The Birth of Venus (26 page)

“It is hard to be angry at beauty,” she said simply. “She has such unexpected grace to her and, as you say, not many will read her as we do. Though your sister of course—”

“—will be outraged.” We both smiled this time. “So. It is finished?”

“Not quite. Though he assures us it will be ready for the first mass.”

“And when is that?”

“Luca is eager, Tomaso is captive for once, and Plautilla loves an event. If the mandrake and semilla work I think we could plan it for early next month. It will be good to have the family reunited again, don’t you think?”

Thirty-six

T
HOUGH IT WOULD BE NICE TO TELL YOU THAT MY
mother’s remedy had a miraculous effect on my constitution, the fact was that it worked no better than anything else. Or perhaps it simply took more time.

I was well into my fourth month and so thin that I looked more like a sufferer of famine than a woman rich with child, when, just as suddenly as it had come, the vomiting stopped. I woke up one morning and was already leaning over the bowl in readiness to spew up more of the lining of my empty stomach when I realized that the nausea had gone. My head was clear, my stomach juices quiet. I lay back against the pillow and put my hand over the swelling that as yet only I could see.

“Thank you,” I said. “And welcome.”

MY MOTHER HAD ASKED THAT WE COME THE DAY BEFORE
SO ERILA
could help with preparations and the family might spend a little time together. The summer was long over and with it had gone the scorching heat, but the drought remained. There was dirt and dust everywhere, clouds of it swirling up from wheels and horses’ hooves, coating and choking passersby. Some of the people we passed looked almost as thin as I did. The stalls in the market were half empty, a testament to a failed harvest, the vegetables and fruit small and malformed. There was no sign of the snake man. The only people doing good business were the pawn merchants and the apothecaries. The boils had left their mark. Even those who were cured had the scars to show for it.

The house came out to greet us. Not the painter—but then he had always held himself apart—but Maria, Ludovica, and the rest of them. Everyone who greeted me was shocked by my appearance, though they tried, inadequately, not to show it. My mother kissed me on both cheeks and took me to the study where my father now spent all his time.

He was sitting at the table with a stack of account books in front of him and a pair of magnifying lenses on his nose. He didn’t hear us come in and we stood for a moment watching him as he ran his fingers down each column, his lips moving silently as he counted, then made a flurry of notes in the margin. He looked more like one of the moneylenders on the streets than a prosperous merchant of the city. But then maybe he wasn’t so prosperous anymore.

“Ah . . . Alessandra,” he said when he saw me, my name coming out like a long wheeze from his chest. He stood up, and he was much smaller than I remembered, as if something at the center of him had caved in and the rest of his body curved inward to protect the hole.

We embraced, and our bones rattled together.

“Sit, sit, sit, my child. We have much to talk about.”

But after we had exchanged pleasantries and he had congratulated me on my news and asked after my husband’s welfare, it seemed there was little to say and his eyes began straying back to the columns of his books.

These ledgers, with their neatness and accuracy, had for many years been his pride and joy, the written evidence of our mounting wealth. Now, as he looked, he seemed to keep finding mistakes, clicking his tongue angrily as he underlined them heavily, scribbling further figures on the side.

My mother rescued me a little later.

“What is he doing?” I asked, as we tiptoed out.

“He is . . . he is seeing to business. As he always did,” she replied briskly. “So . . . now there is something else you should see.”

And she took me into the chapel.

It was truly an amazing sight. Where there had been cold stone in cold light now ran two sets of pews in fresh walnut, each with polished carved heads at both ends. The altar was in place with a delicate panel painting of the Nativity in the center, lit up by a row of great candles in tall silver holders, their fiery glow directing your eyes upward to the frescoes on the walls.

“Oh!”

My mother smiled, but as I walked toward the altar she let me go alone, and a little later I heard the doors close behind her. With the exception of a small piece of tarpaulin at the bottom half of the left wall the frescoes were finished: complete, coherent, beautiful.

“Oh!” I said again.

Santa Caterina grew into her martyrdom now with gravitas and serenity, her torture just a passing stage on her journey toward the light, her face aglow with the same almost childish joy that I remembered from that first Virgin on the wall of his room.

