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Isabella slid a thin piece of paper over the sketch to keep it from smudging before carefully closing the book. The pages were almost full now, the pristine whiteness covered with black-and-grey images of flowers, trees, houses, people, imaginary scenes. Anything that caught her eye and challenged her to capture its essence in lines and planes.
She packed the precious volume carefully in a basket, along with her charcoal box and the remains of a long-consumed picnic meal. She would have to leave soon, as well, and abandon this secret, enchanted grove for the prosaic real world of the villa. Her father would be emerging from his library, looking about for her in his absent way.
Not just yet, though. Isabella lay back in the warm grass, staring up at the sky through the long, lacy pattern of the olive branches. The bright blue of afternoon had faded to a paler, rose-tinged hue, but the air still hung heavy, not yet cooled by the onrush of evening. She smelled the green freshness of the grass, the sulphur-tinged sweetness of wild jasmine. It was a beautiful time of day, her favourite, when it seemed she was all alone in the world, that nothing could touch her, hurt her, change her. There were no responsibilities, no demands. No wild longings.
Isabella closed her eyes, feeling the soft caress of the wind across her cheeks, through the fall of her loose, thick black hair. The song of the birds was muted now, as if they were far away. What would it be like to fly free as they did, to feel the breeze bearing her up, up, up? To soar above the earth.
She imagined a painting in her mind, a canvas washed with an expanse of clear, priceless sky-blue, dotted with grey-tipped white clouds. At the very bottom of the scene, a string of buildings, villas, farms, the dome of a church. Perhaps the tiny dots of people going about their daily business. And above, hovering in the heady, thin air of perfect freedom, Icarus. A handsome young man, naked but for the pointed wings arcing above his head. A single moment of untainted glory. But high above, at the top edge of the canvas, the hot, waiting rays of the harsh sun. The fall that lurked for all men who dared fly too high.
Isabella opened her eyes and for an instant she fancied she saw a tiny figure soaring towards the sunset. His face was indistinct, she couldn’t yet envision it, though she dreamed of just such a man. Somewhere out there, waiting for her.
She laughed wryly. That was hardly likely. Their home here was beautiful, safe, tucked far away from the dangerous doings of the great men in Florence. The men of her Strozzi cousins’ circle. There were no dangerous suns here. But neither were there wax wings to bear a soul to freedom.
The sky was streaked with vivid orange and gold now, a paint palette that signalled the close of one more day. She had stayed here too long.
Isabella pushed herself up, rising slowly to her feet. Her legs were stiff from sitting too long, from balancing the sketchbook on her knees. Her dark blue skirts were streaked with ochre-coloured dust and grass blades, but she had no time to worry about that now. She had to get home, to make sure supper was waiting for her father.
* * *
The farm was slowly coming to life for the evening, after the long siesta of the sleepy afternoon. Outside the cottages, tables were being set up beneath the trees, candles lit against the gathering darkness. Children raced around, energized by the cool breeze that crept over the dusty land, banishing the heat of the day. Laughter, the barking of dogs, the fresh song of awakening night birds followed Isabella as she hurried down the pathway, dirt billowing around her sandal-clad feet, the hem of her gown.
‘Buona notte!’ people called after her and she answered with quick waves, smiles. At last she came to the top of the slope that led to her father’s villa.
It was quieter there, the ebb and flow of life in the rough stone cottages muffled by a ring of scrubby olive trees, and by something else, something intangible yet ever-present. The barrier of being different. Her father’s family had lived on this estate for decades, had overseen the fields, the orchards, the grapevines. Isabella had known all those people since she was in swaddling clothes, the poor little bambina with no mother who thus became the child of all. Or none.
But truly they were different. She and her father. The scholar, the man so wrapped in his dusty books, his ancient world, his memories of her mother, that he never walked the fields as his own father had. He cared little for the things that absorbed the days of others, the mundane work of feeding families, worshipping God, living life. And she, his daughter, his only child, was worse. A woman who would rather scribble strange images on parchment than marry and raise children.
Isabella absently twisted her untidy black hair up into a knot, thinking of the whispers people thought she couldn’t hear. This was her home, the only one she had ever known. Yet she didn’t belong here. She thought again of Icarus, soaring free on his fatal wings. What she would not give for just a taste of that freedom! Yet it was impossible. She was a woman, she had her duties, her destinies. Wings could not be hers.
