Immortal (29 page)

“—who would have a sentence on his head, and I’ve never heard of a Luca Bastardo who has been exiled for political reasons. Everyone knows who the Medici’s enemies are, they’re very open about that,” he finished, as if I hadn’t spoken. “Stay and teach me!”

“The risk is too great. Someday I will risk my life, I will give it, but that will be for love, for my one great love who will come,” I said, unsettled.

“Maybe you’re supposed to look in Florence for her while you teach me,” he said slyly. Leonardo always had an answer for everything.

I pulled out the dagger I kept sheathed at my thigh and threw it so it landed upright, its point in the ground, at Leonardo’s feet. “Here, there are wolves about. You can take it into the cavern with you, too.”

Leonardo took the dagger. He marched back toward the cavern, paused at its mouth, and called, “The wolves are here because they are meant to be! As are you, Luca Bastardo. Beneath the surface of everything is a tightly woven fabric of meaning!” He disappeared into the cavern at the same moment that one of the wolves howled mournfully. His lyrical words and the slow, long howl echoed off the rocks in unison and blended together until they were one word tumbling down the mountain. That word bore an uncanny resemblance to the word the Wanderer had whispered into my ear more than a century ago, the night of the philosopher’s stone. Then, the next day, Geber had died after uttering the same sentence to me that Leonardo had just said. I was struck with the sense of time coming back around like a snake on a caduceus to claim me. Perhaps young Leonardo was right, and I was meant to be his teacher; but first I had to go to Florence to pay my respects to the aged and ailing Cosimo de’ Medici.

“
THEY’RE ALL GONE,
Luca,” called Cosimo, in quavery voice. He lay in a magnificent bed, covered with sumptuous linens embroidered with gold and silver. I stood not in the Medici palazzo in Florence, but in an exquisite villa in Careggi, in the hilly countryside north of Florence. Cosimo was in residence here, avoiding the resurgent plague. As they’d been doing for over a hundred years when bubboni appeared, nobles and rich merchants with country estates fled the city and shut themselves inside their villas; there was still no cure for the dreaded Black Death.

“I am sorry to see you uncomfortable, Cosimo,” I said, perusing his face sadly. He did not look well, this man who was famed for going nights without sleep and days without food. But he’d always been sallow, and now he was gouty and arthritic. He had high color in his cheeks and a thin sheen of sweat glistening on his brow, and I could tell by looking at him that he wasn’t passing his urine as he ought. The physico skills taught me by Moshe Sforno and practiced in exile came to the fore. I began to think of ways to ease his suffering.

“I feel better with you here,” he said, and a genuine smile came to his lips. “I’m happy you came. I wanted to see you one last time. We’ve met many times far from Florence, but I wasn’t sure that you’d come home, even for me.”

“Always for you, Cosimoletto,” I said, and hearing his father’s old nickname for him widened his smile. Then a look of sorrow passed over his face.

“They’re all gone, Luca,” he repeated. “My son Giovanni died last year. My grandson Cosimino two years ago. He wasn’t even six yet. I couldn’t stay in the palazzo on Via Larga anymore. It was just too large for so small a family as remained.”

“It’s hard to lose those we love,” I replied softly. I felt Cosimo’s forehead and noted his fever, and then counted his pulse at his wrist.

“One time, I was meeting with an embassy from Lucca, we were discussing matters of state, you know how fraught it is with Lucca.” He paused, looking at me for confirmation. I nodded. “Cosimino came in and asked me to make him a whistle. A whistle!”

“I’ll bet you did, right then and there.” I smiled.

“You know me too well,” he answered, squeezing my hand. “I adjourned the meeting, and we made the whistle together, that boy and me, and only when he was well pleased did I resume the meeting. The Luccan delegates were much put out!” He chuckled softly and I joined him. Then he said, “And I’m so glad I did it, Luca, because I will never have another opportunity to play with him. He’ll never again climb into my lap, or interrupt a meeting, or stick a frog in the pocket of my mantello and laugh when I put my hand on it and scream.”

“You took advantage of the time you had with your grandson and you loved him well,” I said. “You can take comfort in that.”

“Yes!” Cosimo cried, his sagging, seamed face lighting up. “I loved him, and love doesn’t end. Love is the only immortality we can have, Luca. I hope you have found it for yourself!”

