The Birth of Venus (8 page)

“Except I think you sinned as much against propriety as I did that day,” he says quietly. “As we do now, being here together.” And he starts to gather up his stuff in preparation for blowing out the candles and I watch it all slipping away from me.

“Why do you dismiss me so? Is it because I am a woman?” I take a breath. “Because it seems to me you have learned enough from them in other ways.” He stops, though he does not turn or in any other way acknowledge my words. “I mean . . . I mean your girl on the stretcher. I wonder how much you paid for her to lie down for you.”

Now he turns and looks at me, and his face is bloodless in the candlelight. But there is no going back.

“I know what it is you do at night, sir. I have watched you leaving the house. I have spoken to my brother Tomaso. I think my father would be most unhappy to discover that his chapel painter spends his nights whoring in the slums of the city.”

At that moment I think it possible that he might cry. For all that God might be in his fingertips, he is sorely inadequate when it comes to dealing with the cunning of our city. How disillusioning it must have been for him, arriving in the new Athens only to find it so noisy with compromise and temptation. Maybe Savonarola is right, after all. Maybe we have indeed become too worldly for our own good.

“You don’t understand anything,” he says, and his voice is dark with pain.

“All I am asking is that you look at my work. Tell me what you think, without lying. If you do this simple thing I will not breathe a word. More—I will protect you against my brother. He can be much more vicious than I, and—”

We both hear it: the crash of the central door opening below us in the house. The same lightning rod of horror runs through us together and without thinking we start to extinguish the candles around us. If someone were to come in now . . . What did I think I had been doing, taking such a risk?

“My father,” I whisper, as the darkness engulfs us. “He was at a meeting of the Signoria late.”

On cue I hear his voice, calling up into the stairwell; then, from nearer, another door opening. Tomaso must have fallen asleep waiting for him. Their voices mingle and another door closes. It is quiet.

Close by in the darkness the red speck of his taper light glows like a firefly. We are so close to each other that his breath grazes my cheek. His smell is all around me, hot and sour, and I feel a sudden sickness in the pit of my stomach. If I put out my hand now I could touch the skin on his chest. I step back as if he has scalded me and send a candle spinning over the flagstone floor. The noise is awful. A moment earlier, and . . .

“I’ll go first,” I say, when I have regained my balance, and my voice sounds dry with fear. “Stay until you hear the door close.”

He grunts assent. A flicker of candlelight appears next to the taper glow, with his face illuminated above it. He lifts it and hands it to me. Our eyes meet in the glow. Do we have an agreement? I have no idea. I retrace my footsteps hurriedly to the main door. When I reach it I look back to see his figure in enlarged silhouette against the wall as he pulls the paper down from the apse wall, his arms outstretched like a man crucified.

Nine

B
ACK IN MY ROOM, THE SOUND OF MY FATHER
’
S AND
brother’s voices echoed up the stone staircase from his study below. The pain in my stomach corkscrewed again so that I could barely stay upright. I gave the argument time to end, then made my way out again, determined now to reach my mother’s medicine chest.

But I was not the only one up who shouldn’t be. Tomaso was coming down the stairs with about as much finesse as a wounded bull. But at least he was trying to be quiet. He was so intent on stepping on air that he walked straight into me, then looked guilty as sin as he straightened up—all of which meant I had something to barter.

“Alessandra! God’s teeth, you gave me a fright,” he said, in a cracked whisper. “What are doing here?”

“I heard you and Father arguing,” I lied smoothly. “It woke me up. Where are you going? It’s nearly morning.”

“I—have to see someone.”

“What did Father say?”

“Nothing.”

“Did he have news about Plautilla?”

“No, no. There’s no news from her.”

“So what did you talk about?” His lips closed a little tighter. “Tomaso?” I said, with soft threat. “What did you and Father talk about?”

He gave me a cool stare, as if to show that while he understood the bargain, this particular surrender would not cause him much grief. “There’s trouble in the city.”

“What kind of trouble?”

He paused. “Bad. The night watchmen of Santo Spírito have found two bodies.”

“Bodies?”

“A man and a woman. Murdered.”

“Where?”

He took a breath. “In the church.”

“The church! What happened?”

“No one knows. They found them this morning. They were laid out beneath the pews. Their throats had been slit.”

“Oh!”

But there was more. I could see it in his eyes. God help me, though I didn’t mean to, my thoughts strayed to the body of that young woman with dog bites all over her. “What else?”

“They were both naked. And she had something stuffed in her mouth,” he said grimly, then stopped, as if he might have said enough.

I frowned to show I didn’t understand.

