Da Vinci's Tiger

by L. M. Elliott

  He would still mock my brother? Even after such a triumphant display of horsemanship and bravery? I turned round and blessed the Pazzi man with the most innocent, demure smile I could muster in my fury. “But good, my lord,” I said in a purposely dulcet tone, “would not this horse father wondrous colts?” I paused to allow my listeners time to consider. “After all, his most important . . . mmm . . . . leg . . . was not pierced.”

  The man’s mouth dropped open.

  His friends guffawed in appreciation. But this time the laughter was with me. Even ladylike Simonetta shook with mirth, but she pressed her lips together to keep from laughing out loud.

  I turned back to face the jousting field, having won that round for my family’s honor, just as Giuliano charged back into the lists for his next go at glory.

  2

  TRUMPETS BLARING, GIULIANO DE’ MEDICI SPURRED HIS mount to the grandstand where Simonetta and other special guests sat. He pulled up in a shower of white sand. Bracing his ten-foot-long lance against his hip, Giuliano bowed to Simonetta while his horse pranced and snorted in place, anxious to get back on course.

  It had been a typical Tuscan January day, cloudy and cold with a damp chill coming off the Arno River. But at that moment—as if the Fates wished to add to the moment’s symbolic drama—the sun burst forth, spilling golden light onto the Piazza di Santa Croce and making Giuliano’s fantastical armor gleam. His silver-steel breastplate was draped in white silk embroidered with pearls, the gold border of his red cape encrusted with diamonds, rubies, and sapphires. His shield was the snarling face of Medusa, her hair of snakes so lifelike one could almost hear them hiss. Orso, his black-and-white-spotted horse, was just as resplendent. A silvery helmet covered its forehead, and its back was draped with a blue-cloth caparison embroidered with the Medici coat of arms.

  We all gaped at the image created by the warhorse and its twenty-one-year-old rider, whom Florence affectionately called “the Prince of Youth.”

  “My lady,” Giuliano called out. “May I ask the honor of your favor again?” The scarf she’d given him earlier must have been lost on the field or bloodied during the last round. He carefully lowered his lance as Simonetta stood. From inside her angel-wing sleeve she pulled a long ribbon of blue and silver, dyed and embroidered to match Giuliano’s attire, and tied it onto the blunted pole.

  Giuliano raised the ribboned lance once again in salute to the stands. The crowd erupted as he and Orso cantered back to the 125-foot-long jousting lane.

  Trumpets sounded to announce his opponent. “Signor Morelli has now entered the lists,” called the tournament official. I couldn’t help but feel sorry for anyone tilting against Florence’s favorite son that day. The poor man received tepid applause.

  Trying to garner some support, his herald shouted, “Signor Morelli challenges the honorable, the champion Giuliano de’ Medici a plaisance!” A friendly challenge for the pleasure of the assembled to watch—no real danger to Giuliano.

  At this, the piazza echoed with cheers.

  Giuliano and Morelli lowered the hinged visors of their helmets. As if cued by the snap of the eye shields, both horses reared and pawed the air. The two riders struggled to balance themselves, their lances, their shields, and their armors’ weight against the horses’ excited cavorting. The crowd hushed.

  A page approached the rail that ran the course, separating the horses from colliding. He lowered a crimson-colored pennant to the ground. He looked left, then right, to make sure each rider was ready.

  The horses snorted, nickered, kicked up sand.

  And . . . and . . .

  Even the passing clouds above seemed to stop and hover in anticipation.

  The page snapped the flag up into the air.

  “Heeaaah!” Giuliano shouted, and jabbed Orso with his long golden spurs. Whinnying his own battle cry, Orso lunged into a canter. So, too, did Morelli’s chestnut charger.

  Daaa-da-dummm, daaa-da-dummm, daaa-da-dummm. The rhythmic surge of the horses’ hoofbeats mingled with the music of jingling armor. The two men lowered and braced their heavy wooden spears across their chests at an angle, straight at each other.

  Da-da-dum, da-da-dum, da-da-dum. The horses’ rhythm quickened.

  I felt Simonetta stiffen and hold her breath.

  The riders hugged their shields closer, leaning forward and in toward the barrier fence to maximize the force of impact. And to survive it.

