Signora Da Vinci (14 page)

“Who is the woman?” I said to Benito, never taking my eyes from them.

“Lucrezia de’ Medici,” he said, “Lorenzo and Giuliano’s mother.”

The crowd began to cheer, if not half heartedly perhaps reservedly, for the next person out the door, a man rather severely dressed in black, and bent over nearly double. His face, if it had been handsome, I could not see for the pain that was etched into every feature.

“Piero the Gouty,” Benito offered, “Lorenzo’s father. The Medici’s Highest of the High. He doesn’t have long to live.”

“I can see that.”

“He’s none too popular,” Benito said. “Certainly not so loved as his papa, Cosimo—he has been named Father of the Country. No one will admit that they long for the day that Lorenzo will rule.”

Now the real show began. First came eighteen knights, all in flashing silver armor and military helmets, each, Benito told me, representing the great Florentine families. The armor, too, had been created by Lorenzo.

“Where are the friars?” I asked Benito. Even on Vinci’s feast days, puny compared to this spectacle, the village holy men were conspicuous participants. Here, today in Florence, they were conspicuously absent.

“This is not a day for the friars, Cato,” he replied, unable to hide the disdain in his voice. “The church has its own festivals, but not like this. Look, look! Here is the Queen of the Day!”

Enough talk of holy men,
I thought and smiled to myself. Indeed, here came Lorenzo’s bride, perhaps the loveliest creature I had ever in my life seen. If I had been a man, I think I would have fallen in love with her myself. Her hair was the color of the setting sun, falling in soft curls about her pale, rounded shoulders. Her features were delicately honed, the nose coming to a pretty point, the chin and cheeks a study in fine curves and perfect angles. Her eyes danced with delight.

And who wouldn’t be delighted? She was robed and bejeweled as a princess in pale blue and white silk, seeded with a thousand pearls, and though I could not from that distance see the color of her eyes, I imagined them a perfect match to her gown. Her manner of transport was magnificent and stately; she was enthroned on a queen’s gilded chair and, with the crowd grown silent in awe, carried high on the shoulders of eight uniformed bearers down a purple carpet to a place in the middle of the square cordoned off by velvet ropes.

She was set down facing the Signoria, the dignitaries under the loggia regarding her with nodding heads of approbation.

Suddenly the crowd stirred, then began cheering as out from behind the hall on horseback came a young man—he looked sixteen at the most, one of the handsomest men I had ever set eyes on. Short, pale, curly hair framed a nobly proportioned head, a chin and jaw cut as if by a razor. He had a regal, straight-backed bearing, offset by a boyish grin from ear to ear. He was waving to the crowd, who uninhibitedly adored him.

“Giuliano,” Benito whispered, not bothering to temper his awe of this young man. “Lorenzo’s younger brother. They are best friends and will rule together when Piero dies.”

A fife and trumpet fanfare, louder and grander than all the rest, was joined by a sound I recognized as a roar. It was a louder human commotion than I had ever in my life heard.

Every person on the square, from windows, on the roofs and parapets, were cheering, and chanting a single name. “Lorenzo!” The cheering finally ceased and only the chanting remained. “Lorenzo! Lorenzo!! Lorenzo!!!”

Then he came. At first all I saw was a figure on a white charger, his silk cape swirling around him, black shoulder-length hair, the long white plumes of his cap arched out over his shoulders.

The horse and he seemed to be one as they rode down the purple carpet toward “the queen.” The mount was draped in red-and-white pearl-encrusted velvet, and pranced in proud high steps. Lorenzo wore a velvet surcoat of scarlet, and a flowing silk scarf gorgeously embroidered in scarlet roses. He sat tall and dignified in his saddle, carrying an azure shield of fleur-de-lis and in whose center nestled a diamond the size of a duck’s egg.

He did not wave his hand as his brother had, but the eyes with which he surveyed the chanting masses were filled with such extraordinary love for them that such a gesture was altogether unnecessary.

When a woman from the crowd called out, “We love you, Lorenzo!” the man flashed a smile so brilliant and heartfelt that I myself felt a strange tugging in my breast. And when the people began to roar again in their approval of him I found myself shouting with them.

I had never raised my voice like that before, never felt the sensation of idolatry for a mortal man and, I realized, a young man at that.

