Signora Da Vinci (34 page)

“I have come across some books in my library,” he said slowly, “and some writings by Pico and Silio.”

I found a stopping place in the sublimation procedure and gave Lorenzo my full attention. He spoke slowly, choosing his words with care.

“They all seem to arrive at a similar conclusion. That true alchemy takes place within the confines of the human body. That the act of love is the bridge between heaven and earth. It is the highest sacrament possible, and that only through the sexual act can the soul achieve enlightenment.”

“I think most would call those outrageous assertions,” I said.

“Most would. Most have not had the opportunity to read
The Erotic Papyrus of Egypt
, either.”

“Nor would they dare.” I smiled. “What does that appallingly heretical text tell you?”

“That the most sacred ancient Egyptian rites were sexual. But Dante—and who among us questions Dante?—he tells us in
Fidel d’Amore
of achieving intellectual and mystical harmony through sexual love.”

“And . . .”

“And our very own Marsilio Ficino writes of ‘altered states’ where in a climax of all the senses, the soul achieves reunion with the Divine!”

I went and stood between Lorenzo’s outstretched thighs. He pulled me to him.

“I have a copy of
Abraham and the Jew
,” he said with no little mystery in his voice.

“
Abraham and the Jew
?” I said with an amused smile and, leaning down, gently took his earlobe between my teeth.

“It was the book used by Nicholas Flamel and Perenelle the night they accomplished the Great Work.”

“I see.” Now I sought a nipple through the thin white shirt. He groaned. “And I suppose you would like for us to strive for the same goal,” I said.

“You will be the bride of a god, and I the lover of a goddess.” He lifted my tunic and slid my hose down over my hips. “Complete union . . . ,” he whispered breathlessly, “with one’s beloved other half.” Then he lowered me onto himself.

“Tomorrow,” I told him.

“Tomorrow . . .” His sigh was long and contented. “Tomorrow is soon enough.”

CHAPTER 25

An invitation to the city palazzo had been delivered by a Medici page, who’d been instructed to receive my acceptance then and there. Clearly, declining this request was unacceptable.

As I strode into the central courtyard at the appointed hour I saw, to my surprise, all the members of the Platonic Academy standing in genial clusters waiting to be called to dinner. A moment later the family descended the staircase, Lucrezia on Lorenzo’s arm. Clarice and her eldest daughter, Maddalena—not quite a beauty at twelve—Piero, who took the stairs alone looking disdainful and haughty, and the plump thirteen-year-old Giovanni.

Dinner was a genial enough occasion, but the moment the final course was finished, Lorenzo stood and invited his fellow philosophers to repair upstairs to the grand salon. We settled ourselves in comfortable chairs and began talking among ourselves. But when the door opened it was to everyone’s surprise to see Lorenzo ushering his mother in before him.

Sandro Botticelli stood and gave Lucrezia his seat. I could see a look of especial delight on the face of Pico Mirandola, whose unpublished manuscript of
The Witch
Lorenzo had recently shown me, a story revolving around an Italian cult presided over by a goddess, and whose theme was feminine power. Silio Ficino seemed similarly delighted by the inclusion of a woman into the hitherto all-male Academy. But really, I thought, it was not altogether strange, for Platonists did, in fact, revere Isis, and Lucrezia de’ Medici was the most remarkable woman in Florentine society—a scholar, a poetess, a patron, and mother to
Il Magnifico
.
Why shouldn’t she join our ranks?

Everyone voiced their sincere welcome as Lorenzo stood to face us.

“Tonight we will dispense with all ritual and formality,” he began. “There is trouble afoot, my friends, and we must be prepared for it. Of course we are mourning the death of our beloved Pope Sixtus. . . .”

Lorenzo paused briefly to allow for his irony to be acknowledged, then continued. “The election of the new pontiff, Innocent VIII, was sadly out of our control, as Rome has given us no purchase in the last years. How Innocent intends to rule is a mystery, though I believe he could never be more of a threat to us here in Florence than Sixtus was.”

