Last Mass Sample: Chapter: One

A little something while you wait...

Chapter One

Friday, June 18, 1462

The old countryman's cart rattled through the San Giorgio gate just past dawn. The sky was still bright with streaks of gold and pink, and in the height of its vault it glowed with a deep soft blue, like the Virgin's cloak painted in a church. The air was still blessedly cool. Soon, though, the sun would rise over the low hills, and Florence would swelter through another long summer day. Before the heat got too bad though, Antonio Marconi meant to have finished up selling his vegetables and doing his shopping, and be headed home. Castello di San Damino was just a little village, no more than a few houses round a square, and the old tower, but it was cooler in the summer than Florence, and it stank much less.

Marconi liked to come into the city, though, even on a hot summer day. A bit of bustle did him good, and meeting strangers with interesting stories, and you got better prices in Florence. He relished these early morning drives through the streets, when folks were just coming out of the houses and into the shops, and you could watch the city waking up.

Next to the old man sat his nephew Enrico, a big, silent, brawny-shouldered young man who worked hard and kept his mouth shut. Marconi approved of the first quality, but he liked to talk to someone who could keep up their end of a conversation. To the old man’s mind, his grandson, his namesake, little Tonino, was better company than Enrico, for all the child was only six. Tonino was going to town with them that day, and he was just now waking up, as the cart made its way through the narrow streets going down to the river. He clambered into the front of the cart to sit with his grandfather.

Marconi reached out a steadying hand to settle the child on the board as he swayed uncertainly. "Hey now Tonino! You already awake so early?"

The little boy nodded solemnly. His dark hair stuck up all around his head like a spiky halo, with straw stuck in it, and he still had a blanket wrapped around him.  Disheveled as he was, he was bright-eyed and well rested, and interested in seeing things. Going into the city with his grandfather was a rare treat. Ordinarily he would have been at home, helping in the garden, but his mother was sick since the last baby had come early and had so soon died. Marconi’s younger daughter was helping around the house, but he could see his son was distracted with the children. Hoping to ease some of the burden in the home, the old man had proposed taking the oldest boy off their hands by taking him into town for the day.

Now, of course, he was enjoying himself, showing off the sights to a new audience. He should have done this long ago, he thought to himself, feeling sensible and foreseeing, so as to get the child used to coming in with him, and have an extra pair of hands at the market. “Look, there's the Cathedral," Marconi told his grandson, pointing at the famous red dome that dominated the skyline across the river. "I was no older than your uncle Enrico when the building on that was finished up. That's where we'll go to mass next week, when we go into the city for San Giovanni's feast day." The little boy nodded. "That big red dome, you see it?” Morning light spilled over the great curve of the Duomo, and Marconi nodded at it with proprietary approval. “That was made by a man called Brunelleschi.”

"All by himself?" Tonino asked, interested. “It must have taken a really long time, just one person doing all that building. Papa’s been putting up a shed for his tools since I was almost a baby, and Mama says that Jesus is going to come back before it gets done, and that’s just one little shed.”

"Well, I think Brunelleschi had a little help with the building part, maybe, after he drew the pictures." Marconi grinned, and shifted the conversation away from the ongoing and volatile family discussion regarding his son’s tool shed. "Let me tell you a little story about Messer Brunelleschi and his big church dome, Tonino. They had a contest, way back before even I was born, to decide which of the architects would get to build that dome up over Santa Maria’s church. And they all came, the best architects and artists, and showed the plans they’d made. But that Brunelleschi, he told the great men of the city, all those rich merchants from the big families, that they’d better hire him, but he wouldn’t tell them how he was going to build it. Now what do you suppose they said to that?”

Tonino frowned. “I guess they said he could build it, Nonno. ‘Cause you said he did build it. But if you hadn’t told me, I would have said they said no, ‘cause why would you buy something if you don’t get to look at it and see if it’s any good?”

This was so much wisdom from a very little mouth that Marconi pounded his hand in approval on the front of the cart, giving his elderly donkey a mild start. “Good boy! They almost did say no, but then Brunelleschi said, ‘All right, let’s make a contest of it, and say the dome will be built by whoever can balance an egg on a plate, up on its end.’”

Tonino spluttered with laughter. “An egg? Up on its end? Did they?:

“Of course they did, and all the architects, they tried everything, but I bet you can guess that they couldn’t do it.”

“Nobody could!” Tonino exclaimed. “An egg won’t stand up on its end on a plate! But Brunelli did it? How?”