“It was his cock.” He watched my confusion, then gave a grim little smile and put his hand down to grab hold of his own crotch. “Understand now? Whoever killed them cut off his cock and stuck it in her mouth.”

“Oh!” I know I must have sounded like a child, because at that moment I felt like one again. “Oh, who would do such a thing? And in Santo Spírito!”

But we both knew the answer. The same madman who had cut the marsh girl’s body to pieces just by Santa Croce church.

“That’s what Father’s meeting was about. The Signoria and the Security Council have decided to move the bodies.”

“Move them? You mean—”

“So they’ll be found outside the city.”

“That’s what Father told you tonight?”

He nodded.

But why would he have done that? If you were going to keep such a horror secret, you didn’t do so by telling people. Especially not young men like Tomaso, who spent half their lives out on the streets. Young men who might therefore find themselves at risk if they didn’t change their behavior. Of course. My stomach pain must have addled my brain.

“But—why should they move them? I mean, if that’s where they were found, shouldn’t—”

“What happens, Alessandra, do you get stupid at night?” He sighed. “Think about it. The desecration would cause a riot.”

He was right. It would. Only a few weeks before, a young man had been found chipping bits off the statues in the niches outside the old church of Orsanmichele and had barely escaped with his life after the mob had got hold of him. Erila said he had been touched by madness, but Savonarola had made the city nervous about such blasphemy and, after a summary trial, the hangman had dispatched him three days later with less violence and equally little ceremony. A sacrilege such as this one now would offer fine ammunition to the friar. What were his words about Florence?
When the Devil rules a city, his uncrowned consort is lust, and thus does evil proliferate until there is only filth and despair.

I felt so sick and so frightened that I had to pretend not to be. “You know, Tomaso,” I said with a small laugh, “there are some brothers who would protect their younger sisters against such stories.”

“And there are some sisters who spend their days worshipping their brothers.”

“But what fun would you get from them, pray?” I said softly. “They would surely bore you.”

For the first time as we looked at each other I wondered how our lives might have been if we had not been cast as enemies. He shrugged slightly and started to move past me.

“You can’t go out now, not knowing that. It could be dangerous.”

He said nothing.

“That’s what you and Father were rowing about, right? He forbade you to go?”

He shook his head. “I have an appointment, Alessandra. I
have
to go.”

I took a breath. “Whoever she is, you can wait.”

He looked at me in the gloom for a moment and then smiled. “You don’t understand, little sister. Even if I could,
she
can’t. So. Good night.” He said it quietly and made to leave.

I put a hand on his arm. “Be careful.”

He let it rest there for a while before he lifted it off carefully. Was he on the verge of saying something more, or did I only imagine it? He took a sudden step back from me. “God, Alessandra, what’s happened? You’re hurt!”

“What?”

“Look at you, you’re bleeding.”

I looked down. Sure enough, on the front of my shift there was a fresh dark stain.

And suddenly it all made sense. It wasn’t Plautilla’s pain I was feeling but my own. It had come. The moment I most dreaded in my life. I felt a great flush of shame rise up like fever. My face grew hot with it and I clutched my hands over my night shift, scrunching it up between my fingers until the stain disappeared. And as I did so I felt a trickle of hot liquid run down the inside of my thigh.

Tomaso, of course, read it all. I felt even sicker with terror at the prospect of his revenge. But instead he did something I have never forgotten. He leaned toward me and touched my cheek. “So,” he said, almost gently, “it seems we both have secrets now. Good night, little sister.” He moved past me down the stairs, and I heard a door below him close quietly.

I went to bed and felt my blood flow.

Ten

M
Y MOTHER ARRIVED HOME BEFORE ANY OF US HAD RISEN.
She and my father ate behind closed doors. At ten o’clock Erila woke me to say I had been summoned to his study. When she saw the blood she gave me a sly smile, changed my sheets, and brought me cloth to bind into my undergarments.

“Not a word,” I said. “Do you understand? Not a word to anyone until I say so.”

“Then you’d better say so fast. Maria will sniff you out in no time.”

Erila dressed me quickly and I presented myself. At the dining table I met Luca, bleary-eyed, stuffing himself with bread and pork jelly. I felt too sick to eat. He scowled at me. I scowled back. My mother and father were waiting. Tomaso arrived a few minutes later. Despite a change of clothes, he had the look of someone who had not been to bed.

