The Madonna of the Almonds (6 page)

There was a star cut into the door. A curious star with six points, designed as if two triangles had been offset, rotated to leave their points exposed. Simonetta had never seen such a thing, and for a moment her fears left her to be replaced by curiosity as her fingers traced the deep grooves in the heavy oaken door. She might have felt much at this moment, for since her interview with Oderigo Beccaria that very morning she had been given much to think about. She had had to endure the voices of her maid and squire, combined in chorus to condemn the man who lived in this house, and all his race.

Simonetta had ever been a religious girl – she had been devout until this last month when she had stayed away from Santa Maria dei Miracoli. She told herself that she had been absent from the church because she grieved too greatly for Lorenzo, that she was too occupied with the economies of her household, even that she hated God for taking her husband. She never admitted, even to herself, that she was
afraid of seeing
him
again.

Simonetta had no intention of turning her back on God forever. It was only that she could not think of him, not praise him, just now. She felt she had little to give thanks for, and much to pray for, but she felt that the Lord had done with listening to her. But according to her servants, she now stood in danger of losing her Christian soul forever, just by consorting with a Jew.

Never had she heard such condemnation, such censure. Never had she heard such bitter words fall from the lips of her beloved maid, and her mild-mannered squire. For the Jews were apparently demons. The men were warlocks, the women witches. They were hideously deformed, as a punishment for the death of Christ, for which they were directly responsible. The genitals for both men and women were the same – they could not mate as God intended, nor give birth in the natural way; but spat their babes from their mouths in bloody sacs. They drank blood and feasted on the flesh of Christian babes. They could not feel the warmth of the sun and walked in darkness but never in daylight. They were skilled in the dark arts and could bewitch and curse good Christians until they sickened and died. They used their arts to accrue great wealth, which they bled from good God fearing folk.

This then, was what Simonetta was to expect. But there was more. The man she was to visit, to plead for money, was the worst of the lot. He was a creature of darkness indeed.
He had the face of a Devil and the body of a bear. He spoke in an evil tongue and took the livelihoods of good hardworking men and women. And he literally wore his wealth on his sleeve, for he had a golden hand (‘solid gold!’ said Raffaella) which had the power to kill at a touch. This member had given him the name by which he was known: ‘
Manodorata’
or ‘golden hand’. Better to quit the house altogether than to feed Castello with his bloody gold. Even if he helped them the place would be ruined in a matter of months anyway, because of the usurious practices of the Jews that were strictly banned in the Bible. The interest would be crippling.

So said Raffaella and Gregorio as they pleaded with their mistress not to put herself in the clutches of the Jew. And yet she knew she had to go. She would not know how to leave Castello, to start again. Where could she go? What could she do? The plague had taken her family, and Lorenzo’s too. And besides, as she made her way to Jews’ Street in Saronno she began to feel strongly that, unfortunate as her circumstances were, the fight was what was keeping her going. This survival instinct, that she had not known she had, was the only opposition to her other temptation, which was to end it all by falling on Lorenzo’s sword. If the Jew wanted to eat her alive, let him. If her Christian God could not help her, very well. Let the other side try.

She took her fingers from the star and knocked at the door – hard enough to graze her knuckles. She hoped, and
then feared, that there was no one within. But at length, the ornamental grille set into the door above the star slid open and a pair of eyes appeared. Simonetta cleared her throat and said what she had been instructed. ‘My name is Simonetta di Saronno, and I am here on the business of Oderigo Beccaria.’

The grille slid shut and she was about to despair of entry when the door creaked open. She was met by the owner of the eyes, a lady wearing a purple robe and golden jewellery more costly than the ones she herself had sold. Simonetta took her for the lady of the house until the woman ushered her within. Simonetta marvelled as she followed the maid through cool courtyards where fountains played, through ornamental arches and between tall slim pillars. Everything was coloured and patterned with strange but regular shapes, but to a tasteful, not gaudy, effect. It was warm in the house, for all that it was so great, and a spicy incense hung in the air. It was all so alien and opulent and very seductive. She had headed into something rich and strange indeed.

