The Competition

by Donna Russo Morin

  “To us!” Isabetta raised her cup once everyone’s was full.

  “To us!” they chorused, and drank.

  “Will they drink to us next Monday?” Natasia asked the question, though, once more, any one of them could have.

  The mention of that day, the day their work was to be revealed in an ostentatious ceremony Antonio di Salvestro had insisted upon, sprinkled the sourness of a lemon in their sweet brandy.

  “Or throw drinks at us?” Fiammetta mused with a smirk.

  “Does it matter?” Isabetta asked.

  To the one, all looked back up at what they created.

  “No,” Viviana said. She said it for them all.

  They left together then, out the front door, heads in the clouds where their spirits soared.

  Chapter Thirty-Seven

  “Hate is a burden that walks a path of destruction.”

  She walked from room to room, looking in each, not knowing what she looked for.

  As a specter tethered to the world, Viviana had haunted her home for the two days since they had finished the fresco. She tried to sit, to read, to write in her journal, but such pursuits were far too frivolous; they could not keep her. Neither food nor drink held appeal.

  Instead she walked, never leaving her home. If she had walked as many steps from her door as she had taken within it, she would have been halfway to Rome by now. Her mind traveled only as far as her feet. She paced her house, searching every room as if in one of them she would find the answer to the question of what nagged at her, insisting she be somewhere else.

  “Uffa!” Jemma cried out as, yet again, Viviana barged into her as the young woman went about her duties.

  “You are bringing me to madness, madonna, do you not know that?” Jemma huffed as she pushed herself off the wall she had fallen against, picking up the linens she had carried. “I will have to wash these again.”

  “I am sorry, dear Jemma, I…” Viviana stammered as she helped Jemma gather up the sheets.

  Jemma snatched them back. “Go, madonna. Go do something. Go paint.”

  For a moment Viviana hovered, utterly still.

  “That is it, Jemma! That is what I should do! The studio is where I need to be!”

  With a grazie mille tossed over her shoulder, Viviana donned her heavy cloak and flew from the house. She hurried down the Via Porto Rossi, her cloak billowing out behind her like the wings of a bird as she muttered to herself.

  For an artist, one of any creative sort, to finish a creation meant losing possession of it; it lived no longer in the artist’s heart and mind, but in the world. Finishing then became both exhilarating and mournful, for it could never belong to the artist alone ever again. The artist could never again live in the world of that piece of art. Such a separation could be disconcerting indeed.

  When she reached the Piazza de Spirito Santo, Viviana found it more crowded than ever. The crowd of those who wished to see them fail continued to grow; their oblivion that they fought to stop a thing already done brought her a snide satisfaction, though she would not let them see it.

  She could enter by the back; there was no more reason to face the crowd any longer. She had faced them; she and the others had already triumphed merely in the completion of the work, though these people did not know it. Yet Viviana wanted to walk past the chapel, to look upon it once more before the rest of the city did.

  The guards cleaved her a path through the rabble; she walked it with head held high, and lips spread. With her hand upon the latch, Viviana hesitated at the door; a sound in the crowd stopped her, a sound she had not heard before from this horde.

  She heard laughter.

  A shiver crawled up her spine. She straightened her shoulders to shove it away and entered the basilica.

  Viviana stood at the apex of the nave; the utter quiet and ever-present aroma of incense greeted her. Normally they calmed her. Yet her stomach reeled, the knot a warning, but of what she could not say.

  As soon as Viviana turned into the side aisle, she knew something was wrong. The cover cloth they had left in its place, to conceal their work until the unveiling, now lay pooled in a puddle on the floor. She froze at the sight of it; then she ran.

  “Oh Dio mio, Dio no!” Viviana cried out at the sight before her. Her knees quivered, collapsed. She dropped to the floor, dropped her head in her hands. Her sobs, her anger, racked her body. She dared to look up once more.

  Their brilliant work, the delicate flora beneath the tender sky, the commanding figures, and the detailed story they told, was in ruin. Someone had decimated it with splashes of paint, onerous paint of puce and moldy green. Splatters of it dotted each wall.

