by Lisa Hilton
Careggi seemed enclosed, marooned beyond the currents that were reshaping Italy. Only Maestro Ficino’s correspondents brought us news of what was happening beyond the hills. In truth, though, my master cared very little for the tides that washed these armies up and down the peninsula. He cared little for the Pope and his Holy League or the Duke of Milan. His thoughts were all for me. He had me read to him from his own tracts on alchemy, and the Philosopher’s Stone. I had heard of this from the mountebanks who thronged the street corners of Florence before the coming of the French, and I wondered why my master should concern himself with such things. He explained that this was no vulgar search for gold. He was not chasing after magical dreams of wealth. Rather, he sought a heavenly and spiritual substance, which could transcend nature itself and bring all things to their best, most perfect state. It was no chimerical phantasy, he said, but a sober possibility of Nature. It was not a stone, quite. Its appearance was a powder, almost impalpable to the touch, sweet tasting and fragrant, dry yet unctuous, capable of tinging a plate of metal. It was named ‘stone’ because its nature was so fixed as to resist fire.
‘It is the father of all miracles, Mora, combining all the elements in such a manner that none will dominate, but rather produce a fifth essence, a glorious, spiritual gold. That is what we are seeking. That is why I needed you.’
His belief in it was so fervent that I could not help but be convinced. He was a great scholar and I knew so little. He thought that I had been brought to him by design, to help him; and I was so dull and sorrowful and disliked myself so for the twisted thing he had shown me I was, that it seemed my duty to do so. What other purpose could there be for me?
He talked and talked, and I tried to listen, though often it bored me and my mind would drift away. More often, though, it frightened and disgusted me. He did not mean to be unkind, my master. Indeed I think he even felt affection for me, so much as he could feel it for anything that was not written down in a book. But day after day, as he theorised and consulted his charts, I felt like a surgeon’s specimen, pinned down to be sliced apart and the pieces served up for my master to scrutinise.
It would take many, many years, he said.
I would grow old at Careggi, I thought. Imprisoned by walls of paper, as from the first, in that drawing of the flaming child in Toledo.
‘“Prima materies,”,’ he read to me, ‘“corresponding to the synthesis of heaven and earth, to the spirit and the body, it contains all metals and all colours and engenders itself . . . the Philosopher’s Stone, which is identified with it, is represented by a crowned Hermaphrodite.”’
That, I supposed, would be me.
‘“Adamus philosophicus,”,’ he went on, ‘“is double-sexed, because though he appears in masculine form” – where is your gown, Mora? – “he carries within him his wife Eve. That it may be realised in the mystic alembic” – you that is – “the magus” – myself – “enquires into the synthesis of contraries, as fire–water, sun–moon. The union of brother and sister elements, as reconciled in a medium which partakes of both natures, symbolises this return to the most ancient of unities.”’
My master said it was natural and right that I should be humble, but he mistook me. I did not wish it to be true. I did not wish to believe that I should never be a woman, but there it was, concealed beneath my breeches, no dark hot place between my legs, but only that secret skin I blushed to touch. I came to hate my flesh so much that sometimes I thought of taking a knife to it, to cut out the pain.
As my master believed the planets to govern all the movements of the world, so Mercury amongst them was most apt to his purpose. We spent many nights shivering up in the broken loggia, where hatred of Piero had left us a fine observatory. My master watched the sky through a curious glass of his own devising, and I slowly turned blue as he tracked their movements through the dark, the three male planets, the three female, and Mercury, my planet, which was both and neither. Mercury, quicksilver, the liquid metal which can melt gold and regenerate it, mercury which can dissolve into all things like the shimmer of a peacock’s tail. Sometimes, in the books, Mercury was shown as a breasted youth, sometimes as a naked girl, all smooth and flat like me, the coroi, my master called her.
