Da Vinci's Tiger (19 page)

Spring 1478

C
LAIMING
I
NEEDED SOLITUDE TO RECOVER,
I
REMAINED AT
Le Murate for almost two years. I alternated between sequestering myself to write, reminiscing about my time in Verrocchio's studio and the Medici circle, and visiting home. Mostly when I left the convent, I attended Florence's special holidays and masses or went to see my brother. During this time, political alliances within and without the city were shifting. Often my conversations with Giovanni were full of gossip about Lorenzo's troubles with the Pope—troubles that the Pazzi family stirred and kept simmering.

“So, what news is there, brother?” I asked one day, as I settled down into his rooms for a dinner of sea bass, potatoes, and mussels in piecrust. I have to admit such splendid food was another reason I liked to visit him. The convent's fare of broth and bread grew tiresome.

Giovanni leaned back in his chair and clasped his hands behind his head. “Well . . .” He paused and grinned at me. “Are you sure your feminine sensibilities are strong enough for men's politics?”

I bit into a dried fig and made a face at him.

“I do miss teasing you, sister.” He laughed, and then grew serious. “Politics and diplomacy have become far more complicated and fraught with dangerous personal vendettas. I told you that Lorenzo refused to let his bank loan the Pope the monies he wanted to purchase the town of Imola for one of his nephews. The nephew is a cardinal, and the purchase was clearly part of Pope Sixtus's plan to expand the Vatican's powers geographically as well as spiritually. Honestly, the man acts more like a duke than a pontiff. So Lorenzo asked all Florentine banks, including the Pazzi's, to deny the Pope's request—for the sake of Florence's sovereignty in Tuscany, to prevent the Pope garnering too much political influence in our region.”

I reached for some sweetmeats. “And? Lorenzo pressuring others to his will within Florence's governance is nothing new.”

“And,” Giovanni spoke emphatically, “the Pazzi seized upon Lorenzo's refusal as a way to weaken and wound the
Medici. The Pazzi went straight to the Pope and gave him the florins he needed. They also informed His Holiness that Lorenzo had tried to collude with other moneylenders to thwart the Pope's desires. The Pope was furious. He has removed the Vatican accounts from the Medici branch bank in Rome and deposited them with the Pazzi.”

Now that was potentially devastating to the Medici fortune. I knew that much from growing up listening to my father. Rome was the mainstay of the Medici banking empire.

“The Pope also retaliated by appointing an archbishop for our region who is decidedly anti-Medici, ignoring all the candidates Florence suggested. It's a particular insult because the Pope has ignored Lorenzo's campaign for Giuliano to become a cardinal. Lorenzo and the Signoria struck back by refusing to recognize Francesco Salviati as archbishop.”

“Ahhh.” I began to see the trickling effect of all this into the lives of ordinary Florentines. “So that is why Florence was threatened with excommunication by the Pope. All the sisters in Le Murate were terrified about not being able to receive communion and being damned eternally.”

“Indeed.” Giovanni sat up and took his goblet of wine. “Lorenzo has finally acknowledged the archbishop, and things seem to have settled down. But you know how these things fester in Florence. Lorenzo has made new enemies for himself, and the Pazzi have grown stronger and bolder.”

I thought of Simonetta's concerns for Giuliano's honor and safety, her hatred of the Pazzi. “But isn't Lorenzo's sister married to a Pazzi man?” I asked. “Surely that built a healing
bridge between the two families and will keep them from open conflict?”

Giovanni smiled at me. “Ah, sister, you of all people should know that marriages aren't always the answers we think they will be.” He patted my hand. “Now, enough of that. Tell me what you are writing. What poems do you have to share with me?”

I did not think much about our conversation again, and my next forays outside Le Murate's gates were uneventful. Until the fifth Sunday after Easter, April 26, 1478.

That day happened to be the second anniversary of Simonetta's death. I wanted to attend mass in the Duomo and be among her family and friends. Le Murate was also atwitter with the news that the newest cardinal, a beautiful seventeen-year-old nephew of the Pope, was attending the service at Lorenzo's special invitation—which I assumed was part of the Medici's resumed courtship of the Vatican to heal the rift Giovanni had told me of. Amid blushes and giggles, the young penitents and convent-school boarders begged me to go see and return to tell them what the youth really looked like.