Simonetta began to fear again, as the stories of her servants returned, and she felt that she was walking into the lion’s mouth. But she saw a sight to revive her spirits – through an archway to her left she spied two small blonde boys playing with their nursemaid. The lady wore three long dark plaits and a scarlet robe, and was rolling a silver ball between the little boys. The ball held a bell within, and the laughter of the boys echoed its tinkling sound. Simonetta
smiled at the scene. The laughter of children, and the tender look on the nursemaid’s face, gave her courage. It seemed the Jews loved their children too.

The fear returned as she was led deeper into the house and she perceived a figure seated at a
tavola
writing with a quill. Simonetta’s notion that she had truly entered another world was only compounded when her nervous brain registered that the figure was writing in a ledger from right to left, not from left to right in the Christian manner. Nor were the black characters like any that she had been taught by the good sisters of the Pisan convent that directed her education. The fellow’s bulk seemed massive as he leant over his work, and he wore a
berretto all’antica
in the Milanese style, the velvet of the hat obscuring his face. Was this, then, the Devil she had come to dance with? Yes, for the maidservant ushered her into a chair of gold filigree opposite the figure. He continued to direct the quill with a hand that looked the same as most men’s – and his bulk was an illusion in that he wore a heavy fur cloak indoors, but Simonetta began to dread what she would see when he looked up. At length Manodorata laid his pen aside and raised his head to his visitor. He had not, after all, the face of the Devil, but yet there was something to fear. His eyes were a cold grey that flickered with fearsome intelligence. His lips were unusually full, but were set in a dangerous line. At a time when the fashion was for a clean-shaven face he wore a beard that was oiled and cut into a point as sharp
as a knife. His hair and beard were dark but his face looked old – he could have been fifty or more. When he spoke it was in fluent Milanese, but in accents which betrayed that his tongue was accustomed to another language altogether.

‘You have business to transact for my friend Beccaria? But I may not call him a friend; nor yet a foe. He may as likely spit at me as ask me for money. He has not yet decided where he stands with me. Like most Christians he thinks that business is a dirty word. So I suspect you have come on your own account.’

Simonetta was disconcerted at being seen through so soon. She could see there was little point in trifling with the Jew. ‘I have come to ask for help,’ she said simply.

‘Then you have wasted your time. And mine.’ Manodorata took up his quill again, and motioned for his maidservant to show his visitor out. Simonetta stood up and, as the quill began to scratch, spoke urgently. ‘Please. I may lose my house.’

‘I can see you are not accustomed to pleading. The trick is to appeal to something that I actually care about. Try again.’

‘I lost my husband.’

‘Better, but not good enough.’

Simonetta hung her head and exhaled a deep breath as if it were her last. She spoke in a low tone, almost to herself. ‘Then it is decided. I am done for. The Spanish may as well have killed me too.’

The quill stopped. ‘The Spanish?’

‘Yes. At Pavia.’

‘The Spanish took your husband?’

‘Yes.’

Manodorata pointed the quill at the chair. ‘Sit down.’

Simonetta sat, her heart thudding with hope.

‘You see, Signora di Saronno, you have caught the trick of it.
Your
plight does not touch me but you have said something to pique
my
interest. You see, we have something in common. I too hate the Spanish. And I like to think that I am qualified to speak on the matter – that my opinion does not arise from hearsay or conjecture.’ He looked at her with his light grey eyes and she had the uncomfortable feeling that he divined exactly what she had been told about him.

She found her voice. ‘You know that nation well?’

‘I should. You see,
I
am a Spaniard.’

Simonetta’s head span. ‘In truth?’

‘Yes. I was not always known as Manodorata. I was born Zaccheus Abravanel, in Castile. But despite this, I still hate them. For they took something from me too that I loved. In my case, my hand.’

He held aloft the hand that had been hidden under the desk, and Simonetta could not but stare. It was indeed a golden hand. It gleamed in the light from the ornamental windows. She looked at it curiously. Seeing her interest he held it out to her. It was solid, the fingers defined by ingenious moulding. There were even nails to the fingers and
lines crossing the palm as he turned his hand. On the palm too, in the very centre where one might press a coin, was the same star that she had seen on the door.

‘What do you think of it?’

