Immortal (41 page)

“I suppose it’s better not to be alone today,” she said, stealing a glance at me. She moved forward and I took the opportunity to lean in toward her hair and smell her lilac scent. We walked through the hordes of chattering people, passed by a row of vendors with bright spring flowers from the contado. Today the vendors were less interested in selling their wares than in jabbering together: what would happen to Florence? Maddalena turned to me.

“So, Signore Bastardo—”

“Call me Luca,” I said, knowing it wasn’t appropriate and not caring. She half-smiled and her thick lashes dropped to hide her eyes. Today she wore an indigo velvet cottardita embroidered with silver threads and encrusted with a design of pearls along the bodice. Over it she’d thrown on a white wool mantello. The effect was rich and striking with her fair skin, her variegated hair with its lush mix of brown, red, gold, plum, and black tones, and her eyes that were as complicated as agates.

“I suppose we are old friends. You saw me at my worst! So, then, Luca, you look very well, exactly as I remember you. It’s wonderful to see my memories of you weren’t childish fantasies, after all.” She laughed shortly, her cheeks coloring again.

“What kind of fantasies did you have of me? Good ones?” I gave her a suggestive smile.

“That’s not what I meant!” She reddened from the perfectly shaped widow’s peak on her scalp to her delicate collarbones.

“I know what you meant. I just wanted to see what other meanings there could be.”

“Suggestion is the bastard child of wicked intentions.”

“Relatives, both,” I said, punning on my surname.

“Please, signore, I am not like your sophisticated Florentine women. I find this conversation unbecoming!” She took a deep breath. “I, ah, I never asked you back then, what do you do in Florence? That night in Volterra, you fought like a condottiere, but you were so skilled at treating injured people, I assumed you were a physico of some kind.”

“I’ve been a doctor and a soldier. Now I’m pursuing the art of alchemy.”

“Alchemy, how interesting.” She brightened. “We were at dinner at the Medici palazzo just two weeks ago and I listened to Marsilio Ficino speak on that topic. He’s a fascinating man, so learned and mystical. I want to learn alchemy. Astrology, too. I’m not as educated as your clever Florentine women, and I’m eager to catch up. I find I enjoy learning. I have a hearty appetite for it. My husband has been so kind as to offer to hire a tutor for me.”

You deserve kindness,
I thought, and was torn between feeling grateful to Rucellai for his generosity and envious that he was the one able to show it to her. Aloud, I said, “Even in Florence, few women study alchemy or astrology.”

“I would like to,” she said, giving me a thoughtful look. “Perhaps you could teach me.”

I was almost overwhelmed by my longing to touch her and didn’t trust myself to say something reasonable about teaching her. Instead, I asked, “What are you shopping for? If you don’t know who to buy from, I can show you the best purveyors.”

“My husband has been most solicitous in taking me around Florence and introducing me to shopkeepers.” She made a gesture with her fine-boned hand. “Besides, I really came today to hear what people are saying. The Rucellai are deeply involved in the political life of Florence. I like to keep abreast of events so I’ll have something to say to my new relatives over dinner.”

“I’m sure your husband appreciates your diligence,” I said, and couldn’t keep the sharpness from my tone. Maddalena’s head snapped up as she looked at me. Her brows knitted.

“Have I offended you?” she asked, a look of concern spreading over her lovely face.

I shook my head. Then, because I couldn’t help myself, I said, “I thought you were going to wait until I came back to Volterra for you.”

“Wait?” She looked startled. “You mean that last conversation we had, as you were mounting your horse—what was his name, Ginori—and leaving Volterra?”

“You asked me to come back for you. I said I would.”

She colored, laughed once, and placed her hand on her throat. “Signore, I could not take to heart your kind words to a wounded young girl!”

“But you should have,” I said mordantly, and she looked away.

“Maddalena, Maddalena! What are you doing out?” cried a familiar voice. Rushing toward us with his sword drawn was Rinaldo Rucellai, flanked by two other sword-carrying men whom I recognized as friends of Lorenzo’s, another Rucellai cousin and a Donati.

“Carissima, you should not be outdoors when people are rioting,” Rucellai said anxiously, after kissing his wife’s forehead. He went on breathlessly, “There is a Volterran implicated in the conspiracy; the man who nicked Lorenzo in the neck is a Volterran. You should stay inside lest people associate you with him and take vengeance! I don’t want you killed in the streets of Florence. I would go mad with sorrow at the loss of you!”

