by Linda Proud
60
LORENZO IN HIS BATH
1492
ANGELO HAD BEEN DEPUTED TO BE LORENZO’S ATTENDANT poet at bath time, but with Lorenzo wanting a bath with increasing frequency to ease the pain in his joints, one day I was called away from the printing house to substitute for Poliziano. Miscomini was indulgent, as was everyone when it came to Lorenzo.
I found Lorenzo in his chamber, soaking in a steaming three-quarter barrel, only his head and shoulders showing. ‘Ah, Tommaso, good,’ he said, and nodded towards the reading lectern. I crossed to it and found that the manuscript thereon was the Four Books of Architecture by Leon Battista Alberti, written in his own, fine hand. As Lorenzo soaked in his tub, his great head turbaned in silk, I read from the master who had been a friend of Lorenzo’s father and whom Lorenzo had known when he was a boy, a man who, in extolling the architecture of the ancients, had inspired our age.
Lorenzo squinted at me, sometimes nodding, sometimes sighing at Alberti’s ideas and expressions. Sometimes he asked me to repeat a line, three or four times, so that he could fix it in his memory. I felt like a conduit, a transmitter of ideas from one great mind to another. When I came to the end of the chapter, Lorenzo said, ‘Basta!’, as if Alberti were rich food to be had in moderation. And then he stood up, water falling from him, to be towelled dry by servants and helped to step back into the world of pain.
Although he no longer enjoyed any sport, he retained the physique of an athlete. Only the swollen joints, reddened by the hot water, betrayed his illness. He was an original, black-haired Tuscan. When so many Florentines were fair Lombards, Lorenzo stood naked, brown-skinned, black-haired, original. Etruscan. The Medici, like the olives, had been born of this soil generation after generation stretching back into antiquity, before antiquity. Original. While invaders had swept in, built castles, called them- selves lords, the Medici had farmed in the hills of the Mugello. Bright sons had trained in medicine; brighter ones became bankers. They kept to their hills while the so-called nobility fought their battles on the plain. When, at last, they came down from the hills, they outwitted those false rulers, not in battle but in business. Lorenzo il Magnifico was our king, but clever enough not to claim such a title. Natural, original, ordained by God – the Medici.
While he dressed, I studied the marble bust of his father, Piero, that stood on a column in the chamber. Sculpted by Mino da Fiesole, it was the likeness of a pseudo-senator of proud chest and firm jaw, far removed from the bed-ridden invalid Piero had been.
‘Not as I remember him,’ Lorenzo said, noticing my expression. He joined me, holding out his arm for his servant to lace the sleeve. ‘I used to be out doors all the time when I was a boy, hunting, at the lists, wrestling. I used to dread coming home, because my mother always made me visit my father in his chamber. He was nearly always in bed. Wan, drawn, in great pain. I never knew what to say. I pitied him, of course, but with all the condescension of youth, presuming, fit as I was, that such a thing would never happen to me. Now I have to suffer my own son coming in, rich with the smell of sweat, to tell me about the game of football he’s just won in the streets.’ Lorenzo sighed. His dress complete, he settled in a chair and winced as the servant lifted his feet up on to a stool.
‘Come and talk to me awhile,’ he said, dismissing the servant with a gentle word of thanks. ‘What is this I hear about you working in a printing shop? Why didn’t you speak to me about it first? If it’s money you need – ’
‘No, Magnifico. I’m trying to acquire the skills, that is all.’ And I told him then of my ambition, to print all the works of the Greeks and in editions without error.
‘Would you steal another man’s vision? Angelo has told me about Aldo Manuzio.’
‘But Aldo is old,’ I said, then tried to swallow my words.
‘Forty-one. Two years my junior and presumably just as close to death.’
Had I made this mistake with the ruler of any other state in our land, I would have walked from that room into the nearest dungeon. But then I would have been more on my guard with any other man; with Lorenzo it was too easy to relax. After frightening me for a little while with a hard, beady stare, he threw back his head and laughed. ‘You are right – it is too ripe an age for a new venture. Carry on.’
I told him more of my ambitious plans. ‘How much will this cost?’
