The Poet Prince (25 page)

“Maureen, you have taught me the meaning of love. You have transformed me, changed me from someone who was existing to someone who is alive. I am sorry, more than I can ever say, for what has happened with Vittoria. And . . . I must tell you that it
is
possible the child is
my son.”

“I know that too,” Maureen said. She walked from the terrace back into the bedroom to retrieve an envelope from the dressing table. “Vittoria left this for me today.”

Bérenger opened the envelope and removed the three eight-by-ten photographs from within. They were all pictures of a beautiful little boy, a toddler just over two years old. Bérenger caught his breath as he went through the photos one by one. The boy in the photographs, with his long, curly dark hair and his blue-green eyes, looked like a tiny version of Bérenger Sinclair.

“You’ve never seen him.” Maureen realized as she watched his unexpected, emotional response to the photos.

“No.” His voice was choked as he looked at photos of his son for the first time.

“What are you going to do?”

Bérenger was stunned into silence for a moment. The photos of Dante had instantly diminished his previously held determination. Nothing could have prepared him for the impact of seeing this perfect, tiny version of himself. What stirred in him as he gazed at the child in the photograph was something close to grief. In that moment, he realized that his life had changed indelibly. He had lost all control of it. Dante was his, and he would not deny him.

Bérenger’s voice cracked as he ultimately replied. “He’s my son, Maureen—just look at him. I don’t need a DNA test when I have
eyes. And . . .”

“And what?”

“He is a child of the prophecy. I don’t have to tell you what that means, and I cannot turn my back on the importance of that. And there is something more, something you do not know yet.”

Maureen steadied herself in preparation for his explanation. She was shaking. Her entire world was crumbling around her, and she was certain that the final wrecking ball was about to shatter whatever was left of her castles in the air.

“The prophecy. Maureen, there is another piece to it. It is rarely recited because the event of which it speaks has never happened before. It
is called the Second Prince.” He paused to breathe for a moment before reciting it for her.

The Son of Man shall himself return
as the Second Prince.
When the time has come and the stars align,
a Poet Prince will be born to a Poet Prince
and become once again the King of Kings.

Maureen, so familiar with the power of prophecy as it had worked within her own life, was terrified. She did not wish to take the risk of misinterpreting what he was trying to say to her. After a terrible silence between them, she asked in a whisper, “What, exactly, are you saying to me, Bérenger?”

He took both her hands in his, grasping them so tightly that she flinched, as the tears welled in his eyes. “No Poet Prince has ever been born to another. It has never happened in the history of our people that a father and son both shared all the qualities of the prophecy. Therefore the Second Prince . . .”

“Is the Second Coming.” Maureen finished the sentence with a dull finality, in a voice she did not recognize as her own.

“Maureen, I know it sounds crazy, but think of what we have all been through together. We have seen so much that is impossible. The prophecies have never failed. If there is even a possibility that Dante is . . .” Bérenger paused. He was not even able to say it out loud yet, so disturbing was the concept.

He continued, “If Dante is truly special, then he needs me. And not just to visit him occasionally or to send him money, but to be his father. He will need constant guidance, and he will also need someone to keep his mother’s ambitions in check. That will require my constant presence.”

Maureen felt the lump burning like a hot coal in the back of her throat as she repeated the question she knew she would never want to hear answered.

“What are you going to do?”

“The right thing. I’m sorry, Maureen. I am so sorry. But I have to prove myself worthy of this position that I hold. I have to pass this test.” He shed the tears he had been fighting, then said in a voice that seemed to come from somewhere else, “Perhaps it is our obligation to be noble before it is our obligation to be happy.”

Maureen rose as if in slow motion, trying to grasp how a moment so blissful had turned into a nightmare in a matter of seconds. In one instant, they were affirming the undying and eternal nature of their love for each other; in the next, Bérenger was dumping her for a life with Vittoria and their child.

She choked back a sob as she turned from him, found her feet, and ran from the terrace.

