Signora Da Vinci

by Robin Maxwell

  I reached what I believed was my own back gate, happily wide enough to allow my cart in. Removing from a purse hung inside my tunic the old rusted key my father had given me along with the deed, I found the keyhole and strove to open the ancient lock. Clearly the key fit. It simply refused to turn. With all the strength in my hands I tried and tried, to no avail. It was the first time, though it would not be the last, that I wished I was a man, with a man’s strength.

  The mule made a mournful sound. I was tempted to make one myself. Frustrated, I gave the gate an angry shove and, to my shock, it swung widely into the garden, the lock and key quite unnecessary for its opening.

  I wasted no time, leading Xenophon and my belongings into the yard. There stood my house and an overgrown garden. I went right to the back door and that, too, gave way with a swift kick of my boot at its base.

  I was not altogether unprepared for the small confraternity of rats, whose peace I’d disturbed, that came rushing at me with awful rodent squeals, and some the other way, farther into the house. My father had been right about it being a rattrap, but there was nothing to be done for the moment.

  I spent the next hour emptying my wagon, glad that everything was packed tight in wooden chests against the horrible creatures, and happier still that I had only to pull the boxes down from the cart and drag them along the overgrown but still visibly paved walkway into the largely empty storeroom. It was in here that the rats had made themselves at home, and by the great mass of their droppings I knew they were many and had nested here for a long while.

  Only after the cart was emptied did I venture into my new home. The door separating the storeroom and the shop opened easily, but with its front windows boarded up there was only light enough to see that the place was spun heavily with cobwebs. So, I thought, spiders could be counted in good numbers as well as rats.

  I was pleased to see that, despite thick dust and the cobwebs, what had been old man Bracciolini’s apothecary was reasonably intact. There were sturdy shelves on three sides, and a counter that ran nearly the width of the shop, leaving just enough space for a person to come and go through. Behind and under the counter were cabinets with doors.

  When I swept the dust and grime from the counter with my hand I was delighted to discover it was made of the finest travertine marble, an unattainable luxury for my father, but one that Poggio had been able to afford.

  Now eager to see my new shop in the light of day, I grabbed the broom I’d brought and hacked a path through the cobwebs, the way I’d seen country lads hack through undergrowth to clear it for a new field. Using the handle, I pried the first of the rotted boards off the large window. It was real Venetian glass, another Bracciolini luxury. Sunlight came streaming in. But when I wrenched away the last piece of wood I reared back in fright.

  A face and body were pressed square up against the glass. It was more the sudden shock of it than the demeanor of the person himself. He was just a boy, no more than thirteen, lean and wiry, his dark hair in a bowl cut. He was smiling impishly, as though he’d meant to give me a fright. He was pointing his finger, as though to say, “Let me in.” Recovering my senses, I went to the front door, unbolted it, and tried to pull it open. It was jammed tight.

  “Stand back,” I heard through the wood planks.

  I did, and all at once with a crash the door flew open on screeching hinges. There the boy stood, beaming, very pleased with his success. I was glad that the force of his blow had not splintered my front door.

  “Benito Russo at your service, signor,” he said, and bowed politely at the waist. I returned the male bow, feeling a bit odd.

  “Cato Cattalivoni,” I introduced myself. Benito’s voice, I quickly realized, was still in the process of changing from that of a boy, so mine was even more manly than his. “My master and uncle, Signor Risticante, is the owner of this house,” I went on. “He and I are reopening the apothecary here.”

  “Splendid!” Benito said. “I am your neighbor.” He pointed to the house to the right of mine. “Or I should say, ‘we’ are your neighbors. My parents, two sisters and grandmother.”

  “Have you lived there long?” I asked. I wondered silently if they remembered the previous owner, or his apprentice, my father, Ernesto.

  “Several generations,” he said absently and came in, uninvited. He looked around in wonderment at the cobwebs and the counter and shelves.

  “We’re to have an apothecary next door to us? That will suit my grandmother very well. She’s always sick or complaining about something.” He looked at the countertop where my hand had swept the dust from the marble. He picked a cobweb out of his hair. “Will you and your master clean it up by yourselves?”

