The Competition

  The Competition

  Da Vinci’s Disciples - Book Two

  Donna Russo Morin

  Copyright

  Diversion Books

  A Division of Diversion Publishing Corp.

  443 Park Avenue South, Suite 1008

  New York, NY 10016

  www.DiversionBooks.com

  Copyright © 2017 by Donna Ruson Morin

  All rights reserved, including the right to reproduce this book or portions thereof in any form whatsoever.

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or locales is entirely coincidental.

  For more information, email info@diversionbooks.com

  First Diversion Books edition April 2017

  ISBN: 978-1-68230-805-9

  To Carl,

  For his unwavering belief,

  For his calming presence,

  For his love.

  Personaggi

  *denotes historical character

  Viviana del Marrone – a founding member of Da Vinci’s Disciples; the daughter of a long line of wealthy vintners; born 1444

  Contessa Fiammetta Ruspoli Maffei – a member of Da Vinci’s Disciples; daughter to one of the great noble houses of Florence; born 1442

  Isabetta Fioravanti – a member Da Vinci’s Disciples; a mainland Venetian brought to Florence by her husband, a once-successful butcher; born 1454

  Lapaccia Cavalcanti – a member of Da Vinci’s Disciples; widow of Messer Andrea Cavalcanti; born 1438

  Natasia Soderini – a member of Da Vinci’s Disciples; a member of one of the most powerful and noble houses of Florence; born 1462

  Mattea Zamperini – a member of Da Vinci’s Disciples; daughter of a deceased merchant; born 1461

  Conte Patrizio Maffei – Fiammetta’s husband; a high-ranking nobleman; born 1437

  Patrizia Ruspoli Maffei – daughter to the Conte and Contessa Maffei; born 1464

  Sansone Caivano – professional soldier from northern Venice; born 1450

  Marcello del Marrone – son of Viviana; soldier; spice merchant; born 1461

  Rudolfo del Marrone – son of Viviana; soldier; spice merchant; born 1463

  *Lorenzo de’ Medici – entitled Il Magnifico by the people of Florence; renowned Italian statesmen and unofficial ruler of the Florentine government; merchant banker; a great patron of the arts; Platonist; poet; born 1449

  *Clarice Orsini de’ Medici – wife of Lorenzo; daughter of Jacopo Giacomo Orsini, Lord of Monterotondo and Bracciano, and his wife and cousin Maddalena Orsini; born 1453

  Andreano Cavalcanti – son of Lapaccia; once a member of the Consiglio di Cento, Council of One Hundred; born 1456

  Carina di Tafani – daughter of a minor Florentine nobleman; born 1468

  Father Raffaello, Tomaso Soderini – Natasia Soderini’s brother; parish priest of Santo Spirito; born 1457

  Antonio di Salvestro de’ Serristori – a clerk for the Dodoici Procuratori, oversight committee of the Florentine finances; born 1457

  Fabia di Testaverdi di Salvestro de’ Serristori – wife of Antonio; born 1462

  *Alessandro di Mariano di Vanni Filipepi, better known as Sandro Botticelli – Italian Renaissance painter of the Florentine School; belonged to court of Lorenzo de’ Medici; born 1445

  *Andrea di Michele di Francesco de’ Cioni (Andrea del Verrocchio) – Florentine painter, sculptor, goldsmith; maestro of an esteemed and influential workshop; born 1435

  *Lucrezia Donati Ardinghelli – daughter of fallen nobleman Manno di Manno Donati and his wife Caterina di Benedeto de’ Bardi; wife of Niccolò Ardinghelli; born 1447

  *Leonardo da Vinci – polymath; born 1452

  Renaissance Florence

  A - Home of Viviana del Marrone L - Palazzo della Signoria

  B - Home of Fiammetta and Patrizia Maffei M - Home of Soderini (Natasia’s parents)

  C - Home of Lapaccia Cavalcanti N - Church of San Lorenzo

  D - Home of Natasia Soderini Capponi O - Bargello

  E - Home of Mattea Zamperini P - Ponte alla Carraia

  F - Home of Isabetta Fioravanti Q - Ponte Santa Trinta

  G - Home of Carina Tafani R - Ponte Vecchio

  H - Santo Spirito S - Ponte alla Grazie

  I - Palazzo de’ Medici T - Porta San Piero Gattolinio

  J - Cathedral of Santa Maria del Fiore (Duomo) U - Porta alla Croce/Gallows

  K - Baptistry V - Porta a San Gallo

  If our fates must be decided, and not simply allowed,

  we should be their masters.

