Signora Da Vinci (49 page)

What Jews Queen Isabella had not murdered in her brutal Inquisition she expelled
en masse
from Spain, while her navigator Christoforo Columbus, sailing west across the Ocean Sea, found a new world, claiming all the gold and heathen souls there for Christendom.

King Louis of France went to his grave, leaving his throne and the first standing army in Europe’s history to an ambitious twenty-two-year-old named Charles, who, with his huge flaring birthmark near one eye, a fearsome facial twitch, and six toes on each foot, was most sympathetically described as appallingly educated, most disparagingly as “an abortion.”

I remained in Florence alone in my little house living half a life, for though Lorenzo had left me well provided for, I had no work to do. Without my apothecary I had no means to heal my neighbors, even if they had dared seek help from one of the “sorcerers” the Prior of San Marco decried from his pulpit. Books were too dangerous to own except for Scripture. If one was found it was burned along with its owner.

There was no one left in the Palazzo Medici who knew me, Lucrezia having followed her beloved son to the grave within months. After Lorenzo’s death at Careggi, Piero and his family had slinked back to Florence like dogs who cower at the sound of thunder. And though he ostensibly ruled in his father’s place, he was granted neither credence nor respect.

My friends of the Academy were taking shelter in Rome or Venice, or keeping their heads down in the sad city of Florence. No festivals, horse races, gambling, no dancing, no Sunday
calcio
matches. All that was left were solemn masses and sermons that grew blacker and blacker, and a populace beaten by their fears of eternal damnation into dull submission.

I had begun attending Savonarola’s church services, knowing it was there at the Duomo that I would receive the first signal that our conspiracy had sprung to life.

“Oh, my sinning children,” he sang out to an overflowing crowd at the cathedral one Sunday in early 1493. “I must speak to you of prophecy today. Of a holy relic that will shortly be revealed to us.”

The audience pressed forward, straining to hear, for there was nothing more dear to the hearts of Christians than their relics.

I covered my smile with my hand, remembering all that had transpired at the Corte Vecchia and in the Pavia house. In the last moments of his life Lorenzo had whispered word of the shroud not as a message from God—the prior would never have believed such a sinner. But we knew the man was a cheat. He called intelligence gleaned from confessions made to his priests “the word of an all-knowing God.” We’d gambled that the self-proclaimed “Prophet of Florence” would be unable to resist so exciting a prediction, as a
bribe
from Lorenzo to save his soul.

The Prior of San Marco.

I wondered what thoughts must be crashing round in his head. His prophecy of Lorenzo’s and Innocent’s deaths in 1492 was surely no more than educated calculations. All knew how ill the two men had been. But this,
this
revelation would be proof of his infallibility. And news of it had come from Lorenzo, his greatest enemy.

After that day, the people of Florence, already aquake at the prior’s words, grew excited, and impatient for further news of the relic’s public showing. But now, finally, it was my time to leave the city.

There was so much more work left to be done.

 

I left for Rome immediately, this time allowing myself the comfort of a coach.

Two cardinals came out to greet me—Ascanio Sforza, now the right hand of the pope, and Lorenzo’s son Giovanni, whom I’d known since birth. He was only sixteen but looked as serious as could be in his red cassock and cap. Ascanio asked after my nephew, Leonardo, and we shared condolences on our loss of Lorenzo. Just before his death, Lorenzo had written Giovanni a long letter, the boy told me, knowing that his son was about to take up his cardinal’s position in Rome and wishing to impart to him the best of his knowledge and wisdom as he took his place in the world of powerful men. Knowing what dear friends we had been, Giovanni offered that before I left the city he would allow me, if I wished, to read Lorenzo’s last letter.

Then he slipped away and Ascanio escorted me through the Vatican with no further delay and into the Holy Father’s private apartments. I found it a scene of great artistic industry, the scaffolding just then being removed from newly painted frescoes in the four rooms of his personal sanctuary.

Roderigo Borgia had, as did so many Italian men, thickened with age. There were remnants of his handsomeness, but the nose had sharpened into a beak, and a bloated wattle of skin extended from chin to collarbone.

