The House of Medici Page 7

  Inwardly, Maddalena smiled. If their relationship was to grow and then to endure, she knew she couldn’t just pour out her life’s history. It was necessary to have a little magic; some fascination that brought the abbess back, time after time; like the secret answer to an unstated question. And in a house full of virgins, she was pretty sure she knew the question that was hovering, unspoken. She could see it in the yearning expression and the girlish hesitation, and in response, she was equally sure that she would delay answering it for as long as she could.

  Their private discussions had been going well. So well, indeed, that in addition to their fortnightly assignations high up in the tower, they had also begun to have a number of less secretive conversations in the abbess’ private parlour. Already they were comfortable in each other’s company and their exchanges had not only grown increasingly warm, but had also become more trustful and as a result, slowly, but steadily, more intimate.

  At the first of their ‘parlour’ conversations, no doubt emboldened by the greater familiarity of her surroundings, and perhaps feeling that it was her turn to offer information; the abbess had shied away completely from questioning Maddalena and instead had taken a new tack, explaining how the convent had come to be formed and how it had changed over the years of its long history. By the end, Madonna Arcangelica had grown quite candid and had made a number of direct references to the financial problems the convent had faced over recent years. She admitted quite openly that Cosimo’s recent generosity had almost certainly saved the convent from closure and for that, she said, she would be eternally grateful. But all of the time, Maddalena sensed that she was holding back; waiting to discuss another subject that she was not yet prepared to ask about.

  Their next conversation had been unplanned; Maddalena had knocked on the door of the abbess’ parlour, intending simply to ask a couple of procedural questions about the operation of their Rule, but to her surprise, the abbess, having answered both questions, and perhaps feeling she had paid her way with the previous week’s divulgences, had returned to questioning.

  But still she remained on safe ground, asking Maddalena how Florence fared and general questions about life in the city; the sort of questions that would have embarrassed neither had any of the discrete interrupted them, or indeed, had one or more of the ascoltatrici been hovering and performing their duties as chaperones.

  Maddalena had rewarded her with a long explanation of the city’s recent history, describing some of the personalities that today dominated its governance, its commercial success and its artistic development. Madonna Arcangelica appeared particularly interested in hearing about religious paintings and sculptures and Maddalena found she could hold her entranced, simply by giving details of the latest works by Fra Filippo Lippi and by Donatello.

  In the course of the conversation, it was, perhaps, inevitable that she should refer to some of the scandals that both of these artists seemed to attract, and it was while describing how Lippi had run off with a nun from Prato by the name of Lucrezia Buti, (a nun who, it was well known, had recently borne him a son) that Maddalena finally confirmed her suspicions. Beneath her saintly manner, the abbess’ secret preoccupation was with the great unknown: the opposite sex.

  But whether it was her natural reticence, their joint awareness of the likelihood of interruption, or simply the inappropriateness of discussing such matters in the austere and formal rooms of the abbess’ personal quarters, Maddalena had not been pressed for further details and she, in turn, had chosen not to volunteer them.

  ***

  Remembering this, back in the more remote atmosphere of her own room, Maddalena now made polite conversation about the seasons, and the weather, and waited for the question that she knew must eventually come. Finally, the abbess could hold it back no longer. ‘May I ask you a personal question?’

  Maddalena inclined her head to one side and waited. Not for her to presume what the question was; the abbess must ask it herself. But after years of flirting with ambassadors and clients of the Medici Bank, she could play this game effortlessly. ‘By all means.’

  The abbess put a protective hand to her face, as if wondering whether its colour showed the heat she felt rising within. It did. Patiently, Maddalena waited.

  ‘What is it like? Being with a man?’ As she said the words, she gasped at her own audacity and immediately, with a flurry of words, tried to explain. ‘It is the younger nuns. It is a subject that, despite all our teachings and our example, they return to, again and again. They wonder what might have been, in another life; what they may have missed.’ She sat back, appearing embarrassed and regretting her outburst, but despite her discomfort, the appetite in her face for Maddalena’s reply seemed undiminished.

  Maddalena paused. Although expected, the question surprised her in its boldness. It was a good question; a question that could be answered at two levels: in one short, lascivious sentence, or more fully. And as she chose the latter, Maddalena realised that she had, in her own way, been willing the abbess to take them in this direction for some time. The fuller reply would allow her to explain how, having come into her life, Cosimo de’ Medici had taken it over and dominated it, and in so doing, had changed it forever. But more than that. Now she realised that in answering the abbess’ question, she might also be able to answer the question that had been growing in her mind ever since she had watched him depart. What had been the purpose of her life with Cosimo and what, if anything had been its value?

  It was a question that had never arisen during her many years with him. There had, simply, never been the time to ask it. But now, having arrived here at this place of contemplation, with more time to think than she had ever had in her life before, it was a question that kept welling up inside her and which, increasingly, demanded an answer.

  She felt herself nod gently, a decision made. She had steered herself into being asked this question and now she would have to address it, as best she could.

  ‘I shall answer your question as fully as I can. It is a large question, and my reply may be a long one. Due to the nature of your question, my reply may frequently tell of things that are beyond your experience, here in this isolated and holy place. But at all times, I shall try to tell you the truth as I see it, simply and honestly.’