While Lorenzo de’ Medici was certainly older than Giuliano, he looked not more than twenty-five. He was not handsome in the way his brother was. His skin was a deep olive. The nose looked crooked, almost sunken, the chin and lower lip perhaps a bit too pronounced, and deep wrinkles in his forehead bespoke of a serious nature. But he was tall, broad-shouldered, and slim at the hips. I could see his muscular legs, those of a horseman.

Now Lorenzo on his horse had passed us and was making his way down the long purple carpet to “his queen.” Frustrated to be watching his back, as well as a horse’s ass, I grabbed Benito’s arm and started pushing my way through the crowd till we were in good sight of the beautiful lady, who watched with admiration as Lorenzo dismounted and with a flourish of his white cape bowed low to her.

A page appeared with a velvet cushion on which sat a crown that seemed all to be made of large cut diamonds. Lorenzo took the circlet from the pillow. The crowd hushed once more, and as he knelt before his wife-to-be, I heard for the first time the voice of Lorenzo de’ Medici. It was deep, almost a growl, but he spoke with studied eloquence.

“You are the jewel of Florence and the queen of all of our hearts.” Then he stood and gently placed the crown into the riot of her golden curls.

The crowd cheered again.

“What a lucky woman to be getting such a fine husband!” I had to shout over the noise to be heard by Benito.

“What do you mean?!” he shouted back. “That is not Lorenzo’s betrothed. She is Lucrezia Donati, the most beautiful and beloved woman in Florence!”

“Where is his wife-to-be!?” I was very confused.

“She is on her way here from Rome! Clarice Orsini is her name. It’s a very noble family, but the match is not very popular with Florentines! Romans are well known for their pride and snobbery! But the alliance brings soldiers and several great estates with it! And a six-thousand-florin dowry. Six thousand!”

The racket had lessened again, for Lorenzo was now singing to the newly crowned queen. There was a smile behind that voice of his, the odd amalgam of gruffness and gentility—the smile because the words he sang were bawdy and outrageous. But far from the crowd being shocked or dismayed by his verse, it seemed to make them love Lorenzo more.

“Don’t tell me,” I whispered to Benito, “he composed the song himself.”

“How did you know?”

“Is there anything that Lorenzo de’ Medici does not do splendidly?”

“If there is, I cannot think of it.”

The song finished, the bearers heaved the throne on their shoulders and Lorenzo, throwing back his red-rosed scarf and cape, mounted his charger in one graceful sweep. I could tell he would soon be out of sight, and I wished to see him one more time.

With more brazenness than I thought I had in me I pushed forward to the edge of the purple carpet. Oncoming was Lorenzo, followed by the crowd and enthroned queen.

But I had, in my enthusiasm, perhaps jostled a stocky Florentine lad too hard, for now with a grimace in my direction he jostled me back. I was unused to roughhousing like young men regularly do, and I was caught off balance. With my scholar’s cap flying off my head, I fell unceremoniously into the middle of the purple carpet flat on my back, right in the path of Lorenzo’s charger.

Before I could spring to my feet I found myself staring up into the face of the Medici heir. He was smiling a dazzling smile, and his hand reached down to pull me up.

I lifted my arm and his strong hand gripped mine. I was on my feet in the next moment. I snatched my cap and placed it back on my head. Lorenzo, with a grin, straightened it for me. The crowd was delighted by this little scene. The great Lorenzo helping the hapless young scholar with grace and good humor.

Then with a wave to the queen’s bearers that he was moving again, Lorenzo rode back for the loggia, where his mother and father were standing with Giuliano, waiting for him to join them, completing the Medici family tableau.

I stepped back and felt myself lost amidst the masses. I was aware of Benito speaking to me, tugging at my arm.

“Cato! He pulled you up! Straightened your cap! Acknowledged you!” The boy began dusting off my tunic, as though he was the servant of a fine gentleman. I noticed that many eyes were fixed on me, as though I had been blessed by God himself.

“I’m all right, really I am,” I said to Benito, wishing for him to stop his fussing. “Tell me, is that food I smell?”

“Food? You think you smell food?” His whole face lit up and I was reminded suddenly of Leonardo and the insatiable appetite my son quite suddenly acquired the year he turned thirteen. “I will show you food!”

