S
ilvano da Montacuto was not just young, handsome and rich. He was young, handsome, rich and in love. As he rode on a grey stallion along the main street of Perugia one evening in high summer, a hawk on his pommel and his hound pacing behind him, he could hardly have been happier.

Silvano was sixteen years old, slim and elegantly dressed, with a feather in his hat and a silver dagger in his belt – he was his mother’s darling only son and his father’s pride and joy. And he was on his way to the house of Angelica, his beloved.

But first he was to meet his best friend, Gervasio de’ Oddini, to show him his new hawk, Celeste, and ask his advice about how to pursue his courtship of Angelica.

‘Like a hunter,’ Gervasio was sure to say. ‘Study your prey, learn her habits, accustom her to your presence by seeming harmless and kind. And then, when she is tame and off-guard, you pounce!’

‘But I
am
harmless – at least I mean her no harm,’ Silvano would say.

Gervasio would just smile. He was a year older than his friend and liked to play the world-weary older man, experienced with women, accomplished in the arts of courtly love as well as proficient in the skills of hunting, fighting and running up debts at the local inns.

The Eagle was where they were to meet this evening, their favourite inn near the main square of the city, the Platea Magna. Silvano tied up his horse outside but took the hooded Celeste in on his wrist, Ettore the hound padding after them. The inn was an ideal place for a private conversation, full of loud-voiced drinkers and smoky with candles.

Silvano made out his friend through the gloom and threaded his way past wooden tables, stepping over outstretched legs. Gervasio was drinking with a man Silvano had never seen before, who slipped away silently as soon as he approached. Gervasio called for more wine and the two young men moved to a table in a quieter part of the room.

‘Nice bird,’ said Gervasio, admiring Celeste’s barred breast feathers.

‘From Bruges,’ said Silvano casually, while bursting with pride. ‘She was trained in Brabant, of course.’

‘Of course,’ said Gervasio ironically. His own hawk was a small hobby, a lesser bird, but all his father could afford as his family were minor nobility and Gervasio was the sixth and youngest son.

Silvano was the only son and heir of the wealthy Baron Montacuto, and his clothes, his horse and now his new peregrine all declared his status to the world. The friends spent a good ten minutes discussing the qualities of the falcon, who had been a birthday present, before getting on to the subject of the fair Angelica.

‘If only a certain lady could be induced by soft words and compliments to bend to your will like Celeste,’ said Gervasio, at last changing the subject to an area in which he did feel superior to his friend.

Silvano fetched a deep sigh in agreement. He was quite happy to discuss Angelica all night long but did not feel any confidence that she really knew of his existence. She was married to a wealthy sheep farmer, much older than her, who bought her fine dresses and jewels and perfumes, but that was not the problem. In Silvano’s eyes she was as much above him in beauty as he was above her in station and he could not believe she would ever look kindly on his devotion, even if she were free.

‘Write her a poem,’ suggested Gervasio, looking keenly at his friend. He was much more cynical than Silvano and couldn’t see how a well-dressed and good-looking boy with money and a title to inherit could fail to impress a young woman married to a middle-aged farmer with a paunch and a wart at the side of his nose.

And there was no doubt that Silvano was good-looking. His light brown hair was cut so that it fell straight to just under his jaw and his eyes were a silvery-grey with long dark lashes, both features inherited from his Belgian mother. The Baronessa Montacuto was delicate in face and form and her fragility, which had caused her to lose three other sons and a brace of daughters before they drew breath, gave to her surviving boy a grace of movement and a fineness of feature that fitted his destiny perfectly.

He rode, fenced, hunted, sang like a dawn bird and could read Latin almost as well as a monk. But his future would not lie in the Church. No, Silvano would be Baron Montacuto, with a household of servants, the rents from substantial lands north of Perugia and a beautiful Baronessa to raise his brood of children. Only she would not be Angelica. The sheep farmer’s wife would be fat before she was twenty-five, but Silvano would have moved on by then.

Gervasio’s mouth curved as he thought of her ample charms. ‘Write her a poem,’ he said again. ‘She’ll be impressed.’

A faint pink flush had tinged Silvano’s prominent cheekbones.

‘You’ve done it already, haven’t you?’ laughed Gervasio. ‘I knew it! Come on, let’s hear it.’

Silvano dug into the purse at his belt and produced a piece of parchment, much scraped and criss-crossed with black ink. He pretended not to be able to read his verse properly but actually he knew the words without the parchment:

‘Twice wounded lies my bleeding heart

And suffers still its secret pain.

Amor himself shot the first dart

My lady’s eyes then aimed again.

The god has left for Heaven’s gate

Who now his work on earth has done

For me to heal it is too late

Unless to mercy she should come.

One glance would mend the second scar

Or could if it were soft and kind.

One rose but thrown from out her bower.

The first I’ll bear till end of time.

