CHAPTER 5

“You have always been uncommonly stubborn,” Serafino said from where he lay sprawled on his back in the sweet-scented flowery mead of Siri’s garden, hands linked behind his head while he watched the lazy movement of the clouds across the mid-morning sky.

Lucianna tried to ignore him, along with the sluggish flow of her bronze needle through her linen cloth. She had never forgotten the sweet glide of the silver needle Siri had given her one Epiphany morn in Venice. Lucianna had imagined the angels who embroidered the holy altar cloths in the celestial city must all employ needles so divine for their sacred, joyous work. Lucianna’s heart had rejoiced, as well, in the few, short days she had embroidered her own humbler patterns with Siri’s gift, until Serafino had made her sell the needle to pay off another of his debts and keep his tongue quiet and his existence a secret from the people Lucianna loved. She had had to tell Siri she’d lost it. So many lies, when Lucianna’s nature rebelled painfully against dishonesty.

At least this time she had managed to spite Serafino by slapping the needles back into Sir Balduin’s hands. But she could not stop her heart from aching for the loss of both the gift and the giver.

Serafino gave a soft snort. Lucianna hoped he had fallen asleep in the sun, but from the way he cursed and scrubbed at his nose, she discerned a gnat had merely flown into one of his nostrils. He sat up, sufficiently annoyed by the insect’s assault to glare at his sister.

“Your lover returned this morning.”

“He is not my lover.” Lucianna dragged the red thread through her cloth. “Nor is he longer my affianced husband. As soon as Siri’s bambino is born, I am returning to Venice. You may come with me, or if you fear you are no longer welcome there, you may stay here to gamble and swill(?) and otherwise squander your misbegotten life among people who do not yet know what a scoundrel you are.”

Serafino lifted one of his ruddy brows. Lucianna bit her lip as heat flowed into her cheeks. He did not need to say it for her to know the silent threat her words had roused on his tongue.

He plucked some periwinkle petels from his sleeve. “Those needles would have set me up for months, that ring for more than a year. A man who can afford to lavish such gifts upon you would never notice if a needle or two went missing. The ring might be more difficult to explain, but you were ever a careless wench. You could say you misplaced it—”

“Careless only when you were near. There will be no more lies for you, Serafino. Sir Balduin is not rich, but even if he were, I would not marry such an insensitive brute, and not even you can make me.”

“Not rich? Then how did he afford those gifts?”

Lucianna did not know the answer so she had no reply. It did not matter anyway. She would not let Serafino use her in so shameful a way again.

“Does he really think you are a lady?” Serafino asked.

Lucianna tugged through another thread. “It is merely a habit they all fell into calling me when I came. I have never pretended to be a donna. Siri knows the truth and has surely told Sir Triston . . . ”

But had Triston told Sir Balduin? Lucianna had never thought to wonder before. What if he did believe her nobly born? She reminded herself that Triston had wanted to marry Siri before he had known she was more than a mere craftsman’s daughter. Surely Sir Balduin would not have shunned Lucianna for being the daughter of an Italian merchant—had it been the truth.

“You mean Siri knows that absurd story you and your dear Elisabetta concocted,” Serafino said with a sneer in his voice. Lucianna cursed herself for trailing off and allowing him to guess at her thoughts. “Lucianna Fabio, orphaned daughter of Giovanni Fabio and Maria Amorosi, a respected merchant family from NAME CITY. Their deaths cast you on the mercies of the Sisters of NAME ABBEY to raise, though your dear parents had the forethought to leave you a modest dowry for a future marriage, not enough for a grand match, but sufficient to win the consent of Vincenzo Mirolli’s parents for you to wed him, si? Did Elisabetta’s father ever learn that his daughter sold that fine pearl necklace he gave her when he brought her home from the abbey, to fabricate that dowry for you?”

Lucianna felt her cheeks drain cold, anger and shame(?) struggling for dominance in her breast. “You know he did not, for you could never have blackmailed me all those years if he had known.”

“Si,” Serafino said. “Cosimo Gallo would have thrown you out on the streets if he’d known, instead of embracing you to his bosom as his beloved daughter’s amica cara.”

