Excerpts from
THE TOWER:
A FAIRY TALE INTERRUPTED
GENRES: novel – historical fiction, magical realism, gothic romance, literary fiction, epistolary.
Sample #1
Once the pass opened up, we saw a sprawling, sunken plain eviscerated by turgid streams. Chalky roads snaked to a blister of a town where chains of indolent smoke suspended in the air like devils’ fingers. We were still half a kilometer away when Tea pulled out her handkerchief to fend off the noxious odors.
We came then to the Devil’s Antechamber. My father led us down rude streets where miserable men shambled up and down, some with bare feet, some in rags, nearly all grimy from head to toe. They hollered and hauled and sifted and ran about as frantic as a swarm of wasps. Here squatted a cavernous well garroted by spindly cranes of cracked wood; there gaped the mouth of a shop where fuming tubs boiled the salt water until it ran over like Vesuvius; everywhere ungodly miasmas, bilious steam, biting flies, chalky air, and hissing, slurping, grinding, dripping, buzzing and cursing filled the air. My horse could hardly step for the heaps of salt, the mounds of sulfur and niter, and the racks of toothy instruments. Vats of bituminous oil more combustible than Greek Fire and chutes of putrid ox blood for purifying the minerals added a rancid odor to this cacophony of sensation.
“Mother, I’d like to go home,” said Tea. She reminded me of a frightened pup.
“Nonsense, my little sweet,” said the Countess. “It’s good to know the means of your father’s livelihood..” Flaming pitch burned in her eyes, and her smile echoed my father’s pronouncement which ignored Tea’s distress:
“Magnificent, isn’t it!?”
Tea turned to me, still searching for sympathy:
“Angelica, are you a savage? How can you bear this?”
In truth I was entirely lost in the effluvia of this terrestrial Antinferno. I had never been allowed north of the toll station before, and all my windswept mind could muster in the moment was the pride that my distant cousin Dante, whom not a few people remember, had so accurately described the place, and with such poetic verbiage. This rallying banner gathered my mindless thoughts together enough that I could actually look up to meet her gaze. She looked pale and genuinely terrified.
“Father, I think we should get Tea home,” I said.
Sample #2
Just after our late lunch, one of the guards rushed in.
“My lord, la Iolanda is at the gates. She demands an audience.”
I ran after my father as he stormed out into the court and to the gate. Iolanda was there as before, talking loudly through the oak doors.
“My Lord Rolando,” she practically shouted, “I demand that I be allowed to visit my godchild.”
I’ve noticed on more than one occasion that Papà does not treat Iolanda like other people. It is as if he’s afraid of her.
“I— I cannot permit that,” he said, arms crossed and head looking to the ground. “My daughter needs time to acclimate to her new vocation.”
Somehow, when he said it to her, it sounded very unconvincing.
“If you’re swearing her off to celibacy,” she said, “and not putting her in a convent, then who is there to guide her?”
“She has a governess, handmaids—”
“Who is there to guide her vocation? Would you keep out the only woman who knows how to live for the Lord outside the cloister walls?”
“I didn’t, I don’t—” he tried.
“Would you defy Laura’s will,” she growled, “when she chose me to watch over Angelica’s spiritual development? Would you break the sacred bond, and tear a godmother from her godchild? Would you defy the words of Scripture, that what is bound on earth is bound on heaven, that what God has joined, let no man tear asunder? Does it not break the sacred laws of hospitality, that you would grant me a hermitage on your land, make me godmother to your child, have me care for the sick and destitute among your dependents, then turn me away? Do you not know it is bad luck to keep a servant of Christ from her heavenly child? That it tests the patience of heaven? Do not test heaven, Lord Rolando, no matter your worldly title, for we shall all stand before the same Divine Judge.”
Her words excited me with strange and unimagined feelings. Though my father stammered and tried to make excuses, he grew pale as a ghost. Reluctantly, he had the guards open the gate and allow la Iolanda into Gallinella.
My godmother’s behavior toward Papà gave me courage like nothing else in the world. I’ve never seen anyone, not even her, talk to him that way. My stay in the convent and my trip to the Palazzo Sforza are the only times I’ve even been beyond the borders of his dominion. I always expect everyone to treat him as an emperor. I wonder what kind of man he would be if he were in Piacenza, or Milan, or Rome, where he is king of nothing but the clothes on his back.
Iolanda came in the garb she nearly always wears, the habit of an independent religious (pinzochera) according to her interpretation: a white chemise, plain kirtle, dark scapular, and loose veil. I’ve always thought her very beautiful, but not in a way the other sex appreciates. She has a strong jaw and brow like a man’s, light brown hair, chiseled cheekbones, tall forehead, crows feet and hazel eyes. I think she is the same age my mother would be if she were still alive, but she lives in the open wilderness and her skin has weathered. When I imagine the warrior queen Camilla, who Virgil said was devoted to the goddess Diana, I picture her exactly like Iolanda. I could never tell her this though, for she is the most upstanding, humble Christian lady in the world, and she would be upset if I compared her to a pagan, even a virgin one.
Sample #3
[Matteo] leaned in over me to point across my shoulder at a copse of trees. “There your stallion awaits, milady.”
He brought me to a glade where three horses stood tied up to a large old oak which was split by lightning. They were nibbling on the sorrel near its roots. Matteo placed his hand on the foremost of them, a strong black courser, and whispered to it. A white palfrey and brown rouncey raised their heads and stared at me with big eyes.
“Why are there three of them?” I asked hesitantly.
I screeched as another man came out from behind a tree. He was adjusting his pants as if he had just finished relieving himself.
“Woa, woa,” said Matteo as if I was a frightened horse. “No need to worry. This is a friend. He knows about us.”
I turned with disbelief from Matteo to the intruder. He was about the same age as my beloved, with big curly hair, a thin mustache, bushy eyebrows, a sharp nose, and large jocular eyes. When he saw I was staring at him, he gave a wide-eyed grin and bowed with his pointy nose to the ground.
“Pleased to meet you as well, I’m sure, my lady—and lady of my friend, that is, my lord—my friend and lord. They call me Mr. Panfilo Verdi, my lady, and I have the especial pleasure of manserving and friending this my auspicious lord, Lord Matteo. If it please you.”
My apprehension quickly turned into a smile and then a laugh:
“It pleases me, Mr. Verdi, that Matteo has a friend and a manservant all rolled into one.”
“More things than those are rolled up in him, I’m afraid,” said Matteo, slapping his friend on the stomach. “All three of the handpies I put in the saddlebags, for instance.”
Panfilo flicked a crumb off the corner of his mouth like he was shooing away the accusation. “I only ate them to protect you lovebirds from overpecking, of course—me being, as always, at your humblest service—the both of yours.”
“Well not to worry,” said Matteo, putting a reassuring hand on my waist. “I brought enough money to buy us a feast when we’re there—unless, Verdi, you managed to spend all that too.” He made a show of looking for his purse.
Anna Maddalena Patti 