The talisman wasn’t as complicated as it might have sounded. Obviously, the recipient was either using a similar wheel—at least, I hoped so, as deciphering the messages the old-fashioned way would be ridiculously complex. All they needed to know was which letter of the alphabet lined up with a particular magical symbol.
I turned behind me to the large shelf that held all the contents of the jeweler’s trade and took up a slab of creamy honey-colored beeswax. It was cold in the cellar; so cold, I’d been shivering without realizing it, and the beeswax was so hard that any attempt to carve it would have cracked it.
I went at once to the furnace, realizing that it would take hours for it to reach a good temperature, stoked it with coal, sparked the flint, and got a fire going. I didn’t have the luxury of waiting for the air to warm, so I held my achingly cold hands over the fire until they grew heated.
Then I turned my attention to the wax. Ser Abramo’s writings—the ones I had studied so carefully—had been laid upon the desk, so I had all the references I needed. I scribbled out a design for the talisman. I would use copper for Venus, the ruling symbol for Taurus—in honor of Lorenzo’s murdered brother Giuliano, who had died in late April. I painstakingly carved the back of the talisman first—the square of numbers that represented Venus. It would be a love charm, the better to help along any diplomacy, if that was its purpose, and it would look like a real love charm, with the symbol for Venus on the front. There were an infinite number of phrases that could be written around the edge of the coin, surrounding the central symbols, depending on the planet and the talisman’s purpose. I chose one from Virgil, from my days secretly studying Latin: Omnia vincit amor, love conquers all. But at the end of the phrase, I added an extra L, followed by the Hebrew aleph. Even an apprentice magician would notice the odd addition, and even a slow cryptographer would pick up the hint.
It took hours just to finish the back of the talisman to my satisfaction—during which, food, water, and wine were lowered down to us in a basket. I scarcely touched either. By the time food was lowered down a second time, it must have been evening. I suspect it was midnight by the time I finished carving the front of the wax talisman. I was just about to sink the little steel dowels into its edges to prepare the mold when I realized an image was missing. There were no notes from Ser Abramo to guide me, but it was a symbol I could never forget.
See there? Sister Anna Maria had told me, her finger pointing to an inconspicuous letter M on the silver talisman my parents had given me. The third leg of the M had the letter F growing out of it, and the center point of the M gave birth to a circle. That little sun and moon conjoined? See the tiny crescent moon embracing the sun—that circle with a dot in it…”
The symbol of the Magician of Florence.
I drew in an uncertain breath. I hadn’t the right to make such a symbol; it seemed disrespectful, somehow profane. But the talisman would not be complete without it. I had no choice. I used the fine engraving tool to carefully scoop out the tiny bit of wax whose absence would create the powerful symbol, biting my lip until it hurt to keep my mind from straying to memory.
And blinking down at the legend I had just carved, a sense of infinite weight and inexpressible awe settled over me at the realization of who I had just become.
I was now the Magician of Florence.
Fourteen
I sat and stared at what I had just created. No wonder I was still alive—Ser Abramo had trained me to be his replacement. I was his child, with the same exceptional skill for language, for symbols, for understanding and creating secret codes. Lorenzo would be hard-pressed to find another urchin quite like me.
I was motionless for so long that the half-blood Medici, whose heavy lids had grown even heavier, rose and stretched long thin arms as he let go an emphatic yawn and ran a hand over his cloud of black-brown hair. “It’s very late now,” he said. “You must sleep—you’ve grown tired.”
I stared up at him and stood myself, to turn toward the shelves behind me and reached for four tiny steel dowels and the large jar of white powder. “You speak for yourself,” I said. “Three more talismans in two days. I worked all day on one, and it’s nowhere near finished. I won’t be sleeping anytime soon.”
