‘Not well. That’s what I was going to say to you. In public, she put a good face on everything, as a dutiful wife would. But the hurt on her face when she didn’t think anyone was looking was painful to watch. I remember seeing her, sitting in the house, large with child and clearly exhausted from attending the wedding in San Lorenzo, and looking across the room at Giovanni. The grief in that expression still haunts me.’
‘And Giovanni?’
‘Oh yes. He still loved her, too. There was no doubt about that. Cosimo may have convinced himself that he had done the right thing from the family’s point of view by marrying Lucrezia to Piero, and he may have convinced himself that they had both come to terms with the arrangement, but in my view, neither of them has ever really got over it and neither of them has forgiven Cosimo for what he did.’
Maddalena decided to change the subject. She sat down and prepared herself.
***
PALAZZO MEDICI
12th June 1453
‘She shouldn’t interfere!’
Maddalena sits beside Cosimo’s bed and tries to calm him. He’s always grumpy when bedridden with gout and in pain. Understandable really.
But in recent years, the frequency of his illnesses and incapacity has increased dramatically, and in turn, his manner has declined. Now at his best he is sardonic and caustic, and at his worst, almost unbearably miserable and rude.
And, she has to admit, he is increasingly lonely, because she now is the only one able and willing to handle his moods; while the rest tiptoe away and find more congenial company.
But today he has picked on an infrequent adversary, and one, she thinks, he is unlikely to better. The problem is, she thinks Lucrezia is right, and Cosimo, as is increasingly the case these days, is in the wrong.
It’s a family issue really. Lucrezia’s youngest brother, Giovanni Battista Tornabuoni, has been working with the Rome branch of the bank from the age of fifteen, initially as a junior cashier, and by now as bookkeeper.
It’s a responsible job. Bills of exchange are extremely valuable—effectively money—they are holograph documents; always written by hand by the named author, an example of whose handwriting will have been sent under separate cover to whichever branch or banking agent is expected to honour it at the other end. And Giovanni, along with Roberto Martelli, the General Manager and Leonardo Vernacci, the Assistant Manager, are the only named and recognised authors.
But Roberto has been away a great deal of the time, on business, and Leonardo has had the responsibility of running the Rome branch himself. This is a great burden on his shoulders. So effectively, almost all of the bills end up being written out by Giovanni, who feels put upon.
What makes it worse is that over the years Leonardo d’Angelo Vernacci, the Assistant Manager, under pressure from his additional responsibilities, has frequently accused Tornabuoni of slacking, and complained about him to Roberto, and also to Giovanni Benci, the General Manager of the Bank, in Florence. And Tornabuoni, who was brought up running the corridors of the Palazzo Medici with Giovanni de’ Medici, who is now—under Cosimo’s nominal leadership—Deputy Director of the Bank and more senior than all of them, thinks he is being unfairly criticised.
The latest row began when Vernacci wrote to Giovanni de’ Medici, reminding him that the bank’s written policy had for years been ‘to advance anyone doing well without regard to family connections’ and that ‘advancement is based entirely on merit’.
Incensed, Lucrezia’s brother has written to Piero in his capacity as head of the family and Lucrezia’s husband (and not, as he should have done, to Giovanni, who runs the bank) to take issue with the complaints.
That, Maddalena thinks, is outrageous enough, but Piero has been stupid enough to reply, even though the matter was really none of his business. And now Cosimo is backing Piero, (because he knows nobody else will) and who, he says, was only trying to help. But now, to his surprise, Lucrezia, instead of backing her husband, is arguing the managerial case, saying the family is failing to support its professional management. Why? Because she still loves her brother-in-law, Giovanni de’ Medici, and always takes his side. And perhaps because what she says is true.
‘Lucrezia is being disloyal!’ Cosimo, propped up with pillows, is standing his ground as well as a sick man can.
Maddalena has one more go at getting through to him.
