Zo

by Leanne Owens

  ‘Maybe,’ Ally smiled at her eagerness. ‘We’ll see. The morning is getting away, so let’s start. I’ll give you a bit of a framework to hang Giro on, because he was important.’

  Once they had settled on the blankets and cushions, Ally began to tell them about the man she detested. Some thought of him as a saint, but she knew differently. ‘After I left home to find sanctuary with Lorenzo, I neither saw nor heard of Girolamo Savonarola for many years. Then, in April of 1475 – three years before the Easter Sunday assassination - Zo, myself, and a few others travelled to Faenza for hunting and to pick up a couple of race horses. Zo was secretly meeting with Ottoman representatives because he hoped to prevent a war between them and Italy, but that isn’t important at this point, except as a reason to have us in the town He always seemed to combine five things at once, whatever he did.

  ‘We were dining in a tavern one night, with me dressed as a boy, when I noticed a man staring at me. As soon as I met his gaze, I knew he was Giro. He hadn’t changed. He had no idea that I was the girl he’d known in Ferrara, though – to him, I was a pretty boy fawning over Lorenzo de’ Medici. But he couldn’t stop staring.’

  ***

  ‘Do you know our friend over there?’ Zo whispered to her, tilting his chin to the dark corner where Giro brooded, his eyes never leaving her face.

  ‘That, my dearest,’ she replied softly, so that the loudly carousing friends around them did not hear, ‘is my dreaded Giro, from home.’

  ‘Really?’ Lorenzo threw back his head and laughed, amused by the coincidence of finding him here. ‘He does not look the evil monster you made him out to be.’

  ‘Do not underestimate him,’ she warned. ‘He is smart. He will be a dangerous man.’

  ‘He looks like a young cub looking for a pack.’

  ‘He’ll start his own pack,’ she presaged, with no clue of the importance of her words. ‘He always seethed with anger and wanted to change the world. I fear what he is capable of as he is a righteous man with flaws who hates faults in others and detests them in himself.’

  An hour later, her words came back with a vengeance when she slipped out of the room to seek a private place where she could relieve herself without revealing her lack of manly parts. As she tip-toed down a corridor at the back of a tavern, an arm snaked out from the shadows and grabbed her around the neck, pulling her into a doorway and pinning her against the door.

  ‘I know you,’ Savonarola claimed in a hoarse voice. ‘I know you. Where from? Where have we met?’

  ‘I do not know you,’ she gasped, hoping to disguise the accents of their home town. ‘Release me.’

  After watching the boy all night and fighting the revulsion he felt at himself for feeling weakness of the flesh while looking at him, Savonarola wanted nothing more than to throw the boy from him. But he couldn’t. He wanted this boy. He wanted the boy to laugh at the things he said, as he’d laughed at Lorenzo de’ Medici. He despised the lust he felt as he held the small body of the pretty boy against the door.

  But he could not let him go.

  ‘Tell me your name,’ he insisted, his head lowering towards Elli.

  ‘You are a pig,’ Elli hissed, struggling in vain against the strength of the man who gave her no room to fight.

  ‘You need to be taught some manners,’ he chided her. ‘A boy with a face as pretty as yours should behave like a good girl.’

  Feeling more excited than he’d ever felt in his life, Girolamo Savonarola, pushed his mouth against the face of the boy he trapped against the door. Elli turned her head left and right to avoid his wet mouth and tried to push the man off her. She needed space to fight back but he held her in an iron grip against the door. The struggling aroused him even more, and he groaned against the mouth that tried in vain to avoid his.

  Elli suddenly went limp in his arms and, caught off guard, he moved back half a step to see what had befallen the boy. The half-step was all the room Elli needed to bring her knee up with great force into Giro’s groin. A huge oomph of air gushed from him as he bent over in agony, clutching at the hurt that replaced the pleasure. With his face now level with her waist, she brought her knee up a second time to connect with his nose. He flipped upright, grabbing at the explosion of pain in the centre of his face, exposing his throat. With all her strength, she jabbed a right-left-right combination punch into his throat. He stumbled back, gasping for breath, in a world of pain.