  She saw the abbess nod in reply and took that as an affirmation of the path she had chosen. ‘The question contains many parts and sometimes I may have to ask myself a question, in order to answer. You ask what it is like to be with a man. In my life, I have known only one. With that one man have I shared experiences, hopes, fears, setbacks and despondency, success and elation, secrets, intimacies, affection, respect, and finally, love. That man is Cosimo di Giovanni de’ Medici and it is through my life with him that I shall try to answer your question.’

  Madonna Arcangelica was watching her thoughtfully. Her face seemed at once to contain relief, satisfaction, and expectation. Maddalena wondered whether the abbess had already realised the unstated question that lay beside her own enquiry and in so doing, if she had recognised the growing self-doubt that had led her to ask it. There was no way of knowing. Madonna Arcangelica’s expression was too bland to tell. She said nothing, but prepared herself and sat back in her chair, her hands in her lap, no longer gripping each other in anguish but at rest, as Maddalena began.

  ‘I have told you how we came to meet, when he bought me, on the slave market, in Venice. Within days, we were on the road, travelling to Rome, where at that time, he was running the Corte di Roma branch of the Medici Bank. This was a travelling branch, which followed the pope’s court wherever it went. During my time with Cosimo it resided in Florence for three years, spent a year in Bologna, and another in Ferrara, and then finally returned to Florence for another four years before going back to Rome. But at the time of which I speak, it was situated in Rome itself, and that is where I went with Cosimo.

  ‘He had rented a house in Tivoli and that was where, despite one of the Medici Bank staff rules being �
�thou shalt not keep a woman in the house” he took me. Perhaps they thought slaves didn’t count. I was not the first; he already had another there, another black girl, whose name was Tita. It was short for Titania, but what made Cosimo think she was like a daughter of the Titans I cannot think. She looked well enough. In fact she was very pretty, but I soon learned that she was, to use Cosimo’s unkind but sadly apt phrase, “memorable in her stupidity”.’

  Titania. Perhaps he had had great hopes for her when first he bought her, or perhaps he just liked the name. I know he liked to read Ovid’s Metamorphoses and I think he may have found the name there. In any event, by the time I arrived, she had fallen out of any personal favour he might have bestowed on her beauty, and seemed to spend all her time cleaning and doing menial jobs. To my relief, she was so useless at everything she did that she made me look competent. But nevertheless, she taught me an early and important lesson; that I must create my own future, and I was determined from the beginning not to finish up like her.

  ‘Cosimo gave me my opportunity to advance. He was as good as his word and as soon as we arrived, he showed me his studiolo, where he and his branch manager, Bartolomeo de’ Bardi, wrote up the books for the Curia branch. It was nominally the branch of the Medici Bank located in Rome, but the reality was that it had one client: THE client—no less than the central governing body of the entire Catholic Church worldwide, including the personal bank accounts of all the cardinals and their administrators. And all of this lay in the gift of one man and one man alone: His Holiness the Pope—whoever he was at that time. Later the relationship soured, but the bank was ever so close to Pope Martin V and his Curia at this time, and for you to understand how my relationship with Cosimo developed, I must tell you a little of how the Medici Bank worked.

  ‘The church had a special need for us. The cardinals, prelates and clerics, as well as Mother Church itself, had revenues flowing in from all over the known world; some from Scandinavia, Iceland and even from Greenland. These were regular and well-known payments and of course it would have been far too risky for them to send money by ship or mule-train, in the form of coin. So instead, they sent letters of credit, drawn on a bank in, or close to their own country, and these were then paid into the church’s coffers at the Apostolic Chamber by the Depository General. Although this was nominally a senior officer of the Curia, in some years, officers of the Bank took on the administrative responsibility direct.

  So the Medici Bank effectively managed the Church’s coffers, which for the reasons I have explained, contained more wealth in the form of credit accounts in foreign banks than it did in gold coins.

  ‘During my time with Cosimo in Rome, and for some years afterward, Bartolomeo de’ Bardi was not only our branch manager, but he also held the post of Depository General. Because most of the wealth of the church was in the form of promissory notes or letters of credit, while the monies being paid out in Rome were in coin, it was the function of the Medici Bank to turn paper into real cash. As you might imagine, we were paid handsomely for this service. By discounting the overseas bills at our own exchange rate, we could claim that what we were receiving was exchange commission, and not interest, and in this way, we were able to get round the usury laws.’

  Across the room, the abbess gave a little frown.

  ‘I can see you are asking yourself how the bank was able to continue, turning promissory notes into cash and the answer lies in trade. If a church in, say, Lavenham, which is a wool-producing town in Suffolk in England, were required to make a payment to mother church, it would instruct its bankers in London to issue a promissory note and send it to Rome. Here, after taking its due commission, the Medici Bank would exchange that note for good value in coin.

  ‘But then the reverse was true. When a Florentine wool merchant wanted to import English wool from Suffolk to Italy, he would not travel to England carrying sacks of gold florins. Instead he would draw a promissory note from his credit with the Medici Bank and would send that to England. There it would be presented to the wool merchant’s bank in London, who would, (again after taking the appropriate commission) provide the merchant with his coin.

