The Competition

by Donna Russo Morin

  Viviana’s lips twitched. Poor Father Raffaello’s largesse, impressive in its own right, looked far fleshier as he stood beside these well-trained, burly, and muscular men. The priest must have seen her in that moment, for he leaned toward the nearest guard, nudging him, and pointing in her direction. With but a glance from that soldier, the others sprang into action, plunging into the crowd, parting it with the same might that Moses must have the Red Sea.

  “Make way!” they shouted, hewing a path through the rabble, more than a few people requiring a shove from a horizontal lance before they moved.

  Angry voices became growls. The shoving moved in both directions. People fell upon the cobbles. The human sea tossed angrily.

  Viviana pulled her veil down, dipped her head, and plunged into the open trough they created for her. As she reached the steps and climbed them, the soldiers closed ranks behind her, at the ready once more.

  With one hand on the door, she turned back to the soldier nearest to her. “Thank you for being here today, signore.”

  “We will be here every day until you finish,” he said, wary glare never leaving the crowd. “It has been so ordered.”

  Viviana gave a nod of acknowledgement, hand upon the door. There she held it for the briefest moment, as her gaze caught and held on two faces, two men who surprised her with their presence in the horde. She turned from them with a frown and slipped through the door; the soldiers may guard their bodies, but invectives still wounded hearts and minds. She hurried from them, slammed the door on them.

  The first woman she saw was Isabetta, struggling through the back door, arms filled with more bristly brushes and pots of pigments. Viviana corralled her before they ducked behind the cloth.

  “I see we are to be protected,” she said with a tilt of her head, “and by the Otto, no less.”

  Isabetta’s face burst joyously. “Is it not wonderful? I feel my creativity leaping knowing they are there.”

  “And have you felt other things that Il Magnifico has to offer?”

  Isabetta’s joy disappeared like a candle snuffed. It was a brazen question, even if asked by her closest friend.

  Viviana softened. “Did you think I would not be able to tell, as you had with me, even were they not at the door? It is painted gloriously upon your face.”

  Isabetta said naught. Her gaze rose to the coffers above their heads, or perhaps beyond. “There are many things I have done that I regret, as have you, that they tell us will send us into the fires of Hell,” Isabetta said without artifice or shame. “If I find scattered moments of satisfaction in his arms, it is the least of my offenses.”

  Viviana’s chest swelled and collapsed with her sigh. “I feel only joy for you. You have been too long without such moments. My care—my concern—is for your heart. Magnifico is a powerful, persuasive man, but he is a thief of hearts. Protect yours, please, cara.”

  “Who is to say who uses who?” Isabetta said within the shelter of Viviana’s solicitude. “I have known the pain of loving one I cannot have. I promise you it has hardened me against doing so ever again.”

  Viviana nodded though unconvinced. She knew the magnetism of Lorenzo de’ Medici, had felt it herself. She knew too Isabetta’s needs. The combination was not a favorable one, not in Viviana’s mind.

  The raised voice of Leonardo da Vinci, distinctive though muffled through the door, broke her worried reverie.

  “He speaks to the crowd? What does he say?” Isabetta dropped her bundles, hurried to the front of the church, Viviana hard on her heels. They put their ears to the crack.

  “Do you not realize what this can do for our work, all our work? How it can bring it to the masses, not just to those with deep pockets? Is not that what we truly want? What is best for the craft?”

  “They are women!” A cry answered him, as if being female were a contagion to ward oneself against. In this instance, perhaps it was.

  “True, but they are talented, dedicated women.”

  “He dares to reason with them.” Isabetta pulled back, fell back, knocking her head upon the door. “He may as well try to sell rosary beads to the devil.”

  “There are many among them from the guilds,” Viviana mused. “I believe it is to them he speaks, not those who merely demand we know our place.”

  “Your place is within that chapel continuing the profound and beautiful work you were meant to do.”

  The women jumped at the presence of da Vinci before them; neither had heard his silent entry through one of the two smaller doors bookending the large, main one.

