Chapter 1
Beatrice stirred and cast an arm across the straw mattress, seeking the warmth of her mother’s body, listening hopefully for her breathing. Predawn, the sky was the color of river silt and the silence was deep; even the rooster slept. She pushed aside the rough linen blanket and pressed a hand to the stone wall, steadying herself against the absence. Only half-awake, she reached for her father’s old quilted jacket and held it close, like a beloved friend.
Three months she had been making the journey to sell olive oil to the artists inside the city. It had become more difficult to gain permission to pass through the tollgates. But, then, measured against what her life had become, that hardly mattered. Her mother had disappeared, traumatized, her face crazed like the night’s constellations. Her father—she would not think of it.
Alone, moving stiffly, Beatrice used her hips to guide the wooden cart down the dirt road, out of the tiny village of Settignano. One of the wheels wobbled, threatening to come off. There were no florins to pay an ironsmith. If she failed to sell her olive oil she would starve, and if she starved she would die. She pinched her thigh hard, giving herself a proper bruise for the self-pitying thought.
Kicking the wheel back onto its wooden axle with a naked foot, she walked on, imagining her feet to be padded like an animal’s, her toes protected by bristled hair. The idea of loping through her village as a she-wolf buoyed her, and she started to trot down the hill.
The road leading to Florence had been pounded flat by heavy wagons pulled by men and teams of white oxen. The stoneworkers traveled from the local quarries, their backs bowed like willow sticks, hauling the pietra serenabecause the rich favored the calming gray-blue colors. “Serena,” the cutters would joke about the name, a trace of bitterness lacing their voices, their bodies crippled by carrying the stone to the city so that the wealthy could raise monuments to God, to the Virgin Mary and to themselves.
* * *
A white cat, thin as a shadow, angled beside her and mewled loudly. Beatrice set down her cart and stroked its scrawny head, allowing the animal to crawl inside her wool gambeson. Before, even on hot days, her father wore the jacket like a noble soldier preparing for battle, though he was only a gentle philosopher and keeper of a few olive trees. Now he was buried deep in the ground. She held the warm cat and thought of a story she’d heard about prisoners in dungeons who befriended rats to keep from going mad. Being in prison might not be so bad if you were there with your mamma e papà and there was a portal to look out at the world. But her kin were gone, and without them, the joy in her land had run dry.
The air tasted of winter cold descending from the Apennines, and Beatrice knew there was more of that to come. She uncorked her deerskin and sipped wine. Her supply of olive oil was nearly exhausted. Only days ago, she had tenderly raked and sorted the olives from her modest family grove to have them inspected by the owner of the local olive mill. It was her first time representing the family, and she’d felt nervous and excited. He motioned her to the private yard behind the giant granite crushers. “You have money to pay?” Sweat clung to her skin from running her cart, heavy with her harvest, down the road to the mill. She had removed every twig and all the slender silver leaves from her autumnal haul and was bursting with pride at its glistening freshness. Now she was standing in olive muck up to her ankles.
“No money, no olive oil,” warned the miller, his mouth twitching. He looked her over as if seeing her for the first time.
“I have no coins, but I can trade with you.”
She watched his blackened fingers stretching and curling. They reminded her of short, pudgy eels.
“I have a pillow stitched with tombolo lace by my mother,” she said, stepping toward him, pleading her case. “My father brought our olives to you over many years.”
He leered at her. “Orphaned wench. Tombolo does not interest me.” His fingers were suddenly upon her. He gripped her neck and clawed at her tunic. She kicked him hard between the legs and ran for it, dumping most of the olives from her cart by the time she had reached the safety of the road.
The attack had terrified her. Surely she had done something to provoke his rage? Her parents had never raised a hand against her, so it was difficult to know how to gauge the customs of other people. Such an ugly man, with eels for fingers. She remembered how her father had taught her to hurl stones at the black night whenever she fell into a sour mood. “To the moon!” he had laughed, “La luna!” That was a game they had played together. She used to believe in its magic, but now she wasn’t so sure.
She pushed her cart toward Florence, her feet now leaden and unsteady, her imaginary friend, the she-wolf, lying low in a tangle of juniper bush.
The sky was lightening to the gray of Florentine wool. She took two dirty lengths of linen from her satchel, wound them tightly around both hands, picked up the handles again and rolled forward, the wheels lurching down a steep pitch gnarled by tree roots and rocks heaved up from the earth. Her thighs burned with the effort and she felt a crack on her heel run with fresh blood. Her earthenware jars rattled against each other like broken bones.
The road dipped then flattened, and she saw the massive outline of the brick wall that protected Florence from peasants, the popolo minuto, like her. She watched as the outsiders pushed frantically toward the wall, three stories tall—villagers and shanty dwellers coming from all directions, a river of snakes with dull eyes and oily backs. Beatrice set the cart down and knotted her black hair tightly at the back of her head, the better to go anonymously into the crowd and avoid the unwanted attention of the guards at the city gates.
She pulled her hood down low and shifted her mantle so that her breasts were camouflaged, becoming less girl, more boy. Before the troubles, she was adored and coddled, presented as a jewel by her parents whenever they walked through the village. No longer. Now, alone, she carried a blade and kept her eyes down.
She pressed both hands together in a rough prayer to make ready for the humiliating inspection. A group of women hauling baskets of fresh-cut oak on their heads shouldered their way past as the chief sentry called out to open the thick wooden doors. Vendors scrabbled like cockroaches, using their carts and shovels to push their way forward toward the tollgates, ready to pay their meager coins to gain access to the great golden city.
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