Primavera

by Mary Jane Beaufrand

  “It’s all right. I’m not womanly. I’m going to the convent.”

  “Oh,” he said, looking relieved. “They told me that one of the daughters was in the courtyard so I assumed . . .”

  “That I was the pretty one?”

  He nodded silently.

  I liked this boy. He was honest even when he was sick.

  “What do you know about Marco Polo?” I asked.

  He looked thrown off balance by my question, as was I. Why did that even come out of my mouth? All he did was puke in the orange tree and I handed him the content of my dreams.

  The youth stared at me overlong, taking my measure. “Not much,” he said finally. “Only that when he first returned from his travels no one believed him. They say he stood on the altar at San Marco in Venice, slit open his robes, and a king’s ransom in jewels fell out.”

  This youth didn’t know it yet, but he said exactly the right thing. Because here is what I hid from Andrea along with the flawed diamond up my sleeve. Mamma said I was too plain to marry so she gave my dowry to Our Lady of Fiesole. I didn’t want to go. I couldn’t stand the thought of spending the rest of my life indoors, growing wrinkled and blind from sewing someone’s undergarments in dim light. It was only by the grace of God and the intervention of my beloved nonna that I wasn’t there already. But Nonna was old and could not live forever, no matter how much I willed it. One day she would leave me. I was determined that when that day came, it would finally be my turn. I would take my stolen gems and use them to buy my way to Venice, where I would book passage on a ship to the Holy Lands, battle infidels, and rescue the bones of some saint. From there I would ride on a camel through the mountains and have tea with a Chinese lord with a moustache so long it dragged in the ground. When I came back, I would stand at the altar during high mass at our duomo. I would slit open my robes as Marco Polo did, and say: See, Papa? Is this enough? Do you love me now?

  He would embrace me in front of the whole city. He would tell me he loved me and that he always knew my true worth. I would never have to tend anything again.

  “What is your name?” I asked the youth in front of me.

  He looked at me kindly, and the shadow of a smile crossed his face. “Emilio,” he said.

  “Well, Emilio, I’m Flora. I’ll show you to my father’s study, then you will come with me to the kitchen where we will get you some real food. None of that black bread they give you in the billet. I’ve seen what the cook puts into those loaves. Rat droppings and powdered snot.”

  I pointed my finger down my throat and made gagging noises.

  If I thought Emilio’s half smile was interesting, his full smile warmed me like the sun. I even liked his two crooked front teeth.

  “What shall I do about the orange tree, eh?” he asked.

  “Leave it,” I said. “She’ll get over it.”

  I didn’t know why I said she. It was my garden after all. But for some reason when I thought of puke in the delicate white vase I thought of Domenica.

  Chapter Two

  Our palazzo had rooms for everything — cooking, sleeping, bathing, reading, plucking, praying. Each space seemed stuffed more than decorated. There was no corner without a bust; no wall without a painting or tapestry. Mamma said that the Medici were smart enough to patronize artists so we must do the same or we would look coarse. We did everything the Medici did.

  I led Emilio up the marble stairs to the piano nobile — the floor where all the activity in the house took place. The stairs brought us directly into the great hall where my family and their minions ate their evening meal around a large U-shaped table. I rarely was invited to sit with them. Mamma said I was too plain for good company and that I honored my family best by serving the meals and then dining in the kitchen where I would be more “comfortable.”

  I called Mamma a wench sometimes when she wasn’t listening.

  Today, Emilio walked two paces behind me through the Madonna gallery to Papa’s library. The poverino was swaying so hard I feared he would fall over, and his eyes seemed to spiral in their sockets as he looked from side to side. All those enthroned virgins crammed into that long, narrow space. Don’t get me wrong — the paintings and busts were all lovely, but there were too many of them. They made me dizzy; I could only imagine how Emilio felt.

  At the end of the Madonna gallery the library door was ajar, so we stood at the threshold and had a good view of half the room. I stood back and motioned to Emilio to stand behind me. I was good at peering through half-open doors.

  My father was within and pacing, his soft leather shoes padding quietly on Carrera marble.

