Seeds of Decline

by Edward Charles

  ‘The reverse of Cosimo’s funeral, then?’

  Savonarola had found a way of sitting with his elbows on the arms of the chair, his hands clasped together, and his chin rested on his thumbs. Although relaxed, he looked very attentive.

  She left the window and began walking slowly around the room. ‘Exactly. With Cosimo’s death we had wanted to play down the vacuum we knew was left behind. But now the story was reversed. This time we wanted everyone to feel safe in the knowledge that Piero could do no more harm and that Lorenzo the Magnificent was …’

  ‘In charge?’

  She stopped walking and shook her head. ‘In a republic, we could not presume that. No, we simply made it clear that he was now the head of the family, and left it to others to respond.’

  She reached the back of her chair and stood with her hands resting on it, facing him. There was a finality to her stance as she remained unspeaking.

  Sensing that the conversation was over, he lifted his head from his hands and made to rise from his chair. ‘Judge us by what we do?’

  She grinned. ‘Yes. But as you do so, always ask yourself why we do it.’

  Savonarola nodded to himself and she could read his expression. Oh but I always do. Every day , it said. She smiled to herself as she watched him leave.

  He’s a bright one, this, and learning fast. From now on I shall have to be extra careful how much I say to him.

  Chapter 11

  To be a Prince

  Overnight the mist and rain had blown away and although it was nearly June, the air had the gentle freshness of a spring day. To Girolamo, Madonna Lucrezia looked much improved. The drawn look had gone from her face and for the moment she no longer seemed to wince every time she sat down. She does seem to be a worrier, he thought.

  Her health had seemed to decline immediately following that mental slip, a few days before, when it was obvious she had found herself trying to defend something she was less than sure about herself. He wondered whether some aspect of his questions that day had pricked her conscience or whether, in answering him, she had for the first time questioned something she had always taken for granted.

  But young as he was … why do people insist on describing me as young? At nearly thirty I am almost middle-aged. Perhaps my relative un-worldliness makes me appear young to the people here? Young as he was, he did not fall into the trap of assuming that every action in others was a reaction in response to something he had done. It was just as likely (even as he thought about it, the memory of his early lectures in medicine at the University of Ferrara sprung to mind) that it was the beginnings of the onset of her illness, whatever it was, that had caused her to lose her usual focus and clarity and go off like that.

  But she did seem to be on the mend now. She had, at least, accepted his suggestion that they walk once again, gently this time, not high into the hills but following their side of the valley through the woods, just above the river with the roar and swirl of the water still audible further below and the smell of still-damp moss and pine trees wrapping itself around them.

  ‘How long did it take you to crack the code?’ No point in beating about the bush. As he spoke, a pine-marten ran along a branch above them and she looked up, almost flinching away from the unexpected movement.

  He was almost ready to ask the question again when she replied. ‘The poem? Oh not long. Less than a week, on and off, you know.’

  She watched the pine-marten climb higher in the tree and once she knew what it was, smiled at its agility. ‘I had hindsight on my side and, looking back, with the specific questions in mind, I remembered seeing things.’

  GARDEN, PALAZZO MEDICI

  23rd January 1470

  ‘Are you talking to yourself again, Mother?’

  Lucrezia, standing before the Donatello David in the garden, looks up. Lorenzo is walking towards her, grinning. ‘What did you say?’

  ‘I asked if you were talking to yourself.’

  ‘No you didn’t. You said again. Are you implying that I’ve fallen into the habit of talking to myself?’

  He’s still grinning, despite the cold. ‘Of course you do. But only quietly. And only when you think you’re alone. It’s usually your poetry. You practise it, walking round the garden, by yourself.’

  ‘Oh that? Well yes. I have to admit. But it wasn’t my poetry I was rehearsing this time, it was your grandfather’s.’

  She points to the statue. David, looking remarkably like Carlo looked a few years before and also, from certain angles, like Maddalena, stands erect and proud, his left foot on Goliath’s severed head, his sword hand resting the great sword point-downward, beside the head.