‘’Tis wonderfully well wrought.’

‘It is. Perhaps more so than your own, for I see that you have three fingers all of a length, a mistake a craftsman would not make.
This
hand was made not by God but by some of my Florentine brethren. It has served me well. And it is the only story they tell of me that is true.’

Simonetta felt a blush spread over her cheek.

‘What else did they say? That I devour babes?’

She looked down.

‘The rest is easily explained to the rational mind. I may resemble a bear, because I wear a fur at all times as I am used to warmer climes. I have no taste for human flesh. I have a wife and two sons whom I love dearly. You may have noticed them playing.’

‘Your wife?’

‘Rebecca. And my sons Evangelista and Giovan Pietro. You are surprised?’

‘Only at them playing so together. In great…Christian families, nursemaids tend the children at all times. I barely knew my mother.’ She surprised herself with such an admission.

‘Then perhaps such families are not so great. I hear that even the Christian king Francis, who was taken prisoner
at Pavia, has offered his two sons as hostages in his stead.’ A fastidious sniff was enough to deprecate the conduct of a king. ‘As for my wealth, I have amassed it through fair means, merely by being able to understand the principles of banking and the precepts of Arabic mathematics. Which brings me back to your troubles.’

Simonetta was encouraged by such openness and explained her plight. Manodorata smoothed his beard with his gold hand as he listened, as if he could feel its fibres with his false fingertips. When she had done he was silent for a period, and Simonetta wondered what he would say. He surprised her.

‘I think that I must visit your property. For one thing, you must offer it to me as security in case you are unable to pay me.’ He held up his hand to silence her protests. ‘Such practice is normal. But for another, I may be able to think of a way to make the place pay. You see in order to keep it you may have to make the land work for you, and I must see if there is a way to do this. I will visit you in a sevennight, but there is a condition. Before that time you must have made some money for yourself. For it is also common practice to offer me a sum, or principal, for my help. I can see you are noble, and unused to work, but you must work if I am to help you.’

‘But how? What you ask is impossible! If I could get money I would not be here.’

‘Think hard. Is there no possible way, has no opportunity
been presented you? Use your wits, for I only help those who help themselves.’

Of course she remembered. The parting shot that
he
had assailed her with, that had at that time been so disgusting to her; that mention of payment so offensive to a great lady, could now be her saviour. ‘There was…a man, who wanted to paint me. For the church, here in Saronno. But it was some little time ago. I have…changed. He may not want to paint me now.’ She thought she saw a flicker of amusement in the Jew’s eyes, for all that his mouth remained impassive.

‘I am not given to gallantry, Signora, but let me assure you that any man who has seen you would wish to paint you, if only he could.’ He stood abruptly, the interview over. ‘I will leave it to your best offices to decide. Come to me in a sevennight, with the money for your principal or not at all.’ He held out his golden hand, and saw her hesitate before she took it.

It was surprisingly warm to the touch – clearly its metals had been heated by the limb to which it was attached. Simonetta met his eyes and saw at once that in that moment of hesitation he had divined what she had been told. For the first time in their discourse he actually smiled and his face was transformed. ‘Don’t worry Signora,’ said the man they called Manodorata, ‘it won’t kill you.’

When Selvaggio opened his eyes at last, he could see nothing but wood.

At first he could not move his eyes. The wood was an inch from the end of his nose. Smooth, worn, polished with age. He could look neither left nor right for some moments so stared straight ahead, blinking. He must be in his coffin. He must be dead.

He did not expect death to feel like this. If he was dead, then why could he still feel? Why did his chest and stomach sting with raw pain? He tried to move; could not. Better to stay still, and look at his casket. Rest. He followed the grain of the wood with his eyes, flowing, beautiful lines, like a landscape in microcosm. Gentle inclines and long plains of a peaceful, fruitful land. Or the waves of a calm sea, rising and falling in unison, now and again punctuated with dark fishes that were the knots. He felt the grain draw him in, embrace him. He became one with the landscape. Dust to dust. Wood was
beautiful
, why had he not seen it before?
Why could he only see it now, now that he was in his coffin, perhaps interred in the earth?

