Signora Da Vinci Read online

  Table of Contents

  Title Page

  Copyright Page

  The Alchemist’s Daughter

  CHAPTER 1

  CHAPTER 2

  CHAPTER 3

  CHAPTER 4

  CHAPTER 5

  CHAPTER 6

  Cato

  CHAPTER 7

  CHAPTER 8

  CHAPTER 9

  CHAPTER 10

  CHAPTER 11

  CHAPTER 12

  CHAPTER 13

  CHAPTER 14

  Companies of Night

  CHAPTER 15

  CHAPTER 16

  CHAPTER 17

  CHAPTER 18

  CHAPTER 19

  CHAPTER 20

  CHAPTER 21

  CHAPTER 22

  CHAPTER 23

  Madmen and Holy Relics

  CHAPTER 24

  CHAPTER 25

  CHAPTER 26

  CHAPTER 27

  CHAPTER 28

  CHAPTER 29

  CHAPTER 30

  A Good Conspiracy

  CHAPTER 31

  CHAPTER 32

  CHAPTER 33

  CHAPTER 34

  CHAPTER 35

  CHAPTER 36

  CHAPTER 37

  CHAPTER 38

  CHAPTER 39

  CHAPTER 40

  CHAPTER 41

  CHAPTER 42

  EPILOGUE

  Acknowledgements

  A CONVERSATION WITH ROBIN MAXWELL

  QUESTIONS FOR DISCUSSION

  GRAPE AND OLIVE COMPOTE

  BIBLIOGRAPHY

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  Praise for the Historical Novels of Robin Maxwell

  “Utterly engrossing and glittering with color. Lorenzo the Magnificent, Botticelli, Leonardo da Vinci, and his courageous, passionate mother, Caterina, move through the pages of this book, radiating life and touching the heart.”

  —Sandra Worth, author of The King’s Daughter

  “Focuses on the unsung genius who was Leonardo da Vinci’s mother, a woman of intellectual curiosity and maternal instincts toward the son who was torn from her. She moved in a world that included the glittering Medicis and the villainous Savonarola, all of whom are well limned in this sparkling epic. Set in the sunshine of fifteenth-century Tuscany, the novel continually delights with intriguing details, from the bottega workshops of the great Italian masters to the minutiae of an alchemist’s laboratory.”—Vicki León, author of the Uppity Women series

  “From the dusty streets of Vinci to the glories of Lorenzo Il Magnifico’s Florence and the conspiratorial halls of Rome and Milan, Signora da Vinci is a tour de force celebration of one woman’s unquenchable ardor for knowledge and of a secret world that historical fiction readers rarely see.”

  —C. W. Gortner, author of The Last Queen

  “Signora da Vinci is without a doubt the best historical fiction I have read all year. In her most remarkable novel yet, Robin Maxwell takes us back to the turbulent times of the Italian Renaissance.... A masterful blend of fact and fiction, Signora da Vinci mesmerizes.”—Michelle Moran, author of The Heretic Queen

  Mademoiselle Boleyn

  “Robin Maxwell offers a fascinating glimpse at the ambitious girl who will grow into the infamous queen.”

  —Susan Holloway Scott, author of The King’s Favorite

  “[A] historically plausible account of Anne Boleyn’s adolescence in France as a courtier of King Francois . . . lavishly imagined . . . [an] accomplished rehabilitation of much-maligned Anne as an empowered woman.”—Kirkus Reviews

  BOOKS BY ROBIN MAXWELL

  The Secret Diary of Anne Boleyn

  The Queen’s Bastard: A Novel

  Virgin: Prelude to the Throne

  The Wild Irish: A Novel of Elizabeth I and the Pirate O’Malley

  To the Tower Born: A Novel of the Lost Princes

  Mademoiselle Boleyn: A Novel

  New American Library

  Published by New American Library, a division of

  Penguin Group (USA) Inc., 375 Hudson Street,

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  Penguin Books Ltd., Registered Offices: 80 Strand, London WC2R 0RL, England

  First published by New American Library, a division of Penguin Group (USA) Inc.

  First Printing, January 2009

  Copyright © Robin Maxwell, 2009

  Readers Guide copyright © Penguin Group (USA) Inc., 2009

  All rights reserved

  REGISTERED TRADEMARK—MARCA REGISTRADA

  LIBRARY OF CONGRESS CATALOGING-IN-PUBLICATION DATA

  Maxwell, Robin, 1948-

  Signora da Vinci / Robin Maxwell.

  p. cm.

  eISBN : 978-1-440-66103-7

  1. Caterina, 15th cent.—Fiction. 2. Leonardo, da Vinci, 1452-1519—Fiction.

  3. Artists—Italy—Fiction. 4. Mothers and sons—Italy—Fiction. I. Title.

  PS3563.A9254S54 2009

  813’.54—dc22 2008030630

  Without limiting the rights under copyright reserved above, no part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form, or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise), without the prior written permission of both the copyright owner and the above publisher of this book.

