The Second Mrs. Giaconda

by E. L. Konigsburg

  “Do?” he asked.

  “Yes. Do,” she repeated. “My sister, Isabella, says that you can juggle and do acrobatics and that when you are very jolly, you do your imitation of a drunken monk, and that is certain to cheer me up.”

  “Oh, yes,” Salai answered. If someone needed cheering up, how could he not try? He had seen enough drunk monks, but he didn’t think he could start with that. “I shall juggle first,” he said.

  “What will you juggle?”

  He reached into his sack and pulled out an anise cookie. “This!” he exclaimed, and he then began tossing it from one hand to another. “Loop de loo. Loop de la,” he cooed.

  “Is that it?” Beatrice asked. “When will you toss two at a time?”

  “Right now!” Salai answered. He reached into the sack again and withdrew another anise cookie. “Are you sure you are ready for this?” he asked. The young duchess nodded. Salai looked at the cookies, knowing that the minute he tried to keep two in the air, one, at least, would go splat. Oh, well, he thought, Leonardo’s will be the first to go.

  One anise cake did go splat immediately. He looked down at it, and could not bear to leave it there for the ants. The second that he looked down, the other went splat also. Salai followed that second cookie to the ground, and began to pick up pieces and to eat them right there.

  The duchess got up from her chair and sniffed the cookies. “Anise?” she asked. Salai nodded, not raising his eyes, picking up crumbs to stuff into his mouth. The duchess began to do the same. “I love anise,” she said. “But don’t let me eat too much. I have vowed not to get fat. Mother is fat, and Isabella will get there, but not I.”

  “Isabella will keep a lean tongue,” Salai said. “She overworks it.”

  Duchess Beatrice laughed, her whole mouth open, her tongue and teeth coated with wet anise cookie, the uninhibited laugh of someone who would never let good manners interfere with a need as strong as laughter. “Have you another anise cake?” she asked. “An uncrushed one?” Salai nodded. “I know what!” she said. “You do a trick to make it appear. Make it just appear. You are very good at doing magic, Isabella says.”

  “In Mantua Isabella says is one word. We call her Isabellasays. In Mantua we do not allow the fair Duchess Isabellasays in the sun without an umbrella; we fear that she will get a sunburned tongue.”

  “Oh, Matello!” Beatrice exclaimed.

  At that moment Salai saw a dwarf coming from the far end of the court. Apparently, the real Matello had come forward. Beatrice, who was not facing the direction from which he was coming, could not see him. “Close your eyes, Duchess,” Salai said. “Close your eyes, and I shall have for you a surprise bigger than an anise cookie.” Beatrice obliged, and Salai motioned to the dwarf to hurry over. Matello toddled over, his large head weaving, his shoulders lifting and falling with each step. Salai held his finger over his mouth, and the dwarf obligingly kept quiet. Salai set one anise cake in each of the dwarf’s hands and popped one into his mouth. “Open your eyes, my lady,” he called.

  Beatrice looked from Matello to Salai and back again. And then, as daintily as you please, she plucked one, then two, then three cookies from the little man. She examined the one from his mouth, made a small face and popped it back between his thick lips. “That one is yours for keeps.” She took one of the other two and held it within Salai’s reach. Just as Salai raised his hand to take it, she swung it behind her back. “It will be yours,” she said, “when you tell me who you are.”

  “I am Salai,” he said.

  “And I am Beatrice d’Este, wife of Ludovico Sforza, Il Moro as he is called, the Duke of Milan.”

  “I know who you are,” Salai replied. “I’ve seen you before. I threw up the first time I saw you.”

  “Well,” Beatrice said, “I am certainly not as beautiful as you, but I had no idea that plain looks could upset your stomach.”

  “It was probably the anise cookies I ate that day.”

  At that she popped the cake she was holding out to him behind her back again. “What do you do besides throw up?” she asked.

  “Why,” he answered, “I am assistant to Leonardo da Vinci. Just now I was on my way to the mountains. He wants my advice on some scientific problems that have been puzzling him. Did you like the revolving stage that I invented for the production of Paradise?”

