The Madonna of the Almonds (17 page)

‘Amante?’

‘Amare?’

‘Amarezza?’

Simonetta and Manodorata faced each other across the table. Each had a willow cup of the sweet new amber elixir, and each tasted periodically as they tried to fix upon a name to christen Simonetta’s liquid alchemy.

‘Well,’ began Simonetta. ‘Let’s get back to the start.
Man
dorla
is the word for almond…’

‘A name very close to my own.’

‘Indeed. Then perhaps we could call it Manodorata, if you agree. ’Twould not have been made without you.’

Manodorata shook his dark head, and the velvet tail of his cap swung behind his shoulders. ‘That would never do. I am known in these parts, and association with a Jew would do your sales no favours. Let us canvass your other suggestions.’

‘Well…the old Latin for almond is
amygdalus
…’

‘Meaning…’

‘Tonsil plum, I think.’

Manodorata gave a snort of laughter. ‘’Tis hardly an attractive root for a name. What else?’

Simonetta tasted the brew again. She felt too raw to reveal the epiphany that she had had while making the drink, that she had distilled the pleasure and pain of her feelings for Bernardino. ‘It struck me that the drink is both sweet and bitter at once. And the words for love –
amare
– and bitterness –
amarezza
, are very close.’

Manodorata nodded. ‘In fact one might say that love lies within bitterness – the word
amare
is found at the beginning of
amare-zza
.’

Simonetta smiled wryly. ‘So love
ends
in bitterness? Not a very encouraging homily.’

‘But a true one.’

‘Not for you. You have your Rebecca, and your sons.’

‘Even those who love the most, rarely die on the same day. Everyone is alone eventually, but love lives for ever, as we once discussed.’

Simonetta shivered, as she thought of Bernardino. Had he remembered her, or did he even now lie in the embrace of another, wherever he was? A bitter thought indeed. ‘Let us say
Amarett-o
then. For our drink is only a
little
bitter. And we must hope that its taste can at least give cheer, for the time that we are on the earth.’

From the day that Amaretto was given its name, Manodorata
and Simonetta moved fast in their joint venture. Manodorata brought a gang of Jewish workers to harvest the almonds and cut back the trees correctly for the next growth. Simonetta oversaw this process – she told the axemen what she herself had once been told by Lorenzo: ‘the branches must be spaced so that a swallow may fly between the groves without flapping his wings.’ When it was done, and the trees were elegantly spaced, Simonetta looked back from the arches of the loggia and actually saw one of the small birds dip and turn through the pleached grove. Just as he had said, the swallow did need to fold its wings. She felt a shiver of foreboding, for had not the Romans foreseen ill auguries in the flight of a swallow? She shook off the feeling and went inside to the kitchens, where the womenfolk that Manodorata had employed had created a buzzing hive of industry as they set to to make the almond milk.

Manodorata had thought of everything. He laid out money to bring brown rock sugar from Constantinople, lemons from Cyprus and apples from England. Cloves and spices came from the trade ships of the Black Sea, and were brought by runners from Genoa. The still worked day and night, and the industrious Jews made the house live again, filling it with their chatter and strange beautiful song. Sweet melodies and guttural words floated through the rooms.

From Venice came the most precious cargo, clear bottles of
cristallo
glass, swaddled in silk like babes. When Simonetta opened the first parcel she gasped – for the bottle was a
thing of beauty, mirror-bright, water-clear and with the elegant shape of a Roman amphora, with a flat bottom so the bottle might stand. The whole was finished with an almond shaped stopper, tied in place with a riband the same blue of the Castello arms.

Simonetta did not know nor ask how many ducats Manodorata poured into their enterprise. But as the bottles were filled, tied and crated, she was to learn that Manodorata had not yet completed his investment. He climbed the stair to her chamber and knocked and entered. In his arms, a festoon of red and gold almost hid him from sight.

Simonetta turned from her window and laid down her bow, for she had been shooting pigeons for the pot. She wore Lorenzo’s ancient garb. Her hair was longer now, and matted, one cheek red from the twang of the bowstring, her fingers raw and chapped from plucking her quarry. Manodorata sighed and threw his bundle on the bed.

‘What is that?’ queried Simonetta, leaving her perch.

‘Time was you would not have asked that question. It is a dress. Have you forgot that such things exist?’