I stuck the four dowels at equidistant intervals along the thin edge of the talisman, then took a flagon of water from the food tray. I went to the far corner of the long worktable, where I poured the powder out in a little mound and made a depression in it, the way I’d seen Ser Abramo do. It was sloppy work, but soon I had malleable plaster and covered the talisman thickly with it, taking care that every dowel was exposed. I set the damp ball of plaster on a shelf for drying. With luck, it would be ready by morning, and so would the furnace.
To be honest, I was grateful to be sorely pressed for time, and strangely grateful that Tommaso and Cecilia’s lives depended on my success. Otherwise, being in Ser Abramo’s house, looking at notes written in his hand, creating the items as he had taught me … It would have been unbearable if I hadn’t been impossibly busy.
Ignoring the Nubian, who didn’t press, I sat down again, took up ink and quill and the blank backside of my captor’s message, ready to design the next talisman.
The remaining three were to be for protection. Saturn was the best choice, lead the best metal. I rifled through Ser Abramo’s notes, found guidance, and began to scratch out the talisman’s basic design.
* * *
By morning, the young Nubian was bleary-eyed and I was still busy. The plaster had hardened during the night on the first mold, and I had shoved it into the furnace and watched the wax melt away, leaving a suitable cast. Using Ser Abramo’s clever levers, I melted the copper—watching the fire change color until it finally flared green, then deepened to a beautiful blue—and poured the molten metal into my plaster cast. The metal had cooled fairly quickly, and I had broken the mold to stare down at the fine copper talisman with bittersweet pride.
That pride was quickly tempered by trepidation. It was time to magically charge the charm while I waited for the second mold to dry. I went to the apothecary cabinet and found the tiny drawers with yellowed labels written in Abramo’s predecessor’s hand. Several drawers were marked with the symbol for Venus, but I chose only two of them: rose petals and benzoin, as I hadn’t time to grind a special incense. With these in hand, I went toward the magical tent. The Nubian, despite his weariness, was quick to follow. It was painful, seeing the Magician’s robe hanging on the earthen wall, and painful to put on the shorter one that I’d worn before. The Nubian left his lamp burning on the floor by his chair, while I took the one from the worktable.
Hands trembling, I pulled back the black velvet flap leading inside, and gestured for the Nubian to go in.
He balked and shook his head.
“What are you afraid of?” I asked, with no small amount of superiority.
“Magic,” he said.
“You believe in it?” I was a bit skeptical. If he’d been truthful about being a Medici, he had been educated by the finest minds in Italy.
He nodded, suddenly seeming like a child.
“Really?” I said, my tone faintly snide. “Have you seen birds talk or objects drawn from thin air, because I haven’t. Shall I produce snakes to bite you or a weapon so that I can escape?”
“Don’t be silly,” he said. “There’s no such thing as that kind of magic. But the kind that changes people—that’s the most powerful kind.”
The Magician’s words resonated so loudly in my head I was tempted to cover my ears. The spell I worked … was for more than just your protection. Your heart’s in a magical furnace now … there’s no stopping it.
I drew in a breath of pure resolve and stepped inside a room darker than night, while my cautious and willowy companion hovered on the threshold, velvet flap in hand, unwilling to take another step.
I put the rose and resin in the thurible and held the lamp to it until it began to smoke. Then I lit the candles at each quarter
, in the proper sequence—clockwise, starting with the east—and finished at the altar, where I lit the white candle representing the element of fire. All was in its place: the candle representing the element of fire, the goblet representing water, the pentacle representing Earth. But the element of air was missing.
“The dagger,” I said. “Someone moved the dagger.”
“A good thing, too,” my owl-eyed guard said, his tone hushed. “You’ll have to do without.”
I considered arguing, but realized it would simply waste time. I chanted the prayer Ser Abramo had taught me, then used my finger to draw the star of the east, almost as large as me, in front of the altar.
It worked just the same: dagger or no, I felt the strange shift within me, the same as I’d felt when Abramo had first cast the circle about us. The air seemed to shimmer faintly, to vibrate, just as if he’d been standing there beside me. Spy or not, he had truly been a magician—the Magician—and the power of his talisman had reunited us at last.
