Immortal

by Traci L. Slatton

  “Do you hear that, Isabella?” the girl asked. “You’re going to be fine after some rest. Come, I’ll wash your face and comb your hair.” The blond Isabella stood, teetering. I reached a hand out to steady her but she flinched. It would be a while before Isabella could tolerate a man’s touch, even one like me who was trying to help her. The girl braced her slim shoulder under Isabella’s good arm and they struggled off. The girl gave me a serious look over her shoulder.

  “These outrages are horrible, insupportable,” said a voice behind me.

  “Wasn’t that the point, signore?” I said softly, staring into Lorenzo de’ Medici’s brilliant black eyes. Something flashed across his face and was quickly concealed. An expression of deep compassion spread over him and he nodded his head in the direction of Isabella and the girl, who were hobbling together into a palazzo where the injured were resting.

  “This is appalling. I had no idea this would happen! The troops went berserk!”

  “You had every idea this would happen.”

  “How can you say such a thing? I am horrified! Every Florentine citizen is horrified!”

  “Yes, I imagine they are. As are all the other Florentine territories and Sixtus.”

  “Bastardo, what are you saying?” Lorenzo shouted. He strode away to where a ragged, wizened elderly man sat on a bench. The old man was curled into himself and Lorenzo, with a show of gentleness, picked up his arm to look at the sword cuts crisscrossing it. Fortunately for the old gentleman, the cuts were superficial. I knew they were painful, though, and he’d been waiting patiently for me to look at him. Lorenzo took the man’s bloodied hand in his own and clutched it to his chest. Then Lorenzo turned to the growing crowd of Volterrans.

  “My fellow Florentines and I are shocked! We profoundly regret this; words cannot say how horrible these outrages to Volterra are! I have come to make reparations!” He nodded to Tommaso Soderini, who scurried over to stand beside Lorenzo. Attending Soderini were two brawny Moorish servants straining to carry a heavy chest. Lorenzo nodded again, and Soderini opened the chest. Lorenzo brought out a gold florin. He held it up, but there was no sun to catch it, so it was just a dull yellow disk in his oddly refined hands. He looked out over the people, but they didn’t make a sound.

  “I am making restitution! I am distributing money to all who have suffered losses!” he proclaimed loudly. There wasn’t a sound among the few dozen elderly people, women, and children who stood watching him. Each one was dirty and bedraggled; most wore bloodstained clothes; many were bandaged; there were no adult men among them. Lorenzo’s black-haired head swung around as he looked into the crowd, seeking a response, but they simply surveyed him in stony silence. He tossed the florin to Soderini, who went into the crowd and handed it eagerly to a dark-haired woman with a bandage across her head. I knew what Lorenzo didn’t, that she’d lost an ear when the condottiere who wanted to rape her couldn’t get an erection and had bit it off. She was one of the lucky ones, though; her husband had survived. He had a stab wound through his thigh and it hurt him, but he’d live. As long as infection didn’t set in, he’d live. Unsmiling, unspeaking, the woman took the coin from Soderini, then looked away. Soderini motioned hurriedly to the Moorish servants. They carried over the chest and Soderini dug into it, shoved more coins at the woman, then handed out coins to everyone assembled around him. No one said a word. Lorenzo watched the scene from a distance. I went to Ginori and took off his saddle. It was the very saddle Lorenzo had given me eight years ago, expertly crafted of supple, sturdy leather and well-worked metal fittings and the finest stirrups, worth a king’s ransom, and like all beautiful things I’d ever been given, I’d taken excellent care of it.

  “Your coins won’t buy back their wholeness,” I said. I tossed the saddle onto the muddy street in front of Lorenzo. “Nor will it purchase my services.” He gazed at the saddle and then angled his face to one side, as if he were Federigo and had only one good eye to see with.

  “I heard you killed over fifty of Montrefelto’s good men,” Lorenzo said in a tone that was half envy, half reproof. His eyes went to the sword at my side in a calculating fashion. I knew he was wondering if he’d have scored as high.

  “How good can they be if they’d do this,” I sneered, with a gesture that indicated the ruined town and damaged people around me, “even if they were under orders?”