“I seek it. And there are old friends for whom I have great affection. You’re one of them, Cosimo. I hate to see my old friends unwell. We must think of a way to mend you.”

“Mend me, bah, I am ready to go,” he sniffed.

“Now, that I do not want to hear,” I said sternly. “As a physico, I have always found that a man who is ready to die will die.”

“And what’s so bad about dying, eh, Bastardo? Accepting death isn’t so terrible.”

“Sometimes it isn’t, sometimes it’s the end of pain and the beginning of freedom. But still, it should not be allowed one minute earlier than it must be,” I said. “Life is too precious to surrender easily to death!”

“It’s not surrender when a man grows beyond his fears and sheds this, this”—he picked up his shrunken pale quivering arm with his other hand as if it were a stick—“sheds this box! But don’t worry about yourself in the event of my death. I’ve left instructions about your account; your money will always earn the most favorable interest, and you’ll always be able to access it anywhere in the world that you wander, Bastardo,” he teased me, and something of the old sparkle came into his eyes.

“Listen to how wise you are, we cannot let the world be deprived of a man of such excellent sense,” I returned lightly. I put my hands on the arm that Cosimo had treated so scornfully and felt its frailty, its humanness. Would we not all come to this? Deep down in the bone of his arm, perhaps in its marrow, there was a fading thrum like a song that had played out and was about to end. My heart opened and a delicious warmth ran out of my chest, down my arms, and out my hands into Cosimo. Geber’s consolamentum was moving through me, like soft water flowing through the living pipe that was my body. Cosimo sighed.

“Your hands feel so good, Luca mio,” he said softly, and his face melted as pain eased out of him. His gray lips parted and some slight color washed into them. I waited until the flow of the consolamentum trickled to a stop, then spoke.

“Tell me about making water, old friend, how is that going?”

“Not well.” He shrugged, and turned his large-nosed face away. “I have some wonderful paintings you should see. There are a few panels here by Fra Angelico—”

“The small, saintly friar you told me about, when I met you in Avignon ten years ago?” I said. “The one who prayed before he touched his brush to holy figures?”

“The very one,” Cosimo said, delighted that I’d remembered. But of course I did; I never forgot an artist or a work of art. “Fra Angelico wept when he painted Christ on the cross. He was a man of holy simplicity, the easiest artist to work with. Most of them are so difficult, and they commit outrageous actions, like children who never grow up, but they must still be treated with the utmost respect.”

“They understand and render beauty, so allowances must be made for them.”

“I learned that from another artist, a man of opposite temperament to Fra Angelico: Fra Filippo Lippi. A talented artist, but he was a beast of earthly and sensual desire, couldn’t stay away from women. Absconded with a nun, even; cost me a pretty sum to buy him out of the clergy, and even his gratitude to me couldn’t induce him to work when lechery took hold of him. I once tried locking him up in his room to get him to finish a painting, but he tore the bedsheets into strips, knotted them together, and escaped down the window!”

“Men always find ways to escape,” I observed, which made me wonder if I’d truly escaped from Bernardo and Nicolo Silvano; wasn’t that what Leonardo was asking me to do? Leave behind the prison of my fear and anger and create a life here, at home, anew?

“So they do, eventually.” Cosimo sighed. “From whatever they consider their prison. I think Fra Angelico, pious as he was, thought of life on earth as his prison, and painting was his escape. He did a splendid job at San Marco, when I renovated it.”

“The old Dominican monastery,” I remembered, suddenly eager to return to Florence the city, to enter in through her strong gates and stand within her incomparable churches and busy piazze, her stone walls and her fine palazzi and her grand, imposing public buildings.

“I have financed a great deal of public work, as my father did.” Cosimo nodded. “Fra Angelico’s
Crucifixion with Saints
fills the whole north wall of the chapter hall. It’s an extraordinary painting, three crosses rising into a blue sky, while the saints are spread out in front. It has peace and innocence while showing the tragedy of the Crucifixion. Every artist paints himself; you can see that in Fra Angelico’s faces, which are filled with awe. I look forward to being in the presence of the God who could inspire that awe, Luca. Now that you’re back in Florence, you must see it! That is, if you’re going to stay, Luca mio? To see me through to the end?”

“I hope it’s not the end,” I said somberly, dodging the question.

“We’ve been friends too long for us to fool one another,” he said. “I can still remember you saving me from criminals, long ago in the year of the plague, when I was a simple boy.”

