Muse (7 page)

“He said that the three Marys are not in that Bible verse.”

If the Florentine had any shame, his face would have gone as bright as the Magdalene’s hair, for he had blithely painted over the librarian’s cartoon and added more faces to the crowd to entertain himself. But no, he was not humbled. He was on his feet, rocking confidently from heel to toe.

“Mother Agnes,” he said, “why not offer the psalter to another prelate, one who would pay more?”

The abbess grasped her calves, one at a time, to ease her feet from the basin, although they had not been in long enough to get relief. The water streamed onto the flagstones. The lay sister stooped to dry the blistered feet, then backed out eagerly to tell the cloister of the stingy payment.

“Because you worked the Orsini bear so cleverly into the miniatures,” the abbess said wearily, “as the cardinal was delighted to show his kinsmen, who were gathered around.” We had all watched these
bears becoming smaller and more witty, the last no larger than a grain of rice. “It seems, Tommaso Tarlati, that as much as I dislike the double plough, we are yoked together, for the cardinal prizes the indelicacy of your art. He has awarded us a commission for his nephew’s marriage and given you licence to let your fancy roam this time.”

The Florentine took the book that she held out to him. “
La Vita Nuova—The New Life
—by Dante Alighieri. Another Florentine, who writes in my native tongue.”

He read a few pages to himself, then translated. The poet Dante, he explained, fell in love with Beatrice when she was only nine. Nine years later he had a vision in which Amore, the god of love, appeared to him carrying Beatrice in one hand. In his other hand Amore held the poet’s burning heart, which Beatrice, naked except for a wisp of scarlet, devoured.

The Florentine sniggered as he handed the book to Ursula. “It is a bedchamber gift to stimulate the bridegroom’s heart and body.”

“A book we cannot read cannot corrupt us,” the abbess asserted.

Ursula was too red-faced to open it. I reached for the book, but she passed it behind my back to Blanche, who passed it to the librarian. I had grown a hand’s-breadth in a year, but still no one took any notice of me.

The abbess said, “The copying will take a twelve-month, but will fill our cellar with salt, spices, cured fish, and dried foodstuffs.” She upended a purse of gold florins. “The first payment—to buy the finest vellum. If we scrape it ourselves and do not blot the pages, we will have enough left over to build a new infirmary.”

“But our vows!” Ursula protested. “Saint Benedict enjoined us to read holy works, not pagan ones.”

I stood up quickly, as tall as Ursula was. “I will do it.”

The Florentine agreed. “Solange’s writing is slanted in the Italian style. She has not taken her vows and need not know what she is copying. I will check her pages each day at dusk to spare the librarian.”

Before the scribes could object, the abbess carried the manuscript to my writing desk and helped me bind it with leather straps.

“Bless your work, child,” she said, covering my fingers with hers. “The fate of our infirmary is in your hands.”

In the morning, I placed my new magnifying glasses on my desk. Blanche noticed them at once and sent Ursula a jealous signal, but I steadied myself to face the task before me. On page after page, I saw the intriguing words
Beatrice
and
Amore
. The lean, graceful script ran in one unbroken line. I practised on used parchment while the librarian and the Florentine mapped out the folios and illuminations. Each of the forty-three brief chapters would have a miniature—but this time the Florentine would draw his own cartoons. Once my wrist was supple and my letters sloping and continuous, I called for a folio of perfect vellum.

At dusk, after the scriptorium had emptied, the Florentine leaned over my shoulder to read my first flight of cursive script, letting the words roll richly off his tongue as he warmed himself against my back. Big as a bull, he stank of drink and something rancid, like oil gone bad, but perhaps this was how all men smelt. It was the first time one of the monks had touched me and it made me feel more womanly, almost as unclothed as Beatrice.

“The other scribes are envious,” I said.

“Leave them to me. Your letters are finely wrought, a joy to the eye. However, to be a scribe who copies the most prized books, you will have need of Italian. I will teach you the Tuscan dialect from my own lips, Gentilissima.”

“The abbess has forbidden it.”

He lifted me down from my chair lightly. “Your little ears did not hear correctly. She did not actually forbid you to learn Italian.”

He had twisted her meaning, yet where was the harm? Up to now, the abbess had encouraged my passion for learning, and all day I had been hungering to know the words instead of blindly copying them. The poetry had teased my ear with sweet, long syllables of love and I yearned to discover the fate of Dante and his Beatrice. I would soon be thirteen, old enough to please myself. Besides, how could the abbess discover my furtive pleasure if neither of us told her?

Ten

T
HE QUIET IN THE
scriptorium sped my work and I feasted on Dante’s words, picking up their meanings quickly with the Florentine’s help. Even when folios awaited him, he hovered over Blanche and Ursula, chivvying them along with bawdy hand signals, finger-milking, and ear-pulling. Sometimes he spent more time teaching Ursula to illuminate than wielding his own brush. He used our faces in his miniatures and gave his females tall, high-waisted forms like ours, to which he added rounded, fecund bellies. He had become a Solomon with his harem, hornswoggling them and cuckolding God.

In the gutters of the folios he prepared, I found Italian phrases that I erased briskly, although their coarseness was indelible. He made his cartoons deliberately lewd. But when he dipped his brushes, the miniatures became as luminous and spiritual as Dante’s love for Beatrice. There had never been a girl like Beatrice, never such blandishments of brush and colour as the Florentine lavished on this pair of lovers. It made me wish that I could draw.

