OCTOBER 1ST, 1496
Girolamo is on his way back from visiting Benivieni, which he has come to find preferable to having the man visit San Marco, as he can control the timing of the visits and get away more easily. Benivieni is writing songs for his Angels to sing as they walk in procession. He is also translating some of Girolamo’s work from Latin to Italian, for publication. He will be glad to have the songs and the translations, but is glad now to be away from the man, with his constant unreciprocated assumption of a deep degree of intimacy. He walks along the Arno. It is a beautiful autumn day. The sun is sliding down towards the hills behind him, stretching his shadow out before him like a long-legged giraffe, and gilding the city. The light has the especial vividness of autumn afternoons when the days are shortening. The trees are turning brown and vivid gold. There are barges on the river, bringing bales of raw wool, blocks of marble, and stacks of timber, and taking away finished goods. There are far fewer of them than there were. The city is feeling the bite of the loss of Pisa.
As he crosses the square outside the Senatorial Palace, Valori comes up to him, looking smaller and paler. “I was coming to see you. Do you have a moment?” Valori asks.
“Of course,” he says, although he would prefer to get back to San Marco. Valori is one of the leading men of the commonwealth now, and the leader of the Wailers. “Let’s sit in the Loggia.”
Valori nods, and they pass up the central steps to where they can sit on one of the stone benches that runs around inside the covered colonnade. There are a few other people there, but the place is not full the way it would be in summer when everyone takes advantage of the shade. A mother and daughter, plainly dressed and with respectably covered heads, sit spinning silk with drop spindles, a small group of merchants are discussing some business, and a group of boys squat on the stone floor playing a game with horse chestnuts. Valori and Girolamo sit on the lower step in the corner, facing towards the palace. The off-centre tower with its twisting stairs at the top looks like one of the confections bakers make out of glazed dough. Valori fusses with his red robe, then finally looks straight at him. “The news has come that Capponi is dead.”
“God rest his soul,” he says. “Did he manage to retake Pisa?”
Valori shakes his head. “This is a great blow for us, for our party,” he says. “And it seems everyone wants to make war on Florence. The Empire is attacking. There is a great navy heading for us.”
“The Empire,” he repeats. The Emperor, who is nominally Emperor of Rome but in fact rules a bunch of squabbling German principalities, is also a power from over the Alps, a sword from the north. Having declared the King of France was the New Cyrus, he would lose face if he changed his mind now, even if Charles has gone back to France, even if he might have been wrong. He frowns.
“I hate to ask this, but will you preach to protect the city?” Valori asks.
“It will antagonize Pope Alexander. He has sworn me to silence. When I preached on Palm Sunday in spite of his ban he was very angry. He could demand Florence surrender me to him. He can’t prove me a heretic, though he has tried, but he could excommunicate me for meddling in politics.” No one could prove Girolamo a heretic, he is as orthodox as St Augustine, as St Thomas Aquinas. Like the late Count, he knows more theology than anyone who could possibly challenge him, and unlike the Count he does not transgress the bounds, nor wish to.
Valori twists his robe in his hands, bunching the material. “Without Capponi, without you preaching, it’s very hard. The Lukewarm and the Greys gain power. There is talk of a new party rising, who call themselves the Furious. They are all the men who hate us, and hate everything we stand for. But as long as we are in power you needn’t worry about Florence surrendering you. That could never happen. We stood by Lorenzo de’ Medici when he was excommunicated after the Pazzi Conspiracy. Even when Pope Sixtus put the whole city under interdict, our priests defied him.”
He touches the green stone in his pocket, remembering Lorenzo. He has sometimes felt recently that his position and Lorenzo’s are strangely similar. There are positions of power in the commonwealth, but they are held by others, others who listen to him and take his advice, but only by their own choice. Valori is one of them now, as he was for Lorenzo. Lorenzo called himself “master of the shop,” not king or duke. The position is one of moral authority, not power. He can compel no one, outside the Tuscan congregation of the Dominicans. He doesn’t want to antagonize Pope Alexander by preaching after he has been forbidden. But it is very hard for him to resist Valori’s appeal.
“I will hold a day of prayer,” he says. “We could have the Madonna of Impruneta brought to the city, and have a procession.” It is a miracle-working icon, one that is generally hidden and only brought out in time of trouble.
