Page 17 of The Stone Witch of Florence
SIXTEEN
A LOVING SPIRIT
1340, City of Florence, the Kitchen of a Great House
W hen Ginevra was twenty, she fell in love. It happened when she was making a delivery of eggs from Sant’Elisabetta to the kitchens of the Acciaiuoli family, who were such important bankers that they lent money to the king of England, or so they bragged. Ginevra disliked this particular errand. Every week the bankers’ cook condescended to her how the Acciaiuoli only bought from the convent out of charity, how the eggs were not any good and that was why his custards never turned out properly. This was very frustrating to Ginevra. She knew their chickens were the finest in Florence, because Agnesa had found a piece of Sardinian pink granite that was just the exact shape of a hen egg and buried it in the floor of the coop. Ever since, each of their hens laid two perfect eggs, speckled and pink like the granite, exactly as the sun rose. Of course, she could not explain this to the cook.
On one of these occasions, Ginevra looked with exasperation past the grumbling chef and was startled to meet eyes with a young man, his smooth face brimming with suppressed laughter. Ginevra looked to the floor, embarrassed. For this young man was not a servant of her own station. He wore a flocked doublet woven in blue checks. His hat matched it perfectly.
“Gentiluccio, if you go on harassing vendors like this, we’re all going to starve.”
The cook turned around to face the young man. “Signore Ludovico! What are you doing here? You’ll get your nice hat all smoky.”
“I just wanted a—” He looked at Ginevra again and stopped speaking.
“A what?” asked the cook.
“I—I’ve forgotten somehow. Introduce me to your friend.”
“Who, her? She works for the egg nuns. Don’t worry about it, she’s gone.”
And Ginevra was, as fast as she could go.
But Ludovico Acciaiuoli could not forget her. Because it is true that the eyes are a window to the soul; it is therefore not just the malocchio that may use them as a portal, but also Love. So when Ludovico and Ginevra had locked eyes, her invisible golden strings became tangled with his plain strings of cat-gut or whatever type of string the universe attaches to ordinary men. And when she hurried out of the room, their strings stretched and twisted further round each other, and bound them in sweet longing.
For Ludovico, this manifested as the overwhelming and immediate urge to impress Ginevra. It was not something he was used to feeling. As the eldest son of an important family, he was used to women trying to impress him , and he was all but immune to the chemically whitened necks and carefully plucked foreheads of his young lady peers. But Ginevra—to his eye she needed no sculpting, no bleaching, or other artifice. He concluded a donation of provisions to the convent would be appropriate. When Ginevra came with Taddea to accept the gift, he remained unnecessarily involved in the transaction. He was polite to Taddea, of course, but upon Ginevra, he heaped an embarrassment of attention. As his father’s servants filled a cart with luxurious foodstuffs, he gazed deeply into Ginevra’s eyes and asked her hundreds of mundane questions, nodding intently at her answers and repeating them aloud as if to commit her words to memory.
“And where is your family?”
“Genoa, sir.”
“Genoa. Yes. And what does your father do?”
“He...he fishes, sir.”
“He fishes. Of course. The sea. It’s there, isn’t it?”
Ginevra, doing her best to ignore the pull of her golden strings, was cautious in her answers. She felt not only the gaze of Ludovico but also of Taddea, whose own eyes were wide with disapproval.
With provisions loaded, Ludovico offered Ginevra a formal goodbye, extending his arm in a low bow. As a result of the gesture, his hand touched hers. Just a tiny bit. The slightest little brush, really. Barely a fingernail. So quick it might not have happened at all. But she knew it had happened. She knew because she felt it from the tips of her toes to the hairs on her head.
The two women walked back to the convent in stiff silence, afraid to speak a dangerous thing into existence. A cart loaded with salami and peaches followed behind them.
As soon as they left, Ludovico locked himself in his studio to write Ginevra a poem:
Your dress is brown
Your skin like down
Your friend is just fine
But you must be mine
Ludovico at least had the good sense to be embarrassed of his poetry, and threw draft after draft into the fire until he decided it would be much easier to just borrow a few lines from Dante. Impatient in his task by this point, he modified them hastily, sent the note out with his servant, and devoted himself to pacing anxiously until Ginevra replied.
Knowing he couldn’t approach Ginevra at the convent, the servant went to the bakery across from Sant’Elisabetta and waited. To pass the time he stuffed himself with bread and flirted with the good wives who came to have their clay-potted suppers cooked inside the bakery’s giant ovens. At last, the bread-bloated servant saw Ginevra exit the convent. He gave the baker a look so he knew to busy himself at the oven, and then went and pressed a letter into her palm. “Read it here,” he said, “and give me your reply straightaway.”
With trembling fingers, she unfolded the note, eyes flying over the words—could this all really be for her?
My Dearest,
That day in the kitchen I felt a marvelous trembling that started on the left side of my chest and spread rapidly throughout my entire body. I raised my eyes and saw that most gracious of creatures, Beatrice. My spirits were overcome by the force of love.
“But this is not for me,” she cried. “This is for some Beatrice!”
