Signora Da Vinci

by Maxwell, Robin

  I knew what Francesco said was true. Sometimes I would hear Piero and Albiera from their bedroom window. His joyless grunts, her pained whimpers. As every month went by with the laundress bringing out Albiera’s bloody rags to wash, it was clear even to me that the mood in the house was growing darker.

  Francesco shook his head morosely.

  I put my sisterly arms around him, feeling strangely light and happy for having heard such uncheerful news. “Then I suppose Leonardo and I are better off in this stinking barn than in your grim household,” I said.

  Francesco managed a smile. “We three have each other.”

  “Unca Cecco!”

  We turned to see my sparkling-eyed boy peeking his head over the edge of his hammock and grinning with delight. He threw his blanket onto the floor.

  “Play!” he demanded and began to giggle.

  CHAPTER 5

  Those two bittersweet years ended suddenly one afternoon when I was summoned to the villa. The da Vincis were at their dinner, much as they had been when, after Leonardo’s birth, I’d barged in demanding to have my son back. This time they were expecting me, prepared with their rod-straight spines and expressions that looked as though the lot of them had swallowed sour dishrags. Only Piero’s grandfather seemed diminished. He was very thin and frail, and his eyes glittered brightly with the dementia that Francesco told me had overtaken him in the past years.

  Once again Piero was like a small boy cowering in the shadow of his father, saying nothing at all but leveling me with a look of furious impotence. With his eyes, poor Francesco implored my forgiveness for what was to come.

  “My wife informs me,” Antonio da Vinci began, “that in the case of Piero’s son, the time for a wetnurse is long past.”

  “I still have milk in my breasts,” I answered him quickly, “and Leonardo—you persist in refusing to call him by name—is thriving on it. Many children are nursed till they are—”

  “There is more,” Antonio snapped, cutting me off. “And you will obey the rules I set down when you came to live under our roof and eat our food, burn our wood. Speak only when spoken to. Keep silent and respectful.” He fixed his jaw with so tight a clenching I thought I would soon hear the bones of his face cracking. “It has come to my attention that my daughter-in-law’s infertility may have causes other than natural ones.”

  I was stunned, silenced, expecting as always the worst from this family, but never so sordid an accusation as this.

  “You are, after all, an apothecary’s daughter, with knowledge of—”

  “Say not another word, Signor da Vinci,” I said, finally finding my voice. “This is a serious crime of which you are accusing me. Have you any proof ?”

  “Of course we have proof, you little whore!” his old father cried in a shrill, almost hysterical tone.

  “Albiera’s maid found pennyroyal leaves in the bottom of her wineglass,” Antonio said. “Pennyroyal, I am told, brings on an abortion.”

  “And how do you suppose I slipped these leaves into Albiera’s wineglass? I’m not allowed anywhere near this house.”

  “A girl as devious and sinful as yourself could always—”

  “Devious and sinful as I may be,” I interrupted him with chilly indignation, “I am not stupid. Anyone who knows a thing about pennyroyal realizes that its effects are neutralized by the alcohol in wine. It would best have been ground up and put in her soup.”

  “You think evil thoughts about me all the time!” Albiera cried. “Who needs herbs when you and your father can lay curses on me?”

  “The only curse on you,” I said quietly, “is a womb laid bare by your own frigid nature. You poison yourself with hatred and jealousy and then blame me.”

  Albiera turned to Piero. “Tell her to shut her mouth,” she spat. “Tell her. Right now!”

  Piero’s lip trembled violently. His face turned ashen.

  “Piero . . . ,” his grandfather threatened.

  “You will not address my wife like that,” he finally said to me in a voice that was pitifully weak. So weak, in fact, that it embarrassed his father.

  “There will be no need for apologies or confessions,” Antonio said, turning to me, “as you will be leaving this house immediately. Vacate your rooms.”

  “My rooms?” I cried. “Do you mean the stench-ridden, rodent-infested corner of your barn to which you banished your grandson?”

