Leonardo's Swans

by Karen Essex

  This last thought opens a new landscape in her heart. Life, love, lust does not begin and end with her husband. There are many fields upon which she might sow the seeds of her affections. And with this new thought, she realizes that she is tired of this stiff bowing and polite turning upon one’s toes; these tame dances that begin and end with reverence paid to one’s partner. It is time for a new kind of dance, something to match the fresh daring rising up inside her. At once, a strange force rushes through her veins and seems to empty itself out in the core of her being. It feels to her as if some wild creature—and she does not mean her fetus, but another type of spirit—is expanding inside of her, demanding her to give some outlet to its pulsing energy. Beatrice feels that if she does not let the creature release itself upon the dance floor, it will consume its host. If she moves fast enough, if she whirls and twirls enough to exhaust the demon, then she, Beatrice, will have peace. Though the room is beginning to spin about her, she knows that it is not rest she needs, but to dance this feeling away.

  “Who will join me in the galliard?” she asks. She learned the dance from the French King Charles, who relished hopping about on his short legs, showing off his knowledge of the intricate steps.

  Galeazz sits quietly in a big leather chair, isolated from the other guests. Why has she not thought of him before? Who else should she turn to for comfort at this time but the beautiful man who pledged his life to her six years ago? Have they both not experienced the most excruciating loss? Why should they not find solace in each other’s arms? But Galeazz’s deep-set brown eyes look upon the duchess not with the sparkle of adventure or the hope of comfort but with profound sadness; he shakes his head ever so slightly, hoping she knows, that she will not demand that he join her in dance, for then, how could he refuse? He does not wish to release his sorrow, not yet. His heart grieves. She can read that upon his face. If he had sprung to his feet and taken up her challenge, she would have been disappointed. No, that would not be her Galeazz at all, but a man who acts in utter self-interest. A man like her husband. And she never wants Galeazz to tarnish himself by acting like Ludovico.

  But others, who are visitors at court and cannot know the extent of the duchess’s pain over the loss of Bianca Giovanna, followed by the loss of her husband at such a fragile time, quickly leap to answer Beatrice’s request.

  “A galliard!” she calls out to the musicians. The flute players, instruments poised at the lips to answer Beatrice’s request, hesitate. They look at the duchess to make certain that they have heard correctly; that a woman grown large with child is demanding that they play a frenetic French jig, and that she fully intends to lead the dance.

  “Play, I say!” she yells at them. She has never, she knows, sounded more demanding and officious.

  The pipe players begin the lively tune, and Beatrice counts to four before leading the dancers in the opening steps. She remembers each move of this dance that she practiced for hours with the toad-like Charles, who was so very pleased with the way that she picked up his footwork. “It is a dance better for a man than a woman,” Charles had said. “That was only true until now,” Beatrice had answered him.

  Right heel up, left heel up. Skip back, two three. Jump right. Jump left. Right heel up, now left. Early into the dance, she begins to feel winded, but she can hardly stop now, not when she insisted upon having this recreation. She will not spoil her own party. She is surrounded by young men, men of her own age, who are paying the most vigilant attention to her every move. Right heel up. Now left. Twist and jump and again. She is exhilarated. She has had no idea that she could leap so high into the air at this weight. But why not? Hasn’t she always remained active until the last days of her pregnancies? The midwives have practically had to drag her from the hunting grounds so that she could lay up in anticipation of the births. Perhaps this time she would not be confined at all. She would dance until she went into labor. Dance and host festivities and choose who would be her lovers after the baby was born and she was healed. She would deny Ludovico entrance to her bedroom, just as he has shut his door against her. And if he burst in upon her privacy, he would find her in the embraces of a beautiful man less than half his age.

  Maybe it would be the man now jumping in the air alongside her, with his bright green eyes and straight, light hair the color of sand. He is lithe and limber, and his every move seems to challenge her to match his great leaps. He smiles at her, showing his white teeth, and when he turns, his pink tongue licks the corner of his mouth in an unconscious way. He reminds her of an animal. He is taller than she, and so she must try harder to keep their eyes on the same level when they jump. When the count is correct, when the pipes are at their loudest, Beatrice bends her knees deep and then springs into the air. She looks up at the eyes of her dancing partner, and she can see that he admires the way she is keeping up with him. High in the air, she feels something sharp in her belly, trying to pull her back to the ground. She does not want to descend, not yet. She wishes she could remain like this, feet off the ground, staring into the bright eyes that are looking back at her. But the pain she feels is more real than this fantastic moment, and she gives in to it. She feels her feet hit the ground, but her knees cannot support her. The young man’s smile drops as he watches the duchess crash to the floor. She hits her head, but the thud of that impact is completely obscured by the fact that she thinks that someone is stabbing her in the gut with a great lance. She looks up to see Galeazz’s face suddenly above hers, pushing the pale young German out of the way, his strong arms stretched out to wrap around her shoulders.

  “Why is someone killing me?” she whispers to him as he lifts her from the ground. And then the world goes black.

