Antonio lay naked beneath a worn blanket, on a bed damp from cleaning. His eyes were closed; in the light filtering through the half-closed shutters, he looked grayish white. I had not realized how thin he had become; below his bare chest, his ribs thrust out so prominently, I could count each one. His face looked as though the skin were melting off the bone.
I stepped up to the bed and he opened his eyes. They were lost and glittering, the whites yellowed. “Lisa,” he whispered. His breath smelled vilely sweet.
“Father,” I answered. Loretta brought a chair. I thanked her and asked her to leave, but asked Zalumma to stay. Then I sat down and took my father’s hand; he was too weak to return my grip.
His breath came quick and shallow. “How like your mother you look . . . but even more beautiful.” I opened my mouth to contradict him, but he frowned. “Yes, more beautiful . . .” His gaze rolled about the room. “Is Matteo here?”
Guilt pierced me; how could I have denied him his one joy, his grandson? “I am sorry,” I said. “He is sleeping.”
“Good. This is a terrible place for a child.”
I did not look at Zalumma. I kept my gaze on my father and said, “They have poisoned you, then.”
“Yes. It happened faster than I thought. . . .” He blinked at me. “I can hardly see you. The shadows . . .” He grimaced at a spasm of pain, then gave me an apologetic look once he recovered. “I wanted to get us out of Florence. I had a contact I thought could help us. . . . They gave him more money than I did. I’m sorry. Can’t even give you that . . .” All the speaking had wearied him; gasping, he closed his eyes.
“There is one thing you can give me,” I said. “The truth.”
He opened his eyes a slit and gave me a sidewise glance.
“I know you killed the elder Giuliano,” I said. Behind me, Zalumma released a sound of surprise and rage; my father began to mouth words of apology. “Please—don’t be upset; I’m not asking you to explain yourself. And I know you killed Pico. I know that you did whatever Francesco told you, to keep me safe. But we are not done with secrets. You have more to tell me. About my first husband. About my only husband.”
His face contorted; he made a low, terrible noise that might have been a sob. “Ah, daughter,” he said. “It broke my heart to lie so cruelly.”
“It’s true, then.” I closed my eyes, wanting to rail, to give vent to my fury and joy and grief, but I could not make a sound. When I opened my eyes again, everything in the room looked changed, different.
“If I had told you,” he whispered, “you would have tried to go to him. And they would have killed you. They would have killed the baby. And if he had tried to come to you, they would have killed him.”
“Giuliano,”
Zalumma whispered. I turned to look at her. “I did not know,” she explained. “I was never sure. Someone in the marketplace once said something that made me think perhaps . . . but I decided he was mad. And few people in Florence have ever dared breathe the name Medici, except to criticize. No one else ever dared say anything around me, around you, because you had married Francesco. And Francesco told all the other servants never to mention Giuliano’s name, for fear of upsetting you.”
My life with Francesco, I realized, had been limited: I saw the servants, my husband’s guests and associates, the insides of churches. And no one had ever spoken to me of Giuliano. No one except Francesco had ever spoken at length to me about the Medici.
I looked back at my father and could not keep the pain from my voice. “Why did he not come to me?”
“He did. He sent a man; Francesco killed him. He sent a letter; Francesco made me write one, saying you had died. I don’t think even then he believed it; Francesco said someone had gone to the Baptistery and found the marriage records.”
Salai. Leonardo. Perhaps Giuliano had heard of my marriage and had it confirmed; perhaps he had thought I wanted him to think me dead.
Imagine you are with Giuliano again
, Leonardo had said.
Imagine that you are introducing him to his child
. . . .
“You want the truth. . . .” Antonio whispered. “There is one thing more. The reason I was so angry with your mother . . .”
His voice was fading; I leaned closer to hear.
“Look at your face, child. Your face. You will not see mine there. And I have looked at you a thousand times, and never seen Giuliano de’ Medici’s. There was another man. . . .”
I dismissed the last statement as the product of delirium; I did not consider it long, for my father began to cough, a low burbling sound. Blood foamed on his lips.