My father was portrayed to the left of the altar, my mother opposite him on the other side. They were in profile, kneeling, their dress somber, their gaze devout. For a man who had begun life in a draper’s shop it was a fitting elevation, but it was my mother who caught the attention, even in profile, her eye so keen and her posture alert.

My sister embodied the figure of the empress visiting the saint in her cell, her wedding garments faithfully reproduced in such shining color that she almost eclipsed the quiet beauty of the saint, while Luca was to be found as one of her interlocutors, his bullish features and stern gaze exuding a certain self-importance, though he would probably read it as authority. And Tomaso . . . well, Tomaso had got his wish. There he stood, cured of his present affliction for the purposes of posterity, strong and elegant as one of the court’s most prominent scholars, a man whose dress sense was as vibrant as his mind. In generations to come, whichever family worshipped here, the young girls of the household would find their attention torn between piety and longing. How little would they know . . .

And me? Well, as my mother had intimated, I was in the heavens, so high that you would have to have youthful eyes and risk a crick in your neck to appreciate the depth of the likeness. But to really understand the power of the transformation, you would have to have seen what had been painted there before. The Devil was banished from his throne, all sign of cannibalism and terror lost in a shimmer of light. In his place now sat Our Lady: not so much a beauty as a substantial soul, with no sign of giraffe awkwardness, content at last with all that had been asked of her.

I stood with my head back, turning myself round and round to see how each wall reached up to the ceiling, until my head was giddy and the frescoes seemed to swim and swirl in front of my eyes as if the figures themselves were moving. There was a kind of joy in me the like of which I had not felt for so long.

And as I turned the next time he was standing there in front of me.

He was well dressed and well fed. If we lay together now, his flesh would take up more room than mine. My sickness had kept any longing at bay, but without it my fear was that my mind would be as giddy as my body.

“So? What do you think of it?” His Tuscan had less of an accent now.

“Oh, it is beautiful!” I could feel myself grinning, as if the happiness were overflowing and I could do nothing but let it pour out. “It is . . . it is Florentine.” I paused. “And you . . . are well?”

He nodded, his eyes still fixed on mine as if there were a text he was intent on reading there.

“Not cold anymore?”

“No,” he said softly. “Not cold anymore. But you—”

“I know,” I said quickly. “It’s all right. . . . I am better now.” You must tell him, I thought. You must tell him. In case no one else has.

But I couldn’t. Instead, as the words died away, we stood looking at each other, then kept on looking. If someone came in now they would surely know immediately. If someone came in . . . I remembered how many times I had had the same thought: his room that first time, the chapel at night, the garden . . . What had Erila once said to me? Innocence can spring more traps than knowledge. But in our innocence there had always been knowledge. I knew that now. I wanted to touch him so much it made my hands ache.

“So.” My voice sounded strangely light, like the froth of egg whites when they are beaten into airy peaks. “Your chapel is done.”

“No. Not yet. There is something still to be completed.”

Now at last he put out his hand to me. As I took it my fingers slid over the thickened skin in his palm, but the scars were so rough that I couldn’t be sure he would even feel my touch. He led me to the left wall, where he unhooked the remaining piece of tarpaulin. Underneath was a small blank space in the fresco, the outline of a woman sitting with her skirts full around her, her face turned to a window in which a white bird was framed looking back at her: Santa Caterina as a tender young woman. The screed plaster inside her absent image was still damp.

“Your mother told me you would be here this morning. The plasterer has just finished. She is yours.”

“But . . . I cannot . . .”

My voice died away. I watched his smile grow. “You cannot what? Cannot paint a young girl who is about to defy her parents and the world in order to follow her own calling?” He picked up a brush and held it out. “In the sketches of your sister you made your father’s cloth move like water. The wall is less forgiving than the page, but you of all people have no need to be afraid of it.”

I stood staring at the space where Santa Caterina would be. My whole body was tingling. He was right. I knew her. Knew everything that she was feeling now: the collision of excitement and trepidation. In my mind I had painted her already.

“I have mixed ocher, skin tones, and two different reds. Tell me if there is any other shade you need.”

