The King's Agent (51 page)

Aurelia cocked an eye at him. “It could not have gone so easily, surely?”

Battista shook his head. “It did not. At that same moment, Cardinal Passerini arrived at the head of the duke of Urbino’s cavalry. So many of them, we stopped counting. To this day, no one knows who opened a gate to them. Then the real fighting began.” Battista’s recollections doused his joy, his head hung with the heaviness. “So many died. So much bloodshed.”

Aurelia reached out and grabbed his hand, squeezing it with all her might.

Battista looked up and began again, hands waving in the air with the riotous story. “But the cardinal wanted to retake the palace and the committee of the people would have none of it. They bolted the doors. The duke and his men attacked them with long pikes, but those inside took to the windows and the roof. They threw everything and anything down upon the marauders, furniture, armor, crockery. It was outrageous. It was all wonderful, except ...”

She slapped at his hand as he left her hanging once more. “Except. . . ?”

Battista shook his head. “Something struck the Giant. I thought Michelangelo would die. The left arm broke off, just below the elbow.” He pitched her a sidelong look. “But you knew that would happen,
sì?
”

Aurelia’s mouth stretched into a grim line. “I had a thought of it, nothing more. I had hoped he could stop it.”

“He could not. Nothing that day could be stopped.”

“Tell me the rest,” she urged him from the very edge of her chair.

Battista shrugged. “The fighting continued for days. It was unlike war, Aurelia, it was carnage in the street.” He looked up at her, a bright star in his deep brown eyes, the smile returning to his well-formed mouth. “But we took the ground. The Republic indeed lives.”

Aurelia jumped up and threw herself in his arms; it was the greatest trophy any warrior ever wished to attain. She pulled back of a sudden, pushing him away.

“And what of the Giant? What of Michelangelo?”

Battista laughed. “You will not believe it. It seems one of Michelangelo’s apprentices, Guido, ah, no, Giorgio, Giorgio Vas-sari, and a friend by the name of Cecchino, I believe ... it makes no matter, though. In the ruckus, they retrieved all the broken pieces, and in the middle of that first night they went to Michelangelo’s house to tell him they were hidden at Rossi’s father’s house, another of the artist’s apprentices. They were all safe.”

“And ... he can repair him?”

Battista nodded. “He does so as we speak.”

Aurelia sighed deeply with profound relief.

“We did not save Florence,
cara mia,
but Florence was saved nonetheless.” Battista tipped his forehead to hers; his story told, the worst of the past few months over, he found release and care in her arms.

“We may not have saved Florence, but we spared the world a terrible fate, never doubt it,” she whispered, safe in their intimacy. “You spared the world.”

Battista smiled without opening his eyes, wanting nothing more than to rest in this very spot for the rest of his days. “I have done my best, I can say no more.” He laughed. “I think I may give up my plundering and live off my bounty.”

Aurelia pulled her head away, piercing him with the intensity of her glare. “Be not at war, Battista, I wish it for you with all my heart. But you must be forever on your guard. You have mixed your lot with mine. You cannot doubt what it may mean.”

He kissed her quick and light. “It is where I belong, it is—”

“You must never forget the evil that taints the good in this world,” she plunged ahead, allowing him no room to naysay her. “So many men throughout time have thrown their lot in with the bad. You must always beware. Even I, and those who will come after me, can never know all the powers at work in this world. Dante knew of man’s woes, men’s darkness. We can never forget.” She squeezed his shoulders, her thin fingers digging into his arm, and shook him as she would a mischievous child. “Promise me, Battista.”

He looked down at her, convinced by the potency of her warning and the ardency of her emotions. All they had seen and done ... he could never deny any possibility ever again. “I promise, my lady. To you, I swear it.”

Aurelia’s smile lifted with reassurance, gaze moving to his mouth, lips opening to him. With a low moan of pleasure, he met her invitation, lips brushing hers before capturing them tenderly.

They barely heard the light knock on the door and, though they both desired to, they did not ignore it.

“Enter,” Aurelia called, her soft breath caressing his face.

