Boy

Meets
Girl
In Medieval Florence

An extract from a new story, Besieged: The

Coils of the Viper by James Watson

Introduction
The mercenary armies of Gian Galeazzo Visconti, Duke of
Milan, called The Viper, have brought terror to Italy. Cities
such as Siena, Perugia and Bologna, have either been
overcome in battle or been terrified into submission.

Florence alone stands out against him. In the burning hot

summer of 1402, the Viper has laid siege to the city, his
intention to starve the citizens until they are too weak to
resist.

In the refectory of the priory of the Dominican brothers, the

Master, one of Florence’s most distinguished artists, and
Luca, his teenage apprentice, see no choice but to continue
with the great fresco that the Master has been commissioned
to paint. They know that once Visconti’s savage mercenaries
breach the city walls few citizens will survive the brutality that
has become the Viper’s trademark.

While escaping the heat of the August sun and sketching the
masterpieces of Giotto in the gaunt but magnificent Santa
Croce basilica, Luca has become aware of the girl in a brown
robe, hovering in shadow as if compelled to look over his
shoulder at what his skilful hand commits to the page. Will one
of them pluck up the courage to speak?

The Girl in the Brown Robe

Selected from Chapter 3 and edited

…I’ve been sketching the figure of St. John the Evangelist and the
petitioners kneeling around him. Usually, after I’ve been here in Santa
Croce for a while, I’m recognised by one of the lay brothers.
 He pinched my cheek once, and I only smiled and shook my head.
Since then he seems to haunt the chapel, and when he sees me he brings out
a stool for me to sit on.
He pats my shoulder and leaves me to my sketching.
It looks as though the girl isn’t going to turn up. She’s become almost as
regular a visitor as I am; about my age, curiously dressed – a brown woollen
robe, complete with hood but cut short at the calf. I guess she bought or
stole it from a mendicant friar, took if off his corpse or traded it for services
rendered.
It’s that kind of world; everything is possible, and blame is as stupid as it
can be unjust.
She usually wears rope sandals but at other times she appears out of the
shadows barefoot. That’s how I think of her – a mystery; a sort of spirit. I
never see her arrive, never see her depart. Yet I’ve decided her eyes are too
bright for them to belong to a ghost. Her skin, though fresh, has the hue of
dark leather; and there is the hint of a limp, making her rock slightly from
side to side as she walks.
Hers is as beautiful a face as I’m likely to see in these blighted days, for
the respectable daughters of Florence are kept indoors, unless they’re in
service to the rich and need to chance the city streets to fetch and carry, or if
their business is in the tanneries or the woolsheds along the Arno…

