The Madonna of the Almonds

by Marina Fiorato

‘What is this coil? Where are they all going? Where are we going?’

  ‘To see an execution. Come, we may be too late.’

  ‘Tell me as we walk then. Who is to be dispatched?’ Bianca seemed visibly distressed, and Bernardino bit his lip at the flippant choice of words.

  ‘The Countess of Challant, a great friend of mine and of my family.’

  ‘Of your father? Then surely he may intercede?’

  ‘It may have gone too far for that. Her death is demanded by the people.’

  ‘By the people? Why?’

  ‘They have taken a moral stance against a woman known to be a libertine. A woman whose sin is to love more than one man; in truth, more than two.’

  A knell sounded in Bernardino’s chest. Here then, was proof of the censure that awaited women that loved freely. His own rival for Simonetta’s heart was dead, and yet Lorenzo’s ghost had been enough to divide them forever. Simonetta was derided by the people of Saronno, and here in Milan a lady’s passions could buy her death. ‘How did this come to pass?’

  Bianca unfolded the tale, as they walked through the streets, guided like leaves in the current as the mob streamed past the Duomo. ‘The Contessa di Challant was the only child of a rich usurer who lived at Casal Monferrato. Her mother was a Greek; and she was a girl of such exquisite beauty that, in spite of her low origin, she became the wife of the noble Ermes Visconti in her sixteenth year.’

  Bernardino had heard of such matches. ‘How old was the husband?’

  Bianca smiled, and the furrows of her brow cleared, shortly to return. ‘Old enough to be her grandsire. He took her to live with him at Milan, where she frequented the house of my father but none other. She played with me as I grew with great kindness and gaiety but was kept from other society. Her ancient husband told my friend Matteo Bandello that he knew her temper better than to let her visit with the freedom of the Milanese ladies. Upon Ermes’ death, while she was little more than twenty, she retired to Casale and led a gay life among many lovers. One of these, the Count of Challant in the Val d’Aosta, became her second husband. He was captivated by her extraordinary loveliness, but they could not agree together. She left him, and established herself at Pavia. Rich with the wealth of her father and first husband, and still beautiful in her middle years, she now abandoned herself to a life of profligacy. She took numerous lovers.’

  Bernardino, jostled by the crowd, thought that the Countess had found herself the ideal life, but sensed a sting in the tale. He had to hold the sleeve of the Abbess’s habit in order that they might not be separated, that he might hear the rest.

  ‘Two of her lovers must be named. Ardizzino Valperga, Count of Masino; and the Sicilian Don Pietro di Cardona. She tired of the Count of Masino, but Don Pietro loved her with the insane passion of a very young man. What she desired, he promised to do blindly; and she bade him murder his predecessor in her favour.’

  Bernardino was shocked that the libertine had turned murderess. He was unsure of the Abbess’s intentions but had to shout to voice his queries. ‘But Sister Bianca, it seems that this lady did indeed have an evil influence. Can you, a servant of God, defend such a woman? Can you hope to intercede for her?’

  ‘We are all sinners, Bernardino. But no man has the right to take life, only God. If she is now killed, then the Duke Sforza is no better than Don Pietro the murderer.’

  ‘So the murder was carried out? What came to pass?’

  ‘At this time she was living here in Milan. Don Pietro waylaid the Count of Masino, as he was late one night from supper. The Count was killed: but Don Pietro was caught. He revealed the atrocity of his mistress; and she was sent to prison. She is now held in the Porta Giova fortress, the castle of the Sforzas, and awaits execution this very morn.’

  ‘Then what can you do?’

  ‘I hope to buy her freedom. For, although she acted wrongly, I believe she has atoned and it grieves me that she may pay for the actions of another. Though I wear a habit I am still a woman and it burns my heart that a woman may be killed for what a man has done, however strong her influence. I hope to appeal to her to become one of the sisters, to live her life in repentance in the circle of our cloister.’ The mob stopped for a moment, and the Abbess faced him. ‘You see, Bernardino, when I think of the Countess I don’t see a libertine, nor yet a murderess. I see the gentle lady that played and laughed with a lonely child in my father’s house.’

