The Miracles of Prato (20 page)

“I love you,” he said again. “I love you.”

Fumbling, he opened the clasp that held back her hair and pulled it softly around her face, kissing the ends, letting it tickle his cheek. Then he lifted her arms and began to slide her shift over her head. She felt his hands on her shoulders and then on her breasts. His fingertips lingered on her nipples.

Still kissing her, Fra Filippo slid her chemise off her shoulder. Her breath was coming in short gasps now. Nothing mattered more than their bodies, together. She would be his wife, and she would no longer be afraid.

He drew back and looked at her in the soft firelight. She forced a smile, and nodded. The painter ran his hands from her shoulders to her thighs. For a moment she remembered the prior general's hot breath, and she recoiled. As if he could read her thoughts, the painter murmured words of reassurance, all the while holding her closer, pressing himself more firmly against her, covering her with his own warmth.

She felt his thick fingers touching her, and inhaled deeply. The monk brought his hand to his mouth and wet his fingers on his
tongue, then slowly brought them under the blanket, moving them back and forth across the lobe that seemed to grow under his touch. A low moan escaped Lucrezia's lips, and the sound of her pleasure excited the painter. Softly, he parted her legs and rolled between them. She cried out.

“Is it all right,
mia cara
?” The monk's voice was throaty and deep.

She opened her eyes. His face was close, and the love in his eyes reassured her. She pressed a palm against his cheek and nodded.

Gently, slowly, a great heat pressed into her, filling her in a place she'd never realized was empty. Lucrezia drank in the painter's familiar scent of wine and gesso and realized what it was to be in love. Until this moment she hadn't known what it meant to be joined to another, body and soul, and the gratitude she felt more than made up for the pain that grew stronger as her body opened and he thrust more deeply. He kissed her eyes, her brow, her cheek; his breath rasped in her ear. His body stiffened, he shuddered, and Lucrezia held him more tightly, astonished by his complete surrender. She felt a soaking between her legs.

“Lucrezia.” He pulled back to look into her face. His eyes were bright, lit from the inside.

“Now we're truly married,” she whispered, surprised at how much sorrow she felt along with her joy.

“I love you,” he said. “Lucrezia, don't cry. I love you.”

The Nineteenth Week After Pentecost, the Year of Our Lord 1456

Lucrezia's bruises healed until they were barely shadows on her body, wiped away by the painter's love. Autumn blazed and cooled, and the woodpile outside the
bottega
grew smaller. She began spending more nights on the pallet with Fra Filippo, letting his hands roam the length of her body, his palms press lightly against her mouth to muffle her cries of pleasure. He was patient and kind, and in the dark she found it easier to push the prior general from her mind.

As the Feast of All Saints' Day approached, Spinetta complained of a chill at night, and asked if she might sleep on the pallet by the hearth.

“Thank you,” Lucrezia said quietly. “Thank you for your love and understanding.”

“I do not know what is right any longer,” Spinetta said, her eyes darkening. “I pray every night for your soul,
mia cara
.”

“As do I,” Lucrezia said.

She said nothing about her monthly bleeding, which had not come for nearly two months now, but each morning, after the painter left her, she knelt by the bed and prayed for the Virgin Mother's guidance.

Lucrezia knew from the past that emotional turmoil could interrupt her regular bleeding, but the prior general's violation gave her different cause for worry. If there was to be a child, more than ever
she and Filippo would need the pope's blessing. And if, God forbid, the child was the prior general's, she would need the Holy Mother's protection and perhaps more love than the painter had for her.

 

“Do you hear anything from your patron?” Lucrezia asked Fra Filippo one evening, as he was cleaning his brushes.

Fra Filippo didn't meet her eye. He'd received a note from Ser Francesco Cantansanti two days earlier, delivered to him at the Church of Santo Stefano.

“Filippo?” Lucrezia repeated. “What have you heard?”

Clearing his throat, Fra Filippo kept his eyes on his brushes, and his hands busy. He'd replied to Cantansanti in haste, and dispatched the letter that very morning.

“The Medici want to see the altarpiece in Naples as soon as possible,” he said. “When it arrives, I believe good things will come to us.”

Lucrezia's face clouded. The central panel of the triptych hadn't been touched in days. Although her image was sketched and already filled in with an underpainting of
verdaccio
and a bit of
cinabrese
to warm the Madonna's cheeks, it clearly wasn't close to completion.

“Then I pray you'll finish it quickly,” Lucrezia said, her voice more terse than she intended. “So that good things will come to us soon.”

