The Birth of Venus

by Sarah Dunant

  “I know that.” I pulled myself up and took her hand quickly and briefly squeezed it tight. “Thank you, Erila. You can leave us now.”

  She nodded and moved away without another look. I watched her go, her unbound hair like a swarm of angry flies around her head.

  “They did not take you.” I smiled up at him. “The relief must have been too great for me.” But even as I said it I could feel a wave of nausea rising up inside. I know it now, I thought. I know what you felt: that blind fear that comes from imagining what might be happening to someone you love, even now, as you think this very thought. I swallowed and tried again. “You know, Plautilla says that birth is as bad as the strappado. Still, I cannot believe that, because birth is about life and you would surely understand that when the pain came.”

  “Your sister knows nothing of such things,” he said curtly.

  “No. Cristoforo?” I heard my voice waver.

  “I am listening.”

  “Cristoforo, I am so glad it is not you. So glad—” I broke off. “But you know this is Tomaso’s hatred of me. He—” I stopped again, seeing Erila’s eyes in front of me. “He could have spoken a dozen other names. He knows of my great love of art and how much I owe to the painter’s encouragement.” I found it hard to hold his eyes. “They will torture him too, won’t they?”

  He nodded. “If he has been named, yes. It is the law.”

  “But he knows nothing. And no one. So he will have no names to give them. But they will not listen to that. You know what will happen, Cristoforo. You know what they will do—they will continue and continue until he speaks, and in that way they will break the joints in his arms. And without his arms—”

  “I know, Alessandra. I know.” His voice was sharp. “I know very well what is happening here.”

  “I’m sorry.” And despite my intended caution I was crying openly now. “I’m sorry. I know it is not your fault.” I started to pull myself off the couch. “I must go there.”

  He moved toward me. “Don’t be stupid.”

  “No, no, I must go. I must tell them. If they don’t believe me they can interrogate me. The law forbids the torture of pregnant women, so they will be forced to accept my word.”

  “Ah, this is total stupidity. They will never listen to you. You will only do more harm than good and embroil us all in their bloody guilt.”

  “Their guilt? But—”

  “Listen to me—”

  “It is not their guilt. It is—”

  “God’s blood, I have already sent—”

  Our voices thrashed angrily around each other. I could imagine Erila standing outside in alarm, trying to make sense of the storm. I broke off. “What did you say?”

  “I said—if you can find the calm to listen—that I have already sent to the prison.”

  “Sent who?”

  “Someone they might listen to. You may think what you like of your brother, and in some ways I might think it too, but I would not have you believing that I would let an innocent man suffer in my place.”

  “Oh, you have not confessed?”

  He laughed bitterly. “I am not that brave. But I have found a way into the ears of those who decide such things. You have slept through some momentous hours. History is running faster than the Arno in flood, and things are changing even as we speak.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “I mean the monk’s power is under real threat now.”

  “How?”

  “Yesterday the leader of the Franciscan order openly attacked him, saying that he was not a prophet but a misguided lunatic and that the city risks damnation by following him. To prove it he challenged him to an ordeal by fire.”

  “What?”

  “Both of them to walk together through flame to show whether Savonarola is really under the protection of God.”

  “Oh, sweet Mary! What is happening to us here? We are become barbarians.”

  “Indeed we are. But it is spectacle and in such times it substitutes well enough for thought. They are already building up the soaked timbers in the Piazza della Signoria.”

  “And if Savonarola wins?”

  “Don’t be naïve, Alessandra. Neither of them will win. It will simply encourage the mob. But he has lost already. This morning he announced that God’s work was more important than such tests and nominated another friar in his place.”

  “Oh! But then he is exposed as both a fraud and a coward!”

  “He would not see it like that, but it is the message the people will take. Most important, it means the Signoria need no longer side with him. They have been waiting for such an excuse ever since his excommunication.”

  “And so you think—”

  “I think there is a chance that it will all topple now, yes. No one wants to be a follower of a leader doomed for destruction, however menial your position. At such times it is all too easy for the torturer to become the tortured. In the old days these crimes could be negotiated by influence and the size of your pocket. We must hope and pray that we might go that way again.”

  “So you will buy them out of prison?”

  “It is possible, yes.”

  “Oh, God,” and I was crying again now, no hope of stopping the tears. “Oh, God. We are living in madness here. What will become of us?”

  “What will become of us?” He shook his head sadly. “We will do what we can, live the lives we have been given, and pray that Savonarola is wrong and that God in His eternal mercy can love sinners as well as saints.”

  Forty-two

  THE DAY DRAGGED INTO EVENING, AND THE EVENING into night. Around midnight a message came for my husband. He left immediately. Outside, the city refused to sleep. It was like the old days to have so much activity so late at night. If you kept the window open you could hear the hubbub from the square.

  For comfort, Erila and I went to my workshop. I kept thinking of that morning before my wedding when La Vacca had rung and my mother would not let me out to see what was happening. Just as she had witnessed the Pazzi violence with me in her womb, now I too was close to bloody business as my child came near to term. I tried to use paint to still my panic, but even the colors seemed thinner now and they did nothing to stop the thundering in my head.