‘Loyalty is not the case at point. Not even whether Giovanni is any good or not. The point is, whether the bank is going to support its professional management, including Vernacci, or whether, as has happened too often recently, the family always wins. To Lucrezia, the principles of good management come before loyalty—even to her own brother! Can’t you see that?’
‘Don’t shout at me. I’m ill.’ He is putting on his quavering voice now; a sure sign he knows he’s losing. But she knows him too well to fall for that one. He’ll soon recover if she shows signs of weakening.
‘Lucrezia is right. It’s ridiculous to buy a powerful horse and then pull your own cart. Even the horse will lose respect for you, if you do that.’
And she says it confidently, because she knows it’s true. The Bank has branches all over Europe and it’s essential that the managers of those branches respect and adhere to the policies set by the head office.
‘Piero may be head of the family, but he is not formally involved in the running of the Bank at all. You can’t have him supporting Giovanni Battista against the local and central management, even if he is my brother.’
This time, Cosimo nods and subsides into his pillows.
But Maddalena knows nothing will happen and that the argument will persevere, like a festering sore, so long as Cosimo and Piero keep poking their little fingers in. Lucrezia is right. She nearly always is.
***
The abbess began nodding. ‘I think I understand. Discipline is, as we know here well enough, essential to maintain.’
Maddalena smiled back at her. She said nothing, but the thought that entered her head was of interpretation, for it was the lightness of touch with which Madonna Arcangelica interpreted the Rule of the convent that made life bearable.
Had the easing of the policy of the Medici Bank in Cosimo’s latter years merely reflected a softening of interpretation, or had the family lost its grip on what originally made the bank what it had become?
Somehow, although she had never met him, she knew what Cosimo’s father would have said and she had a feeling that Lucrezia would agree with him.
The abbess was looking drawn. It was time for another change of subject.
‘Shall we talk about something different?’ She had one more story in her mind that she thought worth telling.
The abbess nodded absent-mindedly.
‘Now that he was married, Lucrezia may have thought that Giovanni could do nothing else to hurt her. But two years later, he did.’
Once again, the abbess sat up. It was always the same. People, rather than the rules of institutions and organisations, seemed to be her stimulus.
***
PALAZZO MEDICI
Late Autumn 1455
‘I’m back.’
Giovanni de’ Medici clambers awkwardly from his carriage and looks across the courtyard of the palazzo.
Two floors above, Maddalena hears the cry and looks out of the window. Lucrezia will be pleased she thinks. She’s missed him terribly.
She knows there’s no hurry. By the look of him he’s put on quite a lot more weight during his year as ambassador to Rome. He’ll take a lot longer to puff his way up the stairs to the piano nobile than I will to drop down one short staircase. Instead she leans on the windowsill and watches. Arrivals are always fun. There’s nearly always some element of surprise.
Down below, she sees him turn and reach a hand back into the carriage. His hand is followed by a long, slender arm. A girl’s arm. A black girl’s arm. An arm wearing a slave bangle, just like hers.
The girl looks nervous. Well, who wouldn’t be
? Arriving in an ambassador’s carriage in the central courtyard of the Palazzo Medici. Maddalena leans out further, to get a better look. She’s beautiful. Not just attractive, but take-your-breath-away beautiful; tall and slender, slim-hipped and, as she crosses the courtyard holding Giovanni’s pudgy hand, she is graceful, walking like a dancer, or an athlete.
Ginevra won’t be pleased. Maddalena bites her lip. She even feels a twinge of jealousy herself.
Cosimo will like her. He’ll like her a lot. She is truly gorgeous.
As she makes her way down the staircase, her head is whirring. He must have bought her in Venice.
Step, step, step.
Copied his father and found her on the Riva degli Schiavoni.
Step, step, step.
I hope he is looking after her as well as Cosimo looked after me. She can’t be more than seventeen. Perhaps the same age I was?
She reaches the landing and slows. It won’t do to arrive breathless. They’ll think I’ve been running.
She takes the first couple of steps down the next flight of stairs and suddenly stops as she hears what sounds like Lucrezia’s voice below her. Oh dear. Now she certainly won’t like this. Lucrezia won’t like it at all.
