The Poet Prince

by Kathleen McGowan

  Colombina nodded. “I do not know what to do about Sandro. Or Lorenzo and Giuliano for that matter. They will be distraught, as will we all. But at least you and I are prepared for it. We have watched death stalk her for the last years, watched as it came closer and closer to our sweet girl. But the men in our midst are unprepared. They know she is fragile, but I don’t think any of them have actually accepted that we will lose her.”

  “And soon.” Ginevra shivered.

  “How long, I wonder? I need to hug her against me one more time and tell her that she is my sister of spirit and let her know just how much I love her.”

  “Then I suggest you do so immediately, Colombina. After seeing her today, I do not think we have much time left with her. Perhaps we should send a messenger to Lorenzo and Giuliano. They will want to see her as well.”

  Colombina paled. “Oh God, they aren’t here. They’re in Pisa on business, both of them. But they’ll be back in a few days, and I will have a messenger waiting for them as soon as they return to Florence. You don’t think . . . we will lose her that soon? Oh, please don’t say so.”

  Ginevra, usually the pillar of strength, began to sob. Simonetta was like her little sister, and she had grown to love her over the years. Losing her would be challenging to all of them, to everything they believed. What was God thinking, giving the world such beauty and then taking it away like this?

  The messenger Colombina had prepared to send to Lorenzo and Giuliano ultimately made the long ride to Pisa with the message that she had most dreaded: Simonetta Cattaneo de Vespucci had died suddenly that same day, April 26, 1476.

  No one had a chance to say good-bye.

  Lorenzo and Giuliano took a long walk together that night, to talk about Simonetta and to share their grief over the young woman who had moved all of them with her purity and sweetness. They all loved her completely; she had become the official little sister of the

  Order.

  “April twenty-sixth. It will forever be a day of sadness in our world, Giuliano. We must always honor her on this day.”

  Giuliano nodded and pointed to the sky. “See that? The star that is brighter than the others? Is it Venus?”

  “Perhaps,” Lorenzo answered. “Or perhaps our Simonetta is with God, and the light of her soul has merged with that star to create something as beautiful and bright as she was.”

  “I will never have your gift of poetry, my brother. I can only say that I loved her and I will miss her, and I will pray that she is surrounded now by the same beauty and grace she brought to all of us.”

  Lorenzo smiled at his little brother. “Who said you weren’t a

  poet?”

  Returning to his room that night, Lorenzo wept at the loss of their beautiful little sister. As Angelo always prodded him, Lorenzo used his pain to inspire a poem, which would become a favorite of the Tuscan people, “O Chiara Stella,” Oh Beloved Star.

  Simonetta was a piece of heaven now.

  The funeral of Simonetta Cattaneo de Vespucci was an elaborate and somber occasion. Her casket was carried from her home to the church in Ognissanti by the Vespucci and Medici men who loved her. Thousands turned out in the city of Florence to mourn her. Perhaps the enormous attendance at her funeral was an indication that at the end of her all-too-short life, the people of Florence did indeed understand that they had lost a unique treasure.

  Marco Vespucci did mourn her, but he remarried quickly. His new bride was homely but sturdy, a woman of the earth with whom he could lustily mate and actively procreate. While drinking in the Tavern at Ognissanti one night, he was overheard saying, “Goddesses are to be worshipped, but they are not meant to become wives. Simonetta was never meant for me. She belonged to the world. Ultimately, she belonged to God, and he called her back home, as heaven was incomplete without her.”

  La Bella Simonetta.

  She was the most exquisite thing I have ever seen. She was the troubadour muse—perfect, untouchable, divine.

  People say that I was in love with her. Of course I was. So was everyone in the Order. Simonetta embodied love, and anyone who knew her experienced that love. But it was not something as simple as Eros would definite it. It was not a physical yearning to possess something so lovely. Simonetta moved all of us beyond that and into an understanding of the nature of the living female aspect of God on earth. I truly believe, with all my heart and soul, that Simonetta was the true incarnation of Venus. And I painted her as such.

