Chapter 32 Chapter Thirty-One

We took him to Dad's buggy and he made no fuss.He seemed grateful for our kindness.I left a letter for my mother, in which I told her that I had found the painter ill in the chapel and had taken him to my house to recuperate. Anyway, that's the truth.We helped him down from the church and out into the yard.As soon as the sun hit him, he seemed to collapse: his body shook violently, and his teeth kept banging up and down, and it even made people think that it would break his skull.Halfway through, he collapsed and we had to have him carried down the last few flights of stairs. It was almost dark when the carriage drove out of the gate.I sat in the back and Ilila drove the carriage.She was nervous, I think it was the first time I saw her like this.Now is not a good time to be out on the streets, she said.After nightfall, the young fighters of Savonarola would emerge and prowl the city enforcing their curfew. If they came across them, it would be a good show.

They stopped us on the side of the magnificent Strozzi mansion.They moved a huge cornerstone as a temporary barricade, and about 20 people spread out on the street.Their attire was dirty, and they dressed up as angels even more so.The older one came out and held out his hand to signal us to stop, "Good evening, holy women of Florence. What are you doing in the streets at this late hour?" Ilila bowed to him, in keeping with her slave status, and said, "Good evening, sir. My lady's brother is sick, and we are bringing him home to be treated." "Where is your patient?"

She pointed to the back of the carriage. They come towards me.I sat in the carriage with the artist wrapped in a blanket and fell asleep on my lap.One of them pulled the blanket away, and the other stabbed him with a stick in his hand. He woke up suddenly, got out of my arms and sat up, crawled into the car nervously, and escaped from them. "Don't come near me, don't come near me. I've got the devil in me. He's eaten Christ and he'll eat you too." "What is he talking about?" The boy's nose was as sharp as the stick in his hand, and he was about to poke again.

"Don't you understand the language of this saint?" I said roughly. "He is praising God's goodness and the love of our Redeemer in Latin." "But why did he mention the devil?" Thanks, of course, to Savonarola, who makes the Devil more famous than God these days. "He said that with the help of the pious, the goodness and love of God would drive the devil out of Florence. We must waste no time, my brother is a follower of the friar. He will have his inauguration at the monastery of San Marco .So we have to bring him home and let him heal before the ceremony."

The boy hesitated, took a step forward, and his nose detected that the painter was not like a monk at all. "Don't touch him, miss," cried Irilah impatiently from the front of the carriage. "If he moves, the boil will burst. The pus will be contagious." "Boils? He has boils?" The boy with the stick in his hand jumped away hastily. "Why didn't you explain it earlier?" said the leading fellow. "You all stay away from him. You women, get him out of here. And don't let him near any monastery until he is cured." Fearing the infection, they hurriedly removed the barricade, and Ilila grabbed the reins, and the carriage rushed forward.The painter grabbed the blanket and wrapped himself up.

"Wow! Watch out for your skin," she said as I crawled up beside her, "I don't want to touch any pus." "Boils!" I laughed, "Since when is our holy army afraid of boils?" "Since the contagion started," she grinned, "the trouble is, you don't know you've got it. No one knows where it came from. Rumors say that when the French ejaculate in the vagina, they leave it to in Florence. It came from prostitutes at first. Only women used to get it, and it was considered the devil's disease; but now the believers start to blister and pus, and they say God is testing their patience, For example... What is the name of the person who spread the plague in the Bible..."

"Job," I said. "Job, yes, that's it. But I bet Job never had anything like a French boil: swollen like a big ball, hot and pus-like, like hell's wounds, and left A hypertrophic scar." When she had finished, she motioned me to go back to the carriage, and took the reins, and the horses galloped faster as darkness slowly settled over the city. Cristoforo and Tommaso's horse were not in the yard, nor was his room lit.I ordered the groom to carry the painter to the workshop next to my bedroom.We made a floor bunk for him there, explaining that he was a priest in my family and that he was sick but my parents weren't home.

After getting him settled, I called the groom's brother to take care of him.He was a stocky young man, born with damaged eardrums, which made him appear more blunt than he really was, and softened the mighty mute.Ilila taught him how to untie the painter's clothes and bathe him.She fetched the medicine jar from her room, which her mother had left her.Could her mother's secret recipe heal his mental wounds as well as his hands? They helped him sit in an armchair, and he leaned forward, keeping his eyes on the ground.I walked over and knelt down beside him. "You're safe now," I said, "and we'll take care of you, fix your hand, and make you feel better. No one treats you badly here, you know?"

He didn't respond.I looked up at her, and she gestured to me, pointing to the door. "...if he starts crying? We'll knock him out. But anyway, he'll have to be cleaned and fed before you can get close to him. You can use this time to make up some amazing stories to deal with you Husband. Because I still don't know what he will do to your holy useless relative." After speaking, she pushed me out of the room. The first few days were bad.Although the family members pretended to be nonchalant on the surface, there were constant rumors in private.To the painter, he lies like an idiot, saying nothing, but this is also his own way of rebelling.Although he agreed with Ilila and Filippo to wash his body and bandage his palms, he still refused to eat.

"He can move his fingers, and maybe he can draw; but no one can foresee his fate. One more thing, there is no medicine here that I know can cure him. If he doesn't eat, just will die sooner than losing faith." I stayed up all night, listening to him.From time to time in the darkness, his painful convulsive voice was heard, full of despair, as if all the pain in the world was borne by him alone.I met Ilila at his door, and Ilila refused to let me in. "But he was in such pain that I thought I could help him." "You'd better help yourself," she said to me angrily. "Your husband will only need an excuse to divorce you; but you will need a lifetime to prove your loyalty. His servants will betray you, and the whole scandal will Detonate your lives like a fuse. Go back to your room, I am the one who should take care of him, not you."

Because her words frightened me, I went back to my room. On the second night, his shouting subsided a little.I waited for Irilah to attend to him.She may be too tired, or sleep too fast.Worried that his screams would wake up the whole family, I slipped out to see what was going on.