by Lisa Rochon
He propped himself on an elbow and sat up, feeling for his velvet cloak on the stone floor. Wrapped inside it, soothed by the luxurious fabric, he moved to the long oak table, flipped open his small leather journal and read his latest entry about the movement of air, written right to left with his left hand in a style he had developed as a boy to keep his thoughts safe from his father’s judgment:
revir a ekil sevom ria Eht
ti htiw sduolc eht seirrac dna
He snapped the book shut. Lifted his arms and stretched until his shoulders ached. It had been an intellect’s paradise to work for the duke of Milan. The French invasion had brought his time there to a swift, dramatic end. He had been indulged by his patron while in Milan, but Florence was a city where commissions were won by cockfighting among rivals. A place that pitted talents against one another, dating back nearly one hundred years to when Brunelleschi won the contest to design the massive brick dome soaring over the cathedral.
An old man playing at a young man’s game. That’s what he had become. Winning commissions required all kinds of tricks. Ghiberti had won the prize to create the monumental doors at the baptistery. How had he impressed the forty-three citizens who sat on the design jury? By recommending the hollowing-out of the backs of his panels, allowing for an impressive saving of expensive bronze. Leonardo had to be street-smart to be competitive in Florence. Was he too old to enter the fray again?
He walked to the window to take stock of his situation. The prior had kept quiet about his flamboyant style of dress, about his sharing a bed with a young man, even averting his eyes and apologizing after discovering Salaì—buck naked, drunk, desperate to suck on a lemon—in the monastery garden. Leonardo felt a twinge of guilt—he did not wish to devote a moment’s thought to the altar painting, the only thing the Servites had asked for in exchange for this free studio space.
He eyed the iron bar holding the velvet curtains against the window. Ten chin-ups, he thought, to show that he still had strength. He gripped the bar with both hands, stomach muscles clenching. Once he had bent an iron bar into a horseshoe with his bare hands. How long ago was that? Years? Decades? He hauled himself up, shoulders shaking, chin barely grazing the top of the bar.
Lord of the Arts. That’s what they had called him on the streets in Milan. When his mane of white hair was a mess of auburn-gold ringlets. He forced his body up again. Two was his limit. Further evidence that his body was disintegrating back to the earth.
Rubbing his arms, he thought of the heartbreaking poetry of Genesis: “In the sweat of thy face shalt thou eat bread, till thou return unto the ground; for out of it wast thou taken: for dust thou art, and unto dust shalt thou return.” The Bible always delivered. Simply, poetically, with excruciating honesty.
The sharp sound of hooves clattering across the pavers of Piazza San Marco reached his ears—donkeys hauling carts loaded with squealing pigs to market. He turned from the window and sat down on a narrow chair, observing his great oak bed and Salaì, mercifully, still sleeping.
Morning declared itself, turning Salaì’s torso bronze, the light deepening his biceps in color, turning the linea transversae and linea alba of his stomach into a ladder of muscle. The woolen blankets were at his pelvis.
There was a gentle tapping at the door. “Permesso, signore?”
“Paolo, come in, come in, the door is open,” said Leonardo. The cook carried a brass tray laid with a blue and white flask of spring water and a carafe of red wine. The two porcelain cups, featuring a flowing, arabesque design, had been gifted by a rich merchant of gold—a Muslim—whom Leonardo had met in Venice. With the reverence of a priest about to baptize a child, Paolo lifted both of the vessels high and poured a stream of intermingled liquid into the cups.
Paolo bowed, then hesitated at a small round table where scraps lay scattered; Salaì had ordered capon and a berlingozzo late last evening but had been already too drunk to do more than throw the fruit from the cake at imaginary ghosts.
“Let it wait. Va bene,” said Leonardo, waving Paolo off. Sunrise was to be enjoyed in silence.
