Portrait of a Conspiracy

by Donna Russo Morin

  “Are you all right?”

  “Be gone Pazzi!” the cry rang out, saving Viviana from finding an answer.

  All eyes turned to the giovani and the lifeless captive.

  “Farewell Pazzi!” they yelled, lifting the body and tossing it into the Arno.

  The body fell in utter silence, hovering, tattered rags of his once fine doublet flapping in the air. It hit the water with a decisive splash and a full splay of water.

  “Evviva! Evviva!”

  The rousing cheers erupted; the desecration turned into a festival.

  Viviana could take no more; she had seen the very worst of human existence within the span of ten days. She must retreat.

  “Come, Isabetta,” she pulled on the angry woman’s arm, finding no resistance.

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  “Knowing is not accepting.”

  “I will not be very long, mama,” Mattea called as she opened the door. “I will find us some fresh tuna for our supper.”

  Mattea closed the door on the answering call. She would not return soon. It was not to the fish market she went.

  She had received the note late yesterday, just as she returned from witnessing the drowning of Jacopo de’ Pazzi’s dead body. It could not have come at a more auspicious moment; nothing else could have lifted her spirits as did the words from her beloved.

  The directives were clear and she could barely contain herself until this moment came.

  Mattea hurried eastward and north, beyond the Palazzo della Signoria, beyond the Duomo and Giotto’s campanile standing sentinel over the quiet city. The Eight still made their arrests, the hungry scurried to the market and back, and the giovani pranced here and there. But all seemed as though done in secret, as if no one wanted—cared or dared—to see the goings-on in their homeland.

  All the better.

  Mattea rushed up the Via del Maglio, drawing closer to the Porta a San Gallo, the main northern gate. Here there were fewer houses, fewer churches, and barely a soul in sight.

  As the convent of San Domenico del Maglio came into site, Mattea trounced off the right edge of the road and into the vast space of undeveloped land. The gentle forest of wildflowers, cypress, and sturdy oak shared their home congenially. It was a place of magical secrecy, and Mattea delighted in romping through it, communing with nature in the privacy it afforded, though still within the confined safety of the city walls. This was not the first time she had met him here.

  She entered the grove, their grove, only to find it empty. Mattea raised her gaze to the sky, to the clouds finally beginning to part and break away, to the glow of the sun through the gaps as well as a blue of pure azure, one so deep she longed to paint with it.

  Mattea tipped her head to the side. It was not footsteps she heard, as she hoped, but music. It sounded like a frottola, though only the slimmest of the repetitive rhythms did she hear and feel, as if in the air around her, as if the lute player sat in the tops of the trees high above her.

  She closed her eyes and began to sway. She imagined him in her arms, his warmth, his strength, as he guided her into the steps. Mattea inhaled, smelling his dark, cinnamon-like scent.

  Her eyes popped open. It was no imagined scene. He was there, in her arms, holding her, leading her in a gently sensual movement of dance as the trees stood watch round them. Mattea almost cried with the ecstasy of it. Instead, she lay her head upon his shoulder. Closing her eyes once more, feeling his body rub against hers as they swayed together—never had she experienced such intimacy in the whole of her life, one far deeper than actual coupling brought, one she wished would last forever.

  But, of course, it could not.

  She gave no resistance as he kissed her, as his mouth captured and caressed hers, delicately at first, commandingly soon.

  “How desperately I have missed you,” he whispered, his mouth burning a trail up her neck to her ear. The words broke Mattea’s fugue, and she pulled back, keeping his lips from hers though her eyes rested on them still.

  “You are more involved in this than you are telling me, aren’t you?”

  “Does it matter?” he finally asked, licking his full lips as if he would taste her yet again.

  “I have always known,” she began softly, not wanting to make accusations, wanting only to know the truth of him, lest her fears take her to worse places than reality, wanting to be prepared if it was as frightening as she thought it could be. “I have always known you do not respect and adore the Medici as most fiorentinos do, as I do.”