  The crowd slowed at the Duomo where vendors sought to sell to the unwary. There were images of the Countess, a reputed beauty with yellow hair and a comely face. Bernardino and the Abbess lowered their heads to push through the press of people. Peddlers sold Holy water to bless the body and the more enterprising thrust fistfuls of yellow horsehair in their cowls, purporting to be hair from the Countess’s head. On a wooden thrust stage, players wearing grotesque masks reenacted the tale of lust and murder, with the two lovers sporting huge phalli of papier-mâché at their groins. An actor with a long yellow wig stroked them lasciviously, before the dusky Sicilian killed the Neapolitan, who flung rolls of red ribbon into the crowd to mimic blood. At the finish, a huge silver axe fell on the Countess’s white neck as more gore ensued.

  The crowd reached a pitch of excitement that was at once disgusting and disorienting to Bernardino after his months of peace. He knew well why the Abbess had wanted protection on such a day, for couples openly pressed themselves on each other in a libidinous expression of their excitement, and he saw a lone maid fight off a circle of men that cat-called and pulled at her clothes. He raised his eyes skyward and saw the Saints standing atop the gothic pinnacles of the Duomo, sorrowing as they looked down, themselves players against the sickly saffron backdrop of the sky. He too began to feel disquiet that a high-born lady was to be murdered for the sins of her lovers and pressed forward urgently.

  They neared the ramparts of the great red Porta Giova fortress, its battlements like the wards of a thousand keys that served to keep the Sforzas in and the city out. But not today. Today the great gates of the Torre del Filarete clock tower were open, and the crowd streamed though, beneath the baleful eye of the coiled Sforza serpent that adorned the castle arms. Poised to strike, thought Bernardino; poised to kill. Today the paghe vive guards, salaried soldiers employed to guard the castle, uncrossed their pikes to let the multitude through. Inside the great parade ground of the Piazza d’Armi was crammed with citizens, all jostling for position. Sister Bianca took Bernardino’s arm, and pulled him to the outer reaches of the crowd, leading him up a flight of stone steps at the Ghirlanda curtain wall. Here a figure in bright blue silk loitered, waiting. The figure knelt at the sight of the Abbess and kissed the garnet ring.

  ‘Greetings Matteo,’ said the Abbess, ‘were it not such a dark day this would be a meeting of minds indeed. Matteo Bandello, a great writer, meet Bernardino Luini, a great artist.’ Both men bowed and eyed each other curiously. One who was a stranger to Holiness wore the habit of a brother, but was more handsome than any monk had a right to be. The other, ugly and ill-favoured, was in fact a monk but wore the finest clothes that ever complimented a courtier. The writer’s eyes fairly shone with lively intelligence.

  ‘I hope we may have an opportunity to speak later, for I have admired such of your work as I have seen, Signore,’ said Bandello.

  Bernardino, never a great reader, could not respond with glowing reviews of Bandello’s novellae. But the fellow had already moved on; his quick mind working, his hands gesturing, as he resumed the urgency of the day. ‘Have you got it all?’ he questioned the Abbess.

  ‘Yes,’ replied Sister Bianca. ‘15,000 crowns.’

  ‘From the Monastero?’

  Even at such a time she smiled. ‘Hardly. From one who knows the Countess and wishes her well.’

  Bandello nodded. ‘Alessandro Bentivoglio. Your father was ever the true noblemen, such largesse is typical of his generosity.’

  Sister Bianca smiled her strange half smile, and whispered back rapidly. ‘And th
e diplomat; he knows that I must act for him in this matter – that it would not do for him to be seen as partisan. The Countess has offended the people greatly, and my father cannot afford to so do. Nor can the Duke: is he here?’

  Bandello shook his head. ‘Not he. Francesco Sforza will not risk his neck among the crowd, for all his wartime campaigns. Yet you may be sure he watches, from the safety of the Rocchetta.’ In explanation he nodded to the safe, windowed portion of the castle. ‘The Rocchetta can be reached only by drawbridge, which as you see, is drawn up. Let us hope that the name of the moat it crosses is not prophetic.’

  ‘The name?’ Bernardino questioned.

  ‘Fossato Morto. The moat of the dead.’ Bandello gave a ghoulish grin and took the heavy leather bag from the Abbess. ‘Well, let us try what may be done with this purse. Wait here. I will come again.’ They watched as the blue figure climbed the ramparts and disappeared into the great round tower named for Bona of Savoy, the long dead chatelaine. Below the Ghirlanda wall the crowd grew restive and chants began to relay around the courtyard – hymns fought with filthy tavern songs as the crowd awaited the bloodletting they had been promised. Bianca closed her eyes on the scene and her lips moved in prayer. Bernardino felt unsettled enough to interrupt her devotions. ‘Could not an escape have been attempted?’ he whispered.

