APRIL 4TH, 1492
He had thought of the villa at Careggi as an overgrown farmhouse in the Roman style, but once they are inside, Girolamo realises that it is better thought of as a country palace. The Count leads him through richly furnished rooms smelling of wax candles and cinnamon and rose petals. It isn’t as big as San Marco, but San Marco houses a whole community, close to a hundred monks drawn together for the glory of God. This villa is dedicated to nothing beyond the worldly glory of the house of Medici. It is vanity, conceit, vainglorious trumpeting of empty earthly pomp. A marble faun’s head leers at him from a polished pedestal. It is harder not to flinch from it than it had been before the demons. The demons feared him. This statue fears nothing.
Girolamo follows close behind the Count, who apparently knows his way around. They see no one but servants, who greet them courteously, until at last they go up a great flight of stairs and turn into a large airy room, frescoed with pagan pastoral scenes. The big rumpled bed is empty, but the rest of the room is full, even after the servant courteously withdraws. A doctor and his assistant are compounding something at a table by the window, grinding with a mortar and pestle that makes a sharp scraping noise and fills the room with the acrid scent of pepper and poppy seeds. A man is writing, bent over a desk. Another is sitting in a chair with an open book on his lap, but making no pretence of reading. A well-dressed young woman is sitting sewing beside the bed. She looks up at them alertly, biting off her thread. Angelo Poliziano is pacing to and fro. He’s a tiny man in scholar’s robes, a poet famous all over Italy for his translations of Homer and his original poetry in Italian. He works as one of Lorenzo’s secretaries, and was once tutor to his children. He turns to the Count as they come in. “Giovanni! You found him!” The Count smiles at him, his face full of fondness.
“Yes, Angelo, I found him.”
“I am here,” Girolamo says.
“Thanks be to God,” Angelo says, taking his hands.
He knows Angelo—the man comes to his sermons and has visited him at San Marco—but they are not such good friends that this could pass for a normal greeting. “Will you take refreshment?” Angelo asks. “Wine? Beer? Some bread and cheese?”
Girolamo shakes his head. “I’m fasting today,” he says.
“Water, then?” Angelo offers.
The man in the chair leaps to his feet, paying no heed to the book which falls to the floor. “Another priest?” he says. “What are you doing here? They gave my father absolution yesterday.”
So this was Piero, Magnificent Lorenzo’s heir. Girolamo doesn’t think much of him. His face isn’t attractive, and his petulant expression is less attractive still. Petty and spoiled, he thinks. Piero is only twenty years old, but is married already to a Roman aristocrat, an Orsini like his mother. People say he thought himself too good for Florence. When you think you’re too good to marry your neighbours, you start expecting them to be your servants. Lorenzo’s mother and grandmother had been from Florentine merchant families, but the Medici thought themselves beyond that now. Or so Girolamo has heard people say. Others, the friends of the Medici, say that the Orsini alliance means that Florence now has priceless access to the Orsini mercenary captains, which makes the city safer.
“The Count asked me to come,” Girolamo says, evenly. “I’ll leave if I’m not wanted.” He only half hopes they’ll take him at his word, the other half is now wildly curious to meet Lorenzo.
“Oh, you’re Girolamo Savonarola,” Piero says, peering at him curiously. He must have recognised Girolamo’s voice, the Ferrarese accent.
Girolamo nods.
“We’re very glad you’ve come,” Angelo says, releasing his hands and turning to Piero. “Your father asked to see him.”
Piero nods. “Yes, another last minute obsession. Father wants to add another monk to his collection.” He turns away and walks back towards his chair.
Angelo frowns after him. “You don’t have to wait here,” he says.
“No, I’ll wait,” Piero says, sitting down again. He picks up the fallen book and absently smoothes the crumpled pages with his hand. “I’ll wait because sooner or later my father will remember he has an heir and add me to the list of people he wants to see. And if not, even if that never happens, then very soon now, Angelo, there will be a time when I am here and he is not. You’re not my tutor anymore. You will be sorry then you let a ragged monk see him and kept me out.”
Girolamo looks down at his habit, which is indeed a little frayed. He should darn it, for the dignity of San Marco, but he never seems to remember about it when there is time. It seems very strange to him that Piero is being kept away from his father, or that Lorenzo wouldn’t want to see his heir.
“I apologise for Piero’s behaviour,” Angelo says, stiffly. “I think I still hold enough of the office of tutor to be allowed to do that.”
“I understand. He’s losing a father,” Girolamo says, looking from Angelo’s flushed face to Piero’s sulky one.
“We’re all losing a father,” Angelo says.
“No, you’re not,” Piero says, glaring at him. “You may be losing a dear friend and benefactor, and you may be distressed by this, but it is only I who am losing a father.”
“And I,” says the woman by the bed, looking up from her sewing again. “You are not Father’s only child, Piero, nor even the eldest.”
“You know girls don’t count, Lucrezia,” Piero says.
“This is Mistress Salviati,” Angelo says, uncomfortably, with a gesture towards her. She stands, and Girolamo sees that her belly is swollen in the late stages of pregnancy.