“Brunelleschi, that was his name, and yes he did. When it was his turn, he took the egg, and he went like this!” Marconi slammed his closed fist down on the side of the cart. “And the bottom of the egg went smush! and when he took his hand away it was standing on one end, as nice as you please. All the other architects, they said ‘Well, if you’d told us that was what you meant, we could have done it too.’ And Brunelleschi, he said, ‘And if I told you how I was going to build the Duomo, you could do that, too, but I’m not going to.’ And they had to give him the job; for it was plain he was the smartest man there.” Marconi tried to add a little education to his tale. “You see, it's good to keep a little back, not to tell all your business to everyone. That's the best way to get on."

Tonino’s eyes were wandering as the story ended and the moral began, and his grandfather laughed. “Ah, now I'm being too serious, hey? Well, let's talk about something else. Let's talk about candy. They sell a lot of candy in the city on a big feast day. I guess you and your little brothers and your sister will want some? I thought so. What kind is your favorite again?"

The Marconi family rented the stall on the end of the Ponte Santa Trinita in common with two other marketing families in their village, each using it on their appointed days. It wasn't much more than a collection of wooden boxes and a canvas stretched overhead to keep the sun off, but they didn't need any more than that to sell a cartload of good fruit and vegetables. The cart itself was their storeroom, and they kept bringing out their wares until the lot was sold, which was usually no more than an hour or two after dawn. Then it was soup and bread at a cheap restaurant in the market, shopping for whatever might be needed at home, and they'd be back on the farm not more than an hour past noon. The arrangement worked very well, and so had lasted two generations with no alterations, and only one or two pauses for the plague to sweep through.

Marconi and Enrico got themselves busy laying out everything they had brought to sell: heaps of golden and white onions, green cabbages and lettuce and peas, and dark ruddy plums in enticing displays of color. After stacking up the melons in a big pyramid, Marconi split a big one in half, to show off the icy red meat and be able to offer a taste to the customers. Tonino was supposed to be helping them, but after a few minutes he got bored, and went to hang over the edge of the bridge and drop pebbles into the water. Marconi watched him go for a moment. He wasn’t bothered by the child wandering off. He wasn't enough help to miss it, really, small as he was, and later he could fetch more baskets from the cart when his grandfather and uncle really got busy. He might as well be allowed to play around a little now. The other stall owners would keep an eye on him.

The old man and the young fellow moved quickly and skillfully, setting things up. There were already a couple of women in shawls and wooden clogs clomping busily towards them from the far end of the bridge, with Friday's fish already in their baskets. “Monna Niccolosa!” Marconi shouted out, recognizing old customers. “Monna Bice! Come over here and get the finest, freshest fruit there is!” The women crowded in on the stall, heavy skirts swinging, eyes sharpening below linen veils, and began to rummage through the cabbages.

This was what Marconi was best at, and for a time he lost himself in his expertise, praising and weighing his ware, haggling and swapping bits of gossip, while Enrico silently hefted sacks and baskets. “Here’s the best sorrel you can find,” he wheedled expertly, using patter that had sold cartloads of vegetables over the years. “Give your husband this in his soup and he’ll fall in love all over again. Give him this melon afterward and it might even be with you!”

Another woman bustled up to the counter with a request. Marconi’s broad, yellow-toothed smile flashed confidently. “Of course I’ve got eggs, Madonna. These eggs are so fresh that the chicken had to ride in to town with us to finish laying them. Enrico, get me six eggs for our most beautiful customer!”

While the men worked, Tonino wandered down the bridge, examining the wares that other people had brought to the bridge, taking big bites out of a plum he'd snatched from the stall. Juice ran down his chin and left a little trail of dark sticky drops behind him. Between two stands he found a gap in the canvas, and scrambled through so he could climb up onto the wide stone rails of the bridge. He sat there, watching the sun rise low over the river, and looking as far downstream as he could see.

The view that met the peasant child’s interested eyes was one of the most famous in Europe. He was looking north from the shore of the River Arno, the silver ribbon that supplied water to Florence’s industry. The water was low and slow-moving in summer, tainted with the effluvia of the cloth-finishing workshops, but it glinted bright in the early morning light, and Tonino thought it was pretty. He examined the houses on the other side of the water, and waved to people standing on their balconies, trying to get them to see him. One lady, hanging out some wash, spotted him and waved back, and Tonino grinned proudly.

He finished his plum and threw the stone into the water to make it splash. He was about to jump back down and make his way to the other end of the bridge to see what was happening there, when his eye was caught by a blur of warm color drifting beneath the surface of the muddy water below.

Tonino squinted at it. There was something quite big in the water, and it was a very funny shape, like a dead sheep, but bigger, and more spread out. It was moving very slowly, in the low water of the summer Arno, drifting along, and bumping into other debris. The color that had caught his eye was darkened by soaking, but was still red, redder than anything else in the water. It rippled slightly in the current. Then the thing bobbed closer to the surface, and Tonino saw it more clearly. One white hand, with a big ring with a stone in it, like the one worn by Father Marcello who said Mass on Sundays at San Damino, floated free of the rippling darkness and drifted to the surface.

