Leonardo's Swans (21 page)

Leonardo stood silently, amazed, perhaps, along with Isabella, at Ludovico’s outburst.

“It would be less costly!” Ludovico added as if bolstering his argument. “Even if the horses were of fine quality!”

“Ah, Your Excellency, I see that you believe I have wasted my hours, when it has been my highest intent to create something not commonly seen, something extraordinary and new with which to honor the memory of your illustrious father.” Leonardo’s voice was silky and even. “I shall quicken my efforts, not because I believe that speed will contribute to quality, but because it is my fondest wish to serve you.”

With that, the Magistro’s nostrils flared, not unlike those of the horses in his drawings. He did not appear insulted or angry, but rather puffed himself up like a rooster who was about to leave a satisfied henhouse.

Before Ludovico could reply, the Magistro performed perfunctory bows in the directions of Beatrice and Isabella, snapping his finger at his mute servant before turning away from them and hurrying from the room. The boy scooped Leonardo’s drawings off the table and, without meeting anyone’s eyes, ran after his master. Isabella wanted to fly after the Magistro and invite him to Mantua, but she dared not. She wanted to assure him that neither she nor the marquis would ever hurry his genius; that they understood that such labors evolved in their own time. She looked to her sister, expecting Beatrice to admonish her husband for his impatience, but Beatrice was in the act of standing and offering her chair to him instead.

“My dear, you mustn’t allow yourself to get so distraught over these dealings with the Magistro. It isn’t good for your health. He does not mean to be a frustration to you.”

Rather than sit, Ludovico took his wife into his arms, kissing her forehead. “Imagine, Isabella! My wife is heavy with child, and it’s my health that concerns her.” He raised Beatrice’s face so that he could look into her eyes. “How did I ever live without you, my darling? Isabella, does she not look positively beatific?”

Indeed, she did. Beatrice’s cheeks were cherub pink and, like her belly, rounded. She must have been staying off her steeds as a precaution because her skin was soft and pale like the petal of a white rose. Beatrice’s brown doll’s eyes were wider than ever, but in Isabella’s mind, there was a new strength to her sister that belied her ever-softening features. Yet Ludovico was doting over her as if she were a newly acquired piece of precious porcelain.

“A rose in full bloom,” Isabella muttered, aware that she had not only just lost an opportunity to arrange a sitting with Leonardo but was also losing whatever secret power she had formerly held over her brother-in-law. She even wondered if Ludovico had his outburst in front of her so that she would see his difficulties with the Magistro and stop requesting a sitting. Her brother-in-law was capable of such subtle intrigue, though mistaken if he thought his sister-in-law would be so easily deterred.

“The man acquired his position at this court after convincing me that it was his great passion to make the equestrian statue in honor of my father, but in the last twelve years, he has spent his time on everything but that.”

“You don’t know the half of it, Isabella,” Beatrice said. “The Magistro tells us that he spends all his time working toward sculpting the horse, but we have heard that he is devoting secret time to inventing a machine that would enable a man to take flight as if he were a bird! Imagine!”

“Can you not withhold his household allowance?” Isabella inquired. “He should soon be hungry enough to do your bidding.”

“Oh, I am soft when it comes to genius,” Ludovico exclaimed, putting his head in his hands as if he was never sorrier for another soul than he was for himself for having this all-too-mortal foible.

Ludovico went on to explain how Leonardo spent all his days at the stables, admiring four particular stallions, as well as the magnificent frescoes of different-colored horses, and drawing them from every possible angle. “He has spent more time looking at a horse’s rear end than any man in history,” Ludovico complained, throwing Beatrice into peals of giggles. “I believe he is trying to make a horse’s ass out of me!”

“One cannot hurry genius,” Isabella said, aware that Ludovico was, with every utterance, also preparing her for the disappointment of hearing that Leonardo making a portrait of her on this visit was out of the question.

“I am beside myself,” Ludovico complained. “A few months ago, I sent a request to Lorenzo the Magnificent to send me another Florentine sculptor who would execute the equestrian monument. But then Lorenzo—God rest his discriminating and shrewd soul—passed away. I’ll never be able to replace Leonardo now. Damn the man!”

