Free A Golden Web by Barbara Quick Page B

knife his father had bought for him, as predicted, to replace the one he gave to Alessandra. She’d taken to wearing the dagger, well hidden, under her gown. He watched his sister as she carved each letter, the tip of her tongue in the corner of her mouth.
    Carlo, walking in from outside, looked over his elder daughter’s shoulder. “Hearken to this, Giorgio,” he said. “I think I’ll fire you and hire Alessandra in your stead. She draws letters with her penknife that rival those youmake with your finest brushes.”
    Both Giorgio and Pierina joined him to look over Alessandra’s shoulder.
    “What a waste,” said Pierina, “to have something so beautiful merely eaten! Dodo doesn’t give a fig what the letters look like.”
    “Effe!” said Dodo, barely waiting till Alessandra told him he was right before pulling the apple to his bright strong teeth and taking a big bite where the F had been.
    “I taught you in just the same way,” said Emilia.
    Ursula spoke from her place closest to the fire. “How came you to read? Wasn’t your father—what was it? An ostler?”
    “He did indeed, Signora , look after the Bishop’s horses. And the Bishop himself taught me my letters, although with a slate rather than an apple. My brother and me would practice our letters on afternoons when we worked in the Bishop’s orchards.”
    “Wasting the Bishop’s good apples, no doubt,” said Ursula.
    Giorgio was grinning.
    “Go on, then!” Pierina said to him. “Say whatever itis you want to say, or sing it—for I would love a good laugh just now.”
    Giorgio used the tune of the round they were just singing to make his joke, which involved a play on the Latin word— malum— that means both “apple” and “evil.”
    “And what’s the joke?” asked Ursula.
    Both Pierina and Alessandra tittered, while Giorgio blushed at having shamed his mistress.
    Carlo saved the day by coming closer to his wife and kissing her hand. “We have good news from the convent.”
    Alessandra froze.
    “You are taking the veil!” cried Pierina reproachfully.
    “Not the veil, my pet,” said Ursula, poking at the fire so that the flames leapt up and lit all their faces, for a brief moment, as brightly as if it were day.
    “A year of retreat,” said Carlo.
    Pierina tried to read Alessandra’s face, but the light was once again dim and imperfect.
    “Perhaps two years, or even more,” said Alessandra, although her voice was, like the flames, subdued.
    “Oh, a year should be quite enough,” said Ursulabrightly. “And then we’ll have a wedding.”
    Pierina wanted to look at Giorgio, but didn’t dare.
    Alessandra held Dodo tightly and stared into the flames. Now that her entire life was about to be transformed—even though it was a transformation that she had hoped, prayed, and planned for—all she felt was dread.
     
    Nicco’s bag of precious coins lifted a great burden from Alessandra’s heart. But she knew that no matter how carefully she lived, nor how hard she worked, it could not buy enough time for what she hoped to do.
    Every night, when she could hear that everyone else was sleeping, she took the icon out from under her mattress—for she could not bear to have it far away from her now. She prayed to her mother and to the Virgin to help her find the rest of the gold she would need.
    Students normally used seven years to finish the philosophy degree required for admission to the medical school. But Alessandra thought she could do it faster. She knew her capacity to work hard, and she had done much of the reading already. She wondered if she could find work to pay for her food and lodgings—and worriedabout how she could do that work without compromising her progress. And books! How would she ever pay for them?
    Every night, when she prayed, she kissed her mother’s face and asked her to shed light on the path that was, for now, still shrouded in darkness and uncertainty. And every night it seemed the golden web cast over