Signora Da Vinci

by Maxwell, Robin

  As we had been the night before, we were rewarded by a perfect image of the corpse’s front, the chest and arms dark with laceration marks, the torso, rounded thighs, and calves ghostly shadows on the light linen. Where the face should have been was blank. Leonardo had been correct. The solution had not yet reacted to light, and washed out completely in the boiling water.

  But everyone was more than curious to hear how Leonardo planned to add the face to the nearly completed shroud image.

  “I will use myself as the model,” he said.

  We all stared at him in uncomprehending silence.

  “A place on the shroud is waiting for Jesus’s face. Whose better than mine?”

  “Could anything be more sacrilegious?” I said.

  “A perfect blasphemy,” Papa added.

  “A better practical joke than a stinkball,” said Zoroastre.

  “You could be caught, Leonardo,” I said, bringing an end to the levity. “They would burn you at the stake.”

  “I will not be recognized,” he assured me. “Look at what we have so far.” He led me to the wall where the shroud was tacked up to dry. “The high places that appear to touch the winding sheet appear the darkest. The image of my face that will be seen by the pilgrims as they pass will be the line of my nose, my forehead with its bloody thorn holes, my mustache, beard, and cheekbones. I believe the entire area of my eye sockets will be light. Without sight of that part of my face, I will not be recognizable. But of course we must do several trials first. We cannot afford to ruin the work we’ve already done.”

  I was unconvinced, too worried as a mother to listen to sense, but there was nothing to do but try.

  The next day we positioned a powdered Leonardo on the table, placing the square of treated cloth in the camera where it would fit on the shroud. Before Zoroastre fixed the mirrors on him, Leonardo told us, “The most difficult part of this is lying still for eight hours. Not moving a muscle.”

  He was right. Two hours into the first trial some of the powder strayed into a nostril. He sneezed so violently he nearly came off the table.

  The next sunny day we were more careful with the powder. Papa spoke to Leonardo quietly, telling him how the great mystics of India were able to slow their breathing so extremely that they appeared, for all intents and purposes, dead to the world. For hours he sat as close as he was able, guiding Leonardo through breath after shallow breath. We had made it through six hours when a stray cat who’d found its way into the villa, slipping past everyone’s notice, leapt onto Leonardo’s stomach.

  Such a rude awakening from a near trance caused a terrible shriek, which made us all scream and then fall about in gales of laughter . . . and no little frustration.

  This was, in fact, the first time I had seen Leonardo give in to despair. For the days were getting shorter, the hours of full light less and less, and fewer without gray skies and rain.

  I watched him as he stood over a bowl of water to wash the powder off his face and hair. He stared at his reflection and sighed deeply. The consternation was palpable in his expression. He was altogether unused to failure. There was always a solution to be had. Always another experiment.

  Finally he leaned down and splashed his face with water. But as I watched, I saw him freeze in that position, stay still as a statue for the longest moment. Then he straightened slowly and stared at his own image in the looking glass. His face was still white with powder, but rivulets of water dripped down his cheeks and through his beard.

  “Bring me the powder,” he whispered. Only I had heard him.

  “Zoroastre,” I said, “will you bring Leonardo the bowl of powder?”

  He rushed away and was back moments later with the bowl, which he set before my son.

  Leonardo looked down and, splashing his cheeks and nose and forehead once more with water, thrust his hands into the powder bowl, then brought them to his face. He pressed them into the wetness till it caked there, thick—like plaster.

  I gasped quietly, for I knew his thinking.

  That divine mind, I thought.

  “Death mask,” he said quietly. “A living man’s death mask.”

  He turned and smiled at me, the thick wet powder cracking his face.

  “A white plaster cast of my face!” he fairly shouted at Papa and Zoroastre. “It cannot move. It will not need to breathe. And we shall lock all the doors against cats!” He laughed joyously. “How did I not think of this before?”

  He hugged Papa, then Zoroastre, then me.