But there was one choice she could make, a gift of her father’s hazy unworldliness, his carelessness. She could choose not to marry some country lordling and lose her youth and vitality in endless tasks, endless childbearing. Even if it meant she stayed frozen for ever.
Isabella secured her hair with a comb from her pocket, brushed off her skirts and tugged the ruffled cuffs of her chemise down to cover the worst of the charcoal smudges. She was as tidy as she could make herself, so she continued on her way down the shadowed slope towards the villa.
Their house had once been the grandest in the neighbourhood, back in her grandfather’s youth, when it was newly built. The latest design, with all the most modern conveniences, the most luxurious furnishings. Her grandmother was a great beauty, a daughter of the Strozzi family, and she gave banquets and dances that were talked of even in Florence.
That was a long time ago.
Isabella’s grandparents had been gone for many years and under her father’s stewardship the villa had fallen silent. Isabella heard tell that her mother, another Strozzi, had also given banquets, had danced under the moonlight with all her stylish Florentine friends. But she’d died at Isabella’s birth and that sparkling life ended for all of them. Her father detested dancing without his wife, was indifferent to food and feasting. Oh, they did sometimes have guests to be sure, other scholars who came to debate with her father over the philosophies of the ancient Greeks, the concepts of higher mathematics, the nature of man’s highest vocation.
They did not care for dancing, either. Or even for the art that was Isabella’s life-sustaining joy. And her mother’s relatives had no use for a connection who was only a scholar, no use in a battle or at forming new alliances.
The house came into view at last and Isabella paused to catch her breath at the edge of the wild, overgrown garden. When the villa was new-built, it had been a deep ochre colour, thickly stuccoed, set off by the green-painted shutters and carved wooden doors. Now it was faded to the uneven colour of a ripe peach, the stucco flaking away in places to reveal the stone beneath, the shutters peeling. A few of the terracotta tiles of the roof were missing and the garden where Isabella’s mother had danced was a wild snarl. Statuary that once came all the way from Rome tilted this way and that amid the tangled vines, the haphazard spill of flowers. A chipped Cupid with bow drawn, a smiling Venus, Neptune with no trident.
The windows of the upper floors were dark, blank, but the doors were open, casting golden light out into the courtyard. The lower windows were thrown wide to the twilight breeze and Isabella could hear the laughter and chatter of the servants as they finished preparing supper. A table was set up near the old fountain, laid out with pitchers of wine, loaves of fresh-baked breads and ewers of olive oil.
The conversation was a high hum, an ebb and flow, but it became clearer as Isabella moved ever closer to the open doors, coalescing into words.
‘...wasn’t sure his grand relations even remembered he was here,’ she heard the cook, Flavia, say. The woman’s comments were punctuated with the click of pottery bowls. ‘He hasn’t heard from them in months.’
‘And a messenger came today?’ Mena, the housekeeper who also served as Isabella’s maid, said.
A messenger? Isabella paused, her foot on the stone step. Flavia was right—they seldom heard from their relations, not that there were many of them left. Her father’s family was not a fertile one and her mother’s cousins, the Strozzis, were people of high position in Florence. Isabella had only met them a few times, and knew little about them except that their lives sounded like a dream of beauty and culture. Why would they send a messenger now?
‘I saw him myself,’ one of the footmen commented. ‘Very grand, in a livery of blue-and-cream velvet.’
‘The Strozzi colours,’ Mena murmured. ‘What would they want now? I did hear...’
Her words were shattered by the crash of a falling bowl, the excited bark of one of the kitchen dogs.
‘Maledizione!’ Flavia cursed.
Isabella glanced back over her shoulder, as if she could see the ‘grand’ messenger, but there was only the empty garden.
‘Signorina Isabella!’ Mena called, startling Isabella back to the present moment, the reality of her place. Her head whipped back around to find Mena standing before her in the doorway, balancing a large bowl of boiled greens. ‘So, here you are at last. Are you quite all right?’