Zalumma was already beside me. “Sit him up!”
I reached beneath his arm and lifted him up and forward; the movement caused a fountain of dark blood to spill from his mouth into his lap. Zalumma went to call for Loretta while I held my father’s shoulders with one arm and his head with the other. He gagged, and a second, brighter gush of blood followed; this seemed to relieve him, and he sat, breathing heavily. I wanted to ask him whose face he saw in mine, but I knew there was no time.
“I love you,” I said into his ear. “And I know you love me. God will forgive your sins.”
He heard. He groaned and tried to reach up to pat my hand, but he was not strong enough.
“I will leave soon with Matteo,” I whispered. “I will find a way to go to Giuliano, because Francesco has little use for me now. You mustn’t worry about us. We will be safe, and we will always love you.”
He shook his head, agitated. He tried to speak, and started, instead, to cough.
Loretta came in with towels, then, and we cleaned him as best we could, then let him lie down. He did not speak coherently again. His eyes had dulled, and he did not react to the sound of my voice. Soon after, he closed his eyes and seemed to sleep.
I sat with him through the afternoon. I sat with him at dusk, when evening fell. When Francesco came, his indignance over my escape from the palazzo constrained by false sympathy, I would not let him in my father’s room.
I stayed beside my father until the hour past midnight, when I realized he had not been breathing for some time. I called Loretta and Zalumma, and then I went downstairs, to the dining room, where Francesco sat drinking wine.
“Is he dead?” he asked, kindly.
I nodded. My eyes were dry.
“I shall pray for his soul. What did he die of, do you know?”
“Fever,” I said. “Brought on by an ailment of the bowels.”
Francesco studied my face carefully, and seemed satisfied by what he saw there. Perhaps I was not such a bad spy after all. “I am so sorry. Will you be staying with him?”
“Yes. Until after the funeral. I will need to speak to the servants, find them placement with us or a new family. And there will be other matters to deal with . . .”
“I need to return home. I am awaiting word on our guest’s arrival, and there are still many matters to take care of in regards to the Signoria.”
“Yes.” I knew that Savonarola had been arrested, thanks to
Francesco’s timely defection to the
Arrabbiati
. At least I would no longer have to pretend that my husband and I were pious folk.
“Will I see you, then, at the funeral?”
“Of course. May God give us all strength.”
“Yes,” I said. I wanted strength. I would need it, to kill Francesco.
I
stayed at my father’s house that night and slept in my mother’s bed. Zalumma went back to Francesco’s palazzo and fetched me personal items and a mourning gown and veil for the funeral. She also brought, at my request, the large emerald Francesco had given me the first night I had sullied myself with him, and the earrings of diamond and opal. Matteo remained at home, with the nursemaid; I did not have the heart to bring him to such an unhappy place.
I did not watch Loretta wash my father’s body as I waited for Zalumma to return. Instead, I went to his study, and found a sheet of writing parchment, and a quill, and ink.
Giuliano di Lorenzo de’ Medici
Rome
My love, my love
,
I was lied to, told you were dead. But my heart never changed toward you
.A warning: Salvatore de’ Pazzi and Francesco del Giocondo plan to draw you and Piero here to kill you. They are amassing an army in Florence. They want to repeat—this time, with success—Messer Iacopo de’ Pazzi’s plan, to rally the people in the Piazza della Signoria against the Medici
.You must not come
.
I paused. After the passage of so much time, how could he be sure of my handwriting? What could I say so that he could be certain of the letter’s authenticity?
I only ask, as I did before: Give me a place, in some other city, and a time. Either way, I am coming to you soon. You dare not communicate it by regular correspondence—your letter would be confiscated and read, and I and our child, your son, endangered
.I have been separated from you because of a monstrous falsehood. Now that I know the truth, I cannot tolerate the distance between us an instant longer than I must
.