  She begins to recite the poem:

  Beneath the goldsmith’s secret

  Possession, lover, son…

  As she speaks, she nods toward the statue.

  Lorenzo turns and follows her eyes. Then a great grin spreads across his face. ‘Oh you clever old thing! It is, isn’t it? That’s Donatello’s secret: the goldsmith’s secret.’

  He looks at the statue. At one time it represents Cosimo’s slave and lover Maddalena, and their son Carlo. Possession, lover, son.

  There lies the stone of destiny

  Whose answer is but one

  Now it’s Lorenzo’s turn to recite. She hadn’t realized that he had learned the poem. He must have been listening more intently than he had pretended at the time.

  He looks up at her, and then approaches the statue. ‘If this is Donatello’s secret, then what is meant by beneath the goldsmith’s secret? There must be something somewhere here? In the plinth?’ He begins poking around, working his way slowly round the base, feeling with his fingertips.

  It doesn’t take long. ‘Here, look.’ His voice has dropped to a whisper. He has found a crevice and as he picks at it with the tip of his dagger, a small block of stone – hardly more than a sliver – perhaps a thumb’s width thick at the most – loosens and allows him to draw it out. The dagger probes the cavity and Lorenzo, now wholly absorbed, gives a triumphant cry. ‘Aha. Look what I’ve found!’

  The disc of stone is larger than a florin but smaller than the palm of his hand. It is perfectly round, flat on the bottom and domed above. It is smooth on both sides, but while the bottom is unmarked, the upper side has three marks painted on it: a dot in the centre, a thin line, running through the centre and from one side to the other, and a shorter, thicker line, in line with the central dot and marking the periphery a short distance to the left of the longer line.

  Lorenzo lifts it, hefts it in his hand, grins and calls a servant. ‘Can you bring me a shallow saucer please? As big as the palm of my hand or a bit larger?’

  The servant runs off and soon returns. Lorenzo puts the stone flat-side down in the centre of the saucer and walks across to the little pond at the base of the fountain. He winks at his mother as he floats the saucer.

  ‘The stone of destiny. It’s a lodestone. I bet it’s a lodestone.’

  Freed, the saucer begins to turn until the line though the disc points to the centre of the north side of the garden. Lorenzo squats and looks along the line, then moves until he can sight along the shorter line.

  ‘Whose answer is but one. Where should it be floated and what does it point to? That’s the question.’

  Lucrezia began to recite the second half of the poem:

  Ten quarrels equidistant

  From where that once we lay

  My final diminution

  Holds Lorenzo’s destiny

  Lucrezia’s mind goes back to the abbess’s original description of how Cosimo and Maddalena had come to the convent together and had finally said their last farewells. There had been something coy yet knowledgeable about the way she said it that suggested something known but hidden.

  From where, that once, we lay.

  ‘With the pauses emphasized, it takes on a different complexion. Perhaps it refers to the last time they were together? Did the abbess’s coy expression mean she believ
ed they had …? Not, surely, in a convent?’ But the more she thinks about it, the more she is sure. She asks Lorenzo what he thinks, and as soon as she hints at it he understands.

  ‘Yes. It must be. Naughty old grandfather. I didn’t think he had it in him. And Maddalena too!” He sounds really proud of them both.

  ‘Let me see,’ he says. He stands facing north with his left eye shut and his right hand held vertically, thumb up. ‘Due north of the convent and then,’ he rotates his hand to the left, ‘west a bit?’

  He is standing alone, one eye shut and his hand in front of him. But in his mind he’s not in the garden of the Palazzo Medici but standing on the ridge of Monte Senario, facing north.

  ‘That’s just by the side of the ridge crest. We had a stag up there last year, close to the …’

  He gets the rest in one flash of inspiration and looks up. ‘It’s the Badia di Buonsollazzo. Where Cosimino is buried. It’s in exactly the right direction. And the distance? Ten quarrels. Ten shots with a crossbow. It’s about right. It must be. My final diminution, that means Cosimino.’ He starts to laugh. ‘I told you so. It’s where Cosimino is buried. My final diminution. That’s not bad for Grandfather.’

