The Madonna of the Almonds Read Free Page B

pozzo dei mariti .’
    Nonna snorted scornfully but her old eyes softened. She knew that local folklore had it that if you gazed into one of the natural wells in the woods beyond Pavia it was said that you would see the face of your future husband. She knew that Amaria longed one day to fall in love and be married, but she also knew that the girl’s advanced age andlowly station meant a good match were impossible, and a grandmother’s love precluded her from a bad one. Her disappointment for her granddaughter made Nonna even more acerbic than usual. ‘Girlish nonsense! Depend upon it. He were some hermit, or mayhap a Frenchman. They say the French king is took by the Spanish at Pavia…knocked clean off his horse by Cesare Hercolani…did he wear a crown, your future husband?’
    Amaria smiled. She knew nothing of the politics of the recent battle, just that many men had gone and few returned, lowering her chances of a match still more. But at least she had had no man to keen and cry over, and light candles like the widows in the basilica. She knew that the French king Francis was indeed a prisoner of the victorious Spanish who now held Milan. But she knew little of his citizens save that they had tails and it was said that they could converse with their horses, so curious and snorting was their language. She sighed. ‘You’re right. He must have been a madman. Or some soldier.’
    She sewed in silence looking closely at her work, but the talk of war and the French led her grandmother’s eyes to the wall where Filippo’s dagger hung above the mantle. Had it really been more than twenty years since Nonna had lost her son, her beloved only son, her shining boy? Had all that time truly passed since the great battle of Garigliano in 1503, when she and all the other mothers had prayed for news of their sons? The fate of the others, left to guesswhether their sons lived or died was not to be hers though – the Spanish left her in no doubt of Filippo’s fate when they brought hundreds of corpses back to Pavia to display in the square. She and those other mothers had searched the grisly pile as the flies and buzzards circled, till she saw his beloved face, beaten and bloodied. The Comune had decreed that the pile was to be burnt to prevent pestilence so she could not even bring him home to wash his body as she had done so often when he was a little boy, and lay him out with prayers as she ought. She had time to do little more than close his eyes and take from his body the dagger that he had placed in his hose – all that the looters had left. She had returned home, thinking she would never forget the stink of human flesh as the pyre burned hot and high and the smoke gave her eyes at last the tears that would not come.
    She might have continued so forever, numb with grief and feeling nothing, had God not given her Amaria. For at that very well where the girl had gone this morning she had found her, like Moses among the bulrushes. Babies were often left there, and more so now, with so many war orphans of girls that had been gotten into trouble by absent soldiers. Nonna had gone there for water, as the city’s wells were polluted with corpses. As she stooped to the pool she heard a strangled cry and parted the rough grass to find a naked, bloody child, its limbs weaving at the unaccustomed light, dark eyes blinking from the squashed features of a newborn. Nonna had swaddled the babe and taken it home,not knowing if it was a girl or a boy. She wanted only occupation, and a chance to feel again now that she had lost the son who had been her life. She sat impassive as the babe cried all night from the redgum, when it bawled all day for its honeyteat, when it protested at the swaddle that she sewed her into, for she knew now it was a girl. Nonna remained numb until the day that the baby fixed her currant eyes on her and smiled her first toothless smile, so guileless, so innocent of the war and all that had gone before it. Nonna