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- Herausgeber: Allison & Busby
- Kategorie: Gesellschafts- und Liebesromane
- Sprache: Englisch
'My favourite kind of historical fiction ... So beautifully atmospheric ... I loved this book and can't wait to read more from Glennis Virgo' - Frances Quinn, author of That Bonesetter Woman Bologna, 1575. A talented seamstress A powerful merchant A fierce battle of wills Bologna, 1575. A talented seamstress. A powerful merchant. A fierce battle of wills. Elena Morandi has gained a fragile foothold in a master tailor's workshop, despite the profession being barred to women. But then Antonio della Fontana, a powerful man from her past, crosses her path and threatens everything she has built. Fontana has every corner of the city in his pocket and Elena knows all too well of his past abuses. Driven to fight for justice, she hatches a daring plan to get retribution for herself, a lost friend and his other victims. The sights, sounds and textures of Renaissance Italy are brought to vivid life in this breathtaking historical fiction debut. 'I LOVED this. The characters sing. Bravo' - Sara Sheridan, author of The Fair Botanists
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For Izzie – my Persephone.
With love from your Demeter.
Contents
Report on an applicant for a place at the orphanage of Santa Maria del Baraccano, Bologna, in the year of our Lord, 1566
We are satisfied that the girl is a true orphan, lacking both father and mother, and is from a respectable artisan family. In the absence of any other living kinsman, she has been recommended by one of her father’s journeymen. Her baptismal certificate has been examined and gives her age as ten years. Father and mother were citizens and she was born within the city walls. She has been neither begging nor working as a domestic servant nor tending animals in the fields since her parents passed from this life. This testifies to righteous conduct, but without the protection of the orphanage her honour could be in peril before much time has passed.
She has no deformities or disease – is neither blind, deaf, mute, hunchbacked, nor lame. Her eyesight is sharp. Though she speaks little, she is obedient and not considered lazy or a gossip. She has been verified as a virgin by a respected gentlewoman and shows no signs of an evil disposition. Though 8she is not especially fair, there is no impediment to her being placed in employment and married in due course, so long as she contracts no disfiguring ailment whilst under the care of the mistresses. In sum, there is nothing to indicate that she would weigh down the orphanage.
There is one further attribute to note. The girl has, it would appear, some knowledge of sewing which will be of benefit both to the orphanage and to herself.910
Chapter One
Bologna, 1575
In those days, before we all took our revenge, a man in Signora Ruffo’s workroom was as noteworthy as marten fur lining in a velvet cape – and a good deal less welcome.
The Signora had been widowed long before (her husband one of those tailors whose workshops stud the Via Drapperie) and her clients knew well that menfolk were not gladly received at their fittings. Fathers and husbands likely paid for the gowns and capes, the undershifts and overdresses, but neither their attendance nor their approval was required. The fittings took place in the afternoons and each working day was separated into two distinct parts. In the mornings there were but three of us in the workroom. The Signora and I spent our time cutting and sewing, and the loudest sound was that of shears sliding through silk or the soft thud when Sofia moved a bolt of fabric. The afternoons were a swirl of female chatter and gossip as each client swept in, accompanied by at least one sister or friend to 12give advice, together with a lady’s maid to be loaded up with discarded clothing. Signora Ruffo had set up a corner of the workroom as a fitting area. There were tapestry chairs softened with cushions, a painted screen – its design of mulberry trees a constant reminder of the source of the city’s wealth – and two small tables on which wine was served once the damasks and brocades had been safely put aside. As a rule, the two of us moved from one customer to the next, pinning and tweaking, reassuring and encouraging, until the last had flurried down the stairs.
That afternoon I was on my knees adjusting the hem of a blue silk gown (its owner far too short to do it justice, in my opinion) when a male voice, announcing its owner as Signor Martelli, rumbled under the usual chirruping and caused us all to look towards the door. I had expected the Signora to hustle the man away, but he wore the air of an expected visitor and she invited him to sit at her embroidery table, where they remained in conference for two strikes of the hour from the clock on the Accursio Tower. Signor Martelli was hard to place – his clothes were not those of a nobleman but they were well cut and the fabric of good quality. And he was neither old nor especially ugly. If I had thought a little harder, I would have tumbled to it, but I was too busy grappling with the swathes of silk.
