A Golden Web Part 9

"It's only that I know-"

"You know what?"

Tonio swallowed hard. "That you're traveling with your nanny."

Alessandra lowered the knife without even meaning to. "How did you find out?"

"I saw her-well, I don't want to say it, seeing as she's old. I saw her..." He cupped his hands over his chest and then, thinking better of it, lowered them down to his belly, "when she was getting dressed. And last night I saw her kiss you g' night." Tonio looked wistful. Alessandra was fairly certain he had never had anyone kiss him good night.

She looked at him as if with a new sense of respect (even though all she felt was pity for him). "You're a smart lad."

"Look-just because I'm poor and you're rich, it doesn't make you any older than me, right?"

Alessandra tried to think, once again, what Nicco might do in the situation. "Mind your place!" she said. And then, throwing an arm around Tonio and speaking low into one of his dirty ears, she added, "It's true enough-she couldn't bear to be parted from me. She suckled me as a baby and she'd continue to do so, if she had her way."

"Women!" said Tonio.

"They're all the same." Alessandra gave Tonio a friendly slap on the back and then hoisted up her breeches. "I told her no one would buy that disguise of hers. You won't let on, though, will you?" She got her little moneybag out and found a coin in it-a small copper one-and gave it to Tonio. "It would hurt her something terrible."

"Seeing as how you've put it so persuasive-like..." Tonio smiled with satisfaction at the expensive word that came to him, as sweet and miraculous as the honey the bees pulled out of the air.

Alessandra tried to hide the sigh of relief that escaped her. "I'm glad to know I can trust you. There may be things that will come up, things that-" She jerked her head toward the room she shared with Emilia and said softly, "-she or I might need done."

"I'm your man, Sandro." A look of anxiety pa.s.sed over Tonio's features. "Is it all right to address you so?"

"When it's just the two of us, you may use my Christian name."

Alessandra knew that she had an ally now at Signora Isabella's-and thanked her lucky stars she had an older brother.

"Papa," said Pierina a few weeks after her betrothal. "Dearest Papa!"

"I quake with fear when I hear those words," said Carlo.

"Sweetest Papa!"

Carlo held up his hands as if to ward off a blow.

"Darling Papa!"

"Slay me now, Pierina, and have done with it!"

She kissed him on the cheek and scooted close enough to rest her head on his shoulder. "You know I can't marry until after Alessandra has her wedding."

"What of it?"

She laced her arm through his. "Can't she be persuaded to have it sooner?"

Carlo put a bit of s.p.a.ce between them. "Are you in such a hurry, my poppet?" He looked more closely at her, examining her luminous skin and clear blue eyes. "You're not-"

"No," said Pierina, perhaps a little too quickly. "But I want to start my married life without delay."

"You have time!"

"Who knows how much time any of us has on this Earth? And you know how Alessandra is-she will put off her marriage as long as she can, because..." Pierina looked a little guilty. "Because she doesn't love her fiance, does she? Not like I love my Giorgio!"

"Alessandra has not met her fiance, Pierina."

"And you shouldn't let her meet him, either-not till the wedding! She's bound to find some objection to him, despite the brilliant match you've made for her." She lowered her voice. "You do not know my sister like I do, Papa! She is unnaturally stubborn."

"Whereas you are docile and obedient?"

"I would be, forever and ever, if you hurried things up a bit. We could even have the weddings on the same day-wouldn't that be lovely?" Pierina looked very pleased with herself. "We could have one big feast instead of two."

Carlo spoke sternly. "You seem to forget your place, Pierina, as my second daughter."

"Oh, I haven't at all, Papa! I know that Alessandra's betrothal is the only reason why Mother has agreed to let me marry Giorgio, besides wanting to keep me close by. One brilliant marriage is, after all, as much as any family needs."

Unlike her big sister, Pierina had no gift for seeing when she was being teased-and always rose to the bait.

Carlo a.s.sumed his most thoughtful expression, as if he were suddenly reconsidering everything. "So," he said slowly, "if Alessandra does not marry the man I've chosen for her, then you will agree to make a brilliant marriage for us instead?"

Pierina pushed away and stamped her foot. "How you vex me, Papa!"

Her show of pique banished Carlo's playful mood. "You will do as I say, daughter!"

Pierina knelt before him. "I must marry Giorgio! A fortune-teller told me I would marry a dark-eyed man from Padova."

"There are many men who fit that description, and from far more ill.u.s.trious families, who could probably be convinced to take you as a wife."

