Zo

by Leanne Owens

  There was empathy in their expressions as they considered what happened on that Easter Sunday in 1478. Sandy wiped tears with a tissue. Lynette chewed her bottom lip to distract her from crying, though she still needed to blink away tears. The men appeared solemn.

  Silence settled on the private garden at Kamekura when she paused. None of the listeners felt that they had words important enough to utter at this point, so they remained respectfully quiet.

  ‘Zo lived, his brother did not,’ sighed Ally, sighed Ally, sitting upright to stretch her back and legs. The distress of that day reached across the centuries to put tension into her muscles. ‘Florence rose up in outrage about the attack in the cathedral. Zo demanded we take him back to the palace. He felt that he could protect himself and his family from there. He was unable to walk, so his friends carried him. As we made our way through the streets, there was confusion everywhere, but it seemed that all Lorenzo’s friends as well as his loyal soldiers, and all the people of Florence were there to protect him.

  ‘The consequences of what happened at the Duomo were horrific for all those who plotted against the Medicis. Executions took place without trial. Bodies hung outside the Signoria, which was like the government house of Florence. They threw the conspirators trapped in the Palazzo Vecchio out the windows to die on the steps below. Francesco Pazzi, who came to fetch Giuliano that day, was taken from his bed and torn apart by an angry mob. The Florentines wiped the Pazzi family from the city. The support for Lorenzo hit an all-time high after that day – it was Florence and their Lorenzo against the rest of the world.

  ‘If conspirators escaped, they were hunted down. Bernardo, the other who took Giuliano to the Duomo and then stabbed him, fled to Constantinople – or Istanbul. A year and a half later, Antonio Medici brought him back to Florence where they hanged him. True to her word, Elli took part in avenging the events of that day and over the years, there were men who died of natural causes after a pretty wench or an effeminate male servant served them food and drink.

  ‘The Duke of Urbino, Federico da Montefeltro, who was outside Florence with his soldiers that day, visited my home town of Ferrara while Elli was also there. He died of fever shortly after her visit – my visit…whatever.’

  Ally’s smile lacked amusement as she muddled the identities of herself and Elli.

  ‘What did the Pope do?’ Andrew asked, to cover the slight chill that fell as they realised Elli became an assassin for the Medici family. And what did that make Ally? He did not want to dwell on that. ‘Religion was obviously important to Florence, and the Pope was the head of it, so how did everyone handle his allies being slaughtered by the Medici supporters?’

  ‘Not well,’ Ally replied with a snort. ‘Of course, Sixtus couldn’t come out and say he was behind the attempt to assassinate the brothers in the cathedral at Easter mass, so he feigned outrage at what happened, then punished them for hanging his Archbishop on a Sunday. He pushed his allies in Naples to go to war with Florence, hoping that would make the people of Florence grow tired of their Il Magnifico. He excommunicated Lorenzo and placed an interdict on the city, which was basically a banning of services by his priests in Florence. That was akin to excommunicating the entire city. Unfortunately for him, the priests in the city were loyal to their congregations and defied the Pope by continuing services.

  ‘Times were tough with the plague at our gates as well as Naples siding with Rome in a war of attrition. Eventually, Lorenzo went to Naples – alone. Many assumed Ferdinand, the king there, would kill him as soon as he arrived. Ferdinand was the most vicious, oppressive, warmonger you can imagine – think Jabba the Hut in human form, and multiply the cruelty by a factor of ten. The man took the notion of keep your friends close and your enemies closer to the extreme by having his enemies killed, embalmed, and dressed in their finery around him. I had nightmares waiting outside Naples fearing that Zo would join the embalmed display.

  ‘I should have known to trust Zo’s instinct to go in alone. He was so likeable and charming, so hugely intelligent, and such a great reader of men. Ferdinand admired his sheer gutsiness for going in like that, and they shared the notion of the Italian states – particularly the northern ones – sticking together to hold out invasion from the north. Lorenzo checkmated the Pope by having Naples come over to his side.

  ‘But, honestly, you can read all of that in the history books. I could have read those facts and relayed them to you. It’s the things that aren’t in the history books that I want to tell you. The little things no one wrote.’