I had spent all morning working on the gown, its colour mirrored in the early spring sky beyond the open windows. Only on the coldest days, when fingers became too stiff for sewing and chilblains threatened, would Signora Ruffo allow the shutters to be closed. She always said that working in the gloom is a certain road to crooked seams and clumsy pleating. Every so often, I had to stop and rub my hands together for 13warmth before picking up my needle again to continue the row of small and perfectly even stitches, but I did not mind. A room full of light, however cold, does not make me shiver – unlike shadows and flickering candles. The Signora’s palazzo is tall and elegant, much like the mistress herself, and situated at the end of a block where the last buildings in the street surrender to smallholdings. From the top-floor workroom the view stretches as far as the solid walls which encircle the city and, in the other direction, to the jumble of buildings and towers which make up the church of San Francesco. He had been my favourite saint in my mother’s bedtime stories, and I sent up a quick prayer for my next piece of work to consist of something other than sky-blue ruffles and flounces. A mourning dress in a sombre monachino would be perfect: collar standing sentinel around the neck, tightly fitted bodice and the only decoration a few tassels.
After making a neat finish to the final seam, I had gathered up the silk gown in my arms. The Signora was seated at her table embroidering a stomacher with gold thread which glittered in the sunlight, but she put it aside to scrutinise every finger’s length of my work. Finally, she looked up and smiled.
‘Excellent work, Elena. I could have made you the best seamstress in Bologna – given more time.’
I twisted my thimble ring round and round.
‘Signora, is there any likelihood that this afternoon there may be a lady who requires a more … fitted gown?’
‘There speaks a tailor’s daughter! Always looking at shape rather than embellishment. Your mother should have birthed a boy.’
There was the rub. My skills may have rivalled those of any 14pustule-faced apprentice, but my sex decreed that the door of every tailor’s workshop in the city was closed to me. A gown may be as elaborate and well fashioned as any doublet and breeches but its making is women’s work. There is no honour in it – or money either. Time and again, I had bludgeoned the mistress about my ambition but her response never wavered: that the closest a woman may get to being a tailor is to marry one. Her dismissal served to avoid further argument.
‘Now, hurry along and help Sofia prepare for the clients.’
I bobbed a grudging curtsey before scooping up the completed gown and draping it over the hanging beam.
It was not the Signora who taught me to sew; I learnt those skills in my father’s workshop, sitting on his knee. And later, inside the Baraccano, my talents were put to such good use that, on leaving, I was placed as a seamstress rather than some rich woman’s drudge. But it was Signora Ruffo who taught me to measure and fit, to make adjustments which enhance a long neck or disguise a thickening waist. Most seamstresses do not venture beyond undershifts of fine white linen, while for outer garments there is Drapperie where many of the tailors are content to clothe women as well as gentlemen. But some ladies of good taste do not want to be measured and prodded by a man – and an artisan at that. Signora Ruffo made it her business to provide everything such clients may require, from a hooded cape to an undershift edged with decorative stitching. Not that I was required to make undershifts any longer.
The previous October, around the feast of San Petronio, Signora Ruffo had decided that there was too much work for just herself and me. Sofia sews a good, straight seam and can do so in haste when a customer decides for some reason that she 15has desperate need of new undergarments before the end of the week. It is also Sofia’s job to keep the workroom tidy, which she does with great attentiveness; there is never a dropped needle or a speck of lint to be found on the floor. Sofia is not her real name, but no one is able to pronounce that, and I can no longer even recall it. When she arrived, her language was like an uneven seam, all stops and starts, with an accent even stranger than that of the Sicilians who haggle over the price of cocoons in the Pavaglione. In the afternoons she was kept busy at a distance from the clients. They were, for the most part, the wives and daughters of rich silk merchants, or aristocrats who had somehow clung on to the Holy Father’s goodwill. If Sofia came too close, those ladies would affect a shudder. One even told the Signora that her new assistant needed to be scrubbed clean to get that horrible colour from her skin. But Sofia continued to sway a path around the edges of the room, her expression always serene.
Sofia and I each had a narrow bedroom, high up under the beams of the palazzo. One night I had been lying awake, fearing dreams of the Baraccano, when I heard sounds through the thin wall which divided the two rooms. Sofia was speaking aloud, but I could not work out what she was saying – even less who she could be talking to. I got up and pressed my ear to the wall: Sofia was repeating phrases she heard used in the workroom.
‘Bring the crimson damask over here, please.’
‘Feel the quality of this silk velvet, Signora.’
‘Has anyone seen my needle?’
Sofia was trying to improve her Bolognese! From time to time, she would pause on a word and say it over and over again, struggling for the correct pronunciation. 16
The following evening, as soon as the murmuring began, I tapped on her door. For a few moments there was silence, then Sofia opened it a crack, her head lowered in apology.
‘Sorry, Elena, sorry. I have disturbed.’
‘I heard you practising. May I help?’
‘No. Thank you. You sleep. I be quiet.’
It took me the length of a Mass to persuade her, but from that time onwards we spent every evening together. We began by chanting the names of fabrics and equipment, but Sofia was a quick learner and soon she was making up her own sentences. Gradually, the lessons turned into conversation and we would gossip about the clients. I even taught her some of the things I would like to say to them – on strict instructions that they must never be repeated:
‘I am sorry, Signora, but you are far too old to be wearing that.’
