The Poet Prince

by Kathleen McGowan

  and the bloodline of the blessed.

  He who will submerge the influence of Mars

  And exalt the influence of Venus

  To embody grace over aggression.

  He will inspire the hearts and minds of the people

  So as to illuminate the path of service

  And show them the Way.

  This is his legacy,

  This, and to know a very great love.

  Good King René looked up at his old friend with eyes that blurred with tears. “As you know, I have not been the most perfect prince.

  I have indeed been blessed to know a very great love, I have fathered an equinox-born daughter who fulfills a prophecy of her own, and I have tried to complete all the tasks set out for me to benefit the Order and preserve our ways. But I will admit it does not grieve me to relinquish the title. I shall sleep better once this boy is born, and born perfectly to the plan set forth by God through the schedule of the stars. Perhaps I shall sleep once and for all.”

  “Do not speak so, René,” the elder Cosimo chided. “You are such a young man. There is much greatness awaiting you in this life.”

  King René d’Anjou had come to Florence at the request of Fra Francesco, known by the exalted title of Master of the Order of the Holy Sepulcher, to surrender his title as the reigning Poet Prince in preparation for the baby whose coming was now foretold. The date of this meeting had been carefully calculated by the astrologers within the Order, who were known as the Magi in honor of the three priest-kings who foresaw the birth of Jesus. Indeed, the legacy of the Magi spanned the fifteen hundred years since the appearance of the Star of Bethlehem. These modern Magi were highly educated in the way of the ancients, conversant in teachings from Zoroaster and the Kabbalah, and were experts in the study of the Sybilline Oracles. They were masters of Egyptian mysticism, Chaldean numerology, and above all, the workings of the planets on the fortunes of mankind. The Magi understood that astrology was a gift from God, meant to be a scepter of power when enhanced by the intellect, spirit, and free will of those who were enlightened enough to utilize it properly. It was the ultimate tool that could be used to accomplish the will of God.

  The current Magi were on constant watch for the special children who had been predicted in this generation. In the Order, “The time returns” was the ancient motto that they lived by, and the stars indicated that the coming decades would bring together the most significantly gifted and divinely blessed men and women. There were specific cycles of greatness in history, eras which were predetermined by God, through the stars, to bring forth angelic and evolved souls to improve the state of mankind. The Magi, along with the elders of the Order, were not content to leave all this to chance—nor had they ever been. Through the careful use of astrology they could ensure that certain children were conceived at the appropriate time and in the immaculate way that would dictate divine blessings in birth and through life. With specific guidance and wisdom, this new generation would create a golden age, a rebirth of mankind that would combine ancient wisdom with progressive thought to catapult humanity into a shining time of peace and prosperity. It was a divine vision of unity, of a time when all men and women would understand what it meant to be anthropos—fully realized and fulfilled humans—as defined in the Order’s most sacred text, the Libro Rosso.

  The Libro Rosso, the great red book, was a protected text passed down through the Order. It contained within it a perfect copy of the stunning lost gospel written by Jesus, referred to as the Book of Love. Legend within the Order told that Jesus left this priceless document to Mary Magdalene so that she might teach his words from it after he was gone. While the original gospel written in the hand of the Lord himself had disappeared to history, a perfect copy was made by the apostle Philip in the presence of the first book. That copy was now bound within the gilded leather cover of the Libro Rosso. Also in the sacred red book was a history of the Order, including lives of the saints, many of whom were not recognized by the traditional Church, and others with very different stories to tell than those which were now “accepted” by Rome. Finally, the book contained a series of prophecies, including that of the Poet Prince. The Libro Rosso had been in the possession of French royalty for centuries and was now kept by Good King René as the reigning heir to the prophecy.

  René ran his hands through his hair as he settled back in one of Cosimo’s plush velvet-covered chairs. He sighed heavily before continuing. “Ah, this child, this child . . . you must know that it is a curse as much as it is a blessing, Cosimo. It is . . . not an easy thing to live with this prophecy. And yet for those of us who do, we must remember at all times that we were chosen for it by God. It is a responsibility that we can never, never lose sight of.”

