The Birth of Venus (16 page)

No. The truth was I had brought this upon myself, and while their punishment would be that there would be no salvation, mine would be to have to live with it. I put the prayer book back in the chest. God and I were beyond words.

I cried a little more, but the night had used up all my tears and after a while I took refuge in surer comfort, digging deeper under the cloths and the books to where I had hidden my drawings and my pens and ink.

SO I PASSED THE REST OF MY WEDDING NIGHT IN
THE PURSUIT OF
art.
And this time my pen strokes fell, if not like rain then with ease and fluidity, and gave me quiet pleasure. Although if you had seen the image that grew under my quill, you might have thought that it itself was a sign of my estrangement from God.

On the paper in front of me, a young woman clothed in fine silk lay quietly in her marriage bed, watching as the man at her side sat with his doublet undone and his naked cock held in his hands. On his face there was a look between pain and ecstasy, as if at that moment the divine had entered into him, bringing him to the very edge of transcendence.

It was, even if I say so myself, the truest drawing I had done for some time.

CHARLES VIII AND HIS ARMY MARCHED INTO FLORENCE ON
17 November 1494. While history would remember it as a day of shame for the Republic, on the streets it was more like a pageant than a humiliation.

The route from Porta San Frediano over the river past the Cathedral of Santa Maria del Fiore with its great dome to the Medici Palace was choked with people. And among those who found themselves spectators of this grave moment was the newly wedded Langella couple: Cristoforo, scholar and gentleman, and his tender bride, Alessandra, younger daughter of the Cecchi family, who, flush from her nuptials, went on her husband’s arm through the swelling crowd, her eyes shining like cut glass as she took in the pulsating color of the streets around her, until they reached the square of the cathedral, where he had to hold her tight as he propelled her through the mass of people toward a set of wooden tiers hastily constructed against a far wall.

There he palmed two florins to a man below (an outrageous price, but Florence was a city of commerce even at times of crisis), and husband and wife climbed to the top and settled themselves, so their view took in not just the façade of the cathedral but the road down which, within barely an hour, Florence would bear witness to the arrival of her first, and surely her only, army of conquest.

And thus did my husband prove as good as his word.

PART II

Twenty

H
E HAD ARRIVED HOME THAT MORNING WHILE ERILA AND
I were unpacking my chest, with occasional breaks to peer from the window at the tide of people flowing toward the square, and while he did not come to me immediately, he sent word via his servant that I should not worry: I was missing nothing, as he had it on good authority that the king and his army were great but so weary that they came sluggishly toward the city and would not arrive till near sunset.

His news was so fresh even Erila was impressed. Which was good because she and I were a little lost in our new roles as mistress and servant in this drafty gray house.

Our communication since the wedding night had been muted. I had sketched till dawn and slept long into the day, and not surprisingly she had mistaken my late rising for a sign of connubial energy. When she inquired as to my health I said I was well and dropped my eyes, making it clear that I did not wish to say more. Oh, I would have given anything in the world to tell her. I was desperately in need of a confidante and till then I think I had told her everything that had happened to me. But such secrets as I had had were small rebellious ones, harmful to no one but myself. While she and I were close, she was also a slave, and even I could see that, given such temptation, the forces of gossip might prove stronger than her loyalty. Or anyway, that was the excuse I had given myself when I woke that afternoon in my wedding bed, my sketches scattered around me. Perhaps the greater truth was that I could barely bring myself to remember what had happened, let alone share it with anybody else.

So when Cristoforo had come upon us sitting at the window arranging linen and watching the crowds, she already had reason to be suspicious and had got up and taken her leave of us without even looking at him. He had waited till the door was closed behind her before he spoke. “She is close to you, your slave?”

I nodded.

“I am glad. She will be company for you. But I would think that you do not tell her everything?”

While it was a question it was also a statement.

“No,” I said. “I do not.”

In the silence that followed I busied myself with the folding of cloth, my eyes meek to the floor. He smiled as if indeed I were his beloved new wife and held out his arm to me, and so we walked together down the stairs and out into the throng.

IF I HAD BEEN THE KING OF FRANCE I WOULD
HAVE BEEN WELL
pleased by the impact my entrance made upon my new vassal state. Though I might have chastised my generals for not starting our triumphal march earlier, since by the time Charles arrived at the square the sun was almost set, which meant there was less light to shine off his gilt armor or illuminate the great gold canopy held above him by his knights and bodyguard. The fading sun also meant that when he descended to climb the steps to the cathedral he could barely be seen by the mass of people, though I suspect that was also because for a king he was unexpectedly short of stature, especially after he had dismounted from his great black horse, chosen no doubt because it made him look taller than he was.

Certainly that was the only moment when the fickle Florentines wavered in their groveling enthusiasm for their sovereign invader. Not least because as this little king began to walk up the entrance of our great cathedral, he limped like a man deformed, which in a way he was, his feet being of noticeably larger proportion than the rest of his body. So it wasn’t long before all of Florence knew that the conqueror sent to absolve us of our sins was in fact a dwarf with six toes on each foot. I am pleased to say that I was one of the crowd who spread the rumor around the square that day. And thus did I learn something of how history is written: that while it is not always accurate, one can still be part of the making of it.

Despite the gossip, it was impossible not to be in awe of the spectacle. Hours after the king had left the square to cries of
Viva Francia!
rising up like choral evensong behind him and was safely ensconced in the Medici Palace, Florence was still bursting with the arrival of the infantry and the cavalry. There were so many horses that the air was high with their dung, ground into the cobbles by the artillery guns they pulled behind them. But the most impressive of all were the archers and crossbow men: thousands upon thousands of armed peasants, such numbers that I worried that France might be a country now guarded only by its women until my husband told me that most of the army was not French at all but mercenaries hired for the campaign, expensively in the case of the Swiss Guard, much cheaper for the warriors from Scotland. And I was glad that these were not the men who would be billeted upon us, because I had never seen anything like them: giants from the North with great manes of straw hair and beards as red as my father’s dyes, so matted and filthy that one could only wonder that their bows did not get caught in them as they fired.

