Da Vinci's Tiger

by L. M. Elliott

  I pulled away. “No, my lord. I beg your pardon. I . . . I cannot do this. My honor. My husband.”

  He laughed, but it was hoarse with desire, not the warm, amused chortle I knew so well. “Come, come, Ginevra. That is no real marriage. It was arranged, a calculated merger of families, one of convenience only.” He paused. “You and I, on the other hand, share true, heartfelt affection, our love of literature and art, great passions of the soul. Come, my dear, this is an expression of love. I promise.” He reached for me.

  I evaded him, retreating deeper into a corner behind the portrait.

  “Where is that poet who captivated me with her sonnet about the unrepentant, fiery horse pulling the chariot of her soul?” He caught me and bent me backward, his mouth against my hair as he crooned, “Let go the reins. Let that dark horse lead you.”

  The arm encircling me tightened so that I was totally enveloped. He curled my body up into his, and only my tiptoes touched the floor. If Bernardo let go, I would have fallen to the ground, but instead, given his strength, we were fused as surely as two figures in a statue. Again he kissed me, tender but insistent. I was having a hard time knowing which limbs were mine in that embrace, an even harder time making myself want to break it.

  But I wriggled free, prattling, “That poem was about my finding the wisdom to keep the two horses—one chaste, one not—working together . . . to keep me on my chosen path of virtue.” I took a deep breath to steel myself. “This is not what we agreed, my lord, or what is heralded by Plato or Ficino or . . . or . . . Lorenzo de’ Medici.”

  “Lorenzo?” Bernardo guffawed. “Do you realize how many illegitimate children he has probably sired?”

  I tried to not show my shock. “Nevertheless, Your Excellency, I know what you value in me is my loyal, virtuous heart. You had the poet Landino compare those qualities of me to Petrarch’s Laura, the most lauded lady in literature!” I quoted the last poem he had sent me, having memorized every word of it. “‘For she surpasses Laura in chastity, beauty, elegance, and even her pious character.’” I looked at Bernardo defiantly now. “Landino also wrote, ‘Mortals, learn that the beauty of the soul, not of the body, must be desired, and learn to love true grace.’ It was your commission, so surely those are your beliefs. I trust you to hold to them.”

  Bernardo considered that a moment. And then he tried another tack, ever the persuasive, clever diplomat. “Come now, Ginevra, this is not the sweet young lady I beheld at the joust, the obedient niece Bartolomeo introduced me to, the inquisitive mind I saw looking so rapturously at Donatello’s statue, the avid scholar who yearns to know the truth of life and its art.” Those blue eyes twinkled mischievously as he added, “Nor is it the woman who looked without flinching at the bronze David’s manhood.”

  Oh sweet Mother Mary, he’d seen me. Sister Margaret had always said my brazen curiosity would be the hook on which the devil would catch me.

  “Take pity on me, carissima, I have longed for you for months, commissioned poems and artwork from Florence’s most renowned studio.” He held out his arms, gesturing to Leonardo’s painting and toward the corner where Verrocchio’s sculpture stood.

  Bernardo had indeed done all that. I felt my resolve weaken, wondering how I could be so ungrateful. Certainly I’d just felt great longing as he kissed me. It was a sweet ache. Lord knows many a soul succumbed to desire and transgressed, and then afterward begged forgiveness and received absolution in the confessional. It was done all the time in Florence.

  “Yes, you see?” Bernardo seemed to read my mind and stepped toward me slowly, carefully, to not spook me as he continued his plea. “Was there ever as devoted a lover as I have been? A better champion? All Christendom will now know of you, La Bencina. You will not die, but live forever in art. Because of me.”

  It was true. “Why must you leave Florence, my lord? Why must things change?”

  Bernardo stopped. His face clouded. “I have been called back.”

  “But why? Do they need you for another ambassadorship?”

  “I am called back by the Council of Ten.”

  “The Council of Ten?” I knew nothing of Venice’s politics. They were completely different from Florence’s. Each Italian city—Florence, Venice, Milan, Naples, Ferrara—had their own government, their own armies, their own rulers. It was why they bickered endlessly and why treaties among them were so critically important.