“The market is calm, people are gathered only to exchange news, I’ll be safe here,” Maddalena objected with a gesture that took in the swarms of people babbling with excitement.

“Your life is my responsibility now, Maddalena mia,” Rucellai said, with an air of lordly determination that became him, with his height and his closely cropped gray beard and his white hair.

“I’ll escort the signora home,” I offered.

“I would be most grateful,” Rinaldo Rucellai said, gripping my arm in thanks. “And again indebted to you. I must attend to Lorenzo’s business, but you will join us for dinner soon, Signore Bastardo? To let us show our appreciation?”

“Surely,” I said. Maddalena and I watched the three men scurry off. “Come, signora, let’s obey your lord and master.” Her mouth tightened for a moment, then relaxed. “I would not rule my wife with so heavy a hand,” I said blandly. “A man should allow his wife to govern herself.”

“Then your wife might be hurt when there are riots in the streets,” she said lightly, with a flutter of her thick black lashes. “My husband’s love for me makes him protective.”

“Love doesn’t include incarceration,” I said stiffly.

“Signore Bastardo, it’s not incarceration for me, it’s my pleasure to do my husband’s will. His wisdom is apparent, these are uncertain times!”

It’s not wisdom because he has white hair,
I thought, and then was ashamed of my jealousy. I was glad that Rucellai took good care of Maddalena. It’s just that I longed to do that myself. But I said nothing. I didn’t show it, but I trembled inside as I took hold of her elbow to escort her. It was small and fine, a delicate birdlike notching together of bones, a delight in my hand. If I couldn’t touch her anywhere else, at least I knew what her elbow felt like, through her sleeve.

“
I WROTE A PLAY FOR MY CHILDREN
,” Lorenzo was saying, as dessert dishes were cleared by servants, “entitled
San Giovanni and San Paolo.
They each have a part in it, as do I. It’s great fun to enact with them! We put on costumes and make their mother watch and laugh through the whole thing. I miss them terribly. A good wife and many children are the greatest blessing life and God can offer.” He took a draught of his wine and then gave me a long sardonic look across the table with his black eyes glittering over the rim of his silver goblet. “You must be getting ready to choose a wife, Luca. You’re wealthy, allied with the most excellent families.” He indicated Rinaldo Rucellai, who was pleased at Lorenzo’s attention and bowed his head in response. Lorenzo continued, “Isn’t it long past time for you to think of starting a family? You look young for your years, but a man must settle down and produce children eventually.”

“I’ve considered it of late,” I allowed.

“A man as handsome you, and as virile as you’re said to be, must want a wife,” Lorenzo continued, playing his familiar game of cat and mouse with me. “Is it true, as rumor has it, that you sometimes visit several ladies in a night? What marvelous stamina you have! I’m envious!” Maddalena, who sat next to her husband at the head of the table, knocked down her wineglass. A servant bustled over to mop up the garnet liquid.

“Virility is common among Florentine men, who take their cue from their leaders,” I answered, with a level gaze at Lorenzo. “I don’t give any credence to rumors.”

“Perhaps he intends to reproduce his name,” cracked Sandro Filipepi. “Florence will be overrun with bastards! Luca, you must be the son of a vigorous man and an insatiable woman!”

“There are a few bastards around,” Leonardo replied. “But there is only one Luca.” It was late in the evening and we were a dozen guests in the dining salon at Rinaldo Rucellai’s richly appointed palazzo. The meal was over, and successful, having left us mellow and convivial with good wine. Since the dinner party was nominally in my honor, I sat near the head of the table, next to Maddalena, who was on Rucellai’s left. I was close enough to her that I’d been inhaling her lemon and lilac scent all evening, which eroded the edges of my reason into rags. Lorenzo sat at Rucellai’s right hand, across from me. It was the first time Lorenzo and I had been in the same room together, the first time we’d spoken, since the sack of Volterra six years ago. I was uneasy. Lorenzo with his cunning like a street rat could sense it.

“How about it, Luca, are there marriage plans in the offing?” Lorenzo pressed me.

“Eventually,” I said.

“Any prospective brides in particular?” Rucellai asked. Matchmaking, with large amounts of money changing hands via dowries, was a topic of supreme interest in Florence.

“Perhaps,” I answered.

