Love in a Bottle Page 6

  Meanwhile the city down below bathed in the sunlight, in its petty day-to-day business and its seething hatred. For Lytto, it was as if those people did not exist. He inhabited a different, more silent world, almost as lonely as Galeazzo himself. Except that he had someone to love, and that love was enough to link him with all those others down there, dashing about with their own busy loves and hates. Galeazzo had foreseen everything but this: that in time Lytto would come to love him. In that respect, his plan had failed.

  Around this time the police arrested Orlondhi and his eleven accomplices in a plot against the tyrant’s life. Galeazzo condemned them all to death. Lytto went down to the courtyard in the castle where the executions were to take place. Ever since childhood he had been told of attempts to assassinate the Duke and of those involved being executed, and he had heard the story so often he had come to accept it as normal. Now for the first time he began to wonder why it should be, and who these people were—what sort of deep-dyed criminal would want to end the life of such a benevolent ruler? In considerable trepidation, like someone about to witness a supernatural horror, he dragged himself to a corner of the courtyard and prepared for the worst.

  To his extreme surprise, up the steps of the gallows the executioners led twelve fine-looking young men, their heads held high. As they came forward to place their heads on the block, every one of them, by prior agreement, shouted out for all to hear: “Long live freedom! Death to the Tyrant of Milan!”

  Profoundly troubled, Lytto made his way as quickly as he could back to his room, his eyes fixed on the ground, like a little boy who feels ashamed of his father and doesn’t know why. Having been used since childhood to the fact that other people took no interest in his purely personal feelings, he sought advice from no one. Instead, he locked the door and spread out his books, his little silent senate, on the table. Above all else, he needed to understand why, and how, those twelve young men could plot the murder of an old man and then mount the scaffold, not trembling and downcast, with the distracted, faraway look of assassins being thrust forward at every step into the arms of the devil, but looking around in triumph, their faces radiant, victorious unto death.

  His books supplied the answer. The tyrannicide was not a malefactor; rather he was to be ranked with the greatest of heroes. Heroes of this stamp he found in the stories of Pelopidas and his young companions, and of Timoleon, the liberator of Sicily. Livy conjured up for him the proud figure of Mucius Scaevola, pointing with his one remaining arm to the long line of his successors. He even came across the Greek verses that had so inspired the youth of Milan:

  When, like Harmodius and Aristogeiton,

  I have dispatched the usurper

  And made Athenians equal under the law

  I shall garland my sword with myrtle leaves.

  “But those people were pagans,” he reflected. He opened the scriptures and found the book of Judith, who, though but a weak and feeble woman, killed a man and achieved eternal fame. Even the holy and austere St Thomas Aquinas—who was himself eventually poisoned by a French despot—condoned tyrannicide. Ordinary people and philosophers alike agreed that the death of a tyrant was pleasing to God. Soon even Lytto could see that such a person was a pernicious figure, and the enemy of all mankind. But who, or what exactly, was a ‘tyrant’?

  Tacitus and Suetonius told him what he needed to know about the way such people behaved. He gobbled up their pages, scarcely able to wait for long-needed Vengeance to glut itself on the bloody Nero. Now there was a tyrant! He set fire to Rome, poisoned his relatives, murdered his mother and put Christians to the torch. He was mad—and more loathsome than any monster. But Galeazzo? How could he be a ‘tyrant’. The hideous, bestial image that the word conjured up for Lytto seemed in no way to describe the gentle, refined, almost monkish figure of the Duke. Since childhood, standing at his place behind Galeazzo’s chair, Lytto had been present at all the important discussions of affairs of state. He had never taken much interest in them, but he knew all the secrets of the way Milan was governed. And he knew perfectly well that Galeazzo had never perpetrated any of the things those monstrous dictators had. In everything he did as a ruler he had been honourable and humane.

  Lytto began to think that there must be some unfathomable, Satanic madness driving the youth of Milan to their death, like moths to the candle.

  Then his hand fell on the history of Julius Caesar, that greatest of all rulers, who was slain as a tyrant, in the name of liberty, by his closest friends. Why? Once again everything became confused in his mind.

  For many days he carried these burning questions around in his head. But for that very reason he performed his duties all the more punctiliously, and his placid gaze, with its permanent air of wonder, troubled no one. Galeazzo had taught him well: no one could see what lay in the depths of his soul.

  One evening they were sitting together in front of the fire. Galeazzo, still convalescent and finding sleep difficult, was ensconced in a large armchair swathed in furs, with Lytto at his feet, lyre in hand. The cosy, dancing half-light would have been enough to stir up memories of younger days and past loves in anyone, but neither of them had any such to call on. However Galeazzo’s face was more languid than usual, and he felt at ease with himself. He was enjoying the soft, exquisite singing, the gentle warmth, and the self-indulgent wanderings of the convalescent mind. But above all, he enjoyed having Lytto at his side. He would have protested fiercely against any suggestion that he might love the boy so very much, but he was certainly receptive to everything that was beautiful, and he took real delight in Lytto’s noble, upright character as he sat there with his head inclined gracefully over his instrument, and his long hair trailing across his face. Galeazzo felt the need to talk, to embrace the boy with words, the way you might caress a beautiful statue with your eyes.

