Nonna Mettucci lived in a destitute slum.
Hubert recalled that Guillou had indicated something to that effect. That the befana lived in a poor part of Tarraconesis. But Hubert still felt unprepared for the depth of poverty he saw. The riverside buildings were nothing but old warehouses, and a few streets from the mighty Red River the buildings barely qualified as shacks. Each hovel was no more than a small room, with old thatch roofs and thin timber walls. Most were so small and poorly ventilated he expected they lacked even a basic hearth—a fact that he grew especially confident of when he noticed sporadic communal cookfires scattered every block or so.
He had seen many slums in his years. Nahash, the jewel of Torathia, had impoverished areas of ramshackle hovels and cutthroat criminals. As did every other major city in Torathia, Kirkworth, Caedia, and Cassala. Even the near east of Al Hassad, the parts Hubert had seen anyway, were similar.
It wasn’t the slum itself that surprised Hubert. It was the atmosphere he found there. Most such areas were rife with crime and misery. Men and especially women moved through quickly, warily, to get to their destinations. Rough types with small armaments lurked in alleys and at seedy alehouses, looking for trouble.
All such things were absent here. Instead of bravos lurking in the alleys, he saw children playing there. Families gathered around the communal cooking areas—from the smells, Hubert expected their meals were bland and simple, but they were cooking them together nonetheless.
People did not eye him with wary mistrust. They smiled. Some of them waved. And when he greeted them and asked for directions to Nonna Mettucci, their smiles grew wider.
“That way!” They told him, pointing deeper into the neighborhood. “Three blocks down, and one across, and then count the third house. Look for Big Antoni, and you will find Nonna. She will help whatever ails you!”
Hubert did not bother to correct them. The hope and enthusiasm was so infectious he almost wished he did have an ailment for the befana to treat. Well, you have one for her to treat, you just don’t have it yourself.
It was not until he found the house that he encountered the first person to offer even the slightest resistance. When he followed the directions, he found the hovel… and a man standing outside, arms crossed over his chest.
“You must be Big Antoni,” Hubert said.
Big did not adequately describe the man. He was enormous. Seven feet tall, Hubert suspected, and as broad as two men. Two broad men. His legs and arms looked like tree trunks. His thick, keg-shaped belly looked big enough for Hubert to climb inside.
Antoni nodded. Hubert felt the man glare at him.
“I’m here to meet with Nonna Mettucci,” Hubert said. “Nun—”
“Yes, yes,” Antoni said, breaking into a grin. “Nonna Mettucci!”
“Uh. Right. Nun Gui—”
“Inside!” Antoni said, stepping aside. “Nonna Mettucci is inside! You go!”
The man still squinted at Hubert, but his mouth was open in a wide smile that revealed crooked yellow teeth. He gestured at the door of the hovel.
He wasn’t glaring, Hubert realized. He was just staring. The man’s size was so intimidating, it made it easy to attribute more hostility than might actually exist.
“Nun Guillou sent me,” Hubert finally managed to get the words out. Not that he figured they mattered much. Antoni just continued grinning and squinting, and nodded his head.
So Hubert walked past and opened the door. It swung open into a tiny, well lit room, and he stepped inside.
The room smelled strongly of smoke and herbs. Rosemary, sage, lavender, yarrow, garlic, feverfew, and many more Hubert couldn’t immediately place. Bundles hung from the ceiling, dozens of them, so many that Hubert had to gently nudge them aside to enter. Embers glowed in a small hearth. The hovel seemed to consist only of a bed, the hearth, and a single small table and chair. The walls were lined with cabinets, and clearly Mettucci also made good use of the ceiling. A low fire crackled in the hearth, and a lamp on the table cast even light across the room.
Mettucci herself sat in the chair at the table, knitting. She looked nothing like a witch, and exactly like an elderly grandmother. Her wrinkled countenance regarded Hubert with a smile, her eyes twinkling in the firelight. Despite the warmth from the hearth—an uncomfortable warmth on such a day as this, to Hubert’s senses—she was also bundled up in a few layers of roughspun peasant clothes.
“Nonna Mettucci?” Hubert said gently. “Nun Guillou sent me.”
“Yes, I heard.” Her voice was quiet, with the quavering rasp of immense age. “What ails you, child?”