THE INVASION LASTED ELEVEN DAYS. THE TROOPS BILLETED UPON US
were well enough behaved: two knights from the city of Toulouse with their servants and entourage. We dined with them the night after their arrival, laying out my husband’s best plate and cutlery—though they had no idea how to use the forks they were presented with—and they treated me with due deference, kissing my hand and commenting on my beauty, by which I knew they were either blind or liars, and since they could see their way to the wine flagon well enough I concluded the latter. I heard later from Erila that their servants had the similar table manners of pigs but that in other ways they kept their hands to themselves, instructions that must have been issued to the army as a whole, because nine months later there was no obvious epidemic of foundling French babies turned on the wheel at the Ospedale degli Innocenti, though we were later to discover another gift from their occasional courtship that was to cause us more grief than a few extra souls on earth.

Over dinner they spoke with passion about their great king and the glory of his campaign, but when they were better lubricated they confessed to a certain longing for home and weariness about how far their warmongering would take them. The final destination was the Holy Land, but you could see they had their eyes set more on the comforts of Naples, where they had heard the women were fair in their darkness and the riches theirs for the taking. As for the greatness of Florence—well, they were men of battle rather than art and while my husband’s statue gallery impressed them, they were more interested in where they could buy new cloth. (I learned later that there were those Florentines who made small fortunes from the invasion by swallowing their patriotism in favor of their pockets.) To be fair, one of the knights spoke with enthusiasm about the marvel of the cathedral and seemed interested when I told him he could find a gilt statue of Saint Louis, the patron saint of his home city, by our great Donatello above the door of the façade of Santa Croce. But whether he sought it out or not, I do not know. What I do know is that they ate and drank a great deal during those eleven days, because the cook kept records of the amounts consumed, since it had been agreed by the truce that the army would pay its own maintenance.

AT FIRST THE CITY PUT ON HER BEST FACE TO
IMPRESS HER
conquerors. A special performance of the Annunciation was staged at San Felice and my husband managed to get us places, a considerable feat, seeing as I could find no other Medici supporters in the congregation. I had been taken as a child to such an event once at the Carmine monastery, where I had a memory of gossamer clouds strung across the nave of the church and how, at a certain moment, a chorus of little boys had been revealed suspended among them, dressed as angels, one of them so patently terrified that when everyone else began to sing he howled so loudly that he had to be lowered down.

There were boy angels in San Felice this day too, but none of them cried. The church was transformed. A cupola like a second roof had been built and hung from the beams above the central nave, its interior painted the deepest blue with a hundred tiny lamps suspended inside so that you seemed to look up into the night sky with stars in the firmament. Around its base in the heavens stood twelve shining child angels on little plinths. But that was the least of it. For when the moment came for the Annunciation, a rotating second sphere was lowered carrying eight angels, older boys now, and then, from inside that, a further sphere encasing a final, older Angel Gabriel. As he descended he moved his wings to and fro, causing a myriad of lights to flicker around him, as if he brought the very stars of heaven down with him.

While I sat, more astonished even than Mary, my husband made me look up again and note how each sphere of angels could be read as an accentuated lesson in perspective: the biggest at the bottom moving to the smallest at the top. So in this way we could appreciate not only the glory of God but the perfection of the laws of nature and our artist’s mastery over them. He told me that this elaborate stage device had been the invention of none other than the renowned Brunelleschi, its secret handed down through the years since his death.

While there is no record of what the king of France thought of it all, I know we Florentines were mightily proud and impressed. Yet when I look back on it now I find it hard to distinguish between my joy at the spectacle and the quieter pleasure that came from my husband’s erudition and the way he taught me to look deeper into things I might otherwise have missed. When we headed back that night through the crowded streets, he guided me by the elbow so we moved like two sleek fishes through a tumbling sea. After we reached our house, we sat talking for a while of all we had witnessed and he accompanied me to my room, where he kissed me on the cheek and thanked me for my company before retiring to his study. As I lay in bed thinking back on all that I had seen, I could almost believe that my freedom had been worth whatever sacrifice I had made to get it. And that Cristoforo, whatever he might do in the future, had made an honest start to our bargain.

In the days that followed, the government was kept busy swapping compliments with the king and ratifying a treaty that made his occupation look like an invitation and gave him a great loan for his war chest, presumably in thanks for not sacking the city. While the officials were polite enough to one another, on the streets the atmosphere soured faster and a few would-be young warriors started to pitch stones at the invaders, who in turn gave sword blows back, and in this way a dozen or so Florentines were killed. Not exactly a massacre, or even glorious resistance, but a reminder at least of the spirit we had lost. Aware that his welcome was growing thin and advised by Savonarola that God would go with him if he went fast, Charles mobilized his army and they marched out at the end of November, with a good deal less ceremony and crowd to cheer them on their way—which could have had something to do with the fact that they left without paying their bills—our own good Toulouse noblemen included—liars to the end.

Two days later, my husband, who had slept in the house for the whole time, a gentleman, for his wife’s safety, left also.

Without him and our invaders, the palazzo suddenly felt cold and stern. The rooms were dark, the wood paneling stained with age, the tapestries moth-eaten, and the windows too small to let in much light. And because I was scared that my solitude might tumble me into a pit of self-pity, the next morning I woke Erila at dawn and together we set out to test the new freedom of my married life on the streets.