 

But good things did not come quickly. In a week's time the painter was forced to admit the loss of his chaplain's wages meant he could no longer afford to pay Rosina. The girl, who'd just had a birthday, happily went off to Santa Margherita to begin her life as a novitiate. But the morning after she bade them good-bye, Lucrezia found Spinetta weeping in front of the hearth.

“I want to go back to Santa Margherita, too,” Spinetta said, turning away from her sister. She was no longer angry, only sad. “Soon it will be Advent season, and I want to be with the others in the convent.”

“I know,” Lucrezia answered. “But I'm afraid of what people will say if I'm living here alone with Fra Filippo.”

“Then come back with me,” Spinetta said. “People are talking, Lucrezia. You must know that. He's still a monk; no matter what he's said to you, he puts on his white robe each morning and walks through the piazza with his head held high.”

“But I love him,” Lucrezia said, lowering her gaze. “And my curse, Spinetta, my bleeding.”

Spinetta turned pale. When her own curse had come the week
prior, she'd used a small pile of clean rags, boiling them and then stacking them behind her few private belongings in a shelf by the hearth. She'd assumed her sister had been doing the same.

“Your bleeding hasn't come?”

Lucrezia shook her head, refusing to look up at her sister.

“How long has it been?” Spinetta asked.

“Not since we left home, Spinetta. Not since July.”

Spinetta muffled a cry.

“You see why I'm praying for word from Rome?” Lucrezia whispered.

Spinetta pressed her lips together.

“I'll stay with you a bit longer,” she said, reaching inside the pocket of her robe for her prayer beads. “But I must at least practice my duties as a novitiate, and serve the poor and ill in the
ospedale
when I can.”

 

Lucrezia's beauty and love gave Fra Filippo all that his heart needed, but the world demanded payment for food and firewood, and feeding three people taxed his meager resources until they were nearly gone. The food he brought home each evening grew more sparse, and while Spinetta was across town at the
ospedale
on a cool afternoon
,
Lucrezia went into the small patch behind the
bottega
to dig for some root vegetables to fill their stomachs.

Advent was upon them and it was cold, even in the sun. Squatting heavily, she tugged at the tubers pushing their way up through the hard ground. Her back ached and her breasts felt heavy, the raw wind cut against her bare hands, and her eyelids were nearly shut. In an hour's time she'd dug only three onions and a rutabaga.

Inside for the afternoon siesta, she wrapped herself in the rough
woolen blanket that smelled of Fra Filippo, and fell into the cocoon of sleep. She'd never felt so tired, it seemed, in all of her life. Even after she'd slept deeply, she barely kept herself awake through the evening meal of thin onion soup.

The painter helped her into bed that night, bringing her an extra glass of wine as she combed out her hair. She was pale, he saw, but her eyes were somehow bluer than they'd ever been before.

 

When she woke in the morning, Lucrezia rushed to the chamber pot and retched. The painter brought her a rag and wiped away the bile that wouldn't stay down. He said nothing of what he suspected, and neither did Lucrezia. But when she went into the kitchen, Spinetta was standing at the hearth, staring at her with wide, frightened eyes.

“Are you ill?” Spinetta whispered, shaking her head even as she asked.

Lucrezia looked at her sister. How stark their differences appeared: Spinetta in her black robe and wimple, starched and fresh, while Lucrezia's
gamurra
hung damp from perspiration under the plain blue robe she'd pulled over her head.

“I don't think I'm ill, sister.”

They could hear the painter moving around in his workshop and they spoke quietly to each other in urgent tones.

“I must stay here and have the child.”

“The child of a monk.” As the bitter words left Spinetta's mouth, the far worse possibility was reflected in the expression on her face.

“Whatever God wills,” Lucrezia said, dropping her eyes to the rough floorboards. Spinetta crossed herself and sat heavily on the stool opposite Lucrezia.

“What did Fra Filippo say?”

“I haven't told him yet,” Lucrezia said. “But he must know. In truth, sister, I'm afraid of what will happen now.”

She closed her eyes and pictured a fat-limbed, blue-eyed child with Filippo's broad features. But each time she remembered the prior general's face, nausea took hold of her.

By the time Spinetta went to the market for a bit of ham, leaving the two of them alone in the
bottega,
Lucrezia was exhausted from worry. She found the painter in his studio, and cleared her throat to get his attention.

Turning from his palette, Fra Filippo guessed exactly why she'd come to him. He'd suspected her news for some days now, and although it had consumed his thoughts, he was still unsure of his feelings.

