The Madonna of the Almonds (15 page)

‘Decimated?’ questioned Bernardino.

‘Every tenth man was to be executed.’

‘So Maurice and his men stood firm, even though one in every ten of his soldiers were to die? Who would do such a thing? Who would have such strength, or such folly?’

‘A man who truly believed that what he was doing was right. The penalty was carried out, but still the legion refused to comply. Maximian was enraged and another decimation was made. When Maurice and his legion persisted, Maximian ordered that the remaining men should be executed. The men offered no resistance, but went to their deaths convinced that they would become martyrs.’

‘So they all died?
All
of them? Sixty six hundred men?’

‘Every man was put to the sword, including Maurice and his fellow officers. Those elements of the legion that weren’t at Agaunum were hunted down and executed.’

Bernardino shook his head. Now the scene in front of him ran red with blood, the legion of martyrs lying dead on the field of battle. ‘What a waste.’

‘Why a waste?’ asked Sister Bianca gently. ‘They believed in something enough to die for it. You may think you believe in nothing,’ she looked him full in the eye. ‘But everyone believes in something. Don’t you, Signore, believe in something, or someone, enough to die for it?’

Bernardino was silenced for a moment, for there was one to whom he would give his life in a heartbeat. Yet he persisted. ‘What good has come from such a sacrifice?’

The Abbess waved her ringed hand. ‘This foundation is
built in his name and will give succour to many of the poor and needy in Milan. And not just this foundation, but many are built to honour the Saint. Our patron feels as I do, that it is a story of hope. Hope and faith do not die, and nor does love. A church was built on Maurice’s grave. Here, Signor Bentivoglio is doing the same.’

‘You seem to know his mind very well.’

‘I should. For when I lived in the world, before God named me Sister Bianca, my name was Alessandra Sforza Bentivoglio. Our Patron is my father.’

Bernardino turned away in shock and confusion. Little wonder the Abbess reminded him of Anselmo – she was the priest’s natural sister! Did she know that such a brother existed? Had her father told this unworldly woman of his sins?

Sister Bianca saw him turn, and made her own interpretation. ‘You wish to work. I’ll leave you now.’

Bernardino turned back, to reassure her that he did not wish her gone, but she had disappeared back to the nuns’ side of the monastery. He climbed down from his perch and looked at the wall where he had witnessed the scenes that she and her brother described. The blood was gone, the dead legionaries gone. ‘Love does not die,’ he said to himself. ‘No indeed, Simonetta.’ (He did not know that a good man of a different faith, had spoken the same words to Simonetta; not in a chapel, but in a grove of almonds.) As he watched, the green grass grew and a city was built
before his eyes. Saint Maurice, young strong and alive again, founded his church on the bones of the sixty-six hundred. Hope sprung from the ground. Furiously, before the image faded, Bernardino began to draw.

‘What will you do now?’

Simonetta and Manodorata sat on the floor of the treasure cellar. It was not a comfortable place; cold, with remnants of almond shells scattering the floor, but Manodorata had seemed to wish for privacy. He had sat down first, cross-legged like a moor, and she, clad again in Lorenzo’s clothes had copied him, and found the posture surprisingly comfortable. Simonetta sighed. ‘I do not know.’

Manodorata looked down. ‘This artist man. Luini. He has gone.’ It was a statement, not a question.

Simonetta spoke forcefully, to keep her voice from cracking. ‘Yes. He has gone.’

Manodorata nodded sagely. She felt no need to explain herself to him, nor to ask how he knew what had passed in a church that was not his own. She knew he would not judge her. He had said she would fall in love again and he had been right. He had not said it would hurt more than the first time. His grey eyes, so like another’s and yet not
so, held a world of sympathy and understanding. He began to speak. ‘It is well he has gone. The Cardinal is a vengeful man. His thirst for revenge knows no bounds. He hates and he waits.’

Simonetta drew her cape about her, feeling the threat like a draught. ‘You know of this man?’

Manodorata let out a breath in defeat, like the wind’s end when the sail drops. ‘I do. For it was he that took my hand from me.’ Her eyes widened. ‘Yes,’ he went on, ‘there is a time to tell every tale and the time for this one is now. You shall know how it went with me.’ He picked a rotten almond from the floor and peeled it, one handed, as he spoke. ‘In Toledo, three years past, Gabriel Solis de Gonzales was a Cardinal in the employ of a new institution called the Holy Office.’

