by Lisa Rochon
“I saw your Pietà at old Saint Peter’s church,” said Raphael, turning to face Michelangelo. “Your sculpture of the young mother holding her dead son on her knees. My God, love and forgiveness are alive in that work.”
“And we know it’s yours, since you engraved your signature across the front,” cracked Rustici, rubbing his nose; it was red and inflamed from excessive drink.
“What of it?” countered Michelangelo, still enraged. “My family comes from ancient nobility.” He looked accusingly at Leonardo. “I have a first and last name. I will sign my full name on my works when I please. My family lineage pleases me.”
“Did you include your address, too?” Rustici asked, laughing. The crowd broke into hoots of delight.
“Rustici hasn’t had work for months,” said Granacci, to soothe Michelangelo. “Let’s go. Now.” He bowed low to Leonardo.
Michelangelo followed, aware that the face of a coward is the back of his head.
Chapter 14
Brilliant red feathers. Sharp spurs on the back of his legs. One eye that was permanently shut. Her rooster was a magnificent bird. A fighter with more wins than losses. Gleaming with health, so unlike the lumpen fowl of Florence that luxuriated on shit-stained saints of marble and ate whatever garbage was thrown their way in the city’s streets and piazzas. Her bird had driven away the foxes and the badgers. He was the king of her stone hut. At night before sundown, when the sky was misted over with loneliness and regret, Beatrice would crouch on the ground next to him, stroking his plumage, the bird tolerating her caresses while standing guard against predators. She would tell the story of her mother’s grand return, treating him as a treasured confidant, though he refused to look her in the eye and she found herself losing interest in the truth of the story.
Tonight, she lay exhausted on the depleted sacks of grain outside her front door after having walked the streets of Florence in search of her mother. She had dared to roll her cart into the courtyards of some of the grand mansions, imagining that her mother might have found happy employment as a servant to a noble family. At midday, under the hot Tuscan sky, nobody was around. She drew her mother’s face—what she remembered of it—on the foundation wall below the massive rusticated stone facade on one of the palazzi, and was deepening the drapery of her gown when she was set upon by a guard. Short and stocky, he lifted her easily off the ground by the back of her gambeson and kicked her in the backside. She sprang to her feet like a cat and hurled abuse at him. “Old toad, may you be dragged through the streets on your ass.” He smacked her head against an iron ring extruding from the wall, used for harnessing horses. Stars clouded her eyes and she unleashed a feral cry. It was delicious to scream her rage about what she had lost and could no longer find. He unsheathed his dagger and lunged at her, and she sent her nails into his eyes, crumpling the man and allowing her the chance to escape. Limping home with a throbbing headache, she’d heard herself grunting from the effort of pushing her broken cart up the hills from Florence, and was disgusted by her new life as a shoeless donkey.
Grace came from her birds, the way they seemed delighted by her arrival at the end of the day. She and the cock walked toward the terraced grove in search of some olives decent enough to eat. She shared whatever she found with her birds, a few kernels of corn, a maggot scratched from the ground. Then she climbed one of the trees and waited in the crutch of two branches. “Vieni! Vieni!” she called to the cock. The hen and the baby chicks scattered and wandered idly back to the front step. The rooster stood still, head in perfect profile, body balanced on twig legs, finally trotting toward her. She called to him again, praising him—it was stupid, but Michelangelo had done the same with her—and he flew up into the branches to sit next to her, his plumage piled high on his tiny head, looking like a pompous ass. “Il Papa, here you are. King of the castle.”
From her perch in the olive tree, she looked at her little stone hut. Once it had been a place of family joy. “È romantico!” her mother would shout, arms flung wide, face lifted to the sky. Beatrice remembered the annual tasting of fresh-pressed oil with her mamma e papà at her side. Usually in late November. They would gather under this very olive tree, her parents smiling at her timid dipping, urging her to soak the flatbread in the golden-green liquid. The sound of their laughter, the smell of fresh-cut grass filling her nostrils. “Su dai, Beatrice,” her father would say, pushing more of the goodness of the oiled bread at her. Her mother, leaning forward, hands gripping the arms of her husband and daughter, would say, “Ti voglio bene,” eyes filled with tears, ever thankful, ever dramatic. And Beatrice, mouth stuffed to overflowing, would wave her arms, eyes bulging, finally exclaiming, to the delight of her parents: “Buonissimi!”
