Immortal (45 page)

“Hold your tongue or lose it, monk,” I said. “We’re leaving now.” I carried the sword unsheathed and clasped Maddalena’s hand in my free hand. The monk’s gleaming eyes were glued to her face. She held her head high though her cheeks were flushed, and we walked with dignity to the other bank. We felt his eyes on our back the whole way.

“God will punish you!” the monk screamed, unable to contain himself. “Your sorcery will bring you to destruction! There is no escape for satanists and fornicators like you!”

We didn’t answer but turned down a side street that was thronged with merrymakers. We threaded our way through them, and when we finally stepped free, we took off at a sprint.

Back home we were seized with a fit of laughter which continued unabated until we crawled into bed, where I tried to put the fiery-eyed monk from my head. My intention to reveal the secrets of my long life to Maddalena was dissolved, shattered by the monk’s threats, which I wanted to forget. So I just held my wife with gratitude and let my secrets remain hidden.

WHEN SIMONETTA WAS FIVE,
I was summoned to the Medici villa in Careggi. I saddled a new horse named Marco. Stalwart Ginori, whose red coat was stippled through with white, still lived but was hampered with arthritis and age, illnesses I would never know. I only knew that I was happy: happy with the incomparable Maddalena, the wife of my life; happy with Simonetta, my sweet-natured daughter; happy with my small circle of friends, with my palazzo and my vast bank account. I rode through the stony streets with a whistle on my lips. Florence was my home, the greatest city in the world, and I was finally at home in her.

It was April 1492, a warm spring that had seen many storms. I wore a light woolen mantello and enjoyed the ride into the country. A servant let me into the villa and led me to Lorenzo’s bedchamber. He was still young, in his forties, but he was gravely ill. He burned with a fever that attacked not only his arteries and veins but also his nerves, bones, and marrow. His eyesight was failing and his extremities were swollen with gout. Little was left of
il Magnifico,
who was a master at everything a man could master: fortune, family, statesmanship, riding horses, composing music, writing poetry, collecting art, winning allies, championing artists and philosophers, falconry, calcio, seducing women.

“I didn’t know if you’d come,” he whispered.

“I’ll leave if we’re playing cat and mouse,” I said. That made him laugh.

“We’ve had a grand game of it, haven’t we, Bastardo?” Lorenzo said.

“I don’t much like games.”

“That’s true, you’ve always been a bit humorless.” He sighed. He rolled his swollen, distorted, pale face away, then looked back at me. “Do you remember when we first met?”

“Here, your grandfather was ill.” I sat down on the edge of the bed.

“Yes. I’ve thought of that day often,” Lorenzo said. “You showed up looking like a young god, exactly as you do now, and my grandfather was thrilled to see you. I was so jealous.”

“You were his grandson. I may have amused him, but you were the light of his heart.”

“You did more than amuse Cosimo de’ Medici. He was devoted to you. Is it true you were with him in Venice when he was exiled there as a young man?” Lorenzo asked, his ugly face twisted with pain and illness. I nodded. He said, as if with afterthought, “You’ll never forgive me, will you?” I shook my head.

“I’ve done wrong by you, Luca Bastardo. But you’ll have the last word. You know I’m dying, don’t you? I won’t recover from this illness. There are omens. Two of Florence’s lions died in a fight in their cage. She-wolves howl in the night. Strange colored lights flicker in the sky. A woman in Santa Maria Novella was seized by a divine madness and ran around during Mass, screaming about a bull with flaming horns that was tearing down the church. Worst of all”—he wiped his hand across his face—“one of the marble palle, one of the balls, from the lantern on the Duomo fell toward my house. The palle fell, the Medici palle. It’s a sign.”

“Signs are what you read in them. Mostly they’re God’s jokes.”

Lorenzo laughed, but more weakly. His face was ravaged with pain. “You worship comedy, and here I’ve always considered you humorless.”

“What do you want from me, Lorenzo?” I asked, but not unkindly.

“Just before he died, Nonno told me that you had a marvelous power in your hands. You touched him, and it soothed his heart. It helped him. He said it gave him extra days to live!”

“It’s not power. It’s the opposite. It’s what happens when you relinquish power.”

