The Birth of Venus

by Sarah Dunant

  “Idiot, stupid girl.” She murmured sweet insults into my ear, then held me at arm’s length and stroked my cheek and swept my tousled hair back from my face to study me better. “So,” she said softly. “You did it? At last. How was it? Did you hear the sweetness of the lute string?”

  “I . . . Not really,” I whispered, though I knew I had felt something.

  “Well, that’s because you have to do it more than once. They learn slowly, men. They’re all fury and fumble and hot haste. Most of them don’t get any better at it. They just move on. But there are occasional ones who have the humility to learn. As long as you don’t let them know you’re teaching them. But first you have to find your own pleasure. Can you do that?”

  I laughed nervously. “I don’t know. I . . . I think so. But . . . I don’t understand, Erila. What are you telling me?”

  “I’m telling you that if you’re going to break the rules, you have to learn to do it better than anyone—anyone—who keeps them. That’s the only way you beat them at their game.”

  “I don’t know if I can do that . . . unless you help me?”

  She laughed. “When did I not? Now get into bed and sleep. You’re going to need your wits about you tomorrow. As are we all.”

  Thirty-four

  HE WAS SITTING AT THE TABLE, READING AND DRINKING wine. The morning was young but the heat was already strong. We had not seen each other for many weeks. I didn’t know how much I might have changed, though that morning when I studied my face in my mirror glass I could not see any obvious difference. He, on the other hand, was altered. The lines around his mouth were more prominent, pulling his face into a permanent scowl, and his skin was more flushed. Keeping up with my brother would put a strain on a young constitution, let alone an older one. I sat opposite him and he greeted me. I had no idea what he was thinking.

  “Hello, wife.”

  “Hello, husband.”

  “You slept well?”

  “Yes, thank you. I am sorry I was not here to meet you.”

  He made a dismissive wave of the hand. “You are fully recovered now?”

  “Yes,” I said. Then, after a while, “I have been painting.”

  He lifted his eyes, and I swear I saw pleasure there. “Good.” He looked back down at his papers.

  “Is my brother with you?”

  He glanced up. “Why?”

  “I . . . er, I would like to greet him if he is.”

  “No, no. He is home. He is not well.”

  “Nothing serious, I hope.”

  “I think not. Just a touch of the fever.”

  I would not get such a good opening again. “Sir, I have something to tell you.”

  “Yes?”

  “We have a visitor in the house.”

  This time he looked up. “So I’ve heard.”

  I told it simply, fashioning it into a story about art and beauty: the wonders the painter could create and the fear that he would not be able to do so anymore. I think I did as good a job as I could, though I know I was more nervous than I might have wished. He never took his eyes off me once, even when the silence grew between us after I had finished.

  “Alessandra . . . You remember our first conversation, yes? On our wedding night.”

  “Yes.”

  “So you will remember that I asked a number of things from you then, to which I remember you agreed. And one of those things was discretion.”

  “Yes, but—”

  “Do you really think this was a discreet act? To bring a crazed man halfway across town in a cart at night, to the palazzo from where your husband is absent, and house him in a room next to your own?”

  “He was ill—” I broke off. I knew there was no point. By Erila’s own rendition of the rules I had forfeited any sense of right. “I’m sorry,” I said. “I can see that it might compromise you. Even if he isn’t—”

  “What he is or isn’t is not the point, Alessandra. The point is how it is perceived. That, my dear, is what this city is all about now. Not reality but perception. You are clever enough to know that as well as I.”

  This time he let the silence grow.

  “He cannot stay,” I said after a while, making it a fact rather than a question.

  “No, he cannot.”

  “I . . . er . . . I believe he is a little better anyway.” I had already heard from Erila that he had taken some sustenance that morning. “In which case he will be eager to return to my parents’ house. He has work to finish. He is a wonderful painter, Cristoforo. When you see his apse finished, you will understand.”

  “I’m sure I shall.” He took a sip of the wine. “We will talk no more about it.” He put down the glass carefully and sat for a moment watching me. “Now, I have something to tell you.” He paused. “Yesterday two acquaintances of mine were arrested on suspicion of indecent fornication. They had been accused through the denunciation box in Santa Maria Novella. Their names are of no importance, though you will hear them soon enough because they are from good families.” He paused. “Though not as good as ours.”

  “What will happen to them?”

  “They will be interrogated and tortured in an attempt to verify the accusations and to gain more names as to their associates. Neither of them have direct reason to implicate me, but—well, once the thread starts to unravel, the garment can come apart very fast.”

  No wonder my transgression had angered him. On the other hand, if I had been Erila I would surely start looking for potential as well as disaster in such a moment.

  “Well, sir, maybe we should find a way to protect you more.” I paused. “Would a pregnant wife do anything to revive your reputation?”

  He smiled wryly. “It would certainly do it no harm. But you are not pregnant, unless I mistook your slave’s words. And she seemed to make herself very clear.”

  “No,” I said, “I am not,” remembering Erila’s lie. “But if I can conceive once, I can conceive again.” I let the silence grow just a little. “It is a good time for me now.”

  “I see. And you would feel . . . content about that?”

