I, Mona Lisa

by Jeanne Kalogridis

  Il successor di Karlo che la chioma

  Co la corona del suo antiquo adorna

  Prese a gia l’arme per fiacchar la corna

  A Babilonia, et chi da lei si noma

  The heir of Charlemagne, whose brow

  The crown of ancient times adorns

  Now wields his sword against the horns

  Of Babylon, and those who to her bow.

  I shut the book, set it down, and went over to the fire. The heat was fierce; I crossed my arms over my chest, tightly, as if to hold in the fear. They were all connected somehow: Leonardo, the third man, Lorenzo’s death, the piagnoni . . . and me.

  When I looked up, I saw Uccello’s Battle of San Romano, with its bright banners flying in an imaginary wind. Captain Tolentino still appeared brave and determined, but this time he seemed very alone, soon to be overwhelmed by the enemy.

  Giuliano did not return until late afternoon—so close to the hour he was scheduled to leave that I summoned Laura and sent her after him to be sure he came to see me before he left.

  He no longer wore his false cheerfulness; his eyes were serious, his brow faintly lined. He brought with him a valet who dressed him in a severe tunic of dark gray, untrimmed.

  When the valet was gone, I said lightly, “You look like a piagnone.”

  He did not smile. “I have to leave soon. Did Laura show you where Giovanni’s suite is?”

  “Yes.”

  “Good.” He paused; I knew he was choosing his words carefully. “If for any reason Piero and I are detained . . . if we’re late, or if anything happens to worry you, go to Giovanni at once. He’ll know what to do.”

  I scowled, using displeasure and disapproval to mask my unease. “What could possibly worry me? Why would I want to go to Giovanni?”

  My husband’s lips twitched slightly as he made the decision to be candid. “Our things are packed. Giovanni knows where they are, and he knows where to take you. We’ve agreed on a place where we can meet. So if we’re detained . . .”

  “I want to go with you. I can’t stay here.”

  He gave a short, soft laugh devoid of humor. My suggestion was outrageous, of course: I was a woman, and women would not be welcome at the Palazzo della Signoria. And I already knew Giuliano well enough to know he would never let me accompany him on such a dangerous outing.

  “Lisa.” He took my shoulders tenderly. “We’ve come to an agreement with King Charles; the Signoria may not like it. I was a fool to let Piero continue to listen to Dovizi—everything he’s encouraged my brother to do has made our family look bad. I should never have let things get to this stage; I was too busy looking after our banking interests, left too much of the politics in Piero’s hands. Piero won’t like it, but from this day forth, I’ll insist on being more involved. Dovizi will not be sleeping under our roof tonight. Piero will listen only to my counsel from now on.”

  He paused then, and looked toward the window. I knew he was listening for the bells.

  “You have to go now, don’t you?”

  In reply, he took my face in his hands. “I love you.” He gave me a small, sweet kiss. “And I’ll be back soon, I promise you. Don’t worry.”

  “All right,” I said. Somehow, I managed to speak and behave very calmly. “I’ll let you go without me on one condition.”

  “What?” He tried to sound playful.

  The connection between Leonardo’s letter and Lorenzo’s dying words still gnawed at me, and I feared that my opportunity to learn the truth was fast escaping. “Answer this question. Who is the third man? The penitent?”

  His hands dropped to his sides. His lips parted, and he frowned at me, dumbstruck. “After all this time . . . you remember my father saying that?” And then he collected himself. “He was dying. He didn’t know what he was saying.”

  “You’re a terrible liar. Who did he mean?”

  Giuliano’s shoulders slumped slightly in defeat. “He was the one man who escaped,” he said, and at that instant the bells began to ring.

  We both started, but I persisted. Time was slipping away, and I had a sudden keen desire to know, as if both our fates depended on it. “Escaped what?”

  “They caught everyone involved in the conspiracy to kill my uncle. But one man escaped.”

  “Your father saw him?”

  He shook his head, visibly anxious now, his body turning toward the door. “Leonardo,” he said. “Leonardo saw him; my uncle died in his arms. Lisa, I have to go. Kiss me again.”