  “Yes, maestro,” the women said in concert, rising up.

  “We may work safely now the Otto is here as well as Signore Caivano.” Leonardo led them up the side aisle and to the walls that awaited the strokes of their brushes.

  The guards’ presence, like Sansone’s, was a relief; any peripheral burden withdrawn allowed expanded creativity within. The women worked with passionate determination and efficiency, completing two sections of the lunettes before the time for None came. Though today, and the many days that would follow until their work was finished, there would be no None service offered at Santo Spirito. Father Raffaello had deemed it best for both his parishioners and the artists. Father Tutalle from the neighboring Santo Felice, on the Via Agostino just two blocks away, had agreed to shared precedency over that particular mass.

  The Disciples still worked behind the cloth, if only for their own peace of mind. As they sat on the floor and the scaffolds and took a midday repast, a memory from the morning returned to Viviana.

  “Natasia, dear, why were your uncle and cousin in the crowd?” she asked.

  Natasia’s head bobbed as she swallowed her mouthful of bread and cheese. “They were? They were here?”

  Viviana nodded. “Indeed. I saw them myself. Did you not?”

  “I did not.” Natasia shook her head, food forgotten. “Their relationship with Il Magnifico falters. Perhaps they fear this, and my action in it, will make it worse.”

  “It makes no sense,” Fiammetta said dubiously. “He has approved of it. If they endeavor to endear themselves to him, they would agree, not oppose.”

  Natasia fluttered both hands as if plagued by pesky insects. “Oh who knows the vagaries of my uncle’s mind? I would pay it no heed.” Her eyes met not a one of theirs.

  A piece of meat, half chewed, caught in Viviana’s throat. There was little she could do to discharge it.

  Chapter Twenty-Seven

  “Loving your work does not make it anything less than work.”

  Their raw fingers ached, splotched with color, color that would not wash away no matter how hard they washed, no matter how roughly they scrubbed.

  Bowed backs, strained necks, throbbing eyes—it was the truth of them all.

  The consequences of their undertaking grew and grew. Viviana had expected derision from the community; they received condemnation. She knew they would need to work hard; she never expected it to take such a toll upon their bodies.

  As the women around her stretched and moaned, unfurling hunched backs, stretching cramped fingers, Viviana felt their pain as well as hers, for in her eyes she had brought it upon them.

  Or had she?

  It was Isabetta who insisted they work longer. It was Fiammetta who demanded they work finer, pay greater attention to detail. It was Mattea who mixed and remixed the pigments, sometimes starting over and over again, until she created the perfect color.

  To a one, they had never worked so hard or for such long hours before.

  Viviana stopped her work to watch theirs, and added another pain to her list: that of her heart.

  “Perhaps we should stop a bit early today, take some much-needed rest,” she suggested.

  Not a single agreement came in reply.

  Leonardo sidled up to stand beside her; he watched her watching them.

  “Tell me, madonna, do you think you are all weak women, too weak for this work?”

  “How dare you, maest
ro,” Viviana spun toward him, roared at him. “There is nothing weak about us. There is nothing weak about being a woman. It is only the men who govern us all who believe such nonsense, who try to tell us it is so. We can do anything a man can do, and do it better. We…”

  Viviana stopped her own ranting, narrowed her eyes at da Vinci, and smiled, almost.

  Leonardo tilted his head to the side as his brows rose and made ripples upon his skin.

  Viviana leaned closer to him.

  “If you were any one but Leonardo da Vinci, I would gladly wipe that grin from your face and show you just how weak I am.”

  Each day blurred into the next. Weeks passed. They began to take turns rubbing each other’s backs, soaking their hands in heated water to ease their aches. The one thing they did not do—would not do—was stop.

  • • •

  The chapel was an agitated, buzzing hive, each woman a bee, angered at the dishonor and the taint, the same they had all encountered that morning. Like angered bees, they were a threat to sting anyone they could blame for it.

