Signora Da Vinci

by Maxwell, Robin

  Then Antonio da Vinci asked his son if he had deflowered the apothecary’s daughter. Piero had not attempted to deny it. His mother and grandmother had sniffed in disgust. The acknowledgment of my lost virginity had finalized the conversation.

  Suddenly Francesco looked down at his feet, loath to continue.

  “What did your father say?” I insisted.

  “That you were no better than a common prostitute. When Grandfather asked what Piero would do if he’d made you pregnant, Mother and Grandmother stood and left the room.”

  With those words my knees jellied. The thought of pregnancy had never entered my head. We were to be married. If there had been a child it was meant to be born legitimate. We were to be married!

  “Did he not fight for me?” I cried. “Even a little?”

  Francesco regarded me with pity. “I told you what they said, Caterina. How could my brother have fought for you?” Francesco shook his head. “He is heir to this greedy, self-serving family. He should have known better!”

  I remember little after that. There must have been moonlight, for even in the night I was able to make my way into the hills, stumbling as I went, caring nothing for my scraped knees and torn skirts. I wandered like a wraith up the river shore, collapsing in the shallows to weep, loudly cursing Piero and his miserable family, and finally and most viciously, cursing myself.

  How could I have been so stupid? I was a fourteen-year-old girl. No one in the village knew of my father’s honorable profession in the service of Poggio, who, in turn, had served Cosimo de’ Medici himself. No one knew Ernesto was anything more than a poor country herbalist. And even if Piero’s family had known of the vast treasure of books and manuscripts kept in my father’s study, it would have meant nothing. All that mattered to them was a fat dowry and a step up into Florentine society. None of that could I offer their son.

  And I was a whore at that.

  I lay on my back staring up at the stars. They seemed to mock me with their cold, distant sparkle, as if to say, “We haven’t a care for you, you poor worthless creature. Rule your own fate? See where it’s gotten you.”

  I cried for so long and so hard that I was altogether emptied, and fell into a dreamless sleep. I woke after dawn, damp all over, the shape of grass spikes gouged into the flesh of my cheek.

  I found my way back to the village, ignoring my neighbors, refusing to answer their cheerful hellos. At home I found my father frantic with worry, and Magdalena, relief having turned to annoyance, clucked disapprovingly at my disheveled appearance. Tongues would already be wagging, she scolded.

  I could not look my father in the eye. I pulled out of the fierce embrace in which I allowed him to hold me for only a moment before climbing the stairs to my room.

  Only later did I learn, or even care, that the fire in his sacred furnace had, for the first time since it had been lit, been allowed to burn down and die.

  CHAPTER 3

  The day after I returned from Piero’s betrayal I drank great quantities of willow leaf tincture to prevent the joining of Piero’s seed with my own. I believed in its efficacy and that the vitriol coursing through my veins and surely engorging my organs would kill anything trying to live there and grow.

  In the following weeks I was silent in my rage, telling no one—not even my father—the source of it. Fury grew and festered into something sick and pustulent in the deepest part of me.

  I became openly irritable, ignored washing or brushing my hair, ate portions that would better suit a large man than a slender girl, and I grew fat and slovenly, my face crisscrossed with white-headed pimples. I lay abed every night obsessed with thoughts of Piero and his family, revenge I would take, even magic potions I would compound to recapture his love if he should ever return from Florence. I refused to go to the hills to collect the herbs for my father’s apothecary, and snapped rudely at his patrons. No one understood the change that had come over Caterina—sweet, affable daughter of Ernesto.

  In my confused and anguished state I had overlooked the first missed menses, but by the second I had recovered enough of my good sense to realize that the white willow tincture had failed as a contraceptive.

  I was pregnant.

  I was carrying in my belly the spawn of weak-livered Piero da Vinci. This made me livid. I would not have it, I decided. If I believed Aristotle, the fetus at this stage was still an animal and not a person. I would kill the thing, I decided. Flush it out of my body. Then, perhaps, I could put Piero out of my thoughts forever. Find the joy I had known in my girl’s life. Return to my father’s good graces and redeem myself with the villagers I had repeatedly insulted.