  ‘Elli?’ Zo’s voice came from nearby.

  ‘Zo!’ she called, her voice unsteady.

  He stepped forward to see Savonarola, his face bloody, backed against the wall opposite Elli. With one hand at his groin, and the other at his throat, Giro’s breath rasped as he glared at Elli, who stood in a fighting stance, poised on the balls of her feet.

  Raising his brows at Elli, Zo hid the fury that swept over him when he correctly interpreted the scene, and asked in a calm voice, ‘Have you been fighting again, child? Have we not told you that boys should be seen but not felt? It looks as though our friend here has felt your fists.’

  ‘He was feeling me,’ Elli accused, pointing at Giro. ‘He is a disgusting pig.’

  ‘Be that as it may,’ Zo cast a disparaging eye over Savonarola who remained crippled by pain, ‘it is unpleasant for boys to kick men in the sensitive place.’

  ‘I did not kick him there,’ Elli announced defiantly, ‘I kneed him. And if he hadn’t been trying to kiss me, then I wouldn’t have to knee him there, and in his nose, or punch him in the throat.’

  Lorenzo winced, ‘Such a violent child.’

  ‘What sort of man wants to force kisses on a boy?’ she asked, looking in distaste at Giro who was yet to recover from her attack.

  ‘What sort, indeed,’ a hint of a smile touched Zo’s mouth as he regarded his young lover, her cheeks red with anger and her eyes flashing with resentment. She was undeniably the most ravishing creature he had ever seen. He could almost pity poor Girolamo if he hadn’t forced himself on her in such a sneaky fashion. What man could gaze upon the beauty of this woman, even though she passed herself off as a boy, and not feel overcome with passion?

  ‘Do something, Zo,’ Elli insisted, indicating Giro whose breath was starting to return to normal.

  ‘I think, little one, that you have done quite enough.’ He turned his attention to Giro and smiled coolly at him, his voice frigid. ‘I trust you will never approach this boy again. If he had not set you back with his knees and fists, and you had harmed him, I would have to kill you. I prefer writing poetry to committing murder, but if anyone harms my young friend here, I will happily – and swiftly – make an exception. Do you understand?’

  Giro nodded, his eyes glinting with rage at the boy and Lorenzo, as well as at himself. He could not believe that lust for this boy had overcome him. He did not want males in that way. He liked women, not men. His self-disgust made him ill. He loathed them for seeing him like this.

  ‘I don’t want to see your face again.’ Zo’s usually cheerful demeanour now carried a chilling threat as he looked at the younger man, adding dismissively, ‘Go clean yourself up, and be gone from this place.’

  After Elli and Zo left, he slunk away into the night. The next day, he rode to Bologna and went to the Convent of San Domenico, where he took vows of obedience, poverty, and chastity. Fra Girolamo Savonarola, the man who would bring about the fall of Lorenzo and Florence, began his journey because of his misguided passions.

  ***

  ‘It may have been a coincidence,’ concluded Ally, ‘but I’m fairly sure it was that encounter with Elli that triggered Giro into turning to religion. There were many times after that incident when Savonarola saw Elli, and for most of the time he thought she was a boy. He was passionate in his hatred of her because she represented the uncontrolled lust that he despised in himself. That grew to become an obsession with destroying everything about Lorenzo and Florence, and even the church which was not as perfect as he wanted it to be.

  ‘After he
discovered that I was Eliga Spini from Ferrara, his loathing climbed to a whole new level. All those years of feeling guilty about lusting after a boy, then he learns that the he was a she, and it made things worse. His lectures and sermons spewed his hatred of all things relating to Elli and Zo: lust, wealth, desire, art, books, power, the rule of men like Lorenzo, the corruption of the Church, and the weakness of the flesh. He knew of the ties between Pope Innocent the Eighth and the Medicis, and it incensed him…he wanted to bring us all crashing down.

  ‘In the late 1480s, our young friend Pico, the genius behind the 900 Theses, convinced Zo that he should host Savonarola in Florence, even though Giro was already speaking loudly against the Medicis. Pico and Poliziano had come under Giro’s spell, and, believe me, he was a hypnotic speaker. Even Zo found some of the fiery sermons moving, and I had to remind him that he was often the object of the attacks in those rants.