  Only here in nature’s hidden chamber would she dare speak such words, but dare she must.

  Mattea stepped toward him once more, reached out with hands he took eagerly.

  “Have they done something to you or your family perhaps, to make you feel this way?” It was a feeling she had always had, but only a feeling.

  He answered her in kind.

  “You know me well, but you see more than there may be. Do not let the maniacal days we live in infest you.” It was no answer, just a vague response. Her glare told him it was not enough and he shrugged his wide shoulders. “Perhaps I simply have problems with authority, as my father, God rest him, was so wont to tell me. Perhaps I simply have problems with any one family wielding so much power.”

  “There is much fear among…my friends,” she slipped over the words, even here not daring to speak of the group aloud. “We have learned more, more about the day one such friend disappeared, but it does not help us find her.”

  He nodded his head. “It is one of the reasons I asked to see you.”

  He kissed her then, with the depth of his emotion and desire.

  “That is the most important reason,” he smiled rakishly as he pulled away. “But there is something I wanted to tell you. I think there may be an opportunity for you to learn more.”

  Mattea perked up, shook off her desire.

  “In a few days’ time,” he continued, “there is to be a gathering, a small social occasion of sorts, if you can imagine one in these days. It will take place at a young, rich man’s sala, a visiting condottiere. He is said to know much of the city’s secrets. Perhaps he may reveal something to a young beautiful woman.”

  “I cannot go alone,” Mattea objected, scandalized. “Nor would I be admitted.”

  “Bring one of your friends. There must be one among you who would fit in, one who searches as you do,” he said, or did he ask?

  Mattea nodded. Yes, Natasia served all the criteria, but the timid woman would never dare. Yet there was one among them who looked at every dare as a challenge. Perhaps they could make their way through the miasma that was a social occasion among the privileged. Had Isabetta not been one herself, before disaster befell her?

  She nodded, accepting his challenge.

  He took her in his arms, an embrace of protection, speaking softly as his lips brushed the top of her head, as he rubbed his cheek against the soft auburn floss.

  “Our city is becoming more and more a place of danger,” the aberrant darkness in his voice demanded attention. “Even the innocent nobles are becoming fearful and dangerous. It may seem as if the Medici and their followers are gaining back ground but there is a fear of another sort infesting them. Do you know how to use a dagger?” The question came from him but out of nowhere.

  “What? Hah!” Mattea staggered, snickered at the absurdity of it, but there was not one iota of amusement in his face.

  From the back of the belt he wore upon his waist, between the body and the skirt of his farsetto, he pulled a dagger, one of gleaming steel, jeweled sheath, and hilt.

  He held it out. “This is for you.”

  Before she could find words—any word—he knelt before her and removed the laces from his camicia. With the dagger in one hand and the laces in the other, he lifted her skirts with his wrists. Mattea felt her breath hitch, but remained motionless. He twirled the laces thrice about the middle of her calf, lips curving sensually as his touch brought out goose bumps upon her smoo
th flesh. Laces placed and tied, he slipped the dagger sheath snuggly against her leg.

  “There you should always keep it. I wager you may have a thicker piece of leather or heavy cloth from which you could make a better garter for it, yes?”

  Mattea nodded, pulling her skirt up and stepping her leg out like a man about to offer a bow. Instead, she stared at the dagger attached to her leg. Her dagger. She was an armed woman. How astounded those who knew her would be to learn of it.

  She made to reach down, to take it in her hands, but he held her motion with a laugh.

  “Not yet, cara. First I must teach you to use it.”

  “But how—” she began, giggling as she watched him rustle in the undergrowth, bringing up a long, thin stick and breaking it in half, a side for her, one for him, both the size of a dagger.

  “Stay on your toes. Keep your knees slightly bent, never locked.” He told her as he entered the posture, a ready stance for fighting.