  Each woman began her day in her own way. Fiammetta broke her fast with her husband and daughter, Natasia with Pagolo, and Mattea with her mother. Isabetta wandered her small home as if she looked for something, but if asked she could not say what. Lapaccia began her day in prayer, as did Carina with her family. Viviana wrote in her journal, for most nights she was far too tired to do so.

  But this day had begun the same for them all, for when they stepped outside their door, turned to close it behind them, they all saw it. Though the words all differed slightly, the message was the same.

  To the one, their doors and the front of their homes—the large and the small—had been vandalized. In paint as red as a hot summer sunset, the words defiled them. Words of their indecency, their lack of legal paternity, even their physical beings had been splashed on their homes for all to see.

  To the one, they gaped in shock, grew red in anger, and made their way to the chapel and their work, work that no words—no man—could stop.

  • • •

  The day had been plagued with interruptions, disruptions of little consequence, nonsensical thoughts in minds intent on focus. Father Raffaello asking what time they would finish that day, Mattea’s mother appearing merely to speak once more of the noble who loved her daughter, the back door to the basilica opened and slammed to a shut, yet again.

  “Dio mio, what now?” Isabetta snapped. She stood at the chapel egress, her back to the church, beseeching her fellow artists. “Have we not suffered enough? Can we not simply carry on with our work without interruption?”

  “Oh dear,” the soft, lilting voice answered her. “I fear I have come at an inopportune moment.”

  Isabetta spun, words of banishment ready upon her lips until she saw that face.

  It was a face talked about by men and women throughout Florence, a face immortalized by both Leonardo and Botticelli. Her delicate beauty—the petite face upon the long, thin neck, the cupid’s-bow lips, the wide, pale eyes, the long, flowing hair of the natural auburn so coveted by Florentine women—had been extolled in the sonnets and poetry of men throughout Florence, men including Lorenzo de’ Medici.

  Isabetta lost thought, words, in the face of her lover’s true love.

  The relationship between Lorenzo and Lucrezia Donati was a topic forever under discussion. Some said he fell in love with her long before his marriage to Clarice, though Lucrezia was already married. Some said Lorenzo’s love for Lucrezia was naught more than platonic worship. Few believed it. Knowing the man as she did now, Isabetta knew with certainty there was nothing platonic about what went on between them, knew his lust to be too powerful, his power too strong to be denied, his insatiable desire to possess all that was truly beautiful too insistent.

  Yet he protected her, feeding the fantastical notion. For a man to commit adultery, though a sin in the eyes of God, was nothing exceptional in the eyes of society. For a woman to do so was a punishable offense, one punishable by law and its biting jaw.

  “Of course not, signora.” Viviana rushed to Isabetta’s assistance. “We are merely taken aback by the presence of a visitor. We have been forced to deny such attendants, I fear. I am sure you understand.”

  “Indeed,” Lucrezia gave a simple bow of her head, perhaps an attempt at an apology. “I have seen those who would make for poor guests.”

  “And yet you found your way in,” Fiammetta challenged; no matter how revered this woman was, she would not intimidate the contessa, nor would she be countenanced.

  Lucrezia smiled, a gesture lovely and enchanting and, to another woman’s eye, well rehearsed.

  “For me, allowances are made, sì,” she professed with a coquettish lift of one shoulder. “I confess I felt a powerful need to see the courageous women everyone speaks about.”

  Fiammetta replied with her own polished, “contessa” smile. They all knew her words were specious; they all knew whom Lucrezia had truly come to see.

  “You are most welcome, Signora Ardinghelli.” Isabetta, the master of herself once more, faced this woman with her true self, one that had become a powerful force all her own.

  “You know me?” Lucrezia’s perfectly plucked brows rose.

  “A beauty such as yours is well known, madonna,” Isabetta simpered sweetly.

  Lucrezia tipped her head, accepting such sweetness, unable—or unwilling—to hear its mockery.