  “Yes, I liked that very much, Salai. Tell me, how many men were required to turn it?”

  “Not too many,” Salai answered. “Only about four or eight thousand.”

  “Tell me, Salai, did you design the men, too? For you made them very quiet. I could have sworn that your four or eight thousand men moving the stage made no more sound than half a dozen of the usual type.”

  “Oh, yes,” Salai replied, “I am very good at man-design. I specialize in designing quiet ones. I have one model that makes no sounds at all. Now listen and tell me if you can hear me.” With that Salai moved his mouth, forming the words Duchess Beatrice is a beautiful lady, letting no sound escape his lips.

  Beatrice watched Salai’s lips very closely, she nodded her head and then clicked her tongue. “That was not a success, Salai. I heard it. I heard Salai is the biggest liar in all of Milan.”

  At that moment Salai looked into the eyes of the duchess, and she looked into his eyes, too. They exchanged a look that bound them together for that moment and for years to come. Because each found in the eye of the other something he could appreciate. Both could recognize a genuine sense of mischief. Their look held until the smiles that were creeping up on their faces forced their eyes out of focus. Then they laughed, the soft laugh that comes when one sees a baby take its first steps, a laugh of rediscovery.

  Beatrice said, “Now, Salai, I want you to observe how very excellent I am at silent sounds.” She then moved her lips in a pattern that was easy to read, “Tell Matello to go home.” Then out loud she added, “Would you do that for me please, Salai?”

  “Certainly, my lady.” Salai turned to Matello and said, “The Duchess Beatrice no longer needs you. She would like you to return to your mistress, the Duchess Isabellasays, and tell her that her sister, Beatrice, misses her very much, as much as a person with chicken pox misses the measles.”

  The dwarf looked from Salai to Beatrice and back again and again. Beatrice said, “You translated that very well, Salai.” She smiled at the dwarf, took pity on his confusion and said, “You may go, Matello. I am quite cheered up.”

  As the little man went skipping back into the castle, Beatrice asked Salai, “Where are you going now?”

  “To the mountains.”

  “Oh, yes,” she said, “to consult with Leonardo about some scientific problems on the mountaintop.” She bolted upright in the chair. “I’m going with you,” she proclaimed. “Have you enough lunch in that sack for me, too?” “Enough of everything except anise cookies.”

  THEY FOUND Leonardo sitting on the ground, turning over in his hand a wild flower he had picked. Salai had seen him study weeds for hours at a time. Once he had asked, “What are you doing, Master Leonardo?” and Leonardo had answered, “Watching grass.” Salai had grown accustomed to long silences and strange answers.

  The young duchess walked over to where Leonardo sat twirling the plant between his fingers. She reached over his shoulder from behind and took it from him. “The star of Bethlehem,” she said.

  Leonardo looked up, startled. He started to rise. Beatrice put a hand on his shoulder with just enough pressure to tell him to remain seated. “Master Leonardo,” she said, “were you to draw this humble weed, you would grant it immortality.”

  “You are very kind, my lady,” Leonardo replied, turning to look at her.

  Beatrice returned his look, long and steady. “No,” she said. “I am not very kind. I am just kind. What I am very is: honest. I am very honest. And I am also very neglected.”

  “But, my lady, how can the wife to the richest duke in all of Italy feel neglected? Are you not surrounded by admirers an
d people willing to do your service?”

  “I am, Master Leonardo. And so are you. But how does it conquer loneliness to have admirers who know what I am but do not know who I am? How does it conquer loneliness to have not one single person who sees something other than a plain brown wrapping and the label Duchess written thereon? Had my coloring been blond and had my features been elegant, as are my sister’s, then people would care to look inside. They would find, Leonardo, bright colors inside this puce package. They would find an eye for every shade of every color of the rainbow and an ear for every quarter tone of the lute. They would find blood that pulses to every tincture and every texture and every taste.” The duchess paused. “Except anise,” she said, smiling toward Salai. “My taste for anise has been temporarily dulled.”

  Leonardo studied the young duchess. “You are plain, my lady,” he pronounced. He looked at the star of Bethlehem which he held in his hand. “What an inconspicuous flower comes from this whorl of leaves. It was the whorl of leaves that I was studying. Can you make your leaf structure more interesting than that inconspicuous flower of your face?”