“You must rest, Ludovico,” Beatrice said. “These things always have a way of working out for the best.” She took Isabella’s arm, leading her out of the room.

“Would Ludovico really send the Magistro away?” Isabella asked, wondering if she could use this opportunity to steal the Magistro away to Mantua without incurring her brother-in-law’s wrath.

“Oh, Ludovico will calm down. Those two are like an old married couple, Isabella. At the end of the day, they always make up. They would no more part company than would Mother and Father.”

I
SABELLA
had her first opportunity to be alone with Ludovico when he offered to take her on a tour of the Treasure Tower. Ludovico took the key from the steward and dismissed him, opening the door for Isabella and allowing her to walk in. Armed guards, replaced every eight hours, Ludovico explained, stood at attention as the marchesa passed by and into the vaults. She heard the door close behind her.

Light streamed from triangular windows set high in the walls, falling on bushels and bushels of silver ducats sitting in painted barrels and organized according to weight and worth. Long tables held jewels of every kind, the stones and gems too numerous in variety for Isabella to identify. Great silver crosses laden with diamonds were arranged from small to large covering the length of a dining table. Collars and belts glittering with variegated gems lay waiting to be placed about the neck or hip of the fortunate. Tapestries and paintings lined the walls from ceiling to floor. Trunks of silver sat upon handwoven carpets, and tall candelabra of gold and silver, perhaps two hundred pairs, crowded the corner of the great room like some strange army frozen in motion. In the far reaches of the vault sat heaps of coins of every kind, piled so high that Isabella guessed that Beatrice, on her best horse, could not have jumped it.

Isabella felt light-headed surrounded by so much wealth, realizing that she was visiting her sister’s personal jewelry box. “Dazzling,” she finally said to Ludovico, who had awaited her response.

“This is nothing,” he said, producing another dark iron key from the pocket of his robe. He then began to open the doors of the cabinets lining the walls. Isabella hardly knew how to take in the contents—crowns and other bejeweled headpieces; rings of every size, shape, and stone; ropes of pearls both black and white; and reams of golden cloth and heavy brocade.

“It is too much to take in,” Isabella said. “Two eyes are inadequate to the task.”

“The wealth of a small kingdom inside every cabinet,” Ludovico said.

“The cabinets alone are beautiful,” Isabella said, noting the intricate ivy pattern painted delicately on every door. She tried to trace the snaking design with her eyes, getting dizzy in the process.

“Designed and decorated by the Magistro himself,” Ludovico said.

Ah, Isabella thought, an opening. “Having him make my portrait would be worth everything in this room to me,” Isabella said, as if to the air.

“And yet I can give you anything in this room but that,” she heard him say. She turned around to look at him. Gone was the dancing flirtation in his eyes that had been there the last time she saw him. He seemed older now, treating her as if she were the younger, and Beatrice the more mature. Could pregnancy accomplish so much?

“I must be very direct with you, Your Excellency.” He had never sounded so formal when addressing her. Isabella knew it signaled the end of a certain intimacy between them. “I have already approached the subject with my wife. She will not brook such a thing. She fears that it would signal to the world that I have had another affair.”

“But if the Magistro painted her first?” Isabella offered, feeling the hollow of her stomach sink, remembering how she, herself, had already sabotaged that possibility.

“She won’t have it. She will not be placed on par with one of my mistresses.”

Isabella leaned on one of the tables for support. She thought she would faint. How could she have been so stupid? So intentionally cruel? And now God was punishing her for the sin. She deserved to suffer.

At the same time, she knew that she was not about to give up. This would not be like giving up on a pearl ring or an antique vase or some other trifle. This would be like giving up on immortality itself. But at this moment, she was caught in the middle of a web that she herself had spun and unsure of what to do.

“You look unwell, Isabella,” Ludovico said, taking her hand without a trace of the sensuality that used to pass between them. He looked at her like a concerned father.

“What can we do?” she asked him with tears forming in her upturned eyes.

“At the moment, nothing. As you know, there have been rumors enough about the two of us. The situation is delicate for many reasons. I have tried to make friends everywhere, but I am discovering that I have many enemies. I cannot afford to make one of my wife.”

