Voices from the Past Part 69

Yesterday, I wrote Niccol and invited him to Cloux.

"We will be a pair of exiles. Stay with me a month or two. Amboise won't bore you. There's a superb library.

The King has welcomed you. There will be no expense on your part. I will see to that."

How he helped in Florence: I remember that I owe my Anghiari commission to him. And that night Cesare strangled my friend...it was Niccol who provided the horse.

A library.

A library can erase problems.

A library is a kind of stained gla.s.s.

Francesco and I enjoy the Cloux library. Handsome room.

A fine Mantegna-in an old style frame-hangs on the far wall. Its mythological scene is pleasantly antique. The shelves hold parchments, vellums, velvet-bound books, illuminated ma.n.u.scripts, scores. Francesco has turned up a score I wrote for the Medici, one I used to play.

There is a white marble table with alabaster legs where I spread out the ma.n.u.scripts and books.

The librarian, keys at his waspish gut, is a defrocked Jesuit, ashen-headed, ashen-faced; he admits that he has never lifted down half of the books.

A lovely prie dieu holds a Latin volume, its pages ornamented with pastel watercolor and gold leaf. The carpet is a mouse-chewed Turkish weave, red on red on red, with colorless, limp fringes.

The unchained books are in Spanish, Latin, French, Greek, Dutch, and Hungarian-collected by King Francis'

father. He loved this room. He died there.

Sitting under the green pergola at Amboise, King Francis and I sipped aperitifs, the afternoon warm, a lazy hunting dog at his feet.

"I don't understand how your army crossed the Alps in six or seven days."

"Five days," he corrected me.

"By the Col d'Argentiere?

"Yes...do you know that Pa.s.s?"

"I have camped there. I have seen some of it when I was collecting fossils. But for an army to get through, it seems impossible. You had cannons, horses, mules..."

"We were determined to surprise the Milanese."

We watched dragonflies circle above lily pads in a small rock-rimmed fountain, their orange wings on fire in the afternoon light. Near the fountain men were planting young columnar cypress. Other gardeners were spading paths because the King was re-landscaping. Someone, pushing a barrow, with an enormous red wheel, asked the King if he could plant the roses in the circular beds already prepared.

"We had good weather," Francis said.

"Think of it...it took me almost a month to reach here."

"But you were in no hurry, Mon Pere."

"Snow...mud...ice..."

"I realize."

"Did you think of Hannibal?"

"I did."

"What Pa.s.s did he use to invade Italy?"

"Some say the Mount Genevre."

"He was a great tactical genius."

"Our army was well led...but there were times when I wished we had some of Hannibal's elephants...but fog was our worst problem...morning fog, thick as an elephant's hide...maybe that fog helped us...our scouts encountered shepherds in the fog...stopped them from informing others..."

Most men fail to come to grips with nature's intricacies. When they find a fossil they are satisfied with a cursory look. As for flowers, insects, animals, birds, they turn away from them if they serve no practical purpose. And because men do not care to probe, they resent or fear my studies. I have been made to feel this through the years.

They accuse me of wizardry...alchemy...vile practices.

My studio door is banged open.

"Help me, Maestro...oh, G.o.d, help me!"

And I try... I draw out pus... I patch a hole in a rogue's leg... I sew up flesh...but the same man, when he is well, whispers lies about me :

"He steals bodies from the morgue! He steals dead men's legs...he slices men's skulls in half!"

The body's secrets, the mind's secrets...we must unlock them!

In his Amboise armory, facing the Loire, Francis showed me his trophies and gear: his new armor from Cadiz, engraved with floral patterns; his father's armor inlaid with gold and silver (from Milan); a plumed helmet with the regal salamander in bra.s.s and copper inlay; a circular shield inscribed AFTER DEFEAT VICTORY.

We spent a morning among spears, pikes, swords, scabbards, helmets, bows and arrows, arquebuses...standards...saddlery. The King admired a Toledo sword and a pair of antique Hungarian spurs. I was taken by an engraved dagger from Greece-Homeric lines along its shaft.

Leaning on a pike staff, Francis spoke excitedly about his conquest of Milan:

"...How we fought! Was it for twenty-eight hours or longer? I thought our cavalry would mow down the Swiss...the Swiss kept rushing toward us...it was our artillery that destroyed them...I fought on my great Conde, the chestnut you admired...he was wounded, badly wounded...I had to leave him...I had my visor smashed...my shoulder was sliced open...it was like your Anghiari... horses...men...smoke and dust...at times I couldn't see...everybody yelling...drums beating...the Venetian troops saved us...

"By G.o.d, it was terrible...sometimes I felt alone...sometimes I thought my own men would kill me."