Enna has something in common with the young Lorenzo de' Medici: no one mourns her father's death. But Lorenzo lives in a palace, surrounded by family and friends, holding the future of Florence in his very hands; Enna, instead, has no one and nothin...
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Florence, 1470
They called Patience a virtue.
Enna called it a soft underbelly.
As a toddler, on carnival Thursdays, her father forbade her to eat the berlingozzo* before dinner, and she invariably stole away from her chamber to burrow her way through the cake under the table of the kitchen; then the man would scowl and let her have another slice. He had always overlooked her every whim with forbearance.
And again, her mother had always found faults in her husband's behaviour, indulging in the company of fanciful nobles and rubying her face with robust wine to manifest her disappointment. One day, she had gone back to her native family in Pisa, whose ties outstretched as far as Rome, and had obtained an unordinary annulment of her marriage—she had demanded her dowry to be returned, though not her daughter. Enna's father had not opposed to it, as tolerant as he had ever been.
The man's efforts to build a fortune of his own had led him to the Medici's bank, years earlier, yet his work had not paid off as he had patiently hoped—the main reason his wife had left. Crushed under the weight of debts, he had fallen in with some people promising unimaginable profits, making himself accountable for illicit transactions and faithfully awaiting to benefit them; only his accomplices had done that, however, using the fool as a scapegoat.
One lesson Enna had learned from her father was that a patient nature made you weak and subject to other people's volition.
Her father had been a patient man, and how did he fare now?
Still, he had been a man.
She was a woman, no more than a leaf tossed in the winds of a patriarchal society where the suitability for bearing heirs and the rank of fathers, then husbands, defined the worth of females—and Enna had neither father nor husband. She had no title, no dowry, no power, no voice. Yet, she would not allow herself to be patient; it was God's dare for a woman to find her own way in life, otherwise He would not have given her willpower and guile.
Something about Bice should have been done already, Enna told herself. Still, no word had come from the priora since their conversation, two days past, and she was tired of waiting.
"C'mon, babe, ease up. I still need my tit when I come back to my husband, he's pretty famished too," the wet nurse cackled over the small child cradled in her meaty palms, a few of the other women nursing the infants of the Spedale joined her.
Enna brought a hand to her own bosom, but didn't laugh. "How long since he's last been fed?" she asked.
The woman heaved a sigh, "The mourning, lass. The little fellow, here, is a tad bit spoilt. Aren't ye, laddie? But Da is moneyed, so ye get special privileges."
"Oh, really? Who's the father, then?" she inquired with a mild interest.
"His name is Niccolò. He's a cutler," replied the nurse with a meaningful flick of the tongue, moving the child to her other breast with practised motions. She truly was a seasoned breastfeeder. "The bairn is the first born, and his wife needs resting to bear the next."
