Barbara Quick - A Golden Web

A beautiful baby lay in her cradle, watched over by a nanny still nursing the infants rosy big brother. The wet-nurse, both famous and feared for her knowledge of plants and nostrums, had placed a bowl of water beneath the cradle. Into this bowl she dropped three oak apples, plucked at break of dawn from the crooked branches of an ancient tree that grew outside the nursery window.

The baby had, the night before, looked up from the nannys breast, smacked her lips, and said, as clear as day, Delizioso!

If the oak apples sank instead of floating, the nanny would know for certain that this childwith such an unnaturally bright look in its eyeswas a changeling, put in the cradle by a devil who had snatched the real baby away with him at a moment when the nurses attention was somewhere else.

She had her knife at the ready. She was watching the oak apples with such intensityone hand on the good boy baby and the other on the knifethat she neither saw nor heard her mistress come into the room.

With the strength and swiftness born of her love, Signora Giliani wrested both the knife and her son out of the nurses grasp and snatched her baby daughter out of the cradle. The bowl of water, stained brown by the oak apples, spilled out over the flagstones.

Leave this house! she said, her voice raked by the horror of what had nearly happened.

The nanny looked not at her mistress but at the bright-eyed infant, who was watching everything unfold with a look of intelligence the nurse had never seen before, in all the babes shed ever suckled. A wordand not just any word, but such a fancy wordat eight months old!

Signora Giliani spoke again. Leave now, and God help you if I ever see you anywhere near my children!

When the woman was gone and the young mother had stilled her heart, she allowed her winsome boy to stand by her while she unwrapped the infant and made sure she hadnt been harmed. She kissed the babys silken shoulders, breathed in the good scent of her, then wrapped her up again, holding her safe and close.

Alessandra, my angel! she half whispered, half sang. Then she bent down and kissed her firstborns blond hair. Nicco, she said, looking into his blue eyes that were so like his fathers. You will help us watch over your baby sister, wont you?

The baby heard her mothers voice accompanied by the comforting sound of her mothers heartand she knew, though only an infant, that she was loved. She thought the word again that shed said before Delizioso! one of the several words shed come to associate with feelings or things. Her world was a bright and shining place, so filled with wonders that she was loath to ever close her eyes to it.

If anything should happen to me, Nicco, Alessandra heard her mother murmur, although she couldnt understand yet what the words meant, nor the grief they portended, you must stand by her always.

Nicco was scared. His tutor was going to burst through the door at any moment, and Alessandra was nowhere to be found. Not in her room, not in the library, not in the chicken coop watching the damn chickenswho but his ridiculous little sister could spend hours watching chickens? Not in the barn, not in the kitchen, not in their tree house, not in the nursery. And today, of all days, when he was going to be grilled on Aristotle!

He eyed the window, fitted with the waxed linen screenthe only one of its kind in Persiceto, imported all the way from Rome and such a source of pride to his stepmother. Shed smacked him hard, more than once, for falling against it or touching it with sticky fingers. He could just pull it open on its clever hinge, if he dared. In two minutes flat, hed be across the courtyard and onto the towpath. If he was lucky, he could catch a barge all the way to Bologna.

The entryway door clanged shut. Oh, please, sweet Jesus, Nicco prayed, let Emilia offer the blighter a nip of brandy! Dear Emilia, watching over each of them in turn since Alessandra was a baby, usually carried a little flask of spiritsfor emergencies, she always told the childrentucked into her bodice.

Nicco ran his fingers up and down the page he was supposed to have mastered, wishing he could coax or comb the words into some order that would make more sense to him. What a blasted son of a monkey that Aristotle was, no doubt having made it his lifes purpose to trip up brave and honest boys in the sleep-inducing twists and turns of his prose!

There was the sound of giggling outside the door. Thats it, Emiliareach for the flask and give him an eyeful of your flesh! Just buy me a little time! What does it matter if he looks? Your bosom is as goodly a thing to look upon as any cathedral.

With a sinking heart, Nicco heard the sound of a slap. Oh, God, Emiliahow could you? That slap of yours will transform itself into a beating for me faster than my dog gets fleas! Nicco scratched at a bite beneath his jerkin, then swore, cutting off the oath just in time for it to turn into a greeting for his fat, flustered, and now red-faced tutor.

Fra Giuseppe! said Nicco, bowing low and wincing in anticipation of his tutors customary greetinga blow with his stick across Niccos buttocks, if he was lucky, rather than on his face or hands. For the errors you are about to make, Fra Giuseppe would say in Latin, as if this qualified the action as part of Niccos education.

Nicco raised his face when no blow came, and looked with a sudden rush of hope and gratitude into the bloodshot blue eyes of the friar, who always smelled of mice and drink.

Fra Giuseppe waited until Nicco was upright and then caught him with a snap of the stick at the backs of his knees, making them buckle. Stop staring, you blockhead! Thinking of escaping, were you?

How did he know? Nicco got to his feet, careful to keep his eyes trained on the floor. He prayed to St. Anthony to come to his rescue, but then stopped himself short when he realized what a sin it would be to call for the sudden death of a priest, if only such a one as Fra Giuseppe, in minor orders and known as one of the most energetic sinners in the parish. Would it be a sin to pray for the friar to be struck with palsy, so that he would be unable to wield that stick of his? Or to come over paralyzed all of a sudden, just like the swineherd, Tommaso, who was found in the piazza just two days past, alive but as stiff as a plank, unable to move even so much as a finger?

Aristotle, came the tutors grating voice. He bent his face close to Niccos, so close that Nicco held his breath, willing the priest away from his nostrils before he was forced to inhale. Its a newly cut stick, my boy. Not yet broken in.

Nicco had thought it felt less pliant than the old onethe backs of his knees were still stinging. What a plague all teachers were! How could Alessandra possibly long for their company with the same ardor Nicco felt for the horse his father had given him to mark his fourteenth year?

And no sooner did Nicco think of his sister than she appeared in the doorway, a curly-haired shrimp of a girl with her green velvet gown all spattered in mud.

Fra Giuseppe, she said, eyes downcast and curtsying just like a proper lady. Emilia has requested your help with a knotty spiritual question, Padre. She is waiting for you in the hut behind the rose garden.

A tender smile floated across the friars face. Ah, yes, I certainly must go to her. You! he said to Nicco.

Yes, sir.

I will question you when I return. Um

Yes, Padre?

If your dear mother comes to check upon our lessons

We will be sure to tell her, Padre, that you were called away on an urgent spiritual matter, said Alessandra, dropping another curtsy. Nicco thought she was laying it on a bit thick.

But the friar only licked his lips as if hed just tasted something wonderful. Yes, an urgent spiritual matter. He turned to Nicco again. What a shame, blockhead, that you do not have even a fingers-breadth of the mental agility of this mere girl! Then he was out the door with the swiftness of an arrow.