The Road to Damietta

  By placing trestles stacked with merchandise in front of his store from one side of the street to the other, Bernardone had made a dead end of it. This was against the law, a law my father had helped to write, which required merchants to pile their goods no closer to the center of the street than one inch, and on one side of the street only. Thus we had to dismount halfway down Via Portico and give the horses to our guards, which annoyed Raul.

  "Bernardone has been fined a dozen times," he said as we threaded our way through row after row of bulging trestles. "But the fines are small; he pays them and goes right on littering the street. Like his son, Bernardone thinks himself a noble cavalier, scornful of the law."

  He sent one of our guards to announce that the daughter of Davino di Montanaro was waiting, and at once boys came running out to make a path for us. A stout gentleman with a scraggly beard, wearing a shabby robe, appeared in the doorway.

  "I am honored," he said, after introducing himself with a courtly bow, "to welcome a member of the Montanaro family. And please excuse the confusion. Only yesterday I received a shipment of cloth from Flanders—seven carts and seven donkeys loaded down with treasures, which we haven't had a chance to arrange on the shelves."

  I made out the slim figure of his son. He was looking at me, his head cocked to one side, as I walked sedately toward him over the cobbles, my heart beating.

  Raul introduced himself and me to Bernardone, who got my name wrong—Pica instead of Ricca—which was not a good beginning. Then to his son.

  "I have seen you before," Francis said, smiling, "on the way to San Subasio."

  "And other places," I said. "In our courtyard with the bull. And months ago when you sang in the square."

  "Oh, yes, you were on the balcony, dressed in a white gown. I saw you while I was singing."

  Singing to me, I desperately wanted to say, not to Clare di Scifi. Not to anyone but me. Instead, I reminded him that we had danced in the square on the night of the December Liberties.

  He frowned at this and fell silent. He had changed. From the glimpses I'd had of him in the cathedral, filled as it was with candle smoke, and in the square, dense with the oily smoke of torches, I didn't have a true idea of how he looked. But now as I saw him in the daylight, I was certain that he had changed. He was no longer the smiling young man I had seen before.

  He was thinner than I remembered. And his eyes, deep-set beneath their black brows, had changed. They seemed troubled. Could Raul's story be true? Was he worried about the angry threats his father had made against him? To belie this troubled mood, he was dressed in the gayest and most charming of costumes—one leg of black silk, one leg of red silk, and a tunic of three or four different colors cinched tight by a rainbow belt.

  "Don't just stand there gawking," Signor Bernardone said. "Show the young lady the new damask that arrived only yesterday from Flanders. And the precious Venetian sendal, which is in short supply."

  I hadn't come to buy sendal or damask, but since I couldn't say why I had come, I said nothing.

  Francis disappeared into the shop, a long, narrow arcade lined with shelves, gloomy as a tomb save for the feeble glow of lanterns. He came back with two bolts of cloth, slipped into the street, and spread them out on a trestle. Draping a corner of the sendal over his arm, he held it up to catch the sunlight.

  "Notice, if you will," he said, trying hard to be friendly, "the enchanted glow."

  I ran my hand over the silk.

  "Doesn't it remind you of a spring day," he said, "when the meadows are green and the wind blows her sweetest and God's flowers bloom?"

  I nodded and strove to follow his flight of fancy.

  The three bells of San Niccolo broke forth, calling workers to their churchly tasks. The sound of the bells echoed in the narrow street. Raul, who had bought a parcel of serge, stood in the doorway watching. Signor Bernardone was also watching. He darted forth, took up the bolt of sendal, pushed his son aside none too gently, and said how well the silk matched my coloring. Without a word Francis quietly slipped away.

  "I'll take a piece of sendal," I said. "And my father will pay you."

  "That's not necessary," Bernardone explained. "Pay when you visit us again. I'll have Moorish cloth quite soon. This coming week, perhaps, depending upon the thieves that guard the way and the cloth thieves themselves."

  4

  The sky had darkened, and as we left the shelter of Via Portico the wind swooped down upon us. Simonetta ruffled her feathers and took a firmer grip on my wrist.

