The Birth of Venus

  Tomaso, my pretty, fawning brother, who never lacked for rich new garments or even for special silver belts at his sister’s marriage. And I saw him staring at me in the mirror that morning—was it really still the same day?—uncomfortable for once with whatever it was he couldn’t quite bring himself to say.

  “No,” I said. “He didn’t tell me.”

  “But he—”

  “I think perhaps you might have underestimated how much my brother dislikes me.”

  He sighed, rubbing his face with his hands. “I do not think it is so much dislike as a certain fear. I think he might be scared of your intelligence.”

  “Poor thing,” I said. And for that second even I could make out the Devil in my voice.

  Of course. The longer I knew, the more it all fell into place: the stranger who, when he danced with me, had inside information about both my clumsiness and my Greek. Tomaso’s glee the night he spotted the blood on my robe and saw a way to save his lover and pay his sister back at the same time. The morning in church when he had bent his head under Savonarola’s accusations and I had encountered Cristoforo’s eyes looking straight into mine. Except of course I had not been the one he was gazing at. No. That shining little smile of worship had been reserved for my brother. My stupid, pretty, fawning, vain, vulgar, vicious brother.

  I started to cry again.

  He had enough compassion not to try and stop me. He sat watching over me; then after a while he put out his hand, and this time I let it cover mine. “I am so sorry. It was not meant to be like this.”

  “You should never have trusted him to tell me,” I said, when I could find the breath. “What lies did he spin you about me?”

  “Only that it would be doing both of us a favor. That you wanted freedom and independence more than a husband. That you would do anything that was necessary to get it.”

  “He was right,” I said softly. “Though not anything.”

  We sat again for a while. Outside in the night we caught the sound of shouting, men running through the streets, then a sudden sharp cry of pain, and it brought back the gruesome sight of the young man adrift in his own blood by the Baptistery doors. Florence was turned against herself now, and safety was gone forever.

  “Despite my sins, you should know that I am not a bad man, Alessandra,” he said, after a while.

  “What about in the eyes of God? You don’t fear the burning sands and storms of fire?”

  “As we said, at least in hell there will be a memory of pleasure.” He paused. “You’d be surprised how many of us there are. The greatest civilizations of antiquity have found transcendence in the arsehole of a man.”

  I winced.

  “Forgive my crudity, Alessandra. But it is better that you know me now. For we are going to have to spend time together.”

  He got up to fill his glass again. I watched him walk across the room. Now his haggard beauty and studied elegance seemed almost teasing. Why had I not noticed it before? Was I so locked in my own mind that I could not read the signs around me?

  “As for Judgment Day,” he continued, “well, I will take my chances. In those same burning sands are blasphemers and usurers, and worse torments are reserved for them. I think even if I had never yearned for the taste of young boys, heaven would still have not been mine. At least I will have the comfort of sharing the flames with fellow sinners. And I will be in religious company. Believe me, if that army of sodomites had not been so constantly in flight, I wager you would have seen a host of tonsured heads among their numbers.”

  “No!”

  He smiled. “For a sophisticate, Alessandra, you are charmingly naïve.”

  Though not for much longer, I thought. I looked at him. Now he was without distaste, his humor and goodwill were back, and I couldn’t help but like him a little again.

  “At least you will not be able to claim your wife’s reluctance drove you to it,” I said quietly. He looked bemused. “The sodomite that Dante talks to in the sixteenth canto. Doesn’t he say something like that? I cannot remember his name.”

  “Of course. Jacopo Rusticucci. A man of no public merit whatsoever. Rumor has it he was a merchant rather than a scholar.” He smiled. “Tomaso told me he would find me a wife who knew her Divine Comedy as well as I.” I dropped my eyes. “I am sorry. His name brings you pain.”

  “I’ll live,” I said quietly. But I could feel hot tears pricking at the back of my eyes.

  “I hope so. I would hate to be the cause of death to such a sweet intellect.”

  “Not to mention such a perfect smoke screen.”

  He laughed. “Welcome back. I like your wit more than your self-pity. You are a remarkable young woman, you know.”

  I looked at my husband and wondered what it might have been like if his compliments had warmed my body as much as my mind.

  “So—perhaps we should talk of the future. As I told you, this house is yours now. Its library, its art. With the exception of my study, you may treat it as you please. That was part of the bargain.”

  “What about you?”

  “I shall not bother you often. In public we might be seen at a few state events, if indeed there is still a state with enough independence to command them. Other than that I will be out much of the time. That is all you need know.”

  “Will he come here?” I said.

  He looked at me steadily. “He is your brother. As family it would be only natural.” He smiled a little at the last word. “The fact is, the city is no longer as safe as it was.” He paused. “Let us say there may be times when he comes here. But not for a while.”

  “You are diplomatic,” I said.

  He shrugged. “Man must rule his slaves like a tyrant, his children like a king, and—”

  “—his wife like a politician.” I closed the sentence for him. “I am not sure this is what Aristotle had in mind.”

