Life As Carola

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Text originally published in 1940 under the same title.

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Publisher’s Note

Although in most cases we have retained the Author’s original spelling and grammar to authentically reproduce the work of the Author and the original intent of such material, some additional notes and clarifications have been added for the modern reader’s benefit.

We have also made every effort to include all maps and illustrations of the original edition the limitations of formatting do not allow of including larger maps, we will upload as many of these maps as possible.

LIFE AS CAROLA

BY

JOAN GRANT

A Far Memory Book

TABLE OF CONTENTS

Contents

TABLE OF CONTENTS 3

MORE LIVES THAN ONE 7

DEDICATION 8

AUTHOR’S NOTE 9

CHAPTER ONE 10

1. DAUGHTER OF THE GRIFFIN 10

2. FIESTA 13

3. DONNA ISABELLA 14

CHAPTER TWO 16

1. RETURN OF ORLANZO 16

2. THE TEAR IN THE TAPESTRY 18

3. SERENE INTERLUDE 22

CHAPTER THREE 26

1. THE SPANISH BRIDE 26

2. BANISHMENT 28

3. OLIVIA THE EMBROIDRESS 30

4. THE SHINING ONE 33

CHAPTER FOUR 35

1. DONNELLI 35

2. HOUSE OF THE MAGNOLIAS 36

3. PRELUDE FOR STRINGS 38

CHAPTER FIVE 41

1. THE STRONG-MAN 41

2. FRESCO 44

3. VILLAGE TO VILLAGE 46

4. SORROWFUL WOMAN 48

CHAPTER SIX 50

1. REVOLT IN PADUA 50

2. DARK HARVEST 51

3. THE OLD STRANGER 55

CHAPTER SEVEN 58

1. THE FARM 58

2. NEW LUTE 60

CHAPTER EIGHT 63

1. THE JESTER 63

CHAPTER NINE 68

1. COMPANIONS ON A JOURNEY 68

2. WINDOW WITHOUT SHUTTERS 70

CHAPTER TEN 74

1. LOVE AND LUCIA 74

2. SANDRA 74

3. GHOST OF THE GRIFFIN 77

4. SMALLPOX 80

CHAPTER ELEVEN 84

1. THE DRAB 84

2. LOVE POTION 86

3. LONELY VALLEYS 88

CHAPTER TWELVE 91

1. THE ALCHEMIST’S DAUGHTER 91

2. THE DARK FAMILIAR 93

CHAPTER THIRTEEN 98

1. THE LOTUS 98

2. WITCH-BURNING 100

CHAPTER FOURTEEN 103

1. FUGITIVE 103

2. RELUCTANT TROUBADOUR 105

3. THE CONTE’S JEST 106

CHAPTER FIFTEEN 108

1. THE ‘SANTA MARIA’ 108

2. WINTER IN FIUME 110

3. THE GREAT PHYSICIAN 115

CHAPTER SIXTEEN 118

1. HOUSE OF THE WHITE SISTERS 118

2. CLOISTER GARDEN 119

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN 124

1. ANTHONY THE GLASS-MAKER 124

2. HEAL THE SICK 125

3. THE OLD ABBESS 128

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN 133

1. GREEN BLOOD 133

2. THE APRICOT 134

3. BEATRICE 136

4. THE ANT 139

CHAPTER NINETEEN 143

1. SNOW IN HEAVEN 143

2. DESPERATE CONCEALMENT 145

3. NATIVITY 147

CHAPTER TWENTY 150

1. THE LAME NUN 150

2. TWO VOICES 151

3. ARRAIGNMENT 153

4. RECANT! 156

5. THE CLOSED DOOR 159

CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE 162

1. RETURN FROM A DARK JOURNEY 162

2. HIPPOGRIFF 164

3. CAROLA DI LUDOVICI 166

CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO 169

1. THE ARK 169

2. THE JAR AND THE CUP 172

3. EXILES FROM EDEN 174

CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE 176

1. BLIND ALLEY 176

2. FLAIL OF THE ANGELS 180

CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR 183

1. LALAGE 183

2. STATUE OF APOLLO 185

3. CAROLA SAW LOVE 187

CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE 190

1. GODSON OF CARLOS 190

2. ISLAND IN THE WEST 191

3. LAMENT FOR A LUTE 194

4. THE CRIPPLED SAILOR 196

CHAPTER TWENTY SIX 200

1. THE ‘CRIMSON ROSE’ 200

2. STORM WRACK 202

3. TWO EFFIGIES 205

CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN 207

1. TORCH LIGHT 207

2. THE CAROLA I WORE 210

REQUEST FROM THE PUBLISHER 213

MORE LIVES THAN ONE

The memories of a wanderer in the stormy and licentious era of Renaissance Italy…

THE ASTONISHING JOAN GRANT became aware as a child of her uncanny gift of far memory—the ability to recall in detail previous incarnations, both male and female, in other centuries and other lands. Her books, which have been highly praised for the richness of color and incident and for their beauty of language and thought, are in fact the author’s memories of her earlier lives.