Lucianna set a line of stitches in frigid silence. To speak would only encourage Serafino’s taunting. It had seemed a harmless enough ruse when she and Elisabetta Gallo had invented the story for Elisabetta’s father. They had had years to create an elaborate, convincing, and tragic tale of Lucianna’s unknown parentage. Two young girls who had become inseparable during their time in the abbey, and desperate and determined to maintain their sisterhood when Elisabetta’s father finally called her home. The well-to-do merchant, Cosimo Gallo, had hoped to groom his daughter with a refined education by the nuns so that she might further raise the status of their house with an advantageous marriage when she turned fifteen. Lucianna, destined eventually to join the nuns in their order, for what other future could there be for a poor foundling left upon the abbey’s doorstep while still a mewling babe, had been lent to Elisabetta as a companion when homesickness had at first so overwhelmed Elisabetta that she could give no heed to her lessons.

But as Elisabetta blossomed for her future role and began to speak eagerly of marriage, Lucianna had found herself dreaming, too. And then Elisabetta, passionate, impulsive Elisabetta had struck upon the plan. Oh, the lies they had told to her father and the nuns, each behind the other’s backs, to persuade the former that Lucianna held such birth as to make her worthy of Cosimo’s compassion to take her into his home with his daughter, and convince the nuns that the merchant had taken pity on a foundling girl to adopt her for his daughter’s sake. How many times Lucianna had held her breath in terror that they would be exposed, but Elisabetta, clever as well as passionate, had somehow managed to keep her father and the nuns befuddled to the truth until Lucianna stood safely beneath Cosimo Gallo’s roof.

“Elisabetta,” Lucianna whispered. “Mia amica cara.”

What wild, exciting days had followed as Lucianna had found herself courted by nearly as many men as Elisabetta, though none of them as rich as her friend’s suitors. But thanks to the pearl necklace Elisabetta had sold, handsome, charming Vincenzo Mirolli had asked for Lucianna’s hand before her sixteenth year. And then—then Serafino, the brother she had never known she had, had suddenly appeared and ruined everything.

Just as he had once more appeared as if from a nightmare X days ago and had spoiled everything again.

“Why do you stay?” Lucianna asked crossly. “I will not change my mind about Sir Balduin. Go back to Venice. I will join you there when Siri’s bambino is born.”

Serafino’s lip curled. “And what will you do in Venice, cara? You have no home to go to. You were always dependent on Elisabetta and her children to give you a roof over your head, and Lady Siri’s roof is now here in Poitou.”

“I will join the sisters of NAME ABBEY. If I had known of your despicable existence, I would never have left there.”

“Nay, cara, you were in a glow when I first laid eyes on you, laughing and flirting and dancing as lightly as a faery sprite while the men around you basked in the fiery rays of your luster. You were not meant for abstinence and prayers, but for a life overflowing with love. All these years you have done naught but spite yourself by denying the cravings of your heart. No husband, no children—It did not need to be so, cara.”

“You gave me no choice.” Bitterness made her jerk the thread so tight it puckered the cloth. She sought to smooth it out with a hand that trembled slightly. “If I had married Vincenzo, he would have ended up hating me.”

“He hated you anyway.”

“Si, thanks to you, but only for a day, a week, a month, perhaps—but not for a lifetime. He married Angela de Luzio and forgot all about me.”

At least, Lucianna prayed he had. The humiliation and grief Serafino had cast upon her that day would flare up from its long-buried depths if she thought Vincenzo remembered her as anything more than a vague, pitiful moment from his past. Serafino’s threat, one he had vindictively fulfilled, had robbed her of a husband and family of her own, but she had shared in the love of Elisabetta’s children and cherished them as her own after Elisabetta and her husband had died.

