17
The meal had ended. Alessandro and Maria had gone out into the courtyard for a breath of fresh air and the servants were busy clearing up the dining room and kitchen. Lorena was wondering what kind of impression Mauricio had made on her parents.
Stealthily she climbed the staircase leading to the floor above. She came to the room she shared with her sister but did not stop there. Pausing only to take off her shoes in order not to make any noise, she walked toward her parents’ room. She could hear voices and the door was slightly ajar. Strategically placing herself to make sure she could not be seen, she listened keenly to the conversation. She had to be extremely aware, not only of her parents’ words, but also the slightest noise that could mean that someone was coming upstairs. Were anybody to discover her barefoot listening at the door, she would find herself in an extremely compromising situation. Nevertheless, her curiosity overrode her fear.
“He seemed like a nice young man, this Mauricio,” her mother was saying.
“But Flavia, did you not notice the way he was looking at Lorena?”
“Of course I did, Francesco. It is quite obvious that he is very taken with our eldest child.”
They were talking loudly enough to be clearly heard without any effort. Lorena thought yet again about her siblings’ names—Alessandro, like her paternal grandfather, and Maria, her maternal grandmother. Why had they gone against tradition and not christened her with the name of one of her relatives? It would have been logical for her to be named Maria, considering she had been born three and a half years before her sister. She had been puzzled by this question for a long time and had even summoned up enough courage to ask her mother about it. “I once had a dream in which your name came to me so clearly and I was so insistent that Francesco finally gave in,” she had answered. Since when did a dream carry enough weight to tip the balance against a tradition going back generations? Her father’s voice brought her back to the present.
“Well he can forget about her! By no means will she ever be his. We are not going to throw all our efforts overboard with such a hazardous marriage. This Mauricio does not seem to possess a private fortune. He owes his position in the Medici Bank to the fact Lorenzo values him. Please God that Il Magnifico continues at the head of our republic. However, you know full well that not everyone thinks like me. The enemies that seek his downfall are extremely powerful. Should Lorenzo fall, Mauricio would be no more than a penniless foreigner in a city that is not his.”
“Although it should be said,” her mother intervened, “that the boy seems intelligent enough and enterprising. If Il Magnifico manages to overcome this crisis, Mauricio could rise high, carried on the shoulders of a patron like him.”
“This is only a possibility that depends more on good fortune than any other consideration. And our daughter deserves solid reality instead of a ticket for the lottery. Take Luca Albizzi for example. Now there is a sure bet. He is not only of noble birth but also a man of means. Lorenzo respects him and Luca is sufficiently shrewd to dance to Il Magnifico’s tune. But should Lorenzo disappear from the scene, Luca would be one of the beneficiaries of the change of regime.”
“Yes, we have discussed this often. We have always been pro-Medici. Nevertheless, if they were to fall one day, the majority of the families who were exiled during their mandate would return. And in Florence, when some lose, others gain. The main families connected to the Medici would be banished. This would not be our case, because although we are wealthy, we are not sufficiently important yet. However, we shall inevitably lose our privileges and social standing. Everything will be more difficult for us.”
“Exactly!” said her father emphatically. “Instead of continuing to improve, our lineage would be brought down to a lower rank. But with Luca, quite the opposite would happen. The majority of the Albizzi would return from exile and settle anew in Florence. What with their wealth and contacts they would rapidly become one of the leading families of the city. And Luca would be one of them. I am sure that in spite of the love he claims to have for Lorenzo, he keeps the Albizzi clan regularly informed about what is brewing in the corridors of Florence.”
“And you think,” continued her mother, “that a marriage alliance with Luca Albizzi would guarantee us a prominent position in the new regime that might come to power?”
“Of course, with the added advantage that we lose nothing if Lorenzo finally does stay in power in as much as they have a good relationship. As Luca is a distant relative of Rinaldo Albizzi, the old enemy of Cosimo de Medici, Lorenzo does not see him as a danger but rather a tangible example of how anyone who submits to the Medici peace can live prosperously.”
“In other words,” concluded her mother, “we could play a double game.”
“We not only ‘could,’ but ‘should’ take that course of action. Although this is the city of commerce and the arts, no one can rise above a certain level without counting on the goodwill of those who are in power. Luca Albizzi has shown interest in Lorena. Do you not see that in the present circumstances this is a heaven-sent miracle? To reject it would be an insult toward our families. It would be like burying the hopes for which our forbearers fought so hard under a mound of earth. If we were to act so negligently, I would not be surprised if they turned over in their graves. That is why I would be happy to spend money on a splendid dowry for our daughter, should Luca be the chosen one.”
“There is a lot of truth in what you say, Francesco, but I think it would be preferable if the marriage pleased our daughter.”
“Of course it will be to her liking,” asserted her father categorically. “Luca is neither an old man nor a scatterbrained youth. He is attractive and courteous, a wealthy man without vices. What more could a woman want?”