Such a book is LIFE AS CAROLA, the memories of a wanderer in one of the most turbulent and colorful ages in history.

Here is an unusual book that shines with fire...that is packed with incident, that is vivid, dramatic and skillfully put together—and yet one that this reviewer finds harder to value correctly than any that has ever fallen into his hands.—New York Times

DEDICATION

TO

CHARLES BEATTY

FROM

THE I THAT WAS CAROLA

AUTHOR’S NOTE

Although the author could have availed herself of the 20th century facilities for historical research, she has preferred to seek no documentary confirmation and to leave this story bound by the limitations of Carola’s own experience.

Carola judged people and institutions only as she saw them—through the eyes of a bastard of the Lord of the Griffin in 16th century Italy. This is perhaps particularly noticeable in those chapters which describe her days as a novice in the House of the White Sisters. At first she was under the rule of a wise and benevolent Abbess, and it was only when the new Abbess, a woman unworthy of her office, assumed authority, that Carola came to hate the Church—not, until several years later, being sufficiently experienced to realize that a religious system cannot be condemned because certain of its adherents misuse their power.

That the fanatical Abbess subjected Carola to torture in an attempt to make her recant of her heresies, does not mean that this was a usual practice in convents, but only that a woman driven by hatred took the law into her own hands. The reader may find it strange that Carola submitted to torture without demanding a trial for witchcraft; but a strolling player has little knowledge of the temporal laws under which she lives.

CHAPTER ONE

1. DAUGHTER OF THE GRIFFIN

I WAS born early in the morning of the fourth of May, in the year of our Lord fifteen hundred and ten.

Though I was conceived in the great bed, I opened my new eyes for the first time in the north-west turret of a castle of the House of the Griffin, which lay two days’ journey from Perugia in the country of Italy.

My cradle was of dark, carved wood, very old, and my mother used to rock it with her foot while she laid her long thread into smooth stitches. All through my first summer I never saw the sun except when it shone through the high window in a clear-cut shaft of light and lit a blue sheen in her black hair; but when the cold weather came she used to take me out under the sky, where I could watch the clouds and see the winter trees flaring in the wind.

Sometimes she carried me through vast, shuttered rooms, where the storm cried in the wide chimneys and the furniture was blind and shrouded in the dusty gloom, into a long gallery where there were many pictures. She would hold me up to them and talk to the portraits as if they were living people. Often she would begin to cry, and I would feel her tears falling warm and wet on my face.

Even when I could run very fast my mother still had to carry me up the stairs of the turret because they were so very steep and there was nothing to hold onto. There were two rooms in our turret, one above the other, and we lived in the top one. The walls were so thick that the embrasures of the three high windows were almost like passages leading to the light. I often used to curl up in them, for the windows were too narrow for me to fall out of, and look down at the country far below me. At the bottom of the castle hill there were vineyards and plough land, and on days of clear air I could hear the voices of the drivers as they shouted to their oxen. The sound was very small and thin, because of the distance, and the oxen looked like toys I could pick up in my hand; as if I should have to be small as a grasshopper to ride on them.

The privy was in the corner of the room, up three little steps. The hole was very big and I was always afraid of falling down it, like an unwelcome guest down an oubliette, until Mother got the carpenter to make a little wooden seat for me so that I should feel safe. I did not play there in summer, because it was very smelly, and in winter there was a cold draught. But in spring and autumn I used to collect pebbles or horse chestnuts and pretend they were my enemies whom I had at last brought to justice; then I dropped them into the privy and heard them go clattering down till they fell into my dungeon.

Because my mother was the daughter of Donna Isabella’s steward, who had died the year before I was born, she looked after the rich materials that were stored in four great chests in the room below ours: rolls of cut-velvet, damask and brocade; stamped cloth-of-gold, satins and lawn for ruffs; and bundles of black horsehair to stiffen sleeves. She used to embroider with the gold and silver threads and precious stones that were kept in a little cabinet, its drawers inlaid with mother-of-pearl, whose key she always wore on a chain round her neck.

