chapter 10

The house was quiet, the morning light just beginning to warm the shadows of the halls, tiled in cool terrazzo. Matt leaned on the windowsill of the stairs down to the second floor, enjoying the morning air. The hunting party was already in the valley below, setting off through one of the fields and leaving a wake of bent wheat like a fleet of tiny ships crossing the yet-to-be discovered Sargasso Sea. Rodrigo was not with them; he was still asleep in the bed Matt had fallen into early the night before. Exhausted by the unaccustomed exercise and fresh air, Matt had slept soundly with only Rodrigo as company, a welcome change from the inns where as many as six might pile in together. The bed, blissfully, was free of the fleas and bedbugs that had so tormented him the first week, leaving him sleepless as well as bone-weary and sore from the unaccustomed exertion of riding a horse day in and day out.

Matt, curious as to the extent and layout of the complex of buildings that surrounded the villa, decided to explore. Rodrigo had told him before he fell asleep that the first meal of the day was after the morning service. The villa was built around an internal courtyard, with the main living areas on the second floor. Their room was on the third floor, with a tiny window that boded sleepless nights if the weather turned sultry. Small as it was, though, at least it was not on the even more cramped top floor, under the roof with the servants.

Matt passed the dining hall, quiet and dark, where the night before he had sat unnoticed at the foot of a table at the end of the long, high-ceilinged room. Anna, whose laugh he could occasionally pick out over the buzz of conversation and the music from the gallery, where two lutenists kept up a lively succession of dances and frottole, had sat at the head table between the duke and Leandro. That there was something going on between Anna and this Leandro, Matt thought, was made more obvious by the transparent way they tried to conceal it. Listening intently to the duke, her back to Leandro, Anna inclined her head very slightly when he leaned over and, not looking at her, made a very brief comment. Did they think that everyone was so oblivious as not to notice?

“He’s the duke’s natural son,” Rodrigo said.

“Who?” Matt asked, nettled that Rodrigo had seen through the air of indifference he had assumed. Until he knew more he thought it only prudent to conceal any interest he might have in Anna.

The sharp lines radiating from the corners of Rodrigo’s eyes deepened with amusement. “Leandro. You might try to be a bit more discreet,” he added. “I don’t know that he would find your attention entirely flattering. He’s the kind of man who thinks with his sword, and he doesn’t allow himself or others the luxury of a second thought.”

“My attention was on the duke,” Matt protested. “He’s famous.”

“Ah,” Rodrigo replied, with a noncommittal nod.

“A pretty tune,” Matt commented.

“By Tromboncino. One of his charming little barzallettes. You know it?”

“No, this is the first I’ve heard it.”

“It won’t be the last,” Rodrigo said. “It’s all you hear these days. Which raises a most interesting question. How is it that mediocrity is often elevated to the same level of acclaim as a work of true excellence? ‘Oh heaven or fortune, treat me well or badly as you choose.’ That’s a far cry from Dante, but people listen to it over and over. They even quote it with the same heartfelt conviction that they do the great canzoni, and the tears that come to their eyes are every bit as salty and wet. The corrupted scansion, the contrived rhyme—piace, audace, capace—the threadbare metaphors. ‘Fleeing the wounds of love.’ It’s true that he did kill his wife when he discovered she was unfaithful, so one must concede that he knows whereof he speaks, but unfortunately veracity is not an ingredient called for in the recipe of art. It doesn’t make the music any better or the poetry any finer. But look at them, they love it. Like love, it’s the sentiment aroused and not the thing itself that matters.”

“Not everything has to be a work of genius,” Matt replied.

“Of course not. I’m not talking about the work but the response it engenders. Let’s consider a different emotion, one just as strong as love but more often true: fear. Blind terror. The most beautiful sword or the crudest ax will elicit the same response if wielded with similar force. Or consider a passion more consuming than love, one that banishes fear. Intoxication. No matter how good or bad the wine the effect is the same.”

The servants leaned over their shoulders, taking the large squares of bread, dripping with fragrant gravy, that had served as plates for the stew and putting them on platters for the dogs and beggars outside to fight over. They placed a glazed bowl brimming with scented water and rose petals before each of the guests.

“Reduce the cause still further, to the purely physical,” Rodrigo continued, rinsing his fingers in the bowl. “Heat. Whether the stimulus is a fire, or the sun, or making love, or just being in love, the effect is the same: we feel warmth. From the basest urge to the most noble sentiments, it makes no difference. The stimulus may vary but the response is the same. Even beauty.”

“Not beauty,” Matt said, looking away from Anna, who was smiling as she listened to the duke tell her a story. “Exquisite beauty has no equal.”

