The Phoenix of Florence

by Philip Kazan

  ‘I would like to stay here,’ I whispered. ‘I cannot tell you how much I wish that I could.’

  ‘I know, my daughter. But you belong to the world.’ She smiled. ‘Or is it the other way around? Now, sleep. It will give you back your strength. You of all people need to be strong.’

  The nuns had washed and repaired my clothes. I found them waiting for me one morning when I came back to my cell after hobbling around the lovely little garden behind the convent. I had been on my feet for two days, though at first I could do nothing but walk out into the cloister and back to my bed. There didn’t seem to be any serious damage to my thigh. It had been a small miracle, Sister Vittoria said, the spear had missed both my stockings and my breeches, which must have ridden up as I stood in the saddle, and there were no pieces of dirty cloth in the wound. So, while the hole in my thigh was still leaking yellowish fluid into the bandages, it was giving me an honest pain, like a freshly cut finger, and not the dizzy heat of infection. One of the sisters had brought me an old crutch, and another had sewn me a rough shift out of old bedlinen, not much more than a long white sack with wide arms and a hole for my head which, when I pulled it on, looked a little like a shroud. That was how we buried men in the company: wrapped in white cloth. I had been wondering how many men had been buried after the skirmish and, looking down at myself, naked beneath the crude drapery, I felt another pang of the guilt that had been growing in me since my fever had broken. That day I limped around the cloister until my leg ached, then rested on the single stone bench, breathing in the scent of the rose bush that grew in the centre of the gravel square, then limped again. The nuns – there were five of them, apart from the Mother Superior and Sister Vittoria – came and went on their daily errands or followed the fixed ritual of the holy hours. At first, they had found me interesting, but that place moved to its own inexorable rhythm, and had little time for novelty. The convent was not one of those places where daughters of good family are deposited out of convenience, or where girls from questionable families are locked away to protect them from the appetites of men. It was a place, so Sister Vittoria told me one day as she was changing my bandages, where nuns from several other convents down the coast had come after their own houses had been overrun by the Turkish advance. There was no one here without a true vocation. I liked the fact that I could be so easily ignored, even though every sister knew my story by now. I felt invisible yet cared for, like the ghost of someone whose family misses them, and is glad when they hear footsteps in an upstairs room, or the sudden, soft brush of an unseen robe. It was how I wished I could spend my whole life. But I could not.

  I closed the door of my cell and stared at the clothes on the bed, laid out in order, as though they had clothed a corpse that had rotted completely away. My sword looked obscene lying on the nuns’ scrubbed linen. I hesitated, then picked up my armoured doublet. It seemed so heavy: a brutish thing that didn’t belong in that tiny, pure space. My shirt had been washed and stitched, though the lower quarter was stained a rusty orange. Even the codpiece on my breeches had been cleaned. I felt a pang of guilty revulsion when I imaged the gentle sisters setting diligently to work on it. There, inside, was my copper pissing-tube in its little sleeve. How ridiculous it looked, how foolish my concerns appeared now that I could walk out into the garden and feel the warmth of spring on my unbound skin.

  These clothes were Onorio’s skin, which he’d sloughed off like a snake. But a snake can leave those papery husks behind and go off into the world all new-made. Onorio would not be given such a blessing. He would have to put his old skin on again and let it shape him into the creature he had, perhaps, thought to escape. Had I really believed that I could?

  ‘I’m so sorry, my daughter.’ I jumped, startled, and my hand, of its own accord, reached for the hilt of my sword. Sister Vittoria was standing in the half-open doorway. I pulled my hand away, my face burning with embarrassment.

  I yelped. ‘You startled me, sister!’

  Sister Vittoria pretended not to notice. ‘We had word from your colonel this morning. He is taking the company north. I’m afraid, Onoria, that you shall have to leave us.’

  ‘Oh, Holy Virgin,’ I breathed, and sat down heavily on the little stool. ‘I’m not ready.’

  ‘I understand. You have found peace here.’

  ‘Yes, I have,’ I said, and began to cry, properly, unashamed.

