My older boys—my stepson, Bartolomeo, and my firstborn, Piero—are with their father visiting relatives. I miss all three of them. It is not silly to miss my husband, for he is away on business often and too long. But to miss the boys is totally ridiculous. They have been gone but two days. And heaven knows, when they’re here sometimes I close myself away from the noise for a moment’s solitude. They are good-natured boys, but rough and tumble.
Four miracle children. And I will have more. These are things beyond the control of mere mortals, of course, but I know this family is not yet full size. I would love to have one more girl, for sisters are a beautiful thing. I never knew that until I had the fortune and privilege to love my father’s young wife, Caterina. We are like sisters. She is at once aunt to my stepson and stepmother to me.
I love the complications of life. The weave.
It is sad that Caterina has never had children of her own. Since my mother also had difficulties becoming with child, I wonder if the problem might be Papà’s, if such a thing is possible. But this is not an idea to voice. It helps no one.
And Caterina has found satisfaction in loving my brood.
Camilla skips away and Andrea crawls after her in a clumpity way. I am reminded of Uccio, the goat given to me by the love of my life. He skipped. And clumped. He died the day before Andrea was born—back in December. I suppose of old age. He was born the same year as Bartolomeo, after all. Eleven years ago.
Eleven years. Time is a gossamer filament, like a silk strand from a cocoon, flying just out of reach. No one can catch it and hold it firm.
Eleven years ago I met a man—a boy, then—who earned my heart. Nine years ago we promised to marry each other. More than eight years ago, I married another.
A woman’s choices are limited. Particularly if she loves her father and her stepmother-sister. Particularly if she honors the memory of her mother.
I sit up and smell the world as deeply as I can. Then I brush the dirt and grass and flowers from Silvia’s dress and arms. She gives a groan and goes on sleeping. She is spending a couple of weeks with me at our villa. She lost a baby. This is the third time. She carries them a few months, just long enough to be able to feel their kicks, to get a sense of their souls. A cruel amount of time. My heart breaks for her. After each loss she comes to stay with me. I care for her until she is strong again. Then she returns to Villa Vignamaggio, to her husband, Alberto.
Taking care of her like this gives me pleasure and makes me feel less guilty for living the life she so much wanted. Alberto is a peasant, like her father. The work is hard and the pay is low. They need children to help out. She is without luck.
In contrast, everything about my life is lucky, viewed from the right perspective.
Sometimes my determination flags and my perspective goes awry. In those times all I feel is searing loss.
A woman’s choices are limited.
I suppose I could have joined a nunnery. But then I wouldn’t be able to share my day with these children. And, I must admit, I wouldn’t have the pleasures my constant husband offers.
Am I heartless? I wish I were.
“Aiii!” the scream comes.
I jump up and run. A fallen horse, a broken neck, a nightmare returned?
Camilla is tugging on Andrea, who has managed to fall, though he was only crawling, and smack his forehead on a stone. He rubs at the large red abrasion and refuses to sit up. He’s a bit of a round fatty, and she’s but a willow switch. His cry is primal, demanding that his pain be acknowledged by the world at large. I laugh in joy at such a reparable damage, kiss Camilla on the head, and sweep Andrea up into my arms. I carry him back to Silvia, who has woken and looks around groggily.
We talk as I nurse Andrea. He stopped crying the instant he took my breast. He’s a simple boy. A mother’s pearl.
“My milk came in this time,” says Silvia.
I know that, of course. I cleaned her sheets. I won’t let servants tend to her at these times; I do it myself. We have remained best friends. A most precious achievement—a right we asserted and won, against all odds.
“All three times my milk has come in.” Her voice trails off. Then, “Oh! The next time it happens, I’ll borrow a baby. I’ll keep my milk flowing so I can be a wet nurse. That way I can hold babies all day whether God chooses to give me one or not.”
“That’s not a bad plan, Silvia.” I believe in practical talk, though it tastes like vinegar splashed on cake. Lies between women are unforgivable. “But we are both only twenty-four. Too young to rule out possibilities.”
