The Birth of Venus

by Sarah Dunant

  He stayed rocking and sniveling for a moment, then slowly uncurled them from around his body and extended them toward me, palms down. I took hold of them, and as I did so he let out a sharp yelp of pain as if my touch had burned him. I shifted my grip to the ends of his fingers, cold as ice, and gently turned them over.

  Oh! But all my gentleness could never be enough. In the middle of his palms were two great wounds, dark holes of caked blood, the flesh swollen around the edges where infection was setting in. The holes where the nails would have gone in. I thought of Saint Francis waking up in his stone cell filled with the ecstasy of God. And of my own intoxication that night, when the pain of my body had seemed like almost a relief to the pain of my mind. But mine had been an accidental self-mutilation, neither as deep nor as lost as this.

  “Oh, dear God,” I breathed. “Oh, dear God. What violence have you done to yourself?”

  As I said it I felt despair like a poisoned fog seep over him again, filling his mouth and his ears and his eyes, choking his spirit with its fumes. And now I felt really scared, because I could no longer be sure it wouldn’t leak into me too.

  Of course I had heard stories of melancholy. How even pious men sometimes got lost on their journey to God and gave in to self-destruction to ease the pain. One of my early tutors had fallen into such a pit, wasted away with lack of hope and meaning, until even my kindly mother had dismissed him, fearful of the impact of his sorrow upon our young minds. When I had asked her about him she had told me that some believed such sorrow to be the work of the Devil, but that she thought it was a disease of the mind and the humors, and that while it did not usually kill, it could debilitate a soul for the longest time, and there was no easy remedy.

  “You are right,” I said quietly, pulling myself away from him, working more on instinct now than reason. “You have sinned. But not in the way you think. This is not truth, it is despair, and despair is a sin. You cannot see because you have put out the light inside you. You cannot paint because you have been lured into self-destruction.”

  I stood up.

  “When did you do this to yourself? How far had you got with the frescoes?” I said, and my voice was fierce.

  He sat for a moment, staring at the ground.

  “If you don’t tell me I shall look for myself.”

  I pulled him up. Roughly. I know I hurt him.

  “You are too selfish, painter. When you had talent, you wouldn’t share it. Now you are without it you are almost proud of that too. You have not just embraced despair, you have sinned against hope. The Devil deserves you.”

  I walked him up through the chapel to the left-hand wall of the apse. He came without resistance, as if his body were more under my control than his own, though it was my own heart that I felt thudding in my chest.

  The tarpaulins covering the walls and ceiling were connected separately by double ropes running to a pole at the floor. “Come. Show me these God-forsaken works,” I said. “I want to see.”

  He looked directly at me for a moment. And in that instant I saw something underneath the despair, a kind of recognition of me, an understanding that if there was no one else I would have to do. Then he turned to the ropes and, unknotting them, let the first tarpaulin slip.

  There was not a great deal of light that day, so it is hard for me to explain adequately why the impact was quite so great. Of course I was expecting something different, something lost or bad or defiled, and had tensed myself for shock. But instead I was undermined by beauty.

  The newly painted frescoes glowed off the wall: the life of Santa Caterina, divided into eight parts, her serene willowy figure moving in vibrant color through her early years. Like his Virgin on the wall, she seemed to contain not just the peace of God but an exuberant human sweetness all her own.

  I stared at him, but he would not meet my gaze. The brief moment of connection had slid away and he was in the grip of his own demons again. I went myself to the next panel and unleashed the ropes, letting the tarpaulin slide slowly to the ground. The second wall took her from her triumphs to her death. It was here that the heresy started to seep in.