Today I promised myself I’d speak to her at last. All it needs is a word, a
question, a smile. It’d be worth it merely to have her smile back, for so far
she’s been as solemn as one of the angels my Master complains about in
Santa Maria Maggiore; ‘joyless,’ he calls them.
I shouldn’t feel so disappointed that she’s not turned up. Only a fool gets
his hopes up in these horrible times. My hand seems to lose its motivation to
draw, and I realise the only reason I keep coming, poring over the
Evangelist’s resurrection of Drusiana, over his Ascension or the Death of St.
Francis, is to see her.
I realise I’m talking to myself and this is at the same moment that I sense
her presence. She is close enough to see the page of my open sketchbook.
I’ve been scribbling devils. She glances up at the fresco where there are no
devils, and the drumming of my heart tells me she is about to break our
silence.
Pointing up to Maestro Giotto’s fresco, she says, ‘Scusami, excuse me,
but is that what you see?’
I amaze myself with my nerve: ‘I was thinking you wouldn’t come.’
The comment startles both of us. We evade each other’s embarrassment
by staring up at the flowing robes of Giotto’s figures.
She seems to be pleased at my frankness. ‘You noticed?...I’m surprised,
for you seem to concentrate so hard.’ I’m struggling to keep up with her, say
the right words that won’t put her off; but she doesn’t need any help. ‘May I
look?’
She almost brushes my shoulder as I turn the pages of my sketchbook. I
say, ‘All very quick…Just, sort of, ideas on paper.’
‘Why do you like Giotto so much – because you sketch only his figures,
don’t you?’
‘Because…well, they have volume, roundness. They’re solid – real.’
 ‘As if they’re about to step from the painting – alive?’
‘Yes, that’s it, exactly.’
I am pleased. Her interest is welcome, her perceptiveness obvious. ‘You
see, so many paintings are just like the old mosaics – everything flat.’ I hear
myself going on a bit, but I can’t rein in my enthusiasm. ‘They’ve no space,
no perspective. They shut you out instead of drawing you in.’
‘Is that the secret – perspective?’
‘My friend Filippo swears it is. Perspective, he says, is the key to great
art. Without it, we are left with pure decoration.’
‘Does it mean the same as having a perspective on life?’
I decide she’s half-teasing me, but I’m grateful for that half-smile and
look forward to receiving a whole one. ‘That’s a bit more complicated,’ I
manage to say. I return to my latest sketch.
‘That devil could be Gian Galeazzo the Viper, could it not?’
I nod. My pencil shifts to a space on the page and I begin to draw a
coiled serpent – Gian Galeazzo’s emblem. There are seven coils narrowing
to a pointed tail. Trapped in the final coil is a tiny human figure, struggling
in terror. ‘That could be the people of Florence,’ I say, ‘in a few days’ time.’
‘You are very talented.’
‘Thank you.’
‘I suppose everyone tells you that.’
‘They did, once. But there’re no “everyones” any more.’
‘Are you an apprentice?’
‘For my sins.’
She blesses me with a full smile. ‘You look too innocent to be a sinner.’

They are clearing the church, locking up. The great works of Maestro
Giotto have faded into shadow. I stand. She is tall, my height if not a shade
taller. She is thinner than I remember her; yet close up, her face is truly
beautiful, full of character (as the Maestro often describes his madonnas and
his saints – ‘depth of character, that’s what counts, in art as in life’).
‘My guess,’ I say, determined to hold on to her company for as long as
possible, ‘is you’re not from these parts, neither Florentine nor Tuscan.’
‘You can tell by my accent?’
We are outside in the piazza. Normally it would be crowded, but we are
almost alone. The heat is as intense as it’s been since early morning, but
now the atmosphere is clammy. ‘You’re from the north, I think.’
‘From Lombardy. Remember the Bianchi? I was one of them. When we
marched here, Florence gave us the kind of welcome that made us want to
stay.’
I laugh, remembering something the Master had said: ‘My Master
approved of the Bianchi, and the city loved them, he says, because they paid
their bills!’
‘True, but our cause – universal peace, that was what Florence
welcomed.’
‘Peace, my Master says, is good for trade, and trade is Florence’s first
religion.’
She takes the comment in good part. ‘Be a cynic, if you wish. But it was
much more than that. There was a yearning among the people, for an end to
wars and bloodshed. We felt it then and still do.’
 …
We’ve strolled down to the river. There’s scarcely a dribble of water. A
pale golden light still lingers on the façade of San Miniato high above us.
The avenues of pine and cypress are deepening from green to black tinged
with the last flashes of crimson along the horizon…
. ‘My name’s Luca, by the way.’
‘Caterina – come sta, how are you?’
‘Sto bene, grazie, I’m fine, thank you!’
We talk about Florence. ‘You are very proud of the city, aren’t you,
Luca?’
‘And sometimes I’m ashamed of it. At its best, I love it. It was once
beautiful, perhaps the most beautiful city on earth.’
‘Are you forgetting Venice?’
‘Never been, but the Master jokes about his visit there – “Too much
water!” he said.’
Her face lights up every time she smiles. ‘Especially if you’re not
looking where you’re going. I went there once. It does pong a bit. But as for
Florence, it’s what the city stands for, isn’t it, which makes you Florentines
proud?’…