Isabella blinked at her, the woman’s familiar, creased, olive-complexioned face coming into focus. Her dark eyes were narrow with concern. Isabella gave her a reassuring smile. ‘I am very well, Mena. Just a bit too much sun, I think.’
Mena gave a disapproving cluck and moved around Isabella to set the bowl on the waiting table. ‘You spend far too much time wandering about outdoors, signorina. Soon you will be dark as a Moor!’
Isabella laughed. ‘I hardly think it matters! No one will see me, dark or fair. Besides, I need the light for my work.’
Mena tossed her a speculative glance but said nothing. She merely made that clucking sound again, a symbol of disapproval Isabella had known since she was a babe in arms. ‘Go fetch the pottage.’
Isabella nodded and stepped into the kitchen. The heat of the cooking fires hit her in the face, thick and humid after the cooling evening air, filled with the scents of roasted chicken, spices, boiling vegetables, burned sugar.
Flavia, a plump, red-faced woman who had also been with their family for as long as Isabella could remember, was stirring a vat of stewed chicken in cinnamon. She merely nodded towards the pottage and Isabella snatched it up to carry it back outside, away from the scalding heat.
Mena lingered by the table, pouring wine into pottery goblets. As Isabella set down the pottage, she leaned close and whispered, ‘Cousin Caterina sent a letter?’
Mena did not meet her gaze. She shrugged, fussing with the wine. ‘A letter did come, but who can name the sender?’
‘Mena! How many other Strozzis do we know? What do you think she wants?’
Mena’s lips tightened. She was a country woman, bred of sturdy Tuscan stock, and had lived all her life in this spot. She knew little of Florentine doings, and what she did know she disapproved of. Learning old, pagan ways, looking at paintings of naked goddesses and gods—it went against God and the saints. Even as she loved Isabella, had practically raised her after her mother died, Isabella knew well she did not understand Isabella’s longing for a life that was not her own.
‘Oh, signorina,’ Mena said, strangely sad. ‘Why can you not just...?’
‘Is this my supper?’ a puzzled voice enquired, thin, confused.
Isabella gave Mena one more searching look, but it was obvious that the maid knew no more of their mysterious messenger. She had only lectures about appreciating one’s place in the world, the place where God placed one. Isabella had heard it all before.
She glanced over to see her father standing at the edge of the garden. It was his practice every evening to emerge from his library when it grew too dark to see the pages of his books and wander out the front doors around the house until he found someone to tell him what to do, where to go. It was no use to have servants remind him of the time, or guide him to the supper table—the same table they ate at every night.
Isabella smiled at him gently. His long, white hair stood out in a thick, uneven corona around his round, ruddy face and his beard was too long, his brows wild above faded green-grey eyes. The green-grey eyes Isabella inherited. Despite the warmth of summer, he wore an old, patched velvet robe trimmed with moth-eaten fur.
‘Sì, Father, it is your supper,’ she said, hurrying over to slip her arm through his and lead him to his chair.
‘Vegetables?’ he asked, absently surveying the offerings.
‘And some stewed chicken with cinnamon,’ said Isabella, sitting down next to him. ‘You like cinnamon. Flavia is just finishing with it.’
‘I will go fetch it,’ Mena said and left them to return to the kitchen. The hum of voices resumed in there as Isabella pressed a cup of wine into her father’s hand. How she yearned to ask him about the letter, to discover what was happening with their Florence relations! But she knew full well it would never work to press him. Until her father had some food, some wine, emerged from his dream world of study, he would not even remember what she talked about.
‘How was your day?’ she asked, spooning out a portion of the pottage on to his plate. ‘Did you finish the new essay on the Aeneid?’
‘No, no, not yet. But I am close, I think. Very close. I must write to Fernando in Mantua. He has documents that will be of great use to me in this matter.’
‘Perhaps he would even travel here himself, then you could discuss it in person,’ Isabella said. ‘We have not seen him in many months.’
‘Hmm,’ was all her father said.
Mena returned with the chicken and they ate in silence as the night shadows lengthened and the stars emerged above them. It was a clear, cool evening, the moon a mere silvery sliver on the horizon. Gradually, Isabella felt the tension of the day easing from her shoulders, sliding away on wine and serene silence. When the dessert of rice cooked in honey and almond milk was consumed, the lanterns strung high in the trees were lit and Isabella and her father were left alone. The conversation in the kitchen slowed, until there was only the distant song of the nightingale.
