Читать книгу The Carnival of Florence - Bowen Marjorie - Страница 9

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Standing beneath the wall of the beautiful gardens of the Medici, which lay at one end of the Via Larga and near the Piazza San Marco, Cristofano degli Albizzi listened to the sounds, now loud, now indistinct, of the fray between the Piagnoni and the followers of the Medici. Street brawls neither stirred nor frightened Cristofano; his hatred of the Medici was not to be expressed by blows exchanged in the quarrels of the Carnival. His family had once been greater than the Medici, from their street of palaces the Albizzi had lorded Florence until the day when Maro degli Albizzi had been banished the city, never, despite his heroic attempts, to behold more than a distant glimpse of its towers again.

So the famous house had fallen into insignificance in exile, earning their way with the fire of their sword, patching their fortunes with rich marriages; so fallen and from such greatness were they that Cristofano, their descendant, had difficulty in obtaining from Lorenzo dei Medici permission to return to Florence.

It had been granted on condition that he made no claim to the ancient estates, and that he lived without the walls.

So Cristofano, who had inherited a few estates near Lucca from his mother, bought the villa near Santa Margharita al Montici, where he could look down on the city his forefathers had held and lost.

While Lorenzo lived, Cristofano had been nothing but an idler, mingling with the young Florentine nobles, learning the philosophy of Marsilio Ficino, the verses of Lorenzo and Poligiano, interesting himself in the discovery of the antique and the revival of modern art.

But much that was pleasant in Florence died when Lorenzo died unrepentant at Careggi; it seemed as if the great days were over; people began to listen to Fra Girolamo, Cristofano among them, and his slumbering hatred of the Medici awoke now the family was represented by the person of Piero.

The noise of the tumult died away; a burst of music succeeded; it appeared as if the wild mirth of the Carnival had succeeded the brief fury of the fight—the cries of "Palle! palle!" became fainter; intoxicated songs rose into the summer air.

Cristofano wandered along the garden wall. Above his head hung tamerisk and privet, scenting the dark; the blackness of erect cypress trees rose against the moonlit skies; he paused to look in at the gate, and seemed to be peeping into enchantment. The white statues that Lorenzo had loved, and the young artists of Florence copied, gleamed beneath the trees of pomegranate, mulberry, lime and beech, where the Magnifico had walked to listen to Ficino's translation of Plato.

Cold, impassive, remote, these heathen deities, half concealed among the living green, seemed to hold both menace and allure; they had outlasted the men who fashioned them, and Lorenzo who had resurrected them, it seemed they might outlast Fra Girolamo who denounced them from the convent opposite. Cristofano surveyed them calmly; older than Christ and as powerful, to him they were not false gods, for Cristofano had almost ceased to say "which, which?" and could instead say "both." The bewildering glitter of fire-flies came and went among the statues and trees; there were no festival lamps here; it was remote alike from Carnival and brawl. Cristofano leant against the gate in idleness, and gazed down the moon-misty avenues with dreaming eyes.

Suddenly a living figure flitted across the stillness that had seemed unearthly; it was that of a man in a green robe; he carried over his shoulder a woman in a light mantle, and wore an animal mask.

Cristofano watched, still idly.

He wondered if these were members of the Medici household, or revellers who had broken into the garden, then, so quickly did they pass into the deep shade, he wondered if he had seen them at all, or if they were not mere illusions of the heathen garden. The evening was wearing late, and at midnight he was due at Cafaggiuolo. He had not much hope from this interview with Piero dei Medici, but the thought of it spurred and interested him; he wanted to be able to tell the Magnifico to his face what his government was doing for Florence; the Albizzi loved the city from which his family had been exiled so long; of late he had had dreams of greater glory, of nobler destinies for her than she could ever attain under the Medici. Fra Girolamo was a fine counterbalance to Piero, an influence to be used to cast the Medico from the gates, but Cristofano had no desire to put Savonarola where Lorenzo had ruled.

Neither was he sure that the aims of the Prior of San Marco were any nearer his own than the aims of Piero; it was himself that Cristofano dreamed of as ruling Florence, nay, Tuscany, and of bringing here the golden age Ludovico Sforza was trying to inaugurate in Milan. The project was too ambitious to be breathed, but not so ambitious as to discourage the boldness and vastness of Cristofano's dream.

True, he was a penniless nobody, but he carried a greater name than the Medici; his family had ever produced warriors and nobles, while the founder of Piero's house had sold herb medicines—hence his name and the golden pilules on the shield—the "palle" of the war-cry—and their fortunes had been built on commerce.

Ludovico Sforza was the grandson of a peasant; Alessandro Borgia had come to Rome a poor stranger—Cristofano thought he might equal these in luck and in achievement.