Lorenzo opened a parchment and looked down at it, as though to refresh himself of the contents before he spoke again. “I have here a letter from Roderigo Borgia, now a cardinal and high advisor to the Holy Father.” Lorenzo smiled to himself. “Roderigo calls our new pope ‘a rabbit of a man,’ one with few convictions who is easily swayed. But Cardinal Borgia warns us to be on our guard.” Lorenzo’s voice became very solemn now. “Innocent has endorsed the publication of a German book entitled
Malleus Maleficarum—Hammer of the Witches.
”

He handed the letter to his mother, who folded it carefully and placed it in her lap.

“The disastrousness of this endorsement by Rome cannot be overstated. The book has already precipitated a wave of witch burnings in Europe, which will no doubt weave its tentacles south into the Italian peninsula and further enflame Queen Isabella’s Spanish Inquisition.”

“What can be done?” Pico asked.

“Florentines are the most tolerant people in Europe,” said Poliziano. “Milan and Pisa can be counted on for sensible restraint as well.”

“We have our printing presses and our booksellers.” He nodded to Vespasiano. “We will counteract the madness through the written word and in the universities.”

Murmurs of general agreement swept the room, but I was watching Lorenzo’s face, and there was yet something troubling him.

“Have any of you heard the sermons of a young Dominican friar who has recently begun to preach in our city? His name is Savonarola.”

I looked at Lorenzo disbelievingly
. Was this the same man who had prosecuted Leonardo for sodomy?

“I’ve heard him,” Landino said. “He’s an ugly little gnome—big nose, meaty lips. He is a rousing speaker. I’ll admit that. But what he preaches is ridiculous. He is telling the people of Florence to abandon their luxuries—fine clothes, wine, perfumes, ladies’ powders and paint. He wants us to abolish carnivals and horse races, gambling and card playing. No one will heed him.”

“There’s more,” Lucrezia said. Everyone turned to listen. I had not seen her this somber since the death of her son. “This man believes he is divinely inspired. He insists that God is speaking through him, telling the people of Italy that the sensual pleasures are destroying their souls. He is calling for the destruction of all ‘wanton’ works of art. Those of a nonreligious nature, of pagan themes, classical themes—so many of the masterpieces you have created—he is insisting they be destroyed.”

“Destroyed?” Botticelli cried. “Destroyed!”

“He’s a madman,” Ficino said dismissively.

“Prostitutes he calls ‘those pieces of meat with eyes,’” Lucrezia told us. “He wants all sodomites burned alive.”

I felt a clenching in my guts at those words.

“The people of Florence need to frame a new constitution, this friar tells us, and be governed not by man but by the laws of God alone,” she continued. “If Florentines do not mend their ways, they will be dreadfully punished in the fires of hell and damnation. Only a return to the simplicity of the early Christian church can save them.”

“I cannot believe the people of Florence will be swayed by such lunacy,” Pico said.

“Nor can I,” Ficino agreed.

“You must remember one thing,” Lucrezia offered in a commanding voice. Everyone turned to regard her with the deepest respect. “People, even the most rational of them, are fickle creatures. The slightest breeze can sway them. They are driven most volubly by their
fears
. I can see this friar one day stoking their fear of damnation into a great fire.”

“But the greater threat at present,” Lorenzo said, “is Pope Innocent. My mother and wife and I have discussed this at length, and concluded that some sacrifices will have to be made to restore a balance of power with Rome.”

“What are you saying, Lorenzo?” Sandro Botticelli demanded, dread suffusing his voice. “Has not this family already sacrificed Giuliano to the perversions of one wicked pope?”

“These are not outright losses, Sandro. They will bring as many blessings as hardships.”

“What is your plan?” Ficino asked Lorenzo.

He sighed. “A betrothal. My daughter, Maddalena, to one of the pope’s sons. And Giovanni’s appointment to a high office of the church.”

“He is only thirteen,” Pico Mirandola observed. “What high position in Rome could you possibly seek for him?”

“Cardinal,” Lorenzo said simply.

An uproar of incredulity unsettled the room.

“Listen to me,” Lorenzo said, quieting everyone with calm authority. “I count Cardinal Roderigo Borgia as a friend. He, in turn, has a close ally in the papal offices—Ludovico Sforza’s brother—also a cardinal, who will help us overcome all obstacles to Giovanni’s appointment.”

There was quiet and not-so-very-quiet discussion among the members.

“Please, everyone, listen to Lorenzo,” Lucrezia begged.

