Signora Da Vinci (23 page)

“You did not give him the order to
attack
, Lorenzo. Everyone knows that.”

“The army should not have been stationed there in the first place! That was
my
error. My youth. My inexperience.” He shook his head. “My pride.”

“Relinquish your post, then,” I said.

“No!” he quickly cried. “You don’t mean that.”

“Of course I don’t. You were born to lead, Lorenzo.”

He sat, his elbows pressed into his knees, his chin resting between the palms of his hands. The posture was so human, so lacking pretension, that it endeared him to me even further.

“I am the
cappa della bottega
of Florence,” he said. “The foreman of the shop. I must be good at what I do, and prevail in this role for which Providence has selected me. The Florentine military is weak, so we must survive other ways—by our financial dominance. Our mercantile strength.”

“This is not beyond your capabilities,” I told him. “You have a genius for diplomacy.”

He considered this. “Even if I do, I must make amends for Volterra. Somehow.”

“Build an orphanage there,” I said. “Send the widows a pension.”

“And what do I do for the ruined girls?”

Ruined,
I thought.
I had been “ruined” in a small town
.

“Send them tutors,” I said.

“Tutors?” This took him by surprise.

“If they’ve lost their reputation, let them have an education.”

He smiled. “Spoken like a true scholar.” It was the first time that day I had seen a spark of joy in him. He thought about my idea. “Plato would have approved. He believed that Athens wasted the talents of half the population by not using women in government and military work.” He thought for a moment more. “I’ve already begun reviving and endowing the university of Pisa. It’s fallen on hard times. I could hire tutors from there, and from the university here in Florence. Send them to Volterra.” He eyed me appreciatively. “I
like
the way you think, Cato.”

“There’s no greater compliment than that,” I said. “To me. To my father.” I felt myself reddening. Though Lorenzo spoke of the mind, and had surely sought my counsel today, that strange spark between us had, in the space of a single conversation, reignited.

A commotion of voices at the church’s back door was a welcome diversion from our heavy and uncomfortable conversation. It was the gang of Verrocchio’s workmen, each carrying a small sack with his midday meal.

Leonardo must indeed have noticed me inside, as he made directly for the bench where I sat. He muttered “my lord” and bowed with the grace of a fine gentleman to Lorenzo, who returned the greeting with a respectful tilt of his head.

But when I stood to embrace my son I felt an odd tension in his muscles and realized in his tongue-tied silence that followed that Leonardo was starstruck in the presence of Lorenzo de’ Medici. He could hardly believe that his once-disgraced mother—albeit in the guise of a man—could claim friendship with such a high personage. The very ruler of Florence. I so wished Leonardo to be at ease with Lorenzo.

“What have you got in the sack?” I asked him.

“The maestro’s cook sends us bread and cheese and wine, and if we’re lucky, a portion of stew.” He opened his bag and brought out the brown half loaf and a large square of pale yellow cheese. Without hesitation he broke these up into three parts and handed them all around. Then he peered into the sack again and removed a stoneware crock and a spoon. “It took some doing to convince her to leave the meat out of mine,” Leonardo continued, offering the crock and the spoon to Lorenzo, who accepted it, dipping his bread in the stew.

“No meat?” Lorenzo inquired.

“I don’t eat the stuff, nor do I eat fish or fowl. Anything with a face on it.”

“That’s extraordinary,” Lorenzo said, then handed me the crock.

I ate a spoonful, then said, “It’s also heretical according to the church fathers.”

Lorenzo sighed. “The church fathers . . .” He murmured the words, then said no more. I thought it best to change the subject.

“Lorenzo has a horse called Morello, who is as devoted to his master as his master is to him,” I told my son.

Leonardo’s face lit up instantly. “Tell me about him,” he demanded of Lorenzo, then gave his full attention to the answer.

“He’s a beautiful beast, chestnut with four white feet and a star of white on his forehead. He holds his tail in a proud arch, and his legs are like steel. Most of all I love Morello’s head—just magnificent—long and handsome with black liquid eyes . . .”

Utterly rapt, his eyes closed imagining the horse as it was described, Leonardo smiled. “I have a passion for all living creatures, but none do I love more than horses. There is such a dignity about them. So much strength and so much sweetness in a single package. One can commune very deeply with a horse.”