“Cosimo, of all men, you have never been simple.”

“That’s a big secret!” Cosimo cried, his eyes flashing. “You must pretend you don’t know that, and listen kindly to the reminiscences of a sick old man! I remember, back then, how you looked like a saint or an angel as you put me on top of that beastly donkey. Then you drew your dagger and killed those men, just as they deserved.”

“Whatever happened to that donkey?” I wondered.

“I was fifteen when a Jew with a wild beard showed up, claiming to be a friend of yours; he asked for the animal, so we gave it to him. I still remember him, a big man with a lot of questions. Isn’t it funny what you remember when you get old? Yet here you are, looking exactly the same, not having aged at all. This is some strange gift you’ve been given. I envy you, Luca.”

“Don’t,” I said shortly. “I would die to know the love, and the family, you’ve known.”

“You’ll have it.” He smiled, as if he already shared the joke with whichever God was laughing now. “Death, too, because we all get that. But I wonder if you’ll ever know the travails of old age. It’s not for cowards. There’s pain and humiliation. It’s not a condition for one who abhors cages.”

“I’ve had my share of pain and humiliation,” I said. I gave him a serious look. “What do you hear of the Confraternity of the Red Feather these days?”

“Not much, but then I am not much on the streets of Florence these days. There are still Silvanos about, let’s see, a young man named Pietro, looks just like Domenico did. Same distinctive nose and chin. Domenico also had a daughter who married and had sons, but I’ve forgotten their names. They must be grown men now. But Luca, it’s been sixty years. Maybe that’s not long for you, but it is a lifetime for the rest of us. Perhaps the old enmity has faded—”

“We’re Florentines, enmity never fades!” I laughed. “You know that better than anyone, Cosimo. Hatred, like hell, lasts an eternity!”

“Then are we not all always in hell, because we feel hatred constantly and keenly? And always in heaven with our love?” He shrugged. “I am old enough now, and sick enough, and I’ve spent enough time in contemplation of late to wish I’d done some things differently in my life, Luca. Perhaps shown some mercy at times.”

“One doesn’t show mercy to an asp. One cuts off its head.”

Cosimo sighed and squeezed my hand again. “Perhaps you need your long life to learn what the rest of us do in sixty years. Tell me of some of your travels, Bastardo. That ancient manuscript you sent to me via your agent, oh, was that only three years ago? You obtained it in Macedonia, yes? Your letter said there was a story attached to it….”

“The
Corpus Hermeticum,
” I said. “I found it in a monastery in Macedonia.”

“I know the title,” Cosimo said slyly. “I didn’t know if you did. Would you care to divert a dying man with the story of your finding it?”

Evening was well darkened into night hours later, as I was leaving, and Cosimo’s wife Contessina de’ Bardi stopped me. She was a fat, fussy, cheerful woman whom I’d met only once before. This was because I had always met Cosimo outside of Florence, and when he traveled, he took with him a Circassian slave girl of whom he’d been inordinately fond. I’d liked her, too, finding her pretty, pleasant, and undemanding. The Circassian had borne Cosimo a son whom he’d named Carlo and brought up with Contessina’s sons. Contessina hadn’t minded. As Leonardo had pointed out, powerful men often sired bastards. Now Contessina laid her plump old hand on my shoulder.

“He has a special fondness for you,” she said, in a low voice.

“And I for him,” I said.

“Isn’t that convenient,” said a nasal, cracking voice. I turned to see a tall, strong youth of fifteen. He had thick dark hair which fell almost to his shoulders, a long, flattened nose that looked as if it had been broken and badly set, and a heavy, jutting jaw. But the combination of his ugly features was striking, even mesmerizing, and his dark, penetrating eyes flashed with will and intelligence. He gave a cool, tight smile. “Many men profess their love for Nonno now that he is dying, and yet we all know that he has been as ruthless as he has been charitable.”

“It’s not for me to criticize a great man,” I said quietly.

“You were closeted alone with Nonno for hours, and now you speak with the slick tongue of a spy,” Lorenzo barked. Fear flickered in his eyes but was quickly masked by his arrogance. “Do you report to that fool Pitti, or to the traitor Agnolo Acciaiuoli, who are dogs tearing at the sides of a grand old lion, trying to bring him down? The Medici do not stand for disloyalty! Nonno and Papa may be ill, but I will soon have authority, and I will wield it with a sure hand!”