That day he just picked up the purse and walked away. “I swear, Emilio,” he said. “You’ll be the death of me.”
I couldn’t deny it. Not with my history.
Chapter Twenty-two
Florence, 1482
It has now been almost a week since Signor Botticelli came to the shop.
After he left, I asked Maestro Orazio to bring me a quill and a bit of paper. He looked at me as though I asked for the moon, but produced them all the same. I have been writing this on the backs of his old accounts.
For the past week I’ve been pulling these images, sharp and painful, from the forges of memory. I’ve spared myself nothing. There are a few details that remain to end my narrative, and I’m determined to do so by tomorrow when I deliver Botticelli’s commission. My time is near, I can feel it like a change in the wind.
What more to say about four years of hard work? I labored, I ate, I slept. And gradually I forgot everything but my own guilt. It was clear I had a hand in my family’s tragedy. Had I not helped save Lorenzo de Medici, my father’s scheme might have turned out differently. But working here with gold makes me remember a jeweled hand, reaching out from under a sea of black robes. No matter how I might wish to have behaved otherwise, I know I could never have stood by watching those fingers curl and relax for even an instant more than I did.
I have been slowly losing the texture of my former life. The sight of my brothers swinging from the Bargello walls — after a while they just became things to me. Straw men shedding their stuffing in the wind. Andrea’s tormented face when I last saw him? It is just a shape, a pair of sunken cheekbones. I remember Papa’s red cap but not the head underneath; I remember Domenica’s hair, but she no longer turns around to face me. Even of Nonna all that remains is one gray braid sweeping her crooked back.
But there is one I don’t forget, nor will I, no matter how long I live. It is for his sake that I draw out these memories, even the painful ones, beginning with the day the messenger of the gods came to my palazzo and vomited in our oranges.
I remember Emilio’s brown curly hair and the gap in his front teeth. I remember that he was skinny and ill, then he was not. I remember how I felt when he smiled. I remember the night we stood together in the kitchen, watching Domenica and Captain Umberto whisper to each other in the firelight. Amore per sempre. I remember him saying, “Thank God we’ll never be like that.” I was confused at the time, thinking he meant we — Emilio and I — would never be in love. Now I realize he wasn’t saying that at all: he was saying we were too smart to make promises we couldn’t keep.
Then I remember all the things Emilio did during our short time together. Like the time he attacked a man twice his size just for pushing me, or him leaning out the kitchen window, brandishing a wheel of cheese, waving off Signor Botticelli. Not that one, eh? I need that one. I remember reaching for his hand when I wanted to help him or just be with him, and how, even though those moments weren’t ornate or even pretty, they nourished me more than the finest art.
Finally, I remember him standing on a hilltop, not meeting my eyes. I don’t love the others, he had said, in a voice so soft and low I thought it was the wind.
You were wrong about me, Emilio. I did turn out like Domenica. I made you an empty promise. I want to tell you I didn’t understand then because I had only the illusion to guide me. I hated the pretty words that passed between lovers but I wanted to hear them spoken. And now that I am like Signor Botticelli and able to see the true beauty in my life, it’s too late. You’re gone.
This is what keeps me here in this hell so terrible I think it must have been dreamt by Father Alberto. This is what I will never stop atoning for, no matter how many spoons Giuliano’s son delights in, how many rings adorn the sheriff’s fingers. This is why Signor Botticelli’s visit has transformed me from hard metal back into some whining, pampered nitwit.
I grow tired of baubles.
I want to go home.
Chapter Twenty-three
This morning, after a night of thrashing sleeplessly, I shoo my master and mistress to high mass. “Are you sure, Flora?” Maria says. “Perhaps Orazio should accompany you. Signor Botticelli said nothing about your coming alone.”
I tell her it is all right, that she and her husband had already done enough.
She caresses my face. “Carissima,” she says. “You stopped being a debt a long time ago. If you want us to, we will come.”
“I thought you didn’t want any more family,” I say.
Signora Maria tears up and rushes from the room.
“I can see that our influence hasn’t improved your manners,” Orazio says. “That was a fine parting.”
I call Maria back and apologize. I tell her I will be fine and send them on their way.
Am I sad that my time is at an end? Not really. It’s time I took my place alongside my brothers as I should have four years ago.
There is a tub of bathwater upstairs in the apartment. Both Signora Maria and Maestro Orazio have already used it so the water is not clean, but it is clean enough. I unwrap the hair I haven’t seen in four years. It falls to my waist. I wash myself as best I can, but when I get out of the tub I still smell like a volcano. I put on Maria’s second dress and remember days when I thought dresses shabby because they lacked pearls.
Outside, I turn my uncovered face to the sun. The air isn’t exactly fresh — it smells of horse poop and turgid water from the Arno — but I breathe it as though a fine perfume. I’m not really breaking my bargain with God, I reason. This is my death march. Surely a doomed person deserves to breathe open air?
My first act is to cross the street. “Signor Butternut!” I call loudly and wave. I kiss him sloppily on the cheek. “Buongiorno, fratello mio! Is this not a glorious day? I have to go now, but I shall most likely be back in a moment. Ciao!”
