Wolves in Winter (6 page)

I did not speak all the time we journeyed across the warm plains of this new country, nor as we came under the walls of Florence, nor as we passed the great church when I wanted to cry out
– for its colours were of
marzepan
on carnival day, soft pinks and greens that seemed to call for me from Toledo; the only bright things in that cold city.

In the
dormitorio
of the palazzo, I sunk my teeth in the straw mattress as I came to waking. Every morning, I lay there, soaked and trembling, until the yellow light of dawn brushed
across the ceiling and I remembered who I was. Not Mura Benito, the bookseller’s child from Toledo. Not Mura who could wish up wolves and far away cities, mirages conjured in the stove-light
for a delighted little girl. Not Mura safe in her little room above the shop. I was Mora, the slave. Mora, the ugly orphan who was fit only for whippings and the whispered desires of foul old men,
so each morning, I put aside my dream wanderings, and I kept my eyes down.

I did not want, I did not feel. I sought the little ice-shard that was all I had of my mama, now, and instead of longings, I conjured hate.

CHAPTER FOUR

M
AY, AND FLORENCE IN ITS BOWL OF HILLS BEGAN
to vibrate with gathering heat. As the evenings grew longer, the benches set
into the walls of the palazzi filled with people, talking, eating, shawled women at their needlework with children scuttering at their feet. As the sky turned from gold to purple, the torches would
be lit in the braces at street corners, and candles would appear behind the linen screens covering the windows, and then the sound of singing filled the city – the
stomelli
beloved of
the Florentines – until those thin, sweet songs were replaced by the chiming of the bell for Lauds. This was the signal for householders to cover their fires and throw out their slops,
carefully secure the doors of their shops and obediently shut themselves in until the first hour next morning. Even kitchen slaves might take advantage of these brief hours of fresh air, and
imagine themselves in a garden, if they had the wit.

I did not. I still shuffled through the days locked in my carapace of bitter loneliness and longing, living only to search for my mother through my dreams. Until something happened that made me
see I could find something, somewhere in the city, that might get me free.

There were three of them.
Esclava
like me, a little older than I, all mouse hair and watery blue eyes in fat moonfaces, bought from the Venetian trade. We slept beside one another every
night. They were always gossiping and chattering, though they did not know I could understand their talk. I knew they went with the lads from the kitchens, allowing a pinch on their bared soft
breasts, or more, before the curfew rang and the steward came round with his lamp. Gropings and fingerings, coarse words and grubby giggles. Perhaps I would have despised them if I could have
roused myself, but I tried not to think on them, I tried not to think on anything. They felt it, though, my contempt, and they turned on me. At supper, my dish of beans and lard would be
accidentally knocked to the floor, so I would have to scoop my meal off the floor or go hungry. One night I found the pot had been tipped over my sheet. I had to shiver through the night in my
clothes, with the straw poking at my skin, then carry the stinking bundle to the laundry in the morning, and get a box on the ear for fouling the linen. It was strange, but it became almost a
distraction to me, through the long days, paying them no mind, containing each slight, each piece of bullying, adding to my store of hate. Sometimes I felt I would burst with it, and felt an odd
pleasure in pressing it down, in stopping up the rage inside of me.

Every week, before Mass, we were permitted warm water to wash with. I did not look at them as they stripped, I breathed through my mouth so as not to catch the scents released from their
chemises. When my turn came at the basin I dipped a rag gingerly into the water, trying not to look at the horrible scum of greasy tallow soap and floating hairs, and rubbed it quickly over my
neck, under my arms and between my legs, crouching with my back to them and my own chemise bundled over my shoulders. Suddenly, it was snatched away. I turned, trying to cover myself with my
dripping hands.

‘Ugh, look at that.’

‘
Che brutta
.’

‘She’s got nothing.’

‘
Poverina
, no wonder she’s too ashamed to speak.’

For a moment, I thought of hurling the copper basin at them, or of pressing its unfinished rim against one of their fat throats until the blood ran. I was twitching to do it. I tried to stare
them down, but they wouldn’t stop.

‘Don’t you ever want to do it, Mora?’

