Zo

by Leanne Owens

  After the small talk of evening greetings, they took up their story-time positions in the matching yellow chairs around her bed, and Ally asked them if they had any questions.

  ‘I was wondering,’ Marcus began, ‘were you aware of what was happening outside of Florence? Or were you completely focused on your life there? I’m trying to work out how you remember things – like something from long ago that’s partially forgotten or as though it was recent.’

  Ally nodded in approval at the question. ‘It’s like it happened to me at the same time as things happening in this life, and I remember them as clearly, sometimes clearer. The people, the smells, the sounds, the colours, the feelings…it is the same as you have memories of any days in your life. As for what else was happening in the world back then, prior to living with Zo, I didn’t have much opportunity to learn about the events around Italy and Europe. The men didn’t discuss those sorts of things in the hearing of girls like me. But Zo and his friends were often involved in discussions about what was happening in the world, and they treated my interest with respect. When someone arrived back in Florence after visiting other countries, they often visited the private rooms if we were in the city, or came out to the Cafaggiolo villa where we spent most of our time.’

  She stopped and tapped her fingers on her bedspread as she tried to remember some examples of their talks. ‘In that first year of living as Zo’s page, there were debates about how affairs in England were progressing with the conflict between the House of Lancaster and the House of York, and they often joked that if the fighting continued, there would be no male heirs left to take the throne. There was keen interest in the marriage of Ferdinand II of Aragon to Isabella I of Castile because it heralded another shift of power in Europe as two powerful dynasties united. And there was lots of talk about how the struggle between England and the Hanseatic League countries would affect trade.

  ‘Everything impacted on everything else. Then you lay the blanket of religion over it all. Power was then, as it is now, the prize they were all after. We knew that to control the papacy in Rome was as important as political and financial power, which was why, years later, Zo pushed for his son Giovanni to take religion as a career. He became Pope Leo X and, like his father, loved art and learning and architecture, and spent money hand over fist to indulge his interests. That, in part, led to Martin Luther’s Ninety-Five Theses, which led to the Reformation and the Protestant movement. It’s all woven together, a conversation here led to an overthrow there, a marriage led to a new kingdom, a fight led to the demise of a country.’

  Again, she paused to look at her audience. They were listening carefully, their faces studies of concentration. ‘Everything is intertwined in such a complicated way. But we understood that, and from the time I joined Zo in 1469 as his page, or attendant, right through to the 1490s, we had debates and discussions that changed the world. The talks that took place in the privacy of his palace or villas with the greatest minds of that period, as well as some of his less-than-stellar friends, examined the patterns that were emerging. There was so much going on at the time, and Zo was committed to the enlightenment of minds. Meanwhile, there were religious zealots who were equally determined to burn the new understandings and leave only the dark, tainted control of religion.’

  ‘The Protestants?’ asked Andrew, thinking she referred to them.

  Ally shook her head, ‘No, on the most part, they were fine. And, they were right. Italian families were using the papacy to advance the power of their own families, so Martin Luther was spot on with that. Savonarola was the dark one. I hated him. I’d hated him when we were growing up in Ferrara. Girolamo Savonarola, or Giro as we called him as children. He was the one who caused our local priest to beat me. He was a bit younger than Zo, a bit older than me. and he was the opposite of Lorenzo. Where Zo wanted to lift others up to greatness, Giro wanted to pull them down and see himself rise above all as God’s chosen one. He was mean where Zo was kind. He was obsessed with his own beliefs instead of enjoying hearing and trying to understand the beliefs of others. He was the destruction where Zo was the enlightenment.’

  Closing her eyes, she fought the sick feeling that came over her whenever she remembered the man who made her skin crawl when he gazed at her with sick lust. ‘Enough of Savonarola, though, we will talk more of him later. He had a massive impact on our lives.’

  ‘I want to know when you and Zo became lovers,’ Lynette arched an eyebrow suggestively. ‘I can’t remember you ever dating anyone when we were at school and uni, so I’m guessing you’d hooked up with him by the time we were at uni.’

