The Birth of Venus

by Sarah Dunant

  She was silent for a moment. “You really think so?”

  “Yes, I think so. I think what has been happening to us here is mistaken. I think what it has done is to make us full of fear rather than love.”

  She shook her head. “I . . . I don’t know. You were always so outspoken. If Luca were here, he would say—”

  “How much do you see of Luca?”

  She shrugged. “He comes this way with his boys. I don’t think he feels welcome at home and . . . well, he was always nicer to me than you and Tomaso. I think we did not feel so stupid when we were together.”

  Her words cut deeper than years of her anger or scorn had ever done. How much damage had my arrogance done to my family?

  “I am sorry, Plautilla,” I said. “I have not been a good sister to you. But if you will let me, I will try and make it up to you from now on.”

  She leaned toward me and our stomachs met. I found myself imagining visions of Mary and Elizabeth: two women filled with child, their stomachs meeting as they stood together praising the mysterious ways of the Lord, a scene conjured up in a dozen wall paintings throughout the city. In a way I was right. The ways of the Lord were mysterious. And while there were no holy seeds in either Plautilla or Alessandra there was nevertheless a quiet revelation to be had from the love we had for each other.

  So we rested together until Erila came back with a draft she had prepared. Plautilla took it from her, and we sat with her until she fell asleep.

  Her face grew lovelier in repose.

  “I do not believe that this is what God would want of us,” I said, as we watched over her. “Pulling households and families apart. This man is destroying the city.”

  “Not anymore.” Erila shook her head. “Now he is just destroying himself.”

  Forty

  IT WAS WELL INTO EVENING BY THE TIME WE SET OFF FOR home. Maurizio pressed us to stay—I think he was somewhat frightened by the prospect of managing his changed wife—but both of us wanted to be in our own house and we declined politely.

  The streets were different from the night we had driven the painter home. A slow drizzle was falling, and the cold made the dark seem more profound. But it wasn’t just the season. The very atmosphere had shifted. In the last weeks since the excommunication an opposition was beginning to make itself felt. With the pope’s might behind them, the Medici supporters were feeling strong enough to venture forth in public again, and groups of young men whose families stood to gain from a change of government had started appearing on the streets. There had even been the odd skirmish between them and the Angels. It was said it was they who had been responsible for the incident in the cathedral when someone had greased the pulpit with animal fat the night before Savonarola was due to speak. Then, during his sermon, a large chest had been dropped into the nave, smashing onto the stone floor and causing panic among the congregation. For once the forces of dissent had proved louder than his voice.

  To get home from my sister’s house we had to travel past the great stone frontage of the Medici Palace, now boarded up and ransacked, cross to the south of the Baptistery, and go west into the Via Porta Rossa. The road was empty, but halfway along I spotted the bulky figure of a Dominican friar sliding out from the darkness of one of the intersecting alleyways. His hood was down, his hands clasped inside his sleeves, and the dark brown of his robes made him blend in with the gloom. As we got closer he waved his arms to flag us down. We braced ourselves for an interrogation.

  “Good evening to you, daughters of God.”

  We bowed our heads.

  “You are late out on the streets, good sisters. I am sure you know such transgression is forbidden by our noble Savonarola. Are you alone?”

  “As you see us, Father. But we are on an errand of mercy,” said Erila quickly. “My mistress’s sister lost her baby to the plague. We were bringing her comfort and prayer.”

  “In which case it is an ordinance sweetly broken,” he murmured, his face still hidden by his hood. “And God has sent you on another errand of mercy now. There is a woman injured nearby. I found her in the doorway of a church. I need help to take her to a hospital.”

  “Of course,” I said. “Will you ride with us and show us where?”

  He shook his head. “The alley is too narrow for your wheels. Leave your carriage, and we will walk together and between us help her back.”