  Mattea mimicked him, and though he could not see her knees bent, she showed him the fluidity of her body with a slight up and down bounce. She raised her weapon hand, holding the “dagger” as if she would poke him with it, as one would poke a fire in the grate.

  “You would think this way was the best way, I know, but watch.”

  He took her hand and moved the stick within it, so the “blade” extended from the back of her hand, not the front, out from her palm with blade pointing toward her, not from between thumb and forefinger pointing at him.

  “Holding it thus will allow you two slashes in the motion of one.”

  He showed her then, showed her offensive moves—attacking moves—but mostly defensive ones, ones to make if attacked.

  The sun rose high, their bodies became warm and slick with sweat, but still he kept her at it, until her blood thudded in her ears, her muscles ached, and she felt a power unlike any other she had ever experienced. It intoxicated her.

  He came at her yet again, hands and arms raised, reaching, a fiend intent on grabbing her. Ducking beneath his arms, she twirled as if she whirled away, yet coming full round, in a dance, and popped back up. Taking him unaware, she slashed upward and to the left with her right hand—her “dagger” scraping along his chest between each arm—then back down again she sent the “knife,” breaking the tiny twig at the base of his neck.

  Were it steel in her hand, he would be dead.

  He dropped his “weapon;” she scooped it up.

  Her teacher, her lover, stood immobile, his face agape at the brilliant move she flourished.

  He grabbed his neck, gurgling as if blood puddled in his throat, eyes rolling in their sockets as he staggered about like a drunken man.

  Mattea laughed with delight, squealed with triumph as his dramatic death scene brought him to his knees, then to his back, splayed on leaves and flowers, unmoving as his throe passed.

  But she was not done with him.

  As the conquering hero, never had she felt so like one, Mattea lifted her skirts, stepped one leg over his body, and lowered herself onto him. His lustful groan sounded her reward.

  Mattea took him then, but it was not with the weapon he gave her, but the one she was born with.

  • • •

  He remembered the night he sketched it. It came upon him, unbidden, unforeseen, after spending a day with the women who were now a permanent fixture in his life.

  Like a man possessed he set to work. Drawing out a blank canvas, one already stretched and awaiting his touch, he plied it with absorbent ground, the chalk surfacing agent applied to a canvas, or panel, without oil, making the canvas more able to absorb the paint’s own oil.

  Without Botticelli’s cheat, it took him but an hour or so to proportionally enlarge the cartone to a full sketch upon the blank sheath. Quickly he put Fiammetta standing at the canvas in the center. Using costruzione legittima, a system of perspective founded on a geometrically constructed picture plane, the height of the foremost figure—in this case, the abundance that was the contessa—became the module on which all proportions of the whole were predicated. His horizon, the middle of the space at the eye level of this figure—in this case the canvas within the canvas, a miniature of the actual accursed painting itself—became his vanishing point.

  With colors as distinctive as the women themselves, he brought them to life with his brush, with the emotion for them he felt but could not express in any other manner. With his quick, almost stabbing-like technique, he rendered his new family. With scumbling, he gave them softness by painting thin layers of light color over dark; he brought them to life.

  Leonardo played with his colors and the variants of them he devised with shadow and brightness, the latter most assuredly on the female artists’ faces, for they had brought light back upon his own.

  He worked until his arm ached, until no more than a few candles lit the room.

  Stepping back, becoming now an objective observer of what he had created, as best as he could be, always the worst to look upon his own work. Eyes uncritical of form, focused on content.

  Leonardo almost laughed.

  He had intended to honor this group, yet what he had produced was nothing if not another of his puzzles. Which was the painting of the conspiracy, that which the women painted—the one which had gone missing from the palazzo—or was it what he had rendered? The women painting the painting. He relished in the ironic convolution of it.

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  “A line once drawn, can never be erased.”

