The Birth of Venus

by Sarah Dunant

  I could feel the tears coming, nerves and fury mixed together. I started to pull myself up from the ground and was halfway across the yard when I caught the sound of the door opening again.

  I sank back into the shadows. It had to be him. The door closed again, quietly this time, and I heard the sound of the inside bolt being drawn across. For a second there was silence, then padded footsteps crossed the courtyard. I waited till he was almost directly in front of me. He was breathing heavily. Maybe he had been running too. If I stayed still he would have just moved past me and away. Why did I do it? Because I had been such a coward? To prove to myself that I was not all talk? Or maybe it was more unkind than that: the need to see someone as frightened as I had been.

  “Did you have a good time?”

  I stepped into his path at the same time as I spoke. He lifted off the ground with the shock and I heard something fall, a dull slam like a hard object hitting the ground. He seemed more agitated by the loss of it than by my presence as he flung himself down onto the ground, feeling desperately around him. But I had got there first. My fingers closed over the rough cover of a book. Our hands met. He withdrew his instantly as if the touch had scalded him. I pushed the book back toward him and he grabbed it.

  “What are you doing here?” he hissed.

  “Watching you.”

  “Why?”

  “I told you. I want your help.”

  “I can’t help you. Don’t you understand?” And I heard the fear in his voice.

  “Why? What is out there? What have you seen?”

  “Nothing. Nothing. Get away from me.”

  He pushed me to one side as he got up and stumbled out of the way. But we had made too much noise, and a voice came rolling out of the darkness somewhere off the courtyard nearby, freezing us both to the spot. “Shut up, whoever you are. Go screw somewhere else.”

  I stayed crouched in the darkness. The voice died away and after a few seconds I heard the painter stumble off. I waited till everything was quiet, then used my hands to push myself up. As I did so I found something on the ground nearby, a paper that must have slid out of the book. I grasped it tightly in my hand and made my way silently back across the courtyard, up the servants’ staircase to the main body of the house.

  Once in the safety of my room I fumbled to light the oil lamp. It took awhile for its glow to grow vivid enough for me to see.

  I unfolded the paper and smoothed it out on the bed.

  It had been torn in half, so the image was cut through the middle, but there was enough to read it. It was part of the body of a man, naked legs and most of the torso, the paper ripped below where the neck would have been. The chalk strokes were rough and crude, as if there had been barely enough time to capture it, but what it showed was unforgettable. From the collarbone to the groin, his body was split open by a single deep knife wound, the flesh peeled backward like an animal carcass on a butcher’s stall and the innards pulled out and exposed.

  My hands came up to my mouth to stifle the quick moan, and as they did so I registered the smell on my fingers: that same sweet stench of decay that had come off his body the day of the portrait session in the chapel, a session which I now remembered had taken place after another of his night journeys into town. And so I learned that what our devout artist did with his nights had more to do with death than sex.

  Seventeen

  IT MUST HAVE BEEN ONLY A FEW HOURS LATER WHEN the shouting in the streets woke me. I had fallen asleep fully dressed on my bed, the paper in my hand. The oil lamp was still burning and the sky was streaked with swaths of pink. Someone was banging on the main door of the palazzo. I pulled on a gown over my clothes and met my father halfway down the stairs.

  “Go back to bed,” he said tersely.

  “What is happening?”

  But he ignored me. Below us in the courtyard a servant had already saddled his horse. I saw my mother on the landing still in her dressing robe.

  “Mother?”

  “Your father is called for. Piero de’ Medici is arrived back at the Signoria.”

  Of course there was no sleep to be had after that. Since there was nowhere else, I put the paper for safekeeping with my own drawings, already packed in my marriage chest. I would think about what I should do with it later. For now there were more pressing matters. Downstairs, Tomaso and Luca were about to leave. I met my mother and followed her into her bedroom to plead with her, though I knew it would be to no avail.

  “You told me once that history must be noted. We stood together in Ghirlandaio’s chapel and you said those words to me. Now something even more momentous is happening in our city. Are we not allowed to be witnesses?”

  “It is out of the question. Your father says Piero has come into the city with a sword in his hand and men at his heels. There will be bloodshed and violence. It is not for women to witness such things.”

  “So what do we do, sit and embroider our shrouds?”

  “Don’t be melodramatic, Alessandra, it doesn’t suit you. Yes, you can sew if you like. Though it might do you better to pray. For yourself as well as the city.”

  What could one say? I did not know any more what was right. Everything that had once seemed safe and certain was unraveling before my eyes. The Medici had ruled our city for fifty years, but they had never in all that time raised arms against the state. At best Piero was a bad politician, at worst he was a traitor. Tomaso was right. The Republic was falling like a house of cards. Where had it gone? All that glory and wealth and learning? Could it be that Savonarola was right? All the art in the world could not keep out an invading army. Was it our sins and our pride that had brought us to this?

  My mother busied herself about the house.

  Halfway down the stairs I met Erila slipping out.

