Signora Da Vinci (11 page)

Piero straightened. “That is true, Maestro Verrocchio thinks very highly of me.”

I managed a smile. “Do you think it is possible to have him consider Leonardo for an apprenticeship?”

There was silence from Piero as he considered this. I could see that lawyerly mind clicking away, tallying up the benefits to himself, and any possible unpleasant consequences. My patience was running thin.

“I cannot see the harm in showing him the drawings,” I said. “You yourself thought they were good.”

Finally Piero looked me squarely in the eye.

“You’re ready to send your son away? You’ve fought like a baited bear since his birth to keep him close to you.”

This was the hardest part. With these words Piero had skewered me as if on a sword, as I had done to him in my dream.

“Yes. I think he should go.” The words sounded so hard to my ears. “If he doesn’t learn a trade, he’ll be nothing but a worthless vagabond, and it will reflect badly on you and your family’s good name.”

He considered this in another lengthy silence. Then without a word, he took the folio from my hands.

“I’ll see what my friend can do.”

Now it was I quaking with emotion.

“Thank you, Piero,” I said, and turning, walked quickly away so he would not see me weeping.

It took more than a year for arrangements to be made, but in the end the apprenticeship was set and Leonardo’s excitement at the thought of beginning his career grew to a fevered pitch.

The only agony, I feared, would be in our parting.

Cato

CHAPTER 7

I had refused to shed tears that day when my boy of thirteen, fresh-faced and gangly limbed, had climbed on the back of Piero’s horse and disappeared from my sight. I believed that my other separations from Leonardo would prepare me for this one. I had initiated it. It was clearly in my son’s best interests. He would be surrounded by a community of artists and be taught by one of Italy’s greatest masters. It would put an end to his lowly status as the village bastard, and provide a chance for him to grow into manhood and rise to a well-deserved glory. We had both promised, of course, to write to each other. These were all indisputable blessings.

Yet it felt as though my heart had been wrenched forcibly from my chest. In the days and weeks after he left my breath came in short gasps. I slept poorly, and when I did sleep my dreams were somber at best, nightmares at worst. I lost my appetite for food, and nothing Magdalena prepared had the slightest flavor in my mouth. I lost weight and developed an alarming pallor.

My work for Papa in the apothecary was lifeless and slipshod. He was forced to remind me several times of potions I was meant to prepare, and the keeping of the alchemical fire, once a mystical ritual, became nothing more than a tiresome chore.

 

I’m ashamed to say I wept reading this letter and the others he wrote about his wonderful new life. I wasted many precious sheets of paper rewriting letters back to him, as I did not wish him to see my tearstains giving lie to the cheerful words I had written. I believed time would heal the gaping wound his departure had left in my soul, but I was wrong. Months growing into years only caused the chasm to fill with bitterness and, worse, self-pity.

On a spring day in the third year of Leonardo’s absence, I mistakenly ground the poisonous leaves of belladonna, and not the healing leaves of marigold, into a salve for Signora Carlotti’s skin rash. Had it not been for Papa’s keen eye as he pushed it across the counter to her, then retracted it, saying the salve must be remade with fresher ingredients, the poor woman would have died a horrible death.

When he later confronted me with my mistake I began to tremble violently, as though I’d been caught naked in an Alpine snowstorm. The strength left my legs and I dropped to the floor in a heap. But I was dry-eyed, my tears all spent.

Papa helped me stand, but I refused his arm as I climbed the stairs to my room. There I lay, still as a corpse for the rest of the day and night, wide-eyed and awake, though paralyzed with loathing for myself and the life I was leading.

The idea came with the first rays of dawn. It was an image of the Egyptian goddess Isis, whose beloved husband, Osiris, had been killed in battle, his body broken into pieces by his evil brother and scattered all over the world. In her great love for Osiris, and with the greatest courage, Isis found every piece and, putting them back together, breathed life into his resurrected body.
What had become of my courage?
I wondered. I had once possessed a great measure of it.
Could I not resurrect it myself?

I dressed and walked up into the hills along the river path. At the waterfall I removed every stitch of clothing and stepped beneath the torrent of icy meltwater come recently from the snow-covered mountains. The freezing shock on my skin forced a shout from my lungs, but the sound, when it came, was a passing from the deepest part of me of all of my pain and my fury. I stood there bellowing my rage, daring Isis to come to this sad, wasted woman and infuse her with strength to do what must be done.