"Please, Papa! Alessandra will be happy enough, once she gets used to the idea."

"And do you not think that your sister deserves the sort of happiness you feel?"

"Oh, Alessandra does not even know what it means to love someone. All she cares about is Aristotle."

"To love someone." As Carlo repeated his daughter's words, a shadow pa.s.sed over his features. "Well, my child, I am glad that you, at your tender age, have pondered so deeply the ways of Earth and Heaven, and understand them better than your sister-and perhaps better than everyone else in this household."

Pierina looked at him fearfully. "Can't Nicco make a brilliant marriage," she asked in a small, chastened voice, "if Alessandra won't?"

"Enough!"

"Forgive me, Papa!"

"Go to your room! Ask G.o.d for His forgiveness, and to mend your spoiled ways."

Eleven

On Sat.u.r.day morning, the crier pa.s.sed by Signora Isabella's, announcing that the water at the neighborhood bathhouse was good and hot. announcing that the water at the neighborhood bathhouse was good and hot.

"Quick, Emilia!" said Alessandra, shaking her awake. "Change into your gown! We must go bathe today-I feel I will die if I don't."

Alessandra had already pulled on the chemise, gown, and kirtle that had lain folded and hidden away.

"I will, with pleasure, Mistress! But how will we leave this house without being seen?"

"Just dress yourself! We'll look out in the hallway and pa.s.s quickly. And if anyone sees us, perhaps they'll take us for a couple of wh.o.r.es ordered up by our other selves."

"Oh, the whole thing makes my head spin," said Emilia, who was nonetheless getting up and dressing with unaccustomed alacrity. "I can't keep track of who I am, one minute to the next."

"Well, in a very short time," whispered Alessandra as she cracked the door and gazed out into the hall, "both Emilia and Emilio will be much cleaner and more comfortable. Go now!" They darted out of the room and down the stairs, both of them giggling at the irony of disguising themselves as women.

They slowed their pace, both out of breath, as soon as they'd rounded the corner.

"How odd to be out and about in Bologna, dressed like this!"

Emilia was looking all about her, touching her gown and her unloosed hair, and looking down at her newly restored bosom, with obvious pleasure. "Do you really think they'd stop you from going to lectures if you showed up as yourself?"

"I don't want to risk it. I haven't seen a single other female student."

They knew they'd reached the bathhouse by the cloud of steam coming from the windows. "This will be a treat for me, Emilia-far more hot water, I'll wager, than in the laundry tub you bathed me in at home."

Alessandra paid their entry and bought soap for them. They pa.s.sed by some private curtained rooms, where servants waited on the couples within-illicit lovers, all of them, who could only meet in secret, away from their homes. Emilia sighed at the thought of all the wickedness in the world. "Maybe it's not such a bad thing for you, after all, to hide yourself, out as you are among all those men and their wanton desires."

"Yes," said Alessandra as she pulled off her clothes. "The only feeling Sandro inspires among them is rivalry." She lowered herself into the water. "Oh, Emilia-I've died and gone to Heaven!"

Alessandra tried to be as inconspicuous as possible during lectures. But when she knew a subject well, she would approach the professor afterwards and arrange to be examined. In this way, all within the s.p.a.ce of her first nine months in Bologna, she pa.s.sed her first year's exams, then the second year's, followed by the third.

The fame of this brilliant and mysterious young man spread quickly, as did all news in the student quarter. People were calling him another Abelard. All sorts of stories sprang up about where he came from. He was, by some accounts, an Arabian prince traveling with his eunuch. There was another rumor that made the young man a nephew of the King of Burgundy. The story that was soonest quashed said that this Sandro was actually a girl from a wealthy family, traveling with her nanny, both of them dressed in men's garb. No one believed that one, and it was soon dismissed as altogether implausible.

Alessandra withdrew more and more frequently into the sanctuary of the seven churches of Santo Stefano, to ask forgiveness for the sinful pride she took in her accomplishment, as well as for the sin of disguising her gender. She confessed once a week to the oldest, most wizened priest she could find, and made sure he saw the coins she put in the offertory. To her great comfort, he seemed every week to have forgotten everything she'd confessed to him the week before. She took Communion from him and hoped he wouldn't give her away.

In the dappled light and shadows of the innermost sanctuary of Santo Sepolcro, she knelt on the cold stone to pray for the courage to carry on. She prayed to her mother to intercede for her, to plead her case and send her the strength and determination that she knew she needed every waking hour.