  “I am to answer ethical questions.”

  “My lord?”

  “It seems they are not happy that I asked Lorenzo de’ Medici for loans. The question I must answer is if I compromised Venice somehow in doing so, if I neglected my city’s needs to advance my personal friendship with Lorenzo in order to obtain monies for my own household. And”—he paused for emphasis and swept his hand to point at the studio—“for these commissions.”

  And for how many gambling debts? I wondered.

  “What some of the council members fail to understand—several of them never having been diplomats themselves—is that these commissions ultimately glorify our realm, not just me personally.” He spoke with growing agitation. “My joining Lorenzo’s philosophical circle, my Platonic romance with you, brought me and therefore Venice closer to the Medici.”

  I stiffened. So Scolastica had been right. Bernardo might indeed be taken with me, want me, but clearly he recognized the political advantage of our romance as well.

  And what about me? If I was honest about my feelings? I certainly had gained social prominence through his attentions. My life had brightened, like a rosy dawn following a thick fog. But was that love? Or just infatuation?

  Bernardo scowled and spoke with sudden fury. “My honor has become suspect! Life without honor is a living death. If I ever catch the bastard who twisted and used my private affairs to poison the council against me, I’ll pay him back with my sword.” He caught me by the elbow. “And it is all your doing, La Bencina.” The term he had always used lightly, flirtatiously, he now drew out with sarcasm. “I did it for you. That gaze of yours goaded me into it.”

  “Me? What gaze?”

  “What gaze?” he repeated. “That one!” He pointed to Leonardo’s portrait. “Come, Ginevra, a truly modest woman would not look out at a man so unrelentingly—right into his soul, as well as revealing her own if the man braves entering that stare. You’re like a siren, singing a song that Odysseus couldn’t resist. Your painting betrays you. The painting I commissioned. The painting I will pay for—in more ways than one.”

  Having me by the elbow, Bernardo pulled us down to sit on a bench, crowded with drawings and small clay figures. He yanked me to him and kissed me again. But I did not feel love, or even passion, in it this time. This kiss tasted of resentment, of entitlement. Bernardo thrust his tongue hard past my lips and jammed his hand down the neckline of my bodice to grope my breasts.

  “NO!” I squirmed and tried to push him away. This was no expression of love. “Not . . . not like this.”

  He did not let go, and his mouth continued its voyage over me.

  Panicked, I squirmed backward along the bench, bumping into some of the apprentices’ little statue studies of draped clothing that had been drying on it. I reached down and grabbed one. Before Bernardo realized what I was doing, I brought it crashing down on his skull.

  “God’s wounds!” he cried, releasing me. His hand went to his head, but the figure had done little damage other than leaving a powder of crumbled plaster in his hair and a little trickle of blood along his forehead from a scratch.

  I scrambled to my feet, my hands clenched in fists. “I will not yield to you this way, signor,” I cried. “No matter how much you track me around this room. No matter how many arguments you make to convince me it is my obligation to reward you with my body. No matter what promises of fame you dangle before me.”

  He looked at me, amazed. But that quickly changed. For a few tense moments, his face darkened with wrath, his body coiled dangerously. I planted my feet firmly, anticipating
his lunging at me. I glared back, my heart pounding.

  Then, remarkably, Bernardo’s expression lightened. He began to laugh—a deep, rumbling chortle. Dusting himself off, he stood. “You are a magnificent creature, Ginevra de’ Benci. You are . . .”

  “A mountain tiger,” I finished for him.

  He cocked his head, thinking for a moment, and then nodded, smiling with that warmth that had first charmed me. “Yes, just so. Just so. Caged, perhaps, but untamed. Just like the sultan’s pet. I understand. It is in that gaze. And”—he rubbed his head—“in those claws.” He laughed again. Then he grew serious. “You know, my dear, I would not wish, nor do I need, to force myself on an unwilling woman. There are plenty who ask to undress for me.”