  When Papa was asleep I crept up the stairs to his study. I found the texts from Galen, Avicenna, Dioscorides, and Rhazes. I frantically perused the sections on contraception and abortifacants. Many named the same herbs “to provoke the menses,” while only a few claimed to “kill embryos and cause them to fall from the womb.” But some of these substances were extinct in the world, the best of all abortificants—silphium—gone for a thousand years. Others were not to be found in Italy—squirting cucumber made into a juice, or elephant dung to be used in a suppository. Some, like myrrh and savin, were presently missing from my father’s apothecary shelves, he awaiting shipments from distant lands at the port in Pisa. The alchemical texts, with mention of special stones, herbs, and stars that could cause an abortion, were obtuse and the least helpful of all.

  The truth was there had been no cause, in all the time I had been helping my father, to end a pregnancy in Vinci. Many women came to him for help in preventing conception, realizing the old wives’ tales, like burning a mule’s hoof over hot coals, were harebrained. But pregnancy was, except in plague years, always a blessing, and my only knowledge of ending life in the womb was that which I had read in a book. The subject was not one I had even discussed with my father.

  I was left to pore over the ancient medical manuscripts myself in the flickering light of a candle, wondering if the decoctions and suppositories suggested would kill the thing inside . . . without killing me as well. Then, consumed by melancholy, I considered that death was no worse a fate than giving birth to a bastard child in a small town.

  It was therefore with more than a small draught of fear that I mixed a foul-smelling brew of those ingredients at hand in the apothecary named as abortificants—rue, betony, pennyroyal, and juniper sap—and desperate girl that I was, swallowed it just before the sun rose, climbing back up to my room and into my bed.

  Almost at once I became sick to my stomach, and by the time Aunt Magdalena had arrived and my father was opening the apothecary door, I was retching violently and screeching in high-pitched cries that echoed down the stairs, all the way into the shop.

  Papa and Magdalena were suddenly at my bedside, weeping as they ministered to me, begging me to tell them what was wrong. By then I was so terrified of dying—something I suddenly knew with great clarity I did not wish for myself—that I blurted out the ingredients I had ingested, and for what purpose.

  The pain and delirium were so great I cannot say how they saved my life that day. But they did. I was weak as a kitten for a week after that, and could not swallow anything but the thinnest broth of salted vegetables.

  The fetus, despite its host’s attempt to poison it, had refused to be expelled. And after that attempt, as I regained the health of my body and my mind, I changed in my feelings for that which grew inside me.

  It had earned my respect. It was strong and stubborn, and soon I could feel its life pulsing inside me, bubbles and butterfly wings that long before the turns and kicks and thumps began spoke to me . . . as if “speaking” could describe the communication.

  I believed it to be a female and began to call the child Leonora, the name of my father’s mother. My loathing turned to love, and the scandalous swelling under my skirts, now known to the villagers, delighted me, despite their shock. Some had rightly guessed at my attempted abortion, and to the wicked gossip was add
ed outrage. I had blasphemed against God. Attempted murder. My father and I were visited by the church elders, who chastised me and forbade us coming back into church.

  Papa was secretly delighted at the prohibition, tired of pretending his Christianity. The thought of losing me to death that terrible day had also cleared his mind of all anger toward me for the pregnancy. He shared my fury at the spineless Piero and his disgraceful family, and swore he was joyful at the prospect of a grandchild. He would happily raise it with me, giving the boy or girl all the love that a father would.

  The months would have passed joyfully enough had the villagers left me alone. But once my condition became impossible to conceal it was, to them, as if the doorway to Hell had opened and I—one of Satan’s minions—had been sent through the portal to our town.

  Mine was to be the first illegitimate child born in Vinci for several generations. All the unmarried girls had managed to stay within the strict bounds of piety and chastity, or else had been blessed with great good fortune.