And I leave him to stare after me like some dumb beast.
I make my progress up the Via dei Balastrieri, my head held high, my skirts held up but only high enough that they don’t drag in the muck. It is a fine spring day. People stare as I walk past — men especially. I imagine what they’re thinking. Murderer. Traitor.
I find Signor Botticelli’s address and knock on the back door.
A maid answers, a squat woman with a harelip. At first glance she is not beautiful, yet I know she must be, else Signor Botticelli would not employ her. She looks me up and down. “This will not do. This will not do at all,” she says.
She pulls me inside and pours me a new bath, this time with clean hot water. She takes a brush to my hair and face and begins to scrub. She is not gentle. “Leave me alone,” I tell her. “I know how to bathe.”
“No, you don’t,” she says, whacking me on the head with a brush. “You’re filthy. Now sit still.”
But I don’t want to sit still. I don’t want to watch as she scrubs away everything I’ve so carefully built up. I don’t want to see what’s underneath.
The black is the first layer to go. Then the red.
When she is satisfied that I am clean, she produces a linen towel. “Dry yourself,” she says. “Then Maestro Alessandro says that you are to put this on and join him upstairs in his studio. He is expecting you.”
She hangs a gown from a beam in the ceiling as if it were a bunch of sage. When she is gone, I step out of the tub and examine the dress. The material is soft and light — almost transparent. Embroidered all over are tiny flowers in pink and green and yellow. Even Domenica would not turn up her nose at such a fine vestment.
What is Signor Botticelli up to? Why bring me here at all, dress me like this? Perhaps this is Signora de Medici’s desire, that I have one last reminder of something fine before she exacts my punishment. Very well, then. She has asked for a Pazzi; a Pazzi she shall have.
I take the ring I made for Signora de Medici, mount the stairs, and throw open the door the maid indicated to me.
Inside is a space as large as our great hall used to be — an open ro
om with wooden floors and huge leaded windows facing south. I do not see Signora de Medici, but Signor Botticelli is there, standing with his back to me, inspecting a draped canvas as tall as he is and twice as long.
Around him a dozen aproned apprentices busy themselves grinding and mixing. One of them, carrying a paint jar, sees me enter.
“Madonna!” he says as his mouth drops along with the paint. Blue splatters all over the wooden floor.
The rest turn around and stare just as long. “I didn’t believe it,” mutters another apprentice. “You told us but I didn’t believe it.”
Signor Botticelli himself turns around and looks as well. He is wearing a face I’ve never seen before. He is neither the upstairs toady nor the downstairs dishwasher I remember. His expression is serious. Maybe, I think, this is his true face; his working face.
He wipes his hands on a paint-splattered smock and comes up to me. Up close I can see how he’s aged in four years. His sandy hair is mostly gray; his heft now makes him look tired instead of prosperous. His eyes and chins sag like heavy purses.
He twists a lock of my hair over my shoulder and pinches a fleck of dust from my sleeve. “Very well,” he says to his apprentices. “I promised you all one look. When you are done gawking you may leave us. And one of you fetch us some wine. I am in a festive mood.”
One by one they set down their tools and file past me. None looks away from my face until they are gone.
Signor Botticelli closes the door on the nose of the last one, and examines my hands. “I don’t need to ask where you’ve been all these years,” he says, pointing to a scar on my palm. “How could you let this happen to you?”
“Basta,” I say, and slap him away. “Quit fussing with me. Where is your patroness?”
Signor Botticelli seems perplexed. “This is not what I expected, but I forget you have reason to be suspicious. Very well. I thought we could go straight to overindulging, but I see we must get the unpleasantness out of the way first.”
I look over his shoulder and out the window. How many horses are below? Is there one for each of my limbs?
“You’ve been pardoned,” Signor Botticelli says. “Signora Lucrezia de Medici has deemed you no longer a threat to her or her kin. You are free. You cannot remain in Florence, but you have her word that you will not be pursued.”
It is my turn to gawk.
“Close your mouth, Flora. It’s an unbecoming expression.”
“I’ve been pardoned? For what?”
“For being a traitor, I suppose. It’s too dangerous for you to remain any longer, Flora. You’ve changed in four years. Everyone can see that. Signor Valentini himself has been whispering about the apprentice in Maestro Orazio’s shop who looks nothing like a boy but a lot like a Pazzi. Everyone has. One of these days someone will inform Il Magnifico.”
I purse my lips. “I saved his life,” I say.
“So Father Alberto tells me. Il Magnifico has chosen to forget that fact, Flora, as should you. If you remind him he will silence you and quickly. He does not like to be thought of as a weak man, still breathing by the grace of a fragile young maid.”
“Hardly fragile,” I mutter. “And definitely not young. Not anymore.”
He smiles with half of his mouth, then turns around and rummages through a cupboard. “I wouldn’t say that, Flora. You’re not old. Just different. Most people experience the spring of their lives first. But you, cara mia, jumped straight into winter.”
I don’t know what he’s talking about, my life in winter. For the past four years my life has had only one season: hot.
