A painter’s apprentice chapters 1 and 2 (more to come)

Chapter 1
fifteen year old Lecretia Della Rizzi lay huddled for warmth. She was half delirious, soaked from the rain and chilled down to her core. But she preferred this to what was waiting for her back home.

Suddenly she felt two hands wrap gently around her shoulders. She knew without a doubt that they weren’t the rough hands of a man, but the soft hands of a woman. Even in her exhaustion their touch seemed to stir up some mysterious desire in her flesh. They were warm and soothing on her bare skin. Maybe she had just imagined them, but they made her feel safe, and she could conjure no strength do anything but put all of her trust in them. Suddenly she heard a silky voice whispering in her ear and opened her eyes to see a woman’s face.

“Hello. It’s going to be all right. I’m Mesalina.” Lecretia had been running all night and was so exhausted she could only nod her head feebly. “You nearly died of the cold. I found you huddled behind the barn.” She was now dry and wrapped in a blanket. “You have nowhere to go?” She shook her head listlessly. Mesalina’s hands were still soothing Lecretia’s trembling skin. Even in this state, the attention that this woman was giving her made her briefly aware of a fluttering in her stomach, and a brief tingling between her thighs. It only lasted for a split second. She hoped it would pass. It was like when she saw a pretty girl at the market. She couldn’t explain it, and it troubled her. “I think I might be able to help you.” Lecretia let her head drop weakly into Mesalina’s lap. She had no choice but to trust her. She needed help. She surrendered. She didn’t care what happened anymore. Anything was better than what was waiting for her back home.

Since Lecretia was little her father worked her to the bone as a milkmaid, and he sold the milk, butter and cheese at the market.
She went to mass every Sunday. She loved the incense, the choir, the windows, and the arched vaulting in the ceiling. She seldom listened to the priest and didn’t like the way he shouted. The cathedral stood in the center of the village of Muro di Pietra, with a steeple for all to see and bells for all to hear. All of the other buildings were sagging, and dismal, but the cathedral was the people’s pride. Lecretia felt honored to be in its presence.

What she loved most of all was a painting in the center of the altar. It was of a bloodied man nailed to two beams of wood being carried down a crowded road. She hadn’t listed to the priest enough to know with certainty, who the man was, but for some reason she couldn’t take her eyes off of it. She felt immediately sorry for him and was transfixed by the paint strokes. They were as luminous as the stained glass. His bloody naked body was so vivid and life-like it was made beautiful. It seemed there was some innate feeling in her that was so stirred by the painting it made her insides ache. She couldn’t explain it. She would sit in her pew and dream of being an artist as great as whoever painted the altarpiece.

Her mother had died when she was a small child and her father, Jacopo della Rizzi said it was because of the falling sickness; she perished of epileptic fits. There was no further need for explanation because she could still remember them; her mother collapsing and going rigid, her limbs trembling and her body writhing, and the incoherent mumbling afterwards.
Father Bellicci at first concluded that the fits were brought on by demons. After several unsuccessful attempts to cast them out, he moved onto other remedies.

“This,” said father Bellicci, giving Jocopo a ring “is made of iron and carries the blessing of St. valentine. It cures falling sickness.” Jacopo sought remedy after remedy until his wife finally went into a fit on the floor and writhed until her face turned blue and her body went cold and still for good.

From that day on they never went to mass again. Jacopo began to beat Lecretia, and forced her to milk and tend the cows from sunup to sundown. He drank away their wages and left Lecretia cold and hungry.
She thought of the painting at the altar. The man’s ribs were protruding and gnarled like dead branches and in them she saw her own hunger. His eyes were rolled back in pain and in the man’s eyes she saw her own suffering.

“Why don’t we go to mass again?” She asked Jacopo timidly. Jacopo’s eyes suddenly brimmed with hatred, but he kept his composure.

“You’re dumb aren’t you, little whelp? Do you even know what Father Bellicci preaches about every Sunday?” Lecretia looked down, her face red, and shyly dug her toe into the dirt. She didn’t want to be called dumb and longed to prove her father wrong, but realized that she had no idea what father Bellicci preached about, since she never listened. “He preaches about giving to the poor! Why then, does he try to build the grandest cathedral in all of Italy while the peasants go hungry?” Lecretia didn’t know.
“He’s a damn liar!”

“The choir boys, they have the voices of angels, no? Why do their voices never change? Their voices never get deeper as they age. Why?” Lecretia didn’t know. “Because they’ve been castrated like steers.” He paused for a moment to relish the horror on Lecretias face. “Father Bellicci preaches about chastity while he fucks the altar boys. What do you think he’d do to your cunt if he got the chance?” Lecretia said nothing. She never asked about mass again.

Lecretia was now fifteen years old. She was thin from hunger, but her eyes were large and bright and her hair almost black. She still thought of the altarpiece and dreamed of the day she could meet the artist and praise him for his subtle brilliance.

She once traced the form of the dying man onto a scrap of wood using a piece of lead. She was concentrating on capturing the curves of his form and the expression on his face from memory when her father walked into the barn.
Jacopo was accompanied by his neighbor, Giovanni D’antonio. Their lips were stained purple with wine.

“You never told me you were an artist, little whelp. Why, this could be a gift for the Medici! Fit for the popes ceiling!” he said with a smirk. With that, he snapped it in half over his knee then, threw the pieces into manure.

“You should send her to Florence to apprentice the great Michelangelo!” Giovanni slurred drunkenly.
Jacopo flung her into the stall of his tired old mare and threw a shovel at her knocking her backwards into the filth. “Make yourself of use! No more of this silly scribbling!”

Later that day as always, she met her father at the market to bring home the leftover milk that hadn’t been sold.