  I refused to name the father, not wishing to bring Piero’s family into it. What was the point? Even if it had been rape, it would have made no difference. All believed that any girl who’d been so used was in large part responsible for her own ravishment. That she had, in fact, done harm to the soul of the man who had raped her.

  Of course, this was not the case. I had encouraged Piero’s advances, and could only condemn him for his weakness, never violence.

  In any event, the townspeople were enraged by my scandalous condition. Gossip festered about the identity of the father and how Ernesto had failed so miserably in the upbringing of his daughter. I, according to my once-friendly neighbors and local churchmen, was a wicked whore, and what was worse, had fooled them all into thinking I was a sweet, virtuous girl.

  None would allow me to help my father in the preparation of their remedies. My very presence in the apothecary shop was intolerable to the customers. And once I had begun my treks into the hills to pick herbs again, Papa received complaints that such wanderings were dangerous for the boys and men in the village, as I might lure them into sin. Mothers would hurry their daughters away from the window when I passed, as even the sight of me might corrupt them.

  Therefore, no one but my father and Magdalena spoke to me for nearly five months. Strange as it seems, I minded my ostracism very little. When Papa called the villagers small-minded and cruel, I believed him. And as my time drew near, the spirit of my child resounded in every part of my being. I could hardly bear the wait for her birth.

  Leonora. My sweet girl.

  I faltered only once—upon hearing that Piero had taken a wife, the daughter of a rich notary from Pistoia. Her generous dowry was the talk of Vinci. The wedding had taken place in Florence, but Piero’s fortunes were not yet high enough for them to immediately take up residence in the city. They came to live, instead, in the da Vinci house near the old castle wall, his bride, Albiera, doing as all good wives did, staying at home sewing and busying herself with other small domestic chores.

  As before, Piero came and went from and into Florence for his business, which was, everyone said, bringing him some small fame, with the promise of wealth in the future. It was my good fortune never to run across either of them in all the time of my pregnancy, though I was sure news of my profligacy must have reached the da Vinci household. There never was, nor did I expect, any acknowledgment that my child was also a child of that family.

  Of course I grieved at the blow of Piero’s marriage, one that quashed any fantasies I still quietly harbored that one day he would grow a backbone, stand up to his parents and marry me. When we heard the news Papa held me in his arms and let me cry a few bitter tears before admonishing me to see the thing for what it was—a worthless family and pathetic son, neither one we would desire to be part of our lives, or the life of my child.

  But finally the blessed day was upon us. Healthy and ripe as a summer peach, I was brought to bed. My father paced nervously in his room as Magdalena worked between my outstretched thighs to bring forth the squalling infant—not Leonora, but a boy, Leonardo. My aunt reported that in all her years of midwifery, she had never seen a babe spring more enthusiastically from the womb than my son. He seemed to dive into her arms, she said, as though he had had quite enough of the darkness and silence, and craved the outer world.

  Even in my haze of pain and fatigue I was aware that his cries were immediate and lusty. And when Magdalena had bathed Leonardo, he had flailed his chubby little limbs around so zealously, she defied the common practice of swaddling him, instead placing him loosely in a blanket and into my waiting arms.

  Magic happened then. I fell in love with my son. Wholly and irretrievably.

  All those months of our souls’ voices joined had not been imagined. We knew each other. He was blind still, as all newborns are, but he ceased crying the moment he was laid upon my chest and snuggled deep into me, a safe nest. There was no hesitation at taking the nipple, and I overflowed with mother’s milk. He suckled so enthusiastically that the sweet white liquid pooled around his mouth and dripped down my breast.

  By the time Magdalena allowed Papa in to see us, I was laughing aloud at the sight of my ravenous son and weeping all at once. For joy. For relief. And for the preciousness of the gift that had come from so much pain—the life I had tried in my fury at Piero to snuff out like a candle.

