But not this time.
At Lorenzo de’ Medici’s insistence—he who had commissioned Botticelli to conduct the work, a commission of forty large florins—the depiction was to be rendered on the wall of the government palace, facing the large courtyard in the city. Day after day, all would see it, a constant reminder to those who dare pit themselves against the great house of Medici.
In the heat of the day, the dusty smell of the warming paving stones rose up to meet the pungent odor of the fresh, wet limestone applied to the wall in readiness. Sandro Botticelli climbed the scaffold. Isabetta watched him, with Mattea by her side. He wore a scarlet cape trimmed with a thin row of fur.
“More to the left,” he called out to the apprentices splaying the wet lime plaster on the wall in specified sections, Sandro following along with his tools.
“He need not add inscriptions,” Isabetta said, bumping shoulders with Mattea.
Mattea sniffed, “No one will ever wonder who these fiends are.”
Botticelli had been at work for only a few days, yet the identity of the first two men, merely rendered in life-sized outline at this point, could be none other than Francesco de’ Pazzi and Archbishop Salviati. Simple sketches depicted with such mastery, the realism of the men captured in the moment of their gruesome death throes as they hung from windows of this very building were so startling, passersby shivered with frigid memories. Nowhere else would the new method of realism—of shadow, light, and dimensionality combined—be best put to use. Already the artwork served its purpose.
In what should have been the somnolent days of spring, when folks idled away their days in their gardens or in the rejoicing of the most popular days for passeggiata, the piazza had become the focal point of society. People came in droves to watch for hours, standing against the Mercanzia, the city’s courthouse, while others brought chairs and tables, food and drink, and made a day of the theater of art playing out before them.
It was easy for Isabetta and Mattea to be lost in the crowd, easy for them to hold small squares of parchment or heavier vellum in the palms of their hands as they copied the sketches of the maestro. They made notes describing every tool Botticelli used, every technique he plied. And it was easy to scan the crowd for any glimpse of Lapaccia or anyone they may ask who may know something of her. As they sketched, as they mimicked the maestro’s technique, they could not overcome their own concerns, those for Lapaccia, and now Viviana.
“Had Viviana ever told you about…” Mattea struggled, for she could not speak of Orfeo’s treatment of her friend lightly. “Did she ever tell you the truth of their marriage?”
Isabetta shook her head without looking up from her notes. “No, never. I could tell theirs was not a love match. Not all of us are lucky enough to fall in love with those our family binds us to. I knew he was inattentive and slothful, that he had lost most of his inheritance, and hers. But never, in my wildest imagination, would I have thought…”
“I do not know how she bore the infliction of it for so long.” There was a note of fear in Mattea’s voice; she heard it herself. Her lover seemed the kindest, gentlest of men, but had not Viviana once thought the same of Orfeo? “I am not sure I could have endured such horror in silence.”
Isabetta shrugged sadly. “Perhaps it was her pride, or perhaps it was her shame, which kept her from revealing the truth.”
“Shame?” Mattea balked with a frown. “What had she to be ashamed of? He is the despicable one.”
“True, true,” Isabetta agreed. “But many women who endure, such as our Viviana has, feel they are somehow deserving of it, somehow they brought it upon themselves.”
“Utter nonsense,” Mattea snipped, a disgusted moue upon her young face.
Isabetta leaned closer, to speak her next words in a whisper, “I wonder if she has thought of life as a widow, the widow of a traitor.”
“She should retain legal rights to their holdings, no? Her sons are emancipated. Perhaps all will go to them. They will take great care of her, I am sure.”
“You speak as if she would be a normal widow. What will happen after—” Isabetta waggled her head. “She could face banishment as so many others have. She could lose all.”
The thin piece of pointed lead and small squares of parchment began to shake in Mattea’s hands. Until Isabetta reached out and took them into her own.
“Think not of it, not yet,” she insisted with a squeeze. “Whatever happens, we will be there to help her.”