  We got down and tethered the horse. The street behind us was empty now and the alleyway he gestured toward pitch black. Such was the anxiety in us all now that even his cloth did not completely reassure me. I pushed away my fear. He moved ahead of us quickly, his hood low down, his robe slick with the rain. Not so long ago, the Dominicans walked the streets as if they owned them, yet now he seemed almost afraid of being seen. Most certainly, the tide was shifting.

  From a street some way away I heard a cry. Surprise, or maybe pain. Then a gale of wild laughter. I glanced nervously at Erila. “How far is it, Father?” she said, as we crossed the Via delle Terme only to plunge back into another alley, farther into the dark.

  “Here, my child, just here in Santi Apostoli. Can’t you hear her cries?”

  But I could hear nothing. The church’s entrance loomed up to the left, its heavy doors closed fast. Sure enough, we could just make out a figure, half lost in the gloom: a woman slumped on the steps, her head low on her chest, as if she was too tired to get up.

  Erila got to her before I did and crouched down. She put out a hand immediately to stop me from getting any closer.

  “Father,” she said quickly, “she is not ill, she is dead. There is blood all over her.”

  “Ah, no. Ah, me, she was moving when I left. I tried to stem the flow with my hands.” He lifted up his arms, and as his sleeves fell back I could see the stains on them, even in the dark. He sank down beside her. “Poor child. Poor dear child. At least she is with God now.”

  With God perhaps. But it would have been a painful journey. Over Erila’s shoulder I could make out the bloody mess of her chest. For the first time in many months I felt the saliva in my mouth rise up. Erila got to her feet quickly, and I could see that she too was shaken.

  The friar glanced up at us both. “We must pray for her. Whatever her poor sad life, we will bring her to salvation with our songs and prayers.”

  He started to sing in a thick croaky voice. And suddenly there was something familiar about him: the dark cloak and the echo of a voice in another moment of darkness, one that had also made me sweat with fear. I took an involuntary step back. He broke off. “Come, sisters.” This time the tone was harsh. “Both of you, down on your knees.”

  But Erila now placed herself firmly between him and me. “I am sorry, Father. We cannot stay. My mistress is with child and she will catch a chill unless I get her home. These are not clement times for a pregnant woman to be on the streets.”

  He looked up at me as if he was seeing me properly for the first time. “With child? Is it a godly creation?” And as he spoke his hood fell back and now I caught sight of a pale spreading face like the moon’s surface pitted with pockmarks. Pumice stone, I thought, a Dominican monk with a face like pumice stone who saw Florence as a sewer of evil. How long ago had Erila told me that story? Except I knew she was remembering it too.

  “Indeed, most godly,” she answered for me, as she pushed me farther away. “Godly and near to birth. We will send help from our house. We live right close by.”

  He stared at her, then dropped his head and turned his attention back to the body. He put a hand out over the woman’s chest on the place where she was most bloody, and started to sing again.

  We stumbled our way back to the cart. The dark was near impenetrable, and Erila kept my hand firmly in hers. Both of our palms were sticky with fear.

  “What happened there?” I said breathlessly as we climbed back onto the carriage and whipped the horse into action.

  “I don’t know. But I tell you one thing. That woman had not been alive for some time. And he
was reeking of her blood.”

  WE ARRIVED HOME TO FIND THE GATES TO THE HOUSE OPEN AND the groom and Cristoforo waiting in the courtyard.

  “Thank God you are back. Where have you been?”

  “I’m sorry,” I said, as he helped me clamber down. “We were delayed in the streets. We—”

  “I have men looking all over the city. You should not be out so late.”

  “I know. I am sorry,” I said again. I put my hand out to him. He took it and held it tight, and I could feel anxiety like a fast tide washing over him. “But we are back now. Safe. Come, let us go in and sit together in the warm and I will tell you what we have seen tonight.”

  “There is no time for idle chat.” Behind me the groom was unharnessing our horse. He waited until he was out of earshot. Erila was standing close by. I felt his hesitation and waved her away.

  “What? What is it? Tell me.”

  “It is bad.”

