“Take your belongings, assets, do what you must with your house, but disappear and start a new life. Berlinghiero Berlinghieri must pass from people’s memories.”
Berlinghiero listened with a quiet resignation. Deep down, he knew that the prior was right. He had himself heard the whispers behind his back. He had watched his entire family pass away before him, not from some untold tragedy but from old age and natural causes. He had lovingly held Ilaria’s head in his hand and stroked her gray hair while tears flooded his eyes. He had sat beside each of his three sons when they left the world and comforted his grandchildren, some of whom already looked older than he. Over the past several years he had taken to letting his beard grow longer and limited his interactions with others in the community in an effort to hide his apparent youth.
He was confused and felt hollow. A man should not have to bury his entire family, and suffer their loss. He had been a diligent servant of the church, and a faithful and loving husband and a nurturing, caring father who raised his sons to fulfill their potential, which, ultimately, they each had. Now, through no fault of his own, he was the target of the harshest of accusations, accused of being in league with the devil. He would be forced to leave his beloved Lucca, the only city he had ever known, where he had spent his life carefully building his name, his legacy. He was acclaimed as Berlinghiero of Lucca, the greatest artist of his generation, and now he would have to leave that behind and start life anew.
He lifted his head and looked at the prior. “Father Prior, I thank you for your candor, your wisdom and most importantly, your friendship. As you said, I have known you since you were a boy. I have watched you grow into a man. As much as it pains me, I know that what you have said is in my best interest and ultimately is the only road I can take. I will leave Lucca soon. My house and studio will go to Bonaventura’s oldest son, Antonio. I will leave quietly and disappear. Please look after my family.”
“I will watch over your family and I will ensure that the name Berlinghiero of Lucca is honored as it should be among the people of Lucca.”
“Thank you, Father Prior. I will leave within the week.”
“God be with you, my son,” said the prior as they walked slowly to the door.
“And with you, Father Prior.” He took a last look at the prior’s office and headed out the door, into Piazza Frediano. That night, he made his way slowly through the familiar streets that he had known since he was a boy to his house and began preparations for his exit from the city.
Chapter 36
Mackenzie looked at Anthony in stunned silence. She could not speak and had to consciously force herself to breath. She fumbled for her wine glass.
“Do you mind if I have a sip of wine? I think I need one.”
Anthony laughed. “Of course, I just did not want you to drop the glass in shock when I broke the news. But it seems like a nice sip of wine would do wonders for you. In fact, might I suggest something a bit stronger?”
“I think anything would help at this point,” said Mackenzie after finishing the remainder of her wine in one long gulp.
“I tend to like Ports when the weather gets colder. They are a bit much in the heat of the summer, but they are quite nice on a cold night.” He went to a cabinet in the hallway and pulled out a very dusty bottle of 1927 Quinta do Noval vintage port along with two small glasses.
“This one is quite nice. I hope you like it,” he said as he poured two glasses and handed one to Mackenzie.
Mackenzie had drunk inexpensive ports before in grad school, which frankly tasted cheap, a small step above cough syrup. This, however, was something completely unexpected.
“Wow, this is fantastic! I’ve never had anything like this.”
“I have been saving this one for a special occasion, and I figure that telling someone that I have been alive for 822 years fits the bill, so to speak.”
“Anthony, I—I don’t even know what to say. What you are saying is so crazy that it’s like I’m in an episode of the X-Files and I’m waiting for Scully and Mulder to walk out of the guest bedroom.”
“I know. I told you that you probably would not believe me. If I were in your shoes, I would be quite skeptical. I do not know what to say to convince you. In fact, I am not really trying to convince you. It would be easier for me if you just decided I was some crazy guy who thought he was Napoleon and never gave it a second thought. Being considered odd is par for the course for artists. People give us a pretty wide berth. Van Gogh was institutionalized, albeit in San Remy, which is a lovely place to be put away. Picasso used to burn women with cigarettes. The list goes on. So being considered eccentric is not a big deal for me.
“On the other hand, if you truly do believe what I have told you, then I have a lot to be concerned about.”
“Why is that?” asked Mackenzie curiously.
“Because if you truly believe what I say, and then break our pact and share it with someone else, there will inevitably be questions. There will be psychiatrists who will want to speak with me, maybe even federal agents who would like to talk with me about back taxes, etc. Compound interest over a couple hundred years could be some serious cash.” They both laughed.
“I guess what I am saying is that the worst thing that could happen to me, in all honesty, is for a lot of people to believe that what I am saying is true. I would never be left alone. I would be a freak, little better than the Elephant Man. Being a strange guy who’s a little off, living in obscurity, is a lot easier to manage.”
“I guess you’re right. I never really thought of it that way. Do you mind if I ask you some questions?”
“Of course, I will answer anything you ask.” Anthony refilled their glasses with more port.
“Well, for starters, when did you realize that you didn’t age like every-one else?”
