I, Mona Lisa

by Jeanne Kalogridis

  They mean to destroy us. . . .

  PART TWO

  Lisa

  XI

  I will always remember the day my mother told me the story of Giuliano de’ Medici’s murder.

  It was a December day thirteen and a half years after the event; I was twelve. For the first time in my life, I stood inside the great Duomo, my head thrown back as I marveled at the magnificence of Brunelleschi’s cupola while my mother, her hands folded in prayer, whispered the gruesome tale to me.

  Midweek after morning Mass, the cathedral was nearly deserted, save for a sobbing widow on her knees just beyond the entry, and a priest replacing the tapers on the altar’s candelabra. We had stopped directly in front of the high altar, where the events of the assassination had taken place. I loved tales of adventure, and tried to picture a young Lorenzo de’ Medici, his sword drawn, leaping into the choir and running past the priests to safety.

  I turned to look at my mother, Lucrezia, and tugged at her embroidered brocade sleeve. She was dark-haired, dark-eyed, with skin so flawless it provoked my jealousy; she, however, seemed unaware of her amazing appearance. She complained of the adamant straightness of her locks, of the olive cast to her complexion. Never mind that she was fine-boned, with lovely hands, feet, and teeth. I was mature for my years, already larger than she, with coarse dull brown waves and troubled skin.

  “What happened after Lorenzo escaped?” I hissed. “What became of Giuliano?”

  My mother’s eyes had filled with tears. She was, as my father often said, easily provoked to deep emotion. “He died of his terrible wounds. Florence went mad; everyone wanted blood. And the executions of the conspirators . . .” She shuddered at the memory, unable to bring herself to finish the thought.

  Zalumma, who stood on her other side, leaned forward to scowl a warning at me.

  “Didn’t anyone try to help Giuliano?” I asked. “Or was he already dead? I would have at least gone to see if he was still alive.”

  “Hush,” Zalumma warned me. “Can’t you see she is becoming upset?”

  This was indeed cause for concern. My mother was not well, and agitation worsened her condition.

  “She was the one who told the story,” I countered. “I did not ask for it.”

  “Quiet!” Zalumma ordered. I was stubborn, but she was more so. She took my mother’s elbow and, in a sweeter tone, said, “Madonna, it’s time to leave. We must get home before your absence is discovered.”

  She referred to my father, who had spent that day, like most others, tending his business. He would be aghast if he returned to find his wife gone; this was the first time in years she had dared venture out so far and so long.

  We had secretly planned this outing for some time. I had never seen the Duomo, though I had grown up looking at its great brick cupola from the opposite side of the Arno, in our house on the Via Maggio. All my life, I had attended our local church of Santo Spirito and thought it grand, with its interior classical columns and arches made of pietra serena, a fine, pale gray stone. Our main altar was also centered beneath a cupola designed by the great Brunelleschi, his final achievement; I had thought Santo Spirito, with its thirty-eight side altars, impossibly grand, impossibly large—until I stood inside the great Duomo. The cupola challenged the imagination. Gazing on it, I understood why, when it was first constructed, people were reluctant to stand beneath it. I understood, too, why some of those who heard the shouting on the day of Giuliano’s murder had rushed outside, believing the great dome was finally collapsing.

  Magic it was, for something so vast to rise into the air without visible support.

  My mother had brought me to the Piazza del Duomo not just to marvel at the cupola, but to slake my yearning for art—and hers. She was wellborn and well educated; she adored poetry, which she read in Italian and Latin (both of which she had insisted on teaching to me). She had passionately acquired a wealth of knowledge about the city’s cultural treasures—and had long been troubled by the fact that her illness had prevented her from sharing them with me. So when the opportunity arose on that bright December day, we took a carriage east and headed across the Ponte Vecchio into the heart of Florence.

