As I approached Madama’s private suite a roar of laughter echoed down the long bare alley, a man’s voice, teasingly familiar. Ghosts. Would I never be rid of them?
As I stood there, the curtains parted and one of Madama’s little beauties slipped out, still giggling. “You had better go in at once, Madonna Grazia,” she whispered as she passed me. “Madama has been inquiring after you all evening.”
“Who has she got in there?” I asked.
“One of the gentlemen who are to accompany Prince Federico on his journey to Roma,” she replied. “Just arrived home from the French court.”
By then I had had a bellyful of courtiers with their pomades and their exaggerated manners and their cold hearts.
I hesitated, searching for a way to excuse myself from yet another tedious display of courtly wit. Then I heard my name.
“Madonna Grazia . . .” No doubt about it, the man was talking about me. “Does she still . . .” The speaker must have turned his back to the door for I heard no more of his question. But I did hear Madonna Isabella’s answer quite clearly. “She is still slim and pale and pliant as a reed. I’ll tell you, cousin, I am taking my life into my hands to reintroduce you to her, for you are quite certain to fall in love with her all over again . . .”
With quivering fingers I carefully drew the door curtain aside just wide enough to peek through the crack with one eye.
Dio, it was he. “The last time I encountered her she was on a horse and she cut me dead,” I heard him say. “Perhaps she will not be happy to see me.”
“Perhaps yes. Perhaps no. We shall see,” Madama answered lightly. “Whatever comes of it, I have promised her a surprise and if you are nothing else you most certainly are that, cousin.”
Gazing through the frayed edge of the curtain, I was Narcissus at the edge of the drowning pool. God knows I wanted to stay. But my feet obeyed my command and delivered me from temptation. Without stopping even to gather up my possessions, I ran down the great staircase, out the great gates of the Reggio, and through the dark streets to the Porto Catena with nothing more by way of baggage than the clothes on my back and the little leather pouch fastened around my waist in which I carried La Nonna’s jewels.
A pearl from that hoard bought me my passage. A cameo set in filigree gold procured me bread and wine for the voyage and one night at Padova. There I took passage on the burchiello at the cost of a gold bangle, with enough left over to finance a gondola ride in great style from Saint Mark’s to Murano. But my little bubble of joy was quickly pricked for, on arrival, I found my life’s companion, the gallant Fingebat, had suffered a stroke in my absence.
His ravaged little body ceased to draw breath that very night. “The only thing that has kept him alive these last few days was the hope of seeing you one last time,” Judah told me. “If I were a believer in the movements of the planets, I would say that your lucky star brought you home at just the right moment.”
My boxes were sent from Mantova some weeks later with only the briefest note to accompany them.
“Do you know the story of Anaxarete, who disdained her suitor Iphis out of misplaced chastity?” I read. “The heartless girl was turned into a stone image by Venus. Venus hates a hard-hearted maiden. Be warned and prepare to yield to your prince.” It was unsigned but I recognized Madama’s hand.
However, I was safe from her meddling and mischief by then and confident enough to fire off a poem of my own.
May you never, oh never, behold me
Sharing the couch of a god,
May none of the dwellers in heaven
Draw near to me ever.
Such love as the high gods know
From whose eyes none can hide,
May that never be mine.
To war with a half-god is not love.
It is despair.
To this riposte I received no reply nor did I hear further about my Book of Heroines. And I put them to rest in my cassone without regret. Better unpublished and unseen than tailored to the taste of this whimsical lady and her paid humanist. To inquiries as to what had transpired during my stay at the Reggio, I responded with such a ferocious scowl that even Ser Aldo ceased to ask.
The mills of the gods grind slow. It took almost three years for Madonna Isabella to get her son back, but Pope Julius finally fell in one of his many battles and Federico was returned to Mantova the most worldly thirteen-year-old in all Italy.
The happy mother was not the only one delighted by the death of the Pope. By then Italy had had a bellyful of war. Even the cardinals had become pacifists. To prove it they elected as their next pope a man of peace, a man of compromise, a man of commerce, a son of Lorenzo il magnifico, Giovanni dei Medici, who took the name of Leo X.
They said that when this tenth Leo received the news of his election to the papal throne he confided to his Medici cousin, “Since God has given us the papacy, let us enjoy it!” But his papacy was by no means all self-indulgence. To his credit this first Medici pope devoted the initial two years of his pontificate to playing the role of peacemaker. Unfortunately for him and for Italy, just when he finally got all his counters lined up, there came to the throne of France a young man of war, raised in the tradition of chivalry and as besotted with the vision of glory as his ancestor Charles VIII. This one was a Bourbon who became Francis I of France.
He was crowned at Rheims cathedral on the twenty-fifth day of January 1515 and set about at once to raise a vast army. His goal: to cross the Alps and take possession of the duchy of Milano. Dreams of conquest never die. The basis of Francis’s claim was a marriage between his ancestor the Duke of Orléans and Valentina Visconti of Milano that had been celebrated over a hundred years earlier, a claim about as legitimate as the claim of his ancestor Charles VIII to the crown of Napoli.