Anthony paused before responding. “It was probably when I was about fifty, sometime around 1238 or so. I noticed that I looked as young or younger than my son Bonaventura. My wife, Ilaria, was very beautiful, but she looked like a beautiful forty-five-year-old woman and I looked like I was about twenty-five. I had no wrinkles on my face and my skin was very smooth. I did not gain weight like most middle-aged men. Ilaria pointed this out to me on a number of occasions. She was not complaining, per se, it was just that it struck her as odd. Some of her friends had even mentioned it to her. Back then, people were very afraid of things they did not understand, and there were a lot of things they did not understand. If you did not understand it, it was probably magic, and magic meant you were a witch or in league with the devil. Neither of which was particularly good for your longevity.
“I tried to look older. I grew out my beard and let my hair grow long so that you could not see my face as much. I actually came up with a mixture of some pigments that we used along with some ash and other substances and made a cream that would make me look older, or at least a bit dirtier, which made me look older. That helped a bit.”
“The art history records show that Berlinghiero died around 1247 at the age of fifty-nine. What happened?”
“Thankfully, record keeping back then was pretty poor. With the help of a wise and compassionate local priest in Lucca, we arranged for Berlinghiero to basically disappear and staged a funeral. I left Lucca and Berlinghiero was buried in a closed casket. Any mystery ended at that point. I was able to sell off much of what I owned to the church, including a number of paintings, and the rest I left to my grandchildren. That left me with enough money to survive for a reasonable period of time.”
“So you left Berlinghiero behind and disappeared?”
“Yes, for almost fifty years. I lived in the countryside. I bought a small farm in the hills outside of Siena. I grew beans and barley, raised sheep and lived a quiet life by myself. I lived like that for almost fifty years and then I went to Florence and took on the name Bernardo Daddi.”
“You must have been lonely.”
Anthony looked down at his glass of port, reflectively. “I have
been lonely for most of my life. I have learned to live with it. In fact, it seems quite normal to me to be what most people would call lonely. At that time, though, yes, I was very lonely and very sad. I kept busy farming the land and raising sheep. I painted a little bit just to keep myself occupied, mostly landscapes of my farm. But the thought that I still had grandchildren who were alive and raising families that I would never know was difficult. I did not dare return to Lucca for a long time because I still looked the same as I did when I was there twenty to thirty years earlier. There were many people who knew of Berlinghiero, so it would have been difficult to sneak around undetected. So I just waited until I was sure that anyone who might have known me was already dead. Then I went to Lucca in the guise of a poor farmer and asked around about the Berlinghieri family. My sons had all done quite well as artists and they were well known. They had all passed away long ago and were buried in a graveyard with me, or at least by my casket, and my wife Ilaria. There were probably more than a dozen grandchildren and great grandchildren living in and around Lucca, many of whom had married and taken other names. I knew none of them, nor did they know me.
I went to visit the graves of my family. Even though I had been the one to bury them almost a half century earlier, it still moved me greatly to see their headstones all together. I cried over their graves like a baby. I cried until I had no more tears to cry. It was shortly after that visit that I realized I was ready to start painting again. That is when I moved to Florence, found Giotto, and became an apprentice under him.”
After listening to all of this, Mackenzie sat back in her chair and shook her head with both hands, as if trying to clear the cobwebs, or perhaps to make sure that she wasn’t dreaming.
“It’s just all too much to take in. Seriously, it’s like someone just told me that Batman is real. I mean, it’s not that I don’t believe you or think that you would lie to me, especially with such a strange story, but it’s hard to get my head around the whole thing.”
“I know,” responded Anthony. “Imagine how I felt when I realized I was not aging like everyone else. At the time, back in the thirteenth century, I really thought that maybe I was possessed by the devil. I went to church every day and prayed to God for guidance and to help me understand what was happening. I could not even talk to the priest about it during confession. I had nowhere to turn. It was terrible.”
Mackenzie felt awful. She was too busy thinking about how this was affecting her to consider how it must be for Anthony. It was a curse to live forever. At one time or another, everyone dreamed of it, explorers searched for the Fountain of Youth, but in the end it was a Faustian pact.
“Anthony,” she said, “this must be incredibly difficult for you. I promise that I will not share your secret with anyone.”
“I appreciate that,” replied Anthony. “Probably the worst part of all of this is that the friends I make, including you, will all be gone from my life far too soon. Eighty years is a long time to live, but to me eighty years seems more like ten. I have met so many wonderful people with whom I have grown close to, only to watch them pass out of this world. I do not mean to be morbid or melancholy, but the closer you and I become, the more I will mourn your loss.”
Mackenzie thought about that for a moment. “But at least I get to hang around this really good looking young guy when I’m old and gray.”
He raised his glass to her. “There are always silver linings. It is good to look for them.” They both touched glasses and finished the port.
Chapter 37
Florence, Italy, June 1315
Outside of a cathedral, it was by far the largest building Daddi had ever seen. He was amazed that one family, albeit one of the city’s wealthiest, could live in such an enormous house. The newly finished marble walls were expertly cut and set and glistened with the reflected light from hundreds of candles. The smell of roasting meats, rabbits, pigs, ducks and chickens, and breads of all types filled the large room. There had to be at least three hundred people here tonight.
