Utah State University
From the SelectedWorks of Gene Washington
2000
THE SCHOOL OF DONNINA VISCONTI
gene washington, Utah State University
Available at: http://works.bepress.com/gene_washington/118/
THE SCHOOL OF DONNINA VISCONTI
Pictures From The Trecento
Stories have a beginning, middle and an end--but not necessarily in that order. Jean-Luc Godard.
Every woman is condemned to have a love affair that remains unfinished. Mine has been
with the Italian Trecento. It is a love I share with my great-grandfather, the poet, Percy Bysshe
Shelley. Shelley was a direct descendant of Donnina Visconti, the daughter of Bernabó,
Archduke of Lombarby (1323-85) and her union with the condottiere, Sir John Hawkwood.
Conclusive evidence is lacking, but it may be the case that her son, Roberto, was responsible for
the final preparation, and preservation, of the MS of this novel.
(I now hold in my hand the ruby ring Shelley was wearing at the time of his death. The
engraving inside reads il buon tempo verra.)
verra
Due to the ravages of time and accidents, the task of transcribing the MS was a
formidable one. Part of this was the result of the MS being stored at some time in its history in a
damp place and the consequent mutilation and smearing of the ink. Insects seem to have eaten
holes in some pages; a few sections are almost unintelligible; others have been struck out and
new lines added. The title itself is in the hand of Shelley, as are many additions to the text itself.
These, insofar as possible, have been retained and identified by either an S, where the
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identification approaches certainty, or an S', where, due to the shape of certain letters, there is
some doubt. Many technical, and scientific, descriptions, the reader will note, are marked by an
S. This reflects the fact that Shelley, as we now know, was widely read in these areas. We may
also look upon these Shelleyan additions to the MS as his excursus on the need to constrain the
literary imagination by adhering strictly to what is true.
Does what you are about to read be fit any known genre? If we ignore the (occasional)
unusual arrangement of its sentences, then I believe we can liken it to a novel. Like most early
novels, it treats heavily of recollection and proceeds through multiple repetitions. We should
recall that persons from that age did not always think, imagine or dream the way we do. To them
the past was "better," more complete than we now like to think, and far more accessible.
Laudator temporis acti. But you will also find in what you are about to read not only the heroic
and the marvelous, but also the infuriating, the shameful and the horrible.
Shelley, in a recently discovered letter to Robert Moore, seems to have the MS before us
in mind. Here he refers to this species of writing as a "mood-fiction." What he meant by this term
cannot now be precisely determined. I myself believe it refers to a type of fiction that treats
heavily in ambiguous signs of seen and unseen parallel realms, some of ghosts, perhaps, others of
intangible, marginalized presences. Their appearances and disappearances in the narrative
provide a constant hovering possibility of estranging shifts of perspective. We should not be
surprised, then, at the multiple shifts in verb-tenses and the frequent use of the negative. (I might
say in passing that the proof-reader, employed by my publisher, deleted a number of negatives. I
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have, after considerable effort, restored them.)
But perhaps all this trying to find a genre for the MS is besides the point. Its sub-title of
the MS is "pictures" and we should perhaps leave it at that
Mistakes in grammar, where they have been found, have been corrected and the archaic
spelling of the original modernized.
My researches have so far turned up nothing substantial about the identity of "Geoffrey,"
the self-proclaimed author of the MS. A friend has suggested, something I have yet to act on, that
a search through the names "Geoffrey," "Jeffrey," or "Jared" in The Dictionary of National
Biography might produce an identification.
The title was, at first, somewhat puzzling to me. But now I realize, after several fresh
readings of the MS, that "school" has the likely meaning of the kind of pictorial and written
representation of the Trecento that follows the practice of Donnina Visconti herself. A more
exact description of the meaning of the term will have to wait on an analysis of the pictures,
thought to show the hand of Donnina, that are now coming to light in parts of northern Italy,
particularly, Milan, Verona and Turin. Some of these pictures, it is clear from the text, were
available to Shelley. See, for example, the scene on p. 215 and the paragraph that begins, "The
subject is made, not given…."
_______
On May, 21, 1377, Sir John Hawkwood, condottiere, married Donnina Visconti,
daughter of Bernabó Visconti, in the old cathedral at Milan. Orange scented incense floated
through the great cathedral. The nuptial scent of the incense seem to absord the interior as a full
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moon overwhelms the landscape. Beyond the circle of light emitted by the candles from the
cathedral, the city was plunged in total darkness. Low shuttered houses stood mute weighed
down by the huge forms of convents, churches and monasteries. There were many of these
structures, for women and men, for rich and poor, nobles and commoners, for Jesuits,
Benedictines, Capuchins, and Carmelites. It was the buildings that gave Milan its weight and
character, its elegance but also its grimness and feeling of impending doom.
Later that night, bonefires would be lit on the hills surrounding the city. These were the
fires stoked by persons much like the princes who ruled the city. Persons who were sometimes
fanatical, often self-absorbed, avid for power or for the lethagy that was for them the same as
power.
Donnina removes John’s helmet and runs her fingers through the dark mat of his hair, still
wet from the long ride from Vicenza. Above them, gnats spiral-dance in shafting sunlight. Appleblossoms, level-slanting the sunlight, float down to crown John’s head, cradled in Donnina’s lap.
Below, she can just make out where the Adda starts to make its great bend north to its
junction with the Po. On the other side of the valley, shadows begin to encroach on wind-carved,
Assyrian-looking mass of stones. The shadow of a cloud moves slowly over the stones down
toward the river.
What, my lord, is the difference between life and death”? She waits for his words. But she
hears only his low breathing, the hard angles of his face now softened. She traces an old wound
with her finger along John’s forehead. The air carries blossoms by in a dreamy, blue haze.
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Only the sway of a small flame,” she hears herself say.
John wakes, lifting his eyelids slowly. Their talk runs long into the evening.
Bernabó, Archduke of Milan, departed soon after the wedding for his hunting lodge in
Hungary. Here he will entertain the Emperor with a boar-hunt and later a sumptuous meal of
fermented mushrooms and pork.
To start the fementation of the mushrooms, the cook has sprinkled salt freely over them
and let stand for a few hours. He will mash them and set aside for two days. Then he will
follow with an addition of an ounce of peppercorns, a blade of mace, thyme, ginger and lemon
rind.
It is thought that Bernabó and the Emperor have entered into secret negotiations to
conquer the territories now held by the Pope in the mountains of Civitavecchia--known to
contain rich deposits of alum.
Donnina stands in the doorway of the castello, watching the wind, like soft insistent
fingers of an unseen hand, part the leaves on the beech trees of the great yard. In her arms she
holds a brown puppy spaniel in cosy embrace. Smothering part of her face against the puppy’s
small, fat body, she turns and moves back into the hall.
Donnina leans out from the low casement window. A flame-like shimmer, spreading into
blueish darkness, covers the stones of the courtyard. Suddenly John appears from the shade of a
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yew tree. He watches the pale blue of her stretched down arm and face come closer. Reaching out
an hand he can just reach the huge key she holds. Pink and blue Bougainvillaea bloom along the
frame and sill of the window.
He takes the key from her warm hand.
Donnina's eyes, moistening in the pale-blue light, turn up and outward. John looks. As his
gaze goes deeper into her eyes, their colors begin to bloom and grow richer and deeper.
The pupils of Donnina's eyes begin to dilate, perfect circles expanding outward.
S
The posterior part of the eyeball and the anterior parts of its muscles are enveloped in a
lymph space, known as the capsule of Tenon, which assists their movements.
When Donnina and John’s wedding was announced in Rome. Cynics said that it would
never last, that Donnina was too proud, too independent to live in such a constrained state.
Epicureans saw in the wedding the emblem of the overriding nature of desire. Stoics, in late
reply, said it was all illusion, a dream, a passing shadow.
Donnina and Hawkwood kneel before the altar. Candles gutter, throwing out pale
combustions. Incensation, normally enjoined before the introit, at the gospel and again at the
offertory and elevation, has been allowed by special dispensation of the Pope. The aroma of
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frankincense eddies and pools in the aisles of the great nave. For his services to the state,
Hawkwood receives from the priest a clod of earth, a scepter and a sword. Along the surface of
the priest’s chasuble run small welf-figures, in silver and gold, of Our Lord’s Passion. His
maniple, in rich red and gold, falls loosely from his left arm.
Donnina closes her eyes. Edges, textures and surfaces of light retreat. Sounds from the
street die away.
A celebrated manuscript in the Musee de Chantilly , the tres riches du Duc de Milan,
represents Donnina at her dressing table the day before her wedding. Behind her is a fire in a
hooded chimney. She is protected from its heat by a circular screen of plaited silver threads. The
wall is covered by tapestries hung on hooks. Above the tapestries one can see lunettes enclosing
clumps of foliage and other ornaments following the late Gothic tradition. The coffered ceiling is
carved and painted the color of the night sky--at the time of the rising of the Pleiades. The table,
with legs of trestle form, is covered with a striking white cloth and courtiers and maid-servants
are busy around it.
Donnina sits in her chair. In form and ornament, it reminds one immediately of
Carpaccio’s painting of St. Ursula’s dream, now in the Academy of Venice. The back, arms and
legs of the chair are richly carved and gilded. (Walnut, a common wood in the mountains north
of Milan is an admirable material for delicate carving.) The seat and back are of red velvet, plush,
well-plumped.
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_______
In 1385, Gian Galeazzo Visconti murdered his uncle Bernabó and became sole ruler of
the Milanese territories. Linear, illegal succession of power. Gian's investiture, by the Emperor,
occurred at Milan the following year. The leaves from the poplars fell early that year. The water
had a strange, chemical, taste.
An investiture betokens the relation between a suzerain and vassal. From the Emperor,
Gian received, as symbols of his office and estate, a clod of earth, a scepter and sword. Gian
would later go on to found the new Cathedral at Milan, build the bridge across the Ticino at
Pavia and improve its University. In 1387, he conquered Verona and in the following year took
Padua. While besieging Florence, in 1402, he died of the plague.
The investiture is about to begin. The dignitaries, including representatives of the Pope
and Antipope, are all assembled. Rays of light, below the red, have raised the temperature in the
great cathedral. A female scorpion fly, attracted by pheromones emitted by a male, lands on a
fresco of the Last Judgment. A few of the guests are self-invited, like this wretched man in rags
and that old blind woman in the corner. The smell of incense drifts through the nave. A stonemason, high in an uncompleted spire at the southeast corner stops to urinate. A violet light,
falling on the scarlet robes of the cardinals, creates a solemn impression. The female fly will
mate with the male for an hour. The sound of the great bell stops. Yellow light, in the upper
spires of the cathedral, will reach its greatest intensity in the pool of urine. Receptor cells activate
the light.
Gian kneels before the Emperor. The old man leans forward. His right hand moves out
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toward Gian with the clod of earth. The old woman turns her head toward a brief, anomalous
sound, Gian's spur making contact with the marble floor. Patterns of stone tracery appear on the
smooth, glossy, surface of the clod. The head of the mason's penis swells. Circles of blooddiffusion. Gian raises his hand to take the object. The stone-mason, finishing buttoning his
codpiece, stoops to pick up his chisel and hammer.
Some of them, at the same time, are thinking that the flowers, just before frost, seem
highly eroticized.
Aspire to beauty.
_______
It reminds her, faintly, of strawberries. Clarity of color and flavor will be singled out as
positives. They are friends, these two cooks. A pink flush will later spread here, along the skin of
her back and over the buttocks and upper legs. He will, acknowledging causality, notice it. The
kitchen is hot, steamy. Drifts of visible sediment run through this particular vinegar. The pots of
the liquid, seven in all, are just here, along this wall. Scrutinize this orifice. In a blind tasting of a
surface, we must expect some movement of the tongue and sucking by the lips. Her nipples rose.
There will be praise for its mellow and complex fruity flavor. It was as if they had found some
absent space. But some will find it lip-puckering. Later their commitment will be to deeper,
heavier, breathing. She was sweating along the hairline.
S
Kitchen pollutants, acting on the reproductive system of cooks of his class, have reduced
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the volume of viable semen in one ejaculation to 3.3 milliliters.
"Smacks" of berries and/or dried fruit. Red wine vinegar. Not until later will her skin, the
crease of a thigh, make a commitment to a brighter color. "When will you have your answer"?
The dark flat patch of hair between her legs shortens and elongates as she moves. Her description
of the taste of the liquid will later be described by him as "honest." She will, parting her legs,
move over him. Tasters who dislike this also loathed it. He will later go limp. Others find the
taste "clean." "In a few days." Foreign infusions, within a known group of membranes, may be a
factor in the way we respond to others. "It is only one of my many weaknesses." Kitchen work
seemed to anchor their lives. But still rumors, counter-rumors, spread like other things. List here,
in order of preference, the vinegars. "I like that. I am very happy with it."
Before you belittle them, taste their obsessions.
Donnina felt a presence behind her, the sound of steel on the marble floor, and a voice
demanding,
"Ragazza! Show me to the Duke."
Her robe swung in the heavy Lombardian air. She saw a tall, broad-shouldered man. The
source of light is from the high windows of the castello. It shone across his burnished helmet, its
encrusted image of an attacking hawk, and cuirass. The sound of spurs approached Donnina,
surrounded her. Motes of dust hung, slow-spiralling, in the air. The man stopped.
"You heard me. Move. I do not have, as you obviously do, time to waste."
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S
The outstanding feature of Donnina's robe is its rich, raised satin figures. They were
formed from a loosely floating satin warp on the background of a second and special weft that
was woven as a loose float. They were then tightly bound down by a separate binder warp.
Donnina felt her cheek flush. She looked up. She would, holding her position, say to him.
I am not a servant, I am the daughter of the Arch-Duke of Lombardy. I possess the keys to all the
doors of this castello.
In tying up the design, it was the background that was tied up, not the figures of
Donnina's robe. The two separate warps of the satin required two separate rollers. The main roller
was weighted only lightly and the binder warp roller heavily, so that the background was held
hard down while the figures were left loose and elevated. Background and figures were of
different colors.
The cloth of the robe is luxurious and expensive. The figure weft include gold-and-silver
threads.
A door from this room opens into a tunnel. It runs from here to the stables and then to the
river beyond. It is never without sound or movement. Cobwebs sag in the wet air. A low pulsing
sound, like paddles beating still water, comes from up ahead. In a small tunnel to the left a
column of brown, wood-ants, attack the nursery of a colony of pharoah's ants. The captured
nestlings, raised as wood-ants, will later return to attack their parents.
The queen of the pharoah's ants lies immobile, Aphrodite under the hill, in the moist
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darkness. Her gestation, birth and maturity take sixteen days. She does not intend to let any other
female replace her as queen.
Ant-thorax, gaster, and legs lies parts-scattered over minute hills of brown clay.
"Go, go, avanti. I have news for your master."
Donnina did not speak. Her robe carried no authority for him. His eyes looked past her.
Was he looking for signs of an ambush? An assassin, waiting around the corner, behind the
door? His hand, she noticed, was suspended above the handle of his sword.
The sweet wind, blowing, sours as it enters the catapecchie.
Suddenly they were there, the sound and the force, pulling her up from the running earth.
The stars were the palest things. She felt the darkness retreating, the dog-like sounds falling away
and back. Pale ovals and circles advanced, moving, melding, reforming the stars with contrary
shadows. The trees, releasing their scent into the high air, swung open into a meadow along a
low hill. The great horse, its velocity increasing, even without the rider's commands, turned right
towards the lights of the village below. Donnina's silken shoes, pulled by the force below, fell
away.
The rider's armor shone in the moonlight. He pulled her higher, closer. Along his
shoulders the metal was cool. His breath was warm in her hair. Her skin felt light. The sensation,
increasing as the lights of the village came closer, spread up and out. The rider, pulling her
closer, moved his lips down.
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Nel fuoco d'amore mi mise.
The lips are slightly parted. His right hand, fingers slightly spread, holds-caresses her
cheek and hair.
Paint fever in her sex. Find successive rows of open windows to send to cast lights and
shadows across her long hair and face. Emphasize the color of the eyes, the color of emeralds,
inducing passion and then sleep.
The emerald, too, preserves and strengthens the sight.
They went together down the grand hall, past other windows, to the spiraling staircase.
Donnina paused, her hand moved to rest on the oak balustrade. Why should she continue in this
pretence?
Through the first window she looked across the long sweep of the yard, the river, to the
Alps beyond. One day it will be mine, she said to herself. I will never marry. I will be free.
She then remembered the man behind, forcing her will.
Castration had removed them from the realm of theory. Show them not, like one or two of
the others, singing the King out of his melancholia. Five arias an evening. The King on the
balcony, leaning out, listening.
Show these begging in the streets, in rags. Above the King, just inside the window, the
Queen also listens. These have been instructed by il preto (on the instructions of il vescovo) to
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avoid all churches, assembly-halls and central piazzas.
What color there was to their life has faded, still fading. This one's face, the one without
a curved ridge or delta. In each scene he-it exited to the left. The Queen is in love with the singer.
Desire rises like a liquid in clear crystal. Suo viso del cristallo. Her vagina moistens. The area where
the testicles should be are called whorls. This whorl has at least one recurving loop. The head of
the clitoris, mobile, oily, pushes upward, toward silk-filtered light.
E'l suo bel viso dolcie ed amoroso. "Only a relatively small number of these are unsuitable." His
lungs had filled with a mucous-like substance. "Annus canicularis. That sounds more elegant
than 'dog-star,' don't you agree"? The Queen's voice, warm in the singer's ear, had a faint, familiar
ring, amor condusse noi ad una morte. But he could not be sure. The organ went easily into her.
There are two lines of regard here. Its head is erect, the first line of regard is toward a distant
goal. Her response is effected by four straight muscles and two oblique.
_____
Back of them the Adda River was flooding and beyond it was a steep, now muddy, cliff
rising to a clump of aspens standing at a stone wall. This species of spider, in the grass below, is
the Argiope. It hunts in daylight. To their right, left and front, the lances and crossbowmen of the
Anti-Pope. Hawkwood, and what was left of the White Company were trapped. The Argiope
decorate their webs, putting thick strands of silk in the middle to form zigzags (or cross-hatch)
patterns. Hawkwood's back hurt as he twisted in the saddle and pulled the great grey horse,
already running hard, around to the right. The web signals to the prey of the spider, not "open sky
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beyond," but blossoming flowers and nectar paths.
Hawkwood did not feel the weight of the heavy sword in his right hand. Web and flower
glow in ultraviolet-reflecting light. Blood from a recent wound, driven by the rain and increasing
speed of the horse, began to streak John's armor and to stream back along the horse's armored
flanks. The bee tries to shake itself free of the web. On John's left, the voice of Conrad of Pau,
with him since the summer of 1375, vanished in the sound of rushing hooves and lances coming
up and around. Variation in web-design have prevented the bee from learning from its mistakes.
Twenty five yards from Robert's first lances, the instincts of the horse and rider became one,
heads slightly down, muscles tightening for the first impact, peripheral objects blurring. Fifteen
yards, the horse and rider now seemed beyond gravity, within an elevated vortex of hooves, mud
and wind. Five yards, Hawkwood's heavy voice was coming back, along the line, calling them
forward.
S'
The orb-weavers' web is not a frail improvisation.
Three yards, the great horse, now free of all constraints, his ears flattened, the head and
shoulder of the rider low along the flying mane--1000 pounds of accelerating mass aimed toward
the center of the first rank. Evolution has given the Argiope the right to chose the color of its web
with a strategic perspective in mind.
The lance that Simon held, like those of the other lancers of the first rank, was standard
issue. Six and a half feet long, made of Apennine hickory, steel tipped, flat at the butt. Since he
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was an experienced soldier, he had been placed in the first rank--trained to kneel on his right leg,
his right and left hands holding the planted lance--elevated at a twenty-five degree angle, ready to
receive the charge. He was tired and wet and he felt heavy. His stomach was churning from fear
and the effects of the grappa he had just drunk. The rain, blowing in his eyes, made it hard to
see.
It has been estimated that the width of the Anti-pope's position was approximately 950
yards. Simon's lance, together with those of his comrades, constituted a kind of thicket. Given
that there were a 1000 lancers in the line of battle, ranked shoulder to shoulder three deep, they
would have occupied, at a yard of front per lancer, 250 yards. Simon could hear, behind him, the
sound of the archers driving in their stakes. If the 5000, on the remaining 700 yards of the front,
planted their stakes side by side, they would have formed a fence at five inch intervals. The
presence of crossbowmen at the rear cannot be ruled out. Neither the velocity of the crossbow
bolt or arrow can be estimated.
On the order to elevate lances, Simon tightened his grip on the butt of the lance and
swung it left over his body. He waited. Of the two weapon principles (held by military theorists),
the "missile" one had now begun. Personified by archers, it essentially meant a contest between
Robert's bowmen and the knights of the White Company. It got darker as the rain began to fall
heavier. Reports of thunder broke through the sound of the lancers moving into position. A flight
of arrows sang over Simon's head and disappeared into the rain. The wide-brimmed helmet of the
White Company, not unlike a bascinet, offered a glancing surface to the arrows. Mud pulled at
Simon's legs. On his left, he heard the sound of someone praying. He had, that morning, asked
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for the Virgin's help for all. The sound of the arrows, falling on armor, must have been a strange
clanking and banging. The horses of Hawkwood and the White Company were still too far from
the front of Simon's line to test the effectiveness of the second, "shock," principle of military
theory.
The sound reached Simon first--then the rush of mud and heavy air, followed by a grey
mass, distorted at the edges, jerking his lance out and around--a mass going up and over, turning
him to the left and down into the mud. A jagged line of lights danced in his head as his neck
snapped back and broke. The sky went dark in the rain. Caught in the armor of Hawkwood's
great horse, Simon's lance swept back through the ranks, decapitating and disemboweling his
comrades, opening a gap for the on-coming White Company. In an ordinary "shock" situation the
lancers move away from the on-coming horses. In front of the line the last fifty yards of the
Company's charge was over recently plowed land. Simon's comrades, frightened at the sound,
initially moved back a "spear's length." The great swords of the knights made a
v
, left, right,
over and around the necks and bodies of their chargers. They were following, in and through the
ranks of the lancers, the sound of Hawkwood's voice, "avanti," "go," go."
Only Jules would not go to bed that night with the feeling of victory; of John Hawkwood,
dismounted, and of the condottiere's great horse, Swallow, pivot-dancing around the warrior.
Nigel, Massimo and John would drink their wine, pray for Jules' soul, all before it became hard
to see the last crossbowmen of the Anti-Pope falling back--swimming, shouting, drowning--over
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the flooding river.
Tomorrow they would go south, Jules' body tied bolt upright in his saddle. In full armor, a
comrade holding the head straight, hands folded on the saddle horn. None of the villagers noticed
the dead condottiere. This one is watching the approach of a storm front to the west. The long
wound was now dry under the armor. Jules' flesh was tone-yellow. The man at the corner has an
eye-infection. After a spell of Rigor mortis, the sinews relax the joints. The burial party would
take Jules south toward Belluno, through Castelbello, to Montecchio and finally Migliari. Here,
within three days, Jules would be buried from La Chiesa di Santo Spirito in procession.
The hill between the church and cemetery is steep here. The cantor, leading the
procession, sings in a low voice. Up the hill, in an envelope of shining steel, they go. Up further,
through stands of poplar and beech, finally to the top under the yews. Jules, 1345-1369, dead,
buried before his seventh battle and the winning of his spurs. Here lie other members of the
White Company. Henry of Warwick and Gianfranco of Orvieto. The gravediggers watch. There
seems to be a mountain in the background. Water from a high remote spring makes a cascade
down the face of the rock. The old man at the left is hungry. His hands rest on the pala corta.
The sun is hot. Note the place where Jules was buried. It seems to lie on the west slope of a small
depression. Further west, along the top of the slope, one sees a large evergreen tree, perhaps a
spruce. The cascade of water is still there.
The old man never looks at the body. But he fears the malaria of the place. The smell of
the dead, like vegetation decomposing in a swamp, mixes with the wind. Jules was buried,
because of concerns about the return of the plague, seven feet deep.
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Where the cascade falls through a gorge, on its way to a river in the corner there, its force
and velocity increase. Natives take pride in their torrente assassino.
_____
For some time the dream and the fear would be denied. The infant Donnina would hold,
washing it, dressing it. The contents of the dream were there, the infant's smile, almost a halfgrin, its pupils dilating in pleasure at her own pleasure in its presence. In the dream there's a halftransparent lake, stretching away in every direction, too big for her to see the shores of it, if there
are any shores.
Donnina inhaled the perfumed scent of the infant's skin. At the bottom of the lake, so
deep she could only guess at the dark masses moving and heaving, are the real dragons. She felt
the infant's silent existence behind her in the room. Into this lake people's minds run at night,
brooks and gutter-trickles to one borderless reservoir. The infant surprised her with its changing
moods. The lake is the sewage of the ages (transparency aside). The quiet breath of the infant was
in Donnina's ear in the night. The lake water stinks and smokes from what dreams have been left
sogging around in it over the centuries.
The infant's own sleep was like the changing surface of a lake, wild then calm. Call the
water what you will, Lake Expectations, Bog of Nightmares, it is here the sleeping people lie and
toss together among the stuff of their worst dreams, each of them waking, thinking of themselves
alone. Their hand movements are never directly intended, their responses to the water are never
appropriate.
The scent of time was raw. She would have to look for new candles in the drawer. The
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scent moved through the world. Or did the world move through it?
The infant was ill again, feverish eyes, its face shone with light.
_______
Refused food at the Castelluccio Bifolchi, the Pope was obliged, with much
inconvenience and hunger, to ride on to Montepulciano.
______
Threshing, the crowing feast day of the year on the great castello. Donnina greets each of
her estate workers and the neighbors who have arrived to help with the threshing. She presents a
bag of sweets to each of the children. The air is heavy with fine gold dust, shimmering in the
mid-day sun. The wine-flasks pass from mouth to mouth, the children climb with their bags of
candy onto the carts and stacks of wheat.
Beside the threshing floor, the banquet begins. First comes soup and smoke cured hams,
then dishes of spaghetti, then three kinds of meat (one of which is the gander, l'ocio, fattened for
weeks beforehand). Then follows plates of sheep's cheese, made by Donnina herself, then the
dolce and red wine.
S
Who bears the red wine? The young handsome country girls, of course. Imagine it: the
girls bringing in stacks of yellow pasta and flask upon flask of wine. The banter and the laughing,
the hot sun beating down over the pale valley. The vines despoiled of their former riches. The
sense of fulfilment after a long year's labor!
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The dolce has been prepared under Donnina's supervision. This year it is panna cotta with
strawberries prepared in balsamic vinegar. The panna cotta is served chilled in wine glasses. The
ingredients are whole milk, gelatin, heavy cream, vanilla beans, sugar (or honey) and salt. Pour
milk into a large pan, sprinkle the surface evenly with gelatin and let stand 10 minutes to hydrate
the gelatin. Add cream and vanilla beans. Heat milk and gelatin mixture over high heat, stirring
constantly, until the gelatin is dissolved. Take off heat and add sugar (or honey) and salt; stir
until dissolved. Stirring constantly, pour cream with vanilla into pan containing milk then chill
in container with ice, or very cold water. Chill until the mixture sets. About 4 to 6 hours.
É fa di claritas l'aer. The lights of the village below trembled like water over stones. The
stones trusted the water not to carry them away.
She had a hypothesis about him. The vomeronasal receptors, for the present, mixed their
signals. He was leaning against a tree. She moved closer. Make the light come. Show around his
head and shoulders, a pale glow, like the fire at the base of the candle flame. Wobble slightly the
visage.
Not yet will the shadow of the fire stretch to the palm of her hand.
"You were," he said, "a victim of timing."
She looked beyond him to the slope beyond, gravely foreign under its green cloak, heavy
makeup. The shadow of the great horse, swinging its weight, came between her and the moon.
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The tiny pits, just inside the nose (on both sides of the septum), opened. They had not asked for
what they were receiving. They existed for a fact long before they knew what to do with the fact.
Her left arm went around his waist. She, reaching up, lifted his helmet. Her legs parted.
Naked feet in the cool grass. She rose on her toes, pushing the buttocks up. He, reaching down,
around them, pulling her higher into warmer light.
Peasants, the uneducated, the illiterate, sailors, priests, clerks, clergy and poets all
experience the horror sanguinis. Accordingly, the warrior, back from the war (with the usual bag
of dead), can expect a certain kind of moral treatment.
Yet war is justified by gender, power and the blood of royalty.
The warrior may, the authorities noticing that his hands were unclean, be required to
undergo penance (The Penitential of Monte Cassino, Regino's Ecclesiastical discipline.)
Hawkwood would not be allowed to take communion for forty days. Qui per jussionem
domini sui hominem occiderit, 40 diebus abstineat se ab ecclesia, et qui occiderit hominem in
publico bello, 40 dies poeniteat. Bird minded. His companions rose smiling. They had to get up
early for the birds.
"Many birds, even at night. A pygmy owl. He even fools the other birds."
Hawkwood was tired. He did not rise. He leaned back on his arms, his hands spread wide
on the sand.
"There was a bird this morning, just along the beach here."
On this view, that is, that of the community of all Christians, blood was viewed as both
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holy and accursed. Both to be worshipped as the essence of the life-force and as a miasma,
spreading from the hand of the warrior, contaminating the others. "Birds here are like the food,
part of the scene, the arum lilies and barley-sop soup." Hawkwood turned his head, looking down
the beach, and then around to the sea itself, stretching, paleing, into blue. The waves rolled up
and slowly back. The black crows, disturbed by the killing, rose over his head and flew toward
the trees. The eyes of the dead knight had no thought to reflect, no mind to review the last fact.
"He was the nicest boy. He showed me the nests of the herons and all the live things
growing along here, sea-side."
The community wanted to protect itself from the attacks of the spirit of the dead. The
crows had settled in the tops of the trees. Hawkwood pulled himself into the saddle.
"What was the boy's name?"
"I am thinking. He had a pink scar on his cheek."
The sea-light flashed jade.
Hawkwood tried to remember the last words of the dead knight. When they had asked
him, just before pronouncing penance, what it had been he had said to Ricco,
"What's that he says," "qu'est-ce qu'il dit?"
Crows, as if from an uncivilized country, squall-stake the trees.
He would be no martyr, killed in battle, a just war. Something moved in a passing cloud.
Near shore a wave had begun to stir. Its crest nodded at Hawkwood and a shape below began to
blossom toward shore.
Penance was a faint rattle. He sat about remembering the misty horses, the hard gallop in
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the wet dawn above Cesena. With the collapse of the wave, greenness had taken over, the
greenness of the shallows of the sea before it deepened into turquoise, of the color of the wet
arum lily leaf.
Donnina's hand came up from the balustrade as her body, pushed by a silk-slippered foot,
began to ascend the first step. An electric charge whispered from the contact between her foot
and the rug. She paused again, her anger rising. She would at least force the man to remove his
spurs and sword. Giorgio, the butler, would keep them until their return.
In the tunnel the moles build their runways up, and out, toward the yard of the castello.
Ahead, the insects who hear their coming, attempt an elegant minuet of escape. Moles, only
distinguishing light from darkness, do not live in captivity.
The second step, of the great spiraling staircase to Donnina's father's study and chapel,
would have to wait.
The stairs, by Isabella Boschetti, have been designed with both safety and effect in mind.
The risers are 7.3 inches high. The height of the balastrade is exactly 35.3 inches. Tread depth,
from 11 inches deep at the top, increases to 15 inches at the bottom. The increased depth, by
forcing the knees into a semi-locked position, gives the upper body of the person descending the
stairs, a more rigid, formal, look.
Donnina knows the dangers of the stairs. She orders the glazier, in order to protect against
cracking, the glazes of the stairs to dry for six months.
It starts to rain. The great north windows sent a sound down, like the beating hands of
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small children. Beyond the great gates a forest of exotic trees bend in the wind. Magnolias and
tulip trees begin to shed their leaves. The branches of biblical cedars sweep low in fans,
propelled by the increasing velocity of the wind. It carries the songs of thrushes and blackbirds
away, like a fast stream removing debris from its shores.
GEOFFREY
Writing has been compared to many different, silly, things. Like gardening, where the line
of flowers reminds the writer of the line on the page or the text a meal shared by the writer and
reader. Others have compared writing with copulation. The writer, silently, bends and rocks until
the text shivers, again and again. Afterwards, the reader lies back limp. "Are you upset?" "No."
"Then why are you hiding your face?" "I am crying. I am happy."
But I draw no such analogies here. I do ask, however, for your attention and contract with
you not to interrupt you at your other work.
At first, other work pressing me, I was reluctant to write what you see. But His Majesty
set me the task, saying (his eyes intent, his eyebrows tightening) that the stories would make a
more proper tribute to England and Italy than any of the usual monuments, edifices, or poems.
"As soon as possible. Next Michaelmas," was His answer to my question about date of
completion. I asked for more time, "Easter?" A compromise, "Christmas, next year."
A word of caution. Expect here no specific kinds of text, no specific level of language or
perspective on the subject. I am not writing these stories the way I want to write them, but the
only way they can be written. Forget the word "representation." Writers of my type deal only with
"presentation." Things stand as themselves, as they are. I describe them this way, in the past, in
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expectation. Don't expect to use what I am writing as you do food and wine, a way of escaping a
dull life. Have someone read something else to you. Go play with the maid.
I pause here, shifting the weight off an overburdened testicle. I hear rain falling in the
street outside.
Your spouse is stupid, overweight, smelly? Your children loutish? You won't find any
comfort here. I won't say that you should have remained single, celibate. I don't give advice.Don't
stare!
I lift the pen from the surface of the paper. Don't take it as a sign that I don't know what
has to come next.
Can you live with silence?
Here are same names you will meet.
Donnina Visconti (1345-1438), daughter of Bernabó Visconti, Archduke of Lombardy
(1323-1385). Without Donnina's paintings and tapestry designs we would be ignorant of many of
the colors of the Trecento. Sir John Hawkwood (1331?-1394), condottiere, son of an English
tanner. Knighted by the king at Pau, France, (1356). The expression, Inglese italianato e un
diavolo incarnato, is perhaps a reference to John and his men, The White Company. The
Company is composed, at all times, of 153 men of different nations and principalities. The
number is, perhaps, significant. Did not St John the Evangelist capture that many fish at one
draw?
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Swallow, Hawkwood's horse. Given the time-span of the narrative, and the average lifespan of a horse, it is likely that more than one horse is referred to under that name.
S
Swallow is without doubt the Shire breed of horse. It is descended from the old English
Great Horse, or Black horse, which was valued in old times for its ability to carry the enormous
weight of the armored knight. Many kings of England, from John to Henry VIII, went to
considerable pains to encourage the breed—and, in particular, to maintain its great size.
The Shire is a large and heavy horse, stallions, like Swallow, being generally over 17 and
occasionally reaching 18 hands. The back is short and strong, the quarters heavy and powerful
the body deep and wide.
Gian Galeazzo Visconti (1351?-1402). Nephew of Bernabo and, after his uncle's death (in
Gian's prison) sole ruler of the Visconti lands. Wenceslaus (1361-1419), Emperor (never
crowned) of the Holy Roman Empire and King of Bohemia and Brandenburg. Much given to
drunkiness and violent behavior. Boniface IX (1345-1404), Pope from 1389 to 1404. Robert of
Geneva (1378-1394), Antipope, lived at Avignon. Violent and cruel, thought to be insane.
Geoffrey, scholar, biographer, encyclopedist, linguist. A great traveler, but essentially
temporally and geographically indeterminate. Friend and correspondent of many people in the
story, including Francesco Petrarca (1304-1374), Patrick (1355-95) and a person (a female
servant?) whom he sometime addresses as "child."
Geoffrey is thought to be a sometime ambassador to the Archduke's court at Milan.
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From elsewhere come the smell of perfume, drifting along the rows of candles; a vertical
becoming (eventually with no effort) a horizontal ecstasy; cries going out there in the wet, hard
streets; Yellow eyes sending messages back and up: Organize a theory of mind; replies and
counter-replies rising past the appraising glances of linear stone saints; windows piercing walls
of stone with wheels of rose-light.
In bee venom and mercury fumes (released from the surface of his armor by the rays of
the sun) the knight becomes dizzy.
In his most characteristic stance, we see Geoffrey bent low over his writing table. The
movement of his pen is slow and deliberate. Paint the ink the color of anthrax, the paper the
color of white marble. In his writing, while sounds in the street below recede, while meals go
uneaten, he is happy. For him writing is like a continual feast, where the music that slumbers at
the heart of things becomes audible and is transformed into notes endurable to human sense.
For those who do not write, the notes are remote, fragmentary.
It is of slight significance that Geoffrey is thought to live and work in London.
Trecento Italy. For Donnina, the colors are mostly red, bright saffron, croceo.
_______
The Pope was restless. He crossed the summit of the Apennines and spent the night in the
town of Firenzuola. The Apennines are lofty mountains, running from the Alps the entire length
of Italy.
On leaving Firenzuola, the Pope crossed another ridge with considerable toil and
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difficulty and arrived at Pianoro.
_______
In the moonlight the rider-less horses are swimming. Their heavy breath scurfs the
surface of the water. Wounds, trying to close, release blood along their flanks and legs. A log,
raking its branches along its forehead, blinds the lead horse. The shoreline disappears. The
current, turning, pulls the horses away downstream. Lights in the village below start to go out.
Along the shores of the Adda the water takes on the color of rust in the moonlight. The
current, swollen by melting snow, draws oleaginous scents from the roots of the shoreline trees.
Swallow's hooves touch the bottom of the river. Hawkwood, shifting his sword back,
pulls his body higher in the saddle. A hand releases the tension on the reins. Weight increases
along the legs of the horse. Under the willows, the air is cool. Moonlight through their branches
dapples the tracks toward the river.
The knight stands watching the river flow past. The river flows on, around the first bend,
toward the last light remaining in the village below. A log, slow rotating in the current, goes by.
The branches of the willows start to move in a passing wind. Hawkwood reins the horse away
from the river toward a low hill. Light, dappling in the branches, falls away. Beyond the hill the
country opens up, surface-edges blurring under the legs of the great running animal.
At this speed the blue haze on the plums ripening along the river is hard to see, harder to
describe.
As night falls, Donnina begins to light the candles along the walls of her room. Minute
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sizzlings interrupt the rustle of silk. With her left hand she steadies, one by one, the unlit candle.
The surface of the wax is smooth, cool. From the right descends the flame.
The fuel of an unlit candle consists mostly of solid hydrocarbons, compounds built
essentially from carbon and hydrogen atoms. The atoms are organized into strongly bonded
groups called molecules, typically about 20 carbons and twice as many hydrogens in the paraffin
of the most expensive candles.
A process called pyrolysis transforms the fuel of the candle into a combustible form. This
produces a hot hydrocarbon vapor that reacts with oxygen molecules in the air.
Donnina's eyes reflect the image of the flames in the mirrored walls. Finger tips slid along
the shaft. Friction starts to grow along the lips. Heat rises and begins to move through a fluid
medium.
The Trecento was an age of factional wars.Of city states, Florence, Siena and Pisa
fighting for territory. Within a space of fifty years, from 1341 to 1391, the Tuscan town of twodozen towers, San Gimigiano, would pass back and forth nine times under the successive control
of Florence and Siena. Vincenza would first fall to Milan in 1355, later to Venice in 1357, and
back to Milan three years later.
Here we are looking at a picture which a scene from that time. Notice how Donnina
represents fear: behind the deserted village, the sky glows with brilliant reds and oranges. With
the exception of the stunted olive tree, the landscape appears life-less. Those dark birds, here and
here, look to be some kind of vulture. Most impressive.
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Let us move into better light. This window will do. I have had the trees removed on that
side of the house. The color value of the piece? You noticed. Donnina's way of distinguishing
the light and dark colors is remarkable. The strong orange of this cloud appears almost yellow.
The colors here pull the sky down, threatening the village. The land shrinks back. Do you not get
that feeling? Their color value? Very weak, here, but strong there. The artist is obviously a
master in achieving maximum color contrast with the same hue. Her cobalts, not at all forced,
exhibit the same ability.
The colors remind you of a disease? One accompanied by a fever? Perhaps.
The Anti-Pope sits at the high window looking south. A line of dark clouds is beginning
to form along the top of the mountains.
In early summer the snow will have melted from the passes. The men and horses will
have regained strength. The rivers will be fordable.
The words in his mind are blood, justice, blood.
We know that at least three pictures of Hawkwood's White Company exist. In this one,
the men are dressed in full armor. In front, reading the condotta to them, is Ricco, Hawkwood's
second in command. (Ricco will later be killed in a skirmish with a detachment of Robert's
troops at Verona.)
Note Donnina's skill in rendering flesh tones of the men's faces. With them, the viewer is
able to identify their national origins. In the olive-colored tones, here and here, we see men from
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Mediterranean countries. Along the back, standing a head higher, are the lighter-skinned men of
the Nordic race. One or two of the men, here and back there, bear a high resemblance, in the
shape of their noses, to the Serbs of Trucka. The bright red hair of the standard-bearer suggests a
northern Frisian homeland.
Later, we will move on to examine, in detail, the artist's painstaking rendering of the
condotta. From its various elements, given time for a proper perusal of the scene, we will be able
to identify the forces that make the Company an effective fighting unit.
_______
The Pope, because of his gout, could not ride on horseback but was carried in a gold chair
on the shoulders of his attendants. Florence, once called Fluentia from the river Arno which now
flows through it, was the capital of Tuscany.
After leaving Ferrara, the Pope sailed up the Po to Revere, a town belonging to the
Marquis of Mantua. The inhabitants, seated along the banks, implored the Pope's Benediction.
He blessed them and they shouted "viva."
_______
The birds, moved by memories and the smell of rotting flesh, are of the family
Accipitridae. They circle, waiting, flies crawling on a blue canvas. They fall, pinion-brakes
moving out, in groups of two and three. Near the ground the air is warmer. Wings, resisting the
ground, push the bodies of the birds out beyond the site. Where they land a face stares beyond
them at the sky.
The approach of the vultures to the food, like a top beginning to lose its centering
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balance, is a stiff-legged wobble.
_______
The name "Hawkwood" would be a hard one for the Italians, with no "h" or "w" in their
language, to pronounce. Some would call him "Acud" others "Acuto," or "Acoude." Some,
forgetting the sound of the name, but remembering his ferocity in battle, would call him Il
Diavolo. Francesco Sforza, who would meet him many times in battle, would call him Il Vipero.
It was rumored that Hawkwood wore a ruby ring (given him by his grandmother who was a
witch), one that had the power to poison wells.
In the mirrored wall, an image of Hawkwood's great horse appeared to Donnina. She
turns back to the growing form on the canvas. Red streaks appear along the dappled-grey flanks
of the horse. The rider leans low over the flattened ears of the animal and over its mane
streaming back over his armored chest.
The legs of the animal are elevated in a vortex of mud, pieces of torn grass, and
compressed air. In its eyes, face and nose, the blood lines of the noble horses of Thessaly are
appearing.
Hawkwood's sword, upright in the rushing air, sings in the ear of the horse.
_______
Donnina, lifting her foot from the stairs, turned to the old butler, stooped in the shadows
of the statue of Proteus. She caught what she thought was the smell of incense, drifting down the
staircase. Or was it the scent of late summer roses?
"Giorgio. Show this man to my father."
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The old man started to move forward, his right arm coming up as if to bar the way up the
stairs.
"My lady. The Duke cannot be disturbed. He is at his prayers."
"Then show this man to the library. He can, if nothing else, look at the pictures of my
ancestors." She knew that her sarcasm would be ignored by the man. But Giorgio would at least
know what she thought of him and how he should be treated. Later, at dinner with his fellow
servants, Giorgio would re-tell, with added details, the story of his mistress and the aggressive
young man in armor.
Donnina heard a movement behind her, the dull thud of an armored boot against the first
step, a force pulling the air toward, and around, her. The man was obviously out of control,
unwilling to wait. Did he suppose that this was one of his battlefields? Her body stiffened as she
twisted left, blocking his way. The force, still pressing, came on. She would not allow herself to
become unbalanced. To lose control of the situation. Her left foot was now the pivot, controlling
the swing of her body; snapping, with a swift kick of the right slippered foot, the forward rush of
the man. Somewhere, she heard Giorgio's voice beginning to rise, calling her name, warning her
of the danger. Another, closer, cry came to her as she saw the descending mass of weight and
steel, shaking the lower stairs, sending small eddies of dust into the air.
The scent of the incense had vanished.
"Giorgio, summon my father's guards."An inner voice called, coaxing her heart to its
resting pace. The air settled, as a sudden illumination, through a window, broke from a passing
cloud. A clock began sounding the time. The prone man, his armor shaking, turned up and over.
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Donnina shifted her weight and bent to adjust her slipper. A smile, she noticed, was beginning to
form on the man's face. His right arm, led by its armored hand, came up as if in half salute, half
defeat. Suddenly, streaks of yellow, red and black blurred in her peripheral vision. She and the
man were being surrounded by her father's armed guard. She heard the voice of Giorgio, calling,
"Take him away!"
GEOFFREY
The Trecento invites us, like a grand house, to wander through it; to explore its rooms,
look out its windows, research its history. How many storeys does the age have? What's the
design of the whole? What lies hidden?
Today is my day to finish the letter A in my Encyclopedia. But I am having some trouble
deciding what the entry should be. Mazzoni has, of course, "Azur." I am leaning at the moment,
however, in favor of "Azzur." My authorities for this choice (which include the Pythagorean
writers, Hipparchus, Timaeus, and Sosiggenes) will be given later along with the Table of
Contents.
Two years ago I was in Venice, visiting my friend Marin Contarini. He is building there,
on the canal grande, a new house. The structure was almost complete. It was a fine, cool
morning. I stood, listening to Marin give instructions to one Zuan da Franza about the decoration
of the facade. "Gild all of the little balls on top of the crenellation." Marin was pointing to the
second story. "Gild all of the discs of the crenellations below the flowers." We were then
interrupted by a barge bringing stones for the stairs from the cortile. "And gild the rosettes at the
bottom of the little arches." The main staircase will lead upward from the cortile. "Gild all of the
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leaves of the two large capitals at the corners, the ones with the lions on top. Fill in the capitals
with ultramarine blue." The two principal storeys will have long, spacious halls; two large
alberghi grandi, eight or ten smaller rooms and quarters for the servants. Two logge will
overlook the canal. "Gild the large coat of arms, the shield with the dentils and foliage. Apply
stripes of ultramarine blue, in two coats so that it will appear excellent."
I received word last week that Marin has died, la peste. He had moved into his new house
three months ago. I believe that the drains were bad. The pipe from the lavelo on the upper piano
nobile, not being properly installed, allowed contaminated water to flow to the other pipes. His
son now lives, new drains installed, in the house.
From the quay of the Pescharia opposite the appearance of the house was striking,
shining with red, black, white, blue and gold.
"Shall I open the windows, Master?" She stands near the table. The drink and food wait to
be removed. She turns toward the sound of his voice. She remembered her brother. He had been
the member of her family whom she had loved most intensely. The wind rattles a window,
moving a curtain out. The brother had taught her to see the animals. There is a six light window
to the piano nobile.
"The air of the room is stale, Master."
He takes her by the arm. They turn and move toward a window. The names of the animals
were not only those whose wool, hides and milk they had sent to the valley. A fully glazed house
is a sign of considerable wealth. The brother showed her what had never been owned.
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"This window will do. Pull its curtains back, Child."
"This side is very plain, Master."
"Run your hand over the surface of the other side. The pile is rich and full. Its quality is
apparent from the street below."
Some windows enlighten us, others are vacuous.
"They are made for me by Mr. Stanton, in Manchester Square."
"Look, Master, this one is torn. Shall I send it out for mending?"
The cost of glass is very expensive, except at Venice where there is a flourishing glassindustry at Murano.
"As you wish, Child." They sit in the window seat looking in toward the room through the
open curtains. Her presence in the room becomes more elusive. She smiled, remembering how
the brother would make her laugh; lying in the tall grass above the valley, the cliffs opposite the
river darkening.
"Will the seat hold our weight, Master?"
"I directed its construction myself, Child. Have you not noticed the outside supports?"
For cleaning a bay-window one needs special equipment and skills. On this building, the
builder installed a cleaning rail over each window. The trolley, just there, moves along the rail
when you shift your weight.
The existence of the rail is unknown to the persons now sitting in the window. The
pedestrians below pass without noticing it.
Notice the snaps for your rope. Here are the supports for your feet. You need to wear soft,
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light shoes. Being able to feel the supports makes your movement across the window faster and
easier.
Never clean a window without the consent of the owner--usually the inhabitant of the
room.
One must think first about whom is speaking to before mentioning that the windows have
all been recently cleaned.
_______
The Pope entered Bologna, amid great enthusiasm of the populace. The chief men of the
city carried his chair.
At Poggibonsi the Pope was met by ambassadors, who did honor to the Vicar of Christ in
glowing words. This town was of slight importance and lies in the valley of the Elsa river.
_______
"Should I not return to my duties now, Master?"
Shadows along the carpet move up, elongating toward a far corner of the room. Behind
them, they hear the sound of the curtains moving on their rods.
"Of course, Child." The colors of the slopes above the valley were such as they must have
been in spring, bright, lucent, soft. Later the light would turn dusty, tawny.
_______
The title of the book is Apicius. Gian Galaezzo holds it open. He looks at the page.
Recipe, #259. Wine sauce for fig-fed pork. He looks up, pauses, and continues to eat. The room
is heavy with the smell of wine, meat and sweat, aging in the eater's clothes. To prepare the sauce
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flavor honey with ground pepper and skim. Mix with spiced wine. (The addition of wormwood
creates a popular variation). They had starved the pig for two weeks. They were now cramming it
with dried figs. Gian's fingernails are broken, discolored. Eyelets and loops of his mantella strain.
The curve of his belly bulges toward the edge of the table. Cook the liver in thyme, lovage, broth,
a little wine and oil. In the pig's stomach the figs violently explode. In the ensuing fermentation
the liver greatly expands and the pig dies.
