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The following morning, gazing on Giuliano in the Duomo, Leonardo dwelled on his own unhappy passion. He recalled, again and again, the painful instant when he had seen the look pass between Giuliano and the woman, when he had realized Giuliano’s heart belonged to her, and hers to him; and he cursed himself for being vulnerable to such a foolish emotion as jealousy.
He had been so ensnared by his reverie that he had been startled by the sudden movement in front of him. A robed figure stepped forward a fraction of a second before Giuliano turned to look behind him, then released a sharp gasp.
There followed Baroncelli’s hoarse shout. Leonardo had stared up, stricken, at the glint of the raised blade. In the space of a breath, the frightened worshipers scattered, pulling the artist backwards with the tide of bodies. He had thrashed, struggling vainly to reach Giuliano, with the thought of protecting him from further attack, but he could not even hold his ground.
In the wild scramble, Leonardo’s view of Baroncelli’s knife entering Giuliano’s flesh had been blocked. But Leonardo had seen the final blows of Francesco’s unspeakably brutal attack – the dagger biting, again and again, into Giuliano’s flesh, just as Archbishop Salviati would, in due turn, bite into Francesco de’ Pazzi’s shoulder.
The instant he realized what was happening, Leonardo let go of a loud shout – inarticulate, threatening, horrified – at the attackers. At last the crowd cleared; at last no one stood between him and the assassins. He had run towards them as Francesco, still shrieking, moved on. But it was too late to shelter, to protect, Giuliano’s good, innocent spirit.
Leonardo dropped to his knees beside the fallen man. He lay half-curled on his side, his mouth still working; blood foamed at his lips and spilled from his wounds.
Leonardo pressed his hand to the worst of them, the gaping hole in Giuliano’s chest. He could hear the frail, gurgling wheeze of the victim’s lungs as they fought to expel blood and draw in air. But Leonardo’s efforts to staunch the flow were futile.
Each wound on the front of Giuliano’s pale green tunic released its own steady stream of blood. The streams forked then rejoined, creating a latticework over the young man’s body until at last they merged into the growing dark pool on the marble floor.
‘Giuliano,’ Leonardo had gasped, tears pouring down his cheeks at the sight of such suffering, at the sight of beauty so marred.
Giuliano did not hear him. He was beyond hearing, beyond sight: his half-open eyes already stared into the next world. As Leonardo hovered over him, he retched up a volume of bright, foaming blood; his limbs twitched briefly, then his eyes widened. Thus he died.
Now, standing in front of Lorenzo, Leonardo said nothing of Giuliano’s final suffering to Lorenzo, for such details would only fuel Lorenzo’s grief. He spoke not of Baroncelli, nor of Francesco de’ Pazzi. Instead, he spoke of a third man, one who had yet to be found.
Leonardo recounted that he had seen, in the periphery of his vision, a robed figure step forward on Giuliano’s right, and that he believed it was this man who had delivered the first blow. As Giuliano tried to back away from Baroncelli, the figure had stood fast – pressed hard against the victim and trapped him. The unknown did not even recoil when Francesco struck out wildly with the dagger, but remained firmly in place until Francesco and Baroncelli moved on.
Once Giuliano had died, Leonardo had glanced up and noticed the man moving quickly towards the door that led to the piazza. He must have paused at some point to look behind him, to be sure that his victim died.
‘Assassin!’ the artist had shouted. ‘Stop!’
There was such outraged authority, such pure force in his voice that the conspirator had stopped in mid-stride, and glanced swiftly over his shoulder.
Leonardo captured his image with a trained artist’s eye. The man wore the robes of a penitent – crude burlap – and his clean-shaven face was half-shadowed by a cowl. Only the lower half of his lip and his chin were visible.
Held close to his side, his hand gripped a bloodied stiletto.
After he had fled, Leonardo had gently rolled Giuliano’s body onto its side, and discovered the puncture – small but very deep – in his midback.
This he relayed to Lorenzo. But he did not admit what he knew in his tortured heart: that he, Leonardo, was responsible for Giuliano’s death.
