Signora Da Vinci

by Robin Maxwell

  Hours had passed in conversation, and I was aware that sunlight no longer streamed through the temple skylight. The cold marble was chilly on my bottom, and a restlessness among the men sparked an almost impromptu blessing to Plato, Hermes, and Isis, and with no further ado, the gathered filed out into the early evening light.

  There was laughter and camaraderie as we crunched our way down the gravel paths through the formal gardens to the darkened villa. Several men stopped along the way to relieve themselves, and I suddenly realized my own need. I found a hedge, and with my “horn” began watering it.

  “A treat, eh?”

  I startled so violently at the voice near my shoulder that the device came completely out of my hand. I grabbed it quickly but my piss sprayed wildly, and embarrassingly, from left to right.

  “Whoa, sorry!” Lorenzo laughed as he began to relieve himself at my side. “I hope it’s not our meeting that makes you so jumpy.”

  I tried to recover my aplomb. “Not the meeting, but the member that snuck up behind me and . . .” Instantly, I regretted my choice of words, but Lorenzo graciously refrained from playing on the pun. Instead he went silent and finished quickly, giving me a friendly pat on the back before disappearing.

  A close call, that.

  When I’d stowed my horn and straightened my robes I went to join the others at the back door, where Lorenzo led us all into the shadowy house, though not the salon or dining room, but to the kitchen.

  As there were no cooks or servants, everyone went to work as though it were the most natural thing in the world. Gigi Pulci lit wall torches and began building a fire along the length of the wide kitchen hearth. Several chickens and as many hares had already been plucked and skinned, and Lorenzo, standing at the workbench, rolled up his sleeves and himself oiled them with his bare hands. Then he skewered them onto a long rod, which he handed to Poliziano, who set it on a spit over the fire.

  Landino and Mirandola were silently slicing tomatoes and shucking peas. Cabbage was being chopped with great industry by Pollaiuolo. Bisticci was elbow-deep in seafood, cleaning piles of cockles and river crabs, gudgeon, mullet, grayling, pike, and turbot, and heaving them into a massive iron pot. Even old Alberti was busy fashioning ravioli from sheets of dough and bowls of creamy white cheese.

  “Cato,” I heard Lorenzo call to me. “Don’t just stand there gaping. Make us some of that marvelous compote. It can’t be that difficult. In the cold cupboard you’ll find grapes and olives.” He pointed to a shelf crowded with bottles and jars. “Oil and vinegar are there, and all the herbs you should need. And a pot . . .” He knelt at the side of the hearth, where cook pots and pans were piled. With something of a racket he pulled out a good-sized crock and thrust it at me.

  “This is a rather large vessel,” I said, trying to keep a straight face.

  “I can promise you there won’t be a spoonful left by night’s end.” He stood and gave me a lopsided grin. “How did you like your first session in the Thinkery?”

  I was at a loss for words.

  “I shall have to think about it,” I finally said.

  Lorenzo laughed. “Get to work,” he ordered, and started cracking open a mammoth pile of walnuts.

  “The next topic is Death,” Silio Ficino announced suddenly and with little ado, as though we were still gathered around the eternal flame overwatched by Plato, Hermes, and Isis, and not engaged in oyster shucking and ravioli making.

  “That really is rather a broad palette, don’t you think?” Gigi Pulci said as he scraped a carrot.

  “Let us make it personal,” Ficino said. “About our own deaths. For example: I wish to die . . .” He took a moment to collect his thoughts. “. . . believing in my heart, as well as in the words I write, in my own goodness and divinity.”

  There was silence, aside from the chopping and clanging, as the philosopher cooks deliberated and cogitated.

  Cristoforo Landino spoke next. “I wish to die in the knowledge that my body shall dissolve, but thus dissolved, I am transformed.”

  “Here, here!” someone said. “Well spoken,” said another.

  “I wish to die believing I have finished my work,” Lorenzo said with quiet dignity, “and that my beloved Florence is safe.”

  There were murmurs of approval all around.

  “I wish to die in my beloved’s arms,” Poliziano said, unable to keep his longing eyes from straying toward Lorenzo.