  I looked at him directly and my gaze did not waver. “Yes,” I said. “I would.”

  And I got up and slowly leaned across the table and kissed him lightly on the forehead before leaving the room and returning to my own.

  I SHALL NOT BORE YOU WITH DESCRIPTIONS OF OUR SECOND experience of intercourse. My reticence is not meant to tease or intrigue. If there were more to report than the first time I would gladly disclose it. The older I grow the more sure I become that the silence surrounding such matters breeds only more hesitation and misunderstanding. But there was no misunderstanding between us then. Ours was a business partnership between husband and wife. And there was enough respect and care so at least I felt more of an equal.

  Unlike the first time, he did not leave immediately. Instead we sat almost companionably together for a while, taking refreshments and talking of art and life and matters of state. And thus as we relaxed we gained some mutual pleasure from our union again, though it came from the caress of words rather than skin.

  “When did you hear this? It isn’t common gossip yet.”

  “No? Well, it will be soon enough. Such things can’t be kept secret for long.”

  “Will Savonarola obey?”

  “Put yourself in his place, Alessandra. You are the undisputed leader of the city. Florence hangs on your every word. The pulpit is a better place to govern from than the Signoria. Then your enemy, the pope, forbids you to preach on pain of excommunication. What would you do?”

  “I think it would depend on whose judgment I feared more, the pope’s or God’s.”

  “You wouldn’t think that it was heresy to suggest a difference between the two?”

  “Well, I might think that, yes. But I am Savonarola for the sake of this argument. And he makes no such distinction. God comes first for him. Though”—I broke in on myself—“he is not a fool when it comes to matters of state. But then, neither is
the pope.”

  “So would it interest you further to know that there is a carrot as well as a stick?”

  “Which is?”

  “A cardinal’s hat if he agrees.”

  “Oh!” I thought about it. “No. He won’t take it. He may be mad for God, but he is not a hypocrite. He despises the corruption of the church. A cardinal’s hat would be like taking the thirty pieces of silver to betray the true Christ.”

  “Well, we shall see.”

  “Cristoforo, how do you know all this?” I asked admiringly.

  He paused. “I do not spend all my free time whoring with your brother.”

  I was taken aback. “But . . . but I didn’t think you were involved in such things,” I said, remembering my mother’s analysis of him.

  “At times like this that is the best way to be involved, wouldn’t you say?” He paused. “The safest opposition is one that doesn’t exist until the right moment.”

  “In which case I think you should be careful whom you confide in.”

  “I am,” he said, looking at me keenly. “Do you think I have made a mistake?”

  “No.” My voice was firm.

  “Good.”

  “Nevertheless, you must be careful. This involvement makes you a political enemy as much as a moral one.”

  “That is true. Though I suspect when they light the straw under me it will not be my politics they are burning.”

  “Don’t speak like that,” I said. “That won’t happen. However powerful he is, he can’t defy the pope forever. There will be many devout Florentines who would feel uncomfortable listening to the preachings of an excommunicated friar.”

  “You’re right. Though the pope will need to pick his time. Too soon and it will only encourage further rebellion. He must wait till the cracks start to show.”

  “He had better have a long life then,” I said. “I see no cracks.”

  “In which case you are not looking carefully enough, wife.”

  “You should have been on the streets when his warriors stopped us with the painter.” I saw his face darken. “It’s all right. They had no idea who we were. Erila scared the wits out of them by evoking French boils.”

  “Ah, yes, the boils. So our saviors, the French, are shown to have brought more with them than civic liberty.”

  “Yes, but that’s hardly enough to dent his power.”

  “Not on its own, no. But what if summer continues as hot as the winter was cold? What if there is no rain and the crops fail? We are too pious to pursue prosperity now and the city doesn’t have as much fat to live off as she did. And for all his godly army, there is still a madman running round the place using people’s intestines as necklaces.”

  “There’s been another body?”

  He shrugged. “It is not common knowledge. The watchmen at Santa Felicita found human remains splattered over the altar yesterday morning.”

  “Oh . . .”

  “Yet when they came back with help they were gone.”

  “You think his supporters got rid of the body?”

  “What body? Reality and perception, remember? When he was in opposition, such desecration was a gift from heaven. Now it smacks of anarchy. Or worse. Think about it. If Florence is godly but God is cruel to Florence, it will only be a matter of time before the friar’s supporters start publicly questioning if his is the right kind of piety.”

  “You think this or you know it?” I said. Because even an opposition that doesn’t exist must be in touch with voices from within as well as without.

  He smiled. “We shall see. Tell me, Alessandra, how do you feel?”

  How did I feel? I had slept with two men in the last few hours. One had fed my body, the other had fed my mind. If Savonarola was indeed God’s envoy on earth, then I should already be feeling the flames licking at my feet. But instead I was surprisingly calm.

  “I feel . . . full,” I said.

  “Well, I have heard that summer is a ripe time for conception, if husband and wife meet in respectful love rather than lust.” He paused. “So. Let us pray for the future.”

