by Lisa Rochon
“Beatrice, don’t start. Look at my skin. All the hideous bumps.”
“I see them, Mamma. Goose bumps. One of the signs that you are—that you were—using too much laudanum.” She turned to face her mother, who was twisting on the bench, growing irritable, wiping strands of hair from her face. The addiction had wrecked Leda; Beatrice could see that. But a quiet rage was building inside her: all of this might have been prevented if only her mother had not abandoned her in the first place.
“Clear your head for a moment,” Beatrice pleaded. “Can you do that for me?”
Her mother straightened her back and slowly looked over at her.
Beatrice wanted to shake her. Instead, her voice low, she said: “I need to know.”
“I never liked that farm. It was lonely and isolated. Your grandparents liked it, and your father did, too. He said it calmed him, after losing Constantinople. It appealed to his poetic side.” Leda was hunching her shoulders up to her ears, her voice getting louder. “He went out to check on the hens. You remember?”
“Of course I do,” snapped Beatrice.
“I was stitching. I should have gone with him. Then he was dead, broken by their shovels and pitchforks. After that, no more breathing for me.”
“But you left me.”
The accusation hung in the air for a long time.
Leda dragged an arm across her face. “Crazy. I went crazy,” she whispered.
“Mamma,” said Beatrice. “You . . . you never came back for me.”
They sat silent.
Leda looked out the window where the horse had nuzzled their hands that morning. “You see the pear tree with its fruit and greenery?” Beatrice glanced out through the glass, and her mother continued: “Once that was me. But then I was a tree without any leaves, and my branches grew thin and brittle, easy to break. I broke—that is what happened. I broke and I escaped.” She ran her restless fingers up and down her bodice.
Beatrice reached an arm around her mother. Once Leda had been her guardian angel; now she was Leda’s caregiver.
“You are better than this. Than me,” said Leda, flapping a hand in the air.
“No, Mamma. Don’t speak like that. We have each other. I am grateful for that.”
Even as she said these words, Beatrice longed for something more, something she could not ask for: an apology.
Chapter 43
Agnella had given her a walking stick crafted from an olive branch. She wanted to hurl it through the air and curse the gods for what had happened to her. For making her a girl. For making her a nothing. For making her the daughter of a whore.
Angrily, Beatrice grasped the stick and steadied herself. She fixed her wreath of oak leaves carefully over the stitching on the side of her head. Gone was the mother who had once brushed her hair and taught her to make garlands of olive leaves and roses. Beatrice had found her, yet she was never coming back. Whatever kindness existed for her was unlikely to be found in Settignano. Even their little stone hut had been destroyed. Her mother had lost the ability to care for her. Love? Leda loved opium more than Beatrice. That knowledge no longer made her eyes sting with tears. It felt good to be clear about where she stood; it strengthened her resolve. Slowly, chin lifted, she started walking along Via della Stufa toward the artists’ laneway.
She knocked at Michelangelo’s door and discovered him hunched over the table, a piece of black conté in his hand. He jumped to his feet, rushing to hold the door open for her.
“May I?” she said, nodding her head toward the sole chair in his studio.
He picked up a deerskin, settling the hide and some dusty pillows on the chair, and motioned for her to sit down. “Are you well enough? Agnella threw you out of the hospice?”
Beatrice offered a smile and set her cane to the side of Michelangelo’s table. Displayed on its surface were naked men, examined from every side, from every angle, every muscle of the legs, arms and stomach twisting and turning to show her another piece of flesh. There were so many she looked away, embarrassed.
“All your devotion,” she said, gesturing with her chin to his sketchbook. In his company, she felt her anger easing.
“What do you mean?”
Beatrice was not fool enough to believe he would be content to stay in Florence. His genius would outgrow the glittering city. Venice or Milan would send him invitations. Or there would be commissions from the papacy in Rome. They never spoke of it, but they both knew that Michelangelo’s destiny was larger than what kinship lay between them.
