The silkworm keeper a ca.., p.1
The Silkworm Keeper: A captivating historical novel of Renaissance Italy, page 1
The Silkworm Keeper
Deborah Swift
Quire Books
Copyright © 2021 by Deborah Swift
First Edition: Quire Books
All rights reserved.
No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the author, except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.
Contents
The Silkworm Keeper
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
Chapter 31
Chapter 32
Chapter 33
Chapter 34
Chapter 35
Chapter 36
Chapter 37
Chapter 38
Historical Notes
Hear more from Deborah
Acknowledgments
Meet Deborah Swift
Also by Deborah Swift
The Silkworm Keeper
Vecchi peccati hanno le ombre lunghe.
‘Old sins have long shadows.’
~ Italian Proverb
Chapter 1
The Convent of Maria Assumpta, Rome
May 1638
The hammering at the convent door increased. After five years of seclusion from the outside world, the noise still made Giulia’s heart race. But with a great act of will, she ignored it and wrung out the coarse linen cloth in the basin of water.
Gently, she wiped the newborn again, cleared away the bloody sheets into a basket and swaddled the babe in his bands, laying him into a wooden cot away from the draught. ‘A son,’ she said. ‘Praise be to God. A beautiful boy.’
‘A boy?’ croaked the mother, a hefty-limbed girl with curly black hair. ‘You’re sure?’
‘A fine little man. Big and healthy,’ Giulia said.
The mother, sweating and exhausted, couldn’t summon the energy to do anything but make a small groan of acknowledgement.
The commotion outside continued, as if someone was trying to batter down the convent door. Giulia winced; such noise was unusual in their quiet lives. Even with a hundred nuns, the fabric of silence had seeped into the walls. Now the silence was even more intense as two hundred ears inside the convent listened to the racket outside.
Giulia took in the baby’s tiny nose, his dark eyelashes and his flawless skin. One more beautiful new life to atone for the ones she’d taken. The commotion outside the hospital made her frown; it was disturbing the patients.
When the noise ceased, Sister Simona’s crisp voice reached them from the small door within the gate. ‘Absolutely not. You must write to the cardinal for an appointment.’ Giulia paused as she tucked in the babe. She pictured Sister Simona’s implacable countenance appearing at the grille in the door, and smiled.
More men’s voices, strident, demanding.
Breathe. It’s nothing to do with you.
Giulia turned back to tend to the mother, to carefully peel away the long strip of parchment bound around her now flaccid belly. Sister Teresa from the library had illuminated the prayer strip with psalms and beautifully painted bees, a symbol of the sweetness of life. The scribing of the Word was powerful medicine in a city where most women couldn’t read. But now the bees were a blur and the ink was smudged from the woman’s sweat and writhing.
Giulia set the strip on the floor in a patch of pale sunlight to dry. Often the women wanted to keep these prayer strips as keepsakes once they’d birthed a healthy babe. If the babe was born deformed or dead, then the strips would be burned and sent back to the devil.
When Sister Agnese tapped her on the shoulder, Giulia reached into the cradle again and handed the tightly swaddled newborn back to its mother. ‘Rest now,’ she said gently to the mother. ‘Your hard work is only just beginning.’
Agnese’s face was white as she pulled Giulia out of earshot of the patients. ‘That noise – I was in the courtyard when Sister Simona went to the door and I heard one of the emissaries give the title, the Duke de Verdi, and ask for me by name. I know I’m not mistaken.’
The name, de Verdi, gave Giulia an internal shudder. ‘No. Why would they come here? Why, after all this time?’
‘I don’t know. Of course, the old duke is dead, and it’s his younger brother now who holds the title, Mario de Verdi. But they are all wasps from the same nest. They’ve sent a cohort of men searching for me.’
‘Why? You were absolved of any wrongdoing in your husband’s death.’
‘Probably for money. My guess is they want to contest my husband’s inheritance – they resent the fact that all the income from his grazing land comes here, to this convent, instead of to them.’
‘They can’t do anything, can they?’
‘I don’t know.’ Her usually smooth brow was creased in concern. ‘They’re powerful men, and we’re all women here. The gates are locked, and they were only three men. The duke’s valet and two servants. But they were demanding to come in and speak with me in the duke’s name. They were saying they would return with more force if they were denied.’
‘What did Sister Simona say?’
‘Sister Simona told them they were disturbing God’s work and to leave us alone. That she wouldn’t open the gates without a letter of permission from the cardinal. Thank goodness the gates are sturdy and the walls high.’
‘Cardinal Revatti won’t give it. Too much like trouble.’
‘Unless they pay him enough,’ Agnese said. They exchanged fearful glances.
The past rose up in Giulia like a reverberation in her heart. Her sins had caught up with her.
