Zalumma laughed softly; I hushed her. We stood in the doorway to my father’s bedchamber. Behind my back, my father slept quiet as the dead after a restless, pain-filled night; I had closed the shutters to keep out the glare of the morning sun.
“Oh, but it was grand, though,” Loretta said, “when he rode through the San Frediano gate yesterday. The Signoria stood on a platform, dressed in crimson coats with ermine at their necks. It was so loud! Every bell in the city was tolling, and then when the drummers began, I thought my ears would burst. And I never heard of an army dressing so beautifully-why, the footmen themselves wore velvet embroidered with thread of gold, and the calvary’s armor was engraved with beautiful designs, and they all carried gold embroidered banners…
“Then Charles came. We knew it was him, because he rode a great black stallion and his armor was covered with gemstones. Four knights rode beside him-two on each side-and held a silk canopy over his head.
“It was lovely, just lovely-until Charles finally stopped, and got off his horse, and joined the Lord Priors on the platform. He’s the strangest-looking man I ever saw. A great head, covered with hair the color of fresh-polished copper, almost pink, and a tiny body-he looked like a walking baby. A walking baby with shoes like horses’ hooves. I don’t know what is wrong with his feet.
“He was so comical. Everyone was waiting for Charles or the Lord Priors to speak, and over the silence a little girl near me cried out, ‘But he is so small!’ And the people around me laughed-not too loud, though. No point in starting trouble.
“So that is the man who has kept us in mortal fear all this time. A small man. And the Signoria addressed him in Latin-he didn’t understand a word! One of his attendants had to translate every word into French.
“Do you know what a man in the crowd told me? An educated nobleman, very intelligent. He said-very quietly of course, because you don’t know who’s listening these days-that Charles wanted to invade Naples because he heard the hunting was good there and the weather always nice, and he loves to hunt. And then he got wind of what Savonarola was saying about him, so he figured he may as well take a little trip south.”
Zalumma was fascinated by all this, but I turned away and went back to sit with my father. I did not want to hear that Charles was a buffoon who had blundered his way into Tuscany, who for foolish reasons had caused the death of my husband and the downfall of the Medici family.
I did not let myself think of much of anything outside of my father. He was all I had left now, besides Zalumma. I had nothing else.
I honestly feared my father would die. There were nights his teeth chattered and he shook so violently that I crawled into the bed and held him, hoping the warmth of my body would soothe him. I slept in his room, abandoning mine.
Slowly, he improved, though his right thumb and forefinger remained misshapen; dark scabs had formed in place of the fingernails.
Zalumma haunted me like a ghost. I was only peripherally aware of her presence, as she worried over my lack of sleep and food, my lack of any pursuit other than nursing my father. She was the only one I told about Giuliano’s death. The Lord Priors kept the public uninformed, lest the graves outside the city walls all be dug up in the anti-Medici frenzy that had consumed the city.
We had two French soldiers camping at our palazzo then; the Signoria had insisted that the well-to-do families house and feed Charles’s soldiers. I did not go to market or out into the city at all, so I saw little of them. I only glimpsed our houseguests from my father’s windows or in passing, when I had to leave the room.
Occasionally I saw them when Ser Francesco came to visit. He did not come often in those first days, when the city was in turmoil and my father was gravely ill. But when it became clear that my father would survive, Ser Francesco came to pay his respects. I admit, when my father greeted him with wan cordiality, I was inwardly seething.
But I reminded myself that my father smiled at the man who had saved his life. Ser Francesco, too, supported us: My father’s bottega had been incinerated, and all his wools stolen or consumed in the blaze; and our palazzo had been vandalized. All the furniture on the ground floor and most of our clothing, drapes, tapestries, and linens had been burned. Ser Francesco had the best food delivered to our kitchen, had the apothecary deliver unguents and ingredients for poultices, had the barber come to lance my father’s sores, and had sent his own physician to apply leeches. All this he did without asking for time alone with me-indeed, without referring once to our bargain. The one time he managed a private word with me, as I led him to the door of my father’s chamber, he said, in a low voice so my father could not hear:
“I have left funds in Zalumma’s care, for the replacement of furniture and other things that your father lost during the rioting. I did not want to be presumptuous and choose them myself; you know your father’s taste better than I.” He paused. “I am sorry to relay that Count Giovanni Pico died recently. I know such news will be difficult for your father. Perhaps it would be best to wait to tell him until he is well.”
I nodded. And I looked into his face-into those eyes of icy blue-and saw something very like affection, very like the desire to please. But they were not Giuliano’s eyes, and the difference left me bitter. The slightest reference to Lorenzo, or Cosimo, or anything even distantly related to the Medici scalded my heart.
When Loretta casually mentioned one day that King Charles had demanded that Piero de’ Medici be returned to power, I turned on her, furious, and ordered her to leave the room. The next day, after I had lain awake that night, burdened by the knowledge, I apologized to Loretta and asked for more news.
“The Signoria would not hear of it,” she said. Savonarola had gone to Charles and told him God would smite him if he caused the Medici to be returned.