  Just after dawn the front gate opened and we heard his feet on the stone steps. Erila, who had fallen asleep, woke fast as a finger snap. As he came in I was up on my feet and would have gone to him if she hadn’t stopped me with her warning glance. “Welcome home, husband,” I said quietly. “How are you?”

  “Your painter is released.”

  “Oh.” And as my hand flew up to my mouth I felt Erila’s eyes still me. “And . . . what of Tomaso?”

  He was silent for a few seconds. “We could discover nothing of Tomaso. He is no longer in the prison. No one knows where he is.”

  “But . . . but wherever he is he will be safe. You will find him.”

  “We must hope that, yes.”

  But we both knew it was not a foregone conclusion. He would not be the first prisoner to disappear without trace from jail. Still, this was Tomaso. His story was surely too bold to end in the back of a cart with a makeshift shroud over him.

  “What else?”

  He shot a glance at Erila. She stood up, but I laid a hand on her arm. “Cristoforo, she knows everything that is between us. I would trust her with my life. At such a time I think she should hear the rest.”

  He stared at her for a moment as if seeing her for the first time. She bowed her head meekly. “So. What more do you want to know?” he said wearily.

  “Did they—I mean . . . ?”

  “We were lucky. The jailers were more interested in the day’s news than the day’s work. We found him before the worst had been done.” I wanted to ask more but I didn’t know how. “Don’t worry, Alessandra. Your precious painter will still hold a brush.”

  “Thank you,” I said.

  “Perhaps you should wait before you thank me. You have not heard it al
l. While he is released, the charges still stand. As a foreigner there is the punishment of banishment, with immediate effect. I have spoken with your mother and written a letter of introduction to some acquaintances in Rome. He will be safe there. If his talent is still in place, I think they will be able to use him. He is already dispatched.”

  Already dispatched. What had I thought, that there would be no price to be paid for his freedom? Already dispatched. The world seemed to shake for a few seconds and I could see how life could suddenly pull you through the cracks of destiny into despair, but I could not let that happen to me now. My husband was staring at me and there was, I thought, also a sadness to him that I had not seen before. I swallowed. “What more can you do about Tomaso?”

  He shrugged. “We can keep looking. If he is in Florence, we will find him.”

  “Oh, I am sure you will.”

  He looked so tired. There was a flagon of wine on the table. I brought him a glass, sinking down as far as my stomach would let me to serve him. He took a long draft and put his head back against the chair. It seemed to me that his skin had grown yellow and loose with the night’s worries, so that his face was now that of an old man. I put my hand on his. He stared at it but did not respond.

  “And what of the city?” I said. “Does the ordeal still take place?”

  He shook his head. “Ah, it becomes more farce at every turn. The Franciscan now says he will walk through the flames with no one but Savonarola. So another monk is substituted in his place too.”

  “In which case there is no point.”

  “None at all, short of proving that fire burns. They would do as well to walk across the Arno and judge by which one gets their feet wet.”

  “So why doesn’t the Signoria put a stop to it?”

  “Because the crowd is mad for it and to do so now would cause a riot. All they can do is try and limit the damage and bad-mouth the friars to whoever will listen. They are like rats on a sinking ship, eager to jump but afraid of the water. Still, they will have a privileged view from the windows when the flames start to lick.”

  There would have been a time when such news might have brought a frisson of excitement as well as terror, when I might have fantasized ways to escape the clutches of chaperones and lose myself into the crowd, to be a part of history. But not now. “I cannot bear that we are fallen so low. Will you go to watch?”

  “Me? No. I have better things to do with my life than witness the humiliation of my city.” He turned to Erila. “And what about you? From what I hear, you know more of what goes on in Florence than most of its government. Will you bear witness?”

  She held his eye coolly. “I do not like the smell of burning flesh,” she said quietly.

  “Good for you. All we can hope for is that God agrees and somehow makes His own hand felt.”

  And so He did.

  PERHAPS YOU DO NOT KNOW THE STORY. IN FLORENCE IT IS LEGEND now: how the mad monks disgraced themselves, squabbling and spatting until God threw a thunderbolt to bring the whole thing to a standstill.

  If one is looking to diagnose sin, then pride would be the one that comes most easily to mind. And if one were to apportion blame, it is surely the Dominicans who must be spoken of first.

  The ordeal was set for midafternoon that next day, the day before Palm Sunday. Under leaden skies, the Franciscans arrived on time, behaving according to their supporters with humility and worship. In contrast, their rivals, who had learned the power of theater from their leader, were outrageously late, finally entering the piazza in elaborate procession, carrying a great crucifix before them and swelled by the ranks of the faithful chanting the Laudate and singing psalms. And there, at the very back, came Savonarola himself, proud and defiant, holding aloft the consecrated host.

  This was too much for the Franciscans, who demanded that it be removed immediately from his excommunicated hands. Things soured further when Savonarola’s appointee, Fra Domenico, announced his intention to carry both the host and the crucifix with him into the flames. The Franciscan then refused to accompany him. Eventually, after much angry negotiation—during which time the corridor of fire was burning higher and hotter—Fra Domenico agreed to leave the crucifix behind but insisted on keeping the host.

