Leonardo's Swans (26 page)

De Preti smiled, impressed that Isabella had such knowledge of the French king. “Though he has quite an insatiable appetite for ladies, I assure you, Your Excellency, that his appetite for the duke’s wealth is far greater.”

De Preti explained that a few days later, Ludovico entertained Charles at Pavia, where Duke Gian Galeazzo had taken ill “after a good long drunk.” Charles paid a visit to the languishing duke, who was his cousin, and also to the duchess, who it was said was on the verge of madness about Ludovico’s support of the invasion of Naples. “It was the most wretched thing, Your Excellencies,” de Preti said. “Isabel of Aragon threw herself at Charles’s knees, making a pitiful plea for the safety of her family. Charles assured her that he would protect her and her children, but Ludovico turned a deaf ear toward her, advising her to pray. Imagine.”

Two days after Charles left Pavia, the duke passed away.

“No one could ignore the convenience of this event to Ludovico Sforza’s plans,” de Preti explained. “One day he was entertaining the French king, who promised to support his bid for Duke of Milan; the next day, the man who holds the title of Duke of Milan died at the rather premature age of twenty-five.”

“What precisely was the cause of the duke’s death?” Francesco asked.

“The official word was that he caught a fever, but rumors of poison abound everywhere. The duke’s doctor said that contrary to his orders, the duke ate pears and drank wine, which made him take a turn for the worse.” Isabella could tell by de Preti’s contemptible look that he did not believe the explanation.

“Whoever in this world has died of pears and wine?” she asked.

“I spoke with the Pavian doctor on the case, Theodore Guainiero.” De Preti leaned as close to the marchesa as he dared. The marquis tucked his head into their sphere so that he might hear the secret. “He says that everyone believes that Ludovico Sforza had his astrologer—that incubus Ambrogio, who is also a doctor—slowly administer poison to the poor unsuspecting duke.”

Deliver us from evil, oh Lord, deliver us from temptation now and at the hour of our death.

It was unthinkable. Yet, before Gian Galeazzo had been dead twenty-four hours, while his freshly washed and handsomely dressed corpse was on its way to the cathedral for display, Ludovico had assembled all the magistrates and clergy and nobility in the Rocchetta in Milan, where they quickly cast aside Gian Galeazzo’s four-year-old son as the successor and named Ludovico Duke of Milan, pending investiture from the Germans, to whom Ludovico immediately sent for the official diploma. As a gesture of respect toward his dead nephew, Ludovico asked to be called only duke, and not Duke of Milan, until Gian Galeazzo was buried.

God rest Gian Galeazzo’s weary and drunken soul, and the soul of Ludovico, if he has taken part in a sinister plot against him
, Isabella prays now, shuddering in one of the cathedral’s many frigid drafts, kneeling before the vault where the duke’s body lay, and remembering the conversation with de Preti. She prays for them all—the dead, the living who may have expedited death, and all those who will have to live with the consequences—for surely all of them will need every prayer they can get. She prays for Francesco, who had no trouble believing Ludovico’s complicity. She prays for herself to cease speculation of his guilt.

Glory be to the Father and to the Son and to the Holy Spirit. As it was in the beginning, is now, and ever shall be, world without end.

Isabella pockets her rosary and stands, knees sore and joints aching from kneeling in this glacial place, large and gloomy enough to be a tomb for all of mankind, sweeping aside the thought that she has been avoiding since the news had reached her months ago: Surely Beatrice would not have been involved? Yet Isabella had seen with her own eyes the newly stoked fires of ambition burning in her sister. Oh, she cannot even entertain that idea, not now when she is on her way to see Beatrice, pregnant once again. All the astrologers and midwives and card-readers and little people—anyone with the supposed ability to see into the future—are predicting that Beatrice will deliver another son. She and Ludovico had been insistent that Isabella be present for the birth. Why? So that she could relive again her own disappointment at delivering a daughter?
Thou shalt not covet thy neighbor’s goods.
Nor thy sister’s children. But she is not here for these reasons. She has come at the insistence of her husband, who had angered Ludovico when he turned down the commission to join the French. Isabella, caught between the two men, has come to smooth over the relations.

