Portrait of a Conspiracy

by Donna Russo Morin

  “But how? How did you survive?” Rodolfo probed, not disbelieving, only in disbelief. “They are killing everyone, even for reasons less tangible than this noodle.”

  Swirling the thick and darkly red Valpolicella in her hand, Viviana answered without looking up. “With the help of Leonardo da Vinci.”

  “Da Vinci?” Rudolfo’s voice squeaked. “The…artist?”

  Viviana heard the stumble for what it was. Rudolfo’s tongue tripped on the resounding rumors swirling about her new friend, but he would never speak them. She had taught them better, taught them the true meaning of acceptance and love, against whatever example their father had shown them.

  “Sì, the artist.” Viviana smiled into the green-tinted brown eyes of her sons. She had told them so much already, was the rest truly worth keeping a secret?

  • • •

  “Our mother, a dilettare.” Marcello dropped back in his chair, head as full as his belly. “I knew of your appreciation for art, but never your talent.”

  Viviana smiled into her cup, how it had loosened her tongue and given her strength, the daring to tell her sons of her secret life as an artist and of the group itself, to bring them to her room and show them her work, her completed self-portrait begun on the night she became a free woman. She would need far greater fortitude for the rest, to tell the entire story, which she must. But for now, she steeped herself in the magic of this moment.

  “Whatever prompted you to do such a thing?” Rudolfo leaned forward, pouring himself more wine.

  “It all began when I received my deceased cousin’s belongings,” Viviana told them, told them of Caterina’s journals, treatises, and drawings, and what had happened when she shared them with the other women. “But it was more,” she grew thoughtful, the witness she was to her own life dredging the deepest parts of it. “My husband is…was…a bastard. You boys grew up. I needed something. A greater purpose. Caterina showed me mine.”

  Viviana heard an edge of despair in her voice. She laughed it away. “At least until one of you hurry up and bless me with a grandchild.”

  Marcello smirked, “From what I hear, Rudolfo is working on it all the time.”

  “Hold your tongue, brother,” the younger man chided, but the mauve stain working up his cheeks snatched away any true objections attempted. He gave up the ghost. With a dashing flick of his brows and a devilish half smile, her youngest told Viviana all she needed to know of his sexual exploits. It was all too much for the tipsy trio. Their laughter rang out well and loud.

  Viviana sat back in her chair, in relief as much as relaxation. The building was the same, with the same room, the same furniture, yet it was a new place, a place it had never been. With Orfeo’s death, it had become a home, a haven. Closing her eyes for an instant, the music of her sons’ voices—the words indistinct as they continued to stuff cheese and tortes into their mouths, a lifetime of such breathtaking moments burst in her mind, moments that would be lived here in this, her home, with her sons, and their wives and their children. Such a future was worth the risk and the pain, and even the punishment that may yet await her in eternity.

  “Will you be able to keep the house?” Marcello asked.

  “I believe I will sell your father’s business, with your permission. Or rather, you will, sì? I have no interest in fabrics, except to wear them. Between such proceeds and the income we still receive from my family’s vineyards—the sale of the wine and the rents—there should be more than enough to cover the taxes and the upkeep.”

  “The warehouse and offices would make a fine spice shop,” Rudolfo commented to Marcello.

  “We’ll see,” his brother replied.

  Viviana sighed with thick contentment. Though smaller by one, her family had never felt more complete. And yet, it would not be free of its ghosts until the whole story was told. She could only pray it would survive.

  “There is one more thing I must tell you.” Even as she spoke, her voice lost all of its frivolity, her face darkened with fear, not at what she had done, but at what they would think of her.

  • • •

  Each young man sat slumped in his chair, one with hands fisted in his lap, the other hanging on to the edge of the table as if it were the only thing keeping him from falling off the edge of the world. For Viviana, it was a moment seeming to last a lifetime, until she could bear it no longer.

  “One of you say something, please.” It was a whispered plea, but it brought results.