Gian remembers his uncle, thin, selfish, ascetic. The indignity of waiting on the old man,
waiting for him to die. In the wine-cellar the air was cool. Dull gleams came from the shoulders
and sides of the bottles. There seemed to be no end to them. Envy and hate filled Gian. The
uncle, in order to spite the nephew, would drink the entire cellar.
ALITER: Trim the liver. Marinate in broth, with pepper, lovage, two laurel berries. Wrap
in caul, grill on the gridiron and serve with heavy wine. The door at Gian's left opens. The
servants enter with the next course. The image of the old man, counting the bottles, caressing the
surface of the glass, drinking his wine, comes to the diner.
Donnina paints the feeling green, mixing it with a malodorous yellow.
GEOFFREY
Ours is an age heavy with envious people. (I except from this, as the reader who
continues to read will know, Donnina Visconti and John Hawkwood.) Perhaps such envy is due,
in part, to the over-emphasis on families and hierarchical institutions. We know, of course, that
Saul envied David; Juno turned Proteus' daughters into cattle, because she was jealous of their
beauty. Among the Turks we read about many terrible examples. Selimus killed Cornutus (his
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youngest brother), five of his nephews, Mustapha Bassa and several others; Soliman the
Magnificent murdered his own son Mustapha.
But history alone does not help us to understand the depth of Gian's envy and hatred of
his uncle. Perhaps they lie in the nature of things. Perhaps they are the result of mere greed.
Horace's advice, drink your fine wine before it falls into the clutches of your heirs, is useful to
remember here And does not Vives remind us that even animals, in particular, swans, doves and
bulls, exhibit envy toward one another? My own experience with livestock is slight. But my
butcher informs me that bulls will not admit another bull to feed in the same pasture. I believe I
remember reading a similar observation by Oppian.
The book that Gian is shown reading calls for more attention. It is undoubtedly the work
of Coelius Apicius, De Opsoniis et condimentis sive arte conquinaria, libri decem. The book is
very precious. I have no copy by me. (An acquaintance, William King, refuses to peruse a copy
in his possession, saying, churlishly, that it is too fine a rarity to part from his closet.) I cannot,
therefore, say unequivocally that the "Wine Sauce with Fig-fed Pork" is from Apicius nor that the
ingredients for the dish are in the right quantities.
I demand, from cook, a strict reliance upon De honesta voluptate, a modern cookbook by
an author of my acquaintance. In it, unlike the Apicius, one does not find recipes designed to trick
the gastronomer or ones with unnatural combinations, viz, sugar and meat.
Tonight I dine on Roast Crane. After the bird is well roasted, pour over it this sauce
made from the following ingredients, crushed pepper, lovage, oregano with broth, honey, a little
vine. Boil the sauce well, thicken it with roux, add pieces of parboiled pumpkin. Instead of crane,
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an agreeable variation is to try the sauce with giblets and chicken feet.
The author of Apicius (perhaps I should say compiler) committed suicide after being
afflicted with the fantasy that he was about to starve. Before his suicide he chose the ingredients,
and wrote out in great detail, the courses to be served at his funeral.
Somewhere in my library is a copy of that document.
_______
The Visconti castello stood, where it had for three-hundred years, in the center of
Lombardy, near the convergence of the Adda and Brembio Rivers. More than half of its acreage
and park was of great oaks, elms and poplar trees and much of its acreage was given over to the
production of food for the staff and family.
The Adda rises in the small lakes off the Fraele valley and unites with several smaller
streams near Bormio, in the Rhaetian Alps.
It water, in a certain light, seems an inverse of water, clear over crystalline surfaces. They
lay in the soft grass by the river's edge. She was pointing upward, the gemmed field of the sky.
Near them rose a black wing shot with crimson.
Thence the river flows southwest and west through the Valtellina, passing Tirono. The
helmed head of a knight, passing in the trees near the town, separates a spider from its web.
The castello's rose-garden, established by the first Duke, ran from below the window of
the Duke's study west to the oldest stand of oaks on the estate. The house itself was bordered by
beds of iris, set off by clumps of azaleas and rhododendrons.
When the stable boy came back from the war he was sad. He could feel the ribs of the
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horses. Dove sta memoria.
S
Pear trees flower in the shut gardens (a destra) where the Poschiavino joins the Adda at
Tirano.
Water from the river fed fountains, reflecting pools, and cascades of the castello. Statues
of heroes and gods lined its allees of beech, cedar and boxwood. Sun-dials cast the shadow of
passing clouds low along the ground.
Within the center of the rose-garden the second Duke had a water-organ installed, capable
of imitating the songs of seventeen species of birds. The Malero joins the Adda at Sondrio
whence it falls into the northern end of Lake Como.
"Ergo, delight not in the river itself but in what flows from it."
From the main entrance, near where the river swept south to the plains of Lombardy, also
began the long marbled drive from the main entrance of the estate to the castello. Its shape was
that of a coiled snake, the heraldic symbol of the Visconti Family. On the leather bound books in
the Duke's library the emblem stood forth in gold relief and along the eaves of the great house.
Over the gates to the stables and guest quarters, the symbol had been done in bronze and fastened
in place by heavy steel bands.
The water enkindled light. "I am reminded," she said, still looking at the sky, "of the
crimes of Aegisthus."
Back of the castello, in a low glen, lay Donnina's herb-garden. Here grew, in what the
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estate workers called terra al sole, the medicinal herbs of Lombardy. Some species had been
brought to Donnina from France, England and Spain. The garden grew herbs effacious for
healing human and animals wounds and diseases. In one part there were the herbs and flowers,
rosemary, lavender, basil, thyme and hyssop, good for curing consumption and rheumatism. In
another, there were plants, sorrel, hammer-wort, plantain and Scotch wax, good for the diseases
of horses and cattle, elf-shot, hoof-rot and spavin.
The Adda, joining the Po above Cremona, forms the boundary between the territories of
Venice and of Milan.
GEOFFREY
I had meant to look into Bartholomaeus Anglicus' Proprietatibus Rerum in order to verify
the accuracy of the names of these herbs and their curative properties.
But I have misplaced, it seems, the relevant volumes.
I report the facts. But I must withhold my judgment about a physic based entirely upon a
course of herb-cures. Can a blind man judge of colors? I doubt not that such physic is often
superior to a chemical one--of which Bombastus Boderius is so stiff that he will admit of almost
no other. But are we not, on almost every street corner, accosted by mountebanks, quacksalvers
and empirics advertising a cure by means of hellebore or hyssop for every malady?
The role magic, or astrology, should play in a cure is the subject for another place in this
history. For the time being I advise the reader, touching the matter of cure for a malady, not to be
overly niggardly with his purse. The Abderites, when they sent for Hippocrates, promised him
what reward he would have, all the gold they had. Naaman, the Syrian, when he went to Elisha
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(who was then in Israel), to be cured of the leprosy took with him ten talent of silver, six
thousand pieces of gold and ten changes of raiment.
I might say also that I approve of Seneca's chief caveat to his friend Lucilius, that the
patient be slow to change his physician or course of physic. Nothing hinders health more: a
wound can never be cured with a surfeit of different dressings.
_______
The light was mostly pink with blue tones. Sometimes, up high, it became, like a flame
drying, a dull red. Below, the dew reflected the light back to the bottom of the leaves. Bees flew
up and around the small, moving, bodies.
Donnina and her friends went down the slope toward the trees collecting wild hollyhocks.
Inside some of the tiny, clenched hands, fireflies jumped. There was just enough light remaining
in the day to build houses from the flowers for the insects.
Weaving a hollyhock-house begins in a process essentially like of rope-plaiting. Three or
more of the flower-stems, laid parallel to each other and twisted over each other, may be used.
The primary purpose of the twisting is to bind the material together (by mutual friction) for the
construction of the walls. This allows the stems to hold together whenever a strain is applied to
the walls of the house. Hard twisting of the stems has the further advantage of compacting the
fibers and preventing, to some extent, the penetration of moisture through the walls of the
hollyhock house.
Twisting part of the hollyhock stems clockwise and part of them counter clockwise
prevents the walls from unwinding.
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Donnina holds the flowers, weaving tight walls for the house. The light through the
flowers is mostly blue and red and the purple light gives a strange and magic beauty to her
moving fingers and hands.
Minute lights flash out from the clenched hands of her waiting companions, an attentive
circle.
On the highest point of the Visconti estate, a low-ridge on the far side of the River, had
been erected a temple. Constructed of marble, gold and lapis lazuli, it was the building on the
estate to reflect the first rays of the morning sun and the last of the evening.
The only source of lapis lazuli is Afghanistan where it is mined by slaves. From the
mines it is transported, in leather bags, by camels to Aleppo. Here it is loaded on ships bound for
various seaports in the northern Mediterranean and along the Adriatic. The chief distribution
center for northern Italy is Venice.
The stone is the material for ultramarine, the precious blue paint used by book
illuminators. In the Winchester Psalter one can see where it was scraped off for re-use. In the
inventory of the vast wealth of the Duc de Berry two pots of ultramarine are listed.
Lapis lazuli should not be confused with azurite, a blue stone rich in copper and found in
most countries of Europe.
From the winds sweeping down from the high Alps, and the night breezes of late
summer, the temple made a music that resembled the music of the spheres--low, sweet, rising
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and falling, soothing the spirit of the woods and caves. The music had the power to cure
lycanthropy and satyriasis. On moonlight nights would appear there the ghost of the first Duke.
In a great coat, flashing a scarlet lining, he would slowly circle the Temple three times; peering,
listening, running his jeweled right hand along the marble of the porch.
The Duke inspected the structure for damage or structural decay. The Visconti Family
would endure only as long as the temple stood intact, whole in the original design of the first
builder, making music from the wind.
Donnina, turned the key in the lock, and let the bronze door of the Temple swing out and
around. She quickly entered, her dress sliding a quiet sound against the door-frame. The great
door came back and around, falling with a thud into place, its locking mechanisms engaging,
grasping the solid frames. Before her stood a second door. Once through it, she knew, she would
be in the innermost room of the Temple. Here her father, back from a campaign, would take her.
Held high in his arms, they would look down on the great house and the river flowing away,
vanishing into the distance.
The Bianchi order of flagellants were not like the other orders. They had their own rules.
They were very strict. Appear, immediately after tierce, in the piazza. Strip to the waist. Wait for
a crowd to assemble. Assume that everyone is a sinner. Exhort them to repent. Offer prayers to
St. Peter Damian. Continue scourging until blood flows to the level of the thighs.
Most effective are the days of light rain. Water, mixing with the blood, spreads beyond
the piazza to the vicoli piccoli. It moves the citizens to find its source. The rain-blood mixture
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continues to spread. Children notice it. They begin to skip, to rotate, shouting its arrival.
The flagellum favored by the Bianchi come from the workshop of Vincenzo da Perugia.
Feel the material of the handle. Its absorption capacity is quite high. It dries quickly. One's grip
on it is always firm.
_______
The Duke's clothes smelled of pine smoke. Donnina turned her head away. She could
remember the smell of camphor, rosemary and myrrh. Treatment for wounds, for stanching
blood. The servants polished the Duke's sword with white lead and clay. The marrow from a
decayed sheep's bone went for burnishing his armor.
Now the room smelled of old candle
smoke and perfume. From the fire of the temple, at the center of the room, Donnina lighted a
candle, and pulled a chair close to the table near the window. The evening was ending. Mists
formed in the valley. Further back, she could see shadows beginning to re-shape the trees in the
great park.
The setting of the sun involves the convergence of three points of reference, the horizon
and the top and bottom parts of the sun. From the time the bottom first touches the horizon, to
the time the top sinks beneath it, some eight minutes has to elapse. Donnina turned her head
down. A mist settles on the first line of trees and moved lower along the river. The sun's faculae,
brighter than the photosphere, touches the horizon. Donnina heard the candle gutter. Hydrogen
fuel reacts with carbon and nitrogen to release the light. She shifted her body forward toward the
edge of the table. The temperature of the earth is a measurement of the temperature of the sun.
Donnina brushed her hair back. The axis of sun is seven degrees to the plane of the ecliptic. As
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Donnina watched, re-positioning the chair, the plane became a disappearing edge. She wanted to
be calm. The candle, sending its flame suddenly up and right, guttered and fell back.
From inside the table, Donnina pulled out a manuscript and began to write. The ink shone
and went flat on the white page. Donnina lifted the pen and looked back. Each word in its proper
place. She felt the presence of the first Duke, the soldier-poet, moving in the room behind her
chair. Under the table, the marble floor seem to recede from her feet. The walls of the room drew
back and the candle began to glow more intensely. She shifted her shoulders back slightly then
again forward. Her head came down. She was now in the present moment, the idea, the next
word.
Behind her, near the door, moonlight through the window splashed suddenly on scarlet.
Feet whispered toward the door. A passing cloud smudged the face of the moon. Below the
slope, between the house and the moonlit temple, a nightingale sang and then fell silent.
"Gone?"
"Released this morning." Donnina's father had risen from his chair. He stood at the
window, looking down on the garden. The roses, Rosa damascena (a source of attar), were a
favorite of Horace. The profile of his nose and dark face outlined the morning light. Donnina
stood, her body tense, her anger rising. In the tracery of the window of the west facade of the
cathedral at Chartres one sees the design of an open rose. Somewhere, in the depth of the
castello, cloth-shoes slid on marble. A servant, carrying food to her mother? Donnina waited, her
eyes on the Duke, waiting for him to turn with an explanation for releasing the man.
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Mitte sectari, rosa quo locorum sera moretur.
"I could not hold him, Donni. He has to lead the White Company into battle tomorrow."
"He insulted me, father. He attacked Giorgio." Her words choked off. Her throat closed
with anger. The sound of the large man came back to her, swinging his shoulders, issuing orders,
pushing her into a role she was not willing to accept. But what did it mean? His final gesture,
prone on the stairs? The raised arm, the half smile? Had she herself misunderstood his
intentions?
She felt the presence of the Duke, moving closer, the authority of his voice. "We need
him, Donni. He is the best soldier in Italy. Sapeva i fatti suoi."
"A barbarian, father." Donnina fought to hold her body from pushing forward, forcing the
Duke to hear the meaning of her words, to reverse his decision.
"An Englishman, Donni. Courageous, a supreme strategist. Only he can lead the White
Company."
At the sound of a tinkling noise, the Duke turned away from Donnina toward the
campanello over the door to his study. As the tinkling died away, a servant entered, carrying a
large tray. Since his wife's illness, the Duke ate alone in his study. Alone with his books and
manuscripts, the pictures of his ancestors along the walls, some buried in the family crypts below
the house.
Above the crypt of the first Duke, in summer, the trees drop apples. In the sun they lie
rotting, attracting wasps. Below the crypt, in the subnivean world of winter, the voles reproduce.
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Some, as the snow accumulates, repair tunnels. Others, moving further from the dens, collect
seeds of wheat, thistle and stems of grass.
The genus Microtus has a relatively short tail.
"Join me, Donni. We need to talk more about your marriage to Giovanni." The Duke,
turning away, gestured toward the heavy table where the food rested. A pranzo mezzogiorno of
bread, fruit, cheese and wine.
"Father, you know I will never marry Giovanni. Nor anyone else." She felt her hands
begin to clench into fists. Her hair swung loose as her head moved in rejection. She had said the
words before to the Duke and to her mother. But they were still, forced as they were against her
fear of the Duke's power, hard to say. Longer, and seemingly louder than most words, they hung
in the space now separating her from her father. Light from outside dimmed under the shadow of
a passing cloud. "You must, Donnina. You know how much we need the support of the Gonzaga
family. I have signed the marriage contract with the boy's father." The Duke's words were
designed to send a final message.
The word "Donnina" weakened her resolve. It was the formal sound that the Duke used
to express his anger with her.
"You must not provoke your mother and me, Donnina. We do not want to punish you."
"Donnina' both calls and identifies. "But we have made plans. Your responsibility is to the
family. To Lombardy."
She wanted to be the tended saint. A bright fish among the flotsam.
The Duke paused, pushed the bread and cheese away, and rose from the table. It was time
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for his daily ride around the estate.
Burn iron-spiked candles around her, yellow bright in the growing dark. Her spirit, like
light from the strokes of the rowers, draw the men out from the shore, de fondo. The papyri is
hushed in his hands.
Donnina, the matter of her marriage settled in the Duke's mind, would be dismissed. With
"Donnina" the intonation curve (the one exception being a question) rises on the second syllable
and falls on the third.
Donnina heard, from across the courtyard, the sound of the campana tolling the noon
hour and the hooves of the Duke's horse on the courtyard stones. The estate bailiff, the Duke's
squire, the Duke's horse, waiting, the Duke's black horse circle dancing, sending sparks up from
the dry stones.
Flame dies on the smoke stained roof, an altar of love for the family. Where the Adda
turns west, still unbridged, boughs stir the water in abstract sensuality.
Donnina is standing. Her back is toward the wall. The Duke, taking up his feathered hat,
is passing her in front, on his right. Her eyes seem to follow his movement. As he passes the
angle of her right shoulder, his pace seems to slacken. Donnina's arms hang tense at her sides.
She has more words to say. The Duke is now in mid-space between her and the door. A slight
flush is beginning to start on his neck. The door from the study stands closed. His hand grasps
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the door knob. Donnina watches the door swing out and in. Only the upper body of the Duke is
now moving. Donnina's hands clench into fists. A shaft of purple light falls on the rug. A rat
scratches at the wainscotting behind a picture. The light shifts left toward the edge of the rug.
The Duke pauses in mid-stride. Donnina waits, her eyes holding their gaze. His head
rotates around. Does the Duke look at her? His foot falls on the first step. Noise from the
direction of the wainscotting stops. Donnina's eyes follow the figure of the Duke. He is passing
from her sight, down the stairs. But not completely.
The rat now lying quietly behind the wainscotting is Rattus rattus, or the black rat. It is
somewhat smaller than the typical brown, or Norway rat (R. norvegicus). But it possesses a
longer tail and ears. It is typically glossy black in color, but brown varieties, which readily help
to distinguish it from the brown rat, are common, especially in southern lands. The black rat
agrees with the brown in its predaceous habits, omnivorous diet and great fecundity. It bears, four
or five times a year, from four to ten blind and naked young, which, in turn, are able to breed at
the age of six months. The time of gestation is about twenty days.
Rattus rattus, which likes to frequent ships, first reached Italy in the thirteenth-century. It
is this species that is the chief disseminator of the bubonic plague (Yersinia pestis)
S'
Yersinia pestis always retains its bacteriological identification as a Gram-negative,
bipolar-staining, facultative anaerobic, non-lactose-fermenting, non-spore-forming bacterium.
Donnina stood, her head high. North, from beyond the first hills, the sound of a hawk, in
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a black fury of attack, broke the silence.
GEOFFREY
I sit here. Looking at the page. The pen rests now on the desk. My right hand, unmoving,
rests besides it. The voice of the watch dies away. He is walking away down Horseferry Street,
towards the Thames? Whispers from below stairs. A dog barks in the street outside. I think I ate
too much for supper. My guest had been all day on the road from Tunbridge. I did not wish to
seem churlish. I ate along with him, matching him dish for dish.
Instead of the alphabet,
perhaps I should another way of organizing my Encyclopedia. Perhaps a scheme like that of
Pliny:
Book I: Sky portents.
Flint-shell fish (chapter lxxi)
Species whose generated offspring is unfertile
(chapter lxxii)
Book II: Islands in Constant Agitation.
Who first invented aviaries? (chapter ix)
Etc.
But perhaps not.
What should come next in our story? Or should I say, the next picture of our gallery? You
are in a hurry to see it finished? You would like to see more details, more about how that age
differs from ours? Patience! It will come. But at the proper place, at the right time. Think of us as
dancers, moving together, you responding to my lead.
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I must tell the story the way it happened. I was, of course, a young man when it began.
But I was alert. I listened and I watched. I read. I interviewed the spectators as well as the actors
in the great drama I am now relating. I was at Donnina's and John's wedding in Milan . I was with
John--not of course in the front rank--at the battle of Piaveponte. I have heard his voice, at the
table, in battle, in the great hall with wine and the perfume of his women. I spoke at his funeral
and advised Uccello and the Dean of the Cathedral on the color, placement and size of John's
(now Sir John's) picture.
It was I who rode south to Rome with news of John's death. I can still see the miles of
olive groves. The banal trees. The weather was foul, the wine bad, the inns stinking and
overpriced. The food swam lifeless in heavy olive oil. The Pope, I recall, listened, nodding
enigmatically. We took supper. More olive oil. He showed me his latest pictures. I left, His
Holiness contemplating Piero's Madonna Before A Mirror--an inept and profane work.
Donnina's body is still slim. Her movements, through the great halls, I am told, are still
graceful. We exchange letters. I plan to visit her there, San Donati di Torre. To sit with her under
her giant beeches. Before it is too late.
I shift right in my chair. A better position for the back. The candle light, falling on the
page, dims then flares out. A passing breeze? I lean forward and begin to write.
Donnina's portrait of Geoffrey, still unfinished, is a polyptych. In this panel, the artist
depicts the subject at his writing table. His head is down, looking at a sheet of paper. His pen,
leaving a black trail of ink, is half way through the line, half way down the page. At the top right
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corner of the page the writer has written the number of the page and the date. Stacked on the left
side of the table are books with the Hawkwood emblem embossed on the cover. A globe of the
world and some maps stand to the right of the books and next to them a bust of Geoffrey's
contemporary, the writer, Francesco Petrarca.
The subject would appear to be in his early middle age. The beard and hair still have their
color and the skin is still relatively smooth. The viewer does detect, however, the beginning of a
double chin. Those small brown spots along the back of the hand holding the pen may indicate
the presence of a liver disorder. A plate, holding bits of bread, cheese and fruit, stands on a
cupboard top behind the writer. Behind the table is a large window. One notes, within the room
as a whole, two devices for keeping time. Near the right corner of the table sits an ordinary hour
glass. On the wall, to the left of the window, hangs a mechanical clock of the new Heidelberg
design. From the angle of light through the window, one judges the time of day as mid-morning,
perhaps a bit later.
In the next panel, Donnina plans to show Geoffrey with his head up, looking either out or
at the window.
All the authorities tell us that Hawkwood and the White Company left Pau, France for
Italy in the early spring of 1357. From Pau their journey south-east can be traced to the Rhone at
Basle. The river, wide, sluggish and brown, is still crossed by three bridges. Falling behind,
taking the woman by the hand, one member of the Company would decide to stay. Stadts Luft
macht frei. From this point Hawkwood might have taken the Company east to Innsbruck and
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across the Brenner Pass. Light spilled over the snow-cornices along the edges of the ravine. Their
journey down the Adige to Verona would have been easy, a matter of several weeks. As they
came into the farmstead they heard the hackling of hens, warm, staccato voices, the bleat of
goats. At Verona they would have turned west toward Brescia. They passed through the sound of
a church bell (swinging wildly in its tower) through slotted streets, past women in black shawls
around a pump. Outside the city they passed a deserted house, one window shutter hanging down
from a rusted hinge. A flock of yellow finches came suddenly through the window.
But the best authorities agree that Hawkwood brought the White Company into Italy from
the Cottian Alps. In early afternoon, James, the oldest man of the Company, began to sway like a
drunk. A ridge on the opposite side of the ravine began to wobble and part of it became detached.
It hung suspended from the sky. Nothing grew there but cistus scrub. No sound except the scratch
of a red-winged grasshopper. Turin would have been reached either from the area of the Col de la
Traversette or the Col de Mary down the Maira. From Turin, Hawkwood would have turned east
toward Lake Orta and eventually Lake Maggiore and on in to Milan. That night they sat on the
ridge above Giaglione, watching the lights go out. They thought of Tenebrae. Candles being
extinguished, one by one, commemorating the darkness that fell over the earth and men's
motives. They buried James the next day, above the heights of Bonette. Non ce andro mai
Here there is mention of an island in a river and a rock at the end of a gorge. It would be
helpful to know the exact date of the setting of the Pleiades in 1357-58 and the height of the treeline along here. Donnina brings the brush closer. She will end the tree-line just below the rockfield running diagonally north from the first high peak. The colors show that the rock is soft.
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From here to that small valley below she will paint the faint outlines of the tracks of two
elephants.
The Gonzagas of Mantua. Collectors of expensive furniture, pictures, blooded horses and
people. Each generation as acquisitive as the preceding generation, yet never satisfied with its
collections. There it was, shoved into corners of vast rooms, stuffed in basements and attics of
their ugly, stately homes. Pictures, statues, children toys, doll-houses, tapestries, rolls of
yellowing wall-paper, saddles and bridles. Through it all the servants of the house had made
tunnels, in order to carry food, wine and clothes to their masters. At night, with lighted candles
hovering near books, textiles and pictures, their way was fearful. Their steps were short, agitated,
swift.
The capacity of any given material to catch fire can be mimicked in a fire tunnel. They
expected the sound, smell, of fire. The material is attached to the ceiling of the tunnel. They
sensed that the timbers of the great houses were waiting to explode into flames. A standard flame
from a burner is introduced at one end of the tunnel. At the other end, products of the combustion
exit.
"Say hello to Giovanni, Donni. Give him a kiss." Donnina remembered her mother's arms
urging her forward, toward the unsmiling boy, sitting toad-like at the end of the sofa. Ports in the
side of the tunnel facilitate observation and measurement. She heard the voice of her Aunt
Barbara, "Don't be shy, Donni." Her audience was there, in the vast hall, cattle sheltering from
the first great storm of winter. The servants had left plates of food and beakers of wine. A fire
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roared in a cave-like fireplace at the end of the hall, leaping defiance at the wind and snow hitting
the high windows of the castello. Ease of ignition, rate of smoke release and the radiant power
from the flames are some of the variables in evaluating fire behavior.
"Give your cousin a kiss, Donni. He has been waiting, impatiently, to meet you." Selfindulgent odors came from his clothes and hair. Most house fires, unlike those in earlier times,
start small. His fingers were sticky and cold. Most people, adjusted to linear phenomena, do not
expect a flashover. Bacon grease covered his lower lip and streaked his jaw. "Don't be shy,
Donnina." The heat from a fire is proportional to the area burning. She began to cry, pulling
back, covering her eyes. Her shoulders began to jerk. Combustion in an unwanted fire is not as
complete as that a controlled fire, a candle or a fireplace. Just before her mother rushed her from
the room, Donnina heard the high voice of Giovanni, taunting her.
In a flashover, every object and surface burst into flames.
The shield of the Gonzagas is a blue field with the golden bend. The shield is impaled
with two coats of arms. Both coats are dimidiated. On the dexter side (the right hand of the shield
being at the right hand of the person covered by it) are two fusils of an indented fesse. On the
sinister side are three waves. In the shield we see the parted arms of husband and wife. Since the
wife bears arms with quarter for the only charge, her half of the shield is blank.
The wife of a Gonzaga is never an heir. The dimidiated coats, therefore, are on the same
shield. As we expect, the little scocheon above the arms of her husband lies empty.
"The Gonzagas are an influential family, Donni. Our alliance with them would solve
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many problems." Donnina looked at her mother, pale, shrunken, propped among the pillows and
blankets of the bed. The same bed that had been transported, piece by piece, from her parents
home in Innsbruck, over the pass at Brennaro and down the valley of the Adige River to Verona.
Here it rested, in a storehouse of the Visconti's palazzo, until the final stage of its voyage to
Milan.
"I will never marry him, mother."
"Then you will be sent to the Convent of Santa Caterina." Donnina watched as her
mother's face twisted in pain. Bony arms came slowly back. She pushed forward. "Come closer,
Donni." Donnina walked-leaned in toward the bed. A fly lands on a window pane above the bed.
Nearer the bed the smell was sweet, but unfamiliar. A nurse, her head down, watched from the
other side of the bed. Donnina's dress rustled and a slipper whispered on the floor. The arms of
the nurse seem to be folded under a large towel. The fly, disturbed by a sudden light, rises up
from the window and flies toward the nurse's amice. A bony arm falls back. The pillow sinks.
Donnina knew that her refusal to marry Giovanni would cause her mother further pain. Donnina's
head came up as she stopped before the side of the bed.
The amice is first laid on the head, allowed to fall on the shoulders, and folded around the
chest. In the version worn by the nurse, the garment has been secured by strings embroidered
with minute crosses.
"Why do you wear your hair that way. You know how it disturbs your father and me."
The mother insisted that her own hair be re-styled, each morning by the parucchiera, in the stiff
fashion of the high-born lady. The nurses of St. Vincent de Paul use the amice to symbolize their
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discipline over speech. Over the mother's head the hair, held in place by pins shaped in the form
of coiled snakes, spiraled upward. The fly, disturbed by a movement of the nurse's head, flies
toward the bed.
Donnina did not reply to her mother's criticism. She stood, looking down, holding her
place.
The mother had always been the strong one, the keeper of the honor of the family. While
the Duke had been away, campaigning, visiting his mistresses, she had stayed alone with the
servants in the castello. The estate tenants, out of luck and in despair, had come to her for advice
and food. The servants obeyed only her. She had raised the children to the age of marriage. She
was not vindictive, but she did want something in return, an acknowledgement by her children
that she had performed her duties well, that she had been an exemplary wife and mother.
Donnina knew that her parents no longer loved each other. That what now passed between them
concerned only Donnina's planned marriage and the affairs of the estate.
A thrust of anxiety went through Donnina's body. Her cheeks and the skin along her neck
flushed. Her mother's eyes were closed, her breath coming in short, low, periods. "Just asleep, my
Lady." the nurse's voice was quiet, determined. "You must now leave, my Lady." A gust of wind,
signaling the approach of an early autumn storm, shook the north facing windows. Donnina
turned from the bed. "Call me when she awakens."
An amice, much like that of that worn by the nurse, is listed in an inventory of vestments
given by Abbot Angilbert to the monastery at Centula and in the de clericorum institutione of
Hrabanus Maurus.
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"Of course, my Lady." As Donnina descended the stairs to the great hall another, stronger
gust of wind struck the north side and porch of the great house. Donnina knew that the rain
would soon follow, cleansing the long upslope lawns and park, washing the leaves of the trees.
Tomorrow would be bright with new green. A day to ride out, holding the horse to the pace she
wanted; out beyond the first low ridge, to her secret grove of beech trees. Here she would be free,
her thoughts disengaged. The trees, swinging their great branches, would welcome her. The bluesilver stream, among the stones, would quiet her soul. The over-scheduled world of the Viscontis
would dissolve into the shade, the water and clean, errant air of the grove.
Within the grove lay a pool of clear water. No fish swam within it depths, no insects
disturbed its surface. No animal was ever observed drinking from it. In winter, snow melted from
its surface and no degree of cold would freeze its water. From the north and west, beyond the
boundaries of the grove itself, came small streams in the spring and early summer to feed their
water into it. With the arrival of late summer, and fall, the streams went dry and small dead
leaves and insects lay scattered in their beds. Yet the dimensions of the pool never changed,
neither shrinking inward to its center nor expanding outward.
Within the pool appeared the reversed image of the grove, its trees, the sky above.
Clouds, leaves and the shadows of birds, moving upside down, went by, reflected within its
water. Images broke apart, merged, and united when the wind moved the branches of the trees.
Now, in the late afternoon of that summer's day, the image of Donnina's nude body ran,
transformed, within the depths of the pool. Her hair spiraled down, and then up, in pellucid
water, caressing her breasts. Her fingers walked along the skin of her inner thighs, the tips of
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her breasts. Her earlobes tingled as her pupils began to dilate and a red flush began to spread
along the skin of her neck. Her arms came up, stretching, her legs, parted and elongated. She
thrust her feet into the grass of the pool's bank.
The curve of her neck, back and hip shifted, mutating in the light of the trees and water.
Light brown images merged into silvery blue. The image of her breasts rose into light.
To where the Grace, and her two nude sisters, the Nymphs, lay in the soft air of the grove
came the quick intake of Donnina's breath. Disturbed images in the pool quieted. The branches of
the trees resumed their slow sway over the surface of the pool. The shadow of a cloud went by,
leaving the sky open, a blue bowl, rotating. The Graces, whom the peasants call Gratii, listened,
hearing only the low song of silk, whispering through the grass.
Notice the garments of the Graces. Bergamo has observed that the reference might be to
the dress of antiquity, made of light material and worn over the chemise in order to add charm
and decency without producing heat. Their hair is bound in place by patient folds, suggestive of a
Madonna by Giotto di Bondone in his early period. The Grace on the left wears what Minzoi has
identified as a vespaio. In a similar picture by Piero da Verona a Grace is shown wearing the
vespaio attached to a large gioiello da testa.
The thick row of buttons on the chemise of the center Grace is now thought to be out of
fashion.
GEOFFREY
It takes a lot of nerve to keep going on to the next sentence. (As I write this the moon
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,which tonight will be partially full, seems to have lost its blemishes of misproportion). There are
several reasons, in addition to gravity and fatigue, for this. (I occupy this house, by the way, as a
burgage-tenant, a species of socage). One reason lies in the selection of detail. And details, for
our purposes, can be thought of as a thick, heavy, forest. (The moon is still rising, enormous and
perfect, in a clear sky.) At places in the forest there are clearings. My desk is still in shadow but
the window above it is pale illuminated by the light of the moon. Socage is a free tenement held
in fee simple by services of an economic kind, such as the payment of rent or the performance of
some work. But for most of the time you cannot see the clearings. Some of the travelers that you
meet deny the existence of clearings. Are they putting you, by now a mosquito-bitten, thorn-torn,
bruised, traveler, to a test with an obscure purpose? (The moon is now high and small. It strikes
light from the linden trees outside.)
You push on, it gets darker, the trees thicker. The floor of the forest is littered with dead
trees, twisted vines, briars, and the bones. Somes of the bones still have hides with bits of hair
hanging from them. Are some of them human? You finally stumble into a clearing. Should you
rest awhile, recovering your strength like a swimmer clutching at a log, while you decide what to
do next? Suddenly, you hear wings flapping, squeaks like mice. You decide to push on, across
the clearing, towards the line of dark trees on the other side.
No doubt it would all be easier if sleep were not so innocent and stubborn of entry.
That evening, feet set directly for the door of the library, Donnina went to read another
book, on medical procedures described by Pliny.
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He asked her, delicately, if she saw him as special. "Do you want me as refuge or as an
adjunct to your world"?
_______
The Pope slept that night in the hospice of Santa Maria, which is called Cuna, six miles
from Siena. Nowhere had the Pope seen greater evidence of rejoicing. From Sarteano the Pope
went on to Corsignano.
_______
The sound of the key, turning in the brass mechanism of the lock, sent a slight metallic
vibration through the wainscotted walls of the library.
His possession of her implies her (thoughts, bird-like, settling, rising, scattering)
tentative, initial concessions.
A family of sleeping mice within the walls briefly stirred and fell silent. Donnina pulled
the heavy, leather-bound, book from the shelf and started to read.
The words of Horace ran in Donnina's mind, aequum animum in rebus difficilibus serva.
A calm mind, for what she must do, would be hard to achieve.
_______
Two nuns on the left are standing. Three of them, towards the center, are sitting, near the
wall, in a circle, looking in at each other. Two of the women, on what appears to a low, stone
porch, stand, arm folded, looking over the wall at the sea and a few sea-gulls flying. The color of
the sea is light blue. An older woman sits on the railing of the porch looking down. The light,
coming from the right, casts the woman's shadow on the wall. The viewer is thrown off balance
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by this scene of a religious subject in a humdrum context. The black and white habits of the
women contrast boldly with the green, golden, tones of the wall, porch and raw soil of the
cloisters. Donnina's vision of the convent neither condemns, nor celebrates, the religious life. At
the far edge of the picture, like a gesturing index finger, a dwarfish white shrub grows against the
wall. Donnina's art elevates the eye to a grassy height beyond the wall and pale-blue sea. The line
of the stone wall runs across the picture plane just below the horizon. The scene is silent but
projects a slight smell. A tree, growing behind the convent building (left) projects a small,
motionless branch towards the white coifs of the nuns on the porch.
There is a clear affinity between the flaps of the nuns' coifs and the wings of the sea-gulls.
The angle of the light suggests that the time of day is either early morning or late afternoon. The
shadow of the nuns standing (center, foreground) is long and slender. Another shadow, long and
forked, from an object cut from the scene falls across the near foreground of the picture. Donnina
means to draw a contrast between the freedom of the seagulls and the mechanical routine of the
women. The slightly raised skirts of the nuns standing center foreground give evidence of a
breeze, perhaps one from the sea. Donnina catches the sweep of the sea and the land beyond
while keeping the human action in perspective. Pebbles and small stones project from the small
slope that leads away from the stone porch to the center of the cloisters. Should the viewer see
the nuns move, it would be in a slow, measured, cadence. The stones are pale white, reflecting
the feeble light. There is neither movement of the concealed hands of the women nor facial
animation. On a level with the heads of the women on the porch a window of the convent
building looks out toward the wall. Behind the women, a broad vertical line, of dark brown color,
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creates a high, open door into the convent.
The Convent of Santa Caterina has a mournful air. As in a frieze, the position of the
groups of nuns sustains the lateral compositional rhythm. The scene smells of dust and the lack
of rain. Behind the porch's railing a few stunted weeds turn brown, then pale tan. The figures are
confined to the coordinate views, profile (left) and full face (center). The wall stands as an
artificial horizon between the women and the outside world. Just above the top of the wall one
sees the true horizon, between the bluish-white sky, sea and land. The dark spots against the sky
are sea-gulls flying out to sea. The viewer's eye pans across the frame of the picture. Hold, with
the artist, the horizon parallel to the frontal plane.
The soil of the cloisters is uncultivated. Heat, and lack of rain, have killed the seeds.
Donnina's intention is to place the picture at the base of the altar in her private chapel. The nuns,
in their heavy habits, begin to sweat. The rectangular format of the picture is based primarily on
the predella. Largo gradino posto sotto la cattedra dell'insegnante o davanti all'altare. The
sweat accumulates under the bands of the coifs. On the wall, center foreground, stands the
crucifix. The predella, depicting quiet movement, will stand in energetic counterpoint to the
more neutral zone above it. Flies, attracted by the odor, gather around the coifs of the women.
Darkness thickens where the wall crowds the nuns seated below the crucifix. Ancillary to the
story provided by the nuns in the predella, will be the more exalted religious event Donnina will
paint as the central panel of the altar. The heat increases as the sea-breezes die. At the once cool
wall the women wait for the next breeze to start. With the predella Donnina will show her
sincerity, her roots in the long past of Lombardy. The viewer now realizes that the single convent
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window represents a functionless view. It does not, as is usual for pictures from the Trecento,
frame a narrative of the present.
The Continuator of the Chronicles of Nangis notes, in an entry for this year, an increase in
the number of painting with an exclusive point of view, the top of a mountain, the balcony of a
grand castello, a window of the Doge's Palace. These vedute, mostly executed for the nobility,
allow for a stretching out of the horizon for a panoramic depiction of crowds and special events.
It remains to be seen whether or not these paintings do, or will at some point, become a
school.
This evening, as usual, there is a breeze from the lake. The tuftaffeta, which is all broad
silk, blew out from the arms and shoulders of the woman. Unlike narrow ware, or parchmentry,
broad silk is made from prime thrown silk. Beyond the lake the light was beginning to fade from
the trees. Above the trees the woman could see the snow at the top of some mountains in the
distance. Later, the silkweavers would take the manufacture of broad silk to Antwerp, Lille and
West Flanders. The woman looked down at the letter and began to read again. Light from the
lake caught gold-and-silver thread in the sleeve of her dress. Her lover was dead. The fluid is
salty, the ink on the page run, forming small, pale-yellow pools. The weavers clung to the old
ways, making the gold-and-silver thread by gilding vellum, cutting it into strips and winding
these around the silk threads. She looked up. Beyond the lake, the trees were dark and the
mountains back of them were beginning to disappear. The collar is edged in crimson. The next
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breeze from the lake will be colder. Before weaving, extra luster had been lent to the weft chain
of the silk by a soaking process. She turned away from the balcony rail and started to hand the
letter to her maid. Her lover's body has not been found. His wounded, rider-less, horse had
plunged into the enemy ranks. Pale-yellow pools dry on the page. A secondary purple warp
lacing strip had been added to the hem. A calender had been used to water the cloth. They
stripped him of his armor. The maid reaches out for the letter. Extra luster might have been lent
to the tram also. At Milan they did not yet know how to make the lustrings in the fashion of
Lyons. The woman turns toward the door, south of the darkening lake and mountains. The air
without a breeze is cold.
At the door, the maid following, a last lake-light overtakes organzine.
GEOFFREY
Despite the piecework wage fixed by the justices of the peace, the manufacture of broad
silk is on the move in this country. To Woodland, or thereabouts, to Sudbury, Nayland, Bocking,
Halstead, Earls Colne, Pebmarsh, Tring and St. Albans (in the Chilterns) to Winchester, Overton
and Andover, to Taunton, Bideford and Tiverton (in the West Country) to Desborough, Coventry
and Kidderminster (in the Midlands), to Lancaster and Manchester and the old satellite town of
Mildenhall and Saffron Walden.
Vide "Sericulture" in my Encyclopedia.
_______
John, assisted by two dressers, was being vested for battle. The gambeson, made of
heavy cotton, reinforced around the genitals, slid over the feet--John leaning on the right-hand
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dresser--up the legs, hips--dressers pulling, over the arms, around the shoulder. Then came the
leather neck-protector. Three inches high, rising to the base of the skull. The brain does not
recognize itself within the skull. The dresser stands on the left, focusing, John's white skin,
curled genital hairs. White-pink-streaked dawn enters the window. Next came the hammered,
grey, mail. John himself released the pulley brake. The mail, correctly aligned, descended. John
waited. The dressers directed his arms upwards. The descent of the mail stopped. The room
dawn-brightened. Cotton cushioned the mail. The warrior shrugged his shoulders. Torted,
imperceptibly, right then left. Toledo steel. Un-stained, un-rusted, from the ford-fought battles of
Piaveponte and Belluno. The hands of the dressers stopped--waited--began again.
Change to a new position, set oneself to receive the plate defence, twenty-three pounds of
steel yawning, descending. John rigid, the dressers guiding the steel, down, down--elbow cops,
pauldrons--encircling. Release the pins, guide the leather belts through the buckles. A pin
dropped, another. Note the time, the light, extending itself along the windowsill. Next the
surcoat, known also as the cyclas. Over the mail, the dressers tugging at the folds. John felt,
coming through the mail, the rustle, slip-sliding down. The hem stirred with a movement of air
from the fireplace. John, dressers following, moves to the sollerets. The dresser on the left, penis
stirring, up, out; stroking the steel, thinking of his possible loss. Defences expose-opening the
white skin, the defence-less skin, releasing the blood. Note the time. A shaft of sunlight rose
toward the vertical.
John fit, adjusted, the helm and camail. One may cite this part of the armor as an
example of a new, and improved, style. Recall Pisanello's picture of St. George and St. Anthony?
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Delightful. Note the elegance of the camail, sweeping low over the neck. But permitting the neck
and head to come around un-obstructed. The visor opening to the front and sides. John stood, the
bulk of his weight resting on the left leg. He looked right, arms hanging straight down. The
dressers stepped back, paused, stop. The room was still, stiller, then alive with the sound of
leather and steel moving out, further out. The dressers, replaced by grooms and comrades, faded
back, disappeared.
The second dresser's work of short fiction, Nel Regno dell'Amore, is about finished.
GEOFFREY
"In this story, Child, you must imagine we are in Africa."
"I have heard of that place, Master. Cook says that it is where we obtain most of our
spices."
"Cook is mistaken, Child. Imagine that it is morning. A mist rises from a swamp. A lion,
yawning, comes out from under a grove of thorn trees. He hungry. He will have to run fast in
order to catch the swift gazelle. Somewhere, a gazelle will have to run fast to escape the hungry
lion"
"The import of the story is quite clear, Master."
"You must allow me to finish it."
"It is a story about knowledge, Master."
"Indeed?"
"Both the lion and the gazelle know that each day will begin with them running fast."
_______
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John watched as the groom carried his sword and helmet out of the tent. He knew that
they would be properly cared for, cleaned with sand-stone and polished with the burned marrow
of a lamb's leg. Ready for use against the forces of the Anti-pope, now injured, wounded, but not
defeated. John knew that the enemy would take up defences on the other side of the River, their
back protected by the first foothills of the Alps, their flanks anchored on small tributaries of the
Adda River.
Now he remembered. There was the slim, dark girl on the stairs of the Duke's castello.
Desire rose through his fatigue, the weight of the day's battle. It had been necessary, on their
descent into Turin, to remove a large stone in the trail. John sat, watching the shadows cast by the
candles move on the canvas wall. Desire rose again, thrusting, and he thought of the women he
had had in his twenty three years. The trail, it appeared, had been carried away by a rock-slide.
There were the usual camp followers, the daughter of sutlers, fellow officers, and, most recently,
the young wife of the notaio of Settebello. A strong wind was, fortunately, blowing. Suddenly,
riding over all, came the remembrance of the silken foot, flashing out, bringing him down; 190
pounds, hors de combat, the skin of his face ground into the carpeted stairs. Notice how the rock
was removed from the trail in order to let the White Company proceed.
Felled by a woman! But he would return, in two weeks time, to the great castello. After
the stone is heated, a mixture of urine and vinegar (or wine which has gone sour) was poured
over it. John's report to the Duke would then be due. The men attacked the stone with hammers
and axes. The Duke was looking at a portrait of his father. Would the young woman be there?
Beyond the stone, the trail disappeared under new fallen snow. In the old Duke hands rests a pair
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of spectacles. The lens on the rest reflect the image of a large gothic window.
John's arrival and departure from the castello would be the same. Silence would flow
back into the space left by the sound of plunging hooves.
"John! May I come in?"
Ricco's voice broke into his thoughts. The sight of the slim girl, the long spiraling
staircase and the jewelled windows of the castello faded. A slight wind shook the tent. "Our
ultimatum to Robert has been rejected. Two of the envoys have been killed, their bodies hung on
the walls outside Robert's headquarters."
Ricco threw his body into a chair. As the sound of his armor faded, his hand moved to
pick up the leather wine flask. Then, looking at John, he paused, holding his outstretched hand
motionless.
"Attack?"
"Tomorrow."
_______
"We are, like transhumant sheep, passing through this world to the next." John, hearing
but not understanding the words of the priest, sat with his family in the pew set aside for tanners.
From his place, when he turned to look, he could see neither the congregation nor the priest. He
knew, without understanding, that they were different from the others. Pushed aside, concealed,
from the eyes of God and His people. The priest, interrupted by words in a letter from of a friend
(of philosophical tendencies) stopped. John felt his mother's hand, touching his hair, gently
pushing him down in the pew. Entia were the problem. John resisted, twisting his small body
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right, pushing with his legs against the kneelers. "Leave me alone." Entia? Words or things? John
turned, kicking at his older brother, expanding his space on the hard pew seat. The space defined
by a pew is not so much holy as pure. Its being is its being understood, eorum esse est eorum
cognosci.
Then John felt the hands, lifting him, legs dangling, out through the back door of the
church, into the wet day. "Stay here," his mother said. The back steps of the church are secular.
His mother pushed John down on them. "Wrap this around you." It had always seemed to the
priest that entia were multiplied insofar as there was time enough to multiply them. John
hunched down in cold and wool. Doctor singularis et invincibilis. From the wool, the cold
withdrew. John's mother knew that he would not stay there. The movement, colors and textures
of his small world tugged at him. Entia non sunt. The order of the words baffled him. Where
John could now see no open space for him, one would have to be made. His dreams were just
beginning to show him scenes of towns, cities, and countries beyond the tight alleys and long
fields of his own village.
Necessitatem. It was a matter of what one was trying to represent. The village of Sybril
Hedington was small. Here is part of the road, running between Canterbury and London. The
largest building in the village, the church, was set back from the main road in a grove of elm
trees. Donnina paints the scene from what John had told her of the village. The home of Lord
Essex, Justicer of the King, lay three miles from the village, in a park of oak, hickory and elm
trees. John's memory of the priest was sketchy. The artist added the necessary entia. John's
mother's gaze was there. In Hedington and London, for example, two things are similar in being
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similar things. But not because there is one singularity common to the two things. From the
highest room of the great house Donnina makes one see the extent of the Lord's land. Here are
allees, like the slender fingers of a giant, running in all directions from the house. The river is
just over there, behind the line of shrubs.
Entia. Some are here, some there, some elsewhere. John had told her about high street of
the village. A cauldron of dust, flies and stinking litter in the summer and a sink of mud in the
fall and winter. The man with the staff, who has just passed through the village, stands and looks
back. Starving mothers, had thrust their pellagrous infants at him. The color of their skin is pale
yellow fading, in parts, to brown. Like all travelers, his eye is focused, his concerns few and
constrained. Entia. Some factual, some fictitious. John remembered the hard surface of the
church steps. Hardness defines this entity. The color is mostly grey and charcoal. The difficulty is
to show it in shadows. Here the memory faded. The old man was beyond the hill, his staff trailing
a faint line in the dust. The artist brushes her hair back. One hears the sound of a color-mill. It is
necessary to grind paint thoroughly in order to wet each pigment particle with the paint vehicle.
The artist, in the process of examining a new area, shifts the picture. Grinding breaks up the
agglomerates of pigment particles and expels the occluded air.
Donnina's school makes us aware of the paradox at the heart of her work. In its noise, a
paint-mill is not unlike a water-mill. Everything she painted is individual, singular, the reason
she painted it was universal, general. Rising, pausing, falling. The stone of the mill is the same.
Each stroke of the brush is different. In this picture, the substance of the water-mill (at the stream
below the crossroad) shares, by means of color and form, the same substance as the color-mill.
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But what if the memory of her informant was faulty?
Entia begin in grinding. Donnina remembers John questioning the priest's use of the
word, "transhumant." The true desiratum of the grinding procedure is the creation of paints
perfect in texture and supreme in beauty of color. Patches of yellowish-brown skin appeared
through the beard of the old man. The staff was from the limb of an ash tree. Feel the surface of
this marble. The steps of the church were like that, only harder, rougher.