‘Don’t you want to feel what you’ve got, up there? But you can’t, can you?’

‘Disgusting.’

‘Deformed, she is. Shall we tell?’

They sniggered delightedly. They were creeping towards me. I thought they would push me over, slide their hands over me like vines.
Mind and be nice to the gentleman
. I could hear my own
breath, high and rapid. I thought I would explode. Then just as quickly they grew bored, the bells were tolling for Mass and they began to plait their hair, shuffle into their skirts. Carelessly,
one of them threw my chemise at my feet. I felt as though cold water had been dashed in my face. Was this what I would become if I stayed here? Would that be me in a year or so, tormenting some
poor new creature, grateful for an onion-breathed boy groping under my skirts? I saw our chamber with its truckle beds and the motes of dust drifting between the beams suddenly as sharp as a jewel.
This was not what I was, it could not be. This would never be my home.

As I trailed behind the Medici servants to San Lorenzo that day, I looked about me, at this world to which my grieving had blinded me for so long and I felt redeemed. I had so nearly been lost,
I thought. I had not listened to what my mother tried to tell me as I slept. I would not spend the rest of my life working out my strength until I was so useless I had to be grateful for a coarse
robe and a bowlful of scraps to mumble by the scullery fire. I would not. Something was waiting for me, I was certain of it, and I had only to calculate and consider how I might get away to find
it.

Behind the palazzo, on the San Marco side, there was an irregular space in the wall, left there when Piero’s great grandfather had pulled down a whole block of buildings to build his new
house. Two long stone benches were set at angles, coming to a point where a dusty chestnut tree shaded the corner with its ever-yellowing leaves. The kitchen people were absurdly proud of this
tree, ‘our tree’ they called it, and they guarded the privilege of sitting in its patchy shadow jealously. There were, it seemed, hardly any green places in the city, so to be a Medici
servant under a Medici tree was a fine thing indeed for them. As the evenings warmed, they made a holiday of it after the day’s work was done.

The customs of Florence about the separation of men and maids were strict; one bench for them and one for us. The first night, I was happy to sit with my bundle of clumsy needlework, happy to
sit at all and feel the strain of a day on my feet easing out of my muscles. As usual, none of the other women tried to include me in their gossip, none of them even looked at me. The next night, I
went to sit a little further away, towards the corner of the street. The night after that, I walked just a little way out into the wide sweep of the Via Larga, dominated by the forbidding walls of
the palazzo. And on the fourth night, I set myself free, alone in the streets of the city. So long as I was back for the first chime of Lauds, when we would be counted back through the gates of the
palazzo like so many sheep, I realised that no one would miss me at all.

For the first time, then, I was grateful for my ugly servant’s dress, for it made me invisible. I tied my headcloth more firmly round my forehead to contain the scraps of silver hair which
were beginning to grow again, and I moved at a deliberate dawdle, a slave on an errand making the most of her time. At first, my wanderings had no purpose. I had been confined so long to the
kitchens that I had almost forgotten the pleasure of moving for its own sake. For that first year, I had been so listless with sorrow I had seen no further than the tips of my clogs. Now, as I
walked the city, I began to come alive again.

The first time, I made my way along the Via Larga, a short distance to where the space opened up around the Duomo, the great cathedral, surprising amongst the dull bricks of the narrow streets
that wound so tightly a man could span them with his arms. In the evening, the steps of the church filled with people, ‘taking the mountain air,’ they said, for the coolness of the
stone. It was nothing like a real mountain, but I could see how one might think it of that huge humped dome, rising as high as the hills on the horizon. From the Duomo, I found my way to the old
marketplace, where braziers were lit to fry up messes of tripe and entrails, sharp with rosemary and stuffed between tranches of saltless Florentine bread. I was disgusted by the sight of spurting
white flesh, and astonished to find my mouth watering at the smell. I discovered the huge square in front of the Signoria, the government building, though I knew enough even then to know that the
palazzo with its high tower was only a façade: the real power lay behind the doors of the Medici palazzo. I walked to the riverbank and watched the bruise-coloured waters of the Arno flow
beneath the statues of the Trinity bridge and the crazy, jumbled-together houses of the Ponte Vecchio.

