Immortal

by Traci L. Slatton

  “You mean you eavesdropped on another conversation that didn’t concern you.”

  Leonardo dimpled. “You’re richer than Papa, you don’t need the money he gives you.”

  “It’s the principle of the thing,” I insisted. “A man should be paid for his hard work.”

  “I’m hard work?” Leonardo threw his head back and his laughter floated out around us like music. “We spent yesterday swimming in the water hole up on Monte Albano. We spent the day before climbing trees and throwing acorns at people who came to the well!”

  “Sure, I’m your nanny.” I shrugged. “I should be paid for it!”

  “You’re not my nanny, you’re my professore, and I think, since you’re rich, and you’re only getting richer, that you should buy me things. Like a notebook. You promised you’d buy me a notebook; when are you going to do that?”

  “Soon,” I said. “Maybe when you finish the buckler.” I gave him a sunny smile and he made a face at me. He held up a garden snake.

  “Is this scary?”

  “I’m quivering with fear,” I said dryly, at which Leonardo tossed the snake at me. I caught it with one hand, and just like that, watching the serpent’s green-and-brown body writhe into strange etheric shapes against the yellow sunlight, I knew that death, my old familiar friend, was paying me a visit. “That horseman is coming for me,” I said quietly. I tossed the snake back to the boy and stood up and dusted myself off. Leonardo scrambled up out of the vines, picked the grapes from his ear, and pulled on the emerald-green lucco which he’d shortened himself so that it reached only to his waist. We waited as the horse cantered toward us. It was the Moorish servant from the Medici villa at Careggi.

  “Come quickly,” he said, panting slightly. “Lord Cosimo has died.”

  By nightfall Leonardo and I arrived at the villa. I dismounted and handed my stalwart horse Ginori to a servant, leaving Leonardo to jump off and trip along after me. I was ushered immediately into Cosimo’s chambers, where somber men and women were gathered. Marsilio Ficino rushed over to embrace me.

  “Luca, he’s been take-taken to-to the Lord,” Ficino stammered tearfully. “But he has gone with gr-grace. A few days ago, Cosimo got out of bed, dressed, and made his con-confession to the Prior of San Lorenzo.” The tiny man laid his face on my chest and sobbed raggedly. I patted his back gingerly.

  “Then Nonno had Mass said,” Lorenzo added, approaching us. The boy’s craggy face was set in harsh lines, his brilliant eyes reddened and bleary. “Papa told us that he made all the responses as if he were perfectly well.”

  “There was never such a-a leader! A man so in touch with his divine, immortal soul, whence he drew his power and his wisdom! Cosimo must be-be with his beloved Cosimino and his son Giovanni now,” Ficino stammered and sniffled, as I peeled him off me. He smeared at his face with his arm, then lifted his agonized face to me. “Luca, you must speak some comforting words to Contessina, she hasn’t stopped weeping.”

  “Grandmother will keep for a few moments,” Lorenzo said grimly. “I must speak with Luca.” He led me out into the garden, which nestled behind a high wall. “Nonno’s beloved architect Michelozzo couldn’t restructure the entire villa to reflect the new principles he loved: orderliness, classical detailing, symmetry, a mass that is”—Lorenzo paused, touching his incongruously elegant finger to his large flattened nose—“inconspicuously conspicuous, as the palazzo on Via Larga is. That is a fitting description of Nonno, yes?”

  “Yes.” I smiled. “He was always more than his modest exterior suggested.”

  “He said you were a friend,” Lorenzo said. “He told me things about you which Papa himself doesn’t know.” We walked in the dusk under myrtle, poplar, oak, and citrus trees, alongside full, blooming flowers, wild orchids and roses and lavender and well-tended lilies.

  “There’s more to the story of Nonno making his confession,” Lorenzo said finally. “He went about asking pardon of people for wrongs he’d done them.” Lorenzo paused, looking at me. I said nothing. Lorenzo snapped, “You know as well as I do that there are too many people hurt by him for him to obtain forgiveness from all of them!”

  “Your grandfather exalted his friends and crushed his enemies.”