He had been invited to attend a party at the house of one of his largest donors, Giuseppe Speziali, who had recently commissioned several wall paintings for his new house. Daddi wasn’t exactly sure what the party was for, but believed it had something to do with the engagement of one of Speziali’s daughters.
Everyone at the party was dressed in rich colorful silks and finely woven cotton and sheer linens. Women’s long flowing dresses and veils in vibrant colors—reds, blues, yellows and greens—and men in slightly less colorful hats, made the crowd seem like a field of wildflowers in spring. Music floated through the room from somewhere Daddi couldn’t immediately locate. The mood was festive and bustling. Dozens of servants moved efficiently through the crowd offering various light treats and silver and gold goblets of wine. Daddi thought that the collection of wine goblets themselves would sell for enough for fifty merchant families to live well for a full year.
Such was the life of the rich, and Speziali was certainly that. The Speziali, along with the Lana and Giudici families, controlled most of the industries and wealth within Florence. The Speziali clan focused on the ever-growing jewelry trade. Not only did they own most of the major gold, silver, copper and precious stone mines throughout Tuscany, they had fleets of ships that sailed regularly from the port at Livorno south to Sicily or north to Marseille and Barcelona to obtain more precious metals and gemstones. They owned the majority of the smelting operations in Florence, as well as the craft shops that turned those fine metals into wine goblets, platters, candleholders, candelabras, and fine jewelry that adorned the wrists, heads, fingers, necks and earlobes of the growing class of wealthy women, royalty and the clergy. Jewel encrusted scepters, golden chalices and Eucharist plates, or paten, were always needed by the myriad of churches and cathedrals that seemed to be popping up every several years in and around Florence and throughout Tuscany. They also owned most of the retail stores that sold the final goods to the populace or to their buyers. They had numerous stores that lined the beautiful gothic bridges that spanned the Arno River like the Ponte alla Carraia and Ponte Vecchio. And of course, those ships that sailed to Sicily, Genoa, Marseilles and Barcelona to pick up fine metals and jewels also carried with them the fine, finished products which would be sold to merchants in those foreign markets.
Daddi crept his way through the crowd. He really didn’t know any of the people here except for Speziali himself, although he was sure they made up Florence’s elite. He was hoping to potentially see his old friend Giotto, who had originally introduced him to Speziali in the first place. Giotto was in such demand in Florence that he didn’t have time to accommodate Speziali’s wishes for eight to ten significant paintings in his new house. Of course, Giotto was no fool. You did not simply say no to a man like Giuseppe Speziali. Instead, Giotto found an elegant solution by convincing Speziali that Daddi was an artist who could better meet his specific needs and that his commitments to the church were such that it would be at least two years before he could begin work on his project.
Like most wealthy and powerful men, Speziali hated to wait almost as much as he hated to be turned down. This created a perfect opportunity for Bernardo Daddi. After all, you couldn’t ask for a better sponsor than Giuseppe Speziali. He allowed for greater freedom as an artist than the church, and although he was a shrewd businessman, Giotto had already driven up his price so high that Daddi appeared to be a bargain, even if he was paying three to four times what Daddi could have reasonably commanded at that point in his career. To charge much less, though, would have made Speziali feel as if he was compromising and that was something that he was not willing to do. Daddi, as far as Speziali saw it, which of course was how Giotto had helped him see it, was every bit the painter that Giotto was and it was his good fortune that Daddi was available to paint an entire series of masterworks specifically for him.
A servant approached him with a polished silver and gold goblet of red wine. He took it and continued squeezing his way
through the crowd, smiling, offering the obligatory greeting to people he didn’t know, but might eventually want to know. He took a sip of the wine. It was smooth and rich, perhaps the finest Chianti he had ever tasted. Round, full, with a velvety finish and no tannic bite that was so common in younger wines. Obviously Speziali was not going to spare any expense to showcase his new home and announce the engagement of his daughter.
Daddi felt that warm, wonderful feeling of comfort and relief that everyone who enters a group of strangers experiences when they finally see someone they know, whether it’s a close friend or not. He recognized his old friend and mentor, Giotto, surrounded by almost twenty people listening to his animated stories delivered with a flurry of sweeping arm motions. Giotto was now the most famous artist in all of Florence, and perhaps all of Italy. The elite of Florence flocked to be in the company of the master and listen to what he had to say, and, perhaps more importantly, just to share his aura.
Giotto smiled broadly when he saw Daddi approach.
“My friends,” he paused, turning towards Daddi, “we are privileged this evening to be in the presence of one of Florence’s finest young artists.” The group surrounding Giotto turned to greet Daddi, attention that was at once flattering and intimidating.
“Please welcome Florence’s next great painter, Bernardo Daddi,” announced Giotto. With an introduction like that the group of people surrounding Giotto almost knocked each other over trying to introduce themselves.
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