Signora Da Vinci (13 page)

Moving out the Via de Servi and turning right on the Via Riccardi, I found myself on a long block of four-story houses, the street very narrow but clean. Nowhere so far had I found sewage running in gutters, nor pigs and dogs rooting around in kitchen garbage thrown from upper windows. Like all the other buildings I had seen since entering Florence, the houses were of light brown and gray stone, and their façades were uniformly modest, as though their inhabitants wanted no one to know whether what lay inside was rich or poor. It was a preposterous Florentine pretension of humility. For it was always said, “Better to be a Tuscan than an Italian. Better yet to be a Florentine than a Tuscan.”

I reached the spot my father had marked on his map, and sure enough, just in the middle of a long block, set between a prosperous-looking bakery and a residence with a stout metal-studded door, was a gray stone building, its storefront nailed up with rotting boards. Its first-story windows were boarded as well, and the jutting second- and third-floor wooden loggias looked ready to fall down on my head.

Wasting no time, I went back the way I’d come, carefully counting the number of houses from the corner, then led my animal to the alley behind it. “Almost there, my friend,” I said. There were stone walls interspersed at every house with a back gate, and I remembered to
count
, as a mistaken entry into the wrong garden would result in an unwanted commotion.

I reached what I believed was my own back gate, happily wide enough to allow my cart in. Removing from a purse hung inside my tunic the old rusted key my father had given me along with the deed, I found the keyhole and strove to open the ancient lock. Clearly the key fit. It simply refused to turn. With all the strength in my hands I tried and tried, to no avail. It was the first time, though it would not be the last, that I wished I
was
a man, with a man’s strength.

The mule made a mournful sound. I was tempted to make one myself. Frustrated, I gave the gate an angry shove and, to my shock, it swung widely into the garden, the lock and key quite unnecessary for its opening.

I wasted no time, leading Xenophon and my belongings into the yard. There stood my house and an overgrown garden. I went right to the back door and that, too, gave way with a swift kick of my boot at its base.

I was not altogether unprepared for the small confraternity of rats, whose peace I’d disturbed, that came rushing at me with awful rodent squeals, and some the other way, farther into the house. My father had been right about it being a rattrap, but there was nothing to be done for the moment.

I spent the next hour emptying my wagon, glad that everything was packed tight in wooden chests against the horrible creatures, and happier still that I had only to pull the boxes
down
from the cart and drag them along the overgrown but still visibly paved walkway into the largely empty storeroom. It was in here that the rats had made themselves at home, and by the great mass of their droppings I knew they were many and had nested here for a long while.

Only after the cart was emptied did I venture into my new home. The door separating the storeroom and the shop opened easily, but with its front windows boarded up there was only light enough to see that the place was spun heavily with cobwebs.
So,
I thought,
spiders could be counted in good numbers as well as rats
.

I was pleased to see that, despite thick dust and the cobwebs, what had been old man Bracciolini’s apothecary was reasonably intact. There were sturdy shelves on three sides, and a counter that ran nearly the width of the shop, leaving just enough space for a person to come and go through. Behind and under the counter were cabinets with doors.

When I swept the dust and grime from the counter with my hand I was delighted to discover it was made of the finest travertine marble, an unattainable luxury for my father, but one that Poggio had been able to afford.

Now eager to see my new shop in the light of day, I grabbed the broom I’d brought and hacked a path through the cobwebs, the way I’d seen country lads hack through undergrowth to clear it for a new field. Using the handle, I pried the first of the rotted boards off the large window. It was real Venetian glass, another Bracciolini luxury. Sunlight came streaming in. But when I wrenched away the last piece of wood I reared back in fright.

A face and body were pressed square up against the glass. It was more the sudden shock of it than the demeanor of the person himself. He was just a boy, no more than thirteen, lean and wiry, his dark hair in a bowl cut. He was smiling impishly, as though he’d meant to give me a fright. He was pointing his finger, as though to say, “Let me in.” Recovering my senses, I went to the front door, unbolted it, and tried to pull it open. It was jammed tight.