  ‘But you have only put your life to one side, my dear.’ She nodded towards the sword on the bed. ‘The habits of the flesh are deeply engrained in every one of us. And you, you’ve made your life, actually crafted it, like a goldsmith who makes a fine statue. Mother Superior told me you thought you might stay here. I should like that very much, if it was possible. People are remade in places like this. They are redeemed. God takes the gold, melts it in His crucible and recasts it into something new. But you, my daughter, you are both statue and sculptor. You are your own creator. You will have to find redemption yourself.’

  ‘Will I, sister?’ I wiped my face on the rough linen of my shroud tunic. ‘Do you think I can?’

  ‘If it is in your power to make a fragile young woman into a man of war, I imagine you can do anything. But …’ She paused and ran her fingers down the beads of the rosary around her neck.

  ‘What is it?’ I asked.

  ‘Don’t mistake yourself for God. You – your Onorio – is a work of art. But even the greatest artist is herself created. Never forget that.’

  When she had gone, I knelt and prayed for guidance to God, the Holy Virgin and Santa Celava. But in that place where they should, by rights, have been close by, I felt completely alone. So, very slowly and painfully, I dressed myself. Standing naked on the cold tiled floor, I pulled on the man’s underwear that I had tailored myself so that they fit tight across my hips, with the wide slit I had cut and hemmed from front to back. Then the stockings. If I had had a mirror, if I could have seen myself, I’d have still seen a woman. I lifted my arms and stretched, feeling my breasts lift, feeling the life there, a life that was and was not mine. Then I bound them, and tied myself into the heavy, bulging skin of Onorio Celavini.

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  We were on our way to Sicily, where a great Christian army was being assembled. While I had lain in the convent, an Ottoman fleet, a vast armada of two hundred or more ships, had invaded the island of Malta and laid siege to the fortresses of the Knights Hospitaller. A messenger had brought Don Orazio a letter from an old friend of his, the condottiere Ascanio della Corgna, inviting him to join the army that Don García de Toledo, the viceroy of Sicily, was gathering for the relief of the island. The whole of Christendom was in a panic, so I learnt, because if Malta fell, the Sultan would have the Mediterranean Sea at his disposal, and was already planning to invade Italy and beyond. I was most interested because Ascanio della Corgna was someone I had heard of for most of my life, being at that time the most famous swordsman in Italy. My father had told me stories of a great duel the man had fought in Bologna many years before I was born, and now perhaps I would meet him.

  These were the thoughts of Onorio Celavini as I rode down through Italy, past Ravenna, across the mountains to Rome and into Campagna. I had healed. My skin was my own again. Perhaps because the freedom I had found in the convent had been so blissful, so tempting, I wrapped myself even more tightly in manhood, and after only a little while I began to tell myself that my experience among the good sisters had been terrible, a violation, that they had flayed poor Onorio and I had been forced to grow a fresh skin, as if Ovid had written the story of wretched Marsyas in reverse. That had been one of my most hated passages in the Metamorphoses, though Bartolomeo had told me I should like it, because boys liked gruesome things. I had never been able to convince him that I did not want to be a boy, that I wasn’t trying to go through my own metamorphosis, but simply to be as free as he was, though he squandered his freedom in books and candlelight. And now I was growing more like one of Ovid’s subjects with every year that pa
ssed.

  The company had welcomed me back with wine and roasted flesh, and I had allowed myself to celebrate, or at least to pretend, because drunkenness was as terrifying to me as a poisoned well. How could I indulge in something that, as I saw almost daily, stripped people of their defences, their natural reserve, and released what men like to think of as their true selves to brawl and rut like beasts? My men were forever trying to get me drunk. It was a good-natured game, good-natured as all things are until men cross their particular line. I had long ago demonstrated that I wouldn’t allow their sport to go past a certain point, by beating one drunken idiot around the camp with the flat of my sword. I suspect the men, though they feared me, wanted to see what would happen if they succeeded, like those fellows who insist on smoking their pipes next to barrels of gunpowder.

  We had lost three men in the skirmish with the Ottomans: two from my lance, one from Gentile’s; Gentile himself had broken his arm. He was sure I had saved him from the effendi and greeted me with actual tears. No one else had been seriously hurt. Paolo had clearly embroidered the story of my exploits in the battle, because I returned to find my reputation higher than it had been before I had been wounded. But something was different. I took Paolo aside and made him swear many ferocious oaths that he had said nothing about my injury. The poor fellow denied it again and again until I saw that he believed what he said. But Paolo was a man who liked his wine and, though he was always happy in his cups, was the kind of man whose tongue begins to flutter like a pennant in the breeze after he had drunk too much. I wondered what he had said, and to whom. I caught men staring at me, who hastily turned away when I met their eyes. There was a certain kind of laughter that was quickly stifled in my presence. But they also seemed to be somewhat in awe of me, as though I had become even more of an exotic creature.

