Part 7 (1/2)
Ursula looked on, smiling while father and daughter whispered together. She felt generous in this final hour, knowing that the next morning would dawn without the irksome presence of either Alessandra or Emilia. Families were discouraged from visiting their daughters, as contact with the outside world was contrary to the purposes of the cloister.
Alessandra curtsied and kissed her stepmother's hand. Pierina jumped down from the cart and threw her arms around her sister, sobbing unreservedly.
”Come off with me for a moment,” Alessandra said to her, looking at her father for permission. ”Is it all right?”
Carlo nodded, and Alessandra walked off with her arm around Pierina, far enough away where they couldn't be heard. But no words pa.s.sed between them. Pierina's eyes overflowed, but she sniffed and stifled her sobs. They hugged so hard then that it seemed to each of them their hearts would break. Pierina asked, ”How will I remember her without you here to help me?”
Alessandra had no answer for her.
Dodo wailed when she said good-bye, kissing her wetly with his red lips, as pretty as a girl's. Emilia cried freely, torn between sorrow at leaving three of the children behind and relief that at least there would be someone to watch over absentminded Alessandra.
At last, when every embrace was given and every word said, Carlo rang the bell and two black-clad nuns appeared. They attached themselves to Alessandra and Emilia like crows to carrion, leading them away, out of the daylight, into the cloister.
Nine
Emilia found herself with not enough to do for the first time in all her forty years. her forty years.
Alessandra had little need and less desire for a lady's maid. Emilia folded and refolded the items of clothing they'd brought along, and picked sprigs of lavender from the convent garden to tuck between them. She regularly brought out and aired the blue silk dress, making sure it was safe from mold and mice. But Alessandra shooed her away when Emilia tried to brush her hair or wash her feet, saying, ”I cannot think, Emilia, with you fussing about me so!”
When the day was fair, Alessandra sat in the garden to plan and dream, with a prayer book, as often as not, sitting open but unread across her lap.
It was a silent convent, at least as regarded the professed nuns-and the lack of conversation was driving poor Emilia half mad. She'd taken to talking to Alessandra's two finches, complaining about the scant food, the inferior quality of the linens, and the cold. She spoke of the advantages of marrying young and marrying well, of the silliness of girls who thought themselves unready for marriage, despite the fact that she herself was married and a mother by the age of fourteen. She entrusted to the birds all sorts of confidences she hoped Alessandra would overhear and take to heart.
But Alessandra fled whenever Emilia launched into one of her one-way dialogues with the birds. She'd find a tall narrow window that let her sit and listen to the rain. She sat in the library and explored the books there-although there were only a few, and those of little interest, that weren't to be found in her father's library at home.
A couple of the novices were friendly, but mostly the nuns kept their distance from her. Emilia was surprised to see Alessandra-normally a curious and outgoing girl-show so little interest in the other inmates of the place where they would both be spending a year or more. Emilia made up for the indifference of her young mistress by forging good relations.h.i.+ps, first in the kitchen and then in the laundry. It exasperated her that Alessandra hardly seemed to notice how the quality of both the food and their linens had improved after such a short time, thanks to Emilia's efforts.
For all the sweetness of her nature, Alessandra could indeed be exasperating. She seemed to keep a veritable a.r.s.enal of secret objects beneath her skirts now-a notebook in which she scribbled furiously whenever she thought Emilia wasn't looking, and oddly enough, a knife-a big dagger of the very sort that Nicco had lost. Had Alessandra stolen it from him? Did the girl have some reason to fear for her safety? Emilia shook her head and held her counsel, except when she couldn't keep her thoughts to herself anymore, and spoke of her troubles to the birds.
Carlo was paying a high price to have his elder daughter cloistered among the Sisters, and they treated her with a mixture of respect for her wealth and contempt-or perhaps it was envy-for the worldly destiny awaiting her.
Six months after her arrival, the Mother Superior sent a novice to summon Alessandra. Emilia, mad with curiosity and dread, followed along as closely as she could without actually treading on Alessandra's heels.
The Mother Superior eyed Emilia with disapproval before turning, rather deferentially, to the young signorina signorina. ”A messenger has come with news from your home.”
”Oh, Lord!” wailed Emilia. ”Has that fool of a kitchen maid burned the place down?”
