As for the precious contents of the little bag: Immediately before commencing the ritual, take half a small spoonful, no more; use wine to cut the bitterness. See that it never falls into the hands of the profane, or is used wastefully. This, too, must be accomplished in strict privacy, and never be mentioned to outsiders.
May this rite, which was handed down to us by the ancients, guide you to a greater knowledge of the One Who created us all.
In eternal friendship,
Your servant,
Marsilio
On the third day, the wife was so ill that she lay coughing all day inside the wagon; I sat beside the driver again as we skirted the mountains. The weather was dry, sunny, and mild, and remained that way on the fourth day. We stopped at other inns, but I read no more; the letter by the mysterious Marsilio had assuaged some of my fears, but raised other uncomfortable questions. I remained puzzled, confused, thoroughly intrigued.
Late on the morning of the fifth day, we passed over a series of gentle hills; at the apex of the last one, I spied Florence, nestled in the basin below, and let go a gasp of appreciation. Beneath a dazzling blue sky, the city looked golden, its southern flank bisected by the winding silver Arno. As we descended, the separate rooftops grew distinct, and the driver, who knew the city well, began to point out landmarks. The greatest of them, dominating the skyline, was the vast orange-red dome of the great cathedral, Santa Maria del Fiore, Our Lady of the Lilies, matched in height only by its slender campanile; farther south lay the tower of the Palazzo della Signoria, the Palace of Lords, seat of the city’s government.
Most of the buildings were made of stone—some of the costly pietra serena, a dove gray rock that turned shimmering white in the strong sun, others of a pale brown or gold. Some were of stucco, but almost all had the same orange-red brick roof and were built in the classical style, which lent a pleasant uniformity. Perhaps it was the light or the clement weather or the languid hills that embraced the outskirts, but I judged Florence to be the prettiest city I had ever seen. Next to it, Milan seemed drab and cold and dirty.
We passed through the northern gate onto the broad, cobblestoned Via Larga, swarming with pedestrians, wagons, carriages, horses, and street merchants; the sun hung at mid-heaven, and all over the city, church bells were chiming to mark Sext, the sixth hour after sunrise. From the upper-floor windows of all the buildings, fluttering banners hung. Most bore the city standard, a bright red fleur-de-lis against a white background, or the Medici crest, a gold shield adorned with six balls, five of them red and the topmost blue, with tiny gold stylized lilies.
I was so exhilarated that I wanted to keep riding, but we arrived at San Marco all too quickly, and the wagon wheels slowed to a stop at last. I was disappointed; I had wanted a cathedral with a great dome and tall spires for Matteo, but instead saw a spare single-nave church with a bland stone façade, and tucked next to it, a square, plain, two-story cloister. I climbed down from the wagon, my legs wobbly from disuse, and waited with the horses while the driver entered the monastery.
He returned with a lay brother, Domenico, a cheerful young man with red curls who wore a white tunic and scapular beneath a black cape that fell below his ankles. Domenico led me just inside the cloister, to a public area known as the chapter house. He explained in a whisper that San Marco’s church and convent had been some two hundred years old when Lorenzo de’ Medici’s grandfather, Cosimo, paid for their renovation thirty years earlier; the crumbling wood and mortar were replaced by the more durable and handsome pietra serena and cream stucco.
I sat, only half listening as Domenico spoke in hushed tones. He told me that the abbot was expecting me, and that the next afternoon at None, the ninth hour after dawn, a service for Matteo would be held in the sanctuary, followed by burial in the churchyard. I left, relieved that I had survived the discussion without tears, and returned to the waiting driver, his wife, and the now-empty wagon.
We continued south down the wide Via Larga and the driver continued his narration. He pointed out the home of Lorenzo the Magnificent, an unremarkable, square, three-story fortress of stone, with the Medici banner hanging from every window.
The driver pointed straight ahead. “And that way lies the church of San Lorenzo, where Lorenzo’s father and grandfather are buried.”
We rolled past similar palazzos and gardens, then artists’ workshops, goldsmiths, and jewelers. Not long after, we approached the massive cathedral of Florence, also called the Duomo because of its magically unsupported dome, the largest in all the world. Across from it stood the pale stone octagon of the Baptistry of Saint John, its gilded bronze doors dazzling in the sun.