Simonetta looked blank.

‘It has another name. The Inquisition.’

Did she imagine it, or did Manodorata lower his voice as he uttered the word of terror? ‘Toledo was my home. I was a banker, a moneylender of good repute. I had lately married Rebecca and Elijah and Jovaphet were babies.’ He smiled at the memory, but the smile soon faded. ‘We loved each other greatly, but the world began to hate us. We were forced to live in a
Juderia
, a place the Venetians would call a
ghetto
.’

Like Jews’ Street in Saronno
, thought Simonetta.

‘But this was not enough. Under the new influence of
the Inquisition I was forced to convert to Christianity, or leave the country.’

Simonetta gasped – she could not imagine what he had suffered to be brought to such a pass. Manodorata reacted defensively to her exclamation. ‘Yes, it is not something of which I am proud. It was for show only, and at home we carried on our religious observances in secret. But I wanted to protect my family and my home.’

Simonetta reached out in the gloom and laid a hand upon his arm. ‘You mistake me,’ she said. ‘I do not judge you, only those that forced you to do such a thing.’

He nodded, and went on. ‘They made us give the boys Christian names and we chose Evangelista for Elijah and Giovan Pietro for Jovaphet, as they at least sounded close to the boys’ own. We attempted to live as Christians for the outside world, yet we were still derided. They called us
Mar
ranos
. Pigs.’ He shook his head. ‘Still, the Inquisition were not satisfied. I was arrested and questioned by the very man that seeks your love, Gabriel Solis de Gonzales himself, who had found good odour with the Holy Office by holding the hardest line he could against my people.’

Now it was Simonetta’s turn to shake her head. What evil chance had brought the Cardinal here, right into the path of one he had already damaged so much? She had little time to contemplate on the littleness of the globe, as Manodorata’s exotic accents came again, like the tide bringing ill news.

‘I was asked to denounce others of my race, other
Con
versos
who had accepted the Christian faith as a mask for their Judaism. And here, I reached the end of the road. I had given away much of my own person, and my own dignity for the sake of my family. I had abrogated my faith and my place in Abraham’s bosom. But all this I did on my own account. It was not my right to make that decision for others. I looked him in his pale Devil’s eyes and told him: this, I would not do.’ He paused before delivering the blow; lopping off each word abruptly. ‘They took my hand from me.’

Simonetta did not breathe.

‘I remember the stench of my own hand burning as Gonzales’s eyes shone brighter than the flames that took it. They let me go when they knew I would not tell them. One night my friend Abiathar came to me and warned me that the Cardinal sought my life. He had only released me so that I may lead him to other prominent Jews. The next day we sailed for Genoa. When we came to these shores I had the Florentines make me a hand of gold as an act of defiance. We settled here, in this quiet place, for here we hoped we might find tolerance. And we did.’

Simonetta was astonished. ‘You call what you experience
here
tolerance? And what I myself…’ her voice tailed away.

Manodorata smiled a thin smile. ‘Words? Insults? The spittle of ignorant men? Such things do not really hurt. For my kind, tolerance is a day without a broken bone. A day
when you come home and your house is not aflame. A day when your property is not stolen, and your children and womenfolk left to walk in peace, undefiled. These are the days we have lived in Saronno. Until this day, when ill wind blew this Cardinal into my path again.’

Simonetta drew her brows together. ‘What do you mean? Is he still here?’

Manodorata laughed shortly. ‘Not he. He will return to his palace in Milan, to his comforts and luxury, but he has left his miasma behind him. In his search for your friend he has found our houses and our businesses, and seen the Jew living and working in his See. He will not let us lie here long.’

Simonetta was silent. They were both outcasts now, for as she had run blindly from the church last week the citizens had jeered her and one or two had spat in her path. She had never fully understood before what Manodorata endured every day, until now.

Manodorata broke into her reverie. ‘So, I have come to say this. If you decide to stay here, we must move swiftly to secure your fate. For I may not be able to help you for long.’

‘Do you…you don’t mean Gonzales will seek to harm you?’

Manodorata meant exactly that, but sought to reassure Simonetta. ‘Of course not. He does not know that
I
live here. I meant only that he may seek the property of my
kind, or prevent us from trading. So,’ his voice took on a businesslike bent. ‘Our conversation has sailed full circle. Will you stay here?’

