Signora Da Vinci

Table of Contents

 

 

 

 

 

 

“Utterly engrossing and glittering with color. Lorenzo the Magnificent, Botticelli, Leonardo da Vinci, and his courageous, passionate mother, Caterina, move through the pages of this book, radiating life and touching the heart.”

—
Sandra Worth, author of
The King’s Daughter

 

“Focuses on the unsung genius who was Leonardo da Vinci’s mother, a woman of intellectual curiosity and maternal instincts toward the son who was torn from her. She moved in a world that included the glittering Medicis and the villainous Savonarola, all of whom are well limned in this sparkling epic. Set in the sunshine of fifteenth-century Tuscany, the novel continually delights with intriguing details, from the bottega workshops of the great Italian masters to the minutiae of an alchemist’s laboratory.”—Vicki León, author of the Uppity Women series

 

“From the dusty streets of Vinci to the glories of Lorenzo Il Magnifico’s Florence and the conspiratorial halls of Rome and Milan,
Signora da Vinci
is a tour de force celebration of one woman’s unquenchable ardor for knowledge and of a secret world that historical fiction readers rarely see.”

—C. W. Gortner, author of
The Last Queen

 

“
Signora da Vinci
is without a doubt the best historical fiction I have read all year. In her most remarkable novel yet, Robin Maxwell takes us back to the turbulent times of the Italian Renaissance.... A masterful blend of fact and fiction,
Signora da Vinci
mesmerizes.”—Michelle Moran, author of
The Heretic Queen

 

 

“Robin Maxwell offers a fascinating glimpse at the ambitious girl who will grow into the infamous queen.”

—Susan Holloway Scott, author of
The King’s Favorite

 

“[A] historically plausible account of Anne Boleyn’s adolescence in France as a courtier of King Francois . . . lavishly imagined . . . [an] accomplished rehabilitation of much-maligned Anne as an empowered woman.”—
Kirkus Reviews

BOOKS BY ROBIN MAXWELL

New American Library
Published by New American Library, a division of
Penguin Group (USA) Inc., 375 Hudson Street,
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Penguin Books Ltd., Registered Offices: 80 Strand, London WC2R 0RL, England
First published by New American Library, a division of Penguin Group (USA) Inc.

 

First Printing, January 2009

Copyright © Robin Maxwell, 2009

Readers Guide copyright © Penguin Group (USA) Inc., 2009
All rights reserved

REGISTERED TRADEMARK—MARCA REGISTRADA

 

LIBRARY OF CONGRESS CATALOGING-IN-PUBLICATION DATA
Maxwell, Robin, 1948-
Signora da Vinci / Robin Maxwell.
p. cm.

eISBN : 978-1-440-66103-7

1. Caterina, 15th cent.—Fiction. 2. Leonardo, da Vinci, 1452-1519—Fiction.
3. Artists—Italy—Fiction. 4. Mothers and sons—Italy—Fiction. I. Title.
PS3563.A9254S54 2009
813’.54—dc22 2008030630

 

 

 

Without limiting the rights under copyright reserved above, no part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form, or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise), without the prior written permission of both the copyright owner and the above publisher of this book.

 

PUBLISHER’S NOTE

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

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CHAPTER 1

Alie.

 

 

I needed a fresh lie to help me escape the house this day. Call it “deceit,” I corrected myself as I threw another log in the furnace, enduring its searing blast on my face before shutting the iron door with a clank. I had chosen the fattest log in the woodpile. The bigger it was the longer the fire would burn without needing tending—all part of my deceit.
Use the word, Caterina,
I scolded myself.
You will be telling Papa a lie so you can run barefoot in the hills today instead of doing your chores.

I grabbed the handle of the bellows and gave them several mighty squeezes, imagining the fierce heat its wind would create inside my father’s alchemical furnace, then threw off my leather apron and face mask and turned to go.

I could see he was making a batch of alcohol on his worktable, the still with its two-headed spouts and receiving flasks all rigged together in a confusing array. It should not have been confusing, I knew. He had been trying to teach me for weeks—a simple process to create a substance especially useful in the apothecary. But my mind, of late, had been elsewhere.
Anywhere
else but in Papa’s alchemical laboratory, his medicinal garden, or his apothecary shop, where I normally helped him.

A plan was forming in my head. I went back to the furnace and threw in one more log for good measure, praying I would not burn down the house with my inferno of deceit.
Had that been one of Dante’s Seven Deadly Sins?
I tried to remember as I started down the stairs from the top floor to the second.

Here I stopped in my bedchamber, a small room with enough space for my covered bed, a chair, a desk, and several wooden chests that held my belongings. I avoided looking at my prettily painted “marriage chest,” the one Aunt Magdalena had insisted on giving me a year ago when I’d turned thirteen, the one she’d begun to fill with linens, fine smocks, and baby things—all that a girl would need as a young bride.

But the sight of it seemed to mock me.
Who would marry me?
I had never learned the “womanly skills.” And Papa, despite his sister’s nagging, had more excuses than hairs on his head. I was too young, he told her, though of course girls my age were marrying all the time. There was no one suitable in Vinci, he’d insisted, but of course there were other towns nearby, larger places like Empoli and Pistoia, and of course Florence just a day’s ride away.