The Madonna of the Almonds (23 page)

Gabriel Solis de Gonzales, Cardinal of Milan, was used to such little tributes as his flock liked to give him. A life of indigence and self-denial was not for him. He was quite happy to preach in the Duomo about camels and needle-eyes but he saw no need to impoverish himself in order to enter Heaven. He felt his place in Paradise was assured by his purgation of the Jewish menace. So he was not wholly surprised when an interesting-looking bottle of liquor was delivered to him. It was the colour of burnt sugar, and when he lifted the stopper – Venetian glass, he noticed appreciably – there was the sweet smell of almonds. He was not surprised by the gift, but the servant who brought it in was not his usual groom of the chamber. This man was small and ugly. ‘Where is Niccolò?’ asked the Cardinal imperiously, after the small pause necessary to recollect his groom’s name.

‘He took sick, Your Eminence. The water fever.’

The Cardinal sniffed fastidiously. Better to replace Niccolò
then, for he did not wish to contract the gripes too. Best to find a replacement. This was how the Cardinal rewarded many years of devoted service. ‘What is your name?’ asked the Cardinal.

‘Ambrogio, Your Grace.’

‘Hmmm.’ A good Milanese name. But this man would not do – he had too much in his face which called the Hebrew to mind. He would be dismissed too – but tomorrow would be soon enough. The liquor tempted the Cardinal. ‘Who brought this? It has no direction.’

The man shuffled. ‘I know not, your Eminence. I think it came from his Excellency the Duke, as the Sforza’s man was just lately here.’

The Cardinal tisked faintly at this man’s incompetence. He dismissed him with a wave, confident that he would never have to see this feckless servant again. In this he was quite right.

In the absence of Niccolò or an apt replacement the Cardinal extinguished the candles himself, and climbed into his velveted four-poster in his cap and gown. He took a goblet from his night table and drank the draught down while reading a book of homilies on the excrescences of the Jew in the Spanish language. He enjoyed the sentiments and the liquor together and drank on till the little bottle was empty. Really, the flavour of almonds was quite delightful. At length the book fell from his hand and he slept.

He did not sleep, of course. He was dead. For what the Cardinal did not know is that another liquid that has the scent of almonds is the lethal compound Prussic acid. This powder, extracted from the leaves of the cherry laurel, is so deadly that even the poisoner that sold it, in the small streets behind Mantua’s cathedral, felt moved to warn the lady who bought it from him of its effects. She had nodded quickly and taken the vial in her white hand, a hand, he noted, with the three middle fingers all one length.

The Cardinal’s newest and last servant ran rapidly down the steps of his dead master’s palace. He paused only to throw a cloak over his livery, and conceal the empty bottle he had taken from his master’s bedside. He ran to his horse where it stood silently behind a hedge of yew. He rode hard till he came to the open country. The river was a broad silver ribbon threading through the night. He flung the bottle far from him, and above the hoofbeats heard a splash as the river accepted the crystal bottle and made it its own. He reached the Villa Castello at daybreak and saw his mistress watching from her window as the sky paled. She came down at once to meet him, and he was too exhausted to do more than throw his reins over the dovecot and leave his horse to crop grass as he almost fell to the ground. She did not trouble him with long interrogation. ‘Did you see him?’

‘Yes.’

‘Is it done?’

‘Yes.’

She breathed relief. ‘I excuse you from your tutelage of the boys today. Go and get some sleep.’ As he entered her door she called him back. ‘Isaac?’

‘Yes, my lady?’

She searched for the words. ‘Your God would be proud of you.’

He smiled the smile that was his only beauty, and sketched a
shalom
with his hand. ‘Yours would too, my Lady.’

‘I cannot stay. Saint Catherine was the last of them.’ Once more, Bernadino paced, wolflike, in the nave of a Holy place. ‘I must go. If yesterday taught me anything it is that there is nothing more important than living the life you are given, even if it is in sin. I have made a friend of God while I lived here. I know now that he is real, when once I thought he was not. I think he loves me too, despite my many flaws. But life is short. I know, at last, how to paint. I learned yesterday. And now I have to go, and live the life that I must, even if I am damned for it.’

