Page 13 of The Stone Witch of Florence
TWELVE
THE WOMEN’S WARD
1335, City of Florence, Convent of Sant’Elisabetta delle Convertite
S oon enough, the pilgrims reached the walls of Florence, and Ginevra passed under the studded doors of the Porta San Gallo for the first time, into what felt like a whole new world. She breathed in the odor of crushed pomegranates and rare incense, and as her party wound through the irregular web of streets, she gaped up at pink buildings that shot toward the sky and terraced out over thin roadways, so that in places the clouds overhead were visible only in quick slivers. Genoa was the city of her birth but here , she knew in an instant, was the place of her heart.
In the midst of all the churches and shops and palaces, everywhere Ginevra looked, the saints of Florence were manifest as statues and frescoes, as effigies held aloft by processing confraternities, watching over the city they had blessed with growth and prosperity. It was the most congested place she had ever been, and she found herself jostled through crowds of painters, stonemasons, woodcarvers, and goldsmiths.
She saw men of God and base women decorated with bells. Servants dressed in the colors of their masters, and sellers of parsley who squatted on corners. One of the pilgrims had been to Florence before, and he pointed out all that he knew to Ginevra as they passed, including the men of great consequence, whose ancestors had been vicious lords of the country, and who now made untold fortunes importing Venetian glass, painted books, and English wool. They squeezed past crowds of the wretched poor, crying out for bread, who came as pilgrims to beg for relief in front of Florence’s famous relics, housed in gem-studded shrines. And all along the way, Ginevra spotted the little limps and sores and watery eyes and thought, I will fix you, and you, and you.
Her walk ended at the front door of the Augustinian convent of Sant’Elisabetta delle Convertite, set into the street-facing stucco wall that adjoined their modest chapel. The pilgrims handed Ginevra over to Sister Agnesa, the cousin of Monna Vermilia.
After a brief and awkward introduction, Ginevra presented Monna Vermilia’s letter and the package of stones. She waited nervously for Agnesa to open the package, but the nun put it away in her purse without a word. Agnesa was not quite so old as her cousin, her face lined but not sagging, the whites of her eyes still clear.
“Walk with me now,” she said, her gray habit billowing around her as she stepped quickly down the hallway of red tile floors and striped plaster walls. At the end of the corridor was a large wooden door, which Sister Agnesa pushed open to reveal a long rectangular dormitory lined with small wooden cots.
“Here is the hospital. We are one of the largest in the city, with twelve beds,” she said with pride. “Its purpose is to provide shelter for poor pilgrims, who travel far to pray before the city’s relics. Your job will be to keep it clean and see to their needs.”
“Gladly, Sister, but—I can do more than that—surely in her letter, Vermilia mentioned...”
“Do you find the role of housekeeper beneath you? Hygiene and preparedness are the cornerstones of our work.”
“No, Sister, forgive me,” said Ginevra, perplexed. “But I thought, I mean, Vermilia implied—that the convent had use for me specifically. There wasn’t a girl already in Florence that would have sufficed as housekeeper?”
“Surely, there was. Now, if you will hold your thoughts for a moment, so I might tell you mine? Good. The reason I will take you and not some other girl is this way, come.”
They walked through the hospital and exited the other end into a yard, surrounded by high walls on all sides and filled with the stuff of daily life: vats for laundry, chicken coops, a vegetable garden, a privy. In the yard, three young nuns wrapped wool threads with golden foil, and an ancient nun sat and smiled on a sunny patch of earth. And against the far wall, there was a large wooden lean-to that Ginevra took as a shed for animals. It was here Agnesa led her. Will they make me a swineherd, too? she worried. But when she stepped inside, Ginevra gasped at the interior. Instead of piglets rooting in apple cores, a proper brick floor covered in reed mats, and another dozen beds, several occupied with very pregnant women.
“Hello, ladies,” said Agnesa.
The women murmured back their greeting.
“Here is the other work we do,” she said, turning back to Ginevra. “A place for women to have their babies, when they wish nobody else to know. We do this because we remember our sisters outside the city wall, who must sell their bodies and on occasion find themselves in this predicament. My cousin says you understand discretion, yes?”
A woman tied to a ladder and consumed by flames flashed in Ginevra’s memory. She nodded vigorously.
“Good. You will help them as you help the pilgrims, and you will not mention this part of our work to anyone. It’s the sort of thing where word is passed to those who need it, and no one else. Understood?”
Ginevra nodded again. Being privy to clandestine activities made the prospect of maid’s work much more palatable. She was sure they’d get to the magic and healing eventually.