‘If you are rude to me again, I will stick pins in you.’
At first Sofia would trap a giggle behind her hand but soon we were both laughing out loud, glad that the mistress slept two floors below. We talked of clothes and handsome young men we had caught sight of in the street, but neither of us spoke of life before joining Signora Ruffo. For me, it would be like scratching an open wound, and I imagined that the same was true for Sofia. Even at that time, I thought it unlikely that she had arrived in Bologna of her own will. Though our talk in the workroom was of practical matters, sometimes we would catch each other’s eye and have to turn away to hide our smiles. 17
It was about a week later that Signor Martelli stood on the threshold again, but this time there trailed behind him another, whose black robes and hat marked him out as a notary. Some of them, I knew, were learned men of means while others could scarcely afford their own quills; the depth of dye in this one’s garments suggested that he fell somewhere between the two. He pulled from his bag a sheaf of papers as thick as half a Bible before joining Signor Martelli at the Signora’s embroidery table. I tried to hear what was being said, but their discourse was held in an undertone and my customer would keep prating on about the exact fit of her bodice. Sofia was closer to the Signora’s table and I hoped that she had been able to unravel some words.
After less than an hour of the clock the notary left, his robes flapping like the wings of a crow, while Signor Martelli remained seated, legs outstretched, and gazed around as though he owned us all. Each time his eyes lit on me, I repaid him with a scowl. Only when fitting had ended for the day did the Signora escort him downstairs along with the remaining customers. I immediately sidled over to Sofia.
‘Did you manage to catch anything, Sof? Is Signora Ruffo making a will? Please tell me that man is not buying her business.’
Sofia continued stabbing pins into a pin pillow and would not meet my eye.
‘It is about marriage, I think. They say “betrothal”. That is marriage, yes?’
Though I felt as though a stone had settled inside me, I attempted a laugh.
‘The mistress marry? She would never do that. She has 18nothing to gain and would lose all her freedom. You must have misheard.’
‘Not the mistress. They put names on papers. His name.’ She looked up with a weak smile. ‘And yours.’
I turned away, in need of re-winding a roll of damask. At that moment the Signora came back into the workroom and I strode across to her.
‘Is it true?’
‘Remember your manners please, miss.’
Sofia edged to the side of the room and looked like she wished to fade into a fabric bolt. I sketched an unwilling curtsey.
‘I beg pardon, Signora. Is it true that I am to be married to Signor Martelli?’
Signora Ruffo gestured towards her table.
‘Come and sit down with me.’
‘No – I thank you. Please answer me, Signora.’
‘I intended to tell you this evening, my dear, but I see that you have worked matters out for yourself. He is a good man, recently widowed, with no children. His wife died soon after their marriage.’
‘I do not care about his wife! Nor do I wish to be his new one.’ My voice was rising and I could feel the heat in my face. ‘If I am not allowed to be a tailor, why may I not remain here? You are pleased with my work, are you not?’
‘You know that I am, Elena, but you cannot pretend surprise.’ Her voice was scratched with irritation. ‘Three years of work and then a marriage – they are the Baraccano rules. I have done my best for you.’
All at once the cut of Signor Martelli’s clothes made sense. I sighed. 19
‘So he is a master tailor – but I surmise that he will not allow me to work.’
Signora Ruffo lowered her head and smoothed the gap between her brows.
‘Some tidying of his workshop, perhaps, but that is all. I tried, Elena, but he was obdurate.’
She probably took my silence as submission, but I had already made my resolve: I was not going to marry Signor Martelli.
Chapter Two
I left no note: not because I was unable – the mistresses at the Baraccano slapped and cuffed our letters into us – but I was too angry to give any explanation or thanks. If the Signora thought me an ungrateful wretch, so be it; at least she would not come looking for me. As for Sofia – it pains me still that I did not take my proper leave of her and worse, that I unpicked our friendship in a few words.
‘No lesson in Bolognese tonight, I beg you, Sofia. To tell truth, I have become wearied by them.’
That same night, I waited until it was certain that they would both be asleep before I took my bundle and crept down the flights of stone steps, pulling the front door shut behind me. In the courtyard I unbarred the gate and slipped round the side of the palazzo, heading towards the Reno Canal.
I spent the first part of the night ducking in and out of side streets, avoiding the main roads where the Legate’s sbirri21liked to roam in gangs, pretending to keep the peace. But soon after Matins a fine drizzle of rain which clung to my cloak and hood drove me to find shelter in the precinct of a tiny church, set back from the road. Its porch was in dark shadow and I tiptoed towards it, expecting to find at least one snoring vagrant stretched out on the stones. As I approached, a rat’s tail flicked away into the surrounding bushes, but that and the lingering smell of stale piss were the only signs of life. I curled up behind a pillar, my bundle an unyielding lump beneath my head. Nearby a dog barked, setting off a chain of yapping and howling which faded into the distance, followed by silence.