  I decided that Paolo must have talked about my wound. But he plainly hadn’t believed the truth that I feared his hand must have told him, because if he had … I didn’t like to think what would have happened then. There had been a woman from Cremona who had impersonated a man and been a respected condottiere a hundred years ago, but she might have been a legend. The Maid of France had not met a good end. Women do command troops from time to time, but only as women, and always queens or nobility. It would be my deception that would put me in danger now, not my sex. But that was not, it seemed, in question. I guessed there was a lot of speculation about my privy regions, and how much, if any, had survived the Turk’s spear. If it amused them, so be it. I was amused to know that, though they thought I might be missing something important, none of them had the balls to challenge me about it.

  Don Orazio promoted me to man at arms. I still had command of my lance, but now I had responsibility for the company’s security. I settled disputes between men that were too petty to drag in front of Don Orazio himself. If we stopped in a village or town, I made sure the men did not cause too much offence, and if one of the locals did anything against us, I was responsible for sorting those problems out as well. I was remaking myself, just as Sister Vittoria had said.

  I tried not to think about Sister Vittoria, or the Mother Superior, or the little convent that had smelt of clean stone and damask roses. I made myself forget how I had felt there. What I had been. I made myself forget Onoria, with her slender body that did not need to be hidden, that told its owner things about herself that she had never before tried to understand. I never let my mind linger on the moment I had seen my soldier’s clothes on the bed and had thought that perhaps I would tell the sisters to give them to the poor and ask them to sew me a black novice’s robe.

  ‘The men respect you a great deal,’ Don Orazio had said when he gave me the job. ‘They also fear you, which is good. But none of them understand you, and that is excellent. I don’t understand you myself, Onorio, but I don’t have to. I know I can trust you, and I don’t care about anything else.’

  You are right: you don’t understand me, I thought. And you never will. But you can trust me, because I can wear your trust like a mail shirt. I can wear it like the striped skin of the snake, that makes it invisible as it lies among the rocks.

  We arrived in Sicily at the beginning of August. I had never been on a ship before and left a trail of my vomit across the Strait of Messina, but so did the rest of the company. The army of Don García was gathered at the western end of the island in an encampment of ten thousand soldiers, carpenters, sailors, farriers, armourers, cooks and camp followers – a sprawling landscape of tents as big as a middle-sized Italian town. There I finally met Don Ascanio della Corgna. He was a hawk-faced man with sunken cheeks and one eyelid sewn shut over an empty socket. Don Orazio must have told him about me because he sought me out one day and we talked for a long time about swordsmanship.

  It was only a couple of days later that a man bumped shoulders with me as I walked through the camp with Paolo, discussing two of the men from my lance who were on the verge of blows over a whore. It was a hard bump, and I turned angrily. I recognised the man who had done it. I’d seen him the night before as I made my rounds. He’d been drinking with some men from Gentile Rondoni’s lance, boasting loudly and belligerently in a Neapolitan accent.

  ‘No balls,’ he said loudly, when I stopped in my tracks. ‘No cock either. And you pretend to be a soldier?’

  ‘Do I know you, sir?’ I asked. Paolo’s hand had gone to his sword, but I stepped in front of him.

  ‘Alexandro de Ricca.’ He smirked. He was dressed to the hilt: apricot silk quilting on his doublet, sleeves slashed into thin ribbons, silver sequins on his cap. ‘My lady,’ he added.

  I burst out laughing. Perhaps it was relief, because this was my worst fear realised, and now it was already past.

  ‘Tell him to show you his cock,’ said his companion, who I’d not noticed: a thin, nervous-looking fellow with the unmistakeable silky sheen of a nobleman.

  I looked around me. We were on the border between Don Orazio’s company and the next, which was the much larger contingent led by Ascanio della Corgna. And indeed, della Corgna’s tent was only fifty or so paces away from us. The man himself was sitting with a group of other men, one of whom was Don Orazio. I could tell him by his hat. De Ricca looked shamelessly in their direction.