  There was nothing malicious in his tone, just a matter-of-fact braggadocio with a tinge of teasing that now fell flat with me. But it was also an unspoken capitulation that allowed me to speak honestly. “I was not trying to provoke anything with my gaze and this painting. I was trying to do the exact opposite. To look out so the viewer could see that I am not just what men define me as—a saint, a bargaining chip, a mark of my family’s fortunes, a political pawn, or . . . or a trophy. My own being, with my own thoughts, my own poetry, if you but look.”

  Bernardo held his hand out toward me and waited for me to take it. Gingerly, I did. “You overwhelm me, Ginevra.” He paused. “When I speak of us, I will celebrate your virtue and your great spirit. I will talk of how you guided me to my best self, my summum bonum. Surely, we are owed heaven having denied ourselves it here on earth in this moment of passion. I hope you will remember all that came before this afternoon when you speak of me.”

  “Yes,” I agreed, still not letting down my guard, but in a treaty of mutual respect, mutual debt, and a fondness that once was.

  Bernardo lifted my hand and kissed it lightly as he would do in court when introduced to a woman for the first time. “My lady,” he said, and bowed. Then Ambassador Bembo walked out of Verrocchio’s studio and out of my life.

  Or so I thought.

  24

  AFTER BERNARDO LEFT, I COLLAPSED ONTO THE BENCH, ALL the fierce energy that had emboldened me now drained away. I decided not to wait for Verrocchio’s return. I brushed myself off, straightened my dress, smoothed my hair, took several deep breaths, and went to look for Sancha. I found Leonardo in the work yard instead.

  He was sitting on a bench, leaning over clasped hands, looking at the ground. His great curly mane of hair, typically so carefully combed, was matted and tangled. His clothes were covered with grime.

  “Maestro!”

  Leonardo looked up, unsurprised, as if he had been waiting there for me.

  “Where is Master Verrocchio?”

  “Still talking with the magistrates.”

  I sat down beside him and put my hand on his arm. He looked horrible. “Are you all right?”

  He shook his head. “Are you all right?” he countered.

  I was startled by his question and the pointed way he asked it. Then I realized. “How . . . how long have you been here?”

  “A while,” he said. “Long enough.”

  I chewed on my lower lip. “So you heard?”

  “Yes. Forgive me for not helping you. I . . . I was uncertain what to do. How you might feel about his advances.”

  I withdrew my hand from his arm in embarrassment.

  “But you, Donna Ginevra, you were so resolute.”

  I sighed, relieved that Leonardo did not think I had somehow provoked Bernardo. Even though I had not done so, certainly the convent, Florence’s society, books like Alberti’s treatise on family, and priests in the pulpit said that if men acted inappropriately, a woman had incited it. I also knew that I had been lucky. Bernardo had not been drunk or egged on by other less honorable men. He had been willing to concede to my refusal. Many other men would not have.

  “We cannot tell our hearts who to love or what to feel,” I said quietly. “But we can decide whether to act on those emotions.”

  Leonardo nudged a pebble with the toe of his boot. “I know better than most how much courage and control that took.”

  I waited, wondering if he was thinking about some of his own recent choices. But if he was, he never shared that with me. Instead he talked of his mother. “I am the issue of such a moment, you know. As a servant brought from Constantinople, my mother had no choice but to concede to my father’s desires. He did free her after I was born—I give him that. And he let me have five precious years with her before taking me to his parents’ house. My mother is a good woman, devoted and generous. She always told me I could do anything, learn anything. I remember. But she made no argument when my father took me away from her.”

  I chafed at the comparison. I was neither slave nor servant. But Bernardo had certainly acted as if he had rights to me. Indeed, Florence considered all women property in some regard—belonging to our fathers, our husbands, our family. “I am so sorry she had to give you up, maestro, but it sounds like there was little she could have done. Such is the lot of women. Our fates are negotiated by men. I hope someday that will change. Perhaps our painting will help a little in that, yes?”

  He nodded but remained unmoved.

  “I am sure your mother’s heart broke at your separation. But I am also sure she hoped it would mean a better life for you—that is a mother’s dearest desire, after all. Certainly Florence has provided you that?”

  “Perhaps. It is difficult to see that from a prison cell.” Leonardo drew himself up. “Even so, I will not forget this strength of yours, Donna Ginevra. I will keep it in my heart as I paint other women. I will look for it in them.”

