The Birth of Venus (9 page)

Eleven

W
ITH CHARLES AND HIS ARMY ON THE TUSCAN BORDER AND
panic sniffing around the city gates, Florence took herself to church. There were so many people in Santa Maria del Fiore that Sunday that the crowd spewed out onto the steps below. My mother said it was the greatest gathering she had ever seen for a service, but it felt to me as if we were waiting for Judgment Day. Gazing up into the dome, I felt—as I always did—a sudden vertigo, as if its very scale unbalanced one’s mind.

My father says Brunelleschi’s wonder is still the talk of Europe—how such a great structure could have risen without the traditional help of supporting beams. Even now when I imagine the final coming I think of Santa Maria del Fiore filled with the mass of the godly risen from the grave, the dome alive with the beating of angel wings.

Still, I would hope Judgment Day might smell better, since the stink of so many bodies hung in the air like a fog of foul incense that day. Already a number of the poorer women had fainted, but then the more devout had apparently begun fasting, on Savonarola’s orders, to bring the city back to God. It would take longer for the rich to swoon, though I noticed they had been careful to dress down; this was not the time to risk being found guilty of vanity.

By the time Savonarola climbed into the pulpit the place was humming with godliness, but it fell deathly silent upon his arrival. It was the supreme irony of the age that Florence’s ugliest man was also her most godly. Yet it was a testimony to his eloquence that when he preached you forgot his dwarf body, his drilling little eyes, and the nose hooked like an eagle’s beak. Together he and his archenemy Lorenzo would have been the stuff of gargoyles. One could almost imagine the diptych in which their profiles confronted each other, their noses as powerful as their personalities, the city of Florence—their battlefield—in the background. But who would risk such a painting now? Who would dare to commission it?

His enemies said he was so small that to raise himself up he stood on books, translations of Aristotle and the classics that his monks procured for him so his feet could despoil them. Others claimed he used the stool from his cell, one of the few pieces of furniture that he allowed himself in a life of extreme asceticism. It was said that his was the only cell in San Marco without a devotional painting, so much suspicion did he have about the power of art to undermine the purity of faith, and that he stilled any cravings of the flesh by whipping himself daily. While there had always been those in the church with an appetite for flagellation, it was a delicacy of suffering that did not appeal to everyone. Looking back on it now, I think we Florentines were always a people more interested in pleasure than pain, though at times of crisis fear bred its own desire for self-punishment.

He stood for a moment in silence, his hands clutching the edge of the stone, his eyes raking the great crowd around him. “It is written that the shepherd should welcome his flock. But today I do not welcome you.” The voice that came out began as a hiss, growing louder with each succeeding word until it filled the cathedral and rose up unto the heaven of the dome. “For today you crowd into God’s house only because fear and despair lick at your feet like the flames of hell and because you long for redemption.

“So you come to me, to a man whose own unworthiness is matched only by the Lord’s generosity in making him His mouthpiece. Yes, the Lord shows Himself to me. He blesses me with His vision and unveils the future. The army that waits on our border was foretold. It is the sword I saw hanging above the city. There is no fury like the fury of God.
‘They shall cast their silver in the streets and their gold shall be removed: all their silver and gold shall not be able to deliver them in the day of the wrath of the Lord.’
And Florence lies like a carcass swarming with flies in the burning path of His vengeance.”

Even for those who knew their scriptures well it was hard to see the seams. He was working up a sweat now, his hood thrown back, the nose moving to and fro like a great beak pecking at sparrows. At first, when he began preaching, it was said that his voice was thin and wheezy and that, in response to his sermons, old women would fall asleep and dogs would howl at the church door. He had found his voice now, and it rolled out like thunder. The Greeks might call it demagoguery, but there was more to it than that. He spoke to everyone; in his godliness, sin was the great leveler, undermining power and wealth. He knew how to mix his message with the yeast of politics, which is why the privileged feared him so much. But these thoughts came later. At the time you just listened.

From out of his robes he pulled a small mirror. He held it up toward the crowd. At a certain angle it caught a blaze of candlelight and sent it spinning around the church. “See this, Florence? I hold up a mirror to your soul and what does it show? Decay and rot. This, which was once a godly city, now pours more filth down its streets than the Arno on a flooding tide.
‘Enter not the path of the wicked and go not in the way of evil men.’
But Florence has blocked her ears to the words of the Lord. When the night comes down, the beast starts to walk and the battle for her soul begins.”

Next to me I felt Luca shift in his seat. In the study room the only texts he ever showed any interest in were the ones that had war and bloodshed in them. If there was fighting to be done, whoever the enemy, he would want to be there.