  The Abbess did not open her eyes. ‘It has been tried. There are many passages that lead from this castle to safety – one out into the Barco hunting reserve and thence to the country, and the other leads to the Monastery of Santa Maria della Grazie.’

  ‘Santa Maria delle Grazie?’

  The Abbess opened her eyes. ‘You know it?’

  ‘Yes. My Master’s great work, the Cenacolo, hangs there.’

  She nodded. ‘The Last Supper. I have never seen it. Yet there is a secret covered causeway that connects this fortress to that place – it was built by Ludovico Il Moro himself, as he made nightly trips to visit the body of his dead wife in the chapel there.’ Tis said that you can still hear the old Duke’s sobs in the passage at night.’ The Abbess crossed herself. ‘A sevennight ago the Countess attempted to make her escape to the monastery by that route, but she was betrayed. The purse is our only hope now.’ She closed her eyes once again and began to finger the beads of the rosary at her waist.

  Bernardino was silent. His eyes searched the crowd, collecting the ugly expressions, and his memory registered the details of the mocking faces. He thought of the book that sat in his cell next to the Bible, the Libricciolo that Leonardo had made of the grotesques that interested him, but Bernardino’s head was a library for such characters. There were many in the crowd that day that would find themselves immortalized on the walls of San Maurizio, when Bernardino would paint the Mocking of Christ.

  A friar in the magpie robes of the Dominicans mounted the square block that crowned the ramparts and began, in a nasal whine, a Latin diatribe on the evils of women beginning with Eve and persisting through the ages to the present day. His sentiments drew roars of approbation from the crowd – the learned who knew Latin and agreed with the sentiments expounded, and the ignorant who merely found vent for their feelings in their raucous ‘Ayes’. The friar was a good few moments into his speech before Bernardino realised the purpose of the block that the friar stood upon, and he grew cold despite the wool of his habit.

  Presently Bandello returned. He carried the bag and shook his head as he descended. ‘No one would take it,’ he said. ‘Even in this age of corruption they dare not cheat the crowd of their moment. She is doomed.’

  Bianca nodded her head in solemn acceptance and the three of them watched the scene unfold. From the Torre di Bona di Savoia emerged two Sergeants-at-Arms followed by a figure with brass-bright hair. As the trio walked between the battlements Bernardino could divine that the Countess was an ample figure clad in a golden gown chased with silver gilt. The crowd mocked and hissed, as the sorry procession emerged from the shadow of the great tower, and flung such vegetation and ordure as they had brought from their cots. Cries of ‘Whore!’ were taken up and echoed round the square. Bernardino admired the Countess’s quiet composure in the face of such censure but was privily amazed that such a woman had caused two hearts to beat so strong that their thoughts had turned to murder. Her best years were well behind her, her figure had spread at the waist and her skin was tanned as a peasant’s. Bernardino noted that nature had little to do with the bright gilt of the hair, but that she obviously used such arts and unguents that Venetian ladies used to lighten their tresses. Then she turned to the weeping handmaiden that carried her train, kissed her on the cheek and favoured her with a dimpled smile, and Bernardino saw the face lifted into the promise of beauty and bedsport. The lady unhooked her ruff and laid her head on the black block as the hooded executioner stepped forward. As her head went down Bernardino saw from their privileged position, a vast spectrum of emotions writ upon her face. Gladness of a life well lived, a memory of what it was to love and be loved, regret for what was to be left, and bowel-opening terror. And over this all, like the finest actor, pride and dignity, and a will to leave the world with the nobility she was born to. Bernardino felt tears prick his eyes as he registered the reality of what she felt: here was no plaster Saint, but a real woman under the shadow of the axe. All was so rapid that Bernardino could not believe what was happening until it was done. The axe fell with a scything sweep and the sickly sun kissed the blade in valediction as it fell. Ribbons of blood flew into the crowd and the deed was done. The Countess’s head was held high, eyes rolled back to the whites; her dimples would dip no more.