  My mother, who was closeted with him, made a lot of noise. I glimpsed the elaborate black and tan brocade of her gown as she swished from place to place. The timbre of her voice was high and reedy and pierced my skull.

  I turned to Emilio and put a finger to my lips. We weren’t spying, exactly . . . well yes, we were. But we were doing it through an open door. God would forgive us.

  “But think what an alliance would mean, Jacopo,” my mother said.

  “We already have one, Maddelena. My brother married a Medici.”

  “That is different,” Mamma continued. “Guglielmo married a Medici daughter. You know as well as I that daughters mean nothing.”

  I cringed. Mamma told me this daily with looks and sharp words, but I’d never heard her lump all the daughters of the world together. After all, Domenica was a daughter too.

  Mamma continued: “The power lies with the sons. Lorenzo would have been a better match. Still, Giuliano would be a fine son-in-law. And, God forbid, should something happen to Lorenzo, your daughter would be First Lady of Florence.”

  Giuliano was Lorenzo de Medici’s younger brother. Lorenzo was already married to a Roman girl and they had two sons. Giuliano would not inherit the bulk of the family fortune, but he was still rich and powerful enough to please my mother.

  My father pounded his fist on the desk. “Medici, Medici, Medici. I am tired of hearing about those wool merchants. Who do they think they are, anyway? My ancestors were out defending the Holy Land when those upstarts were still guarding sheep.”

  That was a common rant of my father’s. What right do they have to be richer than we are? They do not wear crowns. They have never even been knighted, like we have. They are mere peasants.

  Mere peasants with enough business sense to finance a pope. Mere peasants who rule our city as if they were kings. For all their humble beginnings they must have done something right.

  “I’m not saying we have to like them, Jacopo,” Mamma said. “But think of the power we would wield. More votes would go your way in the Signoria. They would be forced to accept us as equals.”

  The Signoria was the council of leading citizens of Florence. They decided on civic issues (taxes, levies, maintenance of common paths) based on a ballot of stones — red stones for yes, black stones for no. They voted in the open in front of all the other important men. There was once a time when measures my father proposed all met with red stones.

  Now, too often, his proposals met with black.

  I heard my father sigh; then watched his silhouette drop in his chair. He seemed heavy with fatigue. On top of the black votes and the sleepless nights, he was weighed down by my mother. She weighed us all down. “All right then, Maddelena,” he said. “What do you propose?”

  “Giuliano has seen Domenica Sundays at mass and thought her comely. We must do all in our power to make her even more comely. She will need more dresses and jewelry and a maid of her own.”

  “More dresses? Why should she need more dresses? She already has three,” Papa said.

  “Variety, Jacopo. In order for a woman to get a man’s attention she must seem to be many women. Do you remember when we were courting? I wore a different dress to each mass then. As I recall, you thought well of me.”

  “I thought well of your money,” he muttered.

  Mamma kept talking as though she hadn’t hea
rd his barb. “We must have her portrait painted and present it to the Medici. The portrait must show Domenica even more lovely than she is in life.”

  I saw where this was going. I groaned softly and rolled my eyes. Emilio looked at me, confused.

  My father understood. “Please,” he begged. “No more Madonnas.”

  “Why not?” Mamma pleaded. “Our daughter is certainly beautiful enough to rival the Queen of Heaven.”

  I held my breath. Next to me, Emilio crossed himself. This talk of my mother’s was not good. Mortals couldn’t talk like this without inviting serious consequences.

  I drew breath again, surprised we hadn’t been struck by lightning. But now I was even more afraid. My mother wrought something with her words. I hoped we would not all have to pay.

  My father seemed to give up. “And you already have someone in mind,” he said.

  “Lucrezia de Medici prefers to patronize the artist Alessandro Filipepi — the one who calls himself Botticelli. He will do nicely, I think.”

  Lucrezia’s husband, “Piero the Gouty,” had died young and she’d lived more than half her life as a widow. Lucrezia didn’t seem to mind. Without him, she could boss her children about all she liked. I’m sure most days my own mamma wished Papa would contract a bad case of gout.

