‘We’ll try to hold him back for as long as possible,’ said Zoroastro. ‘At least until the thirteenth hour has passed. We must protect him as best we can.’
I saw that Zoroastro had tied red thread to the struts of the wine press he had adapted to crush the pigment blocks to make the Maestro’s special paint mixtures. This red thread was an old folk custom to ward off evil spirits. It came from the legend that long, long ago, at the beginning of the world, Man, growing tired of living in darkness and cold, had obtained fire from heaven. So having the colour red about your home and your workplace reminds any wicked spirits that you have the power to make flames to burn them, and so they leave you alone.
In addition to Zoroastro’s equipment in the Council Hall there were the tables and scaffolding taken from our workshop in the Santa Maria Novella monastery and re-erected here. There were wax and clay models of men and horses, and the cartoon itself, most of it still attached to frames made of wooden struts. Earlier this year a consignment of sponges, pitch and plaster had been brought in to prepare the surface, and over the last month the central part of the cartoon had been transferred to its position on the wall. A scribe and a storyteller employed by Niccolò Machiavelli, Secretary to the Council, had written out an account of the battle of Anghiari, a famous Florentine victory, for the Maestro to depict. From these notes my master had contrived the main scene, the Struggle for the Standard. This was seen as encompassing the spirit of the Florentine Republic upholding ideals of freedom and liberty against the despotic power of tyrants. It was the keystone of the fresco, and all those who looked upon it believed that when it was finally unveiled it would stun the world.
It had stunned me when I first beheld it.
The image drew you in – horses and soldiers strained against each other, contorted in the effort of their struggle. The horses rearing up with terrified shuddering flanks, nostrils dilated, men grimacing, their torsos twisted among the animals’ flailing hooves – a whirling vortex of movement.
To one side a rider had been dragged down from his horse, his skull split open. Above him and the other fallen men, the hooves of the horses plunged, trampling the wounded crawling underneath. In the mêlée and carnage faces were shown screaming in spasms of terror, grinding teeth in the rictus of death. Soldiers hacked and grappled in close combat to win the battle standard. Yes, the moment was glorious, but within it I saw the brutality of men, fighting and killing each other to achieve their purpose.
On the evening the outline had been completed upon the wall of the Council Hall, Felipe, the most practical of men, stood before it. Then he asked the Maestro, ‘Was it your intention that the men and women who visit this place should view so much horror?’
‘Is that the thought your mind turns to when you look at this fresco, Felipe?’
There was a silence. It was known that the Maestro never discussed his private intentions. It was also known that he abhorred war, but in order to live he needed patronage, and those who paid him frequently demanded from him designs for implements of war. Was he using these drawings to show the awful truth of combat?
‘If you can see the painting,’ the Maestro said finally, ‘then see it.’
As I looked at it now, inside my head flickered the scene at Perela: the smell of spilled blood, the hideous sight of the mutilated body of Captain dell’Orte. I felt the slipperiness of the leather between my fingers as I tethered my horse, saw again the blood puddled in the hoof marks on the earth at my feet. Yes, this fresco would indeed amaze those who beheld it. But each person would read it according to his own experience.
‘Ho now, Master Zoroastro!’
We turned round. Maestro da Vinci had come up the stairs from the ground floor without us noticing.
‘Good day to you.’ The Maestro addressed us cheerfully. ‘Good day to all. Everyone is ready to start work?’
His staff and workers greeted him warmly.
‘And you too, Matteo. You are well?’
‘Yes, sir.’
‘Then let us begin.’
Zoroastro glanced at me.
‘It is very dull outside,’ I said at once, hoping, as Zoroastro had suggested, that if we could hold him up, delay until the thirteenth hour had passed, then any harm would be less potent. ‘The light is not good.’
‘I know. There were clouds gathering over the hills at Fiesole, and as I came along past the Arno I saw the river was running very fast.’
‘Then perhaps we should wait?’ I suggested.
‘Better not to,’ he said. He took off his hat and placed it on a bench. ‘If the storm blows in then the light will become worse, not better.’
It was June and should have been bright at that time of day. But it was not sunny, although already very hot, almost oppressively so.
‘But in this poor light we will have difficulty seeing if the colour is true.’
‘I am anxious to begin,’ he said abruptly.
‘But—’
‘No more, Matteo. Please.’
I exchanged a hopeless glance with Zoroastro.
Everyone gathered together. For this momentous occasion he had chosen a patch of earth at the foot of the central piece. Flavio Volci poured some wine and we raised our cups to the Maestro.
Outside it grew darker. Artists and pupils looked at each other. ‘We do need more light,’ one of them ventured to say.
‘Bring lamps and candles then,’ said the Maestro.
Zoroastro pressed his lips together.
He wanted to cry out, as I longed to: ‘Leave off! Take heed when warnings are as clear as this.’ But loyalty forbade him to say anything openly which might seem critical of his friend. He would not challenge the Maestro in front of these others.
I immediately went to bring the lanterns and some of the candles that were stacked to one side of the room. I lit a few and set them about. Then, holding the brightest lantern, I went to stand beside my master.
