Signora Da Vinci (24 page)

Fire had broken out behind the set.

All at once Leonardo’s painted scene burst into flames. People shrieked in panic and stampeded back toward the doors behind them.

I caught sight of Lorenzo and Giuliano. Their eyes met and locked in brief but fierce concentration of purpose. They were altogether calm and seemed to be of one mind, as though such a catastrophe was as commonplace as a game of
calcio
. With a few signals of hand and head they leapt into action.

Giuliano sprang forward through the thickening smoke to the front row, grabbing his mother and sister-in-law, Clarice, and pushed them ahead of him to the side of the church. Lorenzo spun on his heels and like a furious shepherd sliced Bona, Galeazzo, and Ludovico Sforza from the chaotic mass now surging to the doors, and herded them in the same direction as Giuliano had taken the Medici women.

Determined to follow them I moved to the right but was violently plowed into by a man twice my size, and suddenly found myself on the marble floor, trampled underfoot by men and women screaming and fleeing. The air was thick with acrid smoke.

I tried to rise and was knocked down again. My eyes burned and I began to choke. Flames rose in columns all around me. But as the wooden mountains, completely consumed by fire, began toppling toward me in a nightmarishly slow fall, a pair of strong hands grasped me roughly under the arms and tugged me backward.

“Mama!” was all Leonardo had time to say before the set, with a horrific roar, collapsed entirely, exploding into a plume of burning wood fragments and a rain of molten embers.

Clutching one another and cradling our heads from falling debris, he led me, gasping and blind from the terror, through a doorway in the side of the church.

A moment and a lifetime later we were gulping fresh air and rubbing the pain from our eyes. Once I knew we were safe my thoughts sped like a loosed arrow to Lorenzo, shocking me with the intensity of my fear for his life.

A moment later he was there, soot-smudged and altogether unhurt.

“All right, you two?” he said with utter calm. But I could see in his expression the same panic I had felt in the moment before he’d appeared. “Come back to the house later,” he pleaded, then left us.

My friends were all safe, and miraculously the fire that destroyed much of San Spirito claimed not a single life.

It was a night I would never forget.

CHAPTER 15

The weather had turned warm and lovely. My existence, while having settled into something I might call comfortable, was never quite routine. But then how could living a man’s life in a woman’s body ever be routine?

This day, having borrowed Benito’s family horse—Xenophon too stubborn to be coaxed into the harness anymore—we clip-clopped past the last of the stone houses and headed northwest along Via Faenza into the countryside.

I passed by small landholdings with modest cottages worked by their owners and kin. But here and there I could see spread out before me what had lately become the newest fashion—great tracts of land owned by the wealthiest families of Florence, their gracious villas surrounded by orchards and vineyards, immense barns, herds and flocks of farm animals, all tended by small armies of hired laborers.

Observing the contrasts of the two circumstances, I was catapulted suddenly into musings about the contrast of my own existence. The one constant blessing was, of course, Leonardo. It seemed as if the Fates had consistently rained down blow after violent blow on Caterina, the woman of Vinci, but they had nothing but gracious smiles and blessings for Cato, the apothecary of Florence.

I pondered the rights I now owned as a man. I no longer had to read the Stoics to bolster me against the barrage of ugliness and petty gossip aimed at a fallen woman in a small town. I was free to move about in city streets and markets, alone if I chose. I could speak as I wished, in any tone I liked, and I could study as I saw fit. My opinions were heard and considered with respect. I debated in all manners of discourse, from medicine to animal husbandry to politics, with no one naming me a witch, a shrill housewife or a freak of nature.

But what would it take,
I wondered,
to thrust me from Paradise to Hades? The removal of my breast bindings and the drawing in of my bodice? The loosing of my hair and the softening of my voice?
It seemed absurd that such inconsequential actions would deprive me of all the freedom, all the strength and standing in the world that I had recently won. But it was, I was sorry to concede, all too true.

Save Lucrezia Tornabuoni de’ Medici, matron of the wealthiest and most enlightened family in Europe—the rarest of all birds, revered as much for her mind as her mothering—the lot of even the happiest of women, those with gentle, loving, well-to-do husbands and many healthy children, was nevertheless one of constraint, submission, and subservience. Their thoughts, unless of Christian piety or domestic virtues, were neither sought nor spoken. And those with cruel, ignorant, or drunken fathers or husbands were subjected to lives no better than a slave’s.

The ritual bath in which I had submerged myself the night before Lorenzo’s first appearance at my shop had, indeed, opened a portal into an altogether new life. I had undergone a birth as profound as Leonardo slipping from my womb into Magdalena’s hands.

Birth,
I mused, playing the word in the soft recesses of my mind.
Rebirth. Rinascimento.
How many in this life are so fortunate as to be granted a new beginning such as this? How many even consider such a thing as possible?

I thought of my destination this day—another blessing. Lorenzo had invited me for a brief holiday at his family’s country villa, Careggi. I looked forward to seeing his mother, Lucrezia, still in mourning for her husband, and the handsome, winsome Giuliano. Clarice would certainly be there with her and Lorenzo’s infant son, Piero, and daughter, Maddalena. Perhaps Sandro Botticelli would take time from his painting to join us. I smiled, thinking of my petty longing for the simple but excellent meals I would surely enjoy at the Medici table. And the quiet beauty of the countryside, which I missed, living in the crush and bustle of the city.

Lorenzo’s directions, written as a map, brought me at length to a crossroads marked by a stone pillar carved simply with the well-known “six balls” that symbolized the Medici—these represented medicinal pills of a family whose earliest ancestors had been doctors—and an arrow pointing up a narrow, tree-lined lane.