We turned east to drive alongside the long stone spine of the cathedral, and followed the road as it curved due south again. Eventually, we came to a grim, four-story fortress with a crenellated tower, which housed the city magistrate; there we veered sharply left onto the Via Ghibellina. A few minutes later, the driver pulled the horses over to the curb.
“The convent of Le Murate,” he announced, and hopped down from his seat to help me down.
I descended to find a long expanse of stone wall broken by a tall, narrow wooden gate. Two rusting iron grates, one at the level of my eyes, the other of my ankles, were set into the door; the uppermost grate was covered on the inside by a black cloth. While the driver waved down a street lad to help him fetch my trunk, I clanged the brass knocker and called out softly; as I did, I caught a sudden whiff of vinegar and felt inexplicably nauseated.
Within a few minutes, the gate opened far enough to allow the driver to shove my trunk inside the door, though he was not allowed entry himself. He promised to come for me the next afternoon, and as I passed through the convent walls I saw the vinegar—used to prevent plague—in a bucket that held alms thrown through the grate by passersby.
Le Murate was old but in good repair and very clean; the furnishings were spare but elegant and comfortable, even by the court of Milan’s standards. The abbess, who had received Bona’s letter, welcomed me personally and gratefully accepted the duchess’s generous donation, which I pressed into her palm. Even so, the place evoked a strange anxiety in me.
I went at once to the cell assigned me, closed my door, and studied the star rituals written in Matteo’s hand. “For banishing,” he had written beneath the first, “start here.” I was not certain I wanted to know what needed banishing, but the alternative was to sit and think deeply on the funeral that was to come. I chose instead to practice drawing the five-pointed stars in the air with my index finger, the way I had seen Matteo do it in the darkness. I began, also, to memorize the strange words that went with the banishing. I did not emerge from my cell until supper; afterward I walked the grounds alone, and came upon the carefully tended gardens. In the center of them stood an unusual tree: a cedar, as tall as four men standing upon each other’s shoulders, its branches broad and sweeping.
The sight jolted me, as if I had seen Matteo himself standing there. I hurried to the tree and reached past the bristling blue-green needles to press my hand to the bark; it was ridged and rough, as I knew it would be, though I had supposedly never seen such a tree before. I leaned against it and drew in its pungent fragrance; tears came to my eyes as I heard a woman’s voice whisper in my memory.
A cedar of Lebanon.
My mother’s voice. The convent’s outer walls loomed close and began to spin; I closed my eyes, panicked. The Duomo’s red cupola, the cobblestoned streets, the whitewashed convent walls, even the grates on the door and the smell of vinegar . . . hadn’t I recognized them all?
I do not know this place, I told myself firmly, and hurried back to my cell through halls grown terrifyingly familiar.
That night, I silently performed Matteo’s banishing ritual, and did not emerge from my cell until the next day at half past two, when it was time to leave for my husband’s funeral.
The driver delivered me to the main entrance of the church of San Marco, where the redheaded Broth
er Domenico waited for me. He led me into a modest chapel, where a small candelabrum burned in front of a magnificent altarpiece painted with a scene of the Last Judgment. Nearby, a balding priest was lighting coals for the censer, muttering prayers as he did so. Two monks in white tunics and black capes stood together just left of the altar, and lowered their gazes as I entered.
As the church was the recipient of the Medicis’ charity, there were wooden chairs for the worshippers. In the last row sat a tall, spare woman dressed in a rich but modest gown of dark gray velvet; her face and bowed head were veiled in black silk gauze. She did not look up as I passed, but kept her head inclined toward the rosary in her prayer-steepled hands.
Domenico deposited me in my seat, in the first row directly before the altar, and departed without a word to the woman. The priest sprinkled frankincense upon the now-hot coals, and put the lid on the censer; smoke streamed out through the holes. Swinging the censer from a chain, he made his way down the aisle, chanting. I turned as the door to the chapel opened and Domenico and five other men carried Matteo’s casket as far as the threshold. There they waited while the priest censed the casket, then took a brass asperger from the font by the door and sprinkled Matteo with holy water.
As he did, the two monks by the altar began to sing a hollow, aching melody.
De profundis clamavi ad te, Domine . . .
Out of the depths have I cried unto Thee, O Lord . . .