“Can you touch me thus?” he whispered. I stared at his ugly face with its fierce, glittering black eyes. Despite the suffering there, I could not imagine letting my heart open for him, as the consolamentum required. The sack of Volterra, the years of controlling me through my fear of the Silvano clan, the way he used people like pawns for his own goals…I did not trust him. I went to look out the window at the leafy poplar trees Cosimo had planted.

“What did you do with the letter you obtained from the Silvanos, about my origins?”

“I kept it. I made a copy which I gave back to the Silvanos a few years ago.”

“There’s a monk who’s heard about it,” I said grimly. “It doesn’t bode well for me or my family. And you want me to give you the consolamentum?”

Lorenzo laughed wheezily. “I understand, Bastardo, it’s impossible for you. That letter is just the latest round in those games you don’t like, starting with that calcio game a few weeks before Nonno died. At least we won. We’ve had our victories, even if death wins ultimately.”

“I could try to give you the consolamentum,” I said, grudgingly. Lorenzo was Cosimo’s grandson, and Cosimo had been a true friend.

“But would you be trying for my sake or for his?” Lorenzo whispered, reading my mind in his canny way. “I don’t want Cosimo’s leftovers! I never have!”

“Then what can I do for you?”

“You can bear witness,” he said, licking his dry lips. “Remember the glory of what I’ve done. Your youth seems to have no end. Perhaps your life won’t, either. You’re like one of the ancient patriarchs of whom the Bible speaks, who lived for hundreds of years. Perhaps your father and mother were such people, and that’s why those mysterious Cathars attended them. Ficino translated a document which seems to indicate this.”

“Lorenzo, what document? And how do you know so much about my parents? Only from that letter?”

“I had to know everything about you. I tracked your movements, paid your agents to reveal to me what they did for you, and what they discovered. I was jealous, jealous of Nonno’s affection for you and of your service to him. I wanted you to love me as you loved him.”

“You cannot manipulate affection from people. It must be freely given.”

“I have been trusted with the governance of the greatest city on earth. I had no time to waste worrying about other men’s freedom when the security of Florence demanded everything!” he barked, then panted from the exertion. “I answer to history, not to individuals! That’s why Volterra had to be sacrificed. If I did not act with ruthless authority, everything my grandfather and his father had worked to create here in Florence, all the art and letters, all the learning from the Platonic Academy, everything noble we’ve achieved, it would all have been uprooted and denied to future generations! What is freedom when compared to that?”

“Freedom is everything, it’s what created the art and letters and learning you’re so proud of. Individual lives matter.” I turned away, feeling nauseated. “I would have liked to have had that letter. And I’d like to read Ficino’s document. You’ve interfered with the destinies of other men, Lorenzo. How can you expect love to be given you when you do that?”

“I have been more concerned with allegiance than with love,” he admitted. “But it has been my gift to guide the destinies of other men! It has been my gift to create history, to shape the future. Your gift is longevity. Since you can’t give me the consolamentum, I want you to use your gift in witness to my gifts. My gifts to Florence.”

“You may have a reversal of your illness and be back on your feet in the Signoria, commanding the city,” I said. “The consolamentum may be unnecessary.”

“Don’t tell me what I want to hear; you’ve never done that, and it doesn’t suit you!”

“Because I didn’t tell you what you wanted to hear about Volterra, you recalled the Silvanos sworn to kill me!” I snapped.

“You’re the one who left my service over Volterra!” Lorenzo replied. “Why are you still so angry? Isn’t that where you first met your lovely Maddalena? I heard rumors to that effect! Would you have met her and come to love her if it weren’t for the sack of Volterra?”

“Innocent people were hurt! Innocent people died!”

“There are no innocent people!” he flung back at me. “Being born into this life sets us all up for suffering! And we don’t ever know what joy will come out of suffering!”

“And that’s what makes God laugh,” I said with more ferocity than any other living man would have dared direct at Lorenzo de’ Medici.