  Viviana glimpsed a waking nightmare.

  Once more, her sobs felled her. She clutched her chest as it too fell against the floor.

  “Accidenti a te, maledetto tutto!” From the floor, she screamed; from the floor, she damned them all as she pounded a fist upon the marble. She felt no pain save that of her shattered heart.

  “Mona Viviana! Madonna!” Father Raffaello came to her, calling her name, brought out of his refectory by her shrieks. When she did not answer, he took her by the shoulders, shaking gently.

  “Mona Viviana?” Once more he tried; once more she did not respond. He pulled her shoulders off the floor, lifting her until she sat. The fingers that held her twitched, his face drained of color.

  “Caro Dio, what has happened to you?”

  Viviana could not speak; sobs still shuddered through her. She could only point.

  The priest turned his head; his gaze hesitatingly followed her trembling finger. He dropped to his knees.

  “I bastardi.” Father Raffaello quivered with rage; his face burned with it. Viviana did not know if he knew the vile words he spoke.

  His head fell back on his thick neck, quickly snapping back up. He threw his heavy, strong arms about her, pulled Viviana to him, held her as she continued to shudder and sob.

  “I will get the others,” he whispered in her ear. “Vanni! Vanni, where are you?”

  These words he yelled; their vehemence came back to them as it echoed off the walls and ceiling of the empty church.

  Viviana heard slapping footsteps from far off. Were they far from her mind, one stricken, unable to think, incapable of thinking of anything but the desecration of their work, their masterpiece?

  “Vanni will bring them. They are coming,” he whispered to her once more. “Come with me, madonna. Come wait in the refectory.”

  As he spoke, he tried to pull her up; he might well have tried to pull a giant oak from the earth.

  Viviana shook her head. “I cannot leave. I will not leave it. I cannot.”

  Father Raffaello nodded, dropping from his knees to sit beside her, never loosening his hold upon her. “Very well. We will wait together.”

  The concept of time became elusive, for in Viviana’s mind six months had been stolen from her, six months of her life had been lost, as their creation had been lost. She laid her head upon the priest’s shoulder and stared at the devastation. She knew she cried still; she could not stop.

  And then they came; they all came, not just the Disciples.

  No one spoke a word; they screamed. To the one, every Disciple wept and moaned, blasphemed and cursed; their keening filled the basilica. Together they all huddled, a churning whirlpool of gloom and heat.

  Lapaccia was the only one of them to walk into the cappella, two steps, then more, further and further in. Viviana feared the shock was too great upon the older woman. Lapaccia stood within inches of the back wall and its rendering of the Exaltation of the Cross, now with its brownish-purple splotch and small smatters. She gasped, wobbling backward. Isabetta hurried to her; gentle hands tenderly turned Lapaccia, brought her away, brought her back into their fold.

  Viviana felt Father Raffaello’s arms slip away from her. She thought she would tumble off the earth, until another set of strong arms replaced those of the priest. These arms she knew. With San
sone’s presence, her sobs, barely abated, grew harsh and terrible once more. Once more, time became irrelevant.

  “Such evil man can do does not surprise me, but it breaks me.” Verrocchio’s warbling voice, never more tremulous, rived the brutal silence.

  “This is not the work of those who tried to stop me.” Natasia gulped the words through her tears, muffled by Pagolo’s hold upon her.

  “No, this is the work of men who think lowly of women, who believe we are not worthy to be artists, who have screamed at us in the streets and from their windows, who vandalized our homes,” Isabetta said, teeth snapping. Viviana saw she did not cry; her body shook, eyes slinting. “Men who think women are not even human.”

  Botticelli stepped away from the ring of people, stepped into the chapel.

  “Verrocchio, Leo, come, look.” He compelled them with his words and a beckoning hand.

  They went. They looked. They whispered together.

  Leonardo stepped from them, returning to his Disciples. “The paint is still wet, madonnas,” he whispered, as if his message demanded it. “This can be fixed. You can fix this.”

