I pulled at a fold of Florindo’s lace neck ruff, which wasn’t as starched as I would have preferred. Even the wires that held it up had trouble keeping the structure fanned to its full width. The damage was done for tonight, his golden silk doublet only just managing to draw the eye from the drooping neckline, but I’d have to have a word with the servants about it.
“Sposa, you’ll end up ripping the lace. Leave it be.”
“All of the work I’ve done, just to be thwarted by a ruff,” I hissed.
He chuckled. “Thwarted? Amore, this night is already a success. The villa looks exquisite and so do you.” He glanced about the courtyard and quickly placed a kiss on the tip of my nose. “You are by far the loveliest woman present.”
I frowned more markedly to try and hide my rising smile, but I knew I’d fail. He always found the precise words to unlace my sternness like a gown. “You really think the house looks as it should?”
“Better. But I’m not entirely surprised, with the expenses I’ve written down in my ricordanza.” He cleared his throat and pursed his lips in his own best attempt at seriousness. “They were substantial. We’ll have to tighten the purse strings a bit for the remainder of the year.”
“It’s the first time all these people meet us, Florindo. The expenses were necessary and you know it as well as I do.”
He shrugged, the movement flattening his ruff again. “Perhaps. Though I can’t imagine all those new tapestries were crucial to our position in the region.”
“They were if I say they were. You want people to have confidence in what we’re doing, so we need to look successful.”
I widened my smile at the woman in the blue brocade gown with rather disappointing gray embroidered sleeves who had started toward us. I’d never have chosen those with that overdress and certainly not for the evening. Not so much as a lone pearl on them! Nothing gleamed. Nothing caught the eye and held it. Genova might own this region once again, but its sartorial influence had not reached it yet.
“Yes, but the sugar sculptures. What shall we do with all of them when the evening is over?”
“Hush, sposo,” I said, casting about for the woman’s name. What had it been?
Ah, yes. I had it now.
“Messer Caparalia, Madonna Caparalia,” she said, with a fold of her knees.
I did the same, Florindo bowing his head. “Madonna Rosso.”
“I wanted to offer my congratulations on the villa,” she said, her smile a pinched, tepid thing. “The frescoes are some of the loveliest I’ve seen.”
“They are my wife’s own designs,” Florindo said, as he’d done the entire evening whenever anyone even glanced in their direction.
“Alas, not my own executions,” I said. “My talents do not lie with a brush and paint, at least not those that I do not apply to my face.”
Her laugh was as brittle as early frost, and she made no attempt to continue the banter. I could think of at least four different things to say that would have charmed a hostess, amused her enough to have earned myself a place at her side for the remainder of the night. Madre di Dio, this woman wouldn’t have lasted more than a day at a Genovese court with these rather weak attempts at flattery.
Madonna Rosso’s smile drooped more with each beat of silence that passed, because now that she had run out of things to say, she also didn’t seem to know how to extricate herself from our presence. That was one of the first things my mother had taught me before plunging me into society: never begin a conversation without knowing how to end it.
The sound of the bugle made Madonna Rosso almost exhale with relief.
“If you’ll pardon me,” she said with another tight curtsy. “I must find my husband.”
“Of course.”
I waited until she’d disappeared to groan lightly. “This is going to be a very long evening if they all put as little effort into conversation. So far none of the women I’ve spoken with have exactly glinted with wit.”
Florindo lifted his arm and I rested my hand on his. “You can’t expect all of them to be as clever as you, Maddalena.”
“I expect what I am used to.”
“This is not Genova, sposa.”
“Clearly.”
I adjusted my white cuff so that the threads of silver caught the courtyard’s candlelight and then I nodded to him to begin. To lead us into the sala.
I couldn’t help smiling at the beauty of the room. As I’d instructed, the servants had lit all the candles, dozens of them catching the gold leaf of the cornices and of the silk-thread tapestries I’d purchased. The candle-glow swept across the red beaded birds on my full sleeves as I stepped inside, setting them aflame against the black silk and velvet brocade. Exactly as I’d intended.
Florindo guided us down the length of the room to the stone table decked in unadorned white linen. The silver on the tables echoed the silver in the credenze, light bouncing from one to the other as the candles flickered. I’d had two more tables brought in and placed perpendicularly to the main one, all of them crowned with a sugar sculpture of a griffin at each end, along with a dais I’d had placed at the center for the lute and the viola da gamba players. The hand bowls filled with rose water at each place setting released their soft perfume into the glowing room.