  Lorenzo nodded slowly. “You realize, my long-lived friend, I can’t protect you if you won’t place yourself under my protection.”

  “I’d rather have the devil’s protection.”

  “That’s what the Silvanos think, no? Soon they’ll have a letter in their possession to prove it.” He smiled contemptuously, and I knew I’d just made a bitter enemy. I didn’t care. I placed my hand on his shoulder, spoke in a low confident tone so that only he could hear me.

  “My dear friend Cosimo de’ Medici would not have done this,” I said. “He would never have stooped so low. He wouldn’t have needed to.” Lorenzo recoiled as if I’d stabbed him, which, of course, I had. Lorenzo had grown up in the looming shadow of a man who was worth two of him, a man whose genius and accomplishment Lorenzo could hope only to equal and not to better, and he knew it.

  IT WAS NIGHT and long plum shadows fell in lattices of fog around sodden, bloodstained Volterra. I was folding and refolding the saddle pad, figuring out how best to protect my testicles while I galloped a saddleless Ginori back to Florence. Bouncing around unprotected on the withers of a horse was hard on a man. I’d heard of gypsies and men from the Far East who rode bareback all the time; perhaps if one was born and suckled in a saddle as they were, it was an easy feat.

  “Maddalena,” said a husky, lyrical voice behind me.

  “What?” I turned and the curving white light from torches held in brass fittings on the stone walls illuminated the face of the young girl whose unusual beauty had captivated me.

  “That’s me, Maddalena.” She smiled and held up a large saddle with a quaint old-fashioned shape. I stared at the saddle in bemusement. She thrust it at me. “It’s heavy!”

  “This is for me?” I asked, clutching the saddle and feeling foolish.

  “They said you gave your saddle to Signore Medici. I thought you’d need one. This was Papa’s saddle. He won’t need it anymore.” She sighed. I gave her a sharp look, saw that she was sad but not distraught. I was glad to see it; I have always approved of people who could bear their suffering with grace. It’s an important skill in this world where the cruel God snickers at pain that the good God allows. I placed the saddle on Ginori, scooted it into position, and hooked the girth.

  “Why did you give your saddle to the great lord?” asked Maddalena.

  “For reasons of my own,” I said vaguely.

  “You’re not very trusting, are you?”

  “I trust that people will be who they are.”

  “Do they have a choice? How come you didn’t tell me your name? That’s what you’re supposed to do when someone introduces herself to you!” She sounded indignant and I couldn’t help but smile at her, though I knew I should discourage her interest. I knew that I must seem like a hero to this young girl whom I’d saved from a soldier’s blade.

  “I’m—”

  “Luca Bastardo,” she said. “There’ll be a lot of bastards running around Volterra next year. Maybe they’ll all call themselves ‘Bastardo’ and you’ll have a big family!” A lilt quickened her voice and she fluttered her lashes; she was teasing me.

  “Just what I always wanted,” I responded, rolling my eyes. Then I sobered. “Perhaps the midwives can prevent unnecessary births.”

  “I hope so. I don’t think they can help me. I’m too young to bear a child, but a woman told me I might not be able to have one at all after what happened.” Her voice was neutral, but there was an undertone of anxiety in it. “I always wanted to have children, and I’m not so far from being old enough for a husband, some girls get married at fourteen and that’s only in one year for me! We
ll, no man would marry me now, but if one did…”

  I swung myself up into the saddle. “You’ll find a husband. You’ll have children.”

  She gave me an intent look. “How do you know that?”

  “I’ve always found that the inner mind determines what happens to the body,” I said, reining in Ginori, who pranced with desire to return home. “Someone who is ready to die, will. Someone who intends to live, will. Someone who intends to live fully, will. It’s not complex.”

  “I hope you’re right,” she said shyly. Then she giggled. “I know I’ll get a husband because I took a bunch of gold florins from Signore Medici and I’m going to save them for my dowry!” She covered her mouth with her small, fine-boned hand as if she’d said something naughty, reminding me again of how young she was. Young but practical; it was clever of her to save for her dowry. Marriage was everything for a woman. She stroked Ginori’s neck and looked up. “Will you come back to Volterra, Luca Bastardo?” She stretched the syllables of my name out into a song, seductively, the way a grown woman would if she wanted a man. I swallowed, Maddalena saw my response, and she added flirtatiously, “I would like it if you did!”

