Zo

by Leanne Owens

  Andrew laughed and patted his arm affectionately.

  ‘And there were plenty of gay men in Florence at the time,’ Ally told them. ‘Pico of the 900 Theses and Poliziano, the writer who had been a tutor for Zo’s children, were lovers, and Giro had to know that as they spent a lot of time with him. But, clearly, he had issues with desiring Lorenzo’s young male companion.

  ‘One evening, for something different, I wore a dress of green silk with gold thread highlights, tight at the waist with gold lacing, and a square neckline that was not as modest as perhaps it should have been. I loved that dress. Sometimes, when we were home alone, I wore it, but this night I wore it out for a stroll through Florence.

  ‘As always, Zo had his loyal men around him who would die to protect him. Ever since the Pazzi incident, he had been obsessive about security. We weren’t going far as Zo’s gout was playing up, and walking was painful, though he insisted he had to walk as he detested being carried in the litter that he was beginning to use.

  ‘Shortly after leaving the palace, heading towards the river, Giro saw us. He was coming from the cathedral and a crowd followed him, listening to him ranting about the wealth of the oppressors who ruled Florence while they suffered. When they listened to him, they forgot all the good Lorenzo did for his people. Zo loved Florence, he really did.

  ‘We tried to avoid him, turning back, but he began yelling and pointing. I made the mistake of turning to look at him, and he recognised me as the boy who was always with Lorenzo. He didn’t hesitate to consider that perhaps I was a young man in women’s clothes, he knew I was a woman. He knew that he’d been lusting after a woman all those years that he thought he’d desired a boy. The fury in his face exploded into words, and he began screaming about whores and harlots.

  ‘That meeting marked the escalation in his fixation with tearing down the Medici family. His sermons became inspired by his fanaticism, and his cult like following grew. I heard him a few times, and his words were strong currents that swept followers off their feet.

  ‘Lorenzo grew increasingly unwell. I didn’t suspect poisoning at the time as it was gradual, but I believe that was the case. He had such trust in Pico and Poliziano, but I think Giro convinced them that it was time for Zo to move aside for the new order chosen by God.

  ‘At the beginning of April, in 1492, we were back where we first met, at the Medici villa at Careggi, where his grandfather died. He went home to Careggi to die. After borrowing money from his cousins, the lesser branch of the Medici, he had signed over his beloved Cafaggiolo villa to them, so that was gone. Instead, he chose to be where his grandfather had died, and where we had met. He was ready to leave as the pain was unbearable, and nothing gave relief, certainly not the grotesque treatments of his doctors.’

  ‘Was it like your childhood pain?’ asked Andrew, wondering if that linked them somehow.

  Ally shook her head, ‘Nothing like it. It was hard for him to sleep, he couldn’t ride his beloved horses anymore, he didn’t hunt. And yet he remained so pleasant to all around him, no matter how much he suffered.’

  ***

  She remembered how he had lain in his bed, the physicians around him mixing potions and grinding pearls and gems that they assured him would help. Nothing helped. In the outfit of a young male servant, she stayed quietly in his room, watching over him as friends and officials came and went. In his final days, he turned to his humanist friends for comfort and, when they were present, she could drop her act and be the Elli they knew.

  When they were alone, she moved to sit next to him and gently took his hand in hers. They would sit like this until the door opened and another visitor arrived, then she would retire to the edge of the room.

  ‘Our friends will care for you when I am gone,’ he whispered to her late one Saturday night as she lay on a cot next to his bed. Any movement could trigger his discomfort, so she no longer slept in bed with him in case she hurt him during the night.

  ‘You’re not going,’ she whispered back, reaching for his hand. ‘We will find something that helps. I’ve sent messengers to the eastern lands – their physicians might have a cure we don’t know about.’

  ‘No, dearest,’ he responded, ‘there is no help coming. Do not hold out false hope.’

  ‘But I can’t live without you, Zo,’ her voice trembled.

  ‘You can, and you will. You know I’ve always told you to choose life.’

  ‘Then you choose life,’ she pleaded, sitting up so that she could lean over him, her short-cropped hair falling forward onto his arm. ‘Don’t say you are dying. Choose to stay with me.’