I did not drowse for longer than an Ave Maria that night. Every footstep, every scuttling creature set my heart pounding and my thoughts weaving some shapeless danger. A lone girl lying on the ground in the dark invited violence, or so most would say – men and women both. And I had of my own will left a warm pallet and the safety of Signora Ruffo’s palazzo. It was but one night, yet it gave a terrifying glimpse of what my life could become if I did not find work.
Finally, a grey dawn brought with it the first low rumblings from the massive mills which crouched along the canal banks, spewing out flour, paper and silk thread. The thrumming sound was ever-present during daylight and there was a saying in the city that you could tell a foreigner because he walked around with his hands over his ears. Here, so close to the mills, I felt like doing the same myself, but I had never before been so grateful for the pounding noise and the return to the daily round it marked. I peered round the pillar and saw men and women in heavy wool tunics already hurrying down the street in the direction of the canal. I fell in behind them, looking like 22just another silk-thrower on her way to work.
Hard against the canal was a mesh of streets, already narrow but further straitened by porticoes on either side where households had extended their upper floors to make space for a paying lodger. I knew that if I could afford a room anywhere it would be here. At the first house I tried, a weary-looking mother with children tugging at her skirts suggested I share a room with two infants. I smiled a refusal and walked a little further on. This time the door was opened by an elderly widow who, it seemed, had become wary of letting out to students from the university after one almost burnt the place down. Consequently, the rent would be low for a quiet and respectable seamstress. It took only moments before I was unwrapping my bundle in a tiny room which teetered over the street below. I had, of course, forfeited my dowry by running away, but I’d managed to save most of the purse money the Signora was contracted to give me, as well as my earnings from piecework at the Baraccano. It was enough to live on for a few months but I needed a tailor to give me work soon – if I was to avoid lifting my skirts in order to eat.
I was bawled out of most of the tailors’ workshops which jostle for attention along the Via Drapperie, and in others the welcome was more physical. I could feel where bruises would soon ripen on my arms because eager journeymen wanted to be certain that I found the door. As for the workshop of Signor Martelli, I hurried past its counter – that meeting would be a humiliation too far. Now there was but one left to try. It occupied a position of prestige on the corner where, no doubt, light coming in from two sides was reflected in the rent. Nevertheless, I smoothed down my apron once again and 23stepped through the gap in the counter into the back room. This workshop, though larger and brighter than the others, shared with them the smells of new fabrics and waxed thread and was laid out much the same, with rolls of cloth propped around the edges and half-finished garments hanging from a beam suspended along the back wall.
In the lightest corner of the room four tailors sat cross-legged on a long table. One was grizzled with age and held his work close to his eyes, but all were older than their master, who stood at his own bench within sight of the street. He wore his hair and beard neatly trimmed and his clothes were in the highest fashion: ivory silk doublet and crimson breeches, both with just enough slashing to let a richer fabric show through while avoiding a penalty under the sumptuary laws. I curtseyed.
‘Good day, Signore.’
There was a long silence, sliced through by the sound of his shears on a fine blue serge. Finally, he cocked his head and waited.
‘I come to ask if you have need of an apprentice.’
He sighed.
‘Is your brother, husband … or pimp unable to ask for work?’
‘I ask for myself, Signore.’
There were stifled guffaws from the journeymen, which he quelled with a glare, and I pressed on.
‘I have worked for three years as assistant to a seamstress. My stitches are so small as to be almost invisible and my seams hold firm. I am also an experienced fitter.’
This was usually when the shouting or manhandling began, but he waved in the direction of a small basket under the table. 24
‘There are fabric scraps in the cavolo. Join two of them with stitches of exactly equal length.’
I was so taken by surprise at this chance to show my skills that it took me some time to select my pieces. I knew he would expect me to pick some linen, an obvious choice for a seamstress who had worked only on undershifts. Instead, I chose a heavy, embossed damask which required particular care with matching of the pattern across the sewed seam. I had to search around for the haberdashery I needed, since the journeymen had buried their noses in their work and showed no sign of offering help. Set along the side wall was a small set of drawers and inside I found thread of the right colour as well as needle and thimble. I considered hoisting up my skirts to join the others on the table, but thought it more prudent to settle on a cushion on the floor. There was silence inside the room – the only sound the muffled chatter of matrons in the street beyond. At first, my hands shook, but I took in a deep breath of the familiar workshop smells – beeswax, wool, silk, a wisp of woodsmoke from the stove – and was soon lulled into the rhythmic repetition of stitching.
