The Madonna of the Almonds (22 page)

Bernardino was silent. His eyes searched the crowd, collecting the ugly expressions, and his memory registered the details of the mocking faces. He thought of the book that sat in his cell next to the Bible, the
Libricciolo
that Leonardo had made of the grotesques that interested him, but Bernardino’s head was a library for such characters. There were many in the crowd that day that would find themselves immortalized on the walls of San Maurizio, when Bernardino would paint the Mocking of Christ.

A friar in the magpie robes of the Dominicans mounted the square block that crowned the ramparts and began, in a nasal whine, a Latin diatribe on the evils of women beginning with Eve and persisting through the ages to the present day. His sentiments drew roars of approbation from the crowd – the learned who knew Latin and agreed with the sentiments expounded, and the ignorant who merely found
vent for their feelings in their raucous ‘Ayes’. The friar was a good few moments into his speech before Bernardino realised the purpose of the block that the friar stood upon, and he grew cold despite the wool of his habit.

Presently Bandello returned. He carried the bag and shook his head as he descended. ‘No one would take it,’ he said. ‘Even in this age of corruption they dare not cheat the crowd of their moment. She is doomed.’

Bianca nodded her head in solemn acceptance and the three of them watched the scene unfold. From the Torre di Bona di Savoia emerged two Sergeants-at-Arms followed by a figure with brass-bright hair. As the trio walked between the battlements Bernardino could divine that the Countess was an ample figure clad in a golden gown chased with silver gilt. The crowd mocked and hissed, as the sorry procession emerged from the shadow of the great tower, and flung such vegetation and ordure as they had brought from their cots. Cries of ‘Whore!’ were taken up and echoed round the square. Bernardino admired the Countess’s quiet composure in the face of such censure but was privily amazed that such a woman had caused two hearts to beat so strong that their thoughts had turned to murder. Her best years were well behind her, her figure had spread at the waist and her skin was tanned as a peasant’s. Bernardino noted that nature had little to do with the bright gilt of the hair, but that she obviously used such arts and unguents that Venetian ladies used to lighten their tresses. Then she turned to
the weeping handmaiden that carried her train, kissed her on the cheek and favoured her with a dimpled smile, and Bernardino saw the face lifted into the promise of beauty and bedsport. The lady unhooked her ruff and laid her head on the black block as the hooded executioner stepped forward. As her head went down Bernardino saw from their privileged position, a vast spectrum of emotions writ upon her face. Gladness of a life well lived, a memory of what it was to love and be loved, regret for what was to be left, and bowel-opening terror. And over this all, like the finest actor, pride and dignity, and a will to leave the world with the nobility she was born to. Bernardino felt tears prick his eyes as he registered the reality of what she felt: here was no plaster Saint, but a real woman under the shadow of the axe. All was so rapid that Bernardino could not believe what was happening until it was done. The axe fell with a scything sweep and the sickly sun kissed the blade in valediction as it fell. Ribbons of blood flew into the crowd and the deed was done. The Countess’s head was held high, eyes rolled back to the whites; her dimples would dip no more.

Bernardino knew that Sister Bianca suffered at that moment, and threw an arm about her shoulders.

Bandello took the Abbess’s hand and said, ‘It counts for little at such a time, but I will write a history of the Countess, so that her passing shall not be forgot. But now I must go, before I am missed by my Masters.’ With a further kiss of the ring and a nod to Bernardino, he melted into the
throng.

The minstrels struck up and the crowd danced in a weaving dragon, fat with blood and sated, back to the Duomo square to carouse for the rest of the day.

‘Stay here,’ said Sister Bianca suddenly. ‘I must see the Sergeant-at-Arms. There is one more thing that I may do for her.’

Bernardino waited as the sun climbed higher and the castle fell silent. The red stones warmed and the blood clotted in the walls, steeped in the memory of this and other killings, but protesting its innocence as the light showed the fineness of its architecture; the thrust of the walls, the turn of a stair, the reach of the round towers into the orange sky.

Sister Bianca returned with the leather bag, no longer jingling but full and rounded and dark at the base. With a lurch of his stomach Bernardino knew what was within, and that 15,000 crowns, which had not been enough to buy a life, had been enough to buy this. ‘Come,’ said Bianca, ‘we will see the rites done at least.’