  ‘The choice is not mine,’ he raised his hand to touch her face and brush away the tears. ‘I would always choose to stay with you, but my body is a temple that is collapsing, and my soul will have to flee soon.’

  ‘What will I do without you?’

  ‘You will do what you are meant to do. You will help others. You will be a friend to my friends. You will laugh with Leo when he comes to visit. Young Nicco is very fond of you – he will stand by you. The apartment that my mother gave to you is a perfect place to live. You will paint and you will write. Your life will go on.’

  ‘I need you, Zo,’ she spoke with desperation. It terrified her to see him slipping away.

  ‘And I need you, Elli. You have been the diamond at the core of my being since that day we met in the gardens outside. I wish I had given you children. I wish you weren’t so scared of being alone. I am sorry if life with me meant you missed out on having a husband and your own family. I’m…’

  Elli put a finger to his lips to stop him. ‘Zo, I have had the best life any woman in all the world could have lived. Most men treat women like their property, a broodmare who must provide children and care for his house.’

  ‘A broodmare would make a poor housekeeper,’ he smiled in the darkness. ‘Hooves are not handy for needlework and polishing.’

  ‘Even now you joke?’ she asked.

  ‘Even now,’ he agreed. ‘It is good medicine, so I’ve been told.’

  ‘See how you joke with me… so many men would never joke with their wives. I do not miss having children. I certainly do not miss being the property of some overweight merchant who hits me for not organising the meals the way he likes.’

  ‘It would be a sorry man who hits you, little firebrand.’

  ‘Yes, and then he would have me locked up. You men are so unfair.’

  ‘Me?’

  ‘No, not you, Zo, you are the fairest of fair. Just men in general.’

  ‘You don’t sound sad now. That is good,’ he exhaled heavily, amused by how quickly she jumped from grief to anger about the power men held over women.

  ‘I am still sad,’ she said softly. ‘While you lie here, sadness remains like a glacier moving through my chest. I want to go hunting with you again. I want to watch your horses race in the Palio. I want us to drink wine into the night, and sing your ballads, and have you recite your poems…’

  ‘I want that, too,’ he said gently, ‘but death comes for me and he will be a friend. Elli, even now, talking to you, when I should feel such happiness, the pain is so great that I want to cry out into the night. Death does not come for me as my enemy. Death opens his arms to invite me to a safe place, where this suffering of my body will be left behind.’

  ‘And I will be left behind, Zo,’ she spoke in a small voice, like a child alone in the dark, scared of what waits beyond. ‘I want to go with you.’

  ‘If what our priests have told us is right, if there is a heaven and an afterlife, then I will never leave you, Elli. You must not try to come with me. I will stay with you. You just won’t feel my hand as I wipe away your tears.’

  ‘When you’re not here,’ she took his hand and pressed her lips against it, alarmed by the coldness of his skin. ‘If you’re not here,’ she began again, ‘then I will have no one to protect me from Giro.’

  ‘I will take care of Savonarola,’ he promised. ‘He comes here tom
orrow to see me.’

  ‘No,’ she cried, trying to keep her voice low. ‘Do not see him. Do not allow him near you. You know he is dangerous.’

  ‘I make my peace with him tomorrow, and I will make sure he never harms you or worries you.’

  ‘Please don’t see him,’ she wept, fearful for what Giro would do when Zo was so helpless.

  ‘Death comes for me as a friend, Elli,’ he repeated his earlier words. ‘There is nothing he can do to me that I will not welcome.’

  ‘He has been predicting your death, Lorenzo,’ she reminded him. ‘He wants you to die so that he is seen as a prophet.’

  ‘This I understand. I have Pico visiting early tomorrow, and then Savonarola.’

  ‘You know I think Pico has been poisoning you.’

  ‘I know,’ he replied. ‘And if you are right, he needs my forgiveness. If he has done this for Savonarola, then it will destroy him if I do not forgive him tomorrow. He will change the world if guilt and grief do not overcome him. I do this for the world.’

  ‘Damn the world, Zo. Send them away tomorrow, and just live.’