The priest struggled with the image. A figure at the crossroad beyond the last house of the
village. Donnina struggles with him. A figure with three heads, one for each direction of the three
roads. One head was a laughing face, the other frowning, the third indifferent to entia. Donnina
paints the figure as Trivia, the substance of nightmares, inspiration of thieves, assassins and
rapists. John remembered feeding the image. The old traveler has no friends. He stares at the
figure. Her hands are empowered by love. One must never feed the goddess like one feeds the
ducks and geese on a pond or slow moving river. Nor with the same food. Fresh, not left over or
foul with mold.
Fear of the goddess Trivia is yellow on a black field. The face of the goddess and the
traveler (beneath her looking up) has maximum visibility. John remembered the winter of that
year as wet and cold. The chroma of the colors of the year will be weaker than those of this year.
In the curve of the staff of the old man one sees the general outline of a snake. Entia are now
distorted. John's memory was a parody of the feel of the surface of the steps. The entia of Sybril
Hedington itself pressed on the body of the young boy. The temperature of the Spiegelsaal drops
a degree or two. The yellowish hue of the grey-fear of the old man will be the result of
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simultaneous contrast of a field of blue, black and white. In the late afternoon, the entia have
become distorted by fatigue and bad light.
"Our concern was not the wolves but the transformation of people and animals into
wolves." Donnina sat, remembering John. The fabric of the cloth of the sheets was cool against
her skin. His voice rose when he turned his head toward her. "The lair of the werewolves was
beyond the hills north of the village." Her hand moved along the skin of his leg. Where armor
had covered the skin, the colors would be white shading into pale tan. "My sister was bitten." Her
hand, an index finger circling, moved higher, around. Her breathing was sharper, shorter. For the
eyes, the colors would be grey into hazel-yellow (full light) and grey into cashew-green (halflight). Her left leg came up, parting her thighs. "We wore garlic." In the wall opposite, the
reflection of a smile, lips opening. Her lips opened around a nipple. The form of the design is a
circle within a circle. The head of the organ was hard. Donnina leaned her head closer. Between
the terms labia and "lips" one discerns only a contingent relationship. John's voice went through
her hair to the space beyond. The movement of the hair follicles excite nerves along the back of
Donnina's neck. The colors are white, leading to blood red, through black. "He spilled himself
entirely within her." Donnina leans back from the easel. One hears the quick intake of breath,
notes the movement of parted legs, the change in the silhouette of her breasts in the mirrored wall
opposite.
Donnina paints this scene on mahogany. It does not crack as readily as white poplar. As
the blood ran back, pooling, the organs softened, fell. The profile flattened.
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GEOFFREY
Hawkwood, you may not know, once asked me to accompany him and the White
Company on a summer campaign (this was in 1374) against a detachment of Robert's cavalry.
Perhaps John knew, or rather hoped, that I would someday write his biography. He knew my
work--my reputation was even then well established. But perhaps he only thought of flattering
me. It's difficult to know. A "noncombatant observer" is the term he used.
He invited me, walking with me arm and arm to his stables, to select one of his horses.
The grooms, addressing me, "My Lord," recognized me. I smiled at them. The marshall of the
grooms, accepting a florin, bowed low--gestured towards the roan. "A fine animal, My Lord.
Experienced in battle. Courageous." The surface of the coin is dull.
I sit here, thinking about that event. The last guest of Sir John had given him a substitute
coin, a counter. A fine summer day. Cool, especially toward evening. John may be dead. I
declined his invitation, offering, I forget what, some excuse. Perhaps it was something to do with
His Majesty. No one would think to value this coin because of its rarity. One of His envoys to the
French Court. John, I remember, looked away, toward the hills to the north. He touched my
shoulder, turning back toward the house. I said nothing, looking down. His shoes have been worn
the same way on both sides. The gravelled walk. Down toward the hills, under the beeches, even
then large in their immaturity. The carriage. I left, saying I would write. John grew smaller. The
shadow of the trees elongated. Did I detect a shaking palsy in his hands?
Was I wrong? No. I hate violence. The risk, noise, blood. I make my servant, Patrick, lock
my study door. I hear nothing from below. Nothing from the kitchen, great hall, the stonedrive. I
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go to the high window--here. I only look up, the quiet sky. Am I a coward? Perhaps. I offer the
word to you as a possible classification. I hate causes. The general shape of the coin is an
uncompounded curved line. Causes acknowledge one's weakness; the fear of going it alone.
Causes mean groups of rude, ill-natured, people. It mean being shoved about; pushed out of line
when one is minding his own business. Writing plainer would have required the purchase of
more paper.
I never heard it. And I would never have told him, of course. But John's war-cry, "go, go,
avanti," struck me as too loud, idiotic, the vowels too high in the throat, the speed of the tongue,
gliding toward the front, too fast.
Ink is quieter than air. It stays in its place. I look up from the last line. The ink is drying,
dry. I look down.
_______
At every step, the Pope met with proofs of his own age and could not fail to realize that
he was an old man who would soon die.
When the Pope stepped on board ship, the sea submitted to him like a tamed beast. The
inhabitants of the region were struck with amazement that Trasimeno, which all winter is
windswept and unmanageable, submitted to be crossed by the Pope.
_______
Every word where I first put it. Still, obedient infants without tongues to complain. I start
a new line, my pen (designed for silent running by Mr. Harley, Stationer, of Fishamble Street),
moves toward the right.
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I now see that the last entry under A in my Encyclopedia should indeed be "Azzur," not
"Azur." I will send instructions to the printer to make the change.
_______
The Duke of Milan: White. His opponent: Black.
"Father, I must speak with you." The Duke's opponent at chess was Ludwig von
Alptraum, his chief consigliere. The sight of the man revolted Donnina. A long thin face, small
lips. It had to be a painting, not a sketch or drawing. Alptraum was bald. "Flies like to pitch upon
baldness." His influence over the Duke had been long and pernicious. Donnina had heard rumors
that Ludwig was a spy for the Emperor. The table at the center of the room serves as a fulcrum
for the balance revealed in the position of the two men. The Emperor was now known to be
financing the campaigns of the Anti-Pope. Complementary colors of the clothes of the men also
help to balance the scene. The Emperor had sent agitators into the villages of Lombardy to stir up
hatred for the Viscontis. Steinhof's family, improvished noblemen of East Prussia, driven from
their lands because of witchcraft and heresy, would stand to profit from the division of the
Visconti lands.
"Father! Listen to me!"
The Duke's head turned back toward the array of chess-pieces. His dark clad body shifted
forward and his head went down, closer, looking. The archetype for balance in a scene is balance
in the body. Donnina could see that his position was precarious. Ludwig, with three quick moves,
would have the Duke in check. The balance of the body results from muscles opposing gravity.
She could save her father. But she knew that he would not listen. Ludwig's first move was what
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she expected. Bishop to knight. The way was now open for his attack on the Duke's queen.
Donnina's problem was grinding colors with oil. Donnina wanted to shout a warning. She knew
the way. Her body tensed as the beating of her heart rose.
"Not now, Donni." The Duke's voice sounded different. The balance of the body is
assumed to be most lasting when gravitational forces work out from the center. As if the Duke
was in some anomalous mental distress, or physically tired. With a sudden movement of the
hand, Alptraum swept the Duke's rook from the board. Oil, either of mineral or vegetable
extraction, renders the colors durable. Donnina wanted to interrupt, to show her father the way, to
stop Alptraum's attack, put his advancing pawns and bishops to rout. She saw clearly in her mind
the moves, the directions to go. White's bishop would take Black's queen. This would force Black
to withdraw his rook to protect his left flank. Oil paint will adhere to a number of grounds.
White's knight would then take the pawn protecting Black's bishop. The final move, and check
on Black, would be White's bishop to a blocking position below Black's king. Wood is the
material of this ground. White poplar.
As Donnina turned back toward the door she caught a glimpse of Ludwig's hand moving
toward the queen's position. Mahogany, which does not crack as easily as poplar, is, nevertheless,
more portable than oak. It was obvious to her that the game was now about to end with the
Duke's last bishop removed from the board and his king in check. It was a move she herself had
learned from a book in her father's library and had later refined in order to defeat her classics
tutor. Wood is not always the best material for a small picture.
The Duke, raising his hands from the board, turning his head, watched her depart. Only
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after the low sound of her feet on the stairs had faded, did he turn his head back toward the game.
Was rätst du mir? The sound of her father asking for Ludwig's advice came faintly to
Donnina. What was it about? Had they been discussing her refusal to marry Giovanni before she
had entered the room? Ludwig's replay was broken, incomplete, but intelligible. Herzog. Ich
habe den Eindruck...dass...Ihre Tochter.
So the Duke had been asking Alptraum about her. In time, the balance of the scene will
be restored.
Donnina recognized the seal on the letter. The letter came open, under the force of her
knife, with the scent of cedar-oil moving from inside the envelope. The words of her friend,
Contessa di Mantova, did not have their usual neat order:
Carissima Donni:
I am sorry for my delay in answering your recent letter. I was called to
Brescia to see to the welfare of my two small sons. They suffer there from the climate. Their
school is drafty, damp, unhealthy. My Lord would have them there. For it was, La Scuola
di Virtu, his own and that of his family. I am instructed not to interfere, break the
tradition. Yet I fear for the health of my bambini. Pray for them.
You must learn to be patient. Your parents are not unkind. Perhaps they
acted too precipitously in pledging your hand to a Gonzaga. But your situation, at your
age, unmarried, is an anomalous one. An heiress, educated, potential continuator of a great
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name. Their honor lies open, exposed.
Donnina paused in her reading. The letter lay open on the dark surface of the table, its
pages still emitting the scent of cedar-oil and rosemary. She shifted right, letting her body relax
back into the velvet folds of the poltrona. Her mouth felt dry. Her maid would bring wine. First
she would finish reading the letter.
I have not met your father's consigliere. But the name is familiar to me. An ancient
house. The principal estates of the Alptraums are, I believe, at Steinhof. My aunt took me
there, I was six or seven, I believe. I remember the great beech trees. The high windless
skies. I was invited back.
The estates had been confiscated. It was no longer possible to make a visit.
The desire for space, vistas, came to Donnina. At the Duke's brigata, they sang and
danced, and talked of more dancing, a ballare, a ballare. Donnina's mind seemed to expand, a
space without a horizon. Her spirit longed to leave this place, to flow out like the great Po river.
At the dance, Lucrezia, Costanza and one of the Rucellai sisters were without their husbands, il
mele senza mosche. Neither the sea nor the sky had boundaries. "Lucrezia's husband is off in his
usual haunts. It is truly a pity to leave such sweet terrain unplowed."
Donnina, hearing a noise, turned. Her body came up swiftly from the poltrona. But it was
only part of the great house, settling, parts re-arranging themselves, gravity pulling at the
masonry between the ancient stones. They danced, sang and drank until the sixth hour of the
night.
No, I haven't read Horace. Or Pliny, of whom you hold such high regard. His work
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on the healing arts is, I hear, of the highest value. Men fear our sex, of course. They are
overcome with anxiety about our creativity, our ability to bear children. Yet they pretend
to think we are the inferior sex, the "imperfect man." You've read Aristotle? Of course.
Recall his phrase, the Latin is very fine, "muliebria figmentia." The concept permeates
our lives. We are the creature of pieces, fragmented. Put us together, re-combine
the
parts, with constraints. Control our lives. I am, you know, forbidden to go, without written
permission of my lord, beyond the first inner wall of this palazzo.
Yet I do not say that you must not marry nor obey your father. You must. They
have the monopoly on authority. They teach, kill, preach, advise, entertain and sometimes
cure. They do not create. Have you not noticed that the pictures that hang on your walls
are all of men or their mothers?
The Count and I expect you in the spring. Expect to stay at least until summer. We
have much to show you. A new wing has been added to the palazzo and we have several
houseguests you should meet.
Cecilia Ferrazzi.
Donnina did not think of changing a man's ways. Lucrezia, her husband away, fell into a
melancholy. Donnina's anger rose. Her body was straight. One detects a slight rise in the
temperature of the room. Lucrezia listened to music. It was said to be good for the melancholy.
Donnina, in her response to masculine control, will show great passion. She paints Lucrezia's
cheeks in a pale, ashen, color. Donnina thought of the idea of male superiority. The nature of the
idea resembles a grey line on a white ground. The voice, singing to Lucrezia, is male soprano.
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The songs are always the same.
Donnina was too intelligent to think much longer. She would not, could not, pursue the
superior:men, inferior:women. In the room, she was aware of a sexless phantasm. The walls of
the room were male. The phantasm came in and walked out. The window, shaken by the wind,
reflected the sound of its passing. Donnina relates the misery of Lucrezia. Donnina would listen
to Cecilia's advice, implied by her statements on marriage, but she would not necessarily follow
it. In the painting, the sun, luce, was Lucrezia. Where the husband had been was a laurel tree.
Donnina transforms it to alabaster under the influence of the sun's rays. The castrato continues
his song to Lucrezia. The notes are pure, high, held longer than the notes of a trumpet.
Donnina moved away from the painting. The difference between freedom from and
freedom to do was too abstract to her. It reminded her, in its remoteness from real experience, of
a syllogism of her philosophy tutor. The sleeves of her gown were blue. On the upper surface
were embroidered, in gold, the words speri. What was needed was the experience of life as it was
lived by the people unprotected by wealth, status and privilege. Seasons replaced one another.
The voice of the singer stopped. Lucrezia lies flat, immobilized on the colored surface Spring
would release the constraints. Donnina remembered the story of her nurse. Nuns who have
neglected their vows live in a heaven on the moon. The roads in Lombardy are long roads, the
villages small, the fields rich. Phantasms of the lowest sphere seeking a higher one. There were
the market days, the ringing of bells, dogs barking, children running. Piazzas alive with color
and movement.
From the surface the eyes gaze out. A song, dying, leads the gaze further out. Donnina's
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back is to the center of the room. Below the castello, where the Adda starts its bend to the east, a
new bridge is under construction. Lucrezia, del nobil sangue di Piccarda nata. Luigi swung the
hammer. The wood resisted, sank, shone polished like bronze. Donnina's soul was divided.
Immediate withdrawal, seclusion, escape. Luigi's assistant swings the plank into place. The water
of the river is cold this time of year. The gaze elongated. Familial obedience forms the
foundation of a concept of gentility, both personal and generalized. Donnina's hands rested on the
window sill. The sill, pressing her thighs, sighed a resistance.
The floor of the bridge will be three feet above the flood stage of the river. Beyond the
bridge, the road leads around a grove of cork oaks and over the hill. Since Lucrezia shared her
soul with her absent husband, to kill herself would be to kill him too. Mela senza mosche. The
impression, within white flesh, is that of a half-smile.
_______
The dog attacked Hawkwood from a door half-way down the alley. The stones of the
alley were dry, the space between the dog and Hawkwood was open, and the instincts of the dog
told it that the attack should proceed. It had seen that the man was alone, that his head and eyes
were focused on what was directly ahead, not what lay concealed in the next low door-way.
Through the dog's mind, in real colors and shapes, ran the sight of its mother in a similar attack
on the men who came to carry her away. Had they not gone away, bloody, cursing, yelling for
help? Its mother's victory, it remembered, had been shown by her mouth, smeared with blood and
skin, the fire of her eyes.
________
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The Pope remained at Perugia for three weeks and then, to the grief of the citizens, set out
for Siena.
_______
The dog's first mistake was in attacking Hawkwood. Its second in attacking him from the
left side. Two alternatives create a possibility. One mistake would have been enough to insure the
dog's defeat and possible death. Two were enough to make its death a certainty. It could not have
known who the man was, what he was capable of. But it could have, drawing from the collective
memory of its breed, about the consequences of its angle of attack. It should have waited for the
man to pass the door-way, to a position several feet ahead. The attack, by such a heavy dog,
being from the rear of the man, unseen and quiet, would have had a fair chance of knocking the
man down. His neck and throat would then have been exposed, his arms and hands pinned under
his body. The armor and sword of the man, pressing him down, would have worked to the dog's
advantage.
The yellowish blur, at the corner of his eye, caused Hawkwood to turn. The fingers are
full grown, tapered. As his right arm came over across his body, drawing the sword, his left arm
was deflecting the force of the dog's attack. The dimples of the knuckles are white, smooth. A
growling cry ran past Hawkwood, to his right, and fell against the opposite alley wall.
Scrambling, turning back toward the man, the instincts of the dog told it that it had lost the
advantage. The different hues of the color must be considered shades of each other. A new
feeling, something like fear, rose along the dog's neck and the upper part of its body. It saw, in
the half-shadows of the alley, the huge, jewel-encrusted, sword, the silent man, his legs set, his
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eyes straight ahead. What the dog did not see was the dagger, encrusted with a figure of an
attacking hawk, in the man's left hand. Nor did the dog notice--it would have had no reason to
notice--the unusual way the man's hands held the sword and dagger.
The colored shade, along the hair of the dog, recede from the eye of the painter.
The dog's second attack seemed much like the first. Within two seconds the dog, its hind
legs in constant acceleration, had closed the gap between itself and Hawkwood. But the
determination of its breed, the hereditary cautions of the predator, were not there. It had closed
without a clear target on the person of the man. Its angle of attack was too high, allowing its rush
to expose its neck and lower body. It entered, without understanding the consequences, a space
ruled by a special sword. As the man's hand, thumb over the index finger, rotated the sword
clockwise, a locking mechanism of the handle released. The blade, powered by a coiled spring,
began a sequence of rachetting movements, lacerating, widening the blade's destruction.
The dog felt, following a low hissing sound, the bit of steel in its lower body.
What had begun as a controlled attack was now ending in a the jerking, wobbling motion
of an unravelling rope. Blood, grease and pieces of fur streamed back from its severed legs,
splattering the legs of the man and falling on the stones of the alley. The color of the blood
changed and the surface of the globlets began to harden. The dog's ability to detect the odor of
blood, even in quiet air, left it. A low moan went back left, toward the door-way where it had all
begun. The man followed, moving closer, closer. The blade of his dagger flashed only once. The
alley was silent.
Hawkwood, his sword now quiet, the dagger concealed, continued on. The dog's old
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master watched, not daring to speak, hearing only his heart, the sound of steel on stones,
diminishing, vanishing. Later he would carry the body of the dog out beyond the sounds of the
village, the rumble of its wagons and the cries of its children; out where the pit lay, scavagers
waiting, to receive the carcass of the animal.
The flow of blood, the curve of light from steel, decomposing flesh are all created by the
serpentine line. Waves of winding lines run into each other. Intricate tracery defines the muscles
beneath the skin. The sound of the bell recedes from the room. A door, at the end of the
Spiegelsaal, opens. Hannibal and Hercules followed the serpentine trail (the guides traitorous)
through the mountains. Donnina's hand, moving softly down Hawkwood's bare chest, encourages
the image.
_______
“Nel fuoco d’amore mi mise.” Donnina removes John’s helmet and runs her fingers through the
dark mat of his hair, still wet from the long ride from Vicenza. Above them, gnats spiral-dance in
shafting sunlight. Apple-blossoms, level-slanting the sunlight, float down to crown John’s head,
cradled in Donnina’s lap.
Below, she can just make out where the Adda starts to make its great bend north to its
junction with the Po. On the other side of the valley, shadows begin to encroach on wind-carved,
Assyrian-looking mass of stones. The shadow of a cloud moves slowly over the stones down
toward the river.
“What, my lord, is the difference between life and death”? She waits for his words. But
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she hears only his low breathing, the hard angles of his face now softened. She traces an old
wound with her finger along John’s forehead. The air carries blossoms by in a dreamy, blue haze
“Only the sway of a small flame,” she hears herself say.
John wakes, lifting his eyelids slowly. Their talk runs long into the evenin
_______
Donnina heard the sound of hobbling steps. Her skin felt different. Zoppo, dwarf and
jester to the Duke, spoke to her from behind a marble pillar. Broken teeth showed. The voice
seemed to come from a hole. Dwarfs are usually born to parents of normal stature and are likely
to be sterile.
"My Lady, the Duke and his lady are planning to send you to the Convent of Santa
Caterina. For your disobeyance."
Zoppo was old. Among humans Nanism appears to be the result of endocrine malfunction
which causes an arrest of growth. Only a few grey hairs grew on his head and beard. His skin
appeared to be dry, cracking along his cheeks like plaster on an aging wall. Pigmies, unlike
dwarfs, are fecund. Zoppo had, it seemed, came with the house. In a small garret room in the
south wing of the castello, he had his collection of fifty clocks, all running, but set to different
times. The picture, when completed, will show him to be achondroplastic, with limbs (partially
concealed by fine clothes) disportionate to his body. Years ago, Donnina remembered, playing
with her cousin, Colzina, she had found Zoppo's room. Zoppo was there, holding a clock, turning
it, scrutinizing its shape and surface. There has been much inclusive speculation about Zoppo's
costume.
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Donnina and Colzina had waited, the ticking of the clocks concealing the sound of their
movements. They watched as Zoppo's eyes and hands caressed the clock. An auxiliary theme of
the picture is the awareness, by his heraldic symbol on the face of the clock, of the Duke's
presence. Zoppo touched the face of the clock with his index finger, running its tip over the
edges, around a corner of the back, under its base. Dwarfs vary in height from two to four feet.
Often there is a marked increase in stature in early middle age. Zoppo raised the clock to his lips,
the tip of his tongue came out, and he was licking, kissing it. Donnina and her cousin had
watched. Zoppo stands at the invisible border line between real and painted space. Fascinated
horror on a face can sometimes be achieved with the same hues as surprised unbelief.
As
Zoppo's body began to jerk, his yellow and red pantaloni shaking in the dim light, Donnina and
Colzina had run from the room, the sound of their feet dying away in the noise of the clocks. In
this picture, Donnina, brush in hand, stands at the left. Her eyes are fixed on the viewer.
They were never to return to that room. But Colzina, in a letter to Donnina before her
death, wrote that the incident appeared often in her nightmares.
"You have, My Lady, been wicked. You will be punished." Zoppo's taunts followed
Donnina as she continued down the long hall. She knew that he would follow her, hobbling on
legs of unequal length, his voice pleading for her attention. The head is frequently much larger
than a normal person at that age. The dwarf was without love, neither able to give it or accept it.
Perhaps it was because of Zoppo's desertion, as an infant, by his parents, abandoned by a stone
wall near Cortevecchia. Left to die in the high, dry air and be eaten by scavagers. Or perhaps, it
was in the nature of things for him to be as he was? The scene is virtually inexhaustible in its
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visual and psychological subtleties.
Was he, Donnina thought, of that race of goblins spoken of by the peasants? Usually, but
not always, the third child of a normal family? Marked, by behavior and understanding, as
different, recognizable as a goblin only in his, or her, early teens and then only by a mid-wife?
Zoppo, Donnina remembered, was always absent whenever their own midwife, an old woman
from the village, came to assist at a birth in the castello. Zoppo is the one on the right, behind the
dog. The animal is desolate.
"My Lady. Stop! I have more to say to you."
Donnina is at the end of the great hall, pulling the fur coat tight around her shoulders and
neck. Through the door she would be free of the voice. Following Donnina's lead, the portrayal
of dwarfs in ducal portraits will increase in the Quattrocento. The door is mirrored, at the back,
by another door. Donnina knew that the dwarf's legs would not allow him to follow her into the
courtyard, wet with a cold autumn rain, falling, sucking in the fog. Innocence can be spoiled with
the wrong colors.
Is this a candid representation of an actual event?
GEOFFREY
Zoppo is, I believe, now dead. Was he, as Donnina represents him, a goblin? Or was he a
devil, a bad angel? The question is obscure. Our wits are weak, dry, defective in this area. Our
intelligences, like the owl's eyes in sunlight, wax dull.
I have laid the evidence before my friends, Julius Pollux and Dandinus the Cabbalist.
Julius stoutly denies that Zoppo was a devil. He smiled at me, I recall, at the head of the stairs to
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his study, saying, "have you ever seen one, talked to one"? However, Dandinus, citing Plotinus,
Porphyrius, Iamblicus and Proclus, makes no doubt of it. The devil, he affirms, is the progeny of
Adam by his first wife, Lilis. Was his eye yellow, his hair red? I shook my head. I described
Zoppo's short, achondroplastic, body. That puts the matter beyond dispute, he said. I pointed out
to him that the descent and corporeality theory of devils had been exploded by the theologians of
our church. He was silent.
Then Dandinus turned away from me, I remember, to order another glass of wine. Years
later, full of honor and gouts, he was heard to use the word "Zoppo" when he asked for the time
the last time.
But I am a rationalist. I explain things according to their natural causes. That devils, if
they exist, can change their shape, represent castles in the air to mortal eyes, send smells and
savors to their noses I doubt not. Other effects still lie beyond my researches.
But the history of Donnina and John must continue. Zoppo's progeny, I say in passing, is
extensive. It continues to increase.
The Nanist School, much corrupted by sentimental images, is active at Toledo.
In this scene the subject is both painter and painter's sitter. The reaction of the painter to
the sitter during the Trecento is explained in a letter from Bolzati to Calvecchi, then Chancellor
of Florence. We must not suppose that Donnina agrees with the sentiments expressed in the
letter.
The violin, whose strings ring whenever their note is sounded by an outside
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instrument, is a pure symbol of the poet. In the poet cumulative images of every form of
beauty begin in earliest infancy to occupy the brain, till, in his early maturity, these have
become true touchstones, like the violin string. Let the painter once look upon a person
who has, beneath no matter how many surface defects, one dominant greatness--purity at
heart and fiery love of truth and beauty--and in his own heart the image of such a person.
GEOFFREY
Bolzati's opinions always sound bilious to me.
_______
The painter looked at the young woman sitting at the window. The light of early
afternoon outlined her face and the shape of her nose and chin. The natural skin is semitranslucent and therefore more luminous than anything that can be applied to it. During the hour
of this day's sitting for the picture, the light would shift from the woman's face to her hair and
finally to her dress. Rouge, lipstick and powder camouflage, so to speak, the fine modelling of
the skin on which a good portrait depends.
But the painter would not think about the light or what it did to the figure of the sitter. He
thought only of the Archduke's orders, remembering the words,
"It must be finished this month. No chance must be taken that the Duchess may not live to
see it." Donnina's sitter never breaks an appointment.
"Yes, My Lord. I will speak to the Lady Donnina. Perhaps
tomorrow afternoon"?
"No, now. My daughter waits in the crystal room." The Duke gestured, issuing the
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command, ending the meeting with the painter. His father and grandfather had painted the
portraits of earlier Viscontis. Their work hung, as he hoped his own would, in the portrait gallery
running through the central part of the castello. Portraits which are entirely satisfactory to the
family of the sitter often displease outsiders. They would not paint what he saw, but how the
family wanted its members to appear, regal, unsmiling, rigid. Donnina avoids fatiguing the sitter.
The position is comfortable, the expression natural. The painter wanted to work slowly, to walk
frequently back and forth between the subject and the canvas. In spite of the fact that this would
be his first portrait for the family, he knew that he was equal to the task. He had learned the
proper techniques from his father. Often Donnina dines with the sitter in order to study her
expression when she is at her ease. The painter had carefully studied the existing portraits. The
so-called "colors of the Viscontis," the hues and flesh tones, he knew well, how to mix the
pigment in their proper ratio: 50% yellow, from solidago canadensis, 30%, dark red oxides, 20%
black from the tinto negro iris.
But this subject would not allow him to paint her as a Visconti. Donnina makes sketches
before the proper pose is found. Within the hour, Donnina would rise in the chair to critique, and
correct, the work of the painter. Her voice, he would remember, was soft but determined,
"The mouth and face are too flat. Look"! The lady now stood, her chair empty, before the
large mirror in the corner, turning body, framing her face,
_______
Next the Pope came to the river, or rather a swamp, called Chiana, which separates the
territory of Siena from that of Perugia.
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_______
"Look"! the lady's hands were now moving down the sides of her body, following their
contours. She smiled at the painter's confused look, his hesitation,
"Look"! Her eyes shone with delight and triumph. The air of the room was then
motionless, the body and hand of the painter still. Donnina, watching, felt the painter's
frustration. Her mood, and attitude, changed. Now she stood at the back of the chair she had
recently vacated. Her right hand rest on its curved back. Her eyes had softened in compassion for
the painter's situation. She knew what's the Duke's orders had been to the painter and what the
consequences of not following them would be.
Often the profile is the only advantageous view of the sitter head and yet there seems to
be a prejudice against it. Donnina's profile holds the image opposite steady. The pose of her
hands frames the movement of the brush. The lines of her dress react on the lines of her face. A
musical note has overtones.
Donnina walked deliberately around to the front of the chair to take her seat,
"Signor. Let us continue."
As the eye of the painter turned to focus on the face of his subject, the silence of the room
was split by the distant cry of a hawk. A hand paused, then moved on, conveying the brush
toward the canvas. Over a monochrome under-painting, Donnina models carefully with red,
black, white and blue, mixing the lights with red and white, the shadows with red and black. The
painter did not notice the head of the lady move, as if in cadence, to the rise and fall of the bird's
cry. Many artists have stage-fright before beginning a portrait. Nor did the painter notice what
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might have been a flash of recognition in the sitter's eyes. After the under-painting has dried,
Donnina glazes with the bright colors, yellows and bright reds.
The pounces of the hawk move out. Remarks made by the layman to the painter before he
asks for them can be harmful. Flesh tones of the sitter are those of Donnina's own face.
The tones are not unlike the reflection one notes in Venetian waters from the facade of
Santa Maria della Salute.
GEOFFREY
I have a friend in Munich, ein Uhrmacher. It was one of his ancestors who designed the
clock for the cathedral at Glastonbury. (You have been there?) Delightful! Especially (would you
not agree?) after Easter. Fresh strawberries and clotted cream. Lunching al fresco, the green
fields, the clock chiming.
A clock is, we now know, a machine in which the only work to be done is the
overcoming of its own friction and the resistance of air. To the layman, consequently, the
problems of the clock-maker may seem simple. Lower friction between the parts of the machine
and produce an efficient clock. But, Hans tells me, there is always (hidden from the view of the
layman) the problem of verge escapement.
Clock-makers have no shared aesthetic. They show a considerable degree of individuality
in decorating their clocks.
Hans writes me. The language is technical. But the meaning is clear:
Clock motion. The oscillating body, which regulates the rate of going of the clock,
must have mass and movement and must be kept going by the expenditure of force. Two
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weights of equal mass, one at each end of a rod, might be swung in a circular path, and a
spring of some sort might be fixed to them so as to gradually retard their motion. This was
the first idea of the clock-makers of the last century and on it the Glastonbury clock of
your country was designed. The method of attaching the spring is very clumsy, and quite
destructive of accuracy.
It is called the verge escapement.
The problem of the clock-maker is not unlike my own. What we make, in order to keep
the whole going, should have both mass and movement. Donnina and John. Two weights of
equal mass. You and I (in different ways, and with different means), keep them going.
Note Hans' word retard. I have made a shift to retard the movement of their lives in order
for you to observe them more closely. Perhaps I have retarded them too much, too often? It is a
matter of timing. Set them in motion, retard the motion, set it going again.
I have discussed this analogy with several of my friends. I expect to hear from them
shortly on how it might be amplified in ways I may have overlooked.
Hans continues. If we know the rate of error of a clock, we can allow for it in an
observatory or neglect it in common life. Our real timekeeper is the stars. The time is set all
over the world by the consensus of a host of observatories.
Here again we have the problem of accurate timing. But it is now framed in the context of error. I
have anticipated this possibility. As you will come to know, in succeeding pages, I have many
times, and at considerable risk to my person and purse, solicited information about Donnina and
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John from people who knew them. Some I have spoken to directly, standing with them in windy
places or sitting with them in sordid inns. In mental space the mind experiences itself as living or
enjoying. One or two have invited me to partake with them of their greasy food. Some have
written to me, often in an illegible hand.
Enjoy time as an angel, by assuming it to be a simple element of mind along side of
physical existence.
Does not Hans' phrase, our real timekeeper is the stars, strike you, coming as it does
from the mind of a clock-maker, an anomalous note? Angels speak for Hans. Time has the same
color as wind in distress.
In the second panel of the polyptyph, Donnina has painted Geoffrey with his head up,
looking toward the viewer. The stack of papers at the left corner of the writing table, noted in our
description of the first panel, is higher. At the right corner lie the same number of books. Before
the writer one can make out a half-written page. The pen, resting lightly in the writer's gloved
right hand, is a swan quill. Recall that the first panel shows the writer using an ordinary goosequill. The change is significant.
The Continuator of the Chronicles of Nangis, under the year 1407, notes the increase in
the price of swan pens.
Geoffrey is wearing a headcap, a fur robe and he appears to have thrown a woollen
blanket around his shoulders. One notes the thin film of frost that is forming on the hairs of his
beard and the window pane. Moisture transformed into frost depicts, in its slate colors, the
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despair of the wind. Geoffrey's eyes look directly toward us. The hour-glass, just behind him (to
the right), waits to be turned.
Behind him a slippered foot appears through an opening door. Nothing in Geoffrey's face
or bodily position indicates that he is aware of it. What the picture needs it another observer. One
standing at the back of the room. His clothes, especially the hat and gloves, inform the viewer of
the correct historical time. But a portrait which fails to express does not thereby, in some
automatic way, express the inexpressible.
"My Lady, you must attend more to the reading." Donnina's philosophy tutor, Massimo da
Ferrara, frowned. His hair shook as he moved his head in dispproval.
"Now, read it again, My Lady, and tell me what the philosopher is saying about the
meaning of our own death."
The philosopher's reader is a fiction. Donnina looked down at the page again. She began
to listen to her own voice, the mellifluous sounds, the rise and fall of the syllables. The fiction is,
however, necessary. She felt her tongue, sliding, finding the harmony of the long "r's," "l's" and
"m's." The garish colors of the reader, bright yellows and oranges, emphasize his fictionality. The
cadence of the words moved through the room, Nam veluti pueri trepidant atque omnia caecis in
tenebris metuunt.
"Signor. Lucretius is saying that death is not to feared, that it is not an evil. He is wrong."
"Wrong"? The Tutor's angry. Lighten his hands, darken his face and eyes. He stood, under
the presence and authority of his academic robes, near the table. He looked down at Donnina. In
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the picture, there is a causal relationship between the two observers of the text.
"It is more correct to say that death is an evil most of the time. The philosopher does not
show that he knows the difference between death as a word and death as it is actually
experienced." Donnina's eyes were up, focused on those of the tutor.
_______
The next day the Pope crossed the bridge over the Anio and climbed a very high and
difficult mountain, from which he descended to a wooded valley where converging streams, not
finding an outlet, made a pool and marshy ground attractive to wild boars.
_______
Donnina meant to hold her eyes there.
"What"?
"My cousin, Colzina Visconti, just lost a child. The consequences were evil." The image
is of an empty container. The lack of color and form, flowing from inside center, attracts our
gaze, thought. The body rocks in anticipation of the next deprivation.
Massimo had tutored two generations of the Viscontis. He was tired. Donnina's resistance
to his authority made him tired. Evil does not exist if evil is only the lack of something. Infant
clothes are folded in the corner. The light, in the center of the crib, resembles torchlight on a
moonlit night.
Massimo turned away from the table. He stood before a globe of the world. He turned the
globe, examining the outlines of the countries. The library of the castello smelled of leather and
parchment. One detects the faint odor of ash and wood smoke drifting from a fireplace. The hues
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of the tutor's face are blasphemous. Donnina stalked the old man's thoughts.
"You miss the philosopher's point, My Lady. He is not saying that death does not deprive
us of ones we love, or they of our love. Only that death, being part of nature, is not to be feared
as deprivation."
The tutor's distinction, Donnina recognized, was one he had made in two of his books on
ancient ethics. Spare rationalizations. She would not release him from the effects of his theory.
The tutor's bodily stance now reflected her direction, her will.
"Tutor. What right does Lucretius have to instruct us on the meaning of "nature"? Is it not
as correct to say that there exist, not one "nature," but a plurality of "natures"?
The child had died in the first rindy, bitter bright, time of the first wind-fall of leaves.
Colzina, crying, pulled the curtains over the mirrors in the nursery. The amount of time became
infinite. "Natures? The word, forgive me, My Lady, is absurd." Massimo lifted his hand. The
globe spun faster. The child's love would have kept Colzina away from the pain of the world.
Light spun away from the globe. Behind the tutor, along the wall, Donnina could see the long
line of portraits of her ancestors on the wall of the library. The globe makes half-light of the
man's hand. Light, moisture, heat are the three enemies of the portrait painter.
"Can we not say, Tutor, that each of us has a "nature," one unlike anyone else? Look
behind you, the faces of my ancestors. Each different from the other."
"Forgive me, My Lady. I fail to see the relevance of this to Lucretius' discussion of
death." The tutor, after examining the portraits, had turned back toward Donnina. The eyes of the
infant, jewel-like, closed. The tutor sensed that he was losing control of the situation. Never
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conceal, out of fear of damage from light, one's ancestors behind a curtain. Display them in
chronological order. Competing ideas, still unformed by words, pressed forward in Massimo's
mind. His walk to the high, north window, was meant as a delay, a time to allow the right idea to
form into words. His black eyes, amply balanced, darkly molded, shone like the skin of a wet
seal. No child is worthier than the newly dead infant.
"By "nature," My Lady, the philosopher means "everything that not only happens, but
everything that can happen. Death, you said, came to your friend. It will come, in time, to us."
Donnina paused. She knew that the tutor was, by substituting terms, attempting to force
the discussion into his own area. Privation is the absence of that which we would naturally
possess. Hence our exclusion of pure negation, a feature of language, from true privations. The
empty infant shoes point toward the corner. In enduring the hour, Colzina hoped for the
placations of necessity. The light moves back of the shoes. Donnina was determined to hold the
discussion to what she knew was Lucretius' weakness. A fingernail had left its mark along the
side of one of the shoes. Socialize the event with company, they had said. Colzina would read
through the night. Rain followed the death of the leaves, soiling them.
"Nothing, certainly not the death of an individual human being, is reducible, tutor, to
'nature.' I, of course, recognize your distinction between what exists and what can exist, or not
exist. Aristotle first made it. But it is not applicable to death, either in the particular case or in a
general discussion." Donnina's words hung there, between her and the tutor. Near the table,
standing. She could feel her throat tighten and the palms of her hands moisten. A shiver of
anxiety went along her neck. She moved her shoulders back and stood higher. Massimo was
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silent, his eyes now on the area beyond the window.
"Please read the rest of Lucretius, My Lady. We will continue the discussion on
Wednesday." She was being dismissed, her words not heard. At the end of the room, a wall
becomes familiar. Colzina moves up from the chair. Perhaps the infant had only been a
temporary trophy of honor?
Donnina knew that Massimo was later discuss with the Duke the behavior of his
daughter.
As Donnina waited, Massimo moved toward the door. His lips were set. The light came
from an unseen source. Imagine the authority of black. Donnina waited. A sound ran along the
surface of the carpet. The authority of the man deepened as he approached the door. Darkness
attracted weight at its surface. Colzina's day begins in silence. The dark room would not keep out
the color of her thoughts.
The stone arch felt cool. Donnina pushed the great window out. A wind, carrying the
smell of burning leaves, pulled at the sleeve of her right arm.
_______
The harvest was bad that year. Images of privation. Painting is an image of an image.
Homeless families, increasing in numbers, appeared on the roads leading out of Milan. Donnina's
apprentice,who appears a bit melancholy, is busy painting the scene. Je suis le charme de la veue.
The mother of peasants, herself the child of a peasant family, sat begging at the church door. The
priest, new on the job, was irritated. Dés doux attraits dont le ciel m'a pourveu. Vines were
dying. Peasants, released from work, distributed themselves more unequally over the countryside
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and throughout the small villages. The apprentice has been told that in this picture she must
portray absence. The origins of love are always absent. Luigi's children began to die. The vines
would have to be replanted. He was looking for the wild asparagus along the ditch. Il n'est point
d'oeil qui ne soit enchanté. The image of the apprentice is reflected by a mirror that sits besides
the canvas. It seems to be crowned by a sun. The only motion from Luigi's children was an
expectant movement of their heads. The mother of peasants slowly made way for the priest. He
was forced, against his will, to move past her, sideways, a hand deep in his cassock. What
surfaces Luigi could still see became grey. Le temps qui détruit tout me rend encore plus belle.
Luigi's children followed, with their eyes, the imaginary trail of their father. The third child sat by
himself, over to the right. His head was down, his hands busy with grinding a substance. Perhaps
the apprentice is working on a self-portrait. Mon art est ma naiveté. Perhaps, she thinks, poetry
could best portray absence? Estate workers found Luigi's body in the ditch in the following
week.
What the farm animals would forget would be their domestication. Wildness is not so
much a state as a procedure. Luigi's body was buried without ceremony. The apprentice had
arrived from Paris to study with Donnina. In the fall, it began to rain, a hard driving rain from the
north, blowing the leaves from the trees and filling the streams with wild, yellow, rushing water.
But she must paint the absence of things, peasants and beggars, weakened by hunger. She has to
hunt down her own simulacra. The mistress insists on it. The priest put his right hand on the old
woman's head. His knee lodged itself on her shoulder. As the head went down under the force of
his hand, his knee began its work. The doorway was wet with rain. Without color, nothing is
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present. Luigi had no mourners. Beyond the grave site there was a cliff, with a grey, and agitated
surface. The philosopher cannot give, as far as we know, painting a serious reproach. Sliding (the
body is emaciated) is one of the few things a person can do upon a slippery surface.
The apprentice rests. The viewer's gaze, within the space of representation, is now
occupied by dogs infected with rabies. Foam along the mouth demands patience. They howl.
Throw, like Protogenes, a sponge at the place. Macchia. Farm-animals move aside. Hawkwood
came to the Visconti castello. He was carrying news to the Archduke of the victory of the White
Company over Robert. He did not come alone. The giant black dog, Colpo, was with him. Never
sleeping, an animal defence against whatever attacked from the side of the road or from the
darkness outside the light of Hawkwood's campfire. The smell of wet aspen leaves. The earth
brewed its own history.
_______
The journey took thirteen nights and part of another day. After leaving Praeneste, the
Pope reached Passarano about noon.
_______
The rain was beginning to turn cold, colder. Hawkwood felt it as immature snow. The
clouds thickened from their transparency.
Donnina, alone, watching death in a herb garden. She saw them first. Strangely enough,
you can smell the violets here; or if violet are impossible this time year, Donnina must grow
something very pungent in the garden. She watched as they emerged, from the grove of evergreen
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oaks, one by one. The horse side-stepping high, the dog following, swinging his great head, the
man in armor moving with the motion of the horse. Fear, a withdrawing, shaking, emotion. A
brigand? Light from the picture can be obliterated several ways. By a roller, perhaps. Brigands
looted and burned the estates of the Maseratis, neighbors of the Viscontis to the north.
Keeping low behind the wall of the garden Donnina began to move back, toward a side
door to the castello. Inside, she would be safe, calling her father's guards, ordering them to secure
the doors. But she would not be able to manage it. Dog and horse dung shred to dust. A spider
leaves a trail through it. The horse and dog vanished around the trees. Or through them?
Donnina's garden was thick with dead leaves. The dog's eye is directed. Her silent movement was
impossible. The silk of her dress, in contact with a dry leaf, emitted a sound heard by the dog. As
we know, one strategy can harbor another or, more exactly, be a mere tactic used to conceal the
real stakes of the true strategy. As the dog's head turned, releasing the force of its muscles, it
leaped toward the sound behind the wall. Donnina heard the noise of its claws, digging at the
graveled drive. She crouched, lower, holding her hoe as a weapon. She knew that she would not
be able to survive the dog's attack. But she was determined to leave the marks of her defence on
it. Now she could hear the sound of the dog's breathing, its lungs sucking the air. No need to
mention the foam streaming back from its mouth. The viewer can understand the real power of
images. A heavy shadow appeared at the top of the wall.
The man on the horse was there. Donnina felt the rush of air, a mass, greying at the edges,
moving past. She heard the sound of a steel, hitting the top of the wall, the strangled cry of the
dog. The hoe fell from her hand. Her brown hair, loose from its cap, showered around her neck
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and face. She saw the man, holding the dog under his right arm, swinging the head of the horse
around.
"I must apologize for Colpo's manners." He seemed to half-smile down. He pulled back
on the reins as the horse tried to move back toward the wall of the garden. View the wall as it is,
hoary, old, majestic. Long past sunset it offers itself, as sacrificial scapegoat, to the sky. White
ankles no longer startle it.
"Your dog tried to kill me," Donnina shouted at the man. She turned, stooping. The hoe,
in order to be part of the scene, must be touched, taken up, returned. Donnina's maid, and her
father's guards, were there. The man in armor was gone. Taken by the guards? The garden lay
quiet. Only its surface, bitten by marks of the horse's passage, seemed changed. Donnina's maid
held out her hand toward her mistress. The sky darkened and it began to rain.
The nearest door was more than a quarter of a mile away. Donnina knew that she and her
maid would be wet before they reached it.
Where had the man gone? Who was he?
Behind the pane, along back here, history's line curves away. A line is the result of a
course began, the start of a new drawing. Compare this to color: It is not the beginning of a
figure, it is not homogeneous with the line. Color is a sign.
The empty armor lay along the edge of the hill and along the slope toward the river. A
leather strap, moved by the wind, would occasionally rise and fall like a feeble wave of the hand.
Later that year, after the snow had melted, grass would start to sprout and grow through joints,
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sockets and nodes.
In the moonlight the rusting metal took on the color of blood.
Donnina's maid waited for her mistress to return. She kept her room clean. Once a day
she would change the linen on the bed and sweep the floor. She began to polish the bronze and
silver ornaments on Donnina's dresser and bed. She dusted, the feather duster sweeping in curves,
the window drapes, pictures and wall tapestries of her mistress' room. Twice she had replaced,
with late fall roses, the flowers on the table near the south window. After cleaning, each piece of
furniture would be carefully put back in place. She gave the position of Donnina chair before her
desk special attention.
She stood at windows of the castello, looking out, watching. She interrupted the other
servants at their work; asking them if they had seen her mistress. She no longer, even after the
labors of her day, slept well. Anxiety and anticipation awakened her at night. Noises from her
mistress' room below often drew her down the stairs to stand, listening, at Donnina's door. One
clear morning she walked to the end of the great drive. She was young and her eyes were good.
What she saw did not show the presence of her mistress.
In time her anxiety diminished. She began to sleep without interruption. Yet she
continued to clean her lady's room each day. One day she noticed that the petals of the roses on
the table were wilting and beginning to drop. She felt sad that there would be no fresh ones to
replace them with this year.
STILLNESS, with SILENCE at her back, entered the room. Una stanza. They drew their
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gauzy mantle over the head of the maid. LISTLESSNESS, with lax sinews and undirected eye,
sat quietly down beside her. The second star, in from the handle of the dipper (Ursa Major),
separated into two parts. A water ouzel bobbed, stabilizing the pool, in the dim light.
The wind outside the windows, in the cedars, is colorless.
A wheel of the cart went over a large stone and lurched right. Around and under the
stone, where the land lay exposed, was clay soil intermixed with particles and small rocks of
quartzite. Struts holding the canvas top of the cart thrust toward the top of the hill. An old horse
pulled at the cart. Two adults, a boy and a girl, pushed at its back and sides. Here and there ones
sees the evidence of old lava flows. Inside the cart, a young woman, dressed in clothes of a
peasant, lay in a fever. The flies around her head were warm. The seeds of the resurrection plant
lay dormant under the flows. The motion of the cart did not disturb the flies. A cold wind blew
down from the ridge and it had begun to snow. The forehead and neck of the woman were hot.
Sweating as a cooling mechanism is known only in humans and few additional mammals. The
adult male, pushing harder at the cart, knew that it would soon be dark. The young woman's body
alternated between sweating and shaking with cold. On the slope below, one notes the presence
of a few stilt plants, small members of the sundew and trigger plant families. The way was a
familiar one to him, but he knew that it would be easy for them to lose their way. They were near
the top of the pass. Below them lay the valley, still free of snow, and the campsite he had
prepared on an earlier journey. Unlike most plants, the phloem tissues of the trigger plant, which
conduct sugar and other nutrients, are in the middle of the root. The cart and went higher. Heat,
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convecting from the surface of the canvas, went up and out.
He did not want to stop. There was danger from bands of brigands and the militia of the
communes. Female persistence in work breeds envy in the male. But his wife, whom he could
hear breathing heavily on the other side of the cart, insisted on making camp for the next few
days. The beauty of the female creates fear in the male. The children, the wife had said, were
tired, the young woman needed care. He told himself that she did not know the danger to them.
That they had already been too long on this trail. They passed by a low-growing shrub. It was
likely that the commune's militia knew their location and direction and were following them. On
the limb, a spider with no common names, has built its nest. The man had tried to conceal from
his wife his nervousness, his frequent backward looks. Terribly severe he looked, walked,
pushed. Mostly white, with black stripes on its abdomen, the spider shields itself from the sun
with a tubular nest of dense silk. The sound of the wind, along the top of the ridge, was that of a
broom sweeping, sweeping. An orblike web, designed for catching flying insects, radiates from
the mouth of the nest.
The struts of the canvas combatted the wind and the gravity of the pebble strewn fields of
the slope.
Inside the cart the young woman moaned and attempted to struggle into consciousness.
The vision of a castello came, and then faded, from her mind.
_______
The Pope proceeded through Piano to Abbadia which he had selected as a suitable refuge
from the heat. The Pope crossed the Anio at Tivoli, followed along its left bank, and spent the
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first night at Vicovaro.
_______
The young woman sometimes heard voices from the past, soft and obsequious, rising in
response to other, more authoritative, voices. Spaces of immobility separated the past from the
present. Her will and memory had been weakened by fever. She no longer tried to keep her eyes
from staring long into one corner of the cart. The voices were worn. She knew nothing of the
man's attempts to escape the militia or of the approaching cold and snow. She would stay in this
condition, only occasionally shifting the weight and position of her body, for the next long day
and part of the night.
When the family would finally camp, under the trees next to the stream, the young
woman would finally begin to improve. Familiar shapes would return to her mind. She would no
longer miss the meaning of what the voices from the past were saying. But she would have a
deeper interest in voices from the present.
Colon, nor any of his family or friends, ever said the word "gypsy." The word, when they
used it, was "rom," or "the people." The sound of the word contained its full meaning for them.