  “Actually,” I answered, beginning to spin my own web of deceit to this talkative youngster, “my uncle will be several months coming. I’ll be readying the shop and house myself.”

  “Yourself!” Benito cried. “You’ll be dead of fatigue before he arrives! Let me help you. I don’t begin work till November. I’m to be an apprentice in a silk dyeing shop. You can hire me for cheap.”

  I trusted the boy at once, liked his proximity to my house, as well as his age, for I thought him less likely to suspect my sex. On that count I had so far been unquestioned. The merchants along the road and the workmen at the Signoria seemed to have had no doubt of my masculinity. And now Benito appeared fooled.

  “If you help me get my house and shop in order I will provide you and your family all of my apothecarial services for nothing, for as long as I live here.”

  Benito’s eyes went wide.

  “Signor,” he exclaimed, and bowed even lower. “What a gift that would be!” His eyes were sparkling, no doubt musing on the honor and respect he would gain in his family by delivering such a windfall to them.

  We worked for a while, Benito showing off his manly strength in lifting heavy crates. While he worked, he talked. I heard about the great families who ran the city—the Spini, the Tornabuoni, the Rucellai, the Pazzi, the Benci. And of course, the Medici. The festival—one that would not be finished for two more days—was in fact a celebration of the coming marriage of the Medici heir, Lorenzo.

  “Everyone loves him,” Benito said. “He’ll no doubt succeed his father when he dies. Unofficially, of course.”

  I told him I was not sure what he meant.

  “Well, Florence is a proud republic. We have no kings or princes. And Lorenzo is a discreet and modest man.” Then his eyes twinkled. “But on the occasion of his betrothal to a wealthy Roman girl, he himself proclaimed a three-day festival to celebrate it. We Florentines are always happy for any excuse for a gaudy spectacle,” he confided. “And no one throws a better one than Lorenzo and his brother, Giuliano.”

  There were many questions about my uncle and master, about whom I wove a splendid story of renown in Siena, calling up minutiae my father had fed me about the place—one I had never been, and where, thankfully, neither had Benito visited.

  I was looking around the place, wondering where to start.

  “I have a suggestion, if I might be so bold . . . ,” Benito began.

  “And your suggestion is . . . ?” I prodded him.

  “That we leave off all work for today, and that you accompany me to the festival.” I smiled my assent. “Splendid!” he cried. “But we should change our clothes. We’re full of cobwebs and dust. And on a day such as today, all young men should be at their best.”

  I tried to look serious. “You have a point. Meet me outside in a quarter of an hour.”

  I was sorely tempted to stay and explore the upstairs rooms of my house, but I knew that could wait. A Florentine festival sponsored by the Medici heir on the occasion of his betrothal was an occasion not to be missed. I might even catch a glimpse of Leonardo.

  My young friend Benito and I joined the throng of celebrants who were pouring from every house into the street, reminding me of rivulets and streams feeding through the Vinci hills into the Arno. Their mood was buoyant and jo
vial, and they were clothed in their finest. The women, cheeks aglow, breasts high in deeply plunging bodices, were topped with hair uncovered to show curled ringlets or intricately woven braids. Men wore, in the finest of textiles, an astonishing array of fashions: tunics, robes, capes, and doublets with hose. They finished their costumes with hats and turbans of sometimes alarming size and fantastical shapes.

  Unlike the serious and grim-faced town fathers of Vinci, even the older men smiled and laughed as they walked, flirting openly with the women, young girls to old ladies.

  As Benito and I with the rest of the city poured into the spectacle that was the Piazza della Signoria, there seemed a feeling of gay abandon, as though not a care in the world troubled a one of them. And yet, I saw the Florentines not as a vulgar or dissolute people, but as healthy and naturally happy. I had never in my life experienced such an explosion of color and cacophonous sound. As I had seen this morning, every window, roof, loggia, and parapet overlooking the square was crowded with celebrants and hung with a gorgeous array of banners and streamers, flags and tapestries fluttering merrily in the breeze. Every inch of the piazza teemed with revelers, tableaus, and musicians. There was a parade of miniature castles, gilded and glinting in the sun. Then, as a small herd of riderless horses crashed headlong into the crowd, I turned to Benito, crying, “What was that?!” but he’d been swallowed up by the masses.

