Signora Da Vinci (48 page)

I hardly knew how to begin. “I have never believed in magic, Lorenzo. Like my son, I adhere to the infinite possibilities of Nature. But what Leonardo created out of natural substances and alchemical processes is something
magical
, even to these skeptical eyes of mine.”

“And will it serve our purposes in all the necessary ways?”

“Perfectly.”

Lorenzo exhaled a long satisfied sigh. “Then I will leave this world content,” he said. “How wonderful it would be if all people knew that by their death something great would be gained.”

It was inconceivable how sanguine he was at the thought of dying.

“Piero . . . ,” I began.

“Piero will prove a disastrous leader,” Lorenzo said. “He hasn’t a prayer of overcoming the prior’s influence. Things in Florence will grow far worse before they can improve. I want you to go back to live with Leonardo in Milan.”

I nodded my assent. It was, with every moment, growing more difficult to speak, with no sorrow, no regret.

“Can you move closer?” he whispered hoarsely, unable to keep the pain from his voice. “Your heat is soothing.”

I pushed as close as I could to him and laid one arm over his chest. I felt his lips on the crown of my head.

“There is something I must tell you now—what I learned from
Il Moro
when we last visited him. What he and Roderigo are planning. Roderigo,” he murmured with no little awe, “the first Borgia pope. When he takes the tall hat you must go to Rome and see him. He holds the final intelligence that will secure our conspiracy’s success.”

When he groaned I released my hold on him, knowing the touch of my body, while perhaps warming him, must also be causing him pain. We lay side by side staring up at the underside of the bed’s carven canopy.

“If Innocent is that close to dying,” I said, “do you realize that Savonarola correctly prophesied the year of your death
and
the pope’s?”

“I do. In its own perverse way, that is what will make what I tell our friend so perfectly believable. Caterina, I need you to bring me a pen and paper.”

I rose reluctantly and went to the desk.

Leaning on one elbow, Lorenzo struggled with his gnarled fingers to do the necessary writing.

“Let me do it,” I said.

“No. The invitation must come from my own hand.”

When it was done I poured red wax over the folded letter and closed it with the Medici seal.

He lay back, exhausted with that small exertion.

“How long do you think the pulverized gems will take to kill me?” he asked unexpectedly.

I turned and strode back to his bedside.

“Lorenzo, no! I cannot even imagine the pain it will cause.”

“It can be no worse than what I’m already suffering. Caterina,” he said, grabbing my hand, “I must know when to take it. I want to
die in his presence
. Think what he will make of that!”

I lay down again to embrace him, finally unable to hide my desperation or contain my tears. His arms went around me and he kissed my face a hundred times.

“Go now, love,” he finally said.

I rose, and hardly knowing how to put one foot in front of the other, went to the door.

“You must thank Leonardo for me,” I heard him say. “And all the world will thank you, sweetest of all women . . . for Leonardo.”

I turned back for my final sight of the man whom I had been so blessed to love.

“One last smile, Lorenzo,” I said. “I wish to remember you smiling.”

 

I rode into Florence and again to Via Larga.

It took all my courage to walk into the Monastery of San Marco. I spoke quietly to a fresh-faced young monk, saying I held a correspondence from Lorenzo de’ Medici that must be delivered to his prior in person.

He scurried away, no doubt puffed with importance that he should be the one who would bring this momentous news to Savonarola.

A different Dominican returned, this one older and more severe. He looked as though he might never have smiled in his whole life, and eyed the sealed letter in my hand, as though it had been written by Satan himself.

“You will follow me,” he instructed, and turned away.

Up we went to the first-floor hallway. The place stank of urine, as though the monks rarely bothered to piss out of doors, and each tonsured man that saw me glared, as though he believed his evil eye might frighten me.

The door to a small, plain cell was opened. The Prior Savonarola, sitting at a spare desk on a backless bench, was gazing out an arched window, the one I knew to overlook the Medici sculpture garden. Without looking up he gestured for the severe-looking monk to leave us.

Then we were alone.