Like them, it was direct, to the point. Like them, its only home was where it was, when it was.
But the word would never be able to describe their situation as a race. They had been driven,
from one village to another, hunted by the militia of the commune. They had been accused of
crimes they had not committed. Since no one would listen, no one except themselves would ever
know the extent of their innocence.
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They moved, camped, and survived. Colon, now alone before the campfire, sat trying to
assemble his thoughts. Sparks from the fire, caught by a late evening breeze, blew suddenly right
over his head. He felt the pain in the palms of his hands, along his upper arms. The day's work
had been hard, the trail steep, the cart resisting the force of his muscles. He could see that the
young woman, now asleep with the others, would recover. She was, already that afternoon,
showing the signs of her strength, of her will to survive. She had begun to ask questions about
who they were and how she had got there.
Food was short. The family had to be able to move fast. Colon knew that it would be best
to abandon the young woman here. Or leave her at the door of the convent in the next village.
The hands of the young woman, he had seen, were unmarked by heavy work. Her body was slim
and light. Had she been cast out by her family? Did she carry some disease? The fuel for the fire,
Colon could see, was gone. The air was calm in the trees. As the last flame died back into a
glowing coal, the light remaining was engulfed by the darkness. The moon would not rise for
three days. The Perseid meteor shower will peak. Colon shifted his weight forward, up from the
stone he had been sitting on. Above his head, cometary debris will enter the atmosphere.
Tomorrow, after questioning the young woman, he would decide what must be done with her.
Our scene will pass through the cloud of cometary refuse when its course intersects a comet's
course. Halley's comet sheds debris for the Orionids in October. Colon expected resistance. The
dialogue in his mind drew to a close, for now. A comet sheds material like a dandelion seed-puff,
swung round, the air resisting. The male ego, paint it the same color as his priesthood, expected
resistance, from the wind, the slope, the voices.
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Umberto's blood was infected. His body would shake, alternately, with fever and chills.
He was losing his hearing. His sleep was bad. Schistosomiasis, the blood fluke, was killing him.
But he was not alone. The fluke was also killing its other hosts, Umberto's neighbors and fellow
rice-farmers, the mollusks that lived in the water of the rice-fields. The lord who owned the
fields, his family and friends, had not been infected by the parasite.
The Continuator of the Chronicles of Nangis will note, under this year, the increase in the
price of rice.
In the lord's Milanese palazzo the candles burned late into the night. There was usually
enough light for dancing, for finding one's partner. One heard, from deep within the green shrubs
and trees surround the palazzo, low cries and quick releases of breath. They did not disturb the
robins, scanning the lawn for food. The gardeners had planted three colors of crocus that year,
yellow, blue and white. After they had died, the iris had come into bloom. They were, with
several new varieties, especially lovely. One liked to walk between them, arm and arm,
discussing what distinguished the varieties. Descriptive words, in particular, the right color
terms, were hard to find. Even harder to apply. Did the maroon fringe of this flower's petal go all
the way around? What should one say is the dominant color of this one? Cyan?
Suspended above the flowers, but also in them, the honey bee moves its wings. The flight
muscles in the thorax contract 200 times per second.
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"My Lady. I do not comprehend the idea of them."
"What"? Taking John by the arm, her breath warm, the wind perfumed by the scent of
roses through the open windows. The view through the windows is astonishing clear. "Have you
neglected your Aristotle"?
"My Lady"?
"The paradox of the good servant but bad master"? She holds him by the hand, increasing
the pressure. They stop before the last picture of the series. She has the soul of an actress, of
course. The line of light flows perpetually around her. Pins in the bodice scarcely attach the silk
when it flies. Heat at the core moves toward a cooler periphery. The design upon the cushions,
here, is that of cross-legged god.
"Fire, earth, wind, water. Do they not both serve us and rule us? Can we not, adroitly
using both sides of the picture, depict the paradox"?
She holds the picture up. On this side, a scene of a family before a fireplace. On the right,
the father sits, looking into the fire. The mother, on the left, sits sewing. Two children, lying on
their stomachs, heads cupped by their hands, look at the fire. From back of the family into the
flame of the fire itself the colors change from a muted slate-yellow into soft reds and yellows.
Soft yellowish-red shows the quiet sound of the flames. Grey covers the fall of solid fuel into
ashes at the bottom. Black, that most essential of colors, covers the innermost area of the firepit.
She rotates the picture. Around it, the world lives the same, sane, vigorous. On the other
side of the picture a forest fire burns, right to left, towards the house. Garish, jagged red edge
moves toward a green line. Behind the edge lies an area of grey-black pigment. Moving out
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before the flames a wind blows the dry grass and dead flowers toward the left corner. The house
shrinks into a darker shade of grey. Heavy reds, intensifying the sound of the flames, move
higher toward the top left corner.
"For the best effect," she says smiling up at him, "it should be hung where the wind can
reach it--to turn it like this."
Imagine the ecstasy and hubbub of the spirit.
Donnina woke to consciousness in the dark with the sound of an infant crying. She
recognized the cries of a baby girl. The cries, in the half-day, half-night air, seem to rise and fall.
Were they being muted, changed, by its mother's arms, shifting their holding positions? She
turned her head, one way and then the other, listening for more cries. Nothing. Over a ridge, now
only a smudge on the horizon, she could see some stars, still bright, motionless.
Donnina waited, testing her strength. She was, she knew, much better. The fever was
gone. She rose up left, over the end of the cart's tailgate, and began to climb down. Her legs felt
too free. Her clothes too loose. A sudden gust of wind lifted the collar on her shirt and blew her
hair back. The collar of the shirt of the male is vestigial, not functional, in origin. From the
woods back of the cart came the cadence of an axe, the quick sound of steel on wood. A passing
cloud of wood smoke, dissipating in the bright air, went by Donnina. She walked, the pungent
odor increasing, toward the source of the smoke.
In a clearing, under a tree, Colon's wife and daughters were making breakfast. Later, after
the stars had faded and light was starting to flood the clearing, they would break camp. Would
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they, Donnina thought, take her with them? Her governess had told her stories about the gypsies.
They were, she had emphasized, part of the descendants of Cain. God had outlawed them.
Marked them with short, stunted bodies, dark skin. Their language was only understood by the
Devil, from whom they received instructions on how to kidnap infants, poison wells, and burn
dry rice-fields. Donnina, approaching the movement at the morning fire, felt her anxiety increase.
A voice told her this would be the best time to run, escape from the camp. But where would she
go? Nowhere, except here, were there any evidence of human habitation. She walked on toward
the fire. Perhaps she could, by offering to help, soften their attitude toward her?
The gypsy campfire. A strange and amazing artifact. Note the composition of the
surrounding, containing, stones. Their colors tell us the story of their origins and their resistance
to high temperatures. This one, pinkish-orange, flecked with grey spots, can only be granite. Note
its edges, quartz, orthoclase here and microcline running along there. In this stone we can see
evidence of garnet. It occurs, we now know in two internally isomorphic series, either in
metamorphic or igneous rock. The colors most associated with the first are red, brown, and black.
With the later they are generally green or black. The stones of Colon's campfire are granite. The
embedded garnet, therefore, is predominately green, broken in irregular patterns by jagged black
spots.
The temperature of the stones will rise to over two-hundred degrees. They will hold that
temperature for over an hour. It is their nature to release the heat in waves out and upward. In the
waves' path will be water to boil (for tea), bread to heat and plover eggs to fry. The waves, much
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weakened, will reach their final destination in the bodies of the Colon family. Colon's wife notes,
holding her hands above the fire, turning her body, that the heat waves seem weaker this
morning. Her youngest daughter, wearing her coat, circles the fire, her arms out, her hands and
fingers sensing.
The stones at the center of the fire are hotter than those at the periphery. Yet it is the
stones at the periphery that regulate the heat of the fire. The daughter is shabby. The solitary
stone does not retain its heat. Her hands are bruised. The skin of her hands become hotter. Hotter
stones move outward from the core toward a cooler periphery. Like flotsam on the sea, the
streaks of dirt on her hands are never true, fixed to one place. Holes where the stones have been
release heat into the cooler air. Her eyes are dull and thick.
The shape of the stones have no intrinsic significance.
Donnina sat on a fallen trunk of a tree near the fire. She looked at the fire. A stick of
wood near the top of the flames was exploding, sending small, quick jets of blue flame out. The
stick rested on quiescent black coals lay near the bottom of the fire. The stick of wood was
crumbling into ashes, past minute flashes of red
"Can you now remember your name, child?" Colon's wife asked.Donnina, trying to
remember, was aware of an empty space somewhere inside her head. She waited, delaying her
reply. In this corner, the shepherd blows a ram's horn at the new moon. If Donnina waited long
enough, she thought, something would enter the space. A sound, a scene, an outside view of
herself. It is part of the ritual set by the tradition. A name, sounding in her mind, would call
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whatever she had been back to her.
Donnina leaned toward the fire. She could smell food cooking. From the woods back of
the cart she heard the thud of Colon's axe.
"I can't remember. I have tried."
"You have been ill, child. It will return. In time." Donnina strained her mind, looking
inward. The empty space was still there. A spark from the fire hit her leg. The odor of burning
cloth whiffed by. Her mind withdrew from its examination of the space. The stone she sat on felt
cold.
"Mama, how long is this lady going to stay?" Donnina turned in the direction of the voice.
The woman's daughter was looking at her, smearing, with one of her hands, the dirt that lay
around her mouth and along her cheeks. Smoke, grease and dirt had mixed her hair into a dull,
glossy, mass. The child's clothes smelled of stale urine and mold.
"Go find your father, Angelia." The mother, gestured toward the woods, and turned to
hand Donnina a plate of food. Dull orange beans, mixed with bits of meat, emerged from an oily
silver-yellowish, substance. Donnina felt a movement at the top of her stomach. Her throat
tightened.
The extraction of oil from olives is largely a mechanical process. As soon after harvesting
as possible, the fruit is crushed beneath stone rollers, then placed in press cloths which are
stacked one above the other somewhat like flat cheeses. The oil content of the olive ranges from
50% to 60% of the dry weight of pit-free pulp. Ripe olives, in order to make them palatable,
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require an immersion in a lye solution. Rising the temperature of olives to over a hundred
degrees, in a steam-bath, results in a complete sterilization of the fruit.
In the Iliad olive oil is prized for its value in the heroic toilet. "Wine within, oil without."
The oil, heavier than wine, weighs approximately 7.6 lb. per gallon.
Donnina set the plate down. The oily substance, she noticed, had now thickened into a
darker yellow.
GEOFFREY
Last week I went down to Essex. I didn't want to go. My work presses me here. The roads
in that area are abominable--the coach-fares exorbitant. I have heard that the county is dirty, its
towns full of pigs and beggars. But I have a friend there, Gorgonson de Vigny, a retired member
of the White Company. He is old and has begun to lose his eyesight. He lives with an old
woman, who sells candles, and her daughter. The daughter, a sleek, compact creature (I quote
Gorgonson last letter), had been engaged to show me the crypts of the Hawkwood family. And
Gorgonson promised to put me in the picture concerning the affair of Hawkwood's first wife and
family.
Hinckford was as I expected. Full of pigs' excrement and flies. It was raining and cold.
Beggars, thrusting rusty containers and pellagrous infants at me, surrounded me at the door of the
station house. I was forced to cover my nose with my handkerchief (infused with some brandy)
until I had arrived at the Hawkwood crypts. Gorgonson, who had promised to meet me there,
would be a little late--a fortuitous delay, it would turn out.
Her name, she told me, was Mertonne. Her mother, a French Huegenot, a widow. My
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hand was there to support hers as she lighted our candles. She teased me, laughing softly, "Don't
lose yours. Hold it like this." Showing me, the light illuminating her high, pointed, breasts. The
light seemed to dilate the pupils of her eyes. She smiled, lifting her perfumed skirts, down the
stone stairs, leading me. I kissed her neck. She turned, smiling, not minding. At the bottom of the
stairs, just as she was raising her candle higher, I moved closer, rubbing up against her buttocks.
My candle dropped, sputtering out in some water in a corner. My hands went around her hips, up
over the stomach, the breasts. As her candle fell, it illuminated the sheen of her legs. Her breath
was coming in soft pants; increasing as I passed my tongue, left:right, over her earlobe. Her hand
reached back, caressing, encircling, squeezing. The skin along her upper thighs moistened and
became warm, warmer.
We had, despite our age differences, become good friends. As we moved among the
coffins of the Hawkwoods, she told me about the multitude of her sorrows. Her mother was
dying of a cancer. She had not heard from her fiance, a soldier whose regiment had been called
away to fight against the French in Flanders. There was no food for her infant brother. I pressed a
coin in her hand. Her eyes, reflected in the light from the lanthorn I now held, showed her
gratitude. She read the inscriptions on the coffins, giving particular attention (after my
instructions) to birth and death dates. She held the lanthorn while I carefully wrote in my journal.
I explained my work, noting the difficulty of sorting out the genealogy of the Hawkwood family.
Why, she asked, did the Hawkwoods have such long lives? She, of course, knew nothing of my
treatise on the secrets of long life. I started, then stopped, an answer to her question, an
explanation of the puzzle. The sudden movement of a rat frightened her into taking my hand. I
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raised the lanthorn, throwing its light in front of us, telling her there was nothing to be afraid of.
We sat on the coffin of Sir John's grand-uncle (dead of wounds from an obscure battle around
Antwerp, age 53). She leaned her head against my shoulder. The light from the lanthorn blurred.
My soul filled with pity for her misfortunes. Vespers was ringing in the high tower as we climbed
together the stairs; up to the nave where we found Gorgonson waiting, talking fervently with an
old verger.
War continues what politicians begin. Mars, god of war, is one of the twelve Olympians.
In the Trecento, the major politicians were the Pope, The Anti-Pope, and rulers of cities like
Milan, Florence and Pisa. Bernarbo Visconti, Duke of Milan, was an example of such a ruler.
Jupiter and Juno, Mars' parents, hate him for his aggressive and brutal nature. The goal of each
party was to persuade the other to abandon his "policy." (We ignore, for the moment, where the
respective "policies" came from, how they developed, and the like.) The exception is Venus, who
is excessively in love with Mars. End and means to the end lay within each policy. What was to
be gained with the implementation of the policy and how it was to be gained. Mars' armor
consists of helmet and shield. But he is seldom in full panoply.
At first, all parties tried to "talk" the other into abandoning his policy. Representatives
met and argued with each other, letters were exchanged and threats went back and forth. In the
later tradition of this school, Mars will be accompanied by a wolf, an animal which has an
aggressive nature. For the Pope and Anti-Pope, the goal of their policies was essentially the
same. How Mars and Venus were discovered making love (under Vulcan's net) is told in Homer.
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Establish the absolute rule of the church, not only in Christian countries, but also in nonChristian lands, especially those held by Islam. The Pope and the Anti-Pope differed, however,
on the means needed to reach their goal.
Amoretti make playthings and toys of Mars' weapons. Talking, however, did not succeed.
None the parties gave up his policy. Since they did not have the means to go back to the pretalking stage, it was clear that they could only do one thing, prepare for war. They formulated
strategies.
They recruited troops. They confiscated food from farmers; they accumulated supplies.
Most of all, they made plans. The first plans were simple. Attack the enemy while he was still
unprepared. The Anti-Pope attacked first. A legate of the Pope, Silvio Talese, together with his
entourage, was ambushed at the Milliaponte, a small town on the Adda north of Milan. Talese
was killed. Survivors, one of whom was later to write a treatise on strategies, described the attack
as being well planned and executed. Special note was made of the camouflage clothing used by
the troops of the Anti-Pope. The clothing was colored, in rounded shapes, in high glossy greens
set off from muted browns.
The Pope ordered his army north. We see them here, resting on their way. Of course, they
had more supply-wagons and cavalry than those that appear here. But these few establish our
thesis. The cavalry, composed of Roman noblemen and mercenaries, was led by the Duke of
Romagna. The Pope knew that he could depend on it to fight well. Notice the position of the
wagons. The captain's doublet, splattered with mud, is red. He leans in to talk to the man driving
the wagon. The infantry, more than twice the size of the cavalry, was a matter of concern to His
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Holiness. The heads of the horses are down, the movement of their tails arrested along the upper
legs. The troops had been conscripted from the sobborghi of Rome and Naples. They were
disorderly and difficult to discipline. The view is from above, elements of the scene pass the
viewer from right to left. The troops deserted camp. Many, speaking only the dialect of the
slums, did not understand the language of their officers. At the battle of Cima di Ponte, the first
of what was later to become a pattern, more than a third of the units run away or failed to fight.
In the Trojan War Minerva and Mars meet on the plains of Ilium. The place where the
troops rest is in a meadow close to some trees and a stream. Minerva stands victorious over
Mars. Dust from their recent battle floats that way. Lances of the men, butts grounded, are
stacked. The men sit behind them, near the trees. Minerva's arms stand for wisdom, a minister of
peace. Even the birds, a raptor and a swift, rest. Perhaps the duration of the rest can be inferred
from the small column of smoke rising from the left.
Strategy is the bridge between policy and tactics. When the war became a matter of
tactics, strategy is forgotten, not remembered. Poetry can only represent absence. Paintings
represent the presence of absence. The tactical factor, all parties realized, is constant: one
horseman against another, one infantryman against another. Under the trees, the grass is
motionless. A cloud hangs from the sky like a picture from a wall. Knowing the quality and use
of weapons, and the training of the soldier, is the best way to understand the tactical element.
_______
Policy, strategy and tactics. These then are the elements of war you need to know in order
to know, and understand, the world of John and his companions. We have, in what you have just
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read, listed them "top-down." From the most general to the most specific. Silence in the scene of
rest is light green upon blue. But you should realize that this order is arbitrary. Upon Minerva's
goatskin cloak a figure of the head of Medusa appears. One could also, without loss of essential
information, proceed "bottom-up." Start with tactics and move on through strategy to policy. The
music of the small stream is, presumably, quite inobstrusive. The heads of the seated troops are
down, still. What one should not attempt to do, however, is follow a "middle-out" procedure.
Start with strategy and move, say, first up to policy then on to tactics--or vice versa. Caesar, in
War Commentaries, omits descriptions of the resting periods of the troops.
Policy was set by those who hired John. Strategy and tactics were the concerns of John
and his lieutenants. To members of the White Company the only concern was tactics. How did
they understand them? (Note that only "tactics," of the three essential terms, is written in the
plural form.)
Let us examine the case of one member of the White Company. His name is Michael. He
is twenty-one years old. Unmarried. He is the son of a land-less farm laborer from York,
England. Like many members of the White Company, Michael fought in France with the
Company before it moved into Italy in the early 1360's. He intends to make the Company, and its
hazardous work, his life.
Michael is a member of a unit within the White Company called a "free-lance," men who
are free to sell their services to whoever will pay for them. A lance was composed, typically, of
three men, who fought both on foot and horseback. For fighting on foot, it was the custom for
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one man to hold the horses back of the line while the other two engaged in combat. The safety of
the horses was deemed as high a priority as that of the men. The task of holding the horses
rotated among the men of the lance.
Michael is proficient in the dagger, sword and the long lance.
The length of the lance immediately attracts our attention. It is well over ten feet long.
The point is steel, triangular in shape. A broken lance, recall, is a symbol of St George. The staff
is made of ash which has been impregnated with a mixture of linseed oil and tar. Notice in this
picture that George's lance lies already broken on the ground, one piece piercing the dragon's
neck. (Lances made of bamboo are known to be stronger and easier to handle. But the material
was not available during the Company's stay in Italy.) In the attack mode, Michael holds its butt
against the cotton padded wambais. The princess, to the left of the saint, is either praying for
George's victory over the monster (who represents evil) or is fleeing the scene. Perhaps a third
reason for her position will be discovered later. Michael allows the bulk of the lance's weight to
be carried by a leather thong suspended from the horn of the saddle. Remains of previous victims
of the dragon are strewn about the courtyard. In the parade mode, Michael elevates the lance with
its butt resting in a leather bucket attached to a stirrup. Since Michael is right-handed, he mounts
the horse from the left side. The leather bucket, attached to the right-hand stirrup, thus constitutes
no obstacle to either mounting or dismounting.
Spectators watch the struggle between St George and the dragon from the city walls. The
smell of dragon blood, carried by a convection current from the dragon's fire, is like that of ripe
mushrooms. That yellow halo in the center, resembling that of a candle, has its source in the
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dragon's flame.
The length of Michael's lance suggests its resemblance to the weapon mentioned in a
treatise on tactics prepared for Henry II in 1181: "all burgesses and the whole community of
freemen shall have a wambais, a chaplet of iron and a lance...it shall be the duty of the lancemen, armed complet, theyr horses likewise barded, to give the first charge, to discover the
squadrons or battalions of pikes. Lightly armed skyrmidgers may retire to the lances for safety."
The dragon's fire, just before death, becomes more intense. The spectators move back, attempting
to keep their body temperature below lethal limits. In most humans, core and surface temperature
tolerances differ.
S
Contact with a surface temperature of more than 140° is not tolerable.
Montecucculi characterizes the lance as the "queen of battle." From his description it is
clear that its reputation came from its employment as a "first shock" weapon. While Michael
would not necessarily disagree with this, he knows that the lance is not well adapted to swift
parries in the melee. Along the upper walls of the city the temperature is slightly cooler than that
at lower levels. A slight breeze removes the dragon's heat from the skin and upper body of the
princess. For a fight in the melee, Michael uses his sword and dagger. He realizes that carrying
these weapons into battle means more weight for his horse.
The viewer steps back from the picture, cupping his head with a hand, supporting the
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elbow with the other hand. At what point does the dragon's heat become lethal to the monster
himself? The spectators, she notices, continue to move back.
The design of Michael's sword is the result of the decision for each member of the White
Company to have, in addition to the lance, a cutting and slashing weapon. Its general form recalls
the schlager. Cutting power has been achieved without sacrificing other qualities. The edge is
curved, the object being, in delivering the blow, to present an oblique and therefore acute-angle
section of the blade to the adversary--especially his head and upper body. The sharpness of the
edge is finer than could be put on the blade in its direct transverse action. The setting of the
blade, as regards its handle is similarly ordered with a view to this action. The handle "leads
forward." On Michael's sword there is no texturing of either the steel of the handle or blade.The
dragon's heat increases, increasing the surface temperature of the stones of the courtyard. The
saint, ignoring the glare, moves closer, raising his sword. Courtyard topography exacerbates the
spectators' situation. Heat, radiating from the stones and intersecting the rays of the sun, elevates
the temperature of the walls. The saint, turning in the saddle, brings the heavy sword down.
In the melee, where excitement runs high, the natural tendency of all men is to cut and
run. This tendency, in the White Company, has been overcome by instilling in the men
confidence in their use of the sword.
S
Dragons avoid their own heat-death by doing a thermoregulatory dance. It consists of
raising the opposite fore and hind legs, leaving the tail and remaining appendages as body
supports.
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When sufficiently cooled, the elevated legs replace those on the surface, which then shoot
skyward. So the thermoregulatory dance of the dragon continues, with legs and appendages rising
and falling in a jerky, puppet-like rhythm.
The dance is no defense against the sword of the saint.
The steel blade of Michael's sword contains 0.3% of carbon. Metal impurities, such as
sulphur and phosphorus, have been reduced through gasification. The unequal distribution of
ferro-alloys has been corrected by repeated rollings. The metal was hardened by quenching in
cold water, followed by a bath of iced brine, and a final cooling in a burial of lime.
The grains of the metal have irregular boundaries. But the ultimate atoms are in an
orderly geometric arrangement of rows and ranks. If one would to subdivide the space occupied
by each atom into a space-lattice of cubes regularly placed on top and to both sides of each other,
the atoms would be located at the corner of each of these cubes and each cube will have one atom
at its center.
Hawkwood's shoulders were on a level with the heads of the enemy. His sword, rose and
fell, flashing obliquely in the early morning sun. He pushed forward, killing one enemy at the
periphery of the melee, then another further in, going on toward the center. He did not hear all the
sounds of battle, the moans of men dying, their panic breathings. He pushed on, swinging the
great sword, closing toward the center. It got hotter, tighter. He stopped himself from falling,
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pulling his right leg up and away from an arm and head lying entangled in a low shrub. The battle
went past a grove of trees and starting down a slope. The weight on Hawkwood's legs decreased
and he felt lighter along the back and upper arms. He pulled the dagger suddenly up and across.
Grease and blood of a man's stomach warmed his hand. The head of the man's comrade,
liquefying the inside of his helmet, fell right out of the periphery of Hawkwood's sight.
Hawkwood's shoulders were above the heads of the other warriors and Michael was
following them into the melee. The trunk of a tree grazed his shoulder as he ran forward. His
body heat increased. He felt good. He was now part of the melee. It was moving closer to the
stream. On the other bank, upslope toward the morning sun, Michael could see the yellow and
black flag of the Anti-Pope. He could not see the slight backward motion of the flag-bearer, the
knuckles of his fingers going pale on the staff of the flag. He heard Hawkwood's battle cry. He
tried to call his comrades forward. But they heard only the usual sounds of battle.
Something had killed one of Michael's comrades. He ran past his body, lying wedged in
the fork of a tree. The man's mouth open, the eyes staring upward. Someone had removed his
mail. Or had he, because of the heat, abandoned it? Michael could see clotted blood on his upper
chest and neck. Michael's speed continued to increase.
S
In the coagulation of blood, red and white corpuscles and blood platelets are caught in a
network of fibrils. The fibrils consist of fibrin which forms whenever there is a wound or break
in the skin. When blood is shed, thromboplastin is released from the injured tissues and the
platelets. This substance, aided by calcium ions in the blood, converts prothrombin to thrombin;
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fibrinogen is then activated by the thrombin, forming fibrin.
Blood coagulates normally in four minutes.
At the stream the melee was slowing in a tangle of dead and dying men. Michael was hit
by a rider-less horse. He stumbled past a fallen tree. The bank of the stream seemed to tilt as if it
was about to fall on him. The air was heavier. He passed through pockets of air carrying the
smell of blood and urine. His vision cleared. His body, the sword arm leading, came up, higher.
The sound of battle came back. He could now see, his balance restored, that Hawkwood had
fought through the melee to the slope beyond. Michael ran forward, his sword rising. Before the
enemy tightened its line beyond the stream, he would be with Hawkwood. The enemy around the
flag-bearer would understand what it meant to fight the White Company.
The Company itself carries two flags. One is a figure on a charging horse holding his
sword upright. The other is of the figure of two knights running in opposite directions. We may
say these resemble the emblems of war and peace which were attached to the yoke of Darius's
chariot in ancient times.
The sand at the bottom of the stream pulled at Michael's boots. He lowered his center of
gravity, trying to get more traction. The surface of the sand became harder. Sand, a few yards
from the bank, was being replaced by gravel. Michael could see a way up, over the bank. He was
following the light coming between an opening between two low shrubs. Suddenly, he felt heavy.
A force pulled at his head. He tried to force it back up. It fell forward again as his arms dropped.
Inside his head an incoherent sound started up. He lost his sense of smell. He knew that his body
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was falling forward. He did not know why his arms would not come up to break his fall. His face
hit the edge of the bank first.
That the fall broke Michael's neck does not count in any significant way with our
understanding the scene.
Michael's comrade, approaching from the rear, did not see the object that killed Michael.
Had he stopped for a closer look (rolling Michael's body over) he would have noticed the unusual
size and shape of his wound. But he was frightened and in a hurry to reach Hawkwood now in a
hard fight around the flag-bearer.
What had killed Michael? Was it the thrust of a sword or some other weapon? The sword
was, of course, the usual weapon of death. But the wound itself bears some of the marks of a
gunshot, one fired at close range. Note that the aperture of entry is much smaller than that of exit.
The skin around the aperture of entry has been blackened by a substance not unlike carbon. The
missile entered the head through the frontal bone, directly above the ali-sphenoid position, and
exited near the lamedoidal suture at the back. The supra-occipital bone also shows considerable
damage. The vertical extent of the exit wound is 1.1 inches, the horizontal extent somewhat
larger, 1.3. The angle of descent of the missile through the head would then appear to be
somewhere between 110 to 120 degrees. This further suggests that the shot from fired from the
bank at an elevation slightly above Michael's upper body.
Had Michael survived the wound he would have most certainly would have died later
from infection or gaseous gangrene.
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The caliber and velocity of the shot is impossible to determine. From the size of the exit
wound, however, it is reasonable to suppose that the metal of the shot was quite soft. The gun,
doubtless, was a hackbut with the standard matchlock firing mechanism.
One notes, beginning about this time, the increased mortality of flag-bearers.
Persons credited with inventing gunpowder include Roger Bacon and Berthold Schwarz,
the alchemist-monk. Bacon's original formula for gunpowder, 41.2% of saltpeter, 29.4% each of
carbon and sulphur has been adjusted, for better effects, to 74.64% (saltpeter), 13.51% (carbon)
and 11.85% (sulphur).
The mixing liquid of the ingredients, the urine of the wine-drinker, is still preferred.
The interior of the window, splayed by jambs, is wider than the exterior. The whole is
mullioned and transomed with a pale-rose substance. The arch-head of the window suggests a
north-eastern Mediterranean origin. Perhaps Trapani. Roundels, of which much use have been
made, highlight the diamond-shaped panes of the window. Bronze has been used in the frame.
The colors of the panes, blue, red and pale-yellow, are created by the different velocities of light
through the glass. The position of the sun further influences the intensity of each color. But the
sermons in color do not stop with night and the diminution of light.
Geraniums bloom along the interior window-sill.
The woman sits in the window-seat looking out. The man, holding a lantern, leans in. He
is dressed as a soldier. He leans further in, whispering. The reflection of the window appears in
the eyes of the woman. The leaf of a lemon-rose geranium plant, disturbed by her breath, moves
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out and back. (Crush the leaf of the pelargonium plant and a fragrant scent is released.) The man
raises the lantern. The flame of the candle lies open to the wind through the perforated metal of
the lantern. The woman's head turns up and around. Her breasts make contact with the jamb. Her
hands start to come up from her lap. The man smiles. The candle flame moves within the lantern.
Its light, through the window, falls at a 45 degree angle on a mirror back of the woman.
The curve of the woman's breasts and upper body appears in the mirror. A sudden gust of wind
extinguishes the candle's flame. The head of the man withdraws from the window. The woman,
rising, turns back toward the center of the room. The door from the street is on her left.
Donnina picked the child up and started to carry her up toward the light at the top of the
hill. The body of the child shook. The skin of her cheek was hot against Donnina's arm.
Donnina's shawl wrapped the body of the child. They went higher. The top was a ridge through
the trees. Morning light was spreading over the ridge and down the slope.
Donnina knew that the efficacy of the herbs that she had given the child would be
improved by sunlight and the air along the ridge above.
GEOFFREY
I must tell you about a picnic I had with Donnina and John. It was only one of many, but
typical of the practice of the times. We departed early from the castello, the wheels of the
carriage sparkling in the morning sun (the spokes were gilded). The coachman, I recall, wore a
rather odd jlooking hat, made of black velvet, its brim turned up perpendicular and with a black
ostrich feature stuck in the crown. Two black ribbons of silk attached to the back of the hat
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fluttered in the air. I was impressed by how well the hat went with his black-frogged coat. Was
this the livery of some of some ancient branch of the Visconti family? Or was it, perhaps, a new
design, one soon to be adopted by the household and staff? (I must, within the week, make
further inquiries.)
We settled on a grassy bank under cottonwood trees just at the bend of the Adda. While
the horses swished their tails and munched on grass in the shade nearby, we ate and drank and
watched a heron gliding through the branches of the trees to settle among the rushes of a
midstream island. We were, I now realize, at the edge of a large forest. It was full of birdsong.
Our talk languished in late afternoon. We leaned back on our elbows and watched three deer,
with large antlers, spring from the rushes along the river's edge. As the sun was setting, we drove
back to the castello, alongside fields of wheat, where swifts dove and swerved. We could hear
jangling bells and the bleating of sheep, their forms glowing in clouds of golden dust. The
shepherds were driving their flocks home to the village, below the grounds of the great castello.
Donnina herself showed me to my room. I am now looking at the sketches I made of it
and its furnishing. They are, perhaps, not the best, but they do remind me of the overall quality of
the place.
S
Perhaps merenda all'aperto or fare una scampagnata are fair approximations of the word
"picnic." Though we must acknowledge that the Italian has a liveliness not present in the English
term for this most delightful of diversions.
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Desire ran high in the maids of the Duke's household. Their breasts ached to be pressed-their lips touched--their legs parted--warm flesh moisting. The maids held each other around the
waist--shoulder--neck--looking out of upper story windows. The young hard flesh of the White
Company--iron hooves sounding high on the stone drive--pennants flying--sudden flashes of light
reflecting from armor--going out beyond the low hills. The maids saw them come suddenly
around a corner, through the trees, up over the banks of the silver flashing Adda. They spurred
their great chargers forward. Lances upright, their stocks held deep in stirrup pockets. They held
their eyes forward, memory driving honor and will.
The sound of their boots resounded in the great hall, going along the black and white
marbled floor. Their swords brushed the wall tapestry. The maids watched them, whispering
together, laugh-giggling into each other's hair. They pressed their bodies into each other. Time
was passing beyond their desire. The leaves fell without their noticing. The snow came and left.
Grace left, Barbara, right. Grace feels the pulse of Barbara, slides her hand over the curve
of her hip. A slow movement as the leg shifts forward. The hand comes out to touch the cool
window sill. Note the sudden up-rush of motes in the light. Barbara's head rests on Grace's
shoulder. Her mouth moistens and she inhales rose-scented air. Pupils widen, dilating. Barbara's
body turns, the starched dress rustles. Toes start to tingle. The skin crawls towards the end of
things--finger-tips, an earlobe, lips.
The nipples of the viewer tighten, redden, move up. The clitoris leans forward, inclining
upward. The small hill-like organ, relinquishing strict homoiothermy, fluctuates. Images of
penetration. The other viewer, detects an auditory event. The finger, pressing on the carotid
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pulse, can properly identify the rate of respiration. The viewer's tongue slides up, interrupting the
ejection sound. Openings snap. Tinnitus along the slope. She moves along, experiencing other
details.
The sudden beat of hooves, of bloody intention and dragon desire, interrupts their moves.
GEOFFREY
Reader! Do you not sometimes see yourself like the water ouzel. Your head bobbing up
and down, your head swivelling right and left. You attribute it to your active disposition?
_______
Hawkwood concealed a white pawn in the right hand, a black one in the left. His
opponent touched the left hand. The hand opened.
_______
The Pope left Todi on December 13. The country south of Todi, as far as Acquasparta,
(where the Pope was met by great throngs carrying olive branches) was covered with larch trees..
The country was not without charm. A woman, imploring the Pope to avenge the murder of her
brother, beat her breast and tore at her cheeks. The Pope, after hearing the woman's plea, turned
the matter over to the Priors of Todi. It was thought that some families of importance were
involved in the matter.
_______
The chessplayers looked, paused, and began. Black P to K4, White following suit. olive
branches) was not without charm. Black KKt-KB3, White replying, QKt-QB3. When Black
assumed, taking en passant, KB-QB4, Hawkwood advanced KB-QB4. The middle game was
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acquired practically. Ingenuity had full scope. White KKt-KB3, first encountering P-QB3,
changed to KKt-KB3. involved in the matter. Black Q4,en prise, finds mate with White's KBQKts.
Hawkwood leaned back, looking at the lady. She frowned, pulling at a her robe. "Learn to
fight more in the neighborhood of the king, my lady." Hawkwood rose, turning, his words
coming back. "Give your king a more active role."
_______
The Pope then came, over mountains white with snow, to the town of San Gemini. After
leaving San Gemini the Pope was received by the people of Terni with enthusiasm and all the
splendor the city could afford.
_______
"Two knights, without their pawns, are valueless." She smiled, her creativity increasing.
But she knew that standard examples do not meet all cases.
Hawkwood was outside, mounted, looking down at her. He was holding the great horse
from turning.
There is no evidence that Margaret of Antioch, patroness of women in childbirth, is
anything but a romance. Donnina knew about difficult labors. About the woman's womb too
weak to expel the child, her strength eroded by work and anxiety. The prefect of Antioch wants
to marry her, but she refuses him. Donnina had heard the cries of the women in delivery. She had
listened to the midwife discussing the hazards of breech birth, bleeding, the failure of the womb
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to expel the after-birth. Margaret's attribute is a dragon. She tramples it under her feet, or she
leads it by a cord or girdle, or she may rise out of its belly. Donnina understood why the voice of
the midwife would drop whenever she noticed the first signs of puerperal fever in her patient. It
was she that had informed Donnina that her cousin, Janella, had died from the fever. Margaret
holds the martyr's palm and a cross. A chaplet of pearls alludes to her name.
S
The infecting organisms are the pus-producing cocci, of which the streptococcus
pyogenes is the most common and its haemolytic forms the most serious. In portraits of the
Virgin, Margaret often accompanies Catherine of Alexandria. Other pyogenic cocci, for example
staphylococcus, gonococcus, pneumococcus, sometimes occur. Margaret is distinguished from
Martha, who also is depicted with a dragon, by the aspergillum.
Infection may either be exogenous, introduced from without by those attending the
woman, or autogenous, due to further spread of organisms already present in the patient's birth
canal or from septic foci elsewhere in her body.
Donnina was determined that this woman would not catch the fever. That she would give
birth to a healthy child. Every morning she gave the woman a bath. The woman's clothes, and her
own, she boiled over an open fire. She massaged the woman's abdomen and made her walk,
twice a day in good weather, to the edge of the woods and back. Coloris always demands a
certain distance, since its effect blurs as the viewer approaches it. Donnina spread the woman's
bedding out for airing and cooked her meals. A painting in which drawing dominates enforces a
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proximity that borders on contact. She washed and dried the woman's hair. She used her own
petticoats as a drying material. The material, seen from too far a distance, resembles the stone of
an ancient sculpture.
Donnina's hands were always clean before she began her work. Deus pictor.
Donnina sat next to the woman's bed. Donnina's memory had returned. She could again
hear the voices of her family and those of the servants of the castello. From what had been only
nebulous forms had now come the figures of familiar objects. The great trees of the estate, the
river, the long driveway to the south. Yesterday, she had sung to the woman the songs she had
learned from her mother and her governess. Later, she would tell the woman stories, some true,
some mythic, about the Viscontis.
She was now, as the candle burned lower, reciting to her lines from the Commedia. The
woman smiled, turned her head right, and fell asleep.
The woman's husband, who had left that morning on some un-announced errand, had not
returned. Here the viewers must remain at a distance if they do not want to be dazzled by the
vividness of the colors.
GEOFFREY
We know that John Hawkwood was born, the second son of Gilbert de Hawkwood, in
Hinckford, Essex, Sunday, the 11 of July 1331. His father, from an ancient landed family of the
county, was then in reduced circumstances, practicing the trade of a tanner. The misfortunes of
John's father, one of which was the forfeiture of half of his estate to the crown and half to the
Papacy, started with his support of the religious reformer, Simon de Hacud (or Haggug). Gilbert
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supported the Simonian thesis (later found heretical) that the soul of the individual had its being
in a hierarchy of "Supersouls.". The thesis was, on the whole, logical and supported with
impeccable, largely scriptural, evidence and quotation. (The example of the early saints,
especially Geoffrey of Avignon, was a later addition to the evidence.)
But the thesis soon foundered on the counter-evidence and logic of what later came to be
called "the principle of least imageability"--traceable, in part, to the writings of the minor
Aristotelian, Eugenio di Mantova (1273-1315). For it could not be denied, nor refuted by any
known argument, that the soul was precisely that, an entity of "least imageability." From which it
followed that the body was its contrary, the entity of "maximal imageability." Gilbert, who was
not a graduate of either university, overlooked this basic distinction. (Or was, perhaps, too stupid
to infer it from the treatises available in any decent library.) Perhaps Simon himself was not
completely aware of it. His origins in North Yorkshire could well have misled him. Local
scholars there, as is well known today, would not have known about St. Anselmo's Proof-certainly not the final version of it.
I myself was having some difficulty with Proposition fifteen of the Proof as late as the
summer of 1391. Somewhere in this room lies the copy of a letter I wrote to Petrarch, an Italian
poet of my acquaintance, about Simon's misinterpretation of the Proof. In the letter, I recall, I
propose a simpler, certainly a more elegant, reduction of Proposition fifteen to Propositions
eleven and thirteen.
(I dismiss entirely the recent work on Proposition fifteen of the theological faculty at the
Sorbonne. Capita vulgi philosophancium Parisius.)
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You, reader, will have an opportunity for a perusal of the full text at some later, more
appropriate, place.
A door opens behind me. She is bringing wine and bread. I pause.
"Do you know, Child, the story of the lion and the brides"?
"No, Master. I cannot read. And I live a simple, secluded, life."
"In the old days the chastity of women was much regarded, and not only by fathers and
husbands. The clergy, politicians, kings and emperors were also concerned about the matter."
"Is it not so today, Master"?
"Perhaps, but not to the same degree, Child. Our concerns are of a different order. The
belief was then that no lion would ever harm a true virgin."
"I have been told, Master, that virgins commonly receive much courtesy from beasts like
the unicorn."
"In those days it was the custom for every parish to keep a he-lion to test the chastity of
its brides. Before her wedding day, the bride was required to spend twenty-four hours inside the
lion's cage."
"Was the lion fed beforehand, Master"?
"No, Child, the beast lived only upon the flesh of the young women. The lion was denied
food for a three day period before the testing of each bride."
"I can plainly see the falsity of the premise upon which the custom was based, Master."
"Indeed"?
"If the lion must eat flesh to determine the chastity of the bride, then no virgin can
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become a bride."
I sit silent.
"For either the groom would later refuse the proven virgin as his bride or there will be no
one for him to marry."
"In the first case, the teeth and the claws of the lion will have marred the beauty of the
man's bride. In the other, she will have been eaten."
Antonio Missaglia, Armaiuolo di Milano, and his apprentices were finishing the armor
garniture. The reinforcing plates had been installed. Polishing was proceeding in one corner of
the room on the greaves, cuirass and horse barde. In another, a gilder was preparing the amalgam
of gold and mercury for the barde. The men were silent. The din of their hammers on metal
made it impossible to talk. The room was hot and smoky.
Wind whipped snow around the corner of the armory. Since the water had frozen in the
stream, there was no power for the tilthammer or water-driven polishers. Fear of not keeping the
schedule and the need to maintain the quality of the product drove their work Time was short.
The Anti-pope was expecting his garniture before the end of the week. His representatives were
here, waiting. The men would work through the night.
The contract called for an etched sallet. The etcher covers the metal with a coating of
acid-resistant varnish. He then scratches the design with an etching needle. We watch him as he
prepares to dip the plate into acid. Note how the acid eats into the uncovered areas of the metal.
He removes the sallet from the acid-bath and goes to wash away the varnish. He then follows this
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with a blackening mixture for the etched design.
Antonio's representative in Geneva (a distant relation) has taken measurements, sur le
corps de mondit seigner, some months earlier.
_______
The Pope passed the night in the Minorite convent just outside the walls of Stroncone.
The town is independent, subject only to the Pope whose service is freedom. When the Pope left
Stroncone he crossed a number of hills difficult because of the rough cliffs. He then descended
into a valley enclosed on the left by Monte Severo and on the right by Monte Luna.
The blackening mixture for the design of the sallet is composed of lamp black and oil.
The sallet is heated until the oil evaporates. The design seems to be one prepared for the Antipope by the younger Burgkmaier.
Three gilders are at work gilding the horse barde. One, a journeyman, applies the
amalgam of gold and mercury to the armor. The second, two years into his apprenticeship, hands
the pieces of armor to the boy at the fire. The boy is a week into his apprenticeship.
From Monte Severo a never-failing stream flows through the valley. From here the stream
flows in two directions, into the Nera to the south and another river, further east, after a long
descent. Some say this is the Imele river which finally curves to the right and west and empties
into the Tiber near Magliano, the chief town of the legendary Sabines.
GEOFFREY
This geography, in a document I received last week from an official of the Curia, is
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confusing. There are three streams in this area bearing the name Aia. One empties into the Nera
near Narni (as described above), another into the Tiber near Magliano. A third, Torrente Aia,
flows into the Tiber further south above Stimigliano.
_______
Then over rough mountains already white with snow the Pope came to the town of San
Gemini situated on a high hill. The next day he departed for Terni.
_______
Antonio pays his journeymen three florins a year. He provides only food, shelter, and
some clothing, to his apprentices. An apprenticeship with Antonio lasts seven years.
The boy apprentice rotates the pieces of armor over the fire. Fumes from the evaporating
mercury surround his head and upper body. He watches as the gold of the amalgam adheres to the
metal. He waits until all the mercury evaporates.
S
Mercury vaporizes at 360°. Its volatility is generally increased by the presence of
impurities. Its vapors are very toxic. The symptoms are usually intense gastro-intestinal
inflammation, vomiting, diarrhea and mental and physical collapse.
Treatment for mercury poisoning is very difficult and seldom effective.
The Anti-pope wears the armor only on parade. The armor is thicker on the left side in
case the man chooses to wear it in a joust. The whole weighs approximately forty-seven pounds.
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The weight of the horse armor is somewhat less. The horse is reckoned the strongest in the Antipope's stables.
Sunlight, broken by the shadows of passing clouds, flows across the gilded surface of the
metal. A bluish sheen, interrupted by flashes of gold, runs along the man's shoulders and down
his back.
The Anti-Pope's standard on parade is black and white. It signifies his conviction that
justice is never grey.
The woman smiled at the child in her arms and looked up at Donnina. Through the
opening at the front of the cart Donnina could see Colon and beyond him a flat horizon of land
and sky. They were, she knew, out of the mountains, into a low, tree-less country. The air was
calm and the cart no longer shook from the stony roads of the high country.
Donnina, leaning back against a strut holding the cloth covering of the cart, was telling
Colon's wife and daughter a story about ownership and justice.
In a small village high in a valley in the mountains lived a young girl. Her
name was Helena and her father was a cripple. In the summer, he sold vegetables from his
cart and in the winter he would deliver wood to the richest man in the village. The
blacksmith once asked him to bring him a load of charcoal. But the father refused, saying
that the material would put too much weight on the axle of the cart. From that day, the
father and blacksmith were enemies.
The name of the mare that pulled the father's cart was Giumenta. Helena's
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father had a bad temper and often wanted to beat Giumenta for going too slow. But
Giumenta had a friend in Helena who would not permit it. Helena fed Giumenta and
curried her. One day, while Helena's father lay ill and could not work, Giumenta gave
birth to a small white foal. Helena decided to call the foal Puledra.
Donnina stopped. The woman, the child motionless in her arms, was being lulled to sleep
by the movement of the cart. Outside, the air thickened with the approach of a storm. Inside, next
to Donnina, looking up, the daughter waited for Donnina to continue.
One day Helena could not find Puledra. Helena looked for her in the houses
below their little farm. For two days she looked. The foal was gone. Who would pull the
father's cart when Puledra's mother was dead? Helena continued to look. The weather
turned cold and snow appeared on the tops of the mountains beyond the farm. Helena's
father grew sullen. More and more he felt the need to beat Puledra's mother for pulling his
cart too slowly.
One Sunday morning, passing the window of a neighbor's barn, Helena saw
the foal tied to a stall inside. The neighbor, who was miserly in his ways, claimed Puledra
for his own. He had found her under his haystack. The magistrate agreed. The neighbor,
since he owned the haystack, owned the foal. Helena told her friends and neighbors that
the foal was her father's. But they asked, where is your proof? If the foal was found under
the haystack, then it must have given birth to the foal. Helena's father grew more sullen
and quiet.
Donnina paused, looking at the girl. The child reminded her as she remembered herself
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long ago. In the great room, listening to her father telling of his days in Spain. The war against
the Moors.
The child was thinking, her eyes fixed on Donnina, her mind was clear. She understood
the logic of the story. But she could not predict its ending, the entanglements of adult ownership.
One day the king came to the village. He sat with his
judges in the middle
of the piazza listening to the complaints of the villagers. The day was cold and citizens with
nothing to ask the king stayed at home or gawked from windows at the king.
Helena and the neighbor who owned the haystack were last to see the king.
Helena saw that he was tired.
The neighbor explained to the king the relationship of the foal to the haystack he
owned. The king nodded. He then asked Helena why her parents were not present. Helena
said that her mother was dead and that her father was a cripple. The king nodded again.
Would she then explain why she claimed the foal as her father's
Helena told the king about the sea. People who live on the shores of the sea
take fish from it. Yet they do not say that the sea gives birth to the fish. The people see
ships sail in from the sea. Yet they do not say that the sea
owns the ships. People look at the sand along the sea and say that it defines the edge of the
sea. But they do not say that the sea is the mother of the sand.
The king, who was born in a village by the sea, nodded and ordered the
haystack owner to return the foal to Helena's father.
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"This country is new to us. But we must pass through it in order to reach The Land of No
Evil." Colon sat looking into the fire. Noises came to Donnina beyond the circle of light created
by the campfire. As the darkness thickens, the noises would increase and seem to move closer to
the periphery of the light.
"Land of No Evil"?
"It's east of here, beyond this valley and the next range of mountains. I have seen it on a
map," Colon said. "All our people are gathering there."
Donnina remembered her father's old librarian showing her the mappaemundi stowed in
shelves in one corner of the great library. The maps were all rectangular, brightly colored. The
Red Sea was colored red, the ocean river that flowed around the margins of the world was green.
The towns were brown and blue. Some of the green, interior rivers, led nowhere. There were no
roads. The twelve winds were personified as children with long hair. They looked inward at the
world, expelling black jets of air.
_______
The Pope, after leaving Mirteto, came to the Farfa river (which is thickly shaded on both
banks.) The river descends to the plains through the monastery to which it gives it name.
Everything is clear and full of trout.
The Farfa river empties into the Tiber. After crossing this river by a bridge, the Pope
climbed a lofty hill nearby. He then crossed a marsh, itself crossed by a small stream, which
some say is the Curesium which gave its name to Podio Cures. Others think it was the stream
anciently called Allia.
