“He’s a little monster,” Leonardo said, removing the cloth from the still unfinished Madonna and child.
“Because you allow it,” I said, but there was no scolding in my voice.
“Reds!” he called, and within moments the apprentice, Alessio, had come to his side with a palette arrayed in every shade of that color. Leonardo took it and praised the young man before dismissing him.
“Is it wrong, Mama,” he whispered, “to want to give your child everything?”
I smiled. “Of all people, how can you ask me that question? I’ve always believed every child deserves one shamelessly indulgent parent.”
Leonardo laughed a dark laugh. “The Limb of Satan. Let us hope he is not the death of me.”
Lorenzo, Leonardo, and I had visited with Ludovico and Beatrice. Though we had little time to waste, we knew it was necessary to oblige. It would have seemed odd for the Medici to travel to Milan without a visit to his important ally,
Il Moro
. The Castella Sforza, an utterly impregnable fortress of bricks the color of dried blood, was impossibly luxurious within.
The welcome by
Il Moro
and his lovely young bride could not have been warmer. Ludovico, in the years since I had last seen him in Rome, had matured into a thick-bodied man with a broad, fleshy face and a heavy, drooping chin. Beatrice, the youngest daughter of Ferrante—that dangerous Neapolitan friend of Lorenzo’s since his youth—had been a sheer delight, happy and exuberant and spectacularly attired in a pearl-encrusted gown.
The couple had seemed quite at home in their role as “First Lord and Lady of Milan,” while in fact Ludovico’s nephew, Gian, was the true ducal heir. Gian and his wife, Isabella, were nowhere to be found at court, and Beatrice had whispered to me that Isabella was furious at this state of affairs. Furious to have a weak, effeminate husband who trembled under the gaze of
Il Moro
, whom Gian allowed to rule un-challenged, who beat her in private, and openly flaunted his affair with a country boy.
At Lorenzo’s urgings we had had a quiet, intimate evening at the castella, treated to exquisite food, while beautiful music played quietly in the corner. Much praise was heaped on Leonardo for his talents, and assurances were made that he was accepted within the court’s innermost circle.
While Lorenzo and Ludovico spoke privately, Beatrice had chattered about an endless list of projects for the court artist—a summer house for her garden and decoration of her already opulent private apartments. She wished him to design a
rappresentazione
for an upcoming festival. “Something celestial,” she’d insisted enthusiastically, “with spinning planets, and the zodiac, and stars lit up like those in the sky!”
I’d come away feeling warmed by the sincere and openly appreciative patronage, though Leonardo did complain that for someone as wealthy as
Il Moro
, he was awfully slow to pay.
Within the week we were riding out into the countryside. Lorenzo revealed that his private conversation with
Il Moro
had been quite fruitful for our purposes, though Ludovico was unaware of the help he had given. I could see that the intelligence Lorenzo had gleaned troubled him deeply, for the duke’s plans for his governance of Milan and its alliances would reach far beyond its borders. There would be time for us to discuss the details, but this day’s mission was first in all our minds.
Our carriage deposited us at a lovely country villa surrounded by ancient olive groves. A horse-faced servant opened the door.
“Come this way,” he said, leading us into a formal salon, where we were seated. We said very little as we waited for the person upon whose shoulders rested the substantial weight of our conspiracy.
“Bianca Maria de Galeazza Sforza, Duchess of Savoy,” the servant announced in a funereal tone. The sixteen-year-old noblewoman entered the room with quiet dignity that matched her somber attire. She could not have been more different from her uncle’s wife, Beatrice. I was momentarily startled to see she wore a crucifix at the high neck of her steel-gray gown.
She was similarly reserved in her greetings to us all, accepting kisses to her hand from Leonardo and myself, and one on the cheek from Lorenzo. She was especially deferential to him.
“I am deeply honored by your visit, my lord. My uncle has told me of your loyal friendship over the years.” She nodded to my son. “Leonardo tells me you were a kind patron to him.” She smiled with almost insipid mildness at me. “And you must be very proud of your nephew.”
“I am,” I said, beginning to feel uneasy, as though we had perhaps come to the wrong home.