  “I wish to die inside my favorite courtesan,” Gigi Pulci announced, loudly sucking a grape into his mouth and eliciting the hoped-for laughter.

  “I . . . ,” Vespasiano da Bisticci began, waiting for the guffaws to die down before continuing, “wish to die with the most books in my possession.”

  To this there were shouts of mock disdain, but then Lorenzo cried, “We shall have a race to the finish on that one!”

  “Once dead,” Alberti intoned with a seriousness that quieted the room, “I wish to find myself in the company of great souls—Plato, Hermes, and Moses among them.”

  There was quiet contemplation after that, till Antonio Pollaiuolo spoke simply. “I wish to die neither in fear nor in pain.”

  There were grunts of agreement all round. I became aware I was the only one left to speak.

  “I wish to die happy,” I finally said.

  There was silence, and I suddenly feared the sentiment lacked all profundity or meaning. Then I felt a gentle hand on my shoulder. I turned and saw Ficino, father of the Platonic Academy, smiling a warm smile.

  “A man after my own heart,” he said.

  From the corner of my eye I saw Lorenzo beaming with pride.

  It was the finest moment of my life.

  “As you have so graciously invited me into your sanctum sanctorum,” I found myself saying, excited by the memory of Papa opening his to me for the first time, “I would like to make you aware of a chamber three floors above my shop.”

  Everyone stopped their culinary tasks and attended me. Lorenzo, who had come no higher than my sitting room, was particularly bemused.

  “What kind of chamber, Apothecary?” Bisticci asked, playfully suspicious.

  “Well, it has, till now, been a secret chamber.” I was having a difficult time trying not to smile.

  “Would it, perhaps, be a place that Hermes himself would find agreeable?” Ficino asked hopefully.

  “More than agreeable,” I said, completely surrendering to my joy. “Positively elemental.”

  CHAPTER 16

  I watched Andrea Verrocchio hurrying toward Leonardo and me from down the street as we approached a building that housed, according to a large, beautifully rendered sign, THE FLORENTINE PAINTERS CONFRATERNITY.

  I said to Leonardo in the baritone that still amused him, “Are you ready to join the Artists Guild?”

  “It’s hard to believe. It feels like yesterday that I arrived in Florence a skinny boy.”

  “You’re still too skinny,” I said very quietly, unable to control myself. “You don’t eat enough.”

  “Mama!” he whispered back, afraid I’d be overheard babying him.

  I laughed at myself. “I won’t say another word.”

  “Look,” Leonardo said as his maestro joined us, “there’s old Filippo Lippi going in.”

  “And Domenico Ghirlandaio behind him,” Verrocchio added.

  My heart started pumping a little harder. These were legendary names in the Florentine art world. Ghirlandaio had been Sandro Botticelli’s master before his more mature apprenticeship with Verrocchio.

  “Come,” Andrea said, herding us through the doors into the waxed-wood-smelling vestibule, “let us see who else is here.”

  If we had hoped to be in the company of greats we were not disappointed. Already standing before a table in the largely empty chamber, where the artists club registrar—a pale young man with wide eyes made even larger by the company he found himself in—pointed in an open book, Sandro Botticelli was signing his name. Standing behind him waiting for thei
r turns were Antonio Pollaiuolo and his brother, Piero, Lippi and Ghirlandaio at their backs.

  On a bench someone had placed a carafe of red wine and some lovely, very fragile Venetian goblets, ones that I recognized as having come from the Palazzo Medici.

  As we took our places behind the Pollaiuolos, the artists greeted each other with happy embraces. I was introduced to those I did not know. They were signing on to be members of a confraternity, I thought, but they were already brothers.

  Antonio Pollaiuolo stepped up to sign, first laying down thirty-two soldi, the price of membership. “You see, this is what you get,” he said to the registrar, indicating the small mob of artists behind him, “when you close your books for three years, then open them again.”

  “Oh, Maestro, we are so honored by your presence . . . ,” the young man replied, shaking his head in wonder, “. . . all of you.”

  “Don’t let him sign,” Botticelli said, pummeling Leonardo’s arm. “He’s a baby.”

  “I may be a baby,” Leonardo quipped, giving Sandro an imaginary uppercut, “but I know a thing or two about perspective.”