The priest then led the slow procession into the chapel. I turned away, struggling to contain my tears, and did not look at the coffin again until the priest took his place at the altar, and the pallbearers gently set the casket down a few steps from him.
For the first time, I noticed the pallbearers. One was Brother Domenico and two others his fellow monks. But three of the men were wealthy gentlemen, given their exceedingly fine but unostentatious clothes. The first was small and delicate-looking, with graying red-gold hair; the second was Matteo’s age, young, handsome, dark-haired and muscular. And the third was Lorenzo de’ Medici.
At the sight of Lorenzo, my tenuous grip on my emotions failed. Tears spilled from me, hot and fierce. I remembered Matteo’s suffering on that last horrible night; I thought of how Lorenzo must have waited for him and finally realized that something had gone horribly wrong.
I heard Matteo’s ragged whisper: Tell Lorenzo . . .
I remember little else of the ceremony—only the sacred Host dry upon my tongue, and the priest circling the coffin twice with more incense, more holy water. Only when it was over, and the pallbearers returned to take the coffin, did I realize that they had been sitting behind me the entire time.
The priest caught my arm and led me after the coffin; as I left the chapel, the tall veiled woman rose and stood respectfully.
We went to a deep hole flanked by a large mound of reddish dirt in the churchyard; the gravediggers were waiting for us, leaning on their shovels. The coffin was set upon ropes, which the diggers used to lower it into the ground. Matteo was laid to rest so that his head lay due east of his feet, since Christ would appear in the eastern sky when He returned to raise the dead.
Lorenzo and the younger man flanked the veiled woman, their arms wound about hers in support; the delicate middle-aged man stood on Lorenzo’s other side and dabbed at his red-rimmed eyes. They remained a short distance from me, as if unwilling to intrude on my grief.
I listened, dazed, as the priest spoke of Saint Martha and her profession of faith that her brother would indeed rise from the dead.
At last, the priest made the sign of the cross over the grave, and chanted: Requiem aeternam dona ei, Domine, et lux perpetua luceat ei . . .
It was over. At the priest’s prompting, I clutched a fistful of cold, wet soil and sprinkled it onto Matteo’s coffin. The other four mourners watched me, hesitant. I turned to them, gesturing at the mound of earth.
“Please,” I said.
The woman was first to add her handful of dirt; the men followed. Once I had handed a coin to the priest for his services, and a purse for the monastery from Bona to Brother Domenico, the gravediggers took to their work with haste. I turned to the others.
“Ser Lorenzo,” I asked, “may I have a private word with you?”
He nodded, and moved to my side; the others retreated a few steps, while Lorenzo led me over to a bare-limbed tree, swollen with pink-red bud in response to the unusually mild weather. I tried not to flinch each time a clod of earth struck Matteo’s coffin.
“I was so sorry to hear of Matteo’s death,” Lorenzo said. For once, his glorious confidence and equanimity were gone, his strong shoulders slumped by sorrow. “We learned of it from the abbot less than a week ago.” A rock struck the pine coffin resoundingly; he looked over his shoulders toward the gravediggers and turned back to me. “When did it happen? Was he ill?”
“The night after you left Milan,” I answered. “Ser Lorenzo, he was poisoned.” I struggled to keep my voice steady, but it broke on the last word.
He drew in a deep breath and turned his face away, though not before I glimpsed his guilt and pain. For a long moment, he stood speechless, staring at distant church spires; when he was able to look back at me, he whispered, “I am so sorry.”
“As he was dying, he gave me a message for your ears alone,” I told him. “He said, ‘Tell Lorenzo: The Wolf and Romulus mean to destroy you.’ I would have given you this sooner, but I did not trust putting it on paper. Matteo asked me to bring him here, to San Marco, and I tried to come immediately, but the duke would not give me leave.”
He gazed past me at the far distance and clenched his jaw, the lower jutting a finger’s breadth beyond the upper; a muscle in his cheek twitched. “I had expected as much,” he said softly. “And I apologize, Madonna, for involving you in such sordid matters.”
“But who is the Wolf? And who Romulus?” I tried, and failed, to hide the hatred, the bitterness, in my tone.
