Tuscan Rose
Authors: Belinda Alexandra
Belinda Alexandra
For my family and friends
—thank you for your love and support
Florence, 1914
T
he man pauses in a doorway, swaying on his feet, before lunging again along the crooked street in the direction of the river. The distance he has covered across the city leaves him panting. But the fate of the infant he has hidden in the folds of his coat depends on him, and he is terrified that if he does not deliver her to safety, and return before his absence raises suspicion, they will both be lost.
The sound of hoofs on the cobblestones makes the hairs on his neck bristle. He twists to challenge his pursuer but sees only a merchant’s carriage laden with candles and bags of flour. He leaps into a passageway between two houses. The breeze is chilly but the infant cradled against his chest warms his skin. He pushes back his coat and glimpses her face. ‘God be praised for the deep sleep of babes,’ the man mutters, caressing the child’s cheek with his gloveless, calloused hand. He turns to the sky and tries to shut away the images of the last few hours, shivering when he remembers the bloodless face of the mother…and the screams: so terrifying he could not have imagined they came from a human being.
He creeps along the street and comes upon a group of youths loitering around a fountain. One of them catches his eye and breaks
away from the others: an emaciated adolescent with a moth-eaten scarf knotted at his throat. The man licks his lips and bares his teeth, but thinks better of the challenge and turns into a laneway. ‘
E allora!’
the youth calls out after him but makes no move to follow. The boy may have only wanted a match for his cigarette, but Florence is on edge with the threat of war and this is not the time to take chances.
The man emerges from the laneway. The slow-moving Arno glitters before him in the setting sun. The Ponte Vecchio is golden in the rays. He remembers the first time he saw Florence and how he was sure that it was the most beautiful city in the world. But he was too naïve then to know that beauty has two faces and that a splendid façade can hide a putrid soul.
The man lopes along the bridge, ignoring the calls of the jewellers who are packing away their wares and hoping for a last-minute sale. He tracks along the banks of the Arno before his prematurely greying hair and bulky coat make him conspicuous amongst the young lovers on their evening strolls. He darts into a street of narrow houses before turning back onto Via Maggio and at last to the piazza that smells of coal fires and damp stone. A wind is swirling the leaves around the cobblestones. He stands before the high walls of the convent. Darkness is falling and he peers at the stones, hoping to see a
ruota,
a foundling wheel. There isn’t one. The convent in the town he grew up in had a
ruota:
a revolving door in the wall where a child could be deposited with the nuns without them seeing the bearer’s face. But the medieval practice has fallen out of favour in Italy’s current spirit of liberalism and he has no choice but to rap on the door. There is no response and he strikes the wood with more force.
Footsteps scurry inside and the grate is flung aside. He is aware of being looked at but it is too dark to see the observer’s face. The door scrapes open and he squints at the black-robed figure before him. He senses the nun’s hesitation. It is not the custom of the sisters to welcome strange men in the night.
‘I have a child,’ he says.
He fears the nun will send him away. There is the Ospedale
degli Innocenti for foundlings, but he knows it is overcrowded and the babies often die from poor hygiene. The infant’s best chance is the convent. To his relief, the nun holds out a lamp over the steps and indicates for him to come inside. The man glances over his shoulder then follows her into the vestibule. The door thuds behind him, shutting out the encroaching night. The sound of singing drifts on the air: the sisters at vespers. The nun leads him to a parlour and turns on the light. She is young, no more than twenty, with a pleasant face. Her eyes pass over him and he sees the kindness in them. Suddenly all the strength it has taken him to steal the child to safety drains from him. Tears blur his vision.
‘Come,’ she says, directing him to a chair. His keen sense of smell detects the scents of rosemary and thyme on her sleeves. Does she work in the convent garden? Or the kitchen?
He unfolds his coat to reveal the child. She has woken up. Her fists are clenched into balls and her mouth is open in a silent cry.
The nun’s eyes glisten when he passes the child into her arms. ‘Shh! Shh!’ the nun comforts her. ‘You are hungry, aren’t you, little one?’
The nun turns to him. ‘The mother?’ she asks delicately. ‘Can she come to nurse her?’
‘No,’ the man answers, unable to hold the nun’s gaze. He realises she has assumed the child is his and grimaces. He lost his family long ago. Will she think his wife has died in confinement? Or that she has left him? Or simply that they are too poor and sick to feed another mouth, like so many others in the city?
‘A wet nurse is staying here to feed a baby whose mother is ill,’ the nun says. ‘We won’t have to send this little one to a
balia.’
The man has heard stories of the
balie:
women who take care of the abandoned infants for the convents and not always under hygienic conditions. It seems the child is doubly blessed and the man marvels at her turn in fate. He can see that the nun, beneath her robes, has a well-formed figure. She is the kind of woman, had she not been married to Christ, who would have made an excellent mother. The child is in good hands.
