Immortal (43 page)

“Alchemy is the search for what not yet is, the art of change, the quest for the divine powers hidden in things,” I said in a solemn voice.

“What does that have to do with those manuscripts?” she demanded, her face shuttering in annoyance. I stepped away, hastily, in case she threw something at me. She’d done that once when I’d corrected her Greek conjugations in a way she didn’t like. She said, “I hope that’s Ficino’s work; I’m ready for it, after two years of Latin and astrology!”

“Tell him to give you this book,” boomed a familiar voice which I had not heard in a while, and I smiled. “Why is it taking so long to get to the good stuff? Have you asked him that?” said the Wanderer, his broad-shouldered body standing in the threshold. He trudged in and heaved himself down on the stool next to Maddalena. She scrutinized him thoroughly, and he met her gaze directly. After a few moments she reached out to touch his wild gray beard. He laughed and leaned back, avoiding her hand.

“How long did it take you to grow that?” she asked, unoffended.

“How long does any great work take?”

“That depends on the work,” she answered, her dark brows puckering. “It could be a few days, or hundreds of years. It could take a moment or a millennium!”

“Exactly!” he responded, straightening his patched gray tunic.

“So how long have you had?” Maddalena persisted, smiling at him with great charm.

The Wanderer grinned. “How long do you want me to have had?”

“Millennia, of course! Aren’t there legends about men who live almost forever, wandering the earth until the Messiah returns?”

“Until the Messiah comes,” the Wanderer answered slyly. “But your legends concern a shoemaker who offended the great rabbi Jesus on his way to his crucifixion, and thus the rabbi cursed him to walk the earth alone until the world ends.”

“I thought it came from the beloved disciple to whom Jesus said, ‘There are some standing here, which shall not taste of death, till they see the Son of Man coming in his kingdom,’” said Maddalena. “Which do you think it is?”

“That depends on whether you think the millennia are a curse or a blessing,” the Wanderer responded.

“Did you stable your beastly donkey, Wanderer?” I asked, changing the subject. I had not decided for myself if longevity was a blessing or a curse, and I had no stomach to hear the topic debated between the woman I loved and the mysterious, maddening Wanderer, who probably knew my origins but would only answer my questions with more questions.

“What, would I insult him that way? He’s downstairs in the foyer!” said the Wanderer. I didn’t know if he was joking, anything was possible with the Wanderer, so I made a frantic motion for the maid to run downstairs and check. The Wanderer grinned voraciously and handed me a thick, leather-bound book with shiny gilt edges.

“Summa Perfectionis,”
I read. Then I yelped, realizing what I was holding. “Geber’s manuscript, his life work. You published it!”

“What’s important is that I brought it to you, to remind you of the goal of alchemy, and it’s not the creation of gold! Have you attended to yourself, are you ready to rectify the world?”

“What is this manuscript?” Maddalena asked. “How do you know about it?”

“Il Bastardo here knows many things. Have you told her about the consolamentum?” asked the Wanderer.

“The consolamentum? What’s that?” cried Maddalena. “Tell me, Luca!”

“It’s a transfer of soul or spirit, something like that,” I said, sighing. “It comes through the hands. I’ve given it to sick people to good effect.”

“When your hands grow warm and tingly and everything looks bright and soft,” Maddalena cried. “You gave me the consolamentum that day in Volterra, that terrible day! It made me feel better. Maybe it even saved my life.” She gave me a tender look, almost reluctantly, as if she couldn’t stop herself. I melted.

“There’s a donkey in the foyer!” screamed the maid from the stairwell. The Wanderer burst out laughing, leaning back on the stool with his black eyes dancing and his huge beard wagging like a furry animal on the run. Maddalena, who was like Leonardo in her eternal curiosity, leapt off her stool to go see.

I CHERISHED,
in particular, one night that was a great victory for me, even though it also exposed me to the danger that ever dogged my steps. It occurred during a festival that Lorenzo sponsored to rebuild Florentine morale during the years following the Pazzi conspiracy. The revelry began in the morning, but I went at sundown, when the light turned crystalline and the sky purpled and grew fragrant like lilacs. Like everyone else, I wore a costume. I was dressed in the leathers of a condottiere. I had been invited to a few parties, at least one of which would surely have devolved into an orgy, but I preferred to be alone with my thoughts of Maddalena.