  “Oh, maestro, what a compliment. Thank you.” I took a deep breath. “Now we must make sure you receive your commission for your portrait.”

  “He will not pay, signora.” Leonardo’s voice was contemptuous.

  “What do you mean? The ambassador and I parted with respect. Our Platonic affections hold.”

  Leonardo raised an eyebrow. “We’ll see.”

  I was able to share Luigi’s warning to Leonardo before Sancha and Verrocchio returned. We did not discuss why Leonardo had been arrested. Just that he had been and that Luigi had passed along that the Officers of the Night sometimes employed spies to substantiate accusations that might otherwise not carry enough evidence to convict.

  Leonardo was grim. “Nothing is so much to be feared as evil report.”

  I nodded. “So be careful.”

  “You, too, signora,” he said. “Gossip will hound both of us for a while. But I have been thinking that patience protects against insults as clothes do against winter winds.”

  “Then we must learn to wear many layers,” I said with a smile.

  I walked home with Sancha along the Arno. I wanted to breathe a while before buttoning on the role of wife. The evening light was soft, the Arno placid. The late April warmth turned the water blue again, after months of the river’s currents running gray and winter-dull. White herons waded along the marshy edge. Swifts skimmed the air just above the mirrorlike waters, darting under bridges and then soaring up to take another dive and run. In the pink glow of twilight, Florence’s tightly packed tan- and mustard-colored houses brightened to a rich, warm gold. Long reflections of them and their bright terra-cotta roofs shivered in the river.

  I stopped to take it all in and raised my eyes over the city’s fortified walls and watchtowers to the hills and mountains beyond. There, clouds lay flattened out on the peaks and slopes like cats stretching themselves out along the tops of garden walls to sleep. Beyond that, the heavens. “I will lift up mine eyes unto the hills, from whence cometh my help.” Yes, I thought, exactly. A mountain tiger. Even if only in my heart, in my inner world. Nothing could change that. I smiled and felt a bit taller.

  That was when an ungodly wail seemed to rise up out of the inner city. A rider thundered past us on his way to the Ponte Vecchio and out to the countryside. Down the street several men clu
stered, talking excitedly. One of them fell to his knees.

  “What is happening?” I turned to Sancha.

  More people gathered in knots of worried conversation. A bell began to toll.

  “Hey, you there, fellow!” Sancha reached out and grabbed the arm of a liveried servant darting past us, clutching a message. “What is wrong? Why are people spreading an alarm? Are we attacked?”

  “No! Worse!” he cried. “La Bella Simonetta is dead!”

  The hysteria lasted for days. Italians came from all over to mourn the beautiful Simonetta’s untimely death from consumption. They jammed themselves through the city gates and clogged the taverns. Rumor spread that a new star was shining in the skies above Florence, and surely it was Simonetta’s spirit. Each night, dozens of people stood along the city’s walls past midnight, pointing and marveling that this beloved and beauteous young woman had climbed into the heavens alongside constellations of Orion and Hercules. The Night Watch gave up trying to enforce the city’s curfew.

  On the day of her funeral, thousands packed the streets. Simonetta’s coffin was open as it was carried to the Church of Ognissanti, so the throng could see how exquisite she remained. Some even claimed she was more beautiful in death than in life. Poet Bernardo Pulchi, brother to Lorenzo’s friend and poet Luigi, wrote a moving elegy.

  He read it out loud, shouting the words so those within earshot could hear. Simonetta, he wrote, was on her way to the firmament to join Petrarch’s Laura and Dante’s Beatrice “like a new Phoenix.” Such loud weeping followed that if Simonetta was not already there, the floor of heaven would have been rattled enough by Florence’s sobbing that angels would have thrown open the pearly gates to see what the cacophony below was about.

  Only then did the slow, sad procession start. The entourage following her casket was enormous, led by Giuliano and her husband, Marco, his parents, Lorenzo and the Medici clan, and their inner circle. I was surprised not to see Bernardo among them. Perhaps he had already left the city for Venice, his departure lost in the commotion over Simonetta.