“I have a little brother named Lorenzo. I am Cosimo,” the boy told him, sounding at once both lofty and sensible, a neat trick.
“I’m Luca Bastardo,” I said. “Are you an artist, Lorenzo, to be so sensitive to beauty?”
“I’m a goldsmith, but, ah, I also paint,” he said modestly, his round face coloring. “It’s my dream to create a set of sculpted doors to rival Pisano’s and add to the luster of Florence!”
“What would you do?” I asked. “What scenes?”
“Whatever was required.” He waved off my question. “It’s not what I would do, so much as how. You see how much stillness there is in Pisano’s work; I would make exuberant figures, with life spilling out of them! I would fill the space and yet make the space an important compositional element….” He stood in front of the plain doors, gesticulating as if he had created his own set of bronze doors. It was a trick of light, but for a moment, I could almost see Lorenzo’s doors: twenty-eight panels, with the first panel on the top row showing a masterful Jesus carrying the cross…. Then I blinked, and the image was gone.
“Perhaps you will execute these doors,” I mused, “since you have such ideas for them.”
He chuckled. “I am an unknown goldsmith. If anyone gets a commission to do these doors, it will be some famed master artist!”
“You never know what life has in store. Powerful dreams have a way of coming true.” I shrugged. “Perhaps there will be a competition for the commission, and you’ll win.”
“A competition, I like that!” Cosimo cried, placing his hands on his hips and thrusting his chest out as if he were a grown man. “My father has close friends in the Calimala guild that maintains the Baptistery, I’ll talk to him about it!”
Lorenzo rubbed his thin hair. “A commission, now? With Milan barking like a rabid dog at our gates, and the Black Death murdering our citizens? Would the guild spend the money?”
“Maybe not right away,” Cosimo said thoughtfully. “But I will mention it to my father for later. He listens to me, you know.”
“I’m sure he does,” Lorenzo said, without a trace of mockery. Cosimo had that effect on people; though a child, he possessed a reserve that caused them to take him seriously. In later years, I was to see him exercise his unique gravity even more effectively as an adult.
“Art in Florence has always been a matter of civic pride,” I added. “The money offered by the Calimala guild would be well spent invigorating the city in the face of these troubles.”
“This is so, art is the soul of Florence,” Lorenzo said.
“Art and money,” I corrected him, and he gave me a sardonic grin that I returned.
“Art and money and the people of Florence,” Cosimo corrected us both.
“Wisdom out of the mouths of babes…. I must return to my workshop. People want necklaces even when they are growing bubboni.” Lorenzo sighed. “To impress their neighbors from their caskets, I suppose.”
“Don’t forget your dream, Lorenzo….”
“Ghiberti. Lorenzo Ghiberti.” He bowed in courtly fashion, then set off toward the Arno.
“I like him, Luca. I want him to make the doors, I just know he will make them as beautiful as the gates of paradise!” Cosimo gave me an intense look. “One day I will rule Florence,” he said, in the sure voice of a man making a vow. “When I do, I will bring the best artists here! You believe me, don’t you, Luca, that I will rule Florence?” the boy asked fiercely. “I know I look on the outside like a skinny boy. But you can tell, can’t you, that I have something special inside me? What’s on the outside is the least of what people have. It’s the qualities inside us that really matter!”
Giotto’s words from long ago came back to me. How had I forgotten the first thing ever taught me by Master Giotto, the thing that had changed and preserved my life a thousand times?
“‘What’s inside you is the gate to everything. It’s what you become, what you make of your life,’” I agreed, repeating Giotto’s words as if waking.
“Exactly!” Cosimo cried. “You understand! So you believe me when I say I will rule Florence and make her greater than ever?”
The boy’s eyes were so filled with luminous conviction that something in my heart melted. Yes, with such precocious wisdom, this boy would rule Florence. I knelt beside him in a posture of fealty. I stared carefully into his sallow young face, so that he would know I spoke honestly. His features plucked at my memory, and the architecture of my mind moved like glass shards falling. I had a flashback to Geber the alchemist and the night of the philosopher’s stone. After seeing myself dead, when time winged forward before my eyes, I saw many faces. One was of a puissant man, a ruler, who had grown out of the young Cosimo. It confirmed for me that this boy was unusual and gifted. In Petrarca’s terms, Cosimo had the aura of the elect.