The cook departed, and Leonardo pulled from his cloak a notebook in which he could observe, calculate and consider. In Milan, he had books filled with lists calling for the measurements of the duke’s palace and the need to see the master of arithmetic to determine how to square a triangle. In the glow of the Florentine morning light, Leonardo wrote a fresh to-do list: Walnut oil, linseed oil, resinous plaster and wax, he wrote, from right to left. Then, Calisthenics every morning. Horseback riding. Walks into the mountain. He looked at the bar suspended above the window. Throwing large rocks, he added, pressing the nib of the goose quill hard into the page.
The salon was a fine space to work. The other rooms also carried the promise of discovery, but one was accessible only by the bedroom, which overlooked the courtyard. That was where he would keep the tiny carcasses of lizards and rats, or baby falcons, if he found any dead in the monastery’s garden. He had once dried and purged the innards of a castrated sheep; it had been a hefty size, yet the bladder had reduced, over time, to a tiny inflatable sac. With delicate movements, he could still pump it up with a miniature smith’s bellows and launch it as a tiny flying machine.
Something else could happen in that private room: dissections of cadavers. Monks who died of sickness or old age could be delivered from the monastery’s infirmary; nobody needed to know. The prior claimed he supported the advancement of the sciences. Some monks might be distressed by the slicing open of their cellmates, he’d said, and had asked only that the work be conducted discreetly for the peace of his community. Leonardo thought it might be simpler to perform dissections a few blocks over, at the venerable old Ospedale di Santa Maria Nuova.
Dissecting and painting were exercises in problem-solving and discovery. Both required technical skill and extraordinary patience. Neither was truly enjoyable.
Swimming in a river after a long afternoon’s hike—that was something he considered delightful. He found immense pleasure in gathering the latest wisdom from other expert minds—Get Maestro Fazio to teach you about proportion or, in another earlier notebook: Ask Maestro Antonio how mortars are positioned on bastions by day or night. He also delighted in bringing the most advanced methods to his studio. “The best colors, wrought from nature,” he muttered. As Pliny the Elder once described in exquisite detail. He scribbled in his journal the colors that currently inspired him: purpurissum, indicum, caeruleum, milinum, orpiment, appianum, ceruse.
There were times he enjoyed painting very much. A client settled into a softly padded chair, a breeze floating through the studio, a musician playing the lyre.
Painting Ginevra de’ Benci had been like that. When she looked up from her embroidery and stared at him with daring and fierceness—
A knock on the door startled him out of his reverie. Paolo appeared and motioned to a messenger standing breathless behind him.
“An urgent message by order of Francesco di Bartolomeo di Zanobi del Giocondo,” the messenger said, bowing low. “Apologies. It is still early.” He glanced at the wildly colored clothes thrown over a mattress, leather bags half unpacked, the table cluttered with drawings and little dried-up bats and mice, acorns, thistles, cockleshells. That night, Leonardo was sure, the messenger would tell his mother and sisters that artists were a curious breed, strange thinkers, not to be trusted.
Leonardo noted the heavy gold lettering on the parchment scroll—no expense spared—and saw the youth puffing out his chest, making ready to deliver the message in his most grandiloquent voice. He quickly wiped his hands on his purple silk hose and took the scroll. “So it begins,” he muttered to himself. Summoning his energy, he read it aloud: “F. Giocondo would be delighted to make your acquaintance and requests a meeting at Piazza della Santissima Annunziata.”
The messenger gaped at Leonardo, seeming astonished that a mere artist—even the Master of Arts—could read. “Prepare yourself, master,” he said, bowing. “
You will receive all kinds of invitations from the ottimati to paint their wives. They like to make a show of their wealth.”
Leonardo stifled a snort, pretending to be distracted by the collection of dried artifacts on his table. He picked up a conté, offered a curt bow to the messenger and dropped a coin in his outstretched hand.
“Naturally,” said Leonardo, “the pleasure would be all mine.”
As the messenger took his leave, the great bell in the tower of the Palazzo Vecchio sounded, like the lowing of a cow. “La vacca mugghia,” said Leonardo. “Seven in the morning.”
He looked at Salaì’s sleeping face. Without willing it, he saw the structure of his skull. He walked to the bed. Bending over and stretching a hand over the young man’s throat, he muttered: “At a distance of two fingers, the uvula, where one tastes the food, lies straight above the windpipe, and above the opening of the heart by the space of a foot.”