“Filippo?”

She saw his face was grave, and tears stung her eyes. The painter reached for her hand and held it tightly.

“What is it?” He touched her cheek. “Why are you crying?”

Outside, the streets stirred with the sounds of horses pulling carts, but the
bottega
was perfectly still. Lucrezia said nothing. She guided the painter's hand to her belly, and placed it there, gently.

“It's been many months since I suffered the curse,” she said. She laced her fingers through his, and watched his face. He blinked, but didn't move. His hand stayed where it was, warm and immobile.

“I'm going to have a child,” she blurted. “Tell me, Filippo, is it a blessing, or is it a punishment?”

As she voiced her fears, what spread over the painter's face wasn't horror or dread, but something much closer to happiness. Fra Filippo didn't take his hand from her belly, but simply pressed more firmly.

“A child from my Madonna will be a blessing,” he said.

“I'm not your Madonna,” she said weakly. “I am not any Madonna. To say such a thing is blasphemy.”

Fra Filippo knelt and pressed his face against her belly. He had no child on earth, only one poor soul born too soon to the woman he'd known in Padua. Long ago he'd come to accept that while even cardinals had illicit children, he would have none.

“I've always longed for a son,” he said. “I can't feel sorrow at such news.”

“But we're not married in the eyes of Rome. When they see me in the streets they will speak ill of me, and just think what they'll say at Santa Margherita! Filippo, now more than ever we have to pray that favorable word comes from Rome.”

“I don't care what they say in Rome,” he said passionately. He stood and took Lucrezia's face in his hands. “Since the moment I saw you, Lucrezia, I've seen and felt many things I'd never believed I would see on this earth. We'll pray and work fervently for word from Rome. But no matter what, I'll never let you live in shame.”

Bolstered by his words, she let his joy wash over her.

“And if Rome says it is impossible?” she asked, putting her cheek on his chest.

Fra Filippo knew that what happened in Rome would depend on the goodwill and influence of the Medici. God governed heaven, Satan ruled over hell, but it was Cosimo de' Medici who willed what happened on their peninsula.

“Remember, nothing is impossible if God wills it,” the painter said. “If God wills it, nothing is impossible.”

Despite the monk's happiness, he heard the echoes of Ser Cantansanti, his face stern as he warned Fra Filippo not to flaunt his romantic dalliance under the watchful eye of the Medici.

 

Y
ou are following God's will, Lucrezia,” Spinetta said one morning. “But I, too, must do what God asks of me. I must return to the convent to celebrate the Lord's birth.”

“You've been very good to me,” Lucrezia said bravely. “I know Fra Filippo will care for me. Please tell the others I am sorry if I have caused them pain.”

On the eve of the Nativity, Lucrezia said a tearful good-bye to Spinetta and watched through the window as her sister followed the wiry figure of Paolo through the streets, heading toward the gates of Santa Margherita. When the two disappeared from view, Lucrezia put on the simple dress she'd stitched from the remnants Fra Filippo had brought to her, and stood outside until she was able to catch the eye of a woolgatherer's wife.

“I would like to take in the air today,” Lucrezia said, with a sad smile. “And would be ever grateful if you would accompany me.”

The woman, called Anna, was one of many in the city who'd heard rumors of the miracle at the palazzo de' Valenti, and believed in Lucrezia's goodness. She was simple but devout, and walked beside Lucrezia to and from the banks of the Bisenzio River, speaking little. Lucrezia hid her face with her hood, but when she returned home her cheeks were pink, and she felt the strength of a new resolve.

“I don't want to hide,” she said to Fra Filippo. “It's the eve of Our Lord's birth. I want to go to church and receive the sacrament.”

Fra Filippo sent a note to his friend Fra Piero, who hadn't visited the
bottega
since the day the two had exchanged their vows. Their friend arrived at the house at sunset, carrying a ham in a sack. Birdlike and full of energy, his nose red from the cold, the procurator
tossed his gift onto the table, crossed the room, and opened his arms to embrace Lucrezia.

“You're radiant,” he said, his warm smile displaying his crooked teeth.

Grasping her hand, he drew Lucrezia into the kitchen, where he sat her close to the fire, took a seat on a stool, and guessed at her news.

“A child is a blessing,” he said kindly. Although he wondered about the source of the child's seed, he remained silent on this question, and reminded himself that the vows he'd pronounced for his friends had the Lord's legitimacy, if not the pope's approval. “How wonderful that you've received this gift during this joyous season.”