Your loving wife,
Lisa di Antonio Gherardini
When Zalumma returned, I handed her the folded parchment. “I cannot send this as correspondence,” I said. “The Council of Eight would intercept it, and have my head. I will have to buy someone willing to hide the correspondence on his person and ride all the way to Rome with it, and see it personally delivered.” I showed her the emerald and the earrings, and handed them to her.
“You are the only one I can trust,” I told her. I had thought I could trust Leonardo; now, I could not speak his name without venom. He had knowingly kept from me the one truth that would have healed my heart.
Giuliano
. . .
dead. Few people have heard this. Most believe he is still alive
.
Do you not love him still?
He had been reticent on our first meeting because he thought I had married another man while my first husband still lived. He had thought me capable of complete betrayal—because he was capable of it himself.
Zalumma took the jewels and nestled them carefully in the pocket hidden in the folds of her gown. “If it is at all possible,” she said, “I will see it done.”
We agreed that she would go early in the morning to search for a trustworthy courier. The lie: I was so grief-stricken that she had gone to the apothecary’s in search of something to soothe my nerves. It was so early, and I so desperate, that I did not want to wait for the stablehand to wake and ready the horses, and so I sent her off on foot.
I was terrified to send her off on such a dangerous hunt; one thing especially worried me. “I did not bring my knife,” I said; if I had, I would have given it to her.
Her smile was small but wicked. “I did.”
I did not mourn that night. I lay in my mother’s bed, with Zalumma at my feet in the cot that my father had never been able to bring himself to remove, and did not sleep. Now that Antonio was dead, Francesco had no more use for me—except as a lure, a role I would not play. The time had come to escape; my ultimate destination was Rome. I considered a dozen different ways to try to make it past the city gates—but none were safe or feasible when a restless two-year-old boy was involved.
I resolved only one thing, that we three—Zalumma, Matteo, and I—would leave in the hours before dawn, after Francesco had returned from his revels, so that I could kill him as he lay drunk in his bed.
In the quiet of morning, when everyone was still asleep, the time came for Zalumma to go. I took her hands and kissed her cheek.
“You will see me again,” she promised, “no later than your father’s
burial. If I am late, I will find you at the church.” She moved to the door, her step light; and then a thought stopped her and made her look back over her shoulder at me. “You forgave your father many things,” she said. “Too many. But perhaps I will try to forgive him, too.”
Once she was gone, I went into my father’s bedroom. He looked cold and unhappy in his white linen shift, with his hands folded around a little red cross. I took it from his grasp and hid it in the wardrobe, under a pile of tunics where Loretta would not find it; and when I did so, I came across a gold-handled stiletto—neat and deadly—and hid it in my belt.
The funeral was just after
none
, mid-afternoon, at Santo Spirito. Loretta had gone early to make the arrangements; since the plague was no longer widespread, it had been easier than she expected to hire gravediggers.
The Mass said for my father was short and sad. Francesco came and sat impatiently through the service, then left abruptly, saying there was an emergency at the Signoria. I was relieved; it had grown almost impossible to hide my infinite loathing for him.
Few stood at my father’s graveside: only Uncle Lauro, his wife and children, Loretta, my father’s stablehand, my father’s cook, and me. Matteo remained at home with the nursemaid. As I cast the first handful of earth onto my father’s coffin—nestled beside my mother’s sweet stone cherubs—I shed no tears.
Perhaps fear stole them from me: Zalumma had not returned. It had been a mistake, I told myself, to send her out alone with such expensive jewels, especially so early when the streets were empty. If she had encountered a thief, who would have heard her cries for help?
The time came to return to my father’s home for a funeral supper. Uncle Lauro and the others tried to coax me into walking back with them to my parents’ house, but I refused. I wanted a private moment with my father and mother; I wanted to remain in case Zalumma finally returned.
When the others left, I was alone only briefly. One of Santo Spirito’s
Augustinian monks approached, in his order’s traditional habit, with a capuchin’s gathered folds around his shoulders and his cowl raised.
I kept my eyes focused on my father’s grave; I wanted no conversation. But he came to stand directly beside me and said, softly, “Madonna Lisa. I am so terribly sorry.”