The Competition

by Donna Russo Morin

  “If I may ask, Mama, how do you know this man?”

  So I am to be “this man.” Sansone did not turn at the words, did not allow the slight to show upon his face. I must change that.

  “Well, I met him quite a long time ago, at the home of the Contessa Maffei.” Viviana launched into her story, a condensed version bereft of her emotions, the years of her longing, save for when she told them of Sansone’s assistance in keeping her safe as they searched for—and saved—Lapaccia.

  “Well done, Sansone,” Rudolfo said between his many bites of food.

  Marcello’s eyes had never left Sansone’s face as his mother spoke.

  “And now? What brings him to our table?” He spoke impolitic words with soft belligerence.

  “Now?” Viviana’s voice had reached the tone of a strangling bird. “Well now we are…that is to say…well, he and I—”

  “I would like to court your mother, Marcello.” Sansone put down his fork, clasped his hands before him, and looked Marcello straight in the eye. “I have come to you today to ask your permission to do so.”

  Did they not sit at opposite ends of the table, Sansone felt sure Viviana would have reached out to him; he felt her touch nonetheless. He was equally as sure that Marcello would have stabbed him with his fork.

  “Really?” Rudolfo blurted, though not unkindly. He stared at Sansone, who stared at his mother. He shrugged his shoulders with a big grin. “Good for you, Mama. You have my permission, Sansone, with gratitude.”

  “Grazie tante, Rudolfo,” Sansone replied, unable not to smile at the young man’s natural ebullience, and his kindness.

  Marcello stood abruptly. “You ask my permission, signore. Yet you are already lovers.” It was not a question but an accusation.

  “Sit down, Marcello.” The command came not from his mother, but from his brother.

  Marcello did not sit.

  “Our mother,” Rudolfo said, pointing to her, “has not known love, the true love of a man, for the whole of her life. Do you really wish it to remain that way? Does she not deserve better?”

  Sansone felt a flash of pride, for Rudolfo, for his defense and care for his mother’s happiness, and even for Marcello. Any honorable man, one who loved and respected his mother as he should—as Sansone had when his own mother was alive—was a good man. How strange he should already feel proprietary towards these sons of hers.

  “I would feel the same were it my mother, Marcello,” he said to the young man who still had not sat down. “But I assure you my intentions are honorable. I have asked her to marry me but she hesitates.”

  The hard etchings of anger on Marcello’s face softened, but did not disappear altogether.

  “But you are…” Marcello began, then turned to his mother, “forgive me, mia cara Mama”—his gaze fell again on Sansone—“but you are a younger man, are you not?”

  He strikes hard, to the heart, Sansone thought as Marcello would. Younger men were often with older women—especially widows—to use them, to spend their money, to enjoy their connections and their property, only to take their satisfaction elsewhere. It was a cruel truth.

  “In the number of our years? Yes, I am younger.” Sansone knew that only unvarnished honesty would suffice. “But we—all people—are not defined by a number. We are defined by ourselves, our truth. In that, there is no difference between us.”

  He gazed upon Viviana, every feeling he had for her, those so strong and encompassing, lay in that gaze.

  “Your mother’s beauty, her intelligence, her charms, her caring and loving nature are ageless in my eyes.”

  It was a declaration Sansone knew she might never have heard in her life but one she well deserved.

  Viviana dropped her chin, but not her eyes, which locked securely on him. She bloomed beneath his words.

  Marcello sat, but slowly, not in the rush of defeat.

  “Has he asked you to marry him, Mama?”

  Viviana nodded sparingly.

  “But you have not answered him yet?”

  “No, I…” Viviana faltered, but only a little. “I wanted you to know him, know of him.” She took a deep breath. “To know myself and my truth with him a little bit better.”

  Marcello nodded at her sensible words. “Then I will await your answer as well.”

  Sansone caught Viviana’s gaze once more, and saw the small shrug of one shoulder she offered. It was not the answer he had hoped for, but then neither was hers. He was content to wait for both.