Lorena heard footsteps coming up the stairs accompanied by the unmistakable voices of her two siblings. She quickly went to her room before her sister’s head appeared on the staircase. She had heard enough. Her parents were not interested in Mauricio. They only had eyes for Luca. Although their words were full of common sense, there was something she could not get out of her head. During the dinner with Luca, she thought she had caught a sinister glint in his eyes. She could not explain this feeling rationally, but for a brief moment she was filled with dark forebodings concerning him. It was as if in a brief flash, when his eyes were lost in thought, she had been allowed to glimpse deep into the hidden black abyss of Luca’s soul. And what she saw, she did not like. It would be pointless to try to explain her strange intuitions. She had already learned that as a child. She had to displease Luca at any price for him not to want her as his wife.
18
Mauricio marked the end of the chapter with a garnet-colored satin ribbon, shut his book, and let his gaze roam across the high-paneled ceilings of Lorenzo’s private library. The Apology of Socrates was a deeply absorbing work, but his mind kept wandering away from the Platonic dialogue toward thoughts of reuniting with Lorena. There were moments when he actually felt her presence near him and the image of her expressive eyes appeared to him in dreams, transmitting an unfathomable peace that dispelled all his anguish. It was a sort of ecstatic love that seemed to come from afar, from a time before he had been born, as if they had both belonged to some distant, long-forgotten homeland, in a previous world. Was this, then, the mystery of love as recited by poets? During the luncheon, Lorena’s parents had been pleasant enough, but had established boundaries as invisible as they were impenetrable. It was understandable. After all, Mauricio was an outsider who had been artificially introduced into a world that was not his.
He had lodgings in the grandest palace in Florence without being a nobleman. He attended the meetings of the Platonic Academy, where great thinkers and even geniuses were plentiful, although he himself was far from being an erudite person or even a humble artist. He could dine with Lorenzo de Medici himself, though any ordinary courtier boasted better table manners than he did. He had shares in the Tavola Medici in Florence, in spite of kn
owing nothing of matters relating to the world of finance. And although he was surrounded by great fortunes, he had no money to his name other than the salary assigned to him by Lorenzo.
In short, if Il Magnifico were to be no more, this borrowed world would vanish with him. If this were to happen, there was one thing that nobody could ever take away from him: knowledge. Mauricio’s eyes came to rest on the bookcases that surrounded him. No other library or European monastery could offer a collection such as the one assembled by the Medici. Agents sent by Cosimo, Lorenzo’s grandfather, had scoured Constantinople, Egypt, Palestine, and the most far-flung European monasteries in search of ancient manuscripts. Outstanding among them was the Corpus Hermeticum, written by the Egyptian sage Hermes Trismegistus at the very dawn of humanity. They had found a Greek copy in a remote Macedonian monastery and Cosimo had commissioned Marsilio Ficino to translate it immediately, urging him to abandon any other work he was doing at the time. Thus the works of Plato, which had been rediscovered a short time before, had to await their turn patiently before being read in Latin. Cosimo, fearful of being struck down by the thunderbolt of death, wished to comprehend the mysteries of Egypt in the autumn of his life. What conclusions would the aged Cosimo have passed onto Lorenzo, his favorite grandson? Mauricio wondered, somewhat intrigued. The question was not to be taken lightly because Hermes Trismegistus delved into such fascinating matters as the rites and magic formulae of Egyptian religion, the ascension of the soul through the spheres, and various ecstatic religious experiences enabling one to reach superior levels of understanding. Mauricio had feared that these teachings could be contrary to those of the church, but Marsilio Ficino, supported by the authority of respected fathers of the church, had honored him by calling him a prophet, comparable to Moses. This argument was upheld by the fact that his writings, far from being contrary to Christianity, permitted one to enter even deeper into its mysteries.
Mauricio found his emotion difficult to contain and a thrill ran through him with an intensity he had never felt before. In that universe that Lorenzo offered him, all the answers to the great mysteries of creation seemed suddenly within his reach. So many years of daydreaming, so many nights trying to grasp the truth in the solitude of his bedroom, and now to finally turn up in the only city in which everything was possible: Florence.
Because Florence not only meant philosophy, but also beauty in all its manifestations. The Medici library was a good example of this in as much as its mahogany bookshelves safeguarded collections of the best poets, especially those who, like Il Magnifico, enjoyed using their vernacular language instead of Latin. Lorenzo held in special esteem the extraordinarily original verses of Saint Francis of Assisi freely singing to Brother Sun and Sister Moon without submitting to the dictatorship of Latin and poetic meter. A place of honor was also reserved for the works of Petrarch, pioneer in the lyrical use of the Tuscan language and in the introduction of pagan elements within Christianity. However Il Magnifico’s enthusiasm for poetry extended well beyond the Italian peninsula. Lancelot by Chrétien de Troyes or Parzifal by Wolfram von Eschenbach attested to this, as did the bound manuscripts containing the most wonderful poems composed by the troubadours of French Occitania from the twelfth century. Written in the language of Occitan, which was very similar to Catalan, Mauricio had learned to love them and recite them from a very young age. In them, love was unattainable yet filled with longing. Would his passion for the inaccessible Lorena also become a verse condemned to misfortune?
19
“A stroll around the grounds of the villa would do us good after such a copious meal,” suggested Francesco, Lorena’s father.