  Antonio became very still and very cold. I think if I had been nearer him he would have struck me. “As for my only grandson,” he began again, “do not think for a moment he will be going with you when you leave.”

  Now it was I who grew cold. In the surprise of the accusation and heated defense of myself I had failed to anticipate that this was the very reason I had been summoned here.

  They were taking Leonardo from me a second time!

  “If you are not gone within the hour, I shall call the church authorities. You will be accused of the crime of witchcraft, and laying curses on this family!”

  Now I saw the old man grinning horribly.

  “Father,” Francesco interjected in a strong, calm voice. “You know very well this is a false accusation.”

  Antonio glared at his younger son, the boy who had brought no glory to this family—only whispers that he was a sodomite and heretic.

  “Leonardo does indeed thrive in Caterina’s care,” Francesco went on with more courage than I ever imagined he had. “Who will look after the boy if she goes?”

  “Cook,” Antonio answered flatly.

  “Cook!” Francesco argued. “Cook barely has time for her own chores. She—”

  “Silence!” Antonio smashed his closed fist on the table so hard the plates and goblets rattled.

  “Get out,” he said without bothering to look at me again. “Never show your face in this house again.” Then he turned to his wife. “Tell them to bring on the main course.”

  CHAPTER 6

  My reputation when I left the da Vinci household was in tatters. I had borne an illegitimate child and lived as a servant in his father’s family barn. I wanted to push from my memory the moment I left Leonardo in Francesco’s arms and took my leave of the da Vinci villa. But I could never forget the woeful expression on his cherubic face and how, even protected by the warm embrace of his uncle, my son knew this was a terrible and unnatural parting from me. He set up a heartbreaking wail that followed me out the front gate and far down the cobbled street of Vinci.

  I took up my old room over the apothecary and helped my father quietly in the back garden and storeroom, mixing potions and poultices, leaving the shop and its customers, all of whom still held a grudge against the “low woman” I was, to him. Though I had a place of warmth and love under my father’s roof, and loyal Aunt Magdalena, life felt a hollow thing. My boy was just across the small village, yet he might have been a thousand miles away.

  Of course, there was not a man or woman in the village who wanted me as a daughter-in-law. This concerned me not at all, but as soon as I had come back to my father’s house it began to cause the da Vincis some concern.

  They started trying to marry me off.

  Notes and letters appeared at our door with what they considered a very wise plan. An unmarried man named Tonio Buti de Vaca was a lime burner who lived just outside Vinci with his parents, elder brother, sister-in-law, and their children, crowded into a tiny clutch of run-down houses, barns, and sheds.

  Papa and I knew of the Buti family, and the reputation of Tonio. In his youth he had been known as “Accattabriga”—a troublemaker, a quarrel picker, the reason he was unmarriageable. This man was the best they could do, Piero’s father wrote, for “a girl such as Caterina.”

  Papa was, in fact, more angry than I at the da Vincis’ audacity. We ignored their first letter, their second and third. Suddenly all correspondence stopped, and we learned the reason. Tonio “the quarreler” Buti had married another girl by the name of Caterina, and she began to have his children immediately. Final
ly I was left in peace.

  But never was Leonardo far from my mind.

  It was agony being separated from him. Many times I contemplated marching into the da Vinci house demanding to see him, but I knew it would have amounted to nothing, or worse, created more gossip in the village.

  Then one day as I was leaving the apothecary in the spring of 1456, a strange figure appeared at the end of our street. At a distance he seemed unnaturally tall. It took me a moment to realize it was a man with a small child riding on his shoulders.

  I let out a shout and went running for them. It was Francesco, lovely Francesco, and my Leonardo, no longer an infant but a little boy.

  When I reached them Leonardo, with no hesitation, flew off his uncle’s shoulders into my arms. I wept and clutched him tightly, kissing his curls and cheeks and eyes and he, though dry-eyed, kept whispering, “Mama, Mama,” and making soft sounds like tiny gasps of laughter.