“In each dark alley where the light of God has been blown out there is sin and violation. Remember the broken body of that pure young woman. There is outrage and sodomy.
‘Burn out their foulness, Lord, and let their bodies renounce sin in torment and everlasting fires.’
There is lust, there is fornication.
‘The lips of strange women drop as honeycomb, but her end is bitter as wormwood, sharp as a two-edged sword. Her feet go down into death and her steps take hold on hell.’
”

Even Tomaso was paying attention now, spoiled, pampered Tomaso, whose looks drew women like moths to the candle flame. When had he last thought about hell? Well, he was thinking about it now. You could see it in his eyes. For all of his usual insouciance, the thought of those mutilated bodies and the threat of a French army at the gates were inside him now. I stared at his face, intrigued by this new anxiety. He felt my gaze and, scowling at me, dropped his head.

As he did so, another face from across the rows of pews came into focus above his: a man staring directly at me with a clear shine in his eyes. He was immediately familiar, but it took me a moment to place him. Of course: Plautilla’s wedding. The man who had talked of Greek and then helped me through the steps. As the look between us connected he nodded slightly, and I thought I saw a slight smile move across his face. His blatant attention confused me and I turned back to the pulpit.

“Ask yourself, men and women of Florence. Why does God march the French army toward us now? It is to show us that our city has forgotten Christ’s message. A city that has become dazzled by false gold, that has put learning above piety, the so-called wisdom of pagans over the word of God.”

As the river of wrath poured over us again, from the body of the church there came a low moaning of voices, a kind of chorus of despair. “‘
Behold, because you have set at nought all my counsel I will laugh at your calamity,
’ saith the Lord.
‘I will mock when your fear cometh as desolation and when destruction arrives as a whirlwind; when distress and anguish cometh upon you I will not answer.’
O Florence. When will you open your eyes and return to the ways of God?”

The moaning got louder. I could even hear the rattle starting in Luca’s throat. I glanced back up toward the man. He was not listening to Savonarola. He was still looking at me.

Twelve

F
OUR DAYS LATER, THE MUTILATED BODIES OF THE MAN
and the woman were found outside the city walls, in an olive grove off the road between Florence and the village of Impruneta.

The weather had been hot for so long that there were fears of drought and the harvest being ruined, and the church had organized a procession to bring the miraculous statue of Our Lady of Impruneta down into the city for prayers and a mass. If God was angry with Florence, He might still listen to the intercession of Our Lady. But as the procession gathered bigger and bigger crowds on its way to the city gates, stragglers fanned out from the path and into the fields—and so it was that a boy found himself wandering on the edge of a vineyard and he spotted bloody flesh under the vines. If I had been my father on the Security Council, I might have asked what fool had allowed the transportation of the bodies to a place so obvious, but of course no one said a thing.

Because the crime had taken place outside the city walls, it was not strictly a Florentine affair so there were no damning proclamations in the City Square. Still, the news of the murders traveled like the plague. The woman was a prostitute and the man her client and their corpses were stinking, the wounds alive with maggots. Ours was not a queasy city. If the woman had been prosecuted for licentiousness, a healthy crowd would have gathered to watch her nose cut off. Those same people had probably seen entrails split in the name of justice before now, but the blasphemous punishment in this violence burned its way into people’s minds and brought the friar’s dark prophesies echoing back. What man could possibly have done such a thing? It was an act of such depravity that it was easier to read it as retribution: the Devil pulling himself up from hell and stalking the streets to claim his own early.

At home my father brought us together again to report how the French envoys had come and gone, laden with gifts and honeyed promises of neutrality, but no safe conduct. Would it be enough, or would Charles have the nerve to invade Tuscany? All we could do was wait. And still the heat continued. Our Lady’s intercession, it seemed, was not enough.

I sat in my room. My Annunciation was finished, but I was already dissatisfied with it. Our Lady’s discomfort was captured well enough and the Angel had a certain verve to his movements, but their world was monochrome and my fingers were itching for color. In the past I had done my best with household alchemy. I had used egg yolks filched from the kitchen (my love of meringues was legendary with the cook), which, mixed into white lead, could produce a shade close to that of skin. I had made my own black out of the grounds of burned almond shells and soot gathered from the linseed-oil lamp, and once I had even forged a passable shade of verdigris by pouring strong vinegar into copper bowls. But there had been uproar in the kitchen when the stained bowls had been discovered, and the quality of the paint produced was feeble. Anyway, what stories could you illustrate using black, white, and green?

It was almost a week since the painter and I had parted company in the chapel. The workmen had begun erecting the scaffolding for him to begin. I could not wait any longer. I called for Erila.