The Duomo was packed. The April weather was beautiful and balmy, allowing many people to travel in from the countryside in anticipation of the coming week's Feast of the Ascension. As the Medici family waded through the thick crowd toward the front of the nave, stopping to greet friends and dignitaries, Lorenzo's mother spotted me where I stood
with Giovanni. Luigi, as usual, was with his guildsmen. Lucrezia de' Medici reached out to take my arm. “My dear, it is so good to see you. I understand you have been ill. You are better, I hope?”

I thanked her and said I was.

“I also have heard you have been writing a great deal. I would love to see your verses, child. We never really had the chance to share our poetry, did we?”

I was too pleased at the invitation to wonder what spies in the convent might have passed along that information. When invited to the Medici palazzo during Bernardo's and my Platonic courtship, my hope had been to share my poetry, but I had been too impressed and intimidated by the art contained in the household and the debate among the men surrounding the Magnifico to do so. Now I would far prefer to chat privately with this aged Medici matron, poet to poet, even though our writing was sure to be different. Despite my hours in Le Murate, my poems were not exactly devotional in nature.

The choirs began to sing. The Medici moved on. Lorenzo went to stand just to the right of the high altar.

Out of the corner of my eye I caught a patch of a salmon-colored tunic and a gold-brown mane of curls. I caught my breath. It was Leonardo. We had seen each other a few times because Giovanni was lending space within his rooms to Leonardo to paint. But there was bashful awkwardness between us then. Leonardo had left Verrocchio's studio and lived and worked on his own now. Oh, if only somehow I
could happen upon him after the service. I stood on my tiptoes to watch where he ended up. But he was already lost in the wake of other bodies.

The throng was settling down and quieting in anticipation of the service, when suddenly there was a rippling of elbows and loud shuffling as people moved aside to let Giuliano de' Medici pass. He was late for church, but no one seemed to begrudge him his tardiness. I watched him sail through the sea of vividly colored clothing toward the high altar. Still beautiful, still the embodiment of youth and its promise. His bearing was so graceful it was natural to note the two men who followed him, arm in arm, because they were such a contrast in roughness.

One was a Pazzi. Odd, I thought, given what Giovanni had told me about friction between the families. But I knew the man's brother was married to Giuliano and Lorenzo's sister, Bianca. No matter what intrigues were going on in back rooms, Florence's leading families were well practiced in presenting an air of unity and regal harmony to the public.

I and the multitude of other worshippers turned to the high altar and silenced as the service began. The liturgy washed over me, incense drifted like a thin fog up to the stained-glass windows, the voice of the priest lifted resonantly, and the congregation's answering “Amens” rumbled like distant thunder along the marble floors and walls.

The service came to the blessing of the communion bread. A cherubic-looking altar boy rang a small, high-pitched bell to announce the Elevation of the Host. We all
lowered our heads and eyes in reverence as the priest began. “He took bread into his holy hands
. . .
”

“Take that, traitor!”

A thousand heads snapped up at once to the sight of two daggers raised above head level and brought crashing down to guttural shrieks of pain. There was another glint of blades, bloodied now, brought down again. More gurgling shrieks. People in front near the altar lunged back and pushed in fear, sending a swell of bodies knocking into one another. I fell to the ground, my skirts twisted and caught underfoot. Another woman washed over on top of me.

As I struggled to get out from under her and to my feet, I saw Lorenzo whip his cape around his arm in a makeshift shield of cloth and draw his sword to beat back two attackers, before leaping over the altar and away.

“Murder!” someone shouted.

“The dome is collapsing!” cried another voice farther back in the crowd, unable to see what was causing the furor near the altar.

“Run for your lives!” screamed many.

“Ginevra!” Giovanni grabbed my arm. “Get up! Hurry!” He yanked me and the other woman to our feet. Her husband caught her up and Giovanni clutched my hand, pulling out his sword to protect us both. “Come with me.”

“What is it?” I gasped. “What is happening?”

“Assassins,” he said. “Come, we will be trampled if we don't move.” He half dragged me toward the doorway,
dodging men rushing toward the high altar, shouting about protecting the Magnifico and Giuliano.

The rest of the cathedral was in chaos. The confused shouts about murder and catastrophe created a typhoon of panic.

Murder! The dome is collapsing! Run for your lives!

We popped out of the arched doorways, pushed through them by a storm surge of other terrified bodies. Giovanni pulled us into a curve in the cathedral walls and flattened us to the stone like flounder fish, then shielded my body against the scraping flood of frantic runners.

Murder! The dome is collapsing! Run for your lives!

The mob gushed down the streets, still howling.

“Fools!” Giovanni muttered. We almost had to peel ourselves off the stone, we had been pushed so hard up against it.

