A Golden Web Read online

  Both Giorgio and Pierina joined him to look over Alessandra’s shoulder.

  “What a waste,” said Pierina, “to have something so beautiful merely eaten! Dodo doesn’t give a fig what the letters look like.”

  “Effe!” said Dodo, barely waiting till Alessandra told him he was right before pulling the apple to his bright strong teeth and taking a big bite where the F had been.

  “I taught you in just the same way,” said Emilia.

  Ursula spoke from her place closest to the fire. “How came you to read? Wasn’t your father—what was it? An ostler?”

  “He did indeed, Signora, look after the Bishop’s horses. And the Bishop himself taught me my letters, although with a slate rather than an apple. My brother and me would practice our letters on afternoons when we worked in the Bishop’s orchards.”

  “Wasting the Bishop’s good apples, no doubt,” said Ursula.

  Giorgio was grinning.

  “Go on, then!” Pierina said to him. “Say whatever it is you want to say, or sing it—for I would love a good laugh just now.”

  Giorgio used the tune of the round they were just singing to make his joke, which involved a play on the Latin word—malum—that means both “apple” and “evil.”

  “And what’s the joke?” asked Ursula.

  Both Pierina and Alessandra tittered, while Giorgio blushed at having shamed his mistress.

  Carlo saved the day by coming closer to his wife and kissing her hand. “We have good news from the convent.”

  Alessandra froze.

  “You are taking the veil!” cried Pierina reproachfully.

  “Not the veil, my pet,” said Ursula, poking at the fire so that the flames leapt up and lit all their faces, for a brief moment, as brightly as if it were day.

  “A year of retreat,” said Carlo.

  Pierina tried to read Alessandra’s face, but the light was once again dim and imperfect.

  “Perhaps two years, or even more,” said Alessandra, although her voice was, like the flames, subdued.

  “Oh, a year should be quite enough,” said Ursula brightly. “And then we’ll have a wedding.”

  Pierina wanted to look at Giorgio, but didn’t dare.

  Alessandra held Dodo tightly and stared into the flames. Now that her entire life was about to be transformed—even though it was a transformation that she had hoped, prayed, and planned for—all she felt was dread.

  Nicco’s bag of precious coins lifted a great burden from Alessandra’s heart. But she knew that no matter how carefully she lived, nor how hard she worked, it could not buy enough time for what she hoped to do.

  Every night, when she could hear that everyone else was sleeping, she took the icon out from under her mattress—for she could not bear to have it far away from her now. She prayed to her mother and to the Virgin to help her find the rest of the gold she would need.

  Students normally used seven years to finish the philosophy degree required for admission to the medical school. But Alessandra thought she could do it faster. She knew her capacity to work hard, and she had done much of the reading already. She wondered if she could find work to pay for her food and lodgings—and worried about how she could do that work without compromising her progress. And books! How would she ever pay for them?

  Every night, when she prayed, she kissed her mother’s face and asked her to shed light on the path that was, for now, still shrouded in darkness and uncertainty. And every night it seemed the golden web cast over that face shone brighter.

  One night, having planted too wet a kiss, mixed with her own tears, Alessandra wiped the painting dry with the edge of her sleeve. To her horror, she saw her mother’s face disappear.

  Gasping at the realization of what she’d done and what she’d lost, she looked at the circle of gold where her mother’s face had been. And then she brought the icon closer to the candle.

  The heaviness of the thing, she’d always assumed, was in the iron frame that housed the painting. With her own heartbeat nearly audible, she rubbed more of the precious paint away—until she saw that the picture had been painted on a solid piece of gold.

  The day for her removal to the convent came much more quickly than Alessandra had imagined possible, as if the very nature of time itself had suddenly changed. So many of the things she’d planned to do a last time, or even for the first time—things she hoped to say and things she’d hoped for the chance to unsay—all of it burst like a soap bubble now, and there was nothing left but the cold, gray dawn of her departure.

