Finding Margaret Fuller, page 35
Wrapped in his arms, I realize something. “Tomorrow is July fourth,” I say. Not sure that Giovanni knows the significance of the date, I add: “The day of American independence.” I think of them, an ocean away. Waldo, Louisa May, Thoreau, the Hawthornes, the Greeleys, my mother. They will have picnics and parades. They’ll listen to music and eat foods fresh from the summer garden. They can’t know what we are living through here, on the other side of the globe, where all of us are as hungry for freedom. And yet we now live in a place where the dream of freedom has turned into a nightmare.
Chapter Fifty-One
Rieti
July 1849
We crawl into Rieti a few days later, Giovanni ordered by his commanding officer to leave Rome before the French entered. Clutching our hastily packed bags, my American passport tucked safely into the pocket of my traveling cloak, we’d sped by rented coach in an eerie quiet through the campagna, arriving at the village of rusty red buildings and dusty streets at daybreak.
We see, with relief, that the town seems to have been spared fighting. The two sides must have met elsewhere, for we see no signs of bombs or bullets as we make our way toward Chiara’s family home. In fact it is hard to believe how peaceful it all looks. Here, the people wake from sleep not to the sound of bombs but to their roosters. They have not watched buildings collapse, but have watched grapes grow fat on their vines. Their church bells ring not to warn people to take shelter, but to mark the passage of morning and evening services in the hillside monastery. War has not ravaged Rieti, and that gives my ravaged soul a large measure of comfort. I am desperate to take my baby in my arms.
Chiara’s house looks squalid, but I breathe a sigh of relief to see how lived-in it appears—the chickens peck the scorched grass in the yard; there’s a small, skinny goat tied to a post. They have not fled. They have not had to flee.
And then we see them, two babes in the backyard. The little boy a few months older than Nino spots us and runs inside. “Chiara’s son,” I say to Giovanni. An instant later I hear a noise like someone dropping a pot in the house. The other little child, sitting on the grass, blinks up at us. “Nino!” I gasp. I take my skirts in my fists and run to him.
He does not recognize me, but he does not cry in fear at my picking him up, either. He simply stares at me, his gaze hollow. My heart flips as I take him in; he looks dreadful. His eyes, once such a bright and clear blue, appear blank, looking out from skin that’s a sickening shade of yellow. He seems entirely disinterested in his surroundings, as if he does not have the vigor to engage. He is not yet a year, ten months at this point—but he should be more responsive than this by now. I narrow my eyes and study his skin: there are scars on his arms and neck. And he’s so thin! Where once he was all soft flesh and milk fat, now I feel the hard jut of his bones.
Just then the sound of footsteps, and Chiara emerges from the door, holding her boy on her hip, a jug of something in her other hand, which she places on the table. She, also, looks too thin. “Chiara,” I say, my voice flimsy as a reed.
She’s clearly surprised by our sudden appearance in her yard. “Marchesa Ossoli. Marchese Ossoli. I did not expect you. I was just about to give them breakfast.”
“The entire trip was unexpected,” I say. “Chiara, what are these?”
She looks to where I’m pointing, to my son’s neck. “He had the pox,” she says. “Almost dead.” She makes a sign of the cross. “But it leaves the scars.”
“When was that?” I ask.
She shrugs. “Month ago?”
“He’s so…he’s so thin.”
“My milk is gone. I didn’t have enough.”
But her little boy looks robust and happy. Toddling around the yard while my son can barely focus his eyes. “What do you feed him? What is for breakfast?”
“Bread,” she says, avoiding my eyes. “You didn’t send me money. You’re lucky I gave him anything.”
This hits me like a punch. How can I even respond? Does this girl know that Rome was besieged? I let out a weary sigh. I, too, am starving and exhausted, and I’d rather save what scant reserves I do have for my son. From the looks of it, he needs me.
“We will put it all to rights,” I say, looking to my boy. “We are here now. We will pay you what is owed and we won’t impose on you any longer. If we could just stay with you for one night, Chiara, then we will make our travel arrangements and move on.”
