Leonardo's Swans (6 page)

Yes, surely Isabella will be better off after all. She and Francesco are noble people who will rule a noble society; Il Moro and the court of Milan are corrupt.

And if it comes to pass that Fortuna has played some clever trick on her, then she will take her destiny into her own hands. She will know what to do to remedy Fortuna’s mistake. She has often wondered if Fortuna is in God’s jurisdiction, or reigns over a realm of her own. Though she is certain that this thought is heresy, she cannot help but to ponder it. She has been taught that God is, was, and always shall be. But this singular idea of Fortuna has survived centuries of the church’s doctrine. God’s power is omniscient, but Fortuna is left over from the meddling Olympian gods so interested in worldly affairs. While Zeus and Hera and the like are only alive today in paintings, sculptures, myths, and the ruins of antiquities, Fortuna is still active in the daily intercourse of human events. Isabella is not alone in this belief, she knows. Doesn’t every kitchen maid, every soldier, shout pleas and gratitude to Fortuna?

God, Fortuna—one or both will take care of her, or she will take care of herself. It’s as her devout father has always advised: “Believe passionately in Our Lord. Pay tribute to His greatness day and night. Build cathedrals to His glory. Have faith in His will. But don’t always rely on Him to do your bidding.”

Chapter Two

0 * IL MATTO (THE FOOL)

FROM THE NOTEBOOK OF LEONARDO:

An old man, a few hours before his death, told me that he had lived a hundred years and that he did not feel any ailments other than weakness. Thus while sitting upon a bed in the hospital, without any movement or sign of anything amiss, I watched him pass from this life. I made an autopsy to ascertain the cause of so peaceful a death, and found that it was from weakness through failure of blood and the artery that feeds the heart and the lower members, which I found to be parched and shrunk and withered.

The other autopsy was on a child of two years old, and I found everything to be contrary to that which was in the case of the old man.

On the contrast between old and young:

The veins in the young are straight and full of blood, but in the decrepit they are twisted, flat, shriveled, and the blood is blocked from its passages.

The liver, which in youth, is of deep red color and strong consistency, in the old is pale, without the redness from the healthy flow of blood, and the veins stay empty. Moreover, in the old, the thin texture of the substance of the liver may be likened to bran steeped in a small quantity of water.

The colon in the old is thin, becoming as slender as the middle finger of the hand, whereas in the young, it may have the width of the larger part of the human arm.

In life, beauty perishes; not in art.

IN THE YEAR 1491; IN THE CITY OF PAVIA,
IN THE REGION OF MILAN

B
EATRICE
kicks the stomach of the fiery evil spirit who is pulling on her arm, trying to drag her through the gates of Hell. Her high-heeled boot passes right through the flames of his belly, and he laughs at her while his red eyes shoot yellow sparks into the air, momentarily blinding her. She is screaming, writhing, trying even to bite his flaming flesh. She is arguing that she is not
that
Beatrice, not the poet Dante’s lover, not his inspiration or salvation or anyone’s for that matter. “Leave me alone,” she yells at the demon. She can see smoke and flames in the distance. She feels hot, but the heat is coming from her insides. She knows that if she cannot escape, she will implode even before the devil’s fires engulf her. “I’ve done nothing,” she says over and over again, trying to yank her arm from the devil’s claws. The monster is stronger even than her big horse, Drago, and has no compunction to obey her. “I’m not the one,” she cries. “I’m not the one that you want.”

“Beatrice d’Este!”

Suddenly, the devil has the voice of a woman.

“Beatrice!”

The devil’s claws sink deeper into her arm. With his other hand, he grips her face, shaking it violently until she opens her eyes.

Her mother’s insistent face shocks her out of her dream state and into the bedroom, where she sweats beneath the thick blankets. Her face is hot, her brow damp, but her nose, sticking out into the air, is cold. She is not certain where she is, but she wonders how her mother knew that the devil had come for her, and that she needed to be yanked from his deathly grip.

“The ambassadors are coming, child. You must get up.” Duchess Leonora rolls her daughter over on her side, pulling the blankets down and her nightgown up.

Beatrice is aware that heavy drapes are being pulled aside, allowing stark gray morning light to replace the devil’s glittering flames.

“Not much, but it will have to do,” Leonora says.

Before Beatrice can ask what she means—is she speaking of her daughter’s behind?—two of her ladies are pulling Beatrice off the bed and slipping a heavy embroidered robe over her shoulders.

“You accommodated your husband, thank God!” Leonora exclaims, examining the messy sheets. “Or you know what would have happened. We would have had to write to your father.
He
would not have taken kindly to a daughter’s skittishness on her wedding night. You know how he is about duty.”

Officious footsteps marching in threes, echoing off stone floors, approach. Messer Trotti and two dour gentlemen Beatrice does not recognize enter the room. Ignoring her, their attention goes directly to the pink-stained, rumpled bedsheets.

