Daughters of the Doge (48 page)

He looked round again, but we were still being ignored. ‘Second, and a subject close to the physician, is the
process
of dying, and that is almost infinite in its variety: expected or unexpected, fought against or welcomed, short or extended, painful or even, yes, comfortable. Blessed is the man who dies without pain, with sufficient time to prepare himself, but no more, and with the satisfaction of knowing he has done most of the things he hoped to do in life – for, in truth, I suspect none of us achieves all of his ambitions.’

‘And surrounded by his or her friends?’ I wanted to show I understood.

Thomas considered my question carefully. ‘Strangely, I don’t believe that is true. In my experience, the actual moment of death is often a private one, and most people seem to slip away unnoticed during an unwatched moment or when their relatives have left the room. It is strange how often this is the case. Even though their eyes may be shut, they seem somehow to know when they are being observed, and at the final moment there seems a sort of dignity in being alone. Perhaps it is finally being at peace with yourself, or at least resolved that the battle is over and you can leave the field with honour.’

I bit my lip and considered what he had said. At first I found his words hard, mechanical and uncaring. But then I realized that he had stripped away the sentiment and had spoken truthfully of what he knew as a physician, and I felt privileged to have shared it.

The Catholic mass made me feel awkward, but Thomas seemed to have a relaxed attitude to the proceedings, and did not seem to mind answering me here in the church. It was as if the dominating presence of the priesthood between God and congregation relieved the latter of some of their responsibilities, and allowed them to respond more as an audience than as participants. Lady Jane would have been appalled, but Thomas seemed to take it all for granted.

‘And what is old age? In the absence of murder or an accident, what finally brings about death by what we call natural causes? Which goes first, the body or the mind?’

‘I believe the human body is designed to take a lifetime of wear and tear. Those who look after it may make it last longer, whilst those who punish their bodies surely shorten the span of their lives. Some people subject one part of their body to more punishment than others and that may be the reason it fails first. The glutton subjects his belly to a lifetime of excess, and the drinker his liver. The tiller of the soil loses his back, the weaver his fingers, the laceworker her sight, and for those who are subject to mental torment the mind is likely to go first.’

‘Do you believe, then, that all people are created equal at birth?’

Again, as so often in such conversations, I had to wait whilst Thomas considered his answer and weighed his words.

‘If you ask that as a moral philosopher, I believe they should be considered so, and certainly every man should in fairness be offered the same opportunities in life. However, if you ask me as a medical practitioner, I will tell you that my experience is that they are not. Some babies are born strong and healthy and others are weaklings from birth. Perhaps the rich are better-fed and – housed, the country dweller gets more fresh air; it does appear that some diseases are hereditary – as, for example, consumption among the Tudors.’

He paused as we watched the coffin being carried the length of the church. ‘It may not be fair,’ he continued, ‘but it is true. I believe the raw material of life is uneven, but the stresses to which different people then subject that raw material are also uneven.’

I nodded towards Courtenay, standing five rows in front of us and well out of earshot. ‘How would you judge the earl?’

‘When I look at him, I consider two factors. First, he was born of good strong stock. His mother is built like a warhorse, so that counts in his favour. His father was beheaded for a questionable treason, but no less dead for that, so we cannot judge his longevity fairly.

‘Secondly, I look at the influences of a man’s life. In his case, he was, no doubt, brought up well fed and well looked-after, in a household that built his self-confidence. That is a good start. But I have to ask myself what did seeing his father executed and his own long imprisonment do to his body and his brain? And since then? He exhibits many of the signs of a man with the pox or Naples disease, and if that is the case, the months immediately after his release are likely to have been the source.’

I raised an eyebrow at Thomas. He had hinted before that he believed Courtenay to be ill and not wicked, but he had been reluctant to confirm the illness openly. I had assumed that he was referring to some degree of mental trouble, the result of Courtenay’s long imprisonment, and had not pressed him on the matter. Yet as soon as he suggested the diagnosis, a number of my own thoughts from the past seemed to fall into place, and I could not help but believe he was probably right. One thing was certain: Courtenay had certainly exposed himself to the risk of disease frequently in the period immediately after his imprisonment; to the extent that this had been named by many as one of the reasons Queen Mary had rejected him as a suitor.

Thomas continued. ‘As for his prospects in the future, and which of his weaknesses will get him first, much depends on the life he goes on to lead. If he married a strong and wealthy woman, one who would remove his worries and continue to mother him as his own mother has done, then perhaps that would be to his advantage. But if my medical diagnosis is right, his likely infection of her body would show little gratitude for whatever she might do for him.’

I was well aware of my growing bitterness towards His Grace, but the situation which Thomas described, even if hypothetical, showed what an unkind world this could be. Looking across at the coffin of the old Doge, now on its stand before the altar, I began to wonder how long we all had to live – the earl, Thomas and, of course, myself. The answer, I knew, was God’s gift, not our own, and not for the first time I asked myself how a kind God could take away from us so brutally someone like Lady Jane, who, to my knowledge, had never done an unkind thing to anyone in her life. She had studied hard, eaten daintily, hardly drank alcohol and prayed regularly and with complete sincerity. And for these acts her head was hacked from her neck by an axe at the age of sixteen.