I plucked a figure from the air, double what I thought he would consider, half of the real cost involved. Lorenzo snorted. ‘It’s cheaper to be a cardinal. Have you spoken to Lorenzino? He’s the only man I know who could afford that kind of sum.’
I said I had not. Lorenzo nodded, grateful for my loyalty. ‘But do you approve of the idea, Magnifico?’
He sat back and studied me. If he was reading my soul, it seemed that the script was not clear to him. ‘Let us leave it with God,’ he said at last. ‘When a man chooses the right path, the way opens before him. Do what you have to do, Tommaso. Whatever it is, you will have my blessing.’
I rose to go.
‘No, stay a while longer. There is something else I wish to discuss: the matter of a new wife. A man should be married or in orders. Anything else is unnatural.’
My mind worked furiously to anticipate his. It was one of Lorenzo’s chief occupations, marriage brokering, linking this one to that with the careful deliberation of a spider making a web. He had joined together half of Florence this way. But of what use could I be in his schemes of kinship?
‘You will not always have me, you know.’
‘Lorenzo…’
‘Think on it. You live at the Villa Bruscoli in some strange, celibate ménage à trois. Under my protection. Without me here to stop the gossips, what will happen to your little nest? It is Maria I am concerned about. What is she now, twenty-seven? Beyond any hope of finding a husband, and not only because of her age. Rumours dash like rats from house to house. I want this arrangement made legal. I’ve spoken to Angelo and he has agreed: it is my wish that you marry Maria Poliziana.’
The blood rushed to my head, my face, my neck. ‘She would not have me.’
‘Have you asked her?’
‘No, there is no need. She plays Clare to Pico’s St Francis. It is he who should marry her. It is he, and only he, she would take as a husband.’
‘That is not my will. I will speak to Pico and you will speak to Maria. There, that is the end of the matter.’
With that, I was dismissed. I stayed in my chair.
‘What is it? Speak.’
‘Things are so clear-cut for you, Magnifico. Do this, do that. You are a master of decision. It is not so clear for me. I walk in the fog of the underworld, seeing ghosts. When I was a boy in Volterra, I met a Greek gipsy who foretold my future, mine and that of my brother, Antonio. Everything he said has come to pass, including the manner of Antonio’s death with all the features cut off his face. What he said to me was, “Everyone you love will die before you.”’ I struggled to continue but could not.
‘So you will not marry Maria in case she dies?’
‘Why repeat happiness only to suffer a repetition of sorrow? I could not bear it.’
‘If this curse is true, whether you marry Maria or not is immaterial. Loving her is enough to endanger her.’
‘That is it, you see. I do not love her. Cannot love her. Must not love her. I twist the neck of every emotion I feel in her regard. Do not make me her husband.’
‘Tommaso, I speak to you as a dying man. Yes, dying. Embrace your fate and accept the will of God.’
Now the tears were spilling down my cheeks. ‘You are not dying. You cannot die. Gout does not kill. Just because one mad friar said –’
Lorenzo reached out and held my face. ‘I am dying,’ he said, ‘but not before I have you all standing on your own feet.’
Bourges, August 16th, 1506
I was on my way to the Cathedral, having h
eard that it has some smiling statues nearly a century old, when, passing between two gabled, timber houses I saw a figure riding past in the market square ahead. Just a glimpse is all I had, of a man on horseback, an Italian, a Florentine, surely, by the straightness of his spine and the tilt of his head, the flowing, waving hair, the jutting chin and lower lip – that Medici lip. A chance resemblance, that was all, but for a moment my head swam, giddy with irrational hope.
I hastened into the square and searched for the rider but he had vanished, as ghosts do. But, ah, for that moment Giuliano lived again and, by the thudding of my heart, so did I. Gain and loss. Whether living or dead, he had vanished and my heart dropped like a dead bird. Why go back to Italy? The past is not there. It lies only in my imagination.
61
A HAIL OF LIGHT
1492
IT WAS AN HOUR BEFORE MIDNIGHT. FEW WERE ABROAD, but almost everyone within the city heard it: a tremendous searing of the sky like a ripping of silk, immediately followed by an explosion in heaven and a mighty crash in the city. Even before the final reverberations had died, people were out on their rooftops and balconies in their nightshirts. By the flashes of lightning that were rupturing the sky, those in houses around the cathedral could see what had happened. Brunelleschi’s great dome had only been completed a few years earlier when Andrea del Verrocchio made the ball to crown its lantern. Now the ball was gone and the lantern split almost in half.
