A Golden Web (6 page)

“Who’s that old git, then?” he called up to Alessandra.

Alessandra, keeping her gaze facing outside, away from Ursula, looked down at Nicco and crossed her eyes.

Nicco wiped the smile off his face when Ursula appeared side by side with Alessandra in the window. He noticed how his sister had grown—perhaps from all that
time spent lying in bed: She was just a hand’s breadth shorter than Ursula now.

“That, young Niccolò,” Ursula said magisterially, “is a very wealthy man, owner of two castles and vast tracts of land in a delightfully distant province.”

Alessandra turned to her. “May I take this dress off now, Madame?”

Ursula, dismissing Alessandra with a wave of her hand, continued to look out the window.

Nicco called up to her, “You’re not planning to give our Alessandra to him?”

“I would, readily enough, but the gentleman already has a wife.” Ursula laughed—a thing she did rarely enough. “No, we have promised Alessandra to his only son. Your father has gone to a great deal of trouble over the matter—far more trouble, in my opinion, than was deserved.”

That summer went by quickly for Alessandra, filled as it was with
her observations of all that she was about to leave behind. She wanted to spend more time with her siblings than they seemed to have for her suddenly, as if they’d simply accepted the idea that she was leaving for the cloister, and had replaced her already in their hearts and habits.

She couldn’t help but notice and feel hurt by Ursula’s uncharacteristic good cheer, evidently at the prospect of getting rid of her least favorite stepchild. Alessandra looked, as always, to her father’s library for comfort—
and wondered if books and learning were to be her sole lifelong companions.

There were two aspects of her plan that especially troubled her, driving her to steal into Ursula’s room and look into the polished bronze of her mother’s mirror whenever she could do so undetected.

Alessandra’s mother had been a person of celebrated beauty, both inside and outside, and a model of womanhood held up all around the parish—a lady who did good works quietly, without crowing about them. Who managed to show both justice and affection to her children. Who was a helpmate to her husband but also a companion to his heart, held in the tenderest esteem by him.

The face Alessandra saw in the mirror belonged to an awkward, lonely, and frightened girl who was nonetheless filled with a sense of her own momentous destiny. Who was about to leave all safety and comfort behind her, as well as every similarity she bore to the saintly mother she loved so well.

Pierina was right: The risks applied to all of them. Shame, censure—even financial ruin, if the Church or the
Podestà
sniffed out Alessandra’s deception. She’d looked in
some law books from her father’s library: if she’d understood them correctly, her father could be held responsible for every rule broken by her, every flouting of convention, every breach of the law, both civil and sacred, that she incurred. His land, his books, and his business would all be liable.

She cried, alone in her room, thinking of Nicco reduced to working as a laborer on someone else’s land, and Pierina—beautiful Pierina—dowerless and relegated to a lifetime of servitude. And her papa?

This thought made her weep hardest of all. Her papa, who believed in her obedience and goodness as no father had ever believed in his daughter before, with such trust and faith and love—her papa would die of shame and sorrow if Alessandra’s deception were made known.

She would have to cover her tracks so thoroughly that not one single suspicion would be raised, either in her home or at the convent. But such an enterprise—she was worldly enough to know—would require not only determination and careful planning but also a great amount of gold.

Alessandra put down the mirror, dried her tears, and
crossed herself. She closed her eyes and imagined her future, and could picture no other path but this one stretching out before her—however difficult and solitary. However far it led from the sort of future her loving father dearly wanted for her.

She prayed to the mother of God—and to her own mother—to understand and forgive her for what she was planning to do.

The call of a nightjar woke Alessandra from a troubled dream. All she could recollect of it was that she was lost in a strange and ominous land. The birdsong was part of the dream, but she couldn’t remember how, except to recall that she felt afraid, as if something—or someone—were pursuing her.

She lay there in her bed, looking out at the shimmering glimpse of Heaven that showed through her window. And then she heard the
chirrup
again, recognizing it this time—now that she was more completely awake—as Nicco’s call to her to come out into the night.

Before Ursula had begun keeping such close watch on her, Alessandra and Nicco—and, later, Pierina—had
occasionally climbed up and down the ancient wisteria vine that clung to the stones of the house and perfumed Alessandra’s room with its purple blossoms all through the spring and summer. Ursula found out about these nighttime jaunts and caused the vine to be cut so that it reached too far below Alessandra’s window to allow her escape.

On full-moon nights, Alessandra would lie in her bed and remember the delicious feeling of being abroad in the silvery, dangerous world of the nighttime.

It was a grinning new moon now, and even the starlight was shining only faintly through the wisps of clouds that raced across the sky—not the sort of night Nicco usually chose for their rambles. Not a safe night for risking whatever evil spirits lurked in the shadows—a night that would be the darling of robbers, assassins, and demons.

