The Road to Damietta (16 page)

I wanted to shout, You are fickle, Francis Bernardone; you're a mad changeling! But instead I quietly said, "At San Rufino you urged your listeners to remain unmarried. What would happen
if they all were to take your advice? How long, sir, would the world last?"

"I don't expect everyone to follow my preachings. Only the few. Only the chosen."

"The chosen? Who is the chooser? God?"

"No, each man chooses for himself."

"And each woman chooses for herself ?"

"Yes."

"But Clare di Scifi didn't have a chance to choose. She fell in love with you and head over heels was swept away into a sisterhood."

"Away, that is so," Francis said, a strong note in his voice. "Away, to the arms of Christ. And only to Christ, our Lord."

He was answering the rumor, abroad in the city for weeks now, that the two were secretly lovers. People believed this; the Scifis and all of my family believed it. And until this very moment, I, too, had believed it.

"You're not in your fancy clothes, your furs and jewels," he said. "You are dressed for travel. Where do you go?"

"North to Venice, as I wrote you in my letter."

"Oh, yes," he said, pretending the letter meant nothing to him. "Why do you go to Venice? It's an oriental city, rife with corruption."

"I go because I am being sent there."

"Why are you sent?"

I hesitated. I glanced at the trees bending to the gusting wind, at the portals with their spring flowers, finally at him.

"Why?" he asked again.

"Because of you, signore."

He quit fondling the hawk. Baffled and silent, he looked at me. Color rose to his cheeks.

I took the hawk from his hand and launched it on the air. It flew as high as the trees, then wheeled back and hovered above us, beating its wings, torn between us and the sky.

I didn't wait for the bird to disappear. I put heels to the horse, and when I came to the clearing I glanced back. Francis was watching from the church steps. Boyish Clare di Scifi, fuzzyheaded in her ugly woolen sack tied by a cord around her middle, who would tramp the streets, begging for pork rinds and stale bread, stood behind him.

"Patience, patience, patience," I said to the thud of the horse's hoofs, remembering the moment I had told him why I was being sent to Venice. Remembering his silence, the color that rose suddenly to his pale cheeks, as he struggled with memories of happier times. As he thought of the letters I had written to him, the last one.

The hawk I had freed was a symbol and a pledge. I had prevailed over Clare di Scifi. I would prevail over his latest love.

Past noon I overtook the caravan, resting in a shady
grove. Before I got down from the horse, Raul was at my side, babbling away.

"We'll soon come to the crossroads where we turn west on the road that leads to the coast and on to Granada," he said. "I can see that you've already made a decision. A wise one, I trust. I see it in your face. It speaks out from your radiant eyes and smile."

Bluntly I told him that he was mistaken about my eyes and face and smile, that I was happy thinking of my new life in the carnival city of Venice. Without further comment we went northward, past the crossroads where we could have taken the road to Granada, traveling until dusk.

At nightfall of the third day, while we were camped in a meadow beside a slow-moving brook, Tommaso, the captain of the guards, a windy oldster, heard the sound of hoofs behind us in a wooded ravine we had just passed through.

"It can be one horseman or many," he said, speaking quietly to allay our fears. "But this is a favorite haunt of cutthroats, and the time of day they usually emerge. I suggest, therefore, that all the women repair to their tents. When last I rode through here I met with five of the scum. Of that band, however, there's now only one, and he with a missing leg. Be calm, have faith in my strong right hand."

The cook asked him if we should pray, but before Captain Tommaso could answer, the rider appeared at the mouth of the ravine, crossed the brook, and dismounted. To my great astonishment, it was Nicola Ascoli.

During the past three days I had thought of her. Of all the family, all of them except my father, she was saddest to see me go. She had followed me into the street, clinging to the horse's mane, until I found the courage to ride away.

Joyful cries of "Thanks be to God" rose from the camp, now that we were confronted not by a brigand but by a pretty girl with a travel-stained face.

Nicola had chosen a wrong turn in the road or she would have overtaken us sooner. "I went to the left instead of the right," she said. "Then I was in a forest for a long time, hiding from a band of men. They were cut-purses, for while I watched they held up a man and a woman traveling in a cart. Then this morning I had to hide again..."