  “There is talk of bloodshed on the streets,” I said. “You should be careful. Mother says it is no place for women out there now.”

  “I’ll remember that,” she said, grinning as she pulled her cloak around her head.

  “Oh, take me with you,” I whispered as she moved away. “Please.” And I know that she heard me, because I saw her hesitate before she went, moving swiftly toward the door.

  I KEPT VIGIL ON MY WINDOW SEAT IN THE RECEIVING ROOM. Just after midday the great bell of the Signoria started to toll. I had never heard it before yet I knew immediately what it was. What had my tutors called it? La Vacca, the cow, because its tone was so mournful and low. But while its name was comical, its sound marked the end of the world, for it was rung only at moments of deepest crisis: a call for the citizenry of Florence to gather in the Piazza della Signoria because the government was under threat.

  My mother came rushing in and joined me at the window. Already there were people pouring out onto the street. Now she was as agitated as I. I thought for a moment she was ill, she looked so faint.

  “What is it?”

  She said nothing.

  “What is it?” I insisted.

  “I haven’t heard it for so long,” she said dimly. She shook her head as if clearing her thoughts. “They rang it the day of the assassination of Giuliano and the attack on Lorenzo in the cathedral. The city was in uproar, people screaming and shouting everywhere.” She stopped and I could feel her struggling to continue. It made me think of her sudden tears at Lorenzo’s body. Who was she then? “I . . . I was carrying you near to term, and the moment the bells started I felt you move violently. I think you probably wanted to be watching then too.” She smiled weakly.

  “What did you do?” I said, remembering the below-stairs tales of her transgression.

  She closed her eyes. “I went to the window, just like you.”

  “And?”

  “And I watched as the mob dragged one of the assassins, the priest De Bagnone, through the streets to the gallows. He was bleeding from where they had castrated him.”

  “Oh.” So it was true. I had been turned in the womb by fear and horror. I moved away from the window almost without thin
king. “And so I grew monstrous from the shock.”

  “No. You are not monstrous, Alessandra, only curious. And young. Like I was.” She paused. “If it makes you feel better, I was not so much shocked or frightened as consumed by sadness for him. That anyone should be in so much pain and terror . . . I know what is said by others about such things, but I have thought about it much since that day, and I think that if I gave you anything in the womb it would have been compassion for the suffering of man.”

  I came and sat down next to her, and she put her arm around me. “What will happen to us, Mama?” I said, after a while.

  She sighed. “I don’t know. I fear Piero has neither the wit nor the power to save the government, though he may yet save his own life.”

  “And the French?”

  “Your father says they are on their way. Piero has made humiliating concessions. He has given them the freedom of the city, the fortress of Pisa, and a great loan to Charles’s war chest.”

  “So much! How could he do that? When will they get here?”

  “It’s only a matter of days.” And she looked at me, almost as if she were seeing me for the first time. “I think we should accept that your wedding may come sooner than we think, Alessandra.”

  As always, it was Erila who brought the news. It was so late by then I think even my mother was worried, and for once she didn’t have the heart to banish me to my room.

  “Piero’s gone, madam. Taken his men and fled the city. When the Signoria heard the terms he’d made they threw him out. But he refused to leave the square and his men had their swords out. That’s when they rang the bell. You should have seen the crowds. Half of Florence was there within minutes. They took a vote to form a new government then and there. The first thing it did was to exile him and put a price of two thousand florins on his head. I came back through Via Tornabuoni. The Medici Palace is already under siege. It’s like a war out there.”

  So Savonarola had been proved right. The sword was upon us.

  I ROSE AT 6 A.M. I REFUSED MARIA, AND ON THIS OF ALL DAYS I WAS given my way. Erila dressed me and decorated my hair. We were both exhausted. For me it marked the second night of sleeplessness. In the courtyard the grooms were harnessing the horses, and a group of men my father employed as guards were being fed in the kitchens. Half the city was still on the streets and there was talk of looting at the Medici Palace. It was nobody’s idea of a wedding day.

  I considered myself in the mirror glass. There had been no time for my husband to supply my new wardrobe, as was the custom, so I had had to make do with my own. In recent months I had grown large for my best crimson brocade, but I was stuffed into it nevertheless and could barely move my arms, the sleeves were so tight. No sign of my sister’s sighing silk skirts and pale skin now. I had neither beauty nor grace. But then this was not the time for proud family portraits anyway. It was just as well. How could I sit calmly in front of a man whose chalk captured sliced flesh and the contours of disemboweled innards?

  I felt sick even at the thought.

  “Tss . . . Hold still, Alessandra. I can’t weave the flowers in place if you jiggle so.”

  It was not my twisting but their wilted condition that was the fault. Yesterday’s flowers for today’s bride. I caught her eye in the glass. She did not smile, and I know she was frightened too.

  “Erila—?”

  “Shhh . . . There’s no time for this now. We’ll be fine. It’s a marriage, not a coffin. Remember, it was you who chose this over the nunnery.”