“Nothing, Nonna,” Hubert said. “Guillou did not send me to get help for myself. She sent me to ask your help for another. A man named Claudio. Guillou has been caring for him as best she can, but he is in a bad way. Stricken by a—” Hubert hesitated, feeling a fleeting moment of embarrassment. It passed. She is a witch. She won’t look askance at claims of witchery. “Stricken by the malocchio. The evil eye. Guillou said you could help.”
Mettucci just bobbed her head in a slow nod. She glanced at Hubert, though her hands continued knitting. “Yes,” she said.
“Wonderful. Ah… how, exactly? Guillou said something about a cimaruta?”
Mettucci just nodded. She paused, shifted in her chair, then resumed knitting. It took Hubert a moment to realize she’d set down some half-finished article of clothing on the table and picked up different piece.
She held a small oval formed from woven wicker strands looped and bent into shape. It was no more than a single handspan across. Within that frame she quickly began running lengths of yarn and knitting them into defined shapes. Her thin, frail hands moved with shocking speed and precision.
As she worked, she hummed to a simple tune. Hubert heard her murmur words in an old Spatalian dialect in a singsong that reminded him of nonsense nursery rhymes mothers sang their babes.
Before Hubert’s eyes, the oblong strands of wicker took on the form of something else. He saw the “sprig of rue” that gave its name to the cimaruta, a twisting shape of tiny branches, but on each woven branch he saw small shapes emerge. A moon and stars, the sun, a key, a blade, a cup. In the center of the woven image of the rue branch, Hubert was certain he saw her weave an unblinking almond eye.
The whole affair was finished in… How long have I been watching her? Hubert wondered suddenly. It had felt like just a few minutes, but that couldn’t be. The intricacy of the small creation in her hands made that an impossibility. He was no expert at weaving or knitting, but he thought a work so careful had to take an hour, if not several times that. And the little rhyme—there was no way she had been singing a nursery rhyme for the entire time.
Witchcraft, Hubert realized, his eyes widening. I just witnessed witchcraft.
Nonna Mettucci held the cimaruta out to him. “Here,” she said. “It is done.”
“Fascinating!” he said. He took a step closer and took the object from her, studying it. Up close, the detail was even more impressive. “But, well. What do I do with it?”
“Give it to Claudio,” Mettucci said gently. She picked up her knitting and resumed her work. It looked like she was making a sock. Or maybe the sleeve of a larger garment.
“Just give it to him?”
“Yes,” she said. “It will protect him from the malocchio. And other hexes, for a time.”
“Forgive me, but… how?” Hubert asked.
Mettucci just smiled at him. “Give it to Claudio,” she repeated. She continued knitting.
Somehow, Hubert had expected something more. Some sorcery, a proper incantation. Magic. But he could tell that Mettucci had no intention of divulging anything further. He opted not to press his luck and risk offending her by pressing the matter.
We’ll be here a while longer, Hubert decided. Take an interest in Claudio’s recovery, and perhaps another chance to meet Mettucci will present itself.
He thanked the old woman for her help and ducked back out the door. Big Antoni was still standing outside, and he stared at Hubert. “Nonna Mettucci help you,” he said.
It wasn’t spoken like a question. Indeed, the man just grinned at him, clearly confident that there could have been no other outcome.
“She did,” Hubert agreed.
“Cimaruta?” Antoni peered down at the small charm in Hubert’s hand. He grinned wider, reached inside his shirt, and pulled out a similar charm that seemed to be hanging from a cord around his neck. “Good! Cimaruta protect you. Very good.”
He’s definitely Spatalian, Hubert thought. No accent. That broken speech is the sign of a simpleton, not a man struggling with a foreign tongue.
“Indeed,” he said. “It protects you?”
“Yes!” Antoni said, nodding vigorously. “Yes!”
“From what?” Hubert asked.
Antoni’s brow furrowed. “It protects,” he said. “From… from the strega.”
“Do the strega trouble you?”
Antoni shook his head and tapped the cimaruta. “No. Cimaruta protects me.”
The circular reasoning didn’t seem to give him pause. Hubert sighed.
“Well then,” he said. “Let’s hope it protects me as well.”
Antoni just nodded and smiled, and Hubert took his leave.