Sometimes, though not often, she took me down there and let me play with the jewels. I loved the blue ones, and the green, but the red ones made me think of the dove that had fallen on the parapet after a hawk had plucked out both its eyes: I think I comforted it a little before it died between my hands, but the blood that dripped from its beak onto its breast reminded me of white velvet sewn with rubies.

Mother often sat all day at her embroidery frame and I had to play alone, but on other days she would be gay, play hide-and-seek or, in the spring, take me out to the hillside to gather wild iris. From autumn to early summer we were alone in the castle, except for a few servants in the kitchen quarters, and I was free to wander wherever I liked. I used to help in the herb garden when they were gathering the herbs to make cordials and simples, and run races with the kitchen children on the stone terraces where I fed the birds in winter.

The great empty castle was a very good place to play in. One room was floored like the Long Gallery, with alternate squares of black and white marble, and when I crossed it I was always very careful never to step on the black squares; T don’t know how this game started, but it always seemed very important. I could even go into Donna Isabella’s own apartments, where the furniture crouched in the shadows like wolves waiting to spring on an unwary traveler, and the mice had grown so bold that if I stood quite still they would creep out of their holes and watch me with their little bright eyes.

I had three dolls, and my favorite one was a blackamoor that Mother had made for me out of a scrap of velvet. He was dressed as a negro page, with a yellow turban, and pantaloons of silk striped in green and mulberry, and he even had shoes with curling points. His eyes were very real, for the craftsman who came to mend one of the inlaid cabinets had made them from a broken piece of mother-of-pearl. He was called Salim, after the famous negro page, because I had always loved the story of Salim and made her tell it to me very often.

On Sundays, when Mother took me down to the village to hear Mass, I wore a green velvet dress and a skull cap embroidered with wild flowers in brilliant colored threads. My hair was a bright sienna red, and Mother rolled it in rags so that it would curl up round my cap. The little damp knobs were very uncomfortable to sleep on, and I often wished I were like the kitchen children whose heads had never felt a comb.

When Donna Isabella left her palazzo in Sienna and came to the castle for the hot weather, everything was different. I could not understand why she must never see me, and why Mother was so frightened of her, but I knew I had to stay in our turret whose stairs she was too crippled to climb. I was kept almost like a prisoner and was not allowed to go out of doors except very early in the morning when all the grand people were still sleeping. It was only after I overheard Maria talking to my mother that I realized Donna Isabella was my grandmother.

Maria was the head cook, and I was very fond of her; she was fat and friendly and always gave me nice things to eat when I went into the kitchen. Three days after her eldest daughter’s baby was born, she took me down to the village to see it. The baby was very small and red and it cried a lot, but Maria seemed to love it already though she had only known it such a short time.

While we were walking back to the castle I asked her, Why doesn’t my grandmother love me as you love your grandchild?

At first she pretended not to hear me, but I went on asking her until she said, It is because Donna Isabella is not your real grandmother—at least your mother is not her daughter-in-law, and a tie of blood is often a tie of hatred when it has not been knotted by a priest.

I said, I know I am a bastard... I didn’t know what a bastard was, but I had heard people say I was one and I knew it was caused by having a mother who wasn’t married. ...but I can’t see what difference it makes. As far as I can see I am just the same as your children, and I know they aren’t bastards because I asked them. Maria didn’t say anything; I thought she was offended, so I added, "In the Long Gallery there are two portraits of men of the House of the Griffin who were bastards, and no one seems to be ashamed of them."

That is quite different. You see, their mothers were married and the father of one of them became a cardinal, and, anyway, it all happened a long time ago.

I think it is very silly and unfair. Next time Donna Isabella comes to the castle I shall go and ask her why she hates me, and when she sees I’m only an ordinary little girl she may like me after all.

If you do that, you and your mother will be turned out of the castle! She will send you far away from here to some horrible place where you will never have enough to eat and not even a roof to shelter you. There is no place in Donna Isabella’s heart where kindliness can hope to find a lodging!

Why is she so cruel?

She is of the true line of the Griffin, not only by marriage, but by blood, for she married her first cousin. I have often wondered by what strange chance your father, Orlanzo, was born into this eagle’s nest. Have you never heard the stories that the servants whisper below the creaking of the turning spits? How Guido, whose portrait hangs at the end of the Long Gallery, drank of viper’s broth when he was young to make him wily as a serpent? He snatched a bride from the Duchy of Milan; he poisoned her brother while he was his guest and then took her as though he picked up a gage that challenged him to show his power. Some say he died a traitor’s death, but I have heard that it was his wife, a girl turned to a bitter woman, who gave him the toast to drink that he heard answered by the keeper of the gates of hell!