“Yes, yes, of course. All will be well, for we shall make it so.”
The declaration made, to Isabetta and to herself, Mattea lost herself gladly to the study of Botticelli and his movements. She watched with an eye to technique and method, until something else took root in her heart, something perhaps not as worthy or as kind, something more akin to hunger. To practice her art—her mastery—so publicly, could there be anything greater? A question jumped into her mind—how much would she sacrifice to practice her art as men do?
As Botticelli moved back and forth upon the scaffold, his arm grandly sweeping in bold gestures of color, she knew there had never been a stage more largely set nor a canvas so grand. She frowned at the small scrap in her hand and almost laughed at the pathetic sight.
Mattea snuffled away her melancholy; it was a product of more than just this moment, but the culmination of all the trying ones over the last weeks. Gaze shifting back up, her eyes glazed over. Now she saw herself upon the scaffold wearing a smock, neatly tied up and lace-trimmed, one of the other women by her side. It was the illusion—a magnificent vision—setting her back to her task, to watch and to learn, for the sake of learning itself, for it was all she and the fellowship could ever have. But perhaps Signore da Vinci was right; perhaps their work would pave the way for other women, females longing to create as they did, in public, not just as some disregarded, genteel hobby.
“Clearly Francesco will be as naked here as he was in his death,” she muttered to Isabetta. “It appears as if Signore Botticelli will create the Archbishop’s bite upon him as well, though they will face forward, not as they hung facing each other.”
“I agree,” her companion replied. “I don’t know if the cruel postures are necessary to project the warning they are intended to convey. But what is the point of such an undertaking if not to do so with the grandest impact?”
“It is strange to think of it. Here we have the Pazzi and their ilk vilified while in other parts of the city, the Medici, both living and dead, are being glorified.”
It was the sculptures Mattea spoke of, images of a victorious Il Magnifico commissioned by Lorenzo’s family and friends.
“It is a shame we cannot witness that work as well,” Isabetta replied.
“Verrocchio’s.” They said together and laughed, though not without a hint of bitterness.
Sculpting took place in the privacy of an artist’s workshop, a place women were not allowed. If they could, they would watch the great Verrocchio collaborating with the modeler Orsino Benintendi to sculpt three life-sized figures of Lorenzo, intended for display in the three most attended churches in the city.
“One work would remind us always of who is dead, the other to assure us,” Isabetta waved her hand to include the vast crowd in the piazza, “to assure all of us, that Lorenzo is very much alive, and so very much among us.”
• • •
Leonardo could not have asked for a grander distraction than the one his friend Sandro provided. He stopped amidst the crowd for the briefest of moments to watch, shrugging off the twinge of envy. What artist would not wish for such a commission as this fresco? He almost laughed at Sandro’s grandiosity, watching the short man sketch as if he conducted a lavish orchestra, creating with the same insolence he carried in his every day manner. Many held the distinctiveness against Botticelli, but not Leonardo. In truth, it amused him.
He hitched the painting, barely dry and covered by a thin linen, higher beneath his arm. Edging along the outskirts of the
crowd clogging the piazza’s north and west side, Leonardo made for the main entrance.
“Signore da Vinci,” a member of the Eight, those who still stood guard at all the entrances to any building wherein a Medici may be, greeted the artist with a serious mien. “I must ask your business here today.”
“As well you should,” Leonardo said spiritedly. In an awkward twist of hands and torso, he lifted the painting up a few inches. “I must return this painting to the palazzo and the Gonfaloniere.”
“Return?” The ruddy-skinned soldier’s face grew darker still. “What do mean return?”
“Well, it came from the palazzo to begin with. I was…” Leonardo let his words fade. “Perhaps it would be best if you brought me to Gonfaloniere Petrucci’s office and allowed me to explain it all to him.”
But the soldier on the opposite side of the wide double door stepped quickly over to the painting, lifting the linen. Disciplined soldier though he maybe, he could not keep the surprise off his young—and handsome, thought Leonardo—face. Small though they were, it was the jumping jaw muscles, the spasm beneath the clean-shaven, strong bones, which laid bare his shock.