  Crrrr-aaack! Giuliano’s lance struck Morelli’s arm guard and split.

  Morelli lurched dangerously to the side but stayed in his saddle.

  “A hit! One point to Giuliano de’ Medici!” the joust’s scorekeeper sang out. “That is his thirty-first broken lance of the day!”

  Striking an opposing rider on his armor between the waist and neck yielded a point. Unhorsing an opponent was an automatic win. Each match lasted “three lances,” unless one of the riders was knocked to the ground. Breaking a lance did not add points, simply a heightened drama to the hit.

  Giuliano was handed another brightly painted lance and the riders charged each other again.

  This time Morelli managed to hit Giuliano’s breastplate. Giuliano was knocked askew so that his lance missed Morelli entirely.

  “A point to Morelli!” the scorekeeper shouted with a little less enthusiasm.

  The third and last round no longer seemed friendly at all to me. Simonetta shifted uncomfortably, tense. The two riders charged faster this time, their horses heaving, their necks lathered in sweat.

  With a bone-chilling crash, the men smashed together with such force they both fell backward in their saddles, their heads sagging toward the horses’ rumps, their arms splayed out wide like Christ on the crucifix. Their lances dropped to the sand. Pages rushed forward to stop the horses. It took several of them to push their masters—weighed down by fifty pounds of armor—upright.

  Sitting again, Giuliano and Morelli pulled off their helmets, shaking their heads as if clearing their vision. They smiled weakly at each other, trying to catch their breath.

  But who had won their match?

  The crowd waited. Silence from the scorekeeper. It became obvious the longer he hesitated that the scorekeeper was trying to find a way to award the round to Giuliano. Rumor had it the Medici family spent sixty thousand florins of their own for the joust’s decorations, prizes, and grandstands, not to mention purchasing Giuliano’s armor, his entourage’s livery, and banners. Since a single florin could buy thirty chickens, the monies spent to delight Florence with such a spectacle were staggering. It seemed a proper thank-you to let Giuliano win.

  Even so, Florentines were devoted to fair odds. A favorite maxim held that someone not appropriately rewarded for his efforts was like a donkey who carried wine on his back but was given only water to drink—in other words, anyone allowing himself to be exploited in such a way was an ass. So our expectation was that hard work guaranteed a fair shot at success, a share in the goods. It was the underlying, pervasive philosophy that kept our little republic rotating citizens in and out of important offices every two months, to theoretically give all citizens the chance to influence policy.

  And yet somehow these beliefs were thrown out the window like the contents of a chamber pot when it came to the Medici. The family essentially ran Florence. The Medici had achieved this power subtly. They did not use violence, poisonings, or assassinations, as did some power-hungry families like the Sforza in Naples. Nor did they flaunt their privilege, culture, and education to intimidate others, as did the noble-born Pazzi.

  Instead the Medici granted favors and loans when a person most needed them. They brokered advantageous marriages and business partnerships. Such favors demanded loyalty in return. With the general public, the Medici continued their soft-as-silk coercion with entertainments like this joust and by building an almost mythical image for themselves. Giuliano was so gallant and handsome, Lorenzo so witty and poetic, that there was a widespread affection for the young Medici brothers.
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  Perhaps recognizing the political blunder of undoing Giuliano de’ Medici at the joust his family was footing, Morelli made a brilliant move.

  He raised his leather-gloved hand and shouted, “Good Giuliano, in thanks for your gracious arrangement of this glorious day, I concede our round to you. And in commemoration of our valiant bout, I present you”—at this he signaled his pages—“my banner. Accept this in salute to your jousting prowess, to our great city’s alliance with Milan and Venice, and to the honor of this joust’s Queen of Beauty!”

  The crowd’s answering applause was rapturous. Morelli may have lost his match by the gesture, but he’d certainly won the hearts of Florence. He instructed his pages to drape the triangular pennant over the railing in front of Simonetta before he trotted off the jousting field.

  Much as I liked her, I felt myself pout as I inspected the artwork. Could one woman possibly deserve all this attention?

