Portrait of a Conspiracy

by Donna Russo Morin

  “It is not fear.” Isabetta led the women through the small sitting room and its meager furnishings and into her bedchamber. She tipped her head across the hall and lowered her voice. “It is Vittorio. The light seems to induce the head pains.”

  Viviana put a hand upon her chest. “He is in such a bad way?”

  “He is very ill, Viviana. I think he may be near the end.”

  They sat then, two friends, side by side upon Isabetta’s bed. From there she told Viviana of the ever-growing seriousness of Vittorio’s condition, of his sleeping in the servants’ quarters for they no longer could afford any, the difficulties at the shop and the troublesome condition of their finances. Isabetta left the only ignominy—that of her work at the tavern—unspoken.

  “I am so very sorry, my dear. Why did you not tell me, any of us?”

  “When I am with you, with the sisterhood,” Isabetta began, “it is a different world, a world free of worry and strife.” The jut of her sharp chin returned; her shoulders squared once more. “I would not have my place of sanctuary tainted.”

  Viviana almost laughed, ready to share like emotions, but the chance flitted away.

  “Come, we must dress,” Isabetta said. “Time is tight.”

  With Jemma’s help, the women donned the garish gowns Viviana had procured from one of the convents, a haven where fallen women unable to live the life of prostitution any longer found refuge and a place to live out the remainder of their years. With Jemma’s help, Viviana kept her bruises, those just beginning to fade, from Isabetta’s gaze. Someday she would confess her torturous truth, as Isabetta had just been so courageous to do, but today was not that day.

  Brash of color, one of burnt pumpkin, the other of dingy olive, both were made of far less fabric than either woman was familiar with wearing, both heavy with the odors of the bodies that had worn them and the sickly perfumes such women had used to mask it.

  Though the orange gown would suit Isabetta’s platinum hair and the olive gown would the auburn of Viviana, they purposefully made the switch. The sleeves, though ballooned, were unslashed, a style many years abandoned. The olive gown boasted a high, sashed waistline, while the other fell straight from a gather below the bust. Both displayed most of the women’s décolletage.

  “I cannot wear this in public,” Viviana hissed. Jemma bleated agreement like an old goat. So low was the square neckline of the kirtle, so transparent was the V-neck of the partlet, that little covered her full breasts, the material barely disguising her nipples.

  Isabetta glanced up from the ministrations of her own costume, and bit her lips tightly together, eyes flashing with bursting hilarity.

  Viviana glowered at Isabetta. “Do not laugh at me. Do not dare.”

  But there was nothing for it. As Viviana attempted to shove her voluptuous bosom below the kirtle’s neckline, squishing them down, Isabetta fell into a chair, laughter overwhelming her.

  Viviana snarled, but it was half scowl, half sneer, for she could see how she appeared in Isabetta’s cloudy looking glass. Her copper hair, ridiculously coifed and embellished high upon her head, clashing so atrociously with the orange hue. She attempted to push her breasts into a space ill-equipped to accommodate them.

  Isabetta reached into her gown, pulling first one breast, then the other, as high as she could, revealing as much of them as she could. She began to prance about the bed, chest stuck up and out. “Look, it is I, the top-heavy Viviana.”

  All three women gave into it then, the ridiculousness.

  The laughter made it difficult to paint their faces—the crushed pearl dust (the same many used to clean their teeth), the saffron applied to lips and cheeks in sharp, bright contrast—only made them laugh more, for they no longer recognized each other or, in truth, themselves.

  “It is just as well,” Viviana muttered, mind returning to their mission. “It is not me.” They left Isabetta’s house, leaving Jemma to watch over the sleeping Vittorio.

  They hurried past the cathedral, the bas reliefs of Ghiberti visible on the bronze paneled doors of the Baptistery even in the fading light. As they turned onto the Via Sasseta, following it up into the more seedy part of the city, the air grew thick, the buildings ramshackle, and the people unsavory. Even in these dark days, raucous noises—voices of lowly dialect, bawdy laughter, blustering music—reached out into the streets on waves of strong aromas. For here were rows of brothels sandwiched between rowdy inns like the Hotel at the Crown and the Inn of the Bell. This was Florence’s most lecherous district, and neither woman had ever set foot within its purview, had never desired nor dared to. Before now.

