Seeds of Decline

by Edward Charles

  Savonarola began shaking his head. ‘I don’t understand. You came from Rome to Florence via Assisi? Why Assisi?’

  She raised a hand, irritated that he should intrude on a matter that did not concern him. ‘I had business there, on behalf of the pope. I came on to Fuligno by the beginning of May and there I was taken very ill with bronchitis. Luckily I was treated by Maestro Girolamo. Without him, I think I might have died.’

  ‘You were travelling alone? Surely not?’

  Still irritated, she shook her head. ‘Of course not. I was accompanied by Filippo Martelli, by two of my brothers, Leonardo and Niccolò, and by Bartolomeo, a valiant constable with all his men. But it was Maestro Girolamo who saved my life. Finally we came by way of Arezzo and I broke the news of the marriage arrangements to Lorenzo when I reached home.’

  ‘How did he take it?’

  ‘He seemed irritated and disinterested.’ The image of the Night Watch letter leapt into her head again. She shook her head, concentrated, and forced a smile. ‘Lorenzo had already become infatuated with Lucrezia Donati, to the point where he had given up his liaisons with two others he had in tow that summer. I think they were called Elena and Matilda. So it was hard to get him to concentrate on his marital responsibilities. He kept questioning me on what she was like and he must have read my hesitancy. Finally, resorting to coarseness as he sometimes did when he was trying to shock me, he said, “has she got any tits?”

  ‘I said, “she’s from a very noble Roman family,” and he said, “Oh. No tits at all, then.”’ She looked up. ‘All in all it wasn’t a very productive conversation.’

  ‘But you had recovered from your illness?’ Savonarola seemed to have lost the train of her argument, which was not surprising, as in her attempts to lead him off the trail of usury she had almost lost it herself.

  ‘Temporarily, yes. The bronchitis went but I was left with indigestion and depression. A black mood came over me and hung on for all that summer.’

  ‘Did you know why?’

  ‘Not at the time, but looking back now it all seems clearer. I think, like Lorenzo, I was just exhausted. In my attempts to break out from the cage that Piero had locked me in, I was simply trying to do too much. And then, as Piero became more and more ill, and less and less effective, I was trying to keep the momentum going and doing as many of his jobs as I could.’

  She sat up and stared at Savonarola in emphasis. ‘I was trying to be supportive.’

  ‘Although the direction you were pushing things in was, perhaps, not the direction he would have pursued himself?’ There was a cynical smile on his face now.

  For a moment she was silent, caught out by his perceptiveness. She had thought she had covered that matter better. ‘I had to do what I thought was right.’

  ‘For Piero? Or for Lorenzo?’

  It was the critical question and she knew she had to answer it truly, because in the end, everything hinged on that one question.

  ‘For the future. For Lorenzo. Piero was part of the past.’ She looked into his eyes, hoping he would not judge her too harshly. ‘In my mind, Piero, my husband, was already dead.’

  He looked at her and said nothing, but his gentle nod seemed to signify that he had understood, and that apparent acceptance encouraged her to continue.

  ‘I was obviously moving too fast. Too fast for Piero, who wanted the world to stay the way it had been in his father’s day and perhaps, in view of my succession of illnesses, too fast for me too. And then Lorenzo came out with dreadful eczema, and I realized that in my haste to escape the past, I was probably moving too fast for him as well. And so, in early September, I came here, to the Bagno, and brought Lorenzo with me.’

  ‘And then, finally, with all your tasks completed, you were able to sit and relax?’

  She began to laugh. ‘Hardly. We had only been here a few days when I received word from Piero. He said he had heard there was a plot to kidnap us both here, at the Bagno. So I sent Lorenzo back to Florence on some excuse. Of course, he expected to return in a few days, but two weeks later he wrote to me. They had talked him round and convinced him to stay in Florence.

  ‘Within days Piero wrote to agree it was safer to keep Lorenzo in Florence, and suddenly I began to realize what was happening. Piero’s story about a kidnap had been invented, it had been a ruse to get Lorenzo away from me and back under his own control. Piero, or more likely one of his advisors, must have realized that I was avoiding him and that Lorenzo was taking more notice of me than he was of his father.

