The Orphan of Florence

by Jeanne Kalogridis

  The banker behind the desk—a man whose curling white hair, peeking out from beneath a new but decades-outdated black toque, just covered his ears—had just finished joking with one customer and was waving the next forward as if he were a friend (which he likely was). At the sight of me blocking the customer’s way, he lowered the spectacles on his nose and looked up at me, the insolent unfamiliar youth, over the top of his lenses.

  “What is the cause of such rudeness?” he demanded.

  I said: “Life or death. I must speak to Ser Lorenzo. Immediately.”

  My exhaustion, my trembling, the sheer sincerity and agony in my tone made him straighten in his seat, all disapproval gone, and blink at me. By then, I was unsteady on my feet. I wondered if I looked as drunk and near madness as I felt.

  “On what account?” he asked softly.

  My legs began to give way beneath me. Dizzied, I set a palm upon his desk and sank onto my haunches; he rose.

  “I can’t speak about it here,” I whispered. “Please … would you tell him or Donna Lucrezia, if he isn’t available, that Giuliana is here.” In my distress, I gave my real name, not realizing how incongruous it seemed with me dressed as a man. “I have something extremely valuable that I can give only to them. No servant, no one else, but them.”

  The banker’s expression divulged that his first impulse was to dismiss me outright, but a second long glance at me apparently changed his mind. He came around his desk and extended a hand. I took it and let myself be pulled to my feet, surprised at his strength and my own weakness. He led me over to a cold, shadowed corner near a thick wooden door leading into the estate.

  Four guards in red-and-white livery stood by the door, a pair on either side. They nodded to one of the incognito guards among the customers, who came over and patted me down thoroughly. I’d bound my breasts so tightly that they couldn’t be felt beneath my thick tunic. They found the cipher wheel in my pocket, drew it out, and examined it. Convinced it was harmless, they handed it back to me, and I clutched it possessively, as a child would a doll. “This is for Ser Lorenzo’s eyes only!” I exclaimed, huffily stuffing it back into my cloak as best I could.

  The guard nodded to the banker. The banker directed his words to me.

  “Wait here,” he said, and disappeared inside. I leaned inside the cold stone wall, pressed my hands to my eyes, and saw Ser Abramo’s face.

  Trouble came, I told him silently, and I’ve gone to Ser Lorenzo.

  I lowered my hands as the door opened again. The banker came out too quickly, without Lorenzo, without Donna Lucrezia, without so much as an assistant.

  “Please…” I began. He lifted a kindly hand for silence.

  “Someone will be out shortly to tend to you.”

  I waited a minute, then two, then three, and wondered blearily whether I should leave, whether I would be believed or blamed, whether it would be wiser simply to shove the cipher wheel inside the door and flee.

  I stayed only because of the Magician’s most recent message.

  In time, the door opened a third time. To my utter disappointment, it was neither Lorenzo nor Lucrezia, but a middle-aged woman with iron hair tightly plaited and wound beneath a veil of black gossamer. Her severe brows were just as tightly knitted and the corners of her lips drawn tautly downward. She was well-dressed, a household servant with great authority, judging by her bearing, but a household servant nonetheless. She held the door open without stepping out of the palazzo; a wave of warm air accompanied her.

  Beside her was a large brute of a man dressed in black, with a neck as thick as his head. He motioned for me to stand still—I obliged quickly—and I was again patted down. The brute frowned when he felt the square wooden object tucked into my cloak. I shook my head when he motioned for me to take it out. “It’s too precious,” I said. “I’m carrying it for Ser Lorenzo, with orders that only he is to see it.”

  “It’s harmless,” one of the guards at the door reassured him. He shrugged.

  The woman servant gestured sharply with her chin for the bodyguard to step back.

  “Ser Lorenzo, of course, cannot see you,” she told me dismissively. “And Donna Lucrezia is far too busy to be bothered by the likes of—”

  “Simona!” A familiar voice called behind her. “Simona, let him in at once!”

