Leonardo's Swans (25 page)

Chapter Six

IV * L’IMPERATORE
(THE EMPEROR)

IN THE WINTER SEASON, 1495;
IN THE CITY OF MILAN

I
SABELLA
kneels at the wooden pew set in front of her as a courtesy by the friar in the Duomo of Milan. She does not like this cavernous, dark cathedral with its frigid air, dwarfing marble columns, and eerie echo that seems to come from nowhere and whirls about her like a taunting demon. She had come to pay her respects to the poor dead Gian Galeazzo, late Duke of Milan, now locked up in the family crypt like so many Viscontis and Sforzas before him. Shivering in the dank air, clutching her rosary, she tries to imagine the cathedral as it was described to her on the occasion of the duke’s funeral, with thousands of wax candles lighting its dark expanse, and the celestial-sounding requiem of Milan’s finest choir chanting for the duke’s soul as it ascended to Heaven, or to wherever it was going. Did all that ceremony matter to Our Lord when He considered the fate of one’s soul? Was He swayed by the heavenly voices, the glowing cathedral, the prayers for the dead, or the wailing relatives cloaked in black?

Besides being even colder inside than it is out of doors on this January day, the Duomo makes Isabella uncomfortable. Surely this grand building, with its thorny Gothic spires, stacked tombs, and altars under which fabled treasures of silver and gold are buried, was built to appease God’s darker nature. The loving, forgiving Father who sent His Son to redeem mankind does not make His home here; only the vengeful God, angered by the sins of the flock which squanders His many gifts. Isabella wonders which man has angered God more in recent times—the duke, who wasted his young life away in drink and perversion, or the one who all of Milan whispers is responsible for his death. She wonders if having put large amounts of one’s fortune into the building and embellishment of this cathedral, as Ludovico and every royal in Milan have done for more than one hundred years, will slake God’s thirst for vengeance when the time comes to answer for one’s deeds.

She finishes her prayers for the duke’s eternal respite—a full rosary of Our Fathers and Hail Marys and Glory Be to Gods—lingering on the last of the crystal beads. How has Our Lord greeted such a sad dissolute come early to His bosom? Did Gian Galeazzo meet the God of Forgiveness or the Avenger? She supposes that it is none of her concern, but she often wonders how God conducts His business. She has already said a rosary for her mother—God rest her loving soul—who passed away the year before. For an entire winter, both Beatrice and Isabella—distraught that distance had not allowed either to be with the duchess when she died—wore black moiré robes with long black sleeves and heavy black velvet mantles, their faces covered in delicate white lawn veils that draped from tall black caps.

Isabella presses her palms together to send up a prayer for which she has little hope of receiving an answer. She begs God that in time her heart will open up to her little daughter, named Leonora after Isabella’s mother, because she was born so soon after the great duchess had died. Would not her mother want Isabella to love the little girl? Isabella knows that she is doing her mother’s memory a great disservice by withholding maternal love from the child, but she has not been able to change the fact that she had wanted a boy so badly that she cannot muster any feelings for the girl.

“What is wrong with girls?” Francesco is fond of asking. “You are a girl, Isabella! The child is beautiful like you, and healthy. Why are you disappointed?”

Francesco, who could have been disappointed that Isabella had failed to provide him with a little marquis to inherit the kingdom, is utterly delighted with his daughter. But Isabella put away the golden cradle that Duke Ercole had Ferrara’s best artists carve for his first grandchild in Mantua, and with that cradle, put away her heart. She would take it out when she gave birth to a boy. She did not want to feel this way. She instructed all the nursery attendants to shower love and attention upon the child; no discipline is allowed or necessary. Leonora is always clothed in elaborate dresses and bonnets of pearls and lace, given tiny sweets to suck on, and picked up and cuddled at the first sign of discontent. All this spoiling is meant to make up for the fact that Isabella has no room for little Leonora in her deepest heart of hearts. Not in the same way that Beatrice has taken her son to her bosom. No, Isabella knows the difference. She knows her own deficiency, and she prays to God that in time she will be able to make up for this coldness.

Holy Queen, Mother of Mercy, our life, our sweetness, and our hope. To thee do we cry, poor banished children of Eve. To thee do we send up our sighs, mourning and weeping in this valley of tears.

