Zo

by Leanne Owens

  Elli glared at him, knowing that arguing did not advance her cause. She could do nothing to win this battle while standing in a reception room in her grandfather’s house, but she would not marry the man. He was a pig. Her father was a pig if he expected her to marry that man, and she did not feel at all ashamed for thinking such a horrid thing.

  ‘When is the wedding supposed to happen?’ she asked mulishly, trying to placate her father so that she could come up with the plan that would see her escape from an unwanted marriage.

  ‘As soon as possible,’ her father nodded, pleased his daughter saw sense at last. ‘Silvio has an itch and you are the one to scratch it. He thinks you are a beautiful woman.’

  ‘I am a beautiful woman,’ she declared.

  ‘You are a vain woman,’ Enzo raised his brows at her, ‘from a poor family who used to be a good family. Silvio is the opportunity to get our family climbing back up the ladder of Florence society. You are not sacrificing yourself to a beast, you are marrying a man who can make life so much better for all of us. Now, hurry up and clean yourself up. We are meeting Silvio in less than an hour on the Ponte Vecchio.’

  With heavy feet, Elli dragged herself to her room and allowed her maid to help her dress and do her hair. I am fifteen, she thought, I do not want to marry that oaf and have his fat fingers touch my body. I do not want to lose my virginity to a man who makes me want to vomit. That will not happen. Lorenzo will help me, I know he will.

  An hour later, as darkness fell on Florence, Elli stood with her father and aunt on the central part of the Ponte Vecchio which spanned the Arno River. The bridge had shops built on it and many people were still active, crossing the bridge, shopping, and stopping on the central arch to look down at the dark waters of the Arno. Silvio had asked to meet them here as he lived on the northern side of the river and they were staying on the southern side, so it marked a convenient central point.

  Elli saw him approaching through the crowds - a great slug of a man with wet lips and beady eyes - and she knew that this had to stop now. If he reached them, he would take her hand in his bloated, sweaty fingers and never let go. It hit her like a flash that her father would let her go with him tonight, before marriage, to ensure the deal would go through. Silvio would soil her virtuousness, tonight. The notion of increasing the family’s reputation amongst the people of Florence had so obsessed her father, that he wouldn’t even consider that this pig might bed her and then not marry her. Her father gambled her life with this man, and her ruination was the cost.

  As Silvio rolled towards them, Elli felt an overwhelming sense of panic. A snare closed around her heart and breathing became difficult. She knew that he came to claim her, not meet her. Her father had trapped her on this bridge for Silvio. Enzo stood behind her, along with his sister and one of their servants, as her mother had refused to come to this meeting. She must have suspected the true nature of tonight’s activities. Silvio approached, licking his lips like a fat lizard, his eyes on her.

  Think, think, she told herself, trying to look calm as she saw her fate approaching. Could she outrun them? No doubt, she could outdistance her father and Silvio, but not the lean servant with the long legs of a runner. She couldn’t run, she couldn’t stay. The trap had been well planned, and, in seconds, it would snap shut on her, and Silvio’s outstretched hand would clasp her wrist.

  With one last strangled look at the man approaching, his beady eyes expectant and lustful, she jerked sideways and flung herself from the bridge.

  Screams erupted from the crowd as soon as she launched into the air. Many saw her jump, and the early evening crowds that were walking the streets, enjoying the cooler air after a hot day, turned to stare as several people shouted about a woman jumping off the bridge.

  As soon as Elli hit the water, her survival instinct cut in. She couldn’t surface or someone would jump in to save her and deliver her back to Silvio, so she kicked with the current and swam underwater as fast and as far as she could. All those summers of swimming like a wild thing were paying off now as she held her breath and kept swimming, striking further and further down the river. With her lungs close to bursting and her desire to breathe forcing her to the surface, she took a few more strokes, just a bit further, just another few strokes, desperate to get as far as possible from Silvio and her father.