  Simona looked over her shoulder at her mistress with a look of disbelief and poorly hidden disapproval. She held the door open and flattened herself against the wall lest I brush against her when I entered. Wobbly, I stepped over the threshold and found myself in the presence of Donna Lucrezia—flanked by a pair of armed, disagreeable-looking men.

  Her gray hair, like her underling’s, was plaited and wound and topped by a sheer black veil; her unfitted shift was of plain black wool, her overdress of black silk, her old-fashioned bell-shaped sleeves without slits. Her homely face was worn and her dark eyes deeply shadowed; at the sight of me, they widened, and her pale hands reached for my shoulders. We were the same height, and it took all my strength not to reach out for her shoulders, too, and collapse into her arms.

  “My dear!” she addressed me, not with distrust or shock that I should be absent my prison and standing before her, but with genuine concern.

  “I, I have to see Lorenzo,” I stammered. “Something horrible has happened—”

  “You must tell me,” she said firmly.

  I glanced over at her maid and at the two guards; Lucrezia marked the gesture. She waved a hand in dismissal: the maid disappeared, but the two guards remained, albeit at a distance that allowed our words to be private.

  “Come,” she said. She took my cold hand in her warm one and led me and the politely distant guards through a series of rooms, each one covered in paneled wood with outrageously ornate designs; each one, oddly, with a bed, and crammed with paintings and vases and statuary of gold and bronze and marble atop semiprecious pedestals, Persian and Chinese carpets, and curios from the East and jewels—a display of more wealth than befitted a king, more than I ever could have imagined existed.

  I stumbled alongside her across a private loggia, then inside again and up a narrow staircase. She led me through another series of rooms, each slightly less cluttered with art and jewels than the last, until we arrived at the farthest chamber. The guards hung back at the doorway, reluctant to enter a lady’s bedroom. Lucrezia’s was paneled in a darker wood, with a few paintings and sculptures, religious rather than pagan in theme. A small bed curtained in heavy gold brocade was pushed off into one corner, as was a single wardrobe; the rest of the room was filled with padded chairs and low tables to facilitate the serving of refreshments: apparently, Lucrezia did far more entertaining than sleeping here. A chambermaid stood filling the bedside ewer, and a kitchen maid had just arrived with a flagon of what smelled to be hot mulled wine.

  Donna Lucrezia gestured for the women to leave and close the door behind them and on the reluctant guards. When we were alone, she turned and put the softest palm I’d ever felt to my cheek.

  “My dear, what has happened to you?”

  I’d never known the touch of a maternal hand, and it took all my resolve not to cry.

  “Abramo,” I began, then stopped, unable to go on.

  Lucrezia took both my hands and lowered me into a chair as she took the one across from mine. “I know,” she said gently. “They had discovered his identity, Giuliana.” She uttered my real name as if she’d always known it, as if the fact that I was female had come as no revelation, but was the most natural thing in the world. “His previous assistant had betrayed him. It was only a matter of time.”

  I knew that they were the Romans.

  “Niccolo did it,” I said, with much less conviction than I’d previously felt after seeing Niccolo magically appear in place of Stout.

  Lucrezia sighed and let go of my hands. Her tone was soft and firm at the same time. “Niccolo did his part for us, my dear, no matter what you saw. He is now at great risk. But something more has happen
ed, or you would not be sitting here.” She paused, and the softness left her. In its place was an exquisitely sharp intelligence, and steely determination. “Why did your … protectors let you go?”

  “I need to speak to Lorenzo,” I said. I couldn’t imagine relaying the horrid details of Albrecht’s and the Nubian’s murders to this gentle woman, nor could I imagine that anyone outside of Lorenzo would have any knowledge of the cipher wheel or the encoded talismans.

  “As you wish,” she said, not altogether pleased. She got up and called for a servant and whispered something to the chambermaid, who disappeared.

  Donna Lucrezia sat back down, pulling her chair a bit closer to mine, and took my chin gently in her fingers, a caress. “I have been worried about you,” she said, her kindliness returned. “It was not my choice to put you in such a situation.”

  I took her to mean that she regretted my imprisonment. I was wrong.

  “You know too much,” she said, in a way that did not threaten. “Which puts you in grave danger. We have to protect you. It is our obligation, as you are one of us.”