  Marcello stood slowly, chair legs squelching against stone as his legs pushed it backward. He took two steps and stood over her; never would she have thought her own son could appear so foreboding. Bending in half, Marcello wrapped his long arms about her neck and rested his head on her shoulder, much as he did as a small child.

  “Justice finds the strangest of paths,” he whispered, his breath sending wisps of her chestnut hair floating in the air, “but it always finds its way.”

  Viviana closed her eyes and leaned her head against his, a sob of relief caught in her throat. She reached across the table toward Rudolfo.

  The young man stared at the outstretched hand, at her blue eyes, violet with the redness of tears about them.

  He stood, and walked away.

  “Rudolfo!” Viviana found her voice through her tears, through her fears, but it was for naught. Her son’s long strides helped him escape the room, and her, with swiftness.

  Even as his heavy footfalls struck the steps down to the street, Viviana turned to Marcello, but in this son’s eyes, she saw only her own perplexity.

  • • •

  For two days, Marcello doted on her, and it brought her a modicum of peace. But Viviana saw his gaze fall to the road below.

  “You should take to your bed, mama,” Marcello said late on the second night. “You have still not fully recovered from your ordeal. I see it on your skin and in your eyes.”

  “I cannot sleep.”

  Marcello stood and shook his head; anger made an appearance on the dear features. He kissed her forehead and retreated to his own room.

  Viviana watched as the streets emptied, until only the heavy boots of the Night Watch stepped upon it.

  “Mama, mama, I am here.”

  She heard Rudolfo’s voice. With eyes closed, she dozed, dreamed.

  Until she felt his head in her lap.

  Viviana’s eyes fluttered open. There he was.

  “Oh my boy, my boy,” Viviana sobbed, leaning over to envelope him in her embrace. “You have come back to me, my dear son.”

  “I never left you, not really,” Rudolfo’s voice cracked with emotion. “I needed to talk. To understand.”

  Viviana pulled up on his shoulders. “To understand what, cara?”

  “To understand my—” Rudolfo swallowed, his throat bobbed with the effort, “—to understand my joy at what you had done.”

  “Your joy?”

  Rudolfo nodded fiercely, with the slightest bit of shame. “I had never loved my father as I love you, had never felt anything remotely resembling affection for him.” He leaned closer. “There were many times I wished him gone, by whatever means.”

  Viviana’s sigh trembled from her lungs. “He was a cruel and heartless man.”

  Rudolfo nodded. “I know. I do know. But when I saw him die, when I saw him take his last breath…the relief. I thought it sinful to feel this way. And then, when you told us it was you, I was filled with—”

  Viviana shook him by his broad shoulders. “With what?”

  “Yes, with what?” Marcello stood in the doorway.

  Rudolfo lifted his chin and confessed, “Glee. I thought, how perfect for the woman whose life he made such a Hell, to help send him there. And I felt ever more ashamed. But I was wrong. I did nothing wrong. My father chose to be who he was. It was not my doing. He made me see the truth of it.”

  “Who did, Rudolfo?” Viviana asked, uncertain whether to feel grateful or fearful. “With whom did you speak?”

  For
the first time since his return, her son smiled. “Father Raffaello.”

  Viviana barked a laugh. Her son had confessed to one who was a party to the entire affair. Life was but one circle within another.

  • • •

  “I do not have very much time, but I so longed to see you.”

  Isabetta sat at Viviana’s bedside. Viviana and her sons had talked so late into the night, yet another in which she had found little sleep, she felt little compunction in receiving her friend from the comfort of her bed.

  “I was very worried when you failed to join us yesterday.” Isabetta continued from the embroidered chair Marcello had placed by the bed.

  “I recover still, I fear,” Viviana replied.

  “Did they injure you?”

  Viviana turned her head, displaying the bruise on the side of her mouth, touching it delicately. “It is far less than I have received in the past.”

  “Why did you never tell us? Why did you never tell one of us?”

  Viviana dropped her head back on her shoulders. “At first I thought I could change him. Such nonsense.”

  Isabetta nodded in silent agreement.