Arezzo, Tuscany
July 21, 1463

A
LESSANDRO DI FILIPEPI
was feeling very grateful for his life. At the age of eighteen, he had been apprenticed to the greatest artists in Italy and was proving to be the equal of anyone painting in Florence. Perhaps more important, he had been adopted into the Medici family in everything but name, living and working under the roof of Piero and Lucrezia de’ Medici, and acting as an elder brother to the Poet Prince himself and the younger Giuliano. Lorenzo and Sandro had become inseparable, and it was with great excitement that both of them accompanied Cosimo on this pilgrimage to Sansepolcro, the spiritual home of the Order of the Holy Sepulcher. Cosimo was weak, but he had rallied with the idea—his own—of bringing the boys there. It was likely to be his last excursion, as the gout made it nearly impossible for him to mount a horse. He rode his gentle white mule at a slow pace beside the equally challenged Fra Francesco. They were perfect company for each other on the journey. And while the boys were itching to
move faster, both revered Cosimo and the Master far too much to rush
them.

The date was not random, of course; nothing ever was with the Order and those who orchestrated it. Tomorrow, July twenty-second, was the feast day of Mary Magdalene, and it would be celebrated by the official confraternity that carried her name. Lorenzo and Sandro would witness the procession in honor of the woman who both revered as
one of their great spiritual leaders. They would follow the feast with a week of intensive study at the hands of the Master and in the presence of the great relics of the Order upon which Sansepolcro had been founded.

But that was the future. Today, the boys were with Cosimo and Fra Francesco on their way to meet with the official artist in residence of the Order: the great Piero della Francesca. This was the source of Sandro’s awe and gratitude. Piero della Francesca was the greatest living “angelic,” discovered as a boy personally by Fra Francesco; he had been predicted by the Magi and born in the strange and holy little town of Sansepolcro. Piero was a fresco artist without equal, and he was finishing a cycle within the ancient church of San Francesco, the home of the Order in Arezzo. The elaborate frescoes, floor to ceiling and covering an enormous chapel behind the altar, depicted the legend of the True Cross and the meeting of King Solomon and the Queen of Sheba. For members of the Order, this latter was the holiest of stories. It was from the union of Solomon and Sheba that some of the greatest teachings in human history had been handed down, teachings of love and wisdom that were thoroughly transformational. The Order preached that many of the secret teachings that Jesus shared with his followers had been passed through the holy branches of the Davidic lineage, of which Jesus was the heir.

The Order’s sacred practice of
hieros-gamos,
the understanding that God is found in the bridal chamber when a man and woman are unified in a place of trust and consciousness, was traced to the union of Solomon and Sheba. Indeed the Old Testament Song of Songs, the ultimate poem of life-affirming passion and sacred union, was attributed to Solomon.

The Master spoke to the boys as they entered the Romanesque church, built here in honor of Saint Francis of Assisi in the thirteenth century.

“Although we look at the prophecy of the Poet Prince as a Christian concept now, as the coming of men who will restore and protect the true teachings of Christ, it was not always so. The prophecies are ancient. They are timeless. They are from God, and they relate to men and women across time and distance who will come and do God’s work—whether they be Jew or Christian or Muslim or Hindu or pagan. It matters not. Solomon and David were both Poet Princes. Think on this for a moment: David wrote Psalms, his son Solomon wrote hundreds of poems, including our most exalted Song of Songs, and both changed the world in their own way. Jesus was indeed a Poet Prince, but he was by no means the first. He was just one in a long line of them and the most exceptional of them all, no doubt, but certainly not the first or the only—or the last.” He smiled at Lorenzo.

He stopped the boys, as they were in the center of the nave now. “Look up, toward the altar. Pause here to view something very important that our Piero has created. Before you allow your eye to see the magnificence of the frescoes, look first on either side of the altar.”

On both sides of the huge altar space were long, narrow columns. Painted in a twinned manner and perfectly matched were larger-than-life portraits of Jesus on the left and Mary Magdalene on the right. They had been painted perfectly as equals, but also clearly as a pair.

“The portraits of true beloveds. Equals under God,” came a soft male voice from behind them.

