Portrait of a Conspiracy

by Donna Russo Morin

  “My love, forgive me.” Andreano raised Mattea’s hand to his lips and kissed it deeply.

  All lives hold secrets, Viviana thought yet again, as she had so often in the last few days.

  “I could not risk telling you,” Andreano shook his head with shame, wavy golden brown hair falling in his face. “I could not risk involving you any more than I already had. I involved all of you. I was stupid and vengeful. I am so very sorry.”

  Mattea held him like the anchor to the ship of her life; her shoulders and head dropped with relief, ragged breath came and went as she closed her eyes and simply held him.

  “Mattea?”

  It was Isabetta who dared to speak, hesitantly, a whisper of pure disbelief.

  Mattea opened her eyes. Above her lover’s head, every gaze was upon her.

  “You were right, Isabetta, I know not who I am. I love someone whom life has decided I cannot love.” She spoke pointedly. “But love him I do, with every fiber of my being.”

  Andreano rose and kissed her forehead. Mattea stepped out of his embrace, spoke to Lapaccia. “I can only ask forgiveness for loving your son. I would not allow him to make it known. I feared your disapproval would force him to choose between us, and this I would never allow.”

  Lapaccia’s gaze flitted between them in silence. “All I have ever wanted for my son is love. We cannot control where our hearts takes us, try though we might.” Lapaccia reached out her hands, one for each. “Neither of you need question my forgiveness, for anything.”

  “Oh, for the love of God. And now we are to protect a murderer?” Fiammetta cried.

  Andreano whirled at her. “I committed no such sin,” he spat.

  “Then what did you do?” Fiammetta retorted. “You were in the painting. Your mother would not have taken it were you not.”

  And there it was, Viviana thought, chiding herself for her own stupidity.

  Fiammetta turned to Lapaccia, seated once more on the cot. She said not a word, but gave a single nod of her head.

  “What did you do then?” Fiammetta demanded of the young man.

  Andreano’s eyes, wide and forlorn, looked more like those of the child he once was. “I opened the gate. I ensured the gate opened for the Perugini mercenaries who attacked the Palazzo della Signoria.”

  It was the most unforeseen of answers. It seemed such an innocuous collusion. However, collusion with the dreadful Pazzis it was. Viviana’s mind volleyed back and forth, between wanting to the slap Andreano as his mother had—the visions haunting her, the viciousness in the church that day wanting, demanding her to do so—and yet, she knew the desire for justice, a consuming flame which left little room for twigs of logic. How could she fault him for the same sin she had committed?

  “It will come out, Andreano,” Viviana stated the vicious truth with quiet sadness. “Il Magnifico will not stop until everyone connected, no matter how tenuously, to his brother’s death is dead. I know for certain.”

  The hissing slash of a whisper came from the door cracked only inches open; another nun’s long thin face peaked through it.

  “There are guards at the gate. They know you are here, they know your son is here. They followed him. We can only hold them off for so long.”

  As quickly as she came, she retreated, her appearance like a shy specter.

  Lapaccia jumped up with a vitality it would not seem she possessed.

  “You must leave, Andreano,” she grabbed him by the shoulders and spun him toward the door.

  “I will come back—”

  “NO!” his mother spat. “You must leave Florence.”

  “He cannot!” Mattea cried.

  “He must,” Lapaccia insisted, even as Andreano fought against her push toward the door.

  Her son took her hands. Insistent though gentle, he took them from her. “I will not allow my mother to suffer for my actions anymore.”

  “And I will not allow my son to die. If you are killed, I would have no reason to live,” Lapaccia hissed. “Will you live with that? Will you allow us both to die?”

  Andreano shook his head with the vehemence of a spasm. “You would not. You could not.”

  “She will, Andreano,” Isabetta stood behind Lapaccia. “She has the strength of ten men. Look at what she has already done for your safety! She lives for you; all she talks about is you. What is she without you?”

  “You, they will kill, me they may only banish.”