  The image—of a reclining nymph, asleep after gathering a bouquet of wildflowers, and the Cupid who crept up to wake her—was absolutely exquisite. Better, frankly, than the joust’s centerpiece by Botticelli, I thought. There was something so real, so alive about their expressions. The Cupid youth looked upon the nymph with such tenderness, and she seemed so peaceful, as if entranced by the scent of the blossoms she held. Delicate shading around her cheekbones and eyes added such depth and naturalness to her face.

  “Who painted this?” I asked Simonetta. “Do you know?”

  “Maestro Verrocchio,” she said.

  “Really?” I was surprised. Trained as a goldsmith, Andrea del Verrocchio had become the Medici’s favorite sculptor now that Donatello was dead. “I am amazed. I know Verrocchio’s studio is one of the busiest in the city, and his sculpture much admired. But I did not realize he could paint so . . . such . . .”

  “Haunting faces?” Simonetta finished my thought.

  “Yes.”

  We both gazed at the pennant. “In the Medici palazzo hangs a portrait painted by Verrocchio, which is quite lovely,” Simonetta said. “But there is something different about this image, something new. I’ve heard it said that one of his older apprentices helped Verrocchio paint this pennant. A man named Leonardo, from the little village of Vinci. He’s the illegitimate son of the Medici notary, I believe. Isn’t it astounding that such promise emanates from so low a beginning?”

  3

  THE JOUST CONTINUED, ROUND AFTER ROUND, UNTIL THE Piazza di Santa Croce began to darken with shadows as the sun slid low toward rest for the night. That was when Renato de’ Pazzi rode into the lists on an enormous black horse.

  Simonetta took in a sharp breath. “I have been dreading this. Giuliano practiced daily for a month to ready himself for today’s tournament and sought out the very best horse to ride. He asked his godfather, the Duke of Urbino, to lend him this very mount that now enters under the Pazzi rider. This horse has won countless jousts throughout Tuscany. Any man who rides it into the tilting yard has a tremendous advantage over his opponent.”

  “Why does Giuliano not ride it, then?”

  Simonetta’s fair face grew shadowed like the piazza. “His godfather wrote back saying the Pazzi family had requested the horse first. That was all. No apology. His own godfather!” Simonetta grew indignant. “It was a terrible insult to my Giuliano that his godfather lent this horse to someone else for his joust, but especially so since he showed the favor to a Pazzi son.”

  I knew the Medici were constantly having to beat back challenges to their power—some attempts to dethrone them worse than others. When Lorenzo had been a mere teenager, several families organized an assassination ambush of his father. Lorenzo had managed to catch wind of it and directed his father to travel a different route. But I had never heard it said that the Pazzi were part of that plot. So I asked, “Why is a Pazzi wanting the horse so bad?”

  “Oh, Ginevra, the Pazzi are bitterly competitive with the Medici. Even though they do banking business together, the Pazzi hate that their family is outdistanced by the Medici, a family without noble lineage. They constantly try to undermine Lorenzo’s influence in Florence and to build up alliances against him. Borrowing this particular horse from Giuliano’s very own godfather feels like the Pazzi are trying to recruit the duke to some underhanded business. At best, it’s simply a way to embarrass Giuliano that his godfather would favor someone else. But to me it feels more like retribution for Florence’s last major joust. The whole thing smells of . . . of . . . well, it smells like horse dung!” She pursed her lips and crossed her arms on her chest.

  “Retribution?” I asked.

  “I forget how young you are, Ginevra. You would have been a child when this happened. When Lorenzo hosted a joust six years ago to celebrate his engagement to be married, he rode in it himself, as Giuliano does today. Francesco de’ Pazzi hit him with such force during their tilt that Lorenzo was unhorsed. The Magnifico landed on the ground so hard that at first they almost stopped the tournament. But he managed to get up and continue riding. At the end of the tournament, Lorenzo still won the trophy. Everyone said he had competed beautifully and deserved it. But his win infuriated the Pazzi since one of them had unhorsed Lorenzo, which technically could have eliminated the Magnifico from competing further that day. Francesco has been grumbling ever since.”

  Florence was rife with such intrigues and rivalries. I looked at Giuliano, who was smiling as his pages handed him his helmet. “He doesn’t seem upset about the horse,” I said.

