NOVEMBER 18TH, 1494
He doesn’t especially want to leave the Count’s sickbed to go to see the French arrive, but everyone assumes he will be there, and it seems churlish to refuse without a good reason. They march into the city with their fleur-de-lys banners flying, with drums and trumpets, with shields and horses and all the panoply of chivalry. They smell of mud, sweat, and badly risen bread. He told the Count that France is Plato’s timarchy, and the Count tried to smile. He is in the infirmary of San Marco, on the upper floor, where the brothers care for their own sick. His bed is in front of a fresco of the presentation of Jesus at the temple. Now let thy servant depart in peace. San Marco is a relatively new monastery, but he wonders how many of his brothers have departed in sight of that gentle painting. The tapestries have been put up in the infirmary too, covering the lower part of the walls, to keep the cell warmer.
The first of the French to arrive were their quartermasters, to arrange the billeting and provisioning of the troops in the city. Girolamo has heard a quip in the streets that the French have conquered Florence with a stick of chalk, the chalk they used to mark houses where troops can stay. The troops march in now, in splendid style, and Girolamo stands watching them from in front of the Senatorial Palace, standing beside Capponi and Valori and the other men who have taken charge of the city in the sudden absence of the Medici. Girolamo spoke for an amnesty, and against purging Medician supporters. There has been too much of that already. Piero and his brother the young cardinal have fled. Alfonsina Orsini, Piero’s wife, has taken refuge in Santa Lucia with her mother and her young son. Let the rest of them alone, as long as they behave, the sisters and their husbands, and the cousins. It’s time for the city to pull together, not break apart. They are calling Florence’s exiles home, not making more.
The Medici Palace was looted as soon as Piero fled, before Girolamo came back to Florence, but he appealed from the pulpit for the goods to be restored. “They belong to all of us now, not to any of us in particular,” he said, and most of them have indeed been quietly returned. Donatello’s bronze statue of a nude David, which used to stand in the courtyard of the Medici Palace, has been moved to the Senatorial Palace. David is the symbol of little Florence, alone among the great Goliaths, with God on her side. There are already two statues of David in the Senatorial Palace, a thoroughly dressed marble one by Donatello and a bronze by Verrocchio, but one more doesn’t hurt. Now everyone will be able to see Donatello’s David. His bronze Judith and Holofernes has been set up outside the palace, on the dais in the square, next to where Girolamo is standing, shivering, watching endless columns of Frenchmen march through. It’s more to his taste than the extravagantly nude David, which seems designed to turn thoughts to sins of the flesh. The story of Judith celebrates the overthrow of a tyrant.
The people in the streets are cheering the soldiers, and the soldiers seem in a good mood too. Charles arrives eventually, on a high-striding horse, dressed splendidly in cloth-of-gold robes. Capponi welcomes him to Florence. Charles dismounts, with the aid of one of his men. He looks as if the glories of Florence have intimidated him already. His route will have taken him past the cathedral of Santa Maria del Fiore, one of the most splendid cathedrals in Christendom, with its huge dome, the largest in the world. His lords and retinue dismount behind him. They go inside, finally, up the steep stairs and out of the wind. The room they are ushered into has a fresco of St Zenobius, the first bishop of Florence. The other walls are blue, and have been rapidly painted with gold fleur des lys, symbol of both Florence and France. Painters have been stencilling them all night, and there is still a slight smell of paint. Refreshments are offered, fruits, salads, and hams, but Girolamo refuses. He is fasting. He goes over to the window, climbing up on the stone step to continue to watch the parade of soldiers pass through the square. How many men has Charles brought? They seem endless. And the flags, lily after lily.
He can’t think, later, how he can have been so obtuse about the lilies. Like much prophecy, it is obvious only in retrospect. The time of the lilies. Of course. Tears burn at his eyes. He prays to St Jerome and the Holy Mother for the soul of that good man and good friend Giovanni Pico della Mirandola.
The parade eventually ends. While course follows course and Charles eats lampreys and roast boar with the senators, his troops disperse to their various chalkmarked billets, scattered among the narrow streets of Florence. There they will be fed and rested for a day or two until they move on south. The spectators empty out of the square, looking cold and tired. Girolamo turns to face the room, where Capponi and Charles and the other senators and French noblemen are finishing their meal with pastry delicacies and marzipan shaped like leaves and flowers. Charles and Capponi are both red in the face and scowling at each other. “P-Piero offered me t-twice that much,” Charles says, setting down an untouched cream-filled horn.
“We don’t have it and can’t spare it,” Capponi says, leaning forward.
“I could invite P-Piero b-back,” Charles threatens.
“Whether the city would accept him back is a different matter,” Capponi says, smoothly.
“I could b-blow my trumpets,” Charles says.