Luca felt slightly dizzy as he rose from the table, noticing for the first time that the drink had gone to his head. Although the wine he had been served was delicious, it had more body than the one produced on his property and he had to admit, much to his regret, that it was also superior. In any case, either because of its different composition or due to the large quantity imbibed, Luca felt a sensation similar to vertigo as he walked around the gardens that graced the main entrance of the property.
Only a few miles outside of Florence, the villa of the Ginori family looked quite magnificent. In his old age, Francesco’s father had bought an old, ramshackle house together with its land at an extremely reasonable price. With the passing of the years, Francesco had transformed it into a wonderful manor of great beauty. The old run-down house was now a sumptuous mansion and the vineyards produced one of the best wines Luca had ever tasted. The quality of the olives was also excellent, judging by the oil.
The plump, self-important hens clacking in the poultry yard were a testimony to the quality of the estate-grown barley and even the pigs proudly displayed their generous proportions, well fed from the acorns produced by the many holm oaks scattered around the estate.
Strolling along a small path in the company of Lorena, Luca reflected on how in these modern times the new rich were able to acquire what would have been the exclusive property of the nobility in the old days. Lorena’s parents and siblings had come to a halt a few steps behind to admire the landscape. This could hardly be attributed to sheer coincidence. Sufficient distance had been left to enable them to talk intimately without being overheard, but at the same time their every movement could also be seen by the whole family.
“What a magnificent day,” said Luca attempting to break the ice, “and a perfect way of spending it in such lovely, pleasant surroundings, although if truth be known I have to admit to you that no view, however beautiful and pleasing, could ever rival your company.”
“It is indeed fortunate to escape from the August heat to this villa, where the mountain groves regale us with their refreshing breeze.”
Luca was annoyed that Lorena had deliberately ignored his gallantries. During the meal she had been very silent and had not laughed at any of his witty remarks. Luca had attributed this behavior to the nervousness she might have felt being in the presence of someone who was probably going to become her husband. However, he was forced to change his opinion. Her answer to his flattery had been a subtle snub and her whole previous attitude concealed signs of the low esteem she felt for him.
“Have you heard of the attacks that the countryside and villas south of Florence have been suffering?” asked Luca. “The enemy troops,” he continued, without waiting for an answer, “have achieved significant advances toward our city. They are burning everything they encounter on their way and to make things worse, organized bands of criminals, taking advantage of the confusion, are coming down from the mountains and ransacking properties by surprise. Do you not fear something similar could occur on your estate? They could acquire fine spoils if your land came to their attention … ”
Luca enjoyed frightening this young woman, although he did not really believe the danger was imminent. Where did her airs and graces come from? She should have been kissing the very ground he walked on instead of keeping up this pose of distant superiority. He would put her in her place …
“As you have pointed out so well, the enemy is attacking from the south and we are just to the north of Florence. And my fears are now allayed knowing that we could always count on your help in case of need.”
Luca was convinced that the little minx was trying to ridicule him. He would have plenty of time to pay her back in kind … Although it had not been mentioned explicitly, the betrothal to Lorena had already been arranged. Luca had told her parents that it would be an honor for any Florentine to marry daughters like his. Francesco had answered him that if an honorable gentleman chose to cast his eyes upon them, he would be happy to contribute toward the aforesaid union with a dowry of two thousand gold florins, although at the moment it was only Lorena who was of a marrying age. Two thousand gold florins constituted a small fortune, which Luca desperately needed. Despite everyone thinking that his position in Florence was extremely solvent, the truth was very different. He had secretly run up a large amount of debts in other cities, so
me with relatives and others with moneylenders. The events taking place in Florence had made his creditors uneasy and many of them were unwilling to wait any longer for repayment. If they reclaimed their loans, he would be obliged to sell his properties at a loss and he would be left in ruins. Therefore, it was better to adapt to new times and marry this little shrew. He would soon tame her. He glimpsed her flimsy silk dress tightly fitting under her breast and gathered at the waist with a beautiful braided gold belt. Luca became aroused. Soon he would be able to undress her and take her.
“I am happy you are not afraid,” lied Luca, “because I have heard truly horrible things. They say soldiers do not restrict themselves to looting property. When they find a woman who pleases them, they rape her mercilessly. Afterward they brag in the taverns, and continuing in the same vile manner tell everyone that she derived more pleasure with them than with her own husband.”
“How could you recount such unpleasant falsehoods?” replied Lorena as the color rose to her cheeks.
Luca felt that the wine and Lorena’s reaction were producing an exhilaratingly euphoric effect on him. Shocking this young woman was proving to be perfectly delightful.
“These are not falsehoods. Friends of mine have reported what they have seen and heard.”
“And do you truly believe that these unfortunate women who were raped actually enjoyed being party to such a perverse crime?”
Luca laughed joyfully. “No, of course not. I am only repeating what some friends of mine had heard in taverns of bad repute. The mere bragging of soulless drunks, I suppose. Although,” he continued, lowering his voice confidentially, “I have heard that when a woman resists her husband the pleasure becomes more intense for both of them.”
The Florentine Emerald: The Secret of the Convert's Ring Page 8