  ‘And then, perhaps, the rich wool merchant would deposit some of his profit with the local church in Lavenham, to thank God for his good fortune and to ask the chantry to pray for his soul. And thus, the church’s coffers were replenished and the whole process could start again.

  ‘Those were happy days. Cosimo was learning the business and growing rapidly in confidence. He had the ear not only of the clerics and the cardinals but also of Pope Martin V himself. True, he was away from home and from his wife and two sons. As was customary, his wife, Contessina had remained behind at the Palazzo Bardi, the family home in Florence that she had brought to the marriage, first with their son Piero and later also with Giovanni, who was born some months after Cosimo left for Rome.

  ‘But as compensation, he had me, and I was determined to provide all the compensation he needed.’

  Maddalena looked at the abbess, who seemed to have been dozing during the description of the workings of the Medici Bank, but whose eyes had suddenly widened. ‘You mean you . . . ? You and he . . . ?’ Somehow, Madonna Arcangelica couldn’t bring herself to complete the sentences.

  ‘Lay with him? Of course. Regularly. Perhaps I should say frequently. In fact, pretty well every night. As I told you, I was his compensation and I was determined to satisfy him. Rest assured, Reverend Mother, I had no intention of scrubbing floors and carrying wood to the kitchens as Tita was doing by that time.’

  The abbess sat up, with a look of admonition on her face. ‘But to give your body to him? Outside marriage? That sacred thing . . .’

  Maddalena shook her head. ‘Please! You do not understand. You make it sound like a callous decision made after weeks of carefully considering the moral issues; the pros and cons. But it wasn’t like that. Not like that at all. When you reach rock bottom, you find yourself in a place unlike any place you have ever been or even contemplated before. A place of abject and utter loneliness. At such a moment, you really do have to decide; are you going to drown, or are you going to fight? It is primal; instinctive: violent in its raw immediacy.

  ‘I had watched both my parents being killed in front of me and had found myself clinging to the rough wood of the ship’s deck, snivelling with terror. At that moment, I thought I had only seconds left, before I too had to face the pain of violent death.

  ‘But I was lucky. I clung to life. A life of sorts: one of being sold into slavery. I had no idea what pain or degradation faced me in the future. But I realised one thing; that I was on my own. I decided I must take my father’s advice and do what I could to save and protect myself. And in so doing, it was clear to me that the niceties of married life were no longer available to me as I had once expected them to be.’

  She shook her head, searching for adequate words. ‘Once you decide to fight, you start looking for weapons. I had nothing but my body and my education. They were all I had.’

  She lifted her head and looked hard at the abbess, willing her to understand. ‘If you are left with nothing, you don’t waste what little you do have.’

  She saw the abbess put her hand to her mouth ‘I apologise. You are, of course, right. I had no idea what it must have been like.’

  Madonna Arcangelica sat, looking at the floor, perhaps trying to visualise the events she had just heard described. She looked up. ‘Did you hate the pirates? The ones that killed your parents and sold you off?’

  ‘Hate them? Surprisingly, no. In a strange way, in my predicament, I felt close to them. I saw them simply as poor men; men with almost nothing. I thought perhaps they too had no choice; that they were simply trying in their own way to survive, to make a living of sorts along a rough and inhospitable shoreline.

  Opposite her Maddalena watched the abbess sitting, thinking, shaking her head. ‘And you were so young.’ Then she took her hand from her mouth and leaned forward. ‘He didn’t
hurt you?’

  Maddalena shook her head. ‘Cosimo? Never. From that first night—on the day he bought me, he never hurt me. Instead he was kind, and thoughtful, and gentle.’

  Maddalena saw the abbess’s mouth open and close and guessed that inside, she was willing her to continue; to go into the details of their lovemaking. It suddenly dawned on her that during all the years the abbess had been in this place, she might be the first person who could really answer her questions; the private questions that any normal innocent woman, pious or otherwise, must sometimes ask herself.

  What could she tell her? How could she explain how it had been? How it had felt? The first time, for example.

  ***

  GRAND CANAL, VENICE

  3rd June 1421

  ‘Yes here. This is it.’

  The gondolier leans on his great oar and the boat turns in its own length, leaving a swirl of turbid water beside it in the Grand Canal. He straightens up and leans the other way, and the gondola, with just enough impetus left to complete the manoeuvre, slides alongside the molo and stops exactly midway between the tallest of the red and white spiral-painted poles.

  Cosimo sits back while servants run to secure it, front and back, and reach willing hands to stop it rocking. As soon as it is still, he climbs out onto the pier and reaches a hand back down to her.

  ‘Come on. This is where we live. At least, while we are here in Venice. In a few days we shall leave for Rome, but for the time being, this will have to do.’

  Have to do? Maddalena (she’ll never get used to that strange name) looks up at the building. It’s huge; a palazzo. It must be one of the biggest. There’s a great door standing open and inside what looks like a warehouse, with bales of wool, stacked high on wooden pallets, presumably to keep them clear of the water, which even at three-quarter tide laps dangerously close to the top of the molo.