A fortnight passed. Charles and his soldiers grew increasingly demanding and abusive; Florentines no longer welcomed them as heroes, but came to see them as a great nuisance.
On the twenty-seventh of November-eighteen days after I became Giuliano’s wife-Savonarola again went to King Charles. This time he told the monarch that God demanded the French army move on or risk divine wrath. And Charles, stupid Charles, believed him.
The next day, the French were gone.
December came. My father grew hale enough to leave his bed, though he became morose and silent when told of Giovanni Pico’s death. Even Ser Francesco’s visits, with their attendant discussions of preparations for our June wedding, failed to cheer him.
I, on the other hand, grew ill.
I thought it was grief at first: It made sense that the ache in my heart should spread outward. My limbs were heavy; at times, the slightest exertion made me gasp for air, made me long to lie down. My breasts hurt. Food became increasingly repugnant, until I could no longer bear to go into the kitchen.
One evening I eschewed supper and instead took to my bed, wrapping myself in furs because the cold seemed to pierce me with especial vengeance that winter. Zalumma brought me up one of my favorite dishes: quail roasted with onions and leaves of sage. As a special temptation, she had added some warm stewed figs.
She presented it to me as I sat up on my bed, and held the tray under my nose. I looked down at the little bird, gleaming and crisp, with juices visible swirling beneath its skin. The pungent scent of sage rose up with the steam… and I rose up from my bed, quite desperate, overwhelmed by a nausea swifter and more urgent than I had ever known.
Zalumma moved out of the way quickly, but I never made it to the basin. The smell of smoke and burning wood from the nearby hearth mingled with that of the quail; I fell to my knees and retched violently. Fortunately, I had taken nothing more than water and a little bread that day.
Then, while I sat on my haunches against the wall, eyes closed, gasping and trembling, she quickly took the tray out of the room. In an instant, she returned, cleaned the floor, and pressed a cool cloth to my forehead.
When I finally took it from her, opened my eyes, a
nd wiped my face, she demanded, “When was your last monthly course?”
I blinked at her, not understanding. Her expression was very grave, very severe.
“Two weeks,” I began, then broke into tears.
“Hush, hush.” She put an arm about my shoulder. “Then you have nothing to fear. You are just tired, tired from sorrow and sick from not eating…”
“Let me finish.” I struggled, my voice catching on almost every word. “Two weeks… before my wedding.”
“Oh.” As tears streamed down my cheeks, I watched her do a quick calculation. It was almost mid-December; I had consummated my marriage to Giuliano on the ninth of November.
It had been five weeks.
“You are pregnant,” she said implacably.
We stared at each other for a very long, very silent moment.
I let go a sudden laugh, and she caught my hand and smiled.
Just as abruptly, I turned my face and stared, melancholy, into the fire.
“I want to see my mother,” I said.
LI
Two days later, Zalumma swaddled me against the chill. With my father’s leave, she and I rode to the churchyard at Santo Spirito. Had I not been feeling unsteady, we could have walked.
The driver waited inside the narthex while we women went outside to the churchyard. The cold air stung my nose and eyes and made them water; the tip of Zalumma’s nose, the edges of her nostrils, were bright pink. We both raised the hoods of our capes-new ones, courtesy of Ser Francesco.
The dead grass and leaves were frosted and crackled beneath our feet as we walked to where my mother was buried.
My mother lay in a crypt of pink and white marble that gleamed like pearl where the feeble sunlight struck it. Per my father’s wishes, her marker was plainer than most: Two curly-haired marble cherubs adorned it. One sat upon the marker, an arm and his face directed upward, as if contemplating her destination; the other gazed solemnly at the viewer, the index finger of his dimpled fist pointing at her name:
ANNA LUCREZIA DI PAOLO STROZZI
Had the weather not been bitter, I think I would simply have sat down next to her, on the ground, and rested in her presence. As it was, I stood none too steadily and thought, Mother, I am going to have a child. I put a gloved hand on her tomb; it burned like ice, and I thought how very cold her bones must be, lying there.
“Three years ago,” I said aloud to Zalumma. “Three years ago this very day, she took me to the Duomo.” It had been cold that day, too, though it did not make me ache so.
“On your birthday,” Zalumma said. Her voice was taut; I thought she would cry. “She wanted to do something special for you that day.”
Grief, I thought, had made her forgetful. I clucked my tongue gently, made my tone light. Zalumma cried very rarely, and I could not have borne it that day. “Silly. Where is your head? You know my birthday is in June. The fifteenth, like today.”
Zalumma bowed her head beside me. “Your mother always tried to do something special for you on this day. Something no one else would notice, but I always knew.”
I turned my face toward her. She knew exactly what she was saying. She stared straight ahead at my mother’s grave, unable to meet my gaze.
“That’s impossible,” I said slowly. “Everyone knows my birthday falls in June.”
“You were born at your grandmother’s country estate. Your father sent Madonna Lucrezia there when she began to show. And she stayed there for almost a year after you were born.” Her face was flushed. She, who had always been supremely confident, now spoke timidly, stumbling over her words. “She and your father were agreed on this. And she swore me to secrecy. If it had been only for him…” Her handsome features contorted briefly with hate.