“Right this way, signore.” Without another word, the soldier pushed open the right side door. With a clanking of armor, he led Leonardo up the grand staircase at the back of the foyer.
At the office door of the Gonfaloniere, the soldier held a hand up. “If you please, wait but a moment.”
“Of course,” Leonardo replied, biting his lips as the door closed in his face. He imagined the conversation taking place on the other side. He needn’t imagine for long.
With a whoosh, the door dashed open. Gonfaloniere Petrucci himself stood in the threshold, long face bursting with high color and bright eyes.
“Signore da Vinci, what a wonderful surprise. How nice it is to see you. I hear you have something for me?” The man could not be more effusive, could not contain his ebullience, so like a child about to receive a treat.
“I do,” Leonardo replied.
The soldier stepped aside, permitting the artist entry into the large and opulently outfitted office.
“Please, please, come in,” Cesare Petrucci beckoned him further into the vast space, indicating, with a long hand, a chair before his desk.
“Thank you, Gonfaloniere, but I cannot tarry,” Leonardo said. “It has recently come to my attention you may be looking for this painting.”
Vague pronouncement made, Leonardo placed the canvas upon the chair, and with a flourish worthy of his friend Botticelli, threw off the linen.
Leonardo did not sit, but at the sight of the painting, the Gonfaloniere did.
He studied it intently, a silent tongue, a whirling mind. “How did you come by this?” It was a demand, whispered but not disguised.
“It was Giuliano himself,” Leonardo began, stumbling over the story he had created, one he knew would be believed, but one not easy to fabricate. His grief he still held tight and close. “He asked me but a few days before…”
For a moment, Leonardo thought he should have sat. Calling up memories of the man he so greatly admired, a man he loved, was proving harder than imagined. He took a deep breath, rushing to finish.
“He told me it had been damaged in a leak, from the rains, and asked me to fix it.”
Cesare’s round eyes bore into him; Leonardo saw the tincture of skepticism in the gaze.
“Did you not know this painting has been searched for, for days? Did you not hear of what it represents?”
“I learned of it only last evening.” Leonardo shook his head, wide-eyed. “I do my utmost not to listen to gossip. Surely you can understand.”
Cesare Petrucci cleared his throat, or did he choke on his own words, it mattered not. He would ask nothing more. Instead, he offered gratitude.
“It would have been easy for you to put aside this task,” the Gonfaloniere said, “in light of these devastating events.”
“No,” Leonardo snapped quickly. “No it would not. I could not. I made my promise to Giuliano. I would keep it.”
“Of course, of course,” Petrucci stood up, taking Leonardo’s hand. “On behalf of the Medici and the Republic, I thank you for returning this to us. It will prove so very helpful, I assure you.”
Leonardo bowed his head. Turning quickly upon his heels, he made from the office with as much unseemly swiftness as possible, before the Gonfaloniere could see the slight smile of satisfaction brimming on his lips.
The deed was done.
Chapter Twenty-Eight
“The time of reckoning comes for us all.”
The world lay tucked into the gray blanket of dawn.
That’s when they came for him.
Viviana heard the crash from her sitting room. Here she slept ever since threatening Orfeo with her knife. They had circled each other since then, lions waiting for the other to pounce, not a shred of marriage—of trust—left between them.
But none of that mattered anymore.
Viviana knew the time had come.
“Signore Orfeo del Marrone?” It was a deep, dark voice rising up from within the confines of the courtyard as if rising up from hell, echoing eerily off the cold stonewalls.
Viviana sat up and listened to the sounds of her husband rousing from his bed, the rustle of the silk sheets she had long been denied, the thumping of his bare feet on the floor as he marched to the door and answered the call.
“I am Orfeo del Marrone. Who is there? What do you want?”
“You.” Came the simple, denouncing answer.