Isabella leaned her chin in her hand and closed her eyes, envisioning the sketch of young Veronica. There was still something not quite right about the line of the cheek, the flow of the hair, something she could not quite decipher...
‘Perhaps I shall invite Fernando to visit,’ her father suddenly said.
Isabella’s eyes flew open. ‘What? Father, I mentioned that above an hour ago!’
Her father just smiled. ‘Ah, Bella, you think I do not listen to you. I do. It simply takes time for me to absorb your words.’
Isabella laughed and reached out to pour more wine into their goblets. ‘That is very good to know, Father. And, yes, it will be a fine thing to have your friend here for a visit. He could help you so much with your studies. I fear you must find it a lonely task, with none to share your interests.’
‘I enjoy the quiet,’ he answered and took a slow sip of his wine. ‘After the great clamour at university so long ago, I found that only peace is conducive to true study. Do you not find it so, Bella, in your own work?’
Isabella frowned, puzzled. She did not know her father even realized she had ‘work’. ‘My art?’
‘Hmm, yes. Oh, but then art is different from history. I deal with men who are dead, events that are dust. Art is—well, it is life. How can you progress here, when there is nothing to inspire you? No one to help you?’
Isabella was utterly astonished. Every evening, winter or summer, rain or star-shine, she and her father supped together here at this table. Yet these were the greatest number of words they had shared in a long while, the most true understanding he had ever shown her. He loved her, she knew that. He just lived so much in his own mind. ‘I am content,’ she said.
‘Content. But not happy.’ Her father slowly shook his head, his wild hair drooping over his wrinkled brow. ‘Bella, I forget how young you are. This is the life I want, the life I have chosen. You deserve the chance to choose, as well. To look beyond our home and perhaps find a new way. A fine husband. A wider world.’ He sighed. ‘You are really so much like your mother.’
‘Father, what has brought this on?’ Isabella asked, bewildered. ‘Are we not content here together? Are you...?’ A horrible thought struck her. ‘Are you ill?’
He laughed. ‘Not at all. Just the aches and pains of age. I merely had a reminder of the outside world today. A reminder long overdue.’ He reached inside his robe and withdrew a small scroll. The blue wax seal was broken.
Ah, yes. The letter from Caterina, the letter that caused such a furore of curiosity in their house. ‘What is that, Father?’
‘A letter from your cousin Caterina Strozzi. She writes to enquire after you.’ He unrolled the scroll, flattening it on the table. ‘She has shown an interest in you before, but, well, with relations such as they were between myself and her father, how useless I was to them after your mother died—I thought it better to leave things alone.’
‘What has changed?’ Isabella asked.
‘Caterina writes that she knows of your great interest in art, an interest that the two of you share. She says she has not been well of late and she would like a companion to help her, to be her friend. Someone she could trust, a kinswoman. She asks if you will come to live with her in Florence. For a time, anyway.’
Live in Florence? Isabella’s stomach seized and fluttered with a sudden, icy rush of joy and fear. She turned away, pressing her hands hard to that ache. Could this be real? It was what she longed for, prayed for! A wider world, a journey to a place of art and beauty and culture, where she would no longer be alone. Her greatest wish, held out to her now, a gleaming jewel she had only to reach out for.
And yet—and yet...
This was her home, all she knew. What if her bright dream tarnished, turned to ashes in the harsh glare of real life? And what if the nightmares she’d had when she was younger came to torment her in the new house? They hadn’t visited her in a long time, but when she was tired or worried, the visions came back. What would she do then?
‘It is entirely up to you, Bella,’ her father said quietly. ‘Florence was poison for me, but it could be good for you. You are so smart, so lovely. But if you do not wish to go, that is very well, too.’
‘Who would take care of you, Father?’ she whispered, still surrounded by that buzzing brilliance of unreality.
‘Why, the servants, of course! You could take Mena with you, but the rest of us will rub along well enough. My needs are few. And I will invite some of those friends to visit. It is past time I did that anyway.’ He reached out suddenly and took her hand, his fingers gnarled, ink-stained, gentle. ‘I cannot stand in your way any longer, Bella. You must find your own path now.’
