“WHAT IS IT LIKE IN THE CONVENT?” SANCHA WHISPERED TO me as we began the walk home. She had refused to let me cross the city alone, tucking a kitchen knife in her belt to escort me—a comical precaution, but I had been in too much of a hurry to argue the point with her. Of course accompanying me also allowed her one of her favorite pastimes—watching people. Rather than entering Le Murate with me, she had waited outside on via Ghibellina, amusing herself by assessing visitors coming into the city’s northern gate, weary from crossing the Apennines on the road from Bologna.
Her curiosity now turned from that parade of strangers to the inner workings of Le Murate. “Is it all hair shirts and floggings? And spirits and goblins pursuing the nuns?”
“Goodness, no, Sancha. What makes you think such things?”
She shrugged. “I’ve heard of strange goings-on inside.” She yanked me away from stepping in ox dung. Florence’s backstreets were narrow and crowded. Men jostled one another, relieved themselves in corners, and argued loudly—even throwing punches—over neighborhood politics. A pair of debaters in front of us shoved each other until one of them fell to the ground. Sancha kept me close to the sand-colored walls and stayed on my outside arm, dismissing men ogling her with a scowl.
She was a rare good soul, this fierce little protector of mine. I couldn’t help but smile. “And what have you heard, Sancha?”
“Well . . .” She pulled me close, as if someone could hear her in that din. “My cousin works in the Medici kitchens. Once the great Lorenzo and some of his band climbed the garden walls of the convent at night and peeped in windows. And . . .”
I stopped. “He did what?”
“My lady, men do that on a lark and a dare all the time to see the nuns.”
I was horrified. “I had no idea.”
Sancha nodded, as if confirming something as obvious as the sun rising in the morning. “The Magnifico and his friends returned at dawn, hungry, and laid siege to the kitchen, where my cousin was beginning the morning meal. She heard Lorenzo brag that he had seen the nuns at prayer. He said that over each hovered an angel.” Sancha lowered her voice as if sharing a secret. “But one had a bloodred devil crouching beside her, whispering in her ear, as if they were friends conspiring together. It was later told that the sister confessed a sin to the abbess that required her doing terrible penance.”
Sancha’s expression was so earnest, I knew I could do little to shake her superstitions. But I tried. “It is not like that, Sancha. The sisters do pray, for their own souls and ours, and many do seem rather angelic. But in all the years I was there, I never saw a demon or a ghost.” Of course, I did remember the novice who fled her new husband on her wedding night when he passed out from wine, daring to run away into the night disguised as a servant. She claimed she had been guided safely through the dark streets to Le Murate by a kind gentleman, who at the convent door revealed himself to be St. Peter. I always supposed she’d made up the story to prevent her family dragging her back to her marriage. Who could argue with an apostle?
But I was still incredulous at the thought of carousing men climbing the walls to spy on penitent women just for fun. “Are you describing the night the Magnifico spotted smoke coming from the convent’s kitchens and rushed in to put out a fire?”
Sancha patted my arm. “No, my lady.”
“But,” I began, “he has been such a benefactor to Le Murate since the fire, rebuilding the kitchen and the laundry.”
Sancha just shook her head. “Why do you think he was so nearby that he happened to see smoke and fire in the middle of the night?”
That silenced me. We continued our path home along via dell’Agnolo. I was about to protest her gossip again, when I heard her catch her breath and mutter, “My God, who is that?” Sancha quickened her pace and pulled me along with her.
I glanced up the street in the direction she was looking and spotted the back of a tall man with a mane of curls, wearing a rose-colored tunic. He had just emerged from a small corner row house. In the mustard browns of the surrounding buildings and the crowd of dirt-covered laborers who lived on the north side of Piazza di Santa Croce, the man’s richly colored clothing made him stand out like a colorful rooster among chickens. But it wasn’t until he turned to speak to someone ambling beside him that I recognized the beautiful, smooth-chiseled face. It was Leonardo da Vinci.
“He’s a painter and sculptor,” I said.
“Hmmmm. I thought from the looks of him that he was born of higher stuff.” Sancha seemed pleased to hear he was not.