  I wanted to cry from sheer worry, but instead I kissed him.

  “The guards are just outside,” he said quickly, “and they will tell you if you need to go to Giovanni. Stay here. Laura will bring you something to eat.” He opened the door, then turned his head to look at me one last time. His face was young, painted with fireglow; his eyes were shining and anxious. “I love you.”

  “I love you,” I said.

  He closed the door. I went over to the window and opened it, unmindful of the chill. There was finally a break in the clouds, and I caught a glimpse of the low sun, coral orange. I leaned out for a while, listening to the bells; then I watched as finally Piero and Giuliano set out on horseback, accompanied by some thirty men.

  “Leonardo,” I said, with no one there to hear me. Somehow we were connected to each other and the trouble that was surely coming now.

  XLVI

  I listened to the cascading harmony of the church bells until the very last note faded into the vibrating air. I felt I ought to go downstairs to the chapel, where Giovanni and Michelangelo were no doubt at vespers; I felt I should pray to my mother’s benevolent God to protect my husband. But I was too agitated at that point to converse with God or anyone else. I was too agitated, in fact, to obey Giuliano and sit patiently in the bedchamber.

  I was dressed in my wedding gown, since Zalumma had never arrived with my other clothes; because it was chilly, I put on the lovely brocade overdress with its fur lining. Something made me pause and retrieve my two gold medallions from the desk, where Laura had put them when she had undressed me the night before. I slipped them into the inside pocket of the overdress, and stepped out into the antechamber.

  My giant rose to his feet. “Is there anything you need, Madonna Lisa?”

  “No. I’m just going to the kitchen to get something to eat,” I lied cheerily, and graced him with my best smile.

  His expression grew troubled. “But Ser Giuliano gave orders—”

  My smile broadened. “That I was to stay in my room. I know. But he said if I got hungry, there was no harm in going to the kitchen. Besides, I’m bored of Petrarch. I wanted to borrow another book from the library.”

  “We can fetch you food—whatever you like. And if you tell us the book—”

  “Ah, but I’m not familiar with the library, so I wouldn’t know what book to ask for.” My tone grew pleading. “Please. I’ll only be a minute.”

  “Very well,” he said, reluctant. “But I must respectfully ask that you don’t dawdle. Ser Giuliano would never forgive me if he returned and I could not account for your whereabouts.” He led the way to the antechamber door and paused to instruct the two guards there in a low voice. As I made my way down the corridor, I could hear one of them following me at a discreet distance.

  I went downstairs, passing more armed guards. I had no desire to go to the kitchen, of course; I only wanted to distract myself. And so I wandered out into the courtyard.

  It was almost as I remembered: There, in the center, was Donatello’s sleek, girlish bronze David, and nearby a stone bust of Plato. But many of the ancient pieces were gone, and, most notably, so was the terra-cotta sculpture of the elder Giuliano.

  I had heard of the famed Medici gardens and knew that they lay beyond the courtyard. I passed between a pair of columns connected by an arch of pietra serena, crossing through a loggia until the building opened up again.

  Here I found the formal garden, a third the size of the vast palazzo. At the center
of a bright green lawn, two flagstone paths, lined by potted fruit trees, intersected. Between the trees stood thickets of rosebushes, thorny and starkly pruned for the coming winter. Behind the bushes, at carefully placed intervals, stood life-sized statues on high pedestals. The one that most caught my eye portrayed the Hebrew, Judith, her fist clutching the hair of her fallen enemy, Holofernes. Her other hand bore a large sword, hefted above her head, ready to render the blow that would finish the gory task of hacking Holofernes’ head from his body.

  And stacked neatly upon the flagstone, next to the walls, were piles and piles of weapons and armor: shields, helmets, maces, long swords, daggers, and lances reminiscent of Uccello’s masterpiece.

  The sight evoked a thrill: All this time, the Medici had been preparing for a war.

  I lifted my gaze to a small group of soldiers who stood nearby, conversing idly with one another; they stopped to stare back at me with curious, unfriendly expressions.