Benito began moving through the crowd to the perimeter of the square. “Stay close so we don’t lose each other again!”

Now we had reached the edge of the piazza, where, to my further astonishment in a day of unending astonishments, was a long row of tables, each covered with a colorful tent and piled high with some Tuscan delicacy being served by a smiling Florentine woman. Separating each table was a barrel of wine and a vintner hawking the fruit of his vines.

There was nothing an Italian was more proud of than his wine, unless, of course, you counted his olive oil. But the oil was a given, used in every dish, in potions and poultices, and preserves and even to lubricate the skin. My father used to say, “Cut a Tuscan’s vein and out is just as likely to pour wine or oil as blood.”

“Food indeed,” I said to Benito.

“What did you expect?” said Benito. “How can it be a festival without a feast?”

We walked down the row of tables deciding what we wished to eat first.

“And I suppose this was all provided by . . .”

“Look around you, Cato,” the boy said rather dramatically. So I did as I was told. “There is not a single thing you can see, hear, taste, or smell in this whole piazza that has not been imagined, created, or paid for by Lorenzo.”

My eyes had fallen on the canopy beneath the Signoria’s loggia.

The core of the Medici dynasty stood together. The ruler’s frail arms were slung over the shoulders of his two sons, of whom he seemed very proud. Then Lorenzo picked up his mother’s hand, and with adoring eyes kissed the tips of her fingers. The scene tightened my throat, but what I saw next was like a sharp stake thrust into my belly.

Talking with the head of the Notaries Guild was Leonardo’s father, Piero da Vinci.

Of course I knew that in moving to Florence there would be no way to avoid seeing him. He was a respected lawyer, “a notable notary,” Leonardo had quipped in one of his letters.

I had determined to stay as far away from Piero as possible, as he was the one person most likely to recognize my identity. True, he had seen me almost never in the past ten years. I had grown from the girl he had seduced into a mature, work-hardened woman. Piero himself had seen less and less of Vinci in the years after Leonardo’s birth, coming more often and finally moving to Florence, where his aspirations and ambitions could take flight.

It was possible, I concluded, that Piero might stare me right in the face and never know it was his once-young, once-beloved sweetheart. When I felt my guts beginning to churn I knew I should leave. I found Benito at a table serving quail pastries. His cheeks were stuffed with the delicacy and his eyes were watering—it must have been spiced with hot peppers.

“I’m going back to my house,” I said. “I must at least make up a place where I can sleep before tonight. I’ve not even been up my stairs yet.”

“Do you want me to come help you?” he asked with his mouth full. It was comical to see, but it was a sweet gesture of sacrifice from a boy I had met only hours before.

“Don’t be silly,” I called back to him. “Stay and enjoy the food.”

“And dancing!” he shouted at my back as if to entice me.

I was tempted to say with a touch of sarcasm, “I suppose Lorenzo de’ Medici choreographed the dances, too.” Later I found out that he had.

 

I climbed the stairs that clung to the east wall of my house, finding them thankfully sturdy, and also found, to my surprise and delight, a reasonably intact and less than filthy sitting room on the first floor. There were two large windows in the front, which, when uncovered, looked down on the street, and a good-sized hearth on the back wall that looked down on my garden. From here I watched the mule busily clearing the brush, chewing contentedly and seeming completely at home in this new yard.

On the second floor I found what had been used as a kitchen, and a bedroom complete with an Italian’s most prized possession—a family-sized bed with wooden canopy. There was no bedding, just a frame, and the dust in there was so thick that when I placed a single foot in the room a cloud of it rose up around me.

One more flight up I found, on the street side, a smaller chamber that once might have been used for a bedroom, but had since been converted by the elder Bracciolini to a study. There was an unremarkable desk—but one I was mightily pleased to see—and a wall of shelves that must have held books. I smiled, suddenly feeling more at home here, for the place reminded me of my father’s house. Not all men had studies. Fewer still owned books.

There was a history of scholarship in the house. And a link with my father. Perhaps some of the volumes that had graced these shelves had been acquired or first copied by Poggio and Papa on one of their adventures, and brought as a gift to Poggio’s father, my father’s master.