  THE PAINTER LEFT EARLY THE NEXT MORNING. ERILA SAW HIM before he went. She told me later that he was calm and civil to her and let her tend his hands. The wounds were starting to heal and, while he was still weak, he had eaten enough to give him a certain alertness, as if some of his spirit were returned to him. The last thing she did was to give him the keys to the chapel. My parents were not due home for some weeks; the latest news was that my father was improving with the waters. Either he would find the will and the strength to rework the frescoes or he would not. I could do nothing more to help him now.

  After he was gone, I lay in my room wondering which child I would like more: one who had an aptitude for politics or for painting.

  PART III

  Thirty-five

  MY HUSBAND WAS PROVED RIGHT ABOUT MANY THINGS IN the months that followed, not least the weather. The summer roared on, steamy and fetid as a horse’s breath, and the city grew rank with it. Where two years before we had seen the pews from the church of Santa Croce floating down toward the cathedral as the spring rains came in, now those same streets were producing dust storms as the carts rattled by.

  In the country, the burgeoning olives shriveled tight as animal droppings and the ground was so hard it might as well have been frozen. As the heat progressed through August into September the word drought began to be replaced by the whisper of famine. With no water to wash their whiteness, Savonarola’s Angels began to smell less pure. But then they had less to police. It was too hot to sin. It almost felt too hot to pray.

  The pope did exactly as my husband had predicted and ordered Savonarola to stop preaching. The private offer of a cardinal’s hat had been dismissed with a public utterance that another scarlet hat would suit him better, “one red with blood.” Still, Savonarola understood the politics of the moment enough to retire to his cell to ask for God’s guidance. Even my husband applauded his acumen, but whether it was politics or sincerity it was impossible to know. For a holy man he was a complex mix of arrogance and humility.

  The weather, the power struggle—my husband had predicted it all. He was also right about early summer. It proved a good time for conception.

  I lay in my darkened room, throwing up the contents of my stomach day and night into a bowl beside my bed. I was sicker than I had ever been in my life. It had begun two weeks after I failed to bleed. I woke up one morning and tried to get out of bed and, as my legs gave way from under me, so my stomach arrived in my mouth and then out onto the floor. I couldn’t even make it to the door. Erila found me there later, retching up saliva because by that time there was nothing else to retch.

  “Congratulations.”

  “I am dying.”

  “No, you’re not. You’re pregnant.”

  “How can that be? This is not a baby, it is a disease.”

  She laughed. “You should be glad. This level of sickness means the pregnancy is well founded. Women who feel nothing often bleed it away before the end of the third moon.”

  “And the lucky ones?” I said, between retches. “How long does it last?”

  She shook her head, mopping my head with a wet cloth. “Thank God for your build,” she said cheerfully. “It will serve you well.”

  I became consumed by sickness. There were days when I could barely speak, I was so focused on the rise of the saliva level in my mouth. It had its uses. I did not think of the painter, his fingers on the wall or the feel of his body against mine. I did not wonder about my husband or even resent my brother. And for the first time in my life I did not yearn for my freedom. The house was already too big a world for me.

  My illness did wonders for my standing with the servants. Where before I had been cocky and full of myself, now I could barely walk. They stopped whispering about me behind my back and started providing bowls at strategic places around the house so I could vomit wherever the urge took me. They even came to me with suggestio
ns. I ate garlic, chewed gingerroot, and drank earth tea. Erila combed every apothecary in the city for remedies. She spent so long in the Landucci shop next to Palazzo Strozzi that she struck up a relationship with its owner, a man of loquacious gossip to match her own. He sent back a poultice filled with herbs and dried bits of dead animals to lay across my stomach. It smelled worse than my vomit, though it seemed to soothe me for a few days. But only a few days. My husband, who was busier than ever on matters that weren’t supposed to exist, became so worried he brought in a physician. He gave me a potion that made me throw up more.

  By the middle of September I had been sick for so long that even Erila stopped being jaunty with me. I think she feared I might die. I was so sick there were times I would almost have welcomed it. I became morose in my suffering.

  “Do you ever wonder about this baby?” I said to her one night as she sat by my bed, fanning away the awful heat that clung to my skin like a sodden blanket.

  “Wonder what?”

  “If my sickness isn’t some kind of punishment. A sign. That maybe this is really the Devil’s child.”

  She laughed. “And if it is, when did you find time to fornicate with him that night?”

  “I mean it, Erila. You—”

  “Look. You know the worst thing that could happen to you? Your life could become peaceful and quiet and give you nothing to think about. You attract drama like flies to a dog’s corpse. And unless I am much mistaken you always will. It’s both the wonder and the sorrow of you. But as to the Devil’s child . . . take it from me. If he wished to sire an heir in this city, there are a thousand candidates more deserving than you.”

  That week my sister came to visit. The news of my humiliation must have been common knowledge. “Oh, look at you! You look awful. Your face has gone quite scrawny. Still, you did always like getting attention.” She was pregnant again and eating for two. But she hugged me hard enough for me to know that she was worried about me. “Poor thing,” she said. “Never mind—before long you’ll be sipping sweet wines and tasting roasted pigeon. Our cook has a recipe for the most delicious plum sauce.”