The Shepherdess of Siena: A Novel of Renaissance Tuscany (14 page)

C
HAPTER
34

Siena, Pugna Hills

J
ANUARY
1575

In spite of the lessons and work with the horses at my padrino’s, I still had to guard the old and fallow ewes at night. I preferred the company of the sheep to my aunt. There was a soothing quality to the rhythmic sound of the old girls chewing their cuds.

Even though I was still a pastorella, spending half my life with sheep, I noticed the village of Vignano began to treat me differently.

Shepherd boys who had never looked my way found an excuse to move their flocks nearer my ewes on the hills. When I brought the washing down by the stream, girls argued over who would take the rock next to mine to scrub their clothes.

“What is it like to ride a horse?” they asked, their eyes gleaming with excitement.

“How do you keep from falling off? Does the wind whistle in your ears as you gallop?”

But not everyone was pleased.

Nothing I did could please my aunt, of course, but I soon discovered Zia Claudia had an ally in the church, Father Alfredo, an emaciated old priest whose dry skin clung tightly to his skull like a corpse’s.

Watching him from the pew, I could see the veins stand out on his forehead when he got angry. He shook his skeletal finger at the congregation, threatening us with God’s wrath.

He especially cursed the pagan Brunelli, “a horse sorcerer amongst our Vignano flock.”

One Sunday, the priest delivered a sermon on the responsibilities of women and our duties—given that we were made from the rib of Adam.

“Girls and women should serve God and Man, in that order, which was prescribed in the Bible.” His mouth was wrinkled so tight, it was a wonder he could spit the words out. “Shepherding is a noble profession.” He switched his focus, as if my zia had written the sermon for him. “Though some may think it beneath them.”

“Pay attention, ragazza,” said my zia, pinching me.

“Stories of shepherds are woven throughout the Bible,” said the priest.

The congregation nodded their heads, the motion sending the scent of greasy hair and rarely washed bodies through the close, damp air of the tiny church.

“Who were the first visitors to the manger in Bethlehem? Is God the Lord not likened to a shepherd? Are we as innocents not referred to as his lambs?”

“Amen,” whispered Zia. She slid her eyes toward me.

“A shepherd’s livelihood gives time for reflection and prayer,” said the priest. “Those hours can either be spent in devotion or idled away contemplating the devil’s own ambition.”

Franco, my cousin, sat directly in front of me, for he alternated Sundays with his brother, one always with the flock. My cousin smelled of sheep dung mixed with lye soap. A foamy crust still clung to his right ear where his mother had made him wash. Now he turned around, casting an accusatory look at me.

“Look away,” I hissed. “Your ugly face makes my breakfast leap into my throat.”

His mother tugged him by the ear, making him look back up at the priest.

“Shh!” Zia Claudia admonished.

“Give thanks for your profession, be content with your lot,” said the priest. “To reach beyond the station God has assigned us is a serious sin indeed. It is the devil who urges us to reach our greedy hands up, trying to grasp the stars that belong to God alone!”

The priest fixed his eyes on me. I stared back defiantly, itching to get on a horse and ride far away from the dried-up old clergyman, my vicious zia, the smell of the congregation. Most of us were shepherds. The wet sheep dung clinging to the soles of their boots sickened me.

Time for reflection, yes.

And every moment I thought of horses.

I toted a bucket to the stables from the well. The water sloshed over the warped wooden sides. My padrino was tacking the last nail of a horseshoe into a mare’s hoof.

“The thrush is better,” he said. “It’s the power of a new moon.”

“What?”

“
Una luna piena
excites nature,” he said. “What is growing will grow faster. What is good, better. What is bad, worse.”

“What do you mean, Padrino?”

“Say a mare has thrush, rotting at her foot. If she is on the mend as the moon swells, her flesh will heal until it is sweet as a colt’s. But a horse who has not responded to treatment? As the moon fills, the stink of its putrid hoof will fill the air.”

He nodded sharply to underline the message.

“Never start a colt under a full moon. You invite the devil.”

The devil?
I looked up at him, thinking of what my zia had said, how my padrino would never cross the threshold of a church.

“A moon enhances. Only fools fight the moon,” said Padrino, giving the mare a pat on the rump.

“Padrino,” I asked. “What is a pagan?”

He removed the nail from his mouth and pounded it into the perforation in the iron shoe. He set down the horse’s hoof, straightening his back with a wince.

“Your zia has been talking to you again about me?”

I shrugged. “The priest talked about pagans.”

“Ah! The priest. Yes, of course. If we were all pagans, the nasty bastard would be out of a job.”

“So what is it?”

Padrino untied the horse from the iron ring by the anvil. He led her to the stable highline where he tied the horses.

“She walks fine,” he grunted. “Her new shoes suit her.”

“A pagan. What is a pagan?” I insisted.

His fingers fashioned a quick slipknot while he answered. “A pagan is anyone who does not worship the way you do.”

Yes. That would describe il mio padrino in the priest’s eyes.

“But
. . .
then will that soul not enter the gates of heaven?”

“Heaven?” he scoffed. “My Virginia, cara. I do not presume to know where I will go after this life. When I die, I have only one wish. I want to be buried in Corsano, where I was born. Under the cypress tree near our stone stable, where my father and I buried so many horses in my youth. Beyond that
. . .
well, I will not pretend I know what happens after death. All I can try is to do good here on Earth. Healing and training horses. Horses are my connection to the sacred.”

I nodded my head, drinking in the smell of horse and straw. I had always loved the majestic cypress trees lining the road to Quattro Torra. And the connection to horses—

“Padrino,” I said. “I think I will be a pagan, too.”