  “I have often thought, young Lytto,” he said after a protracted silence, “how strange it is that you never show any desire to get away from this castle, with its permanently cold floors, and that you never seem to be bored beside such a silent person as myself. But you know, I’d be quite happy now to tell you something about my life—not that there is anything to tell… On winter evenings… I always used to sit here in front of the fire… in summer it was in the loggia… I spent my free time in the library. Sometimes I’d watch the guardsmen drilling… and I had so much to do. So much work. I tell you, sometimes I loved just watching the birds taking to the air… and then suddenly the years had all flown away with them, and I was old. Now there’s a boring tale for you.”

  Lytto’s fingers trembled on the lyre. No one had ever heard the Duke speak like this before.

  “When you were young, my lord, did you never go down into Milan?”

  “Never, my boy. If I had, they would have killed me within the hour.”

  “But what about your bodyguards?”

  “Lytto, perhaps you think I am some sort of coward. Well, perhaps. Who can say he truly knows himself? But then, a man who holds the lives of hundreds of thousands of people in his hands, and would put all that in jeopardy, is probably exempt from the charge. No, Lytto, I’m not afraid of the assassin’s dagger, believe me, nor do I think I shall escape it in the end. What does horrify me is the depth of hatred—you know—the loathsome atmosphere of the hatred of slaves. It would smother me, down there. I begin to wonder if this isn’t my greatest achievement, that no man was ever so deeply hated as I am.”

  The words burst from Lytto’s mouth:

  “My lord, in the name of all the saints, why do they hate you, who are so good, so virtuous in your life, and always act for the best?”

  Galeazzo shrugged his shoulders.

  “I don’t know, and I’m not really interested. The hatred is in them, not in me. My soul will be found pure on the Day of Judgement. I’m incapable of hatred, myself.”

  Lytto leapt to his feet.

  “My lord, I shall go right now and tell them they are wrong!”

  Galeazzo’s
smile was a sharp as a razor.

  “Calm yourself down, my boy, and then we can continue the discussion. No more of these loud words and wild gestures, if you please. Believe an older man, Lytto, there’s no helping this hatred until these people change, and change totally, and become like you, and me, and everyone else. The fact is, they hate themselves in me.”

  “I don’t follow you, my lord.”

  “I’m not surprised, and it isn’t important that you should. Every living thing strives for power, Lytto—for domination. Some consciously, some not. The Lord Mayor orders the heads of guilds about, the guildsman lords it over the bootmaker, the bootmaker bullies his apprentices, the apprentice no doubt has younger siblings who torture the cat, the cat torments the mouse, and no doubt even the mouse isn’t at the bottom of this ghastly hierarchy. So the mouse hates the cat, the cat hates the children, and everyone hates me, because I am the one with power.”

  “Is the possession of power worth all the hatred, my lord?”

  “I could declaim in poetical tropes, Lytto, how one minute of power is equal to a thousand years of hell. Of course power isn’t an end in itself. It is simply an instrument. But it is absolutely necessary.”

  “Then what is its purpose?”

  “Go and ask the meanest beggar in Milan and he will tell you—freedom. That is what glitters at the bottom of the well of their dreams. It’s all they worship, and for its sake they will struggle for power, hating whatever power is greater than their own. And yet not one of these people has any idea what freedom is. They are bound by a thousand shackles, these unfortunates: wives, children, relatives, the state of the country, the ceaseless urgings of the body. And everyone is dependent on everyone else. Beat one of them and others will be sure to suffer. If the judge’s wife sprains her little finger you can’t guarantee that the next day six children won’t weep for a father languishing in prison. What they call freedom is a squalid, meaningless lie, because if they did kill me they’d get someone a thousand times worse around their necks. They’ve got so used to all this they can’t live without it. I could even argue that when I do away with these conspirators I do so in their own best interests… but how odd it is, that I should be the only one who knows what freedom means,” he added, rising to his feet.

  “To be free, Lytto, act as if you were utterly alone—without love, without hatred, without fear and without hope. What man can measure up to that? But what a fine evening this is! Would you play something? We’ve talked for so long…

  “But don’t think, Lytto, that I am afraid. I might take myself off to some faraway country for a holiday, where no one would bother me—I tell you, at times I have become very weary of it all and have given thought to such things. But I am a citizen of Milan. Anywhere else I would be a stranger, a guest; not my own master, and no longer free. And if they do succeed in killing me, I’d rather it happened here, at home, where my father and my ancestors met their fate.”

  “But why, why?”

  “Because no one can bear the thought of someone else achieving what he wants for himself from the very bottom of his heart. The free man is a permanent rebuke to others. He reminds them that they are slaves. So keep a tight rein on your passions, Lytto. You are a good, honest lad, with a pleasant face. Perhaps you will never come to understand what you have heard tonight. But if you do, learn from it. Now, isn’t it wonderful how I have rattled on this evening? But it’s been very agreeable. Now it’s time we went to bed. How does the poet put it?