  At that moment, Beatrice appeared in the doorway. “The veal, madonna, yes?”

  “Yes, please,” Viviana replied, her relief to change the conversation palpable.

  Rudolfo kept them all laughing, all charmed, with his easy banter as they ate the scrumptious meal. Marcello ate.

  The afternoon turned to evening and Viviana’s sons made for their home.

  “It was an honor to meet you, Sansone.” Rudolfo took his hand. “I hope I will see a great deal more of you.”

  Sansone gripped the hand in his, man to man. “Nothing would please me more, Rudolfo.”

  Marcello simply bowed before him. “Signore,” he said, and nothing more.

  Both boys kissed their mother and took themselves down the stairs.

  Arm in arm, Sansone and Viviana watched them go.

  “He is not happy with me,” Viviana said, not needing to delineate which son she meant.

  “He will come round,” Sansone assured her, holding her closer. As will you, I pray.

  Chapter Thirty-One

  “Many things may be hidden, but rarely truth.”

  The clamorous caterwauling of the ever-growing crowd came to Viviana as if from far over the hills. She walked through the path cleaved for her by the guards, gratefully entering the contrasting silence within.

  “I hoped you would arrive before the others.” Fiammetta’s voice reached through and into Viviana’s foggy realm. “I need to speak to you.” She patted the scaffold upon which she sat.

  To Viviana it looked like a hangman’s scaffold. The days of summer had evaporated, as had their heat, but it was not the chill of autumn, stretching its arms to settle around them, that made her shiver. Still, she sat as instructed.

  “This man, Sansone, your lover…”

  Viviana gurgled a laugh as her head dropped back on her neck. For all her faults, one could not fault Fiammetta for being mealy mouthed.

  “Sì, Fiammetta, he is my lover. He is that, and more. And what have you to say to me of it?”

  The contessa flinched, and Viviana straightened in triumph; if Fiammetta intended to hurl arrows at the heart, then so would Viviana.

  Fiammetta sat up straighter, cleared her throat. “Very well then.” She turned to face Viviana directly. “It is wrong and you will suffer for it.”

  “More than I suffered beneath the fists of my husband?”

  “There are many forms of misery, Viviana, and you are well aware of that fact. You not only disgrace yourself, you disgrace every one of Da Vinci’s Disciples.”

  “Ah,” Viviana muttered. There was the truth of it. “You mean I will disgrace you by your association with me?”

  Fiammetta’s lips formed a hard line upon her face until she cracked it. “I will not deny it. Yes, I will be disgraced. Along with the others. We will all be disgraced by it, as individuals, as a group, a group of women artists who dare to do things no woman has done before. Your promiscuity will only cast more disparagements upon us. Are you prepared to pick up that burden? Is he worth it?”

  “Promiscuity?” Viviana jumped from their perch, stood before Fiammetta trembling. “We live in a world where it is common place for men to have mistresses, many mistresses, where the puttana walk the streets openly. And I am promiscuous?” Viviana waved the ridiculousness away. “Is he worth it? Truly, Fiammetta? Should the question not be is my happiness worth it?”

  “We must often sacrifice our own happiness for the good of others. As a mother you should know that.�
�

  Viviana’s pitch swelled to reach Fiammetta’s. “What? Now you are to question my duty as a mother? You go too far, Fiammetta.”

  “No, it is you who has gone too far! Your selfishness will only ruin me further.”

  Viviana opened her mouth, bitter tongue longing to snap hurtful words like a whip. Fiammetta’s face stopped it. Viviana had never seen the woman looking so forlorn…so beaten.

  “What has happened, Fiammetta?”

  With a gaze that looked everywhere but at Viviana, Fiammetta shrugged her broad, fleshy shoulders. “You know quite well what has happened.”

  “But that was years ago now,” Viviana replied, assuming Fiammetta referred to the downfall she’d suffered because of her friendship with the Pazzi family, those responsible for Giuliano de’ Medici’s murder. “Surely it is forgotten by now.”

