Signora Da Vinci (35 page)

Lorenzo, however, now began to prepare me for the hellhole that was the “City of God.” It was, he said, no more than a tenth of the size it had been in the days of the empire, and what was left were the ruins of that pagan stronghold. It had fallen on hard times since the days of the Great Augustus, when it was accepted as the center of the known world, and not so long since the Catholic church had again made it its home after years in France.

Still, nothing could prepare me for the shock of the place. Having entered from the east we rode back down toward the Tiber through the famed Seven Hills of Rome, these dotted with only the occasional run-down farm.

The streets—anything but the broad avenues described by the Roman writers—were hardly more than alleys, and filthy ones at that. The piazzas were no better than garbage heaps, the stench of human excrement and rotting entrails wafting up from them as though they were cesspits.

Small neighborhoods huddled around broken-down churches, and even the larger homes had crumbling walls and heavy gates closed tight. Loggia and stairways jutted into the road, making it nearly impossible to pass. Most of the people in these places were themselves ragged. Nearly every woman we saw was a prostitute.

Up ahead we saw a vineyard—a sight for sore eyes. But as we rode past I could see, poking up from between the green rows, ruined walls.

“The Palatine,” Lorenzo murmured, “or what is left of it.”

I remembered this had been a neighborhood of fine palaces in imperial days. One was Nero’s. It was said to have been covered in gold.

“See the cattle grazing?” Lorenzo asked and jutted his chin toward an overgrown field full of sheep and their shepherds. Strangely, pieces of once-towering arches and ruined walls and half-buried columns rose up here and there among them. “The Forum,” he said. “Seat of ancient Roman government.”

Thankfully Hadrian’s Pantheon had been spared ruination, as the Temple of the Gods—a round dome larger even than Brunelleschi’s cathedral in Florence—had seven hundred years before been converted into a Christian church.

The Colosseum had not fared so well. The gladiatorial stadium, even in its pitiful condition, I could see rose on a scale so massive it was hardly fathomable. More terrible than the marketplace of farmers, butchers, and fishmongers who hawked their wares between its arches were the masons who mindlessly hacked and hammered at the curved marble walls and the grimy slaves that pushed the pilfered blocks onto carts and carried them away.

“So this is the city from which Clarice looks down upon us?” I said. “From where is bred her snobbery and ostentation?”

“It’s hard to believe,” Lorenzo agreed. “Poggio always called Rome a wild wasteland.” He sighed. “Every time I visit I feel my heart aching for the glory that was lost from here. Imagine what the great men whom we study would think if they could see their beloved home now.”

As we approached a bridge over the Tiber, I could see the tall marsh grasses growing on the banks and inhaled the stink of dead fish. Rumbling ominously in front, beside, and behind us were cart after cart of stone quarried from the ancient ruins.

“Where is it all being taken?” I asked. “Who is the thief of antiquity?”

“Our host, of course. Innocent is in a frenzy of building. He’s determined to pick up where Pope Nicholas left off with his plans to renew Rome and the church to their former glory. I’m sure he’ll speak of it . . . endlessly. What he will never say is that Saint Peter’s Basilica—that most hallowed monument—is built on Caligula’s killing fields and cemeteries, the graveyard of thousands of butchered Christians. Even now packs of wolves come down from the hills and dig up their bones.”

“Very holy,” I observed.

Lorenzo smiled.

But all the squalor of the streets evaporated as we crossed the river and entered the Vatican compound. Instead there were clouds of dust stirred by the industry of construction. Virtually every building face was crisscrossed with scaffolding. Huge piles of stolen marble stood waiting for dressing by an army of stonemasons.

The towering doors of the Papal Palace opened. Priests and bishops lined up along its polished marble hall to welcome
Il Magnifico
to the holiest house on earth. I had wished to hang back for that entrance but Lorenzo insisted I stay by his side.

Coming forward to greet us were a pair of red-robed cardinals, their three-cornered birettas on their heads. I saw from the corner of my eye that Lorenzo was smiling with recognition. Our salutations were, by necessity, measured and steeped in ritual, but as the two led us away from the vestibule and up a majestic white marble staircase, its sidewall hung with massive tapestries, the introduction to Roderigo Borgia and his cardinalate brother, Ascanio Sforza, was as natural and friendly as four men meeting in a taverna for a night of wine and women.