  “Us?” I shook my head, which forced her to withdraw her hand. “I’m not one of you.”

  She lowered her gaze to the fine carpet beneath us, her large dark eyes suddenly sorrowful, liquid, glinting in the hearthlight. She seemed to be struggling to make a decision, to find her voice.

  When she looked up at me, her face composed, she reached for me again and clasped my hands—once more touching me, as if she’d found something so dear she dared not let it go.

  “Magic is real, my dear,” she whispered conspiratorially. “I’m sure you know this, having worked with Abramo. When I saw you, and your eyes…” She drew a quick breath, as if in pain, but caught hold of herself again. “And I heard your name, it was as though heaven had returned my Giuliano to me again. Even death cannot keep us from our loved ones.”

  I blinked at her as though I’d come abruptly on a lunatic, but the last of her words echoed Ser Abramo in a way that made my hair stand on end.

  She must have read the confusion in my eyes, for she gently set my hands down upon my lap and withdrew her own, and sat back, smiling calmly, sanely, as if she had not just made an astounding confession. And then she rose, and rang for a servant, and ordered her to bring us bread and cheese.

  “You must be terribly hungry, my dear Giuliana,” she said. “Your hands are trembling badly.”

  She poured me a cup of mulled wine, as if she’d been the servant and I the mistress, and watered it down at my request before handing it to me with a calm smile.

  Lorenzo finally came in and drew back, stunned at the sight of me. His eyes, like his mother’s, were deeply shadowed, and his face seemed more gaunt than when I’d last seen it. It was the face of a man struggling beneath the weight of an entire city, beneath the specter of his own imminent death.

  I had always disliked Lorenzo and his brother because they were wealthy, spoiled, and worshiped, to my mind, by an ignorant population who thought gold a sign of God’s favor and occasional spectacle a sufficient distraction from daily misery. But I had never considered that their privilege had also brought them peril and was now forcing Lorenzo to confront one of his most dangerous enemies.

  Lorenzo stood protectively beside his mother, as if I’d been a threat. Lucrezia caught his sleeve. He started to pull away in irritation, but her grip was adamant, and he let himself be coaxed into the seat beside her. Although he leaned forward so far, he was scarcely sitting at all.

  “What in God’s name are you doing here?” he demanded, his voice so loud that Lucrezia shushed him to get him to lower it. In a calmer tone, he continued, “Where are my men?”

  I directed a sidewise look at Donna Lucrezia, uncertain as to whether she should—or wanted to be—included in the conversation.

  “My mother knows more than I do at this point,” Lorenzo said. “How in God’s name did you come to be here? Where are my men?”

  “Dead.” Even I could hear the anguish in my voice.

  Even Lucrezia leaned forward in alarm.

  “Stout killed them,” I said.

  “Who?” Lorenzo was puzzled, if no less intense.

  Stout had been my private nickname for the murderer. I cast about and finally said, “The man who … questioned me that day, trying to prove my loyalty, in the warehouse. Where you and your mother saw me for the first time.”

  “Girolamo,” Donna Lucrezia murmured to her son. “The stablehand.”

  Lorenzo directed a thunderous scowl at me. “Outrageous,” he said. “Girolamo has worked for our family for years.”

  “He killed Albrecht,” I said, my voice catching. “He killed the Nubian and … others. I think he’s dead. At any rate, he’s trapped down in Ser Abramo’s cellar. He has the written notes concerning your plans—”

  “What else, what else?” Lorenzo half rose from his seat. Even Lucrezia’s insistent tug couldn’t make him sit back down.

  Silently, I stood and tugged on the cipher wheel until it finally came free of my cloak pocket. I handed it to Lorenzo, who looked at it in honest confusion.

  “The talismans are safe, already in your people’s possession,” I began.

  “I have them,” Lucrezia said. “All but one.” She took the wheel from her son’s grasp and said, “An invention of Abramo’s and mine. It generates the code that goes on the amulets. If our enemies stole this, it would destroy our entire system of secret communication.”