His guilt was not irrational. It was the product of long meditation on the events that had occurred. Had he, the artist, not been so overcome by love and pain and jealousy, Giuliano might have lived.
It was Leonardo’s habit to study crowds – faces, bodies, posture – and from this, he usually learned a great deal of information. Almost as much could be read from a man’s back as from his front. If the artist had not been absorbed by thoughts of Giuliano and the woman, he would surely have noticed the exceptional tension in the penitent’s stance, for the man had been almost directly in front of him. He might have noticed something peculiar in Baroncelli or Francesco de’ Pazzi’s demeanour as they waited beside Giuliano. He should have sensed the anxiety of the three men, and deduced that Giuliano was in great danger.
If he had been paying attention, he would have seen the penitent surreptitiously reach for the stiletto; he would have noticed Baroncelli’s hand tensing on the hilt of his sword.
And there would have been time for him to take a single step forwards. To reach for the penitent’s hand. To move between Giuliano and Baroncelli.
Instead, his passion had reduced him to a witless bystander, rendered helpless by the panicked, fleeing crowd. And it had cost Giuliano his life.
He bowed his head at the weight of the guilt, then raised it again and looked in il Magnifico‘s sorrowful, eager eyes.
‘I am certain this man was disguised, my lord.’
Lorenzo was intrigued. ‘How can you possibly know that?’
‘His posture. Penitents indulge in self-flagellation, they wear hair shirts beneath their robes. Then slump, cringe, and move gingerly, because of the pain each time the shirt touches their skin. This man moved freely; his posture was straight and sure. But the muscles were tensed.
‘I believe, as well, that he was from the upper classes, given the dignity and gentility of his aspect.’
Lorenzo’s gaze was penetrating. ‘All this you have ascertained from a man’s movements, a man who was draped in a robe?’
Leonardo stared back unflinching. ‘I would not have come if I had not.’
‘Then you shall be my agent.’ Lorenzo’s eyes narrowed with hatred and determination. ‘You shall help me find this man.’
So, over the past year, Leonardo had been summoned several times to the prison in the Bargello, to carefully examine the lips and chins and postures of several unfortunate men. None of them had matched those of the penitent he had seen in the cathedral.
The night before Baroncelli’s execution, Lorenzo, had sent two guards to bring Leonardo to the palazzo on the Via Larga.
Lorenzo had changed little physically – save for the pale scar on his neck. If his unseen wound had similarly healed, this day had torn it open, rendered it fresh and raw.
Had Leonardo not been so stricken, he might have delighted in il Magnifico‘s unique features, especially his prominent nose. The bridge rose briefly just beneath the eyebrows, then flattened and abruptly disappeared, as if God had taken his thumb and squashed it down. Yet it rose again, rebellious and astonishing in its length, and sloped precipitously to the left. Its shape rendered his voice harshly nasal
That evening, il Magnifico wore a woollen tunic of deep rich blue; white ermine edged the collar and cuffs. He was an unhappy victor this night, but he seemed more troubled than gloating. ‘Perhaps you have already deduced why I have called for you,’ he said.
‘Yes. I am to go to the piazza tomorrow to look for the third man.’ Leonardo hesitated; he, too, was troubled. ‘I need your assurance first.’
‘Ask and I will give it. I have Baroncelli now; I cannot rest until the third assassin is found.’
‘Baroncelli is to die, and rumour has it that he has been tortured mercilessly.’
Lorenzo interrupted swiftly. ‘And with good reason. He was my best hope to find the third assassin; but if he does know him, he will take the secret to Hell.’
The bitterness in il Magnifico‘s tone gave Leonardo pause. ‘Ser Lorenzo, if I find this third assassin, I cannot in good conscience turn him over to be killed.’
Lorenzo recoiled as if he had been struck full in the face; his pitch rose with indignance. ‘You would let my brother’s murderer go free?’
‘No.’ Leonardo’s own voice trembled faintly. ‘I esteemed your brother more highly than any other.’
‘I know,’ Lorenzo replied softly, in a way that said he did know the full truth of the matter.