No, he could not be below ground, for there was light coming from somewhere, light that hurt his eyes. And somewhere too, over the landscape or across the sea, somewhere an angry fly buzzed and bounced at a casement, trying to get out, trapped too.

With a Herculean effort Selvaggio moved his eyes from left to right as his head beat time. Despite the pounding, searing headache he could now find his bearings: he was lying on a long table, padded with straw. The straw tickled his nose – here his bedding was golden, here it was black with blood. His blood. He was lying on his side, with his face inches from the wall; the wood he had first seen was the mainstay of the wattle, criss-crossed around the plaster panels of the daub. He tried to call out, to bring someone to aid him, but no sound came from his desert-dry mouth. The sweat of panic rimed his upper lip and chilled his forehead. He could not remember anything, not one thing; not how he came here or what had happened to him, nor where he was from or anything about his life. There was nothing in his memory before the wood that he saw as he woke – he was like a schoolboy’s slate wiped clean; a babe newborn. He knew his impression of the coffin was an error; the wood was a beginning for him, not an end. In the beginning was the wood. And yet, there must have been something before this; just as the wood that made the wall
had once been a tree that stood in a forest, in another life and another place. How could he know of seas and fishes and coffins and such, if he did not know his own name? How did he know the words for everything that he saw and felt, but could not speak one single syllable? He knew everything, yet he knew nothing. He saw all, but could say naught. The vessel of his consciousness, swelling at every moment like new-blown glass, was already brim-full with questions. How came he here? Why was he lying down? Why was he on his side? Selvaggio rolled onto his back and learned the reason; he was immediately pierced through with a million blades as if he had rolled onto a waiting bed of nails. He rolled again, in agony, away from the pain like a speared fish, and crashed to the floor. The sound brought Amaria running.

When Amaria laid her hand on Selvaggio’s forehead, she knew he was out of danger. For a day and a night he had slept on their board on his bedding of straw; they had shoved the table against the wall to lessen the chance that he would roll off if he woke. And he did not wake; for as long as the bells of the Duomo chimed their nine times round. He did not feel his dressings being changed or the sting of the bitter salve that Nonna rubbed into his wounds. He did not hear Amaria make the
polenta
on the fire, no, not even when she dropped the pot. But when she placed her fingers on his head, there on the floor where he lay, she
knew he would live.

Amaria told herself she wished to check for his fever. But in truth she wanted to feel his warm skin again. When his eyes looked into hers she started guiltily, then smiled. His mouth did not smile back, but his eyes did. She ran to fetch Nonna.

Nonna was in the yard shooing the chickens with her stick. She grunted at the news that the wildman was awake, but secretly her heart unfurled within her. Since that first brief waking when they had brought him home, she had not allowed herself to feel, in case he should sink and be taken from them. She had kept herself still and close. But now she could hardly feign her indifference as she hastened inside behind her chattering granddaughter. She found the young man already raised on one elbow and the two women heaved an arm each to help him back on to his makeshift bed. Amaria rolled a sheepskin behind his shoulders for support, and lifted the polenta from the hearth, talking all the time.

‘Nonna, hold his head. Can you hold your head still? Can you open your mouth? Take a little of this. ’Twill do you good. Nonna, wipe his chin. ’Tis only polenta, but I made it thin with a little goats milk and olive oil and good parmesan. We have a little block of
reggiano
wrapped in canvas in the pantry, just for special occasions like
Pasqua
and Yule, and Saint Ambrose’s day. He’s our Saint you know – I mean Lombardy’s Saint; Milan’s Saint. And
my
special Saint,
because I share his name. But the parmesan – I thought it might do you good. After all, when something tastes so good, it must be good
for
you, mustn’t it? Tonight I think we will kill a chicken. Nonna, we may, mayn’t we? I think it would benefit you, for our chickens are the best in Pavia, are they not, Nonna?’

‘Nothing like.’

‘Anyway, I think a good chicken broth will have you on your feet. And perhaps tomorrow I will find some roots in the forest, perhaps some rosemary for the polenta. Rosemary is a great healing herb, and I know a little of such things. Nonna always says I am quite the
medico
, she has so great an opinion of my physick.’

‘I never said anything of the sort.’