I was once again that small child back in my father’s workshop, where I learnt to thread a needle after running a thread across a lump of wax; to use a bodkin to make eyelet holes; to mark fabric with a sliver of leftover chalk. Mine was the best-dressed wooden doll in the street, with a collection of outfits which I sewed from scraps too small to be of use to the tailors. But my doll did not wear flowing gowns and capes of linen and silk, because I had long since decided that it was a boy. Father had split the doll’s stump, usually hidden under skirts, to create separate legs so that I could clothe them 25in little damask breeches, and I added matching doublets and even tiny ruffs.
If the journeymen were working, I kept myself tucked in a warm corner out of the way, my hair tousled from time to time as one of them passed by. But once they had left for the day, Father would dart around the room with me trotting behind.
‘Feel this perpignano, Elena. Isn’t it soft?’
‘Look at the gold thread glittering in this brocade, Elena.’
I learnt the name of every fabric and how to use it to best effect as well as the tricks and ruses used to enhance a man’s figure. Mother always knew where to find me and she would patter down the stairs from our living quarters to bring me a piece of bread or remind me to use the privy; when I was in the workshop with Father, I was like to forget everything else.
‘Signore.’
I held out my completed work. The tailor did not take it straightaway but continued cutting along his chalked line until he reached the end. Then he snatched the fabric from my outstretched hand and walked to the doorway where he held it up to the thin March light and peered at it, pulling at the seam, tugging it this way and that. At last, he spoke.
‘You sew a tight seam, girl. The stitches are even too, and that is better pattern-matching than I have seen from some journeymen.’
I caught him glancing in the direction of the youngest assistant, whose neck flushed. Then he turned and tossed the fabric back into the scraps basket.
‘But I have no need of an apprentice. We do not even dress women here. I cannot abide frills and flounces.’
‘Exactly, Signore …’ 26
But I knew that it was useless to argue; he had already turned back to his work, as had the gawping journeymen. I left the shop, blinking away angry tears, and pushed my way through the labyrinth of streets until one spilt out onto Piazza Maggiore. It was not a market day so the square appeared vast, bounded only by the civic buildings which loudly announced Bologna’s self-regard. To my left loomed the massive bulk of the basilica of San Petronio, its façade still only half-clad in marble, though the rest of the building had been completed before I was born, so they say. I climbed its shallow steps and sat down near the top just behind a pair of chattering women, baskets on arms, whose children scampered up and down around them. They offered a good screen against any man who might think I needed company.
I adjusted the cape around my shoulders, hands still trembling with anger, my thoughts as tightly wound as a skein of yarn. What had I done to deserve such contempt? My skills had impressed the tailor, I had no doubt of that, yet he must have found amusement in offering me a morsel and then snatching it away, as though I were a hungry bird tethered by its leg. At least the other tailors had not tortured me with hope. But he had pretended the test was a real one when he had no intention of taking me on; his arrogance was a very good fit for the city.
A dark cloud covered the sun and the women began gathering up their children to return home. I shivered and pulled my cloak tighter. There were no tailors’ workshops left to try in Drapperie and I had no other plan. Perhaps the married women on the steps had made the right choice, after all; at least they could rely on a roof and a full stomach, even if 27their husbands were brutes and the lyings-in endless. Without work or a man’s protection, my life would likely be a hard church porch, my hand stretched out for alms. And the only alternative would soon beckon: earning a living flat on my back on a pallet, forced to trust a pimp to frighten off the worst of the abusers.
I stood up to shake off the thought and glanced towards the darkening alleys of shops leading away from the piazza. Tucked away among them was the tailor’s warm workshop, lined with bolts of fine fabric. Though I had been there for less than an hour, it had felt like home – and what was more, my tormentor had no interest in clothing women, so he was the very person to teach me how to become a gentlemen’s tailor. And, though he had thrown me out like all the others, he was the only one who asked to see my work, the only one who allowed me to show what I could do. I had no other recourse; he may have claimed that there was no place for a girl apprentice, but the tailor was not going to rid himself of me that easily.
Chapter Three
On the following morning, before the tailor’s shop had even opened, I was leaning against a pillar on the opposite side of the alley, watching the journeymen arrive one by one and duck under the half-open shutters. Shortly afterwards, the youngest of them came out and lifted the shutters to their full height, but not before throwing me a glare. I remained at my post all morning while gentlemen, already fine in silk and wool, came to choose fabric from the bales piled high on the counter, or slipped inside the workshop for a fitting. The tailor certainly did not want for customers. I whiled away the time imagining the sleeves I would fashion to make one look as though he had broad shoulders, or the breeches to disguise another’s paunch. Every so often, the tailor himself would appear at the counter, nodding at passers-by and sometimes engaging a likely client in conversation. He must have seen me, though he pretended he had not.