  “No.” Simonetta shook her head. “He is possessed of a gentle, cheerful disposition. He does not recognize guile or notice slights, or if he does, he shakes them off quickly. That is part of his great charm. I just hope it will not prove his downfall.”

  Her worries were interrupted by the call of the Pazzi herald. “Great Florence! The noble Renato de’ Pazzi—whose family fought in the last crusade to Jerusalem and brought God’s grace to our cathedral by giving it a flint chipped off Christ’s tomb . . .” He paused to ensure that his listeners remembered the Pazzi were the knights to bring back a sacred relic from the clutches of the infidels. The Medici had no such history or pedigree.

  The herald continued in a chant-like voice. “Renato de’ Pazzi, the glorious, wishes to challenge the Medici’s youngest son, Giuliano . . .” He paused again, glancing back at the Pazzi combatant, seeking affirmation of something. The Pazzi rider nodded and gestured dismissively to his servant to continue. “The great Renato de’ Pazzi wishes to challenge à la guerre!”

  “À la guerre?” Simonetta gasped.

  In war. For this bout between the Pazzi and the Medici, there would be no pretense of polite competition. There would be no conceding the match. Points would not matter. Unhorsing a rider would be the aim and the only honorable way to win. And that could, indeed, kill one of them.

  The obnoxious Pazzi man behind me stood, applauding loudly.

  This time I put my hand over Simonetta’s to quiet her. I knew enough about horses from my brother to recognize that the Pazzi’s destrier was a type of horse bred to be taller, heavier, and stronger than Giuliano’s charger. But I tried to comfort her. “Peace, Simonetta,” I whispered. “Giuliano has speed and agility and valor. Those will win out against brawn and a villainous heart, I know it.”

  “Ah,” she sighed. “So Lorenzo is right. You are a poet.” She glanced sideways at me and then back to the jousting field. “Sadly, Ginevra, I have learned that poetry does not always match reality. But you give me hope. And hope is what elevates mankind above God’s other creatures here on earth, is it not?” Simonetta sat up a little taller. But she still bit at her lower lip in nervousness.

  A page crouched at the tilting fence line, the starting flag he held now darkened to a bloodred in the late-afternoon shadows.

  Orso pranced and tossed his mane, his head armor glinting even in the growing gloom.

  The Pazzi horse pawed and snorted like the giant hellhound Cerberus.

  I held my breath with
Simonetta as the page snapped the flag up and ran for the safety of the sideline.

  Both horses leaped to a gallop. Da-da-dum, da-da-dum, da-da-dum. No gentle, musical canter beginning to this rush toward collision. The Pazzi horse thundered up the track, kicking great clods of dirt. Orso raced, so speedy it was almost as if his pretty hooves did not touch the ground.

  CRRRAAACCKKK!!

  With an enormous rip, both riders’ lances tore apart from the blow, up to the cone-shaped vamplate that protected the hand holding the lance. Orso staggered as he trotted away. Giuliano held his hand to his chest, as if he fought to breathe.

  The Pazzi rider hurled what remained of his lance to the sand, then turned to see what Giuliano’s condition was. His black horse bucked and stomped its way back to the start line.

  A solitary tear slipped out of Simonetta’s eye and slid slowly down her otherwise composed face. She stayed frozen, creating a convincing picture of having complete confidence in her champion. She knew Florence’s gossips were watching. I discreetly entwined my fingers with hers and squeezed her hand.

  Again the flag snapped its signal to start.

  Simonetta clutched my hand so hard I thought she might crush a bone.

  CRRRAAACCKKK!!

  Again the two riders smashed each other, sending splinters flying. Both were knocked sideways in their saddles, making it a mammoth struggle to pull themselves upright. Retreating to the recess area, they yanked off their helmets to splash their faces with water from bowls their pages held up toward them.

  Giuliano’s shield was badly dented, and one of his liveried servants frantically pounded at it from the inside to straighten it. Giuliano patted the young groom’s head to stop him and gently took back his shield and helmet.

  The Pazzi rider snatched his headgear from his servant.

  As Giuliano turned to reenter the lists, one of his men-at-arms dashed to his side. The Prince of Youth reined in Orso and leaned down to listen to his friend.

  “What do you think they say?” I whispered.