  “In three days? Three days!” Fiammetta roared.

  “No, four,” Father Raffaello corrected. “I have no doubt God would forgive you to work on Sunday, to do this work on this Sunday.”

  “But still, even with four days, we must fix what took six months!” Fiammetta threw her arms up to the heavens, her swollen, red eyes rolled up in her head still quaking with her anger. “We must make the date of reveal or we will be seen as failures. It cannot be done in time.”

  Botticelli came to her, pulled down her arms, and pressed them to her sides. His gaze captured them all.

  “Yes, it can.” The artist was not merely calm; he was deadly calm. “It can be done and we will tell you—show you—how.”

  Chapter Thirty-Eight

  “One’s true character does not show itself when all is well, but when all is not.”

  Each woman wore the same face.

  It mattered not if some were more creased than others were, some darker, some rounder. Dark crescent moons shadowed swollen eyes; lips drooped at the corners, and shoulders slumped and curled inward.

  Yet they came. Their maestro and the two others had assured them it could be fixed; if their doubt hung heavy upon them, it would not stop them from trying.

  With them came their families, their husbands, their sons, Viviana’s lover, and even Mattea’s mother. Only Lapaccia was not among them.

  “She took a fall,” Mattea told Viviana when asked. “She claims she stumbled upon a step.”

  Viviana’s brows jumped. “Claims?”

  Mattea merely shrugged, falling into silence as the others joined them.

  The beginning did not begin with brush strokes, but with words.

  Leonardo stood before them wearing the strangest thing: a smile.

  “Have you gone mad, maestro?” Isabetta asked when she saw it, one foot tapping an annoyed rhythm. “Or have you been in your cups all night?”

  Da Vinci laughed softly.

  “And now you laugh,” Fiammetta cried. “This is no time for laughter.”

  “I do not smile or laugh at our task, but at what I see before me.” He walked toward them, walked among them. “I love those who can smile in trouble, who can gather strength from distress, and grow brave by reflection. ’Tis the business of little minds to shrink, but they whose heart is firm, and whose conscience approves their conduct, will pursue their principles unto death. You are just such brave souls and I am so proud to find you all here.”

  “Did you think we would not come?” Mattea questioned softly.

  “Not for a moment,” Leonardo heartily replied. “And that is why I smile.”

  “Sì, we are here, maestro,” Viviana ceded, “but what do we do now? How can this be fixed?”

  Leonardo held up one finger, moved it in an arch before all their expectant faces.

  “You must first possess one thought, one piece of knowledge you already have learned but have forgotten.” Leonardo crossed his arms upon his chest. “What makes the fresco different from other forms of painting?”

  The original Disciples looked at each other askance, as if he had insulted them; it was a question for a novice.

  “It utilizes dry pigments on wet plaster, rather than wet paint upon a canvas,” Carina asserted, eager to display all she had learned in so short a time, eager to earn their respect.

  “You are correct, piccolina,” Leonardo lectured. Viviana almost smiled herself at the sight of Marcello’s chest puffing with pride. “And what is the end result of such a difference?”

  “Affè!” Isabetta gasped her astonishment, stepping out of the group, walking slowly into the chapel.

  Leonardo nodded with yet another smirk. “What do you see, Isabetta? What can you tell us?”

  “Applying dry pigments to the plaster causes them to dry quickly.” She spoke as if in a dream, softly, liltingly.

  “And how long ago did you finish?”

  “Three days.”

  “And how long does the fresco take to dry?”

  Isabetta spun round, to Leonardo, to them all. Her eyes crinkled at the corners as she raised both shoulders and opened her arms. “Hours. No more than hours.”

  Patrizia jumped out of the crowd, and ran to one of the larger, lower splotches. With the tip of a finger, she laid a delicate touch upon it. She turned, beaming. “It is oil. Oil.”

  The remaining Disciples gasped, realization captured their breath.

  Leonardo clasped his hands together as if in prayer. “Oh miei cari artisti, you make me so proud.”