  Suddenly I caught the barest glimpse of a young man all the way across the piazza, a young man who might have been my Leonardo—wild-haired, even-featured and beautiful. He disappeared into the throng as quickly as he had appeared, and I found myself horrified to realize that I might not recognize my own son. I had not seen him for three years. Those years between thirteen and sixteen were the ones in which a boy grew and changed the most. Piero was tall, wide-shouldered, and well made, and even as a young boy Leonardo resembled him in those ways. As for his face, I reassured myself, if I was close enough to see that broad mouth, his fulsome lips and straight-toothed smile, the long straight nose and wide-set gray eyes flecked with gold, I would know him in an instant.

  A loud trumpet fanfare thrust me out of my musing back into the chaotic piazza. The Palazzo della Signoria’s stone front and tall rock bell tower could hardly be seen for all the silken banners fluttering around them. Under the palazzo’s ground-floor loggia a platform had been erected, draped and canopied with costly brocades of blue and gold and white. Two long rows of high-backed chairs, ornate and thronelike, sat empty under the tent.

  As I tried to see better what and who was under that loggia, I pushed shamelessly through the crowd till I was several rows from the front. Suddenly I felt a tap on my shoulder. I turned and saw Benito at my side.

  “Glad you came with me?” he asked.

  “More than glad. It would have been a crime to miss this,” I told him.

  “Look, Cato!” Benito pointed to the doorway of the Palazzo della Signoria, which had swung open and out of which, in a long procession, dozens of men emerged, all of them sober and dignified.

  “Who are they?” I said to Benito as I watched them, one by one, take their seats and fold their hands on their laps. He explained they were the current members of the Signoria and the heads of each of the guilds. I could see in the richness or modesty of their dress the guild heads’ visions of themselves. The bankers and the notaries were hung with thick chains of gold, rings of precious gems on every finger. The silk and wool men had attired themselves in simple fashion, but proudly displayed the best of their wares on their bodies. The carpenters and butchers and masons were stockier, more muscular under their robes. Their features were coarser, too, men who over the generations had not had the money or prestige to marry with the finest and most ancient Italian female stock.

  As if my thoughts had suddenly turned to flesh, a noblewoman now emerged from the Signoria door outfitted and bejeweled in a way I had never seen a woman adorned, opulently and dazzlingly elegant.

  More trumpet blasts announced from the rear of the Signoria a host of fifers and standard-bearers, followed by heralds, pages, and men-at-arms. Each and every one of them was costumed dramatically.

  “Lorenzo’s designs,” Benito said of their dress. “He takes a hand in every part of the festival’s planning.”

  “Who is the woman?” I said to Benito, never taking my eyes from them.

  “Lucrezia de’ Medici,” he said, “Lorenzo and Giuliano’s mother.”

  The crowd began to cheer, if not half heartedly perhaps reservedly, for the next person out the door, a man rather severely dressed in black, and bent over nearly double. His face, if it had been handsome, I could not see for the pain that was etched into every feature.

  “Piero the Gouty,” Benito offered, “Lorenzo’s father. The Medici’s Highest of the High. He doesn’t have long to live.”

  “I can see that.”

  “He’s none too popular,” Benito said. “Certainly not so loved as his papa, Cosimo—he has been named Father of the Country. No one will admit that they long for the day that Lorenzo will rule.”

  Now the real show began. First came eighteen knights, all in flashing silver armor and military helmets, each, Benito told me, representing the great Florentine families. The armor, too, had been created by Lorenzo.

  “Where are the friars?” I asked Benito. Even on Vinci’s feast days, puny compared to this spectacle, the village holy men were conspicuous participants. Here, today in Florence, they were conspicuously absent.

  “This is not a day for the friars, Cato,” he replied, unable to hide the disdain in his voice. “The church has its own festivals, but not like this. Look, look! Here is the Queen of the Day!”

