The Poet Prince

by Kathleen McGowan

  Sandro would come with new sketches for paintings, and his visits often cheered Lorenzo most of all. Sandro could still make his friend laugh harder than anyone else, and he did it effortlessly.

  Sandro had returned to Florence one evening in early April with Colombina, leaving Lorenzo in the hands of his family and Angelo. For the rest of her life, Colombina would wonder what might have happened if she or Sandro had stayed. She knew one thing: neither of them would have allowed Savonarola into Lorenzo’s room without supervision.

  In Angelo’s defense, it was a situation he could not have been prepared for. The little friar had arrived completely unannounced, and to open the door at Careggi and see Girolamo Savonarola was not something that anyone expected. The monk had traveled with three other friars from San Marco, one of whom was known by Angelo. In retrospect, this was likely part of the plan. Because Angelo had some familiarity with one of the brothers, he ushered them in quickly and submitted to their requests more readily than perhaps he should have.

  “I wish to see Lorenzo,” Savonarola said simply in his raspy voice. In person and outside the drama of the pulpit, he was far less intimidating. He was small and slightly hunched. Angelo thought if he passed him on the street, he would feel sympathy for him or place money in his cup.

  “Why?”

  “Because I hear that he is dying.”

  “He is not. He is ill, yes, but Cosimo lived many years in this state. Lorenzo will too.”

  “You dare to say you know the will of God?”

  “You say it every Sunday in the Duomo.”

  “I am God’s instrument. It is for me to do so. It is not for you, poet. But I am not here as your enemy, or as Lorenzo’s. I would show my lenience, and God’s, by offering him consolation in this time of darkness.”

  Angelo considered this for a moment, as the friars accompanying Savonarola murmured their agreement that they were here only to provide comfort and offer a gesture of peace to the Medici patriarch.

  “I believe he will want to see me,” Savonarola said. “Why don’t you ask him and see what he says.”

  Angelo nodded. If Lorenzo was indeed awake, this was the best course of action. There was nothing wrong with il Magnifico’s mind, even though his body was failing him. And if he were feeling strong enough, he might find this encounter to be very interesting in-

  deed.

  Angelo found Lorenzo awake and restless when he entered the room. “What is happening, Angelo? I sense disorder in the house.”

  “You could say that. You have a visitor. An unexpected visitor.

  Girolamo Savonarola.”

  “Really?” Lorenzo began the painful process of sitting up in his bed. “Well, by all means send him in. I am anxious to show him I am not dying.

  “Oh, and Angelo, bring us some wine, please. I cannot fail to be hospitable to my guest.”

  “I need to be alone with him.” Savonarola was insistent. “What I need to discuss with Lorenzo is a private matter regarding his soul. It is not to be witnessed by anyone but God.”

  Angelo led the little monk into Lorenzo’s bedchamber and closed the door behind him. If Lorenzo had any concerns about being alone with Savonarola, he didn’t show it.

  There would be no witnesses to exactly what happened in the room that night, precisely as Savonarola had demanded. At least, no witnesses that anyone was aware of. Students of history would argue these events into the next five hundred years, without benefit of one vital piece of information.

  Thirteen-year-old Michelangelo, forever Lorenzo’s angel, had been sketching quietly in the adjacent antechamber, separated only by a curtain. Nobody knew he was there.

  He heard everything.

  Girolamo Savonarola stormed out of the Medici villa in Careggi, signaling for his brothers to follow him quickly. He snapped over his shoulder at Angelo, “You’d best send for his doctor. And anyone else who needs to say good-bye. I told you he was dying. You were a fool to disbelieve me.”

  What no one saw as he rushed out the door to the waiting horses was the wine goblet he carried beneath his clothes, the one emblazoned with Lorenzo’s symbol of the three interlocking wedding rings.

  Lorenzo was having a convulsion. He was groaning in pain, shaking uncontrollably and unable to speak.