When he judged the alignments to be correct, we would seal off the library with sheets of white linen and scent the air with perfume. Seven torches had to be lit, for the seven planets, the floorboards sprinkled with vinegar. My master bemoaned his lost harp, and his gemstones, for sapphire, he said, was very strong in the summoning of Mercury. I was to sit in a chair and my master placed a garland on my head as tender as a bridegroom, giving me a flower to hold in one hand and in the other a piece of unicorn’s horn which had flown through the air with him to safety from Florence.
It never came right. No hovering phoenix appeared in the air before us as my master cast and chanted, no constellations of silver and gold for him to pluck from the air like fruits. I asked him once if he was not afraid that what we did was sinful and that a demon might appear before us, but he chided me for foolishness. Though no one could have looked more foolish than he, as he hopped around a heptagram dripped in candle wax on the floor with his robe hitched up and his bony ankles showing, so that for all my sadness it was as much as I could do not to laugh aloud.
‘We must go on, Mora. I am an old man, I have not much time left. The calculations were not clear, I need more time.’
He had me sit up at nights copying descriptions of our attempts until my head ached and my eyes could not follow the letters before me. Then I would open the shutters so the fresh wet air of the hills came to me, and wish myself anywhere but closed up here with my dismal duty. Could this be what my father had meant me for? Then I thought on what I was, and saw that he was right, for what place could there be in the world for one such as me? Where else was there for me to go?
CHAPTER TEN
I HAD BEEN NEGLECTING MY LITTLE STORE OF HERBS since Ser Giovanni’s arrival. I was so shy of everyone now that I barely ventured into the kitchens. But as it turned out, I was glad I had kept them, for when harvest time came Ser Giovanni was struck down with the gout. As the Holy League fought its last battle against the fleeing French, Ser Giovanni was confined to his chamber, his leg and his temper both aflame. He was no longer the proud, arrogant young man I had seen at the Medici ball. He had been quick to adapt himself to the times, and wise to retreat to Careggi. Fine manners and learned conversation were no longer respected in Florence. Now, Ser Giovanni played the country gentleman, meaning to make a fine profit on the sale of Popolano grain. He was out in the fields each day, until the humours mounted in his limb, swelling his foot until it bulged and shone like an overripe cherry. From the library we could hear him roaring at his men, furious that he could not be amongst them to oversee the gathering of the crop.
‘It will pass,’ said my master, irritably, ‘they are all plagued with it, the Medici. I remember Lorenzo and his father giving audience from their beds in the cortile of the palazzo when they were struck down.’
‘May I go to him, sir? I might perhaps help?’
‘If you must, if you must, but hurry back, Mora. I want you about my translation of Psellus.’
Ser Giovanni had his foot propped on a stool before the window, anxiously scanning the sky for signs of rain. He had a little dog on his knee, and he winced at its every restless stirring.
‘What is it now?’ he grumbled. ‘Oh, you. What’s-your-name. Well?’
‘You might let the dog go, sir. It will do no good. Here, I will lift him down for you.’ Folk believed that the heat of an animal could draw away the pain, but I knew it to be useless.
‘I have something else for you.’
‘I want none of Ficino’s meddling. What do you get up to in there anyway, closeted up with him? You should be out working with the other boys.’
‘I do my master’s bidding, sir, as do they,’ I answered smartly. ‘Here, I have made a poultice for your foot, a
plaster of crushed fern, cooling, that would numb the skin a little and stop it breaking. And here, if you can take this with a little water perhaps. I do not think wine is good for what ails you. Celery root, boiled down. It will ease you.’
It did, and he was glad of it. In three days he could ride out and watch the carts roll back high with wheat for threshing. He commended me to my master, who grumbled when next I was summoned to attend to a maid in the kitchen, who had cut her arm on a rusty chafer and feared it would creep into her blood.