  He laughed. “Indeed. As for the rest, well, it is up to you. Your choice. Don’t let this destroy your life, Alessandra. You’d be surprised what goes on in the bedrooms of our godly city. Such marriages have worked before. You wouldn’t want to be like the others anyway. If my attentions burdened you with a dozen children, you would sink beneath the waves. Only give me a single heir and I will leave you alone forever.” He paused. “As to your own pleasure—well, that too is your affair. All I ask is that you be discreet.”

  I stared down at my hands. My insides hurt less than they did, though a deeper burning sensation remained. How did one know when there was a baby in one’s womb? My own pleasure? What did I want most in life?

  “You will let me paint.”

  He shrugged. “I have said. You can do as you want.”

  I nodded. “And I want to see the French,” I said firmly. “I mean really see them. When Charles’s army marches in, I want to be there on the street, witnessing it as history is made.”

  He made a small gesture. “Very well. That is what you shall do. It will no doubt be a triumphal entrance.”

  “You will come with me?”

  “I hardly think it would be safe without.”

  The silence sat between us, yet his name was everywhere. “And what of Tomaso?”

  “You and I are man and wife. It will be only proper for us to be seen together.” He hesitated. “I will talk to Tomaso. He will understand.”

  I dropped my eyes so he could not see the spark of pleasure that ignited there.

  “So? Do you have any more requests, wife?”

  “No”—I paused—“husband.”

  “Good.” He got up from the bed. “Shall I send your slave to you now?”

  I shook my head. He leaned over, and for a second I wondered if he might kiss me on the forehead, but instead he brushed his fingers lightly across my cheek. “Good night, Alessandra.”

  “Good night.”

  So he left me, and a few moments later I heard the main doors of the house open and close behind him.

  AFTER A WHILE THE BURNING SENSATION BETWEEN MY LEGS
COOLED and I got up to clean myself. It hurt a little to walk and my skin was crusty where his spouting liquid had dried on my thigh, but his fastidiousness had saved my gown from staining and it fell softly about me as I walked.

  I washed carefully, too scared to examine myself. But after I let the gown fall again I moved my hands over my body, just to feel the silk against my skin. And from my breast and hips my fingers strayed downward toward my cleft. What if he had indeed torn me there and there was now a wound that would not heal? Both my mother and her sister had been ripped apart by big children. Could that have happened to me already?

  I hesitated, then moved my hand a little farther, separating my fingers to discover that my middle one slipped most easily inside toward my sex. And as it did so my fingertip encountered what felt like a small mound of exposed flesh, which as I touched it sent a raw shiver through me. I felt my breath sharpen and I moved my finger carefully back and across it again. I could hardly tell if the sensation was pleasure or pain, but it made me catch my breath and left me trembling. Was this the way his penis had damaged me, uncovering some nerve end in the very mouth of my sex?

  Who could I ask? Who could I possibly tell what had taken place between us? I withdrew my hand quickly, my face flushed with remembered shame. But my curiosity was greater than my pain, and this time I lifted the material of my gown before my fingers roamed back to find the place again. Across my inner thigh a streak of watery blood, pink as the dawn sky, sat like ink wash against my skin. I traced its line back toward my thatch of hair, and the tenderness of my own caress brought tears back to my eyes. I hooked my finger inside me and now when I came upon it, the flesh seemed almost raw. I honed down the point of sensation, then gently applied more pressure, bracing myself for more pain. It seemed to swell under my touch and there came instead a rush of such intense sweetness that it made me gasp out loud and I doubled over slightly on myself. Again I pushed my fingertip. Again it came, and again, like a series of fast ripples on the surface of water, till all I could do was hold on to the table nearby for fear that I might lose my balance as I let the gasps come, so lost was I in the pleasure of my pain.

  When it was over my legs were so weak I had to sit down on the bed. There was a strange sense of loss that the feeling was no more, and to my surprise I found myself crying again, though I do not quite know why, because I do not think that what I felt was sadness anymore.

  It wasn’t long before the anxiety flowed in. What on God’s earth would become of me now? I had left my home, my city was in turmoil, and I was newly married to a man who could not bear the sight of my body but who swooned at the thought of my brother. If it had been written as a moral tale, I would probably be sacrificed now, dying of shame and sorrow so that my husband could be brought to penitence and God.

  I went over to my marriage chest, a monster of a thing that had once belonged to my husband’s mother. It had been carried from his house to mine and then finally back again that afternoon (and to my father’s satisfaction it had been as heavy as my sister’s, though its riches were weighed in books rather than silks and velvets). From its depths I now brought out my mother’s prayer book, over which she and I had first deciphered letters when I was barely able to talk. What was it she had said to me that day the government fell? That when I was alone in my husband’s house I would find it easier to talk to God. And that these conversations would make me a good wife and a good mother.

  I knelt by the bed and opened the book. But I, to whom words came so easily, could not think of which ones to use now. What could God and I possibly have to say to each other? My husband was a sodomite. If it was not my own arrogance that had brought me to this, it was my duty to bring him to justice for the sake of his own soul as well as my own. Yet if I exposed him I would bring the whole house of lust down with him, and while I might hate my brother how could I possibly destroy my own family in the process? The shame would surely kill my father.

  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

  HE 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 arrangi
ng 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.