The House of Medici Read online

  The following morning they had returned and had spent the whole day in conference with the abbess, occasionally calling in those nuns, like the chapter clerk, the procuratrix, the cellarer and the gatekeeper, whose positions of authority were essential to the smooth running of the community.

  Finally, to her great surprise, but not, apparently to the abbess’, they had singled out Suora Maddalena and interviewed her in the abbess’ presence. It had been a strange interview. Much of the time was spent summarising the purpose and detail of their visit and they seemed obsessed with the stringency of their examinations. Their questions, when they reached them, had been oblique and their purpose hard to determine, although it appeared from her demeanour that the abbess knew what they were about.

  It was only after they had left that she had explained her thoughts to Maddalena. ‘I think they were covering themselves; nervously aware of the source of the recent patronage we have enjoyed and presuming that you were The Magnificent One’s representative here. They kept talking about his past generosity to San Marco and how one of his conditions had been the replacement of the Silvestrines by the Strict Dominicans. They had convinced themselves you would be reporting back to him in due course, and wanted to assure you of the diligence of their review.’ She had giggled as she continued ‘They looked so nervous; as if they thought it was you interviewing them.’

  They had waved them off with a mixture of relief and trepidation. What would their report say and what would be its consequences? In the past, convents receiving negative reports had been harshly disciplined and their interpretation of the Rule made so stringent that life for many had become intolerable. Maddalena hoped that would not happen to San Damiano. Madonna Arcangelica’s light touch in interpreting the Rule was, she thought, what made life here bearable.

  ***

  There was a bang as the door at the base of the tower slammed shut in the wind and then the slow step, scrape of the abbess’ footsteps. So she had decided to come, after all. Perhaps, with the departure of her ‘torturers’ (her word) she would be less preoccupied with men’s politics. Maddalena hoped so. She wanted to talk about the family, although, on consideration, it was going to be impossible to describe their lives over those next ten years without referring to the political background that seemed to surround almost every aspect of what they did or said.

  A quiet knock on the door and at once she responded. ‘Please enter, Reverend Mother. Our chairs await us.’

  Madonna Arcangelica smiled as her face appeared round the door, perhaps embarrassed at her red face and breathless expression, but Maddalena had grown used to the manner of her arrival and as always, gave her time to settle. Not that she needed it today. Maddalena had hardly sat down when she began talking.

  ‘During a quiet moment, while our visitors were with us, I was thinking about our last conversation; how the years immediately following the Magnificent One’s return from exile signalled something of a change in him and in his approach to life. Did matters settle down thereafter? It sounds as if they were very busy years, presumably for both of you: your involvement with the bank, then the Convent of San Marco and finally, I believe, work at San Lorenzo? And Cosimo’s other projects, the new house, and of course, the politics. Did you, I wonder, ever see anything of the family?’

  Maddalena smiled inwardly. The family. How strange that their minds should have been travelling on such parallel paths.

  ‘Of course! You have to remember that after our return from exile, almost everything was run from the family home. First from the Palazzo Bardi in Oltrarno, then from the Casa Vecchia on Via Larga and finally from the Palazzo Medici, next door.’

  ‘When did you finally move in there?’

  ‘There was no single date; no occasion when Cosimo said, “Tomorrow we move next door.” It wasn’t like that. Apart from anything else, the work was not truly finished, and, I am sure, isn’t even now. When I left to come here work was yet being done, and no doubt the Casa Vecchia still stands next door. I am sure one of these days, they will knock it down and extend the palazzo even further. Cosimo and Piero talk of using that side to build a separate servants’ wing, with stables and storage rooms, but there are still other houses to be bought and demolished before that dream can be made into a reality.

  ‘What I can tell you is that as soon as each part of the new house was finished, we started to use it. Perhaps the most significant change took place just over a year ago, when Cosimo decided to move the books of account into his new apartment, because he wanted the visiting dignitaries to start visiting us there, rather than at the old house. That, I suppose, was when the new palazzo became acknowledged as the centre of the Medici world.