“The Fates have happily cooperated in these endeavors,” Lorenzo went on. “I recently received an invitation to travel to Rome to meet with the pontiff and all the European heads of state.”

“Is this safe?” Landino demanded to know.

“Cardinal Borgia promises it is. Innocent wishes us to view some sacred relics that have come into his possession. But of course he wishes, above all, for the rulers of the Christian world to come groveling. See him in all his splendor.”

“I don’t like it,” Poliziano said.

“None of us likes it,” Ficino insisted. He fixed Lorenzo in his affectionate gaze. “But we all hold Lorenzo in the highest possible esteem. We trust him to do what is best for Florence. What is right.” He turned his eyes to the faces of his Platonic brothers. “Do we not?”

“We do!” came the chorus of voices, mine raised louder than anyone’s.

“A marriage into the papal family, and a Medici cardinal.” Lorenzo smiled with confidence. “Consider it done.”

CHAPTER 26

It was to my great surprise and even greater delight to be invited by Lorenzo to accompany him to Rome. “His physician and advisor,” he would call me. Physician was true enough. I had begun treating him for the first symptoms of gout that had been plaguing him—occasional soreness in the joints of his thumbs and big toes, a feeling like broken glass grinding inside them, he told me.

By then I was proficient as a horseman, quite enjoying my cushioned saddle, and even attempting a short gallop, if not a race with Lorenzo. But most of all I relished the chance to spend time away from the narrow streets and mountains of cut stone that were Florence. It was a lovely summer journey with my favorite companion south through the green and rolling Italian countryside, with none of our friends or Lorenzo’s counselors, and only a small company of
conditores
to guard us along the road.

As for the Great Work, we had—Lorenzo and I—been attempting a spiritual joining in my bed, but the thing always eluded us. Somehow, too much attention was paid to pleasuring each other’s bodies for any protracted striving toward a Sacred Initiation, an Alchemical Wedding.

Lorenzo had for months been bringing books to my house from his—those from the East that smelled of patchouli and incense. One that was called
Kama Sutra
showed Indian men and women entwined in sexual postures that, when attempted by the two of us, left us collapsed in a heap, laughing till tears flowed
. The Erotic Papyrus of Egypt
, translated first into Greek and then into Latin, had, we decided, been transcribed by a prudish monk, for most of the passages that should have provided its readers with actual techniques used by the gods and pharaohs for Oneness with the Universal Divine were either blank spaces or had been rubbed out of the text.

Our one triumph, a joining of intellectual study and physical ecstasy, was discovery of the “rosebud.” It was a symbol found in numerous medieval churches and cathedrals. At the tip-top of their doors’ archways leading inside—doorways that were shaped very much like vulvas—was carved a rose. That delicate stone flower corresponded perfectly with the small fleshy bud at the pinnacle of every female cleft, that tiny organ of sexual joy—the only part of the human body, a man’s or a woman’s—whose sole function was pleasure.

It was a mystery. Had the church, the one that preached that women, through their original sin, had brought filth and shame and degeneration into the world, been founded on the principle of female ecstasy?

But the melding of body, intellect, and soul slipped from our grasp again and again. That Lorenzo had brought with him on this journey to Rome his copy of
Abraham and the Jew
became less a means for fulfillment than a source of merriment. And in the evenings, when we had stopped for our rest,
Abraham
remained tucked away in Lorenzo’s trunk as we found high pleasure, if not spirit, in each other’s arms.

I had never traveled before, save my one-day journey from Vinci to Florence, so Lorenzo delighted in showing me the sights he most loved—like the village of San Gimignano with its hundred tall towers. He said Florence had had many more of these ancient keeps in the past, but had torn them down to make way for modernity. South of Siena cattle grazed in the low rolling hills capped with jagged volcanic rocks.

Most evenings we slept in either flea-bitten inns or the more comfortable tent our guards erected for us. Our one-night stay with the monks in the Abbey of Monte Oliveto Maggiore compared as a luxury.

Finally we were in the countryside north of Rome and traveling the Via Flaminia down toward the city. Here our
conditori
became wary, as the place was notorious for the bandits that regularly terrorized travelers and pilgrims. But luck was with us and our passage through the campagna was peaceful and uninterrupted.