  A cart was hired to carry them all to the doors of the convent. Alessandra brought her birds with her (although she would far rather have brought some of her father’s books—an impossibility, given their great value and the dangers of the road). She was made to wear the heavy, blue silk dress, covered over for the journey by a mouse-brown cloak.

  While weaving the matching blue ribbons into her hair, which tumbled down to the middle of her back now, Ursula assured Alessandra that the wealthier she looked on her arrival, the better the nuns would treat her.

  Emilia was to stay with her and serve her: Alessandra’s father had insisted on it, and her stepmother—who disliked Emilia just as she disliked every reminder of the mistress who preceded her—exulted to thus be ridding herself of two annoyances at the same time. Alessandra, who had sewn the heavy gold wafer into the hem of her chemise, was still mulling over the question of how she was going to deal with Emilia now that she had, by default, become part of her plan.

  Nicco was nowhere to be found when they were ready to leave. His horse was gone from the stable, and Alessandra knew it was because he didn’t want to cry in front of them. She clutched the knife in its scabbard where she kept it hidden beneath her gown, and knew that her brother loved her.

  Ursula was the only one who spoke at all during the journey, prattling on so gaily that even Carlo avoided meeting her eyes, looking out at the landscape instead, gray with rain. Everything smelled of damp leaves and woodsmoke. Alessandra was savoring the wide-open spaces and fresh air, despite the drizzle. She, Pierina, and Dodo huddled together under a blanket. Pierina wept softly. Dodo, who never liked waking early, lay sprawled across both of them, fast asleep.

  Giorgio had said good-bye at the house. He embraced Alessandra, and sang in his sweet, clear voice, “Godspeed!”

  The journey didn’t last long enough. As Carlo helped Alessandra down from the cart, he looked into her eyes and said her name. And then he whispered to her, “I hope you’ll see, a year from now, the justice of the course I’ve chosen for you.”

  She bit down hard on her lip as she hugged him. “I know you’ve chosen out of love for me.” And then, her voice trembling, she added, “Thank you, Papa, for all the love you’ve shown me—and for anticipating my every need!”

  She tried to see if he knew what she meant. The heavy wafer of gold, heated through by her own skin, felt warm against her.

  Carlo simply nodded. “Yes, I’ve tried—and only time will reveal if I’ve chosen well.”

  Ursula looked on, smiling while father and daughter whispered together. She felt generous in this final hour, knowing that the next morning would dawn without the irksome presence of either Alessandra or Emilia. Families were discouraged from visiting their daughters, as contact with the outside world was contrary to the purposes of the cloister.

  Alessandra curtsied and kissed her stepmother’s hand. Pierina jumped down from the cart and threw her arms around her sister, sobbing unreservedly.

  “Come off with me for a moment,” Alessandra said to her, looking at her father for permission. “Is it all right?”

  Carlo nodded, and Alessandra walked off with her arm around Pierina, far enough away where they couldn’t be heard. But no words passed between them. Pierina’s eyes overflowed, but she sniffed and stifled her sobs. They hugged so hard then that it seemed to each of them their hearts would break. Pierina asked, “How will I remember her without you here to help me?”

>   Alessandra had no answer for her.

  Dodo wailed when she said good-bye, kissing her wetly with his red lips, as pretty as a girl’s. Emilia cried freely, torn between sorrow at leaving three of the children behind and relief that at least there would be someone to watch over absentminded Alessandra.

  At last, when every embrace was given and every word said, Carlo rang the bell and two black-clad nuns appeared. They attached themselves to Alessandra and Emilia like crows to carrion, leading them away, out of the daylight, into the cloister.

  Nine

  Emilia found herself with not enough to do for the first time in all her forty years.

  Alessandra had little need and less desire for a lady’s maid. Emilia folded and refolded the items of clothing they’d brought along, and picked sprigs of lavender from the convent garden to tuck between them. She regularly brought out and aired the blue silk dress, making sure it was safe from mold and mice. But Alessandra shooed her away when Emilia tried to brush her hair or wash her feet, saying, “I cannot think, Emilia, with you fussing about me so!”