I began to make the appropriate kneeling obeisance to the most Christian man in the world, but he pulled me upright, dispelling all formality. In the Room of Saints he, Ascanio, and I sat in three chairs in front of the grandest hearth I had ever seen—solid gold pillars upholding a green marble mantel over which was painted a fresco from which I could not take my eyes.

“Pinturicchio has done a marvelous thing with my apartment, do you not agree, Cato?” said the pope, aware of my steady gaze on the fresco.

“He is the painter of all these new works?” I asked.

“The man has been decorating the Vatican for twenty-five years.” Roderigo smiled and cocked his head. “He is no Leonardo, but perhaps we shall yet have your nephew in Rome.”

“Forgive me, Your Grace,” I said, tilting my chin at the painting above the fireplace, “but is not the lady on the throne
Isis
?”

“She is.”

“And if I might presume,” I went on, “that the man sitting to the right of her is Moses, then may I assume the man on her left is Hermes Trismegistus?”

“You have a good eye for the heretical, my friend.”

I was startled. Though I knew where Roderigo Borgia’s sympathies lay, it had never occurred to me that as the pope he would so blatantly flaunt his own Hermetic bent.
Thus is the nature of absolute power,
I thought
. In such a position a man believes himself unassailable, infallible. Godlike.
I thanked the Fates that at this crucial juncture, the most powerful man in Christendom was a like-minded soul, and dedicated to the same mission I was.

“Yes,” he said lightly, calling for more wine with a mere twitch of his finger at a silk-clad page. “Later I will show you the other frescoes. I’ve got Hermes again in the Room of Sibyls, and behind you, it’s yet to be uncovered”—he pointed to a canvas-draped wall—“is a wonderful scene indeed. The bull is the Borgia family emblem, as is the Egyptian bull, Apis.”

“Apis is worshipped as Osiris, the sun god, if I am not mistaken,” I said.

Roderigo nodded. “In the frescoes I have Egyptians worshipping the holy cross as well as the pyramid, as well as the bull.”

“In the end, they are all worshipping
you
, Roderigo,” Ascanio Sforza quipped.

“As it should be,” the Holy Father said with a wicked grin. “Now, Cato, you must tell us the news of Florence and the Prior of San Marco.”

With some relish I described Leonardo’s shroud hoax. Both pope and cardinal might have been bolted to their chairs for all they moved during my telling of our failures with the decomposing corpse, alchemical adventures, and the magic of the
camera obscura
.

“And when will this masterpiece be shown?” Roderigo asked me.

“On Easter Sunday in Vercelli, the most Christian Holy Roman Empress, Bianca Sforza, will for the first time in forty-five years display for all pilgrims the Savoy family’s Lirey Shroud.”

“Though much improved,” Roderigo added with a sardonic smile.

“Beyond all imagining,” I said. “I believe that our work, together with Savonarola’s obsession for sainthood, will coalesce into our conspiracy’s first triumph.”

“Well,” said the pontiff, sitting forward, “I can now enlighten you as to the second chapter of our conspiracy. While the first was of a scientific nature, this one, I’m afraid, is of a most political and strategic complexion.”

Political?
I thought. Of all the civilized arts, and though Lorenzo’s forte, politics was the one of which I understood the least.

“My brother Ludovico
Il Moro
,” Ascanio began, “has for reasons of greed and revenge set into motion a most disturbing chain of events that will affect all of Italy. As it cannot be undone, we have happily conceived of a way to use it to our advantage. Once more, we will need Leonardo’s artistic skills.”

“And Savonarola’s appetite for self-aggrandizement,” Roderigo added.

“Both of which are already in great supply,” I said.

Roderigo sat back and began to drum his fingers on the gilt claw arm of his chair. “What do you know of the French king, Charles?”

“Nothing but the greedy and lecherous reputation that precedes him,” I replied.

Roderigo and Ascanio exchanged a mysterious look.

“Think a hundred times worse,” the cardinal said to me, eliciting a smile, then continued. “Now consider a scenario in which
Il Moro
, the King of France, and Savonarola himself all become unwitting players in the tragic downfall of our favorite prior.”

“I do not believe I can imagine a more pleasurable pastime,” Roderigo said.