As we did so, a flotilla of men emerged from the cathedral, swords drawn, looking back and forth, scanning their surroundings. Buoyed and protected inside them was Lorenzo, holding a blood-soaked cloth to his neck.

“Giuliano,” he cried. “What of Giuliano?”

Their silence told the tragedy.

Giuliano, Florence's beloved Prince of Youth, lay dead in a lake of his own blood in front of the high altar. He'd been stabbed nineteen times by the men who had accompanied him into the cathedral—Francesco de' Pazzi, who long ago claimed he'd unjustly lost a jousting championship to Lorenzo, and Bernardo Bandini. The Pazzi family and their
allies had grown impatient with their less violent methods of insurrection—assassination through gossip, criticisms, and innuendos, and luring away banking clients in a calculated campaign to drain Medici coffers. They'd decided instead to grab power through murder.

Simonetta's fear that Giuliano's blithe, generous nature might keep him from recognizing the jealousy and hatred of other men had come true.

S
UCKED INTO THE URGENT TIDE OF THE
CROWD,
G
IOVANNI
and I followed Lorenzo and his protectors as the great bell in the Signoria tower began to toll. Only in the direst trouble was La Vacca, “the cow,” sounded. Its resonant lowing pulled cascades of citizens rushing out their doors, armed with swords and shields, hurriedly fastening on breastplates yanked from the home arsenal all Florentines seemed to have.

In the distance, we could hear shouts of “Vivano le Medici” and then a chant, growing in intensity and rage:
“Palle! Palle!”
The battle cry referred to the most recognizable element of the Medici crest—its cluster of golden, coin-like balls.

Enormous waves of people converged on via Larga as Lorenzo and his protectors disappeared behind the huge gates of the Medici palazzo. They shouted for Lorenzo to appear and tell them what to do.

“Palle! Palle!”
The chant echoed along the streets. More men surged toward the Medici's fortress-palace from the direction of the Signoria.

Giovanni recognized a friend among them and called over the din, “Do you know what is happening?”

The man leaned in close to be heard. “While Lorenzo and Giuliano were attacked, Archbishop Salviati led a band of hired soldiers to the Signoria. He planned to capture the
priori
and take over our government.”

“The archbishop? A man of God?” I couldn't help but gasp.

“Yes, my lady,” the man said. “We think in revenge for Lorenzo refusing to recognize his appointment to the office.”

Giovanni put his hand on my arm to quiet my questions so the man could talk. “What happened then?”

“Salviati demanded to be seen, saying the Pope had sent him on important business. But our
gonfaloniere
was suspicious and
grabbed the archbishop by the hair and threw him to the ground and called the palace guard. Even his servants seized cooking-spits and impaled a few of Salviati's thugs themselves. Thank God they did, because within moments Jacopo de' Pazzi galloped in, leading an army of mercenaries that had been waiting just outside the city until the Medici brothers were killed. They are saying the Pope, maybe even
the king of Naples and Giuliano's own godfather, the duke of Urbino, were part of the plot.”

“God's blood!” Giovanni cursed. “Have the Pazzi and their army taken the Signoria?”

“No! Had the
priori
been prisoners of Salviati, they might have. But the Signoria servants, grown brave by their successful attack on Salviati's brigade, hurled stones over the battlements onto the soldiers below. That emboldened the crowd in the square. The people stood down Pazzi and his mercenaries, chanting
‘Palle! Palle!'
The
priori
put nooses around the necks of the conspirators they held—including the archbishop—and hurled them out windows to swing and dangle until they choked. That's when the mercenaries scattered.”

“What about Jacopo de' Pazzi?”

But before
the man could answer, Lorenzo appeared at a second-story window. His luxurious tunic was covered in blood and his throat was bandaged, but he managed to call down to the crowd. “Citizens of Florence, please, control yourselves. My wound is not mortal. Let justice prevail. Save your energy to resist the enemies who engineered this conspiracy. They are likely to attack the city.”

But somehow Lorenzo's self-effacing words seemed to make Florentines' blood boil. Their favorite son, Giuliano, lay dead, mutilated. Their trusted civic leader, the Magnifico, who had brought them honor and grand entertainments, was injured—at the hands of a haughty family that had never done anything to help the common Florentine. Every man in
the city could sing at least one of the colorful songs Lorenzo had written for Carnival. He seemed one of them.

Like waters are sent roiling by the wind, a storm of fury broke lose, breaking the dikes of self-control. Cursing, waving swords or kitchen knives or pitchforks, the mob swept out into the city, seeking other conspirators.