As I walked the city, I began to pay attention to its configuration, to the different moods of its districts, to the chatter and gossip I heard as I paused to take a drink of brackish, ferrous
water from a fountain or appreciate the shade of a crowded loggia. Until I left Toledo, I had never thought of the future, except as children do – that vague, unimaginably distant country
where I should be a grown-up. Now, passing from a broad piazza to a street of dark little shops, I was searching. Each evening, I tried to go a different way, as far as I could before the ringing
of the bells for Compline reminded me of the other servants beneath their sorry tree.

One evening, my walk took me to a church in a poor neighbourhood, the Oltrarno on the southern bank of the river. On every street was a stand covered in tiny wicker cages, each one housing a
cricket, each fiddling a love song, bringing to these busy streets the calming throb of a country twilight. The Feast of Crickets was a Florentine tradition, an old festival from the time before
the month of May belonged to Mary. It was the sort of thing my papa would have liked, and I was bending over a pile of cages, wishing I had a copper to take one back, when I heard a hissing
voice.

‘You, green eyes. Come over here.’

I was startled. My first thought was to run, that it was someone from the palazzo, that I should be whipped. The voice came from a pile of rags in the corner of the church porch. Then I saw a
head, bound in a red cloth, and a bony arm beckoning me.

‘Come on, I won’t hurt you.’ The voice was cracked and reedy, an old woman, though the turnip-like face inside the cloth looked sexless, it was so wizened. There didn’t
seem much to be frightened of, so I walked over to her.

‘Who’re you then?’

I was so surprised that I went to answer her, but I had been silent so long that all that came from my mouth was a hoarse croak. The creature nodded sympathetically.

‘Dummerer, are you? All the better, for them’s as got the gift. I’m Margherita, hee hee, Suora Margherita to those what pays. Let’s have a look at you, then.’

She had my headcloth off before I saw her hand move, and I felt her bony fingers raking through my hair. I was disgusted, but she seemed so fragile that I was afraid I should hurt her if I
pushed her away.

‘Pretty good, pretty good. Won’t have the boys after you, will you? Now, you sit down next to me, here, and have some of this.’

She scrabbled under the rags which covered her body, sending up a foul whiff, and pulled out a white linen napkin, delicately embroidered, which she unwrapped to show a glowing coral of quince
paste. Her dirty fingers tore it in half and passed a piece to me. I closed my eyes as I sucked at it, the first sweet thing I had tasted in so long, but she must have seen the surprise before the
greed.

‘Don’t go thinking as I stole that! Oh no, my little onion, that was given me, along with all sorts of other things. I’ve got all sorts of treasures under here, hee
hee.’

She was obviously mad, and smelly, and coarse-minded, but she spoke to me as though I was there, as though I was something more than a slave’s gown and a pair of working hands.

‘I was watching you. Servant, are you?’

I nodded.

‘Out where you shouldn’t be?’

I nodded again. I sensed that she would be disappointed if I tried to speak.

‘Well, you come along back here tomorrow, if you can. Would you like to earn yourself a few florins? For your wedding box! Hey, you, Nennis!’ She was calling to the man with the
cricket cages.

‘You give one of those to my new young lady. Brighten her up a bit. A good noisy one, mind.’

I pulled my headcloth back on, bewildered, as the man obediently selected one of the cages, no bigger than his palm, reached up the church steps and handed it to me. As he did so, the bells
began, and I grabbed at it rudely, knowing I should have to run half across the city.

‘Off you go then; mind and come back now,’ called Margherita as I headed off, my clogs in one hand and the frail cage held carefully in the other. As I ran through the emptying
streets with the little creature chirping, I realised that I did not have nothing after all. Whatever had caused my father to do as he did, whatever frightened my old neighbours in the Zocodover,
whatever the crazy old woman had seen in my face, that thing was a kind of power. And it was mine. I stretched the muscles of my thighs, my bare feet moving smooth and easy over the stones, running
as freely as I did in my dream of shadows. For the first time since I left my papa’s house, I felt almost happy.