  “They never forget,” Fiammetta spat. “Not the Medicis nor those devoted to them.” Her chin dropped, neck creasing with rolls of flesh. She stared at the floor. “Every day we receive fewer and fewer callers, less and less invitations. And of those I send, most are not accepted. I had hoped, perhaps foolishly so, that participating in a commission approved of by Il Magnifico would once more endear us to the faction, but it has not happened. Do you think my husband sits in this church, day after day, merely for his concern for my safety and that of Patrizia? It is because he has nowhere else to go, nowhere where he is accepted.” Fiammetta raised her eyes but not her face. “The quicksand of our past draws us ever downward.”

  Viviana struggled for words of encouragement, words to wash away the anguish she was witnessing. She struggled in vain.

  “Do you not see, Viviana? To be so closely associated with a woman who is being intimate with a man she is not married to may be the fatal blow.”

  Viviana knuckled her forehead as a battle of thoughts warred within. How much of her life had she squandered on doing what was best for others? How much had she sacrificed already? It was not her doing, the relationship between the Maffei and the Pazzi—that Fiammetta and Patrizio had done themselves. Now Fiammetta asked her to sacrifice for them, sacrifice her happiness for their misguided loyalty? She shook her head. No, now it was her time, her time to think about herself. There was but one answer, one thing to be said.

  “Sansone loves me. He has asked to marry me.”

  “Marry? A younger man! What will they say?”

  “I will say something,” the coarse male voice jammed a wedge between them.

  Seeing Andrea Verrocchio both women took a step away from the other. Neither could have said when he entered beneath the draping, or how much he had heard.

  “I may not know of what you argue, but I do know this.” The elderly man stepped further into the chapel. “A workshop divided is a workshop that cannot work.”

  Verrocchio stomped his way to the corner, where they piled their supplies at the end of each working day. Grabbing a brush, he stomped back to them. “If there is to be cohesion upon the brush, there must be cohesion in hearts and minds. I have seen discord destroy more than one studio in my life.”

  “Wise words, maestro,” Fiammetta said, in her best contessa voice. “But this is more than a discussion between fellow artists. It is one between longtime acquaintances, and I have but one more thing to say. No, to ask.”

  Verrocchio shook his head, threw the brush back toward the pile of supplies, where it smacked against the wall, landing with a dull thud.

  Fiammetta leaned toward Viviana, all civility gone from her voice. “You have said Sansone loves you. He has told you so?”

  Viviana nodded with clenched teeth, leaning forward as well.

  “But do you love him?”

  “Yes I do!” The cry burst from her, unbidden, unforced.

  Verrocchio grunted, stepping between them.

  “I believe that is all you need to know, contessa,” he said, walking away.

  Viviana could not know what lay upon her face. She saw only Fiammetta’s and how it had softened.

  “Viviana, I—”

  “Here we are, please forgive our tardiness,” Isabetta chirped as they stepped through the concealing shroud cloth. “We were…what goes on here?”

  “Nothing to concern yourselves with,” Fiammetta answered, stepping away from Viviana. Trudging to the pile of supplies, she began to set them out.

  Isabetta looked at Viviana, raising her brows. Viviana shook her head.

  “Let us to work, yes,” she said only. “We are so close now.”

  “Indeed you are,” Verrocchio blustered, with a nod to the other women as they too began to file in.

  Once all were there, all greetings made, he spoke to them as one.

  “First I tell you that Leo had to leave for Milan, but,” he said, staving off the peeps of disappointment and worry with a raised hand, “but that only means you will have Botticelli and I for the next few days. We will take turns, but one of us will always be here if you need us. Though I am not sure we will not merely be superfluous.”

  His gaze flew up and around, to the walls and the women’s paint upon them.

  “There was a first,” Isabetta said. “Is there a second?”

  “Hmm, sì, there is, but they are words that taste bitter to me.” Verrocchio brought his gaze back down to them, but lifted his chin. “I owe you an apology, all of you.”

  To the one their mouths closed, their ears opened wider.

  “I knew you possessed a degree of talent, but—”

  “A degree?” Mattea muttered.