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_______
The librarian, pointing to one map, had said that it had belonged to the Apostle John. Like
the others, no roads showed on the map. The mappaemundi, the old man said, were invaluable.
The Duke himself called for them often.
This type of map was created by Beatus of Liebana, abbot of the monastery. More than
300 were produced and sold, both from the monastery and at various outlets in Paris and London.
Note the orientation. East, where the Garden of Eden appears, is up. The four continents, going
clockwise around the map, are Asia, Terra Incognita, Africa and Europe. Only Terra Incognita
lies empty of color. It is beyond the ocean-river to the south.
None of these places would be identifiable without the written notations on the map. The
map as a whole has a strange and magic quality. Its use, except as a decorative accompaniment to
The Commentary on the Apocalyse of St. John (a shoddy and profane work) is unknown.
The camp fire was changing its color from red to reddish-yellow. The wood fuel of the
fire was turning from dark brown into grey. Colors were contracting, and withdrawing, from the
outside to the inside. The darkness and the noises it contained moved closer. The center of the
fire still held. Back of her, Donnina heard the wind start up in the trees. A small blue flame jetted
out from the center of the fire and fell back. A wisp of smoke trailed off. As the darkness pushed
in, the color at the center of the fire held and then disappeared.
Did The Land Of No Evil exist? Or had Colon dreamed it? Tomorrow Donnina would
rise early to help the eldest daughter, Tynca, prepare for her wedding.
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Colon's grandmother was a witch and fortune-teller. The world, she had told him, is divided into
two parts, the kaki (pure) and the skakin (impure). As one of the kaki, she said, he must learn to
recognize the skakin in order to avoid them.
"Where are the skakin"?, he had asked the old woman.
"Everywhere. But their distribution, like other kinds of matter in the world, is unequal."
The grandmother's eyes, Colon remembered, were blue; her face looked as if all its flesh had
been boiled away.
"Unequal"?
"The skakin are clumped together like the trees. They move in crowds of different
numbers. It is their weakness and the source of their violence."
"Violence, grandmother"?
Colon remembered her bony fingers, turning the cards she called taroti. The cars were old
and their edges were frayed. But their colors, and designs, were still distinct. In her hands, they
slid like air over quiet water.
"Being confined to the tight spaces of the crowd makes the skakin violent. Yet they
cannot exist without the crowd."
The grandmother, Colon remembered, was always alone. At the edge of things, the camp,
wedding, or funeral. There was always separating space between her and the skakin. The fortunetelling she did for them was silent and impersonal. She avoided their eyes. The gaze of the
skakin, she would say, will imprison the will of the kaki. She did not answer their questions.
Colon held the grandmother's cards in his hands. The picture of their future was complete.
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The bear, dancing before its reflection in a pool, was the key. They would stay in this place for
the next three days. Then they would go north, looking for the way into the Land of No Evil.
The blood-bath that Cardinal Tres Rosa (vicar of Monte Pulciano) sat in had delayed, but
not cured, his leprosy. He had, remembering the words of his doctors, expected more favorable
results. If not a cure, then at least a remission of the disease...whitish scales falling...yelloworange pus oozing...the fiery itch. His mistresses would no longer touch him. The gypsies girls,
begging (with his permission) along the Via Sacra, were demanding more money for their
services. His sons, with their wives and children, were living in Munich, the city on the flood
plains of the cruel, rushing, Isar.
He still had his villas--on the Via Veneto, Lake Como and Perugia--and admirers. The
disease that tore at his skin, and contaminated his blood, had spared his voice. Soft, calm,
tolerate-seeming, it made him a favorite at the confessional with the young ladies of the
parrocchia.
"Was I wrong in letting him touch my breasts, Father"?..."My nurse, father, keeps me
from church"..."They are naked, father, but it is only in a dream"..."I swore twice, last week,
forgive me."
His revision of the canon law on witchcraft was going well. He expected to have a draft
of the MS to His Holiness by next fall. Petrarch, a Florentine poet, was reputed to have
commented favorably on one or two of his anti-heresy poems. His hand, although tender, was
still steady. The sulphur-blood ointment, applied twice daily to the eyelids, had stopped the
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disease before it had reach the pupils of the eye.
His doctors had prescribed the blood of infant children for his bath. But he would not
have it, ordering as a substitute the blood of a young, small, animal. The doctors protested. They
argued. Umberto, Licentiate of Bologna, Fellow of Oxford and Leyden, pointed out the risk
involved in using inferior material. Much was known about the curative value of infant blood.
Nothing of the blood of animals. The supply was uncertain. Umberto threatened to resign. The
Cardinal, his health at stake, compromised. He would allow a mixture, infant blood and the blood
of wolf-cubs.
He sat, thinking, the reddish fluid lapping his chest. The Via Sacra, the olive skinned
girls, teasing, fingers pressing, their breath perfuming the quiet air. Time was with him. His MS
would benefit from a paragraph or two on the diet of witches vis a vis their transformation into
flying wolves. He would begin in the morning. Satisfied, he leaned back, pushing his knees up
and out, two hills rising out of red rain.
In the typical wedding, the broomstick was placed aslant the doorway of the house of the
couple. Witnesses, the majority of which had to be women, stood in a half-circle around the front
of the house. If the doorway was narrow, then the man would usually (turning sideways) jump
first. The woman would follow, imitating the action of the man. The broom, positioned by the
bride's mother, could not be moved or touched by either the man or his bride. If both jumped the
broom successfully, then the ceremony was completed. The bride's mother removed the broom,
closed the door, and the couple went to consummate the marriage.
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S
A sprig of broom (Cytisus scoparius) was the badge from which Henry II of Anjou took
the name Plantagenet.
The broom for Tynca's wedding was supported by two trees. Beyond the trees a low line
of hills met the sky in a pinkish fringe of clouds. The shadow of the broom fell toward the
witnesses. The two adult men were not watching. They stood smoking, talking, their arms folded.
Further back, toward the stream, Donnina could see that Colon's old horse, his head down, was
sleeping.
The wind was gusting through the grove and twice the broom had to be re-positioned by
Tynca's mother. The groom, his jump executed, stood waiting. In her first jump, Tynca's dress
had dislodged the broom. Now she was ready to jump again. The lower part of her dress was
heavy. The wind, pulling at its folds, slowed her movement. Donnina turned her head toward the
women back of Tynca. Their heads were forward, quiet. Tynca's mother and her aunt watched,
their arms interlocked. The light beyond the trees expanded. The force of the wind decreased and
moved higher in the trees. The would be groom stood, waiting.
Donnina knew that a second failure would bring disgrace to Tynca's family. She wanted
to move forward, to take Tynca's place. The center of her body felt open, empty. Her arms tensed.
_______
Candlemas. The lists had been prepared. The crowd, numbering more than 3,000, was
assembled in high stands around the field of combat. The lady, turning a coin in hand, sat in front
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looking over the field. She knew that the failure of Hawkwood would mean her death. On the
obverse side of the coin is the figure of a woman. She had already endured imprisonment for her
charge of rape against Sir Royce de Gris. The figure wears a silver gown, slightly raised over her
tiny left shoulder. It adds to the sense of richness one is meant to feel around her. The lady's lord
had been away. Sir Royce was in her bedroom, tearing her gown from her body. Her screams
were unheard. The coin scene catches the woman in a moment of activity. The lady had felt the
thrust. The mass pushing her down, a hand at her breast, the other at her throat. The coin
woman's right arm is extended to the side as well as slightly behind her, as though its activity can
scarcely keep up with the pace of her stride. Later, the lady's lord returned. She confessed and
wailed. The right arm of the coin lady is slightly bent at the elbow, the two sections of her arm
create an angle of 130°. At first, the lord did not believe the lady. The man was his friend, his
comrade in arms. Another angle is created on the coin by the woman's hand and wrist, which are
tilted at from 95-99° away from the forearm. The end of Trinity and the beginning of Advent
came. The lady pleaded with her lord for retribution. She had been raped. Under the arms and
wrist of the coin woman passes the silver rays of the sun. The rays are intercepted by a straight
line crosswise, which is thinner and has less body than the rays.
The question of guilt would be settled by a combat of champions. On the coin there is a
suggestion, of mechanical origins, of the superiority of the figure of the woman to the other
elements of the composition. Everything passes beneath or beyond her. The lady handed the coin
to a maid. She would examine the other side later.
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The herald has announced the names of the knights. The ladies have armed their knights
for combat.
The lady's silk dress is pale pink. Her peaked coiffure may be regarded as a solar image.
Her cooks are preparing lapin saute. Under the lady's coiffure the head is shaved. The chief cook
makes petits pois.
The lady turns to smile at Hawkwood. This particular dish will be eel. Her right hand,
moving out and over her body, holds the lance. Swallow moves closer to the lady as the knight
raises his arm toward the offered lance. The eel selected by the cook is grey-green in color. The
valance, standing up along his spine, is of transparent purple. Two pale-green fins stood up
behind his head. The lady's left hand, palm out, reaches toward Hawkwood's visor. The hand is
level with the level of the lady's eyes.
The mount of Hawkwood's opponent is black. Hawkwood's armor is dark brown. A
generous use of red, on the horse bard, Hawkwood's shield and plume, has been used.
S'
The scene, depicting the incorporation of courtly love with a combat of champions, is
entirely appropriate for this age.
Hawkwood entered from the lady's right, Gris from the left. A flash of sun broke on his
helm and ran down his right arm, now held high in a salute to the lady--seated, demure, her
attendants motion-less. Gris held the great black horse in pause motion. He looked at the lady
and then, further up, at the Emperor's entourage. The sun disappeared and the field darkened.
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Back of the stands, toward the low hills to the east, a wind started up in the trees. Hawkwood
turned Swallow, now in high expectation, back toward the center--slowing--the hooves of the
great horse sloughing the grass. The wind died and the pennants around the Emperor's seat--on
the upright lances and helms of the champions--flagged. The shadow of a bird passed over the
field and continued north toward the river. The crowd fell silent.
Hawkwood on the right, Gris on the left. Their lances went up in salute and then came
down, light running over their steel tips. Their chargers strained forward, against the bit, tension
building in the thighs and legs. They waited. The Emperor paused, the signal to begin forming in
his mind--thinking of her rose-scent and beauty--the white laugher turning the head toward him
that evening in Prague. With "now" the great horses sprung forward--the lances steady--their
pennants streaming back. The rush toward the center, ten yards, eight, then four.
The lady's maid looks at the coin. The figure of the woman is the largest element in the
composition, the most raised up in relief. She is sculpted in movement.
From the left, Gris' lance struck Hawkwood's chest cuirass and slid to the side. The
knight's body rocked back in the saddle. Swallow continued his charge, throwing the broken
lance down and under his plunging legs. Gris' great black horse went sideways. His purpose and
acceleration slackened. Gris dropped his lance arm. Followed by a wind, horse and rider slid past
Hawkwood down the field. A wave of dust surged. On the coin the woman's left arm is extended
straight down and forward, creating an angle 41° with the perpendicular line of her body.
The sound of the combat moved over the stands--lungs sucking the air--steel and wood
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ringing--and up to the Emperor's seat. The sound paused, until, adulterated by the wind, it
disappeared. But flesh, purpose and honor stood firm--fixed in their forms by the eyes from the
stands. The champions stood, dismounted, swords upright. Out of combat, their horses watched,
pulling against the arm of the grooms. The hand of the woman on the coin holds something
slightly larger than her head, something polygonal in shape. It seems to be a small shield and
oddly stuck to her forearm.
The contrast between light and shade, angle and curve, green and yellow blurred-merged
as the rain began. The low, slow and familiar, sounds of foot combat replaced the high sharp
ones of mounted warriors. Misty rain blew the forms together and apart, the circling sword, the
diagonally-held shield. Spurred boots sent their muted sound into the mud. Hawkwood, helmviser snapped down, moved closer, forcing Gris back, hammer--carving wet steel. Gris' legs went
numb--mud sucking his boots toward the center--the surface of the field came nearer. His armor
began to compress his chest and lungs. Expelling air from the lungs became more difficult. His
right arm, and head, became heavy. His shield, sword and helm sagged, dropped. The wind-free
rain dropped straight down. Puddles began to form.
Further examination, however, leads the maid to conclude that the woman on the coin
does not hold a shield. Rather, the object seems to be a sack of some kind, perhaps a repository
for grain or seed. If so, this would explain the position of the woman's right arm and her
movement across the coin.
The Emperor watched. He thought of the lady. That night. Her quick hand on his sleeve-her gown brushing his leg. The people, leaving the stands, began to move, then run for shelter.
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A servant handed the lady something hot to drink. She felt the smooth texture of the vessel. The
liquid was golden brown. The tips of her fingers moved across its warm surface. She sat the
vessel on a robe. Warmth radiated to the skin of her lower thigh. A sun ray broke from above and
disappeared.
The coin woman's right knee is slightly bent at the foot, flat on the ground. The left leg is
bent slightly from the hip in such a way that the bottom of the shoe makes an angle of 61° with
the flat surface. Gris fell back, trying to catch himself with his left arm. Hawkwood moved in on
the horizontal form. It became dark, darker. The Emperor, momentarily looking away to the
north, noticed a clearing in the sky. The trees, back of the stands, moved back to the vertical
position as the wind dropped. Gris' hand went up--an instinct--protect the head, the eyes.
Hawkwood turned his heavy shoulder right, planted his boots, and thrust the heavy sword at Gris'
neck. The sword, deflected by the gorget, went right, deep into the mud. Gris pushed, crabbing
back. Mud and muddy water penetrated his armor. The rain increased. His helm, acting like an
eaves-pipe, sent a stream of water down. He was blind.
Hawkwood drew his knife, pushed up his viser, circled Gris' head with his left arm, and
began to push the knife slowly through the gorget. The knife went deeper. Blood gushed, then
ran, over Hawkwood's glove--mixed with the muddy water, thinning in the rain. Hawkwood's
knife hit a bone. He threw his weight, shoulders, hips turning right and down, into the knife.
Under her pavilion the lady's clothes were dry. She watched, her eyes moving with the
thrust of Hawkwood's body. Her finger-tips tingled. She handed her drinking vessel to her maid
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and leaned forward. Hawkwood was now up--standing--turning. The lady acknowledged his
salute. An armored fist held the blood-greased knife high. Red rain washed the blade.
The lady smiled and leaned back in her seat.
The Emperor, with his entourage, has left his pavilion. His place is empty. The spectators
now start to move from their places. They file left and right, toward the exits. Outside, they
scatter. Some circle around the pavilions. Some move straight for the street. None turns to look
back.
Above them, along the edge of the hill, a cart carries the body of Sir Gris toward a burialfield. Couples walking from a village below the hill make room for the cart by moving to the
side of the road. The cart drops below the edge of the hill. The rumbling sound die. The couples
walk on, following the edge of the hill, higher.
_______
Tynca's run toward the broomstick started. One hand holds the bottom of her dress. After
she was in the air, she pulled her legs up together and turned her body sideways. The broomstick
moved but held its place. The man was there, his arms out. Together, they went back into the
trees.
Colon and the groom's father are walking toward a cart. Smoke from the camp fire drifts
back. We follow the path of the smoke as it moves back toward Tynca's mother and aunt as they
start to remove the broomstick from its position between the trees. The mother picks the broom
up, rotates the implement upright. The aunt watches. Moving closer would violate her role and
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relationship to Tynca. She stands, her arms folded, watching her sister wipe the handle of the
broom with her apron.
The smoke drifts further back, to the place of the newly married couple in their retreat.
Neither of them notices its smell, color, or texture.
Donnina smiles and steps back toward the source of the smoke.
GEOFFREY
One of His Majesty's scribes visited me last night. I showed him the Visconti-Hawkwood
MS. He seemed quite pleased with my progress. I asked for a slight extension of the deadline. He
smiled, saying nothing. I offered him a glass of wine. He thanked me, offering some excuse
about his own work in hand. Before he left, he showed me the new style of holding the pen. I
tried it. But I saw no improvement, either in speed or intelligibility of the line.
I continue, taking up the implement, to write in my usual way:
Hold the pen straight downward on the inside of the tips of the middle and forefingers.
The tip of the thumb is used to steady the pen. The fourth and fifth fingers are curled up out of
the way. The movement of the pen is controlled, not by the fingers, but by the whole hand. The
vertical position of the hand allows the ink to flow evenly.
For the right-handed writer the pen which fits most comfortably into the hand has a slight
natural curve to the right. This comes from the left wing of the bird. The best feathers prove to be
the five or so outer wing pinions of goose or swan.
John of Tilbury, one of my cousin-scholars in the household of Thomas Becket, describes
how to sharpen the pen for the best effect: Pare away, on each flank, material from the tip. Then
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(much in the manner of a kitchen maid peeling a potato) cushion the pen in the hand and cut a slit
up the center of the nib. Finally, lay the pen against a hard surface and, pushing the knife blade
across the extreme end, remove what remains in order to produce a crisp squared-off tip.
I add this information for the benefit of readers who are setting up to be writers--even
though the times are unfavorable for the profession.
We are now examining a sheet of parchment of the times. It seems to be the work of a lay
percamenarius of Regensburg. Note that the hair from the grain side (which is naturally darker in
color than the flesh side) has been removed in the usual way. The percamenarius has first soaked
the hide in a solution of lime and water for three days and then scraped the hair from the surface
on the circulus. One sees, here and over there, holes left by the pegs that attached the hide to the
circulus. The parchmenter has smoothed the surface with a lunellum, a crescent-shaped knife,
and later with several rubbings with chalk.
Now let us hold the parchment up closer to the light. Notice, on this side, the tiny dots.
Hair follicles. Now turn it over to the flesh side. The small, tree-like, lines? Blood vessels of the
animal. This large shape here is the backbone image of the animal.
S
We know that the 156 sheets of percamenti vitulini for the Litlyngton Missal of
Westminister Abbey cost 4.6s.8d in 1383. But we have a record of sale (in 1312) for London
parchmenters charging only 8s.8d for 82 sheets.
The question of uterine parchment, or skin said to be obtained from aborted foetuses, is a
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vexed one. Is it true? Would our farmers (who do not, of course, read or write) sacrifice
thousands of their animals to the booktrade?
_______
Donnina rose early. The Pleiades, after their forty day interval of invisibility, were going
down. In the way they filtered light from some remote source behind them, they resembled a
silver sieve. She imagined a cold wind blowing, from the west, through them. She turned her
head. Taurus, close to the ecliptic, appeared. There the moon would rise and the sun set its
course.
The successor of this season would soon appear.
_______
Robert had more important things to think about than thinking about his discontent-about his isolation in Geneva, the inadequate palace and staff, the bad food and wine. He had to
keep his mind on Hawkwood and the White Company. Three times he and his army, going south
through the cold mountains had been defeated by the White Company. Umberto Colleoni, his
friend, was dead. Bernardo Rimino, whom he depended on to see to the finances of his reign, lay
dying in the next room. The smell of a gangrene mixed with stale candle smoke drifted through
the halls.
Women went in and out of Bernardo's room, carrying cotton dressing, rosemary water and
sulphur. Robert's discontent would not interrupt his plans. This winter, a new army. Next
summer, the march southward to Rome. The Papacy would be his. No longer the Anti-Pope,
suffering the crude manners of this northern city. But the gardens, its spray-cooled air, and the
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library of the Vatican.
He would take his own Swiss Guards with him. He had designed their uniforms. Yellow
on black, the color of his own flag and standards. The Guards were expensive. Each Guard, he
calculated, was costing him 57 florins a year.
The Guards are not volunteers. The Swiss Diet conscripts them from the peasant class
and hires them out to governments, and individuals, under treaties called capitulations. Their
term of conscription is for life.
In Hof, a small village in the half-canton of Nidwalden, there is a hospital for wounded
and ill Guards and a cemetery behind it. Aurum est commune sepulchrum. Taxes were needed to
build the hospital. Forgiveness for sins, done in a proper manner, detracted their mind from
taxation. The hospital, after a certain amount of stone-cutting, was erected in a grove of tamarisk
trees. Commune sepulchrum. The colors are silver and pale white, almost ashen, especially
around the eyes, running back toward the ears.
Flashes of color went through Robert's mind. He saw himself being surrounded by his
cardinals. Incense was drifting through the great church. The silver and gold surface of the
chalice and cross reflected the light from the candles.
He would replace the Ambrosian plain song of the church with the true Gregorian. He
had his own schola cantorum which he would take with him south to Rome. He himself had
instructed them on the modal system of the song.
The song is based, we believe, upon the final development of the Greek system. That is,
its system is comprised of eight modes, four authentic and four plagal.
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On his way to Rome, he would have blood, the head of Hawkwood, justice for the
indignities of his defeats--the humiliation of penury among northern infidels. He sat in the throne
he had made for himself, looking south, toward the mountains. He would wait, allow his
discontent, building like the snow in the high passes, to feed his hate.
In the night fields below the palace the contadini wait for the Pleiades to go down before
beginning their plowing. Or the cranes to start flying north.
The contadini live in huts of wood, packed into them like bees in a hive. Even the
smallest of the huts holds several families. Promiscuous living multiplies forms. Inside the huts
thick smoke drifts, drying up noxious moisture. The Anti-Pope looks higher, over the roofs of the
huts, to the mountains beyond. The ridge of snow along the edge of the first pass is lower,
smaller. A snake-like shadow falls on the terrace.
GEOFFREY
I have been trying to collect what my contract with His Majesty calls for. See, here it is,
paragraph two. Payment, in the amount of 23, 7s, is to be made at the completion of each section
of the manuscript. I am to hire an amanuensis, and purchase materials, from the money I am paid.
You see my dilemma. Last Wednesday I called on the Receiver of the King's Bills. The
room smelled of mold and urine. I insisted on presenting my unpaid bill to the Receiver himself.
His clerks, a surly, morose group, tried to put me off. I insisted. (I may have raised my voice.)
The Receiver, hearing the noise, finally appeared. A brutish, evil smelling man. I thrust the
itemized bill at him. He refused it, saying that authority to disperse His Majesty's monies had
been transferred to the Exchequer. I reminded him of the recent rise in the price of parchment. He
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said he was ignorant of the matter. I threatened to start writing the text on paper. He stood there,
silent, running a soiled hand down the front of what appeared (the light was bad) to be an old
bargeman's jacket.
I left, throwing myself down the stairs. I could bear the stench of the place no longer. It
still clings to my clothes. I ordered Patrick to prepare rosemary. But he is drunk (for the third
time this week) with the apprentices in Cheapside.
I go on, knowing that writing the story of Donnina and John is still worthy of my time. I
shall try to make time to call on the Exchequer next week.
_______
The siege of Cesena was now in its third week. Twice Hawkwood had sent messengers to
the garrison commander demanding the surrender of the city. The first messenger, his body cut in
two in full view of the White Company, had been hung from the city walls. The commander had
also rejected Hawkwood's second demand. He ordered that the head of the messenger, the note
stuck in his mouth, be fired back to the White Company.
_______
The Pope lunched at Canapina and then went to Nepi. The Pope observed a martin,
floating. It puzzled him that it took no care of his presence
_______
The means of delivery of the messenger's head was a trebuchet of the new design of Ugo
di Carracciolo. Notice the release mechanism of the machine. Instead of the standard rope-loop
connection, with its dangerous recoil (a hold-over from the post-classical Roman Onager), here
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we have the so-called "remote" windlass. The operator forces down the spoke, containing the
projectile, by an ingenious cog and sprocket device well clear of the action of the spoke.
Our attention is next drawn next to the projectile. It sets in a deeper, wider cup than in
previous models. As the cup, on release, strike the crosspiece of the horizontal frame, the
outward force of the moving projectile is forced inward to create what is now known as the
Carracciolo parabola. The moving projectile, whose eccentricity is lower than 1°, tends toward a
focus along the directrix defined by the inside friction of the cup on the projectile at the time of
release.
Whether or not this constitutes a true parabola, instead of the known ellipse of older
models, is now the subject of debate in several engineering faculties. Tests have confirmed,
however, that the path of the projectile has constant acceleration even in the most difficult
resisting media such as crosswinds and rain.
. The air was wet and heavy on the day the Carracciolo trebuchet delivered the head of his
messenger to Hawkwood. Yet constant acceleration of the projectile, even one with the known
drag of the human head, was observed by all. No perceptible damage was suffered by the head
itself during delivery. Several words in the otherwise intelligible message were, it is true,
smudged. Whether this was due to the dampness of the air, saliva, or some liquid dropped on the
page at the source, can perhaps never be known.
The siege continued. Hawkwood ordered the belfry and the battering ram to be brought
up. Inside the belfry it was hot and crowded. The men, stripped to the waist, pulled the heavy ram
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back and let it swing forward against the city wall. The men shouted at each other. But the noise
of the ram and missiles falling from the wall on the roof of the belfry made it hard to hear. The
battering went on that day and through the night. Around midnight, inspecting the condition of
the head of the ram, the belfry commander was killed by a bolt fired from one of the city large
bacistas. One man was killed when the swing holding the ram broke. More would be killed when
the wall was finally breached by the ram.
Simonetto was killed by a ball (the size of a filbert) fired from the scoppetum. Though he
would have chosen to live longer, yet this was the end he desired. For he would often say to his
comrade in arms, "May God grant me to die in the exercise of my profession and in the service of
my lord."
Hawkwood's second demand for surrender of the garrison was rejected. The siege
continued. The day stretches between door and door. The bull, painted just here on the wall, runs
blind upon the sword. É naturale.
All belfrys in use at Cesena are two-story. The role of the upper-story soldiers is to
suppress fire from the city wall which is directed at the battering ram crew below. The duty is
dangerous. Since the walls of the belfry will only withstand an ordinary crossbow bolt, the men
are forced to wear heavy armor. Its weight, restricting their movement, puts them at a
disadvantage during counter-sieges mounted against the belfry from the wall.
The capture of an upper-story by the enemy usually means the death of soldiers manning
the battering ram.
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Hawkwood's design engineer for the belfrys is Massimo Ugalozzo. Hawkwood denied his
request that the standard cherry wood of the belfry be replaced by oak and ironwood.
Blood from the upper-story is dripping on the ram and the soldiers working it. Hands
become wet and begin to lose their grip. The feet of the soldiers, pushing against the ram, begin
to lose their traction. Noise from the fight for the upper-story increases. A severed head falls
from above onto the ram and bounces left into a corner. A soldier working at the head of the ram
screams and falls back. Noise, and the flow of blood from the upper-story, increase. The smell of
urine drifts through the belfry.
The belfry commander walks toward the head of the ram to inspect the damage to the
wall. His way, slowed by diverse body parts, takes him longer than he planned. Dust and smoke
from an unknown source make it hard for him to see the wall. Hawkwood's orders to him that
morning were for him to breach the wall by that evening.
The commander is not sure what time of day it is.
_______
The Pope had built a fountain in a garden in a shady place that he might dine by it in
summer.
Gout now denies to the Pope what corpulence had refused the Cardinals.
_______
Hawkwood, sitting quietly on his horse, watched the battle below. He could see, on the
roof of the belfry, a small fire flare up and die back. From the wall above the roof he saw men
pouring a smoking substance on the belfry. He had no name for the substance. His horse twitched
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his tail at a fly and, settling his weight onto three legs, cocked his left hind hoof. The shadow of a
bird passed over the grass in front of Hawkwood and moved downslope toward a grove of trees.
Toward evening, he thought, the clouds would increase.
Hawkwood turned to Ricco for information about the smoking substance.
"Greek fire, My Lord."
The ingredients for greek fire are sulphur, pitch, sarcocolla (a gum), petroleum, sal coctus
(a salt recovered from saltwater by artificial heat), oil of gemma and tartarum (bitartrate of
potash).
Greek fire is extinguished with great difficulty.
GEOFFREY
I have looked into Marcus Graecus' Liber Ignium in order to verify the names of the
ingredients. Graecus' description of the Fire, it is true, has as its context a sea battle (cuius virtus
et efficacia ad comburrendos hostes tam in mari), but I see no reason to doubt that the same
ingredients were not used in the fire weapons at the siege at Cesena.
The siege actually lasted longer than the space given to it here.
_______
In less than an hour the fire had destroyed the roof and upper story of the belfry. It burned
lower. Members of the battering ram started to die. The fire continued, burning down and in,
toward the center of the lower story. The ram's swing caught fire. The remaining crew fought
back from the ram. Cords on the swing snapped. The ram fell, killing two of the crew.
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The one survivor would later die from burns and smoke inhalation. A new belfry, with a
new crew, was brought up. A stone shot, falling short from an antiquated mangonel, would later
destroy the belfry and kill all its crew.
The siege was in its third week with the walls still unbreached. Trebuchets of the
opposing forces were now firing the decomposing bodies of dead men and animals. Disease
began to spread through the city and Hawkwood's army. The soldiers were tired and desperate.
The decision was made to start killing the prisoners.
The weather turned hot. Flowers bloomed in the hills around the city. The stench of the
dead increased. The wings of hummingbirds could be seen flashing in the sun. Hawkwood, his
latest demand for a surrender refused, decided to storm the city.
The storm is one of three alternatives for ending a siege. The others are surrender on
terms (in which case the lives of the citizens are generally spared) and the expiration of the
allowed forty-days--in which case the besieging force melts away.
The storm always results in the slaughter of the males and the rape and enslavement of
women and children.
Hawkwood was first over the wall. The scream of the soldier he had just killed went
down past him to the left. While reaching back to help Ricco to gain the top, he pushed the
ladder away. Something heavy, trailing an acrid smell, went past his head. He turned right,
running down the wall, looking for a way down into the street below. Members of the White
Company were now on the wall. They formed on Ricco, one behind the other in a single file.
Near the center of the city four young ladies stand on the battlements of a castello. Their
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dresses and hair are long and flowing. Soft pinks and reds contrast with the dull gray stone of the
castello. Their hands gesture to the defenders of the city in the streets below. As the hands circle,
rise and fall, the voices of the ladies descend to the men who fight but do not see.
The contours of the lady's body appear beneath her dress as she turns sideways. Her dress
releases the scent of roses and lavender. A hand slides the hem of the dress up a white leg. The
wife of the commander is encouraging her lord and his men to a stronger defence.
The lady on the right, dressed as a nun, watches the dress move up the smooth leg.
Hawkwood and the White Company would fight, keeping the cathedral in sight, toward
the center of the city. Other elements of their army would follow. The storm would be over by
that evening. Their dead would be buried, and the fires put out, by the next day.
Donnina began by teaching the child the names of the flowering herbs. Then she told her
a story about each one. The story was necessary in order to teach the child the true nature of each
herb.
The herb is Herba Britannica. The great Roman general, Julius Caesar, carried the
herb with him on the invasion of the Rhine. With it, his doctors cured the soldiers of the
fever. Dioscorides tells us that he cured his father of the scurvy with it.
S'
The berries of the Rumex aquaticus are round like those of ivy. The flower is white.
Camomile is good for restoring color to a man who has spent too long in his bath. Infused
with white wine, it is good for sunburn.
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Anthemis nobilis is an aromatic plant thought to have originated in Eurasia.
The sun grew warmer as they walked up the hill. The child's hand was light in Donnina's
hand. Donnina's eyes were on the ground, looking for a flash of color in the grass. Bees rose from
a passing clump of hyssop. The hair of the small girl swung out as she turned around the rising
swarm. Donnina felt the tug of a small arm. She paused, turning to look. The force of the tugging
arm slackened. The hand took up its familiar lightness.
Every morning, Donnina had the children lined up. In her hand she held a soaped cloth.
Between clenched teeth she held a pin. When she finished washing their faces and behind their
ears, she would dig in their ears with the knob end of the pin. The children's faces went pink in
the cool air. Their skin stung from the soap and the friction of the cloth.
Donnina's voice was bright as she gave instructions to the children.
_______
Hawkwood looked down at the friars. They stood, looking at him. The hand of one was
up.
"An alms, an alms." Swallow tried to move on toward the gate of the town. Hawkwood
pulled him around. The great horse shook his head and pulled his body back. Dust settled on the
robes of the friars.
"Brothers. Is it not true that you have dedicated yourselves wholly to the arts of peace?"
The one chosen by the others to speak, replied. "That is true, Sir Knight. It is the will of
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our lord."
"Do you not also go about in this country advocating peace to the people?"
"That is so. It is our duty, My Lord." The friar, stirred by the urgency of his message,
started to move toward the mounted knight.
Hawkwood felt the muscles of the great horse tense. "Then you mistake yourselves here."
The friar stepped back. His face was set. "My Lord?"
"Is not peace the opposite of war, brother?"
"It is, My Lord."
"Are we not then wedded to opposites. You to peace, I to war?"
"Of course, My Lord."
"Do we not, as Christians, then not wish to see the other
deny his spouse?"
"My Lord?" The friar looked confused.
"By giving an alms to peace would I not deny war, a most demanding spouse?"
It is the time of Nones. Hawkwood moves toward the source of the sound of the bells.
The friars stand. As the great horse goes past them, a following wind moves the skirt of their
robes and lifts their cowls. They smell the odor of oiled leather and steel. The air becomes quiet.
The hands of the friars are disappearing into the sleeves of their robes. They watch
Hawkwood ride past. They see the torn armor along Swallow's left flank. The distance between
them and the horse increases. They turn to move, following the sound of the bells.
The gates of the town swing open. Hawkwood sees the head of the horse come higher.
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Armor begins to rattle as it changes to a higher, faster, gait. The sentries come to attention. The
beggar at the gate, raising his head, disturbs the flies along the wall. The friars continue to
approach the gate.
The gates stand open. The smell of the town surges out. Swallow goes toward the center
of town. The street opens into a small piazza. White roses are blooming among the trees at its
center. The spire of the church appears tall behind the roof of the houses. Hawkwood, leaving the
piazza, turns the horse left down a narrow street. Pedestrians part from his path, moving to stand,
watching from doorways and alleys.
The odor of oiled leather and steel is lost in the mixed smells of the town.
GEOFFREY
"Do you know, child, the difference between the demands of the brigand and those of
one's spouse"?
"No, Master."
"With the brigand the demand is either your money or your life."
"I have heard that, Master."
"With one's spouse the demand is always for both your money and your life."
We need to pause here to consider a question I know I will be asked. To what degree does
Hawkwood, in his person, motives and conduct, represent the best of chivalric traditions?
I have before me the three books that will help us to answer the question, namely, the
Ordene de Chevalerie, the Libre del Ordre de Cavayleria and the Book of Chivalry. It would
interrupt the story to mine them for all their information at this point. (Such information is
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forthcoming at later, proper, places.)
But a quick comparison between the deeds of Hawkwood and the ideals of chivalry, as
laid out in the Ordene, will not go amiss in this place.
The Ordene is replete with descriptions of the trappings of chivalry; with its origins and
rituals. Some of these we will have cause to refer to from time to time. But it is the story within
the text which now concerns us. Hugh, Count of Tiberias, has been captured in battle by Saladin.
Saladin agrees to release Hugh if the Count will instruct him in the procedures by which knights
are made under Christian law.
Hugh's alternatives are these: (1) remain a captive of Saladin; (2) agree to pay an
outrageous ransom for his freedom or (3) agree to make Saladin a knight after the proper forms.
For three nights, alone in his cell, Hugh ponders his choices. On the third night, just as day is
breaking in the East, a knightly figure appears in the cell. His voice, deep and somber, seems to
come from a remote place and time. "Instruct the Moor."
In the waters off Barcelona fish follow the wake of the Saracen.
Hugh began with Saladin's beard and hair. As he ran the comb through the Moor's beard,
Hugh reminded him of the knight's dedication to order, how neatness in the hair and face reflect
God's order in the world. Then Hugh brought him to the bath of bounty and courtesy. Hugh
recalled for the Moor the sacrament of baptism, where one comes, like the infant from the font,
free of sin. Then the Knight takes Saladin to a fair, wide, bed. This signified the repose of
Paradise which every knight must try to win by his chivalry.
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The wake of the Saracen wobbles like the shadow of an ant at sunrise.
Hugh then vested the Moor in a white robe, signifying the purity of his body. Over the
robe, he threw a red cloak, a reminder of the knight's duty to shed his blood in defence of the one
true church. Next came the brown stockings, reminding Saladin of the earth he must finally lie in.
The knight then bound about the Moor's waist a belt of white, symbolizing virginity and the need
to hold back lust. Last, came the gold spurs and the sword. With the spurs the Moor was shown
that he must be swift, like the pricked charger, in obedience to God's commandments. With the
two sharp edges of the sword the twin virtues of justice and loyalty are shown.
At this point Hugh should have administered the collee, a light blow with either the
sword or the hand.
Collee is a French corruption of paumee.
_______
The dragon lies dead at the young knight's feet. His death was long and hard, something
which is reflected in the tightly curled tail, disturbed earth and the bared teeth. The tip of the
animal's left wing protrudes from under his body. A hand like appendage, palm open, stands in
rigid position before the wing.The armor of the knight is unsoiled. It glows with a magic, golden,
light. His golden spurs reflect the rays of the setting sun. Blood from his sword speckles the
brown hide of the dragon. The air around his feathered helm is quiet. The cocked left boot thrusts
its spur at a right angle across the spur of his right boot. A simple, but effective, sign of the cross.
The head of the knight's charger is up, looking over the trees. A sign in the heavens? The
skin of the neck and cheeks of the knight is brown shading into dark yellow. St. Anthony fixes
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him with a steady gaze. The light from his halo throws a deeper shade over the body of the
dragon. The halo is the sun setting over the dark trees.
The small bell, in the saint's left hand, waits to ring out the church's victory.
Macchia. Spot, sketch, underbrush. The scene depicts a moment in time. Donnina will
work into the night. The women are gathering wood, brushwood, holm, turkey oaks, for the
charcoal burners. In the yellow and red colors of the setting sun is reflected the fire of the
charcoal burners. Donnina projects the sweep of the country and the sad isolation of the women.
At the left cattle graze, indicating that the country is cultivated. The picture is an alternative
depiction of life on the plains of Lombardy. Her work would reform the view that painters should
avoid political statements.
The story is one she heard from Giorgio. Of the young peasant woman and the bandit.
The light through the thick brush gives the man's clothes a speckled look. He hears the sound of
her movement. He holds his body still. The sun, just before setting, deepens in color. The young
woman moves toward the thicket. From Donnina's school of painting, un capolavoro, will
emerge. Moving off from the center of the scene are the other women. Their heads and shoulders
are bent. The work is hard, heavy, their bodies show its effects early. The bandit's name is
Giovanni Verga. In this closeup, we see his dark eyes. His face is calm. The beard is short. The
sound of the woman cutting the branches from the trees comes closer. He moves his body down,
lower. Macchia. Spots on the leaves along the ground fluctuate between a dark, golden color and
brown. From the leaves comes the smell of mold. The woman, turning, stooping, moves closer
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toward the center of the ticket.
In a scene like this it is necessary to consider the veduta. The woman pauses. In this
thicket the light falls at a strange angle. At the center it seems to disappear. Giovanni waits. In
the background, in the view over the center of the thicket, the other woman rest. Their bundles of
wood lie on the dry, brown earth. The wide extent of the terrain, the sparse detail, suggest the
long distance they will have to travel to reach their destination, the home of their lord. A sudden
gust of wind blows a few particles of dust in Giovanni's eyes. Donnina quickly moves the brush,
noting the effect. The young woman's name is Bebba. She knows that turkey oaks grow at the
center of the thicket. From acorns come food for the pigs, gall for ink, wood for the charcoal
burners. She stoops again. The man's hands are there, pulling her down, into the vanishing light
at the center of the thicket. The weight of her great burden falls away.
Nel piú folto della macchia. The weight of his hand is over her mouth. Her eyes shift. His
body is hard. Beyond the thicket the other women re-shoulder their loads. The line of their bodies
is vertical. The bundles of brushwood, running horizontally across their shoulders, suggest the
form of a tree. Beyond the sky grows dark. Bebba feels the warm breath of the man on her neck.
Donnina is not afraid to paint the red flush that spreads along her back, that moistens the space
between her legs. Her commitment is to an extreme closeup and lifesize expression. Oval shaped
cells expand, releasing their fluid. A determinate spot grows. Piccola zona di colore diverso ce
interrompe e talvolta altera. The teeth are white. They enter the flesh below the woman's right
ear. Lavare una marmo con il sangue. Against the white skin, the blood is red, redder. The man's
honor as an outlaw is at stake.
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A sexual macchia. Difficult to penetrate. Una boscaglia fitta, di difficile accesso. The
head rising, pushes forward. She cries, her breath goes away into the night air. Airiness. Beyond
the thicket the woman move toward the edge of the hill. Their figures tilt the perspective. At the
center of the thicket the heat rises. Hearts beat, horizontally. The suggestion of tonality interrupts
the scene. Donnina pauses, looking. Hawkwood, un cavaliere senza macchia, senza paura. Push
on toward the center, head rising into black-red, refuge in a salvage zone. Crabgrass grows here,
from the molting earth, under the green-brown leaves.
_______
Within the kitchen the odor of food had a touch of the exotic: paprika, caraway, garlic,
sausage, nutmeg, olive oil, pepper and thyme. The capocuoco gave orders in a thick, humid
accent. The high windows were glazed with steam and grease.
Food was being prepared for Gian Galeazzo. Gian was unhappy with his uncle for still
living. He sat alone at the great table. Now that it was dark enough, all the candles had been lit
along the table and down the great hall. To the servants bringing the food, Gian looked squat and
brooding. Yellow, dim light from the candles fell across his long face. Each of the fingers of his
left hand carried a heavy jewelled ring. The ring on the index finger contained poison.
Gian slowly ate the food, now cold and congealing from its long trip from the kitchen.
The odor of garlic and grease hung in the room. The uncle in his castello at Milan was too old to
enjoy his power. The province needed better leadership. From Gian's mouth came the rancid
smell of olive oil. It mingled with the odor of garlic and settled in the folds of his heavy robe.
Gian's hate for his uncle was making the wine go sour in his mouth. He belched. The
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candle flames blew back. Perhaps his uncle would accept an invitation to visit him? His recent
acquisitions would perhaps please the Archduke?
Gian's palazzo is designed on the axis of honor scheme. The further one has to travel to
visit a guest the higher the honor one bestows on that person. His uncle would see the respect
offered him by his lodgings in the far west room of the palazzo. The time it would take Gian to
walk there from his own room would consume the better part of an hour.
The food brought to Gian came from the detached kitchen from the far side of the
palazzo. Part of the way, the servants follow a passage which runs underground. The passage
smells of mold and rat excrement. Candles do not burn well in the heavy air.
The great hall where Gian sits eating is on the third floor of the palazzo. The view over
his estates is especially fine. He wipes his lips. The stewed mushrooms have a slightly
nitrogenous taste. Put the mushrooms in a stewpan with two ounces of butter. The smell is heavy,
earthy. Surfaces break and crumble releasing warm juices along the tongue of the eater. Add to
the butter a pinch of salt, the squeeze of a lemon, two blades of mace. The wine is port, heavy,
dark, running a sluggish stream. The eater belches. Objects in the room grow fainter, remoter.
Serve with one of the fortified wines, Sherry, Madeira, Malaga or Port. When cooked, stir in a
white mixture of flour and butter. Gian, rocking his body, chews and swallows. Serve the dish as
an entree or as stuffing for wild game. You may want to accompany the dish with a sauce of
butter and heavy cream. When the left hand of the eater pushes the finished dish away, his right
pulls in another. The movement of the mouth is from left to right, from a higher to a lower
elevation above the food. The mouth opens. Saliva, accumulating at the base of the tongue,
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lubricates the movement of the organ forward.
In the kitchen, candle wax drips into the dishes being prepared for Gian. Sprinkle salt
freely over large mushrooms and let them stand for a few hours. The direction of the flies is in
and down. Mash and set aside for two days. Sweat runs glossy, cooling, from the armpits of the
cooks. Yeast, in contact with the flesh of the fungus, starts the fermentation. Something falls
from her hair into the mixture. Press through a colander and put in a pan. Leave until the next
day. The work of the cooks is silent, sullen. Their feet are bare. Grease streaks the ceiling and
walls a dull, heavy grey. Paint the floor as a slippery surface. Add an ounce of peppercorns
(black, crushed), a blade of mace, thyme, ginger and lemon rind. Reduce by boiling. Her toes are
spread, sticky. Fly excrement drops with mote-like lightness from the ceiling.
She removes the stalks from the mushrooms and wipes them clean with her sleeve.
Discolored spore dust drops from the gills. The pulp feels mushy, putrid. They will do as a
garnish for making a galantine. Gian closes his mouth, moves the tip of his tongue back and
swallows. The side of the spore bulged outward and formed a round tube-like outgrowth. Gian
urinates. Heat the fat to 350°. Use one of the common edible fleshes, horsemeat, deer, pheasant,
et sic deinceps. Let the fat penetrate the crust. Brown by sauteing in olive oil. Back of the kitchen
rotting flesh accumulate. The coals should be hot, glowing red. The tube-like outgrowth
lengthens and sends out thread-like branches. The warm urine runs cool over his ankles. The
threads penetrate the sub-soil. Add garlic, leeks, cinnamon and cloves. Globose bodies, maturing
into the characteristic umbrella-shape, develop. Below the ground the mycelia feeds on rotting
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wood.
In the painting microscopic points of dissimilarity appear. The gills, which were once
white, have changed gradually to pink and into shades of deepening brown. The viewer is invited
to note that the ends of the gills nearest the stip are not attached to it. When the stip is removed
from the pileus, the ends of the gills are not disturbed. The chamois skinlike membrane stretches
from the stip to the edge of the pileus and hides the gills from our view.
S'
Since the membrane, or veil, is still attached to the pileus, we assume that Donnina had
chosen to portray the fruiting structure at a late stage of immaturity.
The stone vault of the great hall exhibits the improvement of the tas-de-charge, a set of
through stones in squared masonry that forms the lowest sections of the ribs and transverse
arches and extends back into the wall itself.
The tas-de-charge conveys the vault thrust through the wall to the head of the arched flier.
The thrust then continues down the arch to the outer pier-buttress.
The stone of the vault is ashlar.
Gian's shadow through the night window is ponderous, yellow, and too human.
Donnina saw her father being dragged from the church where he had been praying. The
abductors were large, brutal. They shouted at each other and at the Duke. They had the Duke by
his arms and were forcing him back, down the long aisle to the door. Donnina could see, but not
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recognize, a figure at the door, waiting, watching, turning to hold the door open. Twice, it
seemed, the Duke would break free from the men's grasp. But he would not, she knew, get
beyond the man at the door. Smoke from candle and incense swirled around the struggling
figures. The Duke, the bulk of his weight now on his abductors, fought them down the aisle.
As Donnina came half-awake the nightmare was ending. Wind was passing overhead through the
top of the trees. A nightingale sang and fell silent. She moved her hand along the bed, feeling,
trying to identify familiar contours. The hand paused, fingers walking along the surface.
Donnina's head came up, slightly rotating, looking for signs of the experienced place of memory.
Her hand continued its search. Had she seen her father? The hand stopped. The wind,
now lower in the trees, pulled at the cloth walls. Donnina lowered her head and drew back the
wandering hand. Birds were now mixing their sounds in the air around the cart and the trees.
Yellow, soft light began to flow through the walls.
The details of her dream were fading in her morning plans. The preparation of the fire and
the food. The walls began to glow with brighter yellow. The wind started to die away as Donnina
pushed herself up over the edge of the bed.
GEOFFREY
Caro Franceso:
I agree with you that writing is remembering. And I agree, in principle, with your
more general claim that familiar objects and events are the substance of memory. But
writing, by representing memory, does not always reveal the familiar. It also
unfamiliarizes. It is part of the paradox of representation.
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Death is a remembered, familiar, event. In my own text on Donnina Visconti and
John Hawkwood I been forced to represent it often. But does its representation there
always capture, for the benefit of my reader, the familiarity of death? Suppose I have to
describe the death of one's of John's comrades. There were many. But that of Jack
Knightsburg will illustrate my point.
Jack lay dying in the whirling dust. His senses were no longer reliable informants. He had
forgotten his horsemanship.
We are familiar with memory, with our horsemanship. We rely on our senses to
inform us. We must represent these things. Jack cannot do it for himself. We do it, knowing
it is what he would have done. But is our representation one he would recognize?
You see my point? As writers we are caught between the necessity of representation
and the knowledge of its estranging effect. We make pools become streams in spite of
ourselves.
The documents were delivered to me yesterday. I believe they will help me to
establish motive in Gian's treatment of his uncle.
What pleasure will Roberto have in marrying at his age? You say his nephew is
depressed? Quite so.
Sono vostre schiavo.
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Donnina looks down the street, following the direction of the sound of the puppy. A small
alley opens up, between two yellow houses, in half-shade. Two small girls, one holding the
puppy, turns to look. Donnina smiles. The shade, moving imperceptibly toward the right,
deepens. The ears and head of the puppy rise from the crook of a small arm. The warmth of the
arm is familiar. The puppy expects to have it continue.
The small brown arms hold the puppy out toward Donnina. The eyes of the animal are
bright. The hand of the second child is caressing its head. The puppy whimpers and seems to
draw back, deeper, into a rough sleeve. The children smile at Donnina.
As the corner of the alley approaches, her pace slackens.
The glimpse is transitory, human, magic.
_______
"You require an audience, we diversion. What can you give us? My men and I are easy to
amuse."
Members of the White Company sat near the edge of the road, at the top of a hill.
Hawkwood stood, holding his helm in his left hand. The horses of the Company had been led
back into the woods behind them.
"We can do you satire and comedy, Sir Knight. We can do you scenes of domestic
disorders, professional corruption, boasts, struts and cons. We accept any coin, any gratuity."
The Impresario looked down at Hawkwood from his high seat on the wagon. Hung along
its sides were the costumes of the players. Chairs, tables, wooden swords vessels, rolls of cloth,
books and musical instruments lay scattered on top of the wagon. The large dray horses smelled
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of sweat.
"What! No tragedy, no romance? No love, mystery, war, lointains voyages?"
"No, My Lord. Our art represents life as we know it."
"Can you not represent what you do not know?"
"No, My Lord. The scene must always follow the experience. Do you not obey the same
rule in war?"
"No, I improvise."
"Do not the improvisations of both our arts follow our experiences, Sir Knight, like
mountains rivers from this year's snow-melt?"