Aided in this vainglorious scheme by his doting mother, Louise of Savoia, Francis quickly assembled the finest and best-equipped army in Europe. Only one thing held him back, a miserable malady that prevented him from sitting a horse for long periods.
Young, virile, and a patriot, what disease other than the French disease would he have contracted? And what physician would be called upon to help the King regain his seat, so to speak?
The letter of appointment — more properly, the summons — to treat the King came not from the monarch himself but from his mother, Louise of Savoia. By then Judah and I between us had had so many farewells and welcome-homes that I hardly regarded the journey as anything unusual.
Judah embarked for Paris directly after the Chanukah celebrations, promising to be back for Passover. Who could have predicted that by the time he was done with his royal patron he would be practicing medicine from a battlewagon?
FROM DANILO’S ARCHIVE
TO GRAZIA DEI ROSSI DEL MEDIGO AT VENEZIA
Beloved wife:
When I look back on how I have spent the last few years, crossing and recrossing the lands of Europe in response to this or that entreaty or bribe or threat, I begin to believe that every important personage in Europe has somehow gotten himself a dose of this foul plague now named after Niobe’s son Syphilus.
The young King, my patient, arises at eleven o’clock, hears mass, dines, spends two or three hours with his mother (that Louise who persuaded me to come to France, for which I will never forgive her), then goes hunting (since I have forbidden him whoring until the course of his treatment is done), and finally ends the night wandering here and there. This means that nobody can get an audience with him by day.
It is his heart’s desire to mount a campaign in Italy this spring and he swears he will not set off until I have eradicated the pustules that cover his private parts both without and within and which cause him much discomfort when he urinates. “A fighting man in the midst of a battle cannot stop every half an hour to get out three drops of piss,” he advised me.
He is very cheerful
in his infirmity and I would number him among my more agreeable patients did he not insist that I attend his damn court. He tells me that he loves men of learning. He believes that scholars bring a prince more glory than battles. It is my misfortune that I am learned and thus an ornament to his entourage.
I rave on in my vain manner when the task before me is to clean out the King’s urinary tract so that he can go comfortably to Italy and kill a thousand Swiss mercenaries to satisfy his vanity. Vanity, vanity, all is vanity, so says Koheleth. And should you take it that because you care neither for glory nor fame you are exempt from his judgment, I remind you as I close this letter that he also tells us: “Of the making of many books there is no end. And all is vanity and a striving after wind.”
Pay no attention to this dyspeptic oratory. It is but empty talk from a lonely man who misses his own bed and his own dear wife and wants only to be in Venezia with her and not here at Blois.
My compliments and a kiss.
Your devoted husband, J.
Blois, May 12, 1515.
TO GRAZIA DEI ROSSI DEL MEDIGO AT VENEZIA
Beloved wife:
The King is cured. He can piss without fear or reproach. Still I am with him and his army at Lyon. Why? His mother, that witch Louise, insists that I remain at his side while he crosses the Alps. She reminds me that I am protected from highwaymen and bandits by thirty thousand of the finest fighting men in Europe. The woman has fallen in love with me. But I am warned. They say at court that Louise’s embrace can be the kiss of death.
While we lodge here at Lyon, an advance party led by the venerable general Trivulzio has sniffed out an old shepherd’s path through the Alpine mountains which would deliver our army into Italy behind the Swiss mercenaries who are said to be waiting for us at Suza ten thousand strong. The King is tempted to chance it. But I hear from a corpsman in the reconnoitering party that this new pass is hardly more than a series of defiles with only room on the path for a single horse; and that torrents swollen by the melting snows run so fast no horse can keep his footing in them; and that when a horse falls it falls half a league down. I assume this estimate applies equally to a falling man, such as myself.
If the King gives this reckless venture a go-forth I mean to separate myself from him at once and make my way back to Italy through the Mont Cenis pass like a rational man. I will inform the King that we must go our separate ways because we pursue separate ends. He is after glory; I wish to save my own life. Only one other is dearer to me and that is yours, my exemplary wife.
Your devoted husband, with the King at Lyon, July 31, 1515.
TO GRAZIA DEI ROSSI DEL MEDIGO AT VENEZIA
These may be the last words you will ever hear from your husband, Grazia. My reasons for being where I am I will not try to explain. I have been misled by a mother with lies on her lips and a king with stars in his eyes. Now it is too late to turn back.
This is the fourth day of our passage through the Alpine mountains. For three days we have lived on bread and cheese and slept on the bare mountainside with only the mountain torrents to drink from. Even the King has gone without wine. But he has no need for it; he is drunk on glory. All he talks of is how the world will marvel at this exploit. And that his mother will be proud of him.
These paths have not seen the footprints of men on them since the time of Hannibal. And, by the way, if my life is extinguished in this mad venture I trust you to set the record straight in my name. No elephant ever came across these mountains. I will stake my life on it. I have staked my life on it.
The ascent was terrifying. Nothing to see but dark pines and giant peaks, nothing to hear but the roar of the swollen streams and every once in a while a strangled cry, a whinny, a screech as a man or a horse lost footing and plunged into the abyss.