At the last of her prayers, Isabella looks up from her folded hands to the towering stained-glass windows above her, noticing that each is laced with the Visconti family symbol, a serpent swallowing a man. The windows are probably as old as the cathedral, put in place by the first Prince Gian Galeazzo Visconti, who broke ground on this monolithic structure one hundred years ago, but the same message holds true today—man is a hapless creature in the hands of the Viscontis. Even when it concerns their own blood, these creatures will swallow any who obstruct their ambitions. And now her sister is a part of this family of serpents—perhaps has become one of the very vipers.

Isabella can hardly believe what they are saying about Ludovico, and yet she can hardly deny it. It is all too convenient, the way Gian Galeazzo exited this world at the very point in time that Ludovico had rallied enough support to usurp the title of Duke of Milan. Now the shifting swirl of political alliances and betrayals that Isabella had foreseen from her conversation with Beatrice on the river is coming to fruition.

From the moment that Duchess Leonora died, it seemed that all of Italy was in a fever to bring in the French. With no one in Ferrara left to plead for Naples, the Diamond quickly gave his sanction for the French to attack his late wife’s former kingdom. Duke Ercole had no love for the French—or for anyone else, for that matter—but along with much of Italy, he hated and feared Naples’s ally, Alexander VI, the corrupt Borgia pope whose son Cesare wanted to reconquer all the independent Italian states in the name of the papacy. This, the Diamond could not bear.

“I am not trying to make an enemy of Naples. I am saving Ferrara from the Borgias’ ambitions,” he explained to Isabella. “If it takes the French to put the Borgias in their place, so be it. If your grandfather wants to align with the devil—and I assure you that Borgia is the devil—he will have to pay the price of his wicked bargain. Your mother—God rest her soul—would understand. We must wrestle the papacy back from this Satan. The French can help us unseat the abomination Alexander and restore a holy man to the throne in the Vatican.”

At the same time, Ludovico and Beatrice were entertaining kings and emperors who would support Ludovico’s ascent to Duke of Milan. They started to call their son, Ercole, “Max,” to honor the German emperor. Last fall, Ludovico and Duke Ercole, who thus far voiced no objection to his grandson’s name change, met the French King Charles VIII at Asti, near Turin, where Beatrice hosted a fabulous reception at the castle at Annona, with her choir of singers and musicians and eighty beautiful, well-turned-out ladies. She had bothered to write Isabella
every single detail
in a letter explaining how Charles—short, hunchbacked, big-nosed, pockmarked, and ugly as a frog, but a king nonetheless—adores ladies to the extent that he travels with a court artist who paints each lady the king beds in whatever sexual positions they enjoyed for his personal book of memories. Beatrice, once so pure, regarded this as a minor scandal in one who could do so much to promote her husband.

According to Beatrice, despite the fact that she found the French tiresome—they complained incessantly about the heat, and about Italian wine, which they found sour—she had charmed the king. She had enchanted him with her wardrobe—a green satin robe, the bodice of which was adorned by endless paths of diamonds, pearls, and other jewels, and a cap which sprouted feathers, held together by a clasp made of the largest rubies in the treasury. He was astonished that “with all of that on her head,” she sat as tall and straight on her horse as any man. She danced for him in the French style, allowing him a single kiss with each of her ladies-in-waiting, including Ludovico’s daughter, Bianca Giovanna, now fifteen and recently wedded to her longtime betrothed, Galeazz di Sanseverino. Beatrice did say that she had kept a close eye on the girl, however, turning the king’s lascivious eye away from the dew-eyed newlywed and toward ever more compliant and experienced ladies. She is protective of Bianca Giovanna, who is lithe and delicate, and whose elongated white face sits above her neck like a lily on a stalk. Beatrice so dazzled King Charles that he had a portrait of her done by the painter Jean Perreal for his sister, Anne of Bourbon, who wanted to see what the most fashionable lady in Italy was wearing. “He is as generous and warm in conversation as any man alive, but would you believe it, sister, the king and the French barons are practically illiterate? They can barely make their letters and were astonished to hear our youth recite poetry and oration in the Latin!”