  ‘I didn’t date anyone when we were young, but that had nothing to do with Zo and everything to do with…’ Ally stopped, glanced down, and changed what she was going to say. ‘It had everything to do with who I was. And, with Zo, things didn’t progress all that quickly.’

  Ally’s eyes became soft lavender as she cast her mind back to her teenage years where memories became entangled in moments that were centuries apart. ‘Elli was fifteen when she took up as his page, pretending to be a boy several years younger than she was, and that gave rise to a lot of talk about Lorenzo’s personal life since he carted the pretty blonde boy around with him everywhere. I went on hunts with him – he loved hunting and hawking. I would help him with his horses before the Palio, the great horse race in Siena. He was a keen horse breeder and was crazy about racing.'

  She shook her head at the memory of Lorenzo and his horses, and smiled. ‘If only he’d been more interested in banking than racing, things would have been better for the Medici family. When his father died that year, 1469, he took over as head of the family. He had a gift for spending money, but not so much for making the coffers grow. Mind you, when you consider what he spent it on, you can see that his decisions were for the ages, not just for the profits at the time.

  ‘He was very focussed on trying to maintain peace by keeping a balance of power between the northern Italian states so that their unity would discourage other European countries from entering Italy, particularly France. He also worked hard to keep trade with the Ottoman empire going strong as his family’s wealth depended largely on that maritime trade staying open. Then there was alum.’

  Ally paused to allow the memories to order themselves. It was important to convey information concisely and rationally, that was something Zo had been insistent upon.

  ‘Florence had a lot of money tied up in glassmaking, textiles, and tanning,’ she explained as she moved the story towards the day the relationship between Zo and Elli changed. 'Alum was a key ingredient. They found a new source at Volterra north of Florence, and Zo wanted to secure the supply. In 1472, at eighteen, my virtue was still intact - honestly, I was an old maid as others my age were on to their third or fourth child. Lorenzo was twenty-three, and he was trying to secure the supply of alum for his businesses and for Florence. Understandably, the people of Volterra wanted the profits from their alum mines to stay with them, not go to Florence, so there was an uprising.

  ‘The Volterrans murdered the businessmen who were supporting Lorenzo, and violence began to escalate. Lorenzo employed Federico – the one-eyed lord of Urbino – to settle the riots. And by one-eyed, I don’t mean biased - he had one eye, he lost the other jousting, not that you’d know by any of his portraits as he always had artists paint his good side. Federico had a brilliant military mind, but never trust a man whose services you can buy, as you’ll find out later in my story.

  ‘Federico rounded up close to five thousand mercenaries, but instead of controlling Volterra, as Lorenzo expected, they sacked the city. His men raped women and girls. They murdered old men, women, and children. Men died protecting their families. Zo had never intended that to happen, and he was devastated. It was one of the Medici edicts that they look after the towns and townspeople under their protection, and the sacking of Volterra went against everything Lorenzo stood for. He was shattered by the news of what happened.’

  ***<
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  It marked the turning point in her relationship with Lorenzo de’ Medici.

  That morning, in 1472, Elli had sat at the easel in Lorenzo’s private rooms in Florence, sketching in the horses for one of Leo’s paintings that he wasn’t likely to finish because he was too often starting projects and rushing on to the next project without finishing the two or three before. As she drew a horse rearing on the battlefield, the door opened. She looked up to see Lorenzo standing there, one hand grasping the door frame to hold him up, his face ashen.

  He gazed at her, unable to speak, drinking in the sight of the friend who always managed to soothe him. Elli wore one of his old tunics as an artist’s smock over her boy’s clothes, her shoulder length blonde hair cut in a man’s style that suited her. It was easy to see why so many thought she was an attractive youth who had won favour with him because of pretty looks, but it had always been her humour and wit, her laughter and her vibrancy that had kept her at his side these past few years. He had never needed it as much as in that moment.

  ‘What’s wrong, Zo?’ she asked, turning away from her sketching to face him.

