Love in a Bottle (7 page)

Around this time the police arrested Orlondhi and his eleven accomplices in a plot against the tyrant’s life. Galeazzo condemned them all to death. Lytto went down to the courtyard in the castle where the executions were to take place. Ever since childhood he had been told of attempts to assassinate the Duke and of those involved being executed, and he had heard the story so often he had come to accept it as normal. Now for the first time he began to wonder why it should be, and who these people were—what sort of deep-dyed criminal would want to end the life of such a benevolent ruler? In considerable trepidation, like someone about to witness a supernatural horror, he dragged himself to a corner of the courtyard and prepared for the worst.

To his extreme surprise, up the steps of the gallows the executioners led twelve fine-looking young men, their heads held high. As they came forward to place their heads on the block, every one of them, by prior agreement, shouted out for all to hear: “Long live freedom! Death to the Tyrant of Milan!”

Profoundly troubled, Lytto made his way as quickly as he could back to his room, his eyes fixed on the ground, like a little boy who feels ashamed of his father and doesn’t
know why. Having been used since childhood to the fact that other people took no interest in his purely personal feelings, he sought advice from no one. Instead, he locked the door and spread out his books, his little silent senate, on the table. Above all else, he needed to understand why, and how, those twelve young men could plot the murder of an old man and then mount the scaffold, not trembling and downcast, with the distracted, faraway look of
assassins
being thrust forward at every step into the arms of the devil, but looking around in triumph, their faces radiant, victorious unto death.

His books supplied the answer. The tyrannicide was not a malefactor; rather he was to be ranked with the greatest of heroes. Heroes of this stamp he found in the stories of Pelopidas and his young companions, and of Timoleon, the liberator of Sicily. Livy conjured up for him the proud figure of Mucius Scaevola, pointing with his one remaining arm to the long line of his successors. He even came across the Greek verses that had so inspired the youth of Milan:

“But those people were pagans,” he reflected. He opened the scriptures and found the book of Judith, who, though but a weak and feeble woman, killed a man and achieved eternal fame. Even the holy and austere St Thomas Aquinas—who
was himself eventually poisoned by a French despot—
condoned
tyrannicide. Ordinary people and philosophers alike agreed that the death of a tyrant was pleasing to God. Soon even Lytto could see that such a person was a pernicious figure, and the enemy of all mankind. But who, or what exactly, was a ‘tyrant’?

Tacitus and Suetonius told him what he needed to know about the way such people behaved. He gobbled up their pages, scarcely able to wait for long-needed Vengeance to glut itself on the bloody Nero. Now
there
was a tyrant! He set fire to Rome, poisoned his relatives, murdered his mother and put Christians to the torch. He was mad—and more loathsome than any monster. But Galeazzo? How could he be a ‘tyrant’. The hideous, bestial image that the word conjured up for Lytto seemed in no way to describe the gentle, refined, almost monkish figure of the Duke. Since childhood, standing at his place behind Galeazzo’s chair, Lytto had been present at all the important discussions of affairs of state. He had never taken much interest in them, but he knew all the secrets of the way Milan was governed. And he knew perfectly well that Galeazzo had never
perpetrated
any of the things those monstrous dictators had. In everything he did as a ruler he had been honourable and humane.

Lytto began to think that there must be some
unfathomable
, Satanic madness driving the youth of Milan to their death, like moths to the candle.

Then his hand fell on the history of Julius Caesar, that greatest of all rulers, who was slain as a tyrant, in the name
of liberty, by his closest friends. Why? Once again everything became confused in his mind.

For many days he carried these burning questions around in his head. But for that very reason he performed his duties all the more punctiliously, and his placid gaze, with its
permanent
air of wonder, troubled no one. Galeazzo had taught him well: no one could see what lay in the depths of his soul.