  “That’s Signore Bastardo to you, ragazza,” I said, struggling not to be seduced by her too-youthful charm. But I was drawn in by her, I couldn’t help it, and as I steered Ginori away from her and toward the town gate, I smiled back at the lovely Maddalena. “Save your dowry for ten years, I just might come back!”

  AS I APPROACHED THE WALLS OF FLORENCE by the milky first light, I spied a figure moving down the road among the farmers’ carts headed for city markets. The figure was flame-shaped, indigo and orange in the wan light of dawn. Yet there was something bulky and familiar about it, about the man leading a gray donkey that kept stopping to graze. I touched my heels to Ginori’s flanks and cantered up beside the man. The donkey bared its yellow teeth and brayed at us.

  “I can’t believe that beast’s not dead, Wanderer,” I called down.

  “Why should he be?” said the Wanderer, his white teeth carving a smile in the thicket of his beard. “You think we’re the only creatures lucky enough to stave off the inevitable?”

  “My question is, is it our good luck or our bad luck?” I teased, overjoyed to see him, and at this very moment, when I was heartsick about Volterra.

  “Isn’t that the eternal question?” he hollered. I dismounted and we hugged, laughing and pounding each other on the back. He stepped back and looked at me. “The wolf is becoming a man. You’re finally showing some years, Bastardo. There are a few good lines under your eyes.”

  “It’s not the years, it’s the struggle.” I grimaced. I took Ginori’s lead rope and walked alongside him. I could smell the donkey all the way over on the other side of the Wanderer; I’d forgotten how the animal stank. I shook my head. “What brings you back to Florence?”

  “The question is, what brings you back? What are you going to do now that you’ve pissed off your protector?” he said, running his gnarled fingers through his bushy beard.

  “How do you always know what’s going on? Where do you get your information?”

  “The whole world is brimming with information, if you’re willing to listen,” he said with a twinkle in his eyes. “I told you this before: ‘In the beginning, when the King’s will began to take effect, He engraved signs into the heavenly sphere.’ There are no secrets, just men not willing to pay attention to the signs around them!”

  “Let me guess, you have a few ideas about what I should be doing,” I said wearily.

  “Are you satisfied with your education? You never pursued what you started with my old friend Geber,” he said. “Now he’s transmigrated into the soul of your artistic young friend—”

  “I don’t believe in that, I told you once before!” I said, with some impatience.

  The Wanderer shrugged. “How else do you explain so many things?”

  “Jokes for some laughing God!”

  “You and God’s laughter.” He shook his head. “One day you’ll become reconciled to God, and find not laughter, but a heart of living song…. It’s simple fact that the soul’s presence in the body means it hasn’t completed its work, and that it must transmigrate until the work is finished, until all is repaired, until it has wound through every branch of the tree of life. The work of creation is slowly refining the mirror of existence into a higher and more subtle state in order to reflect in every man a more lucid image of God. Then the soul can return to its source.”

  “You and Marsilio Ficino with your talk about souls emanating out of the Godhead,” I said. “What use is it? Does it make our lives better? Does it prevent war, rape, looting, murder, the death of innocents? Ficino just gets depressed and has to listen to music to come out of it!”

  “I like the sound of this Ficino.” The Wanderer smiled. “He has potential.”

  “You should meet him, definitely.”

  “That sounds like an invitation; I accept. You have a big house in Florence, yes? But no wife yet. Donkey and I will keep you company. We’ll help you set up a workshop like Geber’s, so you can get back into your circles of instruction.” The Wanderer winked.

  “Just what I wanted, guests,” I grumbled, but I wasn’t displeased. I had to fill my time some way, now that I had quit Lorenzo de’ Medici’s service. I thought of sharp-tongued Geber, and the months I’d spent with him as he slowly succumbed to the plague. He’d died without teaching me what I really wanted to know: how to transmute lead into gold. That would be a worthy skill, especially now, with Lorenzo angry at me. There was no telling if my money, saved so carefully over so many years, would be safe at the Medici bank, or if Lorenzo would find a way to confiscate it as punishment. Lorenzo was vindictive; Volterra had proven that. I said thoughtfully, “Alchemy might hold some interest for me now.”