  It would have been more efficient to head straight down the Via Maggio to the nearest bridge, the Ponte Santa Trinità, but that would have denied me a visual treat. The Ponte Vecchio was lined with the botteghe of goldsmiths and artists. Each bottega opened directly onto the street, with the owner’s wares prominently displayed in front of the shop. We all wore our best fur-lined capes to protect us from the chilly air, and Zalumma had tucked several thick woolen blankets around my mother. But I was too elated to feel cold; I stuck my head outside the carriage to gape at golden plaques, statuettes, belts, bracelets, and Carnival masks. I gazed on chiseled marble busts of wealthy Florentines, on portraits in progress. In the early days, my mother said, the bridge was home to tanners and fabric dyers, who used to dump their noxious-smelling chemicals directly into the Arno. The Medici had objected: The river was cleaner now than it had ever been, and the tanners and dyers worked in specified areas of the city.

  On our way to the Duomo, our carriage paused in the vast piazza, in front of the imposing fortress known as the Palazzo della Signoria, where the Lord Priors of Florence met. On a prominent wall of an adjacent building was a grotesque mural: paintings of hanged men. I knew nothing of them save that they were known as the Pazzi conspirators, and that they were evil. One of the conspirators, a small naked man, stared wide-eyed and sightless back at me; the effect was unnerving. But what intrigued me most was the portrait of the last hanging body. His form differed from the others, was more delicately portrayed, more assured; its subtle shadings poignantly evoked the grief and remorse of a troubled soul. And it did not seem to float, as the others did, but possessed the shadow and the depth of reality. I felt as though I could reach into the wall and touch Baroncelli’s cooling flesh.

  I turned to my mother. She was watching me carefully, though she said not a word about the mural, nor the reason we had lingered there. It was the first time I had stayed for any length of time in the piazza, the first time I had been allowed such a close view of the hanged men. “This last one was done by a different artist,” I said.

  “Leonardo, from Vinci,” she said. “He has an amazing refinement, doesn’t he? He is like God, breathing life into stone.” She nodded, clearly pleased by my discernment, and waved for the driver to move on.

  We made our way north to the Piazza del Duomo.

  Before entering the cathedral, I had examined Ghiberti’s bas relief panels on the doors of the nearby octagonal Baptistery. Here, near the public entry at the southern end of the building, scenes from the life of Florence’s patron saint, John the Baptist, covered the walls. But what truly tantalized me was the Door of Paradise on the northern side. There, in fine gilded bronze, the Old Testament came to life in vivid detail. I stood on tiptoe to finger the sweeping curve of an angel’s wing as he announced to Abraham that God desired Isaac as a sacrifice; I bent down to marvel at Moses receiving the tablets from the divine hand. What I most yearned to touch were the delicately rendered heads and muscular shoulders of oxen, emerging from the metal of the uppermost plaque to plow a field. I knew the tips of the horns would be sharp and cold against my fingertip, but they lay too high for my reach. Instead, I contented myself with rubbing the numerous tiny heads of prophets and sibyls that lined the doors like garlands; the bronze burned like ice.

  The interior of the Baptistery was for me less remarkable. Only one item caught my attention: Donatello’s dark wooden carving of Mary Magdalen, larger than life. She was a ghastly, spectral version of the seductress: aged now, her hair so wild and long that she clothed herself in the tangles, just as Saint John clothed himself in the skins of animals. Her cheeks were gaunt, her features worn down by decades of guilt and regret. Something about the resignation in her aspect reminded me of my mother.

  We three made our way into the Duomo prop
er then, and once we arrived in front of the altar, my mother immediately began speaking of the murder that had taken place there almost fourteen years earlier. I had only moments to draw in the astonishing vastness of the cupola before Zalumma grew worried and told my mother it was time to leave.

  “I suppose so.” My mother reluctantly agreed with Zalumma’s urgings. “But first I must speak to my daughter alone.”

  This frustrated the slave. She scowled until her brows merged into one great black line, but her social status compelled her to say calmly, “Of course, Madonna.” So she retreated, but only a short distance away.

  Once my mother satisfied herself that Zalumma was not watching, she retrieved from her bosom a small, shining object. A coin, I thought, but after she had pressed it into my palm, I saw it was a gold medallion, stamped with the words PUBLIC MOURNING. Beneath the letters, two men with knives readied themselves to attack a startled victim. Despite its small size, the image was detailed and lifelike, rendered with a delicacy worthy of Ghiberti.

