The Competition Read online

  He came to her just as she finished the few words required. Viviana peppered it with pounce, waved it in the air, then folded it, sealed it with wax, and used the stamp of her own family—her birth family—to seal it.

  “Deliver this to the home of di Salvestro di ser Ristoro of the Serristori,” she instructed, giving him the address and directions.

  Nunzio held the message, nodding at her instructions.

  “Now, Nunzio, go!”

  Into her room, Viviana ran to stand before her easel. Picking up brush and pallet, she slathered the tip of the brush with the deepest shade of red; she slathered the words, those she had sent to Antonio di Salvestro, on the ghost of the landscape just begun: We will be there.

  • • •

  She had been standing at the door, shooing away any annoying but well-meaning servants did they linger too long, did they pester her with questions of her needs. She felt as if she had been standing there for a lifetime, time in which worrisome thoughts plagued her: Would the priest do as he promised? Would they be exactly as she had found them?

  When the ecclesiastical novice put the package in her hands, the weight of it thrilled her. Surely it all must be there, as promised.

  Running to the most unused room in the house, she unwrapped the package, rifled through it, scanning each page. Her sigh of relief did not come until she saw the signature of a notary upon the last page, one attesting the papers as true and exact copies of the originals.

  Deliverance overwhelmed her, and she dropped into the closest chair. She stared at the pile of parchment. It held the key to her future, but would she truly be allowed to open the door?

  Chapter Sixteen

  “Generosity is a thing given, it cannot—should not—be taken.”

  Though dressed in his red robe of the Signoria, Lorenzo de’ Medici wore steely armor.

  He did not sit at his beautiful, if untidy desk. He stood before it, arms folded across his chest, lips a thin, tight line. The sun blazing in the leaded panes of glass behind him cast his hard-edged face in distorting shadow.

  They filed in silently, save for Leonardo.

  “Buongiorno, Magnifico.”

  He received no answer save a fixed, thunderous glare, the same he gave each of them as they entered, Viviana and Isabetta, Antonio and Fabia. They stood before the epitome of an angered god…and waited.

  “That you are all standing here before me means only one thing.” Lorenzo de’ Medici did not uncross his arms. “A thing I felt sure would require not another of my thoughts.”

  “Magnifico.” Antonio stepped up, offering his obnoxiously subservient and flourishing bow, yet his words held a strength belying his physical servility. “I know what we propose, what these women propose, is an uncommon venture, but—”

  “Uncommon? It is that and more.”

  “True. Very true. But it is innovative, and you are a great believer of innovation, I know that to be true. If it pleases you, I ask only, at this point, that you look upon the sketches and the proposal they have made.” Antonio took a step forward, but not another, waiting.

  Lorenzo stared at him, sneered in truculent silence, and, finally, beckoned him forward with a jerk of his jutting chin.

  Antonio rushed to the desk, quickly unfurling the best of the sketches that had accompanied the proposal. Lorenzo turned his back to da Vinci and his disciples.

  “This is unbearable,” Isabetta moaned in Viviana’s ear.

  “Shush.” A poke of her elbow came with Viviana’s response.

  Lorenzo turned back, but not to them.

  “Did you render these, da Vinci?”

  With a shake of his shaggy head, Leonardo replied, “No, Magnifico, the youngest member of the group, one called Mattea, completed the majority of the sketches.”

  Lorenzo’s brow finally broke its furrow. “The youngest, you say?”

  Leonardo gave one simple nod of his head, almond-shaped eyes slanted and gleaming.

  “Look here, Magnifico.” Antonio pointed to the sketch of The Exaltation of the Cross. “This man, this man who arrests the eye, here is where your likeness will be. It is the figure of the emperor.”

  Viviana could only see the side of Lorenzo’s face, but it was enough to catch his smirk.

  Lorenzo spoke to Antonio in a hushed whisper, words mostly incomprehensible. Mostly.