Today we reached the top and started down. The descent is worse than the ascent. Climbing, one could look up at the sky and think of God. Descending, all we see is the void.
The King’s engineer, Don Pedro, and his men have constructed a series of bridges out of logs and ropes to enable the men and carts to traverse the ravines. They are so delicate that each time I step foot on one I recite the prayer for the dying and commend myself to God for I fear that such a fragile structure will not hold my weight. But thus far not one of the bridges has broken.
The cannons are swung across on swings operated by an ingenious set of pulleys also designed by Ser Pedro. (This Spaniard is a genius.) Since we can only go in single file, we proceed like ants down the face of each defile with interminable waits for slinging the cannons. The boredom is excruciating. Yet the King appears to be enjoying himself. Clad in full armor except for his helmet, he manages to be everywhere — encouraging, cursing, laughing, lending his great strength here to swing a cannon, there to quiet a panicked horse. Everybody adores him. He is irresistible. But when he smiles at me, I want to cry, “Can you not see, sire, that I am too old for these knightly antics?”
Oh, my dear wife, I long for a world which recognizes something other than jesting, jousting, and boasting.
My folly has brought me to this. I swear that if God allows me to cross these mountains alive I will never again curse the gondola, that perfect cradle of a vehicle, or General Sassatello, that prince among patrons, nor stray farther from your side than the winged lion of Saint Mark’s. Only let me live that I may demonstrate my deep love for you with more than words. Until that day, I am your devoted husband, J.
From the French HQ at Col d’Argentière, August 20, 1515.
TO GRAZIA DEI ROSSI DEL MEDIGO AT VENEZIA
Still not home, wife —
Today is the King’s twenty-first birthday and I am still riding his wagons like a camp follower. Have I become a war lover? No. It is not combat that entices me. I have succumbed to a much more insidious infection: tenderness. I have appointed myself godfather to this great boy of a king. All my homeless father-feelings have come to rest on him. Today was his twenty-first birthday. And I worried that he would eat too many sweetmeats and give himself a bellyache before the battle. He needs protection both from his excessive appetites and from his excessive valor. And who is there to protect him besides me?
We are camped amid the swampy rice fields of this plain on the only high, dry ground for miles around. Constable Bourbon (I still marvel that Montpensier’s little son has grown into a formidable general) is the King’s tactician as well as his second in command. He has chosen our position well. We stand some forty leagues from Milano waiting for the Pope’s Swiss mercenaries to decide whether to do battle or no. They are democratic, it turns out. They vote on whether or not to fight. Last week our King offered them an enormous bribe to turn tail and march themselves back to their cantons. Some twelve thousand of them took their booty and went home. But the Swiss of the eastern cantons have thrown in their lot with Cardinal Schiner, one of those warlike churchmen, who just yesterday preached a sermon in front of the Milano cathedral announcing that he wanted to wash his hands and swim in French blood. Our spies tell us that this Christian sentiment had its desired effect and that, as I write, the Swiss are preparing to descend upon this valley and gratify the saintly bishop’s wishes. Remember the name of this place: Marignano.
Do not worry over me. I will stay far behind the lines to tend to the wounded and to be of service to my patron should his reckless courage land him in trouble. After this battle, home.
Your devoted husband, J.
In the field at Marignano, September 12, 1515.
FROM FRANCIS, KING OF FRANCE, AT MARIGNANO
TO GRAZIA DEI ROSSI DEL MEDIGO AT VENEZIA
WRITTEN THE 18TH DAY OF SEPTEMBER, 1515.
Madame:
It pains me to inform you that Maestro Judah has been wounded in the field at Marignano while succoring me. With God’s grace, he was spared the terrible fate of many on that day and my physician assures me that his wounds will
heal with time and no ill effect of them be felt. Take it as a measure of our regard for him that he leaves here today in the care of one of my most valued lieutenants. God willing, their party should reach Venezia in ten days’ time.
Maestro Judah took the field at Marignano in the company of heroic men. Be proud that he acquitted himself no less nobly than the noblest knight. Accept the thanks of a grateful King.
46
It was a hot shiny day such as Venezia often enjoys in late autumn. A gondola emblazoned with the arms of the Brotherhood of San Rocco skittered along the rio below my balcony like a swift, black snake. I knew that this brotherhood volunteered its services to the dead, and was convinced that Judah had died on the way home from Lombardia and that this death craft was carrying his body home. The black curtains that sealed the occupants from view played directly into my fears.
As I watched, the gondolier guided the craft out of my sight to dock at the landing stage below my balcony. Moments later there was a pounding on the stair and our servant broke into my room without knocking. “The maestro . . .” he panted. “They’ve brought him home from the war. Oh, madonna . . .”
I thrust him out of my way and rushed down the stairs. I recall the sun streaming in through the open gates at the end of the sala, blinding me. Silhouetted against the sky, two men were climbing out of the gondola, half carrying a bent-over figure, a moving frieze.
The Secret Book of Grazia dei Rossi Page 52