Only Bernardino and the Abbess knew that the Countess of Challant’s head lay in the herb garden of the monastery of San Maurizio. Despite her sins she was admitted to the consecrated cloister, and came among the sisters indeed; though not in the way the Abbess had intended. Sister Bianca placed her under the white spreading flowers of the
Valerian plant, the herb known as ‘heal all’, which guards against evil and induces peace and calm. As the bells rang for Nones the shadow of the circus tower fell over the plot like a gnomon, and Bernardino now felt the significance of this garden that had once been the arid sand centre of the arena of death. This playground of the Emperor Maximius had seen much. More than one head, or limb, would have lain here – still did perhaps – and blood would have daily darkened the sand beneath this turf. The blood beat in Bernardino’s head as he heard the crowd’s roar from the cavea, saw the bloodthirsty Emperor waving from the meta. ‘The people’s joy,’ Ausonius had said,
populique voluptas
. By God, Bernardino had seen that today. The baying mob and the blood lust. He knew then the peace of the cloister that he had felt only this morning was an illusion. Round that still centre, the world still turned, as bloody and violent as it had ever been. When they entered the Hall of the Believers at last it was only noon, though Bernardino felt as if a year had passed since he had crossed the cloister in the quiet and contemplation of the morning. Bernardino took his brushes, but could not think of anything other than the scenes of the morning. As he sketched the blessed Catherine, he could not help drawing the homely face of the Countess, imbuing her not with the hot passions of her life but the quiet and dignified manner of her death. He drew the gold gown embroidered with silver gilt, and her noble head bowed before the sword of her assassin.

‘Saint Catherine,’ he said to Bianca. ‘What happened to her?

Once again the Abbess told him of the life of a Saint, but this time her voice was shaking, her tone full of sorrow, and her tale halting; imbued with the significance of what both had seen.

‘Catherine was both noble and brave for at the age of eighteen she presented herself to the Emperor Maximius who was violently persecuting the Christians, and castigated him for his cruelty.’

Bernardino looked up from his paints. ‘Maximius again?’

‘Even he. Catherine emerged from the debate victorious. Several of her adversaries, conquered by her eloquence, declared themselves Christians and were at once put to death. Furious at being beaten, Maximius had Catherine scourged and then imprisoned. Yet Catherine effected so many conversions even from her cell, including that of the Emperor’s wife, that she was condemned to die on the wheel, but, at her touch, this instrument of torture was miraculously destroyed.’

Bernardino continued to sketch furiously. But today his mind did not paint idealized scenes of sanctity on the wall for him to copy. Today he saw only the Countess, and her end. He drew the wheels on which she was to be metaphorically and physically broken, and blasted them with the might of angels, till their gears and cogs spilled forth. Here
he gave a nod to the mechanical drawing of Master Leonardo, not God in the machine but the machine in God, and he wondered afresh at the tortures that mankind prepared for its own. He heard his friend’s voice crack behind him as she ended the story. ‘The Emperor, enraged beyond control, then had her beheaded and angels carried her body to Mount Sinai where later a church and monastery were built in her honour.’

The Abbess sank into a pew and covered her eyes in prayer, or weeping, or he knew not what. Bernardino watched, not moving, as she grieved for what she had lost – far, far more than a childhood friend. Her innocence had gone too. When she raised her head her cheeks ran with tears.

Suddenly martyrdom had a human face as both had witnessed for the first time in a pair of sheltered lives, one human being killed by another. ‘It is well that we saw what we saw,’ said Sister Bianca at last. ‘I have told you many tales now, of Saints and sinners, martyrs and the best of men. Here I sit, preaching to you these glib homilies of the canonized and the horrors that they bore. That
I
should presume to make
you
a better person, to bring
you
into the faith. It was arrogance and pride.’ She rose and began to pace before Bernardino, agitated. ‘But until today I did not know of what I spoke. I did not know of true courage in the face of death. My ministry here is sheltered, my life is one of quiet contemplation. I have been raised in wealth and comfort
and never given succour to the sick or been among the dying. Here we give alms to the poor, but they are an orderly poor; the respectable and able-bodied are brought here and we throw coins at their feet. The ones with the pox, or the limbless ones that have been devoured by leprosy wait outside the Hall of the Believers for their comrades. They all believe fervently, but they are not admitted lest we sisters catch their contagion. I have never put myself in the way of sickness or danger or death. Here we hide; we call ourselves brides of Christ but yet we are virgins; we have never known the heat of a bed or what it may drive the human heart to do. We know nothing of love or what it is to give birth, or any of the trials of mortal women. Henceforth my ministry will change,’ the Abbess asserted, driving her fist into the palm of her other hand. ‘My faith shall assume a more practical nature. I and my sisters must go out into the world, take our ministry out to the people of this city, make life bearable for the unfortunates of this place.’