Gathering himself, Leonardo bowed his head, then lifted it again. ‘I want to see the man brought to justice – to be deprived of his freedom, condemned to work for the good of others, to be forced to spend the remainder of his life contemplating his crime.’
Lorenzo’s upper lip was invisible; his lower stretched so taut over his jutting lower teeth that the tips of them showed. ‘Such idealism is admirable.’ He paused. ‘I am a reasonable man – and like you, an honest one. If I agree that, should you find him, he will not be killed but instead imprisoned, will you go to the piazza to find him?’
‘I will,’ Leonardo promised. ‘And if I fail tomorrow, I will not stop searching until he is found.’
Lorenzo nodded, satisfied. He looked away, and stared at a Flemish painting of bewitching delicacy on his wall. ‘You should know that this man …’ He stopped himself, then started again. ‘This goes far deeper than the murder of my brother, Leonardo. They mean to destroy us.’
‘To destroy you and your family?’
Lorenzo faced him again. ‘You. Me. Botticelli. Verrochio. Perugino. Ghirlandaio. All that Florence represents.’ Leonardo opened his mouth to ask Who? Who means to do this?, but Lorenzo lifted a hand to silence him. ‘Go to the piazza tomorrow. Find the third man. I mean to question him personally.’
It was agreed that Lorenzo would pay Leonardo a token sum for a ‘commission’ – the sketch of Bernardo Baroncelli hanged, with the possibility that such a sketch might become a portrait. Thus Leonardo could honestly answer that he was in the Piazza della Signoria because Lorenzo de’ Medici wanted a drawing; he was a very bad liar, and prevarication did not suit him.
As he stood in the square on the cold December morning of Baroncelli’s death, staring intently at the face of each man who passed, he puzzled over il Magnifico’s words.
They mean to destroy us …
PART II LISA (#ulink_6adb8fc9-859c-53e4-95ed-07fb6d71d6b0)
XI (#ulink_7e7e44db-f787-5270-9b9f-d40fe09510cf)
I will always remember the day my mother told me the story of Giuliano de’ Medici’s murder.
It was a December day more than thirteen and a half years after the event; I was twelve. For the first time in my life, I stood inside the great Duomo, my head thrown back as I marvelled at the magnificence of Brunelleschi’s cupola while my mother, her hands folded in prayer, whispered the gruesome tale to me.
Midweek after morning Mass, the cathedral was nearly deserted, save for a sobbing widow on her knees just beyond the entry, and a priest replacing the tapers on the altar’s candelabra. We had stopped directly in front of the high altar, where the events of the assassination had taken place. I loved tales of adventure, and tried to picture a young Lorenzo de’ Medici, his sword drawn, leaping into the choir and running past the priests to safety.
I turned to look at my mother, Lucrezia, and tugged at her embroidered brocade sleeve. ‘What happened after Lorenzo escaped?’ I hissed. ‘What became of Giuliano?’
My mother’s eyes had filled with tears. She was, as my father often said, easily moved. ‘He died of his terrible wounds,’ she said, and sighed. ‘And the executions of the conspirators were horribly brutal … It was a horrible time for Florence.’
Zalumma, who stood on her other side, leaned forward to scowl a warning at me.
‘Didn’t anyone try to help Giuliano?’ I asked. ‘Or was he already dead? I would have at least gone to see if he was still alive.’
‘Hush,’ Zalumma warned me. ‘Can’t you see she is becoming upset?’
This was indeed cause for concern. My mother was not well, and agitation worsened her condition.
‘She was the one who told the story,’ I countered. ‘I did not ask for it.’
‘Quiet!’ Zalumma ordered. I was stubborn, but she was more so. She took my mother’s elbow and in a sweeter tone, said, ‘Madonna, it’s time to leave. We must get home before your absence is discovered.’
She referred to my father, who had spent that day, like most others, tending his business. He would be aghast if he returned to find his wife gone; this was the first time in years she had dared venture out so far and for so long.