  In Lorenzo’s garden there is a statue from ancient Rome that is called the Medici Venus. She is naked perfection, her right hand covering her breasts in part, and her left draped over her most personal female area. I used that statue as the model for Simonetta’s body, but the rest is all her: lengths of golden hair, creamy skin, copper-flecked eyes. She arises from the sea in a scallop shell, symbols of Asherah, our mother in heaven who is Beauty, and who is later known by the Greeks as Aphrodite and the Romans as Venus.

  To the left, Zephyr and Chloris blow life into her, helping her to incarnate while moving from heaven to earth. She is surrounded by touches of real gold, a reminder to the viewer that what they are seeing here, True Beauty, which is also Love, is priceless and to be treasured.

  To her right, a woman arrives to cover her with a red cloak draped in flowers. The woman is Colombina, who here represents the sister who would protect her against the harshness of the world. Though Colombina knows she is beautiful in her nakedness, she also knows that the world will not understand it and will abuse her for it, and she seeks to cloak her from the eyes of a world that does not deserve her.

  I have draped Colombina in Lorenzo’s symbol, the laurel leaves, and given her a girdle of pink carnations. Those flowers are a pun, carrying as they do the root of the word incarnation within their name.

  The Birth of Venus is my tribute not only to Simonetta but to the beautiful sisterhood that exists within the Order. It is love personified.

  I have asked to be buried at Simonetta’s feet, in the same way in which Donatello chose to spend eternity alongside Cosimo. I shall submit the request in writing to Marco Vespucci to prove that I am indeed serious. I have no doubt that even her bones will be beautiful and will inspire me into eternity.

  She was, indeed, the Unparalleled One.

  I remain,

  Alessandro di Filipepi, known as “Botticelli”

  FROM THE SECRET MEMOIRS OF SANDRO BOTTICELLI

  Florence

  present day

  “THE ARRANGEMENTS are made, Bérenger. Meet me tomorrow afternoon at two in the Palazzo Vecchio,” Vittoria informed him from her cell phone. “We will be married by the magistrate in the Sala Rossa. The Red Room. It was once Cosimo de’ Medici’s bedroom. He conceived his children there. Appropriate, no?”

  “Vittoria, why the mad rush? Why must we do this tomorrow? I need time. For the love of God, my brother is in jail and my family in chaos.”

  “I told you, Bérenger, that this is just a civil ceremony at the town hall. Just between you and me. I need to see your commitment to our son and his destiny. No one else even has to know. Yet. We will plan a society wedding that the entire world will talk about for later in the year. October is beautiful in Tuscany.”

  “Vittoria, please. I need—”

  She wasn’t listening to a word of it. “I am not going to allow you to buy me off—or attempt to take my son. We are a package, Bérenger, and you will get both of us together. Which you should be grateful for. Do you know how many men would kill to have the chance to marry me?”

  He tried another tactic. “Vittoria, I want to see you tonight, before the wedding. Just to talk. May I come over to your place? Some time after ten?”

  Vittoria was delighted by the implication of a late-night rendezvous with Bérenger in her apartment. He was finally coming around, as she knew he would. Men always did. Always.

  The time returns. That was the heretic’s favorite catchphrase, wasn’t it? It was their sickening motto that dated back eve
n beyond the anti-Christ spawn Lorenzo de’ Medici and his adulteress whore. There was once a time when her uncle, Father Girolamo, could not even utter the name of Medici without choking on his own bile, so abhorrent was

  the legacy of that family to him and his ancestors. And combating that heretical legacy was the reason this sacred confraternity had been created in the first place all those years ago in Florence, created by his namesake, Girolamo Savonarola.