We trailed behind Leonardo, since we were heading in the same direction. He bowed and spoke to people as he passed. I have to admit I was curious myself. Although artists were regarded as mere craftsmen for hire, I still marveled at such talent milling about town like any ordinary person. But as we approached our house, I slowed, ready to leave the street.
The bells of the Duomo began to chime the hour, a deep resounding tolling that rippled out along the streets from the cathedral, washing up against the walls in swells of sound, then crashing off them in echoes. Other church bells answered, one after another, so all of Florence pealed and throbbed.
“My lady.” Sancha tugged on my arm without taking her eyes off Leonardo’s retreating figure. “I feel the need to attend midday mass. May we go to the cathedral?” The Duomo lay a few minutes away in the direction Leonardo was walking.
I laughed at Sancha’s thinly disguised motivation. She grinned at me. Why not? I thought. And so Sancha and I followed.
Another turn on a corner and the rich red bricks of the Duomo’s legendary dome loomed over Florence’s tiled roofs. I never ceased to marvel at it whenever it popped into my view. I stopped and shaded my eyes to look up at it.
The largest dome in all Christendom, it had risen under the direction of Brunelleschi, an artist-engineer renowned for his temper and strange habits. He based his design for the Duomo on his study of Rome’s Pantheon—a pagan temple—which alone was enough to make most Florentines distrust its construction. Despite citizens amusing themselves by sitting at the cathedral’s base to watch the laborers—and making bets as to when the whole thing would crash to the ground—Brunelleschi successfully finished the egg-shaped dome in fifteen years. The final touch was placing a golden orb and cross atop its lantern. Watching that gleaming ball being hoisted to its spot touching the sky was one of the last things I witnessed as a young girl free to be out on the streets of Florence, before I entered convent school. I remembered the scene vividly—Verrocchio had constructed the orb and overseen lifting it by cranes and pulleys.
I brought my gaze back down to street level, estimating that a young Leonardo had been part of Verrocchio’s band of workers that day—probably the age I was now. Sancha tugged on my arm, and I resumed my gait, allowing her to pull me along so she kept Leonardo in sight.
Just as we stepped into the massive shadows the cathedral threw along its square, Leonardo stopped abruptly. He balled his hands into fists, putting them on his hips, and shouted angrily.
“What’s he doing?” Sancha muttered. We both looked in the direction he’d yelled. A young man in two-toned hose and a tight doublet turned, searching the crowd for the shout. When he spotted Leonardo, he squared his feet and bit his thumb at him—the highest of insults!
Sancha laughed. “Now there’ll be a fight.”
But when Leonardo threw up his hands, spread wide in disbelief and challenge, the man waved him off dismissively and stalked away. Leonardo stayed rooted for a few moments, staring at where the man had been. Then he lowered his arms and stormed into a nearby house.
“What was that all about, do you suppose, Sancha?”
Watching that exchange, her expression had changed from delighted curiosity to gossipy interest and finally to disgust. “That man just dropped a letter into a tamburi.”
“Really?” I asked. Tamburi were locked wooden boxes placed near major churches by the Ufficiali di Notte, the Officers of the Night. In those boxes, Florentines could denounce their neighbors for vice by leaving secret accusations of crimes against decency that brought arrest and trial in front of a tribunal of old men. The tamburi were notorious and much used—but I had never before seen anyone actually drop a denunciation into one. “What do you suppose he is reporting?”
“Well, it could be a number of things, my lady. Gambling, prostitution, lechery, a woman breaking the laws against seductive or overly showy clothes.” She scowled. “Or any kind of bodily pleasure that is not procreative as prescribed by the Bible and could not bring about a baby.”
Sancha spat on the ground. “May the Lord strike down that man! My own father was accused by some willy-wag gossip of debauchery. Not that the jackass didn’t deserve it. He was constantly wasting his wages at the brothels, carousing and buying ale for others to appear like an important man and doing disgusting things when drunk. Imagine the humiliation to my mother. And doing that when he had children to feed! The Officers of the Night tribunal had him beaten until his ribs cracked. But what help was that to us? He was never able to manage the hard work of the vats again. That’s when I had to leave home to work for your husband. My mother started mending clothes. It ruined her eyes.”