While I waited for another folio to work on, I visited Sister Raymonde in her gardening shelter, observing her load her brushes for the showy petals of the opium poppies. Ever since her opiate had eased Madame’s pain, Raymonde had been trying to get their shape and colour exactly right. I leaned into her as she painted a new one, soaking up her body heat and the earthy scent of furrows after a rainfall. From her, I learnt how to sketch outlines in ink, then fill them with brushstrokes, one colour at a time. I washed an old book clean of ink to create my own hortus deliciarum, my garden of delights, drawing flora and fauna and the daily life of the abbey. Over the months, as Raymonde’s poppies turned to seed, lost their petals, and died, I brought her specimens from my rambles in the fields, Lady’s bed-straw or devil’s paintbrush, only to see her open her record book to find them already there. Her science was so exact it extended to the furthest corner of the abbey grounds.

“Goosefoot,” she’d say, turning pages, “yes, here it is. From the river—amongst the willows. But this wort is unusual.” She picked up a specimen I had brought. “I haven’t seen blue flowers on this before.” She sketched it briskly in ink, then dipped her brush into the lapis lazuli, which I had stolen for her, to paint a brilliant wash over the flower.

One dusk, when the scribes had left the scriptorium and the Florentine read my Dante pages to check them, he found only a single wavering end-stroke to correct. After he had complimented the vigour of my pen, I asked, “Will you teach me how to draft cartoons?”

“Show me what you can draw.” His big hand splayed across my desk, oddly inviting to the touch. When I had inked a cornflower with deft strokes the way Raymonde had taught me, he tilted his head, acknowledging its merit. “But can you draw a man?”

After shaving my quill to an exact point, he drew a heap of straw next to my cornflower, a peasant girl lying back against the straw, and on top of her a monk, his habit flapping to expose his hairy buttocks. Then, slyly, he wet a brush on his tongue, loaded it with madder, and reached across me to colour the girl’s hair and cheeks a brazen red, like mine. Ashamed
that I had encouraged him, I thrust his cartoon beneath my other papers and cleaned my tools with extra care. I was waiting for him to leave so we did not walk out together, but he was in no hurry to go.

“Can you imagine what it is like to work in this scriptorium, with its moist and tempting females?” He circled my writing desk, swaying, eyelids almost shut. In his fist, stained with the Virgin’s blue paint, was a flask of eau-de-vie, but his words had never been more sober. “Like me, you crave a love akin to Dante and Beatrice’s, but human love is not found in abbeys. Think what you must forfeit to become a nun, Gentilissima. Be certain before you prostrate yourself on the church pavement, for a chill goes through you that lasts a lifetime.”

I was stripped to my shift before Abbot Bernard and all the abbey on the day I became fourteen. Pentecost was early in 1323 and I shivered in the nave as the sacristan clothed me in my new habit. The abbot asked me whether I offered myself willingly and with an open heart, and I answered in the correct Latin. I was then accepted into my novitiate and he advised me, as he advised each novice, to keep my secular garments so that if I did not espouse obedience and chastity, I could climb into them once more. Otherwise, in a year’s time, I would profess my vows as a choir nun.

When all was done, the nuns embraced me and bade me welcome. The abbot put his arm around my shoulder and walked me to the cloister. “You answered very capably today,” he said cheerfully.

“I am grieved I have no dowry, Father Bernard. I hope my talent as a scribe will bring income to the abbey.”

“No, no, no—your gift is your clairvoyance, my dear.”

“I have had few visions.”

“We will not trouble her for more, shall we?” He looked conspiratorially at the abbess. “Do not press her, Mother Agnes, do not urge, but send me word by a quick horse as soon as she has one.”

He drew me apart from the abbess. “Now, tell me, because the abbess refuses. How far has the Florentine progressed with illuminating the Dante?”

I knew the abbess was afraid to inform him because we had already taken more than the twelve-month expected by Cardinal Orsini. “Half-way,” I said, though it was half the truth.

The abbot weighed a purse on his palm and dangled it in front of the abbess. “Then I am commanded by Orsini to give you half a payment.”

The abbess loosened the string to fish out a coin. “Pope John is minting his own florins?”

“Such are the times. Let us hope his gold is as pure as the King’s. Now, Mother Agnes, stop scrutinizing your coins and escort me to the refectory. Where is the banquet you promised me for receiving this child into her novitiate? Your abbey is renowned for its table and this is Pentecost! I insist on sampling your eau-de-vie, though the Florentine says it is fiery. No, dear abbess—do not deny you distilled your rotting fruit! I will not object if a flask finds its way into my saddlebags. But pity my poor horse. Put a jar on both sides to balance his load.”

It was just past midsummer when the stockbreeder discovered me lying in the pasture, reading one of the finished Dante folios while I waited for the Florentine to prepare a new one.

“Watch Emmanuelle for a sign she is ready for breeding,” she said.

“What should I look for?”

“You’ll know. She’ll start acting oddly.”

I continued to read, glancing over at Emmanuelle frequently. In cow years, Emmanuelle was no older than I was. She was one of the more intelligent heifers, with soft, begging eyes, though I could never tell exactly what she wanted. In the afternoon, her tail stood strangely erect. As I
approached, she swung about, knocking me to the side, then trotted towards a cowardly heifer to leap on her back, forelegs dangling as she pumped up and down. I pulled Emmanuelle off, yelling for the stockbreeder, who shouted that I should halter her and lead her to the small field. By yanking and scolding, I got her into a corner. I was tying the rope to the fence just as the stockbreeder led in our brown bull by the ring in his nose. Once she let him go, he lumbered over to Emmanuelle to sniff her hind parts, pawing a hoof and snorting, pawing and snorting. He took a violent leap on top of her and began making quick, clumsy jabs. Then he wandered off, no doubt trying to recall what he had left off doing. I ran to Emmanuelle to console her, for I felt upset myself. I led her back to the pasture with her tail crooked a little to one side, and as we walked, it fell by stages until it hung softly, as was usual.