Pilgrim

  Now, she was a woman. She wore a woman’s clothes. She had unbound her breasts and bound her hair in modest veiling. She wore no jewellery, no gloves, no scarves and only the plainest shoes.

  The bruises on her hips, her thighs and on her wrists were hidden. No one had seen them but herself. Not even Violetta, her nurse.

  That morning, after prayers, Elisabetta had told her father she was now prepared to consider suitors. She had quit men’s attire forever. Her mourning for Angelo was over. Life must continue. She must do her duty—marry, have children and take her modest place in society.

  She had sung this litany of platitudes in a monotone, staring at her father’s hands where they rested, folded on the table across from where she sat. She was tired. She was beaten. She had surrendered.

  Her father was kind—even conciliatory. He welcomed her back, he kissed her and blessed her. He even smiled.

  Now, they would go to the Bonfire of Vanities, make their contributions, pay their tributes and depart. It would be over.

  At twilight, the carriage arrived on the drive. Its pale green sides, with her father’s painted monograms and guild crests, were draped in black. Elisabetta smiled. They were, after all, on their way to a funeral of sorts—the cremation of her former self, whose life had been so short.

  There were so many carriages, so many horsemen, so many people streaming on foot from every direction, Signor Gherardini said the coachman must dismount and lead the horses through the crowd until all forward movement was impossible. Only then would they descend.

  A parade of singing priests and acolytes cut in front of them. They were led by four child-angels who carried Donatello’s infant Christ on their shoulders—the angels got up in white and paper wings, and the priests robed in grey.

  The bells of all the churches within the city walls began to toll. In any other year, this would have been a riotous scene of Carnival—with colours flying from every window and crowds of dancers, musicians, hawkers and costumed men and women wearing masks. All the horses would have pranced and all the dogs set barking. But not on this occasion.

  The zealous wept and chanted the holy names; crosses were borne on every side by would-be martyrs; the smell of incense was universal. Each of the citizens carried a token of sacrifice—some with sacks and some with boxes, some with paintings, some with books and some with masks and ribbons, carnival costumes, hats and pretty coloured flags—all denoting the denial of pleasure.

  The bonfire itself, when at last it could be seen, was built in the shape of a pyramid sixty feet high or more—and, so it was later claimed, two hundred and forty feet in circumference. There were seven separate stages already laden with vanities, and at the crown, an effigy of Satan, painted red.

  Four young men and four young women—the purest of the pure—had been chosen from more than a hundred candidates, all put forward by their parents—and these were, two by two, to set the bonfire ablaze at four assigned stations.

  As the chanting and the singing rose above the Piazza, Savonarola watched from the campanile of the Palazzo Vecchio—standing in the shadows, his hood in place, his face unseen.

  When the signal was given and the chosen ones stepped forward with their torches, a hush descended—and as if they had sensed what was going to happen, the doves on all the surrounding cornices and window ledges suddenly rose with a universal clap of wings and, for a moment before they departed, blackened the twilit sky.

  Elisabetta put her hand out, asking Alessandro, her father’s stable boy, to assist her. Her nurse Violetta came after and then her parents. Her sister Ginetta did not get down, but handed her vanity—a treasured collar of Belgian lace—to her mother and remained behind with the coachman, who had been told to stay with the horses.

  It was all but impossible to get through. The crowd had surged forward as soon as the fires were lit and the assembled vanities on all seven stages had begun to burn.

  Elisabetta put one arm around Violetta’s waist and together they pushed towards the conflagration, using their shoulders and elbows to force their way through.

  Signor Gherardini took his wife Alicia’s hand and, followed by young Alessandro bearing their vanities—a doublet of crimson taffeta, a gown of cream-coloured silk encrusted with beads of glass—they waded into the sea of backs.

  The heat was so great, Elisabetta thought for a moment she herself was on fire. She and Violetta finally gained the perimeter, which now was ringed with armed soldiers attempting to hold the zealots back, for fear they might attempt to immolate themselves. Beyond them, some of the priests had formed an inner circle and were reaching out to take the newly offered vanities and throw them into the flames. Violetta, who had waited until this moment to show her chosen vanity, drew a rough wooden crucifix from her pocket, held it up for the priests to see and threw it beyond their waiting hands into the fire. “I offer this because the Bonfire itself is a vanity and shows a perverted love of God!” she shouted, though no one heard her but Elisabetta.

  Before Elisabetta lifted her bundle over the wall of arms, she snatched the silver locket away from its folds—turned again and, clutching still at Violetta’s waist, began to make her way back towards her father’s carriage.

  Within twenty feet of her goal, she stopped dead in her tracks with Violetta beside her.

  “What is it? What?” the nurse asked.

  Elisabetta said nothing.

  Seated nearby on a sorrel horse, Leonardo was staring at them, his eyes narrowed, his lips parted—his hair pulled away from his face and tucked beneath a wide-brimmed hat.

  Elisabetta gazed at him without expression. Yes—you know me. Yes—it is I. Good day to you, my bastard lord.

  As if he had read her thought, Leonardo turned and rode away.

