Portrait of a Conspiracy

by Donna Russo Morin

  He pulled her once more to the right, along the back of the abandoned San Girolamo Convent. Built more than two hundred years ago, once a convent for Franciscan nuns, it was in the middle of renovations, work suspended, at least for the time being, since the riotous events of Sunday.

  Her man pulled her into the garden at the back, rushing her through the flowers and vegetables, wild and untended, rustling and rasping against their legs as they rushed through to the very back corner of the building and the encompassing solitude of the location.

  He pulled her in front of him, plunged her against the wall, and thrust his body against hers, his lips upon her mouth.

  Mattea moaned with breathless rapture, the feel of his lips, his hard body. He kissed her with relish—the rushing thrill of lust, yes, of course it was, she knew. He kissed her as if they were drowning and only shared passion could save them. But she knew it was worship as well, adoration snatching his breath with magnificent thievery.

  He moved his lips down her throat as she laid her head to rest against the wall behind her, holding fast to him, lest she fall to the ground limply. Mattea opened her eyes, for she would watch him, see him as much as she could. He was the epitome of the new man, a man of the rebirth taking place in their city, zealous and expert in all facets of his life, be it art or sport or politics. Or love.

  His lips moved to hers again, but this time she denied them.

  “I was so worried for you,” she whispered, though she knew none were near to hear, only the crickets chirping around them as evening fell. Their love lived in these dark corners, in the secret places of the city, sometimes in the forest outside the city walls. It was only in her dreams that they walked, hand in hand, through the Piazza della Signoria, or into the Duomo, with the greatest of Florence’s families smiling benevolently at them. “I knew you would be, must be, in the thick of this.”

  The young man nodded, pulling his face no more than inches from hers, eyes caressing her lovely features, fingers brushing them with a feathery touch. “I must be. But I had to see you. Had to hold you.”

  “Are you well?”

  He leaned in, his lips teasing her ear, making her tremble. “As well as can be.”

  Pulling back abruptly, he held her by the shoulders. “You and your mama, do you have all you need? Is there anything I can get you?”

  And there it was—the concern transforming lust to love. Mattea held to it tightly.

  “We are fine. Signore Bostiana brought us some milk and cheese just this morning. We will be fine. I will go to the market soon.”

  “You will ask one of your friends to accompany you, yes?” he said sternly, as he would to a child, or a wife. “No matter where you go, you will do nothing foolish. I know what her disappearance must mean to you, how kindly she looks upon you, but you must do nothing to put yourself in harm’s way.”

  “We…I…must do what I can,” she argued. “Surely, you know I must.”

  He shook his head, but said, “Of course, I would expect nothing less of you.” He kissed the top of her head, pulling back again, quickly. “But you must do it ever so carefully. You could be hurt, imprisoned. I cannot lose you t—”

  Mattea took his mouth, took his fear, until she felt the tense, tight muscles of his body relax once more.

  “Promise me,” he demanded. “Promise me you will be careful.”

  Mattea smiled then; her compliance, her gratitude, and her lust lived in the small expression.

  “I promise,” she vowed, and pulled him to her, unable to bear his lips not upon her.

  He groaned at her brazenness, his kisses growing hard, forceful. He grabbed her by the back of her hair, opening her mouth to him with unfettered abandon. As he lifted her skirts, his hands slid so slowly up her thighs, a tantalizing tease, knowing what it would do to her. Mattea ached to grab them, to put his hands where they would do the most good. She clutched at them and he laughed in her mouth as his tongue played with hers.

  Grabbing each of her thighs with a powerful hand, he bent ever so slightly, only to straighten, lift her off the ground, and pin her against the wall. Holding her there with the force of his body, he drew his cape around them to create a secret haven for their bodies should anyone wander into this forsaken garden. Within the confines of his concealing garb, their bodies pressed close, their need urgent.

  Mattea could think no more; she could but feel and do.