  “It already is, Master Leonardo. But everyone is not Leonardo da Vinci. Everyone is not interested in looking at an inconspicuous flower. My husband is thirty-nine years old. He is a worldly man, and he is in love with one of the most beautiful and most intelligent women in Milan. He rushed back to her, to Milan, from our wedding in Pavia. I know why I am now being shipped about, but I say nothing to him. I am as tongue-tied with him as I was with my mother and sister. At home I was my parents’ second daughter, my mother’s second thought, and here I am second choice. Could I but gain my husband’s love, I know that I could disguise this plain brown wrapping.”

  “Don’t disguise it,” Leonardo said. “Make it transparent. Sit down, my lady,” Leonardo said. Beatrice sat, Leonardo spoke to her very quietly, very confidentially. “Your husband is a busy man. He is an impatient man also. But—for all his desire to show off, for all his need to surround himself with beautiful things and beautiful people—he has something that makes him the best patron in all of Italy. Better than the Medici of Florence. He can recognize the genuine from the sham, the original from the copy. He may not know why something is good, but he knows that it is, and he is willing to give that which is good his support. He has an instinct for true quality. He can detect quality in a horse, in a man, in a painting, and in a woman. He can appreciate it, delight in it. But dear lady, you are right; he will not take the time to look for it. He respects talent, but it must be brought to his attention. What original quality do you have to give him that Cecilia has not?”

  “A sense of fun, Master Leonardo.”

  “Then give him that, dear lady. That will lead him toward your soul. A sense of fun is sadly lacking in our times.”

  “Hey, Duchess,” Salai said, “I didn’t know that you knew about Cecilia.”

  “Salai, had I your regular features and your golden curls, people would worry about what I think. People don’t like to upset a beautiful thing. Were I as beautiful as Cecilia, I, too, would like to have my portrait painted by Leonardo da Vinci.”

  “You ought to let Leonardo paint you. He is the guy who believes that you paint a face to show what is inside the head. Besides,” Salai continued, “Leonardo now has me to help him.”

  The little duchess lowered her eyes and said, half to herself, “Perhaps. Perhaps, yes. But I think no. Perhaps there is too much vanity within me. Or perhaps I have too much respect for the master’s talent. Would it be fair to have him who can create light on canvas be saddled with painting a face that should remain in shadow?”

  “Listen,” Salai said, “Leonardo draws all kind of funny faces. He draws grotesques all the time. There are pages of them all over the studio.”

  “My face is something between grotesque and beautiful, Salai. It is something far less interesting; it is plain.”

  “Hike it,” Salai said.

  “And so do I,” Leonardo added.

  The young duchess sighed, then smiled. “Let’s eat,” she said.

  AFTER THAT DAY in the mountains Beatrice often sent for Salai. Leonardo would excuse the boy from his duties in the shop, and Salai would attend to the duchess. Leonardo often joined them in the evenings.

  Because Leonardo visited Beatrice, others soon followed. They came because of the master; they stayed because of the duchess. Evenings in her chambers were filled with poetry being read and songs being sung and music being played. All of that was in the air plus one other ingredient that Salai knew was magic.

  Salai was convinced that Beatrice was a magician. He noticed that four people in a room could sit in each other’s presence and stifle yawns but that the same four people plus Beatrice suddenly had a great deal to say to each other. Even the secretive, self-conscious Leonardo began to fill the pages of his notebooks with stories and fables to read to her; he began to invent riddles, very complicated and intellectual and too difficult for everyone to understand. But everyone enjoyed seeing the master relax enough to tell them.

  Evenings with Beatrice were spent indoors in the pursuit of art, but afternoons with her were spent out-of-doors in the pursuit of pure pleasure. Francesco and his grackles were good company in the afternoon. They all enjoyed fishing and riding and hunting and just plain fooling around. Beatrice often made up elaborate games and jokes; nothing suited Salai more.