‘Who is she?’ The Abbess’s eyes were open and candid. Bernardino was caught off guard. ‘Who?’

‘The lady.’

‘Which lady?’ Bernardino’s mind ran over the speech he had given, at a loss to know where Simonetta’s name appeared. Bianca moved from him and pointed to Saint Ursula. ‘This one,’ she said, then she strode to the panel of Saint Maurice and her finger picked out the lady in the
foreground in a red dress. ‘And this.’ Her black skirts swept the floor as she turned to point: ‘Saint Agatha, and Saint Lucy, and Saint Apollonia. Even,’ she indicated the last of all, ‘Saint Catherine. Here in her own chapel she has the look of the Countess of Challant indeed. But here on this panel, where she stands next to Saint Agatha, she is that secret lady once again. The lady who appears everywhere in this place yet you have never once spoken of her. Even in my mother.’ She pointed to the spectre in white who knelt on the lunette above Saint Catherine and Saint Agatha. ‘She was indeed a beauty, but you have flattered her with a superior countenance. Even I, one that loved her well, must admit that.’

Bernardino smiled ruefully and placed his head in his hands. He laughed. ‘You do not flatter my painting skill.’

The Abbess sat on the pew next to him. ‘Bernardino. You know how highly I prize your work. But look again. There are subtle differences, but all these ladies are the same woman.’

He rubbed his eyes fit to dislodge them from their sockets and when he opened them he looked afresh at his work. Sister Bianca was right. He had painted Simonetta over and over again since he had come here. He had painted her as Saint Ursula looking down at the red-winged angel that was Elijah. He had painted her, in great detail, in a red dress that he had never seen her wear attending the dedication of Saint Maurice’s church. There she stood, resplendent in
her finery, the scarlet of her dress crossed with gold, with her hair caught in a jewelled fillet studded with seed pearls. Great were the happenings in that painting, as Saint Maurice founded his church among the dead; but it was the lady in red with her strange hands folded in prayer who drew the eye and pulled the viewer into the painting. I am one of you, she seemed to say. I am a witness to this day. And – he almost laughed – he had painted Simonetta standing outside her own house, that very villa with the rosy plaster walls and the elegant portico that he had seen but once, as he bade her farewell. He had even painted the window at which she had stood that day when he took his leave, and placed in it a figure with shoulder length red-gold hair wearing a man’s russet hunting tunic.

And there was more. He turned around as his greatest work revolved around him. Every woman that he had painted since he came here had something of her in it, in form or figure, face or hands. Most of the women had her colouring, and even when they didn’t they had her eyes, or her gestures. He didn’t know whether the feeling that bubbled in his chest would end in laughter or tears. That he had thought her forgotten! That he had lain awake in his cell desperate to remember her face! She was here before him, a hundred times over, more real in his depictions than when he had painted her from life in Saronno. Then, captivated by her person, he had not been able to see her as she truly was. Here, separated by more than just distance, his denied
heart had remembered her in every particular, and his faithful hands had drawn her countenance every day. There were but two dames that were not Simonetta in that place: Saint Scholastica and a grieving acolyte at the Entombment of Christ. Both wore the black habit of a nun, and the plain kindly face of Sister Bianca.

‘Well?’ smiled Sister Bianca.

‘You are right. There is…a Lady. You are a clever woman to have seen so much when no word of it was spoken.’

‘These dames told me much, of course. But there was another clue, and it is this.’ She went again to the delimiting wall and found a small symbol in the frescoed panel, so small it would have fitted on a missive that could be crushed in a white hand; a piece of vellum that took leave of a lover. It was a heart that held a fleur-de-lys of leaves within. ‘Like the lady,’ said Sister Bianca, ‘this symbol is everywhere. Here on the shawl of Saint Catherine. On the bodice of Saint Ursula. And most often on the cloak of the Magdalene, as she witnesses the death of her lover-Lord, and when he reaches out to her from beyond the grave.’ In the Hall of the Nuns the Abbess pointed to the blood-red cape, covered in the leaf-filled hearts, wreathing around the stricken, lovelorn woman that Christ loved above all. ‘When I saw that I knew that you were captive,’ she turned back and smiled, ‘and then you painted your fair jailer again and again.’ The Abbess sat beside him again, with a look of intent inquiry. ‘Who is this lady with red hair and white skin, and eyes
oval as almonds? Who is she that moves with such grace, that inclines her head like a Saint and carries her body like a queen? She must be a rare beauty indeed.’