  • • •

  He brought her along the outer edge of the city, for he would not allow her to walk home in the gloaming, no matter the danger of being seen together. Only at the edge of the row of small houses did he part, with a last fluttering kiss upon her swollen mouth. From there he could watch in the shadows, watch as she traveled the last few steps to her door.

  Mattea held the tears, as she always did, until she had turned fully from him, holding her shoulders straight, walking swiftly so he would not need to dally overlong.

  She cried not at his parting, for she knew she would see him again, as soon as he could. She cried not for his presence in her life, for she would be bereft at its loss. Mattea cried silent tears of confusion, not knowing how life could be so magnificent and so brutal at the same time.

  Chapter Thirteen

  “There are always roses among the thorns.”

  “Truly, mama, if you take much longer, I will…”

  “Rudolfo!”

  Viviana threw open the door, her mouth split wide at the sight of both sons. Halfway up the curved staircase, so handsome, so young and strong, each with his own swagger yet with brotherhood undenied in the curve of the eye, in the width of the smile—her smile.

  “Marcello!”

  The very essence of life changed in that moment.

  She was a young girl again, running after the round cheeked little boys, so full of life, hair of curls, mouths boasting only a few teeth. As they climbed to greet her, Viviana flung herself into their arms. She pulled them close, as if she were drowning and they were all that kept her afloat.

  “Madre mia,” Marcello, the eldest, croaked a complaint. “You are strangling me.”

  With bright laughter, Viviana released them, only to pull them back into the full embrace of her arms.

  Viviana stood on tiptoes to embrace her eldest, a man nearing twenty years who stood a half foot above her. She quivered to have him in her arms, to feel the strength of him, to know he was truly well and unharmed.

  “I am fine, mama,” Marcello whispered as if he read her mind. He seemed able to do so the whole of his life. He pushed her gently from him and scrutinized her closely. “And you, you are well?”

  She ruffled his cap of black curls, a habit from his childhood. “I am well, all considered.”

  With open arms, she turned to her youngest, less than a year younger than the older brother he idolized. She held Rudolfo tightly. This affectionate boy, this loving man, had always been effusive and demonstrative; age had not disavowed him of his truth.

  He put his forehead to hers, his eyes, soft brown—golden green if the sun or the heart touched them just so—tender on her face. “I am fine as well, mama.” His full lips cracked into a smile as they so often did. Rudolfo loved to laugh, still silly for all his years. “A bit hungry though.”

  Viviana pulled back, laughing. “Then we will have a big, wonderful pranzo to fill you up.”

  She patted his stomach. Broader than his slim but stately brother, Rudolfo’s muscles needed fuel, constantly it seemed.

  “Are there the makings for such a repast?” Rudolfo asked skeptically.

  “I will make it as fine with what we have,” Viviana replied.

  “You are going to cook, mama?” Marcello’s deep voice squeaked, as much from trepidation as from surprise.

  Viviana laughed. She never pretended to be a master in the kitchen. “Beatrice has not been here in two days, not since…but Jemma will help me.”

  “And you should not be out either,” Rudolfo remonstrated. “You have been t
o Mass today, haven’t you? You wear your dress for it.”

  “You have no business being out, seeing what goes on,” Marcello chided her.

  Viviana shook her head. “It is far too late, my son. I have seen far too much. I was there. I was in the cathedral.”

  “What!” Marcello barked.

  “No, it cannot be.” Rudolfo shook his head.

  “I will share all, I promise. But not only have I been to Mass, I have been with the Contessa de Maffei, and I am a bit weary. Allow me some rest and we will eat, drink, and talk, yes?”

  Rudolfo leaned down and kissed her cheek tenderly. “Of course, mama. You rest. I need to ask Jemma to clean some of my shirts. I fear they are offending my fellows.”

  Viviana laughed again. She had no doubt they had come to assure themselves of her well-being. If they could eat and get their clothes laundered as well, such was simply a matter of course, and she adored it.