Full of the day's wild adventures, she would have rattled on
had I let her. My delight at seeing Nicola was short-lived. She brought a problem. I would be protected by the prioress, Mother Sofia, a handsome gift for my board and keep having been given in advance. But what of Nicola Ascoli, unsponsored, without a
soldo
to her name?

She had eaten two eggs, she told me, stolen from a farmyard the night before, and nothing since, though in a basket tied to the saddle she had a rooster hidden away, which she wished to present us for supper. But the rooster, thin and bedraggled, stretched his neck and challenged us with a crow, so defiant and yet so appealing that we took a vote on whether to have him stewed for supper. The men voted to place him in the pot, but the women prevailed, so we kept him and gave him the name Cerberus, the watchful keeper. And keeper he proved to be.

Sleeping for the most part at well-guarded inns, we made our journey without incident until we approached the town of Padua. Here, pitching our tents midst scattered trees in open country, we were awakened late in the night by the frantic flapping of wings and prolonged cries of distress.

The guards bounded out of their tents—all were asleep at the time—to confront a number of brigands in the act of running off with our horses. If successful, the raid would have left us stranded leagues from the nearest help. Afterward Cerberus became our pampered guide and, with the help of Captain Tommaso, brought us safely to the fabulous city of Venice.

The city, as everyone knows, is paved with seawater and not with stones. Twice each day the tides of the Adriatic Sea flow in, sweep up the streets, and flow out again.

You do not, therefore, ride gaily into Venice, nor do you walk. At the edge of the salt meadow where the land ends and the sea begins, boats of all descriptions wait to take you to this island city—double-ended gondolas, mostly painted black, each rowed by a single oarsman; small, shallow-draft boats of all colors; the floating palaces called
bruchielli;
and, if fishing is poor, the fisher-man's skiffs.

We left our retainers in the meadow, including Cerberus, and hired a gondola to take Raul and Nicola and me to Piazza San Marco. From there it was a short walking distance to the monastery.

My aunt was at prayer when we arrived, so we had a long wait in a bare room lit by a small window and a row of candles beside a crucifix and a picture of Christ, like the room where I first met the prioress of San Paolo, Mother Sibilia.

The two women were also alike. Indeed, when Aunt Sofia came striding into the room, a candle clutched in one hand, shielding it with the other, she gave me a start. Like Mother Sibilia's, her pale skin was stretched tight over sharp bones and deep hollows. It was a face that comes from hidden heat. For a terrifying moment I saw myself standing here in this same room, holding a candle in my hand—it could be three years from now, perhaps longer—pale, hollow-cheeked, like this woman.

I expected her to remark on how I had grown since she had seen me—I was a baby in arms at the time. But instead she asked if the long journey had fatigued me, then complimented me on the fine work I had done as a copyist and said she hoped that I would continue the art while I was at the monastery.

At this time Raul mentioned the six manuscripts he had brought from our library.

"We are lacking in books," my aunt said, greatly pleased. "Since the fire last April that left our library in ashes, we have had few. Only the books that were in our rooms escaped. Those who tend our fires, which I think they often set themselves, did more damage with their buckets of water than was done by the flames."

We had heard in Assisi about the fire soon after it happened. It is my belief that arrangements for my residence at the monastery, between my father and my aunt, were based upon the trade of valuable books for her willingness to take me under her wing.

In any event, our porter carried in from the street a large bundle from home. Raul opened it and made a little speech expressing my father's pleasure at this chance to start a new library at the monastery.

"Here are the seeds that will sprout and come to flower," he said. "The Book of Daniel and the Books of Hosea and Amos, complete. Incomplete is the Book of Genesis, copied only to the first verse of the third chapter."

He gave this fragment to Aunt Sofia, the three sheets I had copied in bold Gothic and gold capitals, down to the place where Adam and Eve stand shamelessly naked in the Garden of Eden as the serpent appears.