  Chapter One

  “Inspiration, when it comes, comes on its own terms.”

  Specks of sand in a windstorm, eddying about, seemingly chaotic yet cohesive, unified within the calm, unseen core.

  They stood apart in the vast crowd and yet together, a feat they had managed to accomplish ever since those fateful days. None could see them and know them as a group; society would frown upon it. Few of their number—in truth, but one—cared little for the caprices of society. Their truth had already rendered it specious. But if their truth were known—the deepest, darkest depths of it—they would all be dead, a brutal death at the end of the hangman’s noose.

  The boisterous throng swirled around them, ignorant to the revolutionaries they stood beside. With the crowd whirled the music, the voices, the change in the wind. Some of the women wore jewels and ermine trim, others simple muslin. Only in their smocks were their ranks and wealth negated. They stood united by what they had done, by all they created, and all they hoped yet to create. Such brazenness, such daring, such criminal activity bound them in a way little else could. They were—now and forever—united as Da Vinci’s Disciples.

  “Isn’t it breathtaking, dearest?” Natasia twittered to her husband, Pagolo, squeezing his arm with a plump hand in her zeal.

  Tall and stick-like to Natasia’s round fleshiness, Pagolo Capponi shielded his slim, dark eyes from the midday sun as they watched the grand procession pass before them. “Yes dearest, splendid.”

  Viviana tucked her chin down, hiding her motherly grin; so much had changed, and yet some things never would. Natasia may be married now, as she had so craved to be, but her girlish giggles had not abandoned her.

  Viviana stood beside the couple and they beside Fiammetta and Patrizio, the Conte and Contessa Maffei, she with her face a blasé mask, he with bright spots of happiness on his round cheeks. Beside them stood Lapaccia Cavalcanti, simply attired as always, an ash walking stick in her hand. The widowed noblewoman held the arm of another elderly woman, a noble as well, down to her luxurious trappings.

  On Viviana’s other side stood Isabetta and Mattea, both in their finest—if simplest—muslin, both with the kiss of the sun emerging on their pale cheeks.

  Viviana was the middle ground between the ottimati and popolo of their group, the elite and the common citizens. She was a widow herself, that of a disgraced lesser elite, disgraced by his own hands, deceased by hers and those of the women near to her. She was as in limbo in life as she was between these women, not exactly knowing her place, not exactly knowing where life would next take her.

  “About time things returned to normal,” Fiammetta grumbled. Viviana wholeheartedly agreed with her, which did not happen often.

  “Thanks to Il Magnifico.” Viviana felt gladness for him, and all of Florence.

  Lorenzo de’ Medici was not the man he had once been. The change came the day they murdered his brother in the great cathedral. It came when Lorenzo learned the murder was a conspiracy, with gnarled fingers that reached all the way to the Vatican. All goodness and light within him h
ad been extinguished when he had avenged Giuliano’s murder in a massacre of near to one hundred men. He ruled darkly in the wars that followed, and in the years that followed those wars. What with the pope’s decree of excommunication upon Il Magnifico and all of Florence, the wars, and the plague, Florence and its citizens had suffered dearly in the intervening years. Lorenzo’s grief and anger had hovered over the city like an ominous black cloud. Today, at long last, he had allowed a celebration to take place. And what a spectacle it was.

  This Festa di San Giovanni, a celebration of John the Baptist, was unlike any the city had seen before. Under Il Magnifico’s rule, as every facet of life had become, it blazed with both pageantry and eminence.

  “Florence dons her golden gown once more,” Isabetta said. “Would you look at that?”

  One had no choice. Fifteen wagons drawn by fifty pairs of oxen filled the street, their clomping the air, the cheering of the crowd the ears.

