The Birth of Venus

by Sarah Dunant

  Finally, at the end of October, Piero left the city with his personal entourage and headed for the French camp.

  In the study room our tutor made us pray for his safe return. From the pulpit Savonarola openly preached welcome to Charles, hailing him as God’s instrument for saving Florence’s soul and denouncing Piero as a Medici coward whose family had destroyed our godly Republic. The waiting city vibrated with anxiety. Three days before, my father had come home with news of a proclamation from the Signoria that if the French army entered the city certain households would be billeted upon. Officials came round and chalked so many doors with white crosses that it looked like the plague had hit again. As with the pestilence, wealth and influence proved no protection. Both my old and my new home were chosen. If the French did come, their arrival would mark my first role as hostess in my married house.

  Each day there was a story of another family dispatching their daughters—indeed, sometimes even their wives—to the safety of cloisters, though as I heard my mother mutter one day when the panic was running high, “When did any invading foreign army respect the sanctity of convent walls?”

  And the date of my wedding, 26 November, was less than two weeks away.

  The heat had finally broken the day before and the rain had come. I sat at my window, my possessions around me, watching the dirt flow down the gullies, wondering if this too was God’s plan to wash the city clean. Erila helped me pack my chest.

  “All this is happening very fast.”

  “Yes,” I said, meeting her gaze. “Does that worry you?”

  She shrugged slightly. “Maybe you didn’t need to take the first one they offered.”

  “Oh, really. Did I miss the queue outside the house? Or would you have preferred to see me fingering my rosary beads in some damp cell in the wilds of the country? I could have asked to take you with me there too.”

  She said nothing.

  “Erila?” I waited. “He will be your master as well. If you know anything I don’t, it would be better to tell me now.”

  She shook her head. “We are both sold already. We shall just have to make the best of it.”

  It felt as if my life were running out like the sands in an hourglass and there would soon be no time unaccounted for. I had heard nothing from the painter. His silence was like an ache that I tried to ignore, yet sometimes in bed when the heat had been at its worst I found myself succumbing to it, and then I would be back in the cool of the chapel, his skin pearly in the candlelight, or in the freshness of the dawn garden, watching his fingers flying over the page, entranced by the way angels’ wings grew under his touch. On those nights I slept badly and woke in a sweat that was cold as well as hot.

  I decided that honesty was the best method of deceit and asked my mother’s permission to visit the chapel, seeing as I would be leaving soon. She was too busy to join me, and of course there was less need for chaperones now. Erila would do.

  The chapel was transformed. The apse was halfway between a building site and a sorcerer’s cave: there were scaffolding and beams lashed into place to create a series of walkways and platforms at every height, reaching high up the walls, while in the middle a small fire clogged the air with fumes. Above it, strung across the roof, was a grid of what looked like thick black wire, the shadow of which was thrown up by the light of the flames onto the vaulted roof above. The painter was hoisted high into the space on a harness. He was suspended close to the surface of the roof and was intent on drawing the shadow grid lines onto the ceiling itself. When he completed one, he called down for the men to slacken or tighten the rope to move him from one side to another, in and out of the heat.

  Erila and I stood and watched transfixed. He was so concentrated and deft, like a gangling spider spinning a crude but geometrically perfect web. He moved fast, doing the best he could to avoid the heat of the flames. Already one wall showed figures in outline painted in earthy red sinopia in readiness for the plastering to take place. On the ground a boy, probably no older than myself, was working at a table with pestle and mortar, grinding the outline paint. When the fresco work began in earnest there would be more than one, but for now he would suffice. From above the painter called to him. The boy looked in our direction and left what he was doing to join us.

  He bowed low. “The master says he cannot stop now. The fire will scorch the ceiling if it burns too long, so he must finish the grid this afternoon.”

  “What is he doing?” Erila muttered, clearly horrified by the spectacle.

  “Oh, he is gridding the roof so he has the reference points for the fresco,” said the boy eagerly. I stared at him. His face was grimy but his eyes shone. At what age had he first felt the itch in his fingers?