I bought a skin bag of wine from a vendor and walked along the banks of the pearlescent Arno, listening to lyres playing, flutes piping, trumpets blaring, drums beating, and squeals of laughter echoing off the stones. Bands of young nobles paraded the streets, singing ballads bawdy enough to embarrass a Neapolitan sailor. A pageant with horse-drawn tableaux designed by Leonardo processed along the Via Larga; some of the lath and plaster tableaux with living actors were a re-creation of the story of the Three Magi and the Christ Child. This referred to the Medici, who saw themselves as the Magi of Florence.

I felt no urgency to watch the pageant, having discussed it exhaustively with Leonardo. He’d shown me his sketches for the tableaux from their inception. I’d even watched them being constructed to his exacting standards. So I walked in a leisurely way along the Ponte Santa Trinita, sipping my wine, wishing I were with Maddalena, feeling doubly lonely because I was not only a freak with a dubious past, I was also alone, unable to have the great love I’d been promised. Suddenly a woman in a gorgeously feathered, befurred, and bejeweled cottardita thrust herself in front of me. She had been running and she was out of breath.

“Hello, stranger!” She laughed. Her face was obscured by a fantastically plumed, and probably expensive, mask, and her hair was hidden under an outrageous hat that was the head of a wildcat. But I would have recognized the small, curving form anywhere. She giggled and I wondered how much she’d had to drink. “Aren’t you going to say hello?”

“Oh, yes,” I said. I wrapped my arms around her and pulled her to me and kissed her thoroughly, despite her mask. Her lips parted and I pushed my tongue in, savored the grapey wine taste of her soft wet mouth. Every part of my being had yearned for a moment like this, and I took full advantage of it. She melted into me, her thighs embracing mine, and I nearly made love to her there, on the bridge. Finally I released her. Her scent of lilacs and lemons and crisp spring morning lay on my arms and chest like a magical mantello.

“That’s not what I meant.” She sighed.

“I know what you meant.”

“Do it again!” she said tipsily, stepping toward me. I was about to oblige her when a laughing group of people, all dressed as animals, surrounded us.

“Look, a soldier!” shouted Rinaldo Rucellai, who wore a lion’s-head hat and a lucco of golden-brown fur. I stepped away from his wife. “Have you killed anyone today, soldier?” he asked with drunken hilarity.

“Not yet,” I said. “But I’m thinking about it.” That provoked gales of laughter, and the group, with Maddalena in their midst, moved away toward another bridge.

We never spoke of the moment during our lessons, because such feathery things as transpired during
carnevale
were not meant to be addressed. And Maddalena wasn’t the only person I saw wearing feathers during that fantastical night. On another bridge, later, when the stars tumbled out of an indigo sky as if they’d been shaken from a blanket, after I had imbibed too much crude wine, I came face-to-face with a boy. I had seen him once before. His sharp nose and thrusting chin were instantly recognizable. He was about ten years old now, a little older than I had been when his ancestor had made me a captive in his brothel. He wore red feathers sewn onto his camicia, and he recognized me, too. He looked back at me with open contempt.

“Luca Bastardo,” he said, and saluted me.

“Gerardo Silvano,” I said.

“Until soon.” He nodded, fingering one of the red feathers, and stepped away. My blood ran cold, but I could never bring myself to regret going out that night, because the few minutes of holding Maddalena would make death itself worthwhile.

ALL THINGS END,
even me, and endings are also beginnings. Here in my cell, awaiting my execution, I don’t know what beginning I will have after they burn me, but I know there will be one. My precious time as Maddalena’s teacher came to an end, also. Not long after the carnevale, there was a pounding at my door. It was late and I was dressed only in a camicia, which hung open. The servants weren’t around, so I descended the stairs, cracked open the door, and peeked out. It was Maddalena, alone, wearing only a plain pink gonna. I’d never before seen her so intimately dressed. Sweat beaded up on my back and forehead. I shivered. I saw the outlines of her breasts and the lush dark points of her nipples through the gonna’s sheer fabric.
She’s come to be with me,
I thought, suffused with joy. A lightness I’d never before experienced spread through me, dizzying me. I had never known happiness until that very moment, I realized. I threw open the door, heedless of my undress and the erection springing forth to greet her. My arms spread wide to pull her inside the palazzo and sweep her close to me.