  “Exactly. Things will be difficult now.” Lorenzo pulled a plum from a tree and took a voracious bite before continuing. “The Medicis’ enemies will see weakness and want to strike at us. There must be plots afoot already. I cannot let the house of Medici be taken down! I must live up to Nonno and his legacy, protect what he built!”

  “Your father will not retain power for long,” I agreed. “He has not the health nor the stomach for it. He’ll be lucky to survive five years in power.”

  “Don’t say those things!” Lorenzo barked. He tossed the plum pit, then ran his long fingers through his black hair. “I love Papa. But it’s true. I don’t know if he has the strength to respond decisively when the strike against us comes. We need our friends more than ever now, Luca Bastardo!” He laid his hands on my shoulders, swinging me around to look at him.

  “I have been and ever will be a friend to the Medicis,” I said, meeting Lorenzo’s eyes squarely. Abruptly he released me.

  “Good. Here’s what I need you to do: wander around Florence and listen for plots against us. Socialize, mingle freely.”

  “I try to avoid that, given my history.”

  “I sent Pietro Silvano out of Florence on business, and I’m making arrangements to buy orders in the Church for two of the young men in the family. The Silvanos will be dispersed. It won’t be long before I obtain the letter that you fear; I employ some men who are skilled burglars. You will be protected from the Confraternity of the Red Feather, Luca Bastardo.”

  “I would like to have that letter in my possession,” I said grimly.

  Lorenzo smiled and looked away, and I guessed that he wasn’t about to turn it over to me. The leverage was too important to him. He said, “You and I will meet discreetly. I’ll feign some coolness, some distance from you. Nothing overt, but people will think I’ve some small displeasure with you. It’ll make you seem trustworthy to those who plot against us.”

  “Sending me into the front line again to draw out the opposition, Lorenzo?”

  “You won’t get clobbered this time.” He smiled. “If you do, you’re a survivor, you’ll be fine. But you’ll be even more of a hero!”

  “Let’s go back in,” I said wearily, knowing that I’d let myself in for danger and intrigue by traveling down this road of an alliance with Lorenzo de’ Medici. “I’d like to pay my respects to your grandfather’s body and offer condolences to your grandmother and father.”

  We walked in silence back into the villa. When we entered Cosimo’s chambers, a sad sweet song greeted our ears. Someone was playing the lute and singing, with such haunting sorrow communicated in the lyrical timbre of voice that everyone in the room wept. I looked through the milling mourners, and, of course, it was Leonardo. He stood near Cosimo’s bed, where the body lay in state. Leonardo held a lyre and sang with his eyes closed, his entire being thrumming with loss and love, which are inseparable, and dog us as long as we live on earth.

  Cosimo de’ Medici was buried with as little pomp as the city could be persuaded to show him, in accordance with his wishes. He was interred among a huge, solemn assembly of fellow Florentines before the high altar of the church of San Lorenzo, the Medici church. The plain slab over Cosimo’s tomb carried his name and the inscription Pater Patriae, father of his country. I remembered him best as a somber boy with big dreams, all of which had come true.

  I BEGAN A NEW LIFE IN TUSCANY. It was a sweet life and for a time, the two Gods seemed to maintain a truce, keeping a peace in the battlefield of my life. Caterina gave generously of herself and asked little, which made things even sweeter. Early on I inquired about her Cathar connection. We lay together in the room I kept at the inn for this purpose, which seemed safer from Leonardo’s incursions, or Ser Piero’s for that matter
, than her room. I was running my fingers along her beautifully shaped back, smiling to imagine her as a child playing happily in Anchiano, when I remembered what Leonardo had told me about her ancestry.

  “Caterina, is it true that you are descended from Cathars?” I asked.

  She lifted her head so that her blond curls swept over the pillow. “You’ve been talking to my son.” I nodded. She rolled onto her side to face me. “It’s a private matter.”

  “My parents traveled in the company of Cathars, or so the story goes,” I said, stroking her white shoulders, which were rounded with muscles from lifting heavy trays at the tavern.

  “Really?” she asked, propping her head up on her palm. “What do you know of Cathars?”

  “They were mystical Christians from Christ’s time who wandered, eventually settling in the Languedoc, where they practiced charity and purity. They were slaughtered by the Pope.”

