Ariosto Read online

  “I don’t pity you, Damiano. But I am concerned. You come here unexpectedly, and tell me such things…”

  Again Damiano interrupted. “You haven’t been in Firenze for more than a month. There are times I wish I hadn’t sent you here. I’ve wanted to talk with you. But so far…All this I’ve been telling you has been building like the power in one of Leonardo’s old toys. You know the Confraternità that goes in for those masked orgies? I almost went to their last one. Imagine being covered by a black silken sheet with only one crucial hole, and the attention that is so extensively lavished on what is revealed there. I haven’t allowed myself more than three cups of wine in a day so that my tongue will never be unguarded. An orgy, though, there are no faces—a whole world of nothing but genitals.” He went and sat on the wall, his back to the valley and Firenze. “I used not to understand why so many of my…associates chose to attend these evenings, but I do now. Giordano told me once that he was addicted to the gentle whips of his Confraternità and I was horrified. Giordano is a powerful man, handling enormous amounts of money and endless responsibilities. Yet, like my Cardinale cousin, he seeks the lash. I have my scourges enough in my life, but I know now that it would be easy to succumb to that other.”

  Lodovico had sat very still as Damiano spoke. When he was certain that il Primàrio had finished for a while, he said “Where is the harm if you do that? You say yourself that it attracts you. Where is the difference between that and Minetta, except in numbers?” He was surprised to hear how calm his voice was and how reasonable he sounded.

  “The illusion of anonymity,” Damiano mused. “It would be only an illusion, and I would be a great fool to make myself so vulnerable. A careless word, or a ruthless man with a knife…” He shook his head. “There must be a place in Italia where there is escape from all this. A monk’s cell, perhaps.” He laughed at himself. “It’s a lie, my friend. I don’t truly desire escape, only a little time to set the burdens aside, not discard them altogether. That, in part, is why I came here, why I sent you away from Firenze.”

  Over the valley two larks were ascending, singing. Lodovico heard them and turned to watch their flight.

  “I have a new mistress,” Damiano said after a moment, an edge of scorn in his voice. “A pretty puss she is, too, rapacious as they come but randy as a hare. She cares only that I bring her presents and keep atop her for an hour. In my way, I am grateful to her.” His heels clacked against the wall.

  Twice in his life Lodovico had taken a mistress, and one of them was Alessandra. There had been other women, of course, their pleasure purchased in taverns or demanded of servants. Yet he had never heard Damiano speak cynically of the women he had kept until now. There were other men who were both callous and cruel and Damiano had always looked on them with subtle contempt. Now he was speaking in the same tone. Lodovico scowled at the empty spot of air where the larks had been. “Why do you keep her?”

  “She’s stupid and she’s safe,” Damiano snapped. His heels thumped on the wall in a slow and regular rhythm. “I needn’t think around her. Do you know what luxury it is not to have to think?”

  “Thinking is a joy,” Lodovico said to the air, bewildered.

  “If your thoughts are full of the things that give you the rewards of wisdom or the delight of entertainment, it probably is. I’ve forgotten such pleasures. My mind is filled with reports and rumors and plans and worry. Thought is a trial for me. When I came here, I was hoping that I could put it all aside and discuss, oh, the classics or what that new Polish essayist has said about the work of Dante.” He pushed himself off the wall. “And I have only myself to blame that we haven’t talked of such things. I have been speaking almost since the moment I arrived. I can’t say you distracted me, surely.” He touched his hands to his wide, prominent brow.

  At last Lodovico felt he could address Damiano. “Come. A little time, Damiano: we’ll tell Alessandra that you will take comestio with us. There’s plenty of chicken and bread was baked yesterday. And,” he went on more lightly, “this is your villa. Eat with us. I won’t ask you about anything but Plato, if you like.” Inwardly, he was astounded at his own ease. He put his arm through Damiano’s as if he had been doing this every day of his life.

  Damiano made no protest. “My grandfather loved the country. He used to threaten to stay at Ambra forever. It was impossible, but he longed for it as long as I knew him.” With his free hand he made a sweeping gesture that took in all of the little garden. “What more native land does a man need than this?” The question was obviously rhetorical.