“Then all I will need to set things in motion,” I said, “are the details for my nephew.”

“Bring me
Il Moro
’s letter,” Roderigo said to Ascanio, “and let Cato see the means to our end.”

CHAPTER 37

I was needed in Milan for help with the showing of the Lirey Shroud. I looked forward to traveling north again. Florence now held more evil memories for me than happy ones. Indeed, there was no place on earth that I would rather have been than Milan, for there lived my father, my son, and my grandson.

The day I arrived a small army of workmen was installing four large furnaces at the corners of the great pit that had been dug for the bronze horse casting. The clay model itself was nowhere to be seen.

Leonardo was beside himself with excitement, though in perfect control of his senses, directing the burly iron smiths as to the specific placement of the smelters. Stacked in a corner nearby was a huge pile of scrap metal.

“He’s gone mad collecting metal,” Zoroastre told me, coming to my side.

“I’ve only begun,” Leonardo said. “It’s frightening to think how much I shall need for the statue. But
Il Moro
has promised me a great load of it.”

“Like he promised to pay you for decorating Beatrice’s rooms?” Zoroastre sniped.

“Ludovico withholds your fees?” I asked Leonardo.

“Let us say he is slow to pay. But he did unveil the equestrian monument—the clay statue—at the Castella, in honor of Bianca’s marriage to Maximilian.”

“Everyone loved it,” Zoroastre added, then said to me, “It’s a disgrace that Leonardo is reduced to sending letters begging for money owed him.”

“I would stifle my complaining about Ludovico until we are thrown out of the palace he has given us to live in,” Leonardo said.

“What is that?” I said to change the course of conversation, pointing to an enormous sheet-draped object on the far side of the ballroom.

It was all points and angles beneath the cover. I walked across to the sheeted mountain. On the wall behind it were endless, obsessive sketches of bird wings, bat wings, insect wings, angel wings. Wings from every angle, paying most attention to their articulated joints. Leonardo came up behind me and stood silently for a moment, appraising the drawings almost as though they were new to him.

“I don’t suppose I need to ask what is under the sheet,” I said.

“Would you like to see it?” His eyes were suddenly alight.

I nodded, and in the next instant the cloth had been pulled away.

Despite having seen Leonardo’s first attempt at a flying machine, and now the sketches on the wall, the massive contraption was still a shock to my eye. The two long bat wings fashioned from oiled leather and stretched over struts of pine were clearly constructed to move with their mechanisms of springs, wires, and pulleys. The wings attached to a slender, almost delicate gondola with stirruped pedals sticking out the bottom, and an intricate canvas harness was designed to hold a man inside the machine—and the wings to the man.

“Isn’t she beautiful?” Leonardo said.

“I find ‘her’ rather alarming.”

“This one will fly,” he said, ignoring my worry. “I’m sure of it. It’s light. Perfectly proportioned. With the right wind . . .”

“Leonardo . . .” Zoroastre had come up behind us. “Why don’t you show Cato to his room. He must be exhausted from his journey.”

“Thank you, my friend,” he said to Zoroastre, then to me, “I do get caught up with myself and need reminding.”

Leonardo and I went up the great staircase together, passing by the old ducal apartments where I had spent my last nights alone with Lorenzo.

“I’ve brought all your notebooks and folios that I’ve been keeping for you,” I told him.

“Why now?” he asked.

“Because I feel you are safe now. In your own home. And they belong to you.”

“And this,” he said, ushering me through another doorway and into a single bedchamber, “belongs to you.”

I might have been stepping into a sultan’s harem, what with lengths of vermilion silk draped and woven above, altogether tenting the ceiling. Brilliant-hued brocade cushions were piled around the room’s perimeter on the intricately patterned Turkey rug. Crossed scimitars hung on one wall, an exotic stringed instrument inlaid with tortoise-shell on another. The latticed window threw patterns on the low, satin-draped bed, and a hookah to one side, its long tube mouthpiece hanging down, seemed to await languid partaking.

“It’s lovely, Leonardo.”

“I decorated it for you myself, though many of the artifacts are Grandfather’s.”

I turned and went into his arms. “No one has ever had a sweeter child than you.”