‘She is a rare beauty,’ replied Bernardino, exhaling a breath of defeat. ‘But she is no Saint. Her name is Simonetta di Saronno. She is human; just a woman, like other women. And because of her sin and mine I am here. But now I know that I cannot be without her, and yesterday’s events showed me that our sin was perhaps not so great.’

‘Might you tell me?’ the question was gentle, as if to an errant child.

‘We loved too soon after her husband’s death, and in the wrong place. She was my model for the Holy Virgin in Saronno, and we embraced in the church. We were seen and denounced. She is Godfearing, and sent me from her. I went for her sake more than my own, but now I know that I cannot stay away. Life is not life without her. She is all that matters now.’

Sister Bianca shook her head as she looked at the frescoes. ‘I think you will be painting her for the rest of your life.’

Bernardino shrugged, as if it was easy to cast off his gift. ‘I think history has enough of my paintings. The best of my work is here. My Master was right.’

‘Your Master?’

‘Master Leonardo. He said that I would not be able to paint until I first learned to
feel
. And he was right. What I
painted in the white church of Saronno was mere confection. I tickled the white walls with decoration as if I embellished a cake. Here I walked into a black cell and I have turned it into a jewel box. I know I will never do better, and that history will judge me on
this
place.’ His sweeping gesture took in the entire of the hall, and the many chapels, now peopled with numerous figures. Now he could see that the frescoes held none of the staged classical attitudes of his work in Saronno, nor the nerveless antique tropes of his former work. They were no longer refined, aristocratic and courtly. Here the figures lived with a vibrant naturalism; the fuzzy
chiaroscuro
with which he had aped Leonardo was now pulled into sharp focus which was real, definite and alive. Bernardino was no longer constrained by form or moderation. His passions had set him free: the brush was made flesh.

Now, too, he could see that his work had kept step with his growing faith; now the light of devotion shone from
within
the figures, not without. Bernardino felt that he addressed a learned colloquy of Holy figures that had gathered to hear him. The long-dead and the living convened together: Alessandro Bentivoglio, Sister Bianca’s father, knelt in his splendid robe of white and grey, black and gold, and behind him, Saint Stephen stood with the rocks that had killed him scattered at his feet. The Abbess’s dead mother Ippolita knelt over Saints Agatha and Lucy, all three wearing the face and form of Simonetta di Saronno. And there too,
were Bianca and her brother Anselmo, portrayed as Saint Scholastica and her twin Saint Benedict, smiling beatitude from the pilasters. In their raiments of glorious colour, precious pigments of lapis lazuli, periwinkle and malachite, the past and the present shone down from the arches and spandrels, the oculi and lunettes. The colours and drapery of the fabrics were spectacular; the
sottinsù
or perspective of the figures was so marvellous that it seemed that they bent down to bestow their grace on the world below. Bernardino had created reality from illusion – the fictive marble and niches he had painted looked as real as if they had been carved by a mason, rendered with shadows and forms that were not their own. He knew this was his master work. ‘But it is no longer admiration that I crave,’ he said, almost to himself, as if answering a question that had not been asked. ‘I want only her, and we will live in sin, if sin it is, if she will have me. I will live on her doorstep and plague her every day if I must.’

The Abbess thought for a moment before she spoke. ‘My dear Bernardino. Had you never thought that such a pass may not be necessary? You have become God’s friend, so you say. He does indeed love you, despite your faults, as he loves all his children. Might it not be possible to proceed in His path?’

‘What can you mean?’

‘I mean marriage. It is one of the sacraments, a state most beloved of God.’

‘Marriage?’ Bernardino said the word as if for the first time.