  Perhaps, I told myself, this was simply Piero’s doing—the result of his unease and mistrust, like the Orsini troops who awaited him by the San Gallo city gate. Perhaps Giuliano had never approved this, or thought it necessary.

  Nevertheless, I went over to one of the mounds of knives and carefully teased out a sheathed dagger—the smallest one there. The men did not like it; one of them made a move as if to come over and stop me, but the others held him back. I was now, after all, one of the Medici.

  I unsheathed the dagger and held it to the fading sunlight. It was pure steel, double-edged, with a razor-sharp tip. My breath was coming hard as I slid it back into the leather, then nestled it into the inside pocket of my overdress.

  The guard who had followed me from the house was waiting beneath the archway. I gave him a challenging stare, knowing that he had watched me take the weapon; he said nothing.

  I let him follow me to the library. No more Petrarch; I wanted something unemotional, dry and demanding, to force my thoughts away from all unpleasantness. This time I chose a Latin primer. If everything went as planned—if the Signoria and Piero could be reconciled—I wanted to improve my education in the classics, as I would be entertaining many scholars. I wanted never to cause my husband any embarrassment by seeming like an unlettered peasant, and I was already worrying about how to impress my new sister-in-law.

  I returned to my room and closed the door, which greatly relieved my guardians. I slipped my overdress off and laid it over the chair, then sat down by the fire. The book was meant as a child’s introduction to Latin; I opened the book and read:

  Video, vides, videt, videmus, videtis, vident . . .

  I see, you see, he sees, and so on. Had I been calm, I would have flown through the pages, but my thoughts were so scattered that I stared at the words stupidly. In order to concentrate at all, I read them aloud.

  I droned on for only a few minutes when I was interrupted by a sound outside my window—the low, melancholy tolling of a bell, the one popularly known as the “cow” because it struck the same pitch as cattle lowing.

  It was the bell that summoned all Florentine citizens to the Piazza della Signoria.

  XLVII

  I dropped the book, ran to the window, and flung open the shutters. It was still light outside and I peered down the street, straining toward the Piazza della Signoria. The clanging increased in tempo; I watched as servants wandered out of the grand palazzi down the street to stare, as pedestrians below stopped and turned their faces in the direction of the piazza, transfixed. Beneath me, a small army of men hurried out of the main and side entrances of our building, shields held at chest level, unsheathed swords clenched in their fists.

  I clung fiercely to reason. The citizens had been summoned; I could not assume it was to cheer Piero’s downfall. It might well be to cheer his triumph.

  I leaned out of my window for an eternity—like my neighbors, awaiting a sign. Painful moments passed before it came: softly, from the east and south, a distant, unintelligible rumble at first. Then a single voice, high and clear, rode upon the wind.

  Popolo e libertà! Popolo e libertà!

  I thought at once of Messer Iacopo astride his horse in the great piazza, trying in vain to rally the people to his cause. Only now it was my husband and his brother in that same piazza—and their efforts had been just as vain.

  I thought of Messer Iacopo’s corpse, bloated and blue-white, exhumed from its grave and dragged through the city streets.

  Beyond my window, servants ran back into palazzi, slamming doors; pedestrians scattered, running toward the sound or fleeing it.

  I pushed myself away and quickly donned my overdress. I had brought nothing else with me, and so had nothing else to take—but instinct stopped me at the door. I pulled open the drawer to the desk, found Leonardo’s folded letter, and cast it upon the fire.

  Go to Giovanni, my husband had said.

  I rushed out into the antechamber to find the guards had gone. I ran into the corridor and there saw Michelangelo running toward me. His shyness was gone, replaced by urgency; this time, he met my gaze directly. We stopped just short of colliding; his breath came ragged, like mine.

  “Where is Giuliano? Has he returned?” I asked.

  He spoke at the same instant I did. “Madonna, you must flee! Go quickly to Giovanni!”

  “Giuliano—”

  “I have not seen him. I don’t think he has returned. But I know he would want you to go with his brother.”

  He took my elbow and steered me down the stairs, across the courtyard, up another flight of stairs. He pushed me faster than I could run; twice, I stumbled over my skirts.

