Quattrocento Page 16

  Lifting the tip of the brush from the panel, Anna paused. “I want to see the Parthenon,” she said. “I’ve been to Venice. A long time ago, when I was just a girl. I saw the doge toss his ring into the sea from the Bucentaur on Ascension Day. The Parthenon—someday. I can see it, almost as though I have already been there.”

  “I hope that you do. It’s one of the few things you’ll ever see that’s more real than the way you imagine it. People talk about the music of the spheres. I don’t know much about that, but I do know that seeing the moon rise over the Parthenon is the closest you will ever come to hearing it.”

  “And Alexandria, and the great pyramids, and the Nile. It would be so amazing! But at the same time I don’t think I would ever be able to leave this behind. It’s home. Funny, isn’t it? Here, I long to see all those places I have heard about. Travelers come through, or traders from Florence or Venice, or someone like Kamal, and I can’t get enough of the stories they tell. The wonders there are to be seen! I have heard of deserts wider than oceans and mountains so high no one has ever seen the top. But I know if I were there, I would dream of here. And I’d miss it terribly. I can imagine all those places, and more, but the one thing I can’t imagine is not having a home. Even the widest-roaming eagle has a nest somewhere.”

  “Then someday I’ll find mine,” Matt said. He picked up the muller, a heavy mushroom of glass with a flat bottom. Leaning over the tabletop, he moved it in slow, regular circles to grind the pigment finer and finer until it looked as though he were stirring a plate of liquid sunflowers. As he worked, he added the powdered glass he had pulverized in a mortar from the shards of a goblet from Murano. Lisl had shaken her head in exasperation at his insistence, but not just any glass would do; it was the leading in the crystal that he needed as a drier for the oil. Matt used the knife to gather up the thick paste, carefully scraping it into a jar that he then put next to the others.

  “What led you to this?” Matt asked. He stretched, rolling his shoulders, trying to relax the bunched muscles. He had forgotten how physically taxing painting was; how much concentration and control it took to have the brush become an extension of his hand and eye, how much pure muscular exertion was involved in standing still, hour after hour. He picked up a piece of paper he had used to make a rough sketch of the flowers and idly began to fold it.

  “The church hasn’t been used in years, and I wanted the privacy.”

  “I meant painting,” he said, creasing the paper in half. He made another fold, this one on the diagonal, and then a longer one, first one side and then the other. “It’s not really—”

  “Something ladies do?” Anna asked, finishing the sentence for him.

  “Well, is it?”

  “No, it isn’t.”

  Matt shrugged, his attention on the paper. He made another fold and then looked up when it was apparent that she wasn’t going to continue. “It’s fine with me,” he said, opening his hands. “I think it’s wonderful.”

  “You’re terribly open-minded,” Anna said.

  “Travel is broadening. Where I’m from, lots of women paint. I was just curious as to what led you to it.” He looked at her, a sudden thought dawning on him. “You know, I don’t think you realize how good you are.”

  “You think I’m good?”

  “Are you serious?” Matt asked. He reached over and took the panel of the swallow and handed it to her. “This speaks for itself. You created it, but now it exists all on its own. What you think or I think makes no difference at all. Like the Parthenon. Does it matter what anyone thinks of it?”

  “This isn’t the Parthenon.”

  “It doesn’t have to be. It’s beautiful, Contessa. Madame. Your Excellence. It’s a beautiful painting. And, like it or not, it no longer has anything to do with you. But I don’t have to tell you that, you know it as full well as I do.”

  Matt picked up the folded paper and turned it inside out, made one last crease, and there: it was done. Holding up the paper airplane, he sighted along the wings and then launched it. With a smile of satisfaction he watched as the tiny aircraft, only inches long, turned its nose up and rose into a graceful loop before gliding to a rest on the worn flagstones, tilted over onto one narrow wing.

  Anna put down her brush. She went over and picked up the airplane as gently as though it were a butterfly. Balancing it on the palm of her hand she looked at it, turning it this way and that. “It’s wonderful,” she said. “What do you call it?”

  “The swallow,” Matt said, looking at her painting.

  “This is your swallow? Show me how to make it fly,” she said.