Now the olive groves looked threatening, unknowable. In the shadows, she imagined the trees taking on the bulky shapes of monstrous bears, the bark crawling with spiders, the branches twisting like snakes. She hated living in the hut by herself, but was determined to make herself scarce in the village to avoid the possibility of being labeled an orphan and turned over to the authorities to live out her days in an asylum or convent. She had stayed clear of Agnella these last weeks, growing armor as strong as iron to harden her heart.
Nobody would know of her fears.
“Il Papa, vieni e vedi!” She dropped out of the tree and picked up a tattered linen sheet left on the ground. She waved it impatiently at the cock. The Pope stood looking off into the distance, one eye open, the other shut. “Il Papa, vieni!” This was their version of a bullfight, something the Spanish liked to do, something she had heard artists joke about in the back lanes. She shook the sheet again, willing the bird to charge like a proper bull and make her think less about her loneliness.
Beatrice was aware of her own smell, and her menses had flowed between her thighs a few days earlier. Despite what Agnella had advised, it had been weeks since she had bathed. The river was a long walk away, and it was shrouded in forest ivy and willows.
The sun spread a final wash of pink across the horizon, the color lingering before the sky deepened to black. A waxing moon. The promise of stars. And no bullfight. Beatrice pulled the length of linen wide behind her back and flapped her arms, generating a cool breeze. She thought of a song her mother would sing to her during the olive harvest: “You feed among the lilies, surrounded by a choir of virgins.” As she sang the song aloud, she turned a slow circle in the dirt, head down, eyes closed: “A bridegroom beautiful with glory and giving rewards to his brides.”
That night she took the chicks in her skirts and set them down in the crate in her hut. The hen considered coming inside, but finally turned and wobbled away to the hutch. But the cock took up his watch, as he often did, from the foot of her bed. Beatrice toppled onto the straw mattress and pulled the blanket of hemp beside her thin body. Her thoughts drifted to sketching on the wall, with Michelangelo standing next to her. The feel of his hand, his gentle coaxing as she drew her little bird. She missed him. But his studio had been locked the last two times she had attempted to visit. Leonardo, too, had been absent, gone to work as an engineer for Cesare Borgia, the new duke of Romagna. Paolo had told her that Leonardo was assigned to make maps of territories to conquer.
Her legs cramped from the day of walking, and she bounced them on the mattress to offer rough comfort. It was too hot for a blanket, and its scratchiness reminded her that it was the one her family had used as a net to capture olives shaken from the trees during harvest. The other blankets had been bartered away for food—even a wool blanket given to her by Agnella. Settling her legs on the bed, she thought about Leonardo: the artist who freed birds was also somebody who worked for warlords. It seemed strange to her. “But we live in a time of war,” enthused Paolo when she impulsively visited the studio that day. “Leonardo sometimes works in his own dream world, sometimes for the real world. He has a great talent for inventing war machinery!” He stirred the pot of beans and garlic and did not offer the ladle to Beatrice. “Come back in two or three months. H
e’ll be home then. I’m away now to the market.” And he shooed her away with his hands, as if she were a mouse come to spoil the baking.
She felt the weight of the day crash upon her like the felling of an ancient oak. The chicks had gone silent. The cock stepped fretfully across the bed. Finally, when the moon rose high, the bird tucked its head deep into its feathers and slept.
* * *
She was awakened by the sound of footsteps outside the hut. Many footsteps, moving around outside. Male voices urging further action. Something heavy and blunt pounding on the door.
She opened her eyes and watched the cock watching her, warning her from his one good eye. She felt her body trembling and found it impossible to move. There was another crashing against the door, and she listened with terror to the groaning of the iron rods that braced it shut. She looked again at Il Papa and heard her father’s words: “Do not be useless to yourself.” Heeding his words, she rose soundlessly and pulled the rooster tight to her breast. There was only one window in the hut, a small square carved high on the wall, inaccessible except by ladder and barely big enough to fit a man. There was no way to escape but down.
