What Remains of the Fair Simonetta

by Laura T. Emery

  Chapter 33

  The nymphs and Cupids still danced well into the night, but the only ones I could see now were those carved into the ceiling of my bedchamber. I stared at the wooden festivities happening above me, and wondered again what my presence here meant. I had embraced Simonetta more than ever that evening; feeling for a time that I’d actually become her. And it was glorious.

  I wanted to continue the girls-night-out theme, but even though Antonella had forced herself to stay awake until we returned so that she might bathe me and prepare me for bed, she was clearly exhausted, and not in the mood for conversation.

  Unable to sleep, I cross-examined myself with a multitude of inquiries: Did Simonetta love Sandro? Or was it Giuliano she cared for? Is it possible she willingly went to Giuliano? And what was the deal with Mariano? Had I really done anything to repair his relationship with Sandro? Why was that damn coyote taunting me again? And did I have enough time to figure it all out before I kicked the bucket? I had answers to nothing, but questions galore.

  I prepared myself for a troubled slumber that would surely be bombarded with flashes of the church, the coyote, and my grave. But when I finally drifted off, I dreamed of something I hadn’t prepared for at all. I had become a sister of the convent.

  Garbed in a gray and white habit, I scrambled to blend in with fifty other nuns who knelt in the nave of the Ognissanti. The recitation of the Liturgy of the Hours was led by the Sister Constance look-alike, who was not dressed like an abbess at all, but rather half-naked again, clothed only in the loose drape, and holding her javelin.

  In unison, the congregation chanted vespers, “O God, come to my assistance. O Lord, make haste to help me. Glory to the Father, and to the Son, and to the Holy Spirit. As it was in the beginning, is now, and will be forever. Amen.” I had heard the words so many times after my death, I had no difficulty keeping time with them.

  With the benediction completed, the nuns each lit and carried a candle offering in front of Giotto’s Madonna at the base of the high altar. Taper in hand, I followed the others and made my way after them, somehow not afraid to face her.

  “Anastasia,” the half-naked leader of the consecrated religious whispered. I looked up to meet her gaze. “I have always been here, Anastasia.”

  “But why are you dressed like that?” I asked.

  “You see me as I truly am.”

  No closer to ending the mystery, I awakened in the usual manner, with Antonella ripping the covers off me, shoving cheese, bread, and wine in my face, and performing the whole gamut of beautification rituals. While she tugged and tormented, I came to the conclusion that the whole scene in the Ognissanti was not a vision, but merely a delusion of my intellect, as no one in their right mind would ever consider the likes of me for a religious order.

  I had almost forgotten I was to model for Leonardo, but Marco hadn’t. He sent the kind-faced member of the retinue to escort Antonella and me. As we commenced the journey, I wasted no time conjuring methods to butter up our new companion, as there would be a need for him to look the other way at some point. Sandro was expecting me.

  “There goes my day of leisure,” Antonella whispered, as the kind-faced man, dressed in his Vespucci livery, walked a few steps behind us.

  “What’s his name?” I asked in a hushed voice. “He’s doted on me, and carried me here and there, but I’ve never asked his name.”

  “It is Carlo. I know what you are thinking Netta, but you will not bend him to your will. He will serve only his master.”

  Damn.

  I made light conversation with Carlo anyway, and threw in a few compliments about how reassuring his presence felt, and held onto his arm for “warmth.”

  When we reached the shop of Verrocchio, Leonardo greeted us with a smile, but looked sideways at our new companion.

  “Yes. Marco sent Carlo along with us.” I said through a clenched-toothed smile. “To ensure my safety.”

  “Carlo,” Leonardo greeted him with a pat on the back. “I am appurtenance in this bottega, scarcely superior to an apprentice, and therefore tiresome to behold. But could I beguile you with the privilege to regard our Master Verrocchio while he forges a golden palla to be positioned on the pinnacle of Brunelleschi’s cupola.”

  “Verrocchio?” Carlo asked, as if that was the only word he understood.

  “Yes.” Leonardo pointed to the far corner of the workshop where Verrocchio was hidden behind a small crowd. Without another word, Carlo was drawn towards the spectacle like an addict to heroin.

