Seeds of Decline

by Edward Charles

  She puts a hand on his, knowing how hard he will have found it to say the words. She tries to show her understanding with a smile.

  ‘I know now that the exercise was futile’ Cosimo says, his voice beginning to fail. ‘The future lies with Lauro.’

  This time she is less surprised, the whole family had called her son Lauro until he decided that he had come of age. That had been five-and-a-half years earlier, on his tenth birthday.

  ‘I have made provision for him. When Lauro comes of age or, if it comes earlier, when Piero dies, you are to take Lauro to the Convento di Santo Damiano. Maddalena is there and she will tell you everything. Maddalena knows everything. She will tell you what to do.’

  The effort seems to have exhausted him and he lies back on the pillows. For a moment, she thinks he has gone, but a slight breeze makes the muslin inner-curtains lift lightly and she sees a small smile cross his face. Gently, she takes her leave.

  ‘Those were almost his last words to me. To me they had a terrible finality.’

  Lucrezia looked up and Savonarola saw tears welling up in her eyes.

  But as he watched her, he could not decide whether her tears were of sympathy for her dead husband or sadness at the old man’s revelation or simply tears of frustration that Cosimo had allowed such a situation to happen in the first place. She walked to the chair and sat facing him, a sad and distant smile on her face.

  ‘Maddalena was Cosimo’s slave for thirty-five years or more. I can’t remember exactly now. She was as close to him as any person I ever met and in the end he had put his trust in her completely. He didn’t know then that Maddalena had already died, and nor did I. Nor did any of us. It turned out that she had died in the February of that year, but nobody had told us. I only found out later. The memory of her seemed to drain him; as if he knew he had unfinished business and was ashamed of himself for not completing it.

  ‘He said little more. He was too tired. But as I was leaving he called me back. “I am sorry that in my concern for the family, I came between you and Giovanni,” he said. “It was one of the greatest mistakes of my life. All I can say in my own mitigation is that I had the interests of the family at heart. I was concerned that when I died, Piero would face great responsibilities as head of the family and, knowing his weaknesses, I believed that your strength was what he needed to support him. Now I know it was a mistake. Piero is inadequate and always will be. I should have allowed you to marry Giovanni. You would have been such a handsome couple, and made such beautiful children together.”’

  Lucrezia swallowed hard and nodded, emphatically. ‘That’s what he said. Then he closed his eyes and slept. The next time I saw him, he was in his coffin.’

  Chapter 5

  Cosimo’s Funeral

  ‘Yesterday I mentioned Maddalena. She had been Cosimo’s slave and had borne him a son, Carlo, who now holds high rank in the church.’

  Savonarola frowned. Carlo de Medici? He knew that name. A cardinal, a newish one. But he hadn’t realized that he was the son of a slave. Then he remembered that the cardinal is black, yet with blue eyes. His mother must have had the same distinct colouring. Cosimo had brown eyes. How remarkable. What other secrets were going to emerge from these conversations? Now he was glad he had started returning to the privacy of his room each night and writing out copious notes on what he had heard that day. Lest his mind forget, of course. For personal use only, not to be shown or divulged. It did not break their agreement. Well, not the spirit of their agreement. Well, probably not. Did it?

  She took a deep breath. ‘It was at Cosimo’s funeral, in the great church of San Lorenzo, that I first heard that Maddalena was dead. Her son, the cardinal, told me himself. It could not have been under worse circumstances.’

  CHURCH OF SAN LORENZO

  Thursday 2nd August 1464

  ‘What did you say his final instructions were?’

  Lucrezia is looking round the packed church. San Lorenzo is the gonfalon church of Leon D’Oro and the family church of the Medici. But it’s not her family church. The Tornabuoni chapel is in Santa Maria Novella and, try as she may, she can’t drag her allegiance away from it.

  ‘Carefully understated.’