Sometimes she stayed there until her knees had no sensation, too confused and afraid to step out into the light again. Why would G.o.d have given her a keen and questioning mind if He didn't intend her to use it? Why would the world and all of Nature be laid out like a book, waiting to be read and understood, if the Creator had not desired her to discover its secrets and draw wisdom from them? Wasn't it a sign of respect to try to better the lot of the creatures G.o.d had favored above all others with intelligence and reason?

Woman was created last of all, after all the animals and after Adam himself. Why would G.o.d have done it thus if He intended woman as a lesser creature? Would He not then have made her just after the animals and before Adam?

Alessandra sat there in the twilight of the church, surrounded by the entombed spirits of the dead. She knew she would have to oppose all the powers on Earth to accomplish what G.o.d had given her the ability and ambition to do.

Alessandra was sitting among the throng of scholars at a lecture by Mondino, taking careful notes on everything he said and jotting down questions she hoped to ask him later. Halfway through, she turned around, aware of someone's attention trained on her rather than on the eminent doctor. She felt it as surely as if an insect had been hovering around her head-and she wished that, whoever he was, she could as readily swat him away.

He sat behind her and a little bit to the side. He was handsome and well made for that bookish crowd, and he wore the clothes of a gentleman, although carelessly, as if his wealth was of little concern to him. His eyes were dark and yet full of light. He met and held Alessandra's eyes, which flashed at first with annoyance and then softened. She took in the rich binding of his notebook, his chiseled profile, and his beautiful hands-and then she turned to her own notes again.

Her heart was beating fast. What business did he have, looking at a fellow student so intensely?

Even though the lecture was one that Alessandra had been greatly looking forward to hearing, she found herself having trouble concentrating on the rest of it. And when it was over, she resolved to wait until the following week to speak to Mondino.

Her hands felt cold while she corked her ink bottle and put her pen in its case, and yet the sun was s.h.i.+ning and there wasn't a cloud in the cerulean sky. She stole another look over her shoulder; there were those eyes again-and this time it seemed they were laughing at her.

She swept her things into her satchel, gave him a withering look-the sort of look she imagined Nicco would give to any fellow who dared to stare at him so impertinently-and walked away with more swagger than she usually affected, trying especially hard to look both taller and older.

She thought of him, though, during the whole of her walk back to Signora Isabella's. Of all the scholars who'd come to her father's scriptorium-of all the traders pa.s.sing through Persiceto, and of all the people in the town-she'd never seen any person before whose face and mien pressed themselves as precisely into her memory, as if he had been an engraved seal and she a melted pool of wax.

She hurried away as if fleeing the sweet laughter in those brown, expressive eyes, wondering if she would ever see him again and knowing that she shouldn't.

Intimate friends.h.i.+p would not be on Sandro's path-how could it be? Anyone who drew too close to her was bound to discover her secret.

That evening, sticking her head out the window of her room for a look at the full moon and a bit of fresh air, she saw him-at least, it looked like him-on the street below, standing as still as a statue. Whoever it was bowed and evanesced into the shadows. But the incident was alarming enough for Alessandra to resolve to find new lodgings.

When Nicco came to look for Sandro at Signora Isabella's, he was told that the young gentleman and his servant had left Bologna, called away on urgent family business.

This bit of news left Nicco scratching his head.

In fact, Alessandra had sent a note to her brother, informing him that she was seeking out new lodgings and he shouldn't send any correspondence until she could tell him precisely where. But the messenger and Nicco had pa.s.sed each other on the road.

Nicco wandered rather helplessly around the student quarter. Everyone he asked, it seemed, had heard of the academic prodigy named Sandro. But no one had the slightest idea how to find him.

The rumor of Nicco's quest grew its own wings, with a proliferation of adornments. Nicco was an agent of the King of Burgundy...a secret a.s.sa.s.sin...Sandro's h.o.m.os.e.xual lover...Sandro's brother...Sandro's creditor...and (best of all) Sandro's unbelievably homely sister, who had donned male garb to come search for him.

Tonio, always keen to follow the scent of money, found Nicco at a tavern, waiting for the joint of meat roasting on the spit there.

"'Scuse me, Your Honor," said Tonio, simultaneously bowing and wiping his nose. It was a bad season for colds that winter, with dripping noses everywhere.

The joint was taking a long time, and Nicco had drunk quite a few bowls of hot mulled wine by then. As a result of this, as well as his sense of fatigue and discouragement, his only words to Tonio were "Go away!"