  They were still bickering like children when God, understandably exasperated by their noise and arrogance, broke open the skies with a massive thunderstorm, dumping a torrent of water onto the flames and engulfing the square with smoke and confusion, so that as dusk fell the Signoria, relieved beyond measure that someone else had decided the matter in their stead, suspended the fiasco and ordered the crowds to go home.

  That night Florence stewed in the poisonous juices of shame and disappointment.

  Forty-three

  GET UP.”

  “What is it? What has happened?” Fear had me alert immediately.

  “Shh. Quiet.” Erila was leaning over me, ready for traveling. “Don’t ask questions. Just get up and get dressed. Quickly. Make no noise at all.”

  I did as I was told, though the baby was so large now that even simple things took time.

  She was waiting for me at the bottom of the stairs. It was the darkest part of the night. As I opened my mouth she laid her finger across it and pressed it to my lips. Then taking my hand she gave it a quick squeeze and guided me toward the back of the house, where she unlocked the tradesmen’s door. We slid out onto the streets. The temperature was sharp, the leftovers of winter still in the air.

  “Listen to me, Alessandra. We must walk, all right? Can you do that?”

  “Not unless you tell me where we are going.”

  “No. I told you. No questions. It is better if you don’t know. I mean it. Trust me. We don’t have much time.”

  “Then at least tell me how far.”

  “It is a way. Porta di Giustizia.”

  The city gate of the gallows? I started to speak, but she was already off into the darkness.

  We were not the only ones. The city, crazy after the anticlimax of the day, was alive with gangs of men in search of sport. We kept our heads well covered and took the side streets, where the night was thickest. Two or three times Erila stopped suddenly, holding me back and listening, and once I am sure I heard something or someone behind us. She walked back a few steps to check, peering into the darkness, then plunged onward, pulling me faster. We passed remnants of the day’s barricades but avoided the piazza, crossing to the north near my father’s house, then cutting back down behind Santa Croce until we joined the Via de’ Malcontenti, that sad, somber street down which condemned prisoners are made to walk, attended by friars in black.

  The baby was awake and fidgeting, though there was less room for its movements now. I felt an elbow or maybe a knee slide thickly under the surface of my stomach. “Erila, stop. Please. I cannot go so fast.”

  She was impatient. “You must. They will not wait for us.”

  Behind us the bells of Santa Croce rang the beginning of the 3 A.M. watch. The streets gave way to more open country here, the plots and gardens of Santa Croce monastery to either side, ahead the gate with the great walls of the city running thick around it. I remember Tomaso telling me how in summer such places made good sporting ground for those who wanted to play. I had imagined young women with coquettish smiles, but he was no doubt talking of other things. But the mood was for another kind of transgression now, and the scrub ground leading up to the gate was deserted.

  “Dear God, I hope we are not too late,” Erila murmured. She pushed me back into the shadows of a large tree. “Don’t move from here,” she ordered. “I will be back.”

  She disappeared into the gloom, and I leaned back against the trunk. I was panting from the exertion and my legs were shaking. I thought I heard something moving to my left and turned quickly, but there was nothing there. At the gate there would be soldiers: 3 A.M. would mark the changing of their watch. Why had the hour been so important?

  “Erila?” I whispered after a while.
r />   The silence now was profound and the open darkness more scary than the streets. I felt a short sharp pain in the bottom of my womb, but whether it was fear or baby it was hard to know. From the dark under the wall I saw a figure emerging, Erila, half walking, half running. When she reached me she grabbed me by the hand.

  “Alessandra. We must go back. Right now. I know you’re tired, but we must move quickly.”

  “But—”

  “But nothing. I will tell you, I promise, but not now. Now please just walk.” And there was a terror in her voice I had never heard before that stopped my protests. She held me by the hand, and when I became breathless she supported me under the elbow. We moved from scrubland back into city streets. Her eyes were everywhere, trying to read the darkness. When we reached the Piazza Santa Croce I halted, the great brick façade of the church looming over us.

  “I have to stop or I will be ill,” I said, my voice shaky with exhaustion.

  She nodded, her eyes still darting every which way. The piazza was a gray lake under shafts of broken moonlight, the single rose window of the great church looking down on us like the Cyclops’ eye.

  “So, tell me.”

  “Later. I will—”

  “No. Tell me now. I don’t move until you do.”

  “Oh, sweet Jesus, there is no time for this!”

  “Then we stay here.”

  She knew I meant it. “All right. Tonight, after you had fallen asleep, I was sitting in my room when your husband came to the servants’ quarters. He spoke with his man. I heard everything they said. He told him that he must take a pass to the Porta di Giustizia tonight. He said it was urgent; there was a man, a painter, who was leaving at three A.M. and he would need the document to be allowed through.” She closed her eyes up tight. “I swear to you that was what he said. That’s why I brought you. I thought—”

  “You thought I could meet him. So where was he?”

  “He wasn’t there. Neither he nor the servant. No one was there.”

  “So it is the wrong gate. We must go—”

  “No. No, listen to me. I know what I heard.” She paused. “I think now that I was meant to hear it.”