  Enough talk of holy men, I thought and smiled to myself. Indeed, here came Lorenzo’s bride, perhaps the loveliest creature I had ever in my life seen. If I had been a man, I think I would have fallen in love with her myself. Her hair was the color of the setting sun, falling in soft curls about her pale, rounded shoulders. Her features were delicately honed, the nose coming to a pretty point, the chin and cheeks a study in fine curves and perfect angles. Her eyes danced with delight.

  And who wouldn’t be delighted? She was robed and bejeweled as a princess in pale blue and white silk, seeded with a thousand pearls, and though I could not from that distance see the color of her eyes, I imagined them a perfect match to her gown. Her manner of transport was magnificent and stately; she was enthroned on a queen’s gilded chair and, with the crowd grown silent in awe, carried high on the shoulders of eight uniformed bearers down a purple carpet to a place in the middle of the square cordoned off by velvet ropes.

  She was set down facing the Signoria, the dignitaries under the loggia regarding her with nodding heads of approbation.

  Suddenly the crowd stirred, then began cheering as out from behind the hall on horseback came a young man—he looked sixteen at the most, one of the handsomest men I had ever set eyes on. Short, pale, curly hair framed a nobly proportioned head, a chin and jaw cut as if by a razor. He had a regal, straight-backed bearing, offset by a boyish grin from ear to ear. He was waving to the crowd, who uninhibitedly adored him.

  “Giuliano,” Benito whispered, not bothering to temper his awe of this young man. “Lorenzo’s younger brother. They are best friends and will rule together when Piero dies.”

  A fife and trumpet fanfare, louder and grander than all the rest, was joined by a sound I recognized as a roar. It was a louder human commotion than I had ever in my life heard.

  Every person on the square, from windows, on the roofs and parapets, were cheering, and chanting a single name. “Lorenzo!” The cheering finally ceased and only the chanting remained. “Lorenzo! Lorenzo!! Lorenzo!!!”

  Then he came. At first all I saw was a figure on a white charger, his silk cape swirling around him, black shoulder-length hair, the long white plumes of his cap arched out over his shoulders.

  The horse and he seemed to be one as they rode down the purple carpet toward “the quee
n.” The mount was draped in red-and-white pearl-encrusted velvet, and pranced in proud high steps. Lorenzo wore a velvet surcoat of scarlet, and a flowing silk scarf gorgeously embroidered in scarlet roses. He sat tall and dignified in his saddle, carrying an azure shield of fleur-de-lis and in whose center nestled a diamond the size of a duck’s egg.

  He did not wave his hand as his brother had, but the eyes with which he surveyed the chanting masses were filled with such extraordinary love for them that such a gesture was altogether unnecessary.

  When a woman from the crowd called out, “We love you, Lorenzo!” the man flashed a smile so brilliant and heartfelt that I myself felt a strange tugging in my breast. And when the people began to roar again in their approval of him I found myself shouting with them.

  I had never raised my voice like that before, never felt the sensation of idolatry for a mortal man and, I realized, a young man at that.

  While Lorenzo de’ Medici was certainly older than Giuliano, he looked not more than twenty-five. He was not handsome in the way his brother was. His skin was a deep olive. The nose looked crooked, almost sunken, the chin and lower lip perhaps a bit too pronounced, and deep wrinkles in his forehead bespoke of a serious nature. But he was tall, broad-shouldered, and slim at the hips. I could see his muscular legs, those of a horseman.

  Now Lorenzo on his horse had passed us and was making his way down the long purple carpet to “his queen.” Frustrated to be watching his back, as well as a horse’s ass, I grabbed Benito’s arm and started pushing my way through the crowd till we were in good sight of the beautiful lady, who watched with admiration as Lorenzo dismounted and with a flourish of his white cape bowed low to her.

  A page appeared with a velvet cushion on which sat a crown that seemed all to be made of large cut diamonds. Lorenzo took the circlet from the pillow. The crowd hushed once more, and as he knelt before his wife-to-be, I heard for the first time the voice of Lorenzo de’ Medici. It was deep, almost a growl, but he spoke with studied eloquence.