Once Agnese had gone back to her duties in the convent herb garden, Giulia walked out of the hospital building and into the lady chapel where she got to her knees and grasped the cold wood of the pew in front. Her mind still churning with memories, Giulia bowed her head before the blue-robed figure of the Virgin Mary. She must calm herself, and perhaps prayer would help this time. For five years she had dedicated herself to God and asked his forgiveness for her sins, half-desperate for relief, but half-terrified he would answer her.
She clutched her rosary to her forehead. Her terror that Christ might manifest before her was as great as her terror he would not. Had he sent the de Verdi men to track her and Agnese down? Was his retribution coming after all this time? Or his forgiveness? Christ’s forgiveness might turn her life into a vocation, and truth be told, in her heart she had never given up the hope that she might return to a secular life outside. She dreaded that she might start to gabble in tongues, that her hands might grow stigmata, but at the same time she thirsted for the relief of absolution.
How did Sister Simona stand it? She’d been thirty years a nun. Being here was to be forgotten, to know life in all its glorious richness was passing by.
Giulia prayed to be released from the penetrating silence that met her each time she knelt.
She prayed harder, but the silence only grew thicker.
Taking refuge in her inner chamber, the prioress Sister Simona fought to regain her composure after the morning’s disturbance by reading a page or two of her missal. It was fortunate the gates were closed. In the last few years they’d all ceased to be vigilant about such things, but some instinct had made her close the gates last night.
Providence, she thought. The Lord sees our need and provides.
But the de Verdi men were a danger to Sister Agnese and Sister Giulia. Few of the nuns knew the full story of why Giulia and Agnese were sheltering in their midst, and she didn’t want the whole rumour mill to start. Gossip was the bane of her life amongst these women. Nuns were often bored and rumour grew like wildfire. She must avoid that at all cost.
A practical woman, she knew the answer had to be with some action, not with prayer. Her ruminations were interrupted by a gentler knock on her door.
‘A visitor at the gate, Mother Superior,’ the novice said. ‘Signor Moreno.’
Not the Duke de Verdi’s men again, thank God. She picked up the clanking keys from behind the door. She’d forgotten the wine merchant Moreno and his daughter were coming, though she remembered now writing his name in the appointment book. A widower, she recalled.
She opened the gate, and after checking there was no sign of her earlier threatening visitors, she greeted him cordially with an obeisance. A powerfully built man with hooded eyes, he gave her a brief nod of the head as if it was too much trouble.
Another one, the same as the rest, she thought. So many men wanting to foist their daughters on her. Sister Simona tried to look upon him with favour as she led him through the cloisters and into the small dark chamber that served as her office.
He was to be married again, he told her, now his first wife had passed from the white fever. Despite his expensive stiff burgundy velvet, he brought with him an air, no, a stench of corruption. It was nothing she could pinpoint. Years of observing people in holy silence gave her an instinct for it. The man appeared respectable but the stench was there nonetheless. Perhaps it was that he looked too clean, as if overcareful to be so.
She observed him as he told her his first-born daughter had recently made a good match and brought him a lucrative trade alliance.
‘So I wish to fulfil our heavenly duty and dedicate our second daughter to the Church.’
He meant: the girl was a burden he no longer wanted to support.
The daughter, a pretty but sullen girl of about eleven years, slumped miserably in the hard-backed chair so that her whalebone hoops tipped up carelessly to show thin black-stockinged ankles. The heavy black mourning petticoats made the girl’s complexion grey, but her expression was even blacker.
‘Lianna has a very good voice,’ the father said, addressing Sister Simona too loudly over her desk. ‘She would be a valuable asset to your choir.’
Ah. He had in mind that the child would be a professe, a choir nun, rather than a common converse. ‘Has she shown any yearning for our calling?’ she asked, refusing to be intimidated.
‘She is always at prayer. She has a devout soul and I’m sure would learn the ways of the nunnery without difficulty.’
Without difficulty. He obviously had no idea what a cloistered life entailed. How she hated this trade in girls. Yet what choice had she? The convent needed repairs to the sagging cloister, and Father Benedetto would not help, she knew. The sisters were always the poor relations to the monastery.
‘And what about her mother, God rest her? Was she reconciled to this?’
‘She only wished for the girl to receive God’s blessing.’ His tone challenged her to deny it.
Sister Simona sighed and looked down at her chapped, work-worn hands, where they were clasped in her lap. His answer was too glib. No loving mother gave up a daughter that easily, but now the girl’s mother was gone to our Lord, there was no one to gainsay it.
‘Are you ready for a life of service, Lianna?’ she addressed the girl directly.
Lianna looked up, open venom in her eyes. ‘I will do what Pappi proposes for me, as usual. After all, I will be given no choice.’
