The Madonna of the Almonds (20 page)

Manodorata and his two sons stayed at Castello at Simonetta’s insistence. She made it a home for them, using her newfound wealth to furnish their rooms with Castilian artefacts that she found in Pavia and at Como and Lodi, the other markets she attended with her Amaretto brew. Manodorata never once spoke of Rebecca, and Simonetta never asked of her, but she knew that the second time he came to her house that fateful day, she was gone. Jovaphet, too young to understand, asked for her daily but was easily soothed with a comfit or an embrace. Elijah, silent and taciturn, soaked his bed nightly and awoke fevered and screaming. Simonetta saw that Manodorata was too damaged to comfort his boys, so she took the task upon herself. She began to lie with them, so that Elijah could find her hand with his in the night, and drift back to sleep never knowing, in his dreamlike state, that she was not Rebecca.

With the spring, Elijah began to thaw; his smiles came again and she heard him laugh as he chased Jovaphet around
the groves. She was glad of it but concerned for her friend. Manodorata seemed to concentrate only on the selling and production of the Amaretto, and never looked in his own heart once. Night after night, in the light evenings of the dog days, they sat in fireside amity drinking the almond draught and speaking of their new venture. At these moments Simonetta thought that he may speak to her of what he had lost. But he did not, nor did she speak of Bernardino, so they sat on, both hobbled by love; turtle doves with their wings clipped, doomed to flightlessness.

The next time Simonetta and Veronica went to market in Pavia they were approached by a man in black and white robes. He greeted Veronica in Hebrew and asked Simonetta if Manodorata was well. Fearing a trap Simonetta looked to Veronica, on whose sound judgement she had come to rely. The mute nodded, and so Simonetta told the man all she could of her friend and his sons. The Jew asked a few courteous questions, then bowed and said: ‘Please tell him that Isaac, son of Abiathar of Toledo, wishes him well. I once was lucky enough to call him my friend.’

Simonetta looked to Veronica again and said, ‘Why don’t you tell him yourself? You’re welcome, Signore, to come back to my house, where he now resides.’

Isaac rode back with them, telling Simonetta along the way what a debt he and his late father owed to Manodorata, and as Simonetta listened to the complicated tale of usury and rescue from bankruptcy she once again marvelled at
the solidarity of the Jewish people. When she had been in need no Christian would lend her a hand; only a Jew had given her succour, and friendship.

She knew her instincts were sound when the two friends embraced each other on the loggia of her house. She retired early and let the men talk. She hoped that Manodorata could find solace in an older friend; and perhaps speak, at last, of Rebecca.

Isaac never left Castello. Simonetta noted his scholarly status and engaged him as a tutor to the boys, deeming it fitting that they should have a good education and a thorough knowledge of the Jewish Holy texts. Her own knowledge grew with theirs as Elijah began to share tales and fables with her. She marvelled again at how different, yet how similar the religions were. As summer blushed into autumn her family warmed too. Manodorata seemed happier and mellowed with the seasons. She watched with joy as a friendship began to blossom between Isaac and Veronica, with a promise of more. Then came the unforgettable day when Elijah ran into the kitchen to show her a red lizard from the garden. The creature lay still and hot in his hand, tongue flickering like a tiny dragon, and Elijah called Simonetta ‘mother’ in his excitement. She made no comment, and admonished him for the mud on his boots, but her heart thrilled as she hugged him close and fiercely. He soon fell into the use of the name, and Jevophat followed suit.
Simonetta looked anxiously at Manodorata when the boys called her so; his eyes remained inscrutable but he uttered no reproach, nor did he correct his sons. She was delighted at this new love that had come to her. She had not known that children could mean so much to her, that her love for the boys could use the limitless resources of a wasted heart. She had always thought to fill these walls with a family that she loved and who loved her in return. She had just always thought that they would be flesh of her own flesh. She was learning that family meant more than bloodlines, much more.