  He shook his head slightly. ‘That option is not available, Elli. So, I make my peace with those who can improve the world, and negotiate with those who can hurt you. Then, when Death comes, I can leave without regret or fear.’

  ‘Please don’t go,’ she sobbed, terrified of facing life without him.

  ‘Shh,’ he hushed her, closing his cold hand around hers. ‘It’s only this body that gives out. I will go on. I will always be with you.’

  As Saturday night passed into Sunday, she went to sleep, leaning over the side of his bed, her head next to his chest. Lorenzo could not sleep, so he lay quietly, fighting the pain, his hand resting protectively on her shoulder.

  In the morning, at Zo’s instruction, two of his friends took Elli away to have breakfast and look at the latest horses in stables. She had always loved horses, and Zo wanted her away from the house when his friend Pico della Mirandola arrived. He did not want her attacking Pico over her suspicions that he worked for Savonarola. It might be so, but he was not sure. He certainly did not want her anywhere near when Fra Girolamo arrived as he needed to settle matters with the man.

  While Elli and her two companions exercised three of the Medici racehorses, Lorenzo met with Pico and, as he left, Fra Girolamo Savonarola arrived. Antonio, one of Lorenzo’s attendants and close friends, later told Elli that he had stood outside the door and could hear the two men talking, but could not make out their words. They spoke privately at length, and then Lorenzo asked the friar for the benediction. They prayed together, and Savonarola gave Lorenzo de’ Medici his blessing, and departed.

  His friends returned to his bedside and Lorenzo joked with them about the weather and the meal he attempted to eat. They watched him with anguish in their hearts as they realised how close death rode. In true Lorenzo form, he apologised for disrupting their lives with his illness, and made light of dying. His friends cried.

  There were a dozen men around his bed when Elli returned from riding the horses. Assuming the role of a servant, she moved to the side of the room and stood against a wall, watching quietly as the man she loved struggled to speak to his friends. Occasionally, he met her eyes and all else in the room and the universe disappeared as they alone existed in those moments. Eventually, he waved his friends out with a tired gesture so that he could have some time alone with Elli.

  Once they were gone and the door closed, she moved quietly to his bedside and stood looking down at him, her face pinched with worry as she observed the tense lines on his face. She thought he had gone to sleep and waited silently so as not to disturb him.

  ‘Did you have a good ride?’ he asked, opening his eyes to gaze up at her. His breath laboured against the pain that destroyed him, bit by bit.

  ‘I was scared,’ Elli sat on a chair next to his bed and leaned over towards him, taking his hand in hers and kissing it gently. ‘I kept thinking I would hear the bells toll for you, and I would never see you again.’

  ‘And yet you see me,’ he smiled, giving her hand a squeeze. ‘Sometimes, our fears are in vain. Do not give in to your fears, dear one.’

  ‘I was worried Giro would take action to ensure his prophecy came true.’ She wiped at her tears when he closed his eyes. Being brave for him was difficult. ‘Antonio said he gave you the blessing.’

  Lorenzo nodded slightly. ‘We made our peace. He will leave you alone. I have his promise.’

  ‘Pwah!’ she spat. ‘What good is his promise?’

  He chuckled lightly, then coughed. ‘Granted, we do not like the man, and he detests everything my family represents, but he is devout. He will not break this promise. The man dislikes corruption and believes he is bringing God back to rule the church.’

  ‘He believes he is the hand of God. He thinks you are proud with your wealth and your friends, your power and all you’ve created, but he errs if he thinks he is not a proud man. He is delusional in his pride. He wants power as much as any man, he simply convinces himself it is for God and not for himself. It is for himself. It is.’

  ‘I’ll not argue that.’

  ‘How did you get him to agree to leave me alone?’

  Lorenzo sighed, his dark eyes settling on her troubled face. ‘I made a deal with him. He will honour it.’

  ‘What deal?’ Elli looked at him suspiciously.

  ‘A deal that you are not to trouble yourself with.’

