A Golden Web by Barbara Quick Page B

when she couldn’t keep her thoughts to herself anymore, and spoke of her troubles to the birds.
    Carlo was paying a high price to have his elder daughter cloistered among the Sisters, and they treated herwith a mixture of respect for her wealth and contempt—or perhaps it was envy—for the worldly destiny awaiting her.
     
    Six months after her arrival, the Mother Superior sent a novice to summon Alessandra. Emilia, mad with curiosity and dread, followed along as closely as she could without actually treading on Alessandra’s heels.
    The Mother Superior eyed Emilia with disapproval before turning, rather deferentially, to the young signorina . “A messenger has come with news from your home.”
    “Oh, Lord!” wailed Emilia. “Has that fool of a kitchen maid burned the place down?”
    “Hush, Emilia!” whispered Alessandra.
    Emilia looked fearfully from the Mother Superior to Alessandra and back again. “Not the master! Please, Reverend Mother, tell us that the signorina ’s father is well!”
    The expression on Alessandra’s face showed alarm. “Who is the messenger, Reverend Mother, and what news does he bring?”
    The Mother Superior passed a scroll across her desk to Alessandra.
    Alessandra—who read the note holding it close to her chest, so that Emilia couldn’t make out a single word of it—looked pale when she raised her eyes, but her voice was steady. “Emilia, please ready our things—only the essentials. We’ll need to leave immediately.”
    Rising, the Mother Superior put one hand on Alessandra’s head and made the sign of the cross with the other. Alessandra bowed and thanked her for her blessing before she and Emilia hurried back to their chamber.
    “Bad news, Miss?”
    Alessandra began assembling a small pile of her belongings. “Don’t stand there staring, Emilia! Pack your things!”
    “So it’s only a short time we’ll be away?”
    “Hush and gather your belongings! We’re never coming back to this place.”
    Emilia was trying to puzzle out what it could all mean. Then a look of happiness dawned on her face. She opened the trunk and took out Alessandra’s blue silk dress, briefly touching her cheek to the pearl-studded fabric and sniffing in the scent of lavender. “It will travel so much better in the trunk, Miss.” She made a quick mental inventoryof their room, trying to think of some other way to carry the dress safely.
    Alessandra caught her gaze. “Leave it,” she said quietly.
    Emilia gazed back at her, as uncomprehending as an innocent animal looking into the butcher’s eyes. “But why, my pet? You’ll surely need your wedding gown.”
    “There’s no time to explain now.”
    Emilia reasoned that Alessandra’s fiancé must be very rich indeed if such a dress were to be left behind! She placed it back into the trunk, wishing she herself were slim enough to fit into it—or that at least she could give it to one of her granddaughters. “But Pierina will want it, dear, even if you have no more need of it!”
    “She can come get it then.”
    Slipping an escaped sprig of lavender into the silken folds, Emilia placed the dress back in the trunk. And then, furtively—as if she hoped Alessandra somehow wouldn’t see her—she laid her hands on the finches’ cage.
    “Leave the birds, Emilia. We won’t be able to carry them.”
    Tears leaked out of Emilia’s eyes then. “We can’t just leave them here, with no one to feed them! I will givethem to Sister Paolina—I won’t be a moment!”
    Alessandra paused in her work of tying her little pile of things into a bundle. She looked at the pair of finches in their pretty cage. Their clipped wings had long ago grown back again. She wondered, even in her haste, if they would remember how to use them. “Let them go, Emilia—let them fly away.” She pried the cage out of Emilia’s hands, placing it on the ledge of the window—then lifted the latch of the gate. “Fly!” she whispered. She had to shake the birds out