Portrait of a Conspiracy

by Donna Russo Morin

“Does he imagine the duke and the Pope to be part of the conspiracy?” Viviana blanched. She had spoken of it as a theory, but to hear evidence of it, there was no salvation to be found in a world defiled by such degradation. A sense of abandonment engulfed her.

  Orfeo laughed, “A soldier’s confession, Montesecco. It had already told the truth of it. And then there is the poem.”

  “Poem?”

  “Oh yes, and quite the verse it is too, though no one has come forth to claim it. Others of great condition, but it is better not to speak their names, although each of them was born of humble origins, so that anyone can guess who they are.”

  He sat back, pleased with himself, plopping his booted feet upon the corner of the table with a thump and a thump.

  Viviana reached her limit; she could no longer allow this impotent cock to crow when the sun had been up for hours.

  “Does this tell us something? In truth? Nothing. It could be anyone.” She dismissed his contention as she dismissed him, with a flick of her hand, turning her attention back to her food.

  Orfeo dropped his feet to the floor, his arms upon the table with a thud.

  “You are so wise, aren’t you?” There he was, the snide and cruel man, the truth of him. “I will tell you something you do not know, could not know.”

  He leaned over the table, a stubby finger pointed in her face.

  “Your friend Lapaccia Cavalcanti is still very much on the arrest list. I have it on good authority—”

  “Who?” Viviana squeezed the arms of her chair until her knuckles turned bloodless white.

  “—they believe they are getting closer to learning her whereabouts.”

  “Who told you this?”

  “Baccio Ugolini, Lorenzo’s eyes and ears in Rome. I heard him tell Sigismondo della Stufa myself. I…” The contemptuous man’s words withered on his flapping tongue. His reddened cheeks revealed his epiphany. He knew what he had confessed—he had not come by the information directly, but by eavesdropping, the act of a meaningless person. He slapped his hands upon the table with a thwack. “I need not tell you anymore.”

  “But you must, it is Lapaccia, one of my dearest friends.” Viviana hated the thin edge of desperation in her voice.

  “You will not become involved with her anymore, wherever she may be. You will not see her again. She has proven to be of the wrong sort.”

  Viviana’s head jerked back as if slapped, a snarl undisguised on her lips.

  It was the moment; the metamorphosis was complete. It was as if a great wind had thrashed its way through their home, snuffing out every candle, dousing their world into utter darkness.

  “The ‘wrong sort?’ You now call the Cavalcanti the ‘wrong sort?’”

  Slowly, deliberately, Viviana took a long draught of the sweet Trebbiano she so enjoyed. If there was a quiver in her hand, she ignored it. “Why I remember it was not so long ago you would have wiped the ass of a Cavalcanti if it would have done you some good.”

  Orfeo sat forward so fast, his chair almost slipped out from under him, his face turned purple. “You…you…” he choked on his anger.

  Viviana watched Orfeo through new eyes. He was so different now. With a breath, Viviana cleared her mind, batted her eyes prettily, and smiled.

  Orfeo jumped to his feet, chair tipping backwards and slamming against the floor, rushing to her with a hand raised across his body, the back of it aimed for her face.

  But she was quicker.

  “Touch me and I will plunge this into that soft gullet of yours.”

  She pointed her knife at his stomach, where it waited for the slightest effort to gouge him.

  Orfeo was a fool and a dullard, but he was committed to self-preservation at all costs.

  He lowered his hand and took two slow steps back.

  With the smile still upon her face, knife still in her hand, Viviana rose and, with a curtsey, backed out of the room.

  “You cannot be always on guard,” he hissed at her like a snake just as she reached the door. “Nor can your sons.”

  She spun round, knife raised. “Harm my sons and I will kill you where you stand.” She laughed malevolently. “Or sleep. I do know where you sleep, Orfeo, all of the time.”

  As she closed and locked both doors of her salon, she realized she had become much like Il Magnifico. She would cleanse her life of all its venomous toxicity, one way or another.

