Leonardo's Swans (44 page)

Ercole’s expression does not change. “Ludovico has made his own tomb, Isabella. He played all parties against each other for too many years. His ambitions and his hubris are naked for all the world to see. Louis has always laid claim to Milan. His grandmother was a Visconti, what can I say? He has as much right to the duchy as Ludovico.”

“But Beatrice—” Isabella begins.

“Beatrice is in her grave. We must act in the interests of the living. The smart people—and we Estes are the smartest of the smart—will wait this out to see who is the victor. Don’t let Francesco move on behalf of anyone, not Ludovico, not the French, not the Venetians. Here is what matters: after this is over, after Ludovico Sforza is a forgotten man long turned to dust, the House of Este will still be standing. And the House of Gonzaga too, God willing, if your husband follows my example.”

“Father, I will heed your counsel, though it may cost me my heart to betray Ludovico or to sit by while he is attacked.” What did she expect from her father, who, as soon as her mother’s body was cold, supported the French in their invasion of her native kingdom of Naples?

“Isabella, why do you think I have lived to be an old man? If you want to see your dotage, you will learn from me: in these matters the heart must hide behind the mind’s greater powers of reason.”

Still, she cannot bear it. She foresees the scenario: Ludovico, with both enemies closing in on him, will write frantic letters and send hard-riding messengers to Mantua, demanding that Francesco move the army to help him. The missives will get more desperate until Ludovico realizes that he has been betrayed. He will assume that the marchesa is in on the betrayal. And he might go to his grave wondering why. Yet what good would it do her to betray her own husband? To reveal his duplicity to Ludovico? What would she do? Flee to Milan, only to be crushed herself? To end her life a fallen woman and disgraced daughter? A mad harridan who couldn’t wait for her sister’s death so that she could seize her husband?

She hears from one of her correspondents in Venice that the Venetian army has already set march for Milan. As they cross the Adda River, the soldiers are singing, “Now it’s Il Moro’s turn to dance!” Was anything more satisfying to a human being than the downfall of the mighty? She returns home to Mantua, where she gets word that General Trivulzio, the Italian traitor who left Ludovico’s service years ago over his jealousy of Galeazz, is swooping down the Alps with a huge French army upon the castle of Annona, a Milanese stronghold. Galeazz has vowed to hold the northern city of Alessandria, which would cut the French off from Milan. But his soldiers are once again unpaid and half starved and deserting him. His brother, the Count of Caiazzo, a man of war who could more easily than Galeazz allow his heart to hide behind his greater powers of reason, has openly gone over to the French. Men other than Caiazzo who have also dined at Ludovico’s table turn on him, riding to meet up with the French army. The predicted letters fly from Milan into Mantua, begging Francesco to move to defend Milan. Isabella herself makes a plea on behalf of her two nephews, who could lose their lives in the fray, until she finds out that Ludovico has sent them off to the German court, along with a substantial sum of his gold and jewels, and is probably going to flee there himself. Ludovico makes a last appeal to his allies, but none responds.

One by one, the people of the small cities of the duchy of Milan, tired of paying Ludovico’s heavy taxes and encouraged by their patrons, who are tired of not being able to collect on the loans they made to the duke, open their gates to the French. Louis, Isabella is told, is astonished at the reception he receives as he trots across northern Italy. He attributes it to his good looks, his superior lineage as a Visconti, and to Ludovico’s slow drain on his people’s resources for his grand projects. Ludovico sends even more letters via messengers whose horses have been ridden so hard that they die in Isabella’s courtyard. Francesco gets weary of the letters and rides to Vigevano—where Beatrice and Ludovico had lavishly entertained him—and openly starts to fight at the side of Louis. He is met there by Duke Ercole, who had waited patiently in Ferrara, throwing Ludovico’s desperate letters into the hearth until French victory was guaranteed.