The clever servant read the note and realized at once what had happened—in his haste, Ludovico forgot to switch out the name of Dante’s beloved Beatrice for Ginevra.
“Dama, be assured! I would not misdeliver a message of this importance. Beatrice is...a pet name! That’s right, a pet name Ser Ludovico has bestowed upon you, Ginevra, the object of his affection.”
“You swear it?”
“Of course.” The servant already had many lies he must confess; this one did not bother him.
Ginevra’s earlier resolve gave way to the delicious pull of mutual connection. She cut a blank page from her notebook—the notebook Agnesa scraped clean for her to record the magic of the stones—to write back that she always brought eggs to the house on Thursdays, and perhaps if Ludovico requested more custards from his cook, she could come on Mondays as well. He wrote back right away and said that custard was his favorite dish.
And then it was ritual. Twice a week, they would flirt in the Acciaiuoli kitchens, as the long-suffering cook boiled custard after custard between them. Ludovico would ask egg-related questions, and call her his Beatrice. She would laugh every time. But it was clear to the both of them (and also to the cook) that this was not enough. With the help of Ludovico’s bread-loving servant, they arranged clandestine meetings in ancient chapels where nobody came to pray anymore. They stood close to each other on cracked stone floors, clasping hands and whispering their secrets.
“My family would not be pleased to know of the time I spent with you, a poor person, but I am my own man,” Ludovico would say.
“Well, I’m not just an ordinary peasant,” answered Ginevra, so eager to please she forgot to be insulted.
“Really?” said Ludovico, so eager to please he forgot to sound incredulous.
“Really.” She explained all that Monna Vermilia told her, all that was meant to be her own particular secret—about her blood being special, and how she could work healing wonders with stones.
“Is that what has happened?” he teased. “Have you put a love charm on me?”
“No! No, that’s not the sort of thing—I would never do that to you...”
He put his hands upon her waist. “It’s alright, even if you did, for I have never been so happy.”
Soon they were sneaking out in the gray dawn to make love against the walls of forgotten gardens. Ludovico wasn’t very good at it, but Ginevra didn’t know any better and luxuriated in his rough pressings, his eager hands. She did know, at least, how to avoid becoming pregnant. A mixture of pomegranate seed and alum, applied at the correct time. The compound must have made up half of Monna Vermilia’s business. Now the alum, bought from an alchemist who winked at her, took up more than half her meager salary.
“Taddea,” she asked her friend one day, “do you think you would like to have a husband and children?”
“No, I would not,” said Taddea without blinking.
“I think it might be nice.”
“Once you are married, you work like a slave cleaning up after your man while he lazes about waiting for you to cook him supper.”
“Of course—but—what if you married a rich man, who had his own cook?”
“That’s a foolish question—no rich man would ever marry me—or you, for that matter. They need to marry a woman who’s rich also, or at least one of noble family. Otherwise, they won’t stay rich. Is this to do with Ser Ludovico?”
“No,” Ginevra lied. “I was just wondering.”
“I know how often you go to the kitchens in his palazzo.”
“They are our best customers!” she retorted. “In fact, I am going there today, right now.” She shook her straw-filled basket in Taddea’s direction.
Her friend rolled her eyes. “And why do you think they’re such loyal customers? Do you know how many women come here, disgraced by the greedy men of that family? The Acciaiuoli buy from our hens as a favor for the many services rendered to them by the nuns of Sant’Elisabetta.”
“You are jealous, Taddea, that Ser Ludovico spoke more to me than to you.” She hated how awful she sounded, but could not help herself.
Taddea looked back at her, hurt. “Nothing good will come of it, I’m telling you.”
“And what would you know of such things, speaking only to nuns your whole life?”
“Yes, but before they were nuns, they were prostitutes.”
Ginevra hurried away from the conversation, toward Ludovico’s home, as if she could outrun the truth her friend had spoken. She knew Taddea was right, that for most women this would be a dangerous situation. But she was not most women. She was one of the lucky ones. Had she not been told since she was a child that she was privy to the wisdom of old? To knowledge not accessible to ordinary women? Besides, had she not dreamed up this very situation? For a man of Ludovico’s station to raise her up? If Taddea only understood how deeply Ludovico was devoted to her, she wouldn’t be so skeptical. So what if other men in his family were typical scoundrels? Ludo was different. He had given her a pet name, after all, and once, when they were up against the garden wall, he said he loved her with the gentle and spontaneous tone of one who truly means it.
“Beatrice?”
Startled, she saw the man himself in front of her. Lost in thought, she had already arrived at his doorstep.
“Is everything alright?”
She did not answer, for how could she say that it was his own hypothetical misdeeds that furrowed her brow. Ludovico took the basket from her hands.
“It will rain soon,” he said, looking up at the gray sky. “I know—I will take you somewhere to be dry, and there you will tell me what bothers you.”
He took Ginevra by the hand and guided her through a maze of alleyways she had never explored, until they arrived at what appeared to be a disused shop. Ludo opened the door with a key, and led her through the empty storefront, up a long staircase, and into the most beautifully appointed apartment she had ever seen. “We keep this place for business associates who are visiting from out of town,” Ludo said by way of explanation.