  PUBLISHER’S NOTE

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

  The recipe contained in this book is to be followed exactly as written.The publisher is not responsible for your specific health or allergy needs that may require medical supervision.The publisher is not responsible for any adverse reactions to the recipes contained in this book.

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  The Alchemist’s Daughter

  CHAPTER 1

  Alie.

  I needed a fresh lie to help me escape the house this day. Call it “deceit,” I corrected myself as I threw another log in the furnace, enduring its searing blast on my face before shutting the iron door with a clank. I had chosen the fattest log in the woodpile. The bigger it was the longer the fire would burn without needing tending—all part of my deceit. Use the word, Caterina, I scolded myself. You will be
telling Papa a lie so you can run barefoot in the hills today instead of doing your chores.

  I grabbed the handle of the bellows and gave them several mighty squeezes, imagining the fierce heat its wind would create inside my father’s alchemical furnace, then threw off my leather apron and face mask and turned to go.

  I could see he was making a batch of alcohol on his worktable, the still with its two-headed spouts and receiving flasks all rigged together in a confusing array. It should not have been confusing, I knew. He had been trying to teach me for weeks—a simple process to create a substance especially useful in the apothecary. But my mind, of late, had been elsewhere. Anywhere else but in Papa’s alchemical laboratory, his medicinal garden, or his apothecary shop, where I normally helped him.

  A plan was forming in my head. I went back to the furnace and threw in one more log for good measure, praying I would not burn down the house with my inferno of deceit. Had that been one of Dante’s Seven Deadly Sins? I tried to remember as I started down the stairs from the top floor to the second.

  Here I stopped in my bedchamber, a small room with enough space for my covered bed, a chair, a desk, and several wooden chests that held my belongings. I avoided looking at my prettily painted “marriage chest,” the one Aunt Magdalena had insisted on giving me a year ago when I’d turned thirteen, the one she’d begun to fill with linens, fine smocks, and baby things—all that a girl would need as a young bride.

  But the sight of it seemed to mock me. Who would marry me? I had never learned the “womanly skills.” And Papa, despite his sister’s nagging, had more excuses than hairs on his head. I was too young, he told her, though of course girls my age were marrying all the time. There was no one suitable in Vinci, he’d insisted, but of course there were other towns nearby, larger places like Empoli and Pistoia, and of course Florence just a day’s ride away.

  But the truth of my unsuitability for marriage, I realized as I knelt before the plain wooden chest at the foot of my bed, I was now holding in my hands. It was my much-worn copy of Plato’s Timaeus . . . in Greek. No one would want so freakishly educated a girl as I was.

  A girl with secrets even worse than that.

  I carefully wrapped the book in a scarlet and gold silk scarf Papa had given my mother before she died—it was now one of my prized possessions—and carefully placed the package in my sturdy cloth herb sack. I took the stairs down another flight, knowing I would find there in the kitchen or sitting room the first obstruction to my hoped-for day of freedom.

  “Eat something, Caterina!” I heard, before I saw, Aunt Magdalena calling out as she bent over, retrieving our morning bread from the oven. Her substantial buttocks pointing in my direction blocked sight of all the rest of her, but her position made my “Not hungry!” and my flight down the final set of stairs all the easier. This last would be the difficult part.

  All along this lower staircase bunches of drying greenery hung, flower side down, wafting lovely fragrances all round my head, announcing my descent into the world of the apothecary. The entire ground floor, inside and out, was dedicated to the herbal arts. The storeroom and drying room into which the staircase emerged was piled bottom to top with barrels and crates, giant jars and boxes that, through their pungent odors as much as their lettering, sang of exotic lands and mysterious spices.

  But I could not linger here. My devious plan took me outside to the garden, Papa’s apothecary garden. I suppose it was mine as well. I was more than useful amidst vegetation. Owned great knowledge of it. Took much pleasure in it. This morning, however, I would shamelessly exploit it. Even destroy a part of it . . . for my selfish purposes.

  But it was spring. A fresh, glorious, sun-spangled morning. And it was not my scheduled day for gathering plants in the wild—ones that either refused to grow in our garden or ones that needed restocking, either by seed or seedling.

  I had to be outdoors this day. I’d woken with my blood racing and my lungs aching for the crisp moist air that could only be found near running water.