Now there is only the small matter of the duke himself, who must surely be trying to flee Milan. She cannot imagine Ludovico putting up a hopeless fight, sword in hand, manning the Castello against the French all by himself. The last time she saw him, he had complained of being afflicted with the gout, which made it nearly impossible for him to mount his horse.

What, she wonders, will happen to her friends in Milan? Cecilia’s portrait still hangs in Isabella’s studiolo, seemingly asking her that very question. Will the French be kind to those who had been loyal to the duke, or will they do what conquerors always do—seize property, rape women, destroy the symbols of power, execute the loyalists, torture the artists, and pick the treasury dry?

There is nothing that Isabella can do for Ludovico without endangering her family and the city of Mantua. But she can help his friends. She does not consult Francesco, but sends messengers to Milan to spread the word that Isabella d’Este is offering sanctuary to those who were loyal to the Duke and the late Duchess of Milan. In the letters, she urges them to flee the city before the French arrive, wearing the plumage of the conquerors. Flying on hooves that barely touch the dirt, the Mantuan riders are sent off with their missives. Isabella makes certain that the messengers know to stop at the Corte Vecchio, the residence of not only poor, disgraced Isabel of Aragon but of Leonardo the Florentine, to let both parties know that they and their households are welcome and will be treated kindly in Mantua, despite the fact—or perhaps because—the marquis seems to now be so very close to the king of France. She prays that they reach Milan in time for Ludovico to hear that she has tried to help his friends. She knows that he must think that she, too, has deserted him. She has written to his brother Ascanio in Rome declaring that she would like to come to Milan and fight the French herself. Ascanio wrote back, sarcastically suggesting that in Milan, they would prefer to see her husband with his army. Ludovico can only have a low opinion of her now.

Francesco hears that she is offering shelter to the Milanese and he sends her a furious letter.
I am fighting at the side of Louis XII, King of France, and you are giving sanctuary to those he means to capture? Have you lost your mind, woman?
Isabella sends a brief letter in return:
Your Excellency, you deal with the King of France in your way, and I will deal with him in mine. Since you are so very close to him at this moment, you may tell him so yourself. If he does not fear a weak woman, he may come to Mantua and see me on the matter. I do not fear Louis, only the French language, but I can speak it if I must.

Is this King Louis not just a man like any other? And does her reputation as
la prima donna del mondo
, given to her by poets and courtiers from one end of Europe to the other, not already intrigue him? She knows how to deal with Louis. She assembles her staff and starts to put together a gift—no, not a gift but a presentation—to greet the king when he inevitably reaches Milan. The order is simple: pack up the same things we sent to Ludovico in the spring—the fresh garda and carp, the artichokes and flowers—and to it add a pair of our special falcons and a pair of the marquis’s hunting dogs. Have the gifts in their entirety waiting in Ludovico’s palace for the arrival of the King of France. Add this note:

We wish to convey our invitation to His Excellency to come here and visit us. We know that word has reached your ears of us being pro-Sforza. If Your Excellency visits us, he will convince himself that we are true French. We confess, frankly being free of falsehood, that at one time we were very fond of Duke Ludovico, as fond as one can imagine, both for reasons of kinship and because of the affection and honors he showered upon us. But after he began to treat our illustrious consort badly, our affections began to diminish and we found ourselves in accord with the aims of His Majesty, the Most Christian King Louis. Now that he has shown such honors upon our consort, we are indeed a good Frenchwoman. Should Your Excellency choose to accept our invitation to visit, he will find us clothed in fleurs-de-lis.

Your Humble Servant,
Isabella d’Este Gonzaga, Marchesa of Mantua

Full of lies, but no matter. It would bring about the desired end—safety for Mantua and for Isabella’s Milanese friends.

Still, every cloud has a silver lining, and in her dark moment, Isabella wonders if Leonardo the Florentine will take her up on her offer of shelter. Does she dare rekindle that desire? But why not? As her father said, we must act in the interest of the living, and she is still very much alive.