“You are most certainly right,” Rodrigo said. “And said exquisitely well. I commend you. No equal indeed. Singular, unique, nonpareil. But I must ask—exquisite beauty by whose designation? Every man awards his own golden apple. Your rapture at a rare Greek statue is identical to that of a farmer beholding his prize pig. Every baby looks up and sees a beautiful mother. Just as every new husband sees the most beautiful woman alive and every weary traveler returns to the sweetest home on earth. We like to think that we grow more refined, increasing our ability to distinguish excellence in all things, but the truth is much more prosaic. We just get bored. The stimulus is most sharp at its inception. It fades with time and repetition. We don’t grow more refined, our senses just get dulled. Good or bad, you’re sated, and you move on to something else.”

Rodrigo took a bunch of grapes from the large platter of fruit in front of them. “The most fortunate man, to my mind, is the least refined. His enjoyment is the most universal. And ecumenical. In fact, one might say he is the most universally refined, for he is open to all experiences equally.”

“Or closed.”

“Have some,” Rodrigo said to Matt, offering him a bowl of what looked like bright yellow gumdrops before taking a handful himself. “The refinement of taste, as we call it, is a narrowing of our perspective, not a widening. The world shrinks as you experience it. While the world of what we know is perhaps enlarged slightly, the wider world of the unknown is vastly reduced. That which you have yet to know is an undiscovered continent, an Africa of the imagination; those things once experienced, no matter how exotic, are taken from the realm of the imagined and become mundane. Wonder is the horizon, not experience; and knowledge is the death of wonder. Not for you?” he added, watching Matt’s tentative reaction as he chewed.

“No, I like it,” Matt said, crunching the drops, and swallowed. “Interesting flavor. Some kind of nuts?” he guessed.

“Candied locusts,” Rodrigo replied, taking another handful. “I love them, and no one ever serves them anymore.” He tilted the bowl in Matt’s direction.

“Thanks,” Matt demurred. “I’m all right for now.”

“Suit yourself,” Rodrigo replied with a shrug. “Leandro’s the heir apparent, unless Federico remarries, which is always possible.”

“What about Guidobaldo?” Matt asked, curiosity winning out over his desire to seem disinterested, which didn’t seem to be working anyway. He realized that it was silly, in any case; he wanted to know as much as possible, and who better than Rodrigo to guide him through the maze of court intrigue? In this case, what he was saying was basic, and known to anyone. As a natural son—a bastard—any dynastic hopes Leandro had would yield to those of a legitimate heir.

Rodrigo, his face suddenly closed, sat back.

“Guidobaldo’s the heir,” Matt said.

“Was,” Rodrigo said in a fierce undertone, with a quick look around to be sure they weren’t overheard. “Have you taken complete leave of your senses?”

“Sorry,” Matt replied. What did Rodrigo mean by “Was”? Guidobaldo’s life was well known. He would be about Orlando’s age. Matt had assumed that was why the duke was going to Mantua—to visit his son at the famous school of Vittorino da Feltre, where the duke had as a child himself been so deeply imbued with the precepts of a nascent humanism. Assuming the dukedom when his father died, Guidobaldo had married and lived to an old age. If the locusts had not been quite so crunchy and sweet, or the beds he and Rodrigo had slept in on their journey here so uncomfortable and flea-ridden, Matt might have thought he was dreaming the whole thing. A woman who stepped out of a painting being courted by a man who never existed, himself supplanting a rightful heir who had vanished before his time. But Matt knew he wasn’t dreaming. For one, he never would have dreamed Anna with a husband, much less a suitor, too—particularly one so formidable as the one sitting right now at her left elbow.

“Where is the count, anyway?” Matt asked, exasperated. Orlando, Anna’s son, sat in the place his father should have occupied, to the right of the duke Federico. He wore his coat—blue, with floral patterns embroidered in gold on the sleeves—with an authority far beyond his years. He might be a child, but under the soft contours of youth Matt could already see the outlines of the man who would soon emerge to claim his inheritance.

“Bedridden,” Rodrigo answered. “The doctors say it’s a wasting disease of an Oriental nature that they are helpless to treat. The truth, if you’d care to know, is that he discovered the infinite pleasure of a moving object that has allowed itself to come to rest. Soon—very soon—Lethe will gather the willing lover into her gentle arms and whisk him across the river Sharon to a welcome oblivion.”

Leandro glanced over at them. Matt averted his eyes, but it was too late. Pushing back his chair, the powerfully built man rose to his feet.

“Wonderful,” Rodrigo said as Leandro edged around the table and headed for them. “Didn’t I warn you? But you wouldn’t listen.”

Matt fought off panic as he felt the looming presence of the knight grow closer. He had not the slightest idea of what to expect or what he might do in response. He flinched, a large hand appearing in the air above and behind him, but it landed on Rodrigo’s shoulder, not his.

“Rodrigo,” Leandro growled.

Relief, as refreshing as a wave, washed over Matt.

“Your Excellence?” Rodrigo asked.

“Did you bring them?”

“Yes, Your Excellence,” Rodrigo replied. “That was the cause of my delay. Finding an effective seal was more difficult than I thought it would be.”