  The women leaned away from the heat of the many girandole, the wheels of fire in the shapes of ships and houses, their fires crackling, popping, and spattering the crowd with sparks.

  Zigzagging their way through the wagons and platforms, the spiritegli hovered over all, their legs strapped to poles so tall they seemed to walk on air.

  A banner upon the lead wagon identified the edifizi it carried: Lucius Aemilius Paulus.

  “It is his vanity,” Fiammetta said once more.

  “It is his need to reassert himself,” Viviana argued with a whisper, not for her sake, but for Fiammetta’s; she had no wish for any to hear of her friend’s continued anti-Medicean attitude. There were those who shared Fiammetta’s feelings for the city’s ruler. Most hid behind a façade of Medici support, in dark corners and shadows, for their own purposes and pernicious agendas.

  Lucius Aemilus Paulus was the Roman conqueror of Macedonia, from before the birth of Jesus Christ. His return to Rome, with overflowing bounty, had made him immortal.

  “No doubt Il Magnifico wishes to make an identification,” Viviana raised her voice in concert with the rising roar of the crowd. “Lorenzo put much at risk to save our city, going to Naples, being held virtually hostage there for more than a year. His safe return, his success in saving Florence from further ravages of war—surely it is a bounty worth celebrating.”

  “Humph,” was Fiammetta’s response.

  “Indeed, Florence is reborn,” Mattea agreed with Isabetta. “Already women are wearing their finest again, and palazzos are being built. Yes, Florence is reborn. But can it be as if nothing ever happened? Can it be as it was before?”

  Before. The word had a strange effect. Did they really wish for it to be so?

  Viviana studied each face, watched as her friends’ minds traveled back in time with her own. Lapaccia had never regained her health since the days and weeks she’d hidden in the convent. She had become what she had never been, no matter her age…an old, frail lady. Her son, Mattea’s lover, wandered, hiding, the small price he paid for the small part he played in the conspiracy to kill Guiliano de’ Medici and the attempt to kill Lorenzo. Mattea’s longing, her fear was ever there upon her face, in her eyes that did not sparkle as they once had, upon lips slow to curve.

  Isabetta in her widow’s weeds, her husband whom she had loved and nursed for years now gone, though not so very long ago. A badge of guilt hung heavy on that woman’s neck. But not nearly as heavy as one did on Viviana’s, for Isabetta had not been the instrument of her husband’s death; that part belonged to Viviana and Viviana alone. Was it truly wrong? No, she had never thought so, not for a moment. What she feared more was that she had killed something within herself when she killed him.

  Fiammetta had slipped down the social ladder—an atrocity, in her mind, for staying on her perch was so very important to her. Her association with the Pazzi family—they who had led the assassination—had chipped away at her lofty standing. Watching her struggle to climb back up was like watching a child attempt to scale a mountain, a pitiable sight.

  Only Natasia—sweet, young Natasia—had come away unscathed.

  They had even lost their mentor, if only temporarily. They’d lost Leonardo da Vinci to the Duke of Milan, or rather his uncle Ludovico, who acted as regent for his eight-year-old nephew. The wars Florence had endured had left no one to sponsor him, which da Vinci needed in order to become the maestro of the studio that he deserved to be.

  But something had happened, something glorious in the before. They had saved Lapaccia’s life, even Andreano’s, and they had created a masterpiece. It hung in the Palazzo della Signoria still, the towering building at their backs. It hung where the original masterpiece had hung and still no one knew the difference. The city and its keepers thought it a warning to all those who dare defy its leaders, most especially the Medicis, and so it remained upon its wall, an accusatory finger to be avoided. In truth, it was a living, breathing testament to the women’s growing prowess as artists. It didn’t matter that no one knew such beauty had come from their hands; at least that was what they told themselves.

  Viviana looked to the sky, to the small prison at the top of the tower where she herself had spent a night. No one knew she and these women, Da Vinci’s Disciples, had rendered the painting that hung in that tower.

  No, it didn’t matter. Or did it? The question had plagued Viviana more and more of late, as she searched for the same fiery purpose she had felt when helping to paint it. She now seemed to crave it, as the souse craved his wine.