The improvisations of the players of the Commedia dell'arte
are called lazzi, or "turns," or "tricks." The word is a Lombardian one. We know it comes from
lacci, Tuscan for "knots."
The actor resorts to lazzi when his wit or eloquence gives out. For example, Harlequin
might pretend to throw a cherry pit in Scapin's face, or catch a fly on the wing and eat it. Some of
the players, for example, Scaramouche, are acrobats. He can turn a somersault with a glass of
water and not spill a drop. I have heard that he is still performing at Vicenza.
Scaramouche, an actor who excels in the role of the braggard Captain, is now eighty-three
years old. The Duke of Parma, in admiration of Scaramouche's talents, plans to present his coach
and equipage to the old actor.
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Its color is flesh-toned. From the center sprouts a huge, menacing nose. Below the nose,
fierce, bristling moustaches, which seem like spikes set out to defend the entrance to a castle, jut
out.
The old actor is putting on his mask. In its general aspect it is intended to emphasize the
contrast between his brave appearance and his cowardly nature. The rest of his costume, an
immense starched ruff, plumed hat and boots with scalloped edges at the top follow next. Finally,
he thrusts the sword into its scabbard and hangs it around his waist. A foot too long, the sword
drags on the floor as he moves left to the entrance to the stage.
The Captain meets Pan, a god. "I am in love with Franceschina. Will you help me"?
"So you love Franceschina? She is beautiful, young, admired by all for her wit. You are
old, ugly, your joints hung together like a baboon."
"Watch your mouth, god." Reaches his hand out to find his sword. "I have fought the
Turk, mounted walls in sieges, commanded a galley, crossed the Alps in winter, swam the
Hellespont in complete armor."
"Franceschina is mine." Causing the sword to move outside the Captain's grasp. "I never
share my women with ill-tempered mortals, particularly those with one foot in the grave."
Franceschina, played by a man, leans from the window, listening.
"Her father, Spavento della Valle Inferna, has promised her to me. Here is the marriage contract."
Holds up a document wrapped in red ribbons.
"Spavento della Valle Inferna is a dissembler and a cheat. He has no children. I rendered
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him impotent long ago." Takes up his flute. "Relax. It can happen to any mortal." Begins to play.
Franceschina, who has lent money to the Captain, leans further out of the window.
Escobombardon, Sangre y Fuego, and Taille-Bras, fellows-in-arms of the Captain, enter.
Each wears a costume embellished with the turbans of the infidels he has killed and various items
(handkerchiefs, scarves, rings, locks of hair, billets-doux of mistresses) signifying conquests of
the heart.
Pan, playing the flute more as the master than the pupil, dances around the assembled
company. "Do you not," addressing it, "have on your collective escutcheon the noble device of
the porcupine"?
GEOFFREY
Pan's ability to speak and play the flute at the same time has been remarked upon by
several authorities.
_______
Franceschina, moving her eyes, transfers her affection to Sangre y Fuego. From an
imagined melee she watches her hero emerge, bristling like a brush, with the arrows of the Turk.
"Most appropriate. For the porcupine, for all of his quills and lust, is a known coward."
"Have you not, god, heard of the great Captain, John Hawkwood? We are of his
company."
"That great buffoon?"
"A great soldier.
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"More likely to suffocate inside his armor than to fall in battle."
"A most courteous knight."
"A party server."
"A champion of the poor."
"A rapist, a roaster of prisoners." Dances away, playing his flute. "Advise him, upon pain
of total impotency, never again to disturb my sleep in the greenwood."
Franceschina, pulling the shutters closed, turns away from the window.
Donnina, smiling, raises her hands to applaud the players.
The engravings of the principal character of the commedia dell'arte are by de Geijn. They
are on loan to His Holiness from King Frances. His Holiness is particularly fond of this one, a
rendering of Hawkwood as Captain Mala-Gamba. One of a series, a triptych. You are surprised at
His Holiness interest in secular matters?
The representation of the mask is particularly adroit. Notice the fine detail of the nose, its
surface texture. Like lichen upon a rough stone? Quite so. Like craters upon a full, pale, moon?
Only within a certain light.
_______
Luigi, deaf from the noise of the water-mill, worked in silence and determination. While
there was no grain for him to grind, sack and weigh, he repaired the water-wheel and kept the
stream clear of obstructions. Twice this year high water had destroyed the wheel and its gears.
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Behind the mill, in a long shed, Luigi was drying the logs that would later be used to replace the
entire structure.
Luigi's work schedule is seasonal and of a certain order: open the penstock at the mill
dam to start the water flowing on the water-wheel. Cut, with chisel and hammer, deeper furrows
in the millstones. Put tallow around the spindle on the bush. When the grinding season ends, let
the penstock down to stop water from falling on the wheel.
S
The watermill works on the principle of the wheel and axle. The axle turns as a greater
speed, and with more force, than the wheel.
Had Luigi's mill been in perfect condition the floats of the wheel would have moved with
a third part of the velocity of the water and the stone would have made on rotation within a
second.
Three of the rapes committed in the area can be attributed to Luigi. He suffered from no remorse.
Their screams were silent, his sleep, those nights above the groaning waterwheel, peaceful.
Luigi's customers sometimes offer the service of their women in exchange for the use of
his mill.
S'
Of the four possible kinds of gears (spur, bevel, worm and rack and pinion), the watermill
has two. Two bevel gears intermesh at an angle at the wheel to change the direction of rotation
from horizontal to vertical. To control the speed and force of the motion of the wheel, a series of
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spur gears intermesh on the same plane.
Without the spur gears, Luigi would not be able to reverse the direction of the wheel's
force.
Luigi stands watching as the cart approach the ford below the mill. As the cart turns up
the hill toward the mill, the muddied water of the ford starts to clear. Water from the ford
changes the shrill grinding of the cart's axle and wheel to a low, throbbing sound. The heat of the
friction between the axle and the wheels subsides. The wooden spokes and rim of the wheel,
expanding from water-absorption, tighten the iron tires of the cart.
Friction between the axle and wheel of the cart opposes the forward motion of the cart. Its
motion slows as the slope of the hill leading up to the entrance to the mill increases. Luigi sees
the hand of the driver come out, pulling the brake-lever back, setting the brake-shoe against the
iron tire of the wheel. The cart rocks back and stops.
Donnina recognized the noise. It rose and fell, tumbling forward through the trees and
over the hill. She had heard it before, at Mulino di Torre
"It is a dangerous place, Donni. Stay away."
The dog struggled to reach the bank before being swept from the dam through the
penstock. The increasing velocity of the current, pulling at the weight of its heavy coat of hair,
drew it closer to the penstock.
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Donnina screamed and took Gabriella by the hand. They ran, looking for a sign, through
the heavy grass along the bank of the stream. The noise of the turning mill wheel below rose over
the sound of the water falling from the penstock. The head of the small dog appeared and then
twisted left into the penstock. As Donnina screamed again, Gabriella turned right, away from the
bank of the mill dam.
The skin of the miller's hand is very sensitive. The milled grain sifts through his fingers of
his right hand. The grains of the meal, in contact with the thumb and index finger, feel too
coarse.
He holds in reserve for his lord meal of a finer ground.
"We must not stay here." Donnina looked earnestly at Colon.
"But there is water and fuel for a fire." The man, leaning back in the seat of the cart,
gestured toward the mill stream and the woods beyond. "We must rest before continuing our
journey."
One of the figures, Luigi could see, was a large man. A ragged sleeve of his coat fluttered
as he swept his arm around. His head was down, in the direction of a smaller figure standing near
the seat of the cart.
Luigi leaned further out of the door. He held his weight with his right hand and controlled
the rotation of his head by relaxing and tensing his left arm. He did not expect the arrival of any
more grain today. Nothing moved along the banks of the stream and in the woods beyond.
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Luigi watched as the smaller figure turned away from the cart. The shape of the buttocks
reminded him of a difference, an attraction. An early evening breeze raised the figure's cap and
pushed strands of hair out into the light. The head was high in a posture of deep listening.
Luigi had not had sex for a week.
GEOFFREY
"My father, Sir, was a miller. In Cambridgeshire."
I am, despite my years, quite trusting of people, especially of the young.
"My mother kept a boarding house hard by the mill."
Her references are just here, to my left. I have not had time to read them.
"Their services were much in demand by the scholars from the university."
My stomach had been bad at Cambridge. The fens smelt of rotting fish.
"Our beds and custom were quite affordable."
The noise of the mill below my window gave me bad dreams.
The velocity of the Cam River at Grantchester is now too weak to turn the wheel below
the Church of St. Paul and St. Peter. The farmers take their grain elsewhere.
"My mother was quite adept at pleasing our guests. It is her gift to me."
My old tutor, dying of a flux, would ask me to count the words in his latest manuscript.
At the time, I remember, I objected to this as time wasted in a difficult period of my life. But I
have learned better since.
"I am nineteen and quite able to read. I owe it to the generosity of a passing scholar,Sir."
_______
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From Fabricia, the Pope went to Soriano along roads which at that season were most
delightful.
The small insect struggled to spring out, free from Donnina's firm, but gentle, grasp. Her
breath, falling quietly through the cool night air, was warm on its wings and back. As her hand
rotated upward, light flashed from its abdomen.
The flash of light, 0.3 seconds in duration, vanishes from Donnina's palm in a pale yellow
glow. Points of light answered from the valley below. Donnina's hand relaxed its hold. The insect
leaps airborne out and up, flashing a dotted line of light toward the valley. Donnina leaned back
against the cool grass of the hill. More small lights appeared in the valley, spreading toward the
woods beyond, defining its edges.
She felt at home, remembering the lights along the valleys of the Adda.
GEOFFREY
I believe this species of Coleoptera is Luciola. It emits a greenish light from a pale spot
situated on each side at the base of the pronotum.
But I have mislaid the reference which contains fuller details about the insect.
_______
A chaotic sound disturbed the air to Donnina's right. The figure of a man went past,
sliding on the damp grass, falling out of control down the hill. She came quickly up, turned left,
and started running hard. Beyond the edge of the hill the night was darker, thicker with shrubs
and long grass.
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She would use gravity, her own quick mind and light body, to her advantage. She knew
that she was running for her life, but the strength and poise of her body gave her confidence. The
cool night air pushed energy into her legs. Her arms swung forward and out, forming a defensive
wedge before her, guiding her body between the stones and shrubs.
In the darkness behind, the figure was blind and unbalanced. His mind started to leave his
purpose. His legs felt stiff. He began to fall, screaming in a sound he could not hear. The surface
of the hill would not hold him. He tripped and fell. Gravity and his forward momentum pushed
him toward the racing mill steam below.
As the night deepened and became more silent, the gathering of fireflies became thicker.
Columns of the insects, attempting to escape the mass building at the center of the valley,
constructed spirals of flashing, moving, light. Higher, above the long grass, toward the midlevels of trees, the columns went. At the tops of the trees, starlight gave a jewelled glow to the
light of the rising, circling, columns.
At tree-top level, a few of the spiraling columns started to unwind. The vortex at the
center lost its force and began to move out, dissipating, vanishing without form or pressure.
Their wings now without lift, the bodies of the insects began to turn and roll. Vestiges of dew on
the grass caught their legs. Starlight withdrew behind the trees.
Near the surface of the earth the insect did not sense that the air was cold. Its light pulsed
slowly and died.
Donnina went toward the cart under the trees. The sound of the mill below the hill,
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mixing with the sounds of nocturnal insects, was becoming less distinct.
The cloth of the opening into the cart was plain, unadorned. As Donnina's hand pulled the
cloth open, starlight spilled into the space inside.
S
The subject is made, not given. Take, for example, the subject of this picture. Notice how
colors create the action of the current. At the surface, where the waves curl back, the water is
silvery-blue, almost transparent. Further down, toward the center, the water is turning a
yellowish-green, almost opaque. Near the bottom, where the sediment is heaviest, the color is
dark brown, quite like the dark stain obtained from the husk of a walnut.
The whole is an adroit study in the effects of water, gravity and sedimentation in a small,
insignificant, mill-stream.
"My Lord, your armor, that sword, those boots. The weight, the drag? Have you, weight
and gravity signed a condotta against the free movement of the body"?
The dwarf looked at Hawkwood. His voice was shrill, mocking."My movement, Jester,
can be tried." Hawkwood raised the heavy sword and swung it over the dwarf's head.
The air, taking up the sound of resistance, opposes the swing of the sword. The dwarf's body
spins. One foot comes up on its toe, the other swings out, holding the body, top-like, in centering
balance.
The antlers of the great male stag push his head down. In the greenwood along the Ticino
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River, the underbrush is thick. A swarm of mosquitoes settle on the animal's back. The
underbrush pulls, like flotsom accumulating in the slowing current of a stream, against its head
and shoulders.
The hunters spur their horses down the green slope into the forest. The air, cooled by the
river, sweeps over their faces, raising hair from silk. As their heads come lower over the necks of
the horses, the spurs come back, cutting flesh.
"Have I not, My Lord, observed your behavior at the table? Nourishing the third deadly
sin? Pork, ham, beef, chicken, fish, eel, bread, wine. Your stomach even refuses to reject the
spiny parts of the artichoke."
"A simple cut will open yours, Jester. Do you not perceive the need for a more substantial
covering for that part? Do me and the Duke the honor of eating more and with less
discriminating taste."
"I have, My Lord, sufficient nourishment to support what I myself find insupportable in
you and your kind."
"My kind finds much support, especially in the society of the ladies. But you, I surmise by
your dress and figure, would not know how to press them for their support."
"I have pressed, and impressed, many in my employments for the Duke."
"But where are the proofs that the impression has taken"?
GEOFFREY
What I often told John I must now tell the reader. Assume no special place, no special
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skills, no uniqueness. What you are is what everything, and everyone else, is. It is hard to
imagine? Not at all. Simply ignore the pressure to think of yourself as more important, unlike,
something else.
In the action of the lightning bolt appears the similar motive of the beetle.
For her image to move in the mirrored walls, Donnina herself need not move. The image
moves, impelled by a mobile outside light, down and across the wall to her right. On the left, the
other wall reflects Donnina and her resting, now moving, image.
Her image rests and moves.
The places have the same duration and size. Donnina takes no pride in what she has done, what
she does, or what she will do.
The light rests in red and then moves on to yellow and green. Forms of familiar objects
appear, a fire, a green woods, a yellow sun.
The bird felt it first, a slight vibration of its pinions, a sudden turbulence in the air around
its body. Below, near the tops of the trees, the air began to become heavy with electricity. The
wind shifted downward, forcing the load toward the center of the trees. Sap began to boil, to push
outward, exploding leaves and bark.
The yellow flash, unheard by the soldiers it killed beneath the trees, continue to roll
across the lawn toward the reflecting pool near the orangery. Giorgio's dog pulled back from the
door, feeling for his master's leg with his shoulder. His nostrils started to burn from the smell of
wood and grass. A greenish-yellow light appeared across the upper part of the door. A following
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noise, going toward the side of the house near the river, shook the tapestry along the long hall.
Georgio, taking the dog's leash, turned back away from the door and began to run toward the
stairs at the end of the hall.
The bolt of lightning continued it course toward the river. Before it killed the man
pushing his boat out from the shore it caused his earlobes to tingle and the skin along his neck to
sense what he took to be the movement of an insect's wings. Beyond the idle boat, fish began to
surface in scattered drifts. Georgio, turning up the first flight of stairs, heard a noise toward the
river. Near the base of a wooden pier, the water became warm. The air along the shore, and under
the trees with the dead soldiers, became quiet.
Georgio felt the leash tighten in his hand. The dog, its head up, had stopped. Its legs were
stiff, holding its body up, refusal building in its eyes. In its mind appeared the image of the door,
the grass and spiraling gnats, rising in the trees.
Over the mountain peaks ahead, small, white, thinly vaporous clouds began to form.
_______
The White Company, Hawkwood and a guide leading, were fording a river near Brolio.
Sand, rising through the water muddied the water below the passing horsemen. Small pebbles at
the bottom, glistened at their surfaces and disappeared into a brown opacity. The pebbles can
move in any direction. Only a pebble of their own size, or larger, stops them. The men moved
toward the center of the stream, the water pulling at the knees of the horses. Lighter air, displaced
by heavier air moving down the slopes of the mountains, rose higher into clouds. Before them the
men could see a squall-line forming. The current of the river became stronger, colder. Above the
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dark squall line, cells of white energy pushed out and up. The frontal thundercell will reach a
ceiling of 28,000 feet before lightning will begin to flash. Hawkwood, turning in the saddle,
looked for signs of movement, an ambush. An average thundercell in this country reaches a
ceiling of 37,000 feet. Along the cliff, to the right, Hawkwood could see the remains of an old
castello. Above it, the sky, broken by a few pink-white clouds, was quiet. The knees of the horses
rose and then disappeared under the surface of the current. The sound was abrupt, fragmented,
against the steady sound of the current. The moment was silver, wet, surprising. Giant
thundercells reach heights of 60,000 feet or more and mushroom out to diameters as great as
30,000 feet. Hawkwood turned his head back to the front. He leaned forward in the saddle. The
space between Swallow and the others lengthened. A pebble, dislodged from the bottom of the
stream, made something like the knight's move on a chessboard.
The guide, in the pay and on the instructions of the Anti-Pope was leading them into an
ambush. The voice of the guide, shrill with anxiety, mingled with the sound of the water. The
noise of weapons and armor rose insistent against the sound of the flowing water. Wet leather
smells musty, old. Its surface stretched, brown toward red. "My Lord." The guide gestured. "Our
way is toward the right, between those cliffs." In the clouds ahead, negative charged particles
rose in the heavy air. Hawkwood, standing in the saddle, turning his head, scanned the cliffs for
movement. In the heavy air, the particles stalled. The force of the stream's current slackened.
In the stream a pebble, changing positions, replaced another pebble further downstream. It
was no promotion, no change of status.
At the edge of the stream Hawkwood pulled his horse around to face the men coming up
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from the stream. Water from Swallow's legs pooled and ran back toward the stream. The air felt
charged, heavy. Hawkwood, the guide beside him, would take the salute of the White Company
passing to his front, toward the pass between the cliffs. A gust of wind lifted Swallow's mane and
passed back, moving the rider's hair. In the stream, the water began to clear, the pebbles and sand
anchoring themselves, en passant, at the bottom. Negative charged particles, passing in the
frontal clouds along the eastern slope of the mountain, began to fall. Men of the White Company,
turning in the saddle, returning the salute, continued to pass Hawkwood. Clear water ran in the
stream. The sheen of the water left the hair of the horses' legs. Lightning flashed. Hawkwood
looked west, towards its source. Thunder rolled over, and among, the men, dying away to the
back, to the stream and the low country beyond.
The guide pointed toward the pass. "There is shelter there, My Lord. A place to make
camp. Enough water and fuel for the entire Company." Note the face and clothes of the guide.
None of it is real, all make-up, designed to seduce the gaze of the viewer. Even Hawkwood, for
the moment, has been deceived, his guard let down. Will he, as he should, first send in a
detachment of scouts into the pass? Or will he, following the advice of the guide, lead the entire
Company into the ambush? The last of the Company passed, returning the salute of the leader.
Swallow, feeling the electricity rising in the air, moved back and right. Lightning flashed again,
the sound of thunder immediately following. The gaze of the viewer is on the face and head of
the guide. Note the neotenic effect, the mock innocence. Do Hawkwood's sentiments, like those
of most viewers, lie with the young, the immature?
With this picture we force ourselves to stop, to stand back, to think. As the slope turned
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grey, it began to rain. Hawkwood reining his horse left, felt an increase in the force of the wind,
and the rain. The way ahead was greyer, more indistinct. The viewer pauses to re-examine, rethink, the arrangement of details. In the upper portion of the storm cloud the positive charged
particles rose. Later, in fair weather, they would return to recharge the earth for its loss of
positive charge from the lightning. Swallow, hooves churning the wet earth, swung around the
front of the Company. Along the cliffs ahead the enemy waited. Hawkwood called the Company
forward, heads slightly down, helmets, cuirasses and gauntlets taking the force of the rain.
Clouds thickened, the pass dimmed, the gaze of the men leveled to the front. Along the slopes,
above the cliffs, the animals moved, blinded by rain. Any droplets would mute the window pane,
any candle flame would reddens. Point-discharge currents release sharp objects on the heads of
the men and horses. Inside the pass the cliff-walls went higher. Lightning, like candle-lights on
the mast, flashed. The footing was stony, slick. The horses lunged ahead. Along the edge of the
cliffs the heads and arms of the enemies came up. Their voices called out to each other.
To viewers the scene is odorless, but not silent. They see, beyond the scene of battle, a
field of red flowers below a line of trees, Beyond the trees and the ridge behind them they see a
line of grey cumulus clouds, rising. Gespardiu's horse went lame. As he raised the leg to examine
the hoof he was killed by a missile. The red flowers, of the genus castilleja, have spikes of
flowers surrounded by showy, brightly colored bracts. The trajectory, and velocity, of the missile
were sensitive to initial conditions.
The hormone, now disappearing from the organ, is prostaglandin E-1. As it withdraws,
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nerves at the entrance of the urethra atrophy and die. Thickets of tiny, helix-shaped arteries,
collapse. Chemicals from the dying nerves begin to constrict the flow of blood and oxygen. The
size and length of the organ decreases. The whole, withdrawing toward a larger mass at its back,
loses its purpose. Within the fluids of the organ's central cavity, nitric oxide is no longer present.
_______
"I am, My Lord, a simple sempstress."
"The very skills it needs to cap its head, clothe its length."
"I cannot dress it in the dark, My Lord."
"The fit, not the fashion of it, means all."
"I do not, My Lord, yet feel that needlish quality required to meet the demands of my
thimble."
"It is a thimble of bad design that cannot promote the proper thrust, and angle, of the
needle."
_______
The colors, blue and gold, are the colors of the heavens and the water below. In their
emotional appeal, they transcend all boundaries, ideological, national and religious. Donnina is
now below the gold roof, working with different colors down and across the facade. Above the
roof, the blue of the heavens reflects the blues of the water of the lagoon. The water slides
gondola forms up to the surface and over the waves. Across the lagoon a golden cupola stands
out against a drifting cloud and a low horizon.
Domus Aurea. Rising between water and sky it belongs to neither. But represents the
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painter's bridge of colors between them. Colors shape the size and spatial location of the storied
windows. From the larger windows of the upper story the view is in all directions. On a clear day,
one can see as far as the mountains around Cortina d'Amprezzo.
On the east side, fronting onto a narrow street, there will be a flamboyant portal. The
waterfront loggias of the house will eventually be superimposed and glazed. On the west, the
cusped wallhead will resemble those of the monastic churches of the
Veneto.
Behind the flickering crocket, at this corner of the picture, a street will be painted. The
whole is meant to suggest the owner's commerce with both the Levant and countries to the north.
Since he is known to have traveled little, it is up to the painter to convince the viewer of the
owner's taste and experience with these architectural innovations. Notice, in particular, those
pendant traceries and these idiosyncratic Egyptian-style crenellations.
In the basement, below the level of the lagoon, the imprisoned soldier can only hear the
sound of the water, pushed by the tide and a passing gondola, against the side of his cell.
_______
The sound of the river caused Hawkwood and the Company to turn left. They went
through a willow thicket to stand in the mud at the edge of a bank. Swarms of mosquitoes and
black flies rose from the line of trees and settled on the faces and necks of the men. The river was
high with thick, brown, water. The men felt the heat begin to increase under their armor. Some
had taken off their helmets and were beginning to stack their arms. They stood, looking at the
river rising toward the top of its banks. Along the willows on the opposite bank thermal winds
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pushed leaves and branches out toward the river. Between the bank and the next hill a swamp
had formed from the spring run-off.
A fever was causing Zane Bon, the oldest member of the Company, to hallucinate. His
body shook and he began to vomit again. Pain spread from between his buttocks up toward his
lower back and out to his legs. He saw his wife and two of his friends coming along the bank of
the river. Their voices carried the names of flowers. Where the river had cut the trail, they
paused, looking. Zane watched his wife raise the hem of her dress. Trees beyond the river, and
the hill, began to merge their shapes. Zane saw his wife turn, as if she had heard a noise. The
noise of the river faded. He felt a hand behind his head, raising it around and up. The sky was
turning grey and it was beginning to get cold.
The voices naming the flowers had vanished into a roar at the back of Zane's head.
The hounds attacked Hawkwood and what was left of the White Company as they came
up and over the edge of the bank. The attack was silent, from a line of trees to the left of the men.
Hawkwood, shaking his arm, pulled a dog from the ground and threw it toward the river. He felt
a pain along his lower right leg. Ricco, to his left, swung the weapon at the animal. It neck,
falling away from its body, went away, raining blood toward the river. Another dog, its hind legs
trying to brake its rush, went over the bank. Hawkwood, his speed increasing, turned left along
the river toward the tents of the Anti-Pope. A third dog ran at him from behind the first tent.
The eye of the animal which first saw the flash in the man's hand suddenly felt pain.
Inside the eye, nerves gathered the pain against them and moved it to the inside of the head.
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Blood splashed on Hawkwood's armored hand. The animal, circling, fell away right against the
tent. Hawkwood ran past the empty tent toward the next one. The dog saw water where the land
and trees ought to be. The rest of the Company came on, their boots pulling at the wet ground
and heavy grass. Inside their armor, heat rose along the surface of their skin. The canvas of the
last tent, in the path of Hawkwood's sword, split and fell open. Ragged strands of cloth wavered.
Caught by the vortex of air around Hawkwood's shoulders and rising and falling arm, the
wavering stopped. The attack of the Company went through the camp and through the next line
of trees. It continued for the rest of the day along the road leading away from the river to the low
pass to the north. Where the road rose toward the mountains the men would wait for the stallieri
to arrive with the horses.
The horses are swimming in the darkness. Light gathers against their skin. The surface of
the water, pushed by their breath, moves out in half-circles. They hold themselves against the
current. River flotsam, rotating colors and forms, go by. Toward the far shore the current
slackens and the water becomes cold. The animals swim on, toward the low shore, below the still
moon and stars.
"They came from over there." The old woman pointed through the window. Donnina
turned her head. The line of low hills were half-covered in shade. Toward the top, an outcropping
of white stones showed through the trees.
The old woman sat over a round table. Under it sat a brazier of olive pressings. "It is cold.
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Warm yourselves." Donnina looked for a chair. "They were looking for what they called the
rebels. They killed fifty men in the village. One of them was my brother."
"Was he part of the Movement"?
"Marin? He picked olives for the Conte. He had no time for politics." The old woman
gestured toward a younger woman in the corner. "Go see to the animals."
Donnina steps back from the table. The woman passes her, trailing from her clothes the
odor of smoke. The woman's gaze holds an image of Donnina's clothes, face and hair. Her mouth
is closed. Her movement through the door is that of a woman twice her age. A hand comes up
from some rags at her waist to steady her passage through the low door. Along the surface of the
hand Donnina sees sores erupting red through discolored skin.
When they took the body of the hanged woman up later that day they saw that she had
been in the last days of her pregnancy.
"My brother did not speak their language. We buried him and the others near the river."
Donnina unfolded her arms and leaned closer to the table. Her hand felt the bony arm of the old
woman. Her legs were no longer warm from the heat from the brazier.
"The last of the fuel."
GEOFFREY
I hold a magnet in my right hand. On the table lies scattered piles of iron filings. I bring
the magnet close, closer. Two inches, an inch. Closer. The filings begin to un-pile, leaping at the
magnet's end, a sudden air-borne pattern. My left hand lies still, flat. The pattern, transformed,
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reaches the magnet. I rotate the magnet left and down. Another pattern. A slight vibration leaves
the room, the floor, dying. I stop the movement of the magnet. Bit of dust, float through the light,
hanging in the air. I move the magnet up and right. A third pattern. I look at the filings closer,
short, thick, long, slender. Rough, tapered toward the end. Their colors, black, yellowish, brown,
greening in the afternoon light. Shifting here, as I turn the magnet, toward red. The patterns stay,
riding the curve, the curving moment.
I turn away from the table to my desk. The MS, ink, black, the pen floating down. I begin
to write. (Patrick, my servant, curse, burden, will re-arrange the piles of filings. Stow the
magnet). An analogy: the details of Donnina's and John's life, motives, times. Scattered across
the spaces of Northern Italy. You and I found them in an unequal distribution. Unconnected,
random, unpatterned. Battles, journeys, loves, condotte. You and I, we must organize the details,
give them a proper pattern. The inert details lie there, here, elsewhere. Urge them to leap-shape
themselves. Rotate left, a new memory. A different pattern. A misfit? Try again. Black ink files
right, a clause, sentence, paragraph. Stop. Go on to the next.
_______
The colors of the sky look that those of Giovanni Bellini. Red light colors the white
houses of the village. Yellow light glimmers on the feminine olive trees. At the bottom corner,
the light darkens into night.
_______
Lately, the dream had always been the same. The pressure between her legs. The mound
rose, opening, moistening. The pressure moved in, deeper, and began to spread through her body
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to her breasts. The nipples hardened. Her hands clenched into fists. Her lips, reddening like her
nipples, opened and her tongue started to slid along the top of the mouth.
Escape from the state came with the sudden constriction of her lungs and the rush of air
building into a cry. She began to feel again the forces of this high mountain valley moving
through, and around, her.
The smell of pine trees, and a warm breath on her neck, made her come awake.
In the room the heat was increasing. The smell of sweat rose from the body of the men
seated at the high table and in the facing chairs. The robes of the advocatus diaboli, the young
man at the left, and the old advocatus Dei, at the right, pulled at their shoulders. In the hands of
the old man, the document he held shook. What he knew gave him confidence, but his voice was
weak. The cardinal-judges, at the high table, strained to hear him.
"The evidence for the miracles is irrefutable, Your Eminences. All witness agree on the
dates of their occurrence and the nature of the events." The old's man voice fell as he slumped
back in his seat. The cardinal-judges waited for the rebuttal of the advocatus diaboli.
"I would remind Your Eminences that this court has to establish a probability of the
existence of the miracles. This we know, is done on grounds of experience and observation,
neither of which the witnesses can lay claim to."
The canonization trial of Caterina di Siena would take four days. In that time it would
rain, the temperature would rise and a cardinal judge would die of the fever.
In the street outside scraps of food and litter accumulated in the gutter and doorways.
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After the rain, the odor of rotting meat subsided and the scavagers returned. Before dawn, the
birds had gone. The rats stayed.
Carlos Impredezzo, impiegati di immondizia, was dying of a fever.
"Miracles, we agree, are a violation of the laws of nature. Where, in all the testimony we
have so far heard, is there any evidence of such violation?" The body of the young man tensed.
His voice rose. The cardinal-judges, hearing the words, did not judge.
The advocatus Dei pushed his chair away from the table and rose. Under his robes the
hairshirt ate at the skin along his shoulders and arms. He felt dizzy. He knew that neither
tradition or precedent required him to speak. But the works and sanctity of Caterina were in his
mind, forcing his voice.
He began to speak. The miracle of the saint, the one that set the pattern for all the others,
occurred in Siena in the late afternoon of 10 June 1357. Details of the event composed
themselves in his mind. In their specificity, nuances and color, lay the refutation of his opponent's
definition of a miracle and the validation of her sainthood.
The miracle was to change the course of an event set at the beginning of time.
The room is almost full. Yet not all the people in it are the same as those who first
entered it. In the middle, half way back from the high seats of the podesta and his assistants, sits
the woman. In her mind she watches the cathedral rise above the castello of the Archduke. The
issue is money, authorized by the podesta, from the commune. The Duke's builder is bearded,
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fat, morose. She feels in his face the coercion of the Duke.
"His Lordship's castello needs repair. It serves the people in both war and peace. It
protects us from the attacks of the Florentines. The people visit its grounds and walk through its
halls. A zoo, and playground, is now under construction for the children."
The woman rises from her chair and turns to the people. She gestures toward an old man
in the rear of the room, "Sergio. How many times have you been admitted to the castello"?
"None."
"To the cathedral"?
"Always."
"And you, Gabriella, how many times have you taken your children to visit the Duke"?
The park of the Duke is enclosed by a ha-ha. The inside, vertical, wall of the fence is
done entirely in glazed stone. One leaves the vertical wall, and the park itself, by way of an
embankment. Neither the wall nor the embankment is visible from the park itself or the fields
around it.
In the budget of the commune there is money for repairing the fence.
_______
The falcon's head rotated left and its head went up. It felt the man's hand tighten as it
tried to spring up and out toward the shadow passing in high center vision. A larger shadow drew
its attention right and down. Outlines sharpened into recognizable forms, peasants before a low
house, a horse, its head cocked right, a woman with a bucket at a well.
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A dead rat floats in the warm water of the well. The fleas attached to its skin release the
bacillus Yersinia pestis.
Behind the woman a young man dressed in lace and fur pulled at her waist. Her head was coming
back and the man's hand was at her breast. Her mouth tried to form a smile. Or a cry for help?
Her hand was slipping from the bail of the bucket. The horse of the man pulling at the woman's
breast waited. His right hind leg was cocked, his eyes on the men moving toward the edge of the
hill.
A rush of air goes by as a dog attacks a larger, dirty-yellow, dog. The force of the attack
pushes the dogs back, toward the porch of the house.
On the porch, the peasants are standing, smoking, staring at the passing horsemen.
The smell of urine and burning dung hangs in the air around the house.
A band of falconers, Hawkwood leading, was passing a farmhouse. A sudden, slight,
wind raised the rim of Hawkwood's hat and ruffled the feathers along the back and wings of the
bird he held in his left hand. A flutter in the air caused the head of the falcon to rotate suddenly
right. John pushed the bird out, holding him higher, out of his shadow.
_______
S
Snipes may be killed with first class tiercels flying in favorable localities.
_______
John's companions followed him up over the edge of the hill. The day was starting
cloudless with only a light wind. Prey for their birds would be easy to see, to take. Soon they
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would be beyond the farmhouse and in the open, unfenced, country beyond the hill.
Dust from the hooves of the horses, caught by a drifting wind, blows back along the edge
of the hill. As they pass through a grove of stunted cork oaks and ilex they hear the cry of a dog,
fading.
_______
Rien sans pennes. Donnina has painted the bird as a white gyrfalcon which has molted
into adult plumage. The head of the hooded bird is toward the viewer. The colors of the feathers
of the plume are mainly orange, brown, white and dark grey. Arrow-shaped markings run along
the top of the folded wing. Pinions at the end of the left wing show a slight flare.
The bird sits on Donnina's gauntlet of soft, brown leather. Jesses, of the same texture and
color, droop toward the bottom of the picture. The lace of Donnina's sleeve emerges from the
gauntlet and vanishes into a large white area at the left side of the picture.
The gyrfalcon is the most noble of rapacious birds.
_______
At the bottom of the hill, before crossing a ravine, the falconers released their birds. They
watched, heads up, turning, waiting for a sign, a cry behind the sun, a dark speck on the stretched
blue canvas of sky.
The horses, heads down, nibble at white cistus, lupins. The men wait, hands clenched into
fists in their gauntlets. Arbutus and myrtle bloom along the next low hill.
The left wing of the falcon comes up. Its pinions flare out, opening windows to the sky
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beyond. As its right wing folds in, the bird stoops, its velocity increasing. Talons move out,
assuming the proper position.
The head of the old woman on the porch of the farmhouse turns right. She hears a sound she has
never heard before.
_______
The cat, developing its own theory of identity, looks at its reflection in the mirror. It sees
a yellow and black striped head rotate its ears right. Its whiskers, brushing the cool surface of the
glass, tingle. Black slits appears in the yellow eyes, withdraw, and shrink in size. The animal
waits. In the mirror the image steadies and comes to rest.
The body of the cat, pushed by its hind legs, comes suddenly up. Releasing its claws, it
swings its free right paw at the image. The left paw of the image-cat comes out and around. Real
cat and cat-image then fall left, out of the picture.
A tall, vacuous, indifference now occupies the mirrored wall of the room and the one
opposite.
_______
The horsehair and linen of the petticoat holds the dress stiff. In the flowers, still wet from
the dew, the crinoline dress drags back against her legs. Grey-stains appear and expand in the
florid designs of the skirt. The weight, along her thighs and knees, increases. The movement of
the skirt scraps bees from the vetch flowers in its passing.
The woman's lover, running toward her in boots and tight satin beeches, reaches the
center of the meadow first.
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GEOFFREY
Have I told you the story of the Cistercian monk and His Majesty? You know, I suppose,
that the Cistercians wear no underclothes. A vestment rule of the order, I believe. Its purpose,
stated in the rule (I have seen the document where it is written) is to dampen thoughts of a carnal
connection by allowing a free circulation of air around the private parts.
Well, it was a wet, summer day. His Majesty and his entourage were in York on their
way to the cathedral. The Cistercian, attempting to avoid the prancing horse of the king, slipped
and fell, causing his robe to come up and over his head.
His Majesty, observing the bared flesh of the monk, was heard to say, maledicta religio
que develat anum.
_______
Donnina's hand, clenched into a fist, pounded on the door. Silence, like quiet water filling
a pool, flowed from the empty room. She pounded on the door again. The silence moved around
her and stopped. She raised her fist. The silence was now all around and back of her, beginning
to move down the great stairs to the rooms below. In the corners of the great Spiegelsaal below
the silence would finally gather darkness to it.
She turned away from the door. No voice, no footstep came from the floor below. There
was no one to call.
_______
The smell of gangrene from the wound in Simon's leg drifted through the room. He had
been, with Robert, the last to leave the battlefield. Something like the taste of an overripe olive
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moved along the edge of his tongue to the back of his mouth. When he raised his left arm, the
numbness started to change to a tingling sensation. They heard the last scream from their horses
as they moved out of the grove of trees and down toward the stream. His penis moved its head,
along a cotton surface, slightly to the left. He began to feel weak. They had followed the stream
all that afternoon and evening. The smell of willows intermingled with the sensation of cool
mud. He had fallen left, opening a wound in the palm. Robert, leading, went along the bank
toward the curve in the stream. The breath of his horse was warm along his face. He began to
scream at the curtains beyond the end of his bed.
The breath of his horse had turned cold. The edge of Robert's head disappeared around
the stream's curve. His penis relaxed back beyond feeling.
_______
The Pope went through a chestnut forest and a vineyard close by. To the west he could
see Mt. Argentaro, bounded by the sea.
_______
Donnina's arms were around the girl's thin shoulders. She felt the small body shake. In the
evening air had not yet begun to cool their tears. The girl's arms pulled harder at Donnina's waist.
Donnina's stomach and throat tightened. Sobs broke the sound of the girl's words.
"Don't leave us now."
"I must return to my family. They are old and lonely."
Colon watched from the seat of the cart. The family dog whimpered. Colon's wife, her
head covered by a sun-bonnet, looked away, along the road they would soon take away from the
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crossroad.
Donnina, kissing the hair of the girl, pulled her arms away from her waist. In the space
behind the head of the girl she made the sign of the cross.
Colon's voice was calling his daughter. Donnina held the small face with her hands. "You
will come and visit me. Walk with me along the Adda. In spring the lupins bloom there."
"I don't want you to leave."
"Remember the names of the flowers I taught you. Teach them to your children."
"You promised."
Colon's voice, closer, called again. Donnina slipped her hand away from the girl's cheek.
Donnina turned toward the road to the right. Ahead, the bottom edge of the sun touched the
horizon. The sound of wheels rolled off to the left. Donnina's cheeks were wet again. As the grey
film disappeared from her eyes the contours of the road ahead sharpened into detail. The horizon
had now reached the upper edge of the sun.
In this picture, we notice, there is a somewhat different arrangement of details. A school
of fish, their mouths and eyes wide open, gaze in awe at a large crucifix on the right side. On the
left, defining the tails of the fish, the image of Hecate stares beyond the heads of the three
travelers toward the land beyond. The figure of Christ is outlined, from behind, by a reddish glare
of light. Its source seems to be in an area to His right.
The illumination begins to touch the head of the fish. Or are they moving closer to Him?
The signature of the artist can no longer be read.
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Donnina's new clothes were strange, heavy, stiff. The rough surface of the pants had
begun to chaff her skin. It was harder now to bend her ankles or raise her legs. Bruises, from
awkward turns of the boots, were beginning to cover her ankles. A heavy woollen cap concealed
her hair and a leather coat flattened her breasts. She felt a strange bulge between her legs.
The clothes made her feel more armored than costumed.
The more she practiced, throwing her voice ahead and to the side, the more she sounded
like one of her father's pages. She was learning to force the sounds more through the nose. The
nasal sounds were strident, rising and falling. She felt the strange position of her tongue, forming
the sounds of her name. The sound of the names she pronounced made the trees and flowers
along the road remote.
She was a stranger to herself and free. She stopped on the top of the hill. Below her, she
could see the lights of a village. The breeze along her face was cold, out of season. From a source
beyond the village came a slow, undulating roar. A slow flying bird went by.
Donnina went down the dark road toward the lights of the village. Beyond the village the
fishermen slept on their unmended nets around their boats. Back from the beach, in the houses
along the first low hill, the wives of the men sewed and made lace. Sea-water, beyond the village,
sieved minute organisms. From their shells came limestone and then marble.
Where the country came up against the first house of the village, a dog started to bark.
The voice of a child called. Donnina walked toward the center of the village. Puddles of water
stood in the street. Mud, pulling at her legs, compressed the darkness. A whirling motion started
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up in her head. A hand came out, feeling for support. The dark world was now in an oscillating,
up and down, movement.
Donnina was unconscious before she began to fall.
Before the poisoner began his journey south, through the mountains to Italy, he had to
know details about Hawkwood himself, his security arrangement and problems that might arise
from the layout of the headquarters of the White Company. The poisoner was anxious to
complete the work. But there were delays. At the end of September, the weather turned bad.
Rain, then ice and snow blocked the roads and passes. His servant, after a short physical
complaint, went out of his mind. He was forced to select another out of Robert's kitchen staff.
The poisoner waited for approval from the Antipope. But an audience, due to the
inefficiency and stiffness of Robert's ministers, was difficult to arrange. The rituals of Robert's
court confused, annoyed and bored the poisoner. The perfumes of the court ladies began to stink.
With the winter season of court festivals, it became hard to find an empty corner in which to be
alone.
_______
The Pope went to Santa Fiora at the invitation of the tyrant. The town lies on a high rock
with rough and jagged cliffs. Passing through a meadow, the Pope was offered milk to drink by a
peasant. Remembering the man who offered water in his two hands to Artaxerxes as he passed
by, the Pope smiled and did not disdain to touch the black and greasy bowl with his lips.
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_______
But the poisoner persisted. He must have the details about Hawkwood from Robert's own
lips. The days and weeks went by. He observed, from various corners, Robert and his entourage
leave and return. He became expert in Robert's habits. He knew that Robert customarily slept six
hours an night and that his favorite wine was a pinot bianco from Isonzo.
The poisoner waited, listening carefully to his informants. This last one had just finished
computing, from a suit of stolen armor, Hawkwood's body mass. The exact amount of necessary
poison could now be determined. The poisoner was beginning to feel better about his work, his
journey south. Yet the perfumes of the ladies still bothered him.
S
The poison is homobatrachotoxin, colorless, odorless and tasteless. It is a relatively
unknown member of the neurotoxins that affect the sodium balance in muscles. The victim first
has a slight headache. Often ringing occurs in the ears. Within three to five hours, convulsions,
caused by muscle cell ruptures, begin. Fluid begins to fill the lungs. Breathing becomes difficult.
Muscles in the neck and along the torso begin a series of out of control contractions. Bleeding
often starts from the nose, ears and eye sockets. As cell rupture continues, fluids from the
muscles, lungs, stomach and liver mix and generate (as yet an unexplained) chemical reaction.
An odor, something like that of rotting leaves, is often detected. Within an hour, the victim
explodes into a jellied mass.
Pietrasanta. Donnina looked at the reflection of the marble statue in the mirrored wall.
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The reflection stood, silent. She rose, turning around the easel, toward the center of the room.
Her hand, fingers coming out flat, opened. The surface of the marble felt cool. Where the green
and golden streaks ran through the stone the surface felt rough, raised. The marble of the statue
was from a remote mine at Seravezza. Donnina's moved an upper leg against a stone shoulder. A
road, Via Monte Altissimo, had been made to bring the stone down from the mountain. It ran
from Riomagno to the bridge above Malbacco. The cloth of Donnina's dress is di cendato. A
slight rise in temperature can be noted along the surface of the stone.
At the bridge above Malbacco grew three sycamores in the French style. In a pool below
the bridge, where the water exited an aisle of white boulders, swam the summer sculptors of
Seravezza. Donnina's fingers moved up the stone neck. The lobs of the ears were smooth, cool.
The thumb and index finger tightened. From the skin of the swimmers white marble dust floats
away. Waste marble, made into paving stones, lay on a slope blackened by fire above Riomagno.
The swimmers, thinking il peso non dorme, remembered the weight of the mountain.
Heat from stone through silk to flesh moves by conduction. Minute hairs along Donnina's
legs stood. The transfer of energy occurs in the collision from more excited to less excited
particles. Donnina's nipples, stiffening, pull her breasts higher. The heat from her skin issues
isotropically.
_______
Hawkwood, his legs stretched out, lay on the bed flipping cards into the helmet between
his feet. The cards, one by one, arched, turning in a flat rotation. He thought about tomorrow's
battle. How should he time the first attack? Would there be enough food for the horses? A card
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hit the rim of the helmet and fell right toward a burning candle. He paused. He would order the
men to dismount before the old circumvallation. Yellow light illuminated the face of the red
queen. Hawkwood, feeling its cool surface, slid the card out and up. They would, before light,
lead the horses between the counterguard and the revalin to the east of the river.
The fortifications of Montefeltro were similar to the ones he and the White Company
would assault tomorrow. Where the card rotated gently into the helmet Hawkwood noticed a
brief flash of red. The defence design, by the French engineer, Tauban, had an extraordinarily
deep fosse and cuvette. When he shook the helmet slightly the card fell from the rim of the
helmet. He slid another card from the deck. The counterscarp would still be wet from the rain
yesterday. The card was a black ace. The problem would be to keep the horses quiet until they
were in position beyond the revalin. He moved his right leg out, relaxing its stiffness, away from
the helmet. The aim of the arm had been bad. The card's center of gravity shifted. Robert of
Hinckley, with him since 1369, had been killed crossing an exposed area of the fosse at
Montefeltro. The rotation of the card had become a wobble. It disappeared into the darkness at
the end of the bed. Blood, mixing with water at the bottom, ran into the cuvette.
The White Company, beyond the scarp and counterscarp would have to make the final
assault as infantry. Hawkwood, spilling the cards out, turned the helmet up and over. As he
pushed through the tent's opening, the air became a slight wind. The yellow cone of a candle
flame bent back. Just above the molten wax at the top of the candle the flame held steady,
burning a deep blue.
Notice that the stone fragment that killed Robert came from the hornwork in the center of
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the fortifications.
GEOFFREY
"The world today, Child, resembles a chess-board which is checkered white and black."
White: P-Q4. "It is now your move, Child." Black: P-K3. "The colors of the chess-board show
the two conditions of life and death, praise or blame." White: P-K4. "The chess pieces are men of
the world who have a common birth, occupy different stations and hold different titles in life."
Black: P-Q4. "They all contend together and have the same fate." White: Kt-QB3. "The King
often lies under the other pieces in the bag."
"Cook expects me to return soon, Master." Black: P-QB4. "A more orthodox continuation
for you, Child, would be Kt-KB3."
"The King's moves and powers of capture are in all directions." White: Kt-B3. "This is
because the King's will is law." Black: Kt-QB3. "The Queen's move is aslant the board because
women are greedy." White: KPXP. "She takes nothing but by injustice and guile." "I am well
acquainted, Master, with these slanders against our sex." Black: KPXP. "The Knight's move
combines a straight move and an oblique one. The former betokens his legal power of collecting
rents, the latter his extortions and wrongdoings." White: B-K2. "The Pawns, Child, are poor
people." Black: Kt-B3. "Their move is straight, except when they take anything." White: Castles.
"The poor man does well as long as he keeps himself from ambition." Black: B-K2.
White: B-KKts. "Cook is lazy, Child. I will instruct her to kill her own chickens." Black:
Castles. "After a Pawn is promoted, he becomes a Queen and moves obliquely, which shows how
hard it is for a poor man to be just when he raised above his proper station." White: PXP. "In this
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game, the Devil says 'Check' when a person such as yourself falls into sin." Black: B-K3. "Cook
says I have quick, steady, hands." White: Kt-Q4. "Unless you quickly cover the devil's 'Check'
with your repentance, the devil says 'Mate' and carries you off to hell." Black: BXP. "Did I not
detect the tremble of a hand on that last move, Master?" White: KtXB. "I am merely connecting
my center pawns, Child." Black: PXKt. "And with no moral to accompany it, Master?"
My game with the maid could have ended in several ways. The King, leaving his passive
role, could have become an attacking force. The cook, angry because of the delay of the maid,
could have interrupted our game, telling me (perhaps) that I could cook my own chicken for
supper. The pawns might have increased in value while that of other pieces might have
decreased. It might have become too dark to distinguish the chess-pieces or the black from the
white squares. The cook, extremely angry, might have thrown a live chicken into the midst of our
play. Two knights, for example, without their pawns, might have become valueless. But, being
an amply endowed player, the endgame was of a quite different sort.
S
It stands in the Duomo at Florence. Walk to the north-east side. Stand in front of Paolo
Uccello's (1397-1475) equestrian fresco-portrait of Hawkwood (1436). (The work had been
promised to Sir John two years before his death in 1394). Look carefully at the base that supports
the pedestal. It rests on three consoles, not unlike those designed by Luca della Robbia for his
Cantoria (1431-1438). The whole was originally projected in perspective from a view below the
level of the fresco and about the eye level of the viewer standing in the side aisle. Jurgen has
shown that the fresco, transferred twice, is now hung at its proper level. The overall viewing
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effect is that of Avanzo's Liberation of the Companions of St. James (c. 1374) which Uccello
may have seen in Padua.