“You see those boys there?” Roderigo said, pointing to a pair of youths walking side by side in the first-floor hallway and dressed in rich velvet tunics and jaunty caps. “They are two of Innocent’s offspring. We have seen many Holy Fathers become ‘Unholy’ Fathers, but before this, never one who openly housed his children in the Vatican.”

“That speaks well for the man,” Lorenzo observed mildly.

Ascanio smiled. “I understand you’re adopting Giuliano’s son by his mistress.”

“Medici blood.” It was all Lorenzo had to say—understood by everyone.

We’d come to a fantastically gilt and carven door. Roderigo opened it and showed us in. It was an apartment fit for a king, with two separate sleeping chambers joined by an ornamented salon.

“I’ll send in tubs and attendants for your baths,” Ascanio Sforza offered, “to get the road grime from your pores.”

All at once the pleasure of my surroundings transmogrified into a threat.

“Very kind of you, Cardinal Sforza,” I said, hoping to keep my tone calm and even. “But a wash basin will do nicely for me. I’ve a skin condition that worsens if I soak in a tub. But Lorenzo . . .”

“By all means, send me a tub,” he finished for me. “But no attendants. My physician here will see to my needs.”

“Very well.” Roderigo moved to the door, Ascanio following. “Someone will be sent to fetch you for the evening meal. The Dukes of Savoy and Milan have already arrived. Our rider tells us that Maximilian’s cavalcade should be here momentarily. The French king has sent his regrets, along with Edward of England.”

“Louis is too old to travel,” Ascanio said.

“And Edward of England too fat,” said Roderigo. “All that gluttony and debauchery.”

With that they were gone. Lorenzo bolted the door behind them and immediately took me in his arms.

“So tell me, physician, what is to be done with this rod that grows stiff between my legs at the first mention of a king’s debauchery?”

“I cannot be sure,” I said with a lazy smile. “But I would guess it will need examining.”

 

A page came to collect Lorenzo and me as the sun went down over Vatican Hill. I could hardly keep my eyes off my lover, for I had not seen him so resplendent since the day of his wedding festival. He wore black velvet—a doublet trimmed with ermine, the puffed sleeves large and slashed to reveal fine ruffles of cloth of silver silk. And he wore diamonds—fist-sized clasps at both shoulders, in rings on his fingers and a row of them hanging like teardrops from the rim of his black velvet cap.

Lorenzo, in all the years I had known him, had shown nothing but modesty in his dress and manner, but this night he was changed. Bold. Confident. Strutting and peacocklike.
Necessary,
I thought.
Necessary to display his might and his wealth to this new pontiff.

He’d even urged me to assume less severe garb than a scholar would for this visit, and having had several attractive doublets made for me, took great delight in helping me dress. When I admitted it felt strange for the first time in my life to display my legs in nothing but a pair of hose, he insisted I was “a fine-looking man” in all my parts.

We were shown to a dining hall so massive and so opulently appointed that the Medici garden loggia was a peasant’s table in comparison. No ladies had come. And no children were present.

This was a meeting of men who ruled the world.

Maximilian, tall and rangy with the strange pugnacious Hapsburg chin, owned an empire that spread across the entire European continent. His demeanor was the easy grace of one whose noble family bloodline snaked like a river too far back into history to imagine ever finding its source.

Jacque, the Duke of Savoy, had a long oval face, tight red curls and eyebrows so severely arched he looked at all times surprised. The Savoys, too, were an old and powerful family that held the high Alps joining France and Italy in its powerful grip.

The two cardinals, Roderigo and Ascanio, stood to greet us, and when they regained their seats, I saw with a shudder of delight that Ludovico
Il Moro
Sforza, now a solid young man, inhabited a place at the table. It seemed apparent by
Il Moro
’s presence here that his sister-in-law, Bona, had lost her regent’s control over the Duchy of Milan.

“Vico!” Lorenzo cried with sincere joy.

The two embraced. Ludovico recalled meeting me in Florence, but even more memorable was Leonardo’s fantastical
sacre rappresentazione
at San Spirito and the fire from which we had all escaped with our lives.