“Good. Now, the other part of what you’ll do here, as a laywoman, is see to our affairs outside the convent. The sisters are not permitted to leave. And if you’re representing us, you must be an example of what a decent lady ought to be like and, my dear, being clean is one of those things.” They went back out into the yard, to the area where the laundry was done. In the middle of all the drying underthings, a small cloth-lined tub had been prepared, filled with warmish water.
“Off with your clothes and into the bath,” said Agnesa.
Ginevra looked nervously around for some private corner to undress. She could see gold-spinning nuns sneaking glances her way from across the yard.
“No time for modesty now,” said Agnesa. “Every sister here had another life before in the brothels; you think we haven’t seen it all and some besides?”
And with that, Ginevra was out of her dusty garments and into the tub.
“What’s that you wear on your neck?” said Agnesa immediately.
Ginevra’s hand clutched at her coral. “It’s nothing! A gift. I have always worn it since I was young...”
Agnesa gently pulled her hand open and observed the carved amulet. “You know, lots of our pilgrims carry their own little charms. Corals, bits of horn, prayers tied up with string...though this one has a presence, doesn’t it? But you might take it off now, since you’ve removed all your other clothes.”
“But—Vermilia said I was never to take it off, ever.”
“She did? My cousin said that?”
“Yes. It was she who gave it to me... after I punctured the malocchio .”
A brief shadow passed over Agnesa’s face. “How does it feel now? Is it hot? Is it cold?”
Ginevra shook her head.
“Well, if Vermilia told you to keep it on, you’d better do it. We are not so foolish here as to ignore... Just keep it to yourself. Don’t go showing it off.”
“It’s only because I am naked, Sister, that you know of it.”
“See that it stays that way. And you still need to say your prayers to the Virgin, even with that.”
Ginevra nodded and sunk down into the tub, feeling rather self-conscious. She was used to being helpful (and dressed), not a bother who didn’t understand how things were. But the water did feel nice. She decided to enjoy the wash. The air of this new city smelled fresh and clean, and she wanted badly for her person to be as well-kept as its surroundings.
Of course, if you walked along the river Arno that cut the city in two, or the breeze blew the wrong way, you would catch an eye-watering waft of sewage, but this happened in every city in the world. A small price to pay for living inside protective walls.
The real smell of Florence was something else. It came from air that blew in through snowy mountains and valleys full of chestnut blossoms, and when it got to the city, it mixed with the pleasant odors of cooking from the markets and the great houses. Not fish fried in stale lard, like in Genoa, but bread baked with finely milled white flour, fruits boiling in spiced wine, and young chickens, stuffed with lemons and rosemary, roasting on spits. So Ginevra relished the rough scrubbing with stinging lye soap, until she was pink as an apple and her pores empty of the salty Genoese grime. She did not flinch when the nun brushed her hair a hundred times with scratchy boar bristles, turning her brittle plaits soft and golden. The braids were wound back up with ribbons and then covered in a new white linen veil so her hair could stay clean as she went about her work.
And her old gray dress—the spilled wine that had so distressed her years ago was now but one stain among many. This tired garment was given to the rag pickers, and Ginevra was gifted a white linen shift to wear next to her skin, and a brown dress to wear over it with a long apron that tied attractively around her waist. A small purse was suspended from the apron, and it was here she put her pilfered stone to keep safe. On her feet, soft leather slippers that fastened at the ankle and came to points at the toes.
Now it was as if the nun’s bath had worked its own kind of magic. Ginevra glowed like a star and any fool could see there was something about her not commonly found in a ward at a convent.
Satisfied, Sister Agnesa brought Ginevra to a whitewashed cell, where she would sleep with another servant girl, Taddea, who was also scrubbed clean and wearing a pretty brown dress. Taddea was directed to show Ginevra around and explain to her the workings of things, and the two young women were left on their own.
Taddea had been born at the convent, and the nuns took care of her after her mother ran away. She looked Ginevra up and down, and then her round face spread into a happy smile and she embraced her, glad to have somebody else share the workload.
“I’ll show you everything, don’t worry,” she said. She took Ginevra first to the kitchen with its huge hearth and glowing embers, where a sister stirred a giant pot of groats. She showed her the dormitory where the nuns had their cells, and then took her back outside and introduced her to the weaving nuns who had spied on her bath.
Ginevra nodded shyly at their friendly greetings, her eyes drawn to the sparkling spools in their laps.
“The silk guild gives us gold to spin into threads for tapestries,” Taddea explained. “We make money from this, from our eggs, and from leasing out the bakery across the street.” Ginevra tried to absorb it all, amazed that a girl her own age could know so much about business.