I took my seat to my husband’s right, leaving a seat empty between us for our guest of honor, Dottore Cestarello, the chancellor of the region. His wife, a woman who had donned a rather fetching set of sleeves featuring embroidered stalks of wheat, took the seat to my right.
Walking silently into the room with their instruments, the three players stepped up to the dais.
The head steward’s eyes were fixed on me from the corner of the room leading out into the servant’s passage so that I only had to give him the slightest of nods to launch him into the beginning of the cena. He, in turn, motioned to the wine steward, and the entire affair began.
“This is perfection,” Madonna Cestarello said, watching the synchronicity of the men, one for each table, pouring wine in rhythm with the music. “You’ve truly outdone yourself, Madonna Caparalia.”
“Thank you, but please, call me Maddalena.”
She smiled. “And I am Silvia.”
“I agree with my wife,” the chancellor said. “It’s not at all what we’re used to here, but it should be.”
“That is most kind. It really is all a matter of planning.”
“With respect, Maddalena,” the chancellor said, motioning to the near dance occurring in front of us, “there is real artistry in this.”
My cheeks seemed to glow as much as the room did as I bowed my head in acknowledgment. Now that was how one flattered a hostess.
The light clearing of a throat shifted my attention farther down the table to the newly appointed massaro, Messer Alessandro Scappi, and his wife. She was inspecting the silverware, her lips pursed as if she had found water marks I knew were not there, but he was watching me. He tipped his head in my direction. I returned the gesture.
“And how was the journey here?” the chancellor said, lifting his wineglass. “Did you have any trouble with the bandits?”
Florindo shook his head. “Not at all, Salvatore. But we did have escorts through most of the trail, because my wife wouldn’t have stepped foot in a carriage with our children if there’d been the slightest chance of danger.”
“Entirely reasonable.”
Yes, I’d thought so, too. If I had to trek through all of Liguria with the five most precious things I possessed, falling victim to the banditry that had been spreading across the entire region for years could not be a possibility.
“And we’ve already had our share of trouble with them,” I said.
“Oh?”
I nodded, watching the servers bring the first two cold dishes from the credenza, a pear crostata with dried prunes, and fried cow’s udders dressed in cinnamon and a dollop of a sauce made of carrots. Exactly on time.
“Yes, we had one of our shipments of wheat stolen on the road to Genova last year,” I said. “It was . . . unpleasant.”
Words were weak to describe the anguish of those days. The loss had come on the heels of the previous season’s poor harvest, the supplier we’d bought from having delivered chaff with mere aspirations of being wheat. That was when we’d had to resort to the first loan.
“Is that why you decided to begin your own wheat production?” Chancellor Cestarello said.
“Partly, yes,” Florindo said, wiping sauce from his chin. “In truth, I’ve always wanted to have my own hectares to ensure the quality of the grain is up to my own personal standards. And those of Maddalena, of course, which are even harsher.”
I smiled and wished I could squeeze my husband’s hand. Because the truth was infinitely more complicated.
After the poor harvest and then the robbery, we’d known we’d not make it through another year if we did not attempt to take our fate back from other people’s hands. Our fortune would have disappeared on the backs of bank loans. We spent entire nights scratching numbers on ledgers, adding and subtracting expenses until they did not tip sharply into the negative, days spent fawning over investors. The braided scarlet bracelets I made us wear and that I’d dipped in a mixture of ginger, frankincense, and boiled mercury to transform fortune into a docile thing turned our skin raw with boils. But it’d worked. We’d found our solution, unpleasant as it was for my Genovese soul.
I’d plunged my dowry into the villa, knowing well that if something were to happen to Florindo I’d be left without recourse. We’d sold our home in Genova and our small mill on its outskirts to buy this mud-swamped one that my husband had found for less than it was worth, and we’d even managed to charm an advance on this year’s flour from one single investor, allowing us the possibility of seeding thirty hectares of wheat fields. Every scudo we had was here.
None of it had been easy. And it wouldn’t begin to be until this year’s wheat poured golden into the mill. We would still have one more loan to pay back, but the worst of it would be over. Our future would be in our hands and in our fields.
“Have you had many instances of bandits in the area?” I said, turning away from my anxious thoughts and toward the massaro and his wife. “We’re here chattering away when you surely have the most experience.”