  The portents showed that the next child to fulfill the prophecy, the Poet Prince who would usher in this new era of enlightenment, was destined to be the child of Cosimo’s oldest son, Piero. Their focus now would be to choose the appropriate “Mary” to wed to Piero, to carry the child and to raise him properly in preparation for his destiny.

  “This grandchild of yours must be taught carefully, by our Master, in the same way that we were—only with even greater focus. We must learn from our mistakes.”

  Cosimo nodded. “Any advice you choose to impart to prepare us as we raise this child to fulfill his destiny will be considered the most valuable counsel.”

  René had thought about this while traveling north from Sansepolcro the previous day. Once the Master had told him that the new Poet Prince was expected to be born into the Medici family, he knew that it was time to pass on the mantle he had worn for so many years. And he would, in all honesty, be relieved to be rid of it. He was a young man still, and yet at times he felt ancient and exhausted by the responsibilities of his heritage. The burden had grown far too heavy, and he would enjoy stepping back from it. And while his life had been filled with the blessings of the highly privileged, René d’Anjou had also endured his share of tragedies. One, above all others, haunted him every day of his life and would until he took his last breath and could then beg her forgiveness in heaven.

  Jeanne.

  She was known by many names now as her legend continued to grow since the terrible day of her execution eleven years earlier. She was the Maid of Orléans, she was Jeanne d’Arc; even the English crossed themselves when speaking of her, calling her Joan of Arc and the Daughter of God, while whispering that the Church had made a dreadful mistake in her execution as a heretic. But for King René, Jeanne had been so much more: she was his spiritual sister, his family’s protégée, the Expected One, the hope of France . . . and his greatest failure. That he could not protect her in the end was unforeseeable; that he did not have the courage to do so was unforgivable. And this was the source of the self-loathing that tortured his sleepless nights since that wretched day in May of 1431 when Jeanne had been burned alive for the crime of hearing the voices of saints and angels too clearly.

  If René was truly honest with himself, with his brethren in the Order, and with his God, it was his courage that had ultimately failed him—with a fair amount of help from his ego and his love of worldly comforts. He blamed his youth for this ultimate failing; he had only been twenty-two at the time, just three years older than Jeanne. He

  had been young enough to falter under such a weighty burden. He had not been willing to risk everything he had, everything he was, to try to save the girl he loved more than a sister, the prophetess who had been an angelic being in a girl’s body. He knew she had been both conceived and raised to be the Daughter of God, and yet he had allowed her to die through his absolute passivity when she most needed him to save her.

  Good King René now lived in a self-imposed hell every day of his life. He would not wish that on the innocent child who would be born into this terrible prophecy.

  René cleared his throat. “Tell this future grandchild . . . that he must have the courage of ten thousand lions, and most of all he must not fear Rome and their thre
ats. The angels and the innocents who live among us must be protected at all costs.” René grew silent for a moment remembering his own failure once again. “As you know, the Magi say that more angelic beings and special ones are coming now as the time returns. They must be cared for. Your young prince will be born to lead them, and he must never waiver in what he knows to be right action, for one misstep can be the ruination of all that is in God’s greatest plans. I have seen that.

  “For while God provides us with the outline of our destiny . . .”

  Cosimo finished the sentence, a tenet of the Order’s teachings, “. . . he also gives us the free will to fulfill that destiny—or not.”

  As his old friend continued, Cosimo listened carefully, committing it all to his sharp memory. He saw the deep lines etched in René’s face, once a place where only laughter and witticisms reigned. But eleven years of terrible regret had aged him brutally and prematurely.

  “I buckled under the pressures of the jackals in Rome, Cosimo, and to their henchmen priests in Paris. I despised their corruption, recognized it for all that it was and always has been, but in the end I feared their power more.” His voice cracked as he spoke, safe in the presence of one of his oldest friends, and a man with whom all shared secrets were sacrosanct. “I . . . I could have saved her. I . . .”