‘Will you visit her?’ the nun asks him.
The man shakes his head and the nun flinches. He watches her brush her finger over the child’s dusky-rose skin. She is a fine child, born to better things, he thinks. Now she will be poor. But better poor than…
The nuns start singing again. The uplifting sound touches the man’s heart. He has achieved what he set out to do.
‘If you change your mind, you can come back. I’ll remember you,’ the nun says.
The man doesn’t answer her and for a while they are silent. Then he says: ‘It’s best that she remains anonymous. Without her birth name and history she will be safe.’
The nun pales. She has the right to demand the mother’s name but he sees that she has understood there is danger in saying anything more.
The man strides back to the vestibule. The nun follows him. He takes the handle and swings the door open, admitting a cold gust of wind. He turns for one last glimpse of the nun and the child. As he does so, he notices the only painting that adorns the white-washed wall behind them: the Madonna and the Christ child.
‘May they watch over you both,’ he says.
‘And over you,’ the nun replies.
The man nods before rushing out into the night.
The nun takes the child to the refectory, where a warm fire is burning. Placing the child on her lap, she feels her wrappings to see if they are wet. Something protrudes from the baby’s thigh. The nun slips her hand into the wrappings and pulls out the object: a tiny silver key.
‘It’s magic,’ the nun says under her breath. She told the stranger that she would remember him and she is certain that she will. With his watchful eyes and grizzled appearance…he was a wolf in human form. But not the epitome of evil that the animal represented in legends. No, this wolf was kind—and badly in need of redemption.
R
osa Bellocchi was dying by inches. Her life was about to change and everything familiar was slipping from her grasp. She sat in the convent kitchen with Suor Maddalena as she had every morning since she had finished her formal education at the Convent of Santo Spirito. The kitchen was terracotta-tiled with a wooden bench running down the centre of it, and overlooked the courtyard and the statue of Sant’ Agostino. Despite the fire in the cast-iron stove, the early spring air had a chill to it and the women had moved their chairs into the patch of sunlight streaming through the window. Suor Maddalena peeled potatoes while Rosa sat with her flute in her lap, her spine stiff and her stomach stretched taut. She pretended to study the phrasing of the hymn perched on her music stand but her mind was racing.
Will today be the last time we sit together like this? she asked herself.
Suor Maddalena sang when she worked in the kitchen. The convent was a place for meditation, but the cavernous halls and maze of corridors acted like echo chambers and each morning the duet of Suor Maddalena’s perfect pitch and the sweet tones of Rosa’s flute would reach even the remotest parts of the convent. The nuns working in the vegetable garden lifted their heads and
strained to hear the heavenly music, and the older ones, allowed to rest in their cells after breakfast, dreamed of angels. But that morning Suor Maddalena was silent, absorbed in a grief her faith would not allow her to show. Rosa’s heart ached to think that she would soon be separated from the woman who was the closest person to a mother she had known. Their intimate relationship, the bond that had developed during their years in the kitchen, would cease and all future conversations would take place in the formal parlour through the grille with a ‘listening nun’ in attendance.
I will be on the outside of the only home I have known, Rosa thought.
Her eyes took in the words of the hymn—
The greatest joy is sacrificing one’s self for others
—and she was reminded of her interview with the Badessa, the convent’s Mother Superior, a few days before.
‘Although the outside world thinks our life is plain, we are content,’ the Badessa had told her. ‘Our faith is full of wonder and our community shares an understanding lacking in many families. But to live this life one must be called to it…and, Rosa, you have not been called.’
Rosa, whose blue-black eyes had been fixed on the painting of the Ascension on the wall behind the Badessa’s desk, opened her mouth to speak but closed it again. She had tried to feel ‘called’ but had never heard the still voice that the nuns spoke of with rapture.
‘I do feel called,’ she told the Badessa, ‘to something.’
The Badessa took off her glasses and rubbed her eyes before putting the glasses back on. ‘With your intelligence and wit I have no doubt that God has a great purpose for you, Rosa. But it is not here within the walls of the convent. It is not with us that you will fulfil it.’
Rosa’s heart beat violently. She had known this moment would come, but now it was here she was not prepared for it. The older girls who had been schooled at the convent had been sent into marriages with good Florentine families. But that would not be possible for Rosa because she was an orphan.
‘I have spoken with Don Marzoli,’ the Badessa continued. ‘And our priest agrees that you would be a good governess and is making enquiries with our patron families to see if such a position is available. After all, you have excelled in mathematics and music and can speak English, French and German.’
‘I could teach here…at the school,’ Rosa blurted out.
The sight of the Badessa’s raised eyebrows stopped her. It would be impossible to continue to live at the convent unless she were a nun. And she could not pretend she had been called, even though it meant she would be sent away.