We had secretly planned this outing for some time. I had never seen the Duomo, even though I had grown up looking at its great brick cupola from the opposite side of the Arno, from our house on the Via Maggio. All my life, I had attended our local church of Santo Spirito, with its interior classical columns and arches made of pietra serena, a fine, pale grey stone. Our main altar was also centred beneath a cupola designed by the great Brunelleschi, his final achievement; I had thought Santo Spirito, with its thirty-eight side altars impossibly grand, impossibly large – until I stood inside the great Duomo. The great cupola challenged the imagination. Gazing on it, I understood why, when it was first constructed, people were reluctant to stand beneath it. I understood, too, why some of those who had heard the shouting on the day of Giuliano’s murder had rushed outside, believing the great dome was finally collapsing.
Magic it was, for something so vast to rise into the air without visible support.
My mother had brought me to the Piazza del Duomo not just to marvel at the cupola, but to slake my yearning for art – and hers. She was well-born and well-educated; she adored poetry, which she read in Italian and Latin (both of which she had insisted on teaching me). She had passionately acquired a wealth of knowledge about the city’s cultural treasures – and had long been troubled by the fact that her illness had prevented her from sharing them with me. So when the opportunity arose, on that bright December day, we took a carriage east, and headed across the Ponte Vecchio, into the heart of Florence.
It would have been more efficient to head straight down the Via Maggio to the nearest bridge, the Ponte Santa Trinita, but that would have denied me a visual treat. The Ponte Vecchio was lined with the botteghe of goldsmiths and artists. Each bottega opened directly onto the street, with the owner’s wares prominently displayed in front of the shop. We all wore our best fur-lined capes to protect us from the chilly air, and Zalumma had tucked several thick woollen blankets around my mother. But I was too elated to feel cold; I stuck my head outside the carriage to gape at golden plaques, statuettes, belts, bracelets and Carnival masks. I gazed on chiselled marble busts of wealthy Florentines, on portraits in progress. In the early days, my mother said, the bridge was home to the tanners and fabric dyers, who used to dump their noxious-smelling chemicals directly into the Arno. The Medici had objected: The river was cleaner now than it had ever been, and the tanners and dyers worked in specified areas of the city.
On our way to the Duomo, our carriage paused in the vast piazza, in front of the imposing fortress known as the Palazzo della Signoria, where the Lord Priors of Florence met. On the wall of an adjacent building was a grotesque mural: paintings of hanged men. I knew nothing of them save that they were known as the Pazzi conspirators, and that they were evil. One of the conspirators, a small naked man, stared wide-eyed and sightless back at me; the effect was unnerving. But what intrigued me most was the portrait of the last hanging body. His form differed from the others, was more delicately portrayed, more assured; its subtle shadings poignantly evoked the grief and remorse of a troubled soul. And it did not seem to float, as the others did, but possessed the shadow and depth of reality. I felt as though I could reach into the wall and touch Baroncelli’s cooling flesh.
I turned to my mother. She was watching me carefully, though she said not a word about the mural, nor the reason we had lingered there. It was the first time I had stayed for any length of time in the Piazza, the first time I had been allowed such a close view of the famous hanged men. ‘The last one was done by a different artist,’ I said.
‘Yes. He has an amazing refinement, doesn’t he? He is like God, breathing life into stone.’ She nodded, clearly pleased by my discernment, and waved for the driver to move on.
We made our way north to the Piazza del Duomo.
Before entering the cathedral, I had examined Ghiberti’s bas relief panels on the doors of the nearby octagonal Baptistery. Here, near the public entry at the southern end of the building, scenes of Florence’s patron saint, John the Baptist covered the walls, but what truly tantalized me was the Door of Paradise on the northern side. There, in fine gilded bronze, the Old Testament came to life in vivid detail. I stood on tiptoe to finger the sweeping curve of an angel’s wing as he announced to Abraham that God desired Isaac as a sacrifice; I bent down to marvel at Moses receiving the tablets from the divine hand while, at the foot of the mountain, the Israelites looked on in awe. What I most yearned to touch were the delicately rendered heads and muscular shoulders of oxen, emerging from the metal of the uppermost plaque to plough a field. I knew the tips of their horns would be sharp and cold against my fingertip, but they lay too high for my reach. Instead, I contented myself with rubbing the numerous tiny heads of prophets and sibyls that lined the doors like garlands; the bronze burned like ice.
