Immortal (36 page)

“I’ve looked for my parents. There are one or two small, insignificant questions I’d ask them,” I said, with humor and regret and a trace of the old longing.

“I know you looked for them.” Leonardo smiled. “You used to quiz me and my mother about the Cathars, and then the next day your agents would come to your cottage at the vineyard. I’d hide outside and eavesdrop on your instructions to them.”

“So naughty, poking into other people’s business!”

“You wouldn’t have it any other way.” He flashed his dimples at me in his old, boyish way, treating me to that smile like the sun coming out from behind the clouds. “There’s another Cathar legend. After Satan created the world through rebellion, God sent to earth an angel who had remained loyal. That angel was Adam, the direct ancestor of my mother’s people, the Cathars. But Adam was captured by Satan and forced to take human form. Since Adam lived in this form against his will, he was saved, with all his descendants. And Adam was the father of Seth, who in turn fathered a race of long-lived people. Perhaps you’re one of those sons of Seth.”

“Caterina told me about Seth, and I’ve always wondered about that,” I admitted. “But I don’t know for sure that the nobles who lost a son were my parents. I simply don’t know how to solve the riddle of my years. Perhaps my soul is too earthbound to free itself,” I offered, with both irony and whimsy. If I didn’t know my origins, at least I knew myself. I knew that I was not particularly soulful, in the way Giotto and Petrarca had been, and Leonardo and Ficino were, and even the magnificent, manipulative Lorenzo was, with his poetry and statesmanship and athleticism. I was literal, dogged, not particularly creative, though I revered creativity in other men. I could not paint, sculpt, or write in verse. My gift was something I could not claim credit for. I could only shrug it off as a rich joke for whichever God wanted the diversion.

“The
Corpus Hermeticum
would imply that you have an abundance of the fifth essence beyond the four physical elements; it would say that there’s something particular about your arcanum, that your arcanum is a larger receptacle of the celestial effluvia that pours down in a torrent through the souls of all species and all individuals. But I don’t think so.” Leonardo raised his golden-brown brows. “I think your longevity results from something that can be measured and examined in nature. Something about your organs renewing themselves, perhaps, or the structure of your organs, or the amount and healthfulness of your physical fluids. It’s an interesting question. I wish I knew more about organs; someday I shall make a great study of the mechanical structure of man, to reveal the inner mysteries. Then I will know about you, Luca. I believe that Ficino’s mystical soul will come back to merge with the body in some way. I don’t wish to be considered heretical, but I think”—he paused, his eyes alight—“that the soul resides in the seat of judgment, and the judgment resides in the place where all the senses meet, which is called the common sense; and the senses of hearing and vision and smell and touch pass through the body, the body is the vehicle….”

“You’re to start with Verrocchio soon. Maybe tomorrow. He was most impressed by your sketches and begged your father to let you start even today,” I said. “You will have a great career as an artist, ragazzo mio. The world will know of your genius. Fortune and fame are yours!”

“I will get old before you do, Bastardo,” Leonardo answered, with some sadness. He stared into me, as if he saw clearly the starlike essence that other men sensed but couldn’t quite perceive. In a musing voice, he said, “I don’t know if I will die before you, though…. I think you have other secrets, dangerous secrets that Lorenzo de’ Medici knows and uses to keep you tied to him. I see the way you look at him, with distrust and anger and respect.”

“I will always be your friend,” I said softly. He wasn’t going to discuss his apprenticeship and our parting. It was too close to his heart; he had, after all, chosen me as his teacher. I rose and stood in front of Leonardo.

“It will be a few years before I see you again, ragazzo. Apprentices work day and night to learn their craft. They are always at the beck and call of their master. Verrocchio will keep you busy, as he should.” I put my hand on Leonardo’s shoulder and was surprised to feel the consolamentum start, the soft lyrical flow of something, a transfer of spirit or whatever natural thing Leonardo would want to call it. It originated in the warm lucent percussion of my heart and moved into the young man seated on the marble bench in front of me. His face softened and he smiled, closed his eyes, and drank in the flow. The radiance around him which always made him seem more vital than other people seemed to expand and brighten. I waited until the flow of the consolamentum slowed, then I took my hand from Leonardo and placed it on my heart. “It has been my joy and my honor to spend time with you. You have enriched my life.”

