The Orphan of Florence

by Jeanne Kalogridis

  * * *

  The all-too-brief nap I’d taken on Donna Lucrezia’s bed hadn’t lifted my fatigue one jot, but the bread and cheese and watered wine provided me just enough strength to cross the city once more, albeit it at a pace far too slow for a pickpocket’s liking.

  Cecilia screamed with joy at the sight of me, a sound so shrill it made my head hurt (although at that point, most sounds made my head hurt), and when Tommaso hurled himself at me, my legs gave way and I fell hard onto my backside, right there in the open doorway.

  Giggling with glee, Tommaso fell on top of me and stayed there, wrapping his skinny arms around my ribs and trying to burrow his face into my bound breasts.

  Cecilia’s golden hair was down, unplaited and uncoiled; it spilled down her back as she threw her head back and laughed. She and Tommaso pulled me up so I could rise but her laughter stopped when she saw my face. I was too tired, too overcome with worry and grief and shock and desperation to even smile. I pushed myself up to a sitting position with effort. Cecilia saw, took my arms, and pulled me to my feet. It gave me time to see that Tommaso’s front tooth had come in halfway now, brilliant white against pristine pink gums, time to drown in bittersweet relief at the sight.

  “Giuli!” Cecilia crowed, and Tommaso chimed in—at which point Cecilia caught herself and shushed Tommaso as Ginevra, swaddled on the bed behind them, let go a plaintive sleepy mewl.

  “Shhh,” she told me in a whisper. “The baby’s napping.” In low voices, she and Tommaso babbled of worry and gratitude for the money, food, and fine bedding, and then Cecilia stopped herself abruptly. She put her hand to my cheek, just as Donna Lucrezia had done, and I had to squeeze my eyes tightly shut at the welling of tears, at the sudden painful tug in my throat.

  “Giuli, my darling,” she said softly, ignoring Tommaso’s excited, slightly-too-loud chatter as he pulled at my clothes trying to get my blurry attention. “Tell me what has happened to you. Tell me what is wrong.”

  “Will you leave me again?” Tommaso asked, so pitifully, so near tears himself, that I sat down on the narrow bed and pulled him to me, winding my arms around him so tightly that he was crushed and near breathless, but he didn’t try to squirm away.

  “I’ll never leave you again, ever,” I gasped. “But we’re leaving this place for a much, much nicer one.” I looked over the top of his little straw-colored head at Cecilia, whose sweet face had grown abruptly grim.

  “For two days, I thought you had died,” she said somberly, “until the money started appearing. Packages. My landlord didn’t know what was in them. I kept wondering if Tommaso and I should go to another city, like you told us, but I kept hoping you’d come back. And now you have.” She paused. “You don’t look well, Giuli.”

  I closed my eyes and managed to say calmly, “The men who killed my master are after me and—”

  “The men who killed your master,” she interrupted, her look stern and maternal. “Criminals?”

  I shook my head. “Worse.”

  She frowned, confused.

  “I’m in danger,” I said. “Which means you might be in danger, too. But everything is going to be all right. We’re leaving—I don’t know if we’re leaving Florence, but we’re going someplace safe. Others will be protecting us.”

  Her dazzlingly blue eyes narrowed. “What others? Giuli, I’m not getting involved with criminals or worse. I’ll not let Tommaso get involved with them either.”

  I drew a deep breath. If I hadn’t been so jagged, so near insanity, I might have answered differently. When I let go the rush of air, unexpected words rode on it.

  “The Medici. It’s about the war, Celia. It’s about Rome.”

  It was her turn to let go a gust. Her pretty rosebud lips pursed into an open circle that grew until it was the size of her widened eyes.

  “You’re a spy,” she whispered.

  “Among other things,” I admitted, then almost slapped my own face as I realized that Tommaso—chatty brat Tommaso, that little blond parrot—should never have heard such a thing. And by telling Cecilia, I had just endangered her, too.

  “We need to get back to their palazzo now,” I said. “They’ll take very good care of us all. We have to go. I … I’m keeping too many secrets. And the Romans know it. They’re after me, Celia.”