  In the library, Papa sighed. “I take it this Botticelli is expensive.”

  “Moderately so, I believe.”

  “All right then. Do what you need to do. This is not my province.”

  I knew by my father’s words that he was done. I rapped on the door as though we’d just arrived.

  My mother opened the door wide. She was even more startling up close than she was in silhouette: her black lustrous hair held in a tight knot by alabaster combs, her elegant gown spanning the width of the hall. But the bump on the middle of her nose — the one that no amount of white powder could hide — conspired to make her look coarse.

  She looked first at me and then Emilio. She took in my uncombed hair, my ruddy cheeks, my formless shift. Then she sized Emilio up, the too-big clothes, the rank smell, the flies around the cap.

  “Why aren’t you outside?” she said to me.

  “This youth has a message for Papa,” I said. “He didn’t know the way.”

  “Bene,” she said. “Don’t linger.” With that, she covered her nose with a handkerchief and pushed past us.

  My mother and I were not allies. If I had been Domenica she would have not only spotted my flaws, she would have corrected them. Come, bambina mia, she would have said. Your hair is unkempt and there’s a spot on your skirt. I shall have someone fix you up. Sometimes I longed for this treatment; mostly I was glad she left me alone.

  “Flora, what do you want?” my father called.

  My father, even indoors, wore a red mazzochio on his head that resembled a giant strawberry. He didn’t like anyone to know that underneath he was bald.

  “This youth has a letter for you, Papa,” I said.

  I nudged Emilio forward. His hands shook as he held the letter out to my father. Papa grabbed it from him without looking at his face.

  Then my father’s eyes went wide when he saw the seal.

  “Leave me,” he said abruptly.

  “We’ll be in the kitchen if you need Emilio to send a reply.”

  He waved us away.

  “Kitchen, Papa,” I said as we left, and I closed the door behind us. Later, after he was done reading and analyzing the letter, he would remember and send for us.

  In the meantime Emilio swayed on his feet. He needed to eat and quickly, so I took him to the kitchen and Nonna.

  Chapter Three

  Now I come to the part of my story it most grieves me to look upon. I have lost everything — my garden, my family, my way of life. I miss Mamma and Papa not at all. I do miss Andrea, but he wasn’t like Nonna. Nobody was.

  For the first fourteen years of my life Nonna was everything to me. She was my captain, my nurse, my parent, my cook. She was possibly the ugliest part of the palazzo — stooped and toothless and surly like a pasha — but the way she dispensed care and comfort made her beautiful.

  And now once again I am walking down the back stairs to her realm. Once again I smell the rich odors of sage and thick broth and honeyed bread. Once again I feel it is possible to be made whole.

  I cross the threshold of memory and there she is in plain back dress, one long gray braid snaking down her back, moving independently of the rest of her, as if it were always swatting at something. I see the black-dog ring she wore on the middle finger of her right hand, a ring made of gold and onyx that even now I wear around my neck in a chain forged of silver, a reminder that I am a prisoner of regret. Nonna loved me enough to give up everything for me. And even though I loved Nonna, I took her for granted. To me, she was just another part of the house, like the black kettle that simmered on the hearth behind her.

  That morning Nonna was hard at work, slapping a loaf into shape. “There you are, you lazy girl,” she said when she saw me. “Did you not hear me calling? Come wash your hands. Knead the dough while I finish with the soup.”

  Behind her were Graziella, the kitchen maid, and two contadine braiding garlic. Graziella chopped the heads off a pile of dead rabbits. Whack! I didn’t trust that girl. Whack! Whack! She took too much joy in wielding that cleaver.

  Outside the kitchen was a bench full of Nonna’s patients. Nonna was an accomplished healer; some even whispered that she was a strega, a witch. Either way she was never at a loss for patients. Most brought something to barter for their health: turnips, ducks, rabbits, pine nuts. A few, a very few, came with their hands empty. Nonna never turned anyone away.

  Today it was crowded with people who suffered from overindulgence. Lent was almost upon us and most of the town took their forty days of deprivation seriously. So seriously, in fact, that the days before Lent they drank so much red wine they were more poisoned than stupefied. Nonna sent them away with jugs of water seasoned with chamomile flowers. (“The water’s the thing,” she often told me. “No witchcraft about it.”)