  Piero’s face is quite straight but she knows he sees the cynical side of it. Another example of watch what I do, not what I say … even if it is understated. And they could, she supposes, have paraded round the whole city, taking in all four quarters and every gonfalon, it is still, she is sure, quite different from what Cosimo had wanted and instructed. But then again, the survivors somehow always think they know better, don’t they?

  She nods and looks sideways at her husband. ‘Carefully understated?’

  ‘It was meant to be a small affair.’ Piero is talking out of the side of his mouth. He’s always been nervous in his piety and feels embarrassed talking in church. ‘A private family affair. That’s what I asked for.’

  She chances a glance towards him and sees the strain in his face. He’s insisted on doing the organization himself and she’s aware it’s tried his every capability. She’s seen his accounts. Ninety-four pounds of candles for putting in the church. Another 96lb of wax for torches carried by the priests and a further 97lb to provide the sixteen torches surrounding the body.

  And not just any old wax – it’s best beeswax. Mind you, it does smell better. There’s nothing worse than a church full of rancid wax smoke.

  And then there are the candles for the thirty days of masses to be sung afterwards. How the chapter and priests of San Lorenzo will manage to use another 170lb of wax candles for those she can’t understand. But no doubt they have to burden the rich to help lighten the load of the poor.

  And then there’s the mourning cloth. Four slaves and five maids at 6 yards each seemed reasonable, with the same for thirteen gentlemen and officials. Another eight women including herself and her daughters required 9 yards each, as did each of the twelve men from the family, including Cosimo’s three sons. The only one who stood out was cousin Pier Francesco, who needed 11 yards, but he’s been fat for years now and will go the way of Giovanni if he’s not careful.

  And then, of course, there’s Contessina. She looks across at her mother-in-law. Yes we know she’s in mourning, but 20 yards and 8 inches of black cloth and eight separate veils and two kerchiefs of black silk is, surely, overdoing it a bit? She looked like a trawler as she dragged that lot through the church.

  Once this is all over Piero will start moaning about the expense. Still, he’s probably managed to do a special deal on a candle wax order of that size and all that cloth will have come wholesale. Surely?

  She risks another look round. All the family officers are present: the canon, their doctor, their chancellor and the factors and stewards from Careggi, Fiesole and Cafaggiolo. In all twenty-five men. All nine women seem to have turned up. She can see Contessina, Maria Nannina, both widows Ginevra (Giovanni’s and cousin Lorenzo’s), Laudomina, Pier Francesco’s wife, and three others from the Vernio family. And for completeness, the five maids and all four of their remaining slaves, all, it must be said, looking very clean and smart.

  What a pity Maddalena’s not here. She would have enjoyed this, especially the gossip afterward. For one moment just now she had looked round, expecting to see her. With a stab of pain down her left side, she realizes how much she misses Maddalena. Such an enigma. A slave in law, but a friend in reality, to everyone except Contessina. She wonders how she fares in the convent.

  She takes one more look round. Across the church, a nice touch she thinks, someone has invited a few of the artists whose work has so glorified Cosimo’s life and who over recent years have been so close to them that they think of them as family. Michelozzo, of course, and Donatello are in the pew opposite hers and Sandro Botticelli, who has been living with them in the Palazzo Medici for the last two years, is beside them. Before the service he seemed quite overcome, but later, as they entered the church, she saw him laughing with Lauro, so he must have
made quite a quick recovery. But then, when you are only nineteen, and sure you are invincible, funerals only seem to apply to other people.

  Lucrezia had stopped speaking and was facing the window, but Savonarola could see her eyes were still far away, focused elsewhere.

  ‘Quite a crowd in the end, but it was nice of them all to come.’

  Suddenly she turned towards him. ‘Of course, the one person who we all recognized was missing was Maddalena. We knew that once committed to a convent she could not easily gain a dispensation to leave, not even to attend Cosimo’s funeral. But seeing Carlo in the cortege, I went up to him afterward and asked if he had heard from her recently.