He made his way down the Via Larga, from where the roysterers had fled, and where the black-masked brethren of the Misericordia were taking away the wounded and the dead.

The cobbles were stained with blood; broken daggers lay among the trampled confetti, the burst bladders, the fool's staffs, the dead flowers that strewed the road. The lights were out in the black pile of the Palazzo Medici, and the huge gates were shut; only, either side the portals flared a great resin torch set in the iron bracket, illuminating, with a smoky light, the stone shield with the arms of the Medici.

"So begins the Carnival," thought Cristofano. He looked up with contempt at the shield in the torchlight, and choosing his way so as to avoid the blood in the runnels of the road, hastened on towards the Piazza del Duomo. There the Carnival was still at full height; a fair was in progress in the Piazza San Giovanni behind the Batistery, whose wonderful gilded doors threw back the coloured light of hundreds of lanterns.

Cristofano passed through the crowd and turned down the Borgo San Lorenzo.

Here, near the lesser dome of the great Medicean church, was a little insignificant trattoria, whose one oil-lamp burned dimly in the dark interior. Cristofano entered and demanded of the man who stood behind the rows of flasks on the little counter if the horse was ready?

The tavern-keeper replied that it was, and left the shop at the back, crying out to the servant.

Cristofano poured out a glass of the bright chianti into one of the thick tumblers, and drank.

"Cristofano!"

He turned quickly, hearing his name.

Andrea Salvucci came from behind one of the wooden tables.

Cristofano smiled, finished his wine, and stared into the empty glass.

"Do not go to Cafaggiuolo," said Andrea, in a low voice.

"You are here to tell me that?" asked Cristofano, raising his eyes.

"Yes, you told me that you kept your horse here—do not go."

Cristofano's full mouth curved almost into a laugh.

"Now, why, my Andrea?"

"Ah," said Andrea. "It is so very obviously a trap—a trick."

"Nay," replied the Albizzi quietly. "Piero is not tyrant of Florence, nor are we in the days of the Duke of Athens. He can neither murder me nor imprison me. He would not dare, because he has not enough power."

"He would dare anything, I think," said Andrea.

"Some accident—"

"As for that," interrupted Cristofano, "I am prepared," and he turned up the soft red sleeve of his robe, showing the fine mesh of steel mail beneath.

Andrea was not convinced.

"It will not save you from the Medici," he returned. "Nor can I understand why you go. Cannot he see you in the Via Larga?"

"I go for two reasons," said Cristofano. "First, because he does not expect I shall dare to come, and I wish to show him how an Albizzi values a Medico; and, secondly, because I wish to gather from his own lips what he means to do in Florence. He is not clever; I shall sound him."

They had been speaking very low as they leant together over the dirty little counter under the trembling light of the tiny lamp that sent a dim radiance over their two handsome faces; now Andrea lowered his voice even more.

"What do you mean to do?" he asked, with a certain eagerness that was almost wistful. "Are you working for Fra Girolamo? Do you mean to set him up in Piero's place?"

"Would you join me if I did?" demanded Cristofano instantly. "We might go to Milan—Ludovico Sforza—"

"I am no ally worth asking for," smiled Andrea.

But the Albizzi wished as many men as possible bound to the cause he meant eventually to make his—wholly—his own.

"I tell you Savonarola's party is more powerful than you might guess," he answered. "Just now they drove the Piagnoni before them for insulting a friar—in the front of the Medici Palazzo."

"The Pope will protect the Medici."

"Fra Girolamo will defy the Pope."

"But will Florence?"

"Why not?" said Cristofano indifferently. "Perhaps it were not impossible to dethrone the Borgia—do not his deeds stink before Christendom?"

"And would you make a friar lord of Florence?" asked Andrea incredulously.

"I do not say so," replied Cristofano quickly. "Fra Girolamo is a saint, a prophet—maybe no statesman."

"Is he either saint or prophet?" asked the other, in an agitated tone. "Is he not ambitious—would he not rule—would he not be in the Pope's place, nay, greater than the Pope?"

"You never believed in him," said Cristofano; he poured out more wine and drank it slowly.

"Listen." Andrea leaned closer and spoke eagerly.

"Yesterday I went with the Conte to San Marco. We saw the Prior and spoke with him. He is terrible—inhuman."

"Yes, he is terrible," agreed Cristofano, "but he can be gentle too—if you see him in the fields at Fiesole with his monks, preaching to them of gentleness."

"Gentleness! He hates the world."

"Because he loves heaven."

"I liked him not," said Andrea, "he had no comfort to give me—but to forsake the world."

"Why do you not?" smiled Cristofano.

"I should stifle in San Marco—if I could believe—"

"Ah, if!—but you were always too full of doubts," interposed the other.

"You too have had your doubts," returned Andrea quickly. "What did we speak of but yesterday?"