  ‘Volterra,’ he replied, shaking his head with the horror of the news that had reached him. ‘The men I sent there to control things, Federico’s men…they destroyed the town. I destroyed it.’

  Rising to her feet, she quickly walked to him and wrapped her arms around him, knowing that he needed comfort. He leaned against her, finding strength in her support, as always. For several minutes, they stood together in silence as her care assuaged the pain and his guilt.

  ‘Did you instruct them to sack the town?’ she asked as she drew back from him and gazed up at his saddened features, deeply moved by the grief in his eyes.

  He shook his head, ‘Of course not. I wanted peace in the town. They were to control the uprising, not go on a rampage with murder in their hearts.’

  ‘Then it is not your fault that they disobeyed your instructions.’

  ‘It is my fault that they were there, armed and ready to fight,’ he argued, feeling sick at the loss of life for which he felt responsible. ‘It is my fault for sending mercenaries instead of going there myself to talk to the town leaders and resolve the situation.

  ‘The Volterrans had murdered the Florentine representatives,’ she reminded him, taking his hand, and leading him to his favourite chair. ‘If you had gone, they may well have turned on you. Perhaps the mercenaries tried to solve it without violence, and were forced into their actions.’

  With a heavy heart, he sat and took the glass of wine that Elli poured for him. ‘The men I sent were out of control. It doesn’t matter what you say to make me feel better – though I do appreciate you saying it – the blame rests on me. They were my men. I sent them there. The death and destruction that resulted is my fault.'

  ‘You cannot change what has happened,’ Elli sat on the floor at his feet and looked at him, adoringly. Knowing that he didn’t return her regard was sometimes painful, but she found a measure of contentment in the fact that he enjoyed her company and shared his thoughts with her. ‘You can change what happens from this point, though.’

  ‘What do you mean?’ he asked, peering at her over the rim of his glass and thinking that the smudge of red paint on her cheek was rather becoming.

  ‘If those men have crushed the town, you can help raise Volterra up again. You can choose to be remembered for your men who destroyed them, or for your actions to restore them.’

  ‘I will be judged for what has happened today,’ he sighed, despondent about the news from Volterra, ‘but you are right.’ He reached down and brushed the backs of his fingers against her cheeks in the familiar gesture she loved. ‘I cannot change that, but I can change what I do about it. Can you make a list for me?’

  Elli stretched an arm over to a small table where there was paper, a quill, and some ink. Lorenzo proceeded to give her the names of the men he would call on to assist him. When he paused, she carefully blotted the ink to stop it from smudging. He continued with a list of actions he could take to try and recompense the town for the deeds of the mercenaries. His mercenaries.

  Taking the page after Elli had finished recording his words, he got to his feet and made his way to the door. He stopped to look back at her, still seated on the rug at the foot of his chair, her soft violet eyes watching him. She was no longer a child, he realised with a shock. No longer the youngster he treated like a favourite cousin, who followed him around and made him laugh. She was a woman. A beautiful woman. She was a desirable woman.

  No doubt, he thought as he took in the image of her seated on the floor staring back at him, one of his friends would make a claim on her. Perhaps they already had, and he didn’t know about it. The thought was an unexpected knife in his chest. Thinking of her with one of his friends, or with any man, was unthinkable. How had he not realised this before?

  He strode back to her, stopped, and bent to place a gentle kiss on the top of her head.

  ‘I will be gone for a few days and I can’t take you with me this time,’ he told her, resting a hand on the softness of her hair. He found himself wondering at the texture and feel of her locks. ‘But when I come back from Volterra, perhaps we will do something together. Just the two of us. I will miss you while I’m away.’

  ‘And I will miss you,’ she murmured, feeling her heart race at the caress of his hand on her hair.

  ‘Have I been selfish, keeping you dressed as a boy these past years so that the world doesn’t even know you are a woman?’

  ‘I have been happier these past three years than I have been for the rest of my life before that. I would be content if the world never knew I was a woman and I could go on being your friend, Zo.’