“God be with you,” he says, bowing his head to her politely.
“Sorry to involve you in our petty family squabbles,” she responds. “My husband speaks very highly of your sermons.” This is Lucrezia de’ Medici, two years older than Piero and, unlike him, married to a Florentine, Jacopo Salviati, who does indeed come regularly to Girolamo’s sermons. She has given him one son already. Girolamo blessed the boy in his father’s arms in the Baptistery of San Giovanni, not long ago. This is the first time he has met Lucrezia. She has dark honey-coloured hair, worn neatly coiled under a matron’s cap. She isn’t beautiful, but she burns with a fierce independent intelligence. Virtues of the soul have always seemed to Girolamo to be better than beauty, though of course it is best of all when they are united, as with the Count.
“Thank you,” he says, awkwardly, thinking that Lucrezia is worth two of her brother.
“Come out to Lorenzo, and never mind all this,” the Count says, putting a hand on Girolamo’s arm.
The doctors are still grinding away, intent on their work. The man writing puts down his pen and stretches a cramp out of his fingers, but does not turn to pay any attention to the spat. No matter how big and lavish the room, it reminds Girolamo of many other rooms where families have gathered and squabbled waiting for death. They have mostly been small and close and smelling of sickness, but for all that, the atmosphere is the same. An alabaster bowl of precious stones sits on the bedside table here, and a painted Venus hangs on the wall, but riches do not help, not now. They can do nothing more for Magnificent Lorenzo. He only hopes they have not damned him already. Angelo and the Count seem concerned in a way he does not quite understand.
They lead him out onto a big upper balcony, large enough to be considered a small room, but open to the air on two sides. Even here, essentially out of doors, the walls are painted with nymphs and shepherds. The roof extends out above them, and there are floor-to-ceiling pillars on the two open sides, perfectly proportioned. Between them he can see the lush farmlands falling away, and the distant hills. He takes it all in at a glance, for it is the dying man that compels his attention. He is lying on a small bed, and another man sits beside him on a stool, reading aloud in gentle tones. The man on the bed glows with a clear blue light, so bright that Girolamo almost wants to shield his eyes against it. The colour is serene, celestial, the deep clear blue of a midsummer evening. The Count and the poet do not appear to notice the glow. The man reading breaks off as they come out. The word he stops on is Anima, the Latin word for soul.
“Lorenzo, Marsilio, let me make known to you Brother Girolamo of San Marco,” Angelo says formally.
The little man introduced as Marsilio sets down his book carefully, marking his place with a ribbon, then stands and bows. He has silver hair beneath a red hat, and a lined face. Girolamo recognises him at once: he is Marsilio Ficino, a teacher and translator of Plato. Rumour says he is a sodomite. He is another man like Angelo that the Medici have educated and moulded into their creature. Girolamo has seen him before, in church, but they have not spoken. He bows now in return.
“Could you try to talk to Piero? He’s very upset,” Angelo says to Marsilio. “It’s getting harder and harder to keep him away.”
Marsilio nods. “I’ll do my best,” he says, more loudly than he had been reading. “Or should we let him see his father now?”
“I’ll speak to him soon,” Lorenzo says. “Let me have a little while more in peace.”
Marsilio nods and goes in.
Girolamo looks down at the man on the bed. He is ordinary, dark hair streaked with grey, a beaky nose, a face much like his daughter’s, but worn with pain. Not old, middle-aged only, but certainly dying. There is nothing unusual about him except the celestial light shining from him. “Stay, Pico,” Lorenzo says. “And you stay too, my recording angel.”
The Count stands at the foot of the bed. Angelo walks over to the wall of pillars and stands staring out over the countryside. His head only just comes over the balustrade.
“Sit down, First Brother,” Lorenzo says, looking up at Girolamo. He starts, realising he had been standing there like an ox, not speaking or moving. “Not what you expected?” Lorenzo asks. His tone is playful, mocking.
“Not at all,” he says, and lowers himself to the stool where Marsilio had been sitting beside the bed. This close, he can smell the sickly odour of the dying man’s skin, and the jasmine scent they have used to try to cover it. He has read of an odour of sanctity that attends dying saints, but there is no sign of that.
“I just wanted to get a look at you,” Lorenzo goes on.
“I came because the Count of Concordia expressed concern for your soul,” he says, perching uncomfortably on the stool, drawing in his knees and elbows, forcing his shoulders not to hunch. If he stays here long he will have a backache.
Lorenzo looks serenely up at him. “But now you’re not concerned?” he suggests.
“I don’t know what to think. There are snares and deceptions in this world.” He has seen many dying people, many who had received the last rites, but never anything at all like this. What is it? It isn’t a halo, at least not as portrayed in art. And why is it blue? He looks at the Count, who is staring at Lorenzo, and then back down at the glow. “Is this from God?”
“I am from God, you are from God, we are all from God.”
“It is not from Hell,” he says, feeling sure of it, because the things of Hell shrink from him in fear, and this light continues to shine undimmed from the dying man.