Note the resemblance to the Donatello Gattamelata in Padua (1445-1453)--notably, the
advancement of the legs of the horse on one side the retraction of the others on the other side--the
stiff pose of the rider's legs--the raised baton--the curled tail of the horse. But note the
differences. The lack of tension in the Gattamelata, especially in the bowed neck of the horse and
the shoulders of the rider, whose presence in the Hawkwood make it unforgettable. With the
dress of Hawkwood and the trappings of the horse, we might have expected something more
Roman, more martial. But Uccello has been content to dress his subject in contemporary garb, a
short cloak (reaching only to the knees), a beret, and light armor.
Thus an element of common humanity has been added to what might have otherwise been
an ordinary figure of epic proportions characteristic of what other Florentine painters would be
doing later on, from1433 to 1439.
Despite the damage, and neglect, suffered by the Hawkwood, it is still a magnificent
creation.
_______
In from the door a warm fire was burning. Hawkwood walked naked into the glow. In the
trees back of the house the ravens started to share their food. He heard the same soft moans. The
bed moved up, re-concaving its center. The bird's neck, in exclusive languor, stretched out. The
blue beak opened, delivering its food.
The opening was larger, warmer. Soft enfoldings re-centered. The light from the candle,
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above the bed, met the heat from the fire. The spermatozoon would like to see a new Hawkwood
in every generation. She asked, sharp small fingernails on his shoulder, for more. From the trees
an eye rolled toward a grain of corn. Initially everything was constrained within a solid phase.
Receiving heat, by conduction, from above and before it, a molecule of the organ began to
vibrate more vigorously about it position in the structure of the head. She took him in, aching,
throbbing. Weak and temporary relations with other molecules formed. Capillary attraction pulls
it up, excited. It acquired greater velocity and internal energy (rotation and vibration). Soot in the
flame of the candle ascended toward the ceiling of the bedroom, lending the area its luminance.
"I don't want to hurt you," Hawkwood said. Another black shadow flew past the window
toward the sounds in the trees. Hawkwood heard a chuckle. Her fingers wound in his hair, his
legs wound in hers.
GEOFFREY
Dear Francesco
It is true about the printing machine at Venice? One John Bates, sea-captain, makes
it go about here that he has seen it in operation. He promises to deliver the evidence of the
machine's capacities within the week. My scribe, who seldom goes out-of-doors because of
his fear of tanning, says that he is totally ignorant of the matter.
My near neighbor, Sir James Kristal, praeses coll. trin. Oxon. is dead. I have just
received the news from his niece, who is pleased to call upon me once or twice a week. He
dragged with one foot a bit, by which he gave warning, like the rattlesnake, of his
approach. He preached every sunday at Garsington--about fifteen miles off. His death has
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reminded me to look again into the sermon I believe I sent you for perusal. The one
wherein the speaker is wont to compare man to a mischievous baboon.
His marriage, I suppose, hastened his death. Quod erat faciendum.
_______
The Pope climbed the hill beyond Rocca di Papa. The Pope beheld the mountains of
Civitavecchia, which enrich the times with newly-found alum. The Pope turned his eyes toward
Monte Circeo and its fabled heights.
_______
The men are provveditori. They met him at the stairs leading down from the Ducal
Palace. Bartolomeo had entered into secret negotiations with a potential new employer whose
army he was at the same time facing in battle. They took him by the arm. At his death, by
beheading, he left 231,983 ducats to three heirs, only one of whom was legitimate. Soap made
the surface of the deck slick. Lime dust had been thrown in Robert's eyes. The name, chelandie,
since it suggests a resemblance to the tortoise, means that the vessel had a second deck, a
protective structure built as a defence against greek fire and missiles. Robert went down, grey
fluid bespattering part of a rowing seat on the vessel's left side. The beheading took place, a
month later, between the two columns of the Piazetta.
Gasparo looked at the ballot, a small round ball. The ball was, unlike most of the others,
gilded. He walked toward the platform at the front of the hall. "My Lord, we have designed the
urns in such a way as to conceal from the voting members the kind of ballot they have drawn."
No birds were disturbed by the sound of the severed head, falling. Gasparo showed the ballot he
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had drawn to the Doge. In the unfavorable part of the balloting box, the green part, the votes for
execution accumulated.
_______
The Pope could also see Soracte and the Sabine country. The Pope could also see Lake
Regillus and the ruins of Tusculum. The next day, the Pope proceeded to Grottaferrata. The
Pope's words were received with approval and nothing further was done that day.
_______
The chelandie burned toward the waterline. Water began to lap Robert's lips and nose. By
next summer the bronze statue of the dead condottiere would be in place. The seat of
government, at San Marco, does not permit of the glorification of any individual. On the right of
the bronze statue is a church, somewhat in the Gothic style. On the left, the Scuola San Giovanni.
The pedestal, by the Venetian caster, Mauro Leopardi, exemplifies the late medieval style of
Coducci.. The condottiere's left arm is up, pulling the horse to the right. The light through the
water of the bay is green and blue. Toward the bottom, where the current turns Robert's body, the
light becomes tinged with purple.
S'
The pedestal stands 15 feet high and 9 feet long. It is wide enough for a well-proportioned
horse, 12 hands high. The whole suggests that the knight had won his reputation, not in fighting
archers or infantry, but fully caparisoned knights.
The essence of Donnina's school of painting lies in its use of color. "My Lord, the enemy
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control the approaches to the bridge." The hand, holding the Queen, trembles. Hawkwood looked
down at the river. Through the fog the bridge was a long, faint, shadow. At the beginning of the
game, the Queen always stands upon a square of her own color. Smoke from their fires drifted
along the bank. Color highlights the structure of a face, defines the mouth, shades the eyelids,
hollows the cheeks. Only a piece of the Queen's own color stops her from moving. Grass floated
out in eddies along the bank. Long-legged insects circled in miniature vortices. Hawkwood and
two of his men slip naked into the water. It will be perceived that the knight has moved to a
square of a different color. In this place, the water runs still and deep. A closer look reveals bits
of flotsam circling at the surface, going nowhere.
Hawkwood is swimming in blue-green water. His arms start their drive from a full
extension in front, hands close together on the surface of the water, palms down. The aquatic
environment will become hostile. La fossa maledetta e sventurata. Hawkwood swims ahead of
his comrades. Small waves, pushing out from his body, disturb the motion of the men. Air
bubbles stream back from the thrashing feet of the knight. He is drawing his legs up in a way
much like squatting, knees apart, feet close and pointed. An arrow breaks the surface of the
water, slows, and spirals slowly down. Hawkwood's feet are turned outward. With a continuous
sweep, he kicks back and out to an angle of about 90° and then snaps them together. Voices from
the banks are garbled, broken. The water is generous, receptive.
On the other shore, two of the enemy are poised to dive. A gust of wind suddenly ripples
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the surface. Their arms come upward and outward, extended sideways, level with the shoulders.
Hawkwood increases his speed. His arms now moving alternately, one starting its pull just before
the other completes its drive. The enemy enter the water with backs hollowed and heads held
back. Hawkwood sees each of his arms dip in front, on its own side. The elbow stands up a few
inches higher than the hand. The legs of the enemy are straight, toes pointed and legs pressed
together. Something moves just below the surface of the water. Their commander, on the bridge,
shouts orders to them. Hawkwood's arms sweep from the middle of his body to his thighs. The
arms of the enemy are together just above the head. Orders from their commander stop.
Hawkwood's legs whip up and down, alternately, one rising as the other drops. He rolls his body
and turns his head above water. The enemy swim toward Hawkwood. Exhalation occurs
underwater during the recovery of the under-arm. Silvery white points stream back and vanish.
Eyebrows at water level, shoulders flat and square.
Hawkwood takes a breath, depresses his head (looking downwards) and plunges. The
enemy swimmers are there. Hawkwood strokes downward with his legs and hands. The enemy
treads water, waiting. Hawkwood turns his head back and up. The arms of the enemy move with
a sculling motion near the hips. Hawkwood strokes powerfully toward the forms at the surface.
The lungs of the enemy fill with water. Their legs sink. Their backs are no longer hollow.
Their lips are below the surface of the water.
The tone of the skin around their eyes heightened. The white knight can move to any
square occupied by a black one. Their screams were brief, falling. The eyes of the White
Company, across the river, were transformed into a gaze by a shadow. The set of the face showed
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extreme experience combined with extreme absorption. Hawkwood leaves the water near the
approach to the bridge.
The man turned toward the noise. He felt the pressure of a hand over his mouth, on his
neck. His boot slipped on the planking of the bridge. The moment is inseparable from the
movement of reflexivity that characterizes consciousness. Hawkwood broke the man's neck with
a quick movement of the arm. What had been light became heavy. The man's head and shoulders
pulled Hawkwood's upper body down. When the pawn reaches the eighth square he must be
exchanged for a piece of the same color. Hawkwood releases the body. Its final position and
shape (at the bottom of the scene) resembles an overturned chess piece. But the scene, the viewer
remembers, builds on the appearance of deception. The morning fog, thinning, moves over the
form.
Hawkwood, his men following, runs down the length of the bridge toward the barred
approach at the other end. Men of the White Company meet him there, pushing the heavy bars
out and up. The wood of the bars is smooth, glossy in the pale light. The fog has neutralized the
smell of the early morning river. At the moment, Hawkwood deceives the viewer by not
shivering. Standing to one side, he watches the men of the White Company run past. His nudity
cannot be regarded as an aesthetic category. Over the shoulder, back and buttocks, the skin seems
to be undarkened by the sun. The figure of Hawkwood's groom and the head of the horse,
Swallow, parting the light, appear on the bridge's approach.
GEOFFREY
This is my fifth revision of the text. They have cost me a considerable amount of time and
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effort. Yet I believe they have been useful, even necessary. My friend, Mr. Samuel Cooper (the
prince of physiologists of this age) charges me with an excess of spirits naturally dependent upon
a sanguineo-melancholicus complexion. Others have said it is due to a sexual interest in Donnina
and John. (Their exact words, which I have written down somewhere, are too low to be published
here.) One said (in jest?) that he detected such interest in the length of the line and the space
taken up by descriptions of their love-making. He added that he also detected in the descriptions
a number of letters with an uncharacteristic upright stance.
But I am vergentibus annis. The flower and heat of my youth are largely gone. I love and
admire Donnina and John, but from a distance. La bella Donnina d'acqua rosata lo viso se lava.
That I lavish my revising efforts upon their love-making merely shows my interest in words, their
sound, meaning and order in the line. The loop slid over the last button. Le aperture nelle vesti.
In revising for an auditory effect I go on the principle that if two things sound alike they are (in
some sense) alike. The robe is blue, edged in alzarin yellow. I cigli bruni e volti in forma d'arco.
He pulls the large brooch from her hair. The knot unwinds, spreading the soft hair over her neck.
La nuca e nuda. My patience, care with words, is well known. The nipples of her breast rise hard,
red. I assume, of course, that the dialect spoken by John and Donnina is the one spoken mostly in
London, or places (like Richmond) hard by. Yellow separates from blue. Her head, mouth
slightly open, goes back. Mucous red openings. La bocca piccioletta e colorita. I am especially
concerned about the effects of ambiguity. She meets him, flexed knees push-brushing his chest,
his chin. Treat adjectives as you would a beggar in the street. Moonlight on the bed shows the
relief of their bodies. He thrusts. She cries. The smell of wild-flowers rises from her body. Keep
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punctuation to a minimum. Take an analogous approach to paragraph length and effect. He cries,
fingers clutching, pulling the flesh. A shadow moves across the face of the moon. Vermiglia
come rosa di giardino, piagente e amorosa per basciare.
In any text, of course, one must always resist the need to display one's knowledge of the
symbolic value of words. A warm, now cooling, fluid streaks her body. As it dries, it takes on the
color of wax in moonlight.
Avoid the conflation of genres.
I should mention that as I was walking through Newgate last week, I saw a bust of
Donnina. It stood in a stall at the Golden Cross, a soap-boiling establishment. I took notice of it
to one that was with me. She remarked to me that the gilding on the bust was much damaged by a
fire.
Consider how these things would be forgotten had I not had the leisure to put them down.
_______
Donnina looked at the ceiling. It was yellow, but not bright yellow. Closer to brown and
full of long cracks. In the time she would look at the ceiling, several flakes of a white substance
would fall from its surface. The walls were the same color as the ceiling, though not so full of
cracks. From a small window, she could see the beach, the men at work mending their nets and,
further out, seagulls flying. She stretched out her arms, yawned, and turned away from the
window. She was happy to be a stranger, invisible, in this village by the sea. She heard the cry of
a seagull, sharp, cacophonous.
Three children of the village were racing around the house. One stood by the back and
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one ran around the building one way and the other the other way. If there had been any
inhabitants in the house, they would likely not have seen them. The house only has one window
and a door. Around the outside a hedge of hawthorn, euonymus, blackberry and wild roses grew.
If a passerby or a neighbor saw them, the racers would slow down and pretend to be looking for
something. In order to win the race, one had to reach the steps to the door before any of the
others. All of them ran as fast as they could. Anything could happen if they didn't.
Donnina walked across the room and sat in the chair. The wood of the back and seat
creaked. Two seagulls, squabbling, flew low over the house. Donnina shifted right in the chair
and leaned back. She supposed the birds were now out at sea. Or diving on a fisherman's boat.
She used to wish that the wood of the furniture in the castello would speak. One did once, the
wood above the fireplace in the Duke's study. It told her all about colors and how they felt and
where the flames in the fireplace were trying to go when they flew up. It told her that, if you are
lucky, you turn into a flame when you die. The others, the unlucky ones, become mud or water.
_______
Swallow hit the hedge at full speed. A young hazel tree blurred its form. The animal
drove its backlegs harder. The impact, unseating Hawkwood, threw him forward and right over
the pommel. His grip on the great sword tightened. It was the season of the dog star. The horse's
legs flailed through the branches of a low shrub. Bits of grass and moss arched back and away
from the plunging animal. Blood started from a wound made by a blackberry vine. Hawkwood's
knees pushed in around the belly of the horse, stiffening and compacting his hold in the saddle.
He swung the sword, cutting a limb from an elm. Wood chips flew back, half filling Swallow's
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ragged tracks. Roots of recent colonizers of the hedge, spindle, hawthorn and roses spun up and
then went to pieces under the plunging hooves of the horse.
The snake's temper was short. Its tongue felt the heat. The shadow above it was heavy,
deep, crashing. Swallow hurled himself forward into the center of the hedge. Hawkwood's sword
sang over the ears of the horse. Bark, leaves and bits of thorns streamed back and down. The
snake, timing the approach, struck out at the noise and rushing black mass. Its head met the
unexpected. Its coiled body went piecemeal into a mixture of muddy blood and green slime. A
fine place for silence. The great horse felt stronger. At the far edge of the hedgerow its hooves
killed a hare and a family of mice. Clay compacted down, tight. The day brightened. Hawkwood
spurred the horse on and out toward the open field.
S'
Parish hedge-boundaries can be old, hard to penetrate. Their siting is important, their
depth and number of species a matter of time.
Hawkwood pulled the great animal, still running hard, around to the left, down along the
edge of the hedge. Back of him, through the gap he had made, the first lance of the White
Company appeared. The gap widened, slowly, swords, knives and lances began to flash. Wood
has a soul that should be respected. Shrubs and small trees at the edge of the gap fall. The
Company wheels left, falling in line on Hawkwood, hearing his cry, "go, go, avanti."
Against the flat sky the sun makes a fine contrast of colors.
_______
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Gian does not like to be interrupted at the table. But the news is favorable.
"Is my uncle dead"? The prisoner vomited. The walls of his cell seem to shift and turn
topsy-turvy. She pours cream, warm honey and melted butter into the dish before Gian Galeazzo.
He orders her to leave the rest.
"The body has been removed, my lord." The flow of saliva increased in the prisoner's
mouth. In this tradition, the angel of death appears as a white, hooded figure. The cell was not
properly furnished for prisoners with diarrhea. Watery feces litter the floor, corners. You hear
shuffling feet and hear cries and mourns.
Gian rose from the table and walked to the north window. Now all the Visconti lands
were his. All that he lacked was investiture as the hereditary Duke of Milan. He had heard that
the Emperor would be in Rome for a meeting with the Pope. He would arrange to be there.
His official title was "the Driver of the Tapestry Sumpter." His responsibility was the safe
transportation of the Emperor's favorite pieces of tapestry from the great hall of the palazzo. On
this trip to Rome some of the mules would carry the pieces specially woven to hang between
windows; other animals would carry larger pieces, the covering for doors and walls.
On this one, he saw the figure of a jardin d'agrement. In the middle of the garden a monk
sat in his tree house, writing. He is at one with the other birds and animals of the garden. Behind
the wagon, bearing the household items of the Driver, a careless mule-driver was being whipped.
Mud streaks the edge of the tapestry where it had touched the ground. The upper end of the great
hall, near the dais, the best and most elaborate tapestries have been hung.
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There they hang, above the salt. The dais is wet, sticky. The Emperor was drunk. Behind
the wagon, the whipping continues. The Driver's own favorite piece, in eight different colors of
worsted, carried the design of the chase. In the center foreground the scene is of a deer being
gralloched.
The pain of the mule-driver filled the world. It was complete, a universe where nothing
could be subtracted or added. The abdomen is first cut open. The liver of the deer will be fed to
the hounds. It was the most perfect of all worlds, for it contained a single characteristic, and this
characteristic was spread evenly through space. Inside the carcass of the deer the hand is warm,
wet. Along the border of the tapestry an intricate star medallion rules a brilliant yellow field
covered with a system of scrolling arabesques and fluttering cloud bands. Buff on yellow, grey on
taupe, form an angular network of blossoming stems, across which hunters dash after their prey.
The heart of the deer will be done in oils for the next edition of Livre de Chasse. Behind
the wagon, the heavy breathing and screams stops. The boardlike stiffness of the tapestry, the
result of being woven on a solid double warp, is a desirable characteristic. The Emperor, his head
down, is being half-dragged-guided from his throne. In the rushes, below the dias, the rushes
absorb the spilled wine, bits of meat, urine.
It was not the Emperor's intentions to cross any borders before reaching Rome. The
tapestries had been put in place by the time he arrived at Hechingen. It is known for its raw and
blustery climate, especially from mid-October to mid-May. The Emperor, casually looking up,
noticed that the tapestry called Peasants Hunting Rabbits with Ferrets was soiled.
He ordered it cleaned. A sluggish, brown river, called the Neckar, runs near here. Over
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the river, the Emperor could see a dense forest. The Emperor, turning in the saddle, ordered that a
count, by square mile, be made of his castles in this area.
_______
The daughter will paint the mother in several poses, from more than one school. In this
one, the intention is to suggest the presence of the mother by means of a marble statue. It will be
the single creation of the daughter. Downy hair grows along her soft, pinkish, earlobs. Come
closer: here we see miniature blood-vessels, within the skin, forking. The figure will be nude,
white. The tips of their tongue, circling, meet. The daughter wants to know, to experience, the
generosity of the mother. In order to emphasize her dominance, the view will be from below.
Roman Breche pink for the tips of her breasts. Separate edges move open. A form, like the head
of a hooded monk, stands up, elongating. The edges of the opening moisten. She was the result of
heat and pressure. Sticky, slow pressure, deeper, wider.
The marble has no bedding or schistosity which would tend to make it fissile. The mother
lies open, revealed, on the bed. Color her movements campan mélange vert. Her fingers slides
lower. The surface will have a fine saccharoidal texture. A pellucid light shines from the eyes.
The hand, relaxing, releases its grip on the mound it has created. The area above the thighs will
be shaded, variegated. Light penetrates only for a short distance. The daughter tastes the
sweetness. It spreads, up and back, in concentric zones. Follow the lead of the mother. The
material, pale in the light of the oil-lamp, is best worked at night. Lychnites. The daughter pauses
in her work. Mention the mother's onyx-like surface. Color the mother's bed a still pool, its
surface waving the water-lilies. Veins dilate and push out. A full, soft mouth will please the
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viewer. Forceblood pushes through famosa violet.
The mother is actually larger than the view will suggest. The green of her iris suffuses her
gaze. The pale yellow mica is an accessory to the mass. The iris reflect the light, as if they will
always look at the sun. Soap bubbles twinkle and burst along the surface. The work of the
mother's hands is precise, thorough. The daughter's head, mouth opening, moves closer. Wilful,
in no particular direction, the accessory organs probe deeper
GEOFFREY
I assume that by now that you have heard what some of the critics are saying about this
text. Perhaps you have, like me, jotted down some of the comments: "He sacrifices the spiritual
to the material." "He lacks the religious sensibilities we expect from our contemporary writers";
"there is far too much about the body, not enough about the soul."
But they mistake, not only my intentions here, but the very nature of literary
representation. Is spirituality a certain color to you? What verbs would you use to describe a
group of believers sitting idly in their pews? Since a writer is also mortal, subject to the turns of
fortune, he too has to make quick choices. But he should never look back.
Of course I feel the tension between the demands of the body and those of the soul. Who
could not? Let me tell you a story: in the garden bloom the flowers. In the morning their leaves
twinkle with dew, in the evening perfumed air blows through the garden. The gardener, dressed
in the habit of a monk, is half-way up the stairs to heaven. He turns, contrary to the orders of the
saint, to look back. He smells the roses and sees the green, black energy of the hummingbird's
wings. Senses annihilate theology, opinion. At the top of the stairs, pale figures slid fog-like
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along the edge of heaven. Inveterate de-sensualized saints.
The gardener, his clothes showing the reflected greens, oranges and yellows of the
garden, turns back. Either the steps of the stairs have become steeper or the gardener is in a hurry
to return to the garden before a flower wilts. The voices of the saints in discussion do not reach
the edge of heaven.
The gardener looks at the brown, twisted leaf. Defeat has come for it in the costume of
brown wilt.
Gravity sucks.
_______
Gian's men were looking for Donnina, the Duke's only surviving heir. "She must be found
before my investiture by the Emperor." The air in the room had felt heavy. North, toward the
mountains, clouds had begun to thicken and roll along the top. Fording the Neckar River the
Emperor had heard the cry of a red-tailed hawk.
"We know her general whereabouts, My Lord." Gian turned to look at the place on the
map. "We know that she is living, disguised as a young man, in this village." Gian moved closer
to the map. The area is one he didn't know. If none of the villagers know her true identity, then
would they know the true reason for her disappearance?
They had cautioned Gian, asking for his patience. "We know that she tutors the Duke
Rizzoli's children, My Lord. She will be hard to take."
The main gate to the Duke's castello had been built with a pointed arch, flanked on each
side by a three story tower. From the towers swings a heavy wooden door, festooned with spikes.
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"A storm of the castello would take some time, be very costly, My Lord. We have not
prepared." Between the door and the inner arch there was a large hall with vaulted recesses on
either side. Gian, turning away from the map, remembered his failures. "We have no definite date
for the Emperor's arrival. It could as early as next spring." The next morning, the Emperor recrossed the Neckar River and proceeded in a southwest direction toward Burg Hohenzollern. The
towers of the castello are square on the outer face. The gate is approached by a bridge of two
spans, the first span reaches from the outer bank to a pier in the moat. The second stretches from
the pier to a broad stone platform which fills the space between the gate and the tower.
Gian's plans for the Visconti lands grew, with cell-like division and expansion, in his
mind. He would destroy all traces of his uncle's influence. His portraits and busts would be
removed from the great hall. The second span of the bridge is a drawbridge which can be raised
or drawn back on the platform. His cousin would enter the family's convent. The poison would
be administered by the Prioress. Murderous mitotis. Even if an enemy gained the platform, he
had no important advantage. He was then in a confined space. Fire from the meutriers and
battlements would fall from three sides.
Gian was hungary again. Some of the cells started to divide at a faster rate. Parts
differentiation. Conquer all the lands to the northeast. Machicolation bisects the gateway to the
Duke's castello. Destroy Donnina's books. The facing of the castello is composed mainly of
ashlar. Different colors help to distinguish the boundaries between the new cells. Gian's posture
in the chair was awkward, tilted. His right hand lay on a document. Paint it black with red
lettering. L'opera. Here fire is a feeble servant. Actually, Gian had not himself written the
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document. He thumbed the black edge. Passing through the library, the Emperor notices a
tapestry hanging to his right.
The wheel of fortune appears on it with the standard formula of four. The movement of
the viewer's eyes is clockwise, around the wheel. The figure of the Emperor, his crown in place,
sits holding the scepter (top). Regno. Next the Emperor, upside down, falls, trailing the
descending scepter (right). Regnavi. His hands clutches the rim of the wheel. Pause at the bottom
of the wheel. Here the figure stands upright (head slightly twisted left) holding the spokes of the
wheel. Sum sine regno. His robes flow strangely beyond the bottom of the rim of the wheel. At
the viewer's left, the figure of the would-be Emperor ascends toward a crown and scepter.
Regnabo.
Here the viewer must make a decision about the movement of the eyes.
_______
At the entrance to the pass, it had begun to rain, a heavy, thick rain from the north. The
voices of the men were low, hard to hear. The smell, coming from wet leather was musty, like
something allowed to remain too long in a damp cellar. Under the armor, muscles strained to pull
their bodies inward, to a warmer, drier place. Oil from their armor ran off, staining the water
grey, green. The trail became steeper. Ahead, the men could see that water, running in arabesque
patterns, was beginning to furrow and erode the trail. When they heard the sound, like a violin
being played badly, they know that it was dead trees, scraping their branches together, trying to
fall.
Hawkwood and the White Company were on their way to relieve the Antipope's siege of
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Monteferrato. The journey would take them three days. Replacements for the men they would
lose would have to come from the young men of the town.
Focus your mind on the other, possible, things, a block of waxy suet, a plate of white,
involuted, honey-combed and feathery tripe. Ducks, gold beaks, black eyes, neck feathers
flowing scarlet over white. A child's finger engraves the surface of a still pool.
Winter in these mountains means cultural annihilation. Just below tree-line, the rain had
turned to hail. It blew into the faces of the men. Ice piled in the ditches and on the windward
sides of the shrunken trees and shrubs. On the cliffs opposite, edges and corners began to go
misty, indistinct. Turning in the saddle, Hawkwood looked back along the trail. He saw white,
wavering, figures in the greying air. The hooves of the horses began to slip, jerking their riders,
rattling their armor. Ahead, before passing around a cliff, the trail seemed to narrow. Suddenly, a
white curtain of hailstones crossed the trail and swept toward the men. Hawkwood pulled
Swallow closer into the cliff. Something heavy went past the knight's head and hit the edge of the
trail, dislodging stones and bits of dead grass. The sound of its fall into the ravine, to the river
below, was almost musical, each note of its collisions and rebounds rising than falling more and
more remote.
Create an illusion of vacancy at the center by twisting your head. Swandown in pale
sapphire light. Remember your feet, soundless, leaving no impression on the carpeted stairs. The
balustrade twists in gilded ivy. Flesh-toned florets stare out.
Linen wicks the heat away from the flesh. Water-logs for the eyelids. A phantasmagoria
in winter. Bones of the hands and feet shift cowardly away from the cold.
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It became lighter, more visible. The strain of the horses' muscles slackened. Here there
was snow, another world. Hawkwood wanted to be over the pass, into the valley, within the day.
The snow accumulated. Along a low ridge ahead, the wind-driven snow was building a cornice.
Draw the form, at this distance, as a sine-curve from the hand of the plane geometer. A thin
vaporous fringe dances along the top of the cornice. Swallow's knees disappeared and he began
to move in heavy, short, lunges.
If the wind would decrease, then the snow would have an opportunity to create more
interesting forms at the end of the cornice.
Toward the center of the cornice the snow became deeper, harder to break. Swallow
lunged higher, harder, his lungs an equine cage for pain and struggle. The legs of the rider pushed
inward, gently urging the great animal forward. Note the stance of the rider, much like the slouch
of the asthmatic. The position will last as long as you hold the gaze, focus the attention.
Donnina, watching the struggling horse, weighs the appropriateness of a motto, written
just above the movement of the great head and mane. Eadem mutata resurgam? Swallow was
now chest deep in snow. Two yards and he would be over the top. The snow continued to fall
with a hallucinatory closeness. Yet the inanimacy of the substance gives place to the enlarging
figure of the plunging horse.
"My Lord, let one of us take the lead." Hawkwood raised his arm as a sign of his decline
of the request. "We are through the worst of it. Avanti."
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Paint Swallow both as bird and dragon, as aerial and chthonic principle.
GEOFFREY
Infans, puer, adolescens, juvenis, senior, senex, decrepitus. The seven ages of every man.
My original design was to describe each one of these ages in some detail for each character
actually brought on stage. The bulk of that description would have lain heaviest, naturally, with
Donnina and John. But I have been forced by new information, and by experience as an author in
this genre, to modify my plans.
I don't want to bloat the text (or interrupt you) with trivial details, unconnected thoughts,
or, even worse, answer every question every reader will have about every age of every character.
Non omnia possumus omnes. But it will be, I believe, of some use to future readers of this text to
reflect on a few of the reasons I have been forced to alter my original design.
First, there is the problem of balance. One naturally wants to balance the whole by giving
equal weight to each age of every character. I wrote some forty or fifty pages (on expensive
paper) with that view in mind. But troubles sat in immediately with puer and descrepitus. It was
not so much what I should have written about these ages, but what I could. Since both are lived
in darkness, in a state of unconsciousness, both are subject to hearsay, wild opinion and the
babble of unreliable informants. Information from mothers on the puer of their offspring, I found,
was especially untrustworthy, even wrong. Such shoddy materials could have no place (like
fustian in a tapestry) in a text of this quality.
The other problem arose with trying to describe the duration of each age plus the nature
of the transitions between them. When did, say, juvenis begin with John and when did it end?
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What did we know about the beinning of the senex of the Pope? Would we have been correct in
saying that age ended for him? (My latest information about him, which I will insert at the proper
place, is that he hasn't been seen for a while.)
What I have been forced to do, in the interest of reading intelligibility, is to focus entirely
(something I will continue to do) on the "perfect age" of each character. I leave a fuller definition
of the term to a later time. I will say only now that it is something like the "flower" of one's age,
her "prime," his "acme." The metaphor of a tree, flourishing from roots to canopy, is not
inappropriate.
Am I in my own perfecta aetas?
_______
Point d'appui. The man was large, he smelled of sweat and rancid food. Donnina fought
him, grabbing for objects in the room to stop her movement toward the door. She could not see
his face. His breath smelled of garlic and sour wine. A table overturned, sending books and
writing instruments floorward. The man heaved, lifting Donnina up and back. She felt her
slippers fall away. Ink pooled and then spread out in minute arrowheads. It progress through the
fabric of the rug was excruciatingly slow and precise. Donnina heard the man give orders for
someone to open the door wider. The surface of the gown was slippery. The man's arm moved
higher, tighter, around the woman's shoulders and neck. Donnina screamed. At her left she saw
the figure of a second man. She hammered an elbow into the ribs of the man holding her. She
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would, at the first chance, wound him with her teeth. The spreading ink stopped at the edge of the
first figure in the carpet, a stalk of barley growing in a field, its awn down, its whiskers pointing
toward the earth. Donnina had tasted her own blood before. But this was different, strangely
sweet, pungent. The man howled and dropped his arm away. The second man struck Donnina
with something heavy. The room became a field of yellow mustard, sharp and painful, throwing
light in her eyes. The yellow glare began to superimpose itself on glossy waves. Donnina felt
dizzy, sick. The man struck her again. Nooses of fire, red poppies in a field, unfolded.
Donnina's abduction from the Rizzoli castello by Gian's men would take two hours. The
Duke's guards had been paid. They would not try to stop the abduction. Midnight and not even
the shadow of the moon. Her room, at the top of the castello, would record the fight, the
approximate number of her abductors, the skill of her resistance. The carpet would have to be
taken up to be cleaned. The Duke's children would be taken away to his English estate at
Boughton, Northamptonshire. They would remember the lady, her smile and soft voice. Her
ribbons danced, her bell-like skirt, floating. Their picnics had been on the cliffs, above the
castello, above the sea. On that last day, arms back as props, they watched the changing surfaces
of the sea. They finally rose, turning down the slope toward the great park, leaving it there, light
swaying on its surface like the wings of drunken butterflies.
The men carried Donnina through an opening cut in the north hedge. The dogs would not
follow them. Blood ran from their necks. Terror in the stables. Horses dying, dead. Eyelids jerked
open, showing an empty ball. The men reached the open lawn and turned left down the long
drive toward the men waiting at a grove of elms. They began to run. The end was rational, the
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means arbitrary, violent. Poison for the hay, water, oats. The sound of the men running overrode
the silence of Donnina's erratic breathing.
"Fasten this over her eyes." The substance of the shadow of the moon was like a liquid.
Behind them, toward the sea, the seagulls called. They moved off toward the waiting horses. It
washed the limbs of the trees.
At intervals, messengers would reach Gian before the main party arrived the next month.
Gian's map, stretched over the table in the far corner, shows the daily (approximate) location of
the party. Note the duration of each day's march. With two or three exceptions they are about the
same length.
Donnina will try, again and again, to escape from her abductors. On two or three
occasions she will succeed.
A finger will now move to the places on the map where these occurred.
The Emperor was pleased with the Baron's maze. "Will you, Excellency, be dining with
the Baron tonight?" The entrance is just here, down these steps. "In all likelihood," shrugging his
shoulders. "Why would you dine with him, Excellency, if you do not wholly approve of his
theology?" I invite you to notice that this maze is an exact replica of the one outside. "Why not? I
might miss something." The gardeners keep it neatly trimmed. Dust is swept from its corners.
Shellac is applied monthly to its pillars and handrails. "What would you miss, Excellency?" The
Baron built both mazes for an unknown reason. The Emperor was pleased by this information.
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"Information." The branches along here harbor a species of scaled insect. Projections of a
resinous secretion. Stoop lower. "I dine also with the Baron because I find the conversation there
amusing. Voices in a loveless merger." Here it is best to crawl.
I notice your quizzical expression. The maze, considered as a sum of its corners, is
infinite. "Her marriage to the count. Perhaps she was guilty because once again she had used a
man she had no feeling for." Here a spring was discovered. This wall conceals it. The Emperor,
smiling, nodded his head up and down. "It is difficult to know the countess." The voice stops.
The Emperor stopped at the next corner. Amenemhet IV (XII dynasty). The low, dark
house of the Minotaur. We should be cautious here. She flipped her spoon over. "That's how the
countess got her first husband."
"Really? I assume that it would be difficult to know."
"What do you mean?"
Without stick-lac her dress would not be red. At least not this red. All impurities, bits of
wood, fragments of a leaf, the excrement of the insect, were removed before the dye was
produced. For his tour of the maze, the Emperor wore plain clothes. He carried no weapons. "The
monks had prepared a list of the one hundred richest counts in Lombardy. He was on it. She went
after him. She is no sciocca." The historian was not permitted to visit the lower chambers of the
maze. What excuse was given is not known, perhaps it was because of the sacred crocodiles and
the tombs of the Pharoahs. The Emperor walked on, reflecting upon the reasons.
"A list? Is that how she got your father?" It is a structure difficult of egress. Note the
shadowy quality of the beast. It is doubtful whether it ever had any real existence. "No idea." She
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uttered the words in a mock theatrical voice. But her bravado was forced. It could not conceal the
expression of loss in her eyes.
GEOFFREY
Labyrinth. The etymology of the word is in dispute. Francesco Petrarca, a scholar, friend,
poet, has traced it to an Egyptian word meaning "mine" or "excavation." In my Encyclopedia,
however, I have organized a substantial amount of archeological and linguistic evidence of the
word's family relationship to a Carian word, labrus, meaning "double-bladed axe."
Certain features of the Baron's maze (which I have omitted here in the interest of space
and reading intelligibility) suggest that the whole was modeled on the tomb of Porsena at
Clusium—a design much used in the floors of French cathedrals. I do not find the egress of the
one at Amiens at all difficult.
Pliny's list of the labyrinths of antiquity, I might say in passing, slights archeological evidence.
_______
Fill this area with olfactory war. A war waged by terrorists, without truce, conditions or
even hope of a victory. The scent of flowers, the odor of perfumes, the stench of excrement,
urine and rotting meat. They collide, separate and collide again. Would that they were more
sensitive to their initial, familial, conditions!
We attribute this state of affairs to the absence of the usual division between inside and
outside.
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Here there are figures (guests?) at the table. The males, we notice, have bequeathed
colors and textures to the women. Delineate the hips with silk, the edges of the sleeves with
ribbons of red satin. Add the scent of tuberose and jasmine, float them out in pale yellow light.
Have them fall, at first languidly and then con rapidita, to encounter the stenches.
The body of the Duke lay, with the waste of the kitchen and bedroom, in the corner of the
basement room. "There is a lack of good accommodations in Milan." Something, with something
grayish-white in its tentacles, crawls out from the pile. "Punto avorio. From our estate at Valle
Vogna." The message from the nose of the animal (anomalous in this light) to its brain will be
slow and fragmentary. The movement of the air here is best depicted as diagonal, slightly
sideways and upward. The glass seems to mock the light, never expecting it to enter completely.
The animal twitches its whiskers and nose with its forepaws. Everything is yielding, glossy,
familiar.
In small alcoves above the table the hostess has placed the busts of her children. The
busts are odorless, silent. In this one the face of a young woman stares out, perhaps toward a
version of masculine order. The room would not inspire envy, or even self-depredation, in this
viewer. Along the borders of the chair, before a soundless fireplace, someone has carved a burst
of delphinium. "Two forces threaten the masculine world, My Lord. Order and disorder." Note
the border of yellow yarrow, a stone urn, a yellow gravelled drive, on this piece of furniture. "The
woman, My Lord, is possessed of much less knowledge than the man. It has been true since
Adam." Turn your head here, the leaves are flickering, silvery in the breeze, the landscape
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seemed to be enflamed by brazen autumn colors. In the marble there are faint streaks of incense
and candle smoke. "Woman was created by God cold and moist, a temperature which is
necessary in order to make her fruitful but one which empowers her to become an enemy to
knowledge."
She is not so much a woman as a sexual landscape. Apprehension seizes the male. The
dress is blue, embroidered with pearls. Notice the lace, here and there, point de Venise à réseau?
"She is like a child, My Lord, in aetate puerili. Would you offer her the sacrament of
confirmation." Hills, valleys, vested in blue. Move, pause and stop: the wet-like shrubs and low
trees of her thighs. Liquidations of order and sequence. Factions of rusticities ride the blood.
Nevertheless we must expect (even presuming forest succession) for the landscape to age, erode.
Sed corporales aetates animae non praejudicant. She returned his kiss. His voice was edged with
an unfamiliar coldness. Call for the unknown child.
GEOFFREY
You and I have now been together for some time. I see that you are still wearing that
carnelian scarab ring. We still have, of course, much to learn about each other. My maid will
soon be here with the wine. Is that a streak of grey? But I need more than a silent companion. I
need someone to confide in, someone like a wife or good friend. Those objets de culte behind
you. Until now I wasn't aware that my work was attracting readers of your class. Most
impressive.
In my usual kind of work, of course, I work quite well, even happy, with only myself for
company. But in this text the words I have written are starting to talk back, ask questions. I need
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a friend, someone from whom I can ask advice, even request protection. What kind of questions?
Your clothes are unusually severe for one in your position, nicht wahr? But they do set off the
grey nicely.
The door to my study? Locked from the inside, of course. But you need only knock three
times. I fear that some of the words are saying, to each other and to anyone who will take time to
stop and read, that I am not their author. Put the mirror down. That powder box: is the inset a
cabochon ruby? Of course, I could meet you somewhere else. But it would mean time off from
my writing. That's one of the complaints the words are making: I don't spend time creating new
words or in giving the old ones a more proper arrangement. Isn't it too hot for a coat that bulky?
It occurs to me that I better not meet you anywhere else. Is that concoction your hair?
Your servant looks appalled. But then the servants are always the worst snobs of all. It is, after
all, all they have. Of course the words are going to deny it. Or just refuse to answer your
questions. I can see the vestiges of a lost beauty in your face. I find no such thing in other readers.
You hear that knocking?
_______
The land of no evil. There was more than the sun in Colon's eyes. The colors were
slightly elegiac in tone. Behind him sheep graze on a warm, brown hill. They had, by crossing the
mountains, left the others behind. The empty rivers. There, when the days were dark, the robin's
wing would give you the color of a coot. Here they were what they are, will be. It will take time
where there is no time. Our conversation will no longer be littered with pauses. He looked away.
The river ran before him, the light of the viewer illuminated the scene. Forget the others, they in
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their lonely light and ludicrous luxury.
The land of no evil. Here the wind was never oily with perfume. Things in the intellect
were simultaneous with their stay in the senses. You cannot recall, even dimly, what you had said
to the others there. To the merchants (masters of many tongues) of lace and hemp. Colon looked
beyond the river. He could see the blue haze hanging, veil-like, on the mountains. There she
would write him from Cortina. "It will take more time than I originally thought, carissima." A
shadow moved behind the veil. Her holiday would be agonizingly solitary. But she told herself
she would have time to finish the picture.
There, the knight lies dead, in the orchard, under the tree. Anaphylaxis. Notice just below
the right ear, the red, almost invisible welt. The bit of the bee was too much for him. Sensitized
mast cells reacted. He should have been more careful. Stinging insects on fermenting apples,
pears, and apricots. On the asters and scarlet runners. The bee got him just as he was about to exit
the place. The swelling of the larynx can cause suffocation. Here you can see where the turf has
been disturbed by the hooves of a running horse. The rider would have been leaning slightly left,
holding his head low under the branches, guiding the horse among the trees.
The horse is over there, at the edge of that field. Is there anyone expecting the knight?
Hard to say. Not all pictures succeed in making an absence present. Land of no evil. The cart
rocked slightly as Colon sat back. He was tired but happy. Tomorrow he would take his family
further down into the valley, across the river, toward the blue veiled mountains. The others
would be expecting them.
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In the land of no evil we do not expect to find the Pope, the Anti-pope, the condottiere,
the painter or the writer.
It is hard to say what the audience wanted as a whole from the castrato. His notes
contained all of the tonal material. His bedroom had been painted in every color. It is hard to say
what the castrato expected from his audience. The bed is chrome-yellow. This member of the
audience, sitting here in a corner balcony seat with his wife, listening, wanted to undress him.
The song was an old one, perhaps one of the trouveres. It will set the fashion in melody,
probably in the direction of Sumer is icumen in.
"I would never have thought that you were so beautiful." The walls of his bedroom are
pale lilac. "You really think I am"? "I am overcome." The scale of his voice comprised twelve
equal semitones and is, therefore, without mode.
Hawkwood, in company with some others, sat listening to the voice. The song was one of
pure desire. But what was the object of desire? Where was it? The song continued, the notes
going higher, desire increasing. Hawkwood leaned back. The velvet surfaces of the chair yielded
to his weight.
"I should tell you. I...I couldn't touch a man. Not after...the operation...it had made me feel
ugly, unnecessary." The tone rose another half step. Hawkwood detected the source of perfume,
lavender and damask-rose, below and to the left.
"Don't." The flat, imposed by the singer, indicated that the mode had been transposed. "I
know that you don't like me to talk." The wall of the castrato's bedroom has been treated as an
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easel. Hawkwood expected the song to end there. How could it go on? From the object of desire,
itself unknown, he could learn nothing about the nature of the desire. With a voice of this power,
one treats the rests much as half-notes with equal temperament.
Even though the nature of the desire was inaccessible to him, Hawkwood was pleased
with the singing.
S
Can we not then say that aesthetic data imparts more knowledge of itself by means of
those who are pleased by it than from a recording of its technical details?
Hawkwood and the others were descending the stairs from the theater. (The other sets of
stairs, at the other end of the theater, was reserved for the Emperor, his family and guests.) One
of the company remembered a nightmare she had the night before. One was impressed by
Hawkwood's description of the provenance and history of the stairs. The figure of a griffin is
embroidered, in seven different colors, on the carpet of the stairs. The nature of this curious
beast, guardian of gold mines and enemy to the horse, would not be part of the knight's
conversation.
"They have not, of course, been solely designed for safety." "But would not a philosopher
say, My Lord, that the quiddity of the stairs lies in their form, the way the marble makes a stony,
inorganic world stir with life?"
"Perhaps. Note the width. An easy ingress for my White Company." The great horse, the
others following, was taking the stairs four, five at a jump.
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"The marble calls up, and sustains, complex forms."
White globs of sweat flew from the plunging animal. Its genitalia swung with a jerky
back and forward motion. The embroidered figures mount a mute, colored attack on the exposed
belly of the animal.
The lady with the brooch (a huge dark butterfly, paved in rubies, with diamonds en
tremblant) turned to Hawkwood.
"Have you and your Company no manners, sir? Unthinkable. These lovely objects,
transformed into a race-track."
"Perhaps your interest with beauty, things in respose, and still life, is obsessive, madame.
The carpet is sturdy enough to withstand the thrust of a hoof or two." Dung lay on the carpet
behind the last leaping horses of the White Company. At the first landing, Swallow waited,
jump-dancing in a big circle.
At the first landing down, they pause to examine a fresco. "Evidence of fatigue and
decaying nerves in the painter."
"A curious work."
"His vision seems to have its origins in Genesis. Perhaps it is meant to be a depiction of
our divided nature."
The landing, being too small for the horses of the entire Company, was no place to stop.
They lunged on upwards, toward the hedgehoglike shadow at the top of the stairs. Above the
shadow, flamed an eggshell-like winged creature in fresco.
"The artist wasted the Emperor's commission." In the lady's mind, a warm muddle
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formed.
"Sir, the hooves of your steeds would mar the design of the carpet." Show Hawkwood
pausing, to touch the apex of his cheekbone.
"Madame, let us leave this subject. You will never understand me. Your obsession with
still-life prevents it." Yet the image was still there.
In this part, the wall of the dungeon was cold, wet. Higher up, along the ceiling, ran a
series of silver and brown blotches. Something, emitting concentric circles of sound, stirred in a
corner. Straw rotted on the floor. Its surface was soft, wet sticky. Donnina sat in a corner, trying
to hold her feet away from the surface of the floor. She was hungry and naked. Down the corridor
an iron door, turning on rusty hinges, swung shut. The sounds of the footsteps of a single person,
mixing with the sound of the door, faded and ended. Something like light tried to stretch in from
an unseen window as far as the bars of Donnina's cell. But something stronger, inside the
window, was holding it back.
Donnina arms held her legs close to her breast. She was trying to keep the remainder of
the heat from leaving her body. In her dream that night, a dangerous looking beast would break
through the surface of the floor. At a sound to the right, she turned her head. The beast had
yellow eyes and teeth. Its head seemed to be covered with the wet, stinking, substance of the
floor. She had supposed the floor to be thicker, stronger. She tried to imagine the place within her
that produced the heat, there in the gentian center, velvet, blood dark. The size of the beast
expanded. Donnina could not see enough of its parts to count them.
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Whatever it was had pushed the light outside. Donnina, her vagina opening, elongating,
pulled her arms tighter around her knees. She felt her breasts flatten, the vagina close. The bowed
legs of the beast, growing used to muscle, jerked. Its claws were gluey. Its penis, testicles
bulging, was erect, red. At the sound of coughing she turned her head. Where a nose should have
been, the skin along the face of the beast was creased. The coughing became louder, closer.
Donnina tilted her head down and waited. A cooler air moved between her legs.
_______
Hawkwood and the White Company, on the main road leading into Cesena, were on a
collision course with the sheep, 2,333 of them. Dust rose from the hooves of the horses and fell
on the brown, dead, grass at the edge of the road. Specks of white foam collected under the armor
of the horses and fell back in windless, blue-transparent, air. Ahead, Hawkwood could see a low
hill and beyond it the stones, chimneys and turrets of the town itself. Smoke from the chimneys
hung in the quiet air.
Hawkwood watched as Swallow's head came slightly down. He felt the muscles of the [
horse tighten, the velocity of the wind increase. The top of the hill was just there, a wavering,
yellow, onrushing line.
The scene is no still-life. Paint the sound of hooves driving, the furious flowering of the
noise of armor, the wind roaring in the knights' ears. Paint their profound deafness to the sounds
of the sheep, over the hill, exiting the town.
The town garrison had been seized by the Anti-pope's men. Hawkwood and the White
Company were driven by the need to reach the town before the garrison was executed.
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The shepherdess, tall, blue-eyed, thought about pulverage. As she walked, she drew lines
in the dust with her staff. Transhumance. Time of the passage of the sheep from the low lands,
now grazed and burned out, to the green pasture of the low Alps. Now the staff was across her
shoulders, the shepherdess' hands pulling each end lightly down. The maneuver was forcing her
breasts up and out. Where she had lain down with him, naked, the flowers had been geometric,
the leaves of their stems, cool, surfaces marked by minute white hairs. The sheep, chewing their
cuds, lying in the cool place, had not yet learned how to entertain a thought about it.
The gate of the town was Roman, built of heavy limestone. For the sheep, now passing
through it, it was a gauntlet, constricting their movement, pushing, thrusting them together.
Townpeople stood by, watching, resenting, routines and schedules interrupted. Their faces
showed no concern for the fate of the garrison.
Ahead of her, beyond the gate, the shepherdess could see a dusty road, brown, surface
broken by pebbles and small, brown, stones. Beyond the bellwether, she could see a hill and
further on the land starting to rise through some trees. She knew she could not see it from here,
that beyond the trees began the green pastures of the lower Alps. She released one end of the staff
and began to swing it right off her shoulders. She could feel her breasts swell under the rough
shirt. He had gone into her, he said, in order to make her feel more comfortable. But she had only
felt complete, the final shaft of flesh lodged in an ultimate, soft, space.
Will she manage to continue this trek to the Alps each fall? The Duke has threatened to
close the pastures to her and the other shepherds. The bellwether reached the open road. A gust
of wind blew dust from its hooves back along the other sheep leading the flock. The shepherdess,
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rotating her staff, positioned herself to catch a lamb attempting to exit the flock. She had cried
when her cat died, that spring, lying still in a bed of nasturtiums. Animals had always flourished
in the light of her attention. Particles of dust accumulated, forming a low cloud over the sheep. A
small, passing, veil darkened the road ahead, the approaching hill.
