“No doubt,” Damiano agreed. “We do the best we can, however.” He motioned to Lodovico, who stood off to the side. “Come here, my friend. I want you to listen to this saintly man.”
Lodovico obeyed unwillingly. When he had been told the day before of the plan for this evening, he had found the whole idea distasteful, and now that the confrontation was underway, he recoiled from it. He could not bring himself to defy Damiano in this place, with his enemies all around him. “I am here, Primàrio,” he said as he touched Damiano’s shoulder.
I am glad of it, good poet.” He lifted his voice so that it would carry through the drone of conversation. “You are a man of genius and wisdom, Lodovico. There is a special gift of vision that is the blessing and the curse of poets, and you have it in abundance. And therefore, you will be more knowledgeable than I, than most of us here, in this case. Until now you have had only your Muse to counsel you, but now the choirs of heaven may add their efforts to your inspiration.” He turned back to di Lozza. “That is one of the many things I have heard about you, that you speak with the angels. Do not, I pray you, disappoint us.”
Inwardly, Lodovico shrank from the sarcasm Damiano heaped on the man in white. He wanted to tell il Primàrio that it was a tactical error to alienate this self-proclaimed visionary, but he had listed all his objections already and knew that it was fruitless to do so again. He muttered, “I want nothing from this man.”
“Lodovico!” Damiano admonished him. “Who else may we rely on, if not you? My cousin Cosimo is not here, so we have no officer of the Church who is of high enough rank to judge the merit of this man. Without the Cardinale, we have to improvise, and you yourself have told me before that poets, saints, and madmen are all brothers.”
Di Lozza was gazing at Lodovico, and for an instant his candid blue eyes narrowed in scrutiny. “So you are the idolatrous poet Ariosto.”
“I wouldn’t describe myself that way,” Lodovico answered good-naturedly. He was determined not to be offended by any challenge di Lozza offered him. “I am a good son of Holy Mother Church, or I try to be.”
“That is not good enough. It is easy to say in this company, in this room.” Carmelo di Lozza permitted his gaze to travel through the room, over the guests and the furniture and the paintings and the statues. “Surrounded by luxury, supported in your vices, you confess with pride and then you commit them afresh, supported and encouraged by the man you call il Primàrio.”
“Vice? Luxury?” Lodovico demanded, the unnecessary accusations stinging him. “This is the first new giornea I’ve had in five years. My wife and I live simply, because we must. Yet I know that I am fortunate. My patron is not a whimsical man, and he is generous. I am encouraged to write what I wish to write and not what he would like me to write. There are few poets who can say that. If you rebuke me for what you see as privilege, then remember that without this so-called privilege, I could not realize my art. If I had to break my back digging in the earth, or ruin my eyes weaving cloth, or wear out my learning attempting to teach recalcitrant children, then all I would ever have done is scribble a few lines that would be forgotten. But this man and this court offer me a haven, so that instead of a few sheaves of incomplete verses, I have now a body of works, of epics and plays and romances…” He was as astounded as the rest of the gathering at this outburst, and was not certain where it would lead.
Di Lozza cut him short. “These things in which you take pride are ornaments of Satan. You do not dedicate your work to the Glory of God. You say that you are supported. So would you be in a hermit’s cell, in a cloister, but no, you must have worldly acclaim for your profane writings.”
“That’s not so!” Lodovico cried out because he feared that it was.
“Then it would be better for you to leave this place, this city, and live in obscurity rather than spend your time in creating lying tales of heathenish cowards for the delight of these degenerate wastrels.” He said this calmly, with that strange composure that was as distinctive as his clothing.
My tales aren’t lying. They’re romances, fictions…” His ire was rising and he was aware that in some subtle way this imposter in white was baiting him. He tried to recall all his good intentions, all the admonitions he had given Damiano on the benefits of tolerance, but none of them came to mind.
