The Road to Damietta (4 page)

There was a somber tone in his voice that I had never heard before. It made me think he was speaking the truth, that he did see the falcon's eyes beneath the hood.

"Simonetta," I said, "is young. She hasn't been trained. If I free her, she will never come back. She'll starve or be hunted down."

"God will care for her, as He cares for all His creatures, even for you and me."

He looked up from under the peak of his feathered cap, fixing
me with a steady glance. It was meant to make me quaver, lose my senses, free Simonetta—my father's generous gift, bought from the falconry of Filippo dei Casini, doge of Venice.

I looked at Raul, waiting impatiently on the far side of the square. I thought of a way to break the spell.

"I've heard an awful tale. It's ... well, people are saying that you stole a piece of cloth that belonged to your father. Such terrible things. They can't possibly be true."

"But they are," he said eagerly, taking pride in the theft. "A handsome length of damask fit for a cardinal's cape. Also a fat handful of money."

"You're just dreaming up a wild story," I said, though by now I didn't know what to believe.

"I'd have taken more, two lengths of his best brocade and two handfuls of money, if I hadn't decided that this would be a sin. Here I was stealing from my father because he was greedy, and here I was, being greedy myself. But you haven't mentioned the horse. I stole a horse, too, a fine Arabian."

"You're making this up," I said, but as the words left my lips I realized that it made no difference to me whether he was a thief or not, whether he had stolen every bolt of cloth, every
soldo,
and every horse his father owned.

He began to pet Simonetta, running a hand over her shining feathers, not listening to me at all.

"When she is trained and can fend for herself," I said, "I'll think about setting her free."

Now he was talking to Simonetta, at least making sounds that caused the hawk to turn her head one way and the other.

"If you take off the hood then I can talk to her better," he said. "It is with the eyes that we talk to each other."

With misgivings, I placed Simonetta on his arm and removed the golden hood, but kept a firm grip on the chain that held her.

"She has the eyes of an odalisque," I said, to appear well read and scholarly.

He didn't know the word. "Odalisque?" he said, shaking his head.

"I mean that her eyes remind me of the melting eyes of a slave girl in a sultan's harem."

"You're familiar with harems?"

"Only through my reading," I said, embarrassed.

He held the bird at arm's length and the two gazed at each other.

"Her eyes don't melt," he said. "I am climbing a mountain in a winter storm. It is dusk as I near the top. Before me stands an icy cliff. In the face of the cliff is a small crevice and deep inside the crevice I see a fire. Her eyes are like that—fire and burning ice."

He began to talk to Simonetta, strange sounds unlike any that I had ever heard before. Then he broke off the talk and said to me, "You must have many of these pretty birds, ones to match the colors of your cloaks and gowns," he said. "You'll never miss Simonetta."

Deep within his own eyes I saw the fire and burning ice. Silently, holding my breath, I watched him unloose the chain from the falcon's leg. I watched her while she fluttered awkwardly away from us, then, gathering herself, disappeared in the stormy sky.

"She's gone," I cried.

"No longer an ornament on your wrist, but not gone," he said, pausing to gather his cloak about him. "She's in God's care. Now that you know this, you will free the others in your falconry."

Through falling snow, I saw Raul beckoning to me. My senses returned. Without a word I spurred my horse and crossed the square.

"I see that you didn't fare too badly with Bernardone," Raul said. "You only lost your favorite hawk. You're fortunate; you might have lost your purse as well as your horse and your nice silk surcoat. You might be walking homeward in your bare feet, freezing to death in your underclothes."

I didn't answer him. My eyes were upon Francis Bernardone. He was still where I had left him. Now it was snowing big flakes and he was on his knees, his hands outstretched, catching them as they fell.

The kneeling figure grew dim and disappeared in the driving snow. In all my life, I had never loved Francis Bernardone so much, so desperately.

Snow hid the walls of San Rufino. As we came to the
Scifi palace, the watchman called out, inviting us to take shelter.