By the time the shutters came down for the lunchtime pause, 29my aching back was demanding a seat. The bell signalling the end of the market in Piazza Maggiore had just rung and Drapperie was bustling with matrons, each carrying a basket of produce on her arm. I dodged my way through them until, not many paces along the street, I reached the tiny church of San Matteo which nestled between two tailors’ workshops. I crossed its narrow churchyard and gave a gentle push on the wooden door.
Inside, the only light came from a few candles burning down in front of a statue of the saint, and I stood for the length of an Ave Maria while my eyes became accustomed to the gloom. I was glad that I would not need to feign prayer as an excuse for my presence; the church was empty, though the lingering aroma of incense suggested that a Mass had only recently ended. My first impression was that I had stumbled into an especially fine draper’s shop for, as well as the usual statues and paintings, the church was richly adorned with fabrics. In addition to the altar cloth, which hung in extravagant gold and scarlet folds, lengths of embroidered silk were draped from the low beams. The statue of San Matteo himself was dressed in a robe of sage green and the chair on which he sat to write his gospel was upholstered in a dark damask: brown, perhaps – it was hard to tell in the half-light. Even the crucified Christ who hung above the altar wore a real loincloth of what looked like ivory silk. I sank into a pew, which was softened with a thin cushion of patterned damask, and stretched my back and shoulders this way and that. To one side of me, there were tombs set flush into the wall, none of them elaborate, yet the occupants were named and there was some simple decoration. One made me smile. Some master tailor was clearly so proud of his profession that he had made 30sure all knew it; embedded within the vertical surface of the gravestone was a pair of real cutting shears, slightly open and pointing downwards. They took me back to Father’s workshop where I had watched him mark up a linen toile for a doublet. I must have been about eight summers and I was standing close beside him at the cutting-table, following every stroke of the chalk. When he had finished, he picked up the shears and held them out to me.
‘Here, Elena. You try. Nice, smooth slices using the whole length of the blade. No snipping or clipping.’
I took the shears – they were so heavy it was all I could do to hold them in one hand – and began sliding them through the fabric along the cutting-line which marked the side of the doublet. Father gave no advice but watched every cut as I followed the curve of the armhole, the neckline, then down the sweep of the front. I now suspect that the linen was of low value and that any mistakes I made would have been of little consequence, but I took as much care as though it were costly cloth of gold. As soon as I had finished and set down the shears, he wrapped me in his arms and twirled me around the workshop, while Mother clapped from the bottom of the stairs where she had been looking on. Father’s old workshop was still there, a few doors down from where I sat, but it had a new owner now and I had recognised not one journeyman when I had gone there asking for work.
I settled against the back of the pew, amazed at how the textiles in this ‘tailors’ church’ muffled the sounds from the street and made it feel almost warm on a chill spring morning. My eyes wanted to close and I allowed the lids to droop for a moment. 31
I was startled awake by the sound of the door scraping open and immediately slid to my knees, hands palm to palm. Using a church for sleep was the act of a vagrant and I had no wish to be taken for one; but I need not have feared. By the time the door banged shut a young priest was already bustling down the nave before disappearing round a corner, without even noticing my presence. I slipped from my pew and crept out of the church.
When I arrived back at my place opposite the workshop, the young journeyman was already raising the shutters once again but this time did not even bother to look at me. A determined drizzle was setting in and I stepped back under the portico, at the risk of rousing the ire of another artisan. I remained there until the end of the working day when the craftsmen joked and ragged their way down the street. Then I turned in the opposite direction and trudged off home.
I returned to my post the following day, and the days after that, never missing. Once I tried to speak to the tailor. I waited until he was at the counter, nodding greetings as usual, before I walked over and made my most respectful curtsey. He looked me up and down.
‘I have already told you that there is no vacancy for an apprentice – and certainly not one in skirts.’
I was tempted to offer to wear a codpiece, if that was all I lacked, but thought better of it.
‘I am willing to do whatever work is required, Signore.’
But he was gone before I had finished speaking. 32
It was one morning about a week later when only three journeymen stooped under the shutters; the eldest was missing. There was a disorganised air around the workshop all day, with customers having to bang on the counter repeatedly to gain attention. The old man must have been afflicted by some malady, I thought. No doubt he will soon be back to earn his wage, even if not fully recovered. But the days passed and he did not return. The workshop moved from disorganised to frantic and the other journeymen were now grumbling their way down the street at the end of the day.