“And HERE,” said Taddea, taking Ginevra’s arm and bringing her back to the other side of the yard, “is the garden where we grow all sorts of herbs and flowers that can’t be bought anywhere else.” Ginevra looked closer and saw that what she had taken for an ordinary vegetable garden was filled with all sorts of wonderful leaves and blossoms.
“Oh! Is this a...a plantain flower?” she asked, kneeling down.
“It is!” said Taddea. “How’d you know that? It’s special for the women’s ward.”
“I’ve only seen it dried up before!” said Ginevra, excitedly. “In Genoa, we’d use it to help with all sorts of things.” Here she dropped her voice down. “Mostly for people’s bottoms.”
“That’s what they use it for here, I think,” said Taddea, not in the least bothered by talk of bottoms. “Now come with me to the chapel. It’s the best part of the whole convent.” She led them back through the nuns’ dormitory to a discreet door that opened into the side of the sanctuary. They paused to cross themselves at the threshold, and stepped into the cool space, the interior frescoed all over with the tales of Christ and Santa Maria Magdalena.
“There,” Taddea said, pointing to a carved wooden cupboard behind the altar, “is the relic for the church. Brought here by our founder, Fra Simone Fidati da Cascia.”
Within the cupboard, Ginevra saw a large crucifix, a crystal orb fixed at its center. Something was suspended in the center of the orb.
“It’s a piece of bread, soaked in the blood of Jesus Christ himself .” Taddea crossed herself again and Ginevra followed suit.
“I’ve never seen such an important relic before, besides from far away in processions,” Ginevra said, impressed that Taddea was allowed to just walk up and point to it whenever she felt inclined.
“It was a real, actual miracle. A parish priest put a piece of the host inside a book of prayers to bring to a sick person. When he opened up his book, the bread was soaked in the blood of Christ. He was afraid of it, so he brought it to Fra Simone.”
“In my parish in Genoa, we just had a rock that touched a piece of San Francesco’s robe once. I don’t think it ever did any miracles.”
“Well, this one does. All the women about to give birth—we pray to the bread to keep them safe, and so far no mamas or babies have died, ever .”
Ginevra looked at the extraordinary communion bread and crossed herself again. No mothers and no babies? This was unheard of. Vermilia must not have known about this relic, or she wouldn’t have been so dismissive about praying to them.
“Anyhow,” said Taddea, “I have to go help with supper now. Today is porridge day—actually, most days are porridge day, but I think you’ll like it—oh! And can you run across the street to Ser Cecchi, the baker? His rent is due and we must collect it. Tell him I sent you. Thanks!”
And with this fragmented introduction to the Convent of Sant’Elisabetta delle Convertite, Ginevra began to settle into her new life. For a while, she worried Agnesa would ask her about the rattling stone in her purse, but days and weeks passed and it was not mentioned. Ginevra continued to wonder, though, why Vermilia thought this place, where coral amulets must be hidden, and where there was a relic that actually listened to healing prayers, was the right place to send a girl with witchcraft in her blood and a package of magic stones.
When Vermilia’s letters began to arrive, they contained no answers, only the normal things: Messages of love from Ginevra’s parents. A bit of gossip here and there. All this was transcribed by Vermilia’s monk, and then Sister Agnesa and Ginevra would read them together—the nun using them as lessons. But in all the syllables and sentences that Ginevra painstakingly sounded out, never was there anything about Ginevra’s aptitude for magic, about how Sant’Elisabetta was connected to the golden strings. So, she put questions of this nature in the back of her mind, and focused instead on the pleasant challenges of literacy and of learning to navigate her new city as she ran errands for the convent.
Every day, Ginevra was dazzled. Florence had its troubles, of course, but they were covered over with veneers of parti-colored marble and the nervous hands of its citizens were hidden, tucked into fur-lined cloaks. It was only in the large numbers of destitute women who came to seek help at Sant’Elisabetta—far more than pilgrims who sought lodging—did she notice the cracks in the facade of her new home.
Taddea explained to Ginevra that the women’s ward was a bit of an open secret.
“Nobody talks about it, but everyone knows.”
Prostitution was not permitted inside the city, but it flourished just on the other side of the Porta San Gallo. And even though extramarital affairs were practically the national pastime, an unwed mother was the most wretched creature in all of Italy, and there were not so many places that would care for them. Women who came to the convent were encouraged to stay and take the vow themselves, but not everyone was meant to be a nun, and many women preferred to return to their old lives. A very few who came were noble, whisked there by their mothers to carry their shame to term. These women paid large sums of money for discretion and private quarters. But rich or poor, no woman in the ward ever saw her man come back to marry her or claim his child.