‘That’s all there is so far,’ said Silvano, his cheeks now burning.

‘That should do the trick,’ said Gervasio, trying to keep a straight face.

‘You really think she’ll like it?’

‘She will if you read it to her in your most pleading voice and flutter your long eyelashes at her. In fact,’ said Gervasio, getting to his feet, ‘let’s go and find her now and strike while the iron is hot.’

Angelica lived in the west of the city, near the Porta Trasimena, a short walk from the inn. The two young men walked past the vast bulk of the Church of San Francesco, with its friary alongside it. It held a special horror for Gervasio, who feared that he might one day be sent to live there as a friar, once his father had died and his brothers had shared out the patrimony. And he had no taste for poverty or obedience, let alone chastity.

Two young friars, in their dingy grey habits, walked barefoot out of the great church as they passed and Gervasio grimaced at the sight. He hurried Silvano along the road west.

Angelica sat at the window of her husband’s town house feeling bored. Tommaso was off negotiating sheep prices in Tuscany, but she refused to set foot in the old-fashioned stone farmhouse outside Gubbio, even when he was not away. Buying the fashionable palazzo in the city had been part of their marriage contract. Old Tommaso brought the wealth and substance to the match; Angelica the beauty. Her family were well aware that she had nothing else to offer: no name or breeding, no particular skills or accomplishments, just her perfectly oval face with the springy blonde curls that framed it and her perfectly rounded limbs.

Tommaso wanted an heir; his first wife had been barren and he had waited patiently until she died. Angelica wanted a nice house, servants and pretty clothes to wear. In her parents’ home she had been little more than a servant herself and she had sworn not to have hands as coarse and red as her mother’s. So the town house had been purchased and for the first year of her marriage Angelica had enjoyed buying furniture and hangings for it almost as much as she had revelled in the silks and lace and fur she could wrap around her pampered body, according to the season.

But now she was bored. The expected – the bargained for – baby had not arrived. There had been the beginnings of one but it ended in pain and blood a few months into its life and Angelica had used that as an excuse to keep Tommaso out of her bed for many months. And she was beginning to wonder if all the pretty clothes in the world could make up for having a short fat middle-aged man for a husband.

Angelica glanced out of the window and immediately turned pink with pleasure. There were two good-looking young men in the street below and she knew that one of them was in love with her.

Silvano looked up and saw her. She was dressed in a light blue gown with white muslin at the breast and she wore a double string of pearls round her throat. In his own throat his voice died and he knew that he could never recite his poem to her.

‘You do it,’ he hissed to Gervasio. ‘You’ll say it better than I will,’ and he thrust the parchment into his friend’s hand, turning away from the palazzo to hide his confusion.

‘I won’t, I won’t, I won’t!’ said the girl, glaring at her brother. ‘You can’t make me!’

‘I think you will find that I can,’ said Bernardo. ‘I am your brother and your guardian and, if I say you are to enter a convent, who will argue with me except yourself?’

Chiara was weeping with rage and fear. ‘Then you will have to tie me up and take me there in a sack,’ she spat. ‘For no one will ever say I went there willingly!’

‘If that is what I have to do, then I shall do it,’ said Bernardo, quite unperturbed. ‘There is no other choice. Father did not leave enough money for a decent dowry for you. The pittance that the Poor Clares are willing to accept as a donation would buy you no kind of husband. And you wouldn’t want to be married off to a hideous old man, would you?’

Chiara stopped her raging for a moment. Could it really be that Bernardo was being kind and considerate in his way? But she knew his way of old and there had been little enough kindness in her life since their father had died six months ago. And not much before that.

‘But why can’t I stay here with you and Vanna?’ she asked, subsiding into sobs. ‘It is my home and I could help you with the children.’

‘We’ve been through all this before,’ said Bernardo wearily. ‘I can pay a servant girl to do that for far less than it would cost to keep you in meat and wine and decent clothing.’

‘Then let me eat bread and drink ale and wear homespun!’ cried Chiara. ‘Only don’t send me away.’

‘You are being ridiculous,’ snapped Bernardo. ‘I am not selling you into slavery. Many girls like you enter religious houses and live devout and useful lives. Why should not you?’

Because I am not without a family, thought Chiara. And I don’t have a vocation. But she was too proud to beg for her brother to show her some affection. She had been starved of that since the death of their mother when she had been a little girl just losing her milk teeth. Their father had been like his son, a man not given to tender caresses or shows of emotion. Chiara wondered fleetingly how her sister-in-law Vanna could bear being married to such a cold fish.

But she pushed the thought down along with her own feelings of rejection. She had been silent for some minutes and the tears were drying on her face. Her future as a nun stretched drearily out in front of her, empty of adventure or romance, and she felt deathly tired, as if she really had fought her brother physically and lost.

‘I see you have no answer,’ said Bernardo. ‘That is settled then.’

He had won.

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