  Viviana’s blood burned hot at the sight of him. Speechless, static, face a sculpture, hands fisted by her side—she was a steaming cauldron barely contained.

  “Are your duties well-tended?” Viviana asked as Orfeo trounced through their home, past her sitting room. Her sarcasm was lost on him. How could he know what she knew? She could never reproach him for it. How could she explain her knowledge?

  “Of course not,” Orfeo scoffed, returning from the bedchamber where he had divested himself of belt and doublet. Though thin, his flabby middle section hung grossly over the edge of his hose. All Viviana could think about was the grisliest of pig sausage in its thin casing.

  “But we have finally convinced Il Magnifico to take some rest.” Orfeo puffed. “It is the perfect recess in which to change clothes and sleep in one’s own bed.”

  “As opposed to someone else’s,” Viviana snapped without thought.

  “What?”

  He sat then, upon her settee. “I have quite the tale to tell, of a dead man, no less,” his voice, like his small chest, swelled. “You would not believe what the giovani have done.”

  Viviana dropped her book in her lap. “You mean how they dug up the body of Jacopo de’ Pazzi, dragged him through the streets, and threw him in the river?”

  Orfeo’s small mouth dropped open, gape narrowing to a sneer at the denied opportunity to laud his superior knowledge.

  “H—how…how?” It was all he could manage.

  “I saw it happen,” Viviana reported far too jovially, but she could not seem to help it.

  His shoulders dropped, his arms twisted against his meager chest. “You were out in it, in such a debacle?”

  Viviana cared not a whit for his displeasure, in truth, she quite enjoyed it. “Isabetta and I were out for passeggiata. We ended up in the very path of the giovani. We followed. We saw it all.”

  Orfeo didn’t ask of her safety or that of her friend. He stood and left the room without another word. Viviana rose, following, fairly skipping behind him as he entered the dining room.

  Seeing her there, Orfeo’s jaw twitched. He stepped to the banquet and poured himself a large goblet of strong brunello, the dark brew staining his teeth a tint browner with a single gulp.

  “Foolish women,” he mumbled, wiping his mouth with the back of his hand. Any other man would demand his wife not leave the house.

  Orfeo took his place at table, waiting without request for his food.

  Alerted to his return,
Beatrice quickly filled the table with an impressive midday pranzo, a chicken pie, cooked to perfection with golden crust, and an erbolata, the cheese and herb tart, one of the master’s favorite foods.

  “You will not know of the letter,” he spoke again, after a long stretch of silence as they ate, together yet apart. Viviana knew he had used the time to search for a token of his superiority.

  “Of what letter do you speak?” Viviana asked with little curiosity, voice flat, continuing to eat. He did not deserve her undivided attention.

  With dramatic aplomb Orfeo told her of the letter Lorenzo de’ Medici had received from the Duke of Urbino, and how annoyed Lorenzo had been by it.

  Orfeo held in his diatribe, forcing her to give his words their due.

  With a clang, Viviana dropped her knife and her two-pronged fork, and glared at him. “And why was he agitated?”

  The supercilious man leaned back in his chair. “It was disguised as a missive of condolence, but its tone, the content, the very closing offered little in the way of sympathy. He offered help to the Medici, to Florence, but with little enthusiasm.” Orfeo shook his head with condemnation. “When we took it apart, the message, line by line, denuded it of its rhetoric and its formalities, the message was clear, and it was not one of warmth or support.”

  “What was the true message?”

  “Montefeltro made it perfectly clear—Lorenzo should consider himself lucky not to be dead as well. And if he wanted to continue to stay alive, he had better keep his mouth shut and do nothing ‘to disturb God’ and his followers.”

  “Disturb God. There was something else meant there.”

  Orfeo’s nostrils flared. “Yes. ‘God’ in this instance is meant in the worldly form,” Orfeo took a slow drink. “God in this letter is none other than the most holy vicar, Pope Sixtus, and his followers, including Federico Montefeltro himself.”