Seeds of Decline

by Edward Charles

  There’s a long pause. She knows her son is thinking hard. ‘They died.’

  ‘Died?’

  ‘Haven’t you heard? They were found dead this morning. On a mud bank beside the Arno. Opposite the Palazzo Bardi.’

  ‘What happened to them?’

  Lorenzo shrugs. ‘No one quite knows. From what I heard, it seems they were garrotted.’

  ‘Who by?’

  He shrugs again, dismissively. ‘I haven’t found out. I had paid them handsomely. Perhaps they waved their money about too freely.’

  She looks at him long and hard. She knows he’s lying. And she knows she’ll never discover the truth. And nor, if they have any sense, will anyone else. She sighs. ‘Oh dear. What an unhappy ending.’

  Lorenzo looks wistful and she knows he’s acting. ‘At least the secret’s safe now.’ He gathers up his sword, his dagger, his books and his outdoor clothes, and leans over her. ‘Must go, mother. Lots to do. Bye.’

  Lucrezia shook her head. She had never dared approach the subject again. It was obviously impossible. Playing the part of Lorenzo’s mother had been a lifetime role, a task without end. On some days it had been like participating in a serious fencing contest. You could not just cross your fingers behind your back, say enough, and then drop your guard and turn and walk away. But difficult and sometimes uncomfortable as it had been, she would not have missed a moment of it. In the end, being Lorenzo’s mother had made up for all the other disappointments in her life – even the big one.

  Now she knew the bulk of her life was in the past. Little awaited her in the future except death. Somehow she didn’t think it would be long now. Perhaps as little as one year. She hoped it would not be too painful when it came. But also not so quick that she was caught out… unfinished, unprepared. She would never forgive herself if she died with loose ends untied. She did have standards to maintain after all. And a reputation. Of sorts.

  After a few days of prevarication, with much packing and unpacking of clothes, she finally made her decision. I will talk to the monk once more, at the end of the week. On Sunday. Somehow, she thought, a Sunday would be appropriate. Then he really should return to Florence and face the music. She had kept him long enough. And anyway, by then there would be no more to say.

  Apart from the confession itself. She laughed inwardly. Only the hard part. And then it will all be over.

  Sunday morning came and an enormous thunderstorm was raging. The rain was hammering down on roof tiles and yard-stones alike, raising splashes knee-high. Gutters were overflowing and the river was howling. A veritable torrent of thunderous, uncontrollable dark-coloured water. The sky was black, so dark they had had to light all the lamps and candles and now they had to close the shutters to prevent the violent little squalls from blowing them all out again.

  They met for the last time, in the same room, as arranged.

  ‘Thank you for waiting. As I told you the day before yesterday, this will be our last conversation; my final confession. Tomorrow, it will be time for you to return to Florence and I … I shall go on to Pisa. And after that …’ Who knows after that?

  She pointed him to his chair, but for herself she chose to stand. She had thought about it for hours and this was what she had decided. To be in a chair was to be a prisoner, and for someone already feeling constricted by her thoughts, that would have been uncomfortable.

  No. Today she wanted him to be seated, held down, a passive receiver, while she had the opportunity to pace, to look out of the window for the inspiration she had so often gained there and to walk the stage. For this, being her true confession, it must be delivered faultlessly.

  She had chosen not only to be on her feet, with freedom of movement to assist expression, but also to be dressed in a high-necked cioppa of pavonazzo, a careful choice, the dress brought with her in case of special occasions, such as funerals. It was dark blue, almost the iridescent colour of a peacock’s back, a sign, not specifically of mourning but more of occasion and by the knowledgeable, always recognized as such.

  So here she was, standing, facing him, looking down on him as he sat captive in his chair in the corner, exactly where she wanted him.

  ‘Where do I start? I have told you something of my life, of the events that have happened to me and affected me and those which I, sometimes, have managed to influence myself. I hope in the process I have given you some insights into Florence, the city, its ways and the difference between some of its pretences and its realities. Now, as I reach the end of my story, I must look at my own life with a true and honest eye and confess my sins.’