“Then we could ring our bells,” Capponi counters. “You have brought a great army, but now your soldiers are scattered into the streets and alleyways of a city strange to them, where barricades could be thrown up in minutes.”
Girolamo does not speak, because he knows he does not need to. For a few minutes Charles continues to glare at Capponi, and then he laughs.
“Oh C-Capponi, you are such a c-capon!” he says. He picks up his cream pastry and bites into it decisively. All the French titter sycophantically, and a shiver of distaste runs through Girolamo. How terrible for human souls to abase themselves that way. Then Charles turns to him, crumbs falling from the corners of his mouth. “What n-news, Friar?”
“Count Giovanni Pico della Mirandola is dying,” he says, quite without premeditation.
To his surprise, Charles’s face crumples in grief. “Send doctors,” he snaps to one of his underlings, who bows and summons an underling of his own. Of course, Pico has a reputation among all educated men. But Girolamo is surprised at this reaction. He remembers that the Count was arrested in France, and Charles did nothing for him then. It was Lorenzo, and Girolamo himself, who had written urgently to the Pope to procure his release.
Two French doctors accompany him back to San Marco. Brother Silvestro meets the three of them at the gate, his face doleful. “Too late,” he says, but Girolamo has known it since he understood the riddle of the lilies.
They go upstairs, past the Annunciation. Mary’s painted face seems to hold all hope and all sorrow. The French doctors exclaim over its beauty, in Latin, and Silvestro tells them in the same language that it was painted by Brother Angelico, of Fiesole, and of this house, and they exclaim again. “Truly he understood the incarnation,” one of them says. Girolamo nods, completely agreeing, but does not speak because of the lump in his throat.
They are met at the infirmary door by the Count’s nephew and heir, Gianfrancesco and Benivieni, both of them in tears. “Too late,” Gianfrancesco says to the doctors. “So kind of King Charles, but there is nothing you could have done.” He looks like a younger, plumper, less well-defined version of his uncle, like an apprentice copy of a master’s painting. It seems cruel that he still has breath to animate his body when his uncle lies dead.
“He breathed his last as the French entered Florence,” Benivieni says, wiping his eyes. “In the time of the lilies, as you prophecied, Brother Girolamo.”
Girolamo doesn’t bother to deny the origin of the prophecy. He goes into the room and sees the Count on the bed, looking shrunken and smaller in death. His brothers have cleaned him and dressed him in the Dominican habit he did not live to claim. His face is peaceful. Girolamo smoothes the hair from his cold forehead. He thinks of Angelo struggling to forgive Piero, and for the time being can himself forgive neither Piero nor the servant Cristoforo, who gave the Count another dose of poison. He looks at the painting, the baby Jesus in the arms of Simeon, his mother reaching out her arms towards them. Jesus forgave the soldiers who came to arrest him. He reattached the ear of the one Peter attacked. If Girolamo were Piero’s confessor he would make him walk barefoot to San Diego de Compostela, and then swim to Jerusalem. He abused hospitality, to poison guests at his table. Girolamo is so angry that if Piero were there he would strike him.
“After the Count was given the last rites, he spoke the name of Lorenzo, almost as if he saw him and recognised him,” Silvestro says.
“That’s good,” Girolamo says, pleased that Lorenzo came from heaven to help his friend’s soul at the last. How can God make such a man and let him be lost so soon? How many books would the Count have written, what a harvest of souls would he have brought in, if he had lived? He will be with God, he will understand all the mysteries he always wanted to understand, but the world still needed him.
“Such a loss, such a marvel,” Benivieni says, behind him. “Truly he was the Phoenix of our age.” It’s true, but he resents Benivieni saying it. Now the Count is dead, Benivieni will spend the rest of his life going around telling people how close they were, how he was his best friend. Girolamo sees it so clearly he isn’t sure whether it’s prophecy or just an observation of human nature.
“He will be with God,” Girolamo says, turning to them. His voice is thick with tears. “He will be buried here, in San Marco, with Angelo Poliziano. They both meant to take vows if they lived.”
“I know it, it’s true,” Gianfrancesco says, nodding fervently. “It’s better for his bones to be here than back in Mirandola. I will write to my father and my uncle and to all his friends.”
Girolamo nods, and then remembers Isabella, who no one will write to, who is not the Count’s widow. The doctors bustle about leaving, expressing their regrets. Everyone assures them that King Charles has done all he possibly could. Benivieni leaves, saying he is going to Ficino. He will spread the news through the city, Girolamo sees, with himself in the starring role as chief mourner.
“He will be with God,” he says again, to Gianfrancesco, after Benivieni has gone. “After a little while atoning for his sins in Purgatory and being cleansed.”
Gianfrancesco sobs, harshly, and falls to his knees on the tiled floor, still sobbing. He is in his early twenties, but he still seems like a boy.
