A Golden Web Part 1

A Golden Web.

by Barbara Quick.

Prologue

A beautiful baby lay in her cradle, watched over by a nanny still nursing the infant's rosy big brother. The wet-nurse, both famous and feared for her knowledge of plants and nostrums, had placed a bowl of water beneath the cradle. Into this bowl she dropped three oak apples, plucked at break of dawn from the crooked branches of an ancient tree that grew outside the nursery window. nursing the infant's rosy big brother. The wet-nurse, both famous and feared for her knowledge of plants and nostrums, had placed a bowl of water beneath the cradle. Into this bowl she dropped three oak apples, plucked at break of dawn from the crooked branches of an ancient tree that grew outside the nursery window.

The baby had, the night before, looked up from the nanny's breast, smacked her lips, and said, as clear as day, "Delizioso!" "Delizioso!"

If the oak apples sank instead of floating, the nanny would know for certain that this child-with such an unnaturally bright look in its eyes-was a changeling, put in the cradle by a devil who had s.n.a.t.c.hed the real baby away with him at a moment when the nurse's attention was somewhere else.

She had her knife at the ready. She was watching the oak apples with such intensity-one hand on the good boy baby and the other on the knife-that she neither saw nor heard her mistress come into the room.

With the strength and swiftness born of her love, Signora Giliani wrested both the knife and her son out of the nurse's grasp and s.n.a.t.c.hed her baby daughter out of the cradle. The bowl of water, stained brown by the oak apples, spilled out over the flagstones.

"Leave this house!" she said, her voice raked by the horror of what had nearly happened.

The nanny looked not at her mistress but at the bright-eyed infant, who was watching everything unfold with a look of intelligence the nurse had never seen before, in all the babes she'd ever suckled. A word-and not just any word, but such a fancy word-at eight months old!

Signora Giliani spoke again. "Leave now, and G.o.d help you if I ever see you anywhere near my children!"

When the woman was gone and the young mother had stilled her heart, she allowed her winsome boy to stand by her while she unwrapped the infant and made sure she hadn't been harmed. She kissed the baby's silken shoulders, breathed in the good scent of her, then wrapped her up again, holding her safe and close.

"Alessandra, my angel!" she half whispered, half sang. Then she bent down and kissed her firstborn's blond hair. "Nicco," she said, looking into his blue eyes that were so like his father's. "You will help us watch over your baby sister, won't you?"

The baby heard her mother's voice accompanied by the comforting sound of her mother's heart-and she knew, though only an infant, that she was loved. She thought the word again that she'd said before-"Delizioso!"-one of the several words she'd come to a.s.sociate with feelings or things. Her world was a bright and s.h.i.+ning place, so filled with wonders that she was loath to ever close her eyes to it.

"If anything should happen to me, Nicco," Alessandra heard her mother murmur, although she couldn't understand yet what the words meant, nor the grief they portended, "you must stand by her always."

One

Nicco was scared. His tutor was going to burst through the door at any moment, and Alessandra was nowhere to be found. Not in her room, not in the library, not in the chicken coop watching the d.a.m.n chickens-who but his ridiculous little sister could spend hours watching chickens? Not in the barn, not in the kitchen, not in their tree house, not in the nursery. And today, of all days, when he was going to be grilled on Aristotle! at any moment, and Alessandra was nowhere to be found. Not in her room, not in the library, not in the chicken coop watching the d.a.m.n chickens-who but his ridiculous little sister could spend hours watching chickens? Not in the barn, not in the kitchen, not in their tree house, not in the nursery. And today, of all days, when he was going to be grilled on Aristotle!

He eyed the window, fitted with the waxed linen screen-the only one of its kind in Persiceto, imported all the way from Rome and such a source of pride to his stepmother. She'd smacked him hard, more than once, for falling against it or touching it with sticky fingers. He could just pull it open on its clever hinge, if he dared. In two minutes flat, he'd be across the courtyard and onto the towpath. If he was lucky, he could catch a barge all the way to Bologna.

The entryway door clanged shut. Oh, please, sweet Jesus, Oh, please, sweet Jesus, Nicco prayed, Nicco prayed, let Emilia offer the blighter a nip of brandy! let Emilia offer the blighter a nip of brandy! Dear Emilia, watching over each of them in turn since Alessandra was a baby, usually carried a little flask of spirits-for emergencies, she always told the children-tucked into her bodice. Dear Emilia, watching over each of them in turn since Alessandra was a baby, usually carried a little flask of spirits-for emergencies, she always told the children-tucked into her bodice.

Nicco ran his fingers up and down the page he was supposed to have mastered, wis.h.i.+ng he could coax or comb the words into some order that would make more sense to him. What a blasted son of a monkey that Aristotle was, no doubt having made it his life's purpose to trip up brave and honest boys in the sleep-inducing twists and turns of his prose!

There was the sound of giggling outside the door. That's it, Emilia-reach for the flask and give him an eyeful of your fles.h.!.+ Just buy me a little time! What does it matter if he looks? Your bosom is as goodly a thing to look upon as any cathedral. That's it, Emilia-reach for the flask and give him an eyeful of your fles.h.!.+ Just buy me a little time! What does it matter if he looks? Your bosom is as goodly a thing to look upon as any cathedral.