  The diminutive Dominican friar came to Florence in 1490, somewhat ironically, through the invitation of Lorenzo de’ Medici himself. History was unclear as to why Lorenzo would have welcomed the fire-and-brimstone preacher, installing him at the head of the monastery in San Marco, the retreat so beloved of Cosimo de’ Medici. Savonarola’s sermons against sin and frivolity were shocking to Florentines, who were not used to having the wrath of God rain down upon them in the way that Savonarola called for it. Lorenzo would come to regret his decision as soon Savonarola would condemn the Medici as tyrants, all the while preaching the evils of art. The Madonna was painted as an overpriced whore, he shrieked, taking Botticelli to task for his elaborate and beautiful Madonna of the Magnificat. He would escalate this campaign with the infamous bonfires of the vanities, mockeries of the elaborate festival events that Florence and the Medici had once been famous for. In Savonarola’s Florence, the “festival” consisted of his followers knocking on doors and demanding items of vanity—luxury goods of any kind—to be donated to the enormous bonfire that would take place in the Piazza della Signoria. But the real treasure for Savonarola’s followers, who were called by the cowed people of Florence the Piagnoni—meaning “the snivelers”—was art and literature. Nothing fed Savonarola’s flames like paintings and poetry. These instruments of heresy had to be weeded out at any cost. And Girolamo Savonarola had been expert at destroying hundreds of pieces of art, which would be worth countless millions today.

  Good riddance to bad rubbish, Felicity thought. As it stood, too much of it had survived.

  Now that her uncle had lost his faith, it was up to Felicity to carry on the holy war against those who would continue the blasphemy started here by the Medici five hundred years earlier. She would be the one to continue Savonarola’s work. There would be a new Renaissance, to be sure, but this rebirth would not be one of Lorenzo’s heresy through the Paschal witch’s blasphemy. It would be a resurrection of the great Savonarola’s efforts to cleanse Florence of sin. She would re-create the bonfire of the vanities, beginning with the commemoration the confraternity was hosting this week in honor of the anniversary of Savonarola’s death.

  Having gained permission to create a bonfire in the courtyard behind Santa Felicita, Felicity was challenging confraternity members to gather vanity items, specifically books considered heretical and blasphemous, to feed the flames. She would supply copies of everything Maureen Paschal had ever published. She had versions in English and Italian.

  Meanwhile, the American campaign had worked brilliantly. The confraternity members here in Italy had mobilized their sister organizations in the States to attack Maureen Paschal online in every possible forum. Some were hired guns, others were merely faithful followers who were willing to do whatever it took to stamp out such blasphemy as she created. But they had been quick and effective in spreading the rumors created in Rome against Maureen—and inspiring the death threats. The death threats were the icing on the cake, the final, sweet element. When the media ran with the story that Maureen had been threatened, the confraternity’s team hit the Web again with the rumor that Maureen’s publicist had manufactured that rumor to gain more publicity and sympathy. It was a beautifully vicious circle, which appeared to be effectively chipping away at Maureen’s reputation. And it was only the beginning. There was much more to

  come.

  After Felicity’s last encounter with the blasphemer and her cohort, she was more determined than ever to step up her campaign against their godlessness. Unfortunately, the Antica Torre, where they were living in Florence, was relatively impenetrable. She was still formulating the second half of her plan, the means by which she could eliminate the blasphemy permanently—by eliminating the blasphemer.

  The time returns? she thought. You bet it does.

  Confraternity of the Holy Apparition

  Vatican City

  present day

  FATHER GIROLAMO DE PAZZI was making his final preparations for his departure to Florence. He was tired, so tired, and wanted nothing more than to stay in the sunny sanctity of Rome for the rest of his days. But there were too many pressing issues to be dealt with in Tuscany, and he could no longer sit idle when he knew so much.

  Felicity would certainly have to be dealt with, but that was not his first priority. He knew that action was about to be taken to eliminate the Buondelmonti problem, and he would need to be in Florence to deal with the repercussions. The Confraternity of the Holy Apparition had existed for nearly five hundred years, and while its public purpose was to study and celebrate visions of the Blessed Virgin Mary, it had a deeper, private purpose. The confraternity had become a rogue element operating outside the Vatican, one that made its own determinations about protecting the Church. If a threat was perceived, that threat was systematically eliminated.