  “And then I thought, foolishly, if I told no one, then it wasn’t real, it couldn’t be true.” Viviana took Isabetta’s hands in both of hers. “The mind plays tricks to allow the soul to continue. But the darkness had reached my soul and I could allow it no longer.”

  “What a pair we make. Your husband is dead, and mine is dying.”

  “And you have kept it a secret as well,” Viviana said, a reproach of the tender sort.

  Isabetta shrugged a single shoulder. “I stopped loving him long before he became ill, but when he did, the lack of love turned to guilt, a guilt eating away at me like the leeches the physicians use.”

  They simply squeezed the hands they held, these two women who knew so much of guilt as well as its senselessness.

  “It is all the more despicable because of my needs.”

  Viviana raised her gaze at these words, but the direct look did nothing to hold Isabetta’s tongue, a captive at last released.

  “They say sexual need is the purview of men, but it is so strong in me, and the lack exacerbates my loneliness.”

  “It makes it so much harder to bear, does it not?” Viviana replied.

  “You too?”

  “Oh yes,” Viviana nodded vigorously. “Me too. But I thought I was an aberration. I have such fantasies,” Viviana continued, “I wonder what it would be like not only to love a man, in a physical way, but to be loved.”

  “Truly loved,” Isabetta said, wistfully.

  “Yes, truly loved. I want to know what it feels like to be adored and revered by a man.” Viviana proclaimed it as if she wished upon Venus. “My sons love me, I know, but it is not the same. I want a man to love me, not for my family’s fortune, my face, or my figure—just for me.”

  Viviana held her tongue, though she was mightily tempted, aching to put thoughts to words as she was to put fantasies to actions. How Viviana longed to tell Isabetta the rest of it, of the man who haunted her dreams, the burnished gold of his hair, the changing eyes, the touch of his hand still burned her skin. But she couldn’t, not yet. Someday, someday for it all—the telling and the doing—perhaps.

  “They paint us with such perfection,” Isabetta mused, “yet their regard rarely comes off the canvas.”

  Their talked turned then, as it always seemed to, to specific works of particularly beautiful women and the men who painted them, which brought them to a fine and heated discussion of technique and craft. And, suddenly, the sadness turned to pure joy.

  Chapter Thirty-Three

  “Cracks and fissures appear in the hardest of stones.”

  The door to the secret studio smashed open as if kicked, thrust open with such force, it hit the interior wall with the boom of God’s condemning thunder, the latch bent against the stone it chipped, the hinges screaming as they were pushed beyond their limits.

  Fiammetta stood in the threshold, heaving like a rabid animal.

  “Damn you, Viviana del Marrone.”

  Viviana cringed. How happy she had been, but a moment ago, to be back in the studio, to be feeling well and returned to her work. She lowered her silverpoint from the barely marked canvas in a stupor.

  “Why? Why do you damn me?”

  Fiammetta crossed the room like a marauding army, heedless to a knocked over stool, the clatter and crack of overturned bottles upon a jostled table. She stood inches from her friend, dark eyes black in red-rimmed, swollen skin.

  “My husband spent the night in the tower,” Fiammetta barked, ignoring the gasps throughout the room. “The same tower you once graced. And it is entirely your fault.”

  The silverpoint dropped from Viviana’s hand. “My fault? Why was it my fault? I said nothing of—”

  “It is not what you said,” Fiammetta spewed, “but what you did, what you made us all do.”

  “What I—”

  “Orfeo! We condemned Orfeo, now all his acquaintances are in question.”

  Viviana took a step back, not out of fear but with thought. Orfeo had few men of close ties, few friends, and she had heard of none who had been arrested and questioned. Any time Patrizio spent time with Orfeo was due to the relationship of their wives. Patrizio had, however, spent more than a little time with…

  “The Pazzis,” the tail end of her thoughts she said aloud. “Patrizio had a far closer relationship with the Pazzis then he ever did with Orfeo. Surely it is this which accounts for the government’s action, and nothing else.”