“We will have him taken to the church now, to lie there, with candles,” Brother Silvestro says, putting his hand on Gianfrancesco’s shoulder. “Would you take your turn watching, with the brothers?”
Girolamo leaves Silvestro to comfort Gianfrancesco and deal with the practical details. There are a thousand things he should be doing. He has sermons to write, letters to answer, problems within the monastery and outside it, and perhaps he should ensure that Capponi and Charles do not need him. There is also the routine of the offices of prayer, which he should not neglect without urgent need. He stares unseeing at the fresco for a little while, then ignores all of his duties and walks straight back out into the chill of the afternoon. He pulls his habit close around him. The workshops and stalls are closed, for the entry of the French. The muck of the streets has barely been trodden since the troops passed through, but there are knots of men clustered outside inns and taverns, talking. Each group falls silent as he passes, one after the next, watching him, and starting up muttering again when he has passed. He overhears his name. There are no women visible at all. He sees the occasional French soldier, swaggering. When he passes the licenced brothel, stinking as always of perfume and sex, he sees it is full of soldiers, with not a Florentine in sight, apart from the girls. At last he comes to the house on the Via Porto Rossa where he had heard Angelo’s confession. A child opens the door to him, a dark-eyed boy of eight or nine.
“I’m looking for Isabella,” he says.
“I think she’s gone,” the boy says. “The Count has gone. But go up and look.”
The boy disappears into one of the rooms that open off the courtyard on the ground floor, and Girolamo goes up the stairs. On the second floor he taps on the closed door of the room where Angelo died. If she has already gone, he knows he will never be able to find her. He waits, and then hears footsteps, not from inside but from around the portico. Isabella appears, dressed in black, with her hair completely covered, like a widow.
“I didn’t expect you to come,” she says. She shows him into a different room, one hung with tapestries showing the story of Susanna. It’s a little study. On the desk are piles of books, a big silver hourglass, ink pots, a sand-shaker for blotting, and a pile of closely written paper. He sits, awkwardly, in one of the chairs made to his own design, the sleeves of his habit falling forward over his hands.
“I wanted to tell you he was dead,” he says. “I knew no one would. I didn’t want you to hear it on the street.”
“Thank you,” she says. “I knew he would die, and yet until now I held on to a tiny shred of hope. Oh why couldn’t he have lived! Even if he’d taken vows and I’d never seen him again, the world would not have lost him!”
It is how he feels himself. “He spoke well of you. He wanted to take care of you.”
“He has,” she says. “I am going to go to Genoa to set up in a little shop as a seller of ribbons. I will say I am a widow. I couldn’t do it here, where people know me. It’s all arranged. It’s what I was going to do when he joined you. I would have gone already, except that it’s so hard to leave.” She folds the black wool of her sleeve, staring down at it.
Girolamo absently straightens the pile of paper on the table. “Hard to leave Florence?”
She looks up and meets his eyes. “Hard to leave these rooms where we were so happy, where it seems as if he might come bounding in at any moment, saying something I would never have thought of in a century.” She tips her head back and takes a slow breath, then straightens up again, holding on to her self control. “Thank you for coming to tell me,” she says. “That was kind. I would have heard it on the street, the news of his death will echo around the world. But this is better. And thank you for telling me he’d spoken well of me to you.”
“He should have married you,” Girolamo blurts out.
“But then he could not have become a Dominican and joined you,” she says.
“Well, technically he could, if you’d married and then both taken vows at the same time,” Girolamo says.
Isabella tries to smile, and a tear escapes and trickles down her cheek. “He really couldn’t marry me. He was a Count. Any marriage he made would have to have been for alliance and position and worldly status. I’m not the right kind at all. My father was a bean seller!” She shakes her head. “No, I knew he could never marry me, but he was fond of me.”
“He was,” Girolamo agrees. “He said so.”
“Well, now that will have to be enough,” she says. “You’d better take his papers and give them to his nephew. They’re no good to me.”
“You can’t read?”
She looks at him scornfully. “I can read. But I can’t finish his translation of Psalms from Hebrew, or his treatise against the astrologers.”
“I’ll finish that,” Girolamo promises. She gathers up the books and papers and gives them to him, and then when he is standing with the pile in his arms there is nothing to do but go. “Good luck in Genoa,” he says, awkwardly. On the top of the pile is a copy of Ficino’s translation of Plotinus. His eye keeps falling on it as he walks down the stairs, and as he walks back through the streets. Plotinus was a Platonist. He hasn’t read him, but he has heard the Count discuss him. So many conversations they will never have. So many things that he too would never have thought of in a century. Yet he should rejoice for him. All the mysteries are open to him now. He is with God, or soon will be. How he will delight in Heaven! Girolamo feels hot tears spilling from his eyes, and pulls the hood of his robe forward so no one will see.