  “Bad? What can be worse than death and possible murder?”

  I am not sure he even heard me. “Tomaso is arrested.”

  “What! When?”

  “He was taken this afternoon.”

  “But who—” I stopped. “Luca. Of course.”

  I stopped again, and in the light of the torches we stared at each other. It took me time to find the words.

  “Surely it is just a warning,” I whispered. “He is young. They probably mean to scare him.” He said nothing. “It will be all right. Tomaso is not a fool. If he can’t be strong he will be cunning.”

  He smiled sadly. “Alessandra, it is not a question of strength. Only a question of time.” He paused. “I did not care for him enough these last few months.” He said it so quietly I am not even sure if those were the words.

  “This is not the moment for regret,” I said urgently. “Maybe none of us have cared enough for one another. Maybe that’s why all this has happened. But it is not the time to give up. You said so yourself. His is not the only voice in the city now. They wouldn’t dare to come for you. Your name is too good and the tide is turning too fast among them. Come, let us go inside and talk further.”

  WE STAYED UP TOGETHER THAT EVENING, STARING INTO THE FLAMES as we had done during those few sweet weeks after our marriage before the acid of jealousy had leaked into me. He was the one who needed help now, and though I gave as much as I could it was not enough. Each time he fell silent I knew what he was thinking. How does it feel when you know that someone you love is in pain? When however much you close your ears you can still hear their screams? Though I could not honestly say I loved my brother, the thought of what might be happening to him now twisted my stomach. How much worse must it be for my husband, who had worshipped that perfect body as he held it in his arms? When the strappado was finished with it, it would be perfect no longer.

  “Talk to me, Cristoforo. It will help to talk. Tell me. You must have thought about this moment. About what either of you would do if it came to this.”

  He shook his head. “Tomaso never bothered with the future. His talent was the present. He could make the moment so powerful that you might almost believe it was never going to end.”

  “So he will learn now. No one knows how he or she will behave until they are tested. He may surprise us both.”

  “He is afraid of pain.”

  “Which one of us is not?”

  I had often wondered about the strappado. Maybe everybody does. Some days when you pass the Bargello prison in summer, when the heat has forced all the casements open, you can catch the echoes of pain rising up from inside. And you hurry past, reassured by the knowledge that it is no one you know or that they are criminals or sinners and either way there is nothing you can do. But you can still imagine.

  Its purpose is to break your will by breaking your body. While there are a million other ways—pincers and fire and ropes and whips—wounds heal and scars grow over. But if it is used properly, there is no recovery from the strappado. Once your arms are tied rigid behind your back, they hoist you up and drop you again and again from a great height, and such is the pressure that it is only a matter of time before the sinews and the muscles crack and tear and your joints pop out of their sockets. Some believe it is fitting torture because it has echoes of the Crucifixion—the way Our Lord’s arms would have been torn apart by the weight of His body hanging off the cross. The difference is that you do not die. Or not usually. Afterward, when they cut you down, it is said that you fall to the floor like a cloth doll. You sometimes see them, the survivors, in the streets years later: men with a kind of palsy shaking and rolling as they move, their limbs all aquiver and uneven. God has given man such fragility along with his beauty. The Bible tells us that before the Fall we felt no pain, and that our suffering is the fault of Eve’s disobedience. It seems so hard to believe God would visit such a punishment for one single sin, however great. Surely pain is also there as a reminder of the transience and imperfection of our bodies as opposed to the radiance of our souls. Even so, it seems too cruel. . . .

  “Alessandra.”

  “I’m sorry?” My thoughts were lost in the flames and I had not heard his voice.

  “You are tired. Why don’t you go to bed? There is no point in both of us waiting.”

  I shook my head. “I will stay with you. Do you have any idea how long we have got?”

  “No. One of the men they took in the summer . . . I saw him before his exile. He told me how it went with him. He said some of them gave names straight away, to avoid the pain. But confessions without torture are not considered reliable.”