L
UDOVICO
palliated the pain he caused in the Treasure Tower by giving Isabella a lengthy bolt of gold brocade. “Have something lovely made up,” he told her, kissing her on the forehead. The
forehead
! Then he took her hand, and with the old music back in his voice, confided that things were more complex than she imagined and she must be patient. He invited no further discussion as to what he meant by that cryptic statement, but left her to attend to other business.

The next day, Isabella’s world was further shaken when she came to lunch, only to see a lovely blond woman—sweet of face, curvaceous of body, with sharp, intelligent sea-green eyes—laughing as Beatrice played with a hearty brown-haired little boy. Though she had filled out since she sat for the Magistro more than ten years ago, Isabella recognized the woman instantly from the portrait, and the boy, from the dark hair and full, pouting lips he inherited from his father.

Isabella had no idea how to react to the introduction to Cecilia Gallerani, Ludovico’s former mistress, who now sat at table with Ludovico’s wife, who was bouncing Ludovico’s bastard on her knee. Beatrice could not have been more gracious, even hand-feeding little Cesare sweets and remarking on his resemblance to the Sforza clan. “He will have Ludovico’s height,” she said, as if nothing in the world could have delighted her more than that her husband’s bastard son would not have to suffer being short.

Isabella was unusually quiet during the meal. She gulped three glasses of white wine from Ludovico’s vineyards in the south, politely answering questions posed by Cecilia, while pondering how strange everything had become in the short time since she had last seen the Sforzas. After the meal, Beatrice announced that she was going to take a rest, and Isabella used the opportunity to ask Cecilia to take a walk with her through Il Moro’s recently landscaped park west of the Castello. He had expanded the castle grounds to include fully three miles of forest and garden, and was in the process of having much of it planted in intricate patterns with flowering trees and bushes lining stone pathways.

Walking arm in arm with Cecilia through the grounds, Isabella was just drunk enough to ask her if she had perceived any recent changes in the relations between Ludovico and his wife.

“Oh yes,” Cecilia said in a low tone laden with girlish mischief. “He confessed to me some months ago that he had suddenly and unexpectedly fallen in love with her.”

“Madonna Cecilia, please do not think me indiscreet, but I must ask: Is Il Moro still in love with you?”

“Your Excellency, I understand your sisterly concern and I assure you that you may put your mind at ease. We have not been romantic in a very long time. I am quite content with my husband, and I adore your sister, whose kindness to me has been exceptional. I will always be indebted to Ludovico for arranging a marriage to such a lovely gentleman as Count Bergamini. I have become to Ludovico what an old lover should be, a friend and confidante.” Cecilia tightened her squeeze on Isabella’s arm and whispered in her ear as if they had been friends for years and not hours. “Anyway, after the excitement of the first bloom of romance, what is the difference between one man or another?”

Isabella did not have the experience to support or argue with Cecilia’s assertion. After all, Cecilia was almost thirty. Isabella had experienced two men in her lifetime, one of whom was her husband, whom she did not think she would be ready to trade away in a few years, and the other, Ludovico, who had removed his attention as quickly as he had bestowed it. Isabella, just nineteen, was still trying to sort out her loyalty and duty to her husband, whose power she shared by day and whose lust she shared in the dark of the night, and her longing for her brother-in-law, with whom she had not only experienced an intense attraction but had shared the contents of her mind by letter for the better part of a year.

But Cecilia had no such conflicts; she allowed that she was devoted to her son now, and to decorating her palace, which she intended to compete with the finest private houses anywhere in the world. She was interested in the comforts of home, writing poetry, and acquiring beautiful things.

“Ludovico showers us with treasures for our quarters,” Cecilia said. “I suppose he wants his son to live in the splendor worthy of his family line.”

“I am certain that it is because you gave him many happy years,” Isabella said. She meant it; Cecilia was kind, gracious, and level-headed, and Isabella found herself wishing that this older woman lived near her and could serve as a mentor in womanly matters. If only she knew her better, she could ask her advice about Ludovico’s sudden attachment to Beatrice and what she should do about the ensuing quelling of his feelings for her after a year of courting her by letter.