“Luca, come quickly. Rinaldo is sick, he is going to die! You must give him the consolamentum and save him!” Maddalena cried, as her scent ravished me.

No,
I thought, dropping my arms. Everything inside me went cold.
Let Rinaldo die.

“Please, Luca.” She grabbed my arm. Her long soft hair flowed down around her face and neck, and even in the candlelight, it glimmered with red and purple and gold. She cried, “The doctors can’t do anything. But you can! Don’t let him die. He’s been good to me!”

No. Don’t ask this of me.

“You’re my only hope, Luca, my last hope! You’re my friend. Please, come with me to save my husband!” she begged. Tears like polished crystal enlarged her limpid eyes, those amazing eyes that stayed with me long after she left my workshop and the lessons in alchemy. She pleaded, “Get dressed, and come on! Hurry! Won’t you come?”

“Yes,” I said. I had promised myself that I would always say yes to her, and a man is only as good as the promises to himself that he keeps.

RINALDO RUCELLAI WAS IN A BAD WAY.
He was pale and sweaty as he lay in his bed, the bed he shared with Maddalena. His white hair was unkempt, his gray-bearded face slack. I took his pulse, which was thready and erratic. I watched how shallowly he breathed, and I knew he was at the end. Rucellai was dying. I would finally have Maddalena. These two years of teaching her, of staying at the distance her loyalty demanded and the proximity her friendship allowed, had been purgatory. Now, at last, I was climbing into heaven. I’d earned it. I’d waited for the woman promised me in my vision. She was mine by divine right, I felt that as surely as I knew that the evil God laughed cruelly and the good One enjoyed His reflection in Giotto’s frescoes.

But Maddalena wanted me to save him. I sat down heavily on the edge of the bed, rested my head in my hands. Everything inside me, organs and bones and blood, was quaking, dissolving. Maddalena had asked me to help her husband live.

“Be good to her,” whispered Rucellai.

“What?” I jerked up my head. He looked at me out of dark, compassionate eyes set in a linen-white face. His breath came even more shallowly. He smiled slightly, knowingly.

He knew how I felt about his wife and he was giving his blessing. Maddalena could come to me happily, with a clear conscience, her loyalty appeased. But she wanted me to save him. I looked at Rucellai, thought of all the people whose deaths I had witnessed: Marco, Bella, Bernardo Silvano, Geber. I was no stranger to death, even if Death and his brother Decrepitude had left me alone for a hundred sixty-some years. I was not afraid to watch Rinaldo Rucellai die.

But Maddalena wanted her husband to live. A blue-and-gold Venetian vase on the chest at the end of the bed held a dozen blossoms, red, pink, yellow, and white roses. It looked like a bouquet Maddalena might have set there to brighten the room for her husband. It bore her signature: the profusion of colors both strong and delicate, but not fragile; petals in all states of maturity, from closed in the bud to drooping with senescence; the sweet scent; the thorns.

What was love, if not surrendering the self for the beloved? I felt how deeply I wanted to take her, to let my desires rule over hers. I knew how selfish I was. My life was still a battleground between the good God and the evil one. I could only hope to effect a truce by committing to love and surrender.

I laid my hands on Rucellai’s chest. I didn’t know if I could save him; he was far gone. And I had never completely mastered the consolamentum. It streamed forth from me when it chose, not when I did. But I would try. What had Geber said? “It’s about surrender, fool, when will you understand that?” I closed my eyes and surrendered. I gave up my own desires. I allowed myself to melt. I felt despair at losing Maddalena again—it felt like another loss—and my heart throbbed with pain, with longing, with love. I swelled with those immortal twin guardians of human life, love and loss, and almost couldn’t contain myself.

A gate within me banged open. The consolamentum gushed out with such force that my whole body shook. I would have to tell Leonardo about this; he was always interested in questions concerning force. It was a deluge that poured through me and out of my hands into Rucellai’s chest. He gasped, arched his belly high up into the air to make a bridge with his spine, and then dropped back down onto the bed. He gasped again. Color washed over his face. He gave a third gasp, and this time, he inhaled deeply into his abdomen. He exhaled and it was the sound of waves breaking as the living river coursed past.