  He could not continue. The years of guilt and agony came out in a flood as the king of Naples and Jerusalem buried his head in his hands and wept openly. Cosimo remained silent and waited with respect for his friend, his cousin of blood and spirit, to move through his pain.

  René raised his head after another minute, wiping his eyes while he spoke. “I failed her, I failed the Order, and I failed God. Fra Francesco says that I have already been forgiven. But I do not accept that, for I have yet to forgive myself. You can help me to make amends for my failings, old friend, by raising this child to be the true Poet Prince of our prophecy. Let him learn from my mistakes and vow that he will not repeat them. And as my gift to all that he can become, I will leave him with a great legacy of treasure, including our most sacred Libro Rosso, for it belongs in the hands of the worthy. And I want him to have

  this.”

  René reached behind his neck to unfasten the clasp of a long silver chain that hung out of sight and beneath his clothes. As he removed the necklace, Cosimo could see that it was a pendant, a small reliquary locket made of silver. René rose from his chair to place it in Cosimo’s hand, then paced the room as he explained.

  “It was Jeanne’s,” he said simply, allowing the import of those words to land before continuing with his explanation. “It was her protective amulet, passed down through the Order and given to her at her equinox birth when it was determined that she was . . . who and what she was. Jeanne wore it every day of her life once she was old enough to understand its purpose. On the day that she was taken, it had fallen off and was later found on the floor where she had last been dressed. The chain was broken. She must not have known it fell off, as she would never have left without it. I contend that she would not have been arrested if she had been wearing it; she would be with us today. Its powers of protection are said to be unlimited. God knows that she wore it into heated battles where she could not possibly have survived, and yet she always emerged from those victorious and unscathed.”

  René walked over and put his hand over Cosimo’s for emphasis. “There is great power in this amulet, Cosimo. See that the child understands it, and that he wears it always. It is a greater shield than armor. One day it may save his life, as it should have saved Jeanne the Maid.”

  Cosimo moved toward the lantern on his desk to look at the amulet more closely.

  It was oval and made like a locket, but with a cover that slipped over the top, like the lid on a tiny box. The lid covered the red wax seal that was used to both protect and authenticate religious artifacts. In this case, the seal was so ancient and deteriorated that it was impossible to determine what the original image had looked like in its entirety, but there were tiny stars visible in what appeared to be a circular pattern embedded in the wax.

  While smaller than Cosimo’s thumbnail, the casing was, conversely, highly detailed and well preserved. Embossed into the silver cover was a miniature crucifixion sequence. At the foot of the cross, a long-haired and kneeling Mary Magdalene clung to the feet of her dying beloved. Strangely, the only other element—carefully crafted—was a columned temple perched on a hill behind the crucifixion. The temple looked distinctly Greek in style, resembling the Acropolis in Athens, the shrine built to honor feminine wisdom and strength.

  Cosimo turned the case over to see the relic itself. It was minuscule, so tiny as to be nearly invisible, but it was there. A speck of wood was held in place by some type of resin, adhered into the center of a golden flower. Beneath the relic was a sliver of paper, handwritten in painstaking script:

  v. croise

  It was an abbreviation that the learned Cosimo understood, even written as it was in the antiquated French of the troubadours. Vraie Croise. He looked up at his friend. “This is a piece of the True Cross. The most sacred relic of the Order.”

  “It is. And it will protect your grandson in a world that is most often hostile to those of us who would strive to change it.”

  Cosimo took the amulet with gratitude, aware as he did so that René’s final words on the subject sounded a little too much like a prophecy of their own.

  “It will save his life, no matter how determined others will be to

  take it.”

  It would be several hours before the others arrived and the official meeting of the Order came together. Cosimo, in anticipation of René’s potential melancholy over the day, had planned a diversion for his friend that he knew would be greatly appreciated. He led Rene through the grounds of Careggi in the golden heat of a Tuscan afternoon, toward an apple cellar beneath the stables. Rene was perplexed at the destination but followed with interest. No doubt Cosimo de’ Medici had something extraordinary in that apple cellar. And René was relatively certain it was not apples.