  Before his stroke, Girolamo de Pazzi had been the most effective and ruthless leader of the confraternity in the last century. There was a time when signing off on the death sentence of any enemy of the Church was effortless. Protecting the faith was necessary, a holy mission that he would not abandon. And while he still believed passionately in his Church, the events of the last three years had changed him. He was no longer willing to take lives quite so quickly or easily. This was what had caused the rift between him and Felicity, indeed between Girolamo and the rest of the confraternity. He had been put out to pasture, essentially, once it was determined that he had been too soft on Maureen Paschal during the Book of Love debacle.

  He was a still a venerated elder who was worthy of respect, but he had been retired from making operational decisions for the confraternity. Still, the confraternity’s new leaders in Rome had approached him for urgent consultation on this matter of Vittoria Buondelmonti. Father Girolamo was an expert on the bloodline families, the Order, and all their secrets. Did he believe that Vittoria Buondelmonti was dangerous to the established Church? What was she proposing to do with all this public posturing about her baby? Why was the paternity of this child so important? Their intelligence underground was effective enough to understand that she posed a threat to them, but they didn’t understand the nuances of her plot.

  The report Girolamo de Pazzi gave was distressing. It appeared that there was a high-level conspiracy among several of the noble families of Europe to unite behind this child, who they claimed was a messiah—perhaps even the Second Coming of Christ—and there was a clear threat to the Church within that strategy. It appeared to be a very serious threat, as the families involved had access to a great many secrets about the origins of Christianity. They were also in possession of priceless holy relics. Forces within the confraternity had tried for hundreds of years to get their hands on the Libro Rosso and the Spear of Destiny. Their goal was to stop them from ever becoming known beyond the secret societies, to keep their authenticity from ever being proven. The Libro Rosso was the most damaging single piece of evidence against the Church’s authority that existed, whereas the Spear of Destiny held the power of victory over all opposition. Both were priceless and worth fighting for, regardless of the collateral

  damage.

  The Buondelmonti threat was real, and it was therefore determined that Vittoria and her child must be removed from the game board. Vittoria had been followed and monitored by the confraternity since she made the announcement about her son. When it became known through their advanced intelligence operations that Vittoria was meeting with Bérenger Sinclair in Florence later that night, a plan was put into action.

  They could kill three birds with one stone.


  Girolamo de Pazzi would not give the order to harm Bérenger, Vittoria, and the child. Those days were over for him. But he knew that there would always be someone within the confraternity leadership who was willing to do whatever was deemed necessary to ensure the safety of the status quo and eliminate any threat. That was what the confraternity attracted, after all: the most fanatical element, the self-appointed soldiers for Christ who would take any action they felt protected their Church.

  Vittoria Buondelmonti had gone too far, and she would die as a result, as would the baby and his father. He had no doubt of that, nor could he stop it.

  They were deemed to be an unholy trinity that threatened the Church, and they would be eradicated accordingly.

  Florence

  1477

  LORENZO SIGHED heavily and took another large gulp of the strong wine from the elegant goblet on his desk, careful not to spill any on the official document that currently absorbed his complete attention. This particular piece of parchment represented one of the most challenging diplomatic puzzles of his life.

  In his role as the head of the Medici Bank, now the most profitable and powerful banking institution in the world, Lorenzo was often petitioned to provide loans that were risky or otherwise unusual. Most often, these requests came from powerful personages: kings, cardinals, or influential merchants who knew how to wield their weight. Lorenzo had learned well by watching his grandfather handle these difficult problems masterfully. He had learned equally from witnessing his father botch these negotiations and create formidable enemies in the mishandling of these requests. Lorenzo understood that balance in such negotiations was critical. And this particular request, from no less than Francesco della Rovere, was going to be the most difficult he had ever considered.