“I could introduce you to the mothers of some of the young women I’ve met in Florence, if you can be dragged away from your ladies,” Maddalena offered. Her long lashes were lowered, making her protean eyes unreadable. I struggled to keep my face from showing my revulsion at her words. Crafty Lorenzo saw something that made him sit up straighter.

“I think caro Luca is far too busy endeavoring to turn lead into gold to worry about marriage right now,” Leonardo said easily, diverting the other guests’ attention.

“I would love to study alchemy!” said Maddalena.

“Luca would be the man to teach you,” Leonardo said, as if confiding in her alone. “He studies and works in his workshop until late every day. He reads and rereads Ficino’s translation of the
Corpus Hermeticum.
He has other alchemical works spread about his workshop. He is a man possessed with discovering the great secret of alchemy!”

“I thought the great secret of alchemy was immortality,” said Lorenzo, smiling at me while playing with the stem of his wine goblet.

“Your grandfather once told me that the only immortality we could hope for was in the love we felt for other people,” I replied, knowing how my reference to Cosimo would affect Lorenzo. He pushed the silver goblet back with a spastic motion.

“I like to think my paintings will enjoy some sort of immortality, like the timelessness of nature,” Leonardo said serenely, again rescuing me from unwanted attention. “Since painting embraces within itself all the universal forms of nature. This is why it’s so important to paint from nature, to learn from nature. To this purpose I have hired a young peasant woman and her baby as models for recent sketches of the Madonna and Child. The peasant woman is physically beautiful, and I would like to capture the essence of her beauty so that it ravishes the viewer. And not just the beauty, but the mystery of femininity and grace!”

“What is immortal is the soul, inclined toward God and propelled by love,” commented Sandro. “That’s grace, that propelling. Ficino says the soul is so responsive to beauty that earthly beauty becomes a way to access divine beauty, which is universal goodness and harmony.”

“If anyone can paint universal beauty, it would be you, Signore Leonardo,” said Maddalena warmly, and I loved her even more for championing Leonardo.

“So I shall account myself a second-rate draughtsman who is denied nature’s favors as a husband is turned away by a wife who locks her knees together!” exclaimed Sandro.

“No, Signore Filipepi, that’s not what I meant; your works are full of grace,” Maddalena cried. “I love your
Adoration of the Magi
in Santa Maria Novella, with the radiance of the star pointing at the sweet haloed head of the Christ Child, held so lovingly in his mother’s lap, and the way you captured the emotional face of Cosimo de’ Medici as the wise man, and Signore Lorenzo here, and young Pico della Mirandola with whom Ficino is so taken—”

“Signora, pay Sandro no heed, he is a great trickster and is playing upon your tender sympathies,” Leonardo said graciously, smiling at Maddalena.

“Well, don’t spoil the joke for me,” grumbled Sandro, but he lifted his wineglass with good humor in a salute to Maddalena.

“You know what a husband should do with a wife who locks her knees,” Lorenzo said, with a serious mien. “He should roll her over onto her belly!” Sandro burst into guffaws, Leonardo choked on his wine as he tried to contain a laugh, and Rinaldo Rucellai with his neat gray beard colored and grinned. To her credit, Maddalena didn’t flinch.

“Poor Clarice, I will offer her my sympathy if I see her limping,” she said in a deadpan tone of voice. Her comment elicited hoots and cheers around the table, and it was only when at the other end of the table the wives of Donati and Tommaso Soderini clapped and called, “Brava! Bravissima!” that she blushed and cast her eyes down. I couldn’t believe how adorable she was in that instant. It was all I could do to restrain myself from reaching out to touch her.

“A toast to your wife, Rucellai, she is as good-humored as she is beautiful!” applauded Sandro.

“She is a treasure,” Rucellai agreed, reaching his hand out to squeeze hers. “I would love to have Maddalena’s portrait, Sandro; perhaps we could discuss it.”

It took away my breath to think of Maddalena painted by Sandro Botticelli, and I resolved at once that I must own that portrait. Thereafter I was absorbed in figuring out how to obtain it and didn’t listen to the dinner conversation. But I did watch Maddalena. Her expressive face reflected a dozen emotions and ideas over the course of a few minutes, like notes rippling off the strings of a lyre. Her fine hands were animated, too, illustrating her words, touching her husband’s arm, gesticulating for servants to refill wine goblets. I didn’t want to stare but couldn’t help it. I only managed to drop my eyes when Leonardo tread on my foot, warning me. After that I managed to confine her mostly to my peripheral vision. Mostly.