Signora Da Vinci

by Robin Maxwell

  “You should come soon then, before I open the place for business. So I can show you around. Without a stream of customers. We can spend more time talking.”

  “So you like to talk?” Botticelli asked with a sly grin.

  I think I blushed. “I do like to talk.”

  Lorenzo smiled his handsome smile. “Then you have found yourself in good company. Other than riding and celebrating festivals and making love to beautiful women, talking is our favorite thing to do in the world.”

  “Shall we come tomorrow?” Botticelli said.

  “Tomorrow it is,” I said, hardly believing what had just occurred.

  They went their way down the street, and I started back the way I’d come, though seeing little of what was before me. My mind was whirling so, with everything I had witnessed and heard, the people I had met, the memory of Leonardo in my arms again.

  A pox on Piero! I thought suddenly. Even now he treated his only son with small regard. I remember his boasting that he had secured the apprenticeship by virtue of his “close friendship” with Andrea Verrocchio. Ha! The apprenticeship had only to do with Leonardo’s genius. Verrocchio himself had used the word to describe him. But I refused to dwell too long on such remembrances. My father would always say they could cause the liver to simmer in its own bile, the guts to putrefy, and the heart to turn black and shatter.

  So I pushed Piero from my mind.

  I was filled with equal measures of contentment at having finally seen Leonardo—so happy and well appreciated—and excitement at the thought of the visit I would certainly get from Lorenzo de’ Medici and Sandro Botticelli, who, though I hardly knew them, seemed to be men of their word.

  At my house I began at once to clean the remnants of clutter from the renovations and prepare for their visit. I worried. Should I have benches or chairs for us to sit down on in the shop, or should I entertain them in my sitting room upstairs? They had not told me when they would arrive, so I wondered if I should fix a meal or some small delicacies. But I was a young man now, and too poor to hire a housekeeper or a cook. The meal could not be too sumptuous or well prepared or it would look suspicious. Neither could I shame myself in front of these great men with poor food.

  I settled on a simple but delicious meal—an earthy Sangiovese wine, the creamiest white goat cheese, a loaf of good bread, and the baked compote of Greek olives, red grapes, olive oil, and balsamic vinegar, slightly seasoned with thyme, that Magdalena had taught me to make. It was my father’s favorite and was sure to please my guests.

  I swept the floor, poked with my broom into the ceiling corners for spiders. I opened the pots of several of the most fragrant herbs so their rich scents would mingle and permeate the shop to please the Medici’s nose, he who loved the smell of apothecaries. And I made the decision to limit the visit to the ground floor, allowing me to place all my fervid preparations in the shop and storeroom.

  I bathed that night, the cool water I had hauled up the stairs to my tub feeling wonderful against my warm skin. I lay back and by candlelight gazed at the length of my body, still skinny as a reed from my rejection of food. Finally released from their tight bindings, my now-smaller breasts were uncreasing and softening in the water. My arms were strong and the fingers dexterous from the hard and delicate chores of housewifery and this summer’s labors. My legs were lean but retained their soft curves. Between them the womanly parts cast a dark, three-pointed shadow under the water’s ripples.

  This form had served me well as a woman. Now it must serve me as a man. Somehow, I thought, if I am to survive in Florence, I must begin to feel myself a masculine creature. Father had suggested that an elixir of bull testicles might provide me with the features of a male—a further shrinking of my breasts, a deeper voice, and perhaps even some facial hair. But the number of the poor beasts’ stones I would need to make the extraction was so enormous it rendered the possibility null. I would instead have to rely on illusion, and my hitherto unknown talents as a mimic. As for any female venereal desires, they were long gone. I might even fool myself.

  It was only Leonardo who worried me on this account. The sight of him today had caused an unbidden upsurge of motherly passion, a softening at the core of me. My shrunken breasts had, for an instant, ached the way they had in the moments before I’d put my baby on the nipple.