  Matt took the plane and, holding it gently between his thumb and forefinger, launched it into the air. Once again it lifted and rose before sailing back to the floor.

  Anna picked it up. “Like this?” she asked.

  “Almost. You have to balance it,” Matt said. “Here, I’ll show you.” He took her hand and moved the plane slightly back. “There,” he said. “Try it now.”

  With a quick movement Anna sent the plane aloft. They both watched as it looped, up and over and around, before finally curving to one side to land on the bench.

  Matt picked up the plane and handed it to her. “Here,” he said. “It’s yours.”

  “Mine?” Anna asked. “Are you sure?”

  “I made it for you,” Matt said.

  Anna placed it on the shelf, next to the paints. “Let me see your hand,” she said, and then carefully unhooked the compresa from her dress. Without a word she placed it in Matt’s open palm.

  “I can’t take this,” Matt said.

  “You gave me yours.”

  “Yes, but—”

  Anna reached for the pin, but Matt stopped her, their fingers barely touching, as weightless as the pin resting in the palm of his hand.

  Francesca, out of sight, coughed.

  “Yes, Francesca,” Anna called out. “We have to go,” she said to Matt.

  “Anna,” he said.

  “Yes?”

  “Just that.”

  Anna, smiling slightly, closed his hand around the pin. “You’ll know when to wear it,” she said, and in a swirl of yellow was gone.

  Outside the door of the church, Matt paused, enjoying the heat of the sun, the weight of it on his face and shoulders, amazed to see that nothing had outwardly changed, that the church and the field and the three lone fig trees looked exactly the same.

  chapter 17

  Rodrigo held a sword in both hands, the point raised. Dressed in chain mail over a leather jerkin, helmet on, he faced his double across the open slate floor.

  “Go,” he commanded, and the two swords raised and then fell, the zing of the blades echoing off the suits that stood ranked against the wall in dumb witness to the match. The blades stopped as quickly as they had begun, and the two resumed their stance. “Again,” Rodrigo ordered, and the quick pas de deux was repeated.

  “Isn’t it time for a break?” Matt asked, his voice slightly muffled and metallic behind the slitted visor of his helmet. “Aren’t you thirsty? I’m sweating like a pig in here.”

  “Go!” Rodrigo snapped, and the blades again sang against each other. “You’re still doing that thing with your wrist,” he said. He dropped his sword and went over to stand next to him. “Watch me,” Rodrigo said. “No wrist.” He went through the motion again, with Matt watching.

  “We’ve been at it since dawn,” Matt grumbled.

  “You think I’m doing this for my own enjoyment?” Rodrigo asked with some exasperation. He unsnapped his visor and lifted the heavy helmet free of his head. His hair hung in wet locks around his forehead, a red line showing where the felt padding had supported the heavy steel. “Love comes with a heavy price,” he said. “And the way you’ve been going about it, the bill is going to come due any day now.”

  “Who said anything about love?” Matt asked, taking off his own helmet. The air was almost deliciously cool after the suffocating closeness of the helmet.<
br />
  Rodrigo snorted. “That’s all you haven’t done. Talk about it, thank God. Your demeanor has said enough. Luckily everyone thinks you’re Irish, so this air of fatuous good cheer seems perfectly normal. The only other reason a person acts so benighted is if he fell off a horse and landed on his helmet.”

  “It’s a good thing it won’t ever happen to you,” Matt said. “I can’t even imagine what it would be like, a profound cynic in the throes of passion.”

  “Cynicism and profundity can’t go together. It’s an impossibility of nature, like a virgin in Rome.”

  Orlando, running by, came to a halt as he saw the two men dressed in armor, swords in their hands. He entered the room, followed by Cosimo, and went over to the racks of armor. “Let me try,” he said, taking down his cuirass.

  “Me, too,” Cosimo piped up.

  “You’re too small,” Orlando told him, cinching the buckles.

  “That doesn’t sound like a good host to me,” Matt said. “What would Lucullus have to say?”

  “We don’t have any suits his size,” Orlando said, taking down a sword as tall as he was.

  “Wait a minute,” Rodrigo said, laughing. “That’s way too big for you.”