  When the day was fair, Alessandra sat in the garden to plan and dream, with a prayer book, as often as not, sitting open but unread across her lap.

  It was a silent convent, at least as regarded the professed nuns—and the lack of conversation was driving poor Emilia half mad. She’d taken to talking to Alessandra’s two finches, complaining about the scant food, the inferior quality of the linens, and the cold. She spoke of the advantages of marrying young and marrying well, of the silliness of girls who thought themselves unready for marriage, despite the fact that she herself was married and a mother by the age of fourteen. She entrusted to the birds all sorts of confidences she hoped Alessandra would overhear and take to heart.

  But Alessandra fled whenever Emilia launched into one of her one-way dialogues with the birds. She’d find a tall narrow window that let her sit and listen to the rain. She sat in the library and explored the books there—although there were only a few, and those of little interest, that weren’t to be found in her father’s library at home.

  A couple of the novices were friendly, but mostly the nuns kept their distance from her. Emilia was surprised to see Alessandra—normally a curious and outgoing girl—show so little interest in the other inmates of the place where they would both be spending a year or more. Emilia made up for the indifference of her young mistress by forging good relationships, first in the kitchen and then in the laundry. It exasperated her that Alessandra hardly seemed to notice how the quality of both the food and their linens had improved after such a short time, thanks to Emilia’s efforts.

  For all the sweetness of her nature, Alessandra could indeed be exasperating. She seemed to keep a veritable arsenal of secret objects beneath her skirts now—a notebook in which she scribbled furiously whenever she thought Emilia wasn’t looking, and oddly enough, a knife—a big dagger of the very sort that Nicco had lost. Had Alessandra stolen it from him? Did the girl have some reason to fear for her safety? Emilia shook her head and held her counsel, except when she couldn’t keep her thoughts to herself anymore, and spoke of her troubles to the birds.

  Carlo was paying a high price to have his elder daughter cloistered among the Sisters, and they treated her with a mixture of respect for her wealth and contempt—or perhaps it was envy—for the worldly destiny awaiting her.

  Six months after her arrival, the Mother Superior sent a novice to summon Alessandra. Emilia, mad with curiosity and dread, followed along as closely as she could without actually treading on Alessandra’s heels.

  The Mother Superior eyed Emilia with disapproval before turning, rather deferentially, to the young signorina. “A messenger has come with news from your home.”

  “Oh, Lord!” wailed Emilia. “Has that fool of a kitchen maid burned the place down?”

  “Hush, Emilia!” whispered Alessandra.

  Emilia looked fearfully from the Mother Superior to Alessandra and back again. “Not the master! Please, Reverend Mother, tell us that the signorina’s father is well!”

  The expression on Alessandra’s face showed alarm. “Who is the messenger, Reverend Mother, and what news does he bring?”

  The Mother Superior passed a scroll across her desk to Alessandra.

  Alessandra—who read the note holding it close to her chest, so that Emilia couldn’t make out a single word of it—looked pale when she raised her eyes, but her voice was steady. “Emilia, please ready our things—only the essentials. We’ll need to leave immediately.”

  Rising, the Mother Superior put one hand on Alessandra’s head and made the sign of the cross with the other. Alessandra bowed and thanked her for her blessing before she and Emilia hurried back to their chamber.

  “Bad news, Miss?”

  Alessandra began assembling a small pile of her belongings. “Don’t stand there staring, Emilia! Pack your things!”

  “So it’s only a short time we’ll be away?”

  “Hush and gather your belongings! We’re never coming back to this place.”

  Emilia was trying to puzzle out what it could all mean. Then a look of happiness dawned on her face. She opened the trunk and took out Alessandra’s blue silk dress, briefly touching her cheek to the pearl-studded fabric and sniffing in the scent of lavender. “It will travel so much better in the trunk, Miss.” She made a quick mental inventory of their room, trying to think of some other way to carry the dress safely.

  Alessandra caught her gaze. “Leave it,” she said quietly.