S
The veil is an indication of the in-betweenness of the parallel, but different, worlds we
find throughout this novel. Recall the féth fiáda the magic mist which veils the doings of the
fairy, or gentle folk, the Tuatha de Danann, Ireland's original inhabitants. They had been
conquered and forced underground by Amergin's race, the Milesians.
The bellwether's head was down, swinging in the sound of its bell. Contours of white on
brown. Just below the edge of the hill, only dark forms in the swirling dust, Hawkwood and the
White Company collided with the sheep leading the flock. In this depiction, more than one part
of the event become salient, First is the mutilation, and death, of the lead sheep. The bellwether's
headless carcass lies here, in the ditch to the right. (The bell, speckled with blood and bits of fur
is over there, near its severed head.) The shepherdess, attempting to pull a lamb to safety, fell
right into a clump of low shrubs. She had been host to a motley collection of strays. Her ankle
twisted and she felt the pain, rising in short jabs up toward the knee and lower thigh. The staff
ripped suddenly out of her grasp. Notice, as a second salient feature of this picture, the wide
corridor created by Hawkwood and the White Company. The sheep, lying here and here, are, of
course, dead. Notice particularly the expression on this one's face. Shock, not Hawkwood's sword
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or Swallow's hooves, killed her. The bared teeth are not the only sign. The most helpless and
passive of the sheep and cats had come and waited for her to feed them. Some had cried, softly,
some had been mute, their heads up, waiting. The pain was increasing in her leg. None of the
knights, low over the manes of their horses, heard her cries. She had given the animals the usual
grain and scraps from the table and kitchen. Most of them, usually the sheep, would return the
following day.
Hawkwood and the White Company massacred the men of the Anti-pope, freed the
garrison and looted the town.
The shepherdess, using the branch of a tree as a crutch, struggled back on to the road.
Down the road, toward the town, she could see the dust starting to spread and settle on the low
shrubs and grass.
The sun is warm, the air clear. The sheep lie around, chewing. The purple welts over her
ankle are now beginning to turn brown. Later they will disappear. Life is still, stiller, again.
_______
The Emperor liked symmetry in the body parts of his women. Capelli: biondi, crespi,
lunghi. But they must be fed. His penis would rise, harden. Fronte: bianca e liscia. He had, after
a long war, won food for this one. While they copulate she will feed on it, a sort of nuptial gift.
Invisible pheromonic substances fill the soft spaces and slid along a wet surface. Occhi: chiari,
lucenti splendenti. Hands, arms and penis act in this matter like a pair of strong claspers.
For this one, he would kill all the satellite males. Bocca: piccola e vermiglia. He would
not allow them to grab his women with the claspers. Resistance by the woman would, in any
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case, keep the copulation short. He is larger than most Emperors. Satellites, performing no useful
work, circle his court and the women. But his size is not what makes him attractive to the
women. Mammelle: bianche, rotonde, piccole, durette. Males with asymmetrical testes generally
lose the fight. Reproductive screams will evolve bilaterally into symmetrical body parts.
The stones of the courtyard were wet, glossy. The baggage wagons were loaded. Being
careful not to slip on the stones, he picked up the pace. He put his hand on his sword, holding it
to his body. The guards were just there, in the center. Later, he would expect to see in the faces of
the great black horses, the nervous waste of a normal day.
They were still weeks away from Milan and Gian's investiture. He put his left hand on the
pommel of the saddle and raised his left foot toward the stirrup. He would set the date of the
investiture and the order of the following festival. He would not allow the Pope to interfere.
Piede: piccolo, con la pianta concava. The leather felt cool to his hand. He pushed his foot hard
into the stirrup and swung his right leg up over the seat of the saddle. He felt the horse suddenly
whirl-turn. The grey stones of his castle merged their outlines and disappeared from the corner of
his eye. A low, brown, door passed by. The horse stopped. He was facing a low wall, overlooking
a river. His race with the Pope was coevolutionary. Survival. He felt good, in control. He waved
the men forward, first a high trot and then a gallop.
Due to his faster generation time, he would always have the upper hand on the Pope.
Gola: bianca, molle, trasparente. He was better able to adapt. He took, posed in the center of the
accelerating speed of the horse, the sentries' salute at the gate. Flanges outward, open, silver
eagles flashing at the top. The Pope would not, with an outmoded response to enemies, be able to
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adapt, survive. Denti: piccoli, bianchi, serrati. Behind them, the baggage-wagons were beginning
to turn, iron-wheels slipping, on the stones of the courtyard. Shouts of the drivers rose. The
women recognized in him, the symmetrical male, a high resistance to parasites. He would have
many heirs.
He led them south, the sun rising on the left.
GEOFFREY
I have before me a letter from John. The first three pages are a bit dry: the usual
descriptions of his latest battles, strategies, casualties, etc. He has suffered, it seems, a recurrence
of his back problems. I suspect there is a problem with the deep fascia, where it is attached to the
occipital bone. The pain, it is true, can be quite intense. Though one would not want to say it
equals that of the gout.
The script is unusually clear and precise. Perhaps, now that he is famous, he is employing
an amanuensis?
John is concerned about his representation in this text, specifically about his relationship,
vis a vis, insentient objects. If you are not in too much of a hurry, I would like for you to hear
some of what he says.
The reason for no shoes? I woke this morning with this toe inflamed. The internal plantar
region, plus a tendon of the flexor brevis hallucis, seems to be involved.
I request that you insert this statement about my treatment of hedges, trees, stones,
sheep and the like. I omit here John's technical description of these objects, certain names,
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dates, places, etc. "I have no personal grudge against these aforementioned objects. They
just happened to be in the way. I wonder. On second thought, it seems best (strictly in the
interest of accuracy) for me to re-write those sections dealing with my treatment of the
objects. Now, concerning that flock of sheep….
I forget which page that's on. Perhaps I will have some time to look for it tomorrow.
It will interest you to know that I have completed my Encyclopedia through the letter N.
The description of the customs and the language of the Northumberians is particularly thorough.
In their dialect, mu, is a common class prefix for singular human nouns. A semantic basis
for the noun classes is discernible primarily in deverbal and other forms of nominal
derivation.
No, I don't suspect it's a sprain. It has a diffferent look to it. There are six diphthongs,
all falling. B, d, g are subject to intervocalic spirantization and medial devoicing.
I have in mind the right place to give you more information about how John received his back
injury.
_______
He fell from his horse, dead. A bird, interrupted by the sound of rattling armor, flew up.
The rider's horse stopped. The air was quiet, under the trees. The wolf had looked at the knight
first. He had not, his head down, eating dirt, seen him fall. The horse, turning his head left and
down, waited for the knight to re-mount. The knight lay on his back, his arms outspread. His
horse, swinging its tail at a fly, was ready to leave this place. The wolf came down the trail
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through the trees. The wind, overhead, was moving the forest canopy. A bird, lifting and
lowering a wing, opening and closing pinions, circles. Green light pales toward the color of
yellow chalk. Eyes stare upward. The helm lay on its side. The horse, dragging the reins of the
bridle, jogs around the body of the knight.
The wolf, without an intention, will eventually fuse the images.
Place the head of the knight (on his helm) in any inclined position. Imagine, on the
retinas, an after-image. Yellow eyes, red toward the margins. But the knight had been colorblind. Elsewise, he would not be dead.
FRANCESCO
Someone ought to advice Geoffrey, if not as a friend than certainly as a concerned reader,
that this scene is unbalanced; that there are too many animals in it and not enough men.
You would like to stop here for lunch? Up ahead, near those conifers, the wind will not
be blowing as hard.
Humans want to be recognized by animals. How can that happen if there are no humans
around? Or, in this case, only a dead one?
Recognition? Consciousness of form, usually a
body, a figure, but just as often a voice. What would I do? Simple. Introduce another human or
two. I was thinking, given this context, that a guardaboschi would not be inappropriate.
The tree is unknown to me, perhaps a maple. We have to go around here, through that
defile and along the ridge.
"Cold."
"Very cold. But bracing."
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The wolf must not exit the scene alive. It is the task of the guardaboschi to see that does
not happen. But the guardaboschi will also be changed by his encounter with the wolf. He will
no longer have the calm clarity of perception he had in his mediocre state of existence that men
may develop by a life in the forest.
When it rains, those maple leaves sometimes blow against the sides of these houses, fall,
and turn blood red. At night the stars up here are immaculate.
Under the canopy, in mid-afternoon, the guardaboschi would show his resplendent
profile to the wolf. The animal, while the man is present, would be left confused and
overwhelmed.
When? Just before he kills the wolf. The berries? Gone, eaten by the deer and elk. At any
rate, they don't thrive where we are going.
You have been told that? That in the presence of the man, the wolf is always either
laughing or crying? I do not doubt your word, just the accuracy of your source.
Why does Geoffrey show the wolf eating dirt? For no apparent reason, as far as I can tell.
S
On lines relevant to this matter see La Divina Commedia, Inferno, I, 103-105. Questi non
cibera terra ne peltro,/Ma sapienza e amore e virtute,/E sua nazion sara tra Feltro e Feltro.
Every day, during Carnival, he likes to wear a different disguise, present a different face
at different ages, Emperor old-man-young man; Pope, senile-middle age-young; Condottiere,
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infant-teenager; Assassin, neotenic-wrinkled. For what he celebrates is the conjunction of
perfection and death. The festival is not for a farmer, worried about the death of his crop, the
mother concerned about the health of her child.
Perfection and death. Both have a certain color, resonate with a certain sound. Entrance
was a matter of a pervasive early contingency. But it joins, in the center there, to a strictly local
(and late) necessity. "Who are you? Your mask is awry, or is that your face itself?"
"I am, you can say today, the result of saying many ridiculous things and of many serious
ones. And who are you?"
Carnival rolls on, a certain historical sequence in which the construction of necessities is
accentuated by early stages which become attenuated in the later ones. He walked down the
street, thinking. The air is full of the smell of perfume, stale wine and roasting meat. In the dust
lie sandals, old clothes (torn) and bits of hair and spit. Voice approach him from behind, come
even and go by. He perhaps emphasizes overmuch (only to himself of course) the interaction of
randomness and predictability. He throws a handful of feathers into the air. The celebrant must
wear his camicia until it falls into rags.
The feathers, as they fall to earth (the air being quiet at the moment), assume a beautiful
diversity.
Fungal pseudoflowers make Carnival make sense. He looked at her, looking for beauty, in
the eyes under the mask. "The Carnival Thing."
"Can you imagine my face, my head?"
Threads of black hair over the forehead, around the soft ear. Her eyes, solemn windows,
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reflect his own. His thick lips, smiling, are unseen.
"No, I can't."
"Can you imagine your own face?"
Other masked faces on the street wheel away, their ribbons waving undistinguishable,
trailing knotted rings of perfume. In the house, just along here, a drop of vinegar blistered on the
stove; wine turned a coffee color, umber, black, smelled of sour-kraut and failure.
What could be more like Carnival! Everyone had forgotten how to be dutiful, to make
sacrifices. The warm day, the mixture of drowsiness and cooking odors, drew them together.
They walked, mostly along the Grand Canal. He proposed to her, a game. Not really a game, but
a strategy for breaking through the mask, shyness. Her reticence seemed to him, grim. Sufficient
unto itself.
"I can only act after I have known your feelings."
"And what about me? What do you feel?"
Carnival is, first of all, indifferent to everything that is not part of its own mechanism.
"Go on."
Carnival does not set as its goal knowledge. The smell of garlic, roasting, and the
sluggish canals. His nostrils became overactive. The surface of the water, just to their left, lies in
a golden refulgence.
"It doesn't stir you up?"
"I lead a humdrum life."
"Let's look at the people, make a classification of their masks."
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But Carnival, as initiation, requires a physiological metamorphosis. Her senses absorb a
new substance, the taste of a secret wisdom. He adjusts the mask, pulls at a sleeve. The people
were invested with meaning. Suddenly, they seem to be plants in a kind of soil, upon the surface
of which appeared bits of brightly colored flowers, fruits and stones. They walk on, Mädchen in
Uniform.
At Carnival the people cannot bear talk about the stars and celestrial motions. They are
simply too horrible. They have no time for knowledge of the heavens.
"That's because you see them as human."
S
Venetian piers support bridges which support colonies of ants. Lasius niger? Perhaps. Or
Lasius fuliginosus.
The ants ran in their wooden tunnels, like the people on the surface of the bridges. Knots
of swarms, fiercely struggling bristles from invisibly fine openings. The nests of the ants are
surrounded by the erotic aura of the kitchen and cathedral. They stroke the cocoon coverings of
their young.
"You must understand that these masks cover people who do not see excess as the enemy
of life."
"I do not understand you."
Either seething chaos or raging, incomprehensible life. Participants in Carnival do not
base their morality on the heavy precepts that make up the wisdom of a race, but on the decision
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to treat ordinary language as an enemy. The light from the water cast round pools onto the walls.
From another angle, the pools are white circles. Her black velvet dress seems to be smeared with
vomit.
"Let us put a stop to the proliferation of images."
"Why"?
_______
The Antipope made the decision to enter Milan via the Adda River and the Martesana
Canal. No one along the shores of the river, or the banks of the canal, took unusual notice of the
barges, the men along their sides pushing their long poles into the water.
The barges were of the dumb type. Under their decks there was ample cupboard space
(made possible by a small deck area) for the weapons of the Antipope's men. A large hatchway is
just here. Egress is always easy. The barges will pass several sailing barges and lighters, swimended.
No one noticed the clothes of the bargemen, the odd cut, the off-color, the too-clean look.
The city was noisy, this time of day, this day of the week. The townspeople did not detect the
strange sound, the odd syntax.
In the main cabin of the lead barge, Robert sat looking at a map of Milan. He could see
that the canal ran directly into the center of the great city. A door opened behind him. He did not
turn to look at her. He bent his head closer to the map. The light through the window, above his
head, was yellow-red. The city, virtually without walls, had easy means of egress. Her dress was
perfumed, her breath warm on his neck. "I am sorry for all your troubles." He and his men would
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have to take the cathedral and storm the castle. His relationship with her was still anomalous.
He had warned his men against seeing the Milanese in terms of human life. She too had
listened. "But isn't your language colored and informed by human categories"? It was true, he had
named the citizens of the great city, "laborer," "soldier," "slave," "priest." The movement of the
cabin was still. She had compared Robert's lips to the obscure form of the sexual organs of the
griffin. They would, after storming the castle, make a circuit of the city on their barges. This
female was one of the fecund kind. A shadow, thickening the yellow-red light, appeared on the
surface of the map.
Robert's barge was passing under a bridge. On the bridge the men were discussing its
deteriorating condition. The woman, turning away, looked at his coat-of-arms at the far wall of
the cabin. The silver feather had a quill of gobony silver and azure. "On this side, as you can see,
the timbers are rotted."
"How much of your world is based purely upon hatred?"
Pictos leones preferens in clypeo.
It began to rain. A bolt of lightning struck the rudder of the barge directly behind
Robert's. The rain, driven by the wind, soaked the men along the small decks. The leeboards may
have to be hove up. The fire burned down the rudder in the after-swim. Owing only to the rubber
can the barge move in a straight line. The fire burns forward. The plank seams are rabbited. In
time, the crew will abandon the vessel and lose themselves in the crowds of the city.
Robert delayed his next decision. The woman turned back from examining his coat-ofarms. Her plait resembled one fat tapering shape down her back, between her shoulders. A barge
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at the end of Robert's procession of barges was becoming faint-headed, falling away too far on
the wind. "The other timber on this side seems sound."
"I hate him," the low voice said. "I hate the man my church
has married. We got along until it came." Robert's lips opened, pale mucul red, white. His gums
were good. The lips will demonstrate the full horror of sex.
"We were."
Define more the outlines of the barges while thinning the surface textures of the greybrown decks.
With mutable, mobile, vestments and a murderous will (nothing gamboling therein)
Robert's barge floated toward the center of the city.
_______
The advantage to the creature of being endosketal is that it makes it less horny.
GEOFFREY
There is a self-denial, even self-mockery in writing, especially a book like this. Why do I
subject myself to the drudgery? Sometimes the work feels like a meteorite, trying to sink into the
earth. I could pay my scribe a bit more. He's poor, with the usual starving family he shouldn't
have. Winter is coming on. But perhaps there's less self-denial, self-mockery in my writing it
than in paying the scribe to write it.
Perhaps I should write it and not publish it? Here's a greater self-mockery. This would be
no less real than the other, the openly sentimental, stupid, book, written for money or fame. Or,
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worse yet, the book written to be quoted, or used, by someone without his own wits or language.
But writers must accept the fact that someone will use his words for something they were not
intended for.
"I write you from Firenze, la cittá dolente." It's absurd, using my words for your purpose.
I comfort myself in knowing I am removed from the absurdity, like a picture of London on a
letter of greeting is at least one remove (more?) from the stony reality of the city. The distance is
more than physical, it's also spiritual.
"Physical:spiritual, an infantile synthesis."
Perhaps the absurdity is built into art, like the stomach built into the body, an organ for
pouring wine into. "My wits, like Plato's guardians, will run, by reading, the whole affair."
My book disappoints you? Mere pieces of paper. You don't have time to read it? Outside
my window everyone is walking, warm thighs pushing up through dresses and pants, breathing
the cool air. I don't require that you shed blood for my sake, or even that a statue be erected in my
honor. Only that you use, in your next communication, your own words. You are welcome to use
my punctuation marks and white spaces.
What do you want us to do, say, in the next sentence? Don't be shy. The hoary satyr
leans-leers certain body parts at the young virgin in the garden. Which part is most salient?
Here are possibilities for the next sentence. Since it is your intention to use the words,
you should have the right to choose which one should come immediately next. Everyone is
walking, warm thighs pushing up through dresses and pants. No? I regret that your life is not
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better organized, like my own or that of my neighbors. We have very little hard information
about Bulargi, jeweler of Milan. Writers do not like to sense the hatred of their readers. I close
my door with a special key. Is that coral jewel from Torre del Greco? My strategy (which I shall
never disclose again) is to exchange exclusiveness for a balance between the quality and length
of the word.
I bring my characters together out of erotic, not geometric, necessity.
It is the writer who upholds, through his hand holding the pen, the chief attribute of
cosmic sovereignty.
Who are you?
_______
The Emperor approached Milan from Savoy, precisely the limit between the Cottian and
Graian Alps. His baggage was carried by thirty-three wagons and hand-carts. The days were
bright, above the tree-line, snow-cornices still melting into thin shades. His route lay below the
Col del Frejus. From Chambery, their way went up the Isere Valley, past St Jean de Maurienne to
Modane Bardonneche. The night were cold, the wind came down from the heights above the
trees, the line of snow grey-white below the ridges. Absence of habitations.
The Emperor's men began to feel like a small bird under the hawk's eye. The Emperor
asked that his bed be made early that night. We also know that he asked for his copy of Marcus
Aurelius.
Stone-falls, stone-avalanches, snow-drifts, snow-dunes, crevice dangers, ice-breaks,
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glacier-burns, snow-blindness, exhaustion and mountain-sickness. They went on to Oulx where
they joined the road from Mont Genevre. Here the locals, carrying their own food and
unhampered by supply-trains, attacked them. Were the Emperor's guides treacherous?
The Emperor's problem was to bring about a general engagement with the enemy. They
fought their way along the Dora Riparia toward Turin.
S
Turin is exactly 64 1/2 miles from Modane.
Clan patriotism among the enemy was high. The Emperor's column advanced. Mountain
difficulties of coordination and mutual support. Flanking detachments fanned out to seize
commanding ground and tactical points within arrow-shot of the advancing column. The
Emperor propped the Meditations on his knees (flexed for the purpose) and began to read. The
text was full of self-mockery and allusions to death. The purpose of the Emperor's knees is at
present to uphold a cosmic irony.
They mounted the Arc Valley from Modane to Lanslebourg, whence lay a hospice. In the
high mountain air, the walls of the structure were white. Someone had tried to paint the door at
the front green. Marcus' soul was filled with death. A bee aimed its attack at the white throat of
the Emperor. At night-halts, pickets were posted on all sides to hold all commanding ground
within arrow-shot range. The column, minus fifteen wagons, began its descent through the Cenis
Valley to Susa.
CHILD
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He never goes out anymore. No one comes to see him. Patrick and I have to take him his
meals. His little garden back there is going to weeds. He still receives and sends out letters. I
believe that he is fully literate. Patrick is not sure.
Yesterday I saw him on the landing here. The door to his study is just down there. Patrick
says that he sometimes has a "Non Disturbare" on the door-knob. But I have never seen it. The
light is bad there, especially this time of day.
"What was he doing on the landing?"
I almost asked him that. There's a window opposite. But something interrupted me. It may
have been the sound of a rat. They are bad in this house. The cockroaches too. Water is seeping
into the kitchen.
"Or was it something you saw. Something about his look, or dress?"
Haggard, pale. The same. Perhaps he stooped a bit more than usual. He looked at me. His
eyes were bright.
"What's he been doing?"
Writing, he says. Something, he says, for His Highness. He hasn't shown me anything of
it. Patrick knows more about it than I do.
"Why is that?"
He asks more questions. Pushes himself on the old man more than I can force myself to
do. Did you know that I am the daughter of a miller?
"Of course. Tell me more about his work."
Patrick says that there are stacks of papers, maps and books on his desk and in his room.
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Patrick says that he doubts the old man's story about the King. My father was arrested for
negligence. Something to do with the Lord's grain.
"The law is quite clear about negligence. Legis enim est qui inscienter peccat, scienter
emendet. The principle is same one underlying a Roman noxal action.
But why does Patrick doubt Geoffrey's story about the King."
"Geoffrey?"
"That's his name, isn't it?"
I will have to ask Patrick. He knows him better.
"Yes, do that. I will come again later."
I worry about the danger of fire. He is careless with fire, coals, candles, burners. Paper
lies about everywhere. Some of them the rats have eaten holes in.
"How do you know that?"
Patrick is an inquisitive type. He spies on him over the transom, through the keyhole, the
cracks in the door. He is very bold when he drinks. Pray for my father.
"I will see that he sent him reliable oath-helpers. Is Patrick a trustworthy informant?"
I have been told that he is. But I only met him last week. The place is just below here,
behind the house, in the alley that passes from an adjoining street. That's how you came, isn't it?
"I believe it was. But it was still quite dark."
What do you think of Patrick? He is intelligent and considered quite handsome.
"I haven't met him yet. Is he here?"
It's time for him. The Lord has sent his personal miller to replace my father. My mother
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says that he is from another village.
"Quite proper. Your father's tenure as a miller in that county was, after all, serviential."
Really? My mother told me that he owned the mill. That the Lord, additionally, was to
receive a small article of luxury, a sparrowhawk, a pair of gloves, a pair of gilt spurs, a pound of
pepper or incense or wax.
The old man is quiet now. I don't hear a thing.
"Is this his time to sleep?"
No. This is the time of day, Patrick says, that he likes to compile his notes. But I can't
confirm that.
"Then I should perhaps wait for Patrick to appear."
Where would you like to do that?
______
At this level of existence advance toward Turin becomes for the common foot-soldier a
twisted form of metaphysical dissatisfaction. He began to shake with fever. He began to see
snakes on the cliff, opposite. To the southwest of Mont Cenis lies Little Mont Cenis which leads
from the summit plateau of Italy to the main pass to the Etache Valley in France.
But that would be to reverse the Emperor's line of advance. At this moment, Marcus'
thoughts are isomorphs of the cosmos. The Stoic was the axis of the sky before becoming axis of
the Roman Empire. At Bramans in the Arc Valley his feet began to slip on the red dirt, slick with
rain. Pools of muddy water filled the center. All thirty or forty of his comrades were pointed in
one way, toward the pass crossed by the Vaudois (and believed by some to have been Hannibal's
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Pass as delivered by Livy.) He fell, twisting, to the rocks below. They stripped the body and sold
his clothes, sword, helm, boots in a second-hand market in Turin.
The Emperor puts the Meditations of the Emperor down. On its cover a winged lion holds
a book open in its right paw.
It was the second night of non-movement. There had not, in this dry country, yet been any
rain. The wind was quiet, under the trees. Why had they been forced to stop? He watched the
shadow of the horses move beyond the leaves, forming another level of existence, color and
form. The stars did not give him an identifiable point of reference. Their positions and intensities
were all the same. It all seemed to be happening to someone else, something at a distance, an
event at Carnival.
Massimo came, in full armor but without his helmet, into the clearing, at the edge of the
trees. The horses, pulling at their tethers, flung their hooves out. Dark movements in green shade.
John had, in the bad light, been studying the map. It was the work of an outsider. But he could
not claim the proper rights of possession.
"You look melancholy."
"I'm in pain. Don't you remember."
Although he had lost his appetite for the trivial, the inconsequential, he would not allow it
to show, especially to the men. Massimo's head was shaved. He could only eat cold bread and
drink black broth. He washed in cold water. His life was a mirage of the virtuous Spartan. But he
was still in search of his identity. He was rumored to have had sex with blond dryads from the
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north.
"It's my eye."
John lit a new candle and holding it higher, brought it closer to Massimo's eye. He raised
his eyelids with two fingers. His breath was warm. His teeth were white. Where the speck of
wood lay, the flesh was inflamed, red at the center, yellowing toward the periphery. A horse,
pulling at its tether, filled a space behind them. Massimo's eye was vacant. John probed,
dislodging the speck, with a corner of a leaf. Holding it up, he looked at the piece of wood,
almost prayerfully.
"Is it out?"
_______
There was no enthusiasm for the moment. Splattered shade of the trees. They went into a
long silence. Embedded in the green, dark leaves, the horses began to eat something. John laid
the leaf and speck of wood down.
What was happening at the time on the road into Milan was a lightening of the Pope's
responsibilities. His mind shrugged off the role of the church with a brusque gesture. Suddenly,
the chair in which he was being carried slammed against a tree. The Pope, having nothing to hold
onto, landed on top of the Swiss Guard. Muddy water began to seep through his robes.
Their silence contained wild gyrations of thought. The map was a skein of confused lines.
Pain and self-doubt grew together in Massimo's eye. In what light, John thought, should they be
viewed? Tomorrow, perhaps, the non-movement would end, or at least the cause (of questionable
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form) of it. Occult causes anticipate the dread of the next, largely physical, movement. The jaws
of the horses, chewing, formed rectangles of black figures. The Pope's food would have to be
dried with an absorbent cloth. Above the rectangles, still moving, there were areas free of
meaning. The meat (roast turkey) was lost under the chair, but the bread was safe because it had
lodged itself between two small chests containing the Pope's vestments.
Someone had decorated the chests with small figures of crocodiles wearing sapphire
earrings.
S
Sapphires are good for inducing sleep.
Something odd was happening at Gian's investiture. A silent fury of multiplication had
seized the animate and inanimate numbers. Vortices of breath gasped. Note first the numbers of
inanimate objects. They kept her body three days before sending it to the undertakers. Motes of
cotton, silk and wool floated up, pushed by the gasps of participants and spectators. The theory
was that after three days the undertakers would not rape her. Soot particles, the substance of
candle smoke, drifted in a more diagonal fashion. Statues of men and saints multiplied. The
builders of the cathedral had mocked them with a simple gesture: They all looked the same. Yet
there was, on the faces of the saints, the look that said that the gap between them and the others
was unbridgeable.
Did anyone notice, the statues increasing their numbers, each one gaining weight? For the
past 100 years they had been almost svelte. But now there was a new-me sort of posture. In the
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drift of her perfume past the fibula, snatched from an Etruscan grave, one can measure the depth
of her sarcasm. (To solder the tiny spheres to the ornament took great skill and patience.) One
can see by the folds of her robe that the left knee is bent slightly in front of the right. There was
something especially unsettling in it.
Gian rose. The scepter felt heavy. The Emperor looked down the nave. His mind seemed
to fill with dolphin images. Perhaps it was the light through the slim, jewelled windows. Blurry
otherworldliness of his surroundings. Gian handed the symbol to someone, standing in half-light,
at the back. He would not be mistaken for a dignitary of the court or church. Upon the entrance
of the Antipope, the authority of the papal state doubled.
But the multiplication of numbers does not end here.
FRANCESCO
Dear Geoffrey: You know how much I am fascinated by the soul of the female, its
immersion in life and sentiment. It might be of use to you, in your biography, to know what I
have learned about this mystery from a new acquaintance of mine. She is a friend of the Emperor,
a student of her family's history.
I say this, in part, because I find your representations of the female unconvincing. Perhaps
you should look for an epistolary relationship with a member of that sex?
The time of our interview is unimportant:
"It has been said of the Emperor that he could catch fish with his hands."
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She was silent. But I thought I heard, "epater les copains."
"He wears a pearl in his left ear. To remind him of his daughter he lost for the want of
sufficient liquor in the midwife's traveling bag."
"The Emperor is a garrulous fool. He tried to seduce my sister by being brusque." She was
primping in her tiny mirror. "His brother, I'm told, is a waiter."
I caught her out of the corner of my eye. There was, in her face, the awful deceit of a
goddess. But it was momentary. I started, as I had promised, on the story of Diana.
"He wanted her flesh to become violets"?
But she wanted to hear about my skill in genealogy, in discovering unknown relatives.
"There is one relative of some interest. Your uncle. Geoffrey found the relevant
documents about him in the registry of the Stationers Guild at London. I have them, just here."
Her position there, in the afternoon light, is not a relevant detail.
"It seems he was a doctor, an interpreter of dreams. But he took bribes from his patients.
The issue was knowledge. They wanted to know him better in order for him to know them better.
It would facilitate, they thought, the success of the cure. But he only wanted to know himself."
"Was he rich?"
"He squandered his money on women."
She walked to the high, north window. Her face was pale, like ashes left (perhaps too
long) in a dark room. The most terrifying part is to watch the apathy of her hand, holding the
curtain back, looking down.
"Your uncle was a member of the Itinerant Orphics. Their promise was that all rewards
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were found in words, uttered in the right way."
There was a bruise on her hand. A counterpoint to a design on the curtain. Humdrum
conundrums filled this space. She moved the curtain back, enfolding the design.
"It seems that the Orphics would knock on the doors of the rich, arrive (on market day
usually) with strange objects, charms, bundle of books. They venerated the names of PreOlympian gods."
She went to examine my picture of the Sassi of Matera. (It's still here, but in a different
room. I have mounted it in a unique setting). The quarter of the city, churches, dwellings, streets,
cut out of stone.
"My aunt?"
"Frumpish. In their marriage they finally arrived at a point which was neither Christian
nor pagan. Yet the proper gestures were there."
Her head, before the picture, was in the posture of detachment and flight. Lunar dust
anchored the stones of this church in this quarter.
"The Orphics ignored all mediation between the sound of a word and its meaning."
"Was my aunt rich?"
"Geoffrey found her will. It provides only for the care, feeding and burial of strays cats."
In the picture, life and art have been brought together in immediate contact.
"Isn't that church too close to the street?"
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"But your uncle always paid homage to your aunt in a unique way. This was in public, of
course."
She and the picture had achieved an uncanny, instinctual, intimacy.
"He always addressed her with a feminine form of the adjective before the masculine
noun."
"Chére maître?" She was devoid of all abstraction. It is part of my task to do it for her.
Beyond the city of stones lay the small islands, sparkling with delicate fires. Above them,
the face of the moon was approaching.
Below the window I can hear the boat, docking. She is immersed in wholeness, in life,
before the picture.
The boat is for her.
GEOFFREY
Dear Francesco: I must here interrupt my reading of your letter to go bathe in the
stream below my house.
The water is icy. Viene un momento in cui non ci sono píu fiori. The flowers have all
gone.
Blood does not make a pleasing color of red.
The White Company, Hawkwood leading, was attacking the rearguard of Robert's army.
Swallow's hooves, slipping in the substance on the floor of the bridge, pulled Hawkwood forward
and to the right. Rings along the top of his helm rang. Under the armor, along his back,
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something crawled and then stopped. Below the bridge, the water curled in minute vortices
around the edges and surfaces of the stones. The palm of Hawkwood's hand was dry on the
handle of the sword.
The evening before there had been crickets singing in the willows along the stream.
Among them there were notorious stridulators.
Swallow turned, diagonally, between two foot soldiers and ran over the one behind, the
one holding the green and black pennant. What felt like grease mixed with blood and oozed from
his stomach. His thighs went slack. He felt a warm liquid between them. Swallow, like a thread
in the eye of a needle, went through the group of archers and turned sideways into a platoon
leader. Hawkwood killed the man in front. It required a blow, half-circling, of his sword.
The man had been wearing light, local boots.
The crickets were silent, cosmopolitan.
His intelligence and training had carried no defence for a lethal naivete. In his blood,
flowing from the wound in his neck, the familiar and the exotic were united.
The White Company, following Hawkwood's cry, came up the sloped floor of the bridge.
Their heads were down, over the manes of the horses, their lances coming down and out. The
sound of their cries and hooves of the horses commemorated their approach, their singularity. At
the proper order, the lances of the rearguard came down.
The attack would continue with Hawkwood and the White Company dismounted. The
crickets cannot fly. Their wings have been reduced to sound-producing portions of the tegmina
only. The men skated in blood. The man on Hawkwood's right, trying to stand, realized that the
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plates of his skull were coming apart. He saw, above the trees to the right, a sail in the sky. The
cricket Hydropedeticus skates freely on the surface of water. He was being sucked into darkness,
where the snakes lay. Hawkwood swung his sword left. His boots twisted in a sticky substance.
He could not see the snakes of his comrade. The wood of the larch had been used to make the
bridge.
Apterism marked all the men fighting on (and for) the bridge. The sail swelled and
spread. A great deal of useful material can be injured by a man seeing sails and thinking about
the snakes.
_______
_______
Hawkwood, seeing an opening, ran forward, calling the man after him. After the battle,
the bridge will lose its pre-eminence and gradually decline to an insignificant status. But for now
it has become a symbol for a precise ferocity. Hawkwood killed one man (the one who tried to
rise from a squatting position) and ran on toward the top, where the arch of the bridge began its
descent to the bank.
The sail collapsed. The man fell among the snakes. The creatures would prove to be
illiterate.
Hawkwood would be the first to reach the bank opposite. He ran off the bridge and turned
right along the bank. Willow branches whipped at his face and arms. A pain started, and then
stopped, along his right shoulder. Ahead, he could see the camp of the enemy, hear the sound of a
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dog, and see smoke climbing into the still air. The smoke was forming a shadowy cone between
the day moon and the bank of the river. Hawkwood went through the smoke like a shadow,
through the smoke like a door. Mud pulled at his boots. He ran screaming into the center of the
camp. Elements of the White Company, now exited the bridge, turned along the bank to follow
him.
Over the stones in the stream-bed, light had the inverse of water.
"I like a certain amount of shades in my landscape."
"My Lord?"
They walked out of the trees and looked across the valley. Beyond the river, they could
see the peaks of the Ortler, a great snow-clad mass.
"It calls for a short palette. Naturally, the dealer will try to sell you as many different
shades and hues of color as possible. Your task is to select exactly the smallest number of color
which will give complete range and effect of shade."
"It is a difficult art, My Lord. My training has been elsewhere, in a different medium."
The peak is considered inaccessible, either from the Stelvio Pass (west) or the upper valley of the
Adige between the valleys of Trafoi (northwest) and Sulden (northeast).
"You have not allowed the vermilion time enough to set." The fur of the sable moves.
Light enfolds the shade. Across the river they could see a grey veil forming, beginning to move
along the face of the mountains.
"Wash the sable in warm water and soap at various times, as the paint rots the hairs."
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The veil moves further south. It was trying to land, like a drifting soul, on the surface of a
darker shade. "After the point wears down, the brush becomes a club."
"Your landscape is dead."
"My Lord?"
The face of the peak seemed to be made up of an extremely fine powder. In the cemetery
of the village below, the dead recognize it as the substance of other souls.
He sat down and turned the picture to catch the light. Flood colors obscure tints. The
texture grabbed the wrinkles on the edge of the veil.
"Would you clear up this point for me?"
"My Lord?"
"Your belief in the need for shades in the landscape." Enchantments of cloth with wind.
They had entered, he knew, the realm of risk.
In time, a waterfall (a point in a water-course where descent is perpendicular or nearly
so) would form below the mass of snow.
"The risk is fine, indeed, My Lord. My gestures were, see here and here, were limited by
the medium." He holds the picture at a 45° angle. Subaquatic habits of the colors diffuse the light
upward. Mark the sudden change in stratum below the mass.
"Here the edges should collapse, forming a deeper shade." He replaced the picture on its
stand. He was ready for dinner. "Your three colors call for supplementary assistants." Behind
him, toward the castello, ran the rapid erosion of the voice of a child. There was flight of light
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from shade. "Cerulean blue would also be useful."
It was enough for him to use discourse to get his point across and then é poi basta.
_______
Of course the knight will seek to avoid bad form. During, after or before the tournament,
quest, battle. He will especially try to insure accurate representation of his good form, in statues,
poems, etc. after his death.
Bronze, wood, porcelain, ivory, ink, paper, air, marble.
(In this the knight is grossly under-represented by Geoffrey). In the knight's world, bad
form will always conspire, like women (even in the presence of death), to become pregnant.
Form, for one thing, is a matter of posture. While the Duke is not looking, the Duchess kneads
her breasts, spraying them up into alien shapes. Posture depends, in part, on the presence, or
absence, of side-figures. Sour milk (she hopes for plum juice) would run out of her breasts if
someone bit them.
The knight avoid leaning, except when he wants to accentuate his waist in the turning of
his head in a certain direction. The Duchess dropped her sweat into a house plant. The treatment
of the sword (with a flow of human feeling) is especially relevant, important. A strand of the
Duchess' hair catches in a door-hinge. The Duke hears her cries and ignores them the best he can.
GEOFFREY
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Geoffrey: My intent is to show Hawkwood in several scenes of knightly good form. But I
have been detained in the composing thereof by several household matters. The cockroaches
(blattoidea fam. blattidae) have been bad in this wet weather. They have descended, along with
the mantids and termites, from the ancestral beetles, from the Palaeozoic Protoblattoidea. Note,
crawling over this page, the many-jointed cerci, primitive wing venation and ootheca.
The knight's enemy will always be in bad form. Show him, in the walking position, with
stiff limbs and stilted rhythm. The old lap-dog of the Duchess wheezes under the little bed in the
corner. Our thoughts are often led, by the posture of the knight's head, to the most emotional
religious art of the Orient. Beside water this becomes particularly salient to the viewer. One leg is
pendant, the other bent crosswise over the bank. But the foot is never placed on the opposite leg.
The left elbow is practically touching the knee, as if to support the body which leans over toward
the side.
Geoffrey's representations seldom rise above the level of ordinary mass products written
according to standard models.
S
This posture does not seem to have conceived for a good moral purpose. Compare it to
that of Ariberto, later archbishop, offering to Christ a model of the church he consecrated in
1007, the presumed date of the representation
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The Duchess lives in some made-for disaster. The Duke knows what is in store for her.
Things with form are not what they seem. Suppose we find a white stone on the beach,
one with a blue-green street engraved on it. Are we to take it as a map (glinting in the sun) of a
possible route into Milan? As a sign that we are to lead, henceforth, a wordless life? Cognitive
form in a slightly falsified white glow. Beyond this valley, in those mountains, there are stands of
sycamore, oak, cottonwood. There are, at the same time in this room, washes of Lombardian
poppies, paintings of two sulfur-headed cockatoos, two roan horses, a landscape (obscured by
shadows). What should be the knight's proper form before them, examining them for detail?
In the ballroom, scented with perfume, candle-gutterings, pale combustions, The Duchess
embraces violence. Her fingers run- slope cool steel, a form bounded by a diminishing set of
known coordinates. The posture of the candle flame changes in passing wind.
The knight's charger has the capacity, as its supporters frequently mention, to operate "in
places with narrow hedges, like Lombardy." Beyond the hedge, toward the river, peasants of the
area squat. They bear some resemblance to those of the Carolingian Stuttgart Psalter, watching a
running horse. The whole seems to be a totally Lombardian idiom, probably of the first part of
that century. In the mind of the one to the left, a nimbed half-figure of the knight appears,
youthful, tawny-haired, with large almond-shaped eyes.
Before her dressing table, removing her face, the Duchess mourns the death of violence
(however superficial), the flight of blood from ritual. Her face was, this evening, for decoration
rather than for the expression of purely plastic ideas.
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_______
Donnina, standing with slack arms, watched Gian's investiture.
_______
Note the weave of Donnina's dress. Its smooth and glossy texture results chiefly from its
construction on the simple five-end weft satin weave structure--with the welf showing only on
the surface. Donnina has selected Georgio Venturenno, in Via la Spiga, as her tailor. He and his
staff contracted with the Berbini guild of cloth-makers to produce the cloth for the dress. It is of
especially high quality, being manufactured from a warp with 100 threads per inch of 2.66's fastcolored cotton, and 163 picks per inch of botany worsted weft, piece-dyed blue, edged in purple,
and finely calendered. Silk embroidering, of alizarin yellow, has been used along the sleeves and
shoulders.
The purple edging around the collar, hem and elbows immediately attracts our attention.
It could only be from one source: the Florentine dyeing establishment of Federigo Rucellia. The
dye comes from certain lichens (roccella tinctoria) of Asia Minor. The yellow silk embroidering
of the sleeves of Donnina's dress shows the results of the acid bath followed immediately by
treatment with the boiling solution of bichromate of potash in which the coloring matter on the
fiber is changed into an insoluble oxidation product. The deep blue of the bulk of the dress
results from 1.2 to .03 ounces of carbonate of soda being added to one gallon of dye materials.
S
We now believe that the first complete book on dyeing produced in Europe, Mariegola
dell'arte de Tentori (Venice, 1429) drew directly on the work of Federigo. The family name,
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Rucellia, is a reference to the dyeing industry.
Autumn aloft. The shrub, found chiefly in dry soils in the Upper Adige Valley, had
attained its height (35 feet) and diameter (27 inches). The lance-like leaves, clothed beneath with
minute gold-yellow persistent scales, bore its fruit in a hard-shelled nut with a sweet kernel.
Donnina's station does not make her elaborate girdle seem unseemly. A flat surface of
silver supports minute baselards and pearls. The tang of the girdle is not unlike that of the Garter.
The design of the whole, by Massimo Tagliato of Via Aventuro, depicts the union of the two
great houses of Visconti and Hawkwood.
The Continuator of the Chronicles of Nangis, under that year, notes the increase in the
price of pearls.
_______
The grains of the steel blade of Hawkwood’s sword have irregular boundaries. But the
ultimate atoms are in an orderly geometric arrangement of rows and ranks. If one would
subdivide the space occupied by each atom into a space-lattice of cubes regularly placed on top
and to both sides of each other, the atoms would be located at the corner of each of these cubes
and each cube would have one atom at its center.
Hawkwood, turning in the saddle, brings the great sword around and down. A scream
goes back in the heavy, wet, air. The body of the man falls right into a low shrub.
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S
The bark of the shrub, although devoid of tannin, is sometimes used to adulterate that of
the tanoak (lithocarpus densiflorus). Some authorities regard it as a variety of the gold
chinquapin.
The starching of Donnina's petticoats was done by three of her maids using a four bowl
water mangle and a hot-air stentering range. For the collar, and sleeve, area a Malatrestera
calender with five bowls, with friction, was used. Since it was deemed necessary to back-starch
the inner petticoat, care was taken that the starched side did not come in contact with the heated
cylinders of the stentering range.
Robert of Geneva, Anti-pope, Cardinal of the Church of the Twelve Apostles and Legate
of Romagna, floated toward the center of Milan.
Blood, justice, blood.
One of the dignitaries at Gian's investiture was waiting for another, one with more
authority showing in his clothes. He kept looking at the great main door and then back at the
ceremony proceeding at the front. Beyond the group surrounding Gian he could see, even with
his bad eyes, that the plaster was falling from the back wall. Toward the left, running toward a
dark corner, it seemed to get worse. Perhaps it had been caused by an earthquake? Like that
which had damaged both St. Mark's and the Cathedral of Torcello, where the apostles in the main
apse had been set by the same Greeks.
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He had stopped looking in mirrors. He could feel his eyes, red-rimmed. More and more,
in the morning, he was finding a grandular, whitish substance below the corner of his eyes. Only
a group of the four prophets, Jeremiah, Obadiah, Habakkuk and David were still intact. She
could hardly sit still, he remembered. His forefinger had caused her to breathe hard. Once or
twice she had an orgasm. She squeezed his penis. The miracle scenes in the north vault of the
central dome, the north and east bays of the north transept, originally comprised as many as
twenty-three episodes. Just before ejaculation he had stopped. Her fingers pushed the foreskin
back. She was passionate, composed of warm spaces. "No, not there, here." A transparent fluid
made the skin at the tip feel oily.
He would know the man by his clothes, he had been told. After a short intermission, the
local mosaicists took over. He would ejaculate later, at home, the memory of her warm hand still
on the semi-stiff organ. But even their work, a matter of family pride, had fallen into disrepair.
He turned to look through the door. Outside there was a small courtyard and a yellow stucco
wall. Keep your eye on the door through the wall. That was the most likely place for the man he
was waiting for to appear. The style of those in the north transept seemed to derive from earlier
mosaics of the choir chapels of St. Peter and St. Clement. She had lacked the pretensions of her
mother. No light shone through her eyes. Eyes like a tiger.
He waited, folding and unfolding his arms. Il decaduto. Colors ran together. His eyes were
failing. Sweat ran down his back. She had made him rock-hard. The antipathy to papal claims to
primacy had been expressed in the main apse. But he could no longer see the details. Perhaps his
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name was Matteo d'Ajello, thought to be under the dangerous influence of the Englishman,
Walter of the Mill? She admired his size. He put his hand on the wall. The plaster was crumbly,
old. But it was support for his bad knee. Outside, shadows were elongating. The door through the
wall was shut. He would not, at this distance, be able to hear it turn on its hinges. Her mother's
face showed some transalpine influence.
How do you discover the delusions (confusions) in this man's mind? Should they be
disclosed? In the orchard they could smell the sweet odor of half-burned fig leaves. She sat on his
legs, looking down. Phylloxera discolored the grape vines. She was busy improving the
appearance of his upright penis. What purchase do grape leaves have on a slippery surface? An
old man, with a vaguely familiar gait, went past him. He looked away from the door in the wall.
Half of a moon-belly, semi-globes of pale breast. He needed not to worry, as he would later,
about the hallucinatory despair of trying (long enough) to keep it hard, erect.
He unfolded his arms, allowing old lace to fall over his knuckles.
About here we need a burial, or perhaps a description of a monument to someone dead.
But who will write it? Geoffrey seems to have disappeared. I am ready to read it. Swallow stands
just over there, behind that odd looking structure.
The correlation between the end of life and the end of a text is, I suppose, a natural one.
(We are about to end, aren't we?) The correlation between the beginning of life and the text (one
that does not begin in medias res) is always there also. (No, I haven't fallen from my horse.)
While we wait for Geoffrey to come back, I think we ought to discuss what points need to
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be covered in the burial scene. I'll make a list to give to him.
*Means of disposal: cremation or inhumation?
"Is there a third way?" Preservation, exposure, waterburial, destruction by wild animals, chemical decomposition.
*Posture and orientation of the body. Fully extended?
tightly contracted? Side, back?
"Whatever."
*Type of tomb and (if any) tomb furniture, jars, wickerwood, marble, stone, garments, etc.
"We can ask my nephew. He is now passing through an
imaginative adolescence."
"I think I hear Geoffrey coming now. What does he look like?"
Why?
"So I can tell him what we have been doing while he was gone."
He is full of angular surprises. He walks as if he had thorns in his feet. The last
hypothesis I heard about him was that he was unimportant to society.
"His kind have an Europe-wide distribution."
_______
The glass is largely red and blue and the purple light through the slim jewelled windows
of the cathedral gives a strange and magic beauty to Donnina's dress.
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The spider is in the phylum Arthropoda, class Arachnida, order Araneae, family
Theridiidae. Had its mate not chosen to eat it after mating, the original classifier of such things
would never have known it to be male. But there it is, lying in wait for the next knight.
_______
80 percent of the knights in this country, stung by this kind of spider, are male. The
yellow fluid, descending through heavy light, falls on the web of the spider. The place exploits
the knight's fundamental need to urinate. The web of the creature are called "orbs," in the oldfashioned meaning of "circular." It has a Halloween type fame. The creature attacks, up and left.
Wounded, welty, the organ pulls back. Will the knight pull his sword? Will he have the capacity
to sire more children?
Donnina's body and mind?
Sottile, like mine.
_______
Hawkwood staggers back, looking for an oak tree to embrace, to regain his strength.
S
The poison, a neurotoxin, does something we cannot explain to the glial cells of his
nervous system.
Donnina and John walk hand in hand along the high west wall of their castello. The rays
from the setting sun cast an impressive balance of black-and-white images and moving bodies
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bathed, at times, in rosy side-lighting that underscores the couple's aliveness. A subtle additional
choreography emerges in the rhythms of the tree branches above their head.
In their garden they pause to watch a flight of white doves rising again and again into the
sky with only a few short beat of their wings. The birds rise into higher and higher realms of blue
then, dropping with a faint call, glide down on the air in sweeping arcs around the cypress trees
of the garden, trees that have been there for centuries. The green of their leaves gleam through
the vivid air, reminding John of the yews that populate the churchyard of his native parish.
S
Yew trees grow much slower than cypresses. An inch of yew wood will sometimes have a
hundred or more annual growth rings.
Donnina, alone in her castello, leans on the back of a red velvet chair. Through the
window she can see the great yard and the trees running down to the river. Beyond the river there
are fields of wildflowers and, further back, the foothills of the Alps, giant steps leading to high,
snow-covered, mountains.
Her first-born son, the Archduke Roberto di Milano, of the major succession, wilkl later
lead the White Company through the high passes, and beyond the Rhone, into battles with forces
of the Anti-Pope. Donnina carries a representation of Roberto, by the great Byzantine artist,
Svinthila Ugan, in a penannular brooch on her left shoulder. The pin of the brooch is held in
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position by the pull of the cloth through which it passes. The general design is thought to
originate with the late Celtic tradition of Ireland, and in a lesser degree, that of Scotland.
Word Count: 84,444
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