  “So you are loyal,” Lorenzo stated matter-of-factly, as if I hadn’t proved myself a thousand times over. “Good. But now we must discover who else in our household has betrayed us, if anyone. And you…” He eyed me intently. “You must not leave our protection. The Romans are likely aware of you now, as they were of Abramo.”

  He stood up and pulled the long velvet sash that rang the bell for a servant. As he waited, pacing near the door, I begged: “Please, my friends … Where did you take them? Can I see them?”

  The ever-present crease between his mahogany-dark brows deepened as he struggled to remember. “Ah yes. Your friends,” he said. “The young woman and the baby and the little boy. They’re where they’ve always been and well-fed and warm, but they don’t know who their benefactor is.”

  I rose, aghast. “Then they’re not protected?”

  “Our people have checked on them from time to time. But I thought it best not to draw attention to them. I doubt anyone knows of their connection to you.”

  I sank back onto my chair, shaken and gripped by worry. A chambermaid arrived with a tray of bread and cheese and was shortly followed by a manservant, whom Lorenzo took aside and loaded down with murmured instructions.

  “You must eat,” Donna Lucrezia prompted, “and then you must sleep.”

  But I could hardly do either, thinking of Tommaso and Cecilia.

  * * *

  Somehow, I managed to do both, and I was curled asleep on Donna Lucrezia’s bed when she shook me awake by the shoulder. Lorenzo stood over me, his dark shoulder-length hair hung forward framing his cheeks, making him look even more gaunt than before.

  “Girolamo is gone,” he said, and at my sleepy confusion, added, “Stout. There was no body in the cellar. The rendezvous locations are in the hands of the Romans, apparently.”

  Donna Lucrezia walked up beside him, the hem of her long overdress whispering against the carpet. The animated charm had fled her heavy-lidded eyes with the result that she looked worn and tired and older than her years.

  I pressed my palms against the mattress and pushed myself up to sitting as she said: “The cipher wheel. Did he see it, Giuliana? Did he try to take it?”

  “He tried, but I got it. He passed it over at first—I don’t think he knew what it was, but then he went back and picked it up as an afterthought. He had to have been badly injured. I can’t imagine he got very far.”

  Lucrezia and Lorenzo ignored my last two sentences and shared pointed glances.

  “We’re
moving to another property,” Lorenzo said; his tone invited no opposition. “Someone may have seen you come here. All the tools that you need to continue your work will be taken there.”

  “How long will I be there?” I asked.

  “Indefinitely. Most likely until I can bring this war to an end.”

  “My friends,” I pressed. “They have to come with us.”

  He was already turning away, intent on the matter at hand, and muttered over his shoulder, “They’ll be fine where they are. We don’t have time to waste.”

  * * *

  It takes time for the Medici to gather up necessary things; time for servants to prepare for a journey, however short. I convinced Donna Lucrezia that I was desperate for sleep and so would, in one of the quiet guest rooms while she directed the ladies who crowded her bedchamber.

  I did not sleep, of course. I had kept my cloak nearby and laid it beside me as I settled into another feather-soft bed as Donna Lucrezia watched. I’m quite good at feigning snoring, a necessary talent when it came to convincing an anxious little Tommaso to sleep or at least to be quiet. So I gave a fine performance for Donna Lucrezia, letting my jaw sag and my lips part, and snoring just loud enough, but not too, until she closed the door on me and went to take care of other things.

  I waited for the sound of her tread to disappear and at once jumped up and folded my cloak over my arm. I cracked my door, peered both ways to make sure neither Lucrezia nor Lorenzo was anywhere in sight, and stepped out into the bustling hall.

  The household staff, many of them dressed in the Medici livery, swarmed the rooms in a swirl of red and white. None of them had time for a well-dressed lad apparently sent on an errand. The palazzo was vast and I got lost a time or two in yet another curio-laden room with busy golden wood panels, but somehow I managed to hold my breath most of the way out and released it with a gust when I finally stepped outside the door I’d entered.

  The bodyguard who’d stopped me the first time was lingering there. I forced a half smile and a nod as if to say my work is done here, thank you. It wasn’t so easy to gain access into the Medici estate, but it was certainly a cinch to get out.