  Viviana heard names, names of those who held high positions in Florence’s government, those who often opposed Lorenzo. A few words jumped out at her, “difficulties,” “dissatisfaction,” “growing.” She heard Antonio counter, at times so meekly she wondered if he begged, at times with flashes of his subdued strength.

  “You have been defying them for months now, and are only growing stronger for it.”

  Antonio refused to waver. Viviana did not know where perserverance for his wife’s sake ended and perserverance for his own began, but it had begun.

  “Would this not make that strength stronger, show your true power? And think of the women it would please!”

  Lorenzo spun round, piercing Leonardo with his gaze, the skin beneath his eyes twitching.

  “Did you tell him to say that?” he asked.

  “I’ve said not a word of it to Antonio. Anything I have said to him was only to assure him of my assistance in the project, of my guidance of these talented women.”

  As if summoned by the very notion of talented women, Fabia stepped forward.

  “I believe your mother would approve,” she said softly, the impact of her words a mighty strike.

  “You dare speak of my mother?” Lorenzo spun round, features hard and blazing.

  “Fabia,” Antonio shushed her with a pained glare.

  “I sat often at her feet when I was a young girl,” Fabia began, her poise an elegant thing. “And yet I remember her words so well. I remember her poetry most of all. She was a talented woman. As are these.”

  As if cleansed, Lorenzo’s face softened, any remnant of ire wiped away.

  He had lost his mother a little more than two years ago and yet the loss was still keen within him; it was there on his unmasked face, the innocence of a son who would always love his mother. Lucrezia Tornabuoni, a daughter of a nobleman, had bridged the gap between the Medici—wealthiest of wealthy merchants they may have been—and the nobility that infused the city with its grandeur. She had held great influence not only over Florence, but also over its poets, especially female poets. Her own works were numerous, religious, and chivalrous, a value she treasured, and had passed on to her children.

  Lorenzo was far more his mother’s son than his father’s, a man long dead, a man now called Piero the Gouty.

  Lorenzo looked at Fabia, really looked at her for perhaps the first time since she had entered his study, head tilted, eyes narrowed with focus.

  “Are you that Fabia, Fabia di Testaverdi?”

  Fabia lowered her head, perhaps to hide the pleasure blooming on her face. “I am indeed. She was a progressive woman, your mother.”

  Lorenzo laughed, a surprisingly joyful sound.

  “I remember you, you were a precocious child. My mother often spoke of you.” Lorenzo stepped forward to bow over her hand as she curtsied. “It was always with great fondness.”

  Fabia rose, cheeks dimpling. “Thank you, Magnifico. I will always treasure such words.”

  He tacked her in place with his penetrating stare.

  “Are you not afraid? Afraid of what this may to do your family’s reputation.”

  “I fear more that true and great talent may go to waste,” Fabia replied, fast and sure, her chin rising.

  Lorenzo huffed, grinning. He released Fabia, took a quick step, and stood before Viviana and Isabetta, but it was the last to whom he spoke.

  “You wear widow’s weeds, as you did before,” he said to her.

  She didn’t answer; what was there for her to say?

  “How long since your husband left this world?” Lorenzo pried.

  “A little more than
three months,” Isabetta said. She did not tell him that she had lost Vittorio long ago, to the illness that ate away at him with painful, nasty slowness. She did not tell him that her love for him had died long before that.

  “And how do you fare?”

  Isabetta shrugged one shoulder. “I do not starve, and if I do it is only for more living.”

  Lorenzo’s thin lips spread. Viviana’s breath caught.

  “You have no fears either? Not for the consequences such an endeavor may bring?”

  Isabetta laughed. “Of course we are afraid. But fear is but a spark to light great fires.”

  Now Lorenzo laughed well and truly. “That, my dear, is something my mother would have said. Are you a poet as well?”

  “No, Magnifico, simply a woman who has lived more years than my age would tell.”

  Lorenzo paced his office, which was now as still and quiet as a tomb save for his movements and the swish of the fine fabrics he wore.