Salaì shifted and moaned with the pleasure of a long and satisfying sleep. “You are more animal than man,” said Leonardo.
“So you have always said.” Eyes still closed, half slurring his words.
Leonardo joined him on the bed. They had been together for a long time—ten years. The dukes, the priors, his own father, all of them raised their eyebrows. But there was this . . . always this. He could feel Salaì’s breath, still sweet with wine, warming him, his mouth kissing him on the neck. Leonardo felt himself relaxing. He had discovered Salaì, a boy living rough on the streets of Milan, all manic energy and yearning. Had glanced at him and continued walking, then felt himself returning, pulled back by the force of an angel. “Come with me. Do you like chestnut pie?”
In those first years, Salaì had been given to fits of anger. He would climb the walls, scratching frantically at the plaster, his eyes rolled high into his head. “Be still,” Leonardo would say. “You are no longer a runaway.”
Theirs was a carnal union, to be sure, one that had developed long after Salaì first came into his house. Leonardo had enjoyed other boys, and the game from behind, as it was known in Florence. With Salaì, though, it was different. What started as master and orphan had grown into a mutually dependent love affair. It was passionate. Even now.
He pulled Salaì toward him and traced his luscious mouth with his fingers, exploring his lips with his tongue, sliding down to his stomach. The morning sun danced over the room. He tasted the sweetness of youth on Salaì’s skin, and thought of a new drawing that he had started of the Virgin Mary and Child, seeing every line in his mind.
Chapter 9
Agnella jumped from the cart and entered Michelangelo’s studio without knocking, kicking open the old wooden door with her boot. This was the boldness that marked her as a witch with terrible powers, thought Beatrice, pinching her thigh as a reminder not to cross the woman.
“I brought soup,” Agnella called into the murky void. She took the clay pot from Beatrice and sat it loudly on the table.
The studio was shrouded in the dull light of dusk, and clouds of dust seemed permanently suspended in the air. Beatrice noticed how the oak plank floors were charred and there were stains of brilliant blue from the woad plant; likely the previous renter was a wool dyer. On the wall, there were scribblings in black, too numerous to make out, and drawings of angels and a girl who looked like she was flying.
Without a word, Agnella cleared some of the ash from the cooking fire and set to work preparing a fresh one, all efficiency. “At last you’re home,” she said. “Come and greet my young friend from the village.”
Behind her, Beatrice lifted the canvas dividing the room. A naked youth was standing on a wooden pedestal, a leather thong wrapped like a snake around his torso. She watched mesmerized as the thong pressed into his waist. Even though the boy was slim, the pressure of the leather against his flawless skin created gentle swells of flesh. Such was her surprise that it took her a moment to realize that the hand pulling the thong tight belonged to Michelangelo. His other hand stroked the curves of the youth’s perfectly athletic ass. She dropped the canvas and looked away, feeling herself begin to shake, even as Agnella walked briskly toward her.
“Is he here? Michel? Michelangelo?” Looking quizzically at Beatrice, she strode across the studio room, heels clicking loudly on the floor.
“Agnella, I am working. This is not a good time.” Michelangelo stepped in front of the canvas, letting it drop behind him. He held the leather strap loosely in his hands, his face burnished, sweat gathering at his temples.
“When are you ever not working, my dear boy?” Agnella set a kiss lightly on his cheek and took him by the arm. “Put it away for now,” she said, taking the leather strap from his hands and setting it on the far side of the table. “Beatrice”—nodding to her—“brought you some soup. Sit, eat, feel better.”
Michelangelo sat at the table, head down, avoiding Beatrice’s eyes.
He had prayed over her dead father, she thought. He had invited her to visit him in Florence. She had believed he could be trusted. Had even dreamed of his hands upon her. She pushed her wretched disappointment to the bottom of her stomach where everything else forbidden and painful was left to fester and roil.
“Beatrice, it would please me if you would water the donkey at the well.” Agnella walked across the room, ripped open the canvas and hauled the young man out into the open. “Take your leave,” she hissed.