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  “At times, the worst to be done, is the best to be done.”

  The early morning sun shined warm on Viviana’s shoulders as it bathed the world in tones of magenta and gold. She took herself across the Ponte Vecchio, toward Santo Spirito, the women and the work awaiting her. She didn’t know if she could work at all, if the spirit of creativity could find its way through her darkness. A demon lived inside her these days; she could see it clearly, but she had found nothing to appease it.

  “Such a sight I never thought to behold, Viviana is the last to arrive.” The snide comment was her greeting from Fiammetta, as Viviana entered the busy and bustling studio. All were in attendance, including Leonardo, for a full, good day of work would find the painting finished.

  “Did we stop for some shopping, perhaps? I noticed many of the shops on the bridge have reopened, some with fine new wares,” Natasia teased her, though far more gently. Viviana ignored her, focusing instead on the painting. It could not be denied, the sight of it cheered her, thrilled her.

  Reminiscent of Rimini’s rendering a century ago, it glorified the evolution of painting progressing to full dimensionality. In lieu of rendering the men in the forefront as miniature to delineate depth, their positions were made clear by more subtle changes in size, as well as in color, both brightness and shadow. There was no blue, but a tender periwinkle. There were no flat colors as there were in the Rimini, but every gradient of color created with a thick ink wash of roasted cobalt ore. It was just such mastery of shading, such jewels of color, which Leonardo had brought them and taught them to use.

  Viviana went to his side, took his hand, and dipped him a curtsey. “We could never have done this without you.”

  Though they were nearly the same age, the man, looking so young in this moment, blushed beneath her gratitude. “Where the spirit does not work with the hand, there is no art. I merely helped you connect them, no more.”

  “Orfeo has told me some news, news of Lapaccia.” Viviana’s declaration held them fast. She relayed the part of her conversation with Orfeo concerning their missing friend.

  “I had heard the diplomat arrived,” Isabetta chimed in. “Baccio Ugolini is a very well-connected signori.”

  “It is not good news the man speaks of our Lapaccia,” Mattea sighed heavily.

  “No, it is not,” Isabetta agreed. “But I do know he will be a guest at a fête, one but two nights hence, at the d’Estes.” She turned to Fiammetta. “Surely you must have been invited as well.”

  Fiammetta became the definitive portrait of a mouse caught in a trap.

  “The invitation did come, but we were not planning to attend. It is unseemly, no, in these days of mourning?”

  Viviana fumed, longed to thrash the pompous woman, to tell Fiammetta what she herself had done for the sake of the cause. Instead, she insisted, “You must attend, Fiammetta. I feel sure there may be information gained. Diplomats are never so garrulous than at a fête, imbued by good food and good wine.”

  Fiammetta narrowed her eyes at Viviana. It was ever so faint a gesture, but it was one seen by all. “Very well. But we should not get our hopes up.”

  With a sudden epiphany, Viviana told what she and Isabetta had learned at the brothel, that Lapaccia had been seen leaving the Palazzo della Signoria with something the size of the painting, but without saying so, she intimated the information came from Orfeo as well.

  “I still do not understand why,” Fiammetta bleated, still a note of irritation at being forced to attend the fête in her tone. “She is not in the painting. Look,
no women are.”

  “It must have something to do with one of these men,” Isabetta moved closer and peered at the faces of those they did not recognize, as if staring at them long enough would bring their identity to light. “Perhaps she was romantically involved with one of them. And then there are three blank faces, those no one has sketched. Maybe one of them is her lover. We must finish them today.”

  The group nodded as one. This was the task assigned them this day, the task remaining. But none took up Isabetta’s postulation, that one of the men was Lapaccia’s lover. It didn’t matter that he was deceased, Lapaccia’s fidelity to her husband would stay true until they met yet again on the other side.

  “Or,” Fiammetta grumbled now, “she could still have been part of the conspiracy, though she does not appear here. Perhaps it was her function to remove the painting if the efforts to put the Pazzis in control were to fail.”