  Well, some of them. Perhaps not all.

  She turned away and walked toward the window, already looking out for inspiration, for guidance. Already her mind was repeating the processes of recent days, thinking, filtering, redacting, editing the thoughts cramming into her head into what she should tell him and what she should avoid.

  Her difficulty, the main reason she had delayed talking to him until now, was that her conversations with him, although designed to convince him of her truths, had so often, either through his words or by his simple reactions to hers had the opposite effect. Progressively in recent weeks his responses had influenced her, changed her, so that what she would have believed and said a month ago had shifted and now she found herself unsure exactly what she did believe.

  The monk, she was not afraid to admit, at least to herself, had done well. He had listened to her. Listened carefully. And in the main, he had said little. But what little he had said – and more importantly, what she had read on his face – had shown how much he despised the way of life she had been describing.

  She had also learned how cynical he was about the morality of the stances she had taken and the actions she had, for years past, accepted as normal and, on occasion, had actively tried to defend. And with her morality questioned by so perceptive an audience, she had begun to question it herself.

  And there lay the problem, the great unanswered question. If this young confessor had rejected her morality and found it wanting, what would Saint Peter do when the great day came and she was standing on the steps? That final day, when it was too late to change anything?

  At the core of the uncertainty was not the conduct of her own life, which, by-and-large, she still believed to have been an honest one, but her legacy. She had spent half her life confident that she had given birth to a great prince, one who would be remembered for generations. But now she found herself beginning to wonder whether, although pursuing her best endeavours with sincerity at the time, she had, in reality, nurtured something of a monster.

  Lorenzo. Always an enigma; even in his youth. She returned to his friendships. Her son had always been surrounded by his brigata, the golden people, humanists, poets, sculptors, architects, painters, writers. But if she thought about them, remembered them, flooding precociously through her house and gardens, she had to admit that what she remembered most clearly was not people of intellect and creativity, as he had always liked to describe them. No, the most consistent common feature she remembered was their youth and their physical beauty. And not just Lucrezia Donati and Simonetta Vespucci, but the other girls, the low-born girls, those who had come and gone, usually under-dressed but always beautiful. Somehow they had never seemed to last very long.

  And then there had been the boys. Some (very few in truth) had been like Leonardo da Vinci, who would cause your mouth to open in amazement at his creative ability, but who was, at the same time, decorative, slender and beautiful in his own right. She could hear his lute playing now, and watch him throw his long hair back as he caressed the strings. And his drawings … well.

  Sandro too could leave you breathless with his work, although as a person she had always had her reservations. Privately that calculating, louche smile had always made her feel uncomfortable, and despite Lorenzo’s carefully-worded denial, her memory of late had kept returning to the knowing looks the two of them had so frequently exchanged, and she found hersel
f hoping that the secret they reflected was not the one she feared; the one whose image she occasionally had to repulse from her consciousness.

  And then there were the rest, like Alessandro the lute player and Jacopo Saltarelli, that boy who had appeared in the court case. She knew they weren’t truly talented artists. And what about that sulky little boy with the golden curls they said was a model at Verrocchio’s studio? The one Sandro Botticelli used to snigger about to Lorenzo and say he was addicted to zucchini and cucumbers?

  She had ignored them, of course. Lorenzo in that sniggering mood had always been best avoided. But deep-down she had known what they meant. She wasn’t stupid. She had just been … how had Lorenzo described her once? Partially-sighted. And of course, knowing Lorenzo, he had meant it as a compliment.

  All those pretty boys. What had they meant to Lorenzo? Almost certainly nothing. They had just been food. Something to be consumed. Food for the sort of appetites that weren’t discussed in polite company. But so what? The rich had always fed well and, no doubt, they always would.