Alessandra wrapped the blanket around her shoulders but shivered anyway—half from fear, half from cold. The
chirrup
might have been a nightjar, after all. She lit the candle from the banked embers of her fire, pulled on her clothes, and looked outside.

There were scant leaves left on the wisteria now, and
a few of these—she saw, with a start, when she saw his face in the window—were stuck in Nicco’s hair.

“Are you going deaf?”

“I was asleep!” She held her hand out to him. He grasped it and pulled himself up far enough to crawl through the window.

“I have something for you, Zan—and I’m going to ask for something in return.” He stared at her, his blue eyes snapping in the firelight. “Talk!”

Alessandra looked with determination out the window and into the darkness. She longed to tell Nicco everything—and to ask his advice. But she only shook her head. “I leave for the cloister in three months’ time. What would you have me say?”

He stood close to her, waiting until she met his eyes. “To the others—to our stepmother, lie all you want, although you put your soul in mortal peril. But do not lie to me, Alessandra!”

“Then do not ask me questions!”

“I know you’re planning something—and Pierina knows it, too. Damn it, why won’t you let us help you?”

She whispered her reply. “It’s something that I can
only do alone.” She took both his hands in hers, and felt how dear they were to her—and how much it would cost her never to hold them again.

“Just tell me this—you’re going to live with the Sisters of Sant’Alba—just nod, yes or no.”

In the firelight, Alessandra nodded once, very slowly.

“And you will marry, in one year’s time, the person our father has chosen for you?”

“Ah, don’t ask me that!” Alessandra knelt and stirred the fire and put some more wood on it. Her face looked golden in the circle of light.

“You will take the veil?” Nicco hazarded.

Without looking at him, Alessandra shook her head no.

“Have you fallen in love with someone else?”

“How could I, Nic, unless he were a phantom? I’m allowed to see no one, and no one sees me!”

Nicco took her by both shoulders. They felt far too delicate and girlish to contend with the dangers of the world.

“Whatever you’re planning,” he said, “you might have need of this….” He took his dagger out of its scabbard—the dagger he carried with him everywhere, which he used
to kill animals and cut them apart, to spear his food at table, and to defend himself from predators, assassins, and thieves if he was caught on the road after dark. “You’ll need to know how to use it, and how to keep it razor sharp.”

She reached up and touched his cheek, where a beard—though fine and light colored—had begun to grow. “But your knife! Surely you need it yourself.”

“I’ll tell Father that it was wrested from me in a game of chance. Or, better yet, lifted from me by a whore.”

“Oh, Nic!”

“Such a tale would please him. He’ll wink and then buy me another knife.” Nicco unbuckled the scabbard and gave that to Alessandra, too.

She held both objects in her hands, put the knife in its sheath, and embraced her brother.

“And this, too,” he said, pushing her away and placing a heavy little leather bag in her hands. “It’s not very much, but it’s all I have.” She could see the glint of tears in his eyes, and how he blinked to make them go away. “Just promise me, Alessandra, that you’ll call out to me for help if you need it! There is no risk I would not take for you.”

“You are the best of brothers!”

She opened the bag and counted out the ten coins it held. “How long, would you say, a man could live on this amount of money?”

Nicco looked at her slantwise. “Here—or in some city?”

“In some city,” said Alessandra.

“A year, I’d say, if that man lived carefully.”

She kissed his hands. “Thank you, Nic!”

“You won’t tell me more?”

She looked into his brave, blue eyes. “I’ll send word to you from the convent.”

Her promise clearly made him happy. “Here, Zan,” he said, taking the knife from her. “I’ll show you how to make it sharp enough to slice through flesh as if it were butter.” He brought a sharpening stone out of his pocket and spat on it.

Nicco’s knife—even Alessandra couldn’t guess that night how important a tool it would prove to be for her. How it would, in a sense, determine the course of her entire future.

The family was gathered around the hearth. Alessandra was teaching Dodo his letters, incising them one by one into the skin of an apple with her little penknife—a gift from her father that doubled the number of knives she suddenly owned. If Dodo named the letter correctly, she let him take a bite of the apple. When every surface of the apple was incised and eaten, Dodo was allowed to feed the core to Nicco’s dog, and they started on another apple.

The sun had set. The day itself had been overcast, and there wasn’t enough light now, of course, for reading. Pierina and Giorgio sang, though softly, as Ursula complained of a headache. Nicco sat and sharpened the new hunting knife his father had bought for him, as predicted, to replace the one he gave to Alessandra. She’d taken to wearing the dagger, well hidden, under her gown. He watched his sister as she carved each letter, the tip of her tongue in the corner of her mouth.

Carlo, walking in from outside, looked over his elder daughter’s shoulder. “Hearken to this, Giorgio,” he said. “I think I’ll fire you and hire Alessandra in your stead. She draws letters with her penknife that rival those you
make with your finest brushes.”

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.