Chiara – Revenge and Triumph (18 page)

"Sit, Lorenzo," said Antonia. "Chiara is doing all that can be done. There’s nothing more that you can do, except making everybody nervous too."

"She must not die. Oh God, please don’t let her die," he pleaded, sinking to the floor next to Maria.

As the evening progressed, Maria became delirious, thrashing around. Chiara and Alda continued sponging her face with cold water.

"Giovanni, please fetch more water from the creek," requested Alda.

He took the pail, put on his cloak, and disappeared in the dark.

When he did not return, Alda asked: "What’s taking him so long?" She went to the door, searching the black night. "Carlo, find out what’s happened. He may have lost his way."

Carlo also donned his cloak and went outside. They waited again. Neither returned. Chiara and Alda looked at each other. It was Antonia who voiced their suspicion: "I bet they have fled, the cowards."

Chiara got up and took the other pail. "I’ll get water and I will be back."

"I don’t doubt it, child. You’re not one to run from perils."

Chiara found the other pail at the corner of the hut. She took both and returned a few minutes later.

They continued their vigil the whole night.

During a rare moment of lucidity, Maria took Chiara’s hand. "Am I dying?" she whispered.

"We will not let you die, dear Maria."

"I think I’m dying. Will you pray for my soul?"

"You must not give up. You must fight to live, and we all will pray for you," replied Chiara, wiping the tears that rolled down her cheeks.

Maria closed her eyes, a faint smile around her lips. After a while she whispered: "Will you take my confession?"

 "Yes, I will, but you’re such a good and blameless woman, there’s nothing that God can reproach you of."

"I have sinned… I haven’t gone to confession… I’ve been envious…"

She opened her mouth to say more and then lapsed into unconsciousness. Lorenzo was sobbing silently at her side, holding her hand. A while later, Alda brought a bowl of oil. Chiara dipped the tips of her fingers in it and then lightly touched Maria’s eyes, nostrils, lips, and hands, murmuring at the same time: "In the name of the father, the son, and the holy spirit, we forgive you your sins and pray for God’s forgiveness."

Then she too broke into silent sobs.

By morning, Maria’s delirium abated. She fell into a state of extreme prostration. Her breathing irregular, wheezy. She opened her eyes. They did not seem to recognize anybody and then they glazed over. She had stopped breathing. Alda wiped a hand over Maria’s eyes, closing them for the last time. Lorenzo remained slumped next to his wife’s body, looking at her face, his eyes drained of tears, murmuring time and again: "She was a good woman."

They buried her later that morning, wrapped in her cloak. Pepe dug the grave, and Chiara said a prayer. The two shepherds stayed away. In fact, they tended to walk away whenever one of them came close.

Later that day, Pepe went down to check on their carts. He reported that they had been partially uncovered and various things, mostly belonging to Giovanni and Carlo, had been removed. He had put things in order again and covered the carts.

Lorenzo was not himself anymore. He sat in the corner where Maria had lain, completely oblivious to his surrounding. When asked a question, he seemed to come from afar and rather than reply would simply repeat: "She was a good woman."

Chiara was not surprised when he too developed a high fever and lapsed into delirium. Antonia admonished Chiara and Alda for staying so close and sponging him off.
Does she expect me to abandon him now?

He never regained consciousness and died in the morning of the following day. Chiara performed the last rites shortly before his last breath. Pepe reopened Maria’s grave and they laid him next to her.

Chiara and Alda sobbed on each other’s shoulders, sharing their grief. Antonia told Pepe to remove all the bracken and burn it. He, Chiara and Alda collected new bundles. The physical activity had a healing effect and took their thoughts at least temporarily away from the deaths.

Over the next few days, they all watched each other, looking for signs of the disease, praying that they would be spared, fearing that they might not. Chiara and Alda talked about dying, about their regrets of all the things that they still would like to do and now never might. A week passed and their hopes of being spared rose. Even the shepherds did not avoid them any longer and sold them more of their goat cheese.