“I believe you. And when you rule Florence, Cosimo, you must never forget that her beauty, her art, belongs to all Florentines, rich or poor, no matter what their class!”
“I will remember. And you will be my friend when I am ruler,” he decided. I rose, clasped my hands together at my chest, and bowed. It was not facetious. The face from my vision was Cosimo’s; I had always believed that the vision granted me by the philosopher’s stone contained truth. And there had always been destiny in Giotto’s words. All these years that my caprice had led me across the earth, I was not quite living. Now that I was back in Florence, caprice dropped away like a fluffy mantello and something else, something richer and more substantial, took its place: purpose. I was here for her. The woman from my vision. I didn’t know if I was worthy of her, but once again, I felt the unquenchable pull of that youthful longing for a wife and a love of my own. I felt as if she would walk up and greet me where I stood, by the Baptistery. I looked around for her with my heart racing. Then I caught myself and laughed. With wonder, I sensed the warms strains of divine laughter, too. I was on the path to meet her now, even if I had wandered for decades.
“Cosimo, Cosimo!” cried a voice. “Son, where have you been?” A stocky man wearing the finest green and orange lucco raced up to us. He was flanked by dozens of men: retainers, condottieri, ufficiali, and priests. Concern made his features haggard, but as he scooped the boy up into his arms, his hard features melted and his hooded eyes softened. “We were worried that you’d been kidnapped by ruffians. One of the slaves saw men grabbing you….”
“Bandits took me, but this man saved me!” Cosimo cried, hugging his father tightly. The father gave me an intense look of relief and gratitude over his son’s shoulder. “Two mean men threw me into their cart, and they were going to take me out of the city, but I bit one and jumped out of the cart and ran even though my knees hurt from jumping, and they chased me! They were very big and dirty. This man killed them, and I was so glad he did! They deserved to die because they tried to hurt me. It was scary, Papa, but I tried to be brave!”
“I’m sure you were, Cosimoletto,” the man murmured. He set the boy down and looked at me seriously. He had a substantial nose and a big chin, but was made appealing by the thoughtful stateliness which he had passed down to his son. He said, “I owe you a great debt, signore. I am Giovanni di Bicci de’ Medici. Command me, and I am your servant!”
I shook my head. “You owe me nothing. Any man would help a child in need. And your son is a brave boy, signore. But you may want to send some men to clean up the bodies, to prevent any misunderstandings. Toward my role in their deaths, that is.”
“I’ll make sure you aren’t hassled for the service you have done me and my son,” he said, and his sharp eyes narrowed. “There’s something familiar about you. May I ask your name?”
“Papa, let’s walk a bit,” Cosimo said in his high, fine voice. He looked purposefully at all the men within earshot. They were a large group, murmuring with excitement, waiting with sycophantic eagerness to congratulate the father upon his son’s safe return. Then Cosimo looked back at his father. Tacit understanding passed between them, and
the father took his son’s hand and clasped it tightly in his own.
“Come, signore, let’s walk with my son,” he said. He held up his free hand with great majesty. “The three of us will walk!” A sibilant sound of disappointment passed through the crowd, and many hungry eyes fixed on me like sucking mouths. I pulled my mantello closer despite the warmth of this late-summer day with the sun climbing high overhead.
“This way,” Giovanni said. He held his son’s hand and led us toward the still-unfinished Santa Maria del Fiore with its eccentric pattern of green, white, and red marble rectangles and flowers. Giovanni muttered, “We must do something about setting a dome atop this enormous cathedral!” He wiped his hand over his hard-featured face. “It is not fitting that the most beautiful and honorable temple in Tuscany should stand practically in ruins!”
“A competition, Papa, to find someone who can build it,” Cosimo said. “But first a competition for new doors for the Baptistery.”
“A competition, eh, little man?” Giovanni smiled, tweaking his son’s nose. “Not a bad idea.” He turned to me. “Signore, is there some problem with your identity?”
“I like my identity just fine.”
“Papa, my friend’s name is Luca Bastardo!” Cosimo said anxiously.