I listened to the orations to Doge Venier given by the ten members of the Council. One after another they listed his many achievements, venerating him for his learning, and for the many great offices of state he had held in his sixty-seven years: Chief Magistrate in Brescia when still a young man, Deputy in Udine, Chief Magistrate in Padua, Venetian Ambassador to Pope Paul III, minister, councillor and Chief Magistrate in Verona and finally, at the age of sixty-five, Doge.

In all of these orations, I noticed that not one of them made mention of specific achievements by Venier whilst holding those venerable positions, and I began to think of him as what the Duke of Northumberland used to call ‘a safe pair of hands’: an able administrator, picking his way through life with few mistakes, but without changing the world. In short, the sequence of speeches listed what he had been, not what he had done.

Listening to the Cardinal summing up the proceedings, I suddenly experienced a loss of faith. Perhaps it was the Catholic surroundings, with their colour, their pomp and their heavy incense. I looked up into one of the great domes of this magnificent church and, not for the first time, wondered whether heaven really existed at all, or whether it was simply a politicians’ promise, one which, if proved untrue, would be discovered too late.

But in the end I decided that it didn’t matter whether the final accounting of your life took place at the gates of heaven or on your deathbed; the conclusion was the same: life was short and death uncertain only in its timing – all a man could do was to use his life as well as he could and try not to waste it, or spoil it with too much unkindness along the way.

The ceremony came to an end, and for a moment I felt the need to be alone, to think. I excused myself and walked through the ornate church. Two old men shuffled awkwardly past me, each clinging to the other for support and both visibly moved by the passing of one who, I assumed, had been their friend. They paused close in front of me and one spoke, his voice strong, though cracked with emotion.

‘He was a strong man, even a hard man, but in the final reckoning a good one.’

The other nodded. ‘Amen to that. Would that no future doge be so beset by problems.’

I watched them walk the length of the church, never looking to left or right, apparently lost in their thoughts and sustained by their memories and each other.

I needed air and took the side door. Crossing the piazza, I turned and looked back at the church. Which was the greatest memorial to a man departed: the church to its architect, the paintings to their artists, the carvings and statues to their sculptors, the windows to their glassmakers, or the words of two old men who simply said they remembered their friend with respect?

I thought about the nuns at Sant’ Alvise, the fishermen mending their nets in the harbour in Chioggia, the four men who were at this moment working their way towards the door of the church, sweeping up the dust and dirt left by the mourners, and I thought of Thomas’s suggestion that, in matters of health, men were dealt an uneven, perhaps unfair, hand.

Walking away from the church, I stood on the sharp bend where the two canals met. It was as if I was facing a choice – this way or that way. The conclusions I came to were simple: build on your strengths, try to offset your weaknesses and, above all, be true to yourself. And in the same way that Thomas had implied that moderation might increase the length of your life, so adhering to moral principles might, I fervently hoped, increase the happiness and the fulfilment of that life. I resolved, there on the canal-side, to know my strengths and weaknesses, and not to spend my life futilely trying to turn myself into that which I was not.

With no other audience, but with a need to speak, for emphasis but also as a statement of commitment, I spoke aloud to the empty canal. ‘I am no diplomat, and I shall not be a courtier or a politician. I believe with much work I could become a competent artist, able to make satisfactory works which men would enjoy and wish to hang on their walls. I believe, also, that I have it within me to become a doctor of medicine, to go forth in the world and do more good than harm to my fellow man.’

I knew that it was between these two paths that I had to choose.

The canals did not reply, not even with the echo of my own voice. The two pigeons sitting on the next bridge, whose cooing I had interrupted with my words, now returned to their own conversation as if nothing had happened.

But if I had not surprised the pigeons, I had certainly surprised myself. For months now, Thomas had been seeking to guide me into the world of medicine, and yet I had resisted even to the point of failing to visit the university in Padua only a short distance away. It was as if I had to make the choice for myself, and now that Thomas had finally stopped pushing me towards a life in medicine, I found myself reaching for it. How perverse I seemed to have become.

I considered my options. If I became a doctor, it would not necessarily prevent me from painting and drawing, although my available time might be severely limited. Under some circumstances, the two might be combined for, as Vesalius, Galen and Professor Fuchs had shown, the ability to observe accurately and draw what you have seen will not only help your own medical studies, but may be of value in teaching others.

The converse, however, was not true. If I became an artist, all hope of practising medicine would quickly fade and would become increasingly difficult to recover.

And there was one final consideration: if I were a doctor, I might help anyone – a king (if only I could have helped King Edward) or a prince or, just as easily, a pauper. A life was a life. But what if I were an artist? Who would then receive the benefit of my work? Certainly, all who saw the work might gain pleasure from it, but in any direct sense, my customer would be . . . who? Courtenay, wanting a portrait for vanity and marriage negotiation? An ornate church to add piety to its proceedings? Or a fat cardinal, leering over the painting of a young and naked girl while he dreamed of ‘her sister’?

I decided at that moment that, if the University of Padua would have me, my future lay in medicine.

C
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