  Michelangelo was already ahead of them. The doctor had taken up residence in Careggi, in chambers just down the hall from Lorenzo. The boy had waited, shaking, until that horrible man was safely out of the room; he ran down the hall to fetch the doctor.

  The doctor sedated his patient to stop the convulsing and Lorenzo slept. His breathing was heavy, but even enough. Still, the prognosis was upsetting and shocking: it appeared that Lorenzo really was dying.

  Angelo sent a messenger into the city to collect Colombina and Sandro. The message said, “Do not wait until sunrise.” They did not want to make the same mistake they had with Simonetta, when nobody had the chance to say good-bye. Sadly, there was not enough time to summon the Master. He would not see Lorenzo alive again.

  Lorenzo awoke, weak and exhausted, before the sunrise. He called his children in one at a time to speak to them, delivering messages to each about their future. He included Michelangelo in this, treating him always as one of his own flesh-and-blood children. Michelangelo would never speak about this day in public to anyone, except to say two things: Lorenzo de’ Medici was my father above all else, and I will be haunted until I die by the voice of Girolamo Savonarola.

  The “twins,” Giovanni and Giulio, Lorenzo addressed together. Their destinies were entwined, and it was fitting that they heard Lorenzo’s final instructions to them in unison. Together, the boys made a pledge to their father to carry out his wishes—without flinching and without fear—in the name of the Order. They weren’t born Medici for nothing.

  The vows taken in that bedchamber would one day alter the course of the Western world.

  Once the boys had said their good-byes, exiting the chamber in tears, Angelo, Sandro, and Colombina entered Lorenzo’s room to-

  gether.

  “You are the only three people in the world whom I trust. The only three who know everything. I need you all to take a vow, here and now, that our work will continue. I do not know if the mad monk poisoned me or not. I cannot prove it. But we did drink from those glasses there, so we can see . . .” Lorenzo pointed to the table, and when he saw that there was only one goblet, he sank back in his bed.

  Sandro slammed his hand on the table and Angelo just looked sick. He would forever blame himself for allowing this to happen.

  “I will oppose him to the death, Lorenzo,” Sandro hissed.

  Lorenzo nodded. “Just be wise about it, my brother.” He smiled weakly. “Be the Medici that I have made you.”

  Colombina had no more interest in talking of Savonarola or revenge. It was clear to her that Lorenzo was dying, and she wanted only to spend his last minutes with him in peace and confessing her eternal love. But before Sandro and Angelo left them, they all joined hands and said the prayer of the Order together.

  We honor God while praying for a time

  when these teachings will be welcomed

  in peace by all people

  and there will be no more martyrs.

  “Promise me, my most beloveds. Promise me that we will all be together again when God chooses and the time returns. Meet me here, on this beautiful earth, that we may finish what we started. It is a promise we all made in heaven, so long ago, and it is a promise we must keep on earth for the future. On earth as it is in heaven. Promise.”

  “I promise,” each said in unison. Sandro and Angelo kissed Lorenzo on both cheeks, tears flowing from all three men, as they took their leave.

  “You are still the most magnificent woman who ever lived, Colombina,” he whispered to her. “I have loved you from the very first day that my eyes rested on your beauty. And now as I die, I love you more than ever, and with God as my witness, I will love you through eternity, you and only you. D
ès le début du temps, jusqu’à la fin du temps.”

  She grasped his hands. Once so strong, there was little strength in them now, just enough to clasp hers gently. Colombina lowered her head, mouth beside his, so that their breath came together as one. She whispered the translation, “From the beginning of time, to the end of time.”

  She raised his hand to her lips and kissed his fingers and began to weep. “Oh, Lorenzo, please do not leave me. Have we been wrong about God? For how can he be a God of love, when he has kept us apart for so long and now he would take you from me completely?”