He turned, and I was struck once again by the man’s hideousness—lips, nose, close-set eyes ringed with brown shadows, and suffused with a sick, simmering rage.

“Why should I believe this comes from the Medici tyrant?” Savonarola said, skewering me with the beady green eyes.

“Because, Father,” I said in my humblest tone, “here is the Medici seal.” I handed him the folded letter. “I know how severely I would be punished for bringing you a forgery.”

He plucked the missive from my hand and brought it to the window, peering closely at the seal before opening it. He stood with his back to me as he read Lorenzo’s words, and I could see the slightly hunched back straighten.

“You realize I have already rejected a dozen of his invitations to visit with him,” he said.

I shook my head stupidly.

“Do you know what is in this letter?” Savonarola asked me, turning back to watch my face as I answered.

“I do, Father. Lorenzo—”

“The Medici tyrant,” he corrected me.

“The Medici tyrant,” I continued obediently, “is in full cognizance of his sins as he lies dying, and wishes to confess them to you.”

“He is at Careggi?”

“Yes.”

“And he has no trap laid for me along the way?”

“No, Father! He has simply seen, as the end draws near, the shrieking abyss of his sinful life, and wishes for redemption.” I fell to my knees before him. “Please be merciful.”

He stared at me suspiciously. “Do I know you?”

“Yes, Father.” I looked down at the floor. “Some years ago your angels brought me to the Office of Night for an infringement of God’s law. I quickly saw the error of my ways and was fortunate to have received personal instruction from your fair, correcting hand.”

“And you are yet an intimate of the Medici,” he accused.

“Only
recently
, Father. Only since I have helped guide him to God. Please . . .” I grabbed the prior’s hand, forcing myself to kiss it. “Please hear his confession. Do not let him die unshriven!”

“How close is he to death?”

“Hours. The doctors say he will be gone by morning.”

“Leave me,” he said dismissively.

“But will you see him, Father?” I pressed. “His is a soul worth saving. Imagine how many would benefit from knowing Lorenzo de’ Medici has, with your help, stepped from the shadows into the light.”

I dared look up only enough to see Savonarola nodding in silent agreement. I lowered my eyes quickly.

“Rise,” he said. “I will see this wretched devil. It will take a merciful God indeed to bring him from the edge of the great abyss to salvation.”

“Thank you, thank you!” I cried, kissing his hand again and again. Then I rose, revulsion in my throat, and quite unable to look into that face again, I left his cell and walked swiftly from the monastery.

Outside on Via Larga, sure no one was watching, I spat the filth of his person from my mouth onto the ground. I walked the short block to the Palazzo Medici and stood in the front doorway peering back at San Marco. It was not long before a band of angels began pouring forth into the street. Now a carriage appeared, and the prior emerged, a phalanx of Dominicans surrounding him. They helped him inside and the carriage drove away.

Soon enough, Via Largo began to fill with Florentines. Word had gone out. Angels were spreading the news.
Il Magnifico
had called for Savonarola to hear his confession!

With that knowledge, and realizing some hours must pass till the next measure of success, I disappeared into the palazzo.

The courtyard was deserted but for a few guards. Lorenzo’s library door was wide open, the shelves obscenely empty. I pulled the door shut and went to the man guarding the grand stairway.

“Did you see him?” he asked me.

I nodded. “He is very brave,” I told him. “He means to die a good death.”

The man began to cry. He moved aside and let me pass. I took the steps for what I knew to be the last time, to the first floor, now all but deserted.

There was glory here,
I thought,
glory of a kind perhaps never seen before and once disappeared, never to return
. Beauty reigned without question—towering colonnades, statuary, paintings and gardens. But something greater lived in the House of Medici.

Love of family. Care and passion and pride. Reverence for ancestry. Hope for the young. Loyalty. Goodness. Grace.

It would die with Lorenzo.
The time of greatness has passed
. I knew this as I walked the echoing hallway. Stepped into the great salon. Stood gazing at Gozzoli’s frescoed chapel.