  ‘I wish you could see Cosimo’s apartment on the piano nobile. It’s on the south side of the house, overlooking Via Gori on the outside and the main cortile within. It is magnificent. On the piano nobile, and right in the core of the house, he has built his chapel. He wants to call it the Chapel of the Magi. He has great plans for fresco walls, and has asked Benozzo Gozzoli to make them; although they were still plain when I left. But the marble floor is complete and so is the carved wooden ceiling.

  ‘That chapel is Cosimo’s place of retreat. The right hand sacristy has a secret staircase, giving access to the attic of the antechamber, where the arms are kept for emergencies, and the sacristy on the left has stairs going down on the outside of the palazzo, as a secret escape route. It was only when he showed them to me that I realised how little he has trusted people since his exile.

  ‘Along a short corridor from that, are Cosimo’s chamber and his studiolo. He ordered the servants to put all the books and documents, including the account books, into boxes and carry them there from the Casa Vecchia. Then he sent everyone away and the two of us spent three days just sorting them out, putting them on shelves and organising the layout of the tavola.

  ‘Of course, there isn’t really a banking table in the Palazzo Medici—the Florentine tavola is in the Mercato Nuovo but Cosimo said he felt more comfortable writing on one so he had a similar table installed in the studiolo. It even had a green cloth covering, like the real banking tables, just to make him feel at home.

  ‘The other comforting thing is his camera, which is not just a bedroom rather a great salon, occupying the whole corner of the building above the loggia pubblica, where the Via Gori meets the Via Larga. It is a wonderful room with seven windows. If you look out of the windows above Via Gori by daylight, you can see the Church of San Lorenzo across the piazza, and at night, if you leave the curtains part open, and when the cresset lamps are lit all along the road, the light flickers in through the windows. It makes the azure and gilding on the coffered ceiling dance like a night sky.’

  ‘And did you maintain your . . . sleeping arrangements there, as you had at the Palazzo Bardi?’ The abbess had the old twinkle back in her eye. Maddalena was certain now that there was one great, unasked question that returned repeatedly to the abbess’ mind, and that one day, inevitably, it would be voiced. Meanwhile, Maddalena thought, there was no harm in teasing her a little longer.

  ‘Of course. That is the whole point of what I am telling you. The appartamento—the whole group of rooms I have described—was our private retreat. I was allowed to use the secret ways, to pray alone in the chapel if I wished and given free access to the studiolo, where even to this day, my little bed remains. At least, I assume it does. Of course, entrance to the salon was by personal invitation only; Cosimo could not have someone, not even me, wandering in there when he was talking business to the pope’s representative, or a duke. But all he had to do was cough, and in I would go.’

  ‘Did he . . . cough frequently?’ Madonna Arcangelica’s expression was as angelic as her name. It was the closest she had ever come to the question, but still, Maddalena thought, too early to answer it.

  ‘By the time the chapel and the apartment was finished and we moved in, I was in my fiftieth year and Cosimo nearly sixty-seven, so there wa
s much less . . . coughing than there had been back in Rome, or even at the Palazzo Bardi. But I would still join him there and lie naked beside him, under silk sheets. Often we would open the curtains and watch the lights flickering on the ceiling: Cosimo would lay plans for the future and I would lie beside him and assure him that one day they would all come to fruition.’

  ‘You never contradicted him?’

  ‘No. Never once. I knew him well enough to know that it was not my judgement he welcomed but my reassurance. It didn’t matter. I had a part to play; a part that was important to him, and I played it to the best of my ability.’ Maddalena looked at the abbess with cool, level eyes. ‘And in so doing, I was sure I was making as much use of my life as I might have done by following my father and becoming a physician.’

  The abbess sat upright, surprised. ‘Would that ever have been possible? In Palermo?’