Leonardo’s eyes were damp and he blinked rapidly and looked away. He could not answer and I finally walked out of the courtyard. “I will discover your secrets, professore,” he called after me. “And I will find a way to help you with them!”

SO LEONARDO PROGRESSED
to a better teacher than me. It left more of my time available for Lorenzo’s use, and he took advantage of that. When he was nineteen, his mother, Lucrezia, chose the Roman aristocrat Clarice Orsini as a bride for him, which scandalized Florence. For him to marry outside Tuscany was tantamount to a betrayal, especially when Tuscan women were the most beautiful and intelligent in Christendom! But canny Lorenzo preferred to scandalize all of Florence rather than to anger particular families by choosing one Tuscan bride over another. He also liked the advantages of the alliance with a wealthy family of old nobility that had important ties to both Roma and Napoli.

In June 1469, the match was made.

A few months later, early in December, Piero the gouty died. Two days after Piero’s death, a solemn delegation from the city asked Lorenzo to assume its guidance. He accepted, though he was only twenty, and as vigorous and lusty as any newlywed twenty-year-old man. But Lorenzo immediately showed his perspicacity and his fitness for the position he’d inherited more from his grandfather Cosimo than from his sickly father, by appointing a council of seasoned men, myself included, to advise him. I remained in the background, though.

The Silvano clan was dispersed from Florence, but that might be temporary. And they had friends. The Confraternity of the Red Feather awaited a resurgence of the Inquisition and other instruments of the Church’s intolerance. Besides, other men might notice that I didn’t age as they did. Circumspection behooved me. So Lorenzo kept me busy with private errands, sensitive diplomatic missions, the carrying of secret messages to foreign ambassadors and princes, and the like. Sometimes I arranged for a woman to meet him; Lorenzo had an unquenchable appetite for the fairer sex, as I did, though I planned to be faithful when I married. I did not judge him for his adultery. I had committed too many dark acts to sit in judgment of other men, and besides, Florentine men of wealth deemed it their right to keep mistresses. Lorenzo considered himself first among Florentine men, with all accompanying privileges. He was on course to lead the city to greater glory, both for itself and for the Medici, when the path of history turned. Generous Pope Paul II, a good friend to Lorenzo, died in 1471, and the Franciscan Francesco della Rovere ascended to the papacy as Sixtus IV.

One fine summer day in June of 1472, Lorenzo summoned me. I thought it was to discuss another of the carnivals and pageants with which he entertained Florence, and which endeared him to pleasure-loving Florentines. I was strolling in the Mercato Vecchio with Sandro Filipepi, who inexplicably called himself by the name Botticelli, which was his brother’s nickname. We meandered through stalls of pink strawberries and red raspberries and cured ham and silver fish brought in from the sea and tables set with fresh game like grouse and deer. We joked and negotiated the price for a tondo of a Madonna and child that I wanted. It wasn’t for devotional reasons, or perhaps it was, considering how I felt about art. Sandro painted in a graceful style, depicting bodies that were at once ethereal and voluptuous; his female figures were celebrations of beauty and femininity, light and receptivity. I was intent on acquiring one of his works to place in my personal collection and accord the reverence it deserved.

“It doesn’t matter how much I pay you; you’ll piss it away immediately,” I said.

“Then you should pay me a huge amount so I can piss like a stallion!” Sandro said, laughing. He was a good-humored, intelligent man who was also kindly and appealing, with deep-set eyes and long, flowing locks of which he seemed inordinately proud, a large nose, and a prominent cleft chin.

“Fifty florins is a huge amount of money.”

“One hundred florins is twice as huge.” He made a hand sign that referred to a man’s parts. “I’ll make a much bigger puddle!” I had thrown up my hands and was laughing when Lorenzo’s Moorish servant hailed me. Sandro patted me on the shoulder. “You’re off at the beckoning of our magnificent Lorenzo, who wouldn’t quibble with me over fifty florins, but I’ll see you in Careggi a few days hence, for Ficino’s dinner, yes?”

“I’ll be at Careggi. Sixty florins,” I called, walking toward the Moorish servant. After all, someday I would make a gift of Botticelli’s painting to my wife. I felt that I was ready for her, and prophetic Leonardo, whose companionship I missed, had told me that when the heart was ready, the beloved would appear.

