The Red Silk Cord

By Liz Berger

The Red Silk Cord resulted from my trip to Florence in 2007 where I visited the Hospital of the Innocents and saw the trinkets left behind by loving mothers and fathers who had to leave their babies with the nuns because they could no longer care for them. I built the story around this idea and included the 15th Century historic truths of the time and the Medici family. The story tells the resilience of a young woman, her survival after being raped, giving birth and being persecuted by the baby's father's family. She is helped by a silk merchant and together they go on a journey along the maritime and land silk route to Xian China. They play a part in the discovery of the new and fastest route to China. The emotional and sexual growth of Margherita is explored via a variety of relationships until she eventually discovers what love is. This book is the first in a group of three books named The Red Silk Cord, The Return of the Red Silk Cord and the Revenge of The Red Silk Cord. It includes the Medici families plan to have their fourth son become Pope Leo XI. I sincerely enjoyed writing this book and hope you find it as enjoyable to read as it was for me to write it. Regards Liz Berger M. A. Soc. Sc.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Xlibris AU
• Release date: Mar 12, 2021
• ISBN: 9781664102187

Book preview

CHAPTER 1

F LORENCE, OR FIRENZE as it is known to those who live there, was the cultural epicentre for early Italian Renaissance art, launching the careers of many prominent artists in fifteenth-century Italy. In an art gallery in the Hospital of the Innocents stands a display cabinet filled with trinkets, coins, pieces of paper, pieces of cloth, broaches, necklaces, ribbons, bracelets, shoes, handkerchiefs, mementos of a mother’s and at times a father’s sacrifice of love. Each memento is torn in half or broken with some force and placed in the clothing of a baby that the mother or family could no longer feed or provide care for.

What was the story behind each of those small strands of hope, desperation, dreams, and sacrifices of love? Pinned but hidden, they were placed with loving care on that part of themselves that had to be abandoned for the sake of safety, security, and future. These babies had someone who wanted to find them again maybe when circumstances got better, or an arranged adoption could be completed. Each baby could be identified by the trinket that was found with them when they were placed in the basin outside the hospital portico to be retrieved by the nuns without disclosing the parent or parents’ identities. There were no records of the tears that were shed, only the acknowledgment of the sacrifice of love made by someone in the City of Silk.

The Hospital of the Innocents saw people like a young woman without any financial security, abandoned on the streets of Florence, abandoned by her family, or a young couple without the means to feed their offspring. They were scared, alone, and without any hope of changing their circumstances. The parents or grandparents of an unwilling child, whose baby was whisked away as soon as it was born so the mother could not see her disgrace in human form. The brothel owner, getting rid of the means of her business failure. Or the maid of a wealthy family wanting to save face in such a judgemental society that valued virginity as a means to a prosperous marriage and society.

The hospital had been built by the silk traders to house the increasing numbers of abandoned babies who were found throughout this famous city. It was designed to help reduce the numbers of babies found floating or weighed down in the river each day. This was a terrible indictment of the city’s immorality in a time of strong Catholic sentiment. Pious people by appearance at church each Sunday; but behind every door, secrets held the players in a darkness that even the light of Christ could not vanquish. Why was it that the innocents paid the price of someone else’s sin? In the fifteenth century, the silk merchants of Florence had approved a new phase of construction for the Hospital of the Innocents, which had been commissioned in 1414 to house orphans but did not reach completion until 1427. It was designed by the famous architect Filippo Brunelleschi and had finally officially opened on the twenty-fifth day of January 1445. Each child mattered in the City of Silk.

The guilds of the city of Florence had been approached by the leading members of the society about the serious matter of abandoned babies being found throughout the city. It was already a serious concern for them with women forming a large part of the workers in the silk factories. Every time they got pregnant, they would be away from the machines for long periods while they breastfed their babies. It was becoming a real problem for the owners of the mills. A solution had to be found, and so the Silk Traders Guild had planned to meet to discuss the matter. The first baby accepted into the new wing had been abandoned outside the portico on the fifth day of February 1445, just a few days after it had opened, and as the baby was unwrapped from its covers, the nun was surprised to see a red silk cord tied to the baby’s umbilical cord.