“
Per favore
, madonna.” The young maid opened the door a crack and leaned her head in. “The marquess says it is time for your guest to depart.”

“Yes, of course,” Aurelia responded, and turned to the maid. “We will be out in just a moment.”

The maid dipped a curtsy but not without a waggle of her brows at her mistress; Aurelia giggled like a young girl.

“There are many who care about you here,” Battista said grudgingly. “I am glad of it. But there are more who love you back in Florence.”

Aurelia stepped away, but he pulled her to him yet again.

“Come with me.” It was a last desperate plea, one he knew she must deny, one he had to make regardless.

She reached up, her soft fingertips closing his lips. “For all things there is time and purpose. We must serve our time and our purpose. To be together would change both.”

He kissed her fingertips; he would bother her no more. As he had heard her tell the marquess, he would accept the joys of what they had, without dwelling on what they could not have.

“I will walk you out,” she said, and, curling her hand in his arm, led him through the palace and out into the courtyard.

Gonzaga waited for them in the sparkling sunshine, the scent of warmed stone sharp in the air. The marquess cast upon him a most particular look, and Battista feared reprisal came at last. But Federico approached with an extended hand. Battista took it with cautionary surprise.

“I come to bid you farewell and safe journey, della Palla.” Federico looked up at him with an eye of respect. “I blame you not, not at all. You served my ward well. Nothing else needs to be said.”

“She is well worth serving, signore.” Battista shook the hand in his. “It was my honor to do so.”

From beside him Aurelia yelped with delight, tossing off his hand and running to the near courtyard gate.

Turning, Battista smiled. Aurelia rushed at Frado, who had appeared in the square, his and Battista’s horses’ reins in hand. Battista’s smile turned to laughter as she threw her arms around the startled man, unable to deny the twinge of pain at the sight of these two—two so very dear to him—sharing their mutual affection.

Turning from the marquess with a tip of his head, Battista neared the pair in time to hear Aurelia’s decree.

“I leave him to your capable hands, dear fellow,” Aurelia said sweetly.

“Sì, donna mia.”
Frado blushed. “Of course, my lady.”

Aurelia turned to Battista, parting no longer deniable.

He bowed, taking her hand and brushing the soft underside of her wrist with his lips. Neither would say the word; they simply smiled as space rose up between them.

“Once a year,” Aurelia called out as he approached his horse. He twisted back round in silent question.

“Once a year, I am allowed guests,” she said again. “But none have ever called.”

His heart trembled in his chest, mouth curling, kissed by a bittersweet grin. “Then perhaps I shall be the first.”

Aurelia’s lips puffed with air; her eyes glistened. “The first,
sì
. And the only.”

Battista’s restraint broke. Dropping his reins, he ran back, pulled her to him, and heedless of the eyes upon them—from the courtyard, from the stairs, from the windows of the palazzo above—his mouth lit upon hers, drinking of her with a deep and passionate kiss.

Lifting slightly, he brushed his lips over hers, across her moist cheek, to flutter against her ear, where he whispered the words of Dante:

“ ‘O lady, you in whom my hope gains strength, you who, for my salvation, have allowed your footsteps to be left in Hell, in all the things that I have seen, I recognize the grace and benefit that I, depending upon your power and goodness, have received.’ ”

Battista lifted his head just enough to see her face, the glow of her sweet smile.

“ ‘You drew me out from slavery to freedom by all those paths, by all those means that were within your power. Do, in me, preserve your generosity, so that my soul, which you have healed, when it is set loose from my body, be a soul that you will welcome.’ ”

POSTSCRIPT

I saw within Its depth how It conceives all things in a single volume bound by Love, of which the universe is the scattered leaves

—Paradiso

P
ope Clement VII remained a prisoner in the Castel Sant’Angelo for many months. He exchanged his life for a ransom of 400,000 ducats as well as the cession of many highly coveted territories within the Papal States. Disguised as a peddler, he escaped Rome and took refuge first in Orvieto and then in Viterbo. When he returned to Rome, in the fall of 1528, he was to find a city destroyed and deserted. Clement became a weak, ineffectual man, in many ways the puppet of the emperor, in order to secure the fate of the Medici family. In later years, it appeared Clement would tip his alliance back toward France, but the world was never to know. He died in 1534, after ingesting the death cap mushroom. Only a few days before his demise, Pope Clement VII commissioned Michelangelo to paint the altar wall of the Sistine Chapel.