Inside the Duomo they found that the roof and vaulting were broken in five places and jagged fragments pierced the brick floor at the very spot where each morning the multitude gathered to listen to Savonarola. Bricks and debris continued to slide through the holes for the rest of the night, sending up clouds of dust. In the surrounding houses people found themselves walking on rubble that had flown through the air: it was a miracle that no one had been killed. There was not a man in Florence who did not agree that this was the work of no ordinary thunderbolt but of divine agency, particularly as the weather was fine in those days, without a cloud to be seen in the sky. This was on the fifth of April.
Savonarola had been up late, preparing his sermon for the next day, working hard and in vain to develop the story of Lazarus. Suddenly, according to the brethren, just before the thunderbolt struck, his voice had roared through the monastery like that of the Lord Jehovah: Ecce gladius Domini! Behold, the sword of the Lord, swift and sure, over the peoples of the earth.
When he was told about what had happened at the cathedral, and that the pulpit was pierced by many jagged fragments of the roof, he asked, ‘In what direction did the lantern fall?’
‘It points to the Via Larga,’ he was told.
In the Via Larga, Lorenzo was asking the same thing. The next day he had himself carried to Careggi. But the following night, over the hill of Careggi, there were red flames flashing and expiring in the sky, dagger-shaped it was said, jabbing spears of fire, each flame vanishing as quickly as it had appeared, a constantly renewing hail of fiery lights.
I heard about it in the morning, when I stopped off at the bakery on my way to the printing house.
‘There was wolves,’ said a miller who lived out in the hills. ‘Lots of folks heard them, up in the forest, wolves. And those that looked out of their windows to see the wolves saw the sky on fire.’
‘Sky on fire?’ said the baker, kneading dough with arms like hams. ‘Again?’
‘Not like the last time,’ said the miller. ‘This was different: a rain of daggers.’
‘Yes, that’s it,’ agreed a tanner. ‘Did you see it yourself then? A rain of daggers, they say. Bloody daggers. And what did that friar call out night afore last? Ecce gladius Domine. Wasn’t that it? Behold the sword of the Lord. So he’s done it again. I tell you, he’s a prophet.’
‘Or in league with the devil. Difficult to say.’ The baker swung the dough round so that it lengthened alarmingly before he caught it, twirled it and threw it down on the table to be kneaded again. ‘After all, when the lantern fell, everyone started saying that it was pointing at the Medici house and that was significant.’
‘Even Lorenzo said that.’
‘But why? Think about it. Didn’t all the debris strike the very spot where Savonarola makes his sermons? So who was the sign for? Just because the Friar predicts flaming swords doesn’t mean they won’t be aimed at him.’
‘But all this was on Careggi. And there’s another thing. There was a woman at mass at Santa Maria Novella yesterday who went mad, running about screaming she was, saying that the church was being torn down by a raging bull with bloodshot eyes and flaming horns, that it was falling round her ears.’
‘Well, you don’t have to be a soothsayer to interpret that one.’ The baker, with his loaves ready, lifted them on to the long- handled shovel and slid them into the oven. ‘It’s my opinion that, if we have fire raining on our heads, it’s all the fault of that ranter at San Marco.’
‘It is the will of God!’ said the miller. ‘What did the Friar prophesy last Advent? That within the year they will all be dead: Lorenzo, the Pope, the King of Naples. It’s coming true, I’m telling you. It’s coming true.’
62
IN ONE SENTENCE
1492
WHILE LORENZO WAS ILL, POLIZIANO WAS LIVING AT THE Medici villa on Careggi, I moved back into my own house, which was close to Miscomini’s, and Maria lived with Cammilla in the town house. After the interview with Lorenzo, I avoided seeing her. Let time sort the matter out – I had work to do.