Isabella knows that her entourage, shivering outside in the windy piazza, is weary from the journey from Mantua and long for the comforts of the Castello Sforzesca. As much as she wishes to escape the heavy murk of this place, she would like to delay crossing the great moat that will lead her into the Sforzas’ world. But she has lingered enough. Beatrice has surely been informed of their arrival in the city and would be worried that they had yet to appear at the Castello. It is only when the friars open the big bronze doors to the cathedral letting in Milan’s cold white afternoon light that Isabella realizes that she has neglected to make the prayer she had most intended—for the safety of Italy, where voices everywhere were crying out to a foreign power to swoop down upon them and deliver them from themselves. Italy would have to wait; she was stiff and exhausted.

I
SABELLA
’
S
train parades up the wide avenue that will pour into the great brick piazza fronting the Castello. The pace of her party is slow. Though the weather is bitter, shopkeepers, workers, and children race into the street to catch a glimpse of the royals, or more likely, to catch whatever the gentry might be throwing their way. Coins, trinkets, tiny dolls, tops, bright baubles, buns, hunks of cheese, and other tokens of goodwill, all brought from Mantua to appease the poor, the greedy, and the curious, make their way from the pockets and purses of the nobles to the cold hands—young and old, mottled, stained with cow’s blood, dyes, dirt, metal, grease—reaching out to them as they pass by.

Isabella is grateful to be under thick blankets riding in a carriage. She slips her hand out of her rabbit-fur muff to pass a toy soldier—nicely painted for a cheap toy, she cannot help but notice—to a green-eyed boy who has rushed out of the butcher’s shop and snatches it from her like a hungry dog grabbing a bone.

As the boy runs away with his treasure, she looks up to see a conical helmet that seems to float in the air. The nose guard is up, exposing a face with strong features and a hawklike countenance. As the train approaches the piazza, she sees that the helmeted head is not floating at all but belongs to a colossal statue standing alone in the square. The figure, a soldier, sits on a strutting horse, supported by a marble plinth. The monument must be twenty feet tall, but the sinking afternoon sun casts a shadow across the piazza twice the length, making it appear that the entire square exists to house the beast and his master.

Isabella asks her driver to circle the statue so that she can see it from all angles. The horse is a wonder, as if the sculptor caught the animal in the act of prancing. Two hooves dance jauntily in the air, while the other two are firmly planted, and the tail swinging as if whipping the air around it. The nostrils flare and the mouth is agape, revealing big square teeth and a long, curling tongue. Though it appears that the rider has pushed the animal to the point of fatigue, there is an air of infallibility about the beast.

The Horse
, the gigantic clay sculpture that the Magistro had promised for years, had finally been completed and displayed in honor of the marriage between Emperor Max and Bianca Maria Sforza to great accolades for the statue, its creator, and of course, Il Moro, who had commissioned it. One of the many reasons Isabella had regretted her illness at the time of that event was that she had missed the unveiling. She had only heard the descriptions in letters from those who were present—and who was not?—and the poems written in honor of Leonardo and his accomplishment. She could not remember the words now, but they were oft repeated—
Victory to the victor, and you, Leonardo, have the victory
, or some such. Then there was the commemoration from Taccone that had made her wince, comparing Leonardo to Pheidias and Praxiteles, and placing him above the both of them. Never had Greece or Rome seen such a magnificent work, or so said the poet. Long ago she herself had believed that, in Ludovico’s modern-day Athens, Leonardo would rise to such heights. She had only regretted that she would not be the duchess of the land that would give the genius the opportunity to exploit his talents to the fullest. Such things required money—piles and piles of money, such as Ludovico kept in his Treasure Tower. Oh, they were able to create miracles in Mantua on what they had, but to truly give an artist’s genius full rein required the mentality of a visionary, which Isabella could provide, and the fortune of a king, which she could not.

Isabella knows that the statue is meant to be a monument to the rider, Francesco Sforza, father of Ludovico and one of Italy’s greatest soldiers and conquerors. But as far as she can tell, the statue is a monument to the beauty of the horse; not to this horse in particular but to all horses, or perhaps to the greatness of God who created these wondrous creatures. If Ludovico asks her what she thinks, she will say that the stamina and preternatural endurance and strength of the horse is evident, and symbolizes and reflects those same qualities possessed by his father—and by all the other Sforzas, including the one who commissioned the work. But this is not what she thinks. She thinks that the horse is a glory unto itself and to the genius who took so many years to apprehend the essence of the animal.