  “You may not be banished at all, Lapaccia,” Viviana chimed in. “I have been freed from my husband’s sins without recourse. Magnifico has let it be known, you have only to tell your truth. But Andreano must go.” This last she said to Mattea, though it tore her heart to do so.

  Her simple words said more than Andreano could ever truly know, but it seemed to tip the scales in his mind.

  Lapaccia cocked her head, face puckered in confusion, eyes narrowed upon Viviana. “Your husband’s sins? What sins?”

  But Viviana had not a moment to answer.

  Men’s voices reached them, deep and insistent, through the small crack in the door.

  “Go!” Lapaccia snapped. “Go to my family in the north. One day this will pass and all may return to normal. I know it.”

  Andreano grabbed his mother and held her as if he may never do so again. As he held his mother with his left arm, he reached for Mattea with his right, pressing her against his side, their passion a portrait—the very definition of love and desire—waiting to be painted.

  He kissed her, hard and deep, without a care for the stares upon them or the open-mouthed gap of the abbess.

  “I will see you again, of that never, ever, be unsure.” Andreano’s voice broke on his emotion. “You are mine, heart and soul, as I am yours.”

  Tears streamed down Mattea’s pale face. “As I am yours,” she repeated his pledge.

  Closing her eyes, able to bear it no more, Lapaccia pushed him from her and out the door.

  “Wait!” The nun in the room stepped from her corner and into the fray. “Do not go left from here. Go to the right and then left at the end. It will take you through a very small, private chapel with a door leading out the back way and to the north.”

  Andreano bowed in gratitude. With a last look for his mother and his lover, he was gone.

  Viviana longed for solace in which to cry, sob as she had not done through all her trials. As a mother, she felt the tearing away of a child. As one never truly loved, she felt the emptiness of Mattea’s loss.

  Such sentimental thoughts vanished like smoke at the clanging of armor, as armed men marched their way.

  “What are we to do? Do we offer you up to the wolves after all we have done to save you from them?” Fiammetta hissed at them, standing in the center of the room, and whirling round to beseech them all. “Or do we tell what Andreano has done, send them after him? They followed him here. They must know he was involved. How much more must we do?”

  “Just one more thing,” Lapaccia coughed her answer, not waiting for the spasms to subside to continue her plea. She took Fiammetta’s hands and squeezed them with all the strength she had left. “Give him time. I ask no more. If we misdirect them, he may have time yet for escape. It is all I will ask, no more, I swear it.”

  Fiammetta’s face wrinkled at this woman’s abject beseeching.

  “Signora Lapaccia Cavalcanti! Andreano Cavalcanti!”

  The door opened, pushed by a gauntlet-covered hand, as the soldier called their names. But as the women within stepped aside, allowing the portal to fully open, the mass of soldiers in the hall could see there was only Lapaccia. There was not a single man within the small cell nor any space in which to hide one. There was barely room to breathe.

  Lapaccia stepped forward. “I am Lapaccia Cavalcanti,” she wheezed.

  The soldier had the good grace to bow, if in a clipped manner, before the highly ranked noblewoman, suspect though she may be. “Where is your son, madonna? We know he entered this holy place. We saw him ourselves.”


  “He is gone.”

  The dark and ruddy soldier nodded his boulder like head on a neck of a tree trunk. “I can see that. But where, where has he gone?”

  Lapaccia shook her head, suddenly coughing too much to speak.

  Viviana knew not if it was truth or diversion, but her friend paled more, white skin turning a sickly shade of blue as Lapaccia could not get the air into her lungs.

  “You see how ill she is,” Viviana said, stepping in, unable not to. “Please allow us to get her to a physician.”

  “No one leaves this room until we know where Andreano Cavalcanti has gone.”

  Mattea sobbed, leaning on Isabetta’s shoulder.

  Fiammetta stepped forward.

  “I will tell you where he is,” she said, her voice harsh and angry, impatient and defiant. “Do you know who I am, soldier?” Fiammetta stepped up with fisted hands upon her hips.

  The man began to shake his head, until a soldier at his back whispered in his ear. The lead soldier quickly dropped a bow.

  “Contessa,” was all he said; it was enough.