“Stand back,” I heard through the wood planks.

I did, and all at once with a crash the door flew open on screeching hinges. There the boy stood, beaming, very pleased with his success. I was glad that the force of his blow had not splintered my front door.

“Benito Russo at your service, signor,” he said, and bowed politely at the waist. I returned the male bow, feeling a bit odd.

“Cato Cattalivoni,” I introduced myself. Benito’s voice, I quickly realized, was still in the process of changing from that of a boy, so mine was even more manly than his. “My master and uncle, Signor Risticante, is the owner of this house,” I went on. “He and I are reopening the apothecary here.”

“Splendid!” Benito said. “I am your neighbor.” He pointed to the house to the right of mine. “Or I should say, ‘we’ are your neighbors. My parents, two sisters and grandmother.”

“Have you lived there long?” I asked. I wondered silently if they remembered the previous owner, or his apprentice, my father, Ernesto.

“Several generations,” he said absently and came in, uninvited. He looked around in wonderment at the cobwebs and the counter and shelves.

“We’re to have an apothecary next door to us? That will suit my grandmother very well. She’s always sick or complaining about something.” He looked at the countertop where my hand had swept the dust from the marble. He picked a cobweb out of his hair. “Will you and your master clean it up by yourselves?”

“Actually,” I answered, beginning to spin my own web of deceit to this talkative youngster, “my uncle will be several months coming. I’ll be readying the shop and house myself.”

“Yourself!” Benito cried. “You’ll be dead of fatigue before he arrives! Let me help you. I don’t begin work till November. I’m to be an apprentice in a silk dyeing shop. You can hire me for cheap.”

I trusted the boy at once, liked his proximity to my house, as well as his age, for I thought him less likely to suspect my sex. On that count I had so far been unquestioned. The merchants along the road and the workmen at the Signoria seemed to have had no doubt of my masculinity. And now Benito appeared fooled.

“If you help me get my house and shop in order I will provide you and your family all of my apothecarial services for nothing, for as long as I live here.”

Benito’s eyes went wide.

“Signor,” he exclaimed, and bowed even lower. “What a gift that would be!” His eyes were sparkling, no doubt musing on the honor and respect he would gain in his family by delivering such a windfall to them.

We worked for a while, Benito showing off his manly strength in lifting heavy crates. While he worked, he talked. I heard about the great families who ran the city—the Spini, the Tornabuoni, the Rucellai, the Pazzi, the Benci. And of course, the Medici. The festival—one that would not be finished for two more days—was in fact a celebration of the coming marriage of the Medici heir, Lorenzo.

“Everyone loves him,” Benito said. “He’ll no doubt succeed his father when he dies. Unofficially, of course.”

I told him I was not sure what he meant.

“Well, Florence is a proud republic. We have no kings or princes. And Lorenzo is a discreet and modest man.” Then his eyes twinkled. “But on the occasion of his betrothal to a wealthy Roman girl, he himself proclaimed a three-day festival to celebrate it. We Florentines are always happy for any excuse for a gaudy spectacle,” he confided. “And no one throws a better one than Lorenzo and his brother, Giuliano.”

There were many questions about my uncle and master, about whom I wove a splendid story of renown in Siena, calling up minutiae my father had fed me about the place—one I had never been, and where, thankfully, neither had Benito visited.

I was looking around the place, wondering where to start.

“I have a suggestion, if I might be so bold . . . ,” Benito began.

“And your suggestion is . . . ?” I prodded him.

“That we leave off all work for today, and that you accompany me to the festival.” I smiled my assent. “Splendid!” he cried. “But we should change our clothes. We’re full of cobwebs and dust. And on a day such as today, all young men should be at their best.”

I tried to look serious. “You have a point. Meet me outside in a quarter of an hour.”

I was sorely tempted to stay and explore the upstairs rooms of my house, but I knew that could wait. A Florentine festival sponsored by the Medici heir on the occasion of his betrothal was an occasion not to be missed. I might even catch a glimpse of Leonardo.