Yet she finds that looking at Cecilia’s portrait has become unbearable. The portrait freezes that moment in time when Cecilia was young and lovely, her only care the pleasure of the duke. None of the young woman’s later sorrows can be predicted in her serene face. Surely she suffered when Beatrice came to court and removed her from the home and affections of the man she had known and loved for ten years. Is she, at this moment, packing whatever her horses can carry and fleeing another cherished home? When they are all gone, the lot of them erased from memory, the portrait will still stand as a tribute to beauty, intelligence, and serenity. No one will think of the pain that the sitter endured, only of her beauty and her good fortune in being immortalized by the great genius of her day. All of the pain and sorrow will die with her.

In the end, it will have been the sorrow that was the temporary thing.

For you, immortality is at the end of a paintbrush. For me, it is at the end of my husband’s cock. I will achieve immortality through the births of my sons.

Isabella recalls how shocked she was when Beatrice said those words. It appears now that Beatrice may have been incorrect. Her sons have been whisked off to the court of Emperor Max in frosty Germany, probably pining for their dead mother and the Italian sun. Would they ever be allowed to return to Milan? Which would carry Beatrice on into history: her issue or her images? Would the French smash to pieces the beautiful bust by Cristoforo, along with the marble twin tomb Ludovico had commissioned for himself and his wife? Would the walls of the refectory painted by the great Magistro be whitewashed by the next generation of clergy, wiped away as useless and antiquated by a new generation? Or, more likely, would the French not want reminders of the reign of Ludovico and tear the refectory down, perhaps torturing the friars?

Oh, all of them would end up nothing but specks of Italian dirt, churned together with the rest of their dead countrymen, should la Fortuna be generous and allow them to die on Italian soil; just more creatures who walked the earth and left it. What did it matter anyway? Fortune is having her way with them all: with Isabella, who once believed that Beatrice had been dealt the better hand; and with Beatrice, who could always make the best of any hand dealt to her, amazing knights and ladies with her luck. Now the luck has run out. The city of Milan, which was in its early days of greatness when Leonardo picked up the brush and painted the duke’s seventeen-year-old mistress, is about to witness its own end. Everyone who had made it what it was—the Athens of modern Europe—is now running for his life. The great treasures, paid for by the people who finally decided that they no longer wanted to finance the duke’s dreams of beauty, would be scattered to the four winds. Like Pericles, whose people got tired of his vast ambitions and found him guilty of theft, Ludovico would pay for his visions of a grand city.

Suddenly Isabella feels very tired, not fatigued in the body but so heavy in the heart that she wants to sink to the ground. She is weary, not just of the present but of the whole of history, how it continues to laboriously repeat itself. How the cast of characters changes but the scenarios remain the same, as if God were some untalented dramatist who could only write one play. She picks up a long black muslin tarp which she had used to block the sunlight from the windows of her studiolo after Beatrice died, for that is what Beatrice’s death brought—the end of warmth and light and all that was good. She drapes the cloth over Cecilia’s face, letting it fall to the ground, shrouding memories of the innocent past.

To: Isabella d’Este Gonzaga, Marchesa of Mantua

From: Georges d’Amboise, Ambassador to the King of France

Madame,

I humbly beg you to forgive the bad opinion we have held of you. Now that you are a good Frenchwoman, we are your humble servants.

Soon, the much matured face of Cecilia Gallerani, swollen with weight and worry, is standing in Isabella’s parlor. She has fled Milan, along with all of Ludovico’s other close allies, sneaking away as Louis entered the city. She throws her arms around Isabella, who takes in the stale smell of travel hanging on Cecilia’s clothes.

“Forgive me, I am full of gnats and dust,” she says. “But thank God for you, Your Excellency. My husband and I were making desperate plans when your messenger arrived. I have brought my two sons with me. The count has gone into hiding. We thought these arrangements best. On the road, soldiers would be less likely to harm the boys if they are traveling with their mother.”