The preparations at Visegrad for my mission had been as thorough as they were secret and the letters were in several languages, including of course Italian. In those of that language I was named rather ambiguously as Signore Ladislao—a fair translation of my Christian name—and all the letters promised the royal gratitude for any assistance given me.
The merchants who had traveled with me had doubtless speculated among themselves about my unspecified mission for Matthias, but had accepted the letters with little open comment. Now the Medici official, after a first reading, borrowed the documents from me, politely enough, and gave orders that I should be provided with suitable refreshment after my long journey. The weather being quite warm, I was led to a shaded table set in an open courtyard.
At any given time in that house it was more likely than not that some group of folk were banqueting. And though my interest in most kinds of food has long since waned, I can still remember … to gorge oneself whenever it was possible to do so was then the European standard of behavior. But not in mannered Florence. It was in Florence that I, the rough soldier, first saw a table fork, though that was on a later day. On that first day I dealt forkless with sausages, slices of melon, boiled capon, and pastries of whose elegant existence I had never before dreamt. I fell to with a will.
Presently some of the men who had shared the road with me appeared, smiling, to join me at table. While they were busy answering some of my questions concerning the city’s history and customs, a young man I did not know came into the courtyard. He was dressed in new, rather simple clothing, cut of the best cloth. In a grating voice, and with a sad-faced courtesy and gravity beyond his years, he addressed me as Signore Ladislao and made me welcome to the house of his family. He was introduced to me, between mouthfuls and without ceremony, by one of my former fellow travelers. This youth was of course Piero’s eldest son, Lorenzo, later to be called the Magnificent; and when his own hour came for subtle rule in Florence, he would wield more power than many an anointed king, and his patronage of art would markedly surpass even that of King Matthias.
On that day in the late summer of 1464, however, Lorenzo de’ Medici was only fifteen years of age—though there were moments when his swarthy face, with its grim eyes, shave-resistant stubble, and the natural beginning of a furrow in his brow, looked thirty-five. Already the elders of his family had begun to trust him with minor diplomatic work. Beside him at my table now stood his little brother Giuliano, only ten, but already an apprentice Medici and at the moment sober as a German count. In those days childhood was a rare thing, for people of any class.
Lorenzo, however precocious, had not recognized my name. He had seen my letters, though, and could identify importance. He sat down at table and munched a piece of fruit while like a seasoned diplomat he killed time and sounded me out with a discussion of relatively neutral topics: the death of the Pope, the sad state of Italian roads. Then presently Lorenzo’s father hobbled into the courtyard to join us. Here was the ruler, certainly, and I rose to my feet; but Piero’s gnarled hand waved me to sit down again. Leaning on the table for support, he handed me back my letters, and bade me stay as a guest in his house for as long as I might choose.
Lorenzo too had sprung up with alacrity, that his father might have the seat at my side. And Piero knew who I was; I could see it in his eyes as at last, he settled himself on the bench beside me with a groan.
“Is it possible, Signore Ladislao, that we have met before? Have you lived in Targoviste, perhaps?”
My old Wallachian capital. I doubted, though of course I could not be sure, that Piero himself had ever dragged his gouty frame that far from home. Medici merchants had certainly been there, though. Where in the known world had they not been? I admitted cautiously that I had once lived in that city.
“Then perhaps,” continued Piero, “you were there some eight years or so past, when an incident occurred that caused one of my family’s most dependable trading representatives to bring back a strange report. Despite the man’s good reputation, some found his story difficult to believe.
“It seems that this merchant, through a chain of the most unlucky circumstances, found himself alone and unescorted on the road, and carrying a great amount of gold coin, so that the first robber’s eye to light upon him must have meant at the very least the total ruin of his life’s work.
“He had just entered the domain of the young warlord Drakulya, said by some to be a prince of unparalleled ruthlessness and ferocity—I do not know the truth of those stories myself. But at any rate our exceedingly fearful merchant, perhaps never having heard the worst of the stories, dared to approach Drakulva himself, pleading that the prince assign guards to protect the traveler’s property whilst he was passing through Wallachia.
“The prince only stared at him coldly. ‘You say, then, that my good people are thieves?’ ‘Great prince, there must be some thieves in any land.’ ‘Not here, I do not tolerate them.’
“The merchant, having seen the skeletons of impaled brigands at roadside—or at least skeletons labeled as guilty of that crime, among others—was not going to argue. The upshot was that the prince commanded him to pick out a dark street corner at random within the capital and to leave all his goods, unguarded, piled there for a whole night. The merchant of course had no choice but to do as he was ordered. Then, resigning himself to ruin, he spent a sleepless night in a room of the prince’s palace. In the morning, expecting nothing but the worst, he returned to where he had left his gold. In the daylight the bags looked like just what they were, bags of coin, unguarded by any visible presence. But not one had been touched. People of every degree, rich and poor, going about their morning business, were walking round them, giving them a wide berth as they passed.” Here Piero paused, looking at me with inquiring eyes.