One evening they were sitting together in front of the fire. Galeazzo, still convalescent and finding sleep difficult, was ensconced in a large armchair swathed in furs, with Lytto at his feet, lyre in hand. The cosy, dancing half-light would have been enough to stir up memories of younger days and past loves in anyone, but neither of them had any such to call on. However Galeazzo’s face was more languid than usual, and he felt at ease with himself. He was
enjoying
the soft, exquisite singing, the gentle warmth, and the self-indulgent wanderings of the convalescent mind. But above all, he enjoyed having Lytto at his side. He would have protested fiercely against any suggestion that he might love the boy so very much, but he was certainly receptive to everything that was beautiful, and he took real delight in Lytto’s noble, upright character as he sat there with his head inclined gracefully over his instrument, and his long hair trailing across his face. Galeazzo felt the need to talk, to embrace the boy with words, the way you might caress a beautiful statue with your eyes.

“I have often thought, young Lytto,” he said after a
protracted
silence, “how strange it is that you never show any desire to get away from this castle, with its permanently cold
floors, and that you never seem to be bored beside such a silent person as myself. But you know, I’d be quite happy now to tell you something about my life—not that there is anything to tell… On winter evenings… I always used to sit here in front of the fire… in summer it was in the loggia… I spent my free time in the library. Sometimes I’d watch the guardsmen drilling… and I had so much to do. So much work. I tell you, sometimes I loved just watching the birds taking to the air… and then suddenly the years had all flown away with them, and I was old. Now there’s a boring tale for you.”

Lytto’s fingers trembled on the lyre. No one had ever heard the Duke speak like this before.

“When you were young, my lord, did you never go down into Milan?”

“Never, my boy. If I had, they would have killed me within the hour.”

“But what about your bodyguards?”

“Lytto, perhaps you think I am some sort of coward. Well, perhaps. Who can say he truly knows himself? But then, a man who holds the lives of hundreds of thousands of people in his hands, and would put all that in jeopardy, is probably exempt from the charge. No, Lytto, I’m not afraid of the assassin’s dagger, believe me, nor do I think I shall escape it in the end. What does horrify me is the depth of hatred—you know—the loathsome atmosphere of the hatred of slaves. It would smother me, down there. I begin to wonder if this isn’t my greatest achievement, that no man was ever so deeply hated as I am.”

The words burst from Lytto’s mouth:

“My lord, in the name of all the saints, why do they hate you, who are so good, so virtuous in your life, and always act for the best?”

Galeazzo shrugged his shoulders.

“I don’t know, and I’m not really interested. The hatred is in them, not in me. My soul will be found pure on the Day of Judgement. I’m incapable of hatred, myself.”

Lytto leapt to his feet.

“My lord, I shall go right now and tell them they are wrong!”

Galeazzo’s smile was a sharp as a razor.

“Calm yourself down, my boy, and then we can continue the discussion. No more of these loud words and wild
gestures
, if you please. Believe an older man, Lytto, there’s no helping this hatred until these people change, and change totally, and become like you, and me, and everyone else. The fact is, they hate themselves in me.”

“I don’t follow you, my lord.”

“I’m not surprised, and it isn’t important that you should. Every living thing strives for power, Lytto—for domination. Some consciously, some not. The Lord Mayor orders the heads of guilds about, the guildsman lords it over the
bootmaker
, the bootmaker bullies his apprentices, the apprentice no doubt has younger siblings who torture the cat, the cat torments the mouse, and no doubt even the mouse isn’t at the bottom of this ghastly hierarchy. So the mouse hates the cat, the cat hates the children, and everyone hates me, because I am the one with power.”

“Is the possession of power worth all the hatred, my lord?”

“I could declaim in poetical tropes, Lytto, how one minute of power is equal to a thousand years of hell. Of course power isn’t an end in itself. It is simply an instrument. But it is absolutely necessary.”

“Then what is its purpose?”

“Go and ask the meanest beggar in Milan and he will tell you—freedom. That is what glitters at the bottom of the well of their dreams. It’s all they worship, and for its sake they will struggle for power, hating whatever power is greater than their own. And yet not one of these people has any idea what freedom is. They are bound by a thousand shackles, these unfortunates: wives, children, relatives, the state of the country, the ceaseless urgings of the body. And everyone is dependent on everyone else. Beat one of them and others will be sure to suffer. If the judge’s wife sprains her little finger you can’t guarantee that the next day six children won’t weep for a father languishing in prison. What they call freedom is a squalid, meaningless lie, because if they did kill me they’d get someone a thousand times worse around their necks. They’ve got so used to all this they can’t live without it. I could even argue that when I do away with these conspirators I do so in their own best interests… but how odd it is, that I should be the only one who knows what freedom means,” he added, rising to his feet.