  Unable to fight the pounding in her head from running out of oxygen, she finally came to the surface, putting her nose above the dark water and drawing in air for two breaths before sinking out of sight and swimming further downstream. She had to get far from the crowded bridge where people were looking for her. She had to get to a dark, quiet place where no one would notice a wet, bedraggled girl crawl from the water.

  When she passed under the Ponte alla Carraia, her limbs were feeling heavy with exhaustion and the cold of the water chilled her. She swam a little further before looking for a dark place to leave the river. And then what? Where could she go? She could never go back to her family as they would force her to re-join Silvio, but if he felt shamed by her actions tonight, there would be no marriage, and her life would be over. A girl who brought shame to her family had no place in her father’s house. Her life, as she knew it, had ended.

  When she found a quiet, shadowed place on the northern bank, she swam towards it and rested for a moment next to a small punt on the bank. Cold seeped into her still muscles. She checked that there were no witnesses, then left the river, slinking into the shadows of the buildings. Rubbing her arms and moving at a jog, she fought off the cold as she moved through a silent part of the city, trying to get her bearings. The breeze that had been pleasantly cool when she was dry now bit into her flesh through her wet clothes, and she began to shake uncontrollably.

  As she passed a row of dark buildings, she saw a tablecloth hanging outside a window, and grabbed it to wrap around her shoulders. After another few streets, she found a corner to huddle in, and sat, drawing her knees up and shivering. She had to think. Running through the streets at night was neither safe nor an answer to her problems. She needed help.

  Lorenzo would know what to do. The thought burned into her mind like a blast from a furnace, heating her from the inside. He would help her. Perhaps he would allow her to become an artist. He said she had great ability and claimed a boy with her talent would succeed as an artist. What if she wasn’t a girl?

  With excitement, she realised that she could completely reinvent herself after jumping into the river. That girl died in the waters of the Arno. In her place stood a boy who wanted to be an artist. No one saw through the deception when she dressed as a boy and accompanied Zo on his hunts or racing outings. People rarely looked closely at a younger person further down the social scale.

  Setting off at a determined walk, she looked for suitable clothes hanging out to dry. Disregarding female outfits, she searched for, and found, boy’s clothes in her size. Secreted in a shadowed corner, she removed her wet garments, donned the tunic and leggings, and tore the hem of her dress to form a makeshift belt for the tunic. It wouldn’t do to leave the dress here, though, she thought as she looked around, it had to go back to the river where searchers could find it. Her family needed to believe she had died.

  Detouring back to the river, she threw her wet clothes onto the edge of the bank where there were no footprints in the mud. If a search party found her dress, they would see that she had not walked away and, hopefully, they would accept the verdict of death by drowning. Knotting her hair back, she hunched into the boy’s clothes so that she looked more like a street urchin than a young woman of good family, and trotted back into the empty streets of a sleeping Florence.

  It was almost midnight when she found the Medici palace. She crept around to the side where the secret door to Zo’s private rooms lay hidden behind an ivy trellis. Slipping behind the trellis, she went down the stairs to the door that led to the basement room that he once described to her.

  She paused, her hand over the brass knocker. Her future pivoted
on this point. If Zo answered and let her in, her life might continue. If he was at one of the Medici villas outside Florence, or if he refused her entry, then her life finished here. She could not go home, she would be living on the streets desperate to find any sort of job so that she could eat and sleep in a safe place.

  Being a boy would have made everything easier, she sighed to herself. Life favoured men. A boy her age could enlist in an army, or apprentice herself to a mason, perhaps find a ship and sail away. Men had many options. Women had so few - marriage, servitude, or prostitution.

  She could not delay any longer, she told herself, she had to know what would happen. She raised the brass knocker and, with a swift tap-tap-tap on the door, she asked for entry.

  The night returned to silence when she stopped. No hint of life came from the other side of the door.

  She knocked again.

