Signora Da Vinci (28 page)

“Best of all,” Lorenzo went on, “my brother is extraordinarily faithful to me. His loyalty is unimpeachable. To know that someone like Giuliano is at my back is the best sleeping draught that I could hope for. I think you should grind him up and sell him, Cato. You’d make a fortune.”

“Speaking of potions,” I said, “my father has sent me a crateful of treasures from the East. Indecipherable books. Herbs. Spices. Shriveled mushrooms. Small idols and textiles. Even a mummified cat he found in Egypt.”

“I would like to meet your father one day. He must be extraordinary.”

I smiled inwardly, knowing how true this was. “More fascinating than the material gifts are the letters he writes,” I said. “He has spoken to many wise men and scholars. Men who hold great traditions in their heads. Many secrets. They speak with great reverence of an intoxicant—
Soma
, they call it—that produces ecstatic visions. The visions upon which all of the Hindu religion is based. When drunk, it made poor men feel rich and free. Life became radiant, immortal. But the plant from which it was made is now lost. Just a memory.”

“It reminds me of the Eleusinian Mysteries of the Greeks. For two thousand years they performed an initiation ritual in a temple outside of Athens. Some unknown spirits were drunk, not unlike your
Soma
, and this produced the profoundest of religious, mystical feelings, a kind of frenzy. But it’s all very unclear, for no one would speak of it or write of it . . . on pain of death. And knowledge of the spirit they drank—gone.” Lorenzo turned to me and smiled. “So here we are with neither
Soma
nor the Eleusinian elixir to excite ecstatic visions. Only the tantalizing memory of them.”

“Sadly so.”

“How is the ride so far?”

“I haven’t a pain anywhere. The saddle is brilliant.”

We had gone a distance north from the villa and out through a north gate in the city wall. As the path widened out into a wider road Leonardo and Giuliano—two of the most handsome and vital young men I had ever laid eyes on—came racing back toward us. We went on together, four abreast.

“I had the strangest dream last night,” I told them. “It gives me chills remembering it. In it I am a woman.”

“That’s odd in itself,” Giuliano said, though Lorenzo had fixed me with a fascinated gaze.

“I gave birth,” I continued, “not to a baby, but to a demon that began devouring me, one body part at a time.”

“That’s horrifying!” Leonardo cried.

“Wait, I’m not finished,” I insisted. “I’m all but eaten, but before the monster can consume my head, I feel a surge of strength and purpose. I open my mouth wide—very wide, my jaws seem to unhinge—and I devour the demon in one bite! This wakes me up . . . and I find that I need to take an enormous shit.”

Everyone fell apart laughing at that, and then we fell silent.

“What is it, Giuliano?” Lorenzo asked. “You have a strange look in your eyes.”

“I had a dream last night, too.” He began to recite it with great reserve and thoughtfulness that, for him, was unusual, as though it was of great significance. “I was walking on the Ponte alle Grazie during a fierce storm. The dream was so real I could feel the hard rain pelting my face and arms. Thunderbolts lit up the night like day. Clouds of sand, boughs and leaves were all flying around together along the river’s edge. Then it became a terrible whirlwind of sand and gravel that rose to a
great
height, broadening out at the top like a monstrous mushroom that caught up the roof of a palace and then carried it away!” Giuliano’s eyes were glittering, and it seemed he himself was caught up in the storm of his own storytelling. “While I was terrified by all this violent agitation, I decided, quite recklessly, to peer over the rail of the bridge. What I saw horrified me. The Arno—” Giuliano stopped, groping for words. “The Arno was
seething
, one monstrous mass of swirling water. I thought to myself, ‘Move away. Run. Run from this place!’ I tried, but my legs would not carry me. And suddenly . . .”

I realized I was hardly breathing. I could not tear my eyes away from the boy and his nightmare.

“. . . the bridge gave way beneath my feet! The next moment I was submerged. No,
not
submerged, for I was half in and half out of the water, being swirled and thrown about this way and that in a current that was wild beyond all imagining!” Giuliano went silent again for a moment, then whispered, “I died in the dream.”

“That is impossible,” Lorenzo said. “You cannot die in a dream.”

