The Secret Book of Grazia dei Rossi (43 page)

If I had failed to find a community of interest with Medina de Cases, whose fault was that but mine? If I had found Judah’s performance as the Purim rabbi disappointing, my own priggishness was the cause. If I did not fill him with desire, my skinny, flat, boy’s body was at least partly to blame. If he did not choose to confide in me, no doubt my own shrewishness had marked me as unsympathetic.

The facts led to only one possible conclusion. I must work and study to make myself a fit companion for a wise man. I must keep my temper in check and bite my hasty tongue. And I must somehow make myself lovable.

28

G
irolamo Savonarola. If the sound of that name echoes into future centuries, how will he be remembered? As a villain? As a saint? As a hero? As a heretic? He was all these things and more to the Florentines in the brief span — less than eight years — of his rise and fall in the city.

After first hearing the name from Isaachino Bonaventura, I now seemed to hear it wherever I turned. Like a cancer that grows from a single lesion, his following (dubbed
piagnoni
— “weepers” — for their ostentatious piety) quickly spread from the monastery at San Marco into all the districts of the city. A good number of these
piagnoni
were children, young boys — shades of Fra Bernardino da Feltre’s Army of the Pure in Heart — who clothed themselves in white cassocks in imitation of monastic novices. At first they merely importuned passersby, crying of the scourge to be unleashed upon the Florentines if they did not repent their godless ways. But very quickly their harangues assumed a physical aspect as well — grabbing women’s necklaces off their throats and snatching furs from their shoulders, knocking down merchants who dealt in
lusso
goods, and increasingly provoking sword and dagger fights with Savonarola’s opponents.

In this climate of escalating passions the magnificent Lorenzo’s heritage of liberality quickly gave way to Savonarola’s harsh orthodoxy. Public punishments of the cruelest sort supplanted the pageants and feasts of Medici times; and the pursuit of pleasure yielded to the search for sin.

As always, the first victims of the heresy hunters were the insulted and injured of this world — Gypsies, the mad, whores, and Jews. And the first among the first were Jewish whores, who bore a double stain.

I came to know this persecution because by chance a cousin of Diamante’s chose that season for her wedding. It was May in the year 1494, a fine day for the procession that wound its way through the Duomo Square on the way to the synagogue. Suddenly the peace of the occasion was shattered when a boil of citizens spilled over into the square from one of the adjoining streets, shrieking curses and tossing small stones at an unseen victim. Then all at once the crowd parted to reveal the cause of the uproar: a woman, chained to a cart and wearing the yellow badge of the prostitute, being whipped along the street by the
bargello
.

“
Dio
,” Diamante muttered beside me. “It is the Jewish whore caught out at last, damn fool. She has been warned against cohabiting with Christians. See, there is her client behind the cart with his privates exposed. He’s lucky they didn’t cut them off.”

Now the whole ugly procession moved into full view before us: the woman, her chemise torn from neck to thigh so as to expose her beaten body, her back a river of blood; the
bargello
standing high on his little cart like a Roman charioteer whipping her on; the Christian shorn of his hose, his cock and balls tolling a warning to the spectators. Still he was not the one being whipped. It was the woman who took the punishment, not only from the
bargello
but from the crowd as well. The sting of the whip as it fell on her seemed to excite some animal memory in them. Every time the lash drew blood, there were shouts of vicious obscenities, all directed at the woman.

“Don’t look, Grazia. Cover your eyes.” Diamante turned to veil my face with her cloak. And I took advantage of this merciful blindness and did not look. But as the cart came abreast of us I began to hear the woman’s cries, hardly stronger than the yelp of a puppy, and suddenly aware of my cowardice, I pushed aside Diamante’s cloak and looked straight at the poor creature.

At that moment she threw back her head to toss aside the dark curls that fell across her face, and our eyes met. I knew those flashing eyes. I knew this woman.
And she knew me.
It was Zaira.

I jumped forward but Diamante grabbed me with her strong arms and barred my way.

“What do you think you’re doing?” she whispered urgently. “You must not take notice. We are all in danger here. She is a Jewess, remember. If you make any more gestures toward her the
bargello
will take you too. Perhaps all of us.”

The
bargello
’s whip whirred through the air. Zaira’s eyes widened with terror. I screamed as if the lash had fallen on my own back.

Diamante’s hand closed over my mouth. “Let them pass, Grazia. She deserves what she’s getting. She was warned.”

I made another effort to free myself. But years at the reins had given Diamante the muscles of a muleteer, and to be perfectly truthful, I did not struggle against her with all my might. I let them take my beloved Zaira to the torture. I jettisoned her for the same reason that sailors jettison heavy cargo in a storm — to save their own skins. Diamante had provided me with the perfect excuse. I must not endanger the safety of “all of us.”

But my conscience could not abide the evasion. Before the sun was up I plucked an unwilling Medina out of his hiding-hole in Judah’s
studiolo
and ordered him to accompany me on an errand across the river. He grumbled, but in the end, he did accompany me across the Ponte Vecchio. However, when we turned away from the market and toward the Piazza della Signoria he began to hang back.

“Where are we going, madonna?” He tugged anxiously at the sleeve of my
gamorra
.

“I have an important task to do,” I replied.

“Where? Where are you taking me?” His voice began to rise.

I strode ahead decisively, hoping to encourage him by example. But after some steps I sensed he had not followed me, and indeed, when I turned around I discovered that he had removed himself to the wall that held back the Arno at that point and was clinging to it like an ivy plant. I knew Medina for a fainthearted whiner. But never until that moment had he actually refused to obey me.

Back I went, prepared to slap him if necessary. But when I stood close to him I saw a look on his face of such misery that my heart was touched and I opted for a more compassionate style of persuasion.