  Stillness. Her heart sank. She leaned her head against the door and sighed. The Medici villa of Cafaggiolo north of Florence was his favourite residence, so maybe he was there, hunting. Perhaps he had left the city for a last lark before marriage. He had married that religious Orsini girl by proxy at the start of the year, and, in a few days, they would marry in person here in Florence. Clarice Orsini, only several months her senior, and Lorenzo had spent almost no time with each other, and certainly hadn’t consummated their marriage, so Elli didn’t view it as a marriage, merely an arrangement between powerful families. But they would be husband and wife in the full sense of the word within days. June, 1469, she mused, the month when my life ends and Clarice Orsini starts her life with the man I love.

  The disappointment hit her hard and the shock of the evening finally sunk in. She started the night with a family and a home, and, now, homelessness and destitution awaited. No one would hire a servant who had no one to vouch for her. Perhaps she could convince one of the artists to hire her as an errand boy.

  Instead of leaving, her knees gave way and she sank to the steps, stifling a sob. She would rest here awhile and then look for a new home, but the prospects were not good. Perhaps it would have been best to marry the fat ugly Silvio and settle for a life of married prostitution.

  The door opened and light flooded on to her. She looked up to see Zo’s face haloed by light like the first time she had seen him on Perseus. He looked out without seeing anyone, then down, and his face registered surprise to see a street urchin on the steps at his door.

  ‘Who comes at this hour?’ a soft male voice behind him called.

  ‘A child of the streets,’ Zo replied, looking over his shoulder. ‘Are you looking for a new model, Leo? This one does look a little scrawny.’

  Elli rose unsteadily to her feet and looked up at Zo’s noble face, her chin tilting at a defiant angle.

  ‘And smells of the river,’ Zo wrinkled his nose at the bedraggled bundle in front of him. His voice became gentle and kind. ‘What is it that you want? I can give you some bread if you wish.’

  ‘I am hoping you’ll let me in, Zo,’ Elli spoke, using the nickname she had given him when they first met, her eyes imploring. ‘I am Elli Spini, not a boy. I have run away and I have nowhere else to go.’

  ‘Elli?’ he asked in astonished tones, staring at her from head to foot and back again.

  ‘Yes. I jumped into the river to escape my future husband and everyone will think I’m drowned.’

  Zo regarded her in silence, his dark eyes hooded as he thought through the problem that stood before him.

  ‘You had better come in, Elli,’ he nodded, ‘you look cold.’

  He opened the door wider, and she stepped into a world unlike any she had seen before. He had told her about his hidden chambers, and the door that led to them, but she had never expected to walk through that door. She gazed wide-eyed at the man’s hideaway from the world of commerce and banking, from family and unwanted visitors. Before her lay a large room with a fireplace at one end, lanterns throughout, easels with unfinished paintings and drawings in one corner, several thousand books on shelves in another corner, seats, and a large bed at the far end. Exotic rugs covered the floors, and artefacts from distant places stood on shelves and tables. Paradise beckoned, and Elli entered.

  ‘You asked the urchin in?’ asked a young man with a paintbrush in his hand. He stood in front of one of the easels, his handsome face creased in concern.

  ‘What do you think of him?’ Zo turned to his companion and gave him a lopsided grin. ‘Any chance of using him as a model for a cherub, or perhaps a slave of the gods in a painting.’

  The artist looked Elli up and down then shook his head. ‘If I needed a model for an undernourished dog, he might come in handy. He’s not what I have in mind for a model, plus,’ he sniffed with a look of alarm, ‘that smell. Is there a dead fish on the child?’

  Zo laughed, ‘Just the river. Apparently, this ruffian jumped into the river to escape the clutches of the fattest, ugliest man in all of Italy.’

  ‘What a splendid tale!’ the other man guffawed. ‘Tell me, who is the fattest, ugliest man in all of Italy, and what does he want with a young boy? Or, maybe don’t tell, I can guess.’

  ‘I am a girl,’ Elli announced, lifting her chin even higher, ‘And I would rather die than marry Silvio d’Este.’

  ‘Excellent choice,’ Leonardo da Vinci laughed. ‘I think every woman with half a wit would prefer death to that oaf. But what is he doing proposing to a street waif in boy’s clothes?’

