Niccolo resigned himself to his captivity. He would have to spend some time in the church, maybe all afternoon. He thought, idly, he would go light a candle and at least warm his hands a little. Backing away from the door, where the occasional thump of a snowball reminded him he was still a captive, he turned to go into the sanctuary. But before he had taken a step, he saw something that made his hair stand on end. His breath caught in his throat.
From the far end of the vestibule, a man had been watching him without saying a word. And in that man’s hand, pointed directly at Niccolo, was a short sword, stained with blood.
Nobody moved. The man was smiling. Or leering. His mouth was pulled into a grin so wide it was almost unnatural. And he had all his teeth. Glistening, white teeth. He said nothing. He stood staring at Niccolo with ferocious, bulging eyes. He held the sword at arm’s length, without a tremor, perfectly motionless.
His skin was a deadly shade, the color of ashes and cold marble. His head was bandaged. His left arm was in a sling. There was a gaping wound in his throat and blood down the front of his shirt.
“Exc-c-use me,” Niccolo stammered. No response. Nothing. Just the unflinching glare of that awful, grinning death mask of a face. And the sword.
Niccolo took a step backward and bumped up against the closed doors. Nowhere to go. He looked down. Those dreadful, menacing eyes were boring into him. He couldn’t bear it anymore. The grinning and the eerie silence. He edged sideways, one step, two steps. Maybe he could circle around the wraith. “With all due respect . . .” he began. But when he looked up, the huge eyes were no longer upon him. They were still staring at the spot where he had been standing. He took another cautious step, then two in quick succession. Incredible. The man had not moved an inch. Not followed him with his gaze—or sword! “Oh my God,” thought Niccolo. “He’s dead. Frozen!”
Niccolo looked the man up and down. Whoever he was and whatever had happened to him, he was a rich man. His short cape was red scarlet silk, trimmed around the bottom in white fur. His black boots were slit up the sides to reveal a second, rakish layer of red leather underneath. Only wealth and power wore boots like that. Summoning up his resolve, Niccolo approached for a closer look.
He couldn’t believe it. The man who had held him at sword point, who had had him trembling in mortal terror, was a statue made of wax! The clothes were real, all right. So was the sword. The cold wax fingers wore real gold rings with real jewels in them (real, if not genuine).
Niccolo chided himself for his own stupidity, telling himself that it must have been the light. He was glad no one had been a witness to the embarrassing scene between him and the deadly statue. He was making excuses for himself: You never found statues like this in churches. Wax, not stone. And with real clothes. Real silk and fur. It did look real, damn it, especially in this light.
Niccolo spotted a small, framed document, affixed to the wall behind the statue. It had been written in an elaborate hand and decorated around the edges with scrollwork and golden miniature. It read:
In thanksgiving for delivering him from the hands of his enemies, and in grateful recognition of God’s mercy, we offer this image of our beloved Lorenzo de’ Medici to the people of Florence.
So this was him—Lorenzo the Magnificent. Niccolo had seen him before, but only from a distance at public functions and spectacles. He considered the statue with a cold eye: He may be magnificent, but he’s not handsome, if he looks anything like this. Big, flat nose, amazing mouth. Jesus, they used real hair!
Niccolo was absorbed in his inspection of the wax figure, when a clipped, nasal voice interrupted him from behind, “Well, what do you think of it? Isn’t it lifelike?”
“It’s really is quite . . .” he broke off in midsentence and his jaw dropped. It was the mouth! And the nose! The complexion was better, but it was him! The statue! Lorenzo the Magnificent!
Niccolo looked back and forth in disbelief, at the statue and at the man, at the real thing and at the representation He saw the same thick, black hair, the same broken nose, the long, twisting mouth, the same square, jutting lower jaw. Only in height did they differ. The original was much shorter.
And the original didn’t have the ghastly pallor of death on his face or a bloody sword in his hand. Amused, and smiling, he repeated his question, “Isn’t it lifelike?”
“Yes, it is. It’s remarkable,” said Niccolo, still looking back and forth.
“So you’ve never seen him before, our friend here?” asked Lorenzo.