  The other artists groaned with pleasure, preparing for the most enjoyable of all pastimes—a verbal joust.

  “Have you seen his trees in The Birth of Venus?” Leonardo said. “They’re flat as flounders!”

  Botticelli grinned wickedly. “Da Vinci’s fluffy little mutt in Tobias and the Angel is so ethereal you see right through it.”

  “Oooh!” “Low blow!” “Come, we can do better than that,” I heard the artists muttering delightedly.

  “The angel in your Annunciation looks like he’s chasing Our Lady out of the room. She seems ready to throw herself, in despair, out the window!” Leonardo cried with obvious exaggeration.

  “You be careful, you snippet,” Filippo Lippi chimed in. “That is my apprentice you’re trouncing.”

  “Actually, he’s mine,” said Verrocchio, grabbing Botticelli by the shoulder and pulling him to his side.

  Everyone laughed at that and suddenly it was Leonardo’s turn to sign the register. He bent down and smiled at me as I removed the thirty-two soldi from my waist pouch and handed it to the registrar.

  “Everyone needs an uncle like you, Cato,” Antonio Pollaiuolo said quite seriously.

  There was murmured agreement.

  Then Verrocchio said, “His father should be here. He ought to be ashamed.”

  “That’s all right, Andrea,” Leonardo said. “I wouldn’t want his sour puss mucking up our happy occasion anyway.” He put on so convincing a bright face that I almost believed him. Maybe it took a mother, I thought, or someone else whom Piero da Vinci had hurt so deeply, to see that stubborn flicker of pain in his son’s eyes.

  “Have I missed all the fun?”

  Everyone turned to see Giuliano de’ Medici burst through the door, smiling. He headed straight for the bench. “Why aren’t we drinking yet?” He started pouring wine.

  “We were waiting for you,” Botticelli said.

  Everyone gathered around Giuliano and took a full glass from him. He eyed Leonardo with playful suspicion. “I’ve heard the loveliest little piece of gossip,” he said.

  “Let’s hear it,” Verrocchio urged.

  It always fascinated me what scandalmongers men were, when it was women who were always blamed for such things.

  “Bring Leonardo closer in, so he can hear,” Giuliano said. “Oh, that’s right,” he said, as though to himself, “it’s about him.”

  Leonardo’s posture changed. He looked like a turtle trying to withdraw into its shell. But he allowed himself to be pulled into the center of this group of his friends.

  “You know that portrait of young Ginevra Benci?” Giuliano slyly asked.

  “She’s not so young,” Botticelli responded. “She’s more than fifteen.”

  Leonardo pleaded with his eyes for Giuliano’s mercy.

  “It’s a beautiful painting.” This was Antonio Pollaiuolo. “I think it’s Leonardo’s best to date.”

  “It’s no wonder,” Giuliano went on, ignoring my son’s silent and desperate request. “He knows her very intimately.”

  Everyone made loud exclamations of feigned shock and moral outrage.

  “This is a bit dangerous, Leonardo,” Filippo Lippi said. “She has a rich husband.”

  Leonardo had turned an alarming carnation pink.

  “And a lover,” Botticelli added. “Silio Ficino’s friend Bernardo Bembi.”

  “Ginevra and Bembi are Platonic lovers,” Leonardo said unexpectedly, then fell silent, shocking everyone with his veritable admission of guilt.

  I was pleasantly dumbfounded. My son was sleeping with a woman—admittedly a questionable choice considering how prominent was her husband and how notorious her “love affair” with Bembi. But Leonardo’s lover was not a prostitute . . . and not a young man, either.

  “All of you tell me,” Leonardo said, clearly shifting the attention away from himself, “is it any more scandalous than Giuliano keeping a mistress . . .” He paused dramatically. “. . . and getting her pregnant?”

  There were shouts and whistles.

  Giuliano pouted in Leonardo’s direction, outdone but not unhappy with the revelation.

  “To the happy father!” Botticelli cried, raising his glass in Giuliano’s direction.

  Leonardo smiled with pleasure at his small victory. Then Sandro lifted his glass in his direction.

  “To Leonardo, whose safety from two jilted men we pray for!”