  Erila shrugged, as confused as before.

  “The curve of the roof is deceptive when you are painting it,” I explained. “It is impossible to gauge the perspective correctly. The grid lines will help him keep to his original drawing. His sketch will have the lines superimposed, like a map, so that he can then transfer the whole picture accurately from one to the other.”

  The boy shot me a look. I shot it straight back. Don’t argue with me, it said. I have read and know more than you will ever know about this, even if it is you and not me who will finally cover our ceilings with visions of heaven.

  “Then tell your master that we will watch and wait for him,” I said evenly. “Perhaps you might bring us some chairs.”

  He looked a little scared but said nothing, scuttling back to the apse and hunting around for suitable chairs. As he pulled two across the floor the painter yelled for him and he was caught for a moment between orders. I was pleased to see the painter won and he left them in the middle of the floor to get back to his work. Erila retrieved them.

  It was the best part of an hour before he came down. The fuel was straw, cheap and capricious, so that it would flare up within seconds. He cried out once or twice as the flames flew too high and the workmen damped them down, which only caused the smoke to make him cough. I had heard of awful injuries at this stage, so the skill of the hoisters needed to be as great as the skill of the painter. Eventually he gave a signal for them to winch him down. The rope twirled and spun as it descended to the floor. He almost fell out of the harness and flung himself flat onto the ground coughing uncontrollably and retching up phlegm, which he spit out in great gobbets as he struggled to get his breath back. How would it ever be possible for women to do such things? Uccello’s daughter might have painted squares of drapery in The House of Mary Magdalene, but she would not have found herself hoisted up into the vaulted skies. Men perform, women applaud. I was beginning to lose faith. From the pulpit, Savonarola was agitating to sending us back to our houses. There were rumors that he would only preach to men soon, and if the French came the women not barricaded in convents would be hidden behind locked doors. God help us then.

  He sat up with his head in his hands, then looked across the chapel and saw us still there waiting. He got up, smoothing down his clothes as best he could, and walked over. He seemed somehow different, as if his body had grown stronger with his spider walking, his former shyness absorbed into the work. Erila stood up to meet him, making an instant barrier between him and me. His face was blacker than hers and his smell was all sweat and burn, as if there were almost something of the Devil’s confidence about him.

  “I cannot stop now.” His voice was cracked with the fumes. “I need the daylight as well as the fire.”

  “You are mad,” I said. “You will injure yourself.”

  “Not if I work fast enough.”

  “My father has some mirrors that he uses to make the candlelight brighter when he works at night. I will ask him to send you one.”

  He bowed his head. “Thank you.”

  From the apse the workmen called out a question, and he answered in clear dialect.

  “You speak Tuscan now.”

  “Fire makes a fast learner.” Amid the grime of his face there was the ghost of smil
e.

  The silence grew. “Erila,” I said, “would you leave us for a moment.”

  She glanced fiercely at me.

  “Please.” Because I did not know what else to say.

  She glared at him, then dropped her eyes and moved away toward the apse, her hips swaying carelessly, as she sometimes did when she wanted men to look at her. The boy could not take his eyes off her, but the painter did not notice.

  “You have looked at them?”

  He nodded slightly, but I could read nothing in his eyes; they were too bloodshot with smoke. He glanced back hurriedly to the fire.

  “So if not now, then when? I leave within a few days.”

  “Leave? For where?”

  It was clear he had not heard. “I am about to be married. You did not know?”

  “No.” He paused. “No, I did not know.”

  His isolation was so profound that it screened him even from servants’ gossip. “Well, then, perhaps you have also not heard that our city is threatened with invaders. And that the Devil is on the streets, murdering and mutilating.”

  “I . . . I have heard stories, yes,” he mumbled, and his confidence seemed to desert him for a moment.

  “You go to church, right? So you have heard him preach.”

  This time as he nodded he wouldn’t meet my eyes.