  Too long, Viviana thought. Only negativity comes slowly.

  Lorenzo broke the stillness, but only to speak to himself. “Well, I will not have to deal with Sixtus at any rate.”

  The pope who had waged war against him after the Pazzis killed his brother, after he avenged him, had died only days ago. While all of the Catholic faith mourned him, some did so with little grief, especially in Florence, especially Lorenzo de’ Medici.

  The new pope, Innocent VIII, might have Greek ancestry, but he had been raised and educated in the Italian states. The relations between the Vatican and Florence had already changed much in the few days of his reign. There were even whispers of a betrothal between Innocent’s illegitimate son, Franceschetto, and Lorenzo’s daughter, Maddalena.

  “I have had enough of papal problems.”

  Lorenzo stopped his pacing, held before the mullioned windows, looking out across the piazza of the Basilica di San Lorenzo, which held the tombs of his family, including his slain brother and his beloved mother. “You are sure this is what you want?”

  “We are,” Viviana replied, at the same time as Antonio.

  Lorenzo turned with a cynical if amused chuckle. His dreary gaze latched onto each one, moving from one to the next with somber slowness.

  “It will not be easy, for any of you. There are many who will be outraged. And, as we know, fiorentinos are outspoken with their feelings.”

  Antonio began to stutter, “I am sure it will not be as bad as—”

  “We know, Ser de’ Medici, but we believe it is too important to allow such dissention to stop us,” Viviana said, for once grateful for her quick tongue and its strength.

  Lorenzo’s head nodded in sluggish scrutiny. “You are a formidable woman, Signora del Marrone. I have been told so, and now I see it for myself.”

  “We are all formidable,” Isabetta spoke up righteously. “We are artists.”

  Once more Lorenzo laughed; once more Viviana saw a spark in his eyes when he looked at the curvaceous blonde beside her. He threw up his hands.

  “Then I wish you all the best of luck. You have my permission and my approval. Let it be known.”

  “Grazie, grazie tante.” Antonio’s gratitude gushed from him.

  “Thank you, Magnifico,” Fabia said, with a bit more grace. “Your mother would be proud.”

  “I have no doubt she would have haunted me from the grave had my decision been otherwise.” Lorenzo grinned with a bow to Fabia. “They are in your care, da Vinci.”

  “Of course, Magnifico.” Leonardo gave a shallow bow as the women beside him, the artists, softly expressed their own gratitude. “We will leave you to your work.”

  They shambled out, bubbling with excitement barely contained.

  “Signora Fioravanti?”

  Isabetta poked her head back in, even as Viviana held the latch.

  “Yes, Magnifico?”

  “It is my desire for you to sketch and paint my likeness,” he announced, as if he were announcing the sun had risen, looking down at the spray of parchments across his desk, his pronouncement far more decisive than his attention. “Only you.”

  “S—sì, Magnifico,” Isabetta replied, ducking back out.

  As Leonardo led them out of the palace, Viviana fixed a hard glare upon her friend. She watched as Isabetta’s face changed from confused to determined to amused.

  Chapter Seventeen

  “In the strangest places, treasures may be found.”

  The gaping balcony doors reached out as if begging for a breeze. The sharp, florid aromas of high summer held sway—the earthy scent of sun upon stone, the sharp sweetness of purple peonies. Inside, veal simmered in its pot; Viviana simmered in jitters.

  She was far more nervous for this Sunday dinner with her sons and Carina than she had been for the last. That time it was Marcello and his lovely young woman who had felt the pressure of hoped-for acceptance. Today it was Viviana.

  The food came in waves, the wine flowed, and she talked. Viviana talked too much and of the most inconsequential things. She dropped her two-tined fork twice. She fiddled with the edge of the embroidered tablecloth. She laughed too often and too loudly.

  “Whatever is the matter with you, Mama?” Rudolfo smacked his goblet on the table. Was it that noise or his question that scorned the restless silence, that changed the air?

  Viviana tucked her chin in, puckered her face. “Matter? There’s nothing the matter.”