Piero Carpaccio owned a silk factory just outside the Florence city centre. He lived in Venice, where his family had a long history selling silk products and materials to the famous families of Italy and Europe. Piero had arrived in the city a few days before and was heading to the local hotel not far from the main centre of Florence. He had visited once before as a young boy and was always impressed by its beauty. Here, in the central business district of Florence, you could see the design of the Palazzo Vecchio as it was being built in Via Larga, near the Medici family church of San Lorenzo.

With all the construction happening, the city was filled with artists, craftsmen, and tradesmen. Piero could see them gathered in the tavernas and walking around carrying their folders and tool bags. They were covered in stone dust, and their faces, hair, and clothing were always a sickly shade of grey. Just at the end of the street that he was walking on, he could see the Ponte Vecchio, where he could buy some gifts for his mother and sister back in Venice. It had been a very prosperous year with the increased market in silks from China. The main problem he was having was getting enough female workers who could stay at the factory after they had completed their training. As soon as they became efficient at their work, they were getting married or getting pregnant. Either way, it seemed to be a problem he would have to find a solution to.

Piero had come to Florence to attend the monthly Silk Traders Guild meeting to talk with other mill owners about this issue and to see how they were handling it. He was completely preoccupied with finding the hotel where he was staying for the few days and was not paying attention to where he was walking until he tripped on something lying on the ground in front of him. It looked like a bunch of old rags, but as he gathered himself and started to stand up, he noticed a small pale hand sticking out and heard a weak voice asking for his help. It was not a new thing for him to find some poor beggar on the streets. This was a common sight in all the cities in Italy at this time. Poverty and sickness were everywhere since the end of the last war, and the plague had caused a lot of orphaned children to be on the streets, selling, stealing, or scamming to make a living. Usually, he would give them a few coins to get rid of their incessant begging and to escape that dreadful smell of unclean and diseased bodies coming near to him.

He took some coins out of his waistcoat pocket and threw them onto the cobbles, but the hand did not move, nor was there any response to the kick he gave the bunch of rags, just a soft sigh. As he bent down to poke the hand, his wrist was suddenly grabbed with such force that he quickly reacted and tried to pull his hand back. As he did this, a face came out from the rags, not a child’s but a young woman’s face, with the palest skin, surrounded by hair the colour of midnight. But it was the eyes that gripped his breath, such a pale blue, like the sea of his hometown in Venice. The eyes were lined with the longest lashes he had seen, and he could not take his eyes off them. ‘Please help me?’ He heard the words but could not move. ‘Please, sir, can you help me?’ Her voice was so soft and so pure, it cut right through his reserve.

Piero noticed her gown was covered in blood, but when he looked more closely, he saw she was dressed in a finely made garment and had expensive slippers on her feet. She appeared very weak from blood loss. He had to think quickly. Where would he take her? He looked around to see whom he might get to help. A man was standing across the street who seemed to be looking at where Piero was standing, but as he gestured to him for help, the man suddenly turned and ran off in the opposite direction. He did not appear to be the usual trader found in the city; he had such fine silk stockings and soft slippers, his suit was made of a delicate pale blue silk, something like the woman’s eyes, Piero thought. As he ran, he kept looking back to where the woman lay in the pile of rags. Piero turned and saw a shop owner standing in front of his store. He called out to him and asked if there was a doctor or hospital nearby. The shop owner pointed to the street that ran off to the right. ‘I think there is a doctor in that street, shop number five, I believe.’ Piero scooped the woman up in his arms and started towards the doctor’s shop.

He pushed the door open and stepped inside with the woman in his arms. ‘Is there a doctor here?’ he asked. ‘I have a seriously injured woman. I need your help.’ A curtain was pulled back revealing what looked like a torture chamber inside.

‘Bring her in here’ came a voice from behind the curtain. It was so dark in there that it took Piero some time for his eyes to focus. When they did, he saw a slightly built man standing by what looked like a bed. ‘Lay her down here,’ he said quietly but firmly. ‘What seems to be the trouble?’ Piero explained what had just happened, how he had tripped over the woman on the street how she was covered with rags and was covered in blood. It was the fifth of February 1445.