‘Of course.’ The Abbess smiled her half-smile. ‘Had you not thought of it before?’

‘Never…how is it possible?’

Sister Bianca laughed. ‘I know little of the world, it is true, but I think it is usual to ask the lady and wait for her to say yes.’ She mocked him gently.

‘But…’

‘You have been here for close on two years. Her husband died when?’

‘At Pavia. A year before I came here.’

‘Then the poor soul has been gone three years, God rest him. She has had time enough to mourn. Respect is due to the dead but the young should live their lives, not spend them in bereavement. The Church and Canon law allow a widow to remarry after a certain time, and that time is now past. She is yours if she will have you.’

Bernardino’s heart began to beat strong, and his eyes burned. Marriage. He had never thought that Simonetta and he could be together legitimately in the eyes of God. But if her scruples would allow it, if he had done penance enough, it was possible. There was no impediment in Church or law, only the scandal that had plagued them at the start, and all scandals must die at last.

‘But I know nothing of her life since I left. I had given her up for lost. I do not even know if she still resides in
Castello. Or even if she has met another.’

‘Do either of these events seem likely? Did she seem attached to her home?’

‘Very much so. In fact she came to work for me to preserve her home for the honour of her dead husband.’

The Abbess nodded with approval. ‘And did she seem fickle? One that would form another attachment?’

‘No. I am sure she loved me, and it tortured her because she felt the same disrespect to her first love.’

‘Then go and seek her. Why not? You can but try.’ The Abbess stood before Bernardino could protest. ‘There is but one more thing needful before you may marry. And it can be achieved this evening at Vespers.’

As the Vespers bells tolled on Bernardino’s last night in the monastery of San Maurizio, he stood, bareheaded at the font. He wore a white shirt and held a candle. The chapel was filled with the sisters that had favoured him with friendship these past years in the cloister, herbarium or library. He knew but a handful of names, yet they were all his friends. And before him, one among their number that he had come to love as a blood sister. She poured the Holy water over his head and he gasped at the shock, the purity of the cold. As he drank from his first communion cup, and looked into the dark carnelian red depths of the chalice, he looked up to the panel he had painted of the Man of Sorrows. Jesus lay prone, spurting lifeblood into the Grail
cup, the very blood that Bernardino now drank, and he found it passing strange that in all his growing knowledge of the lives of the Saints he had never till now thought of the ultimate suffering of the lonely and sorrowing Christ.
‘Noli
me Tangere’
indeed, ‘Touch me Not’ – Bernardino had painted him thus too, here in this hall. He raised his eyes to the painted lunette, and then a great revelation, a realisation, burst in upon him. There on the panel a hand reached out between loved ones, one to touch the other, but Bernardino had painted the opposite of the traditional tableau of the
Noli me Tangere
. Here, now, the Risen Christ reached his hand out to the Magdalene in welcome, just as Simonetta had once reached out to Bernardino in pity and been spurned. Bernardino was ready to touch and be touched, and he knew why; the Son of God’s body was supported by those who loved him; the Magdalene, Mary his mother and Saint John bent close at his end – he was not
alone
in his awful fate. At that moment Bernardino resolved he would not die alone. He wanted a wife and the children of his body to be with him. Unshed tears stood in his eyes at the notion, but they spilled soon enough as the sisters sang
‘Gloria, Gloria!’
in a crescendo of exultation. He looked up as the angels –
his
angels soared above his head, wheeling and revolving in their heavenly measure. For that moment they were not the seraphim that he had painted but were real. They had come to bear witness to his Baptism, to his communion, to his acceptance of God at last, here in the
Hall of the Believers where this lost sheep at last belonged, before they returned to their niches in the dark blue sky with the golden stars.

As he took his leave from the circus gate Bernardino bent and kissed the Abbess’s hands. He did not look at the jewels of her ring as he had when they met but closed his eyes and kissed the rough skin with real affection. She, too, noticed the difference and said, ‘You have given me a great compliment. For when we close our eyes when we kiss, be it the head of a child, the feet of a Saint or the lips of a loved one, that kiss means everything. For only then do we shut out the world and remember to
feel
.’