Teaching was a pleasant distraction, but I soon found myself getting increasingly irritable. At the end of every page of copying I’d wander around the scriptorium, shaking out my sore right hand, and end up at the broken window, looking out at the half-finished scaffolding.
On the morning of August 6th, Bosi was off at a meeting of Ospedale officials to discuss a communal subsidy for postfire recovery, and Egidio had gone to buy more pigments for the rapidly diminishing stores of ink. I was so engrossed in repairing a multivolume set of Dante’s works that I barely noticed the banging sound at first. Eventually I stood up to stretch, and realized the sound was coming from outside the broken window. I approached the jagged opening. Outside, I could see the scaffolding, and behind it blue sky with a few drifting white clouds. My view was abruptly blocked by the silhouette of a head.
“I see you are awake this time, in contrast to our last meeting.” Gabriele’s voice came through the missing panes of the window.
I smiled. “Falling asleep on the job didn’t go well last time. I decided not to repeat it.”
“I am pleased another rescue is not necessary, as I have only recently recovered from the first one.” He smiled to soften his words.
“Do you want to come in? It might be easier to chat.”
Gabriele swung himself to the window ledge and stepped into the room.
“How was your time off?”
“To be quite honest, I found it difficult to think of anything else but returning here. A work in progress always compels me powerfully.”
I felt oddly disappointed. “So you came back for the Virgin Mary, then.”
“Santa Maria holds a place in all our hearts and souls, but humanity has its charms,” he replied, his eyes finding mine.
“I’m honored.” I remembered the painting of Saint Christopher I’d seen in the gallery just before I left and felt a faint spin of vertigo. Had he already painted me before we’d even met? “What are you painting?” I forgot for a moment that I knew the answer; Donata had told me, in modern Siena.
“The Assumption of the Virgin—ascending to the kingdom of heaven in the company of angels. I had thought to make an angel in your likeness, if that would not offend you.” Gabriele tilted his head slightly to one side. I felt the bloom of heat rush upward from my neck to my face. “If it should seem too forward a request, I shall reconsider. . . .”
“No, no, it’s fine. I’m flattered.”
“Many thanks, Signora.” I snuck a look at him, trying to figure out whether this was his version of flirting, or just the mundane efforts of an artist trying to find a model. I wished, not for the first time, that I could use my empathy at will, in this case to figure out what Gabriele was thinking. But for whatever reason, either my inability or his opacity, my attempt to read him failed. He changed the subject gracefully. “Perhaps we should go back to our respective labors until the midday meal? Then we may feel at greater liberty to speak. I would be delighted if you would join me.”
“It’s a date.”
Gabriele smiled, perhaps at the strangeness of my modern idiom, and disappeared again through the open window.
For the next few hours we worked in tandem, with the Ospedale wall between us. By the time the noon bells rang, I’d managed to get through copying the most damaged section of the Inferno. The work was absorbing enough that I’d actually stopped thinking about my upcoming meal plans until a shadow fell over the page I was working on.
“The torments of hell are not a good subject to fuel the appetite.” Gabriele’s voice made me jump.
The door of the scriptorium creaked open on its hinges. Clara stood on the threshold, her hand over her mouth and her eyes round with surprise.
“Ser Accorsi, at your service.” Gabriele bowed graciously. “It is my great pleasure to make your acquaintance.”
Clara’s face flushed pink. “Oh, thank you, Ser, our pleasure is to serve you in whatever way we may. Are you hungry? In need of a cool place to rest? May I bring wine?”
“Monna Trovato and I were about to seek refreshment as a respite from the morning’s work.”
Clara gazed at me as if I had been crowned the queen of England, or the local equivalent.
“Ser, I would be most pleased to bring your dinner to the scriptorium.”
“We both thank you for your gracious offer.” If we ever got to know each other better, Gabriele would have to stop speaking on my behalf, but I did appreciate his medieval graciousness.
Clara backed out of the room with an eager, if somewhat clumsy, combination of a bow, nod, and curtsy. I could hear her footsteps accelerate once she was outside the door.
“Clara seems to be in awe of you, Ser Accorsi.”
Gabriele smiled wryly. “I suspect she has never seen an artist before. I am not a particularly remarkable example of the breed.”
“Do all artists rescue women from burning buildings?”
“If presented with the opportunity, I am sure many would.”
“That’s a generous view of your profession.”
“I strive to be generous, as I hope others would be toward me.”
“You certainly have been—taking me to your house, giving me clothes, feeding me dinner, taking care of me after that fire.”
He shook his head modestly. “Ysabella did the caring and the cooking, and the dress is a result of my uncle’s generosity.”
“I owe all of you my thanks.”
“You have suffered many losses, Monna Trovato, and now live without the protection your husband once provided you. My family and I are happy to be able to provide some modicum of the care that you have lost.”
I had lost, but not a husband. My lies weighed on me in the face of that pure generosity. “I haven’t told you very much about myself.”
“Confidences cannot be hurried.”
Once again, I was presented with an opportunity to tell someone the truth, and the desire to do so was overwhelming. I wiped my eyes with the back of my hand. “I don’t mean to make a spectacle of myself. I’m sorry.”
“Your tears reveal a vulnerability not immediately apparent in your demeanor,” Gabriele said softly. Clara was due to come back soon with dinner, and if I was going to say something, I had to do it fast.
“Listen, there is something I have to tell you. I’m not a widow. I’ve never been married, in fact. But my mother died as I was born, along with my twin sister. I don’t know who my father is. My brother was my only family; he raised me after our mother died, and now he’s dead too.” This time I started to cry in earnest, the tears rolling down my cheeks. I didn’t add that I had been wrenched almost seven centuries out of my own time, though it was certainly adding to my loneliness. I hoped Clara would take her time with the food.