A Golden Web Part 11

"Sandro," said Mina. "This is Signore Agenio-our newest boarder."

"Agenio," Alessandra said. She recognized the name of the primary supplier of calf-and sheepskins to her father's workshop. She looked across the table and saw the face of the handsome scholar who had been ogling her at the lecture.

He smiled more broadly at her this time than he had that day in the square. "'Otto' to everyone present."

Alessandra looked at him longer than she should have and then blushed. Out of all the places he could have chosen to board, why had he chosen this one? It was too unfair! Grabbing the last piece of bread that wasn't already sodden, she managed to say, "I'm ravenous, Signora Mina-and I'm very sorry to be late again. Is there anything left for me?"

Maxie pa.s.sed Alessandra a big hunk of meat on the point of the knife she shared with her sister, Horabilli. "I saved this for you, Sandro!"

"I thought you were being rather a pig," said Mondino's other daughter.

Mumbling her thanks, Alessandra didn't dare look at Otto again. She'd felt so hungry-but now that she found herself with food before her, she could hardly bring herself to eat. How would she hide her gender, at such close quarters, from this man who made her heart beat fast and her knees feel weak with a longing to be held in his arms?

"It pleases me greatly," said Otto, "to be rooming here with another student who shares my pa.s.sion."

Maxie nearly fell over her own feet as she hastened to bring Sandro a goblet of water for the fit of coughing that had overtaken him.

"Be three times happy then, my boy!" Mondino said with a nod to Sandro and a hearty laugh. "All the students at this table are equally entranced with the subject of medicine."

Otto nodded first at his host and then at Bene. "We will all three of us be a merry band of scholars then, privileged to sit at your table, Professore Professore."

Bene thought how poor a figure he cut among these swells, with their rich clothes and fancy airs. He stole a look at Sandro, who was biting down on his rosy lips and largely ignoring the lovely piece of meat he'd just been given. This Otto, at least, looked and sounded like a proper man.

Bene vowed to find a way to win back his place, so lately usurped, as Mondino's protege. Like every other man who was honored and admired, Sandro surely had a weakness that he kept hidden from the world. All Bene had to do was find it out and make it known.

They rode out early in the morning, the hawks hooded and held high, perched on the leather gauntlets worn by Mondino and his eldest son.

Otto stayed as close as he could to Sandro, who raced ahead with all the joy of being free and out in the countryside again. Alessandra had a good horse beneath her, and no one-save Otto-was paying much attention to her at all.

Sometimes, when riding, Alessandra was able to think in a way she couldn't when she was standing still. It was as if she were racing side by side with her own thoughts-and an insight or a new idea would slip inside her. The sweetness of understanding seemed to be all around her then, in the air itself.

When the horses stopped, she tried to gather that sweetness close to her and hold it tight.

They were in a clearing on a rise overlooking a pond.

"There!" said Mondino, spotting the flock of ducks on the surface of the water far below. He brought his hooded goshawk close to his face and whispered a word to her while she s.h.i.+fted from foot to foot and jingled the silver bells attached to her leg. Using his teeth, Mondino untied the cord that held his bird's hood in place and hove his arm aloft. The unhooded hawk was suddenly airborne, flying toward the body of water below. "We'll have a duck for dinner tonight, eh, Dino?"

Gabardino, Mondino's eldest son, also launched his bird-a red falcon-its bells tinkling, into the sweet, clear air. "Two ducks, I should think, Father!"

Lodovico, Mondino's second son (who didn't yet have a hawk of his own) walked his horse up to Otto and Sandro. "There's a good place near here for wild onions. Come with me, you two?"

They rode another mile or so, following Lodovico's lead. Alessandra was suffering agonies of needing to urinate, and riding more was making the situation that much worse. She was grateful when they found the patch of wild onions and got off their horses.

"G.o.d, but I have to pee!" said Lodovico, lifting his doublet and starting to push aside the fabric of his breeches.

Alessandra turned her face away, furiously pretending to occupy herself with her horse's bridle.

"Come, you two!" said Lodovico above the sound of the stream of his urine hitting the ground. "Is it possible that you don't have water to spend after all these hours of riding?"

Alessandra was afraid of wetting herself, so desperate was she to do just that. "I'm going to check the woods for mushrooms!"

"What a fine idea!" said the good-natured Lodovico, shaking himself off and doing up his clothes again. "I'll come with you!"

Otto dug him gently in the ribs. "I think our Sandro might have some solitary business to take care of in the woods," he said in a low tone of voice.

"Are you too proud to s.h.i.+t with your mates, Sandro? Come-I could go ca-ca myself, now that you mention it!" He moved off a bit, away from the onions, and made to squat down.

"I won't be long!" Alessandra called over her shoulder as she ran as fast as she could toward the safety of the trees.

What a bother it was to be a girl sometimes! She found a place behind a fallen tree, where she was sure she wouldn't be seen by anyone.

The relief was enormous. She thought how much a slave one was to the body and its needs.