  “No, no, my Colombina.” He used the little strength he had left to stroke her hair. “This is not the time to lose our faith. Faith is all we have, and we must cling to it. I do not profess to understand the trials that God has put us through, but I have faith that there is a reason for them. Perhaps it was a test, to see how strong our love could be through all things. To see if our love had the endurance of our Lord and his own beloved.”

  She stroked his sallow face and let the tears flow. “Then I believe we have passed his test, my Lorenzo.”

  “It is better this way, my dove.”

  Colombina was exhausted and agonized beyond understanding. “Don’t say so, Lorenzo. I will never see that losing you will be anything but torment for all of us.”

  “But it is.” He seemed to find a surge of strength in these final words. “In our mortal lifetimes, God has seen fit—for whatever his reasons—to keep us apart. But once I have passed from the restrictions of this world, I am quite sure that God will allow me to be with you always. You see, Colombina, we will never be apart again. Isn’t that so much better?”

  She couldn’t speak through her tears, as he continued. “I would extract the greatest promise from you, Colombina. Promise me that when the time returns, no matter where or when, that you will find me and never give up on me. Just like this time . . . you never gave up, and I gave you so many reasons to do so.”

  “No, my sweet prince. There is never a reason to give up on love. Not the kind of love that we share. It is deeper than any of the challenges that we will ever face, in any life or any time. It is eternal, it is

  from God.”

  “You are my soul. You must promise me, Colombina. I have to know that someday, somewhere, I will hold you again.”

  “Oh, my Lorenzo, my beloved,” she whispered with soft determination, “I will love you again. I will.” Her tears blended with his.

  He was now too weak to reply, but his eyes told her everything. Very tenderly, she kissed him for the last time. It was the final moment of merging their souls through their shared breath, that he might take a part of her with him, and that she might keep a piece of him

  with her.

  He would hold her in that way until they would be together once again in the spirit or in the flesh, however God would decree it.

  Colombina walked quietly from Lorenzo’s chamber as the sun was rising in Florence. Angelo and Sandro were sitting outside the door, looking drawn and anxious. Opening her mouth to speak, she choked on the sob that shook her body and hurried from the house. She didn’t have a destination, she was just running blindly to get away from the place where Lorenzo had died. She found herself in the loggia, and there she attempted to steady herself on a great stone pillar, but there was no stone strong enough to hold her grief. She sank to the ground and let the agony of her sorrow overtake her as the first sob broke through in an unearthly scream.

  Her cries were heard throughout the valley. Pitiful and heart-wrenching wails, filled with decades of pain and lost love, they echoed through the forest of Careggi where she and Lorenzo had first met as children all those years ago.

  It was Sandro who came to console her finally, after giving her some time alone.

  “Sandro, what shall we do? How will any of us live without him? How will Florence?”

  “We will live to fulfill his vision, Colombina. As we promised.”

  “But how will any of us find the strength? Without our shepherd, we are lost sheep.”

  Sandro looked at her, not without sympathy, and yet his reply to her was forceful as he got to his knees to hold her by both shoulders. “Listen to me. I have painted you many times, and each time for a reason. As Fortitude, because your strength of purpose is unlike that of any other woman I have ever met. I have painted you as the Goddess of Love, not only because Lorenzo desired it, but because your love for him embodies all that Venus should mean to us. I painted you as Judith, because you are fearless and will flinch at no task that is given to you in the name of what you believe. And I have painted you as our Madonna, many times, in celebration of your grace. You have been a brilliant muse, little dove, precisely because you bear all those qualities. And now you must call upon all of them—your strength, your love, your faith, and your fearlessness. You must do it for yourself, for Lorenzo, and for the work we have promised to complete.”

  Colombina reached up to brush the omnipresent shock of golden hair out of Sandro’s eyes. “You are the best brother anyone could ask for, Allesandro.”

  “Le temps revient, sister. Come on, Judith. There is a giant out there who needs decapitating, and you are just the girl to do it.”