“Are they parables to show the Will of God? They are not.” Di Lozza tucked his hands into his ample sleeves and gazed down at the intricate parquetry of the floor. “Why do I subject myself to this, to the shame and the ridicule of you impious villains?” A dreaminess stole over his features and he smiled slightly. “God, my God, You have mandated a task that fills me with trepidation. Guide me.”
Lodovico was prepared to dispute further with di Lozza, but he felt Damiano’s hand on his arm and heard a soft, restraining word in his ear.
Carmelo di Lozza sank to his knees and the banquet hall grew silent. The man in white was trembling and his head lolled back. His features were contorted now, as if in pain or ecstasy, and his breath was loud in his throat. “O God, O God, O God,” he intoned.
One of the courtiers tittered nervously.
“Sin, sin, sin, all around me. Cleanse this place, I beseech You. The stench—ah! The chastening rod and scourge must be felt. There must be good men to lead, men of God, not the world.” Suddenly di Lozza began to weep. “I mourn for you, Firenze. Lost, benighted, led into the trackless wastes of degradation.” There was spittle on his lips and his beautiful voice was harsh, high and grating. “There must be one to lead them back. Your Princes on earth, my God. Send us Your Prince to be our Prince!” With this last frantic plea, Carmelo di Lozza toppled to his side, shaking, sobbing, his face recognizable.
Damiano stared down at him. “Who has told him this? Who has made him believe?” He spoke softly though it was hardly necessary in the eruption of sound that filled the banquet hall. He beckoned to Lodovico. “When he comes to his senses, take him into the withdrawing room upstairs, the one with the two Verocchio bronzes. I’ll see that you’re not disturbed.”
“I don’t want to talk to him,” Lodovico said, averting his eyes. “I know I wasn’t supposed to get angry, but when he said my work is lies, well…” He was abashed, realizing how completely he had disappointed Damiano. His intentions had been good, he told himself defensively. But he had been provoked beyond anything acceptable.
“You pleased me very much, Lodovico,” Damiano said candidly. “I had not expected that—of either of you.” He glanced swiftly around the hall. “I had better have the musicians start playing dance tunes or there will be chaos here.” He was about to move away when Lodovico stopped him with a question.
“Primàrio, what if he will not talk to me? After what passed between us…” He gave a helpless jerk to his shoulders.
“After what passed between you,” Damiano said with mirthless laughter, “he will undoubtedly want the last word.” He moved away through the crowd and stopped only to talk with Margaret Roper before motioning to one of the servants.
Lodovico squatted down beside the twitching di Lozza. He noticed that no one in the crowded hall was willing to come near them. With a sigh he watched the distorted, angelic features, waiting for the seizure to pass.
Andrea Benci held the door to the withdrawing room open. “I hope that you will not be long,” he said to Lodovico, making a point of ignoring di Lozza.
“We will be as long as is necessary, but no longer,” Lodovico assured him, and waited while Carmelo di Lozza went through the door. He could not resist turning to the old courtier and adding, “As il Primàrio’s secretary, doubtless you have other duties to attend to.”
“Doubtless,” Benci snapped. He glanced once at di Lozza and muttered a few words under his breath. “Have the understeward supply your wants,” he added before slamming the door closed.
Di Lozza had gone to the window and stood looking out on the evening. The last of the sunset had faded from the sky and only a blush in the western sky hinted
that the day had just ended. He refused to acknowledge Lodovico’s presence.
Lodovico selected one of the four chairs and sat in it. There were candles and a lantern to light the room, which pleased him. He would have liked to have something to read, but there was nothing in the chamber but statues and paintings, so he contented himself with staring at a Flight into Egypt. In this light and at this distance, the edges were softly blurred and the color stood out boldly.
“Paintings,” di Lozza announced, “are idolatrous.”
“Perhaps they are, if you are seeking idols.” He said it mildly, more to indicate he had heard than to make comment, and so he was surprised when di Lozza rounded on him in fury.
“I tell you that they are damnable! They are tools of the Devil! They are sent to confuse the people into error and sin!” At each of these statements, he struck his fist into the opposite palm.