  “I suppose it depends on the man,” Lodovico said as he turned at the fountain and guided Damiano toward the side door of the villa.

  All that was left on the table was a platter of melon slices soaked in wine. The courtyard was fallen into welcome shadow and the worst of the day’s heat was over. This being an informal meal, Alessandra sat at the table with the men. The sleeves of her camora were pushed up to her elbows and she was as much at ease as her husband, her son and their guest.

  Damiano had spent the meal regaling them with stories that even had the two servants laughing. Now he sat with a cup of wine before him, one foot propped on the chair Virginio had vacated. “Lodovico, you’ve proved your worth again.”

  “I?” Lodovico blinked. He had been basking in il Primàrio’s attention, which he admitted he had sorely missed. “By telling the cook to grill some more sausage?”

  “That, and other things.” He emptied the cup and reached for the jug to fill it again. “I’m half-drunk, full, and content, and I haven’t been that for longer than I care to think of. You’ve listened to my tales without asking me once about any other business. You’re literate and articulate and…” He broke off, staring across the courtyard. “I’m a fool.”

  This last puzzled Lodovico. “What?”

  Damiano waved his hand. “Nothing. Nothing. Jumping at shadows.” He drank again. “Would you be willing to send your groom to Firenze tonight, just to let Benci know where I am? I left word that I would be back for the evening meal, but tonight, I think, I will sleep here, in that little room overlooking the orchard.”

  Though he had appropriated that room for his study, Lodovico turned to his steward, saying, “You know the room. Prepare it for il Primàrio.”

  “And the material that is there?” the steward asked with a wholly expressionless tone.

  “Surely it can be put on the shelves there.” Lodovico glanced at Alessandra. “Unless you have another suggestion?”

  “There are shelves enough, I think.” She was enjoying herself tonight, sitting with the men, her elbows propped on the table as she drank her wine.

  “Of course there are,” Lodovico said quickly. “Bruno knows where he should put things.” He felt then he had to excuse his outburst and turned to Damiano. “I’m afraid that there may be some clutter in the room, but if that will not displease you?”

  “Clutter?” Damiano chuckled. “Books, papers, poetry, how nice to have them around me.”

  Virginio rolled his eyes skyward with the eternal dissatisfaction of the young with their elders. “My father is very messy. He says it helps him think.”

  “What do you know of it, lad?” Lodovico asked very sharply. “You have yet to acquire the habits of scholarship. When you do, then I will listen to your strictures.” He smiled to soften this rebuke, remembering how his father had terrorized him, and how he had promised himself that he would not do that to his son.

  Damiano cut this short with a reminiscent twinkle and a light word. “My grandfather used to insist he was a neat man, but I can remember how the papers piled up like snow on his writing table. He knew exactly where everything was, however, and so, no matter how chaotic it seemed to the rest of his family, and I include myself, for him, it was neat. He hated not being able to put his hands on things at once.” He drank sighing happily as the wine spread its magic through him.

  “Let me fill your cup once more,” Alessandra and reach
ed for the jug before Damiano could help himself. As she poured, she said to her husband, there is a Spanish wine in the pantry, sweet and white. Why don’t you open it now so that we may pour it shortly?”

  Even as he felt indignation within him, Lodovico recalled that it had been the custom of the high-ranking of Firenzen’ society to serve their guests at meals. He rose without a murmur of objection and went into the villa, to the kitchen.

  His cook looked up, startled, from where she was sitting with two men who were unknown to Lodovico. Her face turned an astounding shade of mulberry and she stammered, “These are my…cousins, who came to see me. I didn’t think…it was wrong to feed them.” She gave a miserable smile and crossed herself.

  Lodovico looked at the two men, noting that one of them wore the somber rough homespuns that were the uniform of a traveling priest. The other man had on a leather apron and might have been a smith, judging from his massive shoulders and thick-muscled arms. He motioned to his cook and when she came nearer, said, “I won’t mention it to my wife, but if I find that the best of our food is gone, you will hear about it.”