Though it was not long till Holy Week, the weather had turned bitterly cold. A northerly wind sliced down Via Drapperie all day, and at night it rattled and buffeted my narrow room. Every evening when I left my post opposite the workshop, it seemed less likely that the tailor would change his mind. And I was so lonely; I shared not a word with a living soul, unless handing over rent to my landlady counted as conversation. How I missed Sofia and our bedtime gossip. One morning, after little sleep and that broken by Baraccano nightmares, I was tempted to forgo my vigil and remain under the coverlet. But then I imagined the tailor’s shrug of indifference and set off as usual, my cloak wrapped tight.
Though I was a little late arriving, the journeymen were still shivering outside the workshop, waiting to be let in, until eventually the youngest banged on the shutters and the tailor appeared, hair uncombed and his doublet wrongly buttoned, and with heavy eyes that suggested he had been working all night. Once the men were inside, he looked across at me and beckoned with one finger.
‘I will give you a trial – a few weeks. My name is Francesco 33Rondinelli, but you will call me Maestro. Your job will be to make our work easier – fetching what we need, sweeping up, waxing thread. That sort of thing. Do not think that you will be doing any tailoring. Is that understood?’
‘Yes, Maestro.’
He raised the shutters a little higher and I followed him in, hoping that the old man’s illness would be of long duration.
The Maestro had not lied; I was more of a servant than an apprentice. But not the sort of servant who is given clear orders. Instead, I was expected to anticipate the individual needs of each tailor in the room. One would require a roll of cloth to be brought to the table, another a ribboned bodkin or a selection of threads from which to choose. I learnt to judge, by the sound, when a pair of shears was in need of sharpening. I worked out how long to leave ‘the goose’ on the stove so that each garment received the correct amount of heat for pressing. I had to wax thread or find a slashing tool of the right width, and all of this without disturbing the men at their work. My first task every day was to arrange the heavy bales of cloth on the counter, ready for opening time, and my last was to sweep the floor and remove every trace of lint from the tables. The only words ever spoken to me were ‘Now!’ or ‘Make haste!’
The three journeymen, I learnt, were called Filippo, Stefano and Ulisse. Filippo was a widower with grown children who did not visit as often as he would have liked. He got little sympathy from Stefano who kept a wife and five youngsters on his artificer's wage, supplemented, if I understood the 34hints correctly, with a little fencing of stolen property. Ulisse, though in his early thirties at least, saw no reason to swap the kind offices of his mother for those of a wife. At the midday break, the Maestro would go upstairs to his quarters, while his assistants huddled round the stove eating bread and raw onion and lamenting the sausages denied them by Lent. I was never asked to join them, so I would take the floor cushion to the far corner of the room or perch on the wooden chest under the window and pretend that I was not listening to their grumbles. That was how I found out that their elderly fellow-worker, who was called Prospero, had been gradually losing his sight for the last few years. The apothecary’s drops of eyebright had not cleared the clouds and finally the Maestro had sent him home for the last time. I expected the others to be spitting rancour and yet they expressed no anger on the old man’s behalf. They probably do not dare, I thought, but I could not help rejoicing that he had gone for good and all. The artificer also gossiped about customers: which followed the newest fashion and wanted their breeches puffed out like pig’s bladder balloons; which preferred a prominent codpiece, or a little space around the middle for a good meal. I started to make a list of the names and preferences in my mind, ready for the unlikely opportunity to tailor for them.
One morning all the tailors were bent over their sewing and I was stacking rolls of cloth when two girls peered around the counter entrance. The younger was perhaps twelve or thirteen years old, scrawny, with straight hair of an unexceptional brown and an anxious furrow between her brows. I might have been looking into the face of my childhood self. A few steps behind came the slightly older chaperone, her expression wary. I knew 35that their roles would have been explained with fierce clarity: the young one simpers her request for alms while the elder ensures that they are not lured into a cupboard or, worse still, the shop-owner’s rooms. They both wore the familiar sky-blue uniform, and I could have joined in with the young girl’s words.
‘Can you spare alms today for the Conservatorio del Baraccano, Signore? You will be remembered in our prayers.’
The Maestro pulled a coin from his purse and thrust it at the girl without even raising his eyes. She bobbed her thanks and both girls scuttled out. I found myself touching my neck, remembering the place where my uniform had always scratched.
My parents’ funerals had taken place within an hour of each other – or so I was told. One of my father’s journeymen had straightaway taken me, stiff with grief, into his household. But the place was jumping with children and it was clear even to me, at only ten years old, that there was no room for another. A few days later I sat, hands in lap, and watched his wife pacing up and down, stopping every so often to crane her head out of the window. Finally, there had been a knock on the door and a woman whose drab garments resembled those of a nun swept into the room.
‘Is this the girl?’
‘Yes, ma’am. She is called Elena. Elena Morandi.’
‘Her family name is of no consequence. After all, she has no family. Thank you, Signora. We will take care of her now.’ She grabbed me by the upper arm, sharp fingers digging in. ‘Come with me, girl.’
