Signora Da Vinci

by Robin Maxwell

  Now Leonardo turned his eyes to the ceiling and a bemused expression crossed his face. “The peace in their marriage began to shatter as soon as little Giacomo began to walk. He was a terror—as beautiful as his mother, but wholly unmanageable. Celeste indulged him and refused to let her husband punish him. He grew more and more willful. Spoiled. Husband and wife fought constantly over him. Much as the man tried, he could not bring himself to love the boy. Then Celeste grew ill. A cancer in her breast. On her deathbed she revealed me as the father. Of course, by that time I was a well-known figure in Milan. So her husband came to me. Told me the story. I knew it was true.”

  Leonardo looked at me then with the warmest of smiles. “He was my son.” His eyes filled with tears and he shook his head. “I adopted him. Paid the man for him.” Now Leonardo barked a laugh. “Giacomo was even worse than he’d been described. I’ve never known a child like him. He is so beautiful to look at. In that way there’s much of his mother in him. But he lies. He steals. So far he seems to have neither interest nor talent for the arts. He is very loud . . . and exceedingly rude.”

  “What are his good qualities?” Lorenzo asked gently. “Even the vilest of children have one or two.”

  “Besides his physical beauty . . . ?” Leonardo thought a moment. “He is loyal to a fault. Keeps a secret well. And in his way”—he pressed his lips together as though to hold back emotion—“he loves me. Recognizes me as his father.”

  I put my hand over his and smiled. “When can I meet my grandson?”

  Leonardo wiped at his eyes. “For now, of course, he will be your ‘grandnephew.’” He sniffed sharply, and picking up a bell, jingled it.

  A door opened and a plump, rosy-cheeked woman peeked her head around it. “Julia, meet my Uncle Cato and Lorenzo de’ Medici.”

  “I’m honored to meet you both,” she said, quite matter-of-factly. “Are you ready for your supper, Maestro?”

  “Will you call Salai first?”

  Julia rolled her eyes heavenward. “The last I looked he was out in the yard up to his elbows in muck.”

  “Please tell him to clean himself and come in,” Leonardo told her with a pleasant resignedness I would come to recognize in all of his dealings with his son. “But I think we three can begin with the soup.”

  By the time Salai arrived at the table we were halfway through our antipasto. He fairly ran into the dining room, and with an odd combination of boredom and affection planted a kiss on Leonardo’s cheek before taking the empty place next to Lorenzo. I was seated across from him, so I could easily look at the boy’s face. Though his clothes had been changed, his forehead retained a smudge of dirt. While he had lips more full and pouty than Leonardo’s, the long, straight nose and the pretty hazel wide-set eyes were clearly his father’s. The mop of light curls was reminiscent of Leonardo’s, too, though by the standard of the day for a young boy was now cut short.

  The child was staring hard at me.

  “That is your great-uncle, Cato,” Leonardo told Salai. “And beside you sits a very important man from Florence, Lorenzo de’ Medici.”

  He gave me a brief, insolent look and then turned to Lorenzo. “Are you very rich?” he asked.

  Lorenzo controlled his smile. “Perhaps the richest man in Italy.”

  “They say Il Moro’s treasury is filled with chests of gold and diamonds and pearls and rubies, and a pile of silver coin so high a stag could not leap over it!”

  “Salai . . . ,” Leonardo began.

  “But I wish to know who is richer!” the boy cried.

  “Why does it matter?” I asked him.

  “Because,” he said, turning to me, “I must know to which man I should go for patronage when I am grown.”

  “But the maestro tells us you have no interest in the arts,” I persisted.

  “No matter,” Salai replied chirpily, “I’ll seek patronage for some other talent.”

  “Court jester perhaps?” Lorenzo suggested.

  Salai looked at his father with open-mouthed wonder. “I could be a jester!”

  “You would make a marvelous fool, Salai,” Leonardo said, straight-faced.

  “Did you know,” Lorenzo continued to the boy, “that fools are the only people at the courts of kings who can say exactly what they want on any subject whatsoever—as long as it is humorously put—and not be punished?”

