The Medusa Amulet

Chapter 18

Cellini watched from the shadows as the catafalque was carried across the piazza. Four members of the Accademia, of which he had been a founder, bore it on their shoulders, followed by a throng of black-clad mourners. The doors of the ancient Basilica della Santissima Annunziata, in which the tomb was waiting, were held open by a quartet of friars.

He touched the silver garland around his temple to make sure that he was still well concealed by its powers.

Inserting himself into the crowd, unseen and unnoticed, he passed under the narrow archway and into the celebrated Chiostrino dei Voti, or Cloister of the Votives. For centuries, pilgrims to the church, who had come to see its marvelous fresco of the Annunciation, had left their own wax candles and figurines-often of themselves-as offerings here. On that night, February 15, 1571, the whole motley collection, in white and yellow and brown wax, was lighted, along with a hundred torches in the basilica beyond.

The church itself was a simple affair, erected in 1260 by the Oratory of the Servants of Mary. Beneath its dome, there was a single long nave, flanked by altar niches and culminating in a rotunda, where the famous fresco could be seen. Legend had it that the painting had been begun by a member of the Order, a Servite, who had despaired of ever making it beautiful enough. Throwing down his brushes in defeat, he had fallen into a deep sleep, and when he awakened, the painting was done… finished by an angel.

At that moment, crowded as the church was, and illuminated only by the flickering torchlight, the painting was almost impossible to see. The casket was placed on a trestle, as monks, chanting and swinging censers, slowly paraded around it. Their voices gradually stilled the commotion, and the family and friends of the artisan, accompanied by his many admirers, filed into the pews, or stood respectfully, silently, in the side chapels, hands folded and heads bowed.

So far, Cellini was pleased with the turnout. Even some of his enemies, he noted, had come to hear the obsequies-though it was possible, he thought, that they just wanted to make sure he was dead.

A young friar, someone he had never so much as seen in his life, stepped up to the altar and began to recite the formal prayers. To be frank, Cellini had never had much use for all the Church’s pomp and ritual. He had seen too much of life, too much of men and their venality, to put much stock in it. And he had seen things- done things-that no monk or priest or Pope could condone. He had crossed swords with too many, both in the Church and out of it, ever to expect all the acclaim he felt was his due. He had worn out his welcome-not only in Florence, but in the papal court, too-and he knew that if he hoped to keep the dark secret he possessed, there was nothing to do at that point but publicly stage his own interment.

And so he had arranged it, as meticulously as he had constructed and erected his grand statue of Perseus for the central square of the city.

Over a period of years, he had laid the groundwork, letting his beard grow long and powdering it to assume the mantle of age. He had walked with an increasing stoop and pretended to forget things he remembered quite well. He put it about that he was suffering from the pleurisy, and on days when he was expected at the studio, he stayed in bed. His crowning touch had been Michelangelo’s funeral-an event that he had largely planned, and which he then did not attend. Instead, he had met the body in private, when it was first transported by mule from Rome. He was shocked to see that it was packaged in a bale of hay, as if it were a crate of pottery-this, the Divine Michelangelo!-and he had personally groomed the body and said his farewells. This was more than a man, this was a force of nature, whose name would still resound long after every preening king and Medici prince had been forgotten.

But speak of the devil… there was the Grand Duke himself, in a long black cape and velvet cap, down from his villa in Castello. On his own breast, he wore the silver mirror given to his late wife as a ward against misfortune. An early cast, Cellini had bestowed upon it ruby eyes, which winked in the torchlight.

For the thousandth time, Cellini wondered what had happened to its secret counterpart, a simpler affair, with no bright gemstones but an unimaginable power, ripped from his neck by the Duke of Castro and secreted somewhere among the papal treasures. Would he ever see, or possess, the true La Medusa again?

The duke was bowed by age, and his long, sloping face was lined with sorrowful creases. In 1562, on a trip to Pisa, his wife, Eleonora de Toledo, and two of his sons, Giovanni and Garzia, had been struck down by the malaria that haunted the marshlands of Italy. Cosimo had never recovered from the blow. Cellini studied his face, the face of his patron and persecutor, his friend and his enemy, over so many years… and, though he knew he could do no such thing, he longed to reach out and touch him, to reveal himself one last time. Cosimo, always a great enthusiast of alchemy and magic, had become even more interested in the unseen world since the deaths in his family. He would be mightily impressed at Cellini’s feat.

But the artisan, huddling beside a marble column, restrained himself. How could he think of undoing what he had so painstakingly planned?

The young friar, his own face as unlined as fresh calfskin, was reciting his eulogy, and doing an admirable job. Cellini wondered who had coached him. Giorgio Vasari? No, not Vasari-the encomiums were too grand. His old companion, Benedetto Varchi, would have done it right, but Varchi had been gone for years. Occasionally, as if he were speaking to the corpse itself, the Servite’s eyes fell to the gleaming lid of the casket and Cellini had to smile at the notion of such high praise and sorrowful remembrance being directed at its occupant, the most insignificant of men, a destitute wretch whom Ascanio had found in the gutter a month ago and brought home in a wheelbarrow.

“What do you think?” he’d said proudly, displaying the beggar as if he were a prize heifer. “He’s about your height, he even looks a lot like you.”

At this, Cellini had objected, and his apprentice laughed.

“And if you listen to his cough,” Ascanio said, “you’ll know he’s not long for this world.”