Historians disagree on the extent of collusion on the part of Charles V, the Holy Roman Emperor, in the sack of Rome. Charles had tried for some time to gain an audience with the pope, only to be turned away. Some theories propound that Charles’s men took the matter into their own hands, gaining him access in an unprecedented violent manner. There are, however, an equal number of theories claiming Charles was, at heart, a peaceful man, though his life was occupied by a series of wars, a man committed to opposing and thwarting the Protestant reform. These same speculations claim the emperor was embarrassed by the acts committed in his name, though he suffered no compunction in taking full advantage of their victory.

Most all agree that May 6, 1527, when Rome fell, marks the end of the Renaissance era.

Every year on May 6, new recruits are sworn in to the Swiss Guard in commemoration of the soldiers’ bravery on that fateful day.

In 1529, the emperor’s forces—with the blessing of the pope—besieged Florence. The citizens of the Republic, including Battista della Palla and Michelangelo Buonarroti, fought bravely for many months, though they fell, in the end, to the emperor’s superior military might. When the Republic tumbled in 1530, Charles V restored the power of the Medici, who were to rule until 1737.

Battista della Palla returned to his art acquisition during the siege, hoping to bolster Florence’s supplies and allies. For the French king, François I, Battista attempted to acquire the celebrated panels of the
Story of Joseph
painted by a trio of artists, Andrea del Sarto, Jacopo Pontormo, and Il Bacchiacca, from Pierfrancesco Borgherini. Borgherini’s wife thrust herself between della Palla and his bounty, castigating him as “a most vile dealer in secondhand goods, a cheap salesman,” one determined “to dismantle the furnishings of respectable men’s bedrooms.”

During his lifetime, della Palla “acquired” many remarkable masterpieces, Pollaiuolo’s
Labours of Hercules,
Pontormo’s
Raising of Lazarus,
Andrea del Sarto’s
Abraham Sacrificing Isaac
and
Charity,
and Rosso Fiorentino’s
Moses and the Daughters of Jethro,
to name but a few. Most, if not all, found their way to France and the hands of its king, and many still hang upon the walls of the Louvre. When Florence fell and the Medici returned as ducal rulers, Battista della Palla was imprisoned for life in the fortress of Pisa, where he was murdered in 1532. Though there is no evidence of a marriage, his letters speak of a love that ruled his heart.

Elected to the Nove della Milizia, the Militia Nine, Michelangelo served Florence as Governor General of Fortifications. He designed and engineered the defenses of Florence against the forces of the emperor and the Medici pope. Once the family of despots had been restored to power, Pope Clement eventually pardoned Michelangelo, having earlier dubbed him as an outlaw, and returned his properties to him, those in both Florence and Rome.

At the age of sixty-two, Michelangelo Buonarroti began three years of work on one of the greatest of all his masterpieces,
The Last Judgment
. Essayed upon the altar wall of the Sistine Chapel, it was the largest ever completed in a single fresco at the time. Many say he worked as a man possessed, answering a call from above.

From the description of symptoms Michelangelo presented with in the last days of his life, it seems clear he suffered a series of strokes before dying, at the astounding age of eighty-eight, of a slow fever.

Michelangelo penned many a verse throughout the course of his years. In one, he divulged the sum of his life, and that of this humble author, with but a few short words:

If I was made for art, from childhood given
A prey for burning beauty to devour,
I blame the mistress I was born to serve.

ON DANTE AND THE LEGEND OF ZELDA

Dante Alighieri wrote his
Commedia
between 1308 and 1321, finishing just months before his passing. The work was dubbed “divine” in 1555. The epic poem has been translated more than 120 times. The seminal translation, and the one used for the basis and creative inspiration of this book, was that done by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow in 1867.