Unlike Vincenzo, dear Elisabetta had remained true to her friendship with Lucianna after Serafino had sought to shock her with the truth, as well, and had even, against Lucianna’s protests, sold more of her jewels to pay Serafino to disappear for years. By the time Serafino had reappeared, it had been more difficult to keep him quiet, for in the interim Elisabetta had dashed her father’s high hopes for her and eloped with an illuminator from Poitou who had interrupted his pilgrimage to the Holy Land to fall in love with her. Inseparable as always from the bond of their youth, Elisabetta had taken Lucianna with her into the new home she established with her husband in Venice, one that, though comfortable, was humbler than the merchant’s house she had left. It had made paying off Serafino’s silence more difficult. Having exposed her twice, once to Vincenzo and again to Elisabetta, neither of the women had doubted that he would do so again to Elisabetta’s new husband, who might take the news as ill as Vincenzo had and seek to turn Lucianna out of his house and her influence over his children.

Lucianna had embroidered her fingers numb and sold her work to earn enough coins to make Serafino go away again and again. When his debts and demands grew higher than she could meet, Elisabetta surreptitiously sold some of her husband’s paints to meet the difference, telling her husband she had clumsily spilled them, knowing he adored her too much to even scold. Lucianna knew then, as she knew now, that she should have had more courage. She should have put a stop to it by telling Elisabetta’s husband and everyone else the truth, even if it had meant the joyous life she had found outside the convent(?) walls must be snuffed by embracing that abstinent life of prayer that Serafino described and which Lucianna still knew so ill-fitted her.

But she was no longer the frightened girl she had been when Serafino had first revealed himself to her, or the proud young woman who could not bear for the world to know the shame of the truth, or the zealous/protective adoptive mother whose heart would break if Siri had been ripped from her arms after Elisabetta’s death. Siri was wed and happy now, with the experience of years to sustain her through her future, unlike the naïve sixteen-year-old she had been at her first marriage. Much as Lucianna would like to have enjoyed sharing Siri’s own motherhood, she knew herself no longer truly needed. Serafino could only hurt her now if she stayed.

A dark-haired serving girl slipped into the garden. She dipped a curtsy to Lucianna. “The trenchers are being laid in the hall,” she said. “May I help you change your gown for dinner, milady?”

Serafino arced a satirical brow at the deferential address, but Lucianna ignored him and neatly folded her embroidery.

“Si, thank you, Audiart. I shall wear the cream colored surcote with the yellow sunbursts on the bodice. Was it laundered as I requested?”

The serving girl frowned a little. “Yes, milady, but are you sure—?”

“And the topaz necklace,” Lucianna interrupted. “How clever of you to think of that.” She tucked her cloth in her workbasket, rose with the basket in her hands, and said crisply, “Come!” to the servant before she could complete her doubt of Lucianna’s wardrobe choice.

She knew herself safe from a repeat of Serafino’s spite because he still hoped she would change her mind about wedding Sir Balduin. Though her brother’s taste in clothes was extravagant, his eye was always focused on the richness of the cloth, value of the jewels or the extravagance of the embroidery, not whether any of these traits flattered the wearer or not. So he would not guess that she had deliberately chosen for her dining attire colors that would wash her complexion out and allow all the flaws of her forty-four year old face to shine through.

The others were gathered in the hall by the time Lucianna joined them, Triston and Siri seated at the center of the table on the dais, Sir Balduin to Triston’s left, and next to him the empty chair waiting for Lucianna. She regretted the day she had agreed to rearrange her position to sit beside Sir Balduin rather than on Siri’s right hand. Serafino now sat in Lucianna’s former place, attempting to charm his hostess, judging from the angelic grin accompanying his conversation with Siri. Siri appeared to be responding with a distant politeness, no doubt remembering the revelations of Serafino’s character that Lucianna had shared with her.

Lucianna caught Serafino’s glance from her to Sir Balduin as she approached the dais. She felt her chin jut up and hoped the assembled diners would interpret her gesture as evidence of the hauteur she knew they whispered of behind her back, rather than the challenge she tossed at her brother.

Lucianna ignored Sir Balduin’s tentative smile as she stepped onto the dais and sniffed one of her disdainful sniffs, loudly enough to proclaim her displeasure as she sank into her chair. She kept her gaze strictly fixed on the tables below the dais where the rest of the household knights and men-at-arms dined, no matter how hungrily her eyes longed to drift to the face of the man who sighed rather dispiritedly beside her, starved for his features after his week’s-long absence from Vere Castle.