  Francesco, bless his loving heart, began bringing Leonardo as often as he could to my father’s house. He reported that his brother and still-childless wife had moved to Florence. Piero was climbing the social ladder and making a real name for himself as a Florentine Notary of the Republic. At the da Vinci villa their age-addled grandfather had died, altogether convinced that I had been the Catarina who’d married Tonio Buti. Their father and mother were getting old and were crankier than ever, and with Piero away they cared even less than they had about the daily routine of their only grandchild. They never even missed him when he was gone from the house.

  Francesco had kept a close watch over his nephew, keeping the memory of me alive in his mind. Leonardo had cried bitterly for months after my banishment, but Francesco always promised him that when he was old enough, he would bring him to me.

  That spring day was the fulfillment of the promise. Though years in the keeping, it set firmly in my son’s head a kind of trust in his uncle and in myself, a trust that endured and made him strong, and a believer that all things, no matter how difficult, were possible.

  Suddenly my life became a happy one.

  Leonardo was a little clown who entertained Papa and me with his acrobatics and practical jokes and with the small creatures he would bring us, pointing out their features—things that no one had ever thought to observe. How the knee joint of a baby hare moved in ropy sinews under the fur; how the orange pollen of an asphodel stuck to the feet of a honeybee; how a certain kind of rock from the river shone with glittering crystals in the sunlight. His powers of observation were, from the earliest age, nearly obsessive, but his flawless character, kindness, and good humor prevailed over all.

  At first my son’s visits to Papa’s house caused a small scandal, but as the da Vincis didn’t seem to care, talk soon died away. My darling Leonardo came nearly every day.

  There were countless times that he, his uncle Francesco, and I would traipse up into the hills on herb-picking adventures. I had made those sojourns alone as a girl, perfectly content with my solitude. But now in the company of two of the brightest, sweetest souls in the universe, my pleasure was multiplied into boundless joy. We laughed and sang and waded in the river. We threw out rugs and lolled in the shade of trees, stuffing ourselves with cheese and bread, heaping them with Magdalena’s wonderful grape and olive compote.

  But the greatest of delights were our explorations. I had always believed myself wise in the ways of plant and animal life, and Francesco had worked among his vines and fields, orchards and herds for many years, and was expert in their ways. It was therefore shocking to discover that an eight-year-old boy might teach us something new about the natural world on almost every walk we took.

  Leonardo’s was a brilliance made entirely from his acute powers of observation. He did not see a thing as others did. He would perceive a hundred points of interest in an object where Francesco and I might see one.

  A flower, for instance. He would see not simply its color—yellow—but variance of the yellow in its petal from lighter to darker and how, if you looked closely—he was always exhorting Francesco and me to “look closely”—one could see an area that bled from yellow to pink and wondered what took place on that boundary. Was it a “war” between the pink and yellow, or a friendly line between them?

  He might hold a petal up to the sunlight and study the pattern of veins, Some that he likened to rivers, and others to trees, how the petals glowed if they were alive, but lost the glow once they were dry and dead. And of course he wished to know the purpose of every part of the flower, and questioned us unmercifully.

  The curves of a flower’s stamen fascinated him, and it was this that became the subject of his very first drawing. I had been unaware he had brought paper and a sliver of black charcoal from Papa’s house. I came up behind him and saw him lying on his belly on the rug, as he often did, the object of his passionate observation laid out in a patch of sunlight under his nose. But this day his shoulders were hunched, and his posture revealed an even fiercer intensity than usual.

  When I came around I saw him staring at a single pale stamen on the end of a stem that he’d placed against a patch of dark red in the rug. The rest of the lily from which it had been taken lay in pieces nearby. The paper I recognized as a blank page from his grandfather’s apothecary diary. I wondered if Leonardo had asked for it, or appropriated it without Papa knowing.