  “Ask Nunzio for help with your clothes. Your father has not been home for a few days, and he has had little to do.”

  Marcello’s mouth tightened into a thin line. The jaw of Rudolfo’s long face hardened. The year before these brothers went together to the notary and petitioned successfully for legal emancipation from their father. The laws of Florence provided sons to acquire parental manumission through two means only: the legal path these young men had taken, or marriage. Neither cared to wait for a wife to be free of a father for whom they had no respect, nor cared to enter into business with him. Viviana had never told her sons how their father had made her pay for their actions; they need never know, though she was certain they had a notion of it. They had seen the monster for themselves for the whole of their lives. Now they served their time with the militia, relishing the lively social life Florence provided for such young, dashing, free men. Their talk of opening a business together had yet to be resolved.

  “I will speak to Jemma of our meal.” Marcello kissed her this time, turning her round and setting her toward her room with a gentle nudge. “You take your rest.”

  Viviana blew them a kiss over her shoulder, sending silent words of gratitude to all the gods for their well-being. But as soon as she entered her small salon, as soon as she shut the door gently behind her, all Viviana could think about were the sketches, the painting, and Lapaccia. Her friend knew little of the harsh ways of life and had little experience dealing with it.

  With little worry of discovery, Viviana knelt before her forziere, tossing aside the cover hastily replaced at the first sound of her sons’ footfalls and throwing off the heavy clasps once more. With slow respect, she put favored tools and Caterina’s journals aside, finding the stack of her sketches, those of landscapes and formidable edifices, and the many masterpieces enriching the city. Those she could sketch without fear.

  Like a beggar given a purse of gold, Viviana held the pack of papers close to her chest and rushed to the light of the window. Rustling took on a rhythm with her discordant grunts as she failed to discover the correct drawings, as she picked up one after the other only to put it aside.

  “Dio mio!” It was a cursed whisper. There it was, in her hand, a sketch of the Feast of Herod. Squinting her eyes to see her small notations in the bottom right corner, made as she always did when sketching, noting the date and title of the piece, the artist if she knew it. Written in her tight, curly scrawl…25 February, in the year 1478, Palazzo della Signoria, anonymous, her own hand provided the incontrovertible evidence.

  She studied the parchment below it and the next and the next. Viviana could not believe her good fortune; there were four sketches in all. One of the painting in its entirety; the other three breaking it down into parts. There was so very much to see.

  As Viviana continued her rapacious perusal, so much became clear, so very much became ominous and frightening. Many of the men she had sketched in form only, leaving their faces devoid of features, as if their missing eyes, noses, and lips were in some way a portent of what was to come. Her gazed followed every line she had made, on every square of parchment, at once critical of her creation and perceptive to what the composition and the content might mean.

  On the third, her sweeping scrutiny stopped. On this particular drawing, she had concentrated on the right background, the far back right corner of the room. There, unmistakably, were two laurel plants—two withering, browning, laurel plants.

  Viviana dropped her hands and the parchments in her lap, perplexed at her own lack of sight, questioning the very veracity of her daring to call herself an artist, for was not seeing truth the only way to paint it?

  With such thought, she wondered how no one else could have seen it for what it was? The Latin origin of the word laurel was Laurus, the symbol for noble or famous. In the Tuscan dialect, it is a word from which a man’s name is derived—that name? Lorenzo. To paint a dying laurel is to paint a dying Lorenzo. Viviana hunched over the parchments, unable to turn away.

  Before she realized it, her shoulders ached with the strain of hunching over them, and the sun had changed its stand in the sky.

  Viviana had not lied; she was indeed so very tired.

  • • •

  “You held him in your arms? As he was dying, you held him?” The pain in Marcello’s voice was undeniable. He thought of Giuliano, a man of a same age and like temperament, with great respect.