I had entirely forgotten the cold. “What you’re saying makes no sense, Zalumma. No sense. Why would so many people-”
“Your father had a wife, before your mother,” she said swiftly. “A young thing. He was married to her four years before she died of fever. And she never conceived. They blamed it on her, of course. They never question the man.
“But then he married your mother. Three years passed, and again, no child. No child, until…” She turned to me, suddenly herself again and filled with exasperation. “Oh, child! Go look in a mirror! You look nothing like Antonio! But everyone else could see it-”
“See what?” I had made myself intentionally stupid, I think, because I did not want to understand what she was saying-but in retrospect, I must have understood it all along. I was near crying. “I know I don’t look like my father, but… what does everyone see?”
She put her hands upon my shoulders at last, in a gesture of comfort, as if she had finally realized that what she was saying would hurt me. “Madonna, forgive me. Forgive me. Your mother loved Giuliano de’ Medici.”
“Giuliano-” I began, then stopped. I had been going to say that Zalumma was mad, that Giuliano-my Giuliano-had never met my mother, so to say that she loved him was insane.
But then my mind returned to that point in time when I had stood in Lorenzo’s courtyard with Leonardo, and the artist had asked me to pose in front of Giuliano’s statue, with its oddly familiar features.
I thought of Leonardo’s skillful, trained eye, how he had so faithfully reproduced my image in a sketch after meeting me only once. I thought, too, of Lorenzo, staring through the window, waiting. I knew then he had been watching the artist for a sign.
My mother had to have known I was Giuliano’s child from the start. My father, in his jealousy, had shunned her for months before I was conceived, and continued to do so long after I was born. That same jealousy caused him to strike her when she confessed she was pregnant.
There were rumors of the affair, of course. Once Giuliano died, my mother and Antonio agreed upon a deception, to spare my father shame: She would deliver me in secret, in her mother’s house in the country, and return with me when my age made the lie feasible. I was baptized late; my false birthdate was recorded in the city ledger.
That way, no one would suspect me of being Giuliano de’ Medici’s daughter. No one except perhaps for the astrologer, paid by Zalumma in secret so that she and my desperately curious mother could learn the truth about my destiny.
No one, except Leonardo and Lorenzo, who had recognized their loved one’s features from afar.
Zalumma and I rode home in silence.
Why, I had demanded of her in the churchyard, did you not tell me this earlier? Why did you wait until now?
Because your mother made me promise to keep this secret from you, she had replied, almost shouting from the grip of strong emotion. And then-you were so miserable living with your father, there seemed no point in making you more miserable, until you were free of him. I had planned to tell you the day you married Giuliano.
I speak now because you deserve to know the truth about the child you carry.
I wanted to weep, for many reasons, but the tears remained trapped in my tightening throat. I remembered Lorenzo, whispering, I love you, child; I remembered my mother, giving me the medallion as a keepsake. And now it was gone, and I had nothing to remember my real father or my husband-my cousin-by.
Perhaps I should have felt angry with my father-with Antonio-for striking my mother because she carried me. But I could only remember his crushed hands, his bleeding fingers where the nails had been torn away. I could only remember my father’s words, as I left to attend the dying Lorenzo:
No matter what he says to you, you are my daughter.
He must have been terrified that I would learn the truth that night; yet he had let me go.
When we returned home, I went up to my chambers and did not go down for supper; I couldn’t have eaten anyway. Zalumma brought me bread and salt to settle my uneasy stomach.
We still did not speak. My mind was racing, reinterpreting the past, and Zalumma seemed to understand that. I blew out the lamp and lay down that night upon my bed, but my eyes stayed open. I stared into the darkness
for an hour, for two, for three.
And then I sat up abruptly, my heartbeat quickening. I thought of the ink rendering of Bernardo Baroncelli; suddenly, I understood why Leonardo had given it to me. And I remembered some of the last words I had heard my husband speak.
Leonardo. Leonardo saw him; my uncle died in his arms.
Leonardo saw him: the man who killed my real father, Giuliano. The man the dying Lorenzo had called “the third man.”
For my mother’s sake, for my own, I wanted revenge.
To Leonardo da Vinci, at the Court of Ludovico Sforza, the Duke of Milan:
Ser Leonardo,
I am writing you because I have recently learned a certain fact-about myself, specifically in terms of my mother’s relationship with Lorenzo de’ Medici’s murdered brother, Giuliano the elder. I feel, because of your actions the evening we were in the Medici courtyard, that you have long been aware of said fact.
Forgive my boldness, but I feel I can trust you as a friend. Giuliano had told me that you were present in the Duomo the day of the assassination, and that you are privy to information-specifically, regarding the identity of a particular man who was also in the cathedral that day. It is my understanding that this man has never been found.
He is now of especial interest to me. Please, Ser Leonardo, could you tell me all that you know about him? If you are able to describe him-or even to sketch him from your recollection-I would be very grateful.
If he still breathes, I am determined to find him. I have little else to live for.
May God keep you well,
Lisa di Antonio Gherardini
Via Maggio
Santo Spirito, Florence
Painting Mona Lisa aka I, Mona Lisa Page 30