Simonetta was drawn to the material, which seemed to glow from within. She rubbed her hand on her breeches before she dared touch the cloth, which was soft and cold as snow. The ruby red was fretted with gold thread and where the thread crossed, seed pearls sat like stars. She had a sudden urge to feel the dress against her skin. ‘For me?’ she
asked, incredulously.

‘I don’t think it would suit me.’ Manodorata sat down on the bed. ‘Simonetta. I cannot sell your liquor. You must do it yourself. Whatever may have…come to pass in recent weeks you are still a lady of good name, and unless I have forgotten everything I ever knew about trade, you will shortly be a very successful merchant.’

‘I?’ said Simonetta aghast. ‘I was not…that is, I cannot.’

‘What is the matter?’ asked Manodorata, testily, as if he already knew her answer.

She sighed. ‘I was not born to trade. I was born nobly, into the
Signori
. I do not have the way of…
business
. My father and mother – Lorenzo, they would say it shamed my name, and theirs. God knows,’ she turned her great eyes on her friend, ‘that I have lately shamed that name enough.’

Manodorata sat down on the coverlet. ‘There are many things about your people that are a mystery to me. Principal among them is the Christian view that the word ‘trade’ is tantamount to the vilest curse ever uttered by a tinker. Things change, Simonetta. The old world is gone. Your name alone will not put meat on your table, it is true, nor lay faggots in your hearth. Yet coupled with this liquor your name can do much.’ He took her chin in his hand. ‘You will be the
face
of this drink – the ship’s figurehead, and as such you cannot dress like a poorly paid groom.’

Simonetta released herself and looked down ruefully at her garb. She secretly longed to wear women’s weeds
again, but till now had felt that she was paying a penance to Lorenzo.

‘Put it on,’ urged her friend, ‘and here,’ he produced more bounty. ‘A looking glass, also from Venice. A comb. Rose ointment for your hands. A small vial fell on the bed. ‘And lastly,’ he held high a glittering constellation that blossomed in his fingers. It was a coif or
cuffia
for her hair made from the same gold net and pearls. ‘Do something about that nest, ’tis fit for sparrows,’ he said, and disappeared.

Simonetta shut the casement and flung off her clothes. She washed from head to foot with water from the rain stoup, and the cold made the bumps rise on her skin like the pigeons she had plucked. Her teeth chattered from cold and excitement and her eyes burned blue. She stepped into the dress and laced herself in as tight as may be, the silk soon warming against her skin. Then she combed her knotted hair till it fell in ripples past her shoulders. It was long enough to go up now, and she began to bind it into a
coaz
zone
plait, her unaccustomed fingers remembering the old ways, the way she did her hair when she was a wife and a lady. She fixed the
cuffia
in place, patting the wayward copper tendrils into the precious net. Lastly she bit her nails till they were even and rubbed the cream of roses into her hands. She pinched her cheeks and bit her lips to make the blood come, and only then did she lift the Venetian glass. What she saw there made her skip with excitement. Her eyes were enormous and brilliant, her skin pearl white. Her
lips were rosy pink and her eyes as blue as the Amaretto ribbons. She looked thinner than she remembered and her eyes were more shadowed, but her hair was still the same burnished red and it shone with her ministrations in a way that rivalled the pearls and gold that adorned it. She moved the glass down to see the dress reflected, and saw that her arms were more willowy and subtle muscles had formed from hard work; her waist now greyhound slim. As she descended the kitchen stair her workers stopped their tasks to goggle, and even Manodorata lost his composure for an instant. Her eyes suddenly stung as she felt their admiration, and she wished that Bernardino could have seen her thus. She turned to Manodorata, dismissing the thought with a grateful smile to her benefactor. When he didn’t speak she prompted him. ‘Well?’ she asked, ‘will I do?’

He slowly began to nod and smile. ‘Yes,’ said he, ‘you’ll do very well.’

It was the day of the spring fair of Pavia, the first fair of the year and the greatest of the region. Simonetta donned her red dress and went down to the loggia. Her new white palfrey, whom she had named Raffaella in remembrance of her maid, was saddled and her mane beribboned with holiday red and gold. Waiting too was a pack mule, loaded with crates of Amaretto bottles and jingling like a Russian’s sleigh. As Simonetta pulled on her riding gloves, Manodorata, who had come to bid her farewell, drew forward a
dark young lady from his shadow. She was tall and capable looking, with sad black eyes and a beauty that spoke of the south. ‘This is Veronica of Taormina,’ he said. ‘She will help you today. She will not invite comment, as she is a Christian, not a Jew.’ Simonetta nodded, understanding his tact. ‘Greetings Veronica,’ she said.