Little by little, Niccolo overcame his amazement and turned his full attention to the living Lorenzo de’ Medici. “It really took me by surprise. I thought for a minute it was a real person. You know, with this light in here, you can make a mistake.”
“Some of the most skilled craftsmen in the city worked on that wax effigy. I sat for hours while they modeled the face. Even with the hands they insisted on copying every detail. Verrocchio oversaw the entire project. He’s a miracle worker. You’ve heard of my wonderful sculptor, Verrocchio?”
Niccolo hadn’t. In fact, when it came to things Medicean, Niccolo knew almost nothing. His father bore the Medici family a grudge and their name was invoked in the Machiavelli household only as the object of scorn and vituperation. To cover his ignorance, Niccolo said, “I thought they only put statues of saints in the churches.”
The most powerful man in Florence laughed heartily at the boy’s observation. “So you don’t think I’m a saint? Well, I suppose I’m not, not in the traditional sense anyway, of fasting and mortifying the flesh,” he gave a mock shudder. “I love the flesh too much to give it up. The flesh is dear to me! I celebrate the flesh!
“And yet I am a saint of sorts,” he continued. “My Marsilio says I’m the patron saint of poetry and music, of sculpture, painting, and philosophy!”
Niccolo was not sure how to respond to this claim, delivered, he thought, a little rhapsodically. A sneeze saved him from having to say something stupid.
But Lorenzo the Magnificent was off and running now. His eyes gleamed. “The arts,” he gushed, “they’re what separate us from the beasts. Without music, without literature, what would we be? Brutes! Nothing but brutes! Without the Muses whispering in our ears, guiding our hands and our tongues and our pens, what would man be but another beast of burden? All dross. But beauty has freed our spirits to sing and to dance! That is the only task worthy of a man—the pursuit of beauty! Don’t you agree?”
“Oh, absolutely,” said Niccolo politely.
The great man continued: “I dabble in poetry, some of it quite shameless, I’m afraid. In fact, this morning I composed some verses that I’m quite pleased with. They’re delightful and frivolous. I wanted to escape this dreadful, dismal weather, to think of spring!
Would you like to hear the song?” He did not wait for an affirmative reply.
He began, hands clasped fervently to his chest:
Quant’è bella giovinezza
che si fugge tuttavia!
Oh, how lovely is youth,
though she flees so soon . . .
In a voice that was nasal and high-pitched, he went on to celebrate, as he had previously said he was fond of doing, the flesh. His movements were studied and histrionic, and anything but graceful, his flapping arms and bobbing head were reminiscent of puppet theatre.
Niccolo squirmed. He was still cold. Nevertheless he smiled politely as the performance unrolled and as the performer warmed to it. He followed the sense of the thing—such as it was—easily enough. It was about Bacchus and love and the woods and the wood nymphs dancing and leaping for joy. It was, in a word, everything he had always thought of, not without some disdain, as “poetry.”
While Lorenzo recited his verses, Niccolo was locked in a fierce inner struggle. The agonizing tickle in his nose would begin, then gradually become more intense, irresistible, almost unbearable. He did not want to ruin the lovely recitation with a sneeze.
“Di doman, non c’è certezza!—
for nothing is certain about the future!” Lorenzo concluded ecstatically and a little out of breath. “Well, what did you think?” He seemed eager for the boy’s approval.
“It was . . . lovely,” said Niccolo.
“I’m glad you enjoyed it,” said the exultant poet. “But as I told you, I’m really just an amateur, a dabbler. Now Angelo! My Angelo, my divine Angelo! He is a poet! He has no equal in the Italian language today, nor in Latin. He will be considered with Dante and Petrarch among the greatest poets of all time. His fame will last a hundred centuries! Longer! Through his art, he will achieve—immortality!” He pronounced this last word with almost religious rapture.
Niccolo wanted to go home, but his companion had no intention of letting him off so easily. “You’ve read Angelo’s divine, divine Stanze?”
A violent fit of sneezing drowned out Niccolo’s admission that he had not read the divine Angelo’s divine Stanze, and, in fact, that he had never even heard of either the poet or the poem. Seeing the boy’s distress, Lorenzo reached into his sleeve and pulled out a voluminous handkerchief. It was as big as a blanket. “Here,” he said, handing it to Niccolo, “I think you can put one of these to good use.”