  Leonardo was beautiful from the very first. Within the hour of his birth, his color was fair with a pinkish tint, his features were distinct, the cheeks chubby, the chin pointed, the nose delicate. I longed to see his eyes, sure that when they opened they would be large and bright.

  Papa confirmed Leonardo’s unusual prettiness for a newborn and held him in his arms with such trembling pride I wept again, this time for sheer happiness. The mistake I believed I had made in giving myself to Piero was nothing of the sort. This child was meant to be born, his absent father be damned.

  I slept that April night, the eve of the church’s celebration of Christ’s resurrection, with my child slung in a hammock near my bed. Many times I awoke to his cries for a feeding, and Magdalena, dear and bleary-eyed woman, was there to place him at my breast.

  Come morning I was exhausted. I was sleeping so deeply I never heard the pounding at the shop door, or my father’s angry shouts. Not until the commotion reached the hall outside my bedroom was I alarmed. Magdalena was nowhere in sight, though now I heard her voice raised with those of several men, my father one of them.

  I sat up quickly and pulled Leonardo, stirring from his own sleep, into my protective clutches.

  The door to my room flew open.

  Papa, red-faced with a look that could only be described as murderous, was trying to block the entrance of a company of angry men, with Magdalena behind, helplessly flapping her hands like the wings of a panicked chicken, her face wet with tears.

  This was dire, whatever it was, though I did not understand its meaning until I recognized amidst the party Piero and his brother, Francesco. Then I heard what my father was shouting. “He is not yours to take!” and the blood froze in my veins.

  But my father and I knew very well the conventions of fatherless children. So many illegitimate ones were unloved, abandoned or even murdered without a trace of guilt or punishment. Even married widows, if they took new husbands, were forced most times to give up their babies to their late husbands’ families. Their sons especially.

  “Our family’s lineage is at stake here!” I heard the oldest da Vinci man shout indignantly. “Unity of our line and our honor always prevails over the feelings of the mother!”

  This terrifying confraternity was making headway into my room despite Papa’s bodily efforts to impede them. I hugged my child hard to my chest and he began to wail.

  In that moment Piero, hearing the cry, stepped forward, his face a confused mask of shame and paternal pride. This was his firstborn son, bastard or not, and it was his right, by all the unnatural laws of the land, to posses
s him.

  “No, don’t take him!” I shrieked. “Please, please! Piero, no!”

  As he strode to the bedside he steadfastly averted his eyes from me, as if our gazes meeting would thwart his ability to act. But when he reached out to our son, who was screaming with the terror I could not but convey to him, Piero hesitated. He did look stricken, as though he knew what he meant to do was devilish, and would crush the girl he had once loved so sincerely.

  Then his father cried out, “Take the child, Piero! Now!”

  I clutched his arm with clawed fingers.

  “You cannot do this,” I whispered with a fierceness I did not know I possessed.

  But he did do it, never looking at me.

  Once he placed his hands on Leonardo I ceased to struggle, incapable of any act that might hurt my child.

  It was as if, in that instant when the men left the room, the sun was extinguished. I vaguely remember Papa shouting threats after them, and Magdalena wailing. Then there was silence, and a gaping emptiness in my arms.

  I was beyond tears, and I knew that no consolation would be offered by my father, for there was no consolation to be had.

  We had failed to prepare for the worst, and the worst had happened.

  It was the end of joy, and in the blaze of suffering I felt nothing worse in all the world could ever happen—to me, to have my son ripped from my arms, and to Leonardo, who would know the barest affection from a family that regarded him as a worthless bastard son.

  It was Easter Sunday and everyone in Vinci had gone to church. News of Leonardo’s paternity spread like a house fire. The villagers fell on the news like a pack of starving dogs on a lame hare. Piero da Vinci was an up-and-coming young man who brought nothing but honor on our town. His poor new wife—“very wealthy and virtuous”—would be made to suffer the indignity of an illegitimate child being brought into a fresh new marriage. I, of course, was a low seductress, a villainous prostitute whose vices threatened one of Vinci’s finest and most upstanding of families.