The Madonna of the Almonds (25 page)

‘The boys best of all.’ He took his arm from round her shoulders and rubbed the back of his neck, as if perplexed. ‘It is passing strange for me. I never longed for children, always thought myself too selfish to take joy in them. I thought I could never be happier than if I possessed you at last,’ he clasped her tight once more. ‘And yet here I am with not only the woman of my heart, but a ready-made family whom I adore.’

‘And now they will be happy,’ she rejoined. ‘The townsfolk will leave us be. We will be celebrated; you for your art, me for Amaretto, and the boys will be safe.’

They were silent for a time, lost in the past and the future. The sky darkened or the stars brightened, and the wind murmured through the almond leaves, prompting their fair owner of something she had forgot. Remembering, Simonetta pulled a small piece of vellum from her bodice. She handed it to her husband, battered for she had carried it every day since he had gone, warm for it had lived next to her heart. ‘Do you remember this?’ she asked, with half a smile.

Bernardino took the parchment. ‘Of course I do. I painted it on the unhappiest day of my life, the day I thought I had lost you forever. And I painted it again, tens, scores, hundreds of times on the walls of San Maurizio. Every single Magdalene, and most of your Saints wear that emblem somewhere on their raiments. ’Twas the secret code of my love for you – at once hopeless and hopeful – and only Bianca found the key.’ He traced the symbol, so well known to him, with his fingertips. ‘And now, my dear heart, do you know the meaning of the rune, you for whom it was designed?’

Simonetta rested her head between his neck and shoulder, and breathed in his skin. ‘I think I do. I did not know for ever so long, but I have learned much in your absence.’

‘Go on.’

She pointed at the cognizance, her hands pale in the moonlight. ‘There is a heart, of course, and within it, a trinity of leaves, like a fleur-de-lys.’

She felt him nod. ‘What leaves are they?’

‘The leaves of the almond tree.’

‘And is there more?’ he prompted her, gently.

‘No. No nut or fruit is depicted there. Just the leaves inside the heart.’

‘Why?’

She heard the urgency in his voice; it was too dark, now, to see his dear face, but it suddenly seemed terribly important that she knew the answer to the riddle. ‘Because we
were not together; and without our union there could be no fruit. The tree would be barren. No flowers or harvest; just artifice and ornament. Beauty without fecundity. Phyllis did not blossom until her Demephon came home and freed her from desolation.’

Bernardino exhaled relief, and pulled her close for a long kiss, the catechism over. They stayed thus till they felt warm raindrops fall on their faces. ‘Come,’ he said. ‘I have a new wife. And by this moon I think it is already my wedding night.’ He pulled her to her feet, softly laughing with delicious anticipation, but as they walked through the scented dusky groves, he began, again, to speak. ‘Strange,’ he said, ‘that in Saronno where we met I saw you as the Virgin and painted you as the Madonna again and again. Yet in San Maurizio I did not paint you as the Queen of Heaven but as Saints and martyrs, mortal women; and that other Mary, the Magdalene.’

Simonetta took his arm, and her voice when she spoke was teasing. ‘Perhaps you saw me then as a fallen woman, as Gregorio the squire called me; a woman who wantonly kissed you on the steps of the church.’ She was amazed how easy it was now to speak lightly of that shattering event.

He did not smile. ‘Perhaps. Perhaps I idealised you, made you my icon of womanly perfection, the Madonna personified. Mother, wife and all things loving and good.’ His voice was earnest and halting as he felt his way through the maze, in an effort to unravel the truth. ‘Then I taught myself to
despise you once I had possessed you, despite the fact that I myself brought you low. Perhaps it had more to do with my own mother, and the way she denied me love, in the way that you denied me yourself too. For she was a Magdalene indeed – they even shared a profession.’ Now he smiled, but even in the dusk she could see that the hurt had not yet gone. She longed to take it all away, to love him as he deserved for the rest of his life.

Now they left the leafy alleys behind and walked the steps to the loggia, and it was she that spoke next. ‘And if you paint me again, my husband, what shall I be then?’

He turned her to him and took her face in his hands. She was bathed in the amber light from the house, the alchemy of candlelight turning her to gold. Yet she was not an icon or a statue, she was
real
, and his wife. He felt his heart fail. ‘I will paint you as you are,’ he said. ‘A mortal woman. But it may yet be that I will paint you as the Virgin once again. For in San Maurizio, in all the tales that were told to me, I have learned that all women, be they never so Holy, are all human; and all men likewise.’ He kissed her, to demonstrate the point, and they went inside.