But there is nothing to explain to Ludovico, Isabella is told upon her arrival; he is away, visiting his French ally King Charles at his military encampment at the Castello di Sarzana in Tuscany.

Beatrice, who cheerily delivers this news, is large with child.

“My dear sister, you are tremendous! Should you not have already started your confinement?” Isabella really wants to ask Beatrice how she can manage to balance herself with her stomach swollen into such a great balloon.

“With Ludovico gone, and the kingdom in mourning over the duke, and the anticipation of my husband being invested by Germany with the duchy, I must remain as active and visible as possible.”

Isabella would like to avoid any discussion of the dead duke. She scours Beatrice’s face for any sign of guilt, or suppression of knowledge, or complicity in the crime, for surely participation in something so heinous would demonstrate itself somewhere on the face, perhaps in an inability to meet the eye of another. Or in the contours of a forced smile.

But Beatrice’s face is bright and open. She glows and crows over the sketch that Andrea Mantegna has made of little Leonora. “It’s as if the tiny creature extracted the finest features from both parents,” she exclaims. Isabella cannot help but feel that her sister is trying to compensate for the fact that the child is a female. She wishes she could join in the ploy, but nothing can induce her to feign enthusiasm in the face of this disappointment, especially not with one who has one son, and undoubtedly another on the way. Either Beatrice is carrying another strapping boy or a baby calf, Isabella thinks, for surely no girl could make the womb stretch to such proportions.

A fat nurse brings in the boy Ercole, holding him by the hand, restraining his eager strut. He is two years old, with shining dark eyes and golden-brown curls. He has inherited Ludovico’s sensuous mouth, already apparent on his little-boy face. Isabella picks him up and covers his head and face with kisses, most of which he accepts on the hair as he ducks his face into her shoulder. He squirms in her arms as she tries to take him in with her eyes.

Beatrice calls him Max, which makes Isabella wince. “Max, sing your new song for Auntie Isabella,” Beatrice says. The boy refuses, shaking his head back and forth resolutely. “Max, where is your little brother?”

The boy’s arm shoots out like an arrow, pointing a finger at his mother’s stomach.

“Tell Auntie Isabella his name.”

“Francesco!” The child sings out the name.

“After his grandfather
and
his uncle, two great soldiers,” Beatrice says.

Isabella knows that after her husband has declined Ludovico’s request for him to serve King Charles, he would hardly allow his second son to be named after
him
. She knows that the boy—if the baby is, indeed, a boy—is being named solely after the late condottiere sitting in the piazza on Leonardo’s magnificent horse. Isabella decides to steer the conversation toward the more benign subject of the monument and away from the difficult topic of soldiering.

“After all of Ludovico’s frustration with the Magistro, the result seems to have been worth the wait,” she offers.

“Oh yes, Emperor Max was so impressed with it!” Beatrice replies. “The Magistro brought great honor to us all.”

“It’s a masterpiece,” Isabella says.

“Ludovico will be so pleased that you like it. You must accompany me tomorrow on a mission,” Beatrice says mysteriously. “I believe you will find the experience gratifying.”

The next morning, Beatrice drives them to the western outskirts of town to the Santa Maria delle Grazie, the home of the Milanese Dominican friars, where Ludovico is investing huge sums of money in improvements. Beatrice elaborates on Ludovico’s fervor for commissioning Milan’s greatest artists to glorify Our Lord, but Isabella is certain that she reads a deeper motivation into the endeavor: the Dominicans are a mighty political force. With Lorenzo the Magnificent dead, Fra Girolamo Savonarola in Florence has escalated his hysteria against moral laxity and his campaign against the Pope. The more Ludovico honors the Dominicans, the less he will have to hear from the moralizing Dominican monk.

Upon entering the church, Isabella is immediately struck with the contrast between the Duomo, which seems to her to dwarf the human spirit, and this building, intimate by comparison, that celebrates it. Beatrice leads them to the center of the apse, where they stand in a cube surrounded by four huge arches. The sisters look up to the top of the dome, where small, round windows let in gentle circles of cold winter rays that illuminate the frescoes on its ceiling. A series of circular motifs line the arches, in harmony with their perfect hemispheric lines.