Simonetta stared, as if mesmerised, at the almond in Manodorata’s hand. It represented Lorenzo’s family and her own, and all that was here at Villa Castello. ‘Yes,’ she said, and in an echo of what she had told him a year ago. ‘I have nowhere else to go. You of all people know the lengths to which a person will go to secure their home.’

He nodded, understanding. ‘Very well. I will engage a gang of Jewish labourers on the morrow. They will bring axes and we will fell your groves and till the soil for farm land. I know of some good Arabic practices whereby, by rotating your crops from field to field, the soil stays rich from one year to the next.’

She nodded, and he pitched the nut from his hand into the dark and made to get up.

The nut landed with a chink of glass in the dark. The two looked at each other and Simonetta scrambled to her feet. She moved gingerly into the dark corner and emerged holding a strange arrangement of bottles connected by tubes. Manodorata followed her and found a brazier and a copper dish in the gloomy corner.

Simonetta set the thing down with wonder. ‘What can it be?’

Manodorata laughed. ‘It’s a still. Someone has been brewing liquor here.’ He sniffed one of the bottles. ‘
Grappa
. And
here,’ he took a cork from the neck of a clay amphora and moved his head swiftly away as if struck; ‘Brandy.’

‘How does it work?’ Simonetta examined the odd machinery, cold and sticky in her hands.

‘It’s a very ancient art, and one unfamiliar to me. But I think the principles are that you place your fermented juices here.’

‘Juices from what?’

‘You can make liquor from anything.
Grappa
, that evil brew, is made from grape seeds. You heat them from below, till they condense…become liquid again, here, and pass through this filter here…’

‘How did it come to be here…not Lorenzo…he only had taste for wine.’

Manodorata smiled wryly. ‘I would have asked your squire. He always looked well jug-bitten.’

Simonetta would have smiled too, but the events of last week, and Gregorio’s cruel exposure of her sins was too raw. She took the amphora and made to throw it away. Manodorata held her wrist. ‘I am no medic, Simonetta, but if I were you, I would take this bottle to bed and get yourself a night’s sleep. For you have not slept since mass, if I am not mistook.’

Indeed she had not. She could not rest while she thought of Bernardino, and the manner of his leavetaking. Manodorata took his own leave before she could demur. Alone, she looked at the amphora, shrugged and made to carry it to
her chamber. As she turned, the naked almond that Manodorata had peeled and cast away glowed from the dark like a star…she stopped, kneeled and put down the amphora. Then she went into the dark to find the almond, and more of its fellows. For the first time since Sunday Simonetta forgot her aching heart.

She had had an idea.

Nonna sat in her new fireside chair, rocking on the curved runners, marvelling at comfort that she had never known. The man whom she considered kin to her regarded her with one arm across his waist and the other elbow propped on it, hand to mouth. He had a rough polishing cloth tied round his waist, just as the blue banner had been when they found him. He was regarding his handiwork through narrowed eyes. ‘It goes well?’ he asked.

‘It is wondrous,’ she said and smiled with as many gaps as teeth. It was wondrous indeed. And so were the new beams that he had placed in the low roof, white cedar glowing in the firelight and oozing sticky amber gum. Her doors were new and solid, her casements mended with the draughts banished. He had even built a new loggia in the tiny courtyard where the hens scratched. He was always to be found collecting wood, chopping, planning and shaping, and miracles sprang from his hands with a new found skill which would not have shamed Saint Joseph himself, father to Our
Lord and the first of all carpenters. He smiled at last, enjoying the moment with her. She nodded in time with the chair. He was a gift from God.

And now she had to admit what she had never known before. She had always compared him to Filippo, and seen in Selvaggio her son born again. But now she had to acknowledge that he was a far far better man than the son she had lost. Memory now prompted her that when Filippo was at home he either had his boots at the fire, or went gaming with the Romanys that collected under the arches of the Ponte Coperto bridge when the sun went down. He would rather spend time with the gipsies, before their bonfires that the
Comune
had banned. They had their dice and their sweet wine, their dusky girls and violins, and Filippo would be found there rather than at his mother’s fireside. Her evenings now were a joy to her. She and the two young people would sit before the fire, enjoying the warmth and the company of their close circle.

There was much else now to enjoy, for at some time in these last weeks Selvaggio had learned that he was able to write. On one of those firelit nights with Amaria he had taken a charred stick from the fire and written on the hearth, characters that were clear and schooled and spoke of an education. He now delighted in being able to teach Amaria to write, to reciprocate the gift of speech she had given him, but he felt a distant disquiet. As the girl formed the very characters that she had taught him to say, questions
crowded his mind. How did he know this skill? Had he been a scribe or notary? Or a schoolmaster?