  A shadow filled the doorway. “Now this is the way to start the day,” Leandro said, coming into the armory. He took the sword from Orlando, who surrendered it with reluctance. Leandro hefted the heavy steel in his hand, turning it from side to side to feel its balance, and then raised it up in both hands, as if readying an attack. He brought the blade down, the sharp edge slicing toward the exposed skin where Orlando’s neck joined his collarbone. Matt, leaning forward to protest, stopped as Leandro slowed the blade inches from the boy’s flesh, turning the blade sideways. Tapping him lightly with the blade, Leandro intoned, “I hereby make thee Sir Orlando.” He looked up at Matt with a smile as bright and chilling as the winter sun reflecting off snow. “Shall we?” he asked.

  “But you’re not wearing any armor—” Matt protested.

  “It’s just practice,” Leandro said.

  Matt lifted his helmet to put it on.

  “Don’t worry about that,” Leandro said. “We’ll be careful. Just something to loosen up.”

  Matt put the helmet down. He raised his sword, holding it at the ready as Rodrigo had shown him. Leandro dropped his waist and flexed his legs, his thighs bunching under his black hose. He rose onto the balls of his feet. Matt, letting his opponent set the pace, braced himself for the first blow. It came like a gyrfalcon out of the sky, fierce and blindingly fast, leaving Matt’s sword resonating in his hands like a bell hit by cannonshot. He fell back a step, warily watching the circling blade, flashing like lightning against a lowering black thunderhead. It struck again, a blur of silver that slammed his blade so hard his hands numbed from the vibration, making him use all his strength just to hold the sword up.

  Eyes black and unblinking, Leandro moved with a sinuous ease, not even breathing hard, twitching the tip of his blade. Matt’s followed sluggishly, like a fat bumblebee trying to chase a dragonfly. Leandro attacked again, slashing his sword hard against Matt’s and then circling his blade in one quick, fluid motion. Matt’s sword sprang from his numbed hands as though it had taken flight. It fell to the ground, the hilt banging and the blade bouncing with a dull, hollow echo. Unarmed, Matt stood helpless as the tip of Leandro’s blade, blunt and flat and razor sharp, hovered in the air inches from his throat.

  Leandro relaxed, standing up and dropping the blade. “That was fun,” he said. “You should take a sword when you go out exploring in the afternoons. Or at least a crossbow. It can be dangerous to be in these woods unarmed. The wild boar can be ferocious.” He hung the sword back up on the wall and left, ignoring the others as though they had ceased to exist.

  “Your wrists,” Rodrigo said with a weary patience. “Do you see why you have to keep them straight?”

  It was only after entering the coolness of the pine forest that Matt realized how strong the sun had gotten in the brief half hour it had taken them to climb the ridge behind the villa. The voices of the party rose and mingled under the hushed canopy, linking the small groups into a loosely strung necklace as they descended the path that wound down the gentle slope on the other side. The murmur of conversation and laughter was accompanied by the music of the band of sackbuts and trumpets that brought up the rear of the procession.

  “A sylvan glade of Arcadian beauty, such as might have been frequented by Demeter,” Tristano, the duke’s poet, remarked, looking about with the proprietary air of a true artist in the midst of nature.

  “Indeed,” Matt replied.

  “Laurel!” Tristano announced, leaning over to pluck a white blossom from a low branch as they passed. “Mortal victim of an immortal’s desire!” he declaimed. “Perhaps even this very tree the one which encases her gentle heart. Ah, chaste virgin of an idyllic paradise, she would rather live as a tree than suffer herself to be profaned by even such a one as Apollo.”

  “Although one might ask if it is any better to spend the next hundred years or so having bits of you plucked off by the random admirer,” Rodrigo said. “Or to have one’s role in love reduced to providing shade for another’s dalliance.”

  “What about Actaeon?” Matt interjected. “Talk about being in the wrong place at the wrong time. You go out hunting in the woods and you happen to see a woman bathing in a pool, and what happens? You get turned into a stag and eaten by your own dogs.”