The doctor pushed him aside and began to inspect the young woman now lying on the table. There was a lot of blood coming from the lower half of her body; her gown was covered in it. Yet she did not seem to have any wounds that he could see, at least not that would have caused such a serious blood flow. But as he lifted her skirts, he understood. She had just given birth; the umbilical cord was still hanging out between her legs. It had been cut, and she had been left to bleed out.

He called his nurse and instructed her to prepare for a post-delivery procedure. The placenta had to be taken out immediately and the blood flow clamped, or this young woman would die in front of them. He pushed Piero out and said, ‘I am going to be very busy for the next hour or so. I will do all I can for her, but you will have to take responsibility for her after that, at least for the next week. Are you willing to do that?’ the doctor asked. ‘I do not have time for you to think about it. I need your answer now.’

Piero nodded. ‘I will pay her bill and arrange for a place for her to recuperate if you can save her.’ The words came out before he could even think about what he was saying.

‘Come back in an hour, and we will know if she will need you or the gravediggers.’ With that, he pushed Piero out the shop door, saying, ‘Go and do whatever business you were planning to do, and we can talk again later.’

Piero walked back to the main street in a daze. ‘What just happened? I do not want to be caught up in something like this. I have business to conduct, and I still have not found where my hotel is yet.’ He turned into the main street and began to walk towards the Hotel A La Fortuna. After he booked in, he washed and changed from his travelling clothes. He put on his business suit, black waistcoat, and pantaloons with a long business coat made from the finest grey wool, combed back his long blond hair, and tied it back with a black ribbon. His shoes were black with a beautifully fashioned silver buckle that matched the buckles on side of each of his calves where the pantaloons finished. He had to attend the meeting tonight; it was too important for his future.

Margherita turned in her four-poster bed; it was a beautifully carved marble bed with volumes of curtains and the biggest feather-filled silken doona. It was covered in the most elaborate embroidery of flowers, butterflies, and birds on a silver background and had been hand-sewn and embroidered at the silk factory owned by one of her father’s friends. He would never tell her exactly who the owner of the factory was, only that he was very wealthy and influential, and that one day he would introduce her to the owner, but not yet. She was barely sixteen years old. Margherita had been raised as the precious daughter of the chairman of the Silk Traders Guild, Alonzo de Launar, and while she had been trained in all the etiquette of the high society she belonged to, she was a simple and gentle girl who loved to roam the hills around her father’s villa on the outskirts of Florence picking wildflowers and making them into beautiful arrangements pressed into her diary.

As a small girl, she had travelled to many of the most beautiful cities in Italy with her father after her mother had died in a horse-riding accident. As a precaution for his daughter’s safety, he had engaged the most qualified riding instructor in Florence for Margherita, who had become an excellent horsewoman. Margherita could ride side-saddle as required by society’s standards, but when she was free and on her own, she rode as well as any man, loving the speed and hedge jumping on her father’s country estate.

Margherita had visited many countries on business trips with her father because he could not bring himself to leave her behind; she had become the most important thing in his life, and her protection was his focus. Even at her coming-out age, the time when other families were looking to make marriage arrangements for their daughters, he could not bring himself to think of anyone touching his beautiful young daughter in that way. He had made sure that she could speak at least three languages, understood the latest scientific discoveries, was informed about the current and future trends in the silk trade, and knew how to manage the palatial villa with its numerous servants, tradesmen, and field workers. They spent many hours talking and planning what they hoped her future would look like and, more importantly, whom she should consider as a suitable suitor when the time came for her to choose the person she would give her heart to. It would be her choice; her father had promised.

It surprised so many people in the social scene when Alonzo engaged a Chinese chaperone to look after Margherita. What they did not know was that the chaperone was highly skilled in Chinese martial arts, something he had witnessed on one of his trips to China. Su Lin was a chaperone and a bodyguard for young Margherita. Her skills had been tested only once when some overamorous young men had approached Margherita at one of the ing of France’s garden parties during one of his business trips. It hurt him to remember how frightened Margherita had been as she clung on to him crying into the night. She was so worried about the young men who had been quickly dispatched by Su Lin and vowed never to go to one of those parties again.