  Like every good Florentine I knew the stories of a thousand saints, had read the parables of their temptations and their bravery and final martyrdoms. Some went more or less willingly; not all had beatific smiles at the moment when the fire caught or the knives were sharpened, but somewhere, in some shape or form, as death came they radiated a certainty of heaven in their pain. But this Santa Caterina did not seem certain of anything. In her cell awaiting execution, in place of serenity there was only agitation, and in the final scene where, having destroyed the wheel, she is dragged toward the executioner’s sword, the face that stared accusingly out at the spectator was lit with palpable fear, reminding me of the agony to come in the young girl of the drawing.

  The final tarpaulin covered both the back wall and the vaulted roof above. As I walked toward the winch that held it in place I felt sweat at the base of my neck.

  As it fell I strained my head upward. The back wall offered a host of angels, their wings splayed out in a feathery glory plucked from doves and peacocks and a thousand imaginary birds of paradise, their eyes looking up to Our Father who art in heaven.

  Sure enough, there he was in the middle of the ceiling, on the golden throne, shining and glorified, surrounded by saints filled with their own sublime lightness—the Devil, his black hairy body splayed out over the seat, his three heads exploding out of his neck, each with its own halo of bat wings, and in his claws the figures of Christ and Mary, stuffed halfway into his mouth between his doglike teeth.

  Thirty-one

  WE TOOK HIM IN MY FATHER’S CART. HE DIDN’T MAKE a fuss. Whatever fight might have been in him was gone by then, and he seemed grateful for any show of kindness. By the time Maria realized what we were doing I think she wanted to stop me, but she had already ceded her authority by then and could only stand by and fret. When she asked me, as she did repeatedly, what was happening, I told her the same thing that I told my mother in the letter I left for her: that I had found the painter ill in the chapel and was taking him to my house to tend to him.

  It was the truth anyway. That he had some kind of malady was obvious to everyone who saw him as we helped him out from the chapel down into the courtyard. He seemed to crumble as the sun hit him, a fearful shaking coming upon his body and his teeth chattering till you thought it would rattle the bones in his skull. Halfway down he collapsed altogether and had to be carried the last flight of stairs.

  We wrapped him in blankets and put him gently in the back of the cart. Before we had removed him from the chapel, Erila and I had winched the tarpaulins back into place and locked both doors and pocketed both sets of keys. If she thought anything about what she had seen on the walls and ceiling, she said nothing of it to me.

  By the time we rode out of the gates it was almost dark. I sat in the back of the cart; Erila was driving. She was nervous. I think it was the first time I had ever seen her so. It was, she said, a bad moment to be out on the streets. Dusk was when Savonarola’s young warriors came out to impose their curfew, shooing men and women twice their age across the city into their homes away from the temptations of the streets. And since they also took it upon themselves to divide up the stalwart from the tempted, and help the latter by making their journey home swifter and often more painful, it was necessary to have a good story ready, just in case.

  They came upon us as we turned the corner by the mighty flanks of the Palazzo Strozzi, a building that would have been the greatest palazzo in the city had it not been left unfinished since the death of Filippo Strozzi. It was a death Savonarola had used frequently as preaching material to illustrate the absurdity of prizing wealth over the promise of everlasting life. Meanwhile, the city had grown so used to the palazzo’s half-finished façade that I could no longer begin to imagine what it would look like if it were ever completed.

  They had used the great cornerstone as their temporary
border post. There were about two dozen of them fanning across the street, their tunics grubby and their resemblance to angels distinctly far-fetched. The eldest one—would this have been Luca’s role?—stepped out from the rest and put his hands up in front of us. Erila pulled the cart to a halt, so close that the horses’ breath was steamy in his face.

  “Good evening, godly Florentine women. What brings you out on the streets after dark?”

  Erila bowed her head low as she did when she was playing the slave. “Good evening, sir. My mistress’s brother is ill, and we are taking him home for treatment.”

  “So late and without a chaperone.”

  “My master’s driver is at fasting prayer across the city. We started in the light but the cart wheel caught a rut and we had to wait to be pulled out. We are almost home now.”

  “Where is your invalid?”

  She gestured to the back of the cart.

