Signora Da Vinci (6 page)

I raced back up to my room, terrified I would miss Piero’s entrance, but by the time I had changed into a fresh bodice and reentered the shop, my love had still not arrived.

More customers came and more time passed. I was annoyed that Piero had not come at the time he said he would. As morning became afternoon I became angry, and when Magdalena called us up for our midday meal I barked at my father that I had no appetite. He looked baffled at my outburst and said that if I was not eating I could watch the shop while he did.

My whole body was trembling with anticipation.
Where was Piero?
Something must have happened to him! Perhaps he was hurt, ill. That must be the case, for he was never ever late for our meetings.
I should go to him.
He needed me. Might need the services of my father.

I was half out the door when I realized I could not just leave without my father’s permission. And what reason would I give? I had not today—as on all the other days of the secret trysts—given him fair warning of my journeying out to the hills, necessitated by a lack of mullein, or our only jarful of woad salve turning rancid and needing replacement.

It would seem odd for me to suddenly rush out. And what if I did, and missed Piero’s visit altogether? There were several ways through the streets of Vinci from his house to ours. He might be stopping along the way to bring us a small gift. What if he was even now in a field picking some pretty flowers?
Oh, why could he have not come when he said he would?

My father had returned from his dinner, his usual good-natured self, though eyeing me suspiciously, for I was not prone to such outbursts as I’d made that morning.

I silently decided that my only course was to wait for Piero’s arrival, whatever time that was, at least until closing.

The rest of the afternoon moved with the speed of a lethargic snail, my nerves fraying with every passing minute. When Father had closed the door on the last customer I could bear it no longer.

“I’m going out!” I fairly shouted.

“Out?” he said mildly. “Out where? To do what?”

I had not prepared an answer and instead stood spluttering helplessly in the doorway. “I’m just going, Papa!”

“Caterina . . .”

I slammed out and began a fast walk toward the old castle and the mill house that stood in its shadows.

It was a fine house that Piero’s family had built five generations before. Three stories high, a large portion of it was devoted to a grain mill inside, driven by a cleverly designed waterwheel on the outside. On one side stretching far down the hill was a long, narrow olive orchard whose trees now, in high summer, were bursting with plump green fruit. The back wall of the main enclosure was, indeed, the ancient Vinci Castle bulwark, but the whole of its large gardens and its several outbuildings were enclosed by shorter but still-sturdy masonry walls.

The front gate was imposing, two high wooden doors, crossed and studded with iron fittings, proclaiming that the family inside was important and prosperous.

The gate was firmly shut.

I wished to pound on it and cry out Piero’s name, but even in my desperate state I knew that to be a fatal mistake. A future wife of this house must be dignified, not some mad shrieking creature.

I stood there pretending serenity, praying that a family member or servant would exit or enter. I would calmly ask them of Piero’s whereabouts. But with no one coming or going I found myself pacing, blowing up little clouds of dust around my feet.

The sun was beginning to set. I could not stand here in the dark.
I must act!

I picked my way around the perimeter of the wall till I reached the olive orchard. I chose my target. There was a huge ancient tree so close to the compound wall that it overhung the garden.

I hiked up my skirts and climbed it.

Protected from sight by the gray-green leaves of the olive tree, I peered down into the yard. Little was happening. Just a few chickens scratching in the dirt, a stable boy carrying tack into the barn. No one I recognized as family was anywhere to be seen.

I pounded the tree trunk with frustration, crying out at the pain.

“Caterina?” I heard a man say from below.

My heart leapt. I looked down, only to sink with the gravest disappointment at seeing not the da Vinci heir, but Francesco.

“What are you doing up there?” he asked. “Come down. You’ll hurt yourself.”

I allowed myself to be helped from the tree, trying to regain something of my dignity. Finally we were face-to-face. The brothers resembled each other, I thought, though Piero was taller, and Francesco’s features were softer, sweeter.