  Lynette leaned forward to take Ally’s hand, ‘That is so much more than what we can read in history books. You make it come alive. How many people can have a first-hand view of what happened in Renaissance Italy? It is amazing!’

  ‘You believe?’ Ally met the clear grey eyes with her intense gaze.

  ‘I believe,’ Lynette replied, finding that, in that moment, she truly did believe what her friend was saying. It didn’t matter that it was impossible. It didn’t matter that it couldn’t be factually proven – it was a truth. She had faith in Ally, just as she had faith in her when they were young.

  ‘Thank you,’ Ally squeezed her hand. ‘It means a lot.’

  ‘I think we all believe,’ said Andrew, his expression sincere. ‘I don’t care that it cannot possibly be true – to me, now, it is my truth. You and Lorenzo de’ Medici loved each other five hundred years ago. It exists outside the life we know, but I accept your version of reality. Unequivocally.’

  ‘Good,’ Ally graced him with one of the smiles that was like an explosion of sunshine on an overcast day. ‘I don’t have too much to tell before I tie up those loose threads and then test our friendship one last time. No, maybe, two times. Perhaps it is unfair of me to give you three tests like this – to believe my story, to hear my confession, and, thirdly, to accept my resolution.’

  ‘That sounds ominous,’ Peter looked at her guardedly. He suspected that Ally had more secrets that he didn’t want to hear, but he also realised that he owed it to her to listen.

  ‘Very,’ she agreed. ‘I had convinced myself that we would all fail miserably on this first test, of me telling you about Florence, but Zo told me to tell you.’

  ‘He said that the other day?’ asked Marcus, curious about everything concerning this unusual woman. He was keen to hear everything, including her confession and resolution, whatever they might be.

  ‘When I tried to top myself,’ she gave him a wry expression, clearly unhappy with her decision to try to take her own life. ‘It was stupid of me, especially since I preached to this crew all our early years about always choosing life. Zo was angry at me, I can tell you, but he was here, on the edges of the light, reminding me of what I must do. I had lost my way. He redirected me. I hope you will all see me through.’

  ‘Hmm,’ Peter screwed up one corner of his mouth, unconvinced that he should agree to anything. ‘We will try to make the right choices.’

  ‘My choices are the right ones,’ she grinned.

  ‘Maybe,’ he narrowed his eyes at her.

  Infuriatingly, she laughed at him and said they needed afternoon tea, and they would continue in an hour.

  ‘I want to run through some random moments. Nothing as momentous as the Easter Sunday assassination and what happened afterwards. Sometimes, those little bites of the feast help you understand the entire spread laid out. Then we go back to Giro – Savonarola.’ She shuddered. ‘I still detest him, the book-burning, art-hating, reptile of a man. No, that is unfair to reptiles. He was a cane toad, a maggot, a blowfly…’

  ‘Didn’t like him, eh?’ Sandy wiggled her eyebrows.

  ‘And, tonight,’ Ally changed subjects with a quick grin at Sandy, ‘we have our very own Sandy Martin movie night.’

  ‘I had hoped you’d forgotten,’ Sandy rolled her eyes.

  ‘Never,’ Ally laughed.

  In the laughter, with her eyes creased in amusement and her even white teeth exposed as her infectio
us good humour rang out across the gardens, she appeared young again. There was a vitality to her that lifted the spirits of all those around. The newcomers, Nick and Marcus, felt it. It was like climbing a mountain, or going up in a plane, and seeing everything from an elevated position. Falling under her spell came with a sense of exhilaration, of standing at the front of a ship and holding arms wide while shouting about being the king of the world. The feelings that shone out of Ally and into their souls made them feel powerful and positive. They understood how this woman had raised four such remarkable friends.

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  Popes, Lucrezia, Clarice, and Movie Night

  They had coffee and cake in the cafeteria, and, once more, the creations of the bakers and pastry chefs delighted the eye and the palate. Ally picked at a delicate apricot pastry as she listened to the dancing conversation that avoided anything remotely Renaissance. Nick provided most of the entertainment with a series of stories about growing up in Texas, making himself the brunt of the joke in most of them. Lynette watched him enthral her friends with his raconteur skills and humour, and she found her heart melting even more for the remarkable man who had come into her life.