‘Or you ask Silvana. She’s my friend, you know. She had the gripes so terrible last spring that we thought she would die from them – yet my sage water saved her from certain doom. ’Tis true that her skin was something of the yellow hue for a sevennight, and her tongue swelled up somewhat, but afterward she felt better than new.’

‘’Tis only a pity that her tongue was not disabled forever. That would have been a cure indeed, for she talks only second to you, Amaria.’

‘By all the Saints, I forgot to tell you my name! We have not become properly acquainted. I am Amaria Sant’Ambrogio, and this is my Nonna. We found you in the woods. You were terrible bad, but we looked after you
and now you look a great deal better. Don’t you think him improved, Nonna?’

‘There’s some danger yet, I’ll be bound.’

‘Can you tell us your name? Are you Milanese?’

Nonna had heard enough. ‘Blessed Saint Ambrose, child! How can the fellow speak with a spoon of polenta in his mouth and your tattle in his ears? Give him some pause – space and silence will do more than all of your prompting.’

Both women looked eagerly at their patient. He had taken a little food, and watched them closely throughout their exchange. His eyes looked amused. It seemed he understood, and he opened his lips a little to speak, but not a sound came. He looked distressed to be mute, and began to exert himself, but Nonna said, ‘Do not trouble. ’Tis full early to think of such things. When you are fed and recovered we will see what comes forth.’

Amaria was unable to remain quiet for long. She looked him in the eyes, and spoke more slowly. ‘But you are able to understand us?’ she asked. ‘You speak Milanese? Can you nod?’

Selvaggio nodded weakly, and seemed to fall back a little on the sheepskin. Nonna saw it all. ‘Leave him, child. Go strangle one of the birds – the red hen will do. This boy may rest awhile and we will make a broth for later.’

When Amaria had gone Nonna smoothed the wildman’s coverlet as he slept again. She too would do everything in her power to heal him but now she knew he would live
she was in no hurry. For as he grew well, and spoke, there must be questions, and answers, and plans and schemes; and he must, at last, go home to wherever he belonged. Nonna listened for Amaria’s receding footsteps then reached for Selvaggio’s hand. She folded his calloused swordhand in her knarled old fingers and held it tight as she had held Filippo’s before he left for battle. Nonna knew little of the wildman but she did know this – that she did not want him to go.

Amaria was happy to leave – her heart was full, and she was determined to make her Selvaggio better. She began to chase the red hen around the yard, holding her skirts high, whooping and hollering like a child. Then she stopped suddenly. She should not shout: she might disturb Selvaggio’s rest. She dropped her skirts to a seemly level and slowed her steps. She smoothed her hair and tucked stray strands behind her ears. She had a job to do; a responsibility, and she must be equal to it. Amaria had never had anyone to look after before; she had been Nonna’s project, her dearest granddaughter, and had been tended and nurtured like a young flower. Despite their poverty Nonna had seen that Amaria never wanted for the things that she needed; always giving her the best cuts of the little meat they had, or the heel of the bread, or the last of the wine. Nonna had even tried to give up her own bed for Amaria when the girl grew too big for her truckle; their one upstairs room was a little dorter up a winding stair, warmed by the fire below – but this Amaria had refused, respecting her grandmother’s
age and need for the comfort of the bed, and she curled up in a sheepskin on the floor.

Amaria had grown, an only child, without ever having to concede to a demanding sibling, or shift for herself in any way. She had never been responsible for tending anything more worthy than these chickens that now pecked and scratched at her feet. She had made children of them, they had been her dolls in a house too poor for toys. She had always turned her back when Nonna strangled one for the pot. And now the red hen, her particular pet, must go; and
she
must dispatch it. Without fuss, she cornered the witless, unsuspecting bird and caught it in her skirts. Nonna had never asked her to kill one of the birds before, but today was different; there was someone else in need, and Nonna needed Amaria to rise to the occasion. And she would. She took the red hen in her two hands and cracked its neck.

On the way back into the house with the warm bird dangling from her hands, she held her head a little higher. In those short moments in the yard she had grown up. Nonna had looked after her. Well she, Amaria Sant’Ambrogio, would look after Selvaggio.