A wall of colonnaded windows glazed with small panes of thick glass let in the sunlight. The windows were wide enough to walk through, but didn’t appear to open. There were two angled wood writing desks in the room, like drafting tables with a ledge at the bottom to prevent things from sliding off. Above each of the desks was a small shelf. I saw a book propped open on one; fresh empty pages rested on the desk below.
Along the walls, niches and wooden shelves overflowed with manuscripts and books. Some had elaborately tooled leather bindings closed with single or double clasps. Others were simply folded pages held between rectangles of wood. Ben would have had a field day doing research in here. Maybe I could too, even in this century? Before I could look more closely at anything, a robed man entered. He had a large, fleshy face, a round head topped by a bristling circle of short gray hair, and deep-set eyes shadowed by heavy brows. He wore an ingenious pair of red folding eyeglasses without earpieces that hinged at the bridge of the nose. It was hard to tell how old he was; aging seemed to have a different rhythm here than I was used to.
“I am told that you can write,” he said doubtfully. This must be Fra Bosi. I nodded. “My former assistant, Guido Baldi, the younger of the two Baldi brothers, disgraced himself in the tavern several days ago, and I suggested he find other employment.” It seemed I’d arrived conveniently at the moment of a job vacancy. Bosi continued, scowling. “I do not intend to waste my time training incompetent widows to hold a pen for charity’s sake, but Suor Umiltà seems to think you might be useful.”
“I hope to be,” I said. Against the wall, a young boy pounded rags with a mallet while an iron pot boiled over a fire in a corner stone fireplace. Fra Bosi saw the direction of my gaze.
“We have taken on the modern techniques of making paper, in addition to parchment,” he said, gruffly. “Egidio is competent at preparing the sheets, but he has not proven himself with the pen and stylus.” I saw Egidio’s shoulders hunch and the pounding got louder.
“I’m here to write,” I said, bluntly. Fra Bosi’s face reddened and his eyes bulged; I was afraid that he might be about to blow a blood vessel somewhere.
“We shall see.” Bosi motioned for me to sit down and placed pages from an account ledger in front of me. Each row was headed by a phrase describing the nature of the expense or payment, and the columns were divided into credits and debits, like a modern double-entry bookkeeping record. The tiny cramped letters and numbers were all carefully ruled by hand.
“The Ospedale needs to provide to the Biccherna a copy of its accounts since the beginning of Lent.” He deposited a stack of stiff, faintly translucent sheets of parchment on the desk in front of me. I’d read about the Biccherna, Siena’s financial governing body, so I didn’t have to risk asking Fra Bosi what he meant. “I will return at the Nones bells to check on your progress. The materials are costly, I am sure you know. I suggest you minimize error.” He turned and left me with my assignment. I checked the quill points, arranged the inks, put the ledger on the stand, set out the ruler and square, and started copying. Nones was seven hours from now; I had some serious work to do.
Oddly enough, I felt more at home in the scriptorium of the Ospedale della Scala than I had almost anywhere in the past month, even in my own time. Maybe because it reminded me of working in Ben’s office, doing my homework while he read and wrote, and then, as a treat when I finished, trying to copy rubrics, the initial red letters that decorated the more elaborate manuscripts. I’d done a class project on a history of books and gotten an A-minus. It would have been an A, but it was a day late because I’d made the inks myself. Ben had called me “my little scribe” after that.
The next time I looked up from the ledgers, Egidio was stirring a large tub of rag pulp and hot water; his face glistened pink from the steam. While I took a break to flex my fingers and shake out my legs, I watched him pour the pulp and water slurry into screened trays and let the liquid drip through the screens into a large stone basin. Along another worktable, trays held sheets of newly made rag paper beginning to curl away from the frames. Egidio turned to the completed trays, carefully removing the sheets from the mesh. He laid the pages out on the table in front of him and painted one side of each sheet with a thick liquid that looked like Elmer’s glue. We hadn’t spoken a word to each other in our hours working side by side.
“What is that?”
Egidio turned, startled; I imagined Fra Bosi didn’t encourage a lot of idle conversation. “Sizing,” he said, blushing furiously. “Fra Bosi says it keeps the ink from spreading on the paper. I cannot write like you so I do not know.”
“Have you tried to learn to write?”
“Fra Bosi says I do not have the skill, Signora.”
“You can learn,” I said, unable to suppress my fundamental educational philosophy. “I don’t know how to make paper and you don’t know how to write. Both of our failings can be fixed.” Egidio’s small smile transformed his serious little face.
My hand was cramping agonizingly by the next peal of the bells—Prime, 9:00 a.m. I stretched for a few minutes, then went back to writing. When the bells rang hours later, the pain extended up to my shoulder. Sext—noon. Three more hours to go. No one had mentioned a lunch break. I sneaked a sip from my water bottle. I came to a long list of products from the Ospedale’s agricultural landholdings, with the income associated with their sale:
80 soldi/35 staia/grano/Grancia di Cuna
150 soldi/15 staia/mandorle/La Grancia Spedaletto
60 soldi/5 barili/olio d’oliva/Grancia di Grossetto
I didn’t know how big staia and barili were, but writing about wheat, almonds, and olive oil made me uncomfortably aware of my lack of lunch. I tried to pay attention to the amounts. If I ever ended up with any money of my own, I would need to know what it was worth. I copied out several lines on payment of artists’ commissions and contracts with architects. There was nothing about the fifth fresco on the facade, but of course Umiltà had only just requested funds for that; it wouldn’t be recorded yet.
On the next page I found a familiar name: Vitalis Signoretti. The same Signoretti I knew? The family did date its prominence in Siena back to the fourteenth century. He seemed to be a patron of the arts—many of the sums by his name were for paintings on Ospedale property. Based on the numbers, he had a ton of money and was spending at least some of it on art.
By the time the bells rang for Nones, I had a headache, and my hand and sleeve were stained with ink. But I was done. Bosi appeared in the doorway as I was putting down my pen and came to peer over my shoulder. He picked up the pages, scrutinizing each one and comparing it with the ledger template. I waited, hearing my heartbeat in my ears.