Signora Da Vinci

by Robin Maxwell

  Leonardo was beside himself with excitement, though in perfect control of his senses, directing the burly iron smiths as to the specific placement of the smelters. Stacked in a corner nearby was a huge pile of scrap metal.

  “He’s gone mad collecting metal,” Zoroastre told me, coming to my side.

  “I’ve only begun,” Leonardo said. “It’s frightening to think how much I shall need for the statue. But Il Moro has promised me a great load of it.”

  “Like he promised to pay you for decorating Beatrice’s rooms?” Zoroastre sniped.

  “Ludovico withholds your fees?” I asked Leonardo.

  “Let us say he is slow to pay. But he did unveil the equestrian monument—the clay statue—at the Castella, in honor of Bianca’s marriage to Maximilian.”

  “Everyone loved it,” Zoroastre added, then said to me, “It’s a disgrace that Leonardo is reduced to sending letters begging for money owed him.”

  “I would stifle my complaining about Ludovico until we are thrown out of the palace he has given us to live in,” Leonardo said.

  “What is that?” I said to change the course of conversation, pointing to an enormous sheet-draped object on the far side of the ballroom.

  It was all points and angles beneath the cover. I walked across to the sheeted mountain. On the wall behind it were endless, obsessive sketches of bird wings, bat wings, insect wings, angel wings. Wings from every angle, paying most attention to their articulated joints. Leonardo came up behind me and stood silently for a moment, appraising the drawings almost as though they were new to him.

  “I don’t suppose I need to ask what is under the sheet,” I said.

  “Would you like to see it?” His eyes were suddenly alight.

  I nodded, and in the next instant the cloth had been pulled away.

  Despite having seen Leonardo’s first attempt at a flying machine, and now the sketches on the wall, the massive contraption was still a shock to my eye. The two long bat wings fashioned from oiled leather and stretched over struts of pine were clearly constructed to move with their mechanisms of springs, wires, and pulleys. The wings attached to a slender, almost delicate gondola with stirruped pedals sticking out the bottom, and an intricate canvas harness was designed to hold a man inside the machine—and the wings to the man.

  “Isn’t she beautiful?” Leonardo said.

  “I find ‘her’ rather alarming.”

  “This one will fly,” he said, ignoring my worry. “I’m sure of it. It’s light. Perfectly proportioned. With the right wind . . .”

  “Leonardo . . .” Zoroastre had come up behind us. “Why don’t you show Cato to his room. He must be exhausted from his journey.”

  “Thank you, my friend,” he said to Zoroastre, then to me, “I do get caught up with myself and need reminding.”

  Leonardo and I went up the great staircase together, passing by the old ducal apartments where I had spent my last nights alone with Lorenzo.

  “I’ve brought all your notebooks and folios that I’ve been keeping for you,” I told him.

  “Why now?” he asked.

  “Because I feel you are safe now. In your own home. And they belong to you.”

  “And this,” he said, ushering me through another doorway and into a single bedchamber, “belongs to you.”

  I might have been stepping into a sultan’s harem, what with lengths of vermilion silk draped and woven above, altogether tenting the ceiling. Brilliant-hued brocade cushions were piled around the room’s perimeter on the intricately patterned Turkey rug. Crossed scimitars hung on one wall, an exotic stringed instrument inlaid with tortoise-shell on another. The latticed window threw patterns on the low, satin-draped bed, and a hookah to one side, its long tube mouthpiece hanging down, seemed to await languid partaking.

  “It’s lovely, Leonardo.”

  “I decorated it for you myself, though many of the artifacts are Grandfather’s.”

  I turned and went into his arms. “No one has ever had a sweeter child than you.”

  “Come look,” he said, taking me by the hand to a prettily painted Chinese wardrobe. “I’ve bought you a few things.” He threw open the doors. Nothing could have startled me more than what I saw inside.

  It was filled with women’s clothing. Simple dresses, festive gowns, skirts and bodices and sleeves. The floor of the cabinet was lined with pairs of silk slippers.

  “Mama,” he said gently. “There’s no longer a need for your disguise. You put it on to protect me. Finally I am in a position to protect you.” He kissed me on both cheeks that were suddenly wet with tears.