He took a brush in his hand and dipped it in a bowl of paint prepared to his own recipe. His intention was to make the first stroke upon the wall, then we would finish our draught of wine together. The brush was loaded with a heavy grey. The colour of mud, the colour of death.
‘So.’ He lifted his wine cup in one hand and the brush in the other. ‘You have all worked very hard over the last year or so, helping me complete the cartoons and transferring this central scene. And still we have many months of work before us. But for now, let us enjoy the moment.’
He stepped forward.
At that moment a wind got up. It seemed to come from the direction of the river. We heard it quite distinctly, sweeping into the Palazzo della Signoria and rattling the window catches, buffeting the glass like some dervish trying to gain admittance.
My master hesitated. Zoroastro brought his eyebrows down and set his chin, so that his short beard jutted out in front of him. He folded his hands across his chest but remained silent.
There was a clatter at the higher level of the room, as if a tree branch or a tile had come loose and been flung against the windowpane. Everyone glanced up. The wind was louder now. More like a winter gale than a summer breeze. We could hear it howling outside.
Then, so abruptly that we had not time to prepare or shade the candles that were already lit, a window catch came loose, and suddenly the wind had gained entry to the hall. The flames flickered wildly. Then they snuffed out as if by an unseen hand.
The bell of the city began to toll.
‘We should desist,’ Zoroastro hissed under his breath.
The Maestro affected not to hear him.
The bell pealed out its sombre warning, telling the people to take shelter. Already we could hear a gaggle of voices as people gathered under archways and overhangs of the buildings outside. Down at the riverside the washerwomen would be collecting their bundles. Round the area of the Santa Croce the fullers would cease their work and the young boys would be scurrying to haul the covers across the big vats of boiling dyestuffs. The
women in the tumbledown shacks of the poorest workers near the riverbank would gather their children and clamber to higher ground. All citizens of Florence knew that the force of the Arno in a flash flood could tear a baby from its mother’s arms.
The wind increased in force. The loose window catch gave way completely and the window smashed against the outside wall.
‘Saints preserve us!’ exclaimed Flavio Volci.
Fierce, like a living creature, the wind circled outside and in. It sent a flurry of ash from the chimney and wrenched a door open. An enormous gust of air came roaring down the huge hall.
The cartoon itself began to unbuckle. The Maestro gave a great cry and ran towards it. He dropped the paintbrush and his wine cup fell from his hand. I went to pick it up. As I did so I tipped the edge of the wooden bench and the jug holding the water slid from the bench where it rested. Zoroastro leaped to save it. His fingers brushed against the jug as it fell and broke upon the floor.
Zoroastro gave a small moan. He whispered to himself,
‘If vessel crack
And water wasted,
Bring some back
Lest bad luck be tasted.’
I had heard my grandmother say that rhyme many times. There was a ritual that should be done at once to show that you did not throw back any gift that Nature had so generously given to you, water being the prime one. Without it no life can exist. Zoroastro and I both went quickly to take some of the water into our hands to drink it. But before we were able to do so, one of the apprentices had found a cloth and mopped it up.
Zoroastro threw up his hands.
I dropped to my knees. Perhaps I could catch some remnant smeared across the floor? But it had all disappeared, soaked up or leaked away. I could find none of it to bring to my lips to show that we respected spilled water. There was not even a drop that I could lick to prevent it going to waste. I got up and backed away from the area.
The Maestro had recovered himself. Someone had climbed the scaffolding and boarded up the window, someone else had secured the door. He and Flavio had pinned the cartoon back in place.
‘It’s water that has spilled.’ The Maestro looked at us irritably. ‘Not gold that we’ve lost.’
‘Water is more precious than gold.’ Zoroastro spoke quietly.
‘It went from a cracked jug,’ I said urgently. ‘And it leaked to earth without us catching any of it.’
‘And this means?’
‘I will not work in this place today,’ Zoroastro declared.
He was so strange, this little man, Tomaso Masini, who went by the name of Zoroastro, and the pupils and artists who worked with my master were used to his unusual ways so that mostly they ignored him. But not today. I saw one nudge the other to pay attention.
‘I’m going to my forge. Come, Matteo, you can assist me.’
I made to obey, and then halted. My master looked angry.
The pupils were now whispering amongst themselves. So these learned people did become uneasy when they saw the evidence before them. Outside the rain had begun, a downpour, hammering noisily on the rooftops.
But now the master was in one of his rare tempers and he would not be moved.
‘You will remain here, Matteo,’ he said coldly. ‘You, Zoroastro, are a free agent and can do as you wish, but the boy is my servant and must do as I bid him.’
Zoroastro became flustered. ‘I will stay,’ he said. ‘Though I can’t persuade you to leave, yet I will not abandon you. I would not leave you to suffer alone. It’s too late now to undo what has been done. Our lives . . . our deaths – are tied together.’ He composed his face in resignation. ‘The fates are decided.’ And as he spoke his next words apprehension trembled in his voice. ‘Our destinies are now meshed in such a way that no power of this world or any other can untangle them.’