“Yes, people will like that. And will you preach?”
“I don’t suppose Brother Domenico would do?” Even as he says it, he knows he wouldn’t. Besides, Domenico is still young and impetuous and sometimes speaks before he thinks, and could get them all into worse trouble. He has put him in charge of the Angels, and he is doing a very good job with them. The boys appreciate his enthusiasm. “No, I’ll preach. But I won’t make a habit of it while I’m still under the ban. We have to get His Holiness to change his mind. I know Cardinal Carafa is trying.”
“Borgia’s a terrible Pope,” Valori mutters.
“I took a vow of obedience, and I didn’t make a proviso to say I’d be obedient unless the Pope happens to be a Spanish nepotistic simoniac,” he says.
Valori smiles, thinly. “When shall we say will be the day of prayer?”
“Tomorrow’s Sunday, and we have to bring the Madonna here from Impruneta, so shall we say Thursday?”
“Yes, yes, that will be good.” One of the playing boys gives a shout of triumph and shovels nuts towards himself.
Girolamo hesitates, not aware of any clear feeling of prophecy, but drawn by a feeling as the boys scatter, calling to each other. “No, let’s say Friday,” he says.
Valori’s face lights up. “God is speaking to you!” he says.
Girolamo doesn’t deny it, doesn’t say what it is, couldn’t even define what it was. He misses the Count, who would have helped him understand.
Perhaps because he was thinking about the Count, he isn’t surprised to see Isabella crossing the square. She sees him, and changes her direction to come towards him. Valori gets up and goes back into the Senatorial Palace, happy now he has a plan that he thinks others will endorse. Girolamo stays where he is and waits for Isabella, who climbs up and sits a little way from him, close enough to speak but not close enough for scandal. He appreciates her tact. She is wearing dark clothes, and has her head covered, but her smooth dark hair peeps out at both sides, framing her face.
“I want to take vows,” she says, when they have exchanged greetings. “I want to be pure in your pure city. I have been listening to your sermons, and reading them too, for a long time. I think it would be what Giovanni would have wanted.”
Girolamo nods. “I hoped you might,” he says. “You have a spiritual gift. You saw the demon that was trying to hurt Angelo.” That was the last demon he saw inside the walls of Florence, he realises with a start.
“Thank you,” she says. “Would you speak for me at Santa Lucia?”
He can feel his eyes widen. “I—you—a Magdalen order would be more appropriate. I could find a place for you at the Convertite.”
“You would have taken Giovanni at San Marco,” she says. “I can assure you I didn’t do anything he didn’t do, and he did it with others before me, which I did not. If he could confess and be clean of it, surely so can I.”
“It isn’t the same for men and women,” he stammers.
“Why not?” she asks.
Why not, he asks himself. For worldly reasons. Because people wouldn’t trust their daughters and widows in a convent that accepted women who were neither virgins nor widows. They would think women like Isabella would be a bad influence. But he could see that she wouldn’t, any more than the Count would have been a bad influence at San Marco, or Angelo. He would have taken Angelo, if he had lived. But men were different. His mind skitters away from the question, he has to force himself to face it.
“It’s been almost two years since he died,” she says, quietly. “I’ve lived respectably, and without fleshly yearnings. I could have entered a Dominican convent in Genoa or Siena where no one would have known or questioned. But I didn’t want to lie. And I wanted to be here, to be in your Ark.”
“Not Santa Lucia,” he says. He knows what the old First Sister would think. She might accept his word that Isabella is a worthy postulant. But she wouldn’t be able to help treating her badly. “There is a new house where your gifts could be more valuable. Sister Camilla Rucellai will take you in Santa Caterina.”
“As long as it is in Florence,” Isabella says.
He prays to St Dominic and St Catherine. Heaven sends him no guidance, no warnings. He runs his fingers over the green stone again. “Let us go there together now,” he says.
Camilla Rucellai lives in a house on the Via Cocomero, not far from San Marco. They walk down past Orsanmichele, around the cathedral, past the baptistery and Giotto’s bell tower. All the stone is luminous in the autumn sunlight.