  “We must work quickly. We cannot be sure of the sun much longer.” To Zoroastre he said, “Drive into Pavia now. To Bellmonte’s bottega. Get us a barrel of plaster.

  The boy was gone in an instant.

  “If this works, we shall have our forgery. The perfect holy relic. The Lirey Shroud with the face of Our Lord . . .” He grinned at Papa and me. “. . . Leonardo da Vinci.”

  Of course it worked perfectly. On the last full day of sun in November 1491 the camera obscura, using our refined fixative, captured the image of my son’s face from the plaster death mask, perfectly aligned with the body of the Milanese corpse. A straight dark slash at the neck separated the two parts, though otherwise it appeared a flawless match.

  There were several anomalies—a foreshortened forehead, and eyes a bit too high on the face. With more of the fixative on a paintbrush and another full day of exposure, Leonardo added the long hair, and dabbing a mixture of his own blood and reddish pigment at the line of the crown of thorns, the centurion’s spear wound, the wrist and foot holes, he added droplets and rivulets where, with his precise knowledge of anatomy, he knew blood would likely have appeared.

  The new Lirey Shroud was perfect.

  CHAPTER 35

  We’d barely had time for celebration when a letter arrived from Lorenzo asking me to come home. The messenger he’d sent was, in fact, one of his fiercest conditores, so that my journey to Florence would not be without protection.

  I remember very little of that hard ride, except gratitude for my male disguise. I had become a proficient “horseman” over the years, and had I been a lady in a carriage, the week traveling would have stretched into two.

  This time the sight of beloved Florence filled me as much with dread as with joy. Once within the city walls I could feel a kind of foreboding in the streets, for it was well known that Lorenzo was dying. Most Florentines now outwardly cleaved to Savonarola’s austere principles and practices, but still wondered if it was enough to protect them from an eternity of fire and brimstone.

  I overheard two men whispering that two of the lions at the Via de Leone, always quite peaceable, had the night before fought so violently they had mauled each other to death. A woman went mad during mass at Santa Maria Novella the day before and began shrieking about a raging bull with flaming horns that was pulling down the church. She-wolves were said to be howling at night. All these were ominous portents.

  I found streets teeming with sinister activity. A steady stream of monks scurried from the San Marco Monastery in through the front door of Palazzo Medici with no guards in sight. My heart sank to see more of them exiting, their arms piled high with books. One carried Lorenzo’s much-prized ninth-century Tragedies of Sophocles, that ancient volume he had proudly shown me on my first visit to his home.

  I entered unmolested to find a small contingent of guards at the stairs to the upper floors and at the door to the garden; the colonnaded courtyard had been invaded by brown-robed clergy. Someone had thrown sheeting over Donatello’s David. Surely Savonarola’s work. Had he desired to spare his minions so disgusting a display of sensuality, I wondered, or was he afraid it might arouse them? Doors to the banco were shut tight, and I could see that Lorenzo’s magnificent library had been all but emptied.

  I approached a stony-faced guard at the stairs, a man that I recognized. “Where is the family?” I said.

  “They have gone to Careggi.” His voice was as lifeless as his eyes.

  “Who is
in charge?” I asked.

  “Piero.” His face suddenly twisted in agony. “Il Magnifico . . . I pray for him, but these maggots,” he whispered, sneering at the San Marco monks, “they desecrate the man’s home before he is even dead.”

  I knew I must leave at once.

  The whole perimeter of the country estate was heavily guarded, though I had no difficulty reaching the villa. The ground floor was a hive of activity—the salon Piero’s makeshift command center. As I climbed the staircase I heard loud arguing and caught sight of Lorenzo’s heir surrounded by conditores, a new circle of young consiglieres, and several elder members of the Signoria, shouting and waving their hands, all demanding attention. Utter chaos reigned where perfect order had once prevailed. Day and night, it is. Heaven and hell.

  I forced my thoughts from Careggi’s back garden—the Temple of Truth, the ancient tree under whose bowers the Academy had searched and debated the far limits of understanding.