I was at the printing house, reading the proofs of an edition of Virgil’s Aeneid, lost somewhere in book six thereof, when a letter came from Angelo saying he needed to see me urgently. Obtaining leave from Miscomini, I went to Careggi. The house was taut and subdued, the air within sickly with too many contending fragrances. It was April but still winter, as if the land itself was holding its breath. Asking for Angelo, I was directed to Lorenzo’s chamber. I entered cautiously, not wishing to disturb the sick man, but Lorenzo was hidden by a large gathering of physicians around his bed. A servant told me that Angelo was in the studiolo and I crossed the bed-chamber to the door of that inner sanctum. I knocked gently and Angelo called me in.
The only man allowed to use Lorenzo’s private study, Angelo was lying on the day bed, hands behind his head, staring at the ceiling which was painted with a portrait of the heavens as they were at the time of Lorenzo’s birth. He sat up as I entered, looking as if he had not slept for a good while.
‘How is Lorenzo?’
‘He is better today. Some say he is recovering’
‘How are you?’
‘In need of company.’
On a pedestal was a marble bust of Lucrezia Donati, the woman who had been Lorenzo’s lover and his Beatrice; on a shelf a stack of his favourite books: the Bible, Dante, Leon Battista Alberti, Ficino’s translation of Plato. A cabinet held a collection of curiosities to remind him of the breathtaking inventiveness of the Creator; there also some of his favourite treasures, a vase made of porphyry, a bronze statuette of Hercules, an exquisitely carved Roman cameo. This was Lorenzo’s sacred place where he came to be himself. The door to the chamber was so constructed that from within the studiolo you could hear everything happening in the main chamber, but in the chamber you could hear nothing from the studiolo. Lorenzo’s sanctum was a perfect spy-hole.
‘I sit here and listen,’ Angelo told me. ‘Sometimes I go out, but I can never get near him for physicians and family.’
He told me that each day brought a new physician in a long train of assistants and apothecaries. All were housed in empty rooms and admitted into the chamber at the wish of Lorenzo but against the advice of Pier Leone, who protested that a mixture of theories and treatments could only be detrimental to the patient: Lorenzo should stick to one system only. Lorenzo agreed that such a thing was to be desired, but at the same time he could not offend the dukes and princes sending
their best physicians.
Of this contradiction of doctors, some wanted the patient to arise at dawn, some said he should only arise when he woke up, others thought that he should not rise at all. Some said he should have only hot food, others said that all food must be raw. Many were not so much doctors as magicians, brewing strange potions and asking Lorenzo to turn three times in his bed before drinking them. Pier Leone rose up against these and asserted himself. He did not care if they had been sent by King Solomon himself, they were not to be allowed near Lorenzo. He arranged that no one could gain entry to Lorenzo’s chamber who did not have a degree in medicine gained at Padua. But even the learned and orthodox had some strange remedies.
‘The only thing all these men have in common,’ Angelo complained, ‘is a single-minded belief in themselves and their cures, which turns the ante-chamber into a rookery, with enraged squawks disturbing the peace.’
Throughout it all, Lorenzo displayed gentle magnanimity, agreeing to take whatever remedy was offered so as not to offend the man offering it. But he stayed in bed, too weak now to rise.
‘These learned physicians have taken him off all dairy food and increased his consumption of garlic. Some analyse his humours and find him sanguine; others declare him melancholic. Some recommend carrying him in a litter to the sulphur baths; others say such a journey would kill him. Some administer emetics, others study the consequences. They grind up poppy seed, or mandragora, or extract of willow, or comfrey. One man not only boils silk but blue silk, and makes Lorenzo drink the water. Others consult charts of the heavens and, at the appropriate moment, they make a cordial of ingredients with properties corresponding to the planet Mercury. Some are traditional and with their cups and leeches try to bleed the disease out of the man. The best of them pray. And there is nothing I can do but sit and listen to it all.’
His exhausted head, sunk into his hands, raised at a terrible, grinding, lapidary sound. He went wearily to find out what this madness of medics was doing now. Through the open door I could see something of Lorenzo, propped up in his bed, surrounded by doctors, himself asking what that terrible noise was. Angelo went to him, to explain that Lorenzo di Pavia, a physician who had just arrived from Milan, was pounding precious gems in a mortar – emeralds, garnets, pearls and opals.