  I washed my own hands and set to work. “This is Emilio,” I said. “He just puked in the oranges. Can you fix him up?”

  Emilio, who was standing next to me, stamped on my foot hard. So I elbowed him in the ribs and nearly sent him flying out the door, he was such a stick (albeit a stick with a foul temper).

  “Basta!” Nonna said, pulling Emilio over to the daylight. “That is enough, Flora.” She was a head shorter than he, but she got right in his face and screwed her right eye up until it resembled a spyglass. “Open your mouth,” she commanded.

  When she was done, she turned to Graziella and slapped her hard on the face. “What have I told you about using that old meal for bread, eh? These boys work hard. We do not need to poison them.”

  “But Signor Jacopo told us we should cut costs. I thought to myself: why waste food? Those ruffians should be grateful for what they get,” Graziella said.

  Emilio was staring at the tops of her breasts, which looked as though they might spill out of her dress at any moment. Don’t pay attention to those, I wanted to say. She’s a lazy slattern.

  Nonna was still berating her. “If you’re smart you’ll worry less about Signor Jacopo and more about me. Now go to the pantry and throw out everything with worms in it.”

  Graziella skulked out of the room. Nonna made Emilio sit on the wooden chair by the hearth and poured him a mug of soup.

  “Drink it,” she instructed him.

  “It’s hot, signora . . .”

  “DRINK IT!”

  Emilio gulped it down. I tried not to laugh. It was probably scalding his throat, poverino. Nonna’s cures were seldom gentle.

  At this point my father bellowed down the stairs. “Boy!”

  My new friend wiped his mouth on his sleeve and stood up quickly.

  “Tranquillo,” I told him. “There’s no need to rush.”

  When his eyes met mine they were hard
as diamonds. “Maybe you don’t need to rush,” he said. “Some of us have to earn our bread.”

  He slapped his empty bowl on the table and darted up the stairs.

  After he disappeared Nonna stood looking after him. “That is a good boy,” she said, “but there is more wrong with him than just his stomach. Perhaps a recent tragedy keeps his humors out of balance. Flora? Are you hearing anything I’m saying?”

  I wasn’t. I had grabbed a wet dish and a towel and made a big show of drying it, all the while inching closer to the stairs, hoping to overhear what Papa told Emilio. I wanted to know what was in the pope’s letter.

  “Bah! You listen to all the wrong things,” Nonna said as she went outside to tend her patients.

  Meanwhile, my father and Emilio stood at the top of the stairs. Papa spoke sotto voce, as though he didn’t want anyone else to hear. I heard him just fine.

  “You will take this letter and ride to Forli,” he said. “You will go alone and be quick about it. At Forli, you will deliver this directly to Count Riorio at his court. You are not to give it to anyone but Count Riorio directly. You will not give it to a guard, you will not give it to a courtier, you will most decidedly not give it to his wife. Do you understand?”

  “Subito, signore,” Emilio said, and dashed off to the stables.

  I didn’t understand. Why was Papa writing to Forli and not Rome? I knew that Count Riorio had married a niece of the pope, but I thought Papa should have sent his response to the Vatican.

  I did understand that the pope was different from Papa’s circle. In some ways he was like a Medici — a ruler with vast resources who could tax and wage war — but he also had God on his side. One bad move and poof! There goes not only your empire but your immortal soul as well.

  My father had chosen to tread carefully. By sending for Count Riorio rather than the pope himself, he was asking for advice from someone in the pope’s inner circle before posting his reply. A shrewd man, my papa was.

  I almost told my sister Domenica about the letter from the pope but thought better of it. During dinner that night I was on my way from the great hall, carrying the carcasses of pheasants stuffed with pine nuts and dates, when she accosted me. She was wearing a gown of silk so delicate it made no noise when she moved. Her face was whitened with lemon juice and goat’s-milk paste. She was supposed to look like an angel, but to me she looked like something that crawled from under a potted orange tree after a heavy rain.