  Lucrezia shakes her head. ‘But if the gold is buried beneath Cosimino’s tomb, how are you going to get it back … without attracting attention?’

  Lorenzo, a mile ahead of her as usual, simply laughs. ‘That, mother dear, is the easy part. It will be dead easy.’

  He stands, shaking his head and grinning. ‘Who would have thought it? All that argument about where we should bury him. And now I know why. Thank you Cosimo. I couldn’t have planned it better myself.’

  Savonarola looked at her and wondered whether, in their previous conversations, she had told him anything about arguments over Cosimino’s burial. He didn’t remember her saying anything. And usually, he didn’t forget much.

  She stopped walking and turned toward him on the narrow path. Then she smiled, as if some things were so obvious they didn’t require further explanation. And he, seeing he was going to have to ask her, opened his hands in supplication. ‘All right. For those of us who are slower on the uptake than your son, how?’

  She was by no means a good-looking woman but today he thought Madonna Lucrezia looked five years younger. For days she had been telling him of death, of decline, of the failure of banks, but now she had a story to tell in which she and her son triumphed. And it suited her. The dappled light falling between the trees flickered gently on her face as she enjoyed her moment.

  Finally, she spoke. ‘Lorenzo had Cosimino re-buried. In San Lorenzo. He and Giuliano commissioned a tomb, nominally for Giovanni and Piero, but they insisted that Cosimino’s little body was brought there too. To be united with his father, they said. Verrocchio it was that designed it for them, from drawings created by his new assistant, Leonardo da Vinci. And together they built it.’

  She placed a hand on his forearm. ‘When you get back to Florence, you must visit the Church of San Lorenzo and see it.’ She grinned. ‘But don’t bother looking for the gold. Somehow it never arrived at the new tomb.’

  There was a sigh of wind high in the trees. The weather was changing again. More rain was coming, perhaps overnight. But for the present, they had plenty of time to return to the Bagno à Morba. They started walking again, choosing the right-hand path, to take them back to the beginning of their walk. They reached a clearing in the trees, with a view across the valley and down to the river not far below them.

  He paused and looked down at the water. ‘Was there a lot?’

  Ahead of him, he saw her stop in mid-stride and look back. He waited, still standing, still looking downward. She heard me. She’s just deciding what to tell me.

  ‘A lot? What of?’

  He smiled. She did say she had been taught market negotiation. When she was younger. She hasn’t lost it.

  ‘Of gold. A lot of gold. Was there a lot of gold under Cosimino’s tomb?’

  She wrinkled her eyebrows, as if struggling to remember. ‘Yes, I think so. Quite a lot.’

  Almost absent-mindedly, she turned and began walking away. ‘Yes I think there must have been.’

  Chapter 12

  Rotten to the Core

  ‘Have you ever had toothache? I mean real, painful, won’t-go-away toothache, which lasts for days and drives you mad?’

  He shook his head. ‘God has spared me that discomfort.’

  She had, of course, had her way. They had returned to the poolside.

  She had woken feeling fully recovered, her self-confidence returned, regrets for recent events thrown behind her. It had been a mistake to set that hare running, about Lorenzo and his friends in the Platonic Academy. She wasn’t to know how deeply the young monk had been seared by his experiences in Ferrara. But she couldn’t change anything now and they did seem to have moved on without the subject being resurrected. It’s gone. Done. Can’t be retrieved. Just forget it and move on.

  And that’s what she was doing. The story needed to be brought to a conclusion. There was not that much more to confess, although she had to admit, the process of opening her soul, whilst uncomfortable at the time, had eased something inside her. Even her lumps felt easier.

  ‘Have you ever seen a tooth that has been removed? A rotten one?’ He shook his head. ‘A rotten tooth is an edifice to falsity, a statue to misrepresentation. The outside remains, a bastion of strength and whiteness, the hardest bone in the human body, so they say. But inside all is decay, corruption and vileness.’