  Everyone laughed and raised their glasses.

  “Salute!” they cried in unison. “To Leonardo!”

  CHAPTER 17

  “Silvery Water,” Lorenzo pronounced.

  “Divine Water,” Silio Ficino countered.

  “Mercury,” Pico della Mirandola intoned with the seriousness of a tutor, “was first known as Water of the Moon.”

  “Milk of the Black Cow,” Lorenzo offered.

  “Never heard that one,” Vespasiano Bisticci said as he moved to light the charcoal burner under the cylindrical glass kerotakis.

  “Wait!” I ordered. I had been perusing an open manuscript that looked to be a thousand years old. I went to the apparatus that stood on the workbench in the center of my alchemical laboratory and placed a small quantity of metallic powder on a screen at the upper part of it.

  It was the middle of the night and this a surreptitious gathering of men leading double lives.

  I gestured for Pico to quickly close the top orifice with a solid hemispherical cover.

  “Seed of the Dragon,” Lorenzo suggested. “It is by far the most poetic.”

  “Bile of the Dragon describes mercury better,” Pico insisted.

  “Depends on the dragon,” Bisticci quipped.

  Everyone laughed at that, but the moment the bookseller put a flame to the charcoal, we all crowded around the kerotakis and quieted. Five sets of eyes fixed with utter fascination on the glass cylinder and the quantity of quicksilver puddled at its closed bottom.

  As it heated, it began bubbling. Ficino was visibly trembling. I could hardly hear the sound of breathing in the deathly quiet attic room. Then suddenly the silvery element vaporized, leaving nothing behind at all in the bottom of the cylinder.

  Though we could not see under the solid cap at the top, we knew—or at least hoped—that the vapors were attacking the metal powder.

  “Now we must be patient,” I told everyone.

  “How long?” Ficino asked.

  “I’m not sure. The text does not say how long melanosis takes to occur.”

  “We’re fortunate to finally have a laboratory for our experiments,” Silio Ficino said, smiling at me.

  “You’re looking very dubious, Pico,” Lorenzo said, addressing his friend.

  “I am not convinced of the value of practical alchemy,” he replied. “The great excitement about seeing minerals changing colors. I thought we all agreed that true alchemy is the transmutation of the spirit,
not of base metal into gold.”

  “We do,” Bisticci agreed. “But is there anything more fascinating than watching a substance, by the simple application of heat or the addition of another substance, change from black to white to the iridescent colors of peacocks’ feathers, to yellow, then purple, then red?”

  “Or to test Aristotle’s theories that the four elements may indeed change form?” Lorenzo added. “Philosophy is the pinnacle, Pico, but experimentation is glorious. Come, admit it. You’re just as curious as the rest of us.” Lorenzo turned to me. “Where do you stand in this argument, Cato? It is your laboratory, after all.”

  I had recently “killed off” my master and uncle, Umberto, who had graciously left his apothecary to me.

  Now my eyes fell on a small but lovely painting I had hung near my furnace. It was one Leonardo had recently gifted me—the figure of a beautiful old woman in flowing red garments, her hair pulled up in a knot on top of her head. I nodded toward her.

  “That is the Chinese goddess of the Stove,” I told my friends. “She is the divinity in charge of cooking and brewing medicines.”

  “And alchemy,” Bisticci added. “She is the goddess of Alchemy. I have a painting of her in one of my manuscripts from the East.”

  “Where does one science leave off and the other begin?” Lorenzo mused.

  “Some call vegetal alchemy the Small Work, and mineral the Great Work,” Pico told us.

  “No, no,” Bisticci argued. “The Great Work is something altogether different. It is finding the elixir to prolong life for eternity.”

  “You’re all wrong,” Lorenzo insisted. “The Great Work is a sexual phenomenon. The mystical and physical and ecstatic melding of the male and female souls into one.”

  “You’re a hopeless romantic!” Ficino cried.

  “That I may be,” Lorenzo answered, “but we do have reports of Nicholas Flamel and his beloved wife, Perenelle, achieving that state of grace in Paris on January seventeenth, 1382.”

  The celibate Pico rolled his eyes. “And where, pray, would a male adept today find a female adept with whom to . . . meld?”