  Our Great Conspiracy is Savonarola’s own Pandora’s Box, I mused as I climbed to the first floor, but the key that unlocked it was the death of the man I loved.

  Here, above, was chaos of a different nature. I saw physicians streaming in and out of Lorenzo’s bedroom. There was the family’s foremost doctor, who had stalwartly refused to believe Lorenzo’s illness was fatal, instructing him that all would be well if he refrained from eating grape pits and pears, and made sure to keep his feet warm and dry. Lucrezia the Elder sat weeping on a hall bench with her namesake daughter trying to console her. Pico Mirandola, himself distraught, was beleaguering a hapless page trying to explain how Savonarola’s monks had gained entrance into the palazzo.

  “Then the library is lost!” I heard Pico cry.

  “It is,” I said, rescuing the poor boy, giving him leave to go and turning to Pico. “We can only hope the Prior of San Marco has enough sanity left not to burn the books.”

  He and I embraced. “Silio is barricaded in his rooms claiming that ghostly giants are fighting and screeching in his garden. Angelo is in there,” he said, looking at the bedroom door, “arguing with a specialist from Pavia, who is insisting that Lorenzo drink a concoction made of ground-up diamonds and pearls.” He shook his head in disbelief. My heart went out to Angelo Poliziano, who, of all the men who had surrounded Lorenzo, loved him most deeply.

  “Is he in terrible pain?” I asked Pico.

  “It is unimaginable. For no reason he bleeds through the skin of his hands and arms. He aches in the very marrow of his bones. He is so tormented he gets no rest whatsoever, and yet . . .” Pico laughed ruefully. “. . . Lorenzo seems more concerned to soothe his physicians’ feelings than to alleviate his own suffering.”

  “I would like to see him,” I told my friend.

  “Go in,” Pico said. “Perhaps you can save him from that mad Pavian and his crushed pearls.”

  I steeled myself as best as I could, attempting if not a smile, then a pleasant expression, when all I could feel was crushing grief.

  The sight of Lorenzo, close as he was to the end, was so joyous a vision that I had to restrain myself rushing into his arms. Angelo Poliziano stood in one corner haranguing a haughty-looking man in dark robes I assumed was the physician.

  Lorenzo saw me at once, and his face, though racked with pain, lit like the sun moving out from behind a storm cloud.

  “Angelo,” he said with the greatest affection, “would you show the good doctor out for now?”

  “Gladly,” Poliziano replied and, nodding a respectful greeting to me, steered the man to the door, closing it behind them.

  “Lock the door, Caterina,” he told me, and as I approached the bed he whispered, “Lie down here next to me.”

  I did, and marveled at how safe I felt in the arms of a man so close to dying.

  “Tell me of our pittura del sole,” he said.

  I hardly knew how to begin. “I have never believed in magic, Lorenzo. Like my son, I adhere to the infinite possibilities of Nature. But what Leonardo created out of natural substances and alchemical processes is something magical, even to these skeptical eyes of mine.”

  “And will it serve our purposes in all the necessary ways?”

  “Perfectly.”

  Lorenzo exhaled a long satisfied sigh. “Then I will leave this world content,” he said. “How wonderful it would be if all people knew that by their death something great would be gained.”

  It was inconceivable how sanguine he was at the thought of dying.

  “Piero . . . ,” I began.

  “Piero will prove a disastrous leader,” Lorenzo said. “He hasn’t a prayer of overcoming the prior’s influence. Things in Florence will grow far worse before they can improve. I want you to go back to live with Leonardo in Milan.”

  I nodded my assent. It was, with every moment, growing more difficult to speak, with no sorrow, no regret.

  “Can you move closer?” he whispered hoarsely, unable to keep the pain from his voice. “Your heat is soothing.”

  I pushed as close as I could to him and laid one arm over his chest. I felt his lips on the crown of my head.

  “There is something I must tell you now—what I learned from Il Moro when we last visited him. What he and Roderigo are planning. Roderigo,” he murmured with no little awe, “the first Borgia pope. When he takes the tall hat you must go to Rome and see him. He holds the final intelligence that will secure our conspiracy’s success.”