  When she comes to, the lance is still poking her stomach, splitting her in two. She has known childbirth two times but has never felt this kind of unendurable pain. The lance seems to be inside her, rocking back and forth, tearing her guts apart. She is certainly being killed, but why is she dying so slowly?

  The world is red. Others are crowded around her, hands, chests, arms, clothes, covered in blood. What is happening? She hears Ludovico’s voice crying out, demanding to know what is going on, and then she hears his cries fading down the hall as someone drags him away. Someone is pushing on her stomach, making the pain greater. A woman, perhaps. Beatrice cannot see through the veil of red that clouds her vision. Everything is draped in it, this bold color. She closes her eyes fiercely to try to remove the tint from the world in front of her but when she opens them again, all is still red. She feels as if the woman on top of her is pulling her insides out, pulling her very intestines out of her stomach, like some horrible form of punishment. A disemboweling for a crime that she has not committed.

  The woman stops pulling. She has reached the end of Beatrice’s entrails, which now lay in her hands. Beatrice tries hard to focus on this bloody flesh, squinting madly to see what her insides look like. Everyone in the room is screaming now. Someone wipes Beatrice’s face with a cold cloth.

  “Cover her eyes!” the woman holding Beatrice’s insides yells out.

  The hands quickly press the cloth over Beatrice’s eyes, drowning out all sight. But not before she realizes what is being hurried away from her—a marble-white baby, its tiny arms limp, its head fallen backward, dripping in blood.

  FROM THE NOTEBOOK OF LEONARDO:

  From what seems a small, light thing, there proceeds a great ruin.

  To: Your Excellency, the Marchesa of Mantua

  From: Cecilia Gallerani, Contessa Bergamini

  Your Excellency,

  As the sudden circumstance of your most illustrious sister’s death prevented you from attending the funeral, I wanted to write to you to let you know that no posthumous honor was withheld that great lady. Though your own grief must be unbearable, I hope that this account of the adoration showered upon the duchess after her death brings some measure of consolation to your wounded heart. I shall try, to the best of my ability and memory, to chronicle th
e events following the shocking and untimely manner of her demise, and that of her stillborn son.

  The duke was and remains inconsolable. He has shut himself in his room, draped the windows in black, and refused anyone, including the little motherless boys, admittance for many days upon end. They say he has shaved his head and wears only black. Those who have been permitted to see him in recent days say that his conversation consists only of the fact that he would much rather have gone to his grave than seen the light of his life predecease him. Your Excellency is aware, I am sure, that the duchess spent many of her last days in tears over the death of Bianca Giovanna, to whom she was deeply attached, and over the indiscreet liaison in which the duke was engaged with Lucrezia Crivelli. Now the duke is struck with remorse and seems to have cut off his relations with that lady. She is, however, pregnant with his child, due in the late spring. Perhaps the duchess found out about the pregnancy. The news could not have helped her own health, weakened by pregnancy and by Bianca’s sudden death. I pray that Ludovico finds solace from his guilt. He takes whatever meals he eats standing, fasts two days a week, and spends long hours at the duchess’s crypt, begging God to let him speak to her just once more so that he can assure her of his love. He is lost in a cloud of sorrows, his only spoken words, lamentations.

  But I get ahead of myself. I mean to tell you of the great honors bestowed upon the young duchess. At the duchess’s passing, the women of the court immediately went to work adorning her body. She was lovingly bathed, I am told, not only in the warm waters of the bath, but by the endless streams of her maids’ tears. All of Milan might drown in its tears, such was the love of the populace for the duchess. Did you know that our people would rush into the streets to see her drive by in her chariot, delighted to see her smile, her beautiful manner of dressing, and the cheerful way that she conducted herself always, not to mention the extraordinary way that she could make her horses prance? They are saying all over Milan that her death represents the end of happiness itself.

  On the day of her funeral, the duchess’s hair was combed exactly the way she liked it worn, parted down the middle of the head and pulled back over her high cheekbones and into a long plait. Ribbons of gold and pearl were woven into her long, dark braid. It has never looked so perfectly pretty. She was dressed in the most extravagant of her golden brocade robes, which made her skin seem to glow, though she no longer breathed. Around her neck was placed a long necklace of pearls strung with gold balls, on the end of which is a cross of the heaviest gold from the land of the Turks, inlaid with many jewels. I believe the duchess would have considered it a suitable gift for her to offer Our Lord. Over her body lay a white cloth embroidered with the arms of the House of Sforza. Pink color was pressed into her lips and cheeks so that she had a lovely, lifelike quality, and believe it or not, Your Excellency, despite that her last hours were spent in pain, her lips formed the slightest, most serene smile. I was very grateful to be able to see her this way once more, so that I could not only impress her loveliness into my memory but also share it with you.