“Do you know where Piero is?” I finally managed to utter with something resembling calm.

“I do, Caterina. He is in Florence.”

“Florence!” My calm shattered instantly. “How can he be in Florence? He was meant to come to my father’s house this morning to ask him for my hand.”

“I know,” Francesco said.

He knew! It was no secret then. All the family must have known of our plans.

“Why did he go without coming to tell me?” I demanded. “When is he coming back?”

Francesco looked stricken. “He will not be coming back for some time.” Francesco paused to collect his words. “My father . . . our father . . . is very angry at him. They quarreled.”

“They quarreled over me,” I said, feeling the skin on my arms rise in gooseflesh.

He nodded.

“Last night, Piero announced his intention to marry you.”

I smiled, heartened at that, even though I knew it would be the only good news I would hear from Francesco.

“Father told Piero he was dreaming if he thought he would be allowed to marry . . .” He grimaced as he said, “. . . the likes of you.”

“The likes of me,” I repeated.

“They are not my words, Caterina, and if you do not wish me to go on . . .”

“No! I want you to tell me everything.” I clutched at his arm. “Everything.”

This he did, with as much gentleness as he possessed in his gentle soul. But nothing could soften the knife edge as it sliced through me with every callous, offensive sentiment. What could Piero have been thinking? My family was nothing, my father a minor tradesman who took his payment in duck eggs. Piero was meant for much better than a poor village girl. When he married—to a girl his father and grandfather would choose for him—it would be into a family of wealth and high position. The girl’s substantial dowry would serve to enrich her husband’s family’s coffers.

Then Antonio da Vinci asked his son if he had deflowered the apothecary’s daughter. Piero had not attempted to deny it. His mother and grandmother had sniffed in disgust. The acknowledgment of my lost virginity had finalized the conversation.

Suddenly Francesco looked down at his feet, loath to continue.

“What did your father say?” I insisted.

“That you were no better than a common prostitute. When Grandfather asked what Piero would do if he’d made you pregnant, Mother and Grandmother stood and left the room.”

With those words my knees jellied. The thought of pregnancy had never entered my head. We were to be married. If there had been a child it was meant to be born legitimate.
We were to be married!

“Did he not fight for me?” I cried. “Even a little?”

Francesco regarded me with pity. “I told you what they said, Caterina. How could my brother have fought for you?” Francesco shook his head. “He is heir to this greedy, self-serving family. He should have known better!”

I remember little after that. There must have been moonlight, for even in the night I was able to make my way into the hills, stumbling as I went, caring nothing for my scraped knees and torn skirts. I wandered like a wraith up the river shore, collapsing in the shallows to weep, loudly cursing Piero and his miserable family, and finally and most viciously, cursing myself.

How could I have been so stupid?
I was a fourteen-year-old girl. No one in the village knew of my father’s honorable profession in the service of Poggio, who, in turn, had served Cosimo de’ Medici himself. No one knew Ernesto was anything more than a poor country herbalist. And even if Piero’s family had known of the vast treasure of books and manuscripts kept in my father’s study, it would have meant nothing. All that mattered to them was a fat dowry and a step up into Florentine society. None of that could I offer their son.

And I was a whore at that.

I lay on my back staring up at the stars. They seemed to mock me with their cold, distant sparkle, as if to say, “We haven’t a care for you, you poor worthless creature. Rule your own fate? See where it’s gotten you.”

I cried for so long and so hard that I was altogether emptied, and fell into a dreamless sleep. I woke after dawn, damp all over, the shape of grass spikes gouged into the flesh of my cheek.

I found my way back to the village, ignoring my neighbors, refusing to answer their cheerful hellos. At home I found my father frantic with worry, and Magdalena, relief having turned to annoyance, clucked disapprovingly at my disheveled appearance. Tongues would already be wagging, she scolded.

I could not look my father in the eye. I pulled out of the fierce embrace in which I allowed him to hold me for only a moment before climbing the stairs to my room.

