Damien Broderick - Strange Attractors by Original (pdf) (no david read aloud txt) 📕

was lace, pure white. The grandmother-made lace. Oh, she

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

Cave Amantem

195

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

196

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