“I have heard the same story,” I replied, “when I lived in that city … of course it is possible, Signore Piero, that you have seen me before and do recognize me, but on the other hand I am sometimes confused with a great rogue who is presently imprisoned in His Majesty’s palace at Visegrad. It is of course not to be expected that such a man would be sent on a confidential mission for His Majesty; yet so strong is the resemblance that it sometimes causes me embarrassment.”
Piero smiled his understanding. “Say no more, good Signore Ladislao; the farthest thing from my intention is that you should ever be embarrassed in my house. Say no more.” And he stood up, and bowed to me; and with that the offer of hospitality and friendship was sealed.
When I had satisfied my appetite for food— which I moderated somewhat in conformity with what seemed to be the local custom—I was shown to what was to be my room, a sizable chamber on the first floor above the ground. Left alone in it, I blinked about me, wondering by what witchcraft these folk of common blood had managed to commandeer a royal palace. By comparison, my former palace in Targoviste was a savage barracks. Here, the bed was of inlaid wood, its covers and canopy and cushions all green velvet. A Byzantine mirror, its gilt frame wrought with cherubs, hung on one wall, reflecting a fresco of great beauty painted on the opposite. I stared at my lean, dark soldier’s visage in the glass— incompatibility with mirrors was some years in the future still—wondering how many similar or even richer rooms were in the vast house, and wondering also at how little I seemed, after all, to know about the world.
How can I, even now, describe what the house of Medici was then? I cannot. Still, I will relate a thing or two. In a sense the place was like a luxurious, or I should say aristocratic, private hotel. There were merchants of other companies lodging there during my stay, along with religious of several ranks, agents, bankers, soldiers, travelers of every respectable kind coming and going daily. Of course Cosimo’s recent death must have done something to augment this traffic, so that I probably saw it at its peak. But though I was a welcome and even pampered guest, I was only one of I know not how many.
Yet I was given what seemed to be special consideration by my hosts. Among
the local people invited for dinner that evening was a man whose name I recognized as that of King Matthias’s official ambassador to the official government of Florence, which was a council whose deliberations passed for the most part without great public attention. Shortly after Morsino and I were introduced, we were politely given a chance to converse alone. And as soon as he had the chance, the ambassador began to question me delicately about my mission. It seemed that he, as well as his fellow Hungarian envoys to the several Italian states, had received secret instructions from the king to the effect that a secret agent of his would soon be in Italy on urgent business. The ambassadors were not told what the business was, though some of them may have guessed; but they were strongly enjoined to give me all the aid they could.
There is a time for tight secrecy, and another time when full candor is required. I judged that the latter epoch had now arrived, and told Morsino plainly that I had been sent to find Helen Hunyadi, the runaway younger sister of our king. I did not discuss what I meant to do with Helen when I had found her, and Morsino did not ask. But he at once expressed his relief that I had arrived. Four days earlier a rumor had reached him, from two independent sources, of the presence in Florence of a woman who spoke Italian with a heavy accent that might well be Hungarian, and who had supposedly told someone that she belonged to the high Hungarian nobility. And if the stories regarding this woman’s disreputable behavior were even approximately true, and if her family in fact had even a clerk’s pretensions to respectability, then that family whoever they might be were in for trouble.
What disreputable behavior? I naturally asked. Morsino glanced around to make sure that we were quite alone. As he had heard the tale, a young and attractive girl of diminutive stature had recently arrived overland from Ravenna, in the company either of a troop of strolling players, or an itinerant artist, or some low company of that kind. (As Morsino admitted, he had been somewhat infected by the notorious Florentine free-thinking attitude in matters of social standing. Still, even in Florence, there were limits.) On arrival in the city, the woman had reportedly engaged in business as a prostitute. And before Ravenna, so one version of her story went, she had been aboard a Venetian galley, traveling mistress of some adventuring scoundrel or other, perhaps one of the foreign mercenary soldiers who in the fifteenth century lived on the body of Italy, as numerous as fleas on a dog. Whoever he was, this man had grown nervous and rid himself of her when he had happened to learn her true identity.
“And in your opinion, Signore Morsino, does she belong to the Hungarian nobility?”
“I have not seen her. And I do not know how much truth is in all these stories … but the truth is, Signore Ladislao, in the form in which the story came to me, what scared off the adventurer was the woman’s claim to be none other than the legitimate sister of our blessed King Matthias himself.”
“He must have found that claim convincing.”
“Evidently so.”
“And where is this young woman now?”
Morsino shrugged. “That I cannot say. But I suppose it likely that she is still in Florence. Of course as soon as I heard these rumors I asked my local agents to quietly find out all about her. But they have not been able to pick up her trail.”
I then asked the ambassador how far he thought we should take the Medici into our confidence. He considered, then gave his opinion that I ought to tell them as much as I felt I possibly could; the woman might be able to hide from Morsino and myself in Florence, but if she were anywhere in the city there was no way that she could hide from them. Even if she were here no longer, they might well be able to learn where she had gone. The goodwill of King Matthias would certainly be important to such far-traveling traders and bankers, and there was no reason to think our hosts were anything but well disposed toward our cause.