  Peter left the table several times to tend to Kamekura business that his employees felt needed his attention. He was sure they could cope without him, but took the time to check and reassure them that their decisions were excellent. From an early age, with Ally as his mentor, he had learned that empowering others led to the best results.

  It was late afternoon when they returned to the sunflower room with its overpowering yellow. Ally, in her bright yellow dress, merged into the décor and grinned like the disappearing Cheshire Cat as she stood against various backgrounds and blended in. Her delight in the simple nonsense of being yellow against yellow had everyone laughing as she pretended to vanish in one place and reappear in another.

  The strain that had surrounded the early part of her story had evaporated as they took up their story-time positions in beanbag chairs that Peter, Andrew, and Marcus brought from one of the other rooms. Ally sat in a yellow leather recliner, smiling fondly at her friends as they arranged themselves. The two couples each shared doubles and, as Sandy began dragging in a single for herself, Peter pointed to one of the larger beanbag chairs.

  ‘Want to share?’ he held the chair up in the air, waiting for an answer.

  ‘Like when we were sixteen?’ she asked, remembering back to parties in the seventies when they sat around listening to Bread, The Beatles, Led Zeppelin, Pink Floyd, and other favourites that provided the background to those years.

  ‘We’ll always be sixteen,’ he grinned at her, throwing the soft chair down next to Lynette and Nick, and flopping down in it, holding an arm out to Sandy to invite her in. ‘We were good friends then – we still are.’

  Although she had always wanted more, Sandy nodded happily, feeling the warmth from her lifelong friend. ‘We always will be, Peter.’

  ‘Enough with the friend-a-thon,’ Lynette laughed at them. ‘Sit down and let’s get Ally talking again. I want to hear as much as possible.’

  ‘About anything in particular?’ Ally asked as she arranged herself in the recliner, kicking her legs sideways over the arms and sprawling out comfortably.

  Sinking elegantly into the beanbag chair next to Peter, Sandy wriggled to make a comfortable shape beneath her and rested her head back on Peter’s arm.

  ‘They’d never pick you second-to-last now,’ he whispered to her, referring to their primary school years.

  ‘You’d still be last,’ she elbowed him lightly in the ribs. ‘Look at you – you’re nearly sixty years old. Who wants an old man on their team?’

  He chuckled softly at her response, pleased to have their friendship sailing on comfortable waters.

  ‘I want to know,’ began Andrew, ‘if your Zo ever got even with Pope Sixtus the Fourth. He really did a number on all of you with that Easter Sunday stunt.’

  ‘Karma is a bee-atch,’ Ally smiled thinly. ‘I guess he discovered he wasn’t all-powerful when the priests of Florence defied him and continued to give services. Then Lorenzo rode into the court of King Ferdinand of Naples and single-handedly convinced the King to abandon the Pope’s side and ally with Florence. That must have hurt. After some other upsets, Elli visited Rome in late July of 1484, six years after the Pazzi conspiracy, and, on August 8, our Sixtus became ill. He died four days later.’

  ‘You killed a Pope?’ Lynette’s eyes were wide with shock at the enormity of what Ally’s words implied.

  ‘I did not,’ Ally inclined her head, her eyes uncharacteristically cool. ‘I have never been to Rome. Elli may have, though. She was present when several who opposed Zo in the Easter Sunday assassinations became ill and died, and she faced her own karma with that. When I get to Savonarola, I’ll explain.’

  ‘Was the next Pope as anti-Medici as Sixtus?’ asked Peter.

  ‘Zo and his mother took care to ensure he wasn’t. A few weeks after Sixtus passed, the Cardinals elected Pope Innocent the Eighth. Three years after he became Pope, his son, Franceschetto was married to Lorenzo’s daughter, Maddalena. That was convenient for the Medicis. It meant that when Giovanni, Zo’s second son, was thirteen, he was given the role of cardinal.’

  ‘Thirteen!’ Nick guffawed. ‘A thirteen-year-old cardinal? You’re kidding.’

  Seeing the humour in it, Ally laughed softly and shook her head. ‘I loved Zo, and he was a remarkable man, but he was a bit of a tyrant. He wanted Giovanni to be a Pope, so he got him off to a flying start by having Innocent proclaim him a teenage cardinal.’