It was after this event that he had asked Su Lin to begin teaching Margherita how to protect herself in case something happened. Teaching such a gentle-spirited young woman had been difficult to start with until Su Lin explained the aim of martial arts was not to kill but to render the attacker powerless. Margherita kept her training a secret from all her friends; they would have been appalled at the thought of touching a stranger and even more so that a woman should think she was an equal with a man; how absurd. It was so much easier just to give in and let the man think he was superior. There had been occasions when Margherita tried to explain her thoughts to her friends, but they just hid behind their fans and called for smelling salts to stop the vapours.

Soon Margherita would be turning seventeen and was showing the beauty that had captured her father’s heart when he met her mother. She was medium height, slim, with olive skin and almond-shaped, sky-blue eyes that hid behind thick black eyelashes. Her hair was waist length and curled around her shoulders like waves of black velvet, and when it was fashioned on top of her head, she drew the attention of all the males in the room, no matter what age.

Her father was constantly having to refuse offers of marriage from the most eligible men at every function she attended, so she had started to politely excuse herself from most social events, but there were some she could not refuse. At those events she attended with her father and Su Lin, she had started to wear a mask in an attempt to disguise herself. Masks had become fashionable at the special carnival days in Venice. She felt safer behind the mask. It did not stop the admiring glances from the males in the room, but it did give her a feeling of protection.

It was at one of the Silk Traders Guild dinners held at the Medici Palace that she was seated across the table from the son of the uke of Florence, the fourth son of the Medici family. He was taller than her, very handsome with an athletic-shaped body, wide shoulders, and especially masculine-looking calves, and appeared to be only a couple of years older than her. Margherita noticed he did not take his eyes off her throughout dinner. When the meal was finished and everyone moved to the ballroom, he was the first one to approach her for a dance. She looked around for her father’s help, but he was busily engaged in a conversation with one of the members of the guild and could not be interrupted. Su Lin stood by her side and quietly nodded her approval, so Margherita accepted his offer to dance.

It was an energetic dance that Margherita thoroughly enjoyed; at the end, it was obvious he was not going to let her retire, and he asked her for the next dance as well. Margherita looked for Su Lin, who was standing quietly to one side of the marble staircase beckoning her to come when he grabbed her by the waist and twirled her away onto the dance floor. Su Lin started to follow them around the floor, moving effortlessly between the standing groups on the edge of the dance floor until the dance ended, and she quickly stepped forward to guide Margherita off the floor. The young man was left standing by himself with an amused look on his face. He turned and walked over to another young woman and asked her to dance. As the dance finished, he beckoned to a tall man wearing black who had been standing watching the previous interactions of the couple and whispered something into his ear. The man left the dance floor and disappeared into the crowd at the foot of the grand marble staircase.

The next morning, Margherita awoke with Su Lin bending over her, attempting to wake her up. ‘Your father would like to speak with you in the study. He wants you to get dressed immediately and come down. Something has happened, and he wants to talk to you about it.’ Margherita hurried to change and have the servants dress her and prepare her hair for the day. She had no appointments, so she could dress casually and leave her hair down. As soon as she was dressed, she went downstairs to her father’s study. On arriving at the study, she heard the sound of men’s raised voices. It sounded like they were arguing. She gently knocked on the door. Her father said, ‘Come in.’ As she stepped over the doorway, she was surprised to see the two people who were in the room.

Margherita recognized the young man she had danced with and a man, standing at the back of the room, who appeared to be reluctant for her to see his face. ‘You wanted me, Father,’ she said.

‘Yes, my dear, please come in,’ said her father. ‘Please be seated.’ He gestured to the two-seater lounge closest to the window. ‘I would like to introduce you to Count Giovanni de Lorenzo Medici, whom you danced with last night. He has come here to ask permission to begin courting you with a view to marriage. I have explained my promise to you regarding your choice of a life partner, but he insists that I break that promise given his ardent desire to have you as his wife.’

Margherita