The bells of Santa Maria Maggiore had rung. Within the hour, my father would be sitting down to dinner. I was not anxious to explain how I had lost Simonetta. Not that he would know about it so soon—days might pass before he heard. But as a dutiful daughter, trained in the importance of truth, if challenged I must confess to an act that he would deem much more than foolish.

"It's warmer within than without," the watchman said, opening the gate. "This is an apt time to get frozen. Come, I pray you."

I asked if Signorina Clare was about. Told that she was in bed, suffering a fever, I handed over my horse and Raul rode on with the servants. Since Clare and I were good friends and often visited each other, I went by way of the back entrance, unannounced.

She lay under a blanket of fox skins, pale but beautiful in spite of her illness. "Where were you to get such a reddish nose?" she asked me.

"At Signor Bernardone's."

"What's under your arm? You're always buying something. Either that or someone is buying it for you."

I opened the package and spread the cloth on the coverlet.

"How lovely," she said. "It matches your coloring."

"Signor Bernardone told me the same thing."

"What did Francis say?"

"Nothing."

Clare and I always talked frankly to each other. But how I felt about Francis Bernardone I had kept from her, thinking that she would belittle him as so many others did.

Clare was not ill from a fever. I learned this before I ever finished the cup of broth her serving woman brought for me. She was ill from fear and anger.

"Have you heard of Rosso di Battero?" she asked me.

"He owns a castle beyond Porta di Murocuplo, in the hills," I said. "He's thin and tall and hollow in the middle, has a gray beard curled to a point, rides a gray horse, and he's always protected by six guards also riding gray horses."

She smiled wanly. "You know him better than I do. I've seen him only once. Last Easter in the cathedral, from a distance. I just found out that my family intends that I marry him."

Clare's father was a stubborn man, strict and fanatically religious. Her mother was an iron-willed woman. Her brothers were famous for their use of the sword, quick to take offense, vindictive, and cruel. I could imagine what a family command would mean to her, especially since people asked why a girl of such beauty remained unwed. Was her life doomed by some terrible disease? Had she made a pact with the Evil One, with the Devil himself ? I had heard these questions and others, asked in my own home.

She was not drinking her barley broth. She lay with her hands folded tight on the coverlet, her gaze upon the window and the falling snow, a figure as remote as the cold white statue in the niche above her head. I asked her if she would marry Rosso di Battero. She picked up a heart-shaped fan and covered her face in disgust.

"No," she said, fanning herself. "No."

"If your family commands you to, you wouldn't dare refuse them."

"You'll see. At the very moment I am threatened."

"What will you do?" I asked, thinking of Count Luzzaro.

"I'll flee."

"Where to?"

"To Perugia. Anywhere. To Venice. I have cousins in Venice and also in Padua."

"Your brothers are fast riders. They'll come for you and bring you back," I said. Then, struck by a thought, I added, "You can hide with me. There's a big room off my tower. It was used once
for weapons, a storage place. It's closed now and nobody ever goes there. You'll be safe for days."

"What a cunning thought," she said.

She tossed the coverlet aside, sat up, and glanced at me over the top of her fan. "How did Francis look?"

"Like a harlequin. Dressed up with one leg in black silk, the other in red silk, and a tunic of four or five colors."

"I mean, how did he act?"

"Sober," I said, deciding not to say a word about our meeting in San Rufino Square or about Simonetta. "Quiet."

"From the stories going around, he may have good reasons for being quiet. It's said he stole from his father, things like cloth and money, and gave them away. I don't believe it for a moment," Clare said.

She sat down at the mirror, and a woman came to dress her hair. Long and heavy and very blond, in the lamplight it looked like melting silver.

"Francis would never steal from his father," she said, "or from anyone else. It's an awful lie."

I agreed with her and we talked on until the bells rang for vespers, but nothing more was said about him.

As I hurried home I tried to think of a likely reason for freeing Simonetta. Father met me as I entered the Great Hall. He glanced at my wrist and empty glove before I had brushed the snow from my face.

"Simonetta?" he said.

I made a motion of a hawk flying away, hunting the heavens.

Father was a medium-tall man who made himself look taller and more imposing by wearing thick-soled, high-heeled boots, by standing very erect with his thin shoulders thrown back, and by wearing tight collars on his cloaks and tunics.