Her face smoldered with hatred. “If I ever discover who denounced my father, I am going to find some piece of trash about that man that will stick to him and drop letters in every tamburi I can find. I will—”
Sancha was interrupted by Leonardo emerging onto the street again.
Verrocchio appeared at the door, shouting at his former apprentice’s back.
Clutching a large hammer and sculpting chisel, Leonardo was marching toward the tamburi.
“Leonardo!” Verrocchio called again, louder and more authoritatively this time.
Leonardo ignored him.
Verrocchio threw a cloth he had been wiping his hands with to the ground and ran after Leonardo as fast as he could, his belly jiggling. The older artist didn’t reach his former apprentice until Leonardo had already inserted the chisel up under the lid of the tamburi and raised his hammer to strike.
Verrocchio nabbed him from behind by his arm and yanked so hard the taller and stronger Leonardo had to turn around to face his master. He shook Leonardo’s arm as he spoke. Leonardo listened for a moment before pushing Verrocchio away with such ferocity the artist nearly fell. But Verrocchio managed to steady himself and then took a step forward to slap Leonardo across the face.
I gasped. Verrocchio was in his rights to discipline an apprentice that way, but a free man?
Leonardo raised his hammer as if to strike his old master. Again Verrocchio held his ground. He spoke in a voice too low to overhear, gesturing to the box, to the house. Leonardo’s arm fell. Verrocchio grabbed him by the collar, like a mother would a child’s ear, to drag him back inside. That’s when Verrocchio realized people had stopped to watch them. He spoke urgently to Leonardo and took a step toward the house. But still Leonardo resisted.
More people gathered and began whispering to one another behind their hands.
“Someone is going to report him trying to break into the tamburi,” Sancha muttered, “if that older man doesn’t get that saucy one off the street fast.”
I looked at Sancha, who nodded at me grimly, and then back toward Leonardo and Verrocchio. I’m not sure what got into me. I put my arm through Sancha’s and walked us toward them.
“Maestro Verrocchio,” I called out, and smiled. “How wonderful to meet you again.”
The pair of artists froze, mid-curse. Then a small smile spread across Verrocchio’s face. He let go of Leonardo’s collar and patted his chest. “Look, Leonardo, it is Luigi Niccolini’s wife. We met her outside the Medici palazzo.” He bowed, elbowing Leonardo to do the same. “Remember?” Leonardo merely nodded at me.
“And how are you today, my lady?” Verrocchio asked.
“Well, thank you. On our way to mass, although I think we are late for it now.”
“I trust that you enjoyed your evening at the Medici palazzo?”
“Yes, indeed, I did.”
As Verrocchio and I exchanged these pleasantries, we both watched Leonardo out of the corner of our eyes. The way he held his body made it clear he was poised to return to his dangerous attack on the tamburi. Some of the crowd surrounding us lingered, nosiness keeping them there, watching.
I was determined to keep talking until Verrocchio figured out what to do with Leonardo. “I was disappointed, however, Master Verrocchio, not to see the Marsyas statue you described. I would have very much liked to.”
Verrocchio’s smile broke into a full-fledged grin. He whacked Leonardo’s chest to get his attention, but he spoke to me. “Perhaps my lady would like to see what we are working on right now in my studio? I am expecting a visit from a patron, praise God in all his mercy. But . . .” He elbowed Leonardo again. “Master Leonardo can show and describe some of our ongoing work to you.”
“I would love that, sir. Thank you.” I smiled and looked up into Leonardo’s face expectantly.
Verrocchio cleared his throat loudly and spoke sternly. “Leonardo, I know you wish to wipe gossip and hypocritical moralizing out of mankind’s character. But smashing the tamburi box is no way to do it. And”—he nodded toward me—“Donna Ginevra is waiting.”
With palpable irritation, Leonardo relented, sighing and handing his old master the chisel and the hammer. “My lady,” he finally addressed me, and swept his arm toward the house.