was an industrious old woman. And pious. There she was at Mass,
as I said, every morning, with her beads and her proud eyes and
her prayers.
She prayed, that old woman, for a husband for Isabella. W hat a
joke! But she did. And she prayed as she swept the flagstones of her
parlour, as she scrubbed the wooden staircase. She was making a
wedding dress for Isabella, you know. Linen and lace and the sheets
and all the household linens. She made the dress for my daughter
Caterina when she married the Count’s nephew. She was known for
miles around for her beautiful wedding gowns. But she couldn’t do
a thing with Isabella.
Nobody could do anything with Isabella. She always went her
own way. The nuns did their best to tame her, and then they just
gave up and prayed for her. The candles that have been lit for that
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girl! The old grandmother was far too weak. What Isabella needed,
I say, was a father and half a dozen brothers to straighten her out.
And that red cloak — she always wore that cloak. You could see
her coming for miles. O f course, her grandm other made it for her.
It would have been fine for a princess on a white horse. But there it
was on Isabella as she ran from one end of the village to the other,
often barefoot, meeting soldiers and travelling musicians and so on
in the forest.
So the grandmother swept the floor and she prayed and she
made lace pillow covers and she prayed and she prayed for a husband for her beautiful Isabella. Everyone felt very sorry for her, the poor old woman. While Isabella roamed round like a gipsy, just like
a gipsy in her red velvet cloak. H er skin was white, you know, just
touched with apricot. The grandmother was like an old walnut,
and she seemed to be made from the roots of trees. Yes, she looked
like the roots of trees, the grandmother, the walnut. The granddaughter was the ripe fruit. Oh, she was a juicy apricot.
My son was half in love with her — half the time. He knew it was
madness. He knew not to go near her. But he liked the idea of
inheriting the poor little farm, and he did like the idea of going with
Isabella. I warned him that if he did, I would beat him within an
inch of his life. He laughed and said he would put me down the well
— ah, but he knew that I meant what I said. And he knew that I
was right, in the end.
He has since m arried the niece of a distant relative of the bishop,
and stands to inherit a flock of sheep and a wide pasture-land. But I
don’t mind telling you that he did plan to marry Isabella.
My son was the answer to the grandm other’s prayers. Heaven
saw the candles she lit; the M other of Sorrows heard the litanies she
mumbled; and my son was to be, he thought, the answer to it all.
He is very pleased now, naturally, that I stepped in. I knew what I
was doing, as far as both families were concerned. They would have
been no good for each other, Isabella and Luis. And our family has
always been very respectable, with scarcely a breath of scandal,
ever. My nephew is an idiot — but that is a different story. And for
all that Isabella was a whore, she was really rather simple.
I went to her, that afternoon, and I said I had an errand for her.
Well, she trusted me. I think now that perhaps she trusted everybody, and that was the funny thing about her. She wanted to please me, because I was the mother of Luis. I asked her to take a basket of
cakes to my sister. Little sugared cakes — to my sister who lives on
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Carmel Bird
the other side of the forest. The great pine forest you see out there.
She, that is, my sister, was giving a party for the nuns. So I packed a
basket with the cakes — I am well known around here for my little
sugared cakes — and the tiny glasses — so delicately cut — the ones
that my sister always likes to use — I sometimes wish that she
would get some of her own — and I called Isabella over, and I asked
her to take the basket of things to my sister. I said she could be back
by