Only later did I learn, or even care, that the fire in his sacred furnace had, for the first time since it had been lit, been allowed to burn down and die.

CHAPTER 3

The day after I returned from Piero’s betrayal I drank great quantities of willow leaf tincture to prevent the joining of Piero’s seed with my own. I believed in its efficacy and that the vitriol coursing through my veins and surely engorging my organs would kill anything trying to live there and grow.

In the following weeks I was silent in my rage, telling no one—not even my father—the source of it. Fury grew and festered into something sick and pustulent in the deepest part of me.

I became openly irritable, ignored washing or brushing my hair, ate portions that would better suit a large man than a slender girl, and I grew fat and slovenly, my face crisscrossed with white-headed pimples. I lay abed every night obsessed with thoughts of Piero and his family, revenge I would take, even magic potions I would compound to recapture his love if he should ever return from Florence. I refused to go to the hills to collect the herbs for my father’s apothecary, and snapped rudely at his patrons. No one understood the change that had come over Caterina—sweet, affable daughter of Ernesto.

In my confused and anguished state I had overlooked the first missed menses, but by the second I had recovered enough of my good sense to realize that the white willow tincture had failed as a contraceptive.

I was pregnant.

I was carrying in my belly the spawn of weak-livered Piero da Vinci. This made me livid. I would not have it, I decided. If I believed Aristotle, the fetus at this stage was still an animal and not a person. I would kill the thing, I decided. Flush it out of my body. Then, perhaps, I could put Piero out of my thoughts forever. Find the joy I had known in my girl’s life. Return to my father’s good graces and redeem myself with the villagers I had repeatedly insulted.

When Papa was asleep I crept up the stairs to his study. I found the texts from Galen, Avicenna, Dioscorides, and Rhazes. I frantically perused the sections on contraception and abortifacants. Many named the same herbs “to provoke the menses,” while only a few claimed to “kill embryos and cause them to fall from the womb.” But some of these substances were extinct in the world, the best of all abortificants—silphium—gone for a thousand years. Others were not to be found in Italy—squirting cucumber made into a juice, or elephant dung to be used in a suppository. Some, like myrrh and savin, were presently missing from my father’s apothecary shelves, he awaiting shipments from distant lands at the port in Pisa. The alchemical texts, with mention of special stones, herbs, and stars that could cause an abortion, were obtuse and the least helpful of all.

The truth was there had been no cause, in all the time I had been helping my father, to end a pregnancy in Vinci. Many women came to him for help in
preventing
conception, realizing the old wives’ tales, like burning a mule’s hoof over hot coals, were harebrained. But pregnancy was, except in plague years, always a blessing, and my only knowledge of ending life in the womb was that which I had read in a book. The subject was not one I had even discussed with my father.

I was left to pore over the ancient medical manuscripts myself in the flickering light of a candle, wondering if the decoctions and suppositories suggested would kill the thing inside . . . without killing me as well. Then, consumed by melancholy, I considered that death was no worse a fate than giving birth to a bastard child in a small town.

It was therefore with more than a small draught of fear that I mixed a foul-smelling brew of those ingredients at hand in the apothecary named as abortificants—rue, betony, pennyroyal, and juniper sap—and desperate girl that I was, swallowed it just before the sun rose, climbing back up to my room and into my bed.

Almost at once I became sick to my stomach, and by the time Aunt Magdalena had arrived and my father was opening the apothecary door, I was retching violently and screeching in high-pitched cries that echoed down the stairs, all the way into the shop.

Papa and Magdalena were suddenly at my bedside, weeping as they ministered to me, begging me to tell them what was wrong. By then I was so terrified of dying—something I suddenly knew with great clarity I did not wish for myself—that I blurted out the ingredients I had ingested, and for what purpose.

The pain and delirium were so great I cannot say how they saved my life that day. But they did. I was weak as a kitten for a week after that, and could not swallow anything but the thinnest broth of salted vegetables.