Messer Scappi waited for the server to place the platter of quails stuffed with sausages on the table before looking over at me.
“Not in this region, thankfully, Madonna Caparalia. I’ve set guards on the roads, but they’ve had no encounters.”
“That is reassuring. There is no danger in me allowing the children to play about the property, then?”
“Not from bandits, no.”
That was a strangely oblique answer. I felt a flutter of something, the hairs on the back of my neck rising.
“Where are the children now?” Silvia said. “I would have so liked to have met them.”
Santa Madre preserve us from such an event. There would have been pieces of sugar griffins embedded in the frescoes. “They are with their tutor, Giusto, and if the stars have been kind, already asleep.”
Silvia smiled into her wineglass.
I almost asked if she had any children herself, but an internal pulse, like a plucking of strings, stopped me. It was a sensation I had learned to heed.
I took a bite of the quail and waited.
“I’ve not been fortunate enough to have children, yet,” Silvia said, lowering her voice. “It is something I have always longed for.”
“You are still very young,” I said. “There is no reason why it should not occur.”
She looked down at her plate, her light hair coppering in the candle-glow. For the first time, I noticed how pale she was. “Yes, I suppose so.”
“Perhaps you can create one of your tonics for her. Or give her a charm of some kind.”
I turned to Madonna Scappi, swallowing down a needle of irritation. She’d been listening to what she had to have realized was a private conversation. Hadn’t she heard the softer tone, seen the lowered head? In Genova, this intrusion would have been met with a wall of silken retreating backs.
“Madonna?” I said.
“It is true, isn’t it, that you are known in Genova for your potions and your charms? Everyone in Ovada says so.” She cut into a slice of salami and apple pasticcio. “Do you read fortunes, as well?”
A seat away from me, Florindo boomed with laughter at something the chancellor had said.
“Cartomancy is not my specialty, alas,” I said, “but yes, I have provided many of the ladies in Genova with various powders and tinctures. Though I wouldn’t call them potions, as such. That has an undertone of something darker, wouldn’t you say?”
“I’m sure I don’t know. I don’t meddle in such things.”
I smiled away the strong words I wanted to say because this was not the place for them. But how rapidly the gossip had spread! In this respect, if in nothing else, the countryside was not so very different from the city.
“Do you truly believe that charms and potions can influence what our Dio has intended for us?” Her voice was light, no trace of threat in it, but there didn’t need to be to make this conversation a precarious one.
I had to tread with care.
Placing my fork down, I turned fully toward Madonna Scappi. “I believe our Dio offers chances of changing the course of our lives, yes. He quite often sends us warnings and signs to guide us, so why wouldn’t He be open to the adjustments in our fates that the heeding of those warnings would bring? We have to be alert to what He and the world tell us and act accordingly. Those charms can aid us in that. They are tools, nothing more and nothing less.”
“There are those who would find that blasphemous.”
“Then they would have misunderstood me.”
A trace of amusement shaped the slight lift of her eyebrows.
“Mona Maddalena,” the chancellor said, to my really rather strong relief, “you must convince your husband to consider selling the lumber on the property.”
I blinked. “The lumber?”
“The hectares of oak trees on your mountain, mona. I’ve not been to see them in months, but the trees grow there like the heads of the Hydra.”
I looked past him at Florindo, who shrugged lightly. I’d known the property was large, but not that anything worth our attention was on the mountain itself. It really wasn’t at all a bad idea. Oak lumber could help us cut into the debts we had while also allowing us to increase our influence in the region.
“I have to warn you, it is somewhat complicated to bring the wood down from the mountain, for the passage giving access to the oak forest is quite narrow,” the chancellor continued, “but consider it, Mona Maddalena. I have no doubt your husband will listen to you.”
Florindo chuckled. “I never have much choice in the matter, Salvatore. Once she decides, it might as well be law.”
It would require a small investment, then, into equipment, more horses than the one we had, though that would be a necessity regardless, more men, but it could be worthwhile. It would bear some thinking about and some more nights with our abacus and ledgers. It may not be feasible until after the harvest, but it was an appealing notion.
I glanced up to say exactly this and my eyes met those of one of the men on the table to our left. I had the impression he’d been staring for some time. He lifted his wineglass in my direction and I nodded at him, trying not to focus too much on the white scar that marred his right cheek.
As was my custom whenever someone’s eyes lingered too long on me or my children, I went to tap the silver horned hand I always carried.