  “Good. You understand who I am, now listen.” Fiammetta dropped her hands from her hips and crossed them on her chest. The women in the room, her sisters in the great sorority they had formed, held their breath as if it were their last. Would she honor their bond or would her ire, so quick to the fore, rule the day?

  “Andreano Cavalcanti has run to Rome. He seeks sanctuary with the Pope.”

  It was the perfect answer; its logic its greatest asset. The women knew not to release their relief, knew they could not, no matter how it burst in their hearts.

  “Thank you, Contessa,” the soldier said, and with a nod over his soldier, sent the majority of the others on their way out the front door, the opposite way Andreano had gone. “Your assistance will be duly noted.”

  “As it should,” Fiammetta huffed, fully in her role now.

  “But I fear,” the soldier continued, “Mona Cavalcanti must come with me. I must take her to the Gonfaloniere.”

  The women had no defense against his claim.

  “But I promise you, she will be seen by a physician.”

  “Oh, I can promise you the same,” Isabetta stepped up with a sneer, “for I shall be accompanying you to the palazzo.”

  Viviana stepped up beside Isabetta. “As will I.”

  “And I!” the rest of the women chirped.

  The soldier, seasoned and scarred though he may be, tottered. Closing his eyes, his large hand rubbed hard across his forehead, as if it pained him, sending the black curls falling upon it into impatient disarray.

  He opened his eyes, shrugged his broad shoulders, and bowed again, one hand gracefully arching toward the door.

  “Then let us away, my ladies,” he surrendered, irony thick in his deep voice.

  Like a religious procession, the women of the artist sisterhood filed from the room, Lapaccia in the lead, held on one side by Mattea, on the other by Isabetta.

  Chapter Forty

  “The final layer of varnish glitters with brilliance;

  The brush looks to the next blank canvas.”

  “Forgive me, forgive me!” Fiammetta barged into the studio, the last one to arrive. Her cheeks flushed, her smile bright. “I am so sorry to be late for this gathering, of all our gatherings.”

  It was, perhaps, the most poignant meeting of the group since its inception. For the first time in too much of it, every member was present.

  “Patrizio took me on a small trip, only to Ferrara for the day, to hear a new friar speak,” she babbled even as she held tightly to Lapaccia. “He was quite stirring, like no preacher I have ever heard. Savonarola is his name, a very intense young man.”

  “Have no fear, amica mia. I have only just arrived myself,” Lapaccia appeased.

  Isabetta stepped to her and held her colleague out at arm’s length. “You look wonderful,” she declared, inspired by what she didn’t see.

  No longer did dark circles rim the noblewoman’s eyes, nor did pallor or cough plague Lapaccia as they had for so long. Though it had been many a day, she still recovered from her ordeal, from the months in the convent without the proper medicines, from the two days in the Palazzo della Signoria tower, two days of non-stop questioning.

  In the end, she had kept the secret of her son’s whereabouts, confusing the Gonfaloniere by telling him her son’s truth, the small part Andreano had played in the cataclysm and his motivations for doing so. Lapaccia had even told Cesare Petrucci she had instructed Andreano to seek refuge among family, but realized she herself did not know to which he would turn if the Pope turned him away. As Viviana had thought, in the words there had been enough truth for the Gonfaloniere, and after consulting with Il Magnifico, he had granted Lapaccia her freedom, proving the success, no doubt, of dear Leonardo’s mission. The woman, still gaining her strength back, agreed with Viviana; they would both be watched.

  “We are lucky to have you back,” Isabetta declared.

  Without announcement or fanfare, the group returned to their ways, working and talking, talking of working, gossiping while working as crepuscular rays of afternoon sun found them, lit them as if from within. The pungent, sharp scent of freshly mixed paints, of flowers and herbs and oils and stone dust filled the air, and they breathed it in like a panacea.

  “I feel very lucky, very blessed to be here,” Lapaccia replied. “I cannot believe so many are dead, so many banished.”

  They rattled off names of the deceased then, some knowing those others did not.