”Hush, Emilia!” whispered Alessandra.
Emilia looked fearfully from the Mother Superior to Alessandra and back again. ”Not the master! Please, Reverend Mother, tell us that the signorina signorina's father is well!”
The expression on Alessandra's face showed alarm. ”Who is the messenger, Reverend Mother, and what news does he bring?”
The Mother Superior pa.s.sed a scroll across her desk to Alessandra.
Alessandra-who read the note holding it close to her chest, so that Emilia couldn't make out a single word of it-looked pale when she raised her eyes, but her voice was steady. ”Emilia, please ready our things-only the essentials. We'll need to leave immediately.”
Rising, the Mother Superior put one hand on Alessandra's head and made the sign of the cross with the other. Alessandra bowed and thanked her for her blessing before she and Emilia hurried back to their chamber.
”Bad news, Miss?”
Alessandra began a.s.sembling a small pile of her belongings. ”Don't stand there staring, Emilia! Pack your things!”
”So it's only a short time we'll be away?”
”Hush and gather your belongings! We're never coming back to this place.”
Emilia was trying to puzzle out what it could all mean. Then a look of happiness dawned on her face. She opened the trunk and took out Alessandra's blue silk dress, briefly touching her cheek to the pearl-studded fabric and sniffing in the scent of lavender. ”It will travel so much better in the trunk, Miss.” She made a quick mental inventory of their room, trying to think of some other way to carry the dress safely.
Alessandra caught her gaze. ”Leave it,” she said quietly.
Emilia gazed back at her, as uncomprehending as an innocent animal looking into the butcher's eyes. ”But why, my pet? You'll surely need your wedding gown.”
”There's no time to explain now.”
Emilia reasoned that Alessandra's fiance must be very rich indeed if such a dress were to be left behind! She placed it back into the trunk, wis.h.i.+ng she herself were slim enough to fit into it-or that at least she could give it to one of her granddaughters. ”But Pierina will want it, dear, even if you have no more need of it!”
”She can come get it then.”
Slipping an escaped sprig of lavender into the silken folds, Emilia placed the dress back in the trunk. And then, furtively-as if she hoped Alessandra somehow wouldn't see her-she laid her hands on the finches' cage.
”Leave the birds, Emilia. We won't be able to carry them.”
Tears leaked out of Emilia's eyes then. ”We can't just leave them here, with no one to feed them! I will give them to Sister Paolina-I won't be a moment!”
Alessandra paused in her work of tying her little pile of things into a bundle. She looked at the pair of finches in their pretty cage. Their clipped wings had long ago grown back again. She wondered, even in her haste, if they would remember how to use them. ”Let them go, Emilia-let them fly away.” She pried the cage out of Emilia's hands, placing it on the ledge of the window-then lifted the latch of the gate. ”Fly!” she whispered. She had to shake the birds out of their prison. And just as if they'd never been caged, they flew-beautifully-straight into the sky.
Fighting back her own tears, Alessandra flung the empty cage to the floor and continued her packing, not daring to meet her nanny's eyes.
It was a time of day when most of the nuns were at their work in the orchards and fields. Few saw Alessandra and Emilia leave with the comely young man who arrived on a horse and led a brindled donkey-the same that he himself had ridden two years before, when he'd arrived at their house in Persiceto.
Emilia mounted the donkey, with much drama and hoisting, sitting with her plump legs stretched out astride the saddlebags, distressed about the birds and the blue dress, and calling out to all the saints that she was about to fall off and break her noggin.
Alessandra climbed up to ride on the horse behind Giorgio. Although Emilia pelted him with questions, he was as silent as if he were one of the Sisters of Sant'Alba-and Alessandra refused to explain what in Heaven was going on.
After an hour's riding, Emilia called out, ”The master's house is north, not south of here. We must turn at the crossroads. Alessandra, tell him to turn us around! Do his ears serve him as badly as his tongue?”
But Alessandra pretended not to hear, and Giorgio led them farther away and off the road completely, into a little stand of willows near a rus.h.i.+ng stream. He and Alessandra both dismounted and suddenly, much to Emilia's horror, began stripping off their clothes.
”Santa Maria!” she cried. ”They are possessed!” she cried. ”They are possessed!”