“Twenty-four is old, Elisabetta.”
“There are plenty of uncharted waters ahead. We must stay afloat.”
“You’re the one in a boat. I’m in the water. Swimming. And swallowing salt.”
Andrea gulps as he swallows milk. He’s a noisy, enthusiastic nurser. That’s always been so gratifying to me. But for Silvia’s sake, I wish this once he could be quiet.
“I was right,” comes a familiar voice, one I never expected to hear again. He walks across the grass and lowers himself to sit facing us. “You are a vision of the Madonna. I knew you would be. I was absolutely right: Madonna Elisabetta.”
“Ser Leonardo.” I look up into a face that is aging rapidly—bulbous nose, long straggly hair and beard—but the same bold, burning eyes. I can hardly find my voice. “What brings you here?”
“You, Mona Lisa.”
He’s lived in Milan so long that he speaks now with a northern accent; he said “Mona” not “Monna,” shortening the n sound. But the part that transfixes me is the second half of that address; my ears hear it greedily—they hear what they have longed to hear. Only one other person in the world has ever called me by that name. But I cannot believe Leonardo is still his friend. From what I have heard, Leonardo is an enemy to the Medici family these days. How did he come up with his address of me?
I caress Andrea’s tiny ear. “Ser Leonardo, this is my friend . . .”
“Ah, yes.” Leonardo reaches for Silvia’s hand and kisses it. Sitting like that, I’m surprised at his flexibility, given his age. He’s as flexible as my own sweet husband, who is only fourteen years my senior, while Leonardo must be older than me by close to double that amount. “Don’t tell me your name. No, no. It will come to me.”
“Leonardo the artist?” asks Silvia. “The one who does animals without skin?”
“I plead guilty. But of many more things than that. I sketch inventions, too.”
“Flying boats,” I say.
“Flying machines of various types, in my youth. But I’ve moved to the water now. I designed a device for breathing underwater and a shoe for walking on the surface and a floating ring to throw to someone drowning.” He smiles at his own cleverness. “And a machine to calculate great sums. And this.” He takes out an inexplicable drawing.
“Shallow bowls?” asks Silvia.
“Concave mirrors. It will be a machine that harnesses sunlight to heat water. I have much work to do on it yet.” He tucks it back away. “For a future year. Ah!” He snaps his fingers. “Yes, there’s your name. I knew it would come to me, Mona Silvia.”
“Finally,” says Silvia, turning to me.
Leonardo looks from Silvia to me quizzically; he cannot guess what she means. I know, though.
I try not to stare, but I must be sure. He has real hair, skin, nails, eyes, breath. Indeed, his breath is sour. He is not some vision. So he cannot know what he hasn’t been told; he cannot pluck Silvia’s name from thin air. And it was no coincidence that he shortened my name to Lisa. He’s been talking with Giuliano.
I am ajangle. Unprepared. The girl I was at fifteen flames up inside me without warning.
CHAPTER Twenty-four
WE SIT at the dining table, though we finished our meal an hour ago. The children are in bed. Silvia has gone upstairs to rest. When I protested, she simply said, “You need to talk to each other.” Leonardo and I need to talk to each other.
&
nbsp; “I visited Milan,” I say and listen to my voice with detached amusement. I sound rational. Ordinary. The matron everyone takes me for. I do not sound like a woman trying to smother an inner voice, a woman about to fly to pieces.
“When?”
“In spring of 1499. I saw your mural in the refectory of the monastery of Santa Maria delle Grazie. The last supper of Christ.”
“The painting you were a perfect model for,” says Leonardo, “a mistake, nevertheless.”
“In what way?” I ask, truly surprised. “My husband called it a masterpiece.”
“And you? What did you think of it?”