  “Art will save the world,” Cosimo said with a smile, and Rene returned the sentence. Passed down through the Order, it was believed to have been spoken by the holy Nicodemus, who was the first man to create a piece of Christian art. His breathtakingly beautiful sculpture of the crucified Christ was the stuff of legend in Tuscany and remained on permanent display in the ancient city of Lucca. Both Nicodemus and his patron, Joseph of Arimathea, were present at the crucifixion and aided in the removal of the body of Jesus from the cross. After witnessing the events of Good Friday, Nicodemus carved the first crucifix, in this case a life-sized version of the image he could not erase from his mind. The face of Jesus he carved was considered so sacred that the artwork was referred to only as the Volto Santo, the Holy

  Face.

  On the day of the original Easter, Joseph of Arimathea and Nicodemus, along with another revered artist who would be known to history as Saint Luke, founded the Order of the Holy Sepulcher. They pledged through their Order to preserve the teachings of the Way as Jesus instructed through the gospel written in his own hand, the Book of Love. When Jesus announced his resurrection to Mary Magdalene on that sacred Sunday, the three men knew beyond any doubt that she was the chosen successor of their messiah. The teachings of the Book would endure under her guidance, and the newly founded Order would be sworn to protect this woman, her children, and her descendants through time. Most of all, they would be sworn to protect the true teachings, the Way of Love as Jesus had set it out most specifically for his followers. Often the Order would preserve these teachings through secret symbolism and encodings in art and literature.

  As a result, like Cosimo and all nobles of the Order, René was a keen patron of the arts. He was looking forward to a time when he could focus more completely on art, music, and architecture and less on politics. Because art was the language members of the Order used to communicate the truth, both Cosimo and René were constantly seekin
g new ways to see the beauty of the secret teachings expressed in art.

  As the men approached the apple cellar, René stopped to listen to the deeply melodic sound emanating from behind the door. He looked at Cosimo, amused. “Singing? Do you have magical apples here in the wilds of Tuscany, Cosimo, which have the power of song?”

  Cosimo laughed in return. “No, I have wayward artists who are delinquent in their commissions, who have the power of painting.”

  René was taken aback. Cosimo was renowned as the most benevolent of patrons, giving generously to his artists, even supporting them and their families completely, while lecturing other patrons to be more magnanimous. “You, of all patrons? You lock up your artists in a cellar?”

  “Well, not normally. But Lippi is the exception to all rules.”

  René gasped. “Lippi? You have Fra Filippo Lippi locked in there?”

  Cosimo nodded nonchalantly. “Yes, I do. He doesn’t sound distressed to you, does he?”

  René shook his head with no small degree of amazement. The booming voice from the apple cellar sounded positively—and

  inexplicably—ebullient. That the sound was coming from Filippo Lippi, who was the most impressive artist working in Florence, was astonishing. Lippi’s frescoes were considered so divinely inspired that even the king of France was interested in sending for him. But Lippi would never leave Cosimo de’ Medici or Florence, not for anything: not for the king of France, the king of the world, or a king’s ransom. For all his eccentricities, Fra Filippo Lippi was unerringly loyal to the patron who protected him against the perils of the world.

  Much of what made Lippi’s art transcendent was his extraordinary ability to capture the divine by communicating with it directly. He was a member of what Cosimo referred to as his “army of angels,” an elite group of supremely gifted artists who had the talent to translate divine inspirations and teachings into canvas and marble. Within the Order, they were called “the angelics.” The coming of these scribes of a new era had also been predicted by the Magi. Cosimo had a passion for locating and cultivating these artists, and he had succeeded most exceptionally with the discovery of Lippi, as well as the remarkable sculptor known in Florence by the name Donatello. They were geniuses possessed by divine inspiration, and consequently, both were rarely impressed by any earthly authority. The angelic qualities they embodied did not always make for the most harmonious lives here on earth. Lippi and Donatello were both notoriously difficult and temperamental. Indeed, no Florentine patron but Cosimo had ever been able to work successfully with either. But then again, no patron but Cosimo truly understood who, and what, they were.