  ’And of course, it was true. I knew I had lost this round in the battle, but I couldn’t face returning to Piero and his sick bed, so I stayed here and kept sending letters saying I was too unwell to return. Piero sent Benedictus Reguardati, a very notable physician, to examine me, and he wrote back to Lorenzo almost immediately.

  ‘He described my symptoms accurately. First, pain in the breast, on the left hand side, and up into the shoulder. Secondly, pains in the stomach and spleen, which had been lasting for days, but which, after his potions, were reduced to little over an hour. And finally, a very painful form of sciatica, in the right thigh.

  ‘Over the next four weeks, with a combination of bathing, rest and the physician’s potions, I slowly recovered and in the middle of November, having received many solicitous letters from my family, I finally felt well enough to return to Florence.’

  ‘And the marriage between Lorenzo and Clarice Orsini went ahead?’

  ‘Of course. The paperwork was completed and the dowry transferred by early February of 1469 and she and Lorenzo were married by proxy with his cousin, Filippo de Medici, Archbishop of Pisa, acting for him, in Rome.

  ‘She finally came to Florence in June and we celebrated the marriage over three days of memorable entertainment at the Palazzo Medici.’

  ‘With Lorenzo finally, sitting with his bride at his side?’ Savonarola seemed to want assurances on everything.

  ‘Well, almost. For most of the time Clarice sat with her silly, giggly friends from Rome and Lorenzo sat elsewhere and entertained his guests – the old brigata of course, still ostentatiously carrying a standard given to him by his old girlfriend, Lucrezia Donati.’

  ‘He hadn’t forgotten her then?’

  Lucrezia shook her head.’ No. Not at all. Lorenzo always stuck by his friends. Even years later he was still writing poetry to her, although by then she was married too.’

  ‘So the Medici marriage was not an expression of true love?’

  She shook her head. ‘I told you. Judge us by what we do, not by what we say. As for the marriage, it was about one thing and one thing only: parentado – the importance of linking powerful families together through interlocking marriages. Lorenzo and Clarice didn’t pretend to love each other and they still don’t.’

  Sensing that she had finished, Savonarola rose to his feet and walked over to his sandals. He slid his feet into them and turned toward Lucrezia, who had rolled onto her elbow to watch him. ‘It sounds like a very difficult life. One in which you have to be tough to keep your health and sanity.’

  She shrugged the one shoulder that could move and stuck out her lower lip in resignation. ‘It’s about survival. You play the cards you are dealt. That’s what women have always had to do.’

  Chapter 10

  Alas, Poor Piero

  It was raining outside. Warm rain with a heavy scent of damp earth and moist young plants. Not heavy rain, more in the nature of heavy mist, but nevertheless wet enough to be a distraction and an irritant.

  She had wanted to return to the poolside but he had pleaded embarrassment. ‘I recognize that this rain makes no difference to you. Your clothing is intended to become wet. But I have only one habit. What do I wear for our conversations if that becomes soaking wet?’

  Finally she had given in to him. She was, she recognized, being selfish, using her position of ownership to make everyone pander to her will. It was a habit she had learned during her childhood in the Palazzo Med
ici, but as she got older, one she was beginning to regret. The young monk was right. It wasn’t necessary. They had a comfortable dry room at their disposal, one with a large open window from which, if she wished, she could still look out and enjoy the freshness that the rain had brought that morning.

  The wide eaves of the tiled roof above her head gave complete protection from the rain and now she sat, propped on the edge of the windowsill, while he, returning to their original routine, sat in the corner of the room, facing out toward her.

  ‘Did your husband take long to die?’

  For an instant his question struck her as crass, insensitive, even coarse. But then she remembered that he was, after all, only picking up a remark of her own, made late in the previous day.

  ‘Was that such an awful thing for me to say yesterday? That in my mind, my husband was already dead? It wasn’t just my mind it was in. The vultures were already lined up along the Via Largo, waiting. And to the south I could imagine even more of them, across the Ponte Vecchio, prowling the corridors and grounds of the Palazzo Pitti, plotting, rehearsing, waiting, each of them desperate for news.