  Well, I thought, if the loss of my womanhood was the price I must pay to bring Leonardo back to me, it was cheap. Already I had tasted the boundless freedom of living as a man—to walk where I wished to walk. To speak to whom I pleased, and however I pleased. In any event, there was no going back to my life as Caterina.

  It was necessary that she die.

  I inhaled deeply and, holding the breath deep in my lungs, slid down in the tub till I felt the water close in over my head. In a wild pagan baptism of my own design I let that woman seep out of me through the skin, pushed her through every pore, lungs ready to burst. When I finally exploded to the surface, the shout of my exhalation was the last gasp of Caterina de Ernesto da Vinci, and the birth cry of Cato the Apothecary.

  My new life had truly begun.

  CHAPTER 10

  The next morning, clean and freshly bound, I stepped into my shop. A glorious and familiar aroma filled my nostrils. I smiled to think that soon my clothing would be permeated with the smell of plant life, the healing salvia and licorice and lavender, a balm to the senses, soul and body.

  I took down the curtains I had hung temporarily over my street window and sunlight flooded in. I looked around. The apothecary was a pretty place with its green walls and bright white marble countertop, bunches of dried flowers in their soft colors peppering the shelves. It was slightly larger than my father’s shop, and the ceiling here was higher, giving the room a lofty, almost grand appearance.

  I took from a box beneath the counter a small casket I’d brought with me from Vinci. Inside was another gift from Papa, a little bronze bell that was meant to be hung over my front door. While waiting for my visitors I did not wish to stay idle, which I knew would only heighten my already-substantial nervousness, so I walked through my doorway into the storeroom to retrieve a hammer and nails and a bench to stand on.

  When I returned to the shop, Lorenzo de’ Medici was in the middle of the shop floor, his eyes closed, deeply inhaling the fragrance that I myself had recently appreciated. He was dressed so plainly, lacking all pretension in a tunic of fine brown wool, with no jewelry of any sort and a flat black cap that nearly disappeared against his long dark hair, that it did not surprise me in the least that the Prince of Florence had come to this modest neighborhood drawing no attention to himself at all.

  He was alone—Sandro Botticelli was nowhere to be seen. Lorenzo opened his eyes and saw me in the doorway, the bench I was holding crosswise blocking my way into the shop. The sight must have been comical because Lorenzo laughed aloud, a wonderful sound, and his strong white teeth flashed against his burnished olive complexion.

  “Do you need a hand?” he said, looking at the bench I held.

  “Not if I’ve got a brain,” I said lightly and turned it so I could pass through the door. I tried not to fumble as I came out from behind my counter and set the bench and tools down. I bowed to him. “Welcome, my lord.”

  He bowed back. “Call me Lorenzo. All my friends do.”

  I felt suddenly bold, as I had when I’d first spoken to him at Verrocchio’s bottega. “You already count me as a friend?” I said. “We’ve only just met.”

  “You are the uncle of the most talented apprentice in Florence, and you are a trained apothecary who has created a most inviting shop. . . .” He looked at me squarely. “If we are not already friends, I think we shall be.”

  “Where is Signor Botticelli?” I asked, trying in vain to stifle my pleasure at his answer.

  “Sandro has been mysteriously locked in his apartments since you last saw him. He sends his apologies.” Lorenzo spied the bell in its casket. “Would you like some help putting it up?”r />
  I marveled at this man who was so easy in his ways, making a person of far lesser rank feel instantly cared for and important. I could see why the people of Florence loved him. I handed him the bell, the hammer and nails, and I picked up the bench again.

  The morning passed very pleasantly, the two of us arguing about the correct position of the bell, and laughing at the number of nails we bent trying to pound them into the doorframe. I showed Lorenzo around the shop and storeroom, answering an unending stream of questions about the efficacy of several herbs and the making of potions and poultices for gout—a condition from which his grandfather and uncles had suffered mightily, one which was, even now, killing his father.