  With a loud whoop Salai was suddenly out of his chair and dancing around the table in a wild tarantella, accompanying himself with a song far too ribald for one his age. He was making such a racket that Julia pushed her head through the door and watched as he danced. Salai ended with a set of whirls and a quite spectacular somersault, landing at Lorenzo’s feet, grinning up at him.

  “You’re hired!” Lorenzo cried.

  Everyone roared at that, all but Julia, who shook her head, muttering, “A mistake to encourage him,” before disappearing back in the kitchen.

  “Sit down and eat your supper,” Leonardo instructed Salai.

  The boy took a few bites of his insalata, then looked at me long and hard. I held his gaze very frankly. He tried to outstare me. Made a few faces. Crossed his eyes. Pulled his cheeks into a fish mouth. I refused to smile. Finally he gave up, but not before announcing, “He’s a sour one.”

  I turned to Leonardo. “You’re right. He is rude.”

  Salai made a farting sound through his lips.

  Leonardo closed his eyes. “Take the rest of your supper in your room,” he told his son.

  “I’m finished anyway,” Salai said, jumping out of his chair. He grabbed a heel of bread from the table, and with an exaggerated bow to Lorenzo, a fish face in my direction, and a peck on Leonardo’s forehead, he darted from the room.

  We all sat there a bit stunned.

  “Remember the dragon on my pillow?” I finally said. “Perhaps he takes after you more than you’d like to admit.”

  “Was I that bad?”

  “There were times . . .”

  Then Julia came in with a steaming plate of savory mushroom ravioli. As we tucked into it with gusto, I regaled Lorenzo, to Leonardo’s sundry amusement and mortification, with stories of his youthful escapades. By the end of the evening he had concluded that, after all, fruit did not fall so very far from the tree.

  Next morning I explored the east wing of Corte Vecchio. It was a warren of small, interconnecting chambers, each possessing one or two overlarge windows, and each a feast for the senses. Embroidered tapestries that must once have hung on royal walls now hung here. Paintings and sculptures—gifts from his friends, the Florentine masters—were everywhere present, though some of the works were Leonardo’s own. A series of four of his sketches stretched the length of one room, all depicting a catastrophic deluge—like the one Giuliano de’ Medici had described as a dream that day in the country so many years before, with hurricane winds and monstrous curling waves that were washing away a mountaintop castle and the whole city beneath. On a chalk wall were scribbled mathematical diagrams and equations that I found completely baffling.

  Underfoot, where there might have been one Turkey carpet, Leonardo had laid three, artfully, so that a piece of each showed through. Every possible surface was piled with treasures: a necklace of cinnabar hanging from the dismembered marble hand of a classical Greek statue; a wood carving of the goddess Isis displayed prominently in a niche, a garland of tiny living orchids encircling her neck.

  In a music room were myriad stringed instruments and horns. There was a violin I recognized, one he’d designed with a fabulous silver sounding box molded into the shape of a horse’s head. On his arrival at the Milanese court he and his unique instrument had been thrust headlong into a musical competition and won! After that, for some time, Leonardo had been strangely cast in the role of a talented musician and not a painter. Here, too, were piles of written music and charts that, to an untrained eye, would make no sense. There were sketches tacked on the wall of “musical waves” traveling through the air toward a perfectl
y rendered human ear and the inside of the listener’s head.

  I finally arrived in the main corridor and stepped into the ballroom studio. Leonardo saw me at once and strode toward me.

  “Good morning, Uncle Cato!” he called out cheerfully. “Look, don’t come any closer. Let me show you something.” He came over and guided me back toward the workshop archway.

  I saw four apprentices move to four points of a square around where Leonardo’s flying contraption stood. They began working, hand over hand, tugging on an intricate system of pulleys, weights, ropes, and heavy chains. Suddenly, with a loud grinding and creaking of gears, the square of wood upon which the flying machine stood began to rise! As it ascended on the ropes and chains, another floor was rising from the story below to take its place. Then with the sound of heavy clanking, the new floor locked perfectly into the place of that which was now suspended high overhead. On this newly risen platform were five sheet-draped easels.