Beatrice glanced at Michelangelo, the hunch of his shoulders, both hands gripping the table, and though it made no sense to her—he was much older than she was—she felt strangely drawn to him, unspeakably so, as if what she had witnessed behind the canvas made him more beautiful to her.
She hurried out to the well, clutching her arms to her sides, regretting the shame he must be feeling, the way she felt every day for being an olive oil girl from a hill town. Abandoned. Cast off. She stepped back across the cobbles to the studio.
From outside the door, she heard Michelangelo kick over the heavy wooden bench. “Agnella, you need to leave. You know nothing of my art. I need male models for my David to make the stone come alive.”
“And you know nothing of your life,” she heard Agnella shoot back. “It might not be worth anything to you, but it’s worth a lot to me. Sodomy can get you killed in this city.”
“You and your judgment. Go back to the village and leave me alone.”
“Michel, you need to resist your hungry ghosts, or they’ll devour you. Push away your obsession with”—Beatrice leaned closer—“before the Officers of the Night knock down your door and charge you with it!” She imagined Agnella’s eyes darkening. “This vice that plagues you can destroy you—it will.”
“What nonsense you speak. Have you gone mad?”
“My boy, you do not see with your own eyes. People are talking in the market. The naked giant you plan to carve with a cazzo as big as the legs of their children. How ignorant you are, and naive. Michel,” Agnella said, “I have always been by your side, since you were a motherless child.”
Beatrice heard a chair being thrown down, the sound of Michelangelo’s heavy boots walking across the studio. Was this why Agnella wanted to introduce her to the sculptor? To secure his safety by way of marriage?
“I want to be alone. Without you and your idiotic ideas.”
“You, who are devoted to God,” she shouted back. “Remember what is written in the Bible: ‘He who walketh with wise men shall be wise: but a companion of fools shall be destroyed.’”
Beatrice heard something heavy—a rock, a shard of marble—being chucked, connecting, splintering against a wall. There was a long silence, and clouds of dust, she imagined, thickened the air. Finally, she heard Agnella speak in her low, commanding voice: “Protect yourself. Allow yourself to experience a girl.”
Without thinking, Beatrice heaved the door open and stood to face Agnella and Michelangelo. She had no idea what to say, but words came out of her mouth: “You squabble and threaten and command,” she said, striding across the stu
dio to pick up the overturned chair. “Throwing water on his wings, Agnella, to stop him from flying on his own.”
She left the airless room before finishing, unable to speak any further. But he, a hard-nosed loner, had lifted his head and looked at her as she stormed past. She had caught his attention, and this gladdened her heart.
Chapter 10
Beatrice imagined her mamma coming home. She rehearsed her arrival, the ceremonial walk along the dirt road, her figure cutting up to the trail that led to their family home. She would look happy—that is something that Beatrice would notice immediately—with a healthy shine on her cheeks and some extra flesh on her hips. Likely she would be singing an old Italian folk song, the one that ends with a curious line about the girl who throws apples at the cows. She would be holding roses in her arms that neighbors had offered to her as homecoming presents, and her eyes would be fixed on the girl sitting on the stone step at their front door. That was the cue for Beatrice to notice her mother. She would look up, and exclaim, and they would run and leap into each other’s arms. A blissful reunion with roses falling to the ground. Life would resume and the clock would rewind to a time when the sweet smell of beeswax rose from the pot hanging over a gentle fire and it seemed possible to believe that darkness would steer forever clear of their lives.
It was a stupid dream. Beatrice knew that in her heart. But she held on to it anyway. As the months slipped by and her loneliness and hunger deepened, she became fiercely attached to the dream and looked forward to playing it out when she had crested the hill and turned her cart into her family patch next to the olive grove. She would call to the rooster and the hen and their two newborn chicks. She adored them completely. They would zigzag from the hutch, taking their time, easily distracted, pecking at anything that looked like something other than dirt, and eventually arrive by the front step of the stone hut, lured there by the clucking of the girl and the promise of a few kernels of corn.