  “The siege of Montségur.” She sighed. “The Pope’s troops burned alive more than two hundred Cathars. But some survived and fled. My ancestor, for one. Those few tried to keep the old knowledge, the old lineage alive, to retain the old tolerance and charity.”

  “I heard that Jews were among them at one time.”

  “That’s true, although we saw the creation differently,” she said. “We believe in a good God who is pure spirit and a lesser God, a blind and deluded God, who created the earth. For us, the Hebrew God Jehovah was a fool, and the Serpent was a benefactor who taught Eve the truth about spirit and matter. Eve was the teacher of her children, of all humanity.”

  “If there were not two Gods, why would there be suffering, disease, betrayal, murder, and cruelty in the world?” I said. “There must be some truth to the Cathar beliefs.”

  “This world is full of pain, Luca mio.” She nodded. “But I often wonder about two Gods. I think that’s too crude an understanding. I think maybe there’s the God we all know about from the Bible, who is jealous, who is a master and a king and a creator and a judge, and then there’s a deeper understanding of God as the source of all being.”

  “Most people stop with the first God,” I said.

  “Yes,” she said, laying her beautiful cheekbone down onto her hand. “But perhaps that’s just an image of God, not really God.”

  “The Church would not like your interpretation,” I said, stroking her soft hair. “Bishops claim to rule the world in God’s place, by means of the same hierarchy through which God rules the earth from heaven. If people stopped accepting God as a king, they would stop accepting the authority of the clergy, who are the king’s representatives on earth. They burn those who question their authority, their order.”

  “I keep my thoughts to myself.” She smiled. “I’ve told no one except my son the tales of my people. But I want the tales preserved. They go back even before Christ. We’ve always been the keepers of secrets, since the beginning of the world. For us, Christ was the fulfillment not just of the prophecies of the Hebrews, but of all the old secret traditions that spoke of the divine spark. The spark that is lit by that Source that I think is God. Christ came to reawaken man to the knowledge of that spark, like a star, trapped within people since Adam’s time. Christ was an incarnation of Eve’s son Seth, who fathered a race of people with unusually long life spans.”

  I sat bolt upright in bed. “Unusually long life spans?”

  “Luca mio, have I startled you?” She caressed my thigh. “It’s an ancient tradition of my people. We speak of these Sethians who were gifted with lives that last centuries.”

  “Do they carry the mark of heresy on their chest?” I asked.

  “Calm yourself, caro. They don’t have any mark on their chest, that’s a silly rumor spread by the Church, like the superstition that Jews have horns. The Church spreads ridiculous tales about things it doesn’t understand, or that it fears! But perhaps this rumor came about because Melchizedek the priest, who was a Sethian, bore a mark in the shape of a sun on his chest. He also possessed the robes of Adam, and handed them down to Abraham, who paid tithes to him.”

  “What happened to this Melchizedek?” I exclaimed. “Were there others like him?”

  “Peace, Luca.” Caterina sat up and moved around behind me to massage my shoulders. “I don’t know much more. The old tales are incomplete among my family.”

  “I’m peaceful! Don’t you know anything else about these long-lived people?” I pleaded.

  She pressed her warm, soft breasts into my back, embracing me. Her sweet breath moved along my cheek. She said softly, “One other thing, caro. This Melchizedek could travel in special ways. He could move through time and space with his mind to see anything.”

  I LIVED FOR TWO YEARS IN ANCHIANO. Inspired anew by Caterina’s Cathar tales, and reassured by her that Sethians did not bear marks on their chest, I took up again the practice of sending out hired agents to seek information about my parents. I was hopeful that the woman from the marketplace whom Silvano and others had seen was my mother, and perhaps someone still knew something, even from so long ago: a scrap of a family tale, a legend of an unusual babe, an alchemist who’d baptized a child with magic, anything. It seemed logical that my parents and I were related to this Melchizedek, and that my parents shared my longevity and hardiness. My inquiries were vaguely worded but designed to elicit the attention of secret Cathars or people with peculiar longevity. There was no response, as if I had no antecedents but had been germinated on the streets of Florence, the product of its gray stones coupling with the river Arno.