“And so,” Siri said as soon as Father Michel had pronounced grace and the servants mounted the dais to serve first the master of the house and his wife, “you must tell us, Sir Balduin, how you found Acelet at court. Is he well? Does he seem happy there?”

“At first, I thought him little changed,” Sir Balduin replied. “His head is still too much in the clouds, in my opinion. He squanders a great deal of his free time among Duke Richard’s troubadours and jongleurs, learning poetry from the former and borrowing instruments to learn to play from the latter. One day he sat in the gardens for hours, thinking only of how to perfect a single rhyme. Or at least, ’twas the only task he appeared to be engaged in each time I entered the gardens that day to speak with him. He told me I must go away until he solved the riddle of his words, for I distracted him and he could not focus on my questions while the mystery buzzed like a bee in his head.”

Lucianna sensed Sir Balduin’s nod beside her, signifying his desire for some dish the servant offered to be placed on his trencher. In general, their tastes were very similar, but Lucianna allowed the selection to pass by her and chose some duck with chawdon sauce, instead.

“He has abandoned all interest in a knighthood, then?” Sir Triston asked of his young cousin.

Lucianna could not quite tell whether the note in his voice suggested disapproval or hope. She was tempted to glance at Triston to search his expression, but she would have to look past Sir Balduin and feared her gaze would go no further.

“I feared ’twas the case.” There was no misinterpreting the disapproval in Sir Balduin’s voice. Lucianna knew his various inflections far too well to mistake. “But then I saw him at his sword practice, and it was just as he told me the day I arrived. Yes, thank you, some of that salt cod, please.”

Lucianna chose the pike in rosemary sauce.

“I thought he was boasting so that I would bring you a fair report,” Sir Balduin continued, “lest you say he was wasting the duke’s time and drag him back to Vere, or worse, send him home to his father. But to my surprise, he’d spoken truly. He was not like his days here, when he fought like a lion when he fought at a shadow, but shrank from the blows of the sword master’s thrusts. While I stood watching, Acelet knocked the other squires down, every one, with both his sword and staff. He is not always so sure on horseback yet. He confessed to me in that naïve way of his that the cadence of the horse’s paces sometimes drifts his mind into melody—aye, sir, absurd! But that is Acelet for you.”

Another servant appeared at Sir Balduin’s shoulder. Lucianna was preparing herself to allow this dish to pass by her too and once more select the opposite of Sir Balduin’s choice when she heard him exclaim with delight, “A hodgepodge! I see Lady Lucianna has been in the kitchens again.”

That finally startled her into glancing at the golden browned goose covered with a thick, savory sauce being served onto Sir Balduin’s trencher. Prior to her arrival at Vere, the castle’s cook had made the sauce with pepper, ginger, and a little cider vinegar. Lucianna had indeed added her own touch to the dish by replacing the cider with wine and adding cloves and mace, both of which spices wafted from Sir Balduin’s trencher to her nose. The new recipe had seduced Sir Balduin’s hearty appetite and quickly become his favorite dish. Lucianna shot a glance down the table at Siri. Siri’s rather too obvious avoidance of her gaze confirmed to Lucianna that Siri had ordered the dish to be prepared to the strict specifications the kitchen staff had learned from Lucianna and served just as Sir Balduin had returned from his journey to Poitiers. Apparently Siri had found a way to meddle that she felt would not contradict the promise she had made to Lucianna. She had said she would not try to change Lucianna’s mind about Sir Balduin, but if a hodgepodge on his trencher gave Sir Balduin hope that Lucianna was having second thoughts and encouraged him to try to change her mind himself, Siri must think her conscience at quits.

Lucianna parted her lips to deny that she had had anything to do with the dish, but Sir Balduin preempted her with a robust smacking sound that followed a morsel of chicken he had chewed and swallowed.

“Delicious!” he pronounced. “Nothing I ate in the duke’s court tasted half so fine as this. My thanks to you, Lady Lucianna. Nothing cheers a man like a warm, savory dish of hodgepodge after a long journey.”

Cheer, indeed! The jauntiness in his voice alarmed her, for it bespoke the very emotion she wished to quell.