When his wet, raw nose touched the soft cloth, Niccolo was in heaven. Never had it touched anything so exquisite, so luxurious before. For this favor he was grateful. If this man wanted to stand here all day and talk to him about poetry, so be it. He thanked him profusely, and then, once again, plunged his face into that glorious handkerchief.
“But come tell me,” Lorenzo pressed him, “what poets do you most enjoy?”
Niccolo had to think hard since he did not, at all, enjoy poetry. “Ah . . . Virgil,” he finally said.
“The divine Virgil! Yes, the Virgil of the Ecologues! Those wonderful celebrations of the simple life! Good wine, good food, clean air! Limpid streams! Birds singing in the trees! You know, Angelo has studied the Ecologues, exhaustively. He knows them by heart, from start to finish. He says they are a source of constant inspiration to him.”
“I wasn’t talking about the Ecologues,” said Niccolo almost apologetically. “When I said Virgil, I meant the Virgil of the Aeneid, the story of the founding of Rome.”
“That long and ghastly thing, full of violence and bloodshed and wars and battles. Whatever could a sensitive young man find to interest him in that?” Lorenzo seemed surprised. “Surely, you read other, more pleasant things?”
“Of course I do,” replied Niccolo enthusiastically, thankful to be on more familiar territory, “I read Caesar and Livy, and I’ve started Tacitus, The Germanic Wars . . .”
“Such warlike reading in one so young,” mused Lorenzo. “Is that what you’re interested in, war? You want to be a soldier?”
“It’s not just war, so much,” Niccolo explained. “I’m interested in history . . . and . . . well . . . politics.”
“How very original! Interested in politics. Now on that score, I can offer you some advice. Stay clear of politics. That is my advice to you. Flee it! Embrace poetry and music. Politics is a painful business. There is no beauty in it, no charm, no joy. It’s treachery and scheming and flirting with the devil. I should know. Look there,” he pointed to his wax double. “That was the result of politics, that wound in my neck. And worse than that, my brother, dead, murdered.” Sadness crept into his voice, the poetic frenzy at an end now.
Niccolo was burning with curiosity. He thought he was never going to get an explanation as to why the statue of this apparently harmless and poetic soul wore a gaping wound in its neck and brandished a bloody sword. “What happened?”
“A conspiracy,” he sighed. “The Pazzi, more mad and rabid than even their name implies. They planned to assassinate my brother Giuliano and me. They were jealous. The pope was involved too. ‘Liberate Florence from the Medici,’ said His Holiness. ‘Here, I give you my blessing.’
“They planned to do it at a banquet, with poison, the coward’s tool. But my brother was ill for several days and confined to his bed. They grew impatient and, in their anger, seized upon the first available opportunity to assassinate us. They would do it while we attended mass, in the cathedral. Sacrilege of sacrileges!” Here, he made the sign of the cross.
“Francesco de’ Pazzi was the leader. Right up to the end, he pretended friendship with us. Franceschino we still called him, out of friendship. Outside the church he put his arms around my brother. He joked with him about his illness, said he had grown soft and fat. He squeezed him with seeming affection. He was squeezing him to see if he had a weapon, to see if he wore armor, and to feel for the soft, unprotected spot where he would plunge his assassin’s dagger.
“They threw themselves upon us during holy mass, when the bell sounded for the priest’s communion. Two disaffected priests lunged at me, but they were weak and slow. I drew my sword and beat them back. Giuliano was not so lucky. Francesco hit him from behind with a blow that would have felled an ox. His hatred was so great that he continued to plunge his dagger again and again into the soft, dead flesh of my fallen brother. Consumed by his madness and blood lust, he would not stop. When they tried to drag him off, he continued hacking and drove the point of his bloody dagger into his own thigh!
“I got away, and my people rallied. The coup was unsuccessful. I appeared at the windows of the palace like that,” he pointed to the wax statue, “shaken, in despair, but not badly injured. I pleaded with my people to contain their anger and their lust for revenge. But it was no use.