Viviana jumped up, grabbing a wrap as she rushed from the room, coming to stand behind Orfeo as the intruder climbed the stairs to the living quarters. His black leather-clad form barely fit in the narrow confines of the stairwell.
“Me?” Orfeo recoiled, neither contrite nor respectful, even in the face of this mammoth law enforcer, one whose presence could mean but one thing, and one thing alone.
“You are under arrest for colluding with conspirators.” The man reached the top and stood over Orfeo, looking down at him like a small child. “You, sir, are a traitor of the state.”
Orfeo blundered back a step. Viviana shifted to the side. She would not catch him.
“I…a traitor?” Orfeo’s ruddy complexion drained of color, his eyes sunk into the dark, saggy skin surrounding them. “You are mistaken.”
“We make no mistakes, signore.” The soldier took Orfeo roughly by the upper arm, pulling the smaller man along as a child would a rag doll. “You are coming with us.”
By now, both Jemma and Nunzio were awake, huddled together in the Great Room just beyond the door, viewing the events.
“No!” Orfeo shouted, reaching back, but for what Viviana could not tell, certainly it could not be for her. Perhaps a sword or a wrap. It mattered not.
They took him then, dragging him roughly, as he tumbled down the stairs, dressed only in the thin linen of his nightshirt—his skinny, hairy ankles and bare feet sticking out the bottom.
“Madonna…” Jemma began.
“Let us go,” Viviana said as if she launched a trip to the market. She closed her wrap, ran back to her sitting room, and grabbed the simple gamurra she had shed the night before. Throwing it on as she ran, she followed her now wailing husband and his captors down the stairs.
Out in the street, a gathering of soldiers awaited their leader and his prisoner, ready in case the arrested man put up violent resistance. Viviana almost laughed at the absurd possibility.
“You have the wrong man, I tell you,” Orfeo whined now, “I am innocent.” He planted his feet upon the cobbles, but as another of the Eight grabbed his free and flaying arm, the two men lifted him straight off the ground, trounced with Orfeo in their grasp all the way up the Via Porto Rosso, straight into the Piazza della Signoria.
The remainder of the soldiers followed behind. Viviana and her two companions walked in their wake. She felt the eyes upon her. Viviana felt the heated stares of those who came o
ut of their beds to watch their disagreeable neighbor swept away, into the clutches of the government, as well as those who did not dare step out, the few watching from between barely opened curtains and shutters.
Viviana gave them nothing of herself to see. No emotion whatsoever, though her upper lip glistened and her legs shook unseen beneath the folds of her gown. She held Jemma’s hands, felt the supportive warmth of Nunzio’s hand on her back. She walked on.
• • •
“Jemma,” Viviana spoke with a voice as flat as the road before them. “Run to Isabetta’s home. Tell her what is afoot.”
The young girl did as instructed, running as if her own life depended on it.
By the time the procession reached the piazza, the sun began to crest the horizon of the hills surrounding the city, began to find its way into the vast space of the government plaza between the forest of buildings as crepuscular rays of light, God’s pointed fingers of justice. And with the light came more people. Some yelling, some whispering, most now dressed for the day’s beginning, none surprised to find yet another man under arrest and on his way to a sentencing. Judicial prudence was still suspended in these days of eradicating conspirators. The ceremony of the imposed sentence, however, had taken on ritualistic theatrics.
As he neared the Palazzo della Signoria, the worst of Orfeo’s indignation and fight left him, his body fell limp in the soldiers’ grasp, his toes bloody from scratching along the cobbles. As they ascended the stairs before the main entrance, the smaller door within the black and brown grid archway opened. In its threshold stood none other than Il Magnifico himself, accompanied by Gonfaloniere Petrucci. This latter man stepped forward as the soldiers threw Orfeo down to his knees upon the stone steps.
“P…please, Gonf—” Orfeo’s begging caught in his throat, strangled by the fracas of wheels upon cobbles, of the snapping of a horse’s rein.
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