  The cook’s blush was fading to a cheesy pallor, but she managed to say a few words of thanks.

  The priest had got to his feet and had begun to explain his exact degree of relationship to Lodovico’s cook, but stopped when Lodovico said, “All the world has cousins. Neither of you is a young man, and since you seem more hungry than amorous, I will make allowances for this visit. But in future, you must send a request before you visit your cousin. While this is usually a peaceful household, there are times we would rather not have unexpected guests, even in the kitchen.” His mind went back to the courtyard where Damiano sat at his ease.

  “Of course, master,” the cook muttered, turning to bustle back to the table and her cousins. The priest took his seat and remarked in a fairly loud voice that Maria had been safely delivered of a boy the week before, and the smith added that his mother had feared Maria’s life, but she had avoided childbed fever this time.

  Lodovico was not listening to their conversation, since family gossip usually bored him. He opened the pantry and looked for the jar of wine Alessandra had mentioned. At first he did see it, and the he thought to look in the shelves behind the locked spice chest. Sure enough, there were eight large jars of Spanish wine and four more of Umbrian red. He reached for one of the jars, changed his mind, and took two.

  The conversation had become more quiet and desultory in the kitchen, and Lodovico was pleased to nod and hurry on. He did not like to intrude on his servants’ lives and his cook, he knew, was a gifted and oddly temperamental woman.

  “You took your time,” Alessandra said as Lodovico came back into the courtyard.

  “I had trouble finding the wine. The steward hides it well.” He put the jars on the table and began to peel the hard wax from the mouth of one. “It will be ready to drink in a moment,” he assured Damiano.

  “Fine,” was the response, and il Primàrio held his cup to Alessandra. “I am going to regret this in the morning, but for the moment, this is heaven.”

  Alessandra’s laughter was a trifle too loud, Lodovico thought as he pried the cap off the wine jar. He sniffed at the contents and was relieved that the scent was good. There had been a bad jar in the last lot; he would have been shamed to have another for Damiano.

  “I’ve always liked to sing,” Damiano said meditatively as he stared up toward the darkening sky. “I haven’t much of a talent for it, but it’s been an enjoyment to me. I haven’t sung in weeks.”

  “Sing now,” Alessandra urged, and Lodovico knew she would boast of it for days.

  He sat still, shaking his head. “No, no, I think not. I suppose my courage is lacking. I’m certain I would squawk like a duck, being so out of practice.”

  “I doubt it,” Lodovico reassured him as he sat down once more. Not waiting for Damiano to make up his mind, he began in his own, rather thin baritone,” ‘Non so che altro paradiso sia,/ quando amor fussi sanza gelosia./ Quando amor fussi sanza alcun sospetto,/ lieta sario la vita degli amanti,/ e’l cor pien di dolcezza e di diletto/ da non aver invidia in cielo a’ santi./ Ma, lasso a me, cagion di quanti pianti/ e questa maladetta gelosia!’”

  “That’s beautiful,” Alessandra murmured, 1ooking across the table at her husband. “Don’t you think so?”

  Whatever Lodovico might have answered—and he had no idea what to say to her—was interrupted by the young Virginio.

  “It’s stupid!” he burst out. “Who can love without jealousy? Who would want to? It sounds silly, to be unsuspicious.”

  “How do you know, puppy?” Damiano demanded, the mischievous light in his eyes once more.

  Virginio set his jaw as his face went rosy as a bake-stove. “I know something about it, rest assured,” he announced with what he had intended to be hauteur but sounded much more like petulance.

  “I thought so, too, at your age,” Damiano said kindly, but still amused. “I don’t know how my grandfather bore with me.” His voice changed and he laughed easily. “Yes, I do. He remembered his own youth, as I do. Those lyrics of his were written when he was older and had learned better.” He drank his wine slowly and deeply. “It’s going to be a beautiful night, I think.”

  Lodovico watched as Damiano rose and went toward the edge of the courtyard where the end of the garden offered a sliver of a view of Firenze, lying below them. He had often stood there himself, seeing the city darken at evening, watching the distant, pale glare of windows and entrance torches that marked the streets, listening to the tolling of the bells in sudden, solemn conversation.