A sense of fate and reverence overtook me. I felt the power as I cast the circle, called upon the archangels’ protection, and invoked Almighty God and the essence of Venus to bless the talisman so it would fulfill its purpose.
At last the ceremony was over, the circle closed. I was glad that the Nubian had remained outside, because when I took the charged talisman off the altar, I noticed a folded piece of paper off to one side, easy to miss in the flickering lamplight if one wasn’t looking for it. Some magical note of Ser Abramo’s, I assumed, and eagerly snatched it up while at the same time telling myself that it would do no good to read it, as it would only bring pain.
I unfolded it. It was indeed written in the Magician’s hand, and I quickly read:
What happened was entirely my fault, due to my inability to control my heart. I was blind to the pain I was causing those who loved me most.
I was a young, unmarried man, and my heart belonged—and had, for years, to a married woman whose name I shall not mention here, out of respect for her reputation and privacy. Let us call her A, for want of a better name. A and I resisted our mutual attraction for years, although the fact that I worked for her father-in-law and later, her husband, put us in daily proximity. For years, A and I worked together without speaking of or acting upon the love we bore for each other, out of respect for her husband, who nonetheless openly had numerous affairs.
But the day finally came when—after years of chaste behavior—our resistance broke, and we fell into each other’s arms. This continued some months until the lady put a stop to the affair.
There was a beautiful young woman named Flora in A’s employ. I did not love Flora, but at A’s insistence, I wed her. A and I both hoped that my new wife would capture my heart, so that A and I would never again be tempted to sin.
It failed to work, though sweet Flora loved me well enough. But I had long ago given my heart to A, and there it steadfastly remained.
The time came when both Flora and A became with child. Flora and I rejoiced at her news, but A was filled with trepidation. By that time, her husband was in poor health, so a pregnancy by him, while possible, was unlikely. A was convinced the child was mine, and her greatest fear was that the baby would resemble me more than her husband.
We waited anxious months. By chance, the babes were born a day apart. Sadly, Flora’s child—a boy, my son—died before drawing his first breath. A gave birth to a strong, healthy daughter, but—as she told me later—the child opened her eyes almost immediately, revealing the truth of her heritage at once. For just like mine, her right eye was green and her left brown.
The innocent babe could not remain under the cuckolded husband’s roof an instant, or the truth would be known and A’s reputation permanently sullied. With the midwife’s help, A told her husband the girl died—and because I was a selfish fool, I convinced Flora, without telling her who the real mother was, to take my infant daughter as her own, because I could not bear to let the child be raised by anyone other than myself or A. I made the baby a special talisman, one that would protect her and bring her good fortune in life.
My incredible selfishness led to death and despair. Poor Flora, despite being heartbroken over my infidelity, agreed to raise the girl out of the goodness of her heart. But over the next weeks, the loss of her own child and my faithlessness caused her to fall into such deep despair that one night, she crept from her bed and, taking the child with her, ran to the nearest bridge and flung herself into the Arno.
Or so witnesses told us—but now I see that even though she was clutching the child’s blanket when she leapt, her innate kindness caused her to leave the babe in a place of safety.
For many years, I did not want to live, but my obligation to others was too great. My grief and guilt faded during days of work, but awaited me in full fury at the fall of night.
There is a love that can never be quelled—a love that transcends mortality. Therein is the highest magic, the magic I poured from my heart into that infant’s talisman. And at last it has repaid me a thousandfold: Our child has returned to me, and I will let nothing take her from me again.
Not even death.
You do not see me, but I am here, Giuliana.
The hairs on my forearms, on the nape of my neck, rose. I am indeed the Magician, and my reach extends beyond the grave.
My mind reeled. Everything I had believed about my past, about my parents, had been untrue; all the anger I had felt toward them, unwarranted.
I had been wanted, and desperately so. My supposed death had brought others years of grief.
