As we prepared for a winter campaign France set up a rebel synod of bishops to defy the Pope. King Louis wanted them to clearly state that the Pope had no temporal authority in Italy. He demanded that Julius withdraw his forces from the Italian states that the French laid claim to.
To which, it was said, the Pope roared a reply: ‘I am a Pope! And the Pope is not a chaplain to the King of France!’
But while King Louis conspired against him in one way, Pope Julius moved swiftly across the chessboard of Europe. He formed a new alliance called the Holy League, which included Switzerland, England and Spain. Now France was surrounded by hostile states. And Spain was sending soldiers from their kingdom in Naples to help the papal armies in Italy.
In Ferrara we prepared for the inevitable fight to come.
Then, in a letter dated just before Christmas 1511, Felipe wrote to me. He said that it was becoming too dangerous to remain in Milan.
The Swiss have set fires outside the city. From the roof of the Duomo we can see farmhouses and vineyards burning. The Maestro intends to go to Vaprio on the river Adda. Francesco Melzi’s father has offered him shelter at his villa there. We intend to move soon, as there is a fear that Milan may be surrounded.
Kestra was not so far outside the city.
Elisabetta was in danger.
Chapter Sixty-Eight
PAOLO NEEDED TO remain in Ferrara to train our new recruits so I took with me Stefano and two others and set out for Kestra.
My aim in choosing Stefano was to do him a service. I wanted to give him the opportunity to withdraw from the Bande Rosse. He had been devastated at the loss of his friend Federico, and I thought that when he met up with his family again and saw his betrothed he would appreciate that life on a farm was preferable and safer than returning to Ferrara. But a strange thing happened as we made our way towards Kestra. Stefano, who had lamented so much after Mirandola and swore that if he ever saw his father’s farm again he would leave it no more, had undergone a change of heart.
The taking of Bologna reversed his opinion. An easy victory and some plunder had made a different man of him. As we rode west he boasted of his exploits, and these became more grandiose and daring with every mile we covered. Gone now were his moans about the defeat at Mirandola, the hardship of the winter, the outbreak of dysentery. His tales were of the glory of conquering Bologna, of how we had sent the Papal Legate running to Ravenna and driven out the Pope’s men. When he arrived at his farmstead, laden with bundles strapped to each side of his horse’s rump and little packages for his girl tied to his saddle, he was given a hero’s welcome. His family looked upon him with pride, and when they saw his booty they insisted that I collect him and his younger brother Silvio on my way back to Ferrara so that they could go off and bring them back more. I left him there, telling wild tales of his struggles with imaginary armies, and went on to Kestra.
At first I thought the farm at Kestra was deserted. There was no sign of life when my two companions and I dismounted. I gave the task of unpacking and stabling our horses to them and entered the house. Elisabetta was in the kitchen, stooped over, struggling to light a fire under the boiler.
I came up behind her and took the flint from her hands. ‘Your kindling is too damp,’ I said. ‘A country girl like yourself should know that the flame will never catch unless the firewood is bone-dry.’
She gave a little scream of fright. Then, when she saw it was I, she burst into tears.
‘What a welcome!’ I exclaimed. ‘And I a poor soldier returned from the wars.’
She wiped her tears away and we hugged each other.
‘Oh Matteo,’ she said. ‘Matteo, Matteo, Matteo.’
‘I can tell that you are not unhappy to see me,’ I teased her. ‘I hope you will be even more happy when I tell you that your brother Paolo is well and sends his love and many gifts to you.’
By this time my two soldiers were at the back of the house piling up the goods that I had brought from Ferrara. I told them to take some of the food we had brought with us and find a place in the barn to eat and rest, then I brought the parcels inside. I opened the one which was my own present to Elisabetta. It was a fine piece of Ferrarese cloth for which I had paid a large sum of money.
‘What do you think of this?’ I asked, holding it up for her to inspect.