  Across the pool, Savonarola sat up, his knees pulled toward him, his arms wrapped around them and his expression suddenly alert and attentive. ‘Yes. I understand.’

  She noticed that his eyes were glittering with concentration and she realized that something in her words must have caught his attention. Oh no. I spoke of corruption. He’s gone back to his memories of Ferrara. Never mind. It can’t be helped. Keep going. The bank. Keep talking about the bank.

  ‘Unless it is removed, the infection spreads, corrupting all around it, until the whole mouth is infected with the same awful condition. And by then…’ She lifted a finger, swirled it briefly in the water before her, then pointed it at him, ‘it is too late.’

  She saw him smile, a grim, unkind smile, and although she was certain that it was her words that had triggered the thought in his head, there was something – a remoteness to his expression to suggest that the thought, whatever it was, was his and his alone. The look was intense yet far away, smiling yet unkind. It was almost the look of someone who was planning cruelty, and immediately it unnerved her. But she was too far committed to her analogy to change direction now.

  ‘The Medici Bank had become like that. Like a rotten tooth. Decayed and infected at the core, with the infection spreading outward as fast as a mouthful of sores.’ Across the pool his eyes looked almost disappointed, but she knew he was still listening. ‘It had begun, of course, with the death of Giovanni Benci and the decision to do away with the holding company. It was that decision that allowed the infection to spread …’

  ‘But the infection itself? What was it?’ For a moment he seemed to be losing the analogy.

  ‘Nepotism.’ She washed her hands in the pool as if they were soiled and then shook the water off before dabbing her palms dry on the opposite shoulders of her gamurra. ‘It is possible to be both a banker and a prince, as Cosimo showed us, but to do both successfully, you have to remove your princely crown before you enter the bank premises. Once you start to confuse the two, all is lost.’

  ‘And the Medici Bank had …?’

  She nodded. ‘And not just Piero, although he seemed to have the capacity for making more mistakes in a day than any other man in creation.’

  ‘No? Not just Piero? Others too?’ He seemed to be following, albeit slowly.

  ‘No. Cosimo himself had put quite a few of the wrong people in place before responsibility passed to Piero.’

  ‘Ah yes.’ He nodded
, seeming to have caught up with her. ‘You have told me on a previous occasion about the Milan branch and the developing over-reliance on the Portinari family.’

  ‘Exactly.’ She felt an unexpected shiver of concern.

  ‘I also seem to remember the problems in Rome, your husband taking it upon himself to support your brother, Giovanni Battista, against the established management?’

  Again Lucrezia felt a little shiver run through her. Such recall. Perhaps what she had read as confusion on his part had merely been guile? Had he been leading her, after all?

  A frown wrinkled his forehead. ‘But what about Giovanni? Was he not responsible for running the bank for a number of years?’

  She shook her head. You’re not going to lay the blame on my Giovanni. ‘The mistakes made during Giovanni’s directorship were made by Cosimo. He was always hovering and interfering. Left to his own devices, Giovanni would, I am sure, have sorted the mess out.’

  He began to nod his head but extremely slowly, as if he had reservations about what she had told him. ‘Yes. If he had really been interested.’

  He really has been listening. And remembering what I have told him. This man is not slow; he is careful. He was also thoughtful, in an independent way that she found invigorating and challenging, but at the same time, almost threatening. Be careful not to over-defend Giovanni. She shrugged, trying to look relaxed. Not easy to do when you’re lying by a shallow pool with your feet in the edge of the water and your weight back on your elbows. ‘Giovanni saw the way it was going. He stepped away.’

  She rolled onto her right elbow and with her left hand began absent-mindedly flicking small stones into the water. The single large cloud that had thrown its shadow over them for the last fifteen minutes finally moved away and as the brightness of the full sun hit the water between them, she squinted and frowned. Careful now. Concentrate. Keep the focus on Cosimo. And Sassetti.