She cocks her head, throws me an aggrieved look. “One night. You’ll want breakfast now, too?”
“Only if you have enough,” I say. “We would be happy to pay you for food.”
She pours three glasses of wine. My baby in my arms sees the wine and begins to writhe in my grasp, crying, straining to reach forward. I look at Chiara, confused by this reaction of his. It’s the first reaction I’ve seen of any kind since we arrived.
“He wants the wine,” she says, as if this clears anything up. I arc an eyebrow. “He knows it’s time for his breakfast, so he’s impatient.”
“Impatient…for the wine?”
“Si.” She breaks off a small piece of bread, dips it in the wine, and puts the soggy bite in Nino’s mouth. He eats it with well-practiced nibbles.
I throw Giovanni a look, then turn back to the woman, asking, “You give him wine?”
“Si. That lazy goat makes not nearly enough milk for all of us. The water is not clean. What else should he drink?”
After breakfast, we retreat to the loft above their small barn, where Chiara tells us we can stay for one night. I settle Nino in for a nap, and Giovanni sets out into the village to make inquiries for where we might be able to stay next. Perhaps there is a small cottage we can rent nearby for a time. As my baby sleeps, I look at him and can’t fight back the onslaught of silent, hot tears. I’m so relieved to be back with him, so overjoyed to have him here, safe, with me. And yet, I’m also ripped apart by anguish at his condition. By all that he has had to endure already in his short life. I only hope that with our love and care, Nino can heal. That all three of us, together, will be able to heal. As Nino sleeps, I whisper a silent prayer over his head, a prayer for his forgiveness. And a prayer that his youthful strength and spirit can somehow revive and return. And then I step back, allowing him the rest that he so badly needs.
I sit down on what I suppose is to be our straw bed. I rifle through my bag, finding the paper, pen, and inkwell. There’s something I must do.
It’s been too long that I’ve felt the need to hide my twin secrets. I’ve been too ashamed to admit that Nino is my child and that Giovanni is my husband. I feared that my friends back in America would look down on my choice of an uneducated Roman soldier, a Catholic, younger than me, not able to read or write beautifully in his native tongue, let alone in English. And I’ve been ashamed to admit that Nino exists. At first it was for fear that they’d know he was conceived out of wedlock, because I could not very well admit to having Nino without admitting to Giovanni first. But now it’s just a secret I’ve carried because I was embarrassed that I had not already admitted it, and it seems strange to claim the child when he is nearly a year old. It’s no small thing to have “failed to mention.”
And yet, living through war, as we’ve done, is also no small thing. It’s the very biggest of things, and it’s changed everything for me. I will not hide our family for another minute. We will be together at last, unashamed. We’ve lost Rome, we’ve lost our home, our dreams of freedom, but I’ve finally gained my full family. And in admitting to that, there is freedom of a different sort.
I write three letters: one to my mother, one to Waldo, and one to Greeley. Mother will tell the rest of my family. Waldo will tell my friends in Massachusetts, and Greeley my community in New York. After all this time, after all this difficulty in finding the words, now they come easily. That, at least, is a blessing.
I’m disturbed from my writing, and Nino stirs from sleep, when we hear a loud noise below. A man’s shouting, and then a second voice. I take Nino, now awake, into my arms and I go downstairs to see.
Out in the small brown yard stand two men. Chiara is between them, and all three of them are yelling. Their faces are red and the words are so rapid that I can barely make out what they are saying. I remain back, hidden in the doorway of the barn.
When I see Giovanni appear in the yard, returned from his errands, I wave him forward. His face is etched in confusion. They are speaking some sort of dialect that I cannot fully understand. “What is happening?” I ask my husband. Nino fusses in my arms but I bounce to comfort him. Neither Chiara nor the two men take any notice of us standing there watching. They are screaming even louder now, then one of them raises his fists, and I do understand when they begin threatening blows. “What are they fighting over?” I ask.