With a sinking heart, Nicco heard the sound of a slap. Oh, G.o.d, Emilia-how could you? That slap of yours will transform itself into a beating for me faster than my dog gets fleas! Oh, G.o.d, Emilia-how could you? That slap of yours will transform itself into a beating for me faster than my dog gets fleas! Nicco scratched at a bite beneath his jerkin, then swore, cutting off the oath just in time for it to turn into a greeting for his fat, fl.u.s.tered, and now red-faced tutor. Nicco scratched at a bite beneath his jerkin, then swore, cutting off the oath just in time for it to turn into a greeting for his fat, fl.u.s.tered, and now red-faced tutor.

"Fra Giuseppe!" said Nicco, bowing low and wincing in antic.i.p.ation of his tutor's customary greeting-a blow with his stick across Nicco's b.u.t.tocks, if he was lucky, rather than on his face or hands. "For the errors you are about to make," Fra Giuseppe would say in Latin, as if this qualified the action as part of Nicco's education.

Nicco raised his face when no blow came, and looked with a sudden rush of hope and grat.i.tude into the bloodshot blue eyes of the friar, who always smelled of mice and drink.

Fra Giuseppe waited until Nicco was upright and then caught him with a snap of the stick at the backs of his knees, making them buckle. "Stop staring, you blockhead! Thinking of escaping, were you?"

How did he know? Nicco got to his feet, careful to keep his eyes trained on the floor. He prayed to St. Anthony to come to his rescue, but then stopped himself short when he realized what a sin it would be to call for the sudden death of a priest, if only such a one as Fra Giuseppe, in minor orders and known as one of the most energetic sinners in the parish. Would it be a sin to pray for the friar to be struck with palsy, so that he would be unable to wield that stick of his? Or to come over paralyzed all of a sudden, just like the swineherd, Tommaso, who was found in the piazza just two days past, alive but as stiff as a plank, unable to move even so much as a finger?

"Aristotle," came the tutor's grating voice. He bent his face close to Nicco's, so close that Nicco held his breath, willing the priest away from his nostrils before he was forced to inhale. "It's a newly cut stick, my boy. Not yet broken in."

Nicco had thought it felt less pliant than the old one-the backs of his knees were still stinging. What a plague all teachers were! How could Alessandra possibly long for their company with the same ardor Nicco felt for the horse his father had given him to mark his fourteenth year?

And no sooner did Nicco think of his sister than she appeared in the doorway, a curly-haired shrimp of a girl with her green velvet gown all spattered in mud.

"Fra Giuseppe," she said, eyes downcast and curtsying just like a proper lady. "Emilia has requested your help with a knotty spiritual question, Padre. She is waiting for you in the hut behind the rose garden."

A tender smile floated across the friar's face. "Ah, yes, I certainly must go to her. You!" he said to Nicco.

"Yes, sir."

"I will question you when I return. Um-"

"Yes, Padre?"

"If your dear mother comes to check upon our lessons..."

"We will be sure to tell her, Padre, that you were called away on an urgent spiritual matter," said Alessandra, dropping another curtsy. Nicco thought she was laying it on a bit thick.

But the friar only licked his lips as if he'd just tasted something wonderful. "Yes, an urgent spiritual matter." He turned to Nicco again. "What a shame, blockhead, that you do not have even a finger's-breadth of the mental agility of this mere girl!" Then he was out the door with the swiftness of an arrow.

"Well done, dear Sis!"

"For the moment, perhaps. But he's going to be piping mad when he gets to the hut and finds no one there but the gardener, who's already in a horrible mood because I trampled his turnips, quite by accident, while trying to catch the new piglet that had wandered off-and now I've ruined my gown, and Mother is surely going to kill me."

"Don't call her Mother, not to my face." Nicco noticed a purpling bruise on the back of his sister's hand. "Has she struck you again?"

Alessandra did her best to hide her hand in the folds of her sleeve. "She makes me call her Mother."

"Well, she shouldn't, G.o.d knows, the way she treats you!"

Alessandra leaned up close to her brother, taking in the good smell of the outdoors that always clung to his clothes. "She's not as bad as some."

"She is going to kill you when she sees the wreck you've made of your gown!" said Nicco as he pushed her gently away. "Isn't that the one Father brought back for you from Firenze?"

"It was the piglet, Nic-he was terribly slippery, and the turnips had just been set out in their rows."

Nicco tousled his sister's hair. "You're as hopeless a well-behaved girl as I am a scholar. Which reminds me...!"

Alessandra turned away from him to examine the book that stood open on its stand. "Oh, I pa.r.s.ed this out last harvest season. Look, let's just go over it so that you can at least do a pa.s.sable job when he comes back, and I'll see if I can find an excuse to stay close by, so that I can help you out with a whispered answer, if need be. Did you know that he's deaf in the left ear?"

"I had no idea, you witch! How do you know these things?"

"I pay attention, sausage-head. Now, you do the same-and hurry up, because he'll be coming through the door again before the noontime bells are rung. If we're lucky, he really will find Emilia, and she'll be nice to him after that lordly slap she just gave him."