‘When you become a nun you are still a mother and a bride, just in a different way,’ Suor Maddalena had once told her. ‘The day I was consecrated, my family was present and I wore a white veil.’ Some of the nuns had brothers and sisters who visited them in the parlour on festivals and special occasions, but their siblings’ lives were a world apart from the cloistered existence of the convent. Suor Maddalena had only been allowed to visit her family home once, when her mother was dying. Despite the Badessa’s assurances that the convent was a whole life, Rosa could not fathom giving away the good fortune of having been born into a family and having a proper name.
Suor Maddalena coughed, bringing Rosa’s thoughts from her interview with the Badessa back into the kitchen. Silent tears were falling down Suor Maddalena’s cheeks. The sight of them brought tears to Rosa’s own eyes.
‘Don Marzoli will find you a good position,’ Suor Maddalena said, half to Rosa and half to herself. ‘Not too far away. You can still come and see me.’
The tremble in the nun’s voice pinched Rosa’s heart. When she was a child, it had been Suor Maddalena who had soothed her nightmares and held her hand on the few occasions the pair was allowed to leave the convent together. The Badessa often warned the nuns about forming too close an attachment to the orphans: ‘They are like little birds that have been blown out of their nests in a storm. We feed them, keep them warm and educate them, but
one day we must let them go.’ Rosa knew that Suor Maddalena would be lonely when her ‘little bird’ had flown and she would not be able to show it. Rosa glanced at her hands and thought of her birth mother. She had no memory of her and imagined her to be a woman dressed in an azure robe with a beatific smile, like the painting of the Madonna holding the Christ child in the vestibule.
‘What are you thinking?’ Suor Maddalena asked. ‘Why don’t you play? It will make us both feel better.’
Rosa brought the flute to her lips but she couldn’t produce any sound. She had a sudden desire to cling to anything she and Suor Maddalena had shared.
‘Tell me again the story of how I came to the convent,’ she said.
Suor Maddalena shredded sprigs of rosemary and did not answer.
‘Please.’
When she was a child, Rosa had often pestered Suor Maddalena to tell her the story of the night the stranger had brought her to the convent. After each telling she would puzzle over who the man had been. Her father? A servant? But the mystery could not be solved and, when she grew up, Rosa had stopped asking.
‘Tell me,’ she begged Suor Maddalena now. ‘I need to hear it one last time. Tell me about the Wolf.’
A few days later Suor Maddalena developed a fever and was ordered to stay in bed by the Badessa. Suor Dorotea and Suor Valeria took charge of supervising the cooking and their inane chatter sent Rosa fleeing to the chapel with her flute. Unlike with her piano practice, Rosa never had to discipline herself to play her second instrument. The pure notes of the flute transported her to the heavenly realm as surely as the nuns’ prayers delivered them to it. To skip practising was the same as going hungry: it left her tight in the stomach and moody.
Rosa was in the midst of Handel’s Largo when she heard a car pull up in the courtyard. She glanced out the window expecting to see Don Marzoli’s Fiat but instead caught sight of a black Bugatti coming to a stop near the statue. It was unprecedented for anyone except
Don Marzoli or the doctor to bring a car into the convent and she wondered who had arrived to disturb the peace. She strained to see past the ilex tree and presently a chauffeur stepped out of the car and opened the rear door. First a man in a hat and with an overcoat hung on his arm appeared. He had a sportsman’s physique and a tanned face. There was somebody else in the car behind him but Rosa’s view was obscured by a branch moving in the breeze. All she glimpsed was a silver brocade sleeve and a white hand on the gentleman’s arm.
A few minutes later, a novice nun hovered at the chapel door. ‘The Badessa requires your presence immediately.’
Rosa swallowed and packed away her flute. It was her habit to take care with the task, careful not to press on the keys or force the pieces apart, because she knew how much the nuns had sacrificed to buy the instrument for her. But the thought that the man in the hat had come to claim her for employment made Rosa’s hands shake. She dropped the headpiece, denting it. The damage to her most precious possession would normally have distressed her but she barely registered the accident.
Rosa followed the novice to the Badessa’s office. Her bladder suddenly seemed full to the point of bursting. She excused herself to use the lavatory but when she sat down on the latrine she could not make herself pass water. If she tried longer she would test the Badessa’s patience by keeping her waiting. She stood up and adjusted her stockings, with no sense of relief and a sharp pain jabbing her side.
The Badessa was sitting at her desk. The man Rosa had seen emerge from the Bugatti was there but not the woman. He was striking, with a square jaw and heavy eyebrows. He had a fresh complexion for his age, which Rosa guessed to be about forty, and would have appeared younger if not for the lines etched on his forehead and around his eyes. From the man’s expensive silk suit and the gold signet ring on his finger, Rosa guessed he was someone of importance.