Ginevra looked around in wonder. The walls were dove gray, burnished to a satiny glow and accented with elaborate moldings of vermilion plaster. Beneath furniture in polished woods and soft peach velvets was a flocked carpet woven with flowers that bloomed in every color of nature’s palate. The ceiling was painted blue with gold stars, and the shutters were decorated with patterns of green parakeets that stood, jewellike, upon a gilt field. Above the shutters, round transoms paned with fine slices of alabaster bathed the room and the two lovers in an ethereal gold light. Ludo opened the shutters to a view of the rooftops of Florence. “Come stand by the window—I want to see all that is mine together, you and the city.”
“You are greedy,” she teased, obliging him and leaning on the sill.
“I am a rich man,” he said, placing his hands around her waist and pulling her close. “So I am greedy, but also I am generous.” Raindrops began to pat against the alabaster panes. Ginevra closed her eyes and they fell into each other, and when she opened them again, the gold light had faded into purple dusk.
After, as they lay intertwined upon the colorful carpets, he asked again, “What was it that troubled my Beatrice this afternoon?”
She thought for a long while, her head resting upon his chest, her mind replaying the conversation with Taddea.
“I know,” she said, finally, “that I am not the sort of woman that would—excite the admiration of your family.”
“Which is precisely why I am excited about you.”
“You are excited here in this dark room, when nobody is around to know about us.”
“Yes, very,” he answered, and began to let his hands wander anew.
“Please, I’m being serious—”
Ludovico squeezed her tight to him and kissed the top of her head. “I know, I know you are. You are my life. Do not doubt it. I will find a way.”
Ginevra curled into the crook of his arm, afraid to utter another word, afraid to show her happiness, for it was so great she was sure it would scare him away if he knew the extent of his powers.
She slipped back through the gate of Sant’Elisabetta just before the city’s curfew began, and nearly jumped out of her skin at Taddea standing by the door, wringing her hands.
“What are you doing here?” asked Ginevra, still angry from their earlier conversation.
“Waiting for you—I’m supposed to tell you to go to Sister Agnesa’s cell straightaway.”
“What for? What has happened?”
“Ginevra, don’t be upset—I was worried about you—I told her how you and Ludovico Acciaiuoli have become...particular friends—”
“How could you?? This will ruin everything—”
Taddea turned red in the face. “It is for your own good.” She walked away toward their shared room and, fuming, Ginevra went to Agnesa’s cell.
She knocked and entered. “Taddea knows not of what she speaks—”
“Ginevra—you’re a fool if you’ve allowed an Acciaiuoli to charm you. But I cannot chastise you tonight. I don’t have the heart—child, bad news has found its way to us. My dear cousin, your teacher...” She covered her mouth with her hand and held out a letter. Ginevra knelt beside her and read:
For my Ginevra,
Your mother and father send you their love and say they pray for you daily and look with joy toward the day you may be reunited.
And I, Vermilia, say to you what you have long known—dear one, my time is now, as the stone told me, and you shall not hear from me again. Be glad for me; I am curious to know the broader reaches of God’s kingdom as I have known His earth.
I send you the ring, which told me of my hour. It is the last gem I kept, but I need it no longer. It has diverse powers, only a few of which have been revealed to me. Perhaps you may divine more. What I do know is that each of the stone’s powers may be used but once. So do not bother asking it for your death date—I have already drained it of that ability.
I have saved the ring for you for another reason: because you are prone to act on instinct, without considering consequences. If you find yourself in danger after offending the wrong person, this stone can help. It has the power to change even the most stubborn minds. This is my last gift to you, who has been so willing a pupil, when I had no daughter of my own.
The letter ended with a note from the monk, saying he would not be transcribing any further correspondence from Ginevra’s parents, as he could not bear to be reminded of his sweet Vermilia. Ginevra held the parchment in both hands, staring at it, willing the letters to rearrange themselves into any other message. All the years she had been in Florence, she had never once tried to go home. The letters had tricked her—they had kept coming and given her a false security that—that what? That Vermilia would live forever?
Into her hand, Agnesa placed Vermilia’s ring, set with its orange gem, engraved with a winged woman atop a wheel. Ginevra knew now, from her studies, that the stone was jasper, and the winged woman was Nemesis, pagan goddess of retribution. She turned it over and saw a Greek spell carved on its reverse, where it would touch the flesh of whoever wore the ring. She placed it on her left hand, as Vermilia had worn it, and left the room. Agnesa, face buried in her hands, did not try to stop her, though she still closely guarded the rest of Ginevra’s inherited stones.
In her own room, Ginevra lay down on her stomach, shoved her face into her bedding, and sobbed. Taddea came over and apologized profusely for snitching about Ludovico; Ginevra did not bother to correct her by explaining the true meaning behind her tears. Her time with Ludo in his beautiful room seemed a thousand years past. How could one day contain such joy and such sorrow?