  Then he turned and left, shutting the door behind him.

  I was quite unprepared for the flood of emotions that rolled over me like waves. Relief. Gratitude. Love. Loss. The masculinity I had assumed for these twenty-five years had been my soldier’s armor. My hide cloak. While my nearest and dearest had known what lay beneath the men’s smocks and scholars’ robes, only had Lorenzo in stolen moments beheld my femininity. On his death that tie to my sex had been severed.

  Is Leonardo right? Have I no use for the male gender now? Can I relinquish all deception and walk in the world as a woman?

  Suddenly I felt warm, too warm in my clothing. Kicking off my leather traveling shoes, I unbuttoned the sleeves of my doublet, then untied my hose from eyelets at the garment’s hem and stripped them off. Undoing several laces and freed from the doublet I felt a breeze through the open window ruffle my thin shirt. With my roll-brimmed hat removed, my long graying hair fell loose to my shoulders.

  I pulled the shirt over my head and let it drop to the floor. Then, as I had done many thousands of times, I began unwinding the long linen strip that encased my chest, round and round till I’d loosed my breasts from their bindings. I stood naked, letting the breeze cool me.

  My nipples hardened and I smiled at that, strangely pleased. Then I reached into the Chinese cabinet and pulled out a dress in my favorite colors.

  It was more than odd walking through the halls of the ducal palace in a gown, a deep olive, its low rounded bodice finely pleated and trimmed in gold ribbon. Its separate sleeves were soft and tawny as a doe, and I’d found a lighter olive cape that I’d thrown over one shoulder.

  When I arrived at the dining room door I heard familiar voices from within and stopped outside it, unsure how to arrange my features for what would surely be a memorable entrance. I settled on a dignified half smile and went in.

  Everyone at the table came to their feet at once, Papa with tears in his eyes, Leonardo beaming with pleasure. Julia stood in the doorway clapping her hands above her head. Zoroastre pushed back his chair and came to me, pulling me into a sweet embrace.

  “I was completely fooled by you, signora. All these years. Come, sit down.”

  He pulled out a chair for me and I took my place at Leonardo’s right hand. Across the table sat Salai, staring at me with a beady eye.

  “You look wonderful in that dress. I’d like to paint your portrait in it,” Leonardo said. He regarded me with his artist’s eye. “You are a handsome woman.”

  “An old woman,” I corrected him.

  “That’s right,” Salai said. “She is old. I liked her better as a man.”

  “And I’d like you better with a rag stuffed in your mouth,” I said, tossing my napkin across the table at him.

  Everyone laughed. Then Leonardo lifted his wineglass, and the men in my little family did likewise . . . even my pesky grandson.

  “La Caterina,” Leonardo said.

  The toast was repeated by all, and my name, together with the sound of Venetian glasses clinking merrily together, rang like music in my ears.

  The narrow road west to Vercelli from Milan was nearly impassable, thronged as it was with pilgrims—thousands of them from all parts of Italy and some, I could tell from the language they spoke, from over the Alps in France. No matter their rank or status, the pilgrims wore white robes and cowry shell necklaces, and each carried a cross and
a begging bowl. Most walked, some barefoot, though the infirm were carried lying down on biers or in pole chairs. It was a solemn procession, all marching with downcast eyes and muttering heartfelt prayers. Here and there were groups of flagellants, their robes pulled down to their waists, whipping themselves bloody.

  Several days before, we had stationed Zoroastre on the road leading north from Florence, and his report was heartening. There had been an endless parade of citizens from there. Zoroastre, himself disguised as a pilgrim, had fallen into step beside many of the faithful and engaged them in quiet conversation.

  Yes, they were coming to view the holy relic, the shroud in which Jesus had been wrapped as he lay in his tomb. Yes, they had heard of this wondrous gift from God from the Prior of San Marco. He had revealed from his pulpit that the shroud, owned for two hundred years by the great family of Savoy, though not on display for the last forty-five , would, for a small price, finally be shown to pilgrims by a Savoy descendant, Bianca, now the wife of Maximilian, the Holy Roman Emperor himself.