  “Damiano,” Alessandra called after him, but Lodovico put his hand on her arm and motioned her to silence. She gave her husband an abrupt, troubled look, then shrugged.

  “I’m going in,” Virginio declared, and almost overset the bench he had been sitting on in his haste to leave the courtyard.

  “A difficult boy, these days,” Alessandra sighed as she looked after her son. There was no anger in her. She started to speak again, then lapsed into silence as she heard the door slam.

  “He will be off to his studies soon, and that will end these displays of his,” Lodovico assured her as he got to his feet. “He thinks he is bored here, and so he tries to liven his days.” He took up the cup Damiano had left behind, refilled it and his own. “He will treasure this summer later, but now it only distresses him because he is certain that life is passing him by.”

  “That’s ridiculous. He’s hardly old enough to shave.” There was an unbelieving sharpness in Alessandra’s tone, and she at last looked into Lodovico’s eyes. “It is ridiculous, isn’t it?”

  “Of course it is,” Lodovico said sadly, “but at that age, there is such urgency. It is later that we learn to savor our days.” He turned away from her and walked across to where Damiano stood, silently looking down on the soft, distant lights of his city, lights that warmed the spring darkness the way the little candles before their shrines relieved the darkness of San Lorenzo, Santa Maria Novella, Santa Croce, San Marco, Ognissant, Santa Trinità, and all the other churches of Firenze.

  Damiano’s face was sullen as he stared upward at Andrea Benci. The old courtier had not yet dismounted, though he had arrived some little time before.

  “We have need of you, Primàrio,” he repeated in a manner that was at once demanding and subservient.

  “I appreciate that,” Damiano snapped back, putting one hand to his aching head. “I only wish that you had not been quite so prompt in the exercise of your duties. And you need not remind me that Cardinale cousin would be insulted by my experience; he’s made that very plain.” He looked back toward the passage to the courtyard. “We are having soft cheese this morning. Come eat with us.”

  “I broke my fast two hours ago, Primàrio.” There was a tone in his voice that implied that Damiano was being lax because he had not done the same.

  From his place by the door, Lodovico called out, “We would be please
d if you would join us. The cook can press some fruits for you, Benci.”

  There was a swift look of approval from Damiano that delighted Lodovico even as Andrea Benci said, “I haven’t the time. Perhaps another day.”

  “Don’t be churlish,” Damiano admonished him. “Lodovico does well to ask you, and it is not kind of you to respond in such a manner.”

  Andrea Benci blinked, unaccustomed to being addressed in that way, and straightened himself in the saddle. “I must refuse this kind offer,” he said stiffly. “Someone must make the proper preparations for il Cardinale. I fear I cannot stay if His Eminence is to be greeted as he deserves.”

  “Do as you think best,” Damiano said, resigned. “I will be along when I am done. And I remind you that we’re not to see Cosimo until prandium, which gives me ample time to finish my meal here, ride back to Firenze, change my clothes, and spend a little time in my study before my cousin requires me.” He made a gesture that dismissed Benci, and came down the path toward Lodovico. “What you told Benci about the pressed fruit—will you have her press some for me? My head is filled with devils this morning.”

  “Certainly,” Lodovico said, feeling lamentably pleased with himself for being able to continue his private conversations with Damiano despite the demands of il Primàrio’s high office. He nodded toward Benci as he stood aside for Damiano to pass through to the courtyard and was amazed to see fury on the secretary’s face, and a naked jealousy that was subtly twisted with gloating.

  La Fantasia

  Bellimbusto rose eagerly into the air, curvetting playfully after his lazy days in the Nuova Genova stables. His enormous wings thundered like well-filled sails, and they smoldered black and bronze as the sun struck him.

  Lodovico felt the same elation as his splendid mount. To be airborne again! To set forth at last toward the enemy! His laughter was deep and full. He hated the waiting, the endless delays and preparations while the enemy made undiscovered progress. He was in his element, and laughed once more as he looked around at the thinning morning mist and the receding ground.