10

Via Flaminia, summer 1348

We followed Antonia’s advice to remain in our refuge in the hills well into the beginning of summer. She said that the pestilence traveled slowly from place to place before it ran out of victims to carry off, although the speed with which this plague had conquered the Peninsula, it surely must have exhausted itself more quickly.

The four of us settled into a routine. Pepe looked after the supplies of wood for our fire. Alda and I foraged in the forest and pastures for edible mushrooms, greens and roots, and the tender new shoots of bracken and dandelions, to supplement our slowly dwindling supplies of grains. And Antonia? The winter had not been kind to her. So we told her to guard the hut and sitting in the sun when the skies were clear. We bought cheeses and even the meat of several lambs and young goats. The only thing we missed was a cup of wine with every meal.

Up in these pastures, protected from the censure of people, I enjoyed once more the freedom offered by my boy’s tunic and breeches. Alda cut my hair to shoulder length and I loved wearing it loose. Occasionally, I took the horse for a ride to visit the shepherds higher up in the hills. I even ventured down to the Via Flaminia. This is how I discovered that the plague had run its terrible course. Travelers reported that towns and villages were mere skeletons of what they had been before. Some villages had emptied out completely, and many towns had lost half or more of their population. The disease had spared neither rich nor poor, peasants nor nobles, nor did it spare the priest who had wanted the Inquisition to save Antonia’s soul.

If it had not been for the terrible tragedy of losing Lorenzo and Maria, our time up in these lofty heights could have been a time of happiness and pleasure, a time of enjoying the rebirth of the land, feasting our eyes on the multitude of flowers and laughing at the frolicking newborn lambs and goats. I was reminded of that other spring full of hope and happiness in my previous life. It seemed that was so long ago, not simply the year before.

Most days I would read aloud a few pages in "La Comedia" to my three companions and I studied the Latin translations of Sophocles’ ‘Electra’, which I had bought months before in Florence, enjoying the challenge of translating the verses into the Tuscan vernacular. Pepe built a little dam on the creek, hidden in the forest, where Alda and I bathed regularly and I felt clean as in my previous life as the lady of Castello Nisporto. The young shepherd lad discovered our hideout. We only laughed at his clumsy curiosity.

But over it all hung a deep hurt, the demise of I Magnifici and the death of two people I respected and loved. Lorenzo, fair, competent, whose encouragement and approval had made what I am now, and Maria, the most private person I have ever known who could transform herself into such a powerful and convincing actress. Many nights before I found sleep, I raged against the injustice of their death. The way God allowed the plague to claim its victims made no sense. I began to doubt whether God even cared or whether he simply let dice decide who lived and who died. I had also lost confidence in the integrity of priests, worse, I had lost respect for them. They were no different from other men, driven by vices and corrupted by power. How could such people hear confession and absolve sins? I knew that I was treading on dangerous grounds. If somebody guessed these thoughts and denounced me to the Inquisition, my soul could become the subject of their investigations.

But it went deeper. I began to wonder about God. Was there a God, as the Church asserted, as Saint Thomas of Aquinas claimed he proved? If God was the sum of all goodness, why did he create for every good thing also its opposite, hate for love, sorrow for happiness, anguish for peace, callousness for caring, avarice and greed for generosity, sickness for health. If he wanted us to be good, caring, loving, generous, peaceful, why did he give us the choice of the opposite? To test us? I would condemn a mother who deliberately tempted her child to be bad, callous, greedy, but told her that she would get a treat if she was good, caring and unselfish. Was this the God who cared for men and loved us all? I could not imagine that God omniscient would be that devious. So the only conclusions I could draw then were that there was no God and his experiment with humanity had gone astray, or that if God was omniscient and omnipotent then he was a cruel, rather than a benevolent God — a God who played with us like a cat plays with mice — or that there was no God at all, and I preferred that conclusion by far. And if that was the case, what was the purpose of the Church and its teachings? I did not even want to think on that thorny question. These thoughts kept me awake many a night.