  Bernardino knew that Sister Bianca suffered at that moment, and threw an arm about her shoulders.

  Bandello took the Abbess’s hand and said, ‘It counts for little at such a time, but I will write a history of the Countess, so that her passing shall not be forgot. But now I must go, before I am missed by my Masters.’ With a further kiss of the ring and a nod to Bernardino, he melted into the throng.

  The minstrels struck up and the crowd danced in a weaving dragon, fat with blood and sated, back to the Duomo square to carouse for the rest of the day.

  ‘Stay here,’ said Sister Bianca suddenly. ‘I must see the Sergeant-at-Arms. There is one more thing that I may do for her.’

  Bernardino waited as the sun climbed higher and the castle fell silent. The red stones warmed and the blood clotted in the walls, steeped in the memory of this and other killings, but protesting its innocence as the light showed the fineness of its architecture; the thrust of the walls, the turn of a stair, the reach of the round towers into the orange sky.

  Sister Bianca returned with the leather bag, no longer jingling but full and rounded and dark at the base. With a lurch of his stomach Bernardino knew what was within, and that 15,000 crowns, which had not been enough to buy a life, had been enough to buy this. ‘Come,’ said Bianca, ‘we will see the rites done at least.’

  Only Bernardino and the Abbess knew that the Countess of Challant’s head lay in the herb garden of the monastery of San Maurizio. Despite her sins she was admitted to the consecrated cloister, and came among the sisters indeed; though not in the way the Abbess had intended. Sister Bianca placed her under the white spreading flowers of the Valerian plant, the herb known as ‘heal all’, which guards against evil and induces peace and calm. As the bells rang for Nones the shadow of the circus tower fell over the plot like a gnomon, and Bernardino now felt the significance of this garden that had once been the arid sand centre of the arena of death. This playground of the Emperor Maximius had seen much. More than one head, or limb, would have lain here – still did perhaps – and blood would have daily darkened the sand beneath this turf. The blood beat in Bernardino’s head as he heard the crowd’s roar from the cavea, saw the bloodthirsty Emperor waving from the meta. ‘The people’s joy,’ Ausonius had said, populique voluptas. By God, Bernardino had seen that today. The baying mob and the blood lust. He knew then the peace of the cloister that he
had felt only this morning was an illusion. Round that still centre, the world still turned, as bloody and violent as it had ever been. When they entered the Hall of the Believers at last it was only noon, though Bernardino felt as if a year had passed since he had crossed the cloister in the quiet and contemplation of the morning. Bernardino took his brushes, but could not think of anything other than the scenes of the morning. As he sketched the blessed Catherine, he could not help drawing the homely face of the Countess, imbuing her not with the hot passions of her life but the quiet and dignified manner of her death. He drew the gold gown embroidered with silver gilt, and her noble head bowed before the sword of her assassin.

  ‘Saint Catherine,’ he said to Bianca. ‘What happened to her?

  Once again the Abbess told him of the life of a Saint, but this time her voice was shaking, her tone full of sorrow, and her tale halting; imbued with the significance of what both had seen.

  ‘Catherine was both noble and brave for at the age of eighteen she presented herself to the Emperor Maximius who was violently persecuting the Christians, and castigated him for his cruelty.’

  Bernardino looked up from his paints. ‘Maximius again?’

  ‘Even he. Catherine emerged from the debate victorious. Several of her adversaries, conquered by her eloquence, declared themselves Christians and were at once put to death. Furious at being beaten, Maximius had Catherine scourged and then imprisoned. Yet Catherine effected so many conversions even from her cell, including that of the Emperor’s wife, that she was condemned to die on the wheel, but, at her touch, this instrument of torture was miraculously destroyed.’

  Bernardino continued to sketch furiously. But today his mind did not paint idealized scenes of sanctity on the wall for him to copy. Today he saw only the Countess, and her end. He drew the wheels on which she was to be metaphorically and physically broken, and blasted them with the might of angels, till their gears and cogs spilled forth. Here he gave a nod to the mechanical drawing of Master Leonardo, not God in the machine but the machine in God, and he wondered afresh at the tortures that mankind prepared for its own. He heard his friend’s voice crack behind him as she ended the story. ‘The Emperor, enraged beyond control, then had her beheaded and angels carried her body to Mount Sinai where later a church and monastery were built in her honour.’