So – intelligent and precocious too. The father glowered down at the top of her head. ‘It’s been a hot journey. She’s not herself.’
‘If we take her’ – Sister Simona stressed the if – ‘then our usual terms are a hundred and twenty silver scudi, plus the clothing donora, the dowry to be paid in full before admission.’
He drew back, as if she’d struck him a slap on the cheek.
‘I’m sure you agree that the dowry for a Bride of Christ himself should be no less than for a secular marriage,’ Sister Simona said, ‘however aristocratic the groom.’
There was nothing Signor Moreno could say to that; many a man had stumbled on the same stair.
‘But you’ll take her?’ He leant further over the desk, imposing himself and his garlic breath into her space.
She moved back. ‘Only if she wishes to come. We do not wish to have any child here who does not wish to abide by the will and direction of the Lord.’
‘As if it matters.’ The words the girl spoke were so low they could barely be heard.
Signor Moreno raised his voice again. ‘She’s obedient and will be no trouble. You will have the bride chest by Friday and can admit her just before the Sabbath. Sooner the better.’
Sister Simona was in time to catch the child’s angry eyes.
‘Perhaps take a few more days to think it over. I’ll call Sister Giulia to show you out. That is, unless your daughter would like to see the nun’s quarters…?’
‘No, that won’t be necessary. I mean… I’m sure it’s perfectly adequate.’
‘I’d like to see them.’ The girl stood up.
‘There’s no time, Lianna,’ Moreno scolded. ‘I need to be at the merchant’s hall by—’
‘Show me,’ the girl said, in the same imperious tone her father had used.
‘Must you always make a fuss?’ he hissed into the child’s ear.
Sister Simona ignored him and opened the heavy oak door to the corridor. Crooking a finger, she summoned Sister Giulia, who was just passing by with a basket of laundry from the hospital. ‘Have you a moment, Sister?’
Sister Giulia put the basket down. She had a troubled look in her grey eyes again. She must have heard about the visit of the de Verdi men. Nothing ever went on in this convent without news leaking out somehow. Still, she was pleased to see Giulia smile at young Lianna with warmth and sympathy.
‘Will you take Signor Moreno’s daughter on a tour of the nunnery, please,’ Sister Simona asked her.
‘I’ll go with her,’ Signor Moreno said.
Sister Simona pinned a smile on her lips. ‘I’m afraid that won’t be possible. Men are not allowed in the nuns’ private quarters. Why not wait outside on the bench by the gate? Sister Giulia will deliver your daughter back to you soon enough.’
She sensed his irritation that he had to wait, and heard the snap of his fingers as he harried Lianna out of the door.
Drained, Sister Simona returned to her chamber, leant back on her cushion and rubbed the wrinkles on her forehead. Moreno had not even bade her a civil goodbye.
Poor girl. Sister Simona got out the ledger to write the date of the girl’s admittance with quill and ink. She paused, nib over the inkwell. She had endured it herself: the sudden cruel wrench away from her playmates, the feeling that she’d been cast off into a life devoid of fun. And the feeling that it must be her fault, that she’d done something to her family that meant she was no longer worthy of anyone’s love or attention.
The pain of it bit anew. And now she was to do the same to this girl, just for a new roof. Was it sinful to wish to improve the convent to the glory of God? The streets outside were a cesspit of filth and violence. In here, Lianna would have simplicity and beauty.
More light. That’s what was needed. No more the soul-crushing austerity of Luther, with his stripping of all that gave the heart flight. There were rumours the Vatican in Rome was paying for another work by Bernini, a great gilded baldachin canopy, so why should she not add a little comfort here? A little extra light to raise the spirits, perhaps a hanging candelabra in the lady chapel nave.
She scribed the girl’s name, Lianna Izaro Moreno. There. It was done. Perhaps in God’s good time the child Lianna would mellow, and who knows, maybe even become a benefactress of the convent.
Sister Simona blotted the paper with a sprinkle of sand and shook her head. Maritate o monachate. Marriage or the cloister, meaning women were either marriageable, and of value, or not. She’d wager there were more women in convents than fish in the sea. And far more nunneries than monasteries. So many women, and all of them forced to look up to Mary as their guiding star. And yet look at Mary’s life – a celebration of the fecund female; the Nativity, the Madonna and Child, and finally the Lamentation over her dead son, all experiences no nun could ever share. Nuns were to be denied all these states of womanly grace.
Was it heresy to think thus?
Probably. Yet she did not like the pompous Signor Moreno and struggled to warm to his surly daughter. She told herself it was not simply because they were Spanish, and interlopers here in the state of Campagna, and that she must have charity. The Spanish were in control everywhere in the south, and it did no good to complain. At least here in the convent she could keep her piece of Italy and, if she had her way, keep it pure for God.