“They are brothers,” Giovanni says, his eyes narrowed as he listens to their insults. They both appear to be drunk, on wine and rage. I hear one of them yell the name Pietro. Ah, so this is Chiara’s husband. I’ve not yet met him, he was gone on my past visits.
“They are fighting over money. This one”—my husband points to Pietro—“is accusing that one of stealing.” And now the brother hurtles forward and punches Pietro. Chiara screams. She tries to step in, but he slaps her across the face, then shoves her backward. She lands with a thud on the ground. I hold Nino tight in my grip, taking a stride back. Giovanni is ready to step in, but before he can, Pietro is back, ready to answer his brother’s blow, only now he’s holding a hammer. The brother wrests it from his grip, hurling it across the yard, where it comes within just a foot of hitting me and Nino.
I turn and flee, away from the yard, holding tight to Nino and grabbing Giovanni by the wrist to ensure that he follows me. We climb back up into the loft, where I hand the baby to my husband and frantically begin to organize the few items we’ve unpacked. “We are not staying here,” I say. “They almost killed Nino. If not today, they would have killed him eventually. We cannot.”
* * *
Hours later, I lie on the lumpy bed of our room at the village inn, knowing that sleep will not come. Not after the day we’ve just had. Not until we have left this village and put many miles between us and Chiara’s family.
Mercifully, Nino has settled, and my husband’s snores beside me tell me that he’s managed to drift off. But that’s when I notice the strange flickering lights in the street below our one dirty window. “Who are they?” I ask, nudging my husband from sleep, whispering so as not to disturb the baby.
I watch as the drowsiness shakes off of his features and he attempts to focus on where I’m pointing. And then I see the strain that grips his entire expression. “Hunters.”
My body feels cold. “Hunters?”
He nods, his jaw set in a tight line. He points a finger. “See the insignia? Papal States. They are hunting for anyone who fought against the pope. They are looking for me.”
The dark room lists like a ship. I step back from the window. “Giovanni, we aren’t safe here. We don’t know the innkeeper.” From the looks of his small, dingy establishment, he could use the money that would come from a valuable tip-off to the pope’s rich scouts. My throat feels strangled, but I lean close to my husband and go on: “Or Chiara and her family…you saw the way they live. Why, if not her, then her husband. Or that terrible brother. They’d sell us to the bounty hunters in a heartbeat.”
He nods.
“We cannot stay here,” I say.
“No, we cannot.” He is quiet a moment. “But we can’t leave now, not while they are in the streets. We’ll go tomorrow, first thing.”
“I won’t sleep tonight,” I say. I cross the room in several determined strides and rummage through my bag.
“What are you doing?” he asks, the confusion apparent in his voice.
“Writing my mother,” I answer. In my haste to flee Chiara’s house after that horrific fight, I did not finish my letters. So I’ll finish them now. I’ll use my writing to fill these anxious hours before the sun rises and we can leave the nightmare in this village.
I conclude my letters in a new way than what I had planned on, explaining: “Nino is the sunshine of my life. Giovanni is the solid earth beneath me. In them, I have found a home.” It’s true. This pilgrim who has filled her life by wandering, this butterfly who never had a place to land, who never had people to call her own, I now have the two people from whom I will never be parted. Giovanni and Nino, they are my home. Now the matter of where that earthly home should be—that must be decided.
Chapter Fifty-Two
Tuscany
Autumn 1849
The Tuscan countryside unrolls before us as I peer, entranced, through the dirty windows of the hired coach. It’s a sweeping view: dark cypress trees and bright green pastures, terraces and vineyards that climb the gentle hillsides, the thick clusters of burgundy and green grapes dancing on the vines. We are traveling through this campagna, this countryside, in the weeks just before the harvesting season, which means that the people of Tuscany are busy, the land overflowing with the riches of its fertility.
Looking out over these scenes of unspoiled beauty, of a countryside ready to yield its abundance and a people ready to cull that abundance, I can’t help but marvel: these lands are mere miles from the Papal States, and yet, all is ripe and thriving, unmaimed, with stories of nearby war and bombs and siege only that—stories.