  “So they confess twice,” I said. “Before and after. I wonder if it is always the same names.”

  He shrugged. “We shall see.”

  I kept awake a little longer, but like Peter keeping watch over Christ’s agony in the garden that last night, I found my eyes growing continually heavy. It had been such a long day and sometimes the child seems to have more power over when I wake and sleep than I do.

  “Come.”

  I looked up and he was standing over me. I gave him my hand. He took me to my room and helped me onto the bed.

  “Shall I call for Erila?”

  “No, no, let her sleep. I will just lie here for a while.”

  And so I did.

  The next thing I remember is the feel of him climbing onto the bed next to me, moving his body carefully nearer to mine until we lay side by side, like a stone couple in a chapel caught in sculpted death. He seemed at pains not to wake me, so I did not let him know that he had. After a while he stretched his arm across my belly until his palm cupped the heaviness of the child. I thought of Plautilla and the child she had lost, and of the friar and the woman’s bloody stomach, and finally I thought of Our Lady, so calm and blessed about it all. And as I did so I felt the baby move.

  “Ah,” he said quietly. “He is getting ready for his entrance.”

  “Mmm,” I said sleepily. “It is a good strong kick.”

  “I wonder what he will be like? With the right teachers he must surely have a mind like a new-minted florin.”

  “And an eye that can tell a new Greek statue from an ancient one.” I could feel the warmth of his hand on my swollen stomach. “Still, I hope he may find it easier to love both God and art without confusion or fear. I would like to imagine that Florence could contain both in the future.”

  “Yes. I would like that too.”

  We fell silent. I put out my hand and gently laid it across his.

  THEY CAME AT FIRST LIGHT, ROUSING THE HOUSE WITH THEIR pounding on the gates. In all such stories bad news comes with the dawn, as if the day itself cannot live with the dishonesty of false hope.

  Though the noise woke me, my husband had been long up already. The baby was so big in me now and I was so tired that it took me a while to get myself off the bed and down the stairs. By the time I reached the courtyard, the main doors were already flung open and the messenger was there. Erila too was up, but then gossip slips through unseen cracks
at times like this.

  I had been expecting soldiers. Or even, God forbid, Luca and his brigade. But instead it was just a single old man.

  “Mistress Alessandra!” It took me a moment to recognize him: Ludovica’s husband, his age exacerbated by too much exertion.

  “Andrea, what is it? What has happened?”

  He looked so awful that it made me wonder what worse there could possibly be.

  “My father?” I said. “Is it my father? He is dead?”

  “No, no, your father is fine, mistress.” He paused. “Your mother sent me. She said I am to tell you the soldiers came back to the house early this morning. And they took away the painter.”

  So Tomaso had fought pain with cunning after all.

  Forty-one

  THERE WAS NO MOVEMENT IN MY WOMB. I PUT MY HANDS over my stomach, prodding until I could make out the bony stretch of a leg and a buttock taut against my flesh. I prodded a little farther but there was no response. I tried not to panic. Sleep can resemble death sometimes, even when you are not yet born.

  “Alessandra.” Her voice stroked my eyes open. My faithful Erila was sitting next to me, her eyes fastened on mine. Behind her stood Cristoforo, his head caught in a halo of morning sun. I shifted my gaze back to Erila’s eyes. Be careful, her look said. With every step you take now your life becomes more dangerous. And I cannot be there to help you.

  I smiled at her. No wonder she could read palms and see patterns in the way sunflower seeds scattered themselves onto the ground. I wanted her to be next to me forever, so she could teach me such skills for handling life and I in turn could hand them on to my child. I understand, I told her silently. I will do my best.

  “Hello.” My voice sounded a long way away. “What happened?”

  “You are fine. You passed out for a moment, that’s all.” My husband’s voice was rich with relief.

  “And the baby—”

  “—is asleep, I am sure,” interrupted Erila. “As you should be too. At such a time, any excess of emotion could damage both of you.”