  The leader signaled to a couple of the gang and they came over to where I was sitting with the painter half concealed under the blanket asleep in my lap. One of them pulled back the covers from his body, and the other poked him with a rod he was carrying.

  He came to with a start, yanking himself out of my arms and frantically scrabbling away from them to the back of the cart. “Don’t come near, don’t come near me. I have the Devil in me. He has Christ between his teeth and he will swallow you too.”

  “What’s that he says?” The boy, who had a nose as sharp as his rod, was poised for another poke.

  “Can’t you understand the language of the saints when you hear it?” I said rudely. “He speaks in Latin of Christ’s mercy and the love of our Savior.”

  “But what did he say of the Devil?”

  Of course: thanks to Savonarola his name was more famous than God’s these days. “He says Christ’s mercy and love will drive the Devil out of Florence with the help of the godly. But we can waste no time. My brother follows the friar. He is destined to take his robes at San Marco. The investiture is planned for next week. Which is why we must get him home and healed before the ceremony.”

  The boy wavered. He took a step closer and the point of his nose registered the painter’s self-neglect. “Phew! Well, he don’t look much like a friar to me. Look at him—he’s lousy with filth.”

  “He’s not ill, he’s drunk,” said the other one, and I saw the leader start toward us.

  “Keep him still there, mistress,” Erila’s voice sang out, edgy and loud from the front of the cart. “If he moves the boils may burst. And the contagion is great within the pus.”

  “Boils? He’s got the boils?” The boy with the rod took a hasty step back.

  “Why didn’t you say so to begin with?” The leader spoke now, taking charge, as all good leaders should. “Keep away from him, all of you. And you, woman, get him out of here. And make sure he doesn’t go near any monastery till he is healed.”

  Erila snapped the reins hard and the cart lurched forward, the barricade melting away before the threat of contagion. The painter curled himself back under the blankets, moaning at our clumsy speed. I waited till they were out of sight before climbing my way up to the pillion.

  “Whoa, watch your skin,” she said, as I slipped down by her side. “I don’t want any of that pus over me.”

  “Boils!” I laughed. “Since when is our godly army afraid of a few boils?”

  “Since the infection came.” She grinned. “Your trouble is you still don’t get out enough. Mind you, those who do are beginning to regret it. No one knows where it came from. Rumor is the French left it in the holes where they put their juices. It started with the prostitutes but it’s begun to spread. When it was only the women who got it, it was known as the Devil’s disease, but now that the faithful are starting to blister and bubble, the talk is of God testing their patience like . . . who was that Bible man he sent the plagues to?”

  “Job,” I said.

  “Job. That’s the one. Though I bet Job never had anything like French boils: great balls of heat and pus, which hurt like hell and leave fat scars. Still, from what I hear, it’s keeping its sufferers out of the sack with more success than the friar’s teaching ever did.”

  “Oh, Erila!” I laughed. “Your gossip is gold-plated. I swear you should have let me teach you your letters better. You could do a history of Florence that would rival Herodotus’ tales of Greece.”

  She shrugged. “If we live long enough to grow old together, I’ll talk and you can write. I just hope we get that far. Which depends on you knowing what you’re doing now,” she said, gesturing to the back of the cart and cracking the reins above the horses’ heads so they picked up speed as the dark settled in over the city.

  Cristoforo and Tomaso’s horses were not in the courtyard and there was no lamp on in his room. I ordered the grooms to carry the painter to the workplace next to my bedroom, where we made up a pallet for him, explaining that he was a holy man of our family taken ill while my parents were away. I caught Erila’s sharp look but ignored it. The alternative was to quarter him with the servants and, while his Latin ramblings might have been safe enough there, if he started screaming about the power of the Devil in Tuscan it would be wiser to have him out of earshot of believers.