  When he groaned I released my hold on him, knowing the touch of my body, while perhaps warming him, must also be causing him pain. We lay side by side staring up at the underside of the bed’s carven canopy.

  “If Innocent is that close to dying,” I said, “do you realize that Savonarola correctly prophesied the year of your death and the pope’s?”

  “I do. In its own perverse way, that is what will make what I tell our friend so perfectly believable. Caterina, I need you to bring me a pen and paper.”

  I rose reluctantly and went to the desk.

  Leaning on one elbow, Lorenzo struggled with his gnarled fingers to do the necessary writing.

  “Let me do it,” I said.

  “No. The invitation must come from my own hand.”

  When it was done I poured red wax over the folded letter and closed it with the Medici seal.

  He lay back, exhausted with that small exertion.

  “How long do you think the pulverized gems will take to kill me?” he asked unexpectedly.

  I turned and strode back to his bedside.

  “Lorenzo, no! I cannot even imagine the pain it will cause.”

  “It can be no worse than what I’m already suffering. Caterina,” he said, grabbing my hand, “I must know when to take it. I want to die in his presence. Think what he will make of that!”

  I lay down again to embrace him, finally unable to hide my desperation or contain my tears. His arms went around me and he kissed my face a hundred times.

  “Go now, love,” he finally said.

  I rose, and hardly knowing how to put one foot in front of the other, went to the door.

  “You must thank Leonardo for me,” I heard him say. “And all the world will thank you, sweetest of all women . . . for Leonardo.”

  I turned back for my final sight of the man whom I had been so blessed to love.

  “One last smile, Lorenzo,” I said. “I wish to remember you smiling.”

  I rode into Florence and again to Via Larga.

  It took all my courage to walk into the Monastery of San Marco. I spoke quietly to a fresh-faced young monk, saying I held a correspondence from Lorenzo de’ Medici that must be delivered to his prior in person.

  He scurried away, no doubt puffed with importance that he should be the one who would bring this momentous news to Savonarola.

  A different Dominican returned, this one older and more severe. He looked as though he might never have smiled in his whole life, and eyed the sealed letter in my hand, as though it had been written by Satan himself.


  “You will follow me,” he instructed, and turned away.

  Up we went to the first-floor hallway. The place stank of urine, as though the monks rarely bothered to piss out of doors, and each tonsured man that saw me glared, as though he believed his evil eye might frighten me.

  The door to a small, plain cell was opened. The Prior Savonarola, sitting at a spare desk on a backless bench, was gazing out an arched window, the one I knew to overlook the Medici sculpture garden. Without looking up he gestured for the severe-looking monk to leave us.

  Then we were alone.

  He turned, and I was struck once again by the man’s hideousness—lips, nose, close-set eyes ringed with brown shadows, and suffused with a sick, simmering rage.

  “Why should I believe this comes from the Medici tyrant?” Savonarola said, skewering me with the beady green eyes.

  “Because, Father,” I said in my humblest tone, “here is the Medici seal.” I handed him the folded letter. “I know how severely I would be punished for bringing you a forgery.”

  He plucked the missive from my hand and brought it to the window, peering closely at the seal before opening it. He stood with his back to me as he read Lorenzo’s words, and I could see the slightly hunched back straighten.

  “You realize I have already rejected a dozen of his invitations to visit with him,” he said.

  I shook my head stupidly.

  “Do you know what is in this letter?” Savonarola asked me, turning back to watch my face as I answered.

  “I do, Father. Lorenzo—”

  “The Medici tyrant,” he corrected me.

  “The Medici tyrant,” I continued obediently, “is in full cognizance of his sins as he lies dying, and wishes to confess them to you.”

  “He is at Careggi?”

  “Yes.”

  “And he has no trap laid for me along the way?”

  “No, Father! He has simply seen, as the end draws near, the shrieking abyss of his sinful life, and wishes for redemption.” I fell to my knees before him. “Please be merciful.”