  Like her city, Viviana carried the scars of those days, yet like Florence, she too was healing. She closed her eyes, raised her face to the sun, and let it warm her. She let gratitude consume her, let the crowd and the cheering and the song and the laughter fade away.

  “I purchased that chapel in Santo Spirito three years ago.” The words spoken by the resonant, lofty voice of a man, somewhere close behind her, broke through her reverence and shattered it. “Now I shall finally be allowed to have it frescoed.”

  Viviana’s eyes snapped open like a shutter in a gale. Through the haze, she saw the man who had spoken, knew his face.

  But more importantly, she saw it, the answer to what came next.

  Chapter Two

  “Often with death comes freedom.”

  She lay in bed waiting for the sound of the rooster’s crow. She did not need it to wake her up. Viviana had never finished yesterday.

  Viviana’s mind had refused to still, refused to stop imagining or dream. The few times she dozed, the journey of the unconscious took her through a house, each bright room overflowed with the herald of conquest. Not a one dispelled it.

  She rose, dressed quickly, hurrying Jemma, her ever-stalwart maid.

  “No, cara, the blue one,” Viviana instructed as the young woman reached for a set of slashed sleeves to tie over Viviana’s puffed-sleeved gamurra.

  Viviana had abandoned her widow’s weeds long ago, barely able to stand their gloominess for the requisite time. Especially as the gloom was not hers to wear in truth. Her wardrobe reflected who she truly was, elegant and unique, wealthy but in the comfortable sense. A widow, yes, but not one knocking on death’s door. This blue gown was the perfect outer statement of her inner truths, with its deep V neckline allowing the delicate, pale blue embroidery of her gamurra to show through, its tight sleeves, tight to the elbow, ending in a profusion of hanging tippets that furled out as she walked.

  She stared at herself in the smoky looking glass.

  What have you to tell me? Viviana asked her reflection. Have I changed much in the last five years, since I became free of him?

  Him.

  She never said his name; she hated the taste of it on her tongue.

  Her looks did not threaten to betray her. Not as her dead husband had.

  She caught her own gaze again. Did she feel guilty? Yes, for her faith demanded she feel remorse and guilt. Though her guilt was for the truth. She was not remorseful, not for her actions that condemned him. Her cruel husband
had been horrifically executed, she had seen to it, but for different crimes than those he actually committed. She ignored it, or tried.

  “Where are you off to, madonna?” Jemma laced up the back of the gown. “You are not for church, not in this.”

  “I go to set a meeting,” Viviana said, the words floating on a breath of excitement.

  Jemma stiffened, stilled.

  “A meeting?” Jemma walked slowly round to face her mistress, her still-cherubic features, hinting at the beauty of full womanhood just around the corner, scrunched with caution. “It is not just to paint then?”

  Jemma’s wisdom had grown as she had.

  “Well, cara, it is and it isn’t.” Viviana pinched Jemma’s cheek. “It is that and so very much more.”

  “O Dio mio. Something starts again, doesn’t it?”

  Fully dressed, Viviana spun to face Jemma, holding the maid by her shoulders, bestowing a smile upon her that held a glimmer of everything that was in her mind, every expectation, every possibility. “I hope so, dear Jemma, I do hope so.”

  Vague pronouncement made, Viviana grabbed her small silk purse, tying it to the slim belt just below her breasts, and headed for the door.

  “Do you not want me to accompany—”

  Jemma’s words eddied to mumbles as Viviana closed the door behind her.

  • • •

  The raggedly dressed men who cleaned the streets filled them. The remnants of yesterday’s festa bedecked the cobblestones with the residue of celebration; empty bottles of wine rolled down the uneven cobbles with arrhythmic chimes, abandoned ribbons and streamers now dotted the landscape with bursts of color.

  Viviana walked past the men and the few other fiorentinos out and about at such an early hour. There weren’t many; most were still recovering, she thought with an amused grin, heads too heavy with wine to lift them from their pillows. Others, perhaps those who had not embraced the celebration as devoutly, were no doubt in church.