  ‘True to form, he kept us all waiting. He hung on painfully and ineffectively for months. By now he couldn’t leave the house, hardly left his bed in fact. Just lay there, in pain, confused at what he had done to deserve such an ending and trying desperately in his mind to find some purpose, some justification for his life by which he might be remembered. But the truth was he was a lost cause and he knew it. The servants drooped around, shoulders bowed, pulling what they thought were the appropriate faces, but in truth bored rigid.

  ‘Lorenzo escaped. He announced that the family needed to make a show of courage and confidence for the popolani and he took to the streets, to be seen. Not walking but on his charger, the big white one he called Fortuna.

  ‘And while he faced the world, I sat and faced my dying husband. I had, finally, grown sorry for him. No man should be asked to accept that combination of hopelessness, pain and indignity. I learned, watching him in those final days, the importance of dignity to the dying. Self-esteem is, I think, the last door to close before we give up. Once that is gone, there’s nothing else to cling on for except, in the very strong, sheer bloody-mindedness.

  ‘So I stayed with him. He had never been consciously unkind to me. He had no more wanted to marry me than I had wanted to marry him, but somehow between us we had made the most of a bad situation. We had always maintained civility towards each other. In fact, to the outside world, we probably looked like a loving couple.

  ‘The really sad thing is that, even as I watched Piero die, I was grieving for his brother, Giovanni. Somehow, in maintaining family decorum, I had never had a chance to grieve for Giovanni at the time when he had died, but now it all spilled out. The respect, the humour, the sheer physical love of life that he brought to every occasion.’

  ‘You loved him, didn’t you? Giovanni?’

  He did not look at her as he asked the question, perhaps not wanting to appear intrusive. She watched him, knowing he did not need to lift his head, knowing that today her voice would tell him everything he needed to know, with uncomfortable precision.

  Finally, she let it come. It had to some time. ‘He was the love of my life.’

  She leaned back out of the window and breathed deeply, sucking in the fresh, damp air and remembering Giovanni in the garden of the Palazzo Medici, his arm round her shoulder, reciting poetry to her and acting the fool.

  ‘How did you cope?’

  She turned, looking out at the gardens below, picking her words carefully. ‘It wasn’t always easy. As I told you yesterday, I threw all my energies into Lorenzo. For years I had known he was the future …’ She paused, still looking out of the window, trying to decide whether or not to go down the path that had just opened up in her mind. And finally made a decision. ‘As had Cosimo.’

  She looked across the room at Savonarola and wondered whether he remembered. His expression answered her question immediately.

  ‘He made … provision for his grandson, you told me. On his deathbed?’

  She saw him look up, sharply, and she nodded. ‘Yes. His investment in the future, he called it. Lorenzo’s Gold.’

  Again she looked out of the window, thinking, deciding, filtering. She was about to open a door, a door to a world of secrets, but how wide she should open it she was still undecided. For the benefit of her soul she knew she must tell the truth. She was, after all, in confessional now. But all of it? The risks were high. If this man broke the secrecy of the confessional, Lorenzo would never forgive me.

  ‘I knew Cosimo had made provision, but I did not know how much or in what manner. That secret, as he himself had told me, had been taken by Donatello and given to Maddalena at the Convento di Santo Damiano. Now both were dead and the trail had grown cold. There was only one other person who might be able to point me in the right direction.

  ‘The abbess?’

  She found herself smiling. ‘You have been listening.’ She saw him grin in return, with what looked like a mixture of pride and apology.

  ‘The abbess, yes. I wrote to her. She replied quickly, sounding relieved, as if she had been finding the responsibility of her secret a heavy burden. She confirmed that everything was there, the first instalment, as she called it, and, amongst Maddalena’s few possessions, her journal and her collection of letters from Cosimo. Amongst those, she told me, was his final letter, the one Donatello had brought with him and explained, the one that contained the poem.’

  ‘There was a poem?’ The surprise on his face made him sit up sharply.