  "You're very silent," Raul said. "You seem somewhat chastened. What goes on in your head?"

  "Lengths of lovely cloth," I said, "that Signor Bernardone has collected from over the world. The velvets from Paris and the sendal from Venice and—"

  "No," Raul said, "not the cloth, of course not. Something else. What is it?"

  I spurred the horse to a canter and left him behind, but I had not gone far when I felt a sharp tug at the saddle cloth. Francis Bernardone was running along beside me. With all sorts of wild thoughts racing through my head, I reined in and waited for him to speak.

  "What do you call your little hawk?" he asked, out of breath, his face clouded.

  "Simonetta," I said.

  "A very pretty name for a very pretty bird. But tell me, why do you keep her chained on such a wonderful day? The wind blows and there's music in the sky. Please, friend, take off the hood and let her loose to share this wondrous hour."

  I looked down upon him in dismay. His dour expression had not changed. Was he mad? Raul had ridden on and was beckoning to me from the far side of the square. I was tempted to follow him and leave Francis Bernardone standing there in the bitter wind.

  "You carry the falcon on your wrist because all the other rich girls do so," he said. "It's the fashion these days. But the falcon wishes to visit heaven, which is her home."

  "How do you know what she wishes to do?" I asked, turning the horse round him in a circle.

  "I know because I see it in her eyes."

  "How can you see her eyes? You can't, because she's wearing a hood."

  There was a somber tone in his voice that I had never heard before. It made me think he was speaking the truth, that he did see the falcon's eyes beneath the hood.

  "Simonetta," I said, "is young. She hasn't been trained. If I free her, she will never come back. She'll starve or be hunted down."

  "God will care for her, as He cares for all His creatures, even for you and me."

  He looked up from under the peak of his feathered cap, fixing me with a steady glance. It was meant to make me quaver, lose my senses, free Simonetta—my father's generous gift, bought from the falconry of Filippo dei Casini, doge of Venice.

  I looked at Raul, waiting impatiently on the far side of the square. I thought of a way to break the spell.

  "I've heard an awful tale. It's ... well, people are saying that you stole a piece of cloth that belonged to your father. Such terrible things. They can't possibly be true."

  "But they are," he said eagerly, taking pride in the theft. "A handsome length of damask fit for a cardinal's cape. Also a fat handful of money."

  "You're just dreaming up a wild story," I said, though by now I didn't know what to believe.

  "I'd have taken more, two lengths of his best brocade and two handfuls of money, if I hadn't decided that this would be a sin. Here I was stealing from my father because he was greedy, and here I was, being greedy myself. But you haven't mentioned the horse. I stole a horse, too, a fine Arabian."

  "You're making this up," I said, but as the words left my lips I realized that it made no difference to me whether he was a thief or not, whether he had stolen every bolt of cloth, every soldo, and every horse his father owned.

  He began to pet Simonetta, running a hand over her shining feathers, not listening to me at all.

  "When she is trained and can fend for herself," I said, "I'll think about setting her free."

  Now he was talking to Simonet
ta, at least making sounds that caused the hawk to turn her head one way and the other.

  "If you take off the hood then I can talk to her better," he said. "It is with the eyes that we talk to each other."

  With misgivings, I placed Simonetta on his arm and removed the golden hood, but kept a firm grip on the chain that held her.

  "She has the eyes of an odalisque," I said, to appear well read and scholarly.

  He didn't know the word. "Odalisque?" he said, shaking his head.

  "I mean that her eyes remind me of the melting eyes of a slave girl in a sultan's harem."

  "You're familiar with harems?"

  "Only through my reading," I said, embarrassed.

  He held the bird at arm's length and the two gazed at each other.

  "Her eyes don't melt," he said. "I am climbing a mountain in a winter storm. It is dusk as I near the top. Before me stands an icy cliff. In the face of the cliff is a small crevice and deep inside the crevice I see a fire. Her eyes are like that—fire and burning ice."