  ‘When the last decade of the century began, there were religious serpents, like Pico and Poliziano, held against the Medici breast – men Zo trusted who were believers of Giro’s fearmongering. Others, like Sandro Botticelli, also began to believe that it was time to return to placing God at the centre of everything, and move away from the humanist beliefs of Zo. Florence was poised for a decade of change. Giro’s power was rising. He was secretly plotting deaths and invasions while, to his congregation, he predicted that they would take place because messengers from God had told him.’

  Ally paused to hold out her hands, they shook. ‘I cannot speak of him without feeling overcome with emotion. Some hold him to be a saint, but I can never forgive or forget what he did, including burning some of the most beautiful paintings ever created. And books.’

  Clapping her hands together, she visibly shrugged off the turmoil that Giro had sparked within, and she forced a smile to replace the frown. ‘I want to finish this story before lunch but for now, I’ll introduce my new dear friend so that I don’t finish this first session talking of Giro. Nicco came into my life about the same time that Giro moved close, ready to strike Lorenzo down. Leo introduced me to Nicco. He had great admiration for the young man’s mind. He was a genius, but not a twisted one like Giro. Nicco’s mind was clean and pure, his brilliance was like the best cut diamond – hard and flawless. He joined our secret discussions and he became one of my dearest friends. He was fifteen years younger than I, and he was like the son I wished for. Niccolò Machiavelli...’

  A sharp intake of breath from Marcus caused Ally to stop and appraise him.

  ‘Sorry,’ he raised a hand as though to wave her on with her words, ‘it was just a shock to hear his name. I thought he was the embodiment of evil.’

  Ally shook her head, thinking of the friend she loved in another time. ‘No - perhaps one of the most misunderstood men of all time, but there was nothing evil or Machiavellian about him, as we’ve come to use his name. He admired Lorenzo. He was funny and had a wit even more cutting that Leo’s. Self-preservation for a political genius like Nicco was difficult at that period, and he had to please many sides at different times to stay alive.’

  Smiling at the memory of her friend from long ago, she said, ‘You are thinking of him as he stands in history - a man who supported the bloodthirsty and immoral means by which leaders – or princes – seized and held power. But he didn’t believe it was right, he simply acknowledged that it happened. He wrote The Prince with more than a touch of satire, irony, and even well-concealed mockery.

  'Zo would have understood the undercurrents in his speeches and writings, but later Medici were not so astute. I’ll jump forward out of sequence again, sorry, to twenty-one years after Zo died. Nicco suffered dreadfully at Medici hands when they reclaimed Florence. He completed The Prince shortly after that episode. He didn’t agree with the methods he described, but he needed those in power to think that he agreed with what they did. I believe it is one of the greatest books ever written. He managed to convince the princes, who would kill him if they knew his true thoughts, that he agreed with their methods.’

  ‘I read The Prince many years ago,’ remarked Marcus, thinking back to his feelings about the book. ‘It was like a handbook for tyrants.’

  ‘Read it again,’ urged Ally, ‘He didn’t like the tyrants. He retired to his villa with his wife and children to avoid the evil of the powerful men whom he had served.’

  Brushing an ant from her skirt, Ally stood. ‘If the green ants are moving in, it’s time for us to move out. Let’s go back and have morning tea.’

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

  The Bells Toll for Lorenzo

  After coffee and a fruit platter, they settled into the leafy Daintree Room, feeling as though a lifetime had passed since they first met here. Ally, glancing at Peter’s watch, decided to launch straight into the next session without allowing idle chit-chat. She had the finishing post in sight and wanted to reach it.

  Once they were sitting in their usual arrangement of two couples and two singles in front of her, the story teller, she began. ‘I’ll give you a quick overview of the 1490s, then talk about the parts that were important to Elli. I hope you have a bit of a picture in your minds about Elli’s life as the decade began.’

  She looked around at the expectant faces, seeing their eagerness to hear the rest of her story. It was good to hand her secrets over to them. All the secrets, she shuddered as she thought of the ones ahead of them. She put the thoughts aside, telling herself that she would cross that bridge when she came to it.