Lorenzo nodded, feeling the truth in Leonardo’s sentiments and, I thought, suddenly understanding his heart. “Have you a horse of your own?” Lorenzo asked.

“No, I’ve no time to give to a horse. And no money to keep one. I ride whenever someone will loan me a mount.” He smiled in my direction. “And I commune with my uncle’s mule. We’re old friends.”

“I have a stable full of beautiful animals, Leonardo,” Lorenzo said. There was such matter-of-factness in the statement, I thought, with not a trace of gloating or ostentation. “Please feel free to ride any of them.”

“Except Morello,” Leonardo said with a teasing grin.

“Except Morello,” Lorenzo agreed. He laughed, and I with him.

I could not have been more pleased with the outcome of this meeting if I had written the dialogue myself.

“What’s all the commotion?”

We looked up to see one of the other apprentices standing above us. He asked Leonardo, “You coming carousing with us tonight? Visit the prostitutes?” He grinned wickedly. “Girls or boys. Your choice.”

My son flushed with embarrassment, and even I had a difficult time keeping a straight face. “Of course,” Leonardo answered. He seemed to have regained his composure. “But not too early. The maestro gets cross with us if we haven’t finished our work.”

The boy moved on to invite other apprentices to the night’s adventure.

“Well,” Lorenzo said to me as he stood. “Shall we go and see what progress has been made on the tomb without a crowd surrounding it?”

I rose to his side. “
Ciao
, Leonardo.”

“Uncle . . . ,” he said and nodded a good-bye.

“Fare well tonight,” Lorenzo instructed him with a conspiratorial wink. But when my friend’s eyes met mine he looked quickly away.

“I shall do my best,” Leonardo called after us as we moved toward the chapel door.

“Don’t forget to visit the horses!” Lorenzo called back.

CHAPTER 14

I had never seen Leonardo so nervous before. He, and the younger of the bottega’s apprentices taking orders from him, were rushing around the nave of the still-empty silver-gray and pillared interior of the Church of San Spirito, perfecting last-minute details on the set for this evening’s
sacre rappresentazione
, “The Descent of the Holy Ghost to the Apostles.” This performance, overseen by Giuliano de’ Medici, was meant as a spectacular climax of the state visit to Florence of the royal family of Milan—four weeks of insanely indulgent entertainment.

Duke Galeazzo Maria Sforza was an Italian tyrant known far and wide for his appalling cruelty. A myriad of stories had circulated in tavernas and over backyard fences in the past weeks. One about the poacher that Galeazzo had had executed by forcing the man to eat whole the hare he’d caught on ducal land—fur, teeth, and claws included. How he raped his courtiers’ wives and enjoyed ripping men’s bodies apart with his bare hands.

Why,
the opinionated citizens of Florence argued loudly over my apothecary counter,
was Lorenzo seeking such a despicable man’s friendship?
But even the simplest Florentine understood the importance of alliances.

“His wife, ‘Bona,’ is the French king’s daughter,” one of my customers had observed.

“A poke in the pope’s eye,” said another. “Sixtus will see that our friendship with Milan is unbreakable. No better way to show strength than that.”

“How does it look, Uncle Cato?” Leonardo had come up behind me.

I regarded the realistically painted wooden mountains that stretched across the front of the tabernacle. I opened my mouth to speak.

“Just wait. One moment more,” he told me, then gave a signal to a thirteen-year-old apprentice standing to one side of the set. The boy promptly disappeared, and all at once I heard the metallic grinding of gears.

To my amazement the mountains began to move, first to the left and back to the right.

“Tonight,” Leonardo said, his eyes sparkling, “with lights flashing as brightly as lightning bolts, and the loudest, most ungodly noises you’ve ever heard, it should look as if an earthquake is happening amidst a storm.”

I shook my head in wonder at the effects created by my son’s latest
ingegni
. “It is the most fantastical thing you have ever done,” I said sincerely. “And that, Leonardo, is saying a great deal.”