Does my mother hate Donna Isabella as you do?

I have heard her say, ‘The day she dies the summer trees will all put forth their buds, though it be winter, to show how they rejoice that she will never walk the paths they shade again!’

After this, in my imagination Donna Isabella became fabulous as a dragon. I felt that she might fly past my window with the beating of heavy leathern wings, as though the griffin on the banner had flown down from the roof.

I had always made up stories to myself while I was in bed at night, but they had been happy stories about the knights and princesses in the tapestries on the walls of the banqueting hall. I had joined with them in their remote green world; ridden pillion behind the man in armor while his white horse galloped through flowery thickets to the castle in the distance, where Mother and I lived with a joyous company and being a bastard didn’t matter at all. I also made up stories with dragons in them; very large, fierce dragons who ate all the wood-cutters in the forest until I, as a young knight in golden armor, slew them in single combat.

Now I began to weave stories in which my mother and I were imprisoned in a castle by an ogre. The ogre was very tall, but I made him too tall to get up the stairs to my room so that I was safe from him when I was in bed. He used to stride across the countryside plucking up cottages as if they were mushrooms, and he never ate anything but human flesh. He was so huge that he could eat a company of soldiers at one bite, and while he was munching them their arms and legs stuck out between his pointed teeth, like wisps of hay stick out of the mouth of a browsing donkey.

Then I decided that Donna Isabella was more frightening than any ogre I could imagine, so I changed him into a female ogre and gave him a face like I thought hers must be. Mother said all ogres were men, but I told her that even ogres must have mothers or they would die when they were baby ogres.

Mother always said that when Orlanzo came back everything would be different. When Donna Isabella was away she used to take me to see the picture of him that hung in the apartments on the east side of the castle. It had been painted before I was born, when he was only fifteen, and it showed him standing against a dark and windy sky, with his hand on the collar of a great boar-hound. Sometimes I used to go there alone and ask him, so hard that it was like praying, to come home to us very quickly.

2. FIESTA

At the end of the summer there was always a fiesta in the village for the vintage. I had never been to the fiesta, but when I was five Maria persuaded my mother to let me go to it, as Donna Isabella had been ill and was still confined to her room.

I was so excited the night before that I hardly slept at all. I woke while it was still dark, but had to wait until the sun got up before I was allowed to. I joined Maria’s children in the kitchen, and after we had had some bread and goats’ cheese we started off along the ridge of the hill towards the terraced vineyards, stopping on the way at the house of Maria’s sister to join her nephew, the village cooper, who had promised to look after us.

Although the sun was quite strong when we reached the highest terrace, it was still cool between the vines. The bloom was cloudy on the grapes, but when I touched them it vanished like mist on a mirror, and they looked hard and shiny. Each time I ran backwards and forwards along the rows I carried two great bunches to put into the pannier-baskets, which were loaded on to the waiting pack-donkeys as soon as they were filled. My hands were soon stained with juice and my bare feet red with dust, so I was glad that Maria had taken off my dress and let me wear only a cotton shift like the other children.

As it grew hotter, little green lizards came out to sun themselves on the narrow walls. They pretended to be asleep, but when I tried to pick one of them up it flashed into a crack between the stones. An old woman was looking after the babies whose mothers were helping in the picking. Beside her there was a pile of water-skins which had been brought up to refresh the vintagers, and when I was thirsty she gave me a drink from an earthenware cup.

After the last of the vines on the terraces had been stripped, we went down the hill to where the grapes that grew in the vineyards on the level ground were being collected into ox-carts. The oxen had been groomed, and some of them had bunches of flowers or corn tied to their horns. Several of the carts had been newly painted; one had pink wheels picked out in green, another was orange, and a third was blue. One of the drovers put me up on the back of his ox. It was very uncomfortable, but I was proud to be there.

It was quite a long way to the pressing tubs; and when I reached them, women with their skirts tucked high up round their thighs were already beginning to tread out the grapes. There were to be six children in our tub, and we had to take off our shifts before we climbed up the ladder to get into it. I was very hot, and before the fruit began to pulp it felt beautifully cool and smooth. We jumped up and down, clapping our hands and shouting. At first we tried to keep in rhythm with the treading-song that the grown-up people were singing; but soon we were playing together as happily as piglets in a swill trough.