  In the early hours of April 9, 1492, as Lorenzo de Medici was extracting promises from his loved ones on his deathbed, a series of unexplainable events occurred in the city of Florence. An intense electrical storm hit, and lightning struck Giotto’s Campanile, causing chunks of stone and marble to fly from the tower and land in the center of Florence. In the midst of this melee, the two male lions who symbolized the emblem of Florence, and who had lived peacefully together beside the Piazza della Signoria for years, began to roar and pace in their pen. They attacked each other and fought viciously. Both lions were dead by morning. So was Lorenzo de’ Medici.

  The people of Florence saw these things as a terrible omen. Most were Medici supporters who feared the worst with Lorenzo gone. There was no leadership to fill his shoes, and the specter of Savonarola’s reign of terror loomed darkly over the city.

  Girolamo Savonarola, for his part, manipulated the events of April ninth in another direction, and did so masterfully.

  “God has spoken!” he roared the following Sunday. “He has struck down Lorenzo de’ Medici, the arch heretic and wicked tyrant. He has shown us his wrath and his disdain for the frivolities that Lorenzo indulged. God has shown us the evils inherent in art, in music, in any book that is not his own holy word. He has shown us with his lightning that he will take the entire Republic of Florence down, and he has killed the lions of this city as his first sacrifices. Do you wish to be his next sacrifice?”

  The little friar roared his fire from the pulpit of the packed Duomo. The faithful in attendance, full of fear, roared in response, “No!”

  “Did I not prophesy that Lorenzo would die before the seasons changed? Did I not tell you that God would no longer allow the Medici tyranny and blasphemy to continue?”

  But Savonarola did not stop with fulfilling his own prophecy. He manufactured a tale of his final minutes with Lorenzo, telling of how the heretic refused to recant on his deathbed, despite Fra Girolamo’s unselfish trek out to Careggi to offer him the comfort of absolution. Lorenzo de’ Medici remained a heretic until he drew his last breath, and he died with the heavy stains of sin on his soul. The monk had no choice but to refuse to administer last rites, as the man was an unrepentant heretic until the end.

  The message was clear: heresy leads to death. And the Medici were heretics.

  Florence

  present day

  THE SUN WAS setting over the Arno, turning the rooftops of Florence into a burnished terra-cotta mosaic. Bérenger and Maureen sat hand in hand, enjoying the view, and each other.

  “I had come here that afternoon to tell you that I would not marry Vittoria under any circumstances,” Bérenger explained. “Even if Dante was my son, even if Dante was the Second Coming as foretold in the prophecy. I had come to
the realization—with some assistance from Destino—that the most noble action I could take would be to honor love. The best example I could provide for anyone would be to have the courage to stand up for the one thing that I know to be true in my life: my love for you.”

  Maureen reached up to kiss him lightly, then said, “The time returns, but it doesn’t have to.”

  “Precisely. It is time to break that cycle, Maureen, and that is what I realized. It is time for a new Renaissance, a golden age of the twenty-first century, a rebirth of the way we think and believe and respond. It is time to be reborn through love, and love alone. By shackling myself to Vittoria I would have been perpetuating the cycle of loss and turning my back on the most perfect gift that any of us can ever have. It would have served only to increase suffering, which as we know is not what God wants from any of us. It would have been a type of mar-

  tyrdom.”

  The realization of it hit Maureen hard. She understood in a new way exactly what it was that Destino had been trying to convey to so many of his students across so much time. They said the prayer of the Order in unison:

  We honor God while praying for a time

  when these teachings will be welcomed

  in peace by all people

  and there will be no more martyrs.

  Felicity de Pazzi wrapped her hands tightly. The commemoration in honor of Savonarola’s martyrdom had gone beautifully. The confraternity crowd had been even larger than that in Rome, and the stigmata had bled perfectly and on time. The bonfire, while small, was sufficiently dramatic to destroy the books that had been accumulated. Heresy and blasphemy burned bright in the flames, urged on by the gasoline, which Felicity poured on them from a canister.