For with the writing came his partner skill of reading; Nonna, when she saw this new development, had brought down the family Bible from her dorter. The old lady could pages fall open at random and read at once. His tones were still rasping, but he spoke fluidly, and his brain leapt ahead of his lately-schooled tongue.

‘Blessed is everyone who fears the Lord, who walks in his
ways. For you will eat the labour of your hands. You will be happy,
and it will be well with you. Your wife will be as a fruitful vine, in
the innermost parts of your house; your children like olive plants,
around your table. Behold, thus is the man blessed who fears the
Lord. May the Lord bless you out of Zion, and may you see the
good of Jerusalem all the days of your life. May you see your chil
dren’s children. Peace be upon Israel.’

Selvaggio shut the book, much pleased with the lesson. God did not belong in a cathedral; he was not to be found seated among the snowy clouds of a priceless fresco, or in the exquisite counterpoint of a choir. God was in the simple things: the fruit of the vine, food, family, children. He looked about him, at the homely, firelit faces of the two women who tended him. Here was where true beauty and goodness lay.

So now, in the evening time, Selvaggio set aside his carving to read parables or scriptures; Nonna listened, nodding over some mending or some lace tatting, and Amaria would practice her letters. The Bible texts were familiar to Selvaggio, but not just because he read them now; he knew he had heard them before somewhere, heard the intonation of a priest’s voice in a far-off church. And he knew that the cadences of his reading, the rise and fall of the words that he read, were not his own; but were prompted by this other, shadowy preacher he had once known.

Soon, too, Selvaggio began to teach Amaria to read; they bent their heads together over the good Book, one dark and one light, and Nonna realised she had been wrong about Selvaggio. He had not needed only a mother to nurture and care for him; he had needed a child too. He that had nothing, that had been given so much charity, had also wanted to feel needed; to give something back. In Amaria he had found all the family that he lacked. Nonna could see him revelling in his role as tutor to the one who had so lately tutored him. And he gained great pleasure from being able, now, to make their humble home a better place with the furniture he made. He was becoming so skilled that he even sold a little of his wares about the town, and they could now afford better meat and vegetables, and finer wine. Nonna saw Selvaggio’s face glow with pleasure as he brought his booty home – bought from the labour of his hands – and knew him for a truly good man. She would watch him
through her steepled hands as they all prayed at mass every Sunday, at the church of St Peter of the Golden Sky. Nonna could see him praying with fervour, and true belief, and knew that in his reading of the Bible he had come home to a faith that must have lived in him once before. She could see in him a moral strength, and a determination to live the new life he had been given by the law of God, to do right by all. At such times she would feel a misgiving, that his own family, who had lost such a son or brother, must be missing him indeed. But then her heart told her of what she had gained and she quelled the thought. After mass they would return to their little house by the river and share their supper of risotto or polenta, then sometimes Nonna would go to the dorter early to give the two some private moments together which she thought they now needed. Now, as she rocked back and forth in her new chair, she smiled at the way of things, and Selvaggio smiled too, thinking that she still dwelt upon her gift.

‘’Tis a design from Flanders,’ he began, then stopped abruptly as his brows drew together. ‘I do not know how I know that.’

Nonna stopped rocking. ‘Do you begin to remember, then, Selvaggio?’ she asked, with a sudden jag of fear.

He rubbed the back of his neck as his head shook. ‘Recollections come to me from time to time; they light for an instant like stars pricking through the night. But when I reach for them, they melt away, as if the day has come. All
my senses have remembrances; tastes, smells, even the feel of things.’ Nonna began to rock again, gently, relieved.

‘Sights too,’ Selvaggio went on. ‘For instance, I recall a dovecot – a little wooden house for doves – but I know not from whence.’ He shook his head and said, ‘No matter. Perhaps I shall make one such for Amaria, and leaven my memory that way.’ Was it Nonna’s imagination or did he redden and look down a little when he mentioned her granddaughter’s name?

‘Ah, Amaria,’ she said and smiled again, ‘she is tending the chickens, if you’re wondering.’ He caught her teasing tones and threw his polishing cloth at her. She caught it easily, and as he left through the new back door of the cot she mused that even if his head remembered what it had to, his heart might yet keep him here.