  ‘If it please you to show me your organ of engenderment, you may go on your way,’ he said to me, loudly. We were surrounded by other soldiers, and they had caught on to what was happening. Men were already gathering, others running in all directions to fetch their friends. I had no idea if this de Ricca had any reputation, but I did, and I guessed, by the sudden uproar, that plenty were putting good odds on his chances against me.

  ‘Do you proposition many men like this? Though by the prettiness of your clothes, it wouldn’t surprise me,’ I said. My mouth was a little dry, but I felt calm. Almost blissfully calm.

  ‘I thought you Tuscans were proud of your balls?’ he said, with a little swagger.

  There was tittering from our audience. Palle was the word for the balls on the Medici coat of arms, and the cry of their supporters. ‘Palle! Palle!’ some wag began to chant.

  ‘But why wouldn’t you be?’ de Ricca went on. ‘Tuscans are the greatest sodomites in Christendom! Though a eunuch need not be a somite,’ he added. ‘Simply a man-woman.’

  ‘You say I am a eunuch, sir?’ I asked, politely.

  ‘I do, sir!’ He grinned.

  ‘Prove it,’ I said.

  ‘It can be proved if you will remove your breeches, sir!’

  ‘Oh, I think it is up to you to prove it. I will not do your work for you. I will not. So, do you still persist in your accusation?’

  ‘I do, indeed!’ he crowed.

  If I had not spent the last few years abroad, I would perhaps have known that Alexandro de Ricca was, at that time, probably the most famous swordsman in Naples, if not the whole of Campania. I suppose it might have made me pause for another few moments before answering. But only for that long.

  ‘Then you l
ie, sir,’ I said, and gave him back his grin.

  ‘You call me a liar?’

  ‘Your actions are the proof. I am merely the witness. But yes, you are an infamous liar.’

  ‘You’ll satisfy my honour with your sword, Signor Eunuch. Or is there nothing of any length, any hardness that you can show me, as I said?’

  ‘You may see my sword whenever you like. Name the time and the place, sir.’

  ‘I think here and now would suit me.’ De Ricca glanced towards della Corgna’s tent again. Now I understood. He wanted to fight me in front of Italy’s most famous duellist. What better way to put more gilding on his reputation?

  I blew out my cheeks and shrugged. ‘Very well,’ I said.

  ‘I’ll be your second, Capo,’ Paolo said at once.

  ‘Thanks,’ I said. I wondered if he knew how the rumours had spread, after all. Still, he was a decent, strong swordsman. ‘While we get ready, please fetch Don Orazio. I should make this right with him before it happens.’

  ‘Immediately, Capo,’ he said, and pushed away through the growing crowd.

  ‘Do you need to send for anything?’ I asked de Ricca. ‘A buckler? A dagger?’ He ignored me and turned to whisper something to his friend. I felt as if I were standing on a stage with no lines to deliver, so I sighed and leant down to brush some dirt from my knee. I heard a gasp from the crowd, like a wave drawing back from a pebble beach, and looked up to see that de Ricca had drawn his sword and was coming at me.

  As chance would have it, I was wearing the German sword with which I had fought Gianbattista Tascha all those years before. Though it was quite short I still carried it sometimes, for sentimental reasons, perhaps, and because a short sword is useful in a crowd, and my job as head of security sometimes put me in those positions. If I’d chosen a longer sword that morning, maybe I wouldn’t have been able to draw it in time, or would have got it caught in the scabbard, but as it was it took little more than a flick of my arm and it was out. De Ricca had been too hasty, and that, too, saved me because I twisted away, his thrust went through the cloth of my left sleeve, and our bodies crashed together. I smelt the perfume of expensive civet and last night’s wine before ducking under his arm and skipping backwards. That was when I saw that his friend had also drawn, and the two of them were coming at me again, their swords in high guard. My eyes told me in a flash that the friend was the inferior swordsman: something in the tightness of his sinews, the way he held his sword, and I didn’t hesitate. Stepping sideways, I feinted, and when he lunged, I parried and let my blade hiss along his, and into his chest. He staggered back, a look of bewilderment on his handsome face, and I cut his throat.