Isabella curled her hand around his tightly. ‘Is my path in Florence?’
He nodded. ‘I think it may be.’
She drew in a deep, steadying breath. All her trepidation, her wild fears, unspooled like a skein of wool and floated free. This was right. This was her destiny, what she waited for all her nineteen years. She laughed aloud, her heart alight with all the shimmering possibilities of the future.
‘Very well, then!’ she cried. ‘I will go to Florence.’
* * *
‘There is the sea and who will drain it dry? Precious as silver, inexhaustible, ever-new, it breeds the more we reap it—tides on tides of crimson dye our robes blood-red...’
Orlando Landucci stared out of the window into the Florence dusk, barely hearing the soft voice of Lucretia, his former mistress and now his friend, as she read from the Oresteia. Evening was gathering fast, always the most beautiful time in the city. A moment when the stone towers turned to spun gold in the torchlight, when ordinary faces turned mysterious and beautiful. All the filth and ugliness were hidden away in the darkness. And so were wicked deeds.
He could hide, too, could forget, even if it was only for few hours. He loved the night.
But tonight the veil was very thin and he couldn’t lose himself in the illicit pleasures of Florence as he usually did. Trouble was bubbling just below Florence’s serene, elegant surface. A tension that simmered and crackled, soon to snap and release the winged evils of Pandora’s box into the world. None of them could deceive themselves much longer. Not even the great Medici and their allies.
Soon Orlando would also have his chance. He wouldn’t have to hide in the night any longer.
As the twilight slipped into black darkness, the fine cobblestone square below Lucretia’s window transformed. Respectable families retreated behind the stout walls of their palazzi, closing their shutters. Merchants shut their shops in the mercato and beggars took refuge in church doorways.
Yet Florence was far from forsaken. Soon the calles would fill with new crowds, young men in brightly striped hose and pearl-sewn doublets, plumed velvet caps on their curled hair. They sang bawdy songs as they passed wine flasks between them, waiting for the courtesans in their crimson-and-yellow satins to emerge from their houses. Music could be heard in the distance, flutes and tambours, a merry dance that grew louder and louder as the night became darker.
Suddenly, as he watched lazily, a large group tumbled into the square, led by the musicians. At their head was the greatest rogue in all Florence, Giuliano de Medici, the handsome younger brother of the all-powerful Lorenzo, followed by his ever-present friends.
They had obviously started on the strong wine a long time before, for they stumbled on the paving stones, laughing uproariously as one of them tumbled to his knees. Their voices, raised in out-of-tune song, floated up to Orlando’s window. They spun and flowed in a stained-glass kaleidoscope of bright greens, blues, reds, waving plumes and flashing jewels. Like a painting come to life.
Orlando eased the window open an inch, letting in the music and laughter, borne on a cool, perfume-scented breeze that seemed to spread their merriment to every corner of the city. There was no danger yet to their merriment, no sadness, no dread. Only their youthful, privileged certainty that all would be well for them, that beauty and merriment would always prevail.
Orlando had once been just like them. So sure nothing could touch the brightness of his life. Now he knew how very false that was. How delicate, like a puff of dust blown away by a hot summer wind. They soon would know that, too.
He saw Eleanora Melozzi hung on Giuliano’s velvet-clad arm, the most expensive courtesan in all Florence. The torchlight glowed on the loose fall of her golden hair as she turned to laugh with the couple who tripped behind them.
The red-haired woman who was Eleanora’s friend held on to a tall, fair-haired man’s arm, her jewelled hand curled tight and possessive around his velvet sleeve. He threw back his head in a burst of raucous laughter, a ray of flickering light falling over his face.
It was Matteo Strozzi.
Orlando’s fist tightened on the edge of the window until the glass bit into his skin. He felt it not at all. He could only see Strozzi, the vile bastard. The man he had vowed to destroy.
Suddenly, through his crimson haze of anger, he felt a soft touch on his sleeve, drawing his hand down. Startled out of his anger, he looked down to see that Lucretia had left her book and come to his side. She stared up at him, her green-gold eyes wide with concern.