  Viviana dared to peek out and over her shoulder from her hood, and she saw him. He stood leaning against the corner of San Miniato tra le Torri, the church between the towers. Even in this dim light, she could see his bemused skepticism—the finely curved brows perched high on his forehead, and though his arms were crossed firmly across his wide chest, one corner of his mouth curved upward.

  Viviana offered a shrug.

  Her green-eyed man placed one hand on his chest, while pointing a finger to the ground where he stood. He would be right there if she needed him. She sighed with the pleasure and pain of it.

  “There,” Isabetta ticked her head at the corner building, a three-story home of muddied brick and crooked shutters, each thrown open, light wafting out in square yellow beams. “Around back.”

  As soon as the women turned the corner onto the Via Alfani, they saw her. Standing by the rickety back door of peeling red paint, Delfina leaned against a wall, ignoring and unperturbed by a drunken group of young men. Seeing Isabetta, her face lit up.

  Delfina hurried them on with a flapping, beckoning hand. As they grew close, Viviana lost all embarrassment from her attire, for Delfina’s was far worse. The young woman’s kirtle was lower than Viviana’s, pink nipples clearly visible through the transparent partlet.

  “He is here. He arrived early,” Delfina told them in hushed tones.

  Isabetta shared only first names, introducing Delfina as a distant cousin of her husband’s.

  Viviana could barely contain her distress as the courtesan led them through the brothel. Though the art she studied so often depicted humans without clothes, rarely had she glimpsed them in open coupling in such a public, debased manner.

  Viviana was neither a fool nor naïve. She knew that what passed between she and her husband was perfunctory at best, save when he took her in anger. She knew, from vague mentions by Fiammetta and Isabetta, and from the way she felt when she glimpsed Sansone’s face, be it months apart, that there was more, much more that could happen when a man and a woman shared carnal knowledge of each other in a sensual manner. But she knew too that what she witnessed now, the lewd acts taking place with little privacy, was not as it should be either.

  Delfina took their cloaks, hanging them on wall pegs by the door, and brought them to a narrow staircase, whispering over her shoulder.

  “In the room I take you to, there is a space, no more than the width of a wardrobe, but it has its own door and cannot be seen by those in the adjoining room. The holes in the wall are well disguised, but they are there. Through them, one can hear and see all. There are some, not many mind, but some who like to watch. There are still others who like to be watched. This is the room we use for such people.”

  “People?” Viviana squeaked. “Women?”

  Isabetta shushed her; Delfina shrugged.

  Viviana swallowed hard at the breadth of life of which she knew so little.

  Delfina brought them to a door, the door, opened it, and warned them, “Do not lean upon the wall. Put only your eyes or ears against it, for it is not sturdy.”

  They nodded as Delfina shut them in.

  The darkness was not the worst of it. Pin-pricks found their way through, beams of light catching dust motes in their slim streams, enough to locate the holes. But the smells. The malodorous scents forced them to cover their noses with a slap, preferring thei
r own scent to the odors of all manner of bodily fluids trapped in the fetid, unstirred air.

  They heard the door in the adjoining room open, heard Delfina’s voice, and they rushed to find a place to look and listen, hurried to become still.

  “I am so sorry, signore, I did not mean to make you wait. You know I long for your arrival.” The girl’s voice turned to a cajoling purr. “Why have you stayed away so long?”

  “You know my duties, my dear. I fear I am more in demand than ever.”

  Viviana rolled her eyes; how like Orfeo the man sounded with his pompous grandiosity. She felt quite sure he was as inconsequential as her husband.

  Like Isabetta beside her, Viviana squinted through the small hole for a quick glance, pulling back to share a look. Together they shook their heads; neither recognized him.

  Narrow-eyed and mostly bald, save for a few scraggly hairs rimming the back and side of his head, Viviana wondered if Delfina would be able to find his manhood beneath the girth of flesh hanging grossly over his belt. But she need not worry, a good prostitute was a good actress.