  Lorenzo winked at his friend over the head of the imp who promised to complicate his life, ‘Perhaps, when she is clean again, you might see that she is less waif and more than you bargained for. Sit,’ he pointed to a chair, then laid a hand on her shoulder to stop her. ‘No, let me protect the chair from your river odour, first.’

  ‘My clothes are not smelly,’ she protested. ‘I stole clean clothes!’

  Snorting at her confession, Lorenzo stripped a rug from the bed in the corner and draped it over the chair before indicating for her to sit.

  ‘Now, my little one, we have a mess to sort out,’ he looked at her with an expression of caring concern, not at all angry at her for turning up in the middle of the night. ‘Should I call your father?’

  ‘If you do, you may as well take me to the river and drown me now,’ she declared, her eyes flashing with sparks. ‘He was willing to have me go with Silvio d’Este tonight, before we were married. He is no longer my father. I am now an orphan.’

  ‘You’re not,’ Lorenzo disagreed in good humour, ‘but I can appreciate your sentiment.’

  ‘Let me stay here,’ she beseeched him, ‘I can be a boy and I can paint and be your page and do anything you would want a boy to do.’

  Leonardo’s lips twitched, ‘Is it a boy you are wanting, Lor? I thought you were marrying the devout Orsini girl in a few days, and you already have the magnificent Lucrezia Donati up in arms over that…you might have some explaining to do to those two women if you add a boy to be gossiped about.’

  Lorenzo threw his friend a warning glance then hushed any protests from Elli. ‘Let’s take this a step at a time. First, I want you clean so that we no longer smell the river in my apartment.’

  ‘And find some boys’ clothes for her,’ put in Leonardo. ‘You know the staff will talk, no matter what you do, but perhaps if they think the child is one of the assistants from the studio rather than a girl who has visited you in the middle of the night, you might manage to uphold your reputation.’

  Lorenzo waggled his brows at his friend and tapped his temple, ‘Always one for thinking, Leo. Thank you.’

  He called for servants to fill the large bath in the corner of the room and bring some spare clothes for the da Vinci page who had fallen in a pond on the way to collect paints for his master.

  ‘I will not bathe in front of you,’ Elli stared at the two young men after the last maid carrying hot water had departed.

  ‘We don’t want to look at your scrawny nakedness,’ Lorenzo rolled his eyes at her complaint, like a
brother might disparage a complaining sister. ‘Here’s a screen for you to hide behind, since you are so modest and shy after coming to a man’s private rooms in the middle of the night.’

  She glared at him. He laughed. Then he pulled a painted screen away from the wall which would provide privacy.

  ‘You’ll still hear me,’ she pointed out.

  ‘I don’t want to hear any bubbling,’ Leo called to her, teasingly, ‘only splashing.’

  As she set about scrubbing the river from her skin and hair, Lorenzo helped Leonardo clean his brushes after his painting session.

  ‘If you’d focus on the one task,’ Lorenzo counselled him, as he looked over Leonardo’s two started paintings and collection of drawings covering a variety of subjects, ‘instead of letting your mind jump all over the place like a handful of grasshoppers, you might make something of yourself.’

  ‘Be mindful of giving advice, Lor,’ Leonardo slapped his friend on the back, ‘you are only three years older than I, and you are formalising your marriage to a very devout Orsini in a few days while romancing the Donati girl, and now you have a delightful young woman who makes you laugh, naked on the other side of that screen. Should you be offering me guidance?’

  ‘Perhaps not,’ Lorenzo shook his head ruefully, smiling, ‘but I am hoping you will help me find a solution for the problem that sits in that bath.’

  ‘I’m not looking for marriage,’ Leonardo raised both his hands to stop that idea.

  ‘No, no!’ Lorenzo laughed, and placed the last of the cleaned paintbrushes back in their holder. ‘The girl’s an artist. A good one.’

  ‘I’m not looking for an apprentice, either,’ Leonardo shrugged. ‘I am still apprenticed to Andrea myself, and he would not stand for a girl in the studio, unless she modelled for us - certainly not as an artist. What about Sandro? At least he has his own studio.’