  When I brought out the food I had prepared we sat on benches on either side of the marble counter and ate. He devoured the grape and olive compote with a genteel gusto that reminded me, with a silent ache, of my own father. I watched with fascination as he invoked one subject of interest after another, proceeding down a seemingly narrow path, only to take a sudden side switch, and another and another, all of which cleverly returned him to the main road of thought. As he talked, he smeared chunks of bread with the goat cheese, piled on the compote and popped the whole mess into his mouth. While he chewed, he encouraged me to answer or comment, or contradict him if I disagreed.

  It was the strangest amalgam of appetite and intelligence I had ever witnessed.

  At first we argued about several of the Virtues—Truth, Time, Fortitude, and Justice. His discourse became more openly Socratic, asking me pointedly ironic questions that would lead to more and more questions, so that at the end of it all, if not coming to any pat conclusion or solution, I would have nevertheless taught myself a lesson.

  “At which university did you study?” Lorenzo finally asked, wiping his fingers on a linen towel I had laid between us.

  I thought of lying but was terrified of getting caught. So I told the truth.

  “We had no money for my education, but my father was a scholar. He was my only tutor.”

  Lorenzo straightened. “Would I know of him?”

  “No, I don’t think so.” I stared at the tray with the remnants of our small meal. There was nothing left of it. Not even the cheese rind.

  “You were hungry,” I said, changing the subject.

  “Have you any more of that?” Lorenzo pointed to the dish that had held the compote.

  I chuckled. “You’re a greedy fellow,” I said.

  He laughed that laugh that I was already coming to love. “I know what I like,” he replied.

  “I’ll see if there’s more in the jar,” I said, standing up and moving to the doorway with the dish. “My neighbor, Signora Serrano, makes it. I wish I could ask you to my sitting room but it’s still a shambles,” I called after me as I started up the stairs.

  “Never mind,” I heard at my ear. I was startled to see Lorenzo at my side. “You should see Sandro’s rooms.” He was following me up the steps. “Everyone indulges ‘the artist.’”

  I was holding my breath, praying that everything was in order in my sitting room, and wondering at the novelty of a young man following me to my private rooms, a man none other than Lorenzo de’ Medici.

  On the first floor he gazed around for a moment, then headed for a pretty embroidered hanging that had come down to me from my mother’s family. “Why are you staring?” he said, turning back to me. “I thought you were bringing us more of Signora Serrano’s delicacy.”

  “Yes, yes,” I said and climbed to the next floor.

  When I returned a few moments later with the news that we had eaten every last grape and olive, he was standing at the front window with his back to me. He was hunched, looking at something he held in his hand. When he heard me on the stair he turned. There was a look of amazement on his face.

  He was holding a book.

  “You have a copy of the Asclepius,” he said.

  I blanched. “I guess I must,” I said, “unless you brought it with you.” It was a poor joke.

  His laugh was different this time. Darker. No longer jovial.

  “This is a Hermetic text,” he said.

  “And in some eyes, heretical,” I added. “Though many men read it.”

  “But they read the Latin translation. This is in Greek. You are reading the Asclepius in Greek.”

  “So it appears,” I whispered. This book was one of those treasured volumes that Poggio Bracciolini and my father had transcribed so many years before.

  “Your father must be quite a scholar,” Lorenzo said. He was gazing at me quizzically, as a child would a wooden puzzle.

  I wished for a way to steer him from this thought path, one that felt dangerous to my new identity. Then he spoke.

  “I would like you to come to my house and sit at my father’s table. The family will be there. Sandro. A few others. Two evenings from now. . . . Why are you gaping at me?”

  “Am I gaping?”

  “Wide enough for a frog to hop between your teeth.”

  “You are inviting me to the Palazzo Medici. Anyone would be awestruck.”

  “You, Cato, have just spent an entire morning discoursing with me on a wide variety of scholarly subjects. And you read the Asclepius in Greek. I do not think it odd to have a man such as yourself at my dinner table.”

  “All right,” I managed to mutter.

  “I’m going now,” he announced and embraced me briefly. Then he started for the stairs. He turned back with one of those brilliant smiles. “You see, I was right,” he said. “We have become friends.”

