Ben helped me up and sat next to me. “Little B, what happened?”
“I fell off the bench,” I said. “Did the maiden know what was going to happen to the unicorn when she agreed to act as bait?” Ben didn’t answer. “She would never have agreed if they had told her!” Adolescents are very intense as a rule, and I was hardly the exception; I was almost at the point of tears. “I wouldn’t have done it if I had known they were going to kill him, KILL him! Never, never, never. . . .” My voice cracked, and I looked down at my shoes. One lace had come untied and I busied myself with it, not meeting Benjamin’s eyes.
“B, the unicorn comes to life again”—he lifted my chin with one hand and with the other pointed at the final tapestry—“and the red on its coat is not blood. It’s pomegranate juice, dripping from the tree above the corral.”
“That doesn’t make it OK! It’s, it’s . . . BETRAYAL!!!” He nodded mutely while I ranted. I stayed away from the tapestry room after that.
After my incident in the Cloisters, Benjamin took me to a lot of doctors. At the time, I thought I had done something wrong, something dangerous. I saw our family doctor, then a general cardiologist, then a specialist in cardiac arrhythmia. They all proclaimed me to be a perfectly ordinary twelve-year-old, at least from a cardiac perspective. Seeing Benjamin’s worry, I vowed to stay in the present, far away from the fanciful imagination that had triggered my outburst. It wasn’t until many years later that I understood the source of his anxiety—his own, unpredictable, vulnerable heart.
* * *
Instead of attempting another trip to the library, I spent the next day at home making Ben’s house feel more like mine. I started in the kitchen with its dark wood-beamed roof meeting thick white plaster walls. I spent a peaceful hour cleaning the old cast-iron stove while the breeze blew through the open shutters. I organized the small collection of chipped yellow and black enamel pots. As I picked up the smallest one, I remembered the first time Ben had taught me to make polenta in it. Finally, standing by myself over that piece of twenty-year-old kitchenware, I managed to cry.
When I could navigate the stairs safely again, I headed to the guest room—the room Ben had intended for me. I loved the metal-framed twin bed and its faded linen sheets, the creaky oak armoire where I hung my clothes, and the tiny sitting room that looked out onto the street. I found an old package of nails and a battered hammer and put up a few pictures I’d found at an antique store near the house, reproductions of old maps that showed how little the city plan had changed since the fourteenth century. As I hammered in the last nail, it crossed my mind that redecorating was the sort of thing you do when planning to stay somewhere for a while, somewhere you might consider calling home.
It was nearly two by the time I made it to the ground floor. I dusted off the chairs and tables in the sala and then went to the back. This had been Ben’s study, his private sanctuary. The desk was his only extravagance, an antique Biedermeier drop-front made of satinwood and ebony. I turned the small brass key in its lock and dropped the leaf to reveal six drawers adorned with ebony pulls. The first held a collection of fountain pens, nibs dry. Another was filled with scribbled notes on bits of scrap paper and old envelopes, and the next held obsolete Italian coins grouped by size in small glass jars. The fourth was devoted to scissors: small gold ones engraved to look like a stork’s beak, larger steel-bladed shears more useful than decorative. In the fifth drawer I found inks in every color of the rainbow—my fingers itched to dip one of the pens and write. The sixth drawer stuck, and I edged it slowly open to avoid cracking the veneer. Inside was a linen-wrapped package, and within that, a heavy cardboard folder with a card tied to the front that read: UNIVERSITà DEGLI STUDI DI SIENA. “Hello,” I said out loud. I’d been alone long enough to start talking to inanimate objects. A single page of parchment was pressed between the covers.
Florence, Italy, September 1347
To Messer Salvestro de’ Medici
My dear Cousin,
I am writing to you as I know not where else to turn. Since the death of his father my little Iacopo has been full of strange and troubled thoughts. I err in calling him “little” as he has attained the age of twenty-eight, but it is always difficult for me to remember that he is fully grown. Perhaps that is a mother’s lot. A mother of a son, that is—I have heard that daughters seem to mature well before their youth should be spent! In truth, Iacopo has always had a strangeness about him, even when he was a boy. Such serious ideas, and held so fiercely. I could never distract him from a grudge. I recall when he was three years of age, he deliberately upset his cup of milk, something that every child has done at least once. But I, heated from too many tasks clamoring for my attention, took his cup from him and would not give it back, despite his screams. When I relented he refused to drink. It was months before he agreed to have milk again, and I worried for his health.
Ever since the misery that has befallen his father, my husband, the execution that has become the tragedy of our noble family, Iacopo has withdrawn into himself. He broods alone and writes endless pages in a small cramped hand. I do not know what he writes. It does not appear to be a letter. He avoids the company of his peers, and of the women of good families I suggest to him, hoping that betrothal might brighten his future. If you think perhaps you might advise him, from the perspective of a gentleman, I would be grateful if you would write to Iacopo. Perhaps he will listen to another man, now that his father is gone. I pray to see the joy return to my son’s face, and lighten the shadow that weighs upon all our hearts.
With best wishes for the success of your business ventures in Venezia,
Immacolata Regate de’ Medici
Why did Ben have a more than six-hundred-year-old letter from a Medici woman with an executed husband and a troubled son? Did it have anything to do with Siena’s downfall? The letter made me apprehensive, but I didn’t know why.
Siena, June 8
Dear Nathaniel,
Today I went to the University of Siena, and met the archivist you recommended—Fabbri. He was helpful but looks like he’s spent enough time in the dark to develop vitamin D deficiency. I told him I was looking for information about the Plague in Siena. He was expecting a visit from me—thanks to your introduction. He actually bowed (so medieval!) and said he was delighted to provide me with material that would help me “imagine with great clarity the horror of the time.” I guess you’re bound to get some creepy reactions when you specialize in the Black Death. But Ben wasn’t creepy. Maybe someday you’ll come visit me here? I’m missing my old life. Or at least I’m missing you.
Love,