  But I think she was only sharp to keep her own spirits up, and when she saw my tears she held me, and when my hair was finished she offered to slip out to fetch me some soft-roasted chestnuts and wine. Only as she was leaving did I remember the painter and our appointment for later that day.

  “Tell him—” But what was there to tell? That I was gone from my father’s house while he spent his nights amid the stink of death and bloody evisceration? “Tell him it is too late now.” And so it was.

  The door opened soon after she left and Tomaso stood in the entrance, as if afraid to come any closer. He was still in last night’s clothes.

  “How is it out there, brother?” I said evenly, into the mirror.

  “As if the invasion is come already. They are ripping down the Medici crests from all the buildings and painting up the sign of the Republic in their place.”

  “Will we be safe?”

  “I don’t know.”

  He took off his cloak and wiped his face with it. “I trust you are not dressed for my wedding,” I said, almost glad for a reason to spat with him. “You won’t make any conquests with that much dirt upon you. Though I think the guest list will be somewhat reduced by circumstances.”

  He gave a little shrug. “Your wedding,” he repeated softly. “I seem to be the only one who has not congratulated you.” He paused, and we looked at each other in the mirror glass. “You look . . . handsome.”

  And it was so incongruous to hear even such a simple compliment from his lips that I couldn’t help laughing. “Good enough to roll and pluck, you mean?”

  He frowned, as if my crudeness upset him. He moved farther in so he could see me directly, out of the reflection of the mirror this time. “I still don’t know why you did it.”

  “Did what?”

  “Agreed to marry him.”

  “To get away from you, of course,” I said lightly, but again he did not react. I shrugged. “Because I would die a slow death in a convent, and I have no life here. Maybe with him I will get one.”

  He made a small noise in his throat, as if the answer had not helped him. “I hope you will be happy.”

  “Do you?”

  He hesitated. “He is a cultured man.”

  “So I hear.”

  “I think . . . I think he will give you the freedom you desire.”

  I frowned. It was similar to something my mother had said. “And what makes you think that?”

  He shrugged.

  “You know him, yes?”

  “A little.”

  I shook my head. “No. More than a little, I think.” Of course. There had been so much going on, I had not been thinking straight. How else had he known about my studies and my painting? Who else would have given him such ammunition? “It was you who told him about me, right?” I said. “About my Greek. And my drawing. And my dancing.”

  “Your dancing tells itself, and your knowledge, sister—well, your knowledge is legendary.” And there was a flash of the old Tomaso back again, the knife dipped in sarcasm.

  “Tell me something, Tomaso. Why is it we always fight?”

  “Because . . .” He stopped. “Because . . . I cannot remember anymore.”

  I sighed. “You are older than I, you have more freedom, more influence, you dance better”—I paused—“and you are a good deal prettier.” He did not say anything. “Or you certainly look in the mirror more often,” I added, with a laugh.

  He could have laughed back. There was an opportunity for that. But instead he said nothing.

  “Well,” I said softly, “maybe we would do well not to make peace now. I think it would shock us too much, and the world is already full of such shocking things.”

  There was nothing left to be said, but still he stayed, loitering. “I meant it, Alessandra. You do look handsome.”

  “I look ready,” I corrected. “Though I am not sure that I am. Anyway . . . The next time we meet after today, I will be a wife and Florence will be an occupied city. You could do better than to brawl in the streets for a while. You might find yourself at the end of a French sword.”

  “I shall come and visit you instead.”

  “You will always be welcome in my home,” I said formally. I wondered how long it would be before the word stopped sounding strange in my mouth.

  “In which case I shall come often.” He paused. “Give my regards to your husband.”

  “I will.”

  I know now, of course, that the conversation
meant more to him than it did to me.

  YOU COULD HARDLY CALL IT A MARRIAGE PROCESSION. I RODE A horse, but you could barely see me for the surrounding guards, and no one on the streets stopped to admire my costume. The city was jumpy. There were knots of men huddled together on street corners, and when we got to the cathedral we were stopped and ordered to take another route because the square in front of the church was cordoned off.

  But the cordon was not complete, and through the gap I had a clear view.

  There was a figure lying on the steps of the Baptistery, his body slouched against Ghiberti’s shining sculptured doors. A cloak covered his head, but from the length of his leg and the colors of his cloth he was clearly a young man. He might almost have been asleep after a night’s drinking, had it not been for the pool of black blood that was seeping like floodwater from underneath his body.

  The groom pulled my horse onward, but the smell of blood must have got into its nostrils because it refused suddenly, snorting, its feet chopping on the cobbles. I held on to the saddle, staring at the corpse. And as I did the cloak slipped down and I saw a mangled bloody face, the head half severed from the torso and a gaping hole where the nose had been. Above him the doors told the story of the Angel of God staying Abraham’s hand in the Sacrifice of Isaac, but there was no such mercy here. Another mutilated corpse by another church. Savonarola was right: Florence was at war with herself, and the Devil was running the city during the hours of darkness.

  The groom pulled the horse’s head to, and we continued on our way.