  Elisabetta closed her eyes. Her insides ached. Her knees gave way and she fell against Violetta, catching at her shoulders.

  Somehow they achieved the carriage, where Ginetta held out her hands and helped her sister to climb inside.

  Nothing was said. They sat and waited.

  All around them, the crowd had raised its collective hands as if to catch the moon—but the moon escaped and rode out the rest of the night in a veil of smoke, while the city below it seemed to be cast adrift on a sea of singing fire.

  Tyrannus impius non habet spem,

  et si quidem longae vitae erit,

  in nihilum computabitur.

  The ungodly ruler has no hope,

  and even though he live forever,

  he shall be seen as nothing.

  By midnight, all was ashes and by dawn, there was a rising wind.

  In the early hours, while the lamps were being extinguished, Leonardo packed his satchel and his saddlebags and, taking Strazzi with him, left the studio and triple-locked its doors.

  Last seen by the Watch, they were passing through the Porto Milano and riding northward.

  Elisabetta, on her hillside, could feel their presence being lifted from her as she saw the sun’s first rays strike the towers and spires below her. Calling to Cornelia, she climbed like a sleepy child onto her bed, lay there with her cat against her belly, closed her eyes and drifted towards what remained of her life as though it was a dream already dreamt and a future already possessed.

  I am a circle, she was thinking. A circle within a circle, bearing yet more circles within me all the way to eternity, for surely, now that he is gone, I shall never die.

  4

  There was music—this is true. Dwarfs, there were none—though you promised them. A juggler—yes. And an angel with wings whose every feather had been cut from paper, tinted with blue and gold and pink and fitted one by one into frames you had fashioned with your own hands. Nothing was spared for my entertainment.

  My husband had said: I want her as she is, before she fades.

  You told me that—and thought, I suppose: it will make her smile.

  And smile I did.

  To fade when you are still a girl at heart and only t
wenty-four years old was not a possibility I entertained, although it is true I had borne four of my children by then and something, somewhere in me, had begun to fade.

  There was a monkey—do you remember?—and from time to time he sat beside me. Once, he climbed onto my head and several times he climbed onto my shoulder. When he climbed onto my head, we all laughed and his master had to tempt him with fruit before he would descend without tearing my veil. As it was, he pulled the veil aside, revealing my birthmark—and you were angry, wanting the monkey removed. But I demanded it remain. I will not sit, I said, unless the monkey stays.

  Yes. It was all familiar to me: the windows facing north which gave the light in which I sat; the giant chest of drawers, the drawers all crammed with your notebooks, sketches, boxes of crayons and sheets of ragged paper; the fireplace with its rampant lions supporting the mantel; the armoire with its toys and costumes, masks and hats and shoes and one blue dress with silver stars—the remnants of your happy days. And the heavy chairs, each one of them; the lamps, their gryphon sconces; and the table.

  And the table.

  And the table. Yes?

  Someone, I don’t remember who it was—a friend of yours perhaps, perhaps a lover—came on certain days and sang. I did not so much dislike his voice as the way in which he presented his songs. He sang to you, not me. One day, I said: you might as well sing to the monkey. He never came back.

  There were lutes and flutes and oboes and something not unlike a lute that was called a mandolin. A choirboy came and sang very sweetly. They brought my babies to me—not that Ernesto, at four, could be called a baby, but was and is and always will be my baby. All my babies—six of them, now. And the two who died.

  I will have no more. And have said so. Francesco has his requisite sons and I have done all I can to give his name and his blood to posterity. What remains of my life, I shall devote entirely to the enjoyment of watching my babies grow.

  Once a mother, always a mother. The same cannot be said for fathers. Fathers scatter their progeny so far afield from where they live, I think that half the children now alive will never know who their father is—or was. Or might have been. And half the fathers living do not know the names, the shapes, the sexes or the smiles of half their children. Or the touch of a searching hand that asks for safety in the dark.

  How sad to be a father.

  And how damnable.

  Sometimes as I sat and watched you from my place in the filtered light, I thought of telling you. It occurred to me once or twice, as I sat, that you had a right to know. But I was silent. Wisely.

  I wanted some kind of revenge. But nothing I could think of was sufficient. Except the child. The child was my secret weapon, like the knife with which I almost stabbed you all those years ago. I would tell you first that you had a child. A boy. A lovely golden boy—your hair, your eyes, your form. I would drive you mad with descriptions of his beauty—his smell—his laughter—his smile and his wondrous openness to everything I showed him; all the doors I opened before his eyes…his joyous, joyous willingness to live.

  And then I would tell you of his death.

  His dreadful, wasteful, stupid, godless death.

  And then I would think—and I remember thinking this so clearly—no. I will not share his death with you.

  It was my death, too. More mine than his. At least he had no notion what had happened to him. He slept—that was all. He went to sleep alive, and in the night—he died.

  Just died.

  That is all I can tell you.

  He was one year old.

  He could walk the whole distance across a room by himself.

  He called me Mama and Cornelia ’Nelia and Violetta Nanna. He also had a doll he called Da.

  I will tell no more.