My master complained more and more as almost every day a message would come for ‘the ’pothecary’ to bind a bruised hand or bring a fever down. I was as glad as he was irritated, for it meant at last that I could go out with a basket into the warm air, so fresh after the stifling confinement of the library, to gather what I found and be alone a little. My head felt so thick with Latin and ink, it was a relief to pull off my cap and feel the sun on my shorn hair, to crush blackberries into my mouth and stretch my limbs on the road down to the village. I spoke little, but I smiled and tried to make myself pleasant so that soon I came and went like a familiar between the farmhouses and the offices of the villa. Like a plant that has been spliced but still yearns to grow, I felt myself knitting together a little – coming right, or as right as I would ever be. I liked the freedom of my shirt and breeches. Sometimes I ran just for the pleasure of it, and even felt young, sometimes, as I had a right to.
Ser Giovanni knew that I could read and write, and asked my grudging master that I might accompany him on his rounds of the land as a clerk, to take down how many carts of grain could be filled, and what it would fetch, and the profit that would be in it. I had never sat upon a horse, but I found I loved it, it came easily to me.
‘You have good hands, boy,’ Ser Giovanni said to me once as we trotted towards the villa at sundown.
It is a lovely time of year to be in the country, when the fields are empty but the shade is thick under the late summer canopy, when the air smells of dust and honey. From a distance, Careggi did not look ruined, the winter rains had cleaned the pale marble of the façade and there was smoke from the kitchens. I was hungry, I hoped there would be pea soup and rabbit for dinner, stewed with lettuce and capers.
‘I am Spanish, sir,’ I said carelessly. ‘They say that we have a way, with horses.’
‘Spanish? I thought you came from the palazzo?’
‘I was Maestro Ficino’s pupil there, sir. And then we came . . . here,’ I finished stupidly.
He said no more, just kicked up his horse ahead of me and I went back to thinking on the rabbit.
The harvest was good that year. Ser Giovanni received news from the Countess of Forli, whose plentiful estates to the south would feed Florence that winter. He was never anything less than Medici, Ser Giovanni, for all that his new name and his support of the French had spared him Piero’s end. He and his brother had wheedled their way back into the favour of the Signoria. They were appointed buyers for the city, and there would be money in it for the brokers. Once the Careggi grain was gone to the mills, my master grew crosser than ever, for Ser Giovanni had him turn clerk too, going over the Countess’s figures. Caterina, her name was, signed in a looping sprawl at the end of her secretary’s letters, sealed with an odd device of two serpents with little figures held in their mouths. One could make out their flowing hair in the red wax. It was a Sforza device, as the Countess was niece to the Duke of Milan who had brought the French king into Italy that he might have the coronet for himself.
Late in the autumn, Ser Giovanni left for her city of Forli, to entreat with her himself, leaving me to trail after Maestro Ficino in Cecco’s place. My master was outraged at the in dignity of it: that such a scholar as he should be reduced to scratching out sums on a slate! We entered the figures laboriously into the account books each evening, and if my master found it beneath him, it was melancholy enough work for me too; every stroke of the quill reminded me of Cecco, of my poor lost friend. It was as much as I could do to stay the tears from dripping down my nose and spoiling the parchment. He felt it, my master. He let his pen fall idle and I had to coax him to take up his work. I thought he could feel the cold of winter coming on in his bones, reminding him of how little time he had to complete his great work, though for myself I was not sorry it had been put off. I had had more than enough of mercury.
I tried to distract him by asking about the Countess Caterina. There had been talk amongst the stable lads when Ser Giovanni rode off, that she was a beautiful woman, and a scandalous one, and I was eager to learn more of her. I would fetch a hot posset from the kitchens and we would sit there, gossiping like two old wives.
‘Tell me about the Castello, Maestro.’
My master’s face softened. Since there was no one at Careggi with whom he might discuss his learning, he took some pleasure at least in telling me stories.
‘Caterina is a Sforza, Mora. You must never forget that. The Sforza were the finest condottieri in Italy – they have warrior blood, and you see that it came out in her, for all that she is a woman.’
‘What happened?’