Since the news of my bleeding she had become excited on my behalf. Once a husband was selected for me, she would find herself in a house in which her mistress would be
the
mistress and her new influence would know no limits. She had much more of an appetite for life than many slaves. But then it had not been as cruel to her as to others. There were some houses where as she got older she would have been taken advantage of—the city was littered with big-bellied slaves who served their masters in the bedroom as well as the dining room—but my father was not like that, and though Luca had tried his luck she had sent him away with a flea in his ear. Tomaso, as far as I knew, had never bothered. He had too much respect for his own vanity to put himself through anything that didn’t lead to certain victory.

“And when I find the painter, what do I say to him?”

“Ask him when I can deliver them. He’ll know what that means.”

“And do you?” she said sharply.

“Erila, please. Just do this one thing for me. There’s not a lot of time left.”

And though she looked at me sternly enough she went anyway, and when she arrived back later and told me he would be in the garden early tomorrow morning I thanked her and told her I would go myself.

I rose at dawn. The smell of fresh baking hung in the air and turned my stomach with hunger. The garden in the back courtyard was my mother’s greatest joy. It was young still, the growth of barely half a dozen summers, but my father had stocked it with plants brought from his villa so there was an air of maturity to it even then. There was a sprouting fig, a pomegranate and a walnut tree, a run of box hedge shot through with aromatic myrtle, an herb garden rich enough to service the kitchens with quantities of sage, mint, rosemary, stonewort, and basil, and a colorful show of flowers that changed with the seasons. My mother, with an ear for Platonic sweetness, thought gardens were close to God, and she was always extolling the virtues of contemplation for the growing mind. I used it mostly for copying shrubs and flowers, of which there were enough varieties to supply a dozen separate Annunciation and Nativity scenes.

There was, however, one drawback. To the plants my mother had added wildlife: doves with clipped wings and her beloved peacocks, two cocks and three hens. For her alone they reserved their respect, even affection. They could tell her footfall, and as she arrived, usually with a bag of seed, the cocks would rush to her. After they had eaten they would strut away, spreading their fans for her. I hated them, both their vanity and their viciousness. Once, when I was younger and entranced by their colors, I had tried to pet one and it had bitten me, and since then their beaks had been the stuff of my nightmares. When I thought of the corpses in the field or the young girl covered in animal bites, I couldn’t help but imagine what the peacocks’ beaks might have made of their eyes.

But that morning they found other prey. The painter was seated on the stone bench, a set of brushes and a dozen tiny pots of mixed paint by his side. In front of him the two cocks stood pecking at tossed seed, both tails stubbornly closed and drooping behind them, and he was watching them intently. But when they saw me one of them let out an irritable shriek, and its plumage exploded up in a dance of threat as it turned on me.

“Ah . . . don’t move,” he said, grabbing the brushes, his hands flying over the pots, mixing the colors in his mind before they reached his fingers.

But my paralysis was real enough. “Please!” I said. Now it was his turn to see me in distress. He stared at me for a moment, caught between his brush and my panic, then took some seed from a pouch and held it out, making a strange chucking noise at the back of his throat. The bird jerked its head as if in recognition and strutted toward the outstretched palm.

“You have no need to be scared of them. They are harmless.”

“That’s what you think. I still have the scars to prove different.” I stood watching him. It took a certain spirit to have such birds eating out of one’s hand. My mother and he were the only ones I had ever seen manage it. “How do you do that? It’s so unfair that God has given you the fingers of Fra Angelico
and
the touch of Saint Francis.”

He kept his eyes on the cock. “In the monastery it was my job to feed the animals.”

“Not this kind,” I muttered.

“No,” he said, his eyes fixed on their outrageous plumage, “I’ve never seen these creatures before. Though I’ve heard stories.”

“Why do you need to paint them? I didn’t think Santa Caterina communed with animals.”

“Angel wings,” he said, as its cruel little beak darted to and from his hand, “for the Resurrection on the ceiling of the chapel. I am in need of feathers.”

“In which case you had better be careful your angels don’t outshine God.” And as I said it I thought how much easier it was for us today, speaking to each other in this way, as if the discord of the chapel darkness had been burned off by the morning sun. “What did you use in the North?”

“Doves . . . geese, and swans.”

“Of course. Your white Gabriel.” And I saw again the billowing wings of the crude fresco in his room. But he was learning fluency in color now. I could see it on his hands. What would I not give to have my nails caked with the dried blood of so many shades? The cock, having pecked its fill, sauntered away, paying me the final insult of ignoring me. The bright morning air was still between us, my yearning as fresh as the dew on the leaves. He picked up his brush again. I moved closer. “Who mixes your colors, painter?”