  The operation complete, the apprentices returned to their various tasks, as though nothing out of the ordinary had occurred.

  “What on earth have I just seen?” I inquired of the massive machinery.

  “I think it should be the work, not the master, that moves up and down. Every night now I am able to put my paintings away and close them up, safely.”

  I moved amidst the easels, nosily lifting the sheet corners to peek at the subjects. Each one was more astonishing than the last. A profile portrait of a woman Leonardo identified as Beatrice d’Este. A wildly costumed Ludovico, who appeared as an overweight wood nymph. There was a somberly dressed physician, and a Madonna holding a vase, the Christ child clutching a delicate flower. In each and every one shone Leonardo’s unique genius.

  “I wish you would sit for me one day,” he said quietly. “As the person you are under those men’s robes and bindings.”

  “Why would you want to paint an old woman?” I said, amused.

  “When I look at you,” he replied, “I see you as you were when I was a boy his age.” He gazed across the room at Salai, who was pounding with mortar and pestle at chunks of blue stone with so much ferocity that bits of its powder were flying up and spraying his face and doublet. He looked fondly at me. “Madonna Mia,” he said.

  “Perhaps one day,” I said, strangely embarrassed and shy. “But we’ve so much to accomplish here and now.”

  “Lorenzo is very ill, is he not?”

  “He is. But there’s a strength in him. Fathomless strength. As long as there is a Florence to save, that man will live forever.”

  In the next moment Salai, all gangly legs and blue-flecked cheeks, approached us. “I’m going out with my friends,” he announced.

  “You haven’t finished grinding the cerulean,” Leonardo said. He was met with an insolent pout.

  “Alessio can do it.”

  Maestro and apprentice locked eyes. Salai’s sparkled with mischief, past and future.

  “Then you must finish when you return,” Leonardo instructed, trying for sternness in his voice. But this was a clearly outrageous indulgence.

  With a nod the master gave the boy leave to withdraw. He swiveled on his heels to go.

  “Salai!” Now there was steel in Leonardo’s voice. He motioned toward me with his eyes. The boy turned back and deposited a perfunctory kiss on my cheek. Then, grabbing a feathered cap and tying closed the front of his doublet, he was gone.

  “He’s a little monster,” Leonardo said, removing the cloth from the still unfinished Madonna and child.

  “Because you allow it,” I said, but there was no scolding in my voice.

  “Reds!” he called, and within moments the apprentice, Alessio, had come to his side with a palette arrayed in every shade of that color. Leonardo took it and praised the young man before dismissing him.

  “Is it wrong, Mama,” he whispered, “to want to give your child everything?”

  I smiled. “Of all people, how can you ask me that question? I’ve always believed every child deserves one shamelessly indulgent parent.”

  Leonardo laughed a dark laugh. “The Limb of Satan. Let us hope he is not the death of me.”

  Lorenzo, Leonardo, and I had visited with Ludovico and Beatrice. Though we had little time to waste, we knew it was necessary to oblige. It would have seemed odd for the Medici to travel to Milan without a visit to his important ally, Il Moro. The Castella Sforza, an utterly impregnable fortress of bricks the color of dried blood, was impossibly luxurious within.

  The welcome by Il Moro and his lovely young bride could not have been warmer. Ludovico, in the years since I had last seen him in Rome, had matured into a thick-bodied man with a broad, fleshy face and a heavy, drooping chin. Beatrice, the youngest daughter of Ferrante—that dangerous Neapolitan friend of Lorenzo’s since his youth—had been a sheer delight, happy and exuberant and spectacularly attired in a pearl-encrusted gown.

  The couple had seemed quite at home in their role as “First Lord and Lady of Milan,” while in fact Ludovico’s nephew, Gian, was the true ducal heir. Gian and his wife, Isabella, were nowhere to be found at court, and Beatrice had whispered to me that Isabella was furious at this state of affairs. Furious to have a weak, effeminate husband who trembled under the gaze of Il Moro, whom Gian allowed to rule un-challenged, who beat her in private, and openly flaunted his affair with a country boy.