  Maddalena smiled wistfully. ‘We can all have our dreams and that had always been mine.’ She shook her head. ‘Until slavery got in the way.’

  ‘But even that, you turned to your advantage?’ Madonna Arcangelica’s face was motherly, and full of admiration.

  ‘I could have done nothing without Cosimo. Throughout our many years together he has always . . .’ she paused, trying to find the right word, ‘. . . he has always lifted me up.’ She shook her head, casting her mind back, sifting the unreliable evidence of memory. ‘He has never pretended I am anything other than what I am. Yet in every situation I have shared with him, he has always elevated me when another, lesser man, might have sought to diminish my position, if only to show his own superiority.’

  Madonna Arcangelica shook her head. ‘It never works. Try as they may, the self-aggrandisement of small men always ends up diminishing them even further.’

  Maddalena looked into her eyes and saw a lifetime of confessors, of visiting priests, of bishops and of patriarchs. Now it was her turn to shake her head. ‘To a discerning audience, perhaps. But in front of the baying crowd, I can assure you, the smallest cockerel learns to strut and so often, is praised for it.’

  ‘Is that the reality of Florentine politics? Is that what it all comes down to? The baying mass?’

  Maddalena nodded. In the last twenty years she had watched Cosimo grow weary and cynical. Seen him reinterpret his father’s words as a chimera of their original meaning. ‘If you wish to maintain the pretence of a democratic republic, then yes, it appears it does. All I know is that it has exhausted him. He would have been happier just to be a banker and a farmer, backing his own judgement and living with the consequences. It was the pretence of politics that wore him down. That and the unreliability of other people..’

  ‘But the Medici Bank? Has that not also contributed to the weariness of his old age? Making money on that scale cannot have been easy?’

  Maddalena looked at Madonna Arcangelica and once again wondered at her perception. How many times had the abbess met Cosimo? He had never told her, but they could probably have been counted on the fingers of one hand. Yet here, in the quiet isolation of the convent, she managed to feel her way into people’s lives with an uncanny sensitivity.

  ‘Cosimo always used to say to me that banking is complex and wearisome except to those who were born to it, and there is no doubt, he was. But the success of the Medici Bank is not just a reflection of personal flair in Cosimo and his father, Giovanni di Bicci.’

  ‘What then?’ The abbess really did appear to care.

  For a moment, Maddalena felt her heart sink. How could she possibly explain so complex a matter in a few simple sentences? But Cosimo had. Once. To her. He had been troubled by gout and had retired to bed in the middle of the day, ‘to ease the pain’. At least, that’s what he had said. Maddalena remembered smiling to herself as she climbed into the great bed beside him. Retired to bed to avoid his wife, more likely. They had had another of their rows.

  ***

  PALAZZO BARDI, FLORENCE

  13th May 1435

  ‘Do you feel happier, dearest, now the new contracts are in place?’

  Maddalena wriggles her toes under the silk sheets and wonders whether Cosimo can do the same, beside her. She has seen no evidence that his toes are hurting since he climbed into bed. In fact he seems in remarkably good spirits. His age is showing, though. He keeps repeating himself.

  For a moment she wonders whether to slide a hand onto his belly, but decides against. He seems more in a mood to talk. Perhaps on balance I’ll stick to the bank. Safe ground.

  ‘Very much so.’ She knows immediately from his tone of voice that she’s in for a lecture. She lies back against the soft pillows. There are worse places to listen to a speech. And worse ways to spend an afternoon.

  Cosimo folds his hands behind his head and addresses the ceiling. ‘The bank owes its success to four guiding principles; established by my father and, I hope, faithfully followed by me ever since. The contracts have, as you have so perceptively recognised, ensured that those principles are, once again, adhered to.’

  Beside him, she wonders why the famous principles had been allowed to drift in the first place, but she knows the answer: parentado and in particular, an excess of loyalty to the Bardi family. They may have been good bankers a century ago, but the modern generation are useless. He doesn’t want to be reminded of that.