  Lucrezia stood up from her windowsill and walked to the centre of the room. She composed herself, remembering. She must get it right or the whole effect would be ruined. Carefully, from memory, she recited it:

  Beneath the goldsmith’s secret

  Possession, lover, son

  There lies the stone of destiny

  Whose answer is but one

  Ten quarrels equidistant

  From where that once we lay

  My final diminution

  Holds Lorenzo’s destiny

  She reached the end without hesitation and to her satisfaction he responded. ‘Oh well done! You remembered it.’

  She returned to her windowsill. ‘I am a poet. I do not forget poetry. Not even simple rhymes.

  ‘With Piero on his deathbed it no longer seemed disloyal to visit the abbess. Lorenzo and I made the journey a couple of weeks later. We were supposed to be disguised, but I am sure a number of people recognized us. Everyone knew what Lorenzo looked like, and in any event, he made no secret of his identity once we were amongst the nuns. We took presents, as was customary, mainly food, wine and oil – two cartloads – but also a few books for the library that Cosimo had originally founded.

  ‘Madonna Arcangelica could not have been more welcoming. She insisted on giving us a tour of her convent. It is a fine place and in reasonably good repair, apart from the roof of the main chapel, which had sustained damage during the earthquake.

  ‘She seemed keen to tell her story, especially when she realized that Lorenzo was the very person the whole scheme had been established for. We stood in the chapel, directly beneath the gaping hole where the beams had collapsed, and she pointed to the place where Maddalena had died. They had tidied up and were at that time still using one of the side chapels for their services. They had hung great canvas sheets and some old tapestries to protect it from the worst of the weather. But at the place where Maddalena had been crushed they had left the broken-backed pew as a sort of shrine. It was autumn when we visited and they had a pot of water with branches from the hedgerows covered in wild berries. A simple tribute but one, I thought, fitting.

  ‘She took us to the library and the vault and with due ceremony she gave Lorenzo the keys to the two great chests that were in there. He unlocked them and, to our amazement and satisfaction, we found gold, a great deal of gold, all in brand new florins fr
om Cosimo’s time. We had them loaded into our carts and as we were doing so, I lifted my eyes to the damaged roof and signalled to Lorenzo.

  ‘He is such a good boy. He realized instantly what I meant and insisted that two of the great bags – two thousand florins, be given to the abbess to see to the necessary repairs. Afterward, as we were returning home by way of Fiesole, I asked him why he had been so generous. The repairs to the roof could, I knew well, have been done for a quarter of the money – perhaps less. He smiled and said, “She knew that money was there and she knew that nobody else had any idea how much of it there was. But still, even with that hole in the roof a daily reminder, and providing the most perfect of moral excuses, she did not help herself to it. That is why I rewarded her handsomely.” And of course, he was right.

  ‘Afterward we ate together with the nuns, and Lorenzo made a speech. It was a good one, for a change, without any of the lewd jokes he often liked to slide in, and the nuns seemed delighted. Then the abbess presented us with Maddalena’s casket, containing her breviary, her bible, her journal and the letters she had received from Cosimo over the years, and we left.

  ‘Lorenzo allowed me to take the casket. “You and Maddalena were always friends,” he said. “Besides, you are a better poet than I am. I will leave it to you to decipher my grandfather’s message.” It was typical of Lorenzo to delegate the onerous tasks, but it was also a kindness, as it gave me something to do while I wiled away the hours as Piero lay dying.

  ‘My husband finally died late on the evening of the first of December. By the time the doctors had pronounced him dead it was past sunset. I’m sure it was a relief for him, as it was for all of us. Nobody grieved. Those who needed to had long done their grieving. We were just content that it was all over and we could stop holding our breath.

  ‘Of course, as you have learned to expect,’ she flicked her eyes across the room and saw Savonarola nod, ‘protocol took over. For his own good reasons Lorenzo wanted to make his father’s death more of a political event than it really was. “My father is dead, grieve with me” had a better ring to it than, “take notice, I am in charge now”. So the funeral was made a men-only affair and, as such, political rather than personal, public rather than family.’