C
HAPTER
35

Siena, Palazzo
d’
Elci

M
AY
1576

Giorgio Brunelli watched the men wrap the painting in velvet and secure it in a trunk.

It was the last time anyone in Italy would see
Leda and the Swan
.

As they carried the trunk away, Giorgio felt a hollowness in his chest. He swallowed hard, watching the coach drive away with the painting.

“I know,” said the maestro, cupping his hand around the young man’s shoulder.

Giorgio was astonished to find his eyes hot with tears. He blinked them away.

“Michelangelo has touched your soul,” said the maestro. “Keep that feeling, keep searching for that emotion in your art, my young Brunelli. Discover what haunts you. Then you will be a true artist.”

Giorgio sighed, his breath catching in his throat.

“How can I ever forget this painting? And yet, maestro, my greatest fear is that I
will
forget. I will forget the perfect lines, the emotion in Leda’s face and body. I am terrified it will become a smudge in my memory.”

The maestro shook his head. Then he took Giorgio’s hand in his. He held it gently.

“Not with this hand of yours,” he said. “Our fickle minds may forget dignity and beauty, but the hand of a true artist will never forget.”

C
HAPTER
36

Fiesole

J
UNE
1576

Firelight played on skin beaded in sweat.

Pietro looked up from between his mistress’s moist thighs. He wiped his mouth, smiling with pride. He glimpsed the slightest flicker of her black lashes, a glimmer of light from her green eyes.

“Did I pleasure you, my lady?” he asked, climbing up her body and kissing her parted lips. He drew back his head to study her reaction.

Carlotta arched an eyebrow, her hand crossing her brow languidly.

“It was gratifying. And did you receive pleasure in turn?” she whispered. She gently pushed the de’ Medici prince off her body.

The linen sheets were damp and tangled around Carlotta. She sat up and unwound them.

Pietro frowned. “Lie back down with me,” he commanded.

“Not until I remove these fetters,” she said. “I feel as if I am in bondage.”

She kicked free of the sheets, and her face relaxed in victorious relief. When she lay down beside Pietro, she saw the mean glitter in his eye.

“I asked, my dearest, if I pleasured you?” said Pietro.

“Of course.” Carlotta raked her fingers through her tangled hair.

“Of course?” he said. “Is that all you can say? Did I not send you into ecstasy with my tongue?”

Carlotta laughed.

“It is a very useful tongue indeed. Perhaps not meant for poetry and wooing, but it serves quite well as you have employed it.”

Pietro set his lips in a sour pout.

“My mistresses in Spain glow with my touch. They beg me for more, worship—”

“Ah,” said Carlotta. “You are speaking of the Spanish whores, my lord?”

Pietro sat up abruptly.

“Not at all!” he said, scowling. “Courtesans of the highest breeding.”

Carlotta shrugged, continuing to comb her long hair with her fingers, plucking at a knot, tangled from their lovemaking.

Pietro grabbed her neck passionately. He threw her against the mattress, covering her throat and the tops of her breasts with kisses.

“You drive me into a frenzy of lust, Carlotta. I cannot think of anyone, of anything but you. These months in Madrid have made me wild with desire—”

He loosened his grip on her neck, kissing her large, plum-colored nipples.

“And your wife?” she whispered. “Did you not miss her? Your son?”

Pietro’s lips lingered above hers just long enough to answer.

“I love only you. Would that I be rid of them both!”

Pietro washed in the basin of water set out for him in the kitchen. He shivered as he doused his face with icy water, drops dripping through his cupped hands.

Carlotta could see by his distracted motions that he was scheming. A quick shiver seized her, a dark cloud obliterating the sun. He dried himself with a linen cloth and looked up at her.

“I want poison. Poison that will kill, leaving no trace.”

Carlotta flinched.

“And why do you ask me, amore?”

Pietro glanced at the herbs that dangled from the rafters above her head. Carlotta’s kitchen was an upside-down garden with bunches of dried flowers and brittle leaves sprouting from the beams, growing top-down.

“My little prince,” she purred, “I hear it is your brother the granduca who concocts the most potent poisons in Italy. Far more subtle than the Borgias’, it is rumored.”

Pietro’s face buckled in an ugly frown. He grabbed her wrist, swinging her around to face him.

“It is treason to speak of the granduca in such a manner!”

“Ah, now you accuse me of treason. Such lovely compliments. Let go of my hand, Pietro de’ Medici.”

Pietro tightened his grip on her hand. For a moment they glared at one another, then he dropped it.

“That is better,” she said, her nostrils pinching as if she smelled something rotten. She turned away from him.

“Carlotta—you
do
have poisons, do you not? Everyone says you are a witch!”

Carlotta turned again to regard him, a furious smile half-born on her face.

“And you, my lord, believe them?”

“The Strega of Fiesole, they call you. Your cures heal those who are sick.”

“And my poisons?”

“Kill without trace,” whispered Pietro, looking over his shoulder, though they were always alone in the house. “That is the potion I am in need of now. Give it to me!”

Carlotta pinched herbs from overhead, hurling them in the boiling cauldron. She whirled around to face the de’ Medici prince, her face red and beaded with sweat.

“Well, you are wrong, Pietro de’ Medici. You think because I share my bed with you that I will help you to murder an innocent.”

Pietro stared at her, perplexed.

“How dare you address a de’ Medici thus!”

“How dare I? I dare indeed. That and more. Maybe it is time for you to visit your wife and child at Palazzo Pitti.” Carlotta stared down at the bubbling liquid in the cauldron. “I shall send a boy to the stable to bring your horse at once.”