She fingered the cloth in appreciation. ‘It is heavy quality,’ she said. ‘I should be able to get a good price for it.’
‘You would sell it!’ I said. ‘This brocade was bought specially to be made into a dress for you to wear at Christmas time.’
She folded the cloth and laid it upon the table. ‘I can see that my brother has not kept you informed as to our true state of affairs,’ she said. ‘Let us eat first, then we will talk.’
She cut a piece from the salted ham I had brought and boiled it with some sweet white onions. As we ate she made me tell her of our adventures and I was pleased to recount the true story of how her brother saved my life at Mirandola. I have been told that I am a good storyteller and it may be that I embellished Paolo’s actions a little as I described them to his sister that day.
‘He charged on his horse to help me,’ I said. ‘It was like the times we played at Perela. Paolo was a noble knight for the crusade. He was a lion. He was a fierce Tartar warrior. He was a gladiator in the arena of the Coliseum. He was all these things. He saved my life.’ And this was true. The core of the story was not false. Without Paolo, that day I would have died.
Afterwards Elisabetta told me how things were with her. There was a small income from her sale of herbs to the apothecary in Milan, but not nearly enough to run the farm. She led me through the house. The rooms were shut up. Most of the furniture was gone. We had eaten from plain crockery because she had pawned the plate months ago. She told me that over the year Paolo had sold off the fields one by one and then finally had mortgaged the house. The deeds were held by Rinaldo Salviati.
‘The man who came here that day and insulted you?’ I asked her.
‘Yes,’ she replied. ‘The man whose nose you broke. And Paolo has not made the payments, so now we no longer own the house. In a month Rinaldo Salviati will foreclose and—’ She broke off.
‘And what?’ I asked in alarm. ‘Has he propositioned you in some way?’
‘He has indicated that we might come to some arrangement.’
‘You will tell him that no such thing will happen.’
‘It is so simple for you to say this!’ Elisabetta flared at me. It was the first time I had seen her angry. ‘I know you have more empathy than other men, Matteo, but until you live as a woman you can have no idea of the constraints put upon us. I have no money, no land, no title, nothing. What am I to do? Where am I to go? How shall I eat? How shall I live?’
Chapter Sixty-Nine
THE NEXT MORNING I left Kestra promising to return as soon as I could.
We went into Milan, swinging south to do so, well away from the road where I had been set upon last autumn. Once in the city I left my men to wander in the area of the duomo. I gave them instructions to be on their guard and incur no ill, but to find out any information they could. These two were good men, inexperienced, but true of heart. Then I took myself to the Maestro’s studio at San Babila.
There I found only Felipe walking about among the leavings of the workshops, sorting through the last of their things to take to the Melzi villa at Vaprio. He welcomed me warmly and I thought of the way I had been welcomed into this household from the beginning, and the manner in which Leonardo da Vinci had dealt with me in my extreme youth, with kindness yet firmness, as a true father would.
Felipe told me of the passing of Graziano, who had died a month previously. Of how our stout friend had joked to the end; telling our master that he must cut him open after he had expired, so that they could see that his stomach was swollen due to a cancer rather than his fondness for food and wine.
Then Felipe asked me if it was true that the Bolognese had toppl
ed the great statue of the Pope. When I said that it was true, he left the room. I went to join him outside in the garden. I surmised that the thought of the felling of such a piece by a genius like Michelangelo was a physical pain to him. Felipe had worked with my master for many years. He knew the cost, the emotional investment and the physical and mental toll of creating something of that magnitude. And he empathized with the lowering of the spirit that an artist must feel on learning of its destruction. In his earlier days in Milan Leonardo da Vinci had made a plaster model for a massive statue of a horse, and it had been destroyed by soldiers using it for target practice.
We stood together in silence for a while.