Manodorata went on. ‘Veronica will assist you at the market, and she will protect you on the road. You permit?’ This last to the girl who nodded as he opened her cloak to reveal a neat rank of daggers, each in the shape of the Maltese cross. ‘She will defend your person and your earnings. Where she is from brigands are more plentiful than hognuts.’

Simonetta was curious and addressed the girl. ‘Perhaps you will tell me of such places along the road.’

The girl’s sad eyes met hers as she shook her head. Manodorata put in, ‘I regret there will be no traveller’s tales from this lady.’

Simonetta looked from one to the other. ‘Does she not speak our dialect?’

Manodorata looked at the pavings. ‘She did once. Veronica is known to me because she married one of our kind – Joce of Leon. She was a Christian marrying a Jew, and her kind took her tongue, and her husband’s life.’

Simonetta was stunned, and clasped the girl’s hand warmly. She marvelled at the misery that love wrought, and that the world held such great obstacles to men’s happiness.
In this case, needless obstacles set against those that loved in the name of God. She had little time for her God now – here was just one more reason why.

The two women set out for Pavia, each thinking of those they had lost, but there was much to lift the spirits along the road. Simonetta found the green hedgerows and the warm sun charming, and when she hummed an air of the May Veronica hummed along too. She found that she could converse well enough with her companion; their discourse continued with questions on the one side and nods and smiles on the other.

As the women drew into Pavia the press of people became almost oppressive; curs barked and livestock jostled. Here a fool in motley juggled fire and there a chicken seller spread the wings of his goods like fans. As they rode across the famous covered bridge of Pavia they were obliged to dismount and lead their mounts; Veronica led the way and her strange silent authority somehow cleared the path for her mistress. They climbed ever uphill as the throng intensified, and at length they reached the square at the rear of the squat red Duomo where the cacophony reached its peak. Minstrels coaxed folk tunes from their wheezing instruments, while vendors called out their wares. The delicious aromas of pies and pasties fought with the spicy rank odours of sheep’s urine and goat dung. The two women found a Marshal in a quartered tabard who showed them to their pitch with a pained and busy air. Simonetta noted
with a jolt of pleasure that the pitch that they were assigned was placed in the exact centre of a six-pointed star, marked out by white cobbles set into the grey. She decided to see this as a sign – she found it pleasing that in mere decoration, a Jewish symbol had unknowingly been placed in the shadow of a Christian building, and hoped it would bring luck to their enterprise. Simonetta unloaded the bottles while Veronica pulled their trestle from the mule and set the table together. Hundreds of other pitches competed for room and Simonetta began to doubt that they would even sell one bottle of their precious elixir. But she draped the trestle with blue velvet and ranked the crystal bottles on the cloth, making the wares look as tempting as she could. At Manodorata’s initiative she had opened one of the bottles, and brought a cup on a chain which Veronica affixed to the table leg, so that the liquor might be tasted by perspective buyers at the price of a
centesimo
. They stood back and waited as the sun climbed and the people milled around their table. As Manodorata had suspected, many folk gathered to stare at the lady in the red dress, but some stayed to taste, and then to buy. Simonetta became bolder with each sale, losing her shyness and chatting with the crowd, charming noble customers with her breeding but using a lower kitchen wit for the tradesmen and servants. Veronica was a solid welcome presence at her back, her fingers dourly counting the money while her dark eyes saw everything. She shooed the bold brave urchins that crept below the table to catch
the falling drops from the pewter cup and chain in their mouths. Twice she clasped the wrist of a pickpocket in her iron grip, and once she saw, as Simonetta did not, that a friendly noblewoman who fingered the stuff of Simonetta’s gown was plucking the pearls from the golden net. A flash of the Maltese knives was enough to send the dame back into the crowd. By the time the bells of the Duomo struck Nones they had sold every last bottle, and the town buzzed with the news of the miraculous new drink. As the two women packed away, the townsfolk became so clamorous with their advance orders that Simonetta caused Veronica to borrow quill and vellum from a notary, so that she could write them down. By noon they were gone, with promises to return. Both sang in earnest now, and a fat bag of ducats jingled and bounced against the neckbone of Veronica’s mule.