  Cecilia was still gaping as if she hadn’t heard. Her gaze left mine and traveled to a spot beyond my right shoulder, where the door was still open. I turned my head away from her, from Tommaso, still in my grasp, and looked over my shoulder at the cowled man standing on the threshold. His face bore cherry bruises, and his black cloak, slashed and hanging down at one side, bore fat handprints where he had tried and failed to brush off all of the white powder.

  “Funny as you should be blabbin’ about that,” Stout said. “You’ll be comin’ with me now, I thinks.”

  Sixteen

  He wasn’t alone. The lanky, silent man I’d nicknamed Lean was lingering behind him in the doorway, his mantle pushed back at the hip to reveal the steel hilt protruding from his baldric, his gaze intently focused on me.

  Cecilia raised herself to her full height. She was far from dangerous, but she’d dealt with many a rowdy male customer, and the sudden frightening blaze in her eyes intimidated me.

  “Get out,” she ordered, her voice low and thick with loathing. “Get out now, or I’ll call for the landlord.”

  Stout gave her a smarmy grin and raised his hands, palms out, to show he meant no harm. “I work for the Medici, dearie. I’m just here for her. You and the kiddies can stay here if you want. We just want to take her someplace safe.”

  Cecilia wavered and glanced back at me.

  I locked gazes with Stout and gently pushed Tommaso away from me.

  “I’ll go with them, Cecilia,” I said slowly. “You and Tommaso stay here. I’ll come back for you later.”

  I’m a fairly good liar, but I’ve never been able to fool Cecilia for an instant.

  “They’re not with the Medici,” she said, her voice quavering not with fear, but indignance. She turned on the two men. “Get out!” she shouted.

  Stout actually took a step backward, and she tried to close the door on his boot, but he kept it on the threshold and used a powerful shoulder to push the door back open.

  Cecilia screamed bloody murder, a sound louder than I thought her capable of making. “Help!” she shrieked. “Police! He’s killing me! Help!”

  Ginevra started wailing almost as loudly, while her mother picked up a bowl from the table and began, ridiculously, to beat Stout with it. He seized her arm with such crushing force that she yelped and dropped the bowl to the floor, where it split in two. He pushed her further back into the room so that he and Lean could step inside and close the door. Enraged, Tommaso let go a high-pitched roar as he lunged at Stout and started pummeling his thighs. I forced myself into the melee, trying to push the boy away, trying to pull Cecilia’s arm free.

  Lean stepped forward and drew his short sword.

  “Tommaso!” I shouted. “Stop it!” To Lean, I yelled, “Don’t you dare hurt either of them or I won’t go!!”

  “Shut up, all of you!” Stout bellowed, and shook Cecilia by the arm as he directed his next words to her. “Or I’ll shut you and your kiddies up for good!”

  He pushed Cecilia away and kicked at Tommaso. I guided both of them away before they got themselves hurt.

  Cecilia was angrier than I’d ever seen her. “Don’t you dare go with him, Giuli!”

  “You have to stay with Tommaso and Ginevra,” I said quietly, reasonably, turning to her and exposing my back to Stout. “Please…”

  “You can’t!” She sounded as petulant as Tommaso, who echoed her in a high-pitched whine.

  “Celia,” I hissed through gritted teeth. “He’s killed. He’s killed…”

  Before I could finish, Stout threw a massive arm around my chest and pressed my back hard against his upper torso so that I was thrown off balance, forced to lean against
him—my head resting on his heart, pinned in the crook of his elbow. If I moved, I would be strangled. At the same time, he unsheathed his sword, one edge of it faintly crusted with a dark brown-red substance. Albrecht’s blood. And now he had me in the same position as poor Albrecht when his throat had been slit.

  I had no weapon, no more trick, no helpful visions of Niccolo.

  So, I thought sourly, this is how it ends. This close to happiness.

  “Yes, I’ve killed,” Stout told a horrified Cecilia, “and I’ll run her and you and the kiddies through unless you back up and shut up.”

  “No matter what he does,” I gasped at her, at Tommaso, “don’t do anything. Just hold still, and let him go.” Because I knew he was going to kill me, and I didn’t want him to do it in front of them. Especially not Tommaso.

  Wide-eyed, her hair tousled, Cecilia ran to the bed and protectively picked up her shrieking child, who pushed her mother’s face away with chubby fingers.