  Your Excellency, not only the privy council and all the nobles of the city, along with the foreign ambassadors who here represent every nation of Europe, but the entire population of Milan followed the duchess’s corpse from the Castello to her resting place at the church of Santa Maria delle Grazie. You have never seen such a solemn and magnificent procession. At sunset, the ambassadors, including those from the Spanish king and the Emperor Max, the duchess’s great admirer, lifted the bier and carried it to the gate of the Castello, where all the world waited to catch a final glimpse of their beloved Duchess Beatrice. The duke and all of his relatives, including the two little boys, were gowned entirely in long black robes, wearing black hoods over their heads. The boys, so young and brave, rode in a small chariot. The family was escorted by the priests and nuns of the city, who led the procession carrying great crosses of silver, gold, and ebony. I believe a thousand torches lit the way for the duchess. Her favorite knight, the esteemed Galeazz di Sanseverino, wore shining black armor, a black mask, and a black garter around his arm. His long hair was dyed as dark as a crow’s feathers, and he rode the duchess’s favorite horse, Drago, the big white stallion that was a gift from your husband. The animal, wearing a saddle laden with silver-and-pearl crosses and sporting a black feathered headpiece, looked bewildered without his mistress. I could swear that his desperate brown eyes were searching the crowd for the duchess. Galeazz carried the duchess’s standards while tears streamed down his face to be escorting his second-favorite lady in all the world to his young wife to another early grave. How sorrowful, yet how comforting, to think of those two friends reunited forever, lying side by side.

  At every major intersection of the city, the local magistrates would take the duchess’s bier from its last bearers and carry it through their quarter. Your Excellency, I can report that her body was handled from the Castello to the crypt only by loving hands. Whenever the magistrates changed guard of her casket, six new pairs of eager and tender hands covered in fine leather against the cold reached out to cradle this young woman whom they so adored. Citizens of every rank and class turned out to pay their respects. Countless numbers of gentlemen and ladies, laborers, merchants and their wives and children all braved the cold January evening to honor her. It seemed to me that the very winds calmed in every quarter out of respect for the duchess, whipping up again as soon as she was passed into another section of the city. Every shop was closed as if it were Christmas day. Even the beggars and prostitutes abandoned their trades during the procession. Many a haggard man in tattered clothing and a woman with too much rouge upon the face was seen in uncharacteristic lament, with no thought to capitalize economically upon the event, as the duchess’s body passed through their neighborhoods. I have never seen the lowest echelons of society put aside thoughts of the coin and pay such respect.

  Finally, long after the sun had set on this short winter’s day, the magistrates reached the gates of the Santa Maria delle Grazie, where six ambassadors from other Italian cities received the duchess’s bier and carried it into the church, laying her upon the steps of the altar. The church was draped in reams of black silk, which was very dramatic against its stark white marble. A thousand wax tapers lit the church in her honor. The cardinal himself received her and said the whole of the Mass. The duchess’s favorite singers, including Cristoforo Romano the sculptor, sang the Requiem in voices that were inspired by the Heavens. Never have you heard such singing, exquisite in its sadness. I tell you, her soul was sent to God by the very voices of angels. After the prayers were made for the Lord to take her soul—though who can doubt Beatrice’s position at the side of the Lord?—and the last, though not final, tears were shed, the body was put into a magnificent sarcophagus, supported by great marble lions. And there, under Donato Bramante’s newly finished cupola—one that Beatrice herself so admired—she will rest until the marble tomb Ludovico has commissioned from the hunchback artist, Solari, is ready to be laid over her.

  Your Excellency, I must not forget to mention that as the funeral party entered the church, I saw none other than the Magistro standing at the gates of Santa Maria delle Grazie. They say he is putting the final touches on his mural of Our Lord’s Last Supper. It has taken him these two years to find the proper model for Judas, but word has it that he found and spied on a poor unsuspecting Jew in the section of the city where they live and followed the man until he felt his features indelibly impressed upon his imagination. Then he made a series of sketches from memory and is now painting that hapless man’s face upon the wall, forever to be immortalized as history’s greatest traitor. You have never seen a sadder expression than the one on the Magistro’s face as he watched the duchess’s corpse enter the church. He stood just out of the light of a torch, but I could make out his features, which seemed to carry the weight of the event in progress. Is it not lovely to imagine Beatrice laid to rest so near the Magistro’s mural, almost as if she can gaze upon the
face of Jesus, an activity which gave her so much pleasure and comfort and consolation in her last days?

  Ludovico did commission the Magistro to make a portrait of Lucrezia Crivelli. I tell you this not to be indiscreet but because I am certain that as gossip spreads faster than weeds, and as you trouble yourself to keep abreast of the current works of the great masters, you have already heard this news. I have not yet seen it, but I hear it is not nearly as nice as the one he made of me so many years ago. I like to think that the Magistro approved of me and of my liaison with the duke, since there was no wife at that time to suffer injury from our affections. Perhaps the Magistro, along with the rest of Milan, so disapproved of Ludovico’s affair that he allowed his disaffection to creep into the portrait. This might be fanciful thinking, that an artist the caliber of Leonardo would let the human failings of others infiltrate his work, but it is a woman’s thinking, nonetheless, and I cannot help but hope that it is at least partially true. I believe that all of us may anticipate a stunning portrait of dear Beatrice on the wall opposite the Last Supper, a final tribute from a devoted court artist to his patron.