  “Keep it,” my mother said. “But let it be our secret.”

  I eyed her gift greedily, curiously. “Was he really so handsome?”

  “He was. It is quite accurate. And quite rare. It was created by the same artist who painted Baroncelli.”

  I tucked it at once into my belt. My mother and I both shared a love of such trinkets, and of art, though my father disapproved of my having anything so impractical. As a merchant, he had worked hard for his wealth, and hated to see it squandered on anything useless. But I was thrilled; I hungered for such things.

  “Zalumma,” my mother called. “I am ready to leave.”

  Zalumma came to fetch us at once and took hold of my mother’s arm again. But when my mother began to turn away from the altar, she paused and wrinkled her nose. “The candles . . .” she murmured. “Have the altar vestments caught fire? Something is burning. . . .”

  Zalumma’s expression went slack with panic, but she recovered herself immediately and said calmly, as if it were the most normal thing in the world: “Lie down, Madonna. Here, on the floor. All will be well.”

  “It all repeats,” my mother said, with the odd catch in her voice I had come to dread.

  “Lie down!” Zalumma ordered, as sternly as she would a child. My mother seemed not to hear her, and when Zalumma pressed on her limbs, trying to force her to the ground, she resisted.

  “It all repeats,” my mother said swiftly, frantically. “Don’t you see it happening again? Here, in this sacred place.”

  I lent my weight to Zalumma’s; together we fought to bring my mother down, but it was like trying to bring down an immovable mountain—one that trembled.

  My mother’s arms moved involuntarily from her sides and shot straight out, rigid. Her legs locked beneath her. “There is murder here, and thoughts of murder!” she shrieked. “Plots within plots once more!”

  Her cry grew unintelligible as she went down.

  Zalumma and I clung to her so that she did not land too harshly.

  My mother writhed on the cold floor of the cathedral, her blue cloak gaping open, her silver skirts pooling around her. Zalumma lay across her body; I put my kerchief between her upper teeth and tongue, then held on to her head.

  I was barely in time. My mother’s dark eyes rolled back until only the veined whites were visible—then the rigors began. Head, torso, limbs—all began to jerk arrhythmically, rapidly.

  Somehow Zalumma held on, rising and falling with the waves, whispering hoarsely in her barbarous tongue, strange words coming so fast and so practiced I knew they were part of a prayer. I, too, began to pray without thinking in a language equally old: Ave Maria, Mater Dei, ora pro nobis pecatoribus, nunc et in hora mortis nostrae . . .

  I focused on the linen kerchief in my mother’s mouth—on her champing teeth, and the small specks of blood there—and on her jerking head, which I now held fast in my lap, so I was startled into fright when a stranger beside us began praying loudly, also in Latin.

  I glanced up and saw the black-frocked priest who had been tending the altar. He alternated between sprinkling my mother with liquid from a small vial and making the sign of the cross over her while he prayed.

  At last the time came when my mother gave a final wrenching groan, then fell limp; her eyelids fluttered shut.

  Beside me, the priest—a young red-haired man with pockmarked florid skin—rose. “She is like the woman from whom Jesus cast out nine devils,” he said with authority. “She is possessed.”

  Sore and halting from the struggle, Zalumma nonetheless rose to her full height—a hand’s breadth taller than the priest—and glared at him. “It is a sickness,” she said, “of which you know nothing.”

  The young priest shrank, his tone now only faintly insistent. “It is the Devil.”

  I glanced from the priest’s face to Zalumma’s stern expression. I was mature for my age and knew responsibility: The increasing number of my mother’s fits had caused me to act as mistress of the household many times, playing hostess to guests, and accompanying my father in her place on social occasions. For the last three years, I had gone with Zalumma to market in my mother’s place. But I was young in terms of my knowledge of the world, and of God. I was still undecided as to whether God was punishing her for some early sin, and whether her fits were indeed of sinister origin. I knew only that I loved her, pitied her, and disliked the priest’s condescension.