  I knew Papa needed me at the shop. There were countless poultices to be pounded this day, seeds to be ground into fine powder. Decoctions to be mixed for our neighbors, who so depended on Ernesto, the well-loved apothecary of Vinci. There being no physicians or surgeons in our tiny village, he had treated the wealthiest landowners and the poorest farmworkers alike. He was even distinguished as a worker of the occasional miracle. I walked in his golden shadow—beloved child in the image of her sorely missed mother. Good-natured young neighbor who was always willing to run an errand or lend an ear to a bit of complaining, and not much of a gossip.

  I hurried to a corner of the garden where I knew the verbena to grow. There it was, a fine healthy clump growing in the loamy earth near the garden wall. Before I allowed myself to ponder my wickedness I gave a final surreptitious glance around me, grasped the base of the greenery and ripped out the clump, roots and all. Stowing it in a waxed cloth bag, I stuffed it in my herb sack and stood.

  I straightened my skirts and brushed off some small clods of earth that had fallen on my bodice. As I cleaned myself I could not help but notice the size of my breasts—an altogether new development—one that I suspected had more than a little to do with my recent untoward wildness.

  Herb sack over my shoulder, I came back through the storeroom, and doing my best to calm myself, envision myself as the dutiful, truthful daughter I had always been, I let myself in through the back door of Papa’s apothecary shop. With its shelves of herbs and jars of potions—bottles of leaves and barks and spices—it was a simple and humble workplace. It was small—for the house itself was small, as most of the four-story homes in Vinci were—and twice as long as it was wide. If a family had a business, it would be found, like Papa’s shop, on the ground floor in the front, facing the street.

  An easy and graceful exit was not to be mine this day. Signora Grasso was sliding a basket of ripe tomatoes across the counter at Papa with a grateful smile. Grateful, I wondered, for the cure he had provided for her daughter’s liver flux or for accepting his payment in vegetables?

  “Caterina, beautiful child!” she called out at the sight of me. “I tell you, Ernesto, she is growing more lovely every day. The image of her mother.” She looked me up and down so carefully one would have thought she was buying a horse. “But I must say she has your height. Though there are some men who might not mind a tall girl.”

  “Is there anything else I can help you with today, signora?” Papa said in that soothing, unrushed fashion the townspeople loved so much. He was, indeed, a long, lanky man with the air of good health about him and a splendid headful of silver hair. He dressed simply and unassumingly, a style that so matched his nature.

  “Well, I do have a rash, Ernesto, in a place I will tell you about, but not show you,” she said confidentially.

  Just then the bell over the front door jangled and my heart soared. Now there were two patients to distract him.

  “Papa,” I said, “I find we are out of verbena.”

  His eyebrows furrowed. “Did we not have a good patch of it near the south wall?”

  “We did,” I said, grateful for the small honesty before the larger lie. “But we used it up.”

  “Used it up?”

  “Remember? Signora D’Aretino for her jaundice and Signor Martoni and his son for their eyes . . . ?” I paused, as though I had a dozen more who had used up our supply, though I really did not. But I knew very well how long my father allowed himself to ponder trivialities, and was not surprised when a moment later he said, “Yes, Caterina, would you go and get us some? And it would be the time, would it not, to find us some woad along the river?”

  “Woad,” I repeated, thrilled that my plan had succeeded. I’d forgotten we had nearly spent our supply of the plant that, made into an ointment, was used in the treatment of ulcers. We both knew it would just be coming into flower.

  “I’ll go immediately,” I called, already half out the door. I did not wish to hea
r any last-minute requests, or reminders to finish my chores before leaving. And I knew the alchemical fire would burn quite happily with no further attention till I returned in the afternoon.

  As I walked the cobbled streets of Vinci—a hilltop village of perhaps fifty households—with its church and the old castle the only buildings of any size, I pondered my newfound rebellion and felt a touch of shame.

  Papa had given me so much . . . and this was how I repaid him. Ernesto was the only parent I had ever known, my mother having died of a fever within weeks of giving birth to me, all of her desperate husband’s potions unable to save her. Throughout my young childhood I had been cherished and doted upon. All the love my widowed father owned he lavished on me. There were no beatings. No abuses. I was made to do the lightest of chores, as everything else was seen to by Magdalena.

  Most days I had sat on the apothecary counter and entertained Papa’s customers. I was a natural mimic and could replicate birdsong, a braying mule, or a neighbor’s laugh. Several days a week Papa would take me up into the hills while he picked the herbs that did not grow in his garden. I loved to hide from him in the tall grasses, chase butterflies, or throw my arms wide and race the wind.

  He showed me the springs where birds gathered to drink and bathe. They always seemed ecstatic, taking their turns in the shallows. Papa and I would laugh as the sleek feathered creatures turned into shaggy, bedraggled monsters. All in all very little had been expected of me. It gave Papa joy just to know I was such a carefree little girl.

  On my eighth birthday everything changed.