  “I should like to watch as well,” Antonella said, as she shuffled slowly away sideways; her interest really more about getting away from Leonardo and his potential to make her model, than for the art of Verrocchio.

  Leonardo asked me to put on a conservatively round-necked, red, gathered smock, with a gold cord around the waist.

  “Are you sure you want your Madonna wearing red?” I asked, as I emerged from the dressing room. “Where I come from it’s the color of floozies and prostitutes. Just sayin’.” I don’t know what I was thinking questioning a mind as great as his, but he seemed to take my taunting well.

  Leonardo chuckled. “Here, vermillion is the hue of authority, the blood of Christ, and martyrdom. Besides, your vestment is not yet complete,” He handed me a reversible silk drape with blue on one side and gold on the other, which I promptly threw over my shoulder.

  “Much better,” I said, sarcastically. “I know you don’t really need me to be here.” I approached his easel. “Let me see what you’ve got.”

  Leonardo smiled and pulled several sketches from the tray. So far I was still just a floating head; my golden hair looking somewhat frizzy and my sculpted eyebrows nonexistent. They were more interpretive than actual lifelike sketches, but beautiful just the same.

  “My cartoons replicate the image of my intellect, and are not absolutely from nature. I require a model for the configuration of hands, and migration of muscle. I restrict myself from painting precisely from life, lest I should be forcibly commissioned for a portrait.” Leo already had an awful lot of do’s and don’ts for one so young. “Now, I shall sketch the folds of your garments.”

  “Okay, then.” I sat in the chair he provided me. “So, I’m wondering, what do you know about me? Not about me me. But about Simonetta. I’d like to know all I can.”

  “I am a stride in advance of you, and have ascertained much without drawing suspicion. I went directly to Lorenzo, for he is aware of all that transpires in our city-state.

  “I’ve heard that.”

  Big brother is watching.

  “I informed him that I wished to perceive ample information regarding the individual I would paint.”

  “And he bought it?” I asked, dubious.

  “As you have mentioned, I am a mite strange.” Leonardo looked up from his sketch. “Creative people are given some entitlement for oddness in the circle of the Medici.”

  “I guess that works out well for you, then.” I smiled.

  “Tell me first what you know of Simonetta.”

  “Okay, so I’m married to Marco, but we haven’t consummated our marriage. He’s taken a servant in the palazzo as his lover, but hides her from his father. And Piero is demanding a grandchild.” I scratched my head. “Yeah, that’s pretty much it. Do you know more?”

  “Quite a lot more,” he said. “But I am uncertain whether it will be advantageous information. Your mother, Catocchia Spinola, was married to a member of the Campofregoso family. However, her husband left her, married another, then died, leaving her with a myriad of children and stepchildren. Your half-brother, Pietro II, served as doge of Genoa.”

  “Really?” I asked, somewhat proud of Simonetta’s heritage.

  “Until he was stabbed to death,” Leonardo clarified.

  “Oh.”

  “Your mother was then remarried to Gaspare Cattaneo, but both the Campofregoso and Cattaneo families were soon forced into exile by the Sforza.”

 
“You know I’m not gonna remember all this, right?”

  Leonardo put a quill to parchment. “I am scribing it as we converse.”

  “You’re not writing it backwards are you?”

  He smiled deviously, “One cannot be too careful.”

  “Whatever,” I shrugged.

  “There is more. Your family sought exile in Piombino, because your half-sister, Battestina, is married to its lord, Jacopo III Appiani.”

  “I almost forgot! I found some documents that were addressed to Jacopo III Appiani hidden under the liner of Piero’s desk. Why do you think he would have them?”

  “The only logic I can deduce is that Piero used his connection to thieve the letters from the Appiani in order to deliver, or sell, the information to Lorenzo.”

  “Nice. A fine thank you to Jacopo Appiani after he gave money and iron mines to the Vespucci as part of my dowry.”

  “Yes, and the income generated from the iron mines of Elba is so vast, that Lorenzo seeks a similar arrangement in order for Giuliano to marry your cousin, Semiramide Appiani.”