“It’s a Dominican tertiary house,” he says as they walk. “They call it Santa Caterina because St Catherine of Siena was a Dominican tertiary, and they share the vows she made. Sister Camilla wants to build a dedicated new monastery on the corner across from San Marco, and she’s raising money for that, but for now it’s just her old house.”
“Is she a widow?” Isabella asks. It’s a reasonable assumption. Many tertiaries are, and it’s even more likely as Camilla Rucellai has her own house. Florence is full of little convents like that.
He shakes his head. “She and her husband dissolved their marriage to take orders.”
“Like Abelard and Héloïse,” she says, surprising him until he remembers she was the Count’s pupil.
“Yes, I suppose so,” he says. “But in her case she was the one who wanted it, and had to persuade him. Ridolfo’s in the novitiate in San Marco now.”
“She must be very strong willed,” Isabella says. “She’s the one who predicted that Giovanni would become a Dominican in the time of the lilies, isn’t she?”
“That’s right. And she’s certainly very strong willed.”
“So she’s a prophet?”
“Yes. Her visions are truly from God. But—” He hesitates. “She’s not very politic about when she tells everyone. And they tend to be symbolic. For instance, before the papal election she saw a bull destroying a temple. Clearly a reference to Borgia. She prophesied it aloud and now everyone knows it. She’s hard to control.”
“Talking about her, you sound the way Giovanni said your superiors talked about you,” Isabella says.
He laughs, surprised. “There might be truth in that.”
They are in front of Santa Caterina. He knocks. Isabella bites her lip, looking suddenly apprehensive.
There is a long pause before the door is opened by Sister Elena, who stares at them in astonishment. It is not his regular day to visit. Girolamo is the only man who ever comes here, except for the occasional workman, and he (or rather Brother Tomasso, who takes care of these details) has to give permission for workmen to enter when a tile blows off the roof or the well needs mending. Women do visit here, friends and relatives of the nuns, but he discourages this and tries to minimize it. Once people enter the religious life, it is better for them to truly devote themselves to God and not be distracted by reminders of the world they chose to leave. “Thanks be to God. I want to see Sister Camilla,” he says.
Elena nods, her eyes darting curiously to Isabella. Elena is the widow of a prosperous mason, in her fifties now, with her children grown and settled. She was plump when she came to Santa Caterina, but she has lost flesh fasting, and now the skin of her face looks baggy under her veil. “Come in,” she says, opening the door wide.
They follow her down the hall to the courtyard in the middle of the building. There is a little orange tree there, and a beehive, and rosemary and lavender bushes. The lavender is still blooming, and the air is full of its fragrance. Sister Camilla comes down the stone stairs that lead up from the courtyard without being called. She is dressed in black and white, with a plain wooden cross around her neck. Behind her glasses her weak eyes are red rimmed, as usual. “Glory to God. I thought you would come today,” she says.
“Did you write it down?” Girolamo asks.
“I did.”
“Good.”
He turns to Isabella. “All the sisters here have special gifts. Sister Camilla, Sister Bartollomea, and Sister Vaggia prophecy. Sister Elena and Sister Anna see demons, as you do, and Sister Beatrice has prophetic dreams.”
“I don’t usually see them, I only have an awareness of their presence. Sometimes I see their shadows,” Isabella says.
“That’s more than any of my brothers at San Marco can do,” he says. “Sister Camilla, I want to speak to you.”
“Sister Elena, could you bring wine to the parlour?” she asks.
“Water for me,” he says.
He sees all three women take breath to speak, probably to urge him to fast less and take better care of himself, then think better of it. He smiles, as he and Isabella follow Camilla into the parlour, a room lined with very fine intarsia wood panels in geometric patterns.
“Oh it’s beautiful!” Isabella says.
“Thank you. My husband’s parents had it done,” Camilla says. “Most of the vanities here we’ve sold, but these can’t be removed without damaging them. And they are beautiful.”
They sit on the stools that are all the furnishings the room now has. Elena comes in with wine for the women and water for him, and once they have settled themselves he speaks. “Sister Camilla, I want you to consider taking Isabella here among you.”
He has not decided what to tell her about Isabella’s past, but Camilla forestalls him. “She lived with Count Pico on the Via Porto Rossa,” she objects.