“Before it was over, some eighty people were dead, some guilty, some innocent. Bodies were mutilated and dragged through the streets. Even the archbishop was among the conspirators. He and the Pazzi, naked with ropes around their necks, were hurled from the windows of the Signoria. Angelo saw them. I didn’t. He said that they kicked and screamed as they dangled, choking, above the cheering mob. The archbishop, the life almost strangled out of him, in a final burst of blind, gruesome rage, sunk his teeth into the dead flesh of Franceschino’s leg. They died as they lived—like rabid dogs.
“The two renegade priests who attacked me were castrated and hanged. Jacopo da’ Pazzi, the head of the family, escaped, but was found and brought back. He was tortured and hanged when they grew tired of tormenting him. Although he was granted Christian burial—unlike the others—a mob later dug up his body and paraded it through the streets. They said his evil spirit was responsible for the heavy rains and floods that followed the coup attempt. Eventually, he was brought home, to the Pazzi Palace. They propped him up against the door and used his decomposing head for a knocker. They smashed it against the heavy oak slabs, crying, ‘Open up in there, it’s your master come home. He wishes to enter.’ That grisly sport went on until there was nothing left of his skull. His brains and blood and hair were left spattered across the door as a reminder and a warning.”
Lorenzo’s eyes were almost closed when he finished his story. His long mouth was twisted tightly in a brooding expression of infinite sadness. Then he looked up at Niccolo. “You see why I warn you away from politics?”
The short winter day had nearly come to an end when Niccolo finally left the church of San Marco. As he had expected, his enemies in the snowball wars had long since given up their siege and gone off to other scurrilous pursuits.
“Wood nymphs,” thought Niccolo, making his way home. “Poetry.” He shook his head. Maybe he would like that sort of thing when he grew up. Maybe it was an acquired taste, like the strong, throat-searing liquors his father drank. He assured Niccolo that he too, one day, would drink and enjoy them. A fleeting vision of adulthood passed through his mind—dozing in a chair, a cup of grappa, and a book of pastoral poetry at his side. He blew his nose mightily into his newly acquired handkerchief. Lorenzo had insisted he keep it.
What a strange man. One minute he was chirping like a cricket about wood nymphs, the next he was lost in a harrowing tale of political assassination. Niccolo was trying to sort things out. True, his father maintained that
Lorenzo de’ Medici was a fool, and when Niccolo had stood listening to his high, piping voice chanting the glories of wood nymphs, he had been inclined to agree.
He had never seen anything sillier and had to keep reminding himself that this man in front of him, putting on this show, was the virtual ruler, the first citizen, of Florence. Niccolo could only speculate what the divine Angelo must be like, if he was the one who was the real poet.
And then the story of the attempted assassination. It had made Niccolo feel sorry for Lorenzo. He had lost his brother. That, he supposed, was what had led him to despise politics, and throw himself into the pursuit of beauty—and the flesh. Niccolo could understand that.
In the end, Niccolo decided he liked him. So what if his father had said Lorenzo was driving the city to ruin? Niccolo’s father had always spoken of Lorenzo as a calculating, moral monster of a man. Niccolo had seen him as just a man, and a rather silly and lighthearted man at that. He was kind and generous—he had even offered to take him into the academy he had established to learn painting and music. Niccolo had said he would have to think about that, but he had already decided against it, knowing his father would be furious if he even mentioned the possibility. Besides, he had little desire to pursue painting and music. Music he had already tried with dismal results. The strings of the lute and the rebec had eluded his stiff, awkward fingers, just as the holes of the flute had done. He was utterly incapable of carrying a tune or hearing the difference between two tones. He liked Lorenzo, but not enough to try to be a musician for him.
Niccolo reached into his pocket and pulled out his great, magnificent handkerchief, already his most prized possession. As he unfolded it, he saw something he had not noticed before, a small sign embroidered in the corner. “Of course,” he thought, “it would be Lorenzo’s family emblem.” The rich and powerful were fond of emblazoning their every possession with their family emblems and coats of arms. He squinted to make out the design in the pale winter-evening light. Niccolo stiffened. A sense of helplessness and confusion swept over him. He had seen this design before. His mind went back six months, back to a simple design he had seen etched in the handle of a dagger he had pulled from the back of a murdered boy.
Machiavelli: The Novel Page 15