  ‘Zo was in his early forties, so still a young man by our reckoning, but he felt old. He’d been in a lot of pain for years. Gout and arthritis ran in the family. Elli was in her late thirties, and still able to pass herself off as a boy.’

  ‘After all that time?’ wondered Marcus. ‘Didn’t people wonder about the boy who never grew up?’

  Ally shrugged, ‘His close friends knew I was a woman. The others may not have taken notice of those they considered to be servants. If they assumed I was a servant, then they would have hardly noticed me, so I could have been any number of young men over the years, not the same one. There is anonymity in being unimportant.

  ‘His brother, Giuliano, was long gone, though Zo never stopped grieving for him. His mother had passed, as had his wife, Clarice. Savonarola was on a roll, so to speak, with his attacks on the corruption of the church and ruling families stirring up the masses in Florence. The man who had tutored Lorenzo’s children for a time, Angelo Ambrogini, or Poliziano as everyone called him, had become very close to Pico della Mirandola, the author of 900 Theses who had the protection and trust of Lorenzo.

  ‘Pico and Poliziano, like many of Zo’s friends, were brilliant, but they began to fall under the spell of Savonarola. Every time they visited, Zo’s health seemed to decline a little more. Savonarola, growing bolder as Zo’s health failed, began predicting the death of both Lorenzo and Pope Innocent the Eighth. When they both died - coincidentally, each after a visit from Savonarola - more people began to believe he was a prophet from God. He wanted them to see him as a great prophet. He also predicted that God would send northerners across the mountains into Florence and Rome to cleanse them of evil tyrants and corruption. I know he’d been in communication with the French king, Charles the Eighth, thanks to our spies, so it was an easy prediction when he was working to invite Charles in.

  ‘Giro wanted power. He claimed he wanted to undertake God’s work and remove the corrupt people who controlled the church and Florence, but he wanted power and he wanted revenge. So much so, that he sold out his country to the French in order to have that power. It was convenient to prophesy the events he was organising so that it looked as though it was all ordained by God. My good friend, Nicco Machiavelli, detested him, writing of him as an unarmed prophet.

  ‘It was a decade of change, beginning with Giro Savonarola hating us so much that he wanted to destroy everything that Lorenzo stood for. He succeeded in removing the Medicis from power and gaining it for himself, but before the next
century began, he was hung, burned, and his ashes scattered in the Arno so no misguided followers would make relics of his bones.’

  Ally closed her eyes as she completed the summary of the decade. It seemed so clinical when a million moments were crammed into a few minutes. Ten years of turmoil in the beautiful city of Florence. Men destroying men for power. Giro destroying books, paintings, and sculptures, claiming it was God’s will. No man ever again created as much as Lorenzo de’ Medici had created in his life time. The events and changes of the decade swept Elli along in their currents, though it was likely, she frowned, that Elli precipitated many of the events that changed Florence that decade.

  ‘I often wonder,’ she spoke her thoughts aloud, ‘if Giro had not seen Elli as a boy in Faenza, would he have become a religious zealot? And, at the start of the 1490s, if he had not discovered that the boy he coveted was, in fact, a woman – a woman who despised him – would he have fallen under Lorenzo’s charm and become a friend rather than an obsessed enemy?’

  ‘There is no point,’ Peter noted, ‘to playing the what if game. Things happen. They don’t change by punishing ourselves with guilt afterwards.’

  ‘It doesn’t stop me from feeling at fault, though,’ she pointed out. ‘Giro had been in Florence for six months, and every time he happened to see Elli out with Lorenzo or his friends, he would rant like a madman about the evils of sodomy, since he was convinced Elli was Zo’s male lover. He would point at her and call down the wrath of the heavens on men who would lie down with men. But she could still see the mad lust in his eyes when he looked at her – at me. It was tearing him apart, hating the thought of homosexuality, but being attracted to someone he believed was male.’

  ‘He has my commiserations,’ said Marcus bemusedly. ‘Imagine the hell of being attracted to another man.’