Chapter Thirty-Four
‘MATTEO, I WOULD speak with you.’
It was some weeks later. After the initial unfortunate beginning, work on the fresco had gone ahead and the paints were applying beautifully. Zoroastro and myself had worried unnecessarily, or so it seemed. Each day, under the Maestro’s guidance, the fresco evolved before us like a living pageant. Horses and riders emerged from their shaded outlines, pulsating colours that beat a rhythm inside my head. When I looked at it I fancied I saw sweat on their bodies and heard the groans and cries of battle. In one area my master had achieved the appearance of smoke, a thing unheard of in a fresco, which can be a limited form of painting because of the difficulty in showing perspective. But he had contrived to make it look as if a cannon-burst had exploded just out of vision and the smoke from the discharge was drifting across the lower part of the wall.
All through this clammy summer, as soon as we arrived in the Council Hall we went straight to work. Some of the tasks I did were repetitive, but I did not mind. I had no aptitude with a brush and could not colour in the simplest outline. Despite being past twelve now I was still quite small and light. Therefore I was able to climb rapidly up and down the scaffolding and fetch the craftsmen their work tools as they called for them: the small pointed rod that the painters used to prick out the drawing, the silk bags which puffed on the dust to show the outlines. I refilled these bags a dozen times a day to apply the powder through the holes. At the end of the day after working in the heat I, like the rest, was exhausted, yet I did not tire of the fresco itself. It fascinated me. I would always find time to go and stand before it and discover a new aspect to intrigue me. Like now, when most of the others had cleared up and departed, I hung back and stared at the latest detail the Maestro had painted in.
What was that man’s name? The one there, who was dying so piteously, unnoticed by his comrades. Did he have a wife and children at home? And the other, the younger one, why had he come? Had he been looking for excitement? Or, like Paolo dell’Orte, was he seeking revenge for some atrocity committed on his family? They, and the others, would have listened to the words of their orators calling them to arms. Which piece of prose had awakened in them the desire to fight? Was it the prospect of reward, or truly the idea of supporting a noble cause? Leaders went to war for many reasons, to gain land or wealth, for personal greed or fame. But why had these soldiers taken part?
‘Matteo!’
I jumped. So lost was I in the construction of a life for each character that made up the fresco I had not heard the Maestro approach.
He stretched out his hand in a gesture of affection and ruffled my hair. ‘What thoughts are inside that head of yours?’
I shrugged. It was a sign of how much easier I had become in company over the last two years that I allowed anyone to do that to me without moving away. ‘I was thinking of the men in your painting. Who are they?’
‘Soldiers of Florence.’
‘What are their names?’
‘Their names?’
‘That one there,’ I went on in a rush before he could continue. ‘The man who is lying on the ground. Will he live?’
The Maestro stepped nearer to the wall to examine the body of the fallen soldier. ‘I doubt it. He’s too grievously harmed. Likely he’ll die later, as most men who are wounded do in battle.’
‘It seems to me that his face has a resignation in it,’ I said. ‘He does not want to live.’
‘Why not?’ My master regarded me with humour.
‘Perhaps he has no home. I think that might be the case. There is no one to grieve for him if he does not return.’
‘That would be sad,’ said my master. ‘If no one cared whether you lived or died.’
‘Whereas’ – I pointed at one of the central figures whose sword arm was upraised to slash at his adversary – ‘he seeks glory and does not care if he dies. Indeed perhaps he would rather die so that his name will live on in people’s minds.’
‘Men like that do exist.’
‘They say that Achilles, the handsomest and bravest of all the ancient Greeks, was such a man. It was foretold to him that if he went to the Trojan War
he would surely die, but his deeds would be told in song and story for ever. Should he stay at home he would survive to old age, unknown. He chose to go with Ulysses and fight to rescue Helen. He slew brave Hector before the walls of Troy, but he in turn was slain by Paris at the Scaean Gate. And it is true, the name of Achilles is not forgotten. Perhaps that is what that man thinks. That if he wins the standard his name too will live for evermore.’
‘A painting has as many interpretations as there are people who view it. Many think of it as a captured moment in time.’
‘I suppose I am interested in what happened before and after the moment depicted.’
‘Ah, you mean the story. There is an account of the battle of Anghiari. In fact there are several accounts of this particular engagement, where the Florentines clashed with the Milanese. But you will find that it depends very much on the individual storyteller as to what actually took place. It’s seen as a great victory for the Florentines, accompanied by the slaughter of their enemy. But my friend Niccolò Machiavelli tells me that the only casualty was a soldier whose horse was startled by a snake, whereupon the beast reared up, its owner fell to the ground, struck his head upon a stone and was killed. But he has a biting wit, Messer Machiavelli, and that might be his own way of reading the battle reports.’
‘I’d like to know what happened to the individuals afterwards,’ I said.
‘You have a keen mind, Matteo. And, indeed, that’s the very thing I want to talk to you about. Before you leave, come over here where we can speak privately. There is something I want to discuss.’
He led me to the centre of the room.
‘It was the autumn of the first year you arrived in Florence when you came to live in my household again. Do you remember?’
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