  “You should be careful. The monk would put a prayer book where your paintbrush should be. I—”

  But Erila was back at my side now, her tongue clicking in irritation. Her job was to see me delivered pure to my husband’s marriage bed, and she had not come this far to be foiled by my intrigues with an artisan.

  I took a breath. “So when, painter? This evening?”

  “No.” His voice was harsh. “No, I cannot this evening.”

  “You have another appointment perhaps?” I let the question hang in the air. “Tomorrow, then?”

  He hesitated. “The day after. The grid will be finished and the fire cleared by then.”

  From the apse one of the men called out. He bowed, then turned and walked back. From where we were standing we could still feel the warmth of the flames.

  Sixteen

  OF COURSE I WAITED FOR HIM. HE WAS LATE, LEAVING after the torches had gone out, and if I hadn’t had the window open I might not have heard the side door groan or had a glimpse of him as he scuttled into the black. How many times had I followed him in my imagination? It was easy enough. I knew every step and uneven cobblestone as far as the cathedral, and unlike most girls my age I was not afraid of the dark. What harm could possibly befall someone with cat’s eyes such as mine?

  All that evening I had tormented myself with pictures of my own bravery. I had deliberately stayed dressed to push myself nearer to the edge. Within days I would be locked in someone else’s life, in a house for which I had no internal map, and so my beloved nocturnal freedom would be over. On the window seat next to me was one of Tomaso’s hats I had filched from his dressing room. I had spent hours trying it on, so I knew just how to place it in a way that made it impossible to see my face. Of course there were still my skirts, but I could hide them in one of my father’s longer cloaks, and walking fast in the darkness I would only be spotted if I met with . . . with what? A light? A figure? A gang of men? I stopped the thoughts. Mine was an elaborate game, a pact I had made with myself. If I were to be married and buried alive, I would not die without seeing even a little of my Orient. I owed myself that much. And if the Devil was out there, surely he would have worse sinners to punish than a girl who disobeyed her parents to breathe in the night air for a memory of freedom.

  I went down the stairs and crossed into the back courtyard from where the servants’ door let out onto the side street. It would usually be bolted from the inside at this time of night and he took a risk, leaving it unfastened when he went out. If someone were to wake and find it now . . . ? I could, I realized, scupper his life simply by pushing the bolt back across. Instead, I followed him out.

  I took a step outside. The door was still ajar behind me. I pulled it shut, then tried it to make sure it opened.

  I stood for a while waiting for my heartbeat to quieten.

  When I felt calmer I moved a half-dozen steps into the darkness. The door dissolved into black behind me. But at the same time my eyes started to work better. There was a thin moon, enough to make out the cobbles directly in front of my feet. I made myself walk farther: fifteen, twenty steps now, then thirty. To the end of one street and the beginning of another. The silence was deeper than the dark. I had almost reached the next corner when I heard a scuffle and something ran over the hem of my dress. I gasped involuntarily, though I knew it must be a rat. What was it the friar said? How the cloak of night brings out the vermin of the city. How it pours lust, like poison, into men’s veins. But why? Though men’s foulness might be hidden from each other, God’s eye would presumably see it just as clearly in the dark. Could it come upon anybody? Were prostitutes ordinary women who stayed out too long in the night? A ridiculous idea. Still, I felt a shiver of fear like frost around my heart.

  I took a few deep breaths. The smell of freedom was mixed with the sour tang of urine and rotting food. The Florentines left their mark on the streets like spraying cats. Savonarola might strive for purity of thought, yet decay and dirt were all around us. Still, I would not be frightened into stopping. My brothers, who were rude and stupid by degree, danced their way through the city darkness every night without mishap. I would simply ape their confidence, walk the streets to the Duomo, and from there to the river. Then I would come back. Not so far as to be lost, but far enough so that when my own daughters came to me with fantasies of freedom I could tell them that there was both nothing to fear and nothing to miss. It was simply the same city without light.

  The street was broader now. I walked faster, my shoes tapping over the uneven cobbles, my father’s cloak sweeping the ground around me. Where, I wondered, would the painter be by now? I had waited awhile before following him. He would surely have crossed the bridge long ago. How long would it take him, there and back? That depended on what he was doing in between. But I would not think of that now.