  And yes, their beloved Savonarola was said even now to be walking behind them on the road to Vercelli to view the holiest of all Christian relics. Zoroastre pressed farther south until he found the Dominican envoy from San Marco and spotted the gnome himself, his dark hair and complexion set off starkly against his white pilgrim’s robe. The penitent martyr that he was, he at times carried on his shoulder a large wooden cross, affecting great suffering under its weight. Zoroastre reported that he’d watched one evening as the cross was taken from the prior’s shoulder and laid on the ground near where the monks slept. Our conspirator had crept in the dark to the cross and, upon lifting it, found it light as a feather—made cleverly of cork.

  Then, renting a horse, he had ridden hell-bent to Vercelli.

  Our little troop was gathered at the church in that tiny village, making preparations for the showing. It had been wonderful to again see Bianca, whom we told of my identity at once. No one could have been more delighted than she at my male disguise, for it was this ruse, she rightly observed, that had allowed me entry into the Platonic Academy and the inner circle of Hermeticism.

  “How I envy you,” she said on the evening before Savonarola was due to arrive. We were sitting by the fire in the villa she had rented for us all in Vercelli. “How did you have the courage?”

  I looked in the direction of Papa, who, with Leonardo, was bent over a map of Milan that Leonardo had drawn. It was rendered, quite strangely, as though seen from above—what my son called “a bird’s-eye view.” “There,” I said to Bianca, pointing at my father and son. “There sits my courage. It is born of many causes. Fear is oftentimes the greatest spur. Terror of losing Leonardo from my life was the prime mover for me. But Papa provided two others without which all the fear in the world could not have taken me down this long road. Belief in me was one. Education was the other.” I took Bianca’s hand. “But look at you.”

  “Me? I was born into a life of privilege, untold wealth,” she said, sitting back in her chair. “I had everything handed to me on golden platters. Even a classical education. Where is the courage in that?”

  I stared into the fire as I spoke. “Every female who is born into this life, no matter her station, can be called courageous as long as she keeps a part of her soul private and intact. Outwardly she may be a downtrodden daughter or wife, scolded or beaten by father or husband, suffer the agonies of childbirth. She can be preached to of hellfire and damnation by her priest, her body abused by ignorant women-loathing physicians. But as long as a tiny seed of self-consciousness lives within her . . .”

  “The divine spark,” Bianca said, grasping my other hand, tears welling in her eyes.

  “Yes, child, the divine spark. As long as it is never allowed to wither and die, anything is possible. I can live the better part of my life as a man. You can quietly defy your powerful family and become the linchpin of history’s most outrageous hoax!”

  Bianca hugged me to her. “Bless you,” she whispered.

  “Surely I am blessed,” I said and, fixing her with the warmest smile, added, “by the pope, the Holy Roman Empress, Isis, and Mother Nature. For what more could a person ask?”

  All was ready the next day. We conspirators, dressed in white as pilgrims, were stationed round the dimly lit Vercelli chapel, Zoroastre and I on either side of the front door, accepting payment for the viewing of the holy relic. Already, after two days, thousands had filed past the shroud, gazing at the vague spindly image in the shape of a man. Many would drop to their knees, the most devout prostrating themselves on the cold stone floor. Some, braver than most, would move closer and stare at the linen, with some innate sense that they were seeing something unusual. Perhaps some of the older ones among them had viewed the Lirey Shroud before and saw it was different.

  Most, however, were little more than pious cattle, heeding the admonitions of the church that to call themselves good Christians they must trudge many miles as penitents and pay their money for the privilege of viewing a piece of religious history. Being in the very presence of “Saint Peter’s shriveled finger,” or “a sliver from Barabbas’s cross,” would infuse the pilgrims with God’s grace and bring them a step closer to salvation. That people would believe anything made our task so much easier.

  Out the door I could see in the orderly line waiting for entrance a wider clumping of pilgrims, as though they surrounded someone of importance. Then I saw the tip of the balsa wood cross perched on the shoulder of a bent-over dark-haired man.

  Savonarola had arrived.