He smiled with pleasure. The wide-eyed village boy had come so far so quickly. Within five years under Verrocchio’s tutelage he had graduated from paintbrush cleaner to trusted assistant to First Apprentice. His master had never once chosen jealousy over advancement. Leonardo’s first assignment on a major work,
The Baptism of Christ
, was a single little angel holding Christ’s robes. The maestro himself had completed the tortured figures of Jesus and the Baptist in the River Jordan, then given his young student full flight with the oils he had recently learned to use. The resulting figure, a celestial child with his head thrown back over his shoulder, all rose and honey skin tones, and ethereal blond curls, was recognized at once as a minor masterpiece. So moved was Verrocchio by Leonardo’s angel that in a stunning admission of his own inferiority he’d let it be known he would abandon his own work with oils, leaving that art to its true maestros. His first loves, gold working and overseeing his bottega, would thereafter suffice. Leonardo’s work on that single angel had demonstrated so staggering an originality and depth of feeling that my boy’s reputation in the world of Florentine artists was established, and once and forever sealed.

The visiting Milanese royals had been in Florence a full month now, during which time I had seen little of Lorenzo. He was spending all his time proving his worthiness to his ally of the north. Leonardo and Giuliano were constant companions, however, for it was that Medici who provided the approval and the florins for every spectacle and pageant that had been planned for the Sforzas.

Indeed, now Giuliano arrived at San Spirito, ahead of the guests who would soon be filling the church. As I stood in the back he entered and headed down the long central aisle, straight for Leonardo, who at once began pointing out to his patron how the evening’s scenario would unfold. As the pair of them put their heads together I caught glimpses of Giuliano’s face and was reminded how beautiful a man he was becoming. He’d lost nothing, I was happily reminded, of his sweetness or boyish charm.

Suddenly their jovial laughter rang out in the church, thundering amidst the massive columns and monstrously high arches. My own heart expanded with the sound, and as I watched the apprentices light a thousand candles, throwing Leonardo and Giuliano into golden light, I knew that I could not have wished for a finer friend for my son.

Before long the huge doors of San Spirito banged open and hordes of Florentines and Milanese entered. They had traveled on foot and horseback and in coaches south from the Palazzo Medici, across Ponte Santa Trinita to this church on the other side of the Arno.

As Lorenzo strode up the center of the cavernous church followed by the Milanese nobles, he spotted me and brought forward a young man looking to be no more than fifteen. He was small and muscle-bound under his velvet doublet, a young tough in fine clothing
.
It was his complexion, though, that was his most outstanding feature. It was dark olive, to the point of looking brown.

“Cato, meet Ludovico Sforza. Vico is Duke Galeazzo’s youngest brother.”

As I executed a brief formal bow I felt a twinge of premonition, as if I were seeing this young man in my future.

“What do you think, Cato?” Lorenzo said, playfully elbowing the Sforza boy. “Is Vico even swarthier than me?”

“He looks to have enjoyed the sun more than most,” I offered, unsure of how familiar I should be.

“I love to bake in the sun,” the young man said, having taken no offense whatsoever. “I slather olive oil on my skin and it turns me this color.”

“Vico
Il Moro
,” Lorenzo jested.

“The Moor,” Ludovico repeated. “I like it. It fits.”

More people crowded in and Lorenzo, finding his wife and mother, took one on either arm and gestured that I should join his retinue at the front of the church. I did follow, but cut off by a group of raucous young men overeager for the best viewing, I found myself half a dozen rows behind my friends. It seemed an eternity before the enormous crowd settled and the first eerie strains of pipe and lyre music commenced.

Then suddenly with the violence Leonardo had promised, the mountains began to move and rumble, and the sky filled with a band of angels, who were men and boys hoisted high and flying through the air on all-but-invisible ropes and pulleys. Explosions like thunder rocked the air, and a brilliant light flashed, then quickly faded, almost as real as bolts of lightning.

I heard women around me shrieking with fear and delight at the spectacle, and I guessed that more than a few men were quaking in their boots.

The story of the descent of the Holy Ghost—here a tall, gaunt creature in flowing tissue robes and a golden spiked halo—down into the presence of twelve cowering apostles was played out amidst wooden painted clouds and smoke billowing from behind the mountains. The effect was so gripping, so terrifying—even for a nonbeliever like myself—that no one realized that the smoke was
real
.