“His Holiness,” a page announced, and we all stood.

Innocent was tall and, I thought, rather handsome, though I could clearly see that meekness about him that Roderigo had called “rabbitlike.” His gaudy robes and jewels were expected, but the way he moved his hands, as though every gesture was an onerous benediction, I found irritating.

One by one we made our obeisance. I was only too aware of my hypocrisy as I knelt and, taking the soft perfumed fingers in my own, kissed the papal ring. I wondered then as Lorenzo did the same if he loathed that necessary act. If he saw in his future an ally, or a murderous enemy as Sixtus had been.

The pope bade us all sit and, clapping his hands twice, began the parade of servants bearing the first course of what I imagined would be many courses—an open pigeon and prune tart smelling of nutmeg.

With Roderigo and Ascanio greasing the wheels, conversation flowed easily. It was plain how deeply Innocent depended upon the counsel of his cardinals. For all his flourishes he barely had an opinion of his own. But the pair of them were clever, and tactful in the extreme. Never once did they stray toward condescension or hubris. And every chance they had, they made much of Lorenzo and his beloved Florence, as well as the beauty of Milan’s steadfast alliance with them.

The pope hinted half a dozen times that he hoped Lorenzo would send him some of our city’s “excellent artists” for his many projects, but Lorenzo was tactfully evasive about granting that wish, at least until he had made the point for which he had come.

“Queen Isabella’s Inquisition that has sent thousands of Jews fleeing from Spain is troubling,” Lorenzo said. He fixed Innocent in an intense gaze. “And the witch burnings that are occurring with ever greater frequency since the publication of
Malleus Malificarum
perhaps moreso. These are signs of a coming catastrophe in Europe, Your Holiness.”

Innocent began to splutter with anger and confusion. He had never imagined so blatant an attack on the first evening of his entertainments.

“I’m sure Lorenzo meant no offense, Holy Father,” Cardinal Sforza offered quickly.

Cardinal Borgia, too, was ready with a soothing balm. “I believe what our friend Lorenzo is saying, Holy Father, is that he dearly wishes that your reign and reputation are never besmirched by such calamitous events as he describes.”

I watched as the pontiff’s features slowly settled and calmed. “I have no wish to be remembered as a murderer, a persecutor,” he said.

“Of course you do not,” Lorenzo said, his demeanor softening.

“You wish to be remembered as the pope who brought peace and justice to the world. The pope who restored Rome to its former glory. And you
will
. . .” He smiled broadly. “. . . with the help of Florence’s greatest artists and architects, whom I will gladly send you.”

Now it was Innocent who was smiling, an alarming sight, for the man’s teeth were brown and rotten.

But Lorenzo’s point had been well made. He had rallied strong support from the two cardinals who controlled the pope. And he had, for the moment, made the Holy Father a happy man.

Perhaps there were other skirmishes to be fought, but this evening had begun successfully.

 

Next morning the pontiff was all abuzz, hurrying us through the meal and the obligatory tour through his domain. First we viewed the former pope’s chapel, the one he had named “Sistine” after himself. I found it very boxlike and uninspiring. Innocent did, indeed, need the talent of Florentine artists to bring him greater glory.

We were then taken in to see the vast basilica in the shape of a cross—the one Innocent desired to rebuild. Now it was simply a thousand-year-old church, a cavernous space with five columned aisles jumbled with chapels and oratories and shrines. Frescoes and mosaics, precious gems inlaid into molded silver and gold. Statues and crypts of various martyrs were buried within its walls.

All of it left me cold, but then when had a church done any more than chill my soul? Innocent, however, waxed effusively of his grandiose schemes. “Pope Nicholas,” he intoned, sweeping his ringed fingers in a majestic arc around the cathedral, “wished a reborn Basilica of Saint Peter. A temple so glorious and beautiful that it would seem a divine, rather than a human, creation. Sadly he died before he could see his dream fulfilled. I shall take up that mantle.”

He led us to a circular, chest-high wall in the center aisle of the church, where its two arms crossed. “Here,” he cried, “here lie the remains of our beloved Simon Peter, upon whose bones the very church was founded!”