  “The transformation I am talking about is not one of simple matter,” said the Wanderer, straightening his torn gray lucco. “Though what is base can be transformed when work and worship are one. It all starts with the heart, with learning to submit the heart.”

  “I don’t like submission, but I understand work.”

  “Start where you are.” He shrugged. “That’s where the doors will open.”

  SO I RETURNED TO MY PALAZZO in Florence and began a new phase of my life with two houseguests, the Wanderer and his donkey, though the latter lived in the stable. The Wanderer helped me turn a spare room into a workshop like Geber’s. He would disappear after breakfast and return for dinner with items he’d discovered in a pawnshop or in the garbage behind an apothecary: beakers, a still, an alembic, flasks, a rare ebony mortar one day and a good alabaster pestle the next. I scoured the markets and met with merchants and purveyors of rare goods for other items: parchment, vials of dye and ink, clay, various powders and elixirs, waxes and pigments and oils, salts and minerals, the desiccated bodies of animals and insects, feathers, seashells, and eggs from a wide variety of species of birds and lizards. I accumulated samples of sulfur, mercury, and vitriol, indeed, of all seven of the alchemical metals: lead, iron, tin, quicksilver, copper, silver, and gold. I also looked for useful books. I didn’t start experimenting with how to turn lead into gold, but I made everything ready for the quest.

  A few months into my preparations, I came home from the market with a vial of frankincense. I was pleased to have obtained this rare and precious substance, and eager to show it to the Wanderer. I ran up to the workshop, and there was the Wanderer beside a tall, bearded, auburn-haired youth, both of them perusing a book spread out on the table.

  “I didn’t know you had company,” I said, and both men looked up. I looked into the face of the bearded young man, and then I cried, “Leonardo!”

  He seemed to leap over the table to embrace me, and I couldn’t believe how he’d matured. He was truly a man now, at twenty. He laughed. “Professore mio, it took you long enough to recognize me! And here I have your face in my mind always!”

  “How ar
e you? What are you doing here? How is your mother?” I stepped back from him but held on to his arm through his sleeve, I was so delighted to see him. He wore a luxurious lucco of fine orange silk with silver embroidering, and he had attached well-puffed-up sleeves with black and yellow stripes. I noted that his lucco was much shorter and tighter than fashion allowed and figured that he was still up to his old tricks, coaxing Caterina into tailoring for him and then cutting the hemlines.

  “Mama is well, she sends her love. And I’ve been admitted to the Company of St. Luke, the guild of apothecaries, physicians, and artists,” he said. “I’ve more freedom now. I thought I’d come see you. I heard your name mentioned the other day, in a way I didn’t like, by our old friend Lorenzo de’ Medici.”

  “That man is no friend of mine.”

  “That explains it,” Leonardo said, gazing into my eyes. “I was at Verrocchio’s and Lorenzo came in. I was working on an angel for one of Verrocchio’s paintings. He talked to Soderini, who was with him. They must have known I could hear them.” He paused, arching a golden-brown eyebrow at me to see if I took in the implications, and I nodded. He went on, “Lorenzo spoke of recalling someone to Florence. Someone who didn’t like you.”

  So that’s how it would play out, exactly as I’d thought. Lorenzo wouldn’t do anything to me himself; he’d call back the Silvano clan, and they’d take care of matters for him. I affected a neutral voice and asked Leonardo, “How did the angel come out?”

  “Fine.” He smiled and looked away, as if he were pleased and trying not to crow. He had grown not only tall, but well muscled, with wide shoulders and arms that looked powerful even in the extravagant sleeves he favored. He walked back over to the table and stood next to the Wanderer.

  “I heard the angel was ravishing. Verrocchio swore he’d never paint again, when he saw the angel,” said the Wanderer, gesturing in the air with his thick fingers.

  “He’s just being dramatic.” Leonardo waved away the Wanderer’s words. “Luca, I brought you a gift. And when I arrived, your friend was here.” He indicated the Wanderer, who waggled his bushy black-and-white eyebrows. Leonardo laughed. “I feel like I’ve met him somewhere; did you introduce us when you were my teacher?”