“What do you mean?” asked Michelangelo again, seeming intrigued by her statement.
“Can’t you see how much you love them all? If men devoted this kind of attention to their wives, I believe Florentines would be a happier lot.”
He smiled, and his eyes seemed to deepen in color. “We have only one shot at living. These men are giving it their very best. They’re all of them heroes.”
Beatrice looked back at him. “They are. They seem alive to me. I fear for their lives just now. I want them to hurry up and put on their armor before the enemy arrives.”
“Beatrice, do you think Leonardo is in love with the people he paints?” Michelangelo looked at his hands and rubbed some charcoal from his fingers.
“Not in the same way as you. Your art honors the flesh and blood of the hero. Leonardo makes us see the force of nature, the flow of rivers, even our inner thoughts”—she pounded her chest with a fist—“the way we think and feel. There’s always something trembling right behind the eyes. A mix of fear and wisdom, I guess.” She settled back on the chair and hesitated before half whispering: “I saw that with his portrait of my own mother, and his sketches of the warriors. Strange. I saw that look even in the wild eyes of the horses fighting for their lives in his big battle scene.”
“I want my soldiers to seem alive.”
“They do—to me they are. Always moving and twisting, the better to show off their muscles.” She smiled, then reached for his sketchbook. She pointed to a drawing of a man with fear in his eyes, turning his body as if to escape his own terror. “They seem strong enough to fly like hawks.”
“Like you,” he said. He slid the chalk over to her. “Draw what you like.”
She did not look at him but moved the book closer and removed a blank sheet of papyrus. Moving quickly, as was her custom when secretly staining the walls of the city, she sketched an angel with a child’s innocence and wings splayed out beyond her robes. Her lines were rough and coarse, but she took time with careful hatching, showing through the dark lines of her pencil that this angel’s arms were lithe and muscular, capable of lifting off the page.
Michelangelo studied the papyrus and nodded. “Good. This is a good start. You need to be more convincing with your shading, though. More detailed and delicate. Be patient. For instance, here.” He rolled his shirt back to reveal his right forearm. “Draw my arm.”
Thinking he might be joking, she rolled her eyes at him. But he had already begun sketching in his notebook with his left hand while holding his right arm completely still for her. She eased the papyrus back in front of her and selected a fresh red conté.
“That’s for later,” he said, taking the conté from her. “Start working in black graphite first. The tip is finer.”
The air in the studio grew still. She bent over the paper and drew the length of his fingers, the boxy shape of his knuckles, the incline of his wrist. With fine crisscrosses of the graphite, she darkened areas to indicate the muscles that traveled along the inside and outside of his forearm. She pressed down to show the crook of his elbow.
An hour had passed and she was still drawing when she sensed his eyes on her.
“That’s enough for today,” he said. “But you must practice.”
She was annoyed that he was treating her like a child, but held her tongue. “I will. I want to become an artist. Not only in secret. I’m eighteen years old. I need to think about what I will do with my life.”
“
It’s a dream,” he said. She braced herself to hear that she should abandon her aspirations. Instead, he added: “It’s a good dream.”
“The nuns at the Ripoli convent showed me women can be artists, too. People are paying for their work. I’d like that. To sell my drawings. To exhibit them. I don’t only want to draw in secret on the city walls.”
“If you practice, something will come of your art. I promise. But for now, I have to focus on my battle scene. Rumor has it that Leonardo is finally hard at work on his cartoon of The Battle of Anghiari. Machiavelli imposed a strict deadline. Failure to honor the contract means we have to repay all the money or hand over the completed portion of the cartoon so that another artist can finish it!”
“I’d happily volunteer,” said Beatrice.
“Only two weeks to go.” He glanced at his sketch of three young soldiers, panicked by the coming attack, leaping out of the River Arno, all of them tormented souls, the way he liked to depict his subjects. “I wonder if the governor and Machiavelli will insist on a devil’s agreement to have Leonardo halt progress until we can both paint simultaneously like gladiators in the Coliseum.” He picked up the black chalk and deepened the shadow on the legs of a naked warrior crawling from the river.
