Ian Creasey - Silence in Florence

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SILENCE IN FLORENCE by Ian Creasey

“Silence in Florence” is Ian Creasey’s third story for Asimov’s. He tells us this

piece was inspired by a newspaper article about an exhibition devoted to portraits of

servants. “One seventeenth-century picture showed a woman whose job was to

scour out chamberpots. In the painting, she wielded her broom in a similar style to

martial portraits of dukes and generals. It reminded me of how often fiction

concentrates on so-called important people, the movers and shakers of their era,

while relegating servants to mere background props. I wrote this story to redress the

balance, and give the chambermaid her due regard.”

* * * *

The chamberpots held only dust. Maria picked one up, and sniffed a faint tang of

rose-water from the last time she had cleaned it—three days ago, before the visitors

arrived. Did the foreigners think themselves too good to piss in a pot? How could

they? Under their fancy robes, everyone had the same bodily functions. Maria had

emptied the pots of princes and cardinals, ambassadors and artists; the more wine

they drank, the smellier their urine became. But now—none?

Maria shrugged. If the pots were empty, she’d complete her rounds quicker.

She needed to finish all these apartments while the occupants toasted the Feast of St.

John the Baptist downstairs. To remove the dust, she gave the chamberpots a quick

wipe with a jasmine-scented rag. Then she left the visitors’ apartment.

On her way to the next stateroom, she met her daughter scurrying down the

corridor. “What is it?” she asked, no longer hoping for an answer in words. At

eleven years old, her daughter had still never spoken. Maria hoped the others hadn’t

been teasing her again. Sometimes they would send Cristina with messages too

complicated to be delivered by gestures.

Cristina tugged at her mother’s apron. Maria allowed herself to be guided

through the servants’ passages—the Pitti Palace had a network of cunningly hidden

corridors and stairways, so that the nobles never had to meet anyone carrying a

chamberpot. Soon they arrived at the artists’ quarters. So many artists spent so

much time working in the Palace that Cosimo II had given them their own suite of

rooms. Although it was not far from the servants’ own quarters in the basement, the

artists made it clear that they considered themselves superior.

Giovanni da San Giovanni panted in short gasps as his sweat shone in the

candlelight. A younger artist, holding Giovanni’s arm, said, “He’s getting worse.

Take that to Alessandro”—he pointed to a chamberpot—”and tell the good doctor

to find out what ails Giovanni. He may have taken some wine, but he is not ‘just

drunk.’“

Maria realized they’d summoned her because Cristina couldn’t tell the doctor

whom the chamberpot belonged to. She smelled ordure under the lid. The artists

could have taken the pot themselves, but that would have been beneath their dignity.

Was it only in Florence that artists considered themselves almost equal to the popes

and Medicis who patronized them? Maria didn’t know; she had never even crossed

the Arno.

On the way to Alessandro’s room, Maria said a short prayer over the

chamberpot. Giovanni looked as if he might need more than the doctor’s aid to

recover.

She let Cristina tag along, although there would be work for her somewhere in

the Palace—there was always work for everyone. The girl skipped along the

corridor, smiling at her mother, running her finger along the frescos until Maria took

her hand. Painted angels looked on impassively, as if they didn’t care what would

become of Cristina when Maria passed away.

In the doctor’s small room, a tub of leeches stood among untidy heaps of

glassware and steel instruments. Alessandro’s moustache twitched as he smiled

ruefully and put the chamberpot on his table. “There should be a better way to

diagnose sickness than poking around in here.” He had said this a dozen times

before, but Maria still felt warmed by the words. At least he spoke to her, and

treated her as a person. If she met him in the courtyard, his gaze didn’t slide away

into the distance.

“And how are you today?” Alessandro asked the fair-haired child poking

among his scalpels and bloodletting cups.

Cristina didn’t answer, but only ducked shyly behind her mother.

“No change?” he asked quietly.

Maria shook her head. Even though she couldn’t afford to pay him,

Alessandro had examined her daughter several times over the years. He had never

been able to find out why she couldn’t speak.

It was an old pain, not worth bringing up again. Maria cast around for a

change of subject, and remembered the empty chamberpots in the visitors’

apartments.

“You’d find treating the foreigners more pleasant,” she said. “They produce

neither piss nor stools.”

Alessandro laughed. “Don’t be silly. Every man produces bodily wastes.

After all, what goes in must come out.”

“I haven’t seen any for three days,” Maria said.

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