“If God laughs, it’s at me, who am dying! You’ve been given God’s embrace: Cosimo’s respect and love, unending youth, and the beauty of Apollo!” Lorenzo spat back. We regarded each other with fury which slowly softened to pain. We each had suffered. Each saw it in the other. No words were said, but we came to an understanding. I still would not give him the consolamentum because of what he’d done to me and Volterra, but I no longer hated him. I have wondered since then, in light of all that’s happened, how time and events would have passed if I had just placed my hands on him, without thought or judgment, in that moment of understanding. Would the consolamentum have poured forth and saved him, as it had resurrected Rinaldo Rucellai? If the consolamentum had healed him, could I have averted the tragedies, personal and civic, that came to pass after Lorenzo the Magnificent died? Was I partly responsible for the events that have rendered me willing to die, not just because I chose love and death in a vision, but also because I did not alter the course of history when I had the chance, by killing Nicolo Silvano and Savonarola or by saving Lorenzo de’ Medici? Could I have changed fate if I had chosen love over anger, over fear, as Lorenzo de’ Medici, the flawed protector of Florence and all things Florentine, lay dying? Or was the wheel just turning?

“Listen then, Luca Bastardo who pins his hopes of salvation on God’s laughter. Listen to what I have accomplished. I have guided Florence to glory in commerce, in letters, and in the arts. I have sat with Popes and I have been excommunicated. Most important, I maintained a balance among the states,” Lorenzo recounted in a dreamy voice.

“This was my greatest feat. I kept Milano and Napoli from war, kept the balance with Venezia and Roma. My peace kept the peninsula of Italia strong. This strength allowed Tuscan culture to flourish. It gave our nobles and merchants money to sponsor art, so that artists could paint and sculpt and create. It allowed educated men to promote education, the study of the past, philosophy, and science. The fruits of this period of peace will feed mankind for a thousand generations! Don’t you see that, Luca?”

I was quiet for a moment. Then I nodded. “There’s truth to what you say.”

His old pleasure in victory flashed over Lorenzo. It was quickly followed by an expression of sorrow. “But the strength and peace of Italia won’t outlive me. The Frankish monarch will march into our land. The Italian states lack strength of unity, and he’s united the Frankish states under him. There’s one France, but not one Italia. He’ll march through the peninsula. One city-state after another will fall to his armies. Even if all of the peninsula doesn’t surrender, he’ll siphon away the might of Florence. You’ll see. I love my son Piero, but he will not maintain the balance. Perhaps, if I could live ten more years, he’d mature into something worthy of the Medici name. But now he’s too young. Foolish and fearful. Weak.”

“You were young when your father left the guidance of Florence to you,” I pointed out, sitting again on the edge of his bed, where I’d sat to speak with the ailing Cosimo so long ago.

“Too young.” Lorenzo sighed. “Strong enough. But I’ve made mistakes.”

“I never thought I’d hear you confess that!”

“There are people I’ve invited back to Florence who should not be here.”

“The Silvanos.”

He laughed weakly, closing his eyes against pain. “Others, too. But I am sorry about the return of that family, Luca Bastardo. Truly. I was happy for you when you and Maddalena were married. I knew you loved her when I saw you sitting next to her at dinner that night at Rucellai’s. Did you receive the wedding gift I sent?”

“Several casks of fine wine,” I said, raising my eyebrows. “I had them all tested for poison.”

Lorenzo laughed again, this time until he coughed. His high-pitched, nasal voice sounded almost cheerful when he spoke next. “So I was right in my judgment of you, after all, Luca Bastardo. It consoles me. You are humorless. Killing you would have ruined the game, ended it too quickly. Don’t you understand yet?”

“It’s more diverting to watch me squirm.”

Lorenzo nodded slowly. “It’s not the Silvano family I would worry most about, if I were you. You’ve avoided them successfully for a long time…a hundred fifty years? More?” He paused, gazing at me, but I didn’t answer. He sighed deeply. “Two years ago I invited back to Florence someone I shouldn’t have. He’ll cause trouble. A Dominican preacher born in Ferrara.”

“My wife likes the eloquent Augustinian monk Fra Mariano.”

“So do all the upper classes, but the
popolo minuto,
the little people, have different tastes,” said Lorenzo. “They like to hear about wickedness. They like to hear the vanity of the upper classes denounced. They can’t afford vanity, the very vanity that has fueled Florence to greatness, so they want to hear it condemned.”

I narrowed my eyes, considering. “You’re speaking of the idiot monk who preaches against good art and Plato’s philosophy and threatens everyone with the world ending if we don’t reform our ways instantly? I’ve never seen him, just heard about him.”