Guillou met Hubert outside the abbey, and ushered him into the infirmary through a side door. He didn’t need to ask to know why she was suddenly so furtive. Seville was awake, and Guillou knew enough to keep Hubert out of his way. That worked just fine for Hubert.
Claudio looked the same as he had when Hubert left. His tremors seemed to be returning—it was true what Guillou had said, then. Her rhyming spell didn’t last long at all.
But when Guillou whispered a quiet thanks to Torath and placed the cimaruta on the man’s chest, he went still again. His eyes opened, and he looked around in bleary confusion.
“I—where am I? Sister?” he stared at Guillou and her nun’s habit in confusion.
“Yes, we are treating you. Lie still, Claudio. You have a while yet before you are well,” she said.
Claudio settled back into his pallet of rushes and thin wool blankets. He looked much better, but his movements were still slow and halting. Sweat beaded on his brow. He looked like a man with a fever. But perhaps a fever that was about to break.
“Brother, come,” Guillou said, taking Hubert by the hand and guiding him a few steps away.
Hubert followed reluctantly, letting Guillou tug him after her. “Fascinating!” he murmured, staring as Claudio drifted back to sleep.
“Thank you again,” Guillou said. “Your help was most welcome.”
“My pleasure,” Hubert said. He turned to look at Guillou. “How does it work? The cimaruta?”
“I am no befana,” Guillou reminded him. “You would have to ask Nonna Mettucci.”
“But—you know more about it than I do, anyway. Indulge me.”
“Protective magic. The power of the land, and its people. Brother—you must go. Seville—”
“He’s awake,” Hubert said. “I gathered that much.”
“He knows you did something to him. He does not for a moment believe God struck him down.”
“Hmph,” Hubert said. “Not for a moment? I swear, divergence from the best parts of Torath’s scripture goes hand in hand with absolute confidence that one is working Torath’s will.”
Guillou’s mouth quirked in a smile, quickly suppressed. “I cannot argue that,” she said. “Nevertheless.”
“I must go, else there’ll be a scene. I understand. But… Claudio… despite what you say, I do feel responsible for him. To say nothing of Camilla. I’d like to come back. Check on them. If that’s alright with you.”
She nodded. “The side door of the infirmary. Seville does not tend the infirm, nor use that door. Come only that way. Knock thrice. If I am here I will admit you. If it is another sister, they may not. Be patient. Do not press them.”
“Wouldn’t dream of it,” Hubert said.
“Then I will see you again soon. Until then, be well, Brother.”
“You too, sister.”
Hubert soon found himself back on the streets of Tarraconesis. With all the walking back and forth he’d done, the sun was nearly setting as he hurried back towards the Garibaldi estate.
You’re late, he chastised himself. He tried to recall Isabel’s agenda for the day. What was he missing? Receptions, he realized. She’s meeting with the noble guests. A chance to take their measure, squandered. I’ll have to hurry or I’ll miss it all.
Of course, Leona and Agrippa were just as shrewd as he was, each in their own ways. They would be fine. He mostly felt guilty that he had let this matter delay him so long, and forced them to cover for his absence.
I’ll make it up to them tonight. Work twice as hard, he decided. He yawned, suddenly remembering the few short hours he’d slept the previous night. Or… twice as hard tomorrow, he amended. That should do.
“There is a clearing in the woods north of town. We’ll meet there tonight, at midnight. Join us.”
He was halfway to the estate when the memory came to him suddenly, stopping him mid stride.
“Meet me after dark tonight, outside the stables on the north road, near the two willows embracing. I can guide you to the meeting.”
Candraca’s offer. The witches’ sabbath. If the meeting began at midnight, he knew he’d not make it back to the estate until after dawn tomorrow, at the earliest. And two nights of little sleep would leave him a dazed husk. He would have to shirk his duties to attend it now.
And yet… How could he resist?
This was a chance for a true new experience. Something novel, new, unique. He owed it to himself to experience it. He owed it to his mentor, his mentor’s mentor, and so many before them. He had to go.
Leona and Agrippa can handle things for a bit longer, he decided. The two of them were supremely competent. They had done much more difficult jobs than babysit a princeppa for a night.
I’ll make it up to them the day after tomorrow, he promised. Or maybe the day after that.