She was just pulling up her breeches when she heard a male voice-the voice of a stranger and yet oddly familiar. He said her name-her male name, but with an obvious sense of irony. She gasped and scrambled to her feet, wondering just how much he'd seen.

It was Bene, standing to his full height with his arms crossed and a pugnacious look on his freckled face. "Sandro!" he repeated.

"What are you doing here?"

"Oh, I wasn't invited on the hunt, was I? Butchers' boys don't go hunting, do they? Not with hawks, and not on horses."

"They told me you wanted to study this morning."

Bene snorted. "Yes, as it happens, I was studying anatomy this morning, and a curious difference between males and females, Sandro! What is your real name, anyway, you witch? And what gave you the notion that you could get away with this-abomination? Do you think the scholars of the University of Bologna will take it lightly, being mocked in this way?"

"Bene-"

"Don't come near me!"

Alessandra nonetheless took a step closer to him. "Bene, you of all people should understand!" She spoke in a whisper, as she would have spoken to a wild, enraged animal. "There was no other way for me to come here as a scholar. You yourself have no doubt had to contend with a great deal to lift yourself above the state you were born into."

"At least I was born a man!"

"It was your good fortune-not only to be born a man but to have the intellectual abilities that allow you to pursue an academic degree. I have the ability, Bene-it is only my gender that is wrong!"

"It is a sin to try to change it."

"I don't wish to change it! I only wish to study and learn." She came even closer. "Do you remember how that felt, when you were still a boy in your village-when you'd learned and read everything you could there?"

With a gesture that was still very much like that of a young boy, Bene put both his hands over his slightly protuberant ears. "It's not the same," he said, a little too loudly.

Alessandra looked at him, at a loss as to what to do next. Finally she said, "Are you going to tell the others?"

"I won't listen to you!"

There was only one thing left to do. Alessandra reached inside her doublet and brought out her knife.

And then she yanked at her chemise, cut the hem open, and pulled out her hunk of gold. She looked at the flecks of blue paint that still adhered to it-the last traces of the image of her mother painted by Old Fabio. "It's all I have," she said, "and I'll give half of it to you if you will keep my secret safe."

Bene grabbed at the gold and bit down on it-then inspected the marks he'd left on it with his teeth. It felt wonderfully hot and heavy in his hands.

"All of it," he said.

"But I'll have nothing to live on!"

"What's that to me? You'll have your life, won't you? It won't be worth two soldi soldi if Bologna finds out your deception. You'll be burned at the stake!" if Bologna finds out your deception. You'll be burned at the stake!"

Someone was calling "Sandro!" in the distance.

"You can't leave me with nothing!"

"Watch me, then!"

There was the sound of footsteps through the leaves.

"There you are!" said Otto, all outlined in sunbeams. Then, "Bene! I thought you were studying. Did you come here on foot?" He looked from Bene to Alessandra. "Is everything all right here?"

Bene smiled. "Just fine," he said, slipping the hunk of gold into his pouch. "Isn't it, Sandro?"

"Yes," said Alessandra miserably.

"Well, then," said Otto. "We can all go back together. Sandro, why don't you ride with me and let Bene ride your horse? You're by far the lightest among us."

"I'll walk," said Alessandra.

"Don't be silly," said Otto. "Come on-Lodovico is waiting."

What was the proper way for a man to ride behind another man? Alessandra, who was used to holding on tight when she rode behind her brother, thought she'd better try to somehow stay on the horse without touching Otto at all. But then he pulled her up so that she was sitting in front of him. "It's safer this way," he said, so close to her that she could feel his warm breath on her face.

The ride was an agony of trying not to rub against Otto-fairly impossible, under the circ.u.mstances-and a weird sensation of pleasure when she did. She'd never experienced anything like it before: his chest pressed up against her back, her bottom brus.h.i.+ng against his thighs. It was very much like having an itch and longing to scratch it-but this itch was not anyplace she could reach or even locate. The feeling was all over her and somehow underneath her skin. She tried to remember if Aristotle had written anything about it-an all-over itch engendered by two people coming into bodily contact with each other. But she couldn't recall ever having read of the phenomenon.

Her agony was compounded, of course, by the knowledge that Bene had just ruined her life. She watched him and noted, with a useless feeling of satisfaction, that he rode poorly. What ill luck that she had needed to relieve herself just then, with Bene lurking close by! He must have set out to trap her. Why else would he be up on the mountains instead of studying, as he said he was going to do?

She should never have shown him the gold! If she'd only told him about it, she could have cut off a large piece of it for herself. He'd never have known the difference. But, then, she reasoned, maybe he wouldn't have believed that she possessed such a treasure, if she'd only spoken of it. And then he surely would have told Otto, and everyone else, what he'd seen-and then she'd have been done for.

She only hoped that Bene, although only a butcher's son, would still prove himself to be a man of honor.

They found the others by the water with hooded birds again, standing over their kill. Mondino was in a merry mood. "All right," he said. He tossed a dead duck to each of them. "Knives out. Let's see who can gut theirs fastest!"