In the evening an enormous meal was spread for the vintagers on long tables made of planks laid across empty barrels. There were huge bowls of meat stew, into which we all dipped our bread; or picked up the hot savory mess in our fingers, until, as I heard one man say to another, there was not a beard or a chin there that had not enough gravy on it to feed a poor family for a week.

I thought my mother might be cross if she saw me naked and dirty, so I wandered off by myself across the fields to the stream. I climbed down the bank by a willow root and found a patch of sand which I used to rub off the sticky juice; then I lay in the running water until I felt cool and clean again. It was so nice being there that I thought I would collect my clothes from the house of Maria’s sister and go home by myself without waiting for the others.

I walked upstream until I came to the ford, splashing through the shallow water and sometimes seeing a fish flash away in the shadows. Growing out of the damp earth in the shelter of a boulder, I found a clump of late forget-me-nots; I picked some, and on the way home I plaited them into a garland, because I wanted to take back something for my mother from my strange and happy day.

3. DONNA ISABELLA

One day Mother went down to the village to see a woman who was sick, so I was alone all day. Although she had left enough food to last me until the evening, black bread, marchpane, a square of cheese, and goats’ milk in an earthenware pitcher, I had finished it all before midday. There was sunshine in the far distance, but it was raining near the castle; I could see the rain slanting across the windows like silver harpstrings. I was tired of telling stories to Salim and I had no chestnuts to play the privy game, so, although I knew that I ought to stay in my room because Donna Isabella was in the house, I decided to go and play ‘squares’ in the Long Gallery.

I had nearly crossed it, hopping on one leg and never once jumping on a black square, when I heard the tapping of Donna Isabella’s stick. I had no time to reach the far door before she would see me, but there was a chest of gilded leather, standing between two of the windows, in which I could hide. I knew there was nothing in it except some spare hangings, for I had crept into it before, when I was playing hide-and-seek in the winter with my mother.

It was very dusty in the darkness and I began to be frightened that I should sneeze. The chest was old and the lid did not fit very well, so I could see out of it through a long narrow slit. Donna Isabella was alone. She was dressed in black, with a widow’s cap hiding her white hair. She was very small and withered—very small to be the familiar of giants and monsters! She was a little lame, and leaned heavily on her stick. It was made of ebony with an ivory ball for a handle. Her hands were narrow and shriveled, with long nails. Suddenly I knew what it was they reminded me of: the griffin’s claws holding the ball, the gilt griffins that upheld the table in the banqueting hall. Her lips were very thin and bloodless, as if she had never kissed anyone or laughed or sung. Her eyes were black and glittering and very alive; yet terribly tired, like the eyes of the old jackdaw in the wicker cage that hung in the doorway of the shoemaker in the village.

I wondered whether her hair had ever been red like mine, or whether when she had been young it had been black and shining like her eyes.

She coughed, a dry harsh sound like the branches of an old tree complaining in the wind. There was a pomander in a silver case hanging from her girdle. She stood by the window sniffing it. I wondered why. Surely she was not afraid of plague in her own house? I knew what a pomander was, for my mother had shown me one, telling me that people carried them when they went to cities where there was a pestilence because the strong aromatic smell kept off the evil vapors.

I wondered whether it was true that this small old woman was the most wicked of all her line, for it was difficult to believe some of the stories that were told about her. It was said that her husband had had ten men murdered because he had suspected them of loving her. I heard Maria tell this to another servant, but I could not understand why any man should have loved Donna Isabella, even fifty years ago when she was young.

Now I had seen her close to, all alone, and lame, and sniffing at her pomander because her cough hurt her, I knew that I shouldn’t be frightened of her anymore. My favorite ogre that I had made up to frighten myself with, the one that was so big it couldn’t get upstairs to my room, would have to have a new face, much more frightening than Donna Isabella’s.

CHAPTER TWO

1. RETURN OF ORLANZO

I DID not see my father until the summer after I was six. He had been on a long journey to the Island of King Harry to visit a kinswoman of his uncle who had married an English wife. This had kept him from Italy for two summers, and before that he had been fighting under his cousin the great condottiere, so though my mother told me that when I was a baby he had often come secretly to our turret room to see us, I could not remember him.