  ‘But I am troubled.’ She stared at him intently, her mind running through all the possible bargains that Giro would agree to and which Lorenzo was able to make while alone with the friar in this room. ‘You could not promise him money without a witness here. You could not buy him off with goods or property or women. What did Giro want in order to agree to this?’

  ‘Something I could willingly give. But no more of this. We waste these minutes discussing Girolamo when we should talk of ourselves. Or not talk. It would make me happy just to have you near.’

  Reluctantly, Elli dropped the subject of Giro. She searched for something to say that would give him cheer. ‘The horse I rode today, Fulmine, is very fast.’

  ‘As fast as lightning,’ he inclined his head in agreement. ‘I have asked Piero to run him at Siena.’

  ‘A good rider and that horse should win,’ she noted, trying not to disparage Piero.

  Lorenzo’s eldest and his heir lacked the courage that made his father a great rider. She tried to like Piero, but she found him weak where Zo was strong, and he lacked the Medici charm and good judgement, but certainly inherited the ruthlessness. If he chose to ride Fulmine in the Palio, the horse would not win.

  ‘Perhaps you will ride him.’

  ‘Only if you are there to leg me up into the saddle,’ she sniffed in amusement at the thought of Piero allowing her to ride. ‘I do not think Piero will want me around the horses if you are too unwell to attend.’

  ‘I won’t be there,’ Zo said softly. ‘You need to understand, my love, that I will not walk away from this bed. This is the end.’

  ‘Please don’t say that. Zo,’ she begged, blinking back the tears that threatened her eyes with little stabs of heat. ‘You have had bad episodes before and recovered.’

  ‘Look at me, Elli,’ he commanded. ‘Stop seeing me as the Lorenzo you knew twenty years ago or ten, or even five. The gout has ruined me. I am ready to die.’

  ‘Don’t,’ her voice quivered.

  ‘I’ll try not to, just for you,’ he smiled weakly. ‘This evening, while my visitors crowd around me here, I have a favour to ask of you.’

  ‘Yes, Zo?’

  ‘I want you to go to with Antonio to the de’Cioni villa to see Giorgio. He was making something for me and promised it would be ready this evening. He will be expecting you.’

  ‘I would rather stay here.’

  ‘I know,’ he said soothingly, ‘but it is something special that I wish you to bring back for me. While you are gone, I shall be
entertained by all our friends who fill the villa.’

  ‘You will be here when I get back?’ she looked at him intently.

  ‘Where would I go?’ he exhaled softly and raised a hand to stroke her cheek. ‘Do you remember when we first met?’

  ‘Of course. Outside, in the gardens, twenty-eight years ago. I thought you were an angel riding into the garden from heaven. I told my mother afterwards that I would marry you, and she told me that Lorenzo de’ Medici would never marry a Spini.’

  ‘I regret that I did not.’

  ‘I don’t,’ she told him with conviction. ‘I have been your friend, your companion, lover, partner, and confidante…I have been so much more than a wife, and I have never for a moment regretted what we have.’

  ‘Nor I,’ he sighed, closing his eyes. ‘I have loved you so much.’

  His breath caught on the words, and his voice faded so that she had to lean close to hear him. ‘But we will talk on this later. For now, go with Antonio - I want that gift from Giorgio. If you ride now, you might reach him before the sun goes down.’

  ‘I shall hurry,’ she promised.

  She placed her lips against his forehead and stepped back from the bed. It looked as though sleep had claimed him as his chest rose and fell gently, his eyes shut. For several minutes, she watched him, silently uttering a prayer to whatever god would listen to her, begging for Zo’s recovery. Leaving him, she paused at the door to look back and saw that he was not asleep - he was watching her. The force of his intellect, humour, kindness, and love reached out to her in his gaze. She smiled at him, touched her hand to her heart, and left the room.

  Antonio was waiting on a bench in the hallway, his eyes red from crying.

  ‘Lorenzo asked that we ride over to Giorgio’s villa,’ she said.

  He nodded, ‘He spoke to me about it earlier. I believe it is something he had Giorgio make for you. It is important to Loro that we do this.’

  ‘I want to ride fast,’ she told him, striding down the corridor towards the stables. ‘I do not want to be away from him for long.’