E
ARLY NEXT MORNING Ser Vitelli sent a servant to conduct Hildegard to the church of Santi Apostoli. Silent and deferential, the boy led her down an alley near the palazzo that eventually brought them out onto the bank of the River Arno. After a few yards he glanced over his shoulder to make sure she was following, then slipped through a narrow gap between two buildings into what seemed to be a blind alley.
As she rounded the corner she gasped in astonishment. The building that stood opposite them across a small piazza was beautiful. It must be the church of Santi Apostoli, she realised, the resting place for the cross of Constantine.
The building was faced in green and grey brick. Double doors stood open and from inside came a dazzle of light. Vitelli’s servant squatted outside to wait and, leaving her hounds with him, Hildegard stepped over the threshold.
What she noticed first was the sparkle of white marble and the sunlight slanting across the tiled floor of the nave through the plain green glass of the clerestory windows. Next was the wonderful sound of a man singing somewhere high up behind the altar in the small, perfect dome that seemed to concentrate the crystalline light of the sun within it.
Above a splendid gold altar screen was a cat’s cradle of ropes and pulleys. A wooden platform with a singer perched on it swung slightly as he dipped a brush into a bucket of paint and applied it in broad sweeps of cerulean blue to the inside of the dome. A second painter was filling in a design of stars and trefoils running the length of the wooden beams supporting the roof.
Lost in wonder she made her way down the nave between thick columns of green marble. ‘
Buon giorno
, messires!’ she called up.
Both men stopped at once and peered down from their perches. She saw two dark faces, two red woollen caps, two flashing smiles. The one painting the dome wore a harness of rope. He stared at her as if she were an apparition, then, calling something to his colleague and with his brush between his teeth, he swung down on the ropes to land at her feet with the aplomb of an acrobat. He swept off his cap and holding it to his chest bowed several times.
‘Buon giorno, sorella.’
He obviously recognised her white Cistercian habit.
‘
Il sacristo
?’ She spread her arms.
The man beckoned. Assuming he was taking her to the sacristan’s chamber, she followed but to her surprise he led her to one of the arcades in the nave and with a flourish indicated a niche in the wall.
She stepped closer. Protected by rippled glass was a silver bird. Life size, it was sitting on a painted wooden branch against a blue background. The painter pointed to the sky and made flying movements with his hands. Mystified, Hildegard peered again into the niche.
The bird was the work of a master silversmith, she could see that at a glance, but why the two painters were showing her this treasure she had no idea. Still puzzled, she asked again to see the sacristan, trying Latin and then the little she knew of their own dialect, but both men looked at her with blank faces. Suddenly one of them had an idea and began to make slicing movements with his right hand.
‘Away?’ asked Hildegard, wishing she had asked Ser Vitelli to send an interpreter.
‘Festa
,’ the man said.
She glanced around. She guessed he was reminding her it was Lent. The cross on the altar wasn’t the only object draped in purple; all the statues in the niches were covered too.
The second painter made a sign for her to follow and behind the altar he reached up for a small box. Inside was a flint-stone and a mound of untreated wool for making light. He mimed the flying movements again, pointing at the sky, laughing at her inability to understand, then indicated a door set in the wall.
When he opened it she saw a cell containing a table, a chair, a narrow bed against the wall and an aumbry with a key in the lock.
A curtained archway led into another small chamber and beyond that was a further door. He drew aside the curtain to let her see the other side and revealed a kitchen, simple and clean, with a bowl, a jug and a water flagon. He crossed over and pushed open the door into a small yard, enclosed by high walls. A spring trickled into a stone basin. A scent of rosemary came from a pot of herbs beside a wooden bench.
It was clear it was the sacristan’s domain. As if to demonstrate his absence the painter gave an elaborate shrug.
As they returned Hildegard noticed a cross above the bed. It looked like a million others. Noticing her interest the man took it down and tapped himself on the chest.
She reached out and ran her fingers over it. Her heart sank. The wood was still green. There was no inscription on the back. ‘Did you carve this?’ she asked.
Whether or not she was right, he nodded, looking pleased.
When Ser Vitelli heard about her disappointment he dispatched a servant at once to find out what had happened to the sacristan. Meanwhile she mentioned the silver bird.
‘That’s
la
colombina
,’ he told her. ‘It’s part of an ancient custom. They set the sacred fire inside to make the dove fly across the piazza on the morning of Easter Sunday. If she flies, good luck will follow.’
When the servant returned he told them that the sacristan was away in Rome and was expected back shortly before Good Friday.
‘Everyone is returning then,’ observed Vitelli with an enigmatic smile. ‘They all want to be here to witness the entrance of Sir John Hawkwood within our walls.’
Although it was Lent, that evening a magnificent feast was laid on. Pierrekyn had presumably passed muster and was included for his playing. The whole Vitelli
famiglia
was in attendance as well as other personages from the upper echelons of the Florentine Signoria. They dined on innumerable dishes brought in by a constant stream of liveried servants.
The centrepiece was a peacock, baked and stuffed with other smaller birds, its feathers put back in place, the tail fan being spread with magnificent artistry to simulate its living glory. As a final tour de force, jets of flame spouted from its beak. This brought a burst of applause from the diners as sparks showered over the table. Some settled among Pierrekyn’s russet hair and he shook his head, making his curls dance. Everyone was delighted. He could become quite a household favourite, Hildegard imagined.
Ser Vitelli leaned forward to brush a few sparks from Hildegard’s sleeve with a murmured apology. The gesture drew attention to the sapphire in his ring with its own small fire.
All in all it was a scintillating show.