His friends and kinsmen were coming many leagues for the great banquet by which his return was to be celebrated. Even before the arrival of the steward, who came a month sooner than Donna Isabella to see that all was ready for her arrival, the sleeping house was startled into life by the scurrying of women-servants and the clatter of provision carts on the cobbles of the kitchen courtyard. The tapestries were uncovered, and hangings, smelling of the rosemary and sprigs of box in which they were packed to keep away the moth, were taken from the presses. The clumsy goose-feather mattresses were carried down to sweeten in the sun, and the lawns whitened, as though there had been snow at mid-summer, with bed-linen and napkins set out to bleach. Hinges of creaking shutters were oiled; floors were waxed until they were honey-smooth; and the chimney-boy brought down tangles of rotten feathers and jackdaws’ nests on to the hearths of long disused rooms.

Mother worked all day long on the doublet that my father would wear at the banquet. It was of white satin, slashed with orange and embroidered with seed pearls and silver thread. While she sewed she told me how she used to hang a bright scarf from our turret window to show Orlanzo that she would be watching him as he returned from the hunt. When they rode up the hill he would gallop a little ahead of his retinue, which was a message to her that he loved her, just as the scarf was a message to tell him that he had all her heart.

You will see, Carola, it will be the same as it was five years ago, only now that he has come to man’s estate he won’t be frightened of his mother and there will be no need for secrecy. He has been without news of us for so long. Perhaps even now he is praying to the saints that my scarf will be hanging from the window to show him I have not changed. He will be so impatient that he will gallop far ahead of the others. The servants will be lined up in the great courtyard; he will have to greet them first and hear the speech of welcome from the steward; but soon, so very soon, we shall hear him running up the turret stairs. He will scratch on the door and we won’t answer for a minute, just to tease him a little—but it will be a very short minute! Then I shall call to him to open and he will see me, and his daughter grown so tall and beautiful, and we shall be together again.

They were to arrive at the castle on the twenty-fourth of June, and for five weeks I had counted off the days, with lines scratched on the stone window-sill. When I could say, Tomorrow he is coming! I was so excited that I couldn’t just sit still and wait for him. I wanted to help get everything ready, so I went down and asked Maria to give me something to do.

Everyone in the kitchen was very busy, and I noticed that the great spits had been cleaned of the grease in which they had been wrapped for the winter. Maria was pouring melted lard over pâtés of goose liver and wild boar, all strongly spiced. She was in a very good temper, and when she had finished she gave me a bit of sugar loaf to suck; it was dark, and so strongly sweet that it was almost bitter. She told me not to bother her, so I watched one of the other cooks making sweetmeats, of egg-yolk and sugar flavored with rose-water, coriander or cinnamon. These were not to be baked, so when she had set them out on trays she told one of the scullions to take them outside to dry in the sun. Then she began shaping marchpane into little pleasure boats, each with almond oars and a cargo of sugar plums.

A cart came up the hill from the village with barrels of wine for the guests’ servants. While it was being unloaded the two white oxen stood patiently in the heat and let me stroke their smooth noses. Children were plucking ducks and goslings in the courtyard, and I helped them gather up the breast feathers, which were collected in sacks to be put away until they were needed to stuff pillows or mattresses. An old greyhound bitch was digging in a pile of garbage by the door; rotten fruit and pig’s entrails, bleached soup bones and the head of a white goat, eggshells and the bloated carcase of a carp; all decaying under a widow’s veil of flies.

The next morning Mother and I got up very early. We swept out our two rooms and then I scattered the herbs I had been collecting on the hillsides, sage and wild lavender and camomile, among the fresh rushes on the floors.

I hoped that my father would say he preferred a brown skin, because for twenty days I had had to go to bed with my hands smeared with an ointment, which Mother made out of honey and crushed almonds and lemon juice, to whiten them. At first I had quite enjoyed this, because when I was left alone to go to sleep it was fun licking it off; but when she found out what I was doing she tied up my hands in little bags. I told her I thought it was a silly idea and that if ever I became the chatelaine of a castle I should get brown all over and make a special law that all the people on my estates could walk about in the sun without any clothes on as much as they liked.

At last she had finished combing my hair and washing me, and I put on the beautiful green dress, embroidered with flowers, that she had made for me. The morning seemed very long, for I had to sit quite still on a high wooden stool and wasn’t allowed to run about or play in case I got dirty.

It was after midday when the fore-rider arrived to say that the retinue was drawing near. When it came in sight Mother let me stand with her at the window from which she had hung her scarf. I could see the great lumbering coach, drawn by six mules with red harness, in which Donna Isabella traveled; and behind it came a long train of pack animals, with traveling boxes slung across their backs instead of panniers.