  As I turned the corner, the great mass of the cathedral revealed itself at the end of the street ahead of me, the curve of the great dome blacker than the night reaching high up into the sky. The closer I got the more improbable its size became, as if the whole of the city lay crouched under its shadow. I could almost imagine it lifting off from the ground in front of my eyes, rising slowly like a vast black bird above the houses, out of the valley, up toward the heavens: an ascension of brick and stone marking the final miracle of its construction.

  I kept my fancies at bay as I crossed the square quickly, head down. Past the Baptistery I took the street south, passing the church of Orsanmichele, its saints staring down at me stone-eyed from their niches. During the day the market here was filled with cloth dealers and the green baize tables of bankers and moneylenders, their raised voices mingling with the snap of the abacus. When my father’s business was still young he had had a stall here and I had come once with my mother to visit, marveling in the hustle and the noise. He had been so pleased to see me. I remember that I had buried my face in the mounds of velvets, the daughter of an aspiring merchant, proud and spoiled by turns. But now the place was echoingly deserted, with pockets of blackest shadow under the arches.

  “You’re out very late, little master. Do your parents know where you are?”

  I froze to the spot. The voice, thick like molasses, came from somewhere deep inside the dark. If I turned back I could be in the Baptistery square within a few moments. But to run away would show my fear.

  I saw the figure of a monk emerge from the night, a big man in dark Dominican robes, his head covered by his cowl. I quickened my pace. “There’s nowhere you can hide where God cannot see you, sir. Take off your hat and show me your face.” His voice was harsh now, but I was almost to the corner and his words chased after me as I plung
ed into the darkness. “That’s it. Run home, boy. And be sure to say your prayers and beg forgiveness, lest you die in the night and the devil take your soul.”

  It took a lot of swallowing to get the saliva back in my throat. I distracted myself by concentrating on the map in my head. I took a turn to the left and then another. The alley was high and narrow. I must have been nearly to the cathedral again when I heard the laughter and made out the shadow of two men coming out of the darkness ahead of me. My blood went icy. They were walking arm in arm, so engrossed in each other that for a while they did not pick up my presence. Going back would lead to the friar and there were no further side streets between them and me. The quicker I walked the quicker it would be over.

  One spotted me before the other. He removed his arm from his companion’s waist and took a step away in my direction. Within seconds the other followed, until they were both deliberately walking toward me in a scissors movement, with a gap of only a few feet between them. I put my head down until Tomaso’s hat entirely covered my face and pulled my cloak fast about me. I heard rather than saw them grow closer. I was having trouble breathing and the blood was roaring in my ears. They were upon me before I had time to think, one to either side of me. I wanted to run but was scared it might provoke them. I hunched my shoulders down and counted the steps in my head.

  As they reached me I heard their voices whispering like animal sounds moving around me, all sibilance and threat—Tschuck, shuck, hsss, tschuck, schuck, tschuck, schuck, hsss—followed by a set of almost girlish giggles. It was all I could do not to scream. As they passed I felt their bodies brushing mine.

  Then, just as suddenly, they were gone. I heard their laughter rise up, raucous and confident, mischief in the sound, and as I glanced behind I saw the two of them come together again like flowing water, linking arms, the game forgotten, already intent on their own business.

  I was safe, but my remaining courage had disintegrated under the strain. I waited till they were out of sight, then turned and ran for home. Less sure of my steps, in my haste I tripped over the stones and almost went sprawling. Eventually the rusticated façade of our palazzo appeared ahead of me with its corner shrine of the Virgin welcoming weary travelers, and I ran the last bit to the entrance. As the door closed behind me I felt my legs give way. Stupid, stupid girl. I had walked a dozen streets and come running home, scared off by the first signs of life. I had no courage, no spirit. I deserved to be locked up. The Devil may take the reckless, but the good will surely die of boredom. Boredom and frustration.