself. He was really unsure whether he could satisfactorily capture her, full-face on the wall. His other frescoes showed the Virgin in profile, oblique, with her great eyes turned from the observer. He had not attempted, yet, to translate the full force of Simonetta’s incredible beauty gazing directly forward, out of the wall. And it was not because she hated him. Of late, she had become kinder towards him, and he felt himself in danger. He hardened his heart and was more caustic than ever, but he had the feeling that she was not convinced by his posturing – that she saw through him
with those eyes of hers. They battled still, but he was the hard one now, and she the softer. Since he had told her of his childhood – damnable weakness! – he had more than once seen a wholly unwanted sympathy in her great eyes. Once or twice she had even laughed as she teased him, and the sound had affected him greatly. Her face descended from the heavenly to the earthly, and the humours in his body boiled as his blood in his veins rejoiced at the sound. He would be tougher today. No quarter for her charms.

He did not turn as she entered. He knew it was she, for the music of her steps walked through his dreams. He ignored the thrill he felt at her coming and threw her the robe without looking at her. ‘Make yourself ready,’ he snapped. ‘We have much to do, for the Cardinal of Milan himself visits tomorrow, and the last face must be done.’

She did not move and he turned to her at last. She was still and looked pale, her eyes shadowed. She looked at him with defeat, not with her hawk’s stare. Something was different. For some reason she was weak. He triumphed. ‘Why are you standing there? I have no time to dawdle.’

‘Signor Luini’ – different indeed, for she had never called him this before – ‘I cannot sit for you today.’

‘Why not?’

‘I am…indisposed.’

‘Indisposed? What is that to me? I care not if you are cursed by your women’s bleedings, or whether some whelp
has got you with child. We speak of higher things here. This is Art. Now get ready.’

She gasped at his harshness but did not bite him back as she was used to do. Bernardino was puzzled by this new Simonetta. He did not know where he was. He had thought that he had the measure of her, but she showed him another face today. He was lost, floundering, and it made him harder still. ‘Well?’ He could hardly hear her reply.

‘It is none of these things. Just that…it is a year to the day that my husband was lost to me.’

Bernardino clenched his fists to stem the tides of sympathy that rose within him. If he let them rise they would engulf him, and he would drown in the sorrow of her plight. He was sorry, so sorry that he had caused her pain. He would not have hurt her for the world. He turned for his brushes – he could not relent, not let her see how horrified he was by his own cruelty. If he did this he felt he would be lost – he feared the strength of what he felt. ‘Sit down,’ he commanded harshly, and she sat, as if vanquished once and for all.

In truth, Simonetta felt, if possible, even more sorrow this year than she did last. While Lorenzo died in battle she had been living at Castello in hope. She lived through the winter not knowing he was already dead – thinking he would come again with the spring. But the spring brought only Gregorio di Puglia to tell her that Lorenzo had been killed in February when the snow fell to lie on his body.
She found it inconceivable that he had died while she had lived – she had even danced and supped with the serfs at Candlemas living on her hope, while he rotted. She remembered the feastday well; she and a bevy of noble ladies had played the game of the golden cushion, in which a gilded pillow had been thrown and caught, for a cup of priceless hippocras held captive by the Lord of Misrule. Simonetta had won the game, and taken the pillow prisoner, and as she drained the cup proffered by the jester,
then
, right then, Lorenzo’s hot life-blood must have poured from him into the frozen Lombard ground. She felt a strange irrational guilt that she had not, in some way,
known
the instant he died. A husband was the flesh of your flesh, joined to you by the most Holy of sacraments; surely a good and Godly wife should know the instant that her spouse ceases to breathe? But no, she had not. Her guilt would not relent. She must have been a bad wife then – but here her memory would not trick her. She saw no lapse of faith, no peccadilloes in their past. They had been not passionate but deeply loving. They had been unified and in one mind in all things. As a wife she had had been obedient, dutiful, chaste. Why then must she carry the burden of this guilt, not just the guilt that she did not feel for Lorenzo’s passing, but the nameless guilt she had felt every day since she had looked on Bernardino Luini’s face and body and found him, despite herself, the most pleasing male form that she had ever seen, including her own Lorenzo. The devilish temptation of him made her
own dear Lorenzo more kind, more temperate, Godlier in her eyes. She yearned for him, and missed him every instant. This year, after the first wild storms of her grief, and the following months of emptiness, she had found a new anger and resolve engendered by her poverty. Matters of money led her to encounters with two very different men – Manodorata had become her friend, and Bernardino her enemy. Both had sustained her in different ways. Manodorata had given her succour and Bernardino had given her anger, and she was clear-sighted enough to know that she owed her life to them both in equal measure. Now, with Lorenzo one year gone, it had begun to occur that there was no end to her loss, that if he was still gone one year on, and that he would be gone the next year, and the next, till the end of her life. She could not even be angry with Luini today, no matter what he said of her. She felt stale and flat, and the wastes of the future stretched out till doomsday. She sat on the chancel steps, in her blue robe, and tears welled and spilled from her peerless eyes.

Bernardino saw it at once for he had not taken his eyes from her face. This was what he had feared. Her tears. He knew he could not resist her tears. Diamonds formed and dropped from her eyes – the eyes that drew him into a muddle of his emotions. The colour of the sky above the beloved lake of his home, Lake Maggiore; the lake and the sky, the sky and the lake; they became a blue oneness when he narrowed his eyes. The angels breathing in and out, in
and out, lapping the tide which was not there. The last touch of his father’s hand on his shoulder as he left Bernardino forever. His love for his mother, the last woman that had made him truly happy. He could bear it no more and went to Simonetta then. He was on the lakeshore wading through the tide of her tears, kneeling as if in supplication, taking her in his arms and kissing her hard on the mouth, feeling her arms around him and her lips opening under his. He tasted her tears – salt, not sweet – and tasted his cure. He knew at once, at last, what had ailed him; and all was made right in an instant. He had found the grail. He loved Simonetta di Saronno, and knew in that incredible moment that she loved him too.