  ‘I have to admit I was embarrassed when he told me she had died six months earlier, when the earthquake, which, to be honest, we had not taken too seriously, had brought down part of the chapel roof in the Convento di Santo Damiano. The abbess, he said, had written to inform him of his mother’s death, but he had assumed we would all know already, so had not written to us himself. “I thought my father always knew everything,” was his comment, made somewhat acidly I thought. We all said a prayer for her. It seemed a bit late to do anything else.

  ‘Cosimo’s funeral itself was mercifully short, as was our walk home across the piazza. Later the Signoria decided that they wished to make some official recognition of his passing and passed a law declaring that in future he should always be referred to as Cosimo Pater Patriae.

  ‘There was, of course, an element of fear and uncertainty throughout the city. Many saw it as the old order passing and they wondered what the future would bring. We could hardly tell them that we had the same worries and so had Cosimo before he died. Nevertheless, many, both within the family and outside, knew that Cosimo’s death would leave a vacuum, and so, indeed, it turned out.’

  Chapter 6

  The Party of the Hill

  ‘When you look back at it from the perspective of old age, life no longer seems like a steady continuum of day-following-day but more like a series of memorable phases, some long and some short, but each with a character and perhaps some lessons of its own. But the strange thing is, most of these phases, and certainly their significance, are only visible with hindsight. At the time, most of us had little sense of the new eras beginning, although as I look backward now, most of the endings did leave us with a recognizable sense of finality.

  ‘I think that is why, with hindsight, we often appeared so unprepared, because at the time we were already deeply immersed in a new era before we had even sensed its existence. How advantaged must be the man who, early on, recognizes the opening of a new era and who has in his mind some measure of its likely direction and implications.’

  Across the room Girolamo Savonarola nodded his head and willed himself to remember what Mona Lucrezia had just said. If only she would allow him to write it all down as she spoke. His memory, he knew, was prodigious by the standards of most men, and secretly he made his notes in the evening. But with someone like Lucrezia it was important to capture the specific words chosen and not just the general spirit of what she was telling him. Sometimes there was so much clarity in her head, and she did so often seem to be able to convert it into the right words.

  Yet at the same time there was also something else, something that, although he only saw infrequent glimpses of it, appeared to contradict that clarity, as if she had some great uncertainty – some unresolved issue deep in her mind. The apparent self-confidence that he had seen at the beginning of their conversations was now starting to appear more fragile, as if she had, hidden away, some question of her own, a question that she was afraid to ask, perhaps because she was afraid of the answer.

  In the quiet of the evening he had also found himself asking a recurring question. Why did she agree to participate in this series of confessional meetings with me? If that was, indeed, what they were in her mind. What had she said? What’s in it for me? She must have asked herself that question. So what answer had she found?

  He had replied and, he thought, confidently enough with his usual offering. But was that what had motivated her to continue? Something, he felt instinctively, was missing.

  He was brought back from his questions by her voice. ‘The period after Cosimo’s death was a case in point. We knew what had ended, and when, and how, but we had little conception of what lay ahead, and even less how we should prepare for it.

  ‘Piero was the least able to prepare for the future. He was the last of the old school – those who tried, at least in part, to follow the creed laid down by Cosimo’s father, Giovanni di Bicci. But Lorenzo, or Lauro as we called him at that time, had made the break; at least in his head. Even at the age of ten Lauro knew that being a banker would stifle him. He was born to be a prince and that is what he was always going to become.’

  There was something about the decisive set of her jaw and the (had he imagined it?) triumphant tone of her voice as she said the words that made Savonarola wonder how strongly the young Lorenzo had been influenced by his mother. And why.

  ‘I would talk to you of January 1459.’ Suddenly her voice seemed distant.

  ‘In the spring of that year Pope Pius II visited the Palazzo Medici, and although Benozzo Gozzoli had yet to begin work on the fresci in the Chapel of the Magi, he started in the dry summer months and finished it that same year, the pope pronounced the building a palace fit for a king. I thought it was an interesting phrase, when used to describe a building created by someone with Cosimo’s creed. But as I have said before, judge us by our actions, and not by our words. It was another, and final, example of Cosimo saying one thing and doing quite the opposite, and the pope had recognized it for what it was.