  Delfina led her client into the room and sat him upon the bed. Opening his legs, she took a stand between them, her unconcealed breasts inches from his face. With slow, languid movements, she began to undress him.

  “Oh yes, signore, I know how very important you are. Tell me of your work.” She leaned down and with a small pink tongue, licked his neck from base to ear. The man leaned toward the caress with eyes aflutter. “It makes me desire you all the more.”

  She leaned ever forward, her breasts fully displayed as she unlaced his tunic, caressing his chest between each pull of a string. Tell her he did, but so much of it was of an irrelevant nature—no doubt all he was truly privy to—that Isabetta and Viviana grew impatient. Delfina drew near the end of the laces.

  Delfina knew her job. She kissed him, licking his lips, darting her tongue in and out of his mouth, in and out of his ear, along his fully bared chest.

  “Tell me more,” she panted. “It would excite me so to know whom you have captured, whom you hunt.”

  She shimmied onto the bed behind him then, and pulled off his farsetto, revealing a sweaty linen shirt beneath, its wide neck flapping open to reveal a hairy chest and breasts plump enough to rival Viviana’s own. Delfina began the slow untethering of the laces on the back of the man’s breeches.

  The man was all too happy to comply. He dropped names like trees did their fall leaves.

  Viviana bit her lip at the mention of such men as Roberto da Sanseverino, Lorenzo Giustini, and others, but his prattling brought little satisfaction other than surprise. Delfina knew her true work that night.

  She turned the man round on the bed, her now open legs wrapping themselves around his girth, and she pulled her kirtle even lower, releasing a plump breast from any remaining binding, reaching down and placing the man’s hand upon it.

  “I remember,” she growled, using her hand to make his squeeze and probe her flesh. The man took on the haze of one drugged and possessed. “I remember you told me they seek a woman. Is it true? Do they seek her still?”

  “It is,” the man said, removing neither hand nor gaze from Delfina’s body. “Signora Cavalcanti is the one they seek.”

  Delfina gave a squeal of pleasure, one well-rehearsed. “Certainly not. She is a great noblewoman. I have seen her in the marketplace so many times. She is as sweet as my own nonni. Why would they want her?”

  The man began to stroke Delfina of his own accord, his thumb moving in wide circles closer and closer to the pink nipple, teasing it out to full plumpness. “They believe she stole a painting, though everyone is quite vague about it. I think some are just after her to remove any power the son may gain as the offspring of such a nobleman.”

  The man removed his hand from the engorged nipple, stroking the flesh of Delfina’s stomach, but he did not desert her breast entirely. Instead, he lapped at it, languished it with a moist tongue and full lips.

  Viviana began to quell at what they did, for more reasons than she cared to acknowledge.

  As Delfina’s head fell back, surrendering, it would seem, to the delight of the sensations, she kept true to her task. “But what prompted the Priors to accuse her in the first place?”

  Viviana heard, but didn’t. She watched the rapture soften the woman’s face, saw her look toward the wall, their wall. With a hard swallow, she realized Delfina was a woman who enjoyed being watched; she enjoyed her task this night. Viviana raised a hand to her own face in question: had it ever shone with such rapture?

  The man’s answer however, when it came, trumped all thoughts.

  “Because Signoria Cavalcanti was seen that very morning.” His muffled words came as his mouth switched from one nipple to the other, his free hand pushing the linens up Delfina’s legs and round her pale buttocks, giving it a stroke, then one to his own swollen self, taking Delfina’s hand and placing it upon him. Keeping his over hers, together they stroked him to further hardness. Yet still he bragged as their breathing grew ragged, as their hands moved up and down, faster, harder. “They won’t rest until they find her, for more than a few say they saw her running from the Palazzo della Signora, and they say she carried something, something large and rectangular.”

  Viviana flinched back from the partition as if struck.

  “Seen?” She mouthed to Isabetta. She too had retreated from the wall. “Seen with it?”

  It was almost too outlandish to be believed. All this time they worked with faith, believing the accusation was false. But if Lapaccia was seen with it…

  Both women put their eyes back to their peepholes, but there would be no more information gained this night. The man set hard to his task now—a mouth to a breast, one hand lost beneath the folds of Delfina’s flimsy skirts. The only sounds were those of humans at their most animalistic.