"An untamed hawk hunts in a snowstorm?" he asked. He carried a lamp and the amber light glittered in his eyes. "Simonetta comes from a family of hawks that's centuries old, from the days of the ancient pharaohs. My falconer has sat up days and nights with this rare bird, never sleeping, walking leagues with her fastened to his fist, keeping her awake hour after hour until she no longer wishes to be free. And though her spirit remains unbroken, she's been lulled into submission. Simonetta has gone through all these stages, but she's not ready to hunt. Why did you ask for Simonetta?"

"Because she is more beautiful than the pigeon hawk or the kestrel."

"Why did the falconer give her to you?"

I shrugged, not daring to say that I had threatened the man a little when he wanted to give me the kestrel hawk. Step by step Father was leading me into a lie. Defiantly, not caring that I stumbled over the words, I blurted the truth.

"You wished to impress Francis Bernardone?"

I nodded.

"Then Bernardone is the cause of your unloosing the hawk." Father's tongue curled around the name. "A clown dancing in
the street now dances his way into the household of Davino di Montanaro." He glanced at the massive door set in walls of hardest stone. "No door, no wall however strong, can keep frivolity at bay, it seems. Shall we deal with this foolishness in a different way? We shall, we shall! Come!"

I followed him through the Great Hall and into the vaulted room of the scriptorium. Two earnest young men sat at benches, pens in hand, diligently at work. Raul de los Santos watched over them.

Father said to him, "My daughter wishes to learn the arts of copying."

"Copying what?" Raul asked, pleased that I was now commanded to do what he had been trying to inveigle me into doing for more than a year.

"Since she's a religious girl," Father said, "her thoughts devoted to our Lord and His works, I suggest she start with the scriptures."

"Copying the scriptures is the surest way to heaven," Raul said. "According to Cassiodorus, 'converting the hand into an organ of speech'—thus, as it were, fighting the Archfiend with the deadly weapon of pen and ink."

"Cassiodorus was a wise man."

"When do you wish to begin?" Raul asked.

Father answered for me. "Tomorrow—early in the morning, tomorrow."

"And where in the scriptures?"

"In the Old Testament. With the first words of Genesis. It should keep Ricca occupied for months."

"For a year, signore. Perhaps two."

Listening to the storm clamoring at the windows, I thought of Francis on his knees in San Rufino Square.

I was in the scriptorium soon after breakfast, to show
Father that I accepted my penance in lofty spirits and was anxious to become a proficient copyist. Raul had not arrived, so I spent my time examining the Bible, which was half my height, bound in wooden boards. Resting upon a strong oak bench, it was fixed there against thievery by a heavy chain. It was one of the two Bibles anywhere in all the provinces; the other Bible belonged to the University of Bologna. There was also part of one in Venice.

When Raul came he set me to work, not with a quill, unfortunately, but at a bench in a dark little hole at the far end of the scriptorium, making squares of lambskin into vellum by rubbing them with pumice, then treating the squares with chalk until they bore a velvety gloss. It was hard, dusty work that I didn't like.

"We don't write upon air," Raul explained maddeningly in answer to my complaint. "We write upon parchment. And with the Old Testament we write not upon ordinary parchment, but upon the prince of parchment, which is vellum. So that you may
treat this princely parchment with respect, it is well to know how much labor goes into its making."

He kept me at this dreadful task for five long days before he stood me up in front of the Montanaro Bible. He handed me a freshly cut goose quill and told me to begin, following as a guide the chalked-in lines on the page of vellum set beside it.

"You have an excellent, upright hand," he said, "perfect for the combination of Gothic and Arabic styles I brought from Granada. We'll leave wide margins, and later, as you gain a surer eye and we come to the Garden of Eden, we'll add a discreet number of peacocks, apes, and serpents. Nothing flamboyant, mind you."

It was a fascinating art, exciting beyond anything I had imagined. On the first day, forgetting dinner, I worked until vespers and copied fifteen verses of the first chapter of Genesis, down to the words, "He made the stars also."