All was well until the baker from Saronno brought bread and pastries to the house. A sign of their new prosperity, Simonetta had ordered treats for the boys to celebrate the second almond harvest. It was a full year since they had come to the house, and she wished for them to find happiness on a day that might bring bad memories. Manodorata, working in the groves, knew the wall-eye and bulbous nose of the baker at once, and stared for a fraction too long. As he had last seen the knave spitting on Rebecca’s ashes, he could not resist a freezing glance at the man’s face. Later he cursed himself as the baker turned his mule to go. Manodorata was without his furs or velvets; he wore the red hat and tunic with blue hose like all the harvesters, and his gold hand was gloved, but he knew he had been seen.

The next day, they came.

Night was falling and the stars began to prick out the sky. Manodorata was at the great almond tree, which he privily called ‘Rebecca’s Tree’, plucking the last of the harvest nuts from the branches. The boys were at his feet playing ‘hot cockles’; they wore black tunics for their mother which contrasted strongly with their father’s red and blue harvester’s garb, but they seemed happy enough. They took turns to don a makeshift blindfold while the other poked his brother with a switch. Laughing and giddy, the blinded one tried to capture his assailant who stood, tantalising, out of reach, crowing ‘hot cockles!’ Manodorata was jolted by the image, thinking suddenly of Synagoga, the female symbolic personification of Judaism. The Jewess was always presented in religious art wearing a blindfold to indicate her ignorant practices, and worse still, holding the head of a goat to symbolise the Devil. Manodorata had seen such an image once, Synagoga’s sorrowing blindfolded head drooping as she stood, petrified in statuary, high in a niche on the cathedral in Strasbourg. That day he had turned away, sickened, thinking that such ignorant iconography had little to do with him. But today he remembered and knew that such prejudice had everything to do with him. It had taken his hand and his wife, and once again Manodorata smelled the evil scent of premonition. As the sun dropped it grew cold, and Jovaphet’s little eyes began to close under the blindfold, and Manodorata knew he should get them within.
He turned to break the news when a new sunrise caught his eye – a light warming the path, then another, then another.

Torches.

Fire had only ever meant trouble for him and his. He clasped the boys to him and hurried up the path to the loggia, but there, his ugly face and wall-eye illumined, stood the baker.

They took Manodorata then, and tied him to Rebecca’s tree; with ropes that bound his chest about and about till he could scarcely breathe. He shouted at the boys to run, but they were stunned to stillness and were taken too. As he saw that they could not escape he choked to his sons that it was just a game, but nothing could stop their screams as they were tied to him, one to each leg, and black faggots laid at their feet. Now they struggled and keened like rabbits caught in a snare and called out to him, tears dripping onto their mourning clothes. He could feel their little hands scrabbling to touch his legs, their shoulders turning against his thighs. He could do nothing. They were in the hands of God; and God, it seemed, had turned his face away. He searched the ugly faces for one sympathetic countenance, someone who hung back, unsure of what he did; someone to reason with. If Manodorata could just find that one wavering man in the crowd he would not plead for his own life, but would beg till his last breath that the boys could go free. But every face was shuttered, every eye evil, and every mouth spat forth
the ugly epithets he had spent his life trying to keep from the ears of Elijah and Jovaphet. Manodorata raised his eyes to the fat stars hanging in the black sky, and the black ladder the mob had brought to gather kindling, and he understood at once. There was to be no escape. This hour was written in his fate; he knew that his dream had come to claim him. He was there, in the tableau of his nightmares. Tied to a stake, with his children tied to him, a trinity of martyrs awaiting the death-fire. There were ten men surrounding them, six jeering in an ugly knot of a crowd around the baker, and four mounted. Just like his dream, they rode the pale horse, white horse, black horse and saffron horse of the riders of the apocalypse. The sky was as black as the world’s end, and he knew he was finished. He looked down at the blonde heads of his children, and twisted his hands till the ropes cut; he knew he could not pull free but he wanted to place his hands on their golden hair one last time. So warm, so soft. ‘I
love
you,’ he whispered. He had never told them before, and never would again.