The Count lets out a sigh of relief. “You are speaking of the glow? I can see it, a little, and Marsilio sees it clearly.” What a Dominican the Count will make, how useful it will be to have another at his side who can perceive such things, Girolamo thinks. “It is from God. I thought so. The colour—everything. But I feared—the world is full of deceptions. I knew you’d be able to tell. That’s why I brought you.”
Angelo crosses himself without turning.
Girolamo turns his attention to Lorenzo. “But what are you, banker, merchant, prince, to have this vouchsafed?” This is a miracle even greater than a camel passing through the eye of the needle.
“A man, only a man.”
Girolamo bows his head. He wishes now he had come before, to know how long this glow, this miracle, has been shining around Lorenzo. Had his stubborn pride, always his worst sin, kept him from knowing a saint on Earth? He prays to Saint Lucy that his eyes might be opened, and to the Merciful Virgin for forgiveness. “How long have you been like this?” he asks.
“I have been like this on occasion for some time, but continuously only since I have been dying.”
“Saints sometimes have a visible glow, in the Golden Legend,” he says, tentatively.
“And philosophers in Diogenes Laërtius,” the Count adds.
“Will you give me your blessing?” Lorenzo asks.
“If you live, you must give up usury and manipulation of the state,” he says, as he has been planning to say.
An incipient smile becomes a grimace of pain on the dying man’s face. “If I live, I will.” They both know he will not live. “Take care of my city, Brother Girolamo.”
Girolamo wants to protest, to say, as he had said to the Count, that Florence is God’s city. And yet, as Lorenzo lies there dying he is resplendent with the pure light of God’s love and favour. The glow shines through him like sunlight through the Virgin’s robe in a stained glass window. Who is he to shun a man granted a miracle of this kind? Furthermore, in asking him to care for Florence, Lorenzo is showing that he knows that it will fall to Brother Girolamo’s part to look after the city in future, which means God must have given the prophetic gift to him, as He has to Girolamo. Their eyes meet. “I will take care of it.”
“And take care of Pico, and Angelo, and my children too, so far as you may.”
The Count is openly weeping.
“I wish I had known you,” Girolamo says, in all honesty. He has never known anyone else who had any gift of prophecy. They could have had such fascinating conversations.
“Too late, Brother,” Lorenzo says, shaking his head a little.
He leans forward, feeling his back twinge at the motion. He moves the book that Marsilio has left lying on the bed. He had thought it was a testament, now he sees that it is a volume of Plato.
“Marsilio read that at Cosimo’s deathbed too,” the Count says, taking it up gently.
“It’s good to give comfort,” Lorenzo says, and Girolamo does not know whether he means that hearing Plato was a comfort to him or that reading it was a comfort to Marsilio.
“Plato saw as much of the truth as anyone could by the light of human reason, and it is good to have independent confirmation of these things,” Girolamo says, looking from Lorenzo to the Count, who has convinced him of this much in their conversations. “But it is only through divine revelation and the sacrifice of our Lord that we can be saved.”
“There is no contradiction,” the Count says, very confidently.
Girolamo can’t argue, not with the divine light so clear before him. He sighs and sets his hand on Lorenzo’s forehead. The light does not change, not even a flicker, nor does he feel anything beyond the natural heat of human flesh. He must have hurt Lorenzo inadvertently though, because the dying man flinches for an instant at the touch, then stills himself and closes his eyes as Girolamo begins to speak the blessing. As Girolamo straightens and makes to rise, Lorenzo’s eyes open again. His face looks troubled.
“I will pray for you,” Lorenzo says.
“And I for you,” Girolamo replies, surprised.
As he begins to stand, he sees there is another bowl of precious stones beside the bed. These are flat, and some of them are carved with words and faces. He stops, half bent, then sits again. Inside his habit he still has the copy of Pliny with the green stone he picked up in Santa Lucia the night before. He has prayed and wondered, but has no indication why the demons were wailing around it, or what he is meant to do with it. “Perhaps God sent something for you,” he says. “You know about stones.”
“I believe some of them have virtues, yes,” Lorenzo says, cautiously. “Marsilio knows more.”
“Last night I found something,” he says. “I think it may have been meant for you.” He stumbles his way through an explanation of the nuns, the demons, and the library. Angelo comes over to join them and listens. Lorenzo smiles through his pain when Girolamo gets to the moment he was soaked with holy water. At last he draws out the book, opens it, and sets the green stone on Lorenzo’s glowing palm.
“Oh!” Lorenzo says, closing his fingers on it. “I never thought I should see this.”
“What is it?” the Count asks. “Is it the stone of Titurel?”
“It has many names … and none of them matter now, I think,” Lorenzo says. “Marsilio would like to see it … but not now. No. The time may come. This is for you, Brother. It came to you, and you can use it. You should keep it with you and take it when you go. This could—” He stops, and shakes his head a little. “I may not speak. Keep it with you. Remember the harrow, and remember me, and the love of God.”
Girolamo isn’t likely to forget the last. He takes back the stone and turns it curiously in his fingers. The stone of Titurel? Some Platonic significance that Marsilio Ficino would appreciate? But meant for him? It is translucent, and the central hollow fits his thumb. He slips it back into the book, and the book inside his habit.