She raced over and threw her arms around my neck. She smelled of woodsmoke and cloves, and as we embraced I felt the roundness of her belly filling the space between us. Pregnant. We emerged from our hug and I tried not to stare at her midsection.
“Clara, how did you know I was here? I’ve just barely arrived.”
“I heard from the other Ospedale wards that a woman—a former scribe—testified at the painter’s trial. I came right away, hoping it was you.” She must have seen my surreptitious glance, because she put her hand on her belly protectively. “Yes, I have been blessed with the promise of a new life.” Asking who the father was didn’t seem appropriate. “Have you just arrived in Siena?”
“Yes,” I said, trying to decide what story to tell her.
“Where did you go? When I came back with the water, you were gone.”
“I’m told I was found by a group of travelers who nursed me back to health.”
Clara’s eyes grew wide. “Praise God for miracles,” she said, and embraced me again, her face nestling at the hollow of my throat. We held each other quietly, like two survivors of a shipwreck. When she emerged from the hug, a familiar look appeared in her eyes.
“You must be hungry.”
I had to smile. “Clara, I can wait to eat.”
“No, you must be famished after your travels—and you look thinner than I like to see you.” I wasn’t sure how she could tell anything about my weight under all the clothing I had on. “I shall visit the kitchens right away to find something nourishing and warm.”
I did feel hungry, despite the violent disruption of hurtling back in time and the drama of testifying at a murder trial. “Is there any poratta?” I remembered the fragrant soup that had been my introduction to medieval Italian cuisine.
“Poratta, Signora? I can find something better than that.”
“No, please, poratta is just what I’d like. It will be the best welcome home I can imagine.”
Clara smiled. “I am so glad to have you with us again, Monna Trovato.”
“I’m glad to be back,” I answered. Before I could say anything else, she was gone.
*
When Iacopo left again for Siena on business he would not explain, Immacolata had had enough of the Medici men’s secrets. After supper she went into Giovanni’s studium—in her mind Immacolata could not think of it as Iacopo’s—and began to look through the papers her son had left behind. The room was dark and cold, and smelled of melted wax.
Iacopo had become even more secretive when the magna Mortalità arrived in Firenze. The city went mad with terror and mourning, and with the fury of priests proclaiming the arrival of God’s wrath upon the earth. But there was something else, something hidden and dangerous in her son that seemed to have been spawned by the Mortalità itself. Iacopo left the palazzo heavily cloaked and hooded, and returned from his forays long after curfew. He burned candles at all hours writing in the drafty studium, and managed to find messengers to take his letters despite the horror sweeping the city, paying the carriers in gold. Immacolata was grateful that she and Iacopo had been spared the touch of the Pestilence, but it was as if she had lost her son to another incarnation of the beast. Iacopo had grown a long straggling beard and mustache, and became even thinner than before; the bones of his face reflected the light.
Immacolata paged through the ledgers, her eyes blurring over the columns of black ink. With Giovanni dead and Iacopo in Siena, the accounts were her domain again. This time, Immacolata went back to the days and weeks before her husband’s death. As she read the entries, she felt a chill at the back of her neck, as if a window had been opened to let in a winter’s draft. Several names repeated themselves next to increasingly large sums, names of Siena’s powerful casati families, well known even outside that city’s walls. Signoretti led the list but was not alone. Vast sums had gone to these men of Siena, men whose families angled for power in the commune. Next to each of the sums was a set of initials, the same letters each time, in Giovanni’s sharp, angular writing. The initials spoke to her, calling up a name she had heard many times in Giovanni’s conversation. He thought I was not listening, or if I listened, thought I could not understand. But she understood now: it was not the name of an individual, but the Brotherhood of San Giovanni Battista. Pouring florins into the coffers of Siena’s most powerful noblemen. What were you about, my dead, conspiring husband?
Now, with this new knowledge, Iacopo’s assumption of his father’s work, his silence, and his increasingly frequent trips to Siena took on even greater menace. But it was not enough to understand what drove Iacopo now. There must be more, something recent and urgent. Shivering, Immacolata turned to the cold hearth. And there she found what she sought: a half-burned letter, edges curling brown and streaked with ash.
For Messer Iacopo de’ Medici:
I have done your bidding. The painter Accorsi has been imprisoned by the Podestà’s police and will stand trial within the week. That will pay him back for bearing witness at your father’s trial. With success your family name will be cleared of any taint and the painter will hang from the gallows. Ser Signoretti granted me audience once he read the letter of introduction you sent, and has agreed to take the witness stand in your favor.
I will find you after the trial to collect my due. Will you be staying at your accustomed place? This time we have him.
With God’s help this letter will move you to ride quickly to Siena and bring my gold.
Penned by my hand on this last Day of December, 1348
G.B.
Siena
Immacolata held the letter tightly and closed her eyes. What was her child planning, her son who carried the taint of his father’s violence in him? She recalled Iacopo’s last letter, before her husband’s hanging.
Father is still in prison in Siena, and it is said they will hang him. Do you know of an Accorsi in Siena? He may have been an informant, I am looking for him. I will stay in Siena until the trial.
Accorsi must be the informant who had brought Giovanni to trial for murder. Immacolata closed her eyes and saw Iacopo as a swaddled infant, his dark eyes, so unlike his father’s pale ones, large in his tiny face, in those first days when the sound of a babe’s cry blew the stale air from their home. Her body had failed her, but her husband’s gold had bought them the child they had desired. He wanted an heir, she wanted a son. In Iacopo they both had their desires, mutual or not. And Iacopo would never know his true origins.
The fragile parchment crumbled in Immacolata’s fist as she gripped it. Iacopo had promised to return by the week’s end, and when he did she would speak to him. She would take him to their family chapel, and there the truth would be known at last, as it must, between mother and son. She left the studium, closing the door tightly behind her.