It wasn’t there. I’d forgotten to tie it into the neckline of my chemise when I changed for the evening.
Of all nights for that to happen.
I breathed out the knot of sudden tension. It couldn’t be helped now. I would have to wait until the cena was over.
Amid a fog of simple chatter, course after course came and went: shrimp in vinegar, veal bones cooked in lemon, roasted pigeons from our own dovecote, and even a pasticcio all’inglese. Wine flowed from the decanters, music gurgled from the dais.
I dipped my fingers in the bowl of rose water the moment my last dish had been cleared and motioned to the servers to begin the preparation of the sweets. With the speed and care that I’d demanded of them when they stepped into my service, they removed the tablecloths and the protective leather layers beneath them to reveal a second cloth. At the other two tables, this meant linen with fine embroidered borders of ivy, but at our table, it was my grandmother’s masterpiece that they now uncovered.
A silk and linen tablecloth that had been part of her trousseau, she had spent years of her childhood embroidering delicate blue and silver flower bouquets at random across its surface. Lace panels draped down its sides in gossamer folds, brushing the marble floors as lightly as seafoam. Through all of the banquets I’d attended since I’d been of age, in all of the stately homes in Genova, I’d never seen its like.
Silvia pressed a hand to her chest and leaned to look at the flowers, and even Madonna Scappi murmured her appreciation of the lacework.
Feeling satisfaction down to the center of my bones, I nodded to the servers to begin the last course.
* * *
It was well upward of midnight when the dancing finished and guests crossed the courtyard toward the front door.
In all, the cena had been a success. Even the sapphire earring in my hand, which had dripped from a woman’s earlobe to the floor and for which four of my servants had had to scour the sala, had no marks or chipping on it.
Now if I could only find the woman, I could wind down the evening.
I eased along the wall of the courtyard to avoid the worst of the skirts and doublets, searching for the burgundy velvet sleeves that, from the elbow fading that not even the added beading could hide, had been worn too often. What kind of headdress did she have? A headband or a snood?
There. That was her.
I slipped past two men in animated conversation and started toward a group of women, one wearing a sole earring.
“—her dress. Who wears black silk in that fashion?”
“The Genovese, it seems.”
My legs stopped moving.
Their laughter tried to scrape paint off the frescoes.
“And Santa Maria! Thinking the griffin sugar sculptures would be the right choice. In this region! With the new taxes Genova has imposed on us, I had to restrain my husband more than once from knocking those horrid things off the table.”
My cheeks burned as if they might catch flames. I could feel each beat of my heart in the tips of my fingers.
Madonna Scappi, for now I saw that she was part of the group, leaned forward. “I, for one, want nothing to do with someone of her kind. There’s something perverse about flaunting her defiance of our Dio in the way she does.”
“What we heard is true, then?”
“Entirely. She is ungodly.”
“That would explain why her children are said to be little diavoli,” the woman missing an earring said, setting off another bout of laughter.
If I truly had been what they professed me to be, their skin would have melted off their bones. I could stand criticism to myself and my home, even from peasants dressed in airs and last year’s gowns, but I’d not have allowed talk of my children from the Prince of Melfi himself.
Clenching the earring in my hand until I thought I’d snap the sapphire off its setting, I walked toward the group.
Madonna Scappi saw me first and signaled to her companions with her eyes.
“It is unfortunate that your lack of breeding made it difficult for you to enjoy the evening, because it was a rather lovely one,” I said, handing the earring to its owner. “Be sure to have a close look at the courtyard before you leave, for none of you will step foot in my home again.”
I turned without allowing them to so much as open their mouths and walked back to where Florindo stood, seeing off the chancellor and Silvia.
I should have felt some satisfaction from the confrontation, but all I wanted was to race up the stairs and embrace my children. Florindo seemed to sense my uneasiness, for he drew closer, his arm brushing mine, as he nodded to another couple.
I stood straighter and pulled my mind from those women’s words. It would be giving their opinion too much importance to allow them to tinge the entire evening with failure.
And yet, I felt a tightness in my chest, the rising pressure of the kind of tears I never knew if I’d be able to quench. It was a sensation I recognized all too well.
* * *
In the morning, a scream I’d half anticipated dragged me out of sleep and propelled me down the main stairwell to the mud-spattered vestibule. On our doorstep, slashed to ribbons and dripping with blood, was my grandmother’s embroidered tablecloth.