“Seventy-five!”

“Done!” I agreed. Sandro laughed and clasped his hands overhead in a victory sign.

“I’d have done it for fifty, I like the subject matter!” he said.

“I like your work, I’d have paid a hundred!”

“Maybe you still will,” he yelled back good-naturedly. I would have answered him, but the Moorish servant touched my sleeve.

“Signore Lorenzo requires your presence. Will you take my horse?” he offered, and gestured to the outskirts of the mercato, where horses were tied up.

I shook my head as I dug out a coin for some of the fleshy orange apricots, which the vendor passed me with alacrity. I bit into the sweet, juicy fruit, chewed, and then answered, “It’s a fine day to walk, and it won’t take me long. Tell your master I’ll be there shortly.”

TOMMASO SODERINI AND FEDERIGO DE MONTREFELTO,
the Duke of Urbino, were already there when I arrived at the Palazzo Medici and went into Lorenzo’s opulent chamber, with its marble floor and coffered ceiling. The men stood by one of Paolo Uccello’s three paintings of the battle of San Romano, paintings of the sort which were usually hung in government buildings to commemorate state military victories. The placement of the paintings in Lorenzo’s private chamber gave the room the air of a prince’s hall or public council chamber. Yet the grandeur of the room could not distract me from a sense that something serious was transpiring.

“Kind of you to join us, Bastardo,” Lorenzo said coolly, and I knew he was displeased that I’d arrived at my leisure. “We were just discussing the new Pope, Sixtus.”

“He’s been polite, and he renewed the Medici management of papal finances,” I said cautiously, coming to stand beside Soderini, who wore a gloomy face.

“Polite but cool,” said Soderini, an older man who was devoted to Lorenzo. He’d been horrified at the attempted coup against the Medici, and had since become one of Lorenzo’s closest friends and staunchest supporters. Some men thought Soderini was the only man in Florence who could disagree with Lorenzo; in fact, Soderini and Lorenzo worked together in harmony, their friendly antagonism maintained for show only, so that Florentines could maintain their cherished illusion of a republic. Now Soderini turned to me. “Our old rivals, the Pazzi, are making overtures to him. He finds their blandishments congenial.”

“The Medici have been the papal bankers since early in Cosimo’s career,” I said. “Would Sixtus disrupt this time-honored arrangement? It’s been lucrative for everyone.”

“Besides, Sixtus is consumed with foreign interests,” said Federigo. He was a fifty-year-old noble, renowned both as a master of warfare and a patron of the arts and of learning. His palace in Urbino was said to be the fairest in Italy, and his library rivaled the Medici library. He was built as I was, lean with hard muscles rolling on his frame, and he was handsome enough on the left side of his face, though the right side lacked an eyeball and bore scars from a tournament injury in his youth. I knew him to be honorable, a man who kept his word, but I had never quite trusted him. In his quest to win every battle, he laid siege to cities and left the weaker inhabitants, that is, children and women, dead. Whatever men wanted to do should be done to consenting equals, and not forced on those who were smaller and weaker. I believed this with every fiber of my being. Federigo went on, “The Pope promotes his crusade against the Turks and the Church’s authority in France, where Louis XI insists on the French church’s independence. He also wants the reunification of the Russian church with Roma.”

“You’ve left out the most important promotion: his nephews’ interests,” said Lorenzo tensely. “He wants to put Florence under their control, and they’re incompetent fools.”

“What’s the immediate problem?” I asked, knowing that there must be one, or Lorenzo wouldn’t have sent for me. I clasped my hands behind my back and waited.

“Volterra is rebelling,” said Soderini. “We have to send troops.”

“Alum mines are the problem,” Lorenzo said, in his nasal, measured tone, “money and alum mines. The Medici bank furnished the capital to those who were given the concession to develop the mines when the mines were discovered a few years ago. In return, the contract for mining the alum went to a consortium consisting of three Florentines, three Sienese, and two Volterrans. The Florentines were my men, of course. Now the mines have proved lucrative. And the Volterrans, with the town behind them, are demanding a bigger cut of the profit.”

“It always comes back to bribes,” Soderini said, pacing around us. “The contractors are bringing the matter before the Signoria. I know from talking to them that the Signoria will vote that the profits should go to the general treasury of the whole Florentine republic.”