By the time Maddalena reaches the great hall, it is half full. Half full with smiling people—people smiling awkwardly, as if they don’t know what to say. And the reason they don’t know what to say is in the middle of the room, trying to smile, still holding Giovanni’s hand, which against her slim brown fingers looks huge and pudgy, like a butcher holding a sparrow.
‘This is Titania.’ Giovanni breaks the silence by introducing her.
Ginevra, already pregnant from the short visit Giovanni made home early in the summer, gasps and puts a hand to her mouth. You can see she is very upset, but it hasn’t taken her long to remember that Giovanni is a law unto himself and that complaining will achieve nothing on his part but the loss of temper, and on her part, further upset and discomfort. So she stands there, until someone brings her a chair.
Maddalena looks around for Lucrezia but she’s not there. It must have been another voice—similar, but not hers. Lucrezia, someone tells her, is still in Pisa, on business. Oh well. Perhaps that’s a blessing.
Slowly, the household settles and adjusts. And once again, all seems quiet. Giovanni, it appears, has got away with it.
Until Lucrezia gets home. Then we’ll see.
***
Maddalena shook her head, laughing to herself, lost in her memories. ‘To my surprise, within a few hours of Titania’s arrival, Ginevra came to see me, by herself, and asked my advice. She seemed to think I would be able to see into the girl’s head just because we were both black and had both arrived under similar circumstances. It wasn’t a very long conversation and as you might imagine, somewhat inconclusive. I had no intention of taking sides in the matter.
‘Then, to my greater surprise, Titania herself caught my eye and asked if she, too, might speak to me. The poor girl was terrified and had no real idea what was in store for her. My mind went back to the early days in Rome when the other Tita had preceded me in Cosimo’s favours. She, like me, was still in the household, although as she had been demoted to kitchens duties, even while in Rome, she had never posed a threat to Contessina or, if I am honest, to me.
‘I asked her what she was good at. Her reply was so inarticulate that one thing was immediately clear. Giovanni may have brought her back to show Cosimo and Giovanni Benci that whatever they had done in the past, he could do now; but I was certain that, beautiful as she was, he would have no long-lasting interest in her and if she was found useful work in the kitchens, he would soon forget her and the matter would blow over pretty quickly.
‘But I had forgotten about Lucrezia and so, it seemed, had Giovanni. Then, the following afternoon, Cosimo, who was having a good spell, and who was again able to walk a very short distance, was helped by the servants to the Signoria. While he was there, Lucrezia returned from Pisa. Within the hour I saw her follow Giovanni into the salon and shut the door.
‘I was in the studiolo, almost next door, but I could hear her voice as if they were in the same room. To say she was not pleased would be an understatement. Ten minutes later, Giovanni emerged, as white as a sheet and visibly shaking. No more was said, but by the next morning, Titania was gone; sold, they said, to one of the Portinari brothers for almost nothing.’
‘Your Lucrezia seems to be a lady of some character.’ The abbess had an approving smile on her face.
Maddalena beamed at her. ‘Lucrezia is special. She represents a new generation. She will never be content to be the dutiful wife, sitting at home with her babies and running the household. She has wider horizons than that. Much wider. And if any of them, from Cosimo to Piero to Giovanni, had failed to recognise that before, they certainly understood it now.’
‘Did that end the matter?’
‘Oh yes. Giovanni apologised to his wife and to Lucrezia. He even apologised to me, although I was not quite clear what for. Titania was never mentioned again, and before the end of that year, Ginevra gave birth to a lovely, healthy, round-faced boy. They named him Cosimo but everyone calls him Cosimino. His birth brought Giovanni and Ginevra closer together again, and although he was never what you might call an attentive husband, he treated her civilly from that time onward.’
‘And Lucrezia? Was she jealous of the child?’
Maddalena looked at the expression on the abbess’ face and saw that she had missed little. She nodded and smiled. ‘Probably. I didn’t ask her. We were overtaken by events. Or to be more precise, by one event of such magnitude that in hindsight, it overshadowed all the others.