Giovanni looked at me with the frown lines between his thick eyebrows deepening. “I’ve heard the name spoken in ways that would discomfit me, if I were you. But I’ve also seen the name on records for regular deposits in an account held by my family’s bank. You’re a prudent man, Bastardo, saving your money so carefully, over such a long period of time.”
“Not prudent enough to have avoided making enemies,” I said. The Wanderer’s donkey brayed loudly, refusing to move forward. I slapped its rump. The wretch snapped at me, then reluctantly moved forward. The harvest sun was warm in an endless cerulean sky, my shadow had shrunk down to a small inky puddle at my feet, and I took off my mantello, rolled it, and stuck it in the portmanteau tied on the donkey.
“The Confraternity of the Red Feather would be happy to have you,” Giovanni said unhappily. “They claim to have an old letter about you that proves you were born of heretics with special powers. Unsavory powers. Perhaps your prudence would urge you to leave the city.”
“I have been gone so long already, and I am a Florentine!”
“I myself don’t care for a society founded upon superstition and torture.” Giovanni shrugged. “There are more profitable activities for a Florentine. But the Church is well disposed toward the Red Feather. Ever since the first occurrence of the Black Death, the Church has smiled upon penitents who flagellate themselves to atone for our sins. The Confraternity of the Red Feather hopes to obtain a papal bull that will declare them an arm of the Inquisition, and give them immunity for their persecutions—just as the bull from Alexander IV a hundred and fifty years ago allowed any kind of torture for suspected heretics, as long as it was attended by at least two priests. And your name is mentioned as a favorite target!”
“I know how to hide on the streets of Florence,” I said stubbornly.
“On the streets of Florence, a florin will buy you anything, especially the whereabouts of an enemy. And you have an implacable one in Domenico Silvano and his ruthless old father, Nicolo.” Giovanni made a frustrated sound in his throat. “Is it true you’re so old, Bastardo? Our records show deposits going back at least thirty years, and yet you look like a young man! Is it possible the confraternity’s letter about you is accurate?” I met his gaze steadily, and after a while Giovanni shook his head. “Perhaps I don’t want to know, if you’re going to create a debt for me by rescuing my son and then refuse to take yourself out of harm’s way. Your parents must have been great mischief makers, to have begotten so unreasonable a son!”
“I never knew my parents, but I know that the Silvano men are bad to their core.”
“Luca’s not a bad man, Papa. He saved me, and there were two of them, and they were much bigger than him!” Cosimo said anxiously. “He didn’t use witchcraft to kill them, he was just so much more clever than they were, and he’s very fast with his dagger!”
“Oh, Cosimo.” Giovanni clutched his son’s head to his chest and closed his eyes. “I was worried about you. Under other circumstances, Bastardo, I would feel as much alarmed as puzzled by your eccentricity. But you’ve brought my son back to me unharmed…. I must urge you again to consider leaving Florence. It’s said that Domenico will soon be Gonfaloniere for a term. Florentines have long memories of their friends but even longer ones of their enemies.”
“I won’t tell him that we met if you don’t,” I said.
“Son, what do we do with this stubborn rescuer of yours?” Giovanni asked, gripping the boy’s shoulders with a show of seeking his advice. For a moment I envied the two. Giovanni had a singular son to be proud of, and Cosimo was much loved and appreciated by his father. I wondered if I would have a child with the woman from my vision, and all my old longings for a family of my own rose up in my chest like a great bird with its wings beating. I resolved not to squander the time I’d been given anymore.
“We should help him leave the city when the Red Feather comes after him, and take good care of his money, so that he will have plenty of it whenever he needs it,” Cosimo said promptly, showing again his unusual perspicacity. “Send letters to all our offices so that he can access his money wherever he goes, without questions being asked of him.”
“There you have it, Bastardo, a plan! An excellent plan, from my most excellent son! Cosimoletto, may I amend your plan to include inviting our friend Luca here to a meal? All this discussion leaves me hungry, and you must be famished after your ordeal! Luca, too, after the dirty work of dispatching ruffians. It’s the least we can do to show our gratitude!”
“Oh yes, Papa, let’s have him come for dinner!” Cosimo clapped his hands together. “He’s ever so interesting, you should hear him talk about Giotto!”