 

My young friend Benito and I joined the throng of celebrants who were pouring from every house into the street, reminding me of rivulets and streams feeding through the Vinci hills into the Arno. Their mood was buoyant and jovial, and they were clothed in their finest. The women, cheeks aglow, breasts high in deeply plunging bodices, were topped with hair uncovered to show curled ringlets or intricately woven braids. Men wore, in the finest of textiles, an astonishing array of fashions: tunics, robes, capes, and doublets with hose. They finished their costumes with hats and turbans of sometimes alarming size and fantastical shapes.

Unlike the serious and grim-faced town fathers of Vinci, even the older men smiled and laughed as they walked, flirting openly with the women, young girls to old ladies.

As Benito and I with the rest of the city poured into the spectacle that was the Piazza della Signoria, there seemed a feeling of gay abandon, as though not a care in the world troubled a one of them. And yet, I saw the Florentines not as a vulgar or dissolute people, but as healthy and naturally happy. I had never in my life experienced such an explosion of color and cacophonous sound. As I had seen this morning, every window, roof, loggia, and parapet overlooking the square was crowded with celebrants and hung with a gorgeous array of banners and streamers, flags and tapestries fluttering merrily in the breeze. Every inch of the piazza teemed with revelers, tableaus, and musicians. There was a parade of miniature castles, gilded and glinting in the sun. Then, as a small herd of riderless horses crashed headlong into the crowd, I turned to Benito, crying, “What was that?!” but he’d been swallowed up by the masses.

Suddenly I caught the barest glimpse of a young man all the way across the piazza, a young man who might have been my Leonardo—wild-haired, even-featured and beautiful. He disappeared into the throng as quickly as he had appeared, and I found myself horrified to realize that I might not recognize my own son. I had not seen him for three years. Those years between thirteen and sixteen were the ones in which a boy grew and changed the most. Piero was tall, wide-shouldered, and well made, and even as a young boy Leonardo resembled him in those ways. As for his face, I reassured myself, if I was close enough to see that broad mouth, his fulsome lips and straight-toothed smile, the long straight nose and wide-set gray eyes flecked with gold, I would know him in an instant.

A loud trumpet fanfare thrust me out of my musing back into the chaotic piazza. The Palazzo della Signoria’s stone front and tall rock bell tower could hardly be seen for all the silken banners fluttering around them. Under the palazzo’s ground-floor loggia a platform had been erected, draped and canopied with costly brocades of blue and gold and white. Two long rows of high-backed chairs, ornate and thronelike, sat empty under the tent.

As I tried to see better what and who was under that loggia, I pushed shamelessly through the crowd till I was several rows from the front. Suddenly I felt a tap on my shoulder. I turned and saw Benito at my side.

“Glad you came with me?” he asked.

“More than glad. It would have been a crime to miss this,” I told him.

“Look, Cato!” Benito pointed to the doorway of the Palazzo della Signoria, which had swung open and out of which, in a long procession, dozens of men emerged, all of them sober and dignified.

“Who are they?” I said to Benito as I watched them, one by one, take their seats and fold their hands on their laps. He explained they were the current members of the Signoria and the heads of each of the guilds. I could see in the richness or modesty of their dress the guild heads’ visions of themselves. The bankers and the notaries were hung with thick chains of gold, rings of precious gems on every finger. The silk and wool men had attired themselves in simple fashion, but proudly displayed the best of their wares on their bodies. The carpenters and butchers and masons were stockier, more muscular under their robes. Their features were coarser, too, men who over the generations had not had the money or prestige to marry with the finest and most ancient Italian female stock.

As if my thoughts had suddenly turned to flesh, a noble
woman
now emerged from the Signoria door outfitted and bejeweled in a way I had never seen a woman adorned, opulently and dazzlingly elegant.

More trumpet blasts announced from the rear of the Signoria a host of fifers and standard-bearers, followed by heralds, pages, and men-at-arms. Each and every one of them was costumed dramatically.

“Lorenzo’s designs,” Benito said of their dress. “He takes a hand in every part of the festival’s planning.”