Piero della Francesca, holding a paintbrush and covered in pigments, smiled kindly at the boys as he explained his work. “I did not create the original portraits of Our Lord and Our Lady. They were done by another native of Arezzo, a great painter who preceded
me here, called Luca Spinello. Sadly his work has deteriorated, but I have restored it. I can only hope to have done him justice. He was a genius, who learned from Giotto.” Piero nodded toward Fra Francesco as he continued. “Perhaps I should say that he learned to paint from Giotto. He learned all else from our Master.”

Piero paused to greet Cosimo with the respect due to the Medici patriarch. Though a native of the southernmost regions of Tuscany, Piero della Francesca had trained extensively in Florence under the patronage of Cosimo. While the Medici family wanted to keep Piero in Florence, they understood the Master’s need for him in Arezzo and Sansepolcro. It was fitting that as the official scribe of the Order, he should establish lasting works of art in this holy region to preserve the teachings.

This would be part of Sandro and Lorenzo’s training over the next week. They would gain a greater understanding of what Piero had accomplished with his unequaled storytelling through fresco painting. Arezzo was the testing ground for these types of “hiding in plain sight” teachings for the Order. Now it would be up to the Florentines to expand on this approach, to bring these same types of powerful, symbolic masterpieces to a larger and more difficult audience. The Order was taking bold steps to conquer Florence through the Medici and their angelic army of artists. If they could achieve their goals in Florence, they would then expand throughout Italy—and ultimately look toward Rome.

The powerful brotherhood created by Lorenzo and Sandro would begin the revolution into a golden age of art and education. The mission was the restoration of the true teachings of the early Christians through epic works of art.

Ficino was fond of reminding his students, when they became a little too inflated with the importance of their mission, that they didn’t start it. They were the blessed heirs to a grand fortune, earned by the blood and sacrifice of the astonishing men and women who came before them. He quoted the great scholar and leader of the Order in the twelfth century, Bernard of Chartres:

“Remember, we are but dwarves standing on the shoulders of giants.”

Florence
present day

“R
EMEMBER, WE ARE BUT
dwarves standing on the shoulders of giants.”

Peter Healy often quoted Bernard of Chartres, keen as he was to remember the greatness of those who came before and gave everything, so that we would not be in the darkness. But the quote seemed particularly applicable as he stood before the statues depicting
Cosimo Pater Patriae
and
Lorenzo il Magnifico
adjacent to the Uffizi Gallery.

Peter and Maureen had walked along the river before making the turn toward the Uffizi, one of the greatest art museums in the world. The approach to this treasury of Renaissance art was lined with the statues of the artists who shaped Florence: painters, writers, architects. They passed Donatello and Leonardo, and up toward the far end of the entrance toward the piazza was the statue of Cosimo, looking very wise and surprisingly warm, standing alongside his grandson. The statue of Lorenzo was equally well crafted and alive. Il Magnifico was depicted with his hand on a bust of Minerva, the goddess of wisdom.

Maureen stood before the stone image of Lorenzo on the pedestal and studied it for a moment, silently. A chill ran through her body as she looked at his face; it was sculpted with the strange feature he was famous for, the nose flattened at the bridge. Yet despite the fact that he was often referred to as homely or even ugly, Maureen was struck by how absolutely beautiful he was. There was extraordinary nobility about him, palpable even from this piece of stone, which had been fashioned hundreds of years after his death.

He was, without question, magnificent.

She shivered, although the sun was well on its way to creating a scorching May day in Tuscany.

Peter saw the shudder. “What is it?”

Maureen swallowed hard, feeling choked up suddenly. “It . . . it looks like him. I mean, I have seen portraits of him and had no reaction, other than to think he was odd-looking. But this . . . this is Lorenzo. It’s as if he is trapped in that stone. The image of him. Perfect.”

Maureen was transfixed on Lorenzo, trying to get a grasp on how she was feeling. “I can’t explain it, really, but when I look at this man I feel utterly committed to him. Like I would follow him into a battle against the devil himself. There is nothing I wouldn’t do for him. But that’s not the only meaning of the word
committed
that I am feeling. He was committed. To his cause, to his mission. And that is what inspired such loyalty from so many. Lorenzo would never ask anyone to do something he wasn’t prepared to do himself. I look at this and I just
know
that.”