“You need space to make your cartoon,” she said, looking around at the small studio.
“They have me over at one of the big rooms at the hospital of the wool dyers in Sant’Onofrio. Smells like wool, mildew and death. Actually, to be honest, it smells like death wrapped in mildewy wool.”
She shook her head and laughed. “I shouldn’t tell you, but Leonardo’s working in a palatial space usually offered to popes!”
Michelangelo gave a crooked, bitter smile. “Compared to Leonardo, I’m receiving far fewer florins, and I’ve been given mere months—not years—to complete my cartoon of the battle.”
She nodded but stayed silent. They sketched together and sang one of his nonsensical songs.
“I have been staying this last while with Madonna Lisa,” said Beatrice.
Michelangelo paused to consider. “Is Leonardo still painting her portrait?” He had heard gossip about the commission. “He hasn’t completed such a small thing yet?”
“She is a great Florentine lady and very kind,” she said, ignoring the jab. “She has offered me the old garden shed. It has little windows set in the stone walls and views to the courtyard and a garden of lemon and pear trees.” She saw Michelangelo’s brow growing dark, but continued: “Madonna Lisa insists that I can move in and stay as long as it pleases me.”
“What will you do all day?” he asked, setting his face to brooding.
“Why do you care how I spend my time?”
“It’s only that . . .” He looked at his boots, then to the timbers of his studio. “If you’re living in high society, you won’t want to mix with the likes of me.”
“I’ll spend my days storytelling and teaching the children how to climb a cypress tree fast—or how to dry your body after a river swim by lying on the back of a pig.” She started to laugh and squeezed her sides. Her ribs ached. “And I’ll be selling olive oil just like before.” She smiled at him and tapped her cane lightly on the floor. She had suffered and survived; now she was ready to get on with life. “You have my cart?”
He indicated a shape across the room, covered with a piece of silk. He rolled it over. Then, changing his mind, he motioned for her to join him outside. “Vieni. For the light.”
She saw new copper edging, the sides sanded smooth. He had painted the cart with angels, some gripping trumpets, others with harps cradled in their rosy arms. At the front was a carved rondel of a girl’s head, hair flowing to the sides, a wreath of mountain flowers delicately painted in white and pink. The handles had been bound in leather strapping.
“Did you sculpt my cart?” she exclaimed. She lifted the handles and automatically pressed her right hip forward to correct the broken wheel. The cart glided easily away from her and, with a shriek of delight, she walked quickly to catch up with it, pain shooting through her chest. “The wheel is fixed!” she called, holding her ribs and trying not to laugh. “It’s good enough for a Medici!”
A small crowd of men from the laneway had gathered around Michelangelo. They stood shyly, arms folded across their chests.
“She likes it, I think,” said the coppersmith who had welded the edging to the cart.
“Of course she does,” said the ironsmith, shrugging his shoulders as if that much was obvious. He seemed proud of the new wooden wheels and iron axle he had fitted for the cart.
With a mere touch of the handles, the cart rolled smoothly in front of her. Beatrice pulled up in front of the men and smiled her thanks. Her head throbbed, but she felt like she was in a blissful dream. They looked seriously at her, not wanting to acknowledge their role, wanting the moment to be owned by Michelangelo, the lion in the laneway, whom they adored.
“Well, then,” she said, shrugging her shoulders. “I thank all of you with all my heart.”
She gazed at her earthenware jars, which were settled in a bed of juniper branches, blue berries still intact.
“Eat those berries—heals snakebite,” said Michelangelo. “Agnella’s touch, of course.”
Back inside the studio, she curled and uncurled her fingers and looked at his many wall paintings. The girl who was flying—it was as if she was seeing the drawing for the first time.“Who is that?” she asked, bending forward.
Michelangelo looked to the ceiling timbers and shuffled his boots on the floor. “That was a long time ago.”