How I wished I could talk about this to my father! Although he was a pious man who strongly believed in God, he was also an open-minded man with a highly logical mind. He would be able to tell me if my reasoning was faulty and how. I remembered how we discussed Plato’s polemics deep into the nights, after I had read the Latin translation of ‘The Republic’. But was my father still alive or had the plague carried him away too? Whenever that last thought snuck into my mind, a forlorn emptiness invaded my heart.

I guessed that Alda and Pepe worried about their daughter and her family in Prato. So I promised to send a letter of inquiry the moment we reached one of the bigger towns in Umbria.

Although we had avoided talking about the future, as spring turned into summer, we could no longer avoid it. Of I Magnifici only a pitiful rump was left, nor was it possible for the three able-bodied of us to travel with three carts. Some serious decisions had to be taken. We had ample money left. Lorenzo’s purse alone was almost as much as the combined possessions of us four. Furthermore, I was confident that the knife-throwing act could easily support us. I was still grieving for Lorenzo and not keen to team up quickly with other players to form a new troupe.

Necessity forced a decision on us. We would take the three carts down to the Via Flaminia and sell a good portion of what we had to travelers and merchants. We would keep no more than what we could easily fit into the big cart, pulled by the horse. Antonia would ride the donkey.

In preparation for our departure, Pepe and I practiced our routines, adding a few new twists to our knife juggling act, such as having two additional knives travel in a high arc above the other four. The two shepherds were our faithful and appreciative audience.

Late June we said good-bye to our refuge. I gave the old shepherd the promised second gold coin and slipped a few silver solidi to his nephew. I think they were genuinely sorry to see us go.

When I looked into the mirror for the first time after four months, I saw a stranger. In my mind I still expected to see the chubby face of the innocent, trusting girl who lived in a little castle on Elba. The person looking back was a woman. At first glance, her age could have been anywhere from twenty-five to thirty-five. Gone was the softness of the teens. Her face reminded me vaguely of my mother, more boldly cut. There was something hard and determined in her eyes, something I could only describe as ‘knowing’. Life had carved its marks, and I suddenly realized that it had also carved its marks on my inner self. I was no longer Chiara da Narni, the daughter of a minor seignior, but Chiara da Narni, the woman in charge of her own life and who would never again let other people decide her fate.

I Magnifici gave the first performance in Cagli. It seemed we were the first group of traveling players visiting the city since the plague. The crowds were small but people seemed to be in a mood for frivolities, convinced that having cheated death they deserved to have fun. Alda played a convincing arlecchino, and people flocked to Antonia to have their cards read.

On the second day, I noticed a girl of about fifteen and a boy a bit younger, covered in rags, eyes far too big for their emaciated faces. They had been there the day before and both were begging, shunned by almost everybody. When we were packing up after the show, they watched us. I waved the girl over.

"Would you like to earn some money and help us carry our things back to the inn?" I asked.

She only nodded. I let her carry the drum, while the boy helped Pepe with the wooden board. After stowing our things away in the court of the taverna, I gave her four denari, enough to buy four loaves of bread and invited her to share food with us. Clutching the money tightly in her dirty hand, she hesitated. Her brother nudged her and she nodded again. I saw her gulp down the bread. She did not even dunk it in the watered-down wine. I was reminded of another young girl, a year before, and could not help identifying with her. I also knew immediately what I had to do. So there were six of us when we left Cagli, slowly making our way to Perugia and from there back into Tuscany. Almost by default, I had fallen into the role of corago, a role I enjoyed.

Veronica and Jacomo, the names of the pair, how many times have they repaid me for that act of charity and compassion, how richer has my life become through them?

And I learned another of life’s truth, namely that the past has a nasty habit of catching up with me. A cousin of the bandit I slew when we crossed the Apennines on our dream to conquer Venice, another Baglione, wanted revenge, and I was forced to kill again.