It has been said often that there was rivalry between the two gifted men of these times, Leonardo da Vinci and Michelangelo. Their natures could not have been more opposite. Leonardo was supposed to have laughed at the other’s favoured profession, stating that a sculpture could not portray the soul; that this could best be done via the medium of a painting, which showed the eyes of the sitter. Michelangelo, for his part, was supposed to have declared that only through the representations of the body in the three dimensions of a statue could true life be reflected and great Art created. Yet Leonardo sculpted and cast statues, and Michelangelo obeyed the Pope’s command and painted a masterpiece on the roof of the Sistine Chapel.
‘We are the barbarians,’ said Felipe. ‘That we would allow such an outrage to take place.’ He looked at me. ‘Give me your own account, Matteo. Did anyone mourn its passing?’
‘They rejoiced in the streets as it fell to earth,’ I told him truthfully. ‘In Ferrara they made bonfires and burned the Pope’s effigy to show what was to happen to the bronze likeness. And Duke Alfonso smelted it down in his furnaces and turned it into a huge cannon.’
Felipe sat down upon a bench. He put his hand upon his heart. ‘Ah. I am become old,’ he said. And then after a moment he added, ‘As is your master.’
I sat down beside him. ‘Has he truly forgiven me for not taking up the place at the university in Pavia?’
‘You should go and speak to him yourself,’ Felipe said. ‘He is at Santa Maria delle Grazie. The Dominicans are complaining that the fresco he painted in their refectory years ago is beginning to peel from the wall.’
‘How is he?’ I asked Felipe.
‘The deaths of his friends Marcantonio della Torre and Charles d’Amboise affected him deeply, and we still mourn the passing of the cheerful Graziano.’
Death. The cruel absolute that severs friends for ever.
Death. The Maestro’s companion and mine on those nights in the mortuary at Averno.
‘But Vaprio is peaceful,’ Felipe continued, ‘and he intends to sketch the geology of the region. It will be good for him to rest there a while.’
‘What will he do if the French lose their grip on Milan?’
‘He needs to see to his affairs and his income. As soon as the roads are safe I am to go to Florence to arrange finances. Then we must shift ourselves to find patronage and avoid the areas of war.’
‘Where does one go nowadays to avoid war?’ I asked.
There was a purpose to my asking Felipe this question, for my mind was concerned with Elisabetta’s situation. I knew that Paolo had no intention of keeping the farm. I saw now that this was why he had asked me to go to Kestra while he remained in Ferrara – so that he did not need to argue his case with Elisabetta. Any money he had he was spending to equip the Bande Rosse. I was loath to take Elisabetta back to Ferrara with me because I did not think it a safe place.
‘It may be difficult to follow the wider politics when you are engaged in the battlefield,’ said Felipe, ‘but you should know that the French will leave Italy. They cannot keep an army here while the Pope encourages young Henry of England to mass his troops against them on their northern frontier.’
‘In Ferrara they believe the Pope to be a wicked scheming man.’
‘The former Duke of Ferrara allied his state to the previous Pope Alexander VI, Rodrigo Borgia, by marrying his son to Lucrezia Borgia. Thus at one time Ferrara sided with the Papacy for power and protection. Yet this Pope, Julius, appears to act for the good of the whole. He has begun monastic reform and brought out a dictate against simony. Unlike others in Church office he has not used his position to advance his family.’ Felipe smiled. ‘Of course, he favours the Arts, and it may be that I’m a little prejudiced in my opinion of him.’
Once again Felipe’s objective thinking cleared my mind. ‘So you think that Pope Julius’s course is more benign to the state of Italy than any other way?’
‘I think Julius seeks to place certain rulers in control of the city states,’ said Felipe, ‘and then he hopes to bring these together under the one authority of Rome. He has declared that Italian affairs must be in Italian hands. I find I cannot disagree with that. It may be that we are witnessing Italy struggling to be born.’
As we were speaking a thought entered my mind. I had told Felipe of my worry about Elisabetta and I now put a proposal to him.