Marconi was busy flattering old Monna Mea into buying more eggs when the child tore back to the stall, weeping and retching, and knocking over a basket of onions which rolled away over the paving stones. "Nonno," he sobbed, "Nonno…”

Marconi crouched down and put his hands on the child's shoulders. "Gesu! Tonino! What's wrong? Did you hurt yourself? Show me." Tonino shook his head. He was shaking all over, in fact, and his nose was running. "There's a man lying in the water," he cried.

Marconi couldn’t understand through the child’s gasps and sobs. "What’s that? You have to speak up. What’s the matter, ‘Nino?"

Tonino shook. "There's a man in the water," he managed to say again, past the terrible feeling in his chest. He tugged on his grandfather's sleeve. "He's drowned, Nonno. He’s all white and dead.

Monna Mea gasped and crossed herself. Wide-eyed, the customers began to mutter among themselves. Marconi picked up the child, bracing him against his strong chest, and jogged to the wall of the bridge. He looked out over the sluggish water, low in the summer heat, and fouled with the tanneries and the dying sheds. For a moment he saw nothing, and wondered if it were a prank, or if a floating animal carcass had frightened the boy.

Then he saw the body. It was lying in the shallow water, caught by some debris on the muddy stretch of south bank revealed by the drop in the water line. A motionless form, dressed in the long gown of the City's merchants. One arm was flung loose, and bobbed with the motion of the river. Besides that arm the body was utterly still.

Marconi sighed, and hugged his grandson closer, as Tonino hid his face in his grandfather's tunic. Marconi carried the child back, put him back down, and pulled Enrico over to the end of the bridge, pointing. He was quick, but he moved with no urgency. The man was dead. They had both known that as soon as they saw him.

A small crowd of shoppers and storekeepers gathered at the end of the bridge as the two contadini in from the country, the short, stout old man and the husky young one, climbed down the bank, and recovered the body. Together they carried it, streaming water and weighty, up to the end of the bridge, where they gave it a makeshift shroud of a length of canvas.

Marconi huffed and puffed back to his feet, and looked down at the corpse with dismay. “Bad work, this,” he said. The body was that of a man in his forties or thereabouts, bald on top. He was a tall, plump fellow who looked as if he ate well and had prospered until he’d met his fate in the river. The face was bloated and grayish, and the long red lucco he wore was sopping wet and muddied, and ripped open in the chest. Marconi winced and spat to one side at the sight of the torn, stained linen and brutal stab wounds below, bled white. The smell of the filthy river water that soaked the heavy clothes was worse than the smell of the corpse. Marconi breathed through his mouth and tried not to think about either. His own clothes and Enrico’s were drenched and filthy with the muddy, stinking river water. His daughter would have a fit when she saw them, Marconi thought. It would all have to be washed.

Tonino watched them, wide-eyed, from where he sat on Monna Mea’s lap, wrapped up in her shawl, while they made the body as decent as they could. Enrico crossed himself and whistled softly. "Bad work," he said, spitting on the ground. He took the trouble, to aim it away from the dead man, out of respect.

Marconi nodded. "You need to go get someone over here," he said. "A man from the Security. There's a guardhouse on the first big street past the bridge. And see if you can find us a priest. Drop into a church on the way, or if you see one in the street make him come. Can you do that?"

Enrico nodded. "I'll be back quick." The young man ran across the bridge, his heavy shoes clomping on the stones.

Marconi lifted his grandson out of Monna Mea’s arms. Tonino was runny-nosed and tear-stained, but he was no longer crying. Marconi held him tightly. "Come here, ‘Nino. Come here. This is a bad business all right, very bad. But see here, we’ll do all that’s left to do. This fellow here, it's nothing but his flesh and bones. His soul's gone on, do you see? It's that we need to worry about now, his soul. You know how to say the Rosary, I know. Your mama taught you to say it, right? Come kneel over here and we'll say it together for this fellow, for the good of his soul, so that he'll go to heaven very soon, and not spend a long time in purgatory for his sins. Come on, Tonino, I forget how it begins. Your old nonno is not so sharp these days. You start me off, will you? Yes, that's right."

The simple task helped the child calm himself, and in a wavery voice, he began “In nomine patri…” Together, the old man and the little boy knelt on the wet stones of the street, next to the vegetable cart at the end of the bridge. The women with their shopping baskets joined them, and the vendors who had come to see what had happened. Together, all prayed aloud for the soul of the stranger they had found in the Arno.

The sun rose higher as they prayed, spilling a painter’s vivid gold down the curve of the Duomo, and the rooftops of the city. It was full daylight now on Friday, the 18th of June, six days before the feast of San Giovanni Battista, patron saint of the city of Florence, and of the Arte della Lana, the guild of the wool merchants.