  “What?” Patrizio interjected, round face a crumple of confusion. “What does it mean?”

  Fiammetta tucked her arm into her husband’s. “It means, dear one, that the slow-drying oil paint was thrown upon dry, plastered pigment already sealed. It should not have penetrated.”

  “It did not penetrate,” Botticelli insisted. “The trick is to remove the oil paint without penetrating the fresco paint, without dampening the plaster and removing the seal. And we”— he pointed his chin toward da Vinci and Verrocchio—“we know all the tricks.”

  “Di preciso!” Leonardo proclaimed. “Isabetta, Mattea, take yourselves to the studio and bring all the clean cloths you can find.”

  Without a question, the two women ran off.

  “Sansone,” the artist addressed the able-bodied man, “if you would be so kind as to retrieve a large case of wine from Father Raffaello’s refectory, I would be most grateful.”

  “I hardly think this is a time for drink,” Fiammetta accused him.

  “My dear contessa, we will not be drinking it. We will be cleaning with it.”

  Sansone returned moments later, shoulders straining under the weight in his hands, the glass bottles tinkling in their box.

  Leonardo retrieved one of the twelve bottles in the wooden crate and held it up for all to see.

  “This is Greek wine. And Greek wine is made from Greek grapes. This one comes from the Athiri. Its skin is much thinner, as is its pulp. The Greeks also use greater quantities of citrus in their wine, especially orange citrus.” He turned from them. “Who was it, Verrocchio, that discovered the powers of this wine on paint?”

  The older man shrugged and tucked his chin down against his crepey neck. “I am too old to remember. I do remember it was first used to remove grime. But with the many mistakes I make, I can only tell you I have used it often, too often.”

  “It removes paint?” Viviana gulped.

  “It does indeed,” Leonardo confirmed, as Isabetta and Mattea hurried back to them, arms full and overflowing with pristine cloths of all sizes, not the tiniest dot of paint on a single one of them.

  “Ah, now you have all you need. I will show you.” Botticelli took one cloth from Isabetta and the bottle of wine from Leonardo. Uncorking the wine with a small knife, he turned it upside down as he held the cloth to its opened
neck. Quickly he strode to the closest splatter on their creation and gently touched it to the oil paint, only to lift it off and quickly touch it again.

  “The trick, madonnas, is to dab,” Leonardo instructed, “never rub.”

  “Never, ever rub,” Verrocchio repeated.

  The assembly scurried closer, spellbound as Botticelli dabbed some more, found a clean spot on the rag, wet it with wine, and dabbed again, and yet again. In no more than a few minutes, he turned to them, holding up the cloth, revealing the garish green upon it and the exposed spot of the fresco now showing through once again.

  They cheered, they hugged, and they ran. They ran to the cloths, grabbing at them; they ran to the wine, pouring it. All of them, including the families, until Viviana stopped them.

  “Dear ones, you show us your love by taking up these weapons,” she intoned, “but if this is to truly be the work, and the war, of Da Vinci’s Disciples, then it is the Disciples who must do it alone.”

  “But, tesoro mio, the work will go much faster if we assist you,” Sansone argued, Patrizio and her sons grunting their agreement.

  Viviana reached up to cup his cheek. “There will be many other ways you can assist us, I promise you.”

  • • •

  For two days, the crowd outside the church watched as only men went in and out. The women they took such pleasure in jeering and insulting were nowhere to be seen, neither coming nor going.

  Sansone’s task this midday was that of quartermaster, stocking the church’s meager pantry—meant to feed but three: the priest and his two novices—now to feed them all. And to bring fresh gowns.

  With his foot upon the bottom step leading to the basilica door, rancid words smashed against his back.

  “Do you see?” One heckler yelled, one who stood but a step away from Sansone. “They have to get their men to do the work.”

  The crowd laughed. Sansone spun on the man, towering over him.

  “They are in there, you buffoon,” he growled, loudly enough for all to hear. “We only bring them food. We cherish and support our women.” He cocked one brow and grinned. “You should think of such things. I heard your wife say so to her lover only last night.”