He is still rummaging through his cupboard. “Never fear, though, Flora. By my expert planning I have ensured that it will not be winter forever. Now where did that woman put that thing? Here it is! Still fresh.” When he emerges he carries a wreath woven with real wildflowers, which he lays upon my head. I don’t have a chance to bury my nose in them. But I don’t have to. Their smell floats down from my hair, a fresh and subtle scent, and I feel something inside me crack.
Signor Botticelli stands back. Can he really be oblivious to the pain this crown causes me? He sensed heartbreak in Domenica, for God’s sake. And yet he seems not to notice my distress.
He continues: “A year after the April Rebellion, Father Alberto came to me with a strange tale of a youth in a confessional with a low but familiar voice who admitted to things — he didn’t tell me which things — he knew you had done. He said that at first he tried to chase you but you were too quick. But you came back, each time with a bauble for the son of the unfortunate Giuliano. He followed you in secret to Maestro Orazio’s.
“He was not certain about your identity and had the excellent sense to consult with me. He knew I’d painted in your palazzo before that terrible day and thought I might be simpatico.”
Well, are you? I wanted to say. I’ve never been able to figure that out.
Instead I let him finish his tale.
“By then I had already heard rumors from other sources about an apprentice in my old goldsmith shop. A youth with a dirty face but even the dirt could not hide his disturbing beauty. So after Father Alberto’s visit I sent my first apprentice to observe you. He came back with this sketch.”
Signor Botticelli produces a notebook from atop a marble pedestal and opens it to the first page. There I am in black and white, sitting in front of an anvil, my head in a wrap. I turn the page. There I am in profile. Here is page after page of details about me in this notebook, my hands, my arms, the curve of my neck. Madonna! My every move has been scrutinized.
“I stood outside Orazio’s too and saw for myself. I had no doubts. I still recognized the girl who crashed into me in her grandmother’s garden — the one chased by the wind.”
“So I’ve been pardoned,” I say. “But why now? You say I’ve changed and I’m no longer safe. I say the change is not exactly new. Why do I have to be pardoned at this very moment?”
“Because only now, with Count Riorio dead, did Signora de Medici give me her blessing.”
“And you would never do anything without it,” I spit.
Signor Botticelli shrugs. “Would you?”
I think of the horses that pulled my father apart. Nothing justified that. No, I will never again do anything against Medici wishes.
“I am what I am, Flora. My fortunes depend on others. But, occasionally, I do get to behave in the manner I like. Today for example. I don’t mind telling you that Father Alberto and I have hatched a plot that even puts your father to shame. The second part of our scheme should be arriving shortly. The first I am pleased to show you now. You, my dear, are the first to see my Primavera.”
He stands by the covered canvas, and there is a glint in his eye I recognize from old. He is very pleased with himself. “You’re really going to thank me for this one,” he says.
With that, he throws back the drapery.
This is no Madonna. It is a garden scene — several figures are celebrating in an orchard with trees with round fruit — fruit that looks like the palle of the Medici — and soft cushiony grass underneath.
I look at two figures in particular.
On the far left is a handsome brown-haired youth with wings on his sandals. He reaches up and stirs clouds with his sword. I reach out and stroke his painted brown curls and I remember a different boy, riding so fast down from the hills it looked as though he was flying. “The messenger of the gods,” I mutter.
“Recognize that one, do you?”
I nod and take my fingers off the canvas. “Mercury.”
Right of center in the front is a fair-haired goddess in a white, almost transparent gown embroidered with flowers, and a wreath upon her hair — a bit like my garb today. She holds delicate blossoms in the fold of her dress, about to scatter them.
I recognize the face at once.
“Beautiful,” I say. “You have captured Domenica perfectly.”
“Domenica? You think that is she? No, my dear. You are mistaken.
” He points to the woman behind, a sad Venus in a heavy red cloak. “This is Domenica back there. This is her realm but not her story.”
“If that’s Domenica, then who’s this?” I point to the goddess in front, the graceful one.
“Who do you think it is, Flora?”
I start to shake then. I shake and I can’t stop. It’s as if inside me there is a catastrophe going on, the kind that swallows houses and brings caves of ice crashing down from mountaintops.
I look to the two remaining figures, the ones on the far right of the canvas, and I know.
These last two are a man and a woman. The man has a blue pallor and floats through the air. He blows on the woman but at the same time his arms are open as if to catch her.
The woman, another fair-haired beauty, runs from him in terror. Flowers spill from her mouth as if she is vomiting them. The blue-faced figure is Zephyrus, God of the West Wind, and the one running in terror is Chloris, the girl I was until today.
I look away from the canvas from the woman in the white dress, the goddess with the flowers. I’m still uncertain. Two faces? Both mine?
Signor Botticelli sees my confusion. “How long has it been since you’ve looked at your reflection?” he asks.
The last time was in the well in Fiesole, after I cut my hair and dirtied my face. “A while,” I say aloud.
He produces a bit of polished glass the size of a human head from his cupboard. “Here. It isn’t large. But it should be enough.”
Primavera Page 17