The Secret Price of History. Gayle Ridinger
Читать онлайн книгу.
sat up. "Show me what you're drawing."
"Your head." He flashed the sketch pad at her.
"Why?"
"Because it seems to me that someday your head will go with a story. I mean, with a scene or theme. I'll keep it till then."
She yawned broadly in answer.
"Let me finish it. Sit back and sleep," he urged.
She did so with the natural immediacy characterizing her person. He returned to his sketch, deepening the lines of Eleonora's Greek nose, making her hair curl more down her back. He had in mind putting her in a picture that rival his Italian Beggars that had caused a sensation at the Annual Exhibition at the National Academy of Design a few months before. Critics had rightly cited Titian as his 'master' in color and glazing and nature's touch, and Murillo for his unglamorized depictions of common people. He struggled daily with ideas for how to make an allusion to classical myth and at the same time say something about the Italy that seemed to finally be in the making. He had no clear idea for now on what would be the subject of the painting with Eleonora, but he could sense that it would come to him. She was too delightfully authentic not to paint. He might not even put another figure in the scene with her, or at most an animal. As Giovanni Ferrero, their teacher at the drawing sessions he attended at the American Academy, kept saying: non troppo confuso—no complicated handling of the scene, and keep the backgrounds simplified. Character, pure character. Eleonora's character was there in her features for him to get at. He was intent at rubbing and blurring the charcoal lines of her hairline, when suddenly a small pistol slipped out from under her cape and fell with a rattle on the floor.
He kept still, surprised and yet not surprised. It was the confirmation that what he thought about her: what she said was what she did. And yet she might do too much. When a few minutes had gone by and she remained asleep, he picked up the gun quietly and went with it to the bedroom, where he hid it at the back of the wardrobe.
It was only when he re-entered the room that she woke with a start. Her soft green-brown eyes fixed on him, the indomitable part of her temperament giving a pulse to them.
"I no longer have a family. I live for revenge, Mr. Freeman," she said.
"Quite understandable. But we still need to consider where you can stay...where you are safe." Then he added, "Of course, your friends are out of the question."
"Then I will live in the street. I—I will be a model. Like that Maria."
He smiled as he reminded her. "Your family and their emissaries are looking for you. You must be in some protected place."
She refused to submit to any authority, as he'd imagined. But 'authority' presumably meant the Papal State, and so he tried a different tack; he told her there was a religious community hostile to the Pope, and affiliated with the Anglicans, with an abbey a short distance from Rome where she could take refuge.
"All right," she said after a moment.
"I feel much relieved. But do stay on till Augusta gets back so I can introduce you properly."
"I'd prefer to go immediately." She rewound her braid and raised her hood.
"But you must come back. I—and Augusta—would like to see you again. You are always welcome. I would like to finish my drawing next time. Or maybe begin a painting."
Annoyance passed over her face.
To make amends, he asked, shaking her hand at the door, if there was anything she wanted.
Eleonora thought for a moment. "Yes, there is," she replied. "I want…..a CONSTITUTION."
Then she was gone.
Piedmont, Italy - March 26, 1849
The day dawned on the smells of Bassignana. It was a pungent foggy morning after several days of intense rain. The iron-damp odor of the flood land along the River Po pervaded the five or six streets of two-storey buildings, whose massive wooden doors stood open at this hour and whose muddy courtyards reeked of barn animals.
Goffredo Morelli was unloading wooden cheese molds from a cart in front of his shop. They were for toma rounds, which most people in town ate for dinner at good times and lamented the lack of when the times were bad. He was hurrying, mindful that it was time for his young cheeses to be removed from their forms and over-night liquid; then put back upside down.
But there was also something else in his cart this morning. There was a small pile of rennet in an open gunny sack, the smell of which always affected him in a peculiar way. This morning he would dry and clean the rennet—the stomachs of some young calves—and then slice it into small pieces and put it to soak in some whey and vinegar. Before going to bed tonight, he'd have to filter it; he needed it to curdle his cheese tomorrow. But for now its smell intruded on his thoughts. The smell of life and death. The smell of the slaughter of the young, which tomorrow would be replaced by the smell of young life—the smell of his cheeses! Once Teresa the wet nurse had told him that she smelled like one of his cheeses when she had two little ones of noblewomen attached to her breast.
Absorbed in his draining and turning, Goffredo heard a rumbling through the open shop door. He thought that it was strange that there was thunder and yet no storm clouds. He left his curds and went out into the street, where Enrico, the blacksmith, was unfolding the wooden shutters of his shop.
"Is that thunder or cannons?"
"Cannons, cannons," Enrico said excitedly. "Two young soldiers from our army came to wake me up last night. They had their officer's horse, which needed reshoeing. There's been a terrible battle at Novara between Piedmont and Austria. They said that King Carl Albert's abdicated the throne. Our army's been crushed, there are wounded and dead everywhere, Austrian prisoners nobody knows what to do with, and roaming bands of soldiers without food."
"What was our King thinking?" Goffredo said. "Our army wasn't ready for war. And then the stupid idea of launching an attack in all this rain, in the cold and mud."
"I hear it was the Austrians who attacked, not us." Enrico broke off to address the two farmers guiding their wagon out of the entranceway of the next building. "Hey! The Austrians have done us in. Carl Albert's abdicated!"
There was no immediate reaction. The farmers, in dirty rough shirts and ropes instead of belts around their waists, impassively thumped at their horses' rumps to make them stop. Only when the wagon stood still did they look at Enrico and Goffredo.
"The King did right to give up the throne," said one shortly. "Can't win against the Austrians."
"And now this new king, Victor Emanuel II," Goffredo muttered. "Only 28 years old."
For the rest of the morning, between one cheese turning or salting and another, Goffredo restlessly mulled around the market in the small square surrounding the modest Baroque church that Bassignana called its cathedral; he was anxious to know something more from the townspeople—as agitated today as their hens and cocks on sale.
No one had much concrete news to offer but the amount of hear-say talk was outstanding. Then, towards noon, a bearded town official with a rolled parchment under one arm arrived in the square, preceded by a boy hoisting the white and red silk banner of the House of Savoy.
"In the name of the Royal House of Savoy, I order all his Majesty's subjects to adhere to the following rules. First, all travel in the direction of Casale Monferrato is forbidden until further notice! Second, no aid or refuge is to be given to deserters from the Royal Army of Piedmont and Sardinia!"
Goffredo, who sold his cheese to the official's family, stepped forward as he was re-rolling his edict. "So it's true—officially?"
The official nodded tersely. "The Austrians have broken through our defense line and have Casale under siege."
"Looks like we're God forsaken, doesn't it?" Goffredo's eyes darted around the square, taking in the everyday happenings of a small town in peace time.
"No one knows yet if an armistice's been signed," the official admitted.