My father’s study was situated at the back of his showroom at the side of the palazzo, where the ladies of the town would bring their tailors to pick the latest fabrics. The place reeked of camphor and other salts suspended in pomades from the ceiling to keep away the moths, and the smell permeated his room. These areas were usually out of bounds for us children, particularly for Plautilla and me, and for that reason of course I loved them even more. From his small parchment-lined office my father ran a small empire of trade throughout Europe and parts of the East. As well as wool and cotton from England, Spain, and Africa, he imported many of the rainbow dyes: vermilion and realgar from the Red Sea, cochineal and
oricello
from the Mediterranean, gall nuts from the Balkans, and, from the Black Sea, the rock alum with which to fix them. Once the cloth was finished, the bolts that did not go into Florentine fashion went back onto the ships to feed the luxury markets in the countries they came from. When I look back on it now, I think my father lived with the weight of the world on his shoulders, because while we prospered I know there were times when the news was bad—when the loss of a ship to storms or piracy had him in his room through the night and my mother kept us on tiptoe next day lest we should wake him. Certainly in my memory he was forever at his ledgers or his letters, tallying the columns of profit and loss and sending dispatches to merchants, agents, and cloth manufacturers who lived in cities with names I could barely pronounce, sometimes in places where they didn’t believe that Jesus Christ was the son of God, though their heathen fingers understood beauty and truth enough within a bale of cloth. Such letters flew daily out of our house like carrier pigeons, signed, sealed, and wrapped in waterproof cloths against the elements, painstakingly copied and filed in case of mishap or loss on the road.

With such business upon him, it was no wonder that my father had so little time for matters of the home. But that morning he looked particularly weary, his face more jowly and lined than I remembered it. He was seventeen years older than my mother and would have been in his fifties at this time. He was rich and well thought of and had twice been chosen for minor offices of state, the most recent his place on the Security Council. Had he been more strategic with his influence he might have promoted himself quicker, but while he was shrewd at business he was also a simple man, more suited to the transport of cloth than politics. I believe he loved us children and he was good enough at lecturing Tomaso and Luca when their behavior demanded it, but in some ways he was more at ease in his factories than his home. His education had only been sufficient unto the fact of his trade—his father had done it before him—and he had none of my mother’s knowledge or her golden tongue. But he could tell if the color in a bolt of cloth was uneven from a single glance, and he always knew which shade of red would please the ladies most when the sun shone.

So the speech he gave that morning was, for him, long and one to which he, and I suspect my mother, had given much thought.

“First I have good news to give you. Plautilla is well. Your mother stayed the night with her, and she is recovered.”

My mother sat back straight, hands folded in her lap. She had long since perfected the art of female quiescence. If you had not known, you would think she was feeling nothing.

“But there is other news, which, since you will hear it soon enough from gossip, we have decided that you should learn first at home.”

I shot a glance at Tomaso. Was he really going to talk of naked women with cocks in their mouths? Not my father, surely.

“The Signoria have been meeting through the night because there are events abroad that affect our security. The king of France is arrived in the north at the head of an army to pursue his claim on the Duchy of Naples. He has destroyed the Neapolitan fleet at Genoa and signed treaties with Milan and Venice. But to go farther south he must come through Tuscany, and he has sent envoys asking for our support of his claim and safe passage for his army.”

I could see from Tomaso’s smirk at me that he had known more than he’d told me all along. But then of course women are not fit for politics.

“So will there be fighting?” Luca’s eyes shone like gold medallions. “I hear the French are fierce warriors.”

“No, Luca. There will not be fighting. There is more glory in peace than in war,” said my father sternly, no doubt aware of how the demand for fine cloth diminishes during conflict. “The Signoria, with the advice of Piero de’ Medici, will offer neutrality but no support for his claim. In that way we shall show strength mixed with prudence.”

Had Piero’s name been spoken even six months before it would probably have soothed us all, but even I knew that his reputation had crumbled since his father’s death. Rumor was that he had trouble pulling on his own boots without whining or losing his temper. How was he possibly going to have the charm or the cunning to negotiate with a king who didn’t need to flatter our city-state when he could just walk in and trample all over it? Though such thoughts were not for me to voice.

“If we pin our hopes on Piero, we might as well open the gates today and welcome them in.”

My father sighed. “And which gossipmonger tells you that?” Tomaso shrugged. “I am telling you the Signoria has faith in the Medici name. There is no one else who commands such a level of respect with a foreign king.”

“Well, I don’t think we should let them just walk through. I think we should fight them,” said Luca, as usual having listened but not heard a thing.

“No, we will not fight them. We will talk to them and make terms with them, Luca. Their battle is not with us. It will be an agreement among equals. They might even give us something in return.”

“What? You think Charles will fight our disputes for us and deliver Pisa into our hands?” I had never heard Tomaso so outrightly quarrelsome in front of my father before. My mother was looking at him sternly, but he did not or would not notice. “He will simply do what he pleases. He knows he only has to threaten and our great Republic will cave in like a house of cards.”

