The Madonna of the Almonds by Marina Fiorato Page A

put him in mind of Simonetta di Saronno, and her troubling absence from mass. He hoped it was nothing to do with Bernardino’s impropriety on her last visit. Perhaps he should travel to the Villa Castello, and hear her confession at home if she chose to give it.
    Bernardino noted the silence. ‘What, no more scripture for today? Am I released from the schoolroom?’
    Anselmo had no wish to reawaken Luini’s interest inthe widow by admitting where his thoughts tended, so he cast around for something to say. ‘I was merely admiring the work,’ he said. Then his eye was caught by a vast space in the presbytery of the Cappella Maggiore – virgin white and untouched by charcoal. Not a mark was there – not the nails and strings that Bernardino placed in the wall for guidance, not the charcoal cartoons. Nothing. ‘What is that space meant for, Bernardino? Have you run out of materials? For I am instructed by the Cardinal to advance you monies should you need them.’
    Bernardino jumped down from his perch, wiping his fingers on his chest, turning the hairs that grew there vermilion. He stared at the void beside the priest. ‘No, that’s the space for the Adoration of the Magi.’
    ‘And you have no wish to begin it yet?’
    ‘The Virgin is central to the piece. At the birth of her son, she is at her most glorious and most beautiful. So I’m waiting for Simonetta.’ Bernardino stared at the wall, as if he could already see the greatness that would one day be there.
    Anselmo sighed, and when he spoke it was in measured tones as if to a child. ‘ Signora di Saronno will not model for you. She has not been near this place since you insulted her last.’
    ‘That’s because she’s in love with me.’
    The priest snorted with derision. ‘You certainly take a good deal upon yourself. You inflate your own charms andinsult that lady and the memory of her husband. I advise you to put her out of your mind.’
    Bernardino began to clean his hands on a rag. He favoured Anselmo with his wolf’s grin. ‘She could certainly inflate my charms. She’ll be back. And she’ll model for me. You’ll see.’
    At that very moment the great doors at the head of the nave swung open and the lady herself entered. She was wearing a man’s weeds and her hair curled above her shoulders. She was sorely changed but her beauty was undimmed. She resembled an avenging angel as she strode toward them.
    Simonetta’s hauteur was an illusion. She held her chin high to give her courage. She kept her eyes on the two widely different men who awaited her. One, portly, and diminutive with a kindly face that held a great deal of surprise. And the other, slim, saturnine, wearing – Saints preserve us – no shirt, painted like a savage and showing no surprise at all on the face she could not forget. She addressed the latter with a simple, rehearsed question. ‘How much?’

CHAPTER 10
Five Senses and Two Dimensions
    Simonetta sat as still as she could. She was practiced in the art, for all of those days and nights she had spent at her window grieving for Lorenzo. Well, now she may think of him at her leisure for hours at a time, with the comfort of being paid for the privilege. But she did not think of Lorenzo, much as she wished to. Now, against her will, she thought of another.
    It seemed that her past had done with her. Her life had carried on, much as she might wish it had not. She was living and breathing in a world of four elements. She had the use of her five senses, and she employed all of them in her time at the church of the miracles. She felt the cold of the church as the blue cloth wrapped around her offered little comfort against the winter. She could smell the oil of the paints and the woodsmoke of the brazier that the kindly priest had placed near. She could feel the stone beneath her feet and legs, leeching the warmth from her flesh to its freezing blocks. She could taste the familiar bitter tang ofperpetual hunger on her tongue. But