I sank to my knees in front of the altar. My heart swelled at the thought—and shrank again with the very next breath. God was crueler than I’d imagined. He’d hurt not just me, but had broken my mother and father’s hearts. He’d given me my father back only to cruelly murder him before I could even acknowledge him. To think that Ser Abramo and I had lived together in the same city our entire lives, each unaware of the other …
And I had a mother—but if she was still alive, how could I ever find her? Ser Abramo had taken her name with him to his grave. And even if I did manage to find her, would she, could she acknowledge me?
“Please,” I whispered, beginning to rock myself out of grief. “Please, come back. Help me…”
“What are you mumbling? You’re done, aren’t you?” the Nubian asked. “Get up. What is that you’re reading?”
“It—it was nothing.”
I rose and folded the letter up, meaning to put it in the waist of my leggings; as I reached the tent opening, he took it, and after a cursory glance, decided it wasn’t a secret message.
“Give it back,” I said, and he did.
“That was sad about Ser Abramo,” the Nubian said respectfully as we left the tent, and I pulled off the too-large magical robe and hung it back on its peg.
I felt raw. I spat on the ground. “You don’t deserve to speak his name!”
He seemed confused. “Why not? He was much esteemed in our household.”
“In the Medici household?” My voice broke, and all my rage tumbled out in a rush. “Is that why Lorenzo let him be killed? Is that why no one protected him? Lorenzo questioned me right after it happened—do you know what he felt? Irritation! Suspicion! If he felt any grief over the loss of a family member, he did a good job of hiding it!”
I moved forward so aggressively as I shouted that the Nubian drew back and his hand instinctively went to the hilt of his dagger.
“You’re a liar,” he said calmly. “And if you’d ever spoken with Lorenzo, you’d know just how preposterous that lie sounds.”
“Preposterous?” I was angry, aghast. We certainly couldn’t be talking about the same man; out of grief, Lorenzo had executed not just the men responsible for his brother’s death, he had executed many of their family members and had in essence destroyed the name and torn away all rightful privileges and properties of one of the oldest and most respected clans in Florence, the Pazzi. “Lorenzo is holdin
g my friends—he’ll kill them if I don’t perform for him!”
The Nubian’s great heavy-lidded eyes narrowed with suspicion; he shook his head, indicating that he wouldn’t deign to respond to such an outrageous charge.
“Lorenzo is a disgrace!” I pressed. “He’s going to abandon Florence—I suppose all you Medici are—and leave us common folk to be killed!”
“What,” the Nubian countered, his own temper flaring, “would make you say such a thing?”
“The talisman,” I said. “The one I … threw in the river. It said Lorenzo was going to go to France. The French are loyal to the pope; he wouldn’t be going there to try to enlist help, only to escape…” I trailed off, realizing the very thing that the young guard would say next.
“You say a talisman told you this,” he said wryly. “And yet…” He gestured at the worktable as we began to head toward it. “Here are three different messages. Has it occurred to you why?”
I lowered my gaze, silenced by my own stupidity. Because Lorenzo didn’t trust me, for one thing, to be sure which course he was taking; for another, if the Romans ever did break the code, they wouldn’t know, either.
“Because the less you know—and the less I know—the better for us, for everyone. Your temper makes you jump to some very silly, nasty conclusions,” he said. “Lorenzo de’ Medici would never abandon Florence. He’s been seriously considering surrendering himself to the pope in order to stop the war. They’d draw and quarter him in St. Peter’s square! They’d impale his head on the city gates and leave it there to rot!”
I lifted my chin at his vehemence. “That may be so, but he’s still holding my friends and has threatened to kill them.”
It was the Nubian’s turn to spit on the floor. “It’s a shame he’s thinking of putting his neck on the line for an ingrate like you!” He lowered his voice. “He’ll die before any of us will.” He paused. “If he’s holding your friends, then there’s very good reason for it.”
The Orphan of Florence Page 21