Despite this, when she lay awake that night, what she saw was not the blue of a sapphire but her blue cloak where it shrouded Talbot’s body in the snow.
Next morning she was making her way down to the principal chamber with its small devotional altar when she chanced to glance over the balcony and noticed Pierrekyn crossing the yard. He was carrying his lute as usual and wore a cloak over his shoulders. He was making for the lodge. She leaned over to watch.
When he reached the great doors she saw him attempt to go through into the street but the porter stepped forward with a brisk warning. A brief discussion was followed by a more prolonged argument. After a moment, Pierrekyn, his scowl visible even from this distance, trudged back up the stairs. Immediately the faint sound of his lute could be heard being played savagely in the principal chamber below.
Hildegard went to seek him out.
He was unaware of her approach. Only when she spoke did he realise that he had an audience. He stopped playing in mid-chord and gave her a sidelong look.
‘You’re well versed in music,’ he challenged. ‘Do you know what it was?’
‘What? That tune?’
He watched her closely.
‘Was it a hymn?’ she asked.
There was a look of relief on his face. She was not surprised.
Of course she knew what it was. Did he think her stupid?
Going up to him before he could start playing again, she said, ‘I wonder whether the steward and his men have managed to apprehend Reynard’s murderer yet?’
Pierrekyn plucked at the strings and pretended to adjust the tuning.
‘Well?’ she demanded.
He played a loud discord but kept his head bent, a tangle of hair covering his face, then looked up with a defiant smile. ‘Either they have – ’ he played a chord, ‘or they haven’t.’ He struck the chord again in a minor mode then began to play, not a lament or a dirge, but a loud, brisk jig.
There was a hospital not far distant called Santa Maria Nuova. It had recently been founded by Folco Portinari, the father of Beatrice, the poet Dante’s muse who had died during the last outbreak of plague. Fortunately the wave of deaths had receded over the last few months and Florence had been able to open its gates once more. Even so, the building was dismal with the groans of the sick and those dying from many other diseases for which there was no cure.
Santa Maria Nuova was also where the famed nun, Catherine of Siena, had tended the sick until her own recent death. Her name was spoken in a hushed voice by one of the sisters who now ran the hospital and had offered to show Hildegard round the wards.
‘Catherine was so saintly she used to drink the pus from the sores of the wounded,’ she told Hildegard admiringly as their tour came to an end. ‘She wore nettles between her breasts. Of course she never ate. What she ate she vomited at once. Even water became too gross for her towards the end. Nothing in this mortal world was pure enough for so saintly a being.’
Hildegard shivered involuntarily. ‘She was, I understand, an emissary for the pope in his dealings with the Signoria?’ she remarked.
‘Indeed,’ said the nun with an imperturbable smile. ‘She begged the pope not to send his armies against the Republic.’ But then,
looking somewhat unhappy, she added, ‘But men, even popes, will be men.’
The pope, Urban VI, was as fierce a warmonger as any man and employed professional men-at-arms to fight his cause, among them Sir John Hawkwood, the Essex mercenary. The Florentine Republic was a thorn in the pope’s side and, apart from wishing to defeat the other pope in Avignon, he wanted nothing more than to destroy the Republic and keep the city with all its wealth under his own absolute control.
Sir John Hawkwood, whose army Jack Black intended to join, had sold his services to Urban in the intervals when he wasn’t fighting on behalf of the higher-paying Republic or for the even higher-paying Duke of Milan – loyalty for Hawkwood being entirely contingent on the amount of gold on offer.
Whether Catherine was as saintly as was claimed was also open to question. It was rumoured that she had been a spy for both sides, pope and Republic, and no one was quite sure which side had won her final allegiance, although shortly before she died the previous year she was said to have pleaded with the pope for an end to war.
Hildegard would have liked to ask the nun whether any of her sisters followed her example and drank the pus of the wounded but she held her tongue. ‘Can you tell me something about the church of Santi Apostoli?’
The nun smiled, her ornate wimple flapping like a pair of swan’s wings. ‘The church is parochial, neither under the control of the Church nor of the brotherhoods. It belongs to the
popolo
and is run by a college of canons. They’re rather mysterious. No one seems to know where they have their headquarters.’
Hildegard rolled up her sleeves. ‘Now I’m here, maybe I can be of assistance?’ It seemed unreasonable not to offer help in the face of the unending tide of sickness that swamped the city. And besides, it looked as if she was going to remain in Florence until the sacristan reappeared.
It was late in the afternoon on the next day, just before the sun went down and left the church of Santi Apostoli lying in a wedge of shadow, that Hildegard came across one of the brothers from an
Order she did not recognise. He was an old man, shuffling his way down the nave towards one of the confessionals. In answer to her question about the sacristan he shook his head and continued on his way.
There were one or two people inside still, the painters working cheerfully high up among the painted clouds, a hunched shape mumbling a prayer at the foot of the altar, a man with his hood up saying his beads beside one of the pillars, and a quick shape following her in and going straight to a side chapel. Aware that it was Lent, that she had purposely avoided confession for some weeks, she made her way to the grille and knelt down.
‘Hear me, oh Father,’ she whispered. A shadow appeared on the other side. She began to speak in English.
It could not be helped that the confessor would not understand her; there were secret thoughts that needed to be clarified. Her yearning for a distant cloister, the brief joy she had known there, the shame of her desire, had not diminished. When she finished she should have felt better but the burden remained.
By now the painters had left. Their buckets and ladders were stacked against the walls and the ropes of the scaffolding hung silently in the roof. The figure at the altar had gone too, as had the man standing beside the pillar. Daylight was already fading, reducing the nave to darkness. Her footsteps echoed strangely in the hollow silence.