Later that evening I had a chance to talk privately with Piero and Lorenzo, and took them almost completely into my confidence, telling them that the woman I sought was a relative of the Hungarian royal house, and that I had been sent to locate her with as little publicity as possible. Piero nodded thoughtfully and agreed to help. But when he asked me what the young woman looked like, I found myself at something of a loss. Matthias’s elder relatives, in the process of reading Helen angrily out of the family, had somewhat overshot the mark, unwisely burning the few existing portraits of her as well as effacing her name from all the written records they could reach.
“She is short of stature, Signore Piero, and of a slender figure. Her face is said to be beautiful, her coloring moderately dark.” Piero looked at me, perhaps revising downward his estimate of my intelligence. But beyond that I had been given no real description, and could offer none.
That very night, searchers were sent discreetly out. And in the middle of the next morning the report came in of what would now be called a solid lead. A young woman speaking a language that was very possibly Hungarian had been seen three days ago, modeling in the workshop of a rising young artist named Verrocchio—a man who could be expected to co-operate fully with me in my search; his career was blooming chiefly as a result of Medici patronage.
I held a quick conference with Morsino, in which we decided it would be better if he did not accompany me to Verrocchio’s workshop. If we were able to avoid giving notice of official Hungarian interest in the woman, so much the better. But Lorenzo volunteered to come along, and it was perfectly natural that he should do so. He was already known as a budding patron of the arts; he had visited the place before, and was well acquainted with its master. As far as anyone but Verrocchio himself might know, Lorenzo and I would be visiting only to inspect and possibly purchase some of the shop’s output. The subject of the Hungarian woman, whether she was still there or not, could arise for discussion as if by accident.
We went through the streets on foot and without escort, which seemed to be the ordinary way for the Medici to get about in town, though Piero with his gout frequently used a litter. Every few paces, or so it seemed to me, Lorenzo was greeted by someone high or low, and as often as not he paused to exchange good wishes and bits of gossip.
“Do you think the woman we want is this artist’s mistress?” I asked him when we seemed to have a moment clear for private conversation.
Lorenzo paused in the middle of a narrow way, smiling and gesturing with an exaggerated flourish for an elderly woman carrying a market basket of vegetables to go ahead of him. I had been told again and again that this family of wealthy merchants who were my hosts were also the virtual dictators of Florence; never before had I seen dictators who behaved in such a fashion.
“I do not think so,” he answered me when we were alone again. “I know Andrea’s tastes … no, I think not.”
The workshop was a smaller, poorer place than I had been expecting. One large room, well lit by skylights and windows, took up most of the interior space in a building rudely constructed of planks and timbers. Off this large room a few doors led to smaller chambers in the rear, and to a yard. All was primitive as a stable, or very nearly so. Verrocchio its master was rough-looking too, a stocky man of about thirty with a gross face, dressed in workman’s clothing covered with various kinds of stains. He greeted Lorenzo with warmth, and told us that his poor house was ours—then grew nervous when Lorenzo whispered in his ear something of the true purpose of our visit.
In the middle of the big room, under a roof panel open to the clear Florentine sky, an old man with rheumy eyes was posing in loose Biblical-looking garb while a single unshaven apprentice sketched him in charcoal on a prepared panel. After stammering some shy greetings to us, they both went on with the job. The door to one of the rear rooms stood open, revealing an elderly female domestic scrubbing at a pot.
Lorenzo and I sat at one side of the studio for a while, playing the role of customers while its master spoke with us about current projects. Or, rather, the tough-looking artist spoke with his young patron who rather resembled a Mafia don of a later century, while I listened and tried to loo
k as if I understood them or at least was interested in what they talked about. Then, with a hint from Lorenzo to guide my taste, I purchased a small, newly-wrought gold chain.
Lorenzo then said that he had an important commission in mind; for the supposed heavy business discussion Verrocchio conducted us into the privacy of what must have been his own bedroom. The chamber was small, its walls heavily decorated with paper sketches. As the elder guest I was granted the single chair; Lorenzo perched on a chest, and Verrocchio sat on the rumpled bed, the only other article of substantial furniture available.
Yes, signori, about that girl, of course. She had been gone for the last two days, and Verrocchio did not know where, any more than he knew from where she had come. Some weeks ago one of the apprentices had brought her in, saying that he wanted to use her as a model and that she was willing to pose for others also. So she had been, even posing naked without protest, which had convinced Verrocchio that she was a whore. A good model, though. He had given her food, a place to sleep with the female servants, and a little money once or twice. She had spoken Italian badly and with an odd accent—certainly not the Greek accent so common in Florence since the refugees from fallen Constantinople had swarmed in; but outside of that, and a certain odd beauty in her face, he had thought her no different from any of a hundred other vagrants and runaways who could be picked up in the streets and taverns. Yes, somewhat better looking than most of them, that was all. Here on the wall were a couple of sketches of her made by his apprentices, if we would like to see.
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