  Once he was settled we called for the groom’s elder brother, Filippo, to tend to him. He was a sturdy young man, born with ruptured eardrums, which made him appear slower and more stupid than he actually was. But it also gave his dumb strength a kind of gentleness, and as such he was the only one of my husband’s servants that Erila had had any time for. In the months since we arrived she had taught herself enough signing to make him her willing slave (though how she paid him for his services I did not ask). Now she gave him instructions to start preparing a bath for the painter before stripping him out of his clothes. From her room she brought her medicine pouch, passed on from her mother, which even as a child I remember had the smell of the exotic about it. Had her mother had the wisdom to cure stigmata of the mind as well as the hands?

  “Tell him we’re going to wash and bandage his hands,” Erila said quickly. “Make sure he understands.”

  He was sitting in the chair where they had left him, his body slumped forward, his eyes staring at the floor. I went up to him and crouched by his side. “You are safe now,” I said. “We will look after you. Tend your hands and make you feel better. Nothing bad will happen to you here. Do you understand?”

  He did not respond. I looked up at her. She gestured me to the door.

  “What if—”

  “—he makes a fuss? Then we’ll crack his skull for him. But one way or another he’ll be washed and fed before you come near him again. You can use the time to think up some fancy story for your husband. Because I don’t see how the holy relative crap is going to work for him.”

  And with that she pushed me from the room.

  THE FIRST FEW DAYS WERE THE WORST. WHILE THE HOUSEHOLD tiptoed around us, the gossip was noisier than any of their footsteps. For his part the painter lay in a kind of stupor, mute yet in his own way rebellious. While he had allowed Erila and Filippo to bandage his hands and bathe him, he still refused food. Her diagnosis was blunt and to the point.

  “He can move his fingers, which means he may paint again, though no one’ll ever read his life in his palms. As to the other: there’s no plant or ointment I know to cure him. If he carries on not eating, that’ll kill him quicker than any loss of God.”

  All that evening I lay awake listening for him. At the darkest point of the night he suffered a kind of howling fit, a sound of such deep despair, as if all the pain in the world was leaking out of him. Erila and I met at his door, but his wailing had woken others and she would not let me go in.

  “But he is in such pain. I think I can help him.”

  “You’d do better to help yourself,” she spit at me. “It is one thing for a husband to break the rules of propriety, another thing entirely for the wife. They are his servants. They’ve had neither the time nor th
e wish to grow to love you for your willfulness. They’ll betray you, and the scandal will run like a line of fire through both your lives. Go back to bed. I’ll see to him, not you.”

  And because her words scared me, I did.

  The next night the crying, when it came, was much softer. I had been awake reading so I heard it immediately but, mindful of her words, waited for Erila to respond. Either she was too tired or sleeping too deeply. Fearful that he might rouse the house again, I slipped out to check.

  The landing was empty, Filippo lay fast asleep again outside his door, oblivious to the noise. I moved over him carefully and went in. If it was a foolish thing to do, then all I can say is I am still not sorry I did it.

  Thirty-two

  THE ROOM WAS LIT BY A SMALL OIL LAMP, ITS GLOW tender like the candlelight in the chapel that night, the smell of paint and the paraphernalia of my work all around. He was lying on the bed, staring straight up into space, sorrow and emptiness like a lake around him.

  I walked over and smiled down at him. His cheeks were wet but the crying had stopped. “How are you, painter?” I said gently.

  His eyes saw me but made no connection.

  I sat myself on the edge of the bed. In the past he would have flinched away from my closeness, but now he didn’t react. I could not tell whether his apathy was weakness or the paralysis of despair. I thought of myself on my wedding night, and how my whole world had lain in shattered fragments around me, and how, when my mind could no longer work, my fingers had taken over. But he had deliberately mutilated his one means of salvation. His hands lay awkwardly on the cover, the bandages neat and unstained. But whether or not they would allow him to hold a pen I didn’t know.

  When there are no pictures, all that is left are words.

  “I have brought you something,” I said. “If you are to be swallowed up by the Devil, you might as well hear from others who have fought the same battle.”