‘In the middle of July, Giovanni Benci died. He had been General Manager of the bank for twenty years, since Cosimo returned from exile, and in that period, the bank had achieved its greatest growth and its highest profitability. I like to think that during that period, and indeed for the years previously, my support and encouragement had also helped, but in my mind, no one played a more important role in the success of the Medici Bank than Giovanni Benci.’
‘More important than Cosimo himself?’ The abbess was looking at her carefully from beneath lowered eyebrows. It was a question few would dare ask, and Maddalena knew it was a searching one. Slowly, she nodded her head.
‘Probably. Yes.’
Already she was casting her mind back, remembering some of the criticisms of Cosimo she had heard Lucrezia make during those last two years at the Palazzo Medici; those final years before she had left for the convent and her new life. Benci had been a huge loss. Cosimo, now no longer a young man, was lost without him, there was no doubt about that. Uncertain and indecisive, issues that once he had addressed remotely, had now become immediate responsibilities and as such, urgent, frightening and personal threats.
Maddalena remembered it all so clearly. That had been little more than two years before I left the Palazzo Medici and came here, to do Cosimo’s latest bidding. But already the signs had been bad. One of Cosimo’s first actions had been to close down the holding company. Now it was a free-for-all. Now each branch was effectively responsible for its own free-standing profit performance, and in the absence of any real interest by Giovanni, the entire onus for making the branches work together lay on Cosimo’s ageing shoulders. And in truth, he was no longer up to it.
Maddalena knew now that whatever Cosimo might ask them to do, local profits, in which they participated heavily, would drive the branch managers to put local considerations first. And, perhaps, cause them to take greater risks than they ought. The old rules had gone. Giovanni di Bicci’s strict principles had rapidly been allowed to decay. Giovanni di Cosimo de’ Medici was now running the bank. He thought it was all good fun, but still he didn’t seem in a hurry to learn banking techniques. And in the absence of strong leadership, it had all started to fall apart.
Distant from these events and seeing them with a new clarity, Maddalena had found herself shocked
by what she realised was happening. There had been a time, two years before, and under Cosimo’s daily influence, when she had wondered why Lucrezia was so cynical about the bank. At the time it had seemed to be doing so well.
But now, with more time to think, she shared Lucrezia’s concern for the future. Now she knew why Cosimo had been so concerned. Now she knew why, once again, as he had done back in 1433, Cosimo had begun squirreling away money; but this time for Lorenzo.
And as far as she knows, he still is. But where is the plan today?
Suddenly she felt her heart go heavy. She was aware that the abbess was looking at her, perhaps thinking about the implications of her last utterance. And suddenly, a loss of confidence overcame her. And as it did so, a terrifying image leapt into her mind; a picture she had not thought about for two years.
‘Up here, in the hills, did you experience the great storm, in the August of two years ago?’
The abbess shook her head. ‘We have a number of violent storms every year, but I don’t recall a single one having special significance. Why do you ask?’
Her mind now half-distant, Maddalena stood and walked towards the folding doors. She released the catch, opened the first section, and looked out, yet still with no real focus to her gaze.
‘They say it was the greatest storm ever seen. That it came roaring in from the sea, passing over Ancona and flooding the whole valley from side to side as it moved inland. Then for some reason, it stopped moving and came to a halt, over Empoli, the lighting filling the sky, the thunder so deafening that afterwards, many people never recovered their hearing. And all the time, they say, the rain kept falling like spears out of the sky and the floods rose higher and higher. Lucca was waist deep, and Vinci was on the verge of being washed away completely.’
***
PALAZZO MEDICI
24th August 1456
‘Yes I think we’re safe now. It seems to have missed us. Thank God we were only on the edge of it. It must be terrifying over there.’
Michelozzo points his finger towards the horizon, beyond the city walls, some eight miles downstream; perhaps somewhere over Empoli.
The House of Medici Page 24