  When we reached our destination, Michelangelo flung open the door. Giovanni, his movements deliberate and calm, was instructing a pair of servants on where his packed trunks should be taken. Only when he glanced up did I see the nervousness in his eyes, but his voice was steady.

  “What is it?” He seemed irritated, almost hostile, at the interruption.

  “You must take care of Madonna Lisa,” Michelangelo answered brusquely, with clear dislike. “You promised your brother. My destination will not be a safe one for her.”

  “Oh. Yes.” With a flick of his fingers, Giovanni dismissed the servants, red-faced beneath the weight of their burdens. “Of course.”

  Michelangelo turned to me. “I pray God we meet again, under better circumstances.” Then he was gone, his rapid steps ringing in the corridor.

  Giovanni’s scarlet robe and red velvet cap were immaculate; he was freshly shaven and groomed, as though he had prepared himself for a high-ranking visitor. He was too distracted, perhaps too frightened, to dissemble. He stared at me without kindness. I was a nuisance, a mistake.

  “Go and ready yourself for travel,” he said. “I will send Laura to help you.”

  I did not believe him for an instant. I motioned to my clothing. “I have nothing to take. This is all I brought with me.” Which was true, except for the mousy brown dress my father had insisted I wear; I was all too glad to leave that behind.

  “Then go to your quarters.” The Cardinal studied me, then said, “Look, this is nothing more than a few Lord Priors trying to incite a riot. With luck, my brothers”—he hesitated just before he said the last two words; I knew he had almost said Giuliano—“will be able to calm everyone down. In the meantime, I’m riding out to help them.” He let go a sigh, as if resigned to showing mercy. “Don’t worry; I won’t leave you here.”

  “Thank you,” I said.

  “Go. I’ll call for Laura to sit with you.”

  I crossed the palazzo and returned to Lorenzo’s bedchamber. I could not resist staring out the open window, which had filled the room with cold air, despite the fire. Outside, dusk had fallen; in its failing light, torches flickered in the distance. They came from the west, the direction of San Marco, down the Via Larga. Those holding them aloft cried out, again and again:

  Palle! Palle! Palle!

  I stared at the shadowy forms materializing from the
gloom. Most were on horseback, a few on foot; these were the wealthy, with their servants, probably friends and family from the palazzi lining the Via Larga, a Medici enclave. The light they bore glanced off fine unsheathed swords, off necklaces of gold, off gems. They took their places alongside the men guarding the front of the Medici palace.

  Palle! Palle!

  Converging from the opposite direction, from the Piazza della Signoria, the cry Popolo e libertà! began to take physical form: Dark figures approached, ill-lit by flaming rags lashed to long sticks or the handles of brooms.

  Abaso le palle! Down with the balls!

  The sharp tines of pitchforks, the points of dented, crooked lances, the smoothed tips of wooden clubs, reared against a deepening sky.

  Just before the two forces met, a new contingent emerged from the ranks of Medici supporters. From my distant perch, I could not make out faces—not even that of the rider on horseback who held a lamp illuminating his features. But I recognized the scarlet of his cape, the broadness of his shoulders, his dignified carriage: Giovanni rode out slowly, surrounded by a swarm of armed soldiers.

  “Palle!” he cried at the approaching threat, in a beautiful, thunderous voice. “Good citizens of Florence, hear me out!”

  But the good citizens of Florence would not listen. A stone flew through the air, striking the shoulder of Giovanni’s black mount, causing it to rear. Giovanni managed to calm it, but a decision was made: Rather than tackle their opponents head-on, the Cardinal and his group elected to gallop north, down an alleyway.

  I could only pray he still intended to head for the piazza.

  As Giovanni and his men receded from my view, the angry citizens advanced. Their number seemed infinite, stretching into the dim light as far as I could see. Bodies on foot were joined by wealthier Medici enemies on horseback, bearing maces, sturdy lances, swords, Turkish scimitars.

  Realizing they were overwhelmed, many Medici supporters rode off, abandoning the palazzo guards to do battle alone.