  But did that make it right? Perhaps it was time to see with both eyes now? The more she thought about it, the more she found it hard to believe that St Peter saw the world as Lorenzo saw it, even if her son did go to Mass every day.

  She thought it was Luigi Pulci who had once said: “Lorenzo, glamorous, charming, brilliant and above all, powerful, Lorenzo was never the seeker but always the sought.” Was that, as she was sure her son would argue, simply the way the world was? She knew that with the possible exception of Lucrezia Donati none of them had really meant anything to Lorenzo. She could hear his voice now, a mixture of disbelief and ridicule. “Come on, Mother! If I am hungry and I see bread, I eat it. Are you suggesting I should consider the bread’s point of view before doing so?”

  No, Lorenzo would never understand.

  And now, since talking to Savonarola, a new question had entered her mind. Something she had never considered in all those years. What did those passing relationships mean to the others? To the young girls, proud to be deflowered by a loving noble prince? To the hungry wives, dissatisfied with their husbands and seeking true love elsewhere? And the pretty boys? What of them? Did they, perhaps, believe that their love for the great one had been (at least in their case) reciprocated, even for a moment? Or was the half-florin in their hot little hand the beginning and end of the matter?

  Of course, Savonarola was biased in his view of these things by the experiences of his own youth, but even so. He had made her think and she wasn’t sure she liked the direction her thoughts were now taking.

  She didn’t pretend to know the answers, of course. But now, at least, she was aware that the questions existed. At least in the minds of some others. And if they were basing their judgements on the monk’s perspectives, what other aspects of the life she had led Lorenzo into would they seek to examine?

  The real question, she now thought, having spoken to the young monk at some length about it one evening, was whether people with real power had any responsibility for the imbalanced relationships that formed around them? Did the powerful prince, as a consequence of his wealth, have any special responsibilities toward the pregnant servant girl he discarded? Cosimo had shown the way with Maddalena and Carlo. But then he had loved her and she had proved to have quite extraordinary capabilities that few would have expected in a mere slave. And Lorenzo, she recognized, was no Cosimo.

  And it was not just personal relationships that they might have to answer for. Lorenzo could have made peace with Pope Sixtus had he wanted to. It was pride that stopped him. And as a result money had been wasted, homes destroyed, lives lost. The behaviour of princes. Why did it appear so disappointing when viewed with hindsight?

  The sacking of Volterra had hardly been his finest hour, either. She had avoided talking about that, knowing, even before the monk’s influence changed her perspective, that she had been ashamed of the whole episode. Lorenzo had used false information to pretend that their new alum mine was a threat to Mother Church and its alum monopoly. But the reality had been different. It had been imports of Turkish alum that had spoiled the price and it was not the church but the Medici Bank, with great unsold stocks of the stuff in its warehouses in Bruges, who had stood to lose the money.

  Sacking Volterra had been unjustified – a petulant response to people made rebellious by circumstances. And building that great castle with its garrison? Surely that will simply breed resentment? You can’t win the hearts and minds of men with soldiers. Not in the end. An occupying force will always be resented, even if they themselves believe they have right on their side. The bitter truth was that Lorenzo had misused power. And the people knew he had.

  The behaviour of princes. In victory, they say, you have to be magnanimous. It is a sign, they say, of a great prince. But unlike his father, Lorenzo had shown no mercy after the Pazzi conspiracy. What Francesco Pazzi had done had been wrong, but hounding the whole of the Pazzi family into extinction could really not have been justified. Women and children had suffered, innocent men too. Just because their name was Pazzi. I know parentado means that families stick together, she told herself, but some of these people had done nothing.

  The behaviour of princes! What Lorenzo had been doing for the last few years was hardly something to brag about. Yes she had told him to avoid the trap Cosimo had fallen into. Make the people pay, she had said. But there were ways and ways. She knew that the old way was unsustainable, but already-rich men living off the fat of the land, incurring vast expenses only to lay the bills at the feet of the state, and then authorize the payment themselves, that too was wrong, and equally unsustainable.