“But the saints have said that there is much that painting can teach us,” Lodovico said, hoping to calm the man.
“They were in error. God despises those excesses. He needs nothing more than the earth and sky to teach us His lessons. The rest is vanity. Worldly men don’t understand that. Only men of God know. Men of God see beyond the world.” He shook his head. “If a man’s servants speak against him, if they give warning in their hearts, it must be God at work. Loyal servants defend their masters, as priests defend God. If there is no reform…”
“If there is no reform,” Lodovico prompted when it seemed that di Lozza had lost track of what he was saying.
“Savonarola tried it, and he was sent away as punishment. He was a willing, ardent servant of God who cared nothing for the world, who sought to end the corruption around him. A Godless Pope and a reprobate Prince sent him to Saxony. Yet he was not silenced. I will not be silenced. You may send me away, but still the servants will know that the master is degenerate, and they will accomplish…” Quite suddenly he stopped. “You don’t believe me, do you?”
“No,” Lodovico answered gently.
Di Lozza accepted this mutely. He began to walk around the room, pausing at each statue and picture to look at it. His expression was that of a man looking into a charnel house and his nostrils were pinched by the spiritual stench.
As the man in white made his censorious tour of the room’s treasures, Lodovico watched him. What was it about di Lozza that disturbed him so much? Was it simply that he had attacked Lodovico’s work, which was more painful than if he had attacked with swords and cannons? He had to admit that was probably the case. Yes, Lodovico told himself, when it came to his work he was touchy as a bear in spring. He tried to be philosophical and find amusement in his antics, but he could not. He could laugh at the unkempt state of his beard and the run in his silken leggings, but he was unable to detach himself from the words he scribbled on paper. Words on paper! Ephemeral things, he thought in a stern way, but the rush of his pulse denied it. He stared at di Lozza, forcing himself to concentrate on the man, to put his inner debate aside. There we something he must do. He cleared his throat.
“Tell me—you said that when a man’s servants speak against him it bodes ill.”
“And so it does,” di Lozza affirmed. “It is the part of the servant to be loyal to an honest and Godly master.”
“Yet you said that there were servants who spoke against their master. Did you mean il Primàrio when you said the master?” He knew the answer, but he could think of no other way to get the man to discuss what he knew.
“I meant all those who are without true faith and who plunder the Kingdom of God with their blasphemy.” He had stopped beside a small, gilded Madonna, a fresh-faced, placid young woman in a garden dandling a sober-miened infant on her knee. The work was by Fra Filippo Lippi and regarded as a great treasure. Carmelo di Lozza perused it, his lips tightening. “A disgrace. The man was no more a monk than you are. He littered all Toscana with his bastards! But he dared to paint Maria in all her purity.”
Lodovico wanted to suggest that it might have been the only way Lippi could experience purity, in that serenely stupid and vacant woman. He turned the conceit over in his mind and thought it was worth exploring. Innocence and ignorance were often assumed to be the same thing, he noted, and yet they could not be. Then he remembered what he had to do. “Were you speaking in metaphor about servants, or have actual servants been talking to you?” he persisted.
“I am no priest. I hear no confession. But there are those who are troubled in soul, and they come to me when they can find no succor in this venal city. They tell me that the churches are stuffed with pomp but the Majesty of God is missing. I have said that it is because the state is guided by an ambitious and worldly man. The churches are tainted with the desecrations of the civic leaders.”
“What servants?” Lodovico asked, determined to stay on the subject.
“Knowing ones,” di Lozza answered smugly. “I am not so foolish as to listen to every complaint as valid, or to assume that a dissatisfied scullery maid has legitimate cause for her protests, but highly-placed men, who are close to…” A crafty look came into his eyes and he looked away from Lodovico. “It does not become me to speak of it, for though I have no vows to keep, yet I regard what has been said to me as protected by the seal of confession.”