  He began to talk to Simonetta, strange sounds unlike any that I had ever heard before. Then he broke off the talk and said to me, "You must have many of these pretty birds, ones to match the colors of your cloaks and gowns," he said. "You'll never miss Simonetta."

  Deep within his own eyes I saw the fire and burning ice. Silently, holding my breath, I watched him unloose the chain from the falcon's leg. I watched her while she fluttered awkwardly away from us, then, gathering herself, disappeared in the stormy sky.

  "She's gone," I cried.

  "No longer an ornament on your wrist, but not gone," he said, pausing to gather his cloak about him. "She's in God's care. Now that you know this, you will free the others in your falconry."

  Through falling snow, I saw Raul beckoning to me. My senses returned. Without a word I spurred my horse and crossed the square.

  "I see that you didn't fare too badly with Bernardone," Raul said. "You only lost your favorite hawk. You're fortunate; you might have lost your purse as well as your horse and your nice silk surcoat. You might be walking homeward in your bare feet, freezing to death in your underclothes."

  I didn't answer him. My eyes were upon Francis Bernardone. He was still where I had left him. Now it was snowing big flakes and he was on his knees, his hands outstretched, catching them as they fell.

  The kneeling figure grew dim and disappeared in the driving snow. In all my life, I had never loved Francis Bernardone so much, so desperately.

  5

  Snow hid the walls of San Rufino. As we came to the Scifi palace, the watchman called out, inviting us to take shelter.

  The bells of Santa Maria Maggiore had rung. Within the hour, my father would be sitting down to dinner. I was not anxious to explain how I had lost Simonetta. Not that he would know about it so soon—days might pass before he heard. But as a dutiful daughter, trained in the importance of truth, if challenged I must confess to an act that he would deem much more than foolish.

  "It's warmer within than without," the watchman said, opening the gate. "This is an apt time to get frozen. Come, I pray you."

  I asked if Signorina Clare was about. Told that she was in bed, suffering a fever, I handed over my horse and Raul rode on with the servants. Since Clare and I were good friends and often visited each other, I went by way of the back entrance, unannounced.

  She lay under a blanket of fox skins, pale but beautiful in spite of her illness. "Where were you to get such a reddish nose?" she asked me.

  "At Signor Bernardone's."

  "What's under your arm? You're always buying something. Either that or someone is buying it for you."

  I opened the package and spread the cloth on the coverlet.

  "How lovely," she said. "It matches your coloring."

  "Signor Bernardone told me the same thing."

  "What did Francis say?"

  "Nothing."

  Clare and I always talked frankly to each other. But how I felt about Francis Bernardone I had kept from her, thinking that she would belittle him as so many others did.

  Clare was not ill from a fever. I learned this before I ever finished the cup of broth her serving woman brought for me. She was ill from fear and anger.

  "Have you heard of Rosso di Battero?" she asked me.

  "He owns a castle beyond Porta di Murocuplo, in the hills," I said. "He's thin and tall and hollow in the middle, has a gray beard curled to a point, rides a gray horse, and he's always protected by six guards also riding gray horses."

  She smiled wanly. "You know him better than I do. I've seen him only once. Last Easter in the cathedral, from a distance. I just found out that my family intends that I marry him."

  Clare's father was a stubborn man, strict and fanatically religious. Her mother was an iron-willed woman. Her brothers were famous for their use of the sword, quick to take offense, vindictive, and cruel. I could imagine what a family command would mean to her, especially since people asked why a girl of such beauty remained unwed. Was her life doomed by some terrible disease? Had she made a pact with the Evil One, with the Devil himself ? I had heard these questions and others, asked in my own home.

  She was not drinking her barley broth. She lay with her hands folded tight on the coverlet, her gaze upon the window and the falling snow, a figure as remote as the cold white statue in the niche above her head. I asked her if she would marry Rosso di Battero. She picked up a heart-shaped fan and covered her face in disgust.

  "No," she said, fanning herself. "No."

  "If your family commands you to, you wouldn't dare refuse them."

  "You'll see. At the very moment I am threatened."