  Periodically dreams perturbed my sleep. I never saw the face of the woman from my vision, but I yearned for her. I could even smell her, a fresh delicate scent of lilacs on a spring morning and lemons and things that were white, like clear light and mild clouds. It was as if I already knew her from choosing her during the vision of the philosopher’s stone, and now I missed her. It was a secret lovesickness for a woman I hadn’t met yet. It infected me even though I cared deeply for Caterina. I reflected on what Caterina had said about the secret song no one else could hear and on what Leonardo had said about my not being ready for love, which echoed the Wanderer’s question to me when I left Bosa decades ago: Was I saving my heart or protecting it? If I was protecting my heart, was that why I hadn’t yet met her? How could I ready myself for her? I couldn’t answer these questions, so I busied myself, practicing with my sword and racing Ginori for hours all over the Tuscan countryside. Mostly I tutored my young charge, Leonardo, son of Ser Piero.

  Leonardo eventually finished the buckler, painting on it a wondrous and horrifying creature emerging from a dark cleft in a rock. It belched forth venom from its open throat and fire from its eyes and poisonous smoke from its nostrils in gruesome fashion. When Leonardo presented it to Ser Piero, on an easel in a shaded part of his room, it looked like the fearsome creature was springing out of the wall. Ser Piero jumped and shrieked. Leonardo was delighted. Ser Piero wiped his brow and praised his son lavishly, going so far as to clap me on the shoulder and tell me that I was doing a good job with the boy.

  “I stay out of his way and let him teach himself,” I told Ser Piero honestly. “Your son is a great genius who’s ready for better teachers than me.” Ser Piero’s eyes narrowed as he took in what I was saying. He was a tall, stately-looking man, strong and with a quick mind one would call canny or shrewd, rather than intellectual. He grasped the import of my words immediately.

  Leonardo saw his father’s mind working and ran over to lay his hand on his father’s arm. “Not yet, Papa! I like my professore. I have more to explore here!”

  “You do have great talent,” Ser Piero said, picking up the buckler. He examined it closely, smiling. Ser Piero was, like all good Florentines, mercenary at heart, and I saw numbers being calculated in his head. Whatever his former plans for the buckler were, he now planned to sell it. I decided to send an agent to purchase it from him.

  “I can go to Florence when I’m sixteen,” Leonardo said hastily. “I’m still learni
ng so much from Luca! Besides, he’s much cheaper than any master in Florence will be!”

  “Very well, since you want to stay.” Ser Piero nodded, pursing his lips. “Besides, I don’t want your pretty mama to miss you too much!” He winked at me and I struggled to keep my face straight. It was well known in Anchiano that Ser Piero, with one barren wife after another, had great fondness for lovely Caterina, who’d produced this extraordinary son for him. He still visited her; I’d been forced to clamber out her window on a few occasions, just in the nick of time, with my camicia and shoes tumbling down after me.

  So Leonardo continued in Anchiano, under what was laughably called my tutelage, but which was really his own program of discovery into all things natural. He was obsessed with flying, and like Icarus made wings for himself out of different materials: wood, animal bones, wax, parchment, leather pasted over with real feathers. More than once I rescued him from a cliff moments before he was to leap. I bought him a notebook, as promised, and he filled it with drawings and ideas, writing in the small backward script that he claimed was magical. Here, now, in this small cell, awaiting my execution, I can see what halcyon days those were. I lived with Leonardo the boyhood I’d never been allowed to have.

  At the same time, I was insinuated into Lorenzo de’ Medici’s affairs. At only fifteen years old, he was entrusted with daunting responsibilities. He was already building a core group of intimates and advisers he could trust. He was dispatched on diplomatic missions to meet Federigo, the son of King Ferrante of Naples; to Milan, to represent the Medici at the marriage of King Ferrante’s elder son to Francesco Sforza’s daughter, Ippolita; to Venice to meet with the Doge; to Naples to see the king himself. On most missions, Lorenzo sent me ahead for reconnaissance. I was to take the pulse of the place and to listen to the gossip on the street. I knew how to blend in, to joke with cobblers and beggars and lords, and to flirt with ladies’ maids, who always had the best information.