Alessandra worked with all the urgency brought on by her dread-and a dawning, desperate hope that perhaps Mondino himself would find some way to employ her, in exchange for her room and board. She could go to him, as Sandro, and tell him that she'd had a sudden reversal of fortune-that she'd have to leave Bologna, return home, and give up her education if some financial remedy couldn't be found.

Or perhaps, she thought with some bitterness, she could simply give in to her family's wishes and marry whatever scurvy man her father had picked out for her. He was rich, after all. But what chance was there that he'd allow his wife to study medicine? If her father had refused her-her father, who loved her more than anyone else in the world-how could she even dream of another man giving her greater license? She would be doomed to stay and serve this great landowner in one or more of his stupid castles, ordering his servants around and carrying his keys. He'd get her pregnant and then her life of learning-and maybe even her very life-would well and truly be done for.

Alessandra wielded her knife as she dressed the duck, without even thinking about it at all. She made a clean cut and pulled out the entrails and the crop, placing the heart and the liver in the jar Mondino had brought along. Her duck was ready well before the others, and very neatly done.

Mondino watched her as she rinsed her hands and her knife in the pond, but said nothing except to urge them all to hasten back down to the house and the kitchen fire before the meat began to spoil.

On the lecturer's chair, high above the corpse, Mondino looked very different and far more intimidating than the fatherly person who enjoyed himself with his family on the weekends. "The knowledge of the structure of the human body," he said in a voice that was also different, like the voice of G.o.d coming down from the heavens, "is the foundation upon which all rational medicine and surgery must be built."

His two a.s.sistants stood below, flanking the body-one to cut and the other to point as Mondino spoke. "Always start with the parts that are most corruptible." The prosector, knife in hand, made a swift, clean cut down the center of the abdomen, from top to bottom; then he made another cut laterally, from side to side. The students gathered round let out a collective gasp. Most of them had never seen the inner workings of a body before-and here were the entrails of a once-living man, exposed to their eyes.

The corpse was fairly fresh, and it was a nice, cold winter day. But corruption had begun already, and the smell of it was revolting.

Alessandra tried to hold back the liquids that began to rise from her own gullet. The last time she had seen this sight was when she was looking inside her mother's own corpse. Her eyes stung with tears-but she blinked them away. A couple of other students gagged and retched. But Alessandra mastered her nausea and watched, fascinated, as the prosector lifted up the entrails to better show them.

Mondino read from his own book on anatomy, quoting from Galen and at times interrupting himself to note points on which his own observations of the human body were at odds with the writings of the ancients. "We are only at the beginning of this new science of anatomy, and there remains a great deal to be discovered and ascertained."

There were murmurs of dissent among the other learned doctors in the a.s.sembly. The writings of the ancient Greeks, with glosses by the Arabs and Persians, comprised the entire basis for the art of medicine.

"For instance," Mondino carried on, undaunted, "Aristotle wrote of a three-chambered heart." The prosector, with some difficulty, cut out the heart and put it upon a cloth spread over the torso by his other a.s.sistant.

"But as you will see-" Mondino had to raise his voice to make it heard above the bits of conversation and argument and the inevitable jokes people always feel compelled to make in these situations. "The heart is divided into two chambers, not three." The prosector cut the thick septum dividing the heart, laying the two pieces side by side. The jokes stopped then, and the murmurs took on more of an admiring tone.

The smell was getting worse, though, and a couple of other students turned and retched into the containers that had been placed by a servant, for that purpose, around the courtyard.

Mondino continued. "I quote from our translation of Galen: 'The blood reaching the right side of the heart goes through invisible pores in the septum to the left side, where it mixes with air to create spirit and then is distributed to the rest of the body.'"

Invisible pores, Alessandra thought. The septum had seemed quite a bit thicker and tougher than the other tissues, judging from the way the prosector had to work at cutting it. She tried to squeeze to the front of the crowd, longing to take a closer look-but by the time she'd done the requisite work with her elbows, Mondino had already moved on. Alessandra thought. The septum had seemed quite a bit thicker and tougher than the other tissues, judging from the way the prosector had to work at cutting it. She tried to squeeze to the front of the crowd, longing to take a closer look-but by the time she'd done the requisite work with her elbows, Mondino had already moved on.

"The head must always come next, and last, the extremities."

It was in the last part of the demonstration that the prosector cut himself-not just a little bit, but badly, so that he was bleeding too heavily to continue.

Corpses were hard to come by. "Blast!" Mondino said, suddenly sounding like himself again. He looked to his second a.s.sistant, who only shook his head.

"You know I'm no good at cutting, Magister Magister."

"You!" said Mondino. He was pointing at Alessandra.

"Me?" she mouthed silently.

"Yes, you-I've seen your skill with a knife. Step up-be swift! The body is decaying rapidly."

And so Alessandra Giliani became Mondino's prosector, before she was even properly admitted into the medical school-and just in time to earn her room and board. All agreed-and Mondino most readily of all-that she was by far the best prosector he'd ever had, a veritable genius with a knife, with a subtle, delicate touch he'd never seen before in any of his a.s.sistants.