  Isabetta took the woman’s arm. “Come; let me introduce you to my fellow artists.”

  Names were exchanged, as were the curtsies, as if they all were performing in a play.

  “May I?” Lucrezia requested, once the fallacious pleasantries finished, tipping her perfectly coifed head toward the chapel.

  “As you wish,” Isabetta allowed.

  Lucrezia strolled about the chapel, Isabetta on her heels, following the rich aromas of rosewater and lavender that hovered about the expensively groomed woman. As Lucrezia studied and examined their work upon the walls, her hard, haughty expression softened, marveled.

  “You have all done this yourselves?” Gone was Lucrezia’s well-practiced speech, her postured superiority.

  “We have,” Isabetta stated.

  The woman who surely looked upon Isabetta as a rival, looked upon her—them all—in wonder.

  “Where did you find the courage?”

  Isabetta tossed her head, one shoulder rising. “There are many times in life where one has no choice but to be courageous, to do what must be done to give ourselves better lives. Surely you can understand.”

  Lucrezia sniffed, though it sounded more like what it was, a snicker.

  “Indeed I do. Do you know,” she continued, “there are many who say you are to be feared?” She looked at them all. “That you are all to be feared. That the devil sent you, that you are witches. They say you will change our very way of life.”

  Viviana dismissed the words, fearing more the leer upon Isabetta’s face. Lucrezia’s gaze scuttled about the chapel and all in it. “I say that there are times when old ways not only should be changed, but must be changed.”

  She turned once more to Isabetta; her small, curved lips lifting at the corners, as did Isabetta’s.

  “I have taken too much of your valuable time, donne artiste. Please, continue your important work.”

  “We thank you for your visit today…and your encouragement,” Isabetta intoned.

  Lucrezia Donati dropped into a deep, respectful curtsy, her pale green eyes flitting to every face.

  “Do not stop. No matter the consequences, hold to your convictions.”

  With such words, she minced away; only the scent of her remained, and the astonishment she left behind.

  Chapter Twenty-Eight

  “Any artist may paint the truth, or the truth as they see it.”

  The carriage tethered to the post before her home looked familiar, but Viviana was unable to place it. She stepped around it to her door, assuming it was but one
of her sons’ regular customers.

  But one should never assume.

  Her sons, like the ground floor full of employees, swirled in an eddy of frantic busyness. Viviana had no desire to get in their way, yet she needed to.

  “Dinner this Sunday, sì?” she asked them quickly.

  “Of course, Mama,” Rudolfo rushed past her.

  Marcello simply nodded; he had not a glance to spare her from the mounds of parchment on a desk made invisible by them. Viviana leaned over the escritoire toward him. “I think it best if Carina not attend, just this time, my son, if it does not offend.”

  That brought his attention to her. “Are you…is there a problem with Carina? Does she not—”

  Viviana stopped him with a raised hand and a shaking head. “She is wonderful, Marcello, have no fear. It is as if she has been one of us from the beginning.”

  Marcello slumped with relief. “Then—”

  “There is merely a private matter I need to discuss with my sons, naught more.”

  His brow furrowed, but he nodded. “Of course, Mama.”

  Viviana leaned further, bussed a kiss upon his forehead, said, “Grazie, cara,” and took herself away, toward the stairs.

  “A visitor awaits you, Mama,” he called to her back. “Signore Capponi.”

  Viviana stumbled, but raised a hand in acknowledgment. What would Natasia’s husband want of her? What would she say to it? Jemma waited for her at the top of the stairs. “Signore Capponi is—”

  “I know,” Viviana stopped her curtly, removing her veil. “Where is he?”

  “Your salon, madonna.”

  “Grazie,” Viviana replied over her shoulder. She reached her study, but stopped short of entering. From the side of the opened door, she peered at the man awaiting her within.

  Pagolo sat slumped in his chair, arms resting on legs that jittered. This was not a social call he paid her.

  With a deep, fortifying breath, Viviana put on her best smile and walked in.