“I know,” Giuliano said very quietly. “I know. But I did die. I drowned in the deluge. Before I awakened—for I was shocked awake—all the world went black, and I knew, somehow, I was a dead man.”

Leonardo looked stricken. He leaned over and placed a tender hand on his friend’s arm. I saw tears glittering in Lorenzo’s eyes. The moment was so terrible that I thought I must save it.

“Don’t tell me,” I ventured in the lightest voice I could muster, “when you woke, you had to take an enormous piss.”

Everyone roared with relieved laughter. Then the two younger men took off like a shot, perhaps to dispel the last remnants of Giuliano’s nightmare, leaving Lorenzo and me riding companionably side by side, the mounts walking at a leisurely pace. We were silent for a very long while.

“I have always been a lover of women,” he said suddenly, taking me by surprise. “Of course I have ‘loved’ many men before. . . .”

Everything screamed in me, “Look away! Do not meet his eye!” But here was my dear friend, making what I was sure would be a desperately difficult pronouncement. I turned and gazed directly at him. In that moment I learned how true was the adage that the eyes were the windows of the soul. For I fell deeply inside of the man, and he was joined with me likewise.

“But I have never been
in love
with a man . . . before you, Cato.”

Time stilled. All sounds around me were magnified—the horses clopping, insects buzzing, the air blowing past my ears.

I knew I had to speak, answer him. All of those silent, heartfelt messages I had felt, but feared to admit had been sent, had indeed been real. I wished with all my heart to tell him that my feelings matched his perfectly. But how on earth could I?

“I want you to know,” I said, trying to remain strong and sure in my inflection, “that I know the burden of finally understanding a thing that you want,
desperately want
, and realizing it is just out of your reach. It is a pain that has no description, yet is one that is keen as the pain of loss.”

He was silent, but I knew he had heard my words clearly. Heard and believed me.

“I love you, Lorenzo. You know that I love you very much . . . ,” I finally said.

He smiled at me then, the smile that warmed me so. The one I adored. “But for the time being,” he finished for me with infinite grace and humor, “I should steer my course to the ladies.”

I hoped that my relieved exhale was not too loud or insultingly pronounced.

“I think that best,” I said, hating my words.

We had never broken the gaze between us for the whole eternity of that exchange. But now it was best finished. He turned and looked ahead.

“Are you up to riding a little faster? A trot perhaps?”

“I would like to try,” I said. “I hope one day I can gallop apace with you.” I grinned at him. “Race you.”

“Nothing would please me more.”

Nothing would please me more than falling into your manly arms,
I thought.
Taking your dear face between my hands and kissing those cheeks, the chin, eyelids. The rich wide mouth. Running my fingers through your thick black hair
.

“Anything I should know about trotting?” I said instead, trying to lighten the mood.

“You should push into your stirrups, putting weight into your feet to keep your bottom from hitting the saddle.” He was very brave in light of my rejection, and I loved him all the more for it. “There is a rhythm to it that is unexplainable. But you’ll learn it soon enough. It should prove natural. Move your knees forward more. Keep a tight hold on the reins.”

He leaned over and laid open my hands, flattening them with his fingers. Into my outstretched palms he carefully laid the reins, and wrapping them around my fists once, closed them over the leather.

“You will tell your horse what you wish by your carriage and the movements of your legs—squeezing and releasing, a well-placed heel on a rump. The animal
wishes
you to command her.”

“If I trot, will I have had a proper ride?” I said, looking into his eyes.

“Most assuredly. Very respectably.”

“You give the signal then. If I fall behind you . . .”

“I will be right there,” Lorenzo said, holding my gaze. “I will never let you fall.”

CHAPTER 19

“Let me get us some
sfogliatella
, Mama.” Leonardo whispered the final word with the utmost caution, though no one could possibly have heard him in the uproar around us in the Piazza Santa Croce. The Pazzi, a mighty family of Florentine bankers and one of the Medici’s great rivals, was taking great pleasure in publicly celebrating the betrothal of Carlo Pazzi to Lorenzo and Giuliano’s sister, Bianca. It had been a three-day circus of parades, fireworks, outdoor feasts, and dances, all of which the
paterfamilia
, Jacopo Pazzi—tired of always being outshone by the Medici—had insisted on paying for . . . every florin of it.