  … et iam nox umida coelo

  Praecipitat, suadentque cadentia sidera somnos.

  … from the sky damp night

  Sinks to a close, and the setting stars urge sleep.

  “Thank you, Lytto, for staying up with me.”

  And he stroked the boy’s hair.

  Lytto had not understood very much of what Galeazzo had told him, but as he sat there listening he had been filled with a sense of unspeakable horror. Partly it was a horror of things he could not understand; partly, and more importantly, it was Galeazzo’s manner of speaking—his calm, perfectly level tones—that so appalled him. What he could not follow in the words he understood perfectly from the tone of voice—that the man was capable of speaking about other human beings as if he had no personal connection with them—as if he were not himself human.

  Nothing more was said until they reached the Duke’s bedchamber. There Galeazzo took the candelabra from Lytto and gazed searchingly into his face.

  “I’ve something else to show you, Lytto. I’m sure you have never seen my portrait. I don’t normally show it to anyone. But this evening I’m in a good mood, so take a look.”

  He drew back a curtain and lifted up the candelabra to illuminate the picture.

  The painting hung beneath a triple arch. Against a gold background it presented a figure sitting on a tall throne, the body completely enveloped in a dark-green cloak that was so voluminous it covered the steps below and made the face above appear intensely white. The face was horrifying. Lytto instinctively stepped back. It was unquestionably the face of Galeazzo, and yet it was not. With its monstrous calmness, gazing stiffly out at the observer, it seemed no longer the countenance of a human being. The lines were recognisably those of a man, but the expression was of something beyond humanity: certainly not a face to entertain foolish banalities, or indeed one in which anything could be read… and yet it did not seem to conceal any secret. It presented a horrific reality, in which there was nothing to be understood—a face that rejected understanding.

  The human forms painted beneath the throne were, in the hierarchical manner of the time, tiny in comparison with the central figure—a vast multitude, all with more or less identical faces, all in some way distorted and seeming to swarm in a kind of restless gloom. Above the throne, the gold background between the two lateral marble arches was interrupted by the unfinished—and truly terrifying—silhouette of two black human figures. The Duke drew the curtains closed.

  “Sit down, Lytto. You’ve gone pale. Pull yourself together,” he said. “There’s a long story behind this painting. One day, after I had escaped from danger that threatened my actual life, I decided to have my portrait done so that, if I did die, there would be something to hang in the gallery alongside my ancestors. I sent for the most famous painter in Milan and promised him a huge sum of money for the work. He was very happy to take it on. Of course I knew that he would see me through the eyes of the Milanese people and would paint me as I appeared in their vision of hatred. But that didn’t bother me. In fact, I was rather pleased. I tell you, it tickled my vanity in those days to be hated by so many people, more than anyone had ever been hated before, and I was delighted that the painter was going to record that loathing for eternity.

  “The strange thing about the whole business was that while he was painting me he apparently went mad. He complained of seeing apparitions, he began to prophesy, and he became convinced that he was in the presence of the Antichrist. And one fine day—I’ve no idea how he came by it—he suddenly ran at me waving a knife in the air. In those days I was still very strong, and my presence of mind has never yet let me down. I picked up a chair and struck him with it. The poor chap was duly executed, and the picture was left, just as you see it, unfinished. Over one of my shoulders there was to be St George, the guardian saint of my family, and on the other side St Ambrose, the patron saint of Milan. But all you can see are their shadows. So, how do you like the portrait, Lytto?”

  “It’s very fine, my lord. But it doesn’t look like you.”

  “Good. So mind you don’t dream about it! Now off you go. And promise me you will never mention this painting to anyone, or you’ll be playing with your life.”

  Lytto silently raised his hand.

  “God bless you, Lytto. You’ve seen, and heard, some important secrets tonight. But I trust you. You’re a good boy.”

  The next day Galeazzo thought about his talkativeness of the night before with some regret. He had raised a
confidant, who might well prove more dangerous than twenty conspirators. Every intimacy we share is a weapon placed in someone else’s hands—it lays our bosom open to them. But he did not worry about it for long. He had a strong sense of Lytto’s loyalty. He knew the boy had grown up away from all the madness outside. In fact, he began to feel rather pleased about what he had done. The long discussion they had had the previous evening actually completed his earlier project for bringing the boy up—to produce a self-reliant disciple, one who understood his thinking as a ruler, who would serve him on the basis of conscious insight and thus pursue his own interests at the same time.

  But in fact Lytto had understood nothing, retaining only the sense of horror that had filled him and the tortured thoughts that continued to trouble his mind. However, it was some consolation that the Duke had taken him so deeply into his confidence that evening. He was certainly pleased that it was he, the simple pageboy, little more than a child, who had been chosen to be trusted with such secrets, and presumably not without reason.

  One evening Lytto, kept awake by a combination of his unanswered questions and the general restlessness of young blood, went roaming through the castle. By chance he made his way up to the observatory, where the court astrologer tirelessly practised his strange mumbo-jumbo. When he saw Lytto, his face filled with concern.