  The splashing of a river, at first a distant murmur indistinguishable from the breeze soughing through the tops of the trees far overhead, had grown as they descended the hill. Loud enough now that Tristano had to raise his voice to declaim, the rushing water could at last be seen, sparkling and dancing under the sun as it coursed over the rocks. Ahead, a woman laughed; not Anna, Matt thought, but perhaps at something she had said.

  The ground leveled, the path becoming springy under the soft soles of Matt’s shoes. He ducked his head to avoid the low branches of a fig tree, white with blossoms, as they emerged from the wood into a meadow, bordered on the other side by a wide pool. Overhung by the drooping branches of hemlocks that rose up the steep bank on the other side, it was only partly in the sun, the surface unbroken but for the occasional tracks of water bugs. The river could be heard, out of sight in both directions, but in the small clearing it barely moved. The long grass, a bright green where it could be seen, was almost completely covered by carpets on which stools and tables had been set, with servants holding umbrellas over the ladies’ heads to shield them from the sun. A pavilion of gaily striped linen had been erected by the deep pool where the wood ended, while on the other side of a clearing the band played a lively frotolla near a long trestle table on which platters heaped with food had been set out, framed by tall cornucopias of fresh fruit. Guests were gathered around, loading their brightly glazed majolica plates with bread and pale yellow cheese, joints of chicken and olives. Handed a goblet, Matt drank deeply, relishing the cool sparkling white wine, so fresh that it was like cider just beginning to turn hard.

  The duke, standing with the emissary of the sultan, held up his hand, and the music and animated buzz of conversation came to a halt. The group bowed their heads as Bonifacio, the rotund priest, intoned a brief prayer in Latin.

  “Where is Virgil’s cave?” Matt asked Rodrigo, looking around the meadow.

  “Up there,” Rodrigo replied, pointing halfway up the opposite ridge.

  Matt craned his neck to look up. “Up there?”

  “It offers a spectacular vista,” Rodrigo said. “Or so I have been told. I have seen enough of Virgil’s caves to know that they invariably offer a spectacular vista. Perhaps Calliope won’t descend unless she finds a setting worthy of her presence. Or else, as with refining ore into metal, it requires a certain expenditure of physical energy to provide the heat for the creative process to occur. Considering how much Virgil had to write, it’s no wonder he spent half his life scrambling up precip
ices. We might consider the converse as proof of this; indolence, and the concomitant lack of inspiration …” he said thoughtfully, his gaze resting on Tristano, who was regaling a small group backed so close to the bank of the pool they teetered as they nodded, their eyes vainly searching for some escape. “If you want to see for yourself, find Orlando,” Rodrigo added. “He loves the climb.”

  “Let’s eat,” Matt said, spying Anna momentarily alone by the long table. Here, in a crowd, would be the perfect time to exchange a few words. With Rodrigo following he eased his way through the knots of people busily eating and talking. Anna appeared and disappeared from sight, her red damascene silk dress and yellow cape standing out like a rare flower in the lush tropical jungle of the other brilliantly resplendent costumes. She seemed to be aware of his approach, even though she never looked directly at him, for now that he was almost upon her she was turning in his direction as though some unspoken communication had passed between them to make their meeting seem casual and accidental. As he came up next to her he saw that she was talking to the priest, who had joined her. Francesca stood by, watchful and quiet, her eyes following the conversation. Bonifacio listened, his face working with the words he was rehearsing in his head like a troop of tumblers chafing to take the stage.

  Matt bowed as he joined the group. “Contessa,” he said.

  “We were discussing angels,” Anna said to him with a welcoming smile. “I was saying that sometimes during Father Bonifacio’s services my mind wanders. I have noticed this to be true of everyone else at one time or another. It is not your words,” she said to the priest, “which are of inestimable value and spoken with true poetry and clarity of insight. Rather, it is that the angels that surround us on the walls of the chapel are of such beauty that is beyond my power to ignore them.”

  “Gabriel,” Matt suggested.

  “Yes,” Anna agreed. “Such an exquisite form, such an expression of beauty in his features. I find myself distracted from the word of God by the irresistible power of his beauty. How can these divine angels, messengers of God, lure us into the same transgression that the snake did in the Garden, to trade the contemplation of the divine for the profane gratifications of sensual beauty, no matter how elevated or refined?”