He heard it and though his expression never flickered, something in him recoiled from it. “You must trust me, Madonna, that Matteo did not die in vain. Those who are guilty will be brought to justice in due time. But I would be remiss in my responsibility to Matteo if I told you. It would place you in great danger and would only increase your suffering.”
“Then he was murdered!” I let go a bitter, gulping sob. “And you know who has killed him—and will not tell me!”
He gave me a moment to collect myself, and asked, very quietly: “Madonna, did you trust Matteo?”
“Of course!” I snapped.
“Of all the people in the world, he sent you to me. He sent you here, to San Marco. Did he tell you that we Medici are the benefactors of this church and monastery? My grandfather Cosimo rebuilt it from a crumbling pile of bricks. He spent much time here in his last years, meditating in one of the cells. Nothing happens at San Marco without our notice.
“Matteo sent you here because he trusted me most of all. Will you not trust me, too, Madonna Dea? We Medici were the closest thing Matteo had to family . . . and I tell you that in the strictest confidence, just as Matteo entrusted his warning for me with you.”
By then, my tears were no longer so angry; when Lorenzo stretched out his hand, I took it.
“Come,” he soothed. “Come and meet our family, and our dearest friend, who loved Matteo greatly.”
He led me over to the group of mourners: the dark-veiled woman, the handsome young man, and the small, frail-looking older gentleman with silvering red hair.
“This is Madonna Dea, Matteo’s wife,” Lorenzo told them. He emphasized the last word, pausing as he did so to shoot the other two men a peculiar warning glance. As they nodded a solemn greeting, the woman faced me and lifted her veil.
She was silver-haired and elegant of bearing, with very large, heavy-lidded eyes and a sharp chin; she might have been lovely had it not been for her astonishing nose, which veered forth from a flattened bridge to curve alarmingly to one side. Like the cedar in the convent garden, her
face was hauntingly familiar.
“My dear,” she said kindly; like Lorenzo’s, her voice was reedy and nasal, yet her tone was so well modulated and gracious that the sound was not as grating as it might have been. “I am Lucrezia Tornabuoni, mother to Lorenzo and Giuliano de’ Medici.” She gestured at her sons as she spoke, then at the small middle-aged man. “And this is our dear friend, Marsilio.”
“Marsilio Ficino,” the man said; his voice was hoarse from weeping. “I knew Matteo for some years, and kept up a correspondence with him. Did he ever speak of me?”
I thought of the translation of Iamblichus, and the letter written at the end of the manuscript. “I know the name,” I answered, “but nothing more.”
Madonna Lucrezia stepped forward and took my hand. Hers were cold and bony, but her eyes and voice drew me like a hearth in winter. “We have known Matteo since he was a boy. We made a little feast, for us alone, in Matteo’s honor; would you do us the kindness of joining us?”
My driver followed their carriage to the rusticated stone palazzo on the Via Larga. Giuliano—the younger brother, with his mother’s lean, handsome face and large eyes, though, fortunately, not her nose—helped me from the wagon while Lorenzo tended to his mother. There was a sweet timidity in Giuliano that his older brother lacked; Giuliano averted his eyes and said nothing while we waited for Lorenzo and Lucrezia to join us.
Lucrezia led the way through the ground-floor loggia, where a pair of bankers sat at a long table, writing up loan agreements for eager clients. We exited onto a large colonnaded courtyard; in its center was a burbling fountain at the feet of a life-sized bronze Judith, grasping Holofernes by his hair as she grimly prepared to hack off his head with a sword. Nearby, a bronze, naked David smirked as he rested one foot atop Goliath’s severed head.
We made our way inside and up to the second floor, crossing over shining, inlaid marble floors and passing displays of crumbling marble busts, ancient armor and tasseled, jewel-encrusted scimitars, thread-of-gold tapestries, and painting after painting after painting in gilded frames. We arrived finally at an intimate dining room, where I was encouraged to sit close to the fire, and servants—not courtiers in finery, but common folk, plainly dressed—brought wine and bread and pasta in broth for the first course. It was nothing like the court of Milan; for one thing, the diners were cordial and entirely relaxed with one another; for another, they addressed those waiting on us as though they were part of the family, and inquired after their well-being and loved ones. The servants, too, were relaxed, and though courteous, did not bother with bows and curtsies.
The Scarlet Contessa Page 12