  The women around her replied with silent disregard at the ridiculous notion, save for Viviana, who awarded her with a look of ill-tempered impatience.

  “What?” Fiammetta shrugged her wide shoulders in defense. “It could be. If these days have taught us anything, it is that behind every life, there are secrets.”

  The words were an arrow to Viviana’s heart, a sign for one who truly believed in signs. This was the moment. She felt as if she couldn’t breathe, as if she never would, then,

  “One of the men without a face,” it was a garbled whisper. Viviana cleared her throat with a tight swallow, tossed back her shoulders. “I know whose features to use for one of the missing faces.”

  “You do?”

  “Who?”

  The women pelted her with their curiosity, more than one and at once.

  Viviana breathed deeply, closing her eyes for an instant as she exhaled through her nose.

  Opening her lids, looking upon each and every one, she spat her announcement.

  “Orfeo. Put Orfeo in the painting.”

  Silence.

  • • •

  They worked the entirety of the day, taking turns at the canvas. Isabetta and Viviana rendered Orfeo with such keen likeness that Viviana felt the same revulsion as when standing before him.

  “They will kill him,” Isabetta said in a hushed voice.

  “He has been killing me, slowly, for years. He abuses me. He abuses me in every way a man can abuse a woman. It has been going on almost the whole of my marriage. And what was I to do? Take it to the Lord Priors? Ask for justice? There is no justice for women such as I, abused by her husband. It is allowed. For pity’s sake, it is encouraged as a show of strength.”

  She gripped her brush, holding the fisted, armed hand up before Isabetta’s face. It trembled with her passion and her fury. “Here. Here is our power, our tool of justice.”

  Isabetta, this intelligent woman of few words, spoke those most crucial. “They will come for you too.”

  Viviana continued to paint the visage of her husband.

  “There will be a scar on your immortal soul,” Fiammetta intoned from across the room, a stiff statue, a guard of her God.

  “A scar on my soul?” Viviana snapped harshly. With both hands, she pulled down one corner of her partlet and gown, revealing a shoulder stained purple. “What of this scar? What of the many others like it? Will that scar be any different than these? I think not.”

  She turned from the stoic woman to continue her work. “I will, I must live with both scars. God will decide which defines my eternal soul.”

  Mattea, releasing held breath, turned back to her work, finishing one by herself. Though it was of the man with the beautiful physique Isabetta had rendered, the face Mattea gave him was so nondescript it could have been any man or every man. Fiammetta rendered the last and she made him as a foreigner from the south, with the dark and harsh features of the Sicilians, for they were rumored to be involved as well.

  The late afternoon sun began its slow descent. The pure light streamed fully in the windows, the brightness of it revealing every stroke of the brush filling the canvas in its entirety.

  The women embraced each other. It had become a victory unlike any they had ever known, ever thought to experience. It had become something far greater than simply a challenging artistic endeavor; it challenged their very beings, their beliefs, and their characters. In it, there was both great joy and debilitating sadness.

  “Genius knows no gender,” Leonardo said softly as his gaze flitted between the painting and the women who had created it. “I am proud to call you all, each and every one, a colleague.”

  “We could not have done it without your help, maestro.” Isabetta turned her warmth upon him, the women agreeing, curtseying as they too murmured their gratitude.

  “Oh, I think you could, madonna,” he chided with his shy smile and a slight nodding. “It occurs to me the feminine sensibility, a woman’s ability to feel more and far greater, far deeper than most men, would make them far more proficient for translating the human condition onto the canvas. And yet you are prohibited by the very fact.” He shook his head, long hair undulating. “It seems inconceivable.”

  “Perhaps it will change someday,” Mattea replied.

  He smiled. “Perhaps it is you, this group, who may bring forth such change.”

  The women brightened at such a notion, a thought, a hope they locked away in their hearts and minds for safekeeping.

  “So,” Fiammetta stood before the painting, in her favorite posture of arms akimbo, “how do we get it back into the Palazzo della Signoria?”