I went to the east wall where Lorenzo had shown me the artist’s two renditions of the one-day Medici ruler—the idealized, handsome young man with fair curls riding a proud horse, and the red-hatted scholar pressed amidst a gaggle of boys, his squashed nose and swarthy complexion easy to miss in a crowd.

Lorenzo had been both of these, I thought. Friend to princes and philosophers alike. Bawdy. Reserved. Playful. Fearless. Common. Kingly. Humble. Generous. Kind.

Il Magnifico
. He had earned his title.

It had been my honor to have loved him.

Even now he lay dying, pearls and diamonds coursing through his veins. With his last breath he would whisper secrets into a devil’s ear, the slender dagger blade of lies that would pierce the fine chinks in that glittering armor of false righteousness.

They would live as one until the end of time.

 

Sitting alone in the great salon I heard the noise of the crowd below on Via Larga as it grew in size in anticipation of Savonarola’s return. I had willed myself to be numb, without feeling of any kind. I thought that if I allowed myself even a dram of emotion to seep to the surface I might lose my grasp of this world. Like Silio Ficino see ghostly battles in the sky, or that poor woman with her visions of a raging bull pulling down the church. I must, for all our sakes, for the sake of the city, for the memory of Lorenzo, hold tight to my own sanity. Save my grief for later.

There’d be time enough for that.

A great cry rose up from the crowd and I knew the prior had returned. I took myself down the staircase and out the door of the palazzo to find the length of the street overflowing, all the people pressing in the direction of the chapel’s front door. My body became the sharp prow of a ship slicing through waves as I pushed through the mass of humanity to the base of the church steps.

There he stood in his glory, burning with obscene religious passion.

“My children!” he shouted, quieting every voice, “I come with great tidings! The Medici tyrant is dead! Remember my sermons! Remember that I foretold of his death
in this year
!”

Now there was murmuring in the crowd. I felt my knees go weak, but I forced myself to straighten, knowing worse was to come.

“As I arrived at the Devil’s lair of Careggi, fiery lights blazed in the sky above! I trembled at the sight, for I knew it was God’s beacon leading me to help in that sinner’s salvation! In his luxurious bed he writhed and suffered in great agony, but less of the body than the spirit, for he knew how atrociously he had lived! He begged me to absolve him of his sins, desperately afraid of dying unshriven, screaming at the prospect of Hell for all Eternity!”

I turned myself into stone to endure the words, hoping for some sign that Lorenzo had managed to accomplish his part.

Savonarola raised his arms to the heavens. “The fiery star above Careggi began to dim as the life did from the sinner’s body. In that moment he pulled me close and whispered in my ear a confession that I believed sincere!” He closed his eyes as though in ecstasy. “And then a miracle happened! Another voice spoke to me through the lips of this sinner . . .” The crowd was still and the silence fearful. “And it was the voice of God!”

There were shouts of surprise. A woman began to weep in terror. I heard Lorenzo’s name called, and “God save us!” all around me.

“What did the Lord say!?” someone called from the street.

“This prophecy is one that shall be revealed in the fullness of time!” Savonarola cried with grave portentousness.

I felt my body sag with relief. Like carefully aimed arrows, Lorenzo’s words whispered to this unholy monster in his final moments of life had found their intended mark. As Savonarola had done in the past—culling his parishioners’ most secret confessions to create his corrupt predictions of the future—he had greedily pulled the loosened threads of our shroud conspiracy to use for his own self-exalting purposes, never realizing that
we
were the weavers, and that the completed fabric would become his very own winding cloth.

In the fullness of time, indeed.

The wait would seem interminable, but the reward would be savory.

CHAPTER 36

It was a year of death and of new beginnings, 1492. Pope Innocent, upon hearing of Lorenzo’s passing, proclaimed, “The peace of Italy is at an end!” then promptly succumbed to a final convulsion and died.

Roderigo Borgia, to great acclaim, ascended the papal throne, assuming the pagan name of Alexander—after the Greek sodomite general who had conquered the world. His first act as pontiff was to write Pico della Mirandola a personal letter of support, absolving him of his heretical crimes of Cabalist scholarship.