  “Don’t you dare,” Cecilia said, her voice quaking with outrage. I couldn’t tell if she was speaking to Stout or to me. “Don’t you dare…”

  Tommaso surged forward again, screaming, “Let her go!” in a voice so loud and so shrill I was surprised the entire city didn’t come bounding up the stairs to investigate. He pushed away Stout’s tattered cloak to reveal one of his thick thighs, and then Tommaso bared his little teeth and sank them into Stout’s flesh.

  Stout yelped and tried to kick the boy away, but his grip on me never wavered.

  “Stop it!” I roared and kicked at Tommaso myself. I finally managed to connect and sent him falling onto his backside.

  “I’ll kill you,” Tommaso wailed. Tears streamed from the corners of his irresistibly blue eyes. He scrambled to his feet.

  “Not before I kill her,” Stout retorted, pressing his blade even closer against my neck. “And you, you stupid little bastard!”

  Lean, heretofore a spectator, sidled past Stout and grabbed Tommaso’s arms. The boy struggled in vain as Lean held him fast.

  “No!” I gasped; the razor-fine edge of Stout’s blade scraped off the tender flesh at my neck. “Let him go. I’ll do anything you say.”

  Stout withdrew his sword a bit. “Oho,” he said. “You’re a tough one. I remember how you was so willing to die for Florence. But maybe there’s something as you love more that’ll loosen your tongue.” He jerked his chin at Lean. “Bring ’im with us.”

  “No,” Cecilia moaned. Ginevra echoed her wordlessly.

  “No,” I moaned, too. “I swear on God’s throne, if you leave him, if you don’t hurt him, I’ll talk. Just please, please leave him alone.”

  “Well,” Stout remarked cheerfully, slowly uncoiling his arm from around my neck. I stood up and rubbed the offended flesh there. “That cinches it, then.” He winked at Lean. “C’mon, let’s go.”

  Lean looked uncertainly at Ginevra, then back at Stout.

  “She’ll keep her yap shut,” Stout said deliberately as he eyed her. “At least until we’re back in the street, if she wants her baby to live.”

  Clutching the sobbing Ginevra to her, Cecilia stared at me, her gaze stunned, frightened, imploring forgiveness.

  “It’s okay, Cecilia,” I said softly. “You’re doing the right thing by Ginevra.” And I truly didn’t blame her, not at all, because I knew that if it came down to a choice for me between protecting Lorenzo de’ Medici or Tommaso, Tommaso would win.

  * * *

  With Stout clutching my arm and Lean clutching Tommaso’s, we marched through the outer rooms and down the stairs into the landlord’s shop. The landlord was in the back firing new wares, but his wife and a pair of customers noted Stout’s brandished sword and my and Tommaso’s incapacitation, and gasped.

  “Police,” Stout growled.

  “He’s lying!” Tommaso piped, before Lean cuffed his ear.

  There was a moment of silence as the others digested this. Please, I thought, looking as desperate and frightened as I dared, please believe Tommaso and help us!

  “So that’s what all that commotion was about,” the landlady said huffily. “And me trying to do business! I told Cecilia that the lad would come to no good. Good riddance!”

  Outside in the street, Stout’s flatbed wagon awaited. A third man sat in the open bed. I marked his long, exposed baldric and the hilt of the weapon inside it, and crawled peaceably up to sit beside him. Lean lifted Tommaso up. The boy kicked a bit and seemed ready to fight the third man, who reached out and enfolded him tightly in his arms.

  I looked pointedly at the man’s baldric and, sotto voce, told Tommaso, “There’s a sword in there with your name on it if you give him any trouble.”

  Tommaso scowled and thrust out his lower lip. He pulled away from his captor—not to escape, but only so that he could be next to me. The man—goateed, middle-aged, and weary-looking—kept hold of Tommaso’s one arm but let the boy squirm in between us. His warm little body pressed against mine and I resolved at that instant that wherever we were ultimately headed, Tommaso would not arrive with us.