“Then why tell me at all?” He knew the answer, even if di Lozza did not, and it disappointed him. Up until that moment, di Lozza, in his own way, had been boasting. He did not tell of his great deeds, but he did revel in his influence. So Carmelo di Lozza was a fraud, whether he recognized it himself or not. It was an effort for Lodovico to contain his indignation. Here was a man posing as saintly, but who was as engrossed in manipulation and the wielding of temporal power as any of the greedy courtiers in the banquet hall. He wanted to grab the pleated front of di Lozza’s lucco and shake him as he would a disobedient child. What caused Lodovico the distress was the realization that part of him had wanted di Lozza to be genuine, to be nothing but a misguided but well-intentioned man in the throes of a religious passion. Lodovico felt cheated and sullied.
Di Lozza had picked up a small ceramic figure, a study by the great, irascible Buonarroti. He turned over in his fingers, his face intent. “He is at Roma, is he not? With the Pope?”
“Yes,” Lodovico answered. “Clemente has known him since they were boys. Buonarroti is older, of course.”
“He has done much for the Church, hasn’t he? He’s not a priest, either. I have heard the Cardinale say that he would like to see more sacred works in Firenze.” He put the figure back on the narrow table.
Lodovico, recalling the terrible interview he had witnessed, had nothing to say. He looked down and discovered that there was a rip in the front of his giornea, very small, but still a rip. How had it happened? he wondered, thinking back over the evening and the one previous occasion he had worn the garment. He could not account for the tear, but there it was, reproaching him. He pressed the rent together with his fingers, as if the cloth could heal itself.
Di Lozza turned away and went back to the window, refusing to speak again until the understeward knocked on the door, more than an hour later.
Margaret Roper stared at the Papal seals on the letter handed to her. Giulio de’ Medici had been taught penmanship by the finest calligraphers in Firenze and a simple request looked like poetry in his elegant hand. She had kissed the wax impressions under his signature when it was given her, but could not bring herself to read the missive.
“My once-removed first cousin wishes you to come to Roma,” Damiano explained. “He has sent me his instructions. I gather that your father wrote to His Holiness and told him what he was doing in Russia. Because Henry is not likely to receive Sir Thomas kindly, the Pope is extending his hospitality to your entire family until such time as all of you are properly welcomed in England.”
Lodovico, looking up from the papers Margaret had given him, drew in his breath sharply. Henry Tudor had thrown down the glove when he had divorced his wife Katherine and m
arried Mistress Boleyn and now the Pope was taking up the challenge. Open defiance of the Church would not be tolerated. Lodovico glanced at Damiano, but il Primàrio’s face was a polite mask and he could read nothing there.
“But why?” Margaret Roper asked finally, the very question that burned in Lodovico.
“He says that he wishes to honor your father and his family for your steadfast faith. You are an example to Catholics everywhere. It’s in the letter.” Damiano had folded his arms over his chest.
Lodovico’s apartments in Palazzo Pitti were on the south side of the north wing, three pleasant, light rooms overlooking the terrace and the enormous gardens. Damiano was adding a third orchard higher up the slope and there were dusty tracks through the flowers to the incomplete plantation. It was a warm day, with early autumn sunlight flooding through Firenze like the gilt rays in Fra Angelico’s paintings. Until the messenger had arrived, Lodovico and Margaret had been enjoying what they still called a lesson, but had become an erudite conversation. The arrival of the messenger changed that.
Margaret bent her head over the page and studied it as if she had no knowledge of Latin whatsoever, and was trying to find one recognizable word. “I don’t understand,” she said slowly and looked toward Damiano for an explanation.
Damiano refused to meet her eyes. He strolled to the nearest window. “His Holiness doesn’t like Henry Tudor usurping his authority. He feels the King of England is overstepping himself.” He stared out into the afternoon. “I think that he has every intention of settling the question of Papal supremacy once and for all. Spain has been a necessary evil, and the German States, well, no Pope has known what to do with the German States. But England, that is another matter. If England’s rebellion is tolerated, then who might be next? France? He can’t allow that.”
Ariosto Page 29