Matt jumped, feeling something cold and wet and hard poking into his side like a used knife that hasn’t been wiped clean. He looked down to find the broad head of Leandro’s mastiff sniffing at his lap.

“But you did,” Leandro said.

“Yes. I think we solved the problem with the gas leakage, too.”

The dog shook his head and snuffled, leaving a trail of warm spit on Matt’s tights as he explored further.

“Good boy,” Matt said as he pushed the animal’s head aside. Growling, it backed off.

“Excellent,” Leandro said. “We’ll find out tomorrow, then.”

“I have something else that you will find very intriguing.”

“Surprise me,” Leandro said, and then with a final squeeze of Rodrigo’s shoulder was gone, his dog padding after him like a trail of smoke from a smoldering fire.

The dinner had ended soon after. Matt continued his exploration of the villa. Around the corner from the dining hall he found another long room, this one also hung with tapestries that gave the space a hushed quality, as though the room itself was still asleep. He walked slowly around, going from scene to scene as Zeus descended on Danaë in a shower of gold, and then as her son Perseus freed Andromeda from her stone and married her. Matt had never studied tapestries as closely as he should have. Were these Belgian? He automatically glanced at the wall by the door, and then grinned, finding no small plaque detailing the date and source of the acquisition. About to leave, he paused, a cassone catching his eye. The painting on the front looked familiar. It couldn’t be.

Matt bent down for a closer look. My God, he thought, it is, and dropped to his knees. Dark green, with patches of red and white, it was a confusion of activity under the arching canopy of a forest. With a verdant carpet underfoot, flowers and ferns, two horsemen waited alertly to one side as dozens of lithe greyhounds darted through the dark glade. Bright against the undergrowth, men in red and blue tabards armed with long staffs followed the dogs as other horsemen charged through the distance. How many hours had Matt spent poring over this very painting at the Ashmolean? He knew it, square inch by square inch; the paired dogs in the center, tan and black, the almost cutout appearance of the one hunter, leaning back rigid, as he pulled hard on the reins of his protesting horse; the echoed arches of the other horses’ necks, and high above, faintly inscribed through a gap in the canopy, stars and the delicate crescent of a waning moon.

Matt, fully stretched out on his belly, his face propped in his hands, studied the man on the leaping horse to the left. Hand raised, mouth open, he was in pursuit—of what? The deer was almost invisible in the distance. What was he saying? Whom was he talking to? And the colors; Matt marveled at how rich they were, untarnished by time. The night glowed with a dark luminosity.

“Are you all right?”

Torn from his reverie, Matt turned and looked up, his chin still on one hand. He scrambled to his feet, the sudden rise making him dizzy. Anna was standing in the door, regarding him with a mixture of curiosity and concern. She was alone.

“Quite all right,” Matt replied, brushing off the front of his doublet. “An interesting scene,” he said, nodding at the chest.

“It was my mother’s,” Anna replied. With her hair pulled back in a French braid, her face was framed by the curls left free at her temples and a thin silver band set with a single pearl encircling her forehead. Her dress, blue silk embroidered in an elaborate floral pattern of gold set with pearls, fell in folds from the gold belt fastened under her bodice. The simple pin of three irises set in gold was on her breast.

“Paolo Uccello,” Matt commented.

“Yes,” Anna said with interest. “How did you know?”

“His style is unique. He used the same themes in much of his work. The rider there—the one leaning back—is identical to one in the Rout of San Romano.”

“Which panel?” Anna asked.

“The one—” Matt stopped himself before saying “at the Louvre.” Originally in Lorenzo’s chamber of the Medici palace in Florence, the three huge panels now hung separately, at the National Gallery in London, the Louvre, and the Uffizi.

“Is something amusing?”

“I’m sorry,” Matt said, realizing he had been smiling. Now? What did that mean? Now, they were hanging in the only place they had ever been. And somewhere, right now, Piero was painting, and so was Leonardo, and Filippino Lippi, and Raphael was in Urbino, just learning to draw; and soon Bellini and Giorgione and Titian—“The panel on the left,” he finished.

“I haven’t seen Lorenzo since last Eastertime. How is he?”

“He wasn’t there,” Matt replied.

“He was a strange old man,” Anna said, looking at the painting on the chest. “Uccello, I mean. More of an old crow than a little bird.”

“You knew him?” Matt asked, remembering that “Uccello” meant “little bird” in the Tuscan dialect.

“I wouldn’t say that. I was just a child. He came to paint a fresco in our house, but he never finished it.”

“You’re lucky to have known him at all. More than anyone else, he was the master of modern perspective.”

“Are you an artist?”

“No,” Matt replied.

“We have met before,” Anna said.

“People often think that,” Matt said, not wanting to contradict her. “I always seem to remind them of someone else.”

“Perhaps I am mistaken. Orlando!” she called, hearing the sound of feet racing down the steps at the end of the hallway. “You will have to excuse me,” she said.

Matt bowed as Anna left.