  Zalumma’s white cheeks turned shell pink. I knew her well: A scathing reply had formed in her mind, and teetered upon her rouged lips, but she checked it. She had need of the priest.

  Her manner turned abruptly unctuous. “I am a poor slave, with no right to contradict a learned man, Father. Here, we must get my mistress to the carriage. Will you help us?”

  The priest looked on her with justifiable suspicion, but he could not refuse. And so I ran to find our driver; when he had brought the carriage round to the front of the cathedral, he and the priest carried my mother to it.

  Exhausted, she slept with her head cradled in Zalumma’s lap; I held her legs. We rode home directly back over the Ponte Santa Trinità, a homely stone bridge which housed no shops.

  Our palazzo on the Via Maggio was neither large nor ostentatious, though my father could have afforded to adorn the house more. It had been built a century before by his great-great-grandfather from plain pietra serena, the expensive subtle gray stone. My father had made no additions, added no statuary nor replaced the plain, worn floors or the scarred doors; he eschewed unnecessary adornment. We rode inside the gate; then Zalumma and the driver lifted my mother from the carriage.

  To our horror, my father, Antonio, stood watching in the loggia.

  XII

  My father had returned early. Dressed in his usual dark farsetto, crimson mantle, and black leggings, he stood with his arms crossed at the entry to the loggia so that he would not miss us. He was a sharp-featured man, with golden-brown hair that grew in darker at the crown, a narrow hooked nose, and thunderous thick eyebrows above pale amber eyes. His disregard for fashion showed in his face; he wore a full beard and mustache at a time when it was common for men to be clean-shaven or wear a neat goatee.

  Yet, ironically, no one knew more about Florence’s current styles and cravings. My father owned a bottega in the Santa Croce district, near the ancient Wool Guild, the Arte de Lana. He specialized in providing the very finest wools to the city’s wealthiest families. He often went to the Medici palazzo on the Via Larga, his carriage heavy with fabrics colored with chermisi, the most expensive of dyes made from the dried carcasses of lice, which produced the most exquisite crimson, and alessandrino, a costly and beautiful deep blue.

  Sometimes I rode with my father and waited in the carriage while he met with his most important clients at their palazzi. I enjoyed the rides, and he seemed to enjoy sharing with me the details of his business, speaking to me as if I were his equal; at times, I felt guilty because I was not a son who could take over t
he family trade. I was his sole heir, and a girl. God had frowned upon my parents, and it was taken for granted that my mother and her fits were to blame.

  And now there was no hiding the fact that our secret escapade had just caused her to suffer another one.

  My father was, for the most part, a self-possessed man. But certain things goaded him—my mother’s condition was one of them—and could induce an uncontrollable rage. As I crawled from the carriage to walk behind Zalumma and the others, I saw the danger in his eye and looked guiltily away.

  For the moment, love of my mother took precedence over my father’s anger. He ran to us and took Zalumma’s place, catching hold of my mother tenderly. Together, he and the driver carried her toward the house; as they did, he glanced over his shoulder at Zalumma and me. He kept his tone low so it would not distress my semiconscious mother, but I could hear the anger coiled in it, waiting to lash out.

  “You women will see her to bed; then I will have words with you.”

  This was the worst possible outcome. Had my mother not succumbed to a fit, we could have argued that she had been too long housebound and deserved the outing. But I was overwhelmed by a sense of responsibility for all that had happened, and ready to submit to a well-deserved tirade. My mother had taken me into the city because she delighted in me and wished to please me by showing me the city’s treasures. My father could never be bothered; he scorned the Duomo, calling it “ill-conceived,” and said that our church at Santo Spirito was good enough for us.

  So my father carried Mother up to her bed. I closed the shutters to block out the sun, then helped Zalumma undress her down to her camicia of embroidered white silk so fine and thin it could scarce be called cloth. Once that was done, and Zalumma was certain my mother was sleeping comfortably, we stepped quietly out into her antechamber and closed the door behind us.