She looked from him to the wall sketch and waited.
“It was after I met you for the first time in Settignano, when you raised your arms above your father. Like you were blessing him. That image stayed with me. The strength you had inside you.”
She nodded, felt the sting of tears, and wiped them away quickly. The pain in her limbs eased. She wanted to tell him something. “Everybody admires your David. Lisa and Francesco, the servants, the vendors.”
He looked at her seriously and nodded to show that he understood.
“But now,” she said, tugging at his tunic, “watch out, because everybody will be admiring my cart!”
“Well,” Michelangelo said, “thank you for helping me with David, and for calling me an idiota.”
They laughed awkwardly. He reached for her hands, searching her eyes as if asking a question. He kissed each of her palms, traced his lips on both of her wrists, then let go, as if in farewell.
Chapter 44
That June, the summer of 1505, the humidity lay thick on the air. Reluctantly, Leonardo pulled on his purple wool stockings and threw a red silk cape over a white blouson, a costume of victory, he supposed, or some kind of good-luck witchery. By the time he reached the political heart of the city, his heart was racing and his hands felt clammy. He nodded at the guards at the front entrance of the Palazzo Vecchio. The massive wooden doors were pushed open, and he walked through into the darkness of the vaulted entrance hall. He tore the cape from his throat—even the light silk was too confining in the morning heat—and put a hand on the cold stone wall to find a measure of comfort.
Leonardo had resisted this moment to the last; he reached a landing, turned a corner, then ascended another flight of stairs, aware of the trembling of his hands.
Oils, he had decided, not watercolors. Oils would deliver rich, lustrous tones. His assistants could dry them on the wall with torches. Experiments on his studio wall at the Hall of the Pope had proven the technique.
He stepped into the upper hallway and walked ten paces to the looming doors of the Great Council Hall. He heaved his body against one of the doors, but it remained firm. Giovanni and Ferrando would arrive soon enough; still, he wanted badly to be inside now, to confront the monumental scale of the wall, the void that needed to be filled with his battle scene. A braccio was an arm’s length; the hall measured 104 braccia long by 40 wide.
“It’s lonely in the
dark.”
He turned to see Governor Soderini, half-dressed, blouson untucked.
“Though my thoughts are my constant companion,” Soderini continued. “Better to get up and walk them around than let them fester while sleepless and horizontal.”
Unwashed, breath stinking of yeast, and with an amazing capacity for early-morning chatter, thought Leonardo. “Before the rest arrive,” he said, “I want to—”
“Exactly right. Up before dawn. I am myself, most mornings, in fact.” Soderini produced a large ring heavy with bronze keys and punched one of them into the door. “Best time to see the people, see how they should be governed.” He maneuvered the key and the lock clicked open. “Before the breaking of dawn, I look out onto the piazza, into the emptiness.”
“The city at its most hopeful.”
“No mess, no rooster testicles for sale, just a man alone—”
“Wanting to fly.”
Soderini looked at Leonardo as if seeing him for the first time. The door swung open and they walked into the giant room, where the heat compressed and solidified. Leonardo dropped his cape on the floor and walked to the daunting emptiness of the east wall, wiping sweat from his brow. He had worked on the commission for more than two years: its concept, its design, the preparatory drawing. Earlier in the spring, his assistants had received eighty-eight pounds of sifted white flour to make a paste to glue the paper cartoon to a linen backing. Workmen had recently hauled bags of sand into the Palazzo Vecchio. They’d laid the sand next to buckets of wet lime putty, mixed them together and applied a smooth intonaco. After waiting for it to dry, Ferrando and Giovanni had filled small cotton bags with charcoal to pounce the outlines of the cartoon over the immense wall. The charcoal transferred neatly through tiny pinpricks in the preparatory drawing, following every stroke. It had taken them days of work, but ultimately they had reproduced the central battle scene, horses and humans in furious combat, fighting for their lives. Now it was time to paint.
