The Secret Book of Grazia dei Rossi (70 page)

Now the point of the story was beginning to emerge. “So you were torn between your loyalty to one brother and another,” I commented.

“I felt a sisterly duty to shield Don Giulio from Alfonso’s wrath,” she replied primly, then added with a sudden softness, “He did have the most beautiful blue eyes.”

“But Duke Alfonso would not be moved . . .” I prodded her.

“I wrote him long letters. I pleaded. I begged. But in the end I had to turn Giulio over to the Duke’s justice.”

“Is he dead, then?” I asked.

“Not dead but might as well be. On the eve of his execution he and Ferrante were marched to the scaffold and blindfolded, to prepare them for the executioner’s axe. But at the last moment my brother the Duke relented and altered the sentence to life imprisonment in the dungeons of the
castello
. And that is where they languish now and will until the day they die.”

She paused. “I see them through the bars when I visit my honorable brother’s court at Ferrara. They are a most pathetic pair. Pale. Ragged. Forsaken.” She paused again. “I tell you this, Grazia, in greatest confidence. It is a subject not easy for me to dwell upon. But I have recollected it today for your sake so that you may understand how limited is the influence of women over princes. Though the woman be called
La Prima Donna del Mondo
and rule as marchesana, still she has no weapons to fight the outraged pride of a prince even if he be her brother.”

45

T
he ever-whimsical Madama, having spent a morning giving me the best reasons in the world why a plea from her could do my brother’s cause no good at all, then spent an afternoon dictating a letter to her brother Duke Alfonso, putting forward an excellent case for Jehiel’s reinstatement at the Este court. She even went so far as to suggest that in his present embattled state the honorable Duke might have use for “a foundryman of proven ability with not a little genius for making siege machines and designing earthworks.”

Wonder of wonders. A letter flew back from Ferrara exonerating Vitale the Jew on all previous charges and reappointing him to the position of chief foundryman at Alfonso d’Este’s cannon foundry. Whether it was the compassionate argument or the practical one that reached the Duke’s heart, we will never know.

Of course, Fortuna is never as generous as she likes to appear. To give with one hand while she takes with the other is her way of going. Less than a week after I announced Jehiel’s rehabilitation and only a few days before his expected arrival, I received an urgent summons from Penina to come at once to the house in the Via Sagnola. My only thought was that one of the children must be ill. I left off my copying and ran all the way there.

When I arrived Penina and Gershom were seated side by side at the table in the
sala grande
, their faces grim. There was no mention of children. Ricca was the subject.

“She has bolted,” Gershom announced. “Taken off without even a goodbye to her own children.”

“To where?”

“We do not know,” Penina answered. “She has gone off with the German.”

“What will we tell Jehiel?” I asked them.

“The truth, of course.” Gershom’s tone was as hard as a note from Tromboncino’s trumpet. “That his wife is a whore and that he is well rid of her. That is what we all feel, is it not?”

Penina and I nodded our agreement although neither of us would have stated the case so baldly.

“What about the children?” Penina asked. “What are they to be told?”

“The children are already delighted that their father is returning to them,” Gershom replied in the same metallic tone. “As for the loss of their mother, Penina is more a mother to them than the harlot who bore them.”

I could not argue the point. But I promised to be present when Jehiel arrived, so that we might share the burden of breaking the news to him.

It was a strange welcome. We must have expected the old Jehiel to gallop up in his laughing way on a fine steed, for none of us recognized the slack figure sauntering toward us on a reluctant mule until he waved. Of course, once he had identified himself we adults shouted halloo and the children followed suit. But when he dismounted and went to pick them up and kiss them, they turned shy and ran away and hid behind Penina’s skirts.

“They will need time to get to know me again,” was his only comment. Surprisingly, he displayed little distress when told that his wife had run off. Nor did he put up even a token resistance to Gershom’s suggestion that he get a divorce at once. What consumed his mind was his determination to arrive in Ferrara in time for the feast of Rosh Hashanah.

“From the time of Ptolemy until now,” he explained, “men have sought out the most propitious moment at which to embark upon new ventures. This year the New Year commences on my most favorable day. For the Hebraic and the Ptolemaic calendars to coalesce in this way is extraordinary. I take it as a sign that my new life will be blessed with prosperity and success if I commence to live it on that propitious day.”

“Surely you are not still looking for guidance in the stars,” I berated him. Whereupon he flushed red and went silent. The wild spirit in my brother was not completely extinguished yet.

He
had
changed in some ways. No longer did he defer to my judgment. Coming hard on the heels of Gershom’s recent emancipation, I found this uncharacteristic independence difficult to accept. And my feeling of being cast aside was exacerbated by my discovery that without telling me he had made plans to take Penina with him to Ferrara. Between themselves my little brother and my mouse of a cousin agreed to set up house together in Ferrara, and had made that decision without asking for my advice or even bothering to inform me. Even though the pill was sweetened by their obvious happiness, it was a little hard to swallow.

After that there was nothing to keep me in Mantova except the ostensible purpose of my visit: the preparation of my
Book of Heroines
. And my hopes for that project had receded with each week that passed. If it was true, as Madama insisted, that Ser Equicola’s mind was a mirror of her own, could I in conscience cut my creations to suit those two mentalities? No. I could not lend myself to the corruption of my own words, however unworthy they might be. Perhaps I had spent too long at Ser Aldo’s fount imbibing the doctrine of textual integrity. Whatever the reason, I resolved to announce my departure to Madama, the sooner the better. And to be sure, Fortuna obliged. That very evening a summons was delivered by a smirking lady-in-waiting with the admonition to be quick as Madama had a special surprise for me. What surprise? Another humanist “tutor” to adulterate my text and disarm my heroines?