“Bernardo,” she said, turning to the servant who was standing at attention at the door. “I am going to take my visitors for a walk around the grounds.”
“I will be glad to accompany you,” he said with a clear note of disapproval born, I suspected, of severe protectiveness.
“That will not be necessary. These are all good friends of mine.”
The servant withdrew, closing the door behind him. The moment we were alone an amazing transformation overtook our hostess. Her face softened into a smile. She embraced Leonardo and knelt, taking Lorenzo’s hand to her lips, fervently kissing his swollen knuckles.
“Follow me,” she said as she rose, then led us out a door into a flower garden. As long as we were close to the villa she kept her voice low, but once away she spoke normally, and with great enthusiasm. “I am so glad you’ve come,” she told us. “The news from Florence is awful.”
“So you understood the full meaning of my letter,” Lorenzo said, more a statement than a question.
“Oh, yes. What secrets not buried in your code were in Greek, and the only one in this household who reads the language besides myself is my tutor. And for
him
, I must also thank you.” She turned to Leonardo and me. “Had it not been for the Medici influence on the Sforzas—their love of the classic cultures—I would never have had a Greek tutor at all. . . .”
Her words hung unfinished as we arrived at a small building ringed by ancient trees. With a key she produced from a chain hidden in the folds of her skirt, Bianca unlocked the heavy door. She led us inside the gloomy chamber and closed the door behind us with a resounding crash. “And I never would have become a student of Plato,” she finished, her voice echoing eerily.
With practiced ease, the duchess took from the wall a torch and went to a stone bowl in which flickered a single candlewick afloat in oil. Touching torch to flame she illuminated the room enough to see it was empty of all decoration save a Turkey carpet on the floor.
“Maestro,” she said, “would you push aside the rug, just there?”
He did what had been asked of him, revealing the fine outline of a trapdoor in the stone floor and a metal ring that needed tugging on top to open it.
Holding her skirts high, Bianca led the way down some moldering steps, lighting numerous torches as she went, so that the vault that emerged from the dark was hardly ominous.
“Soon I will marry Maximilian,” she said, lighting more torches. “I’ll be the Holy Roman Empress.” We had arrived at the bottom of the stairs. She turned to us with an earnest expression. “Had you not written to me when you did, come now to Milan, I would surely have been unable to help you. I have no idea where my future husband stands in all this.”
“It’s hard to say,” Lorenzo told her. “He is a celebrated intellectual, a friend and patron of scholars, but his ties to Rome cannot be overestimated. And alliances are shifting as quickly as the Alpine weather. As for the rulers themselves—who takes a crown, a pope’s throne, who dies and when, who wars with whom—all will determine the outcome of our endeavor. But if the Fates are with us—for we surely know that
right
is on our side—we will see success.”
Bianca nodded hopefully, and in the warm glow of the torchlight she seemed pretty to me. I wondered what kind of life she would lead in the northern climes of Austria and Burgundy. Whether she would miss the soft Italian springs, the gray green of olive groves, her family and her countrymen.
Her Greek tutor.
This had been the key to her involvement with us, Bianca Sforza’s knowledge and love for the Platonists . . . and Hermes Trismegistus. That, and the symbol of her learning, which she’d cleverly embroidered onto her sleeve in the portrait Lorenzo and I had seen in the Vatican—the Egyptian cross. The
ankh
. Symbol of Isis. A brave, shining beacon for all who had eyes to see that, even as a girl, here was a kindred spirit and philosopher.
The basement vault was stacked with sturdy chests. I imagined that some, like
Il Moro
’s treasure chests, were piled with jewels and gold and silver coin. But now Bianca was kneeling before one that itself needed unlocking—another key emerged from the folds of her gown, this one made of gold. She spoke with her back to us. “I always wished that I could have been born a man, but not just any man, anywhere. I wished I could have been born a man who grew up in Florence in the golden years of the Medici—the years of Cosimo, Piero . . .” She turned and looked back over her shoulder with a tear in the corner of her eye. “. . .
Il Magnifico
. To have studied with Ficino, Alberti, Mirandola.”