  Beatrice once asked Salai to bring her one of his sister’s most miserable dresses. She gave Dorotea one of her good brocade gowns in exchange. With both she and Salai dressed in old, faded clothing, she then gave him a dirty sack and filled it with gold ducats. Before he could sling it over his shoulder, she laid on top of the pile of money ten large dried, salted flounder. Then they invaded the shop of the silversmith. When he saw them arrive, the merchant tried to shoo them away before any of his customers could see them or smell them. When it was clear to Bea trice how badly he wanted them to leave, she signaled Salai, and Salai shook the sack. The sack made the unmistakable sound of gold on gold, and that helped the merchant to decide that he would allow them to look around. Nothing washes cleaner than gold.

  “How much for this saltcellar?” Beatrice asked.

  The silversmith reached over her shoulders, taking the piece from her grasp. “Forty ducats,” he said, sniffing into his perfumed handkerchief. “The Duchess of Milan herself has one just like it.”

  Beatrice looked at Salai and asked, “Have you seen such at the castle?”

  Salai shook his head no.

  “Only yesterday,” the merchant said, “one of our duchess’ agents came to my shop to inquire about purchasing several of my wares for her collections. It is an honor to be asked to serve our lady’s exquisite taste.”

  “Would it be worth ten ducats to serve her exquisite taste?”

  “It is worth much more than that,” the merchant replied.

  Beatrice turned to Salai and said, “We’re going to buy a saltcellar.” Salai grinned broadly and bobbed his head up and down as he had seen the court jesters do. He then reached into his sack and brought forth the ten fish. He laid them out on the counter one by one, looking up at Beatrice and waiting for her nod before laying down the next. The merchant coughed and sputtered and urged Salai to hurry up and get to the money, but Salai took his time. He placed a gold ducat on each fish, wiping the coin on his shirt first, looking up to Beatrice and smiling before placing it so. Once each fish had a single coin, he repeated the process with a second. Beatrice smiled at the merchant. “The fish help him count,” she said after Salai had laid out a total of thirty ducats.

  “Your boy is not finished. He must lay one more coin on each fish. Four coins times ten fish equals forty coins.”

  Beatrice said, “That cannot be. Three apples times ten pears is thirty apple-pears. Therefore, four coins times ten fish is equal to forty fish-coins or coin-fish, whichever you prefer.”

  The merchant said, “No, you see, these fish are merely coun
ters.”

  “No,” Beatrice said, “that cannot be either—the fish are on the counter.” Salai did his best not to smile.

  The silversmith shook his head to clear it, then said, “The price of the saltcellar is forty ducats. I have nothing more to add.”

  “I don’t want you to add,” Beatrice said. “I want you to subtract. You said that it was worth ten ducats to serve the Duchess of Milan. Forty subtract ten equals thirty.” Then Beatrice smiled at him, looked down at her toes and said softy, shyly, “I am the Duchess of Milan.”

  The shopkeeper’s patience was at its absolute end. He decided that he had had enough. He looked across his shop and saw the handsome and well-dressed San Severino and Francesco walk in. In a voice loud enough for San Severino, Francesco and half of Milan to hear, the merchant said, “If you are the Duchess of Milan, I must say that the Duke of Milan is Neptune himself, for you smell like a fishwife.”

  At that moment Beatrice sent a signal to San Severino, and he came bounding over. He kissed her heartily on both cheeks. “How are you, my fair duchess?” he asked. Francesco followed suit. He, too, came over, bowed and greeted Beatrice according to the custom of the court. The merchant smiled and stammered, confused and worried that he had not only lost a sale but also lost the chance to serve the Duchess of Milan.

  Beatrice, San Severino and Francesco all linked arms together and were about to leave the shop when Beatrice turned and said to Salai, “Please give the man forty ducats. The saltcellar is certainly worth only thirty, but the afternoon’s entertainment is worth ten.” Salai quickly placed one more ducat on each fish. Beatrice then picked up the saltcellar and said to the silversmith, “I have made an honest man of you, sir. Now you can tell the world that the Duchess of Milan has a saltcellar just like this.”

  Salai glanced over at the row of fish, each one having four gold ducats laid on it. “I’ll leave you my fishies,” he said. And then they all linked arms and marched out.