  "What will you do?" I asked, thinking of Count Luzzaro.

  "I'll flee."

  "Where to?"

  "To Perugia. Anywhere. To Venice. I have cousins in Venice and also in Padua."

  "Your brothers are fast riders. They'll come for you and bring you back," I said. Then, struck by a thought, I added, "You can hide with me. There's a big room off my tower. It was used once for weapons, a storage place. It's closed now and nobody ever goes there. You'll be safe for days."

  "What a cunning thought," she said.

  She tossed the coverlet aside, sat up, and glanced at me over the top of her fan. "How did Francis look?"

  "Like a harlequin. Dressed up with one leg in black silk, the other in red silk, and a tunic of four or five colors."

  "I mean, how did he act?"

  "Sober," I said, deciding not to say a word about our meeting in San Rufino Square or about Simonetta. "Quiet."

  "From the stories going around, he may have good reasons for being quiet. It's said he stole from his father, things like cloth and money, and gave them away. I don't believe it for a moment," Clare said.

  She sat down at the mirror, and a woman came to dress her hair. Long and heavy and very blond, in the lamplight it looked like melting silver.

  "Francis would never steal from his father," she said, "or from anyone else. It's an awful lie."

  I agreed with her and we talked on until the bells rang for vespers, but nothing more was said about him.

  As I hurried home I tried to think of a likely reason for freeing Simonetta. Father met me as I entered the Great Hall. He glanced at my wrist and empty glove before I had brushed the snow from my face.

  "Simonetta?" he said.

  I made a motion of a hawk flying away, hunting the heavens.

  Father was a medium-tall man who made himself look taller and more imposing by wearing thick-soled, high-heeled boots, by standing very erect with his thin shoulders thrown back, and by wearing tight collars on his cloaks and tunics.

  "An untamed hawk hunts in a snowstorm?" he asked. He carried a lamp and the amber light glittered in his eyes. "Simonetta comes from a family of hawks that's centuries old, from the days of the ancient pharaohs. My falconer has sat up days and nights with this rare bird, never sleeping, walking leagues with her fastened to his fist, keeping her awake hour
after hour until she no longer wishes to be free. And though her spirit remains unbroken, she's been lulled into submission. Simonetta has gone through all these stages, but she's not ready to hunt. Why did you ask for Simonetta?"

  "Because she is more beautiful than the pigeon hawk or the kestrel."

  "Why did the falconer give her to you?"

  I shrugged, not daring to say that I had threatened the man a little when he wanted to give me the kestrel hawk. Step by step Father was leading me into a lie. Defiantly, not caring that I stumbled over the words, I blurted the truth.

  "You wished to impress Francis Bernardone?"

  I nodded.

  "Then Bernardone is the cause of your unloosing the hawk." Father's tongue curled around the name. "A clown dancing in the street now dances his way into the household of Davino di Montanaro." He glanced at the massive door set in walls of hardest stone. "No door, no wall however strong, can keep frivolity at bay, it seems. Shall we deal with this foolishness in a different way? We shall, we shall! Come!"

  I followed him through the Great Hall and into the vaulted room of the scriptorium. Two earnest young men sat at benches, pens in hand, diligently at work. Raul de los Santos watched over them.

  Father said to him, "My daughter wishes to learn the arts of copying."

  "Copying what?" Raul asked, pleased that I was now commanded to do what he had been trying to inveigle me into doing for more than a year.

  "Since she's a religious girl," Father said, "her thoughts devoted to our Lord and His works, I suggest she start with the scriptures."

  "Copying the scriptures is the surest way to heaven," Raul said. "According to Cassiodorus, 'converting the hand into an organ of speech'—thus, as it were, fighting the Archfiend with the deadly weapon of pen and ink."

  "Cassiodorus was a wise man."

  "When do you wish to begin?" Raul asked.

  Father answered for me. "Tomorrow—early in the morning, tomorrow."

  "And where in the scriptures?"

  "In the Old Testament. With the first words of Genesis. It should keep Ricca occupied for months."