Isabella wondered how much of this letter was meant to inform, and how much was meant to rankle, for Beatrice had been rankling her for more than a season. Isabella had always been considered the superior dancer of the two; she was certain that this reference was intended to put her in her place. As for the most fashionable, well, even Beatrice would have to admit that if Isabella had been gifted with Ludovico’s money, she would have a wardrobe greater than Beatrice’s in style and ingenuity. Just this fall, Beatrice had asked Isabella for permission to use a design that Niccolò da Correggio had created explicitly for Isabella. She had been saving it for some special occasion, but Beatrice pleaded that she required something stunning for Emperor Max’s wedding to Ludovico’s niece, “where ambassadors will come from as far away as Russia, and all will be gold and silver brocade as far as the eye can see. The very worst-dressed people will be wearing lush velvet sateen!”

Isabella wrote back a short note saying, “Suit yourself,” which she thought generous enough, considering that Beatrice had scores of designers in her employ. Why did she have to take this one special thing from Isabella? Isabella was further irked when Beatrice wrote at length about what a success the pattern had been, “perfect for the massive gold gown I had envisioned for this imperial wedding.” Leonardo himself had designed Beatrice’s sleeves for this brocade opus, using an intricate pattern of circular motifs that Beatrice called Fantasia di Leonardo. The Magistro had carried the pattern over to a magnificent, priceless ring, “outlining the largest green aquamarine stone known to the world in heavy gold with the circular pattern at each corner, all embedded with diamonds. It is so large that I cannot bend my middle finger when I wear it.” All of this was made worse when Isabella could not attend the wedding in Milan due to a strange fever she had caught from Francesco. Would that man never stop devising ways to make his wife absent from important events?

Isabella knows she should not allow these grievances to pass through her mind, especially in the house of the Lord.
O my Jesus, forgive us our sins, save us from the fires of hell, lead all souls to Heaven, especially those who have most need of your mercy
. It would be doubly insulting to have to suffer envy for her sister on this earth, and then have to burn in the fires of hell for the sin.

Isabella soon found out that it was Francesco who was Ludovico’s present object of pursuit. Not long after the imperial wedding, Il Moro had sent Monsieur d’Aubigny and three French ambassadors to Mantua to offer Francesco more than forty thousand ducats to command the French army. D’Aubigny kept speaking to them in that horrible French language, as if everyone should know it, while Isabella continued to answer him in Latin. When the delegation left, Isabella and Francesco discussed the matter. The amount of money was astonishing, but the position would surely offend the Venetians. Finally Francesco said, “Ludovico Sforza is the man of the hour, but Venice is eternal.” He abruptly sent a messenger after d’Aubigny, turning him down.

Word—in the form of Donato de Preti, Mantua’s envoy to Milan—arrived from that city informing them of Ludovico’s fury at Francesco’s rejection of the offer. De Preti arrived in a short velvet cloak, voluminous striped sleeves, and tight beige cuffs clasped together at the forearm with bright gold buttons. He removed his broad hat from his head in a great sweeping motion, simultaneously flinging it to a servant and bowing, trying, as Isabella saw it, to get all the niceties out of the way quickly. Apparently, he could hardly contain the flow of news itching to be released from his tongue.

“Oh, the duke was quite upset with the marquis,” de Preti said. “He doesn’t like his desires being thwarted by loyalty to Venice. But not to worry. He had very little time to consider the matter because King Charles arrived in Milan along with the marquis’s rejection of the offer.”

“How convenient. I suppose His Excellency did not enjoy breaking the news to the king,” Isabella said.

“No, he did not. To reduce His Majesty’s disappointment and to impress his extraordinary wealth upon the king’s imagination, the duke took Charles on a tour of his Treasure Tower. The king could hardly keep the saliva in his mouth as he strolled through those rooms, I assure you.”

“If I had such wealth, I would not be showing it to a man with a larger army than mine,” Francesco said, reading Isabella’s mind.

“It would require a perfect saint to gaze upon those sumptuous riches without envy,” said Isabella. Both she and Francesco had previously discussed the dubious wisdom Ludovico displayed in showing Milan’s treasures to visitors.

“I imagine the French king taking mental inventory of all that he was shown,” Isabella continued. “Perhaps he even had his court artist sketch it for his book so that he could salivate over it at night when he reviews his salacious pictures of women.”