“I stood in front of it and cried. Everyone said it was because I was with child. With my Camilla. That wasn’t why, though.” I remember the painting clearly; it hurt that much. An ache comes to me even at this distance in time. “Christ is located beyond anger—calm as flat water. Not at all shining in wrath like you said he would be, but oh so much more heartrending for lack of it. And you can see the agitation in everyone else. You know they sense the torment ahead. It’s nearly unbearable.”
“Thank you, Mona Lisa. But it is also a mistake. My experiment with oil on dry plaster failed. By the time the Duke was driven out by the French, pieces were already flaking away from it, and I’d finished it only two years before. It will be completely gone by the time I die.”
What really remains of any of us here on earth after we die? But I don’t say that. Leonardo wants to live on forever through his work. He can’t recognize how transient we are, how trivial. Were I to broach the topic, I might even harm his art. I wouldn’t do that. Besides, I don’t believe it: Leonardo has never belonged to just one time. My dear Francesco is right; Leonardo da Vinci is a master, even if perfidious.
“I looked for you,” I say mildly. “But you happened to be out of the city, just when I was visiting.”
“A pity.”
“Then I was told you came back to Florence.”
“You didn’t come to find me in Florence, though?”
I had already decided never to enter the city again. Not after the reign and ruin of Savonarola. But I don’t want to talk about that. “I heard that you divided your time between Florence and Rome, and that you were working for Cesare Borgia.”
“I didn’t work for Borgia until last year.”
“He’s a horrible man,” I say, working to keep my tone level.
“I’m the first to agree. He has his enemies strangled or burned or cut to pieces. Whatever you have heard is wrong—he’s far worse. He has an utter want of scruples. And on top of it, he’s a morose bore.”
“Yet you worked for him.”
“As chief architect and engineer, on the fortresses in the central papal states. It wasn’t a friendship. And I didn’t do anything underhanded for him.”
I won’t back down. “He’s an enemy to the Orsini family. Alfonsina’s family.”
“I don’t work for him anymore. I am here in Florence.”
He cannot placate me so easily. “An enemy of the Orsini family is an enemy of the Medici family. Have you no sense of loyalty?”
“Loyalty? I value nothing more highly. But not loyalty to man or God. I am loyal to truth. To science.”
“You can rationalize all you want. But what you did was indefensible—for it hurt people you were supposed to be friends with. Alfonsina and Piero and their children have taken refuge with their Orsini relatives in Rome.”
“As has Giuliano,” says Leonardo.
A small cry bursts from my chest. I didn’t mean it to. It’s been so long. How can feelings last this long? All those years of never speaking, never hearing his name—they acted to seal me off, a kind of magic banishing. I was here, but I was gone. Now Leonardo has just spoken his name. The spell is broken. I do not want to talk of anything else now. Nothing else matters. Where do I begin?
And, no. No, no. The desire to ask, to know every detail of Giuliano’s life, descriptions of his person, of how he spends his day, what his room looks like, what he talks about—that desire has no place in my present life. I am the third wife of Francesco di Bartolomeo di Zanobi del Giocondo. I am stepmother to Bartolomeo and mother to Piero, Camilla, and Andrea. The love that binds me to all of them, while so different from the passion of my youth, is essential. I will not be drawn off the true path. I will not even stumble. Loyalty. Not in the airy sense of Leonardo, but in the solid sense of Giuliano. It’s his banner, after all. Loyalty.
I blow out the candles and stand. The very end of daylight comes weakly through the window. “What is your work now?” I ask.
“That’s why I’m here. Come with me to Florence tomorrow. I’ll show you.”
“I’m busy.”
“Out here in the country? What could keep you busy?”
I give a small laugh. Only city folk could say such a thing. And only a childless man. I could quote Plato to him; I could speak about how a strong family is the foundation of society, about the essential job of mothers. But I don’t want to lean on others’ words. All I say is, “I have children and a friend to care for here in this villa.”
“And money enough to hire help to take your place for just two days.”