  “Do not—” Fiammetta began, but it was Isabetta’s words putting a stop to them.

  “Is he well?” she asked, the only one, including his wife, to speak of Patrizio’s welfare. “Is he still in custody?”

  Fiammetta rubbed her eyes with fisted knuckles “He was soon released, but feels he is still watched closely.”

  “Everyone is watched closely,” Mattea stated the obvious.

  “Especially those with a long time connection to the Pazzi,” Viviana would not allow the blame to rest on her shoulders.

  The other women rolled their eyes. It was not over.

  Fiammetta jammed her chubby arms on her thick hips. “The Pazzi are one of the greatest families of Florence. Their knighthood dates back to the Crusades.”

  “As do thousands of others.” Viviana shook her head with a smile that could be called many things, but never pleasant. “The Crusades, when men killed other men in the name of their God.”

  “You cannot say the same for the obscure, upstart Medici.” Fiammetta’s thin upper lip curled unbecomingly.

  “True,” Viviana sniffed righteously, “they worked for their power and their fortune.”

  “By using unsavory—”

  “They played the game, Fiammetta, they did not invent it.” Viviana tossed back her head in frustration. “They played the game as the Pazzis did, with the Pope and the taxes and their banks. You know it, and if you do not, do not suddenly be so eager to show your stupidity or your narrow-mindedness.”

  Fiammetta’s mouth dropped open. Never had anyone dared argue with her with such impudence. It seemed to have stifled her. But no. “The Medici have strong armed this city for the last two hundred years. Marriages. Businesses. They control it all. Is it any wonder they made so many enemies?”

  “Civilized people do not kill in response. Rise up, yes. Use the same system to try to gain control, yes. Cold-blooded, brutal murder under the eyes of God?” Viviana shook her head, her skin taking on a green pallor of one pestered with illness. “Only evil itself would perpetuate such a thing.”

  “Come, Fiammetta, come sit. Have some wine.” Natasia led the still irate woman away to her worktable, sat her upon a stool, and fetched a full goblet. Viviana caught Isabetta’s eye, seeing the same question as the one bouncing about in her mind as they watched Natasia pacify and soothe.

  Fiammetta drank, in silence. It seemed as if the gr
oup came to a rest.

  “Did you attend d’Este’s fête, Fiammetta?” Mattea asked as if to change the subject, or was it to see if this woman who held others so accountable was as prodigious with her own responsibilities. “Were you able to find out anything about Lapaccia?”

  “Yes, to both,” Fiammetta replied matter-of-factly. “The government no longer believes Lapaccia stole the painting but they do believe she may have taken something or she is somehow involved. They search for her still. As they see it, only the guilty run.”

  “Surely Andreano’s—” Mattea swallowed and started again, “surely her son’s help protecting the Medici should prove something of their loyalties?”

  Fiammetta nodded. “Yes, of course it does, but the widow of a knight, of a chivalric knight, does not just disappear without reason.”

  It was the truth that had started them on this fraught-filled course.

  “I fear I must tell you all something.” Natasia glanced at the entrance, the battered door still open a crack. “We must be quicker. We must look faster. I shouldn’t tell you; my brother should not have told me,” Natasia lowered her voice to a whisper should the priest be within hearing, “but Lapaccia spoke to him just before she disappeared. She spoke of her ill health, of it growing worse. She spoke of her final requests.”

  They all knew of Lapaccia’s condition; the attacks of the lungs had plagued her all her life, what some called anemos or asma. More than one had mixed the concoction of herbs and heated them upon the hot bricks for her.

  “What if she cannot get her herbal treatments where she is?” Mattea spoke aloud their shared fear.

  Isabetta reached out and took Mattea’s hand. “We will find out as much as we can tonight,” she said, explaining to the other women about the salon and the man who may have information of worth to them.

  “Natasia and I will go to her home once more,” Fiammetta volunteered for them both. “We will demand entry and do a search. Perhaps there is something in her home which will give us a clue to her whereabouts.”