As I approached Madama’s private suite a roar of laughter echoed down the long bare alley, a man’s voice, teasingly familiar. Ghosts. Would I never be rid of them?

As I stood there, the curtains parted and one of Madama’s little beauties slipped out, still giggling. “You had better go in at once, Madonna Grazia,” she whispered as she passed me. “Madama has been inquiring after you all evening.”

“Who has she got in there?” I asked.

“One of the gentlemen who are to accompany Prince Federico on his journey to Roma,” she replied. “Just arrived home from the French court.”

By then I had had a bellyful of courtiers with their pomades and their exaggerated manners and their cold hearts.

I hesitated, searching for a way to excuse myself from yet another tedious display of courtly wit. Then I heard my name.

“Madonna Grazia . . .” No doubt about it, the man was talking about me. “Does she still . . .” The speaker must have turned his back to the door for I heard no more of his question. But I did hear Madonna Isabella’s answer quite clearly. “She is still slim and pale and pliant as a reed. I’ll tell you, cousin, I am taking my life into my hands to reintroduce you to her, for you are quite certain to fall in love with her all over again . . .”

With quivering fingers I carefully drew the door curtain aside just wide enough to peek through the crack with one eye.

Dio
, it was he. “The last time I encountered her she was on a horse and she cut me dead,” I heard him say. “Perhaps she will not be happy to see me.”

“Perhaps yes. Perhaps no. We shall see,” Madama answered lightly. “Whatever comes of it, I have promised her a surprise and if you are nothing else you most certainly are that, cousin.”

Gazing through the frayed edge of the curtain, I was Narcissus at the edge of the drowning pool. God knows I wanted to stay. But my feet obeyed my command and delivered me from temptation. Without stopping even to gather up my possessions, I ran down the great staircase, out the great gates of the Reggio, and through the dark streets to the Porto Catena with nothing more by way of baggage than the clothes on my back and the little leather pouch fastened around my waist in which I carried La Nonna’s jewels.

A pearl from that hoard bought me my passage. A cameo set in filigree gold procured me bread and wine for the voyage and one night at Padova. There I took passage on the
burchiello
at the cost of a gold bangle, with enough left over to finance a gondola ride in great style from Saint Mark’s to Murano. But my little bubble of joy was quickly pricked for, on arrival, I found my life’s companion, the gallant Fingebat, had suffered a stroke in my absence.

His ravaged little body ceased to draw breath that very night. “The only thing that has kept him alive these last few days was the hope of seeing you one last time,” Judah told me. “If I were a believer in the movements of the planets, I would say that your lucky star brought you home at just the right moment.”

My boxes were sent from Mantova some weeks later with only the briefest note to accompany them.

“Do you know the story of Anaxarete, who disdained her suitor Iphis out of misplaced chastity?” I read. “The heartless girl was turned into a stone image by Venus. Venus hates a hard-hearted maiden. Be warned and prepare to yield to your prince.” It was unsigned but I recognized Madama’s hand.

However, I was safe from her meddling and mischief by then and confident enough to fire off a poem of my own.

May you never, oh never, behold me

Sharing the couch of a god,

May none of the dwellers in heaven

Draw near to me ever.

Such love as the high gods know

From whose eyes none can hide,

May that never be mine.

To war with a half-god is not love.

It is despair.

To this riposte I received no reply nor did I hear further about my
Book of Heroines
. And I put them to rest in my
cassone
without regret. Better unpublished and unseen than tailored to the taste of this whimsical lady and her paid humanist. To inquiries as to what had transpired during my stay at the Reggio, I responded with such a ferocious scowl that even Ser Aldo ceased to ask.

The mills of the gods grind slow. It took almost three years for Madonna Isabella to get her son back, but Pope Julius finally fell in one of his many battles and Federico was returned to Mantova the most worldly thirteen-year-old in all Italy.

The happy mother was not the only one delighted by the death of the Pope. By then Italy had had a bellyful of war. Even the cardinals had become pacifists. To prove it they elected as their next pope a man of peace, a man of compromise, a man of commerce, a son of Lorenzo
il magnifico
, Giovanni dei Medici, who took the name of Leo X.

They said that when this tenth Leo received the news of his election to the papal throne he confided to his Medici cousin, “Since God has given us the papacy, let us enjoy it!” But his papacy was by no means all self-indulgence. To his credit this first Medici pope devoted the initial two years of his pontificate to playing the role of peacemaker. Unfortunately for him and for Italy, just when he finally got all his counters lined up, there came to the throne of France a young man of war, raised in the tradition of chivalry and as besotted with the vision of glory as his ancestor Charles VIII. This one was a Bourbon who became Francis I of France.

He was crowned at Rheims cathedral on the twenty-fifth day of January 1515 and set about at once to raise a vast army. His goal: to cross the Alps and take possession of the duchy of Milano. Dreams of conquest never die. The basis of Francis’s claim was a marriage between his ancestor the Duke of Orléans and Valentina Visconti of Milano that had been celebrated over a hundred years earlier, a claim about as legitimate as the claim of his ancestor Charles VIII to the crown of Napoli.

Aided in this vainglorious scheme by his doting mother, Louise of Savoia, Francis quickly assembled the finest and best-equipped army in Europe. Only one thing held him back, a miserable malady that prevented him from sitting a horse for long periods.

Young, virile, and a patriot, what disease other than the French disease would he have contracted? And what physician would be called upon to help the King regain his seat, so to speak?