“Did God tell you that?” Isabella asks.
“Half of Florence knows that,” Camilla says, dismissively.
Isabella seems to shrink. She looks at Girolamo.
“I accepted the Count at San Marco, and he was guilty no less than Isabella. Confession and penance washes away sin—that’s a fundamental sacrament of the Church. Isabella has done that penance. She has spiritual gifts, she can thrive here among you. And she has a dowry to bring.”
“A little more than twelve hundred florins,” Isabella says, quietly. He had not known the Count had given her so much. A normal dowry for a nun is between one and two hundred, about ten percent of a marital dowry.
Camilla looks horrified. When God speaks to her, she is very sure. She has managed to negotiate the shoals of her life very neatly, to make the marriage alliance her family insisted on, and yet to end up dissolving her marriage and embracing the spiritual life. She is still in her novitiate, but still tacitly acknowledged as First Sister here, and by many people as a prophetess. While she is obedient to Girolamo’s authority, often she speaks to him as a colleague and ally, on equal terms. But sometimes, underneath it all you can see the respectable Florentine merchant’s daughter peeping out. “But—” She takes off her glasses and rubs her eyes.
“I know I am asking you to make a sacrifice. We might understand that Isabella has chosen purity, but some in the world will gossip, and you will suffer.”
“Girolamo, you know if she is here no one will want to send their daughters to me!” Camilla says. “I don’t want to be unkind, but I want Santa Caterina to thrive.”
“Ask God about that,” he says.
She sets down her wine glass, puts her glasses back on, and nods once. Then she closes her eyes. Isabella draws breath to speak, but Girolamo puts his finger to his lips to hush her, and she subsides. She takes a sip of wine. They wait for a moment. Then Camilla laughs, an irrepressible bubbling laugh. “God moves in mysterious ways,” she says, opening her eyes and smiling at Isabella. “Who would have thought you would be the sign I have prayed for?”
“What’s that?” Isabella asks.
“God and the Holy Virgin will send Santa Caterina a hundred women, before I die, more than a hundred, because of you. In place of girls thrust into religion to be out of the way of their family, we will have women, grown women, coming of their own strong desire to be pure, to live as Wailers, to be closer to God.”
“That’s what I want,” Isabella says.
Camilla is beaming. “I know. And many of them will be like you, penitent. But who shall cast the first stone? After Brother Girolamo dies we will be a refuge, a sanctuary, a repository of his ideals and dreams. We will shelter a child queen. Many of our sisters will not have full dowries, but we will accept them because they bring us full hearts. And the work of the house will be painting and illuminating, and prophecy. We will walk in the footsteps of Brother Angelico and Brother Girolamo. And my house will last for four hundred years!”
Isabella looks at Girolamo, her face a mixture of delight and apprehension. “It’s the first I’ve heard of painting, but I think it’s an excellent idea,” he says firmly. “It will allow you to do God’s work and help you be independent without producing frivolities like silk thread the way so many convents do.”
“The Holy Virgin showed it to me just now,” Camilla says.
“And you know that it is a true vision?”
“Solid, sure, unquestionable,” she quotes him back.
He nods. “Sometimes it’s just a wisp, and sometimes it’s unshakeable. The details of that sounded reliable to me. And when it’s not what you think you want, that also makes it more likely to be from God. Don’t forget to write it down.”
“A hundred women, more than a hundred!” she repeats. She stands and takes Isabella’s hands. “Sister Isabella must be properly clothed in a postulant’s habit,” she says to Girolamo, reproachfully, as if it were something he had forgotten to see to.
“I’ll leave you to arrange the practical details of her reception,” he says. “I must get back to San Marco. It’s almost time for the Twilight Prayer.”
He smiles as he goes. Isabella is where she belongs, and she is breaking a trail for others like her.
On the Friday, he preaches in the cathedral against the Imperial invasion and prays for deliverance for Florence. They parade the Impruneta Madonna under a canopy, amid trickling rain and gusty winds that rise as they parade, tugging at the skirts of his habit. Later news comes that the Imperial navy has been destroyed that night in a storm. Emperor Maximilian goes home, saying he cannot fight against God. Valori is delighted, the Ballsy and the new enemy party of the Furious are, for the time being, abashed.