They crept up the stair to her solar, following the trail of almond blossom which Veronica had scattered to guide their way. Bernardino was silent, thinking, and Simonetta waited.

‘One thing more before our discourse is done,’ he said, at last. ‘Do you remember once, in Saronno’s church, you held out your hand to me, and I turned away?’

She turned back on the stair and looked down on him.
Noli me Tangere
. His face was so raw and vulnerable. She loved him so much at that moment that she could not speak. She nodded.

‘I will not do so again,’ he said, in a voice so soft that it was almost a whisper.

She held out her hand to him, he took it, and together they climbed the stair.

His hard body lay atop her soft one, and they kissed a hundred, a thousand times until her lips and cheeks were raw with the scrape of his stubble. His hands were everywhere, charting the landscape of her body; on her breasts, between her legs, in all the places she knew she had longed for. Sometimes gripping so hard that there was almost pain, sometimes grazing her flesh so softly and unbearably that she became shameless, guiding his hands and forcing his touch. And then he entered her and the yearning stopped. He lay still for many moments, within her, above her; wolf-grey eyes locked into lake-blue ones, staring deep, deep into the depths. This moment of joining, that Simonetta now knew she had imagined for three long years, flooded her with such pleasure that she had to bite her lip to keep her from crying out. She marvelled at how different it was, this animal act, how different he felt; this new husband, from the old. He fitted, he filled her up. With Lorenzo she had been a girl; young and untried, half a woman who needed half a man –
a boy playing at soldiers – to make her whole. With Bernardino she felt as if two people, who had suffered and learned survival apart, had at last come together to make a couple. A pair; equal in love and life and their separate endeavours. This was not the love of youth, it was the love of age and maturity; of adult passions so much more real and fulfilling than the courtly posturings of her adolescent union. It was so good, and so
right
, that she could hardly bear it. Bernardino began, at last, to move. And she forgot Lorenzo.

Hours later, Bernardino rose to close the casement against a sudden chill breeze. He saw dark storm clouds rolling in across the bottle-green plain from the direction of Pavia. There would be thunder and lightning this night but he cared not. He could not waste another moment on the vista when there was a view more beautiful awaiting him within the solar. His new wife: more lovely than ever, all tumbled and golden and abandoned on the bed. Their union had been more, so much more than even he had ever dreamed. How thankful he was now that she had not given herself to him cheaply, all those years ago; that they could now live honestly in the light, as man and wife, without the torture of conscience on the rack of scandal. His heart was full – he was at once completely happy and could ask for nothing, long for nothing. And as he slid beneath the coverlet and felt her arms close around him, he felt that nothing could ever divide them again.

Another storm, in another season, rolled over the same Lombard hills to disturb the nuptial slumbers of another groom. It woke Selvaggio in the middle of his wedding night, and his heart was too full of happiness to let him sleep again. He turned on his side to his dear Amaria, and her dark fan of hair under his hand was soaked from the rain misting through the open casement. He smiled – he had opened it after they had coupled for the first time, a sweet hot, short consummation for God and the Law, before they spent the next hours exploring each other. Their love had brought the sweat to their skin, so he had opened the window and the cold air rushed in with a shock. Now he rose on silent feet and trod quietly so as not to disturb his new wife, and his Nonna where she slept on the truckle downstairs. He closed the casement against the rain and the threat of thunder. He looked about for something to dry Amaria’s hair, but was unaccustomed to this room. The fireside bed, where tonight Nonna rested, was usually his.
So as he sought a balmcloth or garment to swipe the rain from the coverlet he thought the chest at the foot of the bed seemed a likely place. And so it proved, at once he found a folded cloth, blue in the moonlight. It was somewhat besmottered but he unfolded it anyway. The lightning cracked and lit the cloth day-bright for just a heartbeat, but it was enough. His finger traced the three silver ovals, that his ancestors meant for almonds, and he fell to his knees. A casement opened in his mind and cold memory rushed in.

He knew everything, all of it, in that instant.

I am Lorenzo Giovanni Battista Castello di Saronno.

Now, I remember it all. And remembrance brings his unwelcome brother, realization. I know that I must leave.

I kiss her once before I go. Amaria; the one that I love but must no longer call wife. I swear that she smiles as she sleeps, and my heart cracks. I weaken and move to wake her, but steel myself not to. How can I explain that I am married already, and thus have dishonoured her with the double-headed sin of adultery and fornication? Better that she thinks the worst of me – better to be a feckless, faithless husband, a deserter rather than a bigamist. Better that she forget me, and when the church releases her, she can love again. Why does this thought hurt most of all?