  With a nod to Zoroastre I moved to the front of the church. We had, until that moment, allowed but a single file of pilgrims to move along the right-hand wall of the chapel. Before the stained-glass window and behind the long, cloth-draped altar table, we had mounted the shroud on a horizontal plane, at eye level. Above the stained glass was another window of clear Venetian glass that Bianca had recently donated to the church and had had installed, which threw clear light on the shroud. When the pilgrims, one by one, had seen and prayed before the image, they’d been steered out a side door behind the altar.

  Now, with Savonarola approaching, the side door was closed and all the faithful, after their viewing, were steered back into the chapel, so that they filled the church to overflowing. It was whispered to them by Leonardo and Papa that they had been chosen to be present when the famous preacher, Savonarola, laid eyes on the holy relic. They were agog at the honor.

  When the prior, shorn of his cross, came through the door, he made his way up the line. I watched from the front as he gazed approvingly at the huge crowd that now stood on the floor of the church—his audience.

  Indeed. The show was about to begin.

  The prior, having been personally welcomed to the viewing by the Holy Roman Empress, passed by me, looking me right in the face without recognition. I was, after all, a mere woman now.

  Then he went and stood squarely in front of the shroud. He moved back, nearly as far as the altar table, then moved closer—closer than anyone else had dared. Starting at the right he moved along the length of its back view from foot to head, then from the head to the foot of the front view. The pilgrims were quiet as he observed the darker puddles of shadow where spikes had been driven through the corpse’s feet. He saw the shadowy calves and thighs, the high, dark forehead, the long skeletal arm bones and fingers crossed over the genitals.

  I saw his nose wrinkle in disgust and remembered Lorenzo saying Savonarola was repulsed by sex, that he secretly harbored a distaste for even the thought that God had lowered himself by placing a part of himself in a filthy human body. By my own memory Jesus was, in fact, rarely mentioned in the prior’s sermons. It was the Lord God alone who inspired his devotion.

  He viewed the shroud so long and so silently that tension grew among the faithful. Something was stirring in Savonarola’s mind, they were thinking. He must be hearing the words of the Almighty. If only he would speak and share the words of God!
>
  Finally, with slow deliberation, he turned and faced the audience.

  “My children,” he said, his voice reverberating effortlessly through the chapel. “We have before us an ancient relic belonging to the illustrious House of Savoy.”

  My heart was beating so hard I could feel it thumping in my throat. His next words would determine the success or failure of our entire conspiracy.

  “Despite what you may perceive as the bloody stains made by Christ’s body on his winding sheet, I will tell you now that God has spoken in my ear and told me the truth about the Lirey Shroud. The thing is a hoax!”

  A great commotion rose in the church. Savonarola allowed it to rumble and grow for a time, then silenced it with his next shouted words. “It is an abomination! I know how deeply you sinners long to see the true face of the Christ. How easy it is to see the outlines of a flayed back, a dark shadow at the place the centurion’s spear entered the body. But where are his eyes?” He flung his arm backward toward the shroud. “All I see are pale sockets. I say not only is this a forgery, but it is a pitiful one at that!”

  He turned and glared at Bianca, who was playing the part of a terrified woman who had offended God. “Fie on you and your House of Savoy!” Savonarola fairly spat the name. “Your husband, the Holy Roman Emperor, should punish you for your stupidity and greed. For accepting money from poor, unsuspecting pilgrims traveling hundreds of miles for some hope of salvation.” To the pilgrims he continued, “It is this kind of corruption to which we have been subjected time and time again by Rome, that unholy pit of iniquity!”

  “Good people,” came a kindly and humble voice from the front door of the church. Everyone turned in surprise to see a cardinal in his scarlet robe and skullcap. “I am Ascanio Sforza and I come from Rome,” he continued, making his way up the center of the church, allowing pilgrims to kiss his hands. “I will not say that place has not seen its fill of corruption, but since the recent ascension of Pope Alexander, Rome has become a place of dignity and tolerance. The Holy Father abhors persecution of any kind, and gives much credence to a person’s freedom of action and speech. He is much loved in that place.” Ascanio placed his hand over his heart. “And much loved by me.”