The Badessa spoke slowly as if to stress the significance of the occasion. ‘Rosa, I introduce to you the Marchese Scarfiotti.’
A marchese? Rosa was taken aback by the noble title. She curtseyed.
‘The Marchese Scarfiotti and his wife are looking for a governess for their daughter,’ the Badessa explained. ‘They are impressed by your accomplishments in music and your gift for languages.’
‘My mother and grandmother both attended the school here and were fine musicians,’ the Marchese said, crossing his legs and resting his elbow on his knee. ‘Although my sister was schooled at home, she also took music lessons here as a child. Our family has always prided itself on our musical accomplishments. I want my daughter to carry on that tradition.’
‘Perhaps you could play something for the Marchese now,’ the Badessa said to Rosa.
Rosa clutched her flute case to her chest and squeezed her legs together. Her bladder was excruciatingly full. But she dutifully took out her flute and played the Handel piece she had been practising. Despite her discomfort, she played the piece better than she ever had before. When she finished she could see that the Marchese was pleased.
‘The interpretation was sublime,’ he said. ‘Don Marzoli did not exaggerate your talents.’ The Marchese’s manner was almost fatherly and he had a pleasantly modulated voice.
‘The Scarfiotti family are generous patrons of music and art in Florence,’ the Badessa said, looking steadily at Rosa. ‘It is a great honour they have taken an interest in you.’
It was well known at the convent that Don Marzoli thought highly of Rosa, whom he considered advanced for her age. He must have gone to some lengths to find her a position with the Scarfiotti family. While Rosa was flattered she didn’t want to leave so to whom she was sent was of little consequence.
The Badessa nodded to the novice nun and Rosa realised that she was being dismissed. Her fate had already been decided. The Marchese must have made up his mind before coming and had only wanted to hear her play out of curiosity.
Rosa returned to the chapel and knelt in a pew. She stared at the
painting behind the altar of Christ on the Cross and felt like a condemned prisoner waiting for a stay of execution. Was it possible some miracle would occur, some change of policy, and she would be allowed to stay? Yet interest mingled with her despair. A marchese? Where did he live—in a castle or a villa? And why had his wife not accompanied him to the interview? Surely a mother would be keen to approve or disapprove of a governess for her daughter?
Rosa stood and went to the window. The Marchese’s car was still in the courtyard. He must be completing the final details with the Badessa. Rosa opened her flute case and assembled the instrument, intending to play
Ave Maria.
The sound of the flute would soothe her, she thought, but when she placed the mouthpiece to her lips she found herself out of breath and unable to play, as she had a few days ago in the kitchen. Her thumb touched the dint in the headpiece and she sighed, longing to tell Suor Maddalena what had passed. She was panicked by the thought of being separated from her.
Rosa packed away her flute and hurried to Suor Maddalena’s cell, but when she arrived she found it empty. Suor Eugenia was standing in the corridor.
‘The doctor came this morning and ordered Suor Maddalena be moved to the convalescent room.’
‘The infirmary?’ cried Rosa, knowing only the most ill nuns were sent there. ‘I must see her.’
Suor Eugenia shook her head. ‘It’s forbidden for anyone to go near her. There is a danger of pneumonia.’
‘Pneumonia?’
‘Suor Maddalena has an infection in her chest and must not be upset in any way.’
The blood drained from Rosa’s face. What if she didn’t get to say goodbye to Suor Maddalena at all? She rushed to her own cell and gave a cry when she saw the novice nun packing her clothes into a small suitcase.
‘You are leaving this morning,’ the novice told her. ‘The Marchese is waiting for you in the courtyard. The Badessa said she will meet you there.’
‘But Suor Maddalena is sick. I can’t leave now.’
The novice touched Rosa’s arm. ‘Be brave,’ she said.
Rosa rushed to the desk and scribbled a note for Suor Maddalena before taking her suitcase from the novice and running out to the courtyard. The Badessa was standing by the car with the Marchese. He seemed impatient to be on his way. Rosa had known for several days now that she would be leaving the convent, but everything was happening too fast.
‘Please, Reverenda Madre,’ she said, ‘would you give this letter to Suor Maddalena? I’ve had no time to say goodbye to her or anyone else. I will come and see her as soon as she is better.’
The Badessa averted her eyes. ‘Suor Maddalena will be pleased that you have obtained such a prestigious position. She made sure you received the best education possible.’
Rosa’s heart fell with the Badessa’s words. Was it possible that Suor Maddalena was not as sick as Suor Eugenia had claimed? Was she purposely being kept from Rosa’s departure? Rosa wanted to ask if she might speak to Suor Maddalena through the infirmary window but the Marchese handed his hat and overcoat to the chauffeur and the Badessa nudged her towards the car.