  But how proud I was that I refrained from telling you then. I kept the knowledge of him with me as my weapon against despair—knowing that whatever else happened to me, I had the protection of his existence, no matter how brief, as proof that anything can be survived.

  It was his gift to me—that I survived you—and gave him life in spite of your deadly malice.

  Why would I tell you his name—our child? He was no concern of yours. Though we “made” him, there was no union—merely violence. Fusion, copulation, propagation, coupling—even mating—for all that they reflect the labours of the marriage bed when love is absent, these are noble words compared to the getting of our son. We grappled. Don’t you remember?

  I was vandalized. You stole my life.

  And gave me his.

  And for all that, you hated what you did and got no pleasure from it. At least my husband sighs when he is on me. You had no sighs—no murmurs even of triumph. One great cry is all I hear in memory of that moment—not mine, but yours. A cry of pain, Leonardo. Agony. And it is my belief that in that moment when the cry was given, you had discovered what it is to kill. It was a killer’s cry. A beast’s in the heat of dragging down its victim—a winning cry—that you had seized your opponent by the throat and disemboweled him, as the panther does and the leopard when he curls upon his prey. In fact, for one whole year I called you Leopardo in my mind. Leopardo da Vinci.

  Yes?

  This is true.

  All this is true.

  You might have cried out: while I slay, I am slain! It merely depended on which of us would be the first to die. For while you mortally wounded me, I mortally wounded you. And knew it. Now, unless Heaven falls upon you, I have beaten you to the grave. You are dying, Leonardo—but I am dead. You killed me long ago. Not my body—but my love of life.

  My parents knew of the child and to my great surprise, they came in time to cherish him, not knowing he was yours—though I hesitate still to use that word. Yours denotes caring—longing—pride—enjoyment. Yours denotes devotion to a vanity. Yes? You must recall the Bonfire of Vanities on which we laid what was cherished. I laid my freedom there that night. I shed my brother Angelo’s clothes and burned them so that I would never again be tempted by their allure. I also noted that you laid nothing down, but turned away and departed. This way, I knew that you regarded nothing as yours because you honoured nothing to be worthy of a sacrifice. Beyond one thing—your personal vanity. That, I grant you, remained in your possession.

  You told me that you loved my brother. I believe you. I loved him, too, though the Angelo I loved and the one you called your lover were not the same young man. If he was wanton, then I rejoice for him because it means that he gained his freedom before he died. I never did and never will. But I do not wish to be misunderstood in this. There is a wantonness in men that is not akin to the wantonness in women. If I were to gain my freedom now, I could no longer be myself. If I had gained it then, I should not now be who I am. As it is, I have a wanton will that my children—those who remain—shall live full lives. And those who are dead shall never be forgotten. One, you know of—the other was my husband’s child, the girl Alida, who died six months before I sat to you.

  I sat in velvet and satin. You bade me wear some veiling on my hair and draped the upper reaches of the windows in the same pale gauze. It was blue. You wanted always some diffusion of the light—or so you told me. This way, the play of it was constant.

  You refused to paint my birthmark, as if its being a butterfly offended you. I wore a silver locket, which you also did not paint. This is true. And a marriage ring which is not seen and a pillow at my back which was made for me by Violetta Cappici, who sat, all the while you worked, near the window with my babies and a book. She carried, you may remember, a painted fan with which she cooled my forehead, time to time. It showed a garden in the south with peacocks and a laurel tree—the laurel all in bloom.

  And I removed my shoes and, having sat so long, could not replace them because my feet were swollen. And the angel with the paper wings knelt down and soothed them in a basin filled with scented water. Roses. Do you remember these things? I do. And now you are in France. A great way off, or so it seems. I cannot coun
t the distance. There are rumours of your decline. Surely it will please you to know that at least you are spoken of in Florence—remembered and, yes, in some households, revered. That you will die is certain. But I have no wish to dwell on that beyond the fact that, before you die, I wanted you to know the truth about the child. If Heaven exists, you may see him there. If not, so be it.

  I am told you have taken me with you. Some say you will not be parted from me and others say the story of my husband’s refusal to have the portrait in his house is false and that you would not let him have me. This story goes that you claim the painting is unfinished. Another goes that you are in love with me.

  I think not.

  In all the time I sat to you, you never once acknowledged that we had met. Certainly never that we had grappled and that you had won. You gave me entertainments instead—the choirboy and the mandolin—the angel and the monkey. The making of my image cost us three whole years of being in one another’s company. I was given rocks and rivers to sit amongst and colonnades to sit between and a kitchen chair to sit on. The chair was real, the rest was not. And nothing for my mind to rest on—or my heart. If posterity looks on me, I thought, they will recognize only the man who painted me.

  If I am smiling still, then we alone will know that what is hidden there is the memory of a golden child. Not yours—but mine. And I will take him to my grave.

  I do not wish you ill, nor any dread of me. We will pass together silent into time. But I wonder, will you write somewhere of me before you die: face of a Florentine woman—painted by blue light, 1503-1506. Sleeves of dark green velvet. One button—made of wood.

  This is the last you shall hear of me. The button here enclosed is from his jacket, which I keep beside me always. It is all of him that you shall ever have.