‘I could arrange your escort to Florence,’ I said, ‘if you would take Elisabetta with you. She would be in less danger in Florence than any place else at the moment.’
He considered for a minute. ‘It would be useful for me to get there soon,’ he said. ‘We have some money in an account there that we have need of now. And,’ he added, ‘I have friends living on the outskirts of the city who might take her in. Theirs is a respectable house, and large enough to accommodate a lodger.’
I made an arrangement with Felipe and set off towards Santa Maria delle Grazie to find the Maestro. As I went past the shop of the apothecary who bought herbs from Elisabetta’s garden another an idea came to me. On our return journey south I would make a detour and find the box that contained my grandmother’s recipes. With those to help her Elisabetta might make some income to help sustain her independently.
Chapter Seventy
THE DOMINICAN MONASTERY of Santa Maria delle Grazie was on the far side of the castle and I was conscious of the suspicious stares of the French sentries at my condottieri uniform as I strode past.
I found the Maestro sitting on a stool in the monk’s refectory staring at his famous painting of the Last Supper of Jesus Christ with His Apostles.
I came into the room from the outside cloister and closed the door softly behind me. I stood for a moment looking at him, and felt such a surge of love and affection that I could not move.
He became aware of my presence and turned his head.
‘Matteo!’ He held out his hands. ‘It is you!’
I crossed the room and went down on one knee before him.
‘Come now, Matteo,’ he said. ‘I’m not a god, that you should genuflect in front of me.’
‘I fear I may have vexed you by not returning to study at the university.’
‘I am saddened that you may have missed the opportunity to explore the furthest reaches of that intelligent mind you possess.’ He took me by the shoulders and raised me up. ‘But you are still alive, that is what is most important. And I am very pleased to see you.’
He made me stand a distance from him so that he could admire my fine condottieri tunic and crimson sash.
‘I am sorry if I have disappointed you in your hopes for me.’ I spoke humbly.
‘But the life of a condottieri captain is not without opportunity.’ The Maestro waved his hand towards the other end of the refectory and Montorfano’s fresco of the Crucifixion. ‘If you look on either side of the Cross you will see the painting I made of Ludovico “II Moro” Sforza and his family. The Sforzas were condottieri captains yet rose to rule the duchy of Milan – and if Pope Julius has his way will rule here again when the French are forced to leave.’
‘It was not my true wish to be a condottiere. I rode out with Paolo dell’Orte because—’ I broke off. I could not explain why, without revealing my fear and guilt.
‘You had reason to do what you did,’ the Maestro said
thoughtfully. And then added, ‘Since the beginning of your life.’
I did not know quite what he meant by that, but sensed it might lead me into territory I did not want to explore, so I turned my head to look at his magnificent fresco of the Last Supper. ‘Is it true that the paint is coming away from the wall?’
‘There is some damp which is causing distress. At least’ – he smiled – ‘it is causing the prior of the monastery distress. Whether the work is worth repairing, I do not know, considering that war is coming to the city and it might very well be destroyed in the conflict.’
He stood up, and I walked with him as he approached his masterpiece. It was as if we were entering the actual supper room and the living presence of the thirteen men gathered round the table. The immediate aftermath of the thunderbolt of the announcement of Jesus, ‘One of you shall betray me,’ was apparent in the reaction of the Apostles to the words of their Master. The tension of the moment displayed by their various expressions of stunned disbelief and distress. The rictus of the outstretched fingers of the Christ’s right hand mirrored by those of the Iscariot.
Judas.
The Betrayer.
I started as the Maestro laid his hand upon my shoulder. ‘There is your namesake, Matteo.’ He pointed to one of the Apostles on the left of Jesus. A man portrayed in profile, with a bright blue cloak and serious appearance. ‘Saint Matthew,’ he repeated, ‘whose badge Felipe wears upon his cloak because he has a special devotion to this saint. Did you know that?’
My heart was beating very fast. I shook my head.
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