I took the brush from his hand, and now it was impossible to know if my seasickness was about the danger of us or the challenge of her. The first stroke, and the sight of that iridescent color sliding off the brush onto the wall got me over my fear. I watched the way my wrist moved as it maneuvered the brush, the way the order and the action indelibly connected. Everything about it was so physical: the precision of each stroke, the texture of the paint as it collided with the plaster, how the two bonded and coalesced, the exhilaration as the image grew and rounded under your fingers . . . Oh, if I had been Fra Filippo I would never have wanted to be out of my cell.

For the longest time we did not talk. He worked next to me, preparing the paints and cleaning the brushes. And so Caterina grew into her garments, her sturdy peasant legs firm but unseen under the cloth. And her expression, when it came, spoke I hope of the courage it took to leave as well as the grace it gave her. Eventually my fingers grew numb with the tension of holding the brush. “I have to rest,” I said, pulling away from the wall. And as I came up for air I felt my balance falter.

He grabbed my arm. “What is wrong with you? I knew it. You’re ill.”

“No,” I said. “No. I am not. . . .” I knew what I should say, but I couldn’t get the words out.

We stood looking at each other again. I couldn’t breathe. I had no idea what I was going to do next. We might never find ourselves alone again in our lives. We had done our courtship in this chapel, though neither of us had realized that was what it was.

“I don’t—”

“I wanted—”

His voice was more urgent than mine.

“I wanted to see you. I didn’t know . . . I mean, when you didn’t come I began to think . . .”

His arms went around me, and his body was familiar to me as if all this time I had kept some living copy of it in my mind. And I felt desire—for I know now that that was what it was—flash up like a hot spring in my stomach.

The noise of the sacristy door opening flung us apart so fast that it was possible he might not have seen us. That he was in pain was obvious from the way he walked, though the feeling coming off him was more one of fury. No wonder. I was like Venus and Adonis rolled into one compared with him now. The boils had colonized his face. There were three of them, one on his left cheek, another on his chin, and the last in the middle of his forehead like the Cyclops’ eye. They were fat and full of pus. He hobbled closer. Clearly he had them between his legs too, though they didn’t seem to have affected his eyes. Well, we would know soon enough.

“Tomaso,” I said, moving quickly toward him. “How are you? How is your illness?” And I swear there was not a shred of triumph in my voice, for surely suffering brings out the sympathy in all of us.

“Not as acceptable as yours.” He looked at me steadily. “Though Plautilla was right, you do look like a scarecrow. We make a good pair now.” He snorted “So. When is it due?”

“Er . . . in the spring. April, May.”

“So, an heir for Cristoforo, eh? Well done, you. I didn’t think you had it in you.”

I felt the painter stiffen at my side. I glanced at him. “You probably know,” I said, in a voice that vibrated with jollity, “I am with child. But I have been ill with it, so it is yet to show.”

“With child?” He stared at me. The mathematics were not hard, even for a monastery boy.

I stared back. If you love a man for his honesty, you cannot become angry when he shows it.

Tomaso stared at both of us.

“So, Tomaso, have you seen the chapel?” I said, turning to him with a fluidity that would have made my dancing teacher weep for joy. “Don’t you think it is wonderful?”

“Mmm. Very nice.” But he was still staring.

“Your likeness is most . . .”

“Flattering,” he finished brusquely. “But then we had an understanding, the painter and I, didn’t we? It is a wonder what secrets will do. I hear it was my sister who helped you through your . . . unfortunate illness. When was that? Early summer, wasn’t it? How many months ago is that?”

“Speaking of secrets,” I said sweetly, always the surest sign of vitriol between us, “Mother tells me you have been to confession.” Come on, I thought. Leave him alone. You know you and I are the best players in this game. Anyone else gets knocked down too easily.

He scowled. “Yes . . . How good of her to keep you informed.”

“Well, she knows how much I care for your spiritual well-being. Though it must have been a shock when you realized you weren’t going to die after all.”

“Yes. But I tell you, sister, it has its advantages.” He closed his eyes as if savoring the moment. “As long as I am truly repentant, I am now saved. Which brings me great comfort, as you can imagine. Though I must say it makes me more intolerant toward other people’s sins.” And he stared again at the painter. “So tell me, how is Cristoforo?”