Soundlessly, the hemp blanket tangled around her legs, she lifted the chicks into her skirt pockets. She opened the cellar door and descended gingerly down the ladder steps with The Pope nestled against her. The blanket snaked behind her and she yanked its length down into the cool, muffled depths. The cellar was a storehouse for barrels of vinegar, wine and a salt box. Once there had been jars of oil, but Beatrice had sold them. The rooster adjusted its feathers and cooed softly. She pulled the trapdoor down and tightened her grip on the bird. She could feel the depth of its feathers, tracing her fingers along a raised scar from a cockfight.
Wood splitting apart. It sounded like a fork of thunder, right there, overhead. The cock shifted against her. He must not crow. He must be invisible, like her.
A memory came to her of a time when she and two of her friends became invisible inside the thick, rugged branches of a cypress tree. They had decided to climb the tallest one in the valley, and they scaled its interior until their hands were raw and their thighs shook with the effort. But none of them would stop until they reached the top. How beautiful it was—to sway on the thinnest of the branches and see the valley stretch in dimensions far beyond what they had ever known. How quietly enlightening it was to be suspended above the ground and realize that the earth, like people, had a soul. Though they were terrified of falling, there was comfort in bearing witness together.
If you were loved, people would go to you, be your companion, hear your story, she thought, her hands buried in the bird’s feathers. Jesus was never alone. Even on the crucifix, his Mother was with him. If you were going to suffer, it was better to be with someone. Not to share the pain with that person, but to learn from it. If you showed people your pain, you were also showing your weakness. That you were a fallen star. Nobody wanted to witness that. Stars belonged up high in the sky.
The cock escaped and flew to the top rung of the cellar ladder above her, ruffling his feathers and preparing to crow. Without hesitation, she grabbed for the bird and slammed him against her chest. There was nobody to bear witness, she thought, nobody to help her with what she had to do. She felt the bird’s jagged breastbone, and the pulse of his heart, his body vibrating with the need to crow. She listened, thought she heard the growl of men directly above her, and others with their fists on the door. She located The Pope’s throat with a hand and squeezed. The bird kicked back its long spurs, dragging them along her chest and ripping open her skin. He pounded against her grip, tearing at her, bloodying her clothes.
Her father had not fought the Pisans hard enough, and she had never forgiven him for this. She refused to succumb. Death would not claim her today. She twisted the bird’s neck and heard it snap, and still the spurs kicked back. Dear Pope, dear Pope. My God, forgive me for this. They fought against each other until his claws went limp and the vibrations stopped. Silence descended. No sound of footsteps. No crowing.
* * *
When she reached Agnella’s home in the village, dawn was breaking the face of the dark. Beatrice held the dead cock in her arms, blood from her wounds pasted onto her chest and splattered on her face. She walked stiffly through the garden, its lavender shining with dew, and registered the clatter of a copper pot, the smell of freshly baked bread. She kicked the door with her naked foot and cried out. Agnella heaved open the door, a knife in one hand, a thick stick in the other. A pounding on the door never brought blessed news.
Beatrice’s body was convulsing and she could not speak. She held the bird up like a sick offering, her hands gripping its wrinkled neck. “I’m sorry,” she said at last, dropping to her knees. “I’m sorry. But I have no one.”
Without hesitating, Agnella pried the cock away from her and set the bloody mess down in the garden. “You are here and alive,” she said, kneeling, holding Beatrice close to her, whispering in her ear: “You and I, we will survive together. Promise me that.”
Beatrice nodded, her face blotched and gray.
“We are all alone at times,” Agnella said. She took her knife and punched it into the heel of her own hand. Without flinching, breathing a prayer, she pressed her warm burst of blood to the gash in Beatrice’s chest. “There,” she said, holding her wound against Beatrice’s body until she could be sure their blood had intermingled. “I’ll be your witness.”