Watching the madness take hold, Giovanni said, “Come, Ginevra, I need to get you home. Now! Hurry!”

We hastened through the streets, Giovanni clutching his sword with one hand, holding on to me with the other as men knocked into us in their hurry. We turned a corner too hastily and crashed headlong into a gang of drunkards, delighted to have a legitimate excuse for havoc. Before Giovanni could raise his sword, one of the reprobates swung a knife to my brother's throat. “What about this one?” the man asked his friends. “He seems in a hurry. Well-dressed. I bet he is a Pazzi. I say we gut him.” The point of his knife drew a spot of blood.

“No, please, I implore you,” I gasped. “We are Benci. Friends to the Medici.”

Another man staggered toward my brother. He reeked of wine. “Wait. Maybe. No. I don't recognize him.” He shrugged as if to tell his companion to go ahead.

“Hold, signori,” I cried, and this time I put my hand on Giovanni's arm to stop him from speaking. I knew he would do so in anger and sensed that would further enrage this horde. I tried flattery instead. “You look like clever gambling men to me. Surely you recognize the Six Hundred. His
horse Zephyrus won the
palio
two years back. Please tell me one of you won a good wager that day.”

The men stuck out their lower lips and nodded. “I won fifteen florins on that horse,” the main drunkard proclaimed. He stepped so close to Giovanni their boot toes touched. He eyed my brother up and down slowly, taking a pinch of Giovanni's ribboned azure-blue sleeve between his thumb and fingers to rub it. Such luxurious material in such dirty, bloodied hands was a startling image. “Hmmm. Good cloth. Yes. You could be the Six Hundred.” He focused intensely on Giovanni's face, breathing heavily on it. Giovanni winced from the smell. “Yes,” the man decided. “Yes, I think you are him.”

Giovanni yanked away his arm and glared. My brother was no coward. But arguing the point with these ruffians could get us killed.

“Come, brother, please.” I tugged on his hand. “Let us go.”

Before we continued on our way, I turned to thank the man who'd identified Giovanni. I wished I hadn't. Beside him stood another man I hadn't focused on before. In one hand he held a jug of wine, in the other a severed arm, dripping gore.

He saw where I looked. “We're leaving this at the Magnifico's door,” he said, bragging. “It's part of a priest who worked for the archbishop. Someone is carrying his head around the streets on a pike. I'm not sure where the rest of his body is.”

Giovanni got me to the next street before I vomited.

“Where is your master?” Giovanni shouted, when we'd pounded on my front door long enough that Sancha finally cracked it open, peeping around to make sure it really was us. Even Sancha, with her stout heart and no-nonsense bravery, was afraid that day.

“He's gone to the Signoria. That's where the guild leaders are gathering. In case war is declared.”

Giovanni kissed me on the forehead. “Bolt the door behind you, sister. Luigi is well-known as a Medici follower. As long as you stay off the streets, you will be fine.”

“But where are you going?”

“I want to make sure Mother and our sisters are all right. You know Uncle Bartolomeo will only be looking out for himself.”

“But, brother!”

“I'll be all right.” He smiled at me. “Just use that wit of yours to charm anyone who comes. The Six Hundred, indeed. Thanks a lot, sister!” He disappeared down the street.

“Come into the kitchen, my lady. I will get you something soothing. What a day, what a day,” Sancha muttered as we walked down the hall to the back of the house. She warned me not to be startled when I saw the boy who slept in Luigi's store at night to watch its cloth. “He was bloodied by the mob.”

Given what I had just seen, a few scratches would hardly affect me. But I asked how it happened. “That boy is young and sweet. Why in the world would anyone attack him?”

Sancha stopped and turned. “Because he is young and sweet and gentle . . . and pretty, my lady.” She shook her head. “This vengeance against the Pazzi allows for all sorts of pent-up hatreds and stupidity to erupt to the surface. There are men out there using the conspiracy as an excuse to go after anyone they don't like, with the claim that the poor souls might be involved in the plot against the Medici.”

I froze. I understood exactly what she was saying. “Leonardo!” I darted to the kitchen, scaring the poor battered houseboy, and grabbed a knife. I was out the door before Sancha could stop me.

“My lady!” I heard Sancha running after me. “This is madness.”

“Go back to the house, Sancha!” I shouted.

“I will not.” She caught up with me.

“Sancha, go home.”

“No. Why are you doing this?” She put her hand on my arm. “This man is not for you.”