Caterina puts her hand on my arm, shakes it gently with what I can only
guess is affection. ‘I see Florence being truly great once more.’
I cannot believe it, but we are holding hands. ‘You seem very confident
in the future,’ I say. ‘What are you – a fortune teller?’
She stares down at the riverbed where a child in rags is trying to scoop
up water in a brass pot. ‘Perhaps I am…something like that. Or just an
optimist.’ She glances again at the river. ‘The Arno looks as if it is dying,
doesn’t it? But come the spring, everything will be different. The seasons
bring hope.’..
I’m not so easily shifted from my dark mood. ‘Yes, and sometimes the
floods wash away bridges. Nobody’s safe.’
For a moment we both sense that the floodtide is in ourselves, one of
sadness and bereavement. Our fingers slip reluctantly apart. Defeat is in my
voice: ‘It’s so difficult to hold on to hope when everything seems stacked
against us.’
I guess that she is as loath to depart as I am. Her gaze meets mine,
lingers… and I sense that if I had put my arms around her and hugged her
she would match the strength of my feelings.
She is now holding out her hand towards me, formally, almost stiffly.
‘Till next time, perhaps.’ We shake hands. It is almost comical when really
I would like to hold her and kiss her.
Her smile closes this, the happiest hour of my life. ‘Things to do.’ She
turns, strides away, limping a little from the hip.
I call after her. ‘I would like to sketch you.’
She stops, faces me. The last light of the evening adds a splash of scarlet
to her face and hair. ‘One sitting will cost you ten soldi.’
‘Can I pay you when I’m famous?’
‘A gold florin if I have to wait that long!’
I call after her one last time. ‘You didn’t say where you live.’
 This time she does not look back. ‘No I didn’t.’ She heads towards the
Ponte Vecchio leaving me suddenly empty, struck by melancholy as if I’d
lost something precious that I might never recover.

TO FOLLOW: Girl Meets Girl

From Fair Game: The Steps of Odessa.

****

A GOOD READ…
Anna Perera’s first novel took us into the horrific heart of
Guantanamo. The detail was so well-worked, so convincing that
it was difficult for the reader to believe that the author had not
somehow undergone the experience of incarceration and torture
herself.

In Anna’s new novel, The Glass Collector (Penguin), we get the

same sense of sometimes overwhelming authenticity as in
Guantanamo Boy. In both cases we are introduced to a scarcely
imaginable world. Teenager Aaron, his family, his friends, his
neighbours are Zabaleen Christians scratching out a desperate
living in one of the poorest quarters of Cairo.

We gag at the stink. Nothing, anywhere, could be worse, more

hazardous; yet Anna’s characters shine out of the ordure of
rubbish collection just as do the fragments of glass, the coloured
bottles which Aaron gathers and sometimes cherishes.

The Glass Collector punches hard and relentlessly. It deals with

the isolation of a neglected community which nevertheless holds
together and has a vital function in the greater order of Cairo
life. At the same time, it is brave. What is striking among the
young people Anna describes, and whose lives she portrays
compassionately but with steely objectivity, is their lack of
aspiration, the unwillingness to seriously contemplate escape.

True, an artist working on the local church gives Aaron a leg up

when things are really down for the young thief, but once things
are on an even keel, once his love for Rachel is reciprocated he
does not aspire to be an artist, perceive that as a way out of his
predicament; rather he returns happily it would seem, to the
harsh but strangely rewarding reality of collecting a city’s
discarded glass.
We can read here a lesson in belonging, that to be part of a
community for all its often traumatising customs and pressures,
is sometimes more powerful than western-style individualism
and personal ambition. What we have here in Anna Perera’s .
excellent novel is an antidote to the prevalent values of our
times. The life world she creates is impossible actually to desire,
but somehow impossible not to admire.

************************
JAMES WATSON is the author of several novels for Young Adults,
including The Freedom Tree, Talking in Whispers, Ticket to Prague,
Justice of the Dagger and Fair Game: The Steps of Odessa.

Talking in Whispers was winner of the UK Other Award, Highly

Commended in the Carnegie Awards and winner of the German prize for
teen literature, the Buxtehuder Bulle Prize. Justice of the Dagger was a
Waterstone’s Book of the Month.

He has posted a number items on Scribd.com ranging from plays (Robin

Hood) to analyses of storywriting.