  Leave it to Fiammetta to think of the practical, vital step not a one had yet to consider.

  “I will take it.”

  This time the group turned resounding incomprehension toward Leonardo.

  He shrugged one shoulder as if he spoke of what to have for a meal. “I walk in and out of the Palazzo without a single glance. The same is true for the Medici household itself.” He folded his arms upon his chest. “Plus, I am a painter, of sorts, to be seen carrying a painting will be as natural as a mother carrying a child.”

  “It puts you at great risk, Leonardo,” Viviana said.

  The artist shrugged away her concern. “There is little they could do to me that has not already been done.” There it was—the years of trial, the humiliation, the scars of it. “Consider it my gift in parting.”

  “Parting?” Isabetta squeaked. “Why should we be parting?”

  Leonardo pointed to the painting. “It is finished, as is my work here. There is no reason for me to return.”

  “No, no you must—” Isabetta began, walking toward him, a hand outstretched.

  “We still need you, Leonardo,” Viviana stepped between them. There was no guile in her statement, no undue or misplaced flattery. “If we are to become the vehicle of change you proclaim we may be, then we must be the best, for only then will they pay attention.”

  Leonardo looked down at the woman before him. Viviana felt a kinship with him as she never had with a man of her own age.

  “You are our brother. You are our maestro. There can be—should be—no other.”

  Leonardo held up both hands, shaking his head as he stepped back. “Oh…no…madonna…I could not—”

  “Oh, but you must.” Isabetta jumped up to stand beside Viviana. “You already are. Have you not told us of your dream to have your own studio, to be a maestro?”

  Murmurs of agreement and assent crowded round him as did the other women.

  “But…but I am not,” Leonardo stammered, “that is to say…”

  “You are not a woman, Leonardo, we do understand that part.” Isabetta did not even try to hide her amusement.

  “Then how could I be your maestro? Are you not committed to the forwarding of the female artist?”

  “Because you are an artistic genius,” Fiammetta said it flatly, acceptance of fact rather than compliment. “We must learn to further our mission and we cannot learn from each other. We can only learn from one who holds more knowl
edge than we, we can only learn from a master.”

  “Learn from a master,” Viviana repeated the words, not Fiammetta’s but Caterina’s, exact words she had read in her cousin’s journals. She stepped forward, taking Leonardo’s hand, further astonishing the astounded artist. “I know this—” she waved her free hand about to encompass the room and the women in it, “—I know ’tis not exactly what you wished for, but perhaps it will do for now?”

  Leonardo’s eyes grew as deep as the ocean as he stared at her, and for a moment all thought he would refuse, until the small crack beside them gave his fey smile away.

  “If it is what you wish—”

  “It is! It is!” More than one of them cried, a delightful chorus.

  “Then it will be so.”

  Chapter Twenty-Seven

  “Victims, victors, vermin; captured one and all, immortally in paint.”

  The Piazza della Signoria had remained a vacant wasteland, abandoned by those who adored it, feared by those who abhorred it, as desolate as the ruins on the surrounding hillside.

  But not anymore.

  The artistic endeavor begun on the north wall, or the wall of the Dogana, brought them back out, enticed them, at first, with the hammering and the clamoring of a scaffold under construction. Then, the man who climbed it, none other than Sandro Botticelli, at last cajoled those few still reluctant out of their homes.

  Now the city hummed with talk of it, on every street corner, in every tavern and home, from the low to the lofty. The popolo came out in droves to see what the artist was up to and the piazza became, once more, not a place of destruction, but one of creativity and socializing. The subject of his work seemed not to matter, though it reminded them all of what had transpired. The brutal consequences still echoed with screams of torment, and the bloodthirsty arrests held the breath of the city.

  It had long been a tradition in the world-renowned city of Firenze to depict traitors and bankrupts on building façades. Most often such frescoes were rendered on the walls of the Bargello or the Stinche, the fortress of the chief police magistrate or the prison.