  “So Giuliano wants to marry my cousin? That’s so weird. And Lorenzo is Florence’s First Citizen and matchmaker?”

  “Lorenzo has arranged many advantageous marriages. You were already promised to Luigi della Stufa, but Lorenzo and Piero ensured that those marriage negotiations failed. Piero was in Piombino at the time, as the captain of a galleas serving Ferdinand of Aragon, King of Naples.”

  “And last night’s ball was for Eleonora…of Aragon.”

  “Precisely. The King’s daughter.”

  “Ahh. No wonder Piero was so insistent that I attend, when he didn’t even go himself. It’s all such a tangled, incestuous web, isn’t it?”

  “Yes, it is,” Leonardo agreed.

  “How do you remember all of this information?” I asked Leonardo, as he had completed his “scribing,” and had begun to sketch with charcoal.

  “After Lorenzo told me, I made use of the photographic memory you spoke of.”

  “Uh…no…you have to see it…oh, never mind. But what does any of it have to do with me? Anastasia?”

  “It is unclear. Do you have any specific similarities to Simonetta?” Leonardo pondered.

  “Let’s see…nobility? No. Beauty? Maybe at one time, but not like this.” I noted, as I waved down my body. “Royal blood? Not so much. I was an illegitimate child raised by a single mother.”

  “As was I,” Leonardo sighed. “What of your father?”

  “My father was Russian, and married to another woman. But he and my mother were deeply in love.”

  “They chose each other from passion rather than arrangement?

  “Yes.”

  “My conception was the same. I believe that you and I are the most special of creatures. Since I was young, my insight and intellect have been singled out as extraordinary, and you have special insights as well. I believe it is because of your conception.”

  “Hmm, interesting theory. But if that were true, almost everyone in the twenty-first century would be a super genius.” I chuckled.

  “I also seek to demonstrate that the child-bearer provides an equivalent amount of genetic material to an infant as the father.” I decided to hold my tongue. He paused his drawing and looked up at me. “Anastasia, convey my triumphs.”

  “That’s it. I can’t take it. Speak human, Leo.”

  “My meaning being…,” he muttered nervously. “What can you disclose about…what you articulated at the Palazzo Medici…about me?”

  I heard a lecture once on Leonardo. He hardly ever finished anything. Only nine completed paintings are attributed to him, and no sculptures of his still exist. He had notebooks and notebooks on multiple subjects— mathematics, geometry, mechanics, geology, astronomy, botany, zoology, bird flight, and the military arts—but never really focused on one in particular. It’s like he had ADD or something of that nature. But I didn’t want to tell him he should finish anything or do things differently. Where would the world be without his notebooks?

  “Many believe you have the greatest mind the world has ever known,” I finally replied, “But you were born in the wrong period, same as me. I always felt I belonged in this time and place, but I lived in an era of extraordinary science and discovery. Your mind is way ahead of what current times can provide you to work with. Having said that, I don’t want to say anything that would change the focus of your genius. Just know that your legacy continues to live, even six-hundred years in the future.” He simply nodded and smiled a Mona Lisa smile. “Sorry, but can we get back to me? I have another issue. I’m…in love with Sandro.”

  “Love?” He questioned. “I assume you are referring to the Neo-Platonic concept of Marsilio Ficino?”

  “No, not platonic. Love like, I wanna have his babies.”

  “But, you comprehend that you cannot?”

  “Yeah, I guess. Still, Sandro is expecting me to go to the Ognissanti later today, and well, I can’t.”

  “Because Marco forbids it?”

  “He does, of course. But really it’s because I’m afraid of the Abbess. I know her from the future, and she keeps beckoning me into the church. I think it’s a trap, to put me back into my urn where I belong.”

  He abandoned his charcoal sketch, and picked up his quill and ink to write in his notebook again. “At the Palazzo Vespucci, you claimed there were none comparable to you.”

  “I don’t think she’s like me. In my dreams, she says she’s always been there. In the church.”

  “Perhaps, I should communicate with her myself.”

  “Or distract her, so I can meet up with Sandro,” the childish part of me said, but I knew the Abbess was some sort of all-knowing being that probably wouldn’t fall for distraction.

