‘Take that island, for instance,’ said Daubeny, pointing at St Michael’s Mount across the bay. ‘What good is it? Soil you couldn’t grow weeds in and fortifications fifty years out of date – even in Scotland!’ (This last with particular venom.) ‘And as for … what is it we passed through?’
‘Ludgvan,’ prompted de Peubla, wary of the Baron’s brandy-borne torrents of temper.
‘And as for the … village, if one may so dignify it, of that name,’ Daubeny spluttered on, ‘I’ve pulled down better houses than those. No wonder the poor wretches invaded England in ’97 – anything to see a bit of decent countryside. And another thing—’
The sea breeze across the bay played with the Admiral’s fashionable basin-cut hair as he tuned out the rant-frequency to hear more subtle whispers – from both within and without.
On the presently submerged causeway to the Mount, the two young Princes were clearly visible, more solid, though unearthly still, than ever before. At that distance even Slovo’s sea-trained eyes could not be sure but he nevertheless felt certain that they were smiling at him – as before. The water broke over their feet in ways it should not, the wind did not disturb their golden locks. Mere additions to the scene for Admiral Slovo’s benefit, they looked at him, a distant matchstick figure, and he likewise looked at them.
‘Do you see something, Admiral?’ asked de Peubla, who under his assumed clumsiness was as watchful as a cat.
‘Nothing that has not been my constant companion on this journey, Ambassador,’ came the unhelpful reply. But, in fact, sudden enlightenment dawned like a storm-laden day over Slovo, a revelation sufficiently dark to make him smile.
When he raised his eyes again, the fort on St Michael’s Mount was no longer obsolete or quaint. Storey upon storey, crammed with cannon, rose into the sky above a tessellation of the very latest Dutch-Italian style fieldworks.
Even Daubeny could see that this was no longer a place to be laughed at, its black and white flag of St Piran not a subject for mockery. Only the suspected smiles adorning the Princes on the drowned causeway remained as before, though perhaps a little broader now, to Slovo’s favoured eyes.
Enquiring at the church in Ludgvan, at the Admiral’s request, they were welcomed to ‘Free Kernow’ in most uncertain English by a priest called Borlase. When the foreigners’ business was confidently demanded, Admiral Slovo casually killed him at the presbytery door with a stiletto.
‘I needed to see if my theory was correct,’ protested the Admiral to his shocked companions later.
‘They ask me to investigate something,’ said Admiral Slovo, ‘to “sort it out”, and then cavil at my methods!’
‘I agree,’ sympathized his fellow countryman. ‘You never know where you are with the English. Mostly they’re as rough as a Turk’s lust and then suddenly they’ve gone all mushy on you.’
‘Precisely,’ said Slovo, warming to this young man and more glad than he could, of course, decently show, to run into such a compatriot. ‘And their sense of humour …!’
‘Nothing but toilets,’ nodded the young man. ‘Yes, I’ve run into that – and even that would amuse them – run, do you see?’
Admiral Slovo had come to Westminster Abbey with the intention of hearing mass and offering up a prayer for his speedy delivery home. At the door, however, his eye had been caught by a lithe figure with a sketch-book and charcoal-stick, whose evident grace and taste in dress proclaimed him a non-native. As it turned out he was a Florentine, but the Admiral could forgive him that for the sake of civilized conversation – and a possible pick-up.
‘Your sketch shows no small talent,’ said Slovo, ‘Master …?’
‘Torrigiano – Pietro Torrigiano. And so it should after all my schooling.’
Admiral Slovo studied the artist from head to foot but received no satisfactory answers to the silent questions he posed. ‘Your style betokens tuition,’ he agreed, ‘but the residual stigmata of humble origin suggest insufficient funds for such luxuries.’
Torrigiano smiled wryly. ‘What I do not owe to God, I owe to the Medicis,’ he conceded, and at the second half of his tribute spat heartily on to a proximate headstone. A passing chantry-priest looked blackly at them but thought better of any other protest. Foreigners were best left to their own damnation.
‘Duke Lorenzo, dubbed “The Magnificent”,’ continued Torrigiano as he sketched furiously, ‘rescued me from my peasant destiny and placed me in his sculpture school. We were taught by Bertoldo, you know, and he was taught by Donatello!’
‘Most impressive,’ commented Slovo (who was actually self-trained to indifference in all matters artistic).
‘It was also Lorenzo who expelled me from both school and Florence and into my present penurious exile. I altered another pupil’s face; we couldn’t both remain, so Lorenzo made a decision as to who showed most potential and …’[6]
‘That is the way of Princes,’ said Slovo, trying and failing to offer consolation. ‘Difficult choices.’
‘Difficult to live with possibly,’ answered Torrigiano with a mite less respect and tact than he should have shown to an elder and better; the very cockiness that would ensure his death, many years on, in the prisons of the Inquisition in Spain. ‘Mind you, I have made a life of sorts here in this land. The odd commission does arise.’
‘None odder than this, I suspect,’ said Admiral Slovo. ‘Draw me now against the background of the Abbey – or whatever it may be called at present. Use all speed whilst the effect lasts.’
Slovo had been starting to lose interest in his young find and thus looking about, thinking of Kings and Crowns, discovered that the world had changed whilst they talked.
Torrigiano gaped in awe, even as his hand tore madly across the new canvas. ‘Mother of Sorrows!’ he gasped. ‘Where are we?’
‘London,’ replied Admiral Slovo, considerately remaining as still as he could, ‘or some substitute for it. Do not slacken your efforts, Artist, we may not be here long.’
Torrigiano shook his head sadly. ‘This is for a life-time study,’ he said, ‘not a tantalizing browse. Is it still a church?’
Unable to turn and observe properly, Slovo shrugged. ‘Possibly; though not, it seems, a branch of the Christian faith I’ve yet encountered.’
‘The gargoyles,’ enthused Torrigiano, ‘the domes; such a torrent of flowing colour. I could worship here.’
‘But who?’ smiled Slovo at his chilly best. ‘That is the question. Now, be sure and feature my best side …’
‘It’s disgusting,’ said King Henry. ‘Take it away!’
Torrigiano’s face fell at this savage review of his efforts.
‘His Majesty is not alluding to the verisimilitude of your depiction,’ said Admiral Slovo to him. ‘I can vouch for that. It is the effect he finds distressing.’
‘All that bloody ivy and carving,’ confirmed Henry. ‘It makes me heave, so it does. Who would have fashioned Westminster Abbey like that?’
‘No one of, or to, your tastes, that seems certain,’ said de Peubla in a manner intended to be soothing. He got a regal glare for his pains.
‘I can see that,’ said the King. ‘It is not the sort of place in which Kings of England are crowned.’
‘Though maybe Kings of another sort,’ said Daubeny, looking bemusedly at the picture held by Torrigiano.[7] The eye-borne volley of royal ill-will was worse even than that just received by de Peubla.
6
Curiously, history does relate that, whilst copying before the masterful frescoes of Masaccio at the Church of the Carmine, Michelangelo Buonarroti’s nose was broken by a fellow pupil whose efforts he had been deriding. The pupil was indeed expelled and exiled for this temporary lapse. The nose did not heal correctly and the consequent disfigurement forever after distressed and depressed its owner.
7