The Madonna of the Almonds by Marina Fiorato Read Free Book Online Page A

Selvaggio’s hair. Amaria cut great clumps away until his hair was all of a length. She washedit then with water and lemon to clear the lice away, and as she cut the fruit to squeeze it on his scalp he seemed to revive. His eyelids flickered – perhaps from the sting of the juice for there were sores on his scalp – and she felt moved to whisper an apology as the eyes closed again. Nonna took her bone needle and waxed thread and sewed the cleaned gash as best she could. She had heard of such remedies on the battlefield and they made sense to her. Sewing was part of her lexicon. If something was torn or rent, you sewed it closed. Nonna clung to her homespun sense through these moments of horror – she needed something to make sense in this world gone mad – where a young man was peppered with blades and shot. As she sewed she tried to imagine his skin was the cambric of a cushion cover, and that she sewed to stop the flock escaping, not the viscera of his stomach.
    Amaria had an easier task – she whetted Filippo’s knife on the hearthstone and cut away the beard that covered the savage’s face. As she rubbed olive oil into his skin and began to shave him close, she felt a shock at the warmth of his skin and the roughness of the stubble, for she had never touched a man before. She had had no bearded kiss of a father to remember, or muscular embrace of a brother. It was all new, so new and good that her face heated in the firelight, and her heart sounded in her ears. Her ministrations revealed a face with regular, good features and a refined look that was far away from the savagery of the invalid’s name. Nonna glanced up when the beard was gone and saw him to beyoung. So young. She had imagined him to be another Filippo, but she knew as she worked that the wildman was little more than a boy – more of an age of a grandson than a son to her.
    At length Amaria began to cut Selvaggio’s claw-like nails. When they were clipped away she washed the hands and rubbed in aloes for their wounds and blisters. She noted that the left hand – but for its wounds – was fine and soft, but the right had the calloused palm of an accustomed soldier who carried a sword every day. Nonna dressed the wounds of Selvaggio with a salve she had made of sage in hog fat, and poured wine into the deepest wounds before its application. The two women worked quietly, murmuring to each other occasionally over what was best to be done, revolving around the body as the hours passed. The candles and the laid-out body reminded Nonna of a wake, and she knew that their work may end as such, for his wounds were so heavy, and some infected, that he still may not see dawn.
    She felt at least that, even should he die, she had done what she could not do for her son. She had cleaned his wounds and laid him out, and finally she covered the boy in a clean linen coverlet and left him to sleep, the sleep of refreshment and recovery, or of death and despair. But as the grey light lessened the powers of the candles, the eyelids flickered again, and a bloom returned to the thin sallow face that had not been there before. In the daylight, with all wounds hidden, the case did not look as grave as before.They allowed themselves to hope. He did not rave or fever, his skin was not fiery to the touch, nor his colour hectic. They could now fully see his face; the eyes, as they opened, were the green of basil leaves, and the hair the light straight brown of merlin feathers. As he slept, grandmother and granddaughter embraced as they watched him, and then crept from the room up the stairs of the cot to the dormer they shared, to sleep also. But before they slept both of them shed tears; Nonna for what she had lost, and Amaria for what she had found.

CHAPTER 6
The Notar y
    Simonetta di Saronno had her head in her hands. Those long white hands, with the middle fingers all of a length, concealed her face completely. She had thought that she had reached the bottom of her well