“If I eat another bite I’ll explode,” I told my son.

“The table with the pastries is right there,” he insisted. “I’ll get two and we can take them home for later.”

He disappeared in the direction of the food, and I smiled to myself. Leonardo was as dear a man as he had been a child. So thoughtful. So loving to his mother. It was all I could do to keep myself from grabbing him and covering him with kisses, as I had when he’d been a baby. He retained a certain quality of that boyishness even now, that desire to please me.

He returned with the delicacy wrapped in his handkerchief and opened it to show me the two-layered crusty baked pastries in the shape of a lobster’s tail, its creamy white filling oozing out the sides. I touched one. It was still warm.

“You spoil me, Leonardo.”

He towered over me now, having attained his full height. Leaning down, he said quietly, “That is what all good sons are meant to do. But you make it a pleasure.”

A deafening blast of trumpets silenced the crowd. As I had seen on my day of entry into the city, now came a procession of the families of the betrothed—the Medici and the Pazzi—to sit in state under a gloriously fashioned tent of royal reds and blues, and embroidered with the families’ coats of arms.

I smiled to see Lorenzo, Giuliano, and Lucrezia all looking splendidly elegant for the occasion. Bianca had had the misfortune, as a woman, to be endowed not with her mother’s sweet features but the swarthy complexion and hooked nose of her father.

The Pazzi were, to my eye, all very plain and undistinguished, neither ugly nor beautiful. But they all wore the same haughty expression, as though the audience they had this day assembled to feed and entertain and witness the family’s magnificence was hardly good enough to lick their boots.

When Lorenzo and Giuliano flanked their sister and with kisses on both cheeks made a show of presenting her to her Pazzi groom, the crowd erupted into wild cheers.

Leonardo and I were so caught up in the happy occasion that when I heard the next voice booming over the ruckus to quiet the onlookers, I felt my guts clench. I knew without looking that Leonardo, too, must be experiencing a flood of emotion.

It was his father, Piero.

He now stood under the canopy between the two Florentine clans, gorgeous in the garb of a nobleman, but wearing the thick gold chains that distinguished him as a lawyer. He had come up in the world, I thought, surely an employee of the Pazzi, as Lorenzo steadfastly avoided using his notary’s services, out of deference to Leonardo and me.

Piero was in excellent spirits, for here he was, the center of all attention in Florence, the greatest families in the city behind him and the populace before him, hanging upon his every word.

“It is my pleasure and my great honor,” he began, “to be here before you today.”

My heart began pounding, and I cursed that organ for its unbidden fluxes and flutterings. I felt Leonardo grasp my hand and I squeezed it slightly, not passionately, hoping to quell whatever uneasiness might be surging through his soul.

Then, quite unexpectedly, Piero turned and nodded to one corner of the tent canopy. A lovely young woman with pearls strung through her golden curls, as lavishly attired as Piero himself—and clearly pregnant—stepped shyly to his side.

I felt a sudden chill run through me. It felt as if I was standing with my son in the middle of a road with a carriage and a four-horse team barreling toward us, my legs unable to move or take us out of danger.

“I am Piero da Vinci. This is my wife, Margherita”—he grinned brazenly—“and our first child.”

The crowd loved it and began stamping their approval. I saw Lorenzo scowl. He knew we were here in the audience.

“My family and I . . .” Piero gazed possessively at his third bride. “. . . wish all of the blessings under Heaven to this match. As a Notary of the Republic of Florence I do hereby announce the betrothal of Carlo della Pazzi and Bianca de’ Medici, to later be blessed and sanctified by the church.”

I felt Leonardo stiffen at Piero’s utterance of the words “my family,” so blatantly and publicly, excluding his only son—already a known figure in Florentine society—from his blood circle. It was an excruciating slight.

Done with his introduction, Piero gestured, almost rudely, with his chin for Margherita to step back, which she dutifully did. Piero held out his hands to either side. Carlo and Bianca came forward and each took one. Then with the greatest solemnity, Piero placed their hands together.