Voices from the Past Part 79

I did not know it was raining until one of the King's pages brought me a rain-spattered note, ink and coat-of- arms smudged.

"What is it?" Francesco asked, standing by me protectively, holding the door.

The page grinned and wiped rain off his face. Probably he was perplexed since he could not understand Italian.

"The King is sick," I said, reading the note. "He wants me to come to the chateau and talk to him."

"In this awful rain!"

Water was sluicing off the page's cap.

"I won't let you go out...in this cold rain," protested Maturina. "You have no umbrella...it's being fixed."

Francesco tugged my sleeve.

"The tunnel," he said. "We'll walk through the tunnel, to the chateau. It's been worked on...we'll keep dry...

Shall we?"

So, with torches, the page, and a couple of my servants, we entered the old shaft. Almost at once our torches died out; there was a brisk draft; some of our torches were wet. Somebody went back to the manor house for candles. The pa.s.sage was difficult for a tall man. I had forgotten there were several curves. Bats annoyed us.

We had to wade across rain pools where water was oozing in. I stumbled over bricks and stumbled over a rusty cuira.s.s someone had leaned against the wall.

Holding up my torch I made out crude foreign names and initials and dates... VITELLI...was it really VITELLI? I thought I saw 1502 on the wall. Latin names. Gascon.

1601. 1502 again. Cesare Borgia, that Papal b.a.s.t.a.r.d had had Vitelli strangled on December 1, 1502. His name went on and on, as we tramped through the tunnel.

My hatred was everywhere.

The page opened the chateau door, and we ascended several flights of stairs, walked along halls, were stopped by guards at the King's suite.

"His Majesty is asleep now," a guard said.

Borrowing umbrellas and raincoats, we returned to the manor, preferring the paths and the road to the tunnel route.

How fitfully I slept while in Cesare Borgia's camp...like Alexander the Great I slept with the Iliad and a dagger under my pillow.

It was Niccol Machiavelli who stole horses for us-made our escape possible...horses...rain...all night the two of us rode through the rain.

Fibonacci's dog-eared book, Liber Abaci, still interests me: what tattered covers, foxed pages, and scribbled margins! Too many fingers have flipped through this book. No matter... I have tried his famous rabbit problem once more and then once more. I see that each number is the sum of the two preceding numbers, continuing ad infinitum. And it is true I can divide Fibonacci's number (after the fourteenth in his sequence) by the next highest in number: it is precisely .618034 to 1.

.618034 is nature's proportion-her golden mean: it exists in sunflower seeds, sh.e.l.l spirals, spider webs, ferns, the perfect rectangle, in playing cards, the Parthenon's facade.

Another night of memories, a night for murder.

Incessant wind, rain...

Vitelli...

But there was more than this young man's death. There was Giamina Andres da Ferrara. GAF.

The officials of Milan murdered GAF...the officials!: They had him hung, drawn, and quartered, in the Public Square.

GAF.

I fled to Mantua, as if I could forget in Mantua!

So much of life is fleeing.

So much is trying to forget.

Rain...

Those youthful faces...Vitelli, 24 years old...Ferrara, 33 years old...artists... good men...friends.

Perhaps there is something to be said about this remote chateau, this little manor house, these woodlands, paths, fields, this Loire; I should be able to put these things together and say something; when I am alone here, or alone with Francesco and Maturina, when I sit in my studio or in the library or walk in the fields or along the Loire, I hear something like wisdom: it seems to suggest greater dedication, calm, calmness, like a stag in a clearing, alert, watching.

August 15, 1518

Another summer at Cloux.

(I have not written my journal for months).

Birds-orioles and finches-are singing along the river.

Willows and birds for miles. Old trees, some of them half-drowned by a heavy rain, seem determined to flourish. Where the Loire widens, meadows of water form islands.

Yesterday or the day before, Francesco and I spent most of a morning searching for a species of frog that interests me. We crossed and recrossed the river at shallow points.

Close to the chateau, by the tenth century bridge, I waded over slippery rock. There I fell. Old shanks!

I'll just lie here...the pain won't last...

"Maestro, your sketchbook is ruined...let me help you!"

I was overcome by my own weakness, by the ugliness of my bony legs. It's true I'm an old man!

August 20, '18

Sometimes France becomes alive-not in the geographic sense: it comes alive as a fresco of bogged willows, a row of pencil-pointed cypress, a field of yellow rye, a woodland village, a pagan altar, a tired bridge, a flock of charcoal ravens ...these are the enchantment, along with August cicadas and August storms.

Swans and cygnets are also there, and a knight in armor!