  “I would postulate she has no power over you,” Leonardo said quickly, noticing that Carlo was heading towards us.

  “How could you know?”

  “Because I have the greatest mind the world has ever known.” He smiled before turning back to his work.

  “The palla must cool before the next sheets of copper are applied,” Carlo said, as he planted himself next to me. Antonella remained on the other side of the bottega, as far from Leonardo as possible.

  All but superficial conversation with Leonardo came to an end as Carlo refused to leave my side for the rest of the afternoon. When I couldn’t take it anymore, I stood up, realizing the uselessness of sitting there being stared at non-stop by the kind-faced Carlo, while Leonardo sketched folds of cloth. I had to figure out a way to get to Sandro.

  “I’m tired,” I exclaimed. “Can we resume this another day?”

  “Of course, Monna Simonetta,” Leonardo replied with a bow, and set his chalk down. “I shall take leave of the bottega soon, anyway.”

  “Oh?”

  He looked directly at me. “Yes, I should like to see The Last Supper, which Ghirlandaio has just completed in the Church of Ognissanti. I have considered the subject for myself.”

  “Really?” I chuckled.

  “Yes. And I am also to meet the Abbess at dusk.”

  Chapter 34

  My wish came true.

  A locksmith had visited the palazzo while we were at the shop of Verrocchio. But my secret hope had backfired. The stout, pug of a man had come to install a lock on my bedchamber door, but once he exited, I made the horrifying discovery that the bolt was purposely placed on the wrong side. As soon as I entered the room, a key was turned, sealing me in.

  “Hey!” I yelled and pounded. “What are you doing!?”

  “Forgive me,” I heard the voice of Carlo say quietly, as his footfalls receded down the corridor.

  Antonella knew better than to try to keep me away from Sandro, but she had convinced me to return to the palazzo to plot our escape from Carlo’s watchful eyes before going to meet him. What a mistake that turned out to be.

  Earlier, it seemed like everything would go as planned. Supper played out as usual; the static air
tensed by Piero’s looming presence, Amerigo being chastised by his father, Nastagio, for his general hyper-enthusiasm, Marco’s overly doting charade as dutiful husband. I’d even played along with Marco’s game for Piero’s benefit. As things stood, Marco in no way led me to believe he was displeased with me or otherwise felt the need for my imprisonment.

  I sank onto my bed in a heap, formulating ways to break down the door. I looked about the room for objects which could be used to ram it. Increasingly out of my mind, I could think of nothing but getting to Sandro. The morning would bring the joust and my devirginization by Giuliano, and once that happened, I knew nothing would be the same.

  “We shall leave earlier than usual,” Antonella suddenly announced, startling me out of my wits as she entered my room from hers.

  “We’re locked in!” I pointed to the door dramatically.

  “Of course we are not. This will just make it so that none will search for you. They are still unaware Amerigo possesses the key to the back exit.”

  “Oh yeah!” I thumped my hand to my forehead.

  Antonella went to my wardrobe, opened it and lifted the door to the secret compartment. She pulled out my servant’s dress, and crammed it into a satchel, then removed the gray and white nun’s habit, and placed it on my bed.

  “Well? Turn around.” She demanded. When I hesitantly complied, she unlaced the back of my dress, and reached for the habit.

  “What’s going on?” I asked.

  “It is the day of the moon,” she replied.

  “Which means…?”

  “The tavern, of course.”

  “You want me to go to the tavern dressed like a nun?”

  “No!” she laughed. “You can change after.”

  “You mean, after seeing Sandro?” I hopped a little in excitement, after finally catching her drift.

  “Yes, I suppose Amerigo and I could occupy ourselves for a time.” She smiled.

  Antonella helped me dress in the itchy woolen habit, and tucked my hair completely under the white wimple and veil before washing off my archaic cosmetics. I opted not to even glance in the mirror, for fear I would burst into flames for sacrilege. I didn’t really understand Antonella’s reason for having me wear the costume, but I had a cause of my own. The best way to hide from someone is camouflage. Even though I knew the Abbess had a sixth sense about me, I hoped to somehow evade her by blending in with her flock while I met Sandro.