  “But,” Verrocchio continued, as if he hadn’t heard her, “I did not believe you could fresco or, if you attempted to, I believed it would be a disaster.”

  “And now, maestro?” Viviana prodded gently.

  “And now I realize that though I may think I know everything, I actually know very little. “This…” He waved his arms to encompass the whole of the chapel. “This is nothing less than a masterpiece, and I am honored to be here.”

  Patrizia and Carina squealed softly. Mattea and Natasia preened. The four older women simply shared satisfied looks. They knew what such words truly meant, coming from the master that was Verrocchio. They also knew the struggle he must have had to say them.

  “To your work, madonnas,” he said, rising up only to take himself to the finished wall on the left and plunk himself down on the scaffold. “I will be here if you need me. Wake me should I snore.”

  • • •

  They worked until dusk; they accomplished far more than most days.

  In dribs and drabs, they took themselves home. Fiammetta, her husband, and Patrizia in their carriage, Lapaccia and Carina in theirs. Verrocchio on slow feet, though he had in fact slept through most of the day. Viviana left as she had for many a day, on Sansone’s arm, Isabetta on his other, for they often walked her and Mattea home.

  “Are you not for home?” Isabetta asked Mattea.

  “I will stay and help Natasia with the cleaning up.”

  It was Natasia’s turn, but Mattea longed to stay within these walls as long as she could. She hadn’t felt such hope as that given to her by Verrocchio in a long time; she would savor it.

  “’Tis you and I then,” Natasia said merrily. “We will walk to my parents’ home after, if you would like, perhaps nip some of their dinner while we are there.”

  Mattea blinked. “I would be honored, dear Natasia. What of your husband?”

  “He is off on another trip for Il Magnifico. He will not return till tomorrow, so we need not rush.”

  In companionable silence they worked, cleaning brushes, folding drop cloths, until all was righted.

  “Well done,” Natasia said, surveying the chapel, fists upon her hips and a grin upon her face. “Now for some wine.”

  “And I believe you mentioned food?” Mattea said eagerly, having rarely supped at the table of such wealthy people; she could only imagine the treats in store.

  Natasia laughed and linked her arm in Mattea’s. “Yes, c
ara, and some food.”

  In this manner they quit the church, going out the back way to put some unnecessary implements back in their studio.

  The path behind the basilica was hard to find in the darkness. They laughed as they struggled to maneuver their way, tilting when they inadvertently stepped off the path’s stones, linking arms once more as they landed on the smaller alley along the side of the church.

  “Are you still astounded by Maestro Verrocchio’s words?” Mattea asked, pulling her shoulders up to her ears in her own wonder. How she remembered feeling the same when Leonardo had spoken similar words. To hear it from two masters made it far more real.

  “I am overjoyed,” Natasia replied rapturously. “He did nothing today, and yet we accomplished more than we had on any other. It shows one just how powerful words can be, does it not?”

  “We are so close to the finish,” Mattea mused. “Is it wrong to feel such pride for what we have done, what we have achieved?”

  “And how truly well we have achieved it?” Natasia joined Mattea’s self-praise. “No, I do not believe it is wrong, though pride is a sin. But I believe there is nothing sinful about feeling one’s true worth. Do you feel—”

  The two men came out of the dark as if they had risen from the dead. The two women shuddered to a stop.

  “Let us pass, if you please,” Mattea’s voice dropped, rigidity surged, stiffened her limbs.

  “Not possible, dearie,” said one man.

  He jumped toward her, grabbed her by the waist, and tore her from Natasia’s hold.

  “Help—” Mattea tried to scream.

  He clamped a hand upon her mouth. It smelled as foul as he.

  Mattea felt bile rise in her throat, but still she took in the way of him. Short, stout, and bald; he was not a young man. The same could not be said for the man who had grabbed Natasia.

  He was tall, with a full head of black hair; his long arms captured her friend swiftly, pinning Natasia against the high outer wall of the palazzo beside Santo Spirito.