The beggar, slurping a bowl of hot stew by the hearth, paid no attention.

“We can lodge him in the stable,” Ascanio went on, “until nature takes its course.”

Cellini had moved closer to inspect the man, who looked up at him with rheumy eyes while clutching the rim of the bowl, like a dog protecting its few scraps of food.

“What’s your name?”

“Virgilio.”

An apt one, Cellini thought. Like Virgil leading Dante, this poor impostor could precede him into the next world. But would he be received there with the special considerations due the artisan himself?

The arrangements were made, and in return for staying out of sight, Virgilio was promised a berth in the hayloft, bread and stew and wine every day-he was especially insistent about the wine-and for the next several weeks, as the beggar’s cough grew worse, and his strength flagged, Ascanio kept a close eye on him. When his apprentice came to Cellini’s workroom one night, shaking his head, and saying, “He won’t live to see the dawn,” Cellini knew the time had come. The book of his own life-the life of Italy’s most famous living artisan-had to be closed… and another, newer book begun.

And this one would be lived in another land, under another name.

By then, the friar had given way at the pulpit to various members of the Accademia, who had begun their own eulogies and remembrances. Several sonnets were read aloud, and Cellini could not help judging them against what might have been his own contribution. Despite the name he had made for himself as an artist, he fancied himself a fine writer, too, and regretted that he had stopped writing the story of his own life so abruptly, several years ago. There was so much more to tell, so much to confess; but incomplete copies had already begun to circulate, hand to hand, among other artists and gentry. How could new chapters be expected to appear from the pen of a dead man? Only saints could perform miracles, and Benvenuto knew that he was a saint in no man’s estimation.

When the obsequies were done, a select group of Academicians and Servite friars accompanied the casket through the adjoining Chiostrino dei Morti, or Cloister of the Dead, and into the Chapel of St. Luke, where the tomb in the floor lay open. Cellini, careful to touch no one or to have his presence suspected in any way, slipped between the columns, close enough to gaze into the black maw that was even now receiving the casket. The box was lowered on braided ropes, and once it had settled, the ropes were dropped in. A pile of dirt and rubble, concealed beneath a tarpaulin, had only to be shoveled back in.

How many men, Cellini wondered, had ever lived to see their own funerals? It was an unnerving sight, even for someone of his own bold temperament… and a grim reminder of the immense transgression he committed with every passing day.

A painter who had studied under Bronzino, another of Benvenuto’s great and long-standing friends, stepped to the edge of the grave and, after wishing “eternal peace to this immortal master, who has brought glory to Florence and beauty to the world,” let fall a spray of purple irises.

Immortal master-Cellini liked that. If only this painter knew how fitting it was.

The head of the Order, Abbot Anselmo, lifted the tarpaulin, draped it back, and taking a fistful of dirt, cast it into the grave. A painfully shy old man with a terrible stammer, it was he who had agreed to reserve for Cellini this burial spot… in return for a magnificent marble crucifix Cellini had made and donated to the Order. As the other mourners stepped up to take their own handfuls of dirt and rubble, the faint strains of a laubade drifted in from the rotunda. Played on a harp, a pair of flutes, and a five-stringed lyra da braccio, the composition-both words and music-was also Cellini’s creation. As the melody filled the chamber, Cellini felt his fingers twitch involuntarily, as if playing the notes on a flute, and his eyes filled with tears. Not with regret-he had done what he had done in his life, and he made no apologies-but with nostalgia. His father, a musician himself, had longed for his son to become a famous flutist, and though Benvenuto had made a brilliant start, it had never been his first love. Music was too ephemeral; it was lasting monuments that he had always wanted to build.

But listening to the solemn tune, and its equally solemn lyrics-based on the closing words of the divine Paradiso -he wondered if he had been right about that. Stone could shatter, gold could be melted down, but the very airiness of this creation-a sequence of notes, a few words and phrases-might that not be more enduring, after all? Who could destroy it? Who, for that matter, could truly possess it? It belonged to anyone with an instrument to play, or a voice with which to sing. Benvenuto wished that his father, with whom he had had so many bitter quarrels, were standing in front of him now, so that the artisan could bend his head-as he did to no one else-and beg for his forgiveness.

Instead, he turned away from the grave, where a long line of mourners waited to pay their last respects, and moved silently, surreptitiously, invisibly, down the long nave of burning torches and out into the gloomy piazza.

Ascanio, who awaited him in the shadows of the loggia, was nonetheless startled when, with a low cough, he made his presence known.

“Are we alone?”

“Yes,” Ascanio assured him, looking again in all directions. “There’s no one in sight.”

Cellini made his own survey, then carefully removed the wreath, fashioned from the infernal bulrushes, from around his temples. It had been a tight fit-it was a relief to have it off-and seconds later, like a figure shimmering into view as it stepped from behind a waterfall, he once more became visible to the mortal eye.

“You look no worse for wear,” Ascanio commented, his eye traveling up and down his master’s body.

But Cellini wasn’t so sure of that. Watching your own burial was a sobering sight.

“And now that you’re dead and gone, have you given some thought to who you are going to be?”

“Royalty, I think. Perhaps a marquis.”

Making a grand bow, with one arm folded behind his back, Ascanio said, “And where will the marquis live?”

Cellini had given it much consideration, and in the end he could think of nowhere better suited to his new life than the birthplace of his one great, and long-lost, inamorata. Throwing the hood of his cloak over his head, he strode off into the night, saying simply, “France.”