  “Praise be for Conte Maffei,” Rudolfo said. “You would have run after him, wouldn’t you? Run after Francesco de’ Pazzi?”

  Viviana shook her head no, even as she spoke the truth. “If you had seen what I had…the brutality…the insanity…the blood…” her jaw ached with the grinding of her teeth. Grabbing the goblet, she drank long of the light and fruity Trebbiano wine.

  “What would you have done?” Rudolfo leaned forward.

  Viviana stabbed him with her gaze. “I would have beaten him with all the hate in my mind and in my heart.”

  Her boys sat back, food and drink forgotten. More than anyone, they knew of her anger and hatred. To have it delivered upon a man, any man, would have been a sight to behold. She saw in their faces what she herself feared—her hate would one day eat her alive.

  “I could not bear the thought of him escaping.” Viviana shrugged her shoulders, as if it was enough. For them it was.

  Viviana knew with certainty, more certainty than she knew anything else, how much her sons loved her, how much they would forgive. For a moment, she thought to tell them of her work, of her association with the group, even of her cousin Caterina. She felt certain they would approve, or if not approve, at least accept.

  Her sons told her their part in bringing the city to some semblance of order, of the arrests they had been party to, of the executions they had witnessed.

  “And what of him? When was he last here?” Marcello refused to speak his father’s name; his care for the man’s whereabouts were for his mother alone.

  “He was here when I returned from the cathedral.” Viviana stared a few steps backward in time. “I was covered in blood, Giuliano’s only. But he did not even ask if any was mine.”

  “Stronzo,” Rudolfo spat the crude denouncement.

  “I have been thinking, mama,” Marcello continued on, “I think I should give up my commission and return home. With so much violence all around, others may be caught up in the mania of it.”

  “No, I will not have it, not from either of you.” She took one of their hands in each of hers. “He is far too concerned with using this catastrophe to his own advantage to worry about me.”

  Her sons stared at her with their intrusive eyes, those who knew her better than any other living souls.

  “Very well,” Rudolfo conceded for them both, “but you cannot know, or object, if our friends pass by, perhaps a few times a day.”

  Viviana knew of one who already did just that. “No, I would not know, nor would I mind.”

  “And we will visit more often, I think, in these precarious days,” Marcello ruminated. “I do not think the taver
ns will be very lively at any point. No reason for some of us to visit them whenever we are off duty.”

  He winked at his mother as his brother gave his shoulder a swat. Viviana smiled at the sibling teasing that had always been so affectionately jived. It changed the air yet again.

  Their talk turned to lighter things, recent outings and adventures in the days before the tragedy, Marcello’s favorite new composers, Rudolfo’s latest injury upon the training ground as he tended to be more than a little prone to injury, though often in the most amusing way. As they ate their food and delighted in the few sweets Jemma was able to make with the last bit of sugar, as the wine flowed into their glasses and down their throats and their laughter grew louder and quicker and filled the house with its beauty, Viviana said naught of her secrets.

  Yes, perhaps they would understand, but she could never put them at risk, could never risk losing them. She would denounce the work and her love of it, she would give up the very air she breathed, before she would give up their love.

  Chapter Fourteen

  “There are flowers among the weeds; innocent among the guilty.”

  To free the mind of one worry, one must introduce another.

  It was an illogical supposition, but it was the only one Mattea could think of to relieve her mind of thoughts of him and his touch upon her body.

  She had cooked for her mama upon her return, as promised. Concetta now dozed over embroidery haphazardly done with fingers grown knobby with age. Mattea felt certain she could bring out her sketches without fear of discovery.

  One foot into her room and Mattea sank to her knees, moving so quickly she slid a bit, straight toward the guardaroba that held her meager selection of gowns. Most were plain and showed signs of wear. Those boasting some style—style long out of fashion—were too small for her; they fit the body she owned at the time of her father’s passing. But with his passing she had learned the truth—such trifles as gowns were meaningless in this life.