"I do not let my doubts ride me," said the Albizzi coldly. "I make of them an amusement, not a scourge."

Andrea saw a fire and a determination in his face he had never thought those serene and dreamy features could express.

In some oblique way this look of resolution and pride, flashing for a moment from the clear eyes of his friend, repulsed him.

"I will not intrigue for your friar," he answered. "I had as lief the Medici as him. But the Conte della Mirandola will die a monk."

"The Conte della Mirandola!" repeated Cristofano softly. "He has grown disgusted with beauty and with learning. I heard him tell the Prior that when he could bring himself to it he would assume the Dominican habit."

The young Albizzi marvelled.

"And this was Lorenzo's friend and the follower of Ficino and Poliziano!"

"Angelo Poliziano has repented too," said Andrea, with a dry smile; "he too has burnt his wanton books, and taken down the picture of his lady from his room—listen, the Duke of Milan's man, Leonardo da Vinci, painted it, and it was marvellous, you thought she breathed. And there she hung above his desk ever since she died in Milan, three years gone by, and now he has taken her down and there is a black cross and a white Christ in her place."

"It seems we are likely to have a reign of holiness," remarked Cristofano. "And yet you still do not believe in the friar?"

"I know not what I believe," answered Andrea, turning away. "At present, what I have to think of is that if the Conte take the monk's robe I must look elsewhere for a livelihood."

Cristofano pressed his hand affectionately.

"You shall not lack it when Savonarola and I have restored the Republic," he whispered. Then looking towards the open door, where his horse had for some moments been waiting, he added aloud:

"Come up to Santa Margharita to-morrow evening, and I will relate to you my adventures."

Andrea shook his head sadly.

"I will come," he answered, "but I shall not find you."

Cristofano smiled, and hastened out of the tavern. As he lifted himself into the saddle, he thought, "I shall be late;" but it did not displease him to keep the Magnifico waiting. He rode slowly through the crowded streets where the Carnival was rioting till the dawn, where it would riot indeed, unchecked, in any kind of licence, during the eight days of the festa.

Women, masked, unmasked, cloaked, and half nude, leant from balconies, from sedan chairs, and stretched up their arms from the roadside, asking him where he was going, and why he would not stay?

He was pelted with flowers, with confetti and sweetmeats, sprinkled with scented water from silver squirts, and struck, smartly and lightly, by the coloured swinging fool's bladders.

He laughed aside the jesters and left the city by the Porta San Gallo, setting his horse briskly up the hill of Pratolino. As soon as he had passed the walls a stillness that seemed deathlike succeeded the feverish babble of the city. The few cottages on the roadside were closed and dark, the vineyards and orchards lay undisturbed beneath the moon that floated free with an almost startling brilliancy in the vast expanse of the heavens that sparkled like blue crystal.

Honeysuckle and wild roses mingled with the clematis in the hedges of nut and hawthorn, the perfume was lifted faintly on the wandering night airs.

Cristofano passed no one, the solitude was as complete as had been the multitudinous noises of the city. As his horse slowly took the hills that mounted one after the other towards Pratolino, Cristofano continually looked back at the lights of Florence, and indulged his thoughts of one day ruling there as his forefather, Maro degli Albizzi, had ruled.

Once he was on level ground he touched up the horse, and quickly covered the white winding road that twisted to Cafaggiuolo.

The Medici villa stood flat in a sweep of rich woodland, surrounded by the hills and valleys of a superb hunting country; the white square of it showed clear in the moonlight, the shadows black beneath the buttress and the turrets of the tower.

The gates, guarded by a phalanx of cypress trees, stood open, left so, Cristofano thought, for his arrival; he entered and rode across the short length of grass to the palace door. A man was waiting there; he came forward silently, and took Cristofano's bridle.

"Messere degli Albizzi?" he asked.

"Yes," said Cristofano, "the Magnifico is expecting me, is he not?"

"You are waited for, Messere," replied the servant.

Cristofano dismounted.

He glanced up at the house, which was in darkness, and appeared deserted; he had expected instead to see a festival in progress; Piero dei Medici did not live quietly. The servant whistled, and a boy came up and led away the horse.

The man then turned into the house, and Cristofano followed him. In the entrance-hall his guide took a small lamp from a table, and respectfully bid the Albizzi follow him upstairs.

On the top floor he opened a door which led into a fair-sized apartment, which the uncertain beams of the faint flame showed to be richly furnished.

"Where is Piero dei Medici?" demanded Cristofano.

"In Florence, Messere," replied the servant, "but as soon as he returns he will see you."

With that he quickly lit two candles on the mantel-shelf, then left the room.

Cristofano stood undecided a moment, then, angry at this reception, strode to the door.

As he found it locked, he could but smile at his own folly.