“Why so obdurate, naughty boy?” I wheedled. “What is troubling you? Tell me now.”

“There are places I cannot go in this city,” he mumbled.

“Where? What places?” I asked.

“In the Via Calzaiuoli . . .” He spoke so quietly I could barely make out his words. “There is a church they have made out of an old granary.”

I knew the church. I had seen it on the day we first entered Firenze. “That is the church named after Saint Michael, is it not?” I asked.

“That is it. Orsanmichele.” As he intoned the name of the church his eyes widened. “In the wall of that church, in a niche, stands the Virgin that was smeared with shit.”

“By your brother Bartolomeo?”

“I beg you, madonna, do not make me go near that place. The Virgin is waiting for me. She has put the curse of death on me. Let me go home.”

To force him on would be cruel indeed. Still, no amount of pity would bring back his brother. Bartolomeo de Cases was dead. But Zaira was alive. I made my choice. I smacked him, hard.

Then I held out my hand. “Take it,” I ordered him. “Now pull yourself up, cleanse your mind of ghosts, and gather your courage together. For I am going to the
bargello
this day. And you are going with me.”

And to be sure, he put forth one foot. Then another. And he walked at my side across the Piazza della Signoria without too much trembling. When we passed the Chiesa Orsanmichele he did turn his face away. But he did not falter and we passed that obstacle safely. However, when the forbidding tower of the Bargello’s Palace loomed up in our path he began to shake. Who can blame him? The Bargello’s Palace was designed to put fear into the hearts of the boldest men. How could it not paralyze the will of a terrified boy — and a boy with such memories of it as Medina’s? Lucky for me I had to put on a brave front for him. Otherwise I might not have had the courage to approach the guard myself. But, forced to act the part of a virago, I carried it off, as one almost always does when life offers no other choice.

“I seek to see the Jewish whore who was brought here yesterday,” I informed the guard with as much authority as I could command.

“Do you now, little lady?” He had a twinkle in his eye and an obvious weakness for pert girls, a good omen for my mission.

“Yes, I do, sir,” I replied. The man was so tall that I doubted my reedy voice would reach his ears if I did not shout.

“And may I know your purpose?” he inquired, still twinkling.

“I believe I recognized her as one who served my family long ago and I wished to bring her what comfort I could as she often comforted me when I was a child,” I answered, forgoing guile for truth and sincerity.

“I see you have a good heart, madonna. And an honest tongue. So I will not turn you over to the captain for questioning as my orders direct me to do.” At the mention of the captain I felt Medina’s arm grow weak beneath my hand and I gave him a quick kick in the shins to bolster his courage.

“Your kindness marks you as a compassionate man and a true Christian, sir,” I replied. “May I see the woman?”

“You may for all I know. But not in this jail.”

Was I too late? “Is she dead?” I asked.

“Ought to be after what she’s done. But she’s one of those who step in shit and come up smelling roses. Her Christian client turned out to be a Turkish Mussulman, so she’s free, sent back to her house with a warning to leave Firenze at once. You’ve seen the last of her, lady, and just as well for you. A nice little lady like yourself needs have no traffic with a slut. It doesn’t do. Tell your servant to see you home.” He turned to Medina. “See your lady home, lad. On your way now.”

And before I knew it Medina was fairly dragging me along the street toward the Ponte Vecchio and home. But I could not let the matter rest. Calling up all my strength, I turned the wretch around toward the Bonaventura house so that I might learn from Diamante where I would find “the Jewish whore.”

When I told her my mission she warned me that I was on a fool’s errand. But her loyal heart could not long withstand my urgent pleas for help, and I left her accompanied by two armed porters to show me the way to the house of whores and to watch over me if I insisted on entering.

“But beware, Grazia, these places are not filled with the betrayed and the innocent as you seem to think. There isn’t one of those sluts who wouldn’t slit your throat for the scarf around your neck.” This firm judgment was followed by a final warning from my friend to her
bravi
that if any harm should come to me they would pay dearly for it.

The street they led me to was not more than a hundred small steps from the Bonaventura mansion. But what a distance we traveled in that hundred steps.

From the outside the house seemed no worse than the house of any Florentine silkworker or artisan — three stories high and four
braccias
wide. Not until we stepped inside did the truly hellish character of the place emerge. Normally in these narrow Florentine houses the ground floor serves as a shop or
bottega
, stuffed with hides or woolens or statuary or tinware as the case may be but rarely used by more than three or four persons at one time. In this infamous den the tiny area had been divided by thin curtains into cribs. There must have been twenty of them, no one larger than was absolutely necessary to accommodate the thin straw pallet that along with a metal pitcher and a stool constituted the totality of the furnishings of each cubicle. By comparison, the most austere monk’s cell is a palace.

All this came to me in a glance, for many of the cribs were open to reveal the human merchandise offered for sale in this infamous
bottega
— women in various states of undress, legs splayed, breasts flopping down to their knees, many sucking on bottles of wine like babes on the tit.

And the stench!

“Watch your feet, madonna,” one of my escorts warned just in time to save me stepping into a pile of feces. Apparently the denizens scattered their leavings around like animals. No. Not like animals. Animals do not befoul their own nests. Not even the despised and unclean pig.

Everything in me wanted to bolt, to run back to my friends in their fine clean house. But I had gone too far to turn back.

“Ask who is in charge here,” I instructed my escort.

Behind me a strong husky voice spoke out. “I am, madonna.”

Then the curtain was drawn and out stepped a veritable giant (or giantess) almost a head taller than Lord Pirro, with fluttering hands and a full purple mouth, opulently dressed in a jeweled turban. “How can I be of service?”