She came to me that day—Queen of the World, bringer of life and love. She came and brought me all I asked for, and more than I ever in my wildest imaginings could have dreamed.

I went to Papa in his laboratory that night and told him my plan.

Leonardo was in Florence, a young apprentice at Maestro Verrocchio’s bottega, but his only family in the city was his father, an ice-hearted man who loved his son not at all. I believed, in fact, that Piero despised the boy, regarded him as an advertisement for his greatest failure. He had been unable to sire a single legitimate male heir on either of his young wives. His only son was a bastard, birthed by a girl not fit for marriage into his proud and ambitious family. Leonardo might as well be an orphan in the city, as much attention as his father was paying him. He needed family there.

He needed me.

I would move to Florence and set up shop as an apothecary. If I sold Mama’s rings I would surely have enough to rent a small place until I began earning a living.

Papa sat himself down on the stool near his athenor and closed his eyes. He rested his chin on his chest, remaining silent for a space of time that felt endless to me, for I was waiting word from my most honored advisor, tutor, and sage. His hands, fingertips stained with the essence of herbs and burnt minerals, lightly clutched his knees. Finally he spoke.

“Surely you have the skills for an apothecary, but I do not like to think of you alone in that city. I have always believed that Florence is the worst of all places to be born a woman.”

“I’ll just have to manage,” I snapped, unhappy at Papa’s response. But I could see him wearing a certain expression of intense concentration he used when pondering the deepest mysteries or the most difficult of mathematical calculations.

“What if you went to Florence . . .” His pause was long and very grave. “. . . disguised as a man?”

“A man?”

“A
young
man.” He was thinking as he spoke. “You are thirty-one. As a male you would look twenty, perhaps. Luckily, men are clean-shaven these days.” He was regarding me intensely as he spoke. “And you are tall, so your height alone will not give you away. Of course you would practice lowering your voice.”

I was staring at him gape-mouthed, but my excitement was rising as the possibilities became clear to me. “Twenty is young for a fully trained apothecary,” I reasoned, “but I might say I was setting up shop for my uncle and master . . . who is soon to follow.” The rest seemed suddenly logical. “My uncle could grow ill and die . . . but by then my customers would trust me.”

I saw him begin to waver, as though he suddenly realized how insane was his idea. I sat down next to him on the bench and took one of his hands in mine.

“How can I approve of this?” he said solemnly.

“Do you approve of me being separated from my only child?” I asked. “Do you approve of my wasting away before your eyes? Do you approve of my endless grief ?”

“Caterina . . .”

“It is the only way. I cannot ask you to leave Vinci. And you’re right, it is madness trying to live a free life in Florence as a woman alone.”

He closed his eyes, comprehending the enormity of it all. Then he said quietly, “I own a house in Florence.”

“What?”

His brows furrowed. “Poggio’s bequest. It’s been so many years, I’d almost forgotten. When my master died, he left me his already deceased father’s apothecary in Florence, and the residence above it. It never passed through my mind either to inhabit or sell it. The place has been sitting idle for years. If it is still there, it will be a rattrap.”

“Will you write and discover its condition?” I said, hardly believing this stroke of luck.

He did not answer immediately. But now my determination had taken hold.

“Papa,
please
. You love me as I love Leonardo,” I said. “How can you say no?”

Of course he had not said no, and our mad plan began immediately to take shape.

 

The guise we had chosen for me was that of a young city scholar. This meant a round-necked robe, pleated at the shoulders, hanging straight and untied at the waist to below the knee. Beneath were a shirt and hose. On my feet would be round-toed felt slippers with a strap across the instep. My breasts would have to be bound.

With the suffering of three years past having rent from me all appetite for food, the female curves had melted from my body. My cheeks were gaunt, and only the muscles in my limbs, worked hard in everyday labor, remained firm and healthy.

The small risings that had once been breasts the size of large Spanish oranges needed little in the way of hiding. Aunt Magdalena had wanted to help me, but I’d refused, saying that I would have to learn to do the binding and unbinding of them with a broad strip of cotton myself, for it was alone that I meant to live.