"I thought you were in the pigsty!"

"One hears these things if one stays alert, Nicco. Come on, now. 'Aequiuoca dic.u.n.tur quorum nomen solum commune est...' 'Aequiuoca dic.u.n.tur quorum nomen solum commune est...'" Alessandra muttered the rest of the Latin phrase. "This works out to something like 'Things are said to be named "equivocally" when, although they have the same name, they're actually different things.' It's a way of talking about the relations.h.i.+p between the language we use to describe things and the things themselves."

Nicco looked at her blankly. "What difference does it make what I call a thing?"

"Okay, think of it this way. Mother and our stepmother are both, in our language, una donna una donna-a woman. But you and I know there's a world of difference between them, even though the same word is used to describe them both."

An expression of understanding dawned on Nicco's face. "b.l.o.o.d.y h.e.l.l, Alessandra, you're too clever by half!"

Two

They were not ten minutes into parsing out the pa.s.sage from Aristotle when Domenico, caged inside his baby walker, b.u.mped up against the half-open door. Aristotle when Domenico, caged inside his baby walker, b.u.mped up against the half-open door.

Alessandra managed to catch her youngest sibling mid-fall. "Dodo, my little love! What are you doing out of the nursery?"

The two-year-old was all smiles at the success of the journey he'd taken on his own. He threw his st.u.r.dy little arms around his sister's neck, crowing his own version of her name: "Zan-Zan!"

"He doesn't even have his booties on," said Nicco. "Madame our stepmother will be livid if she finds out he's wandered off on his own again. Was it you or Emilia supposed to be watching him?"

"Emilia-but never mind. Look how tall he's getting, Nicco! I think babies must grow in the nighttime-he already needs a new band sewn to the bottom of his gown."

Alessandra gathered Dodo into her arms, smoothing the feathery tufts of his blond hair. "Doesn't he look like an angel? We must get Old Fabio to paint an image of him in the new book he's working on."

"Old Fabio seems much more inclined to use devils than angels in his decorations these days."

Just then, Emilia herself, rosier than usual and spattered in what looked distinctly like blood, appeared in the doorway, wringing her hands. "I am undone!" she wailed.

"Why, Emilia," said Alessandra, handing off the baby to Nicco, "what's happened?"

Emilia, a full head taller than twelve-year-old Alessandra, and twice as wide, nevertheless managed to collapse into the child's arms. "It's the friar," she sobbed into the chestnut-brown curls. "I gave him a piece of meat and a bowl of wine, feeling rather badly at the way I'd handled him earlier. And he no sooner had a sup of it than he clawed at the air and came over all possessed, barking and snorting like Satan himself!"

"Oh, G.o.d," groaned Nicco, "it is my doing!"

"Hush, Nic! And then what happened?"

"Why, the Devil must have grabbed him by the hair, for he fell straight backwards!" Emilia wept harder. "And there he lay, his eyes rolled back and the earth just beneath him shaking so hard, I thought it would open up and swallow him!"

Alessandra looked accusingly at her brother. "Did you poison the wine, Nic? You could have killed us all!"

"I didn't touch the wine!" Nicco struck his forehead with his fists. "I wished Fra Giuseppe dead today. I prayed to St. Anthony to strike him dead. But I took it back-I swear!"

Dodo began to cry.

"Are you sure he's quite dead, Emilia?" said Alessandra.

Emilia looked up, wiping her nose with the back of her hand. "I never thought to doubt it. He fell like an oak, and there was blood everywhere."

Alessandra used the hem of her gown to blot Emilia's tears. "'By doubting we come to inquire, and by inquiring we perceive the truth.'"

"Oh, do shut up, Alessandra! Emilia, for the love of G.o.d, take us to the old sinner before the Devil claims him!"

They ran then, all three of them-with Dodo perched on his brother's shoulders-outside the house and across the grounds, chickens scattering before them.

Fra Giuseppe's body was sprawled on the raised and fenced platform of flagstones-safe from wolves-where one could overlook the garden. A circlet of blood spread out beneath his head, looking uncannily like a halo. The expression on his face, though, suggested a vision of unspeakable horrors.

"What ill luck," wailed Emilia, "to die without the chance to make his peace with G.o.d!"

"It would have taken this one a month to confess all his sins," said Nicco, nudging the friar's body with the toe of his boot. "He's as dead as a pike, G.o.d save me!"

Alessandra bent down, close enough to stare into the friar's gla.s.sy blue eyes-then farther still, so that her cheek was resting on his chest.

"I know you love learning," said Nicco. "But this is disgusting, Alessandra. He was a loathsome man!"

"Hus.h.!.+" she said. With her cheek still pressed against the friar's body, she felt along the length of his arm, finding the underside of his wrist and squeezing there.

"Make way, for I'm going to be sick!"

"Oh, do be quiet and help me, Nicco!"

"Help you what? He's dead."

Alessandra stood up and pushed Nicco closer to the body.

"I'll be stuffed before I'll kiss him good-bye!"

"Don't be an idiot! He needs to be stomped on, not kissed. But it has to be just right, and I don't have the strength to do it myself."