“I am honored,” I said. “Since you are so gracious, signore, I will ask you one favor….”
“Anything!” Giovanni swore.
“Stable this ass,” I said, laying the lead rope of an ill-tempered, long-lived donkey in the hand of one of the richest and most powerful men in Florence.
IT WAS EVENING when I returned to the street, and this time without the damned donkey. The sky was deepening into a royal blue with pink at the edges, like a fine mantello. My belly was full from a lavish meal of fresh green melon, ravioli in garlic broth, roast guinea fowl covered with the cinnamony red sauce known as savore sanguino, spiced veal, and sautéed leeks and beetroot. We had eaten in intimate surroundings, as the family did on ordinary occasions, at a trestle table near the open garden door, to catch the delicious breeze as afternoon stretched into evening and the light grew honeyed and tinted with lavender. We sat on the lids of chests as musicians played softly in a far corner. It was such a sweet moment, full of the laughter of Cosimo and his brother, Lorenzo, and the warm appreciation of Giovanni, with Giotto’s words ringing again in my heart, that I thought that maybe I’d been too quick to dissolve God into the evil in men’s hearts, as sugar is dissolved in hot brew. Surely, where warmth and love like this were present, so was God. One God, anyway. Perhaps my long-dead friend Geber the alchemist was right, after all. There were two Gods, a good one and an evil one. And if I had fallen under the sway of the lesser God in revering caprice and believing only in men’s capacity for evil, I could still seek out the good God, the God who laughed with tenderness instead of cruelty. There was still time for me.
Giovanni invited me to stay the night, but I didn’t want to bring trouble to his home. I told him it was enough that he hosted my donkey, and I set out again for any kind of inn that was open. If I didn’t find one, I could sleep under a bridge. I still knew how to do that. I’d slept in worse places than by the silver Arno in the last fifty years.
A birdcall sounded. It caught my ear because it was out of context: a real bird’s call wouldn’t sound at t
his time of day. It was someone whistling, communicating, trying to be discreet. It provoked a lift of the hairs on my neck and prickles on the flesh over my triceps, which tightened in anticipation of holding my sword. I kept walking, but I turned abruptly down the next street. A soft set of footsteps shuffled to my left. I walked faster, and the tempo of the accompanying steps increased. I heard another soft clomping to my right. The sky had darkened into indigo and the city’s lamps had not yet all been lit, so long fingers of purply-black shadow raked over the cobblestone streets, obscuring movement. I started to trot and to zigzag through the narrow stone streets, under stone arches that supported tall buildings and around half-built new palazzi and decayed old cottages that looked ready to be cleared for new building.
Footsteps clattered behind me, faster, closer. I turned a corner. Two shadowy cloaked figures stood halfway down the street, outlined in flaming orange light by torches set in bronze holders on the gray stone building behind them. They held unsheathed swords. I reversed direction and raced out toward the intersection. Three more men approached me from the other side. I twisted around, looking for an alley, a lane, anything. I was near the old Palazzo del Capitano del Popolo and I sprinted south past it, toward the Arno. I burst out into the piazza by the Palazzo della Signoria. There waited six cloaked figures in a semicircle. The three men chasing me closed in behind me, and two more ran in, trapping me.
“Are you the man called Luca Bastardo?” bellowed a sonorous voice in the dark.
“Who wants to know?” I asked. I reached for the dagger in its sheath at my thigh. Two men grabbed me from behind and, not bothering to handle me gently, wrested it from me. One of them unbuckled my sword belt. I was disarmed. On each side of me, a man roughly gripped my arm. More men converged on the scene from the dark surrounding streets.
“I do,” said a querulous old voice. Torchbearers lifted their flames, and when the flickering yellow light reached him, the man pushed down his hood. If I had not recognized him by his sneering, nasal voice, I would have known him instantly from his face, despite its aging. The deep seams and sags of time could not erase the prominent chin and sharp, angular nose that were so like his father’s and that repeated again on his son’s face. Nicolo Silvano grinned. “I say you are Luca Bastardo, a witch who uses black arts to defy time and death! And I have a letter from eighty years ago that identifies your parents as sorcerers who keep company with heretics!”
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