“I do.”

“It is hard?”

He shook his head, his fingers moving fast. “At first maybe. Not now.”

I could feel my fingers itching with the need to touch the colors, so much so that I had to clench my fist by my side. “I can name every shade on every wall in Florence, and I know the recipes for a dozen of them. But even if I could get the ingredients I have no workshop to mix them and no time that is my own without supervision.” I stopped. “I am so tired of pen and ink. It gives shade without life, and everything I capture with it looks somehow melancholy.”

This time he looked up at me and our eyes met. And as in the chapel I swear that he understood. The roll of drawings was burning the palm of my hand. Inside was my Annunciation and a dozen others picked as much for their ambition as their precision. It was now or never. I could feel fear like sudden sweat on my palms, and it made me harsher toward him than I intended. I held them out to him now. “I do not want diplomacy, do you understand? I want the truth.”

He didn’t move, and in the silence after my words I knew that I had damaged something that had been growing between us, but I was too nervous to know how else to behave.

“I’m sorry. I cannot judge them for you,” he said quietly. “All I can do is my own work.”

Though he did not say it unkindly, his words were like the peck of the peacock’s beak into my soul. “Then my father was mistaken in your talent. And you will always be an apprentice and never a master.” My hand was still outstretched. I let the papers fall onto the bench by his side. “Your opinion or your reputation. You leave me no choice, painter.”

“And what choice does that leave me?” This time he didn’t look away. The gaze lasted a long time, well beyond politeness, until in the end it was I who dropped my eyes.

At the end of the garden Erila appeared. For the sake of appearances I whirled upon her, though I knew she had been keeping watch over us. “What are you doing?” I switched to Italian. “Spying on me—”

“Oh, madam, please don’t stamp your foot at me,” she said meekly, her humility blatantly fake. “Your mother is looking for you.”

“My mother! At this time? What did you tell her?”

“That you were in the garden drawing leaves.”

“Oh!” I turned on him. “Oh, you must go.” I said in Latin. “Quickly. She mustn’t find you here with me.”

“What about your leaves?”

His Italian was getting better. He took up a piece of charcoal. My mother’s orange bush grew underneath his fingers, the fruit so heavy you could feel it ready to drop. As he handed me the paper I didn’t know whether to laugh or cry. He gathered his paints and put them in a bag by his side. Then he took the sheaf of drawings and slipped them in too.

“I don’t care what you say,” I called after him. “Just don’t lie to me.”

THE COOK
’
S FRESH BREAD WENT WELL WITH SLICES OF QUINCE
preserve. I ate too much while my mother, unnaturally fluttery with nerves, drank only watered wine. The letter had come by an early messenger, though she must surely have known about it in advance; my sister Plautilla had invited family and friends to a small gathering. The baby was due within a few months and now was the time to show off all the fine linen and clothes bought in preparation for the event. I didn’t give it a second thought. My mother, on the other hand, seemed to do nothing but think about it. She ordered Erila to do my hair and lay out a selection of my wardrobe in advance.

“If you don’t approve of him, you’d better find some good reason fast,” Erila said with a mouthful of pins, as she scraped my hair back under the heavy pearl combs.

“What do you mean?”

“I mean when did you last get trussed up like a banquet chicken to visit your sister?”

She teased the second ringlet out of the hot tongs and we watched in the glass as it curled down the side of my face. For a second the two sat in perfect symmetry; then the left slipped resolutely lower than its partner.

When my mother saw me, she didn’t even try to hide her anxiety. “Oh, dear. Your hair is very dark, isn’t it? Perhaps we should have used dye after all. Still, I am sure we can do better with your dress. Let’s see. The gold shot is still in fashion, but I think your father would approve more of one of your brighter silks. The Brazil red from the Western Indies goes well with your complexion.”

My father, though he believed in the efficacy of wearing the business, had never knowingly made a remark on my wardrobe that I could remember.

“You don’t think it is a little grand?” I said. “We would not want to provoke the wrath of the godly on the streets.”

“The preacher does not rule the city yet,” my mother retorted, and I think it was the first time I had heard a note of disdain toward him. “We may still dress as we please where the family is concerned. The shade suits you. And put some effort into your face. Maybe just a touch of white powder to lighten your complexion. Erila can do it for you if she doesn’t waste too much time gossiping.”

“Mama,” I said, “if by any chance this is about a man, it would be easier to pick one who was blind. That way he couldn’t see my defects.”

“Oh, my dear, but you’re wrong. You are lovely. Lovely. There is great bloom and shine to your spirit.”

“I am clever,” I said sourly. “It is not the same thing, as I have been told many times.”