And Simonetta, the love of my youth, what will I say to you, at our joyless reunion? Your name was once poetry to me, but now I can hardly utter it. You are no more real to me now than a dream, or a painting on a wall with two dimensions but no capacity to live in this new world of
mine. Poor, guiltless lady, how can I return your love now this new love has come to me? And yet I must. We are married, and I will be your husband till I die in truth, as I so nearly did.

I take nothing but the blue banner and my cloak. I creep downstairs like the adulterer I am, past Nonna who snores slightly. More than a mother to me, I wish I could kiss her too, and tell her to look after my Amaria. But of this instruction, there is no need.

It takes me more than a sevennight to walk to Saronno, begging like a pilgrim and taking my rest where I can find it under the stars. I go to the Sanctuary church of Santa Maria dei Miracoli, where that first, dreamlike marriage took place. I think to find the good Father Anselmo within; I know now it was his preaching that I once heard, echoing through my memory. His voice it was, guiding my own as I read the scriptures aloud to my Amaria; recalling the thousand masses that I once heard, here in this church. Perhaps the padre knows how my lady Simonetta does, and how the shock of my coming will affect her. I do not go to Castello directly, lest the appearance of Lorenzo-Lazarus should overcome her.

The place is greatly changed – what was once a plain white church is now an Ethiop’s cave, a treasure chest, a rainbow. There are paintings everywhere – frescoes crawl over every inch, and my eyes have entered paradise, even though my heart burns in hell. Despite the sight, my flesh
heats with the agony of loss, like my name – Saint Lorenzo. Save for the crowd of Saints no one is within, except a single fellow hanging high at the rafters and scratching at an image with a paintbrush. The face he paints holds me at once, for it is Simonetta di Saronno, as surely as she is standing in front of me. She is just as I recall her; as beautiful as the day, but now insubstantial. Her fairness can no longer touch me. To me, true beauty wears a more dusky countenance – it has the olive warm skin and raven hair of Amaria.

I find my voice at last. ‘Did you do this?’

The fellow spins round on his ropes, as if he expected someone else.

‘Yes,’ he replies. ‘It has been a long road, but at last it is done. This face is the last of it, and the best of it, long overdue.’ He smiles, as if at a private jest.

‘It is wondrous indeed,’ I say, speaking the truth. ‘If miracles truly happen here, then this is surely the greatest.’

He descends, pleased by the compliment. ‘I thank you,’ he says as he finds his feet. He is shorter than I by a hand, and, on closer scrutiny, a good bit older. But he is slim and handsome enough.

‘She is very fair, your subject,’ say I.

He smiles, and is suddenly my own age. He looks like a man who owns the world and is perfectly happy in it. I envy him. ‘I’m glad you think so,’ he says. ‘She is my wife.’

A hammer strikes in my chest, and I think my ears have
deceived me. ‘Your…wife?’

‘Indeed. I am Bernardino Luini, the artist,’ and indeed I do think I have heard the name, ‘and this is Simonetta, formerly Simonetta di Saronno, now Simonetta Luini.’ He said the name with pride. ‘She sat as my model for the Holy Virgin, as you see. The frescoes are to be dedicated tomorrow, in fact, on the day of Saint Ambrose.’

I nod, dazed. I knew the Saint’s day well. We had come to the parade every year of our marriage, Simonetta and I. But what I remember now is that this time last year I had taken Amaria in my arms for the first time, and carried her away from the Swiss mercenaries.

My new friend and rival looks at me closely, so heaven knows what he sees written in my face. I make an attempt at pleasantry. ‘Is there still a feast, and a parade of the reliquaries?’

‘There is. Attended by the new Cardinal, whom we like much better than the old one, God rot his bones.’ The artist’s eyes narrow. ‘Do you know these parts?’

‘I used to.’

The fellow claps my shoulder. ‘Then you must attend,’ he said, clearly in a mood to be friends with the entire world, even with a pilgrim he had never met before. ‘I will present you to my wife.’ He is plainly eager to show off his prize.

I choke on the remembrance that just a short week past, I had been the same happy, proud groom, wanting to show my Amaria to all the world.

‘Till tomorrow then. You must meet her,’ he says.

Tomorrow. I would see Simonetta tomorrow. She that had been my wife, and was my wife still, till death parted us. We had been married here, in the sight of God, and the law of God bound us still. I take the artist’s proffered hand. Poor fellow. He does not know that I am here to take his world away from him, that I am Arthur to his Lancelot and I am about to claim back my Guinevere. I am sorry that he is soon to feel as I feel now.

‘Right gladly I will,’ I say.