The dappled sunlight filtering through the branches and falling on my arms and lap and horse’s back lent a magical quality to my approach to the long, gracious white stone house, simple but for a second-floor loggia spanning its entire length. There was an olive orchard and a pasture of grazing cattle on the left, a vast vineyard and a field of flowers that looked more like a wild mountain meadow than the garden of a rich and formal home on the right.
Genius,
I thought.
Pure genius.
The illusion of pastoral simplicity amidst opulent glory.

And then a most welcome sight to my eyes—Lorenzo standing at the doorway of the house, all smiles, arms opened wide in welcome. My heart soared at the sight of him. That which others saw as ugliness, I could only see as beauty. The swarthy complexion was exotically handsome to my eyes. The pugnacious chin simply strong. The crushed nose a testament to his manliness. Were I a woman still, I would have wished him for a lover.

“You found us with no trouble, I see.”

“And what a place to find,” I said, sweeping my arm to extol the wild garden and the orchard and the vineyard.

“My favorite in all the world,” he said with sincere reverence. “I am finding that in my poetry, nature is the greatest of all inspirations.”

“Even greater than love?” I challenged.

He began to unharness the horse from my cart. “For the moment, yes. But then again, I have yet to find a great love.” He led the horse to the pasture where the cattle were grazing and, opening a gate, let him in. “The woman of my sonnets was not really mine,” he confessed. “More a figment of my imagination. An ideal . . . Come, Cato, grab your bag. I’ll show you to your room.”

I took my satchel down from the cart and followed Lorenzo into the Medici villa.

Two great marble staircases rose in identical curves to the first floor. The vestibule was flanked by a great salon on the right and a dining room on the left. The furnishings were simple and informal, and I was reminded of the dining utensils at the city palazzo. To my surprise I saw no house servants at all. In fact, the place looked altogether empty.

We took the steps to the right, passing half a dozen niches in which were displayed works of antiquity—an old Roman mosaic of a woman’s head, a graceful marble hand, perhaps all that was left of an ancient statue.

Lorenzo nodded to another niche, where a chubby naked boy with wings clutched a dolphin almost as large as he. “From Verrocchio’s bottega,” he said. “I see some Leonardo in it.”

My heart swelled with the knowledge that my son was, in so many ways, entwined with this noble family.

Climbing another staircase to the second floor, Lorenzo showed me to a bedroom. I saw nothing of its furnishings, as I was instantly attracted to its double doors, ones that opened out onto the villa’s forward loggia. I went to them and flung them wide, stepping onto the covered overhang, gazing out at the vast expanse of rolling green from a height that allowed a great distance to be viewed. From where I stood, nothing of the city could be seen at all—an illusion, I thought. So close was it . . . and yet so far. This was to be my room for the next several days. What a privilege it was!

“Thank you, Lorenzo. This is wonderful.”

“I thought you’d like it. Month after month of city stone and marble, no matter how elegant, can be stultifying. And you were a country boy growing up.”

I wanted to throw my arms around him for his kindness, but instead flung my bag on the large plainly covered bed and began to empty it.

“There’s a place for your things,” he said, pointing to a painted chest with a pitcher and a bowl on top. “You can wash away the dust of the road.” I saw he wore an enigmatic smile.

“Is your mother here?” I asked. “Giuliano? Your wife?”

“No,” he answered, that smile growing more and more mysterious. “This weekend you shall be meeting my
other
family.”

“What family is that?” I said, but Lorenzo was already halfway down the hall, calling back to me:

“Come to the back garden when you’ve freshened up. You’ll find us out there.”

I splashed the cool water on my face and was suddenly struck by the novelty of the moment. Here I was, standing alone in “my” room of a Medici palazzo, its private door opening onto a splendid loggia, cheeks dripping, a pure white towel at my fingertips. The bounty of my life, it seemed to me, was a bottomless cornucopia.

I dried my face and closed the door for privacy, then changed into clean linen. I took a brush to my hair, neatening it, and chose to leave off my scholar’s cap. It seemed a stiff affectation in this place. I put on a fresh robe and opened the bedroom door. The second-floor hallway was quiet and empty as I stepped out.

The gardens behind the Villa Careggi were different from the front—quite formal, a new style the Italians had lately affected. It was symmetrical, with careful rows of hedges and shrubs and bursts of blossoming flowers. But beyond this perfectly formulated courtyard were two objects that seemed in this setting at once extraordinary and altogether fitting.

One was a tree, both ancient and imposing in height, with a massive trunk spreading muscular boughs that groaned in a draping canopy. It was so large and thick with greenery it appeared more as a vegetal behemoth than a tree. If it had had a voice it would have shaken the very earth with its sound.

The other object was a man-made structure of unearthly beauty. It was a round temple, in the style of the Greeks, all of graceful white marble columns and a perfectly globular golden dome.

I was drawn to the tree, however, as there were voices and laughter coming from its direction. Gravel crunched under my soles as I took the winding path through the symmetrical perfection of the garden. I stood before the verdant leviathan, awed by its age and majesty, then beheld the cluster of men beneath its shaded canopy.

They sat, or lay sprawled comfortably on rich Turkey carpets in an exotic patchwork of colors, dotted with decanters of wine, ceramic bowls of grapes, boards of cheeses and breads, and bowls of deep green olive oil for dipping.

One by one they looked up and saw me. Silence fell, and all that could be heard was the wind knocking branch against branch, and from a nearby pasture the plaintive bleating of a young goat suddenly quieted as it found its mother’s teat.

“This is my friend Cato,” I heard Lorenzo announce. “Some of you know him. The rest of you, by day’s end, will be glad to have made his acquaintance.”