  They were silent for a moment, looking at each other, his hand still resting softly on her head, connecting them in a way he had never felt before.

  ‘Have you ever wanted to be more than my friend?’ he whispered, holding a hand out to help her to her feet.

  She stood and stepped close to him, losing herself in the kindness of his dark eyes. There was so much to admire about Zo – his intelligence, his humour, his cutting wit, his ability to think beyond the scope of others, the way he laughed at himself, his loyalty to his friends, his dreams for those around him – but, always, it was his kindness that moved her most.

  ‘Always,’ she replied honestly. ‘Since that first day when I met you, and you sat on the back of Perseus and blocked the sun, I wanted more than friendship. But you have Clarice and Lucrezia and whoever else manages to entrance you, and I am happy that I am your friend with the pieces of you that no other woman has. I always knew that I couldn’t have it all, but this is close.’

  Lorenzo stared into the violet craving of her eyes and wondered why he had never realised before how the colour stirred him. No one had eyes that colour. Sandro and Leo and other artists had remarked on the uniqueness of her eyes, and he had shrugged off their comments. But they were right. Her eyes were the gifts of angels. Her gaze was the breath of heaven. Why had he not been writing poetry about these eyes?

  ‘What if we could have it all?’ he asked, looking at her deliciously parted lips as she stared up at him. ‘What if you had all the pieces of my life?’

  ‘Then heaven would exist on earth,’ she breathed the words, ‘and that is almost too terrifying to contemplate. Where could I go when I die that would be better than being here with you?’

  ‘Then don’t die,’ his words were soft as he lowered his face to hers.

  There was an eternity in the instant before their lips touched, and Elli wanted all of time to halt there and wait. The moment before his mouth touched hers held her future in its pause, and her heart felt as though it was flying. As his lips pressed against hers, she felt a weightless desire awakening within, rising like the warm currents on which eagles soar, and her entire world felt to be collapsing into that moment.

  His arms wrapped around her and he pulled her to him. Her breasts pressed aga
inst his chest as her body cried of an insatiable hunger for him. Afraid he might leave, her hands dug into his back, holding him to her as she made a soft noise in her throat that told of helplessness, and innocence, and desire. The rumble of his groan that responded to her need reverberated through her body, and she surrendered to the yearning that drew their bodies together.

  His hands slipped under her clothes and he stepped her sideways to the bed where she slept alone in virtuous longing, and he gently pushed her down on to the covers. The thrill of hearing her name uttered in passion spurred her desire for him. She reached for him, dragging him down into the vortex of their union. All inhibitions vanished, and the dense and private shadows of their love drifted upwards into the light before exploding into suns that would burn for eternity.

  ***

  ‘I was eighteen,’ Ally’s eyes came back into focus as her memories swirled away into the currents of time. ‘From that point, I would have twenty years with Zo. Just twenty years. Our love shone like stars in the heavens, hidden from the light of day for many reasons, but he spent more time with me than he spent with any other person. You can search the history books and find no mention of Elli, but she existed. He left clues in his poetry. You can see her in some of the paintings done by his friends. There are paintings done by an unknown artist - Elli. He protected her - me. Elli was with him right up until the day he died.’

  ‘No wonder you were in love with him,’ Lynette clasped her hands in front of her chest, moved to tears by Ally’s story. ‘He sounds like the only man good enough for you…’ Seeing Peter’s haunted expression, she quickly added, ‘Present company excepted, of course. But apart from these four perfect men here and now, he sounds divine.’

  ‘He was,’ Ally smiled, remembering all the days and nights they made love, for so many years. All the laughter, the conversations, the brilliance of his mind, the heat of his love. He loved women and flirted with them, even wrote poetry and songs for some, but it was Elli he loved. ‘I could close my eyes and go there, and, as you all grew up and flew high and free into your own lives, I spent more and more time with him. I knew I could not go there physically as I understood the limitations of moving mass and matter through time, but I could live there in my mind.’