  Perhaps it would have been different if the bank had still thrived as it had in Giovanni Benci’s time? But the truth was they had let it go. Lost control of it. Left the branches in the hands of unsuitable, insufficiently-qualified people, people who were unsupervised, with insufficient regulation or leadership, and in an environment whose very rules motivated them to act irresponsibly.

  Whose fault and responsibility had that been? In recent years, her son’s. And who had advised him? To a large extent, she had. She knew in her heart-of-hearts that she had acted petulantly. Maliciously. That was the truth of it. She had never forgiven Cosimo for marrying her to Piero. But how else could she get back at him? Only by attacking the one thing he held most dear: the bank. And when Cosimo had lost Benci and had been left on his own, old and not what he had been, and began making mistakes, she had seen her opportunity and she had acted. It hadn’t been difficult, she had simply let it happen.

  Even before Lorenzo came to power, she had been selfish and angry. Even then, she had seen Francesco Sassetti mismanaging the bank and Giovanni presiding over the decay. And what had she done? She had let it happen. She had stood by and watched it happen and taken pleasure in allocating blame. Malice. It was a sin. An unforgivable sin.

  And then, of course, there was the biggest lie of all. Had that been an act of petulance? In part, yes. An act of defiance? Certainly. An act of duplicity? Of course, in the greatest possible way. But it had also been an act of complicity. And both of Cosimo’s sons had been complicit with her. It was the one secret, surely, that she could not tell the young monk.

  Just desserts, you might say, for wasn’t it she who had been complicit with their father, conspired with him and with Maddalena – albeit after their deaths, to defraud the bank and in that respect, to defraud Piero and Giovanni and their partner-cousin, Pierfrancesco, who although he did nothing, still owned fifty percent of the bank? But they had been cheated out of the gold Cosimo had hidden for Lorenzo. That was the truth. And she had played her part in it.

  So in the end, she had cheated them all: Cosimo, Piero, Giovanni, Pierfran cesco – all except her beloved sons, Lorenzo and Giuliano. And even then, if you were completely honest with yourself, in making Lorenzo what he had become she had perhaps been partially responsible for causing Giuliano’s terrible death.

 
What an indictment!

  And now Savonarola was sitting there, waiting for her confession, and already, the all-seeing God had heard her preparing for it. Even now, he was, perhaps, waiting to see what she told the young monk and what, at her last and final opportunity, she decided to hold back. She felt a sudden shiver of apprehension pass through her, as someone who has just sensed she is being watched. She took a deep breath. The moment had come and already she had gone too far. There was no escape now.

  She was aware she had been pacing up and down, not speaking, and for a moment she felt the need to explain. But there was nothing left to explain. The truth was clear. She had declared this to be her confession and in so doing she had unlocked the door of her own waiting prison cell. There was no longer a way to turn back. Now she must enter it.

  As she faced that reality and made her decision, she felt her mood change. She took three deep breaths. Feeling calmer than she had for days, she walked to the chair, stroked its back with her hand, then turned to face him and, with a sudden and decisive action, sat down.

  ‘My purpose today is to review and summarize my confession. But as you recognize clearly, my whole story over these recent weeks has also formed part of my confession. Every word of what I have told you is privileged. I shall not return to the city until the heat of summer is over, and I do not expect to live for another year thereafter. So you may not see me again. If you do, please make no reference to these conversations.’

  She sat upright and lifted her chin. She was no longer speaking to a young monk from Ferrara, now she was speaking to God. ‘Now I seek redemption for the many sins I have committed.

  ‘With my father-in-law I entered into a fraudulent transaction, to remove money from the bank and to make it secretly available to my son, Lorenzo.

  ‘With my husband I neglected the Medici bank and in the process neglected its depositors, its clients and its employees. My husband did not have the capability to run the bank competently, but I did have the knowledge and from behind him I could have brought it back to success. But I did not. I allowed it to fail.