‘Of particular note was that habit she had worn: pale grey with a darker grey device stitched on the front. No-one recognized it. None of the orders had pale grey habits.
‘I spread the net wider; perhaps she came from an order outside the city, had been visiting relatives during that last week of German occupation in 1944. I roamed across Tuscany looking for the convent from which she came. No success. With my interpreter losing patience I researched all the types of habits used by orders of nuns, past and present. There were several of pale grey but no-one had ever seen the device of the cross with the broken arm.
‘After six weeks I realized it was hopeless. No-one had ever he
ard of her, let alone seen her. She had come into this courtyard on three consecutive nights twenty-four years earlier. She had swabbed the faces of dying soldiers and comforted them. She had touched their wounds and they had not died. Perhaps she was one of those blessed with the gift of healing by touch. But then she had disappeared into the teeming mass of war-torn Italy, never to be seen again. I wished her well, wherever she was, but I knew I would never find her.’
‘But you said you had,’ remarked the American.
‘I said “in a way”,’ the surgeon corrected. ‘I packed to leave, but I tried one last recourse. There are two newspapers in this town. The Corriere di Siena and La Gazzetta di Siena. In each of them I took a quarter-page advert. It even had an illustration. I drew the device I had seen on her shift and this drawing appeared with the text of the advert. It offered a reward for any information that anyone could provide about this strange design. The morning I was due to leave, the papers appeared.
‘I was in my room packing when the reception rang to say there was someone asking for me. I came down with my bags. My cabwas dueinan hour. I never needed that cab and I missed my flight.
‘Waiting in the hall was a little old man with a fuzz of white hair in the garb of a monk, a dark grey habit circled at the waist by a white rope, sandals on his feet. He had a copy of the Gazzetta in his hand, opened at the page of my own advert. We adjourned to the coffee lounge and sat down. He spoke English.
‘He asked who I was, why I had placed the advert. I told him that I had been seeking a young woman of Siena who had helped me almost a quarter of a century earlier. He told me that his name was Fra Domenico and that he came from an order dedicated to fasting, prayer and learning. His own lifelong study had been the history of Siena and of its various religious orders.
‘He seemed nervous, agitated, and asked me to narrate to him exactly how I had come across this particular design on a habit worn by a young woman in Siena. It’s a long story, I told him. We have time, he replied, please tell me everything, so I did.’
The great piazza erupted in sound as one of the horses crossed the finish line just a half-length ahead of the next. The members of nine Contrade groaned in despair while those of the tenth, the Contrada called Istrice, the Porcupine, exploded in screams of joy. In the guildhalls of the losing nine the wine would flow that night but with much regretful shaking of heads and lectures on what might have been. In the guildhall of the Istrice District the celebrations would be a riot.
‘Go on,’ said the American, ‘what did you tell him?’
‘I told him everything. That was what he wanted, insisted on. From start to finish. Every tiny detail, over and over again. The cab came. I dismissed it. But with all that, I forgot one detail until the end. Then I remembered it. The hands, the girl’s hands. At the end I told him about seeing, in the moonlight, the dark stains on the back of each hand.
‘The monk went white as his snowy hair and began to run a rosary through his fingers, eyes closed, lips moving silently. I was a Lutheran then, I converted later. I asked what he was doing.
‘“I am praying, my son,” he replied. “What for, Brother?” I asked. “For my immortal soul and also for yours,” he said. “For I believe you have seen the work of God.” Then I begged him to tell me what he knew, and he told me the story of Catherine of Mercy.’
FRA DOMENICO’S STORY
‘“Do you know anything of the history of Siena?” he asked.
‘“No,” I said, “almost nothing.”
‘“It is very long. This city has seen many centuries come and go. Some have been full of prosperity and peace, but most have seen war and bloodshed, dictators, feuds, famine and plague. But the two worst centuries were from 1355 to 1559.
‘“These were two hundred years of endless, pointless and profitless warfare at home and abroad. The city was incessantly raided by marauding mercenary companies, the dreaded condottieri, and lacked firm government which could defend its citizens.
‘“You must know there was no ‘Italy’ in those days, just a patchwork quilt of princedoms, dukedoms, mini-republics and city-states often lusting to conquer each other or actually at war. Siena was a city-republic, always coveted by the Dukedom of Florence, which eventually absorbed us under Cosimo the First of the house of Medici.
‘“But that event was preceded by the worst period of all, 1520 to 1550, and that is the time of which I speak. The government of the city-state of Siena was in chaos, ruled by five clans called the Monti who feuded between each other until they had ruined the city. Up till 1512 one had dominated. Pandolfo Petrucci led the strongest of them all and ruled in a brutal tyranny but at least gave stability. When he died, anarchy was let loose inside the city.
‘“The city government was supposed to be by the Balia, a permanent council of magistracy of which Petrucci had been a skilful and ruthless chairman. But every member of the Balia was also a member of one of the competing Monti and instead of collaborating to run the city, they fought each other and brought Siena to its knees.
‘“In 1520 a daughter was born to one of the lesser scions of the house of Petrucci, which, even though Pandolfo was dead, still ruled the roost on the Balia. But when she was four the house of Petrucci lost its hold on the Balia and the other four Monti fought unchecked.
‘“The girl grew up as beautiful as she was pious and a credit to her family. They all lived in a large palazzo not far from here, protected from the misery and chaos of the streets outside. Where other rich and indulged girls became headstrong and wilful, not to say licentious, Caterina di Petrucci remained demure and dedicated to the Church.
‘“The only rift with her father was on the question of marriage. In those days it was common for girls to wed as young as sixteen or even fifteen. But the years went by and Caterina rejected suitor after suitor to the chagrin of her father.
‘“By 1540 a vision of hell was being wreaked upon Siena and the surrounding countryside; famine, plague, riots, peasant revolts and internal divisions harassed this city-state. Caterina would have been immune to most of this, protected by the walls of the palazzo and her father’s guards, dividing her time between needlework, reading and attending mass in the family chapel. Then in that year something happened that changed her life. She went to a ball. She never arrived.
‘“We know what happened, or we think we do, because there is a document written in Latin by her father confessor, an old priest retained by the Petrucci family for their spiritual needs. She left the palace in a coach with a lady-in-waiting and six bodyguards, for the streets were dangerous.
‘“On her way her carriage was blocked by another which was drawn askew across the street. She heard shouting, a man screaming in pain. Against the wishes of her duenna she raised the blind and looked out.
‘“The other coach belonged to a rival family among the Monti, and it seemed an old beggar had stumbled in the street, causing the horses to shy and swerve. The enraged occupant, a brutish young nobleman, had leapt out, seized a cudgel from one of his guards and was beating the beggar most savagely.