  “Something troubles you,” Marcello echoed his brother, as always. “You are acting rather strangely.”

  In some ways, Viviana wished it were just her boys at table that day. Her boys understood her, knew her vagaries. Looking deeper within herself, she was grateful for Carina, for the presence of another woman, of another artist.

  And there it was; just that thought was enough.

  Slowly and completely, Viviana told her family what she and the other women were about to do.

  Itchy silence once more took over the room. If she could have scratched it away, her skin would have been raw.

  “You astound me, Mama.” Rudolfo broke the silence, raising his glass to her, drinking long and deeply. “You travel roads others would never even dream exist.”

  She beamed at his glorious words, but there was another truth yet to be told.

  “There will be many who do not approve. There are already those who do not.” Viviana told them of the day she and Isabetta discovered their bid had become known, the heckling, the tomato; she told all. “My greatest prayer is that it will not affect your business.”

  “If it does, who it does, I would have no care to continue doing business with,” Rudolfo declared.

  “Perhaps this is not the wisest course for you to take, Mama,” Marcello argued. “Perhaps it is not best for you or the group. Perhaps it would be better to take things more slowly.”

  “But such progress—” Viviana tried.

  “There are other roads upon which to make progress. Small works by Da Vinci’s Disciples would lead to greater works.”

  “Da Vinci’s Disciples?” For the first time since this particular discussion began, Carina spoke.

  Viviana smiled, just to hear the sound of it. “Yes, I am a member of Da Vinci’s Disciples, a group of women artists under the tutelage of Leonardo.”

  “The Leonardo?”

  “The very one.” Viviana felt her face grow pleasantly florid.

  “Yes, Carina, my mother is something of an iconoclast,” Marcello avowed, eyes and brows making a quick, high jump. “About—”

  Rudolfo stopped him. “She and the women with her are visionaries. Nothing more, and certainly nothing less.”

  With lips tight, head atilt, Marcello ceded to his brother’s assertion.

  “Indeed, they are ahead of their time,” Marcello assured, launching into a much-censored version, to relay them to Carina, of the beginnings of what was now Da Vinci’s Disciples. Not once did he mention his deceased father or the painting that ensured his death.

  “And now”�
��Carina turned fully to Viviana—“now you will fresco a chapel, the whole group, and publicly?”

  Viviana did not doubt for a minute the depths of the girl’s astonishment, but her root emotion remained elusive.

  “We are,” she answered simply, expectantly.

  “I still question if this is the best course,” Marcello mumbled.

  Viviana’s fists twisted in the fine voluminous silk of her gown. Could she do this momentous thing without the approval and support of her sons, both of them?

  “It is the only course.”

  Viviana’s head snapped up. Such words she expected from Rudolfo; they came from Carina.

  Carina preached righteously, “Such talent, and it must be great indeed for them to win the commission, should not be relegated to nothing more than their homes, or some obscure wall bereft of signature. It must be flouted before the world. It must be where all may see and learn and know.” Carina pinned Viviana with her steadfast gaze. “You must do this. You all must.”

  “Do you truly feel that way, cara?” Marcello asked Carina.

  Viviana suddenly realized that his reticence might have been for Carina’s benefit, not hers. How blindly foolish she could be at times, seeing only walls that she herself must hurtle.

  “I do, I truly do.” Carina nodded, so exuberantly thick sable curls fell free of their pins. “But I have a request, if I may.”

  “Of course, child.”

  “I wish to be a part of it. I wish to watch, to learn and, if allowed, to help.”

  Marcello balked. “Carina, you cannot be serious.”

  “Oh, but I am, Marcello. It is a thing all artists dream of, and I am, to my core, an artist.” As if suddenly realizing the vehemence of her words, she softly asked, “Would that meet with your approval?”

  She asks my son for approval, Viviana thought, as a wife would do. She left this conversation to them.

  “I…I…” Marcello gawped at his mother, but found nothing there to help him.