The baker stepped forth with his torch and spat foul phlegm at Manodorata’s face. Manodorata would not flinch, nor turn his cheek as the Testament said, but his gaze bored into the baker’s ugly eyes and damned him for what he did. The baker dropped his head, discomfited, and vengefully thrust his torch into the woodpile at the boys’ feet. He cursed and spat as the faggots refused to light. Manodorata stamped impotently at the falling sparks with his bound
feet but there was no need, the fire would not take. Suddenly he felt Rebecca’s memorial stone, the stone he had placed there a year ago, lying round and hard under his foot. At that moment he knew that she was with him. A small flame of hope leapt in Manodorata’s heart but was soon doused as the baker soaked the ropes of his chest with oil of olives, and set them aflame with a burning brand. As the fire scorched his flesh he knew
he
was done for, but the blaze rose upwards above the ropes, clear of the boys’ heads. Perhaps God was watching and
would
save them, if asked. Manodorata closed his ears to the jeers of the crowd and the tears of his sons. He lifted his eyes to Heaven and began to speak in Hebrew. His hectic brain, confused and boiling with the unbelievable pain, could not find the right prayers of supplication. It could only fix upon the words that Elijah had spoken, for their last evening prayer before Rebecca died. ‘Lay us down to sleep,
Adonai
, our God, in peace; raise us erect, our King, to life, and spread over us the shelter of your peace.’ Before he reached the
Amen
, the fire claimed his throat.

Simonetta was brought to her window by the conflagration, and thought at first that a forest fire had come to claim her trees. But her horrified eyes soon registered the tied figure in the ring of torchlight, and the men and horses gathered round the great almond tree. She did not hesitate over the weapons of old and new – she knew little of the arquebus,
not how to neither hold nor fire it, and could see that the children were bound close to their father. There was no time. She took up her hunting bow at once and in a second had set an arrow on the string. She narrowed her arroweye at once upon the baker, who seemed to be leading the mob, but her friend’s face above the fire gave her pause. She forced herself to look at Manodorata – he showed no pain as his chest burned but looked at her directly, steel eyes bright in the charred face, she saw him fix his eyes on her, then give a slow nod and close them forever. She knew he was lost. She knew what must be done, and as a ruff of flame began to light his beard she shot him once, precisely, in the chestspoon where the ropes bound him. She knew that she had pierced his heart, for his head dropped at once. All was done in an instant. Shaking, she ran down the stairs, pulling Isaac back from the doorway as he ran to help. Veronica was mutely readying her Maltese knives for revenge but her mistress shook her head. ‘Stay inside,’ she hissed, ‘there are too many; they’ll take you too!’

As Simonetta walked outside, she blinked back her brimming tears and forced her chin high. She clasped her bow tight in one hand and a sheaf of arrows in the other, to stop the shaking. She wore a new golden gown trimmed with white vair. She was Saint Ursula to the life. She knew the test was yet to come. It felt as if the world had ended and indeed the stars began to fall as she strode to the mob. Her fevered brain could hardly register but as the cold blossoms
touched her face she knew them to be snowflakes. In September. The Book of Revelation had come to pass and the skies wept for it.

She faced the baker as the fire burned her friend’s body with the hideous stench of charred alien meat. Burning oil dropped on the heads of the crying boys and she feared that their hair would catch but she forced herself to look away from them, and face the mob with a cruel smile.

‘A goodly shot, my lady,’ said the baker, with deference borne of surprise. He had heard it said that the whore of Saronno harboured Jews here and let them work for her. Apparently not.

‘As is my right to dispatch such Infidel filth that trespass on my land.’ Simonetta forced herself to say the words.

There was a murmur of approbation.

‘Would you had fired the Jew’s brats too,’ she said. ‘But I see the snow has damped your kindling.’ Which, miraculously, it had.

‘Aye,’ replied the baker, clearly the ringleader. ‘We had to soak the ropes instead. The oil of olives caught a treat, and he suffered more for his heart burned first.’

Simonetta blocked her ears to the science of her truest friend’s end and walked to the tree through the falling snow. She took Elijah’s face and forced his chin high, till his eyes met hers.
‘Trust me,’
she mouthed, her face turned from the crowd. She turned back with decision. ‘Good people,’ she said. ‘Of your kindness leave these heathen whelps with me.’
She forced Elijah to splay his fingers. ‘They have little hands and can be my labourers. You have my word that they will be raised as Christians. They are too young to have caught the full contagion of the Hebrew. God will smile upon us all for claiming two lost sheep.’