The scaffolding had been erected for the second floor, but no one was working. There should have been five masons laying stones. The only person on site was an elderly man who acted as caretaker and lived in a wooden hut at the back. Merthin found him cooking a chicken over a fire. The fool had used costly marble slabs for his hearth. “Where is everyone?” Merthin said abruptly.
The caretaker leaped to his feet. “Signor Caroli died, and his son Agostino wouldn’t pay the men, so they left, those that weren’t already dead themselves.”
That was a blow. The Caroli family was one of the richest in Florence. If they felt they could no longer afford to build, the crisis was severe indeed.
“So Agostino is alive?”
“Yes, master, I saw him this morning.”
Merthin knew young Agostino. He was not as clever as his father or his uncle Buonaventura, so he compensated by being extremely cautious and conservative. He would not recommence building until he was sure the family finances had recovered from the effects of the plague.
However, Merthin felt confident his third and largest project would continue. He was building a church for an order of friars much favoured by the city’s merchants. The site was south of the river, so he crossed the new bridge.
This bridge had been finished only two years ago. In fact Merthin had done some work on it, under the leading designer, the painter Taddeo Gaddi. The bridge had to withstand fast-flowing water when the winter snows melted, and Merthin had helped with the design of the piers. Now, as he crossed, he was dismayed to see that all the little goldsmiths’ shops on the bridge were closed – another bad sign.
The church of Sant’ Anna dei Frari was his most ambitious project to date. It was a big church, more like a cathedral – the friars were rich – though nothing like the cathedral at Kingsbridge. Italy had Gothic cathedrals, Milan being one of the greatest, but modern-minded Italians did not like the architecture of France and England: they regarded huge windows and flying buttresses as a foreign fetish. The obsession with light, which made sense in the gloomy north-west of Europe, seemed perverse in sunny Italy, where people sought shade and coolness. Italians identified with the classical architecture of ancient Rome, the ruins of which were all around them. They liked gable ends and round arches, and they rejected ornate exterior sculpture in favour of decorative patterns of different-coloured stone and marble.
But Merthin was going to surprise even the Florentines with this church. The plan was a series of squares, each topped by a dome – five in a row, and two either side of the crossing. He had heard about domes back in England, but had never seen one until he visited Siena cathedral. There were none in Florence. The clerestory would be a row of round windows, or oculi. Instead of narrow pillars that reached yearningly for heaven, this church would have circles, complete in themselves, with the air of earthbound self-sufficiency that characterized the commercial people of Florence.
He was disappointed, but not surprised, to see that there were no masons on the scaffolding, no labourers moving the great stones, no mortar-making women stirring with their giant paddles. This site was as quiet as the other two. However, in this case he felt confident he could get the project restarted. A religious order had a life of its own, independent of individuals. He walked around the site and entered the friary.
The place was silent. Monasteries were supposed to be so, of course, but there was a quality to this silence that unnerved him. He passed from the vestibule into the waiting room. There was usually a brother on duty here, studying the scriptures in between attending to visitors, but today the room was empty. With grim apprehension, Merthin went through another door and found himself in the cloisters. The quadrangle was deserted. “Hello!” he called out. “Is anyone there?” His voice echoed around the stone arcades.
He searched the place. All the friars were gone. In the kitchen he found three men sitting at the table, eating ham and drinking wine. They wore the costly clothes of merchants, but they had matted hair, untrimmed beards and dirty hands: they were paupers wearing dead men’s garments. When he walked in they looked guilty but defiant. He said: “Where are the holy brothers?”
“All dead,” said one of the men.
“All?”
“Every one. They took care of the sick, you see, and so they caught the disease.”
The man was drunk, Merthin could see. However, he seemed to be telling the truth. These three were too comfortable, sitting in the monastery, eating the friars’ food and drinking their wine. They clearly knew there was no one left to object.
Merthin returned to the site of the new church. The walls of the choir and transepts were up, and the oculi in the clerestory were visible. He sat in the middle of the crossing, amid stacks of stones, looking at his work. For how long would the project be stalled? If all the friars were dead, who would get their money? As far as he knew, they were not part of a larger order. The bishop might claim the inheritance, and so might the pope. There was a legal tangle here that could take years to resolve.
This morning he had resolved to throw himself into his work as a way of healing the wound of Silvia’s death. Now it was clear that, at least for the present, he had no work. Ever since he began to repair the roof of St Mark’s church in Kingsbridge, ten years ago, he had had at least one building project on the go. Without one, he was lost. It made him feel panicky.
He had woken up to find his whole life in ruins. The fact that he was suddenly very rich only heightened the sense of nightmare. Lolla was the only part of his life he had left.
He did not even know where to go next. He would go home, eventually, but he could not spend all day playing with his three-year-old and talking to Maria. So he stayed where he was, sitting on a carved stone disc intended for a column, looking along what would be the nave.
As the sun rolled down the curve of the afternoon, he began to remember his illness. He had felt sure he would die. So few survived that he did not expect to be among the lucky ones. In his more lucid moments, he had reviewed his life as if it were over. He had come to some grand realization, he knew, but since recovering he had been unable to recall what it was. Now, in the tranquillity of the unfinished church, he recalled concluding that he had made one huge mistake in his life. What was it? He had quarrelled with Elfric, he had had sex with Griselda, he had rejected Elizabeth Clerk… All these decisions had caused trouble, but none counted as the mistake of a lifetime.
Lying on the bed, sweating, coughing, tormented by thirst, he had almost wanted to die; but not quite. Something had kept him alive – and now it came back to him.
He had wanted to see Caris again.
That was his reason for living. In his delirium he had seen her face, and had wept with grief that he might die here, thousands of miles away from her. The mistake of his life had been to leave her.
As he at last retrieved that elusive memory, and realized the blinding truth of the revelation, he was filled with an odd kind of happiness.
It did not make sense, he reflected. She had joined the nunnery. She had refused to see him and explain herself. But his soul was not rational, and it was telling him that he should be where she was.
He wondered what she was doing now, while he sat in a half-built church in a city nearly destroyed by a plague. The last he had heard was that she had been consecrated by the bishop. That decision was irrevocable – or so they said: Caris had never accepted what other people told her were the rules. On the other hand, once she had made her own decision it was generally impossible to change her mind. There was no doubt she was strongly committed to her new life.
It made no difference. He wanted to see her again. Not to do so would be the second-biggest mistake of his life.
And now he was free. His ties with Florence were all broken. His wife was dead, and so were all his relations by marriage except for three children. The only family he had here was his daughter, Lolla, and he would take her with him. She was so young he felt she would hardly notice that they had left.