Stefano Vignaroli - The Bronze Crown

She had tried to limit her movements as much as possible, but at a certain point Andrea had perceived her awakening, had just opened her eyelids slit open, had brought his lips closer to her face, had printed a kiss on one cheek and had untied her from the embrace with delicacy. At that point Lucia, though reluctantly, decided to get up. She reached the bathroom and let the lukewarm water from the shower run over her body for a long time, then, still in her bathrobe and with her hair wet, she gained the kitchen and prepared coffee for her and Andrea. She sat down at the table, with the steaming cup in front of her, greedily resuming the reading of the text she had left up there the previous evening. Attracted by the strong smell of the drink, Andrea soon appeared and pulled down his coffee from the pot and sat down in front of her, activating the tablet to read the morning news on the ANSA website.

«I don't understand why you don’t turn on the television instead of ruining your view on that small screen. There’s news on certain channels all the time and...»

«It’s not the same», Andrea interrupted her. «Some particular news on TV doesn’t pass it on. I’m following closely the events of the archaeological sites destroyed by the Jihadists, the Islamic extremists. The official news are making us believe that the situation is much more serious than it is in reality. But in any case, for me, the loss of finds thousands of years old remains a fact of extreme gravity. When some of these areas are freed, I think I might be ready to leave immediately to assess the damage and bring help to the historical reconstruction of the ancient cities. We saw last year with Nineveh that much of what the ISIS militants had shown as destroyed could be salvaged.»

«And would you leave me here alone for millennia-old ruins?» she turned to him, grabbing his hand and holding it in hers.

«If you wouldn’t follow me, yes. Work is work, and I find mine very exciting. Of course, not that I’d stop loving you, but I wouldn’t give up my commitments anyway.»

Pretending to be a little offended, Lucia took her hands out, looked for the pack of cigarettes and lit one.

«Without perhaps disdaining some exotic love affair, eh? Never trust men. They’re traitors by nature.»

Lucia drew long from the cigarette and puffed the smoke at him, who took it out of his hands and pulled it back.

«Oh, not me. I'm a faithful man!»

«That statement is all to be considered. You’re 30 years old and you make love like a “matter expert”. I know nothing about your previous life. Who knows how many women you had before me!»

As if not to get involved in a speech he didn’t want to face for any reason in the world, Andrea changed the subject.

«But let's come to your work, rather. What did you find so interesting in the humble library of this dwelling, that you’re up until two in the morning and find yourself here at seven in the morning already reading again?»

Waiting for an answer, Andrea crushed the cigarette half consumed in the ashtray. Lucia, unsatisfied with the dose of nicotine she had taken, pulled the electronic cigarette out of the case and pressed the ignition button. The steam puffed out by the young woman vanished into the kitchen air.

«These documents refer to the history of this city in the first decades of the 16th century, and are interesting, because they describe the events that followed the death of Cardinal Baldeschi, in a different way from how I knew them and how they are described in the official texts of the history of Jesi. It is very strange how the copy of “The History of Jesi” preserved in this building, which should be twin to the other two found in the Baldeschi-Balleani Palace and the Petrucciana Library, does not have the pages torn out, but is intact. But what is more interesting is that some details are reported in a different way compared to the other texts that I had the chance to have in my hands.»

«For example?» asked Andrea, intrigued.

«For example, I was convinced that a high prelate of the Ghislieri family had succeeded the Cardinal my ancestor to the office of Bishop. Instead it seems that things had gone quite differently and Ghislieri came to hold this office only after a certain period of time. I thought that my ancestor Lucia Baldeschi would never have taken the position of Captain of the People and instead it is reported here that in 1522, for a certain period of time, the government of the city was carried out, even if in collaboration with the noble caste of Jesi, by a woman, who had even averted a popular rebellion, appeasing inflamed souls with her feminine sensibility. Very strange for those times!»

«I believe that certain news must be assessed for its truthfulness. It’s not uncommon for documents from ancient times to contain sensational historical forgeries. And then often those who wrote these chronicles tended to mix realities and legends in a very easy way. Come on, let’s get dressed and go out for a walk through the old town, before the air out there gets too hot. Sometimes stones reveal much more than books, if one can interpret them. Let an archaeologist guide you, and you won’t regret it!»

Convinced that Andrea knew many more things than he had revealed to her in a few months, she ran to the bathroom, gave her hair a blow-dryer to finish drying it, put on makeup, put on a T-shirt and a pair of jeans and went back to the kitchen ready to go out. She felt Andrea’s smug look on her, realizing that, not having bothered to wear a bra at all, the shape of her nipples was distinctly printed on the t-shirt. But who cares. If even Andrea had been jealous of her graces, better this way: jealous man, man in love!

As they went up, hand in hand, the steps of Baldassini’s Coast, enjoying the still fresh air of the early morning hours, Lucia let the stones of the ancient buildings whisper centuries-old stories, brooding in her head what she had read the night before.

MISERY

The raids of the invading armies were not over and between 1520 and 1521 Giovanni De’ Medici’s men first and then Leo X’s men stayed in our area. The latter were Swiss hired by the Pope, who had stayed for twenty-six days, causing endless damage to the city and the countryside.

In addition to the damage and the harassment, the plague had returned as a nightmare to terrorize the population. At a General Council meeting on December 6, 1522, when a threatened passage of 2,500 militant Spaniards in the pay of the Pope had to be dealt with, it was decided to make the possible to drive them away, even with some gift, and if they wanted to come in any way, to receive them outside the city, it being known that they were carrying the contagion with them. All of Italy, after all, in those years was reduced to the most miserable conditions. To the ruins and carnage caused by the battles and raids of foreign armies, were added the floods and the plague, which continued everywhere to make its victims.

Despite the preventive work of the citizens, the terrible disease, according to some, in particular according to the historian Anthony Gianandrea, arrived in Jesi by way of Ancona, in certain bales of ropes. It was also said that this plague came by God’s just judgment, because the year before some young people, finding a dead body of a stranger in Caldora’s house, all in one piece, as a joke, brought it in the days of Carnival in disguise for the city and, not having been punished for it, but rather by all the people helped, in a dream appeared to them the image of a black man who warned them that shortly afterwards they would die of the plague. It is a fact that the plague threw the population into the blackest misery.