The Madonna of the Almonds Read Free Page A

less. She took her hands from the sword and the gun and left her window at last. She knelt at the foot of her bed to say the Pater Noster , then, wrapping herself in the vair, dropped onto the coverlet of her bed as if felled.

CHAPTER 3
Selvaggio
    ‘Nonna, there’s a Wildman in the woods.’
    ‘Amaria Sant’Ambrogio, you have been on this earth for twenty summers, and you still have no more sense than a bean. What nonsense is this?’
    ‘Truly, Nonna, I swear it by Saint Ambrose himself. Silvana and I were at the wells, and we saw him. And besides, they talk of him in the town. They call him Selvaggio , the savage!’ Amaria’s dark eyes were as wide as saucers.
    The old lady sat down at their humble table and regarded her granddaughter. The girl looked little better than a savage herself. Her black hair which normally hung straight to her waist was tangled with comfrey flowers and briars till it stood out from her head. Her complexion, normally tanned, had a rose blush to it from her exertions. The girl’s olive-black eyes showed the whites all around like the stare of a frighted horse. Her bodice was ripped to show more than was seemly of her bosom, her full breasts straining at the lacings, and the girl’s skirts were kirtled round herknees for ease of running, displaying her sturdy legs. Amaria could not be called fat; never that, for the indigence of their household would never allow gluttony. Yet she was a softly rounded, peach of a girl, all womanliness in figure and a glowing, glossily healthful embodiment of life. She made a tempting picture for any passing gentleman, with her rosy, abundant beauty; despite the fact that her rounded features and full-bodied figure were at odds with the fashions of the day. Courtly ladies craved white alabaster skin, even rubbing leaden paste into their faces to achieve the right hue; Amaria was tanned to the colour of warm sand. Noble women were whippet slim; Amaria was all curves and dimples. Great Signoras used all sorts of arts to lighten their hair to red or gold; Amaria’s fall of hair had the blue-black sheen of a crow’s wing. Though no woman could ever be more beautiful to Nonna than her granddaughter, the old lady despaired of getting Amaria wed; for who wanted a maid of twenty, with plenty of meat on her bones but no sense and no fortune? Even more when she went about Pavia like this – like the whores that hung around the square at dusk.
    Nonna sighed and transferred the sage that she always chewed from one papery cheek to the other. She fiercely loved Amaria and wished the best for her, and because the love she held for the girl was so great that it made her afraid, she always spoke to her harsher than she meant. ‘I might have known that Silvana had something in the case. She encourages you in all your foolishness. Tidy yourself, child,and say your Ave Marias . Look to God instead of your fat friend, and pray instead of chattering like a parrot.’
    Amaria smoothed her hair and let down her skirts. She was used to such censure and it did not lessen her affection for the old lady. She found a bobbin and needle on the mantle and sat to sew her bodice. ‘But I saw him, Nonna. We were…looking in the water and I saw his reflection before I saw his person. He has red skin, claws and fur, but his eyes are kind. Do you think he is a woodsprite?’
    ‘Red skin? Claws and fur? Woodsprite? Where do you get such pagan notions? More like he is a poor fugitive from this lately ended action – a soldier who has lost his wits. Mayhap a Spaniard, for they are witless enough.’ (From Nonna’s levity of tone it could never be guessed that the Spanish had destroyed her life.) ‘What were you doing at the wells anyway, as if I need to ask? We have water aplenty and more besides, and a perfectly good spring in the town square from what I know of it.’
    Amaria dropped her head over her sewing and her cheeks flushed. ‘We were…that is…Silvana wanted to… look in the