"What an exquisite hand. Whose work can this be?" Mother Sofia said, knowing full well that it was mine. Aware of the disrobing scene in San Rufino Square, aware that it came from the Bible, aware of everything, because my father had told her. "The capitals are so proud and stately, yet withal so sensitive. Who is the artist?"

Raul pointed to me.

Holding the candle on high to see me better, Sofia smiled.

"How fortunate we are," she said, "to be given such a treasure."

Her white robe blended with the white wall behind her. All I could make out were the bony face and the hollow cheeks, her dark eyes studying me, the incorrigible Ricca di Montanaro from the city of Assisi.

"And here, the New Testament, which comes from the hands of the finest copyist in Spain," Raul said, holding out my fathers Bible, "which will be copied for you."

My aunt crossed herself and said, "How long will it take to complete the enormous task?"

"Two years at least," I said. Then, fortunately remembering Nicola, I added, "If I work with my assistant, I can finish the task in one year, perhaps less." I glanced about for my friend,
who had disappeared, apparently to inspect the monastery, as she had at San Paolo. "She prepares the vellum, mixes colors and ink, attends to the dozens of details that lessen the labor of a copyist. I brought her from Assisi—her name is Nicola Ascoli—in the hope that you may find a place for her."

I cast a look at Raul, who had turned his back when I mentioned Nicola as my assistant. He was musing, no doubt, on my ability to dissemble.

"Nicola is also very religious," I said. "With her father and mother she tried to reach the Holy Land and had many terrible experiences."

Aunt Sofia was sympathetic. "The poor child," she murmured. "How sad. We are crowded here but I'll find a place for her. And if you're in need of apprentices, there are many sisters who would love to help you. Some among them are quite adept at Latin."

Suddenly I saw myself training a flock ot sisters, forgotten in a Benedictine monastery, hundreds of leagues from Porziuncola, copying books for weeks, for months, for years. The thought gave me a terrified chill.

"Thank you, Aunt Sofia," I said, looking straight into her eyes, "but I'll not need help."

My aunt was unpleasantly surprised when Raul, having
placed me on her doorstep, informed her that he wished to show me some of the places he had come to know during his visits to Venice.

"We'll return before nightfall," he said, "and I will then be on my way to report the tidings to Signor Montanaro, who is anxiously waiting. To inform him that I left his daughter in safekeeping, protected by the warmest of familial affection."

Listening to his speech, Mother Sofia looked anything but familial. She frowned and her brows fluttered with disapproval. Before she could object Raul had me out the door.

He led me down a narrow lane that twisted snake-like through arcades, across squares and bridges, and at last into a sunless
piazzale.
All sides of this little square, he pointed out, were a warehouse that belonged to my father. The sign over the wide doorway read:
DAVINO DI
M
ONTANARO AND
S
ONS.

The sons the sign referred to were my two baby brothers, who died before there was a chance to give them names, my brother Lorenzo, who was killed on the battlefield at Perugia, and my brother Rinaldo, who was much more interested in playing the lute and writing poetry than he was in business. Indeed, Rinaldo had never set foot in Venice.

The warehouse was a dim-lit cavern stocked with barrels and crates of merchandise that had come from far places in the world—from as far away as Samarkand and beyond. The smell was not a single smell but many, all mixed up, so that oil from Spain and dates from Africa and saffron from India and the dried flat fish from Beirut and skeins of yellow wool from England all combined into one powerful smell, which was both pleasant and strong, so overpowering that I tasted it on my tongue.

An army of bare-chested men toiled away in the cavern, creating an awful din. In an enclosure beside a main gate, which opened onto a wide canal where ships were moored, I met Simon Gregorio.

"Signor Gregorio," Raul said, "is in charge of the warehouse. He has many responsibilities, but as far as you are concerned, only one—he is a dispenser of money. What from time to time you receive from your father will come through Signor Gregorio."

Gregorio, who had wary eyes and a head as round as a melon, took a step backward, spread his hands wide, and made what I came to know as a Venetian bow.

"If meanwhile," he said, "you look into your purse by chance and find fewer coins than you had presumed were there, kindly let me know and I will respond at once."