  The stamen almost completely filled the page, which in itself was a revelation to me. I had never seen this portion of a flower in such dimensions. But the simplicity of the subject in the drawing, and the perfection with which it was rendered by my son’s hand, took my breath away. The curve of the almost ethereal stem, the plumpness of its dark head, and the detail of a thousand minuscule dots of pollen covering it so astonished me I was struck speechless.

  I sat down just next to him, but he was too intent to acknowledge me. He was making an attempt at shading the stem, giving it depth and a sense of roundness. How does he know how to do that? I thought. No one has ever put a piece of charcoal in his hand and shown him how to draw!

  “It’s very good, Leonardo,” I finally said, wishing to give praise and encouragement, but not so much as I really felt, which, I feared, might scare him or turn him away from his efforts. “Is that difficult for you?” I asked.

  “No,” he answered, somewhat absently. “Not difficult. Interesting.” He never looked up from the drawing.

  I smiled to myself. “Interesting” had become Leonardo’s favorite word of late. There were very few things under heaven he did not describe as such.

  All at once a thick cloud blocked the sunlight over our rug, and his drawing was thrown into shade. It did not seem to perturb Leonardo, who continued, with great precision, to add more tiny dots of pollen to the head of the stamen.

  “Do you think Papa would like it?” he asked suddenly but in the most matter-of-fact tone possible.

  The question took me by storm. I stalled for time, even as I answered his question with another question—one whose answer I already knew. “Do you mean your grandpapa Ernesto?”

  “No,” he said quietly. My father.”

  There was no way to answer this truthfully without being hurtful. Piero had shown not the slightest interest in his bastard son since the day he’d been born. It amazed me that Leonardo even considered him. Now it was all too apparent that my boy had never forgotten his blood father and wished, as all children did, for his approval.

  “Your father is very busy in Florence,” I said, trying for evenness in my voice.

  “Is that why he never sees me?”

  “It is,” I whispered.

  Why is this happening now? I thought. Leonardo had never raised such questions before. It always seemed that he was content with his lot in life. There were so many besides myself—Francesco and now Magdalena and his grandfather Ernesto—who loved him.

  “Mama, look!”

  Lost as I was in worry, Leonardo’s exclamation surprised me. He pointed to a spot just in front of our faces. A thin shaf
t of sunlight had pierced the cloud above and now illuminated the patch of meadow before us with an unearthly brilliance.

  The purple lavender and orange mallow were overlit, and shone with incredible hues. The air itself, where before it had simply seemed transparent, was suddenly vibrating with sparkling motes of dust, its center a swarm of minuscule gnats that hovered in a frenzied airborne dance.

  “How beautiful!” I cried and grabbed Leonardo’s hand. Silently and together we shared the miraculous, barely daring to breathe. A few moments later the shaft broadened and dispersed into normal light, and as quickly as the natural spectacle had appeared, it vanished.

  My son turned to me with a look of transported joy, and smiled broadly. There were no words that attended the smile. None were needed. Then he turned back to his drawing with sheer contentment and said nothing more of his father.

  Coming into his grandfather’s home became the crowning glory of Leonardo’s childhood. When he reached the age of reasoning, Papa took him into the apothecary to gain knowledge of plant medicine. When I’d left home at fifteen I had not finished my own studies, so I began learning again along with my son.

  Together, joyfully, we dove into my father’s collection of books and manuscripts, and though none of the da Vincis knew it, Leonardo came to be well taught in Latin, and even a smattering of the Greek language. It used to make me smile to watch my father teaching my son the same lessons in philosophy and geography and geometry that he had taught me at the same age.

  Leonardo showed himself to be left-handed, a tendency that—had he been more public a child—would have earned him the reputation of a heretic or a Satanist. The da Vincis provided only the most rudimentary tutors for him, and for only a few hours a week. For the benefits of these men Leonardo learned to write with his right hand, and so became ambidextrous.