  PALAZZO MEDICI

  18th January 1459

  ‘Lauro!’

  Lucrezia stands at the foot of the stairs and calls her son. He appears and begins to descend. He is in his best clothes, including the scarlet silk farsetto and tight black hose his grandfather has just given him for his tenth birthday. He looks older – perhaps fourteen, and dresses, stands and walks like a grown nobleman. Half-grinning, he raises an eyebrow. ‘You called, mother?’

  ‘Galeazzo Maria is here.’ She points to the open door through which the sound of arriving horses can clearly be heard.

  ‘I know. I was watching from the window upstairs.’ He reaches her and puts a friendly but firm hand on her arm. ‘And it’s Lorenzo from now on. Remember?’

  She nods and goes to apologize, but he’s already crossing the hall, hand outstretched, to welcome the Duke of Milan’s fifteen-year-old son. They embrace laughing, and sweep back into the hall and up the stairs, immersed in conversation and without even acknowledging her presence as they pass.

  Lucrezia smiles. Proud young nobles. They are already impressive. Soon they will be formidable. And then, in all probability, they will start to compete with one another. Galeazzo Maria is the sort of boy married women love: tall, slender, with shoulder-length curly red-gold hair, a strong aquiline nose and huge adorable eyes. Already he’s beginning to build a reputation as a ladies man.

  She checks with the housekeeper that appropriate refreshments are on their way then follows the boys upstairs to the new chapel. What a pity the fresci have not yet been started. Another couple of months Gozzoli says, once the walls have dried out from the winter weather. You can’t fresco onto damp walls. The new plaster won’t stick properly. She accepts that.

  Four hours later, and the visitors are preparing to go. Lucrezia stands in the doorway and waves while Galeazzo Maria mounts his huge white charger. She has to admit he’s every inch a condottiere’s son and will look like a duke even before he becomes one. Beside her, Bianca, Maria and Nannina are all pulling faces at each other. It seems the duke’s son has made a good impression.

  The visitors leave and Lorenzo, thoughtful, calls to a servant. ‘Where’s Apollonio Baldovini?’ He turns towards her, shaking his head. ‘Did you see that horse?’

  ‘Within a week Lorenzo had sent his
head groom to buy a stallion just like it. He said to me, “Mother, the future is clear. I am going to be a great prince. Greater even that Galeazzo Maria and my horses will beat his at the palio. You watch me.” And everything he said that day became a reality, so some of us, at least, could see forward into the future.’

  ‘And Giovanni? Your husband’s younger brother?’ For the first time, Savonarola took a chance and asked a question. He waited, hoping that Lucrezia would not end their conversation. But it was a genuine question. More than once she had hinted that Lorenzo took after his uncle rather than his father. If there had been a fundamental break in the family’s purpose, from bankers to princes, where had that break occurred?

  Lucrezia hesitated. It seemed the question had been unexpected and had stopped her flow of thought. But although she seemed to understand the reason for asking it, her delay in replying suggested she was undecided how much she could tell him.

  And as a result, he listened twice as carefully.

  ‘You are right to interrupt, and I forgive you for it. Your question is a good one. As I was saying before, we are often clearer about the end of one era than the beginning of the next. My husband, as we both know, represented the last dying embers of Giovanni di Bicci’s influence. Lorenzo was of the new school, the school of princes, and yes, it was from Giovanni that he inherited that new attitude.’

  ‘Giovanni was a strong influence then?’

  She smiled, nodding. ‘A very strong influence. He and I had been brought up the same way. We believed in the same things. Change was in the air. Unlike my husband, neither of us had a strong reverence for the past. We were far too busy trying to build a future.’ She looked at him carefully, clearly choosing her words. ‘Besides, when your father is not only cold but remote, and distant, and inattentive, your uncle, if he is close, may become the main male influence on your life.’ She grinned. ‘Especially when he represents fun, and opportunity, and enthusiasm for life. And Giovanni was all those things.’