  Emilia gazed back at her, as uncomprehending as an innocent animal looking into the butcher’s eyes. “But why, my pet? You’ll surely need your wedding gown.”

  “There’s no time to explain now.”

  Emilia reasoned that Alessandra’s fiancé must be very rich indeed if such a dress were to be left behind! She placed it back into the trunk, wishing she herself were slim enough to fit into it—or that at least she could give it to one of her granddaughters. “But Pierina will want it, dear, even if you have no more need of it!”

  “She can come get it then.”

  Slipping an escaped sprig of lavender into the silken folds, Emilia placed the dress back in the trunk. And then, furtively—as if she hoped Alessandra somehow wouldn’t see her—she laid her hands on the finches’ cage.

  “Leave the birds, Emilia. We won’t be able to carry them.”

  Tears leaked out of Emilia’s eyes then. “We can’t just leave them here, with no one to feed them! I will give them to Sister Paolina—I won’t be a moment!”

  Alessandra paused in her work of tying her little pile of things into a bundle. She looked at the pair of finches in their pretty cage. Their clipped wings had long ago grown back again. She wondered, even in her haste, if they would remember how to use them. “Let them go, Emilia—let them fly away.” She pried the cage out of Emilia’s hands, placing it on the ledge of the window—then lifted the latch of the gate. “Fly!” she whispered. She had to shake the birds out of their prison. And just as if they’d never been caged, they flew—beautifully—straight into the sky.

  Fighting back her own tears, Alessandra flung the empty cage to the floor and continued her packing, not daring to meet her nanny’s eyes.

  It was a time of day when most of the nuns were at their work in the orchards and fields. Few saw Alessandra and Emilia leave with the comely young man who arrived on a horse and led a brindled donkey—the same that he himself had ridden two years before, when he’d arrived at their house in Persiceto.

  Emilia mounted the donkey, with much drama and hoisting, sitting with her plump legs stretched out astride the saddlebags, distressed about the birds and the blue dress, and calling out to all the saints that she was about to fall off and break her noggin.

  Alessandra climbed up to ride on the horse behind Giorgio. Although Emilia pelted him with questions, he was as silent as if he were one of the Sisters of Sant’Alba—and Alessandra refused to explain what in Heaven was going on.


  After an hour’s riding, Emilia called out, “The master’s house is north, not south of here. We must turn at the crossroads. Alessandra, tell him to turn us around! Do his ears serve him as badly as his tongue?”

  But Alessandra pretended not to hear, and Giorgio led them farther away and off the road completely, into a little stand of willows near a rushing stream. He and Alessandra both dismounted and suddenly, much to Emilia’s horror, began stripping off their clothes.

  “Santa Maria!” she cried. “They are possessed!”

  When Alessandra had stripped down to her hose and chemise, she began putting on everything Giorgio had just taken off. Emilia watched, garment by garment, as her young mistress was transformed before her eyes from maiden to lad.

  “Oh,” she cried, shielding her eyes. “It is an abomination—an evil dream! Dio mio, let me awaken!”

  Giorgio, wearing nothing but his linen breeches and chemise, tried to help Emilia off the donkey, but she kicked at him and pulled his hair. “No, you devil! You shall not have my virtue!’

  Alessandra rolled her eyes. “Calm yourself, Emilia, and get down from there.”

  “Run, my dear girl! Save yourself! I’ll hold him off as long as there’s breath in my body.”

  Alessandra came up close to Emilia and patted her leg. “You’ve often said you’d do anything for me.” She coaxed Emilia down to the ground. “That’s the way! Now—there’s a set of lovely men’s clothes for you in the saddlebag.”

  At these words, Emilia collapsed in a quivering heap. “Let God take my soul, Sant’Agata, while I am still a virtuous woman!”

  Alessandra, out of patience, stamped her foot. “What a star-crossed moment it was when Papa thought of sending you with me! I beg you, Emilia—take off your gown and kirtle like a good girl and put on these breeches.”

  Emilia howled like a wounded animal.