I had often in the years since blamed myself for allowing the woman to lead me away, as docile as a sheep outside the butcher’s shop just before its throat is cut. I should have kicked 36and screamed the length of Via Santo Stefano. Instead, I had done my best to keep step as I was marched almost as far as the city gate, where a long row of looping arches fronted the orphanage. In moments, I was inside and the heavy door banged shut behind me.
It was the silence I remembered most from that first day, together with the rough hands pushing and pulling my body this way and that. No one spoke to me – not even to tell me what to do. I was immediately undressed by two of the older girls, my own clothes bundled off somewhere. Then they dragged the uniform over my head and tied it tightly at the waist. They continued to flank me for the whole day, pressing my head into a position of meek obedience if I dared to look around, crushing my hands together in my lap while we waited for the evening meal. Even in chapel they had tugged me from kneeling to sitting to standing and back again. It was as though they felt some malice towards me, though I could not imagine why that might be.
By the time I and the rest of the younger girls were finally led to the dormitory, I was swaying with exhaustion. I was directed to the far corner of the room where a bed was pushed hard against the wall, another less than an arm’s length away. As I curled up under my blanket a whisper came from the nearby bed.
‘Hello. My name is Laura.’
I went to the doorway and watched as the two girls bobbed in and out of the tailors’ workshops along Via Drapperie. 37Theirs would be a long morning. After going from shop to shop begging for money or food, they would be expected to visit the homes of some who, unlike me, had accepted the husbands chosen for them, hoping for a happy marriage – or at least one without too many black eyes. The new wives, it was believed, would want to support the institution which had saved them from penury. Even on the walk back to the Santo Stefano Gate the girls would be expected to importune passers-by for a small coin or a cabbage from their shopping basket. All would be collected and counted as soon as they were through the orphanage door, and a hungry night would follow if it was deemed that they had not collected enough. I had served my years of alms collection but the needs of the conservatory at least saved me from the job of chaperone. Nor, as the orphan of a respectable tailor, was I doomed to wear the permanent stink of silk-reeling. That was the fate of those born to the wives of pigmen or street-cleaners and, because of it, the rest of us skirted around them.
The two orphans had just turned the corner when I was wrenched back to the present by a shout.
‘Girl! I do not pay you to stand at the door daydreaming. I need some wadding to line this doublet – got to give the man some shape.’
I hurried back in and spent the rest of the morning rushing from one tailor to the next, keeping them supplied with everything they needed. By lunchtime I was afraid that I might fall asleep on my cushion, so I left the shop to feel chill air on my face. I squeezed through the crush of people milling around the shoemakers in Via Calzolerie and turned right into the broad Via Mercato di Mezzo where the Two Towers reared 38up in front of me – the shorter of the two, the Garisenda, leaning drunkenly towards the Asinelli as though for support. Crowds ebbed and flowed around the fabric market at the foot of the towers and I strolled from stall to stall, discreetly rubbing between my fingers a silk brocade here, a woollen serge there. I had already learnt that Maestro Rondinelli despised any customer who appeared with a few braccia of his own cloth bought from the market and asked for a doublet or a shirt to be made. He never refused, but made it clear that he could not be expected to produce the same high-quality work ‘with this inferior fabric’ as with that from his own counter. At that, the client usually gave in and chose anew, their first purchase now destined for the wife’s linen chest. I had thought it just the master’s ploy to sell more of his own goods, but my brief investigation proved him right. His fabrics had a texture and richness which could not be matched by the stalls of the Ravegnana market.
I was just about to turn back towards the workshop when I sensed a change in the crowd’s mood. There was always some sort of trouble when the Bolognesi gathered in numbers: a cutpurse caught in the act, or a scuffle between rival stall-holders. But this was different; the crowd parted, like the Red Sea in the story of Moses, and conversation hushed. Then I saw the reason. Treading a path through the shoppers, head held high, ignoring the startled glances and turned backs, was Sofia. I ran up to her.
‘Sof, I am so pleased to see you! Are you well? And the mistress?’
Sofia raised her eyebrows and did not return my smile.
‘Very well. Thank you. We have new girl.’ 39
She went to walk away and I called out.
‘Please wait.’
Sofia turned back to face me.
‘We friends, I think.’ She shook her head in frustration. ‘I thought. But you just go. You say nothing. Friends do not do that.’
The words were intended to wound – and they did. I lowered my head in apology.
‘I am so sorry. I should have explained. I should have said farewell.’
‘Yes. You should. But now I will say it. Farewell, Elena.’
Before I could reply, Sofia had set off along Mercato di Mezzo, cutting a new swathe through the crowd as she went. I rubbed my eyes with the heel of my hand and plodded back to work.