“Pecora!” Nino shouts now, his blue eyes going wide in delight as he surveys the scene through his window, his soft hand tapping against the pane.
“Yes, my darling, sheep,” I say, taking a moment of maternal delight in his early attempts at language. In his clear improvement from just a few weeks earlier.
Nino points next at a sprawl of vineyard. “Uva!”
“Yes, my darling, grapes, a great number of them.” I exchange a smile with Giovanni over the head of our little boy. I am grateful—relieved beyond measure—that here my son may gape and marvel at sheep and grapes, rather than run and cower from soldiers and cannons. And that is precisely the reason why we have fled to Tuscany, traveling incognito as a family of three, resting for a time at an inn in Perugia before setting out for the final leg of our journey to Florence.
The Florentines did not ever fully join the tidal wave of revolutions led by the Romans. Far from being a republican or a nationalist, their leader, Grand Duke Leopold, is a close ally of the papacy and therefore a friend of the Austrians and French, and he holds the city like a king would. He would not consider us welcome additions to his domain, Giovanni and I being a pair of Roman refugees who fought for the republic, so for that reason we hope to make a quiet entry into the crowded capital of the Tuscan region.
The bustle and intact prosperity of Florence, the indifference and even prevailing disdain toward the disruptive republican movements that played out elsewhere on the Italian peninsula—all of that works in our favor now. We hope to set up a household and live in relative anonymity, and therefore safety, for the coming months.
We roll into the gated city on a mild, clear evening in September and give the name Marchese and Marchesa d’Ossoli. We hope that the noble title, combined with the fact that the Ossoli family has been known to be close allies of the Vatican for centuries, will provide us with a bit of cover, should any of the authorities see fit to make inquiries.
The first and most crucial business at hand is to find rented rooms where we may set up a home for Nino. I have fixed my hopes on the neighborhood of the Piazza di Santa Maria Novella. It’s not the crowded, busy heart of the old city, but near enough to it. I love the sprawling grand square, where Nino will have the freedom to walk and run about, chasing the pigeons that gather on the steps of the cream-colored basilica.
Florence welcomes us with her busy and storied graciousness. I have been here before, during my travels with the Spring family, but it is entirely new for my son and even my husband, who has never left Rome. And it’s different now for me, as well, seeing the city as a refugee rather than a tourist, settling into the place with the hopes that it may provide us with a safe harbor, for a time, before we must set out on another journey—the destination and particulars of which are not yet clear to me.
We settle on rented rooms in an ancient building up six flights of stairs, which is not ideal when having to carry the bulk of our little son, but we are convinced that it’s the place for us when we learn of the building’s name: the Casa Libre. “The Free Home,” Giovanni says, reading the old plaque.
“It was meant for us,” I say, offering him a confiding smile. The apartment is modest but all that we need: a suite of furnished rooms with good sunshine and windows that look out over the square and the tawny rooftops of Florence. From our bedrooms we can hear the bells of the countless churches and cathedrals that ring out from nearly every corner of this city. From my bedroom window I can stare out at the distant sweep of the Tuscan hillsides that rise up like protective arms around this prosperous, flourishing city. I can hear the rowdy chatter of the men who sit below in the cafés, and the negotiations of the women who wind their way past the vendors selling cheese and olives. I hear, even, the laughter of children. Here, at last, in this city, in this home, after months of siege and separation, we hear laughter again. We, too, can laugh. We can breathe out.
In those first few weeks of the golden Tuscan autumn, we settle into a pleasing rhythm as the air turns cool. Nino grows healthier—his skin now appears less sallow, and his body grows softer, as a baby’s should be, from a healthier diet and more consistent love and care. His hair fills in, soft and golden, framing a face with the most delightful eyes that light up at all manner of sights. It is my greatest joy to see that his smiles now come easy and often. The trauma of Rieti, I hope, will soon be nothing more than a fading nightmare.