  Viviana stepped away and toward the door, taking Isabetta by the hand and pulling her along, whispering, “We must go.”

  Here Viviana blanched—at Isabetta’s unyielding stance, at the amusement on her friend’s parted lips, and the desire in her eyes. Yet who was Viviana to disparage her? Was it not the same, deep within, which ignited Viviana’s longing to run?

  With another tug, Isabetta gave way, and the two women slithered from the hidden closet on tiptoes and into the corridor. Viviana moved left, unsure of the way out.

  “No, this way,” Isabetta hissed, taking a step to the right.

  Yet with a sudden yank, she spun them back round, tugging Viviana once more to the left, grabbing her by the shoulder, and turning her abruptly. Viviana’s words of protest were lost, pilfered by deep, lecherous laughter from further down the narrow, dim corridor.

  But it was not so far or so dark for the man’s features to be concealed, for Viviana not to recognize her own husband.

  His laughter—she could not remember the last time she had heard it. It was the strange thought screaming in her head as she stood immobilized. In this mummified disbelief, Viviana watched as Orfeo entered a room on the opposite side of the corridor, one hand working frantically on the front laces of his breeches. His other hand he kept firmly in place on the prostitute’s bare ass.

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  “There is a great disgrace as to be defiled by indignity.”

  Viviana expected no callers. The knock upon her small front door took her by surprise. She opened it to find Leonardo da Vinci and Isabetta, another surprise. But here they stood, a blooming flush on Isabetta’s face, and Leonardo, himself, with the shy, endearing grin he wore so well.

  “I realize how rude it is of us to come unannounced,” Isabetta chirruped, hands aflutter. “But I’ve run into Leonardo and we’ve decided upon a wonderful outing. We hope you’ll join us, as no one else seems available.”

  Viviana heard what Isabetta did not say—that though Isabetta wished it, the married woman could not walk about alone with the unmarried Leonardo.

  “Besides,” Isabetta’s
voice grew tender, “I did think you might benefit the most to be out and about.”

  Once more, the true words were left unspoken. Isabetta knew there was no love to be lost from what Viviana had seen of Orfeo last night, but there were more places in the heart that could be broken.

  “What sort of an outing?” Viviana asked, and if cynicism crept into her tone, it was for this and this alone.

  “Scusi, signora,” Leonardo’s dulcet voice soothed Viviana’s ruffled brow. “I had a thought that perhaps it would aid the group to visit and study paintings, those of a similar composition and treatment.” As that which you forge, he refrained from adding.

  Viviana needed little convincing. She had not slept the night before, too disrupted by anger and disgust. Viviana could have borne a mistress; there were few wives these days who did not, in this age of experimentation and change. But it was within one’s own community, a mix of a decent variety. Even a well-kept courtesan she could have accepted. Was it not enough to suffer his ill-treatment, his disrespect of word and deed, his anger and his humiliation? Must she be further humiliated by his association with a tawdry prostitute? It made his crimes against her all the more castigating, all the more denigrating.

  She ran to her chamber, grabbed a veil and her own sleeveless overgown, and returned, stepping out into the late afternoon with a distinct sigh of relief. The rain of the morning had wasted away to a drizzle, but it did little to impede the contentment of a promenade. It filled the air with an earthy, acidic scent, as if it had been washed and sterilized.

  Though they had been at the studio often, it seemed only to have replaced one confinement with another, so stifling had life in the guarded city become. As they stepped onto the Via Porto Rosso, it appeared they were not the only ones feeling the ill effects of a restrained existence, not the only popolo to long to take back at least a modicum of their city.

  The streets, once empty at all hours, showed signs of life, small shoots of spring bursting through the barren dirt of winter, though nothing of the full richness typically found on the streets. Viviana was pleasantly surprised, nonetheless, to see so many strolling along, once more taking up the tradition of the passeggiata. The walk taken before the evening meal had been a ritual of the city since before Viviana could remember. It was a time for socializing, for catching up on the lives of neighbors, and often it was a time for flirtations and meeting potential mates, as it had been for decades.