  ‘First, we must have a team of qualified and experienced people. Now, once again, in every branch, the bank has experienced professional managers to look after the day-to-day running of its affairs.’

  Yes she thinks. It has now. And to your benefit. That means you will be untroubled by the trivia of administration and can concentrate on making the important decisions and policies. More than that: once you have announced a policy, the managers, especially your General Managers, have the responsibility of ensuring that it is adhered to, day-by-day. And now the Bardi have gone, you can be a little more confident that they will.

  ‘Second, as Director, I must make clear policy decisions, and having announced them, I must allow my managers to manage. I must not keep looking over their shoulders and questioning every action they take.’

  She feels herself nodding. That is one of your strengths. You make judgements about people and situations and then stand by your own judgement. If you are right, the bank is profitable and if not, it incurs losses. And believe me; both have arisen in the years I have known you. Haven’t they?

  ‘The third key is flexibility. The most profitable branch of the Medici Bank is and probably always will be the Rome branch.’

  Yes, of course. We call it the Rome branch, but it is only based in Rome when the pope and the Court of Rome are sitting there, as they were when you first bought me and took me there with you.

  ‘In the last twenty years, it has followed the Ecumenical Council; first to Florence for four years, then to Bologna, then Ferrara and then in 1439 it returned to Florence once again for four more years, before returning once again to Rome.’

  Yes. I remember. You seem to forget I was there. While the Council was here in Florence, the pope established himself at Santa Maria Novella and we rented a house in the piazza opposite to act as our Curia branch. A charmless and pretentious house I always thought. But you seemed to like it; perhaps because it made us a lot of money.

  ‘That same flexibility applies to the commercial branches. The Medici Bank has opened branches in response to market opportunities and we will not be afraid to close them again if circumstances change or because we acknowledge that we have made a mistake.’

  She turns on the pillow. ‘You were always good at admitting your mistakes, dearest. To be fair, you have not made many. I’m still not sure a branch in Ancona will work, though.’

  She feels him nodding beside her, still addressing the ceiling. ‘No I don’t think I have, have I. Not too bad, on balance. Not too many errors of judgement. And don’t worry about Ancona. I know what I’m doing there. We need Sforza as a friend.’

  Beside him, she regrets the implied criti
cism and quickly changes the subject. ‘You said there were four principles? There is one more?’

  He falls for it. ‘Structure. The way the Medici Bank is organised. That is the fourth, and in many respects, the most important, principle.’

  She relaxes, knowing it is a subject he feels strongly about. With a bit of luck, her badly chosen comment about Ancona will be forgotten.

  ‘Giovanni Benci and I have studied the failures of the great banking dynasties of the past; the banks of Orlando Bonsignori in Siena, of Francesco Datini in Prato, and of the Bardi, the Peruzzi and the Acciaiuoli here in Florence. Each of them in their time has made the same mistake; they structured their company as one great partnership. The result was, when disaster befell them, through trade, or the failure of some king or prince to repay his loans, that the whole edifice collapsed. Giovanni and I intend to avoid that risk.’

  Maddalena smiles. She knows full well that at the New Year, two months earlier, on the 15th March, when Cosimo formed the new company with Giovanni Benci, they organised it on a different basis. Each of the branches was designed to be an accomanda—a special form of partnership, whose liability is limited to the extent of its capital. And each of these branches is now itself affiliated to the senior accomanda—the parent partnership. ‘And that has many benefits?’ Keep him going a bit longer. He’s enjoying himself.

  Beside her, Cosimo presses back on his elbows and arches his back. ‘Of course. Consider for a moment. If a branch partnership is an accomanda, the liability of its partners is limited to the invested capital. That means as a partner, you cannot lose more than you have invested.’

  ‘You mean the owners cannot be sucked down?’

  ‘Exactly. Local losses are contained locally, and nobody can sue the parent company, or the investors in that parent company, to make good the losses that the branch has incurred.