My fingers run along the warm gold of the candelabra. Florence. The city has become like a creature to me. A living, breathing beast. Could I face the beast again? Over the twenty-four years of my lifetime, I saw the streets of Florence change drastically. When Lorenzo Il Magnifico was in charge, business flourished. Why, there must have been over a thousand shops in central Florence alone. Festivals lasted days, and people were sincerely happy, dancing and feasting and marveling at the tournaments. Then, in the brief two years that Piero was in charge, the finances of the city crumbled. Gangs terrorized passersby. Resentment at Piero’s profligate ways turned into fury. So it was easy for Savonarola to take over. And inevitable that people who had known such extravagance would chafe under his rule and eventually destroy him. That’s what has stayed with me these last few years—the deplorable end of that deplorable monk.
But now another image comes to mind: the east doors of the baptistery, and that head that protrudes from one of the smaller panels that frames the door, the head of the sculptor Ghiberti himself. His pate is shinier than the rest of the door, because everyone rubs their hand on it. My very earliest memory of the city is being in Papà’s arms and rubbing that head. The other figures in the frame are from the Old Testament. It dawns on me now—the sculptor counted himself as equal to such heroes. That very act, that is Florence; that is the heartbeat of the city—art glorified to the point of being sacred, the artist as close to God. And I understand it now—Savonarola made us all understand it: without art the spirit withers.
Every corner of that city holds art. It is, even after everything that has happened, a glorious city. My eyes grow heavy. I’m fighting tears.
“Please.” Leonardo’s voice intrudes in its solidity. And it surprises me, for it holds a promise, though I cannot fathom what it might be.
“A woman traveling with a man, even a mother of four, is not above rumors.”
He smiles. “A woman traveling with me would be cause for confusion among the rumor mongers.” I blink in incomprehension. “Dearest Mona Lisa,” he says gently, “I’m not known for fancying women.”
“Oh.” I flush. “Forgive my embarrassment. It is not for your behavior, but for my own isolation, which has necessitated your words.”
“Will you accompany me then?”
There is a trustworthy woman I have called upon before. She could come to help Silvia and care for Camilla. And we still have a home in Florence, though only Francesco uses it. If Leonardo were in any way disagreeable, I could retreat immediately and then return the next day to this villa. “I’d have to bring baby Andrea.”
“Agreed.”
Late afternoon of the next day we arrive in Florence. I have been battling my misgivings the whole trip. What a fool I am. But now we are finally here; it is too late to
turn back.
Andrea sits on my lap and looks out the coach window. Both my hands circle his middle. I hold on to him as desperately as a drowning wretch to one of Leonardo’s floating rings. Yet the streets are oddly normal. Ordinary. People walk and talk. Commerce moves continually. Children kick balls. Cats skitter out of the way. I can almost believe Florence is a home of reason again. Perhaps coming here is not a mistake.
The coach stops. Leonardo gets out. He stands with his hand to me. I alight, Andrea on my hip. Near the corner of a building a young man talks with a young woman. He touches above his upper lip hesitantly. And memories flood.
The story of Savonarola exposes the corruption in everyone’s heart. But it is not that aspect of it that has kept me out of Florence. Giuliano had called Savonarola self-righteous. He had talked of the tyranny of piety. His words were prophetic. Oh, yes, what has kept me out of Florence is the anguish of knowing how right Giuliano was about it all. How deeply decent he is. How much I lost when he left.
But I am different now. I can do this. It is important that I be able to do this. I accompany Leonardo into the quiet stone halls of the Santissima Annunziata.
CHAPTER Twenty-five
THE MONASTERY is a perfect place for me,” says Leonardo. “It’s close to the hospital of Santa Maria Nuova. I go there to dissect cadavers for my anatomy studies.”
“Yes,” I say vaguely.
“And the library has a collection of over five thousand codices.”
“I know. I used to visit it often. My husband’s family owns a chapel here.”
“Yes, of course. I knew that. My father and your husband’s father were friends for many years. Our city homes were practically around the corner from each other.”
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