I hesitated.

Sancha pressed her point. “This is a fool's errand, my lady. Look about you.” She pointed up the street to the Piazza di Santa Croce, where men were cheering, shouting, and shoving one another.

A bloodthirsty rage had indeed taken over the city, but there was a wildness boiling up in me, too. I felt a certainty about what I needed to do, stronger than anything I had ever felt before. “Go home, Sancha. It may be a fool's errand, but it is my errand, not yours.”

She crossed her arms. “No, my lady. If you are out and about in this lunacy, I am, too.”

Another group of men rushed past us.
“Palle! Palle!”
they shouted, shaking their fists. One of them eyed Sancha appreciatively and slowed.

No turning back now. I was endangering her as well as myself by standing there. I grabbed her hand. “Come on then.”

We hoisted our skirts and ran. Leonardo's rooms were just on the other side of Santa Croce. We had to get across the piazza, but it was writhing with groups of men bellowing and smashing things on the ground. I thought fleetingly of the joust that had been held in that square, of Giuliano's triumph that day, of Simonetta's beauty, of the beautiful banner Leonardo had helped paint. What a contrast this scene was to that glorious day of chivalry, the best of man's creativity, sense of honor, and agility. This was the worst of humankind.

Quickly, I realized why such violence raged in front of the steps of Santa Croce. The Pazzi had built an enormous, elaborate chapel adjacent to the church, commissioned of Brunelleschi himself, most likely to compete with the Medici's San Lorenzo church. The mob was looting it.

“Palle! Palle!”

“Come, Sancha, we must stay on this edge and try not to be noticed.” We slid along the shops fronting the square, staying in the shadows as best we could.

We emerged onto an alley on the other side of the piazza.

“Just up this way a bit, my lady,” Sancha said, trying to
catch her breath. We were winded. Ever my gatherer of gossip, Sancha had found out Leonardo's whereabouts many months before this.

The narrow street was filled with the stench of garbage and dye vats. It was hard to breathe in the foul-smelling air.

Abruptly, Sancha yanked me to a halt. “Look, my lady.”

There was Leonardo, easily spotted in the distance because of that vibrant rose-colored tunic of his. He was backed against a wall, facing three men. One of them was jabbing Leonardo's chest with his finger. His companions leaned toward Leonardo threateningly as the man spoke.

“It's the man from the
tamburi.
Do you remember, my lady?”

I looked at Sancha and then back to Leonardo. Yes, now I did. The man Leonardo had argued with the day Sancha and I followed him to Verrocchio's studio. The man who had dropped an accusation in the “mouth of truth.” Perhaps he had been Leonardo's accuser as well when Leonardo had been arrested for allegedly being a Florenzer
.

“Leonardo!” I called, waving, and rushed toward them. “I have been looking for you everywhere.” I threw myself past the men to Leonardo and wrapped my arms around his neck. Assuming the man threatening Leonardo might have been involved in his denunciation, I knew exactly how to discredit him. I clung to Leonardo, saying in his ear, but careful to be loud enough for them to hear, “Now's our chance, my love. My husband is away.”

Leonardo's accuser was dumbfounded. His friends looked
at him like he was an idiot. I smiled at them in my most courtly manner, putting my arm through Leonardo's, and said, “Good sirs, thank you for protecting the maestro. I can see you escorted him in safety to his studio. He and his old master Verrocchio are great favorites of the Medici. Lorenzo will be so grateful for this service of yours. He has lost so much already this day with the death of his brother. In his current grief, he would punish severely anyone who might harm the painter Leonardo da Vinci.”

One of his companions punched Leonardo's accuser in the chest, sending him staggering back a step. “You trying to get us drawn and quartered?”

“Come on,” the other said. “We waste time here. I know where some of the Pazzi bank workers live.”

They skulked away down the street.

I'm not sure how we made our way back to my house. Our escape was a blur of anxiety and hurry, as more and more men flooded the streets.
Palle! Palle!
The madness only seemed to grow.

Once safely behind our heavy wooden door, bolted shut, the noise of anger in the street muffled, my knees buckled. I collapsed to the floor.

“My lady!” Sancha cried.

“I have her,” Leonardo said, lifting me gently.

“Take her to her chamber at the top of the stairs. I will fetch water.”

Their voices sounded far away. I felt myself sway and dip
up and down as Leonardo climbed stairs and then the softness of my bed as he laid me down. I opened my eyes, but the room seemed to spin.

“Here, my lady.” Sancha pressed a cool, wet cloth to my face.