“And you are a boy trying to speak like a man and making a risible job of it,” said my father. “Until you have the years to take on such matters, you would do better to keep such treacherous opinions to yourself. I will not hear them in this house.”

There was a shimmering little silence where I kept my eyes away from both of them. Then Tomaso said sullenly, “Very well, sir.”

“And if they do come?” said Luca, still oblivious. “Will they come inside the city? Would we let them go that far?”

“This is something to be decided when we know more.”

“What about Alessandra?” my mother asked quietly.

“My dear, if the French come upon us, Alessandra will be sent to a convent with all the other young girls of the city. Plans have already been discussed—”

“No,” I blurted out.

“Alessandra—”

“No. I don’t want to be sent away. If—”

“You will do as I see fit,” said my father, his tone very angry now. He was not used to this level of rebellion in the family. But then he had forgotten how we had all grown older.

My mother, more pragmatic and wiser, simply looked down at her folded hands again and said softly, “I think before we say any more you should know that your father has other news to deliver.”

They glanced at each other and she smiled slightly. He took her guidance gratefully.

“I . . . it is possible that within the foreseeable future I will be called to the honor of the office of Priore.”

One of the Council of Eight. Honor indeed, even though his early knowledge of such elevation was proof that the selection process was corrupt. Looking back now I can still feel the pride in his voice as he said it. So much so that it would have been churlish even to think that at a time of such crisis our city might have been better served by wiser, more experienced men, because to acknowledge that would have meant also acknowledging that something was seriously wrong within the state, and I don’t think any of us at that moment, even Tomaso, wanted to go that far.

“Father,” I said, when it was clear that neither of my brothers was going to, “you do our family great honor by this news.” And I came and knelt before him and kissed his hand, a dutiful daughter again.

My mother glanced approvingly in my direction as I rose.

“Why, thank you, Alessandra,” he said. “I will remember that, if and when I take my place in the government.”

But as we smiled at each other I couldn’t help thinking of those butchered bodies and all the blood they would have left under the pews of Santo Spírito, and how Savonarola could use them powerfully against a city where the threat of a foreign invasion now made him an even greater prophet in the people’s eyes.

MY MOTHER IS SITTING BY THE WINDOW IN HER ROOM.
FOR A
moment I think she might be praying. For as long as I can remember, she has had a way of being alone with her stillness that makes her seem almost absent. But whether it is thought or prayer I cannot always tell, and I do not have the courage to ask. Watching her from the door I see how beautiful she still is, though she is well past her youth and her beauty is more fragile in the harsh morning light. How does it feel when your family is slipping away from you and your first daughter is to become a mother? Is there triumph that you have navigated her through the waters of Scylla and Charybdis, or do you wonder what you will do with yourself now she has gone? Lucky for her that she still had me to worry about.

I waited till she noticed me, which she did without turning.

“I am very tired, Alessandra,” she said quietly. “If this is not important I would prefer if it could wait till later.”

I took a deep breath. “I want you to know that I won’t go into a convent.”

She frowned. “That decision is still some way off. Though if it comes to it, you will do as you are told.”

“But you said yourself—”

“No! I am not talking about this now. You heard what your father said:
If
the French come—and as yet that is by no means certain—the city will not be safe for young women.”

“But he said they wouldn’t come as enemies. If we make a truce—”

“Look,” she said firmly, turning to me at last. “It is not women’s business to know about the affairs of state. And you in particular will only add to your burdens by showing that you do. But it does not mean you should stay stupid in private. No army occupies a city without having some rights over it. And when soldiers are at war, they are not citizens, only mercenaries, and young virgins are most at risk. You
will
go to a convent.”

I took a breath. “What if I was married? No longer a virgin, and with the protection of a husband? I would be safe then.”

She stared at me. “But you don’t want to be married.”

“I don’t want to be sent away.”

She sighed. “You are still young.”

“Only in years,” I said. Why, I thought, must there always be two conversations, one that women have when there are men present and one we have when we are alone? “In other ways I am older than all of them. If I have to get married in order to stay, that is what I will do.”

“Oh, Alessandra. That is not a good enough reason.”

“Mama,” I said, “it’s all changed anyway. Plautilla is gone, I am at war with Tomaso, and Luca lives in his own thick fog. I can’t study forever. Maybe that means I’m ready.” And for that second I think I really believed it.

“But you know you are
not
ready.”

“I am now,” I said bluntly. “I started to bleed last night.”

“Oh.” Her hands went up and then down to her lap, in the way they always did when she sought to steady herself. “Oh!” And then she laughed and stood up, and I could see that she was also crying. “Oh, my dear child,” she said, as she took me into her arms. “My dear, dear child.”