“To be free, Lytto, act as if you were utterly alone—without love, without hatred, without fear and without hope. What man can measure up to that? But what a fine
evening this is! Would you play something? We’ve talked for so long…

“But don’t think, Lytto, that I am afraid. I might take myself off to some faraway country for a holiday, where no one would bother me—I tell you, at times I have become very weary of it all and have given thought to such things. But I am a citizen of Milan. Anywhere else I would be a stranger, a guest; not my own master, and no longer free. And if they do succeed in killing me, I’d rather it happened here, at home, where my father and my ancestors met their fate.”

“But why, why?”

“Because no one can bear the thought of someone else achieving what he wants for himself from the very bottom of his heart. The free man is a permanent rebuke to others. He reminds them that they are slaves. So keep a tight rein on your passions, Lytto. You are a good, honest lad, with a pleasant face. Perhaps you will never come to understand what you have heard tonight. But if you do, learn from it. Now, isn’t it wonderful how I have rattled on this evening? But it’s been very agreeable. Now it’s time we went to bed. How does the poet put it?

“Thank you, Lytto, for staying up with me.”

And he stroked the boy’s hair.

Lytto had not understood very much of what Galeazzo had told him, but as he sat there listening he had been filled with a sense of unspeakable horror. Partly it was a horror of things he could not understand; partly, and more importantly, it was Galeazzo’s manner of
speaking
—his calm, perfectly level tones—that so appalled him. What he could not follow in the words he
understood
perfectly from the tone of voice—that the man was capable of speaking about other human beings as if he had no personal connection with them—as if he were not himself human.

Nothing more was said until they reached the Duke’s bedchamber. There Galeazzo took the candelabra from Lytto and gazed searchingly into his face.

“I’ve something else to show you, Lytto. I’m sure you have never seen my portrait. I don’t normally show it to anyone. But this evening I’m in a good mood, so take a look.”

He drew back a curtain and lifted up the candelabra to illuminate the picture.

The painting hung beneath a triple arch. Against a gold background it presented a figure sitting on a tall throne, the body completely enveloped in a dark-green cloak that was so voluminous it covered the steps below and made the face above appear intensely white. The face was horrifying. Lytto instinctively stepped back. It was unquestionably the face of Galeazzo, and yet it was not. With its monstrous calmness, gazing stiffly out at the observer, it seemed no longer the
countenance of a human being. The lines were recognisably those of a man, but the expression was of something beyond humanity: certainly not a face to entertain foolish banalities, or indeed one in which anything could be read… and yet it did not seem to conceal any secret. It presented a horrific reality, in which there was nothing to be understood—a face that rejected understanding.

The human forms painted beneath the throne were, in the hierarchical manner of the time, tiny in comparison with the central figure—a vast multitude, all with more or less identical faces, all in some way distorted and seeming to swarm in a kind of restless gloom. Above the throne, the gold background between the two lateral marble arches was interrupted by the unfinished—and truly terrifying—silhouette of two black human figures. The Duke drew the curtains closed.

“Sit down, Lytto. You’ve gone pale. Pull yourself together,” he said. “There’s a long story behind this painting. One day, after I had escaped from danger that threatened my actual life, I decided to have my portrait done so that, if I did die, there would be something to hang in the gallery alongside my ancestors. I sent for the most famous painter in Milan and promised him a huge sum of money for the work. He was very happy to take it on. Of course I knew that he would see me through the eyes of the Milanese people and would paint me as I appeared in their vision of hatred. But that didn’t bother me. In fact, I was rather pleased. I tell you, it tickled my vanity in those days to be hated by so many people, more than anyone had ever been hated before, and
I was delighted that the painter was going to record that loathing for eternity.