Chapter 15
Beatrice agreed to stay with Agnella while she recovered from the trauma of the home invasion. In truth, she had only imagined them breaking into the hut; the iron security rods were still intact when she emerged from the cellar early that morning. But the men had wrecked the hutch and taken the hen. Thankfully, they had not found her cart in the shed. Agnella brought it back to her manor in the village.
Life took on a rhythm of its own, though an undercurrent of anxiety haunted Beatrice day and night. She refused to step outside to chop wood or feed the chickens. Instead, she sat curled next to the hearth inside and made bread with Agnella, adding rosemary, olives and garlic from the garden for taste and texture. They even, in an act of defiance, threw a teaspoon of salt into the mix, knowing they were offending the Tuscan gods of saltless bread. “Love over rules,” said Agnella, brushing wisps of blond hair away from her face. “That’s how you make an interesting life—and good bread.”
“Am I safe living here with you?” Beatrice asked this question several times a day, drumming her fingers on the table, looking around nervously. “You’re not a witch, are you?”
That was another of her regular questions. Agnella shot her looks, half-ironic, half-exasperated, and would go outside to feed the chickens, or continue braiding her hair. She knew this was part of Beatrice’s trauma, that the girl’s mind was a jumble of terrifying thoughts.
Her third most favorite question was about the origin of Agnella’s bracelets, which rang like music whenever she moved her arms.
“This thick gold one was gifted to me by the governor for curing his daughter of excruciating stomach pain.”
“What ailed her?” asked Beatrice, kneading the bread on the wooden table.
“Nothing more than her first menses. She was cured with a peppermint tisane, some spinal twists and me listening to her story of unrequited love.”
“Typical girl,” said Beatrice. “I wish I’d had sisters to talk about all of this when I was growing up.”
Agnella screwed up her face and shot a hard look at her. “You’re still growing up.”
“I’m sixteen!”
“This one with the emerald jewels on silver was given to me by a duke,” said Agnella, ignoring her response.
“Duke Cesare Borgia?” Beatrice asked, naming the duke Paolo had mentioned during her last visit to Leonardo’s studio.
“Long before his reign. No, this was a duke who was part of the Medici family. That was a glorious time. Dining on pheasant stewed in berries, dancing in fountains
.” Agnella poured herself a glass of Chianti from the wine carafe and another, watered down, for Beatrice.
“Sounds romantic.”
“It was, for a while. But affairs with married men never really work out.” She splashed some olive oil onto the bread dough, and Beatrice continued to knead. “These three with the quartz nuggets were made by my dead husband.” She hesitated before adding flatly, “He loved me more than I could love him.” She sighed and continued, “This one with the inlaid ebony and ivory was from an Arab silk trader who wanted to bring me back to his homeland.”
There were also two bracelets carved from jade. “From a Florentine navigator who needed to be cured of scurvy, and a Portuguese adventurer who had brought sugar cane from an island called Caribbean.”
When Beatrice had collapsed on her doorstep, Agnella had lifted her into her arms, shocked by how thin the girl had become, and carried her inside. At first she was inconsolable, screaming about how she had murdered the cock, shivering badly and rocking her body against the bed. A girl living alone outside the village was a public invitation for early death. Agnella knew Beatrice to be a stubborn and fierce fire spirit, but to honor the memory of the girl’s mother, she insisted that Beatrice move into the village with her. Agnella believed Leda had traveled into her own private Hell, the way Eurydice lingered in Hades. It wasn’t enough that women were beaten up by men and condemned to life with the same rights as cattle. Their trauma inspired them to punish themselves further—it only seemed natural—and so they ran from the children they loved to commit themselves to other, hideous forms of life. Leda was her friend and Agnella was determined to find her. But Leda would stay hidden until she was ready.
When Beatrice was done raging at the world, Agnella brought warm compresses and washed the girl, easing her into some fresh wraps. It was only then that she discovered two chicks buried in the pockets of Beatrice’s old skirt. She pulled them out and set them against the girl’s cheeks. They stayed there for much of the night, reviving her beyond what any of Agnella’s elixirs might have done.