  With her perfect pitch, Sandy sang a line from a Wheatus song, changing the lyrics to, ‘'Cause I'm just a teenage cardinal, baby.’

  ‘That’s fairly ambitious,’ said Andrew, once he stopped chuckling at Sandy’s interpretation of the song, ‘wanting your son to be Pope.’

  ‘Zo never lacked ambition,’ Ally admitted. ‘Though, it was actually Leonardo who suggested that he grow his own Pope. In 1480, two years after they murdered Giuliano, Leo was visiting and we were having a quiet night in Zo’s private rooms. The talk turned to our problems with Sixtus, who still had four years to live at the time.’

  ***

  ‘You need to get your own Pope,’ Leo told Zo after they emptied several flasks of wine. He was having a final visit to the Cafaggiolo villa before leaving for an extended stay in Milan. ‘It’s just a business, like any other – like banking. You can put your people into the banks, so put them into the Papacy.’

  ‘How can you say the Church is a business along the lines of a bank?’ asked Antonio, one of Zo’s closest friends, and the one who had been at his side during the events at the Duomo two years earlier. He hiccupped and belched before taking another swig of wine.

  ‘Because it is a business,’ Elli pointed out from where she sat, curled on the floor at Zo’s feet. She wore a full-length dress of burgundy silk, with long sleeves and an intricately embroidered bodice. Defying fashion, she wore her blonde curls loose, without any hat or headdress to hide them. ‘They make money from the people. They sell the notion of heaven. They threaten us with damnation, and they invest wherever they think they can make more money. They are hungry for power, like any businessmen.’

  ‘Like me?’ Zo asked her, resting a hand on her the top of her head, and smiling down at her.

  ‘Just like you,’ she beamed back at him, ‘but not as honest. And, Leo is right. You need to get your own Pope. You know it’s all a corrupt game of power, so put your players in there and make the payments to the right people. We need a Medici Pope.’

  ‘I agree!’ chorused three of the men who sat with them, while the other two snored.

  ‘Think of the power, Loro,’ enthused Leonardo, slamming down his goblet on the table next to him so that the wine leaped over the edge and splashed the sketches he’d been working on. He cursed, wiped the wine off with his sleeve, then continued. ‘You have the banking, the trade, the business
es, the politics, the connections with leaders from other countries. You need Rome. When you have a Medici Pope, you are safe from excommunication and the wrath of the church.’

  ‘It is a good idea,’ Lorenzo scratched his head absent-mindedly as his eyes turned to the ceiling in thought. ‘Having an enemy who is the Pope is a source of great grief.’

  ‘Religion is a source of great grief,’ grumbled Elli.

  Antonio laughed at her comment. ‘Are you not afraid of hell?’ he asked, merriment in his eyes. ‘The priests promise a place there for one as doubtful as you.’

  ‘They promise lots of things,’ she grimaced at the thought of the priests she knew and despised. ‘But look at half of the poor who go to Church regularly – they already live in hell. They starve. They die of disease. They freeze in winter. They drown in floods. The children are beaten and many die as innocent babes. The women are often no better than slaves. Their husbands beat them and rape them. They have children until they die of exhaustion. What is this God doing for them in return for their prayers and faith? Lorenzo does more for them than the priests, the church, and their God. And he doesn’t threaten them with hell, he gives them a festival.’

  ‘I’ll drink to that,’ one of the snorers woke briefly to raise his empty glass, look blearily at its emptiness, and return to sleep.

  ‘People need faith,’ said one of the other men. ‘We are born with an innate need for God.’

  ‘Nonsense,’ objected Elli. ‘There are civilisations all over this world who do not believe in our version of God, and they do perfectly well without Him. The Greeks, Romans, and Egyptians of ancient times built empires beyond our reckoning without our God.’

  ‘They still had faith in gods, though,’ he argued.

  ‘Are you saying that it is the faith that is real, not our God?’ quizzed Elli, giving him an enquiring look. ‘That their dozens of gods and goddesses are no more nor less effective than our almighty God because it is not the gods that are important, but the faith?’