  “Can it really be as many as they say?” Viviana mused as she arranged her brushes on the table before her by size, and the pigments she would use by brightness. The next painting lived in her mind already and therein would lay no more darkness. “I have heard it said over eighty have been hung.”

  “I think ’tis more near to one hundred,” Isabetta murmured between gentle taps of la mazza upon the pointed and petite la subbia. Creation gave her cheer never more needed, wondering how soon her husband would join the departed. “Il Magnifico and the Gonfaloniere believe they have them all, save Andreano, whom they may consider too lowly to hunt, and Bernardo Bandini, one of the worst. I wonder if they will ever find him.”

  Mattea wondered too, aloud, putting down the mortar and pestle in which she mixed some gesso. “And will I ever see my Andreano again?”

  In silence, Viviana deliberated as well, on seeing someone again, a man with green eyes who would not leave her dreams, a soldier who in the impending days of war may not be glimpsed.

  “You will, my dear. True love always finds a way. As for Bandini, I have no cl—” Isabetta began, stopped by the grating of the door latch.

  It was with a flash of fear—they all felt it—that they held their breaths as the door pushed open. Once it did, the sun shone yet again.

  Before the man had fully crossed the threshold, Lapaccia was on her feet, making her way to him with outstretched arms.

  Reaching Leonardo, she rose up on the tips of her toes and wrapped her arms about his neck. With an expression of pure delighted surprise, the tall artist lowered himself to return the embrace.

  “You put your life to the hazard for me,” Lapaccia said, pulling back to speak to this stranger. “How can I ever repay you?”

  “We are all each other’s keeper, madonna,” he replied. “And those who do not do so, will not be saved when their time comes.” Leonardo scanned the room and the women in it. “I was as much saved as you, I swear it.”

  Lapaccia rose up once more, kissing him loudly upon his bristly cheek. Leonardo’s pink blush turned scarlet and the women laughed aloud as Lapaccia pulled him into the room and to the preliminary sketches upon her table.

  “Will you give me some advice on my newest endeavor, maestro?” she asked. “For I am, as are we all, one of your disciples, da Vinci’s disciples.”

  “That is who we are,” Isabetta crowed with great delight, “we are da Vinci’s Disciples.
”

  Though the artist shook his head, trying to shake off the accolade, the women would not be dissuaded.

  “I am your servant, madonna,” Leonardo said and the two put heads together, two artistic minds at work on composition and color.

  Lapaccia observed. “It is indeed sorry I am to have missed your lessons. You have taught me so much in these few minutes.” Lapaccia regarded him with admiration. “What will you teach us next?”

  Leonardo eyed each woman. “I think you are ready.” It was a calmly strident pronouncement.

  “Ready for what?” Isabetta stepped round her bench.

  Leonardo made yet another slow turn, scanning the room and all its astounding works.

  “Frescoes.” The word spoken, he smiled wide, wider still at the women’s gasps.

  “Truly?” Viviana fairly squealed. The technique of buon fresco had eluded the group for so long. If they did apply the wet plaster to the wall correctly—that which must be the base for the painting—they seemed to create the pigments wrong, for frescoes must be done with pigments suspended in water so that the plaster absorbed the color and the painting can truly form part of the wall. Or if the pigments were perfect the plaster failed utterly.

  “We are ready,” Isabetta crowed, whether for the delight of the craft or its teacher, Viviana could not discern, and in that moment, she did not care. And yet a weed of concern blossomed in her mind.

  “Will your involvement with us take away from your own work?” Viviana asked, unable to squelch the note of guilt in her voice.

  Leonardo shook his head gently, “Cara mia le donne, it is your devotion, even though denied to the world, that has helped me see how grateful I am to have such freedom as a man can have. I need to be grateful and to show that gratitude by pursuing my work. We will grow together in creation.”

  A silence fell upon them then, a contented one full of relief and promise. Suddenly the very air they breathed together changed, it crackled as if from lightning.

  “Men believe they are the power,” Isabetta said, raising more than one eyebrow with surprise. “And perhaps, on the surface, they are. But what we have done proves it. Together, there is not a greater power than the strength of women bound to each other.”