The interior of the Baptistery was for me less remarkable. Only one item caught my attention: Donatello’s dark wooden carving of Mary Magdalen, larger than life. She was a ghastly, spectral version of the seductress: aged now, her hair so wild and long that she clothed herself in the tangles, just as St. John clothed himself in the skins of animals. Her cheeks were gaunt, her features worn down by decades of guilt and regret. Something about the resignation in her aspect reminded me of my mother.
We three made our way into the Duomo proper then, and once we arrived in front of the altar, my mother immediately began speaking of the murder that had taken place there almost fourteen years earlier. I had only moments to draw in the astonishing vastness of the cupola before Zalumma grew worried and told my mother it was time to leave.
So we returned to the present.
‘I suppose so,’ my mother reluctantly agreed with Zalumma’s urgings. ‘But first, I must speak to my daughter alone.’
This frustrated the slave. She scowled until her brows merged into one great black line, but her social status compelled her to reply calmly, ‘Of course, Madonna.’ She retreated a short distance away.
Once my mother satisfied herself that Zalumma was not watching, she retrieved from her bosom a small, shining object. A coin, I thought, but after she had pressed it into my palm, I saw it was a gold medallion, stamped with the words ‘Public Mourning’. Beneath the letters, two men with knives readied themselves to attack a startled victim. Despite its small size, the image was detailed and lifelike, rendered with a delicacy worthy of Ghiberti.
‘Keep it,’ my mother said. ‘But let it be our secret.’
I eyed her gift greedily, curiously. ‘Was he really so handsome?’
‘He was. It is quite accurate. And quite rare.’
I tucked it at once into my belt. My mother and I both shared a love of such trinkets, and of art, though my father disapproved of my having anything so impractical. As a merchant, he had worked hard for his wealth, and hated to see it squandered on anything useless. But I was thrilled; I hungered for such things.
‘Zalumma,’ my mother called. ‘I am ready to leave.’
Zalumma came to fetch us at once, and took hold of my mother’s arm again. But when my mother began to turn away from the altar – she paused, and wrinkled her nose. ‘The candles …’ she murmured. ‘Have the altar vestments caught fire? Something is burning …’
Zalumma’s expression went slack with panic, but she recovered herself immediately and said calmly, as if it were the most normal thing in the world: ‘Lie down, Madonna. Here, on the floor. All will be well.’
‘It all repeats,’ my mother said, with the odd catch in her voice I had come to dread.
‘Lie down!’ Zalumma ordered, as sternly as she would a child. My mother seemed not to hear her, and when Zalumma pressed on her limbs, trying to force her to the ground, she resisted.
‘It all repeats,’ my mother said swiftly, frantically. ‘Don’t you see it happening again? Here, in this sacred place.’
I lent my weight to Zalumma’s; together we fought to bring my mother down, but it was like trying to bring down an immovable mountain – one that trembled.
My mother’s arms moved involuntarily from her sides and shot straight out, rigid. Her legs locked beneath her. ‘There is murder here, and thoughts of murder!’ she shrieked. ‘Plots within plots once more!’
Her cries grew unintelligible as she went down.
Zalumma and I clung to her so that she did not land too harshly.
My mother writhed on the cold floor of the cathedral, her blue cloak gaping open, her silver skirts pooling around her. Zalumma lay across her body; I put my kerchief between her upper teeth and tongue, then held onto her head.
I was barely in time. My mother’s dark eyes rolled back until only the veined whites were visible – then the rigors began. Head, torso, limbs – all began to jerk arrhythmically, rapidly.
Somehow Zalumma held on, rising and falling with the waves, whispering hoarsely in her barbarous tongue, strange words coming so fast and so practised I knew they were part of a prayer. I, too, began to pray without thinking in a language equally old: ‘Ave Maria, Mater Dei, ora pro nobis pecatoribus, nunc et in hora mortis nostrae …’