‘She was married to a nephew of the Pope, Girolamo Riario. When the Pope died, there were many in Rome who wished to deprive her family of their rights, and she rode out, great with child, you know, with armour over her gown, they say, and she took the Castel Sant’Angelo, the papal fortress, and held it against them until she had her due.’
‘And then?’
‘And then her husband, a hateful fool of a man, was murdered in their palace at Forli.’
I knew what happened next. How the Countess had taken unspeakable revenge on the treacherous people of Forli, how she had her enemies dragged from horses round the city square, their houses burned, their innocent children hurled down wells. Neither women nor priests were safe from this bloody virago.
‘They said Riario’s body was so riddled with stab wounds it resembled a sponge,’ continued my master, ‘and that his killers threw it from the window into the piazza. And then Caterina’s executioner—’
‘Barbone,’ I breathed, thrilling like a child at the terrifying Turkish name. He smiled indulgently.
‘Quite so, Barbone. Well, when Caterina captured the culprits, this Barbone hanged them from those same windows and had the corpses hurled down—’
‘—where the crowd tore them apart like lumps of meat,’ I finished gleefully. ‘And then? Tell about the children, Maestro.’
My master huddled deeper into his cloak and sipped at his posset. I could see that he was far away, on the walls of that little city, watching the confrontation that had already passed into legend.
‘So, the rebels who had murdered her husband wanted to depose Caterina and set up one of their own in her place. But she tricked her way into the fortress, the Rocca of Ravaldino, and stood there on the battlement to defy them. And they dragged her children out before her and threatened to put them to the sword if she did not submit.’
‘And then?’
If I didn’t know better, I might have thought that Maestro Ficino was blushing. ‘You understand this is not suitable for, um, for the ears of a young person?’
‘It’s me, Maestro.’ I risked a little familiarity. ‘We are scholars together, no?’
‘Well,’ he leaned forward, whispering. ‘And then, all defiance, the Countess lifted up her silk gown and she showed them her woman’s parts and scorned them, and said that they might murder her children, for she had the mould to make others.’
I gasped with delicious shock, as I always did at this part of the story.
‘But they did not?’
‘No. Just like the Castel Sant’Angelo, she defied them, and she had her will.’
From the sniggering in the stableyard, I heard other things. That Caterina had lived like a princess in Rome, that she was a beautiful lady with an eager eye for a strapping young man, and that where her eye was pleased, she pleased herself.
‘Fancy your chances, do you?�
�� they teased each other.
‘Not likely!’
For after the death of Riario, Caterina had taken another husband, a low-born man named Giacomo Feo, with whom she had a child. The people of Forli were shocked at such a disparagement, and they plotted to murder Feo when he was returning from hunting. Caterina’s own elder son, it was believed, was amongst the assassins. And again the streets of Forli ran with blood as the virago took her revenge.
‘And they say that Messr Giovanni’s looking to replace him.’
‘Rather him than me! Let’s hope he wears his breastplate to bed her!’
I was drawn in by this talk, though I knew they should be ashamed if they thought that I was not quite one of them. What kind of woman could Caterina be, to take such magnificent and appalling risks? There was a saying in Florence: ‘If you wish to live as you choose, you should not be born a woman in Italy.’ The women of Florence lived closeted and quiet, yet this Caterina seemed as reckless and powerful as a man. I was fascinated by her, joining in the speculation that there was more than business between Forli and Florence.
When Ser Giovanni returned, though, it was not as an expectant bridegroom. He came storming into the library, where I sat writing as my master dictated from Scot’s De chiromantia.
‘This has to stop. All this. Now.’
My master plucked at the sleeve of his gown. ‘I do not understand you, sir. Why do you disturb my work?’
‘Your work? Your precious work will have us all burned if Savonarola has his way! Where’s the girl?’
‘The girl?’
Ser Giovanni reminded me of Piero at that moment, lordly, imperious, all Medici. He recovered himself and respectfully asked pardon.