Bernardino was touched by the change in the Abbess. In return he acknowledged something of the change in him. He left his perch and took the hand that bore the ring of office. ‘I too,’ he said. ‘I had never seen such a thing. I have never been a soldier, and have been mocked for the fact.’ He echoed Gregorio’s words that he could not forget. ‘While young men die, I
paint
men dying. While they bleed on the battlefield, I try to find the right carmine to paint their blood. Every face I depict at its end has a calm acceptance
of a horrible fate, but this is merely a trope, my notion of what I thought the moment of death can be. The Countess can teach me much about the human face of sacrifice.’

‘Then if you paint her here, you do her justice. God makes us all differently. Your gift is not in swordplay or battle – you would likely die in the first skirmish,’ Bernardino smiled ruefully, ‘but you paint like an angel. Perhaps this day may change us both. We have both crossed the Rubicon,’ acknowledged the Abbess, ‘and can never go back. It is passing strange that is the death of a sinner and not a Saint that has thus altered us. And if you can paint what is real, what is human, as well as what is divine, you will have no equal, and my friend will not have died in vain.’

And so he did. And another man who had been changed by that fateful day, also kept his word and wrote a novella on the life of the Countess of Challant. And at the close of his story Matteo Bandello wrote:

‘And so the poor woman was beheaded; such was the end of her unbridled desires; and he who would fain see her painted to the life, let him go to the Church of the Monastero Maggiore, and there will he behold her portrait.’

Selvaggio had finished. He had planed and lathed and sanded, and now the dovecot was perfect, standing proud and bone-white with the wick wood gleaming in the weak sunlight. The sturdy pole was driven hard into the ground, the housing round with a conical white cap of a roof and two arched doorways for the residents. The little tower nudged his memory as he fashioned it, to remind him of an image of the cloud-capped crenellations of Camelot, but the scene was gone as soon as it had come to him. He stood back, and surveyed his work proudly. It was a palace of dovecots. He had worked tirelessly on this bird house as it was to be a gift for the one he held most dear on her name day.

For it was now nearly a year since he had fought the Swiss mercenaries in Amaria’s defence. Amaria and Nonna were both at the market, for the lessons of last year’s Saint’s day were still fresh and Amaria now went nowhere alone. Grandmother and granddaughter had gone to buy victuals for the feast; they were to have
Zuppa alla Pavese
, the meat
broth with eggs, bread and butter which had been invented as a supper for the Royal prisoner Francis I. At Amaria’s insistence they had also gone to seek the lady in red who sold the famous amber liquor known as Amaretto, to see if a few meagre centimes might buy a small draught to toast Sant’Ambrogio. Mention of the Saint had led Selvaggio’s thoughts back to that fateful day, one year ago, when he had killed three Swiss but could only recall that he had Amaria in his arms for the first time.

There had been other times since then, stolen moments before the dying fire when Nonna had retired to bed. They had remained chaste but Selvaggio knew he could not hold his passions in check for long. He wanted Amaria for his own, but did he have a right to take a wife when his past remained a blank to him?

A fluttering at his feet pulled at his attention and he smiled down on the remainder of his gift. In a netted basket on the frozen ground were two turtle doves, snow white and hopping against their prison bars. He lifted them out with the hands of experience and set them in the little arched doors of the cot. He should clip their wings against flight but they seemed contented to stay, so he desisted for now, not wishing to blot their happiness. As they billed and preened he considered names for his gift and his memory surprised him once again as he began to recall tales of antiquity, as perfectly as if he read them before his eyes. Her-cules and Megara? Tristan and Isolde? Troilus and Cressida?
Or the story he had loved the best, the doomed love of Lancelot and Guinevere, whose guilty embrace was witnessed by a cuckolded Arthur? No; for all these lovers had made sad ends; he wanted these doves to be named after a couple who had enjoyed a happy conclusion to their tale. Ah, he had it. He smiled as the ideal pair of names came to him from he knew not where.

Perfect.