The Madonna of the Almonds by Marina Fiorato

return in a month. Till then, do everything you can to retrench. Sell whatever you can, reduce the number of your servants; it may yet be possible to remain in this house. But it can be no little adjustment: everything in your power must be done – only the essentials should be left alone.’
    Simonetta met his eyes for the first time. The house! It had never occurred to her, in the worst of the last few moments, that she would have to leave the Villa Castello. She could not, would not submit to leaving all that she and Lorenzo had shared, whatever it cost her. She nodded to the notary, and he took his leave, and as he walked the path between the almond trees he relived the thrill of the moment when Simonetta di Saronno had looked him full in the eye.
     
    What a month had she then! What a reduction, a coming down of circumstances! What a difference would Oderigo see when next he walked the almond grove to Castello! Every man and maid who worked on the place was let go, except for her dear Raffaella whom she needed as a friend more than a servant. Gregorio was kept on the place for three reasons – for charity because of his injuries, for his service and strong attachment to her newly dead lord, and for an affection which she saw growing between the squireand Raffaella. Having been rent from her own love, Simonetta could not so part two lovers.
    One man and one maid would have to do. Each day Simonetta walked the villa’s rooms with Raffaella, determining what chests, what fine draperies, what paintings could be sold. Together they went through Simonetta’s closets. Jewels, furs, gowns from happier times were all to be sold. The great tapestry that covered one whole wall of the dining solar, which depicted in wondrous detail the doomed love of Lancelot and Guinevere, was taken from its poles. Simonetta ran her hands over the exquisite stitching as she folded the cloth for sale. She had loved the scene: the passionate embrace of the guilty queen and her shining knight with the shadowy figure of Arthur looking on, and the white conical towers of Camelot set in the hills behind like a shining crown. Lorenzo’s clothes too, untouched since he had worn them, would also go. Simonetta did not allow herself to bury her face in the scent of his linens or remember that she had felt, hard, warm muscle within this velvet sleeve as she leant on his arm or the breadth of his back under that fur as they danced. Dry eyed, she disposed of all, save for his russet hunting garb, and that she kept for a special purpose.
    For now there was no money for meat, Simonetta began to hone her skills with the bow. The sport that she had enjoyed as a diversion, a skill befitting to a great lady, now became as needful to her as to the poorest serf. Hour afterhour she spent at her chamber window – not weeping now, but firing arrows with increasing accuracy at the almond trees. As her skill improved she left the trunks alone – by now as barbed as Saint Sebastian – and painted a single nut with red clay to become her target. She painted the almonds hanging further and further away from the house until she was a true proficient. Her skill was sharpened by the fantasy that she was shooting Spanish soldiers, and sometimes, secretly, that artist fellow who she could not forget. That for his silver eyes, that for his dark curls, that for his maddening white grin that haunted her – torturing her with the remembrance that it had warmed her where she had thought she would be cold forever. Sometimes she thought of him as she walked the woods, dressed in Lorenzo’s shabby hunting garb, setting snares and dispatching the rabbits she caught. She felt a ruthless enjoyment as she found the creatures struggling as they strangled themselves. She took the skins and the stomachs from them with newly learned skill. As the gouts of warm blood ran over her white hands, she revelled in angry pleasure and her heart hardened within her. Like the pagan soothsayers she