  At Lorenzo’s urgings we had had a quiet, intimate evening at the castella, treated to exquisite food, while beautiful music played quietly in the corner. Much praise was heaped on Leonardo for his talents, and assurances were made that he was accepted within the court’s innermost circle.

  While Lorenzo and Ludovico spoke privately, Beatrice had chattered about an endless list of projects for the court artist—a summer house for her garden and decoration of her already opulent private apartments. She wished him to design a rappresentazione for an upcoming festival. “Something celestial,” she’d insisted enthusiastically, “with spinning planets, and the zodiac, and stars lit up like those in the sky!”

  I’d come away feeling warmed by the sincere and openly appreciative patronage, though Leonardo did complain that for someone as wealthy as Il Moro, he was awfully slow to pay.

  Within the week we were riding out into the countryside. Lorenzo revealed that his private conversation with Il Moro had been quite fruitful for our purposes, though Ludovico was unaware of the help he had given. I could see that the intelligence Lorenzo had gleaned troubled him deeply, for the duke’s plans for his governance of Milan and its alliances would reach far beyond its borders. There would be time for us to discuss the details, but this day’s mission was first in all our minds.

  Our carriage deposited us at a lovely country villa surrounded by ancient olive groves. A horse-faced servant opened the door.

  “Come this way,” he said, leading us into a formal salon, where we were seated. We said very little as we waited for the person upon whose shoulders rested the substantial weight of our conspiracy.

  “Bianca Maria de Galeazzo Sforza, Duchess of Savoy,” the servant announced in a funereal tone. The sixteen-year-old noblewoman entered the room with quiet dignity that matched her somber attire. She could not have been more different from her uncle’s wife, Beatrice. I was momentarily startled to see she wore a crucifix at the high neck of her steel-gray gown.

  She was similarly reserved in her greetings to us all, accepting kisses to her hand from Leonardo and myself, and one on the cheek from Lorenzo. She was especially deferential to him.

  “I am deeply honored by your visit, my lord. My uncle has told me of your loyal friendship over the years.” She nodded to my son. “Leonardo tells me you were a kind patron to him.” She smiled with almost insipid mildness at me. “And you must be very proud of your nephew.”

  “I am,” I said, beginning to feel uneasy, as though we had perhaps come to the wrong home.

  “Bernardo,” she said, turning to the servant who was standing at attention at the door. “I am going t
o take my visitors for a walk around the grounds.”

  “I will be glad to accompany you,” he said with a clear note of disapproval born, I suspected, of severe protectiveness.

  “That will not be necessary. These are all good friends of mine.”

  The servant withdrew, closing the door behind him. The moment we were alone an amazing transformation overtook our hostess. Her face softened into a smile. She embraced Leonardo and knelt, taking Lorenzo’s hand to her lips, fervently kissing his swollen knuckles.

  “Follow me,” she said as she rose, then led us out a door into a flower garden. As long as we were close to the villa she kept her voice low, but once away she spoke normally, and with great enthusiasm. “I am so glad you’ve come,” she told us. “The news from Florence is awful.”

  “So you understood the full meaning of my letter,” Lorenzo said, more a statement than a question.

  “Oh, yes. What secrets not buried in your code were in Greek, and the only one in this household who reads the language besides myself is my tutor. And for him, I must also thank you.” She turned to Leonardo and me. “Had it not been for the Medici influence on the Sforzas—their love of the classic cultures—I would never have had a Greek tutor at all. . . .”

  Her words hung unfinished as we arrived at a small building ringed by ancient trees. With a key she produced from a chain hidden in the folds of her skirt, Bianca unlocked the heavy door. She led us inside the gloomy chamber and closed the door behind us with a resounding crash. “And I never would have become a student of Plato,” she finished, her voice echoing eerily.

  With practiced ease, the duchess took from the wall a torch and went to a stone bowl in which flickered a single candlewick afloat in oil. Touching torch to flame she illuminated the room enough to see it was empty of all decoration save a Turkey carpet on the floor.