  I was still in a state of disbelief two days hence when I locked my shop and strode—a new mode of ambulation for me—down the Vias Capponi and Guelfa and turned onto Via Larga, an exceptionally wide thoroughfare, though one that exuded dignity and quietude, with houses on both sides, some of them large and elegant.

  I came then, on my right, upon the Monastery of San Marco, with its stark façade, where, from within, I could hear many voices raised together in the chanting of the psalms. Past that there were several modest homes and a quality silk shop without a sign, as though those patrons who needed to know its location had no need of advertisement.

  I knew I must be nearing the Palazzo Medici and expected to see guards at its perimeter. But in the next moment the edifice was looming large—again on my right—and there was not a soldier or guard anywhere in sight.

  I could see, at the end of a huge three-storied city mansion, crowds of men standing under and around its loggia that turned the corner at Via Gori, and sitting on stone benches built into the outer wall, talking loudly and gesticulating enthusiastically in making their points. Others stood with heads bent together, conversing with quiet urgency.

  They were negotiating. There, under the corner loggia of the Palazzo Medici, men were doing business.

  Now I could see others were entering and leaving through a grand front doorway on Via Larga. I moved close enough to touch the building. The ground floor had been built like a fortress with stone blocks so rough-hewn they looked as if they had just been chiseled from the quarry. Above this, the wall of the first floor, studded with a row of high rounded windows, was finer cut stone. The third, with even more windows, appeared smooth and polished.

  Facing the wide-open grand entrance and marveling at its orgy of commerce, I was further surprised to see that the inner courtyard, a square bounded by graceful columns all around, boasted a statue of a naked man on a pedestal, one that could easily be seen from the street.

  With no one stopping or questioning me, I passed through the door and emerged into the courtyard with the three stories of the palazzo rising four-square around me. Inside, above the powerful arches and columns, was a row of windows, and above that a railed terrace.

  To the right of the entrance on the ground floor guildsmen came and went through an inner door, whose sign above read simply BANCO.

  But of course, I thought, the Medici are bankers. Where better to house the Florentine branch than he
re at the family fortress?

  Drawn to the bronze statue, I saw it was the figure of a boy no older than Leonardo, and like my son modeling for Verrocchio, at his feet was the ghastly severed head of a giant. This must be another artist’s rendition of David with the slain Goliath, I thought.

  Though I had seen little sculpture in my life, the genius of this artist was apparent to even my untrained eye. But except for the sword he carried and the stone for his slingshot, he was not at all as I had imagined David of the Old Testament. He wore a brimmed hat, with girlish hair that fell to his shoulders, and standing with hand on hip at a jaunty angle, he looked more tipsy from wine than having just beheaded a Philistine giant. He was strangely effeminate.

  “The great Donatello,” I heard Lorenzo say behind me. I had come to recognize my new friend’s voice. “His David is the first freestanding statue created in a thousand years. He was, of all the artists my grandfather patronized, his most beloved. They asked to be buried next to each other . . . and were.”

  My mind raced. Would Lorenzo de’ Medici someday patronize my Leonardo? Would his art grace the walls of this palazzo?

  I turned to him. “You invited me to supper at your ‘house.’”

  “This is my house. Come upstairs and I’ll show you.” He tipped his chin at the line of merchants at the banco door. “They’ll soon be leaving to have their supper. Then we’ll reclaim the ground floor.”

  I followed him up a broad, straight stairway. “I loathe the banking business,” he told me. “Of course we made our fortune as bankers—to kings and merchants and popes. But I have no interest in money for money’s sake.” He turned to me. “Does that seem odd?”

  “Very.”

  “I have no facility for it either. Thank goodness Giuliano likes numbers. We’ll rule together someday. He has his strengths. I have mine.”

  I thought of the handsome sixteen-year-old I’d seen riding before Lorenzo at his wedding festival. Giuliano seemed so young to rule. But then, so did Lorenzo. He was barely twenty.