  The wagon rolled toward the east, away from the richer part of town, and south down the vast and crowded Via de’ Calzaiuoli. I drowsed. I tried hard not to fall asleep so that I could keep an eye on Tommaso, but the steady rumble of the wheels and the rocking of the cart overcame me. I dreamed of Niccolo, showing me again and again how to thrust and how to fall. I dreamed of Ser Abramo down in the cellar with the silver talisman I’d had since childhood, studying it, realizing that it marked the position of the constellations and planets on the day I was born, remembering the moment he had hung it around my tiny neck. I dreamed of the moment I had first taken hold of Tommaso’s hand when he was sitting all alone at the fountain outside the orphanage, and our first night together, when he had sobbed in my arms as he told me the story about stumbling over his dead mother in the dark.

  An agonized human shriek, an oddly sickening thump thump of wheels and an ass’s bray hurled me hard into waking, onto my belly on the flatbed of the cart. Tommaso was no longer sobbing in my arms but down beside me, the two of us clutching the wagon bed’s rear edge to keeping from falling down into the street and gaping down over the crushed body of an urchin lying on the cobblestones, close enough for me to reach down and touch. It all happened in the space of a breath, less than a breath, but in that instant I had never been so fully awake, so aware that my captor had lost his grip on me, on Tommaso, and so clear on exactly what I needed to do.

  I rolled onto my side and with all my strength pushed Tommaso off the wagon so that he fell facedown into the street. I would have scrambled after him, but the goateed man seized my legs and held fast. I pushed my palms against the bed, lifting my head and upper torso up so that I could scream: “Run, Tommaso, run!”

  Stupid of me to make noise, since Tommaso already knew what to do—I’d trained him well in the art of running away from the law—but especially since it alerted Lean, who jumped off the driver’s seat and followed at top speed.

  Lean was fast, but there was no one faster than Tommaso, not even me. The sunlight caught his hair and turned it incandescent white gold. I watched that shining little head bob through the crowd and, in seconds, disappear before Lean had even gotten a good start.

  For the first time in days, I felt myself grinning. Ear to ear, with teeth brazenly bared, because that was a singularly happy moment, perhaps the happiest of my life. Tommaso was free; he would go to Cecilia, who would deliver him to the Medici and Donna Lucrezia’s tender care. He would grow up an educated man, and the hard life of the streets—and I—would soon fade from his memory.

  I didn’t relish the notion of being tortured, or of dying, but at the moment, I was too joyful to worry about hell. Who knew, my saving Tommaso’s life might even have qualified me for purgatory.

  * * *

  After the accident, my fellow traveler dragged me back by my legs into the cart—my sleeves picking up several splinters along the way—and pulled me
to sit with him just behind the driver’s seat, our backs pressed against Stout’s as he drove. The goateed man pinned both my arms behind my back until I yelped in pain. He nodded, satisfied, as if to say, You won’t be doing that again, miladdo.

  Our pace quickened, despite the crowds. Stout, like many a heartless driver on an errand, would not be distracted from his mission by the possibility that the child he’d just run over might be in need of assistance or already dead.

  We rumbled on past the massive orange tile dome of the great Duomo, southward past the distant Palazzo della Signoria in the west, the House of Lords, a grim fortress of rough gray stone. If the bulwark was a massive fist, then the slim toothy tower, visible from almost anywhere in the city, was a slim forefinger pointing accusatorily up at the sky.

  I relaxed as best I could in my captor’s grip. No point in trying to escape; if I did, they’d go looking for me, and in the process might come across Tommaso. Lorenzo de’ Medici had no idea how lucky he was that the boy had escaped—because if he hadn’t, I would have told the Romans everything, anything they wanted to know if it would have spared Tommaso an instant of pain. But now …

  Now I wouldn’t talk. I only had to bear the next few hours, or God forbid, days, but I could bear them now that Tommaso was safe.

  The cart lurched and slowed again as we made our way onto the rougher surface of the Old Bridge, where the way grew narrower because of the scores of shops lining either side of the bridge, and the scores of pedestrians patronizing each one. The Arno River reeked of fish and garbage wherever you were, but the smell wasn’t so bad at the north end because the merchants were mostly artisans, with a few goldsmiths and jewelers. But at midpoint came the fishmongers and dye-makers, and the vile piss-and-dung scented tanneries, which always turned my stomach.

  The cart rolled right up next to a tannery and stopped. My captor dragged me from the cart and I sighed, thinking that the tanner whose marriage proposal I’d rejected so long ago was finally having his revenge. All my enemies had to do was threaten to lower me into one of those foul-smelling vats …