Lorenzo placed a hand on her shoulder. “Bianca, sweet girl. Know that we will be forever in your debt. That by your actions here today you become
one
with us.”
The look on her face was one of transported joy. A few of her tears fell before she turned back to the chest. We watched as she reached in and withdrew its contents.
Her arms full, Leonardo and I helped her to her feet, and we all followed as she moved beneath a wall torch, where her treasure was revealed. From a crimson velvet bag she took a wooden case decorated with silver gilt nails. This was unlocked with her golden key. She brought out of the box a bundle draped in red silk. When this was laid open we saw a many-times-folded piece of yellowed linen. It did not look like much. But now she carefully instructed us in the way to unfurl the thing—one on each side, one on each end.
It was many times longer than it was wide, its width two feet across. Along its length was the image in dark red of a man’s body, front and back—Christ’s body, as though this had been his winding sheet, the blood of his wounds having stained the linen—limbs, torso, and head.
It was, to even an untrained eye, a painting. A forgery, and a poor one at that. This was the Savoy family’s precious holy relic—the Lirey Shroud.
“Your uncle Jacque told us in Rome it had not been displayed in public for many years,” Lorenzo said.
“I can see why,” Leonardo said, unable to hide his disdain.
“Can it be done?” I asked him.
He was silent as he stared hard at the long, thin length of linen. I saw that look on his face, the changing tilt of the head. I was reminded of the day he had, as an eight-year-old, observed a flower’s stem and stamen on my red rug in a sunny meadow outside of Vinci.
“Yes,” he said, his lips tilting into a smile. “It will be my finest work. And if not my finest, the one I will most enjoy creating.”
It was night before we returned to Corte Vecchio, and as we pulled into the courtyard I saw a carriage I recognized, though it was not one that made sense being there. A Medici carriage, the family’s finest, one that took Lucrezia or the girls on the longest trips, to Rome or Naples, in grand style.
Its appearance here confused me. Who had traveled from Florence to Milan?
Zoroastre had come to greet us and opened our door. When I stepped out I saw in the shadow of the palazzo door the figure of a tall man stooped down and speaking to Salai. They both turned to face the new arrivals.
“Papa?” I whispered, and looked to see Lorenzo smiling broadly. “You did this?” I said, my whole body trembling.
“When he returned from India, he came to Florence,” Lorenzo said. “Went to Verrocchio’s when he found us gone. My mother wrote and told me. I had him brought here.”
Now Leonardo recognized Ernesto. “Grandfather!” He strode quickly to the door and took the old man in his arms with a fierce embrace. Then he came back and likewise embraced Lorenzo.
I was finding it hard not to weep with joy and gratitude as my father and I closed the distance between us. I’d worried that all the years of traveling would have aged him, weakened him, but it was quite the reverse. When he took me in his arms and embraced me, his grasp had never felt so strong, nor when he pushed me back to regard my face did his countenance appear so vital. He was riven through and through with a great force of life.
We never slept that night. Leonardo, Papa and Salai, Lorenzo and I gathered in the ducal bedchamber, each of us taking turns feeding the fire in the hearth. We sat or lay sprawled across the great bed, nibbling on cheese and bread, and the grape and olive compote I had taught Julia to make.
For the most part my father regaled us with tales of his many adventures in the East. The barefoot and painted holy men who wandered the countryside wearing nothing but loincloths and twisted themselves into fabulous shapes. The almond-eyed, dark-skinned women in silken veils wearing gold bracelets and nose rings, their hands and feet decorated with intricate inked designs. Ancient temples carved with men and women in the most immoderate postures of love. Elephants with immense snakelike noses upon whose backs my father had ridden on a wooden saddle.
While on his travels he’d heard next to nothing of the Christian world. The Indians, he said, were so steeped in their own culture—more ancient by thousands of years than the Western world—that Europe barely existed for them. He did hear many stories about the Judean saint the people called “Issa,” who had spent many years wandering India as a teacher, only to return to his home to be persecuted and crucified. Finally, so the legend went, Issa came back to India to live out his long life, and died there.