“There is little blood,” says one of the men to Leonora. “Either Il Moro was not allowed full access, or this is a well-traveled tunnel.”

Messer Trotti is stone-faced, his thin eyebrows arched and indignant, but the other man snickers.

“The girl spends her days on the back of a horse,” Leonora says. “I will not have you suggest such things about a princess of the House of Este. If you take that idea out of this bedroom, I assure you, it will cost you your position at this and any other court in the land.”

The man is silent. No one would doubt Leonora’s ability to carry forth the threat.

Beatrice marvels at her mother’s ability to intimidate not one but three men with nothing but a pair of big brown eyes and a haughty voice. Not only that, but how is it that someone can be so alert so early in the morning? Would this be expected of her now that she is a wife?

“The child pleased her husband. There is the proof. Now take the sheet and carry out your duty. The marriage is officially consummated.” The men start to back out of the room, like the servants from exotic eastern lands that Beatrice saw once in Venice. “Your every word will reflect nothing but happiness over the success of this event.”

Beatrice is surprised that all of her insides have not spilled out onto the sheets. The smattering of blood staining the white cloth brings back last night’s event. Avoiding the faces of the receding men, of her mother, and of the two ladies who are removing the evidence, she wraps the robe tightly around her frame and turns to look out the window. Snow has fallen overnight, weighing down the landscape. The trees seem burdened; the branches, ready to drop under the weight of the icy overlay. Beatrice’s womb, jostled from its virgin’s slumber the night before, also feels similarly heavy. She squints her eyes against the white vista, which reflects its brightness back to her, startling her memory. As images come rushing into her mind, the activity in the room falls away, and the memories of previous days flush her face with shame.

Could the weather have been more inauspicious for a wedding? It was so cold this winter that Beatrice’s father had to hire ice cutters to chop great frozen blocks out of the Po River so that the wedding party could depart for Milan. Beatrice had watched the men hack away with their giant axes, hoping as the frozen splinters flew like sparks into the brittle air that the ice would prove too thick, and the wedding would have to be postponed. Perhaps in the interim, she would fall off of one of her horses and die.

But she had no such luck. After many cancellations and excuses, Ludovico had finally confirmed the date, but for the most frigid time of year, when traveling down icy rivers and through frozen paths was usually impossible. Beatrice and her family were certain that he was trying to buy himself yet more time.

On the twenty-ninth day of December, after the coldest Christmas in memory, Beatrice and her mother and the rest of the wedding party, wrapped in blankets of wool and ermine, were loaded into bucentaurs, finely decorated river barges. From Ferrara, they would sledge and trudge through the treacherous, glacial river all the way to Pavia in the duchy of Milan, where they were to be met by Ludovico for the official marriage celebration. The journey was full of disasters. The boat containing provisions for the wedding party got stuck miles behind them in the ice, leaving them without a morsel of food for two days. Their beds and blankets were stiff with spray from the river and water from the damp, freezing air. No one was in any mood to be cheery about Beatrice’s great good fortune in marrying one of the most powerful men in Italy, least of all the bride.

Isabella, having married Francesco one year prior, had traveled from Mantua to meet up with the Ferrarese delegation before their departure. Isabella complained loudly that she felt like a living ice sculpture. She was doubly annoyed because Ludovico, by letter, had requested that she reduce her entourage to a mere fifty people and thirty horses. Every important personage in Italy was to attend the wedding, along with ambassadors from each allied or surrounding country and state. How was Ludovico supposed to house, entertain, and feed so many thousands of people and animals, first, at Pavia where the official ceremony was to take place, and then, in Milan, for the ensuing celebrations? Still, Isabella was incensed that she would have to enter that great city in a state of diminished grandeur. But once they were rocking in the river, the boat hitting massive blocks of ice, all passengers sick from the motion, Isabella stopped complaining and, with Beatrice and the rest of the women, merely prayed for a hot meal and a safe arrival.

Beatrice shivered in her berth, pulling her blanket over her eyes and her hat over her numb ears to muffle the sniffling of spoiled ladies-in-waiting, crying over the cold weather. She had two dogs under the covers with her, but worried that with the lack of food, she would soon have to throw their poor little corpses overboard. But at that moment one slept under each of her arms, giving her the only warmth she had felt in days. She had given up crying because the hot tears rapidly turned into little icy streams running down her face. Plus, with no food to eat, the tears and the heaving took too much of her stamina, keeping her in a more frigid state than if she contained her emotions. She had been told by the river navigator that within hours she and her party would be warming themselves by a blazing fire in a palazzo in Piacenza, and that the next day, fed and refreshed, they would continue the short journey to Pavia, where they would be greeted by Ludovico himself. She did not know whether to hope for this, or for death. She did know, however, that with the bone-chilling cold, and the humiliating circumstances of her marriage, she felt more that she was sailing toward her funeral than her wedding.